From the bridge of the Kiritsugu's Retribution, Illya could see the entire fleet, hanging in the star-lit void in front of the Dark Nebula which bordered the domain of the Einzbern Empire.

Of course, the score of ships were little more than points of lights through the reinforced windows, due to the vast distances separating them. But the computers showed her the names and class of each and every one of them. The Alliance they had forged over the last two years was as vast as it was diverse, for the Einzbern Empire they were gathered to fight had made many enemies, and the revelations of their inhuman practices Shirou had spread across the galaxy had earned them even more.

There were ships from the Kingdom of Avalon and the Fujimura Mercenary Group, from the Archibald Territories and the Mihashira Mercantile Union, as well as a dozen other principalities and organizations. Even the elusive Atlas Institute had sent help, in the form of a single ship whose equipment defied all their scanners' attempts to analyse it. Such an armada hadn't been mustered in centuries, and might never again in their lifetimes.

Behind the first line were the transport ships, carrying tens of thousands of troops. The Mihashira Union mostly fielded battle-robots, while the Fujimura Mercenary Group had gathered under its banner the remnants of over a hundred mercenary bands that had found themselves without work at the end of the Grail War. The Kingdom of Avalon had brought its elite forces, and the wealth of the Archibald Territories had paid for much of the equipment being put to use here, once Illya's brother had convinced their reigning Lord that joining their alliance was in their best interests.

Some were here for justice, others for revenge, and others still for profit. In the thousand years since its founding, the Einzbern Empire had accumulated a vast amount of wealth on the backs of its enslaved Homunculi, whose free labor had fuelled centuries of expansion on worlds the other galactic powers had left untouched due to being too hostile to human life. The decadence of the Einzbern courts was legendary, and there were many who had jumped at a chance to get their hands on even a fraction of that great hoard. Given the strength of their foe, they had decided to welcome everyone who was willing to help regardless of motives, so long as they were willing to follow the battle-plan.

Yet for all the might of this fleet, Kiritsugu's Retribution was still the mightiest of them all. The ship still bore the customizations her father had added to it when he had used it to win the Grail War for the Einzbern ten years ago, before betraying them and running off with her mother. Of course, it hadn't been called that at the time : back then, it had been the Magus Killer, named after the feared nickname people had assigned to its master. But Illya had renamed it after reclaiming it from the hidden base where Kiritsugu had left it after leaving his life as one of the galaxy's most dreaded mercenaries behind.

It might have stayed there forever, had the Einzbern not assassinated her parents as revenge for turning on them when Kiritsugu had realized the depths to which they had sunk. Only she could command it, for it had been gene-locked to Kiritsugu himself, and as his last living blood relative, it would only accept her as its commanding officer. The rest of the Alliance had been reticent to let her take command, for various reasons ranging from not wanting her to be exposed to danger to not wanting to give overall command to a little girl, but the sheer firepower of Kiritsugu' Retribution had forced them to accept.

At nearly six kilometers long, Kiritsugu's Retribution was a sleek vessel, capable of achieving incredible speed, but it was its main cannon that had given nightmares to generals and warlords all over the galaxy. The Origin Cannon could pierce through any energy shield, no matter how powerful or advanced. The only defense was not to be hit, which was far easier said than done when talking about a light-speed weapon. Combined with its state-of-the-art stealth mechanisms, it had been little wonder that entire flotillas had scattered at the merest hint of the Magus Killer's presence.

With such power combined with the numbers of the Einzbern's fleets, which could endlessly replenish their crews with new Homunculi, the Einzbern could've won the Grail War and conquered the entire galaxy, if only they hadn't been led by such heartless monsters. Such had been the cruelty and callousness of Jubstacheit von Einzbern, Emperor of the Einzbern Empire, that even the notoriously cold-hearted Magus Killer had had enough eventually, a turn of event no one had seen coming.

Kiritsugu had rescued the Homunculus who had been bred by the Einzbern to serve as a living amplifier for their technology, before marrying her when the two had, against all odds, reason and sense, fallen in love. Then, in the skies of the Fuyuki system he had turned the might of the Magus Killer against the fleet he had erstwhile commanded. It had been a slaughter that had seen both the Einzbern fleet and the ragtag band of defenders utterly annihilated, and the Fuyuki system turned into a graveyard, but it had put paid to the Einzbern ambitions of galactic conquest.

Of course, by the time Illya had found and renamed the Kiritsugu's Retribution, it had been accumulating dust for over ten years at the bottom of a canyon on a lifeless world, and it had taken a lot of effort to return it to battle-readiness. But she'd had a lot of help, from people who had earned her grudging respect.

One of these very people called to her now, drawing her out of her contemplations.

"Everything is ready," said Rin from her position lower on the bridge, surrounded by screens on which flowed complex equations. "The jump calculations are complete : this will take us straight to the coordinates our spies gave us of the Einzbern's homeworld."

"Good," she replied. Less than one in ten of the agents dispatched to the Einzbern Empire had returned alive, and she dreaded to imagine the fate of the others. "Call all the command officers, please. It's time."

