(A/N) Noice. The story returns after a mildly concerning month or so away without leave. Thanks for making His Body is Made of Swords my first story to reach 1k follows, everyone (Emiya-sensei demolished the record in like two chapters, but that's a story for another time).
To commemorate this wonderful milestone, I'll be drawing out the entire first chapter as a fan comic. It will be a way for me to practice using different digital brushes, as I am still more or less an amateur when it comes to digital media. I'll post it on my Twitter, and I'll let y'all know (somehow) when it's done.
So here we are, part one of the grand finale of the introductory "segment" of HBMS. It will probably be spread over quite a few chapters and will end up going places that few will expect. A lot of the stuff that's been alluded to will come into play shortly (or not so shortly idk lol)
Thanks for sticking with me up until this point, and I hope that we all (mostly me) make it to the true starting line of the story with our brains in one piece.
X
The vice director, a man I've quite certainly never met in my extended life, stared down at Sakura, then at me. After looking at us for a little over a second, his eyes dragged themselves up to meet Kiritsugu's.
I had to stop myself from shuffling on my feet. Silence for this long was kind of awkward, wasn't it?
The man had a stern, wrinkled face, though I'm sure he was still older than he appeared. He wore his greying brown hair at shoulder length, paired with a voluminous mustache. His clasped hands pushed up the said mustache, elbows propped securely on his oak desk.
He looked the part of a man that hadn't a clue why there were kids standing in front of him, nor what he was expected to do with their presence.
"Lorelei, dear, why don't you take the children outside."
I suppose that worked.
"I– uhm…" the woman seemed flustered all of a sudden. "Grandfather… what would you have me do with them?"
She hid it well, but I could see the panic in her eyes. She was probably about as used to looking after little kids as she was used to saying "No" to her grandfather.
Kiritsugu spared me a glance, his face contorted in such a way that I could interpret his intentions as "Will you two be alright on your own?"
His worry quickly died as he spotted my poorly-concealed mirth at the young woman's expense.
That's right, old man. You just focus on getting what we came here for.
"Give them a tour," suggested the older man with a wave of the hand. I couldn't say I expected Policies to host walkarounds very often, but then again there couldn't be very many children that come here with their parents.
"Yes. Of course."
X
Policies was a large department with a strong faculty representation. Despite knowing this, it still surprised me a great deal to find out just how far out their campus extended. Barthomeloi had told us that we were underground somewhere near Hyde Park, over three kilometers from where we entered the college.
"Few have been allowed to step so close to the Chamber of Law. Be grateful," she told us for the thousandth time as we walked past another door that probably led to somewhere important.
Honestly, the whole "being grateful" thing might stick better if she bothered to actually explain where we were, or the significance of the places she was overselling.
Willing to get us out of her grandfather's hair she might be, but a tour guide she was not.
"Can we see what's inside?" I tried to break the monotony of our current activity.
Barthomeloi crushed my hopes quickly and efficiently. "No."
I didn't even bother trying to argue with her. The stubbornness that radiated from her person was strong enough to rival a certain magus I knew; my energy would be better spent elsewhere.
This woman was like Rin in many ways… except she had all the "tsun" and none of the "dere".
As luck would have it, the repetitive scenery of the Clocktower's underground passage was done away with as some sort of botanical garden came into sight.
Bathomeloi didn't even give it a glance and walked right past it.
Sakura seemed much more captivated, by comparison. She stared at a nearby flowerbed with glimmering eyes.
"Ah…"
She shuffled closer to a batch of blue flowers and crouched over them.
Barthomeloi looked over her shoulder with an irritated expression. "Why are you wasting time with decorations? Let us move on."
So it really was just a garden then– possibly placed here as some sort of landmark or meeting place for the few students who'd bother with such a thing. It couldn't be anything else for her to disregard it so easily.
I could have come up with some sort of retort that would've surely driven her up the walls, but I was drawing blanks. My focus was on Sakura, who was showing more emotion over a few plants than I've seen from her since I kidnapped her.
"Well?" asked our guardian expectantly.
"We'll be looking at these flowers for a bit. Thanks."
Her jaw slackened. It wasn't by much, but the expression was accentuated by how tight her face usually was. Young, she may be, but I couldn't help but doubt that she had much experience with others telling her "No."
Ignoring the brunette's presence, I asked my friend, "Are you alright, Sakura?"
