I walked wearily down the street, trying to ignore the heaviness of my eyelids. I had first tried reasoning with Miya to keep her out of my pants, but that plan quickly failed when the rest of my flock entered the kitchen and saw what the two of us (or more accurately Miya) was doing. I had briefly hoped that they would help pry her off me, but unfortunately they got over their indignity of the situation rather fast and decided to take advantage of the landlady's new found leniency for lewd acts. Needless to say, I abandoned all hope of diplomacy at that point and promptly jumped out nearest window, running as fast as I could away from the inn. I didn't dare look back until a half hour later and found to my relief that there was no one following me. Nevertheless, I ended up spending the rest of the night in the city rather than risk going back to a building filled with dangerous women intent on ravishing me.

Come to think of it, that happened a few times back in London, too.

It was shortly after dawn that I found myself a few blocks away from the Izumo House, fervently hoping that my cooking's apparent aphrodisiac qualities had worn off by then. My silent prayers were interrupted however, when I suddenly picked up a new scent.

It was a strong scent, and yet somehow ethereal, like it was being carried on a strong wind. Beyond this somewhat paradoxical description, I couldn't tell anything else about it. It was completely unlike anything else I had ever sensed before. It definitely wasn't a Sekirei; I could tell that much was certain. Was it a magus? Given the shear variety of types of magic and the personal traits that were inherent in each Magi's magecraft, it was possible that this was the scent of a magic user, though they certainly didn't seem to practice any form of magic that was common to the Clock Tower.

Slowly and carefully, I ducked into an alley as I followed the scent. It was stationary for the moment, and I felt it would be a better idea to get a look at who or what this thing might be. If it was a threat, now might be the best time to take care of it. They alley was a strangely winding one, wedged between two irregularly shaped buildings. That was why I was closer than I would have liked to the person when I rounded a sharp corner into a narrow part of the alleyway.

It appeared to be a woman with pale skin and a long braid of black hair. Her pants were dark blue with a silver lining, and I could see a corresponding top on the ground next to her. The reason she wasn't wearing the top was so that she could more easily wrap the bandage she was holding around her torso. She moved with a stiffness that indicated pain, and I could see a number of red blotches seeping through the cloth.

I took all of this in within a few moments, as then the woman turned towards me. I ducked back behind the corner, but I was too late.

"Who's there?" The woman said in a tone that could have cut steel. "I'm in no mood for any common thief that might think me an easy mark."

As I felt the scent get stronger, I made a snap decision. I stepped back around the corner to face her, my hands up in a placating gesture. "Stay calm." I said. "I mean you no harm." I figured that if I ran, there was a chance she would pursue, and that could lead to innocent people getting involved. I still didn't know what here intentions were, so I figured it would be best to try to be diplomatic first. Of course, I wasn't a fool; the hammer that represented my magecraft was already cocked in the back of my mind, and I was ready to trace a weapon at a moment's notice.

The woman's eyes narrowed at me, and I could tell from her posture that she didn't let down her guard in the slightest. "What do you want? Or was I just incompetent at hiding myself?"

I paused carefully for a moment before I said "Who are you? And what are you doing in Shin Tokyo?" She clearly wasn't after me, so she must have had some other motive for being here.

Her dark eyes glittered like stars as she appraised me. "I don't see how that is any of your concern. And for that matter, how do you know that I'm not from Shin Tokyo?" she asked with suspicion.

I quickly replied "Well, you don't exactly look like you're from around here. That usually means trouble in my experience." I was not sure enough of what she was to mention magic to her yet.

She stared at me intensely for a few moments longer before giving a small shrug and relaxing slightly. "I suppose that's not too unreasonable. My name is Aethiana Salence. As for why I'm here, well, do you happen to know anything about a sorcerer named Zelretch?"

I felt my body stiffen at the mention of the Wizard Marshal's name. At least now I knew she's aware of magic.

Unfortunately for me, Aethiana noticed how I had become rigid. "Ah, it seems that you do. Tell me, where might I find him?" This sounded more like an order than I would have liked.

