Imperial Privilege
Drawing Board (Part One)
by , January 29th, 2015 at 07:13 PM (4027 Views)
Shamelessly ripping off Vagrant
Let's sift through some ideas of mine that have been shelved or discarded. These are stories that had a bit more thought put into them than a lot of the scattered little nuggets I litter the Fanfic or Crossover Fanfic Idea Threads with. So they've come further and have a more coherent basis than a lot of my
scattershot. Ironically, the first one is actually spun off from a pitch of Zalgo's
Premise
tl;dr version: Tokiomi doesn't summon Gilgamesh, Kirei doesn't have his awakening, and Kirei and Kiritsugu effectively switch places. Kiritsugu has his heart replaced with Grail mud and goes full Terminator in the interim between wars, while Kirei lives as a shell of a man who never embraced his nature and adopts the equally empty Shirou.
Shirou Kotomine: A dispassionate child who modeled himself after his withdrawn, self-flagellating father. He has come to believe that passion is the root of all evil, suppressing anything that doesn't further God's grace and compassion. It's not so much that he's purely logical as he is loathe to give in to his base emotions, taking the "higher" path of a tool for God's will. Unfortunately, having been raised around a beautiful spitfire like Rin gives him all sorts of heartburn. He is deeply attracted to her, though the last ten years have been a master's course in how to bury it and feign disinterest. Whereas Kiritsugu was a horrible teacher, Kirei took Shirou's studies very seriously, passing on as much of his holy, magical and martial knowledge as possible. Having been saved by Kirei's surgical magecraft, Shirou's origin has shifted to Mending. This makes him a White Mage par excellence, although he still has a knack for fixing mechanical things. In practice, though, he's more of a Monk-White Mage (if we're sticking with Final Fantasy classes) combo, as he uses his Reinforcement to take his Bajiquan to the next level in a recklessly aggressive fighting style that allows him to heal off most damage as quickly as he takes it. However, because his healing is now a matter of his own magecraft, he is more vulnerable to knockout blows or anything else that disrupts his Circuits. Avalon was constantly active Regen status buff. This Shirou just constantly spams Curaga on himself as he punches things to death. He has lost his knack for copying Noble Phantasms, but the trade off is that he is now excellent at fixing them. He could conceivably glue a Broken Phantasm back together, given enough time.
Masters
Rin Tohsaka: Largely unchanged, although she is a touch more trollish, having come to enjoy getting under Shirou's skin as a petty little revenge against his father for allowing Tokiomi to perish. However, she gets a new sub-plot in the form of a sisterly rivalry. No, it's not Sakura.
Sakura Matou: Suddenly devout in light of Shirou's own conversion to the Church. The two are not on necessarily friendly terms, although she has developed a sort of savior obsession with him after he viciously beat Shinji when it came to Shirou's attention that he had done the same to Sakura. She still loves Shinji as her one and only brother, but she is secretly grateful for it. Her view toward Shirou has become less overtly romantic. He is more of a guardian angel in her mind, an agent sent to lift her up out of her sorry state.
Illyasviel von Einzbern: "Rescued" from the Einzberns by a mud-stained Kiritsugu to serve as his proxy in the Fifth War. He has drilled into her head that the Einzberns only saw her mother as a tool for their return to greatness, which seems like a pretty good and honest revelation until you see that it's all a mind game to make her the perfect little prana battery for Saber. Where Illya once hated him, she now adores him as the only person in the world who truly loves and understands her. In order to make the Grail War more acceptable to her sheltered and simplistic world view, he couches it in terms of a glorious contest of heroes where the most valiant shall surely win. She fights under the delusion that Kiritsugu will use his wish to revive her mother, although her fairy tale view of the world and her desperate desire to please her father lead to problems with Kiritsugu's pragmatism. On at least one occasion, she ignores her father's orders and marches Saber into battle with the Yggdra posse after they nearly killed Kiritsugu, relying on Saber's raw power and the purity of her intentions to see her through. After all, how could a glorious knight and a little girl fighting to save her mother possibly lose? They have justice on their side.
Misaya Reiroukan: A surprise entrant made possible by Kiritsugu having gunned down as many potential Masters as he could find in the ten years between the wars, she is actually Waver's Hail Mary toss. Knowing he will be assassinated as soon as he tries to go to Japan but deeply disturbed by the notion of someone like Kiritsugu winning a wish, Waver uses some non-Tower contacts to smuggle a summoning catalyst to the Reiroukan family. Misaya takes him up on the offer, not out of a desire to stop an evildoer but to spite the Tohsakas. When the Einzberns were looking for a Japanese collaborator to host the Heaven's Feel, they passed over the Reiroukans, which is an insult they still haven't forgotten. More to the point, Misaya is actually Tokiomi's bastard daughter, the result of a tryst between Misaya's mother and Tokiomi in his youth. The head of the Reiroukan family swallowed his pride, knowing the Tohsaka bloodline was stronger, and turned a blind eye to his fiancee's infidelity for the sake of a greater heir. Of course, it didn't make for a great home environment for Misaya, who is a twisted, vengeful sadist out to make a name for herself by walking over as many bodies as possible.
Darnic Preston Yggdramillennia: Darnic is introduced trying to get Waver to help him track down a student who stole a very valuable manuscript from a fellow professor. Waver smells Darnic's bullshit from a mile away as it actually spurs him to send the catalyst to Japan as the last straw, although he had been planning on doing it anyway. In reality, Darnic masterminded the theft and the student's entry into Japan, knowing he was far enough down the totem pole not to tip off Kiritsugu as a rival. Darnic arrives in Fuyuki just after the hostilities begin, when he knows Kiritsugu's attention has shifted to fighting present enemies instead of picking off future enemies, and makes contact with the student before killing him and taking Caster's contract for himself. He brings with him a posse consisting of Gordes for his mini-army of homunculus bodyguards, Celenike for her capacity to curse Masters to death without a straight fight, and Sagara as a local who can help them get a lay of the land.
