"In Hell"
Georgia, 2020
Shirou remembered his life before Sarajevo and the terrible things that followed. He lived in middle-income London with an apartment that provided a view of the London Eye and Big Ben. Those were better days, if not challenging ones – time spent furthering his magical education, playing mediator between his girlfriend Rin and her rival Luvia, and occasionally taking the odd job or two from the Mage's Association.
For a while, that was all there was, and the memories of the Fifth Fuyuki Holy Grail War grew evermore hazy with each passing day. He managed to distance himself from the wars and disasters he came to associate with 'that man' in his mind.
Back in Japan, Shirou had lived in his own bubble of sorts. The only real problems were day-to-day concerns as he extended himself to help anyone and everyone within reach. But Fuyuki, Japan was small. Moving to London taught him that the world was much bigger and more dangerous than he imagined. But the world also seemed relatively peaceful – the crises only became real when he readily injected himself into the chaos.
Shirou protected the innocent in the ways he could, making sure not to chase the impossible like his other-self. Sometimes he volunteered with an international aid group, sometimes he took a 'weekend trip' into a war-torn nation and picked a fight with local warlords.
Little by little, that dream of becoming a 'Hero of Justice' grew less integral to his identity. He had a life and maybe a future with Rin, and a path that fulfilled the lessons he learned from the Holy Grail War.
A decade passed, and then Sarajevo happened.
A terrorist, armed with a suitcase-sized nuclear device and fissile materials in his backpack, detonated the weapon amongst a tour group visiting the Sarajevo Roses, memorials dedicated to the civilians killed in the Siege of Sarajevo and Bosnian War in the 1990s. Almost three decades after one atrocity, the city was ravaged by another. In the years that followed the attack, recovered security footage became Internet infamous and another turning point for modern society.
More than a half-million people lived in Sarajevo, and in an instant – fifteen thousand human souls were snuffed out. More than a hundred thousand people were exposed to radiation poisoning and many died of painful cancers soon after. Sarajevo became a ghost town and a generational tragedy. A smoking crater was all that remained of the city's tourist-friendly epicenter. The nation of Bosnia and its people vanished, as its population became refugees, and its land transformed into a renewed warzone.
Fellow European republics warped into significant surveillance states overnight as the very real threat of nuclear-capable terrorism finally arrived. The world's other nations followed suit. Even the self-described "Leader of the Free World," the United States of America, took to increased surveillance-security measures in a hurry. The terror was felt everywhere, from Japan to Britain.
Shirou's life took a similarly sharp turn soon after as London grew less hospitable to him. The number of consecutive conflicts worldwide exploded. Jobs for the Mage's Association grew aplenty. People around Shirou developed a hard glint in their eyes. Even Rin who stood by Shirou through thick and thin finally cracked as their continued trips into the worst hells imaginable drained her resolve.
Tohsaka Rin, the tenacious victor of the Holy Grail War, could follow Shirou no longer. They parted ways and he left London, only stopping by Glastonbury Abbey to visit King Arthur's grave for the last time, for some time.
Following his first visit to Glastonbury with Rin a few years prior, Shirou learned that King Arthur's grave marker wasn't really Saber's final resting place. Possibly the product of Britain's subsequent kings seeking renown or desperate monks looking to fund the rebuild of their torched temple; modern archaeologists dismissed the site as an ancient publicity stunt.
Yet still, Shirou maintained a special connection to the burial site. Deep within his chest, the magical properties of Avalon – the hallowed scabbard of Excalibur, reassured and warmed his heart. Even after falling dormant without Saber's presence, he could still feel the magical item resting within him if he looked hard enough. It promised, as with all legends, that a part of King Arthur's legend still lived here amongst the ancient ruins. And within him too.
The scabbard's presence continued to tie him to the legend, his destiny, and the memories of the Holy Grail War. It was also why Shirou felt sheltered, standing in the grove of Glastonbury Abbey under the cover of darkness and light fog, talking at Saber's grave marker.
"Saber, it will be a while before I return. The world…there is millions of people out there suffering. Something terrible has happened; I wonder if you can feel it too – wherever you are. I've said many times that I wanted to become a Hero of Justice, to embody that ideal and save everyone. I think, for a little bit, I was okay with maybe letting that dream go. But I know now that I'm not doing enough. I can't stay in Britain anymore; I can't do anything from here. I got to go now; Rin won't be coming this time. This is something I have to do on my own."
Shirou paused, examining the wooded-and-earthen plot before him as if looking to see if Saber, Artoria Pendragon, was in there somewhere staring back at him.
"Goodbye Saber, wish me luck."
Shirou turned from the burial plot that marked his Servant's final resting place. Exhaling, his warm breath ascended into the cool night air, dancing with the decorative lights that colored the walls of the ancient monastery. Tugging his black hood closer to his rosy cheeks, he hefted a duffel bag upon his shoulder and disappeared into the night.
