We're off to see the Wizard! The wonderful Wizard of... the Cemetary?
*Music comes to a screeching halt*
Ahem. I prefer to be called, THE NECROMANCER!
*Crash of Thunder*
Look upon my works ye mighty, and despair. For this is what I have wasted my time on for the last few months, and it is in the... CEMETERY!
To be re-written, Soon. (Tm)
"And you are absolutely sure he is not going to return this time?" Mousse asked quietly as he looked over his shoulder at the closed back door to the Neko Hanten.
"Of course not, he's just a plain five year old now, so long as you did your part correctly that is."
The mostly blind amazon snorted. "Please, not even dying could bring back his memories after what I did."
"Good. I don't know what town I left him in, but I handed him off to this old foreigner."
Mousse frowned at his fellow conspirator's words. "Foreigner?"
Ryoga chuckled at the pessimistic tone in his erstwhile friend. "Yeah, real creepy guy. Said he had the perfect place for Ranma, and let me tell you, the laughter after he I handed him over," the lost boy shivered. "It makes even that Kodachi chick's laugh seem nice."
The pair paused and shared pain-filled grimaces. Both had met the female, and arguably far more dangerous and insane, Kuno sibling during the course of a usual day in Nerima. Suffice to say, neither one cared to speak of what happened during those few hours in which they were at her mercy. Mousse, rubbed his jaw as something occurred to him.
"Did he tell you his name?"
"Uhh," Ryoga narrowed his eyes in thought. " I dunno, Kiss El Wretched Swein Organ or something?" He paused as his mind took his words and made yet another incorrect assumption.
"I'm not sure why, but that name leaves me feeling horribly afraid of him catching me in my cursed form. I wonder why?"
Elsewhere in Japan, the wizard known to most as the Kaleidoscope paused for a moment, and stared out across the endless expanse of time and space. "Strange," he murmured to himself. "For some reason I feel oddly vindicated for leaving someone with a pair of terrible curses that would last for several centuries."
He waited a few moments more as he looked through the infinite possibilities of everything before turning away with a shrug. "Oh well, I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later. Now, " his mouth curled into a bittersweet grin as he looked at the unconscious body in his hands. "As for you, I know that you will suffer greatly, but I hope that you will show me something truly magnificent."
The ground shuddered and the old man, so ancient that he had watched as time claimed even stars, looked up and watched as the sky blazed. He gently set the boy down on the ground. It didn't matter if he was comfortable, he'd be elsewhere soon enough. The Kaleidoscope did pause to enact one last piece of magic though. It was, in a way, a gift, repayment for what his experiment would cost the boy.
He began to step away, his form already fading into nothingness, and stopped for a moment. He spared the pig-tailed five-year-old one last glance before nodding his head and continuing on. His voice quietly rose from empty air like a ghostly echo as he vanished entirely. "Good luck my boy, you'll need it."
Fire. Everything around him was ablaze with towering flames. Earth and sky met in a sea of fire, the flames consuming everything in their path, the heat baking people alive in the shelter they found, and the smoke cloying and choking those that evaded the first two. If someone had painted Hell, and shown it to him, the boy once known as Ranma Saotome would have laughed at them. Either that or punched them for ever thinking that their work could compare to what he had suffered. No mortal image, no false representation could ever come close to the infernal hell-scape he walked through.
It wasn't even the heat that truly impacted him; in fact the heat barely even phased him, the naked flames licking his body almost tenderly, as if they were lovers in the midst of a midnight tryst. No, what impacted him the worst was the sound. The screams of the dead and dying rose and fell to the tune of a monstrous symphony of the damned, the roar of the flames and thunder of collapsing buildings playing counterpoint to the sometimes sharp shrieks, the sometimes soft whimpers and moans. All the while a great black sphere hung low in the sky, the demonic moon the sole observer to the entire sequence of events.
He didn't know where he was, not that it would have made a difference as all recognizable landmarks had been torn and burned away, but he felt as if he should. That wasn't the only piece of knowledge that he lacked, and by no means was it the greatest; he couldn't even remember his own name, and as he forced himself to continue onwards, he felt as if he could remember less and less. He could feel the fire reaching within him, infusing him with it's essence, changing him, and burning away everything else.
