Fate/Far Side: Synchronized Body
Chapter 6
Dreams Above
She wasn't clear with me as to why, but Kohaku insisted the next day that I look around for the doctor I'd come to find in Misaki, and that she would accompany me. Whether she was ejected from her duties by Tohno-san until a solution to their issues could be found, or whether she wanted to get away herself, or whether I'd somehow managed to peel away enough of her persona to get her to reach out to me in turn, I wasn't really sure. But since it took two birds with one stone, I was not going to complain—though the doctor had really fallen far from my priorities.
Unlike the last time, there was really little chatter. Kohaku seemed lost in her own world of thought and I didn't really feel like I should press it. We would stop at a physician's workplace and I'd ask, and when Kiritsugu's name could not be found, we would just wander off in a random direction from there.
To be honest, with my attention on Kohaku and Kohaku's attention elsewhere, I'm not exactly sure where we stopped for lunch, even.
By the time it was getting late enough to head back, it was very clear that nothing would be getting accomplished that day. I wanted to let Kohaku come out with whatever she was feeling herself, but she didn't seem ready to devote herself to sharing everything that was bothering her. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place—I had learned, painfully, that forcing something was not going to necessarily get me anywhere, but if I just stayed passive and quiet, she might not ever take the initiative.
"What should we do about dinner?" I asked, the thought only occurring to me when we were already coming up on the Tohno estate. Says a lot about how much I wasn't thinking about everything else.
"Take out. There are a few places we can just call in," Kohaku said, her gaze steady on the house.
The Tohno mansion was not a haunted house, did not quite give off that feeling or sensibility. Kohaku's eyes seemed to say "haunted" instead, a mirror reversal. The cliché I've heard is that "eyes are the windows to the soul" or something like that, but I always thought that a little strange. Looking into a house through a window was, well, creepy and intrusive. I think a better idea would be to look at the house of a person instead, look at how the inhabitant views the house, and then figure things out from there.
So, it was a haunted house, at least for Kohaku.
"Shirou, you really don't belong here."
I shrugged. "You said something like that before."
"No, I said that you shouldn't stay here and get mixed up in everything." Kohaku turned her attention to me from the corner of her eye. "But you really just…stick out here."
"And nails get hammered down," I said, quoting the proverb. "I know."
"No," she said again. "It's…nice, you know. Even if I think you should turn the other way and run as fast as you can."
I wasn't really sure whether I should feel good or bad about that. It sounded like a good thing, but the way Kohaku sounded…almost, well, dejected, stole any positivity out of it.
Tohno-san returned from her final day of school that evening and dragged Kohaku off to talk privately when she did. I was so predisposed with what they could be talking about—again—that I didn't realize Hisui had met with the delivery person for food until it was being set out on the table for us.
When they came back, Tohno-san motioned for me to get up and follow her. I glanced to Kohaku, but the maid seemed once more preoccupied with something and unaware of my scrutiny.
I followed Tohno-san toward the bedrooms, though she took me through the doors of one I had not been in, next to Kohaku's room. Unlike the various other places I had seen in the mansion, this one looked distinctively masculine in décor. Austere bed frame of dark wood. Large desk with a heavy chair. The coloring is dark everywhere in the room, save the sheets of white on the bed. Books too numerous to count on shelves. Everything just so.
"I'm just going to be blunt. Who are you, Shirou Emiya?" Tohno-san crossed her arms, her fingers tapping her elbows.
I stared. "I'm…not really sure what you mean." Really, a loaded question. Philosophical, moral…not to mention all the other complications that I had to offer with an answer that the average person would not.
"Kohaku brought you in. I need to be clear with where this is going. She's had her thumb in a lot of dishes, so to speak, and I want to know if you're another part to this all."
I held out my hands helplessly. "I don't know what's going on with her, but I want to."
"You're truly just someone she once met, and stumbled across recently." It seemed less of a question and more rhetorical, like Tohno-san was thinking aloud.
"Yes."
"And that's it. Nothing else."
I had to consider how to word everything from here on out. Suddenly, I felt like I was maneuvering through a minefield and didn't even have a destination in mind to begin with, other than out of the minefield. The vague sense of something unsettling about the room was not helping with that feeling. "I…well, uh…it isn't tied to anything about you or Kohaku, though…but I'm, uh, not exactly…normal?"
