[FSN x Index] Loser's Bracket

[fallacies]

{ Loser's Bracket }
a Fate Stay Night x A Certain Magical Index crossover
by fallacies

Fate was let to run its course, and the War was won. For the sole remaining Master, however, all that was left was to awaken to a world of consequences. Welcome, Emiya Shirou, to the Loser's Bracket.

Contents

000: The Sum of All Evils <-- (this post)
001: Placement Examination

002: Warm Welcome
.1: ACC $1,750,000
.2: Code Ninety-Nine

//

It had briefly crossed his mind at the beginning of the War that if the Grail could grant only one wish to one participant, even if all but one of the camps were defeated, there would still be no clear victor. If neither gave way to the other, the final contention would inevitably fall between Master and Servant.

At the time, he hadn't thought to spare planning toward any such eventuality -- but here at the end of things, it seemed in hindsight a mistake.

Bleeding from the wounds that Kotomine Kirei had inflicted in their final bout, Emiya Shirou was all that kept the King of Knights from obtaining her sole desire.

"You still hold one final Command Seal," said the blonde, approaching the base of the stairs. "Use it and the Grail will recognize your forfeit. It won't be enough to compel me from my goal."

Ignoring the protest of his limbs, Shirou hefted his weapon -- a replica of the nameless axe-sword that his sister's Servant had carried.

"Make that wish," he replied, brandishing the blade, "and you'll be turning your back on the tears and sacrifices of everyone who's ever walked beside you."

The girl ascended the granite steps, bringing to grip her own weapon in a flash of light.

"I've honestly enjoyed our time together these past weeks," she said. "It may be that along our misadventure, the threat of death and the ugliness of human malice were never far off, but with Rin and yourself as my companions, I could at least pretend for a time that weight of this sword was somehow worthwhile."

Across her armor, the scars left by the blades of the King of Heroes mended as if they never were.

"However, the World doesn't allow that fantasies persist," she continued. "This time, the cost of my hubris was no less than the lives of Tohsaka Rin and Illyasviel von Einzbern." Two meters below the top of the stairs, she stopped advancing and brought the sword to her fore in a double-handed grip. "In the end, all of those tears and sacrifices you speak of could have been avoided. They came of walking beside the king that bears as her regalia the light of destruction."

Shirou clenched his jaw. He had dared to hope otherwise, but it didn't seem that he would see a resolution without open conflict.

"It isn't my intention to hurt you," said Saber, "but if you refuse to stand down, don't expect that I'll hold back as much as I have."

At the summit of the Ten no Sakazuki, with his back toward the golden light of the Grail manifest, Shirou stood his ground.

Confidence had no bearing upon his choice. Having restored Avalon to its owner and losing in the process the capacity to successfully trace it, common sense dictated that if Shirou were to cross blades with Arturia Pendragon, his odds of emerging victorious were infinitesimally small. Even so, for her own sake, he was obligated to oppose her. He'd already failed too many people tonight.

"Once again, I will ask that you remove yourself, Shirou," Saber commanded.

"No," he replied. "Never."

Drawing her lips to a thin, displeased line, Saber brought her sword parallel to her waist and /charged/.

Shirou was only barely able to follow her with his eyes, but steadily maintaining his trace of Heracles' monstrous strength and agility, he cleanly blocked the initial wave of attacks -- a series of low slashes aimed at the sides of his legs. The sparks that flew of the exchange were his first indication that things weren't going quite as he anticipated.

The axe-sword borne by Heracles was for all of its extraordinary resilience no more than a slab of mundane stone, chipped to resemble a blade. Tracing a weapon absent of mystery took very little effort or prana on Shirou's part, but accordingly the end-product was at a distinct structural disadvantage in a match against virtually any weapon of superior rank.

At the fifth clash, the axe-sword shattered, and the tip of the Excalibur cut across the side of Shirou's abdomen as he attempted to sidestep. Gasping, Shirou tossed the remnants of the blade at Saber and retreated, tracing out two of the axe-blade replicas he'd mentally loaded.

Saber, who had broken her offensive to evade, was forced yet again to the stairs as Shirou swung and let fly his replacements. Unlike Archer, he hadn't the skill to significantly modify traced objects on demand, but while the axe-blade was obviously unintended for flight, it was aerodynamic enough to stay aloft for a few seconds if thrown in the manner of a boomerang. It bought him just enough breathing space to consecutively load and reproduce further duplicates for use as projectiles.

A few more backwards leaps placed Saber at a great enough distance that the blades he threw could no longer reach her with any accuracy. Taking a more reserved stance, she resumed her approach at slower pace, striking and shattering each of the blades that neared her.

"The shared hope of humanity is unending victory," said Saber, climbing past the stone debris left in her wake. "As a race, we are united in our wish for the unequivocal annihilation of any who would oppose us."

Releasing a stream of prana with a slash of her sword, she simultaneously destroyed every airborne projectile.

"The sword I carry was forged of the crystallization of such a dream," she said with palpable disgust. "So unreasonable an existence should have never been let to arbitrate the matters of the waking world."

Breathing hard, Shirou ended his barrage and crossed the remaining pair of axe-blades before his legs. Saber was waiting him out, he knew. With Avalon sustaining her, she had more than enough prana to engage the Excalibur in full and escape the collapse of the cavern untouched. Had she truly intended to do him any lasting harm, he wouldn't have still been standing.

"Something good must have happened along the way," he insisted. "In all these years that you've fought and struggled, you must've achieved something worth smiling about."

"The crimes I've perpetrated against my own render meaningless whatever good that I've committed," Saber declared, once more lowering her stance.

By inexperience or straight-up fatigue, Shirou misjudged the shift in the blonde's footing as a lead-in to an oncoming charge. It was a moment before he understood his error, and by then, the aerial distortion loosed from Saber's vertical cleave had blown its way past his head. The abrupt, splitting pain in his left eardrum broke his guard, and it was all he could do to roughly toss the trio of rubies in his pocket in Saber's general direction.

"Kephath!" he shouted.

Where the jewels had fallen, wiry blood-red tendrils burst forth and extended vine-like, rapidly constricting Saber's armored limbs. Though the crystalline fibers were delicate of appearance, they enclosed a field of plunder whose function it was to supply prana from within to the thaumaturgical reinforcement of the crystalline matrix. The result was a solid lattice with sufficient strength to withstand over a metric ton of force per centimeter of ruby filament.

"Jewel magecraft," she observed. "You've managed to absorb some of Rin's instruction, it seems."

A concussive pressure rushed from Saber's body without premonition, splintering her bindings to minute fragments. Already disoriented and unstable of footing, Shirou dropped his weapons and stumbled backwards.

"It will be of no aid," said Saber, shortening the distance between them at a slow, deliberate pace. "Before the merciless machinery of reality, the effort and skills of any one human are of inconsequential weight."

In a movement too fast for Shirou to dodge, Saber brought her blade downwards in a diagonal cut to his torso. It was a shallow attack that wouldn't have inflicted lethal damage, but unwilling to risk the chance of incapacitation, Shirou blocked the sword with his right arm, releasing within the bounds of his own skin the highest quality blades he could trace on so short a notice.

"Why can you not comprehend futility?" asked Saber, applying pressure to the blade. "These injuries that I've dealt to you are needless."

