EDIT: Fixed the order of the names Gudao introduces himself with, sorry for the confusion.
Chapter 2:
Shirou took a moment to process the word, and blinked. "Meep?"
The girl blinked, her face going blank for the briefest of instances before she frantically nodded, shooting up onto her feet spryly. "I said yes, I'm definitely, positively, one hundred and twenty percent your Master!" She said quickly. "I'm Fujimaru Gabrielle, but, uh, you can call me Gabby, if you want."
Shirou took the briefest of moments to look her over. A white uniform with black trimmings fit snugly over her body, paired with a knee-length black skirt. The colour of her hair and eyes matched his, strangely enough.
Shirou nodded, her very emphatic statement confirmed by feeling a flow of prana coming from—
Shirou's eyes flickered behind Gabby to look at a boy who had stopped in place just as he had taken a step towards him. He was dressed similarly to Gabby, his blue eyes bright, black hair mussed and distinctly juvenile. A girl with short purple hair positioned herself protectively in front of the boy, a giant shield held off to her side but clearly ready to use it.
Without even thinking about it, Shirou's eyes Structurally Analyzed and recorded that shield—Sir Galahad's shield, the Round Table itself incarnate—planting it into the soil of that endless forest of swords.
Sir Galahad was a woman? Shirou thought in surprise, but as he glanced over the girl's soft features a thought cleared away his skepticism quickly. Well, I suppose if Saber wasn't really a guy…He turned his attention back to the boy, back to what had originally shocked him.
There was a flow of prana coming from him just like the one coming over from Gabrielle.
"Two masters with multiple Servants?" He muttered.
The boy smiled, easygoing and cheerful. "Welcome to Chaldea," he said. "I'm Fujimaru Ritsuka. And you are?"
Chaldea? My Masters are related? And they don't know who I am, their own Servant?
Shirou took a small breath and drew upon old lessons of etiquette that had been drilled into him by Saber almost a decade ago, helping him shove his questions aside until later. "The circumstances of my summoning were unusual." He said calmly. "You were to have summoned Sengo Muramasa with my body as his vessel, but he decided I would fulfill his dream better than he could. This body's name—my name—is Shirou Emiya."
He was expecting blank looks and confusion at having never heard of him.
"EMIYA?!"
Gabby stared at him, looking as startled as he felt. "Are you familiar with my...legend, Master?" He asked.
She narrowed her eyes and stared at his features. "He does kind of look like him," she muttered. "Does being a Servant run in the family or something?"
Shirou felt all sorts of alarm bells ringing in his head. "By him, Master, do you mean a tanned Archer with short white hair dressed in red?" He asked, tense. He had no desire to see that man again, much less repeat their fight.
Her eyes snap back open. "I, uh, take it you don't like him all that much?"
It doesn't sound as if he's Gabby's enemy. And the truth is bound to come up eventually, reasoned Shirou, relaxing. Best to get it out now. "I cannot hate myself for making choices I would have made under different circumstances," Shirou said with a shrug.
"Yourself?" A long moment. "Wait, yourself?!"
"EMIYA is a Shirou from a different timeline," said Ritsuka. Far too quickly, noted Shirou even as he nodded towards his Master. Perhaps he's seen this happen before. "But still, you two don't look so…"
Shirou smiled at the Master, shifting his pale shroud over his bare chest and running a hand through his hair. "Yes," he said simply. They really are talking about Archer as if they know him well, he noted. This Grail War is raising further questions the more I learn about it. "You can call me just Shirou though, for convenience's sake."
"Well, Shirou, I've got another question for you." Ritsuka's expression turned intense. Shirou nodded gravely, gesturing for him to continue. "Can you cook as well as EMIYA?"
He felt Gabby staring a hole into the side of his head, waiting for an answer.
It seems my reputation has preceded me. "I make no promises, Master," said Shirou confidently. "It has been some time since I've last been in a kitchen, but I'm confident the knowledge will come back easily."
Ritsuka closed his eyes and let out a sigh, gazing towards the heavens in contentment and silence. Sir Galahad seemed to feel the same way.
Gabby wiped the corner of her mouth with a sleeve.
Shirou let them be for a moment before asking, "If I may ask though, is this girl truly your…other Servant?" He asked indicating the girl with the shield.
Who came back to herself quickly and gave him a short bow. Well, she's polite. As expected of a Knight of the Round. "Mashu Kyrielight, Servant Shielder. It's a pleasure to meet you, Shirou."
