I do not own any of the original Fate series characters. Also, haven't finished Stay Night yet. For the sake of my story, the grail was never completed.


Accident

Daniel sighed as he stretched, watching the tiny ball of wind spin over his hand. He wasn't a great mage. He really only knew a couple of spells. But because he only knew a few, his family had made sure they were worth it. A ball of wind that packed all the force of a downburst into the size of a softball, a compressed blade of wind so long as he was holding an empty hilt, compressed barriers like bullets fired from his finger tips by miming a gun, telepathy, and barriers. He was actually rather skilled with barriers, according to his father. They were naturally strong, and he could augment them with his wind magic either to hide them or to strengthen them, though not by much if it was bigger than a beach ball. He was also creative enough to employ them in a variety of manners, some of which his father described as "an extension of his body."

However, even with his natural skill with barriers, and his naturally powerful wind magic attacks, he had yet to win a single practice duel. He and his friends who were mages would fight often, but he lost every time. For all of his skill with his own spells, they simply knew more, and several ways to counter them, along with his own naturally slow reaction time. By the time his brain registered the need to react, the spell was usually hitting him already. He didn't like fighting. And he hated the thought of killing. He had seen enough. And he was only eighteen.

"Hey Daniel, you going to try and summon a Servant?" one of his less welcome friends, Cameron, asked.

"Why would I do that?" Daniel asked. "You know I hate fighting. Why would I possibly want to voluntarily order one of the greatest heroes in history to waste their mana trying to keep me alive all in the hopes of getting some hunk of sacrilegious junk that stole the name of the Holy Grail?"

"Uh, because it could grant your one impossible dream," Cameron said.

Daniel grit his teeth, staring at the ground.

"Oh don't be like that," Cameron snorted, wincing sympathetically. "I'm sure you'll get a girlfriend eventually."

"Fuck you Cameron," Daniel chuckled weakly. "For your sake I pray you're finally smart enough to just shut your mouth and stop sassing yours. Otherwise you may end up being beaten by a girl yet again."

Cameron huffed before both began to laugh. Finally, Daniel stared up at the sky and sighed.

"I really can't believe some mage was so full of himself that he created a supposedly omnipotent wish granting device and named it the Holy Grail," Daniel said. "Disgusting pieces of shit."

"Dude, you do remember that you're a mage, right?" Cameron asked.

"Hardly," Daniel snorted. "I know, what, four spells? Besides, being a mage doesn't mean I can't be Christian, does it?"

"I suppose not," Cameron said. "You know, I think it's kind of funny how none of the Masters are ever chosen from our hemisphere. Britain's actually the furthest it's gotten. Probably for the best. Americans tend to be more, shoot first, torture for answers if they miraculously survive."

"That's what happens when your own government decides it wants to train terrorist groups to fight terrorist groups," Daniel said.

"Oh not this shit again," Cameron groaned. "Listen, I've gotta get home before Shanna decides to kill me. I'll see you around Daniel."

"Yeah, see you."

Cameron left and Daniel climbed into his beat up old truck, rumbling down the road back to his house, shutting the engine off with a fair bit of rattling. Probably more than there should have been, even for his truck. He walked into the house, heading into the basement and picking up his hilt and channeling mana into it, forming his wind blade. He liked that spell almost as much as his barriers. He could create a barrier blade as well, but the wind blade was sharper and easier to swing. It was also harder to see. He stared at the sword. The hilt was made of wood with a thick, round guard at the top, a small semi-sphere pommel, and a blade made entirely of wind extending from the opening a proper blade should occupy. It had the faintest of a blue glow from his mana, where as his barriers tended to shine with a cobalt light.

He slashed the sword once before taking his usual stance, hilt in his right hand, body sideways to where his opponent would be, hilt held over his right shoulder, the blade extended toward his invisible opponent. He began to go through the motions of his usual training, fencing with his imaginary foe for several minutes before letting the blade fade.

"So easy to kill imaginary foes," Daniel sighed, putting his hilt back on the small end table he used to hold his hilts.

He had several, but the wooden one was the lightest, so it was the one he preferred. Besides the end table, the room had several targets on one wall for target practice with his bullet spell. That was it.

Daniel walked up the stairs to the main floor and headed to the kitchen, getting some left over pizza from the refrigerator and taking out a slice, taking a bite as he turned on the TV. On the news, it was displaying a news story about several children disappearing a couple of towns over. He grimaced.

"Fucking sadist mages," he grumbled turning the channel. "What kind of sick fuck kidnaps children?"

