[EMIYA SHIROU]
[THE GAMER]
[LV 15 - 5700/15000]
[HP: 1500][MP: 35][MC: 27][ST: 660][PT: 15]
[STR: 33][DEX: 33][INT: 21][WIS: 31][CHR: 50]

Shirou stepped down off of the bus and hit the dirt path that led to the Busujima dojo up in the mountains. He recalled perfectly how to navigate the maze of trees to his destination, but he still wasn't quite used to the eerie feeling that permeated the forest.

[Sense the Unnatural has reached level 4 – Distance increased to forty meters]

Yeah, the place was giving off majorly strange vibes-he would have been able to tell even without the Gamer Prompt, as he had come to call it. Speaking of which, he wondered whether he was capable of doing certain things because of the Gamer ability, if the Gamer ability had integrated with his own talents, or both.

It was a reality-breaking ability in any case and he wondered how Gaia coped with it. Granted, the ability affected only Shirou himself as far as he could tell, so perhaps the will of the planet had no bearing on it.

Either way, it was a great thing to have, although Shirou wondered when it would come time for the other shoe to drop. There was no such thing as a free meal, after all, and even if he assumed that the price of this ability was the trauma of his childhood, that didn't mean that there wouldn't be more to pay as he grew into his powers.

The Mass Confessions incident just from the day before came to mind. Shirou's unusually high charisma had had an impact on his schoolmates. The ability itself did not affect them directly, but it did sufficiently change him to the point where the susceptible young minds of his aforementioned schoolmates reacted accordingly. He had dealt with it smoothly enough, but that hadn't deterred the female half of the school from vying for his affections.

Shirou wasn't an expert in human behavior-the [Broken] title told him as much-but even so, he knew that some people would eventually come to resent him. 'Power breeds conflict,' Kiritsugu had taught him, which was one of the major reasons for Magi to hide their craft.

Now, whether people realised it or not, Shirou had powers beyond his shoddy Magecraft. He could conceal his superhuman strength, speed and stamina well enough, but his charisma was a passive effect. Unless he disfigured himself somehow, he had no way to way to restrain it, and while he wasn't beyond doing exactly that if it meant ensuring other people's safety and autonomy, he knew it was ultimately useless in the long term, especially since it was the most important Stat to both acquire Quests and defuse situations without using brute force.

He was stuck with it and he could only hope that the utility of the stat would outweigh its inherent drawbacks.

[Sense the Unnatural had reached level 5 – Distance increased to fifty meters]

As he became ever more lost in thought, he finally reached the dojo. Busujima-sensei was already waiting for him there.

"Good afternoon, Emiya-kun," she greeted with a polite nod. She was dressed in the same school uniform as the other day.

"Good afternoon, sensei."

"Are you ready to begin? We won't stop until the evening."

"I'm as ready as I'll ever be."

"Very good," she nodded. "Let's begin with a bit of a warm-up first. An hour of running up the mountain path will do nicely."

There was an amused glint in her eyes, but Shirou only nodded. With his Gamer Body, as long as he had Stamina he would not feel any exertion or fatigue. Truth be told, he didn't need warming up either. For all intents and purposes, his body was that of a game character. So far he hadn't encountered any abnormal statuses, despite the unholy amounts of physical training he had subjected himself to day after day. After having unlocked his Mystic Eyes, he discovered that his muscles no longer strained, even when he purposely did the exercises incorrectly to see how they would affect him.

He came to the conclusion that there was no way he could harm himself short of performing what could be qualified as an attack to his own person.

Busujima-sensei could make him run all day long and he would still be ready to fight without any loss of performance on his part, which is exactly what happened after they came back from the warm-up session.

They were both a bit sweaty, but the only one with a hint of labored breath was Busujima-sensei. It was a pity, but his [STR] and [DEX] would no longer increase from this level of exercise.

"It seems like you are in peak physical condition, Emiya-kun," she observed.

"I do train my body every day, sensei."

"A good thing, too. Nothing less than adamantine discipline will see you through the training to come. The Busujima style is quite taxing on the human body."

Shirou merely nodded. If the training was half as harsh as she was, he had no doubts about it.

That day, Emiya Shirou learned a valuable lesson.

[CRITICAL HIT! You lost 20HP]

Busujima-sensei wasn't one to make use of hyperbole. Her idea of training was not so different from her screening process for potential students. It involved pain layered upon pain.

[CRITICAL HIT! You lost 20HP]

[Beginner Swordplay - Busujima Style has reached Lv. 55]

At least he was getting the gist of her technique very quickly. The Busujima Style of kendo relied on using the opponent's own momentum to deliver lightning quick blows at the available openings. It was a style that emphasized battle against a superior number of foes, taking them down quickly with precise strikes.

