Fate/Stay Night Fan Fiction ❯ Escaping Fate ❯ Seven of Swords ( Chapter 6 )
[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
By: Zekk_Skywalk 
A Dead Apostle.
Anime/Manga: Fate/Stay Night Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Supernatural / Horror / Fantasy / Hentai / Drama / Action | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 09.29.2011 | Pages: 3 | Words: 5.0K | Visits: 335 | Status: Completed
A Dead Apostle.
Anime/Manga: Fate/Stay Night Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Supernatural / Horror / Fantasy / Hentai / Drama / Action | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 09.29.2011 | Pages: 3 | Words: 5.0K | Visits: 335 | Status: Completed
AN: Okay, getting this out before people decide my story is too slow and boring.
Although in general, I may scream “DEEEEEEEN!!!!!!!!!” like anyone else that compares the FSN game to the anime, there were a few things I really liked about the anime. One was the lion plushie. So that comes up here, even though it doesn’t appear in the same way in the game.
Maybe I should just be happy FSN didn’t get the same treatment as Tsukihime. And that the Unlimited Blade Works movie was comparatively awesome.
I highly recommend rocking to a version of “Emiya” for this one. Not one of the louder remixes, as things are not sufficiently epic quite yet for that, but, maybe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d66KCh1S5L8 this Battle Moon Wars version. Afterward, try http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji03z81ebyg this song. You game players will know when.
Escaping Fate
Chapter 5
Seven of Swords
“I think a vampire is in town.”
The only thing I could be pleased with was that Tohsaka said this before I had taken a drink. There was no telling what she would do if I spit tea right into her face.
Instead, I gaped at her. “What?”
“That’s the only conclusion I can think of,” Tohsaka said, finger in the air. She often assumed this position as the Tohsaka-sensei Lecture™ began. “I’ve been inspecting both the field around Ryuudou Temple and the various points on the leyline and can detect a distortion in the magical energy. That sort of thing occurs when a presence that doesn’t belong is present.”
Tohsaka had spent the last week running around the city, coming home exhausted and annoyed. Though she didn’t let it show when Fuji-nee and Yumi were around, it became more and more obvious that she was building up to some kind of problem like the magus that had been operating near her territory and experimenting on Yumi.
I just, well, didn’t quite expect this.
“Doesn’t belong? Wouldn’t anything intruding on Ryuudou’s field be like that?”
Nodding, Tohsaka said, “True, but it was specifically awakening due to a property that was not supposed to be here. Shirou, what do you know about Dead Apostles?”
I’d heard the name, though I really couldn’t say with regards to what. “I know they’re like vampires, but that’s about it.”
Tohsaka nodded. “So, then, we’ll start from what you do know. The boundary field around the temple disrupts anything that doesn’t enter by the front gate, though normal humans would merely get lost or feel uneasy.”
I nodded. We’d covered that much before, at least.
“For Servants, it lowered their fighting capacity significantly.”
I nodded again.
“Why do you suppose that is?”
I had to think about it, and decided to safely sip my tea while I had the chance. I guess I could only be grateful that there was plenty of time until dinner when everyone would be returning home—I’m not sure I could pay attention to making a meal at this point.
The boundary field at Ryuudou was not one created by a magus. From what I had learned, monks there had set the field up in a fashion similar to magic, though using different properties. Magic was essentially the creation of miracles; what the monks did was more akin to the enhancement of the natural state of things. Much like the principles behind the difference from a Reality Marble and a Marble Phantasm.
Something Tohsaka had drilled into me until I thought my ears might bleed. Something Illya, in fact, had tuned us onto.
“The barrier repels things not naturally-born by the world, which included Servants,” I said.
Tohsaka smiled. “Exactly. So why then would it react stronger to a vampire?”
“I follow. The vampire extends its life through unnatural means and is constantly trying to be ‘defeated’ by the natural course of things. The field around Ryuudou does so even more.” The reason Servants were weakened if they passed through the field was the world constantly trying to deny them existence, since they were heroic figures of times past that no longer existed in the modern world.
“Right. The intrusion I detected was beyond just a person or creature that didn’t belong. It was a full-blown attack on something that defied the natural course of things.” Tohsaka reassumed her teacher position and I resisted the urge to shake my head. “Between that, and the other disturbances in the leyline that I’ve come across, that’s my conclusion. We haven’t heard anything about attacks yet, but, vampires have to feed, and there aren’t many animals around here because of the magic leyline. If there is one here, it’ll strike eventually.”
I had to wonder, though. “But isn’t it a bit of a leap to go the vampire route? I mean, I know there are other creatures out there.”
Tohsaka looked away, and I had a sense that she might be covering up a blush. “The sense I have from the leyline is very specific. I’m kind of familiar with the presence of a Dead Apostle, and it’s very similar.”
I frowned, considering. She had never told me that she knew what such a thing was like, but I had a feeling she wasn’t going to answer if I asked how she knew. So instead, I went with the more immediate concern. “Why do you keep switching between ‘vampire’ and ‘Dead Apostle’ anyway?”
“Well, they’re slightly different. A Dead Apostle is a vampire, but a vampire isn’t a Dead Apostle. I’ll explain more some other time*, but I keep thinking that this is probably more like a vampire, which is a lesser threat. Dead Apostles usually only get to the point they are by learning to avoid places like Ryuudou Temple. Vampires might still just stumble across it or even test it out just to try.”
“So are we going to go look for it, stop it before it victimizes someone?”
