Okay. My knowledge of Nasuverse is not all-encompassing, so there will be mistakes though I will try to be close. Though I don't know how often I can write fanfic, and not sure when inspiration will strike me on my other fanfiction stories (I get to thinking about Divine Blood and turn back to the novels and original shorts, for example), but this gives me something fun to write to complement the work. (though I have a for-hire deadline this month, so don't expect too much)
Saeko is an actual anime character, and she's using names connected to said character. Anybody familiar with me can probably make an easy guess as to who she is... One thing to note, she won't be learning powers from different places...accumulating equipment yes, but not powers, I'm judging that what made her immortal (which is also from an anime) froze her condition so she can't adapt her body to learn any new power sources. That came, however, in the fifth or sixth world she went to after leaving home.
Eventually, I hope Saeko to end up the mentor character with Shirou taking hero position again. But since she's the element of change up here, I'm starting with her. As implied, this is likely to go out of Nasuverse.
To any fans, sorry, I REALLY wanted to do the massive armament of weapons against Heracles.
The woman lived in Chicago at least for the moment. Life was good, in a manner of speaking. Her home was both luxurious and innocuous. From the outside it looked like any of a number of other buildings in the city. Once upon a time it had been a hotel owned by a disgusting man named H. H. Holmes. It had been riddled with death traps and secret passages when she first came to the scene, but that was in the past. Now those same chambers had been turned to her own use.
Holmes spirit had been lingering in the building, but that was easily handled. She'd had a wealth of knowledge to use against the man, even though his crimes and ghost had gone unknown and undetected for almost a century.
She was Japanese, in her early twenties to all appearances and she had long black hair, strikingly luxuriant, and wore a beautiful black kimono as she strode through a wide hall stacked endlessly with photographs and portraits that showed what seemed to be her or her relatives in a number of exotic places. The woman stopped in the middle of them all and twisted to take in each and every one of them as a soft sob worked out of her throat. She lifted a hand to wipe at her eyes and compose herself before moving on to the next room where a simple ritual space was set up.
"Death is lighter than a feather, duty is heavier than a mountain," she whispered, knowing that the path she was about to step on to was going to abandon that credo. Though she found it questionable whether she had ever truly lived it.
Bending down, she drifted her hand through the golden curls of the item under her hands. She glanced aside toward the clock, she was cutting it close. In thirty minutes the ritual would be performed as normal and she would be left out of events. This wasn't the first time that she had tried this sort of thing, and she'd always seemed to back off as it came to the kickoff.
She'd leave, go looking for something to do, set up a new life, and eventually be back to this point.
"No, it's time for this to end," she whispered determinedly.
Standing up she walked across to a table and looked down at a brightly colored art book displaying diagrams of arcane circles. Nodding to herself she turned back to the fleece and then stepped over to grab a simple looking blue gem etched with the roman numeral XVIII.
Silently she, focused until the gem began to glow and then she quietly intoned the words of the ritual that she had researched, hoping that her research was accurate to her position.
Her answer came in a flash of light that quickly coalesced into the humanoid form of a woman wearing ornate black and purple robes, the top of her face covered by a black hood lined with gold.
"I, Medea of Colchis, do swear to fight in the grail war at your side," the woman said with a bow. "May we be victorious in the war to come and achieve our hearts desires. May I have the name of my Master?"
"One thing first," the woman in the kimono said stepping forward and stretching her arms out wide. "Get it over with."
The summoned Medea cocked her head to the side, looking confused as to what her summoner might be talking about. Her Master smirked a bit and turned an arrogant expression toward her.
"Are you not the Witch of Betrayal?" she demanded harshly. "Get. It. Over. With. I won't stop you."
"You want me to betray you?" the witch smirked. "Already. Is this some manner of test?"
"I've said it once," the woman in the kimono returned sharply. "Take your blade in hand, free yourself from the contract. There's two tickets for Japan on the desk behind me. You don't need me. Show me you truly are the witch of betrayal!"
A shrill, piercing laugh sounded out from the woman's mouth for a two seconds before jarring pain slashed down through her body when the jagged weapon was forced down into her body. A discharge of power slipped through the woman's body as a disappointingly familiar sensation washed over her...and then she crumpled to the ground.
