The simple fact that this War was a way to bring back the peace and appease the different magic-users of the world was nothing to me. The Mage's Association, Atlas, and the Holy Church had all sent representatives, the supervisor being another man of the Church.
Trained for war and having been regarded highly by their peers, these magi were of the highest quality. However, that was also their weakness, as they weren't very good at hiding their own identities. Information on their abilities and their habits was easy to obtain, and their addresses in the city were no great problem. I had subdivided them into three main groups.
First there were "the nobles". These three magi were well-respected in the Clock Tower, and in terms of materiel they were the most competent. However, these three had had to escape the notice of the Lord El-Melloi II, a survivor of the Fourth Fuyuki Grail War, and secondly because this was a secret Church project, their main criteria for being chosen was friendliness to the Church, rather than actual experience. I smiled derisively. Once they find out what's going on here, then it'll all be over. I thought. The three of you had better be ready for this.
The first magus among them, the one who had summoned Saber, was a tall and blond-haired woman about six-two in height and a penchant for lab coats, sweaters, and denim pants. An American, functioning as the lead for this mission, Sylvia Trenton was an accomplished magus who studied runes and is one of the best at deploying them in action. On the outside, she appeared to be a mild-mannered thirty-year-old cultural anthropologist with a hobby for occult runes, but she also studied the magical power of runes extensively. She has a headstrong and cheerful personality, often being called "that crazy bitch" by her colleagues due to her reputation for headstrong and reckless tactics. Because of this, I had no doubt that she was also a dangerous and cunning opponent, as those who only know anger do not survive long in the political shark tank of the Clock Tower. Right now, she and her entourage of the two other "elitists" of the Clock Tower were staying at the J.W. Marriott, probably to keep themselves comfortable and at full power. She had arrived about a month ago, and I had visited them on surveillance about every other day. Looking her up on the webpage of the college in which she worked, quite a prestigious one, in fact, she was listed as "on vacation and will be back shortly". On the days I observed her habits she acted as a normal tourist would, going to malls, tourist sites, and other places around the city. However, I noticed she made an effort to litter, which surprised me greatly, as her profile had also said she was quite clean. After she had left I picked up one of the candy wrappers she had carelessly allowed to drift in the wind.
Carefully written onto it was the Eoael rune. It was written in a clear ink invisible to anyone without a working Magic Circuit and training as a magus. The rune meant "home", which meant that it was probably part of a bounded field ritual.
I ripped it apart and threw it in the trash. She would be a dangerous opponent.
Her two lackeys were nothing special, or at least didn't appear to be. On the surface they were just two graduate students she had become close to, parading them around as two of her brightest, but further investigation smashed their records. The true nature and name of the two students wasn't even close to their covers.
They were British, a man and a woman. The woman by the name of Clare Arwin, and she was about the same age as a graduate student would be. Almost as tall as Trenton but far less predisposed to lab coats, instead opting for a more attractive shirt-and-leggings look, something that was probably there because of her lover and fellow lackey, Brian Thorne, the tallest of the group and with the same age as Clare. Together they commanded the Servants Rider and Caster, with Clare forming a contract with Lancer and Brian forming a contract with Caster.
The two of them had a deadly combination of magecraft within them, the girl being an expert at Formal Craft and the creation of large circles, while Brian was a master of reinforcement, something that complemented his training in karate very well. This was ironic, as their magecraft defied their personality, the girl being rash and impetuous while Brian was always calm and collected. I shook my head as I read their entry in my book again. Even without their Servants, I would be hard-pressed to take them on, as they were well-prepared for any attack. They were still young, capable, and yet they still had room to grow. The future of the Clock Tower, I idly wondered why they were sent out here instead of being allowed to grow within the Clock Tower. I had not had the time to run a proper background check on them all, as I myself had only entered the game a month ago.
Moving on to the next group, there was the side of the Holy Church. They sent two of their finest Executors to stay in the Miyama Church, from where they spread out. Being from Japan originally as well as being experts in concealment and secret operations, I quickly lost them, but not before getting their names, appearances, and the Servants they had contracts with.
Kouhei Kaname was a sober black-haired man well into his twenties. Despite this she was much like an Executor, with no proper magecraft other than the Black Keys and his faith, but she was also a competent fighter and strategist. I had personally met him a few times in my work, and he had always struck me as the cool, professional type. Standing next to me he was slightly shorter, but his stature and strength were such that you always got the feeling he was looking down on you instead of vice versa. With such a sober and professional person, I was genuinely surprised that he summoned Lancer, the blue spearman who had nearly killed me, as a Servant.
Who knows, maybe the guy's the life of the party back at the Vatican. I thought. It suddenly occurred to me that he might recognize me, however the last time I had gone with him was a year ago, and I had bought myself a new set of clothes for this War in order to hide myself, as well as using my natural puberty aging process to my advantage, so I would not be easily recognized. Continuing to check my list, I saw that he had brought his usual partner along as well.
Yagi Kotohime was Kouhei's bodyguard and apprentice, a green-haired short girl with glasses who was nevertheless far more capable in direct combat than Kouhei. I had heard that he had found her fighting off the Dead with nothing but a lead pipe when she was sixteen, and to this day two years later tales of her solo battle with twenty of the Dead with her bare hands were still being told. Her normally calm and emotionless demeanor persisted into combat, becoming an almost ominous yet calming presence, something that both scared us because you never knew what she was thinking and reassured us as her calm silence reminded us that it was all fine. She fought as an Executor would, with Black Keys, although she had learned some Reinforcement in order to strengthen her physical combat capabilities. It was no surprise when she had summoned Assassin as her Servant, showing her skill in battle and nothing else. With these two teams, the winner seemed obvious, however, a third party had emerged among the powers of the world.
