"Oh dear..." Jeanne sighs as we step into the forest, only to be greeted by the distant but audible moans of zombie soldiers and skeleton warriors lurking here, in addition to the occasional growling and snarls of wyverns.
"I'll lure them out," I murmur, and I pull out one of my Desert Eagles, aim straight up into the air, and pull the trigger without a second thought. The loud report echoes through the forest violently, instantly grabbing the attention of every single enemy lurking in this small forest. Jeanne winces at the loud report of my handgun, but to my surprise, she doesn't react poorly at all to it. Perhaps she's heard gunshots before? Well, I have been using my MK-17 all this time, so...
"Assuming combat activities, Mast - " Matthew is saying, but interrupt her by holding up a fist at her while I drop my pistol back into its magical storage rune and, again, pull out my MK-17 SSR.
"I'll handle this," I shake my head, addressing the entire party as a whole as I reach for the muzzle of the rifle and install a silencing rune around it to suppress the noise of my shots, twisting my hand round and round as if I actually were screwing on a physical suppressor onto my weapon.
"No, August, let us help - " Jeanne tries to assure me, but I remain firm as I aim down the magic optics of my rifle, resting the center dot right over an approaching skeleton's head.
"All of you'll only be wasting mana against these pieces 'a trash," I shake my head again and immediately open fire. Thanks to the silencer rune I've installed, my gunshots are now tiny little pops compared to the thunderclaps that they were before, comparatively. These skeleton's aren't particularly fast, and neither are the zombies - only the wyvern poses any serious threat, but I gun it down before it gets anywhere even close. One shot, one kill - and such efficiency is what allows me to take out all the hostiles in our area with a single magazine's worth of ammo with exactly two bullets to spare.
"E-Enemies eliminated..." Matthew reports as soon as I've put a bullet into the last zombie's cranium, and I throw out another Comsat Scan so that I can ascertain that our area is clear, or at least devoid of any magical signatures.
"Amazing...!" Jeanne praises me, sounding genuinely impressed, which almost takes me by surprise. "You must be a very strong Master, August."
"Not strong, just good at what I do," I correct her matter-of-factly. "But let's clear these bodies and sit down somewhere..."
We take a few moments to pick a small little clearing where we pull over a few logs to use as seats and drag away the bodies that I've felled, like unmoving skeletons and dead zombies. Once that's out of the way, we all take seats to rest, with Matthew setting down her cross-shield and simply sitting on that.
"So, once again, I'm August," I redo our introductions, since we can be as cordial as we like now, now that we don't need to deal with those French soldiers at the fort. "So, startin' from my right, Tamamo, our Caster, Artoria Pendragon, all Sabers, Jeanne, and Matthew."
"And I am Jeanne d'Arc, Ruler," Jeanne reintroduces herself with a smile that unfortunately doesn't last for long as she removes her weird trident-like facemask off her forehead and scalp. "I'm very pleased to make your acquaintance...I wholeheartedly admit that I am very glad to have met you all, for my arrival here would have been a little...awkward had I stayed alone at that fort..."
"Yeah, tell us about what's going on, your side of the story," I ask her first.
"Yes, of course. But, truth be told, there is...not much for me to say..." Jeanne frowns sadly, lowering her gaze. "I found myself summoned barely a few hours ago, and I made my way here because I was told that there was a fort where assistance was sorely needed. I know that I am a Ruler-Class Servant, but that I for some reason lack much of my power as a Servant, including my anti-Servant Command Spells and my ability to reveal True Names. Beyond this, there is nothing else I can tell you, really..."
"Then allow us to explain our end," Matthew picks up where Jeanne leaves off. "We are from an organization called Chaldea, whose objective is to protect humanity and maintain human history as the world knows it currently by detecting and resolving incidents that we refer to as 'Singularities', which are emerging in various spots around the world as Reality Marble-like entities threatening to replace the world's current reality with its own. My Master, August, is a Master who is working with Chaldea to arrive on-scene and resolve these Singularities in person while the Chaldea staff support us from our headquarters in Switzerland."
