Fate/Stay Night, Fate EXTRA, Fate Extella, Fate Hollow Ataraxia, Fate Grand Order, Fate Zero, Fate Kaleid Prisma Illya, Fate Apocrypha, Fate Prototype, Fate Requiem, Fate Strange/Fake and Fate Type/Redline are the creation and intellectual properties of Type-Moon and Nasu Kinoko.

"I'm sorry, Sempai," Tohsaka Sakura said, standing on Emiya Shirou's doorstep as soon as he went over to open it. She held a bread toaster between them, wisps of smoke still coming out of it. "But... Neesan stuck her hand in again."

The red haired young man blinked, then took the toaster, studying it carefully. "Geez, Tohsaka needs to start taking it easy when it comes to sandwiches. She didn't lose any fingers this time, did she?"

"Errrr... no," the purple haired girl said, shrugging. Technically she wasn't lying, she thought, they had managed to replace the missing pointer with a magical prosthesis after all. "Um, she'd like to know when-"

"I think it can be ready by Wednesday," Shirou estimated. "It doesn't look too bad, it might even be-"

A whole flank of the toaster creaked, fell off, and dropped on the living room's floor with a metallic clang.

"On second thought," Shirou said after a moment, "maybe you'd better come by Friday..."

Fate: Time and Punishment.

Based on an original screenplay by Greg Daniels and Dan Mc Grath.

It was a duel for the ages.

A battle of the titans.

A clash between two of history's greatest.

Old rivals pitted against each other yet again in a never ending conflict.

Shirou's ability to fix devices versus Rin's capacity to destroy them.

"Come on, come on," the student muttered feverishly in his workshop, late at night, sweaty after long hours of nonstop activity. Hunchbacked over his greatest challenge yet, oil stains all over his clothes, he pushed himself beyond the limits of his Reinforcing just to keep up with the damage brought by Tohsaka upon this poor, long suffering utensil. "I won't lose you yet!"

For a Hero of Justice, there is no small battle as long as it can make a woman happy, a household better fed, loafes of bread crispier and tastier. If Shirou wanted to prove himself he never could let Sakura down. No matter what. Puzzling as the damage caused by Rin could be, he hadn't lost a patient to her yet, and by golly, he wouldn't be starting tonight!

It probably was, he realized, a downgrade when compared to the fights his father had with that of the sisters, but still, a man had to do what a man had to do.

Still, he couldn't help but sighing wearily to himself by this point. Running a hand through his hair, he frowned at the pieces set before him on his work table. "She did a bad number on it this time, though! Let me see..." He ran his fingers across the pieces, synchronizing to the broken machine, analyzing the parts and the whole alike. "I think... this might just work!" he grinned, eyes glinting in golden as he started working again, fitting and screwing and applying mana with nearly obsessive effort. And lo, in no time from there, he was done.

He held the toaster before himself carefully, since already he'd experienced two disappointments, failed attempts to restart the poor thing only to be forced to start all over. However, this time he was fairly sure he'd done it. "Now let's just see, whether you're still toasted or not..." he hummed, pulling a soft, white leaf of sandwich from the bag by his side, and carefully sliding it in. He turned the toaster in and leaned closer, squinting to examine it with great care. "Come on, I know you can do it, don't you let me- Aaaaaaahhhh!" he had to yell, pulling back as electricity began crackling all over the toaster, then jumping out of it to shock him. "Ahhh, no, not like this, I wanted to die fighting terroriiiiiists...!"

Desperately, Shirou put his hands back on the toaster to turn it off, but then both of them- Shirou and Toaster, not both of Emiya's hands- disappeared at once, in a huge blue bolt of lightning.

"Where am I?!" Shirou screamed, tumbling down a strange place he'd never seen before, a manner of colorful tunnel with no apparent upside and downside, no certain left and right, a confusing Nowhere going in all directions at once. "What is this?! Is this hell?!"

There was no floor anywhere in sight, and he appeared to be floating, pulled along by an invisible force he couldn't fight. All he could do was keeping on holding onto the toaster, which thankfully wasn't shocking him anymore, instead drafting a pleasant fragance of fresh toasts. As he went by like this, Shirou noticed several clocks and watches of all sizes and sorts flying all around him, as if spun around by an overwhelming tornado.

