["And when that vision came to pass, the king prayed once again for guidance. But this time, the Voice was silent." — Codex Orchestral, Solo 10:4]
The midday sky was a beautiful shade of blue, with a few dainty clouds painted on its long canvas. Kiritsugu felt his hair ruffle as a light wind passed by. He hadn't changed out of the coat yet, nor did he really want to. As he made his way up to this rampart that stood near the castle's tip, he searched his person and realized that some of his guns had come along with him. Both the Calico and the Contender were holstered in his jacket pockets, hidden in the darkness by some strange magic until he intended to pull them out.
They were comforting. The only comfort he could allow himself, really. He did have a momentary insecurity about ammunition, but a soft tug on his attention let him notice the small pouch on his hip. When he dug around, he found what seemed like endless helical magazines and thirty-ought-six bullets. An unexpected gift from that goddess—one that didn't come anywhere near to papering things over.
But he let it go. It didn't matter. In the end, they were merely tools. The guns his tools, he the tool of this kingdom, the kingdom the tool of the goddess, and who knows what kind of being she answered to.
A sigh left him. He could only survey the city and surrounding countryside for so long, only wring so much information out of this overlooking view, before he needed to get a feel for it on the ground. But they didn't seem very eager to let their prospective king wander the streets as he willed, especially given his expressed intent to leave.
"U-um." He suppressed a twitch. Once again, he had forgotten about the witch. Had death made him sloppy? Or was it the five years of slow deterioration? "Sura for your thoughts?"
"This is quite the peaceful city for a country at war," he remarked. Guard patrols were, while not uncommon, somewhat infrequent. And he could spot at least six uncovered infiltration points on this side of the castle alone. If security was this lax in the capital, then he could only wonder at how the other marked locations on Solaire's map fared.
"Sonata hasn't seen battle in… well over a century, I think." She approached the ledge alongside him, though with a healthy distance between them. "B-but we've been getting much better ever since the Demon War started! And when the, um, the last king died, well… there was a lockdown for a few days while we prepared for the worst. But when it didn't appear… things went back down again. Though this is still the most guarded we've been in over a century."
Kiritsugu spotted another patrol through the main marketplace.
Eight minutes, thirty-nine seconds.
Eight minutes was a long time. At least the guards were taking their positions seriously, warding off potential criminals and keeping an eye out for unusual activity. He hadn't seen a single patrol slacking off. No drunks, no roughhousing, nothing but perfect little soldier boys.
He could have killed them all before they screamed for help.
"I'm… sorry."
The murmured words could've been lost to the wind, but he managed to pick them up. Rather than answering, he looked at her for the first time since coming up here. She couldn't be any older than 20, and definitely did not fit her position of importance. Her body language screamed 'I don't belong here', which was only accented by her diminutive stature—she was at least a head shorter than him, if not two.
Taking the silence as an invitation to continue, she spoke again. "I screwed up. It's my fault. It's all my fault that you weren't summoned at the right time so the princess got a worse impression of you than you deserve and I don't know what else might have gone wrong and I'm sorry I feel so foolish and stupid I definitely messed up I'm—"
She paused to breathe and collect herself. "I'm sorry," she repeated, pulling off her glasses and rubbing at her eyes. "Now I'm wasting your time with my stupid… sorry."
There was a kind of irony in someone like him being asked to pull someone out of the pit of despair. He wasn't sure what to do with it. Compassion and comfort were not his forte, they were… something she had excelled at.
That thought dragged a cold claw through his chest, hitting every rib on the way down.
"I just…" The witch spoke up again. "No, sorry, never mind, I'll shut up. I talk too much anyway."
Before it disappeared entirely, he grabbed ahold of the claw. The pain came from the jagged glass of the broken memory, stained with guilt and sorrow, but that was the only way he could reach it. That was the only way he could even begin to think of what she might have done here.
He inhaled through a tight throat.
"I'm listening."
She looked up at him, but when their eyes met she hurriedly looked away again. "No, really, it's okay, I'm fine. I just needed a second, that's all, really. I'm great, honestly. Feeling a lot better already."
