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Fanfiction / Watery Grave
« on: April 29, 2015, 10:18:08 PM »
a mulatto / an albino / a mosquito / my libido /
Disclaimer:
All participants engaging in the various acts of coitus depicted here are adults of responsible, legally consenting age. Fate/stay night, Tsukihime, and their related concepts and ideas are the intellectual properties of Kinoko Nasu, Type-MOON, Notes Ltd. and other respective rights holders. This story is written solely for the purpose of entertainment, and not for any sort of monetary profit. If anything, consider this free advertising.
“I swear, I don’t know which one of you two idiots is the worse influence on the other.”
Tohsaka Rin was pissed off, plain and simple. Nothing suggested otherwise. Anyone who saw how she incessantly paced back and forth through the hotel room would’ve been reminded of an antsy wildcat stalking about its cage. Further proof of just how angry she was was how she didn’t break eye contact with the ones who drew all of this ire. Her gaze wandered somewhat with her troubled thoughts, but she never fully took her sight off of them. She had a mostly unfounded gut feeling that if she stopped reproachfully glaring at them for even a second there’d be even more trouble waiting for her to clean up the next time she looked.
It didn’t particularly help. The pair was still uncooperative to various degrees, in their own ways. As for who exactly these two hellions were that she was forced to admonish-
Illyasviel von Einzbern boldly locked eyes with Rin in some sort of counter dominance display. Emiya Shirou just looked like he wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. Even so, he still tightly held her small hand.
When Tohsaka saw that she scowled. Illya scowled right back.
“Do you even understand the gravity of the situation?” Tohsaka asked, “You can’t just do what you did and expect there to be no bad consequences.”
“And what of the good?” Illya countered, “Are you willing to deny the positive effects of our actions?”
Tohsaka pursed her lips. Grit her teeth. “Don’t act like you knew that going in. You essentially threw rocks at a hive because you decided it was your business to see if it had any bees. Only in doing so you inadvertently invaded a powerful micronation and assassinated one of its chief politicians. What were you even thinking?”
“Life’s just a series of small miracles isn’t it, Tohsaka?” Shirou replied. This comment caused the full brunt of her baleful staring to be directed right at Shirou. His shifted his gunmetal gaze to the side to avoid direct eye contact with the distressed woman. All things considered, her vitriol was justified. Still, he felt that if he didn’t at least do something to deter her attempts to undermine them she’d just lose sight of priorities.
Illya said, “If you want to be technical over analogies we knew full well the hive was active and went in with full intentions. What we stumbled upon was a mutant, rogue strain of Africanized bees that boasted a lovely mother lode of honeycomb.
“You’re spot on with that micronation bit, though. Kudos to you, Rin,” and finished off with a perfectly cherubic smile.
Being an educated magus, Tohsaka knew full well of the terrible might of cherubim.
“You might be in the right in some capacity,” Tohsaka fully admitted as she collapsed onto a chaise lounge directly across from the loveseat the two shared. She was tempted to break into the bottle of complimentary champagne and drown her bad feelings in the traditional way of her family, but resisted the impulse to imbibe, “Might be,” she sternly elaborated with a tone heavy with real gravitas, “But, the morality of this matter doesn’t mean anything right now. This little stunt has marked you as walking blood money.”
Whether it was irresponsible or thoughtful of them to do, it didn’t matter as much as she made it seem. Tohsaka wasn’t just angry. She was also afraid. Not for herself, though she had a healthy respect for death. Her concern was for the recklessness of the two before her.
“This is all Illya’s fault. I just know it,” The young woman complained out loud and a catty “Hey!” was uttered by the accused party in reply, “Seriously, Emiya, if you do something crazy you’ll make the other people in your life sad.” As she warned Shirou, Tohsaka nervously twiddled her thumbs. It was only for a moment. No one else noticed how she made this gesture but her.
That was her self-imposed duty: to foster as much divergence as possible. She would condemn herself to Hell if she let the future she saw come to pass.
Difficult things were difficult. She imagined just giving in and letting the icy bubbliness of the chilled drink go down her throat. All she had to do was get that cork off and then this work wouldn’t feel so much like work anymore.
Tohsaka put that aside and switched gears to do the comparatively more responsible thing: chew out these two. “You really ought to control your other half better.”
“Why would you say that like it was possible?” Shirou groused empathetically. Illya squeezed his fingers tight enough to make him wince a little. “There’s not much straight thinking between the two of us when we both get riled up, and especially over something that big.”
“Well then,” Tohsaka went on “dare I even ask how this absurdity came to be? If you drop a bomb like this I at least expect that much out of it.”
As she asked this, she gestured to the shadowy man standing passively in the corner. Who had been there the whole time. Who was clearly not human. Who knew better than to get in the way of a scorned woman.
“Umm…” Illya looked at Shirou with an expression that bore an uncertain kind of tautness. Shirou was clearly on the same wavelength as her because he mirrored her wide eyed-ness. “Yeah,” she said, apparently coming to some unspoken agreement, “I suppose there’s a way we can relay to you as much as you need to know in order to get the facts straight.”
‘As much as I need to know?’
“Yes. There are details that we,” she referred to herself and Shirou, “needn’t share for personal reasons, and we simply can’t speak for some of the viewpoints because we’re not privy to their experiences. We can only tell you what we choose to tell you, and that’s our limitation as storytellers.
“Even so, what happened tonight was definitely caused by the convergence of two stories-”
He fucked up.
He fucked up real bad this time.
There he was, trapped in absolute darkness, deep within the Frankensteinian hull of the Fredensborg. It was still as ever in his black prison. The ship was so sizable that there was no discernable rocking. There was no distant, mercifully tangible indication that motion existed. There was no weak but there proof that the world out there actually existed and that hadn’t just been an elaborate hallucination in his head.
The void he was sentenced to was only a facsimile of what a real one could be like. It was produced by human hands. Of course the experience would be a limited one. That was why the original shell was refined upon by the capabilities of once-human hands. That way it was no longer simply limited to be just a void.
Now, it was something closer to an approximation of Hell.
He heard an echo distorted by the winding hallways. He heard the just out of earshot whispers that drifted from the cracks into his head like lazy blowflies. He heard hushed conversation around him, but even if he knew the original language spoken by the voices, he wouldn’t have understood for it was communicated solely through emotional vibes warped and withered by ages of suffering. The arrhythmic quality of the noise was incessant. The psychic residue left over from the slaves who had been stowed and suffered back in the original vessel’s heyday had festered.
“Get a grip…” he muttered, “Your bodies were sold off to the New World centuries ago. …why are you even here?”