"You take the good with the bad, but you never stop hoping," Shirou replied, gritting his teeth at the progressive tearing of his muscles. "Isn't that just how life is?"

Saber jerked and withdrew Excalibur from Shirou's forearm. Delivering a swift horizontal slice through the surface of his abdominal muscles, she cleansed her blade with a flick and watched him collapse to his knees.

The fight was at an end, Shirou knew -- but for good or naught, there was still one final trump to be played.

"By this Command Seal," he said, painfully lifting his bloodied left fist, "I order that you destroy the Grail."

The brand on the back of his hand was consumed in a flare of crimson light, and Saber visibly flinched -- not so much as to disrupt her stance, but she furrowed her brow as if giving intense focus to some private crisis.

"Your father concluded the Fourth Heaven's Feel with those same words," she said softly, closing her eyes. "I admonished you of the probable outcome."

Above them, at the brilliance of the noonday sun, the illusion of the Lesser Grail issued a single pulse of light and began its descent -- drifting slowly until it was level to Saber's diaphragm, at arm's reach. Calmly, and with an expression that might have been of love or remorse, the blonde met Shirou's gaze.

"Don't," warned Shirou, breathing unsteadily.

Saber shook her head and reached at the phantasm, cupping at the base of the bowl. At contact, the surface of the Grail rippled like water.

"To the Holy Grail," she declared, voice resolute, "I ask that Emiya Shirou bears witness to a history in which the Sword of Contract was never drawn by Arturia Pendragon."

Fate had run its course, and the War was won -- but for Emiya Shirou, there was no victory to be had; no understanding to be reached.

From where the shining, golden Grail rested in his field of vision, a pure white darkness burned outwards ...

//

In his first, tentative moments of consciousness, he arrived at the dim awareness that wherever he was, it was uncomfortably bright. Beneath his back, there was a soft, warm surface that might have been a bed or a futon, and somebody was lightly patting at his face in an annoying, repetitive motion.

"Oi," said a girlish voice. "Wake up already, Emiya."

Shirou parted his eyes to a reluctant squint and took in what he could of his surroundings.

He was in an infirmary of some sort -- a spacious, whitewashed room in functional faux-Victorian decor. The beds in array about him were made and vacant, and the only other person presently in sight was a bleach-blond, effeminate-looking Caucasian teen in a boy's student uniform -- presumably the one who had roused him.

'Saber?' he thought. 'No, but there's a definite resemblance ...'

"You don't get your ass outta bed right this moment, we're gonna be late for the System Scan," said the teen, slapping Shirou's face with a little extra force.

"Sys- ... System Scan?" mumbled Shirou, moving his face from the teen's reach and drawing himself upright.

"Hello? The general Power Development examination?" said the teen impatiently. "Like, we only ever take it every trimester or so. Ringin' any bells in there?"

It wasn't familiar, no -- but with mounting panic, Shirou realized that neither was anything else about the situation. Where was Saber? What had happened to the Grail? The last he recalled, he had been in the catacombs beneath Mount Enzou, facing his Servant in the final minutes of the War ...

Oh.

Oh lords.

"Snap the hell out of it, Emiya!"

Brimming over with impatience, the teen entered Shirou's personal space without reservation, stepping on to the bed and pulling him into a tight, uncomfortable choke-hold.

"Y- yield," sputtered Shirou, tapping at the teen's arm.

"Not until you swear that you ain't gonna be a bother no more," came the reply. "I ain't the acting class rep outta the goodness of my heart, you know?"

"I swear!"

"Good," said the teen, smirking in satisfaction. "Now let's get goin' already."

//

By the time Shirou had somewhat regained his bearings, he'd been trailing behind the smaller teen for several minutes -- traversing the corridors and skybridges of a rather upscale academic institution.

Stepping aside to avoid a fancy janitorial robot as they rounded a corner, he nodded unconsciously at the machine with ingrained politeness, staring after it.

'Even a fairly well-off private academy like Homurahara wouldn't be able to afford anything so cutting-edge,' he thought. 'Just how expensive is this place?'

"So what is it with the passing out in class all of a sudden?" asked the blond conversationally. "That mysterious girlfriend of yours keepin' you up at night, or what?"

Girlfriend?

He had a girlfriend? Since when?

Shirou opened his mouth, but closed it again, thinking the better of his gut response.

"Nah, nothing like that," he said. "I've just been having trouble sleeping lately. Might be the weather."

The blond seemed unimpressed with the answer, and paused to fix Shirou with a half-lidded glare.

"Nap if you wanna nap, but don't be pulling this kinda stunt again while I'm on duty. If you've got health issues that are interferin' with your class conduct, that's something you should be taking up with Medical Services. The city ain't providing free, full coverage student health care for you not to use it."

Shirou nodded absently, but didn't reply. He hadn't been aware that Fuyuki provided any such subsidy -- but not having been prone to sickness or injury growing up, he'd left any arrangements of insurance entirely to the whims of Fujimura Taiga and her grandfather. For all that free coverage sounded too good to be true, it could very well have merely been something he'd never bothered to become informed about.

Given, of course, that this was indeed Fuyuki City.

He wanted to say that he was somewhere within the municipality of Shinto, but the cityscape beyond the tall-paned windows happened not to contain any recognizable landmarks. The fact of the absence didn't mean a whole lot, necessarily, but for the time being, there was no way to tell exactly where it was that he'd been transported -- or what precisely had occurred since he was last conscious.

Despite the loss of Avalon, there were no obvious traces of the injuries that he'd sustained, and somebody had apparently put in the time and effort to dress him in the same uniform as his companion -- a white, short-sleeved button-up and a slightly worn pair of black slacks.

'Saber makes a wish, and now I'm somehow a student in an academy for the children of the elite?' he thought. 'Is that how things work out?'

Of all the outlandish things that Shirou had experienced these past weeks, it was this abrupt plunge into an unfamiliar everyday that most lacked the weight of reality. Consequence or punishment he was ready to accept, but the circumstance now presenting itself seemed thus far almost a reward for failing to come to terms with Saber. Frankly, it had him holding his breath for the other shoe to drop.

"Eight minutes late," announced the blond, glancing at the clock on the wall as they pushed into the third-floor lobby of a gymnasium from its balcony walkway. "Homeroom's gonna have my head for this shit."

The floorspace of the lobby opened into a massive indoor arena, complete with what Shirou guessed to be a four-hundred meter track. The sheer scale of the facility was a fair ways over-the-top for a sports education building at a secondary school, but it was something else entirely that caught Shirou's attention.

Several meters above the floor a short distance into the arena, a girl suspended in the air zipped narrowly from the path of a high-speed jet of water, deftly maneuvering as multiple streams arched past her. Further on, a bulky, muscular boy skated along the synthetic rubber flooring as if it had all the surface properties of ice.

These weren't isolated aberrations. Across the gymnasium -- as far as Shirou could see -- uniformed teenagers were engaged in the unreserved exhibition of what he could only tentatively categorize as 'magecraft.' It didn't seem as if the participants in the grand spectacle were particularly concerned with the preservation of the Masquerade.

More strikingly, though structural grasp vaguely indicated the operation of assorted mysteries, Shirou couldn't detect any obvious expenditure of prana in his immediate vicinity.

'Where the hell have you landed me, Saber?'

