"What the hell are you even thinking?!"

I knew I was in trouble the moment Johnathan left the room to go and get Sortiara. Should have known the guy wasn't just going to pick a target himself; no, he had to go and make this decision with her, since they were allies… The thunderous footsteps down the stairs and in the halls had been a clear enough giveaway to signal her arrival, but when she burst through the door shouting, I still couldn't help but shiver a little in my seat behind the computer.

"I'm thinking it's about time you both actually got to thinking about this war of yours" I deadpanned as she glared at me from the doorway. "Well, and that you're late…"

"I'm late?! I'M LATE?! EXCUSE YOU, BUT WHEN DID YOU BECOME THE HEAD OF THIS THING?!"

I could see Johnathan standing behind Sortiara. Kid looked sheepish, but I just returned a blank start. This betrayal was not going to be forgiven, kid.

"The two of us are perfectly capable of making our own decisions and fighting this war without you!"

"Oh really…" I ducked behind the monitor before rolling my eyes.

"Yes, really!"

"Then who's the first target?"

"Berserker, obviously! Who else?!"

"I'd say just about anyone else would be better than trying to hunt down Berserker…"

"Why would we ever just ignore Berserker?! He's the biggest threat by far!"

"By what metrics?! The parameters?!"

…Great, now I was getting fired up. This wasn't going to end well…

"For one, yes! Stat wise Berserker is the strongest of al the servants!"

"But then why would WE want to chase HIM" I stared at her, eyes wide with horror.

"Because with both Lancer and Saber we can beat him!"

"And just give the rest of the opposition such a massive advantage?! Are you braindead or something?!"

"Why you-"

Sortiara's eyes flared, and green energy started swirling around her hand. Fortunately, Johnathan was in enough state of mind to intervene.

"Hey, hey, hey! No firing off magic in the house unless we're under attack" Johnathan shouted over the sound of roaring winds as a collection of talismans came from seemingly nowhere and caged in Sortiara.

"Stop taking his side, damnit Johnathan! Open your eyes already; he's treating us like kids!"

"I'm not taking sides! I'm also not just going to let you blow up my house in the process of settling a spat between you two!"

"Grrr!"

"Good job getting the beast back under control" I smirked a little at the scene in front of me.

"You shut up" he snapped back. "I get it; you probably have a whole bunch of reasons behind your rejection of the idea. I'm not going to pretend that you haven't raised some good points before. But you need to learn when to keep your mouth shut! And these petty insults, taunts and provocations end now, or else you'll be the one who's sorry, mark my words!"

I raised an eyebrow at him as the winds died down and the talismans disappeared.

"So, there's a fire in you after all… Now you just need to redirect it at your actual opposition."

"As far as I'm concerned, you still are my opposition. Lest you have already forgotten that this alliance between us three is temporary, at best."

"…Now we're thinking" I grinned. "That's what I like to hear!"

The two of them both shot me looks of bewilderment, but while Johnathan had dropped his… hostility… Sortiara was still very clearly pissed off at me.

"So, should I run through the reasoning as to why going after Berserker is a terrible idea?"

"Yes" Johnathan sighed.

"No" Sortiara growled at the same time.

"YES" Johnathan repeated, more forcefully.

After a tense moment of the two staring one another down, Sortiara sighed and relented.

"…Fine. I'll hear him out, but don't expect me to just change my mind on the matter easily."

"…Well," I shrugged at Johnathan, "I guess it's progress."

"Just get on with it" he sighed, walking up and around over to my side of the desk.

Sortiara, for her part, actually entered the room, but she still stood a good couple feet away from the desk, arms crossed.

"Right, so just like any other game, this game has an early game, a mid game, and a late game" I started.

"This isn't a game you idiot" Sortiara muttered.

"…A game, by definition, is anything with a stated or implied success and failure condition. Would you not say this war has both a success and failure condition, either stated or implied?"

"…"

"…The answer is yes; it quite clearly does" I sighed at the lack of response. "Really, you'll find basically everything in life is a game, at the end of the day. But moving on… early, mid and late game. We are currently in the infancy of the war: all seven master and servant pairings still stand, and we don't even know the identity of all seven masters, let alone all seven servants."

I stood up from the desk and began my usual pacing.

"Now, personally speaking, I'm what you could call a control player. I like to play for the late game, not the early or mid game. While this typically makes things far more… dull, to most people, I find it is the most sure-fire way to achieve victory, or success, in any game. I will always advocate for playing for the late game. While it is true that playing for the early game or mid game can also result to victory, make no mistake, playing for the late game is the most consistent."

