CHAPTER 9:

A WELL-DESERVED BEATDOWN

Taiga's reaction to the fact that two of her wards had effectively gotten married was, well, mixed, and somewhat predictable. She was torn between overwhelming amusement at their plight, rage against Zelretch for doing this to them without their consent, and lamenting that her children were growing up too fast. When they met Arturia the next morning, she too seemed conflicted, both amused by what happened, but also irritated. Still, as all good fathers did, she gave Harry a certain speech that involved a shallow grave awaiting him if he harmed Mordred. Mordred had promptly snarked that it was the first time she actually acted like a parent.

In truth, Harry got the impression that Arturia, while a little worried about her child, was actually happy for Mordred. That Mordred would be able to get some happiness in this existence that she didn't have at Camelot. Indeed, Arturia seemed to be showing more human feelings, even if only in a stoic, understated way, than she ever did to Mordred in life, given how Mordred recollected things at Camelot.

Then again, the rings binding them were merely an affirmation of what they already knew. Mordred Pendragon and Harry Potter loved each other. A scrawny, snarky wizard, and a tomboyish knight from another era. A rather strange and apparently mismatched couple, but they worked. Harry saw Mordred as a strong young woman who, despite her reputation, was actually filled with compassion to match her passion. And Mordred saw Harry as someone who didn't hold what she did against her, and valued her not as a girl, or the Knight of Betrayal, but as a person. They both respected who they were. Not only that, but Mordred trusted Harry to hold her back when her temper got the better of her, while Harry trusted Mordred to kick his arse if he did anything stupid.

They each had their respective reputations to overcome, to say nothing of their pasts: Harry still had nightmares about the Dursleys and how they treated him, along with the Fuyuki Fire, and Mordred still had her own neuroses about her time at Camelot. But together, and with their friends, they could, if not overcome them, then cope with them.

Of course, they were still so going to kick Zelretch's arse when they next met him.

The next day, after school, Harry and Mordred happened to notice Shinji Matou beckoning Shirou to go talk with him. The two followed at a discreet distance, casting a Disillusionment Charm on them both. Shinji was bringing Shirou into the forest not far from the school. Ambush territory.

However, as they followed, they suddenly felt a hand clamp down on each of their shoulders. Quietly, they heard Rider's voice say, "I wouldn't. I'm sure that my Master would object to you eavesdropping."

"Dammit, let go of me," Mordred snarled quietly. "Anyway, how the actual hell did you find us?"

"Your magic may prevent you from being seen, and muffle any sounds you make…but my senses are sharper than normal humans, let alone Servants. They have to be, considering I wear the Breaker Gorgon," Rider said. Then, she spoke Parseltongue. "Listen to me. If he shows off a particular book in his hand, then destroy it. If you do that, then I won't be your problem anymore."

"A book?" Harry replied. "Why are you helping us?"

"Because he is not my true Master. Do this, and I will be able to remove my Noble Phantasm from around the school."

Harry's eyes widened, and he looked at Mordred. He whispered into her ear, "Shinji is not Rider's real Master, just controlling her. If we see a book in his hand, we destroy it. Rider claims she'll remove her Noble Phantasm then."

"How can you trust her?" Mordred hissed back.

"If she wanted to kill us…we'd be dead already, or else being played around with."

"So, if Shinji's not her real Master…who is it?"

"Either Sakura or her grandfather," Harry said. "Probably the former." He looked over his shoulder at Rider. "And what will you do if we stop Shinji?"

"Protect my Master until I receive further instructions."

Harry chuckled softly, remembering something he read while reading up on myths. "Funny, that. Medusa, in Greek, means guardian."

A faint smile touched the purple-haired Servant's lips. "You'd better hurry. My would-be Master is just starting to…negotiate with your friend. You only have one chance to save him. Don't miss it…" She then Astralized.

Harry and Mordred hurried along, and soon found Shinji and Shirou talking. "…Just an insurance policy," the blue-haired boy was saying, though Harry and Mordred knew he was lying through his teeth. "As for Ayako, my Servant is rather…wilful, shall we say? She did that herself. To tell the truth, I don't want to fight."

Shirou's eyes narrowed. "And how do I know this isn't a trap? I thought we were friends until you attacked Sakura for wanting to be my girlfriend."

Shinji's face twisted briefly into a paroxysm of rage, before he calmed himself with a visible effort, and said, "Look, that's in the past, Shirou. I've come to accept that. My point is, Shirou…is that I want to join forces. That new girl, Jeanne…she's a Servant, isn't she? She's a pretty strong one too, according to Rider. We Matous used to be a Magus family of considerable strength, but our star has, admittedly, waned somewhat."

"I'm aware of that," Shirou said. "I may not be a conventional Magus, but I know that much. I also know that you have no magical ability, according to Rin. And yet, Sakura does."