A flat, dry expression of dullness set on Tohno-san's face. "Yes, I gathered that. So, could you care to explain what a magus is doing in my territory?"
…Sometimes, I hated how everyone always seemed to be a step ahead of me.
The next day had me accompanying Tohno-san into town as she was going to introduce me to the doctor she thought Kiritsugu had once met. It was also once more a sort of strange interrogation, though not in the same goofy way that Kohaku grilled me for information.
"You run around with the name of a famous Magus Killer," Tohno-san explained. The street was oddly barren for an early-morning jaunt, though, so I wasn't exactly worried about the issue being out in the open. Though maybe that was also one of the points to the problem I had. "Yet you assume a person only has mundane knowledge. I think that puts you at a standard disadvantage."
Well, it just didn't occur to me that the not-mundane would be so easy to find. Although I guess I really should have learned my lesson on that from the Grail War, when your school idol, one of your teachers, and the girl that comes over to your house every day turn out to have not-mundane backgrounds. It stood to reason that every major community would probably have some kind of supernatural ties or something of the sort that was not normal.
"So your family has ties to that world. Kohaku and Hisui as well?"
Tohno-san shrugged. "Part of a lineage with ESP."
The instant thought that came to mind was it suddenly made sense how easily Kohaku could get information from me. That, I shook off, though, since ESP didn't actually often work in a stereotypical telepathic sense. "So, is all of this tied to the, um, problems you've been having with Kohaku and those branch family members?"
"Not…entirely…" Tohno-san's voice drifted off, stopped, and took a look around. "Do you get the sense that we're being watched?"
This one has quite the sense for it.
"Something, I'm not sure if it's being watched though," I said. The oddity of the time of day and empty street bothered me. Though school was out, people still had to go to work—and this ought to have been the time of day in which you'd see some commuters. "It was busier yesterday when Kohaku and I went into town. Now it feels too empty…"
Yeah, you idiot. That makes sense. If they wanted to take Hisui or Kohaku as was apparently arranged earlier, they might set up a roadblock before moving in. Especially if, as Tohno-san suggests, there's something magical related to the work going on here.
"I…think we should maybe find this doctor another day and head back," I said, and the prickly feeling on the back of my neck seemed to agree with this sentiment.
Tohno-san gave me a strange look. "You sure?"
Well, even if this doctor she knew was the right one, it was a pressing matter or anything. Another day couldn't hurt.
We made it back to the mansion in time.
Multiple cars had been parked: two to either end of the street a hundred meters from the gate. Another car and the limousine were somewhat closer, pulled up onto the curb on the far approach as Tohno-san and I ran up. It seemed as if they were just doing so, as vehicle doors were only just opening as we came within clear sight.
Just beyond the gate, Kohaku and Hisui were stepping out to investigate.
Bodyguards from the cars in front of us stepped out and looked ready to impede our way. More still exited from the cars on the far side, as well as one from the limousine. That made a total of nine at least, all either pulling metal-lined gloves on or brandishing those strange short swords.
"Let me handle this," I said to Tohno-san. Even if I was still clueless on the how.
The guard from the limo moved around the vehicle to the side facing the mansion to open the far back door, allowing another to step out. A larger man, and unlike the others enough that I had to stop and take notice.
He was unlike the others as night was different from day. His clothes were simple, suitable for a martial trainer rather than a businessman or yakuza, frayed at the edges in a way that no self-important person of high class would ever be caught with. He was shorter than two of the bodyguards, though his build was suitable as a combatant—compact rather than all arms and legs. His hair was wild and from beneath the fringes, one dark eye gave me a quick appraisal.
The Touzaki bodyguards all took steps back, giving this man a wide berth. From behind me, I heard the shuffle of footsteps as well—Tohno-san muttering "No…" under her breath.
"What?"
She apparently recognized the newcomer, her voice picking up a waver. "Kouma Kishima…why?"
Though the man did not speak as he stepped out of the limousine, the old man still sitting within did. "Do not concern yourself with Akiha Tohno. Just the maids. Their games will come to an end, now."
