Author Note
Hi there and welcome to another chapter of Avalon Bond.
First of all, let us answer the reviews.
Wolfrsaber - Thanks for appreciating my work.
orion399 - Well, FGO willsomewhat start in the next chapter. However, it won't be right away. I have other ideas to run first, but in about 2-3 chapters, FGO will begin.
Now let's begin with the chapter.
Avalon Bond
Part I – Fate Stay Night
Chapter 9 – A needed break and inner struggles
After Shirou and Arturia's first assignment to the Association, an entire year has passed of nothing but constant travelling, training, saving lives and risking theirs to combat corrupted magus as well as vampires and dead apostles.
Like Arturia looked forward to, when they started, the couple had travelled to many different locations throughout the Globe. So far, they had missions in pretty much all the continents, with most missions in Europe. However, they had some tough assignments in South America and even in Africa, where both Shirou and Arturia got pushed pretty hard. Specially in Africa, Shirou managed to rescue a group of women and children that were kidnapped and were due for much harsher treatment. Though, they could not do much, considering that part of the enemies were actually members of the local government. The redhead had to be convinced by Arturia that killing them was not an option, though she too considered it after what they had witnessed.
Needless to say, Emiya Shirou began to understand that some actions just could not be forgiven, though he was thankful for Arturia being the voice of reason, stating that he could not lower himself to their level. As he travelled, he began to understand human nature more.
Arturia feared that she would see Archer in Shirou's eyes and she certainly would have, had Shirou crossed that specific line.
Being a king, Arturia Pendragon had witnessed many times how vile humans can be. And she loved Shirou too much to see him lose faith in humanity like a certain counter guardian did in the future. Just the mere thought of it was too much for her to bear. In the end, Shirou and Arturia settled for giving the enemies quite the scare and Shirou even managed to wipe the memories of some, without anyone being the wiser.
Also, one specific mission for the Church involved them travelling to India, when a bunch of vampires were seen terrorizing a small village.
Though no dead apostles were spotted nearby, so Shirou and Ciel just bombarded the vampires with black keys and left, allowing the local government to fix the damage.
It soon became a pattern.
Their three clients would send them a text or e-mail with a location and then they would be there. Either Ciel would demand their presence or Bazett with their mission parameters. The good thing was that throughout the missions, either Ciel or Bazett would be there waiting for them. They got accustomed to working with either women to the point that Arturia would get suspicious of others demanding their services. The reason being that one time a member of the Association sent Shirou a message for a mission in Germany. Seeing that Bazett was their one and only contact with the Enforcers, Shirou contacted her for confirmation. Turned out that Shirou's foresight paid off as it was an ambush for them.
Shirou and Saber's reputation in the Association skyrocketed as so far there was not a mission they could not complete.
Even if a high-level and influential magus like Bazett accompanied them, there were times when they faced almost impossible odds together and still overcame them.
And since they were not affiliated to the Association, some of the more influential families began to feel restless, considering that Shirou was also the magus killer's son. Bazett reported the issue to the Vice-Director at once and the culprit got apprehended. Much to Shirou's objection, the man was tortured until he revealed the name of this contractor. Shirou needed to realize that the Enforcers were under the Vice-Director's wing, so anyone who moved against them was interpreted as undermining her authority. Turned out, that some in Waver Velvet's family, the Archibald, moved to eliminate Shirou and Saber through the use of mercenaries.
The third client being one Tohsaka Rin as Arturia did offer their services for anything that Rin ever needed.
As such, every time Rin needed to conduct a field study in mineralogy, Shirou and Arturia would be there with her both to protect her from harm and to help her speed things up. Of course, Rin never expected to be attacked in any of these trips. It just served for her to give the couple a needed break from the action as well as the opportunity for the three friends to catch up. Shirou and Arturia even followed Rin to other dimensions as per Zelretch's request to recover some artifacts for him. The concept became too foreign for Shirou and Arturia to understand, but Rin was already accustomed to it. Of course, the practitioner of true magic avoided sending the trio to tough spots, even if Rin would not be surprised if he did.
The old man had a weird sense of humor like that.
Rin remembered the time Zelretch sent her to a dimension where she met an older version of herself being married to Matou Shinji of all people. Though, she then came to learn that Shinji of that dimension had the same mentality as the one from her own and got caught in some dirty deed, trying in vain to implant magic circuits to become a magus.