He was sure that when he had awoken he had known how to do truly fantastical things, like algebra - badly mind you - or speak English; at least, that's what he thought he remembered. He didn't know if the memory of him knowing those things was true or not, or even if he was simply remembering a dream in which he had imagined that he could do such things. He froze for a moment, his mind whirling as it tried to comprehend concepts that it no longer possessed the context to fully understand, context alone without ideas, and simple voids of all thought and knowledge. No, it was better if he did not try to focus to hard on remembering those things, living was much more important.
Right foot, he thought to himself, left foot, his eyes were fixed at some point beyond seeing, right foot, only the steady recitation of steps kept himself sane, kept himself moving. Left foot, he couldn't stop, right foot, to stop would be to accept his own defeat, left foot, he would never lose.
Right foot, strange thought, a memory? A feeling? Left foot, I never lose. It feels strange, right foot, it feels... right. Left foot. Ever onwards.
One foot in front of the other, one leg up, the other down; a steady rhythm in tune with the beating of his heart. His eyes searched the scorched skies above, curious as to what gods stared down from on high. He wondered if they were mocking him, forcing him to live where all others died around him; wondering just what he had done to deserve such a fate, or if they were just so cold and callous as to have done this to him all for their sick and twisted amusement.
He shrugged it off and continued his endless chant. There was no point in cursing the gods; they obviously did not listen, and spending time on something pointless like that would surely waste was little life he was sure he had left. No, he could only rely on himself. His eyes turned from the indifferent and harsh Heavens to the all-consuming conflagration he found himself trapped in.
As he strode through the devastation, he felt the initial horror that had choked his mind from he had awoken slowly become muted, the pain dull and blurred. He watched as friends fought to save friends, only to die together; families battling to stay with each other, only to be torn apart and turned to ash that made the black haired boy cough as it lodged in his throat. He wanted - needed - to spit, but he dared not waste what little water he had left in his body. Instead he simply choked it down and continued on.
Nothing fazed him anymore, not even the sight of men and women popping like grapes as building collapsed over top of them, their deaths - just as their lives - had long since lost any meaning. Even the disgust and self-hatred he had felt when his tongue had darted out to lap up some of the blood that had landed on his face had disappeared. The taste of copper only bothered him for a moment, before his mind forced that thought to the side in favour of trying to lick up as much liquid as possible in an attempt to extend his certainly limited lifespan. He could feel the blood of the innocent soaking his skin and hair, staining him a morbid crimson that quickly dried into a dark red brown.
He turned his head and winced as the dried blood that he hadn't gotten rid of cracked and tore at his skin. He ignored the all-too-brief sensation of pain that flitted across his senses and cocked his head to the side in curiosity. From his position in, to his best guess, the middle of what used to be a street before the heat had melted the asphalt and turned the roadway into a bubbling river of molten rock and tar, he could see a strange figure perched atop the roof of a nearby building. The figure was too far away for the boy too make out any definite features, but he could tell that the figure was tall, and even from such a distance possessed an undefinable presence that teased at the edges of his senses. A loud crack echoed in his ear and he whirled around, only to find that it was the glass of a nearby house that had shattered under the immense heat, and when he turned back the figure had vanished.
Dead eyes stared blankly at the empty rooftop for a moment, as if daring the world to prove that it wasn't so uncaring, so heartless as to dangle a single thread of hope in front of him, only to turn into an illusion. Nothing changed, and the boy trembled as focused his eyes on the ground. His entire body shook and he clenched his hands into fists so tight his nails dug into his palms and drew blood. He didn't notice as his blood literally steamed away in the heat, didn't notice the wind that had begun to swirl around him, or the brilliant blue glow that seemed to suffused her body.
His face turned once more towards the sky, and if there had been anyone present to see it, they would have flinched at the iron in those eyes, the deep sapphire blue melted down and transmuted into shining golden steel. They weren't the eyes of a child, forced into a horror story created from the machinations of mortal men; they were the eyes of warrior, a killer, a knight, an assassin, a warlord, a King.