I blinked in mild surprise at this question. "How am I supposed to know? The man spends most of his time in alternate dimensions." How did she know who Zelretch was but didn't know that about him?

Her eyes narrowed again as the tension returned. "Boy, if you are lying to me-argh!" While she was speaking, she swiftly moved into a fighting stance, most likely to intimidate me. However, she underestimated the extent of her wounds as the motion caused her to cry out in pain and fall to her knees. I could see the red on the bandages across her chest increase in size.

Without thinking, I rushed to her side. "Don't move! You're in no state to move around, let alone fight!" With care, I propped her body up against the side of the alley and started to tend to her reopened wounds as much as I could. There was still a little extra bit of bandage left next to her discarded top, so I used it to replace the bit that had become too soaked to function.

After a minute or so of me tending to the woman, her breathing became more even and less strained. She then asked "Why are you helping me?" Looking at her face, I saw a look of confusion in her eyes. "I was trying to threaten you a minute ago."

I gave a small shrug. "You're hurt. You need my help. That's a good enough reason for me."

It must have been a trick of the early morning light, because I could had sworn I saw two faint spots of red on her face. She looked down slightly as she said "Well, most people aren't like that."

"Well, I'm not most people." I replied, finishing up my work. "Now, how exactly did you get into this state, anyway?"

She looked off to the side in mild embarrassment. "It seems I… underestimated my opponent. The old sorcerer was more competent in combat than I assumed."

"What?!" I said incredulously. "You actually fought Zelretch? And lived? Why?" Seriously, anyone in their right mind would never even think about challenging the old man. Also, I did not like the implication that he was in the city.

She returned her gaze to me. "He took something that did not belong to him. I went to get it back. Unfortunately, he didn't have it on him."

"So, what are you going to do now?"

"I'm going to find him again and make him tell me where it is." Aethiana said with grim determination. "It could be anywhere in Creation, and he's the only one who knows where."

I gave a frown as I stood up. "Not in your current state you're not. Honestly, I would think that… wait, are you even from the Mage's Association?"

She looked at me for a moment uncertainly before she said "No."

"You… do know what the Mage's Association is, right?"

She continued to look at me in silence, and I fought down a brief surge of panic. Oh, please tell me that I didn't just reveal the secret of magic to a non-magus, I thought. "At least tell me that you're a magus." I said desperately.

"I'm not familiar with the term," she said slowly, "But if you're asking me if I can use magic, then yes, I suppose that is true."

I gave a sigh of relief. Still, it was incredibly strange that a magus had no idea what the Mage's Association even was. I know that there are a number of practitioners of magecraft that preferred to be independent, but they usually at least knew about it. For Aethiana to be so ignorant, she would have to be from a very isolated and recluse sect. Judging by her attire, I would guess somewhere in China, though I couldn't be certain. There were problems with that theory too, given that while she did look somewhat Asian it wasn't quite right, as well as her obviously non-Chinese name. And the fact that she seemed to speak perfect Japanese. "Where are you from?" I asked.

Her face became blank. "Far away."

"How did you get into the city?"

"I have my ways."

My mouth twisted a bit as I thought about this. I suppose I could understand someone being reluctant to divulge secrets about themselves, but I still only had a vague idea of who this person was. "So, what are you going to do now? And I don't mean going after Zelretch as he's likely long gone by now (hopefully), I mean in the next five minutes, what are you going to do?"

Aethiana's brow furrowed a bit. "Well, once I'm good enough to move, I'm going to find a healer to do something about these wounds. Surely in a city this large there must be a few."

I was about to tell her where the nearest hospital was (and what a hospital was) when a thought occurred to me. "That… might not be such a good idea." I said slowly. "The hospital will be wondering why you don't have any form of identification on you. MBI will find out as they either own all the hospitals or are monitoring them closely, and then they'll be wondering who you are and how you got into the city. And trust me, MBI can get unpleasant when they're trying to get to the bottom of a mystery." I said as I thought back to the first time I met Tamaki and Karasuba.

