A/N: I am SO SORRY ABOUT THIS! This chapter was such a pain in the ass it stopped being funny two weeks ago! The muse just wouldn't cooperate! Still, I don't want to keep you guys waiting forever, so I wrestled with it until I felt reasonably content with it. That said, there are a few parts I'm thinking about extending, so I'll probably be playing with this chapter for a bit.
Special thanks to Logan~ Murder of Crows for his help. Seriously, your ideas are awesome: you'll know what I mean later in the chapter. Also, thanks L002 for those words of encouragement, and to all of those who reviewed and/or faved this tale.
As always, questions, comments, reviews and PMs are always welcome. Enjoy!
Interviews with the Spirits: Part II
The moment Bazett had told her to leave was the same instant Daisuke realized he couldn't. Maybe it was guilt, maybe it was the way the woman placed his afterlife over her own life (let's face it, such behavior isn't exactly normal), or perhaps this guilt was over simply leaving her behind with the monster at the park earlier without a second's thought. The point was, he couldn't run away from the only person alive (or dead, for that matter) that had selflessly put her life on the line for a complete and already dead stranger. Either way, he couldn't bring himself to take advantage of the Hollow's fascination with the redheaded young lady to flee to safety. Perhaps this selfless act of foolish bravery would be the very act that he needed to perform in order to escape the purgatory of drifting as an aimless ghost, and he could at last find peace and pass on to his final reward.
But, much to his astonishment, being run through by a monster's pickaxe-sized claws hurt like a bitch, even though he was technically already long dead. The ghost found himself painfully hacking up whatever the spectral equivalent to blood was, his soul mimicking the living sensations associated with the new injury. Agonizing, mind-numbing pain unlike any he had ever experienced burned through his being. Worse still was the sensation of crushing terror he was feeling in the face of this revelation, hopelessness seizing his heart in its crushing embrace. "W-What are you…" he choked back towards the stunned Bazett as blood dribbled down his chin, "waiting… f-for? Run al...ready!" As he spoke haggardly around his failing lungs, his breathing ragged and drawn, the man wrapped his good arm around the monster's limb, vainly hoping to keep it from pulling back and buy a few more precious seconds for his friend, for all the good they'd likely do. The fact that she was over twenty feet off the ground on a rooftop without the ability to fly didn't exactly register through the haze of agony settling over his senses.
The Hollow's glowing eyes narrowed in obvious amusement before it released what could only be described as a braying, mocking cackle. "Oh this is simply too rich! You finally find your spine right when it's about to be ripped out!" The masked ogre then simply lifted the ghost to its mask, drawing a strangled gurgle from the choking soul, his eyes betraying sinister intent as he stared darkly into Daisuke's defiant eyes. "You know what? I like you, kid. You got guts, and I can respect that," The creature's tone had taken on a veneer of amiability, only just hiding its malevolence. "Hell, it's been ages since anyone of you shrimps had any gumption. I think I'll keep you around for a bit." In lieu of a reply, the man still impaled on the monster's claws spit a wad of blood at his eyehole and missed, further amusing the Hollow even as it opened the tiger-like jaws of its mask. "Still got some fight in you after all this? Pity. But I think you'll start seeing things my way after I do… THIS."
Bazett, despite having seen some pretty disturbing practices and events over the course of her life that would break the spirits of normal men many times over, still found it gut-wrenching to hear the ghost scream in agony as the monster literally ripped out its chest in one horrendous crunch of its fangs, shredding flesh, bone and the metal of the chain before tossing the tormented wretch over his shoulder with a snap of its arm. Watanabe writhed for a few seconds, screaming while clutching his head with his one good arm. Even though she had regained her footing, Bazett remained rooted to the spot, paralyzed by horror from the spectacle playing before her eyes. She was only snapped back to reality by one final scream from Watanabe, his words oddly clear and coherent despite his earlier state.
"GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!"
And then he simply… shattered.
If sheer horror described Bazett's emotions before, there wasn't a word strong enough in any language she knew to describe what she felt watching the events playing before her now.
The form of the man had collapsed as if he was made of cheap glass and hit with a shotgun blast. The… remnants floated almost lazily in the air, their color shifting in the light before violently swirling back towards each other and stretching, assembling into a macabre, dull gray-green form vaguely combining a baboon with a porcupine, its back absolutely covered in long quills, though the body was built with more ape-like qualities, but notably less muscled than the gorilla-like monster to its side. Just like the original creature, the new body drew the eye to the gaping, volleyball-sized circular hole that ran clear through the lower torso. The headless form twitched, and Bazett had to fight back the bile rising in her throat as she watched Daisuke's human face push out from of the neck with a howling scream. The white fluid that erupted from his mouth and eyes turned her stomach further even as it coiled back, sinking in and pushing out in places until it resembled a baboon with its teeth bared in animalistic rage, the pitch-black eyeholes of the mask igniting with a sickly yellow glow. The jaws finally parted, a thin stream of steam hissing from the cold, black void behind the mask. "So… hungry…" Daisuke's voice slowly resonated from within the mask, sounding deeper, darker, and more primal.
The elder of the creatures let out another hearty laugh that lacked any genuine warmth. "Of course you are; you must be starving after all this exercise! But don't worry, my new friend: your first meal right over there! Can't you just smell how delicious her soul must be?" The monster obviously took some perverse pleasure at the prospect of the one who had tried to protect the woman turning around and eating her instead, apparently fully appreciating the terrible irony in it.
With a tilt of its muzzled head, the new monster gave two long sniffs, small ropes of drool leaking from behind the bone mask's teeth. "Delicious… yes... Her soul… ripe and strong… McRemitz… your soul… give it to me!" Daisuke's warped voice almost lilted in anticipation of the feast the first was hinting at.
Bazett didn't bother to wait for the conversation to reach its conclusion, opting instead to simply get the hell out of there, though part of her mind, the dispassionate warrior, coldly reminded her that the hesitation at Daisuke's transformation into another monster had likely already killed her, and she was now living on borrowed time. She was now dealing with two monsters hungry for her soul. While there was a chance that Daisuke's new form would hesitate to… to eat her, the fact that the first monster was already goading him to attack her wasn't exactly very promising.
Rather than dwell on it, she jumped over the alleyway onto the roof of another house, her instincts as a martial artist barely warning her in time of the monsters' pursuit and the barrage of grappling claws the stalking demon launched. Some of the strikes were aimed at odd angles or curved in mid-flight thanks to the ropes of muscle attached to them, forcing the Irish magus hunter to bend, jump, and twist at extremely sharp angles to evade them all. Worse, the monster had dropped all pretense of a hunt in favor of toying with her like a cat with a cornered mouse, flitting in and out of her spiritual perception and herding her maliciously towards the end of a street where the buildings ended over a wide crossroads. Between its claws gouging holes in the rooftops from its missed attempts to hamstring her and the second monster loping after her in a blood-frenzy, Bazett's stomach was sinking at the increasingly hopeless scenario. Added to the fact that no normal person was screaming in horror from her monstrous pursuers reminded her that she was the only one aware of her own plight.
Speaking of the normal people…
"Hey, look at that!"
"Wow! Is that parkour? In a suit?"
"Daaaamn!"
"She's nuts! Who in their right mind would want to do something like that?"
Despite the situation, Bazett couldn't help but mentally groan at the comments from the peanut gallery down below even as she flipped her body on her hands to avoid two claws and threw herself over the alley way between two of these houses, landing on her feet and ducking in a roll before speeding off amidst the "oohs" and "aahs" of the civilians. Her legs were burning, her heart hammering in her chest, half-tempted to leap off the roof at the end of the street as she approached the last house. Unfortunately, she wasn't quite ready to do so in broad daylight. Sure, she could reinforce her legs to absorb the impact, but pulling that kind of stunt and walking away would draw WAY too much attention. She planned to simply hop off the roof and duck out of sight, even if it would require her to almost stop, something she was increasingly loath to do with these monsters nipping at her heels.
Slowing, she prepared to drop down to ground level when she felt something blur into being before her.
