White Ink

1

Shirou

It was a cool crisp night in the city of Fuyuki. The stars shone down illuminating a moonless sky. It was a night in which all little dead apostles stayed in bed dreaming of human ruination and feasts of blood. It was truly a shame that the mood was ruined by a cursed fire rampaging throughout the city.
All of mankind's sins rushed through the streets toppling buildings and burning humans alive. The cries of the dead and dying echoed through the empty as people were crushed under rubble and charred by an eldritch force that well and truly hated them.
"Fuck," thought Shirou Aozaki. It had not been a good night for him. "This has been a terrible evening," he elaborated unknowingly supporting the observation of the narrator.
The acrid taste of the smoke had begun to infiltrate his lungs making it nearly impossible to breathe. His legs ached with a dull throbbing that indicated that his muscles would grudgingly allow this to continue but he better be prepared to pay the price tomorrow. All around him lay the dead and dying. Hands stretched out as if to beg for his help eyes staring accusingly as he trudged on past them not looking at them. Under normal circumstances he would have gone to help them or at least called a responsible adult however at present he found himself immensely preoccupied upon saving his own life.
Shirou scooted around the next batch of horribly maimed and burnt cadavers and swore as he stepped upon an area that had been in contact with the cursed flames not too long ago. He clutched his painfully burnt foot and was reminded of the many times he burnt himself on the oven at his house. His parent had absolutely forbidden him from the kitchen until he was older but the attraction of that shiny magical place from which amazing foods appeared was too much to bear. His mother had promised to teach him the secret Aozaki cooking magecraft when he got older. Now she never would. She was crushed pushing him to safety as their hotel collapsed. He let out a short humourless laugh. His father had died just a few days ago as their old hotel collapsed in some form of gas explosion. "Fucking hotels," he thought to himself resolving to avoid them in the future, if there was a future for him.
Normally he would feel some sort of pleasure in being able to swear without any of his parents reprimanding him but in this case he just felt empty. His capacity to care about anything was long surpassed by the event of the prior few days. The numbness continued flowing up his body and his legs finally gave way leaving him face flat with a mouth full of ashes. He vaguely recognized the heat of the ground but his energy supplies had finally bottomed out and he was utterly unable to move. He closed his eyes lying amongst ash and lost the battle against unconsciousness his last image being of shoes moving swiftly towards him.
Kiritsugu
Kiritsugu frantically ran through the burning streets as if the hounds of hell were chasing him. Dimly a thought repeated in his head like a merciless jackhammer. "This is my fault."
Upon being confronted by that… thing that had come out of the grail he had immediately commanded Saber to destroy the grail. He grimaced as he reflected on how that went down. Excalibur unfortunately was the proverbial water being thrown on the oil that was the holy grail. Upon the light of Excalibur touching the cursed grail, mud had exploded out immediately swallowing his servant. He had barely survived by utilizing his magic circuits to the fullest extent and accelerating his personal time further than he had ever done before. He could still feel the dull ache that symbolized something broken. Even so the mud had nearly reached him, he could remember the prana so laden with curses even a servant would not have stood a snowballs chance in hell against that onslaught.
Unfortunately he possessed no magecraft that could stop the flames, and thus he avoided the sludge and hurried down the mountain determined to save all the people he came across. However every scene he arrived at the only thing he saw was dust and death.
His heart pounded as he pushed himself trying to save just one person. He tried to mitigate this tragedy in just one small way. To try in a small way to atone for what he had done. If he could save just one person that could keep him going prevent him from losing hope. He prayed to the root, he cursed the root. He prayed to god, he cursed god. He stumbled over the cursed ground when he saw it.
A flash of red, a body lying on the mostly untouched by the flames, it was a young boy. Despair gave way to hope as he ran towards the child lying face down in the dirt. He gently flipped him around and laid a hand on his chest feeling for a pulse.
He felt nothing
Shirou
He drifted barely aware of anything. All the pains that he was feeling as he waded through the flames were gone. He couldn't hear, couldn't feel and couldn't see. Even the beating of his heart was silent. He tried to open his eyes but he failed. He tried to lift his hands but he failed.
He tried to panic but his head felt empty. He just existed drifting through the empty spaces. The silence was oppressive but as he listened he started to hear a faint hum.
The hum grew louder and as he focused he began to distinguish a point of light, then another and then another.
The points of light multiplied until there were 27 glowing points of light that were spinning in the air. With a jolt he realized what they were, he would never forget that number 27 or 3x3x3. The number of magic circuits that he possessed greater than any of his families, his parents were so happy to see that and they hoped that when he grew older they would match… someone. He realized with a jolt that he could no longer remember the names of any of his family.
