Prologue
June 10th 2001
Shirou Emiya and Rin Tohsaka beat the Lesser Grail using a massive blow from Excalibur, the holy sword wielded by Saber, the King of Knights. Emiya watched as a black hole, a massive circular portal with glowing white hot edges opened and consumed the bloody, one-armed Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh only had enough strength to throw out only one Chain of Heaven, a last hope to grab onto Shirou and force him to pull him out of the hole's grasp.
A bold move Shirou had done: it secured his feeling of hatred towards Gilgameshand his ideal. Shirou snapped the chain and allowed the Lesser Grail's force consume Gilgamesh, letting clincking chain and Gilgamesh's frightened look instantly dissolve as the dying grail sucked the Heroic Spirit in like a hungry wolf into a void of space.
It was a bold move, but not the right move.
Even with the impact of Saber's masterful hit onto the Lesser Grail, with it devouring a Servant, rather than using a Mage (whose enhanced magic circuitry could power it with mana), the Lesser Grail therein, didn't 'die' as Shirou and Tohsaka had predicted, had thought. Instead, without the mana from a Mage, it fed off Gilgamesh's spirit, and in doing so, laid dormant.
But still very much alive.
Fueled by a slowly repairing Gilgamesh, his mortal arm growing back, wounds being healed by the Lesser Grail, the Lesser Grail leached to repair itself, and the blow it took from Saber's sword.
It was a mutually beneficial.
And on top of this, due to feeding off of Gilgamesh, the Lesser Grail couldn't help but form more human-like thoughts. It understood human emotion better than anything, and mostly negative ones, attributed to Gilgamesh, because all Gilgamesh could muster was destruction to Emiya Shirou and Tohsaka Rin's family lines.
He wanted their families to suffer, a cost of agony, as Gilgamesh was forced to live a disgusting, wretchful life inside the Grail. He'd been made to live for years inside the Lesser Grail, it's black sludge sucking on his life force like a parasite.
Which is exactly why Gilgamesh wouldn't allow the Grail to make a move until many years after the death of both Tohsaka and Shirou.
With Gilgamesh's revenge running thick through the Lesser Grail, it took on his wishes and thoughts, let alone it's own. Patiently waiting, it would to go back to doing what it normally does, and was created by mages to do:
Start a war between seven masters and seven spirits of either past, present or future:
Rider. Assassin. Lancer. Caster. Archer. Berserker. Saber.
Seven respective or non-educated Mage Masters, new faces every war.
A holy war.
A fight to the death for the two wishes from it.
One for the sage. One for the hero.
Gilgamesh wanted to wait until Tohsaka and Shirou were both gone, to take evil vengeance on the families that destroyed his hopes of destroying a majority of the modern human race. He wouldn't have Shirou stop him; the only one capable of killing him, and he wouldn't have that girl be a conspirator.
So he waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Telling the Grail who feed off of him, just as much as he did off of it, that if it intended to start the war again before he said so, before their physical deaths... he'd just kill himself.
The Lesser Grail obeyed him.
So, Gilgamesh obeyed it.
He'd allow the Grail to feed off his essence on that condition... Because he could just commit suicide, and the Grail knew it, then it would die, that omnipotent essence it contained evaporate and Gilgamesh so back to his Hellscape forever.
The King of a million priceless weapons and all the renowned treasures across the world, had finally become exactly what he collected: a treasure himself.
He had become bound to an artifact... becoming the artifact himself.
He had become the Lesser Grail, as much as the Grail was him.
He chuckled at the irony.
He knew the Lesser Grail starting the cycle of wars again would be the only way that he'd get a chance to slip out. For he desired to walk on Earth again in his unchanging mortal body, and go right back to his original plan, fighting for the Lesser Grail in an upcoming war, winning it, then killing off the entire modern human race.
Those left after, would worship him as a rightful Demi-God King, having a purpose and knowing their rights. The leftover ones, the worthiest of the last, the worthiest to be ruled by him.
The Lesser Grail was healed and he was healed by the time that Gilgamesh declared to the object that devoured him that the war cycles could start up again.
The Grail no longer needed him, and could survive once again as a Mage-created entity on it's own. But the Grail, it wouldn't let Gilgamesh go that simply. It clung to his fibers like a newborn clung to a mothers breast.
The war had to happen, the Grail had to be opened, and in that process he had to slip out while the Lesser Grail was fulfilling the two wishes for the winning master and servant. While it was distracted.
Gilgamesh had plenty of time to think it through. All he had was time, just like when he was stuck in his Hellscape, the Hellscape that all un-bodied spirits were stuck in after they died, stuck in the scenes/areas where their mortal body passed.
