...
"..."
Kiritsugu remained silent.
Natalia picked up one specially made round and continued casually,
"I ground your ribs into powder and mixed them into these bullets."
"Anyone struck by one of them will have your Origin manifested inside their body."
"If you fire one while your target's Magic Circuits are active..."
"It will Sever their Magic Circuits..."
"And forcibly Bind them back together in a completely distorted state."
"So long as your target is a proper magus..."
"It's a guaranteed one-shot kill."
"There are sixty-six of these."
"Origin Bullets."
"So don't waste them."
Kiritsugu turned toward the bullets fashioned from the powder of his own bones.
His eyes, long stripped of their former light, remained utterly emotionless.
As the pain coursing through his body continued...
Fragments of the past surfaced one after another.
...
After the Dead Apostle incident on Alimango Island...
Kiritsugu spent the following years living with Natalia Kaminski, the woman who had rescued him from that island.
As expected...
He followed the same path she walked.
He would be trained as a hunter.
And he would live as one.
The first thing Natalia ever taught him was how to assemble and fire a gun.
Every type of firearm.
Every operating mechanism.
And how to maintain an accuracy of at least eighty to ninety percent under virtually any conditions.
Mastering that alone took Kiritsugu years.
In the end...
He finally reached what Natalia called...
"Beginner level."
And the worst part was...
She wasn't joking.
A hunter could never afford to miss.
One mistake meant relentless retaliation.
And a lifetime of sleepless nights.
Much like a magus's obsession with reaching the Root...
Their desire for revenge bordered on insanity.
Just like Norikata Emiya...
Many magi devised bizarre magecraft and grotesque experiments in pursuit of Akasha.
Their methods were impossible to predict.
Which was why...
The only good magus...
Was a dead one.
As Kiritsugu spent more and more time dealing with this collection of dangerously unstable people known as magi...
He came to understand that truth more deeply than anyone.
Natalia...
His adoptive mother...
Belonged to no organization.
She was a completely independent mercenary who worked for nothing except money.
"As long as the price is right..."
"I'll even kill a god."
That was Natalia's favorite line whenever she boasted to prospective clients.
She didn't actually believe it herself.
But reputation mattered.
Sometimes you had to be arrogant.
Otherwise...
People looked down on you.
If respect couldn't be earned...
Fear worked just as well.
The ongoing conflict between the Mage's Association and the Holy Church became Natalia's greatest source of income.
The former resembled a coalition of ancient aristocratic families whose wealth and influence had been accumulated over countless generations.
The latter was, in essence, the religion of the magi.
Bound together by unwavering faith and backed by an enormous following, it was every bit as formidable a force.
From that day onward...
Kiritsugu witnessed countless tragedies just like the massacre on Alimango Island.
He gradually realized...
Such disasters were commonplace.
Somewhere in the world...
Again and again...
They repeated endlessly.
The sense of justice burning within him scorched his conscience like an unquenchable flame.
His life had not been spared merely for his own sake.
It had been spared...
So he could accomplish something meaningful.
Because of that...
Every time Natalia left on a job...
Kiritsugu begged to accompany her.
Again.
And again.
At first...
She refused without hesitation.
He was too weak.
His shooting wasn't good enough.
That was all there was to it.
Until one day.
During another combat exercise...
Using paint-filled training rounds...
Natalia found herself marked by several hits.
Even Kiritsugu's firearm assembly speed had nearly caught up with hers.
From that day onward...
She never rejected his requests again.
Instead...
She brought him along as her assistant.
Together...
The two traveled across the world as freelance mercenaries.
Witnessing chaos.
Corruption.
Cruelty.
And humanity at its ugliest.
Whenever Kiritsugu couldn't bear to watch innocent people die and tried to save them...
Natalia would always ask the same question.
"So..."
"Are you trying to become a Hero of Justice?"
She never waited for his answer.
Instead...
She would simply drag him back from death herself.
Time and again...
Kiritsugu glared at her in frustration.
Time and again...
That anger turned into guilt and self-reproach.
Until...
After cradling the cold bodies of countless innocent victims...
He gradually became numb.
He began to realize...
No matter how desperately he struggled...
There was a limit to the strength he could obtain.
And his dream...
Of becoming a Hero of Justice...
Was nothing more than a fantasy.
"Natalia..."
"Does anything I do even matter?"
"I killed my own father so no one else would have to die."
Having inherited twenty percent of Norikata Emiya's Magic Crest, the now-grown Kiritsugu asked the question while holding the blood-soaked body of a lifeless child in his arms.
The battlefield around them had long since fallen silent.
They were in Southeast Asia.
The aftermath of a raid on a massive human trafficking operation.
Men.
Women.
Adults.
Children.
Here...
Human beings were treated like livestock.
Locked inside cages.
Priced like merchandise.
Some were sold as tools to satisfy depraved desires.
Some became unwilling organ donors.
Others were raised to inherit the criminal enterprise itself.
Every form of human evil...
Had gathered here.
Natalia snorted.
"Killing one person doesn't change anything."
"If you really want your wish to come true..."
"You'd have to wipe out every monster like the ones we dealt with today."
"The whole lot of them."
"If you could actually do that..."
"Maybe your dream would come true."
"Think about it."
"If there were no human traffickers left anywhere in the world..."
"Children wouldn't disappear anymore."
"And anyone with even a shred of decency would help them find their parents."
"..."
Kiritsugu fell into deep thought.
Natalia burst out laughing.
"I'm kidding."
"You didn't seriously believe that, did you?"
"..."
Kiritsugu remained silent.
Seeing his expression...
Natalia's teasing smile slowly faded.
"...Don't waste your time thinking about it."
"It's impossible."
"As long as humanity exists..."
"Evil will continue to be born."
"Even if someone somehow managed to eliminate every guilty person alive today..."
"Tomorrow..."
"New evil would simply take its place."
"There's no solution."
Was that really true?
Kiritsugu refused to believe it.
Somewhere in this world...
There had to be a power capable of bringing about lasting peace.
Even if that peace lasted only a few decades...
He was willing to spend his entire life pursuing it.
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