Consciousness came back to Agatha slowly and laboriously, and she groaned as she rolled over on her futon. "God damn it, Sakura…" she muttered, memories of what happened slowly coming back to her. Contrary to what it may seem, she didn't actually slip into fugue states whenever she… got out of hand, it just took her a little longer to piece things together. And right that moment she had a clear memory of Sakura giving tea she was sure she didn't ask for before everything went black. "I swear, that's not going to work one of these days."
"How are you feeling, Master?"
Agatha froze, then rolled back over the other way to see Saber kneeling next to her futon. "…Saber, how long have you been watching me sleep?"
"Long enough to insure that you got your proper rest." The woman said primly. "You-"
"Yes, yes, shouldn't over exert myself." Agatha waved her off with some irritation before she glared at the Servant. "Somehow I get the feeling that you were the type of person to ignore people giving you the exact same advice when you were alive."
Saber's expression didn't change, but Agatha saw a little bit of color creep into her cheeks. "That… is beside the point. In life I had far more experience and stamina than you currently do." She paused for a moment before she continued. "Are… episodes like this common? Your friend has given me the impression that this has happened before."
"About a few times a years, in various degrees of severity." Agatha said as she pulled herself to her feet. "To be honest, they had been getting less frequent over the past few years. Think I was getting into a rut. Good to know I've still got it!"
"…This really does not seem like the sort of thing you should be proud of, Master."
"You'll change your tune when you see the results." A loud rumble filled the room, and Agatha bent over slightly as she held a hand to her stomach. "Though I will admit that it builds quite an appetite. Shoo, I need to get changed."
Saber dutifully left the room (though Agatha was sure she was only going as far as the hallway), and Agatha got about getting changed. While she did, the girl mulled over what she had learned and put together from her latest 'episode' as Saber had put it. Ok, I've got a solid knowledge base of magic now, so I should at least have an idea of what I'm going to encounter. Made a number of upgrades to my gear, including new sensors for magic phenomenon. And for my home base… "Manor, system report."
"All systems operational, Mistress." the smooth baritone emanated from the walls. "I am currently running optimization calibrations for the defensive weaponry installed last night, but that shall be finished within the hour."
The girl hummed to herself in satisfaction as she pulled her shirt over her head. She then strode purposefully out of her room. Or tried to, as she found herself blinking blearily as she walked out into the hall. Oh, I had forgotten how much going to the Madness Place takes it out of me. The smell of cooked food reached her nose, and she promptly began following it to its source.
Agatha stumbled in the kitchen, where she found Sakura dutifully cooking. The purple haired girl only paused to occasionally shoo away the various dingbots that were scattered around the countertops. "Good morning, Sakura." Agatha said with a wave to the girl's back.
"It's evening, Sempai." The girl replied without turning around.
"What?!" Agatha whirled around and ran out the kitchen and into the hall, actually looking out the windows rather than just walking past them. Realizing that the sky was, in fact, fading into night rather than day, she stared for a moment before running back to the kitchen. "How long was I out?!"
"About… 11 hours." Sakura said as she glance as the clock before finally turning to look at the other girl with an appraising eye. "To be honest considering the state you were in last night, I am surprised that you are doing as well as you are."
"Oh come on, I know I haven't gone that deep in a while, but surely it wasn't-"
"Agatha, you made your house sapient."
"What? No, no, I just improved its general intelligence a bit, and gave it a better conversational interface." Agatha hesitated. "Right?"
"Ah, an excellent cover, Mistress." The house replied cheerfully. "If your enemies think I am a mere chat-bot, they shall underestimate me. I shall participate in this ruse, though I do hope you will let the world know of my splendor once hostilities have ended in your favor."
…I'm not sure how worried I should be about that. Finally, Agatha let out a sigh of resignation and walked out of the kitchen, taking a seat at the dinner table (Saber had already claimed a place for herself). "Well, that's two days in a row I missed school, but I guess I can say my 'flu' lasted longer than I thought. Then again it's a wonder Taiga-" She stopped and her brow furrowed. "Actually, where is Taiga? With me missing school I would have thought she'd have come barging in here demanding to take care of me." Taiga may have been a bit of a lay about, but there was no denying the woman had a lot of heart. And nothing would stop her if she thought Agatha needed help.
