Chapter 3 - Seed of Love
Merely Broken, or Utterly Unfixable?
Years went by without any major events happening. At least, major events that were not of her own making. She'd negotiated with the Illuminati and established a now mega-corporation, Einzbern Industries. Tech, telecommunications, aerospace, medicine, energy, agriculture. You name it, Einzbern Industries was probably not only involved, but outperforming its competition too. Even with Irisviel's knowledge of the future, such a thing would be impossible for her to manage normally.
But she had the supreme intellect of Leonardo Da Vinci - class card Caster - at her disposal. Da Vinci always had the potential to revolutionize the world. She was hampered because she was focused on Chaldea's affairs. Irisviel had no such problems, and massive resources at her disposal to boot. The tech level of the year 1990 was more akin to the early 2010s of normal history. And that was only what was available to the masses.
One of the key projects she'd worked on was setting up satellite internet, and her own space station. She'd always wondered how viable magecraft would be in space. The answer to the question was…incredibly unviable. Magecraft worked based on foundations carved into the world, specifically in this case planet Earth. Once you left the planet, their power grew vanishingly small.
Maybe True Magic would work fine though, she was uncertain. It was also possible that it would work if enough people lived in space - there was a case to be made considering the Servant Universe servants could use some kind of magic all over the galaxy.
Still…the TYPEs, Elder Gods, and the Velber exist. They clearly can do insane things away from wherever their home is. Irisviel truly doubted they used the powers of physics and science alone to perform their bullshit. Is science really even the right path? Was she going about it all wrong? Would mankind reach the age of will faster if it was somehow nuked into the stone age and started over based on magic?
As tempting as that idea was, she believed that answering these questions was a part of her mission. What would be the role of magic in the future to come? More experimentation was required. Maybe if she won the grail war and became the Third Magician more answers would be open to her.
Still, it was not like that had been her only focus. She'd had a few relatively relaxed years, but events were finally starting to pick up again and she'd done everything she could possibly think of to prepare for them. She was going to take care of one such problem today. Kirei Kotomine.
She had mixed feelings about him. He would become a horrible man in the future. But he truly tried his best to be better before that. He tried to love his wife. He tried to find joy in having a family. His wife Claudia Hortensia was dying of a fatal illness, and his future daughter Caren Hortensia would have a terrible childhood. A man who could only derive pleasure from the suffering of others yet managed to hold his impulses at bay for so many years. Was he not worth saving right now? He had not done anything wrong yet. Was his family not worth saving?
To that end, she'd dabbled into mastering the arts of spiritron hacking. Something was wrong with Kirei Kotomine, and while unethical, she believed she could help him by tampering with the foundations of his very soul. Taking a deep breath, she knocked at his doorstep. He opened the door, staring at her with a solemn gaze that seemed filled with suspicion.
"Greetings, Kirei Kotomine. My name is Irisviel von Einzbern. You may have heard of me. I came here to chat with you about a very important matter. Do you have some time to spare?" She greeted him. Well, she knew he had time. She had stalked him for a bit before coming over.
"I do not know what a magus and head of such a large corporation would want with a humble priest like me, but for you to come here personally it must be quite important. Come in, I shall prepare some tea." He accepted without much fuss.
She'd forgotten she was also a public figure at this point. "Thank you for your hospitality." She followed him into his living room, sitting down on a simple armchair while he prepared the beverages.
He came in and offered her one of the cups, sitting down at the chair in front of her. "Now then, what is it you require of me?" He asked flatly.
"There are a few things really. For one, I believe my company has the means to cure your wife's immuno-deficiency problem. But the main reason I am here is to see if I can help you." She said, taking a sip of her tea.
"I see, if you can help my wife that would be quite appreciated." He lied. His wife's pain had been a tonic to his soul. "But what do you mean help me?" He said with a bit of confusion.
"You have tried your best to live a moral and just life. To live your life the way people normally do. To raise a family, to find ordinary happiness. You turned to the church because you believed God would forgive even a sinner such as you. But no matter what you do, at the end of the day you are a man who draws pleasure from the suffering of others." She revealed semi-dramatically. His eyes seemed to tense up, like he was debating what he should do with her body.
"You do not know why you were born broken like this, but that is the truth of your existence. I wish to see if I can help you gain a measure of humanity." She explained in a very measured tone. She had a class card ready to equip in case he chose to kill her for these words, but hoped he would accept her offer.
"To see through me so easily, I do not understand what I could possibly have done to earn your attention?" He said with a smile that looked quite genuine but she was confident it was entirely fake.
"Some mages can have glimpses of the future, correct? So to give you some context, you did not draw my attention due to what you have done. You have drawn my attention due to what you could end up doing. One way an apocalypse could happen on Earth would be by your hands. My initial plan was to kill you…but I feel like that is not the correct path." She admitted.
"To think my existence poses that much risk to humankind's existence. It is hard to stay a humble priest after hearing words such as that. How brutally honest of you. To tell a man you planned on killing him in his own home while drinking the tea he brewed for you." He chuckled.
"I believe being deceitful would do more harm than good. Anyways, it is not your fault you were born this way. If you were born twisted and then went on to do terrible things, I could resolve myself to kill you. Yet, you have not committed any atrocities yet. You are just someone who needs to be saved. To give up on you without even trying, I cannot do that." She explained with conviction.