"Somebody help me!" Shirou shouted, kicking around. "Anyone, please! I am- Oh, forget it, a true Hero must save himself!" he decided, trying to make sense of the strange situation he was in. "Calm down, Emiya, try to keep a clear mind on this. Maybe you're only having a death hallucination, that's all..."

He thought about it. "No, no, that's not right. People die when they are killed, after all. The forces of magic must have taken me somewhere else, to another plane of reality! Hey, maybe I'm in the Root now! Or is this... Second Magic?" he doubted. "That is what it was, right? Time travel, or travel between realities, which one? I wish Dad had ever explained..."

He heard something roar over his head, and lifted his gaze to see a white DeLorean flying by past him, soon disappearing into the featureless distance of this maddening non-place or whatever it was. "Okay, so maybe I'm hallucinating after all. Either that, or I have become the first non-Brazilian to travel across time."

A small white dog wearing glasses passed by him much closer than the car had, wagging a fore leg. "No, no, Shirou, you are the second non Brazilian to achieve that. Please keep your facts straight," the animal spoke.

The young, little ginger boy floating shortly behind the dog smiled. "You tell 'im, Mr. Peabody!"

"Shut up, Sherman," the dog told him, right before both of them were pulled up and out of sight, for parts unknown.

Shirou blinked. "Okay... Now that was strange..."

And then, all of a sudden, he found himself dropping on his butt on green grass, a clear blue sky now stretching over his head once again.

"Okay, this is much better, I guess," Shirou gave a sigh, wandering across the seemingly endless green prairie he'd been abandoned onto. Only a few trees scattered here and there in the distance gave some variety to the landscape, and only the chirping of passing birds gave any sound to the surroundings. "If I'm truly lost in time or something, at least I'm not in the age of dinosaurs. That's got to count for something, right?"

After more than half a hour of marching aimlessly and stopping briefly under each tree's shade to gather his thoughts as best as possible, Shirou heard a rumbling of hooves in the distance. Smiling to himself, he looked in the direction of the incoming animals, only to gasp in awe at the sight of a small number of horseback Medieval knights galloping towards him.

Real, living and breathing armored knights of yore, the Legendary Heroes of song and epic! That, or he'd been taken to some North American Renaissance Fair. Either way, these people were his best shot of getting back home right now, so he waved his arms up, still holding the toaster in a hand. "Hey, everyone...! Sorry to disturb, I think I've lost my way...!"

The knights came to a halt before Shirou, the small figure at the lead staring down at him with a cold scowl. Shirou blinked curiously at the sight of this person. It was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, with a delicate and fair face that was nonetheless icy and devoid of feelings. Her eyes were large, round and light green, and her hair a pale shade of golden blonde, pulled back into a small bun. She wore a long dress of regal blue cloth, along with a metal chestplate and armored gauntlets and boots. The reins of her gigantic horse firmly held in her hands, and on her waist the sturdy sheath of a large sword, perhaps too big for her petite size.

"Hark, stranger!" she addressed him in a foreign language, bathed from behind by the direct sunlight giving her an even more regal appearance, with a calm and aloof voice. "What are you doing in the wilderness, so far from any village? State your business and place of residence."

"Geh…!" Shirou stuttered, too shocked to say anything else. "What...?"

A very large man in white armor with a very large sword spoke from the next horse. "My Liege, he clearly cannot understand you. I think he might be a foreign spy..."

"N-No, of course I can understand you!" Shirou gasped, waving his hands before himself. "You're talking English, after all! The universal language! I pay attention in Negi-sensei's classes, after all!"

That plot hindrance all too conveniently sorted out, the beautiful woman in blue kept on speaking. "In that case, you don't have an excuse for your hesitation. What is it about us that troubles you so?"

Shirou blinked. "Um, perhaps you couldn't hear me before, but I'm lost, completely stranded away from home. I don't even know how I got here, I only can suspect this toaster may have something to do with it..."