As for those who had died aboard it, their souls remained slaves to the ship ever since. They were guard dogs stripped of all their humanity, a strong reminder that he was not alone in this closed world.
The physical pain of his captivity was dull and monotonous. Every bone was broken, and every joint and tendon was pierced by a sword. Chains were unnecessary to hold him.
Here, his body impaled so, covered in wounds, with no way for the light of the moon to reach him in these bowels, he had no chance to recover.
This was a prison meant to hold a vampire.
The voices were torturous, the pain was cruel, and the darkness was maddening. That just came with the territory. None of that was meant to be an especially personal torment by the design of the creator. One of the few times he was allowed a glimpse of light in his prison had shown to him what exactly had been placed down here to keep him busy.
It was a single boom box that played Personal Jesus on loop. Original and covers. Bootlegs and official lives. Parodies and mashups. Drunken singalongs. Acapella.
Now that, that had been done vindictively.
He’d have barfed up his guts by choice a long time ago if they weren’t pinned in place by the crucifixion. He’d never have pegged Brunestud’s white knight as a closeted rocker, but he supposed a pseudonym like ‘Demon of Stratovarius’ had to mean something.
Or not. He didn’t know. He was too tired to think. But, the whole of it all made it so that he was never quite allowed to rest.
Especially not now.
The cover of darkness, chatter of ghosts and perpetual music had always obfuscated his arrival until those glowing red eyes turned around the corner and bear right into him. The spirits would be silenced by his arrival. He would then will an old whale oil lantern to light, and approach him, strutting in tune to the music. He had no need for it in order to see in the dark. The reason he took it with him on was that it brought color to a world drenched in black.
It was purely to stroke his sense of aesthetics.
“Salutations, my dear Enhance,” his captor said with a jovial purr. He pressed a button on the machine and the music was silenced. He took care to not cut it in the middle of a note, though. It was all part of his ritual.
“…Svelten.” His prisoner wearily addressed the number Eight of the Twenty-Seven Dead Apostle Ancestors.
“You know what?” Svelten asked, “The more I look at you the more I realize just how much of a shame it is that I’ll have to ultimately give you up to m’lady. If you hadn’t been turned then I would’ve surely gleefully drunk you dry. That much is a crying tragedy, to be haunted by such near-perfection right in front of you and to not be able to enjoy it how you’d wish.”
“First name basis. Sure know how to make a guy feel special.” Enhance said.
Svelten continued to run his eyes over the ruined body of the one the Dead Apostles venomously knew as the Single Edge. There was a time only recently when he too had derided the Knight of Vengeance in conversation using that name.
That was before he successfully undertook his operation to capture the heretic. When he had not yet seen how starkly visceral it was the way the traitor charged madly into the ambush, even when pitted against the strength of his vaunted Ghost Corps and their overwhelming advantage. Before he had seen Enhance up close and personal.
“Enhance” was what he was known as, and from that point on “Enhance” was what he would always be to Svelten.
“Verily so, your words are. That is because you are indeed quite a special oddity, even when compared with the unique existences of the rest of our peers.” He came in as close as the jutting hilts would permit and stared the captive, Eighteenth right in the face. “Violet. Such an unusual eye color to be held by a vampire,” he said. This was not the first time he took to admiring this feature of Enhance. Svelten’s particular tastes had earned him much notoriety in the supernatural world as The Bloodsucking Count. He was a connoisseur of boys and men, and the more handsome the specimen the more he was compelled to make them his prey. Beauty nourished him. But eyes, eyes were the one thing he cared the most for. If it was said that his hunger made him lust for men, then it was eyes that fulfilled his soul. When it came to eyes sex didn’t matter to him as long as they were lovely.
“Indeed,” Svelten said, “I am not especially looking forward to the day when you change hands from me to the Black Princess. She might just turn you into food for the dog and be done with you. It’s not as if you don’t deserve it. You slaughter your fellow vampires wholesale like animals and you’re fed to the strongest one there is.”
Svelten retreated inwardly to think about this. Hours could have very well passed by in the interim lull.
“Perhaps I could see to it if I could maybe petition her into honoring a request for a co-claim on you. I would compromise on at least that much in this matter. Surely, we could still make the beautiful music together like I’d want to.”
“…pass on that. A psycho-socio carnivore like you gives gays the planet over a bad name.”
“Putting aside the fact that you’d have no choice, you have forgotten.” Svelten was unfazed.
“True enough,” his prisoner conceded. He didn’t have the means or desire to fight back. The wild stallion that he once was had its will broken enough to realize the futility of doing anything in this position.
“I do enjoy these visits of ours, Enhance.”
“Makes at least one of us.”
“Then I suggest you decide soon enough that you like them as well. It is fair to say that I have been rather accommodating enough to you, have I not?” He gave a quick one-over of the thoroughly penetrated Enhance. “…all things considered.
“The possibility that the transference of ownership of you over to m’lady is a death sentence is a strong one. It makes more sense to enjoy the time you have remaining when faced with uncertainty. I thought that, as the one of us who is closest to humans, you’d fully embrace that line of reasoning now that you have nothing left but me.”
“I’ll think about it.” Enhance said, after a moment.
“In that case, Enhance, I’d like to leave you with wishes for a pleasant evening,” said Svelten as he walked away.
The music came back on. The lantern went out. The red eyes vanished behind the corner. The darkness was back. The ghosts returned.
“As if I’d know,” Enhance growled through gritted teeth when he was left alone one more.
Boy, he really had fucked up.
.
- ] | [ -
.
‘The difference of ten and two more’s steel will cause night to stay everlasting.’
It was the first time in Svelten’s 942 years that he had heard the fabled Rose Prophecy, and it would be the last. Whether it was the work of a lone sibyl, or instead the collective will of all of the Dead Apostles and their link with the moon as they subconsciously read the flow of fate as it related to their immortal selves, it was a message that all who ranked among the Ancestors received. It urged self-preservation, to designate with one’s own hands a successor to take their place among the Twenty-Seven.
It was a warning of certain death.
There was no voice. It did not have a particular sound or cadence. There was no way for a vampire to prove that those words only meant for him it existed. It was purely an epiphany – the knowledge that this was to be.
“How difficult,” Svelten had merely said to himself at the time he received it. It was accepted as truth. But, during a night with conditions as optimal as these for a vampire he found it hard to believe. Just as it was that Christianity accepted the word of God, and yet there were heathens who left the church and no longer answered to it, there too were vampires who had turned from the proverbial faith, and as such were unable to recognize its call – in theory. Dead like the Serpent could not speak on their own behalves.
