Chapter 55
Always temper the first rule of power tactics; power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.- Saul Alinsky
The world became a wide open field with green grass spotted with the occasional hill. Apparently mayhem decided it was going to have a pleasant atmosphere.
Harry spun his staff and kept his gaze shifting. He was completely exposed out here. The grass was tall enough to crouch and hide for a normal person, but he was better than six feet tall and wearing a black duster and a stupid hat while carrying a big stick. He wasn't going to be able to hide in the grass.
A veil wasn't going to do him much good either. He'd never been that good with them and without some shadow or existing cover to help him, he wasn't going to be able to hide well.
So he had to start moving. God and Sinon only knew what was waiting for him inside this reality.
He took off toward a city he could see in the distance. The quiet atmosphere kept his nerves on edge and his will ready to flash out with destructive or defensive magic. Given that this was a Noble Phantasm, why wasn't there any chaos?
What are you playing at? Harry thought.
His instincts suddenly screamed at him and he spun, his left arm out and his shield already coalescing before him in a solid barrier of force.
Then the damnedest thing happened.
A bright red line appeared in the air, ending in a circle where the plane of his shield came into being.
A second later a bullet flew through the air and stopped dead as it met his shield. Then more lines appeared followed by gunshots and the barrage of lead was stopped by the power of his shield.
There was a gasp of surprise and Harry dropped the barrier. "Fuego!" he shouted, pointing his blasting rod at the figure crouched in the grass. A jet of blue white fire flew from the rod and blew its way through the gunman.
The figure shouted in alarm, but it didn't simply drop to the ground like it should have. Instead the figure rose to his feet and, holding a rifle to his shoulder, moved away from the burning grass, and lined up his shot and tried to fire again.
A second jet of flame caught the gunman, and this time he stayed down. A moment after he dropped to the ground, a red rectangle appeared over his body, helpfully showing the word 'dead' with a small arrow pointing to the figure.
Harry eyed the prone form warily. Real life was never that candidly useful, and he suspected some kind of trap. There was a faint sound of movement and Harry spun again to see someone else rising from the grass. This guy's gear was completely different from the first one's, but he also held a rifle and was opening fire.
Harry didn't bother with fire this time. He lifted his right hand and clenched his fist, bringing the force rings on his hand into alignment, and released one the bands on a single ring.
The blast of force knocked the gunman off of his feet and his gun went spiraling away from him. When he didn't see a dead message, he chased after the gunman. The guy rolled to his feet and pulled a pistol from a holster at his side.
Harry drew his 500 revolver and they fired at the same time. Harry turned out to be the better shot. His shot took the gunman in the chest while his shot hit the spell layered duster.
The bullet put the gunman down for good that time, another helpful message appearing over the body.
"What the hell is this place?" Harry asked himself as he went to examine the newly made corpse. The body was dressed in body armor, boots, and a helmet which were styled in a kind of 'tough guy' look. He wasn't that much tougher than the average bruiser or thug.
Except that the fire didn't kill the first guy right away, he thought. It had taken a follow up on this guy too to keep him down.
His eyes flicked toward the images at the bottom corner of his vision. They'd changed. The image of his staff now showed his revolver with a 4/5 in place of the symbols. Also the blue bar below his name had become slightly smaller.
A horrible thought came to him and he experimentally reached out to draw in more magic from around him. Nothing happened.
He could still feel his own magical energy, but he couldn't use the world around him to draw in power. There was no life for him to draw ambient magical energy from.
Of course there isn't moron, he thought. This is a Reality Marble. A constructed reality. Nothing is real here. Just things that are real enough to kill you.
A cold feeling ran down his spine and he set off toward the city as quickly as he dared. He wasn't going to be able to draw in more magical energy while he was in this marble. That meant he was going to be able to do only so much magic. Once that was gone, he wasn't much more than a guy with a gun.
He could draw on the Winter Mantle like he did against Kuzuki, but it didn't make him bulletproof, and if the first two guys were any indication, there were going to be a lot of gunmen heading his way.
He needed to find cover and figure out where Link and Pyrrha were. And he was going to need to find another weapon. Magic was useful, but if he had a limited supply, then he was going to be in trouble soon enough.
