//------------------------------//
// Act 1 - Re:Birth 
// Story: Fate - Clara Sole 
// by cullexoh 
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Act 1 – Re:Birth.

Shinjuku.

A city of countless desires that only truly shone in the darkness of night, where Gluttony and Lust bring forth avariciousness, violence, cajolery and a hunger for Fame and Glory so great that men and women alike would gladly sell their bodies and souls for a taste.

In this city where sinners Laughed and were likewise laughed at, where the innocent were devoured and in turn devoured others, where honor is traded like coin for momentary pleasures, a ritual was taking place that would have dire consequences on the world.


“Open, Oh Gate of Heaven! Bless us and bestow miracles upon us!"


Silence was the only response to Sagara Hyouma’s proclamation, the aspiring Summoner gazing reverently at the bloody summoning circle he’d painted on the roof of his apartment building, only to sigh as the glittering lights flickered out within seconds, leaving it as empty as his earlier attempts.

"This isn’t working…’ he sighed, slumping in disappointment as he reached into his coat and pulled out a cigarette, lighting one up and taking a long drag to calm his nerves.

As a Magus, Sagara was hardly the kind of person you would normally never expect to be allowed to participate in such a prestigious ritual as the Fuyuki Holy Grail War, considered by many to be the ultimate proving grounds for Magi, a Free-For-All battle to the death between Seven ‘Masters’ and their ‘Servants, Heroic Spirits summoned to do battle for the chance to claim that most sacred of prizes, the Legendary Holy Grail.

Well, to be fair, it wasn’t the actual Holy Grail, but beggars can’t be choosers and who was Sagara to contradict the people who had essentially created a nigh-omnipotent wish-granting device, only to literally put it on a plinth and challenge the world to come and claim it for themselves?

And besides, it wasn’t as if they had any say in the matter, for the only requirements for qualifying as a Master was that the participant had to possess a wish that could be granted by the grail, so in a sense, it could be said that the Grail itself had deemed Sagara worthy of participation.

Still, dubious qualifications aside, the fact remained that, as a Magus, Sagara Hyouma was decidedly second-rate, and that was being extremely generous. To make matters worse, the impossibility of his situation was only further compounded by the fact his clan's Magecraft was decidedly ill-suited for combat.

However, while this point of view might have been true in the Dark Ages, where wars were typically decided through tactics, might of arms or superior numbers, in more modern times it was often the more cunning foe who triumphed in the end, and the Sagara Family had gotten very good at being sneaky, to the point they bore the title of ‘Rat’ with pride.

Needed information to bury a political rival? The Sagara would dig up all the dirt you needed to thoroughly destroy both their lives and their careers. Wanted to grease the wheels of a particularly lucrative business deal? Pay them enough and they’d have the bastards signing away everything they owned just to get some semblance of privacy back.

So yeah, in the eyes of Magus Society, Sagara Hyouma was a second-rate rat, scavenging for scraps in the gutter. But so far as Shinjuku was concerned he was the King of Rats, having earned the title on the corpses of those unfortunate enough to cross his path, whether that involved interfering in his client’s best interests, or simply because he needed their lifeblood to compensate for his lack of talent, as was the case tonight.

It was for this reason in particular that Sagara was purposefully attempting to summon an Assassin type Servant. Well, that and the fact he highly doubted any of the other classes, bar possibly Caster, would ever consent to working with him even if he possessed the ability to bring out their full potential, and there was no way in hell he would willingly summon Berserker. 

However, in order to avoid the trademark flaw of the Assassin class, namely that the Servants summoned always tended to be some variation of Hassan IL-Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountain who was the origin of the word Assassin, he had used his resources to acquire the catalyst needed to summon a specific Heroic Spirit, arguably the most infamous Serial Killer of all time.

Some might consider it oxymoronic to refer to a Serial Killer as a ‘Hero’, but when you really got down to it were any of the so-called ‘True Heroes’ any different? As a wise man once said, 'everyone is the Hero of their own story', and at the end of the day a ‘Hero’ is simply another word for ‘Killer’, the only difference being how they are recorded by history.

Of course, he challenged you to find anyone who considered Jack The Ripper a ‘Hero’, but in all honesty he didn’t care what the bastard called himself so long as he was able to summon him.

