Day 3: Shinji — Spurned

Shinji Matou stood on the roof of a tall building in downtown Fuyuki, shivering in the chilly night air. He would much rather have been back in the comfort of his own home. However, meeting with an enemy Master was a dangerous proposition. While they had agreed to a temporary truce for this negotiation, promises were nothing more than air and spit. In the event that things turned hostile, he would need any advantage he could get. His house would be a poor setting for Rider to fight in; her greatest advantage was her superior speed and agility, which she couldn't make use of in a confined space. This setting, high in the open air, would allow her to use her Noble Phantasm Bellerophon to summon her winged mount if necessary, giving her a large advantage against the enemy Servant. It also gave him an excellent vantage point for observing his surroundings, in case the entire meeting was just a set-up for an ambush.

Right now, Shinji was watching a large plume of smoke drifting up from deep within the forest territory of the Einzberns. The fire was a result of a large magical explosion within the forest, one of such potency that Rider had been able to sense it all the way from the city. No doubt it was from another Servant and Master pair receiving a thorough ass-kicking by that unholy monster, Berserker. Just thinking the name made him grind his teeth in frustration. Last night, when the Einzbern puppet had led it into the city, he had attempted to ambush them. It had been his first battle as a Master, and he had gone in with high expectations. He had imagined how his Rider would unleash her full power, annihilate the opposition, and finally prove his worth as a Master and a magus to grandfather.

To say that it had gone poorly would be an understatement. Rider hadn't been able to lay so much as a single solitary scratch on the hulking brute; it had shrugged off even her Anti-Army Noble Phantasm as though it was doing nothing more strenuous than swatting a paper airplane from the sky. And to top it all off, that tiny Einzbern bitch had spent the entire battle incessantly prattling on about all the many ways her Servant was superior to his. In the end, Shinji had only just barely escaped with his life; Rider had had to haul him away like he was nothing more than a piece of luggage. And the useless wench hadn't even been able to do that properly; she had been severely wounded in the process, and was recovering sluggishly. She'd even had the gall to blame him for it, saying the slowness of her healing was because of the limited prana she was getting through the Crest Worms. That was the same as saying her weakness was the result of his deficiency as a magus! Naturally, he had appropriately punished her for her insolence.

Shinji's thoughts were snapped back to the present by the sound of a door swinging open, and he quickly focused his attention on the other Master now stepping out onto the rooftop. It was a woman, with short hair and wearing a neatly tailored business suit that couldn't fully disguise her well-muscled physique. Shinji found her unattractive and slightly intimidating. He normally wouldn't want anything to do with such a woman, and would simply send Rider to dispose of her, but she was the only one who'd responded to the tentative inquiries he'd made about forming an alliance to defeat Berserker. Shinji needed to avenge his humiliation at the hands of the mad Servant, and the only way to do so was by temporarily allying with another Master. Plus, with a bit of luck, her Servant might be killed in the process, leaving her an easy target.

The Servant was of the Lancer class, a blue-clad warrior carrying a long red spear. It skulked behind its Master like some barely-trained beast, glaring with scalding animosity. It was hard not to flinch from that ferocious gaze, but Shinji couldn't afford to show weakness in front of another Master. There was no reason to fear, he reassured himself; Rider would more than capable of protecting him against low-level scum like this. He might have underestimated the Einzbern doll, but this woman wasn't from one of the Three Great Families; she was just some third-rate magus from some no-name bloodline. There was no way she'd be able to match up to him, the heir of Makiri.

"Thank you for agreeing to meet me." Shinji said with as much charm as he could muster.

The woman looked somewhat surprised.

"You are the Master of Rider?" she asked.

"Of course I am." Shinji said, irritation slipping into his voice. "Who else would be here at this time of night?"

"Forgive me." the woman said. "The message you sent didn't include any details about your appearance, so I wasn't expecting someone so... young."

Shinji bristled at the implied insult.

"I am the heir of the illustrious Matou family, one of the Three Great Families of the Grail War!" Shinji said. "Don't underestimate me because of my age!"

"My apologies." the woman said. "I meant no offense; I was simply surprised."

"Well, you should try harder to be polite." Shinji said. "You've had an encounter with Berserker and realized that you can't beat it without help, right? That's why you've come here."