He was making good time to the city, the border of which was coming up. In fact, moving seemed easier than it was supposed to. He ran, and not simply because it was healthy. He ran so that, when the situation required it, he'd be good at running. But the effort to move was almost non-existent.
He put more effort into his jogging and moved with amazing speed. He slowed to a stop at the edge of the city.
"Huh," he said. "That's odd. I didn't even need the Mantle to move that fast."
Something slammed into his back at incredible speed. The impact spun him and he saw more red lines followed shortly by bullets. Someone had opened fire.
Harry continued the spin and flared his duster in front of himself, the spell-layered leather stopping the bullets like it had so many times before. This was starting to get ridiculous.
"How many idiots with guns are there?" he demanded. "Find something better to do!"
The gunfire stopped, but he didn't hear the sound of reloading. This guy was apparently smarter than the first two. But he could start firing the second Harry tried to move or could reposition or he could-
His instincts screamed at him once again and Harry shot forward, calling upon the strength and speed of the Winter Knight as he did. His vision seemed to blur slightly with how fast he started moving, but he noticed the small metal sphere flying to where he'd been not a second ago.
Grenade, Harry thought. It didn't look like one of the fragmentation grenades that Ramirez liked, but the shape was distinctive.
He slammed his fist right into the jaw of the gunman and sent him flying through the air and landing with a heavy thud. Then he pulled his revolver again and took aim. As his finger rested against the trigger, a small green circle appeared in his field of view, expanding and shrinking.
Harry ignored it and used the iron sight on the weapon to aim, squeezing the trigger. He missed, the bullet driving itself into the ground by his foot.
The gunman hurriedly got to his feet and Harry fired again. The gunman dove in a roll just as Harry fired, dodging the bullet and coming to his feet with a pistol in his hands.
He and Harry fired at the same time. Harry's bullet hit him center mass, and the gunman's shot slipped just past the duster and slammed into him.
The gunman dropped and Harry checked how bad it was. There was a glowing red circle where the bullet had struck, and that was it. There was no blood, no pain, not even the strange sensation of the Mantle blocking the pain. But the white bar below his name had shrunk in size.
"What the hell is going on here?" he asked himself.
Link flicked his sword to remove blood that wasn't actually there and looked around for more targets or lines.
A wind blew past him, carrying the desert sands with its passing. That was the second person he'd fought already. The guns had been unexpected, but easy to account for once the surprise had passed. Those lines that stemmed from the weapons before the bullets came were certainly helpful. He was fast enough and strong enough to dodge them or even stop them with his sword and shield. For some reason, the one who had had the shotgun hadn't expected Link to simply use his shield to stop the blast before cutting him down.
What was worrying him was that he couldn't access his equipment like he could before. He could pull his bow and the Master sword with his shield, but nothing else.
He ran through the sands and pulled out the strange plastic device from a pouch on his belt. There was nothing to interact with on it except for a single button on the back. He'd pressed it earlier and nothing had happened.
It had been given to him, so it had to be important, he just didn't know how yet. With no better ideas, he pressed the button again.
The lense at the top lit up and a large map projected itself before Link, circles appearing all over it an instant later. As he moved, a green circle moved in the section labeled 'Desert sector' at the same time.
Link slid to a stop and the green circle stopped too. He cautiously reached out and tapped the dot.
A name appeared over the dot. Link.
It's a map, he thought. It's a device that tracks everyone's positions. So everyone probably had one, but why?
He started tapping dots as rapidly as he could, trying to get a sense of where everyone was and who else was around.
It didn't take him long to find both Harry and Pyrrha, but they were too far away to be of any help to him. Harry was off in the prairie sector and Pyrrha was in the forest.
Before he could think more on it, he noticed another dot making its way to him. A quick tap showed him the name 'Kirito'. Whoever this guy was, he was making his way to Link in a hurry.
Link stashed the device in his belt pouch to use later. He'd just have to try and find Harry and Pyrrha as soon as he could. But right now he had bigger problems. He turned to face the direction his next opponent was coming from and readied his sword.
A dark figure crested a dune not much later and the two of them met eyes. The figure, a rather effeminate looking man, pulled a familiar rod from his side and a beam of purple light sprang from the rod.
Link's eyes narrowed. It was the same style of blade Sinon had used on him. Given that this man had drawn it immediately, he was likely skilled with it.
