Woah… I can't believe it. This story already has more than 100 reviews and 20000 views! Thanks a lot to everyone who reads this story, those who leave reviews and those who don't equally, I never would have dream that anything that I wrote, especially something as crazy as this, would be so liked. I hope you all continue enjoying this until the end, I write only to have fun and, if I can, bring some smiles to the people who take their time to read what I do :3
In the reviews side this week we don't have much that would give unnecessary spoilers, but I would like to address to one reviewer called Anon564, who has given a pair of very expressively funny reviews these last chapters (Thanks again for reading my story), and assure him that no, you can calm down, Yukari WON'T get the Orange ring. That would be terrifying, but again, no, it's not going to happen. We're not going to see much about Orange for a while, but once again, as I previously said, I have my plans for the 'darkest' light of the spectrum…
Well, enough of that, it's time to continue with this craziness! A meteor is going to erase Shin Tokyo from the map, and London is about to get a nasty encounter with the wildest of the Lights! What will happen?! Read to find out!
Chapter 9: A Prodigy's Rage! A Savior's Will! or "Why does people always insists in splitting the action between two places?!"
There are moments in life that define us forever. Decisions, promises, wishes…
For Emiya Shirou, those moments were unusually clear. And quite a few.
Walking through Hell on Earth as a hollow shell, losing everything and almost falling in the hands of Death, before being saved by the man who became his father.
The night when Emiya Kiritsugu died, when he inherited his ideals and dreams, promising to become a Hero of Justice.
Meeting a beautiful knight in blue just moments after that crazy lancer tried to kill him, again, who asked him if he was her Master.
Deciding to join the Holy Grail War, not for the wish-granting device, but to try and protect all the innocents he could.
Standing in the graveyard back to back with Rin, both of them having lost their Servants, and refusing to give up even after that.
Seeing Gilgamesh rip out the heart of Illyasviel Von Einzbern and being unable to do anything about it. His first and greatest true failure.
Fighting against EMIYA and winning, swearing to the Counter Guardian that he would never let go of his ideals, never become like him.
That last night of the war with Rin. The 'Contract' they had to form in order to have a chance of surviving.
Unleashing his Inner World against Gilgamesh, proving to the King of Heroes that there wasn't anything which said that a copy couldn't surpass the original, thanks to the might of Unlimited Blade Works.
The day after the end, when he saw that not only they did it and survived, but a miracle had happened and Saber was still with them.
Coming back to Japan, to Shin Tokyo, and accidentally finding his biological family. And the Sekirei.
Surely, there were many more moments that he wasn't thinking about right now, but all of them were being ignored in favor of this absurd and probably last one.
He was flying at top speed to try and stop a meteor from killing everyone in the city. With his bare hands.
Uh, if it wasn't impossible he would have sworn that he could hear Rin's voice screaming his name in fury, probably for trying to do the greatest stupidity in his life. How odd.
"Wha-what the hell is happening?! Is that a freaking METEOR?!" resounded Seo's voice from the communication system.
"Are you kidding me?!"
"Hu-husband, answer, do you know what's happening?!"
"A meteor?! What are you saying?! Shirou-tan, tell me what's going on, I suddenly lost the signal from all the satellites and I'm blind to anything slightly above the level of the buildings cameras!"
"Sekirei Matsu, everyone, I'm afraid Lantern Emiya is too concentrated to answer you right now, so hear Me." talked the ring with an unusually serious voice, making everybody freeze. "First, Sekireis Tsukiumi and Akitsu, you two are the nearest to the location of Sekirei Musubi, so please go and fetch her to the next location…"
"What?! What happened to Musubi?!"
"No time. If we all are still alive, I and Lantern Emiya will explain later."
"Ring… why do you say Emiya-kun is too busy to answer us?" Miya's voice resounded like thunder in the suddenly eerily silent and tense room while Tsukiumi and Akitsu headed towards Musubi's location. "And why did you say 'if we are still alive'?"
"….Sekirei Matsu, there is an especial camera in the roof of MBI headquarters make to illegally monitor the Air-Space of the city. I'm hacking it and transmitting the images to your computers right now."
The moment the ring finished talking, a new image appeared in the screens, and everybody eyes widened, their hearts losing a beat.
There was a piece of the sky falling towards the city, wreathed in hellish flames. It was as big as a skyscraper and as wide as the park where Shirou put his Geas.
"What… how…?"
"It looks like something finally went wrong with the mind of Sekirei Karasuba, aka Golden Shōkyaku." grimly answered the ring to Miya's unfinished questions, making her eyes widen even more.
"Oh my god… that thing is… big enough to reduce the entire city to a giant smoking crater." whispered Matsu while dropping her glasses.
"Haruka… I'm scared…" muttered Kuno with tears in her eyes.
Of course, for almost everyone in the room (Except Haruka and Kuno, who were embracing each other and trembling) the most important fact was the blur of emerald light flying right towards it, like an arrow aimed against a tank.
"Wait a minute… Shirou?! Is that you?!" Homura's cry echoed through the room from the speakers of the communication system, confirming what they were thinking. "What the hell are you doing?!"
"Ashikabi-sama. Please, stop." it was a testament to the seriousness of the petition that everyone could perfectly FEEL the emotion in Akitsu's voice.
"I can't." dryly answered Shirou, his gaze still set in the incoming mass of burning metal.
"Husband, no, stop, right now!"
"She's right man, you can't do this!" Seo sounded absolutely nervous when saying that, he and the Lighting Twins looking the scene from a roof. "You can't stop THAT, superpowers or not!"
"Shirou, please come back!" the anguish in Kazehana's voice was something truly deep to hear.
"Emiya-kun, you have to stop! Think about your Sekirei, they…!"
"I'm thinking about them, Miya!" Shirou's sudden answer made all of them fall silent. They had never heard such… determination in his voice. "I'm also thinking about you, Uzume, Chiho, my sister, mi mother, Seo and everyone else in the city! With the ring, I could maybe get you all out of the city in time, I could save you before it falls… but I would be damming everyone else in the city. I'm the only one who has any chance of stopping that thing, so I'm going to do it. I will save everyone."
