White Ink

8

Shirou

Shirou stood looking down at the blond vampire snoozing below him on the bed. He took another sip from his mug of coffee his umpteenth for the day. While he was well aware it wasn't good for him he had barely had an hour of sleep since he first arrived in Misaki town yesterday afternoon. When this was over he resolved to take off an entire day to sleep and recover before he got to anti-vampirising. The preparations for the attack by Nrvnqsr Chaos had been ready for half-an-hour and no twinge had yet come from the basic detection bounded field that he had set up to encompass the hotel. Shirou was greatly surprised by this.
Pieces of Chaos, a term he had adopted upon further analysing the black goo he had obtained from the hound familiar, could not automatically communicate with each other yet they would act towards a common goal. This is the only reason he decided to bring a piece of the goo into the hotel with him knowing that it would not be able to lead Nrvnqsr back to him. It was now midnight and Nrvnqsr had not found them showing a surprising amount of incompetence for a Dead Apostle Ancestor. Shirou sighed and raised his arm gathering water in his ungloved hand and throwing it at the sleeping True Ancestor.
When the water hit her she immediately jumped out of the bed and onto the floor looking around the room frantically reminding Shirou of a large cat in that moment. Her eyes fixed on Shirou and she huffed standing up and crossing her arms and glaring at him.
Shirou cut her off before she could say anything. "How do you feel," he inquired referring to her state of body and not the wetness he had just inflicted on her.
She stopped glaring immediately and began to examine her body. Shirou kept his thoughts professional as she ran her hands over her wet clothes and performed a few stretching exercises pushing her mobility. Eventually she concluded her inspection and turned back to Shirou her mouth slightly agape and a confused look in her eyes.
"I feel fine," she said. "Wow that thing is powerful."
Seeing the contemplative look in her eyes Shirou quickly shot her down. "I need it back," he said. Seeing Arcueids reluctance he continued, "it only will work in my proximity and I can shut it mostly off if I need to, I need it back."
Arcueid huffed but came forward allowing Shirou to withdraw the scabbard from her chest and implant it in his own. Shirou sighed as the artefact sunk into his chest giving him relief from the side effects of the countless coffees he had imbibed. Minor pains that he had accumulated in the fifteen hours of preparations he had performed while Arcueid was asleep disappeared. Taking inventory of his current state he realised that the only limiting factor was mental fatigue, something that Avalon wasn't great at and he currently had no way to work around. He put it on the list before rebuking himself and tearing the list down. Fuck the list; he has to fight a goddamned Ancestor in a bit. He can deal with that later.
"Are you ready," Arcueid said examining Shirou. "You look tired, did you manage to get all your preparations done."
"Yeah," Shirou replied. "It's twelve o'clock now we'll be fine." He looked at Arcueid, "I'll explain the plan now. Just hope trump cards are less in quantity and quality then my own."
Nrvnqsr
He stalked through the night starving. Inside him hundreds of slavering beasts roared and gnashed their teeth wanting to leap up and devour the meat that surrounded them. He had already devoured two humans on his way to search for the True Ancestor but it wasn't enough. The chaos within him roiled at the sight of one of his numerous black birds returning to him. His familiars returning to him could only mean that the True Ancestor had been tracked down. The bird returned to his flesh and he immediately knew the location of the True Ancestor. She was up in the hotel on the fourth floor with the water magus that had "slain" two of his familiars. He appeared to be a high quality magus and Nrvnqsr basically started to salivate at the idea of acquiring his knowledge. Taking off towards the hotel mouth slightly drooling at the impending slaughter he barely took note of the sky start to imperceptibly lighten.
He headed through the twilight streets the cold doing nothing to his phantasmal body. The hotel loomed up ahead and he stepped into the lobby allowing the chaos that composed his body to flow out all over the lobby in its multitude of forms. Packs of roving dogs, massive tigers and leopards stormed through the lobby attacking unmoving people and devouring them. Nrvnqsr ignored the chaos around him instead heading directly to the elevator. Pressing the fourth button he sat back ignoring the elevator music as he waited for the lift to rise.
