Chapter 81: Chapter 77:Mind of Steel
"I don't even need to say it. It's the supervisor's duty to eliminate a magus who has turned into a heretic. All the more so if the magus is a relative of mine."
Saying this with a stone face she briskly walked into the chapel`s back and then turned towards shirou and said to him with a spark of hope flashing deep in her eyes. She said
"Arent you going to stop me emiya-kun?"
And while shirou had 1000s of questions his future self replied with silence. She said with a steely glint returning to her eyes as the hope died out
"So you won't mind even if I kill Sakura?" after a pause he replied stoically
"I have nothing to say but I would rather take your place if I could."
"No. This is my role. I can't give you this role."
After she went in and the door closed kirei broke the lingering silence and said
"I'm surprised. I thought you would stop her."
But the same silence was his answer, puzzling the present shirou to no end. He was like
"…Hm. It seems you are determined. The Holy Grail War will now return to normal. This is a bit disappointing, but I am looking forward to the end."
Said the priest with slight disappointment evident in his gaze, rather he felt it was a waste.
"…What's there to look forward to? Are you predicting who will win?"
asked Shirou to which the man replied with a snort
"Predict? There is no need to predict. YOU WILL WIN."
"Since you have cast away Matou Sakura, you will use any means possible to kill Matou Zouken, Ilyasviel, and Rin. I am looking forward to how all this will end."
Finally, his future self asked the question he was dying to ask
"…Why? I won't fight Tohsaka. There's no reason for me to stop her, even if she's going to obtain the Holy Grail."
What he didn't know was that he and Rin had only known each other for a week here rather than the years of the present. to which the priest looked at him with a signature look of superiority and explained
"You will fight her."
" You will be forced to fight her when you find out about the true identity of the Holy Grail. Having killed Matou Sakura, Rin will go mad unless she obtains the Holy Grail."
"She will try to win for her belief! while you will try to destroy the Holy Grail for your ideal. You two are incompatible with each other now. You two shall act out the final stage of the Holy Grail War."
Gazing at the leaving priest he asked
"Are you saying I will remain until the very end?"
"Of course. You are Emiya Kiritsugu now. There is no way you cannot win." was the reply and the black cloak that was reinforced with bulletproof material and sacraments as well as alchemy left his view.
In the chapel, the boy was left alone with his thoughts and before they could consume him his vision cracked he expected to be back in the land of shadows and sky of magma but he didn't. Rather he saw a dark room made up of stone with few candles illuminating it, and in the candlelight, he saw Rin standing over a bed with the azoth dagger raised above her head.
She plunged the dagger into someone sleeping on the bed who didn't even let out a groan and judging from the position the stab was likely in the heart. Still, as tears fell from her eyes and he hands shook, her victim's face turned and shirou saw dull purple hair 1st. Then he saw the cold hollow dead eyes and that stabbed into him like a blade into his heart.
The fading purple eyes of Sakura Matou stared at him, she had grown and changed a lot from the shy little girl that he knew but like Rin her eyes stuck with her. The same eyes had also left their impression on him at their 1st meeting. He felt as if they were accusing him of their death and from what he saw it was the truth, his future self wanted to kill her and was vocal about it.
He didn't care that the vision broke again as he felt that it was a nightmare. Reality never changes by denial and as they say no rest for the wicked. So the vision came again, this time shirou felt his body, rather than his future self`s body. He was shocked to find the mana locked in his muscles and bones and the feeling of his circuits working to keep the mana there. He guessed this was reinforcement magecraft that Rin had mastered, the real cause of his violent beatings in the guise of spars.
But those thoughts left him in an instant as he felt his muscles bulge and tackle someone a little smaller than him onto the ground. Looking down he found himself mounting over Rin, who had dark circles around her eyes, her face had shrunk a lot and she looked worse to wear and very similar to his father during the end of the war when he had hypnotised himself to keep fighting.
As he looked at the crazed woman, thrashing around in his grip his future self said
"Get a hold of yourself tohsaka. We know the reality of the grail, we can't release whatever curse is inside it onto the world."
"It was corrupted and false from the beginning."
She howled and said
"Why didn't you say this that day in the church."
"She was the last living one and I had to kill her for this in the hope that the wish of the grail can bring her back."
"Tell me shirou! Do you know with finality the grail can`t bring her back even when it is corrupted?"
His only reply was silence, and then he asked
"What about the people of this city?"
"You are risking 1000s of lives for that possibility of grail granting your wish"
"yes, I am. Her life is worth more than all their lives combined for me. I will figure something out."
The blue glow of magic circuits flashed and a short white sword with a yin-yang symbol painted on its black hilt materialised and in an instant, the blade called Bakuya was stabbed into Rin`s heart similar to how she stabbed Sakura.
But this time she had something that Sakura didn`t have a magic crest, so she didn't die instantly and rather croaked
"Emiya-Kun you will not understand. I never hoped for it to come to this."
She sobbed as she said
"Burry both of us together. Her body is preserved in the workshop under my house. I hoped to use it to pull back her soul."
"Farewell shirou. Thank you for stopping me from killing 1000s."
And she died with a smile uglier than crying. The girl didn't blame him even for her death but rather acted out in a way to alleviate his guilt. As tears fell from the eyes of the boy and his white hair fluttered he said
"I have already sacrificed her life for this ideal and stopping now would mean she died in vain."
"Tohsaka, sakura it always will be shirou emiya that killed both of you. I choose the lives of many over yours."
"And will continue to do so and stopping now would mean I lost you both in vain."
As his rage receded his vision changed again and the backside of the temple lake disappeared. And he found himself crouching on a tree and looking somewhere with a sniper`s scope. He looked at the scene of a fading brown giant and Iliiya lying in a pool of her blood.
Her eyes were slashed out and while holding her heart, the golden archer turned his head towards him. He smirked at him as he looked and said
"Know your place mongrel!"
And the vision shattered.
(A/N: trying to discard humanity doesn't end well for any emiya so shirou was shown some sneak pics.
Anyway, we can begin a lot of events now and slowly complete them but it will take too many chapters. So I will put a time skip after this till Aoi dies and then we can move on to London. My hands are itching to write enforcer missions and use more well-known characters like Waver,
So after this vision i will summarise some ubw unimportant visions and then the plot of him going to the clock tower.
Plus, I want to ask you guys: What should we do for his work as an enforcer? We can skip it all, go to case files, and show them later, like interludes, but it will make keeping track of timelines hard for you people.
Or we can put groundworks 1st there, I have a lot of interesting interactions planned. For example, we will meet Ciel, van fem, a certain wip-using girl. Do a lot of murders and I have various ideas for possibilities in the fate world like minor crimes that magus might commit.
So give your opinions
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THANKS FOR READING:)