The last team from Atlas was a pair of alchemists that had kept the War in a Mexican standoff for a month. The first of them was an artificial human known as Griselda V, who was one of the early prototypes of Atlas' artificial humans. Along with her was an alchemist-professor who came with her in order to record her strengths and defects, going by the name of Professor Hayden.
Griselda V was the Master of Berserker, and her dark skin and purple hair were a strange combination, to say the least of her jester's leotard with a lab coat over it. To top it all off, she was bedecked in golden jewelry and modern-looking glasses. She had no magecraft, instead functioning mostly as a prana tank for Berserker, who required a ridiculous amount of magical energy. Her only notable talent was the Three Divided Thought Processes she possessed, allowing her to quickly comprehend anything that happened. She was quiet, but the main difference between her and Yagi was that her quietness was more unnerving than anything, and it gave the sense of not having anything at all underneath it, quite unlike Yagi who seemed to have a cold determination beneath her calm exterior.
Professor Hayden was far more capable on the magecraft end of the equation, not only possessing more mental power with his Four Divided Thought Processes, but also being experienced in the arts of using the Earth element to attack. This helped him to create the artificial body Griselda V inhabited by using earth to help shape it, as well as making him a competent fighter. He quests for knowledge and experimental findings the most of all, carefully examining and looking at every little thing to learn from it. Of course, his Servant was of the class Archer, the only one that was left open.
I smiled. After all, my role in this War was far, far more than just the ordinary combatant. I was the 8th combatant, the wild card, the one who would break the deadlock. With my Servant, the Second Archer, I would have to be the one who started the fighting.
However there was one thing bothering me. The Holy Grail here should be free of the defect that had plagued the Fuyuki Grail, and yet my Servant, a Counter Guardian no less, had been summoned for no apparent reason. It was an event that should not have occurred, which is something I should be able to sense, having repeated things so often that I can tell cause and effect without much effort. Since effects do not take place without causes, my secondary objective was to find the cause of Archer's summoning.
I was quite sure that nobody in the city expected the explosion on par with the munitions deployed by the modern military, but that made it no less shocking to me when the huge mass of sound blasted the house. Judging from the explosive force it was probably just a few blocks down, which meant one of two things. One, that someone had intercepted Lancer on his way back from his mission, which I doubted, or two, that the Masters had already started fighting amongst themselves. I stood up and rapidly walked to the room on the ground floor where I had stowed my weapons. As I rounded the corner, Archer spoke to me.
"Master, that explosion was caused by two Servants." He said. "I'm not entirely sure you heard it, so I thought I'd tell you about it." I smiled. That Servant of mine had the best sense of humor I had found since I had been a bounty hunter, and among both comrades and enemies alike I had never found a sense of humor like this. It was unique and refreshing, while at the same time witty and cutting, something appreciated for a soldier whose light moments were infrequent and ephemeral, as it could turn even the most dire predicament into a joke routine. My smile grew wider as I delivered a riposte that was somewhat forced, as the serious situation was not something to be easily ignored.
"I'd be surprised if there was a person alive who didn't hear it." I said. "If you are already there, continue to observe. If you suspect that you are spotted, immediately retreat. I'll be at your location in ten minutes or less."
"A bit impatient, aren't we? Getting ready to pick one of them off?"
"Not necessarily." I said, opening the door to the room full of weapons. "Just collecting information." I said.
"Collecting information with the barrel of a rifle?" The voice was quizzical, and I could imagine my Servant's amuse smile on the other end of the mind link, causing me to start grinning even wider.
"It's self-defense." I said as I walked into the closet that held only a large golf bag in it. I felt Archer nod, and he left presumably to oversee the battle.
I flicked on the light and opened the golf bag, revealing the final evidence of my rejection of magi. If there was one thing that proved that I could no longer associate with the world of the Mages' Association, it was this.
Sleek, black, and shiny, a perfectly crafted all-plastic tube of death known as the LWRC SABR rifle, an assault rifle patterned after the M4 Carbine that also incorporated a special barrel that allowed it to be converted into a sniper rifle. Both barrel parts were in the bag, as well as a pair of M92F Beretta pistols, gleaming in their black plastic skins. Zipping up the bag, I shouldered it and turned out the light, walking out the front door. I knew for sure that the clips were there, as well as all of the attachments needed to turn those weapons into precise machines capable of killing magi. Cold, impersonal plastic that would nevertheless sever the lives of those who wielded magic, this was the ultimate blasphemy against the ideas of the Mages' Association and their code that placed magic above all.
Also, this was my rejection of them, and my understanding that magic and magi in general are like natural forces to be controlled, and when necessary, to be put down like beasts, whether for their own good or for the good of others. I belatedly remembered something at the front door, so I put down the bag and unzipped it. Taking out a brown shoulder-holster, I strapped it on, one of the Beretta M92Fs being placed within it soon afterwards. Putting on a trench coat to conceal the weapon, I walked into the afternoon light, headed in the direction I felt Archer was in.
It's time to make the presence of the Eighth Servant felt. Event Repetition: Magi Destruction, commence. I thought, smiling a completely different smile than the one I had smiled moments earlier when Archer had remarked on my "collecting intelligence with a gun".
It was the smile of someone who was about to slake their thirst for blood.
