Matou Shinji and the Broken Chains

A Harry Potter / Fate Stay Night Story

Disclaimer: Though I wish it were otherwise, I do not own or in any way, shape or form hold a legal or moral claim to elements of either the Nasuverse, the Potterverse, or other works I may reference in the course of this story.

Summary: It is a time of seeming peace, as the British Ministry prepares to host the Quidditch World Cup - the greatest sporting event in the Wizarding World. But unbeknownst to them, a grand army of Giants and Werewolves is gathering in Eastern Europe,

under the leadership of the vicious Fenrir Greyback, their sole objective - revenge. In the East, Matou Shinji and his comrades have arrived at the hidden bastion of Mahoutokoro to hone their skills, given that they are likely to become Champions of the two Tournaments this year – the Tri-Wizard and the Potions. And if their struggle against the Acromantulae has shown them anything, it is that only through power can they gain victory - and only through victory can their chains be broken.

Epilogue. Skyclad Observer

Every once in a while, when there were no developing crises to handle for the day, no acts of political brinksmanship, and no incipient headaches dealing with the paperwork resulting from the willful actions of her talented (but troubled) Vice Director, who tended to spend her off hours "testing out" bleeding edge prototypes like the Ortenaus system or the various armored exoskeletons designed for hostile environments, and otherwise had a level of enthusiasm for superweapon development that even she found…problematic, Sion Eltnam Atlasia, the Director of Atlas, found herself thinking back to the events of three years ago, and how before that, the future had been uncertain.

Logically speaking, there wasn't much of a point in revisiting the past, even in the privacy of her head, as she'd already analyzed the situation dozens of times in the last few years, coming to the same conclusion every time.

…that had she not been certain she could obtain the Philosopher's Stone at the end of it, doing what she'd done would have been an audacious plan with an unconscionable level of risk.

An insane level of risk, really, given that to execute it, she'd purposefully accelerated the infection within her so as to gain access to the advanced information manipulation abilities that she – as a vampire destined to be TATARI's successor – could wield.

If she had not obtained the Stone at the end of her journey…no, even obtaining the Stone would not have been a guarantee that all would return to normality. After all, even if her body and soul were cured, that did not mean her psyche would be, given how closely her existence as rogue Alchemist – as an Eltnam – had already resembled that of a vampire, disregarding the common sense of man.

Taking the information of others and using it to her own ends came as naturally as breathing.

Presenting herself in different guises, playing to rumors, ideas, situations, using what people believed to shape her responses and gain her what she needed – in a way, the concept of Sion Eltnam Atlasia had been kept stable only by her obsession for finding a cure.

Avoiding the complications of the world of day while she set up territories in which she "hunted", at least for information and food, if not for blood.

So she had staked everything on her existence as an idea, as a entity of information, and had used TATARI's information editing abilities in an attempt to infiltrate the society of practitioners of Witchcraft in Britain by creating an illusion so real it would deceive even the world…while as well as another – an illusion real enough to deceive even herself.

A fake that would filter the world through its perceptions, that could become the reality when the cure was found.

Sialim Sokaris.

Sion Eltnam Atlasia.

The first was a hollow shell born of rumors and fears of a child inheriting the power of a dark lord – one similar enough in concept to her past self being infected by TATARI that she could…suggest what others saw, and let their observation strengthen her reality. Named for her stillborn twin, the purpose of Sialim had been to deceive the world, to present to the practitioners of witchcraft an image they expected to see – and ultimately to die, so that when she vanished from their society, there would be no trace of her left behind.

The second was more thorough, created from a backup of her personality from before the acceleration of the infection and given reign over the majority of her partitions.

With those two layered atop her vampiric self surely…surely she would have remained herself until she reached her goal.

Until she obtained the cure at last.

…alas, her calculations had failed to take into account how…the infection in her base layer would affect the infection in her backup, how the influx of malignant information from a place like Hogwarts would exacerbate the corrupting influence of the base layer, so that the self meant to deceive the self was already worn thin by the time the term began, with scent of the sweet blood of those around her being far too tempting.

In truth, having overestimated her ability to resist, she had nearly become the monster she feared, and had been considering compromising her mission in order to at least come away with something for her trouble.

After all, with her finally being close – so very close – to a cure, surely she would have been justified in doing whatever she had to in order to stem the infection once and for all.

