White Ink

23

A vampire and a teenager walked down a street. While under most circumstances this would lead to the start of an almost certainly tasteless joke the situation was different here.
"

Have you picked it up yet Satsu?" the older vampire asked her sky blue eyes focused on the younger woman.
"It's in the park isn't it? The girl replied to her teacher's words receiving a subtle nod for her troubles. "It feels old and dangerous," she said and wrinkled her brow in thought.
"Yup," Sumire replied. "When we get there I want you to stay back. You've gotten a lot stronger over the years but physically you're still not on the level of Arcueid, Shirou and I."
The woman turned and looked towards her young apprentice. "Your reality marble has the potential to be among the strongest I've ever seen. I've trained you in it over the past two years so that you can use it in a way that is more efficient than just dropping it and trying to wipe all away the mana." Sumire then smiled. "Just think of this as a final exam, except if you fail we die."
And at that thought she strode towards the Fuyuki Central Park the wellspring from which all the curses flowed. As they came to the park both Sumire and Satsuki found their expectations to be easily met and exceeded. A black tornado whirled through the park uprooting trees and even drinking from the ground.
To Satsuki's eyes it was destroying the park and biding its time. To Sumire's eyes however…
"It's absorbing the curse," Sumire said. She pulled a bottle of liquor from somewhere and downed it, a fact made all that more confounding by the fact that she was still wearing her standard bikini.
"Absorbing the curse," Satsuki repeated trying not to contemplate where Sumire drew her endless stores of liquor from. She appeared to search for the appropriate words which continued to elude her until only the completely inadequate sentence of, "That's bad right."
Sumire graciously ignored the idiocy of her previous sentence and merely replied. "Bad doesn't begin to cover it. A curse is unique among magecraft in that it relies primarily on emotion rather than powerful magecraft. In other words while more prana will increase the power of the curse, what really determines its quality is how much hatred it contains. The curse that infects the park is the highest in quality that I've ever seen and if the Night of Wallachia manages to absorb the data behind the curse," Sumire trailed off. Despite implying how absolutely fucked they were her voice remained calm and nonchalant.
"Well let's get started," she said moving forward.
"Wait, teacher," Satsuki tried to slow her down. "What are we doing?"
"Why we're trying to diffuse the curse. You drain the mana out of it and I'll try to set the atmosphere," the blond Dead Apostle Ancestor said casually.
"That sounds stupidly dangerous," Satsuki said. "Do you know how close I would have to be to that tornado?"
At that very moment a roar reverberated through the roads. The very sound sent a chill through both woman's bones and glass windows from the surrounding buildings cracked causing glass to rain down onto the floor below. An instant after the thunder a wave of mana rippled through the streets washing over both of them.
"It could be worse," Sumire said. "You could be whatever poor sap has to deal with that thing."
Breathing heavily Satsuki just turned and glared at her mentor, "Let's just deal with the tornado," she said.
xxx
Arcueid was running through the streets with Illya on her back and her arms around her neck holding on for dear life. The tentacle beasts that they had fought earlier were back again and more numerous than ever. Looking like some bizarre undersea creature they crowded around the True Ancestor as she ran and were instantly shredded by the blonde vampire or pounded by the rapid fire from the familiars of a moderately stressed Illya. The beasts spewed some sort of acid, but Shirou regularily did the same thing and all it took was a moderate application of her marble phantasm in order to prevent the mist from hitting the panicking teenager.
A bellow boomed across the sky causing a wave of mana to blast across the city. Arcueid came to a stop ignoring the white-haired girl's continued instructions to "protect her chastity" and "keep the tentacles away from her bits".
The True Ancestor was momentarily torn between the two conflicting sources of conflict; namely the park or the temple. While her senses were not very good compared to Shirou or Sumire as a True Ancestor she possessed an innate connection to the natural world. As such she more than anybody was aware of the massive amounts of mana that flowed through the leylines of Fuyuki. At the moment huge amounts of that nigh endless quantity were siphoned into two particular manifestations that took place at the opposite ends of the city.
"What do you think Illya," she said. Turning her head to look at the weight on her back she once again noticed that the delicate looking teenager was still shooting at the mass of monsters that were again beginning to gather around the vampire a look of utmost concentration on her face as her familiars sent bolt after bolt into the mass.
Arcueid sighed. The girl had stated quite vehemently that she wanted to help them despite their arguments otherwise. Shirou specifically had argued that despite her amazing circuits and very well made homunculus body she was by far the weakest of the group. Sumire had looked up from the bottle of her bottle to state that unlike every single other person of the group she had no battle experience. But still despite their objections she had soldiered on and eventually Shirou unhappy about the situation had assigned her to Arcueid as she was the person who could best guarantee her safety.
Arcueid snapped her fingers causing blades of wind to appear and bisect all of the surrounding creatures. Only once the last creature was dead did Illya finally calm down.
"So what do you think," Arcueid said. "To the temple or to the park?"
