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[apriori]

Kotomine Shirou

Fate/AU | apriori

IC:
Character Name: Kotomine Shirou
Canon: Fate/Stay Night (AU)
AU/OC/Previous Game: AU
Age: 16

Appearance: Shirou is 5’10”, with a lean, lightly muscled build, orange hair (SOULLESS GINGER), and gold eyes. He’s fairly well-kept for the most part, and rarely wears anything outside of his school uniform or his priest’s uniform (which he’ll be arriving in).

Cause of Death: Shirou dies during the Fifth War at the hands of Archer, who pins him through the heart with a number of swords, effectively negating Avalon's regenerative abilities.

Impact of Death: Aware of and more than accepting of the violent nature of both his father’s past work as an executor and the Holy Grail War, it’s less his own death and more its timing and circumstances that have a prominent effect on Shirou. Removed from the war and, more importantly, his perceived duty of aiding his father, he’ll be angry and more than eager to take out his frustrations on others, particularly those from “his” world. Adding to those frustrations is the uncertainty brought on by contact with Archer and Rin’s questioning his belief that he’s always been in Kirei’s care.

Character Info:
Ten years ago the city of Fuyuki burnt to the ground in a blaze of unparallelled proportions. Amidst the wreckage and the flames, one lone man found the half conscious body of one lone boy, lifted him from the rubble, and cradled him like a treasure. They were one another's salvation in so many ways -- it was only natural that they would adopt one another. That boy, Shirou, admired Emiya Kiritsugu, his savior, his new father, and wished for nothing more than to become the hero that Kiritsugu himself could not be.

Permanence was something that seemed to elude Kiritsugu. An infamous “magus killer” all too acquainted with death and war, perhaps it was only fitting (or tragically ironic) that even his new life as Shirou’s father was short-lived. Kiritsugu had enemies, and among them was Kotomine Kirei, a uniquely troubled man of god with an obsession with Kiritsugu -- one of the murderous variety. Little more than a year after the Fuyuki disaster, Kirei found his way to Kiritsugu’s doorstep and wasted no time in flaying him open. In the confusion, Shirou was stashed in a nearby closet, forced to listen to the shouts, the screams, the sounds of guts being torn out and strewn about the room.

Kirei plucked Shirou from that closet and took him in as a son. It was a cruel joke, a parting act of spite towards Emiya Kiritsugu. Little did Kirei know that the circumstances of Kiritsugu’s murder had deep-reaching effects on Shirou. Traumatized by the experiences, still unhealed from his ordeal in the blaze a year earlier, the young Shirou retreated into himself, and while he did, he allowed his memory to lapse, to rewrite itself. In order to cope with the shock of losing Kiritsugu, Shirou repressed not only his memories of the murder, but of Kiritsugu entirely. By the time he had adjusted to life with Kirei, he had led himself to believe that Emiya Kiritsugu was a distant, faceless figure, and that Kirei had been the one to rescue him from the fire.

A scarred, hollowed out child, Shirou latched on tight to Kirei, going as far as to aspire to his profession, adopting both his faith and his utterly twisted fascination with human suffering. Kirei encouraged the boy and was more than happy to feed Shirou’s fascination -- during the Holy Grail War, Kirei had formed a close relationship with Matou Kariya, the head of the Matou family and the man who ultimately decided to reject all that the Grail had to offer. The Matou household was a troubled place; Kariya’s own questionable sanity notwithstanding, his brother Byakuya was an unpleasant drunk, Byakuya’s son Shinji was a hateful, arrogant little creature, and they all loathed one another quite thoroughly. Shirou was released into this environment on a regular basis, and it didn’t take long for him to claim Shinji for his own, both bullying him relentlessly and declaring him his friend.

As the years passed, their relationship became bizarrely codependent: Shirou was more than eager to feed Shinji’s inferiority complex and his resentment for his father and uncle while Shinji provided him with companionship and entertainment. (Shirou’s relationship with Kirei’s charges from the Tohsaka household, Rin and Sakura, were not nearly as harmonious. While they were equal targets for bullying, Rin’s headstrong personality kept him at bay, resulting in notably strained relations between the three of them.) By the time Shirou and Shinji had entered high school, they had become inseparable, with Shirou frequently displaying over-protective and downright possessive behavior towards Shinji and anyone who attempted to get close to him.

Outside of his relationship with Shinji, Shirou’s aim, above all, is to emulate and serve his father. (While he is not formally recognized as an Executor, a position that Kirei once held within the church, he’s received extensive training in their techniques. Including the murder part. Yay murder.) It’s of little surprise, then, that when he received a Command Seal at the beginning of the Fifth Holy Grail War, he quickly obeyed his father’s wishes and joined the battle by summoning Saber as his Servant.

Shirou wasted little time in making it perfectly clear that he viewed Saber as little more than a tool for fulfilling his role in the war, something that Saber, understandably, does not take kindly to. While he allowed her to operate on her own and pursue the Grail for her own purposes, he held the threat of suicide via command spell over her head to discourage flagrant disobedience.

