Fate is the creation and intellectual property of Nasu Kinoko and Type-Moon.
All other franchises and characters mentioned within this story are the intellectual properties of their respective copyright and trademark holders.
FATE: Realta Nua of 2814.
Based on the original by Shadow Crystal Mage.
Days pass…
"I just got a proposition from Negi-sensei today," Shirou said over dinner.
Rin, Luvia, and Illya all did a spit-take. "WHAT!?" they all chorused, staring at Shirou.
Kuro made a sound. "Huh. I'd heard about him being a Casanova, but I never imagined he'd be bi. How'd it go, Oniichan? Did you score?"
"Kuro-chan, no, that's just illegal," Iris said. "All jokes aside, the Headmaster would kill Shirou-kun..."
"Yeah, I'm sure the old man is saving him for her granddaughter," Kiritsugu said pensively. "You didn't tell him anything about his mother, right? She made me promise I wouldn't ever tell him."
Archer raised an eyebrow. "Why wouldn't she be interested in him knowing about her?"
"They called her the Queen of Calamity for a reason," Rin said. "She had enemies everywhere."
"I suppose one of the Thousand Master's old lovers might try to kill him out of spite," Iri mused. "You should know better on the subject, right, Kiri-kun? I never got to meet them myself..."
One of Saber's eyebrows twitched. "Why are you wasting your mental energy on that instead of asking him about the present?"
"Dwelling into others' romantic lives is more fun than Grail Wars, naturally!" Irisviel chirped happily. "We already had our fill of those last time, didn't we, Saber-chan?"
Saber facepalmed. "It's not about whether I want to focus on this or not, Irisviel! I have to!"
Lancer stared down at his dinner, which to be fair was very nice. "How did we end up eating here again?"
"A team needs to work together!" Illya cried. "Between the two alternatives of having several diverse and uncomplimentary people learn to work together and respect each other's abilities and beliefs, the 'spending lots of domestic time and training montages' approach seemed the best choice, between the two."
"We aren't a team, though," Lancer said.
"And the other one was…?" Saber asked warily, making a point of ignoring Lancer altogether.
"All of us being the victim of a single evil maniac who inflicted horrendous evil on us in the past, causing us to grudgingly agree to work together to kill him, and finally learning to respect each other as we go through hell and near-death experiences, while revealing our respective origin stories to each other in poignant, heartwarming tearjerker scenes only when we're about to die, and only after undergoing lots of character development!" Illya said.
Saber considered this. "Luvia, please pass the seasoning."
"Here."
"Thank you."
Shirou sighed. "Doesn't anyone want to know what it was about?"
"You did score then?" Kuro said. There was another round of spit-takes.
Archer leaned over and laid a finger on Kuro's cheek. "Trace, on," he said.
A length of duct tape appeared over the girl's mouth.
"Thank you," Miyu said.
Kuro gave him the finger.
"Anyway!" Shirou said, rushing quickly so he wouldn't be interrupted again. "It turns out he's also a Master and invited me to work with him!"
Everyone but Saber and Lancer stopped eating and looked at him, aghast.
Shirou frowned. "What? With his family's reputation, you should have suspected as much, at the very least, Dad!"
"I suppose I should," Kiritsugu allowed, sounding oddly troubled, "but Nagi never was a Master himself, or gave signs of ever wanting to be one, so..."
Rin took a fist to her mouth and bit on her knuckles delicately. "This is bad! Sakura really, really likes that boy! She'll hate me after I blow him up to Kingdom Come!"
"Thankfully I'm Actually Satan and I'm above such regrets," Archer said sarcastically, mouth partly full.
"Tohsaka!" Shiro exclaimed in shock. "We can't do that! He's only a kid, he's done nothing to us, and he says he just wants to settle this war peacefully! He says he won't attack anyone who doesn't attack him. He was forced into this position, just like me and Illya!"
"Illya and I," Miyu corrected. Everyone stared at her. "Well, it's correct."
Lancer held up a finger. "Is it just me, or is it a bad idea to let the moron Master with absolutely no tactical sense and the character judging skills of a potato dictate our War prosecution policy?"
Rin, Luvia and Illya all glared at him.
