A/N
Some of the recent reviews have pointed out that monolingual readers may/will have a hard time with non-English speech, notably in the last chapter. After some thought and at the risk of coming off as inconsiderate, I'd like to keep that as is; I like to think of it as akin to foreign languages you see in movies or games that are treated as Bilingual Bonuses if you happen to know how to read them or if you take the time to look up what they mean. However, I'm aware that this analogy isn't quite applicable to fanfics and other text-based mediums since the text is the entertainment, and having a few words in languages you can't read can certainly feel a bit jarring. It also doesn't help that I grew up with many other cultures, so coming across languages I'm not familiar with is normal for me.
If this is any consolation, these little "Bilingual Bonus" bits won't happen often, and when they do, they won't be essential to the story's plot or anything; at most they'll just be little bits of gratuitous foreign language sprinkled in just to remind the readers that these characters are multilingual. I'm sure there'll also be times where I'll phonetically spell them out too. Also, I've done this once before with one of Yang's conversations in Chapter 4, but if the characters begin speaking in another language, the narration will specifically notify you of their language switch, but it'll of course still be in English.
Edit: as per a reader's suggestion, I'll be putting the original Fate: Recourse Light (pre-reboot) over on Archive Of Our Own; I'll let you know in a future chapter when that is done.
"So you work a normal job by day, and then you either train or carry out contracts as your magework by night?"
"Yeah, something like that."
"Wow ~ it's like you're straight out of a secret spy movie, Master ~ "
"Does it? Doesn't really feel that way to me..."
"Psh. Master's been doing this for such a long time that it doesn't even bother him, what a natural."
"Is that sarcasm I hear, Tamamo?"
"Oh nooo, it totally couldn't be..."
Yuuyuu, sitting in the back of the Tesla directly behind me, puts her right index finger and thumb into her mouth to whistle, pretending like she's a sports referee. "Unnecessary sarcasm, Caster, #62! Ten yard penalty!"
"W-What! What do you meeeeeeean, 'unnecessary sarcasm'?! It's part of my character, characteeeeerrr!" Tamamo whips around in her shotgun seat to haggle with her fellow co-Servant.
"I'm more surprised you know about American football games," I pass a quick grin up to Yuuyuu through my rearview mirror, and she brightly smiles back.
"Ehehe, let's just say that FATE was kind enough to give me some contextual knowledge about American culture. Well, just some basic stuff - football is very popular in this country, right? People even treat certain games like the Super Bowl almost like a national holiday!"
"Wow, you know more about football than me. As an American, I'm ashamed."
Hearing this, Yuuyuu begins to fret, interpreting my self-deprecating remark as a sign of inferiority. After finishing our little shopping trip and returning home to rest, we're heading out to Meridian Park now and taking the Tesla along so that the girls can enjoy the relaxing sensation of a nighttime drive. "Ah, ah, i-it's nothing that I ought to be proud of! I was simply, um, demonstrating the wide breadth of knowledge bestowed to me to prepare me as your Servant, yes, that's it!"
"Excuuuuuuses, Miss Youkihi! Master does not appreciate Servants who flaunt their abilities like that!" Tamamo catcalls to Foreigner, jeering at her to add salt to the proverbial wound, so I sigh a bit heavily to keep Caster in check while Yuuyuu, who actually takes Tamamo's words seriously in this case, quickly eeks out an apology.
"Caster, stoppit. And Yuuyuu, you know Tamamo's just saying that to screw with you."
"I-I know, but - but there is - I can't help but think that there is a certain degree of truth to her words. And I don't intend to come off like some kind of know-it-all..." Yuuyuu murmurs apologetically.
"It's okay, you're fine. How about this - we can all take a day sometime to sit down and watch a football game or something. I don't really watch TV otherwise unless friends are over, might as well get some more use out of it..."
"Ah, really? That sounds like fun ~ !" Yuuyuu immediately looks happier at my suggestion; it's good to know that for as meek as she can be at times, she can just as easily be cheered up and have her enthusiasm restored. Tamamo narrows her golden eyes at me, her fox ears twitching forward in my direction as I continue to drive down the dark, mostly empty road at night.
"And you're sure that you're not playing favorites right now, Master?" she pouts.
"Yes, I'm sure," I respond patiently. From what little I've seen from my two new Servants, I can tell that this is something that I'm gonna have to put up with for the rest of the foreseeable future. "It's just that I don't like the idea of having my two Servants constantly squabble every chance they get, and from what I can tell, you're the one who usually initiates those little squabbles, kinda like this one right now."
