Chapter One: Dapper Danny Draws
It wasn't easy finding a day that wasn't drenched in rain in this time of year and in this part of the world. Why in God's name Gregori Mont, head of one of many growing traditionalist factions within the Mages' Association, had decided to host a gathering of mages in Wexford, Ireland of all places was beyond most of those that had answered the invitation. As typical of mages, each of the twenty also wondered why nineteen nobodies had been called together on that rainy night to the city's relatively small opera house. Many of them recognized peers among their count, all twenty considered by outsiders (and the other nineteen of them) to be soundly competent mages of little renown. Each the best of a few generations old magus family barely old enough to be seeking prestige be associated with their lineage. Each an heir to a lineage that wanted nothing more than for that to have any significance in the magical community.
Questions were answered and created when they were allowed into the unseen sections of the building, to a larger and more utilitarian venue beneath the theater where seating surrounded the stage. Similar to a Roman forum, the place was equally used for practice by performers as it was for discourse and the settling of disputes by mages in the general area. On this night, smack dab in the center of the stage was a relic anyone could surmise was of great value just from the security (both physical and magical) on its glass case. Nearby was a summoning circle that quite a few recognized on sight.
A summoning circle of the variety documented as used in the Holy Grail Wars in Fuyuki repeatedly, most recently the Fifth Holy Grail War years prior. It took only moments for the information to spread by chatter and an assumption to be made. They were here for the selection of at least one master for some sort of Holy Grail War. That the movement of their faction was growing in intensity. That one of them would have a chance at making their family mean something. So when they were seated, the gathered heirs sat with great anticipation. When Mont stepped onto the stage to speak, they waited quietly but impatiently.
"Hello and welcome to my little gathering here. I assume that my little display here has inspired quite the fantastic theory? Good. Your assumption is likely correct. This is a recreation of the site of a summoning ritual for entry into a Holy Grail War, and tonight which of you will represent us in the one to come with be decided."
There was a clamor, and Theodore Glant, recently ascended to head and not mere heir to his house, stood and did not wait for license to speak, "What Holy Grail War is this? The three families are all opposed to a repeat of the war and have made it clear they mean to stop any attempt at another."
"Patience, Mr. Glant. I was going to get to that once the drama of the announcement had properly stewed." Mont smiled and clapped his hands together, "The solution is simple. The hosts of the coming war have secured another Grail for us to fight for."
There was another clamor.
"Another Holy Grail? Are you mad?"
"As real as the Fuyuki Greater Grail I assure you. I have seen it myself."
Andel Marlow, an alchemist of high reputation interjected. "How has the Mages' Association not gotten any word of this? Such a discovery could change the very foundations of the magical world!"
"We have taken great pains to keep this a secret, Mr. Marlow. Pains we will continue to undertake. Until the end of this Holy Grail War this must remain secret at any cost."
Every magus in the room was immediately aware that the bounded field around the building had shifted. They had been notified by some feature of the incantation. It not only warded people away, it would hold them within with equal potency.
Glant shouted immediately over the resulting chaos, "What is the meaning of this treachery?"
Their host held his hand together, his expression regretful, "We cannot afford to lose control of this Grail. Yo are the finest of our faction and if we are to proceed, we must assure a champion for our cause, and that there are none among you that can betray us."
"None of us volunteered to fight a war for you!"
"You speak of change and will not fight for it, Mr. Glant? Causes require courage... a willingness to sacrifice."
Marlow tried to storm the stage but was stopped by two members of the ample security force. He still yelled at the man regardless, "What sacrifice? What is this?"
Mont shook his head, sincerely saddened by the truth of the matter, "Well, research on the Grail has led to the belief that prior attempts at replicating the ritual have been imperfect due to the lack of the Three Great Houses' involvement in the copy. The ritual has safeguards that require someone fill the roles of those families. The only way to establish our own Great Houses is to determine the strongest families among us under the supervision of the Grail. This is the purpose of tonight."
