Chapter 15.5 - "The Final Ominous Crescendo (Lead-up to the Climax)"
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Shirou had been making excellent progress.
The peaceful passing days had been used to good effect.
Unlike Saber's own Grail War, Caster didn't seem to be Medea or any other malicious and unethical Caster who harvest mana by eating people (or at least, they had already been taken care of, if they were), so Saber and the younger didn't have to spend their time scouting out villainous Servants.
Instead, Saber had decided to use the time to train his younger self to better defend himself against any potential threats, and to pave a way for him to pursue a better future.
The younger Shirou had already gotten used to using his magic circuits, and had gotten up his Projections to a good point, where he could reliably Trace Kanshou and Bakuya and reinforce them well.
Shirou had even gotten up to the point where he could reliably use all 27 of his magical circuits at once, and activate them pretty quickly, with both the speed of magical energy flow and the quantity that each of his circuits could use far improved from where he was at the beginning of this war, especially now that the circuits were actually being used in practice and got more exercise in.
Now, each could channel about 10 units of magical energy, about average for a magical circuit. Much improved from the poor quality circuits that were barely able to channel 2 or 3 units because they had grown rusty from a lack of proper use and care.
But with the new continuous practice and usage (and with help of Avalon, healing up even small damages to his soul from his reckless practices of trying to create new circuits), his own natural-born circuits had finally gotten got back to their original, average-quality state.
And with his mana output increased and his projection skills sharpened, he could now project NiseXcaliburs with ease.
Emiya Shirou was looking more and looking like a proper magus now, every day.
He could probably even reliably defeat a prideful experienced mage by now, if Shirou was smart about it and didn't get caught up by any sort of traps or ambushes.
Well, he'd probably still lose against Tohsaka in a pure magecraft battle at this point, though.
But, that much was still very impressive.
After all, Tohsaka was Tohsaka, and that was only natural, given how extraordinary a magus she was, not to mention her intelligence and craftiness.
But the younger Shirou was certainly a far cry from how he was before the war began, where he couldn't even properly reinforce a steel bar while risking his own life to do so, even almost killing himself in the process.
The current Emiya Shirou as he was now was also a serious far cry from how inexperienced Saber had been during his own war, too.
It had taken Saber himself a few years to have reached this point, and that was with Tohsaka's help. Yet, Shirou had made amazing amounts of progress in reaching that point with incredible speed over just these past few days.
It was undoubtedly largely in part because of some sort of resonance effect and the healing factor from Avalon, which Saber had lost after his own war, but even so, the progress that Shirou had made just over these past 2 weeks or so had been pretty incredible.
He really was proud of how far along his younger self had come.
There was one curious change though.
Shirou's switch image, instead of manifesting as the firing of a gun's hammer, had instead become an image of stabbing himself through the chest with a sword.
Well, since Saber was nearby, it was possibly the effect of Saber's own influence, from his own changed trigger after his time spent with Artoria in Avalon.
Besides that, though, there were no other changes.
Shirou had wanted to try projecting Excalibur at least, but Saber had forbid it, because it was much too powerful for him, even at this point.
At his instance, though, Saber had allowed Shirou to try making a degraded Excalibur inside his own Reality Marble, but it didn't turn out very well, as one would naturally expected. It wasn't even up to par with NiseXcalibur, much to Shirou's disappointment.
Well, that much was only natural, though. After all, the NiseXcalibur Saber had made for Shirou and handed to him was Saber's own best attempt at making a degraded Excalibur after his own decades of experience and near death trials at refining it, so it's natural that his refined NiseXcalibur would be a much more elegant and powerful work, even with the projecting experience that Shirou had managed to siphon from Saber through their training.
And trying to project the undegraded Excalibur would undeniably cost Shirou his life, even now at his new peak.
Well, they had come to an agreement, though. If Shirou was in such a desperate situation that he was about to die anyway, and he was already in his own Reality Marble with back-up, then he could give it a try - in other words, in the best case scenario for projecting Excalibur successfully without Shirou losing his life.
But, besides that, they had also done Reality Marble Training and exercise in establishing and collapsing Reality Marbles, how to set one up quickly and how to sustain them for longer periods of time. As expected, Shirou picked it up much quicker than Saber did in his own lifetime, but he was still struggling a bit with maintaining it for longer periods of time.
Shirou had been amazed though, when Saber had shown Shirou his own Reality Marble as a reward for Shirou managing to set up his own for the first.
It was such a different landscape from his own that Shirou wondered if he could ever reach such an ideal himself, and Saber assured him he could, one day, if he set out on his own path.
But, unknown to either of them, Shirou's own Reality Marble had already begun to change and expand in many significant ways...
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Archer, after coming back to the scene, had discovered Zouken's murder of both Sakura and Ilya.
His colder poker face was the same as usual, but internally, he was incredibly furious, seething with white-hot rage.
Even after centuries and millennia of growing accustomed to killing - and even if he had mostly forgotten about them before being summoned back - he still had a very deep fondness for them, deep down.