If he died while stepping outside of Lesser Grail, which was unthinkable, due to Shirou dying, (the only combatant who'd be able to stand a chance in winning against him in a battle), what's the chance that another Mage in a different future time would re-summon him to fight in a future war?
It was high.
But the wait of it annoyed him. He'd rather just remain in his mortal body and not have to wait out the chance to be summoned again. He wanted the human race of this era extinct, and he wanted it NOW. All the uselessness would end for the dumb and lame, and each individual would again have it's own purpose.
He was Gilgamesh, renowned epic ruler, Demi-God and King of All Treasure. All gold belonged to him, he'd even experienced being treasure, being the Lesser Grail.
He'd be summoned again though, and if need be, he thought of dying physically as his back up plan. It would take longer if that happen, but Gilgamesh was keen, just as much as he was vile and self-serving, he'd been a war-bringer in ancient life, he'd draw the plans, start the battles, him and his army would always win.
It was as much planning as it was blunt, brute ever-pushing force.
Gilgamesh laughed inside of the Grail in madness at this, his head no longer cool after being consumed.
There was no stopping him!
Now the time has come. The war will begin and nothing would stop him in his cruel endeavors.
Nothing.
April 17th, 2006
She bore twins, and not to Emiya Shirou.
Emiya was there. He was proud, but he was not their father.
She'd married another man.
Shirou not accepting the invitation to become an official member of the Mage's Association in England got them both kicked out. Both Tohsaka, a member of the esteemed Tohsaka family who patroned Emiya in, and Shirou himself.
It wasn't long after that, that her and him split.
Three years after going to school, getting kicked out, they decided their ideals were just too different.
Shirou lived to make others happy, Rin did small things to make others happy, sure, but had a firm grounding on herself and who she was, and wouldn't allow her back to bent until it broke over helping others and putting others first the way Shirou would. She eventually found love in a man who could put their relationship first.
She traveled as she said she would, back to Japan first to go home, back to her family's historical mansion there. That all too familiar Mage bounding circle of protection sucked her in like normal, the weight on her chest.
She'd told Shirou once, while sitting on his house's outside patio area, that the feeling of the bounding circle at his house was 'easy going, come and go as you please.' It had been put in place by Kiritsugu, it had been strengthened by someone else, she could tell at the time, but that person's heart had been warm.
The one at her house was not that.
It drew you in, then once in, you had the feeling wash over you that you couldn't leave. It had been put in place by her great-grandfather, then every Mage that lived there since, it was their duty, to reinstate it as he or she took it over as head of household.
It wasn't something she'd done. Instead, she'd left.
Shirou didn't do his either. With him, it was more so, she wasn't sure whether he knew he even had to do that.
Both house's bounding fields were fading, times of Mage families living in both of them, it had ended. Eventually, over the next 20 years or so, without a magical reinstatement, it'd completely fade.
Something about that thought, made her not feel ill, but content.
It was a new age. She was her father's child, but she wasn't as the rest of the Tohsakas had been.
She was adventurous, outgoing, not a home-body, and every time she looked at the mansion, nothing remained for her there except her constant negative memories; her sister getting hauled away to live with the Matous and that damn false priest who'd killed her father.
The first thing she did was sell it. She didn't desire to live in Japan any longer, she's grown fond of England and wanted to go back there as Shirou was traveling on his own through Egypt.
While she had no desire to meet up with him there, nor could she send him postcards as he was constantly nomadic, she still longed to travel herself, just as they'd promised each other.
'No matter where this takes us.'
Even if they get kicked out of school.
Even if we break up.
Even if life led them down different paths.
With the money from the mansion being sold, she used it to move around much like Emiya for a few years, until meeting a young man named Bartley. He was an Irishman of a lower Mage family that had attended The Clock Tower Mage School in England and his family was a member of the Clock Tower Mage Association.
He and her actually shared ideals on life, and while both of them shared a similar concept on little tokens of appreciation, but still honoring yourself above all else, they found enough space in both of their hearts to also honor each other. Unlike with Emiya Shirou, who was constantly distracted because he was set to making everyone happy, living not for himself, but only others... A person who couldn't put only one person first, but tried to put everyone first, Tohsaka finally found the love and affection in a relationship that she desired and the shared mentality in another.
Even after they married, Emiya commented that they were in fact 'made for each other'. Tohsaka knew he'd never say sorry, because by being who he was, that was what put an end to their romantic relationship. But at the same time, Tohsaka would never wish it on someone to apologize for their true nature.
Especially since he believed in being that 'hero of justice' that his father Kiritsugu could never fulfill.
Shirou was there in the hospital when the twins boys were born bearing the last name of Casey.