"Ah, and I'm one of those staff that she's referring to," Roman pops in again, much to Jeanne's surprise. "I'm Roman Archaman, by the way, I'm their tactical situation advisor and announcer guy, nice to meet you! Oh, man, it's surreal being able to talk to the one and only Jeanne d'Arc herself in the flesh, the Holy Saint and the - "
"Or, in other words, the guy who sits back and eats candy all day while we're out here puttin' these zombies back in the dirt," I remark dryly, cutting Roman off.
"Hey, this candy is good, though! What is this...Hi-Chew?" We can all hear Roman chewing audibly. "Mmm, yeah, these're good stuff! Where'd you get these, Matthew?"
"Roman, when I have a chance to get back to Chaldea, I'm going to request permission from Lady Animusphere to shove two sticks of those down your throat," Matthew smiles perfectly innocently.
"Whoa, whoa, it feels like I'm getting threatened for some reason, and I don't even know what I did..."
I clear my throat loudly.
"Currently we're investigating why there're reanimated skeletons, zombies, and wyverns runnin' around in France, because as far we I'm aware, those things most certainly weren't around back in 1431 France," I enunciate clearly. "What we know is that King Charles VII was murdered by this Jeanne d'Arc that we don't know about and now the country's goin' to shit. Right now, our biggest question that we need to settle is you."
I point briefly to Ruler.
"I...I can assure you that I know nothing of this other...this other Jeanne d'Arc," Jeanne stammers, acting quick to defend herself.
"Well, even before that..."
I begin glancing back and forth - from Ruler, over to the Artoria's, then back to Jeannie, then back to the Sabers again.
"...is it just me, or do all of you have the exact same face?" I question, pointing in both directions at Jeanne and the Artoria's at the same time.
The whole group just blinks at one another.
"Ohhh, no, wait, you're right, Master!" Tamamo exclaims softly, marveling at this weird coincidence. "They all do have the same face!"
"But...it's not as pronounced for Lady Jeanne since her hairstyle and her outfit are much different," Matthew points out.
"I guess so. I just thought that was really weird..."
Artoria is grimacing, holding her hand over her lips in a bit of a Thinking Man pose and with a troubled look on her face.
"...um, Artoria, what's wrong...?" Lily asks her older self.
"No, it...it is nothing. I just remembered something about this topic from a previous Holy Grail War, though I cannot identify which one exactly..." Artoria mumbles.
"Well, anyways, sorry for sidetracking us. Go on?" I gesture to Jeanne.
"Oh...hm, well, I believe bringing up what that soldier yelled at me is relevant. He called me the 'Dragon Witch', and if you all already know that another Jeanne d'Arc exists and was the one who murdered the Dauphin, then I can only assume that this 'Dragon Witch' is that other Jeanne," Jeanne reasons. "But beyond this, I can add nothing else. I do not know if I can even be of great physical assistance, with the state that I have apparently been summoned in, and it appears to me that it hasn't even been a few days since I was burned at the stake, but..."
Damn, it's that recent? And she remembers her own death that's got to be fresh on her mind like no other.
But Jeanne sits up straight, hardening her resolve, as indicated by the toughening of the look on her face.
"...I cannot sit idly by when I know that there is potentially another 'me' laying waste to this country and people that I love. The Lord did not show me this path as he did before during my life, but this is simply not something that I can ignore. Please, August, allow me to join you in your endeavors in resolving this...Singularity, as you call it."
"Sure. Welcome to the club," I grin curtly at her. "But I guess I should ask you now, even if this isn't the most polite question to ask, but where's your Master? Do you even have one?"
"Master? Oh, well, you see, I...wasn't summoned by one," Jeanne, turning a little red in the cheeks, explains as she looks away again just a little. "I don't know why or how I was able to be summoned without a Master, but...here I am."
"Then if you'd like, you can establish a contract with me so that my mana flow can make you stronger."
"Oh, that's - !" But Jeanne hesitates immediately, looking around at the party. "That's...well...you...already seem to have so many of your own Servants...if I form a contract with you, then...I get the feeling that I would be placing even more of a burden on you as well..."
"Oh, you're worried about that? It's never really bothered me so far," I just shrug. "I think just a handshake will do. That's what I did for Salter, anyway."
So Jeanne takes my outstretched right hand to return my handshake, and the Command Spells on the back of my hand simmer and glow with deep red light as they acknowledge another Servant added to my unwritten roster of Servants under my control.