A knight in a white and red armor concealing their whole figure, armed with a similarly red and white blade, leaned ahead with piqued curiosity. "What manner of sorcery is this?" the stranger asked, voice echoing within a horned helmet obscuring their every feature. "Speak, peasant! What is the purpose of this contraption?!"

"Ah... It toastes bread? If it still works?" Shirou replied dubiously, daring to press on the toaster's handle, and causing the well done leaf of bread spring up, with a pleasant musical sound. "Whaddya know, it does! Well, Sakura will be happy!"

The young woman in blue sniffed, then reached down and snatched the bread away from Shirou, hastily putting it in her mouth and happily wolfing it down.

The knights gathered around her all tensed in their armors, making them clang as they rattled in shock. "Your Majesty!" a knight with no helmet on and showing a handsome face topped by golden short hair protested. "What if that is poisoned?! We can't just trust any stranger with unknown accents we happen to find along our way!"

"This was delicious," the young lady approved, delicately wiping tiny crumbs off her lips with two fingers. "Tell me, boy, would you happen to have more of these on your person?"

"Ah, no, sorry, I left the rest of the bag back at home," Shirou said. "How do you do? I'm Emiya Shirou, and you would be...?"

"I am Arthur, King of Bretons," the woman proudly said, chin high with the poise befitting a royal. "I am the Master of these lands, and these my men, the Knights of the Round."

Shirou blinked again, now looking at three of the other knights, namely a busty short haired person in all too skimpy black armor and carrying a masive shield dwarfing her on size on her back, what had to be a cute girl wearing armor a size or two too big for her and wielding a titanic jousting lance, and a pigtailed blonde in white breastplate and matching short skirt, her left arm a giant of a piece of machinery more fitting some anime mecha than a girl that short and frail looking. "... your men... I see..." he trailed off.

King Arthur sighed in exasperation. "A foreigner no doubt... We should stop by here while we question him regardless, O Knights. Galahad's mount is looking like it wants to fall over again and probably needs a rest."

"I keep telling you we should just put the shield in a car and pull it along the way!" the knight with horns protested. "This poor animal...!"

"We are looking for the Holy Grail, the most important of all treasures under the sun," King Arthur explained solemnly as they all sat in a wide circle on the grass. Not that it was easy for the Knight with Horns, stuck in that sharp looking monstrosity. All in all the King had to have it the easiest, which Shirou supposed was logical since she was the king. "The Cup that held the blood of the Lord, currently held hostage by the faithless. With that purpose, I have set out with Sir Lancelot..."

"Aye," the tall man in white armor and sporting purple hair raised his hand.

"... Sir Gawain..."

The blonde man also raised his hand with a smile. "Always in the service of Camelot and our king!"

"... Sir Galahad..."

The girl in the black armor that was more like a black onepiece swimsuit with boots and gauntlets shyly raised her hand. "Pleased to make your acquaintance."

"... Sir Bedivere..."

"Right here!" the pigtailed girl raised her humongous metallic arm, somehow not collapsing under its weight.

"... Sir Agravain..."

A brooding, pale skinned man with black hair wearing sinister black armor muttered "Perhaps we shouldn't be giving our names to this outsider, My Lord..."

"Let even our enemies know our names so they can fear us from our actions," Arthur lectured. "Then there's Sir Mordred..."

"Yo. I mean, hail Britannia and the ever lasting crown!" said the horned knight, ignoring the sudden stare of shock Shirou was giving them at the recognition of their name.

"... Sir Gareth..."

The girl in the ill fitting armor smiled, struggling to keep her helmet in place, blond strands of hair brushing down on her face from around the corners of the visor. "Greetings, young sir!"

"... and last but never the least, the pride of our numbers, bravest of us all, Sir Robin," Arthur said, bowing along the others towards a dumbly smiling man with long, curly hair, beard and moustache.

Four minstrels appeared suddenly behind this man, singing loudly, "Bravely bold Sir Robin, brought forth from Camelot. He was not afraid to die. For brave Sir Robin, he was not at all afraid to be killed in nasty ways. Pray, pray, pray, pray, Sir Robin. He was not in the least scared to be mashed into a pole or to have his eyes stuck out and his elbows broken. To have his kneecaps split and his body burned away. And his limbs all hacked and mangled. Brave Sir Robin, his head smashed in and his heart cut out and his liver removed and his bowels flattened and-"

Sir Robin waved a hand up. "That's enough music for now!"