Tohsaka named them Ebisu and Keitaro (who later in adulthood just went by Kei). Tohsaka only had meant to have one. As a Mage her concern was that only one descendant could be trained as a Mage in an heir-type situation. Her husband understood the qualms of it, the tradition of it, as he was a Mage, but knew what happened in her past, with her sister who went to the Matous because of her father choosing her as the heir.
They chose to instead keep both boys and they would choose among themselves who would do the Mage works when old enough. It was against tradition, as the sage parent or parents usual chose the heir to the magic circuitry, but when was Tohsaka ever traditional?
She'd broke all her tradition throughout her earlier years already!
She'd ended the cycle of wars with the last half of the True Grail destroyed, she'd sold her family home, she'd been expelled from Clock Tower because of Shirou, she got married to a foreigner (outside of House Tohsaka's past marriages by over a few hundred years), and she bore twins! Twins didn't run in the Tohsaka family!
Tohsaka Rin was a rule breaker.
So why not break another rule (with her husband going along with the decision), and let the twins decide among themselves?
April 17th, 2014
The boys were eight years old.
The Caseys knew what this meant, upon their summer birthday, the cakes, candles, icing, the cheer and claps of blowing out candles together... The time had come.
The boys would have to decide which one would inherit the magic.
Shirou Emiya was not present, hadn't checked-in in a few weeks, he still remained ever present in Tohsaka's mind.
That redhead! Much like her husband, who had the tendency to wander off in his own head, so did that Shirou, for different reasons albeit, but Shirou had wandered off somewhere this time that was preventing him from sending letters.
Hadn't she been told by Shirou's future self, by Archer, that she'd watch him like a hawk and guide him when need be?
So... where was he running off to where she couldn't check in? It infuriated her.
She wasn't about to break the pact she held up with Archer, but also, she had a place inside her heart for Shirou. It was a special place that nobody would ever touch that was only for that man, that would only ever be. It was love, and while it was no longer romantic, she held to it firm, accepted that it was love of him, as a sister would have love, and knowing her feelings, understood that it wasn't just Archer's pact that kept her checking on Shirou, it was also herself. Because she actually truly, really did care about him.
A smile formed in her eyes that were just beginning to show signs of age.
The boys witnessed magic that night from both. Their father had decided to show a traditional magics of element morphing, changing water and liquids into solid at will, hard as stone to make a sword, and Tohsaka kept it simple by showing a simple gem power of a flash of bright light that caused them to all to lose sight for a split second.
At that point, with one children screaming in terror and the other clapping in joy, it was obvious their twins, amidst looking alike, wearing the same clothes much of childhood, sharing everything, playing together, laughing together, that this was the oil and water that would divide them, that would break them.
They were yin and yang in temperament.
Never had Tohsaka seen it this clearly, and it left her feeling insecure about the future for the boys. Never would she ship off Ebisu for being scared of magic, frightened of it and its spiritual qualms, as her father had done to her sister, but she knew it meant two separate paths for them, when they had lived together as one for their first eight years.
It wouldn't be the same after this.
Later that week, Keitaro accepted the entry to become the heir to the Tohsaka and Casey magics, all associated under the Clock Tower name of House Casey. Keitaro became a stay at home student as Ebisu remained in public school.
With the bonding of two factions/families of Mages with a marriage, and upon the tradition of passing on the familial magics, by Clock Tower law, also a new crest was to be drawn, a fresh one.
This had to be followed and registered with the Clock Tower.
While Tohsaka bore the crest of the Tohsaka's, a band in her arm that glowed and wrapped around it like a huge cuff covering her entire upper right arm, (a crest which she'd shared a piece of with Shirou back in the day, the scarred mark still remaining on his arm from it), her husband's crest was more simple and bore the resemblance of a traditional Irish Celt symbol: The Awen, an ancient Neo-Druid symbol of balance.
They combined the two symbols. They kept The Awen (Bartley insisted on it), but instead of The Awen having three solid bars on it, the bars instead consisted of the Tohsaka circuitry. The transplantation of the new symbol was painful, it caused Keitaro to scream for four hours, and be subdued for nearly a month over it. His responses to anything, even something as simple as 'what would you like for dinner?' became a battle to get an answer from, he lived much like a vegetable in the hospital.
But then one day, like the calm of an afternoon breeze, the cloud of darkness, the tension ans stress caused by the pain of internal circuitry being awakened by the transplantation of the symbols and sudden mana lighting, lifted. He became normal again, but not the same smiling, cheery self.
Even though he'd crack a smile here and there, and it being still so lofty and sincere, as a young boy, he'd realized what he'd transplanted himself into, the gravity of what he'd accepted:
To be a Mage, was to experience both the joys and the pains of magic.
It wasn't all pleasure like he's thought it'd be. He'd learned this at too early an age, and the new crest transplantation scarred his mind into a different level of thinking.