But there was no-one there, and the sight that could have changed a future yet set to be went unseen. The boy raised his hand in defiance to the world that dared try to beat him down, to tear him apart, to defeat him. He shook his fist at the gods who watched him and everyone else suffer and die from on high. His body shook so heavily that it seemed as if he was almost vibrating, and his jaw slowly opened.
The roar that tore itself - bloody and violent like a great and terrible demon from the deepest abyss of Gehenna - out of his throat, shook the world to its very core.
The boy couldn't remember what happened next, only a half-forgotten memory of warmth, and a flash of blue and gold. The echo of rushed footsteps on torn ground. A glimpse of a man's face marred by tears of joy at the sight of his barely surviving body. Not his mind though, his mind was almost all gone by that point. From out of the corners of his eyes he caught a glimmer of something, a sight strange and foreign that defied description, and then a moment later it was gone, and above him stood a man with tears running freely down his face, and yet even for the great sadness filling his eyes he still seemed to be happy.
He felt, odd. A strange sensation welled up within him. Curiosity? Was that what he felt? He wasn't sure, but it seemed to fit. He felt curious, why did the man seem so happy? He wondered if it was because the man had saved him, and if he did the same, would he be as happy? A stray thought struck him, and for a moment he wondered instead if saving someone made someone happy, then being strong enough to protect them from needing to be saved would be even better. He wondered, that stray thought lingering long enough to leave seeds that would not bear fruit for years to come, and fell to darkness.
And in that darkness, he found something. A silver wisp of light, moving through him and touching him, illuminating him even as that same touch tainted him with shadows. A voice, nothing more than an echo, ethereal and beautiful reached out and calmed him. The shadows were familiar to him, and he held no fear for them. He understood, at some subconscious level, that they were what had sustained him through the fire, what had shielded him from the dangers he had faced.
When he awoke again, it was to the sound of muttered voices and the mechanical chant of machines monitoring his health. He didn't bother opening his eyes, there was no need when he already knew where he was, though he didn't know how he knew. It was obviously a hospital, though he couldn't remember a time when he had ever been in one, yet he somehow knew that he had visited them before.
The voices spoke in hushed whispers, curious, frightened, confused, and oddly enough, concerned. He tried to strain his ears and he felt something inside him respond to his desires, a strange and unearthly chill running through his veins and freezing his blood, and then suddenly the voices snapped into focus, as if they were standing only a foot away from him.
"How is he? Is he healing properly?"
The boy heard the sound of rustling papers as the other man, probably the doctor or nurse in charge of his health, paged through what was most likely his medical report.
"Well, there's the problem. You said you brought him in from Fuyuki?" The boy cocked his head slightly to the side. Fuyuki? Was that where he was from? It was possible he supposed.
"I found him less than a kilometre from where the police have designated ground zero, why?"
"Because he's completely healthy. No, that's not quite right either. He's beyond healthy, in fact his body is bordering on being inhuman. The disaster he just lived through should have left lasting and possibly crippling injuries, and yet there isn't a mark on his body that isn't years old already." There was a pause as the doctor tried to put his thoughts into words. "His body, it's beyond anything I ever seen in over three decades as a doctor, hell, it's beyond even the most outlandish cases we get presented during medical school! His musculature is incredibly well developed, and from what I can tell from preliminary examination, it seems to be miles more efficient than normal muscle tissue for even a professional athlete. The same can be said about pretty much every single part of the rest of his body; not an hour after being dosed with enough anesthetics to render a grown man comatose his blood was testing as being completely clean, we've had to hook his IV up to a constant high concentration dosage mixed with his water supply, and up until about an hour ago even his oxygen supply was being mixed with halothane and ketamine to keep him under."
The doctor paused again, and the boy could hear him inhale deeply before continuing, his voice much calmer. "If someone had presented me the data just on its own, I would have probably called them out for trying pull some strange joke on me, but after having seen the boy myself... I don't know what to think. As it stands, once he wakes up he'll likely be discharged to make room for another patient, and considering we don't know his name he'll probably go to one of the orphanages until we can track down some family of his. Considering no-one has claimed to have been searching for him here or at any of the other hospitals, it's likely that his family perished in the fire as well."