‘Why isn’t this working?’ he sighed, scratching his head irritably whilst eyeing the blades he’d spent a mint to purchase, namely Jack the Ripper’s actual tools of death. So far as catalysts went, these should be tailor-made catalyst for summoning the Devil of Whitechapel, yet no matter how many times he performed the ritual, it always seemed to fail at the last second ‘Dammit, am I missing something?’

It wasn’t as if his lack of talent as a Magus was an issue, after all, according to his research the Grail itself was the one doing all the heavy lifting. All he, as the Master, was required to do at this juncture was act as a beacon of sorts, the actual summoning should’ve been pretty much automatic by that point.

“Maybe just putting the knives in the center isn’t enough…” he deduced, his devious little mind sparking with ingenuity as he considered the problem from another angle.

When you got right down to it, Jack the Ripper was a relatively ‘young’ legend, only about two-hundred years old at best, and to make matters worse the villain had never been caught, so there wasn’t even any concrete evidence that he’d existed aside from the knives. 

With that in mind, perhaps the ritual needed a little something extra to bind the Legend to the Ritual, an act of violence to confirm that these were, in fact, concrete evidence of Jack’s existence. And what could possibly be more fitting than to wet the Ripper’s blades with the blood of a whore?

The problem here, however, was that while Sagara was the ‘King of Rats’ in Shinjuku, that didn’t necessarily mean he could do as he pleased. For one thing, he was hardly the only Magus in Shinjuku, nor was he the most affluent, and those who did hold said distinction all had ties to the older crime families, both indirectly and directly.

Now normally they wouldn't have given Sagara a second glance, as they were usually preoccupied with testing each other’s defenses, which is just the way Sagara liked it. However, nothing would unite them faster than some ‘young punk’ trying to nab a slice of their prostitution rackets

It was for this reason that, despite his talents being tailor made for the role, Sagara hadn’t branched out into prostitution, as he really didn’t need the headache that would result from such an act.  By the same logic, he couldn’t just grab some random call-girl off the street without performing a background check, as odds were good doing so would come back to bite him in the ass, especially if the Ritual Failed again.

Fortunately for Sagara, he wouldn’t have to look far to find his sacrificial lamb, indeed, he had the perfect candidate waiting for him back at his penthouse, didn’t he? 

In all honesty he’d only kept her around as a cover and source of additional funding, masquerading as her ‘boyfriend’ in order to ward off any suspicions from his rivals early on in his career, occasionally making use of her ‘other talents’ in order to take the edge off, as all things considered she still had one killer bod.

However, while she’d been kind of cute in her own vapid way, in the end he’d grown tired of her, to the point he’d actually been considering having her off herself just so he could move on to greener pastures, so in hindsight this killed two birds with one stone.

“It’s not like she has any other uses.” He scoffed, tucking the knives inside his coat and incinerating the summoning circle with his discarded cigarette butt before making for the rooftop door. In the space of a few seconds, his eyes had already shifted from the cold calculating eyes of Sagara Hyouma, King of Rats, to the warm, innocent eyes of ‘Hikaru’, an up-and-coming night-club host, just another face in the City of Cravings, as indistinguishable from the next as a blank slate.

So you can probably imagine his surprise when, upon opening the door to the rooftop staircase, he was met with the business end of a fire-arm, the look of dumbstruck confusion lasting all of a second before the Magnum Round punched through his skull, decorating the abandoned rooftop with the contents of his sick little mind.





‘Bulls-eye.’ Sunset mused grimly, exhaling softly as she finished checking the corpse to ensure it wasn’t about to get up before holstering her piece and kneeling next to it and opening the attaché case she’d brought with her.

It had been ten years since that day in Fuyuki City. Ten Years since she was carried out of that hell by Emiya Kiritsugu, the self-proclaimed Magus who had taken her into his home and, despite his best efforts to the contrary, introduced her to the World of Magecraft. 

It hadn’t been a smooth introduction mind you. Indeed, Kiritsugu had gone to great lengths to avoid discussing Magecraft at all, but Sunset was nothing if not determined, and unlike Celestia Kiritsugu hadn’t had a millennium to reinforce his patience and was further handicapped due to having to fend off two over-eager redheads instead of just one.