"…"

"…Why is that" Johnathan supplied.

"Because if you play for the late game, and your opposition does not, and most typically won't, then inaction becomes action" I grinned.

"Meaning what" Sortiara huffed.

"…To put it in context for the war, let me ask this: which servant is the most intensive to provide upkeep for, or to maintain in this world?"

"Berserker."

"Right. So, theoretically speaking, if every master and servant was to just… sit and wait. Do nothing at all, whatsoever. …Who would run out of mana first, and thus lose their servant first?"

"Berserker" Johnathan nodded, seemingly understanding.

"But it's not that simple" Sortiara protested. "The quality of the master also plays into that!"

"Yes, I figured it would. However, you happen to know Berserker's master. Quite personally, even. Would you say he is a more capable master than you?"

"…"

"Especially since he has a more mana intensive servant than yourself?"

"…"

"…Well?"

"Of course not!"

"Right! So, then when it comes to Berserker, time is against him, not against you. So, if both you and Berserker's master, Zach, do absolutely nothing, who loses their servant first?"

"Zach, obviously!"

"So then why are you trying to hunt HIM down, instead of forcing him to hunt YOU down" I asked. "All you have to do is avoid him, and you win. You even acknowledge this fact. Why force a confrontation?"

"B-Because-"

"Because it doesn't make sense" I deadpanned. "And you know it. Deep down, you know it. You may not want to admit thus, because I've pointed it out so clearly to you, but you know it. It. Does. Not. Make. Sense."

"…"

"Berserker may very well be the strongest servant, stat, or parameter, wise" I acknowledged. "But that is his only advantage: raw power. And that advantage comes at a huge cost. Not only does Berserker lose all sense of rationality and tactical reasoning when approaching battles, he costs the most to keep around. Berserker is, by design, an early game unit."

"…"

"Now, as I said, you can play for the early game and win. But if you play for the early game, time itself is against you; it's not on your side. If Berserker does nothing, and everyone, or almost everyone, else also does nothing, he loses by default. Thus, he MUST take action. He MUST hunt down the other masters and servants. Why go to him then? Why play into his strengths, which is his early game raw power over all other servants?"

"…Fine. This is a game, and Berserker is some early game unit thing! Then who do we go after?!"

"First, let's take a look at all the pieces. Berserker is an early game unit, as previously established. By my estimates, based on what I've seen thus far, Saber, Lancer, Archer, and Rider would all be mid game units. Caster and Assassin, naturally, would be the late game units."

"What makes Saber, Lancer, Archer and Rider mid game units though" Johnathan asked.

"A few things. For one, after Berserker, they are all roughly the same, parameter wise. Slight differentiations on a parameter-by-parameter basis, but overall, roughly the same power. Two, they don't have the natural resistances of either the Caster class, or the Assassin class."

"What resistances" Sortiara huffed.

"Caster has the highest innate mana parameter, and thus, I'd assume, has the highest mana pool for themselves. This means they can rely on the magical energy supply from their master less, and last longer on their own should they need to split from their master entirely for a while. Again, assumptions, but that's all I have to work off of, so… As for Assassin, he's the pure inverse of Berserker: the weakest in terms of parameters, but also the lowest mana upkeep, or cost. Based off what you guys said earlier, that is. Thus, by virtue of being the inverse of Berserker, if Berserker is an early game unit, Assassin must be a late game unit."

"Wouldn't Archer also be a late game unit then, though, due to the class skill Independent Action" Johnathan asked.

"…I suppose he could be" I mused. "Depending on the rank of that skill, I suppose, as well as the mana stat of that specific Archer unit… Overall though, I'd say Archer still wouldn't outlast a competent Caster or Assassin in a pure war of attrition, so I'm still personally leaning towards Archer being mid game. …That said, with the range advantage and solid stats overall… Archer could also be argued as an early game unit, but with less strain and a more lenient clock than Berserker… Man, Archer is one hell of a versatile class, when you think about it…"

"…By the sounds of things, you're saying that Archer is the strongest class overall" Sortiara spoke as if accusing me of something terrible.

"I mean, the more I think about it all… Yeah? I guess I might put Caster and Assassin above Archer in most cases, but depending on who specifically gets summoned into those three respective classes, Archer could very well be the strongest class."

"So, what? You're saying we should target Archer first then?"

"All I'm saying is that literally ANY other servant is a better target than Berserker. As I told Johnathan though, I'll leave the decision up to you two. You are the magi, after all; I'm mostly just here for the ride, so to speak."

"And if we want your input" Johnathan asked.

