Yukitamas

Fate/Empty Providence

In other news castles are freaky-deaky weird when you look at them with weird eyes.

Fate/Empty Providence

@SIGINT

Airi turned towards Nakae, who was still quite a bit taller than her despite being younger than most of the other Masters. Honestly, she had been starting to wonder why it was all 30-year-olds here. "Oh hey, we saw each other at the church! You said you were heading to a convenience store." The girl recounted, with a grin. "You missed out, man. Ruler announced the free food like, right after that. You coulda saved some money."

The guy's outfit was a little thrown-together, and he looked...kinda ill? Well, he did lose his Servant, that couldn't have come easily to him. "Uh...well, that's good. I don't know a whole lot about Demons, I just know they're bad news." The girl admitted, slowly munching on the further half of burger number eight. "Apparently a bunch of my relatives died from one...Or like, a half-one...I never knew 'em or anything, but still, like, damn, you know?"

He shook his head. “I can eat still. Besides, I need something for later.” Left unsaid was the somber fact that it wouldn’t matter if he died in the near future. But he wasn’t going in this with the intent to lose. With a much more normal, albeit still voracious hunger of the student who was equal parts too lazy and apathetic to cook something and yet enjoyed the simple pleasures of life, especially in his solitude, he began to grab at what he could, starting on his own binging. Without much care for his manners he ate, swiftly, silently, a bit clumsily, in a manner that made the number of napkins at his part of the table slowly build up.

“I don’t know anything about them. I don’t even know anything about magic or anything. I guess to put it one way I knew about the supernatural, but nothing about it, the same way normal people know about a train, but nothing about how they work, what models they are and the details. A train is just a train, the supernatural was just the supernatural. I fell into this war's lap in a way."

He rubbed at his face and shook his head again, towards her before returning his focus to the food again.

"I'm, uh, not really thinking about it."

"Well, you know...treating this like it's some kind of opportunity to get ahead, using it to scout people or throw them under the bus, or shit like that...that kind of teamwork doesn't get you very far." Airi said simply, setting the stack of empty plates aside. "I ran with a crew back in Western Tokyo...sometimes, we'd tussle with gangs that weren't put together very well. And you know what? It showed. It showed in the way they walked down the street together, in the way they fought...and you damn well better believe it showed in what they were able to accomplish." It was a rural area, or at least, as rural as Tokyo could possibly be, which wasn't very. There had always been the sharp and painful contrast between the Shinjuku high-rises she saw when visiting Yuko, and the empty lots that littered the place she and Hana called home. "A team like that is just the sum of its parts. We took 'em down like it was nothing, no matter how many of them there were. My crew was just three people, but our teamwork wasn't some half-hearted bullshit. I didn't roll that way back then, and I'm not changing up my style now."

"Yeah, there'll be a time when we're all enemies again. And I'll think about being enemies at that time." Airi admitted, "But, right now, it's the time for us to be friends. And I'll think about being friends at that time. There's no sense in tripping myself up on anything else."

Exactly what he was doing in a way, but also because he was too weak to stand on his own.Still, even if someone wasn’t doing that, friends?

"That’s an odd way of putting it. Friends is a strong word for people you work with for a short time before killing them. If anything, isn’t that the cruelest or worst way to put it?”

He put his burger down, and waved some juice stained fingers at his direction. His lips moved and his face slowly craned down as though it was going to plant itself onto the table.

“ That sounds way worse than anything else. You’re making something that’s already unpleasant even more painful, more horrible. It sounds sad. It sounds dumb. It sounds mad.”

…

Ah, those were suppose to be in his head. He ended up whispering it, didn’t he? Whispers that snuck under her words, skulking about, trying to be unheard. It felt a bit like how those who would be thinking of the future instead of the now with this joint-venture were acting. He whipped his head back up to see if she noticed, face suddenly presented with hers as she reached out. His locks of hair sprawled out of his face, revealing his eyes clearly for once from the motion, leaving him a bit surprised and almost flinching back from her.

With a rare smile, the girl extended out a hand to Nakae, offering a handshake.

"So, how about it? Wanna be friends?"