That rat bastard of a monster had somehow slipped ahead of her and blocked her exit, its bulky frame too wide for her to circumvent, especially with those massive arms. "End of the line, pretty lady. That was fun and all, but the new guy's gotta eat," it explained with a smug grin, visible as a curving of the balefire orbs within its eye sockets. Sure enough, the spiny beast crossed over the gap between houses, landing heavily on the roof just as the woman turned towards him.
"Hungry… feed me… feed me a SOUL!" Daisuke's bestial form shrieked as he lunged towards Bazett, who grit her teeth and braced for impact, slipping into a fighting stance. Dead woman walking or not, she was still determined to go down in the same manner as her hero, even it was hopeless. Her pride as the carrier of the Fragarach demanded it.
Such plans were shot to hell by a cross of blue light impaled Daisuke's head from behind, the pointed tip protruding through the mask's open mouth. With a gurgle through a spray of blood, the creature's monstrous body shuddered and dissolved into glowing dust on the wind, briefly revealing Daisuke's face, impaled but oddly at peace before he too dissolved into nothingness.
Before she could even blink, she felt the air displace, her short hair blown to the side and her eye instinctively closing from the light shining to her left. Sparing a glance, she was greeted by the sight of a bolt of blue energy inches from her face. The energy was indeed in the shape of a cross, the longest beam stretching behind her. Turning further, she flinched slightly at seeing the arrow of light inside the first monster's eye socket, its body frozen in silent agony inches from ripping into her shoulder. Seconds later, it dissolved, though no human form appeared before doing so like Daisuke's did.
Despite being so close to the energy, the sudden stillness after her chase and the fact that both the masked monsters and the crosses of light had all dissolved into nothing had the redhead too confused to move, nor did she think to try and locate the shooter or even attempt to take more than a cursory probe into the energy of the crosses. It took several seconds before her brain registered the fact that she was no longer in immediate danger. When it did, she simply dropped to her knees, the adrenaline leaving her system and taking most of her energy with it. Suddenly exhausted, Bazett focused her mind on what she could understand from this morning's incidents while her body recovered:
1: She could now see spirits somehow.
2: Evil spirits hunted ghosts and those with the ability to see them.
3: These evil spirits could turn other ghosts into more of their kind.
4: She was saved by what looked like crosses of blue light fired at high velocity.
The specifics of these facts eluded her, but she lacked several crucial pieces of information, so it wasn't exactly something that she could do much about right now. She was too startled at the time of the sudden rescue to consider the source of the energy, though her new sense did give her enough of a glimpse for her to note that it seemed… familiar. Given the motif of the bolt, it looked like something an exorcist of the Holy Church might use. The only one she knew who might be able to do so was the man running the church on the opposite side of the bridge: Kirei Kotomine. However, the likelihood of the man being able and more importantly willing to save her was practically the same as him being a saint (i.e., laughable). Besides that, Kotomine's duties limited how far he could leave the church on top of his obvious detachment and lack of concern towards human life, especially so early in the War.
So did that mean that the Church had deployed another exorcist to take care of these monsters? Or was there another group at work in the shadows? Bazett regained her feet, having recovered enough to consider a slightly more pressing concern: where to now?
About three blocks away, Uryu quietly dispelled Ginrei Kojaku, the spider web-like bow dissolving into a swirl of blue spirit particles, leaving only his Quincy pentacle in his palm which lightly dropped to the end of the short chain around his wrist. The archer sighed, relief flooding him at how close he had cut it. If he hadn't fired at that very instant, those Hollows would have claimed McRemitz-san's soul. As he quietly dropped down behind a dumpster from his sniping position atop a small Bed and Breakfast's roof, Uryu cursed the first Hollow, following it almost immediately by a curse to himself. The fact that he had fought so many strong enemies in succession had hampered his sensory skills against small Hollows. Combined with the fact that most of said opponents didn't bother suppressing their spiritual pressure, and he had a slight lapse in picking up in the subtle signals of a Hollow in hiding. By the time he managed to reassess its position and track it down, the human ghost had been turned and both were after McRemitz-san.
Texting a message to Ichigo, the Quincy offered a silent prayer to the human spirit he had to destroy as a result of his lapse in awareness. 'Never again,' he mentally vowed.
Ichigo's brow twitched. "Okay, I understand why everyone wants to hang around here at the Verde for a while."
Rukia smiled with just a hint of smugness while she nodded.
"And I agree with Inoue that Rider needs clothes to keep up the illusion of being normal…" he continued.
Orihime nodded, both at his comment and at the skirt in her hand as she evaluated it.
"And I'm all for chivalry…"
Tatsuki rolled her eyes, obviously just as annoyed with the situation as Ichigo was, though for slightly different reasons.
"But why am I the designated pack mule for all the bags?" he finally ground out as he adjusted his grip on one of several purchases from various stores stacked in his arms.
"What else were you going to do? You already finished getting souvenirs for everyone back in Karakura," Rukia asked him while she considered the various scarves lined up on the display with a critical eye. "Besides, we need our hands free."
"There's that arcade a little ways down," Ichigo stated without any hesitation. Tatsuki perked at that suggestion. She never really got into the shopping madness that gripped a large number of the girls back home. Besides, there wasn't anything that really caught her eye in any of the clothing stores and she didn't feel like digging through racks and piles for something interesting. Like Ichigo, she did her souvenir shopping and was done, leaving her horribly bored. Arcades, on the other hand, always fired up her competitive streak.
Orihime pouted a little as she turned to her two spiky-haired friends. "But you know Rider-san would follow you, so we wouldn't be able to get her to try any of the outfits we find." She still felt uncomfortable at the whole Master/Servant dynamic that Ichigo was forced to endure with the taller woman. The auburn haired girl also felt distinctly uneasy whenever Rider was close to Ichigo, which was pretty much whenever they were in the same room. She was hoping to spend time with Ichigo alone, but she doubted Rider would let it happen while the War was going on. She could only hope that Rider never developed more than a friendly relationship with her Master.
Rukia, on the other hand, simply got a bit of a kick out of seeing Ichigo, one of the strongest warriors on three planes of existence, serving as a mostly obedient, if mouthy, pack mule. "Don't tell me you expect us to carry all of these bags without some help, especially with Chad still looking for souvenirs," she threw out, knowing that Ichigo would cave and stay.
Ichigo's scowl deepened a bit and a low growl emanated from his throat, but he didn't retort or make any move to leave, and Tatsuki settled back into a bored posture. "Tch. Fine, but after Ishida gets here, we are done. Fair?" he compromised, finding relief at the girls' nods of agreement.
No sooner had he said this that Rider came out of the dressing room, clad in a white long-sleeve button-up shirt and a knee-length black dress skirt that hugged her hips slightly, with dark stockings. "I understand my cover is as your teacher and chaperone, but must I dress the part?" she asked, lightly tugging at the hem of her skirt. "I don't have nearly the range of motion I prefer in this." Despite her apparent discomfort, no one in the group, and likely no one in the whole store, could see a problem with her ensemble. She wore it quite well, her curvaceous figure turning the conservative outfit into something many teenage boys might see in their fantasies, or that many girls wished they could match. Either way, the lavender-haired beauty didn't really notice or seem to care. While she actually liked the sophisticated look, she felt uncomfortable in the restrictive garments.
"You never know when you might to be a little more formal than what you normally wear or just need some variety," Orihime pointed out while handing the confused woman another small stack of skirts and shirts. "Here, try these next; they'll look great on you!" she said, almost hurriedly pushing the Servant back into the dressing room. She secretly chanced a glance at Ichigo, who was leaning his head against the wall, eyes closed and his scowl the same as always.
She was quietly glad he hadn't noticed how good Rider looked in just about everything they picked out…
As it turned out, once the Quincy archer finally arrived and ate his lunch, his own souvenir shopping, combined with his meticulous perusal of various materials and supplies for his sewing hobby kept the group at the Verde for an additional three hours.
Ichigo would have rather faced Ulquiorra without access to his Hollow mask or his Bankai than go through this torture ever again. Especially since he was still relegated to "pack mule" for all the bags save for a few that Chad took off his hands.
