White Ink

2

Shirou
"

Kiritsugu must have been cursed," Shirou thought as he contemplated the abomination that was their current kitchen. The oven was burnt, blackened to an extent he didn't think capable with modern appliances, the sink was full of some blue foul-smelling liquid that quite frankly he didn't have the balls to analyse and worst of all the resulting mess was a frankly inhospitable landscape that stood as a monument to chef skills so tremendously poor that he wouldn't even dare to test Avalon against it.
"Omelette rice," Shirou said, his face frozen in a rictus of incredulity. "How is it possible to mess up Omelette rice so poorly?" Seriously it beggared belief; maybe Kiritsugu had some kind of hidden sorcery trait like "epically poor cooking" that tainted his every attempt turning really simple meals into a hellish landscape of pain, terror and humiliation. Shirou had survived the past week by using his newly found power in order to add [edible] the list of attributes that the food possessed in order to be able choke it down but there were two problems with that.

Firstly he had to witness the attributes of the food and see the "skill" that went into making it. That in itself was a trial as every attempt stretched his rapidly failing sanity further. He watched with ever growing astonishment at Kiritsugu's attempts feeling ensuing emotions of shock, awe, humour, disgust all leading up to a numb feeling.
Shirou tentatively poked the omelette portion which had somehow been able to take on the feeling of glass tapping it and listening to the tak-tak-tak noise that signified a screw up.
The second reason was that it grew harder and harder every time to add that so much desired [edible] trait. He had already given up on even attempting adding the [tasty] trait after his first meal. His new power needed no prana but it required incredible amounts of focus and either watching Kiritsugu's many failures were draining him of his willpower or the food was evolving and adapting against Shirou's attempts. Realistically he knew that Kiritsugu's cooking while tremendously awful didn't quite possess the sentience necessary to adapt to his new power only allowing the first option which was useful showed him the limits of the ability.

When he had told Kiritsugu about his new ability he was shocked. He had immediately got him to try it out on other items. He had found out it seemingly required no expenditure of prana and bore some similarities to the magecraft of alteration and structural analysis only much more powerful.
While structural analysis could give a blueprint of the object it wasn't known for giving an objects history, or its purpose, or its desires. They decided to test it and after half an hour of sitting opposite each other Shirou found himself able to occasionally pick up on Kiritsugu's thoughts. Kiritsugu stopped the test right there and told Shirou to wait for him to come up with a conclusion.
For as terrifying as that ability was it was nowhere near as scary as his other ability. The ability that seemed like alteration at first was quickly found to be more powerful and different than the subject. Alteration apparently allowed a magus to alter an objects shape to fly better or be more resistant to fire. It was incredibly limited and bore some resemblance to projection or runes either changing the physical shape of an object or automatically enacting an effect through magecraft. That was when things stopped being as fun for Shirou. The ability was deadly serious and while it required him to be quite close to the object there was virtually no limit to the things he could do when in the range of that person. He had tried it on the food to make it [edible] on the oven to make it [unburnt] and after Kiritsugu's express permission and an hour of psyching himself up he used it on Kiritsugu in order to remove a blister he had got under one of his fingernails. The effects of the last trial were as horrifying as they were enlightening. Kiritsugu confirmed that rather than healing the blister it seemingly instead altered his existence so that he never acquired one.

This ability horrified Shirou, before this he had seen his abilities as a superpower, something only he had, a special thing that he could use for fun. This skill however had too many frankly unnerving uses. After this he resolved to keep his abilities hidden from all others except Kiritsugu and swore to never use his powers on another human except without their explicit permission and consent.
His abilities had some drawbacks though. It required a great amount of willpower to use, something Shirou as a child did not possess. In addition some objects were able to resist his power. After the first time he claimed Avalon he found himself unable to affect it as if either he had grown weaker or the scabbard had grown stronger. In addition while he could understand a lot of what Avalon could do he lacked context for its powers. He could understand the healing because that is an effect he can visualise. However he couldn't comprehend how it was made or what were it makers. He understood the makers were [the fae] and they made Avalon from a [certain divine mystery] but to his mind it was just way too unfamilliar for him to visualize almost as if he had to put together a puzzle with half the pieces missing.
His abilities to insert concepts into an object were similarly limited. He found he could only place concepts upon the objects that he understood or encountered before. Although the memories had faded he was aware he had eaten tasty edible food before living with Kiritsugu. When he tried to apply the word [unbreakable] on the kitchen appliances it just slid straight off. Kiritsugu theorized the likely reason is that he has not yet seen or comprehended anything he would define as unbreakable and thus had no frame of reference.
Besides that the only other limitations of the ability were the range, the time it took to use the power, his willpower and his own morals.
He took one more bite of the disgusting blasphemy against cooking everywhere noting with a feeling of abject despair that the rice was incredibly hard and yet still was quite slimy.
"I'm cooking from now in this house," he stated his voice containing no doubt or timidity. This was a thing that he would fight and die for. He would cook his food and both of them would like it. Kiritsugu looked up from his own plate and despite the normal blankness of his expression Shirou couldn't help but think he looked a bit guilty.