Holographic screens popped up around her command throne, showing her the faces of the other ship commanders along with another of their trump cards : the seven Knights in the Retribution's launching bays, ready to take their mechs into the void to battle those of the Einzbern while the ships duked it out around them. There were the three Pendragon sisters, heiresses to the world of Camelot, come to help fight the evil of the Einzbern Empire (and, she knew, because all three of them fancied her brother and wanted to impress him so that he would become their King, though she would give them the credit of believing they would've come regardless). On the other side of the display, there were the three Gorgon sisters, who had sworn an oath to follow Sakura Matou into battle after she had rescued them from the stasis trap in which they had been imprisoned centuries ago.

And, last but not least, her adoptive brother and fiancee (no matter what all the shrews around him might think), Shirou. He had been an orphan from the Grail War who Kiritsugu had found in the ruins of Fuyuki, one of only a handful of survivors of that most terrible conflict. She had grown up with him as her older brother, despite having technically been born before him – the years spent in cryogenic surgery to ensure her genetics didn't fall apart due to being half-Homunculus had made sure of that. He was the only member of her family she had left, and she would burn the galaxy before losing him, just as she knew he would do to keep her safe.

Under each display was an image of the pilot's mech, showing their state of readiness – green across the board. They were just as diverse as the fleet : Knights tended to be eccentric people, a consequence of the strength of will required to master the artificial minds that dwelled within every mech, and this was reflected in the customizations they made to their engines. The youngest of the Pendragon sisters had her mech focused on heavy defense and offence, sacrificing mobility in return, while the middle sister prioritized speed and armor penetration, and the eldest favoured a more balanced approach.

The Gorgon sisters had more esoteric specs : the youngest (though you wouldn't know it to look at them, making Illya wonder what kind of genetic modifications their ancestors had involved themselves with) had a brute force machine with really impressive self-repair capabilities. The middle sister used long-range, anti-Knights weaponry, while the eldest … well, nobody was sure how Stheno did it, but it involved taking over the systems of enemy Knights and even ships and making them do whatever she wanted, which usually involved a lot of shooting their erstwhile allies and throwing themselves at heavy objects at full speed. Her mech was a lot more fragile as a result, though, which meant Medusa had to stay close to protect her, but together the three Gorgon sisters were a devastating force.

And then there was Shirou's own mech. The Dark Angel was unique, even by the standards of mechs. It could only be piloted by two people working together, one of whom had to be Shirou, and the other one of his … his bonded women. Of that select few, Sakura was the one he worked the best with, the two of them sharing a bond that nearly rivalled the one Illya had for her brother, and since she needed to command the Kiritsugu's Retribution, Sakura had been chosen to help him in the coming battle. There were few others in the galaxy who could handle the feedback from a Knight's mind like she did, and even fewer as young as she was : Sakura's strength of will was matched only by her love for Shirou, which Illya considered was the absolute minimum to be expected from someone who wanted to be by her brother's side.

Such strength of will was absolutely necessary for her current position. The Dark Angel made use of the special powers Shirou had gained in the aftermath of the Grail War, when Illya's parents had used everything they had to keep him alive even as they hid from the Einzbern hunters. Some of the technology used in its construction had been scavenged from battlefields that had been ancient when the first Einzbern had mastered the secrets of Homunculi creation, and Shirou didn't like using it too often, claiming that the mech's brutal mind tended to mix with his own if he wasn't careful. In battle, it was as disquieting as it was awe-inspiring, capable of laying waste to entire battalions on its own.

In the coming war, it would serve as the vanguard of the fleet, deploying ahead of the Kiritsugu's Retribution to lay waste to the Einzbern Knights and create openings the rest of them could exploit. Then, once they had seized the advantage, he would go on the hunt for Jubstacheit himself, to cut off the serpent's head once and for all.

There were more Knights across the fleet, of course. The tactical realities of space warfare in this day and age required that any flotilla past a certain strength must have a Knight presence to fight alongside or they were already doomed. No doubt her voice and face were being transmitted to them as well as across every ship on the fleet, which meant that thousands of people were now listening.

"My friends," she began. "At long last, the hour has come. For many months, we have prepared for this moment. We have trained, we have gathered resources and information. Many have given their lives to bring us to this point, and many more have made great sacrifices so that we may succeed. Now, we stand on the precipice of destiny."

"The moment we exit jump, we will be in hostile territory," she continued, making no effort to sugar-coat things. "The Einzbern will be caught by surprise by our attack, and hopefully the shock of seeing us in their home system will cause them to panic, but we can't rely on that to win the battle for us. They are as paranoid as they are cruel, and their home system is a fortress. We expect to face dozens of Knights and hundreds of ships, to say nothing of the orbital stations and planet-side cannons. The best Einzbern combat Homunculi which aren't deployed to guard their border territories from raiders will be there, with the best equipment money can buy in the entire galaxy."