For Shirou, the last bell couldn't have come soon enough. Over the rest of the day, the Master's mind constantly replayed the conversation with Rin Tohsaka over and over, more specifically, the last bombshell she had dropped to explain his strange "spirit sight."
"Aside from the obvious, it might mean you are no longer human."
Hearing her say that felt like being hit by a truck. At the same time, he couldn't really fathom what exactly she was implying. How could a person simply stop being human? Sure, there were stories (more like case studies) of humans becoming vampires or one of their undead minions, but Shirou was rather doubtful that this was the case for him. Still, Tohsaka likely had at least some logical reasoning to suspect him losing his status as a human, though exactly what he might be instead and the implications of such a thing were rather vague at the moment. While he was content that he hadn't changed into some kind of monster or lose sight of his dreams so far, it still didn't sit well with him to suddenly be labeled non-human. So what did that make him, and what did it mean for the future?
'Damn it! Why can't I stop thinking in circles?' he mentally groused while he packed his bag and left the classroom. Tohsaka had told him that they would rendezvous back at his house, so Shirou wasn't terribly surprised that the girl was patiently waiting for him just off campus, the translucent form of her Servant standing behind her with his arms crossed and expression grim. For a second, Shirou noted with a hint of amusement that the red coat the Master preferred matched the red shroud the Servant wore, like they coordinated with each other about it. Nodding to the pair, being careful to lock eyes with each to signify that he could still see the red knight, Shirou and Rin started up the road that led to the Japanese-styled estates.
The walk was silent, though the atmosphere between the three… beings was tense. Tohsaka's eyes were slightly narrowed as she doubtlessly poured over her hypotheses and how to explain them. Shirou's mind refused to come off its loop about his predicament except when he felt Archer's coldly analytical stare boring a hole in his head. The hostility was palpable, though Shirou mostly wrote it off as a Servant diligently analyzing a potential threat to his Master. Saber would have probably done the same thing to Tohsaka if the positions were reversed. Of course, this did nothing to alleviate the intensity of the hawk-like vigil Archer had on him. Worse, Shirou couldn't exactly turn and ask Archer to stop trying to set him on fire with his eyes without pissing off his ally further, and he'd rather not disturb Tohsaka's train of thought.
He never could recall a time where the gates to the Emiya mansion looked more inviting.
Scratch that, they definitely were as inviting last night, when he had stumbled home and what he had hoped was away from Lancer. 'Wow. It's only been one day, hasn't it?' The redheaded magus mused.
Stepping into the living room, he politely offered his physical guest a drink, and quickly pulled out a few small snacks while the red knight stayed outside. "By the way, Tohsaka, what's Archer doing while we're in here?"
"Members of the Archer class have the best eyes of any Servant, so he's keeping watch for enemies while we talk."
"Makes sense."
"By the way, you might want to call Saber in on this, as it affects her as well."
Shirou nodded, having expected as much and retrieved his still sleeping Servant. Within a minute, the Servant and Master were patiently waiting for the more experienced magus to start explaining her theory. "Alright, let's review. First off, you're an amateur magus who somehow managed to pull the Saber-class Servant in an act of desperation without any real preparation or practice, right?"
"Y-yeah."
"And since then, you've slowly started seeing spirits, including but not limited to astralized Servants."
"We know that much."
"And lastly, but most importantly, you have gained some form of healing ability that rivals the regenerative power of a Servant."
Shirou nodded, Saber quietly listening to every word without taking her eyes off the pigtailed girl on the opposite side of the table. "I take it these skills have only recently manifested?" she finally asked once it became clear that Rin was done with this part.
"Ever since I got stabbed by Lancer in the school the night I summoned you, strange things like that have been happening. Any ideas?" Shirou replied to the blonde.
Rin opted not to reveal how he survived being stabbed in the heart that night, but quietly added the event to her calculations. "Alright, as near as I can figure, something happened that night, something that altered the very nature of your body and soul."
"Well, don't keep us in suspense; what happened?"
"No clue."
Shirou deflated, but he wasn't terribly surprised. Technically she answered what he asked: she had no clue what changed him, but she obviously had some idea to what the mystery event did to him. With a sigh and a sip of tea, he rephrased his question. "Okay, so what do you think happened to me?"
In true Tohsaka fashion, Rin didn't hand him the answer, but tried to get him to pull his own conclusions based on the facts. "As insane as it sounds, your abilities are quite common among certain types of entities. In fact, you've already met several with these powers. Think about it: what entities can do those things as easily as you suddenly can?"
Shirou wracked his brain for what she meant, not really drawing any firm conclusions, so he turned to Saber, only to be pulled up short by her almost unnervingly intense stare. For a second, he stared back, confusion crinkling his brow before his ochre eyes shot open at the connection. "Oh, no way! Uh-uh, not possible! I'm an amateur, and even I know what you're hinting at is impossible!"
Saber nodded in agreement. "I'll admit that there are parallels between his abilities and a Servant's, but what you appear to be suggesting is dubious at best, Tohsaka-san."
"Relax, you two. I'm not saying you're completely alike, but you're more like a demi-spirit. You can't deny that your new powers are very similar to those Servants and some powerful humans enjoy. While I admit that a normal person suddenly gaining spiritual powers for no reason simply doesn't happen, you might have started developing a kind of… resonance with spirits."
"Resonance? You mean I might have a different kind of link aside from the one between Master and Servant?" Shirou pressed, too focused to even nibble on the snacks he'd set on the table.
"As near as I can see. In all honesty, this is new territory for me, too. If it you only exhibited one of these new talents of yours, I could write it off as a simple case of you borrowing Saber's power, but what you've described suggests something more… pervasive, like the very nature of your existence has changed."
Shirou mentally recalled his day, and realized that the chaos of the morning had derailed his routine, so he hadn't exactly tested for any other strangeness in his body or magical power. "Well, if I really have some kind of connection, would it affect any of my physical or magical abilities?"
"Theoretically, it could do a lot of things," Rin answered vaguely as she sipped her own tea slightly. Green tea wasn't exactly her personal favorite, but it wasn't that bad.
Saber, having been silent with her own thoughts, finally spoke. "It's best not to make the theory any more complicated than it needs to be. Perhaps this is a result of his near-death experience, combined with drawing power from me to regenerate himself and nothing more. The ability to see or sense spirits is not exclusive to Servants or even simple spirits. Some humans are inherently more sensitive to spiritual phenomenon."
Rin quietly laced her fingers together, leaning on her hands for a moment, her crystal eyes distant, only occasionally flicking up to look at Shirou, as if she suspected him to be doing tricks when she wasn't looking. "Maybe…" she finally conceded, "Regardless, we'll need to look into any further abilities you might have developed and how they work."
"I agree. I'd rather not use up all of my life energy simply because I didn't realize I was using it to power a new skill until it was too late."
Rin smiled in approval. "We'll start small; a simplified set of exercises to test your strength and endurance, along with a few tests of your magical potential and what all you can do with spirits."
"Alright. What's first?"
"We'll do it the quick and dirty way," the more experienced of the two mages elaborated, "Saber, if it wouldn't be too much trouble, do you think you could spar with him? I don't want to be presumptuous, but if he's somehow stronger than a normal human, you have a better chance of measuring his strength with your own without getting hurt."
"Whether I do or not depends on Shirou," Saber replied flatly, her eyes narrowed in suspicion.
Shirou didn't even hesitate for a second. "Let's try it. I was hoping to get a chance to train with you anyway. I know that you're strong, but if I can learn how to fight from you, maybe I won't be as helpless as I was against Lancer and Berserker."
After that, the rest of the daylight hours were a haze of pain and sweat and probably a little blood. He'd later learn that Saber not only smacked the ever-loving snot out of him with the shinai he'd handed her, but that Tohsaka's methods to draw out some measure of his magical potential practically had him peeling open his own soul like he would an orange.
The results? Well, he was apparently in excellent shape for his age, the picture of physical health, but nothing special and his magical ability was, in a word, pathetic. So that translated into no superhuman strength or speed, no enhanced or spontaneously opened Magic Circuits, just this weird set of abilities centered around spirits. On the plus side, he'd found that by running prana through his normal Magic Circuits boosted his ability to hear and see Archer, whose continuous stream of snide remarks on the general uselessness of his new ability (Archer justified them with "sometimes the things you don't want to hear at all are the most important things to hear.") only incensed him to try harder and for longer.
