Chapter Six: Insight

Shirou sat in his workshop as he gave the object on the table an intense stare while rubbing his chin. He was twelve now.

He'd been at this for weeks, no matter how many times he'd used Structural Analysis on it, it never ceased to be fascinating to him.

The object in question was a beautiful golden scabbard decorated with blue enamel. It looked more like a treasure to show nobility and pompousness seeing as it was too big to fit Excalibur. Also, who makes a sheath from gold? Fairies apparently.

This was Avalon, the sheath of the legendary Excalibur.

"No matter how many time I examine it, I can't get over how disgustingly useful this thing is," Shirou said as he picked up the scabbard in his hands.

"Shirou, are you in there?" came Aoko's voice from the other side of the door.

"I'm here," Shirou said. "Come on in."

The sound of the door creaking was heard as Aoko came in.

"Shirou, what are you...working...on...now?" Aoko trailed off as she finally got a good look at the inside of his workshop.

"Shirou?" Aoko asked with a raised eyebrow as she looked around.

"Yeah?" Shirou asked back.

"Why does your workshop look like the inside of an M.C. Escher drawing?" the redhead asked.

The entire workshop had architecture that made no sense, the workshop itself resided in a black starry void with a blood red moon in the sky. There were a lot of stairs, they zig-zagged everywhere, upside down, sideways, the ways they were aligned should be impossible, but in Shirou's workshop, impossible didn't exist. Some of the stairs led to doors and others just continued off into the void.

Shirou's right arm began to morph into a twisted mockery of its former self. Black blades jutted out of his arm in various places, and the skin on the rest of his arm had peeled off, revealing the red bleeding muscle underneath. His fingers had turned into jagged, segmented blades that he could still move like regular fingers.

Unlike outside Shirou's workshop, the area around his arm didn't glitch. His workshop had been separated from Gaia's influence.

Aoko wasn't phased by this in the slightest, ever since she'd learned the truth all those years ago.

"To put a long story short," Shirou said as he began poking Avalon with his mutated hand. "Uncle Zelretch decided now was a good time to teach me Kaleidoscope, and I got bored."

"That sounds like something you'd do," Aoko said blandly, she walked over to Shirou and ruffled his red and black hair, he'd grown it out to his upper back. "Is that Avalon?"

"No!" Shirou bellowed.

Aoko gave him a bland look.

"Okay, yeah it is." Shirou caved.

"And what are you doing with it?"

"Long story short, I'm basically hacking it."

"Oh, why?"

"Do you have any idea how disgustingly useful this thing is?" Shirou asked.

"No, but I bet you're going to explain it to me."

"This gold slab here gives you healing abilities that would make Wolverine proud. As long as your brain is intact it will heal any wound short of decapitation," Shirou explained. "You're borderline immortal as long as you have the damn thing on your person."

Aoko's eyes widened. "Wow, that's completely broken."

Shirou beamed. "I know right! If I had this in Yharnam, the Hunt would have been a cakewalk."

Shirou's expression turned emotionless.

"No," the Good Hunter said. "We would have been mauled for hours on end before they decided to decapitate us."

Shirou pouted. "Ruin my fun why don't you."

Aoko frowned at the conversation between the "two". She suddenly gave Shirou a tender hug. Her fellow redhead gave her a curious look.

"What's wrong, Aoko?" Shirou asked.

Aoko sighed. "It's nothing."

Shirou gave her a blank look. "Aoko, you already told me that when a girl says that 'it's nothing,' it is most definitely something."

Aoko pouted but held Shirou closer. "I should have never listened to the advice in that book, now you're too smart for your own good."

Shirou smirked. "And proud of it, too."

Aoko sighed. "I just don't want to talk about it right now, okay?"

Shirou nodded as he poked Avalon with his clawed finger a few more times.

"Did it," he said as it lost its golden glow.

"What happened?" Aoko asked.

"You see, Avalon can only have one registered wielder at a time." Shirou began. "Even if the first wielder dies, they are still registered to Avalon. In a way, I guess you could say I formatted it and now..."

Shirou poked Avalon once again. The sheath of Excalibur gave off a blinding flash of gold that made Aoko cover her eyes with her free arm. Once she blinked the spots out of her eyes, her sights settled back onto Avalon, glowing gold once more.

"I registered myself." Shirou finished with a self-satisfied smile.

Aoko sweatdropped at the implications. "Don't you think that's a bit overkill compared to what you can already do?"

Shirou looked at her blankly. "I lived in Yharnam for most of my life. If there's one thing I got out of being there, it's that there's no such thing as overkill."