Lancer paused, but no support was forthcoming. He glared at Archer and Saber. "Oh, come on, you two agree with me, don't you!?"
"First rule of Servant-Master dynamics," Archer said easily as he sipped from a cup of tea, one pinky out. He somehow made the gesture look butch and manly, with lots of balls. "Don't piss off the one giving you mana."
Saber thought about this, and said, "While I remain neutral in this discussion, you have my sympathetic agreement."
Lancer's eyebrow twitched. "What a touching lukewarm sentiment of unparalleled ambivalence." He turned to the parents. "Come on, you've done this before! Shouldn't you be interfering and controlling like hell to make sure we don't make your mistakes?"
"Nagi was an imbecile, but he still was a good man, and his son has the trust of Konoe Konoemon," Kiritsugu said. "I'm not going to aim for his throat just yet."
Iri reached under the table and pulled out a weapon that looked like a futuristic tommy gun made to fire shotgun shells. It had 'ACME Explosive Magic Rounds' written on tape on its stock. "Of course not, we always aim for the head!" she said cheerfully.
"Dear, you know the rule. No guns on the table."
"Sorry, honey," she said, and bent down to put it back under the table. She did not come back up.
Illya thumped the table, then dove underneath. "MOM! THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO GIVE DAD A BLOWJOB! AHH! MY EYES!"
"It's still in, Illya-chan."
"That's not the point! I'm still mentally scarred by the image!"
Lancer looked down at himself. "Is it a bad indicator that I'm feeling nostalgic for the time I got torn apart?"
"How did he even know you were a Master in the first place?" Rin said.
"He didn't, it just was an educated guess and he took that risk," Shirou said. "He's a genius after all."
"I suppose you're right... But I still don't like this!"
"He keeps a lot of dangerous female company, so that's probably the right mindset regardless," Archer said, munching on a cake Kiritsugu had picked up a few days ago on his way from Tomobiki to buy illegal ammo for Iri.
Lancer sighed. "And how would you know anything about that? Do you keep up with schoolyard rumors now?"
"Actually, yes, he does," Rin said. "Why wouldn't he? We're in a school after all, that's just called gathering tactic intelligence..."
"Well, of course you would place so much value on the gossip of the rabble!" Luvia said.
Lancer closed his eyes and counted up to twenty digits using only prime numbers with the number three in them. In the past few days, he had to get creative about calming down. "Did you at least make out who his Servant is?" he said, glaring at Shirou.
"Well, I'm fairly sure he was a Saber," Shirou said. "Reasonably sure. At least that's what my Master Stat-Vision said."
Everyone stared at him again. Saber and Lancer included, this time.
"What?!" Shirou demanded. "What did I do now?!"
"Uh oh," Iri said as Kiritsugu stiffened. "That's not good."
Shiro blinked. "Huh?"
"Only one Servant from each Class is supposed to be summoned for the War," Kiritsugu explained. "This must mean someone must have messed with the rules or the Grail itself again, and that ends up in disaster every time it's attempted."
"That's not good," Illya concluded.
"That's why it's called a disaster," Archer said. "Of course it's not good, skippy!"
Miyu, who was keeping quiet and being mostly forgotten, sighed. She turned to Magical Sapphire, who was on her shoulder. "No idea on how this could be possible?"
The Zelretch creation thought it over. "I honestly have nothing to contribute."
Saber looked at her Master. "Shirou, what did this Saber look like?"
"Well, it was a guy in armor covering all of his body, and his helmet had these really huge, sharp horns on it," Shirou said. "He had a huge sword and acted all surly, but here between you and me, he had a kind of a girlish voice, especially whenever he threatened to kill me. Why do you ask?"
"..." Saber said. And then she shook her head, disturbed. "No... It's nothing, just gathering the most basic and necessary info, of course. Such a bother. Assassin, Rider, and Caster are still unaccounted for, too. Who knows what kind of damage they can cause, what evil schemes are they hatching? And what of their Masters? Surely they are experienced magi, bidding for their time and setting traps. We are going to have to meet up with this Professor after all."
