This story is a Fanfic written by an amateur and published for non-profit purposes.
I have no right to the Fate universe that belongs to Type-Moon.
On the other hand, the Chtulhu Mytos is a collective work nourished by many authors (such as H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E Howard, Clark A. Smith, August Derleth, Brian Lumley or Frank B. Long). They were never opposed to others writing stories in the universe they created.
Back to Zero
The Moon Cell Grail War had just ended.
It was a conflict between hundreds of Spiritron Hackers, wizards able to use a particular form of magic that made it possible to project themselves into the virtual universe of a computer.
The clash had taken place inside the Moon Cell, also known as Eye of God and the Holy Grail, an immemorial recording device constructed by some sort of quasi divine extraterrestrial beings. This massive collection of photonic crystal within the moon was a sort a supercomputer.
This prodigious artifact, almost as old as the planet Earth, could alter reality, make possible the impossible. For some unknown reason, it had offered its ability to grant any wish to the winner of some kind of deadly game.
After seven weeks of trials without numbers, after winning seven Masters. Hakuno Kishinami and her Caster class Servant were faced with Twice H. Pieceman, the ultimate event...
For years... maybe centuries, time not wanting to say anything in the Seraph, Twice H. Pieceman had shattered the dreams of all the Masters believing they had triumphed in the Grail War. However, despite his Servant, nothing less than Buddha himself, he had just encountered defeat. He had disappeared, letting the winner climb a long staircase leading to the Main Core.
The Main Core was a huge unfinished crystal cube, showing a sphere of golden light floating above a surface covered in water, from which emerged numerous stone pillars like some sort of funeral monuments.
The interior of the main Core was a sea of data, where infinity of 0 and 1 crossed. There was only one intruder in the system, a body sinking into the depths of this digital sea. She was an I.A. with corrupted data that the Moon Cell's defense programs were slowly deconstructing. Her body was crumbling in violet particles; her mind sank, gradually obliterated.
She was a teenager girl with long wavy brown hair and eyes, dressed in the brown female School Uniform of Tsukumihara Academy over a black turtleneck and black pantyhose. She looked very plain with a lack of expressive features... some sort of background character easily forgotten.
Her name was Hakuno Kishinami. Created by the Moon Cell as an N.P.C. in the tournament of death known as the Holy Grail War, she had reached consciousness. Seeking to escape the Seraph, the virtual universe where the fighting took place, Hakuno summoned Tamamo No Mae, the fox-woman. Forced to fight like one of the Masters participating in the event she had won...
It was a miracle...
Yet the endearing story of an A.I. discovering consciousness and overcoming a thousand difficulties to confront her creator ended without happy end. For the Moon Cell, the winner of the Holy Grail War was nothing but corrupt data that it was finishing erasing.
As the girl's consciousness dissolved, one last thought stay afloat, the regret of being a digital copy of a human living on Earth. Hakuno would have wanted to be this original... the sky... the birds... she would have wanted to live and see all this...
A tear rolled on her cheek before she completely collapsed into purple particles which in turn disappeared.
Earth, fifty-nine years after the events of Fate/ Extra.
In the dirty water of Tokyo Bay, the cargo ships gnashed on their anchors. Lit by the electric fire of the holographic advertisements and the sky-car fires in the sky of the Akihabara district, the docks were asleep. The windows of office buildings, obscured by filth, resounded only from the spit that oiled the streets and the cracked concrete. Suddenly, the noise of a vehicle on an air cushion deceived the night silence. Headlights turned around in an alley, reflecting on the blind windows of a dirty and decayed warehouse. Papers rose up in its path and men appeared from the silent darkness.
It was a beautiful hover-limousine, completely displaced in this environment. There was a brief dialogue with the driver. Then the mechanical shutter of the hangar lifted up to allow it to enter. The vehicle stopped so that the passenger door opened at the beginning of a red carpet.
- Welcome, Katsuki-san.
The Japanese who had just spoken wore a strict dark suit with discreet elegance. Taking three steps forward, he bowed to the character that was getting out of the car. The hair white as snow and the face crossed with wrinkles as deep as scars, he replied with a brief nod barely accentuated enough not to be insulting. In fact, his eyes were riveted with a nervousness controlled on the interior wall that cut the hangar in half.