"Emiya… kun…" the first Sekirei didn't knew what to say, and the fact that the images of Takehito's death were appearing in her mind didn't help
"God… he's insane." muttered Hikari to her sister, their Ashikabi staring like a statue towards the ascending emerald shine.
"He's also about to crash against a meteor for us all." answered Hibiki while she and her twin tightly grabbed Seo's hands, their eyes never leaving the falling ball of death. "That doesn't make him any less insane, though."
"Shirou…" Seo fell silent a moment, the image of his old friend appearing in his mind, the memory of how he sacrificed himself to save others invading his mind. "Don't you dare to die, dammit."
"Lantern Emiya, we will make contact in 50 seconds." stated the ring while trying to not sound affected. It didn't work.
"Thanks ring. Everyone… don't worry. I will stop it." he could clearly feel how none of them was worried about that.
They were worried for him, for his safety.
Before coming here, his distorted mind wouldn't have let him totally understand why. Not, though, after everything that had happened…
'This is crazy; we can't stop that thing directly! We have to blow it up, a good aimed Caladbolg or maybe something bigger should do it!'
'NO! If we do that, it will break in a lot of pieces that we wouldn't be able to stop! Hundreds would die!'
'That's better than everyone in the city, right?!'
'We're not discussing your *Ten lives for a hundred, a hundred for a thousand, etc* shit in this moment! We're going to stop that meteor and save all the people!'
'… if you hear the kid, you're just going to doom them all, boy. If that thing crushes us, then it's over. There won't be anything stopping it from turning Shin Tokyo into a burned graveyard.'
"Impact in 30 seconds." the Power Ring's voice echoed in the sudden silence of Emiya Shirou's mind. "25… 20… 15…"
"That will not happen." finally answered Shirou, the giant mass of destruction engulfing all his sight. "Everyone, I…" he closed his eyes for a moment. "Ring, cut the transmission! Make the Power Aura amplify my impulse against gravity and redirect all the Will-Prana to the Reinforcement of my arms and upper muscles, NOW!"
Two giant arms of emerald armor surrounded his normal ones just two seconds before the impact… and the ring should have been more affected by the situation than he seemed, because he was too late to cut the transmission before everyone could heard the start of his scream and the sound of his bones breaking.
The room fell silent a moment after.
Kusano started to cry.
Hate. Fury. Destruction. Blood.
RAGE!
Some little part of Rin Tohsaka's that still could process rational thoughts wondered if this was how a Servant under the Mad Enhancement Skill felt. If that was the case, then she could understand a little more why Berserker had been so brutal when trying to kill her, Shirou and Saber, so many years ago…
"What the…?! Miss, you're bleeding! Are you al…?!"
"OUT… OF MY… WAY!
"Gah!" shouted the poor man that had approached the zone of the explosion, being launched like a ragdoll over the woman's shoulder by a sudden burst of red light.
… of course, having those thoughts didn't help much in the fact that she couldn't even move her body and that some kind of lunatic blood-thirsty impulse had invaded most of her brain.
She felt so angry! Angry at everything, angry at nothing! She had to crush everything, to SMASH it all until only dust remained!
YES! That's it, just what I wanted! Give me more fury, human, give me more RAGE!
"RAGH!" Rin raised her fist and brushed aside with no effort a giant piece of debris, once again amazing the little part of her mind that was still hers. That thing should have weighed 200 Kg. at least! "Stupid… rock!"
We need more power, more destruction! Quick, get your battery out! Recite the oath, unleash the fury!
"Releasing Power Battery from Pocket Dimension." gravely announced the red ring, the lantern-shaped battery falling in Rin's hands.
If it wasn't for the instinctual connection that the Red Lanterns felt towards their batteries, as well as the Butcher's order, she would have tossed it aside like everything that had crossed her path the last minute.
"Power… Rage…"
"Rin?!" the woman turned around just in time to see Saber, who had threw caution to the wind and came at max speed with her armor ready, jumping from a nearby rooftop towards her. "Are you alright?! I'm feeling… My god!"
The old King of Knights had every reason to be horrified-surprised upon seeing her Master's state. She was bleeding from her mouth, a lot, and the blood had sprayed all around her face and was still falling from her chin towards the ground, where it was hissing against the street's floor like some kind of acid. Not to mention that she was hunched over, almost like an animal, and there was a red symbol shining in her eyes where her pupils should be.
Also, there was some kind of shining nimbus-aura of red energy was surrounding her
"Saber…" the sudden shine in the red ring in her finger made Saber took notice of it, just like the strange lantern-thing in her hands. "Get… out of… here…"
"Rin, don't worry, whatever is happening to you I'm going to help…!"
"I DON'T NEED YOUR HELP!" cried Rin, making a sudden burst of red light shooting out of her and slamming against the Servant of the Sword, making her eyes widen when it took her out of her feet and slammed her body against a wall. That had bypassed her Magic Resistance as if it was nothing! "I ONLY NEED YOUR BLOOD!"
The half possessed/half maddened woman pointed her ring towards the lantern, and recited the words that gave form to the Rage of the Multiverse… turning it into Power.
With Blood and Rage of Crimson Red,
Ripped from a Corpse so Freshly Dead,
Together with our Hellish Hate,
We'll Burn you All… That is Your FATE!
A torrent of crimson energy enveloped Rin at the same time that Saber rose from the debris.
"RIN!"
"Power Levels at 100%." resounded from the tornado of crimson energy and the blond knight barely had time to jump out of the way, her instincts screaming at her, when something shot out of the red aura and slammed a fist where she was standing a moment before, cracking the earth as if Heracles had punched it.
It was Rin. Clad in some sort of uniform compost of red and black tights, with the same symbol of the ring shining proudly in her chest.
Now nothing can stop you! UNLEASH THE RAGE!
"DIE AND BURN!" roared the Red Lantern before flying towards the surprised Saber, who raised her invisible blade to defend herself, surprised at the brutal strength that her Master seemed to have gained.