In the end, the man had simply given in and set about instructing his charges to the best of his ability, which admittedly wasn’t all that great, though despite his claims Sunset suspected it had more to do with his failing health than his lack of skill.

While Kiritsugu might not have been the most knowledgeable of Teachers, having only ever invested in the more practical forms of Magecraft, there was no denying that his ability to use Magecraft had been rapidly declining since that day in the rubble, to the point that, five years down the line, he hadn’t even been able to use any at all.

Fortunately for Sunset, she’d already gotten a firm grasp of the basics by that point, enough so that she’d begun experimenting on her own, trying to reverse engineer familiar spells from home, only to be met with decidedly mixed-to-negative results due to the different rules regarding Magic in this universe.

To put it simply, Equestria had it easy, as not only was the air rich with ambient Mana, there wasn’t a force actively acting to suppress any attempts at subverting the so-called ‘Natural Order’, though considering the Equestrian stance on ‘normal’, that really wasn’t saying much.

Case in point, even before the founding of Equestria, it was almost unheard of for animals to fend for themselves, or for the weather to go un-managed, or for crops to flourish unless they had someone watching over them, even in communities where ponies were the minority.

Earth, on the other hand, was the exact opposite, with nature essentially doing as it pleased and taking considerable umbrage if anyone attempted to control it, or at least that had been the case for the past few millennia.

From what little Sunset had been able to gather on the subject, there had been a point when Earth had resembled Equestria, albeit considerably bloodier. This period was collectively referred to as the ‘Age of Gods’ or ‘Age of Myth’, a time when Higher Beings controlled aspects of the world, Phantasmal Species like Dragons, Unicorns and Pegasi roamed freely and Mages could perform feats of Magic that would turn even Celestia’s head.

Sadly, all good things must come to an end, though she used the term ‘Good’ lightly, as from what little she’d seen most of the ‘Gods’ were self-entitled jerks who cared little for Humanity despite relying on them for their survival. 

Regardless, by the time 700 BC rolled around, the so-called ‘Age of Gods’ ended, giving way to the short-lived ‘Age of Fairies’ before the sudden explosion of the Human Population kick-started the Age of Man, driving the Phantasmal Species to the Reverse Side of the World, as their very existence was a direct contrast to the new Laws of Physics this age had wrought.

It was almost ironic, really, that the one trait that Earth seemed to share with her homeland was that, at the end of the day, it followed the law of the most prosperous species on it’s surface.

Back home, this was undoubtedly the Ponies, who in local terms would follow the Laws of Magic, but here the Dominant Species was Mankind, whose natural curiosity drove them to tear-apart the unknown to make it understandable, thus giving rise to the Laws of Physics.

Unfortunately, without the Gods to manage the aspects of the world, something had to fill the gap to ensure mankind didn’t wind up killing themselves with their inherent stupidity. Thus, the Counter Force was born, a pair of Safety Devices formed by the World to defend against extinction.

One of these forces, Gaia, represented the Planet’s desire to survive, and would ensure that survival by suppressing anything that subverted the Natural Laws of The World, which with the coming of the Age of Man, included Magic.

Now that wasn’t to say that Magic had completely died out, but there was no denying that the Mages of today were a far-cry from the Mages of the Age of Gods.

Heck, even the definition of ‘Magic’ had changed over time, to the point there were only five so called ‘True Magics’ recognized by practitioners across the globe, with everything else being referred to as ‘mere’ Magecraft, which was just as vulnerable to being extinguished by the Will of The World as any other Physical Law.

To Sunset’s knowledge, the only place in all of Equestria which resembled Earth in any fashion was the Everfree Forest, supposedly the site of Celestia’s Original castle before Canterlot had been built, where the forest had been so rich with magic it had literally gained a form of sapience to the point it actively targeted anything that tried to use Magic within its boundaries, which included the sky directly overhead, so even Pegasi weren’t entirely safe.

While Gaia was not as direct in it’s attempts to curb Humanity’s stupidity, there was no denying the similarity between the Spirit of The World and the Spirit of The Everfree, to the point Sunset almost found it morbidly comforting. Almost being the key word.