"I have indeed clashed with Berserker, and he seems a most troublesome foe." the woman allowed. "His Noble Phantasm may make him the most powerful Servant in this War."

"Your Servant wasn't able to harm it at all either, right?" Shinji said. "That little shit of a Master was dumb enough to tell me her Servant's identity as Heracles. It's ability, God Hand, cancels any attack below A rank."

"You did not manage to land a lethal blow, then?" the woman asked.

"What do you mean, asking a stupid question like that?" Shinji shouted. "If I had been able to kill it, I wouldn't very well be here offering to team up with you, now would I?"

"God Hand does not merely negate damage; it allows for rapid regeneration and even resurrection." the woman said calmly. "My Servant and I were able to kill Berserker no less than three times before being forced to flee."

"You expect me to believe that?" Shinji demanded.

"...I think perhaps I have made a mistake." the woman said. "Lancer hypothesized that, since God Hand is the conceptual embodiment of the Twelve Labors, Heracles might only be able to resurrect twelve times. Because of this, I believed that by teaming up with another Master, our Servants might between them be able to kill Berserker the requisite number of times to eliminate him. But if your Servant is not capable of killing Berserker, then such a plan cannot work. I apologize for wasting your time."

"Wait a minute!" Shinji demanded. "Are you saying you've changed your mind? You're just giving up?"

"Entering into a partnership only make sense if both of us contribute to the effort." the woman said. "If your Servant lacks the ability to fight Berserker, there is no value in our making an alliance."

She wasn't taking him seriously. She was looking at him with contemptuous eyes. Like he wasn't really a Master, wasn't really a magus, was nothing but a weak and worthless child.

"Stupid bitch!" Shinji yelled. "It doesn't matter whether or not we can take Berserker head-on; that monster's weakness is obviously its Master. If Berserker is distracted chasing after one of us, then the other would be free to kill that stupid Einzbern doll. But the plan needs two Servants to work, so it would be in our best interests to team up, right?"

"What do you think?" the woman asked her Servant.

"A plan like that is probably the best way to defeat Berserker." Lancer said. "But even if you like the idea, I'd advise teaming up with someone else to do it. The kid's a bully and a coward. It'd disgrace your honor to work with trash like him."

"You-!" Shinji spat at the Servant. "Shut up, slave! You're nothing but a dog who's only good for following its Master's orders! You should just be silent and do what you're told!"

Lancer's eyes narrowed.

"Like your Servant does?" it asked. "I notice that she hasn't spoken up in your defense. Hey — you didn't do something stupid like use a Command Spell to order her to be silent so she wouldn't talk back to you, did you?"

Shinji's face flushed with rage. Rider — his own Servant, given to him by grandfather — had insulted him. She'd said that she should have been serving Sakura. Sakura! That weak, worthless slut, who wasn't even a part of the Matou bloodline — even after the cowardly bitch had refused to participate in the Grail War, people still thought she was somehow better than him. Of course he'd punished his Servant for showing such insolence to her proper Master. Perhaps using one of his Command Spells had been a bit rash, but Shinji had a secret advantage in that regard. His grandfather was one of the magi who had originally developed the summoning ritual for the Grail in the first place — specifically, he had designed the Command Spells. While the other Masters had to rely on the three Command Spells granted to them by the Grail, grandfather could create as many as he wished from his Crest Worms. Each time Shinji returned to the pit of worms in his basement, the Book of the False Attendant could be reforged, and the Command Spells within it replenished — thus, he could order Rider around as much as he wanted.

Of course, Shinji couldn't very well reveal the secrets of Matou magecraft to his enemies. Thus, he was unable to offer any defense for his actions, and could only writhe in embarrassment under Lancer's cold glare.

"I respect my Servant's opinion." the woman magus said. "And I agree with his decision. Your offer of an alliance is declined. As this meeting was arranged under a flag of truce, I will not engage you in battle this night. However, if you still remain in the War at dawn tomorrow, you will become my enemy."

"What do you mean, if?" Shinji demanded. "You think I'd be eliminated so easily!?"

"I mean you should give up your Command Spells and seek shelter at the Church, boy." the woman said. "This War is no place for children."