Once again the voices fell silent and no amount of straining garnered the boy further clues. He didn't want to think about the fire, but he couldn't help but think that he was sure his family hadn't been anywhere near it, though couldn't for the life of him figure out why he thought so. After a few minutes he was just about ready to give it up and go back to sleep when the second voice spoke up again.
"You said that he was expected to wake up soon; is it alright if I stay a little while and talk to him?"
The doctor sighed. "So long as I'm there I think it should be alright. But just for a short while, and if he isn't up yet I'll have to ask you to leave. Just letting you in to see him right now is bending the rules enough as it is."
"Thank you, you truly have no idea what this means to me." The boy blinked in surprise and burrowed into the bed as he heard the sound of approaching footsteps, squeezing his eyes tightly together and attempting to control his breathing to fake his supposed slumber. He heard the door to his room open and pretended to have been disturbed by the noise, twitching his body slightly and blinking his eyes a couple of times. The latter wasn't faked, as he needed to adjust his sight to the rather blinding light of the sterile white room.
He looked around, unsurprised by the white tile ceiling or the plain off-white walls, and focused his attention instead on the two men who were staring at him with curiosity, though it wasn't easily visible on the older man, but the boy could tell by the way his left eyebrow seemed to twitch and rise a centimeter above his right, just like Na-hg#Y*&#Q$kv!
He gasped and clutched at his head as his brain practically exploded within his skull, a million images flickering past his eyes faster than he could register. A few lingered long enough for him to catch a glimpse of a young teen with short brown hair and a smile that unnerved him. The older man, his dark hair ruffled and unkempt, immediately leapt forward and grabbed him into a gentle embrace while the doctor hurried over to the machines. He frowned in confusion when the only things appearing out of place was a slightly elevated heart-rate, nothing that should have caused the boy that kind of pain.
As quickly as it came, the wave of images vanished, and with it the pain they had caused. He shook his head, causing the other man's eyes to narrow as the boy's eyes flickered between the golden color he was familiar with, and a startling sapphire. The change was almost enough for him to draw the backup pistol he kept holstered near the small of his back. For a moment, he had almost been reminded of one of his targets, a particularly nasty Dead Apostle who had spent nearly two centuries surgically taking apart the eyes of his prey in order to construct the perfect set of Mystic Eyes for himself. By the time Kiritsugu had finally taken up the job to kill him, the vampire had managed to construct eyes that not only functioned as both Eyes of Binding and Enchantment, but also granted him rudimentary control over both fire and water. The vampire had relished in the ability to make one person spontaneously combust by merely glaring at him, while at the same time causing another to find his lungs filled with constantly refilling water.
The number of people he had killed... Kiritsugu had almost been willing forego killing him immediately in favour of a slower death, but that went against his code, and it would have given the Dead Apostle a chance to recover and flee before its fate could be sealed. In the end a simple explosive set inside its lab did the job spectacularly, leveling not only the Dead Apostle and its research facility, but also bringing the down the small mountain it was hiding within.
A quiet coughing snapped his attention back to the present and forced his muscles to relax, something that the doctor didn't fail to notice either, though he left the obvious question unsaid for the sake of the child still lying on the bed in front of them. Kiritsugu winced and sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck before leaning back a little.
"Are you alright kid?" asked the older man. The boy blinked but nodded, saying nothing. The older man sighed and offered his hand with a wry half-grin. "Well that's a relief. Emiya Kiritsugu," Kiritsugu inclined his head towards the boy, "and you are?
The boy stared blankly for several seconds before tentatively stretching out his hand, his fingers dwarfed by the older man's to the point that they seemed to vanish as Kiritsugu's hand closed around his. He opened his mouth to answer his question only to stop, as he could not remember the answer. He knew it, he was sure he had a name; after all, what kind of person didn't have a name at his age. He blinked in surprise. What was his age? Shouldn't that be something he knew too?
