The master fell flat on his ass as the sky rumbled and the ground seem to shake as the summoning circle glowed. Energy arced across the drawn lines before the chalk he used seemed to boil up like black tar. The air seemed to grow heavy and vibrate as a primal growl floated in existence and the sounds of helicopter blades tore through the newly formed clouds revealing a massive helicopter with red light pouring from it's windows.

Their eyes snapped down as the boiling chalk leeched towards the middle and coalesced into a the form of a tall man with broad shoulders and black hair. The growling intensified as the figure looked down at them and let out in a husky voice, "Where's the show."

He tried to speak up but the sudden appearance of four other members behind him and the vibrating in the air increased as the storm raged. The master had wanted to use stealth and subterfuge to win the war but as the storm raged it all flew out the window. He glanced down at his command seals and the temptation to raise his hand came up strong. But he glanced back at the sudden quintet and decided against it as the one in front loomed over him with a terrifying glare.

His chances at the grail seemed to be sunk.

The master's head fell into his hands as an equally heavy sigh poured through his lips. He knew servants could be problematic, he'd heard enough stories about personalities, but he had assumed that the Caster class would be one of the more reasonable ones. Hell, maybe they could at least have a vested interest in achieving the grail. Unfortunately whatever he had summoned...had different motives.

'Actually, fuck the decorum,' These goddamned idiots he had summoned didn't even understand the grail war as a whole. Which made him explain it. And that in itself was an issue because, at various points, the leader...or frontman found that history frustrating and flipped several tables. Thankfully there were only a few of them in the initial house, and in the...helicopter they were all bolted down fixing the issue. Sure, that was annoying but it still beat the general threat of getting pissed on that kept getting thrown around.

Despite all that there was still some upside. At least he had convinced himself that there was some. The fact that they seemed to have multiple noble phantasms certainly helped, especially since it seemed to take almost no effort for Caster to maintain it. It certainly wasn't the stealthiest mode of transportation, but the fact that it existed off the ground limited how certain servants could approach them. The self-generated food and beer was also a plus, though it was a little worrying to see how much some of the quintet could put away.

He shoved off the couch and meandered towards one of the red tinted windows and looked out through the clouds and towards the town. The brief moment of stillness was interrupted by the sudden blaring of alarms screaming throughout the helicopter. He spun around and cut into the hallway only to quickly realize that he had no idea where the control room was.

The alarms blared for another five minutes until he basically stumbled into a control room of sorts where the red haired member of the quintet was being yelled at by the 'piss' fixated member. Both weren't actually accomplishing anything so he rushed up and shoved them away before handling the buttons himself, shutting the alarm off in about thirty seconds. The two continued to talk, wondering what happened, but the master tuned them out as he flipped through the camera's. 'Inside view, inside view, stage view?, bathrooms?, outside view, outside view, there you are!'

A strange golden ship was hurtling through the air towards them evading all the weapons he hadn't even realized were on the helicopter. He started doing mental gymnastics in order to piece together what servant this could be. Rider was the frontrunner considering they were riding a damn flying contraption, but he didn't see any weapo-

A glowing axe slammed into the helicopter tearing through a window a few floors down. A thrown weapon. So they were dealing with an Archer. Not an awful matchup for a Caster, but it all came down to how they responded.

"Is that a flying axe."

"Thats pretty brutal"

And they just devolved from there. The master split their vision between the arguing quintet and the video feed showing the rapidly approaching servant. Five seconds later they exploded," Are you five going to do anything?!"

A series of stares were levelled at him with varying degrees of hostility. His eye twitched before he continued," Look theres a very aggressive servant trying to come kill all you and me, and if he succeeds in either our shot at the grail is gone."

"...Why do we care about a cup?"

'Just kill me now,' "It's a magical device that held the blood of Christ and can grant the wish of the winner of the war."

"The blood of Christ, that's pretty metal."

'...Run with it.' "Yeah it is, and it can be all yours if you stop that servant from killing all of us."

There was a beat of silence before the group bolted from the room and the master just spun back around to the monitor with a heavy sigh. They weren't idiots but getting them on the same page took a little finangling, but now that they somewhat were it was just a matter of hoping that they could finish Archer off.

Another alarm nearly scared him out of his chair but after another scan of the security cameras it was revealed to be just a stage coming out of the top of the helicopter. It was absolutely batshit insane, but out everything they had dealt with in the past few days it was the least aggravating. Reverb sounded out for only a second before the music started.