 

[fallacies]

Re: FSN x Index] Loser's Bracket

{ Loser's Bracket }
a Fate Stay Night x A Certain Magical Index crossover
by fallacies

001: Placement Examination

//

"Coffee?"

The woman in the wheelchair shook her head, and waved off the offer.

"Given up on caffeine for the month," she replied. "I've been having trouble falling asleep at night these last few weeks."

The young man holding the coffee tsked, lowering the cup to the table before seating himself beside the woman at the control terminal.

"If it isn't an issue with your implants, it's probably the fact that your metabolism's aging," he said. "It isn't too soon to start saving up for retirement, you know."

"I'm twenty-eight, you jackass."

"Practically a dinosaur, in other words."

The woman didn't deign to provide a retort. Giving the young man a final glare, she turned her eyes back to the digital displays that lined the wall.

There were a total of thirty-two screens in the security room -- enough to cover all of the outdoor CCTV cameras in the western half of the school campus. For the purposes of the System Scan today, however, the feeds that were connected came of the monitoring equipment inside the gymnasium, and they were focused on a single subject -- a redheaded boy with golden eyes.

"You said on the phone that there's been some sort of disruption to his AIM profile?" asked the woman. "What changed, exactly?"

"Besides that he's running a slight fever? See for yourself."

Haphazardly, the young man tossed a manila folder to the woman, who opened it to the top page of the document within -- a color print-out of two three-dimensional spectrograms.

"Last time we got him on record was two weeks ago," said the young man. "Today, it's like he's a whole different person altogether."

The woman frowned in contemplation, flipping through the attached logs of the boy's recent medical data. Analysis of an esper's AIM field was the highest fidelity imaging available for the human psyche outside of a university budget -- coming short versus the more sophisticated procedures primarily in its insensitivity to illness and day-to-day psychological disturbances. Being that in this case, there didn't seem to be evidence of overt mental manipulation or significant trauma, there was no reasonable explanation for the stark disparity she was seeing between the two sets of readings.

Somehow, the tell-tale indications of Academy City's Power Development conditioning were now all but missing from Emiya Shirou's AIM profile.

"We've got a fifty-third confirmed Gemstone on our hands, in other words?" she asked.

The man shrugged.

"Honestly, I have no idea if he qualifies," he said. "Higher-ups asked me to confirm the situation when the readings came in thirty minutes ago. I just figured that since you have a personal stake in the boy, I'd give you a ring."

"And knowing you, you want a favor for the head's up," the woman observed. "If it's direct access to the Reformatory like you've been gunning for recently, this isn't nearly enough. Register me as a permanent consultant to the case, and you've got yourself a deal."

"Done," the young man replied, grinning.

Leaning against the back of her wheelchair and supporting an elbow on its armrest, the woman brushed the tips of her fingers horizontally across her lips.

"Let's see how our little spy performs in his practicals."

//

"This one?" asked the greying proctor, holding the back side of a clairvoyance card level to Shirou's eyes.

"A yellow star," Shirou replied.

A new card was drawn from the deck on the table between them.

"And this?" the proctor asked.

"A black arrow."

"Direction?"

"Up."

The proctor smiled. Returning the card to the deck, he penned a series of notes on a thin, transparent device that Shirou presumed to be a high-end tablet.

"You're doing very well, Mister Emiya," said the man, placing his pen in the pocket of his lab coat. "Seventy-five out of seventy-five, with an improvement of thirty-eight points since last trimester. A one hundred percent accuracy is just about enough for you to qualify for a reevaluation of Level. Good job."

"Uh, thank you, sir," said Shirou sheepishly, scratching the back of his head.

In hindsight, maybe he shouldn't have cheated so obviously with Structural Grasp.

"As soon as janitorial staff clears out a bit of floor-space in the Arena, you should be up for practicals," said the proctor. "We'll call you over when it's your turn. In the meantime, you can take a break in the waiting area down the hall."

Nodding, Shirou gathered his uniform jacket from the left booth divider and took his leave.

'Espers,' he thought, exiting into the hall from the long, windowed gallery.

In her long-winded lectures on thaumaturgical theory, Rin had touched on them once or twice -- warningly describing them as alien individuals who by nature 'strayed fundamentally from the common sense of man.' Per the irregularity of their interaction with the World, they held the ability to impose their perceptions upon an environment at no cost beyond mental exertion.

The scientists here hadn't uncovered knowledge of magecraft or the Masquerade, but there apparently existed an entire field dedicated to the study of psychic talents. That mysteries were subject to widespread academic scrutiny wasn't something that Shirou had known of -- but then again, it did seem like the sort of esoteric science that a typical teenager wouldn't normally run across.

Being a student registered to 'Tachikawa Secondary,' on the other hand, Shirou was expected to be an esper of at least 'Level Three' or higher. It put him into the difficult position of having to match up to an entirely guesstimated standard.

As his use of magecraft hadn't thus far raised any eyebrows, Shirou presumed that in all probability the scientists didn't possess the means to tell him apart from an actual esper. Ad-libbing his way through the exams was doable, in other words -- but other than what he could comprehend of his fellow students' abilities via structural grasp, he had no reference from which to self-assess over- or underperformance. It was all he could do to grasp about in the dark.

Sitting himself in the deserted resting area, Shirou sighed.

'No use worrying,' he thought. 'Even if the results don't follow the expectations of the school, there's nothing I can do about it. Best option's just to play along until I have a clearer picture of what's going on.'

But there really were too many pieces of missing information. The more he saw of the school, the less certain he was that he was still within the bounds of Fuyuki -- and unfortunately, confirmation of locale was precisely the sort of thing that he wasn't likely to glean from bits and pieces of overheard conversation.

Wherever the school was situated, he'd lived here for at least half a year -- and Saber's wish had on his behalf fabricated an entire life history that he couldn't remember. It was probably a contrivance on the part of the Grail that he conveniently bore a surface resemblance to the 'Emiya Shirou' known to his teachers and peers here at Tachikawa.

'I suppose this is what having amnesia is like?' he wondered, staring at the floor. 'Hopefully I didn't actually exchange places with another me ...'

"Emiya."

With a rather dour expression, the class representative approached from down the hall -- plopping down two seats to Shirou's right and crossing ankle over knee with exaggerated masculinity.

"Since yer here waitin', I'm guessin' you just got the one exam left?"

It didn't sound as if there was any doubt regarding Shirou's probable reply. By the lack of preamble and the annoyance in the tone, he guessed that despite the play at being friendly, the blond wasn't all too amused to find him here.

"Seems so," Shirou confirmed, frowning. "Not really looking forward to it."

"How come?"

Because the so-called 'practicals' involved teenagers wielding possibly lethal mysteries in live combat?

"If I'm going up against a possibility of grievous bodily harm," said Shirou, "I'd hope that it's for a better purpose than 'because the school expects it.'" He paused. "Isn't this whole thing kinda biased against students whose abilities can't be used for fighting?"

It occurred only after he'd spoken that in questioning the premise of the exam, he was perhaps 'breaking character.' For all he knew, training psychic abilities toward combat application was to anyone who had willingly enrolled in the academy merely a norm to be accepted and observed.

Thankfully, the class rep didn't look at him oddly.

"Can't be helped," came the reply. "You wouldn't know about this, but the 'exhibition fight' is really a pretty recent addition. Got introduced at Tachikawa the year before you transferred in 'cuz we were losin' out to Nagatenjouki and Tokiwadai in average ranking. The theory is, it gives kids the motivation to push harder."