"My goodness, I...I feel stronger already," Jeanne is unable to hide her smile of pleasant surprise as she, too, gains access to my mana pool as my Servant. "I feel like I can discern True Names on my own now, even if it is only to a certain extent...thank you so much, August! Or, um..." Jeanne blushes again, "...should I say, Master?"
"Gunununu..."
I turn around to glance at Tamamo to my right, and Tamamo is clearly pouting really, really hard at Jeanne.
"Now's not the time for that, Tamamo," I remind Caster.
"Gunununu..."
I sigh, rolling my eyes.
"I'm sorry for what I'm about to bring up, but I just wanna ask you," I speak to Jeanne, "you're okay with fighting even though you know that you only just died a few days ago? I don't know what being a Servant is like, obviously, but I'd imagine that that must feel really weird."
"Erm...yes, I...I will admit that this is a most peculiar sensation..." Jeanne mumbles, yet again averting her eyes. "...but at the same time, I know that my original self is already dead and there is nothing I can do about it. After all, Servants needed to have died in their original lives to become Servants to begin with. So don't worry about me, Master. I will get accustomed to this, um, this new role of being a Servant...identity, even. I will have to, if I wish to assist you all in resolving this Singularity and restoring order back to my beloved country."
"Cool." I nod firmly before looking around at the party. "So now we should decide on what we need to do."
"The soldier I talked to back at the coast said that the other Jeanne who assassinated Charles VII said that he was murdered out of Orleans, so it's likely that she is still there. We don't know how strong the enemy forces are, so perhaps it's not the best idea for us to assault Orleans directly," Matthew states.
"But we've got the power to match a few armies and then some!" Tamamo insists, looking around like I did just a moment ago. "And it's not like Master's gonna run out of mana anytime soon."
"Whoa, whoa, I wouldn't go that far..." I warn Tamamo, raising a hand up at her to stop her in her tracks. "Maybe I'm fine with everyone fighting as they have been up 'til now, but I'm not sure what's gonna happen when everyone here blows their Noble Phantasms all at the same time..."
"Master, this has crossed my mind earlier, but do you believe that this other Jeanne d'Arc is in possession of the Holy Grail that is responsible for this Singularity?" Artoria asks, getting us back on topic.
"Yeah, probably. If people're callin' her the Dragon Witch, obviously we'll have to assume for now that she's the one throwing these wyverns at everyone and rippin' up the country, and to do that, she'll probably need the Holy Grail's help. I guess in that sense, we have a good idea of where the Holy Grail's at right now, and it's probably not gonna leave anytime soon..."
"Th-The Holy Grail, you say?" Jeanne seems extremely concerned. "If the Grail itself is at stake, then..."
"Yeah, means we gotta act fast either way. Which is why we need to figure out what we're doin' and execute it."
"Then I suggest that we make our way to nearby towns and see if we can ask around for information that may help us become more aware of the situation that is developing," Jeanne determines. "Is that acceptable, Master?"
"Yeah." I look up at the sky, since it's not like ENIAC can tell me what time it is right now, at least not accurately. Given the position of the sun, it's about late afternoon. "We still have time to get some stuff done. Let's head out now and go to the nearest town, see if anyone there can tell us something."
I get up, and so do the rest of the Servants, though Tamamo tugs on my jacket sleeve.
"Master, are you sure you won't get, like, really tired from moving around all day?" Tamamo asks with great concern now.
"This? Tiring?" I snicker a bit. "It's better than the monotony that's running a business, at least. Real life is nice, but sometimes I need a break from it."
"Business...?" Jeanne asks curiously, unable to help herself, and when I turn to her, she goes red again and looks away. "Er, I'm...I'm sorry, I must be prying into personal business..."
"Oh, I have this business back at home that I make a living through," I explain quickly, not sure if she'll understand if I try to tell her what the exact nature of my business is. Does she know the term "freight forwarding", I wonder?
"I see...well, in any case, please follow me. I believe I know the general direction to which we should head..."
So we let Jeanne take the lead as she guides us out of the forest to the west-southwest.
