White Ink

21

Shirou exited the world of dreams to the feeling of strong arms encircling him. His eyes snapped open reveal the sleeping face of Arcueid Brunestud. She looked angelic in that state even as she stayed in a condition of absolutely no motion akin to the dead. A cough sounded out to his side and he inclined his head to once again see the familiar smiling face of Nine.
"

It's school now Master Inke, if you don't leave the Lady Arcueid and hurry up to have breakfast you will not arrive on time. "
"I'd like to get up," Shirou stated, "but as you can see I'm a bit restrained."
"You can teleport Master Inke," Nine said flatly. "While Lady Arcueid is quite strong I'm afraid you're not restrained in the least."
Shirou simply sighed and disappeared from the bed. He appeared in the kitchen a moment later. The breakfast table was littered with booze giving a strong indication that his favourite dead apostle was here and that she most likely brought her protégé along with her.
Shirou couldn't sense them in the house so he conjectured that they must have left earlier. He finished his breakfast quickly as Nine did not exaggerate when he said that he stood on the cusp of lateness. Shirou dashed from the room quickly changing and performing his other morning activities. As he rushed to leave his house he was stopped by Nine who stood in the doorway.
"Be careful," his servant said. "This town feels hostile. I tried out your so-called evil detecting light and it has been glowing red for the past few hours and getting brighter." The progeny of Nrvnqsr Chaos regarded him seriously. "I don't know what is happening specifically but I would advise you to keep your eyes and ears open.
Shirou nodded to Nine in acknowledgement and walked quickly out of the house and to Homuhara academy. While he was walking he kept his senses sharp and true to Nine's observation he could feel an almost physical oppression. The closest thing he could compare it to was the park in Shinto. A heavy duty bounded field that made the world feel very different.
Even Homuhara was no exception to this heavy atmosphere and as he entered the main gate the oppression seemed to grow to some extent. Students huddled around corners and kept to the walls spoke in whispers and quiet murmurings. He scanned the schoolyard for anybody who may have the slightest clue what was going on and he came across two people. Sakura and Rin representing the Matou and Tohsaka families respectively. They both possessed good quality circuits and were the heir to their respective families so they should at least have some idea of what curse had overtaken the city.
Slinking up behind Tohsaka from her blind spot he greeted her. "Morning Twintails, he said enjoying her startled reaction."
"As usual Inke," she spat out her voice full of venom, "you refuse to show the common decency of referring to me by my name and I'm getting tired of it."
Shirou's eyes widened as he heard her unusually vicious rebuttal, "Bad night," he said inquiringly. "You don't usually get this fed-up with me before the third period."
"Yeah," Tohsaka said with great reluctance now looking quite shamefaced. "It's been a bit hard lately."
"Yeah you look like you've been pushing yourself too hard lately," Shirou said. "You should relax and be careful. There's some bad vibes going on today."
"Yes," Rin blinked and eyed Shirou. "So you also noticed it. The whole town seems nervous. I even heard stories of some people spotting a dragon or something at the river near the temple."
"A dragon down by the river," Shirou repeated. "I have to go see that."
"Oh really," Rin smiled sweetly with the faint scent of victory about it. "So the infamous Shirou Inke believes in dragons."
Shirou scoffed, "Whereas I suppose you deride things such as dragons and magic as fantasies for children. Well I don't care how immature and nonsensical belief in magic is so you can stop trying to convince me otherwise."
At this he savoured the expression of Rin's face that appeared to be engaged in a severe case of mental gymnastics and went to talk to the other mystical lady of Homuhara High.
"Hey Sakura," he said speaking to the more pleasant magus. He had built up an acquaintanceship with her over the years due to his interest over her particular nature. He referred of course to the feeling of utter death that radiated from the girl. While he had initially promised himself that he wouldn't inspect her without her showing further signs for a mix of reasons such as respecting her privacy and not wanting to spoil any surprises in the future if she did turn out to be some form of eldritch god every year he grew more concerned and he resolved to find out her big secret before the grail war.
"Ah, good morning Inke," Sakura said with the tone of a demure housewife. "How are you this morning?"
"Feeling pretty poor actually Sakura," Shirou replied. "And how many times have I told you to call me Shirou."
