I felt the heat.
The scorching, furious god-wrath of 5 kilotons slamming into me as the bomb landed in my backyard. Honestly. An error margin of 30 kilometres seems excessive.
On the upside, there was no time to lament, to sit and waste away in a hospital bed as nuclear rot slowly killed me over a week, a month, a year.
Just a quick "Fuck." followed by 3 seconds of heat and then nothing.
Nothing but me, in my head, my consciousness drifting through purgatory, waiting to find either the eternal reward or the other place. Good money on the other place, really. Not that I was an evil man, or even a terrible one, but there was heartbreak in my wake. Broken trusts and shattered hearts, not to mention the metric ton of pure sloth that I managed to slip into during adulthood.
Maybe this was it for me, the place for the people who were neither good or bad enough for the other two, the axis on which they balanced. Just me, here forever with my thoughts.
This was the bad end then. I couldn't have even begun to craft a better prison for myself. Self-loathing and eternal reflection made for good punishment.
The silence too, leaves me alone with my thoughts. Not a fun place to be.
Or maybe this was none of that, this was the one true end for everything. Consciousness splashed across the cosmos, left to sit and reflect. To what end, who knows? Reincarnation maybe. Perhaps it's the last stretch of life, the single flicker of my brain desperately holding on to the bitter end.
I couldn't move, I couldn't speak, I couldn't see. A final, desperate last gasp. A refusal to the truth of my death.
I'd cry, if I could.
-/-
Time ran thin, if this was my brain's last fight it was doing a mighty impressive job of keeping me around. I suppose time might not even have weight or impact here in the recesses of my void. (PRISON)
It's a considerable surprise, when the world crashes back into place around me. My arms are weak, but I can move them.
My ears track only static but it's better than nothing.
My lips move, heavy sluggish but enough to let out a startled "...bwuh" as sense returns.
And as my eyes open, I need to staple them shut for the sheer swirl of colour that invades my vision, visible even through crushed close eyelids. Something biblical, sent to finally weigh my soul I suppose.
"Huh, you're not supposed to be here." Oh cool, good to know. At least the voice of God isn't burning through my head, there's that small comfort.
"Nnnngh." Mouth's a big old traitor though, refusing to form my perfect comeback.
"Ah yes, I suppose in the state you're in everything's a bit of a struggle." There's some movement, sounds like stretching cloth, pockets? Did angel's need pockets? Jesus, maybe. He had been human. "Here we are then, Das Gefühl von Zuhause." The German's a bit odd, not quite as odd as the resulting vitality that sings through my body. The smell of books and the sound of PC fans that soar in and out of my comprehension on a dime. The coffee in my mouth, the feel of keys clicking under my fingers… "Love you, forever."
I snap up, eyes wide open. Body entirely responsive. "Christ on the Cross, that is some grade-A shit." My words are fast, unrestrained and rushing forward without filter. "Why German though?"
The angel chuckles. "It's my native tongue, why wouldn't I speak it?"
I'm a bit less convinced of the angel bit at this point, between the pockets and the German and, finally making them out, the sharp, red eyes. "Heaven's German?"
"No, also this isn't heaven." there's a tilt to his head, "Hell neither, just in case you were curious." a sudden flash, and I was blind again, colour and light rattling my head. Migraine or not, at least my curiosity had been sated. "One moment, please." There's a pressure on my head in that moment, and my entire life is suddenly playing out, a piss poor screen play really. Much better material the strange void-Man could be watching.
I feel it when he gets to my death, the phantom heat scrapes at my throat, but is banished just as quickly. "Enough atoms smashing together, potentially enough to rend through reality, if unlikely." The rambling is probably important, but I can't focus on it, because my eyes have stuck to the thing he had been resting on my skull a moment ago.
A slab of pure, untarnished diamond. Polished to a mirror sheen and perfectly cut into the form of a sword. But calling it a sword… It seems lacking. There is so much colour and life swirling through the thing that it boggles.
Universes beginning and living and ending all in a single moment. Repeated over and over again. He holds Eternity in his hands. Reality itself bends to his whim.
I know who he is.
"Motherfucking Zelretch."
Red (Fucking Vampire) eyes zero in on mine, and the fever dream has the gall, the absolute hutzpah, to merely crook his eyebrow. "I'm dead, and in my death my brain has gone and manifested a goddamn fictional character to release me from my life." There's laughter in my ears, I think it's mine. Certainly hysterical enough.
"You are dead, yes." there's a smirk to go along with that goddamn eyebrow, my brain is mocking me and I hate it.
