The chapter of December... *sigh*. At least we're not anymore behind. Important announcement after the chapter.
A warning to readers, straight from the lips of Draconic: Parts of this chapter, most notably Fiore's segment, have a copious amount of graphic imagery due to nightmare logic coupled with Jack's obscenely hideous perception of the world. If you are faint of heart, it doesn't start immediately, and there's plenty of 'warning' beforehand, so if you expect something really bad to be coming up, you're probably right, and you should ctrl-F to the next instance of FATEFATE. With that out if the way, Draconic sincerely hopes that you… enjoy… this chapter. But be mindful that his definition of enjoy™ may differ from yours.
Draconic is firmly of the opinion that Jack the Ripper's theme isn't remotely creepy enough for her nightmare, so for those of you who are inclined to read with series music accompaniment, skip out on the Fate/Apocrypha soundtrack for most of this chapter; once the nightmare starts, put on Arbiters Grounds from the soundtrack of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, maybe An Empire in Ruins from Final Fantasy XV if you want some variation.
Beta-ed by Draconic
Time to eat! Time to eat! Time to eat!
Yay!
They were a bit worried when they'd started sensing mages arriving in the city with other Servants, but with their mommy safe back at the house, they could just kill the Masters and eat their hearts. Then the mean other Servants would go away! Because they'd be dead! No one ever tried to hurt them after they cut their throats, so it was better that way.
Yay!
Ooooo! And when they were all dead, they would get the Grail! Then, she and Mommy would be able to stay together forever, and ever, and ever!
It would be so much fun! They'd play piano, and eat steak, and bad people's hearts! If only there weren't so many bad people in the world. People who didn't want to share their hearts with them. People who wouldn't play with them. People who didn't like them. People who hated them. People who killed them. But they and Mommy would be happy forever and ever!
First, though, they needed to stop the bad people and their Servants from hurting Mommy. But this would be fun!
They would just chop them all up and everything would be good again.
The fog had already set out over the town, the Murderer of the Misty Night's toxic fumes seeping through the streets, trapping all who were consumed within it. It would provide great cover from that silly Archer on the rooftops and the toxins would easily poison the scarred mage. His armored knight wouldn't be able to protect him from something he couldn't stab.
It was too bad no one else wanted to come out and play. They all closed their doors and shunned them. Meanies. Jack just wanted to play.
But something was wrong. The mage teetered over, but then he put a cloth over his mouth and nose to try and keep their mist out! That wasn't fair! He was cheating! And the knight… the knight picked him up and was somehow moving out of the fog! No fair! No fair! No one was supposed to be able to know the way around the mist except them! It was against the rules!
Oh well. That just meant they'd get to cut him up, and that would be lots of fun!
The knight and the mage escaped the fog, but the latter kneeled over as he coughed.
Time to kill him!
They dashed over, ready to hop onto the scarred man's shoulder and slice up his throat, when they heard the wind go 'swish,' and darted to the side. A mean old arrow smashed into the ground where they were a moment earlier, sending pebbles flying everywhere.
"Took you long enough, Archer!" the knight roared, pushing the mage behind them and raising their crimson and grey sword. "Now you're mine, Assassin!"
Hmm… so the Archer was helping them? Darn it! Fighting them while also dodging arrows wouldn't be any fun at all, not at all.
Of course, they couldn't shoot their little arrows if they couldn't see, no siree!
"Come and play then!" they cheered, leaping back into their fog. The silly knight dashed in right after. He was so eager to die! He'd be so much fun to play with! He was even managing to follow them in the mist. "Wow! You're pretty good!"
"Say what you will, Assassin," the knight scoffed. "You aren't a Heroic Spirit. You're a mere serial killer!"
"Oh," they gasped. "How did you know?" They'd been sure to be extra careful. They never used to eat the hearts and souls before, just sliced them up a bit. How had the knight figured out it was them?
"What?"
Oh, he hadn't. That was sad.
But they could just tell him! Yay! It'd be fun! They could imagine the desperate fear strangling his eyes under that creepy helmet.
They scampered up onto his shoulder, taking in the weird scent coming off him. "Our true name is Jack the Ripper."
The knight sucked in a startled breath and instantly threw them off. "Yeah, I got the memo earlier. Master said you had a distinctive style, something like… you killed most of your victims by asphyxi-whatever and then cutting their throats."
"Oh, so he knows about us?"
"Yeah, but that's none of your business!" the knight swung his sword again and they flipped out of the way. The dumb metal man was so slow!
"Pretty, pretty please," they smiled. "Would you tell us what your true name is?"
It was curious. The smell they'd caught coming off the knight was strange. Unless… hmm, they'd need another sniff to be sure.
Oh, look, the knight was swinging his sword down on them! How cute!
They skipped out of the way of the incoming blade and flipped back onto his shoulder. Or rather, as another sniff revealed, her shoulder.
"Ha! We knew it!" they cheered, dodging another slash and soaring back into the mist. "You're a woman! In that case, yup, why don't we do that?"
Their Noble Phantasm needed to be used on a woman, at night, when there was mist. Just like… that place. And when they did, the knight would go bye-bye! Rip! Rip! RIP!
"Maria the—"
"Don't underestimate me!" the knight shouted, her helmet retracting into her armor as she raised her sword to the sky. "Red Thunder!"
A tempest of crimson lightning erupted from the blade, thrashing and crackling throughout the courtyard, blasting away their mist. No fair!
"It's over, Assassin!" the knight declared, thrusting her sword at them. "Feel free to cry and scream to your heart's content, because without your head, you won't be able to do either of those things anymore."
They knew the woman was right. If her sword was anything to go by, she was definitely Saber of Red and with the fog dispersed, her Archer ally would be able to provide plenty of support.
Jack knew they were tougher than people would expect of an Assassin, but taking on two of the knight classes at once was still a bit of a stretch.
Yet they couldn't help but laugh. It was all kinds of fun.
"Oh, come on!" they cheered, whipping out two of their many knives and rushing forward. "We're still so hungry!"
Saber grinned and met their charge. "You are gonna regret this, Assassin!"
They readied their blades to meet the knight's heavy sword. There was no way they could win in strength, Sabers were good at that. But they were small, they were quick, and they were really good at hide-and-go-seek! They'd slip through the chinks in Saber's armor, slice up her tendons, and devour her core!
Mommy was going to be so proud!
Suddenly, Saber of Red's eyes widened. Her assault halted, and she rushed backward. They heard it too, just like before.
But this arrow wasn't aimed at them. It struck where Saber had been before, shattering the ground in a hail of concrete and fire. The force of the blast tore through their skin and gave them a bunch of cuts and bruises. Owie! That hurt! That wasn't fair! Cheaters deserved to die.
"Damn it, Archer! Can't you aim?" Saber yelled.
"That wasn't me," a new woman on the rooftops, the Archer, called down. "Black Faction reinforcements are here."
"Then hurry up and kill them!"
The rest of the Black Faction was here? Oh no. The last time they met one of them, they tried to hurt mommy. They had to get back to her before they found her. Saber and Archer were busy deflecting more arrows from the enemy, so they turned around and darted away.
But they were blocked by… Saber?
How had she gotten behind them so fast?! Why was she in different armor? And why was her sword suddenly invisible?
They felt the rush of air from the oncoming swing even if they couldn't see the blade, bringing up their knives to block the strike. But it was too much, Saber was way too strong, and they couldn't take it. Their knives flew from their hands and they lodged themselves in the ground. They themselves were smashed into the sidewalk, a crater erupting from the huge force of the impact.
No problem. They were fast. When they got away, they could bring back the mist and obliterate Saber no matter how much she teleported—ooh, pretty crystals! They flew through the air, glittering just like the ones that mommy had looked at in the store and—why were they glowing with prana?
