"So why am I doing this again," Satsuki said as she adjusted the green elf uniform that Shirou had all but forced upon her. She was sitting down on a chair in a room full of Christmas decorations and general good cheer.
"Well its Christmas," Shirou said as he pointed to his own Santa Claus outfit. "How else would you dress?" He sat opposite Satsuki helping himself to a cookie from a plate on the table between them.
"Firstly I don't celebrate Christmas," Satsuki started. "In fact a lot of Japanese people don't. Secondly why did I get chosen to do this? Thirdly why are we doing this anyway?"
"Because statistically most of the people reading this are American," Shirou started to rebut breaking the fourth wall for the first time of many this chapter. "Secondly its Arcueid's Birthday so she gets off and Ishtar left immediately and is technically dead at this point, or at least put away on a bus. Thirdly the author was asked a few times to do various omakes and refrained because he tried and he couldn't make them funny."
"So what's changed," Satsuki said stealing one of Shirou's cookies.
"Absolutely nothing," Shirou repeated. "And with that we'll go onto our first omake titled 'What really happened to the True Demon.'
xxx
Out of all the places in the Reverse Side of the World Avalon was the friendliest towards human life. The sky was always ocean blue with only a small splattering of clouds and the great sea of emerald grass stretched forever only interrupted by island of flowers that lay about nurtured by the gentle caress of the sun.
"This is horrifically boring," Sir Francis Drake said aloud as she lay beneath a tree. An apple fell from the tree, but Drake proved herself Newtons superior in the understanding of basic physics and caught it before it impacted with her head. Biting into it she wished desperately for anything to happen that would disrupt the mundanity of her life.
The seconds ticked away as she thought that but nothing failed to materialise. Frowning she got up and looked around the other side of the tree. Scanning the horizon she frowned in annoyance. Normally when those thoughts hit something would immediately go wrong and ruin (improved greatly) her day. Whether it was pirates or a rival fleet or a free-for-all battle on the moon something would happen. So she waited for a few minutes of her timeless existence before she relaxed. It would seem that today there…
An explosion of pure magical energy originated from the other side of the tree and she turned just in time to see the trunk of her resting before it impacted upon her face. Spitting the wood out of her mouth she got her first look at the monstrosity that had disrupted her peaceful life.
"That is a face only a mother could love," Drake said whistling. The creature sort of reminded her slightly of those chimera things that she saw when she was sailing the ocean in a race against other famous pirates to track down the Holy Grail. Only the creature was uglier to an incomparable degree. Whichever god created this abomination ought to have its licence revoked.
The creature turned towards the legendary pirate glaring at her with bloodthirst and insanity in its eyes. It took one menacing step towards her and Drake readied her flintlocks before the thing collapsed on the ground groaning weakly.
"Are you alright," Drake asked slightly miffed that the fight that she anticipated was so underwhelming.
"Raargh," the creature said struggling to its feet weakly before lunging towards her. Drake shot it in the end and it collapsed backwards onto the ground where it squirmed a bit before getting up again. Drake shot it again but it resisted the bullet so Drake shot it repeatedly until it once again hit the deck.
"I have to say I'm a little disappointed," Drake said as she unloaded round after round of pistol fire into the weakened beast.
"It's to be expected really," an unwelcome voice announced the presence of a white robed white haired effeminate man.
"Oh Merlin you're here," Drake said acknowledging the existence of the flirtatious magus. "Have you met our new guest?" Drake stopped firing for a moment and the creature leapt up only to be hit by a cannonball and sent flying into the tree, tearing up another portion of the garden of Avalon.
"It's to be expected," Merlin said smiling. "Avalon is a place for humans. A creature such as this one can barely survive here. If we left it for too long it would probably expire on its own. Still to be mailed a Demon. Morgan must be getting creative with her Christmas presents."
"It's not Christmas though," Drake said before almost an as afterthought she bombarded the convulsing form of the Demon.
"It's Christmas somewhere," he said ignoring Drake's look of disbelief. "Hey look there's my liege," he pointed out before he went very, very quiet and his face turned stiff.
The cause of his abrupt change was the presence of King/Queen Arthur. Drake had no idea why he/she wasn't a man. However she found herself in no position to talk considering her own mutilation of her legend, or should she say his legend.
"What is happening here," he/she said his/her voice sharp and his/her eyes steely." The effect was however, utterly ruined by the cat's whiskers that had been drawn on his/her face.