The curious people, that had neared the street because of the explosion, flee screaming.
"What kind of sorcery is this?!" growled the Servant while only defending herself, fearful of harming her master. Then, said woman FLEW 20 meters in the air and unleashed a brutal barrage of red bullets towards her. "Wha…?!" Saber managed to slash the first one out of instinct.
Her other instincts, those who said that her body was immune to any mundane magic, caused her to receive all the others head on and be sent flying once again, her magical armor actually cracking from the impact.
"Blood… fury…" muttered the Magus between incomprehensible snarls, watching her Servant brutally crash against a building.
Said building promptly collapsed upon itself.
YES! MORE DESTRUCTION! MORE RAGE!
"Dammit!" shouted Saber while coming out of the ruined building, a frightened looking couple under her arms, landing and letting them on the street. "Run, now!" she ordered, and be it by fear or her charisma they quickly obeyed. "Rin, I don't know if you can hear me but I will have to hurt you a little! If I don't stop you more innocent people could get involved!"
"ALL OF THEM WILL BE CRUSHED!" was the simple answer of the Red Lantern before creating some kind of big angular red rock upon her right fist out of nowhere.
Saber realized that it was a ruby. A ruby as big as a car.
Through her slowly burning connection with Rin, she could feel the Prana and that other thing filling the gem-construct at impossible speed, effort that would have normally took the Magus years finished in seconds.
"NO! Rin, if you throw that thing here the explosion will be…!"
"DISSAPEAR!" roared the possessed woman, launching her lethal missile.
"Strike Air!" answered the King of Knights while releasing part of the power in Invisible Air, the Hammer of the Wind King, the barrier that covered Excalibur in absence of its true sheath.
The powerful wind-blast struck true and cut the incoming bomb in two, making the blond Servant smile and jump towards her possessed Master…
… only for both sliced parts to suddenly blew up just at her side in a devastating explosion, engulfing her and the entire area in a blast of destruction.
Said blast passed harmlessly over the Red Lantern, her ring aura nullifying all the damage and most of the impact force.
That's great! An explosive gemstone?! A little too complicated for my tastes, but it was still awesome! You have a really destructive mind, human!
"Sa… Saber!" cried the little part of Rin's that could still think straight, growing a little more upon seeing what her maddened body was doing to her lover and friend. "S-stop, damn it! Why can't I stop?!"
It's useless, insignificant human.
"Uh?!" trapped inside her mind, Rin's little consciousness turned around to see the gigantic thing standing behind her.
Calling it a bull would have been an insult. Towering over her, the being looked like pure red muscle given the form of an ox, with gigantic horns and a jaw filled with razor-sharp fangs, two soulless crimson eyes staring directly into what remained of her sanity.
Rage given form, the fury of the Multiverse Incarnated. The destroyer and the annihilator. This was The Butcher, the physical representation of the Red Light of the Emotional Spectrum.
And Rin Tohsaka didn't need to know any of that to realize that she was in front of an existence that far surpassed anything she had ever seen.
Considering that she was a survivor of the last of the Holy Grail Wars that was saying a lot.
You can't stop it. Normally, with my power so low, it would have taken me time to gain full control upon you, but thanks to the uncontrollable Rage that the Red Ring inflicts upon its new bearers combined with my influence, I have isolated your conscious mind here and let only a raging animal who is absurdly easy to control. NOTHING WILL STOP THE RAGE!
"Shut up, you oversized cow! I demand that you release my body right this instant!" while the Butcher laughed mockingly, what remained of Rin's mind was running at full speed, analyzing what she could about her situation to find a solution.
She wasn't an idiot, that was Shirou's job, she knew that normally it would be supremely stupid to insult a being that had possessed your body and looked like it could give a room for his money to the strongest Phantasmal Beast, but from what she had managed to understand the creature not only didn't consider her a threat, but also couldn't kill her mind fully or it wouldn't have bothered in trapping it apart from her body. That implied that it should exist a way for her to regain control.
On a side note, whatever the hell that ring was seemed to be able to concede a normal human the power to fight in equal level as a Servant, or at least to harm them. And if her memory about the newspaper didn't fail her, this was at least the third one to appear.
Also, Shirou had managed to get one, green, and seemingly has been forced to use it against someone who had gained another ring, yellow, and started using it to harm innocents or something like that.
Plus, she was flying, something that seemed to be a standard with these rings, while wearing a ridiculous costume that looked directly out of some cheese superhero story.
If she wasn't in such a serious situation, she would have been flaring with embarrassment and incredulity upon the craziness that surrounded their lives.
That thing that looked like a human should be almost finished by now…
"What the hell are you talking about?! Saber isn't as weak to be defeated by just that, you stupid…!" Rin's mental words stopped upon seeing the dust of the explosion disperse and watching how the blond knight was half-buried by debris, her face filled with scratches, and feebly trying to get the rocks out of her body. "Wh-why? E-even if that attack hit her head on, it shouldn't have been enough to…!"
Because her existence is burning away. It's a testament to her superiority upon the inferior humans that she managed to fight against my Avatar at all.
It was then that Rin realized something that, with all the commotion, she hadn't noticed. Something horrible.
Her contract with Saber. That link that was the only thing that still sustained the miraculous existence of Arthuria in this era, thanks to the high Prana reserves she had between her own Circuits and the Tohsaka Crest.
That thing was destroying it. Burning it away thanks to this RAGE that was spreading through her body like a disease. The Red Light had found the link and, upon finding it useless, was destroying it so that her user wouldn't be hindered by it, like Rin has been since the Grail War thanks to most of her Circuits being constantly used to sustain Saber's existence.
It was something that she never had cared about if it was to keep the honorable girl with herself and Shirou. Unfortunately, the Ring didn't seem to share that opinion, and her Berserker-like body didn't have enough reason to stop it from doing so.
"No… NO, STOP, DAMMIT!"
Now, my Avatar, finish that thing. LET IT FEEL THE RAGE!