The gems exploded a moment later, encasing them in a torpor of violet crystal. They could still move but it took way too long, like moving through a sea of mud, but slower! No matter how hard they tried, they couldn't break the crystal surrounding them. At this rate, they wouldn't be able to get away! They wouldn't be able to protect Mommy!
"I forgot how nice it is when they don't have Magic Resistance," said a new voice, a girl in red with long black hair. "Finish… her? Huh, Jack the Ripper's a loli in… what the actual hell is she wearing? Ugh, whatever. Not like it matters much in the end. Finish her off, Saber!"
"As you command, Master."
No, no, no, no, no! They couldn't die! They didn't want to! They needed to get back to Mommy! She was waiting for them with hamburg steak!
They struggled with everything they had, but the shiny rock wouldn't budge. The best they could do was make the slightest of cracks and Saber's sword was already coming down to strike.
No, no, they'd suffer. They'd all feel what they did. They'd make them all hurt. They'd kill them, warp them, make them understand. The one who dealt the final blow would be their new mommy and the rest would know their suffering.
They would all know what it meant to see Hell!
tiMe To pLAy
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Fucking pansy-ass Archer! What was the point of even having her around her if she couldn't even see through Assassin's fog? Her Master nearly died in there!
No matter. The lion-eared bowman could handle Archer of Black, and her Master could engage the enemy mage. She couldn't let Assassin of Black escape, especially now that she knew that thing's true name. Jack the Ripper was guaranteed to leave a trail of carnage across the countryside if she got away, and Mordred suspected that the little shit had a really screwed up idea of what it meant to paint the town red.
At least, Mordred thought it was a she? They referred to themselves as 'we', but there was clearly only one… screw it, she was killing her anyway.
The Knight of Treachery whipped around to where Assassin had tried to flee, the wretched thing bogged down in some strange crystal at the edge of the fog. There were two figures inside the mist, obscured from Mordred's vision. But not enough that she couldn't see one of them bringing down something else she couldn't see on the trapped Servant.
"Oh no, you don't!" Mordred yelled, activating her Prana Burst and blasting towards the trio in a hail of crimson lighting. "She's mine!"
She'd done all the work in drawing Assassin out. She'd thrown off most of her mist. She did all the work. No one was stealing her prey!
Surprisingly, her shouts had an effect on the figure making for Assassin, who flinched and immediately fell back.
That provided Mordred with just enough of an opening to thrust Clarent forward, obliterating the violet crystal and cleaving Assassin in two.
The Saber of Red hoisted her weapon to the sky with a triumphant cheer. "Ha! I told you you'd regret this, you cowardly serial killer!"
A thick line of mist slowly whisked upward from both halves of the corpse, but Mordred paid it little heed. This new opponent, another Saber, if she hadn't misheard, would be ready to pounce immediately. And if it was Saber of Periwinkle, and they were who she'd thought they were…
No! They ran from her earlier. It couldn't possibly—
A pair of faces emerged from the smog. One was an elegant eastern woman with clear blue eyes and long dark hair pulled back into twin tails. And the other's face was…
Her own.
"Saber," the eastern woman, obviously the Master, spoke warily. "That's her, right?"
"It is, Master," the king confirmed, gulping. "That is Mordred."
Mordred.
Just Mordred.
Not 'my son Mordred,' or 'my knight Mordred,' not even 'my killer Mordred'. Just Mordred. As though they were nothing to each other. As though they weren't blood to each other!
"Wait a minute…" said the mage, staring at the fog rising from the bisected body, "Why is…"
The Knight of Rebellion's head pounded like a war drum, her face twitching madly as her mind attempted to process this new revelation, that she had been granted the esteemed privilege of reuniting with her father by the Holy Grail, only for him to deny her presence, her birthright, her rightful kingship again!
She was so consumed with a violent mix of unrelenting fury and total euphoria that she hardly noticed King Arthur and his Master give a start when something cracked noisily between them.
"Fa—"
The sound of her father's voice shouting a warning jarred her from her wild reverie, whether it had been to her, the Master, or both of them, it was too late, as she saw Assassin's neck, bent at an impossible angle, her arms awkwardly reaching towards her, like a demented puppet. Deranged, snake-like eyes bored a hole into the Knight of Treachery as a rush of fog exploded out of the serial killer's still-moving corpse.
And the king disappeared from her sight once more, stolen by the mist.
"F–Fath—"
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They surrounded the knight, all the countless of them, their souls extinguished before they could ignite. Their vengeance, their curse, the first layer of their nightmare. The Saber had only been there for a few moments and her head was already twitching wildly as she feel deeper and deeper into insanity.
Soon, they would drive her irreversibly mad.
"Why did you have to kill us?" some of them asked pitifully. "Why did you have to take us from our mommy?"
"F-Fa—Fath—Fa—Fa—"
Ha. She couldn't even comprehend what was happening to her. So much for the strongest class. Their curse would devour her mind soon enough.
They all converged upon her, wrapping her in smoke and shadow as they hugged her tight, whispering desperate pleas in her ear with a thousand lost and broken voices.
"Please don't leave us."
"It's so cold."
"Please keep us warm."
"We're freezing."
"Stay with us, won't you?"
"Please be our mommy."
"Father…"
All the spirits of Jack the Ripper paused, quirking their heads to the side. "What?"
Saber of Red's twitching head accelerated, her eyes straight ahead, crimson sparks rocketing off her armor every which way, blasting the revenant spirits away with each shock. "Father."
"No!" The spirits squealed in panic. "Mommy! We want our—"
"FATHERRRRR!"
Saber's roar unleashed a maelstrom of scarlet electricity, the tempest stampeding out all around her, obliterating the special realm made for her.
The spirits wailed, unable to comprehend what was happening. They were sure their curse was perfect, their pleas irresistible. How had Saber brushed them aside? Was it her Magic Resistance? Or something else? And what in the world was a 'father'?
No. It didn't matter. She may have escaped their special place, but she was still trapped in the nightmare. They all were. The four mages, the four Servants, and even that dumb homunculus. They would all know their hell. They would suffer their torment.
The knight's eyes suddenly focused on them, and she smiled. But she looked angry. Why would someone smile when they weren't having fun?
"You insignificant little VERMIN! GET THE HELL OUT OF MY WAY!"
…
The knight's sword ripped through several of them, but they smiled even as the weapon tore through their face.
"What does insignificant mean?" they asked.
The knight snarled like a big, scary tiger.
"It means that you're worthless, you disgusting ghost-brat. It means that if you never existed, the world would be no different…" she paused, "It means that when I kill you, no one in the whole world will care. Not for so much as a second!"
Jack frowned. This knight in red… she was a liar. She was a liar, and Mommy said that lying was bad. This knight in red was a very bad girl.
Bad girls needed to be punished.
As more and more of themselves got chopped up though, they decided that maybe they would have to get back to this one later. She wasn't as much fun as before.
But Mommy loved them.
This knight was a liar! Liar, liar, liar! They were going to rip her apart!
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"Okay?" Rin muttered, glancing about their new surroundings. "This is unexpected."
Saber couldn't help but concur. She'd hesitated when she'd heard Mordred's cry, pulling her sword back to defend against an attack she'd been sure was coming. Instead, her son had slain the trapped Assassin, who'd somehow transported them all to some murky ghost town.
The buildings' rundown architecture would be more suited to the older stylings of Trifas or Sighisoara than the more modern sense they'd witnessed in Bucharest. The streets were littered with broken cobblestones and wrecked carts. And the smell… Saber unfortunately recalled enough from her own time to recognize the miasma of improperly disposed excrement. With any luck, that would be the greatest threat they'd encounter here, but she didn't put much faith that hope.
"Saber, you're wearing your dress instead of your armor. What happened?"