Shirou knocked himself out for nearly an hour doing that. After he came to, Tohsaka had given him the rest of the night to relax. Of course, she had yelled at him for being so stubborn as to not know when to quit, which she considered almost as bad as being as reckless with his own life as he was against Berserker. Shirous only solace after that was that Sakura had an Archery Club meeting that day and Fuji-nee had a staff meeting to attend. As such, he didn't need to worry about anyone walking in on him and his new companions.
In thanks he made everyone dinner, which also revealed another side to his Servant.
It started shortly after he'd finished spreading the various dishes across his table, places set for his two dinner guests. Archer refused, not needing to eat as an astralized spirit, and opting to stand guard rather than socialize. While Shirou and Tohsaka discussed possible strategies to handle the other Masters and Servants, the boy noted Saber's rather peculiar behavior. In all honesty, Shirou didn't expect the obviously foreign woman from another era to know how to use chopsticks, but she did, and handled them with characteristic elegance. She'd stare at a dish for a few seconds, take a single bite of the dish then nod her head in approval before staring at another and repeating the process.
"Hm? Is there something wrong, Saber? You look awfully intense," he asked.
"Nothing, really. It's just that this food is all quite excellent. Do you always cook to this level?" she replied with a completely serious look on her face.
"Oh, well, I try. Consider it a thank you for all you've done for me so far."
Tohsaka finally seemed to acknowledge the food on her plate. "Let me try." The pigtailed magus took a careful bite of a tempura-battered shrimp. Chewing thoughtfully, the magus swallowed and started to smile. Not in approval, but almost a smug expression. "Well, it is good. I'd still win, though," she assessed.
"Huh?"
"Oh, nothing. Maybe one day you'll learn," Tohsaka's smirk wasn't exactly comforting to the red-haired magus, as nonsensical as her statement was.
During the meal, Saber alone ate enough for three people, though always with the same regal grace that she put into every little motion. For a bit, she tried to restrain her intake, but once he and Rin finished, Shirou encouraged her to eat her fill.
"Her fill" consisted of just about everything left on the table. Both magi had to wonder where the tiny woman put it all.
After the dishes were put away, Tohsaka thanked him and wished him a good night. She also explained that while he recovered from the day's ordeal, she'd patrol the areas around their respective homes for signs of other Masters and Servants. It was risky, but with her far greater skills as a magus, she would have a much easier time making an escape if she had to.
It didn't mean that Shirou had to like it.
Uryu hopped over the ten-foot gap between two small buildings effortlessly, clad proudly in his immaculate white Quincy battle garb, the same utilitarian style of suit he had worn in Hueco Mundo, freshly crafted and pristine. Pausing, he scanned the surrounding streets of Miyama slowly, knowing that Chad was purposefully letting off slightly more spiritual pressure than normal down in the streets. The two veteran warriors were playing at drawing out Hollows and Servants with the potential meal, while Uryu attempted to locate their Masters and pick off ambushing Hollows with his inhumanly sharp senses and speed. The hope was that they would be able to repeat Ichigo's success from the previous night and finally start fulfilling their mission objectives.
When the six warriors returned to the hotel, they had found an envelope on their table, and the place was utterly saturated in the residual spiritual pressure of a recently departed Soul Reaper. Naturally, Uryu had been irked by their hands-off method of ordering them about. If you were going to put the fate of so many souls, and perhaps the whole world, in the hands of their little group, it would be nice for the Soul Society to at least put forth the effort to have someone on hand to answer their questions or concerns!
Setting those thoughts aside, the Soul Society really had no complaints about their ad-libbed methods of combating the Servants and Masters. In fact, it was suggested that Ichigo continue to participate as a Master for the time being, at least until more intelligence about the "Holy Grail" was found. As it stood, if the source of the attacks on souls was found, they were all given the choice to capture or eliminate as they deemed necessary. With the information attained the previous night, it was generally agreed that Berserker would need to be eliminated due to his destructive insanity, while Lancer was more likely to be captured. If they found the one able to feed remotely, all parties agreed to elimination, save Orihime, who was uncomfortable with the conversation on principle, even if she understood the necessity.
On their end, Rukia's captain, Jushiro Ukitake, was personally working through the Great Spirit Archives for information on Rider's "Throne of Heroes" and if there were any records of strange phenomenon occurring within the Seireitei during the times associated with the last Holy Grail Wars. In addition, the Twelfth Division had asked for more information on Heroic Spirits at their convenience, though the careful wording by Rukia had managed to keep their mad scientist of a captain from becoming interested directly.
"Thank heaven for small mercies," Ichigo had said when that piece of information was passed. None of them were exactly comfortable with having to hand over a soul of any stripe to the crazed scientist.
The rest of the day consisted of comparing notes and assigning roles. Rukia needed to find Bazett and wipe her memory, and Ichigo and Rider, still essentially traveling as one unit would escort Tatsuki and Orihime through Shinto while she did so. Icihgo initially wanted to take the same role he had the previous night, but Uryu managed to talk him out of it, stating that his display of power would have sent weaker Servants scurrying, and it was actually pretty unlikely that Berserker and his diminutive Master would take the same route twice. On top of that, now that he had revealed his power, it was highly likely the other Masters would avoid him if he was such obvious bait again.
So here he was with Chad in Miyama at 11:30 at night, twitching occasionally as he picked up on every single soul within range of his senses. He'd be damned if he let another lapse in vigilance cost anyone their lives or worse, their souls.
Down on the street, Chad could practically feel Uryu's tension in the air. Ever since he arrived at the Verde, he'd been tightly wound. He didn't say why, but everyone could see it even if they lacked the skills to sense it. The giant didn't pry, though he made it a point to pay careful attention to the white archer's behavior for clues. So far, the only thing of note was a distant Hollow, which Uryu dispatched instantly. Chad only hoped that Uryu's tension didn't cause him to jump the gun and hurt someone unintentionally.
In a white blur, Uryu appeared at the mouth of an alley, his eyes hard and tense. "What is it?" Chad asked in a low drone.
"I sense a strong spiritual pressure with the same linked nature as Rider, drawing its power from a nearby source. I'm going to check it out. I'll try not to take too long. If possible, I'll only need to ask a few questions then fall back."
"Mm," the half-Mexican assented while slowly pulling in his spiritual pressure. "How long should I wait before I come find you?"
"With these Servants, I can't be sure. We'll err on the side of caution and say seven minutes, counting travel time. If you can't find me in five minutes after that, contact the others."
"Got it," the towering teen said just before Uryu vanished in his signature speed technique.
The Quincy blurred between rooftops until he reached the source of the energy, and he crouched to get a better look at his potential enemies without his clothes giving away his position. Both were clad in red coats, though the taller of the two, a tall and heavily tanned man of indeterminate age with a swept back shock of stark white hair, was obviously the Servant. His body was sturdily built but not bulky, and his angular features were creased slightly by lines of tension, giving him a fierce expression that could give Ichigo's best scowl a run for its money. Black armor trimmed with silver was plainly displayed under his coat, and his every move carried razor-sharp awareness and the bearing of a proud warrior. Unfortunately, he carried no weapons so it was impossible to guess his class at a glance.
In contrast, the pigtailed girl was alert and graceful, but by no means as much as her companion. Despite the serious look on her admittedly attractive face, she practically radiated confidence, most likely due to her trust in her Servant's abilities. Even with his presence suppressed, the Servant obviously could tell something was amiss, judging by the sudden yet subtle shift in his stride, while the girl simply swept her gaze around carefully.
Naturally, he was thoroughly impressed when the red knight stopped, whispered to his Master and scanned the area before, amazingly, spotting him on his perch. While Uryu was clad in white, his position on the roof only allowed the top of his head to be visible from the street where his night-black hair melted into the darkness. The Servant's eyes were indeed sharp; even though the Master tried to follow his gaze, she obviously wasn't able to see the Quincy from his perch.