However, the mere thought of herself being with that creep made her tremble to the bone.
===xxx===
Right now, Shirou and Arturia were back in Fuyuki and back in the Emiya Household. The couple enjoyed the travels and the fighting immensely, but they were both homesick. It was a nice change of pace to simply enjoy the company of friends and family as even Rin and Sakura had followed them back home. They even visited the reconstructed Ryuudou Temple together with the bundle of energy known as Taiga and then Shirou cooked them dinner. Neither Ciel nor Bazett bothered them throughout their much-needed and much-deserved holiday as Emiya Shirou would look at the filled table in his house with a smile on his face.
However, only Arturia could understand the subtle saddened look that her lover showed when he thought no one was looking.
It turned out that neither Arturia nor Shirou liked to talk about two specific missions that weighted on their consciousness. Both found out that no matter how hard they tried, both of them had weaknesses to take care of.
===Iran - Flashback===
The first one was a mission they had for the Association as Bazett had received a request from the Spiritual Evocation division.
Bazett has requested Shirou and Arturia to join her and an elite squad from the Spiritual Evocation Division in Tehran. At the time, Bazett opted not to provide any information beforehand, saying that they would receive the necessary intel at the airport in Tehran. Once they arrived, Shirou and Arturia were surprised to see Bazett together with a group of five magus from the Association. Next to her was Bram Nuada-Re Sopbia-Ri, the head of the Department of Spiritual Evocation. Neither Shirou nor Arturia had meet the man, but they knew each of the elite members of the Clock Tower by now. Bram was responsible for acquiring many of the relics the Clock Tower possessed to summon servants for the Grail Wars.
A magus by the name of Barzan had been conducting illegal practices in order to replicate the system of the Grail.
Barzan was actually a member of the Clock Tower but left once he received no recognition for his skills and genius.
Also, Bram had reported that, before leaving the Clock Tower, Barzan had stolen the relic for summoning Darius III, the King of Persia.
They had heard rumors that Barzan's experiments were pretty advanced as the leylines in the area were strong enough for that. Problem was that Bram's idea of a plan was to throw away the cannon fodder while his elites dealt with Barzan. Apparently, one cannot become an elite of the Clock Tower without first becoming a prick. His plan was to send Shirou and Arturia, in Bram's mind, the cannon fodder, to deal with the servant should Barzan be successful while his elites dealt with the magus and the destruction of his experiments. Bazett did protest somewhat, but at the end of the day, Shirou and Arturia were freelancers, in other words, expendable. If something were to happen to them, the Clock Tower would simply discard them. However, neither Shirou nor Arturia minded all that much, considering that with them being alone, there would be no need for restraints, with the obvious exception of Shirou's reality marble.
Even the methods of transportation varied as Bram's team and Bazett all boarded in an elegant SUV while Shirou and Arturia had to use a worn-out jeep. It took two hours before they arrived at a small village and the sight before them was quite destructive. There in the middle of the village, stood a black-skinned bald giant of a man towering easily three meters high and blindly destroying everything in its path. The SUV simply marched forward as they had the location of Barzan, leaving Shirou and Arturia to deal with the huge berserker servant on their own. The couple had previous experience with facing berserker giants as they faced Heracles at the fifth war. The servant carried two golden axes in each hand and unleashed fire both from his mouth and from the axes.
When the King of Knights presented herself as the opponent, Darius III stopped his path of destruction and charged straight at her with surprising speeds.
Shirou immediately threw runes on the ground in the giant's path as the force field lifted.
However, the berserker simply smashed through it. Berserker had Mad Enhancement, so their parameters were up than normal.
That being said, it was time for a game of agility as Shirou and Arturia attacked in tandem, Arturia with her projected Caliburn and Shirou with Kanshou and Bakuya. They were successful in penetrating the giant's defenses and still delivered some intimating attacks, but Darius III felt no pain nor appeared to be debilitated. Darius, though, focused on smashing his axe on the ground, causing tremors and ground attacks at them. Shirou and Arturia had to halt their attacks at the giant and evade them. Shirou then took some more distance and summoned Cadalbolg while Arturia ran interference if needed be. The missile projectile travelled like a comet in the desert and Darius III faced it head on, releasing a powerful beam of fire from his mouth.
