Shinji-kun...I truly pity you, you sorry bastard...those heartless fandom bois out there want your misery...!
?Somewhere?
In a black void, the great wizard marshal lifted an eyebrow on his throne.
A desk with an antique dial telephone on it appeared in the endless nothingness. The phone was ringing.
Reaching over to the phone, he picked it up and dialed a few numbers. He stayed silent as he patiently waited for someone...or something on the other side to pick up his call.
"Yes, this is Zelretch...yes...oh...so the amulet activated...I did feel a great disturbance in the matrix of the multiverse."
"..."
"No, this is no laughing matter. The amulet is a disastrous result of the Second, Third, and Fifth Magic. It should have never been lost in the timeless corridor!"
"..."
"I'm afraid if it has indeed activated, it may as well trapped the unlucky soul in a time-space paradox loop. To get rid of this curse, the user must at least seek the grail to dilute the effects. It would be enough to escape the loop."
"..."
"Yes, yes...we keep searching. Hopefully, we can find the unlucky soul before it has corroded into dust..."
With a small sigh, the old wizard finished his call and stood up from his throne.
He had work to do, and magic waits for no soul.
Rewind Count 1: (First Night of the Grail War)
"Holy shit holy fuck god damn fucking Maria's ginormous tits!"
If you were in the school corridors after dark, you would have heard a pussy scream obscenities like this. That was me.
In my defense, and I have many, it was all their fault.
I really shouldn't have let that blue dude target me instead of that red-haired idiot.
Come to think of it, it's part of his fault that I'm chased by an inhuman killing machine. If I weren't back in the archery club, I wouldn't have needed to spend time mending that blasted brick wall.
Tohsaka is also a complete bitch for refusing to help me fix those junk with magecraft. What did she mean by 'teaching me restraint' !?
I have been exercising 'restraint' so tight and for so long, it would be tighter than her stick-up-her-ass butthole! Who does she think she is anyway, my elder sister!?
"Stay still, kid. I can't kill yah properly!"
"Stay away from me you blue-ass-drilling-homophobic-spearman!"
"What the fuck did you just call me!?"
And that hentai dude in blue skin-tight spandex armor with shoulder pads wanted to kill me. He's SO after my ass.
Jesus, Japan is straying further and further away from God and all that is holy and pure-
I saw a crimson blur and I rolled to the side on instinct. The spear tip gouged the air where my chest was a milli-second ago.
A long leg kicked me in the back. I went with the absurd force as it propelled me through a classroom door, across several tables, and out of the glass window on the opposite wall. The tiny reflections of the moon flashed in my eyes in a shower of glass shards.
Homerun for Shinji-Ball, I sneered to myself. It reminded me of the time when I lost the tiniest bit of control when playing baseball, long ago.
Let's just say that a metal bat wasn't supposed to look like a limp dick.
...Speaking of limp dicks, my neck would look exactly like that if what I was seeing was accurate.
"Haaaaaaaah!"
Yes, my eyesight is eagle-level god-damn it. The hentai ass-spearing dude was after me. His shadow was cast over me from above, and there was no mistaking what his silhouette was trying to do.
I mean, the crimson spear is glowing.
Unable to do anything midair, I could only cross both of my arms in front of me in an attempt to divert the spear's momentum.
The adrenalin pumping in my veins is the only thing that stopped me from the searing agony of the barbed spear tearing my flesh.
It was too fast, too precise, and too damn magical.
Yeah, the fucking spear seemed to swerve at the last second before I horizontally nudged its spearhead. Instead of glancing off in an outside direction, it went inside instead, piercing the joint of my left arm and rendering it useless.
What hurt even more, was that the man summoned his spear right back, with me still on it like a fish on a hook. The tendons, muscles, and veins seemed to go on fire.
Through the haze of pain, I saw the man launch a roundhouse kick. The pain was sudden as it was brutal.
Although I guarded my head with my remaining arm at the last second, his kick was still enough to smash me against the sandy playground beneath.
