Title: I'm a Third-Rate Magus, but This World Doesn't Have Magic
Summary:
A counter guardian exists to prevent humanity's extinction. They mustn't upset the status quo of their mission world, and are thus experts at blending in with mobs and disguising their assassinations as natural events or the work of other people.
Emiya can do that. He's totally a mob.
SO WHY IS HE STUCK WITH THESE PEOPLE?
Or,
Alaya throws Emiya into the chaos of Shibuya Station with vague knowledge of the world and vague instructions, and wishes him good luck.
Characters: Emiya, Fushiguro Touji, Nanami Kento, Okita Alter, Asagami Fujino
Tags: Apparently I can't write, Crack, unless it's seriously, Alternatively: how to pick up middle-aged men in a train station, No one is OP and E-rank luck is REAL, Misunderstandings, Shibuya Incident Arc (JJK), Culling Game Arc (JJK)
A/N:
I'm high on cold medicine, I can write what I want – so have an AU where Counter Guardian EMIYA is called to JJK to prevent humanity's downfall, and proceeds to fail in almost every way because E-rank luck is REAL. Also JJK logic is twisted af, I don't understand anything except that the animation is cool to watch. Kinda like Type-Moon.
Emiya's about to suffer with me.
I'm also going to refer to the good guys as "shamans" (localisation says sorcerers, but my manga fan translations have been saying shamans), and to cursed energy as "juryoku" because then this fic would be too crowded with the word "curse."
Note: I use "X" as a page break.
Edit: I originally posted this in AO3 and forgot I owned an FFN account. So here you go: four chapters out of the gate! Formatting is more restricted on FFN too, so apologies if the codex entries don't flow as well here than they do in AO3. Such are the woes of fic writers….
;
Behind a curtain darker than black, a spot of red manifested.
9:30 PM. Shibuya. October 31, 2018.
2,949 years had passed since the death of Solomon, the King of Magecraft — and with his death, the acceleration to the decline of mystery. The modern rules of reality were no longer of "magic," but now of "science," where the world was boxed in and comprehended by science. The concept of "magical energy" — maryoku in Japanese or prana in general — had vanished from mankind's consciousness. No one in the present era was aware of prana contained in the human body, od, or prana found in the world, mana. No one was using leylines to supplement the "use of prana," aka majutsu or magecraft.
Instead, humanity was distinctly aware of negative emotions.
Allow the general populace to leak enough of it, and the negativity would gather like sediment and gain awareness, forming "cursed spirits" or "curses" for short. With the absence of physical essence, curses were as invisible to the naked eye as human emotion.
Unless a human were attuned to negative emotions.
Box in enough generations of people with deprecating traditions, set up a system run by these products of childhood issues, and negative emotions could be impressed on souls even in conception; aka a "genetic" inheritance of cursed energy, or juryoku. Also, due to the weight of human impression in mysteries, patterns could manifest if there was enough expectation in a certain bloodline. Combined with the natural pull of one's Origin, this process of nature and nurture went through a feedback loop, leading to the present era's juryoku logic. While it wasn't consistent, it was still a "practice" — an alternate flow to human history where humans would have otherwise interacted with mysteries through magecraft and the passing down of magic crests.
Juryoku was man-made energy that naturally overflowed, became curses, and sought humanity's deterioration, thus evoking more negative emotions. In a timeline where humanity had focused on juryoku and not maryoku, human civilization was essentially spiralling towards self-destruction.
Or rather, Japanese civilization.
As with psychology, power was found in that which had weight in the human consciousness. A westerner who had never heard of red bean paste could not crave it. Similarly, the very term juryoku originated from the Edo period in Japan, and could only attract the fascination and study of the Japanese.
…
..
.
All this basic information of the current location and era flowed into Emiya's mind.
He immediately sighed.
Transfigured humans were massacring normal civilians left, right, and centre of Emiya. The outer streets of Shibuya had become a buffer zone against the interference of shamans from outside, while the rest of Shibuya was being attacked by a terrorist group composed of curses and curse users. Further north — towards Shinjuku station, Emiya's downloaded knowledge supplied — stood a black dome. As an agent of Alaya, Emiya understood that this "curtain" was one of four, with Emiya currently sandwiched between the outermost and second outermost layers. The terrorist group's target objective was in the centre of all four curtains, where the action was likely the highest.