"You mean to have us fight to the death?"
"So you are saying you will not fight for your family's legacy? For the right not only to seek access to an omnipotent wish granter, but to ensure your lineage is establish in your generation as a Great House? There are forty of us here. One of us will be a voice to shape the very future of magic going forward. That voice will not be that of a coward!"
Everyone in the room stopped protesting, the sheer magnitude of that promise dragging their ambition to levels surpassing their fear and sense of self-preservation. Some would argue their common sense.
Mont smiled, "So, I would like to see a show of hands. If this arrangement is to your liking, please raise your hand."
Seventeen hands raised immediately, three more raised right after at the sight of the majority.
"Very well. Then let-"
The sealed door came open at great speed, going further than the hinges were designed to, breaking them as the door slammed the wall behind them. Through that door stepped a lone man that had neither triggered nor disabled the bounded field to enter. He was six feet in height with the build of a soldier clad in gray formal wear. Custom dress shoes with functional soles rather than the poor traction of their ilk, a full three piece bespoke suit with a flat cap. In one of his gloved hands was an ornate blackthorn walking stick. No... that was clearly a shillelagh. He was clearly no older than twenty-five though his handsome face was unnaturally cold and expressionless as he advanced through the doorway without pause at a deliberate walking pace towards the summoning circle. The man's eyes barely registering seeing anything as he scanned the room and assessed the occupants.
"Who are you?" Mont demanded, "You were not invited to this meeting!"
The well-dressed man simply kept walking forward.
"Restrain him!
Three members of the security force advanced, reinforcing their bodies with magic, when they got just outside their reach and readied to attack, the man sharply darted forward and, with his shillelagh still held in one hand like a walking stick he brought the head of the weapon across and into the temple of one of them. The guard slammed into the ground as if hit full swing by a bat. A two handed thrust with the tip of the stick into the ribs of the second guard broke several off them and took him to the ground gripping at his gut. The third guard managed a hook punch to the jaw of the man as he himself got clubbed in the chest. The intruder's head snapped to the side and immediately righted itself. The guard flew back at least three feet and thrashed around grabbing at his collapsed chest as he slowly died from one hefty swing. The intruder's expression still hadn't changed. In fact he had only slowed his advance for a moment rather than stopping.
One of the remaining guards on the stage took a step back, a panicked expression on his face, "Shit... that mystic code... that cold look. It's Dapper Danny."
Mont looked at the man, "Who in god's name is 'Dapper Danny'?"
Marlow stepped in the way of the man, "Hold it right there. You aren't just strolling in here and stealing away our shot at this!"
'Dapper Danny' stopped, placed the walking stick in front of him, both his hands resting on it, "This was to be a contest to decide the strongest was it not?"
Mont stepped between the man and the relic, "How did you find out about it?"
"The land speaks to those who listen. If I'm putting it in a less enigmatic way, your obsolete means of magical communication have downsides against those with the proper magical knowledge."
"You tapped our communications?"
Danny did not smirk, nor was their any pride or smugness in his voice, "For my people, you may as well have been talking loudly in a hallway and now complaining I was passing through."
"Who are you to presume you should represent us in the Grail War?"
"I never said I would represent you."
"Bastard!" Marlow lunged, belting the taller intruder straight in the face with a haymaker empowered by mana.
The sound of the impact was comparable to a gunshot. An solid crack was heard by all as Danny's head moved slightly to the side before he resumed looking straight ahead without so much as a flinch or acknowledgment of the attack. Marlow however clasped his broken hand in pain and screamed.
There was a muttering of "That wasn't body reinforcement. There's no signs of it. He just took that naturally."
"There was nothing natural about that."
Dapper Dan coldly reached out and with one hand grabbed Marlow by his face, employing mana for the first time he lifted the man with that one hand and began to squeeze. Marlow screamed as he tried to reinforce his skull and strike at the limb, but it was being in the grip of a pneumatic press and trying to survive by striking it with your bare hand.