Tohsaka paused and gave me an even stare. I wondered for a moment if she was going to say something along the lines of, who do you think you are, inviting yourself along? This is my thing. Instead, she asked, “Do you have something that would work against a creature that may be centuries older than you?”
I considered that. Really, Caliburn was the only thing I had ever used to fight a vastly superior figure, and that hadn’t exactly turned out well when I didn’t have Saber guiding me. I had practiced a lot with Kanshou and Bakuya, but never used them in battle. Caladbolg had done well against the magus Setsuka Yuushi, but I had used it as a Broken Phantasm and Yuushi had been a human. Against a creature that may have years of experience in close-quarters combat, I was still a rank amateur.
I had a couple of swords that I thought would work, but, on the battlefield…
“Yes,” I said. No point in bouncing back and forth theoretical ideas in my head. Tohsaka knew as well as I did anyway, and she was likely just testing my determination.
“Fine. We’re going to go out tomorrow night, so you might get to practicing tonight.”
I sighed and went to replace the tea Tohsaka was ignoring. I didn’t particularly feel like any myself now either.
Something was up.
It was a growing sense in Yumi’s mind. Ever since she had started wearing Rin’s school uniform, it had felt like Rin was closer to her, always with her. She knew that there was nothing magical about the uniform, but the sense that was there left Yumi with an impression. An intuition.
Hoshino-san had convinced Yumi to join the Archery Club and although Yumi was far from starting the use of a bow herself, Sakura had immediately offered the use of her gear. Though she didn’t use it in club—she was still merely pulling the bands to build up the arm strength—Yumi carried the bow and equipment to school for the exact same reason she wore Rin’s uniform. It felt like Sakura.
Here too, she started feeling as if Sakura went with her.
Because of that, when she made it home that evening and sat down to dinner, she could tell. She could sense that Rin was not telling her something, that Sakura was aware of something and not speaking of it.
Of Shirou, she couldn’t tell, though she wondered if carrying that lion plushie he had in his room would work.
Dinner was just like any other day, though it being a Friday, Yumi did not have to worry about waking early for school the next day. When everything was finished and put away, Shirou went to the dojo to practice with something.
Yumi decided she would get plenty of sleep tonight. She had a feeling she would need to be well-rested for tomorrow.
“Cyrus the Great was the Persian, right? The one that conquered Babylon?”
“Yep.”
“Hmm. Caster, perhaps? He had some sort of law-making cylinder as opposed to a sword or spear associated with him, right?”
Tohsaka and I wandered the city that Saturday evening, staying toward the quieter and less-traveled regions in an attempt to either catch this vampire or draw it in ourselves. After four solid hours of wandering, it had devolved into a conversation about other mythic figures and what it might have been like to summon them as Servants.
I wonder if Tohsaka ever felt disappointed that instead of summoning a renowned figure from the past, she got someone like me instead.
“True, and he wasn’t known for riding things into battle like Genghis Khan or the like. He doesn’t particularly fit any of the classes, though he’s assuredly a Heroic Spirit.” Tohsaka shrugged. “I guess I would have liked to see what his presence would’ve done to that Goldie, since Cyrus the Great was known as the King of Sumer, where Gilgamesh’s story originates from.”
I shrugged too. Though as a point of interest, the different figures in history and myth being Servants was thought-provoking, I didn’t really know as much as Tohsaka seemed to. Most of the historical figures I did pay attention to generally, well, had swords to their name.
Miyama-chou** at this time of the night was extremely quiet, though you could see a person about here and there. Saturdays were bereft of uniformed kids, though many teenagers were out and about, in transit between visits with friends or the like. Some adults were heading back home from late weekend work. I suppose Tohsaka and I looked like a young couple on their way from a date, maybe carousing for some privacy.
Young couple.
Tohsaka made me wonder what exactly she intended to do. Upon her first return from London, she had declared that it really wasn’t for her and that she would not stay there long-term and made arrangements with her teachers there. When she was here, she was fairly insular and I’m certain people like Mitsuzuri were not even aware when she was and was not in town. I always thought that considering her popularity at school, if not here, she would be raking in the confessions from guys in London.
Not that I was familiar with how Western magi thought, but, an exotic beauty like Tohsaka plus the magical lineage to guarantee a talented heir…
Maybe she didn’t even notice. That would make sense.
“You think any Americans qualify?” Tohsaka asked.
“Only if there were a ‘Gunslinger’ class available. And I bet a lot of them would be Anti-Heroes, like Butch Cassidy or John Wilkes Booth.”
“You’re forgetting Buffalo Bill or Annie Oakley,” Tohsaka pointed out. “I don’t think they’d qualify as Anti-Heroes.”
I wonder if any vampires stalking us decided we weren’t lovers but a pair of extremely odd academics.
We stayed in Miyama-chou though because boundaries of water did repel vampires just like in the myths, acting as pseudo-Boundary Fields. Since Tohsaka had detected the vampire on the Ryuudou Temple-side of the city, it was highly unlikely that it had found a way to cross to Shinto without completely circumventing the city in some fashion.
It was, however, getting late. Passing one in the morning meant that we were well past the halfway mark through the night, and I had the feeling that a vampire would not feed too late and risk getting caught out in the sun away from wherever it had holed up. If we didn’t encounter anything suspicious in the next half hour or so, I think the consensus was we would return home.
We passed a different kind of suspicious—the kind that included the rustling of bushes, a female giggle and a male grunt—and I shook my head. Oh how little the world knew.