Still, he was a retainer to Altrouge Brunestud, whose court was at the center of the invisible kingdom of the vampires. It was easy enough for him to believe in the Prophecy’s word as law. He believed, but he could not accept. His was a mission from the Black Princess herself, after all.
Svelten stood on the deck of the ship, a platoon of his Dead before him, Parade primed and ready to dispense its necromancy. Through his links to all of his work he had complete sight of the surrounding ocean, all the way to the distant horizons.
‘Let them come from anywhere on the surface,’ he thought.
“Okay, Shirou, open your eyes now!”
“…wow.” What Shirou saw made his eyes open quite wide.
He was not flying through the sky, but floating. The lights that surrounded him were not stars, but the glow of bioluminescent sea creatures. The liquid moon up above was full and white.
This response quickly turned to “Whoawhoawhoa!” when he saw that they were in a bubble underwater.
Both of these responses pleased Illya. “We’re fine, Shirou,” she said with emphasis and assurance, “If this wasn’t such a sturdy submarine I wouldn’t have even thought of taking you out here. I’ve done all of my homework for this one.”
If the unintentional poking around he did during his moment of surprise that hadn’t popped the bubble wasn’t enough, then it was Illya’s calmly confident words that put him to ease. “Okay. Yes, alright. This is wild,” once he regained some of his composure he scanned his surroundings and – more idly and deliberately – prodded lightly at the bubble’s interior, “It feels like just one minute ago we were on the beach, and then the next we’re here.”
“You did let me hypnotize you, so that’s within expectations. I wish I could’ve somehow given myself a similar time dilation effect during it. I couldn’t wait to show you!” Illya quickly stood up and spread her arms out wide, as if to properly introduce their ride for the night. It wasn’t especially visually interesting. It was just a bubble, after all. The only thing about it that could be pegged as unusually was its diameter of around the size of a wardrobe, definitely comfortably large enough for a pair of passengers.
“It didn’t move when you did,” Shirou noticed, “So it has some frictional quality to it. On top of that, it’s stable.”
“Gyroscopically stable!” Illya said excitedly, “Both of which are features that can be controlled at the caster’s will,” and demonstrated this with an effortless twirl. The hem of her white, airy sundress tickled the tip of the sitting Shirou’s nose. It was enchanting, until he realized that Illya was getting physical in a small, enclosed space. “Hey. We’re…not going to run out of air in this, are we?”
“There’s no need to worry about that, either. The bubble is designed to let oxygen filter in and carbon dioxide and other things filter out. I did say it was a submarine. It’d be a poor one if it couldn’t even last a few hours.”
“It’s anything but poor. This is impressive. You’ve put so much thought into it that I don’t know what to really say. It’s amazing.” Shirou said with glowing admiration as he once again ran his hand along the inner surface.
He was a grown man, but his reactions were, in a word, boyish.
She had another word for it: charming. She was reminded of times that, while not necessarily more innocent, were still turning points in their lives, as well as part of a youth to be treasured. Putting aside the fact that they were still young, of course.
“Shirou,” Illya sing-songed, “Do you like touching that bubble so much?”
“Well, I do like beautifully crafted things,” he wryly admitted.
“Then, why don’t you come in close so that you may touch this beautifully crafted thing?” Illya suggested as she scooted up to Shirou. “There’s atmosphere to enjoyed.”
His arm around her was the only answer needed.
For this part no more details were given than were absolutely necessary to set up their location in this event for the sake of Tohsaka Rin’s information gathering.
“Okay, so why were you underwater, and miles off the coast?”
“That’s what we can’t tell you.”
“And why not?”
“I thought the Japanese were supposed to be more modest than this.” Illya bemoaned to herself, though she made no attempt whatsoever to keep her thoughts from Tohsaka. “Don’t you think it’s rather impolite to kiss and tell?”
“I never asked for any kiss and tell! And I am too modest enough!” Tohsaka furiously blanched. She looked ready to throw something heavy in Illya’s direction.
“The only thing in this world that could judge anyone doesn’t exist,” the other man said, “There’s no God and the only Hell that exists is the one that people create themselves.”
“Did you actually say something just now?” Tohsaka asked with a raised eyebrow, “And did you just side with these two?” Her shock just as quickly morphed into persecution.
“You suggest that I care what these crazy kids do with each other? Because I don’t.”
Violet and azure eyes stared at each other for a few silent seconds. As befitting of a Dead Apostle Ancestor, he dodged that bullet after it was fired. That kind of apathy was something she just couldn’t argue with.
The atmosphere was enjoyed.
“Do you know what would look good right there?” Illya pointed to a spot. It looked like how every location of a low-visibility aquatic environment at night looked, but to her this specific spot was the spot. “A castle! With ramparts, and twenty-meter walls, and an elaborate keep with eight spires, one for each possible bearing on a map, as part of a symbolic gesture of our dominion!”
“A castle? Underwater?” was all Shirou took from that.
“An underwater castle made of ice!” An enthused Illya refined upon the original idea.
“That’d be too cold to live in.”
“It would not be.”
“You moan at me to bring out the kotatsu every other time you feel a draft. I think it’d be too cold for you.”
“As if! Igloos are warm and I read that in an encyclopedia so it must be true.”
“Who are you supposed to be anyway, the Snow Queen?”
“That’d be ‘Princess,’ to you! “Besides, there’s another Lorelei called Queen, so it couldn’t be me, anyway.”
”Wait, what now?”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s not important anyway,” she casually blew off the tidbit of information that she herself had shared with Shirou. It sounded like there could have been an interesting story behind that one-off detail, but as it stood Illya didn’t want to talk about it. “Because of how snow works igloos are insulated, so they retain body heat well.”
“A castle is on a completely different level than an igloo. There’s too much space for that method of heating to make a real impact on its temperature.”
“That’s why there’d be snuggling!”
“24/7 snuggling sounds like it’d get old after awhile.”
“You take that back!” she demanded of the blasphemer.
The bubble did make for a fine submarine. Illya and Shirou freely lost track of time within its cozy confines, isolated in a world where they were the only two people.
“There’s so many of these little comb jellies. What do you think they’re here for?” Shirou asked as he looked on at the glowing blobs that played the role of ever-shifting constellations in the undersea night sky. The way the carefree animals gently strummed in the dark currents was like they were slowly dancing with each other.
There was nothing to distract them from the nearby sights.
Illya gently toyed with the stray lock of silver that grew in contrast to the rest of his hair. She twirled it around her finger, made it into a curlicue. She was enamored with it. It wasn’t hard to remember what he looked like before the changes to his body had begun to accumulate noticeably, but Illya still came to adore the way it had made the boyish youth look more and more like a man.