Emiya could imagine the fall of Shibuya – and by extension Tokyo – from this bloody mess, and wondered why he should care. Even if the terrorists and their transfigured humans managed to utterly ruin all of Japanese civilization, it wouldn't be the end of the world.
Human civilization would limp for a while, but continue.
Why then had Alaya tossed its dog at this moment of human history, in this location?
Emiya's intuition pointed north. However, for whatever reason Alaya felt threatened by the current situation, it wasn't enough to benevolently land Emiya in the middle of the problem, but rather three-fourths out of it. As the collective unconsciousness of mankind, Alaya didn't view Emiya as distinct from itself, instead using him as one would one's own hands or feet. Alaya felt that basic information, a general location, and a vague direction towards its goal was enough for Emiya to fulfil his duty.
Thus, it had to be.
He would make it so.
Emiya ignored the blood bath around him and leapt up an office building. A few transfigured humans threw themselves in his way, but a swipe from Kanshou and Bakuya disabled them from attacking him or being able to follow. Up high on a rooftop, the screams and scent of terror were clearer.
But Emiya needed more. He needed to see how masses of people were dying. He needed patterns….
There.
Shibuya Tower. A mall-and-office skyscraper easily dwarfing the rest of Shibuya's skyline by fifteen floors. It was no Fuyuki Center Building, but given the obnoxiously large domed obstruction that was the inner curtain layer, surpassing a certain height in perspective would be negligible. Rather than the edge of a donut, the position was like the sun's perspective in an eclipse. Its blind spot would be tolerably minuscule.
Emiya cut across rooftops for the tower.
"NANAMIIIIIIIN!"
And stumbled.
"NANAMIN, ARE YOU THERE? GOJOU-SENSEI HAS BEEN SEALED!"
He recovered with a beeline for the tower. What was that? A desperate cry for…attention? It certainly hadn't been terror. Maybe it was information.
From quite the pair of lungs.
Emiya's arrival at Shibuya Tower cut his thoughts short. Even without paper tags sealing the entrances, it was apparent that juryoku practitioners had messed with the tower's ground floor. Transfigured humans swarmed in view from where Emiya stood outside the glass doors, and from what he could sense, the swarm continued up ten floors — at least.
Emiya twirled Kanshou and Bakuya at the ready, and leapt through the glass.
"BUDGET CARS!"
"HAND SOAP?"
"PICK UP THE PHONE! PICK UP!"
Transfigured humans burst forth — drawn by the opening or by Emiya, it didn't matter. He cut down those in his way as he fluidly dashed through the crowd like the wind. He didn't think about the normal humans still out on the streets where the swarm could go. He just needed to get to the roof.
And he felt like taking the elevator.
Ding!
"FREE TISSUES!"
Emiya kicked his last obstacle aside through a wall and darted into the elevator. An elongated head snaked for the closing doors, but Emiya could sacrifice one of his blades.
Thwack!
––Without hesitation.
Kanshou pierced the transfigured human's forehead with the force of a thrown axe, leaving Emiya down to one sword. The elevator doors closed on the last sight of eyes rolling back in their head and the gush of blood.
One distinction that Emiya couldn't make:
Transfigured humans.
A soul was the immortal record of one's mind, memory, and magical circuits. Once they were bound to a mortal vessel, souls were doomed to dissolve and return to the Root, but there were exceptions to that rule. In reincarnation, the soul bypassed decay and instead took a second vessel; in true reincarnation, the vessel was even genetically rewritten to reflect the previous one.
The transfigured humans around Emiya had originally been humans whose bodies had reflected their soul's information, before their bodies had been rewritten by another soul's information through juryoku. This led to an acceleration of their souls' decay. In contrast to curses who were pure juryoku, transfigured humans were physical entities that, by their violator's design, emanated a lot of juryoku. There also existed humans who could naturally coexist with plenty of juryoku, like shamans and curse users.
Therefore to Emiya, there was no difference in "presence" between a human beyond saving — i.e. a transfigured human — and a human who still had awareness — i.e. a shaman or a curse user.
This led to Emiya's issue:
A Counter Guardian could not leave a mark on mankind's consciousness.
Emiya wanted to hurriedly reach the rooftop without being seen by a single not-transfigured human. He could kill transfigured humans without concealing his abilities, but not-transfigured humans were a different issue. Hence his taking the elevator instead of charging up the stairwell already swarming with what he could only sense were "humans with juryoku."
Creeeeeeeeeeeeak.