"Feel… the rage…" growled the body of the Magus while raising her ring and pointing it towards the Servant's head, who looked up at her with ashamed eyes.
"Rin… I will… save you…" weakly muttered the blonde while starting to raise the rock that trapped her.
Too slowly. The ring was already shining angrily, Rin's mute scream of horror and sadness lost in the Butcher's laugh…
And then, Shirou's voice echoed through the air, screaming in pain.
Her body froze, looking towards the east, a sudden lacing pain coming from her ring.
She hadn't imagined it. Saber was too looking towards that direction with shocked eyes.
A-ARGH! WHAT'S THIS?! VIOLET?! DAMMIT, OUT OF HERE STUPID INFERIOR EMOTION, YOU WILL NOT MAKE ME LOSE AN AVATAR!
The pressure upon her body suddenly relented and she could almost 'feel' again the connection with her flesh.
She made her body turn the ring away and stopping the imminent shoot of a death ray, moving her unfocused eyes away of the blond knight. She still couldn't regain full control, but if she could just manage to turn her body attention out of Saber and upon something else, something that wouldn't cause any trouble maybe she could…
Her body's gaze suddenly fell, almost casually, upon one the most notorious thing in London. The Clocktower. A lost and unconnected phrase echoed through her maddened-self
Those bastards made Shirou go away.
Suddenly, more thoughts about Him filled her raging mind, making brutal and senseless fury to burn in her veins.
Oh Kami, no. She had to turn her eyes away before…!
Hey, what do you think you are doing?!
The Butcher's words came back together with the strain and she found herself once again unable to influence her body in any way.
Fuck.
"BASTARDS!" roared the Red Lantern while shooting herself towards the heart of the Magus Association, soaring through the air at brutal speeds, leaving a shocked Saber behind.
What the…?! Oh, what do we have here? muttered the incarnation of Rage while feeling the hundreds and gigantic barriers that covered the building and its surroundings. Arrogant humans, no shield can stop the RAGE! BURN IT AWAY!
"BURN!" acknowledged the Red Lantern, the light from her ring spreading through the greatest Bounded Fields in the planet and, to Rin's mind growing horror, infecting them like a burning disease.
Only one thought passed through the isolated consciousness of the Tohsaka heir. Apart of, "I'm so fucking dead", of course.
"I don't know how, but this is somehow all Shirou's fault."
A lot of alarms where roaring in MBI's headquarters while Takami ran through the halls, Yukari and Shiina just behind her, finally arriving to the monitor-filled room where Minaka's assistant was waiting for her.
"Mamoru! What the hell is happening?!"
"Miss Takami, thanks god!" cried the ex-technician, furiously typing on one of the control panels. "We just lost the signal of all of the satellites upon Japan, and we have reports of other ones having disappeared too!"
"A bunch of satellites just disappeared? That's clearly a sign that something really evil and dangerous is about to happen!" proclaimed Yukari, earning looks of disbelief for part of everyone else. "What? It's the truth!"
"… what do you mean with 'lost the signal'?" questioned Takami, deciding it would be for the better to ignore the 'peculiarities' of her daughter. "All the satellites can't just fail at the same tim…"
Suddenly, a cacophony of screams and cars getting out of control started to resound through the building.
"Wha…? What's going on?!" asked Shiina while edging closer to his Ashikabi, both of them looking how Mamoru put a lot of views of the street in the monitors.
Everything was absolute chaos.
"W-what the hell?! Why is everyone…?!"
"Some of them are pointing up… there is something in the sky that…" Mamoru's answer to Yukari's question died in his throat when he put on the screens the transmission from the 'special' camera in MBI's roof.
All of them fell deadly silent upon seeing the monstrous mass of burning metal falling from the sky.
"Thi-this is a joke, right?" muttered Takami while feeling dizzy, unconsciously moving her arms to embrace her gaping daughter, vaguely noting how Shiina was doing the same. "Please Mamoru; tell me that what we're seeing is just part of a bad sci-fi movie."
"I think… what we just found the satellites." was all that answered the man while the computer helpfully calculated that there were more or less 4 minutes before them and everyone else in the city died. "… I just realized that I haven't talked to my mom in more than a month."
The random comment of the secretary didn't snap Takami out of her shock.
However, her daughter suddenly gasping and disentangling herself from her and Shiina while running towards one of the screens did it.
"Emerald Blade!" she exclaimed with a hope-filled voice, her face a mask of relief while pointing towards the suddenly appeared emerald glow that was flying towards the meteor.
"What in heaven's name is he doing?!" demanded Takami while also running towards the screen, Mamoru quickly typing to try and get a better zoom of the image.
"I don't know, but he's ascending faster every second, he will impact against that thing in seconds!"
"He's going to stop the meteor! He will save us all, like a Superhero does!" cried Yukari while looking at everyone with happiness.
Her mother looked at her as if she was crazy.
"Yukari, this is not a game! No matter what powers that ring give him, if he crash against something that big coming at that speed he's just going to be reduced to…!"
The emerald blur and the ball of burning death crashed. The impact resounded even there, some of the screens cracking as the entire city seemed to tremble upon the shock.
The scream of pain came barely a second later, making Yukari cringe and Shiina to embrace her, while Mamoru looked down and started to quickly pray something.
Takami could only stare, half in shock and half in disbelief, how the green shine was still there in the screen, struggling just under the giant ball of fire and metal.
All the logic that ruled her world said that it should have been reduced to tiny bits of meat and be crushed the exact second it crashed against the meteor.
The brutal scream started to die down and the shine of emerald light intensified. Slowly, ever so slowly, Takami realized that the countdown showed in other screen was going a little slower than before.
The man was slowing the meteor down.
"Sweet god."
"You already saved us once today." the scientific took a moment to realize that it was Shiina who was talking, his gaze fixed in the screen while embracing her daughter, a mature and pleading look in his eyes. "I know is selfish but please… do it again."
Emerald light shined strongly on the screen.