It becomes sundown while we're searching around for a town to visit, but I guess in 1431 France there aren't nearly as many villages as there are in the present day. There's my daily dose of Captain Obvious for the day.
In any case, we've resorted to flying around on Tamamo's magic mirrors again, which Jeanne didn't react well to at first and still has trouble adjusting to as we all converge together after scouting around individually to cover as much ground as possible. A possible fear of heights, maybe?
"This is La Charite," Jeanne explains, calling into her own communication rune that I've made for her too, now that she's part of our little group. "Or, more accurately, the outskirts of it. Hopefully this time there are actually people here to whom we can speak..."
While we're still gliding across the air to land inside La Charite, I glance at Jeanne, who doesn't seem to be doing very well at all. All the towns and villages we've visited thus far have either been abandoned, razed, or both, with varying degrees of chaos for each.
"Whoa, hold it, I've just gotten a reading on a Servant down there in the town!" Roman utters, alarmed. "Wait, it just disappeared, what the...? Anyways, proceed with caution!"
"Enemies on the ground! Prepare for combat, everyone!" Matthew advises, spotting more skeletons and zombies lounging about down at ground zero, and I scan the town while we're descending. The town itself is in ruins, no surprise, and it's probably the biggest town we've run into yet. I spy a old church tower whose top's been lopped off by something, probably wyverns, so I point over to it.
"Tamamo, take me to that tower. I'll set up overwatch there," I instruct Caster, who flies the two of us over to the tower while dropping everyone else down to the road directly beneath it. The Sabers all hop off even before the mirrors touch the ground, while Jeanne takes her time and gingerly steps off like she's done for the past couple of landings we've done.
"Touchdown ~ " Tamamo sings as she and I slip into the tower, where thankfully the scaffolding is still intact, giving us at least a little bit of room to maneuver and reposition. Pulling out my MK-17 SSR again, I click off the safety once more and aim down sights as my Servants down on the ground get to work, immediately clearing this initial street of alerted combatants who begin shuffling towards our position to attack. A few minutes into our attack, Tamamo calls out to me urgently, "Master, Master! More of those annoying flying rat thingies coming from the southwest!"
She probably means the wyverns.
So I move over to her, reloading my marksman rifle in transition, and raise it again, acquiring the flock of wyverns flying towards us from Tamamo's indicated direction. I've removed the silencer rune so that my bullets have more range and travel velocity, so my rifle cracks out with every trigger pull of mine, spitting concentrated mana bullets through the air and slapping several of the wyverns out of the sky before they can even reach the town's airspace.
"I'll take care of the rest!" Caster smiles aggressively as she flicks more talismans out like she's flicking steel cards, and the thrown tags burst into shots of flame big enough to engulf a small car each, and they roar towards the remaining wyverns, some of whom react in time and manage to dodge while those who don't react to save their lives get smacked and writhe in the air, slowly descending and eventually plummeting to the ground as they burn to death. The other wyverns who are thrown off course by the fireballs Tamamo has thrown out get picked off by my rifle, as I shoot them in the wings so that they can't fly properly before putting one in their heads to put them down for good. "Good shooting, Master!"
"Thanks." I pull out the magazine to recharge it with another fresh stack of mana bullets, but then Tamamo snaps to the south this time.
"That's...!" she hisses urgently, peering towards the south in our little perch. "Master, those are Servants!"
I immediately throw out another Comsat Scan, and sure enough, while I can't tell that they're Servants like Jeanne probably could, they're definitely big signatures, a lot stronger than when I detected Jeanne the first time around.
"Master, there are Servants headed towards our position!" Jeanne hollers, her voice ringing in my ears - her yelling isn't necessarily because I can still hear her yelling from down on the street, as we're not at all far away from each other. "I detect five Servants in total!"
"So how much we wanna bet that they're not friendly?" I mutter sarcastically as I beckon to Tamamo and pull her close, causing her cheeks to pop red too a little.
"M-Master - ?! Er - " she begins, not knowing what to make of me suddenly pulling her close, but I quiet her down urgently.
"Don't have time to put Presence Concealment you; this'll have to do," I murmur to her under my breath. "If those Servants aren't friendly and they see that we're up here, we're in a bad spot." I glance down the church tower, where the broken ladder leads straight down to the church floor. "Let's jump on three."
