Monomyth

The Call, Part One

"Once upon a time there was a sweet little girl. Everyone who saw her liked her, but most of all her grandmother, who did not know what to give the child next. Once she gave her a little riding hood made of red velvet. Because it suited her so well, and she wanted to wear it all the time, she came to be known as Little Red Riding Hood."

Rin Tohsaka stood upon a circle of silver and iron in her basement after midnight had been an hour dead. Ten years ago, in this exact spot, her father had summoned a being out of myth and legend. To fight in the Holy Grail war; that was Rin Tohsaka's legacy. To hold the Grail in her hands; that was her destiny.

And where legacy and destiny met, that was her fate.

"My will creates your body," she said, "and your sword creates my destiny." She had memorized the incantation from her father's notes, but she needn't have bothered. Just as the Grail would later be the vessel of her wish, its will now flowed through her, demanding a champion in the war. In this moment, she could not have halted the spell if she'd tried.

"If you heed the Grail's call and obey my will and reason, then answer me. I hereby swear that I shall be all the good in the world. That I shall defeat all the evil in the world."

That oath was impossible, but it was what the Grail demanded she say, so she said it. She clutched a handful of gemstones, a king's ransom in price and worth even more in terms of the mana they held. It was the signature of the Tohsaka line to store magical energy in precious stones until a time of need, and Rin needed them now. The gems glowed red.

"You seven heavens, clad in the three great words of power, come forth from the circle of binding, Guardian of the Scales!"

The rubies in her hand, drained of mana, turned to dust.

WWW

"Servant Archer, Ruby Rose, reporting to … hello?"

Ruby looked around the room she had been summoned to. The empty room. Sure, there were couches and tables, but that was it. And I had a whole epic intro planned out for this!

Well, it was probably for the best. Her intro sounded great in her head, but she wasn't sure how it would hold up out loud. "Anyone home?"

No one answered. Maybe there was a delay? Maybe her Master summoned her, waited around a bit, and went to bed. That made sense. After all, who would go through a summoning at—she checked a clock on the mantle—two o'clock in the morning?

Above the mantle a series of mounted swords caught her eye. "Ooh, shiny!"

Don't touch, she told herself. Don't touch, don't touch. She stood up on her toes and pulled one off the wall. She wasn't interested in using a different weapon, but she liked meeting them. Besides, it wasn't like Crescent Rose was going to get jealous. While Ruby's eyes might wander, her heart never did.

She held the sword, testing its weight and balance. It was elegant, sure, but more ornamental than practical and a bit too simple for her tastes. She prefered a weapon with a few surprises.

A door swung open and a girl a few years older than Ruby burst into the room. She wore a red shirt, a dark skirt, and had long black hair in pigtails. Her eyes grew wide and a smile spread across her face when she saw her holding a sword. "Yes!" she said. "I did it! I summoned Saber!"

Ruby looked at the blade in her hand. "Oh, sorry, I'll put this back. No, I'm Ruby. Archer. My class is Archer, my name is Ruby. What's yours?"

"No!"

Ruby blinked. "Your name is No, or no, my name's not Ruby?"

"No, you—my name is Rin Tohsaka, but that's not my point. I was trying to summon Saber, not some—some little girl with a bow!"

A bow? Ruby's eyes narrowed. "Okay, you haven't met my weapon yet, so I'll let that pass, but let's be honest. Swords are nice. They are. There's a real classic appeal to them. But you know what else swords are? Overused. Literally half the people I know use a sword. Don't tell Weiss, Blake, Jaune, Pyrrha, and the sword half of Beacon I said this, but there are other weapons out there. Second of all, I'm not a little girl with a bow."

She unfolded Crescent Rose and brought it out with a blinding flourish before slamming it tip down into the wooden floor with a satisfying thunk. "I'm a little girl with a scythe."

Rin's eyes grew wide as she examined the weapon, which was the most common response Ruby got when people saw her with a scythe larger than she was.

