I do not own Fate/Stay Night and stuffs:

o. o. o.

He dreamed of that man again that night. The man that he condemned with childish dreams moments before his own death. He watched that man's story once more unfold before him. Growing up stern and tall, faithfully following the dreams that he inherited from his father without question.

He watched as the man as a teen fought and learned, pushing his way forward to help others without asking for anything in return. His friends and loved ones, who could not see things the way he did abandoned him as time went on, but he did not falter forging his path to become a hero, helping and saving everyone that was within his sight, not once truly valuing himself.

'Was it so wrong?' The man often thought to himself as people distance themselves from him. 'No… there is nothing wrong about wanting to help others.'

Yet before long he was alone. His selfless deeds were deemed too suspicious by the world. Surely a man who constantly put himself in such danger so frequently had some agenda. No sane man would be that selfless…

But the watcher and the dreaming hero both knew that he was, for the hero in this story was an empty human. He could find no sense of happiness from within. His only joy came from helping others.

So great was his love that the man had, after arriving at the scene of destruction that could only have been caused by some sick accident, made a deal with Alaya, the conciousness of Humanity. In return for becoming a Counter Guardian and protecting the planet after his death, the lives of the hundred odd victims would be saved and restored.

If only the young man had known what he had truly condemned himself to at that time.

Counter Guardians were mere clean up spirits, summoned when the earth was on the verge of destruction and required a massive overwhelming force in order to counteract the threat. They were the cure…

And humans were far too often the disease.

Time and time again after he was betrayed and murdered by one of the people he saved and put to death, the man's spirit was called to commit genocide against humanity. Guilty and innocent, man, woman, and child. So long as they were somehow involved, all who came across him were eventually put down in order to somehow protect humanity as a whole. He could not control his actions for his spirit now belonged to Gaia. All he could do was watch as his beliefs slowly eroded away, washed in the blood of those he had murdered until he became cold and bitter, desperate to escape the hell that he had condemned himself to unknowingly…

Despite the fact that the odds of it happening were borderline nonexistent… he deduced the only possible way to save himself was…

Kiritsugu woke up to Shirou constantly nudging him with his foot. "Come on. Wake up already old man. I need someone to calm Fuji-nee down while I cook." The boy sighed.

"I'm up. I'm up." Kiritsugu grunted as he slowly picked himself up. "Taiga's here already?"

The boy pouted. "Already? She got here late if anything. You slept in again."

'For good reason too.' The man mentally commented as he rubbed his eyes. "I see. I'll be out in a moment, just, go ahead."

The boy sighed before walking outside the room again. "Please hurry up dad. You know how Fuji-nee gets when she's hungry and bored."

"Don't tempt me to take longer Shirou." The father laughed lightly as he waited for his son to get far enough away for him to do his next few tasks in private.

When the coast was clear, Kiritsugu reached for the notebook, which had evolved from that single piece of paper, from underneath one of the tatami mats in his room. It had been three weeks since the dreams started, and even though they occurred roughly only every few nights the man had already discovered and deduced an extremely significant amount of information.

He determined that he was watching roughly 4 different potential routes of the 5th war. The first few were focused from Shirou's perspective… though on occasion he saw possible decisions or actions made in those main routes that ended in his son's rather unpleasant demise. It was fairly amusing… and disturbing to him when he realized that each of these paths involved the boy getting familiar with a different female, especially when he realized that one was his old servant Saber, and the other two were the daughters of Tohsaka…

He could dwell on his son's potential love life later.

The fourth route however intrigued and terrified the man to no end. It did not cover the time of the war itself, but what happened afterwards. After this night's previous dream, he had no doubt that the enigmatic Archer of the new war was indeed a potential future of the boy he was taking care of. A counter guardian with the potential to be a heroic spirit in this day and age where heroic spirits were all but an impossibility… he didn't know whether to cry for joy or for remorse at what his son had become. To possess so much potential…

He shook his head as he continued to write his notes down. He had after a few dreams managed to train himself somehow into retaining all the random information he got while sleeping, and the results were not disappointing in the least.

He now knew how to train Shirou when it came to his magic, and he learned a few other things about the boy in the process as well. His future method of projection and analyzing the structure of objects… Tracing… was in his own words absurd and brilliant. Because in his dreams the boy had focused on nothing but training in structural grasp and reinforcement for so long, he had developed his own advanced form of projection that was borderline sorcery if a real magus actually took the time to look at it. Being able to make borderline perfect copies just by looking at the original…

Other than Shirou's immediate combat potential, Kiritsugu learned some other things as well. Shirou's origin and element for example, were both 'sword', which probably explains all the sword fighting and creating he had seen, yet he was unnaturally skilled in archery as well. He had made a mental note to have the boy train in both as soon as he could. Preferably using Taiga as his trainer when it came to the bladed weapons.

The girl was downright relentless.

Shirou also had a surprisingly strong sensitivity for nearby magic. Most mages experienced this sixth sense by incorperating it into one of their basic five in a way, most commonly by touch or by sight. Shirou on the other hand was able to "smell" nearby sources of prana to such a degree that Kiritsugu had on more than one occasion claimed the boy was part dog. The assassin was already thinking of training methods he could use to enhance the boy's skill with his senses in order to work with it more efficiently and quickly in times of danger.

In the mean time though, Kiritsugu had decided for the boy to focus on his strongest basic which while initially useless, enabled the boy in the future to use his greatest strengths.

Tracing.