Shirou blinked a few times as the minstrels walked away. "Where... where did they come from...?"

"Secret of their trade," Arthur said. "Now, Emiya Shirou, where are you from?"

"Japan."

"Where is that?" Agravain asked.

"Across the ocean, past the far East of Asia," Shirou swung a hand up towards the Orient, the knights' eyes following in fascination. "It's a land of, uh, lascivous fox demons, brave samurai warriors living and dying for their blade, and karaoke bars and pachinko machines."

"What are karaoke and pachinko? Are they things to eat?" Arthur asked with a perfectly straight face.

"Not exactly..." Shirou said. "In a karaoke, you can just go and sing all night long, provided you pay your stay and-"

"We have those too, we call them taverns," Lancelot said as all other Knights nodded.

"Of course you would know everything about that..." Galahad muttered under her breath.

Shirou sweatdropped. "And pachinko machines are these games of random designed to take your money away for the mob, but that's okay because everyone knows, and as long as the money's given willingly and everyone's having a good time, no harm done..."

"Your country sure sounds stupid," Sir Mordred bluntly told him.

"Hey!" an offended Shirou snapped. "We have the best police and health systems in the world!"

"I doubt that," Arthur said. "Our punitive head cutting system is second to none, and our doctors are the best this world have to offer. They... wash their hands!"

"Under our King, we went from being a country where everyone but the king was covered in shit to only have fifty percent of the population covered in shit," Gawain said with brimming pride.

Arthur nodded with great profundity. "My dream is for a Britain where nobody is ever covered in shit unless that is their fetish. They have called me a dreaming madman, but I know it can be done..."

Every knight in the group turned adoring eyes to her as she looked at the skies, the sunlight framing her even more majestically now.

Shirou stared on, dumbfounded. "I... I see! Wait, but where are Sir Kay, Sir Palamedes, Sir Bors, Sir Balin, Sir Tristan, Sir Percival and Sir Ywain?"

"Ah, so you do know about us," Lancelot said accusingly. "Well, someone had to stay and look after Camelot in our absence, from all the vile foreigners sending spies to our lands, wouldn't you think so, young gentleman from Japan...?"

Galahad frowned and slapped him in the back of the head. "You're a foreigner yourself!"

"Galahad," Arthur said. "Lancelot does have a point. Shirou's story is weak and doesn't hold well on its own. So we are to take him as our prisoner of war."

"Aren't we going to just behead him?" Mordred visibly blinked from within the mysteries of the helmet.

"No," the king denied. "He is to cook our bread into this toasted delicacy so we will taste something decent for a chance. Gawain, you are thusly promoted to... Lead Scout, let us say."

Gawain looked greatly rattled and heartbroken. "I'm not the cook anymore?! What did I ever do, Sire?!"

Lancelot glanced aside and sighed discreetly. "On the other hand, perhaps the stranger can stay after all. Even if he attempts to poison us, he couldn't do any worse than Gawain."

"If you liked French cuisine so much you could have stayed back there...!" Gawain pointed a finger at him.

"Brother, no...!" Gareth said.

Shirou just sat perfectly still there, at these heroes of epic and song from yore. And internally wept a little.

"Oh, so the shield doesn't get a car, but the prisoner does!" Sir Mordred complained, while the Knights kept on riding southward, with Shirou stuck in a small car pulled along by Arthur's horse.

"It's a mere matter of humanity," the King said, spurring her stallion down the endless prairie.

"But, the horse...!" Mordred insisted, pointing at Galahad's poor animal of choice, panting under the weight of the collossal shield. This is how we can see how inhuman Arthur had become in her role as the Perfect King, since Wart's heart would have broken at such a sight.

Now they had arrived upon a river, where two knights were dueling on a bridge with giant longswords. One was dressed in green armor, and the other in black.

The Knights stopped to watch the fight. Shirou took a hand to his stomach. "Oh, thank you, God..."