"I think we have more than enough evidence to suggest they're only recruiting from idiots, morons, literal children and Tsunderes this year, Saber," Lancer pointed out. "I wouldn't worry about the Masters so much!"
"HEY!" the Masters gallery chorused as Saber considered this.
"I suppose you're right," Saber agreed, to another chorus of 'HEY!'s. "Boy genius or not, if he's still that young he can't have any life experience, and if the others haven't made a move it might be that they just have no idea of what to do, just like Shirou."
Shirou sighed. "Couldn't you at least wait until the guests are gone to start disrespecting me?"
"Aw, does Shirou-niichan want his own Einzbern-style blowjob to feel better?" Kuro said, slipping under the table.
"COMPACT FULL OPEN! EXPANDING CONNECTION TO ALTERNATE REALITIES!" Illya cried. "KALEIDO RUBY PRISMA ILLYA, TRANSFORMED!"
One kick sent the table flying up to the ceiling as Magical Girl Illya dove at Kuro, while Shirou closed his zipper frantically.
Archer chewed on the last of the cake on his fork and held out a hand. "Illya and Kuro ruined dinner tonight," he said. "Pay up!"
Sighing, Iri, Sella, and Leysritt forked over the money they owed.
Saber stared in horror. "That cake…" she said, voice small. One side of her lip twisted in a slasher smile. "WHAT HAVE YOU TWO DONE TO THE CAKE?!"
Chaos happened.
It was just another night of the Holy Grail War in the Emiya house…
Saber had just snuck out of the house when a voice said, "About damned time!"
She whirled.
Archer and Lancer stood leaning against one wall, the latter negligently cradling his spear, the latter playing with a yo-yo. "We've been waiting for you," the blue-clad one said. "Because I don't know about you, but I'm kind of getting sick of the idiots holding our leashes. At least the little girl has an excuse! But those two girls are experienced Magi. They shouldn't be so brain dead!"
Saber stared. She pointed. "Are you compensating for something, carrying around that spear like that?"
Lancer twitched as Archer held out a hand. "Told you she'd ignore the yo-yo," Archer said. "Pay up."
"You sure you're an Archer and not a Gambler? Or a Snark Knight?" Lancer complained as he shoved some money towards Archer.
"He's an Archer," a voice suddenly growled from an upstairs window. They all looked up.
Kuro dropped several feet to the ground as easily as any of them could, landing perfectly despite the fall being something that should have broken her leg. "He's wearing the right clothes for it, if nothing else."
"Kuro?" Saber said, surprised.
Kuro rolled her eyes. "Oh, don't you pick up my brother's habit of stating the obvious. We get enough of that from him. So, where're we heading first? The teacher brat or the World Tree? The Tree, you're going there, right? It's the logical thing to do, we should've done it from the start..."
"You are not coming along," Lancer said, and Saber nodded in agreement.
"Do not make me go Unlimited Blade Works on your ass!" Kuro said, pointing at Lancer. "Besides–" she shifted to a soft falsetto. "–Everyone, wake up! The Servants are doing things they're not supposed to!" She glared in challenge.
"Let her come," Archer said. "Maybe we'll get lucky and she'll die somehow."
Saber was torn between haranguing Archer and nodding in agreement. She settled for a dignified silence.
"Watch it, copycat!" Kuro said. "There's room in Unlimited Blade Works for both of you!"
There was a gruff, long-drawn grumble, hoarse and rumbling. They looked up.
Berserker stood on the roof of the house like some kind of massive statue, unnaturally still. He was just looking down at them in silence, and his mere gaze was oppressive and unsettling
"Let me guess," Lancer said. "You wanna come along too?"
Silence.
"He's not coming," Archer said, starting to walk away. "Let's go, this place's biggest magic reservoir is waiting."
"A pity," Kuro commented, following him, "he could be useful if anything bad pops up..."
"Why would we even need him! We're Heroic Spirits! We're all about fighting our own battles!" Lancer threw up his hands. "Is this a social outing?! Shit, why don't we pack a picnic lunch while we're at it!"
Saber held up a picnic basket. "No need, I already have one."
Lancer facepalmed.