When his mother said it'd hurt him at first, he didn't realize or understand the concept of the time-frame. He still had a child like mentality, hurting wasn't something long lasting, it was a scratch you could cover with a band-aid.
There was no sense of how the Caseys could of prepared their child for the undertaking of a new crest from two families of Mages. They knew it'd hurt a little more than normal, but not to where it'd knock their son into a different dimensional mindset for a month, only to come out of it with a completely different look spread across his face.
The child Kei was gone.
At eight, his childhood was over and he knew it, they knew it, and his brother knew it. Once Ebisu seen Kei's unreliable, sad comatose state, he'd tried to fight his father, banging against his chest his little fists, screaming to him:
'Why'd you do this?' Then turning to his mother, who had tears covering her once young face, 'Why'd you do this?'
Ebisu wanted his brother to remain his brother. To spend time with him, even though they chose different paths... He loved him. He'd overcome how frightened he was of magic! He'd learn to love his brother anyway for choosing the different path!
His screaming brought agony to Tohsaka's eyes. She wanted to scream she was sorry, so so sorry, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. It was Kei's choice. It had been her choice. It's had been her husband's choice. To give the crest.
While in comatose for a month, she did nothing but get into Kei's bed and hold him, as if her musings would silently say she was sorry for what they'd given him, when in reality she should of been comforting Ebisu as well.
Ebisu had nobody in the family to relate to anymore. Both parents were Mages, and now his brother was a Mage too.
And... this if anything, had perverted his vision of magic all the more.
He had thought he'd eventually ease himself into understanding magic, to not be so frightened of it, but this state his poor brother was in, repulsed him away from magic more.
It flat out sickened him.
He'd heard of the story behind his aunt, who never came to visit. Who he didn't even know. How she was given to a different family because she didn't get the magic.
He loved his family! He didn't want to be given away!
Kei was always comforted by mom. Ebisu always by dad, even though he was a Mage. That month set them on a path to their respective parental figures that they'd look up to the most through adulthood.
As they say... 'he's a momma's boy'... Keitaro became a follower of Tohsaka at the heels.
And even though not a proper Mage, Ebisu became okay with learning some simplistic magics, ones that were practical and that didn't require a crest. The crest that he was so afraid of bearing, that was against the Mage tradition to bear anyway. It's already been given to the one child, the one heir.
Needless to say, he became his father's son.
Never did they play again.
The magic drew a wedge between them.
May 20th, 2024
They were both eighteen.
Graduating from high school, this was their academic graduation they were going to attend together.
It went on like normal for Ebisu.
But for Kei, graduating from being a Mage and being home-schooled was different. Two graduations were given. This space that the home-schooled students graduated in with the public schooled students was an auditorium area connected to the main building.
They both still spoke.
That, at least Shirou noticed, as he showed up for the boys' graduation.
Tohsaka and him were keeping touch well again.
He noted to Tohsaka that them still speaking meant they were on talking terms, willing to still be brother and brother, even though when they disagreed, they disagreed nastily.
Never had the boys seen their mother hang all over someone else as much as she did to this man. Both were baffled. The way she ruffled the hair of the man made Keitaro angry and Ebisu perplexed.
Ebisu didn't know his mother well, so he didn't understand and it didn't bother him to not understand. He knew this man was a long-term family friend somehow and he knew his name was Shirou. He simple stared trying to get a grasp on the man in the red coat and tried to think back if he ever remembered her as being that much of a flirt.
Keitaro was upset. This was his mother! She's married to their dad! It was embarrassing and unnerving to him that his father (that he didn't know that well) would let his wife act such a way and be so nonchalant about it! He was laughing on the side as the two carried on in fact!
Both the boys overheard their mother teasing the tall man in boots.
"Boy boy Emiya kun, look at you!"
"Tohsaka cut it out, you knew I'd pick it up once I came across it."
"That jacket reminds me of someone." She put a finger to lip, the flirtiest she'd looked in years, irking both the on-looking boys for different reasons. "You're turning into him a little more each time I see you."
Both the boys looked at each other with the same thought. 'Turning into someone?' Kei had thoughts of Mage spells running through his head, thinking of what his mother could possibly be referring to, Ebisu thought similarly, but less complex, more so his thought process centered around what his brother was thinking about as it had made his eyes race back and forth.
"You haven't seen me in what, a few years?"
The boys turned back not speaking, to listening as the conversation started back up.
"About." She leaned on the railing of the ceremony area, drinking some punch. "So where'd you find it?"
"In a shop in Venice... Surprisingly." He hushed looking at her with slitted eyes. He knew the younger Caseys were listening. It was a silent acknowledgement that Tohsaka picked up on and ignored.