Medea sneered down at the body as she moved to clean her blade. What manner of luck she had that her summoner was suicidal. It would have been much easier to have a Master for the Grail War, but the woman had been right, there ways around it. Medea wandered through the room for a moment, taking into the absurdity of it all. Alot of the things didn't look anything like a what belonged in a magus's workshop.
A book on the desk attracted her attention and she turned toward it seeing the summoning circle drawn in colorful detail. She fingered the paper and realized it was a modern material of some sort. Turning the page she gasped as she found a stylized picture of herself complete with description of her history and powers and a cursory description of the Rule Breaker.
Turning the next page, she found another picture billed as Berserker and showing the image of a massive man that seemed familiar.
Closing the thin book sharply, she took in the title. "Fate/complete material - Volume III. World Material. What is this?"
Medea's hands started to shake as she looked around the room with a new perspective. Then the sound of a sharply indrawn breath brought her to look back and watch as the blood flowed backwards into the dead body of her former Master. The woman sighed softly and spoke up, "I had hoped Rule Breaker would work. But I'll have to do things the hard way it seems."
"What manner of creature are you?" Medea demanded cautiously as the woman stood up.
"Human," the woman explained. "Terribly, terribly human."
"Then I suppose the next question is who are you?" Medea asked.
The question seemed to make the formerly dead woman stop and think for a moment. "For now, I've been using the name Saeko Rothery. You probably wouldn't know my real name. It is recorded in no histories of note."
"A name is one thing," Medea noted. "But tell me who you are that I should be asked to trust one who named me witch twice."
"Because I am someone else who was named witch, Medea," Saeko noted. "I am someone else who was written to be a villain and for whom many could see nothing else that I could be."
"You think your story compares to mine then?" Medea wondered.
"Before I was this?" Saeko asked casually. "Not even close. My story was small. light-hearted. There was no death save once. Our causes and arguments were petty. Our worries minor. And our lives were blessed though we couldn't see it. I was but a minor player in it with only a limited role."
She sighed wistfully.
"I sunk into real evil only after I left my story," she added harshly. "And without anything like your excuse. I suppose it's possible I haven't died yet because I haven't yet finished atoning. If that's so, I assume I'll fail."
"And now you desire to win the Grail and have it grant your wish," Medea reasoned.
"My desire is the only wish that the Grail is truly capable of granting," Saeko scoffed.
"You wish to die," Medea noted.
"I reason that a malevolent device holding the accumulated evil of a world and capable of planetary genocide should be capable of killing me once and for all," Saeko explained icily, she moved to the book holding the secrets of this universe and sighed as she touched it. "I can give you ways to live on in this world, Medea. I can show you how to step past Jason's lies. I can show you secrets from a thousand worlds. I can show you how to be more than a hero from a story. But I'm afraid that I've already stolen the endings that the books show as possible. Just by being here I've changed things. If Rule Breaker had worked, it might have gone the same..."
She shook her head and glanced back over her shoulder.
"Are you ready to accept the contract again?" Saeko asked. "Or do we go our separate ways, become competitors?"
"Let us see how things proceed," Medea returned calmly.
"Then I offer myself as Master to Medea of Colchis," Saeko Rothery said eagerly. "I shall be your blade and your shield. I am your monster. Through me you shall have knowledge of escaping this life and living on. And, in return, I ask from you that you do no evil at least until our contract is ended."
"This might be hard to do without killing," Medea warned.
"I said do no evil," Saeko noted with a grim, cheerless smile. "I never said anything about not killing."
Saeko kneeled on the ground and looked over the equipment that was going to determine how this fight was going to go. The roll of cloth in front of her had several weapons that she hoped were strong enough to do what needed to be done.
First was a tiny thing that looked rather like a novelty squirt gun. It easily fit in Saeko's own small hands. In fact it was rather small enough that it was a bit awkward to hold. It also wasn't exactly an instant kill weapon so much as it was a massive damage weapon. Still, it went into her sleeve and vanished.