She gave a grimace at this. "Well, then I just have to find a way to do it myself."

I felt my sense of morals tugging at me, demanding I help this woman in some way. After a few moments of silence, I said "If you found a new species of sapient magical creatures, what part would you start to dissect first?"

"What?!" she said in shock at my sudden and morbid change in topic. "Why would I do that?! No one in their right mind who found a new species of intelligent beings would think about that!"

"Good." I replied. I had suspected that since she had never heard of the Mage's Association, there was a good chance she didn't have the same attitude that they did when it came to experimentation. "I'm sorry for being so rude, but I needed to know what kind of magus you were."

"Why?" She asked with a hint of irritation.

I gave her a warm smile as I knelt down. "How would you like to stay with me until you're healed?"

Zelretch chuckled to himself as he observed the Emiya boy carry Aethiana down the street in a bridle carry. He had to admit, even he didn't see this one coming. Sure, he put a translation spell on the woman without her noticing during their fight last night because he wanted to see her get into some wacky hijinks, but this? Oh yes, losing the Exaltation was definitely going to be worth the show he was about to see. I wonder which will happen first? Her finding out he's the Exalted she's looking for, or her succumbing to his unintentional charms and joining that harem of his? Of course, the Emiya boy wouldn't even be thinking about things like that.

After all, if he was he would have noticed the blush on Aethiana's face.

As Zelretch put the binoculars away, he felt a sharp pain in his torso which caused him to wince. He didn't want to admit it, but the Sidereal had put up a better fight than he thought she would. Her Obsidian Shards of Infinity style wasn't as diverse and powerful as his own Kaleidoscope, but it was surprisingly effective. She had managed to see through and counter many of his little tricks with her own probability manipulation. Add that to the fact that he was already tired and injured from his fight with several of her Sidereal companions before that and he ended up being forced to get serious for a few seconds at the end.

He gave a grimace as he started to scan the skyline for the nearest hospital. The fastest way for him to heal would be to make a little visit to the blood storage refrigerators that all hospitals had. The sorcerer disliked drinking blood and avoided it whenever possible, but since he was in a modern society at the moment, he could get it fairly easily and with minimal ethical problems.

Besides, he thought to himself, Now is not a good time to be caught off guard. Normally, he would be content to take the few days necessary to get back his health, but there was something… wrong. It was hard to describe, but something about the Kaleidoscope was off. I wasn't the magic itself, rather it was the fabric of spacetime wherever he tried looking. The Kaleidoscope twisted and swirled when he used it, like currents of water over uneven rocks.

It wasn't enough to impede him, but he knew that it should be much gentler. This was like reality was ready to open a new hole in itself if pushed too hard. It was… disconcerting to say the least. He needed to study it and soon.

Zelretch just hoped that it wasn't somehow his fault.

Yu-Shan. The Celestial city where the gods live and the Celestial Bureaucracy runs the whole of Creation. It is a beautiful city where the streets are paved with jade and gold, and even the most meager dwellings are towering mansions. Several thousand miles across, it is home to an innumerable number of spiritual entities, each more fantastic than any normal man could ever hope to see.

This pristine vision of majesty was marred somewhat by a figure fleeing the Bureau of Heaven building as fast as he could, a wide grin on his face as he shouted "I regret nothing!"

Perhaps some context is in order.

The entity in question is Lytek, the Right Hand of Power and God of Exaltation. There is in fact a good deal he regrets, but he was not thinking of those things at the moment. Back during the First Age, he was one of the most powerful gods in Yu-Shan, due to his purview over the Exalted shards which secured their freedom from the primordials. This changed, however, when the Usurpation came. The Solars had gone mad, and it was decided that they had to be killed and their Exaltations locked away in the Jade Prison. This ended up reducing Lytek's power quite a bit and he had lost his position in the Bureau of Heaven, the office which oversaw the affairs of the gods themselves. Now his position belonged to some stooge appointed by Ryzala, the Goddess of Paperwork.