- I'm late, Hitoshi-san.
- We wouldn't have started without you. Besides, only the… the main topic interests you?
The old man nodded briefly. He continued to fix the pearl curtain. Beyond that, you could hear the sounds of subdued voices and the sour traditional music.
Bowing again, the man named Hitoshi hastened to open the road.
It looked like a private club. A scene produced for the hour four women in furisode playing bamboo flutes and samishen. A triple circle of tables welcomed gray hair men. They were all accompanied by hostesses in pink blouses with an American name stapled to their chest. Many of these grave characters bowed deeply to the passing of the newcomer.
Everyone knew each other. There were members of the Diet, owners of large companies and even a minister in office. Arriving at a vacant place, Katsuki-san stopped without looking at the so-called «Chrystal» who was waiting for him at the table.
- She can go back.
The girl sixteen years old at the most, rose and bowed before leaving.
- You want something to drink, Katsuki -san?
- Sake!
The very select club secretly set up in the city's docks was a kind of very specialized auction hotel. Only members of high society could belong to the club. Of course, we should not ask questions about the origin of the objects offered for sale. Some came from illegal searches carried out by treasure hunters, others were stolen from museums.
Over the last hundred and thirty years, the world had slowly disintegrated. By 1970, a catastrophe had caused the tilting of the Earth's axis and a plethora of consequences had resulted: tidal surges, earthquakes, volcanic eruption, epidemics, wars...
Most men did not know this, but it had caused the death of the supreme entities called Gaia (the will of the world) and Alaya (the collective spirit of men). Without Gaia, the mana, the magical energy that fed the ritual magic (or Formalcraf) had disappeared.
The Clocktower, the organization that brought together the Magi, did not survive such a brutal change in the environment.
The Magi using Magic Circuits to influence the real world disappeared almost completely in a few decades... They were replaced by the Wizards or Spiritron Hackers, users of a particular Magecraft allowing to interact with computers, or even to project themselves within the digital universe.
In this context, around 2030, the Moon Cell was discovered on the Moon and the Holy Grail Wars began.
However, a few years later the Spiritron Hackers could no longer connect with the Holy Grail... as a result of Hakuno Kishinami's wish. The latter- before being erased - had wished that these bloody wars would disappear and that no one would have to die for a wish.
The only wish to have never been fulfilled by the Moon Cell was therefore that there is no more Holy Grail to fulfill the wishes of a dying planet...
Cruel irony, the best of intentions had guided Hakuno. She might have wanted to escape the erasure inside the Moon Cell... At this selfish vow, the victor of the Grail War preferred to sacrifice herself in order to prevent other people from suffering. The result could not have been more opposed to this generous gesture. In fact, Hakuno had closed the last exit door that would have allowed Earth to escape the disasters that followed in the following years.
Almost sixty years and two world wars later, the world was plagued by chaos. The collapse of the European Plutocracy and the Harwey Empire, at the end of the Third World War, had made it possible to revive scientific research and certainly avoid the worst.
However, the world that had emerged from confrontation was permanently divided and the plans for world unification relegated to dangerous utopias. The states disintegrated in favor of increasingly powerful multinationals. While the fortunes of a handful reached their heights, misery was the common lot of the rest of humanity.
Twice H. Pieceman had prevented the Masters reaching the Main Core of the Moon Cell from fulfilling their wishes because he wanted the advent of a world advocating the survival of the most capable. Twice would have loved what Hakuno Kishinami's wish had unintentionally spawned, a noxious universe where money remained the only power and where all fought to obtain it.
Around the hangar serving as a secret sales hotel, some yakuza made a quiet round. After all, the protection of the place came mainly from the "friendships" which the owner of the "club" maintained with the powerful of the country.
In this world where religion, magic and states were little more than windbag, there remained few people of integrity...