"…Mommy likes these flowers."
"…"
Not much I could say to that, to be honest. I never knew the girl's mother personally, I don't think, and I wouldn't be able to remember Rin's mentions of her if my life depended on it. Dead or simply not around, I did not know.
Sakura reached for a flower.
My heartbeat quickened. At first, I didn't know what was happening, but then a shock ran through my brain.
Like what happened at the church, I perceived the world around me in a way that humans could not, let alone a child of my supposed age.
Once more, I saw through the eyes of a counter guardian.
It was for that reason alone that I was able to react in time.
I pulled the smaller girl towards me by the collar of her shirt, and steadied her as she was swept off her feet. In the same instant, the maw of some sort of creature erupted from the flowerbed and crashed into the previously occupied pathway.
The attack was ill-intentioned. The impact alone sent dust and rubble flying every which way, forcing me to turn my back to it so as not to let the debris hit Sakura.
I cursed my physical inability to jump away from the danger. I heard a growl from behind me, and I knew that I had exposed my back to whatever it was that was after us.
My newfound sense of perception alerted me of a strike closing in on the side of my head. Maybe if I acted fast enough, I would be able to–
WHOOSH
I dropped to the ground, and pulled Sakura along with me as forceful tunnels of wind came to life behind me. I heard the creature screech, then a rumble as something collided against the walls of the extended hallway.
Barthomeloi marched our way with a livid snarl across her face.
"Who dares?" she demanded of who I presumed to be our assailant. "The Department of Zoology better have a remarkable explanation for this."
I got to my feet and looked for the creature. A good ten paces away, closer to the edges of the garden, laid an unresponsive and very much dead chimera. There was a good chunk taken out of the wall behind it.
I didn't bother to question how such a massive thing came out of a twenty-centimeter shrubbery, as I knew its presence was somehow masked by magecraft.
Logically, what I did ask was, "Do you think its master is nearby?"
Barthomeloi grunted. "I would presume so."
Her eyes took a quick glance from side to side.
"This is not an ideal place for a confrontation," she told us. As if to support her argument, a chute of loosened tile fell from the ceiling. "We are being targeted, but my magecraft is not suited for narrow spaces, where our opponent cowers out of sight."
The vitriol at the tip of her tongue had me convinced that she wanted to hurt whoever was after our group more than they did us.
As if queued by her challenge, a pair of shadows jumped out behind the angry brunette. She spun around to confront them, but I, by benefit of a clear path, was able to act faster.
I traced two blades as close to the shadows as I could and fired them simultaneously. One was caught by surprise and impaled straight through the chest, but the other got by with a grazed shoulder.
The figure, dressed head-to-toe in a black cloth that hid their identity, threw an object –a rudimentary explosive, as I saw it through an instant structural analysis– straight at the ceiling.
I wasn't able to warn our guardian in time. In less than a second, everything in a ten-meter radius above us came crashing down around us, closing off any means of escape. The underground tunnels must have been close to the surface, as flashes of natural light slipped through the cracks.
The change happened in a blink.
The garden was a mess. I had lost track of Barthomeloi, and Sakura was–
I panicked.
"Sakura!"
I swung my head from side to side. My eyesight, sharpened as it was, quickly zeroed in on the masked figure that was holding her underarm.
I wouldn't be able to engage the enemy with ranged projectiles as long as they held a hostage. Were I a good eighty centimeters taller and about a hundred pounds larger, I would have been able to engage in melee combat, but alas, I was anchored to the body of a rug rat.
Barthomeloi, from wherever she was, heard my yell. She suddenly appeared over my shoulder, pulled out a riding crop out from under her sleeve and pointed it at the remaining assassin.
Before the figure could escape through the only possible exit, the ceiling was blocked by a flurry of rubble kept afloat by magical wind currents.
The figure jumped away, but not fast enough to escape a few scrapes. In their arms, Sakura whimpered audibly as she was unluckily struck across the forehead by a sharp rock.
"Watch it!" I shouted at the woman who was supposed to be helping, not making things worse.
As my terrible running luck would have it, she wasn't even given the change to answer for her misdeed.
The wind spell that was supposed to serve as a barricade ended up doing the complete opposite. The flying rocks knocked loose what little support the ceiling had left.
Barthomeloi's eye's widened. Acting quickly, she dismissed her spell and erected an air dome large enough to protect both of our heads from the more hazardous bits of falling rubble.
