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Pilot - The Last Battalion
1945. Tokyo, Japan.
Smoke choked the skyline of Tokyo. In the distance, ambulance sirens and flashing lights could be seen as parts of the city burned. A buzzing nest of angry planes buzzed through the skies, exiting and entering a truly massive zeppelin to refuel and rearm. Several more blimps rained destruction down upon the city, clearly intending to wipe Tokyo off the face of the earth.
The monetary damage? In the millions.
The loss in life?
Incalculable.
A Junkers Ju-87, showing significant wear on its hull, dove out beneath a particularly thick cloud of ash. The propeller on it chugged and roared angrily as it defied the world by staying in the skies. It wouldn't fall until it took out its target.
The dive bomber's targets, two solitary figures at the end of a long stretch of a main thoroughfare, looked utterly bored as they stared up into the skies. As they were practically the victors of the Holy Grail War, Saber and his master were utterly indifferent to the Nazi plane descending on them.
"Saber, end this farce." Anita Edelfelt's eyes were lidded, bags beneath them adding years to her appearance. Her dress limpidly hung off her frame as she pointed up at the bomber coming for her. "I just...I just want this to end."
Their surroundings, filled with overturned cars and empty, desolate buildings only underscored the cost that had been paid to take down Lancer. The battle with Lancer had cost the people everything, hadn't it?
Saber, keenly aware of the loss as well, grimly set his expression. The plane was stared down at like the gnat it was. He reached to his side, armored gauntlets clasped around the hilt of the blade he wore at his side.
The divebomber roared down the empty streets, its echoes bouncing and gaining increasing ferocity.
The knight class Hero grinned, but it was a sharkish thing, filled with an eagerness to end a life. His Master could only watch with quiet desolation as her noble ally had been brought down so low by the War, but she couldn't even raise a voice in protest. It wasn't fair to voice them after everything she had done to him, now was it?
The plane began to rain death upon the duo. Moving like quicksilver, Saber positioned himself between the instruments and his Master, making Anita flinch and briefly stare at Saber in shock and wonder. Her brief moment of euphoria vanished when she saw the wild, animalistic gleam in the man's eyes as he swung his blade in front of him in a dazzling dance, sending the bullets flying out of range.
Anita merely glanced down as Saber's mad laughter carried him further away from his Master. His speed only increased further as the divebomber drew closer, trying to get past the merciless Hero to try and gun down the weaker half of the team. Not eager enough to meet her maker yet, Anita Edelfelt used the brief window bought by her mad Servant to rush behind cover.
Saber laughed, pitch of voice and actions like a loon as he threw himself up into the skies. The Junkers attempted to ascend, but the curled up knight was as unstoppable as a wrecking ball. His gleaming armor, stained with all manner of fluids, punched through the hull of the plane as he tore into it with savage fury.
Anita Edelfelt ran out behind her cover, hand raised to her mouth in horror as the plane and her Servant went crashing into the side of a building.
"Saber!" She screamed, heart leaping to her throat as she saw the building begin to collapse in on the divebomber. Smoke and flame belched out of the side of the building that the plane had collided up against.
Anita hitched up her long skirts to race after them, but...
A gunshot rang out.
"Now, now, fraulein. I don't think your lover requires a wet nurse at his age, ya?"
A vile, hateful voice spoke up even as Anita collapsed, clutching at her ruined leg. Even as her wound freely bled, she still had enough force of will to cast all of her loathing towards the jolly looking man who was idly twirling his firearm and approaching her.
"Gordo!" Anita's expression turned animalistic. "This was never meant to involve these people!"
Clad in the same impeccably white uniform he had been wearing for most of the war, which managed to defy all expectations and remain clean even in this firestorm, Gordo Yggdramillenia offered her a gentile smile.
"It's a war, fraulein." Gordo chuckled. "Acceptable losses are to be expected, no? Didn't you agree to this?"
Anita flinched. Maybe at some point, but-
"Well, there is no need to worry." Gordo leveled his service arm up towards her forehead. He had a diabolic cast to his eyes, reflected in the flames in the building behind them. "I'll take good care of Siegfried for you."
"You monster..."
"It was not I who split him in twain, fraulein."
One last shot rang out.
Fuyuki, Japan.
The bowstring of an arrow twanged.
Another zeppelin went down in flames, crashing into the bay with a titanic crash.
"Good show, old chap." Hiroto Tohsaka mused, lowering his binoculars. His mustache twitched as mild dismay appeared on his face. "Well, now that's hardly sporting."
Twenty more zeppelins were approaching in the distance.
Besides him, Odysseus peered down the side of Mt. Enzou. His sharp eyes could pick up multiple metal boxes - tanks, was it?- moving up the side of the mountain. The man shifted his leather tunic slightly as he drew another arrow from his quiver.
"Any luck, madam?" The Heroic Spirit called behind them. "We need to put a stop to this debacle before it spreads out of control."
The flighty, but strangely insightful foreigner that Odysseus and Hiroto had run into half a week ago looked up from the spell circle she was sitting cross legged within. Hiroto briefly glanced back, but immediately turned red and looked away from the woman's vulgar way of sitting. "No." The amnesiac magus pointed out. "I can't figure out what Lancer's spear did to the ritual circles, but the energy is spiralling out of control."