"I don't know…" Sakura replied as she entered the dining room carrying a plate of various food stuffs, concern in her voice. "I haven't seen her for a few days. And neither have Issei or Gai. They came around asking after her while you were out. Seems she hasn't been seen in school either."
A shiver of fear crept up Agatha's spine at that, and for an instant her paranoia filled her mind with all sorts of possibilities. If she stumbled on a Servant battle like I did- Agatha shook her head to get rid of the thought. "Something probably just came up and she forgot to tell us about it." She said, making a mental note to check in with Taiga's grandpa as soon as possible. Agatha held back a sigh as she said "Anything else I missed?"
She wasn't actually expecting anything, but Sakura replied "Yes. Before Rin left she mentioned that she wanted to talk to you about something going on at the school. She was vague, but said it was something that might cause problems on your current team project."
"Wonderful." The blonde girl replied flatly. The idea that the War had encroached on the school in some way did not put Agatha at ease. And the fact that Taiga had not been seen in a while didn't help. Speaking more to herself than the other girl, Agatha muttered "Well, at least I built the tools to handle it."
"And, if I may ask, what exactly we're you working on?" Sakura asked.
"Oh, a number of things…" Agatha waved off as she desperately tried to think of a way to explain that she had been experimenting with magic without saying so. "I showed you the mental interface already, but I've also discovered an entirely new way of manipulating quantum processes. It's… still very experimental, but I have gotten a lot of exciting results. It will be a few weeks yet before I publish anything."
Sakura gave her a strange look for a long moment, but she seemed to buy it. The purple haired girl shrugged. "If you say so. You certainly have made even more new devices and inventions than usual." She gestured, and Agatha looked at a corner of the room which was fill with a pile of random equipment, dingbots crawling all over it. "Some of your little robots have been poking at them a bit and brought them here. Not sure why…"
"Probably unsure of how to preform maintenance on certain pieces." Agatha remarked before she beckoned the dingbots towards her. They formed groups to carry the devices over to her one at a time, forming a neat little line as they did so.
Sakura craned her neck as Agatha lifted the first object on to the table, an arm-long mechanical gauntlet covered in plates, wires, and arcane patterns. "What exactly is that?"
"The Arc Gauntlet." Agatha said with some pride in her voice. This was the most advanced thing she had created last night, fusing a Death Ray and advanced computer components with everything she had learned about Formalcraft and Alchemy.
"What does it do?"
"Commands lightning." Agatha looked back her dingbots. "Just leave this one alone, I'll handle it exclusively." The little machines took it away and presented her with the next piece, and Sakura set about setting the table for dinner proper. The next half hour settled into a comfortable rhythm of eating and poking at equipment. All sorts of things were presented to Agatha by her creations, and she was able to give instructions all of them save for one: the mystery project she had been working on since before all this started. It looked like she had modified the circuit board molds to incorporate additional layers of Formalcraft lattices, but she still didn't know what the bloody thing did. She caught Saber giving it a few odd looks, but the Servant didn't say anything.
As dinner finished and Sakura cleared the plates, Agatha was fiddling with the last device, a small spider like contraption. "Oh, my old auto-doc! Never could get it to stop trying to add extra organs. Must have pulled it out of storage to work out the kinks. Let's see, looks like the sensors got an upgrade, probably redid the programing too. Still has the stitcher, sealer, cauterizer, and main supply container has-"She paused when she found a massive syringe and hypodermic needle in her hand, the chamber filled will an amber colored fluid. She stared at it for a moment before she put it back in the device.
"Wait, what was that?" Sakura asked, pointing at the massive syringe.