There was some small part of him, at least, that remained Emiya Shirou after all.
Ignoring Rin's orders to stay cautious (despite her own deep sorrow at Sakura's death), Archer set off his own to hunt down Zouken and Assassin.
He staked them out at their mansion, as he was used to doing on his missions to kill certain targets, but he was started getting impatient. Besides, this wasn't any sort of official mission from the World anyways, so there was no need to minimize the damage where possible.
Taking a more direct approach, he quickly burned down the Matou Mansion in the hopes of smoking them out, if they were still holed up in there.
(Shinji ran out in the process. The on-edge Archer almost sniping him by mistake, but luckily he refraining in time from accidently shooting down Shinji. Sakura's brother, and an innocent bystander, and his former friend).
...Something was wrong, though.
Even with their mansion burning down, neither of them stepped out to meet Archer.
Which either meant that they were in hiding somewhere else, or...
Archer rushed to the Matou basement, finding only the rotting and decaying flesh of what he could only assume was the burnt corpse of Matou Zouken, along with the rotting flesh of a cesspool full of countless worms.
Archer cursed.
Someone else had gotten to Zouken before he had, and by the looks of it, had taken Ilya's body and heart with them.
'Rin, I have bad news...'
She didn't respond.
'Rin? I know you're angry that I didn't obey your commands, but this is important!'
Still, no response.
"Shit! Don't tell me..."
There was only one other person who would have an interest in using Ilya and who would be able to catch Rin off-guard and knock her out so quickly that she wouldn't even be able to call him for help!
"That bastard...! Kotomine...!"
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Elsewhere, Kotomine has already reached Ryuudou temple, both both lesser grails in his grasp, and with even his pupil, Tohsaka to use as an additional conduit for the Evils of Humanity to manifest through.
"Now, eat up!"
He fed them all to the grail, grinning and rejoicing mightily as it swallowed them all up.
Zouken hadn't been easy to kill, especially since his "main worm" kept fleeing amidst all the other worms he kept around, but the of killing him and snatching away his prizes result was well-worth it!
The Greater Grail's Growth now was simply astounding!
Kotomine could only laugh and smile, as the black tendrils started to warp around him and start devouring him as well.
"Ha! Hahahahaha!"
Kotomine's last laugh was filled with mirth, as he rejoiced in the birth of a New Evil.
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Meanwhile,
Shirou and Saber had gone out into the city, taking a break.
The bystanders and citizens who observed them mistook them as either father and son, or as brothers, but they played along with it, as their cover story, since it would be easiest to explain that way.
Saber himself had stopped by a souvenir shop, fondly recalling the time when he had gotten Artoria, his own Saber, her lion plushy.
Saber eyed it, contemplating whether or not he should buy her a new. In fact, this might even be the same lion plushy got her, just in a different timeline where she hadn't been summoned.
She still had the old one Shirou had gotten her even now, in Avalon, somehow (probably Merlin's doing). But maybe she'd appreciate a new one as well.
Thinking that, Saber reached out to grab one the plushies when all of a sudden, he felt a major chill down his spine, as though something was wrong with the Grail that summoned.
Archer, too, could probably feel it, if he was still around.
Quickly, Saber established communications with Shirou.
'Master!'
'Huh? What's wrong?' Shirou asked, startled by the sudden urgency in Saber's voice.
'I can't explain it, but I think something's wrong with the Grail! I'll meet you at Ryuudou temple!'
'Huh? Ryuudou Temple? What do you mean? What's going on? Saber?'
Shirou could feel Saber's urgency through their telepathic communication and could tell that Saber was already hurrying there.
"Wait up! Saber!"
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The Day was slowly falling...
The Hour of Midnight was rising...
As The Night was quickly approaching...
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Chapter 15.5 Transition - "The Ominous Crescendo" END
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Author's Notes:
In fact, I originally didn't plan or feel like to write most of that that out, as it's not interesting (we already kind of saw what would happen in an Assassin VS Archer fight in Heaven's Feel, and it doesn't really deal with any Emiya Shirou besides Archer, so its really not that interesting except for the last part), but after thinking up of the first and last parts, I decided, "screw it!" and decided to write it all out, lmao
It does do some stuff to set up for the bonus chapter, though (mostly setting up about what Shirou's own reality marble would be like, after being in contact with Saber and with other versions of himself), if I ever get around to writing it down and fleshing it out. Mostly about Shirou VS Gilgamesh, which if you like the climax of The Holy Shirou War (or even if you didn't like the climax of The Holy Shirou), you'll probably like it. It's smaller scale than the climax, but it has some pretty cool moments and feats for Shirou, too.
And some pretty cool symbolism and character and thematic stuff, too, as has been present throughout the rest of the story. But it really comes to a head in the bonus chapter. In a sense, the actual climax might be the action climax and first thematic/symbolic of the story, whereas the bonus chapter could said to the be the second thematic/symbolic climax of the story. Not as action-y, but still has some pretty cool action and moments for Shirou, I think.