Shirou's arrow passed through the flames and even pierced the servant's shoulder but did not serve its purpose.
Arturia focused a wind typhoon on her sword and sent it towards Darius III while Shirou summoned a bunch of swords in the air to be sent as projectiles. None of them worked…well, they carved blood from Darius, but nothing they sent appeared to be debilitating. Arturia opted to move the battle to close range as she used her mana burst to parry Darius's axes while she engaged with her sword, now filled with her mana. She even managed to slice one of Darius's axes in half, but the woman was surprised when the other hit her on the chest, carving blood from the king of knights. Shirou immediately used healing mage craft from Avalon as he occupied Darius with a rain of reinforced arrows. None of it even carved a dent on Darius's rigid physique, but it was enough for Arturia to be fully healed. The king of knights was ready to concede that anything short of her noble phantasm won't be enough to deal with this servant.
But using that would not drain Shirou's mana and they did not know if it would be enough.
It was required of them to keep the servant occupied, since he was bound to the magus and Bram's squad needed to either kill the man or cut off his usage of mana.
Once more, the couple joined forces in facing him directly. Arturia with her Caliburn and Shirou with a weapon he rarely used, at least as an actual sword.
Hrunting
The sword alone is not much different than Caliburn in terms of power, but the more Shirou drew blood from the opponent, more the sword will absorb it, until it turned completely red. When that happens, the magical sword becomes even stronger, but at a cost. The more blood it absorbs the more mana it is required to sustain. As such, Shirou was able to land consecutive hits on Darius and they carried even more damage over time. However, Shirou both underestimated the amount of pain tolerance as the servant became full of cuts on his body. Also, his own mana capacity was suffering its strain at keeping the fight going for long. The second of indecision proved almost fatal as Darius's remaining axe slashed through Shirou's side stomach, earning a concerned scream from Arturia.
The redhead cursed himself as he had to back off from the fight while Arturia handled the giant servant all on her own.
While focusing on Avalon to heal him, Shirou unleashed a rain of arrows hoping to keep the giant at bay, while Arturia prepared Excalibur.
To this day, they had never had to use her noble phantasm in combat and Shirou feared that he would not be able to keep up. However, if Bram's team failed to defeat the magus, Darius would be free to destroy everything in its path, killing many innocents. He nodded at Arturia who released the projected Caliburn and focused enough of her energy to summon Excalibur. Shirou could feel the excessive drain on his mana when Arturia's hand gathered the energy. However, both were relieved when Darius III stopped moving. The excessive mana began to pour from his skin as the spirit was released from this world. It was at this moment that Bazett arrived to see her partners all battered and bloodied on the floor, panting in exertion and no servant.
Behind her, Bram's team carried an unconscious Barzan to be escorted back to the Clock Tower for trial.
Though everyone could see the dissatisfied look on Bram's face as he saw the freelancers alive, much to Bazett's delight.
She was rooting for her favorite couple after all.
===End Iran Flashback===
Even if Shirou was not a servant, he still believed he needed to get stronger.
He desperately wanted to fight by Arturia's side as a partner. That fight in Iran showed him that he still lacked something. Darius III, despite not being a full servant because of the false grail, was still easily above Shirou's level. The redhead had to push back and allow Arturia to do the fighting, while the rest of the Enforcers dealt with the magus. Of course, they were not supposed to defeat Darius III, because that would mean that a magus defeated a servant. But at the end of the day, Shirou had to back down and let Arturia do the fighting all by herself while he had to heal his wounds. When the mission was finished, Arturia consoled Shirou, though she never once looked down on him for it or even thought any less of him.
Although Shirou had to back down, he had still acted as her support with his bow and arrow and had allowed Arturia to deliver a crippling blow to Darius III before the servant vanished due to the magus being killed.
Another mission that weighted on them, this time on Arturia's shoulders, was one that Ciel requested their assistance in Romania.
===Romania – Flashback===
This mission was one that Ciel expressed great concern in her message as the rest of the Executors were focused on another mission in the United States.