However, if the Yakuza had looked up on the nearby roof, they would have seen stealth silhouettes. More than a dozen men took positions. They wear some sort of black cotton jumpsuit with high-tech composite chest places, guards for the shoulder, elbow and knees. The helmet, with a short antenna on the side and a breather, was made of the same composite material. They were armed with sniper rifles, stun guns and assault rifles.
The armor markings were in Japanese and English: "S.W.A.T." and "Tokyo Police Department"
Inside the hangar, the first items (works of art from all over the world) were purchased at a fast pace. The auction hardly lasted. Most of the buyers reserved for the "main event".
After a brief musical interlude, a young man with a brilliant smile appeared before the microphone:
- Konban wa (good evening), generous patrons of our humble club. I hope you had a good evening so far and I thank you for your patience. Because, I know, you're all waiting for the highlight of this evening.
Turning to the side, the presenter with the gummy hair made a gesture and the curtain closing the scene opened revealing an oval capsule nearly two meters long made of metal and white plastic chipped by time. The upper part was made of glass or some sort of transparent Plexiglas covered with frost. On the central part was a small control panel with green lights.
The capsule - mounted on a cart- was connected by various cables or pipes to a set of machines, in particular a portable generator.
- As you learned by registering, the jewel of this evening is absolutely unique. It is an intact hibernation sarcophagus. One of our diligent teams, traveling the world to find wonders that meet the tastes of our respectable clientele, discovered it right here, in Tokyo, in the ruins of a hospital looted and burned during the riots that marked the beginning of the Third World War.
Taking a few steps, the presenter switched on an archaic computer. The 2D screen showed the face of a teenager in school uniform.
- Miraculously, a sixteen-year-old girl spent the last six decades sleeping like the Sleeping Beauty of fairy tales. She was put in hibernation because victim of Amnesia Syndrome, an infectious disease identified in the 21st century. It is a virus that violates nerves in the brain. Those infected with this disease gradually lose awareness of the boundary line between themselves and other people. Ultimately they lose all awareness of their memories and it ends their lives. Thankfully, in 2030 a vaccine was developed.
The gummed presenter turned around in front of the captivated crowd:
- Of course, dear patron, the ultimate destiny of this young girl rests in your hands... or rather in the hands of only one of you, the one who will win the auction.
As the presenter revealed a screen with a large amount of money, several hands rose to outbid. Prices were rising very fast...
One of the yakuza members making his rounds outside came to a halt. Like many of this futuristic Japan's henchmen, he was addicted to cybernetic or bionic implants. In particular, his eyes had been replaced by multioptic-eyes, implants capable of seeing under different spectra from infrared to ultraviolet or thermal vision.
Swearing, he fired a heavy gun from under his jacket.
- Cops!
There was a shot and he flipped on himself... his arm swept away by a high-caliber bullet! The police had just begun their intervention:
- Tokyo Police! In accordance with article 469.9 of the law of 11 August 2058, please consider yourself under arrest. Anything you say will be used against you. You have no right to ask for a lawyer or a doctor. You have no right to remain silent. Surrender without resistance. Police officers have the right to use force, including lethal force, to compel recalcitrants!
The call fell from a loudspeaker on the spot the yakuza. Any desire to resist was taken away from them by the arrival of power-armors. The assisted armor fell from the sky, carried by their short wings and heavy thrusters on their backs. Their general appearance was reminiscent of samurais with a helmet adorned with metal blades. However, they held in their right hand a kind of big-gun powered by cable from a generator... a plasma gun!
With a weapon like that, you could destroy a tank with one shot... so a thug just armed with a pistol, let's not talk about it! Without trying to play hero, the yakuza raised their arms and allowed themselves to be disarmed by S.W.A.T.'s agents.
The arrival of the power-armors inside the "club" caused a real commotion. While some of the guests were paling with fear, others rose - sure of their right- to protest:
- That is unspeakable!
- What a right you had in a private evening?!
- Do you know who I am?
- Who is in charge? I ask to speak to the person in charge!
Without listening to the cacophony of voices, the police spread among the tables, leaving business lawyers, corrupt politicians, and the directors of megacorporations against the walls to handcuff them.
Two plainclothes policemen, 30-year-old Japanese, crossed the main hall to climb the few steps leading up to the stage.