What was once a few man-sized cracks had unfortunately become much more than "a few man-sized cracks". The segment of underground hallways in which we were trapped had adopted an open-air concept.
A low growl echoed. At first, I thought it was the woman next to me, but the noise was shortly followed by many others.
I looked up. Coming down from the newly-made hole above our heads, four more chimeras approached with coiled shoulders, ready to pounce on us.
Reinforcements?
…Unlikely. I would wager that a secondary force was positioned close by in case… whatever this was didn't work out for them.
Disregarding my slowly simmering anger, I didn't feel a shred of worry. Chimeras were technically phantasmal species, but that didn't mean that these patchwork dolls made by modern craft would pack the same punch as the mystery of a creature from the age of the gods.
I could attest to that.
Barthomeloi likely felt the same way. She bent one of these things in half with a single blow, after all.
All that said, my following actions had nothing to do "fear" or any kind of sense of self-preservation. They were entirely vindictive, and the result of my misplaced frustration.
Five nameless swords appeared over my shoulder.
Ten more, accompanied by seven spears.
Thirty more swords, fifteen spears, twelve halberds.
In the span of three and a half seconds, one hundred and twenty-six weapons were traced in the relatively confined space of the underground pathway. It took twice as long for all of said weapons to be launched, and for all four chimeras to drop dead as a result of the onslaught.
Annoyingly, the kidnapper knew to take advantage of my delay. In an impressive display of reinforcement magecraft, they jumped straight out to the open air above.
Sighing, I started to climb the pile of rubble as quickly as I could. The surface wasn't too far away, luckily.
I didn't make it more than an inch off the ground before Barthomeloi grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and lifted me all the way up. She was manipulating the air currents in order to make us float.
I was placed down on two feet, and I only felt somewhat embarrassed that she was able to hold my weight with a single hand.
I was able to get a proper view of the park, and I didn't like what I saw.
There were a good thirty to forty more masked heads similar to the pair that had ambushed us in the garden. Even under daylight, the black cloth prevented me from noticing any distinguishing features on any of them.
It was very probable that they were mystic codes of some sort.
I spotted the one who ran with Sakura.
He was visibly tired. Though he didn't make a noise, his frame was slumped and his chest heaved. At some point, he had knocked the girl out.
I traced the most aerodynamic and low-cost knife I could and landed it between the captor's ears.
The action caught the notice of the group. Sakura was taken by another figure the moment she touched the ground.
"You're a fool, boy," muttered Barthomeloi under her breath. "We're grossly outnumbered."
A… fair point. We didn't know the extent of their abilities, either.
But nonetheless…
"We can't let them take Sakura."
If this was an organized attack, and they were prioritizing taking Sakura over killing us, then I'd wager that whoever was in charge of this knew who she was.
Whether it was Zouken trying to take her back or someone else, the end result wouldn't be good for her either way.
I would not allow it. If I had to give up mine and this stuck-up woman's life to save her, then so be it.
"How frustrating."
Our attention turned to another woman making herself visible at the front of the group. She was the only one unmasked, revealing her pale skin and shortly-cropped blond hair, and wore some sort of odd military uniform in place of the black garb.
She did seem quite frustrated. If nothing else, she was upfront about her feelings.
Barthomeloi tilted her chin up and made a point of looking down on the other woman.
"Christodoulopoulos," she greeted scathingly.
…Eh? Did they know each other?
The blonde tisked. "It would have made my life a lot easier if you could have died when you were supposed to. It will be significantly more difficult to keep this operation quiet if you struggle too much."
Another pair of chimeras slid past the ranks of the assassins and flanked her on each side. Unlike the other five who were more similar to the standard mythological depiction of the creature, these had the heads of bears and the bodies of… I didn't know what that was supposed to be, honestly. A really large cat? A deer with paws?
I stared at the side of Barthomeloi's head.
"You two don't get along," I remarked.
"It is not your concern," she replied through clenched teeth.
I'd disagree, seeing as how they were trying to kill us, but I wasn't about to start that argument right now.
"Who hired you?" I asked the blonde from where I stood. I had no clue who she was, and I'd wager that she didn't know who Sakura and I were either.
I was met with silence. The lady tilted her neck towards us with narrowed eyes, clearly not having understood what I had said from so far away.