The two knights on the bridge promptly went on to attempting to maul each other in many various ways and with many different tools of medieval weaponry. Finally, when the green warrior was charging the black one with a battle axe, the black knight threw his sword straight through the eye slit in the green knight's helmet.

"Oh, good one!" Lancelot said. "Eight points!"

"It's worth naught but a seven," Gawain disdainously said.

"Six point thirty five, I would say," Arthur coldly stated.

Shirou pointed up and gagged. "Are you seriously going to let them kill each other?!"

"Well, you go stop them then," Lancelot said.

Shirou began getting up from the car, but Mordred knocked him in the head with a gauntlet and back down into it.

The green knight was now falling to the ground, bleeding copiously. The black knight stepped ahead, pulling his bloodstained sword out of the helmet. Arthur, with a mild arching of an eyebrow, dismounted and walked onto the bridge, addressing the victor.

"You fight with the strength of many men, sir knight," she congratulated him. "What is your name?"

"Black Knight," he said.

"So I see. That is a good name. Precise. I am Arthur, king of the Bretons."

"So what?"

"I seek the finest and the bravest knights in the land to join me at my court at Camelot. You have proved yourself worthy. Will you join me?"

Shirou blinked a few times. "Is that all it takes?!" he asked Mordred, bewildered.

"Shut up, don't question his decisions, fool!" Mordred just punched him back down again.

"Nay," the Black Knight said. "Camelot is a silly place."

Arthur shook her head. "You make me sad. So be it! Come forth, men!"

Before the riders could approach, however, the Black Knight held a hand up and bellowed, "NONE SHALL PASS!"

"What?" Arthur paused.

"NONE SHALL PASS!" he repeated himself.

"I have no quarrel with you, good sir knight, but I must cross this bridge," she argued. "The Holy Grail is on the other side after all."

"THEN YOU SHALL DIE!"

Arthur scowled deeply. "I command you, as king of the Bretons, to stand aside!"

"I MOVE FOR NO MAN!"

"Um," Shirou pointed out from below, "but she is a-!"

This time it was Agravain who punched him down. Mordred thanked him with a nod.

And so, Arthur and the Black Knight began battling, with the former, relatively unencumbered by armor, having no difficulties dodging the heavier but much slower strikes of her adversary. Only every so often their swords would encounter each other, clanging together in a way that resounded all through the landscape.

Shirou looked at the Knights of the Round. "Aren't you, um, going to put a stop to this? What's the point? They might kill each other, it doesn't have to be this way..."

"This is the King's battle to fight," Gawain observed stoically. "We couldn't call ourselves his men were we to interrupt a duel one on one."

"Besides, whenever Sin Lancelot fights he brutally breaks everything around him, and we really need that bridge standing," Galahad quietly added.

Lancelot looked wounded. "It's more a fifty-fifty thing...!"

Finally, Arthur dodged a really close strike, enough as to step aside, find a close quarters opening, and cleanly cut the Black Knight's left arm off with her sword. Blood spurted in a geyser from the Knight's open shoulder, creeping the hell out of Shirou.

"Now stand aside, worthy adversary!" Arthur warned after stepping back.

Far from being intimidated, the Black Knight growled, undaunted. "'Tis but a scratch!"

"A scratch? Your arm's off!" she protested.

"No, it isn't!" he claimed.

Angrily, she pointed down at the arm on the bridge's floor and demanded, "What's that, then?"

Her enemy looked at it for a moment and gruffly said after a reluctant pause: "I've had worse!"

"You liar!" Arthur said.

"Come on, you pansy!" he challenged her again.

With a grunt of fury, Arthur charged ahead once again, swinging in full force and slicing off the Knight's other arm. "Look, you stupid bastard, you've got no arms left!" she pointed out then.

"Just a flesh wound!" the Black Knight replied, blood flowing out of his stumps in all directions.

With a rough sigh of exasperation, Arthur struck yet again, this time cutting the Knight's left leg and leaving him awkwardly tittering on one booted foot, spraying blood everywhere.

This seemed to really anger the Black Knight now. "Right! I'll do you for that!"

"You'll do what?!" a fully disbelieving Arthur cried. "What are you going to do, bleed on me!?"