Tohsaka’s reaction was funnier. “Hey!” she shouted into the bush. “Do your parents know where you are?! Don’t make me call the cops!”
A couple of “eeps!” and some more rustling later, a very red pair—probably teenagers still—climbed out from behind the pseudo-park area that lined one street. The girl’s blouse was off-center and the collar fell off one side of her shoulder, while the boy was hastily zipping himself up. It was just about as cliché as I could imagine.
Yes, children, a blood-sucking demon was out and could possibly get you. Time to have sex like your life depended on it!
Well, not that they knew about the demon part.
Actually, that sounded more like my history. Tohsaka’s and mine.
I guess I really am a hypocrite.
“I could’ve been a mugger or rapist, and you’d have been helpless with your pants down!” Tohsaka was scolding the two as they hastily ran in the opposite direction from us.
Tohsaka’s even more of a hypocrite.
“Geez, you’d think they’d have more sense than to do it in an area right next to a road,” Tohsaka said. “Anyone could walk in on them!”
Was it just me, or was there a fleeting sense of jealousy I heard? “We need to get you a boyfriend, Tohsaka.”
“Only if we get you a girl first,” she countered immediately. “That way you’ll not get distracted in the middle of training!” Ah, so she had prepared this argument before hand.
“You’re the one that sounds like an old, grumpy adult, seeing those two—”
Unlike the cliché expectation of films and television, villains do not often announce their presences and go on like a windbag while their opponent comes up with a plan, unless their name is Kirei Kotomine, anyway.
Whoever leapt from the shadows beyond where the two lovers had been wasted no time in drop-kicking Tohsaka right where she stood. The meaty sound of his foot connecting with her diaphragm was impossibly loud in the open air, and she flew out of my peripheral sight.
“Trace, on!”
Kanshou and Bakuya appeared in my hands, and I knew I would never manage a strike in time. So as the vampire honed in on me, I flung my arms out sideways and sent the blades skyward.
The vampire hit me with a hard punch right into my abs, hard enough to send my feet out from under me, tipping me head-first into the ground while I flew back a few meters. I felt something tear in my body, but managed to get my arms beneath me so I didn’t face-plant into the ground.
I forced my head up to watch for its next move. The vampire—a tall man in a black coat and blue jeans—was not watching me, however, and instead was looking down at a red-colored jewel at his feet.
I ducked my head beneath my arms.
The explosion was like a grenade and thankfully had the properties like one. My head was only a couple of meters from it, but nothing struck me while I was pressed flat to the ground. The vampire, on the other hand, got a face full of magical fire.
I didn’t have time to waste.
I traced a new pair of Kanshou and Bakuya, glanced up at the first pair, now falling down toward me, and threw the pair in my hands like boomerangs to either side of the vampire.
The first pair arched toward the second pair, and both pairs pulled at each other. Forming a circuit on the x and y axis surrounding the vampire, they closed in.
The smoke cleared, and the vampire, singed and looking mightily angry, caught sight of the steel incoming toward him.
“Trace, on.”
It was a vampire. It was death reanimated, a thing that all that was sacred on this earth would expel if given the chance.
It was a stain on this world.
“Admit to all your unholy sins.”
A new sword formed in my hand, a large hilt and grip with a blade hardly longer than Kanshou and Bakuya. Though a broadsword, the end was angled like a single-edged slashing weapon, unnaturally so.
Curtana, the broken sword of mercy, the weapon of Ogire the Dane.***
I threw the blade—no time for the bow—and so intent on the flying Kanshous and Bakuyas, the vampire had no room to avoid all five weapons even if he had the reflexes. He smacked one Kanshou aside, twisted into a shallow cut from its partnered Bakuya, but leapt right into the path of Curtana as the original pair came at him from the sides. With a response surpassing anything I could do, he caught Curtana mid-air.
By the blade, cutting his hand.
Which was enough.
The vampire froze in place, hand dripping from the cut made by Curtana. He seemed to have control of his arms, though the hand gripping Curtana was stuck holding the blade. His feet, though, were locked in place. The look on his face screamed one question: Why?
Because you must confess.
Or die.
A third pair of Kanshou and Bakuya formed in my hands and I closed in on my target. I remembered what Tohsaka said about vampires being killable by normal means, so I didn’t bother attempting to Reinforce them. I just charged in and swung both blades as he flailed his free hand at me.
A head hit the ground, followed by a splatter of blood.
I glanced at Tohsaka, brushing herself off like she hadn’t just been drop-kicked by an enemy out for blood. She caught my eye. “Shirou, your side.”
Looking down, I finally noticed the tear in my shirt and the wound beneath. I’m not even sure when it had been inflicted, from the initial hit or his arm managing to connect before I beheaded him, but it looked like I had just barely managed to avoid being impaled. “Oh.”
“Shirou!”
This time, Tohsaka screamed, and I glanced back to the defeated body of my opponent—
Whose head had returned to its shoulders.
“Oh.”
The vampire thrust his hand at me like a talon, and I dove out of the way, rolling down the slope of the street. Thankfully, the vampire did not come in pursuit and looked to still be locked in place by Curtana.
Tohsaka started pumping Gandr shots into him to keep him from managing to pull Curtana, giving me the time I needed.
Nothing for it.
“Spirit and technique, flawless and firm.”
If Kanshou and Bakuya couldn’t kill this thing, then I would need something stronger. But I was starting to run low on prana and didn’t know what else might work. So I would just have to go stronger with what I had.
