"Urzu Eight, come in Urzu Eight. Central has just authorised full release of all weapon systems in order to deal with these terrorists. We just launched the striker package so be ready to pick it up in... Fifty seconds. Good luck Urzu Three. Over and out."
"Urzu Eight copies. Going to full release on all systems."
Ensconced in the heart of the metal giant the world only knew of by the names of "Black Knight" or "Blade Reaper", the pilot of the ARX-7B Sabre acknowledged the receipt of the weapons free authorisation. In the blue glow of the screens in front of him it was hard to make out the colour of his eyes or hair, but there was no mistaking the wide smile that appeared as he opened up a panel beside his right hand.
"Alright," he muttered as he made his Arm Slave dance into the shadow of a buliding. A blue-white streak of light slammed into the ground where the black mecha had just been standing, demolishing the pavement and the asphalt covered road. Just another long range projectile from the terrorist sniper. With no authorisation to use their heavier weapons, the members of the Urzu team had been forced to spend the last ten minutes evading and hiding from the sniper standing upon the rooftop three kilometres away. By now the rest of the team had various degrees of damage which meant that he was effectively alone against his opponent. Things would have been different had Urzu Six been here but that annoying womaniser was away in Helmajistan of all places. As for Urzu Seven... No telling where he and his girlfriend were right now. Tessa was gloomy enough about it already without his inquiring.
Anyhow, now that the ROE had changed things were going to get HOT around here.
SLBM coming in. Identified as Blade Striker Package. ETA in twelve seconds.
"Okay HAL. Give me some smoke. I need four seconds of cover to get to the package."
Sure thing Boss. Need fries with that?
The driver of the mecha rolled his eyes at the AI's droll comment. He liked the AI, and in the course of the last two years had even become friends of sorts with it, but that awful sense of humour...
"Just give me the smoke HAL..." He groaned while shaking his head.
Okey Dokie. Processing... Three hundred and twenty metres of smoke coming up.
A countdown began displaying on the corner of the HUD, ticking down to zero as the transport carrying the ARX-7B's main weapon system drew closer. The pilot watched it intently. There was no margin of error here, the enemy was too good for that. Come to think of it, just what kind of weapon was that guy using?
"Hey HAL," he called his AI up.
Yes? Three seconds.
"Oh? Nevermind." The driver of the third-gen Arm Slave turned his attention back to the controls.
Zero. Canisters of heat diffusing smoke leaped out of their launchers on the Sabre's shoulders. Falling all around the mecha the smoke created an opaque cloud within which they were free to move around in without being spotted.
"Okay. Let's go!"
Roger that.
Pushing the throttles open, the driver and AI initiated the second stage of this battle as the mecha leapt forward towards the falling object high overhead. Rushing through the smoke the sensors had trouble providing a clear picture of the surroundings beyond a range of five metres. Pilot and AI compensated for this. One of them using all the skills ten years of the hardest school in the world had given him, the other with all processing power and data-manipulation ability granted to 'him' by three of the most brilliant minds to ever exist. Using his memory of the street layout, and the object data that HAL gave him the pilot plunged through the thick smoke and caught the falling striker pack.
Warning. Movement has created wind currents that have disturbed the smoke behind us. If the sniper saw this and made a logical -
Impact, the AI's voice cutting off as everything went dark.
--
Standing on the top of Fuyuki's tallest building Archer smirked as he saw his arrows cleanly hit the last target. That black mecha had been quite a persistent opponent but in the end nothing that big could escape Archer's attacks.
He had to admit though that he had been quite surprised when he first got to this world. It had gone off on a totally different tangent from his home timeline and the Soviets were still around in the year 2004. Some of this was just too weird for his mind to handle, but man, those mechs were cool.
Stifling a yawn Archer decided to return to his master's house for the night. The Rin in this world was still a mage, but much more pleasant than the one he had grown up with, in many ways. In a world where technology was so advanced the Association had been forced to acknowledge that the world had outgrown them. Humbled by this simple fact most mages around the world had settled in to a more unguarded life where only a few incidents, e.g. this grail war, disturbed their public lives.