He thought trying to dredge up the names of his parents, his siblings; anybody and he came up short. Memories of his past life were missing as if they were deleted or removed. But that was impossible, the only way it could have happened was if…
"Oh so you've finally become cognizant of yourself," a voice rang out through the darkness. The voice was toneless and seemed to mock the concept of accents and languages. It felt cold and deliberate as if the words were just parcelled intent being beamed to him. Worse he knew his ears were still not working and that meant…
"Yes I am speaking within your head how nice of you to notice," again the voice sounded out cutting off his internal monologue. He attempted to speak but he had no tongue, no lips. Again that odd feeling of panic not panic settled in. He felt his magic circuits spin faster than ever as if trying to ward off the intruder.
"Relax," the voice sounded again. "There is a very good reason why you can't see. To be more specific, there is a very good reason why I blinded you." The voice said again unveiling the horrible truth in its voice of intent over words.
"Have you ever heard the story of Orpheus, no I don't suppose you would have." The voice stated and Shirou got the feeling the voice was laughing at him. "A man rescues his lover and is told he can leave the underworld on the condition that he doesn't look back. Man looks back and his wife is carried back to the underworld." The humour in the voice stops.
"If you were to see [this place] your human mind would be ripped to shreds at the influx of information, the remaining memories in your soul would be obliterated and you would head immediately to your next life. Understand?"
Shirou envisioned nodding back and forth as fast as he could. The threatening tone in his voice bypassed the numbness that he was feeling and allowing panic to enter his veins.
Wait his veins he could sort of feel them again. They started to tingle and he could sort of feel the blood flow.
"You are starting to live again," the voice said. "To be more specific you are being forced to live again. If you want I can stop that," the voice said offhandedly. "That little artefact is pretty nifty but I can bypass it if you desire to remain here."
Shirou immediately envisioned shaking his head.
"Well don't think about it too long," the voice said amusement filling its voice. "It's not as if I will get offended that you find my company so dull." The voice paused.
"That artefact doesn't have enough juice to get you all the way. If you were sent back you would die again after all the prana gets used up." Shirou suddenly got the impression that the voice was smirking.
"However there is normally a sort of reward for reaching [this place]. With my amazing powers I can somewhat influence the selection." The voice turned contemplative. "Let's see two and five are already taken. One is too complex to use immediately. While three might help you stay alive in some form you don't have the experience to use it to recreate your body. That leaves option number four."
"Right," the voice said and Shirou felt as if he was being gripped, "when you wake up you must immediately claim the artefact," the voice said seriously. "It may put up some resistance but with this power you now have you can bypass it." The intent came thick and fast as Shirou's veins began to tingle more fiercely.
"It was nice talking to you. If you ever find yourself attaining a great enough comprehension of the universe or achieve a higher state so that you may survive here it would be nice to meet you again. Unfortunately I'm not exactly allowed to go where you're going back to. I could bypass the rules but then," the voice seemed to shrug it shoulders, "bad stuff may happen."
Shirou's blood was flowing thickly now and he was starting to feel again. Light flickered across his vision and he could feel both his eyes and ears start to exist.
"By the way if you ever need a name for me when you lie awake in bed imagining my magnificence call me Inke. Or I suppose in your language it would be Inke-Sama. I never really had to deal with honorifics." The voice chuckled. "Goodbye, use that power well, claim the artefact, and be careful of women. They'll ruin you."
Shirou turned back at that last comment and froze. His eyes were barely working but he still caught a glimpse of the owner of the voice.
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His brain blanked out knowledge was flowing into his brain but he was utterly unable to understand it. He could see the voice and grasp the voice but he was unable to comprhend it. He had a feeling if his body wasn't disconnected from his soul his brain would have destroyed itself by now. A myriad of error messages blared to a barely functional brain and he woke up.
Kiritsugu
Avalon was inside the kid but the healing had grown wealer. Kiritsugu rocked on the balls of his feet. He should have kept looking. Even the mythical scabbard of King Arthur should not be able to bring the dead back to life. But something had told him to transfer the scabbard. To try to save the kid. He spent 5 minutes waiting hoping against hope until the boy took his first miraculous yet halting breaths. Those were the longest five minutes of his life. Now the boy lay in a hospital bed barely alive. He was going to adopt the kid, he thought. He's going to make it up for screwing up his life so badly. He was going to adopt the kid and then he's going to rescue Illya and then he will raise them to be brother and sister. But how is he going to get her back from the Eizberns. They surely wouldn't let him take her without a fight. His circuits were damaged from overuse and it would take a while for them to recover. In fact it would be unlikely that he would ever achieve over eighty percent of his prior functionality. First he needs a safe house then a plan. The magus killer stood drawing and discarding plans until he was disrupted by a beeping noise from the monitor that monitored the red-headed child. The nurse rushed out of the room obviously to get the doctor.