"By dangling the threat of injury in front of them?"

"Worst comes to worst, they switch on the AIM Jammers in the floor. Instantly blocks out ability use within the zone."

"And if they don't turn it on in time?" asked Shirou.

"Then the school pays up." Pulling out a device that resembled a smartphone, the blond brought a page of text to the screen and held it up for Shirou to see. "It's right in the fine print o' student contract they make us sign. You waive the right to pursue legal damages for any injuries you receive as a result o' school activities. In exchange, Tachikawa and Student Medical Services jointly agree ta' compensate you in full fer inconveniences and required medical attention."

Somehow, this all wasn't very reassuring. Shirou could comprehend monetary payouts for a broken bone or limb, but what sort of compensation could a private school offer for a permanent brain or spinal injury? And in the first place, why put students at risk? Didn't the academy have a reputation to worry about?

A jingle played across the intercom, interrupting his line of thought.

"Emiya Shirou and Morg M. Harway," said a woman's voice. "Please report to Zone Eight of the third floor Multipurpose Arena for your practicals."

The class rep sighed, getting up and stretching.

"We were the last ones in, so it only makes sense that they paired us off. Somehow I knew it'd turn out like this."

"We're up, I guess?" asked Shirou, standing to his feet.

The blond nodded tiredly.

"Didn't wanna hafta beat you up, but you can consider this payback for the chewing out that bitch Saotome gave me earlier."

Shirou chuckled nervously.

//

Waiting on the square mat at the north-eastern corner of the arena was a short woman with glasses and a ponytail. By her height and bearing alone, it was difficult for Shirou to imagine that she was a teacher -- much less that she'd passed the age of majority.

"Er, Morg M. Harway and Emiya Shirou?" she asked, thumbing across the screen of her clipboard tablet.

"Yeah, that's us," Morg replied, answering for the both of them.

"My name is Tessou Tsuzuri, and I'll be your proctor for your final examination today." Indicating the two white X's taped to the mat with her free hand, she said, "If you'll just take your positions, I'll begin explaining the contents of the exam."

Shirou and Morg did as she asked, stepping up to the X's. Seeing them in place, Ms. Tessou nodded.

"The purpose of this exhibition match is to establish the current performance parameters of your abilities in practical application," she said. "You're not fighting to determine who's stronger or weaker, in other words, so please don't treat this as some sort of ranking bout. I'll terminate the exam either when the system indicates that sufficient data has been recorded, or when it acknowledges consenting forfeit or inability to continue. Actions that may inflict serious injury are strictly prohibited, and will result in exam abortion and disciplinary measures. Any questions?"

Shirou would've wanted a clarification on what precisely constituted a 'serious injury,' but figuring that it was probably whatever qualified under common sense, he shook his head. Across the mat, he saw Morg do the same.

"In that case," said Ms. Tessou, raising her hand, "begin!"

At the fall of her arm, Harway burst forward with a lunging thrust of the fist.

The smaller teen was a long ways off from the agility of a Servant, but the attack was nevertheless fast enough that Shirou had to reinforce his legs to dodge. His evasion, though, placed him neatly in the path of the followup -- a high roundhouse kick, issued with more force than Harway's musculature seemed to permit.

'Reinforcement?' guessed Shirou, blocking with his right arm. 'No ...'

Retracting the kick, Harway dropped fluidly into a low stance, sweeping at Shirou's feet with the opposite leg. Seeing the approach, Shirou backstepped out of range.

"Huh," said the blond. "When'd you get so good?"

"Uh ... I've been practicing?" asked Shirou, warily circling at a distance.

A bit more attention to the blond's physiology revealed that the unusual strength and speed weren't directly a consequence of any esper ability. Rather, by way of nearly inhuman focus, the tensile limits of all muscular groups were being forcibly exceeded -- a feat that likely took years of training to achieve, nigh unattainable without some degree of insensitivity to pain.

As with other psychic abilities that Shirou had attempted to read in the hours preceding, the mystery inherent to Harway's conceptual existence registered as an intense, vaguely-defined impression of an alien truth. The associated physical phenomenon was straightforward enough, though: In the aftermath of a movement, there was a rapid reversal of any tissue damage or acidic build-up.

"... accelerated healing?" asked Shirou aloud, taking the brunt of a fierce right hook to his forearms. "Is that what you have?"

Breaking off, Harway backed away and laughed.

"Only took you two trimesters ta' guess." The blond assumed a ready stance that reminded Shirou of Jeet Kun Do. "Still, pretty good, seein' as I don't exactly advertise. Healing's part of the gig, yeah, but don't be thinking that I'm a one-trick pony like those brats with Auto-Rebirth."

Shirou frowned. Going on the thought that Olympic-class athletics would be more than enough to destroy the opposition, he'd fully intended to get the fight over with on reinforcement alone -- conditions for exam completion notwithstanding.

Once again, it seemed that he'd overestimated himself.

Against an opponent with costless regeneration and physical capabilities just about level to his own, blindly entering a competition of endurance would earn him nothing but injury -- maybe incapacitating him for a more in-depth investigation of his circumstances once the exams were through. By comparison, ingrained paranoia that a fuller reveal of his magecraft might invite unspecified dangers was a concern of far lower priority.

In a breath, a pair of blunt wooden blades were chambered and fired -- imposed from within Shirou's mind unto the domain of Gaia.

"'bout time," said the blond, smirking. "Thought fer a moment you were gonna stall this thing inta' next week."

Shirou's reply was a forward crosscut that he'd seen Archer perform a number of times with the Kanshou and Bakuya. The first set of swings weren't quick enough to catch Harway off-guard, but the greater reach of the weapons did effectively deprive the smaller teen of any clean openings to exploit. Making the best of his temporary advantage, Shirou pressed forth with a second attempt.

This time, though, there was no evasion. Delicate fingers enclosed Shirou's right blade -- and as if the traced weapon were comprised of so much butter, the wood somehow gave way, melting fluid-like beneath the pressure of Harway's grip.

'Negation ... ?' thought Shirou.

The top half of the weapon fell away. Too surprised to immediately disengage, Shirou could only watch as another clawing swipe destroyed his left blade -- leaving the front of his torso undefended. A forceful open-hand strike to his stomach sent him sprawling across the floormat.

Harway didn't close in for a finisher.

"You're right that the practicals don't favor the kids that can't fight," said the smaller teen, dropping back into a ready stance. "But you know, at any Level higher than Three, yer essentially bein' ranked fer your viability as a military instrument."

Clutching his stomach as he stood, Shirou grit his teeth. Military viability? At the end of the day, were the students here nothing more than tools at the disposal of some shadowy power-monger?

Saber had wished for him to witness a history in which she was never king. It stood to reason that the Grail had deposited him here and now for some specific purpose -- maybe to come to terms with the sort of world that she desired, as he'd never truly gone the distance to understand her in their time together.

If this were the world came of her absence, though ...

"Doesn't mean I have to like it," Shirou replied aloud.

In a conflict of two mysteries, quantifiable power had little meaning. Inevitably, whichever fell closer to the common sense of man would be overturned -- and so, as the World rejected phantasmal existences, Shirou's tracings had worn away to the attrition of Harway's distortion. The practice blades used by the Homurabara Kendo Team were, after all, merely mundane objects.