“Our strength rips the mountains, our swords split the water, our names reach the Imperial Palace.”
I Reinforced the blades in hand, pulling out the utmost of their abilities. Sharpness, speed, balance, power. The blades cracked under the strain and screamed as their steel became brittle.
The vampire managed to put his shoulder in the way of Tohsaka’s shots and used his free hand to pull at Curtana, still cutting into the hand that had grabbed it.
“The two of us cannot hold heavens together.”
I strengthened Kanshou and Bakuya until they broke, then charged back up at the vampire.
“Aghhhhhhh!”
The blades cut the vampire, me, the concrete beneath our feet, and themselves.
This time, the blood that hit the ground was mine; when Kanshou and Bakuya dissipated, they left my cut and broken hands to splatter red all over. But the vampire’s body was not far behind, also painting the street red.
And then the vampire’s body hit the ground.
And again.
And again.
The x-pattern cut I made had sent the creature into four pieces. My hands looked like they wanted to be in four pieces but had been left whole on accident. I heard myself groan and felt my circuit close since there was hardly any od left in it.
Tohsaka was next to me faster than I could have expected, catching me before I collapsed face-first into the bloody pile I had made. “Hey, don’t give out on me here, I can’t carry your heavy ass all the way home!”
I groaned again, though I put all my remaining strength into my legs. They felt like metal, though, slow to respond and reverberating like I’d been tapping against them rhythmically. I had practiced overedging Kanshou and Bakuya before and knew that it would essentially blow up in my face, but I’d done it at full prana stock before. Now I felt like my body was a steel skeleton, like the frame of a building, and someone was hammering away on one end and arc wielding on the other.
Maybe I’ll not try that again for a while.
“Maybe you better not do that one again for a while,” Tohsaka said.
Also, my building frame was apparently echoing.
“What was up with its head?” I complained.
Tohsaka was looking up at the sky. “I had a feeling it would be tonight, because there’s a full moon out. Dead Apostles are stronger with the moon full, though I didn’t expect it to be strong enough to return to its state before it was headless.”
I’m not really sure what she was talking about, though I often felt that way with Tohsaka. I would probably get a further explanation sometime later, after I didn’t feel like laying where I was and sleeping for a week.
“What do we do about that?” I asked, motioning to what remained of the vampire’s body.
Tohsaka shrugged. “I’m pretty sure it’s dead now,” though the tone of her voice seemed a little unsure, considering it had put itself back together after a beheading. “Vampires turn to ash after they die and the world ‘resets’ their presence, but I’ll light it up after we get you out of the way first.”
I managed a grin at her. “You’re always cleaning up after my messes.”
“Yeah, well, until we get you a wife, I suppose it falls on me.”
For some reason, I suddenly had this image of Tohsaka in a maid outfit flash through my mind. I made sure to place my tongue between my teeth and hold it there.
If I uttered so much as a word of that, I was pretty sure Tohsaka would erase any evidence of my existence too.
Sometimes, she dreamed.
It was common to dream about her pain. She didn’t exactly nightmare about it, but it was unpleasant and left her feeling hopeless. Like nothing in the world could be right when such a thing occurred.
It was becoming more common to dream about life. School life, daily life. Whimsical things, like grocery shopping, or actually getting the chance to shoot a bow in club, or riding the train to Kyoto. Sometimes they were colored by things she watched on television, like a love triangle between club members or a zombie apocalypse happening in the middle of school.
Whenever she watched Shirou and his swords, she dreamed of distant shores.
Before she had been an orphan, she had once traveled with her mother. She had seen numerous beaches and various shorelines. She couldn’t place the name of a country with each image, but she knew she had been to Sydney, to Vancouver, to Venice. She had seen parts of America, India, England, Russia.
She thought maybe, she dreamed of those places after seeing Shirou and his swords…
Because of his happy face.
She couldn’t recall the emotions she felt before the pain had begun. She wasn’t sure what was her own and what had been added. But looking at Shirou, seeing his happiness at saving her, she thought that emotion fit best with what she could remember of her innocence.
Tonight, it was not so dissimilar.
She had followed after the two of them. She knew that was logically unsound, that if they were going after something, following them would place both herself and them in danger. But an impulsive side of her, a side that certainly was not of her own making, insisted that she go.
For some reason, she had the feeling she would not be attacked anyway. It was an impression she got from that sense of Rin she had with her, like Rin was fully aware that whatever they were after was threatened by them, and would attack them. Not Yumi, not anyone else.
So she followed, and in the shadow of a tree’s overhang, she watched.
When she saw Shirou do battle for the first time, it had been like before. It was vaguer, more distant, not so apparent. But when Shirou had defeated that thing, had cut it to pieces, there was a distant sense of satisfaction on his face.
A distant sense that he may have saved someone.
Yumi quickly returned home after that, so Shirou and Rin would not notice she had been gone. She prepared for bed in record time and was down before they had even made it back to the residence.
That night, after seeing Shirou and his swords, she dreamed of her perfect, untouched past.
She dreamed of escaping the hand fate had dealt her.
**Miyama-chou is the residential district of Fuyuki City, compared to Shinto, the city-side.
***Shirou only ever saw Black Keys in Heaven’s Feel, and as they’re mere conceptual weapons with a specific purpose, not a Noble Phantasm, I really doubt he ever saw one from Gate of Babylon. Though, considering everything else he sees in Gate of Babylon, it wouldn’t be a stretch that he saw a weapon with a similar purpose.