"He's a devil-kind!" Tohno-san hissed.
That made my blood run cold.
It's one thing to hear someone say something along the lines of "monster" or "demon" or even "oni" when describing a person with what the speaker considers great strength or power. But the very specific use of "devil-kind" not only stood out, but there was a term in there that, briefly, brought to mind one of the various things Tohsaka had tried to teach me about: the various lineages of half-bloods scattered throughout the world. One term used to describe them was devil-kind.
I felt Tohno-san's hands on my back, as if to push me. "Look after Hisui and Kohaku. Now, go!"
"But you—"
"It isn't a bluff, he'll seriously have that man kill them," Tohno-san said. "I'll be fine. Go!"
I clamped down on a response and nodded. Only partially keeping an eye on the bodyguards, I moved back toward the maids, keeping one arm partially obscured by my own torso. If this turned ugly fast, I wanted to have Tracing as an option—and still try and keep concealed what it was exactly I did.
The movement on my part caused the guards to move perpendicular to me, and I concluded they would not be the actual threat. They were only here to box the targets in and funnel this new person at any potential threat. From the appraisal I'd given before and the vague statements made by the Touzaki head, the fact that former soldiers and trained martial artists were not supposed to be the main threat gave me a sense of uncertainty.
When I was halfway there, the man took one bare-footed step forward before he was leaping across the distance and toward Kohaku. I bit my tongue, abandoned all sense of caution, and charged their way to intercept. I made it between the maids and this Kouma Kishima with a half-second to spare and fell into stance, ready to lash out with a leg and catch him in the sternum, hoping to knock the wind out of him.
The way his eye caught mine, though, gave me an uneasy feeling—
No, Shirou, get away!
The only thing that saved my life was how I'd come to trust that sense implicitly.
I took a half-step backward and raised an arm to block just as the man stepped up into my space within the blink of an eye. Faster than I'd seen anyone short of Saber or Assassin move, he swept in and brought a tree-trunk of a limb down to where my face had been only a moment before.
I'm not even sure what sound my body made. All I could hear is the surge of bloody feedback in my ears, the sensation of the world going absolutely mute. His fist pounded into my raised arm and crushed my ulna and radius against my chest. Breath tore from my lungs under the pressure and my feet fell out from beneath me, that half-step back turning into a boundless flight. I rebounded off the side of the armor-protected car and rolled down the street as if flung from a moving vehicle.
If I screamed, I couldn't tell. But I managed to come to an absolute halt with a burst of prana—whether I forced my body to expel it, or Saber's will imposed itself strongly enough, I wasn't sure. I righted myself as fast as possible and pushed past the spotted haziness in my sight to imagine a weapon capable of fighting this beast—
The blur of this man was upon me again, his bare feet slapping across the pavement like a skipping stone across water.
Avalon was only just responding, and I had no other option. I raised my shattered left arm to meet his fist, sacrificing it to draw Caliburn with my right.
He flew at me too fast.
With his right hand, he grabbed my wrist and tore my arm right off my body.
With his left hand, he palmed the flat of Caliburn's blade and shattered it.
Blood splattered around me and I screamed.
It wasn't the blood.
It wasn't the brutal efficiency of the Kishima demon and his taijutsu.
It wasn't even seeing the kind boy she still couldn't understand shrieking like a wounded animal.
What brought Kohaku to her knees, gave her shivers like the coldest Antarctic winter, was the arm that fell to her feet.
It was not the arm of a person. It was not made with skin and bones, with muscles and blood, with something that looked alive.
It was like the arm of a mannequin, inorganic, with ball joints and a surface with a sheen.
It was something unreal, something fake.
It was not entirely a lost cause.
Though Caliburn shattered, the human-sized slash of light it produced still activated. With reflexes like Illya's Berserker, he darted aside almost instantly from striking the weapon—the same jerk of movement that he used to wrench my arm right from my body. Though he probably could have moved in and struck me once again before I could produce another weapon, he jumped back and glared at me with his good eye.
Though my lungs refused to obey me and continued to scream, I dropped to my knees and fumbled for my damaged arm.
"Shirou—" Kohaku said from behind me, genuine worry leaking into her voice.