"I'm invincible!"

"You're a loony," Arthur sneered, shaking her head before waving her sword one last time, now chopping the final limb left, so the Black Knight's armored torso dropped on the floor with a loud clang. Exhaling in faint dismay, she walked past him towards her destination, even though the dismembered Knight kept on shouting furiously at her.

"Ooh, ooh, I see, running away, eh? YOU YELLOW BASTARD! Come back here and take what's coming to you! I'll bite your legs off!" As the rest of the Round Table crossed the bridge, pulling the car with Shirou in it along, he still kept on threatening. "You too, bunch of girls, literal girls! Grrrr! Pffft! You don't stand a chance as long as I am-"

Without glancing at him, Mordred punted the torso off the bridge and into the water below.

"That," Shirou said, "was a little bit extreme, I think."

"La la la la, I cannot hear or understand what you say in your perverse alien language..." Mordred sing-sang.

Many were the adventures and travails of A Japanese Hero of Justice Wannabe in King Arthur's (Traveling) Court over the next few days, and it would be folly to try and chronicle them all. Suffice to say for now, at some point the Knights decided to split in teams to better look for the Grail, and during the pulling of the straws Shirou was chosen to depart with Sir Lancelot.

Neither was particularly contented with this, but least of all King Arthur, who would now have to do without Shirou's delicious bonfire cooking and his toasted bread. However, even the King could not oppose the decree of the straws, and so Lancelot and Shirou and his car traveled the mountains alone for days, until reaching a most dangerous place.

A fair maiden bowed to Lancelot and Emiya at the front halls of this greatly ominous palace. "Welcome, gentle sir Knight, and youthful sir Squire. Welcome to the Castle Anthrax!"

"The Castle Anthrax?" Lancelot replied dubiously.

"That doesn't seem to be a very healthy name," Shirou said.

She nodded demurely. "Yes, it's not a very good name, is it? Oh, but we are nice, and we will attend to your every, every need."

"Oh," the just as beautiful young lady standing next to her told them, "I am afraid our life must seem very dull and quiet compared to yours. We are but eight-score young blonds and brunettes, all between sixteen and nineteen and a half, cut off in this castle with no one to protect us. Oooh, it is a lonely life: Bathing, dressing, undressing, making exciting underwear. We are just not used to handsome knights or boyish squires."

"You must spank her well, and after you are done with her, you may deal with her as you like, and then spank me," a third lovely maiden said, bowing her head respectfully.

Several young nuns appeared arount the maidens, excitedly saying, "And me. And me too. And me!"

"Yes," the third maiden nodded firmly. "Yes, you must give us all a good spanking. And after the spanking, the oral sex."

"The oral... what...?" Shirou swallowed hard.

Lancelot blinked. "Well... I could stay a bit longer..."

Then, valiantly and with great flashiness, the Knight of the Shield broke in through the window, heroically grabbed the stunned older warrior and the hapless foreigner, and heroically ran away with them, out the castle's entrance.

"I'm glad, I was in the nick of time. You were in great peril!" Galahad said while running.

"I don't think I was..." Lancelot muttered under his breath.

" Yes, you were. You were in terrible peril!" Galahad insisted.

" Look," he told her, "let me go back in there and face the peril."

"No, it's far too perilous!"

"Look, it's my duty as a knight to sample as much peril as I can," he reminded her.

"I think," Shirou said in an extremely quiet voice, "I shouldn't be running from the peril either..."

"No, we've got to find the Holy Grail. Come on!" she said, pulling along rather more strongly now.

"Oh, will you let us have just a little bit of peril!?" Lancelot complained.

"No. It's unhealthy!"

"I bet you're gay," he grouched.

"I'm a woman!" she growled.

"Oh, that's right, I keep on forgetting..."

And so, finally, after so many more trials and tribulations, King Arthur, her loyal Knights, and the man with the toaster had reached the cavern where the Holy Grail itself was hosted. They had lost brave Sir Robin, his minstrels whom they had to eat, and poor, unfortunate Sir Not Appearing in This Fanfic, but after facing the three tests of the Cave, they had finally reached the depths of the most sacred chamber.