"Oh, err, that's an amber-like biological preserving agent, meant to keep delicate organic structures intact. It dissolves into organic compounds when an electric current is applied." She slapped the case shut and shoved the auto-doc at the remaining dingbots, the lot of them staggering a little before they wandered off. Agatha got up and stretched. "So, that's done with. Hmm… schools already over, and Rin's already planning for tomorrow… Well, I guess if you need me, I'll be in the work-"
The girl has started to turn as she said that, but froze when she found Saber and Sakura blocking her way, and aura of menace emanating from them both. To be honest Sakura was the more terrifying of the two, as she managed a smile that somehow promised terrible things if Agatha tried to finish her sentence.
"…or I could just call Rin and head straight back to bed."
"…and you are sure you got it out of your system?" Rin asked skeptically, leaning against the wall with the phone held up to her ear.
While she couldn't see it, Rin felt Agatha rolling her eyes. "For the last time yes. At this point I want more data from field tests before I go any farther anyway. So I'm done… for now. In any case, what's this I hear about the school?"
Rin let out a breath. "Some kind of bounded field has surrounded it. It is incredibly weak, so much so that I don't believe it is actually active yet. I only just noticed it the other day because it got slightly stronger."
"…Someone is preparing a big spell." Agatha said, coming to the same conclusion Rin did fairly quickly.
"Exactly. And whatever it is, we need to put a stop to it. Most likely we'll find some evidence of how the spell is powered and constructed somewhere on the school grounds, so tomorrow we should take some time to search."
"Right. I've been around the school grounds enough that I have a pretty good mental map of the layout. See you tomorrow."
Rin said her goodbyes and hung up. "Archer, keep an eye on the perimeter. I'm going to spend some time in my lab before I go to bed. I have a few things I need to prepare for tomorrow."
"Just be sure to practice more restraint than your supposed partner." The dry voice came back over the mental link, but she also felt a hint of acknowledgement and the Servant said no more.
With that done, Rin headed down to her basement. Slipping past the wards that lined the stairway that opened up into a spacious stone room, Rin stepped into the Tohsaka workshop. A homey space full of books and scrolls, with tables lining the walls. There were also cubies containing the various raw materials used in the Tohsaka magecraft (primarily gems), along with a few random Mystic Codes scattered about. It was a proper Magus's workshop, much more sensible than Emiya's chaotic mess of a shed in any case.
And yet, as she sat down at her deak she couldn't stop thinking about what she had seen at the blond girl's home that morning. Rin couldn't deny that the results were impressive on their own, but what worried her more was just how fast it had happened. She had figured that it was take the length of the War before Agatha would be able to get any practical results out of that book, but that… If Rin didn't know any better, she would have sworn she had met a second or third generation magus that morning.
Which was great when it came to have a competent and powerful ally… less great when it came to how that ally was going to turn into an enemy when it got down to just the two of them. And to make matters worse, it was unlikely that Agatha would be slowing down. Now that Agatha had gotten her first taste of the arcane, she was going to push it as far as she could. And if that morning was any indication, she could get pretty far on her own very quickly.
Rin grimaced as she leaned back in her chair, and she was forced to consider an unpleasant possibility: What if, when the time came… she couldn't beat Agatha? Even neglecting the match up of Archer and Saber, just herself verses the other girl. On the surface the idea was preposterous; Rin was an experienced magus from a long and noble lineage, and Agatha was some upstart tinkerer with a weird talent. The very idea that someone like that could beat her in a fight should be laughable.
And yet which one of you is able to build a weapon capable of damaging Servants? The traitorous thought popper up in Rin's mind, and she let out a growl of frustration. She tried to push the whole idea out of her mind, picking up a number of small gems from her materials bin and getting to work on some basic area scanning spells. However, as she worked she couldn't stop comparing herself to Agatha. She's done so much so fast… how far along will she be in a week? Two? A year? It's taken me years of hard work and study to become as good a magus as I am, and yet she can get that far in one night? How? How is she better than-
Rin snarled and threw the gems down on the table, not hard but enough to scatter them a bit. She took a few steadying breaths as she got her temper under control, keeping her eyes focused on the desktop. Some of the gems had come to rest nestled up against each other, their facets aligning so that they almost looked like they formed a single solid shape. Almost like pieces of… a… puzzle…
The tension bled out of the magus as she stared at the gems, an idea taking hold in her mind. It wasn't entirely unique; she was fully capable of using multiple spell gems at once and fusing their effects. But that was usually limited to damaging and explosives spells, as each gem contained a unique and immutable spells. But what if… you could build new spells from many smaller pieces? Pieces you could shuffle around to make different spells on a whim.