"BRIDAL—"
Shink!
Thump, thump.
Emiya cursed. Of course the swarm could leak into the elevator shaft from the floors above. Emiya sliced the elevator's grate and dodged the transfigured humans that fell in through the ceiling.
"BRIDAL WEAR—"
Kachak!
Two slashes, and two human-faced centipedes lost half their mobility. And their faces.
The elevator continued to ding for the roof. Emiya exhaled, watching the floors light up.
The brief scuffle had scratched the elevator's panel, but at least it hadn't….
Emiya pinched his nose bridge. A centipede leg had punctured a button in the tight space.
Which meant higher chances of being seen by normal people, by transfigured humans, or both. Hell, the "normal" people might include shamans and curse users who would put up a fight if he tried killing them to quickly "wipe" mankind's memory of him.
As natural as a limb was to one's person, or a white blood cell to a stream of blood, a Counter Guardian had to function seamlessly in human history without standing out in it. Emiya could be seen by transfigured humans because their dissolving awareness was just one of many symptoms of the damage they had received. They were doomed to die. A nick from Rule Breaker could theoretically "cancel" the jujutsu that had been used on them if caught soon enough, but Emiya hadn't been summoned to save mobs.
Normal humans, however, were more likely to remember Emiya's likeness and actions, and pass on their experience with other humans. Alaya could tolerate a cosplayer in a grocery store, but a prana-wielding spirit kicking humans through walls? That would upset the status quo. Best options were to either kill the normal humans who saw Emiya, or avoid being seen by them entirely.
So Emiya chopped up the human centipedes he had killed and kicked their remains out the elevator doors when they dinged open. Each severed part struck a transfigured human rushing at Emiya. Another sacrifice of his blade saw Bakuya piercing a transfigured human before it could join him in the elevator.
What a pain—
Emiya's eyes widened as he bulleted through the closing doors and crashed against the transfigured humans he had just wasted. The elevator exploded and collapsed behind him.
"Sharp instincts! Staying in that death box would have been the end for you!"
Emiya grabbed Bakuya's handle and tore it out of flesh to meet muscle. A shirtless man with a thick moustache grinned back at him, muscled forearms blocking the blade without breaking skin.
"Not that your end isn't soon!" the man crowed.
Emiya was caught at a bad angle — the stranger had height on him while Emiya's legs weren't on solid ground, still folded from having bodily thrown his weight through metal doors and mutated humans. He clicked his tongue. With D-ranked strength, Emiya shoved himself off the transfigured human he had killed, while at the same time shoving the man off of him with the arm wielding Bakuya.
The moustached man went flying through the ceiling at the same angle.
"Bwahaha! That tickles!"
Dramatic, probably insane, but most definitely aware.
A "normal" human.
And the floors were still crawling with transfigured humans.
Just Emiya's luck.
CRASH!
"You don't think I'll let you go, do you?"
The moustached man tore himself from the concrete he had flown into and hopped down on solid ground, one level above the floor he had ambushed Emiya. The moustached man rolled a kink out of his neck and posed to dive back in.
"Know your place, shaman—"
Emiya materialised in mid-air in front of him, Bakuya and a newly-traced Kanshou aimed to strike. The moustached man's eyes widened.
"Wha—nngh!"
The curse user went flying again, this time parallel to the ground. He stopped flying after crashing through his third wall and transfigured human.
"How—"
Emiya was in front of him again, steel-toed boot aimed at his kidney.
BAM!
The man couldn't utter a word. Emiya pounded into him with blade and foot. Eventually, the blows blurred together and the man found himself shaking off debris from a wall on a different floor.
The curse user raised his arms up in a guard, mildly frantic. How could a human move that fast and so powerfully!?
Unexpectedly, Emiya was now strolling through his tunnel of destruction instead of seemingly teleporting again. The counter guardian's mental cogs were whirring.
The brute force of a heroic spirit should have been classes above the average human existence in any timeline. Why else would Alaya rely on Emiya to act as the Counter Force directly? Yet Emiya's opponent hadn't broken a bone or even skin. Emiya had even gone for the eyes. Holding both Kanshou and Bakuya also raised Emiya's magical resistance enough to allow the calculated deflection of A-rank spells. While jujutsu was not magecraft, it likely had its own ranking system.
What fresh garbage was this man's jujutsu?
Emiya's eyes narrowed.