That never happened as an instant later he detected a wave of prana leading to the feeling of a spell triggering. The elevator and lobby briefly glowed with a mass of runes. Flickering the runes exploded obliterating the entire lobby and the whole of the entrance. The explosion stopped at the doors prevented from continuing forth by runes that glowed and then faded as the heat and pressure began to fade leaving a puddle of goo on the floor.
Shirou
He descended down the stairs with Arcueid, noting as he did that the vampire seemed to be somewhat anticipatory. She clenched and unclenched her newly glove covered hands. The new mystic code Shirou created for her sit snugly upon her slender fingers and he hoped that it was worth the time he invested in creating it, almost five hours of his fifteen hour prep time. Hopefully it would be worth the effort.
He took note that the first part of the plan had gone off without a hitch as the black goo lay all over the floor destroyed by the many explosive runes carved onto the lobby. Shirou had merely walked all over the lobby and placed his shoes on the wall using the mystic code to easily set up the multitudes of runes where they easily drew in the ambient mana only to explode when Shirou later flared his prana. Still that was only the first part of the plan, the explosive runes not even amounting to an appetiser compared to the later stage of the plan. As the goo coalesced and reformed into the image of a gray haired tall man wearing a trenchcoat Shirou prepared to finish serving the courses.
"Nvrrqsrn Chaos," Shirou said deliberately fucking up his name in the hopes that it may provoke him. "I'm Sorry were you looking for me; if you were I would have prepared a less warm welcome."
Nrvnqsr Chaos didn't immediately answer instead he merely examined Shirou. Before a trio of hounds leapt from his body and converged on the young magician. Shirou didn't fire a blast of pressurized water instead the blood on the floor flowed up and enveloped the three dogs. Nrvnqsr Chaos merely looked at both Shirou and the dogs as he struggled to break free. Eventually after about thirty seconds of struggling the dogs' movements finally grew still and after a further twenty seconds they broke down and dissolved in the fluid.
"Poison," said Nrvqsr Chaos, and when he looked up at Shirou there was a dangerous look in his eyes. "All of the people in this room were poisoned and when you destroyed the room the poison consumed by my beasts drew back into me." His body shuddered briefly and then almost instantaneously returned back to normal. "No conventional poison would harm me, whatever poison this is it doesn't attack my beasts but draws out energy. I see," he said his eyes actually widening; "you don't intend to destroy me or drive me off but to starve me to death. There are no people in this hotel are there. The bodies that I attacked before, I didn't notice it, cooked meat." He actually threw his head back and laughed sadistically. "With a mind like that you must have so much knowledge. Let me take it from you." And then he exploded.
Beast emerged flying out of the vampire thick and fast. A magnificent stag ahead of the heard rushed forward to gore Shirou upon its antlers. But the beast was blocked by Arcueid who stepped in front of him protectively with a single swipe the beast was cut in half and then another part of Shirou's plan kicked in. The gloves that Arcueid was now adorned in were his latest mystic code. After he had cleared out the hotel using a frankly disturbing amount of tactical hypnosis he had sat down and attempted to make something that could absorb energy. He was fairly certain he could not destroy Nrvnqsr without resorting to using his magic on him, which was still a line he tried his utmost not to cross every day. So he settled on an alternate plan, to wear him down. While Nrvnqsr Chaos required an utmost amount of destructive power to destroy the maintenance that must be enacted by both being a thousand year old apostle and constantly using his reality marble, albeit internally, must be intense. Since Shirou didn't hear of any massacres he decided on his current plan. To drain Nrvnqsr of all the energy he accumulated and then deal with him.
The problem he came up with was what constitutes energy and in what manner was it stored. While humans stored energy in the form of glycerine and triglyceride it was significantly harder to determine in what way Nrvnqsr stored his energy. Even his examination of the Piece of Chaos with the fourth didn't reveal the method in a way that Shirou could understand it. So Shirou went with the time tested method of observation and analysis. By careful use of the fourth he was able to determine that cooling the Piece caused it to burn energy to remain at the same temperature.
Thus the liquid and the gloves were born. The gloves were created by heavy abuse of the fourth and they converted kinetic energy to charge the gloves and rapidly cool anything cut. The liquid was a special substance that spread throughout the body and through an endothermic reaction rapidly cooled and would chill the insides and kill a normal person. Unfortunately Nrvnqsr Chaos proved not to be in anyway an ordinary person as more and more beasts materialized from his body.