The same couldn't be said for the bamboo blade that now rested within Shirou's hands.

The Tora Shinai strayed from the pigeonholing of 'common sense.' For all that the opacity of its history within his mind denied a perfect reproduction, even the very flawed replica before him was able to slip its suggestions through the boundaries of his mind in a reasonable semblance of his own instinct.

Riding on said 'instinct,' Shirou found himself again on the offensive -- adopting the sort of hopping advance that Fujimura Taiga typically employed in casual sparring.

"Face!" he shouted, thrusting the shinai at his opponent's head.

Before Shirou connected, the smaller teen's left hand shot up, batting catlike at the weapon's tip. The attack veered ineffectually into empty air -- but on recognition that the shinai had somehow resisted erosion, an expression of shock settled on Harway's face.

The small window of distraction was all that the Tora Shinai needed. Withdrawing in the middle of follow-through, the weapon circled back and rammed its full weight against the blond's upper right arm. One hundred and twenty centimeters of carved bamboo didn't constitute an insignificant mass. Something had to give -- and the inertia alone was sufficient to knock the smaller teen to the floormat.

Reigning in the shinai's ferocity, Shirou halted the blunt of the tip on the skin of Harway's throat.

"Yield?" he asked.

For several seconds, Harway sat, merely glaring at the Tora Shinai as if it were some offensive existence. Then, relenting, the blond nodded.

"Yield."

//

"AIM intensity at seventy-two point five," said the young man, reading off the screen before him. "One standard deviation above the population mean for Level Fours, hm? Explains how he overwhelmed Harway's Jurisdiction Assert."

Beside him, the normally kindly countenance of the woman in the wheelchair had twisted into a smirk of perverse excitement. Drawing a mobile phone from the pocket of her pajamas, she dialed a number.

The line connected in three ringbacks, and a man's voice greeted her.

[Kihara Byouri,] said the person on the other end. [I don't recall giving you permission to so casually dial this number. Do you yet again require patronage for some crude endeavor of yours?]

"You really shouldn't think so poorly of me, Director," Byouri replied. "It's not as if I make a habit of begging for grants."

[Then what is it that you want?]

"Free reign over the fate of the organization known as RAVENS," she said.

The line went quiet, and Byouri's smirk grew wider.

[If such a body exists, I have no knowledge of it,] said the man. [Feel free to do as you please.]

The call was instantly terminated, but Byouri pocketed her phone with a satisfied expression. From behind the security room's control panel, her companion gaped.

"That was Pieceman?" he asked.

"Yeah."

The younger man sighed, pressing his palm against his face.

"One of these days, you're seriously gonna get burned," he said. "Doesn't do anything for your life expectancy to go ahead and blackmail a member of the Board of Directors, you know?"

"I've associated enough with the man that I doubt he really minds," said Byouri. "Besides, I've long since given up any hope of actually meeting my life expectancy."

Again, she fixed her gaze upon the face of Emiya Shirou, displayed from every angle across the wall of screens.

"Whatever it is that you've come to this city for," she said, "I'll make you give it up as well."

Her lips drew into a toothy smile entirely at odds with her features.

"I swear it on my name as a Kihara."

//

"Say, Uiharu," said a certain middle school girl. "Have you heard that one rumor about the body-snatchers secretly taking over the city?"

//

Subject: Emiya Shirou
Age: 16

Designation: Tactile Image
Rank: Level 3
AIM Range: 5 meters

Precognition: A
Clairvoyance: A
Psychometry: B
Telepathy: D
Psychokinesis: C
Retrocognition: C

The subject is able to impose limited influence over the force interactions of air molecules. Primarily, visible-range photon reflectivity and intermolecular forces are manipulated to temporarily produce ability-maintained solids. Tactile Image may be classified as a subset or variant of the more common ability known as [Aero Hand].

 

[Biigoh]

Oh my~

 

[Prince Charon]

When Shirou starts using weapons whose powers don't fit that profile (or abilities that don't), the reactions are going to be interesting.

Admittedly, there aren't many that that description could not be stretched to cover. Even UBW sort of fits, if you go out of your way to make it.

UBW is rather beyond Level 3, though.

 

[fallacies]

{ Loser's Bracket }
a Fate Stay Night x A Certain Magical Index crossover
by fallacies

002.1: ACC $1,750,000

//

Shirai Kuroko didn't consider herself a technological utopianist, but somewhere behind her decision to stand among the defenders of Academy City, there was an absolute conviction that the progress of science and technology would someday realize all of the hopes and dreams of humanity -- purging the world of the injustices that sprang of ignorance and superstition by law of rationality.

Reality, unfortunately, had a habit of disappointing.

"Say, Uiharu," said a certain middle school girl. "Have you heard that one rumor about the body-snatchers secretly taking over the city?"

The speaker -- one Saten Ruiko -- was a friend of a friend, and therefore not somebody that Kuroko was inclined to verbally take apart without good cause. It did, however, consistently baffle her that two years as a student in Academy City had failed utterly to extinguish any of the girl's unreasonable passion for pseudoscience and urban legends.

'Even here in the foremost bastion of science,' thought Kuroko, filling her teapot with hot water, 'unfounded suppositions lurk evermore beyond the sanctuary of empirical fact.'

The student-operated disciplinary body known as Judgment was ostensibly a government organization, but the crowded office that Kuroko shared at the 177th Branch had more the look of a large, fancy clubroom than anything associated with civil service. In part, it was an intentional effort to make the otherwise utilitarian space more friendly, but Kuroko couldn't say if there was any particular necessity to the numerous stuffed animals that inhabited the room. Those were the work of Uiharu Kazari, the twelve-year-old Judgment officer presently hugging a plushy strawberry pillow on the couch.

"Hmm ... body-snatchers," said Uiharu, pursing her lips in thought. "The thread about them on the Toshi Densetsu BBS a few months ago was neat, but it didn't really go into how to tell an imposter apart from the actual person ..."

Saten smirked.

"If that's what you're looking for, you need to read the one post that popped up this afternoon," she said. "You know how the Power Development instructors are always saying that your AIM profile doesn't change much even if you rank up?"

"Yeah?"

"The word is, there's a student whose AIM readings were totally different from what he got during his previous System Scan. I don't know if the MIBs from the Board of Directors carted him off or whatever, but on the BBS, they're saying that his brain was probably infested by an alien worm."

"This is a recent thing?" asked Uiharu. "City-wide System Scan is still a month or two away ..."

"Some of the higher-end schools don't do it at the same time as everyone else," Saten replied. "The poster didn't say when and where the body-snatcher was caught, but places like Nagatenjouki supposedly have the test this week. I'm betting that the top five secondary academies were specifically targeted for infiltration."

"You're spouting silly absurdities again," said Kuroko, sitting down in her armchair and pouring herself a pre-patrol tea. "If these so-called 'alien brain worms' truly existed, we'd have a Public Health Advisory from the Academy City CDC long before System Scan turns out any 'infiltrators.' Furthermore, in the twenty-odd years since the SETI Institute was founded, there's been no conclusive evidence that extraterrestrial life in fact exists at all."

Kuroko made to sip her tea, but found Saten and Uiharu staring at her with widened eyes.