Regardless if the curse user's jujutsu was equivalent to an A-rank spell or higher, it didn't appear to affect Emiya or the curse user's surroundings. Most likely, it was a self-imposed jujutsu focused on the user's body, allowing them to become an invincible punching bag. It didn't deactivate when the user went on the offensive, as was the case when the moustached man had barrelled Emiya and not been cut by Bakuya's defensive swing. It didn't supplement the user's strength either, since the curse user hadn't been able to resist Emiya's D-rank strength despite having had the positional advantage.
There had to be a transition period. The man was essentially wielding a shield, and had to be changing between offensive and defensive stances in order to use his shield well. It would be a brief window.
A split-second between block and bash.
Emiya would target that.
The curse user caught Emiya's silence and began to relax.
"Bwahaha…it bothers you, doesn't it? Knowing you can't hit me!"
Laughter bubbled out, finally free as a broken faucet. The man was a curse user known as Awasaka Jiro, a murderer who had been looking forward to Gojou Satoru's sealing, and thus end of the underbelly's suppression. Awasaka's jujutsu, Inverse, captured a range of force dealt to him, and flipped its corresponding damage. High-power attacks couldn't scratch him, while a baby's punch could cripple him. The technique could be maintained through a full battle without consistent focus or cooldown intervals. It was fragile on paper, but invaluable in a hot-blooded fight. And so, Awasaka laughed.
"Ahaha…after all, simple is best!"
The curse user rose and rushed for Emiya, fist swinging. At the same time, Emiya launched himself forward with crossed arms whipping his falchions out for a heavy slash.
Awasaka's fist came in first, making contact with Emiya's left shoulder.
Or rather, the cloth on his shoulder.
For Emiya had braked early with his left foot, sacrificing momentum to pull his shoulder back. With his arms crossed, Emiya's left arm was tugged along with his punched shoulder, automatically pushing force against his right forearm. As Awasaka's fist grazed Emiya, the counter guardian's right arm whipped out vertically with reduced power, but enough momentum to make contact with Awasaka's left collarbone — an opening afforded by the man's eagerness to punch.
Shluuk!
Blood cut through the air.
In the instant Awasaka hastily pivoted sideways from Emiya's downward slash, Emiya's blade reached the apex of its swing and sliced into Awasaka's left pec.
The curse user leapt back twice, a diagonal red line now across his collarbone and pec. Emiya's right foot finally came down to the ground, bringing him to a stop at a position where he and Awasaka faced each other across the distance.
Mere seconds had passed.
Emiya peered at his opponent. The counter guardian had been aiming for his blade to start penetrating when his opponent would start to transition from bash to block. Instead, his opponent's skin had broken too early.
There was no transitional period.
The only differences between that exchange and the previous ones were that Emiya and his opponent had attacked each other at the same time, and that the power of Emiya's landing hit had barely been Rank E. In context, if the average human's strength was the value of "one," then Rank E- or "E minus" was equivalent to ten times that value. Of course, this visualisation didn't apply across all parameters, like luck.
Meanwhile, Awasaka inwardly panicked. The stranger's white falchion had caught his left side with the same strength he had thrown into his punch. One thing about Inverse was that it evened the battlefield when Awasaka faced an opponent of equal strength. Then, it was a matter of martial skill.
And Awasaka's opponent far outclassed him. Awasaka didn't know how, he just sensed it.
Awasaka's eyes widened as Emiya rushed in.
With every exchange, it grew increasingly obvious. Emiya was employing a suicidal fighting style, giving Awasaka openings to target so that Emiya could counterattack. After all, the only hits that mattered were the ones that landed. Additionally, matching Awasaka's power or less dealt damage, while superior power scaled downwards. Not that Emiya experimented for long.
He just went for the eyes.
"You're right," Emiya snarked. "Simple is best."
That was the final nail on the coffin. Awasaka's mentality shattered, giving Emiya the opening to finish the fight.
Awasaka's last sight was the black falchion of Alaya's hunting dog coming for his eyes.
X
In the comparatively peaceful climb up the stairwell for the roof, Emiya dismissed Kanshou and Bakuya to project a black bow as tall as himself. At the roof's door, Emiya pulled back the bow's carbon-steel wire effortlessly.
An increase in bow height meant a higher demand of arm power to draw. The skeletons of mediaeval archers had revealed that the ones who could fire the length of a football field had literally thicker bones in their right arm over their left. They had been hailed by the intellectual community as the most "powerful" archers in history.