Illya opened her mouth to reply and then went pale. Her pallor had whitened to such an extent that it looked like her entire figure had been bleached. It was of no surprise however as even facing Illya Arcueid detected the surge of magical energy in her region. While it was smaller than the ones at the park and the temple it was still much bigger than the others they had encountered. It might have been bigger than Roa. Arcueid mentally revaluated her assessment of the phenomenon either it regained a lot of prana from defeated manifestations or its reserves were beyond ridiculous.
Turning around Arcueid beheld the monster that loomed over her. It was massive, the size of a skyscraper, easily exceeding any prior creature Arcueid had glimpsed. From its body flowed tentacles tipped with other tentacles. Its pallete was a mix of red blue and purple and the entire effect ended looking the world's worst made seafood dish.
At the sight of the creature Illya had gone almost comatose whispering "too many tentacles" to herself, leaving Arcueid to decide in which direction to go. "What would Shirou do in this situation," she thought to herself. "He would have said something like, "Oh well I guess it's rude to not try out something offered so sincerely" or "Fuck it. Let's do this."
Arcueid paused for a moment contemplating the scenario ahead of her.
"Fuck it let's do this," she said for herself and leapt at the horror, Illya hanging off her back.
xxx
Shirou skidded to a stop in front of the temple just taking a moment to behold the sight in front of him. While he would normally have teleported to save time, he made it a habit not to teleport into a sufficiently dangerous situation. He had deemed the gigantic build-up of mana to be sufficiently dangerous and he was morbidly glad to see that his initial estimate appeared to be correct.
In front of the Ryuudou temple sat a massive Japanese dragon, its three toes proved testament to its nationality as it lazed on the ground arms crossed underneath its head and eyes closed.
But it wasn't sleeping. As Shirou approached the dragon lazily opened its eyes and stood up yawning as it did so. With its long whiskers and sleepy face it looked like an old man but something prevented Shirou from laughing at it. This phantasmal beast, this dragon possessed something he had never felt before. Or something that he had though not in such quantities.
"Why," he said. "Why do you feel like Gilgamesh," Shirou asked knowing the answer was important but yet it eluded him. "What are you?"
The creature just stared at him and he instinctively knew that it both knew the answer and would not tell him. That the answer was important but that it was not yet time for him to know. He was still cooking and hearing that answer to soon would ruin his flavour. The sense of finality was so strong he immediately switched subjects.
"Are we going to fight," he said. The answer to this was a lazy but definite yes denoted by a simple nod of the head.
"Is there any way to avoid the fight," he said. The answer to this was a just as firm no.
"Why are you fighting me," Shirou asked. "Tatari seems to have summoned you but it is obviously failed to bind you otherwise you would have just immediately attacked me. What is it you hope to achieve?"
The dragon remained silent for a moment and then it spoke the words ancient and crackling with power. "There is no dragon on existence that would fail to point its fangs at one such as you," it spoke those chilling words.
Standing up as the first drops of rain began to fall it shook its long serpentine body momentarily exposing the countless threads of muscle that made up its body and then as the drizzle turned into a down pour, it struck.
A solid wall of ice was formed in an instant from the surrounding water. The construct of several feet thick and as hard as steel barely slowed the dragon as it crashed through it. Shirou increasing the pressure in his body to the max dodged to the side and for his efforts only got clipped by the tail of the dragon.
Unfortunately that small wound was enough to take a chunk of skin out of his body leaving his ribs exposed to the outside rain. Manipulating his own blood he used Magic to force it to clot. Then he pumped prana into the blood that fell to the ground imbued it with the concept of [penetrate] and sent it into the scaly body of the dragon that was coming around again to crush Shirou. The blood bullets struck and caused the scales to chip away leaving some open flesh exposed but the amount was painfully little.
The creature sprayed a jet of liquid at him and Shirou met it with his own. He instantly realised that the liquid that the dragon sprayed was in fact poison and he redoubled his efforts to block the flow. Unfortunately after ten seconds of him matching him he was forced to dive out of the way.
The poison hit the floor and started to spread around the ground and lunged for Shirou's feet. Jumping up the stairs he pulled out his Desert Eagle and shot a bullet into the open mouth of the lunging dragon. That caused it to pause momentarily and Shirou initiated one of his spells. "[Skadi's Frozen Heart]," he yelled out causing the poison to freeze. An unfortunate side effect was it also caused the rain to freeze and he found himself pelted with hail.
Shaking himself free of the hail he found himself looking at the face of a dragon that had quite enough of his shit. The dragon glared at him before it took off into the skies. It was at this point Shirou regretted that his flying research had yet to take off. While he could propel himself around using water manipulation he was so bad at it and it was so hard that it would make him a sitting duck. Shirou gazed up at the sky and then instantly raised a shield of ice. He reinforced it with half a dozen layers and then used his Magic to impose the concept of [Hardness] on it. Bracing for impact he flooded the inside with water to prevent the ice from cracking inward.
In an instant he felt like the world had collapsed. The ground beneath him had cratered and it was only his beyond human durability and the presence of the water that had prevented him from becoming a Shirou pancake. The stone that the ice dome had rested on had collapsed with a single strike from the giant reptile and it consequently left Shirou buried under his own ice dome that was pressing down on him via the weight of the dragon's claw.