There was nothing to distract them from themselves.
“That’s a good question because it’s so easy to answer, Shirou.
“They’ve gathered here – to mate.”
As she spoke she moved into position on top of him. “What do you think? That all these ctenophora may be brainless, but they have the right idea?”
A single strap of Illya’s dress had already slipped off her shoulder. The moonbeam that shined down lit her figure up like a pale spotlight.
“Illya, did you bring me down here for this?” the look on Shirou’s face gave away that he didn’t ask a real question.
Illya’s smile as she leaned over him gave a real answer.
Who were they to argue with the call of nature?
The lovers embraced. Their lips met with playful, earnest hunger; they couldn’t imagine not kissing each other during a session. He took her straps, both the one astray and the one that had still kept its “proper” place, and slid the dress down from her chest. Illya really didn’t want to stop touching Shirou at any point, but she found the will to move her arms so that she could help him slide it off. One of his hands went all the way down and past her back. It stopped there. It was joined by his other hand, which also stopped there.
He gave an inquisitive squeeze. She giggled.
“Has your butt gotten bigger, Illya?”
“Whose fault would you suppose that is, Mr. Executive Chef?”
“It’d be the fault of the one who orders that fancy room service in between the meals I take the liberty to prepare in our room’s kitchen, I suppose.”
“And do we have a problem with that?” she asked cheekily.
He cupped it again. “No, we do not.” Shirou reached under her skirt, only to find his hands grasp nothing at the sides of her hips. “No panties?”
“No panties,” she winked. Illya went back, far enough for him to ogle her delicately sized breasts, far enough to unbutton his shirt so that she too could eat up the sight of his bared body with her eyes. She went back even further and did his shorts next. With Shirou’s cock exposed thusly to the air of the bubble, air warmed by his and Illya’s mingled breaths, he was at her mercy.
The girl brushed some white strands of hair back behind her ear. Now she was ready to let him have it. Illya ran her tongue around the point of his head. She especially liked to do this bit just so – it was like kissing him, but somewhere lower. She savored the slightly bitter taste of his pre-come, which always perked her up, and better than a cup of morning tea ever could. Earl Grey had nothing on Emiya Shirou.
With her thumb and forefinger gently encircled around his base, Illya brought her hand in between her legs. The tips of her fingers brushed against a button barely revealed by her folds, and it made her quiver. That was it. She already felt herself get wet. The lovey-dovey atmosphere of this whole venture had proven to be immense. The hours of reading material from both scholarly and trashy genres, of trying to figure out how to optimally mix thaumaturgical with mushy, all to produce an unforgettable night for her and her love: all of the research had paid off. With interest.
Illyasviel von Einzbern had decided that she was a romantic genius.
She continued to rub, pinch. Her head dipped further. Down and up. She rolled her tongue around the underside of his tip, rubbed at the soft skin of Shirou’s shaft. The hand that had lightly held him in place now worked Shirou at the same time. Up and down. Down further, up further. Up with a twist, down with a reverse. Down even more, up all the way, so far that her lips almost broke away with a light ‘smack.’
Shirou’s hands tightened with intensity at her devotions. She knew the man was at his breaking point. He’d reach it before she did, but that was fine. That was what Illya wanted. The two of them would be more than happy to arrange something where he would return the favor soon enough. To push him past the point of no return, Illya did-
-Nothing. Illya froze.
“Ow,” was all Shirou could muster up to say. It actually hurt, the cessation of her ministrations that had denied him sweet, orgasmic relief.
“Not a word. Be absolutely still.”
Though she let out a shaky hiss of her own, she was deadly serious. Shirou followed suit and grew taut as a pulled bowstring. Her eyes darted back and forth. She scanned the barely lit sub-surface waters. He did just the same in his direction. Even the bubble seemed to have stopped breathing. It became quite cold all of a sudden within it. The bubble had made like a heatsink and flushed all of the warmth it held within to disperse in the nearby water, to camouflage the temperature of its passengers.
The moon was gone, and a dark shadow loomed overhead.
Illya and Shirou didn’t have to look very hard or long for the intruder.
It passed by at an almost lazy clip, its shape obscured by the night, but even from their position they could tell it was huge.
“There’s a bounded field,” Illya whispered barely audibly, excruciatingly slowly into Shirou’s ear, “If I hadn’t been here in the water, and if it hadn’t passed right over us, we would have never noticed it.”
”Do we have an idea of what its like?” he asked.
”Yes to invisibility of the highest order. Grade-A wards are a given. It’s the strongest field of its type that we’ve seen. This really is a one in a million chance. We shouldn’t have even been able to see how it blotted out the moon,” Illya said. Not that there was way to know what exactly the bounded fields did without obtaining knowledge of the creator’s mindset and abilities or, heaven forbid it, testing directly, Shirou still implicitly trusted her estimate to be accurate enough to go on.
“What do you think it is?” Shirou asked another question,”A magus, or…?”
“Even if it was perfectly cloaked it wouldn’t have been able to hide the sense of decay associated with it from me.”
Then there was no doubt that it was the lair of a vampire. A strong one.
Yes, it was leagues away from civilization. But, the vampires it housed fed on people. There were few exceptions to this rule. The younger ones fed with rabid abandon. The older ones secretly enthralled entire regions and were a different sort of cancer. Vampires on the whole caused people as individuals to suffer.
To top it all off, there were rumors of the Dead Apostles mobilizing for some cause…
They knew what had to be done about this was obvious. Especially when Shirou donned that look. When he got like that it was like he wore his beliefs on his face, to save all that he could within his sight and to see justice be done. He wanted to make others happy, keep them safe.
She was the first one that he had been able to. She who originally decried the ideology, and resisted that aspect of him again and again. But, they continued to be drawn together. There was common ground to be found, forgiveness to be had. After much loss, choices made, things that had been done and said that couldn’t be undone or unsaid, he had been able to save the one he made the decision that he really wanted to more than anyone else. They joined together and somehow made it work when the odds were stacked so drastically against them.
In the end, he was still the boy who wanted to save the people. What changed was that as long as the young woman stayed by his side she was the one he always would choose above others. That was the flaw in his lofty ideal, which kept him grounded and made him all the more human.
That was the look that she had learned to see the beauty in. That was the reason Illya chose to be Shirou’s partner-in-crime. It made her heart race, to see that look on his face, to know that she was a part of this as much as he was.
If left to be, someone, somewhere, would be hurt sooner or later. There were vampires, the enemies of humanity, right in front of them. Could the ones who strove for justice simply let them pass by?
