Fate/first order derivative
Part I.3
⇒ restart: iteration 12, day 1, early night
Oh, that is it.
I march downstairs and out the door. I go around to the back alley and down the block. Sure enough, there's Rin and the red guy, fighting the blonde swordwoman. Shirou stands in the alley, yelling at them to stop.
I walk out from behind the corner. "Hey!"
They all turn towards me.
I throw out my arms. "What the hell is -"
"I've got it." Rin points at me. "Etwas. Rückwärts -"
⇒ restart: iteration 13, day 1, early night
I wait fifteen minutes, then I go and bang on Emiya's front door.
He answers. "Uh, yeah?"
"Hi," I say curtly. "Emiya. I live down the street."
"Oh, right. Tomo... nagi?"
"Tomonaga. Okay. I'm just going to come out and say it. What the fuck is going on?!"
He blinks. "What do you..."
"I know I've got no way to prove this, but I've been stuck in this time loop for days now."
"A what?"
"Time loop. Like, I've been repeating the same three days over and over again. Like Groundhog's Day. Have you ever seen Groundhog's Day?"
"Um, no. Sorry."
"You should. Bill Murray. Very funny. Anyway - it's been like this for me for over three weeks now. And it all starts with whatever just happened in your backyard."
"Oh," he says.
"So I need to know exactly what the hell just happened. Who that blonde with the sword is. How she can leap freaking buildings. What Tohsaka is doing here. And -"
I look up to see something hurdling towards me.
⇒ restart: iteration 14, day 1, early night
"- and NO! No!" I point up at the guy in the red jacket standing on Shirou's roof. "I see you! Fuck you! That hurts!" He pauses, a throwing knife in his hands. I turn back to Emiya. "And why is there a guy with knives on your roof?! And why does Rin keep killing me with German! Also, y'know... how."
He looks at me, then slowly slides open the door. "... you... want to come in?"
⇒ skip forward
I take in a deep breath and let it out. "Magic."
"Yep," Rin says.
I'm sitting at Shirou's kitchen table next to him and the blonde swordwoman, with Rin on the other side of us. Somewhere, I can hear a faucet dripping. "As in," I say, "actual, real, Harry Potter, I-cast-a-spell-at-the-darkness magic. Which is a thing."
"Yeah," Shirou says quietly.
"Something like that, yes." Rin grits her teeth. I think I hit a nerve. She's... very different in person than I would have imagined. She looks at Shirou. "You do realize that, under mage law, we should be getting rid of him, right?"
He shrugs. "Yeah, but..."
"You've tried," I say flatly. "A lot. You ever seen Groundhog's Day? All killing me does is reset -"
"I know what a time loop is, thanks." She tosses her hair. "And don't be stupid. I wouldn't kill you. I'd just erase your memory and leave you in a ditch somewhere."
I'm not quite sure how to respond. "That's... good to know?"
"Isn't it? Anyway, as I was saying - this week also marks the start of a competition here in Fuyuki. A battle to the death between seven Masters and seven Servants for the Holy Grail. Each Master is a mage, well-trained or -" She shoots a look at Shirou. "- otherwise, who summons the spirit of a legendary hero as their familiar. The woman over there is Saber, aka Baeber. Who is... for the moment... Shirou's Servant."
"I'm not actually called that second thing," Saber mutters.
I blink. "So... is that spelled B-A-E or B-A-B -"
"Yes. And up on the rooftop, we have my -" Her eyebrow twitches. "- Archer, Not Actually Satan."
"I TOLD YOU NOT TO CALL ME THAT, RIN!" a voice yells from above us.
"YOU GOT SOMETHING BETTER, LET ME KNOW!" Rin shouts back. She looks back to us. "He says he can't remember his real name."
"So... what's the point of all this?" Shirou asks. "Do we get something if we win, or... ?"
She shifts her eyes. "Nothing. Just the cup."
"So... what? It's like... the Wizard Murder Grand Prix?" I ask.
She shrugs. "I prefer Murder-Death-Kill, personally. But that's not bad."
Was that a reference? I feel like that might have been a reference. In any case, I look over at Saber. "And you guys are actually okay with this?"
"Technically," Saber answers, "we are all just the incarnations of Heroic Spirits, held eternally within the collective memory of humanity outside of space and time. When we are killed here, we simply return to the Akashic Records from whence we were summoned. As such, we cannot really die."