Tamamo nods, and after counting down, we both hop off at the same time and land hard on the floor. Still keeping Tamamo close, I post up against a broken window that's partially broken, peering through a crack in the glass so that we won't be seen as easily.
The Artoria's, Matthew, and Jeanne, lined up across the street with bloody corpses of zombies and skeletons scattered around them, stand their ground as they watch five Servants off into the distance to the south approach them, walking up the street to confront them, ala Wild West showdown. I blame the early evening sundown for that ambience.
From the left: a Servant with a sword, dressed in nobleman's clothing and with long blonde hair, though it's hard to tell if he/she is a man or a woman...one of those androgynous types, I suppose. Then, a female Servant with holy-looking yet somewhat revealing robes and carrying a cross-shaped staff. In the middle, the other Jeanne d'Arc, given the fact that she looks exactly like our Jeanne, only with some color palette swaps here and there, like differently colored hair and skin tone. The other two on our right are a tall male Servant cradling a wicked-looking lance of some kind with even paler skin than Jeanne and another tall female Servant in what can only be described as dominatrix gear and clothing, also holding a staff but one that contains a crystal on the end of it.
The two sides glare at each other for a few moments in silence, before the other Jeanne speaks out first, in French. Neither Tamamo nor I speak French, and Matthew isn't here with us to translate, so we're just stuck here watching them as Jeanne and the other Jeanne go back and forth in French.
"Master, they're arguing with each other about their identities and why the other Jeanne decided to attack this town and the other towns and villages we found," Matthew whispers to us via comms rune. "These Servants...they're all very powerful. What should we do?"
"If that other Jeanne's come out of her way to track us down, we gotta return the favor," I murmur, slipping my MK-17 away and instead pulling out the AX-50 sniper rifle. "Everyone, on my mark. You'll know when it happens."
"You should let Ruler talk with that other Jeanne for a little while first, just so that she might be able to figure out more about what's going on," Tamamo advises quietly.
"Yeah, but at the same time, I don't see any way for the girls to get outta there without a fight. And I'd much rather be able to get a free shot off if I've got the chance."
"They're all very strong, I can tell," Tamamo adds. "It's best if you don't get involved yourself, Master. Too risky to fight hand-to-hand with these guys. Let me deal with them for you, I'll beat them all over the heads with my mirrors..."
"Maybe, we'll see."
"It's not maybe, it's - "
But Tamamo gets cut off when the other Jeanne raises her voice and starts laughing at our Jeanne, and the other Jeanne waves her hand at the two Servants to her left, the one with the lance and the crystal staff before turning her back to my Servants and starting to walk away.
Now's my chance.
Swiftly raising my anti-materiel sniper rifle, I stand up so that i can aim through the window. I don't have a good shot - the cracks in the window distort my line of sight too much for me to acquire target on the other Jeanne, but I at least need to try to take her down. I've already weighed the pros and cons of giving away my position and committing first to the attack: if I hit her and she doesn't expect it, I could perhaps weaken her significantly and have a chance to capture her right this instant, and even if I miss and give away my position, my own Servants out there can buy me time and cover me so that Tamamo and I can reposition and provide support again.
"Tamamo," I murmur, creating runes that cover my ears.
"Yes?"
"Cover your ears."
So I pull the trigger of my AX-50, right as Tamamo practically dives onto the floor like there's about to be an earthquake with her hands pressing her fox ears down against her head, hard.
The sniper rifle report is so strong that the entire window in front of me gets blasted into pieces forward and away from me, and the decibel level shakes the whole church and then some, even shattering a few of the very weakened broken windows around us. The magic bullet I fire barely misses the other Jeanne, whizzing in front of her by a margin of about a few inches or so.
"C'mon!" I yell down at Tamamo, who bolts up to her feet after having protected her ears, and practically throwing my sniper rifle back into its magic storage rune, I grab hold of Tamamo's hand and flash-step out of the church's entrance just as the entire structure, what remains of it, anyway, bursts into one massive fireball.
"Master!" Matthew starts to scream, but the enemy Servant with the crystal staff swings it one-handed as though it were a sword, striking the ground with a wave of bloody red energy that skids across the ground towards me and clips Matthew in the process, blasting her off her feet and out of its way.