"What?" asked Kuroko, annoyed. "Have I got something on my face?"

Saten turned to Uiharu.

"Miss Shirai is a student at Tokiwadai, right?" she asked.

"Yes?"

"And Tokiwadai's one of the top five schools, yeah? The ones targeted for infiltration by aliens?"

"Yep," Uiharu replied, nodding.

"Claiming that aliens don't exist is pretty much exactly what I would do if I were secretly an alien brain worm plotting to take over the city ..."

With a perfectly straight expression, Saten made eye contact with Kuroko.

"I've never known Miss Shirai to take so much interest in urban legends," she said in deadpan. "Who are you, and what have you done with her?"

Kuroko felt a vein throb in her forehead, and a teddy bear abruptly vanished from next to her leg -- shooting into the back of Saten's head and eliciting a surprised yelp. Uiharu burst into giggles at sight.

"Sorry," said Saten, laughing and rubbing her head. "Couldn't resist the joke." She leaned back against a sofa cushion, staring up at the ceiling. "Seriously, though ... Even if it just so happened to bump me up a Level or two, I wouldn't want my AIM profile to suddenly change."

Kuroko raised a brow, setting her teacup in its dish.

"Why wouldn't you?" she asked. "Ranking up by two Levels would be a significant achievement."

Saten shook her head.

"With the kind of attention you'd get," she replied, "it'd be like going to the beach dressed as a Christmas tree ..."

//

'Structural Grasp' was at one point an actual spell that required manual activation on Shirou's part -- the silent utterance of a single-line aria, and a fairly standard interfacing to the relevant thaumaturgical foundation.

In the days following Archer's betrayal and the subsequent confrontation with the man in the place of the swords, something had changed.

What had been 'technique' was now a 'sense' -- an instinctual comprehension, no different from sight or scent or taste or touch. Its function wasn't automatic, as derivation of data still required focus on a subject; but elimination of thaumaturgical procedure and prana consumption was a bizarre development that Shirou had yet to fully understand.

Inexplicable as well was his growing capacity to accurately 'appraise' the precise history of certain inanimates -- in particular, any objects that bore the approximate topography of a sword. The processes involved in the manufacture of bladed weapons had always been somewhat easier for him to discern than anything else -- but less than three months ago, attempting to extract an ATM security code from a doorkey likely wouldn't have produced any results.

"One million, seven hundred and fifty thousand AC credits," he muttered, reading off the screen.

The LED display behind the bank tellers' counter indicated nearly a one-to-one conversion ratio to Yen. Assuming that the figures were valid, the worth of the savings account was equivalent only to small fraction of the funds that Kiritsugu had set aside for him in his original timeline. Nevertheless, it wasn't an insignificant sum, given the meager assets typically available to a high school student.

'Maybe he was on a scholarship?' Shirou wondered. 'A school like Tachikawa can't be cheap ...'

Withdrawing his ID from the machine and safely stowing away a stack of crisp, fresh bills, Shirou departed the bank at an outwardly relaxed pace, taking in the sights and sounds of the city at nightfall. Though the urbanization here was noticeably more pronounced than in Shinto, Fuyuki, despite the density of the rush hour traffic and the pedestrians, the winds that drove the turbines lining the street were surprisingly clear of tobacco and gasoline.

This, apparently, was Academy City -- a walled city-state situated just west of the Tokyo Metropolitan Area.

According to the library at Tachikawa Secondary, the place had attained independent sovereignty in the mid-1970's, at the height of the Cold War. Backed by the governments of both Japan and United States, it was founded to advance the growth of cutting edge technologies beyond the restrictive oversight of the conservative academic establishment.

Shirou was certain that no such location lay in the vicinity of the Tokyo that he recalled from excursions with his father growing up.

The city wasn't the only 'revision' that had been appended to historical record -- merely the most obvious that Shirou had identified. Thirty more minutes of research gave that the Historia Regum Britanniae no longer listed Arthur Pendragon amongst of the legendary kings of England. Instead, 'the Wytch Queen Morganna' and her successor, Constantine III of Damnonia, figured centrally in the cycle of tragic romances that dominated the medieval imagination. A princess by the name of 'Arturia' was only obliquely mentioned as one of Morganna's younger siblings -- spirited away by her father's mysterious advisor early on in girlhood.

The Grail hadn't been subtle in its agency.

Shirou had right off considered seeking out a method to return home -- but thinking on the matter a little more, the obstacles to the plan seemed glaringly immovable. The possibly still-ongoing realization of Saber's wish notwithstanding, transplanting himself to his original timeline would require the Second Magic or a thaumaturgical instrument at least equivalent in mystery to the Grail itself. Neither of these were likely to be readily available -- and if securing access were at all possible, in light of the usual generosity of magi, getting at them wouldn't be without a virtual guarantee of lethal combat along the way.

Even if fixes of the supernatural sort were categorically excluded from consideration, it didn't really matter: Fuyuki City had never existed here, as the primary port of Hyougo Prefecture had instead been redesignated to 'Kobe' in the later half of the Edo Period. Inputting any combination of the city name and 'Fujimura' or 'Taiga' to the more popular search engines yielded no promising evidence that his Taiga had in fact ever been born ...

Shirou sighed, stopping outside a fast-food restaurant.

"Might as well eat," he said to himself. "The hunger's starting to get to me ..."

//

Dinner was an Original Macronall's Double Quarter Pounder -- the second most likely contributor to the deterioration of his father's health, just after the man's daily packets of low-tar Silk Cuts. Even in a different world, the 'beef' of the patties managed to taste vaguely of plastic.

"Thank you for your patronage!" said a smiling, uniformed girl, bowing as he exited the building.

Shirou nodded back, and the automated doors slid closed behind him.

Out on the sidewalk, he flipped open his wallet and reconfirmed the address indicated on his ID. The dormitory didn't look to be too far off; he just needed to find the residential bloc in Tenth Sector, two or three intersections away. With any luck, it would be a five or ten minute walk at most.

Academy City -- or maybe just District Seven -- seemed to have a rather higher population density than he was used to. In the municipality of Miyama in Fuyuki, the streets were usually deserted a little after six or seven at night. Foot traffic persisted a little later in Shinto -- but bicycling home at eight from his part-time job at the Copenhagen, Shirou had never encountered anything resembling a crowd. At half past eight here in the shopping street of Akishima, there were still enough people that he was bumping shoulders left and right without meaning to. The cylindrical janitorial robots going about their business on the sidewalk really didn't make things any better.

In part, it was due to the lack of breathing space that he missed the onset of the ambush -- a brief, sudden pain in his right upper arm, which he attributed initially to a collision with the man that he'd just passed. The sensation of the second attack drew his attention to the tear had formed in his uniform trousers -- a straight shear through the cloth of his lower left leg, exposing a bleeding cut across the skin.

'A projectile!?'

Interference from the flow of pedestrians kept him from taking immediate stock of his surroundings, but with a quick backwards glance, he was able to visually confirm a needle of ice planted by its tip through the cement of a wall.

The mystery that had shaped the weapon was barely discernible, dispersing even as Shirou attempted to read it. With its passing, the crystalline structure shattered behind it, leaving only a hairline crack and a spot of moisture on the cement.

'They're on the rooftop across the street,' thought Shirou, maintaining his gait despite the pain. 'With two near-misses, it's unlikely that they aren't targeting me ...'