Normally, it'd take years for anyone to learn how to read the opponent's movements and come up with an appropriate counter, but that wasn't the case for Shirou. His cumulative bonus for sword-related activities meant that he was soaking up the skill like a sponge.

This, of course, didn't go unnoticed by the sword-maiden.

There was a frown marring her face. Curiosity mixed with...something else, like she was looking for something, but it just kept eluding her-not that he had much time to ponder it while he defended himself from her onslaught. Every strike was as vicious as humanly possible. In fact, this wasn't training as much as it was a survival simulation.

It had started simply enough, with Busujima-sensei demonstrating a few basic movements on him, to which he promptly learned to counter, and it just kept escalating from there.

At some point, Shirou wondered whether or not she was still aware that this was supposed to be training, or if she was just trying to figure out how far she could push him before he reached a plateau. Unfortunately for her, though, unless he depleted his stamina, he could keep going indefinitely. With the [DIE HARD] perk not even dropping to zero HP could stop him.

[Beginner Swordplay - Busujima Style has reached Lv. 77]

An hour turned into two, and then two into three. Only when the sun began to set over the horizon did she called the session off.

"That will be enough for today, Emiya-kun," she said with a barely concealed sigh in her voice. Shirou did not understand. He knew that in one single day he had progressed more than any other human being could have hoped to, and yet Busujima-sensei sounded disappointed.

"Thank you, sensei." He bowed nonetheless.

"Feel free to take a bath before leaving. The last bus for Fuyuki is going to pass in a hour."

"I understand. Thank you for your tutelage."

He decided to take advantage of her offer and made his way to the bathroom, all the while pondering what sort of unreasonable expectations his teacher had.

Busujima Saeko was a very upset young woman. Since her early childhood, she had been nothing short than a prodigy with the sword. She was the result of centuries of selective breeding, the product of genetic cherry-picking that had gone on for hundreds of generations. However, with the passing of time the clan had fallen apart.

More and more of her cousins had left, to join a modern world where the practice of the sword was a hobby at best and a relic of the past at worst, until only the main family branch was left to carry on both their legacy and their duty. Saeko had been entrusted with the first since the day she could hold a shinai, and with the untimely passing of her parents, the latter too had been placed on her shoulders.

She was twelve when it happened. The fire had been visible all the way up the mountain and she watched it scorching the city from the window of her room. Only later was she told that her parents had perished along with several hundred others.

It hadn't been easy for her all on her own. The aunt who had legally become her guardian was fully aware of the burden she had to carry, but she also did not want any part in it.

The Busujima were a clan of warriors who taught self-reliance from an early age and Saeko had been able to live by herself without too many problems. However, because of her circumstances, she hadn't been able to make any friends. Even if she still had her parents, it would have been quite difficult to make friends with ordinary people.

Between training, fighting them and looking for eventual disciples she didn't have the time.

The only thing she had left, as well as her only solace, was her swordsmanship, her confidence in her own ability. Never once in her life she had lost to someone her age or lower, and even the older practitioners had a hard time against her.

She could have been an exemplary samurai, but tragedy and circumstance had conspired against her. Victory was her only purpose and in time she learned how to appreciate it as much as she could.

It was a slow process, aided by the flames of puberty. She never interacted with boys much. Like any other teenager she experienced crushes, but she had neither the time nor the social skills to pursue them. The only constants in her life were the sword and victory and eventually they became the only things that mattered.

Slowly she had come to enjoy her superiority, relishing in the broken form of her opponents. Breaking their pride and filling their hearts with despair was the only proof that she lived in a world where she would have been invisible otherwise.

Of course she knew it was wrong. She had been brought up with certain morals, such as never looking down upon an opponent that had fought honorably, and while outwardly she treated everyone with respect, it was only lip service.

Each time she broke someone, she gave them hollow words of consolation, while inciting them to improve themselves further, but inwardly… inwardly she was trembling with excitement.

Every time after she had dismissed her victims she locked herself in her room and unleashed in complete solitude the flames of her twisted core, feeling ashamed of herself every time afterwards, promising herself each time that it would not happen again.

Of course it kept happening, over and over again until she had come to accept that her heart was rotten, looking forward to the next challenger to come fawn the flames of her lust.

Then Emiya Shirou had come. Unlike the rest of the potential disciples, she had warned him off; she had told him that she broke people. It was not so much for his sake as it was for hers.

She was afraid that she would enjoy breaking him too. A child with bright eyes and great potential. She knew that if she did it, if she really came to arouse herself by shattering the spirit of one so young, she would hit rock bottom.