Aoko just sighed and ruffled his hair once again. "Come on, Sakura and Altrouge want to talk to you but couldn't find where you were. Altrouge's getting a little...peckish. You know how she is when she hasn't had your blood in a while."

She released her hold on Shirou and he got out of his chair, Avalon in hand.

"I'll get right on it. I just hope that she doesn't try to eat Sakura...again." Shirou said as he left the room, leaving Aoko by herself.

Aoko shook her head and sighed, she looked back to Shirou's workspace in his rather...expansive workshop. She noted the Trick Weapons on the small table Shirou was working with Avalon on.

She grabbed the handle of the Saw Cleaver. Her eyes bore into the instrument of death as she traced the flat of the blade with her fingers.

Aoko wasn't the same person she used to be ever since that fateful night she learned the truth about Shirou.

Misaki Town, four years ago

Aoko tapped her fingers on the dining table impatiently. It was the morning after Shirou and Altrouge had their little...scuffle.

Okay, maybe "scuffle" was the wrong word. She had the strangest urge to dub their fight The Ultimate Hype Match. Yeah, that wasn't happening.

At long last Shirou, Zelretch, Kiritsugu entered the dining room, along with the redheaded twins Kohaku, and Hisui. They were all carrying plates of food as they entered.

Kiritsugu gave Shirou a blank look. "Why didn't you let me help cook?"

Shirou gave his father an equally blank look. "Because the last time I let you help me cook, I had to fight off an eldritch abomination made of spaghetti! I'm fifty percent sure that was a Great One!"

An invisible arrow pierced Kiritsugu's heart.

"Ugh!" the Magus Killer shouted in metaphorical pain.

Kohaku and Hisui giggled at Shirou's cutting words.

"Typical Kiritsugu," Hisui said, as both she and her sister started giggling again.

Another invisible arrow went through went through Kiritsugu's heart.

"Why?" he said slowly, he seemed close to crying.

Zelretch looked off to the side, he seemed paler than usual. The expression on his face was that of a man that had seen some shit.

"Palms were sweaty, knees weak, monsters should never be made of spaghetti!" the Wizard Marshal said in genuine horror.

"Dammit Zelretch, not you too!" Kiritsugu shouted, betrayed.

Shirou set down a plate of eggs, bacon, and hash browns in front of Aoko. Along with a rather old looking notebook.

"Shirou," Aoko called out as she observed the notebook, the air around it was distorted, making it kind of hard to see correctly. "What's this?"

She felt her heart stop as she was met with the boy's blank, thousand yard stare. To Aoko, his gaze felt like it was looking into her soul.

"Uncle Zelretch said you wanted answers." Shirou motioned towards the book in her hand. "There they are."

Kiritsugu gave Shirou a worried look, as did Kohaku, and Hisui. It seemed the twins had some experience with Shirou when he got like this.

"Shirou," the boy's dead gaze lightened up as he turned to his father. "Why don't you go ahead and give Akiha her breakfast. I'm sure she'll appreciate it."

"Okay," Shirou said emotionlessly.

He picked up a particular plate and was proceeded to be dragged off by Kohaku, and Hisui.

"Hurry up, Shirou!" Hisui cheerfully exclaimed. "I want to play that new game Zelretch brought over. Castlevania or whatever."

"This castle is a creature of Chaos," Shirou said in deadpan as he got dragged off. "It may take many incarnations."

Zelretch snorted at that line. The Dead Apostle shook his head and turned to Aoko.

"I suggest you read in that journal in your room," Zelretch said as head left with Kiritsugu.

The Wizard Marshal turned back one last time and looked Aoko right in the eyes, with an ominous smile.

"You really should be careful, Aoko, I've heard enlightenment can drive you mad," he said with a knowing smile. "I recommend you read that a few hours after breakfast, you'll lose it if you don't."

Miss Blue raised an eyebrow at Zelretch's words, they didn't make much sense, but she kept them in mind. She eyed the notebook Shirou left on the table a few times as she ate, the distortion around it made her eyes hurt slightly. All throughout her meal she never touched the book, it gave off a small sense of foreboding.

Once done with breakfast, she reached out for the book. The moment her hand touched it she heard the echoing roars of countless blood crazed beasts, and endless unintelligible whispers from every direction.

Aoko pulled her hand back quickly, her breath quickened, as did her heart rate. She stared at the notebook wide-eyed in slight fear, but mostly confusion.

"What...the hell...was that?" Aoko asked no one through her breaths.

