Disclaimer: I do not own the Fate franchise it belongs to Kinoko Nasu and Type-Moon.
Resolution
Prologue
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Choirs of cats formed circles in five different places across the city, singing songs without words. Their minds, so simple yet so bright, were able to understand things that Human minds, for all their complexity, were surprisingly incapable of even beginning to understand. And so it was they who sang the songs that would weave thought and concept into a single tapestry of mystery, one that encompassed the entire city, made real by the power that flowed across the very land itself.
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The cats sang, each choir composed of five circles that decreased in number by multitudes of five the closer it came to the center. Each circle of cats walked as they sang, circling the heart of the ritual circle, in which rested a single Human fingerbone, preserved in blood-derived medium. The cats bobbed their heads as they sang and walked, the rhythm of their movements flowing with their song, weaving a spell anchored with blood and bone.
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Fuyuki City was a very built-up city, however. This meant that the song could not be sung in discreet and out of the way places, with one of the ritual circles actually in the central atrium of a shopping mall. Furthermore, the ritual requirements demanded that the flow of ethereal energy be undisturbed by bounded fields and other similar means of concealment. Thankfully, the song could be sung at night, and late at that as well, allowing for at least some degree of discretion. And in the few cases where the singing of the cats drew attention, those few Humans that witnessed the grand performance hid away in fear soon after.
For all their intelligence, Humans could be such limited creatures.
They feared that which they could not understand, and would prefer to either forget such things, or wipe them from existence entirely.
In this case, though, all but one chose the former. But they would never forget. They would never forget the singing and dancing of the cats performing the rituals, or the silent smiles and piercing gazes of those other cats that sat on guard beyond the circles, never showing any hint of malice, but curiosity instead.
What would they do?
Would they leave and allow the grand performance to continue undisturbed?
Or would they meddle in affair beyond their concern, and invite the wrath of the true mistress of Fuyuki City?
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All but one chose to leave, and he would pay dearly for daring to poke his nose where it did not belong, thankfully only briefly muddying the song with Buddhist nonsense. For that, Issei Ryuudo would be scarred for life, clawing markings marring his face, limbs, and torso. And when he dared speak out in the following days, claiming that a coven of witches had taken root in the city, seducing the resident feline population and turning them into unholy familiars who ought to be stamped out and burned…well.
That marked the end of his political career.
It also marked the beginning of a twenty-year-long stay in a mental hospital, in which time he never wavered in his beliefs of witches and demonic cats holding profane rituals and unholy sabbaths in Fuyuki City.
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And high atop Mount Enzo amidst the sacred precincts of Ryuudo Temple, there stood the conductor of the grand performance. Sakura Tohsaka, the Murderer Blue, Second Owner of Fuyuki City, Sixth Tohsaka Magus, and Supreme Mistress of the Land. A mandala revolved under her feet, while around her faint streams of prana flowed up in a circle.
As the singing reached a crescendo, she held up an arm, and pulling her kimono's sleeve back, exposed her crest. She thrust it forward, through the prana flowing around her, her crest's circuits flickering almost like a key matching a lock, and again as she cast a spell.
The conditions are met.
The ever-faithful have sung the song,
Dancing in celebration of rightful authority,
And borne witness to testaments in blood and bone,
Five times five times five.
By right of ancestral descent,
I pass judgment,
And abjure Makiri Zolgen and his blood,
Casting them and their works forth from my domain.
So I have spoken, and so let it be!
Again, like a key, Sakura twisted her arm, her crest's circuits flickering as the mandala rose from Sakura's feet, passing over her body before flashing and rotating faster above her. Faster and faster it went, before abruptly plunging back down to flash blinding bright against the ground.
A pulse of power erupted outwards from Ryuudo Temple, both over and under the ground, and flowing through the leylines. Similar pulses of power erupted from the ritual circles across the city, the choirs raising their voices in triumph and praise.
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And across the city, Zouken Matou's worms and other familiars died en masse, even as the ley lines simply inverted the flow of magical power, not simply refusing to support its mysteries any further, but outright and actively collapsing them.
Just as planned.
"Rin," Sakura sent the thought. "Finish it."
"Gladly."
A black cat sitting on the sidewalk watching the snowflakes fall from across the Matou mansion got to her feet. Just moments ago, there had been a sound like countless mirrors shattering at the same time, a physical side-effect of the Matou mansion's defenses simultaneously collapsing all at once.
