Disclaimer: I do not own the Fate/Stay Night series.

Prologue

The Kaleidoscope. The Second Magic. The ability to view and travel to alternate worlds. Some are so vastly different, that no similarities can be found except with the closest scrutiny. Some, the reverse.

And then there are those that are identical, until a point of divergence. This is one such world. The Holy Grail War proceeded as planned. The Tohsaka provided the spiritual land, the battlefield. The Makiri supplied the combatants, the Servants, and the means to control them, the command spells. The Einzbern brought the ritual itself to the table.

The first War ended in failure, and the deaths of nearly everyone involved. A senseless massacre, and an ungranted wish. It turned Makiri Zolgen into a monster from grief.

The second War saw the deaths of all the participants and a greater amount of collateral damage. The Clocktower was forced to enact a localized purge, and memory rewrites of all non-magi.

The third War was the first time that world authorities not related to the Association became involved, and actively sought to win the Grail for themselves. Again, it ended in failure. Avenger was killed in the opening battles of the conflict, and again, the Servants and Masters killed each other before a wish could be granted.

And here, is where the worlds separate.

Frustrated by the most recent loss, the Einzbern, with the aid of the Waffen SS, removed the Greater Grail from Fuyuki City, transferring it to Berlin. There it would lay, unused until the next Holy Grail War. Because of the Einzbern's connections with the German government, Clocktower forces could not retaliate to the theft. However, with the sixty year gap between Grail Wars, the Germans were not able to utilize it before the war was over.

At the end of the Second World War, they briefly lost control of it when the Allied Forces invaded the city. Though Einzbern dominance was eventually re-established, the emergency reserve function of the Greater Grail had been activated by an unknown agent, and several functions of the system had been tampered with. However, the Grail War did not begin. Regardless, preparations were made by the families in the know.

The ritual did reactivate some time later, as in other worlds. However, the Fourth Holy Grail War began nearly ten years early, while the world was in the midst of the Cold War. The Grail activated explosively on November 1, 1981, destroying a portion of the Berlin Wall, as well as two city blocks on either side of it. The Lesser Grail manifested for a brief moment in front of a crowd of horrified onlookers, automatically assigning Command Spells to three individuals halfway across the world from each other: Tohsaka Tokiomi, Matou Kariya, and Jubherail Lizrich von Einzbern. It inevitably came to the attention of the American and Russian governments, and they scrambled to assemble teams of magi and catalysts for their respective Servants. Because the emergency function had been activated so close to the end of the previous Grail War, as well as the presence of the relatively untouched and very rich Berlin leylines, it became possible to summon three teams of Servants.

The Americans, drawing on their European and Asian allies, contracted mercenary magi to fight on their behalf and a few volunteer magi, as the United States lacked their own equivalent to the Clocktower. This coalition was officially headed by Tohsaka Tokiomi, the heir of the Tohsaka family, though the American military personnel were the ones pulling the strings. Collectively, they were the Blue team.

The Russians, in a similar approach to the Americans, called on both native and foreign contenders. Middle Eastern, European, and Asian magi answered the call, and even the reclusive Atlas organization provided representatives. Matou Kariya was appointed as leader of the alliance, because of the Matou family's extensive experience with the Grail system. Collectively, they were the Red team.

The Einzbern, technically the weakest faction of the three, relied almost exclusively on internal support and a few outsiders. In the decades after claiming the Grail system, they experimented and churned out numerous homunculi to serve as prana batteries and Masters both, as well as training their own magi to fight. Emiya Kiritsugu, an already infamous magus assassin, was hired to participate as both Master and tactician. Collectively, they were the Green team.

The Berlin Wall War, as it has come to be called, began on December 2, 1981, and with it, the veil on the supernatural was lifted. A magical battle of such scale was impossible to hide, so no effort was taken to do so.

On the night that twenty-one magi assembled to make their preparations, when all the Servants had been summoned, an unexpected Servant appeared on the soon-to-be battleground. Garbed in white robes, the man said nothing as he deconstructed the buildings directly on top of where the leylines intersected with a wave of his hand, replacing it with a massive structure in a single night. The Grail had summoned its own moderator, the Servant Ruler.

He was soon joined by another. Normally, I would call it a monster, but it was a creature that defied definition. In all my years, I had never seen anything like it before. Whatever it was, it was never human. The Grail had summoned a guardian for its representative, the Servant Beast.

In three locations, the factions began the ritual.

There are times I look back and wish I could have done something. But mine is not the only world where such a war occurred. Only the outcome was different. In those other worlds, I tried to intervene, but it only wrought destruction on a scale unimaginable, even to one such as I. I met versions of myself that had manipulated the Grail system and entered the war as a wild card, winning through both my own strength and that of my Servant in most cases. I remember the names of the various Servants I summoned in alternate timelines. Seven in total, one for each class, and they certainly ran the gamut. Morality just looks petty in the face of annihilation.

