THG Omake: Fate/Stay Fluffy 1 (Patreon)

Fate/Stay Fluffy 1

John Soprano

The last rays of Excalibur’s full power faded into motes of gold. The Warrior Entity was dead and Earth, all Earths, was safe once more.

I dismissed the Sword of Promised Victory. Its promise had been fulfilled and there was no need to keep it around anymore.

Truth be told, though I wielded Excalibur as well as Artoria ever did thanks to her Saint Graph, I never felt as though it was mine. It was always Artoria’s. The weapon was so tied to the fabled king that I couldn’t claim ownership of it, even in the privacy of my own mind.

No, it was always on loan, just as her skills were. In humanity’s hour of need, the Once and Future King answered, albeit through me.

“There, we’re done now,” I told Cauldron. Its executives stood in awestruck wonder, which was just the right amount of reverence for Artoria’s legend in my opinion. “I’m going back to my restaurant. If any of you fuckwits disturb me for anything unrelated to food, please understand that I will make you suffer.”

Threat delivered and the fear of Don Texas driven into their immortal souls, I summoned Vimana and zipped back to the Holy Grill.

I felt… Well, I wasn’t sure how to feel.

On one hand, I’d done it. I was the greatest hero to ever live by Earth-Bet’s approximation. I slew all endbringers, twenty of those fuckers, wiped excali-blasted Scion out of existence, and anointed more than my fair share of heroes to carry on the good fight. Hell, Shirou himself was having a blast, finding fulfillment in rescuing kittens from trees or whatever the fuck he did.

On the other hand, I earned none of this. I had immortality, limitless wealth, and the adoring worship of the entire world and I felt like I deserved none of it. I was just some guy who got isekai’d into a dystopian world with the mother of all cheats. Sure, I wasn’t a tyrant or rapist or slaver, but “I wasn’t an unredeemable douchebag,” wasn’t exactly something to be proud of.

Was it any wonder I preferred my restaurant?

My cooking wasn’t divine. I didn’t wish myself meat from phantasmal species to cook with. I didn’t use Saint Graphs to absorb the skills of past chefs. The Holy Grill’s menu, from its brisket to the Texas toast, was all mine, and thus something I could unambiguously take pride in.

I arrived back at my restaurant at the speed of thought. Turning on the lights, I went about prepping a light lunch for myself. Dealing with Scion hadn’t even taken me the workday.

It was… a little lonely.

Shirou was off living his best life. I’d long since had the Travelers sent back to Earth-Aleph. I loved my restaurant, but I wasn’t used to the quiet.

“Maybe I should start hiring again,” I mused.

“Perhaps you should, after I have been paid, hmm?”

I whirled to find the single most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Deep, magenta hair cascaded down her back like a waterfall. Crimson eyes held me in place with a gravity all their own. She wore a purple bodysuit and had a figure supermodels would envy.

I knew who she was. How could I not? Exactly no one was able to no-sell my bounded field like this, not in Earth-Bet. She held a copy of my kabob spits in her hand. Or rather, I’d copied her spear to use as spits. Which, in hindsight, she may possibly take issue with…

Scathach, the God-Slaying Witch Queen, had come to pay me a visit.

“Hello, Scathach,” I greeted warmly. She was someone I admired a great deal, almost as much as Artoria herself. “Care to join me for a meal?”

“Hoh? So you know why I’m here? And here I thought you’d tired of breathing.”

“Why would you think that…” I trailed off.

I’d been using the Gate of Skye as a garbage disposal. And, just for kicks, I also dropped in a packaged meal. It was “tribute” in a way; I didn’t think she’d actually care, or enjoy it enough to come visit when I failed to include dinner.

Because I had used the Gate of Skye without dinner. The Warrior’s avatar, Scion, had the same sort of dimensional protections as endbringers. I’d used the gate to bypass those protections, destroying the avatar and opening a portal directly to the entity’s true body in Shardspace.

It was instinct. I saw trash. I disposed of trash.

And I’d failed to include a meal.

Scathach was a queen. I had violated her kingdom. In a manner of speaking, she was here to collect taxes, like the IRS, except infinitely more deadly, and sexy.

“Ah, so you understand,” she said with a downright sadistic grin.

“Umm… Can we talk about this over lunch?” I tried. “There’s a reason I couldn’t include your tribute.”

“Very well. If I am dissatisfied with your explanation, you will know.”

I gulped. I didn’t know I could be so terrified and aroused at the same time. Truly, today was turning out to be full of new experiences.