As for himself... The Shirou in this world was a bumbling fool by all that he had seen of him. He had apparently been taken in by some UN aid worker after the last grail war, and had spent ten years going around the world with his adopted father before coming back to Japan. The experience hadn't improved his clumsiness much and Archer had found it hard to even contemplate killing such a naive fool like that.
"Ah well, fighting all the other servants will be a nice break anyway." The white-haired servant said to himself.
Idly, he turned his eyes back towards where the last of the mechs had fallen. Carried by the winds the huge smoke cloud that had covered the area was beginning to break up and Archer could see most of the street now. Three other mechs, of a different design and with less luck than the last, were lying broken across the town. Whoever these guys were they had some very nice equipment. Archer had been amusing himself by reading up on these Arm Slaves in his free time, and by what he had seen. Those mechs that lay shattered on the asphalt were M9's, which weren't supposed to be in production yet. That black mech wasn't one that he recognised, but he had only been here for seven days. It was probably some custom job only a serious otaku would recognise. Being a customised model hadn't helped it any though. After all, it was lying broken right... there?
Archer's eyes popped wide open as he saw that the space where his arrows had gone was empty. The buildings around the area had all had their windows blown out, and the concrete was showing cracks and other signs of damage, but the mech itself was no longer there. Where in the world?
A noise drew his attention, looking left Archer spotted the black giant running through the streets, apparently bent on taking him out. He would see about that.
"I am the bone of my sword."
Caladbolg II took form in Archer's hands. Against a non-magical opponent it was probably overkill but Archer was getting a little ticked off lately. Things had begun going wrong a few days back when Rider destroyed the hotel he and she had been fighting on, probably why these guys were here in the first place. Time to vent some of his rage on the innocent then.
"Calad-BOLG!!"
Speeding towards its target Caladbolg II was a shaft of light as it split the night air. Its impact shook the building Archer was standing on, the flames from the explosion lighting up the whole Shinto side of the city. Direct hit. Nice.
Movement amidst the flames.
Archer's grin faded. What was that just then? Something had survived in the area of impact? Impossible! But Archer was forced to accept the impossible as the black metal giant walked serenely out of the holocaust he had created. Not a plate on its body had been scratched. The damn thing was untouched!
--
Lambda drivers A and B are beginning cooling sequence. Drive C going active... Now.
"Good. Hows the Striker coming along?"
Blade Striker - Ready. Waveform is currently at 98 of optimal.
The driver smiled. With 45 he could take out a Venom in three hits. 98 was more than enough for this job.
Focussing his display upon the sniper on the rooftop the driver frowned. Was it just him or did that guy look familiar? He would have wondered about that a bit longer but his attention was grabbed by the weapon in the sniper's hands.
"Holy shyt! TDD-1 you getting this?" he exclaimed.
Back on the Tuatha De Danaan a purple haired woman nodded. "Receiving loud and clear Urzu Eight. Wow, is that a bow that guys holding?"
The driver of the ARX-7B Sabre shook his head in disbelief and began driving his AS forward. Maybe that guy had some kind of portable Lambda driver. Yeah, that had to be it. A portable Lambda driver with which to accelerate and strengthen any projectiles he shot. That had to be it.
He must have said that out loud, because HAL answered him.
No power sources detected in vicinity. Uhm... Actually Boss. Looks like that guy up there really is just shooting arrows at us.
The driver had a blank smile on his face.
"I'm not listening."
... Target is moving. Tracking with NIRTSat II.
"Heh, where are you going now mister terrorist?" The driver growled. "HAL, put on some Disturbed will ya?"
As the Sabre began pursuing Archer the sounds of "Down With the Sickness" began booming out of the external speakers.
--
Hotels falling down upon him, mechs that could withstand direct hits from Caladbolg chasing him, what next?
Archer immediately regretted the thought.
'WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!?" he screamed.
The booming tones of Disturbed were following him. Echoing through the narrow streets the drumbeats were even louder than usual and the guitar was a screeching howl that reminded Archer of a banshee he had faced once.
"Metal? He's piloting a mech and he plays HEAVY METAL?! HAVE YOU NO RESPECT FOR TRADITION?"
Archer was screaming at the top of his voice as he ran. Even so he could barely hear himself as the black AS drew closer.