Shinji's face twisted once more in rage, and he snarled, "That little dunce is no Matou! She's a goddamned cuckoo, usurping me from my rightful place! She was adopted into the family!"

"…What?" Shirou hissed, his exclamation mirrored by Harry and Mordred.

Shinji cackled. "What, you didn't know? Oh, she didn't tell you! Then again, she'd be ashamed to admit it to anyone, even you. Still…I'd be loath to allow my sister to visit a participant in this Grail War. She can be used as leverage, after all."

Shirou glared at Shinji, before he sighed. "…Shinji, I thought we were friends. But I know you are lying about Rider. You ordered her to attack Ayako. And you call draining the people in this school an insurance policy? Killing them? And you hurt Sakura. Do you think I would enter into an alliance with you? I want to prevent as many deaths in this Grail War as possible. I think entering into an alliance with you would be a mistake."

Shinji scowled. "A mistake? The only mistake I see is the fact that you came out with me without your Servant." He whipped out a hardbound book from his jacket with a vicious grin. "Rider, I command you…"

But that was as far as he got. With a snarl of "ACCIO, BOOK!", Harry summoned the book to his own hand. He dropped it on the ground, and Mordred, without any prompting, shoved Clarent right through it. Almost instantly, it burst into lavender flames. Shinji whipped around to see Harry and Mordred looking unimpressed.

Shinji after a moment's staring in despair, eventually muttered, "Well, that's not fair at all."

"I'm sorry. I don't give a fuck(1)," Mordred said, her teeth bared in what was part snarl, part grin. Then, she was on him, beating the crap out of him.

"GAH! MERCY!"

"Mercy? Is that something you eat?"

"WAIT-WAIT-WAIT! THAT DOESN'T BEND THAT WAY! IT DOESN'T- GAAAAHHHH! NOW IT DOES!"

"Think of this as my way of beating the stupid out of you."

"MY WORLD IS NOTHING BUT PAIN!"

"And my world is filled with a metric fuckton of anger towards a certain Dead Apostle. That makes you my stress relief, you yellow-bellied, blue-haired, entitled little bitch."

Shirou looked at Harry. "…How did Mordred exchange her sword for Big Sis Fuji's shinai?"

"…It's an art passed down through the Fujimuras for generations," Harry said with a shrug. "I can do it too, actually. Zelretch speculated that it's a highly specialised form of magecraft that certain people can do, magic circuits or not."

"…And why is she singing 'Singing in the Rain' while beating the crap out of him?" Shirou asked.

"Thanks to Zelretch, Mordred's watched A Clockwork Orange," Harry said with another shrug. "I mean, she's too young to see it, technically…but frankly, she's seen worse than a bunch of thugs beating the crap out of people or sex scenes. Remember, she fought in some of the bloodiest battles in history. Personally, I prefer the book. Kubrick sexualised it too much. I'd pity Shinji, but…" Harry shrugged again.

By the end of it, Shinji was now unconscious. Mordred had, surprisingly, not broken bones, though she did dislocate Shinji's arm, left him one giant bruise, and he was probably concussed. And sterile. "Anyway, what the hell was that book thing?" Mordred muttered, spitting on Shinji's face as an afterthought. "I mean, it had to be some sort of Mystic Code. But given what Rider claimed, it was allowing this shitstain to control her."

Medusa appeared. "The creature claiming to be his grandfather called it the Book of False Attendant, effectively transferring the Command Seals of my true Master to this boy. Unfortunately, I could not draw upon the mana of my true Master."

"Still…what to do with him?" Harry asked. "Taking him to hospital might raise too many questions."

"He's an ex-Master, right? Maybe we could take him to Kotomine? I mean, it's not like I really trust the guy that much, but he did say former Masters could be given sanctuary in his church," Shirou said. "Plus, he's responsible for covering up the mess here?"

"I personally wanna kill the fucker," Mordred sneered.

"As much as I agree with your sentiment, my Master has given me orders to protect him," Medusa said. "Taking him to the Overseer, however, is agreeable."

Mordred gritted her teeth, knowing that if she tried to kill Shinji, she couldn't win against the Rider Servant. "Tell Sakura that keeping this shitstain alive is a mistake we'll all regret. We'll take him to Kotomine…"

Kirei Kotomine clicked his tongue in a chiding manner that seemed, frankly, theatrical. "And what did this poor young man do to offend you so?" he asked, as he examined Shinji's body.

Mordred scoffed. They'd used Apparition to get here, and she was feeling a mite irritable, especially now she was meeting this priest up close and personal. Something about him made her want to turn him into an impromptu scabbard for Clarent. "Wanted to turn the high school and everyone in it, staff and students alike, into Servant chow, tried to kill our friends, beats his little sister, swaggers around like a wannabe pimp, has an arrogance in inverse proportion to his penis size…take your pick."