Flicking her chin in the reverse direction, Tamamo, folding her arms across her chest tightly, lets out a cute little hmph! while her ears again twitch in the same direction, perfectly in sync. Tamamo's fox ears add a certain dynamic to her character that I find quite appealing; for as unruly as she is towards Yuuyuu, it makes our little interactions all the more enjoyable. I'm prepared for her to say something in response, but to my silent surprise, she offers no such response. Maybe she's actually aware of the fact that she's the one initiating all these little arguments between her and Foreigner?
"By the way, Master, no one's going to be at the place that we're going to, right?" Yuuyuu asks cautiously.
"Yeah. This late at night, no one's gonna be there." I glance down at the screen between me and Tamamo that replaces the usual dashboard of conventional cars to check the digital clock, which reads 9:44 PM. "People usually stick around at sundown, but most of the time they'll leave once it's completely dark like this. Sometimes there'll be a few people who come by for night walks or something, but if there are people here, I can just use a spell that'll coax them into leaving..."
Finding the correct right turn, I pull the Tesla into the short, winding path into the parking lot of Meridian Park. Sure enough, there are no cars in the empty lot; all the park-goers during the day and even the park employees have gone home for the night, so we have the entire parking lot and the luxury of parking space to ourselves. The three of us climb out once I've parked the car, and Tamamo and Yuuyuu take a look around the park together as I leave my wallet and keys inside the car itself, which means I'll have to leave the car unlocked.
"...doesn't seem like much of a park, to be honest," Caster remarks in a rather unimpressed tone as I join them on the sidewalk in front of the Tesla. "Maybe it's just because we're here at night, but..."
"Aw, don't say that, Miss Tamamo. I'm sure this park means a lot to Master," Yuuyuu scolds Caster lightly.
"It does, actually. I've known this park my whole life, pretty much," I shrug as I get a move on, and my two Servants follow me as the three of us trudge over the grass, past some picnic tables and public charcoal stands to reach the adjacent baseball field that's been down-scaled for the purpose of hosting kid's baseball practice or games during the week.
"E-Ehhhh...so it really does mean a lot to you, Master?" Tamamo asks timidly with a corresponding switch in her tone of voice as she realizes that Yuuyuu's words turned out to be correct.
"Yep. There's an elementary school down the hill from here that I attended and graduated from, and sometimes we'd have a few budget field trips where we'd walk up from school to this park, and we'd hang out and play around here, eat lunch, and then head back. There's also a little playground to our right if you go down the stairs over there." I motion over to a barely-visible set of stairs off in the distance from us that leads down a slope to the other half of the park that we can't see. "And we'd used to play around there too. Even after elementary school and into middle school, I'd sometimes come back just to hang out here with some friends since this park was on the way to their houses, since they live around this area."
As I'm reminiscing somewhat, I notice the two girls behind me as I turn to them while talking listening attentively with an air of quiet solemnness about them, and it makes me pop a small, wry grin at the two of them when I finish my thoughts.
"Is my little trip down memory lane really that interesting? It's nothing special..." I remark, but to my surprise, both Tamamo and Yuuyuu, in the first display of synchronized agreement I've seen them conduct, exclaim at me at the same time,
"That's not true, Master!"
Both Servants are just as surprised as I am that they've ended up blurting out the exact same thing, as they give each other surprised and odd looks; particularly noteworthy is Tamamo's expression, which makes her look like she's weirded out by this unusual interaction. But that doesn't stop her from taking the verbal lead as she turns back to me again.
"Even small little memories like this should be precious to you, Master. Take it from us, whose lives are Servants will amount to little more than just fleeting dreams once our time here is up," Caster says in a rare display of seriousness, and Yuuyuu also chimes in beside her, adding,
"And no matter how ordinary it might seem, this park is clearly very important to you if you've kept it in your memory after all these years in your life. And...as your humble Servants, we want to treat it as such too."
I nod at the two of them, silently thanking them for their sentiments. "Yeah, I guess this park really is pretty special to me, even though it's not really much of a park, like Tamamo said. I guess I never really took the time to sit down and think about it like this until you two made me realize that. Though I don't know how humble Tamamo is..."
Taken aside by that sudden swing in conversation topic towards the end there, Yuuyuu suddenly bursts into a little giggle that she manages to stifle at the last moment and forces herself to turn aside as Tamamo, immediately blushing and clenching her teeth in indignation, squawks at me for this offense.
"H-Heeeeey, Master, you said you wouldn't bully me anymore todaaaayyyy! ! ! ! That one was uncalled for, uncalled fooooorrrr! ! !"