‘Really should’ve seen that Psychiatrist…’ she mused, shaking her head to rid it of such morbid thoughts from her head in order to focus on the long, messy process of retrieving Sagara’s Magic Crest before it degraded with his life-force.

“Link, Start.” She intoned, a solar flare going off behind her eyeballs, a warm heat spreading through her body as glowing emerald lines spread out from her hands to Sagara’s corpse, forming complex circuit-like patterns on his flesh.

The Lifeblood of any Magus, Magic Circuits were what allowed mere mortals to combine their life-force, or Od, with the ambient Mana of the environment and convert it into Prana, the magical energy needed to perform Magecraft in this world. 

While the number of Magical Circuits a person was born with were typically decided at birth, it is possible to change that number artificially through a number of methods, and one of those Methods involved the development of a Thaumaturgical Crest.

Considered to be the most valuable treasure of Magi, each crest contained the accumulated Thaumaturgical knowledge of each Family Head, a literal Arcane Archive of every spell they had ever mastered or researched, passed down to their heirs to ensure their teachings would live on and guarded by their descendants with a zeal that bordered on fanatical.

What truly made Magic Crests so valuable, however, was that the longer the lineage, the more powerful the Crest would become, the spells stored within growing increasingly more stable with each passing generation, to the point the heir simply had to activate the crest to perform a Spell with the proficiency of a Master, even if he’d never studied it prior to receiving the Crest. 

As an added plus, the Crest could also reinforce the bearer’s own spell-casting and in some cases could keep them alive for as long as their Magical Energy lasted. It was for this reason that Magical Crests were highly valued, fetching a high-price from certain unscrupulous figures who wanted a fast way to improve their own social standing.

While the Sagara Clan were hardly the most influential of Magi, even a third-rate Crest could still net a tidy sum from the Association, if only for the difficulty in obtaining it in the first place.

Even between willing participants, the act of transferring a Crest was a risky procedure akin to organ transplantation, with the rate of success dependent on the compatibility of the circuits to their new host, to the point many a Magus Lineage had died out simply because none of their offspring were compatible with the Family Crest.

Needless to say, while the vast majority of the established lineages opted to obtain ‘genetic uniformity’ via inbreeding, citing that any ensuing genetic defects could be corrected with Magecraft, most of the more level-headed ones opted to instead transfer their crest slowly over the course of the recipient’s childhood, in order to better allow their body to acclimate to the changes.

However, there was window of opportunity where the rate of a successful transfer skyrocketed, and that was when the current crest-bearer died or suffered a fatal wound while there was still Magic in their body. 

In such an instance, the Magic Crest would act of its own accord to preserve the body long enough for it to be transferred to a new host, with older more powerful crests even managing to keep their hosts alive just long enough to perform the transfer themselves, in some cases literally altering itself to ensure it survived the transfer to the new host.

Normally this tactic would have at least resulted in some of the data stored within the crest being corrupted or lost despite the best efforts of those involved. It was therefore fortunate, and more than a little ironic, that Sunset’s inherent Sorcery Trait rendered such a concern null and void.

‘Not that the Sagara Clan had anything really worth protecting.’ She scoffed, shaking her head at how easy it was to circumvent the man’s defenses. A more experienced Magi would have had layers upon layers of Bounded Fields between them and any possible intruders, Sagara hadn’t even thought to hire a mundane bodyguard to stand outside the door.

‘Still, no point looking a gift-horse in the mouth,” she mused as the transfer finished, pausing briefly to frisk the corpse for more material valuables, quickly discovering the knives in their leather wrappings. 

“Come to mama.” She mused, re-wrapping the artifacts and tucking them into the hidden compartment of her attaché case, along with what few other valuables she could find, before rising to her feet, drawing a glowing sigil in the air with her free hand, looking on impassively as Sagara’s corpse promptly burst into flames. 

In a matter of minutes there would be nothing left of the King of Rats save ashes on the wind and a scorch mark on the rooftop. That being said, while forensics would be hard-pressed to tie Sunset to the Murder, the less time she spent hanging around the crime-scene the better.

And so once she was absolutely certain she’d retrieved anything that might connect her to the murder, the former Unicorn promptly turned on her heel and vanished with an audible crack, reappearing in a back-alley at the foot of the building, one hand pressed against the wall as a wave of vertigo washed over her.