"You broke my house!"

That, sadly, was the second most common response. Ruby's flourish had shredded the nearby couch, sending wood chips and stuffing all over the living room. And tore up the fireplace. And the expensive mahogany panelling. "Oh. Um, I'm sure Professor Goodwitch will fix that next time she's around."

"Who?"

"Professor Goodwitch … who's not here. I can fix this! Sorry, I'm just not used to wanton acts of destruction having long-term consequences."

"And that still doesn't explain why you would be an Archer."

"Because," Ruby said, growing more comfortable now that the conversation was returning to her perfect weapon, "this is also a gun." Before she could stop herself, she pulled the trigger in demonstration, sending a high-caliber round through the wall. "Sorry! I just—muscle memory!"

"Stop—breaking—my—house!"

This was not how Ruby was hoping her introduction into this whole mess would turn out, but this was still only the second-worst first impression she had ever made. She still hadn't blown anything up yet.

WWW

By the time she woke up the next morning, Rin had (mostly) worked out a plan. Her Servant was wildly destructive, but as long as Ruby didn't kill her by accident, her summon could wreck whatever she liked.

Even though Ruby didn't come from any legend Rin recognized, she had fairly decent stats. Her strength and endurance were low, but those were an Archer's dump stats anyway. Ruby had A++ agility, making her almost definitely the fastest Servant in the war, and her Noble Phantasm was a solid A. As long as Rin was smart about how she faced her opponents, she had a chance.

Ruby opened Rin's bedroom door, carrying a tray. "Good morning, Rin! I made you breakfast."

Rin sat up in her bed and looked down at the tray. "That's not breakfast. That's a plate of cookies with milk. What are you, Santa Claus?" No. Father Christmas would be a Rider, not an Archer.

"Okay," Ruby said. "I made myself breakfast, and brought extra in case you were hungry. But apparently you just hate happiness." She started munching on them, leaving crumbs on the rug. "So, what's the plan?"

"First we have to get you settled," Rin said. "Get you familiar with the city, pick out a good place to fight the other Servants, figure out what you're capable of. Speaking of which, you haven't told me who you are yet." She really should have asked her that last night, but she had been distracted by all the wanton destruction.

"I told you," Ruby said. "I'm Ruby Rose, Archer."

"No, I mean what legend you're from."

Ruby blinked. "Legend?"

"Yes, legend. I summoned you for the Holy Grail War, so that means you must be from some sort of legend, right?"

Ruby grinned sheepishly. "Um, oops?"

"Oops? What do you mean, 'oops?' You are from a legend, right? Myth? Fairytale?"

"Was that in the fine print?"

"Fine print? What are you talking about?"

Ruby held up her hands defensively. "Okay, maybe I enter the league of legendary heroes someday with people telling stories about me for hundreds of years after I'm gone—which would be really cool by the way—but who gets to be a legend in her own lifetime?"

"Wait, you haven't died yet?"

The Holy Grail didn't summon people, it summoned legends of people, mixing fact and fable until it came up with someone who never truly existed. The historical figure merged with the stories told about her until she formed a heroic spirit. But if Ruby didn't have a historical basis at all then maybe her story ended with a happily ever after instead of a tragic death. Her "end" could be her riding off into the sunset, allowing her to be summoned without ever having died.

Ruby put her fingers to her throat to check her pulse. "Nope, still alive."

Alternative hypothesis: the Holy Grail was acting screwy.

WWW

They spent the rest of the day exploring the city. Ruby's outfit didn't draw that much attention; the few people who looked at her twice thought she was going to some cosplay thing, and she was just enough of a dork to make the alibi convincing.

Ruby was easily distracted, wanting to spend time looking at tourist attractions and inside pastry shops, but she had a surprisingly sharp eye for combat. She could glance at a location and decide if it had hard cover, soft cover, or no cover (whatever that meant), blind spots, ambush risks, and terrain advantages and disadvantages. Then she spent at least an hour on the Fuyuki skyline with her sniper scope, figuring out which areas she could hit from which building and which ones she could jump to.