He hadn't taken her advice-he didn't run from the monster that she was, and Saeko had gone into the dojo dreading to break him and simultaneously salivating at the prospect.

But he had not broken. She had struck him furiously, mercilessly, showing her superiority at each and every turn despite the evident skills he had brought to bear.

Pain did not deter him and humiliation did not seem to register. How someone could be so full of motivation and so lacking in pride at the same time Saeko did not know, but for the first time in years she had been stalled.

At first she was so surprised by him that she had all but forgotten about her desire, but then he returned for their first lesson and again her expectations came to the forefront. She scolded herself and tried to teach him properly, but with every strike he deflected, with every landed hit he shrugged off, the bubble within her lower abdomen kept swelling but never came close to bursting off.

Eventually she had to dismiss him for the day and watched him leave without feeling anything but frustration.

This was, without doubt, her karma. The punishment for having such a disgusting, rotten heart.

[EMIYA SHIROU]
[THE GAMER]
[LV 15 - 7700/15000]
[HP: 1500][MP: 35][MC: 27][ST: 740 ][PT: 15]
[STR: 37][DEX: 37][INT: 21][WIS: 31][CHR: 52]

Weeks passed, and Shirou kept up with his routine without missing a beat. New Quests were lacking so far and his progression had stalled. If this was an actual videogame, there would be enemies to fight in order to gain EXP, however there was no such thing nearby and that was… unexpectedly troubling.

That was when Shirou realized a fundamental thing. In order to be save someone, someone else needs being saved first. In order to become a hero, a villain must appear.

He didn't like it one bit. Already, Kiritsugu had told him that a hero is such only to those he manages to protect when choosing who to save and now he had come to realize that wishing to be a hero was the same as wanting tragedies to happen. He didn't want that. He didn't want people getting hurt.

No-in fact, the only thing he wanted was for the people in front of him not to cry.

Perhaps he would never become a hero, then. It was fine if he remained like this, but he would keep getting stronger, and if it ever came the time when a hero was needed, he would be ready.

So he kept going to the Busujima dojo and training. His skill in the Busujima Style had reached level 50 in the intermediate category and now he could hold his own against Saeko-sensei much better. Sure enough, she could probably still waste him if she brought out the big guns, but then again those were probably going to turn out lethal even with bamboo swords. The lucky thing was that he didn't exactly need to learn them specifically. As his ability in the style grew, he automatically learned the techniques even if Saeko-sensei still had to show them.

The progression in the Busujima-style was way slower than the Japanese-style, but then again, for the latter he had been watching several masters and even more apprentices practicing it, whereas for the former he had only interacted with one person. Moreover, it was a far superior technique, so of course it took more practice to acquire even with his insane boost. Still he would master it in less than two months, whereas it would take any other talented human several years to do the same.

More importantly, he was worried for Saeko-sensei. He hadn't known her for long, but she was behaving oddly as far as he was concerned. She was violent… well, she had violent since day one but there had always been unbreakable discipline in her eyes. However, as days passed, the look in her eyes changed. She still looked firmly in control while they sparred, but she looked like a wild beast ready to devour her prey, only then to… sort of slump down and shrink on herself, and thus the beast was replaced with a tired-looking girl and since that happened, she had grown cold and distant. It almost felt like she didn't want him around but was forced to put up with him.

Now, Shirou wasn't an expert at reading people, but he had the strong impression that she was troubled by something. However, there wasn't a Quest mark above her, and therefore either she didn't intend to ask him for help, or Shirou himself didn't have the minimum required stats to make her trust him enough to help her. Now, her problem could be a personal issue of little consequence, but the fact that she lived up a mountain in the middle of a forest that gave off powerful supernatural vibes, he wasn't inclined to believe that.

So what could he do? Even though he was the Gamer, that applied to him alone. Bad things wouldn't wait for him to meet the requirements before happening. He had to figure it out before something went wrong and he saw no other way but to ask.

Before asking, however, he had looked up the status of their relationship and much to his surprise it had skyrocketed. He had started as her [Disciple], with zero points out of 5000, but now the counter read a solid 4325 in less than a month. He had assumed that relationship status would be affected only by quests, but then he realized that there was no reason why the the parameter couldn't increase like his stats. After all, relationships aren't usually determined by single events, but by several occurrences.

So, Saeko-sensei wasn't upset with him, or if she was, it somehow contributed to their relationship. He couldn't begin to fathom how the latter could be.

Again it seemed like the only option was to ask.

"Have I done something to offend you, sensei?" he asked after they finished the latest training session.

"Not that I know of," she said simply, cocking her head. "What makes you ask?"