It was unrelentingly heavy and even the master could feel the arcane energy laced into music itself. The helicopter began to shake as the guitars and drums broke the reverb with a driving beat and the shaking only got worse, but now it was as if hundreds of people were shaking the helicopter even more. Even the Archer seemed to be a little confused as their sudden approach slowed a little bit.

Then the drums kicked in and the magic nearly doubled in its presence with a black web of cracks began to form in the sky. Archer regained its senses and tore back up looking for the now revealed servants, but the Helicopters defenses hadn't given up and were still firing. They were about as effective as toothpicks on body armour but they still pulled his attention.

Despite all the noise and magic nothing was happening yet which meant that the Archer was free to wreak havoc on the helicopter. The master watched as the weapons blinked off one by one, with increasingly louder explosions coming in time. They glanced back at the camera's and noticed the cracks were beginning to leak this black flame, and it was getting faster as the vocalists lyrics began to grow in power.

Archer didn't seem to care about it as they set about destroying the last of the weapons on the helicopter before leisurely taking their flying machine up. The quintet didn't seem to care as they just kept on driving forward in the song, something the Archer seemed to take exception too.

They readied a weapon to launch but a bit of the black flame fell on it and immediately began to eat away at it. Archer seemed even more affronted but looked up as a cracking sound filtered through the camera. Archer flew to the side as the black flames filled the camera. The master swore and switched the camera feed again to see Archer dancing between raining pools of black flames.

The machine had better mobility but it seemed that Archer was trying to attack as they dodged. That came back to hurt them as hanging out a second too long and trying to line up a shot with some sort of sword resulted in a chunk of the machine being doused in the flames, and there it began to spread. Archer ignored it for a second and let loose with a glowing axe that sailed towards the drummer who yelped and dropped down, letting it nick some hairs from his head.

However those few seconds for an attack meant that there was no time left to bail on the now engulfed machine which meant that Archer was now falling out of the sky. They again only seemed annoyed about that fact, but being in freefall spelled their end. They fell straight down and right above them a pool opened and a deluge of black flames spilled out heading straight for them.

Their portals tore open and they managed to push themselves out of the way of the initial deluge but more followed and as the song raged louder the cracking only spread. As more tore open they managed to dodge seven, but the one the did catch them caught one arm and set them ablaze.

The black ball of flame plummeted out of sight as the master fell back with a relieved sigh

The master stared at the scene in front of him with a mix of absolute disbelief and resigned anger. The sheer amount of beer bottles and food staining the floor and walls made him want to burn a command seal to get them to clean it the hell up, but he just managed to restrain himself. Just. Still the fact that in three days they had managed to consume this much beer and run up that much of a tab with about six different restaurants was still infuriating.

The only thing managing to calm him down was the fact that he had sorta figured out how this whole dynamic works. He just had to treat this whole thing like an extremely elaborate stage show. They responded the best to that sort of terminology and it took less then seven pulled teeth to get them going. He also found out it worked best if you didn't try to go get them to do something.

He had tried to convince them to go out and hunt for other servants, especially with how effective the Black Fire seemed to be. He was met with insults, a piss threat, and a death threat. Apparently it wasn't 'metal' to redo the same song in a show and that if people wanted a piece of them they had to come to them, not the other way around. Made him want to cry with how passive he was having to be, but it was his lot in life.

Thankfully he had enough connections and saved money to cover the beer and food, though admittedly it hurt having to sell some of his stocks. In fact, he might have to consider making a few risky investments in order to try and get a profit on this. That was a matter for a later date though since he should probably focus on the matter at hand. Mostly in trying to get any sort of intel on the other servants. Plan A had been to use the helicopter but the black fire hadn't stopped till the song was over and resulted in the thing burning down to slag and wasted potential.

He hadn't been able to confirm anything other than Archer's master leaving the war officially, and then immediately being killed by what he guessed to be Assassin. Apparently the rest were playing it super close top the chest in terms of who their servants were. Aside from him, that is, since Caster had made the decision to announce their presence to everybody in a roughly twenty two mile radius. Caster didn't care about that in the slightest and were legitimately trying to figure out how to go even bigger on their next performance. He was honestly terrified of what they were going to do.