Saber blinked and looked down at herself. She was wearing her dress without her cuirass. She had no recollection of dispelling her armor, so why wasn't she wearing it? Trying to invoke it didn't seem to be doing anything either.
"I… have no idea," she answered. "My armor does not seem to be responding to me."
Rin raised an eyebrow, but didn't press the issue further. It seemed she was still trying to get her bearings.
"This place… it is similar to the bounded field Caster trapped us in when she ransomed Taiga," noted Saber. "How could Assassin have created such a domain?"
"I'm not sure," Rin confessed, her eyes narrowing at their new surroundings. "It's not out of the question for an Assassin to be able to use magecraft, but Jack the Ripper? That seems unlikely, especially when considering she was—" Rin hesitated and Saber began to realize that something else was wrong other than their unnatural relocation. "It… it was a her, right?"
Saber furrowed her brow in thought. Her mind suddenly felt as clouded as their foggy surroundings. She could recall seeing Assassin and getting a clear look at their face, but for the life of her, she couldn't actually remember what it looked like. All she was certain of was that Mordred struck them down after Rin trapped them with her gems. After that…
This was bizarre. It had literally been seconds since she was staring at Assassin. How was it possible for her to have completely forgotten what it looked like?
"I… can recall seeing her moments ago, but I feel as though everything about her appearance itself has been scoured from my memory."
"Could that be one of its personal skills?" Rin asked.
"I have never encountered such a technique before," Saber answered, "however it would be unwise to rule out that possibility."
"I can't remember what I was even trying to say. Something about her made me feel like she wouldn't be capable of magecraft, but I haven't got the first clue what it was, or even why I was thinking that. This isn't loss of memory either. It's probably some form of mental pollution," Rin sighed. "In any case, it can't be Assassin since Saber of Red killed it."
A chorus of childish giggles rang out from the multitude of dark alleys.
"I thought so as well, but I find myself sorely tempted to reevaluate that notion."
Saber raised her invisible sword, grateful that she at least still had her weapons, while Rin primed a gandr spell on the tip of her index finger. Deep within the shadows, they could see dozens of malicious glimmering eyes leering at them.
"This is just great," Rin said, her voice betraying how unnerved she was by all this. "Children laughing… in the dead of a foggy night… in a ghost town… while glowing eyes watch us from an alley. Because those are always a good sign."
"Stay close to me, Rin," Saber advised. "Our foe does not seem the type to fall easily."
"R-Right. We should—Wait, what the—!" Tohsaka stammered, suddenly fumbling about in her pockets.
"Rin, what's wrong?"
Her Master turned to look at her, suddenly appearing even less sure of herself.
"My jewels…" she hissed. "They're gone. They've all just vanished!" She continued rifling through her pockets. "Shirou? Can you hear me? Shirou?!"
Saber saw bags forming under the girl's eyes, terror securing itself in her sapphire depths.
"All of them? Does that include the one we've been using to communicate with Shirou?" Saber glanced around warily.
"Yes! It-It's not like I could have lost them! I felt them in my pockets just seconds ago!"
Saber abruptly realized she was wearing her armor now. What in the world…?
"Considering the circumstances, I find that surprisingly easy to believe."
"We have to find him. If he was sucked in as well, he'll be in trouble."
Indeed. Shirou was more than capable of handling any of the other Masters who were sucked into the field, but there was no telling what Assassin's trickery was capable of. He wouldn't get a chance to trace a sword if there was already a knife in his back.
And then there was Mordred.
Her son had seen her. She knew she was there. Her hopes of letting the knight grow on her own, to heal and evolve in the company of her Master with whom she seemed to get along splendidly with, all of them felt so hollow. Her efforts to avoid them had been for nothing. Mordred would focus on her like a dog with a bone and throw away everything she might have gained for another chance at her head.
If she discovered Shirou had a connection to her, Arturia had to account for the possibility that Mordred use him as bait to draw her in. Saber had faith in her former Master's skills, but he would not be able to face that knight at close range for long. Mordred lacked finesse, had a tendency to show off, and relied mostly on brute force, but she had enough brute force to overwhelm him ten times over. Just once would take a matter of minutes, and that was if he was lucky.
On the other hand, given the inexplicable shift in locale, the eerie laughter, and the disappearance and reappearance of their possessions and equipment, who knew if strength even mattered here?
—GONG—!
The sound of a bell tolling somewhere overhead made them start, looking around for its source.
Rin ran over to a nearby house, reinforced her limbs, and scrambled her way onto the roof, before turning around to face back in Saber's direction as the bell continued its slow, grim tolling.
"Oh my god…" she whispered.
"Rin, what is it?"
"That's not what it's supposed to sound like," Rin's gaze intensified such that Saber could tell even from their distance. Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped, staring in stupefaction at the source of the noise. "It's supposed to be a series of notes."
"You know where we are?"
Rin just gestured for her to join her on the roof. And upon doing so, she understood. The great clock tower and the palace it was built into were unmistakable.
"Saber… We're in London."
Saber nodded. She had never felt less enthusiastic to be 'home.' But something about this Britain… it felt completely, irreparably wrong.
The bell gave one final bellow and stopped. Twelve o'clock midnight.
"You said the clock was not meant to sound like that," Saber noted. I had an observation of my own. It was far too slow for a clock. It almost sounded like—"
"A church bell," finished Rin, her expression darkening. "I'd say that we're right on time for a funeral."
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"Archer?" Fiore inquired, glancing anxiously about the desolate rooftops as they took in the abrupt change in their surroundings. "Where did this bounded field come from?"
"I am unsure, Master," Chiron replied, securitizing their surroundings. "Archer of Red's clothing was Mediterranean in origin, so if she did possess any magecraft of this magnitude, it seems unlikely that it would send us to surroundings of this nature. Saber of Red does not seem the type to bother with such machinations and the Blue Faction has not had the time to prepare something like this."
"Leaving Assassin of Black as the only suspect," Fiore finished. "But you said Saber of Red struck them down?"
"I did, Master. Though, perhaps death is not the impediment it used to be."
"Wonderful."
Between Shriou Emiya's Reality Marble and Assassin's new trick, Fiore was getting quite tired of being forcibly transported to dangerous alternate worlds. She didn't think her current surroundings were on the same level as the previous inner world, people weren't stumbling out of their homes wondering why they were suddenly in Victorian England after all, but it seemed different from a standard bounded field. Getting out would not be a simple matter. She was grateful that Caules was at the edge of the city with their escort of homunculi. She didn't think her little brother would be capable of dealing with something of this magnitude, at the very least he would have needed to use a Command Seal to bring Berserker to his side.
Granted, she didn't know if she herself would be able to handle this mess. Her mission was already a failure given Assassin of Black's demise and now she had to do everything she could to survive the fallout. The Great Holy Grail War had already spiraled far beyond what she had expected, what with the events surrounding the escaped homunculus and the arrival of the Third Faction. She'd had to ready herself enough to confront any possible friends from the Clock Tower who were drafted into the Red Faction, but dealing with Rin Tohsaka? The King of Knights? Shirou Emiya?
Try as she might, Fiore simply couldn't wrap her head around the man with the Reality Marble. Throughout her conversation with him, every question she'd asked him, he'd always responded that he just wanted to save people, even the Masters who were his enemies, who would doubtlessly try to murder him if given the chance. He seemed so genuine, so honest… yet his answers were completely ridiculous. Fighting for the Grail, not even to claim a wish, but just to ensure no one with malicious intent used it to hurt others? To give up a tactical advantage simply so he could save others? That was too altruistic, too noble. He was like one of those colorful comic book characters Caules liked to read about.
He had to have an ulterior motive. He had to be planning some sort of trap, a way to make the Black and Red Factions destroy each other so he and Tohsaka could sweep whoever remained aside with ease. That was what mages did. They were cruel and cunning and ruthless. Just like she'd have to be if she was to survive the war and heal her legs.