I took away what little I could from that. "So... you're ghosts?"
"Not exactly. We can interact with the physical world the same way humans do. Still, that's not entirely inaccurate."
Rin groans and puts her head down on the table. "God. Two complete noobs in the same night. I don't deserve this..." She raises her head. "Okay, to hell with it. A mess like this should be Kotomine's problem."
⇒ go to church
"Hmm." Father Kirei Kotomine strokes his chin. "Interesting. An issue like this has never come up before in the Grail's recorded history."
"You don't say," I reply. In the last few minutes, we'd been informed that the Murder-Death-Kill was in fact officially known as the Fifth Holy Grail War (though Rin refuses to call it that); that Rin had unaccountably failed to mention that the winning Master-Servant pair actually got a magical wish each, not just a trophy; and that this priest was strangely fascinated with the spelling of Shirou's last name. None of which really had anything to do with me, of course.
"You understand, of course," Father Kotomine says, "that under normal circumstances I would be required to alter your memories. The secrecy of the Grail ritual is considered an absolute priority."
"Yeah, I wouldn't bother." On the way over, I'd asked Rin what her memory altering spell sounded like. Sure enough, it was the same German words I'd heard before. So I guess memory wipes trigger the reset too, for some reason. Or they kill me outright somehow, a thing that Rin had assured me is impossible. Probably. "It'd just send me back to the start of the night, and then we'd have to have this conversation all over again."
"Hmm. Well... so long as you hold this knowledge in the strictest confidence, I suppose we can give you time to research a solution. I wish I had more to offer on that front, but frankly this sort of thing is well outside my organization's usual area of expertise."
"Thanks anyway. I appreciate it." I'm not entirely sure if I would have wanted his help anyway. Oh, the priest had been more than reasonable to me so far. All the same, though... something about this guy just strikes me as... off. And Rin seems to have some kind of beef with him.
I don't know, though. Maybe I'm just being xenophobic. I don't really know a whole lot about Christians, to be honest. According to Rin, the Secret Church - which I guess is somehow distinct from, yet simultaneously part of, the Normal Church? - officially moderates this whole shebang to keep it from going out of control. And anyway, that long black robe he's wearing would probably make anyone look sinister.
"Well... I guess that's it, then," I say. "Thanks again." I walk towards the exit, where Shirou and Rin are waiting.
"Go in peace," the priest calls out to us. "Especially you... Shirou Emiya."
Okay, yeah. Gonna circle on back to my first impression, thanks.
⇒ walk home
"So Saber isn't your name, it's the type of Servant you are," I say as we head through the foggy streets.
"Correct," Saber replies.
"Okay. So what is your real name?"
"That is something we Servants reveal only to our Masters."
"Huh. Why's that?"
"Because magic, that's why!" Rin snaps. "Gah, do you always ask this many questions?!" She's still in a bad mood.
"Well, sorry..." I shrug. "Look at it this way. Every one you answer now, I won't have to ask again in a few days."
Rin grumbles something about normies under her breath. I guess she'd really been hoping to get her hands on Baeber. No luck there, though. After talking to Kotomine, Shirou seems to have decided to stay in the game. He silently walks a pace or two in front of us. Brooding, I guess.
I turn back to Saber. "And Servant class - that's basically like an RPG job, right? Or a class in D&D?"
"I don't know what either of those things are."
"It's like... your class defines what you can do. So you're melee, Archer's all about ranged attacks... what about Hulk?"
"The what?"
"You know, the big huge musclehead that goes around with the little albino gir -"
I stop short.
I realize they haven't run into said musclehead yet. "Oh."
I realize where I am - right next to the graveyard. "Oohhhhhhh."
I slowly turn around.
The little albino girl and the giant appear out of the fog behind us.
I turn back to the group and offer a weak, apologetic smile. "Yeah... probably shoulda led with that."
AUTHOR'S NOTES
For those of you who've already read the previous chapter (I.2), I went back and added something new towards the end, since there wasn't really a good place for that bit in this part. Before anyone asks - yes, the prompt reads your comments, and is willing to consider suggestions.
Please consider supporting me at (patrick minus ick plus eon) dot com slash philopoemen!