"Rin, there's someone up there watching us. Do you want me to drag him down?"
Visibly unconcerned by the man's implied threat, Uryu stood to his full height, his white clothes immediately catching the young magus's eyes. He could almost hear her thoughts flickering about her head: "How could I have missed that?" For a moment more, the archer kept his cobalt eyes locked on the Servant's steel grey ones, surreptitiously analyzing the pair's spiritual pressure. Of course, with the Servant, such a thing would only be of limited use, as unstable as they tended to be in his limited experience.
However, the magus at his side was the one that captured his attention. While she herself lacked much in the way of spiritual pressure, most of it being funneled into her Servant regardless, there was a certain… familiar feel to it. It was startlingly similar to a Quincy, in actuality, the way the spirit particles moved around and through her. Also, he could sense extremely dense "nuggets" of spirit energy, highly concentrated sources that lined the magus's pockets like the Ginto in his own pockets. Perhaps the Quincy arts were adapted from the mages? An interesting hypothesis for a later time, he mused. With a slight motion, he hopped off the building, slowing his fall with the ambient spirit particles almost reflexively until he landed in a gentle crouch. "Good evening," Uryu greeted, his hands open and at his sides. Until he knew this particular pair's motives, there was no real reason to act aggressively.
For her part, Rin had no idea what to make of this white-clad figure. His outfit was about as unsuited for stealth as humanly possible with white shoes, white slacks, a white shirt with a blue trim and white gloves, but the design was well-thought out for mobility, his shoulders only slightly obscured by a white shoulder cape like some old nobility might have fancied. A black belt slung across his waist was the only spot on the outfit that wasn't pure white or trimmed by a rich blue. "Who are you?" she ventured, trying not to sound too uneasy or angry. The figure couldn't have been any older than her, and didn't trigger her Command Seals in any way. That said, there was something about the teen before her that set her mind on edge, an instinctive wariness of potential danger triggered by the boy.
The figure adjusted his glasses in a slow, deliberate fashion. "My name is of little consequence right now. I'm not here to fight," he replied.
"Then I assume you're here to talk?" she ventured, her arms crossed in disbelief.
"Precisely."
Rin didn't need Archer's quiet warning to switch to a defensive position at the clipped response, her Servant moving before her to await her command. She continued to hold her eyes to the white figure's own, somewhat comforted that her invisible Servant was between her and the black haired teen. "What could you want with me in the middle of the night? I've never even seen you before."
"…It's strange." His oddly curious tone set Rin on edge, even as he remained perfectly still, trying to remain visibly non-threatening. "It is obvious to me that you are a magus, and yet your spiritual pressure is almost no different from a normal human's. I only have a couple of questions for a human magus."
Archer and Rin both tensed at his words. The million dollar question: how did he know she was a magus? The girl had shared the paranoia of any practicing mage, careful never to use her powers in public if at all possible. Was this figure watching her altercations with Lancer or Saber? "Ask away, but I want to know a few things about you for them," she called back coolly, her eyes narrowed dangerously as she slid her arm into her coat pocket, fingering a small garnet loaded with fire magic.
"That will depend on your answer. The most important question I have is this: what do you seek the Holy Grail for?" the man cut straight to the heart of the matter, his tone shifting to a commanding one, attempting to force an answer from her.
Archer's eyes narrowed into dangerous slits, still waiting for the order from his Master. Despite the boy's slight, almost willowy build, Archer could feel the air warping in his presence, the mana within it twisting around him and oscillating around his left hand in preparation for her answer. An unsatisfactory answer would likely be met with an explosively fast intervention spell. "Rin, be careful. He's far more powerful than he's letting on."
"I can already guess that. Do you suppose he's a Master?" she whispered carefully, still watching the boy through her invisible guardian's back.
"Most likely. Though this… direct approach screams the work of a Servant, he definitely isn't one."
Uryu's brow twitched very slightly, agitated as he was by the hushed whispers between the two. "Is it really necessary to question your Servant on your own motives?"
That set Rin off. This figure obviously had some psychic ability, and likely knew too much for someone not participating in the Holy Grail War. It was time to turn this little Q&A session around. After that, she would need to wipe his memories. "Archer, restrain him." With a nod, Archer materialized, obscuring her view of the bespectacled teen. In an instant, he closed the gap between them, arms up to knock the boy unconscious. No normal human could possibly react to such speed.
The fact that the boy materialized with a swish of displaced air several meters to the side and out of Archer's reach only proved how abnormal the white warrior was. The boy's expression hardened and his hands lifted as if drawing a bow in Archer's direction. "Is that your answer? My apologies for this, then," he said before revealing his weapon. The air twisted around him, light bursting from his palm into a spider web of blue energy, partially transparent and flickering in and out of Rin's perception. She didn't need to have any experience with such a technique to tell that it had some serious bite behind it.
The explosion of debris from the "arrow's" release and impact into the concrete only confirmed it.
On the opposite side of the bridge, Bazett slept in her hotel room, or at least she appeared to. In reality, she was still fully dressed under the covers and only hovering at the very edges of blissful rest, her body and mind wired to jump into action at the slightest creak of the floorboards. She hadn't been this tense in years, but ever since the morning's chase, the magus hunter had practically jumped at shadows the whole day, half-expecting masked monsters to come at her from every direction, masks open wide to devour her.
Naturally, she had retreated to her hotel room, debating her next move and when to make it. The woman lacked critical information, and the danger level of the situation had spiked beyond the simple need to lay low from the church. If these creatures were drawn to the "scent" of her soul like she was beginning to suspect based on the masked monsters' words, it would be like trying to evade hunting dogs if another came after her. 'No, not "if," more like "when,"' she corrected herself. This would be one of the few times that Bazett would need to actively solicit help in this problem. Evil spirits were not her forte, and she needed some method of shielding herself from them.
After that, she would need to isolate and confront one of those kids at that fancy hotel. Ideally she'd be able to have a chat with Rukia, though part of her considered it too much of a risk. If she really was the leader of their little cadre, it was also likely she was the most powerful, or at least the most capable. She doubted she would have an easy time cornering her and likely an even harder time weaseling information out of her.
'Perhaps if I…' her thoughts started, but were interrupted by another sensation against her skin, like a static charge. She dare not open her eyes, but her other senses attempted to pick out the source of the sensation. Sure enough, she could hear the faint sound of small feet scuffing along the carpet without much real care for stealth heading towards her bedside. For the sake of appearances, she remained still and kept her breathing slow and even until the figure was in arm's reach.
While focusing her full attention on the figure, she found that her newfound spiritual sense, when focused on one spirit, gave her a rough estimate of that soul's form. While not exactly detailed, she did get a rough idea of what her mystery guest was up to, as well as set aside her fears, due to it being humanlike rather than a monstrous beast. When she felt the presence of a hand reaching towards her, she jumped into action, her arm snapping up and grabbing the small figure's wrist and throwing herself out of the bed, whirling behind the very small figure and lifting her off the ground, wrapping her free arm around its neck and effectively locking the intruder in place. "Who are you?" she demanded.
The figure didn't reply immediately, allowing Bazett to let her eyes adjust to the low light after she had had her eyes closed for some time. The intruder was short and thin, barely reaching her chest, and clad in a black robe of some kind. The little figure's hair fell away from narrow shoulders, and the white sheath of a sword poked against her side. Finally, the figure's fingers and wrist shifted. "Bakudo One: Sai," a soft, female voice intoned calmly.
Instantly, magical energy twisted her fingers into open claws, ripping her hands away from the intruder as her arms swung behind her in a bar across the small of her back with force sufficient to unbalance her for a second. Worse, her arms locked in that position, bound as securely as if someone had shackled her with heavy iron manacles and chains. The intruder landed gently, hands dropping to the sides and turned to face the Irish magus. Large Indigo eyes greeted her, set in a face as delicate as porcelain, but with the expression of a professional soldier. "Your spiritual awareness is more developed than I expected…" she said slowly, rubbing her wrist for a second.
Even though Bazett had her suspicions earlier, seeing her dressed like a warrior was unbelievably surreal. "K-Kuchiki-san?"