…no matter how many needed to die, or what atrocities needed to be done.

Only, before she'd lost herself completely, before she'd lost her sense of rationality and what little humanity she had, she had encountered an anomaly – someone whose presence she had not anticipated or expected.

The boy from the east – the scion of a family of magi who was not a magus himself.

Matou Shinji.

His…attempts to befriend and impress her, naïve and foolish as they were, to speak with her as a fellow member of the moonlit world, had helped her cling to what remained of her sanity, as they had given her something familiar for the Atlasia and Sokaris personalities to reference, so that she knew it was not she who had gone mad, merely the world these practitioners lived in that was mad.

In the end, she'd accomplished her goal, with everything going as she had planned, more or less.

She had obtained the Stone, cured herself of vampirism, and disappeared from Britain, leaving no one in that country the wiser as to what had truly happened. She had even remained stable enough that she could return to Atlas and explain her decisions – with her actions in reclaiming the lost knowledge of her ancestor proving sufficient for the Committee to forgive her…indiscretions.

…especially once she'd demonstrated how she retained the ability to physically manipulate information – to materialize it and make use of it in ways no one had done since Zepia, as well as proposing several potential directions for research, based on information she'd obtained while infiltrating the society that practitioners of witchcraft had created.

Something that they – and the Sea of Estray – had found of particular interest was the isle where the Potions Championship took place, with the leadership of Atlas identifying that as a priority for investigation. Some had argued that it would be enough to use their existing agents within the Centre for Alchemical Studies, that given how many they already had perhaps one could be directed to the isle – though they had quickly discovered that this was not something that could be accomplished immediately, as the isle was only accessible once every seven years.

Given the timeframe, Sokaris had proposed that they take another approach – that instead of resigning themselves to send an agent to the isle with the expectation that they would be out of contact for seven years, they should start by taking advantage of the upcoming Potions Championship.

She'd argued that before committing a more valuable asset to the isle for the long-term, that they should first investigate further and identify points of interest, as it would be the prudent thing to do – and that she had agents she believed was capable of acting on her behalf – and who had already been of great help to her in retrieving the Philosopher's Stone.

"Given your contributions to the Institute and your status as Vice-Director when you departed," the Committee had decided. "We have agreed to not only reinstate you as an Alchemist of Atlas, with all the rights and privileges thereof, but to appoint you as Director of the Institute for a probationary period of three years."

At the end of that three-year period, the Committee would evaluate her performance, assessing what she had accomplished under her tenure as Director, and whether it was good for the Institute as a whole.

Such an offer had been…unexpectedly generous, and she had of course accepted.

To do otherwise would have been a sign she had no confidence in her position, and Atlas, like any other institute of higher learning, was quite brutal to those who could not stand up for themselves and their interests.

And so, following the meeting, she'd set to work, turning what might have been a stretch of the truth – given that Matou Shinji had not yet been one of her agents – into reality, retaining the services of Aozaki Touko in return for placing her Sealing Designation in abeyance, and having the puppeteer summon the boy to Mahoutokoro for a meeting.

Perhaps, from a purely objective angle, she would have been better served by seeking an older, more established potioneer to act on her behalf, but even someone like her – someone of a noble family of magi – was not immune to a bit of sentimentality.

…and whatever else, she did believe that Matou Shinji would try his best to accomplish what he set out to do. He was rather earnest in that way, if also desperate to prove himself worthy in someone's eyes, despite being more capable than his peers, and possessed of a broader understanding of the world.

'He had – and has – potential, though just how much remains to be seen,' Sion mused, as she sat down to look over a number of reports.

Not just any reports either – these were reports from the Potions Championship, detailing the events that had transpired, what had been invented…and how Matou Shinji had done – the last of which would probably determine if she was going to retain her position as Director when the Committee evaluated her performance.

'I told him to do his best. That is all I can expect,' the purple-haired woman reminded herself, just in case the results were not as she believed. 'And even some basic information on what the isle holds, and the nature of the structures upon it would be useful enough.'

Having prepared herself mentally, the Alchemist of Atlas opened the first of the reports – that belonging to Aozaki Touko – only for her eyes to freeze in the middle of the summary statement, which mentioned the various injuries the boy had suffered, the potions he had invented (and that he had signed away his rights to them to the Americans), and listed the artifacts he had retrieved.

