Assassin (Fate/Crossover - Freddy Krueger)

**Assassin** (アサシン, *Asashin*) is the servant of **Kirie Kotomine** in the ??? Holy Grail War.

*"Come to Freddy."* - Freddy Krueger

## Profile

### Identity

Assassin's true identity is **Frederick Charles Krueger**, best known as **Freddy Krueger**, is the main antagonist of the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.

Freddy Krueger was born from the rape of a young nun at the hands of a hundred violent madmen and things... didn't improve afterwards. Ultimately, he obeyed the violent murderous impulses seemingly buried in his soul and became a child-killer who was ultimately burned to death by the parents of the young ones he had killed. This turned out to be a mistake, for this brought Krueger's vile nature to the attention of the Dream Demons, strange inhuman entities who wanted the soul of an evil man willing to be their agent in bringing nightmares to life. The Dream Demons empowered Freddy, giving him the ability to use fear to kill through dreams, and his depredations continued for many years during which he often returned from seeming obliteration.

### Appearance

In all of his appearances, Freddy is depicted as an undead, demonic serial killer who is commonly identified by his burned, disfigured face, red and dark green striped sweater and brown fedora. His most distinguishing feature is his clawed glove, a semi-metal gauntlet with four blades attached to each finger which he uses to stab and cut his victims into shreds and even capable of slicing through flesh with ease.

### Personality

Freddy is psychopathic, twisted, and driven by the desire to kill. An insatiable sadist, Freddy takes enjoyment in terrifying his victims before killing them and will often spend weeks twisting the dreams of his quarry before moving in for the fatal blow. For a professional killer, he showcases very little composure; he is prone to fits of emotion such as joy and rage. Unresponsive to reason and deaf to pleas for mercy, Freddy is a nightmare made flesh, just what he's always wanted.

Despite his abominable nature, he's not without superficial charm. When he was alive, he was able to hide the fact that he was a child murderer by putting on the guise of a loving husband and mourning father. However, once his wife found out and he killed her, he was still able to get acquitted by the legal system. As a malevolent spirit, one of his most notable characteristics is his flamboyant personality and depraved sense of humor. He's frequently bombastic and likes to crack puns and jokes while he torments his targets. He seems to be a bit egotistical, as he made a comment alluding to the idea that he views himself as a god-like entity.

Unlike many other slasher villains, Freddy Krueger kills his victims out of sheer enjoyment and nothing less. He doesn't kill because of external or personal reasons, he kills because he enjoys every minute of it. He embraces evil by his most common form and can look like whatever he wants. He doesn't have to look like a deformed, burned corpse, as he does that simply because it terrifies people and he loves to make sure they are filled with fear before they die.

In Freddy vs. Jason, he strongly hates it when he is forgotten, as this renders him powerless. When he takes the form of Pamela Voorhees to convince Jason Voorhees to start a killing spree in Springwood, he banks on the idea that he himself will be blamed for the killing spree and that it will make people fear and remember him again. There's also the idea that he specifically preys on the victim's greatest fears in their dreams to get the largest reaction from them. Even when he isn't in their dreams, Freddy would still try to wear them down and get them to sleep, as he'll either tear them into shreds in their nightmares or make them die of sleep deprivation.

Not only that, but he also tries to leverage his past of abuse as a way to gain sympathy in Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare. He shows that he was raised by a sleazy pimp and was bullied relentlessly into isolation as a child. The problem is that he also shows telltale signs of sociopathy even then. And while he attempts to paint himself as a victim, he gets no sympathy.

In The Nightmares on Elm Street: Freddy Krueger's Seven Sweetest Dreams, one of the short stories is set after the fourth film, with Freddy having returned by unknown means after his defeat. Neil Gordon returns with a new plan to kill Freddy utilizing mental time travel, basically a hypnotism technique that allows people to experience moments from the past as if they were really there. He wants to use this technique to have someone go back and raise up a good "Anti-Freddy" capable of destroying the original. Gordon and Curtis use this to have Curtis experience Freddy's conception. Eventually, they execute the plan that was proposed initially, with Curtis being the one to go back and raise up the good Anti-Freddy, who he calls Fred. The two meet in the dream world and, like matter and antimatter, destroy one another. However, Freddy survives this, revealing to Curtis later on that he's an embodiment of hate who feeds off of hate and will linger so long as hatred exists.

