Imperial Privilege

I'm constantly conceiving and discarding story seeds, which has been the subject of many a blog post. But I (like to) think I'm finally zeroing in on a few concrete ideas that, at first blush, weren't related at all. Then I began to think more and more about them and saw how easily they could be sewn together as episodes in a much greater narrative.

The common theme? Shirou winds up fighting vampires in most of them.

But let's start at the beginning.

I've always enjoyed the cryptic comments that a work of fiction makes to past battles and heroic things going on just offscreen, so of course I salivate at the thought of things like the Autobot-Decepticon war before it reached Earth, the five-year gap between the seasons of Young Justice or the gratuitous hints that Nasu drops of unseen adventures.

Like what the demon hunter organization might have been like if it had survived to the present day
Like that time Shirou and Luvia are investigating Van Fem's Casa three years post-Grail War, as mentioned in Hollow (which means it's probably just a joke, but there's potential there)
Like that Grail War-scale conflict ten years after HGW #5 to dismantle the Grail once and for all

Arashi is kicking ass and taking names with that third one over on Hearts of the Suffering, and I'm sure any stab of mine I took at the concept would turn into Sixth Grail War Fanfic #12340879134.

So I got to thinking about what could possibly put Shirou and Luvia on a Dead Apostle's yacht. Well, shit, Imperial, where's the likeliest place for them to have met? And what route ends with Shirou at the Clock Tower? Unlimited Blade Works

Then I got to thinking what a waste it would be to dump the reader right into Shirou and Luvia being old friends dancing around the elephant in the room of their sexual tension. It's a fun story worth telling, but there's got to be more than that.

And then the ball was rolling.

For ease of reading, I'm going to spit out the titles and the blurbs in roughly chronological order, even though I came up with them in a very nonlinear way.

Shirou vs. vampires, the series

The Tower of Power

Post-UBW Shirou and Rin at the Clock Tower. More Rowling than Nasu as pseudo-muggle Shirou adapts to the whacky world of highborn magi, rife with politicking, snobbery and weird shit. Highlights include Shirou and Rin meeting Luvia, meeting Waver, attempts to conceal the existence of Shirou's Reality Marble, trying to keep consistent the highly edited version of the story of the Fifth Grail War they're peddling to the bigwigs and the Church, the Church's suspicions that the Tohsakas have assassinated two overseers in a row for trying to run "their" war, Rin trying to hold on to her title as Fuyuki's Second Owner under allegations of her family fucking up this Grail War business five too many times, Shirou expressing interest in joining the Battalion of Chron/Kelon, an appearance by Gazamy the Evil Spook and his Crystal Valley-tier Reality Marble and--of course--rumors of a vampire on school grounds

Witch Hunt

Having become frienemies, Rin and Luvia collaborate on a paper that comes dangerously close to spelling out what looks to be a workable basis for harnessing the Second Magic. They get saddled with Sealing Designations and the Nasutastic nicknames of Mary of July and Poppins of July (I'm still trying to think of what the hell would earn nicknames like those), which forces Shriou to bail them out with a vulgar display of Unlimited Blade Works. Now the hunt is really on. If The Tower of Power is Rowling, Witch Hunt is pure Araki. More episodic than Tower, focusing on Shirou and friends (including a few OCs who also got caught up in the mess for various reasons) fighting off several Enforcers and freelancers trying to collect the bounty on their heads. Right now, it's a little too formulaic for my tastes.

A magus shows up and has the team on the ropes with his gimmicky powers. Someone (usually Rin) figures out the mechanism behind it. Shirou pulls the right sword for the job out of his ass to counter their powers. Rinse and repeat.

Either way, the story would likely end with Merem Solomon reaching out to the group for an unspecified job that they may or may not take. Note to self: Find a way to make Church vampire Solomon's appearance in the story feel less out-of-the-blue when Shirou has been dealing with magi bounty hunters and the Association up until now

Untitled heist fic

Of course they take it. Shirou and co. are tasked with breaking into Burial HQ to collect a particular item for Solomon, which is a bit odd when he's Number Five and joined with the expectation he would have access to their toys. It's a hugely risky move when they're already wanted people, but Solomon promises that he will use his connections to kick up enough of a fuss with the Association that the heroes will drop off everyone's radar for a while. The question of whether Solomon or anyone else involved can be trusted is a running theme.