Rin, for her part, had lived in the city her whole life and had grown slightly … obsessive in the past few weeks, so she knew the schedule of nearly every part of Fuyuki. The stadium had plenty of room to fight in, but it was crammed full of people well past midnight every weekend, while the water park closed at ten. Between the two of them, they managed to map out the best places to fight in, the worst, and the easiest way to get from the latter to the former.

"Alright," Rin said as the sun began to set. "That's pretty much all we can do until the war actually starts."

"And that's tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow night at sundown." The other Masters might have started weeks ago, building up their respective strongholds, but the Servants couldn't actually fight each other for another twenty-five hours. Not unless they wanted to bring the wrath of the Church down on them.

"Then there's only one thing left to do," Ruby said.

"No, Fuyuki city does not have recreational monster hunts," Rin replied. "For the last time, I don't know why you thought it would."

"The last thing we need to do," Ruby said, "is visit your parents."

Rin stopped. "What?"

"This may be the only chance we have before everyone starts trying to kill us, and if there are two of us and twelve of them, I'd say we have maybe a … fifty percent chance of coming out alive."

"Laws of probability aside," Rin said, "my parents … aren't around here anymore."

"Where are they buried, then?"

Rin looked up. "How did you know they were buried?"

Ruby gave her the same it's-obvious look she had given her when explaining the difference between softcover and difficult terrain. "Your house is way too big for one person, and the last family photo I saw was taken when you were tiny."

Rin stared at her. Ruby had been acting more like a kid playing a game than someone in a war since Rin had summoned her, but … well, Archers were supposed to be perceptive, right?

"Alright. Let's end the tour of the city with a trip to the cemetery."

WWW

Rin didn't visit her parents very much. It wasn't that she was repressing her grief at being orphaned when she was nine – she just didn't like coming any closer to Kotomine than she had to.

She glanced at the church, glaring at the priest through its walls. Her caretaker. Ha.

"Well," she said after they reached her parents' graves. "Here we are." When her father Tokiomi had died, his will had reserved a plot in the graveyard for her mother Aoi. There wasn't a third spot for Rin, of course. She was going to live for a long time yet.

Ruby looked down at the tombstone in silence for a long moment and pulled her hood up over her head reverently. "It's nice here. Lots of graves. My mom was buried by a cliff all by herself, and sometimes I get worried that she's lonely when I don't come to visit."

"How'd she die?" Rin wasn't sure what else to say.

"She was a Huntress," Ruby said, as though that explained everything. And perhaps it did.

"My father was a mage," she replied, also in explanation. Like me. No. She was a mage like him. She had joined the Holy Grail War like him. Following his footsteps didn't look very promising looking at where he had ended up, but she owed it to him to finish what he had tried.

Didn't she?

"Was your mom one too?"

Rin shook her head. Tokiomi had been enough of a mage for both of them. The church was supposed to mediate the war, but even the Holy Grail War hurt a few innocent bystanders. Aoi had turned up in a hospital after being strangled half to death, and she had joined Tokiomi a few weeks later.

"Well," Ruby said to the two graves, "it's been great meeting you. I'm Ruby, by the way. I should have mentioned that. Or Archer, while I'm here. Your daughter summoned me last night, and she's really cool! We get along well and if we're lucky the next time we're here we'll have won the Holy Grail so … wish us luck!"

"Yeah," Rin said softly, looking down. "Wish us luck."

WWW

A/n I'd like to thank Magery for editing this chapter. Nearly every story I've published in the last few years has gone through him first.

The title is from The Hero of a Thousand Faces by Joseph Cambell. It's one of those books you can read when you want to pretend to be smart, and he would discuss the legends of Gilgamesh and King Arthur with the same gusto as Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood, so I thought it fit.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, leave a review. I love reading them and they make me feel good about myself.