A slight noise caught his ear and the incredibly potent smell of flowers filled his nose. Strong enough to overpower the beer that was everywhere. He spun around and booked it down one of the halls hoping to run into one of the quintet, but after a minute he couldn't find a single one of them somehow. 'Caster there a servant nearby I nee-'

'Is that why that flowery bullshit is all around.'

'I thought that was some bullshit you had sprayed around.'

The master felt a headache blossom as the chorus of voices started debating the 'metal' nature of flowers. 'Focus, please, I need you all to pick a song and start figh- the show. So get prepped and I'll give you some info.'

They voiced their discontent but seemed like they were actually cooperating so the Master set out to do his part...and hopefully not die, since it just set in what he had volunteered to do. Being around these dumb asses gave him way too much confidence when it came to everything in this damn war. He cut around the hallway working toward where the smell was strongest, and terrifyingly enough it was close to where the band was starting.

The familiar feel of prana in the air came back as the reverb kicked in covering up his existence from immediate discovery, that or he was being ignored. He was really fine with both. Prana surged through his circuits as he readied a very small burst of electricity. It was going to do much except endanger his life and buy Caster time.

He rounded the corner and let it loose, missing the Caster wide. He cursed as his fingers twitched but the servant still turned and looked at him with violent amusement. They were fairly small and frail with stark white hair, but based on how servants worked could still break him like a twig. He wasn't going to hang around to found out and turned back around the corner as the servant tore forward. The footsteps sounded off as the master swung around a corner and threw a bookcase down behind them.

It almost immediately exploded into a shower of wood chips making the master swear and dive into a side room. He scrambled to a window and threw it open before all but leaping out of it. The song had truly begun and was hammering off, with the now all too familiar death growl coming from Caster.

The servant was still right behind him, but thankfully seemed to just be playing with him as he dashed through the outside garden. Lightning coursed through his arm before he fired off another charged shot of lightning. He turned away but froze as a cry of pain sounded off from behind. A glance over his shoulder revealed the servant hunched over a smoking wound to their chest.

There was a beat of silence as both the servant and the master attempted to process what was happening while Caster played away in the background. The enemy servant put it together first and took off back towards the house, though they were a little less graceful this time about. 'Well, it worked the first time.'

Electricity arced from his hand again and slammed into the servants back sending them into the ground. They recovered quickly and shot back towards the Master who frantically let loose another surge of electricity. He still hadn't recovered from the first one so it slammed straight into the ground sending up a ploom of dirt. The enemy servant charged through and slammed into him sending him into the ground where they began to lay into him.

The master threw his arms up to guard and manage to hold off the onslaught of punches a little, but it seemed wrong. Even a weak servant should outpower most normal people but these punches felt like the result of a bar fight. Whatever Caster was doing took away the most of the servant status. Still left them as incredibly strong, skilled, and athletic. Something he felt as his nose folded over.

But he recovered, bucked the servant off before getting on to and began to lay into them. He only had until the song ended and he didn't know how long it was going to go. Left, right, left, right. The flurry of punches rained down for about a minute straight as the song reached its peak and a moment later he rolled off the servant and it's dissolving body with the instruments fading away into reverb.

He pushed himself up and stumbled into the house, well clambered in through the broken window. And made his way to the kitchen to find the bottle of whiskey he had hidden away from Caster. Damn the moral high ground he needed this.

The lid was off and the bottle was at his lips as Caster meandered back in looking at the damage that had been dealt to the house.

The master wanted to die.

Well, that was a little too far, but it was close. Caster had kept up the food issue but after their elimination of the enemy servant, who he had found out was assassin, they wouldn't leave him alone. He thankfully had found some peace and quiet so he could try to plan. Honestly it was more so checking his budget to see what he could afford.

He had managed to grasp the very general concept of how Casters Noble Phantasm worked. It had a range based on who could hear it and the effect only lasted as long as the song did. And unfortunately the speakers could be destroyed. Though knowing that answered his questions about why they had dragged them from the wreckage of the Helicopter, but forced him to ask why the hell they broke them outside of fight, or 'song' as they wanted it called.

The downtime was the worst part of this entire grail war so far. Caster was just such a grating personality and drain on his finances. But in the end all that mattered was winning and if this is what it took...he'd bear it.

He dragged the last of the speakers he had purchased to the stage and started to hook it up. It had been about four days since the Assassin incident and he had convinced them all to go along with some sort of plan. Of course he had used three of those days to study how in the hell sound engineering works and then one full day to actually set the stage up. And now that it was set up it was only three minutes to the show.