La Casa de los Muertos (or something else in Spanish because I'm feeling pretensious)

Rin has been kidnapped in the aftermath of the heist, and the clues lead Shiro and Luvia to Van Fem. (The rest of the team has died or gone into hiding over the course of the Witch Hunt or the heist story.) This story starts to get more Tsukihime, as the two of them go up against a DAA, learn about the Aylesbury ritual and will probably run into Ciel over the course of her investigation intended both to collect information on the ritual and to root out the Templar agents working with Van Fem out of a belief The Dark Six will usher in the end of days to wipe away the sinful and ascend the faithful. Sancraid Phahn cameo.

However it goes down, things start looping back to Fuyuki as Van Fem tells the gang Rin was kidnapped as a favor to even more powerful DAAs like Gransurg Blackmore, whose faith in the Aylesbury ritual is so slim that he has begun investigating longshots like the Heaven's Feel as an alternative.

Possible gratuitous Extra acknowledgement if I write in the revelation that former magus Blackmore doesn't believe Ortenrosse's magical theory behind the ritual is sound and will only serve to wound Gaia so severely she will stop producing mana. Also more practical concerns that Gaia shares his sentiment and will smite them all with the Counter Force for even trying

Magnificence

Seven Samurai, magi edition. A small town is menaced by Altrouge's lackey, Fina-Blood Svelten, who is scheduled to return to collect the boys he vampirized. The town's local magus recently passed away, and his protege breaks her mentor's isolationist teachings to seek out someone, anyone, who can help. Shirou Emiya is her first find. A rag tag bunch assembles: Shirou, Kairi Shishigou, Rotweill Berzinsky, the Pentel Brothers, Touko and the Jewel Killer.

While the other stories unfold over a three-year time period, Magnificence is seven years post-War. Though not the main thrust of the story, it deals with an older, more world-weary Shirou who is slowly slipping into a Heaven's Feel-like mindset of saving Rin above all else. He is alone now, having either lost Luvia or split up with her some time in the four year gap. (Further agony can be derived from the fact that he may have had a rebound/replacement relationship with Luvia in the four-year interim before it ended out of shame) He is a man against the world. In fact, most of the other magi come to the town with the intention of hunting him down and are only persuaded by appeals to their better nature or the prospect of raiding the dead magus's workshop (which the apprentice does not like one bit) as payment to help fend off the big, bad vampire and his harem-army of child-vampires.

Highlights of the story include Kairi trying and failing to bond with Shirou over how awesome his dad was at killing people, the Pentel Brothers proving their nickname of "the Gum Brothers" by spitting magical saliva with properties similar to chewing gum at vampires, "Silver Lizard" Berzinsky being a Kotomine-styled badass who gets by on his Lizard-themed martial arts more than magic, Touko generally not giving a shit, Kairi blowing Svelten's genitals off with his magic shotgun and a Reality Marble showdown that pits Svelten's Parade against Unlimited Blade Works

And now for something completely different

Entirely unrelated to all of the above is a story that begins with Shiki Ryougi being jumped by a knife-wielding assailant on her way home. It's not Lio, but Shiki Nanaya. (Because alternate universes and only one set of Mystic Eyes of Death Perception and junk) It turns out it was all an initiation to test Ryougi's skills and she if she has what it takes to help him with a problem he's not sure he can take care of on his own, which also gives him an opportunity to troll Ryougi for killing or depowering the others.

I'm not sure if it would be pre-Lio showdown, as she still struggles with the killer instinct Nanaya tries to nurture, or post, as he berates her for going soft. Lots of friction between the two as Nanaya is jealous of her Eyes and considers them wasted on her. Also a lot of compare/contrast as the two each represent different conclusions about their killer nature

May or may not turn into a full-blown Tsukihime cross if Nanaya's "problem" is an OC mixed blood who is more important as a plot device to bring them together for a charter piece or Nrvnqsr Chaos/Roa/Arcueid, which would involve a lot of high-intensity fight scenes at the expense of weakening the focus on the gleeful/reluctant killer angle