He had felt all the bones in his arms fracturing the moment he had made contact with the giant mass of metal. A part of his mind which wasn't screaming in pain noticed that it was practically a miracle in itself that he hadn't turned into a bloody smear the moment he impacted against it.
Even with his Power Aura, his arms should have been brutally pulled out of their sockets. They would have, if he wasn't reinforced to a level that no Magus in the history of his world could have ever dream of achieving. His Power Aura roared around him, forced by him to its utmost limits to fight against gravity and the momentum of the meteor.
He could also feel how Avalon burned inside of him, eating away his Will-Prana at monstrous speed and leaving his bones as good as new before his arm-constructs where forced to collapse because of his pain.
They still cracked, tough. Even with all that, it wasn't working. It wasn't enough.
The meteor was slowing, he could feel it, but it was still going too fast. He wouldn't be able to stop it before it crashed against the ground.
He was going to fail.
'I told you. Now is too late and we're all doomed.' coldly muttered the Ashura.
'…'
'What's up kid? Did you finally realize how stupid you were?'
'I don't have anything to say to you.' simply muttered the Hero while 'looking' towards the struggling Shirou. 'Neither to him. It's all in his hands now. What you or I said won't matter. So, I'm going to believe in that he will do it.'
'… it wasn't a pleasure to meet you, fucking kid.'
'Aww, I love you too, Ashura.' replied the smiling manifestation while his cape flapped. 'And there are a lot of people that loves you too. Right, Shirou?'
Shirou blinked. Images were filling his head.
He saw Akitsu and Tsukiumi, the former staring intensely at the sky, at him, and the latter trying to violently wake up an unconscious Musubi, tears running down her eyes.
Shirou wondered why until realizing that she probably had noticed the violet ring in her finger.
"Musubi, wake up dammit!" cried the water user, shaking the fist-fighter with less force every second. "Ple-please… I'm unable to help him, but you can. I'm useless right now, but you have one of those damn rings, so please wake up and help my… OUR HUSBAND!"
Musubi weakly opened her eyes, and the blond realized with horror that she seemed too weak to even stand up.
"Tsukiumi… don't cry." weakly muttered the childish Sekirei, her eyes looking at the emerald blur trying to stop the incoming end of everyone. "Shirou-sama… won't fail."
"I too believe in Ashikabi-sama." added Akitsu without even looking at them.
The self-proclaimed strongest Sekirei looked from one to the other for a moment before embracing Musubi and looking up too, her reddened eyes now filled with determination.
In another roof, Kazehana was crying too, but she was looking in silence towards the sky, a little smile on her face even as the tears fell down her cheeks.
"I believe, Shirou. Come back to us."
Someone else was jumping from rooftop to rooftop, fire burning in her hands while desperately looking to do… something.
"Dammit, dammit, dammit!" Homura stopped, furiously looking at the sky while clenching her teeth and containing the tears that threatened to fall from her eyes. "Goddammit Shirou! Why must you always do things like this?!" she contained the urge to launch fire towards the sky, knowing it would be for nothing. "Why do you always… do things in where I can't help you?"
Outside of Izumo Inn, everyone was staring up in silence. He wondered if someone had tried to stop Kuu from coming out, but realized that the little girl probably wouldn't have let them.
Haruka was staring with a conflicted look in his face, not letting go of the trembling Kuno for even a moment, as if fearing she would disappear the moment he did it.
"Emiya-kun…" muttered Miya, never having felt so useless in her life.
"Shirou… please, be alright." added Matsu, the Sekirei 002 feeling as powerless as her ex-leader.
"Bro…" Uzume blinked when she felt her Ashikabi's hand clenching her own, a look of absolute resolution in her face. "Chiho…?"
"He will do it Uzume. And he's going to be alright." she smiled with absolute belief as she looked up again. "He's a Superhero, after all."
"Onii-chan…" Kusano had tear in her eyes while grabbing to Matsu's legs, but there was a burning belief in her eyes. "Chiho-chan is right. Onii-chan is a hero. And he's the best! Heroes always do it!"
All the plants in the neighborhood seemed to grow with renewed life upon hearing her voice. No one realized it.
"Everyone…" growled Shirou between rasped breaths, his body burning from pushing his Circuits to the limit.
They were worried for him. And they believed in him.
They believed he could do it. They believed he could save them.
"Power Levels at 53%. Lantern Emiya… we can't do it. It's not going to stop in time. You can't stop it." sadly muttered the ring while the shadow of the falling mass started to cover part of the city.
"You can't save everyone." the words of his father resounded distantly, the weight of a life of failures and disappointment filling them.
"Yes…yes I can…" Shirou felt his helmed shatter, his eyes closed with force, blood pouring from his mouth and nose. "And I… will!"
Rin's and Saber's images summed to everyone else' in his mind. Failure was not an option.
He was a Hero of Justice. Someone who existed to save. Even if he was just a sword, he…
You're wrong.
Shirou's mind froze. Even time itself seemed to stand still for a moment.
You're no longer the Sword. You're the Will that moves the Sword. What will you do?
"I have to… stop it…" answered the Green Lantern, feeling the limits of his body and ring impeding him to keep going.
Finally… you can hear my voice. And now, there is a truth you must comprehend. Your limits… don't exist anymore.
Shirou's eyes snapped open, the image of a roaring shark-whale in them.
"Warning! Willpower Levels rising out of the graphics! Lantern Emiya?! What's happening?!"
Imagination is your limit. And Will your Sword. Now, you can…
"Do anything…" muttered the Magus, feeling the words flowing out of his mouth as if he wasn't the one saying them.
Will was his Sword. His Will was created by Swords. He was the Sword. He was the Will.
Yes. Because…
"My Will was forged by blades…" the Aria came out of Shirou's mouth with no effort, words that weren't his echoing through Shin Tokyo's sky, making everyone stop screaming or running to look up.
Inside the Magus' soul, all the giant gears suddenly exploded, the sky itself burning away with green fire, leaving behind a dark sky filled with shining diamonds. Stars.
And all the swords slowly rose, wrapped in emerald light…
The people of Shin Tokyo looked up it in time to see an emerald Titan of Light take form.