Izumi Airi's voice was oddly devoid of its usual roughness at that moment. It was still unmistakably her, but at the same time, there was an earnestness there, a simple joy that she partook in as any human did. In that crystallized moment, she was just a youthful person who enjoyed making connections with people for its own sake.

It hurt, it hurt ah… it hurt. He looked away, then looked back at her, torn between seeing her to protect himself and trying to escape it completely. “Let’s be friends.” It was a thing he heard of course before, but he couldn’t accept it. It’d fall apart, and he’d be alone, and that was the best. What was the point of being around someone like him with these eyes? What was the point of someone like him being with others? To be around others was painful, but that pain was still better if he couldn’t put a name to it.

It’s just pain, nothing more. Stay nothing, be nothing, you have to or else it will hurt even more.

Even when he looked his gaze seemed to want to avoid her and his eyes focused on strange places, places that people did not usually focus on with other people.

Even after seeing that he didn’t want this. What was good? Everything felt more like a lack of bad to him, especially now.

He reached out with his hand, he’d take what was good and learn about it. Betray? Learn? Well, maybe this play at whatever this was would end with her simply dead from something else. His e hand moved before he thought about it, and his mind was simply trying to catch up, to offer justification. In the end, faced with all that was punishing in the world he found himself with want. Want to push him into the madness that was to continue to fight, to go despite knowing that she without doubt waited at the end of the road.

I want to be happy.

Is this a way? What was the path to it? It didn’t matter what it was, but he’d take them as offered until he finally found his way.

This was a war about wishes, right?

“Sure.”

Fate/Empty Providence

It was, perhaps not too surprising that he went for the food first. Without a word he went to the table to pick up a drink of what was on offer, slinking through the crowd that was admittedly, a bit strange to be around. This gathering was hardly the atmosphere of that of a war. It was more like an….an american picnic or something? Well, that’s what it made him think of anyway.

The others were enemies. He didn’t need the excuse to avoid them but it wasn’t weird for him to not come up to them chattering. Enemies, each one of a them another person between him and victory. Kill them all, beat them all… They all have servants, so many legends like the demented things he’s seen. They’re all like those berserkers… No, none of them could be like her. Even then...

Having given her piece, Airi finally began on burger number seven, turning back to her Servant. "Hey, though...you said 'black-haired demon', earlier...do you really think that's what he is? Like, 'Demon' with a capital D?"

At this he finally spoke up, leaning over and slumping onto the table as best as he could, barely avoiding placing his arms and face in some food. Noisy wasn’t she? It was what got them all grouped up in the first place so he couldn’t complain, but she was a weird girl.
“Berserker sort of was one but that thing, that black haired man was it?… if it was a demon then it’d be under that other girl. If it’s really not part of any servant then it can’t be a demon.” It was a childish reassuring thought, with the logic of a fallacy. If it was so dangerous he hoped it wasn’t under her, that it couldn’t be shackled by her. She was already something she didn’t want to fight and he hoped someone else would kill her. Things wouldn’t work out that pretty he felt, and it felt like it’d be likely she’d be the last one standing. Please die, please don’t be there at the grail at the end of all this bloodshed, that was the fervent wish born of fear and pain that he whispered as he took a bite to eat.

“This beats sitting around with a frozen dinner, so even if nothing happens I won’t complain about my time being wasted." With the food returning back to his mind he craned his head over his shoulder to stare at Ruler. What a strange man. He was a person who seemed to hold a sense of responsibility but went beyond that as well, taking into account considerations and concerns other might consider frivolous or trivial in the wake of a war like this. In a way to him, he seemed less like a judge and more like a nanny, or a well-meaning person. What was he exactly? He was some hero, right? but what kind of hero flips burgers during a war meeting? There were a lot of people here that were weird, but for some reason he felt like that man and the girl whose initiative started this meeting in the first place were the oddest. Even weird became normal if it was the majority, in the presence of all these magi, they seemed to be normal in a weird way. What then, did they think of him? someone who seemed to be charging into his death, he'd probably be considered the weirdest of them all.

"So, are you confident in winning once we deal with this stuff?" he decided to ask the girl.