Such a thing wasn't easy, magecraft worked best when it was a single large spell. A large spell could be complicated, but multiple smaller spells had even more points of failure when it came to how they interconnected, how their very nature meshed. Which was made worse when you brought the World into account. Singular, powerful spells had become not just the normal goal, but something of a symbol of a strong magus.
And yet, that's what Agatha does, isn't it? Rin thought as the realization came to her. She's always going on about science and technology, and that's how those things work. It's all countlessly levers and pulls working together, but that's enough to get a man to the moon. Agatha can take all those many, strange little things she knows and creates and can mesh them into a larger whole that is capable of damaging a Servant. Because she is undoubtedly a genius.
Rin was still for a moment before she drew in a sharp breath, drawing herself up straight as she felt a fire ignite in her chest. "Well, so am I." She said as she gathered up her scattered gems and got to work.
Lucrezia was getting bored.
That was not something she had thought would happen when she had decided to join the Holy Grail War. The way the previous Wars had been described to her they sounded like vicious blood baths with magi constantly clawing at each other to come out on top. To be sure she hadn't been planning on being one of them; she intended to watch from afar and take advantage of any opportunities that presented themselves. Unfortunately, given how there had only been a single fight that she had known about, it seemed everyone else had the same idea.
The woman sighed as she looked up at the night sky from the shrine's porch, its place at the top of a small mountain granting a fantastic view of the heavens. She could leave and take the night off. Those Yakuza fellows did know how to loosen up (when she allowed them to, of course). But then, she just knew something would just happen to go wrong, or some massive event would occur and she would be unavailable. And then dear little Medea would never let Lucrezia hear the end of it.
Now there was a girl that could use some loosening up. The Servant had a dark sense of humor that Lucrezia could appreciate, but at the same time she just seemed to hate fun. What's the point of accruing all this power if you don't do anything entertaining with it? The most interesting thing the woman had done thus far was to acquire some 'extra help', and yet that too was being misused. Such as it was, the Master had last left her Servant staring deeply into a crystal ball.
And Medea got cranky if you interrupted Crystal Ball Time without a good reason.
And so on a whim, Lucrezia found herself gravitating to the front gate of the shrine. She passed a few monks on the way there, but they hardly payed her any mind, and she returned the favor. They were a rather dull sort of people, and the one she was looking for was much more interesting. Soon enough, she found herself at the top of the stairs leading down the small mountain, and leaned on the open gate door. "It must be awfully boring for you to be stuck here all day." She said to the open air.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of the wind blowing though the leaves. Then, a voice came from the other side of the door she was leaning on. "Though not ideal, I am accustomed to the peace. Something I imagine cannot be said of you."
Lucrezia peered around the door to look at the man who had appeared out of thin air, a Japanese man with long indigo hair and eyes, in a purple and lavender kimono. He had a Japanese style vest covering the ensemble, but the most eye catching thing was the truly massive nodachi he carried sheathed in one hand.
This was the 'extra help' Medea had summoned last night. This was their Assassin.
Lucrezia had to admit, the idea of Caster summoning her own Servant was so clever yet simple she was surprised that she hadn't thought of it herself. Now she effectively had two Servants fighting for her in this War, and she hadn't had to put any extra effort in at all. Although, she was not sure the Witch was making the best use of Assassin's talents. "Certainly not, I'm a woman who enjoys a much livelier pace to things." Lucrezia remarked as she walked around the door to face him. "But I am free to come and go as I please. You, unfortunate soul, cannot move more than a hundred meters away from this gate."
The Servant turned to look at her fully, his expression cool. "Forgive the presumption, but do not pretend you pity myself or my circumstances. If you truly did lament the situation, as the Master of my Master you could simply order her to undo the spell that binds me here."