"It's most likely reached Tokyo at this point, Master." Odysseus pointed out. "And we haven't heard a word from that Einzbern woman in hours. We either have to destroy the circle now, or risk letting it fall into their hands."
Hiroto's grip on the radio Anita had given him tightened. It was simply unbelievable that the Master of Lancer had so thoroughly played them all. The mere thought of him having hidden away this army with the help of Caster was ridiculous.
"It isn't fair, is it?" The nameless magus that Hiroto had run into spoke up. When the man glanced back at her, a sympathetic look was on her face. "They ruined this, right?"
"It...it was supposed to be more than this." Hiroto weakly replied, head lowered as he mumbled his pathetic response. "The power of the Grail shouldn't be misused for such petty worldly affairs. It was going to be for something..."
Grander.
"Greater men have fought for such petty affairs." Odysseus pointed out, smiling just a touch bitterly.
Hiroto winced, recognizing what his Servant hinted towards. "My apologies." He ducked his head. "I just don't..."
"Not everyone need love their country."
"My government persecuted-"
"I'll handle these ruffians up here." Odysseus cut Hiroto off. When the man gave him a look of alarm, the Hero merely smiled. "No harm. I understand you as well as you do I. Take the girl and go to the Grand Grail. Shut it down before they get down there, alright?"
Hiroto briefly considered the radio.
There was no time left.
He hooked the device onto his belt and gave Odysseus a firm nod, drawing a smile from the Archer. Taking the foreign woman's hand in his, both of them rushed for the secret entrance to the Greater Grail hidden within Ryuudou Temple.
Odysseus sighed as he glanced up at the army that both descending and ascending to meet him.
"Bah, what happened to turning men into pigs?" The man mumbled in annoyance. Pigs at least had the decency to die easily. Even if it was rather troubling to find out the identity of such after the fact. "Concealing an army as a bottle of mosquitoes is just plain underhanded, Circe."
He drew back his bow towards another zeppelin.
Down below, the bellows of the transmogrified Panzer IV - nightmareish blends of steel, gunpowder, and a rhinoceros, could be heard as they trampled up the side of the mountains. Detonations followed in their wake.
Truly, Circe lived to make his life more difficult, didn't she?
The twisting path to the Greater Grail was more dangerous than ever. The years hadn't been kind to the spiraling steps that led down to the grail. If Hiroto was more of a betting man, he'd put himself in a fisticuffs match against the Bartholomei heir on them not lasting the next century.
Not that it'd probably last more than ten minutes with conditions as they were. Hiroto and his sidekick were practically thrown from the small footpath as the entire chamber was rocked by explosions from above. The heir of the Tohsaka family had to take his comely assistant into his arm and practically bound down long paths of the platform as they gave up the ghost and crumbled down into the pit below them.
Hiroto's homburg fluttered off into the darkness.
"Mister Tohsaka!" The blonde shrieked in terror, burying her head into the crook of his neck. Hiroto didn't let the pleasing, if entirely too distracting for this situation, sensation divert his attention though. With a snap of his wrist, he sent a rapidly uncoiling length of gold up in the direction his hat had flown towards.
The chamber was briefly lit up.
Hiroto's entire body was tugged upwards, arresting his motion.
His foreigner friend yelped as she nearly fell out of Hiroto's grasp, but a grip of sheer desperation kept her from letting go of the Tohsaka. Both magi slowly descended towards the bottom of the Greater Grail chamber, carried aloft by Hiroto's hat. The grey cap had swollen up, now large enough that it could easily support the weight of both of them.
They leisurely descended the rest of the way.
"Y-you saved us!"
"Not so, dear." Hiroto's felt his lips curl disapprovingly as he gazed downwards. Leon Yggdramillenia, former Master of Caster, calmly stood between them and the Greater Grail. "I think we still have one last challenge to get through."
"Sir..." The blonde curled up against his side fearfully as she gazed down at the stoic man. Despite the sheer white uniform he was wearing, it only served to make the shadows cast around him grown even deeper in contrast. Something about the way the shadows curled beneath him... "Something is wrong." She whispered.
"Quite." Hiroto guided them with minor gusts of wind towards Lion. "What a dreadful day to forget my other Mystic Codes." He gustily complained, eyes gleaming dangerously. "Well, I suppose we'll see who wins this round this time."
The second in command of the Last Battalion descended on the two magi.
Massive zeppelins, even as they trailed fire from the ragged cuts in the sides of their cloth, rained fire down upon the top of Mt. Enzou. The earth itself cracked and heaved upwards as the detonations went off perfectly. A massive wound in the very earth itself was revealed, with an massive tower of stone standing in the very center.
The pilots of the intact zeppelins, which maneuvered around their fellows collapsing dirigibles, launched hooks down into the pit that was revealed. If any of them noticed the black tar that was seeping out from where the hooks pierced the stone construct, they either didn't care or intentionally looked away.
Within a few hours, the Great Grail was leaving Japanese airspace.