He tried to think of his age, his name, anything. He strained against the emptiness that suffused his being, fighting to snatch something relevant from the shadows of the ghosts of the life he was sure once was his own, as they fled from his mind. He stretched his mind out, forcing it to move and work to his will, only to catch nothing. An endless amount of nothing, stretching in all directions and beyond, the limitless field of white filling the eye of his mind until it was all he could see.
He didn't even realize he was speaking, giving word to the impossible vista that surrounded him, only one word slipping from his tongue. "S-shiro.."
Kiritsugu raised a brow at the rather unique name, unaware of the boy's internal adventure, and nodded his head towards the doctor who made a note in the boy's file. A warm smile settled on his face as he gently shook the boy's hand once, the physical action severing his connection to the emptiness, before withdrawing his hand.
"Shirou-kun," the boy blinked in confusion before he realized that the man was addressing him, and that Shirou must have been his name. He tilted his head to the side and his vision blurred as his eyes refocused on the strand of crimson hair that had fallen in front of his face. Something about it seemed wrong, as if he shouldn't have it; and yet, another part of him insisted he should, that it was as much a part of him as the fire that had taken his memories was. So caught up in his thoughts he almost missed the older man's next words. "How would you like to be my son?"
The way Shirou's face lit up made the last piece of the Magus Killer within Kiritsugu crumble and fade away. It wasn't anything close to being enough restitution for what he had done, the countless innocent lives that had been snuffed out by the flames of his ideals and the Holy Grail War he had fought in. But for all that it wasn't, it was still a start, a beginning of something truly incredible, though he knew it not.
While he didn't have anything else to accurately judge against, Shirou thought his new life was the best one he could have ever lived, even if his family was a bit... unique. His father, well his father was hardly what he was expecting. In all honesty, Shirou had figured the somewhat disheveled Kiritsugu to have been some kind of firefighter or policeman who had been called in to deal with the blaze, and he had certainly not thought of him in even his most wildest daydreams to have been partially responsible for the fire; or the fact that his father was a magus.
Shirou would never forget the day his father all but broke into tears as he explained his role in the fire that had taken not only Shirou's family from him, but his entire life as well. He wasn't sure what had stunned his father more; the fact that he didn't hold his actions against him, or the fact that he considered Kiritsugu to be his father and love him even for his fault and complicity.
After that day, every hour not spent at school or cooking - Shirou had learned early on that while his father had absolutely no talent in the kitchen, he himself was able to handle himself with ease - the young boy spent badgering his father to teach him magecraft. His desire to protect people from harm and disaster had only grown stronger as he had grown older, and now that he had found the means to achieve his goals he refused to give way.
His father had been a tough teacher, but by no means cruel or harsh, simply demanding. And for all of Shirou's inexperience he was an incredibly fast study, to the point that what he learned had outstripped all that Kiritstugu had to teach within two years. Even barring some strangeness about the way he enacted his magecraft - something within him prevented him from utilizing the ambient prana of the world to sustain his magecraft, forcing him to rely entirely on his far above average supplies of od - he worked at the spells available to him until they became more useful than even his father would have thought possible. The drain of using and learning magecraft also had the pleasant side-effect of tiring him to the point of dreamless sleep for many nights. The rest, the rest were filled with dreams.
The first year after being adopted into the Emiya family, Shirou's dreams suffocated him with the thick scent of smoke and the screams of the dying. The trauma of the disaster that had come to be known as the Great Fuyuki Fire had, to the surprise of many, not left him feeling off put by fire in any way; in fact he often drew comfort from lying next to open flames when he was feeling scared, a trait that consternated his adoptive father to no end. On the other hand, he couldn't stand the sound of screaming, or the charnel house smell of death. But a year after the fire he could finally sleep without worry of being forced to relive that hell. A year later the nightmares finally began to slow until they finally came to a stop, leaving Shirou with peaceful sleep.
The peace was not to last, and it was only a month past his sixth birthday - or at least the date Kiritsugu had designated as his birthday on the adoption papers - though, that the dreams started.