My mouth runs dry, eyes dilate and breathing hitches. "You're fake, fictional. You and that sword." I default to sword because I cannot think of a word to fully encapsulate what the thing is.
"Oh yes, I am very, very fake." the smirk hasn't shifted. "But, in a fluke of decayed physics and supreme luck, your eternal soul slipped from your exploding corpse and found itself here, floating throughout the Infinite Kaleidoscope, somehow manifesting my entire world, my entire history into a sliver of your reality. Good job, Fallout Boy."
"That isn't my name, you've stared into my past, you know my name." It's a weak response. My mind's currently wrestling with the impossible.
"I do know your name, but it's worthless now. Dead on the floor in Australia." The amusement is sharp, but not cruel.
I'm willing to swallow a lot of bullshit for something like this, but a nuke splitting my soul from my body and cracking open a brand new reality centered around a Visual Novel from 2004? "You're fucking with me."
He laughs. It's a warm thing, but there's an edge along it. A knife held to my throat, reminding me of the Eldritch nature shifting below mortal flesh.
"I am fucking with you. Your death did not spawn my universe. You aren't nearly that important, and to think otherwise is a monumental delusion." The ego bruises, but my mind snatches control back.
"But you're fictional, a story from Japan." My teeth grind at the absurdity of it all. "Multiverse Theory is fine, it's whatever. But a completely fictional reality, drifting through the mirror of creation. That's a coin flip I cannot believe in."
"Even if it is all delusion, what's the harm in indulging?" And once more my control slips. "You are dead, your body is ash. If your mind wants to help ease you out of that pain and misery with something fantastical, what really is the harm?"
None, I suppose. Let it play out and I get to grip onto existence for a little bit. That alone is motivation enough to let the screeching impossibility of it all slide off my back.
"Let's pretend this is all real then, and not just a dying hallucination. The whys and the hows please." I don't pretend like I'm even remotely in control of myself anymore, I haven't been in control since the bomb.
"As far as I can work out, you are a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a chance." The ancient vampire drawled. "There is no destiny, no fate tying you to any kind of continued living beyond your death." His smile is all fangs. "You are a fluke in the order of the universe, an error."
There's a brief silence. My mind turns, desperate to seize understanding.
"A fluke then." I break the silence quickly. "An error... Is that why you're here, to correct me? Send me off to the place where I should have gone?" I imagine it would be disgustingly easy for him to do. Swatting a fly easy. Maybe he'd make a note of it, a small curiosity, for a day or two. No more though, I think.
"If that's what you want, I suppose." His smile drops a bit, disappointment bleeds into his eyes and the tip of the thing that looks like a sword (but is infinitely more) presses back into my forehead. "But I do so grow bored, as long lived and all seeing as I am." The wizard who holds reality drawls, once more all fangs. "I won't force you, but I hold your salvation in my hands. Do you want to live, Fallout Boy?"
The offer wraps around my throat. 'Yes' I desperately try to shout, but the answer freezes on it's way out. Back home, a bombed out wasteland. Nothing there but heartbreak really. So his reality? The Nasuverse, and all the things that lurk in the unseen and unknown spaces of his home.
Death scares me, I want desperately to seize this offer, to live again. But I consider Apostles and Magi. The lengths these people would go to if they managed to so much as guess at a connection between me and the 4th Apostle Ancestor. At the very least, the bomb had been quick.
On the other flip of the dick, magic. True blue, honest to God magic. Well, maybe not entirely, Magecraft was certainly no True Magic. Limited and frustratingly iffy. But the chance to bend the universe to my will, even just slightly, to live out a million and one fantasies of my childhood?
'I am disgustingly easy.' To risk a world full of monsters like Primate Murder and Kayneth El Melloi, simply for a chance at throwing fireballs. "Death is scary Marshall, and I am a filthy, filthy slut for magic."
The laugh isn't quite booming, but it is very full. Pride? No, but there is a deep satisfaction behind that knife edge. "You and every single Magus chasing God dreams, Fallout Boy."
"So what is it then? Chaldea, the Moon Cell… Maybe Zelretch's funhouse of fuck worms?" My mood has flipped very quickly, more than a few times, I know. It's been scattered and shattered and rebuilt from the moment the bomb dropped. But if I don't embrace manic hype, right here and now, I may just lose my nerve. Let the fear drown out the excitement.
"Do you consider me a cruel man, Fallout Boy?" May have pushed too hard there, bringing up some of the more… Unseemly possibilities. What little of Zelretch's lore does paint him as someone who cares about people's wellbeing, to at least some degree.