Emiya had designed his weapon system, from bow to string to physical body, to fire the length of kilometres.
What if he fired at point blank?
BAM!
BANG-G-G!
Emiya kicked down the roof door and fired four arrows through the heads of the humans on the rooftop.
Four arrows, two for each head, one arrow behind the other.
Blood burst with the explosion of heads, and with the arrows' force, the rest of their bodies flew off the rooftop like cast rocks. Their bodies would die twice — once from the arrows, then from hitting the ground from sixty stories up.
A quick scan of the roof confirmed that there indeed had only been two people as Emiya had sensed. One had been at the edge of the roof gazing down at the domed curtain to the north, and the second had been farther from the edge and facing the roof door, likely to watch their partner's back. The second one had actually made eye contact with Emiya in the brief millisecond Emiya had gauged the curse user's location and fired. It had been like watching a man's last moments stretch out into the last years of his life.
Emiya had suspected the presence of a curse user in the tower from the moment he had seen the sealed tower doors. His suspicion had only grown when the transfigured humans in the tower had apparently been locked in to guard the entrance for whoever had gathered them there, presumably the moustached man Emiya had just killed. Still, it was mildly surprising to discover a total of three curse users in the tower instead of one. Emiya didn't know why they valued Shinjuku Tower so much aside from a scouting standpoint. In Emiya's overall scheme to head north and address the possible extinction of humanity, it also didn't matter.
The three mob curse users had already been as good as dead for the sake of Emiya's mission.
Emiya headed to the edge of the roof to make sure the two curse users he had just attacked didn't have a technique up their sleeves like the moustached man had. Just in case, Emiya had made the delayed second arrow hit with Rank E- power by not drawing his bowstring back as far.
"AHAHA!"
…What.
Emiya dashed to the roof edge to see a headless corpse and a two-faced man falling for the earth. Emiya narrowed his eyes and confirmed that the man was definitely self-aware, if missing half his jaw.
"YOU'RE STRONG, AIN'T YA?"
And not afraid of crashing at terminal velocity. In fact, the man seemed irritated with Emiya.
How the hell?
What was with these jujutsu practitioners?
…He didn't remember Emiya's face, did he?
Either way, the dark-haired half of the man's face was overlapping with the plain half, starting from the side opposite to the one that had barely dodged Emiya's two arrows. At a glance, the two-faced condition was the result of a soul transmigration starting with a preparation of the physical vessel. The old lady whose head Emiya had blown off must have been running a séance on her plain-faced partner to prepare for a fight, while the moustached man had gone downstairs to address Emiya's invasion. Emiya had interrupted them mid-séance, but the transmigrated soul had had the killer instincts and enough leverage on the original body's soul to bodily evade Emiya's arrows.
The curse user had lost a quarter of his head from merely getting nicked by them, and the arrows' force had propelled him off the roof, but the man could apparently survive that. The arrows had probably even helped the dark-haired face take over the body faster by blowing up the plain-faced side.
Emiya cursed. Had the old lady been conducting the séance through prayer beads? In which case, Emiya hadn't seen it since she had been facing away, her body having blocked sight of her hands.
Emiya rose his bow, only for the falling two-faced man to kick his heels together and disappear behind a copse of trees and buildings with a crash. The heel-kick was a jumping taijutsu technique designed to accelerate the user forwards in mid-jump, but the two-faced man had just used it to alter his path for the earth and instead fall sideways out of sight, neutralising Emiya's ability to snipe him.
The man had to be a genius.
A martial monster.
Emiya had killed those before.
The counter guardian nocked an arrow, mentally mapping a possible crash location. By aiming at the sky and consecutively releasing arrows in a descending angle, he could make multiple arrows land on a target at the same time. If he also charged up a delayed prana detonation in random arrowheads, then when his arrows were near their target, the charged ones would explode near the normal ones, changing their course. The result would be less accurate than anything else Emiya could fire from his bow, but was in turn unpredictable. Compared to arrow rain, it had a desired effect––
FWISH!
––Of an arrow storm.
The calculated crash location blew up with projectile fire. Moving out of Emiya's sight was less of an advantage for his opponents than expected, if they thought he'd behave as a typical sniper. The counter guardian had a range of arrows to noble phantasms that would still allow him to hit his target. He merely disliked using them since discretion got him farther in his missions as a counter guardian.