Converting /tmp/phpVK9iFj to /dev/stdout
Although in general, I may scream “DEEEEEEEN!!!!!!!!!” like anyone else that compares the FSN game to the anime, there were a few things I really liked about the anime. One was the lion plushie. So that comes up here, even though it doesn’t appear in the same way in the game.
Maybe I should just be happy FSN didn’t get the same treatment as Tsukihime. And that the Unlimited Blade Works movie was comparatively awesome.
I highly recommend rocking to a version of “Emiya” for this one. Not one of the louder remixes, as things are not sufficiently epic quite yet for that, but, maybe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d66KCh1S5L8 this Battle Moon Wars version. Afterward, try http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji03z81ebyg this song. You game players will know when.
Escaping Fate
Chapter 5
Seven of Swords
“I think a vampire is in town.”
The only thing I could be pleased with was that Tohsaka said this before I had taken a drink. There was no telling what she would do if I spit tea right into her face.
Instead, I gaped at her. “What?”
“That’s the only conclusion I can think of,” Tohsaka said, finger in the air. She often assumed this position as the Tohsaka-sensei Lecture™ began. “I’ve been inspecting both the field around Ryuudou Temple and the various points on the leyline and can detect a distortion in the magical energy. That sort of thing occurs when a presence that doesn’t belong is present.”
Tohsaka had spent the last week running around the city, coming home exhausted and annoyed. Though she didn’t let it show when Fuji-nee and Yumi were around, it became more and more obvious that she was building up to some kind of problem like the magus that had been operating near her territory and experimenting on Yumi.
I just, well, didn’t quite expect this.
“Doesn’t belong? Wouldn’t anything intruding on Ryuudou’s field be like that?”
Nodding, Tohsaka said, “True, but it was specifically awakening due to a property that was not supposed to be here. Shirou, what do you know about Dead Apostles?”
I’d heard the name, though I really couldn’t say with regards to what. “I know they’re like vampires, but that’s about it.”
Tohsaka nodded. “So, then, we’ll start from what you do know. The boundary field around the temple disrupts anything that doesn’t enter by the front gate, though normal humans would merely get lost or feel uneasy.”
I nodded. We’d covered that much before, at least.
“For Servants, it lowered their fighting capacity significantly.”
I nodded again.
“Why do you suppose that is?”
I had to think about it, and decided to safely sip my tea while I had the chance. I guess I could only be grateful that there was plenty of time until dinner when everyone would be returning home—I’m not sure I could pay attention to making a meal at this point.
The boundary field at Ryuudou was not one created by a magus. From what I had learned, monks there had set the field up in a fashion similar to magic, though using different properties. Magic was essentially the creation of miracles; what the monks did was more akin to the enhancement of the natural state of things. Much like the principles behind the difference from a Reality Marble and a Marble Phantasm.
Something Tohsaka had drilled into me until I thought my ears might bleed. Something Illya, in fact, had tuned us onto.
“The barrier repels things not naturally-born by the world, which included Servants,” I said.
Tohsaka smiled. “Exactly. So why then would it react stronger to a vampire?”
“I follow. The vampire extends its life through unnatural means and is constantly trying to be ‘defeated’ by the natural course of things. The field around Ryuudou does so even more.” The reason Servants were weakened if they passed through the field was the world constantly trying to deny them existence, since they were heroic figures of times past that no longer existed in the modern world.
“Right. The intrusion I detected was beyond just a person or creature that didn’t belong. It was a full-blown attack on something that defied the natural course of things.” Tohsaka reassumed her teacher position and I resisted the urge to shake my head. “Between that, and the other disturbances in the leyline that I’ve come across, that’s my conclusion. We haven’t heard anything about attacks yet, but, vampires have to feed, and there aren’t many animals around here because of the magic leyline. If there is one here, it’ll strike eventually.”
I had to wonder, though. “But isn’t it a bit of a leap to go the vampire route? I mean, I know there are other creatures out there.”
Tohsaka looked away, and I had a sense that she might be covering up a blush. “The sense I have from the leyline is very specific. I’m kind of familiar with the presence of a Dead Apostle, and it’s very similar.”
I frowned, considering. She had never told me that she knew what such a thing was like, but I had a feeling she wasn’t going to answer if I asked how she knew. So instead, I went with the more immediate concern. “Why do you keep switching between ‘vampire’ and ‘Dead Apostle’ anyway?”
“Well, they’re slightly different. A Dead Apostle is a vampire, but a vampire isn’t a Dead Apostle. I’ll explain more some other time*, but I keep thinking that this is probably more like a vampire, which is a lesser threat. Dead Apostles usually only get to the point they are by learning to avoid places like Ryuudou Temple. Vampires might still just stumble across it or even test it out just to try.”
“So are we going to go look for it, stop it before it victimizes someone?”
Tohsaka paused and gave me an even stare. I wondered for a moment if she was going to say something along the lines of, who do you think you are, inviting yourself along? This is my thing. Instead, she asked, “Do you have something that would work against a creature that may be centuries older than you?”
I considered that. Really, Caliburn was the only thing I had ever used to fight a vastly superior figure, and that hadn’t exactly turned out well when I didn’t have Saber guiding me. I had practiced a lot with Kanshou and Bakuya, but never used them in battle. Caladbolg had done well against the magus Setsuka Yuushi, but I had used it as a Broken Phantasm and Yuushi had been a human. Against a creature that may have years of experience in close-quarters combat, I was still a rank amateur.