"By your tome, this Heracles as he is when sunk into the depths of Hera's inflicted madness," Medea lectured...Caster, Saeko corrected herself. "He will not be someone we can reason with."
As Caster spoke, the Japanese woman picked up what looked rather like a flash-light and grimaced. It had taken her a very, very long time to master the use of this weapon in way that she could avoid hurting herself or others on accident. Even now, given that she wasn't the sort of person the weapon had been designed for, she wondered if it would be enough as she clipped it to her belt.
"A Heracles lacking reason is one I can deal with," Saeko assured her. "It's when he's thinking that he's beyond my ability."
The next weapon was one of her disappointments. She picked it up and stared at it. A long barrelled colt revovler built sometime around 1835. The barrel was engraved with the English line "I will fear no evil and there was a pentacle etched in its grip and several bullets stood next to it which she loaded one by one.
"I suppose I'm one of the five things," she muttered to herself.
"What five things?" Caster asked.
"Doesn't matter," Saeko responded with a shrug as she placed the colt in a shoulder holster.
"I see. You have fought Heracles before then?" Caster asked.
Next to that were seven arrows coated with a dark substance. This was the first weapon that the woman planned to use on Heracles. Aside from his sheer strength, the stories had placed what stained these arrows as one of the chief weapons Heracles used, and also the item that had brought his death in the past.
Unfortunately the nature of her life meant that poisons meant nothing to her.
She set the arrows into a quiver on her back. Six of these arrows were of a common sort, but the seventh was a large, black arrow crafted of some sort of metal that Caster was not familiar with.
"Fought him, or a version of him, twenty...thirty...thirty-seven times," Saeko noted. "Fought beside him thirteen times. Married him once."
Two more guns, one white and one black, were picked up then and settled at her side. Those were copies, of a sort, made specifically for her by another old loved one. Like some of the other weapons, they weren't exactly instant kill weapons but given the things she had killed with the pair she hoped that she could at least take one of Berserker's lives.
"You married Heracles?" Caster noted with a blink. "How did that work out?"
"Better than expected," Saeko commented. "Hera only tried to kill me once."
Saeko picked up a scroll with an intricate notation upon it. This had been a trick to get. She'd only managed to get by lucking upon a pair of other travelers in the same place at the same time. Her body didn't actually produce the energy needed to activate the scroll, but it was keyed to her DNA so all she had to do was bleed on it in the right place to trigger the inherent energy to release. The scroll went up her sleeve, vanishing wherever the tiny gun had gone.
"Of the times you've fought him, how many times have you won?" Caster asked.
"Three times," the Japanese woman noted. "Never permanently. Aside from just living longer."
This brought a rueful smile to the Colchean priestess's face. "And you say this is our first target?"
"The girl is our first target," Saeko corrected. "Or rather what she carries. If I could get her away from the giant without him tracking her down, I would. If he were able to think, I'd tell him my plan and hope he'd play along. As it is, I'm going to have to dissipate him."
She picked up a rolled up leather whip and rubbed her hands along it before turning to look at Caster.
"Do you think a rage-overwhelmed Heracles counts as a creature of darkness?" she asked.
"I would bring with you everything you can," Caster warned. "At the very least you'll buy time to give me a chance to strike."
"Good point," Saeko nodded as she put the whip into her jacket and turned to what looked like a simple cane. She brushed her hands along its edges and sighed.
"I can tell there is occult significance to several of these items," Caster noted. "Where did you acquire them?"
"Here and there, from places that no longer need them," Saeko noted. "This one. This shikume-zue...I won't be using it."
"Didn't I tell you that you should bring every weapon that might give you an edge," Caster lectured. "I can feel the power emanating off that weapon."
"It is not so simple," Saeko noted. She shook her head and the cane disappeared into her jacket.
That just left two more items. The first was a simple shield formed of a round metal and painted with a series of concentric red, white and blue circles with a white star at the center. This Saeko slipped over her shoulder opposite the quiver. Then she reached down to pick up the bow with which she would deliver the arrows.
"I'm ready," Saeko determined.
"Then let's begin, Master," Caster said.
Saeko nodded and started running before taking a running leap and landing gracefully on the roof of the first building she reached. Caster was swiftly enough at her side, studying her Master carefully. "I haven't even reinforced you and yet you travel so well."