Unable to get rid of my own dumb smile, I reach out and give Tamamo a comforting pat on the head. The very noticeable discrepancy in our heights - Tamamo is around 160cm (5 feet, three inches) and Yuuyuu a bit shorter than that, while I'm five feet, ten inches (around 178 cm) - makes it very natural for me to give headpats to both of them, arguably even more so to Caster because her ears look so scratchable, if that's even a word. I can tell that headpatting can become a dangerous habit if I don't somehow keep myself in check.
"Sorry, that one's my fault. That one I couldn't resist."
Pouting up at me, Tamamo lightens up her expression as I put up my other hand to begin caressing her ears as well, beginning to purr like she's a cat. But she snaps out of it quickly when she realizes what I'm up to.
"Y-You can't trick me, Master! I won't let you use headpats to buy your way out of your guilt!" she quickly stammers at me, jabbing her finger at me for emphasis.
"Shit, so I was found out, huh...and so soon..." I snap my fingers quickly and click my tongue at having my nefarious plan to deal with Caster foiled so soon.
"And you're not even TRYING to hide it! ! ! !"
"How did you even know that Miss Tamamo is weak to headpats, Master?" Yuuyuu asks me curiously.
"Well, you see Yuuyuu..." I fold my arms in mock seriousness and assume an air of professionalism to help me deliver my speech to her. "What FATE didn't tell you about me when I summoned you two was that I'm actually a connoisseur of girls with animal ears. And in this world, it's common knowledge that they're weak to the simple gesture that's known as a headpat, but!" I raise my finger up into the air dramatically. "The headpat requires skill, it requires technique! And so your average cat girl or dog girl or fox girl or whatever girl enthusiast won't be able to deliver the quality headpat that those kinds of girls desire the most. Headpatting is a skill, an art form! And as such, I've spent countless hours, countless weeks, months, even years studying the art of headpatting, honing my skill to perfection! Do not underestimate my headpats - for they are deserving of a seat in the Pantheon of Headpats, lauded by all who've been graced by their touch!"
To my acute amusement, Yuuyuu is completely buying everything that I'm saying and is looking up at me in sheer awe and amazement.
"W-Wow...I, I never knew that such a simple gesture was taken so seriously in this day and age!" she marvels in a hushed tone. Tamamo is just rolling her eyes for the third time in a row next to me. "But...but it pains me to know that I don't have any animal ears of my own...all I have is this odango hairstyle..." Yuuyuu sadly reaches up for her pair of hairbuns on her head.
"That's alright, because any girl can enjoy headpats! Don't need to have animal ears of any kind, it's just that those who do tend to have bigger affinities for them. Would you like to try them? Act now, and I'll not only give you five minutes of uninterrupted headpatting, but I'll even double that amount, absolutely free!"
Gasping lightly at my generous offer, Yuuyuu nods excitedly and gives a few little excited hops where she stands. "Yes, yes! I'd love to experience Master's world-renowned headpats, please please!"
Having had enough of my bullshit, Tamamo steps forward to wedge herself in between us. "Alright, Master, enough of your shenanigans! There's no such thing as an art of headpatting, and besides, to other people, it sounds like you're talking about something really weird! Like, like you're some kind of drug dealer or something!"
"I mean, you're not wrong, some girls just can't get enough of 'em if you do it right," I shrug nonchalantly.
"Eeeeehhhh...Miss Tamamo, you can't say that, Master wouldn't say something like that just to deceive us!" Yuuyuu whines back at Caster; her sheer amount of innocence is enough to melt my goddamn teeth. It's either that, or she's really good at playing along, so I decide to find out which it is.
"Actually, she's right, I'm just bullshitting about the whole headpat thing," I reveal rather anti-climatically with a deadpan change of tone. "There's no such thing; I was just messing around a little."
At this, Foreigner's face immediately looks like she's just seen a bowl of lychees get knocked off the side of a table; the devastation that oozes off her face is so palpable that I begin to wonder if there exists a Yang Yuhuan Alter in the Throne of Heroes. I guess we'll find out tonight if there is if this keeps up.
"Wa...waa..." After one very big sniffle, Yuuyuu bursts into tears right where she stands. "Uwaaaaaaaaaaaannnnn! M-Maaaaaaaaasteeeeeeeerrrr, you big meeeeeeaaaaaaannnniiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeee! ! ! ! !"
"Master! What are you doing, making a girl cry like this? Please apologize, like, right now!" Jumping into action again, Tamamo quickly wraps her arms around her fellow Servant, even helping to wipe her huge tears with her detached shrine maiden costume sleeves.
"...since when were you best friends with Yuuyuu again?" I point out flatly.