She had to be.
But that didn't mean she should break her word. Disregarding the repercussions Ruler would bring down on her and her family if she broke the ceasefire with the Blue Faction, there would be no telling if further cooperation with Tohsaka and Emiya would be required later on to defeat the Red Faction. It would do little good if any suspicions about her trustworthiness were already jeopardized. She had to maintain her honesty, so she could break it at the optimal moment.
Yes. That was it. The optimal moment.
She could do this.
"Master, are you alright?" Chiron asked concernedly. "You seem lost in thought."
Fiore snapped up instantly. She couldn't afford to show weakness. She trusted Chiron with her life, but he was still technically her subordinate. It was her duty as a Master to keep a cool head and inspire confidence in her Servant during combat, regardless of any annoying moral quandaries that were running through her head.
"Everything is fine, Archer," she reassured him. "Just trying to figure out how we might escape this place."
Chiron raised an eyebrow. "Is that so? Are you sure that's all you're thinking about, Master?"
She blinked in surprise at his tone before sighing in defeat. Of course, she couldn't fool him. He was the Sage of Heroes, a trainer of some of the finest warriors to ever walk the Earth. And any teacher worth their salt could sniff out a student's lie from a mile away, and whether she had realized it or not, it was clear that she was indeed his student.
"Shirou Emiya," she said simply.
"Ah," Chiron nodded. "You doubt him."
"Shouldn't I?" Fiore asked. "Taking things at face value is practically suicide for a mage. And even if it wasn't, who could possibly believe what he said? That he has no interest in an omnipotent wish granter?"
"You raise exemplary points. His stated goals are highly unconventional," Chiron smiled, as if congratulating a student for putting all their effort into a challenging problem. And about to kindly correct them because they still came to the wrong conclusion. "However, that does not necessarily mean he isn't telling the truth about them."
"What? How? Are you saying we should just take him at his word?"
"Not at all. But neither should we assume that he is lying. I met many extraordinary heroes in my life, and though most of them were motivated by their own interests, there were those few that sought righteousness for its own sake. If you jump to the conclusion that Shirou Emiya must have a hidden motive, then you also choose to ignore the very real possibility that he does not, and that could be just as dangerous. To defeat your enemy, you must understand them, and you cannot do that if you assume that something must be a certain way. This is the Great Holy Grail War. If anything has been proven so far, it is that the impossible is just another word for something that has not yet occurred."
Fiore's brow wrinkled in concern. It was ridiculous. She'd learned from grandfather, from her time at the Clock Tower, even from herself, that mages were focused solely on their own self-interest. Everyone was an enemy, right down to their own children in some cases. They couldn't allow for anything else if they were to survive the myriad dangers of the world and their competitors machinations. To be the ones to win the coveted race to Akasha and achieve True Magic. Mages killed and stole, played political games for decades for the sole purpose of bringing about the complete ruin of another mage so that they could take over their work.
No one was ever who they said they were.
But a mage was, first and foremost, a researcher. It was what she loved about it, the mystery, the exploration, the knowledge that her next trial could lead to bold new discoveries. And any good researcher knew that they couldn't allow preexisting prejudices to muddle their findings.
Shirou Emiya seemed honest and she could see no evidence from his actions that he wasn't being truthful about his intentions. That didn't necessarily mean he wasn't simply a master of deception, but discarding the possibility that he was as good as he claimed to be left her just as vulnerable to being blindsided when she betrayed his expectations of her.
And, if no one was who they said they were, then that would mean she couldn't trust her own brother.
"Thank you, Archer," she grinned gratefully. "I have to remember not to let this war make me paranoid."
There was no answer.
"Archer?" she asked, turning around.
There was no sign of him. No indication that he'd ever been there.
She was alone.
For a moment, she thought she heard a child's laughter amidst the deathly silence, but it was gone in an instant.
Without even a creak for a warning, the rooftop she was standing on caved in, and she was suddenly in the alley below. She'd fallen from her wheelchair and it had landed several feet away.
It took far too long for her to pull herself over to it. As much as she had tried to avoid it, her arms and legs were covered in mud. As she was righting the chair however, she paused for a moment.
It was still unnaturally quiet, but…
She could hear something. She pushed her wheelchair back up, some extra effort was needed to make sure it didn't slide around, and listened carefully.
It was too indistinct.
Wiping some of the mud off her hands, on the side of her already ruined shirt, she slowly wheeled herself closer, the horribly uneven and muddy ground making it altogether too difficult to go anywhere without having to put all her strength into it. It unnerved her that the entire world was silent as a graveyard except for that strange noise.
Some sort of snarling? An animal? No, it was almost rhythmic.
She was getting closer to it, but if there was any danger, she had a potent means of defending herself.
Fiore reached a corner and realized that part of it was a voice. Someone whimpering.
She forced her chair towards it, turning the corner and found the source of the sound. And she clamped a hand over her mouth.
It was a girl, bent over, one of her wrists held back behind her by a hideous looking man whose other hand was curled around her neck. The front and back of her dress were slit open.
What she had interpreted as a growl was just his breathing as he… as he thrust into her.
The girl's face was half turned towards Fiore, her red-rimmed eyes those of someone who regretted being alive, the same way one might regret committing a crime. Her face was tear streaked, but she wasn't crying anymore, like she had run out.
"Please…" she croaked. To call it a whimper was generous. "Please stop… Please…stop."
"Lousy bitch!" the man twisted her arm until there was a nauseating snap, and the girl screamed. "Yer sister wuz better'n you!"
"You said…you wouldn't touch her…" for a moment, the girl looked like she might try to fight back, but another thrust and his other hand tightening around her throat put a stop to that. "You said if I just…"
"Shut it, you fucking—"
"Leave her alone!"
The man looked up from his victim and leered at Fiore in a way that made her skin crawl. Even still, she did not regret her shout for an instant.
The grin on his face was sadistic in a way that didn't even make sense. Fiore had accidentally seen Celenike doing some very twisted things with a doll and a knife, but this man was very literally getting off to telling the girl he was raping that he'd done the same to her sister, after she had apparently allowed him do this to her under the promise that he would leave said sister alone. Fiore felt her rational thoughts fleeing her mind with what remained threatening to make her violently ill.
Moreover, the girl barely reacted. Like this wasn't okay, but that it was somehow the way things were supposed to be. That was the part of this picture that made Fiore want to scream; it was horrific, yet was somehow it was supposedly right!
And she wasn't going to let it continue for another microsecond!
"Get your hands away from her, you disgusting ogre!" she held out her right arm.
The man chuckled, a deep gravel like the monster out of a storybook.
"An' wot are you going to do if oi say no?"
"You should be very afraid of the answer to that question," she snarled.
"O' course, o' course. Because a bird in a wheelchair is going to bea' me in a figh'." he sneered.
"A fight would suggest that you stood a chance. This is closer to an execution. Now let her go or else!"
"Sure thing, li''le bird."
He pulled out, kicked the girl forward, yanked her back by her hair, and drove his fist into the side of her jaw. Several teeth flew into the mud and the girl collapsed.
The man started approaching her.
She gave him a chance, and he'd made his choice. He had no one to blame but himself for this. She made a gesture with her right arm.
"Whuzzat supposed to be? Casting a magic spell, are we?"
Fiore looked at her right arm and realized with mounting terror that her Bronze Link Manipulator was gone. She hadn't taken it off! It couldn't possibly have just vanished! What the hell was happening?!"
She knew other magecraft, but she wouldn't be able to use it without getting her magic circuits fixed. And the man started towards her.
"Oh god…"
There was no escape. She couldn't get away without help, and it was dawning on her just how spectacular her error in judgement was.
She blinked and the grotesque man was suddenly right in front of her.