Suddenly Shirou felt the dome begin to heat up. It wasn't a gradual thing. The dome went from barely above zero to above thirty in no more than ten seconds. Shirou opposed the heat by trying to apply the concept of [cold] to the dome but opposing the flames of a dragon is almost impossibly hard under the best conditions let alone when trapped beneath an ice dome and bleeding. The water climbed from thirty to forty and then surged up just as Shirou teleported himself out of the dome and across the courtyard. Instantly he started throwing up ice walls to slow down the angry lizard. Then as the dragon smashed through it he summoned an acid cloud that did absolutely nothing against the hide of the dragon but obscured its vision for a moment.
Putting some distance between the dragon and him he backed up and aimed two immensely powerful jets of water at the eyes of the dragon. As he did this he also shot a bullet towards the mouth of the dragon activating explosive runes on the bullet as he fired it.
This went incredibly poorly. Of the first two jets of water only the first one got anywhere close to its target hitting the dragon on its right eye causing blood to spurt out of the new wound. Unfortunately when the dragon was hit he raised his head and instead of the bullet striking the inside of his mouth the explosive round hit the underside of his chin.
The world seemed to quiet for a moment and for the first time in a long while Shirou got a feeling of immense danger approaching. The dragon reared back and roared to the night sky and once again Shirou got the impression of intense ripples that undermined the structure of the world. Then the roar ceased and Shirou pushed [Ryuujin's Perfect Body] to its limits in anticipation for the coming battle.
That was the only thing that saved him as an instant later he received the impact of a three toed hand on his chest breaking ribs and cracking his sternum even through his extreme defence. Sliding backward from the blow Shirou barely had any time to conjure a shield of ice to prevent the wave of poison rushing at him. Through the massive pain Shirou drew huge chunks of his prana into a wall and pushed all his pain and aches and tiredness into the back of his mind as with all his determination he pushed the concept of [unbreakable] onto it.
The unstoppable wave of poison rushed into the wall and was bounced back by the unbreakable ice. After barely a moment the dragon closed his mouth and when he opened again white hot flames came rushing out onto the wall. Shirou matched the flames massive power with ice cold determination even as he sweated from even being in the same vicinity as that vicious conflagration.
Shirou continued to hold the ice wall for thirty seconds before he was forced to relinquish it. An instant later after he teleported away from the location the wall disintegrated under the weight of the flames. At this point Shirou was exhausted. His body kept protesting that he was in pain and needed medical attention. Every fibre of his being told him to leave but he knew that if he did this dragon would rampage killing the innocent.
Unfortunately his sword was still healing Sakura and thus was not available to heal his own wounds. When he got out of this mess he resolved to learn how to heal himself and not rely on his artefacts. This was getting ridiculous Satsuki had better natural healing than him.
Sizing up the dragon he resolved to do his best to finish it in one strike. The beast looked back at him hatefully but seemed to be sizing him up the spark of reason returning to its eyes. Shirou shifted his weight and the beast followed him. That was fine, the beast wouldn't have a chance to block or dodge this anyway.
"[Amessunu-]," he started off swinging his arm forward. "[-Isstenis]," he finished teleporting onto the beasts back and striking downwards with almost all of his remaining prana. Releasing his ultimate attack at such low range caused quite the backlash and even as he aimed the ability at the beast he was pushed right off the dragon.
Landing on the hard ground he slowly rose to his feet examining the dragon. A massive laceration had formed on the beasts back ruining its perfect skin. Shirou watched the stillness of the beast and heaved a sigh of relief and exhaustion. Turning around feeling the many aches and pains that racked his body he headed into the night.
Or he would have if he didn't hear the slight noise behind him. Turning back he witnessed a sight straight out of a horror movie. The dragon slowly and unsteadily rose to its feet like a wounded yet stoic veteran. Turning to face Shirou the Magician only saw tiredness in its eyes replacing the rage it previously possessed. However it still seemed disinclined to let him go.
Watching the beast breathe in Shirou felt despair. As the beast breathed out flames Shirou felt guilt at the people he would leave behind. As the flames bore down on him Shirou pondered what more he could have done.
Bad End...
No Not Really.
Author Note I'm interested in how my attempt at writing fight scenes went. Does anybody want to see a fanfiction whereby Shirou awakes with a dual-origin of weapon/weapon and becomes a world famous weapon designer. No just me? :(
Tobias97 Sorry not in this story. There are so many interesting characters in Type Moon and I can only justifiably include a fraction of them without spreading myself to thin. It sucks but that's life.
Archleone Fate/Stay Night and Tsukihime contradict themselves and can't canonically exist together. I ignored this for the sake of plot. Used to have Grand Order playing off a USA server before my mother board crashed and I lost all my data. Might in future pick it up if it ever releases in RSA. The two you hate were parodies of Nasu's ever increasing attempts to bring out more versions of Arturia. The undercover Arturia was probably a representation of those who complain about it. I personally found the idea that that would have been Arturia's body if she didn't draw the sword to be hilarious. You can really tell that she drinks her milk.
Please Read and Review. (And Favourite this time. I'm so close to the big 300 at time of writing.)