Chapter Text
Gasping for air, a young raven-haired woman ran through the side streets of Akihabara. The various salaryman restaurants had long shuttered and the few men and women loitering outside of the short-stay hotels eyed her with just as much suspicion as she did them. Clutching a burlap sack to her chest, she rounded a corner and all but froze in place as the edges of her perception tasted copper and smelled the color purple.
“Matou…” The woman whispered, eyes desperately seeking out the source of the roiling taint rolling in like a fog. The street was empty in both directions and the moon obscured.
She flattened herself against the shutters of a closed delicatessen, closed her eyes and whispered, “
Traceless my heart, void is my form. Dance between.”
and stepped back through the wall, the steel parting around her like water and resealing as she passed.
She continued to pass through the meat vendor stall’s front counter, doing her best to ignore the scent of slaughter mixing with the cloying poison approaching. She knew the threat was barely a minute away at best and she was already exhausted. What was the point of reaching for greatness if you were just going to die just before grasping it?
She let go of the miracle and the world reapplied itself around her. She kept moving to the back, past the kitchen and up to the walk-in freezer, her red eyes glowing softly and providing just enough light to navigate with. She walked inside and wove between the hanging flanks to the opposing frozen wall.
She pulled out a small crystal and popped it in her mouth, biting down hard. Amethyst and mint froze her lips as she repeated and amended, “
Traceless my heart, void is my form. Dance between, loved but unseen.”
She walked through into the next building over’s linen closet. The love hotel. Perfect.
The woman took to the stairs. Her scent trail would stall out the search for quite a while, particularly since she forced herself to remain in the phased, invisible state until she’d reached the building’s fourth floor.
Panting from the exertion, she pressed into one of the rooms and popped another crystal. Only three left. Occupied, but the patrons were in the bath. She indulged and checked the couple out, nodding in appreciation with a cheeky grin before turning back toward the bed and reaching into her jacket, procuring a small silver marble.
Taking a deep breath and mustering the remaining force of her will, the small woman folded her hands over the sphere, resting her package in the crooks of her arms, and whispered,
“
Inside, outside, become my real.
Your form my gate, My heart your door.
None will know for you I hide.
In the breath, beneath, between.”
The room around her vanished, replaced with a 12x12 tatami wide patch of grass floating amidst a brilliant void of pinks, purples, and oranges. The woman fell, literally drenched in sweat and laughing in nervous relief. She threw her jacket to the side and wrapped her petite arms around the package, rolling on her side and revelling, “I did it! Oh my god, I did it!”
She bit her lip and laughed, “You’d better be worth it, you stupid hunk of weird,” before checking her limited inventory once more.
The woman popped another crystal in her mouth and frowned at her depleted supplies. Barely enough to finish the ritual… and she had to work fast. The reality marble wouldn’t hold for long… and at this rate, neither would she.
She snapped her fingers and the grass became concrete. She pulled chalk from her bag and set to drawing the summoning circle. After years of trying and failing for one dream after another, it looked like her last year in high school would finally place everything in her grasp. One opportunity after another just kept lining up… and she wouldn’t let a single chance fall aside.
But this… this unreasonable chance. This impossible mistake that had seared into being only a week ago… marking the underside of her forearm with undeniable proof of both her lineage and her potential. Three unfortunately placed command seals that demanded she take part in the terrible game ahead that she only recently discovered the rules for.
Mama would be furious... heartbroken…
But she
had
to do this.
Knowing how terrible the last two wars in Fuyuki had been and seeing that she had been drafted back into this sick world she’d hoped to walk away from left her more than afraid. She was terrified. After finally finding friends, a place where she belonged, a chance to achieve her dreams... this… out-of-nowhere
death sentence
pulls her into a goddamn
grail war
.
Circle nearly completed, she couldn’t help but cry a little. Her family wasn’t big or old enough to even be on the
radar
for this kind of crap! The only reason she could figure she was being dragged into this was because the stupid artifact decided she’d make a great sacrificial lamb to fuel some bigger family’s ambitions.
Oh, but she’d show
them
.
This
girl had
plenty
of reason to fight back. To kick and spit in fury at their callousness. What the hell was a gross family like the freaking Matou even
doing
still trying to be relevant! At least it’d make sense for one of
theirs
to be chosen as a Master. The only reason
she
stood any chance of even summoning a servant was because her family’s limited magical heritage happened to coincide with skills convenient for thievery… and that her Father had thought to pass on the crest as early as he did, eager to hand off the mantle of heir.
From the ruins of the Tohsaka estate, limited knowledge of practical crystal-based magecraft and a few remaining examples of the work. From the Emiya line’s notes, enough to glean the basics of time manipulation that she paired with her own family’s space and dimensional weaving. From the Matou, lore and knowledge on the summoning ritual and the… “holy” grail war itself. Oh yeah, and the abomination in a bag over there.
However the Matou had managed to get their hands on command seals, this… thing… was clearly their ace card. She’d missed so many practices by now that the other girls were starting to worry, but the time spent researching was well worth it. None of the families were exactly comfortable with the aberration, but the Matou were so desperate that they planned on using it as a summon catalyst.
