Shirou grimaced as he walked into an apartment. He had arrived in this new world in a broken state. His leg had practically dissolved and one of his arms was, all things considered, paralyzed. His connection with Alaya had been severed and, as far as he could tell, he was alone in a whole new world. Although the mana in the world felt incredibly abundant and he felt none of the influence of Gaia, he was a cripple. Granted, he still had his abilities, but without Alaya to boost his strength with the combined might of humanity, he was practically a toddler compared to his old strength.

He had investigated what he could about this new world, learning that he had been dropped into a place called Kuoh. It was a quiet, normal little town with the only thing of note being the prestigious school Kuoh Academy. He had no choice but to use his paltry hypnosis abilities to confound a landlady to give him an apartment.

He sighed as he stared at the wall of his small residence despondently. With his arrival on this world, he had lost his purpose and his driving goal. He was a protector of humanity and the descendants of the people he knew to be dear to him but couldn't remember. He was one so long-lived that he had seen the ascent of humanity to the stars and beyond, and guarded them all the same against horrors unseen from the vastness of space and the cosmos. Yet, now it seemed like he had been dropped into a pre-interstellar humanity, one that he could barely recall from his own life.

He hauled himself up blankly, 'maybe a walk will clear my mind,' he thought with a sigh.

Honestly, he found the quiet ambience of Kuoh quite calming and he thoroughly enjoyed simply taking a walk through the streets, despite the crutch. He used it to maintain the appearance of a normal injured person considering his thoroughly bandaged leg, concealing its desiccated appearance. He sucked in a breath, staring at the full-moon.

'Maybe I should just let myself a bit loose. Take a step back from my eternal duty and just enjoy this chance for some normalcy that has fallen into my lap,' he contemplated as he sat on a bench.

His head jerked up as he felt a brief pulse of mana.

He abandoned all pretense and appearance, allowing fire and steel to fill in the cracks and injuries of his useless leg to serve as a temporary fix, and sprinted as fast as he could to the origin of the pulse of mana.

He arrived just in time to see a brilliant spear of light piercing through a young brunette. He watched, wide-eyed, as the boy fell over, bloody and with his life fading. Shirou turned to see the perpetrator, a curvaceous black haired girl with black feathered wings of all things protruding from her back, floating in the air.

A brief flash of a memory floated through his head. A fragmented piece of his past, fighting against great winged monsters. His functional arm twitched almost imperceptibly, before he asked softly, "Why?"

Alerted to his presence, the being turned and pinned him with a condescending stare.

"Ha? Oh, it's just another pesky human, how did you end up here?" she spat, a new spear of light forming in her outstretched palm.

"Who, no, what are you?" Shirou asked, his face stuck in a stony expression.

"I might as well tell you since your miserable pathetic existence is about to be ended," she drawled arrogantly.

"I am the fallen angel, Raynare, here to end your meaningless self just as I did to that disgusting boy, Issei Hyoudou," she sneered, and promptly launched the spear right at Shirou.

Only to see Shirou catch it easily with one hand.

"What!?" she exclaimed in pure shock, seeing a mere human handling a holy weapon such as her spear.

Shirou ignored her completely, thinking back to all the alien threats he could remember that had lorded their superiority over humanity during its first forays into space travel. He remembered their devastating power and weapons, how much destruction they had caused to the infant interstellar empire of mankind. Comparing all of them to this, winged insect playing with spears, he could only say, "Pathetic."

Raynare didn't even have time to react to the feeling of pure dread that surrounded her before her head jerked backwards, and her vision went black.

Her corpse crumpled ungracefully to the ground, a nameless sword embedded in her forehead.

Shirou walked over to the still body of who he now knew to be Issei Hyoudou. He kneeled down, only to see that the life had already drained out of him. He let out a breath in despair, the spear had pierced straight through his heart. The image of Issei's body igniting something in him, he briefly remembered he was once in a similar position as the boy, but looking up to an armored woman dressed in blue with a blurred face.

"Are you my master?"

He shook himself out of his thoughts, and grimaced.

"I still can't remember who that is..." he said, frustrated.

He got back to his feet and made to try to walk back to his apartment, only to fall over.

He looked back at his leg, only to see that his makeshift solution in his leg had corroded away. He clucked his tongue in annoyance, noting how the aftereffects of the Great One's attacks still had an effect on him even now.

He traced a new crutch and limped away from the site of his fight, if it could even be called that. As he limped back, he thought back to Raynare's words. Her contempt for humanity echoed in his brain. He snarled as he swung his good fist in anger against a nearby wall, not noticing how it crumpled under his strength, leaving a crater.

"I see now, no matter the world, there are still those who look down upon humanity, there are still threats," he muttered to himself. His mind howling at him to fulfill his purpose, to strike down these beings who would threaten humans and kill them all. He took a moment to calm himself and continued to limp back to his apartment.

'Fine, I'll study these fallen angels and determine how they operate and if they're a threat. I can't be too impulsive here.' he thought to himself, his drive reignited. Shirou didn't notice, but he stood a little straighter, his eyes a little brighter.

I will protect mankind, as I always have...