With those words, the woman turned her back on him. This final gesture of disrespect was so enraging that Shinji nearly ordered Rider kill her on the spot. However, he bit his tongue at the last moment. The Lancer-class Servant was watching him intently, radiating an intense bloodlust. Since its master had declared she was meeting Shinji under a flag of truce, it had probably been instructed not to attack him; but if Shinji attacked its Master, the truce would be broken and it would be free to fight. And as much as Shinji wanted to teach the wretched creature its proper place, he knew it wouldn't be wise to enter another fight with Rider still weakened from her fight with Berserker.

The enemy Master departed, and her Servant eventually followed.

"Damn it!" Shinji muttered. "Damn it!"

She had written him off as worthless. Just like grandfather had, for so many years, choosing to raise Sakura as the family heir even though she wasn't even of the Matou bloodline. Just like Rider had, saying Sakura would be a better Master. Nobody took him seriously. Nobody respected his talent or his status. They all looked down on him as fools. All of them, all of them! They were the true fools! Too blind and stupid and petty to realize his worth! But he would prove himself. Just as soon as he won the Holy Grail, he would receive the praise and adoration he deserved — and he would have the power to take vengeance on everyone who'd ever mocked him. All he had to do was win. But so many wretches and imbeciles stood in his way: Berserker, and the Einzbern Master, and that insolent Lancer, and Lancer's whore of a Master, and even his own incompetent Servant...!

"Rider!" Shinji shouted. "This is your fault! It's because you're such a pathetic Servant that the magus didn't take me seriously. No — first of all, if you hadn't lost to Berserker earlier, I could've given that uptight bitch the beating she deserved instead of having to beg and grovel for her help! All my problems are because you're so pathetically weak as a Servant!"

Rider, of course, said nothing. Shinji himself had ordered her not to. Even so, her silence pissed him off. He tried to vent his rage by slapping her in the face.

"Gah!" Shinji yelled. "Damn!"

It was like slapping a marble statue. The blow hurt Shinji's hand, while Rider showed no reaction. Shinji took a moment to collect himself before speaking again.

"Fine." he said. "Here's what you're going to do. I'll head to the basement and replenish my stock of Command Spells. Then you're going to make a proper apology to me for being so weak and useless. There'll be need for you to speak; I'll just have you pay me back with your body. Again and again, for each and every time you've humiliated me, until I'm satisfied! And after that... well, I'll just have to think of a way to make you stronger."

Shinji looked down off the side of the building. Not many people were out this late at night, especially with the panic over that serial killer who'd been going after foreigners, but the city was too large to go completely still even at this late hour. There were always people with business too important to be put off for a minor thing like the risk of becoming collateral damage in the Holy Grail War. From this lofty height, they looked like nothing more than ants: mindlessly scurrying about in pursuit of their pointless, trivial goals, ignorant of the great and significant events taking place high above their heads. Utterly contemptible and worthless creatures. But they did possess something he could use. Od: the lesser source of mana, the life energy that every human contained within them... and a source of sustenance for spiritual beings like Servants. The Servant Caster was apparently using familiars to consume the od of people in the city; the resulting mass fainting incidents were being reported in the news as gas leaks. But while the Caster was gradually building strength, it wasn't being very efficient; it was taking only a small amount of od from each person, leaving them alive. Mass killings would cause too much public attention and lead to trouble with the Overseer of the war, some stodgy priest.

What a small-minded fool that Caster was. Consume enough people, gain enough strength, and one could win the Grail. What then would the Overseer's outrage amount to, in the face of such insurmountable power? Rules constrained the small-minded, while victory went to those bold enough to seize it.

"Come along now, Rider." Shinji said. "After your punishment, I'll permit you to speak once more. Then you can tell me more about your other Noble Phantasm — the one that can create a bounded field which steals souls. Bloodfort Andromeda, wasn't it?"

==Interlude: Zouken Matou==

A corpse lay on its back on the cold floor of the Matou estate's basement. It was little more than a shriveled mass of desiccated skin and decayed bone, so withered and rotten that it was barely recognizable as human. Around the corpse was a sea of writhing worms. They had left the corpse for a while, to feed on the succulent mana of the many victims kept alive but immobilized in the innumerable coffin-like stone slots carved into the sides of the worm pit; but now, the magic call of their creator and master called them back to their home. The old corpse seemed to twitched and spasm as they flooded into it, crawling under the skin, filling the collapsed cavities within the torso. Inflated by the vile creatures within it, the corpse no longer seemed so old or so decayed. In the poorly lit gloom of the basement, it could almost be mistaken for something alive: the rhythmic pulsations of the worms giving the illusion of the beating of a heart, the soft sound of them sliding against each other resembling the rasp of breath.