The first was Scathach, the Lady of the Shadow Fort, under the Lancer class. The immortal warrior-witch had never tasted defeat, becoming an embodiment of victory through her many battles, so I had thought that she would be the perfect choice. Between the two of us, we swept through the competition with ease. My spells blew apart the Masters and soldiers into so much dust, while Scathach struck down her fellows left and right. We won the war within three days. However, something happened to her in those last few minutes, as the Greater Grail began to manifest. Apparently, it was something so horrible, that the alternate me refused to even speak of it. The silence and his appearance were telling, though. He was missing his left arm up to his shoulder and chunks of his face and ribcage, and the wounds were still fresh. That version of me had been the first to cross dimensions to warn the others, though I got the impression that he thought something was chasing him and that he was terrified. I'm not sure I want to know what was able to scare myself that badly. He disappeared as soon as he finished telling his tale, not willing to stay in one place for too long.

The second was Karna, the Son of the Sun God, under the Archer class. In that class, he was arguably at his most powerful. I was thinking that sheer power might win the day. It did. Technically. On the first day of the war, after everyone had been gathered in Berlin, I had Karna fire a full-powered Brahmastra Kundala straight at Berlin from on top of an airplane in the upper atmosphere. It did the job. In a single second, all three teams, the Ruler and his Beast, Berlin, the entire country of Germany, and portions of the bordering nations were turned into a sea of flames and molten rock. The explosion made the Tsar Bomba look like a firecracker. Unfortunately, I underestimated the repercussions of my actions. The Grail's physical form broke, for lack of a better word, spilling its contents without end. It crept into the rest of Europe, corrupting and killing all that it touched. But worse still, this awoke two things best left sleeping: Gaea and Alaya. Primate Murder, under the control of Gaea, went on a world-wide killing spree, slaughtering anything that even looked remotely human. This in turn, sparked a reaction from Alaya, which dispatched Counter Guardians to fight both Primate Murder and the encroaching threat of the Grail. The fighting consumed the planet, leaving it barren. The other me was forced to flee after resisting for nearly ten years, until he was the only one left.

The third world I came across was simply non-existent. There was rubble, but nothing else. I had to revisit the dimension at previous point in time to find out what happened. That version of me was…unhinged, using trains of logic that even I find bizarre. When he found out that the Greater Grail had been corrupted by a being that referred to itself as Angra Mainyu, the Zoroastrian god of darkness and evil, he decided that there was only one thing that could fight a god, and that thing was apparently Berserker. I don't curse a lot, but it has to be said in that manner to get the point across: HE SUMMONED FUCKING FENRIR, THE GODDAMN EATER OF GODS, AS FUCKING BERSERKER. Suffice to say, it did not end well for him. Or anyone really. Even Gaea got the crap end of the deal.

After that, I summoned the Hundred-Faced Hassan. A poor choice, in hindsight, though it seemed like a good idea at the time. That unfortunate being died in more cringe-inducing ways than I dare to recall. After it was revealed that I was involved, the Americans and the Russians nuked Germany back to the Stone Age in an attempt to kill me, repeating the events of the version with Karna. Obviously they failed, as I had a rather pleasant conversation with that version of me.

Then I attempted the tried and true Saber class, summoning Sir Lancelot. After working through his many, many issues, we proceeded to, once again, dominate the competition. Apparently, it went very similarly to the first version, with the same result. Though I still have to wonder what happened with Scathach, if dealing with Lancelot didn't leave me as troubled. That version of me was only missing a hand.

With the previous five attempts as warning, the next version of me decided against sheer power or skill. Instead, he summoned Ghengis Khan as Rider. Unfortunately, that war didn't turn out like the others. We had the misfortune to encounter a version of Gilgamesh that didn't have a ten-foot pole shoved up his rear end and was actually proactive in the war. We were eliminated by the end of the week by a half-powered Ea.

The seventh, and final, me that entered the Grail War got frustrated and summoned Merlin as Caster. Like others before it, that attempt went well right up until the end. We faced down the corrupted Grail, as usual. However, Angra Mainyu, god of evil, manipulated Merlin's demonic side, causing the cambion to turn on both of us. After incapacitating me, he proceeded to banish Angra Mainyu from the Grail and took full control with a level of magecraft that made my jaw drop. Then he sparked a war of conquest to re-establish Camelot. He managed to take over the entirety of the western hemisphere before I left. After the others heard the tale of that attempt from a frazzled and heavily wounded me, the rest of us that hadn't had the war start yet in our own dimensions vowed not to get involved at all.

So I was forced to watch as the city was ripped apart by the conflict. Heroes and villains from across time tore each other limb from limb in the burning wreckage. The minds of men and women warped and twisted before breaking in the worst ways possible. I could see even the things the Grail didn't want me to. Even if I didn't allow myself to do something about it, I would make sure I remembered it, so that the lives lost to the battle weren't completely in vain.

I have no idea what possessed me to aid my students in creating this monstrosity mislabeled as the "Holy Grail War," but I wish I had ignored it.

-Wizard Marshall Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg

August 10, 1983

A/N: This is just the introduction, but it'll be a while until the next update, as it will be a three chapter update. So please be patient. I know it's not much just yet, but leave a note about what you think of the concepts presented so far.