Merlin shot Drake a look of exasperation as he desperately tried to keep his facial expressions under control and Drake just smirked in response. The legendary king was a surprisingly deep sleeper and Drake was a pirate, which meant that she could be stealthy when she wasn't drunk or lazy.
"A demon got in your highness," Merlin said in a flat voice, containing not a hint of amusement. "Could you perhaps finish it off? The bugger appears to be quite resilient."
The once and future king nodded immediately drawing Excalibur and firing a golden blast at the wildly convulsing Demon. As soon as the beam hit the creature evaporated into nothingness under the holy light of the sword.
Arthur nodded in satisfaction before he/she turned towards the pair. "Is something the matter," he/she asked. "You're behaving very oddly."
"Everything's fine," Merlin said and Drake just nodded in response. In the end he/she just shot them another sceptical look before he/she left. As soon as she was out of earshot both Merlin and Drake burst into laughter.
"That was brilliant," the Magus of Flowers commented. "Now if you'll excuse me I have to go top that. Farewell." With those words his body faded out of sight and Drake was once more alone.
"That was anti-climactic," the legendary pirate said letting out a sigh. She looked forlornly at the death site of the demon and that's when her sharp eyes made out a golden glint. Moving towards the potential treasure she reached down and dug out the object that was partially buried in the ground. It was a magnificent golden sheath, a bit on the tacky side but Drake liked gaudy things like that.
"Maybe this wasn't so disappointing after all," she said pocketing her newly found treasure.
xxx
"So that's where it got to," Shirou said wincing slightly. "I'm probably going to receive a strongly worded letter from Alaya about that, something to the extent of 'don't pollute mankind's utopia with Demons.'"
"Humanities will to survive uses the postal system," Satsuki asked incredulously as she sipped from her cup of egg nog.
"Nobody uses the postal system," Shirou looked at his companion with the faintest amounts of scorn in his voice. "When I screw up she sends a Counter Guardian over to hand me the message. It's always Emiya due to the fact that he annoys me, Alaya always gives him janitorial work and the author can't be arsed to think to open up Typemoon wiki and search for the name of another counter guardian."
"Anyway," Satsuki said putting down her egg nog. "We still have to do the one thing that is compulsory in all omakes for a story featuring an alternate Shirou."
"Have him summoned in the Holy Grail war to display the omake version of a stomp-fic," Shirou said as he finished off his own egg nog. Nine dressed as a reindeer quickly appeared inside the room and replaced the empty glasses with full ones.
"Precisely," Satsuki said smiling. "Our next omake is titled 'A Holy Grail War in Three Hours or Your Money Back."
xxx
Enki or Shirou Inke as he sometimes went by was standing in [spoiler] watching the [spoiler] with [spoiler] by his side taking a nap against a [spoiler]. It had already been [spoiler] since the Holy Grail War had ended and he was really enjoying the [spoiler]. Suddenly a voice appeared in his head beckoning to him and he smelt the unmistakeable smell of space-time magic. So either he was being summoned to a different world or Zelretch was trying to prank him again. Shirou had the absolute best luck when it came to summoning. He had already been summoned to defeat a demon king three times, kill a hero two times, liberate a species of humans from a dragon, and liberate a species of dragons from humans. Hell he had even been summoned as a familiar once. Still it was to his surprise that he heard the voice of Rin performing bog standard words from the servant summoning ritual.
"Oh wow am I being summoned," Shirou said quietly so as not to wake up [spoiler]. It was unlikely to be a summoning from his world due to [spoiler]. He found himself growing excited at the prospect of experiencing a normal Holy Grail War. Focusing on strategies to take down the various servants and winning the Holy Grail. Maybe this time he could properly participate in the games without having to worry about Vampires and Mesopotamian goddesses and [spoiler]. Just him and six other servants duking it out for an omnipotent wish granting cup that was actually [spoiler].
"Take me away standard summoning ritual," Shirou said as the feeling of foreign mana overwhelmed him and he appeared above the Tohsaka mansion at a speed. "Huh," Shirou said to himself as he crashed through the roof only to land on the couch in the Tohsaka's living room. It was the weirdest feeling being confined to a class. Like wearing really tight pants, except instead of the blood flow being cut off it was his abilities that were cut off instead. He felt weaker and his meagre sword skills had gone to shit as was the case with almost all Casters.