Without thinking, Aoko grabbed the notebook, doing all she could to ignore the all of the roars and whispers, and walked as quickly as she could to her guest room in the Tohno Mansion, locked the door, and quickly set up a silencing Bounded Field. She then tossed the notebook on the small desk in her room. She took a moment to gather her wits before grabbing a chair, sitting down, and mentally preparing herself to read whatever this book was.

She gulped as she opened the book to a random page. She was very much regretting this decision, but her curiosity got the best of her.

I found the birthplace of the Hunters, Byrgenwerth.

I don't know what's even going on anymore. Well, I guess I never really even knew what was going on from the beginning. Everyone in this damn place has transformed into some kind of insect people, and whatever in the world was outside the school.

I found Provost Willem. I wanted to see if I could get any answers out of him, I couldn't even get a word out of him. He's too far gone. I'm sitting next to him right now.

I'm surprised I haven't died yet, that and I'm also just as surprised that he hasn't started shooting lasers at me yet like those things clinging onto the buildings and those weird glowing wiggly flower things. Must be the Caryll Runes I put on myself, that and the Blood Gems. Grandpa Gehrman said, always to improve and upgrade my arsenal.

I haven't really seen any beast here worth mentioning. But that Numbing Mist I got from the Messengers worked wonders on Vicar Amelia. I'm not sure how well it'll work on whatever's here, I can feel something dreadful just right around the corner.

Willem keeps pointing towards the lake. Maybe I should take a dip, I don't know. Either way, if I die, I'll just come back.

Aoko grabbed her head in pain as various images flashed through her mind.

An odd-looking man in robes. Another odd looking man in a wheelchair. Odd symbols. Gems made of crystallized blood. An old school. Mutated, insect-like men. A creature she couldn't quite describe. Some kind of large, white, wolf-like creature with antlers on its head. Small white, things in a bird bath. Massive multi-armed creatures hanging onto the sides of buildings.

"What was that!?" Aoko shouted as the pain stopped.

She didn't understand a single thing that just happened. She didn't even understand what the things mentioned in the notebook where.

Blood Gems? Caryll Runes? Byrgenwerth? Who in the world were Gehrman, Provost Willem, and Vicar Amelia?

The images that flashed through her head only added to the confusion.

Those large multi-armed creatures really caught her attention. Aoko had never heard of a member of the Phantasmal Species that was anything like it. But as she tried to bring the image of the creature back to the front of her mind, a sharp pain erupted through her head.

Perhaps it wasn't the best idea to open to a random page. She should have started for the beginning.

She flipped to the first page.

My name is Shirou.

That was one of the three things I remembered when I awoke in the Hunter's Dream. The second was a city on fire. The third was dying. After that, Grandpa Gehrman has been training me to be a Hunter. It was hard, but soon enough he taught me all he could. The rest could only be gained from the hunt.

So, here I am, finally in Yharnam. Killed my first beast are a few deaths. I met a nice man called Gilbert. He said I should write down my thoughts to cope with what's happened to me so far. He's sick, I hope the Healing Blood of the Church will be able to cure him.

Honestly, I don't really know what to do. Gilbert said my best bet is to head for the Healing Church.

Might as well rid the city of some beast on the way, I'm a Hunter now, after all, it's for my own good.

More images flashed through Aoko's head, and this time there was noticeably less pain.

A Victorian city. Shirou dragging his body through the Fuyuki fire. That strange old man in a wheelchair again. The silhouette of a man behind a window. A large cathedral shrouded in mist. A large wolf-like beast, larger than any man, it was similar to the white one she had seen in the previous entry, but it was much smaller.

The image that got her attention the most was what she believed was The Hunter's Dream. The whole place was a graveyard. A cobblestone path led to a small cabin, and field of graves and flowers. It was beautiful in a somber way.

It seemed that Shirou took the occupation of a Hunter, and these Hunters fight "beast", but this couldn't be right at all, Shirou was eight years old, he may be powerful enough to go head to head with the hybrid Altrouge, but no one in their right mind would trust a child with this kind of duty, would they?

Another image flashed through her mind.

A young teenager with rust-red hair, wearing the long black coat, with a hat with withered feathers, and a face mask. He held a saw-like weapon in one hand and an old flintlock pistol in the other.

"Was that Shirou?" she asked out loud.

She flipped to the next page.

I ran into another nice person on the way to the Healing Church.

Her name's Eileen, she wore some kind of crow themed garb. Called herself "A Hunter of Hunters," She told me that no human beings were left in the city, just flesh-hungry beasts. I can't think like that, people like Gilbert are depending on me to save them from the Scourge of The Beast. What kind of hero would I be if I just killed everything I saw left and right.

She told me where I could find the Healing Church and sent me on my way. I hope she stays safe.