A ring wrought entirely of Saint Quartz – one of the rarest substances in the world, and an extremely powerful magical material.

A sample of Thaumatagoria – an extremely potent reagent for potions which was essentially non-existent away from the island.

A vial of blood from what was apparently a Lamyros based on the Crimson Moon (a Lamyros which had apparently possessed Rainbow-Class Mystic Eyes – though those were currently in Aozaki Touko's possession as payment for artificial limbs she'd crafted for the boy).

…and if all those hadn't been absurd enough, the piece de resistance to the collection was a photonic crystal containing a complete archive of the technology of the First Age – and information on the Umbral Star, whose incursion had ended it.

The Director's eyes glanced over at the black pouch sitting innocuously beside the stack of reports, something which she had assumed would contain some tracings of various glyphs or a map of the isle, not…not priceless treasures from the First Age!

The herb and the ring were rare enough, but…a photonic data crystal, one with an entire archive from the First Age? The merest fragment of that knowledge would have been valuable beyond price, would have been something empires fought over. An entire archive…?

'How…?'

There were no words for just how significant something like this was, for how drastically this changed what was possible. It wasn't a matter of what Atlas could accomplish anymore, the question was really what Atlas couldn't accomplish…

'How…how did Matou manage…this?' she asked herself, calculating the likelihood that this report was falsified or was some sort of prank by Aozaki Touko to be miniscule, as it contained the correct code phases, and the puppeteer knew better than to treat the Director of Atlas with anything but respect.

Part of her – not a small part either, was tempted to drop everything else, to put aside the reports and open the pouch to see what Matou had obtained.

Yet the more ruthless part of her knew that information was power, so she pushed aside her curiosity as she continued reading, with Aozaki Touko noting that while Matou had done some questionable things such as nearly fall off the roof of a building in a drunken stupor, he had also managed to defeat a Champion empowered by the Filth, a memetic pathogen born of the Outer Gods.

The report also mentioned that the boy's soul seemed to have been reconstructed, and that his nature had shifted to something more…elemental in nature, mentioning this as a possible sign of concern. Apparently, a degree of mental contamination had been detected as well, which led Aozaki Touko to question the boy's continued usefulness – though at least, he had not been corrupted by the Filth.

The puppeteer had gone on to assess the boy's ability with crafting potions to be "passable enough," crediting his success in the Championship mostly to happenstance, rare ingredients, and timely use of Felix Felicis, though she acknowledged that the Potion was quite advanced – of legendary standing by the standards of most practitioners.

Seeing this made the Director's lips curve upwards ever so slightly, though only a moment, as Aozaki Touko had never been the sort of person to dispense praise lightly. To be assessed as "passable" by the woman noted as one of the greatest geniuses of her generation was in fact an honor she rarely bestowed on anyone, much less a former apprentice.

…certainly, the woman had never said anything remotely positive about her current apprentice, characterizing Tohsaka Rin as a naïve idiot who was excessively emotional and relied on brute force for what little she managed to accomplish.

She quickly skimmed the last few pages, finding little of note except for some speculation that the Russian Champion may have been experimented on, given the way the Filth had lain dormant in his system as something of a parallel network with his nerves…

'Psuedo-circuits?'

…and of course, forwarding along the details of one Rachelle Lestrange, whose ancestor had apparently been one of her ancestor's students, with the puppeteer having arranged for Sion to meet with the young woman.

'Presumptuous,' the Director mused, 'but efficient, and efficiency forgives much.'

And well, if she managed to recruit Lestrange, that would complete her project of bringing the knowledge that her ancestor had taken from Atlas back under the Institute's aegis.

She closed the report, taking a moment to digest its contents before moving on to the next. Given what Matou had accomplished, there was no question she would be able to retain her position of Director – not when he'd somehow succeeded on a level that most could barely even begin to fathom.

That…was quite the realization.

'I had believed he would do well, but…not to this extent.'

Perhaps it was time to look into setting aside a Philosopher's Stone for his use in a few years, when he reached physical maturity. Though before that, she supposed that it would only be fitting to finally induct him into the organization as an official agent of Atlas, as with his accomplishments, there could be no question that he was at the very least, qualified.