"Fine," Link said. "If you want to use swords, then we'll go at it with swords. Blade of Evil's Bane."
The Master Sword came to life in his hands, the sol shining from the sword in a clear declaration of his location and in a far more powerful reflection of the enemy's blade. He didn't have time to waste. There had been over two dozen points on the projected map. He, Harry, and Pyrrha were severely outnumbered.
The swordsman in black smirked and the two of them shot toward each other in a blur of color.
Pyrrha ran through the forest, spear spinning in her hands and cutting bullets out of the air as she charged her attacker. The man let out a surprised curse as she put out an extra burst of speed and ran him through with her weapon.
The blow didn't shed blood, but rather left a bright red mark in his chest. She pulled Milo out and spun the spear's shaft around her body and slammed it into him. The gunman was knocked to the ground in a sprawl and Pyrrha drove her spear into him one final time to keep him down. A dead marker appeared over him.
"I'm sorry," she said as took up her spear. "But I have to get out of here, and I can't leave you standing to shoot me in the back."
She'd already learned that lesson with her first target. Unconscious wasn't an option, which made her hope that these people weren't real. As a Huntress she would have to kill people who brought the Kingdoms in danger if it couldn't be helped. But that didn't make her happy about it.
She pushed the concern aside. She had to get out of here. She couldn't sense Sakura, and she didn't trust that at all. If she couldn't protect Sakura, then any number of unpleasant things could start, things she and Rider had been able to make an effort to prevent up until now.
Rider was gone, and Shinji had disappeared. That left only a pair of dangers to Sakura, and her presence was hopefully enough to keep them in check.
But, she wasn't with Sakura right now. Fear gnawed at her gut and she started moving again. If she couldn't find a way out, then she'd cut down everyone in her way until she found Sinon and forced her to end her Noble Phantasm.
Something buzzed past her ear, the silent projectile knocked off course by the power of her own Noble Phantasm flowing around her in a protective field.
Pyrrha spun and brought her spear and shield into a ready position. That shot hadn't had a line like the others. With an effort of will, she sent a blast of her semblance out in the direction of where the shot had come from.
Sinon had made a mistake in trapping her here. Everyone she'd encountered used guns, and guns were a hazard that she had been able to stop for a long time. Someone who had been hidden was sent flying by the burst of power she'd released.
She surged forward and dispatched him quickly. Just as she finished, there was a flurry of red lines to her side. Pyrrha spun and thrust on hand forward, her arm glowing black with her semblance's power.
The bullets all stopped in mid air and then shot back toward the shooter killing him rather effectively.
"Sinon!" Pyrrha shouted. "Let me out of this! I have to get to my Master!" There was no reply and Pyrrha grit her teeth. If she could simply find the archer, she could maybe explain. He couldn't know about it if she told someone in here, right?
There was a sudden flash of white through the trees and a tall, thin figure wearing lots of white charged her, a shotgun held in one hand. Pyrrha hurled her shield in his direction, but the man ducked away in a fluid motion and continued to come at her.
Pyrrha shifted Milo into it's rifle shape and opened fire. The man in white dodged her shots with grace and changed the direction of his charge, leaping and launching himself off of the trees and their branches.
It was quite the acrobatic display and Pyrrha had to admire the skill involved. The man landed and opened fire with his shotgun and forced Pyrrha to start moving to avoid being hit. While her bullet shield trick was effective, she still needed to practice with it and she didn't want to use up her aura's protection against every opponent. The longer her aura held out, the greater her advantage would be against Sinon herself.
The man in white was persistent and Pyrrha went onto the offensive. She waited until he made another acrobatic leap and then hurled her spear toward him, leading her target just right.
There was another buzz through the air and something struck her spear just as it left her hand. The bullet impact knocked Milo into a spin that rendered her throw useless, allowing the man in white to land and level the shotgun at her at near point blank range.
Light shone behind the man and then something heavy slammed into the back of his head, knocking him right into Pyrrha. The Lancer rotated and grabbed the shotgun as the man fell over, leveled it at him and fired.
The man collapsed, a dead icon appearing over him and Pyrrha turned to see Harry Dresden standing in an open doorway of light, holding an automatic rifle like a baseball bat and looking very annoyed.