Nodding once, the girl's expression softened. "I'm sorry McRemitz-san, but we can't have anyone knowing about us, at least not yet. Maybe if your abilities continue to develop, I could tell you more another day," she explained as she reached into the sleeve of her robe and withdrew what looked like a lighter.
"Hold on! What are you talking about?" she shouted, trying desperately to get her frozen arms and hands to move, stalling for time as much as she could, even as she moved to the side, trying to put the bed between her and the small swordswoman.
"It's alright. I'm not here to harm you. Also, it would be best if you didn't try to break my Kido, for your own safety. I'll release it once I'm done."
'"Kido?" So she IS a magus!' Bazett thought frantically. Though she didn't recognize the discipline, the name alone, "the Spirit Way" was enough for her to work with. Immediately, she started flooding her Magic Circuits with her od, finally sensing the problem: the Circuits in her arms and shoulders were blocked by a foreign energy, likely the spell Rukia had tagged her with. With a violent surge, she expelled the energy all at once, allowing her to bring her arms around to her front, immediately shunting some of the energy into her gloves' runes and the rest into Reinforcing the muscles in her arms and legs. Rukia's look of surprise allowed Bazett the split second she needed to lunge towards the bed at inhuman speed and, with a single heave of her temporarily enhanced strength, flip the mattress on top of the smaller girl. The move again startled the girl, who likely never expected the magus to have so much raw strength, but she hopped back to safety. As soon as the mattress left her fingers, Bazett turned and bolted to the balcony, throwing open the sliding door just as Rukia spotted her.
In an instant, barely registering the concerned shout from the petite swordswoman, Bazett vaulted over the side, dropping two stories and landing in a crouch in the street. The impact sent her into a crouch, and she took advantage of to propel herself away from the building, almost flying through the streets at speeds normal humans couldn't hope to match. It only lasted seconds before the magic in her legs wore off, forcing her to slow down to more human speeds for a moment before she stopped behind a small grocery store to catch her breath and rest her burned out legs. While casting Reinforcement on her legs allowed her to exceed human limits without lasting harm, it wasn't a terribly easy technique to use on one's body, a fact that limited its usefulness. Still, she had put almost a mile between her and Rukia in only a little more than a minute.
'Okay, so she made the first move. I'm at the disadvantage, and I have to be careful to watch for Kuchiki. As it stands, it is highly likely that only Tatsuki and Orihime are uninvolved in this mess.' She tried to reason to herself as she caught her breath. Her break was short-lived. A sensation of a source of power rocketed towards her at unbelievable speed, swamped her with sensations akin to a blizzard, causing her to shiver briefly just before the petite woman in black literally appeared before her seemingly from thin air. For the Irishwoman, the most terrifying thing was that the power swirling around her from Rukia was far greater than the monster that had pursued her this morning, an almost palpable weight on her shoulders rather than a mild pressure.
"Bakudo Nine: Geki!" she declared sharply before Bazett could even lift her hands past her waist, a red glow constricting her entire body and locking it in place. The woman immediately worked to counter the spell by running od through herself again, only to note the red energy was entirely external, so she would need to press the prana outward, pulling mana from the outside to combat the spell's paralysis before the smaller girl did anything else.
This time, Rukia didn't say a thing as she held the lighter to her face and flicked the switch. The resulting burst of smoke and light released by the little device felt like it had blown the prana clear out of her Magic Circuits, barely shielding her from a brute-force attack of some kind on her mind. At the same time, the girl released her spell and let her drop. The sudden loss of energy in her Circuits left her completely exhausted, her body simply going limp. Vaguely, she thought she saw a toy chicken's head on a spring coming from the little device in Rukia's hand before her depleted muscles went completely still. She kept her eyes closed for the incoming ground, only for the small girl to catch her easily.
"Sorry about this, McRemitz-san," she told Bazett's seemingly unconscious form softly. Despite her small size, the girl proved inhumanly strong, easily shouldering the limp magus and gently, but quickly, jaunting back the way she came. By the time Bazett felt strength return to her limbs, Rukia had gingerly lowered her onto the floor of her hotel room, placing her back against the wall beside the TV. Staying still and waiting for the perfect opportunity to subdue her captor, Bazett heard the indigo-eyed girl dial a phone and wait for a second. "It's me. Where are you?" Rukia spoke softly, as though not wanting to wake her recumbent form, which was actually highly likely.
She paused as a voice too quiet to hear clearly responded from the other end.
"Yeah, I think it worked. She tried to resist, but she's out now."
…
"Her spiritual pressure's pretty strong. I'd estimate only a little bit less than yours was when we first met. She broke a low-level Kido without much difficulty. She'll likely only forget tailing us today for a week at best, but that's it."
…
"Right. I'll meet you there," the conversation ended and she put away her phone before heading back to the balcony, the door sliding mostly closed before Bazett's sixth sense determined that the girl was leaving. She sat there for a few minutes longer, not wanting to risk being up if the startlingly dangerous Kuchiki girl realized she forgot something and came back to check.
Slowly pulling her still off-balance body upright, she sighed at the state of her room. Flipping a mattress on top of a person is a superb way of messing up a hotel room completely. While she still lacked information on her motives, it seemed that Rukia only came to wipe her memories of her suspicions without harming her, and obviously didn't expect her to weather the mental blitzkrieg like she had. Judging by the speed of the act, if she hadn't already had prana coursing through her and resisting another spell, she would be out cold with several hours of her memories replaced or simply gone with no time to react at all.
Either way, the magus now had a hidden advantage: the teens (assuming they weren't somehow older than they appeared) had no idea she still had her memories, allowing her to get closer without anyone growing suspicious so long as she was careful, at least for a short time. Admittedly, she was obviously outclassed in terms of magical ability, but that just meant she'd have to fall back on her other strategies for dealing with stronger magi.
Opting to forgo sleeping on the floor after taxing herself so suddenly and being immediately enervated, Bazett tugged the mattress into a level position before her, shed her suit to just her white dress shirt and panties, and covered up under the disheveled blankets. Despite her exhaustion, she didn't fall asleep for quite a while, as occupied as she was over what to do tomorrow. At the very least, she knew she needed to address the evil spirit issue before another decided to attack. She'd need to avoid ghosts at least until then. Before she finally fell asleep, she briefly wondered if Servants had this problem, being spirits and all.
'Well, it's safe to say that plan backfired in spectacular fashion…' Uryu thought to himself as he evaded another white bolt of condensed spirit energy- 'no, it's prana,' he corrected himself while shooting another bolt of his own.
Uryu's first shot was intended to force the Servant to draw up short, keeping him at range where Uryu could maneuver out of sight and drive the warrior back, emphasizing his superior positioning against the enemy until he could arrange for a ceasefire and speak again. From the information Rider had told them, only two of the classes had viable long-range options without revealing their Noble Phantasms: the Caster and the Archer, and neither class was really suited for such open combat as to wander the streets so freely.
Just his luck that this Servant turned out to be the Archer and determined to prove him wrong, judging by the barrage of retaliatory arrows from that black longbow he'd pulled from thin air. "Damn!" the Quincy bit out as he vanished in a Hirenkyaku to evade a black ball of energy from the Master's outstretched finger and the small barrage fired by the Servant to hem him into it.
He stopped after landing to reassess his target, which had leapt onto the rooftops immediately after the Quincy vanished, both archers locking eyes briefly before drawing their respective bows.
'At least I have the advantage of firing speed,' the teen noted as his blue bolts tore through the air, half of them easily enough to shoot every white bolt out of the air, the rest raining down on the red and black knight half a block away. 'Unfortunately, it's a fleeting advantage when I have to limit collateral damage.'
Archer simply fell back off the roof, the arrows missing him by a matter of inches before striking the rooftop, where they dissolved into shards of blue energy and vanished. Righting himself was no trouble, and he landed with as much sound as a cat hopping down a stairwell. Closing his eyes, he envisioned his younger, but highly skilled and nimble opponent's reaction. The last exchange had been… informative.