A new kind of servant. One quite possibly from beyond the realm of Gods, let alone heroes.
If any of the others succeeded in pulling off something like that, then the war would be over before it began. She could just kiss Mama and the kids goodbye. Admit to the girls that they were the best things to ever happen to her. Maybe even try to kiss the girl she’d come to love before meeting a terrible and likely violent end.
But the aberration was hers now. The ritual was almost prepared. She had two mana crystals left to supplement should the burden of being a Master be heavier than she’d suspected. She’d done more spellcasting in the past hour than she’d done in the past five years combined and she was
feeling it
.
Worse, she was going for broke.
The biggest gun carried the biggest risk, the biggest burden, and her only chance of coming out of this alive. It was just a slight alteration to the incantation, but it was the only way to guarantee she’d get the class she wanted. Perfect offense, practically non-existent defense. Full assault, which was just her style. Completely at odds with her family’s craft.
The woman, stood, trying to steady her breath and calm the shaking in her hands. The adrenaline was fading, leaving her with only the task at hand and the reality of what was very likely going to be the death of her. She unbound the bag and tried not to recoil at the vertigo it’s exposure to the air around her induced.
Taking care not to touch it, she up-ended the bag onto the makeshift altar.
It
slid out and landed with a solid crash, the sound of shattered glass and radio static resounding though nothing around it seemed affected. The air smelled of strawberries and sunflowers as the air wobbled and the altar started to bubble and crackle beneath what the big wigs at the Tower could only label, “An inconsistency in reality itself. Incompatible with the fabric that codifies existence.”
Just unsealing it was dangerous. If it wasn’t for the contained nature of the space she was working in, who knows how it would have reacted. Particularly with the Matou bug parade hunting her down. The woman cracked her knuckles, cracked her neck, glared at her command seals one more time and said, “Alright then. Let’s do this.”
“Let silver and steel be the essence.
Let stone and the archduke of contracts be the foundation.
Let everything and nothing be the colour I pay tribute to.
Let my great Master Andou be the ancestor.
Let rise a wall against the wind that shall fall.
Let the four cardinal gates close.
Let the three-forked road from the crown reaching unto the Kingdom rotate.
I hereby declare.
Your body shall serve under me.
My fate shall be your sword.
Submit to the beckoning of the Holy Grail.
If you will submit to this will and this reason…Then answer!
An oath shall be sworn here!
I shall attain all virtues of all of Heaven.
I shall have dominion over all evils of all of Hell!”
With a deep breath, she committed,
“
Yet, thou serve with thine eyes clouded in chaos
Thou, bound in the cage of madness.
I am she who commands this chaos
From the Seventh Heaven, attended to by three great words of power,
Come forth from the ring of restraints,
Protector of the Holy Balance!
”
As the ritual progressed, the light in the pocket dimension faded. Cracks formed in the space revealed. Black electricity scoured the ritual space forming from the roiling gaseous solid artifact as it shuddered, inverted, and imploded, vanishing completely. With its disappearance went all sound and flavor in the air.
The small woman felt the reality marble shattering around her, but the space persisted. Even as the ground beneath her gave way, she felt her magic circuits flaring hotter than they’d ever burned. Her command seals
throbbed
as the connection was made with the being slowly taking shape in the searingly bright darkness before her.
The hotel room began to superimpose itself around them, but
shifted
as the bubble seemed to relocate itself into the center courtyard of… Kanda?
The bubble shattered completely, it’s residual energy swirling into the crackling maelstrom of her summoning. Then… a pull so hard she nearly fainted, barely having the presence of mind to crack both of her remaining mana crystals.
In the darkness of her near collapse, she caught visions. An infinite hungry darkness. A valley of countless springs. Gleaming hungry feline eyes in the darkness. Tearstained pages and a desperate loneliness. Bright spotlights and… herself? None of it made any sense, but as the darkness coalesced before her, it took the shape of a woman not much taller than her. The darkness cracked, shattered, and reformed around the woman’s pale skin as clothing. A flowing gown held up by one shoulder. In the cloudless night, all the young mage could make out was a pair of sharp, glowing amethyst eyes.
Low, her champion’s voice growling, rumbling violently enough for the woman to feel it in her bones, “Congratulations child… with this, you have already won. What follows shall be a mere formality.” The taller woman approached, a saunter that the summoner was too anxious to appreciate, “Your boldness will be rewarded, on the condition that you don’t get in my way. My name is…”
The champion froze in place, eyes wide. Her voice rose to a heartbreakingly familiar tenor, devastated and confused.
“Nico-chan?”
The woman, trembling as the being before her pulled at her magical reserves so hard she thought she would faint, stared up in wonder and horror.
“Maki-chan?”
---------------------------------------
Author’s notes:
Will this continue? Not sure. Had a really strong visual and rolled with it. Definitely breaking some rules in the Fate canon’s magic system and family dynamics, but… isn’t that what fanfiction is for? I really want to come back to this sometime, but Nishikino takes precedence.
Where are all these freaking ideas coming from?