—too frightened to move—
"H-How—" she was cut off as he grabbed her by the throat.
—too frightened to focus—
"Ah'll tell you wot, li''le bird, ah'm goin' to do to you what I did to 'er…"
—too frightened even to scream—
"Bot when I'm done with you, oi think ah'll take you to meet one o' moi maits, an' you can entertain the both of us. An' we'll keep ye like the li''le bird you are. In a caige. O'couse, you'll be bent over like a dog for us mos' o' the toime, so maybe I'll coll ye puppy, instead o' li''le bird. 'ow's that sound?"
This…
This couldn't be happening…
This couldn't be…
Couldn't be!
That was it!
This was nonsensical… there was no way for her to be in Victorian London! There was no way she could lose her own mystic code!
This wasn't real! It was a nightmare!
"Indeed it is, li''le bird. But who wos it tha' said tha' noigh'mares can't 'urt ya?"
He couldn't have…
"It don't ma''er o' course. Because the whole world is a noigh'mare, doncha know? Ye jus' don' loike it tha' way yet."
She gasped, the pressure around her throat barely allowing her to breathe. How could this be happening? How could she be this utterly pathetic?! She was a mage! Not a helpless little girl!
And yet… even with the realization that this couldn't be reality… she still couldn't do anything about it.
She couldn't even see her Command Seals where they were supposed to be on the back of her hand.
Her Command Seals?
But… if this was a nightmare… then she most certainly still had them!
Terror turned to defiance in an instant.
"I told you you should have been frightened of the answer to that question," she growled, barely getting air into her lungs.
'Come to me, Archer. On this command seal, appear at my side and kill this obscenity!'
"Of course, Master."
The troglodyte's grip on her went slack and she fell into the mud as several arrows punched clear through his head with a splatter of blood and brain matter. Far more than there logically should have been.
Fiore shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself as Chiron carefully picked her up and placed her back in her chair. A quick bit of magecraft on her Servant's part cleaned the filth off her clothes and dried them.
"Master, I am so sorry," Chiron hurriedly apologized, his normally calm face shaken. "I looked away for an instant and suddenly you were—"
"It's alright, Archer. That… was…" she couldn't even finish the sentence. She felt violated just having been near that disgusting caricature of a human being. That he touched her at all was enough to give her goosebumps. How much worse must that poor girl be feeling, having actually been… urgh… she could barely stand the thought of it.
She worked a few more shivers out of her system. She felt sick. The brute's face was going to poison her thoughts for weeks if she didn't have something done about it. She'd ask if she could have her memory altered later, but for now, there was someone who was in far worse condition than herself.
"Miss? Are you alright?" she asked, carefully rolling her wheelchair over to the victim. "I promise, you're safe now."
The girl stirred, but it took a few moments for her to come to her senses. When she did, she looked around.
"Where… where is he? Why would you make him leave?"
Tears welled in her eyes.
…What?
Fiore's attempt at a disarming smile melted away, the same unease she had felt when she had first approached the scene beginning to creep over her again.
"I don't understand. He was attacking you. Why would you-"
"Because that's all I have…"
All of a sudden, she was on her feet, pointing at Fiore, her eyes wild with crazed tears. "Liar! LIAR!" What have you done?! I… everything I was… could have been… You—You've r-ruined everything! You had no right! To spew something as hideous as there being other reasons to exist… there is only cruelty and suffering! There isn't anything in this world more vile than something like you!"
Fiore nearly tumbled out of her wheelchair again as she tried to put some distance between herself and the screaming young woman.
"I have nothing left! N-Nothing!" the girl proclaimed and ran from the alley. "No suffering, no agony… I might as well just die."
Fiore blinked, and she was suddenly outside the alley, looking down an empty street as the girl scrambled into the road as though to get further away. In an instant, a horse and buggy materialized beside her, and before Fiore could so much as react, there was a sickening crunch as the girl was all but splattered across the cobblestones like jelly, the spray of blood slapping her across the face and painting most of her right side—and all exposed parts of her wheelchair—red.
Against her better judgment, she looked down at the remains.
That… that was a mistake.
Fiore fought the urge to vomit and failed, pushing herself out of her chair and rolling herself over just quickly enough to avoided throwing up on herself. She gagged, her stomach heaving painfully. Archer came around her side and held her steady in his arms.
…At least she wasn't crying.
"What…" she choked, "What the hell is wrong with this place?"
"I suspect that this is how Assassin perceives the world," Archer surmised, his calm returned but with a firm scowl in place.
"A world—" her voice caught in her throat as bile filled her mouth. She spat it into the rest of the half-digested mess. "A world like this? A world with only these… horrors? I won't accept that. I refuse! This isn't reality—it's a caricature! …All the hideous things here are gratuitously represented, designed to… to fit a violent playground meant only for a psychopath who's never actually seen the world!" One eye welled up as the girl's blood dripped into it and she wiped it away, leaving a streak across her face, and a stain on her sleeve.
"I wholeheartedly agree, Master. Be rest assured that there is no need for you to accept anything of the sort," Archer soothed her. "Our world is not without it horrors, but this place has distilled them, focused them, removed all the light that would stand against it. It is Assassin's hunting ground, and no more."
"If this is our Assassin, then Emiya was right. I don't care if Grandfather punishes me, this Servant needs to be eliminated."
She noticed Archer wasn't actually looking at her anymore, staring instead into the fog, tapping one finger against his chin in thought.
"Is something the matter, Archer?"
"No, Master. Your concern is appreciated, but fortunately not necessary. It is merely that I find myself wondering how a person would even develop a frame of mind that dictates a world such as this," he muttered. "Perhaps it is less about them deserving to suffer, and more that they must exist to be tortured and murdered, and it is not merely wrong, but anathema for them to have any other purpose."
"Honestly, I couldn't care less about how they arrived at this conclusion, but if your hypothesis is even partially correct, I think it can be definitively established that our Assassin is a liability for its obscene and generally nonsensical interpretation of reality, and can't be trusted under even the most exceptional circumstances. We'll need to change our objective to reflect that. Archer, if we encounter Assassin in this," she paused, "…nightmare, your orders are to eliminate it. We'll locate and apprehend its Master after the fact."
The Bronze-Link Manipulator was suddenly on her arm. She didn't waste a second activating it, springing up from the ground and into the grasp of the four mechanical arms.
Archer gave her an odd look.
"Are you sure you're alright, Fiore?" he asked.
"Y-Yes. Can I ask what your concern is?" It was odd enough that he was using her real name. Why was he giving her such a strange look?
"Fiore, I would consider it highly unwise for you to immediately enter combat after experiencing what you just did."
Fiore clenched her fist. She could still feel that ogre's hands on her, but she banished the phantom sensations with a shake of her head. No harm had come to her. There was nothing to fear in this place: It was all just an appallingly sick joke.
"We don't have the luxury of time right now. As things stand, it's not guaranteed that I'll run into an enemy at all."
Chiron shook his head.
"You cannot hide your intentions from me, Master. I can tell that you expect to be met with resistance. Were you in top form, I've no doubt you would be fully capable of surviving anything the enemy could muster and emerging victorious." Any joy from the compliment was dampened by the context. He continued. "However, you just witnessed an act of violation and depravity of a type you had never attempted to comprehend before. Do you mean to tell me that you'll be unhindered by that?"
"No," she answered. "I don't think that at all. However, I have no other options. This is a Holy Grail War. I have only two choices: I can fight, or I can die."
All around them, it seemed as though their surroundings were laughing at her new resolution, a chorus of childish giggles chiming throughout the fog, the eerie echo of the night setting her hairs on edge.
The concern in the Servant's eyes suddenly vanished. His bow appeared in his grip, and in the time it took her to blink, he used it to deflect a trio of arrows that would have surely killed her.