"The humans where I come from are capable of such things," she explained. "With proper training. Still, to hurt a Heroic Spirit, I'll need to trust you." She emphasized the word trust pointedly.
"Touchy aren't we?" Caster asked.
"Caster, remember that I am very familiar with the way evil thinks," she commented.
"You still haven't taught me anything so it is in my interest to keep you alive," the Servant reminded her.
Ahead of them, the sky lit up in a blast of terrible fire. In another situation, Caster would have been scrying on the scene to watch what had transpired. However, now she already knew approximately what was going on. If any of her Master's books were correct, then she knew what direction events were heading.
But they were about to strike to drastically change the line of events. Caster's mind drifted casually towards the thought of the man, Kuzuki, that she apparently would fall in love and then die with. That concept was troubling to her since she had never found love to be anything but a lie. Yet these books said that had things gone as they should have, then she would have met this man.
Saeko was genuinely distraught that she had ruined that meeting, but Caster scoffed at that. The woman also wanted to die, so of course she would see no problem in the fact that both this man and Caster were dead at the end of the story. Clearly it was better that they both should live, was it not?
As soon as the graveyard exploded, Saeko started traveling on a line to give her a point of interception as their quarry returned to their home base. Caster let herself drift back further from the well-armed Japanese woman. The weapons she had just been packing were hardly the only ones she had. A surreptitious scanning had revealed that, by some trick or another, the woman literally had hundreds of weapons of differing varieties on hand. Unfortunately, they were almost all mortal weapons and mostly not usable in this circumstance.
Saeko stopped on the roof of building and looked down the road towards where Caster could sense the massive energy that was Berserker heading for them. Caster's Master turned to look towards her and gave a nod. The magician reached out and flooded her prana into Saeko's body. The woman shivered and shook her head at the rush of power and looked at her hand curiously before turning to her task.
As the Japanese woman pulled back on the bow for the first time, Caster pulled further back into the air, ready to put distractions in the strong-man's path. That was her first role, support. Then, she would become the weapon once Saeko took on the fool-hardy plan to engage Berserker in melee.
The first arrow streaked through the night sky at almost super-sonic speeds.
Illysaviel frowned as she considered the occurrence at the graveyard. Tohsaka's Archer was rather much more impressive than she had counted on. She actually thought the man had managed to take some of Berserker's lives with that shot. Still, at least the one who had stolen her father from her was punished.
"Well, I suppose I should have finished Tohsaka right there," the little girl said. "But we can deal with that later, right Berserker?"
The giant man simply grunted and Illysaviel smiled happily as she looked up toward the Heroic Spirit. Which was when she saw the simple black arrow strike his skin and bounce off. Blinking in confusion she glanced down toward the shaft, wondering whether Tohsaka's archer meant some sort of offense. Then she leaned down to look over the item and saw the black tarry substance coating the tip.
"Berserker!" she snapped sharply, ducking behind the large man. "Find this archer!"
And then her Servant charged up towards the direction of the arrows.
Saeko watched the arrows fly to her target as he charged in their direction and grimaced as she reached for her last shaft.
"Arrow," she said seriously. "Black arrow. I have saved you to the last. You have never failed me and I always have recovered you. I had from the Lake and that from the Dragon. If ever you came from the forges of the true king under the Mountain, go now and speed well!"
She released and watched as the shaft sliced through through the air in a humble but sure path straight down toward the mountain of a man growing ever closer. And then it hit slamming into Heracles shoulder and drawing forth a roar of sheer pain as the hydra venom streamed into his veins.
Almost instantly, he rallied and continued in his charge on her position.
Saeko dropped down from her perch on the building to step down into the street and pull the old colt out, sighting down the barrels as the ancient hero came closer. She cocked back the hammer and pulled the trigger. The bullet streaked forward and slammed into Heracles, blue flashes of light erupted throughout the Heroic Spirit's body as he staggered and moved to shake off the attack.