"Okay, Shirou," Sakura said but he knew it wouldn't be the last time she forgot to call him that. "But why are you feeling so bad today. Is everything okay at home?"
"Yeah everything's fine at home Sakura," Shirou replied honestly. "Just feel as if today has some bad mojo. It feels like there is a grey sheen over the world."
Sakura bit her lip looking quite worried. "It does seem like a pretty depressing day. Everybody does seem moody."
Shirou and Sakura stood there in companionable silence for the next few minutes before the bell rang sounding that everybody should head into the classrooms.
xxx
The day dragged on without improvement. In fact to Shirou's observant eyes it appeared to get even worse. People became fearful shadows of themselves and the whispers continued. At break Shirou decided to follow up on the one lead he had so far.
"Issei," Shirou waved at the stoic monk in training. The head of the student council waved back slightly less enthusiastically. Their relationship was odd to say the least. Shirou's eccentric behaviour, lazy attitude and slight propensity to raise hell on occasions all while getting some of the best marks in the school annoyed the guy immensely and he often lectured him. However Issei was one of the few characters in this school that Shirou generally liked. His constant battles with Rin never failed to amuse the young magician and his serious personality was a nice break from most of the other people Shirou often found himself acquainted with.
"So Issei I've heard you got a dragon down by the temple," Shirou said grinning as he watched the solemn look on Issei's face be replaced by a look of abject surprise. "You've been holding out on me man."
"Where did you hear that," Issei demanded.
"Oh students were apparently talking about it," Shirou replied. "I personally heard this from Tohsaka."
"That witch is spreading rumours again," Issei grumbled to himself. "There is no dragon Shirou everything you heard is nothing but slander and bad rumours."
"Rumours, huh," Shirou contemplated to himself. "It was good seeing you Issei. We should talk more."
He turned away from the Student Council President. "I'm suddenly feeling quite unwell. I'll take the rest of the day off." After those last words he strode quickly down the hallway.
As soon as he turned the corner and left the sight of his bespectacled friend he disappeared and reappeared back in his house. Clutching his pendant he intoned a now very familiar spell and went to track down the other people in his house.
xxx
Yukika Saegusa walked home alone. The sun had just set a few minutes ago and a gentle breeze wafted through the night air. She normally didn't walk home so late and especially not alone but she had to clean up the clubroom today and both her friends were not available due to different reasons. Kane had to leave early for a family function and Maki was feeling sick and took the day off of school.
Suddenly a breeze blew across the street and she heard the sound of quiet footsteps right behind her. She whirled around and saw an empty street only a few flickering lightbulbs keeping the roads from being plunged into total darkness. She stood petrified the small fear that something was wrong magnified in her and for a few moments she found herself battling to breathe. After what seemed like a lifetime she choked down oxygen and felt her lungs expand and the fear begin to slowly wash away. Looking up she once again saw an empty street.
She sighed to herself berating herself from getting worked up. It was a trying day but that was no excuse to be acting like a frightened child. She turned back to once again go home and out of the corner of her eye she saw a shadow looming over her.
Her composure broke and she ran down the streets like her life depended on it. Her lungs burnt and her legs started to ache but she had no thought to lament her lack of fitness. Her mind had long snapped and her body kept moving on impulse robotically denying her impending death. She didn't notice the increased steps sounding behind her. She did not register the hot breath that tickled the back of her neck. A strip of her jacket disappeared and the cold wind bit into her skin but still she didn't register it.
Turning into the alleys to escape this presence she still had not even set eyes upon her pursuer but her body instinctively knew with utmost certainty that if she stopped for just a second she would be torn to shreds and devoured completely. Her existence replaced by a newspaper lamenting a girl gone missing and a weeping family. She didn't notice the gnashing of jaws behind her, she didn't notice the feeling of her legs starting to give up on her, she didn't notice that the alleyway that she was herded into contained a dead end.
She did notice when her chase came to an abrupt stop as she slammed into an incredibly hard torso. Falling to the ground she was completely knocked out of her frenzied panic as she looked up to see the face of Shirou Inke. For a split second she thought she saw absolute focus on his face. A mask of solemnity so unlike his normal state that for a moment she couldn't believe it was her class mate.
Then that look faded so quickly that Yukiko almost dismissed it as a dream and the normal Shirou was back. "Hello Yuki," he said. She had long ago given her permission to use her nickname. Shirou was quite a nice guy and she liked him. Platonically of course, absolutely platonically, nothing more. She had no fantasies of Shirou.