2007. London, England.
A set of steely eyes stared at the magus across the table over a pair of dark sunglasses. A cigarette, thick but unlit, rolled from one side to the other of the man's hand as he nodded appreciatively at a tightly clothed figure of the waitress serving their drinks. The waitress gave him a wan, slightly fearful smile. Of course, the boy across from him could be made of stone for all the reaction he had to the waitress's flirty look.
Kairi Shishigou really hated jackasses like these. They were practically drowning in poon and they didn't do a single thing to deserve it. It was practically criminal.
"Times up. Show your hand." He growled at the puny magus across from him. When the man flinched at his tone, he merely leaned towards the young boy. He flexed, his rippling muscles bulging beneath the leather of his jacket. "Now, yes?"
The magus nervously nodded.
So he was going to rip this asshole off - goddamned useless Lothario.
It was the only way to balance the universal karma!
Really!
Kairi grinned, counting his money. With his head down, he missed seeing an elderly woman pause outside her door, stare out at him, and promptly slam the door shut as she turned back inside. The feel of the universal karma flows reorienting around him positively were too much of a thrill for him to really care what people thought.
If the universal karma flows looked like a few thousand dollar bills, more power to him, right?
You can't spend karma in this life after all.
The towering redhead casually entered an alleyway, moving towards a shortcut back to his loft. Maybe if he was lucky, he could run into Miss Luviagelita's daily workout? Well, only if her thrice damned butler didn't close the curtains.
He really needed to upgrade that sparrow's skull to a better one soon.
Would probably be too hard to conceal an owl up there, wouldn't it?
Still, it might be worth it...
A goofy grin cracked his stoic demeanor, looking positively ghastly on his face.
"Hee-hee-hee..."
His brief little fantasy about Elina Luviagelita's co-ed body was banished as a particular twirp appeared in front of him.
"H-hey!" The magus from the bar - Manou? Makiri? Mayoi? Something that slipped the large man's mind - shouted in a trembling voice. "Give me that back!" He angrily roared, waving his arms in front of him.
Kairi blinked. "These? I like these guys, though. Me and them have become like- soulbrothers, man." He quirked his head, spreading the bills in front of him like a fan. "Soulbrothers don't part." The man dismissively sniffed at the puny little kid in front of him.
"T-that is..."
"Possession is nine tenths of the law, kid." Kairi lightly fanned himself with the money, eyes half lidded. "Besides, you wanted to show off and say you beat me, right?"
The magus flinched.
"Well, this is the counterbalance." Kairi clicked his tongue at the boy. "Now get the hell out of my face, kid. I'm missing prime time here. Her little sister is going to get home soon and then it's Bitch Quest: 2007 for the rest of the night."
No happy time for lil Kairi then.
Kairi raised an eyebrow as the magus in front of him growled. The air began to fill with tension as magic began to gather.
"Boy..." The older of the two magi warned, teeth flashed in a grim smile. "You might not want to go down this route. Especially for paper route money."
Whatever the boy might have done next was lost to the ages.
"Argh!"
The entire world went bloody for the man. His towering frame suddenly collapsed up against the side of the alleyway, sending bills fluttering to and fro. Kairi groaned, fighting back the urge to bellow as he clutched at his hand and thrashed in agony while the smell of burning flesh filled the alley.
He rolled onto his back, sightlessly staring up at the sky.
Moments later, a massive airship, which held aloft by massive balloons, moved across the skies above. Its mass was enough to shadow London completely as it swept past the city. Countless people quickly threw up their hands in recognition, sending out cries of entreaty towards the flying behemoth. Their desperate wishes, of course, were ignored.
It had come here for only a select few.
The small magus, uncaring about what just had happened, quickly moved to secure his allowance.
Forget wish granting vessels, he wasn't going to be getting a lectured by that shrew that called itself his mother!
"Hah, sucks to be you, dickwad." The boy kicked Kairi in the side, making the man groan in renewed pain. He glanced down at the mark on the back of the giant man's hand. "Hope you die first in the Holy Grail War."
With that last curse, he quickly ran away.
Kairi was left staring up at the blue skies above. His glasses, having fallen off his face, revealed his calm gaze.
"Well, fuck." He mused, lip quirking in a frown. "I'm going to have to find one of those goddamned fire runes now."
Kairi certainly wasn't going to be leaving his corpse around for one of his friends to figuratively fuck over when he was dead. Or perhaps literally, if Jessica was feeling especially creepy that day.
Goddamnit, why'd he have to choose to be a necromancer again?
Why'd he think it'd attract chicks?
The airship Falcon, continued on its endless voyage. Deep inside its cargo hold, a chamber composed of pulsing meat, sat the Grand Grail. With its mark on its chosen champions in London, the ancient device sent another pulse of prana surging through the countless nerves racing from the towering black tower throughout the airship.
Propellers twisted and excess energy was vented as the ship headed in the direction of Shinjuku, Tokyo. Far below, the massive blast zone that had once contained most of central Europe stretched out below the Last Battalion's final weapon. A twisting plum of dark smoke was left in the airship's wake as it headed to the east.