Fate/Zero Begins Filming

Shinji's stomach made that strange sound again.

Sensing something was wrong, Shinji stopped what he was doing and looked down at his body. His chest had suddenly begun to bulge abnormally.

"What..."

Pshk—

A thorn-like tentacle suddenly burst through Shinji's chest from inside!

A great deal of blood splattered across the entire room.

"▲?▼??▼?!!"

A mouth full of spikes poked its head out, letting out a horrifying sound at Shinji.

"Wah—"

Clutching his bloodied mouth, Shinji fell onto the bed, his body twitching uncontrollably.

With his consciousness fading, Shinji saw the tentacled monster crawling out of his body, a black shadow, and...

"HAHAHAHAHAHA! Isn't this super cool?! Hahaha!!"

◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◆◇◆◇◆◇◆

"Cool your ass—!!!"

Shinji leaped straight up from the sofa and screamed at the ceiling.

"Boss, are you all right?"

Seeing Shinji's pale face and cold sweat, Ophelia asked worriedly from beside him.

"Hah... hah..."

Shinji didn't answer his secretary. His mind had calmed down a little, and he leaned back against the sofa, panting heavily as if he'd just run ten kilometers.

"Damn it..."

Shinji carefully felt his chest. Though nothing had actually burst through it, he could still feel the skin beneath his fingers burning hot, as if someone had pressed a red-hot iron against his chest.

"Boss, I think we should stop."

Ophelia gripped Shinji's shoulders with both hands and looked at him with concern.

"Deep-diving into your own consciousness to observe possibilities is much too dangerous." Ophelia urged him anxiously. "A few more times and it'll damage your mind."

Ophelia's Mystic Eyes were a form of future sight, and their ability was to observe possibilities.

The scene Shinji had just "dreamed" was what he'd seen by using Ophelia's Mystic Eyes to observe possible futures through a deep dive into his soul.

More precisely, he'd been observing the possibilities that would follow his summoning a new Heroic Spirit.

After all, some of the Heroic Spirits in FZ were more or less unhinged—or, to be more precise, Lancelot and Gilles de Rais were both total lunatics.

Summoning either of them in their original class was out of the question. Unfortunately, although they both had Spirit Origins for other classes, they were both Saber.

Even though Shinji had increased the number of summoning slots in Fuyuki City's Holy Grail System, the underlying Magecraft design meant...

The Holy Grail could only summon seven new Heroic Spirits at a time, with at most one in each of the seven classes.

Considering that he might need to summon all sorts of strange Heroic Spirits in the future, like Rulers and aliens, Shinji had already asked his grandfather and Irisviel to modify the Holy Grail's summoning system.

But redesigning a foundational Magecraft system without changing the current setup wasn't simple. Progress was slow, just like DW's pathetic output.

Matou Zouken had already made it clear that the project would take years, and Shinji would just have to wait.

Shinji could afford to wait, but the FZ movie couldn't.

With the time for summoning Heroic Spirits drawing closer, Shinji had no choice but to use his secretary's ability to see how he could play things without screwing up.

As it turned out, Master Shinji's decision had been absolutely right. Though he'd only seen a few scattered glimpses, Second Master already knew how disastrous it would be to summon those two lunatics.

Summoning Saber Gilles de Rais wouldn't be so bad. The Matou Residence would only be razed to the ground during the battle between Berserker Lancelot and Artoria.

The real trouble came if he summoned Caster Gilles de Rais. Shinji would either be infected by the Sea Monster or killed by it. The sheer variety of bizarre deaths made Second Master feel like he'd reenacted just about every death of a minor character in Alien.

Worse, Gilles de Rais loved letting out all kinds of unholy laughter. It was practically mental pollution.

All day long, it was either "Cool," "Cooool," or "Cooooool."

"Are you a Blizzard employee or something?!"

Shinji rubbed his head and grumbled.

"Boss? Are you sure you're all right?"

Hearing Shinji blurt that out of nowhere, Ophelia worried that he really might be losing it and quickly grabbed his shoulders again.

"I'm fine. I'm just not satisfied with what I saw. Ophelia, don't blame yourself."

Shinji took the secretary's soft, fair hands and drew her slender, curvaceous body into his arms.

"Don't worry. I'm done observing for now. I won't do it again for a while," Shinji whispered in Ophelia's ear.

Observing possibilities this way was certainly dangerous. Some of the injuries in the visions would be partially reflected onto his body through mana.

But this method of "observing the future" was also very useful. When he wanted to summon a Heroic Spirit in the future, he could use it to confirm whether he'd be able to summon the one he wanted.

"You really shouldn't do this so often."

Ophelia looked up into Shinji's bright eyes and spoke with a hint of displeasure. "It's really dangerous..."

As she said this, she pouted her rosy lips, looking a little upset, even a little angry.

The sight of Shinji's terrified expression had just scared her badly.

Ophelia had always longed to be needed by someone. But if the way Shinji needed her hurt him, she would be heartbroken.

Because to Ophelia, Shinji—the first person to affirm her—was someone very special.

But before Ophelia could voice her complaint, Shinji leaned in and kissed her lightly on the forehead.

Caught off guard, Ophelia's body instinctively leaned backward. If Shinji hadn't been holding her soft waist, she might have toppled onto the floor.