"SHYT!"
Archer gave up running. It was hopeless to think that he could outrun something that did 100kph on rough terrain. Instead he traced over thirty phantasms and hung them on the air before him. Then, he waited for the mech to come around the corner, ready to give the heretical bastard a full taste of a Japanese mecha-anime watcher's love for ballads.
There was a brief pause in the thudding music, as if signalling the beginning of something. As the drums came on once more the AS came leaping over the building. The last thing Archer had been expecting. Understandably he had been expecting specs closer to a general M6's ability. Those were limited to jumps of about 10 metres from what he had read.
The building this black AS had come hurtling over was over fifty metres high.
Caught off guard Archer hastily sent the waiting phantasm's hurtling towards the falling AS. They were met by a strange envelope of light that surrounded the black mecha. A ball of thin blade-like projections that flicked aside every weapon Archer threw at it.
The ball blew apart, and the blades flew outwards before forming into ranks. Archer's eyes grew wide as he counted them all. Ten, twenty, fifty, hundred, thousand... Too many to count.
Before Archer could do anything more the phalanx moved, destroying the servant in an instant. Archer's last thought as his existence faded went:
"I should have spent more time peeking at Rin in the shower... She actually has cleavage in this dimension!"
--
When the dust settled the driver of the AS popped open the canopy and came out to try and see if anything was left of the sniper.
Nothing.
Hey boss. Wasn't it a little overkill to use "Phalanx Shift" mode against him? The poor guy wasn't even in an AS!
"Ah, shut it HAL. Something about the bastard was just making me angry okay?"
Which was true. From the instant Testarossa Shirou had spied the sniper's face a boiling rage had descended over him, only to disappear at the instant the Sabre's Blade Striker Lambda Variant Field had obliterated his existence. Teletha would be annoyed with him for killing the sniper instead of capturing him but Shirou didn't much care at the moment. He was still too annoyed with the guy for taking out the rest of his team.
A communication from the submarine broke him out of his disgruntled mood.
"Urzu Eight. NIRTSat I has detected two more terrorists, apparently armed with weapons of similar power as the sniper. If you've taken care of the sniper can you go and check it out Shirou? - I mean, Urzu Eight."
Shirou arched an eyebrow.
"Hey hey TDD-1. You've got to stop doing that when you talk to me captain!"
From the other side of the line a frustrated 'humph!' could be heard.
"Well it's not my fault I'm used to called you by your name brother. I do the same with Sousuke, where ever he's gone with that hussy! Gees, the nerve of him. Going off like that when the rest of us -."
Transmission cut. Severe interference of all electromagnetic signals in the surrounding area prevents us from receiving any transmissions at the time. Thank you, please come again.
Shirou laughed. He had been about to press the disconnect himself. HAL had saved him the bother by simulating an enemy jammer and was currently giving false sensor readings to Dana back on the Tuatha De Danaan.
"Aren't sisters annoying HAL?" Shirou asked his AI. He closed the canopy again and began going towards the area where
Tell me about it boss. Dana's getting on my case because the data I'm sending her doesn't match the NIRTSat data. That when anyone can tell that my sensors are closer and better than something 200km up in the stratosphere.
Hearing the slightly put out tone the AI had adopted Shirou laughed again. The AI joined in by putting laughing smilies all across the HUD.
About five hundred metres down the road HAL suddenly broke in with a question.
Shirou.
"Yes HAL?" He replied absently. The driver of the ARX-7B was busy reconfiguring the heating sequence for the Lambda Variant Field Generator. The Blade Striker pack was a child of his creation and as such the maintenance and performance of the pack was something he took fanatical care and pride in.
Why did you call the Blade Striker pack's total offence mode "Phalanx Shift"? Personally I thought Teletha's suggestion that we call it Igelstellung mode was quite apt. On top of which there was no reason to make the Lambda Variant Field take on the shape of a sword, if we had made them into cone shapes we would have gotten 17 more power for the same energy expenditure.
Shirou looked up at the screen beside the HUD that he had always regarded as HAL's 'face'. It was the standalone that displayed all of HAL's words in a text format.
"No particular reason," Shirou answered. A shrug accompanied his words.
"I just like swords."