Zouken Matou, master of worms, opened his eyes.

With the aid of a wooden cane, he slowly dragged his husk of a body to its feet. This shell was nearly worn out; soon it would be time to abandon it in favor of a fresher corpse. The body of one of the victims in the pit would do; they all eventually succumbed to the incessant gnawing of the worms, despite the measures taken to maintain their lives for as long as possible. Changing his body was a process Zouken went through every couple of months, and so mundane a matter after all his centuries of life that he hardly gave it a conscious thought any longer. At the present moment, his mind was focused on an entirely different matter: the latest failure of his grandson, Shinji.

Though only one of his innumerable Crest Worms actually contained Zouken's ancient soul, all of them served as his eyes and ears. This of course included the Crest Worms that he had implanted within Rider to provide her with prana. He had tapped into the senses of those worms in order to listen in on Shinji's little meeting with the Mage Association woman, Bazett Fraga McRemitz. What he had concluded from the exchange was slightly disappointing but entirely expected: Shinji was utterly worthless, without the slightest hope of winning the Grail. To achieve his desperate longing, he would have to enter this War himself.

It was an eventuality that Zouken had always been prepared for. Indeed, his original intent had been to seize the False Rider that had appeared following Sakura's summoning of the True Rider, Medusa. That plan, however, had failed due to an unforeseen quirk of fate. One of the False Rider's Noble Phantasms apparently had the effect of obscuring its parameters — not dissimilar to the "For Someone's Glory" Noble Phantasm of the Berserker which had been summoned in the previous War, it occurred to him, though it could not be anything but a coincidence; this Servant had been summoned from some entirely different world, after all. In any event, he had been unable to properly assess the False Rider's Agility parameter, and its unexpected nimbleness had allowed it to escape from the worms he had set upon it at the moment of its appearance.

At the time, he had regarded its escape as an unfortunate setback. After several days of consideration, however, he no longer regarded it as any significant loss. Not all Servants were created equal; some far surpassed others in their inherent power. Since the False Servants had appeared without any Master providing them prana, competition among them to find an eligible magus to form a pact with was particularly fierce. The stronger ones, such as the three knight-class Servants Saber, Archer, and Lancer, had done so without difficulty. False Rider, though, had not found a Master, at least so far as he could tell. Given its performance in the War so far, it was not hard to see why: it had only been in one engagement, against the crude hydra-tooth skeleton familiars summoned by the True Caster, from which it had been forced to flee. A Servant had to be very weak indeed to be driven away by mere familiars.

He would not settle for just any worthless spirit. Let the weak get culled in battle against their superiors, as he was sure Shinji's Rider would inevitably be; or else fade away from lack of prana, such as the False Rider must certainly now be close to doing after three whole days without a Master. Zouken would observe from shadows, judging the strength and merit of each of the competitors; and then, once it was clear which of them was superior to all the others, he would seize it with his worms and use it to destroy the others. The True Berserker was unfortunately probably immune to infestation by his worms, due to the resistance that God Hand afforded it, but there were plenty of other tempting targets. False Lancer, for instance, had demonstrated impressive ability; and True Saber could not help but draw his eye, given the Saber class's reputation as containing the strongest of Heroic Spirits.

Zouken reached out with his mind. His worms were spread throughout the entirety of the city, infesting its shadows like a malignant cancer roiling just beneath the skin. Worms chewed through the soft, rotten wood of old houses; worms snuggled within the flesh of stray animals, worms crawled within sewers and storm drains; worms slithered beneath the bark of diseased trees; worms pulsed within True Rider's spiritual body; and worms lay dormant but eager within the warm, supple flesh of Sakura Matou. Zouken looked out across the city with a million sets of eyes, listened with a million sets of ears. Nothing that happened would escape his awareness.

For all that the magi spoke of its honor and majesty, the Holy Grail War was a war like any other. Let men fight and die for honor and for glory; in the end, they would amount to nothing but a feast for the worms.

==Interlude Out==