“Trace On---” was the only answer needed.
Disclaimer:
All participants engaging in the various acts of coitus depicted here are adults of responsible, legally consenting age. Fate/stay night, Tsukihime, and their related concepts and ideas are the intellectual properties of Kinoko Nasu, Type-MOON, Notes Ltd. and other respective rights holders. This story is written solely for the purpose of entertainment, and not for any sort of monetary profit. If anything, consider this free advertising.
Watery Grave
“I swear, I don’t know which one of you two idiots is the worse influence on the other.”
Tohsaka Rin was pissed off, plain and simple. Nothing suggested otherwise. Anyone who saw how she incessantly paced back and forth through the hotel room would’ve been reminded of an antsy wildcat stalking about its cage. Further proof of just how angry she was was how she didn’t break eye contact with the ones who drew all of this ire. Her gaze wandered somewhat with her troubled thoughts, but she never fully took her sight off of them. She had a mostly unfounded gut feeling that if she stopped reproachfully glaring at them for even a second there’d be even more trouble waiting for her to clean up the next time she looked.
It didn’t particularly help. The pair was still uncooperative to various degrees, in their own ways. As for who exactly these two hellions were that she was forced to admonish-
Illyasviel von Einzbern boldly locked eyes with Rin in some sort of counter dominance display. Emiya Shirou just looked like he wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. Even so, he still tightly held her small hand.
When Tohsaka saw that she scowled. Illya scowled right back.
“Do you even understand the gravity of the situation?” Tohsaka asked, “You can’t just do what you did and expect there to be no bad consequences.”
“And what of the good?” Illya countered, “Are you willing to deny the positive effects of our actions?”
Tohsaka pursed her lips. Grit her teeth. “Don’t act like you knew that going in. You essentially threw rocks at a hive because you decided it was your business to see if it had any bees. Only in doing so you inadvertently invaded a powerful micronation and assassinated one of its chief politicians. What were you even thinking?”
“Life’s just a series of small miracles isn’t it, Tohsaka?” Shirou replied. This comment caused the full brunt of her baleful staring to be directed right at Shirou. His shifted his gunmetal gaze to the side to avoid direct eye contact with the distressed woman. All things considered, her vitriol was justified. Still, he felt that if he didn’t at least do something to deter her attempts to undermine them she’d just lose sight of priorities.
Illya said, “If you want to be technical over analogies we knew full well the hive was active and went in with full intentions. What we stumbled upon was a mutant, rogue strain of Africanized bees that boasted a lovely mother lode of honeycomb.
“You’re spot on with that micronation bit, though. Kudos to you, Rin,” and finished off with a perfectly cherubic smile.
Being an educated magus, Tohsaka knew full well of the terrible might of cherubim.
“You might be in the right in some capacity,” Tohsaka fully admitted as she collapsed onto a chaise lounge directly across from the loveseat the two shared. She was tempted to break into the bottle of complimentary champagne and drown her bad feelings in the traditional way of her family, but resisted the impulse to imbibe, “Might be,” she sternly elaborated with a tone heavy with real gravitas, “But, the morality of this matter doesn’t mean anything right now. This little stunt has marked you as walking blood money.”
Whether it was irresponsible or thoughtful of them to do, it didn’t matter as much as she made it seem. Tohsaka wasn’t just angry. She was also afraid. Not for herself, though she had a healthy respect for death. Her concern was for the recklessness of the two before her.
“This is all Illya’s fault. I just know it,” The young woman complained out loud and a catty “Hey!” was uttered by the accused party in reply, “Seriously, Emiya, if you do something crazy you’ll make the other people in your life sad.” As she warned Shirou, Tohsaka nervously twiddled her thumbs. It was only for a moment. No one else noticed how she made this gesture but her.
That was her self-imposed duty: to foster as much divergence as possible. She would condemn herself to Hell if she let the future she saw come to pass.
Difficult things were difficult. She imagined just giving in and letting the icy bubbliness of the chilled drink go down her throat. All she had to do was get that cork off and then this work wouldn’t feel so much like work anymore.
Tohsaka put that aside and switched gears to do the comparatively more responsible thing: chew out these two. “You really ought to control your other half better.”
“Why would you say that like it was possible?” Shirou groused empathetically. Illya squeezed his fingers tight enough to make him wince a little. “There’s not much straight thinking between the two of us when we both get riled up, and especially over something that big.”
“Well then,” Tohsaka went on “dare I even ask how this absurdity came to be? If you drop a bomb like this I at least expect that much out of it.”
As she asked this, she gestured to the shadowy man standing passively in the corner. Who had been there the whole time. Who was clearly not human. Who knew better than to get in the way of a scorned woman.
“Umm…” Illya looked at Shirou with an expression that bore an uncertain kind of tautness. Shirou was clearly on the same wavelength as her because he mirrored her wide eyed-ness. “Yeah,” she said, apparently coming to some unspoken agreement, “I suppose there’s a way we can relay to you as much as you need to know in order to get the facts straight.”
‘As much as I need to know?’
“Yes. There are details that we,” she referred to herself and Shirou, “needn’t share for personal reasons, and we simply can’t speak for some of the viewpoints because we’re not privy to their experiences. We can only tell you what we choose to tell you, and that’s our limitation as storytellers.
“Even so, what happened tonight was definitely caused by the convergence of two stories-”
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He fucked up.
He fucked up real bad this time.
There he was, trapped in absolute darkness, deep within the Frankensteinian hull of the Fredensborg. It was still as ever in his black prison. The ship was so sizable that there was no discernable rocking. There was no distant, mercifully tangible indication that motion existed. There was no weak but there proof that the world out there actually existed and that hadn’t just been an elaborate hallucination in his head.
The void he was sentenced to was only a facsimile of what a real one could be like. It was produced by human hands. Of course the experience would be a limited one. That was why the original shell was refined upon by the capabilities of once-human hands. That way it was no longer simply limited to be just a void.
Now, it was something closer to an approximation of Hell.
He heard an echo distorted by the winding hallways. He heard the just out of earshot whispers that drifted from the cracks into his head like lazy blowflies. He heard hushed conversation around him, but even if he knew the original language spoken by the voices, he wouldn’t have understood for it was communicated solely through emotional vibes warped and withered by ages of suffering. The arrhythmic quality of the noise was incessant. The psychic residue left over from the slaves who had been stowed and suffered back in the original vessel’s heyday had festered.
“Get a grip…” he muttered, “Your bodies were sold off to the New World centuries ago. …why are you even here?”