"Yield." the intruder coldly demanded.
Marlow managed to call out a simple finn shot, hitting his attacker point blank in the chest. The only reaction from Danny was striking upwards into Marlow's sternum with the head of his shillelagh, the enchantment enhancing its impact enough to blow Marlow flying twenty feet into the corner of the stage, breaking his back. Well... most of the man went. His head was still in Danny's hand for another moment before the man tossed it at the scared guard's feet. Blood flowed from it, mixing with the growing pool of urine at the guard's feet.
The room was silent, stunned.
Danny repeated, this time to the room, "Yield."
Six of the remaining seven guards rushed him, the seventh running the other direction to try and force his way out the other, still sealed door. The other six halted when he pulled out a small pouch that he knocked into the air with the head of his walking stick, the impact not magically enhanced but instead the recoil this time. He let the momentum twirl the stick around his finger and as the bag descended he knocked it once again into the air by timing it to hit the stick on the outside side from the direction he was spinning. Just that was astounding dexterity, and the trick whipped the speed of the spin higher.
Mont yelled at the guards, "Don't be scared of juggling! Restrain him!"
They started forward as the bag came down again, this time he struck it with gusto and with the actual spin behind it. On impact the pouch exploded, spraying small coins at the guards at the velocity far higher than that of shotgun pellets. None died, their bodies had been strengthened with magic after all, but all six went down, most unconscious but all badly injured.
Seeing this, ten of the master candidates rushed him in attempt to stop any further trickery. Danny darted forward, swatting one of the coins that had landed close with the magic of the cudgel. The act propelled the coin into the leg of one enemy, tripping him and getting him trampled by three others. The first to actually reach Danny was dazed by a cane strike to the temple, the rebound empowered instead to double the force of a spin strike to another man. The impact of two activations was enough to kill the target instantly and propel him back with enough momentum for his skull connecting with that of the man behind him knocked that man unconscious. The next was answered with the curve of the stick hooking behind his forward foot, the magic in the weapon turning what would have been a leg sweep into the victim landing head first instead of back on the ground and his skull getting cracked open on the floor. Two strikes to the face of Danny were met with no change in expression, only smashing. Another melee attacker fell victim to Danny hitting an incoming finn shot with his cane, using the magic to spin it again into an uppercut that sprayed the contents of the victim's head all over the ceiling.
Dispatching a yet another target with two rebound building strikes he kept that spin and dispatched the last of the ten with small tripping action and stomping the side of the attacker's leg to break it. The spin he used as a shield to ward off five incoming finn shots, though doing so killed the momentum. The ones that had charged but not been out down had recovered at this point and tried again, getting themselves unceremoniously smashed by the shillelagh.
Nineteen magi down in a matter of minutes. The ten surviving candidates that had not charged moved to form a wall between him and the relic and intended to cast more single action spells. Coldly, the intruder smacked the head of the cane against his palm to spin it around his finger with the magic, and gave a mighty strike to the skull of the magus at his feet, shotgunning blood and brain matter all over the line of defense, unsettling them, stunning them. Leaving them open.
Dapper Danny was on them in that instant in one magically enhanced dash, smashing away at as many skulls as he could as fast as he could. Four were dead in little more than a blink. Mont finally decided to act, an incantation calling a bolt of lightning that arched towards Danny and into the back of a candidate yanked into it's path. Another of the survivors tried to swing a fist but Danny remorselessly slammed his fingers into the eyes of the man, grabbing his head like a bowling ball and augmenting his strength with mana. Danny then proceeded to bludgeon his other attackers with the man, duel wielding a man and his shillelagh with cartoonishly deadly effect. A spinned strike to the now corpse sent it flying at Mont as he tried to finish the incantation of another spell, not killing him, but momentarily taking him out of the fight.
