Disclaimer: I do not own the Fate franchise it belongs to Kinoko Nasu and Type-Moon.

Everything and Nothing

Chapter 15

Electricity crackled and boomed as it danced over an entire section of the ruins, forcing Celenike and her allies to look away from the blinding actinic flare of the electrical storm. Then seemingly melting out of the electricity's madly-dancing shadows, Sakura stepped forward, a pair of beam sabers in her hands already ignited.

"Going somewhere?" she asked in a tone so casual she might as well have been asking about the weather.

The Yggdmillennia captains moved to close ranks, only to stand down at a gesture from Celenike. "Actually, yes, we were just about to take our leave." She replied just as casually.

Sakura raised an eyebrow. "I recognize you from Lord Edelfelt's data." She finally said. "You are Lord Icecolle."

Celenike clicked her tongue. "I was…and I suppose I still am." She said.

"Oh?"

Celenike smiled. "It's just that going forward," she continued. "I'd prefer to use a different title: Lord Celenike Icecolle Yggdmillennia."

"…ambitious, aren't we?" Sakura asked after a moment. "And – not that I really care, it doesn't concern me – just a bit presumptuous, taking on the name of your extinct-in-the-male-line ancestors."

"With Forvedge all but exterminated the senior female line is gone and the title up for grabs." Celenike said with a dismissive gesture. "And it's not like anyone else would want the title, so I might as well use it and maybe even get something from it."

Sakura snorted and put her sabers away. A gesture later, and the electrical storm petered out. "A power play, is that what this is, Lord Icecolle?" she asked.

Celenike frowned at the use of her old title, but decided after a moment to let it go. "You sound so surprised." She said instead.

"You have a reputation as a recluse." Sakura replied, walking over to a still-standing section of wall, to inspect the discolored portrait hanging askew. "Someone who'd rather the world just…went away, while you spent your whole time in your workshop, undisturbed by the distractions that other magi waste so much of their time on."

"Yes, well," Celenike primly said with a cough. "It has served me well…up to now, at least. But…times are changing, and me with them."

Sakura snorted again, before gesturing at Caules and Celenike's infant children. "Back to the main point," she said. "Where are you taking the children?"

"Planning to kill them?"

"…tempting."

Celenike laughed. "Oh, you are dastardly." She said, and Sakura smirked.

"Please," she said with a dismissive gesture. "There's no need for flattery."

Celenike laughed again. "If you must know," she eventually said. "There's value in keeping at least a couple of Forvedge scions alive. I just need enough of them dead that they can't contest my claim to the Yggdmillennia lordship."

"The crest."

Celenike tilted her head. "Astute, but correct." She said. "Someone has to have the Forvedge crest, for reasons I do not need to explain. As an Edelfelt of the female line yourself, you should understand this more than most magi should."

Sakura snorted a third time, remembering how Luvia had once demonstrated her – or rather, the Edelfelt main line's – ability to dominate any and all Edelfelt crests, and by extension, their bearers. It was…terrifying, to be honest.

"I have here a geis from Lord Edelfelt," Celenike was saying, taking an offered box from one of her captains, and opening it to expose several neatly-folded pages of parchment inside. "Guaranteeing my cooperation on this affair, in exchange for gaining custody of the Forvedge heirs. I also understand if you have concerns about letting the children of your late…nemeses, to live, but I am prepared to negotiate another geis scroll to settle those concerns."

"No, that won't be necessary."

"…come again?"

"I don't need a geis scroll guaranteeing those children don't come after me in the future." Sakura said. "Strange as it might sound, they do have the right to revenge. If they grow up and want to exercise it, then by all means, let them come. It's only to be expected that incompetent characters die, isn't it?"

Sakura paused, and smiled a terrifying smile. "But," she said. "What do you think would happen if they try and fail to get their revenge?"

Celenike smiled a matching smile. "If you could kill them here and now," she said. "How would you do it?"

"I'm not one for cruelty for cruelty's sake." Sakura said with a shrug. "A few minutes with a pillow are all I need to put Caules and Cecilia's legacy down for good."

"Like I said before, you are dastardly."

Sakura smiled. "Maybe," she conceded while turning away. "Goodbye, Lord Yggdmillennia. I wish you well."

Celenike smiled warmly at Sakura finally using her proper title. "Likewise, Murderer Blue." She said. "Perhaps in the future we might find more…common ground, between the two of us."