It was probably a mistake to throw his lot in, temporarily, with a girl who hated him. After agreeing to a short cease fire with Rin and aiding in Caster’s defeat, Shirou attempted to eliminate a weakened Rin and Archer. In the ensuing fight, he aimed for the upper hand by (ironically) goading Rin about the truth behind her father’s murder, revealing that it was Kirei who had betrayed and killed him. Angered by Shirou’s flippant attitude, Rin commands Archer to eliminate him, and ultimately Shirou is killed, pinned to the wall through the heart by Archer’s swords.

Despite his horrific personality, outwardly, Shirou appears to be a well-intentioned young man, dedicated to his family and his faith. At school he’s helpful, offering to help with the upkeep of club areas and classrooms, and is often found tending to the grounds of his father’s church in his free time. To strangers, it’s difficult to argue that Shirou is anything but a Decent Guy, and yet there’s a heavy air about him, one that says that something is simply not right with Kotomine Shirou. It’s a hunch that some people walk away with, one that’s unsettlingly correct.

It isn’t that he goes out of his way to hide his numerous character flaws; in fact, he makes it no secret that he dislikes the girls from the Archery Club who flock around Shinji. Instead, he has no reason to be openly aggressive outside of his cold war with Shinji’s fan club -- his classmates at school are a bore, by and large, all painfully regular people who offer few opportunities for entertainment. His fascination lies with more obviously damaged individuals, such as Shinji and, to a certain extent, his own father.

Because he has few people whom he regards with fondness, and because he carries an unconscious fear of losing those people, Shirou is intensely protective of the people around him, to the point of illogical violence. He has lashed out at Rin, at Byakuya, and even at Kariya in Kirei or Shinji’s defense, and will gleefully show off the bullets lodged in the walls and floors to prove it. Backing down is simply something he doesn’t do, ideologically or otherwise.

Behind the resolve, however, is a deep sense of personal confusion that stems from the lingering influence that Kiritsugu left with him. He acknowledges a very real disinterest in the affairs of most “normal” people, and simultaneously finds himself harboring a desire to play the part of a hero, and to throw himself into harm’s way without regard for himself or (more unsettling to him) his loved ones. A well-spectated incident in which he broke his arm while pushing a girl out of a reckless driver’s path was brushed off as his simply doing the right thing, though Shirou found himself confused over his own actions. Despite his own personal distaste for self-doubt, he’s often troubled by the sense that there’s something buried in him that he can’t quite recall, that there’s some hidden aspect of his existence that no one has bothered to tell him about; something connected to the strange iron and clockwork landscapes that he’s seen in his dreams.

Abilities (after Powercap): While Shirou possesses magical circuits, he makes little use of them, as most magic is forbidden by the Church. He does, however, have notable experience in kenpo, shooting, and knife fighting. Because Kotomines are all freaky that way. Also Avalon won’t do shit because that was stupid even in canon the end I hate everything.

Items Brought In: A traced sword (Archer's, one of the ones used to kill him) and the Thompson Contender (given to him as a sick joke on Kirei's part).

Samples:
"I thought you were abnormal, but I’m sure now."

His lips part and he laughs, because there’s little else he can do now. Make no mistake, if he could rip these blades from his body, if he could tear his flesh away and stand and fight, he would. But there's something in his chest, something he can't rip out that's pinning him here, something that's cold and metallic and sucking the life straight out of him. He can't move, he can't move and it's wrong, but there's something to the whole situation that's funny anyways. Tohsaka's voice sounds farther away when she hisses at him in disgust.

"You've always been like this, so determined to kiss Kirei's ass that you become nasty and disconnected. Do you even realize what you're doing?!"

His whole body shudders, heaves, and what's left of his breath becomes hysterical laughter, a reaction that he can't stifle. Is she stupid? Of course he realizes what he's doing, and he's doing exactly as he pleases in remaining obedient to his father. To obey is to respect, to acknowledge his father's wishes is to learn, so that perhaps, one day, he'll be able to emulate the man who he admires so deeply. But of course Tohsaka is a selfish girl, unable to understand such things. He had never evaluated her in such a way before, had never taken her to be both selfish and ignorant, but now here at the end of all things, he realizes that one trait simply feeds the other.

“Of course you don’t. I bet he did something to mess you up. You’re always saying that he saved you, he pulled you from the flames or whatever, but I remember all that stuff too, you know. Everything burnt down and he sure didn’t come back with a psycho like you!”

He hates her. He’s quite certain of it now. The emotion is frowned upon, of course, but he can’t excuse the selfish girl who’s done such a thing to him. It isn’t the swords or that awful Servant of hers -- it is a war, after all, and such things should be expected. But to use them to render him bloodied and useless while his father still needed him was unforgivable, and to accuse Kirei of such things was even worse.

“But you don’t care, do you?”

She sounds angry, which is ridiculous because she isn’t the one dying, and she isn’t the one losing anything. Perhaps it is abnormal to find such things funny, but he hardly has the will or the energy to dwell on those things. Instead he draws in a breath, slow and labored, and looks to Tohsaka with the brightest smile he can muster.

“Not at all.”