The woman masked her irritation with a sad smile. "Ah, but Master-Servant relationships are more complicated than that, wouldn't you say? I could have ordered her otherwise, but Caster was so fearful of someone coming to assault her home that she simply had to have someone protecting it. Denying her that would make thing between us strained."
Assassin folded his hands into his sleeves. "Pragmatic, though you shall not get any sympathy from me. I suppose I should commend you if you speak true, however. I figured you the type of woman to throw a fit anytime things didn't go your way."
"Do you want my help or not?" Lucrezia snapped.
The man chuckled. "There it is." His eyes locked onto hers. "So, just what is it that you are interested in?"
The Master let out a huff. "Fine, I will get on with it and tell you the truth. I want you to be true to your class and not to be bound to this spot. Your potential is wasted as a mere guard dog. And I am sure that you are eager to test your blade against worthy foes yourself."
"I see. And what do you intend to do about it?"
"I have… some ideas." Before she could elaborate any further, she felt something tingle in the back of her mind, a small mental trigger that let her know that the Witch's attention had turned to them. That time I managed to get into her head paid off, it seems, she thought smugly to herself. The numerous protections against divinations that Lucrezia had prepared before the War would only last a few seconds against a Caster, but that was all she needed to get a few last words in. "Speak of this no more, but remember that I am working towards your freedom."
A few seconds later Caster appeared, fading out of the darkness a few feet away from them. The Witch looked at the pair for a moment before she said "What is this about?"
"Oh, I wanted to know if our protector had seen anyone suspicious coming or going from the shrine today. I am sure that you could have told me as well, but you seemed so focused that I didn't want to bother you. That said, have you discovered anything interesting?"
Caster was silent for a second, but soon enough she replied "Just another minor skirmish. It seems Lancer tracked down Rider near the children's school and fought her. They didn't fight for long before Rider disengaged, however. Interesting, considering how in previous encounters it has been Lancer that disengaged first."
Now that was interesting. "Rider is still weak," Lucrezia mused. "She did fight two other Servants two days ago, but it seems she still hasn't recovered. A weakness of her Master, perhaps? In any case, we should capitalize on this."
"Agreed, Master." Caster said as she turned to the other woman, her cloak swirling around her. "And I have just the thing in mind..."
Lancer was on his way to report back to his excuse for a Master when he was stopped by a Howl.
The Servant landed on a rooftop and froze, listening to the sound echo through the night. It was strange to him, the noise both familiar and foreign, so he cocked his head to the side and listened more closely. Lancer considered himself experienced when it came to the sounds of beasts and men, especially those related to violence, but try as he might he couldn't quite place the creature that was making this sound. It was a good distance off, but the Howl carried through the air, and the tone sent a jolt through his nerves. His instinct were telling him that this was not directed at him, but there was something dangerous about the one making it all the same.
Curious, and in no rush to get back, he perched on the edge of the roof with his spear slung over his shoulder and just listened. He could have just gone to find the source, but part of him (perhaps pride) wanted to figure it out by ear. The Howl trailed off and started again, and then again, and again. As it repeated, Lancer realized that it reminded him most of a wolf. Not the actual sound; while definitely having a beastly quality, it wasn't the same. No, it was more how it felt. What this howl was supposed to be.
This is a call to a pack.
The moment he had that thought, a second howl picked up in response to the first, even farther away from Lancer's position. The two quickly joined together in a sort of feral harmony, calling out for more. A few minutes passed before a third one joined in, this one a little closer. After that the tone changed, and Lancer could recognize it for what it was. The pack, though small, had found each other. Which meant coming next would be the roar.
So it surprised him when the next thing he heard drifting through the night air was words.
"VE HUNT!"
A grin etched itself on Lancer's face. "Oh, things are about to get fun, aren't they?"
A/N: THERE IS NO STOPPING SCIENCE! Though it can be slowed down significantly.
So, yeah, aside from the break, I ended up rewriting this chapter a few times. I had a lot of trouble getting event timing and pacing right, so sort if this one feels a little sparse. But, with the out of the way, we can just straight into action next chapter... whenever that comes out.
Till next time.