To my complete and utter dismay, I was unable to speak any louder. Because of my youthful lungs and vocal cords, anything more than the tone I had just used would come out as a squeak.
I was not a prideful individual, but pride had nothing to do with saving myself from unnecessary embarrassment.
Barthomeloi stared down at me, as if asking if I was going to repeat myself. I stared back as neutrally as possible.
"Who is your employer!" Barthomeloi spoke for me.
Thank you. I won't say it out loud, but thank you.
The blonde's frown flipped into a cocky sneer. "Employer? No."
One of the cloaked members of her troupe took off with Sakura. My face was stone cold, but I could feel my fingernails digging into the flesh of my palms.
"We're just returning a favour. They scratch our back, we scratch theirs."
She swung her arms out to the side, gesturing to the masked forces behind her.
I almost recoiled in surprise, not actually expecting her to answer. To this day, I couldn't understand the way these prideful magi thought things through. Regardless, I'd make sure to remember that bit of information.
"Barthomeloi," I spoke softly.
Her eyes flicked my way.
"I'm going to do something very stupid. It will drain all of my magical power, and I will probably pass out. When I do, leave me and go after Sakura."
I felt Barthomeloi's calculating glare on the back of my head.
"You're not a normal child," she remarked. "Son of the Magus Killer or not."
How observant of you.
"Will you, yes or no?"
"…"
She was taking too long to answer. Oh well. I could only hope she listens.
"Trace, on."
A respectable four or so meters above my head, the demon spear of Culann's Hound spun slowly.
If I was going to throw it this way, then I would have liked to keep it as far from my body as possible.
"Gáe…"
There it was: the drain on my reserves. These circuits hadn't been tempered by thousands of years' worth of use, so one mystery of this level was just about all that I would be able to manage.
"Bolg!"
The Noble Phantasm was thrown, and one became many. I heard some sort of commotion, but I couldn't learn the results of my efforts before consciousness left me.
X
"Wake up, boy."
I groaned.
"I don't have time for this, and neither do you."
A hand shook my shoulder vigorously, and I could feel my brain rattle in my skull. Show some restraint, would you? You're not supposed to shake a kid this much.
My eyes opened, and I was met with the mildly blurry face of Barthomeloi.
"Well?" I asked.
"They got away," she grumbled.
Though I was in the motion of sitting upright, my strength was taken from me and I flopped right back onto the upturned ground beneath me.
"Damnit."
"I won't allow the girl to slip away from us."
Slip away? She was already gone, but she shouldn't have "slipped away" at all to begin with. It was becoming clear to me that this teenage version of the future vice-director wasn't yet as capable as she would one day become.
"…What happened?" I asked.
"Christa survived the explosion," she answered. "I defeated her, but she delayed me for nearly a minute. She took advantage of the fact that you were... indisposed, and targeted your body."
She made "nearly a minute" sound as though she was kept to a standstill. I guess I couldn't fault her too much if she was trying to stop me from being killed.
Even though I asked her not to.
"Christa? Is that the blond woman?"
Barthomeloi nodded. "Christa Christodoulopoulos is the daughter of Agamemnon Christodoulopoulos, a man who shows great… dislike for my grandfather. Agamemnon resents that Lord Barthomeloi was elected vice-director over himself."
This Christa woman mentioned something about returning a favour, didn't she?
"Not liking him is one thing, but can they afford to attack you like this? They must know that they wouldn't have gotten away with it if they didn't kill all of us."
"It is strange," she agreed. "Grandfather would have every excuse he would need to erase their bloodline."
Gears started to turn in my head, and I didn't like what I was coming up with.
"What if we weren't the only targets? Lord Barthomeloi could be in trouble."
The old man too.
She waved her hand dismissively. "Impossible. Despite his renown within the Department of Zoology, Agamemnon isn't a Lord. He doesn't have the forces or resources to…"
She trailed off, looking off to the side.
I finally decided to sit up straight to find what she was looking at.
Countless cloaked bodies littered the scorched earth of Hyde Park.
"They scratch our back, we scratch theirs," I mumbled, recalling the blond woman's words from earlier.
If these weren't her men, then they most likely belonged to whoever wanted Sakura.
It would make sense. Christodoulopoulos probably brokered a deal where the third party would provide forces to overthrow Barthomeloi, and Sakura would be secured for them in return.
I couldn't be sure without definite proof. Maybe Christa had something on her person that we could use as a clue.