"Since right now!" Tamamo hugs Youkihi even closer to herself. "I might've known her for only a day, but if anything were to happen to her, I'd kill everyone in this city, and then myself!"
"Okay, calm down there, Rosa Diaz. And why the whole damn city."
Calming down rather quickly for how hard she was crying just a second ago, Yuuyuu looks up like a puppy through her teary eyes at Tamamo. "...M-Miss Tamamo, will you...will you give me headpats instead...?"
"Of course, of cooooouuurse! Oh, you cute little thing!" Tamamo immediately obliges her by smothering her with both of her hands all over her head, and Yuuyuu begins to giggle affectionately instead.
And then, her giggles stop - and morph suddenly into a smile of overwhelming evil. Only I see this transition - Tamamo isn't paying attention because of how engrossed she is in headpatting her fellow Servant.
"...what the hell was that," I remark flatly again, and hearing my voice, Yuuyuu's face snaps back to normal.
"Nothing, Master, absolutely nothing! Anyways, what were we here for again? Aha, ahahahaha ~ "
Tamamo may or may not be in grave danger. And I may or may not be included.
Clearing my throat and taking a look around the dark and empty park, I wave the girls in to get their attention again. "Right...again, we're here so that I can assess both of your combat abilities so I can get a good idea of how we'll fight once we start investigating Singularities proper. I know I sidetracked us with my whole thing about headpats or something dumb like that, so let's get to work."
Turning around, I swiftly raise my left hand towards the rest of the grass field, beyond the small baseball field next to us near the picnic tables.
"Speak my choice, I light the fires of a brand new era as they hear my voice."
At my activation command, a huge light blue magical rune spins into view right underneath our feet, expanding with alarming speed to cover the entire half of the park that my Servants and I occupy, accompanied by a somewhat deafening roar of flames, even though said flames are nowhere to be seen. The light emanating from the huge magical rune that I've produced brightens quickly to the point where it blinds us like a flashbang grenade detonating in slow motion, but our blindness lasts only for a second or two as the illumination dims back to normal, and suddenly the three of us find ourselves standing in the same park - but it is now fully illuminated with perfect visibility, as though the ground itself is lighting up the park, while still being under the grace and tranquility of the night.
"I've put us into a little displacement spell that covers this half of the park. I've set it up this way so that I can come down here to this park to train on my own whenever I get the chance," I explain to the two Servants with me. "While it's not strong enough to be completely removed from the usual plane of space, so outsiders can come into this spell whenever they want if they find it, no one really comes by this area, especially not this late at night, and the defensive spell I mentioned earlier pretty much keeps any normal people out if they venture near."
"You're not worried about people who live just outside this park being able to hear what you're doing?" Yuuyuu asks curiously, glancing over in the direction of the houses lining the sloped street to our left, and I shake my head.
"Nope. Sound and vision are distorted at this spell's boundary, so what happens in here, stays in here. We won't need to worry about bothering the neighborhood."
I point with both index fingers at my Servants now.
"And so to gather sufficient combat data about you two, I'll need the two of you to spar for a bit," I ask of them.
At this, both Caster and Foreigner slowly turn to each other. Then -
"Oh, oh, no no no no, Master...you really shouldn't have," Tamamo begins to cackle in a low and nefarious voice, her divine golden eyes glued onto her soon-to-be opponent. "You're giving me a chance to eliminate this pesky little extra who's stopping me from having my Master all to myself...?"
"Such fortunate timing, agreed, Miss Tamamo," Yuuyuu nods slowly as well, her evil, toothy grin from before revealing itself again, and this time in full light to her rival. "You see, as I believe that I do not have much experience being summoned as a proper Servant, I still need to get a good handle over my abilities. So don't blame me if you happen to die while I play around a little bit with you, hao hao ~ "
I can't help but blink a few times at the two of them. "...wait, what happened to the whole 'if anything happens to her, I'll kill everyone in this city and then myself' thing?"
"Oh, I only said that in the moment. Because when it comes to Master, not even she'll stand in my way, you see ~ ❤︎ " Tamamo smiles brightly over to me, then swiftly leers back at Yuuyuu in the same sentence. "I'll be sure of it."
Yuuyuu drops her own evil grin in favor of a look of heated defiance. "Then we shall see about that, Miss Tamamo. If a battle for who will claim Master for herself once and for all is what you desire, that is what you will get!" She then turns to me. "Master, your orders, please!"
"Sure thing. But I'd like for you two to spar with non-lethal intent, please? And why's this gotta be about me, anyway?"
Once again, both Servants cry out in unison, almost jumping all over me as they both shrilly yell,
"YOU DON'T GET IT, MASTER!"