"…Do you want my input" I raised an eyebrow. "Both of you?"

"...Well, we're already at this point..." Sortiara grumbled.

"Then I shall provide my input. Simply put: no. Archer is not who we should target."

"But shouldn't we move to get rid of that range advantage Archer has over us" Johnathan asked. "If Archer just shoots at us while we're fighting someone else from across the city, we're at a massive disadvantage."

"True, true. However, that's assuming he's going to a) target Saber or Lancer over whatever opponent they're fighting at the time, and b) that no one else is going to make the move on Archer. See, because Archer has that range advantage, he's not liable to move. However, weren't you poking around where Archer's set up for some reason or another?"

"Yeah, there's a bounded field in the area. Not sure what it does though."

"So, then you're trying to pick a fight with an opponent who will see you coming, get the first strike in if they so wish, and get's their pick of the battlefield with whatever defenses they've bothered to set up in advance. Why would you run into Archer? If Archer wants to fire away from the office towers, I say so be it, for now. Archer has six targets to hunt as of right now, and only two of them are bad for us. Odds are, leaving Archer be does us more good than harm. Ideally, Archer will even trade with Berserker and they'd knock each other out. See, we're a mid game composition: we want to avoid the early game units, we're fine taking the fight with the other mid game units basically whenever because we should, theoretically, be at roughly the same power as them at all points of the game; add our number advantage and we should win any fight between the other mid game units. The only things that theoretically beat us if we take too long to win this thing are Caster and Assassin."

"So, we hunt after them then" Sortiara sighed. "We haven't even seen either of them since the start of the war, and one of them is your own servant!"

"That is… an option" I nodded. "See, the tricky thing is that this game has so few units, and we're already a few days in, that you're fairly tight on options. We have Saber and Lancer; two of the seven. We want to avoid Berserker at all costs; three of the seven. Archer is very risky because they've made a base for themselves; four of the seven. That leaves the two unknowns of Caster and Assassin, one of which is my servant, and who knows how that'll go down."

"If we even find either of them" Johnathan sighed.

"Exactly" I nodded. "So that's six of the seven. Which leaves only one mid game unit that is unlikely to sit by and wait for Berserker to drop dead on his own, regardless of if it's the smart thing to do or not."

"…Rider" Sortiara's eyes narrowed.

"But then you risk being out scaled by the late game units, especially if they are sitting back and doing absolutely nothing; conserving all the mana they can" Johnathan's eyes also narrowed.

So, they do understand…

"Why I say it's your call. I don't have a servant to contribute, so I'm not going to vote on a target. Seems only fair that you two pick who your servants fight. But, in my opinion, you only have three reasonable options. You can continue to sit back and wait for Berserker to make the first move from this point on, whatever that may be. You can try to take out the only other mobile mid game unit on the map by using your number advantage: Rider. Or you can try to track down the two units that are putting you guys on the clock, Caster and Assassin, but there's no guarantee that ends up going anywhere. We could even be ambushed by Archer, Rider or Berserker in the process. All three have their downsides, but they also all have upsides."

I narrowed my eyes at the both of them.

"Only thing left to do is make the call: who, if anyone, is tomorrow's target?"

A/N (Somewhat Important First Bit)

Status Update: I won't be home over the weekend; cottage country baby! Meaning that I also won't have another upload till... probably Tuesday or maybe even Wednesday next week for this fic (man, I'm just on a roll with being late nowadays... God damnit xD)

Important bit out of the way though... I've been thinking: when I make a post without any questions or anything to answer from the reviews, I think I'll post a little 'interesting fact' or whatever that I happened to find across my searches for information on FATE systems and things. So, consider this the first "Interesting Fact" posting as well!

"Interesting Fact" 01:

Did y'all know that the Einzberns legit dismantled one of their castles in Germany and just... moved it over to Japan. That's actually the Einzbern castle in the outskirts of Fuyuki City: a castle from Germany that they legit dismantled, shipped over in pieces, and rebuilt in the fucking forest.

Why they thought to do it like this, I have no idea. But apparently this is the case, according to basically every source I've come across discussing the topic. Why the Tohsakas allowed it to even go up in the first place, considering they have jurisdiction over Fuyuki City is another thing I don't get. Like, ok, it's the outskirts of the city; technically not in the city. But really? They actually don't have jurisdiction over the surrounding forests as well? Like, damn, they've been Scamazed, I say xD

Anyways, yeah, the Einzberns being weird is nothing new, but... really? That's the origins of the fuck off western style castle in the middle of the forest O.O