The frightened guard, Joey Cornwall, gave up clawing at the sealed door and collapsed against it in fear, watching the intruder beat the dazed and panicked surviving candidates with a face that had not changed expression even to flinch since he had entered the room. The guard's mind reeled Not again surely... it couldn't happen to him again. The memories he'd tried to forget of his college years experimenting with old blood magics with the other edgy magi in his school. They played at calling themselves a cult of dark magi, and then fallen in with a crowd of drug, sex, and hedonism. Not to mention the real dark magics of some sick bitch playing at being Morgan le Fay. She hadn't been of course. That much was made clear that night years ago when Dapper Danny came strolling into a blood ritual. One that Joey had decided was too far when 'Morgan' showed they were going to sacrifice some little kid from some magus family hers didn't like. At the sound of thwacking and the squishing of human bodies giving under the impact of that damned cudgel flooded his ears and his sight, Joey relived the deaths of that entire cult he'd once been a part of.
His voice trembled as he teetered on the edge of madness, "Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are caaallling..."
Joey had researched the man after he was allowed to walk away that night. 'Dapper Danny', 'the Golem', an inhuman monster the Association labeled as a freelance mercenary. Not that he was ever paid anything according to the rumors. The records he'd found said he was a magus named Daniel Coroin, head of a small clan that practiced old druid magic passed down from the age before invaders thought they killed all the druids off. Joey knew the truth though. That was not a human. Dapper Danny was a-
"MONSTER!" Mont shouted as he freed himself from the weight of the corpse.
Danny looked at the man, making no move, "You called all these families here to kill each other. No... more accurately you called them together so you could kill them. A massive sacrifice to fuel a ritual beyond any magus without the use of a Grail."
"We have a Grail!"
"No you don't."
Mont began t chant, but Danny raised a hand, moving his lips wordlessly in a silent utterance that ended as he breathed in and out on the last inaudible syllables. Gregori Mont felt his body tighten, an unnatural feeling disrupting his ability to focus. It was certainly a curse, at least as powerful as one uttered with a two line incantation, but the stone-faced man hadn't uttered any actual words or taken enough time to cast that strength of spell.
Mont could barely speak, "What is this? It... it crept into me through my casting."
The wheels began to turn in the man's head, "You used the leyline, casting a curse using the mana I drew in? What in the world...?"
"You do not have a Grail. You are trying to force the ritual through drivel like this because you are so greedy for power and the atrophy of the magic."
"I'm protecting our traditions from those fools at the Association! Melloi is destroying everything we've tried to build. If he wants to take apart the Grail, then we have to wrench its power from him no matter that cost before he throws it away! WE WILL ACCESS THE ROOT!"
Danny strode forward, unmoved, his face still as stone. Mont tried to back away, but the curse kept his body tensed and unsettled. He cried out in pain as Danny struck his leg with a baseball swing of his shillelagh. The hit was not enhanced with magic, it was just a normal, knee-shattering blow.
"You are a pollutant. You will not taint heroes of old with your blood feud." his words should have been ones of passion, but his words were as cold as his unchanging face.
Monte went for something in his coat, but that was stopped with a strike shattering his elbow, then his other elbow. He cried out in agony for mercy, the crazed singing of Joey the guard getting louder as the poor soul tried to drown everything out.
"I will not let you twist them into a crusade for rot. I will not let you bloody their hands, their souls, their dying wishes so that magecraft can continue decaying in the hands of the short-sighted."
Mont spat at his assailant, with eyes as full of defiance as they were tears, "Curse you to hell! Curse you straight to hell with that bastard Melloi! His fate is sealed and so is yours now!"
Danny raised his shillelagh high over his head. Gregori Mont would die that night for his plot to wield things he shouldn't have for reasons they should not be used for. It would not be quick though. He would pay for leading twenty heirs of twenty families to his blood ritual, to their end. For corrupting them into a poison on the magical community with his atrophy championing views.
When it was done, the man's cold gaze turned to Joey, "Is that not a bit cliché? Certainly my name is Danny, but singing 'Oh Danny Boy' as I kill people in Ireland? My sensibilities are insulted."
The guard stopped.