"This is the perfect opportunity to get rid of the other Servant for us! You and Chaldea only intended on allowing you to summon one Servant, right? And it's clear that both of us are the type of Servant who wants establish a healthy, familial relationship with their Mas - "
"Lies and deceit! Master, do not believe this vixen's words! A familial bond is not what she claims to desire! It is - " Yuuyuu at first tries to protest, but Tamamo just keeps yelling right over her, going on with,
" - Master, and so in pursuit of that, this Tamamo no Mae will not let you down, Master! For the sake of - "
I'm very glad that I didn't have to deal with shit like this during high school.
"Okay, I get the point, you two," I say loudly over both girls to get them to shut up. "If that's how you wanna treat this, then go ahead, but I will intervene if I feel like you two are going too far. The grass field behind me is your stage - stay within it and this baseball field here, and so long as you can do that, anything short of world-breaking or reality-bending shit is fine. Basically, don't break the displacement spell that I've got going on, that's all I ask. And don't seriously harm each other, I'd rather not lose either of you if I can help it. Just because I summoned two of you on accident doesn't mean I'll just let you two kill each other off."
The girls (begrudgingly) voice their consents, and I escort them out to the middle of the field, where they stand about ten meters apart from one another, with me in between them as a referee or overseer of sorts. Once I can see that they're both ready, glaring at each other with very clear intentions to kill...I sigh to myself a little because I'll have to hope that they don't go overboard with this, even though I have the sinking suspicion that they will...I almost reluctantly give them to go-ahead, as though I'm about to regret my own suggestion to have them spar like this.
"Don't kill each other, I guess."
Even before my hand can reach pass my waist as I flag it down, a miniature kaboom blasts to my right where Tamamo is standing, and before I can even glance over to see what's happened on her end, the left sides of my eyeballs register a blue blur almost warping through the air right in front of Youkihi.
A subsequent explosion of raw mana detonates where Yuuyuu should be standing, a result of Caster's vicious flying overhead strike. If I had to guess what her attack was exactly, it looked as if she used nothing but her claws to strike at Foreigner - and somehow that created enough mana to cause the ground before her to tear open and leave a crater marking here Tamamo executed her first strike.
So vicious and quick was this opening attack that both Tamamo and I don't know where Youkihi went once we realize that she's not where Caster's attack struck. This question is swiftly answered by another roar of flames not unlike the initial one that we heard when I first set up this displacement spell, and looking up, we find Yuuyuu airborne, having jumped up into the empty black sky to evade Tamamo's nigh-unreactable assault. A trio of humanoid, almost fairy-like blue vessels of flame are dancing around the airborne Youkihi, and the moment Tamamo looks up to locate her, they fly out of formation to bombard her like missiles, smashing into the ground when Tamamo dives out of the way and igniting the grass in the area on blue fire.
"Flames? You can't beat me with one of my own elementals!" Tamamo sneers back once Yuuyuu softly lands back down on the grass.
"Your elemental? Preposterous - the notion of 'owning' an elemental is ridiculous. And not to mention, I am your superior when it comes to the manipulation of flame!"
With a sneer that would do Severus Snape proud, Yuuyuu catches a massive pipa that's taller than she is and strums a few quick notes, though she does so with a rockstar-ish pose, even adding that little bit of flair of raising her plucking hand up after playing, and this resummons the same trio of blue flame vessels from her lute strings that again rocket towards Tamamo, who retaliates with force by summoning instruments of her own, though not a literal one. Her gold-studded mirrors the size of punch bowls fly like the world's most dangerous Frisbees and clash with Yuuyuu's flame vessels, whose ethereal forms are torn apart by the solidity of Tamamo's mirrors. They continue onward, stopped not in the slightest by Yuuyuu's fiery guards, but the latter swiftly pulls out a pair of darkly colored bamboo flutes from thin air too, and holding them like battle batons, she deftly smacks aside each mirror that comes her way, knocking them aside to the ground, into which they spike themselves and come to abrupt rests.
Tamamo doesn't just stand around and watch her weapons get knocked aside: while her opponent is busy with them, the foxy shrine maiden leaps forward once again with savage aggression, and with each hand stuffed with paper talismans, Caster hangs in the air about five meters over Yuuyuu and inundates her immediate area with bright, open flames that stream out violently from her handfuls of elemental talismans. The heat being generated from both Servants' fiery powers is tremendous; I can feel my own bangs getting somewhat singed even though their "little spar" hasn't even elapsed one minute yet.