Fate/Empty Providence

Your Servant died?" "Hey, wait a minute...that gaudy dude mentioned someone was about to lose their servant when I got brought here...did you come here from the graveyard?"

His brow twitched. Nakae glowered for a moment, although not really at her. Ah, it was a good thing he couldn’t see things on himself, or otherwise… “Yeah, I did.”

His attention returned to the supervisor. The odds that were probably very generous on part of this judge, this... Ruler told him were received with a nod. He knew that, he knew that he was basically going to die if he fought. It wasn't anything brave. It was only brave to gamble with something if it had worth and was important. If it was something that didn't really matter whether you had it or not then there wasn't any bravery in risking it. He wasn’t brave at all. But he was rather grateful about that salvation from that the gaudy man granted him. "Yeah... thanks for that." He couldn't meet the man's shade-covered eyes and instead looked over to a corner that didn't seem to have anyone lingering. "Yeah, it wouldn't just be death. You saved me in more ways than you know with that."

He slinked back towards the pews, silent as the conversation turned to the strange happenings and monsters that plagued this war that were apparently very abnormal. If that was normal, in any sort of degree then what would be abnormal? He didn’t want to know, not at all. He was abnormally powerful, strange, and apparently something that made Ruler feel disturbed, even as he accepted the existence of that. He couldn’t believe he would feel something worse than that,

But…

"So, the solution here seems really simple to me. How about we stop fucking fighting each other, chasing after everyone's favorite Magical Big Gulp like a pack of autistic ferrets, because you can damn well guess that's what he's hoping we do. He's given no indication that he can or will attack a group, so we make a fucking group and come down on his ass like an eighteen-wheeler."

He stepped out again after taking a glance at every other person present. He couldn’t beat them, he couldn’t beat their servants, not even if he knew about them. If he knew something then maybe… he’d at least know how deep a hole he was digging himself.

He couldn’t do anything alone, he needed to know more and try. This was a way to fulfill both of those criteria. He’d be seen as weak maybe, being the first to latch on like this. He was weak, and there was nothing wrong with being seen as that. He didn’t have anything to be prideful about now, especially as he could still taste the tinge of sour of whatever mess the traces of his last meal was. Actually, despite everything he felt pretty hungry and thirsty.

"I'm going to a convenience store first however."

Fate/Empty Providence

A bit of a slump perhaps, but I'll be posting a bit more regularly myself!

Fate/Empty Providence

@Moonlit Sonata
@Beloss
@Holy Grail
@DrowsyPangolin
@Cu Chulainn

Yeah, leaving and asking for protection, for mercy. That was normal for losers, right? He had no servant, he didn’t really have any ability to fight or continue. But, he needed to win. There was no path but the destination had to be reached. He wanted the wish, he wanted to be free, he wanted to live. There was also that he was afraid, he was afraid of that girl and that existence.

Those evils, those pains. He’d seen them before, right? But that was too much. It was too scary, it was too painful. What did it mean that something like that could exist? How could people go on when there’s so much suffering that could await and accumulate in a life? He’d seen glimpses of lives that withstood things he would have ran away from. But here he was, not running away from that.

He knew that he couldn’t beat -that- or overcome it. A human could not, a hero could not, a demon could not. Yet that girl did. She could hardly be called human, but she wasn’t a demon. A monster, she was most definitely a monstrous human. True evil, true horror, not the imaginary imitations born of people who wished to turn their eyes away from the truth that humanity must hold these things to know them and give birth to them. If humanity invented and created such stories then wasn’t it that they were all the evils?

He couldn’t win, what could win? What would he have to become to win?
It was ridiculous to think in those terms, yet he threw away the notions of not being able to attain victory and continued on in his mind. The question that bloomed as an answer that pierced through his nebulous ideas made him freeze up.

Would he be willing to become that? ...Maybe.

“I’m fighting. I’ll have to turn that offer down. I can’t give up or back away, not when I just started. There’s a reason for me to fight, or more accurately, there’s a wish I need no matter what. I meant to come here to say I was participating, and that doesn’t change. I’m officially joining the war, even if I’m late due to a detour. So, do I get a stamp, or ID Badge or something? Or is that it?”