Obviously, she didn't care. Neither had told the boys about the War, and what had been done, and that they were involved. Only Shirou, Rin and her husband knew. They all had decided not to share it. The Lesser Grail was over. It had ended.
Shirou realized that the boys just wouldn't understand what they were gibbering on about, let alone, understand Rin's teasing.
"So it's Roman Catholic then?"
"Yeh." The man took a sip of punch.
Their mom took another sip. "Should I just start calling you it at this point? I do see so gray hairs in that red mop top of yours."
Hairs stood up on the back of his neck. "Please don't." Shirou sighed, taking a finger and attempting to loosen the collar of the long-coat. "I'd like to think I've already made better choices than he did."
The boys hung close-ish, looming on the words, not even pretending that they weren't listening.
"We'll never know will we?"
"No I suppose not."
"Well..." Tohsaka looked over her shoulder, to the man smiling at her with a indescribable, distant but sincere grin. "Just try not to get yourself hung?"
At that comment, Kei's mouth tightened and the other's mouth fell awry.
"Tohsaka!" The man burst out crushing the empty paper cup in his hand in a sudden knee jerk reaction.
She just chuckled walking out the door, stopping just to say, breathy, the teasing nature obvious.
"You heard me Archer."
The man's lip dropped and then closed. He smiled in a 'knowing' type of way and followed her out the door, leaving both boys wondering what that was all about.
Later that night, he introduced himself as Shirou Emiya, Mage and adoptive son of Kiritsugu Emiya, heir to the Emiya magic, and just magic he'd developed on his own, that he'd been there when the boy's were born, he's the one that sends the letters all the time to their mom.
They sat around the table at their house, all drinking wine and celebrating the boy's graduation. The boy's had their first liquor here.
The Caseys were trying their hardest to re-unite the boys, and the wedge that once drove them apart, the strong magic bearing, and feelings behind it, it had indeed softened some.
Progress in their relationship had been made.
Both the boys were sitting by each other not really talking, but taking in the conversation between the adults, but upon listening, they realized that the 'adults' were recognizing them as adults.
For the first time they had the rights to ask questions as peers to their elders, and they didn't have to wait to speak or wait for their turn.
Ebisu got ballsy in his fluffy liquored state. He asked a question that both Caseys thought that surely Kei would of asked. "Do you have any kids Emiya Shirou?"
"No I don't." He took a sip of white wine. His half gray half red head turned to face them with a simplistic, touching look.
He had no heir. He knew why it was being asked.
Kei's eyes searched the man. 'So. He has no one to pass on the Emiya magics.' This time Kei spoke up finishing off with a question relevant to his position. "So, what are the Emiya crest magics then?"
This made Shirou Emiya smirk deeply and turn to the Tohsaka's husband, both of them laughing in knowed-ness. Shirou more less developed his own magics, sure Kiritsugu had been an influence, but more less, he fed off Archer too, his future self, as odd as that was. He had a connection to him, because he was him.
"Your kids... spoken like true Mages. Bold." He finished off his glass of wine.
"Ebisu's mouth fell. His mind raced. 'Mage?' When had he been lumped-in under the description of a Mage?
Bartley Casey turned to his children, now adults, at the end of the table, Tohsaka smiling into her drink. Shirou Emiya still chuckling, scratching his head almost like it was embarrassing to him as the Casey family head spoke:
"Mage Shirou Emiya is more powerful than us both combined." He motioned a chin lift to his wife.
Tohsaka took the cue, and following, but not until after grabbing an appetizer off the table and putting it in her mouth. "He's right. I could never be as strong of Mage as Archer."
That caused Kei's eye to twitch, in his opinion, he'd seen strong Mages, his mother one of the most strongest.
Shirou stopped laughing instantly, but still with a the silliest smile, "You wouldn't of said that when you was younger."
She laughed back, slamming her hands on the table. "NOPE!" She erupted.
They all just laughed loudly, all three of the older adults.
"Unlimited Blade Works." The man in the long red coat said in a calm voice.
"Wha?" Ebisu spoke lifting an eyebrow.
"Unlimited Blade Works. It's not Emiya magic, just my magic, along with a few lesser, but equally important ones." He was filling his glass full from the bottle of wine.
Tohsaka nodded, allowing Emiya to go ahead, as if an unspoken understanding passed them.
"Can you show me?" Kei asked.
The other twin looked at him wide-eyed with a small-twitch of the face that issued the idea to Kei that he wasn't thrilled with the idea.
"I already am." He turned, smiling deeply, with a eye glint that seemed to give off a distinct idea that he was an elite in hiding. "Look up."
They both gawked above their heads.
Kei didn't flinch a bit, but eyes just widened and breath escaped him as above them at least ten swords floated mid-air, all different in shape than the other. Ebisu emitted a soft gaspy scream, which caused Shirou to chuckle and then dissipate them.