With wide, starry eyes more fitting a child than a King, Arthur reached over to touch the Grail, glowing in precious golden at the end of the room. "It's so beautiful..." she whispered in reverence.

"W-Wait!" Bedivere said, holding her hand back before she could make contact. "What if it's dangerous?"

"A knight doesn't run away from peril," Arthur reminded her.

Lancelot glared at Galahad. "I told you so!"

Galahad threw her hands up. "I regret nothing!"

"But Sire, you know the stories about the Grail!" Bedivere insisted. "Only those without any darkness in their hearts can touch the Grail and survive!"

Gawain gasped, scandalized. "Bedivere! Are you implying our sovereign, the Perfect King, could have anything but light in his heart?!"

Mordred took a fist to their mouth and coughed something that rhymed with 'Hip of Pay Bay.'

"Th-That was a necessary deed for the survival of the kingdom!" Gawain growled, frustrated. "There's no evil in the King's heart whatsoever!"

Bedivere pouted, then produced a pair of scissors out of her giant gauntlet arm and held them around the King's ahoge.

The other Knights grew all stiff in terror, while Shirou only blinked without understanding. "No! In the name of all that is holy, don't do that!" Agravain all but begged.

Bedivere sighed. "Sire," she told Arthur, "while I don't doubt the nobility of your intentions, there is only one of us who could obtain the Grail. Galahad the Pure!" she pointed at Galahad, who just blinked a few times, now as confused as Shirou. "Yes, the only one of us who could sit on the Siege Perilous and live!"

"W-Wait, are you saying that's the reason you always leave that chair for me?" the girl in the black mini-armor asked. "Because it would kill anyone else? Did you even think, the first time I sat there, that I could-?"

"Bedivere," Arthur interrupted her, addressing the twin tailed Knight. "As the second oldest serving of my men, I respect your opinion and wisdom above that of all others. I'm sorry I was blinded by the allure of the Grail. You are correct, of course, that is why you are the intellect of our operation, even if you thought witches were made of wood..."

"... wait," Lancelot took pause. "They aren't?!"

Arthur bowed her head to Galahad. "Claim the Grail in the name of Christianity, Sir Galahad. Now I see that is the task you were born for."

"I don't know, Sire, maybe the officially designed Head Scout should do it!" an offended Galahad argued, pointing at Gawain.

Gawain whistled, looking aside and dragging a foot around. "I never had anyone addressing me as 'the Pure', that is for certain..."

Galahad stopped herself from further arguing, staring all around, and examining the faces of all others. Shirou felt sympathy for her then, and began, "Um, you know, maybe you don't have to do this if you really don't want to..."

Galahad sighed. "No. No, it's okay. Fine. I'll do it..."

As she began walking towards the blessed cup, a tiny Kiritsugu angel popped up on Shirou's right shoulder. "Don't let it come to pass, my son. How can you stand aside while a lady sacrifices herself?"

Another tiny Kiritsugu angel appeared on Shirou's left shoulder. "No, Shirou, you cannot change the course of history. Galahad is meant to fulfill her fate as a hero, much the way you are to meet yours. Now, what you should do is stop doubting and denounce Mordred's treachery to King Arthur..."

"Hey!" the first Kiritsugu angel shouted. "That counts as changing history, too! Do you have any idea what could that do to our present day?! How many lives you could be endangering?!"

The second angel pointed a gun at him. "And how many lives will be lost if you just let this asshole betray his country, you damned idiot?! Stop putting unheroic ideas in my son's mind!"

"YOUR son?! He is MY son!"

"Don't fight, don't fight!" Shirou sighed, shaking them both off his shoulders as the Knight of the Shield reached up to cup her hands around the Grail. "Um, Galahad-san! There's something you should know... about Mo-san!"

Mordred spun around to look at him, surprised. "What do I have to do with anything of this?!"

Shirou took a hand to his face and groaned. "I mean, come to think about it, it should be about Lancelot... or about the Queen, I suppose... or about... Argh, I don't know anything anymore!"

Lancelot scowled down at him. "Have you just implied anything at all about the Queen, son...?"