He grabbed Pyrrha and yanked her through the door, the gate closing behind her. Pyrrha barely had time to yank her weapons to her with her semblance before the gate closed.
"I figured out how to make the plastic thing work," he said as he dropped the rifle. "It's a GPS."
"Thank you," Pyrrha said, dropping the shotgun. "But why did you grab me? Why not get out or look for Sinon?"
"We can't leave here," Harry answered and pointed her toward a building for cover. "It's a Reality Marble. This is our world until Sinon says otherwise or we die. And I don't think I have what it takes to fight Sinon on her home turf, not with the Marble limiting my magic. I can't afford to open another Way or I'll be useless and you had a mongolian horde of goons heading your way."
"Thank you," Pyrrha said again. She pulled out her own device. She clicked the button, but nothing happened.
"It's on a timer," he said. "It went away after I figured out how to make it work. Lash says that it's probably on a repeating cycle."
Pyrrha blinked. "Who's Lash?"
"Long story," he answered. "I'll explain later."
"Where's Link?"
"Hopefully fending for himself in the desert. We've got to make our way to him. You ready?"
"Yes."
"Great, let's get moving."
Link was impressed. This Kirito was quite the skilled swordsman, and Link was fairly certain that the young man he was fighting was a Saber class Servant in his own right. He wouldn't want to face him in an actual battle for the Grail. He wasn't completely sure if he'd be able to survive the experience.
Link ducked under a swing of the light sword and leapt back and away from the swordsman. Kirito didn't give him time to gain ground, surging forward with a burst of speed and thrusting his sword in another attack.
Link blocked the strike with his shield and light blazed from the conflicting equipment before they separated.
There hadn't been anymore gunman since Kirito arrived. Whoever else was in the Marble was probably going after Harry and Pyrrha. All Link had to do was wait until his awakened sword could do her job.
The two swordsmen leapt toward each other once again and they became nothing more than blurs as they swiped their swords and the blades clashed. Link bobbed his head away from a well placed swing of Kirito's sword, the blade of light passing so close that he could feel the heat from the weapon on his cheek.
Link turned the evasion into an attack of his own, spinning and driving his leg into Kirito and forcing him away.
"You're quite good," he said. "I've rarely fought swordsmen of your caliber."
Kirito gave him a grin. "You should see me when I have a better sword. This one's too light for my taste."
"It gets the job done, though," Link said. "I've had to make do with wooden weapons against good steel. But nothing quite beats this sword." The Master Sword still shone with sunlight as Link spun it into a ready stance. "I wish I could go all out on you," he continued. "But this Marble won't let me."
"But you're still holding back," Kirito told him. "You're hiding something."
Link shook his head. "I'm not hiding it," he said. "I'm just giving her time to work."
Kirito's stance shifted at that, become warier. He wasn't a fool. He sensed something was off. Link smiled.
"And I think it's time to show you what I mean," he said.
He and Kirito leapt for each other again, and time seemed to stop. A figure of blue appeared in his vision, a figure he knew from one life, and whose touch he knew from dozens.
She spoke in a calm and rational tone, and performed her duties as she always had. She gave him a complete tactical analysis of the fighting style of the swordsman in front of him, down to the percentage likelihood of the outcome of the battle.
Link smiled as the knowledge met with the instinctive understanding given to him through the Triforce of Courage.
Time sped back up and the two of them began to clash. Now that he'd been told what to look for, Link could see the patterns in Kirito's fighting style. The movements that indicated certain sword techniques he'd noted earlier.
He began to predict where Kirito's sword would be and was able to counter the attacks far more effectively and his counters became far more deadly as a result. He began to press his advantage and force Kirito back.
The swordsman wasn't stupid. Link could see the burning drive in his eyes, the knowledge that Link had gained the upper hand and the desire to overcome the limitation regardless of the odds.
Link felt a thrill run through him and he wanted to savor the fight, he wanted to see this man defy logic and win.
Their fighting became more and more intense and they stopped trading banter. They spoke with their blades and songs of their fighting styles. The world fell away for them and they simply fought, each side trying to overwhelm and destroy the other.
Several red lines suddenly went past him and Kirito broke from their exchange and spun his weapon in a complex sequence that sliced the incoming bullets from the air.
Pyrrha hurled herself at Kirito and forced the swordsman in black away from Link. Pyrrha thrust one hand forward and Kirito was blasted off of his feet and sent spinning through the air away from them.