Time and time again he made the boy scan and analyze random objects to see how they worked. Washing machines, chairs, beams, computers, food. Every time he told the boy to look for their purpose and what they went through. For objects that had mechanical and electrical components, he told the boy to see how they worked and look for the parts that were wrong, even for the things that the child clearly had no idea on how they functioned or what their purpose was. These objects worked best for the boy's training since they had the most complicated internal properties, components, and purposes compared to others.

Shirou was getting better with each passing day. He was no genius, far from it, however it was simply as if Shirou had been trying to figure out how to do those things in the first place and what and Kiritsugu was pointing him in the right direction. This was after all, the only spell the child could perform consistently before he found out he had been making his circuits wrong after all so there was of course some proficiency already there.

The Magus Killer was not a scientist by any means, conventional or magus, however he did managed to scrape up a theory as to how Shirou managed to obtain the ability to copy any close ranged weapon he desired near perfectly just by looking at it. It had… in part, have to do with his other self not knowing how to use his magic circuits. By limiting himself only to 'tracing' and grasping the structure and properties of everyday items for almost a decade, the boy had enhanced his ability to perceive and analyze physical objects to inhumane levels, going beyond the physical and enabling him to grasp history as well as intentional and mystical purposes and processes just as easily.

While this alone was not truly something to brag about to the Clocktower, when combined with his element and origin of 'sword', an unexpected phenomenon occurred at some point. Said phenomenon was that the boy somehow manages to subconsciously trace and store the data of anything that can fall even vaguely under the category of 'sword' without using any prana at all. This included axes, lances, pretty much any sort of short ranged weapon. His dreams indicated that barriers and shield like tools could be recreated as well, but at a higher cost. The boy could also trace other objects as well, including somewhat complicated ones like flashlights and television remotes, however they did not come as natural to him as say a kitchen knife.

And taken to its highest level… the boy would eventually be able to produce something that has only been done by humans a total of 6 times in recorded Magi history. He would be able to create a bounded field that reflected his inner world, temporarily overwriting the natural world around him and turning the land around him into the ultimate tool… a Reality Marble.

Unlimited Blade Works it was called. An endless empty field devoid of life save for those who were drawn into it. The sky was littered with immeasurably huge gyrating gears and the field was likewise littered with all the weapons jutting up like tomb stones that Shirou had witnessed through his life and stored here. The only distinctive landmark was a small hill covered in blades.

Even if Kiritsugu didn't train himself in keeping his memories from his dreams, he would definitely remember that image…

Faker. That was what Gilgamesh, the golden servant that had caused him so many problems the previous war, had called both Shirou and Archer, and that was what Kiritsugu intended to train his son to be. The perfect weapon against the King of Heroes…

Putting his pen and paper away, Kiritsugu put off his planning again to eat some breakfast with the makeshift family he had inadvertently made these past few years.

He came into the dining room to see the teenaged Taiga Fujimura gorging herself on the food his son had made with a burning passion. One just meeting the girl would never assume that she was actually the daughter of one of the local yakuza bosses... and his neighbor. "Calm down Taiga-chan. The food isn't going anywhere and you're already late for school." The reason why Shirou wasn't in a rush was simply because he was still in primary school and as such classes started a bit later than high school so that all the schools could share the busses.

"Urgh!" The girl grunted through a full mouth. "Buh a huha!"

"Words and sentences Taiga-chan." The man shook his head as he knelt down to the old fashioned table and began to serve himself. Perhaps cooking had something to do with Shirou's tracing ability as well. After all, it also possessed the process of taking basic components and turning them into something completely different. All the man knew was that Shirou's cooking had steadily been improving for some reason after his training originally started. Breakfast was no exception.

The girl attempted to swallow a few times, bordering on full blown choking before the food went down before her mouth was empty. "I'm hungryyyy Rugu-kun…" She moaned with teary eyes, calling Kitsirugu by the affectionate nickname she had given him. "I missed dinner yesterday cause I was out all night training for the Kendo tournament this weekend."

"You probably won't even fight though." Shirou added in a matter of fact tone. "You keep on forgetting to take off that pendant off the bottom of your sword. Every time you try to enter, you get disqualified for it." Said pendant the boy was referring to was a small pendant hanging off the pommel of the girl's shinai. Doing so was illegal in tournaments since it was disrespectful to the opponent. Still it didn't do anything to the girl's form and technique when she beat the living daylights out of her opponents in matches that she did manage to get in. Shirou had mentioned at one point or another that her sword seemed to have an unnatural bloodlust deep inside of it…

Perhaps once the boy was no longer scared stiff of the sight of the thing he could convince the red head to trace it to the point that said bloodlust is recreated as well…

"What was that brat?" Taiga roared in blind immature rage as she crawled over to where the boy was rapidly and put him into a headlock.

"Now now Taiga-chan." Kiritsugu laughed. Deep down he ached, wishing deeply his real daughter was here with him to experience this sort of environment. "You can play with Shirou later after school. You're late enough for school as it is."

"Ack!" The girl screamed as she looked at her watch to check the time. "I'm screwed if I'm rediculously late again!" Immediately letting go of the boy and dashing out of the house, not breaking step to grab her bookbag in the process. "I'll see you guys for dinner!" She yelled from the doorway before her footsteps quickly disappeared.

The two remaining males sighed as they finished their meal, grateful for the peace and quiet they got for now.

"… You know she's going to collapse from a cramp and be even later now right?" Shirou asked after a few minutes of content eating.

"I won't say anything to her about it later if you don't." Kiritsugu stated casually before finishing his meal.

o. o. o.