Floating down between them, little sparks of fire, the swords de-materialized and glittered out, like fire-flies slowly dying. Then nothing.
Kei slammed up from the table, away from his brother who still sat aghast.
"AMAZING!" He balled his fist.
"Settle down." Tohsaka said and Kei looked to her with a grunt of confusion.
"I won't teach you. If that's what your thinking." Shirou Emiya softly sighed. Shirou Emiya couldn't teach anyone. It wasn't a 'passed' magic, it wasn't something someone could master with a crest.
Kei's red cheeks and jaw showed his thoughts: 'why not? how rude.'
"Let's go outside." Emiya suggested.
The boys both gathered up themselves and so did Bartley.
Tohsaka: "You've always wondered what it looked like Bartley, now you can see for yourself." She put an arm with his arm and walked out the threshold with him.
Bartley smiled back. She was right. The Unlimited Blade Works that she told him about, that he had tried to perform himself, that he couldn't seem to figure out. He was more than curious.
They all eventually stood out on the porch, looking into the night sky. The moon was there, the stars.
Emiya stood by Bartley. "Are you ready?"
Bartley nodded, and Emiya nodded. Mage to Mage respect. Emiya looked down to the boys, Kei nodding, and Ebisu chewing his nail in insecurity.
He walked out into the blackened, night, about thirty feet out into the grassy backyard. The grass crushed under his tall riding boots. Crickets were chirping.
The first thing they noticed is everything got quiet.
Tohsaka decided to chime in and narrate as Shirou began for display purposes only.
First she shouted "SHIROU! There's a hay bail out there not to far off! You can use that!"
"Okay!" That was all he said.
She started to speak. "Animals can sense when mana is being moved. That's why everything is quiet."
They could feel it, Tohsaka, Bartley and Kei the strongest, and even Ebisu felt a twinge in him.
Silence. Darkness.
Bartley and Kei felt so nervous.
Mostly Bartley.
A whirred started the wind picking up underneath the area where Shirou stood, and a blue electric light started to spark. "If I'm a little rusty Tohsaka you can chastise me later!"
Tohsaka chuckled. "He's starting up the spell."
Suddenly the blue electric snapping turned into the biggest electric fire coming out of a Mage's body that Bartley had ever seen, and clearly, as the flames where so bright and consuming, and the noise of the crackling loud, like a freight train...
"Here it comes." Tohsaka grabbed her husband's hand. This was the spell helped Saber along with saving her life. That helped save the world's life, all of humanity's lives. He knew her husband had been dying to see it, he wanted to know what had saved them all against Gilgamesh's proposed genocide. He considered it pure pleasure to know the Mage that stopped the Wars but he'd always been curious.
She grabbed his hand because finally that curiosity was going to be fulfilled, and it made her happy to know Emiya was willing to help that out for him.
In a deep whirr, like a sudden hurricane, Ebisu was whining, his stomach flipping, among the growling whipping wind around him, the electricity, Ebisu was hanging on to one of the pillars of the porch, Kei hand over the eyes, to help shadow his view so he wouldn't have to look away, Shirou Emiya's voice grew throaty, and screamed:
"YOU ARE THE BONE OF MY SWORD!"
Bartley squeezed Tohsaka's hand. His breath deep.
Then Tohsaka squinted. A confused, awe-struck look crossed her face. Was... Emiya lifting off the ground?
"UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS!"
Then suddenly like stars in the sky, thousands of glowing small lights lit the evening sky above their heads, each little yellow dots forming into swords. Big swords, long swords, curved, Arabian, Samurai, knives of every shape.
Tohsaka gasped whispering to her husband as he stood frozen at the power. "I've never seen this many." She followed with a whisper. He husband was so striken with absolutely, beautiful awe, as someone would to seeing God himself, he was no use. He was frozen. Eyes quivering orbs. He was taking it all in.
This contributed to the saving of the world. Without this... he wouldn't of met Tohsaka, surely of perished in the fire created from the Grail being used by Gilgamesh. His family wouldn't of existed.
Shirou Emiya, in his eyes, was his savior. Was his family's savior.
Tohsaka's mind raced, shouting to her husband who she knew wasn't listening: "He's nearly twenty feet off the ground! His energy! I've! I've never seen it this powerful! He's memorized the details of so many swords! He's gathered so much strength..." Her voice fell flat as she realized it. "That he's learned to defy gravity to a point."
At that response, Kei's whole face came to tears.
It was the most power he'd ever experienced seeing in his entire life.
"How... many?" Kei trickled out. 'Thousands. It's thousands.'
Tohsaka: "Tens of Thousands."