But for now, a Hunter must hunt.

The image of a woman wearing a plague doctor mask and a black feather garb came into her mind.

"That's Eileen I guess," Aoko said.

She flipped to the next page. There were a few drops of blood on the page, they gleamed as if fresh.

I found a little girl.

She asked me to find her mother, her father was apparently a Hunter like myself. She gave me a music box, she said it has one of her father's favorite songs, and that they play it whenever he forgets them to make him remember. She told me that her mother wore a red jeweled brooch.

The same jeweled brooch right next to me, covered in the blood of her own mother, murdered by her father who became drunk on the blood of the Hunt. The same father who helped me fight that thing on that giant beast on the bridge. He turned into a beast during our fight. He TURNED into a beast! Gehrman never told me anything about this, people turning into beasts, what the hell is going on!?

Is this how beasts are made? What does it? Why does it happen? I'm so confused!

I'm going to give the jewel back to the girl, she deserves to know what happened. My hands are wet with the blood of her father, but if I can save her from the Hunt, it's worth it.

One part of Aoko's mind knew she should stop reading, no she should have left the book alone the second she knew something was wrong with it. But she wanted to know the truth about Shirou, and she would follow through with that decision.

Despite her conviction to always follow through with her decisions, she would regret this for the rest of her life, but she'd live with it, those who are granted eyes on the inside either go mad or find a way.

For their eyes are yet to open.

Aoko grit her teeth as the memories came to the front of her mind. She had lost faith in nearly everything she believed in that day. She still very much believed in the "value of life", it was the reason she was still here with Shirou after all. But she couldn't help but feel...doubtful. What use was the "value of life" to someone who lived in a world were their own lives and the lives around them had no meaning.

She set the Saw Cleaver back onto the table and walked out of the workshop.

The eyes of the many abominations made of flesh and blades that guarded the workshop followed her movements until the door closed.

Chapter End

Okame: AVALON!

"You," Shirou from the "Blade Borne" universe said as he points to the reader. "Yeah, you! Has this ever happened to you?"

Blade Borne Shirou pointed a remote towards the large T.V. behind him. It turned on showing the scene from the original Fate/Stay Night of Shirou getting stabbed by Lancer through the heart.

"Well, then you need Avalon!" Shirou exclaimed in glee as he raised up the golden sheath. "The regeneration sensation sweeping the nation!"

Blade Borne Shirou crossed his arms. "Ever lost an arm?"

The T.V. showed Shirou in Unlimited Blade Works slicing off Gilgamesh's arm.

"Been nearly torn in half?"

The T.V. showed the scene of Shirou in canon Fate/Stay Night almost torn in half after his first encounter with Berserker.

"Covered in the mud of the Holy Grail?"

The T.V. shows Gilgamesh from Fate/Zero having the mud of the Holy Grail spilled on him.

"Attacked by some bitch ass troll of a priest?"

The T.V. showed Rin injured by Kirei Kotomine.

"Avalon can fix that lickity split!" Blade Borne Shirou tapped the T.V. with the golden sheath cause golden sparkles to flow over the screen healing all both Shirou, Gilgamesh, and Rin in their respective situation.

Gilgamesh, seeing that his arm was now back, grabbed Ea with both arms.

"Enuma Elish!" he shouted and that world's version of Shirou was consumed in a red maelstrom of energy.

Blade Borne Shirou deadpanned at the sight. "That's unfortunate."

In the scene where Shirou was almost cut in half, noticing he was healed got back up and ran head first towards Berserker.

"I'M A HERO!" he shouted only to meet the same fate once again.

Blade Borne Shirou deadpanned. "That fucking idiot, you're not getting healed again. I can't believe you're a version of me!"

Rin in her situation, she just looked very confused.

Blade Borne Shirou turned back to the viewer and grinned. "To order, call 1-800-Fuck-you-Arthur-I'm-so-done-with-your-white-knight-faggatry! Order Avalon today!"

He turned to the side. "Alright, Cthulhu, where's my fucking money? And don't you pull that 'Foreigner Servant' shit with me. I HAVE GOOGLE MOTHERFUCKER!"

Shirou, Rin, and Artoria from the canon Fate/Stay Night world all looked at the T.V. with disbelieving expressions.

That was the most outrageous thing they'd ever seen. The only thing topping it was the fact that the "Shirou" on screen was a completely different version of him, with black and red hair, and reddish eyes. Guy seemed like he lost his marbles.

Shirou raised up his phone.

"Shirou, don't you dare order that," Artoria said with a dangerous tone.

Shirou casted a disheartened expression, he wanted two.

They all blame Zelretch.