Slight nitpick here- Shirou's technically wrong on the front that Gilgamesh is terrible at fighting. He's canonically a CQC expert, taking on both Enkidu and the Bull of Heaven (albeit the latter with Enkidu's help)

Of course, even with Shirou's incredible badassery in this fight, Gil still should've had this fight in the bag- but, as noted, Gil has the incredibly fascinating ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory while doing a quadruple axle backflip.

This would have been a awesome fight in UBW. 10/10 would Ride The Lightning again.

good

Some things like ride the lightning sounded so fucking lame that I cringe from second hand shame.
But overall this was so fun! I especially love how the both of them felt mutual hatred of archer and a few other moments of weird solidarity. It's a pity gil died. The bromance would have been epic, and lol he tripped on the blow that would have severed his arm like in canon. So funny.

I wish this gilgamesh meets some other shirou after losing to this one...

All I hear is Mighty Wind and south of heaven EMIYA
Great work

This was great! Just one thing. In my haedcanon, Shirou doesn’t need mana to use his swords’ Noble Phantasms besides maintaining his Reality Marble, as what it does is literally rewrite the rules of the world to favour him. Magecraft is fooling the Gaia into temporarily believing what you want her to, but she will inevitably break your mystery, which is why crystallised mysteries are such a big deal, they don’t decay. What a Marble Phantasm does is make the change instead of simply fooling Gaia. If you wanted to pick a black marble from a jar with 99 other marbles, a Marble Phantasm would ensure you always would, whereas a Reality Marble would simply change all the marbles to black.

Leaving that aside, Shirou definitely doesn’t need any mana to project swords inside his world, because he doesn’t need to. I’m not sure whether projecting Kanshou and Bakuya or Rho Aias inside his Reality Marble in the UBW anime fight took mana, but if they did, they were the only projections that did.

Besides that, the draw power and speed of UBW is simply more that that of the Gate, so it would simply overpower it, leaving Gil to block with shields. But he would be on the defensive. He simply can’t overpower UBW by brute forcing it, while UBW can do that to the Gate. At which point Shirou would close the distance. The fight would be his because Gil simply can’t afford to not block to pull out Ea or any other weapon lest he get a taste of his own medicine, unless he hid behind a shield, but that would give Shirou time to charge one his Noble Phantams like Caladbolg II or Caliburn or even Gae Bolg when Gil tries using Enuma Elish.

My point is that Nasu likes to portray Shirou as much less powerful than he actually is, and while his multiverse has a quite comprehensive version of a magic system with hard rules, he has been known to pull retcons out of his ass or change the rules whenever he’s written himself into a corner or as his plot demands. I mean, Shirou is water down Gil outside his RM, which should be able to trump many if not most Heroic Spirits, and inside it only Enkidu should be able stand up to him as he basically outplays Gil at his own game without the stupidity and arrogance, and is ruthless, brutal and efficient. And well, Gil trumps everyone else. So, ShirouGilEveryone else.

Mind you, this only talking about Heroic Spirits. There do exist counters to his RM, hinging on the very fact that it is an RM. Such as that one vampire guy that has an anti-RM RealityMarble. Nevermore or Black or something? I don’t remember. I’m not into the Tsuikihime side of the Nasuverse, which you can tell by the fact that I’ve probably misspelled Tsuikihime.

But seriously, great work. I know the aim was to give a bombastic fight, and you certainly succeeded. Realism was not the focus here, and that’s good. Peace out.

P.S. I really enjoyed your Archer x Taiga one shot too.

hmm may need to see this animated

That was interesting.

Love it, Thanks for the chapter _.

So very satisfying to read

Now that was an epic fight. I don't care if it's lore-compatible or not; it was entertaining and that's the important part.

Nice work.

yes. all the yes. even the no is yes

Man oh MAN!
YES! This is EVERYTHING I'd hoped for when I read the summary!

Epic and beautiful.