A few years later, on a night like the one he fled England on, Shirou took a moment to admire his last moments of peaceful darkness. It was pitch black under the cover of a new moon with the exception to an amber glow reflecting off a grove of dark trees nearly two football fields away. With his magically-enhanced vision, he could make out three men relaxing around a small campfire. A fourth man stood guard mere steps away next to the group's Toyota gun-truck.
Shirou didn't rise from his spot, a path of overgrown shrubbery dotted by garbage and spent bullet casings. Some of it was from children hiding in the woods during a smoke break, others were from soldiers on patrol. There was little Shirou could do to distinguish the articles from their respected eras, not that he bothered trying.
Between him and the relaxed security team, there were maybe two or three hundred meters of distance. Looking towards the night sky, Shirou had to squint and struggle to pick out the flat, rectangle-shaped aircraft silently circling overhead. Stealthy, hard to see and even harder to detect. The visitors would be arriving at any minute.
Shirou tugged at his heat-dispersing blanket, making sure it covered most of his body, he didn't want the new arrivals to detect him. A few moments later, a low whistle fell over the woods and the chirping of crickets and hooting of owls abruptly died down.
Four soft thumps followed as airfoils popped to life around beetle-like Intruder Pods, catching the wind. The modern military insertion vehicles zoomed downwards from their Flying Seaweed airspace-intrusion aircraft. At a thousand feet, the black bodies leveled out from a fast-vertical descent into a slow peaceful glide as they inched down to touch the Earth.
Silent like owls, the only noise the Intruder Pods made was upon touching down in an open field of bronze grain. Four soft landings perfectly planned and executed; Shirou watched as door flaps hissed open and tall, lanky men in matte-black armor exited their pods, appearing slightly disoriented but highly coordinated all the same.
They carried black rifles that matched their black armor. Dim blue lights blinked off computer systems integrated into their suits. Congregating in pairs of two around the center-most pods, the insertion unit performed a final equipment check and spoke softly over their radio network.
After securing the relative perimeter with wide sweeps from their rifles, they went ahead and activated a routine in the Intruder Pods, causing them to hiss with smoke and other gases. The vehicle bodies ate away at themselves in seconds, becoming manure. Synthetic skin – the living tissue cultures that made up the biomechanical insertion craft suffered spontaneous cell death, rapidly disintegrating.
Shirou watched on in silence, unnoticed but wincing. The Intruder Pod asset-denial systems almost reminded him of the Lovecraftian horrors he encountered during the Holy Grail War. Disgusting.
Once the organic materials eroded away, the soldiers collected the remaining ribcage-shaped metal components left in the residue and disassembled them down into even smaller parts. They promptly chucked them in random directions, scattering the evidence. Shirou focused on the soldiers' chests and shoulders but spotted no banners, flags, or insignias. Lonely Identification-Friend-or-Foe chips flickered on their shoulders and helmets.
It was abundantly clear to Shirou that these soldiers were assassination troops. Given the region, maybe they were from the Russian Federation or the European Union, however, Shirou already knew their identity just as he knew their landing zone in advance.
American Special Forces, I-Detachment. Soldier-spy combos wrapped up in a neat unfeeling supersoldier package. During his travels through Southwest Asia and the former Soviet Republics, Shirou heard whispers of nightmare soldiers arriving in the dead of night to kidnap a father or entire family without a trace. The Europeans and Russians maintained similar units, but the Americans flexed their military might in this manner the most.
These I-Detachment troops were not the same ones massacred at Mogadishu in 1993 or the ones that killed the world-infamous terrorist Osama bin Laden in 2011. This was an evolution: a marriage of athletic science, cybernetics, and hypnosis to create efficient, logical killing machines in the form of a soldier that feels no pain, no fear, and no remorse.
But these guys were more than just robot-men with guns. Shirou didn't know much about the shadowy inner workings of the American Intelligence Forces but they replaced the CIA in the realm of military intelligence not too long ago. The American Central Intelligence Agency was traditional spies. I-Detachment was their special forces counterpart, pulled from the ranks of traditional special forces and trained in dozens of skills unrelated to the jobs of soldiers, all to create something more. These men were killers, but they were killers who could understand, emulate, and think like their targets.
Shirou wasn't sure if it was an accurate description, but everything he knew about I-Detachment suggested they were well-honed sociopaths. He watched them move silently through the dark and felt his stomach churn in uncertainty. He shouldn't be there, stalking the soldiers on their mission. If they found him out, he would die. Mage or otherwise, human special forces presented a unique threat that magic didn't necessarily have every solution for.
Still, once they were on their way, in the direction of the lazing patrol unit, he maintained a loose follow of fifty meters. The soldiers' armor flashed momentarily before fading out of sight as their cloaking technology kicked in. Even with his enhanced vision, Shirou barely made out their fuzzy outlines in the darkness.