As such, there was no one else to spare for this assignment. Ciel understood the ugly truth, immediately. It was a suicide mission, plain and simple. Normally, she would expect a least two or three more Executors to accompany her, but the Church did not have anymore to spare, which Ciel doubted very seriously, but chose not to comment. Her past with her bosses was a truculent one and she did not wish that on anyone, not even on her worst enemies. Getting killed over and over again just for a bloody test. Bloody bastards the lots of them, really. Still, she had her freelancers to call upon for help. And it is not like she had misled them withholding information. Shirou and Saber were fully briefed about the situation and were even given the choice to go along or not.
Ciel has been in this dead apostle hunt for longer than these two had been alive…of course, she was still unaware of who Saber actually was.
Both Ciel and Arturia knew that Shirou would not back down from it, considering the atrocities that a group of three dead apostles was causing in Sighisoara, Romania.
Also, Arturia was not someone who would back down from a fight.
As soon as they landed in Romania, both Shirou and Arturia were surprised at the feel of mana in this city. The feel was similar to Fuyuki, land of the Holy Grail War as both considered that this place could very well handle a war of that magnitude, probably even higher. When they arrived in Sighisoara, the city was complete dark, no light and no sound…completely devoid of life. In terms of mission for the Executors, there was a pattern involved. Get rid of the vampires first before facing the dead apostles. And since Arturia was ill equipped to effectively do anything else but cause them injury, the group split up. Ciel would handle her end with as much enthusiasm possible while Shirou and Arturia went together on the other side of town, cleansing them now turned vampires.
However, unlike other times, this was the first time that they had to cleanse an entire city.
If one were to look from above, they would see one blue fire dot and then another…and then another, until the entire city had bright blue fire dots from the black keys burning the vampires up until only dust remained.
The tough part came when they had to face the dead apostles in combat.
Three for three…If something bad happened to each of them, then no one would be able to come to the rescue. After dealing with the vampires, the three dead apostles approached their enemies in the town's center square. It did not take long for each to find a suitable adversary as Ciel broke formation and faced one of them. Shirou and Arturia, though, remained together which forced the remaining two dead apostles to fight together, something that they never believed in doing. Still, the fight carried on with Shirou unleashing his trusty Chinese couple swords while Arturia faced them with Excalibur hidden by her wind spell. Shirou's enemy was obviously stronger physically than him, even with Shirou using reinforcement on himself. However, in terms of agility and with Kanshou and Bakuya being as unpredictable, Shirou had the advantage.
Arturia was also good in her fight, keeping her opponent at bay, however, unconsciously, her eyes drifted to Shirou's fight.
Fighting against a dead apostle was not like fighting a servant, but they were still stronger than humans.
She was full of pride when she saw Kanshou slicing his opponent's arm off, before Shirou summoned a rain of black keys to rid the world of his foe. However, because she took her eyes away from her own enemy, her enemy evaded from her position and charged straight at Shirou in revenge for his partner. Arturia cursed herself for taking her eyes away from her enemy and shouted for Shirou to watch out, while using mana burst to shorten the distance. However, she did not reach the fast enemy in time. Shirou heard Arturia screaming and turned to see what was happening, only to see the enemy's claws inches from his back.
He could feel the strain in his circuits from continuously reinforcing his body. And such overuse did not allow him to use something to protect him or even use runecraft. Shirou tried dodging, but the clawed hand pierced his back and went all the way to the front of his chest, barely missing his heart.
Arturia's breath hitched in her throat as the terrible scene was recorded in her mind. She screamed in anger at the enemy for killing her Shirou.
The dead apostle smirked at the woman and even licked Shirou's blood from his claws.
Shirou was unmoving on the ground and he had lost a lot of blood. The woman had seen red at that point and focused every strength she still had in this world to slice the dead apostle to pieces. The man, however, merely laughed at that, seeing as Arturia had no means of actually killing him. However, that mood changed once a rain of black keys reached his body, burning him up. Arturia was by Shirou's side crying her eyes out, cursing herself for allowing the enemy to evade her and kill her beloved. Ciel was by her side as well in sadness, looking over Shirou's dire wound from his chest.
When she saw, though, the wound closing, she had relaxed. The yellow energy of Avalon worked fast in saving Shirou's life with Arturia close by.
Arturia was still sobbing uncontrollably when she saw the energy healing her lover.
Shirou's eyes opened suddenly and he coughed in pain while his hands went for his chest. Arturia quickly hugged him, saying sorry over and over again.
===End Romania Flashback===
The image of Shirou's chest being pierced like that still plagued Arturia's mind.