Instead of evading the attack, Youkihi elects to take it head-on, and through the jetstreams of fire, she bursts out of Tamamo's flames, her arms crossed over her face to protect it from the fire's most adverse effects, and with her flute-batons still grasped firmly in her hands, she lashes both of them out at once at her enemy like a blunt Weapon X. Not expecting someone like Yuuyuu to brave her attack head-on like this, Tamamo is caught unawares by Yuuyuu's daring gambit and feels the impact of one of her adversary's flutes against her left cheek, but given Yuuyuu's disadvantageous position midair and the awkward backhanding motion of her striking arm, Caster is spared a worse outcome as she merely banks to the side as she quickly regains.
"Why you - how DARE you!"
Snarling with a kind of savagery that I've had the pleasure of hearing only a few times before, Tamamo no Mae, while regaining in midair, flicks all the talismans that she has in both hands back at Yuuyuu. It's clear that Foreigner cannot alter her own trajectory once she's in the air like Tamamo can, so Youkihi has no choice but to eat all ten talismans that each explode in rapid succession like a chain reaction that shoots her down from the sky like a crashing warplane that's just lost a dogfight.
Despite this string of direct hits, Yuuyuu demonstrates surprising tenacity as she hits the ground on both feet, her skin, face, clothes, and hair clearly showing blackened burn marks; both of her hair buns have been undone, resulting in an unexpected but momentarily breathtaking view of a long-haired Yang Yuhuan whose dark purple hair that borders on jet-black flows with the brief gust of wind that's passing through the park.
With adrenaline pumping through her veins, Yuuyuu, focused on her opponent with such concentration that her jade-blue eyes are starting to simmer with small blue fires of their own, which causes an intricately mesmerizing effect of her eyes emitting short wisps of sharp blue light, drops one of her flutes to play the other, with the discarded flute defying gravity and floating behind its owner for future use if needed. The lute notes float through the calm night air of the displacement spell, and blue, fiery vessels once more appear around Yuuyuu, revolving around her as though she were a powerful celestial star.
But Youkihi doesn't stop playing. The longer she plays her flute, the more vessels she summons, so to stop her -
"Oh no you don't!"
Blasting off the air to get airborne again, Caster, twirling her arms around before her before outstretching them straight up in a spirit-bomb motion, channels her mana to quickly create a ball of swirling, turbulent indigo energy that generates whipping winds of its own that causes Tamamo's kimono to rattle generously in its wake; once again I can't help but wonder how on earth that outfit is still staying put.
"CHAOS - HEAVEN!"
With a mighty heave of both arms that didn't take her an entire season's worth of episodes to charge, she hucks her spirit bomb that's the size of a small apartment bedroom down at her opponent.
In response, Yuuyuu changes the notes she's playing on her bamboo flute, and at her directive, the growing army of blue flame vessels that she's managed to generate up to now aggregate into a solid ball of raging blue flames, and it really does give off the image of a little blue sun. Once grown to a sufficient enough size, Yuuyuu sends it up to meet Tamamo's chaotic energy strike, and the two spheres of mana collide in spectacular fashion, causing Tamamo's chaotic energy to shriek and scream and Youkihi's blue flames to roar and boom as their energies clash and rage against one another. At first, Tamamo's spirit bomb appears to be winning, but Yuuyuu continues creating more blue vessels that consequently soar up to add themselves as fuel to the weakening blue sun, sustaining it more and more to the point where Youkihi's sun finally begins to win this potentially catastrophic bout of tug-of-war, pushing Tamamo's Chaos Heaven back to its sender.
Knowing that she can't continue to fuel her own attack in the same fashion as Yang can, Tamamo drops out of the air and curves her trajectory just before she hits the ground, flying directly over the grass for just a moment to perform a high-speed flying kick aimed directly for Yuuyuu's face. Yuuyuu tries to defend herself by diverting the rest of the blue vessels she's summoned to attack Tamamo directly to stop her instead of feeding the blue sun that's pushing Chaos Heaven further up into the sky above them, but Tamamo's flying kick, reinforced with dense mana and a powerful barrier talisman planted on the sole of her platform shoe, pierces straight through her opponent's fiery minions that get bisected like fluffy cornbread sliced by a hot knife.
But before the flying kick can connect with Yuuyuu's face, the latter drops the flute that she's playing, grabs the giant pipa that flies to her hand from the ground where it was dropped from before at the time she drew her pair of bamboo flutes, and jams her playing hand down on its strings, causing a flash explosion of blue flames to burst up from the ground directly in front of her and cascade back in Tamamo's direction like a tidal wave of fire.