They didn't bother picking targets, the Americans moved in and secured their kill all at once. Quick flashes of silver from serrated steel daggers splashed red as the unaware patrol unit had their windpipes slashed or gutted. Lots of blood, Shirou winced once more – seeing unnecessary lives lost. He knew the Americans didn't feel the same, they let the bodies slump to the ground, decloaked, and immediately frisked the corpses for identification.
No dog tags, no papers. The Americans went to work, stripping the bodies naked and feeling them up and down for subdermal obtrusions. Apparently, they found it. Repeatedly, the Americans looked over to their team leader upon sliding over a bump in the corpses' shoulders. Bingo.
Cutting the bodies open, the soldiers revealed small, penny-sized metallic disks – identification-IFF implants. Looking at one another, they produced small amounts of plastic-gelatin from their bags and applied it to the IFF chips, tying them down with floss. The other soldiers shrugged their shoulders and look to the team leader once more.
The leader shrugged back, somewhat hesitantly before taking the coated chip and plopping it on his tongue. Sipping some water from his water bladder and tube, he gulped and swallowed the chip like a medicine pill. The others followed suit, eating the makeshift pills and beginning the process of thorough identity theft.
Shirou made to look away, not interested in examining the nude forms of four American soldiers as they stripped off their gear and slipped into the clothes of their fresh kills. One thing of note that Shirou would have missed without prior knowledge was every soldier in this team was European descent. Blonde hair or brown hair, light skin. The United States was known globally as a nation of diverse, commercialized culture but when it came to an I-Detachment operation, every decision and accessory had a purpose. Even something as trivial as ethnicity could not be overlooked.
While Europeans were just as diverse as Americans, the necessities of plausible deniability ruled that when sending soldier-spies into an enemy state – appearing as the enemy was paramount to wiping away any evidence of American involvement. If I-Detachment deployed to Europe, they sent European-Americans. If they deployed to Africa, they sent African-Americans. If they deployed to Asia, they sent Asian-Americans.
It made Shirou wonder if his own presence in Georgia was questionable. What was a young, amber-haired Japanese man doing in the former Soviet Republic during a god-forsaken civil war? It was a question of the times, someone noticed when he registered for plane tickets and made monetary transactions. Every little action he took was monitored by expert surveillance systems and by the overworked intelligence agencies of the world's many nations.
But Shirou was also a mage. He wasn't skilled enough to magically disappear from the public record, unlike someone of Tohsaka's genius, but he still managed to adapt. When he incorporated himself into the Mage Association's shortlist of freelance mercenaries, Shirou also made the business connections necessary to survive in a surveillance dystopia.
According to British travel data, one Sato Kiritsugu walked onto a commercial flight at London-Heathrow airport bound for Russia on business, representing an unremarkable Japanese holdings company.
Three days before the I-Detachment deployed to Georgia, Shirou was informed by an American contact affiliated with the Mage's Association working in the United States State Department that rumors were moving about in the upper echelons of Washington. While it wasn't much to go off, the reference to a John Paul, the current leadership of Georgia's de facto government, and claims of 'fixing the problem' was enough to paint a picture for him.
He jumped on a plane from London to St. Petersburg, then took a bus ride to the Russian border near Kazakhstan. He smuggled himself onto a ship in the Caspian Sea, and then snuck his way into Georgia. It took two days, but Shirou made it in time to witness the arrival of these near-emotionless killers.
While the soldiers were busy shuffling clothes, Kalashnikovs, and steel-based plate carriers, Shirou began a slow approach, closing in on the Americans as they managed to don some pants. He tapped into his limited knowledge of magecraft going back possibly fifteen years and willed a structural altercation to his heat-dispersing blanket, transforming it into a stealthy, light-dispersing cloak instead.
It wasn't quite on par with the iconic invisibility cloak of Harry Potter or the technological-wizardry of I-Detachment, but it would suffice in drawing less attention to himself. Shirou slipped by the four-man combat unit over to the parked truck. He unsheathed a small knife from his belt, focused a bit of his magical essence into the tool and plopped it inside the vehicle's open window. Now, everything the blade was in earshot of would become intertwined with Shirou's hearing as a magical third ear. It took a fair amount of magical energy, more than he liked to admit; under the Mage Association and Tohsaka's tutelage he'd managed to exponentially expand and recover from childhood atrophy – still, he was far from any master of magecraft.
Shirou backed away from the truck and once more disappeared into the brush, watching the Americans pack up. They wore the Georgia militiamen's clothing too well as if they could slide into any role, they set their mind to. Even in relative silence, they carried themselves with the utmost confidence.