But Tamamo, despite barely getting to her feet after I've pulled her with me out of the now-burning church, responds in kind, snapping her arms out to either side and channeling a massive funnel of sinister purple energy that counters the incoming wave, blasting it away in turn and dissipating it.
"Everyone, occupy those four enemy Servants! Tamamo, you're with me, I'm gonna try to capture that other Jeanne!" I lay down orders, even though the battle's already unfolding before my eyes.
"You just won't learn, will you?!" Tamamo roars at me, but I'm already off the scene, flash-stepping straight past my own Servants and past the enemies to reach the other Jeanne...Jeanne Alter, I guess we'll call her, since there's someone else who takes precedent for that.
Jeanne Alter clearly doesn't expect me to reach her so quickly, as made evident by the fact that my explosion-charged fist is already in the middle of being swung at her face even while she's still turning around to me. What saves her isn't anything of her own doing, but rather that of the Servant armed with the lance, which is the first thing that my fist strikes, taking the blow for Jeanne Alter. And very strangely, rather than being able to get the explosion off, the energy focused in my fist gets sapped immediately the moment I touch it, so all I end up accomplishing is smacking the edge of the lance with my knuckles - and consequently shoving my knuckles about four inches all the way into my own hand.
The enemy Lancer Servant, having materialized swiftly to my side to block my punch, darts in to grab hold of me, but ignoring the searing pain in my hand, I duck while simultaneously tearing my hand free of the lance's cursed grip, for I could feel my blood being sucked out of my wound as if the lance were a vampire. With several of the nerves and tendons in my right hand severed, I can't use my right hand for combat for most things, meaning that I'm effectively one-handed, so I thrust the two fingers of my left hand downwards, aiming for the Lancer Servant's left knee to cripple him back. It connects, and my Touchknife pierces the pants and digs into his knee, but it doesn't feel like I've accomplished anything dangerous, like I didn't even hurt him.
Out of the corner of my eye while I'm attacking the Lancer Servant, I see Jalter raise her hand at me, and I feel a familiar burning sensation gathering right on my exactly location. Knowing what's about to happen, I push off my feet to disengage, and the Lancer Servant does the same, skidding backwards to safety as the area we were in belches a tall column of fire.
But the enemy Lancer doesn't relent.
"I demand blood...!"
Hissing a malicious cry, he darts forward with a single stride, swinging his weapon one-handed with his right hand with an overhead strike to plunge the blade right into the middle of my head and scoop out my brain, and he moves with such swiftness that I can't disobey my first instinct, which is to parry the incoming attack. But the closer hand is my right hand, the same hand that I used to punch that same weapon whose blade is about to kill me, but since I don't have the luxury of time to think about which hand I'm going to use to parry, the right hand it is. I raise the back of my right hand against the incoming blade, where it's going to strike me in the forehead, and when the blade is just about to cut through my hand, I detonate a powerful burst of invisible mana for the parry.
The result is, as you might expect, bloody. The sudden burst of mana wouldn't be a problem under normal circumstances, but having a four-inch deep cut into your hand through your knuckles isn't what I'd call a normal circumstance, so as a result, blood practically explodes from my wound, and the parry itself is horribly botched in a way that when I parry the hit, the lance is deflected to my left rather than stopped in place, which is what's supposed to happen. Not only that, but the lance continues downwards and stabs me in the left shoulder, though thankfully my parry was strong enough to negate most of its forward momentum and only chew into my shoulder slightly, not four inches like last time.
"Kill him, Berserk Lancer! What the fuck are you doing?!" I can hear Jalter screaming behind Lancer, speaking in heavily accented English, just like Jeanne.
While she's screaming, I knock the lance that's lodged in my left shoulder this time back out with a strong knock of my left arm before my adversary has a chance to grind it down even further, but Lancer takes an elegant step back and thrusts it twice at my midsection in an attempt to skewer me, but this time using my left hand, I parry both of them easily, negating them and denying them of opportunities to damage me. It's at this moment when Lancer gets smashed in the side of the face by a flying boat shoe - or whatever the shoes that Tamamo wears are called - courtesy of, you guessed it, your resident foxy waifu.