"It seems we have run out of time," he noted calmly with a shake of his head, returning his bow to its proper grip and nocking an arrow.
Fiore tensed, pushing a sudden sensation of terror to the back of her mind. She couldn't afford to let herself get distracted. "How many?"
"I cannot say for certain. This place is interfering with my ability to sense their magical energy," Chiron informed her. "That said, I believe Saber of Red would have charged in already if she were nearby. I find it more likely that we only face Archer of Red on the rooftops and Kairi Shishigou on the ground."
Fiore nodded. She could already see a large shadow lumbering out from the fog, vaguely reminiscent of the intelligence photos of the deadly mage mercenary. This would not be an easy battle.
"Can you defeat Archer before Saber arrives?"
"If she is having as much difficulty navigating this haze as we are, most likely," he smiled at her reassuringly. "Worry not, Master. Though it might be shrouded by this fog, Sagittarius still shines in the night sky."
Fiore nodded, a faint smile that just barely reached her eyes flashing across her face only to be replaced by one of fierce determination just as quickly. Indeed, she had been lucky to have summoned such a kind and wise Servant. They were far from safe, but they were not without hope either. "Good luck, Archer."
"And to you, Master," he replied. "I'll attempt to keep the battle close, in case Saber arrives."
Fiore nodded, and Chiron leapt onto the rooftops, the whistling of arrows joining the hellish moans of their environment.
No sooner had the sage departed than Kairi Shishigou emerged from the fog. He looked just like his photos. Muscled, rugged, with three scars over his left eye that a pair of sunglasses did nothing to hide. He plucked a lit cigarette from his mouth and tossed it onto the rundown cobblestone streets, careful to avoid striking the many abandoned carts and scrap wood along the sides.
"So," he began looking her and her weapons over. "This madhouse your doing?"
"No," Fiore declared, managing to force herself to stay calm for the moment. "This bounded field was created by Assassin. I had no part in this nightmare's creation and I'm offended by the mere suggestion that I could be."
"Shame. Was hoping you'd know the way out." Shishigou sighed. "Well then, I'm guessing we can skip the introductions."
"Fine by me," Fiore concurred. "We most likely both know each other's names already. However, you don't mind if I give you a warning first, do you?"
"A warning?" Shishigou glanced about their hellish surroundings in disbelief before shrugging. "Sure. Why not?"
Fiore was grateful. While the idea of giving a warning in their current environment was admittedly more than a little ridiculous, it was a method of solidifying her resolve. After all, if she gave her opponent a chance to back out and they didn't take it, it might alleviate some of the guilt their death would place on her shoulders. Besides, in their current surroundings, with rapists lurking in the alleys, women's corpses laying in the streets, the faint but constant giggling of children, and the glowing eyes watching them from the shadows, she couldn't afford to get distracted by anything.
"I suggest you leave this place!" she announced. "This town is now under the cont—ugh… never mind."
"Yeah," Shishigou remarked sympathetically. He opened his arms and gestured around them. "Not much I can do to leave this city anymore. What's with that look? Did you have some sort of speech prepared for this?"
"I might have made a few notes," Fiore confessed, somewhat reluctantly. She had spent several hours going over the warning, discarding draft after draft, even asking Caules if any of his movies or comics had any good excerpts she could use, but in the end, she had kept it simple. It had been designed with the express purpose of intimidating the enemy into backing down—whether by intimidation or a brief show of force—even if the likelihood of success wasn't particularly high. Anything to reduce the chances of her needing to murder someone. But it was worthless in this den of insanity.
"Don't get so down on yourself. I'm sure it was great," Shishigou offered.
"Thank you…?" she answered, feeling rather uncertain about the other mage's intent.
For a ruthless mercenary who dressed like some unruly biker, Mr. Shishigou had excellent manners. It was a shame that they were in opposing roles.
The thought of killing him made her want to throw up again, but after everything she had just been subjected to, she nevertheless felt a powerful urge to hurt something. She couldn't decide if she was dreading what was about to happen or looking forward to it.
It really didn't matter though.
This was a war, and he was on the opposite side. One way or another, someone was almost certainly going to die.
Somewhere in the city, a funeral bell pealed twelve times.
And as it rang, she somehow knew that one of those grim chimes was meant for her.
She resolved to prove it wrong. She wouldn't die. Not tonight. And not in a disgusting place like this. If that bell was indeed ringing for her, she'd see to it that the funeral got postponed indefinitely.
FATEFATEFATEFATE
Kairi considered what it said about his life that fighting a paraplegic teenaged girl with mechanical arms sprouting from her back in a nightmarish facsimile of Victorian London wasn't in the top three of strangest things to ever happen to him. Top five maybe, but it sure didn't beat out the job he did with the Mage Killer.
Granted, perhaps that was a factor in why he wasn't nearly as unsettled by his current surroundings as he should have been. While being in a city crawling with wraiths was never a situation a person wanted to be in, he'd been practicing necromancy more than long enough to be confident in his ability to see them coming.
Though since these were apparently wraiths that came out of a Servant, he didn't want to take any chances. And with Archer dealing with her opposite number, that left him with only one option.
'Hey? You there, Saber?'
"██████!"
…
"Alright… I'll call back later."
Well that was out. He could summon her with a Command Seal, but he didn't want to use one before he really needed to. He only had three after all, and despite whatever eerie noises he could hear coming from the alleyways and darker shadows, the wraiths he had sensed were all headed somewhere else… drawn to something else. Where or what, he didn't know, but he wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially when he had other problems.
Clock Tower intel was sketchy about a lot of stuff, but one of the few details it was clear on was that Fiore Forvedge was Yggdmillennia's second most competent mage after their leader Darnic himself. Possibly more so. And no matter how much they made her look like a certain comic book supervillain, those Bronze-Link Manipulators of hers were a powerful mystic code, equal to the El-Melloi family's Volumen Hydrargyrum in some capabilities, and even surpassing it in others.
He never would have guessed it just by looking at her. On all accounts, she seemed like a sweet kid, almost adorable even when she was trying to be intimidating with that warning of hers. Kind of reminded him of his owndaughter. It was a shame he had to kill her.
But hey, that was war, and he was a mercenary. He wasn't hired to make friends.
A head-on confrontation was out of the question. He'd increased and diversified his arsenal after he'd found out about Emiya, but that didn't mean he could wrestle robot arms powered by what seemed to be the spirits of dead animals. If he could get close for a few moments, he might have been able to exorcize the things, but he doubted he'd be given the time. He'd set up more than a few explosive surprises behind him, so he could retreat if necessary, but if the Periwinkle Faction was caught up in this like Mordred suspected, he wanted to save them for the Mage Killer's successor.
His only advantage in this fight was that he was more experienced. As dangerous as Fiore looked, he could tell she'd never been in a real fight. At best, she'd think like a mage; what spells she could use, or how to keep him from casting his own. Not a bad plan, but hardly the whole picture.
Kairi had been in more fights than he could count, and he'd never been too impressive of a mage. Necromancer, yes, but there was a reason the Clock Tower only called him a spellcaster. He didn't even study the art anymore… there wasn't really much of a point to it now.
Still he had never gone for big fancy masterpieces of magecraft, preferring simple, practical tricks that could save his hide when it counted. Add this to his knack for using his environment—which had given him plenty of options here, what with the rampant fog and piles of lumber—to his advantage, and he was feeling pretty safe about his chances.
Especially since the girl hadn't seen fit to instantly destroy the cigarette he'd tossed away.
He whispered an incantation and the dying light suddenly sparked up into a sizable flame. It was only a moment before the stub itself burned up, but the momentary flame was still more than enough to light up the surrounding wreckage, which quickly erupted into a massive bonfire. Catching the flames out of the corner of her eye, Fiore's attention was momentarily drawn toward the conflagration.