Saeko fired the Colt a second time and watched as, sure enough, the bullet seemed to simple ricochet off the now angered Berserker. He swooped in, swinging his axe club at her. She dodged partially aside, letting the axe sever much of the bottom half of her left arm as she brought the scroll out with her right and whipped it through her blood as quickly as she could. The trigger on the seal registered her and proceeded to unleash what was sealed within the parchment.
Heracles glared as he turned to look in time to come eye to eye with the image of a flaming skull. The rage-maddened madman recoiled briefly as the weight of all his sins screamed down on him and sapping his strength and will until his God Hand revived him and the skull winked out.
Saeko darted away, her left arm flowing back into place, gaining some distance then as she pulled out the tiny gun and pulled the trigger. The strenght of the blast threw her backwards even as she saw the explosion erupt across Berserker's body. She rolled back to her feet and watched as he came charging at her. She fired the tiny weapon again, once again sending her flying backwards and generating an explosion against Berserker's form.
Growling loudly, the giant threw his axe club across the scene. Saeko was standing up as the weapon careened into her, splitting her asunder and sending her down to the ground. She was already reforming when Berserker reached her and tried to stomp down on her body, growling angrily as the blood, bone and flesh flowed around his foot and formed back into her.
As soon as she was conscious again, she pointed up at the giant with the gun and fired, feeling her bones crack and organs crush as the backblast forced her down into the ground, but sending Berserker stumbling back just long enough for her to roll up to her feet and pulling the two demonic guns out of their holsters.
Saeko leaped up into the air firing a blast as she twisted about to avoid the swing of Berserker's recovered weapon. The woman landed atop the weapon and continued firing her guns almost point blank into Heracles' face. The Berserker whipped the blade out from under her feet before she could leap off of it and grabbed hold of her head before he smashed her down into the ground repeatedly.
Illysaviel watched in shock as the assassin continued to battle Berserker. Her Servant had defeated the woman several times already, but she seemed as ever resilient as Heracles himself. Everytime the giant killed her, she just seemed to get up again. The surprise and curiosity of the matter held her back from moving at first, but now she was interested, and concerned.
Whatever weapons this woman had, she'd managed to kill Berserker at least twice, possibly as many as three times. Even now, she was recovering from her thrashing and firing those black and white guns into his body such that the clearly empowered bullets rippled over the Servant's body like rain drops in a typhoon. Those weapons were working up to take another of her servant's lives.
The little homonculus started working up to casting a spell to immobilize this woman when everything seemed to start to grow fuzzy around her. She stumbled and looked to the side catching sight of a vaguely smiling woman wearing ornate orbs before everything turned black.
Kuro and Shiro's bullets had stopped penetrating and Saeko leaped out of the way of another strike as she holstered them. The whip came out then and she lashed it out over her head cackling madly simply for the sentiment of it. The alchemical whip erupted into magical flames and a tongue of flame whipped towards Heracles and washing over him with seemingly no effect.
Saeko took a leap, trying to give herself distance again, but knew she'd failed when she came back to consciousness to find her head re-uniting with her neck in mid air. She hit the ground roughly, the pain quickly disappearing, and rolled again, this time under Heracles' legs. She panted as she leaped up onto his back and wrapped the neck around his throat.
The rage filled monster that ruled the ancient hero simply reached up and threw Saeko across the street sending her through a wall like a bullet. She died again on the way through and was barely able to wake up and get out before the building collapsed in on itself.
This was why she could handle a berserk heracles. All he did was keep trying to kill her and she just kept coming back together. A thinking heracles would have immobilized her and ended the fight that way.
Still, it looked like the sentimental favorite wasn't going to be a use this time so she stashed the weapon and leaped in retreat again as the monster came after her. Saeko reached back and slipped the shield forward, fitting it around her left arm before reaching for that flash-light looking thing with her right.
The axe sword came careening down to meet the red, white and blue shield and stopped there without shifting Saeko in the slightest. Then a whirring noise accompanied the sight of a long beam of blue light whipping out from the cynlinder in her hand. She lashed out, mindful of the weightlessness of the blade and found it stopping against the magical edge of the axe-club.