As for those who had died aboard it, their souls remained slaves to the ship ever since. They were guard dogs stripped of all their humanity, a strong reminder that he was not alone in this closed world.
The physical pain of his captivity was dull and monotonous. Every bone was broken, and every joint and tendon was pierced by a sword. Chains were unnecessary to hold him.
Here, his body impaled so, covered in wounds, with no way for the light of the moon to reach him in these bowels, he had no chance to recover.
This was a prison meant to hold a vampire.
The voices were torturous, the pain was cruel, and the darkness was maddening. That just came with the territory. None of that was meant to be an especially personal torment by the design of the creator. One of the few times he was allowed a glimpse of light in his prison had shown to him what exactly had been placed down here to keep him busy.
It was a single boom box that played Personal Jesus on loop. Original and covers. Bootlegs and official lives. Parodies and mashups. Drunken singalongs. Acapella.
Now that, that had been done vindictively.
He’d have barfed up his guts by choice a long time ago if they weren’t pinned in place by the crucifixion. He’d never have pegged Brunestud’s white knight as a closeted rocker, but he supposed a pseudonym like ‘Demon of Stratovarius’ had to mean something.
Or not. He didn’t know. He was too tired to think. But, the whole of it all made it so that he was never quite allowed to rest.
Especially not now.
The cover of darkness, chatter of ghosts and perpetual music had always obfuscated his arrival until those glowing red eyes turned around the corner and bear right into him. The spirits would be silenced by his arrival. He would then will an old whale oil lantern to light, and approach him, strutting in tune to the music. He had no need for it in order to see in the dark. The reason he took it with him on was that it brought color to a world drenched in black.
It was purely to stroke his sense of aesthetics.
“Salutations, my dear Enhance,” his captor said with a jovial purr. He pressed a button on the machine and the music was silenced. He took care to not cut it in the middle of a note, though. It was all part of his ritual.
“…Svelten.” His prisoner wearily addressed the number Eight of the Twenty-Seven Dead Apostle Ancestors.
“You know what?” Svelten asked, “The more I look at you the more I realize just how much of a shame it is that I’ll have to ultimately give you up to m’lady. If you hadn’t been turned then I would’ve surely gleefully drunk you dry. That much is a crying tragedy, to be haunted by such near-perfection right in front of you and to not be able to enjoy it how you’d wish.”
“First name basis. Sure know how to make a guy feel special.” Enhance said.
Svelten continued to run his eyes over the ruined body of the one the Dead Apostles venomously knew as the Single Edge. There was a time only recently when he too had derided the Knight of Vengeance in conversation using that name.
That was before he successfully undertook his operation to capture the heretic. When he had not yet seen how starkly visceral it was the way the traitor charged madly into the ambush, even when pitted against the strength of his vaunted Ghost Corps and their overwhelming advantage. Before he had seen Enhance up close and personal.
“Enhance” was what he was known as, and from that point on “Enhance” was what he would always be to Svelten.
“Verily so, your words are. That is because you are indeed quite a special oddity, even when compared with the unique existences of the rest of our peers.” He came in as close as the jutting hilts would permit and stared the captive, Eighteenth right in the face. “Violet. Such an unusual eye color to be held by a vampire,” he said. This was not the first time he took to admiring this feature of Enhance. Svelten’s particular tastes had earned him much notoriety in the supernatural world as The Bloodsucking Count. He was a connoisseur of boys and men, and the more handsome the specimen the more he was compelled to make them his prey. Beauty nourished him. But eyes, eyes were the one thing he cared the most for. If it was said that his hunger made him lust for men, then it was eyes that fulfilled his soul. When it came to eyes sex didn’t matter to him as long as they were lovely.
“Indeed,” Svelten said, “I am not especially looking forward to the day when you change hands from me to the Black Princess. She might just turn you into food for the dog and be done with you. It’s not as if you don’t deserve it. You slaughter your fellow vampires wholesale like animals and you’re fed to the strongest one there is.”
Svelten retreated inwardly to think about this. Hours could have very well passed by in the interim lull.
“Perhaps I could see to it if I could maybe petition her into honoring a request for a co-claim on you. I would compromise on at least that much in this matter. Surely, we could still make the beautiful music together like I’d want to.”
“…pass on that. A psycho-socio carnivore like you gives gays the planet over a bad name.”
“Putting aside the fact that you’d have no choice, you have forgotten.” Svelten was unfazed.
“True enough,” his prisoner conceded. He didn’t have the means or desire to fight back. The wild stallion that he once was had its will broken enough to realize the futility of doing anything in this position.
“I do enjoy these visits of ours, Enhance.”
“Makes at least one of us.”
“Then I suggest you decide soon enough that you like them as well. It is fair to say that I have been rather accommodating enough to you, have I not?” He gave a quick one-over of the thoroughly penetrated Enhance. “…all things considered.
“The possibility that the transference of ownership of you over to m’lady is a death sentence is a strong one. It makes more sense to enjoy the time you have remaining when faced with uncertainty. I thought that, as the one of us who is closest to humans, you’d fully embrace that line of reasoning now that you have nothing left but me.”
“I’ll think about it.” Enhance said, after a moment.
“In that case, Enhance, I’d like to leave you with wishes for a pleasant evening,” said Svelten as he walked away.
The music came back on. The lantern went out. The red eyes vanished behind the corner. The darkness was back. The ghosts returned.
“As if I’d know,” Enhance growled through gritted teeth when he was left alone one more.
Boy, he really had fucked up.
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‘The difference of ten and two more’s steel will cause night to stay everlasting.’
It was the first time in Svelten’s 942 years that he had heard the fabled Rose Prophecy, and it would be the last. Whether it was the work of a lone sibyl, or instead the collective will of all of the Dead Apostles and their link with the moon as they subconsciously read the flow of fate as it related to their immortal selves, it was a message that all who ranked among the Ancestors received. It urged self-preservation, to designate with one’s own hands a successor to take their place among the Twenty-Seven.
It was a warning of certain death.
There was no voice. It did not have a particular sound or cadence. There was no way for a vampire to prove that those words only meant for him it existed. It was purely an epiphany – the knowledge that this was to be.
“How difficult,” Svelten had merely said to himself at the time he received it. It was accepted as truth. But, during a night with conditions as optimal as these for a vampire he found it hard to believe. Just as it was that Christianity accepted the word of God, and yet there were heathens who left the church and no longer answered to it, there too were vampires who had turned from the proverbial faith, and as such were unable to recognize its call – in theory. Dead like the Serpent could not speak on their own behalves.