Then the cat began to shimmer an ugly red color, and as it crossed the street, the shimmering until it formed the appearance of a spectral cat the size of a bus. By the time the cat finished crossing the street and reached entrance of the Matou mansion, the spectral cat had solidified, while temperatures in the surrounding area had plummeted from a mere one degree below zero Celsius, to a full two hundred degrees below zero Celsius.
Water in the air simply deposited themselves as ice on the surrounding walls, on the road and sidewalks, as well as on the gate and the ground beyond. The lightbulbs of the streetlights exploded from the pressure of growing ice, as did the windows of the mansion beyond.
Such was the power of Guardian Spirit Rin.
With a dull crash, Rin simply smashed the gates of the Matou property down. As she passed through the grounds, the earth on either side of the walkway cracked and split open, the permafrost too great for the earth to contain. Lifeless branches shattered from nearby trees as ice grew within, while trunks trembled and in case simply burst open, ice crystals visibly growing and creeping out from within.
Then she stepped onto the threshold of the Matou mansion, now entombed in ice. So much so that the doors were frozen shut, but again, that didn't matter. Rin just smashed them open, and entering the Matou mansion found it as on the outside: frozen.
The chandelier above hung in ruins, glass and brass alike blown apart by ice that grew unnaturally quick and thick. The walls were cracked and pitted from ice clawing at them as it grew, while here and there burst pipes poked out of craters shattered from the inside.
Ice was everywhere, as should only be expected when temperatures here had fallen the lowest the planet had known since the last Ice Age.
Rin kept on going, feeling through her paws the sole pocket of life – energy, heat – within this frozen tomb. Down frozen hallways, past chambers buried in broken ice and rubble, and doorways entombed in ice, until she stood before a pair of doors that she again simply broke down.
Then down, down she went, descending down ice-coated stairs, red light shimmering around her as her physical form flowed and shifted into that of a teenage girl, wearing a white, long-sleeved shirt over a blue mini-skirt and dark leggings, a pair of cat ears poking out of her dark hair while a tail waved in the air below her.
At last, she stood at the very heart of Matou, the workshop of the one once known as Makiri Zolgen.
It was a dreary place, looking for all the world as a combination of catacomb and torture chamber. If anything, the stalactites and stalagmites, descending from the ceiling or rising from the floor, respectively, had improved the place, to say nothing of meters-thick ice that encased the walls.
"…why…?" a voice asked, so soft that even with reinforcement, it was unlikely that a Human could hear it.
But Rin wasn't Human anymore, or even just a spirit. She was a cat as well, and her ears twitched as they directed her at its source.
Broken bits of wood encased in ice. Torn cloth, as though from a kimono. Vague discolorations in the ice, as though something wet, soft, pulpy, and alive had been crushed all too quickly and yet too slowly by growing ice.
And there, poking out of the ice, puffing the smallest wisps of steam, was a worm's head.
"…why…" Zouken Matou asked.
"Because you are a mistake." Rin simply replied.
"I…"
Whatever it was Zouken wanted to say, it never had the chance to say it. Rin drew the last touch of heat from the worm, causing to wither and freeze. An existence that went back five hundred years was finally and truly dead, and with it, the legacy of the Zolgen family was all but destroyed.
Nearly three hundred years overdue, as far as the guardian spirit and her sister thought it. But like Rin had said, Zouken Matou was a mistake, a mistake made by the founder of the Tohsaka lineage of magi, Nagato Tohsaka.
And as his heir and successor, it fell to Sakura to correct it. And so she had, through her beloved and cherished elder sister.
Now was the time for true progress to begin.
A/N
Zouken should be honored, that Sakura would go so far as to conduct a grand ritual and even dispatch her guardian spirit of an elder sister to personally dispose of him. It's certainly more than it deserves.
Speaking of Rin, it fits that as a guardian spirit she can simply draw the heat from and plunge an entire area into astronomical cold. Seriously, the coldest Earth's ever gotten is only around eighty-nine degrees below zero Celsius. At two hundred degrees below zero Celsius, we're talking Lunar temperatures. Why it fits, you ask? Because Rin's name has the character for cold in it. That, and it's still Rin, and her tendency to, well, excel at everything. So, if she's going to turn her surroundings into a winter wonderland/frozen hell, she might as well go all the way.
On a brighter note, yes, she's a catgirl now. That's what happens when as part of the guardian spirit transformation ritual, Sakura fused a cat (animal spirit) with Rin's soul.