Fate Altered Reality

Chapter 2

I will try to tone down the swearing, but sometimes it is the fastest way to show a character's reaction. especially with Rin, who does not tolerate fools gladly. The 'dere' is only for the people she likes. Everybody else gets the 'Tsun'

START

Shirou and Rin went their separate ways after walking to school together under a flag of truce. 'Tohsaka is actually pretty decent. She just hides behind an aloof facade,' Shirou mused on how she had gone out of her way to help him yesterday, bringing him up to speed on the Grail war. The fact that Rin had threatened to kill him the next time she saw him didn't make a strong impression. But as Shirou walked further on to the school grounds, he was pulled out of his internal world: He began to notice an odd, sickly smell, like rotting meat or blood.

As the day progressed, the rotting meat smell became stronger and stronger until finally at lunch it got so strong that Shirou could not stomach eating his food. He turned to his lunchtime companion, "Issei - do you smell anything?"

Issei Ryuudou, the Student Council president, was a close friend, and the two often ate lunch together in the student council room. In part because Issei often worked on council business during lunch.

Today, the paperwork had stayed in it's folder. Issei looked up from his bland meal, "I can't say that I do, Emya-kun." He gave an experimental sniff. "There is something odd, though, some niggling sensation just below the surface of my conscious awareness."

Shirou put down his bento. "Here, come with me." Shirou took a sniff, and pulled open the door. His nose led them down the hall and into an empty classroom.

"sniff"

"sniff"

Issei watched in bemusement as Shirou poked, prodded and sniffed his way through racks of A/V equipment, until finally: "Aha! It's coming from here!" Shirou pointed to an empty shelf.

Issei quirked an eyebrow before taking a closer look. He drew back, startled. He then reached out and tentatively ran his hand over the shelf. He jerked it back abruptly, as if burnt. "There is something wrong here." He glanced over at his friend and stood back up, rubbing his chin with one hand while supporting the elbow of that arm with the other hand. "I know this will sound odd. You know my father is the head monk at the Ryuudou temple. Well, one of the things he taught me is how to sense malign spiritual energy. I don't know how better to describe it. Father says that it's caused by evil spirits or curses. I don't know if I believe that, but this shelf is radiating that sort of wrongness."

Issei rubbed his forehead as he tried to assimilate the idea that his religious education might not be a complete waste of time, and that his father might be good for something other than soothing querulous old women.

"Is there anything you can do?" Shirou asked, 'I wonder if Ryuudou-san is a magus. No, he would have taught Issei in that case. He must just have some sort of rudimentary sensitivity.'

Issei nodded, "I can write an Ofuda to purify the evil spirit." He pulled out his calligraphy kit and carefully wrote out a buddhist verse in beautiful kanji. "Fruits of my misspent youth," he quipped as he finished. He then taped the Ofuda underneath the shelf. "This way some well meaning tech-voc student won't throw it away before it has a chance to do it's work."

"I think there are more of these scattered all over the school," Shirou's head swiveled like a bloodhound.

"What are they? Is our school possessed?" Issei frowned. While he didn't plan to follow his father into the priesthood, his religious education was pretty thorough. These patches of spiritual corruption were bad news. "After classes are done, we should go find the rest of these patches and purify the school."