Shirou offered her his hand and she gratefully took it suddenly aware of just how tired she was. Her muscles ached and she was flushed with exertion she suddenly realised self-consciously.
"I better walk you home," he said. "It's not safe for you out on the roads at this time of night."
She nodded and followed him out of the alley.
She didn't notice the various cut destroyed body parts in the alley vanish just out of her sight.
xxx
They were walking for another five minutes before Shirou veered off the route to her house and took them into a nearby park.
"Where are we going," she asked timidly.
"We're being followed," Shirou replied. "I would rather confront them here."
Yukika started to slightly panic at the thought of being chased down again but she suddenly felt a hand upon her shoulder and she looked up to see Shirou smiling at her. "Don't worry," he said. "I'll protect you."
When he came to a stop and he reached into his jacket and pulled out a gun Yukika almost lost her composure again. Only her trust for him prevented her from panicking at the murder weapon.
Shirou turned and pointed the gun into the shadows. "You can come out now," he said.
From the shadows a beautiful woman with the brightest green eyes Yukika had ever seen appeared.
"My, my, my Shirou as aggressive as ever," the woman said with shocking familiarity.
"Narbareck," Shirou said surprising Yukika. "No you're not Narbareck, you're just a copy using her image. It's a good image but doesn't quite match up to the real thing."
"So confident," the woman said and smiled. In an instant there was a large clang right in front of Yukika's face. She jumped back and saw a knife lying on the ground in front of her. "I couldn't even see it," was the last thought that went through her mind before she passed out the exertion of the night proving too much for her.
xxx
"Get her out of here," Shirou yelled into the empty night.
"At once Master," the night said as it coalesced into the form of Nine. He picked up Shirou's classmate and gently carried her off into the darkness.
"You know I wasn't absolutely sure up until you did that. Narbareck would never have attacked an innocent civilian like that. The church would be beyond livid at her," Shirou shook his head.
The fakes smile dimmed a bit before it came back in full force. Black keys were fired at Shirou in their dozens in a genuine barrage against Shirou. Their speed far surpassed the speed of sound being closer to that of a sniper rifle. In addition their force was immense, all of the deflected sunk into the ground to the extent that even their hilts were buried. This salvo would be able to kill all but the strongest of Dead Apostles within seconds. However not a single black key reached Shirou. As soon as they black keys were materialized they were countered by an even greater number of jets of water that tracked and obliterated every single one. Black keys fell to the ground cut into multiple pieces.
"Is that all you have," Shirou said yawning falsely. "You're still not quite as good as the original."
Suddenly her left eye glowed white and Shirou found himself in an entirely different place. He barely had enough time to create a layer of ice before his body was riddled with over twenty black keys.
"Space, that's it," he remarked to herself. "Her white eye controls space and is able to teleport anything that she lays her hand upon. Still while I was initially saying that she was inferior to the original to make her lose her cool it seems she really is."
"Really," he said out loud. "The real Narbareck could teleport a True Demon, attack immediately and control a reality marble at the same time. You really are just a third rate knock-off."
The copies face contorted and suddenly Shirou felt as if his perception of the world had changed. Now her right eye was black and Shirou idly realised that she now had [Alien Stomach World] in her hands.
"Time," he noted idly. "Still not being used very well."
She finished the chant and the world materialised around him. Immediately nerves descended from the floor and ceiling to electrocute him, tentacles on the floor tried to wrap around him and the water that he was now surrounded by started to burn him.
"Goodbye Shirou," the imposter said.
White blobs materialized around him as the world he found himself in tried its utmost to destroy him but all this caused Shirou to do was to sigh.
"I would like to pick apart why you're such a poor copy but I don't have time for this," Shirou lamented. "You were attempting to copy my fears and you somehow managed to half-ass it and try to hard at the same time. Goodbye, goodnight [Amessunu Istenis].
At his last words the world around him was placed under the pressure of the abyss and after a second the domain collapsed. The cheap copy of a dead man's reality marble not being able to hold up to the power of his ultimate move.
It was actually anti-climactic in the extreme. The copy of Narbareck died instantly and all that was left was the park with a few gouges in it, the black keys having disappeared. Shirou carefully released [Amessunu Istenis] making sure not to obliterate the park while he was at it.
