Why am I so sore?
Shirou groaned pitifully as he shifted in his sleep. His entire body ached and his bed felt unusually lumpy and uncomfortable. Calling the soreness in his body an ache was underselling it greatly, though. It felt as if his entire body was one big bruise. Even the pain he experienced when creating a Circuit, the equivalent of inserting a scalding hot iron bar into his spine, when he practiced Magecraft could not hope to compare to this pain. What the hell had happened?
He slowly forced his eyes open, and immediately realized something was very, very wrong. For one, he was no longer in his bedroom where, last he could remember, he had gone to sleep.
Second, sturdy steel bars surrounded him on all sides. He was in a cage.
"..!"
Gasping in shock and bewilderment, Shirou forced himself to sit upright in spite of the pain and looked around wildly. What he saw made his stomach drop like an anvil.
Like previously mentioned he was in a cage, laying down on an old and dirty piece of cloth that wasn't nearly large enough for him to sleep comfortably on. Lining the breadth and width of the dim room he found himself in were dozens upon dozens of cages. He could barely see them through the oppressive gloom, but each and every cage housed at least one other individual.
All of them were as trapped and helpless as he was. Moreover, there was something strange with all of them. He could barely make them out, but some of them didn't exactly have human proportions and… did some of them have extra limbs or something?!
A weak cough was heard to his side, making his ears twitch, and Shirou turned to look.
A little girl was sitting in the corner of the cage beside his, as if trying to hide, though because of her proximity he could see her now that his eyes had adjusted to the dark surroundings. She looked a little younger than him, maybe about ten years old. Her skin was dry and sickly looking. Her hair was unkempt and filthy. She wore nothing but rags and her eyes appeared dead to the world, as if she was a corpse that hadn't realized that she was already dead.
Moreover, she had two rounded ears on top of her head and a long, bushy tail was curled around her. The extra appendages distinctly reminded him of a raccoon.
Shirou looked wide eyed at the extra appendages, "What the hell…" the words slipped out before he even realized he'd said them.
The girl apparently heard him. Her head turned to look at him, but she didn't say anything. She simply gave him a dead eyed stare. Like a fish on a chopping board.
He swallowed thickly at the look and his ears and tail twitched in his unease…
Wait… Ears and… tail…
Slowly, hesitantly, he raised one of his hands and felt around on the top of his head, even as his other hand felt along the ground behind him.
Bump. Bump. Twitch. The rounded raccoon ears on top of his head, the ears that hadn't been there before he had gone to sleep, twitched as he touched them. The long, bushy tail that was attached to his behind swung away as he touched it before curling about his person.
Even though he was already aching terribly, a trembling and wide eyed Shirou pinched his arm. He felt a sharp pain. Nope, he was definitely awake and not having some strange, overblown nightmare. Despite how unbelievable it seemed, he somehow, inexplicably, after going to sleep found himself in a cage with animal parts attached to him.
Before the panic attack that had been building up for a while could fully set in, he'd one odd and random thought pop up in his head.
Taiga-onee-san is going to kill me…
[Status Magic Main Menu]
Emiya Shirou (Age: 12)
Lv: 1
Class: Demi-human (Sub-type: Raccoon)
Equipment: Tattered Clothes
Skills: None
Magic: Projection (100% mastered), Structural Analysis (100% mastered) Reinforcement (23% mastered)
"Okay, now. Let's see…"
Shirou mumbled to himself as he looked through the Status Menu, not quite sure what to make of it.
After calming down from his (well deserved) freak out, he'd started taking stock of his situation. He might be a kid, but he was also a Magus. He was a bit better prepared than most to deal with the supernatural and all around strange situations. Not much, but a little, and that was enough to get him to calm down within an hour instead of several hours. It wasn't long before he'd noticed the strange icon floating in his peripheral vision, and the moment he'd focused on it, it had opened up and filled his vision with this strange, game-like menu box.
Game-like was indeed the correct term. Besides displaying general information about him, it also displayed certain 'statistics' about him like: Health (HP), Attack (ATK), Defense (DEF), Speed (SPD), Agility (AGL), Stamina (STA), etc., together with certain values.
It was really like a game.
Considering the name and the information it displayed in an easy to digest manner, it was probably some kind of Magecraft that made information about the user visible to the naked eye. Probably only visible to himself, though, as none of the people locked up in the cages besides him had reacted when Shirou had unwittingly opened his Menu.
That, of course, raised the question how he could have spontaneously acquired such Magecraft. Especially considering his lack of talent. He'd been practicing Reinforcement for over two years, and he had barely made any progress in those two years.
Unfortunately, his musings around the information displayed, even the information confirming the fact that he had somehow changed species, took a backseat to the pop up that had appeared the second he had opened the Menu. A pop up that had confirmed his worst fear the moment he had noticed the intricate, purple mark emblazoned on his chest.
Caution!
So friends for my motivation don't forget to be a powerstone.