‘Dammit, keep it together Sunset…’ she grit out, pressing her back against the wall so she could set the case down before reaching into her coat for her pack of cigarettes, just one of the many less-savory traits she’d inherited from Kiritsugu over the course of her apprenticeship, sighing in relief as she lit the cancer-stick with a snap of her fingers, taking a long, satisfying drag to settle herself before pulling out a disposable phone and dialed up her employer.

“Job’s done.” She reported, taking another drag as she waited for their response “Yeah I got the crest too. Nothing really valuable from my first glance but beggars can’t be choosers, right?”

“Indeed.” her contact mused, his tone carrying an undertone of distaste, as the theft of another Magus’ Crest was considered one of the worst crimes in Magus Society, unless of course it was claimed by right of conquest, which was simply a fancy way for the more established families to get away with murdering a lesser Magus whose research interested them “I trust you left no witnesses?”

“If by witnesses you mean ‘did anyone see me kill him’ then no.” she confirmed, “Someone probably noticed the fire on the roof though, what with all the monitoring devices they have these days.”

“Far be it from me to question your…methods…” her contact groused, his tone making it clear he’d like nothing more than to comment on her methods “But surely there was a more efficient way of disposing of his corpse?”

“I could’ve burnt the whole building down with him?” Sunset quipped, chuckling to herself as the man choked on the other end “Calm your tits Waver, I’m just yanking your chain. Besides, given how many toes he managed to step on, by this time next week the police will simply assume Sagara got taken out by one of his business rivals in a turf war.”

“That’s not the issue here!” her contact, Waver, snapped, though his tone implied he wasn’t so much angry with her as he was with himself for letting her get to him, as if he really should have known better, which in hindsight he really should have “And how many times have I told you not to address me as such?”

“I’ll start calling you by your title when you stop getting a hair up your ass about the ‘II’.” Sunset scoffed, chuckling to herself as the man cursed on the end of the line “More importantly, do you need me for anything else? Or can I call in a few vacation days?”

“So far as I’m aware there are no other pending issues that require your attention.” Waver groused, though his tone lacked any real resentment “Since you’re already in Japan, I suppose you’ll be stopping by to visit your brother?”

“Now that’d be telling.” Sunset chuckled, only to yelp as a sudden burning sensation on the back of her hand forced her to drop her phone “Shit! What the hell-?!” she swore, looking on in alarm as lines began to appear on the back of her hand, her eyes widening as it formed a familiar shape, one that she hadn’t seen in over ten years “That’s-!”

“Hikaru-?!” the sound of Waver calling out her alias snapped through her shock long enough to reach down to reclaim her discarded phone from the alley floor “What’s wrong? Were you attacked?!”

“I don’t know…” Sunset countered, her expression grim even as she used her afflicted hand to reach into her coat, the comforting weight of her handgun as she drew it from its holster doing wonders to settle her nerves as she pressed her back into a corner, the better to watch both entrances to the alley “The back of my hand started burning…and now there’s this weird mark.”

“Are you absolutely certain?” Waver demanded, the sudden intensity in his voice making it clear that he wasn’t messing around “Does your hand feel numb? Can you sense any form of malignant energy from the markings?”

“It burned like hell a few seconds ago but yeah, it’s kind of numb now.” Sunset confirmed, glancing at the symbol on the back of her hand with one eye while keeping an eye on her surroundings “Sagara’s crest doesn’t appear to have any serious curses recorded in it either, certainly nothing that would activate after his death. It just looks like an intricate tattoo.”

“But that’s not possible…” Waver protested, seemingly talking to himself “It’s far too early, it’s barely been a decade since the last time-!” As if remembering she was there he cleared his throat “Change of plans, I want you on the first plane back to London, no arguments.”

“What’s going on Waver?” Sunset demanded, more than a little unsettled by his shift in tone, as there were very few times he would actually go so far as to give her an order “Do you know something?”

“Far more than I’d like and less than I probably should.” Waver confessed cryptically, his tone decidedly grim “I won’t say anymore until you’re back, but if my suspicions are true we might have a War on our hands.”