Even while Lancer goes skidding along the ground from getting kicked in the side of the face, I flash-step behind Tamamo as she lands, crying out to me to stop engaging the enemy by myself and darting back in straight for Jalter, who angrily lashes back and swings her own dark standard like a spear at me to deter me. This time, rather than parry it, I outright catch it with my hand, and even though it slams against my palm with enough force to break an ordinary human's hand, that kind of blunt pain can't outmatch the kind of piercing, hellish pain that my bloody right hand is throbbing with right now.
"Wh-What - "
Jalter attempts to rip her standard out of my hand - which she does, because I just let go of it the moment I notice that she wants to take it back. So she vastly overcompensates for my resistance to hold onto it on my own and loses her footing, stumbling backwards, which spells a huge attack of opportunity for me. Pumping my left hand with explosive mana, I aim for Jalter's face as I step in and drive my knuckles into her right cheek, just underneath her eye.
Fueled by the pain that's throbbing in my head, I'm unable to properly control the mana I stuff my fist with to strike Jalter, so I end up creating a moderately more powerful explosion than I was intending, which rocks the street and engulfs me, Jalter, Lancer, and Tamamo briefly.
"Master! ! !" I hear several of my Servants scream my name - er, rather, my title - and I know I've put them all in a rough spot by directly involving myself in the fight and getting hurt, no less. But Lancer is still a threat, both to me and Tamamo, so as he gets up from the ground swiftly, I snap in his direction with my left hand to create another explosion on his area, forcing him to back off further by disappearing into a burst of blackish purple mist and reappearing closer to Jalter to make sure that I can't get another sucker punch in.
"Behind us!"
At Tamamo's alert, I notice one of the enemy presences approaching me at rapid speed, and without thinking, I dash to the side, skidding to stop my dash momentum as the enemy Saber servant attempts to thrust her rapier through my back, which makes her a terribly easy target for Tamamo's wrath.
"Don't you dare - !"
Getting a bit physical herself, Tamamo conjures up her mirror and just chucks it at the enemy Saber's head, slamming it against her, on the edge, no less, and bouncing off. Stunned and dazed, the Saber Servant staggers, and Tamamo, glaring with immense killing intent, turns her body while raising her right leg to kick her adversary in the left cheek when she tries to recollect herself to concentrate on Caster, except Tamamo's leg is nowhere near the enemy Servant's face, yet the kick still smashes its target anyway with a light purple blast of energy. Tamamo then proceeds to give him/her the hundred legs treatment, repeatedly battering him/her with almost telekinetic kicks before slamming her leg down with an axe kick, thereby pummeling the Saber Servant's face against the ground.
Just as Tamamo puts the enemy Saber in the dirt with enough force to kick up chunks of gravel and dirt from the street around the enemy Saber's face, the Servant with the magic staff appears before us, retreating back to the Lancer and Jalter in a bloody mist. A brief scream follows, and a gust of wind propels the final enemy Servant backwards to have her join the others.
"You - ! All of you, step aside!" Jalter snarls violently, yanking out the sword that's at her side, just like the one that's at our Jeanne's side. Jeanne gasps at the sight of this, and in response, she darts forward to join us with both hands on her battle standard.
"I won't let you, the other me!" Jeanne shouts as the flag on her standard begins to glow gold while flames begin to circle counterclockwise around Jalter's body and feet.
"Let's see you try, you pathetic excuse of a Saint!" Jalter shrilly cries back - in English, mind you.
Without regard for either of them, something stabs itself into the ground in between us, which catches the attention of both sides. We all take a moment to see what it is, and it's a rose - made of glass.
"This is not elegant...nothing about this is. So much death and destruction...for you to cause all this, perhaps it has never once crossed your mind to try to be a little bit more free and not chain yourself to the creed of chaos?"
Before the enemy Saber Servant steps, seemingly out of nowhere, yet another short girl, though admittedly taller than most of the other girls here, wearing a sleeveless red blouse that looks oddly plastic for some reason, a short excuse of a black skirt, and outlandishly luxurious leggings that, at an angle, almost look like white metal riding boots. I just don't know what's going on with what's she's wearing on top of her head, though.