She didn't need to say that some of that equipment was very illegal in other space-faring nations – it had all been in the briefing. The Einzbern cared nothing for the laws of other people, and their own could be summed up as 'obey the ruling family in all things and treat the Homunculi like disposable tools at best, outright dirt at worst'. Providing evidence of their possession of such weapons had been key to gaining the help of Atlas, as a matter of fact, though whether the isolationist techno-fanatics wanted to destroy these weapons or steal them for study was anyone's guess. The moral compass of the Institute, if they could be said to have such a thing, was a mystery to anyone who wasn't part of it.

"Yet despite all these obstacles in our way, I promise you this : the Einzbern Empire will fall," she declared, feeling the fire that burned within her soul flare anew. "Today, we begin the liberation of the billions of Homunculi enslaved by their progenitors. We will not let them hide behind their armies and fleets, we will not let them laugh as we are forced to kill those we fight to save. We will strike at the heart of their evil, directly at the center of their empire of slavery and suffering."

"We will break their pride and their power ! We will raze their castles and burn their torture chambers ! We will destroy the mind-wiping halls and the indoctrination towers ! We will salt the fields where they grow their alchemical herbs and melt the forges where they build the tools of their oppression !"

"For Kiritsugu and Irisviel." she finished. "For those we have lost, and those we can still save. For all the Homunculi enslaved to the Einzbern, those who have died never knowing freedom, and those yet to be born."

The rest joined in, shouting their own battle-cries of various degrees of honor and decency. Illya tore her gaze away, shut down the call, and focused on the Nebula ahead of them.

There, within those swirls of cosmic matter, were the ones who had ordered her parents' murder and bought it with gold earned by the slavery of her mother's people. There was Jubstacheit von Einzbern, who had tried to kidnap her and had only failed thanks to her brother (and his 'friends') managing to intercept the ship carrying her in time and rescuing her. It had taken her weeks to stop having nightmares about that, and even now she found herself shuddering from time to time when her mind wandered down the path of imagining what would've awaited her there if they had failed.

This would all end soon. One way or another, she would bring an end to the nightmare that was the Einzbern Empire. No more would be born to lives of slavery, never even dreaming of freedom, or condemned to suffer endlessly if they did.

"Shipmistress Tohsaka," she ordered, "you may begin the jump."

"Understood," came the crisp reply. "Final synchronization checks … Complete. Beginning jump in five … four … three … two … one … Jump !"

Across two hundred ships, the engines flared to full power, bending the laws of the universe using techniques inherited from Humanity's first galactic expansion. As they plunged into jumpspace, the familiar sense of dislocation swallowed her senses. The viewport was submerged by a kaleidoscope of colors that swallowed the stars, the void, and the Dark Nebula. Jumping from one location to another was instantaneous from the point of view of others, but to those travelling it could take anything from a few seconds to half an hour. This particular jump should be short, according to Rin's calculations, so everyone was to remain seated and wait for it to end.

There was, by definition, nothing outside the ship during jump : even the kaleidoscope was an illusion, conjured by the energy shield of the Kiritsugu's Retribution meeting the eldritch energies of un-reality. And yet, Illya swore she could hear a voice in the maelstrom -

"Ojou-sama. Ojou-sama. Ojou-sama !"

"Ojou-sama, wake up. If you don't, you will miss breakfast with Emiya-san before he leaves for school."

"Hmmrkkshsh … Full speed ahead … Sella ? What are you doing on the bridge ?"

"The bridge ? Ojou-sama, you were dreaming. Wake up."

She blinked, looking around to see her room in the Emiya residence – wait, the Emiya residence ? She wasn't aboard a … spaceship …

Oh.

She may have watched too many cartoons yesterday, Illya thought as she slowly finished waking up. Or perhaps not enough. It wasn't as if she was ever going to see a mech battle in real life, and though the dream was already fading from her memory, she was certain she would have seen one if Sella had let her sleep just a moment longer. She would have seen something … magnificent.

She'd have to write down as much of her dream as she could later. Right now, she wanted breakfast.

AN : Surprise ! Happy April's Fool !

I had given up on finishing this in time earlier this week, but yesterday, I lost my access to my FGO account (a mishaps involving my emulator failing to run the latest version, me uninstalling it and re-installing a newer version without thinking to save the data), yet after a few panicked hours I managed to find the recovery password I had used two years ago, which was a string of random alphanumerical characters written on a single file in a remote location on my PC.

So, yeah. I decided not to anger the gods and finish writing this as a sign of gratitude. It took a couple of hours, and I feel I could keep adding more details for a long time, but I am satisfied with the results.

The concept for this Omake came to me while reading the light novel series I am the Evil Lord of an Intergalactic Empire, by Yomu Mishima, a while back. I am normally not a great fan of mecha stories, but that one was hilarious and I couldn't help but be inspired.

As always, feedback and ideas are appreciated. I blame any and all inconsistencies and plot holes in this omake on the fact that it's Illya's dream, and dreams don't have to make sense.

Zahariel out.