"How did she fuck that up," Shirou said whistling to himself. "Did she stand in the circle or put a fridge in it or something. I mean what the hell." Shirou was losing confidence about Rin's ability to win the Grail War after all, but he supposed it didn't matter after all. He could win the War with or without his master. So why take the chance was the thought that popped into his head. Footsteps grew closer to the room and so Shirou made a snap decision pumping to prana into the Emiya crest, he watched as inch by inch the door slowly opened and then he moved. Leaping up to the ceiling he made his feet and hands [sticky] he avoided the young magi's gaze and then swooped down behind her casting [sleep] as he did so.
Catching her body he let time resume but moved swiftly to put her to bed. She would awake at seven o' clock as she usually did so he had at most four hours in order to win the Grail War so he wouldn't have to deal with her. Laying her in bed he considered his most immediate problem. He needed mana then he could summon his own servant to eliminate one of the possible competitors. Then he could speedrun his way through the other servants.
The first was easily solved. Shirou had long come up with a plan to regain mana for his servant if he had ever run out. With a thought he had disappeared from the room and reappeared at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Unknown to every other being on Earth besides him and Sumire there were many places under the oceans waves that possessed excellent leylines but the Mariana's trench was unique in that mana from other leylines in the world's oceans was brought in by the tides and often got trapped there. With no magi to tap into this mana it had grown to a truly colossal amount. It was almost unfair Shirou remarked to himself as the amount of mana actually exceeded that of the cup for which he was competing.
Immediately he felt the pressure and then his twin cores swelled as overwhelmingly pure mana was absorbed into them and condensed to the extent that he felt like he could take on all of the servants six to one for the moment. Then he chuckled although it sounded more like a gurgle for the moment before he teleported to the next location on his journey to further tip the odds in his favour.
The Emiya residence was much like he remembered it, with the notable exception of no pool. The bounded field was no problem at all for a servant magician god. He held out his spoils for the evening, a shining gold sheath. He had found the alternate-self sleeping in an impressively shoddy workshop so he had extracted the item and in recompense activated the other Shirou's circuits and improved them to the level of his own when he still possessed magic circuits. He should have a very nice surprise in the morning. What a wonderful Christmas present, even if it's not Christmas.
The ritual was honestly a triviality for Shirou at this point, countless hours of pouring over the Enizbern and Matou's research notes had given him enough knowledge to do the ritual in his sleep. In less than five minutes he stood opposite the form of a young girl in blue sporty garments and a cap. Apparently King Arthur has modern tastes.
"I am Heroine X and I have arrived to deal with the increased number of Sabres," she said.
"Well there's at least one Saber so you can help with that," Shirou said looking at the most unusual servant in front of him. "Servant Assassin," he said.
"Saber," the servant instantly refuted.
"Servant Saber," Shirou said with a small smile on his lips. "My goal is to finish the Holy Grail War in the next two and a half hours. Are you with me?"
"How many servants are there?" she asked with determination in her eyes.
"Five," Shirou said.
"A worthy challenge," Heroine X said. "I'll follow your lead Master."
"Excellent," Shirou said as he held up his hand to his face and let water coalesce and form an icy mask on his face with. He breathed in the oxygenated water by his mouth and focused on the feedback given to him by the spell he cast over the town. "Let's go."
xxx
"One," said Shirou as the pair of weapons comically named Secret-Calibur cleaved the dragon into pieces. In the next second he used the Emiya crest slowing down time and thrust his hand into the core of Servant Rider dragging it out and extracting the mana from it. With a whistle to his 'definitely not King Arthur' servant he exited the building in which the Servant and her Master (a generic magus from Clocktower) had intended to make their base for the war.
xxx
"Two," Shirou said as he finished off the last of the worms. Killing Zouken and freeing Sakura wasn't any less of a chore this time, although he managed to avoid killing that prick Shinji this time. He was hoping to get a chance to fight off the servant (who turned out to be scythe wielding Medusa) but in the end he was forced to leave it to Heroine X who lacked the abilities to save Sakura and kill Zouken effectively. He sensed Heroine X used her finishing move to decapitate the servant and with a gesture he dissipated the fog that blocked eyesight. "We have an hour and a half left he informed his servant before he went to what would likely be his greatest challenge, the Einzberns."
xxx
"Three," Shirou said as he plunged both hands into a very familiar servant. What are the chances that he would get to meet Heracles again. Unfortunately for the white haired girl whose face was slowly turning into a look of horror he had both seen this before and beaten it. At the start of the fight he had once again immediately told her to unleash Secret-Calibur and then he had teleported her directly in front of the surprised Archer. As soon as she had broken through his God Hand Shirou had immediately teleported behind him and crushed both the core in his head and heart simultaneously delivering instant death to the servant beyond any possibility of healing. He looked at the alternate form of his sister with two maids he had never seen standing in front of her and guarding and he felt all the time he made up by his swift kill disappear.