He offered a worn grin with eyes still red and puffy, before finally taking his eyes off the supervisor to look over at his.. Competition. Well, one way or another he at least made it here. It’d have been humiliating to die before the first step, but this was where it started. So he’d have to kill these people and win somehow. That was impossible, but… Well, first he figured he’d look at them before deciding on that or not.

Servant, if the two Berserkers were any indication. A normal?... person? And… that.
Well, through his eyes it was exceptionally strange for sure, and sent a strange, sickly feeling crawling down his spine. The most sickly part of it was that it was comforting in a way, after what he’d seen.

Yeah… that guy was strong, but what was that,.. Wound? How was he still alive? A massive “scar” spread across the man The black that so stained the massive man's midsection was as pure and the memories that brushed at his mind left him in awe. He didn’t understand the context, he didn’t understand what happened. All he knew is that something that was out of his comprehension happened, something on the league of being confronted with hell. He held a hand to his own, the pain of the shot man replicated by his understanding and mind. Toshi let out a tense breath through teeth that shut together in protest. This was nothing compared to that hell, nothing compared to what he saw earlier. He still didn’t like it, mind.

“Gah!... What the hell did you go through? And how in the world did you survive that?”

He blurted it out as a response without thinking on the consequences. His other hand reached out towards the large man that was most definitely a servant before he caught himself and withdrew. He was curious, he admit, whether or not that would work on a servant… but.

Well, he could do without finding out more about that.

“Even a servant should die from something on that level, right?”

Fate/Empty Providence

Walking in through the doors, Toshi found himself confronted with an already filled space. People who were clearly not simply believers in a faith. But one of them was overwhelming. IN a way it was overwhelming with light the way the darkness of hell overwhelmed him. Both were the opposites of each other, but both were too much for a normal person to handle.

His eyes, he saw, he saw that they were special, that they weren't normal, just like Berserker... just like her.

"I'm here for.." he spoke up, before becoming silent just as swiftly as he had opened his mouth. His rush of breath came out in lieu of words as he, burning with a bit of embarrassment in his cheeks, made his way into the church proper.

Without even being invited or told as to whether his presence was welcome or not he walked in their midst.

"This is where the rules and enforcers of the war are, right? I'm a master. It's been a long day. I came as fast as I could but there's been things that kept me late."

Fate/Empty Providence

Maybe you could do a Monte Cristo thing and have the jewel be akin to a special magic crest or something?

Fate/Empty Providence

He didn't know when he got up.

...

Did it really matter?

His body felt heavy, his mind felt heavier. It wasn't that he was in a daze. No, if anything his mind was moving too fast. The events that recently transpired, his regrets, his desires, hell, the evils that man feared. His mind thought, his mind revisited them again, and again. Nonstop. His body moved on with him barely aware.

Sometimes he stopped, stomach heaving as he felt sick again, barely able to keep himself from spilling himself in the manner of a drunkard. He was clammy and feverish all at once. the sound of the blood pounding through his head deafened him, and the light of the sun did not seem a comfort at all to his eyes that squinted as though the well-meaning and bright light seemed to be darker now that he knew the depths of the dark.

He wanted to fight on.

The war was with masters and servants. No one normal could ever stand up to Berserker... either one really. No one could stand up to that. But no one said that he couldn't fight just because he lost a servant, right? It was dumb, it was incredibly dumb. What was he preserving this life for? for what purpose? for what promised day did he live?

If he didn't reach out for this, this chance that could give him a real life then he was already as good as dead.

Toshi walked with a vague destination in mind. He journeyed thinking of the church, dragging himself forward, deciding to continue on instead of just returning home, fueled by the trauma of recent events and the resolve that came with deciding that he wished to change his destiny. That obscene legend, that crazed girl. She managed to conquer that. Then these simple eyes, these accursed eyes.
He could conquer them.

Yeah.

There was no point in saying that he was alive as long as he lived bound by their cruel destiny.

How funny it was, that he saw hell and was now going to a church. It was almost like he was trying to be a convert or something. But there wasn't any time for that, even if it seemed as though the words of a convincing father, kind or cruel, would be intoxicating now. The embrace of god was nice, but what he needed was blood and glory. A wish, a wish. The others would kill and die for it. Was he really wagering something of his on their level? this shitty life of his?