"Shielder?" Shirou asked. "I guess it explains the shield, but I've never heard of that class." She didn't introduce herself as Sir Galahad?
"I can explain a few things while we're walking, if that's okay with you?" asked Ritsuka, gesturing towards a door Shirou had not noticed before.
Shirou shrugged. "Certainly, Master."
He followed as Ritsuka headed toward and opened the door by waving his hand in front of a sensor. "Mashu is a Demi-Servant, like you actually," – That explains why she didn't introduce herself as Galahad – "And her unique circumstances gave her a unique classification as a Servant. Speaking of which, if you were originally the vessel of Sengo Muramasa, that means you're a Saber yourself, right?"
The four of them had stepped out into an empty, brightly lit hallway. His boots hardly made a noise against whatever material the floor was made of.
Shirou briefly entertained the possibility of simply nodding but decided to speak up. His Masters seemed trustworthy enough, and in his case his Servant class was more of a suggestion than a rule. "Not quite. Sengo Muramasa would have been a powerful Saber, despite what my ancestor thought of himself, had he completely possessed my body."
"Ancestor?" the girl, Mashu, asked quickly, wonderingly.
Shirou nodded. "A distant one."
"Huh," Gabby said thoughtfully, staring at him. "You said earlier that the reason he didn't possess entirely was because he thought you could fulfill his wish better than he could. Was that part of the reason why he thought that?" She suddenly blinked, realizing she was staring. "Oh, uh, I mean, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to."
Shirou shook his head. "It isn't a big deal. Muramasa-sensei wished for a worthy successor to his name, one that would not repeat the same mistakes he made." Shirou paused a moment and continued in a more subdued voice. "In me he saw his wish fulfilled. He was truly a good man, regardless of what his legacy said about him."
"I believe you Shirou!" Gabby said quickly.
He smiled briefly, but widely, at her. "Thank you."
She cleared her throat loudly, tugging at her collar. "So, what is your class, anywho?"
"I am a Dual Class Servant," said Shirou. "A Saber from the power Muramasa-sensei left me, and a Caster from my own experiences."
He looked at the shocked faces around him, and said quickly, "Though, if you know anything about EMIYA's magic, you should know my talents as a Caster are extremely limited due to my Reality Marble."
"That's still kickass!" said Gabby, shooting a smirk at her brother, who rolled his eyes.
"For once, I'm in total agreement with Gabby," said Ritsuka dryly.
"Thank you, Master" said Shirou.
"My friends, and most of my Servants are my friends, call me Gudao," Ritsuka said with a smile.
All your Servants? Shirou returned the smile, tinged with confusion. "Why not Ritsuka?"
They came up to a door with an intricately shaped number seven hanging on the wall beside it. Shirou could feel the presence of a Servant inside, but given how they seemed ubiquitous in Chaldea, he assumed this must have been the Servant's lodging. Ritsuka shrugged at the question and knocked on the door. It slid open almost instantaneously. "The name stuck a long time ago," he said simply, stepping into the room.
Shirou followed with a small smile. He decided he liked both Gudao and Gabby.
What struck him first about the room was the lighting. Soft blue, the room was only lit up by the computer screens that seemed to take up the entirety of the far wall, with all kinds of text scrawling continuously across from left to right. The second was the clutter: Shirou took care not to step on a few errant cylindrical cases and books that were stacked haphazardly or simply lying around on the ground as he followed his Masters.
In the center of it all a simple wooden desk seemed to squat, with how low to the ground it was. It had a large monitor sitting on top of it, a boy with short blue hair sitting at the desk, typing upon a floating keyboard, made of what appeared to be light, furiously. A lab coat was draped over his suit with a bowtie matching the color of his hair snugly tied to his collar. A pair of large headphones was plugged into a tablet floating next to the keyboard and light reflected off the thick-rimmed glasses the boy wore.
Gudao waved with a bright smile. The boy did not look up. He turned to Shirou and shrugged, content to wait as there was nothing he could do.
"Hey Andy!" Gabby was under no such inhibition it seemed. "We got a new friend here for you!"
The boy looked up irritably, taking them in. The keyboard disappeared with a low thrum and his sharp blue eyes settled on Shirou. His gaze made Shirou feel as if he were the subject of Structural Analysis.
In strict baritone voice, far too old to rightly belong to a child, he snapped, "I have told you not to call me that before, Master. Despite all appearances to the contrary, I am a fully-grown adult." And then, "Who are you?" to Shirou.