I ripped the sleeve from my shirt, then shoved the doll-like arm back into my shoulder. Whatever this guy was, he definitely had enough demonic strength in him—the façade of real blood and bone had been completely ripped from the limb, which shouldn't have happened. Tohsaka had said if I were to be given an examination by a doctor, I should still look entirely real even under a microscope or x-ray.
"I…am the bone…of my sword," I ground out.
Tiny blades erupted from my shoulder and pierced the errant limb.
The half-demon watched me like a hawk, his eyes following the path of the blades my body produced as they tried to right my limb in place. Though he fought like a monster, it was clear he had acute awareness and precise instincts when it came to the battlefield.
And my awareness and instincts were fuzzy at best, now.
"Kouma, if you can't defeat the boy, ignore him. I want those girls taken care of." The old man's voice drifted in from the limousine—though now the door was closed and the window was half-up.
This Kouma Kishima gave no word in reply. He continued to watch like a predator waiting for its prey to make the first move.
I tried to consider a strategy for him, let the reassuring presence around my neck give its affirmation.
Like he was a telepath, the man's eyes widened even as his pupils dilated and he took that one step in before bunching his strength in his legs for a charge—
A sensation of heat, sharp and sudden, shot past my shoulders and pierced the cool winter air. It was like how something so absolutely cold momentarily felt hot against the skin, flying around my body and into the space before me, taking every heated breath in my lungs with it.
The man called Kishima withdrew from it; though it was apparent he could not see it, the stinging sensation in the air seemed to be enough warning to him. He leapt back a dozen strides in one go, then struck the pavement with his steely fist. The road shattered with the sound like a thunder crack, though instead of the air supercharging and the sky lighting up, the earth shook like a high-magnitude quake. Street that was once flat to the ground flew up into the air and a plume of dust and dirt obscured the monster from view.
"Akiha-sama!" Kohaku and Hisui both shouted in unison.
Akiha Tohno stood behind me, her hair alight as if mimicking flame.
I turned back to face the enemy and held fast onto my left arm. Blades continued to erupt from my shoulder, continued to skewer the phantom limb, though now, reconnected to my body, it once more appeared as flesh and blood. When I could make out the sensation of a fist forming on the lost arm, I pulled myself up onto my feet, the screeching noise of steel-against-steel reverberating through me.
As the sensation of heat and flame burned the air around me, Kouma Kishima danced amidst the debris he had created. He pulled pieces of the street and sidewalk up with his bare hands and flung them into the air as he moved, obscuring his actions from sight and shielding him from whatever it was Tohno-san was doing. Each piece of concrete or asphalt would flare up in combustion for a moment, and each time he would kick up a new piece and shield himself with that, until he was steadily making ground on us.
"Shirou!" Kohaku's cry rose above the bestial stomping the demon caused. "Get out of the way, I don't want you to get—"
"Trace, on!"
I watched the pattern emerging from how he moved and what Tohno-san seemed to be controlling. My mind went to a thick, heavy sword from Western Asia, blade of the man said to have the blessing of Mars though ironically called the Scourge of God. Without my arm functional enough to use a bow, I risked firing the weapon straight out of my mind like a Full Trace.
"Tear this land asunder! Az Isten Kardja!"
Attila the Hun's sword struck the earth and, like the myth of its appearance, buried itself into the pavement with a sound not unlike an explosion. Pieces of the blacktop flew into the air at Kouma's feet—and he was forced to take the brunt of the blow by how Tohno-san had blocked him in.
I took a step back, raised my arms above my head, growling past the pain that shot up my left arm as I did so. I reversed my grip, however, since the Kendo-styled swing needed the bottom hand to provide the strength of the swing.
Golden light formed in my hands.
Kouma sped through the cloud Attila's sword caused and charged me, faster than before, the distance between us shrinking as if by magic.
I clenched my jaw and spit out the activation. Though it would not be a full blast, if anything could breach this guy's defenses, it would be the sword called steel-cutter. "Ex—"
His palm flew in to strike me at the neck, would have hit me before I could make the swing—
It struck something solid first, as if a burst of energy formed a temporary shield before me.
"—calibur!"