He switched the channel again and again, eyes not really seeing any of it. Finally, he shut it off, heading to bed. As soon as the sun peeked through his window, he rolled out of bed, pulling on some sweat pants and a sweat shirt and left the house with his wooden hilt tucked into the back of his waistband. He took off at a fast jog down the road to the beach, then turned it into a sprint across the beach for a few hundred meters before turning back toward the streets, slowing to a stop as he reached a sewer access grate that was askew, dried blood beside the hole.

"This is a terrible idea," he mumbled, quietly dropping into the hole and walking down the tunnel, drawing his hilt.

He finally reached a large open area with support pillars like a parking garage but with a few inches of sewer water on the ground. He walked into the room, sensing himself passing through a barrier and sighing.

"Well that was certainly faster than I expected," a voice said as a man stepped around a pillar a little ways in front of him, a sadistic grin plastered across his dark-skinned face. "I was expecting the ceremony to be over when you arrived."

"What ceremony?" Daniel snarled.

"Simple," the man grinned gesturing behind Daniel.

Daniel turned just as torches blazed to life, illuminating dozens of mangled, mutilated, and barely recognizable corpses, all of them children. Daniel's entire body felt numb, even as it shook with rage.

"Uh oh, I think I struck a nerve!" the man sneered as a wind blade burst into life from Daniel's hilt, Daniel shooting forward, slashing at the man.

The man drew a folding knife, ducking under the slash before beginning to easily deflect the blows with his knife.

"Not bad," the man grinned. "If I didn't know any better, I'd actually say you were good enough to be a Master in the war."

Suddenly, three glowing red marks appeared on the back of his right hand as three triangles, formed into a larger one with a shorter inverted one in the middle of the rest. Then, two more people suddenly materialized on either side of the man. One, helped him by slamming a massive hammer into Daniel's chest, throwing him aside. The man grinned, standing as the second lunged, the pointed shaft of a golden khakkhara streaking toward his heart. Then, there was a flash of sparks and the ring of metal as someone appeared over Damian protectively. Damian stared up at the woman that had saved him. She wore a blue bell dress with a white blouse underneath, a silver cuirass, silver gauntlets, greaves, and had blonde hair in a braid and wrapped in a circle on the back of her head. In her hands was a sword made entirely of nearly-invisible wind.

"Are you alright Master?" she asked.

"Where...Where did you come from?" Daniel asked.

"You summoned me," she said, confused.

Suddenly, the man with the hammer appeared in front of her, hammer over his head. She reacted instantly, darting forward and slashing him across the torso. He staggered backward, blood splattering across the ground before the man roared in rage, darkness suddenly shooting off of him. The black cloak it had been wearing exploded off of its body, revealing a fur skirt, white pants under them, and a bare, scarred, heavily muscled torso with a pair of thin metal bangles just below his shoulder muscles.

"Berserker," the woman said, Daniel staring at her.

Berserker? As in the Servant? He looked back at the man as it shot forward, swinging its massive hammer downward at the woman with one hand, the woman leaping out of the way, the hammer shattering the ground. Daniel scrambled to his feet, grabbing his hilt and reforming his sword just as the man with the khakharra tossed his own cloak off, revealing that it was, in fact, not a man. The woman beneath the cloak had raven hair reaching down her back, a warm smile that contrasted heavily with the evil that practically shone from her poison green eyes, a beautiful face, a dark green dress cut very low on her rather large breasts, black heels, and long black fingernails ending in sharp points. Almost the exact moment the cloak left her body, the woman that had saved Daniel landed beside him, sword held ready and aimed at the woman.

"Morgana," the woman snarled.

"Well well," the other woman grinned. "I take it you've claimed the roll of Saber then? That's good. And you seemed to have lucked out. Your Master seems to be surprisingly useful, for a human."

"What are you two talking about?" Daniel asked. "What's going on? Who are you all?"

"You're such a simpleton," the man Daniel had attacked, who had been leaning against a pillar since the other two had appeared, smirked. "Allow me to clarify. The woman in the green dress is my Servant in the Holy Grail War, Caster. The one with the hammer, is a bit of a special case. A Servant of my Servant. He's a Berserker class."

"Wait, what?" Daniel asked. "Your Servant has a Servant?"

"By the time the war starts for real, we'll have an army of them," the man said. "Anyway, as you have a Servant of your own, now, I'm not allowed to kill you, so you may leave."

Daniel stared at him before nodding, turning and walking away from them, the woman that had saved him, Caster, apparently, following, never letting her guard down. Finally, they left the sewer and Daniel led her back to his house, opening the door and stepping out of the way. As she walked past him he sighed. He had a headache from trying to figure out what exactly had happened, and he doubted the headache would be going away soon.


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