Fate/first order derivative
Part III.6
⇒ continue: iteration 29, day 8, morning
I take a deep breath. "Okay, seriously, Emiya. What the fuck."
Shirou shrugs and rubs the back of his head. Then he winces and stops, because I guess that still hurts. "I dunno."
"Dude, c'mon. I was there, okay? I saw it. I don't care how many Cure Lights she threw at you -" I gesture at Saber. "No one just sleeps off frigging brain damage, all right?!"
"I'm with the rando on this," Rin agrees, her mouth half full of English muffin. Seems she finally got out of the hospital late last night, thanks to a friendly visit from the family lawyer. Right now, we're all at Shirou's place. "Generally speaking, people die when they're killed."
I blink and glance at her. "Um... sorry, what?"
"I said, people usually die when they're mortally wounded." She shoots me a glare, as if daring me to push the matter further.
I'm good, though. "Well, okay, then." That makes a bit more sense.
⇒ whole lot less memeable tho
Shirou spreads his hands. "I don't know what you want me to say here. This shit just keeps happening to me, ever since Lancer stabbed me last week."
"So, what... the same spear that made me time loop, gave you a Wolverine healing factor?" I raise an eyebrow. "Not sure I'm seeing a common thread there."
I pause. "Mind you, if that is the case... kinda have to wonder which one of us got ripped off more."
"Yeah, I don't think you can call something that does that a 'weapon,' exactly," Rin says dryly. "Anyway, fascinating as this line of questioning is - what the hell are we gonna do about Caster?"
"Oh. Yeah." I scratch my head. "Guess this does look pretty bad for her..."
⇒ okay wait i'm missing something
⇒ how does this connect to caster
Oh, you didn't catch that last night?
⇒ skip back to: iteration 29, day 7, early night
Shit. Is he even breathing? I try to ignore the viscera scattered everywhere around me - not an easy task, FYI - and search for a pulse. At least Shirou looks intact. No organs or limbs missing. Just... you know... a fucking nodachi stabbed through his brainpan, like the sword in the fucking stone. (Which is kind of weird, come to think of it. I thought those weapons were supposed to be all about slashing, not piercing damage.)
"... Assassin?" Saber reaches out and puts her hand on the hilt. As soon as she touches it, the nodachi dissolves into blue dust.
Hole it made in Shirou's head is still there, though. Kinda glad it's too dark for me to see details.
⇒ skip forward
"So, yeah..." I hesitate. "... can we maybe call her? I mean, they've gotta have a phone up in the monastery somewhere, right?" In retrospect, probably should have been way more proactive about this situation. But it's been all ambiguous since Tuesday, you know?
"And give her a chance to - how'd you put it? 'Play us'?" Rin air-quotes. "Yeah, I don't think so."
"We should be cautious about jumping to conclusions here, Master," Archer says from the hallway. He leans just outside the door to Shirou's room. "For all we know, Assassin and his Master could have been acting on their own. For that matter, this whole scenario might be some sort of trick by an enemy mage, intended to put us in conflict with Caster's group."
"Hmmph." Rin crosses her arms. "I doubt the von Einzbern brat could pull something like that off... but that would be right up Kirei's alley. Smug bastard never even showed up yesterday..."
"What do you think, Saber?" Shirou asks.
"None of this feels right," Saber replies. She's been sitting quietly up until now. "The man I dueled on Monday possessed impeccable honor. Try as I might... I can't see him striking an opponent from behind, much less one without a sword."
"Maybe the Master used a Command Seal on him," Archer counters. "Or maybe - and I'm just spitballing here - fighting someone once isn't enough to give you a sense of their entire character."
Saber doesn't say anything. She just looks away.
I look around the room. "Kinda sounds like we need more information."
"Buh. Fine!" Rin throws up her hands. "I'll send out the owls today while we're at school. I hope you realize this goes completely against the entire spirit of the Murder-Death-Kill. I haven't gotten to maim or blow up anything all week thanks to this bullshit."
⇒ skip forward
"Is it just me," I ask Shirou at lunch, "or is attendance kinda on the lean side today?"
"It's not just you," he says.
We're sitting in his homeroom this time. (Rin isn't with us. She mumbled something about expanding the search radius and ran off.) Half of the class seems to be out. Mine's even worse off - we're down two-thirds and three teachers.
"Yeah..." I rub the back of my head. Clearly, this situation should be setting off all kinds of warning bells in my head. Problem is, damned if I know for what, exactly.
⇒ skip forward
So I figured the plan was for us to meet back up for a strategy meeting tonight. Instead, Rin leaves this hurriedly scribbled note in Shirou's locker, saying she needs to check into something and she'll catch up with us later. Needless to say, this strikes me as the opposite of a good idea - but at this point, there's nothing for us to do but trust her and Archer to watch their own backs. (Cell phones. Cell phones and GPS trackers. Need to remember that for next time.)