He struck me at my collarbone, but he withdrew in the same motion as my swing came down. The aborted move both saved my life and his—my slash caught the very front of his chest and ignited his clothing, though from the resistance I could tell it did not go very deep. His blow hit me hard enough to snap the bone beneath his hand and I was sent skidding back into Kohaku, Hisui, and Akiha Tohno's feet. But the sudden withdraw of force let me know that had he hit, there would have been a crater where my upper chest was supposed to be.
And suddenly, that blazing warmth that was with me, that heat that hung constantly from my neck, the almost-a-voice in my head—
Gone. Even beyond the ringing in my ears and the rush of blood through my head, I could tell.
I tried to stagger back up, but hands held firmly to my chest kept me down. My sight, fuzzy with spots, realized that Tohno-san stood over me, her hair still a burning red, and that she was speaking. I couldn't push past the white noise in my hearing to make out what was being said, though.
Reaching for that presence, trying to draw on the energy that would speed up recovery from what that guy had just pounded into me—I found nothing. She really was gone.
"—So get back, or I will tear you all down with me," Tohno-san's voice fell into a deep register, enough to push into my awareness.
There seemed to be a general affirmation to what was being said—no demonic man tried to move in for the kill, and I could vaguely feel the ground vibrating from vehicle engines being turned on. Apparently, a cease-fire had been negotiated.
They hauled me back in through the front door; Hisui took me by the shoulders and Kohaku by my feet. I tried to smile at Kohaku, tried to reassure her it was alright, but the haze of pain from my left arm still kept me feeling numb and the way my throat bunched due to my broken collarbone made it hard to breathe. The truly worse part, though, was the absence of the warmth around my neck made me suddenly feel naked and alone in a cold, dank world.
I was set down on a sofa they had in the foyer, a decorative one that felt like the cushions would have been better off being made of wood than fabric. The strain on my limbs went away, though, and I was able to concentrate on pouring prana through my nerved-circuits, trying to forcibly reconnect the work still only half-done by Avalon.
Half-done and not going any further.
Saber was gone.
That last pulse of power that had stalled Kouma's strike—it was the keychain that hung from my neck. He'd crushed it to powder with the same power he had crushed my collarbone. And no matter what her power was, what strength she had within her soul, the container was still just a tiny little object and the magic binding them together fragile at best.
Once again, I was saved, and somebody paid the price for me.
"They might be reluctant now, but they'll press once Kouma is healed," Tohno-san said.
"Akiha-sama," Kohaku began.
"Quiet." Tohno-san flung her hair over her shoulder. "This isn't your deal. It's mine. As the head of this family, it always fell to me to make sure everything went into place. The Touzaki stepping out of line is not any different."
A pregnant silence followed, though I interrupted it ungracefully with a whimper when the last blade withdrew from my shoulder and returned to non-existence inside of me.
All three of the girls turned their gazes onto me. Well, specifically, onto my bloodied limb.
"What was that?" Tohno-san asked. "Your arm, it looked…fake."
Thinking about it with how I felt after that bout only made me want to retch. I scratched at the place where the keychain should have been, but found only Tohsaka's gem hanging there. It occurred to me that I should probably wash the ribbon—at this point, it had to have blood all over it. "Because it was."
"But it looks fine now," Kohaku said, her hands slowly gliding over it. "Not, I mean, fine, but, normal…alive. Not like a…a doll."
The way she said that made me perk up to attention, even through the pain and emptiness that still filled me. "That's about right, though."
Kohaku looked at me quite vacantly.
"What you see here, it isn't quite real. It's a fake. A replication." I sighed, tried to quell the feeling like my stomach was going to revolt. I didn't like thinking about the technicalities of this all because it bent my brain in ways I really couldn't quite comprehend well enough to my own liking. "My real body died…a while ago."
"You mean…" Kohaku looked like she was replaying the various conversations we had in her head, trying to connect the dots.
"I tried saving someone. I failed, and this is what happened," I said.
Synchronized Body, Dreams Above, End
AN: Yes, I planned this from the beginning, both Kouma's appearance and Saber's disappearance. Just for the record, I don't actually get influenced on a story by what people say they want to see or would like to happen. By the time a chapter is up, I know the major plot points. The only time people suggest things that can affect a story happens when I'm still working out the arc of a story from the beginning.