Tamamo's flying kick still manages to pierce through this crashing wave of blue fire, but the sheer energy packed into it does deflate its speed significantly. Still, it appears that Yuuyuu expected this wall of flame to stop her enemy in her tracks, which it didn't, so Yang still gets the bottom of a platform shoe plastered straight into her face for her troubles. At least it's nowhere near as painful as it could have been, but Yang immediately reacts by grabbing a terrifyingly firm hold of Tamamo's ankle and shin, and with a great war cry that does not sound like something one of the world's most historically famous consorts should be capable of making, Yang Guifei pivots and subsequently slams Caster with brutal impunity on the burning grass behind her.
Having braced for the inevitable impact, Tamamo recovers quickly and causes the talisman on the bottom of her sole to detonate, forcing Yang to let go and back away if she doesn't want to eat an explosion this time. However, as soon as Yang backs away, Tamamo cancels her talisman's detonation to create a feint, and pushing off the ground with her arms, she swiftly regains her footing to face Youkihi directly.
Foreigner, who's realized that the talisman ploy was a feint, is already diving back at Caster, unarmed this time and with a glint of fierce blue flame in her eye. But she demonstrates that the lack of instruments is no hindrance for her: sliding across the grass, Youkihi turns her right shoulder and performs a graceful but powerful Tetsuzanko shoulder strike. Her feet, carried across the waving grass with the help of her circulating mana, leaves a small but blazing trail of blue fire in her wake where her feet's dragged across the ground.
Caught unaware once again that Youkihi would resort to bare-handed martial arts, Tamamo returns the favor after raising her arms quickly to block the strike and being knocked back a few feet by raising her right leg.
"HWAAAAAAAAAAA - ! ! ! !"
With a bellowing kiai, Tamamo turns her right leg into a blur of its own, delivering lightning-fast speed-kicks at Yuuyuu, each of which is strong enough to knock an ordinary human being out cold if they connect. But Yang stands her ground - her eyes tracking Tamamo's eyes as if she can see each individual kick, Foreigner blocks each kick perfectly every time each one lands, guarding efficiently against Tamamo's Hyakuretsukyaku with perfect blocks of her hands and the backs of her arms. Because both Servants are charging their limbs with mana to give their attacks and guards to give them the edge in this battle, the resulting kicks and blocks cause a miniature lightshow, with each of Tamamo's kicks blasting blue flames off Yuuyuu's arms and hands.
The moment Tamamo's kicks begin to falter in speed, Yang seizes her opportunity to counterattack: suddenly choosing to duck underneath one of Caster's remaining kicks, Foreigner performs a sweeping kick of her own to knock Tamamo over because she's been standing on only one leg this whole time, causing Tamamo to disengage from her speed-kicks to hop back to avoid the sweep. But she re-engages immediately, and with both feet firmly on the ground to dissuade Yang from trying to sweep her like that again, Tamamo no Mae takes a strong step forward and lets a powerful hook rip, aimed straight for Yang Yuhuan's head with enough force to give even the toughest UFC fighter a major concussion.
Yang blocks this strike expertly as well, so Tamamo continues to unleash blow after blow at her opponent, each strike just as powerful as the last. Punch after kick after punch after kick - I feel like I'm watching something straight out of Ip Man watching these two spar like this; even the sound effects of Yang perfectly guarding against each of Tamamo's advances are reminiscent of the movies, though I suspect it's because of the sheer concentration of mana that they're putting into each of their respective strikes.
A ground-shaking explosion joins the fray overhead, and glancing up quickly at it, I realize that the two colliding balls of energy that my two Servants unleashed on each other from about a minute ago has finally exploded together, causing the sky to briefly rain blue flames. But neither Tamamo nor Yuuyuu seem to notice; they continue to punch, kick, block, and repeat even as blue fire rains down on them from above to create a truly awe-inspiring scene of two ferocious fighters locked in a battle to the death - even though that's the one thing I told them not to do.
Tamamo attempts to raise her right leg for a side kick to catch Yang's left side, but Youkihi simply raises her own left foot that stops Tamamo's foot from advancing, forcing Caster to disengage briefly to regain her footing.
In this rare moment of respite, I catch a glimpse of Tamamo's own eyes - they, too, are simmering gold, and her pupils have elongated. Human pupils don't look like that, last time I checked.
Silently, Yang takes two advancing steps, one for each foot that causes them to stride graciously inwards towards the opposing leg then out, before extending both arms and hands forward from her hips, her luscious dark hair having abandoned their courtly beauty for a more primitive and wild appearance instead as her own flames cascades into the earth all around her.