Instead, I wind up going home and sitting down with a kanji dictionary to try and figure out Rider's final message. I mean, was she trying to point us (or whoever she was trying to reach) in the direction of a certain vista or a particular scenic point? Did she intend to use one of the meanings of that character in Chinese, of which there are like five billion plus a surname? In terms of words she could've been trying to write, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and assume she didn't use her dying breath to convey information about a pachinko prize or Nestorianism (whatever the hell that is.)
In short, I'm just spinning my wheels when I hear a loud dull THUMP from somewhere nearby and the entire house shakes like a leaf.
⇒ that sounds less than good
I look out of my window and see a huge cloud of ash rising up above Emiya's house. Oh, boy.
⇒ follow standard procedure
First, grab coat. Second, run outside and down street. Third, notice the ash cloud's hanging over the backyard. Fourth, find the front door unlocked. Fifth, run through house and into the back -
"SHIROU!" I hear Saber roaring his name long before I set eyes on her. "SHIROU!" I finally get out back and find her tearing madly through the remains of the storehouse. The whole tool shed's been completely reduced to rubble. As I arrive, she turns and raises her sword in my direction.
"It's me! It's me!" I raise my hands. "What happened?!"
"I don't know!" She looks around wildly. I can see tears forming in her eyes. "He was practicing, I was in the dojo - I didn't sense anything! No attack! No magic! That shouldn't even be -"
Saber vanishes into thin air. Poof.
I just stand there alone for a moment, no sound except for the rubble settling. Did... did she just die? Is that what happens when they run out of mana? Where the fuck was all that purple dissolve-y bullshit like when Rider died?! Do other Servants not get -
⇒ calm down
⇒ look around you
Okay, okay, okay. I take a deep breath... then stop, because the air is still choked with dust. I look around. We've got the debris from the flattened storehouse, including what's left of its tiled roof and the shattered remains of its stone walls. We've got the yard. We've got the dojo. We've got the house.
... we've got the bright blue light coming from around the side of the house. A light that looks a lot like...
"No way." I break into a jog. "No freaking way."
I reach the side of the house. I turn the corner.
Shirou lies on his back in the midst of some shrubs. He's covered in stone dust and pretty hideous-looking burns, but he otherwise looks intact. Saber kneels at his side, her healing hands on at full blast, her brow furrowed in concentration. (Shirou's hand seems to be down another Command Seal... I guess he used it to summon her? And now she's using whatever mana's left over to cast some kind of Mega Super Cure.)
Emiya's eyes focus on me. "... ow," he manages to whisper in a strangled voice.
I turn back and look at the ruins of the storehouse. If I'm remembering right, there weren't any doors or windows on that side of the building. Assuming the explosion came from inside, the only way Shirou could've been blown over here is straight through the wall.
Any way that I look at it... Emiya should be salsa right now.
I sit down on the ground next to them. "Right," I say. "First thing tomorrow, we're checking you for flight, super-strength and heat vision. And also, it's official - magic spear totally ripped me off."
Soon after that, the police and fire department arrive. It turns into this whole thing.
⇒ skip to: iteration 29, day 9, morning
"Tom? Tom!"
"Bluurrghhwha?" I blink groggily and automatically fish my glasses off of the shelf next to my bed. Dammit. Mom even said I could sleep in after being up half the night answering the cops' dumb questions over and over...
Oh, wait. That's not Mom. That's Saber.
Oh, shit, that's not Mom, that's Saber! I immediately sit up and wrap the covers around my lower body. "Saber, what the hell -"
"Shirou's gone." Saber stands at the end of my bed in full armor. (I see the window open behind her. I guess she somehow managed to open it from the outside?... you know what, I'm not even going to bother questioning it.)
"What do you mean, gone?" I ask. "Did they take him to the hospital or..."
"No, the ambulance workers cleared him last night." Saber's back to doing her whole stoic thing, but I can tell she's worried. "But when I went to check on him this morning, he wasn't in his room. No note. No signs of a struggle. I haven't been able to find him anywhere.
"Also... there's something outside that you need to see."
"Wha - can't you just tell me?"
"You should really see for yourself," Saber repeats. She gestures towards the window.
I reluctantly get out of bed and trudge over to the window, my blanket dragging on the floor behind me. I look outside.
I see the large island floating placidly in the sky, a few thousand meters or so over the center of town.
"... oh."
AUTHOR'S NOTES
Re: Trapdere's comment from August 16 about Tom's wall socket anecdote - 'blown halfway across the room' is just a colloquialism. Tom is describing an exaggerated startle reflex amplified by involuntary muscle spasms, all of which can happen in response to an electric shock. To put it another way, the electricity made him throw himself across the room, rather than physically propelling him in some way itself. I apologize if my phrasing here was too imprecise for certain readers' tastes.
(It goes without saying that Tom was extremely lucky during this incident, since the current going through a wall socket is more than enough to induce ventricular fibrillation/sudden cardiac death... even if Japanese outlets do carry slightly less voltage than North American ones.)