"Would you like me to fix your body?" he asked, although the question was rhetorical. Despite this being an entire alternate dimension he would not let his sister die.
xxx
"Four," he said as he watched the twitching body of his last opponent. The warrior wore black and red armour that looked draconic in nature. He didn't speak the entire time they fought except to call out his Noble Phantasm. Shirou was quite lucky he had heard the name of his spear in time and was thus able to negate Gae Bolg before it took the heart of Heroine X. Still this was by no means and easy fight but with their superior numbers and prana they managed to safely dismantle the mad warrior. Still with his incredibly high strength, his incredibly fast speed as well as the how resilient he was, being able to absorb Secret-Calibur without dying he had eaten up a lot of their remaining time and their prana. Eventually Shirou had to fall back on his old ability Amessunu Istenis; an ability with an anti-human nature that finally put him back into the grave.
"One more," Shirou said and his servant nodded slightly glumly. While the servants that they had previously fought had been reasonably strong none of them had been Sabers. "The next one may not be a saber but he has a lot of swords if that makes any difference."
"It doesn't," she responded gloomily. "Let's just get this over with."
Shirou nodded and teleported them away for the final battle.
xxx
"Gilgamesh," Shirou said. "Prepare to die."
"Nice to see you again Shirou," Gilgamesh said as he put down the controller He was sitting on a couch playing some driving game in his full armour.
"Yeah it's nice to see you... wait you remember," Shirou said mentally revaluating their relationship.
"Yes I can see other timelines Shirou," Gilgamesh said. "I've been watching you since you were summoned. By the way you have ten minutes to defeat me and claim the grail. Should you really still be standing around talking?"
"Shit no," Shirou said as he charged forward abandoning any restraint in order to bring down his final opponent.
Five minutes later Gilgamesh finally dissolved into golden dust. Heroine X had no interest in the fight and Shirou had no desire to fight so Shirou had left her out of it and went with the extremely cheap tactic of unloading all his magic at Gilgamesh in waves of ice and water then teleporting back to recharge at the Marianas trench and then do it again. Eventually he teleported to the Tohsaka mansion and hypnotized a sleeping Rin to use all three of her command seals to 'force' him to regain his original power. From then on it was a simple matter to overpower and destroy Gilgamesh. Even his trump card of EA that he pulled out from under an invisibility cloak was crushed by its true owner.
From then on things got really boring. He transferred the seals from Heroine X to Rin, purified the grail and dropped it off in Rin's bedroom. After extracting a promise from Heroine X to look after Rin and check on his alternate self now and again he allowed himself to naturally fade away. Holy Grail Wars are pretty fun. He should see if he can do it again some time.
xxx
"That's not very funny," Shirou said as he handed as he placed another present under the tree.
"Maybe the authors reaching the bottom of the barrel on his humour repository," Satsuki said sceptically.
"Well it's already over 3500 words," Shirou pointed out. "That's longer than usual. We better hurry onto the next omake before he just gives up on the whole thing."
"Okay, okay," Satsuki said as she did something equally Christmassy. "The next omake is called 'The Obligatory Beach Episode.' Man I wonder what that's about," Satsuki said as she rolled her eyes.
"The script says you're in it," Shirou said reading from a file as the scene switched.
xxx
It was truly a beautiful day. No clouds impeded the rays of the sun on their path down to the sand. A gentle breeze blew through the air breaking the heat of the day and changing something oppressive into something fresh and pleasant. Shirou sat upon a rocky outcrop a few metres out to see fishing whilst wearing a Hawaiian shirt, shorts and sandals. Arcueid was somewhere below interfering with his fish and Satsuki had created a massive sand castle.
"Why are we here anyway," Arcueid said as she surfaced immediately throwing a pair of fish towards her lover.
"We're here to do an omake," Shirou said. "I'm not sure why you're here. Didn't you opt out of all of this due to the fact that it's your birthday?"
