A/N: Quarantine time oh YEA! Hope you all doing well out there and ain't dying and if you or someone you know is, you have my condolences. Time for us to meet our FATE!
What made a hero, a hero? Was it his valour? His honour, perhaps his dignity? What of his righteousness, does that count as a part of a hero? Does his strength or his cunning mind play a role in his status. Could a tyrant become a hero or vice versa? Many philosophers question and many more commoners did so as well. Opinions, feelings, perceptions all crying out to be validated as if they meant something, as if they were important. Insignificant people who chose to assert their own beliefs over others and try and demean other people down. All of this is just chaos and chaos had no end, unless order was instilled. Order could only come from someone who decides to create a fundamental rule or guideline that they could live by. Some tried to argue that everyone has the right to make their own rules for their own lives, yet in reality it only causes more Chaos. However, those who try to install Order are also mistaken.
Humans aren't machines meant to follow a single path in robotic indifference. Nor are they able to truly conform to society's standards for it is natural for that with a will to rebel against what it deems its oppressor, even if that oppressor brings both good and bad. On one side, Order and on the other Chaos. What to choose? Why can't everyone live how they want? Why must they all conform to society? Why must there be a society?
All these questions, he found stupid. Philosophers, the great thinkers of the world. Bah! Don't make him laugh. They were all people who might have had genuine questions at one point or another but after a while, they only ask things that have no meaning, no point and only cause trouble. So, what if you can't decide what's good? It's not about you. Nor is it about the society. 'It's about both.' He thought as he continued with his exercises. 'How can an individual be so selfish to put his own wants over the greater whole and how can the greater whole be so cold hearted to not help the individual. Only he who helps others will be helped and yet people expect to be rewarded while doing nothing. That's why he chose to be different. That's why he was here. That's why he would become a Hero.'
Shirou Emiya grunted as he finished his last set of special pulls ups. They consisted of a regular pull up with some weights attached. However, while a normal person would add twenty to thirty kilos and an extreme person around fifty while he, utilising the gifts that he had, added over three tons. You may ask, 'How is that possible?' Simple, magecraft. Mages thought that they could limit Magic, and they did due to their inability to be creative. That's the problem with traditional Magecraft. Most 'powerful' beings were individuals who broke certain traditions and simply allowed their mind to open to the possibility that there could be another way.
Granted, not everyone was gifted with a lot of magical circuits but usually those people used different skills to rise to the top. He himself didn't have an extreme amount of magical circuits, or well… he used to not have to be precise. He had found out that one could turn their nerves into magical circuits however it was painful and supposedly not of good quality. So, as was usual of him, he spat in the face of modern magecraft and created his own circuits. It was painful, nothing compared to the fire but still noticeable and yet the quality spoke of itself when his adopted father tested him.
7 Trillion nerves in the human body. A typical mage had around 20 to 40 magical circuits while a powerful one had around 70 to 90 high quality ones. The Dead Apostles were known to be in the triple digits with the last one being around 159 while the first one to close to a thousand. Even then, people like the Mage Killer who only had around 56 magical circuits was still able to kill Dead Apostle's through strategy and cunning. So what does this mean for him? He despised the Magus, their inability to get out of their own pettiness and self-centeredness. When he found out that his father was the boogie man for these people, he decided to follow in his footsteps. He decided to become the second Mage Killer. He asked his father to teach him and—reluctantly so, Kiritsugu Emiya taught his adopted son about strategy, how to use his own enemy's weakness against him along with the surrounding environment.
Then, he went and threw himself in concepts and theories. He found the theories of Origins and Elements. He briefed over Thaumaturgy, Spellcasting and what not—however, he didn't have much care for them. What brought interest was the question of what his element is and what is his Origin. When asked, Kiritsugu explained that the Magus community was wrong in certain aspects. They believed that if someone had their Origin awakened, i.e known to them, they would be unable to stray from it. So if someone had an Origin of murder, he would be unable to stop himself from murdering. However, that isn't the case. An Origin is merely an aspect of the concept of an individual which can boost their weight in the physical realm. So in the case of Murder Origin, if the individual would be doing the act of Murder, it would be like instinct and his presence and concept of his existence would be much more noticeable than when he was not committing the act.
Kiritsugu explained that he himself had a Double Origins, Sever and Bind. At first he had believed that meant anything he does would sever the original things and bind them back together in a less than stellar fashion. However, after years of life and experience he had come to the conclusion that Mage's forced that upon themselves, their own Origin and that something as simple as Sever and Bind, while sounding damaging could be good.
Take the man whose Origin would be murder. What if he decided to conceptualize murder as the action of taking the life of someone who committed an injustice to others for their own sick pleasure or taking the life of someone who is a danger to themselves and society. In such a description, he would be less like a Murderer and more of an Executioner of bad people. However, the tricky part is what does this person consider injustice? What's his definition of bad for the society or the individual's safety? Those were trickier situations. That's why guidelines need to be put in place. Otherwise, people would just end up doing what they want and calling it 'justice' or 'helping the society'.