He wasn't even really sure if they were actually dreams, or if they were possibly his lost memories, but they seemed so impossible they couldn't have been anything but dreams. Even the worst of them are better than dreaming of the fire, and so as he slept, he dreamed. He dreamed of a thousand lives he had never lived, a million different people he had never met, wondrous places he had never seen, and above all, battles beyond counting.
A crippled King and a God shrouded and bound in Chains - or was he a God of Chains? - warring against their world and each other. The devil's lover, hunting down the worlds evil's to be let into hell and her embrace. The Fallen Angel fighting against Time and Death to save herself and the entire world. Death's machinations to bring about the end of all Life, only for his plans to be derailed by Sister Fate and Brother Destiny, and the group of unlikely heroes they had gathered together. The young princess, betrayed by her jealous brother and forced to fight for survival beside a rag-tag band of mercenaries. The Pirate Queen conquering sea and sky in search of the only treasure worth her having. And the being in shadows manipulating the world into a war involving even the gods to seize control over every plane of existence.
Those were the strangest, the wildest, of his dreams, and the ones he enjoyed the most, but by no means were they the most common. No, his sleeping hours were most often spent watching the life of a young man being forced to fend for his life against insanity, assailed on all sides by both enemies and the people he considered to be his friends and family. They were bitter, painful dreams, and Shirou felt nothing but pity and admiration for the teen who seemed to try and embody everything that he had decided to make his own ideals; the teen fought most often to protect the people he cared for, and even though he had his faults - which earned him more than his fair share of trouble - he showed Shirou that you didn't need to be perfect to be a hero.
The only thing that linked all of the dreams together, the one common thread, was the figure he had come to call the Black Lady. Only years later, after the incident had occurred, would he actually learn her name. But the name he had given her was still an apt description; always watching over his shoulder, her black dress always seemed to be twitching and moving from an untouchable wind. For some reason, the sight of her filled him with a sense of immeasurable sadness, and her crimson eyes watched over him, their depths coloured by a strange mix of compassion, kindness, and a melancholic pity.
Every dream he had, she was there, somewhere. Be it a flash of white out of the corner of his eyes, or a flicker of her black dress as it disappeared into a shadow, or even just a brief glimpse of her eyes reflected in a pool of water or a nearby window, she made her presence known. One time, after watching a pair of ninja infiltrate the castle of some daimyo, he tried using the same movements to sneak up on the silver haired woman. He had found her watching the spot he would have been in, and just as he was about to sneak up behind her and tap her shoulder, she whirled around and wrapped him into a hug.
Her proud and joyful tear-streaked smile, as silently she cried, was the last thing he saw before he woke up that night.
It was then, that moment that he laid awake in his bed, listening to the birds as they chirped away the rising sun, that his mind made a truly important leap of logic. If imitating the people in his dreams had made that woman happy, then maybe if he did it again, he'd see her smile more.
And so he set about the task of paying his dreams even more attention, trying to mimic the motions of men and masters, all to make the mysterious woman happy.
He wasn't sure when it started, or if he ever would have noticed at all until the incident, but slowly yet surely elements of his dreams started to leak into his waking hours, tainting his life and actions with their fantastical touch. It was his adoptive big sister who was the first to notice when he started to spend more and more time in the dojo. At first she had simply smiled and let it go, thinking - quite rightly even if she didn't realize just how much so - that he was trying to imitate some of the things he had seen her or others doing. It was only when several well known bullies that attended the same school as Shirou wound up going to the hospital - none of them were permanently injured, though a couple of them did wind up with some broken bones, and they all wouldn't quite ever be the same afterwards - and pegged the shy and kind redhead as their attacker, something that everyone else scoffed at, did Fujimura Taiga finally decide to investigate.
Excusing herself after dinner to go the washroom, she had waited patiently until Shirou had finished washing the dishes before quietly following him to the dojo. She had carefully edged the door open wide enough to peek through and she had been absolutely stunned at what she had seen.