"Trying to save me so earnestly, you remind me of my wife so much it's sickening. Is this the will of God, I wonder?" He said with a frown.
"While I do not deny your God has rendered miracles in this world of ours, I believe to really grow as a species we must make our own miracles. The idea I have in mind is a mixture of scientific and magecraft theories. It would be deeply invasive, it may twist your soul into something the current you would consider alien. Do you consent to this procedure?" She asked him.
"Very well, I accept. There is truly little to be gained by lying to me after all. I do not believe you can save me, but I am willing to let you try." Kirei acquiesced.
"We'll need the assistance of your wife as well. Is she home?" She wondered.
"She's in the bedroom, come with me. It's getting harder for her to leave the bed each day." He explained, as they walked into his bedroom. She was a beautiful, albeit fragile woman. He gently nudged her, and she fluttered her eyes. Her gaze honed in on the unfamiliar occupant of the room, and she looked inquisitively towards Kirie as if asking for an explanation. "This is Irisviel von Einzbern. She wants to try to fix my broken existence, just like you. But she says she needs your help to do so." He said succinctly.
Irisviel supposed Claudia was the only person Kirei could truly be himself around. "Nice to meet you Claudia. I know it's a bit short notice, but I'm going to be diving into Kirei's soul and I'll need you to come with me. Your body shouldn't face any risks through the process, so you need not worry about that either. Are you willing to assist?" She asked.
Claudia gave a soft, genuine smile and nodded. "Of course. Do whatever you need." She accepted.
Truly, being messed up in the head seems to be a common trait of this family. She talked to them for only a few minutes each and they were okay with her invading their souls. Well, it made things easier for her in any case.
Replicating Etherlite hadn't been fully successful, she would have to steal it from Atlas at some point. But she still managed to make a degraded version of the artificial nerves that she could use to dive into Kirei's soul. Instructing the pair to expose their backs, she connected the apparatus to their spinal cords and then they all went unconscious.
Soul Dive
The secret gardens of Kirei's soul numbered three. Maybe it was because she knew a lot about his character beforehand, but it didn't feel like that much of a secret. His desire for happiness, sadistic nature, and anger towards God reflected the deepest aspects of his soul. Unveiling them was simple, but that's not really what she was here for. After peeling away the layers until his soul was utterly defenseless, she pulled Claudia into his spiritual center.
"This is probably an insane idea, but I cannot create the concept of love inside of Kirei. He simply seems to lack it. But that does not mean it can't come from somewhere else. From what I understand of you Claudia, you are a woman filled with a great deal of love towards Kirei. So much so that taking a small bit of that love from you won't harm you much at all. We can plant that small seed of love in his soul, and perhaps it can grow into an emotion all his own." Irisviel explained her theory to Claudia.
Claudia started giggling at her words. "To save him through the power of love. It does make a great deal of sense. But to have such an idea in your head, I wonder if you've read one too many romance novels. So how do I do this?" She asked.
Brushing aside Claudia's comments, she said. "Think of a positive memory. One filled with great love. It is important that you do not pick all your love-filled memories. Or even your most love-filled one. Because that would destroy you, and on the off chance Kirei grows a heart he will lose it all over again seeing you die. Pick a memory of love you cherish, but can do without. Just focus on a memory like that, and I'll do the rest."
Claudia tilted her head in confusion. "I'm not long for this world, you know. If his treatment relies on my life, he won't live very long either."
"Oh right, forgot you weren't a part of that conversation. I have a few different ways of curing your ailments. Don't worry about dying just yet." Irisviel reassured.
"You and I should have a proper chat about all this later on. But thank you, and for now I shall do as you say." Claudia nodded, her eyes closed in tense concentration, but it was a happy memory she was recalling so she smiled.
Spiritron hacking involved messing with the spiritrons that composed the soul. Many memories were soul deep, and she pulled out the most surface level one from Claudia's soul, coalescing the spiritrons into a small little seed that she pushed into Kirie's soul. She'd done what she could, so she halted the spiritron dive and the trio woke up from their positions on the bed.
"Did it work?" Claudia asked.
"Time will tell. I think at least. In theory this gave Kirei the potential to love. It did not make him fall in love." Irisviel answered.
The pair turned towards Kirei, who had tears in his eyes. "No, it definitely worked." He said smiling kind of evilly but that was probably his genuine happy face.
"I see, well I'll leave you two to it. Let's keep in touch okay? Let me know if it really worked or this was just some heat of the moment reaction." She stood up, handing them her business card and walking towards the door. She contacted her secretary to arrange for the treatment of Claudia. She also told her secretary to contact her if it could not be done by their current doctors. The doctors of Einzbern Industries' medical division could probably handle the job though, she'd trained some herself after all.
As she was about to exit the room…were those bedroom eyes she caught Claudia and Kirei making towards each other? She wasn't sure she wanted to burn what Kirei's horny face looked like into her memories but it may be too late. She sped up and out the door, hopefully she had changed the fates of Kirei, Claudia, and their future child Caren. Oh god, what if she was about to be conceived right now. She needed to detox.