The soldiers rolled the corpses into the brush nearby and made certain to pick apart the campsite, disturbing any evidence of a murder or suspicious activity. They poured a water bottle over the low campfire, dosing it completely before heading off. They packed up their original gear in the Toyota's truck bed and covered it with a tarp, then climbed in themselves. The team leader took the passenger side while another took the driver's seat and the other two Americans climbed into the bed with their stolen last-century equipment and their modern, science-fiction-like gear.
Shirou didn't budge from his spot in a small greenbelt depression, comfortably hidden away. The Toyota gun-truck rumbled to life, humming as cooked gasoline rose from its tailpipe. It sputtered on and rolled, heading in the direction of Tbilisi, Georgia's capital city and a fountain of night-light just over the treetops and almost a twenty-minute drive away.
Once the light and noise from the gun-truck had sped off down a farm road and out of sight, Shirou exited his concealment and began to stretch his body out, making sure he was limber for the upcoming run. In his ear, he listened to the mutterings of the Americans riding along in the truck ahead.
Rock music played from an unseen radio, but the music was replaced by a local news station as someone changed the broadcast channel.
"That propaganda from the so-called government?" The team leader asked from the front passenger side.
"Yes sir, they play it over and over. I first heard it just after they seized power." The driver explained.
"So you were here six months ago as part of the Ossetia op? I didn't know that."
"Yep. These days, guys that speak Georgian are in high demand. But no sooner do we take out one bad guy, a new one pops up to take his place. Kind of makes me wonder sometimes if what we do ever accomplishes anything?"
The team leader hummed at the question without hinting at an opinion.
A faux-cough over the team headsets silenced the idle chatter, signifying that someone, or everyone, in the Washington-based command structure was listening in.
"Checkpoint in five hundred meters gentlemen," the Washington-based mission handler called out. "All of you stay on your toes."
That was at least two kilometers ahead of Shirou as he made to keep up. In high school, he tried his hand at athletics, particularly archery but there were just things he wasn't built for. Running was but high jumps were not. Yet mix in a degree of magical propellent and muscle enhancement, he could put even an Olympic runner to shame – that is if he wasn't immediately disqualified for leaping and gliding across twenty-meter distances.
It wasn't quite a Heroic Spirit-level feat, but it accomplished enough to be beyond human. Ahead, he made out the dim, downward-faced floodlights at the Georgian checkpoint. The American-commandeered truck idled, its taillights aglow as the driver kept his foot on the brake pedal.
Someone, potentially the American with the linguistic skills, softly spoke in Georgian to the guard.
The guards seem to accept the claim verbatim, but another called out something else. Shirou wasn't a linguistical genius. He managed to overcome his poor English marks from high school and achieve some fluency through his worldly travels, along with some Russian, French, and Arabic. But Georgian wasn't an extensively spoken language outside the Caspian Sea region, he had to make do with catching a few words and phrases here and there.
He landed harshly in a tumble of grasses, just out of earshot as he waited to see where the mission would go, or what the Americans would do. The Georgian guards seemed lax with the whole situation, only halting the truck for routine I.D. inspections with an electronic hand scanner.
A few moments later, the truck was on the move again and past the gate. Shirou followed suit, zipped through the neighboring woods, passed the Georgian checkpoint. The lights and cameras were set higher than he could leap so he detoured through the greenspace next to the road. In another time, he might have attempted greater caution, but the Americans were on a timetable and so was he.
The Georgians likely boobytrapped the nearby woods but Shirou managed to avoid tripping anything. That thought though was something to consider – this country used to be a stable republic then poof, seemingly overnight, it was transformed into a nation caught amid a civil war. There were more landmines per square mile here than the North Korean DMZ, many with labels like 'Made in the U.S.A' and 'Made in U.S.S.R'.
It didn't take long for the truck to reach the capital. The soldiers didn't talk much now, resorting to playing local rock music rather than soak in the rising smoke plumes, distant gunshots, and red glow painted across the approaching skyline.
The city was ancient, its downtown constructed around an old medieval castle and along both banks of the Mtkvari River. The old technical truck rumbled its way across a worn, stone bridge and into the center of town where the flames glowed the most heinous.
The walls and buildings along the Tbilisi historical district were painted red with glowing bonfires, but they really signified the evil that settled in this place. Shirou didn't just smell it with his enhanced senses, he felt it in his very being through his magical circuits coursing and flexing with the beat of his heart, accelerating.
Shirou walked plenty of battlefields and sensed the energies and magic in the air there. But this wasn't a battlefield, at least not anymore. Smoke rose into the sky for miles, small fires cooked along the roadsides, maybe for hours. No one bothered putting them out. Distinct shapes served as a source for the flames. Limbs, skin, blood, tissue. Human corpses piled to knee-height.
Up to this point, the Americans gave no hint to a reaction. Maybe a factor of their mental conditioning. Shirou balked at the sight just as he reached the other side of the river and within the light of tinted lampposts. It didn't matter how many warzones he stepped into; the magical resonance alone could steal his focus.