A cloud of yellow sand rose up in a plume of gravel, dirt, and rock. The debris rained downed on me, constricting my throat with dust and burning my lungs.
I had no time to grovel in pain. Jumping sideways, I narrowly avoided the man's heel drop and parried his kick sideways with my raised leg.
It seemed that I have ran in a giant circle.
...No, the man led me back. Back, towards the playground where this wild chase started. He was the hunter, and I was the prey.
Blood was gushing out of the open wound in my left arm. The spear had done its job well. It had ground the tissue and leaked the bone marrow.
I felt light-handed. My body temperature was dropping.
The man stared at me with his crimson slit eyes before sidestepping out of the way. A pair of dual Chinese swords, one black and one white with a Taiji circle on each of its hilt, slashed through the moonlight.
Another man clad in a red coat and skin-tight black armor entered the scene, chasing the blue man back with a flurry of strikes.
...Geez, what are with these guys and skin-tight costumes? Do they work in a BDSM gay bar or what?
"Archer! Good job! ...Shinji, you idiot! Stay back, I'll patch up your wound-"
I clicked my tongue. The annoying bitch is here.
"Tohsaka! Where is that idiot!? Is he-"
"SHINJI!"
"AH, FOR FUCK'S SAKE YOU BRAIN-DEAD MORON!"
Just when I thought at least one of them might have a tiny bit of common sense, they defy my lowest expectations.
Is it too much to ask that red-haired featherbrain to run for his life!? Especially when I literally bled for his sorry ass!
I saw the blue man's eyes widen as his lips twisted into a feral snarl. The spear flew from his hand without the slightest delay.
The red-coated man's steel eyes dilated in shock. He tried to step forward, only for the blue man to close the arm's distance between them and land a punch to his gut.
Everything seemed to go into slow motion. I saw the spear soar through the sky like a streak of red lighting, straight at the idiot's face. His face contorted in fear, but it was too late.
Or was it?
...
...
...Ah, curse every one of those idiots.
For the first time in many years, I released the safety switch inside my mind and unchained my strength. Fissures split the ground into a thousand little cobwebs as I exploded forward.
I felt my heels, kneecap, and various blood vessels burst, snap, and fracture from overuse. It hardly mattered.
What mattered is that I manage to reach him in time.
0.05 seconds, three meters from the target.
0.07 seconds, half a meter from the target.
0.09 seconds, push the target away and intercept the threat.
0.01 seconds, failed to neutralize the threat-
...
...I hate my life.
...Emiya, you stupid dude.
My head exploded in a flash of white.
I had only a second to realize that the spear had pierced through my eye and into my brain before everything turned black.
Shinji Matou gasped and sprang up from his bed. His eyes darted to the calendar on his wall.
One week before the Grail War.
Shinji started to laugh hysterically. His fast thinking had already cross-referenced one of his hypotheses against his revival theories.
Either the 'savepoint' where he could revive needed three years to reset or the 'savepoint' automatically updates every three years from the timeline in which he stayed alive.
If it was the former, that meant there would be no more chances back if he died within three years. Shinji wasn't too keen to find out.
He was so fucked.
Shinji laughed again.
Unknowingly to him, one Shirou Emiya and Rin Tohsaka woke up from their beds with a mild headache and an obscure vision of the rewound past.
Was it just a nightmare? Why were the emotions...so raw? Why couldn't they remember anything about it?
Tick-tock tick-tock.
Cuckoo-cuckoo.
The clock ticked on.
Rewind count: 2. Congrats, Shinji! At least you're more capable than the guy from Re:zero. Imagine if your body was Subaru-level weak...you'll need to repeat the first night at least a hundred times, lol.
Ever imagined what would it be like when time-loop MCs find out that their close friends retained a faint fragment/feelings from past encounters?
EMOTIONAL DAMAGE. Ah...the sweet angst...
Review and review again! X-kalibuuuur, off to work.