Heracles kicked out, foot slamming into the shield and again stopping cold at contact with the metal. Saeko retaliated by slashing out with her strange energy sword, cutting half way through Heracles' leg on one swing. The huge man stumbled forward on his injured leg, Saeko darting again around behind him and slamming the energy weapon down into the base of his neck.
The ancient hero shuddered briefly before she removed the energy blade, and then all his injuries started to heal. Shrugging violently, he threw Saeko office his back and turned ponderously towards her. The man was fast, very damn fast, Saeko had to admit that as he slammed a fist down into the shield, forcing her to stay huddled at the ground a moment longer.
Then the sky lit up as a barrage of light beams tore into Heracles body, seeming tearing him to pieces only for them to stop working and the wounds begin to heal. Lashing forward, Saeko drew her energy blade across the man's chest only for it to merely scrape across to her chagrin.
The energy blade snapped closed and returned to her belt as a fire cascaded down over both her and Heracles. The pain was intense, but nothing she hadn't felt before. When it passed, her tactical gear was seared and almost totally ruined, but both she and Heracles were already coming back to health. The massive fist that sent her flying backwards was certainly proof of that.
The Japanese death-seeker was standing before the giant could reach her and placing the shield up in the way of his attack. She tried to take a series of measured, directed steps backward, finding it difficult with the way the man was thrashing about and destroying large swaths of terrain. There was some leeway in what she was doing, but it was a close thing, especially if she was going to keep her cool.
A bolt of lightning slammed down from above, staggering Heracles again and Saeko made a point of not looking up towards where Caster was laying down the artillery. There was no way she was going to bring the single-minded killer's attention to the one doing the real damage right now. She focused instead on keeping to her path and blocking the blows coming from the monsters of a man.
Without the shield this would be impossible. She'd have been tossed about like a ragdoll and would have to start over each and every time. And even after however many years, she was not as good at this as the one who had taught her. It was an aggravating, bone-jarring trip to the center, but she got there. She got there cold and he got there hot.
"Hiryu shoten ha!"
Suddenly the world turned into a mass of swirling wind and dust with her at the center. She gaped wide-eyed at the sheer power of the tornado that Heracles had produced as the Heroic Spirit was tossed skywards amidst the debris being torn from the walls around the Japanese woman wielding the red, white and blue shield. Soon enough, however, the tornado lost its momentum and the Heroic Spirit slammed down to the ground on his back.
Saeko didn't think the tornado had taken a life, it never quite seemed to unless you were really good. But it did give her a chance to lunge outward and swing the shield down into the Berserker's face as hard as she could, save a dent into Heracles' forehead. The next blow from the shield did nothing as Saeko was grabbed and quite literally torn limb from limb and scattered across the field of the battle.
Her head came in contact with her torso in time for her to register the slashing magical wind taking Heracles' head off and then watching it slowly regrow as her own limbs were pulling back into her. How many times was that now? How close were they?
She struggled to her feet, literally, and slowly pulled herself to standing in time to see Heracles starting to move. Glancing aside, she saw the shield lying twenty feet away where her left arm had first landed. Taking a deep breath and hoping that Caster's reinforcement gave her what she noted, she charged forward.
"Dokuja tanketsu sho!" she roared, slamming her tiny palm ridicuously into Heracles' chest. With the force of Caster's reinforcement behind her, she felt her hand just barely succeeding at forcing it's way through the skin and rib cage straight to the Heroic Spirit's heart. And then
Saeko pulled her hand back, staring hopefully. Because if that wasn't enough, she hoped that Caster had something more to add to the fight.
"Why do you show fear, Traveler?" the great man spoke slowly as Saeko watched him fading.
"You are ever where you need to be. Now is no different."
"No, this is my choice," she protested. How did this Heracles know of her in any case? She hadn't ever actually encountered a Heracles from this family of worlds. "The sword didn't bring me here."
"Also true," the Berserker said with a rueful grumble before he finally fell over, the mad light fading from his eyes.
Caster alighted at her side, carrying the sleeping body of Illysaviel in her arms.
"Well, Master," she noted. "I must say that I am impressed. I thought you mentioned you could do no spells."
"Those weren't spells," Saeko protested, taking a breath. "Let's collect my weapons and get out of here."
"Indeed."