Waver Velvet, better known now as Lord El-Melloi the Second, sighed while walking down a corridor of the Clocktower. The only living survivor of the 4th Holy Grail War had a lot in his mind since reading the notice that he found yesterday.
Being one of the almost non-existent Magus of the Association that keep up with modern technology, he has been calmly navigating through the Internet when he had come across of a curious article.
It was called 'The Emerald Blade of Shin Tokyo'.
Five minutes after reading it and checking that the video and images in it had effectively gone viral and spread through the entire world, there was only one though in his head.
Fuck.
He knew that sooner or later the higher ups of the Association where going to hear of this, technology-hate or not this was so big it would be appearing in the news and everywhere probably by today, but he had decided not to tell anything to anyone yet.
While it was certainly a grave threat to the secret of the existence of Magecraft, he knew that there was already no way to cover up this, and that with a little of subtlety it could be manipulated to make everyone believe that it was just a hoax.
Unfortunately, the Magus Association wasn't known for their 'passive' subtlety, so he was still trying to think up of a plan to explain the situation to them that wouldn't result in those bastards trying to kill thousands of innocent people.
It was a testament of the 'goodness' of the Association that he still couldn't come up with anything after an entire day of thinking.
So lost in thought he was that he almost crashed against a blonde girl in an elegant blue dress upon turning a corner.
"Oh, good evening, Lord El-Melloi." politely greeted the woman.
"Miss Edelfelt." Waver returned the gesture while looking at the blond. Lluviagetta Edelfelt was known for being a little too arrogant, but also a prodigy of those that only appeared every hundreds of years.
It was also well known how she and his acquaintance, Rin Tohsaka, couldn't stand each other.
"It's something the matter, sir? You look troubled."
"Nah, its nothing." answered the man while dismissing the matter entirely. After all, as long as nothing else like that happened there was no reason to believe he couldn't convince the Association to…
The sound and impact of hundreds of the most ancient and powerful Bounded Fields in the world shattering like glass violently thrown both of them and everyone in the building and its surroundings to the ground, all the windows and some lesser things brutally shattering too.
Ancient and powerful they may have been. The glory of human Magecraft since immemorial times… but that meant nothing to a tool that, even if it was aligned to a maddening energy, was created by beings that were even older that the entire Solar System.
"Wha-what in the world just happened?!" cried Lluvia while trying to stand up.
Then, something broke the wall five meter ahead of them like a speeding truck or a cannonball, making her yelp and fall to the ground again. It was a person.
Waver needed almost ten seconds to realize who she was. It was difficult between the uniform, the burning blood in her face, the half-useless mask and the strange crimson aura.
"Tohsaka?!" cried Edelfelt exactly what he was thinking, making 'Rin' turn her head towards them. "What the hell happened to yo…?"
"SILENCE, BITCH!" shouted the Red Lantern while punching the air in her direction, making Waver eyes widen when half-formed red light roared through the air and knocked Lluvia to the other end of the hallway, unconscious. "FEEL THE RAGE!"
"Tohsaka, I don't know what happened to you but I'm going to stop you now!" while saying that, Waver quickly took out a little vial and thrown it to the ground, shattering it and releasing the mass of quicksilver, a copy of the Mystic Code of his old teacher and first Lord El-Melloi, Volumen Hydragyrum.
The pool of mercury was just starting to take the shape of a sphere when Rin raised her hand in an angry sneer.
"USELESS!" she cried while red light formed around the Mystic Code and, before the incredulous eyes of the Magus, trapped it inside of a sphere of crimson energy, as tiny as a closed fist. "GO AWAY, TRASH!" after adding that, the possessed woman created an honest to god baseball bat and brutally launched the sphere through the hole she had created upon entering.
Then, she looked at the frozen Waver.
"Oh shi..!"
"DIE!" she cried while shooting another wave of light from the ring in her finger, hitting the man with enough force to make him crash through a wall.
While feeling his broken ribs and trying to stand up again, Waver caught a glimpse of incoming figures by both sides of the hallway, running towards Tohsaka, preparing a lot of attack Mysteries in their hands. Enforcers.
Without asking or saying anything, they launched a wave of elemental death towards the Red Lantern. Waver looked blankly how all of that washed over her without any visible effect except a little stumble in her step. The Enforcers eyes widened.
"Oh, c'mon!" cried Waver while Rin roared, the moment of hesitation costing the Enforcers greatly as a wave of crimson destruction exploded from the woman body and knocked most of the through walls, a couple at least falling out of the Clocktower while screaming. "Did she turn into a Berserker or something?!"
In that moment, a blue and silver figure came through the wall, as fast as the wind itself. Waver recognized it immediately, feeling for a moment as if he was that scared boy from the 4th War once again, a simple human in the middle of a clash of superior beings.
Servant Saber. King Arthur.
"Sorry, Rin!" cried the King of Knights before slamming the flat side of her invisible sword against the chest of the surprised Red Lantern, throwing her out of the building and opening a new hole in the wall at doing it.
Waver realized that she was in a really bad shape, her armor cracked in some parts and a lot of bleeding scratches in her face, not to mention her raged breath.
He had never seen her looking that bad in the Grail War.
She looked towards him and a flicker of recognition seemed to past for her eyes before she shot out of the building too, pursuing her maddened Master.
"Well… there goes my hopes of an easy day…" was the last thing he could mutter before falling unconscious.
"I hope Iskandar's old Master is okay." weakly muttered Saber while following the flying blur of red light, ignoring the screams and exclamations of shock as she jumped in the water of the great river that passed through London.
Discretion didn't mattered anymore, she needed to get Rin to a more deserted zone and figure a way to make her come to her senses before she could hurt someone els…
"RAGE!" roared the Red Lantern, appearing out of nowhere and grabbing the surprised Servant's face. "YOU WILL PAY FOR THAT!" she cried before shooting through the sky at insane speeds, arriving almost to the outskirts of the city before throwing Saber like a missile towards a street. "DIE!"
The impact resounded brutally, making a lot of people scream.