## Abilities

Freddy Krueger can invade people's dreams and kill them within their nightmares, which will also kill them in reality. He usually uses his clawed glove, but can also manipulate the dream world in any way he wants, such as sucking them into a bed, a comic book, or a videogame, making them fall, extending himself, or turning them into an insect. On some occasions, he can possess people, though unlike when Jason does this in Jason Goes to Hell, the victim can survive.

Freddy is impossible to kill in the dream world. However, he is mortal while outside the dream world. He loses all his powers (though he can still disguise himself as his human form) in the real world. Even if he is killed, he can return from Hell if there is enough fear in the area he wishes to appear.

If a person touches fire (unless it is caused by Freddy to kill them) or anything burning hot, it can take them out of the dream world. Freddy also cannot leave Springwood unless inside the dreams of someone who is, in which case he still cannot invade other people's dreams unless the one whose mind he is inside is related to him. Freddy also seems to hate fire as it is what the parents used to burn him alive.

Freddy Krueger starts very, very weak parameter-wise for a Servant, but he can get stronger through murder in a way that is beyond most other Servants. Given enough time and enough souls, the dude can get roughly as strong as it is possible for a Servant to be under the rules of the Fuyuki Grail.

Except Luck. That stays pretty high, because he has the favour of the Dream Demons and that allows him to control his fate to a much, much higher degree than normal. Same for the Noble Phantasm rating, more or less.

### Weapons/Combat

Assassin is not an exceptionally skilled combatant, even by mortal standards. He mostly uses physical superiority and the advantages he gains through use of his Reality Marble to gain the upper hand over his victims, often amusing himself by allowing them to fight back briefly before bringing the engagement to a bloody end.

Vicious monster that he is, however, Krueger is not without courage. If he faces someone who is an enemy, as opposed to mere prey, he will stand his ground if he thinks that victory is possible and fight to the bloody end, pulling no punches and using to the fullest his trademark clawed glove and his not inconsiderable ability to exploit the battlefield to his advantage.

### Skills

#### Class Skills

* Presence Concealment (C Rank): Capacity to hide one's presence as a Servant. Freddy is notoriously hard to detect, if he doesn't want to be seen, and uses this skill to observe his victims remotely. However, his mental distortions (and the requirements of his Noble Phantasms) make him give away his position in flamboyantly obvious fashion prior to an attack.

* Independent Action (EX Rank): The ability to remain in the world without the prana supply of a Master or a valid contract. Assassin can use this skill thanks to the NP Chest of Faces. The length of time he can exist in this state is determined by the amount of energy initially available, but can be extended through murder. See relevant Noble Phantasm description for more details.

#### Personal Skills

* Battle Continuation (EX Rank): Strength of the Servant's vitality, which measures the ability to keep fighting while injured and to retreat successfully after a defeat. Krueger can survive what would be considered decisive fatal wounds in most Servants and shrug the loss of most or all of his body without real loss of vitality, through use of his Noble Phantasm Boiler Room Nightmare inside his own body. As long as he has magical energy to fuel the Reality Marble, his material body is merely a projection of Assassin's imagination that Krueger's true spiritual self can restore at will to its default state by using the blueprint that the Grail System generated during his summoning.

* Insight of the Wicked (B/A+ Rank): Insight to see the vulnerabilities and hidden fears of one destined to become the Servant's victim. Krueger is adept in the use of this skill to torture his victims and maximize their fear in the moment of their death. Full deployment of the Noble Phantasm Boiler Room Nightmare enhances his awareness of these hidden fears to such an extent that he seems capable of reading the minds of those he preys upon.

* Mental Pollution (A+): Possession of a distorted mentality, which grants robust defense against mental interference thaumaturgy, but also makes it difficult to reach an understanding with individuals who aren't distorted to an equivalent degree. Born a cursed human and then further twisted by a life of wickedness, a horrific death and a twilight existence as a wraith, Assassin is perhaps as far removed from humanity as it is possible to be, while still being considered human (for an extremely limited value of "human").

### Noble Phantasm

#### **Chest of Faces; "Profanation of the Innocent"**

The boon of the Dream Demons allows Assassin to capture the souls of those he kills before the souls return to Akasha, as long as the victims die terrified of Krueger. And where the majority of Servants merely break down souls into magical energy to replenish their stores, this Noble Phantasm lets the dream murderer make far greater use of the souls of his victims.