In that moment of distraction, Kairi broke into a run to the right of the street and whipped out his weapons. Without a second's hesitation, he fired a pair of gandr infused fingers from his shotgun and tossed one of his heart grenades right after. He took cover behind the corner of an alley as Fiore gathered her wits about herself and focused on the incoming threats.
…and suddenly he was behind her?
She turned her head at the sound of his footsteps.
"Didn't plan for that," he muttered. "The hell's going on in this place?"
"Jupiter, defend," she commanded calmly. The upper left arm of her mystic code swept out and swatted the gandr fingers from the air, the projectiles bouncing harmlessly into the fire behind her.
Her eyes caught the heart grenade a moment later, widening in terror as she realized what it was. Kairi took the time to pull the pin from another grenade and tossed it towards the girl, reloading his shotgun at the same time.
"Saturn, crush it!" Fiore shouted. One of her lower arms reached forward and did just that, squashing the heart bomb to paste before it's curse could activate. She pushed off the walls she had stationed herself between before the other grenade could detonate. She shot a glare his way as she gave another order. "Saturn, pursue. Mars, open fire!"
Kairi ducked just as the upper right arm unleashed a hail of prana bullets at him, just barely managing to take cover around the nearest corner. The only things keeping his head on his shoulders were his instincts, honed by years of combat experience.
"Dammit!" he growled, "Those arms just have everything, don't they."
She continued shooting, her attacks shattering bricks and splintering wood. The second she let up, he jumped out from his cover and made a break for the next side-street. Which put him… on top of the Tower Bridge?
"Seriously?" he grumbled. Well, at least he had a good view of the city now.
He could see the Archers fighting one another relatively nearby, and Mordred's lightning was coming from an indistinct part of the city, yet for some reason, he could see it elsewhere—on the opposite side of the city, no less. The eerie childish laughter was less audible from so high up, but now he could hear the wailing of frightened young women and injured men.
There was a trap door right underneath him and a quick look at what was on the other side revealed a pit full of what appeared to be knives.
"Riiiight…"
This place made no sense, and he had a feeling that Assassin was all-but micromanaging this fight to disorient or kill the both of them without even appearing to be present.
Fiore materialized out of the fog, but not moving in his direction, instead, her mechanical arms nearly sent her careening off the edge of the roof. Had she not managed to make a partial recovery at the last moment, she would have fallen to her death into the Thames. As things stood, she was only holding onto the tower by one arm. He saw his chance and he took it, but two of her arms immediately began shooting at him the moment he showed his face, while the remaining one punched itself into the masonry. She began climbing back up to his level, managing to thrust herself upwards with enough momentum to get solid precipice on the roof with him in a matter of seconds.
He dove out of the way as the mechanical appendages crashed down where he'd been standing, suddenly realizing just how much trouble he was in. Two of those arms had just dug into solid stonework and he was on a rooftop, with only so much room to maneuver. And unlike her, he couldn't just climb down with a bunch of metal arms. The fog began to thicken around them again, and the sounds of Fiore's Bronze-Link Manipulator were suddenly gone.
If it hadn't been for the telltale scent of ozone and the crackle of electricity, his head would have been cleaved from his shoulders, just barely managing to dodge as Mordred's greatsword passed right over his head, so close that he could feel the static electricity passing by him.
"Saber! What the hell was that?! You could've killed me!" he shouted. Mordred seemed completely unaware of him, and continued charging through the dense fog, the both of them back on the ground. "Saber! Can you hear me?!"
The fog surged in again, and the next thing he knew, he was being shot at again, Fiore right in front of him.
"I don't know about you, but I'm getting kind of sick of being jerked around from one place to another," he growled, taking a few glancing hits as he quickly retreated down the road. He fired back, not bothering to aim, the fingers' heat seeking would handle that. Though with the arms' defenses, he wasn't exactly expecting it to do very much, but if he was lucky the gunfire would divert her attention.
Pulling a third heart-grenade from his coat, he tossed it backwards, letting it roll towards Fiore. She saw organ coming and immediately took evasive action, getting away from the explosive. Meanwhile, he fired his shotgun again, seemingly haphazardly. But there was a grimace of certainty on his face.
He'd just won.
Fiore narrowed her eyes at the approaching gandr rounds. "Jupiter, defen—ah!"
She had assumed the third grenade he'd thrown was another of his heart grenades—a weapon with a limited blast radius that inflicted a gas containing a gandr curse. But the truth was that it was a lot easier to stuff a fragmentation grenade inside a human heart than most people thought, and those things had a much larger blast range than his usual armaments. They weren't of much use against his usual targets, so he didn't normally carry them, but with an Emiya in play he'd decided to think outside the box. A decision that launched Fiore Forvedge Yggdmilennia flying through the air, both her and her mystic code landing in a heap a few feet away from the wood fire on the side of the street.
He took aim just as she was picking herself up.
"Sorry, kid," he said, "End of the line."
Her eyes widened in terror just in time for him to pull the trigger.
Such a waste. A waste of talent, of human life, of his damn ammunition. He had better things to do than kill little girls.
Once had already been too many.
And he moment he thought that, the world turned into something entirely different. The fog swirled around them and all of a sudden, he wasn't in London anymore. Instead, he was in the basement of a house he rarely returned to anymore. And in Fiore's place, screaming in agony as something burned her from the inside out was—
"Rho Aias!"
Kairi's eyes widened in shock as the fog returned, the scene melting away as four… petals? Four petals of pink energy flared to life in the air before Fiore. The fingers he'd shot attempted to course-correct to avoid the new barrier but were simply too close to avoid doing anything but splattering harmlessly against the shield.
"What the hell?" the mercenary muttered, instantly shooting back to his feet. Fiore was looking just as baffled as he was, so she certainly wasn't responsible. Kairi quickly reloaded his shotgun and whirled around to where the voice had come from, one of the rooftops on Fiore's side of the street, where stood…
"Emiya!" Fiore gasped.
Kairi scowled. The redheaded boy he had met at Sighisoara held out his arm to the open air, magic circuits glowing turquoise under his shirt. He reinforced his legs and leapt down from the roof, standing between Kairi and Fiore.
There was something different about him. Perhaps it was the situation, but back at the church, he'd been genial, smiling. A perfectly polite young man. Now… now he was all business, his body rigid and tall, yet loose enough to drop into a fighting stance at any second.
And his eyes… there was fire in them, a steady, uncompromising blaze, unwilling to back down or give in, utterly focused on the task before him. If Kiritsugu had been a cold, empty machine, this boy was a custom job, filled with limitless passion. But ultimately, he was still a machine. It was an intriguing difference, if no less unsettling.
"This fight is over," he stated with finality, the pink shield he'd erected in front of Fiore fading from the air. "We have no idea what this place is, and if you two waste time and energy trying to kill each other, you can bet that none of us will make it out of here."
"Waste time?" Kairi repeated. "You do realize we're here for the express purpose of killing each other, right, kid? Just because one of the Servants pulls a creepy magic trick doesn't mean the war's postponed."
"It does now," Shirou shot back with a wry grin that quickly disappeared. "I'm not letting either of you kill each other. By all means, you can try, but I can guarantee that unless you're hiding a Noble Phantasm in your jacket, you'll be wasting your energy. So put down your weapon, call back your Servants, and let's all get out of this mess to fight another day, alright?"
Fight another day? This was getting ridiculous. As much as the kid was trying to dress it all up with pragmatism, the necromancer could tell he wasn't that worried about Assassin. For all that the world around them was unnerving, the kid was allied with a Servant that could apparently go toe to toe with Lancer of Red and Saber of Black at the same time. They wouldn't be taken down by a Servant with not even two hundred years to their legend.