Still, he was a retainer to Altrouge Brunestud, whose court was at the center of the invisible kingdom of the vampires. It was easy enough for him to believe in the Prophecy’s word as law. He believed, but he could not accept. His was a mission from the Black Princess herself, after all.
Svelten stood on the deck of the ship, a platoon of his Dead before him, Parade primed and ready to dispense its necromancy. Through his links to all of his work he had complete sight of the surrounding ocean, all the way to the distant horizons.
‘Let them come from anywhere on the surface,’ he thought.
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“Okay, Shirou, open your eyes now!”
“…wow.” What Shirou saw made his eyes open quite wide.
He was not flying through the sky, but floating. The lights that surrounded him were not stars, but the glow of bioluminescent sea creatures. The liquid moon up above was full and white.
This response quickly turned to “Whoawhoawhoa!” when he saw that they were in a bubble underwater.
Both of these responses pleased Illya. “We’re fine, Shirou,” she said with emphasis and assurance, “If this wasn’t such a sturdy submarine I wouldn’t have even thought of taking you out here. I’ve done all of my homework for this one.”
If the unintentional poking around he did during his moment of surprise that hadn’t popped the bubble wasn’t enough, then it was Illya’s calmly confident words that put him to ease. “Okay. Yes, alright. This is wild,” once he regained some of his composure he scanned his surroundings and – more idly and deliberately – prodded lightly at the bubble’s interior, “It feels like just one minute ago we were on the beach, and then the next we’re here.”
“You did let me hypnotize you, so that’s within expectations. I wish I could’ve somehow given myself a similar time dilation effect during it. I couldn’t wait to show you!” Illya quickly stood up and spread her arms out wide, as if to properly introduce their ride for the night. It wasn’t especially visually interesting. It was just a bubble, after all. The only thing about it that could be pegged as unusually was its diameter of around the size of a wardrobe, definitely comfortably large enough for a pair of passengers.
“It didn’t move when you did,” Shirou noticed, “So it has some frictional quality to it. On top of that, it’s stable.”
“Gyroscopically stable!” Illya said excitedly, “Both of which are features that can be controlled at the caster’s will,” and demonstrated this with an effortless twirl. The hem of her white, airy sundress tickled the tip of the sitting Shirou’s nose. It was enchanting, until he realized that Illya was getting physical in a small, enclosed space. “Hey. We’re…not going to run out of air in this, are we?”
“There’s no need to worry about that, either. The bubble is designed to let oxygen filter in and carbon dioxide and other things filter out. I did say it was a submarine. It’d be a poor one if it couldn’t even last a few hours.”
“It’s anything but poor. This is impressive. You’ve put so much thought into it that I don’t know what to really say. It’s amazing.” Shirou said with glowing admiration as he once again ran his hand along the inner surface.
He was a grown man, but his reactions were, in a word, boyish.
She had another word for it: charming. She was reminded of times that, while not necessarily more innocent, were still turning points in their lives, as well as part of a youth to be treasured. Putting aside the fact that they were still young, of course.
“Shirou,” Illya sing-songed, “Do you like touching that bubble so much?”
“Well, I do like beautifully crafted things,” he wryly admitted.
“Then, why don’t you come in close so that you may touch this beautifully crafted thing?” Illya suggested as she scooted up to Shirou. “There’s atmosphere to enjoyed.”
His arm around her was the only answer needed.
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For this part no more details were given than were absolutely necessary to set up their location in this event for the sake of Tohsaka Rin’s information gathering.
“Okay, so why were you underwater, and miles off the coast?”
“That’s what we can’t tell you.”
“And why not?”
“I thought the Japanese were supposed to be more modest than this.” Illya bemoaned to herself, though she made no attempt whatsoever to keep her thoughts from Tohsaka. “Don’t you think it’s rather impolite to kiss and tell?”
“I never asked for any kiss and tell! And I am too modest enough!” Tohsaka furiously blanched. She looked ready to throw something heavy in Illya’s direction.
“The only thing in this world that could judge anyone doesn’t exist,” the other man said, “There’s no God and the only Hell that exists is the one that people create themselves.”
“Did you actually say something just now?” Tohsaka asked with a raised eyebrow, “And did you just side with these two?” Her shock just as quickly morphed into persecution.
“You suggest that I care what these crazy kids do with each other? Because I don’t.”
Violet and azure eyes stared at each other for a few silent seconds. As befitting of a Dead Apostle Ancestor, he dodged that bullet after it was fired. That kind of apathy was something she just couldn’t argue with.
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The atmosphere was enjoyed.
“Do you know what would look good right there?” Illya pointed to a spot. It looked like how every location of a low-visibility aquatic environment at night looked, but to her this specific spot was the spot. “A castle! With ramparts, and twenty-meter walls, and an elaborate keep with eight spires, one for each possible bearing on a map, as part of a symbolic gesture of our dominion!”
“A castle? Underwater?” was all Shirou took from that.
“An underwater castle made of ice!” An enthused Illya refined upon the original idea.
“That’d be too cold to live in.”
“It would not be.”
“You moan at me to bring out the kotatsu every other time you feel a draft. I think it’d be too cold for you.”
“As if! Igloos are warm and I read that in an encyclopedia so it must be true.”
“Who are you supposed to be anyway, the Snow Queen?”
“That’d be ‘Princess,’ to you! “Besides, there’s another Lorelei called Queen, so it couldn’t be me, anyway.”
”Wait, what now?”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s not important anyway,” she casually blew off the tidbit of information that she herself had shared with Shirou. It sounded like there could have been an interesting story behind that one-off detail, but as it stood Illya didn’t want to talk about it. “Because of how snow works igloos are insulated, so they retain body heat well.”
“A castle is on a completely different level than an igloo. There’s too much space for that method of heating to make a real impact on its temperature.”
“That’s why there’d be snuggling!”
“24/7 snuggling sounds like it’d get old after awhile.”
“You take that back!” she demanded of the blasphemer.
The bubble did make for a fine submarine. Illya and Shirou freely lost track of time within its cozy confines, isolated in a world where they were the only two people.
“There’s so many of these little comb jellies. What do you think they’re here for?” Shirou asked as he looked on at the glowing blobs that played the role of ever-shifting constellations in the undersea night sky. The way the carefree animals gently strummed in the dark currents was like they were slowly dancing with each other.
There was nothing to distract them from the nearby sights.
Illya gently toyed with the stray lock of silver that grew in contrast to the rest of his hair. She twirled it around her finger, made it into a curlicue. She was enamored with it. It wasn’t hard to remember what he looked like before the changes to his body had begun to accumulate noticeably, but Illya still came to adore the way it had made the boyish youth look more and more like a man.