Shirou had found out early on that didn't see things quite the same way other people did. For the most part it was in the little things, such as why not help someone in need of aid, why not do things for other people without a need for recompense, or why not teach a bully a lesson by crushing him utterly and completely. But it was most noticeable when it came to anything physical that he was as different from anyone else as a true dragon was to a komodo.
The first time he had discovered his ability occurred a few weeks after he had the first couple dreams of the pig-tailed martial artist. While he watched Taiga compete in the kendo tournament she had invited him and his father to, he felt as if something in his mind suddenly clicked into place, his eyes blurring slightly before the world snapped back into an almost startling clarity. At that moment all his attention had been given to the current pair of competitors who were up, his mind was picking apart their movements, digesting their styles and feeding him the information. So focused on the duel he didn't notice when he began muttering under his breath.
Taiga, how had come over to say hello before her match, had come closer to Shirou to find out why he hadn't greeted her. As she leaned in to give him a piece of her mind her ears caught a bit of what he was saying, enough to give her pause and make her lean closer. To her surprise he was casually pointing out moves and attacks that made no sense to her, until she followed his eyes over to where the two kendoists were in the midst of their duel; and were following Shirou's predicted directions exactly.
The duel ended abruptly as one of the kendoists slipped, the other taking immediate advantage to score the final point they needed, and Taiga watched as Shirou blinked in surprise before shaking his head clear of the fog that had settled over it. Though she never mentioned it, after that point, Taiga never forgot what she had heard and made sure to always be near Shirou while her prospective opponents were competing, in the hopes that she might hear some weakness in their style that she might be able to exploit.
While the possibility that Shirou might have been able to apply his strange ability to other forms of martial arts and combat teachings had existed in Taiga's mind, it had done so only as intellectual possibility, hardly a probability. Her hand clenched the door so tightly that it had turned white from the force she was using as she watched Shirou casually and gracefully go through the movements of several different martial arts that she recognized, and most likely more than a few she didn't, flowing easily from one style to the next before stopping and starting the whole process over again.
She wasn't sure how long she had stood there, staring at him, completely absorbed in his every motion, but she nearly jumped out her skin when a hand suddenly landed on her shoulder. She was forced to bite her cheek to keep from screaming as she turned around to find an all too amused Kiritsugu. She was all but ready to unleash painful retribution when he spoke.
"Impressive, isn't he?" Kiritsugu asked quietly, his voice filled with pride. Taiga blinked before turning back to where Shirou continued his practice uninterrupted.
"It's... incredible. I've never seen someone so young move like he does." She shook her head in amazement as Shirou jumped up and performed an aerial combo that seemed to suspend him midair for longer than should have been possible. "It's almost like I'm watching a Bruce Lee movie, or an anime or something."
Kiritsugu found himself nodding along to her words. This wasn't the first time he had seen his son practicing, but he hadn't bothered to watch in many months and he was just as stunned as Taiga looked. The first few times his son had snuck out of his room at night to practice had amused him, it had seemed harmless after all, just a boy trying to imitate what he saw on television with mixed results. The boy had long ago professed his desire to protect people, something which Kiritsugu wholeheartedly encouraged, and to him the boy was simply trying to reach that goal.
Now though, the man once known and feared as the Magus Killer couldn't help but wish that he hadn't given up watching his son. In less than a year he had advanced in such leaps and bounds that he had problems reconciling the master in front of him with the somewhat clumsy boy he had first seen.
It worried him.
He had gone to pick his son up from school - that is what 'normal' parents did after all - and more than once he had found his son on his way to the school - part way down an alley, or a sidestreet, or even in a secluded corner of the park once- in the middle of a fight with someone. Most of the time they were older students or young adults who were clearly not the most upstanding of people, although he had broken up a couple brawls between his son and boys his own age. And even though he had stopped fighting immediately upon being found by his father, as well explained exactly why he was beating up men twice his size, it still didn't do Kiritsugu's heart any good to get a call in the middle of his mid-afternoon nap from the school over his son brawling with some bullies.