Kiritsugu was about to follow the nurse to see the doctor when he suddenly noticed a glow out of the corner of his eye and felt a surge of prana. The glow was faint but it briefly intensified and then died down. And the child opened his eyes.
Shirou
Shirou snapped back to awareness with the sensation of pain that floored him and threatened to send him back to unconsciousness. As waves of pain wracked his body he dimly remembered the instructions that he was given to reclaim the artefact. He tried to open his eyes to look for the artefact but they wouldn't respond he tried to use his hands to grasp for the artefact but they wouldn't respond. He felt despair, he could feel his life slip away and he couldn't find the artefact that could save his life.
But one sense didn't fail him. He could feel an object radiating minute amounts of prana in his chest. He focused on it trying to ignore the pounding in his head and the pain that flowed through all his muscles. As he focused on it something happened like a seventh sense he never knew about he became aware of the object. Vast streams of knowledge flowed into his head, no the knowledge was already in his head and seeing the object just helped him remember it.
The stream of knowledge was heavy but to thing stood out of it.
[Avalon The Ever Distant Utopia] and [Belongs To King Arthur].
He suddenly knew what he had to do he focused on the second part of the object willing it to change. He needed it to change. Not one unit of prana flowed from him, but slowly ever so slowly as if pushing against a mountain the information changed.
[Belongs To Shirou].
He contemplated briefly putting down the name Shirou Aozaki but his parents were dead he didn't even know if his siblings still existed or loved him or anything.
Immediately he felt prana from his circuits flow into the object, Avalon, and his wounds almost instantly disappeared.
Feeling his injuries healed he opened his eyes and realised he was in a hospital room. The hospital room was empty of people except for one. A man with black hair and a serious look upon his face looked at him with sharp eyes.
Shirou just matched his gaze wearily. With all he had been through he was exhausted. Despite being healed his energy was at basically zero.
After a short period of time the man relaxed and walked up to Shirou.
"I see." He said. "You're a magus. Do you have a family to go to?"
Shirou contemplated this for a while. His parents were dead. He was vaguely aware that he might have siblings but he didn't get the feeling of any closeness. He shook his head.
The man looked Shirou up and down before he said bluntly. "My name is Kiritsugu, I'm also a magus would you like me to adopt you."
Shirou looked at the man and focused on him. Instantly he was overcome by a wealth of knowledge. Kiritsugu Emiya. Grew up on an island. Killed his father. Hunted down apostles and rogue magi. Killed his adopted mother. Killed, killed, killed. The magus killer. Caused the destruction of the hotel, caused the fire. Shirou's eyes narrowed. This was the man who brought so much sorrow to the whole world and to him. In that moment for a brief second he truly hated Kiritsugu Emiya.
That moment passed however, he no longer remembered much about his family and so he found it impossible to get upset about them. Moreover he could see the reason behind each of his crimes. He could see his new resolve to atone for his deeds. Beyond that he could see the remorse. He could see the pain that he was in hidden behind the man's stoic exterior. He felt if he rejected the man right now then something awful would happen to him. Plus he could do with a legal guardian he had heard nightmares about the Japanese foster system.
Shirou looked at him weighing up all his sins all the people he murdered and forgave him for it. He felt older and wiser and more mature just watching Kiritsugu's history. While he would never follow any of Kiritsugu's ideals seeing what the end result would be he cannot fault him for his good intentions.
Shirou realised he had been staring to long and nodded as he did noticing Kiritsugu's smile. He had truly saved a man tonight.
"You should get some sleep," Kiritsugu said, "I'm going to have to go hypnotize the doctor so he doesn't draw attention to your miraculous recovery."
He got up and walked to the door. Just before he stepped outside he paused.
"Ah before I go I forgot to ask your name," he said looking embarrassed at such a ridiculous oversight.
Shirou contemplated for a brief moment. His old name was something he no longer felt an attachment to. He didn't feel like taking the name Emiya as it had so much baggage with it.
There was one name however that he could use. He believed its owner wouldn't mind him using it.
"Inke," he said. "My name is Shirou Inke."
Author Note
Hello, as you can see this is my first story. I often read a lot of fanfiction and have also often thought about writing some. I have come into a minor amount of free time due to finishing university and now am going to us this free time to try and focus on this one story I have so far. I appreciate any feedback whatsoever. I basically wrote out this first chapter in one night trying to get some needed momentum going and this 3000 words has wiped me out. I really like the type-moon verse for its interesting and flexible magic system that both infringes on and is infringed upon by the mundane world as well as its many diverse works that can be blended. However I am bound to get things wrong with the lore because I never could scrape together the money to attend The Clocktower. Please be patient and I will correct things if it doesn't interfere with the story too much.