Even from across the river, Shirou could see excavators along the roadside and pre-dug holes at the ready to accept new bodies. Men and women of all ages stood, any mix of despair, rage, and fear written across their faces. The gunshots roared through the open space, deafening the sound of choked tears and the dying gurgling in puddles of their blood. Firing squads blasted one-by-one, dropping newly-made corpses into the mass graves with industrial efficiency.
This wasn't a battlefield; this was a slaughterhouse. The young Japanese man stopped and belched his late dinner into the river below, leaning over the railing. The sight below was no better, bodies lined the shores among blood-stained rocks. Even in the dark, the deep maroon of blood strained separately from the stream of brown water passing through the city center. Even as crimes against humanity flourished, nature carried on without care.
Needing to slow and calm himself, Shirou allowed the Americans' truck to leave him behind, circling a corner. He took to walking and breathing heavily as he searched for an alleyway to slide into. He could catch up later.
"What do you think Captain, are we all going to Hell?"
The Americans were back to making chatter.
"Couldn't say, I'm an atheist."
"Whether you believe in God doesn't matter, Hell still exists sir."
A new voice from a soldier in the truck bed spoke up, "Obviously! Look at this place. Dante, eat your heart out."
"Not what I meant. Hell's not out there, it's in here. Inside your head, seared into your brain. Some might describe this place we're in as a 'hell on Earth', but we can close our eyes and shut it out. When we go home to the States, it will be gone forever. No matter where we are, we can't escape Hell."
The driver changed his tone of voice, "Know why? Because when something's in our heads, we carry it with us."
A couple of the teammates laughed at the philosophy exhibition.
"Does that mean Heaven's in there too?"
"Don't be a jackass, Leland!"
The other soldier in the bed spoke up, "Ladies, that's enough theology for now. We're coming up on the church. Orders, Captain?"
The team leader spoke up once more, more serious than his subordinates. "I doubt those grunts we ambushed had clearance to be in a secure area. Using their tags could cause problems so yank them out."
A cacophony of gagging noises filled Shirou's ears as he grimaced and squirmed, reminded only moments ago of his queasy moment by the bridge. He promptly canceled the eavesdropping magic – he heard enough.
He knew where the American I-Detachment soldiers were heading anyway. He could, of course, trace his dagger, but the soldiers already identified the destination. The Church: Tbilisi's Sioni Cathedral, right along the riverside. He wasn't far from the site; he could take a moment to catch his breath – calm his mind.
"Come on Shirou… Breathe…" he mumbled to himself.
Even as he hid in the secluded space, he couldn't shake the sights of the dead and dying at the hands of Georgian soldiers and their militia supporters. There was a part of him, a younger, experienced part that wanted him to go out there and level the entire courtyard. Not kill, but shock and awe. Prevent anyone from dying. But it was also a stupid sentiment – one he could never let go but one he accepted as dangerously impossible. These warzones taught him that, reinforcing what 'that man' taught him so long ago.
A small crinkling sound filled the dark, abandoned alleyway – distinct from the gunfire erupting nearby. Shirou startled forward, looking about for enemies. Down either end, the deep-dark corners, the shaded rooftops.
Nothing. Wait, just for a moment – there, a spec of maroon disappearing over the side of a rooftop.
Company maybe.
Shirou started towards that spot for moments more, unholstering the Jericho 941 handgun strapped to his thigh. He flicked off the safety, readying it for a quickdraw and chambered a bullet so it was set. He put it back in its thigh container and pulled up his hoodie so he could unstrap the Kalashnikov AKM on his back. He was a mage and destined as an archer – but this was the twenty-first century. He would be a fool not to arm himself with weapons of this era, his era.
Shirou had to climb and slip across the rooftops to catch up to the American soldiers. The cathedral was a slight distance from the urban clutter and required once more to go to the ground. The Americans were already making their way inside through a caved opening in the building's side, their fuzzy-transparent outlines near-invisible in the pitch black.
From atop an ancient wall, Shirou could overlook the surrounding courtyard. Four Russian-made missile trucks guarded the surrounding airspace with teams of Georgian soldiers walking around the courtyard, unfazed by the bloodshed and gunfire in the streets below.
Shirou took a deep breath and leaped. Sticking to the shadows, he slipped in via the same manner as the Americans. Tracing their boot-marks up two flights of stairs, he found one American wandering the halls and clearing adjacent rooms. He hid by the stairs in response, allowing the cold-conscience warrior to pass before following the trace of piano melodies to a meeting room on the cathedral's far side.
There was a crackle as footsteps shuffled from within the room and the radio hit the floor as the music continued to play. Shirou caught his breath and waited, keeping his rifle slung but his Jericho drawn at the ready as he listened into the room.
"Yell or make another move and you die. Where is he, where is the American who's supposed to be meeting you here?" The American team-leader was inside, speaking to someone.