Once again, Tamamo initiates, this time with a flash-step into a front palm strike aimed low for Youkihi's abdomen. But having keenly studied her opponent's striking patterns, Yang successfully predicts the general area of Tamamo's next intended target and is able to not only block the palm strike with just one hand this time, stopping the palm strike with the outer side of her left forearm, but also stride forward and smash the side of her wrist into the left side of Tamamo's chin with such force that she knocks Caster to the ground cleanly. As Tamamo's back flattens the grass underneath it, Yang stoops down and unleashes a rapid series of knuckle strikes against Tamamo's face, causing her head to repeatedly bounce up and down off the ground before the pain that ensues shocks Tamamo back into action and compels her to lash out with her right arm to catch Youkihi by her left ankle, which the latter avoids and backs off once more.
Without warning, Yang Yuhuan's fists ignite with blue flame, just around the time when the blue fire from the heavens has just finished falling, and when Tamamo gets up to her own feet again, Youkihi seizes the offense this time. Approaching with quick steps with both fists raised as before, with the one difference being that they're now on fire, Yuuyuu tosses out a few weak punches aimed at Tamamo's head to build her rhythm, which Tamamo herself blocks, but the flaming edge of the Chinese Foreigner's limbs causes the Japanese Caster's own hands, wrists, and arms to singe and blister, now that both of them are slowly beginning to feel the exhaustion and strain of battle take a toll on their protective manas.
The whirlwind of punches, jabs, and kicks resumes yet again, but this time with a distinct momentum shift: Youkihi is the one who brings the heat to Tamamo, whose hair flies with the breeze just like her opponent's; absent is the latter's bellowing kiai, replaced instead by the silent serenity and deadly aura of Yang Yuhuan, whose burning fists put enormous pressure on Caster. But this only lasts for a short while: in the middle of their furious exchange of blows, Tamamo drapes her own fists in her own compacted mana, colored a vivid pink just like her hair.
"RRRRRRRRAAAAAGGGGGH!"
Roaring savagely once again to establish her audible dominance, Tamamo's strikes redouble their efforts; while Yuuyuu's strikes certainly do not lack in technique and grace, Tamamo's sheer strength and superior mana control starts to tilt the offensive back in her favor. But Yang doesn't let her have it back so easily; rather than strength, Youkihi puts more speed and accuracy into her own strikes, which helps balance out the odds again because Tamamo must keep her own power in check by blocking more of her opponent's strikes. Blue and pink flame is cast into the air all around them, flaking off the combatants' limbs every time their arms, hands, legs, and feet make contact.
Soon, each of my Servants' attacks begin to connect on each other as both of their defenses begin to falter. Youkihi manages to break through first and score painful hits on Tamamo's abdomen and the side of her head, while Tamamo replies back swiftly with an elbow strike against Yuuyuu's chest, directly between her breasts that briefly knocks the wind out of her trachea. Yang parries Tamamo's hook and opens her up to a following double palm strike just underneath Tamamo's own two breasts, but Tamamo performs a swift spin kick that catches Yuuyuu on the chin without warning. Eventually, the hits get worse and worse as both their defenses start to fail catastrophically and they start racking up alarming numbers of brutal hits on each other until blood joins the flakes of blue and pink mana that fly into the air around them.
Soon, the strenuous test of martial arts prowess between the two ferocious Servants comes to a head when Tamamo misjudges her step and enters a bit too far into Yuuyuu's striking range, but she corrects her mistake immediately by tucking her neck down and raising her shoulders to protect her vulnerable nape from another one of Yang's chop strikes, but it doesn't come. Instead, Youkihi takes this as an opportunity to score a devastating elbow strike against the side of Tamamo's head, while Tamamo herself intends to plant her right knuckles against the side of Youkihi's head where Tamamo's managed to strike her twice before for a clean knockout punch. In such close proximity, both blows will land on their respective targets at the same time, and who knows what'll happen with these two being in their respective states.
"Alright, that's enough. I told you two not to try to kill each other like this."
Both Yuuyuu's elbow and Tamamo's fist slap into my outstretched hands that catch both limbs, stopping both of them in their tracks. For a moment, all I hear is the whispers of flame burning on the ground and the grass all around us and the labored, gasping breaths of my Caster and my Foreigner Servants. Letting go of them, Yuuyuu and Tamamo step backwards, still glaring at each other in the aftermath of their bloody duel. Both of them, still with fires burning in their eyes, have blood dripping down various parts of their faces and heads, and their fists, still clenched with the intent to kill, sport terrible scrapes, bruises, and burns.
Glancing back and forth at each of them, I offer them a satisfied smile, even though I know they're probably not paying attention to me at the moment.
"But...color me impressed, you two. I think we'll be able to work well together."