There was nothing to distract them from themselves.
“That’s a good question because it’s so easy to answer, Shirou.
“They’ve gathered here – to mate.”
As she spoke she moved into position on top of him. “What do you think? That all these ctenophora may be brainless, but they have the right idea?”
A single strap of Illya’s dress had already slipped off her shoulder. The moonbeam that shined down lit her figure up like a pale spotlight.
“Illya, did you bring me down here for this?” the look on Shirou’s face gave away that he didn’t ask a real question.
Illya’s smile as she leaned over him gave a real answer.
Who were they to argue with the call of nature?
The lovers embraced. Their lips met with playful, earnest hunger; they couldn’t imagine not kissing each other during a session. He took her straps, both the one astray and the one that had still kept its “proper” place, and slid the dress down from her chest. Illya really didn’t want to stop touching Shirou at any point, but she found the will to move her arms so that she could help him slide it off. One of his hands went all the way down and past her back. It stopped there. It was joined by his other hand, which also stopped there.
He gave an inquisitive squeeze. She giggled.
“Has your butt gotten bigger, Illya?”
“Whose fault would you suppose that is, Mr. Executive Chef?”
“It’d be the fault of the one who orders that fancy room service in between the meals I take the liberty to prepare in our room’s kitchen, I suppose.”
“And do we have a problem with that?” she asked cheekily.
He cupped it again. “No, we do not.” Shirou reached under her skirt, only to find his hands grasp nothing at the sides of her hips. “No panties?”
“No panties,” she winked. Illya went back, far enough for him to ogle her delicately sized breasts, far enough to unbutton his shirt so that she too could eat up the sight of his bared body with her eyes. She went back even further and did his shorts next. With Shirou’s cock exposed thusly to the air of the bubble, air warmed by his and Illya’s mingled breaths, he was at her mercy.
The girl brushed some white strands of hair back behind her ear. Now she was ready to let him have it. Illya ran her tongue around the point of his head. She especially liked to do this bit just so – it was like kissing him, but somewhere lower. She savored the slightly bitter taste of his pre-come, which always perked her up, and better than a cup of morning tea ever could. Earl Grey had nothing on Emiya Shirou.
With her thumb and forefinger gently encircled around his base, Illya brought her hand in between her legs. The tips of her fingers brushed against a button barely revealed by her folds, and it made her quiver. That was it. She already felt herself get wet. The lovey-dovey atmosphere of this whole venture had proven to be immense. The hours of reading material from both scholarly and trashy genres, of trying to figure out how to optimally mix thaumaturgical with mushy, all to produce an unforgettable night for her and her love: all of the research had paid off. With interest.
Illyasviel von Einzbern had decided that she was a romantic genius.
She continued to rub, pinch. Her head dipped further. Down and up. She rolled her tongue around the underside of his tip, rubbed at the soft skin of Shirou’s shaft. The hand that had lightly held him in place now worked Shirou at the same time. Up and down. Down further, up further. Up with a twist, down with a reverse. Down even more, up all the way, so far that her lips almost broke away with a light ‘smack.’
Shirou’s hands tightened with intensity at her devotions. She knew the man was at his breaking point. He’d reach it before she did, but that was fine. That was what Illya wanted. The two of them would be more than happy to arrange something where he would return the favor soon enough. To push him past the point of no return, Illya did-
-Nothing. Illya froze.
“Ow,” was all Shirou could muster up to say. It actually hurt, the cessation of her ministrations that had denied him sweet, orgasmic relief.
“Not a word. Be absolutely still.”
Though she let out a shaky hiss of her own, she was deadly serious. Shirou followed suit and grew taut as a pulled bowstring. Her eyes darted back and forth. She scanned the barely lit sub-surface waters. He did just the same in his direction. Even the bubble seemed to have stopped breathing. It became quite cold all of a sudden within it. The bubble had made like a heatsink and flushed all of the warmth it held within to disperse in the nearby water, to camouflage the temperature of its passengers.
The moon was gone, and a dark shadow loomed overhead.
Illya and Shirou didn’t have to look very hard or long for the intruder.
It passed by at an almost lazy clip, its shape obscured by the night, but even from their position they could tell it was huge.
“There’s a bounded field,” Illya whispered barely audibly, excruciatingly slowly into Shirou’s ear, “If I hadn’t been here in the water, and if it hadn’t passed right over us, we would have never noticed it.”
”Do we have an idea of what its like?” he asked.
”Yes to invisibility of the highest order. Grade-A wards are a given. It’s the strongest field of its type that we’ve seen. This really is a one in a million chance. We shouldn’t have even been able to see how it blotted out the moon,” Illya said. Not that there was way to know what exactly the bounded fields did without obtaining knowledge of the creator’s mindset and abilities or, heaven forbid it, testing directly, Shirou still implicitly trusted her estimate to be accurate enough to go on.
“What do you think it is?” Shirou asked another question,”A magus, or…?”
“Even if it was perfectly cloaked it wouldn’t have been able to hide the sense of decay associated with it from me.”
Then there was no doubt that it was the lair of a vampire. A strong one.
Yes, it was leagues away from civilization. But, the vampires it housed fed on people. There were few exceptions to this rule. The younger ones fed with rabid abandon. The older ones secretly enthralled entire regions and were a different sort of cancer. Vampires on the whole caused people as individuals to suffer.
To top it all off, there were rumors of the Dead Apostles mobilizing for some cause…
They knew what had to be done about this was obvious. Especially when Shirou donned that look. When he got like that it was like he wore his beliefs on his face, to save all that he could within his sight and to see justice be done. He wanted to make others happy, keep them safe.
She was the first one that he had been able to. She who originally decried the ideology, and resisted that aspect of him again and again. But, they continued to be drawn together. There was common ground to be found, forgiveness to be had. After much loss, choices made, things that had been done and said that couldn’t be undone or unsaid, he had been able to save the one he made the decision that he really wanted to more than anyone else. They joined together and somehow made it work when the odds were stacked so drastically against them.
In the end, he was still the boy who wanted to save the people. What changed was that as long as the young woman stayed by his side she was the one he always would choose above others. That was the flaw in his lofty ideal, which kept him grounded and made him all the more human.
That was the look that she had learned to see the beauty in. That was the reason Illya chose to be Shirou’s partner-in-crime. It made her heart race, to see that look on his face, to know that she was a part of this as much as he was.
If left to be, someone, somewhere, would be hurt sooner or later. There were vampires, the enemies of humanity, right in front of them. Could the ones who strove for justice simply let them pass by?
“Trace On---” was the only answer needed.