Soon after, Kiritsugu and himself created the ritual for the Origin and the Element. It wasn't a painful process, it felt more like he had become heavy and light, without gaining physical weight, as if he, Shirou Emiya was more prominent in the world and then was not. Soon after, he was not in the physical realm but in another place. It was huge, with titanic cogs in the air and a strange smell in the air of burnt metal. The land at first glance would seem desolate and lonely, however at a second look you could see that the soil was rich in nutrients, the sky was clear as day, the cogs were bright and shining healthily and the smoke coming from far away was of a clear colour, meaning healthy.
In this, one word stood out above all in his mind. Forge. Then everything started to swirl. He had thought that was the end of it, he found his Origin and he was about to wake up. So why did he open his eyes only to see a battlefield, with thousands of bodies lying around, blood soaking the earth. Spears, arrows, swords, battle-axes, all manners of weaponry strewn around. He didn't panic though. He still felt calm, in control. Even when the word, War sounded in his head and the lights returned and once again found himself in hell.
The flames licked at his body, trying to coax the fear out of him, trying to break him once again. But this time, the Hellfire met resistance unlike anything before. Now, standing inside the very pits of hell, hearing the screams of pain and rage. It was all so, underwhelming. But he didn't receive anything from here. No word, no feeling. So, he started walking. He didn't know how long he walked for, but each step was heavier, and the fire seemed to get hotter and hotter until it would have been unbearable. He didn't stop, he would never allow himself to stop and as he walked, he stared seeing a shape. It was a sword, stabbed in the ground with a sheath resting on it. Both were of beautiful design and seemed to have not been touched by the flames.
Soon he was standing right over the objects. He went to pick up the sheath first and it seemed as if gravity itself grew stronger and stronger to the point he couldn't physically move forward. Again, that didn't stop him, instead he awakened his magical circuits, the few that he had, to increase his physical strength. It seemed enough to be able to lift the sheath. He went to pick the sword and again the same thing, however it seemed as if he needed more power and so, he created magical circuits from his nerves, bearing the pain and not noticing the sheathe glowing slightly. Hand on the handle, he pulled out the sword but before he could take a good look at it, everything turned white and he found himself with two words, Sword & Shield before everything went dark.
Kiritsugu POV
'It's been two years since that damned day and once again I feel the same fear as if I was relieving that moment.' Kiritsugu isn't someone who you could call loving. In his life of forty-years, he had only loved four people. Irisviel, his beautiful wife, Illyasviel, his tiny daughter, Natalia Kaminski, his 'mother' and Shirou Emiya, his adopted son. He had seen his wife's dead body, he had killed his own mother, sentenced his daughter to a lonely life to be raised with death as her only purpose and Shirou… He had taken his previous life away completely and now, he was taking his future. It's as if fate was laughing at him, he who wanted to do good in the world, is now paid with regrets, guilt and slow death. He didn't know how much he could take anymore.
When Shirou had first asked him for training, he had denied the child vehemently, unwilling to put anyone else in that kind of life and pain. So when he saw the child just start doing magecraft by himself, self-teaching and whatnot, he had relented knowing the damage it could have done. When he asked Shirou as to why he wanted to learn, the answer was a surprise.
"I want to be like you. A Magus Killer. Someone who they fear because they know he represents their mortality, their weakness and their inability to become greater. I want to be a hero, but a hero has to do things no one likes, from helping people with simple tasks, to taking the life of those who are a danger to society and to people."
An answer that could have easily evolved into a deeper discussion about perceptions, truths, meanings and definitions, however the finishing line really took him.
"People thrive on Chaos by trying to disturb the balance between Order and Chaos, instead of encouraging it. They don't ask 'smart' questions or 'philosophical' questions. They're just making stuff up, trying to seem intelligent, or philosophical. By that, all they do is cause more Chaos and discourage Order."
'Never knew he was this smart.' Was Kiritsugu's thought. So, with that in mind, he allowed the training to happen and taught his young charge about all that he knew when it came to thinking. He had told Shirou,
"Physically, most magus are useless so being physically capable in different styles is good. Mentally is where Magus would say they succeed. If you believe that, you'll believe that Disney isn't a money industry bent on world domination through kids and cartoons. Any typical Magu's has a pattern, like an MMO game where the player comes up with a specific pattern of attacks for a specific Boss Battle. All you have to do is as Sun Tzu says, "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles." When you know your enemy's way of thinking, when you have the necessary information on them, you can fight them in ways they won't be able to fight back. But be careful, they can do the same. So always keep your cards close to your chest.
"When it comes to enemies you can't predict or don't know enough about, you have to tread carefully. You are always beyond your guard, eyes everywhere, ears everywhere. You need to know their every move, their ever breath and even their heartbeat. If you need to take a shot from a far, it'd be easier to do so in public. They don't expect it. If you can't find them outside, put them there. Blow up their hidey-hole. Cause a stir. Blow a building or two. Never have direct confrontation, unless you are absolutely sure you can take them without suffering. Not getting hurt…Without suffering."
And now, a year later of training, studying and planning, he was holding his surrogate's son limp body, trying to find a heartbeat and just hoping that he hasn't just killed his own son.
A/N What do you think? Updates coming soon. After all, it's not like I can go to work to earn a living or walk outside without government approval…yea... So, stay safe ya'l!