Shirou poked his head into the room from the far door. The black-clad American soldier had a Georgian army officer, possibly a general, in a headlock.
"I did not realize he was an American; he's our Deputy Secretary of Cultural Information, or rather, I should be saying that's who he used to be."
"You killed him then?" The American team-leader asked in a commanding disinterest.
"No, he's alive but he took off suddenly for no apparent reason. All he left behind was that note there on the desk. A single sentence on official letterhead."
"That's it? He disappeared?" One glance at the said letter on the desk and it seemed the American wasn't buying it. "Official letterhead my ass. There's nothing official here, you're not an official government just because you say you are. You're nothing more than armed scumbags committing genocide against your own people."
For a guy supposedly without emotion, he seemed rather opinionated. Shirou slipped a foot into the room, attempting to hear and see the situation better. Plus, he didn't want any Georgian or the other American peeping in on him while he eavesdropped.
The Georgian general raised his voice, shifting dangerously against the knife against his throat. "How dare you profane our peacekeeping efforts by characterizing them that way. It's war, and our government is trying to end it by subduing the terrorists who threaten our citizens."
"But the terrorists aren't the ones going around killing those citizens, you are. And you guys can call yourselves a government or whatever the hell you want. Doesn't mean you're recognized by the U.N."
Distant gunfire erupted outside, drawing Shirou's attention. It sounded much closer than before.
"What does the U.N. got to do with anything. Imperialist pigs came here, trampled on our native culture and sneered at our right to self-determination," the general was starting to sound eerily familiar to Shirou. Justification came in many forms, but they followed patterns as many did when waging war. "The many ethnic groups lived here peacefully, side-by-side for centuries—"
The general abruptly stopped talking as even-closer gunfire erupted once more. Shirou wasn't so sure anymore but he was tempted towards the window to get a look. He didn't move from his shady corner in the room though, not wanting to risk detection by the special forces soldier.
The general continued muttering, "Wait… We were living in harmony so how did we end up here? Tolerance and multi-culturalism were cornerstones of our nation. It was them, the terrorists! They caused this, it's their fault!"
Was this man having a sudden change of heart or a mental breakdown?
"No—that's not right, we didn't have to send troops into the capital for them. Did we?"
The American wasn't even speaking anymore, just standing there confused as he listened to the crazed general process his actions.
"How did we end up like this?"
More gunfire, louder – bigger. Shirou's eyes widened darting between the two conversationalists and the thunderous noises erupting from outside. He could vaguely hear yelling down below, maybe not in the courtyard but just beyond the ancient walls of the complex.
The American team leader finally spoke, "I'm no priest but your repentance is bullshit. Too little, too late. Religion can't help anymore and if there is a Hell, you're about to go straight to it."
The general seemed to be receptive to the American's words but still, the confusion rolled off in his words. "No doubt I will, it's what I deserve but you misunderstand – I'm not asking anyone for forgiveness. I'm trying to figure out what happened, I really don't know. Two years ago, this country was a wonderful-beautiful place and now it lays in utter ruin."
"Because you started a war, you senile old man!"
"Why would I start a war—"
"You tell me!" The American soldier pressed the dagger closer to the general's neck.
"I don't know, I killed so many!" The man was hysterical – his voice was jumpy and even from the shadowy and obfuscated view of Shirou, he could see the Georgian general convulsing into the American's grip. He wasn't fighting, it was almost like a seizure.
Mumbled voices came from the American's radio headset as his Washington handlers commented from afar.
"Why, tell me! Why would I do that?" The general continued to babble incoherently.
"That's enough talking," The American tried, beginning to shiver himself based on the subtle vibrations in his active camouflage.
"I cannot explain it, you must know! You have to know! Why did I kill all those people?" The general slumped against the soldier, losing his senses in the hysteria.
"Shut up…"
"He's beyond restraint… Captain Shepherd, come in! Are you alright?" The voices of the Washington-based mission handlers were louder now, audible even to Shirou across the room.
"Why? What made me kill all of them?"
"Shepherd, report!"
"Be quiet…" The American was now shaking himself, beginning to lose control of the situation.
Shirou took a step, uncertain of the situation and propelled forward by his curiosity – even concern. The American heard the step and spun himself and the general around to face them.
"Shit," The American called out, spotting the black-hooded Shirou standing in the room with his Jericho pointed towards the ground. The soldier's arms were full trying to restrain the general, he wasn't ready for a presence like Shirou – the general's hysteria threw off his concentration.
The general's rapid breathing and bugged-eye look made Shirou freeze in shock, becoming as confused by the situation as his fellow confused audience member in the American.
A silent but unintentional standoff filled the room. Shirou didn't raise his pistol. The general shook in the American's arms as his green uniform bled into the optical camouflage effect of his restrainer. The soldier's blade-held hand was beginning to ease off the general's neck, twitching toward his chest-mounted handgun.