The presenter, guarded by a member of the S.W.A.T. looked furiously at them:
- How dare you? What gives you the right to interfere in private property?
Inspector Minamoto Sezuku pulled his badge out of his jacket:
- This, sir, as well as a number of articles of law. In particular those relating to the possession and sale of stole objects, the association of criminals. I could add that this space has not been declared and that it does not meet fire safety standards. But more importantly, the law doesn't allow the sale of human beings. You've probably gone too far...
Inspector Asano Mihei had been stationed near the old computer:
- What archaism... There is not even a data-jack port. How do we access the data?
- Try tapping the keyboard!
- Yeah... I would have guessed myself.
- Then why ask the question?
- Just to complain, Sezuku-san.
Minamoto Sezuku approached the sarcophagus and used his sleeve to chase the frost that covered the translucent part. He discovered a motionless, bloodless face surrounded by a fringe of brown hair.
Asano Mihei had stopped swearing by trying to understand how the computer works, and smiled when he saw that he had managed to open a file containing the prisoner's personal data from the capsule:
- Her name is Hakuno Kishinami. Born in 1990, cryogenic hibernation dive in 2006... 93 years ago! Secondary school student at the Tsukumihara Academy in Fuyuki, Oita Prefecture, Kyushu. Her parents died in a fire in 2004. Known family: an older brother, born in 1988...
Minamoto cut off his colleague:
- Irrelevant, he must have been dead for decades.
Tokyo Teishin Hospital
The large flat building covered with brown roughcast was surrounded by a park comprising many trees, especially Sakura, the famous cherry trees of Japan. In the spring, their pink petals brightened up the essentially utilitarian building that stood in the heart of the titanic mega-city that stood at the foot of Mount Fuji.
Dr Sakamoto was one of the few Japanese practitioners to have some knowledge of cryogenic hibernation. The process, abandoned some seventy years earlier, was only mentioned in a few specialized journals.
Tired, the old man went out of the operating room requisitioned to get to the coffee machine. Yawning, he then walked towards the policeman asleep on a bench and shook him:
- Inspector Minamoto?
The man growled and pounded his eyelids before rising to sigh:
- Doctor?
- Have you been here all night? I am surprised at your dedication.
- Nobody waits for me but a cat. How is the girl?
The doctor nodded:
- I am amazed. Its state of preservation is miraculous... in fact, I should rather say that it is miraculous that the hibernation sarcophagus remained intact after more than 60 years without maintenance! Kishinami-san has perfectly supported the resuscitation and injection of the anti-virus. She is out of danger, however...
- Yes?
The doctor hesitated for a moment:
- I have found several anomalies.
- Any abnormalities, Doctor?
- Yes, in the first place the electroencephalogram of Kishinami-san is out of the norm. I have never encountered brain activity of this order...
The policeman frowned.
- What do you mean? An effect of Amnesia Syndrome?
- I doubt it... Kishinami-san's brain seems to be working fast. For now, she's still in a coma on artificial respiration and heart stimulation, so it's hard to tell what that means. I'll have to run some tests when she wakes up.
Doctor Sakamoto stood up, took a few steps before turning around and touching his forehead:
- Oh, I almost forgot. By washing the cryogenic fluid on her skin I noticed a tattoo on her hand.
- A tattoo?
- Do you have a data jack?
Minamoto showed a hidden entrance port behind his ear, taking a secure cable the doctor connected to the policeman to exchange data.
Minamoto Sezuku saw the image of Hakuno Kishinami's left hand appear under her eyelids. A nearly erased brown mark was on her back... one might think of a scar. Nevertheless, she had a regular appearance. A kind of tormented fleur-de-lys, like one of those "tribal" tattoos fashioned decades ago.
The policeman secured the image in his neural chip and then opened his eyes:
- That may or may not be important. Hard to say. Take care of her, Doctor. I'll come back when she wakes up.
Sakamoto smiles :
- I have ordered that Kishinami-san be placed in intensive care. I will have you notified when she wakes up.