X

That was how I ended up spending the next century in Dun Scaith under Scathach’s tuteledge. When she found out I had no one tying me down to Earth-Bet, she promptly demanded I move to the Isle of Skye to be her “chef, student, and stress relief.”

No, I did not in fact get a choice in the matter.

It was an enlightening time, full of new experiences, valuable life lessons, and pants-shitting terror. She demanded that I not touch the Saint Graphs at all. No Throne, no Heroic Spirits, and no Noble Phantasms.

Instead, our time was spent shoring up my admittedly nonexistent foundations. I started from the ground up in both the martial and mystical arts. She taught me every aspect of spearmanship and thaumaturgy, to the point that I dreamt of spears and occasionally found myself muttering in ye ol’ Gaelic.

I could now sympathize with Missy and it wasn’t a fun feeling. It was like Scathach was paying me back for every time I smacked the blonde pipsqueak with Tora-Shinai.

I couldn’t even claim that I had no bad habits either. Type Moon lore was a shitshow at the best of times and there was so much that fanon either misunderstood or just plain got wrong that it felt like she spent half her time correcting my misconceptions.

I didn’t know how many times I got stabbed, but after a century of her instruction, I was finally done. I was now proficient in runes, bounded field creation, formalcraft, curses, purification rituals, metallurgy, smithing, alchemy, and half a dozen other fields of magecraft. Not to the point of rivaling Scathach of course, she was a freak of nature, but to the point that she wasn’t embarrassed to call me her student.

I felt my sadistic teacher draw near. My senses were so much sharper now, even the monsters of the Land of Shadows couldn’t sneak up on me anymore.

“Will you be heading out then?” she asked, a note of melancholy in her voice.

“I will. Why? Gonna miss me?” I teased.

“Hmph, don’t get a big head, John.”

“If you weren’t immortal, you’d starve to death without me.”

“I still expect daily tribute.”

“Of course, my queen. Wherever I go, you’ll get your share of whatever I make, promise.”

“As is proper.” We smiled at each other, a shared moment of camaraderie. “Where will you go, John? Your old world is…”

“It’s moved on,” I finished for her. “A century is a long time. Hell, there’s a chance Missy put Caliburn back so she could get on with her life.”

“True. I would have thought you’d check in more often.”

“Nah, I’ve made my mark on Earth-Bet. That dimensional cluster is saved. I see no reason to intervene further. As for what I’ll do now… I don’t know. I guess I’m just getting stir-crazy.”

“I understand. I… I will miss you, student,” she said, planting a soft peck on my lips. “Promise me.”

I pulled her closer. “I promise. One day, when I can claim to be greater than you without touching the Throne, I will return.”

“I look forward to that day, John. Go, I will wash my neck and wait.”

“Always so dramatic, Scathach.”

I turned and walked away. Our relationship was a complicated one. We were landlord and tenant, queen and subject, teacher and student. Occasionally, we were also lovers, a pair of immortals with too much time on our hands. But most of all, we were an eager victim and her prospective murderer.

That was Scathach’s dream, to die to a worthy foe. It didn’t sound like a very difficult dream until one remembered that there were no worthy foes for her in the modern era. Hell, there were precious few even in the earliest Age of Gods. She was an entity who rivaled Gilgamesh, someone who wielded the Primordial Runes of Odin.

If I was to have even the slightest hope of fulfilling her dream through my strength alone, I needed to leave, and leave now. Her growth potential was just that unreasonable.

In another timeline, Cu Chulainn, her greatest student, did become stronger than her, for a time. But as they fought, though Scathach was pushed to the edge and almost died, she adapted. She grew stronger, faster, just plain better until the tables turned. And, of course, she would never willingly slow her spear, not even to fulfill her deepest desire. Her warrior’s pride wouldn’t allow her to cheapen her death.

That was what truly made her so terrifying, the potential to grow without limit on top of her already monstrous foundation. If I ever became strong enough to challenge her in the Isle of Skye, she would simply grow beyond me in response, in a never-ending cycle fueled by the infinity of the Heaven’s Feel and Scathach’s own inhuman potential.

I didn’t turn back. I couldn’t afford to. The warrior queen would think less of me if I did. The next time we saw each other, I would grant her the glorious battle and eternal rest she so craved.

X

Rebecca, Missy, and I sat around my kitchen table, shooting the shit. In front of us was my first batch of brisket I’d made since my return, its smoky aroma lending my new home a familiar feel. I’d also made us some classic slaw, loaded baked potatoes, and cracked open cold beers.