"Who knows?" Sakura asked, already walking away, hand raised in farewell.

Celenike chuckled at the sight. "What an interesting person…" she said, memories of another life flashing through her head.

*Waffen-SS storm through a city's back-alleys in the night*

*a pair of blonde women in formal wear coolly regard a dark-haired man in a general's uniform*

*that same pair of blonde women pointed fingers at each other as another dark-haired man lay bloody and unconscious on the ground between them*

"Just one last thing," Sakura suddenly said while coming to a stop. "What was your involvement with the whole Cecilia affair?"

"I must admit I signed off on their arranged marriage." Celenike admitted with a sigh. "I didn't think much of it at the time, as I had other things on my mind. Those cousins and uncles of mine who just love to play politics slipped it past, using my preoccupation with higher concerns to push it through under my nose."

"In short, you signed off on it to get them off your backs." Sakura said.

"And now they're dead." Celenike said with a grateful nod. "You have my thanks."

"Really now?"

Celenike scoffed. "I have no problem with those of my relatives who'd lock themselves away to drink tears and bathe in blood." He said. "They know how to be discreet, and know better than to meddle with things that are simply none of their business."

Sakura smiled. "Then you are welcome." She said.

"In hindsight, it was a mistake." Celenike admitted. "Alienating you and letting Celenike have free reign with her petty jealousies, that is. When it comes to both magical potential and actual achievement, there's no question who is truly superior between the two of you. A shame I was too preoccupied at the time…though, I must admit I do not know what I could have done with all those silly old men and women from the Forvedges."

"Easy," Sakura said, gesturing and bringing Caules and Cecilia's mangled corpses to lie at Celenike's feet. "Just kill them all.

"A very final resolution to any issue." Celenike said.

"It really is." Sakura said, walking away and vanishing into the shadows. Celenike chuckled before nudging Caules and Celenike's bodies.

"Gordes," she said. "Secure the bodies, and extract the crests as soon as possible. Recover as many magic circuits as you can as well, even if it's just Caules and Cecilia, their circuits still have value enough to be added to their crests."

"I assume I'll be adding Cecilia's circuits to your crest?" Gordes asked.

"Of course." Celenike said. "Every little helps, especially now, with the Prestone crest lost since WWII."

Damn you to hell and back, Makiri Zolgen.

"Of course, my lady." Gordes said, already tapping away at his control panel, and folding Caules and Cecilia's bodies to storage in Imaginary Numbers Space. "Shall I proceed with folding space?"

"Take us out of here, Lord Musik." Celenike said, brushing at her uniform. "We have what we came for."

"Yes, my lady."

Celenike nodding, standing silent and still, looking out with uncaring eyes at the burning and blasted ruins of the Forvedge ancestral lands, even as she and her allies were swallowed up the black void of teleportation.

Sakura stepped from the shadows, pulling her coat tightly to herself as her breath came out in puffs of steam. Frost immediately formed over parts of her skin, at least for the few moments before she sent prana surging through her circuits. The resulting heat bloom melted the frost and kept more from forming, but that was about all she could do.

Ice crunched under her boots as she made her way across the ruins, past frost-covered bone gnawed clean of meat, where the ice and snow had a pinkish tint from the blood spilled on the ground. Clambering up a pile of rubble, Sakura looked out over the ruins from the top, and nonchalantly nudging what looked like a frozen piece of small intestine to fall down the pile in a tinkle of hardened flesh against rock.

Then she jumped down, landing on the ground with a loud thump, and made her way to where an emaciated figure was busy gorging itself on…something.

As Sakura came closer, that something turned out to be a man's head, ripped clean off his shoulders, and broken open at the back to expose the grey matter within. The cold had caused it to congeal to the consistency of ice cream, and Little Rin – in her ghoul/preta form, at least – was literally chomping and licking the grey matter out.

She looked sharply in Sakura's direction as the young woman approached, and lowering the head, grinned happily at her. Sakura smiled back, and stepping up to her elder sister, leaned down to press a kiss to her forehead.

Then as she stepped back Little Rin began to glow, softly at first, then quickly growing brighter until she was blinding to the eye. A powerful breeze picked up, blowing away from Little Rin and whipping through Sakura's coat and hair. Then an explosion blasted away their surroundings…

…except for Sakura herself, who just distorted space around herself so the blast wave flowed around her instead of against her.