Arcueid was like a whirlwind; every single punch of hers froze and shattered another of the myriad creatures despite the hordes racing towards Shirou to devour him not a single one got through. Every punch that was thrown had three more following instantly behind it. Shirou had vaguely known this but Arcueid was by far the most physically powerful being he had ever encountered. She moved magnificently as speeds so fast he could barely track her with his eyes.
Not that he was doing this at this time. The remnants of the fluid were drawn towards his ring and he flung them at the body of Nrvnqsr Chaos. While a lot of them were avoided by the man splashes of water hit and started to freeze his frame. Those parts were ejected from the body fell on the floor and started to dissolve. Suddenly from the many beasts that sprang from the walking zoo a unicorn arose. The beast ignored Shirou and charged Arcueid moving at a speed far superior to the other creatures that surrounded her. Arcueid caught the beast by the horn and punched it twice demolishing the head. But in that brief time that she was momentarily occupied her feet were caught by the wolves and more and animals kept piling on trying to restrain her.
When this was going on Shirou had his own problems the amount of animals that now came for him that Arcueid was temporarily restrained was overwhelming. They barrelled through the liquid frozen limbs carting them forward and onwards towards the young magician. A tiger had managed to barrel through the water only being partly frozen. It opened its mouth to devour Shirou and was promptly kicked in the face and had its head blown off. A couple of dogs tried to flank him but they were each killed with a single swift blow. Leaping back Shirou sent a massive wave of water sending a huge amount of his prana into the spell sweeping all the current animals off their feet and away.
Catching his breath for a moment he noticed that Arcueid was still restrained but she was fighting against her restraints. More and more creatures ran into the muddy goop but the inhuman strength of Arcueid allowed her to keep punching causing bits of the mud to freeze.
Sighing seeing that Arcueid was currently unoccupied Shirou sighed and activated another of his trump cards. Channelling his prana once again he let out a wave of it. Runes flickered on the roof Shirou took brief satisfaction of seeing the look of surprise on Chaos' face as the entire first floor collapsed dropping not only cement and tiles but also about two hundred thousand gallons of ice-cold water onto the lobby floor. Arcueid would barely feel the impact of the cement preoccupied with punching the black goo and Nrvnqsr would reform but Shirou had to control the water to protect him from the falling debris.
The lobby was instantly underwater and it was only the strength of the durability seals that prevented the glass doors cracking open and making this a street fight. Nrvnqsr recovered relatively easy and the water was instantly filled with sharks. They were all massive and all appeared to be man-eaters they rushed towards Shirou with the intent of chomping him in two.
At this stage almost any other magus on earth would have been destroyed. Unfortunately Shirou was a magician who had not only mastered water spells of the highest order but had regularly trained in underwater combat against somebody far stronger than the sharks. Unlike years ago when he fought sharks using his imperfect [Ryuujin's Perfect Body] now his blows did not only stun the sharks. Every single one of his blows hit with such force that shockwaves rang throughout the water and the water around his fists boiled.
Within twenty seconds all of the sharks were obliterated. Unfortunately as he hadn't killed them by freezing about sixty percent of the energy was recovered as the black goo retreated back towards the ancestor who now only appeared to be only half of his body with his entire left side missing. Shirou he wasn't worried about Arcueid, as he had already had a glimpse of how tough she could be, he found himself flagging. High level battles like this pose as much mental as physical strain and his bad choice of not getting sleep was catching up to him despite Avalon healing him of some of the physiological effects.
Determining to finish this quickly he scanned Nrvnqsr chaos and decided his energy reserves were low enough to initiate the final phase of his plan. He immediately channelled half of his maximum prana into his new spell. "[Skadi's coolerbox]," he shouted in his mind, having chosen the name on the spot.
From his body another wave of prana exploded like it did in his [Neptune's Eye] spell. However this was much, much more than the miniscule amount required for the scouting spell. Instantly using his magic in combination with the prana he froze everything the water, the Dead Apostle even Arcueid who broke free and continued beating the shit out of the Black Goo that surrounded her, now mostly disappeared.