"Where's the blonde now?"
Barthomeloi pointed to an uprooted tree.
I quickly spotted Christa Christodoulopoulos' body and planted my face in my hands. If there wasn't even a limb to be made out of the bloody smear on the bark, then my hopes of finding a letter or something similar were close to none.
"Let's unmask these people," I suggested.
She nodded. Thankfully, Barthomeloi was past the point of dismissing me because of my appearance.
I approached the closest body that was more or less in one piece and pulled on the face mask.
I frowned. The mystic code seemed to prevent me from removing the covering.
With an insignificant gesture of the hand, Barthomeloi muttered, "Cyrf."
A blade of wind sliced through the neck of the corpse, severing the spell, cloth, and head all at once.
A cold sweat ran down my neck. Cyrf was a simple wind spell, but its intention was to "cut". Much like how Rin was powerful enough to turn her simple "Gandr" curse into a physically damaging attack, Barthomeloi's spell was overloaded with so much magical energy to the point that it cut straight through the barriers of the mystic code as if they weren't even there.
She might be a little less refined than the Lorelei Barthomeloi of the future, but the raw talent was doubtlessly there.
Pulling off the headcover, her brow furrowed at the sight underneath.
"This is…"
I gulped.
Why? Why them again? What could they possibly want with Sakura?
"It's a homunculus," Barthomeloi announced.
They all were, most likely.
First Kischur's Jewel, now Sakura. If it was raw magical power that they were after, then…
I sighed.
"Let's go make sure the vice-director is alright."
I sincerely hoped that I wouldn't have to rescue their sorry asses, but if I did, then Lord Barthomeloi better return the favour.
I had a kouhai to save.
I tried to stand up, but I stumbled and almost fell, were it not for Barthomeloi steadying me.
"After what you did, you should be glad to still be alive," she chided. "It was reckless."
"It worked."
"You're insufferable."
"So I've been told."
She let go of me and watched as I fell to the earth face first. "You will be useless as you are now."
"…"
She let the issue die when it was clear that I lost the exchange. Instead, she focused on a different matter.
"That spell you used. It wasn't Gradation Air," she remarked, referring to my earlier stunt to take out all the cloaked figures.
"Oh?" I quirked a brow. "And what makes you say that?"
If my acting like an ignoramus made her want to pulverize me the same way she did the other magus girl, then she didn't show it. For whatever reason, she seemed infinitely more patient now then however I remembered her to be.
"The strength of… whatever that was... grossly surpasses what is capable of being achieved with a simple projection. It will be quite difficult for us to return the park to the condition it was in before."
I could believe it. Gáe Bolg made it look like someone was testing some sort of bomb here.
"I'm good at what I do."
"You don't look a day over six," she noted.
"I resent that," I shot back. "I'm…"
I took a moment to remember how old I was supposed to be. "At least seven."
And if you're going to bring that up in an argument, you can at least pretend to be phased by it. You've been talking to me this whole time the same as you would if I were a grown man, and you know it.
Barthomeloi didn't deign to answer back. Instead, she said, "Lord Barthomeloi is not so weak as to fall to someone like Agamemnon."
I stood once more, as shaky as my legs were.
"Is that a risk you're willing to take?"
She might have been right, but there must have been a reason that Lorelei Barthomeloi could become the vice-director of one of the Mage's Association's prime institutions at such a young age. On one hand, there were enough inconsistencies between the two timelines that I knew to dismiss the thought, but on the other, anything that involved the Einzbern family couldn't be dismissed out of hand.
"Of course not!" she denied in such a defensive tone that I could barely consolidate it with the fact that it came out of her mouth.
I grimaced. I was just about done with her wasting time. "Then we need to stop overthinking this and get going. The sooner we stop these people from attacking Lord Barthomeloi, the sooner I can get him to help me find Sakura."
I didn't necessarily think the man was weak to guilt trips or anything, but anyone in such a high legislative position would be expected to return favours.
The brunette crossed her arms. "Absolutely not."
Huh?"
"I won't let you take advantage of his situation," she explained. "Lord Barthomeloi has tasked me with ensuring your safety, and I won't disappoint him any further. I will retrieve the girl personally."
It took everything that I had in me to not pull at my hair in frustration. This woman was an absolute self-important mess. Shame on me for thinking her intentions were even marginally altruistic.