I had a couple of swords that I thought would work, but, on the battlefield…
“Yes,” I said. No point in bouncing back and forth theoretical ideas in my head. Tohsaka knew as well as I did anyway, and she was likely just testing my determination.
“Fine. We’re going to go out tomorrow night, so you might get to practicing tonight.”
I sighed and went to replace the tea Tohsaka was ignoring. I didn’t particularly feel like any myself now either.
Something was up.
It was a growing sense in Yumi’s mind. Ever since she had started wearing Rin’s school uniform, it had felt like Rin was closer to her, always with her. She knew that there was nothing magical about the uniform, but the sense that was there left Yumi with an impression. An intuition.
Hoshino-san had convinced Yumi to join the Archery Club and although Yumi was far from starting the use of a bow herself, Sakura had immediately offered the use of her gear. Though she didn’t use it in club—she was still merely pulling the bands to build up the arm strength—Yumi carried the bow and equipment to school for the exact same reason she wore Rin’s uniform. It felt like Sakura.
Here too, she started feeling as if Sakura went with her.
Because of that, when she made it home that evening and sat down to dinner, she could tell. She could sense that Rin was not telling her something, that Sakura was aware of something and not speaking of it.
Of Shirou, she couldn’t tell, though she wondered if carrying that lion plushie he had in his room would work.
Dinner was just like any other day, though it being a Friday, Yumi did not have to worry about waking early for school the next day. When everything was finished and put away, Shirou went to the dojo to practice with something.
Yumi decided she would get plenty of sleep tonight. She had a feeling she would need to be well-rested for tomorrow.
“Cyrus the Great was the Persian, right? The one that conquered Babylon?”
“Yep.”
“Hmm. Caster, perhaps? He had some sort of law-making cylinder as opposed to a sword or spear associated with him, right?”
Tohsaka and I wandered the city that Saturday evening, staying toward the quieter and less-traveled regions in an attempt to either catch this vampire or draw it in ourselves. After four solid hours of wandering, it had devolved into a conversation about other mythic figures and what it might have been like to summon them as Servants.
I wonder if Tohsaka ever felt disappointed that instead of summoning a renowned figure from the past, she got someone like me instead.
“True, and he wasn’t known for riding things into battle like Genghis Khan or the like. He doesn’t particularly fit any of the classes, though he’s assuredly a Heroic Spirit.” Tohsaka shrugged. “I guess I would have liked to see what his presence would’ve done to that Goldie, since Cyrus the Great was known as the King of Sumer, where Gilgamesh’s story originates from.”
I shrugged too. Though as a point of interest, the different figures in history and myth being Servants was thought-provoking, I didn’t really know as much as Tohsaka seemed to. Most of the historical figures I did pay attention to generally, well, had swords to their name.
Miyama-chou** at this time of the night was extremely quiet, though you could see a person about here and there. Saturdays were bereft of uniformed kids, though many teenagers were out and about, in transit between visits with friends or the like. Some adults were heading back home from late weekend work. I suppose Tohsaka and I looked like a young couple on their way from a date, maybe carousing for some privacy.
Young couple.
Tohsaka made me wonder what exactly she intended to do. Upon her first return from London, she had declared that it really wasn’t for her and that she would not stay there long-term and made arrangements with her teachers there. When she was here, she was fairly insular and I’m certain people like Mitsuzuri were not even aware when she was and was not in town. I always thought that considering her popularity at school, if not here, she would be raking in the confessions from guys in London.
Not that I was familiar with how Western magi thought, but, an exotic beauty like Tohsaka plus the magical lineage to guarantee a talented heir…
Maybe she didn’t even notice. That would make sense.
“You think any Americans qualify?” Tohsaka asked.
“Only if there were a ‘Gunslinger’ class available. And I bet a lot of them would be Anti-Heroes, like Butch Cassidy or John Wilkes Booth.”
“You’re forgetting Buffalo Bill or Annie Oakley,” Tohsaka pointed out. “I don’t think they’d qualify as Anti-Heroes.”
I wonder if any vampires stalking us decided we weren’t lovers but a pair of extremely odd academics.
We stayed in Miyama-chou though because boundaries of water did repel vampires just like in the myths, acting as pseudo-Boundary Fields. Since Tohsaka had detected the vampire on the Ryuudou Temple-side of the city, it was highly unlikely that it had found a way to cross to Shinto without completely circumventing the city in some fashion.
It was, however, getting late. Passing one in the morning meant that we were well past the halfway mark through the night, and I had the feeling that a vampire would not feed too late and risk getting caught out in the sun away from wherever it had holed up. If we didn’t encounter anything suspicious in the next half hour or so, I think the consensus was we would return home.
We passed a different kind of suspicious—the kind that included the rustling of bushes, a female giggle and a male grunt—and I shook my head. Oh how little the world knew.
Tohsaka’s reaction was funnier. “Hey!” she shouted into the bush. “Do your parents know where you are?! Don’t make me call the cops!”
A couple of “eeps!” and some more rustling later, a very red pair—probably teenagers still—climbed out from behind the pseudo-park area that lined one street. The girl’s blouse was off-center and the collar fell off one side of her shoulder, while the boy was hastily zipping himself up. It was just about as cliché as I could imagine.
Yes, children, a blood-sucking demon was out and could possibly get you. Time to have sex like your life depended on it!
Well, not that they knew about the demon part.
Actually, that sounded more like my history. Tohsaka’s and mine.