For every soul absorbed, Krueger's power is fractionally increased and once he has collected enough souls, his parameters will increase in one rank. If allowed to do this indefinitely, Assassin could conceivably grow as strong as it is conventionally possible for a Servant to be within the limits of the Holy Grail War. However, the number of kills required to accomplish this would be in the thousands and therefore rather impractical within the temporal boundaries of the Grail War.

Of course, he can gain more by capturing the souls of powerful beings (absorbing the spirit of an average Servant, for example, would likely boost his parameters by a rank on its own), but defeating powerful foes is a daunting task and even more so is trying to make legendary spirits feel the required levels of dread. He'll rarely try his luck in this fashion as long as more easily collected prey abounds, unless he happens to grow fixated on one or more of his enemies in the conflict.

Absorbed souls are taken to a remote region of Boiler Room Nightmare, where a blood-red mist mostly hides a hellish landscape of souls that are kept trapped and forced to relive the pain of their deaths and their fear of their killer. This state of things lasts until all sense of self is lost and the soul, too degraded to be of further use, is totally devoured for its raw energy. Until this happens, Krueger can access the skills and knowledge of his victims by reading the information recorded in their souls, although this act of profanation considerably accelerates the degradation process. This ability does not extend to the Noble Phantasms of Servants he might have defeated and absorbed.

This Noble Phantasm is also what allows Krueger to use the Independent Action skill. Whenever the World detects the presence of something that should be dead and yet lives, Chest of Souls automatically releases to Akasha the soul of a victim and Gaia is temporarily fooled into thinking that the problem has been solved. Although a number of factors can increase or decrease the number, Assassin loses roughly one parameter rank worth of souls per day, without a contract, so if he lacks a Master, he needs to kill a lot to avoid being weakened and ultimately purged from existence.

It should be noted that although the tortured miniature faces which form from the scar tissue in the Servant's chest are the physical manifestations of this Noble Phantasm, the effects of Boiler Room Nightmare prevent conventional destruction of Chest of Faces. Besides the total annihilation of the Servant, the only suitable method that can target this Noble Phantasm with good odds involves thaumaturgy capable of breaking a mystic bond in the level of a Servant-Master contract. If such an attack is successful, the souls of all the victims will be released and Krueger will be dramatically weakened afterwards.

#### **Boiler Room Nightmare; "Never Sleep Again"**

The boiler room in which Krueger killed children when he was a mortal serial killer and in which he was burned alive by a mob of enraged parents.

The boiler room which became his favourite nightmare playground after the Dream Demons empowered his wraith with power over the night terrors of children.

This poorly lit maze of catwalks, steaming pipes and machinery is the default appeareance of Assassin's Reality Marble and ultimate Noble Phantasm, when Krueger decides to manifest it fully instead of using it just to negate damage done to his body through internalized manifestation.

In truth, however, all things within the Reality Marble are a solidified form of the sixth imaginary element. Thus, Assassin can alter essentially anything and everything within Boiler Room Nightmare, including his own physical body, through a relatively economic method of vision materialization that exceeds the capabilities of most Marble Phantasms, within the narrow boundaries of his nightmare world.

Those brought inside the Reality Marble against their will can prevent Assassin from enacting such alterations upon their persons and objects they are in contact with by circulating magical energy through their magic circuits. As long as they do so, they may use their skills and powers as they normally would, although the battlefield will give Krueger a marked advantage. He will generate situations designed to exploit the fears of his foes, using the information gained through the Insight of the Wicked skill, and to give himself an advantage, all at relatively little cost.

Therefore, only someone with the greatest self-control, the ability to compensate for rapidly altering battlefield conditions and highly prana efficient fighting skills stands even the smallest chance of besting Freddy within Boiler Room Nightmare. Moreover, escape from the Reality Marble is considerably difficult and can only be accomplished through use of Command Seals or other forms of thaumaturgy that can mimic spatial transportation in levels approaching True Magic.

## References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddy\_Krueger

https://anightmareonelmstreet.fandom.com/wiki/Freddy\_Krueger\_(A\_Nightmare\_on\_Elm\_Street\_film\_series)

https://horror.fandom.com/wiki/Freddy\_Krueger\_(original\_timeline)

https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Freddy\_Krueger\_(original)

https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Freddy\_Krueger

https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/summon-a-servant-mk4-fate-stay-night-crossovers.208968/post-11711714