However, it looked like things were about to change. The destruction of the Jade Prison, while worrying, was a second chance for Lytek. It looked like he would rise to prominence once again. Of course, someone had to be the one to tell Ryzala about this. Lytek volunteered.

Let it be known that gods are not above petty gloating. Really, much of the universe makes a lot more sense when this is taken into account.

In any case, that was the reason the god made out of light was running away from some of Ryzala's goons. Fortunately for him, as he didn't actually do anything wrong, they could only pursue him till he left the building.

As Lytek slowed and the elation of rubbing it in the face of that stuck up hag wore off, the god reflected that he was rather lucky that chasing him was all they did. Even after his fall from grace, there were a number of people (Ryzala included) that would have preferred him to disappear entirely. Since the end of the First Age, there had been a number of attempts to do just that. Now that he was in a position to retake his old job…

The god shook his head. Really, it was stupid of him to so openly appear and taunt one of his opponents. He just couldn't help it.

It was a good while later that he returned to his fairly modest residence (modest by Yu-Shan standards, in any case). Upon arriving in his work area, he found it cluttered with a number of papers and missives that had arrived during his absence. He gave a sigh as he wondered how many were from the goddess who he just so royally ticked off. He put all that out of his mind as he turned to his cabinet.

That cabinet was where all Solar Exaltations went after the death of person it was attached to. It was his job to inspect them clean them of memories. Normally only he could access it, but as both the Usurpation and today's events proved, they could be intercepted before they reached it. Opening the cabinet, he found 149 shards inside. I vexed him what those long dead ghosts in the Underworld were doing to his work, but oddly enough it was the last one that had him the most concerned. He didn't have all the details, but apparently someone from outside Creation had show up out of nowhere, taken one of the shards and just disappeared to whence he came. Lytek at least roughly knew where the other 150 were, but that one was could be anywhere.

He closed the cabinet and decided to leaf through the pile of papers in hope that one of them contained information on what was done to find the missing shard. As he sifted through the mess, he came across a number of vaguely threading letters detailing why he should dispose of the shards he had and how the Solars must never be allowed to walk Creation again.

He gave a sigh as he continued his search. It wasn't the Solars' fault, really. Lytek knew what was wrong with them, even if he didn't know the why or how. Back towards the end of the First Age, he had discovered some kind of flaw or corruption in the Exaltation. It seemed that over time, the Solars virtues became twisted, distorting the person until they were only a twisted mockery of what they once stood for. He had though he could fix it before it became a problem.

He was wrong.

Now, he couldn't tell anyone about it, as his negligence to tell the Unconquered Sun before the Solars went mad would mean his death.

Lytek's morose thoughts were interrupted when he found the report he was looking for. He skimmed over the document to see just what was being done to find his missing shard.

'The sorcerer seemed to have an advanced form of magic based on the manipulation of possible realties. It is believed this was the method he used to enter and exit Creation. This theory is strengthened by the evidence of a probabilistic fluctuation-' Yes, yes, less talking more action. Ah here we are. 'It is for these reasons it is believed that the outsider can be followed to his current location given the trace amount of magic left behind. Aethiana Salence, Chosen of the Maidens was selected for the operation due to her mastery of the Obsidian Shards of Infinity style. She was sent through the probabilistic rift via her own skill as well as the aid of all 5 Maidens and-'

Lytek blinked in surprise as he read the end of the sentence. "-and the effort of the 99 remaining Sidereal Exalted."

A small sense of doom crept up the god's spine. Over the past 1000 years, ever since the fall of the Solars, he had been keeping an eye on the rest of the Exalted to see if they exhibited similar flaws. So far he hadn't seen anything too bad, but he noticed an odd little quirk when it came to the Sidereals. He didn't know if it was because their Exaltation was flawed or it was just a weird quirk of Fate.

The thing was, the number of Sidereals involved in any plan was somehow always directly proportional to just how catastrophically it went wrong.

"Oh dear."