The World Tree was fairly away from the residential areas, and it took them quite a while to get there, since Saber and Kuro were limited to normal physical movement, and taking the bus what not really an option in those clothes.
Then, since when it rains it pours, they found out about the Anti-Servant magical barrier around the mountain pretty damned quick. Even with Saber and Lancer's Magic Resistance trait, all of their efforts to break through it by hitting it with their weapons, kicking at it, punching at it, headbutting it or downright biting on it (much to the disgust of Archer and Kuro) amounted to nothing.
There was only one apparent break in the barrier. It was a straight line that coincidentally happened to have the stairs leading up towards the gigantic sacred tree, the free area extending some ways to either side. Not much though. It was obviously a funnel and a trap.
"Trap?" Kuro said.
"Trap," Lancer agreed.
"Go up anyway?" Kuro said.
"Go up anyway," Saber agreed.
"We're all morons for taking this painfully obvious set up?" Kuro continued.
"You're all morons for taking this painfully obvious set up," Archer agreed.
They glared at him.
"What? You set yourself up for that one."
They climbed.
"The air feels off," Saber said quietly as they climbed. "Not wrong, exactly, just off."
"Agreed," Archer murmured. "This isn't what I expected."
"Yeah, there's no giant ball of doom coming down to crush us all," Kuro said.
They all tensed at those words for a moment.
Nothing.
"Okay, that's just weird," Kuro said. "The world's not taking our good ideas and using them against us? We must be majorly screwed somehow."
"That's the spirit!" Lancer said.
They climbed some more.
"So…" Kuro said. "Whose Master do you think is the biggest idiot?"
"No contest. So stop trying to keep up a conversation, will you?" Archer said.
They climbed on in further silence.
When they are about to reach the top, the titanic tree already visible above them, he appeared at the top step
They stopped. There were muted sounds as weapons were readied. Saber gripped her invisible sword, while Lancer took a stance, cursing the elevation. Kuro and Archer, already in similar clothes, took nearly identical stances, arms to either side, hands open, as if waiting for weapons to place themselves there.
He had the moon at his back, his outline clearly that of a man, with a long ponytail and a sword by his side, though details couldn't be made out. Solidity, confidence, and a strange sense of elegance flowed from him like a light breeze. Then the moon shifted, and he came clearly into view.
"Archer. You didn't lead us into a trap willingly, did you?" Saber asked icily, without looking at him.
"What?" the tanned man. "No, of course I didn't! Do I look like the kind of man who would team up with our common enemy?"
"That," Saber said, "is right what someone leading us into a trap would say, which only makes you even more suspicious."
"Saber, do you really think Rin would have let me do that?" the other Servant groaned. "She is too sweet for your idiotic Master! Why don't you ask Lancer instead?"
"My Master is even more attracted to him than yours!" Lancer argued.
"No, she isn't!"
"Yes, she is!"
"Will you leave the shipping wars for later, people?!" Kuro scolded them. "When did I become the adult here?!"
"So loud, so noisy," the stranger above them mused aloud, faintly amused. "I thought I had sensed Heroic Souls approaching, but clearly they are nothing but bickering tourists."
Like a ghost, a man, not as tall as Archer but slightly taller than Lancer, he kept standing firmly on their way. He wore the elegant traditional robes of a classic samurai and held a katana. His face was delicately handsome, and his hair a deep shade of purple, tied back into a long ponytail. He smiled faintly, only causing the others to scowl.
"Looks like the woman was correct after all, and someone figured it out," the stranger said with great aplomb. "All the same, I am thankful to you. The chore of looking after this tree was growing quite boring indeed."
"Who are you?" Saber asked, advancing with her Invisible Air at the ready.
"Nothing but a humble groundskeeper. Call me Assassin," this man said, assuming a battle stance Fujimura Taiga would have envied. "I've been asked to stop Masters and Servants from approaching this holy tree, so I ask you: will you fight me one on one, or will you give my blade a real challenge?"
Archer growled and gave a step ahead. "Like hell we've got the time to waste with this crap. Let's all just gangpile on this imbecile!"
Lancer, aghast, grabbed him by an arm and pulled him back. "What kind of Heroic Spirit are you?! This isn't how these things are done!"