Aiming his bow straight up, the red knight fired a small barrage of arrows, some shadowing others with varying degrees of precision. As predicted, the white bowman appeared over the gap between the two buildings the instant he released the second wave of his attack, whose eyes widened only slightly before he shot the first few arrows down with almost detached ease, nailing a few of the less well-hidden arrows, only for their "shadows" to continue towards the boy's joints and the muscles that controlled his bow. The white warrior's attempts to get a shot in were de-railed by his sudden need to shoot down the second barrage, leaving him no time to take advantage of the high ground before Archer was after him. Releasing his bow, the warrior instantly manifested Kanshou and Bakuya, the black blade aimed for the younger warrior's tendons along his arms, while the white blade remained back for a surprise. If his opponent couldn't use his bow, he couldn't fight.
Uryu deftly pulled the free-flowing spirit particles in the air to create a small platform in before him and kicked off of it, carefully evading the sweeping swords. No sooner had he realigned his bow that a white blur rocketed towards his shoulder, forcing him to twist acrobatically to evade the spinning object with only three arrows launched towards his enemy. The Servant obviously dodged them judging by the lack of noise or the sound of flesh being pierced. Correcting his angle to watch the Servant, Uryu again found his opponent closing in on him at speeds normally unattainable without a special speed technique. Using the broad structure of Ginrei Kojaku as a shield, Uryu swiftly parried the warrior's lightning-swift strikes with the black, curved sword. 'What speed and precision!' he marveled silently. Less than a second had passed in melee, and the man had lashed out half a dozen swift slashes while only aiming for debilitating injuries, not lethal ones. While by no means as strong or as fast as an arrancar, his abilities were obviously within the "superhuman" category.
Then again, the real problem lay in the dark-skinned warrior's cunning and obvious level of experience.
Long-honed combat instincts alerted him to encroaching danger, and Uryu instinctively dropped a hand to his belt, spinning one of the four Seele Schneiders on his belt into his grip and activating the arrow/sword before he was even consciously aware of the warrior's sneak attack. Shoving hard, the Quincy warrior managed to quickly glance behind himself in the brief instant before the Servant was on him again. Still, he was able to deflect the spinning weapon with the blue spirit-cutting sword before he returned his attention to blocking the Servant's assault with his bow. It was a testament to the larger man's skill that that tiny moment of distraction was enough for Archer to give his left arm a shallow but painful scratch. "Tch. Quite impressive swordsmanship for the Archer."
Archer remained silent even as the skinny speed demon attempted to skewer him with the lightsaber he had pulled out of his belt. The boy was obviously well-trained, but wasn't aiming to kill. That said, the kid obviously hadn't expected him to be as skilled as he was. Dodging the blows only incensed the boy to speed up, only slowing briefly to deflect the return of Bakuya as it sought its partner in Archer's hand. If he was holding back against a Servant, considering he obviously knew about them, he was either supremely arrogant or ignorant. Parrying a swing to his shoulder, Archer's eyes widened and he leapt back the moment the blades made contact. The boy smirked in response, obviously noticing the same thing he had.
The moment the blades connected, the black sword had buckled and chipped, small cracks spreading out from the triangular section carved from the blade's edge. Holding his hand out, he caught the returning white blade, noting the two missing chunks of its own edge briefly. "Pretty nice toy you have there, Whitey."
"Seele Schneider grinds down the bonds of energy that make up constructs like your swords and absorbs them," Uryu explained dismissively. "It would be wise to surrender; you are very skilled, likely my better in swordsmanship, but your abilities are similar enough to mine for me to counter, and I have far greater speed. I have no intention of harming your Master, if that is your concern." He wasn't terribly surprised by the Servant's silent dismissal of his offer, but he was a little impressed by his casual demeanor about it. Perhaps he was about to use a Noble Phantasm?
With a swift throw, the two broken blades screamed towards the Quincy end over end. Uryu's casual deflection of the black and white falchions sent them spiraling away erratically, only for them to turn back around towards him in midair. Eyes widened, Uryu barely reacted in time to keep from being skewered. With a blur of Hirenkyaku, he pulled back, the twin broken swords missing each other and arcing up once more before spinning back again. The moment he stopped, he found his vision impeded by another white arrow mere inches from his nose. With a grimace, Uryu threw himself backwards until he was almost parallel to the ground, the arrow barely scratching his glasses before he vanished again in a blur to the right of his position, taking up position on a taller roof of some store. "Now I see. Your swords are drawn to each other like the poles of a magnet. As an Archer, their primary purpose for you is to hem your opponent into position for a killing shot," he analyzed as Archer turned to face him, the spinning swords dissolving into nothing as he did so.
With a smug smirk, Archer kept his arm steady even as he offered his own analysis. "And you rely heavily on your speed because your body isn't really any tougher than an ordinary human's. In fact, your physical strength's only somewhat above average, and your method of Reinforcing your limbs only bolsters their toughness and ability to handle the strain you put on them for moving so fast, not your raw striking power. One good hit and you're done." At the last word, he fired another flurry of arrows. Uryu hopped back off the building just in time to evade the next few shots, only to see the white rain dropping on top of him.
"What?" He hissed in surprise as he spun Seele Schneider to cut away the falling arrows and increasing the weapon's power even higher. He could see the arrows being redirected over his head, almost like they were being steered. It wasn't impossible; hell, he knew a few trick shots that had similar results.
With no time to think about it at the moment, he leaped to the left, his spiritual awareness tracking the Servant as it came down to the street level. It was strange; raining destruction down from higher ground was often far better than playing nice, especially with all the buildings limiting lines of fire. He pressed his back against the wall of the building, his breathing tightly controlled as he prepared to fire the Seele Schneider. Archer was moving slowly and carefully, his unstable spiritual pressure blurring Uryu's perception notably. It was a rather impressive, if unintended, defense against his skills. The blurring effect made it harder to anticipate Archer's movements or aim without visual confirmation. All he knew was that the enemy was approaching, and that the warrior was eerily similar in ability to a Quincy.
Archer held his bow carefully in one hand, the other subtly twitching between being ready to fire another barrage and tracing a sword to meet another charge. His dark eyes narrowed as he neared where his opponent had ducked down. The alleyway he'd dropped into was sealed in the back by a high fence and, though it wouldn't trouble either combatant, would only put him further away from his Master. Both warriors were obviously attempting to steer the other in different directions: Archer was trying to push the white knight wannabe away from his Master long enough to escape back to her home, while his opponent kept trying to keep the fight close to her. So far, neither had been able to dictate the battlefield for more than a few seconds before the other pushed back.
He wasn't terribly surprised when the white archer shot out of the alley, strafing the Knight of Bows with a knee-level stream of arrows. 'Shit.' One of the oldest and most effective tricks for a shooter to use was suddenly turned against him, and he did the only thing he could really do: he jumped.
"It's over," the younger warrior calmly stated as he released the empowered Seele Schneider in a meteor of blue light towards him.
Archer scowled and Traced a single sword to meet the incoming attack head-on. Balisarda was about a meter long, straight and double-edged. The weapon was a one-handed knight's sword, known as an arming sword, popular during the eleventh century for its versatility and elegance. This one's faintly shining blade contained far more power than its simple design suggested at first glance. Balisarda once belonged to the Saracen knight Ruggiero, crafted originally by the sorceress Farelina and inspired by the design of the legendary sword Gram to serve as a tool to pierce mystical protections by simply ignoring any such powers on weapons and defenses beneath its Authority. Without so much as a taunt, Archer braced the blade with his forearm, the bow in his hands breaking into magic shards which faded to nothing with his dismissal.
The Seele Schneider had gathered enough energy from striking Archer's swords and arrows to punch a hole clear through a battleship's armor plating, so seeing the whole thing get turned aside by a simple-looking sword like it was nothing had Uryu staring in utter shock. The pause was enough for Archer to land and switch masterfully to the offense just as Uryu regained his sense and rearmed himself with another Seele Schneider.