Naturally, I served a plate for my old teacher and slid it into the Gate of Skye. I could occasionally be forgetful, but I wasn’t that suicidal.

We were the last of the old guard, what was being called the “Silver Age” of capes since the “Golden Age” ended with the murder of Vikare. Dinah, the only other person who’d received immortality from me in the form of Avalon, had given it up shortly before I killed Scion, saying she’d much rather grow up with her family.

The three of us were all over a century old now, yet none of us looked a day over twenty-five. Hilariously, the oldest of us, Rebecca, looked the youngest. She’d contracted cancer as a teenager and languished for several years before Doctor Mother offered her the fateful vial, healing her and freezing her age at a gangly eighteen.

Unlike her, Missy had the option of giving up her sword at any time. Apparently, there were two instances when she did so. The first was immediately after I killed Scion. She’d thought the world was saved and there was nothing else to do so she’d “retired” for a few years, allowing her body to catch up with her physical age.

That didn’t last. Broken triggers still happened without an entity to oversee the network. She was called back into action, this time as a teenager and under Fortuna’s direct guidance.

Then, when they finally managed to communicate with Shards and come to an understanding of sorts, she stuck her sword in the ground for several more years, both to grow into an adult and to allow another the chance to inherit Caliburn. Suffice to say, Caliburn rejected them all.

Once she was happy with her growth, Missy retrieved Caliburn. Unlike Dinah, Missy didn’t exactly have a family worthy of the name. She was happy to take up the role of Earth-Bet’s greatest hero and protector for the foreseeable future.

“Sounds like I’ve missed a lot,” I said, slicing the brisket for us. “You’ve done a good job of keeping the world safe.”

It wasn’t empty platitudes either. Earth-Bet wasn’t perfect, nor would it ever be, but the PRT succeeded. They’d managed to integrate capes into general society.

There were hiccups. Villains still ran the roost in some cities. But hey, that was life. Humans were assholes and power didn’t corrupt so much as reveal who they truly were. Short of conquering the world and turning it into a despotic dictatorship, I was convinced they’d done as well as could be expected.

“You did, John,” Missy said between mouthfuls of food. “And I missed your food. My god, did I miss this.”

“It helps that Fortuna and Accord drafted a fifty year plan for us before the two retired,” Rebecca hummed. She was still Alexandria, but she could hardly call herself Rebecca Costa-Brown, Chief Director of the PRT now.

Nowadays, she was Rebecca Mendez, Alexandria’s press secretary. How she successfully pulled off a Clark Kent in a world firmly in the Information Age was beyond me.

“You haven’t had any trouble setting up the restaurant, have you? I’m not the head of the Protectorate anymore, but I still have friends in high places.”

“No trouble at all,” I told Missy. They called her the Knight Errant now, the queen who gave up her kingdom to wander the world. “Thanks for the offer though.”

“Where were you anyway? After Scion, you just… vanished.”

“I was having the time of my life, by which I mean I fought for my life and sanity for a century under the most sadistic teacher in history.”

Rebecca eyed me carefully. “Anyone that can make you struggle is likely a threat beyond the world’s ability to handle. What are the–”

“Don’t worry about it. Trust me, Scathach has zero interest in you. You’re too weak.”

“Scathach? As in the legendary witch queen of Celtic myth?”

“The one and the same. Long story short, I now must apologize to Missy. Missy, I’m sorry. I was an abusive teacher and I shouldn’t have hit you upside the head with a wooden stick for my own amusement.”

Missy cracked up and hastily wiped her face before her beer could dribble from her nose and stain her blouse. “Hah! You finally admitted you were hitting me for fun! And it only took you a hundred years!”

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, brat. Look, all I’m saying is I sympathize with being an abused punching bag that happens to be called a student.”

“Funny you should say that. I sympathize with being a teacher who beats her students for funsies now.”

“That sounds terrible, Missy.”

“She’s drunk,” Rebecca explained dryly. “She’s a bit of a lightweight.”

“I’m not drunk,” Missy said, mostly without slurring. “And I’m not a lightweight. You just cheat with your nonsense body.”

“Missy’s taken on several students over the decades,” Rebecca said, ignoring her longtime friend and sole peer in the hero business. “She was asked not to anymore after the last one recommended she seek psychiatric help.”

I laughed. “Hah, how the wheel turns.”

Author’s Note

You can consider this a sequel? Side story? I don’t know. It just sorta happened.

Happy ‘Murica Day. I fucking hate this time of year in DC.