Shirou rose out of the ice that was still infused with his prana. While he would have liked to have said he made a cool entrance the truth was that he was panting and wheezing and not for lack of oxygen either.
His prana was at about ten percent and he had to forcibly stop Avalon from healing the burns on his hands from his punches against the sharks earlier. Sitting down on the ice with his legs and arms shaking from exhaustion he watched as Nrvnqsr chaos tore his way up through the ice.
Nrvnqsr looked like he felt. The entire right side of his body had almost disappeared leaving only a thin skeleton of a leg to keep him balanced.
"Impressive," the Dead Apostle Ancestor said. "You have reduced me to barely a sliver of my energy but you no longer have the ability to stop me. I could kill you here but I must regain my energy and I don't believe in sticking around to face the True Ancestor." He turned his back. "Farewell…"
"Nrvnqsr Chaos, Fabro Rowan. I challenge you to a duel."
The Dead Apostle froze. He turned back to see the boy standing his legs quaking but glaring at him defiantly. At his feet lay four runes Algiz, Nauthis, Ansuz and Ignuz.
"You," the Dead Apostle started.
"Ath nGabla, a spell used by the knights of the red branch this has now become a place of no retreat," Shirou said his eyes determined as he glared at the composite being. "You have no more energy, soon the sun will rise and the True Ancestor will come and finish you off." He raised his arms wide. "Come at me Fabro Rowan and meet your doom."
"You, you, what the hell are you," Rowan said losing his composure. "If the only way to leave is through you then so be it. I'll tear you to pieces; I'll rend your flesh and devour you thoroughly. Become a part of me." As he said this he morphed into a white man shaped beast that towered over even Rowan's previous size. It bulged with muscles and red eyes sat sunken inside sockets and white teeth gleamed. Its head looked vaguely canine and vaguely human. Scanning it Shirou could tell it was monstrously strong and immensely fast and inhumanely durable.
But it was just too inefficient.
The beast was upon Shirou between one blink and the next and its hand lashed out in a blow that would crush his chest and obliterate his heart and lungs. Its speed was far past Shirou's and there was no way that he could dodge it.
So Shirou activated his last trump card.
[Avalon the Everdistant Utopia]
Shirou was instantly encased in a golden glow. Blow after blow was fired and none landed. Attacks were blasted towards the young magician and all missed. Nothing pierced the defence of Avalon.
This was Shirou's last trump card when all else failed. While Avalon was powerful it drained his prana and Shirou found himself approaching rock bottom. The other problems was that he was unable to move while he used it and he had as of yet found no way around that.
Shirou briefly worried about the Scabbard running out before the Vampire but his worries were for nothing. Each massive blow, each tremendous impact quickly drained the Apostle Ancestor of his remaining energy. Bit by bit Rowan began to shrink his energy finally running out until all that was left was a small pile of the Black Goo.
Shirou dropped Avalon sighing as he contemplated his absolutely bottomed out reserves. He fell down onto his knees wincing at the pain. He might have just stretched a ligament there. Typical the worst injury in the whole fight and he gets it in such a stupid way.
Suddenly the ball of Black Goo leaped at him forming small teeth before it stopped in mid-air. "Always with the tunnel vision, right Rowan," said Shirou as he held up his glove. The glove was always so useful in manipulating the fluids of his opponent's bodies.
Unclipping the water bottle from his belt he levitated the Black Goo into the bottle like his friend. Sealed the bottle activating its durability spells and passed out like that.
Arcueid found him like that later sleeping on his knees with a bottle full of the black goo next to him.
Author Note: suddenly being a little problematic to upload on but some nice folks posted a walkaround. Anyway this chapter was the big fight against Chaos. For the record Arcueid actually did the most damage to him. If the blows she landed against soil of genesis were against say Hercules she would have killed him all twelve times even with resistances. Anyway Shirou is not able to kill him without inflicting concepts directly on him. Something Shirou refuses to do. So he went the opposite way and forced him to use up all his energy and restrained him when he lost the energy to even mantain his own body.
Thank you Tobias97 for being the only review. (Wow that sounded sour even for me) Yes nothing bad at all happens in the far side.
Please, please, please read and review. Trilby out.