"I never miss an opportunity to go to the beach Shirou," Arc said seriously. "But what I meant is. What is the point of this omake? Are we going to do standard things such as watermelon smashing, beauty contests and volleyball?"
"I hate watermelon, Arc," Shirou pointed out. "There are only two of you here and I'm sleeping with you so a beauty contest would not only be underwhelming but I'm obviously going to choose you. As for volleyball we can do that later, how does two play one judge sound?"
"We could have sex?" Arcueid said shamelessly gesturing at the beach, deserted except for their mutual friend who was now expanding the castle into a multi-layer town.
"Absolutely no way Arcueid," Shirou denied immediately. "You know that if he was going to do that the author would have to open up another chapter of 'After the Date'. Quite frankly I'm surprised he hasn't thrown in the towel already concerning the visible decline in quality of chapter. Thank the gods this is non-canon."
"I notice the fact that Satsuki was there wasn't a consideration," Arcueid pointed out.
"She's a big girl. I'm sure Sumire's taught her about the birds and the bees already," Shirou pointed out.
"Do you mean like personally," Arcueid started with a roguish smile.
"I… don't know," Shirou said fighting down a blush. "Enough, the reason I took us to this Greek island was because I heard from my sources that there had been sightings of Moby Dick."
"The whale you saw in chapter four?" Arcueid started.
"Okay I've had it," Shirou said pulling out his Desert Eagle from somewhere in his Hawaiian shirt. "The next person who breaks the fourth wall gets shot."
"I'll be good," Arcueid said.
"All I want is a picture," Shirou said. "I want to remember the first time I met Sumire."
"Sounds interesting, no actually it sounds boring," Arcueid replied. "So how are you going to get the shot?"
"Easily," Shirou stated. "I've been pumping prana into the water and as a god of water my prana should be extremely attractive to any oceanic creatures."
"You're a deity of freshwater though," Arcueid sensibly pointed out.
"Unless there's a deity of freshwater dumping prana in another place of the ocean then it won't make a difference," he replied.
"So then all we have to do is wait," Arcueid said.
"All we have to do is wait," Shirou stated as his eyes scanned the depths of the ocean.
Time passed. Satsuki's city became populated by small red crabs that she spawned from DNA she received from Sumire. Outside she spawned and army of black crabs and the she watched over them as the black crabs sieged the red's city occasionally intervening like a god over those two armies. Eventually the black crabs overtook the city and put the red crabs to death and reigned over the city in their place. That is until the black crabs fell into a civil war divided into the dark black shells and the light black shells. The civil war was hard fought but it displeased their god and she responded by obliterating the whole thought experiment.
"So how's it going with you," Satsuki said as she re-joined the other two. "Shirou I just found out being a god is pretty hard."
"Trust me when I say the worst part is dealing with other gods," Shirou said. "The word prick does not begin to describe the majority of them."
"What are you looking for anyway," their goddess in training friend said sitting down next to them on the rocks.
"Moby Dick, do you intend to grapple with him for much longer," Satsuki replied.
"Make him my own personal white whale?" Shirou asked. "No, it is a lovely day though."
"Are we giving up Shirou," Arcueid said.
"Pretty much," the magician responded immediately. "I have this dreaded feeling that as soon as I leave the whale will appear. I guess I just won't get my photo."
"If you want a photo, I think Sumire has one of him," Satsuki said. "I can look back home."
Shirou nodded and a smile lit up his face. "That would be great thank you." In one smooth movement he wrapped an arm around Arcueid and then the pair of them were gone in the next instant. Satsuki took one last look at the ocean before she also disappeared. A few minutes after they left the sea rippled for a moment as if something moved beneath it and then went calm.
xxx
"That ending was slightly disappointing," Shirou said.
"Isn't that the meaning of Christmas though," Satsuki said. "We give gifts away. Sometimes they're not perfect. Sometimes they're not even good. But if it can brighten up somebodies day then maybe it was worth it."
"Still I wouldn't expect any more omakes ever basically, or at least not for another two hundred and sixty thousand chapters," Shirou said. "Hopefully this story will be done before New Year. There are only a few more chapters left," he says basically repeating what the author has said dozens of times already."
"Merry Christmas everybody," Satsuki said deciding to end this chapter here.
"Have a good Yule," Shirou said concurring with Satsuki's statement.