How close he was of dying and all because she failed to protect him. Shirou had battled valiantly against one of the dead apostles, but the battle went for too long and Shirou had to both fight and maintain her at the same time. As such, it took a couple of seconds more for him to adjust after defeating his foe. She may have loathed her, but Arturia was now thankful for Ciel's timely approach as they together dealt with the rest of the dead apostle while Arturia stood close to Shirou so that Avalon could heal him. The wound barely missed his heart, but that was due to Shirou moving his body the soon his eyes saw the attack coming.
The king of knights became mortified at the prospect of losing him, losing the man to whom her heavy heart belonged. And it would be her fault.
Another item to add to the list of her failures.
After the final dead apostle was dealt with, Ciel and Arturia had taken care of Shirou for an entire week until the redhead became fully healthy once more. However, the scar close to his heart would be forever there and every time they made love or simply slept together, Arturia would caress the scar and be reminded of the terrible scene. The memory simply topped every single bad memory she had in her life. No matter how much she suffered seeing the end of her kingdom due to Mordred's betrayal, no matter how much she suffered after knowing of Lancelot and Guinevere's betrayal…she eventually being the cause of the love of her life getting killed easily became number one.
Her chest ached every time her mind went back to that moment.
Also, because Shirou did not have the stamina to keep up the fight while having to support Arturia. If he did not have to supply her, then he would at least be able to do something. This was actually the first time that the thought passed in Arturia's mind. For all intents and purposes, their relationship was between master and servant or familiar now that the war was over.
And the King of Knights could not help but wonder how wonderful it would be to become human once more and be together with Shirou. In London, when she talked about Shirou being a knight in her era, she began to envision the possibility of a real relationship with him not bound by the master familiar type bond. Not only she would enjoy everything she has enjoyed thus far, which were inarguably the best moments of her life, but she would not need Shirou's help anymore in keeping her in this world. She could be completely free to live with him and, most importantly, not become a burden. However, that was a thought for another day as right now all Arturia wanted was for them to enjoy their sweet time resting and recovering, not to mention easing Shirou's magic circuits from sustaining her in between missions.
===xxx===
Turned out that that night, after dinner, the girls ended up throwing a pajama party with sake and everyone slept in Shirou's house afterward.
The redhead took the opportunity to visit old man Raiga and diligently gave every car and motorcycle a fine tune-up. That allowed him to somewhat take his mind away from his troubles. In some of their trips, Shirou had used his skill to fix their method of transportation. In some countries, finding a suitable vehicle was sometimes hard. One time, when they were in Polony hunting a female magus by the name of Haruri Borzak who was harvesting dead apostle bees, Shirou had to first fix an old jeep from the second world war before they could begin the hunt. Later they found out that the woman was actually the granddaughter of Odd Borzak, who was surprisingly killed by Emiya Kiritsugu and Natalia Kaminiski, though no one knew the exact details of what happened.
When he later returned to his house and saw Arturia having fun with the other girls, he smiled and quickly went to his warehouse to work on some runes to aid him in future battles, specifically to add runes in his arrows that would allow the projectile to travel without air resistance. Though that would imply learning a bit about wind elemental spells and Shirou only had knowledge of the fire element. Wind was more Arturia's area of expertise. However, if his plan worked, then his arrows would not only be stronger, but also faster, allowing him to better aid Arturia.
Shirou had been working on his side project for the better part of the night when he felt a pair of hands hugging him from behind.
The golden locks fell from his ears as he could feel Arturia's chest on his back and her head on top of his shoulder.
"What are you working on?"
Every possible answer he could think of pretty much escaped from his mind as he felt her lips kissing his neck softly while whispering moans in his ear.
When they first started having sex, Arturia was still shy in voicing her desires to him. In her mind, the simple fact of having desires was a foreign concept until she began her relationship with Shirou and they began to explore new things together. Arturia had been teased too long by Rin about this, that her mind began to think more lecherously towards her lover. Now as Shirou listened to the woman voicing what she wanted, or rather how she wanted, Shirou could not help but shiver in anticipation. The noise in the house was still going on and that way no one would hear them. Arturia offered her hands to him and Shirou gladly accepted as the couple went back to their room, taking their clothes off along the way to the bed while kissing heavily.