Well, he'd just need to find more chips along the way. It didn't matter. He just needed to win.

Fate/Empty Providence

Streets of Shinto: Under the uncaring moon.

He could barely see it happen. So slow, slow. His words were slow, and even as the world spun and the sensation of pain blinded him he could feel the moments so small that they seemed like grains of sand slip by. The vital moments of destiny that fell before they had a chance to reach out for them.

Barely past the moment his words were said he felt the sting of a cut. He couldn’t feel that pain, not something nearly as small as that. It was the rush of wind, the force that pushed into him. The small nick wasn’t felt. There was too much going on to feel it. In comparison it would have almost been comforting. Hurt him hurt him, punish him, absolve him. All the wrongs he did, all the evils born from him must be paid for with pain. But that pain no not that pain that pain that pain that pain.

Something like mere physical pain would have been fine, even if it was the sensation of being boiled alive, or burned and melted down into a paste.

He was gone, Berserker was gone. Without even knowing things like the identity of his servant, knowing all that much of the war itself or even being able to stand a chance, he had lost. It was a half-baked participation that started with an accidental summoning. No one could blame him for the way things turned out. Yet…

He ran, ran as soon as Berserker disappeared, when the last mark faded away. He knew of defeat and knew that there was no reason to be there anymore. Turning away, hoping to flee from that hell that his mind would fall apart in, he ran.

It was like there was no sound, no life. Running through the city that seemed seeped in a complete darkness and pause, he could not hear even the steps of his feet as they struck the streets, nor hear the blood that seemed to boil in his body. It felt useless to run from that, after all it was an ultimate end, the final destination of a soul seeped in evil.

He never considered himself a good man.

He only stopped running when the ground suddenly rose to strike him. No, wait. He only just fell. That was all there was to it. The shock of the impact that suddenly struck him brought the world crashing back into his perception.

He felt the impact across his hands, his hip, his knees. But he didn't feel anything. Everything was dull, almost dead feeling. He rolled over to stare up at the moon. It looked comforting, it looked mocking, it looked judgemental. No, to begin with such perceptions and thoughts were just thoughts that he pushed into it. It was just a piece of rock in space.

What a half-assed attempt. Even if he wasn't what a master should be he still was intending to be as serious as he could be about this war. His hope at the moment of the fight was dashed away, and he felt the small niggling of hope, of the thought that perhaps he could attain a normal life swelling to make itself known before it was smothered.

Ah this ache. This ache he felt was a pain he didn't know, not even thanks to that hell. If that pain was of all the torments and curses that struck one with inevitability then this was a pain that one would never expect, even if it was realistic to know it would inevitability come.

This was what wanting something was like. His life he went for what was less bothersome, less painful. He danced around his vision, and never really stepped out towards something. Even if his vision was a thing there was more he could have done. Ah, in the end maybe he was just blaming it. No, it definitely was the fault of his eyes, but…

That didn't matter, whether he was to blame or they were to blame.

He began to feel things again. Warmth seeped through his body, but it felt like it was there only to be leached away by the voracious wind. His vision got blurry as the ache deepened.

He wanted it, that wish. He truly wanted it.

"Ah, damn it!..."

His voice came out as a croak as the first tears began to drop. Toshi stretched out his hand, no longer with the symbols of a master branded upon them, towards the distorted moon in his eyes.

It was definitely a mocking moon.

Even if it was too late, even knowing it was most pointless now of all times, he made a wish. He made a wish with his aching heart and spoke a wordless cry. He wanted the grail, he wanted to win. Then why? why did it have to be like this?

Even dying for the wish could have been more satisfying, but he couldn't find himself to want death even in this humiliation and heartbreak.

He wanted it.

Did he ever actually want anything else.

Ah. This is what real personal pain was. The ache was different, less abhorrent than the horrors of hell. Yet in a way it was just as disgusting. It was the tragedy and disgustingness of himself.

The Grail.

Why couldn't it have been his?

Feeling sorry for himself, perhaps as he had his entire life, he let out his tears and wept.