Another rough inhale. Once again, he wished he had a cigarette.
"Tell me what's wrong."
He was no longer offering, he was demanding. Maybe… someone else would've been able to help the witch—he had forgotten her name, damn it—without resorting to such forceful tactics. But he could only do what he could do. And if nobody else could, or would…
She wiped at her eyes with her arm. "I-I'm just… ah, there's a lot of pressure. Lots that I'm r-responsible for as court mage, and I'm sure I'm doing it all wrong. They're all just too polite to say anything, but I can see it." Melancholy slackened her face. "Actually, I-I know it. Lady Marianne would never have fumbled something so basic as the hour, and she w-would already have the crystal pillar set up for you and…"
Her words caught on a sigh that sounded suspiciously like a sob.
"I'm sorry, Y-Yuusha-sama. I'm supposed to be helping, and… and guiding you, telling you everything you need to know, but I-I barely know what I'm doing so…"
She rubbed her eyes again, harder than before.
"Never mind," she muttered as she grabbed her forearms to calm the small shivers running through her frame. "I know it will all work out, now that you're here. Senia herself sent you." She offered him a tentative smile that grew in strength as she seemingly repeated that mantra in her mind. "So let's work hard together, okay?"
She extended a hand towards him. Her palm trembled slightly before she tightened her jaw and forced it still.
It wasn't the same, and yet… right now, before his very eyes, he swore he saw Maiya again. The girl who made him her everything, the tool that would have snapped herself in two for him. The cold claw was back, but this time it tapped on his heart, piercing the muscle.
He could do it again. There wasn't much to do; this girl was already teetering on the precipice. He could break her and fashion himself another tool. A tool of absolute loyalty in this alien world. It wouldn't be that hard.
A second claw joined the first.
"Yuusha-sama?" The outstretched hand fell, as did her smile. "I… I spoke too much again, didn't I…" She lowered the brim of her hat to shield her eyes from him. "Then… ah, I-I'm supposed to give you a tour. Please let me know when you want to, ah, do that."
With that, she moved to the side and stared down somewhere among the bustling crowds and stalls of the open-air market in the distance. Cheerful chatter and sales pitches drifted up to the stone walls.
The claws slowly let go, and his heartbeat returned to normality. She wasn't Maiya. She wasn't Shirou nor Illya. She was someone completely different, and he found that he didn't have the words to help her. The only words he did have were the ones that would break her.
I'm so damn tired.
"Let's go," he stated.
She perked up slightly, and straightened her glasses after. "Okay," she acquiesced, nodding to herself. "Okay. Yeah. This way, please."
She was still brittle, but already mending. Were those two words really all she needed?
Her platinum staff scraped on the stone as she led him along the ramparts toward the tower doors. Occasionally she looked back to check if he was following. He was, of course. Not that he had much choice in the matter, if he wanted any chance at honoring his flimsy bargain for his son's fate. Staying up here wouldn't bring him closer to lodging a bullet in the Demon Lord's head.
And once that was done… well.
He'd get there when he got there.
Minerva's Note: This is the only time you will have an author's note in the entire fic. If you got here, then thank you. I appreciate you taking the chance to try this absurd idea. The whole thing has already been written. This fic will update every Mondays and Thursdays until we reach the last chapter, and then work on book 2 will begin. This is the product of a lot of hours that Tunko and I spent on... I don't even know. Something. This beast was originally pure crack and then... well, to be honest, this chapter happened, and we knew that trying to keep it crack would be doing an injustice to these characters. Characters that we had made ourselves. It was a crazy feeling, and an even crazier ride. I hope you will enjoy the whole thing.
Big, big, big shout out to Kat-2V for editing this entire story despite work and life crushing him. Please go check out his works (the ones on AO3/FFN and also his published original fiction).
TC's Note: "Hey, Minerva, wouldn't it be funny if Kiritsugu had a harem? He'd loathe every moment of it."
"Better yet - what if he was in a bad isekai?"
One novella later, we're still not sure what happened. Is this what madness feels like? Let's descend the spiral together.