Lancer: Son of the sun god Karna and the pivotal Servant of the story. It was his presence in the last war as Tokiomi and later Kirei's Servant that took the story off of its usual track. When Rin is sifting through her father's belongings at Shirou's urging to hurry up and summon a Servant, he notices a golden something fall out of his bag. Rin is more interested in the pendant, and Shirou irrationally pockets the item, which will later cause him no end of guilt and confusion. But it ultimately saves his life when Berserker attempts to invade the Church and the fragment of the gold that once sat in Karna's tooth prompts his summoning. He has no concrete memory of the last war or the intense rivalry with Saber that ended in him shattering the Grail on Kirei's order, but he is struck by an overwhelming sense of deja vu. It's something of a running joke that Karna very nearly breaks up the Shirou-Rin alliance multiple times. Rin initially writes him off as a weakling due to his Uncrowned Arms Mastership giving the impression that he's some no-name hero and encourages Shirou to break the contract rather than failing miserably with such a useless Servant. When she finally sees Karna in action, she realizes how far off the mark she was and accuses them of deliberately concealing Karna's true power from her as an underhanded trick. Finally, there's the simple fact that Karna's talent for scathing truths and withering comebacks makes him a nightmare for Rin and her magus facade.
Servants
Saber: Sharing in Kiritsugu's taint, Saber has assumed her Alter persona as Illyasviel's guardian and attack dog. Unlike Karna, she has a full and vivid memory of the last war and reserves a special breed of hatred for Karna. It was thanks to him that the Grail was lost and she has been reduced to this parody of her former self. She continues to despise Kiritsugu but tolerates his continued existence on the grounds that Illya is her best shot at victory. (If canon Saber would kill Shirou in the basement with too few affection points, it's not a stretch to think Alter would bear Kiritsugu as long as he's useful.) Her chief goal continues to be the wish to undo her past, but gutting Karna is a close second.
Archer: Same old Counter-Guardian, same old Master. But really most of his character is about being the fish out of water. He is the only person who knows how fundamentally wrong everything is, which throws him for a massive loop. Knowing that killing and disillusioning this Shirou is useless, he becomes more moody. He's apathetic rather than antagonistic, sullen rather than sarcastic. After throwing himself a pity party for a while and not doing very much for the war effort, he finally gets his ass in gear at the sight of Illya and a horribly twisted version of Saber taking orders from his living father, prompting him to use his Independent Action to enter the Einzbern forest alone in order to get some God damn answers. This goes about as well as you'd expect.
Caster: Another familiar face, Medea now finds herself partnered with a consummate magus in Darnic. This gives her more prana to work with and Gordes's homunculi to supplement her skeleton forces. Her MO is largely the same in spite of the buffs, but now there is a boat load more mind games and scheming gong on at Ryuudo as Medea, Darnic and Celenike threaten to piss away their team advantage trying to one up each other mid-legendary deathmatch.
Assassin: It's Kojiro again, but a murder mystery sub-plot emerges when he is suddenly killed by the erupting birth of True Assassin. Is it Zouken's doing again? Did Sakura replace her Berserker? Is Darnic running two Servants with Assassin as the back up in the event Medea tries to double cross him? Has Celenike already done the double crossing? Or is it the shifty new moderator, Sancraid Phahn, who has replaced the late Kirei? Before all of this happens, though, he has a blast fighting Karna.
Berserker: The infamous Dr. Jekyll from the Fate/Proto prequel who has responded to Sakura as a fellow magus with a monster inside that just wants to do good. He emerges as a father figure to Sakura and even goes so far as to try to change Shinji's ways, believing that if a man with a bloodstained past like him can change, even Shinji can do it. He is inarguably the nicest, most nobly intentioned Servants of the war. A pity that he turns into a slobbering, howling monstrosity with a knack for indiscriminately murdering anything and everything he comes across. Karna and the good doctor form an odd sort of rivalry to each other, as Jekyll wants to do good but can't and Karna doesn't care for good or evil as long as he serves his lord. Jekyll is appalled that a man with Karna's might and history of kindness is a mindless yes-man who fights for nothing more than his Master's satisfaction.
Rider: Misaya's Servant and Waver's trump card. Not actually Alexander. Waver thought about it, though. He ultimately decided on Achilles, reasoning that Kiritusu already knows Alex's tricks and Achilles is perhaps the most famous figure in Classical mythology, which will give him the firepower Misaya will need to stand up to the Saber that cleaved Cthulhu and Alex's cart. Unfortunately, Misaya hamstrings Achilles almost from the word go. She seals his spear inside of her warped space and burns a Command Seal telling him not to use his other Phantasms without her permission. Achilles is livid, likening her to Agamemnon, but the two strike up a rapport with each other once he learns of her killing curse. He is impressed that she would enter the Grail War even while she's dying and even more so that she has no real wish, only wanting to strike down her enemies and prove her worth (even if it's through the misguided desire to defeat her enemies with Achilles at less than full strength just to make it that much more humiliating for them). Achilles sees a lot of himself in her. She is a candle burning brightest just before she is snuffed out, hoping to leave her name and a trail of vanquished enemies in her wake. They wind up fucking like rabbits.
As you can see, I already had a lot of sub-plots and character beats fleshed out. No points for guessing that the final battle is Karna vs Arturia redux.
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