"I… can't move…" growled Saber while her vision swan dizzily, her grasp in Excalibur feeling weaker than ever.
This was it. The link had almost totally disappeared and she almost didn't have any Prana left. She would fade away in little more than a minute.
Hah! Stupid being, believing you could stop my Avatar! Now, let's get back to that strange place and show those stupid human wizards the might of the RAGE!
While the Butcher's laugh echoed and Rin's mind muted cry was lost in the silence, the body of the Magus looked once more at the fallen Servant before slowly flying away.
Saber followed her with her gaze until she disappeared from her sight behind a building.
It was over. She had failed Rin… and Shirou. Arthuria closed her eyes…
"No… it can't end this way!" mentally growled the blond woman while trying to force her body to move.
So, what if she was running out of Prana? What if the world was trying to erase her existence?
She had already failed too much people in her life… but she would not fail Rin and Shirou. They were the ones who returned the meaning to her existence, who showed her the foolishness of her wish.
They were the ones to bring true happiness to her life for the first time.
She already failed Shirou when he was forced to go away, even though she had sworn to protect him. She won't fail Rin too. There had to be a way to stop this, to save Rin, and she was going to find it, even if Gaia itself was trying to stop her! She won't go back to that hill!
She won't surrender, for the sake of those that had given her…!
Hope.
"What?"
That's what they gave to you. Am I right?
"Merlin? Is that you…?" muttered Saber, wondering if the old wizard had managed to echo his voice though time itself just to help her
No, young woman, I'm not your old friend. I have looked inside of you, Arthuria Pendragon. You were always a beacon of Hope for your country, for your knights. You even wield the crystalized Hope of Humanity in your hands. But you never had Hope for yourself inside you… not until you meet those two. They became the Hope in your heart, the light in your life. And now, I see that there is no one more worthy of my Power upon this world.
"Who…?" Saber's eyes opened. She was floating in a colorless void.
And there was a giant three-faced blue bird before her.
I'm Adara, Hope Incarnated and the Blue Light of the Emotional Spectrum. You're no longer a King, Arthuria, but you will always be a knight. A blue knight of Hope… an Azure Knight.
The old King of Knights blinked and realized that there was a brilliant blue light washing over her, the vanishing of her almost disappeared body having stopped when she was already dissolving.
It was coming from the floating blue ring before her.
"Arthuria Pendragon of the Earth. You have the ability to instill great Hope…" the ring floated silently to her finger, her armor having already vanished, and Saber's eyes flared with the image of Adara, the sureness of the future filling her being. "Welcome to the Blue Lantern Corps."
Blue light filled the broken street, and the people nearby suddenly feel all their worries vanishing, an absolute feeling of surety, of HOPE, filling them.
A hand was raised, grabbing a shining blue lantern, while the other pointed the ring towards it, the oath of the Hope of the Multiverse resounding through the city.
In Fearful Days, in Raging Night
With Strong Hearts Full our Souls Ignite
When All Seems Lost in the War of Light
Look to the Stars… For Hope Burns Bright!
A pillar of blue light roared to the heavens. It was a glorious day for humanity… and a really bad one for the secrecy of Magecraft.
The Red Lantern suddenly stopped in mid-air, a strange and cold feeling washing over her.
"What was that?" muttered the still sane part of Rin's mind while the Butcher suddenly seemed nervous.
Wait a minute… I know this presence… No, it can't be…!
Rin's body blinked. Her Power Aura started to wink in and out, and her mind started to regain contact with her body.
"Uh?" she muttered dumbly before a shining blue light appeared a couple of meters in front of her, a glorious figure wrapped in blue and white armor emerging from it.
The full body armor seemed to have been especially adapted in an impossible manner to not only full-cover the knight, but also allow full mobility. Unlike her normal gauntlets, the ones she was wearing now allowed total liberty to every bone in her fingers, letting the Magus see the brilliant bluer ring in her right hand. If it wasn't for the fact that the lower part of the body was stylized like her normal battle attire, it would have been impossible to tell if the warrior was a man or woman. A strange cape that seemed more like a mantle born directly from her armored shoulders, by moments seeming made of cloth and others from pure blue energy. Blue wind roared around her ring's hand for a moment, outlining the shape of her sword before totally fusing with its mystery, returning the invisibility to the holy weapon.
A full helmet covered her face, with a visor stylized like the knights of old, and some decoration that looked like a crown seemed to be carved right out the top of the helm, blue gems shining in it.
The symbol of the Blue Lanterns Corps was proudly carved in the chest of the armor, a glorious blue upon a white background.
NOOO! Adara, you bastard! Why must you do this to meee…?!
"Don't worry Rin." the voice of the Azure Knight echoed gloriously, drowning the angry question of the Butcher, Rin's aura turning even weaker upon the shine of the blue light. "All will be well."
The Hope brought by her voice resounded as thunder through the souls of every person in the English Capital.
The moment the Aria was pronounced, Shirou felt as if his body had become a burning mass of energy. He clearly felt it when the titanic armor-construct former around himself, almost as big as a skyscraper, and he didn't know if to be amazed by the sheer size at which the light could expand or if to somehow blame Yukari for the fact that it looked like a giant robot.
The eyes of every person in Shin Tokyo widened and their mouths opened in absolute disbelief upon seeing the colossal being still struggling against the meteor, which now looked like a beach ball compared to it.
Inside of MBI, Takami wasn't sure what would happen first, if her jaw would break from incredulity or her mind would collapse upon itself at the sheer absurdity/impossibility of what she was seeing.
"He created a Mecha with his ring!" jumped Yukari with stars in her eyes, her Sekirei's eyes still wide open while staring at the screen. "Go, Emerald Blade!"
Upon a building, the now kneeling Homura was staring blankly at the phenomenon.
"I'm not seeing that…No way, I'm not seeing that…" she repeated again and again, shaking her head.
"…Holy shit." muttered Seo, his two Sekirei still grabbing his arms and with their mouths as opened as his.