"Boss, that's cheating..."

Ophelia blushed and spoke shyly.

"Well, it works better this way~"

Shinji chuckled and gently patted Ophelia's head again.

"So, Boss, have you decided?"

"I have. We'll summon Lancelot as Saber. As for the other one, we'll leave him to Yan Qing or find another actor."

If he could help it, Shinji didn't really want Yan Qing to play the Marshal. The king of bit parts already had more than enough to do; giving him another major role would be asking too much of him.

Shinji suspected that if things kept going this way, he might drive Little Yi Ge to develop a split personality.

"I wonder if Yan Qing will make multiple copies of himself like Hundred Faces."

Teasing his Heroic Spirit, Shinji reached out and opened the room door.

And then—

"Ow!"

"Hey! Don't push me!"

"Get off me!"

Looking at the girls piled up on the floor, Shinji asked coldly, "What are you doing?"

Rin gave an awkward smile. "Well... we were a little curious."

Sakura pouted as she explained, "Because you and Miss Farnese sneaked into this room together. It looked like you were doing something you shouldn't."

Medusa pushed up her glasses. "I was only watching them. I did try to stop them, but I failed."

Only the guileless Artoria gave the real reason. "Because Master was making all sorts of screams in the room, they thought you were doing something exciting... Mmph!"

Although Sakura and Rin quickly covered Artoria's mouth, Shinji had still heard what she said.

"You girls sure have a lot of free time..." Shinji's eyelid twitched. "If you have that much time, could you go do your jobs? Have you finished the preparations for filming?"

"Got it!" N

At Shinji's words, the girls hurriedly scrambled to their feet and ran down the corridor, leaving him behind.

"These girls..."

Shinji really didn't know what to say about them.

Once he'd finalized the summoning list, Shinji began the final preparations for the FZ movie. He even put aside the promotional work for FSN, which was still showing, and left it entirely to the distributor.

Shinji took his movies very seriously. From props and set dressing to choosing filming locations, he personally checked everything.

He didn't oversee the entire process, but he carefully reviewed each stage. Nothing could move on to the next stage until he'd approved it himself.

Aside from filming, the script was another major focus for Shinji before production began.

Commercial movies might not prioritize logic, but that didn't mean they ignored it. For a movie aimed at a general audience, the fewer plot holes, the better.

To make sure the characters' dialogue felt authentic, Shinji had the actors write their own lines for the scenes in the script.

Of course, they still had to submit those lines to Shinji for approval.

After all, movies were different from real life. Conversations in real life were relatively casual, but movies had time limits, so every line had to serve a purpose instead of being meaningless chatter.

That was especially true for a commercial movie like FZ, with its many plotlines. The characters' dialogue needed to be carefully refined.

Thanks to his experience preparing FSN, Shinji's preparations went very smoothly this time.

The summer of 2003 hadn't even ended, and Shinji was already ready to start filming.

Fate Zero Begins Filming

Because the set on the Einzbern Family's land hadn't been built yet, Shinji decided to start with the scenes in the studio.

But unlike during the filming of FSN, Shinji was clearly much stricter about the production this time.

"Cut! Artoria, your expression isn't right."

"Kiritsugu, you're not looking cold enough. Again!"

"The camera shook just now! Cameraman!! If you have Parkinson's like Grandpa Bi again next time, you're out of the crew!"

From the start of FZ's production, the veterans on the crew could tell that the atmosphere was completely different from the last shoot.

Compared with FSN, where a shot would pass as long as it was good enough, Shinji had practically become a perfectionist on the FZ set. He rejected every flawed shot and made them reshoot it.

For instance, Shinji had reshot a conversation between Artoria and Kiritsugu Emiya at least ten times, but he still wasn't satisfied.

Kiritsugu didn't mind. It was just a scene where Artoria complained at him, so all he had to do was listen coldly.

Even though he and Artoria were the two leads with the most screen time in this ensemble drama, he only said three lines to her throughout the whole movie.

Compared with Kiritsugu, Artoria had a harder time. Heroic Spirits might not get hoarse from talking endlessly, but having to repeat the same lines over and over without getting approval made her a little impatient.

After all, this was only a simple scene where Artoria and Kiritsugu discussed their strategy. It wasn't a complicated action sequence or a major dramatic scene, so it shouldn't have been this difficult to film.

In fact, by the standards of whether a shot was usable in the finished movie, the scene was already fine.

Shinji kept calling cut partly because he wanted the perfect shot, and partly because he wanted to give the old crew members a warning. He wanted them to understand that he'd be stricter about FZ than he had been about FSN.

To that end, Shinji had used the start of filming as an excuse to bring every crew member already in Fuyuki City to the set. He'd called it the first day of filming, so everyone had to take part.

"Cut!"

Once again, Shinji called cut through his megaphone. He slapped the monitor, stood up from the director's chair, and walked onto the set.

"Kiritsugu, Artoria, both of you have problems. Your expressions are off," Shinji told the two actors.

Kiritsugu lifted his chin slightly, a trace of helplessness crossing his face.

Artoria took a hamburger from an assistant and began eating it without disturbing her makeup.

"What did I do wrong?" Kiritsugu asked in confusion. "Wasn't I supposed to act cold toward her?"