Archer then calmly shouted to the Caseys. "READY!?"
"GO FOR IT ARCHER!" Tohsaka screamed. In her mind she mocked him 'If I'm rusty you can chastise me.' She mumbled. "As if. You've been practicing this whole time haven't you?"
Her mind went to understanding. It was more than ten thousand, more than fifty thousand, it was more than was possible to count in one setting, then all of a sudden like a whole army of archers he let them all go down on the hay bail. It was not possible to even believe that such power only came from one man.
It looked like a scene out of a war story based around ancient Chinese or Roman fire-archers. Like castle fortification archers laying siege to an army.
The was the day they all watched shiny, sparkling swords bellow down to the Earth and destroy the hail bail, and it was so powerful it left a mark in the backyard, a deep crater close to a hundred feet deep that never got filled.
Kei and Ebisu both understood (at least thought they understood then), why their mother called him 'Archer'.
That was the only day and the last day that the Caseys would ever see Unlimited Blade Works again.
Bartley now understood why Shirou Emiya was the savior of humanity.
The only savior of humanity.
A Hero of Justice.
September 7th, 2028
A new member of the family was welcomed, but also with a death.
Ebisu had taken a wife.
She had bore a child, but died during childbirth.
Ebisu, still at such a young age, so young, to yet again to bear so unfortunate circumstances of his life.
At first it had weighed on him that his brother and parents were Mages and he wasn't, but that blow had been lessened and softened over the years, and now that that was no longer a daunting concern, he was witnessing yet another pain.
In new life, death came. Complications.
His mother, Tohsaka, cried in the corner holding the baby girl. Ebisu's wife, Lily, with her last dying breath named her Heather.
Ebisu had taken on a non-mage wife, someone he could relate to, much like himself, she was of a Mage family, the Clock Tower listed, House Gareth. She wasn't given the Mage descendant magics, her elder brother was, and she had been from a family of five.
So, the Casey's weren't the only ones who'd decided to do what they did, bearing multiple children, but letting the children decided among themselves who'd study the magic and bear the House Gareth Mage name.
Lily's elder brother Charles was the decided one among the five brothers and sisters. It had been between Lily and Charles in the end, but Lily decided ultimately she would rather go to a normal college and eventually, find a man she loved that she could marry and have children with, and that was the deal breaker for her. Being a Mage meant attending a Mage College, marrying another Mage of course was optional.
She wanted to be a veterinarian.
While she was able to produce simple magics without the bearing of the Gareth Crest, two-crossed swords very much looking like a burn on the flesh of her older brother's back, she wasn't as open about it as Ebisu was, she was even more closed off than he was.
That was something Ebisu never understood. He understood it, but not in it's entirety. She never shared why.
Also, her brother being a Mage didn't divide the family. It was just looked at as something that their family 'does'. That simple. For their familial crest was very old, and had been passed down for so many generations that it wasn't painful for the receiver as it had been for his brother, Kei.
Lily and Ebisu, they were similar enough, and fell in love quick, marrying after a few short years, and bore a child.
The only child they'll ever have.
Ebisu never remarried. He wouldn't have children outside of marriage, it was a personal creedo he stuck to.
And he lived up to it.
September 7th, 2036
Heather Casey was eight years old.
"You know I can't have children." Kei went on to his brother down the hall from their parent's room, he looked out across the field, where nearing twelve years ago Shirou Emiya blew a hole in the backyard, a giant crater, now covered with grass, and somehow, their father still went and mowed it in some sort of odd 'worship' Kei thought.
Really, Ebisu looked at it as a respect that he held for Shirou's power.
Kei had found out a few years later, after Heather's birth, that he was not 'potent'.
He was infertile. He had Klinefelter's Syndrome. He was born with two X chromosome's rather than being born with a normal X and Y, like male's should be.
No one of them knew it. Normally they would of caught this at an early age, had it been the case that they were born at a normal hospital, but they weren't they were born at a hospital with a mid-wife.
It had been Tohsaka's asking. She didn't want a normal doctor with normal testing, due to the Mage bloodline, and it had been a tradition of the Tohsaka family to do mid-wifes.
If any, that was the one tradition she stuck too. She still had a relationship with her mid-wife to this day, they were friends and every weeks went out and shopped together.
The boys even knew her as a surrogate aunt, 'Aunt Jackie.'
"I disagree." Ebisu Casey shook his head at his brother. "Look what magic can do Kei." He pointed to the field.
"That's an example of what magic can do to save others Ebisu." He defended it.
"Or destroy people. How do we know? We don't know that Emiya."
"So are you saying that with power, all Mages could turn and use it to hurt people?" Kei crossed his arms, sickened. "That's a dark thought."
"You heard me. I'm not taking it back. It can be dangerous. Remember all those swords? How dangerous is that Kei? Seriously?"