"It's just… you seem uncomfortable all the time around me."

"It's nothing you need to concern yourself with. I'm perfectly fine, I assure you."

So she said, but Shirou wasn't convinced in the least. She didn't so much as meet his eyes while they talked. However, if she was unwilling to speak about it, there was nothing he could do about it. He was sure that if he just met the parameters, he'd be able to see the Quest sign above her head. Did he need more [CHR] or maybe he had first to level up their relationship?

He didn't know, but he would find out.

After Shirou had left, Saeko sat in her bathtub herself, trying to ease the frustration she felt. She wasn't used to be so high-strung all the time. Her opponents were usually dealt with swiftly and painfully, both physically and mentally, and she just forgot about them once she had gotten her pleasure from them. She wasn't used being stuck with one that would neither go away nor submit. Now, three weeks after the beginning of his training, he was about the only thing Saeko could think of when she wasn't otherwise occupied, not only because he was the source of her inner conflicts, but also because he was a huge mystery. She had looked him up and there was nothing out of the ordinary with his history other than the tragedies that had struck him time and time again. His ability to learn her style was insane and if he kept it up, in a month's time, she wouldn't have anything left to teach him. Worse yet, there was something...off about him.

Now, Saeko wasn't precisely familiar with kids, but there was no denying that Emiya Shirou didn't fit the mould of an ordinary child. There was a…presence about him that a kid his age had no business having.

It only made her want to break him even more.

Leaning back her head, she bit her lip. Even just imagining his face contorted in pain and frustration gave her the shivers. Before she even noticed, her hands had slid down the smooth plains of her stomach and between of her long legs.

"What am I doing?" she murmured, as deft fingers sought the entrance of her womanhood. "He's just - ah – just a kid and yet I…"

'S-sensei please,' he begged with watery eyes in her imagination.

"Oh! Ahn!" Saeko moaned in real life. Her fingers had found easy access and had started to fiddle with her wet folds. "This… I never…"

She wasn't a stranger to this. Every time she had thoroughly broken someone, she had inevitably found herself aroused and had to deal with it on her own, but never before she had fantasized about it.

And yet here she was, making up images of her pupil, defeated and broken at her feet, begging her for something she could not visualize. Emiya Shirou, she knew, wouldn't beg to be spared from pain, would not cry over wounded pride. She didn't know what she could make him beg for, but just imagining the face he would make sent white sparks into her mind while her fingers tortured her innermost place.

"I'm the worst. Hmmm! I'm really the worst! Ah! Ah! Ooooh!"

Her release washed over her. Her legs tensed and trembled. Her body shook and then, slowly fell limp.

She stayed there for a while, staring at the ceiling. With her lust now sated, all the was left was the hollow, churning sense of guilt and self-loathing.

She left the water a few minutes later and dried herself. Her body might have been clean but her heart…her heart was as filthy as it got.

Updated: 09/10/2016

Beta: Akemi Homura-san

Sup, sorry for the long wait and the short chapter. I had three times this much written but I wasn't happy with it so I scrapped it. Hopefully, I'll have more by the end on next week.

I made a few corrections to Shirou's stats, nothing major so there's no reason to go back and read it again if you take the new stats at face value.

Now, there are a few things that needed to be addressed from both reviews and private messages such as:

- Q: Why doesn't he have the "observe" skill?
- A: Of course he has it. It's called Structural Analysis. It works differently and currently only on inanimate objects, but that's the Nasuverse for you.

- Q: No, just no. Shirou didn't have projection at the beginning of the game..
- A: Wrong. Canonically, Shirou learned Projection before he did Reinforcement. However he never mentioned it because generally speaking Projection is considered a useless skill, which is correct, unless you can pull Noble Phantasms out of your ass.

- Q: Can Shirou use his points to increase his MC count?
- A: Sure he can, but that would be a waste since he can do Nerve Circuits.

- Q: Did that mean Rin and Sakura also 5 years older than Shirou here?
- A: I realize I didn't make it much clear. In this story, at the moment of the great Fuyuki Fire (end of Fate/Zero) nearly every female character was five years older than canon. Rin was eleven, Sakura was ten, Taiga was twenty and so on and so forth. Only Shirou was around five years old as per canon.

- Q: Why you make Shiro younger?
- A: It all started from a challenge on AdultFanfiction (by the way look me up on there as Ichasennin, in case this story is ever taken down). It required for Shirou to be molested by older women/monster girls for shit and giggles. I like the idea well enough, but not so much to make a story out of it, so I decided to spice it up with a solid (hopefully) The Gamer Crossover.

That'd be all for the time being. Thank you for reading and reviewing.