Thankfully, the crowd hadn't so far noticed -- but if a bystander were accidentally shot, sparking off a stampede from mass panic wasn't unforeseeable. He couldn't stay here.

Ducking into the nearest alley, Shirou broke into a dead run.

The passage wasn't very long. Twenty meters away, it intersected with a poorly-lit side-street empty of shoppers. Standing alone beneath a street lamp, a tall, imposing man in a black leather jacket looked to Shirou with a grim expression.

"So you're the one, huh?" asked the man.

'He's with the sniper?' thought Shirou. "I don't know who you're looking for, but I'm pretty sure you've got the wrong person."

Drawing an oddly-shaped weapon from its holster, the man directed the barrel at Shirou's face.

"My name is Komaba Ritoku," he replied, scowling. "For the crimes that you've perpetrated against Level Zeroes, I'll have you pay your dues."

//

Subject: Morg M. Harway
Age: 15

Designation: Jurisdiction Assert
Rank: Level 3
AIM Range: 0 meters

Precognition: C
Clairvoyance: C
Psychometry: D
Telepathy: D
Psychokinesis: C
Retrocognition: D

Within the space occupied by the user's body, passive/reactive maintenance of a specific physiological state is selectively asserted at the exclusion of phenomenon produced by any non-native AIM jurisdiction. However, the effect is applicable only to phenomenon that fall below the AIM intensity of Jurisdiction Assert. A range of normal biological processes such as digestion and neural functioning are not affected by involuntary maintenance.

 

[Biigoh]

Poor Shirou... just can't catch a break

 

[fallacies]

{ Loser's Bracket }
a Fate Stay Night x A Certain Magical Index crossover
by fallacies

002.2: Code Ninety-Nine

//

Though it was widely established that high-end esper abilities cultivated under the Power Development Curriculum heavily relied on the use of mental calculation, Kuroko had found that misconceptions regarding what this meant on a practical basis were extremely commonplace. The understanding most popular among non-espers and Level Zeroes held that Fours and Fives could initiate phenomenon merely by thinking out complicated equations.

The truth was somewhat less magical:

As abilities functioned more or less like phantom limbs, any 'calculations' that underpinned their operation were of roughly the same variety as the hindbrain processes that mediated motor control -- the automatic adjustment of leg exertion when walking, for example; or the intuitive balancing of the center of weight. The notion that high-speed algebra could mysteriously bestow the ability to shoot laser beams was the stuff of magical girl anime.

'Subconscious' well-described the calculations involved in psychic powers of Level Three or lower, but climbing higher in the ranks generally required specific cognizance of the 'how' and 'why' of things. With practice, ability application could potentially reach machine-like precision, but not without careful measurement and calculation of 'force.'

For Kuroko's teleportation, any slight misrepresentation of coordinates or velocities had a very real chance of reducing her body to a smear -- but this was to her mind a perfectly acceptable risk. If she weren't prepared to put her life on the line for the sake of her ideals, why bother joining an organization like Judgment?

Such a conviction was the lowest possible prerequisite to standing as her Onee-sama's equal.

//

The good thing about evening patrols, Kuroko felt, was the relative lack of attention that street-level pedestrians allotted to the sight of middle school girls falling from the sky. Objects in the air tended to be more difficult to see against a darkened backdrop.

"A Code Ninety-Nine?" she reconfirmed, plummeting feet-first down the side of an office building. "And this would be in Sector Nine, Akishima?"

[Yeah,] replied Uiharu across her earpiece. [CCTV feeds are showing an attack on a male student. The perpetrator seems to be using a heavily customized submachine gun.]

Kuroko pulled herself to the top of a water tower twenty meters away, landing with a metallic noise.

"Who am I dealing with?"

[I'm running facial recognition on the involved parties, but the poor video quality makes them hard to identify,] said Uiharu. [Luckily, they're both fairly unique in appearance. The student's a redhead in a Tachikawa uniform, and the gunman's almost two and a half meters tall.]

Kuroko frowned, throwing herself into the air above a canal.

"Two and a half meters?" she asked.

[Maybe a little shorter. Asian, brown hair, black leather clothes.]

Komaba Ritoku, Kuroko's mind supplied -- the leader of Red Virtue, one of the larger Level Zero gangs involved in the anti-establishment coalition known as Skill-Out. On so little detail, Kuroko couldn't be absolutely certain that Komaba was the perpetrator, but there really weren't very many Asian men of over two meters in height in the city.

If indeed Red Virtue were involved, the motive was likely to be retribution against the Tachikawa pupil -- unattainable through the legal channels for whatever reason. The gang had a reputation of never resorting to violence unprovoked or without just cause, and their victims were invariably guilty of hate crimes or acts of discrimination against Level Zeroes.

'Still, it's highly irregular that somebody in a leadership position like Komaba would venture so far out of District Ten to pursue a hit himself,' she thought. 'He's smart enough that there's never been enough evidence to pin a crime to him. Violates his modus operandi to be caught red-handed in a district known to be under heavy CCTV surveillance ...'

"Uiharu," she said suddenly, landing on the pole of a street lamp. "Has First Branch posted any alerts relating to the Skill-Out situation recently?"

[There was a large fire in one of their District Ten holdings two weeks ago,] said Uiharu. [Other than that, I don't see anything of note. Why do you ask?]

Five meters above a building-top, Kuroko frowned.

"It isn't anything too important just yet," she replied. "I'll inform you if my suspicions are proven valid."

The final eighty meters to Sector Nine, Akishima were crossed in an instant, and Kuroko landed on the top-floor catwalk of a fire escape. It was obvious at this range that the gunshots were at least partially suppressed, and on the echoes alone, it wouldn't be easy to situate the origin. Surveying the street below, she caught sight of the telltale flashes of muzzle fire at the corner of her eye.

"What in the world ..."

Toward the southern end of the block, twenty or thirty slabs of stone were planted perpendicular in the street -- piercing the blacktop by cutting edges crudely knapped in the manner of Paleolithic tools. The redhead that Uiharu had mentioned was taking cover behind them, but given the shrapnel and the shattered granite that littered the ground, it didn't seem as if they constituted a very effective defense against bullets.

Further on, the perpetrator had suspended gunfire.

"Tell me where your superiors are keeping the children," he said, "and I'll consider letting you off lightly."

Moving to the rooftop of the building left of the perpetrator, Kuroko said, softly, "I have visual confirmation on our quarry. Search the database for a Komaba Ritoku, Level Zero. The victim isn't known to me, but he's at least a Level Three. Ability looks to be rock manipulation of some sort -- probably Geo Hand."

[Got it,] said Uiharu. [Reinforcements are en route. They'll be there in about five minutes.]

Even if it was standard procedure for a Code Ninety-Nine, five minutes was far too long a wait.

"Understood," she replied.

Pressing the earpiece to mute her microphone, she walked to the edge of the roof and took note of Komaba's position. Intervening without backup technically wasn't permitted for Ninety-Nines, but as the sole officer on scene, circumvention of the rule was theoretically permissible on 'extenuating circumstances.' Even if her superiors didn't buy the excuse, better that she be marked for an infraction than to stand by and allow a life to be meaninglessly claimed.

Clutching the cloth band pinned to her left sleeve, she landed on the street five meters behind the man, facing his back.