I guess I really am a hypocrite.
“I could’ve been a mugger or rapist, and you’d have been helpless with your pants down!” Tohsaka was scolding the two as they hastily ran in the opposite direction from us.
Tohsaka’s even more of a hypocrite.
“Geez, you’d think they’d have more sense than to do it in an area right next to a road,” Tohsaka said. “Anyone could walk in on them!”
Was it just me, or was there a fleeting sense of jealousy I heard? “We need to get you a boyfriend, Tohsaka.”
“Only if we get you a girl first,” she countered immediately. “That way you’ll not get distracted in the middle of training!” Ah, so she had prepared this argument before hand.
“You’re the one that sounds like an old, grumpy adult, seeing those two—”
Unlike the cliché expectation of films and television, villains do not often announce their presences and go on like a windbag while their opponent comes up with a plan, unless their name is Kirei Kotomine, anyway.
Whoever leapt from the shadows beyond where the two lovers had been wasted no time in drop-kicking Tohsaka right where she stood. The meaty sound of his foot connecting with her diaphragm was impossibly loud in the open air, and she flew out of my peripheral sight.
“Trace, on!”
Kanshou and Bakuya appeared in my hands, and I knew I would never manage a strike in time. So as the vampire honed in on me, I flung my arms out sideways and sent the blades skyward.
The vampire hit me with a hard punch right into my abs, hard enough to send my feet out from under me, tipping me head-first into the ground while I flew back a few meters. I felt something tear in my body, but managed to get my arms beneath me so I didn’t face-plant into the ground.
I forced my head up to watch for its next move. The vampire—a tall man in a black coat and blue jeans—was not watching me, however, and instead was looking down at a red-colored jewel at his feet.
I ducked my head beneath my arms.
The explosion was like a grenade and thankfully had the properties like one. My head was only a couple of meters from it, but nothing struck me while I was pressed flat to the ground. The vampire, on the other hand, got a face full of magical fire.
I didn’t have time to waste.
I traced a new pair of Kanshou and Bakuya, glanced up at the first pair, now falling down toward me, and threw the pair in my hands like boomerangs to either side of the vampire.
The first pair arched toward the second pair, and both pairs pulled at each other. Forming a circuit on the x and y axis surrounding the vampire, they closed in.
The smoke cleared, and the vampire, singed and looking mightily angry, caught sight of the steel incoming toward him.
“Trace, on.”
It was a vampire. It was death reanimated, a thing that all that was sacred on this earth would expel if given the chance.
It was a stain on this world.
“Admit to all your unholy sins.”
A new sword formed in my hand, a large hilt and grip with a blade hardly longer than Kanshou and Bakuya. Though a broadsword, the end was angled like a single-edged slashing weapon, unnaturally so.
Curtana, the broken sword of mercy, the weapon of Ogire the Dane.***
I threw the blade—no time for the bow—and so intent on the flying Kanshous and Bakuyas, the vampire had no room to avoid all five weapons even if he had the reflexes. He smacked one Kanshou aside, twisted into a shallow cut from its partnered Bakuya, but leapt right into the path of Curtana as the original pair came at him from the sides. With a response surpassing anything I could do, he caught Curtana mid-air.
By the blade, cutting his hand.
Which was enough.
The vampire froze in place, hand dripping from the cut made by Curtana. He seemed to have control of his arms, though the hand gripping Curtana was stuck holding the blade. His feet, though, were locked in place. The look on his face screamed one question: Why?
Because you must confess.
Or die.
A third pair of Kanshou and Bakuya formed in my hands and I closed in on my target. I remembered what Tohsaka said about vampires being killable by normal means, so I didn’t bother attempting to Reinforce them. I just charged in and swung both blades as he flailed his free hand at me.
A head hit the ground, followed by a splatter of blood.
I glanced at Tohsaka, brushing herself off like she hadn’t just been drop-kicked by an enemy out for blood. She caught my eye. “Shirou, your side.”
Looking down, I finally noticed the tear in my shirt and the wound beneath. I’m not even sure when it had been inflicted, from the initial hit or his arm managing to connect before I beheaded him, but it looked like I had just barely managed to avoid being impaled. “Oh.”
“Shirou!”
This time, Tohsaka screamed, and I glanced back to the defeated body of my opponent—
Whose head had returned to its shoulders.
“Oh.”
The vampire thrust his hand at me like a talon, and I dove out of the way, rolling down the slope of the street. Thankfully, the vampire did not come in pursuit and looked to still be locked in place by Curtana.
Tohsaka started pumping Gandr shots into him to keep him from managing to pull Curtana, giving me the time I needed.
Nothing for it.
“Spirit and technique, flawless and firm.”
If Kanshou and Bakuya couldn’t kill this thing, then I would need something stronger. But I was starting to run low on prana and didn’t know what else might work. So I would just have to go stronger with what I had.
“Our strength rips the mountains, our swords split the water, our names reach the Imperial Palace.”
I Reinforced the blades in hand, pulling out the utmost of their abilities. Sharpness, speed, balance, power. The blades cracked under the strain and screamed as their steel became brittle.
The vampire managed to put his shoulder in the way of Tohsaka’s shots and used his free hand to pull at Curtana, still cutting into the hand that had grabbed it.
“The two of us cannot hold heavens together.”
I strengthened Kanshou and Bakuya until they broke, then charged back up at the vampire.
“Aghhhhhhh!”