"…I'm full." A visibly-plumper and sleepy-looking Little Rin mumbled as she swayed on her knees. Then she hiccupped, and gave a loud burp. "I'm sleepy too."

Then she keeled over backwards, the vengeful spirit softly snoring as she lay asleep on the ground, a goofy-looking smile on her face. Sakura smiled indulgently as she sank down, and picked up her elder sister.

"Mmm…I can't eat anymore…" Little Rin mumbled in her sleep. "…but…so much…strawberry…pudding…"

Sakura shook her head even as Little Rin briefly glowed and dissolved into astral form, the familiar weight of her spiritual presence hanging reassuringly around Sakura. Then she looked to the distance, and the flashing and rumbling where Rin was happily pounding the surviving Forvede and Icecolle – at least those not aligned to Lord Yggdmillennia – thugs and ne'er-do-wells flat.

"Well, I'm not getting involved in that." Sakura thought as she wandered off. "Guess I'll just have to wait until Rin runs out of steam. That might take a while…I wonder if the kitchens survived, I'm starved…"

Cheerfully whistling a random tune from some anime she couldn't quite name, Sakura stalked off to find something to eat.

Luvia woke with an explosive gasp, forcing air into her lungs under her own power. For several minutes, she just lay there in shock, half-buried in rubble and something…soft, wet, and stinking to high heaven. As her mind put itself back together and pulled itself out of the fog of…

…Luvia squealed in a decidedly-unladylike way, considering she was lying under a dead man literally torn in half, his guts and other innards splattered and rotting all over her. Fighting back the urge to vomit, Luvia practically threw him off of her, along with the rubble and broken rebar, all the while shakily getting to her feet.

Then she was making a very unhappy and dejected noise, as the dress she was wearing – a designer piece that cost some two thousand euros – was clearly beyond salvageable. Not with all the blood, bile, and other unmentionable fluids that had sunk into the cloth. Sighing, Luvia ran a hand to her hair…

…then she grinned madly, as she felt something in her hair. Pulling it away slowly and deliberately, her eyes began to twitch at the sight of a man's…

"TOHSAKA!" Luvia roared as she tossed it away, her rage causing the ground to crater under her and blowing the ruined hallway apart.

Then sinking to one knee, Luvia pressed her hand to the ground, all the while calling on her crest. Through the earth, she sampled the local mana, and found all those who called upon it. There were few now, only two in fact apart from herself, and they weren't too far away. They also felt…

…familiar…too familiar…

Well duh, they're Edelfelts too, thanks to their paternal grandmother…

Luvia tossed that thought aside, before reinforcing her body to bound off to where the Tohsakas were skulking about. Even with the entire complex in ruins, there were still plenty of obstacles, which Luvia simply just punched, kicked, or literally just plowed through.

She did briefly come to a halt as she literally stumbled into a body pit, the mangled bodies of dead Forvedges, Icecolles, their allies, retainers, and servants, had been thrown into and burned. That last wasn't done very well, as while most of the bodies had been reduced to charred and blackened bones, many were still very much intact – at least up to a point – filling the air with the revolting stench of burned and rotting flesh.

Luvia finally lost control at that, vomiting out bile and stomach acid at the sight and smell, before dry heaving and practically collapsing from abdominal cramps. The Tohsakas had apparently beheaded the corpses – at least the ones that still had heads – or recovered any decapitated heads they could find, before sticking them on poles which they stabbed into the ground around the pit.

That's actually pretty impressive, in a…gruesome, macabre, sort of way…

Again pushing the thought aside, Luvia tottered back onto her feet, and hurried to where the Tohsakas were. It didn't take long to get there, with Luvia arriving just as her cousins were jumping behind a trench of some kind.

"YOU TWO…!" she roared, only to be interrupted.

"FIRE IN THE HOLE!" Rin and Sakura chorused, before an explosion blew what looked like a vault door clean off its hinges. It flew through the air, straight towards Luvia, who jumped out of the way with a yelp.

The door slammed into the ground, leaving a small crater around it. Luvia stared at it in disbelief, before turning angrily back to the Tohsakas.

Only, they weren't there anymore.

They were jumping into the vault.

Screaming with frustration, Luvia leapt after them.

"YOU TWO!"

"Oh hey, Luvia." Sakura nonchalantly remarked. "Where…"

"SHUT UP!" Luvia roared. "I AM THE ONE IN CHARGE HERE! DO YOU REALIZE WHAT YOU'VE DONE?"