"Not cruel, no." I appease, as my ears drown in static and phantom flames lick at my skin all over again. "But you're a long lived man, and the nature of your magic… I can see it being very easy to become hardened. Apathetic to the suffering of strangers."
His eyes close, and a frown. I really hope he isn't about to renege. That worry makes it much clearer as the heat grows stronger, the static fading in on an echoed cry for… help maybe? Someone searching for survivors in the fallout.
He smiles, and the taste of ash darts across my tongue, I fight the urge to spit, if I'm in the middle of a fire moisture is import… Oh.
"Apathy isn't wrong." Zelretch intones. He's above me now, I didn't even notice the moment of my collapse. His solidity is fading, the Kaleidoscope and this world slowly separating after their very brief connection.
It's terrifying just how seamless the whole process is.
"The curse of the 2nd magic is a heavy burden. I witness a million billion atrocities every moment of my life." Darkness has wrapped around me again, and Zelretch is concealed by the rubble coffin piled above me. "Can't stop every single one, I can't even commit to a fraction of them. If I let myself do that, if I took those wounds to my heart, I would never stop helping, I would never stop crying for the unfairness of it all."
The rocks clear, Zelretch is a phantom existence, barely there, looking through the hole and fading fast. "But what I have learned, throughout the multitude of centuries I have borne witness, is empathy, Fallout Boy."
Zelretch disappears entirely, and the man he had been superimposed onto comes into focus. Desperate, guilty, unbelieving relief all sharing space across his face. "I saved you, I saved you. I saved you."
Kiritsugu Emiya is saved.
-/-
Codex
Fallout Boy
First Appearance: Fate/Insert 2020 (The Bands debut album, "Take it to Your Grave," Released in 2003.)
The Protagonist. Named for the circumstances of his reincarnation and because JoJo naming conventions are fun. Fallout Boy, the Band formed in 2001 and have 2 and a half good records.
Zelretch
First Appearance: Fate/Stay-Night 2004
The man who killed the moon. He wields the Second [TRUE] Magic, which allows him to peer into and traverse parallel worlds. Bitten by the Original Vampire, Type-Moon, Zelretch is a nigh immortal Vampire who has been granted the title of 4th Apostle Ancestor.
Nuclear Force
On average the explosive yield of an atomic bomb is around 5.2 Megatons, which for context, generates an explosive force of around 5 million tons of pressure
Each of the Four Living Creatures had Six Wings and was Covered with Eyes all around, even Under its Wings
True blue Biblical Angels are made out to be something terrible and incomprehensible to the poor mortals that show up in front of them. A swirl of colour that burns even through closed eyes evokes that feeling to me.
Zelretch's Spell
Das Gefühl von Zuhause: Google Translated directly from; "The Feeling of Home." A throw away spell for this one instance that invokes the warmth and safety of "Home" to completely revitalize a person.
The Jeweled Sword of Zelretch
This thing allows the man to draw upon the magical power of all other universes where the Jeweled Sword of Zelretch exists. Considering the fact that the man wields magic that allows him to 'Operate Parallel Universes' that's all of them. It's this Magic and sword which allowed him to kill the Original Vampire, Brunestead. The Ultimate Life Form of the Moon, Type-Moon.
Excuses to Insert
Zelretch is known across all the Universes where he exists as an incorrigible scamp and viciously unpredictable. As far as SI and Crossover excuses go, he's quite strong.
A Breif Statement on the First Apostle
There are a multitude of monsters in the Nasuverse which defy reason, Primate Murder as a Beast of Gaia designed to Murder Humans, is one of them. It's ranked First, for the sheer fact that nothing else under the purview of Gaia is as good at killing humanity than Primate Murder.
Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald
Master of Lancer in the Fourth Holy Grail War, Kiritsugu spends the entire first half of the story skunking him at every turn, before using his Contender to destroy the man's Magic Circuits, and paralyze him from the waste down on top of that. Kiritsugu then signed a Magically binding contract that stated he would never take action towards Kayneth ever again, in return for ordering his Servant to commit suicide. Kiri then watched as his Mistress/Fangirl sniped him from down town on previously issued orders. Maintaining innocence within the conditions of the contract. Mans was a shit cunt, but he certainly didn't deserve to be deleted by Kiritsugu like he was. RIP Smug Wizard Man
Chaldea, the Moon Cell and Zouken Makiri's Funhouse of Fuck Worms
The Nasuverse, Fate/Properties especially, have an absolute cavalcade of Apocalypse scenarios. Chaldea and the Moon Cell are still much kinder than Zouken Makiri.