The fact that the dark-haired face had invested effort to evade Emiya's Rank E- and stronger arrows at least meant that the curse user didn't have the moustached man's inverted jujutsu.
…But just in case, Emiya would personally check.
Fwoosh!
SQUAWK!
…Later.
An oversized red bird swooped up from the right side of the roof, depositing a normal human on one half of the roof while another human launched himself off the bird to the other half.
"Oraaaaaaa!"
A pincer attack…with wire?
"There!" shouted the human who had jumped. "The curtain pins!"
Emiya turned around and glanced a metre behind him, noting the two paper-tagged objects nailed to the ground that he had ignored up until now, along with a hole that implied that there had been a third object. Emiya looked up as the two humans rushed him.
"Where's the third pin?" one of them noticed as they ran.
The humans' gazes snapped to Emiya, and a flash of understanding hit him. He leapt aside, skirting the roof edge, and pivoted towards the centre. The red bird dove through where he had stood, one human shattered the two pins with a downwards punch, and the other human vainly tried to lasso the counter guardian with wire and failed. The two humans turned to face Emiya, readying themselves in a stance while the bird came around.
"Careful, I can't sense juryoku from this guy!"
"Like Maki-senpai?"
"––Wait." Emiya held up his hands, his bow dangling from the left. "They don't pay me enough to get killed."
The humans who had arrived obviously had beef with the curse users Emiya had encountered, and given the moustached man had shouted "shaman!" on sight of Emiya, their identities were a simple deduction. If shamans destroyed curses and delayed the fall of Japanese civilization, then the two shamans' purposes for raiding Shibuya Tower probably benefited mankind.
Or at least contributed to the likelihood of Emiya not being sent to this timeline again. Ever.
Emiya's declaration halted the shamans, and they shared puzzled glances. The red bird descended to perch on the roof edge behind them, poised to take flight and attack.
One of the shamans, wearing a beanie, spoke up. "Hand it over."
Emiya maintained a straight face. "It's with the other guy downstairs."
The other shaman, pink-haired, raised his fists. "If that's true, then empty your pockets!"
Emiya was wearing lightweight, tight-fitted body armour and a single-layered red mantle. Silence stretched.
"I–I mean, drop your weapons!"
Emiya maintained eye contact as he lowered his bow to the ground and straightened back up. The beanie-wearing shaman firmly gestured, not trusting him a bit, and Emiya considered. He reached behind his back, traced Kanshou and Bakuya, and took them out as if from a sheath. They clattered to the ground in front of his feet. For good measure, Emiya repeated the action to drop a magnetic dual-falchion sheath. It wasn't as believable as a strapped one, but it had to do, given the only straps on Emiya were around his legs to behave like compressors. He held his hands back up in the air.
Beanie and Pinky frowned, but drew closer, releasing the wire connecting them to the bird. The red beast took off and vanished over the roof edge with a dive. Beanie pulled his hat over his face to reveal it was a headsman's mask, then took a stance, his juryoku concentrating between his hands to form a spiral horn pointed at Emiya.
"Itadori."
"Yeah."
The pink-haired shaman stepped up to Emiya, patting him down in search of a large pin wrapped in paper tags like the other two had been. Up close, it was more obvious that the so-called Itadori was young, at most a teenager. When the shaman stepped away empty-handed, his partner straightened up and dismissed the spiral horn.
"…Take us to your friend," the man said.
Emiya frowned. "He's not my friend. Besides, the transfigured humans in the building don't obey anyone. You're no safer heading down with me than without."
"I'll be the judge of that," the masked shaman decided.
Emiya stepped forward, and the two shamans tensed in alarm. He halted near Kanshou and Bakuya. "I need to be able to defend myself."
"No way," the masked man said flatly.
The teenage shaman glanced aside. "Ino-san…."
"Nanami-san left me in charge, Itadori."
"Still, this guy doesn't have juryoku," the teen shifted, "…he's only human. Are we not sworn to protect everyone? And let history decide if our choice was wrong?"
The older one, Ino, thinned his lips and sighed. "Fine." He glared at Emiya. "But you're in front."
Emiya picked up Kanshou and Bakuya with telegraphed movements and headed for the roof's doorway, his mind racing. If he ran and leapt off the roof, the red bird could be waiting to strike. If he tried to ditch the shamans in a floor full of transfigured humans, he could end up in another battle against jujutsu, this time outnumbered.