===Next day===
The next day, after a nice night of rest and other activities, Shirou and Arturia were having a light spar inside their dojo.
While the others slept until late in hangover, Shirou and Arturia had woken up early to practice like always.
Shirou has used Kanshou and Bakuya for so long in their missions that Arturia figured that they could spend some time brushing up on her style of fighting.
They were sparring with the wooden sword that was stashed in the dojo. Today was a fight of pure skill and no strength for two reasons. First, the sword would break in mere minutes and second, it would help Shirou improve on his technique. They had been practicing for a couple hours now as per their routine, and the fight remained controlled but Arturia saw that Shirou's moves became erratic and she could see multitude of openings for her to exploit. It did not take too long for her to capitalize and send him to the ground. Arturia sighed in dismay as she heard a grunt from Shirou on the ground as he complained to himself.
She kneeled next to him, waiting for him to acknowledge her presence.
"Are you okay, Shirou?" He took a long breathing and negated, increasing her worry.
"It's the fight with Darius III all over again…I don't know what to do, Arturia…how can I improve so that that never happens."
Placing a comforting hand on his shoulder, she smiled at him.
"You can't keep blaming yourself like this Shirou…fighting a servant head on is already a daunting task. But you have other abilities to compensate."
"But how can I truly be by your side, then, Arturia…what if something happens to you and I'm not close to prevent it." Arturia nodded, already hearing this concern. "I know that from long range I can aid you, but still there is the risk of me not being fast enough to have your back."
"In battle, there is only so much we can control, Shirou…" Arturia was turning into teacher mode, hiding her own doubts and insecurities. "We just have to practice long enough to take advantage of the enemy's openings without showing our own. Though, no matter how much we practice, we cannot fight against the inevitability of chance. At one point, one of us will eventually be open to an attack. And when that happens, I trust you to cover me just like you trust me to…" Arturia stopped talking as she remembered what happened in Romania. This time, she was the one looking down in sadness and concern and he now turned to comfort her. She wanted to say that he could trust her to watch his back, but the last time it did not happen like that and Shirou was almost killed.
"Arturia…"
"No, Shirou…I was the one at fault. I failed to cover you back then and you almost died!"
Shirou sighed but smiled at her. He had no right or even the strength to correct her when he was feeling down for similar reasons just a couple minutes ago.
"Turns out we both have things to work on, huh?" Arturia nodded concurring, with a pained smile, wipping the tears from her eyes at the memory.
"I guess so…now, I believe we stayed for too long. No doubt, Taiga must be in the kitchen now demanding breakfast…"
"Yeah, let's go...you say Taiga, but I bet that you are also hungry, aren't you?" No sooner had he voiced his suspicion, Arturia's stomach betrayed her, earning a blush, which was even more pronounced when Shirou giggled.
"H…how many times I have to say that I am uncomfortable when you laugh at me Shirou…" His laughter held warmth though as he surprisingly pulled her up close for a bone-crushing hug, placing her head on his chest. The heavy blush turned to a content smile as she looked up to see his heart-warming smile and bright brown eyes directed at her and only her.
She wished for the stars above that she could have these moments forever with him.
As they entered the kitchen, they couple sweat dropped at the scene. Both Taiga and Rin complaining to Shirou, demanding breakfast at once and Sakura sitting on the table when usually Sakura would be more than competent to replace Shirou in the kitchen. Both Taiga and Rin were in shambles with disgruntled hair and messy clothes from yesterday. Sakura was the only one who bothered to change and take a shower, but she was busy at the table rubbing her forehead, trying in vain to ease the hangover from yesterday. Hence why Shirou was the only one present in the room with the skills and mind to make breakfast for all of them. With a smile, he wore his cooking apron and began while Arturia ran damage control, quieting Taiga and Rin down as well as tending to the lightweight Sakura.
Author Note
Well, that's it for now.
I enjoyed writing this chapter as it allowed me to bring forward many aspects of the Nasuverse series with bits of FSN, Tsukyhime, Fate Zero and even a bit of Fate Grand Order with Darius III. Please tell me your thoughts. As I said before the start of the chapter, next chapter I plan on initiating some of the events of Fate Grand Order, but the actual missions of FGO will not start for some time as I have some ideas in mind first.
Thanks everyone for apprecaiting the story.
See ya.
