Yamato looked at the explosive shell, timed slowed as his brain tried to find an answer, a way to stay alive. But it was impossible. Humans can't outrun an explosive shell shooted at them from the barrel of a tank.
-How did this happened?- He wondered.
Tanks don't just roam around the streets of japan shooting at people like if it was a war zone, yet again he used to believe broken spines couldn't be cured, that people couldn't make fire out of their bare hands and that paper would never become a sword. Life was a mysterious thing indeed.
He closed his eyes, the only thing he could do as the shell approached, holding enough fire power to leave no trace of him once it hit, probably blowing the wooden house behind him in the proccess.
CLANG
the sound of steel brought time to its normal pace, like a spell broken... Or cut, to be precise.
"Hahahahaha Oh how I missed the smell of gunpowder"
Came the woman's voice, laughing with such joy and happiness that could be mistaken for a playful child.
Yamato opened his eyes, the approaching shell was now replaced by the back of a woman. Her shoulders where narrow, her waist thin and she didn't seem to be tall, but her shadow covered him like a giant, and those shoulder seemed to encompass the whole world in front of him, guarding him as a tall wall of steel. She was wearing a uniform, green with dark patterns to blend in the forest, a military helmet covered her head and two guns hanged from holsters in her waist. Even then, she was holding a sword, almost as long as she was tall in one hand, pointing at the enemy in front of her, with a poise so still he could barely tell she was breathing.
"Hey boy, ar ya my master or somding?" The woman said, with a Scottish accent so thick he almost didn't understood her question.
"On ya feet boy, this is war" The woman said. Yes, war, she remembered, clear as the light reflecting on her sword, the great war, about the only thing on her life that ever made sense. She remembered charging against enemy lines in the coast of France, sword in hand with machine gun fire whistling around her. She remembered the mortar explosions around trenches and the distant echo of artillery fire. She remembered the haunting scream of German bombers and the stories of tanks that disappeared in the hills and forest of the north like ghosts.
This war was different. More quiet.
No trenches on scarred fields, no mud on her boots and no explosions on the distance. Just a quiet street, trees with pink flowers shedding off their petals like rain, dancing on the whispering wind, what a strange war this was.
-The war of the grail- Her memories answered, the very same she fought long ago, but now it was different. A war of mages and servants. Of wizards and ghosts long dead, a war of seven.
-And here I thought the yankees destroyed that thing with that little gift they drop-
"If you are my master, I'll be ya sword"