"This is Judgment!" she shouted. "Lower your weapon, and put your hands in the air where I can see them!"

//

Bullets were fast. Extremely so.

Shirou's appreciation of this wasn't theoretical. The few times he'd participated in target practice at the shooting range beneath the Fujimura compound, Taiga's grandfather had praised him for his supposed talent as a sharp-shooter.

Tonight, he'd learned that being on the other end of the barrel was a wholly different experience from pulling the trigger.

He'd escaped injury at the outset of the encounter on rough anticipation of bullet trajectory and a lot of luck, making reference of his opponent's line of sight. The technique turned out only to be useful until the man realized that squeezing off shots at random was more effective.

Shirou had by then planted multiple replicas of Berserker's axe-sword in the street as a makeshift barricade -- but after the initial volley of shots glanced off the surfaces of the weapons, the composition of the bullets somehow 'changed.' The altered projectiles came at significantly greater penetrating power and mass, shattering through the lines of blades closest to Komaba as if they were so much china.

'Prana depletion's getting to be moderate,' he thought, sitting on the blacktop with his back against a sword. 'I'll need to take him out before the collaborator decides to join the fight.'

There was always the option of bringing higher-ranked mysteries into play, but he was hesistant to trace out an actual Noble Phantasm for much the same reason that he'd held back against Harway during the examination: Atop the lampposts and along the sides of buildings, there were a multitude of security cameras trained on the street.

Now that he'd confirmed that there was in fact somebody targeting him with intent to kill, it was doubly vital that he conceal his trump cards for emergency use. Letting slip too much information of his limits on camera would provide any observers with the ammunition to set up countermeasures against him.

Still, the situational assumptions he'd adopted for the Grail War didn't all apply. The combat here wasn't about dealing the maximum amount of damage in the smallest period of time. Both of his immediate opponents had thus far been human, and bringing to bear weapons expressly intended to injure Servants was overkill. Death was no longer an acceptable outcome.

'Am I even equipped to perform a non-lethal takedown?'

Pacing forward in the dust of broken swords, Komaba Ritoku ceased in his onslaught, lifting his bizarre weapon across a shoulder.

"Tell me where your superiors are keeping the children," he said, "and I'll consider letting you off lightly."

Speak up and die, in other words.

Before the War, Shirou might've been inclined to respond, but it was difficult now to interpret the overture as anything other than an attempt to discern his location. The destruction that Komaba had rained upon the street wasn't the sort of thing that one offered with heartfelt words of mercy. Likely, the man intended on finding the 'children' he'd mentioned with or without Shirou's cooperation -- and either way, Shirou's life would be forfeit.

The gun needed to go.

"Trace On," he whispered.

The weapon that came at his call was known as the Hrunting -- an ancient blade of black iron, inset on its surface with a twisting, spiral pattern. The javelin-like form that lay now in his grip was the result of a restoration -- a tracing back of the changes applied by Archer, who'd used it primarily as an arrow. In its forging, so long ago, it had been quenched on the lifeblood of hounds loyal unto death -- and in unyielding loyalty, its thrust sought ever after any marks its bearer desired to strike.

It was the kind of sword that lost none of its relevance when carried into a gunfight.

'Let's see how he honors his word ...'

Shirou hefted a grapefruit-sized fragment of granite and tossed it, forcefully shattering a glass storefront adjacent to his barricade.

The response was instantaneous:

Without hesitation or reserve, Komaba pulled back on his trigger, issuing a spray of continuous fire that penetrated through to the hindmost layer of slabs. The axe-blade at Shirou's back fractured and chipped under percussion, crumbling about its edges until only a scant few centimeters of cover remained.

'No openings,' thought Shirou, clutching tightly at the hilt of the Hrunting. 'How am I gonna do this?'

As the barrage ceased, it turned out, the opportunity to strike presented itself unprovoked.

"This is Judgment!" shouted the voice of a girl. "Lower your weapon, and put your hands in the air where I can see them!"

//

Komaba didn't comply.

Smoothly swiveling, he squeezed off a chain of shots in Kuroko's direction -- much as she'd expected. Flitting several meters to his side, she displaced one of the stiletto spikes stowed in her legstrap into his right forearm.

Surprisingly, he didn't yell or drop his weapon.

"There are places I need to be before I'm taken in," he said, scowling as he pulled the trigger again.

'Preemptive use of painkillers?' she thought, evading to a second-floor balcony just outside his peripheral vision. There was blood dripping from the stiletto that punctured his sleeve, but he wasn't in any visible discomfort.

She could try to go for his hand or the weapon itself, but either option could render permanent debilitation -- a messy resolution that she didn't want to deal with. Making her choice, she rematerialized at his back, placing her arms about his neck in a chokehold.

Confirming that while holding a gun, he did indeed exceed the mass limit of her ability, she began to exert pressure. Kuroko had attempted the move a number of times before to varying effect, but correctly performed, it could in theory reduce an opponent to unconsciousness in seconds -- all without much in the way of physical exertion.

In theory.

Whoever developed the textbook blood choke Kuroko had been taught in basic training had apparently never tried it on a heavily muscular opponent more than two meters in height. Incorrect application of pressure won her an elbow to the stomach, and intuitively, she relocated a short distance away -- close enough that Komaba still had an unobstructed shot, she belatedly realized.

Just as the man made to take advantage of it, something fell from the sky -- planting itself clear through the firearm, and knocking it to the blacktop. Inexplicably, the barrel had been bisected along its center by what appeared to be a bronze or iron age javelin.

"What?" asked Komaba, staring.

Kuroko recovered first. Porting herself directly before him, she kneed his groin and slammed her fist to the underside of his jaw. Still in contact with his skin, she delivered him three meters above the street surface -- momentarily following herself to ride his body down into the blacktop.

Panting lightly, she drew a plasticuff from her legstrap and restrained Komaba's arms. Stepping away from his body and dusting off her skirt, she turned to regard the male student, who had only now emerged from the cover of the granite slabs. Was the javelin a product of his esper ability as well?

"You'll need to take my statement, I suppose?" he asked, expression resigned.

"Unfortunately, yes. Your name is ... ?"

"Emiya," the boy replied. "Emiya Shirou."

//

"Goalkeeper is supporting the 177th Branch as rumored," she said, holding the phone to her ear. "Digital evidence might not be the best medium for this ..."

//

Subject: Shirai Kuroko
Age: 13

Designation: Teleport
Rank: Level 4
AIM Range: 81.5 meters

Precognition: C
Clairvoyance: B
Psychometry: D
Telepathy: D
Psychokinesis: A
Retrocognition: C

With relative reference to a three-dimensional Cartesian representation of the esper's immediate environment by default, objects may be relocated between two sets of coordinates via an eleventh dimensional translation. At present, Shirai Kuroko's ability can transport an upwards limit of 130.7 kilograms per utilization.

 

[HeavyMetal29]

Interesting…though wtf 0.o? Why would history without Arturia pulling out Caliburn lead to the Indexverse?

 

[Argentorum]

Interesting, hope you update soon.
I do agree "that no king arthur"="a certain magical index" seems a bit odd, but I'm willing to handwave it in the name of a good story.
Really, I'm just waiting to see Shirou interact with the rest of the Index-verse characters. And also for you to reveal what the secret government organizations think he's up to b/c raisins.