The blades cut the vampire, me, the concrete beneath our feet, and themselves.
This time, the blood that hit the ground was mine; when Kanshou and Bakuya dissipated, they left my cut and broken hands to splatter red all over. But the vampire’s body was not far behind, also painting the street red.
And then the vampire’s body hit the ground.
And again.
And again.
The x-pattern cut I made had sent the creature into four pieces. My hands looked like they wanted to be in four pieces but had been left whole on accident. I heard myself groan and felt my circuit close since there was hardly any od left in it.
Tohsaka was next to me faster than I could have expected, catching me before I collapsed face-first into the bloody pile I had made. “Hey, don’t give out on me here, I can’t carry your heavy ass all the way home!”
I groaned again, though I put all my remaining strength into my legs. They felt like metal, though, slow to respond and reverberating like I’d been tapping against them rhythmically. I had practiced overedging Kanshou and Bakuya before and knew that it would essentially blow up in my face, but I’d done it at full prana stock before. Now I felt like my body was a steel skeleton, like the frame of a building, and someone was hammering away on one end and arc wielding on the other.
Maybe I’ll not try that again for a while.
“Maybe you better not do that one again for a while,” Tohsaka said.
Also, my building frame was apparently echoing.
“What was up with its head?” I complained.
Tohsaka was looking up at the sky. “I had a feeling it would be tonight, because there’s a full moon out. Dead Apostles are stronger with the moon full, though I didn’t expect it to be strong enough to return to its state before it was headless.”
I’m not really sure what she was talking about, though I often felt that way with Tohsaka. I would probably get a further explanation sometime later, after I didn’t feel like laying where I was and sleeping for a week.
“What do we do about that?” I asked, motioning to what remained of the vampire’s body.
Tohsaka shrugged. “I’m pretty sure it’s dead now,” though the tone of her voice seemed a little unsure, considering it had put itself back together after a beheading. “Vampires turn to ash after they die and the world ‘resets’ their presence, but I’ll light it up after we get you out of the way first.”
I managed a grin at her. “You’re always cleaning up after my messes.”
“Yeah, well, until we get you a wife, I suppose it falls on me.”
For some reason, I suddenly had this image of Tohsaka in a maid outfit flash through my mind. I made sure to place my tongue between my teeth and hold it there.
If I uttered so much as a word of that, I was pretty sure Tohsaka would erase any evidence of my existence too.
Sometimes, she dreamed.
It was common to dream about her pain. She didn’t exactly nightmare about it, but it was unpleasant and left her feeling hopeless. Like nothing in the world could be right when such a thing occurred.
It was becoming more common to dream about life. School life, daily life. Whimsical things, like grocery shopping, or actually getting the chance to shoot a bow in club, or riding the train to Kyoto. Sometimes they were colored by things she watched on television, like a love triangle between club members or a zombie apocalypse happening in the middle of school.
Whenever she watched Shirou and his swords, she dreamed of distant shores.
Before she had been an orphan, she had once traveled with her mother. She had seen numerous beaches and various shorelines. She couldn’t place the name of a country with each image, but she knew she had been to Sydney, to Vancouver, to Venice. She had seen parts of America, India, England, Russia.
She thought maybe, she dreamed of those places after seeing Shirou and his swords…
Because of his happy face.
She couldn’t recall the emotions she felt before the pain had begun. She wasn’t sure what was her own and what had been added. But looking at Shirou, seeing his happiness at saving her, she thought that emotion fit best with what she could remember of her innocence.
Tonight, it was not so dissimilar.
She had followed after the two of them. She knew that was logically unsound, that if they were going after something, following them would place both herself and them in danger. But an impulsive side of her, a side that certainly was not of her own making, insisted that she go.
For some reason, she had the feeling she would not be attacked anyway. It was an impression she got from that sense of Rin she had with her, like Rin was fully aware that whatever they were after was threatened by them, and would attack them. Not Yumi, not anyone else.
So she followed, and in the shadow of a tree’s overhang, she watched.
When she saw Shirou do battle for the first time, it had been like before. It was vaguer, more distant, not so apparent. But when Shirou had defeated that thing, had cut it to pieces, there was a distant sense of satisfaction on his face.
A distant sense that he may have saved someone.
Yumi quickly returned home after that, so Shirou and Rin would not notice she had been gone. She prepared for bed in record time and was down before they had even made it back to the residence.
That night, after seeing Shirou and his swords, she dreamed of her perfect, untouched past.
She dreamed of escaping the hand fate had dealt her.
Escaping Fate, Seven of Swords, End
*Getting into the Tsukihime arena a bit. If you’re unfamiliar with the Nasuverse, here’s the gist: vampires are fairly similar to vampires of other fiction, though the reason they would “burn to ash” is touched on here. Much like Shirou’s Traced weapons, which would disappear over time as reality seeks out the contradiction of a “sword that was not here a moment ago” and dissolves them, vampires are creatures that are the contradiction, “a life that should have died long ago” that the world is constantly trying to fix. A Dead Apostle is a long-lived vampire that has broken free of any connection to its sire and established itself. **Miyama-chou is the residential district of Fuyuki City, compared to Shinto, the city-side.
***Shirou only ever saw Black Keys in Heaven’s Feel, and as they’re mere conceptual weapons with a specific purpose, not a Noble Phantasm, I really doubt he ever saw one from Gate of Babylon. Though, considering everything else he sees in Gate of Babylon, it wouldn’t be a stretch that he saw a weapon with a similar purpose.
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