"Let me go, you idiot!" Archer shook him off. "Go peddle your 'Muh Honor' shit elsewhere!"
Kuro blinked. "Muh Honor? Say, what era are you from anyway?"
"I fight my duels by myself," Saber promised, running up and waving her weapon in a graceful and wide swatting arc. "And you should have stuck to your shadows, Assassin!"
Smirking to himself, the samurai ran down to meet her in mid-way, and her swords collided in an explosion of power.
Kuro sighed. "You know what, Copycat is right. We really, really don't have the time for this!"
And she raised an arm.
"I call the bone in your sword…"
Kuro's voice drifted through the night air, the words an intonation, a summoning of power.
"What?" Archer said, blinking, both Lancer and him pausing as they pressed their weapons against each other's throats. Slowly, they backed off as one, staring at where Kuro was chanting a few steps down the stairs.
Oblivious to any of that, Saber and Assassin kept on dueling, blades clanging loudly together. They shared a sharp smile, staring into each other's eyes, never stopping moving from a side to another.
"You are good," he complimented her. "Not many women have passed into history as such skilled warriors. Allow me to guess," he added, swinging for her neck, "Jeanne D'Arc?"
"A understandable mistake, but no," she said, gracefully moving out of his way and trying a leg sweep on him, only for Assassin to jump over it. "My turn! Miyamoto Musashi?"
This, somehow, seemed to have a momentary effect on Assassin, who briefly replaced his affable smile with an angry scowl.
"No!" he growled. "No, I am not Miyamoto Musashi! Or as she rightfully ought to be called, 'Mistress of the sharpened oar'! 'Heroine of the blinding sun'! Or 'Mother of all cheating tramps'!"
"She?" Saber repeated in mild disbelief. Miyamoto Musashi, a woman? Who had ever heard of something that ridiculous?
"Soft is my body, calling the fire in your blood," Kuro continued. "I have created over a thousand lolicons! Unknown to thermodynamics, regardless of physics, I screw reality with my Freudian blades! Yet this flesh burns with unfulfilled desire! And thus I sublimate…"
"You have got to be kidding me," Archer swore. "Son of a bitch, I thought she was joking!"
"UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS!"
Fire.
Fire burned from her, erupted outward, changing the world. Her Reality Marble grew.
A Reality Marble is said to be a personal expression of its creator's soul. Yet it was also a thing of magic, and magic is nothing if not full of so many loopholes one has to wonder how the thing sticks together. Not so long ago, Kuro had been born of the Archer Class Card and Illya's power. Her power was that contained in the Archer Card. And this particular Reality Marble was a part of the Card.
What did that say about her soul?
Kuro thought of none of this. Her fire spread, consumed, and only the stairs and the gate remained. The world had changed. Around them was an open, barren desert, swords piercing the ground like grave markers. It was twilight– or was it dawn?– and gigantic interlocked gears turned in the sky. Flower petals floated in the air, never falling, and beyond the gears the sky was torn by thousands of rifts, glowing in rainbow colors.
She focused her gaze on Assassin and Saber, still locked in fierce combat, holding her hand high as sword began to appear in the air. "Saber, move aside or else!" she warned. "Swords, FALL!"
"What?" Saber blinked and looked down at her, distracted long enough for Assassin to make a clean cut in her midsection, unwillingly pushing her back as Kuro had intended. "Ah!"
The air shivered. A feeling of dark, unholy wrongness filled the air as something began to gather before the tree's guardian even as the other Servants ran. Bones appeared, then muscles…
The swords fell.
They struck Assassin even as he looked up, and exploded. The others shielded themselves as best as they could from the resultant blast.
And on that cliffhanger note, we cut back to...
Somewhere in Europe, the same place in Europe we visited briefly last time:
"Castle Branek," Morgan read aloud to herself, leaning very close to the computer screen. "Excavated shortly after the Second Impact. Funded by the Einzbern family, the only surviving participants of the dig are Henry Hoss and Harv Hickman…"
She took both fists right under her chin and squealed girlishly. "Oiiiiiiii! This Wikipedia is like magic...!"
Soon, Artoria. Soon!
To be Continued.