"Yes, pretty much." Sakura said, while holding up her fingers. "We faked our death…"

"…blew up the Forvedge property…" Rin added.

"…killed just about the entire family…" Sakura continued.

"…along with the Icecolles…" Rin picked up the baton.

"…at least those stupid enough to get involved with the Forvedges…" Sakura said in her turn.

"…paid those assholes Caules and Cecilia back with interest…" Rin continued.

"…then piled up and burned their bodies." They concluded in a very unsettling twin-like way.

Luvia was lost for words, just standing there with a fist raised in the air, visibly grinding her teeth while her face turned blue with veins throbbing on her forehead in frustration. "Don't get so angry now." Sakura said after a moment. "We all got what we wanted in the end."

"Yeah, including the part – that you left out – where you cut a deal with Lord Icecolle." Rin continued. "She has the Forvedge heirs – and crest – and taken them to…I don't know. Somewhere…"

Luvia punched the wall. "YOU MAVERICKS!" she roared. "DO YOU THINK I'M JUST GOING TO…!"

Sakura rolled her eyes before smashing the door next to them. It collapsed inward from the force of her blow…

…and then gold bullion was spilling out. Luvia's rant ended mid-rant in a squeak, her eyes bulging while her face took on an expression of sheer awe and avarice at the sight. Rin wordlessly offered a sack she'd conjured from a gem…

"…less talking and more looting." Luvia quickly said, grabbing the sack and greedily shoveling gold into it.

"Well, that's why we broke into the vault." Sakura said, already – if carefully – tossing paintings into Imaginary Numbers Space. They were mostly Impressionist works, many of them signatured originals from artists like Cezanne, Manet, Monet, and Pissarro. A few went back to the 18th Century, with Sakura even spotting a painting by Francois Boucher, one of the court painters of King Louis XV of France.

"That's the idea." Rin said, carefully storing porcelain pieces and tea sets inside gemstones for safekeeping.

Sakura grunted in agreement as she hefted a bronze sculpture of Joan of Arc – if an especially idealized one, as the model for the sculpture was much too…soft-looking, for the warrior woman that the Maid of Orleans had been in life, to say nothing of posing half-nude like a woman waiting for her lover, something the actual Joan of Arc would certainly never get caught looking like – into Imaginary Numbers Space. Still, it was probably worth something, especially with Luvia doing similarly placing marble sculptures of men in idealized Roman uniforms into gemstones.

"Jackpot!" Rin said, as she found a repository of jewelry. Mostly completed pieces, sapphires, rubies, emeralds, amethysts, and diamonds glittering amidst gold, silver, and platinum, but also unworked gems by the fistful. "Thank you, God!"

"…I'm not sure God would appreciate this, considering we are technically stealing." Sakura chimed in, never mind the fact that she was also hypocritically grabbing fistfuls of gems and jewelry next to Rin.

"Ever read Friedrich Nietzsche?" Luvia chimed in as she joined in the looting of the Forvedge family jewels.

"God is dead." Rin added. "We killed God. And so now we must become God."

"…I have read Nietzsche." Sakura dryly said. "I'm sure he never actually said that, but the message was close enough, I guess."

"I'm pretty sure the actual quote is God is dead, therefore now we desire for the Superman to rise." Luvia said.

Rin scoffed. "A true Superman would care less if others thought his – or her – interpretation of Nietzsche was accurate or not." He said. "After all, to the Superman, the only thing that truly matters is himself, or herself, as it were."

"…less philosophy, and more looting." Luvia said after a moment.

"My thoughts exactly." Sakura said, and tossing a case of 16th Century Spanish dueling pistols into Imaginary Numbers Space.

"No disagreement there." Rin said, helping herself to a display of Toledo blades.

"Indeed." Luvia agreed, taking down a portrait of Vlad Tepes III, Prince of Wallachia. And from that point on, the conversation grew less hostile, and the banter ever friendlier, as the cousins bonded over the one thing that Edelfelts of every stripe had in common.

Robbing their enemies – dead or alive – blind.

A/N

From serious to comedic…

…the Edelfelts can be such crazy fun to write. To say nothing of Little Rin turning back from a ghoul/preta to her 'normal' child ghost form, only to appear visibly fatter/plumper from all the people she ate.