"And what is your plan for this little girl?" Caster asked, indicating where Illysaviel was sleeping on the table in the center of the abandoned sewer chamber.
Saeko looked to her and gave that same grim, cheerless smile as she slipped a hand into her jacket and pulled out holding a massive golden cup that appeared corroded and stained. This she set on the table next to the sleeping girl. Saeko looked at her carefully and then up at Caster.
"I thought magi couldn't be hypnotized like this," she noted.
"These modern magi are not up to my level," Caster assured her. "Is that the original Grail?"
"The corrupted Lesser Grail from the third war before it was damaged," Saeko confirmed.
"Just not from this timeline."
"And now what do you plan to do with it?" Caster asked.
Saeko reached into her jacket again and pulled out a small, fluffy feather that seemed to be made out of multi-colored flame. Then pointed to Illysaviel. "Take Rule Breaker, cut her heart out, intact, and put it into the cup."
Caster straightened, confused and surprsied at the turn of events.
"Seriously, Master," she noted with a trace of humor. "I thought we were doing no evil."
"Mine is a creative destruction," Saeko noted with a dark chuckle of her own. "Be quick, I want her to feel no pain about this."
"Right away, Master."
Caster drew forth her dagger and, as asked, stabbed it down into the girls body. The child gasped in her sleep and almost awoke but then stilled with no more sound. Carving the heart out took barely a minute for the Noble Phantasm, even as awkward a weapon as it was. She turned toward the cup and set the stolen organ into it even as Saeko darted forward to slap the fiery feather down onto Illysaviel's head.
The ancient magus stared in surprise as the corpse shuddered and a fire swept over it. The fire burned briefly in many colors and did not consume the girl's body, but instead seemed to be set it right, as if it were burning the wounds away and leaving healthy flesh in their place.
And, as the last flame swept away, Illysaviel's began to breath calmly in and out.
"Another of your secrets of a thousand worlds?" Caster asked.
"Exactly so," Saeko agreed.
Illysaviel came to consciousness feeling lighter than she had for a very long time. It was...discomforting in a way, as if something had been ripped out of her. But despite that, she still felt better than she ever had. Glancing around, it was quite obvious that she wasn't in the castle and then she remembered the ambush from the night before.
"Berserker!" she snapped sitting up. "Berserker, where are you?"
"Back on the throne of heroes," a woman's voice noted.
Illysaviel turned toward the sound and saw a elegant woman kneeling seiza as she drank tea and looked toward her. There was an amulet about her neck holding a bluish gem with some sort of engraving that Illya didn't have the best view of. "He's...dead?"
"Indeed, regretfully so," the woman noted. "Though I think I might reiterate to you what I said to my Servant later. Had Heracles been able to think clearly, well there's no way I could have beaten him."
Illysaviel winced slightly at the implicit reprimand.
"And I suppose now you plan to wait for me to fill up with the Grail," Illysaviel snapped, angry that she had lost so easily.
"Actually, I've already had Caster remove that burden from you," Saeko responded.
"You lie! There's no way to remove the Lesser Grail from me without killing me!"
"Do you not feel different, little girl?" Saeko asked in a lilting, half-mocking tone.
Illysaviel growled and crossed her arms but refused to answer.
"Now it is just a matter of what to do about you," the Japanese woman commented.
The girl turned about with a snap and stared her captor down.
"So that is your game, seeking to study a real Einzbern homonculus and find out my family secrets," she accused, anger covering her newest worry.
"I have my own methods to craft homonculi, thank you," Saeko responded dryly, as if partially affronted by the idea that Illysaviel was suggesting. "No, the problem is otherwise. I cannot simply let you go for various reasons, the most pressing of which being that you are still a target."
"If you were so concerned about me being a target, you wouldn't have removed my protection," Illya reminded her.
"Berserker with the mad enhancement is an ineffective bodyguard, and one of your enemies is armed well for dealing with such divine beings as Heracles," Saeko noted with a wave of her hand.
"Then you plan to keep me here as a prisoner?" Illysaviel suggested.
"Equally dangerous," Saeko noted. "You are still a Master and there is still a Servant un-summoned. But it's almost the only option we have."