Kirei harrumphed. "I have to say, I'm impressed at the restraint you showed in beating him up. Restraint is not something you would normally show, would it, Mordred Pendragon?"

Harry and Mordred were instantly on-edge. "How the fuck did you find out?!" snarled the Knight of Betrayal. "Have you been spying on us?!"

"Hardly, though I acted as a spy for Rin's father, Tokiomi, ten years ago," Kirei said as he healed Shinji. "As the Master of Assassin, I used my Servant to spy on the other Masters. And thanks to the chivalric foolishness of your sire as well as Lancer, to say nothing of Rider's own foolish bragging, I learned the identities of many of the Servants. Saber was King Arthur, or rather, Arturia Pendragon. It was odd to see her once more, as well as yourself, who resembled her so much. Your attitude did not seem to match up with Morgan le Fay's, so I guessed, correctly as it seems. Then again, I have to confess to finding you more interesting than your sire, Mordred, despite you not being a Heroic Spirit."

"Whoopee shit," Mordred snarked. "I don't have a thing for creepy priests, even if they're lookers."

"My interest is not romantic. Rather, I find your character more interesting than Arturia's. Your sire is, after all, somewhat monolithic, a paragon of chivalry. Whereas you…a scorned bastard child, a Knight of the Round Table, and yet kept apart. I'm surprised you didn't attempt to run your sire through when you first met."

Mordred glared at Kirei with her emerald eyes. In a low growl, she said, "You know nothing about Father and I, you fake fucking priest, nor is it any of your business. Or did you want to kill your father, even if you loved him?"

Mordred noted that Kirei's eyes widened fractionally, then narrowed, before the sardonic priest regained his equilibrium. "With a tongue like that, you'd get along well with my daughter," Kirei observed.

"I'd be scared of anyone with your genes or raised by you," Harry said flatly.

"She was raised by my in-laws. Still, Caren has my wit, as well as my talent as an Executor…"

"…Did you say Caren?" Harry asked, thinking back to a girl she met at Clock Tower briefly. A girl from the Church, with silvery-white hair, golden eyes, and a sharp tongue. "…Caren Ortensia?"

"Ah, you have met her?"

Mordred scoffed. "She was acting as a liaison for the Church due to some high-level Dead Apostle hunt the Church and Clock Tower were cooperating for. Nero Chaos, I think it was. Unfortunately, he killed most of those sent to deal with him, and slipped away before Arc arrived on the scene. Little brat had one hell of a mouth on her. Surprised to see someone so young acting for the Burial Agency. Then again, given who her daddy is…"

"Indeed. And I am sure you have all of your father's skill and ability," Kirei said with a beatific smile that fooled nobody. "In any case, I believe you have overstayed your welcome. You are not Masters in the Holy Grail War, but your affiliation with Rin and Shirou mean that your presence here skirts the edge of the rules."

"Fuck you too," Mordred retorted, as she and Harry turned to leave.

"Before you go," Kirei said, "one last thing I should bring to your attention. I doubt that what you did to Shinji will alleviate much of his sister's suffering. Then again, bonds between siblings are so fragile. Why don't you ask Sakura about her older sister, the one who barely acknowledges her existence?"

"We'd have known it if Sakura had an older sister," Mordred snarled.

"And yet, they didn't know you were Mordred until recently," Kirei said.

"Like she said, fuck you too," Harry snapped.

"By the way, I couldn't help but notice the rings you were wearing," Kirei said. "I would have been all too happy to officiate a ceremony, though aren't you too rather young to get wedded?"

Harry and Mordred looked at each other, before they said, simultaneously, "Zelretch did this."

"…Ah. My condolences…"

After the two Fujimuras left, Kirei sighed quietly. "Well? What did you think?"

From out of the shadows walked a man with blonde hair, red eyes with slitted pupils, and an arrogant bearing, dressed simply in a white shirt, black jacket and trousers. "She is but a poor imitation of Saber, a crude, unrefined, rabid cur, though I will admit, having witnessed her battle with the mad dog, she does well for one who isn't a Heroic Spirit. And she has the fire of Saber, I'll grant her that. Still…what should be done about the descendant of that pathetic worm?" The man indicated Shinji's body, which was being healed by Kirei.

"He may prove useful. This fool's ambitions exceed his ability, but I am sure that he might be persuaded to help, especially to help deal with those two. After all, pawns have their uses…"

CHAPTER 9 ANNOTATIONS:

So, in what is the first major divergence from the mainstream Unlimited Blade Works route (aside from the Shirou/Sakura pairing, anyway), Shinji has had Medusa stripped from him. Don't worry, though. I have a plan for her and Sakura.

1. Shinji's despairing words and Mordred's response comes from Hellsing Ultimate Abridged Episode 2, albeit with Shinji standing in for Jan Valentine, and Mordred standing in for Integra.