The night had been particularly difficult for Inspector Minamoto Sezuku. The abuse of coffee gave him the impression that his stomach had turned into a bag of acid. Most of his colleagues preferred tea and used ginseng roots to keep the tone when they had to watch.
Ever since he was in the States, he's been sticking to coffee. A dirty habit gained during too long interrogations in this crisis P.C. that the federal department multiplied by following the track of the Serials Killers.
Sloping into one of the damp and warm streets of the capital, the policeman gained a back door. Like all real Tokyo townspeople, his ability to find himself in this maze was genius. It was oriented only by taking into account the large buildings of more than two hundred stores that cut across the grist of the city centre. These were the only landmarks in the capital. Rising from its ruins, in the aftermath of the Fourth World War, Tokyo had been rebuilt without an overall plan or street name. Minamoto skirted a palisade behind which was activated giant robots building a building but barely noticed them. Passing under one of the countless elevated roadways, he left the street for a narrower passage. Then he stopped, frozen by surprise...
A nine-year-old boy, carrying a heavy bag, blocked the sidewalk. For a moment, the little man and Minamoto yellowed without moving. It would have been difficult to say who was most affected. Was it the toddler in school uniform or the adult in his suit, roughed up by the moisture, his hair too long and sticky?
They did not sketch a movement of recognition although they were something other than strangers... once, in another life...
The strangely intense gaze, the child crossed the road not to approach the man. He entered a residence and disappeared in the direction of a garden. Regretfully, the adult turned to reach the staircase from where the apparition had arisen. The policeman knocked on the door of a second floor apartment, No one answered. Disillusioned, Minamoto took a quick look at his watch. He was on time.
From the parking lot, a warning call made him turn around. Leaning over the railing, he looked at a motorcycle that was parked below. The rider disengaged with flexibility, his steed perfectly dominated, and stopped just at the foot of the building.
- Sorry to be late, wait for me. I'm going up.
Leaning his mechanical steed on his crutch, the individual in jeans and leather jacket cut the gas. As soon as he had set foot on the ground, he rushed into the hall. And when he arrived on the landing, without worrying about the officer's awkward air, he immediately rushed into his arms.
- You could at least take off your helmet.
Bursting with laughter, the rider obeyed, dropping a stream of ebony-colored hair on her shoulders. The thick and stiff wicks like wood shavings loosely embraced a ravishing doll face of porcelain whiteness. Her eyes, which the Westerners would say «bridled», formed two huge ellipses as if drawn between a tiny nose and temples underlined by an imperceptible hint of wrinkles. More calmly, she held out her cheek so that he kissed her.
- You look tired, Sezuku-kun.
- And you in great shape. What's new?
- Oh?! Not much. In the newspaper we only talk about murders. On the family side, things are going pretty well. Your son just went back to school.
With a tight heart, Minamoto bowed left.
- I saw ihim… on the way.
The smile of the young woman disappeared instantly.
- He's often late. You know it's not easy between works and … It may be even harder for him. Well, I won't keep you waiting in the hallway, it must be cooler inside.
The inspector nodded to show he understood.
The young woman opened the door. She spoke without ceasing, getting her ex-husband drunk with a heap of words without consequence: The off-season climate, global warming and the melting of the ice which threatened the polders on which the new neighborhoods were built. Nothing personal, it sounded like she was trying to keep his mouth shut. The interior of the apartment was rather cramped, a little less than nine tatami, or thirteen square meters according to western measures. The living room filled with shelves revolved around a kotasu, an end table burned up by an infrared lamp. Three sliding PVC doors imitated traditional shoji rice paper. They opened onto the kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. The view from the windows did not catch up. It even left something to be desired. It was only an alignment of bleak, dull concrete buildings, intertwined with the airways under which Minamoto passed on the way. The only free spaces were a bus station and a small park.
What better hope for ninety thousand Yens?
As her guest sat in front of the home, the young woman hastened to prepare tea in the kitchen.
- What about your investigation?
- We have saved a one hundred and nine year old teenager girl, Tomoko.
The woman named Tomoko freeze.
- I beg your pardon?