Of course…agents needed to deal with more than simply competence in the field – or so she was reminded as she took note of the seal on the cover of the next report, the sigil of the Illuminati, if she was not mistaken.

This report, by one Elesa Labelle, Champion of Ilvermorny, had been forwarded to her by way of Jack Harper, one of the Illuminati's top intelligence specialists, with its pages detailing the joint "Atlas-American" expedition's journey into the labyrinth at the center of the island, as well as an incident involving the manifestation of an avatar of an Outer God.

While Sokaris felt a trace of annoyance at how Matou had apparently presumed upon the name of Atlas yet again, as she read on, she found herself surprised. Oh, not by how Matou had managed to nearly get himself killed – Sokaris knew he was quite capable of this without help – but how he had apparently fought the First Jinn, becoming a pseudo-servant in the process, as well as how his contribution had been decisive in defeating the echo of the Crimson Moon.

There was some language recommending that Agents of Atlas carry spare outfits in the future, as well as inquiring if the reckless manner in which Matou fought was something he had been taught by the Institute, but overall, the American Champion had seemed satisfied enough with his performance, as on net, the presence of the boy had proven to be a benefit to the expedition.

The list of items acquired in said joint operation had also been…rather surprising.

Not so much for the fact that it confirmed that Matou had acquired a photonic crystal, but for the fact that this Labelle had acquired two items which were effectively Noble Phantasms, with the Agent having noted that they would be quite useful in Outer God suppression from a field test she was able to perform courtesy of one Matou Shinji, who had apparently "defeated the Avatar of an Outer God through a partial replication of the Moonfall phenomenon."

Sokaris couldn't help but stare, her eyes frozen on the last line she'd read as she wondered if her reading comprehension abilities had somehow degraded.

…a partial replication of the Moonfall?

How…? How was something like that even possible?

Shaking herself, she continued reading, with the report mentioning that the boy had apparently used the Ring of Saint Quartz as the catalyst of a wish, speculating that he might have used the blood of the echo to invoke a mystery associated with the original it was based on.

It further mentioned that the boy had effectively died as a result of that ploy, and that the current Matou Shinji was a combination of various aspects and pieces – an amalgam that believed itself to be Matou Shinji, yet was more elemental than human at this point.

The report attributed his "rebirth" to intervention of yet a third party – a shaman who had "awakened" the isle, in combination with various bits of equipment (a detailed list of which was attached) that the by had been wearing at the time, and recommended a full medical examination be done on the boy to assess his continued stability and aptitude for duty.

Following that, there was a very self-deprecating report from Matou, of course, in which he bemoaned how he had failed to achieve satisfactory results in the Championship, mentioned how he had burdened the American Champion excessively during their expedition into the labyrinth, and expressed doubt about his worth to Atlas, given that he had failed to stop what the Russian Champion had become without resorting to drastic measures. He went on to describe how he had failed in maintaining information security, with the Americans identifying him as an agent of Atlas, and how he had indeed presumed on the name of Atlas when dealing with Rachelle Lestrange, who he had thought would be a useful asset for the Institute.

His closing lines however, seemed quite egregious, especially after she had read the other reports. Word for word, it said the following:

'I apologize for any inconvenience I may have caused you through my failures, and sincerely hope that what little I managed to accomplish does not completely disappoint you. I am sorry I did not manage to meet your expectations. I ask only that you give me a chance to redeem myself.'

Reading this…was just about as shocking as anything else she'd seen in the other reports, given how by almost any standard, he had performed far beyond what could be expected of someone of his age and level of training.

Did Matou really think he had failed her? That he needed to redeem himself when his actions had not only assured that she would retain her position – without anyone daring to challenge her – but had essentially assured Atlas' fortunes for the next century or more?

The contributions he had made to the salvation of the world…the impossible things he had accomplished one after the next – did he think they meant nothing?

And then a chime rang as a priority message came in via the small vanishing cabinet the boy had gifted her – a note from Mashu Kyrielight, stating that Matou had gone to the Ministry for debriefing, something which seemed…something which seemed rather troubling, given the instability of Magical Britain and its approach to outsiders.

'Request permission to intervene if necessary.'

…well, she was hardly going to lose a capable agent – one who went so far above and beyond – was she? That would be foolish.

As such, her reply was obvious.

'Permission granted. Deployment of Prototype Personal Armament Noire authorized.'