"I'm Shirou Emiya," the man in question said politely. "Who are you?"
"I see. Hans Christian Andersen." He pushed away from the desk and with practised motions made his way through the clutter and planted himself in front of Shirou. The writer's head barely came up to Shirou's chest. "A pleasure. I truly hope your culinary skills rival that of your alternate self's." Hans held out a small but wrinkled hand, which Shirou shook bemusedly. He figured that one out quickly as well.
"I'll leave him in your capable hands, Hans," said Gudao with a small bow. "I have to go do some paperwork," he said to Shirou apologetically. "Before, I would explain to the newer Servants myself what we do here in Chaldea but then towards the end of Orleans, well...things just got too busy for Da Vinci and Doctor Roman to handle."
Leonardo Da Vinci, Hans Christian Andersen, and Sir Galahad all in one place at the same time. Shirou almost laughed at the absurdity of it all before remembering how bizarre the Fifth Holy Grail War had been.
Gudao mistook Shirou's look of quiet amusement for something else. "You'll meet them later, but for now Hans will explain what Chaldea is and answer any questions you might have. Probably a lot better than I ever could," he said the last part quietly. At Shirou's nod, Gudao made his way out the door, with Mashu taking a moment to wave quietly to Hans and look once more at Shirou before leaving.
"See you later Shirou!" chirped Gabby as she followed them out. He heard her say, "So where's Fou off to anyhow?" before the door slid closed.
"Indeed," the man in the shape of a boy drawled, as if to himself. Shirou looked curiously at the writer and got a familiar kind of smirk that said he was missing something obvious and the wearer of said smirk wasn't going to tell what it was. "So, onto dry exposition? No, wait a moment, such a story-telling and inquiry should not be conducted in such a poor lighting."
Hans clapped his hands and the ceiling lights flickered on, the sudden illumination making Shirou blink. The room did not seem quite so large now.
"I enjoy the feeling of being in a larger space, even it is simply a self-inflicted illusion," Hans said blandly, walking over to his desk once more. "As well, I work best in dim lighting."
"You read people well," noted Shirou.
"I always have," said Hans primly, picking up a stack of books sitting on top of a chair and setting it aside. "Come and sit. I will tell you the essential parts you have to know about Chaldea first, then you can ask your questions."
Shirou sat upon the indicated chair. His knees were drawn almost uncomfortably close together.
"Apologies," said Hans. "If you'll stand up a moment?"
Shirou did so. Hans waved a hand and a few hardcover books stacked themselves under the chair, raising it higher.
"Thank you," said Shirou gratefully.
"Polite. It was nothing, I have no use for simple pictures of automobiles. No spirit of life in them, you see," said Hans with a shrug, drawing up his own chair and sitting across the desk from Shirou. His feet did not reach the floor. "This story begins with a boy waking up alone in a hallway to the sensation of something wet brushing against his cheek..."
Hans Christian Andersen knew people better than they knew themselves. Similarly, he knew himself far better than he was comfortable with. Both were reasons why he was so pessimistic and cynical, traits that had not endeared him to some other residents of Chaldea. In life, he had struggled to keep that understanding to himself, knowing that sometimes people did not wish to confront the sides of themselves they had not known existed or even kept secret deliberately.
It was only human to shy away from your own flaws, whether it be in spirit, wisdom, intelligence, or body. It was a mark of distinction if one embraced their flaws and made them truly a part of who they were. Such people were rare when considering the whole of humanity, but one of the more gratifying parts of being summoned to Chaldea was meeting one of these people every other door you opened and stuck your head into.
Such was this incarnation of EMIYA, or Shirou, who sat quietly, mulling over the information he had been given.
Hans had been reading Shirou from the moment he had been alerted to his presence. He did that to all newer Servants, but this man was one of the more interesting ones.
The man moved with a grace that spoke of having no illusions as to where his place in the world was, and knew quite well exactly where that place was at all times. It was a gait that spoke simultaneously of great dignity and great humility, paradoxical as such a notion was. Perhaps the man's unique form of magecraft - Tracing, was it? - was responsible for such a distorted self-image.
Or perhaps indicative of it? After all, one can only hold so many Noble Phantasms before they lost much of their majesty, right?