The police inspector summed up his night, the discovery of the clandestine sale of a hibernation tank and the adolescent girl who had been sleeping for almost a century.
His ex-wife who was activating in the kitchen came back with a tray loaded with a narrow teapot and two cups as outputs of a doll service. When she returned, Minamoto was turned to the altar of the house, lighting an incense stick.
Tomoko graciously laid down her charge and took her seat in front of her guest. Getting down on one's knees was difficult.
- Jeans are practical. But I believe they are the very symbol of the difficulty of Japanese has in reconciling uses with modern life.
- No doubt.
The detective pulled a bunch of pictures out of his pocket and put them in front of the reporter.
- Can you talk to me about that?
Without protesting, Tomoko dragged the pictures to her place. She looked at the pictures one after the other. The journalist was no longer smiling and her tension was evident from the stiffness of her shoulders. Hakuno Kishinami was seen on her hospital bed, connected to all the machines that made her breathe and gradually brought her back to life. She then stared at a photo showing the partially erased tattoo. On Tomoko's arms, the Magic Circuits activated, transforming the od into Prana as she appealed to her gift. The vision overwhelmed her:
The Seven Chimeric Lunar Seas...
Moon Cell Grail War...
Vision of a fox-woman... A fleet of ships caught in the storm... A man dressed in green and wearing a crossbow on his wrist... A little girl wearing a nineteenth-century dress... A tyrant in the middle of a forest of impaled victims... an assassin who doesn't need to strike a second blow... A crazy Chinese antique general armed with a large halberd... a knight in armor carrying a blade containing the sun itself...
And above all... Buddha himself...
Hakuno Kishinami Victor of the Moon Cell...
The Last Master...
And...
The vision of a giant crystal cube... a cube containing... the vision distorts as Tomoko held her head with two hands submerged by a stream of contradictory data... a digital ocean containing all the knowledge of thousands of parallel universes...
- Tomoko!
She waved a trembling hand to repel her ex-husband.
- I'm fine... the vision was just too intense. Kami-sama... who is this girl?
Repelling the photographs, the journalist swallowed her saliva while waiting for the inspector's questions.
- What did you see?
She burst out with a bitter laugh.
- I saw... but I didn't understand, Sezuku. Have you ever heard of the Grail Wars?
- I am not a Magus and without you I would know nothing about your world. After all, by your own admission, there are practically no more Magi... and hardly any Wizards.
- It was a conflict between seven Magi called "Masters" through heroic spirits called "Servants".
- Heroic Spirits?
- Ghosts of past heroes who receive a temporary body made up of prana.
Minamoto Sezuku looked at his ex-wife with a strange expression:
- Are you telling me that Hakuno Kishinami is a Master?
- Correct, the "tattoo" is a Command Spell... inactive.
- Excuse me, Tomoko... but I thought you had explained to me that this kind of ritual requires a form of magical energy - the mana- that no longer exists on Earth.
- It still exists on the Moon. Kishinami-san participated... no, she won the Moon Cell Grail War.
The young woman explained at length what the photonic crystal supercomputer on the moon was. Then, finding that the beverage had infused enough, Tomoko turned away from the conversation with the officer. With graceful gestures, she began the tea ceremony or sado.
Tokyo Teishin Hospital
On the hand of a teenager plunged into a coma, an almost erased tattoo began to pulsate, shedding a faint red glow.
Nasu, Tochigi Prefecture
The famous Sessho-seki or "killer stone" was a huge block of black rock girded with a rope where white papers were hung. A wooden pavement allowed visitors to walk around the stone. There were also thousands of statues of Jizou supposed to contain the power of the evil rock. That morning, tourists who came to visit the site of Tamamo no Mae's death saw the stone that was in fact the petrified remains of the Kitsune begin to vibrate.
Some of them even heard a sigh:
- Finally, otto-sama...
Author Note: A new story for Hakuno Kishinami. This time she is immersed in a hopeless world, a world where all moral values have collapsed and where the appetite for power alone guides men... and as Lovecraft so aptly put it, the Old Ones will return to Earth when humanity resembles them... free from all morality.
Important: I search a Beta rRader.