"Stay right there. Who are you?" The American, Captain Shepherd, demanded of Shirou who only stood there in confusion and loss – his eyes and expression hidden by his dark cloak.
The voice of a female handler called out to the lead handler back in Washington, "Colonel, sir! These readings aren't from Captain Shepherd…"
Everything froze at that moment as a thousand things processed through the minds of the room's occupants.
Gunfire erupted into the room as Shirou dove for cover, behind a couch. Two rounds smashed through the skull of the Georgian general causing the new corpse to bleed and slump into Shepherd who compensated, spinning once more towards the new threat and using the dead general as a body shield.
The gunfire continued, suppressed, chewing through the body of the dead general and spraying blood across the room in all directions. The corpse was riddled, looking more like roadkill in milli-seconds.
Shirou kept low behind the couch as he tried to shift his way behind the other end of the couch and draw a bead on the new assailant. He didn't have any quarrel with the American, now at least, he needed to figure out what was going on.
Peaking from behind the couch, he caught sight of an even more confusing sight as the gunfire halted and a black rifle steamed from the automatic exhaust.
Black armor, black helmet. No flags or insignias. White man, blinking IFF responders and sophisticated electronics. The second American had entered the room and promptly begun firing.
Shepherd let the dead Georgian slump to the ground, his optical camouflage was now pointless with the excess blood splattered across it like generously-plastered maroon paint. He leveled his handgun at the other American, further adding to the confusion.
"Huh, Alex. But why," Captain Shepherd asked his teammate, unable to process what happened. Neither man was paying Shirou any mind this moment. "We had him…"
The American soldier, Alex, lowered his weapon upon meeting Shepherd's eyes. "Well… I…"
Alex's body slouched as his eyes drifted out of focus and towards the ceiling. Shirou kept his pistol just below the view of the couch he was crouched behind, ready to draw if need be.
The Colonel over the radio called out, "Shepherd, do you copy?"
Alex, in the dim light, seemed to refocus – glancing back towards Shepherd and surveying the room. He didn't say anything, however, he didn't even react – like the man was a zombie.
His eyes twitched, convulsing. Like the general did.
Shirou's mind said it for him. Shit.
The two Americans leveled their weapons at one another simultaneously, handgun against the rifle. Shepherd was faster, popping two rounds before his teammate could get a shot off.
The first bullet nailed straight between the eyes at seven feet, a perfect shot. The second bullet popped open Alex's throat, causing the dead man to promptly slump and collapse into a newly forming pool of his blood. His fingers still made it to the rifle trigger causing bullets to crash into the wood floor until it hit the ground, lifeless as its owner.
"Status report, Shepherd. Give it to me now, dammit!"
Shepherd quickly spun on his heel and leveled his pistol back at Shirou who slowly rose from behind the couch, his pistol pointed downward and his left hand up to signify parlay.
The American team leader didn't lower his weapon but contacted his superiors, "Target A has been eliminated. But not everything went according to plan and we lost Alex. I have someone in the room here with me. I have him at gunpoint."
"What the hell…" The Colonel mumbled, confused.
"Identify yourself," the American captain demanded, keeping his pistol leveled at Shirou's chest.
"Uh… Sh-S-Sato," Shirou mumbled out, still trying to process the whole situation. The Georgian general was dead. An American just shot his teammate. The elusive John Paul wasn't here.
"Who are you, what are you doing here?"
"I can't answer that," Shirou called out, with a little more confidence.
He could hear hollering coming from downstairs, and now outside. Something was happening. He needed to find a way out of this standoff.
"That's a bullshit response – now tell me, who are you and what do you have to—"
The wind was knocked out of both Shirou and Shepherd as the wall behind them exploded with concussive force throwing glass shards from the broken window and stone from the collapsing wall. The howling of fire, the roar of gunfire, and screams of dying men entered the space as the symphony of battle roared in the courtyard.
Shirou groaned, rolled off his side and pushed aside some distributed, wooden debris. Smoke and fire filled the room, the couch was gone and the wall behind him as well.
Looking around the room, Shirou could see Captain Shepherd struggling to rise after taking a face full of the explosion. His armor absorbed the blunt trauma – he just looked dazed, maybe in a bit of pain.
Not looking to overlook a coincidental gift, he swept the room one last time and noted the destruction that lay across the room. He didn't have much time left because stomping boots were approaching quickly from the hallway and stairwell outside. He spotted the John Paul letter lying on the floor, wrinkled and torn but still legible.
Shirou picked up the letter and stuffed it into the pocket.
He glanced back at the American soldier and wondered if he should stay and help. The Georgians were coming. The voice-over radio told him not to worry, "Shepherd – it's Williams. Get over there quickly, the courtyard's up in flames!"