"I know. Shirou Emiya is on a level that none of us will ever obtain, you know that right?"
He leaned on the pillar, the same one he'd been hanging onto that night when the hundreds of thousands of swords rained down like fire from heaven.
Things were starting to get heated between them, they were both exactly thirty years old, and their spit-fire nature in disputes still lingered.
"I'm not letting it happen."
Kei turned to him with a brutish look.
"She's my daughter."
"She's the only heir to the Caseys!" Kei erupted.
"I'm not letting her even have the chance, or the thought cross her mind that she could use power to do evil!" He spit back at him into the night.
"Are you kidding? Ebisu! This is when we teach her the fundamentals to her being a good human being!"
"Don't you think I've been doing that the best I can already without Lily?" He balled a fist in anger.
"Do you drag that into this!"
"I am!" Ebisu was upset. "Do you think it's ben easy raising this little girl? Do you?"
Kei's face slightly softened, his normal look, rough but something in his eyes always spoke more. "No." He said flatly.
"What if Kei?"
Kei shook his head back and forth softyly, and pulled to look way from him. His mind raced. Something was just about to break within him, with his brother's demeanor, and still, ever lingering fright towards magic.
Ebisu on that night was completely frozen in terror at Emiya. He was the opposite, he reveled in the feeling of mana stirring his blood, in the sight of the man floating off the ground, arms spread wide like Jesus on the Cross, like a god himself.
That's why he knew. There was no fighting it.
He wanted to sock Ebisu out. It was more important to him to keep his daughter 'safe', her mentality on life and on magic guarded than to allow the lineage to continue.
"Every goodness I instilled in her could just be wiped away."
"I don't believe that." Kei whispered out. "She's strong. Stronger than I was." He referred to receiving the new House Casey crest when he was eight, that circuited crest that spanned across his upper right arm, in the same place as the old Tohsaka crest, it's placement purposeful.
"No."
Kei looked into Ebisu's eyes, not with a pleaded, hopes destroyed face, but more of a 'are you sure?'... He wanted to punch him so badly.
Ebisu nodded, glaring in his eyes, with more certainty than he's ever possessed.
Kei sniffed, disgusted and left the porch area.
He twin sighed and shook his head turning away.
This would be the last that Ebisu and Kei spoke for many years.
Both so strong in their convictions. Both so stubborn in their convictions.
Much like their mother.
Much like Shirou as well.
Much like Mages.
January 23rd 2056
Rin Tohsaka passed.
Both boys were there on opposite end of the grave.
Kei stood by himself. His mother's son.
Ebisu stood by his father, who mourned horrifically. Ebisu tried to calm him, handing him tissue after tissue, and Kei watched this emotional episode.
He left the funeral early, but not before he caught sight of a man, standing tall from far away.
In red jacket.
Shirou Emiya.
It was the last glimpse of the now, completely gray headed, Shirou Emiya that Kei Casey would ever get.
He stopped walking to his car.
The man, even though similarly aged as their mother, looked so similar to how he had before, older, but still very fit, he noted.
He stared.
Tears.
He watched them coming down over Emiya's cheeks. The pain on the man's face overwhelming and he could tell he was whispering to himself to calm himself.
Kei's mind fluttered, perhaps he was saying a mantra? Perhaps he was doing magic? He couldn't feel any mana being used.
He was just whispering, standing there, unmoving in the light drizzle, his hair getting matted down.
Kei heard his whimper.
Kei's mind went to the conversation he'd had years ago with his brother, intently watching the elder Mage that he seen as someone who was completely on a different level than him, an elite cry, his pain so deep.
'she could use the power to do evil!'
Kei shook his head profusely. Never could that man do evil. He watched the way he mused. There was love written over his features.
No man ever cried like that without intense feeling of love. He'd seen Ebisu cry over Lily. He'd just watched his father mourning.
Equally torn were both men.
Kei mumbled as he stumbled off down the hill leaving Emiya to cry alone, as he had left his brother and father to mourn with all the other family members he didn't care to speak to. "For someone to mourn over someone like that."
He very well should be crying, he was closest to his mother; he admitted that it pained him and he felt more alone now, but he couldn't bring himself to.
His mother, a Tohsaka, had taught him a many times that death was just a natural part of life, like somehow, she knew something more that she wasn't letting onto, and she made him tough in his mageworks and tough in mentality.
"There's always a way for a Mage to make a logical decision to not use magic for evil. You're wrong Ebisu. So wrong." He shook his head, stepping into his Cadillac and pulled out of the drive at the cemetery.
They say that when Emiya Shirou was hung nearly a year later, he was laughing.
Like he was ready.
Like he wasn't afraid.
He was.