Then Galahad touched the Grail itself. And the whole room was bathed in a blinding, all encompassing flash of white light. Shirou's toaster began buzzing madly on its own volition, even as the light subsided just as fast and black, oozing tendrils began flowing out of the cup, causing Galahad to drop it with a cry of disgust. The Grail shattered on the stone floor and its contents spilled everywhere, growing and expanding, and absolute, evil blackness towering over them all, with an evil laugh coming out of nowhere and everywhere at once...

"Oh, so Sir Galahad the Pure wasn't so pure after all," Agravain deadpanned. "What a shock, how could we ever have expected anything like this from the illegitimate child of a man-whore..."

"Hey, there's no need to go around calling names now!" Lancelot said, unsheating his weapon along Gawain and Gareth. "You know, either way, this brings too many disturbing theological implications I'm not sure I want to think about..."

Gareth shrugged. "Eh, let's just agree it was a phony relic and we'll sleep better. I told you we shouldn't have trusted an enchanter calling himself 'Tim'..."

"Y-Your Majesty!" Shirou yelled at Arthur. "Please, just run away!" he yelled at her. "England depends on you, you still can escape…!"

"England, what's that? You are speaking nonsense, Shirou. Calm down, everyone. Have faith," she said, lifting her sword and aiming it squarely at the unnamable things sprouting and expanding from that Grail.

Galahad gulped, stepping before all the others to shield them with her oversized, well, shield. "Take cover, all of you!" she shouted. "And block your ears too! This is going to hurt...!"

The tendrils of living darkness shook and rumbled, and then roared, drowning Arthur's words as she shouted them. Shirou, wide eyed, could see the extensions being shot downwards, flying towards them, and then Gareth drew him violently into the protective embrace, pressing him against herself, whispering an apology, just as he heard the King's final exclamation, somehow managing to rise over the rumbling and the toaster's mad buzzing. Her blade finally attained all of its golden glory, with a blinding burst of light that flew upwards, vaporizing the incoming tentacles in its blazing wake, and zooming past them and directly into the main mass of the blasphemous things.

"EXCALIBUR!"

Shirou managed to blink yet, truly astonished as he glanced over Gareth's shoulder and Galahad's shield. "Oh," he quietly said. "On the plus side, this isn't such a bad dea—"

And then everything around him blew up.

Emiya Shirou woke up with a start, on his back on the floor of his workshop, and with a broken toaster on his chest.

He jolted up to a sitting position and looked around the room, dawn's early light filtering through the window and delicately bathing the surroundings. "Oh... Oh, thank goodness, it was all a dream," he told himself. "It's a horrible cliche, but I can live with that."

He dusted himself off while standing up, setting the shattered toaster back on the work table. "I'll have to buy Sakura a spare and apologize," he told himself. "That's not so bad, it's funny how now I can see a lot of things with more perspective."

Whistling, he walked back into the house, pulled his shirt off, and marched towards the bathroom. "Man, I smell as if I'd really spent weeks without touching any soap," he yawned, pulling his pants down and shaking his head. "I wonder if-"

Then he heard someone else's voice, right in the bathroom, with him.

"Goddammit that liar! You never can count on him for anything!"

Shirou froze in place and saw a discarded suit of armor set on the floor by the toilet. A long pair of sharp honors protuded from the whole, attached to a helmet, and Shirou's forehead began pearling itself with copious droplets of sweat. Slow and reluctantly, his eyes wandered to the shower stall, its curtains wide open, and a buck naked young woman with blond hair facing away from him, struggling with the shower handle.

"Was it pulling, or pushing? Fuck, neither works!" she was grumbling to herself, Shirou's eyes nailed on her firm, perky bare posterior. "But if a moron like Lancelot could figure it out, so can I... Laaaaancelooooot!" she shouted. "Did you pull, or push?! No fucking water is coming out at all, asshole, you lied!"

She heard a loud thumping sound, and looked back to see Shirou, in nothing but his underwear, fainted on the bathroom's floor, his eyes turned into spirals and some blood leaking out of his nose.

The girl called out again. "Forget it, Lancelot! Shirou woke up already, I'll make him tell me!"

To be Continued?