Once that was done he recognized the presence of one of the other teams approaching his position. From the darkness Satsuki and Sumire emerged with the younger woman carrying a pale and sweating Sakura of all people and the older woman carrying some sort of alcoholic beverage.
"What happened," Shirou said as he looked upon the writhing form of the young woman.
"We were patrolling as we discussed," Satsuki started looking confused and alarmed. "Then we came across this girl cowering away from this other version of herself with white hair and red eyes, kind of like a somewhat older version of Illya. We quickly identified that as the curse that was feeding off her dread and then attacked." Satsuki shivered for a moment. "It was really hard," she said.
At Shirou's silent query Satsuki continued. "She kept sending out these shadows at us that devoured everything. It was only because of my Depletion Garden that I was able to survive by sucking up the mana they were sustaining themselves on. Then something, some kind of monster came out of her and then from it black mud spawned and the entire world seemed to be drowning in curses and then... Sumire did something and all the shadows disappeared."
Both Shirou and Satsuki turned to look at Sumire. Satsuki's face showed pure wonder and expectation while Shirou just had a slight look of disbelief.
For once in her life Sumire looked upset even with a bottle in her hand, "Well I am a dead apostle ancestor you know, it's not just an empty title. Anyway," she said changing the subject. "Something is seriously wrong with that girl. I would recommend that you scan her at once."
"Yeah," Shirou mused partly to himself. "Perhaps I should have already scanned her." Shirou examined her and then used the forth to read her concept. The reading continued for about thirty seconds and after the first five Shirou stopped showing any facial expression instead defaulting to the solemn face he showed when he lost the ability to feel any humour in the situation.
"Well," he finally said. "Please place her on the ground Satsuki." His voice was perfectly calm and reasonable which was a far cry from the normally laughing or smiling Shirou. Satsuki did as he said and lay the girl down on the grass.
Shirou placed his left hand on the right side of his chest and drew forth a side from his breast. Without any ceremony Shirou stabbed the sword into the girl on the floor. Satsuki almost jumped at him before she was held back by Sumire the older vampire simply watching the procedure.
The sword sunk into the chest of the purple haired woman with no blood and almost immediately the heavy breathing and feverish squirming eased and the woman seemed to regain colour before their eyes. Satsuki relaxed at seeing the effects. Which was why the next part caught her so off guard.
Shirou's hand penetrated her chest causing a terrible noise as the bone cracked and the meat was sliced through. In an instant Shirou's hand was out and he was holding a wriggling worm. The worm was crushed and Shirou thrust his hand into the young woman's body and pulled out another one. The same procedure repeated itself over a dozen times before Shirou stood up. His hand was covered in blood and gore and Satsuki had to look away and cover her mouth lest she lose her lunch.
His patient was still healing however. The wounds seemed to close up instantly with some kind of mesh but skin was growing over the mesh even as they watched.
"Nine," Shirou said. "Have you returned her safely to her house?"
"Yes Master Inke," Nine replied as he stepped out from behind one of the trees in the park. "I was unable to modify her memory however as it is a skill I could never learn."
"It is of no consequence Nine," Shirou replied his face set into an emotionless mask. "We have much bigger fish to sauté. Take Sakura to my house." He turned away and started to leave. "The rest of you should continue patrolling. I have a feeling this night is going to get far worse."
"And where will you be going while we are hopping around town searching for these nightmares," Sumire asked before taking a swig of her... brandy? Shirou guessed.
"I'm going on a long overdue de-worming operation," Shirou said and then he disappeared.
Author Note The start of the last arc before the Grail War. I'm not going to do reviews today because is kinda fucking about on that one. I'm not one hundred percent happy about this one. While I have pretty much planned this arc out I think that writing this story for so long is kind of draining me. As a solution I'm going to do something I thought I wouldn't and either start my second story simultaneously or to write out a relatively long one-shot.
I do actually see the reviews even if you don't so please read and review. Thought I might as well do this. Shirou is actually getting stronger as he ages. The last two chapters took place when he was fifteen and now in this chapter he is sixteen. His stats compared to a servant now are as follows below.
Strength C+
Endurance A-
Agility D+++
Magical Power A
Luck B+
Noble Phantasm EX