Shirou whipped around to look up the courtyard. The American named Williams was true to his word, the four missile trucks that once guarded the area were molten-fire wreckages. The bodies of countless Georgian soldiers were strewn across the open space, giant metallic arrows extending from their corpses.
The arrows only glinted there for a moment before taking on blue translucent glows – disappearing into magical particles and thin air. Magic, like an Archer. Like Archer.
Shirou glanced up and towards the security wall. A dark-skinned man with bone-colored hair stood in the dim glow of partially-destroyed floodlights pointed in his direction. An iron-cast longbow of inhuman proportions and design was in hand and drawn, a sword-like arrow notched for its next target; pointed right at Shirou.
Shirou's sense of time slowed as he locked eyes with his past-future demon. That man who haunted his destiny. The heroic spirit self-identified as 'Archer.'
The magical words of power lifted off his lips before he could process them. He felt his shoulder and chest twitch as the magical history in his circuits fired to life. The high-speed incantation left his lips as the Noble Phantasm flew forward towards him.
"I am the bone of my sword... Rho Aias!"
A pedal-shaped light field blossomed before Shirou's out-stretched hand aglow in a hue of plasmatic pink.
The bladed arrow rammed into the ancient shield of magical essence, halting in place as it's runaway kinetic energy collided violently with the immovable object guarding Shirou's form. He had to maintain the shield, or the magical weapon would pierce him through – Archer wouldn't miss.
Or maybe he would – this was by no means Archer's greatest weapon, nor his greatest intent. Shirou breathed, closed his eyes and concentrated. He took a step to the left and felt the shield recede.
There was an explosion and he was thrown from the building, sent crashing down to the hard concrete in the courtyard below. Groaning in pain, he rolled onto his back and look up towards where his would-be killer had stood. Gone.
The magical bowman was gone, back into the night. So fast, maybe Shirou imagined the entire encounter. He looked back up towards the Sioni Cathedral, now engulfed in fire and the sounds of gunfire traded between soldiers of America and Georgia.
Shirou wasted no more time, groaning as he went to rise. He nearly collapsed as pain shot up through his stomach and back where wet blood dampened against his hand and his torn jacket. His AKM laid at his feet in pieces, his Jericho 941 had disappeared out of sight.
Limping and in pain, he still moved, resilient, through the remaining firelight and into the shadows of the courtyard walls. Archer, or possibly Archer, let him live. Shirou was still processing a million different questions from the night – encounters going wrong one after another.
He somehow walked into a situation far greater than he previously realized. Heroic spirits. Americans, Georgians. John Paul.
Shirou reached into his pocket and unfolded the note as he lean-walked against another alley wall, bathed in darkness.
The paper did reveal an 'official' letterhead, a printed crest representing the Georgian Department of Cultural Information. The scrawl beneath the letterhead was neat, cursive, and in English.
A single sentence from the mysterious individual named John Paul.
'My work here is done.'
A/N: My first attempt at a Fate fanfiction; I've been mulling over this concept for months and how I wanted to approach it. Finally, I've completed the first chapter and found a story I wanted to tell. 'Counter Guardian' is a crossover tale between Fate Stay/Night and Project Itoh's Genocidal Organ, particularly based on the latter's OVA film interpretation rather than Project Itoh's novel.
For those not familiar with Project Itoh, or rather Satoshi Ito, he was a Japanese novelist and close friend of game maker Hideo Kojima. Before collaborating with Kojima, Itoh wrote fanfiction for the Metal Gear franchise and was often praised by Kojima for understanding his themes. Itoh went on to write the novelization of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots but tragically passed away after a battle with cancer that lasted several years. Metal Gear Solid: Peacewalker includes a post-mortem dedication to Project Itoh.
Genocidal Organ was Project Itoh's first published work and is inspired heavily by themes and setting from the Metal Gear franchise, particularly supersoldiers, doomsday weapons, advanced technology, and villains with larger-than-life powers. The story has often been looked at as a psychological, pseudo-cyberpunk thriller and is sometimes noted as a cyberpunk Apocalypse Now. It was eventually animated, though with some development troubles, and later released in 2017.
Genocidal Organ is one of three fame works by Project Itoh, the other two being Harmony and Empire of Corpses; all of them animated and the novels award-winning. Harmony went on to receive a Philip K. Dick 'special citation' award. This is my respective contribution to Project Itoh and an odd marriage with the Fate franchise. Hopefully, my readership finds it enjoyable as I rarely step out of the realm of Halo fanfiction myself. It may end up ignoring Fate/hollow ataraxia but I hope this story serves as a respectable sequel to Unlimited Blade Works all the same, and even Fate Grand/Order to some degree.
If you have any thoughts on this story, criticisms or appreciations, I'll take it in the reviews. I like constructive criticism, which helps me improve as a writer. Read and review, I hope to have another chapter out soon.