The shamans had made assumptions of Emiya's identity, so mankind's consciousness wasn't disturbed by his existence. However, so long as Emiya was disinclined to kill the two shamans, he couldn't use visible magecraft in front of them.
Playing the long con wasn't unfamiliar.
Emiya had once had a mission under Alaya that had lasted three years. It was because he had chosen to infiltrate a governmental building as a nobody until his target, a dictator, had finally lowered his guard against poisoned food. Of course, Emiya had still been forced to disguise the death as a natural failure of the body, just in case humanity thought to immortalise a faceless killer. Kind of like Jack the Ripper. Regardless, Emiya had accomplished his mission this way instead of taking the faster, bloodier route of blowing up the building with hundreds of civilians inside and blaming it on rebels.
Still, did Emiya want to con his way to his target?
Did he have a choice?
Emiya smiled mirthlessly. He believed in results over ideals, yet in the end, he always had a choice.
He chose not to kill an idealistic teenage shaman and his senpai.
"Good luck."
"What––!?"
Emiya darted away and leapt off Shibuya Tower. He kicked his heels as he entered free-fall, altering his course for the next tallest building. The counter guardian reinforced his body just before he crashed through concrete.
In the whistling wind, he might have heard a teenager's panicked yell and the crackle of distant lightning.
X
X
Codex entry: Impression on Mankind's Consciousness
The Counter Force of Alaya, the self-preserving "will of mankind," is an impassive force that chooses counter guardians by impulse. Once an individual becomes a counter guardian, they lose their autonomy, and function entirely as mankind's knee-jerk reaction against threats of extinction.
In the rare occasion a counter guardian might act contrary to this reaction, Alaya will instinctively replace them with a different counter guardian and send the original to another threat. Alternatively, Alaya will unconsciously withdraw the counter guardian to throw them into an earlier or later branch of the threat's timeline. Regardless if a counter guardian completes or fails their mission, they will inevitably be sent on another.
The traits and circumstances of counter guardian candidates vary due to Alaya's impassive nature. Candidates can include humans who don't have the means to become a legend — even a local one — on their own. However, Alaya recognises that they are developing useful abilities, inherently possess useful abilities, or both. These types of humans qualify to serve the Counter Force and act within the boundaries or "rules" of a counter guardian after their death. Any deviation from the rules results in a counter guardian's reassignment or relocation as mentioned above.
The rules start with:
1. Do not leave an impression on mankind's consciousness.
This first rule refers to the counter guardian's fate as a part of a whole, not meant to stand out against or separate from the main body, like a white blood cell. The rule can be broken down into two facets:
A. Do not upset the status quo.
B. Do not allow the immortalization of oneself.
The status quo:
A wide variety of alternate worlds take the setting of counter guardian missions. In these worlds, humans have a perceived "status quo." Only the living can contribute to what constitutes the status quo. A counter guardian cannot add to it and must not be "perceived" by the humans of their mission world as behaving outside of it.
In a timeline and location where the use of cursed energy is not uncommon, a counter guardian may get away with utilising abilities that emanate or evoke tangibly negative emotion. One example is Dio Santissimo Misericordia de mi, which, while a mixture of magical energy, is still weaponised killing intent. The minds and bodies of its victims will sooner deteriorate than comprehension can dawn. However, the only wielder of this noble phantasm is not a counter guardian.
Another method of satisfying the status quo is disguising actions as natural events like volcanic eruptions, or attributing actions to existing denizens in the mission world.
Immortalization:
Just as in life, counter guardians cannot become legends in the timelines they enter. They must leave their mission's world as an urban myth at most.
It is possible for the aforementioned candidate type to contract with Alaya in exchange for power that follows their world's logic, or "status quo," and perform wondrous acts before their death. However, since Alaya afforded this power, the "will of mankind" doesn't recognise these acts as distinct from itself, and views the candidate's impact equivalent to an urban myth. However, after the candidate becomes a counter guardian, their power becomes engraved in their soul and can only be used according to a mission world's status quo. Counter guardians are also forbidden from performing wondrous acts that would immortalise them in the mission world's history.
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A/N:
Alaya: i play d&d without meta-gaming
Emiya: kenjutsu kaisen
Author: i forgot that awasaka had a knife, but i already wrote two chapters, and if nasu can take liberties with material, so can i
Thanks for reading! This fic is a lot of fun to write! (The drugs are probably helping lol)