He would have been done quicker but he had an issue with Caster almost starting a fistfight at a bar. It wasn't even open. They had somehow gotten inside and almost thrown down with the owner. Thankfully he had gotten out of it without using a command seal.

A low rumbling noise caught his attention and he wandered towards one of the overlooks on the hill. A swear escaped his mouth when he saw two servants sprinting up the winding mountain path. A quick appraisal showed that one was a saber and the other was either Lancer or Rider. Berserker had been eliminated and Caster had been at least involved in the elimination of Archer and Assassin, so those were the remaining options. More importantly is the fact that they were heading right for the stage. He reached out across the mental link, 'Caster I need you to start the show early, we have a-'

'Ahh, what the hell man.'

'That's some bullshit'

And the whining raged on and on before the master channeled some prana into the seal on the back of his hand. It pulsed as he repeated as the command sunk in, 'Caster start the damn show NOW.'

There was a silence before a series of sighs echoed through his mind, and only a few seconds later the quintet shivered into form on the stage and began to putter about setting up the few minor things he hadn't done. As the sound of tuning filled the air he turned back to the overlook and saw that the approaching duo was much closer than he originally thought. The sound of tuning stopped and a voice called out, "Uh, We got an issue here."

The master spun around mania burning in his eyes, "What do you mean?"

One of them scoffed," We got no power, nothing plugged in."

Something in the master broke as his mind scanned over everything he had done so far. All the setup, research, money, and the generator broke. A glance back showed the approaching duo was almost towards the final path up to the overlook. He grit his teeth and rolled his sleeves up before rushing to the back of the stage and with a vicious kick popped open the main connector.

He grabbed it and felt his magic circuits surge before a massive discharge of electricity slammed into the wires and the speakers screeched to life. Some of the quintet laughed but very quickly they got into position as the Master struggled to retain consciousness. But the beat came through fast and strong as the vocalist began to belt out the lyrics; "Musta-"

Almost immediately the sky began to darken and a deep rumbling could be heard within the ground itself. It was difficult to focus as his nerves screamed in varying degrees, but he still couldn't see the two enemy servants which was a good thing. Suddenly the ground split and a shadowy figure began to climb out with it's only feature being a violent pair of glowing eyes. It paused for a second before stalking off down the mountain path. But it didn't end there as the cracks grew deeper and larger and bigger and bigger shadows crawled their way out and began to stalk down the path.

It was hard to see with the current flying through his veins and how hard his eyes were squinted. All he really could make out were even bigger shapes crawling out of the cracks. The two approaching servants were trying to fight them off, but numbers were winning out in comparison. One died and another replaced but the damage never left the servant. Saber was the first to fall and it was more due to an overzealous strike than anything else. They had killed one of the larger shadows and were already moving on to the next largest threat, but due to oversight they missed one of the smaller ones. It was a swift strike through his ribs into his lungs.

The other held on for a bit longer but as the song neared its end the numbers finally won out again and they were simply overrun, their body crushed and torn apart under the weight. The massive shadows seemed to take incredible pleasure in the sudden rain of blood.

He probably could let go of the spell, but he didn't want to. As much of a pain as Caster had been there was begrudging respect for what Caster had actually accomplished and also because he had no control at this point. It dragged on for about another minute before eventually fading off, and with screaming nerves he unclasped his hands from the wire and fell backwards.

Caster started to meander about now that the fight had finally ended and the master just let them. He should make his way to the grail, he should get his wish taken care of, he should do a lot of things. But all at this moment he wanted to do was just lay here and try to sleep this all off like a bad hangover.

Caster Class Servant- Dethklok

Noble Phantasm- DETHKLOK

-The full power of Brutal Death Metal brought forward into reality and as a result depending on the song a different effect takes hold

-Hatredcopeter- The initial effect of the Noble Phantasm that creates a multitiered massive helicopter with several weapons and a preset stage.

-Black Fire Upon Us- Caster tears a whole in reality and from it comes almost molten balck flames to pour from the holes and rain down on a target area selected by the Caster.

-Impeach God- When this begins a servant, excluding caster, who hears of the song loses their status as a servant and is brought to the level of a human while maintaining some of their skills.

-Awaken- Similar to Black Fire Upon Us it tears open cracks in reality that grow as the song goes on. From them crawl shadow demons that increase in size as the holes do