Danny turned and walked to the stage. He looked at the wards and raised a hand at them, breathing an incantation to dispel them through their supply of mana. It was easy compared to direct dispelling, as modern wars did not protect against that manner of casting. When that was done he simply smashed the glass and reached in, feeling the mana suffusing the relic, the remnants of countless souls that had passed the object in its lifetime. He could feel tiny slivers of memory and emotion still imprinted there. A particularly pleasant one was a grandfather passing the relic to a young girl just getting truly skilled in magecraft. One who adored old stories of heroes.
From that memory he confirmed. It was the shard of a table.
Danny whispered, "Grandfather was this really part of the Round Table. Yes, Pet, that very legendary thing. I wouldn't doubt this crossed paths with Arthur or even Merlin!"
Danny smiled. Though it was not his smile he could enjoy the expression of the young girl, Petunia Nightcress, even if she had died of cancer that had eaten her magic circuits right as rumors of the Third Holy Grail War had started. Her deathbed regret years after was that she had missed such a chance to met a Knight of the Round Table, to perhaps be charmed by Gawain or Galahad, to learn from Merlin...
He slipped back through the slivers, a bit shocked at how clear they were in spite of their age. He could find some from almost all the way back.
"Oi! Don't spill your drink on my spot! Why are you even in here with that?"
Danny was jarred at the simple shard of a pointless event. Stronger than any other thing from that time, some Knight of the Round had a drink spilled on their place at the table and was so intensely bothered by that simple thing. The sheer respect the Knight had for that spot was monstrous.
Dapper Danny clasped the object in his hand, holding onto that sensation, sifting through the mess of imprints to find every trace of that knight. "Hello there."
Something stirred in him, something familiar but also something he couldn't' pin down. It was like a clawing obsession trying to bore out of his torso. He turned and walked out of that place without another word to Joey. That place was not deserving of the relic and he would not allow it to taint it further.
In the empty lobby of the opera house, Danny felt a throbbing tension. Like that of someone walking close beside him. Like a faint shard of memory escaping from the relic and trying to take form. He peering into the imprints on the object. A fleeting hope... the knight he couldn't pin down briefly walking alongside his king as they just happened to enter the room at the same time... and how much the simple act of being at his side meant to the knight even though it was just passing each other going the same direction. It was as happy a feeling as it was lonely.
For some reason, Danny wanted to seize the knight, to talk to that knight... to place a hand on that knight's shoulder and... befriend him? That hand he wished to use started to hurt. As if something that wasn't supposed to be was fighting its way into existence.
He lifted his hand and looked at the place it burned... and there on the back of his hand were three red lines. Nothing fancy or ornate, more like three tally marks than what they had to be. When he started to lower his hand it came to rest on something he very briefly couldn't see, something metal. Something that came into view almost before he could finish processing the sensation. His hand was on a shoulder, the shoulder.
The knight was not as tall as one would imagine, clad in mostly white armor with intricate red accents. The face and head of the knight were totally concealed by a horned helmet that allowed no clue as to the knight's identity.
The knight turned, looking at the hand before regarding its owner, "Hey. What's the big idea getting blood on my armor?"
Next Chapter: Phantom Servant
Author's Note: Welcome to a new Fate fic! If you follow my other one, don't worry. This one isn't going to delay that one any longer than it was going to be anyway and even though this fic has nothing to do with that one, all the follow-ups I mentioned are still happening. I just had ideas I wanted to get onto the page. The next chapter of this may come out fore the next chapter of that one, but maybe not. Whatever I feel like. Anyway, onto something about this fic. If you would like to see a particular servant get summoned in this Grail War go ahead and toss me a suggestion in your review. I might put them in if I feel I can integrate them in an interesting way. A caster is coming in next chapter, but (mild spoiler) that doesn't mean that slot is taken. Even if you have no requests, I'm curious what you think of "Dapper Danny". Even though he's still a bit of a mystery at this point, first impressions count for a lot. Anyway see ya next time.