Hans could also tell Shirou was not a thinker by nature. Not unintelligent at all, simply incapable of making certain intuitive leaps that other broader-thinking minds would have easily made, like King Artoria, Jeanne D'Arc, or even Gudao. It was like someone had taught Shirou how to go through the motions on how to collect and collate information rather than having learned for himself. His questions were clinical, impersonal, revealing nothing of what kind of information he could have personally wanted to know.
Yet the man's personality was as far from that as possible. During tale Hans had woven, Shirou had expressed a warmth and compassion for his fellow man that would have baffled Hans had he not met Saints like Jeanne and Martha beforehand.
Though he never asked after them, Shirou winced every time someone in Han's recollection was hurt, a well-worn expression that belied a deeper pain Shirou had been carrying for a long time.
Simply put, the man who taught Shirou how to interact with others was someone who was markedly different from him in terms of personality, but similar enough in terms of ideals or principles that Shirou's compassion had not been quashed under that tutelage.
Hans thought he knew who that man was, but did not feel the need to confirm it aloud.
"So, how many Servants have you summoned to Chaldea in all?" Asked Shirou finally.
It was a fair question and not entirely unexpected given how Shirou had moments ago been concerned with the differences between the Fuyuki system and Chaldea's.
"Counting you, we have fifty-eight," said Hans, nodding at Shirou's shocked expression. "Indeed it is quite the motley collection of personalities we have here in Chaldea. Luckily we have practically an entire mountain to ourselves, so housing and living space is no issue."
Hans paused for a moment, and chuckled, unable to resist elucidating further on the situation. He had no idea the significance of the words he was about to say.
"Technically we have fifty-six discrete Servants," he said cheerfully, "Considering how both you and Artoria have doppelgangers."
Shirou went absolutely still. "Artoria?" He said in a hoarse whisper.
Hans stared a moment at Shirou's face.
He had seen that expression before once, and only once before, in a mirror as a child. That day he had received a letter from his first love, a letter undoubtedly full of sweet nothings, a letter that remained unopened even up until he had it clutched in his hand upon his death bed.
He could do only one thing in the face of that look.
Hans Christian Andersen stood up and walked out of the room. Standing just outside the doorway, silhouetted against the hallway light, he looked back at Shirou and cleared his throat.
"Do you not seek an audience with a King?" He asked.
Shirou followed the fairy tale writer, his hands shaking, out into the hallway.
Shirou Emiya (Sengo Muramasa)
Class(es): Saber/Caster
Gender: Male
Height/Weight: 187 cm, 78 kg
Alignment: Neutral Good
Master(s): Ritsuka 'Gudao' Fujimaru, Gabrielle 'Gabby, not Gudako!' Fujimaru
Parameters:
Strength: D ~ C+
Endurance: D ~ C+
Agility: C ~ B
Mana: B ~ A+
Luck: E
Noble Phantasm: ?S?W?O?R?D?
Class Abilities:
Magic Resistance: B
Territory Creation: E++
Item Creation: E – A
The complete form of Shirou Emiya as a Magus—not quite. Chosen as a vessel for the Forger of Demon Blades just before he reached the Root of all human knowledge, he was bestowed some of Sengo Muramasa's power as a Saber class, while he himself qualifies as a Caster due to the amount of time he spent practicing and advancing his craft while he was in his Reality Marble. Yet though he has reached the point where he could attain a True Magic, his abilities were not forged by battle as a certain other Archer's were, making most of what he has practiced less useful in a fight. His stats are highly variable due the degree of Reinforcement he can use, as well as a certain other state he can enter to provide a significant boost to his capabilities.
He possesses his original personality in full due to Muramasa's wish. Yet some parts of Muramasa's personality remain.
A/N
Peer pressure's a bitch.
And so am I for continuing a one-shot I had in no way planned on continuing.
Seriously, why do people like this fic so much?
Can't be my writing. I suck at that stuff.
But here we are. Setting up the next chapter to be juicy and introducing one of my favorite Servants.
I grailed Hans to level 80 with no regrets, but also mostly with no Waver or any other SSR Servant to speak of. But who needs or even wants that absurdly broken character anyways?
Certainly not me...
As I wrote this chapter I started playing JP G/O, to try to get ahead in the story and get a rough gist of what's happening.
Why have I done this? I can't even read Japanese.
It's getting difficult to concentrate on anything when Merlin and Artoria Alter are on rate-up...
Send help, preferably in the form of summoning tickets and saint quartz. Either is fine, I just need that cock wizard to come already!
...Next time we see a promise made at dawn fulfilled.