A flash of completely irrational annoyance went through Link at the interruption, but one look at the expression on Pyrrha's face made it vanish.
The Lancer was scared, and not, Link suspected, at anything in the Marble with them. As near as he could figure, Pyrrha hadn't suffered a single scratch in the time they'd spent inside Sinon's Noble Phantasm.
He was covered with red lines from where Kirito had been able to land glancing blows, the small white bar under his name having reduced in size at the time, and the other swordsman had had similar wounds. Pyrrha had no such marks.
Harry was next to Link a moment later. The wizard was holding a rifle in his hands and his staff was nowhere to be seen.
"Hey, Link," he said. "Sorry to break up the party, but we have incoming."
"Define: incoming?" Link asked.
"Uh, well," Harry said. "Everyone."
"We need to go," Pyrrha said, her voice a controlled calm.
"First, let's survive," Harry said. "Then we can get out."
The triforce on Link's hand suddenly blazed to warning light. He acted on complete reflex and leapt forward, shoving Harry to the ground. "Pyrrha!" he shouted in warning.
Something flew right over Link's head and went straight for the Lancer, and missed. The bullet simply swerved to one side and blasted right past Pyrrha's head, barely missing the girl as it drove itself into the sand and creating a small cloud on impact.
Pyrrha spun toward the source of the shot and surged forward in a run. Her green eyes were shining with a furious light that was beyond fear. Link's own eyes went wide at that.
Something was scaring the Lancer enough to make her forgo fairness and even her own survival. He didn't know much about the girl, but if something was motivating her to that extent, he suspected that it was dire indeed.
"Sinon," Harry said, rising to his feet. "That shot had to be her." The wizard let out a grunt as something struck him at high speed and he fell to the ground.
"Harry!" Link shouted. The wizard only groaned and Link spotted something sparking in his shoulder where it had slipped in past the duster.
Link grabbed the sparking thing and ripped it out of Dresden. It was an oddly shaped bullet. There was the sound of another round striking something solid and Link spun to see Dresden back on his feet, his magical shield up and blocking fire from a shooter he couldn't see.
"Harry, behind me!" Link said. Harry dropped the barrier and went back to back with Link as the saber lifted his shield. "Shield of Hyrule," he said and the metal shield became a solid barrier of energy.
"There's another sniper," Harry said. "And that swordsman's going to be back soon."
"Make that now," Link said and nodded his head toward the figure in black that was running their way.
"And there's quite the cloud of dust coming in from behind us," Harry reported. "Someone's booking it our way in a hurry. It looks like all of the big guys are coming out now that we're wearing down." They glanced at each other. "I don't suppose you have a nuke or something we could drop on them?" he asked.
"Nope," Link replied.
"Great," Harry said, the sarcasm hard to miss. "So how long will it take until we get overwhelmed by goons and die?"
"It'd be a lot longer if Pyrrha hadn't run off," Link said. "Something scaring her into recklessness."
"We'll just have to worry about that later," Harry said. He dropped the rifle he was carrying and his staff appeared in his hands. "Well, it's been nice knowing you man. You ready? I'm going to be useless after a couple of big spells. Then all I'll have left is my Death Curse."
Link took a deep breath. "Let's do this," he said.
The world seemed to shudder around them. Then it cracked and shattered and they were surrounded by darkness.
Author's note: Well, that was fun. Not to mention close. I'm not certain if I conveyed just how desperate things were starting to become right there at the end. This was a really fun chapter to write and it took a while to make sure that it came out the way I wanted it to. Namely, badass all around.
Lord of Memory: I believe you now have the answer to your question. 30 vs 3. Every player working together against the intruders placed inside. Now picture a group of Servants and Masters who aren't working together being trapped inside that thing. Sinon is fucking terrifying as a Servant.
PasiveNox: Glad you think so. I hope this chapter is worthy of that description too.
As always, don't forget to favorite, follow, and leave a review! I can't tell you enough how much it means to me when you guys show your support for this story. I love writing this story and I love seeing people enjoy it. I don't ever want to lose that joy and I absolutely want to see this project to its conclusion and have a blast for the entire time. I love hearing from you all and would love any support or advice you could provide.
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Thanks for reading!
