A soft buzz could be heard faintly, prefacing words spoken through the handset.
"Maiya. I need you to take out Caster's Master."
"...Yes sir. The plan has changed?"
A question from her. Odd, but not too odd. He was never a man who changed his plans mid-battle, and for good reason.
"The situation has changed. When I give the signal, take the shot."
"...Understood. Moving to a suitable location now."
A creature had risen at the center of the river Mion. What it was, only a handful of people knew; yet, if you asked anyone who could see it, they would tell you what to call it without hesitation or doubt.
There was no questioning it, after all, even when one knew its nature.
That thing was a monster.
Saber knew this, and yet...
Her orders were clear.
The people were in danger, but what could she do?
Standing on the shore, watching as the creature drew closer, her grip tightened on her weapon.
Orders be damned, she would stop that-
Suddenly, like a bolt of thunder, something struck that titanic creature.
The sound of it reverberated throughout the whole of the river, and for a moment, all was silent.
Then, the crack of thunder came once more. The silence had been broken, and it began.
The monster had begun to scream.
"Tch... I didn't think I'd need to use this," he said softly.
The creature was drawing closer to the shore. Once it crossed that line, it would begin to feast on the energy of every man, woman and child in the whole of Fuyuki.
It had to be stopped, no matter what the cost.
Thankfully... If he was right, the cost would be quite low.
If he was wrong... Then Maiya would take the shot on Caster's Master, just as he would have, and Saber would be sent in. Virtually no difference, even if the first plan should fail.
Heedless of his thoughts and plans, his hands roamed and readied the weapon in his grasp freely, acting solely out of reflex. It had been even longer since he had used this than his Contender. One kill; that was all this gun had ever tasted.
Fired countless times in practice, it had only claimed one life.
Now, it was time for the second.
Once, this gun might have been called a Remington 770. It was similar in shape and form, yes, but even at a glance, you could see that there was a world of difference.
"I even have the luck of a massive target, and the right to a practice shot," he mused.
The lever of the rifle in his hands was lifted and pulled back. He had left it in Maiya's care, and the lack of even a single speck of dust in the chamber was proof of her skill and devotion.
The barrel was immaculate, its rifling clear of any debris and even almost shimmering in the poor lighting. If this were a combat scenario between two snipers, that alone would cost him his life, but this was not a gun for fighting normal men. This was not even a gun to fight against normal magi.
This was the gun that had tasted the life of a Dead Apostle, and had claimed it as its own.
The Remington 770 had been his choice of rifle for its caliber size. The modifications changed nearly all other things to fit him perfectly, to be able to claim lives thought unclaimable, but that had remained the same.
This Remington carried a .30-06 Springfield. The exact same caliber as his Contender.
His hands moved automatically, drawing out a pair of rounds from the two small cases in front of him. The first, a rather standard round, but Reinforced with Runecraft that he'd learned from a Fraga Enforcer on a past mission. The man would probably kill him if he knew what Kiritsugu had used it for.
But that was unimportant. It only needed to pierce the flesh of the creature in front of him.
The chamber was open, so with practiced precision and grace, the first cartridge was loaded, the lever lifted, pushed forward and dropped as he took aim.
"Mark."
As he spoke, he pulled the trigger, knowing that Maiya had heard him.
Two creatures struck at once; the first, a titan of flesh and sin, soaked in debaucherous killing and death. The other, was Kiritsugu's target.
He didn't have time to verify if he had struck visually, but it wasn't necessary. He couldn't have missed it if he tried, after all.
Another lift, tug and drop of the lever. The empty cartridge was ejected and replaced by another, this one with a bottleneck structure.
This time, the target was much smaller, invisible to the naked eye through the walls of flesh before them. However, despite this, Kiritsugu's eyes could still see him. Caster's path through the flesh was clear to him, who had hunted prey almost as great for all of his life.
For another, this shot would be impossible.
For him, the possibility of missing was computationally indistinguishable from zero.
He pulled the trigger one more time, and he relished in the sound of it.
There was a sound of thunder. Then, there was the sound of Goliath's fall before David.
"...A little more high-tech than a sling and stone, I suppose," Kiritsugu muttered in a moment of dark humor. "Maiya, observe the target until verification of death. I'm loading up."
"Yes sir."
Saber's eyes were wide at the sight.
The creature, the massive, titanic monster of unending flesh, the creature that could heal any injury...
...Was fading out of existence.
She didn't know the nature of the Origin Bullets. She didn't know that, once the creature began healing from the normal bullet, the second had struck a blow more harmful than any other.
She did not know that Caster and his beast had been struck, as one, by a Mystic Code bullet that could almost be classified as an Anti-Magus Noble Phantasm, a crystallization of her own Master's Origin.
All she knew, now, was that her Master had earned a title greater even than Magus Killer.
Kiritsugu Emiya was...
The Servant Killer.
A/N: Well, this is a thing. I got distracted, started browsing this site on my phone, and I saw a guy with 186 different challenges.
After I took a moment to recover from the fact that this guy had more ideas on the Nasuverse than I have had on any subject in my life, I decided to write one of his challenges as a one-shot.
The guy is SwordofallCreation, and his collection is called Fate of the Unknown. This was written for Challenge #10, The Magus Killer Challenge! As you can see from the story, it's about Kiritsugu taking out Caster and his monster with a well-placed Origin Round!
And, yes, if you were wondering... According to Word, that is two pages of just describing the gun.
If you liked it, would you kindly drop a review and fave the story? And don't forget to check out the guy behind the challenge!