This time when their blades crossed, Uryu was stunned to note that this new sword didn't even spark, ignoring the oscillating spirit particles as if the sword-arrow was just a bar of glowing metal. He could still feel the weapon thrumming with power in his hand, but the particles that made up the new sword just wouldn't give in the slightest! Now unable to simply carve through the hawk-eyed Servant's weapon, Uryu quickly realized that the title of "Heroic Spirit" wasn't an empty one, even when the Archer was forced to melee. Whoever this man might have been, he was good. While by no means a slouch with a blade, Uryu found himself parrying wildly to keep pace with the silver blade in the white-haired knight's hands. The warrior wasn't aiming to kill, at least it didn't seem like it, but Uryu wouldn't dare trust himself to the tender mercies of a magus participating in the Holy Grail War unless he knew their natures.
A sharp kick from a steel-toed boot snaked past his defenses and drilled into Uryu's stomach. In spite of the pain (he'd had worse, so it wasn't enough to really slow him down), Uryu was almost grateful for it as it sent him back well over a dozen yards, allowing him to roll and switch back to firing with his bow. Ginrei Kojaku rained blue energy on the Servant. His response was an impressive display of acrobatic prowess as he evaded several of the projectiles and blocked the rest with that seemingly unbreakable sword. If it wasn't the fact that he hadn't really done anything truly impressive with it, Uryu might have called it his Noble Phantasm.
Archer ducked behind an old green grocer's store and leaped up to the rooftops, once more calling his black bow into his hands. The nameless warrior narrowed his eyes. This fight had gone on long enough for Rin to go back home safely behind its numerous Boundary Fields, but he somehow doubted his opponent would just let him walk away. Tightening his grip on the sword still in his right hand, Archer only just heard the pinging sound coming from his left. His inhuman eyes picked up the source easily, but it didn't exactly make it easier to believe. Whitey was firing in the wrong direction, but the arrows were literally bouncing off the walls of the various buildings at perfectly calculated angles until they screamed right for him! They were pretty imprecise but still dangerous, especially considering their composition. Moreover, the white archer was still moving, correcting his aim on the fly to rain arrows from practically every accessible angle. "Okay, so he's not bad," he grudgingly admitted to no one in particular in mid-jump, blocking four arrows along Balisarda's length while skillfully evading six more.
This little game continued for nearly a full minute, Archer's expression growing grimmer as the other archer started getting more and more accurate, several of his seemingly infinite arrows nicking his arms and legs. Landing on an adjacent roof, Archer sighed to himself as he mounted the legendary blade on his black bow as he would an arrow. "Never thought I'd need to do this so early…" Leaping off the roof, he fired just as Uryu landed on another roof across the street to take another shot. "Checkmate." The gleaming sword screamed in a fiery comet towards the Quincy even as Archer dropped out of sight.
Uryu saw the spiraling missile, though he really wasn't concerned. He sensed Archer had dropped down back to the streets and leaned to the side to evade the arrow swathed in red-orange spirit energy. It wasn't until it was almost passed him that he noticed two problems with it:
For one, the spirit energy in the air was being forced away from it, concealing the destructive power within. Two, it wasn't an arrow at all, but the knightly sword Archer had been wielding a moment ago.
Behind him was a small air conditioner unit which took the hit before it was consumed in a white flash of light. The explosion did more than simply rend flesh and metal, it blasted away all of the spirit particles around it, disassembling any constructs as it went. Ginrei Kojaku, any arrows Uryu was drawing, the Ginto he'd brought with him on patrol, the energy stored in his Seele Schneider, all of it broke apart and blew away in the flare of destructive anti-magic. The actual explosion was pretty small, but without his Quincy techniques to bolster his physical abilities, the full force of the blast slammed into him hard enough to throw him from the roof, agony searing through his shoulders and back.
It was only pure luck that he landed in a pile of garbage that broke his fall without crushing his insides. At least, he hoped it was just luck. He'd rather not believe Archer had led him on the whole fight for the purpose of leaving him stuck in this ignominious position until he could be hauled off to his Master like some dirty stray.
Extending his senses, Uryu could feel Archer's cautious approach even as he started pulling spirit particles back into the air around him from further out. He couldn't tell if Archer noticed his action, but he did pause about five meters from his position. "That's enough outta you for one night, Whitey. Just come out nice and slow and we'll do this civilly," Archer called out flatly.
"I'm afraid I'll have to decline. It is not in my nature to surrender needlessly." Uryu managed to say without sounding like he was in even half as much pain as he actually felt. As much as it galled him to admit it, Archer had outfoxed him in this encounter. Admittedly he'd made the mistake of underestimating his opponent and started the fight treating Archer like he would a low-level arrancar. It seemed that Heroic Spirits relied more on incredible skill and cunning rather than on their inherent power and instinct like most Hollows did. An interesting challenge.
Archer suppressed a wince. The kid was both skilled and gutsy, and from what he had gathered, the boy was only just starting to take him seriously. Whitey wasn't lacking in accuracy, speed, or power, but he thankfully lacked his decades-worth of fighting experience and only had his swords and arrows. With just those, he somehow managed to keep up with him and covered him in painful little cuts. He needed this fight over before any more tricks fell out of his sleeves. "Alright, have it your way."
Uryu didn't even think at that point, simply throwing himself upright and using Hirenkyaku to reach the roof he'd just fallen from before running back along the street's roofs until he entered a space with a normal amount of spirit particles. From there, he ascended on a pad of spirit energy for a second to reorient himself. He blurred back towards the ground just in time to avoid another arrow from his agitated adversary down below. He'd been led way off course, but at least he had an idea where he was thanks to his earlier patrols. He paused only long enough to snag the Seele Schneider that Archer had deflected earlier and honed in on Chad's spiritual pressure, who likely had contacted the others. That talk-turned-fight took far longer than he thought it would.
At least now he knew that the direct approach to dealing with Masters and Servants about the Grail was a surefire way to start a fight. Talking wasn't exactly on their agenda, it seemed.
His whole body aching and his back feeling like it had been grilled over an open flame, Uryu finally caught up to Chad, who was still on his phone. "Chad-san."
The giant turned, his normally expressionless face gaining a slight look of relief as he spoke into his phone while nodding in his direction. "Hang on, Ishida's just arrived. He looks pretty banged up. I'll call you back later." Hanging up, Chad's eyes widened behind his wavy mop of hair at his friend's battered and… smelly condition. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah, I'll be alright. I'll last until I can get some healing," Uryu ground out through the pain, the adrenaline starting to fade and informing him just how viciously that last attack had turned the fight around. "On second thought, we should probably make our way back. I'm… in no condition to continue tonight."
"Mm. I'll tell the others," Chad grunted in his usual manner, though he made sure to keep an eye on his friend for if he needed support even as he pulled out his phone.
"Well, tonight was a bit of a bust, I'd say," Archer sighed while handing Rin a cup of tea to soothe her nerves. He had returned a few minutes ago, pleased to note that his Master had slipped away in the confusion the first chance she got after she lost sight of the two combatants. She was understandably annoyed with having to do so, but knew better than to stick around such a battle. Sipping his own cup, he sat down across from his Master on the couch, his expression oddly relaxed despite the white archer getting away.
"How strong was he?"
"Very. Almost on my level. Relied too much on half-finished magical constructs, though."
The pigtailed magus let the soothing brew warm her stomach for a moment, staring listlessly into the delicate cup in her slender fingers "I'm getting worried… first Berserker, then this mystery Rider swordsman, and now another archer? Something's not right, and it's starting to look like there's another group at work now."
Archer remained silent, his own thoughts a maelstrom of confusion and apprehension that belied his outer calm. "…So what do you want to do, Master?"
"I'm not entirely sure, but I do know it's no longer safe to be alone out there… there are too many enemies and too many unknowns now."
"Do you want to hole up here for a while?" he asked, not really expecting his fiery Master to accept, but part of him hoping, regardless.
"No. We have allies now, right? Let's centralize our position and regroup."
Archer looked like he had just taken a bite out of a lemon at that. "I hope you aren't thinking what I think you're thinking…" he mumbled under his breath. Smartly, he'd done it while concealing his mouth behind his teacup.
With a bit of a smile on her face, Rin simply said, "Tomorrow, we're going to set up a new base of operations at Shirou-kun's estate."