Watching his son now, he couldn't help but see a little of himself in the red-haired boy. After he had been taken in by the Enforcer who had helped him kill his father, he had thrown himself into every task and training that was presented to him. He was worried that his son might start himself unknowingly along the same path his father had followed for so long.
Coming to a decision, he gently tapped the young Taiga on the shoulder - his heart twisted when she turned her smiling face towards him, reminding him so strongly of Shirley and memories best left forgotten - and quietly led her away. Tomorrow, tomorrow he'd take a much more personal hand in his son's training. If the boy was going to try and be a hero, the hero he could never be, than by all the kami would he make sure Shirou was ready.
With his father teaching him everything he could about Magecraft, and his dreams filling in everything else, Shirou found himself with little time for himself; not that he minded, as working towards his goal of being capable of protecting people was all he needed. Kiritsugu had spent many afternoons fighting to get Shirou to think of himself as well as others, and he succeeded marginally, enough that Shirou was willing to give himself breaks, as well making his son understand the one truth that had eluded him until it was too late.
You can't save everyone. You can't protect every single person in the world. Sometimes, you can't even save yourself.
Saying those two sentences seemed to almost visibly wound his son, each word twisting the dagger in his side. The boy had taken off without warning, and Kiritsugu had let him go, content to wait for his son's emotions to vent. The former Magus Killer didn't know what had happened wherever his son had gone that afternoon, but when he returned his eyes seemed to have a burning intensity behind them and a clarity of purpose that sent shivers down his spine.
His son refused to shed any illumination on the time he had disappeared, other than mentioning that he had met a beautiful 'Golden Lady' while he was out slaying monsters. When he came back from his 'adventure', Shirou had calmly walked up to his father and - while staring him straight in the eyes - serenely declared that while he couldn't protect everyone, he'd simply save as many as he could. The gravity of his words was far too much for a boy of only seven years, but Kiritsugu had smiled down at his son and agreed with him. There were many times when his son seemed far older than his appearance would indicate, and this was just another of them.
That night, Shirou's dreams were the strangest yet. Once more he found himself plunged into the final scene in the life of the strange martial artist that filled so many other dreams of his. This was the last that he would have concerning finally gave him the context he needed to fully understand all of the dreams which featured the mysterious - to him - pig-tailed martial artist; Jusenkyo. The Black Lady was there again, and just as the scene was coming to a close, she grabbed him in a tight embrace, whispering words he couldn't quite understand into his ear.
And then she fell backwards, her arms still ensnaring Shirou and forcing him to fall with her.
They didn't travel very far, their impact thankfully softened by a rather deep spring of water. Shirou struggled for a moment as the Black Lady dragged him down, finally breaking free only to turn and find himself alone in the dark pool. He didn't spend much longer searching around, already his lungs were burning inside him. As he swam to the surface, the motion of the water sliding over his skin felt as though it
So... can I plead the Fifth? No? Sigh, fine. Vultures, the lot of you.
This was inspired by several great pieces of fiction: Path of the King by Neoalfa, In Flight by Gabriel Blessing, Chaos Theory by Moczo, and just a little bit of Tales of the Foxcat for the scene with Ryoga and Mousse. The idea came to me while I was working through my ideas and plot thoughts for A Kitsune in Nerima, and the same bunny that inspired my version of Kasumi worked its foul magic on my mind and spawned the idea that lead to this; What if Shirou, wasn't? What if he had been replaced? Or rather, what if that boy in the fire was someone else? Of course, I could have placed just about anyone in his place, but I wanted to pick one which would have a massive effect on the world. I suppose I could have gone with say, Naruto, but in this case, I chose someone who's own mind is a few twists shy of being as distorted as Shirou's canon self, while still being relatively similar in mindset. At least in my opinion.
Ah, I see you have reached the end of this little tale. I suppose I should explain why this is here.
Simply put, it is cliche. The hook is very overused (Zelretch did it) and I also created several plot-holes and weaknesses that I only recently had pointed out to me. In light of the recent advice I have received, I'm going to rewrite what I have here, as well as edit my plans for the rest of the story.
I'm sorry if I have disappointed any of you, but trust me, I feel your pain. I shall update soon... I hope.