"You have got to be kidding me…" Matsu apparently was the first one to recover the ability to say something coherent between those standing in front of Izumo Inn.
Blinking back to reality, or trying to, Miya realized that Kuu had sparkles in her eyes while looking towards the emerald giant.
"Woah… Bro is really the most amazing guy I have ever met." weakly muttered Uzume while seeing Chiho experiment a reaction similar to Kusano's, unsure of what else to say.
Haruka and Kuno didn't seemed to be in the state of mind to express any word, and probably wouldn't for quite a time.
Even so, the metallic mass was still falling too fast, the giant hands cracking from the pressure.
It's still not enough.
"Trace… Full Expansion." muttered Shirou, the words somehow coming to him, his and at the same time not.
27 seven Magic Circuits flared to life, filling themselves to the brink with Will-Prana. It wasn't enough.
The ring's voice echoed in his head, and those too seemed to be being said by someone else.
Circuits limit reached. Action impossible to continue.
Imagination was his limit…
"Over-Trace. Trigger Open."
Overriding action. Analyzing Magic Circuits existence… Done. Recreating Temporary Artificial Circuits using construct as main body.
Will was his Sword…
The emerald giant opened its mouth (?) and roared, thousands of shining circuits filling his entirety like a Network of Light. The Mana of the entire city was siphoned by them, reconverted into Prana in seconds. Something that should be impossible for Emiya Shirou.
But not for the Emerald Blade.
Process complete. Prana recollected. Searching into inner world for necessary implement… Found.
For there wasn't anything impossible to the Will of the Multiverse.
Tracing object into existence… World interference detected. Using Willpower to reduce interference to minimum…
And he was the Will that moved the Sword.
Do it. Save them.
"Rho Aiais." simply declared the Green Lantern while separating ten meters from the meteor and raising his hand. The titanic construct did the same.
A titanic shield made of seven petals as big as a quarter of the city burned itself into reality, each petal as powerful as if the walls of the legendary Troy themselves had become Noble Phantasms, the symbol of Will embedded in each of them.
The meteor crashed against it. One of the petals cracked. It stopped.
Shirou vaguely felt Avalon repairing the damage done to his body.
An almost supernatural silence filled the city, everyone staring at the giant with the humongous flower-shield and the burning ball of deformed metal standing in the center of it.
"Go away." growled Shirou before overflowing the shield with Will-Prana and simply shooting the arm of the construct like a rocket, meteor and shield flying at impossible speeds towards the sky and disappearing out of sight.
He didn't even wondered how he did it at this point. He felt too tired.
Up in the atmosphere, Karasuba stared blankly as the meteor-shield-arm passed her by and keep going into the void. A monstrous emerald explosion filled the darkness seconds after, the Broken Phantasm detonating with amazing force.
For a moment, a flicker of relief seemed to fill the Sekirei's eyes before her pupils were gone again and only the symbol of Fear remained.
This isn't over, Ion… growled Parallax, feeling how all the screams of terror had vanished and being replaced by silence.
"It's not over…" sinisterly muttered Golden Shōkyaku before flying away.
Shin Tokyo exploded in a roar of happiness and relief, people running while crying and/or embracing each other.
"I… did it…" breathed Shirou, happiness filling him upon the sight.
The titanic construct faded away, and with it the feeling of immense power, leaving Shirou feeling incredibly tired and normal.
…strangely normal for someone with a Power Ring.
That made him notice how his Power Aura was vanishing and that he was quickly falling towards the ground, his limbs feeling as if they weighed a ton.
Remember, young one.
Shirou felt his eyes closing, distant voices calling for him as the image of a giant shark-whale surrounded by floating swords appeared in his mind.
"Power Levels at 3%. Lantern Emiya, wake up!"
"SHIROU!"
"GOD, HE'S FALLING!"
Steel rust and breaks. The heroes come and go. The Legends are lost in the vastness of time…
"SOMEONE DO SOMETHING!"
"… Sekirei Matsu, tell Lantern Emiya it was an honor to have him as my Green Lantern."
"What? Ring, what are you…?"
"Removing A.I. security protocols. Converting self-energy to Willpower. Preparing emergency short-distance teleport" there was a pause. "Goodbye, everyone. It was an honor. Executing."
The last thing Shirou felt before his consciousness faded away was a little shape made of green light enveloping him.
But Will lasts forever. So speaks Ion.
"RING!"
And then, there was darkness…
That day in Shin Tokyo, humanity saw the impossible.
They saw a burning piece of the sky falling upon them. Their deaths were secured, and there was nothing they could do about it.
And then, they saw a man wielding emerald light fly at its encounter.
He raised his hands and became a giant. He roared and they saw his Will became a shield that stopped the piece of sky.
And they saw him throw it back at the heavens, before falling and vanishing as if he never was there, saving them all.
Saving everyone.
From all parts of Japan, the people who still didn't knew the whole story managed the see a burning star fall and then be repelled back by a green shine. Soon, the story of what had happened would reach the worlds ears.
And for good or bad, that day, in Shin Tokyo, a new legend was born.
A Legend of Light in this Darkened World.
Chapter End
Woah, can't believe I just wrote that. I think I have been seeing too much anime and reading too much awesome stories lately. I recommend taking a view to my list of favorites if you want to find some great ones of Fate/Stay Night, and others. The Throne of Shirou's it's an especially good one.
Anyway… the Clocktower is going to be pissed when they realize what had happened. There and in Japan.
Also, Hope burns bright. The Azure Knight has been born. The Butcher is in troubles.
And Ion makes an appearance. Huh, it's amazing how your imagination fly when you have a tool of basically infinite possibilities and the absurdly complicated rules of the Nasuverse in your hands. The final result is that one utterly crushes the other while still taking advantage of it.
And yeah, I just made Shirou stop a meteor.
… Still not as awesome as the insuperable feat of Grabiel Blessing-sama of blowing him up to the Root itself. Ehm… I don't really know what else to say, I think writing all of that left my brain a little dry, so I hope you enjoyed your time reading the chapter, see you all next time. This is Saint, signing off!