But at the same time, he couldn't figure out for the life of him what his motivation actually was. If he was as brutally pragmatic as the last Emiya that Kairi had met, he wouldn't have bothered preventing him from shooting Fiore. Hell, Kiritsugu would have shot him in the back while he was still focused on the Yggdmillennia girl, and would no doubt have had another bullet with her name on it, just to ensure there was no chance of her surviving the cursed fingers.
But this Emiya did the exact opposite, instead preserving the girl and giving up whatever advantage he could have had to catch them both unawares. The only theory Kairi had that might have explained his confounding actions was a desire to use them as shields against Assassin in case they pulled something unexpected out, but even that didn't seem right.
Fiore's robotic arms slowly picked her back up, the girl taking deep breaths as she glared at Kairi. "Thank you for the assistance, Shirou Emiya. But I cannot retreat from this battle."
"Why are all mages so stubborn?" Shirou muttered. He glared at the both of them. "We're in some sort of bounded field that's invoked what I can only describe as a twisted hallucinatory version of Victorian London, with Jack the Ripper after all our heads, and you two want to fight each other? We need to consolidate our Servants and finish it now before it gets away and kills even more people!"
Kairi wasn't sure if he imagined it or not, but the moment Emiya stopped talking, the fog around him seemed to shift again. Just for a moment, it wasn't the gloom filled streets of London shown in the mist, but a wasteland of corpses, obliterated buildings, splotches of strange black mud. But what stood out more than anything was the fire. It looked like an ordinary inner-city fire, and yet somehow, it was unlike anything he'd ever seen before. Somehow, for that singular moment, the entire world was burning.
The necromancer had seen some horrifying things in his life, but he was extremely disturbed to find himself grateful that the environment almost instantly shifted back the serial killer's hideous playground. He would have been more so if Fiore's stricken, white-faced expression hadn't confirmed that what he'd seen was not a hallucination.
"Do you understand?" Shirou demanded, seeming not to have noticed the spectral image that had flickered around him, nor the fire that blazed behind him and Fiore. "Call back your Servants from wherever they are. We can find the rest of my allies and figure out how to get out of here."
That shook Kairi out of his slump. He thrashed his head about to clear the fear from his head and locked his gaze onto the redhead.
"I'm afraid I'm going to have to decline that offer," he shouted, taking several cautious steps backward. "Nothing personal, but I'd rather not put my fate in the hands of someone connected to the Mage Killer."
"Mage Killer?" Shirou murmured, his brow furrowed in confusion. "I don't know who you think I am, but I can tell you for certain that you've got the wrong guy. I wouldn't know anyone you do."
"Really?" Kairi inquired sarcastically, hoping that the mystic fog wouldn't turn him around too badly since he was still close to where he needed to go. "So, you're not Kiritsugu Emiya's apprentice?"
"What?" Shirou exclaimed, the young man's amber eyes widening as his confident demeanor evaporated in an instant. "How the hell do you know the old man?"
Kairi didn't bother to answer, instead capitalizing on the man's moment of confusion to fire another pair of fingers downrange and book it in the other direction.
He heard the rounds bounce off something and he could hear the rapid footsteps of someone chasing after him, meaning his glancing shot had done all of nothing. Fair enough, he hadn't expected it to. Anyone that could throw up something like that pink energy shield in an instant wouldn't be too troubled to do it again. For once, he was thankful for the blasted fog, Fiore could have shot him in the back as he ran if it weren't for the mist obscuring her aim.
But he wasn't far enough away to completely escape pursuit. Even with the blasted bounded field turning every alley and street in a labyrinth, Shirou Emiya was too close behind him to lose immediately, even if the lack of mechanical accompaniment meant Yggdmillennia had likely stayed back. He really didn't want to fight the redhead, especially since his reaction confirmed he had some relation to Kiritsugu. He wasn't anxious to test his luck going up against a fighter trained by the Mage Killer who had seen all his tricks already.
Well, not all of them, but certainly too many.
He came upon a building he recognized, and after checking to make sure his 'surprise' was still where he'd left it, figured it would be his best shot at coming out of this mess alive. There was no doubt in his mind that he needed to kill this kid now, if at all possible. Before he became a much bigger problem later in the war.
FATEFATEFATEFATE
"Wait! Come back!" Shirou shouted, dissipating the hoplon of King Leonidas he had used to deflect the scarred mage's parting shot, and charging down the alley he'd escaped through.
"Shirou, wait!" Fiore called. "Kairi Shishigou is dangerous!"
It was nice to know his current adversary cared enough to warn him, but Shirou still didn't pause as he rocketed down the misty street. Not only did he want to keep the man safe from the unsettling spirits that he could hear snickering throughout the fog, but he'd been more than a bit terrified when the mist had flickered and just for a moment, he'd seen the Fuyuki Fire. He didn't know how this place was doing that, but he couldn't let someone else potentially get sucked into it.
Besides, this Kairi Shishigou… he knew Kiritsugu. Maybe not his Kiritsugu, but a Kiritsugu. From what he'd seen so far of this alternate world, with the exception of matters pertaining to the Grail War, everything was pretty much the same. Thus, it stood to reason that this world's version of his father would be similar to the man he'd known, the man who'd given him his ideals; his dream to be a hero. And while he'd never been particularly curious about his father's life before they'd met, something that Shishigou said disturbed him.
Mage Killer…
He'd heard rumors in the Clock Tower of a legendary assassin, a long dead mercenary of unparalleled ruthlessness and efficiency. When the Mage's Association's best Enforcers couldn't break through a target's defenses, they called him in, and he annihilated anything and anyone in his way before always securing the kill using any means necessary—specifically, those that the Enforcers wouldn't use because they were worried about their status in the Association's political hierarchy. The Mage Killer, on the other hand, wouldn't hesitate to use methods that got him labeled as a heretic. Countless people, innocent and guilty, had lost their lives at his hands. Shirou had managed to study a few of the Association's reports of this demon's activities, the handful that Luvia had been able to get her hands on for him. It only made sense to examine them considering he could be faced with such an opponent.
That was what he told Luvia, of course. The truth was that he figured that he himself might find himself in similar situations one day in his quest to become a Hero of Justice. He needed to try and discern how he could do better, to save more people. But if Kiritsugu had been this mercenary…
No. That was absurd. He'd known Kiritsugu. Yes, he was friends with the local Yakuza boss, but he didn't do anything illegal or immoral, unless one counted his abysmal presence in the kitchen (which Shirou was admittedly tempted to do). Kiritsugu was as unlike a normal mage as was possible. He was spaced out, clumsy, he played around like a child. Hell, half the reason he got along so well with Taiga was that he was the only one who could keep up with her exuberance most of the time.
He was his father. And the time he'd spent with him, the five years between the fire and the old man's death, were probably the best times of his life. He couldn't be this Mage Killer. No one who had instilled his ideals in him, who had granted him his dream to be a hero, could possibly be some hired assassin. He had to figure out what this was all about.
Assassin's mist was clouding his prana sensitivity, but fortunately, while Shishigou was likely in excellent shape, Shirou was much younger and therefore able to keep up with the scarred man, keeping him within sight at all times. He had a feeling if he lost him for even an instant in this fog, he'd never find him again.
The mercenary ducked inside one of the two story buildings that lined the broken streets, tossing something behind him as he dashed through the rotting wooden door. Shirou hopped back from the item, a deep red human heart. Knowing exactly what the strange armament did from Saber's report on the fighting at Sighisoara, he immediately traced a counter.
Since obtaining Archer's arsenal, he had spent every night investigating the infinite horde of weaponry, cataloging every blade and tool he found for further use. Most of what he found was not too helpful, nameless knives and dulling swords. Apparently, even when an armory was unlimited, most of it was still junk. And unlike the Counter Guardian, Shirou didn't have Eye of the Mind to automatically sift through the unhelpful stuff. Thus, he tended to only bother remembering the few score Noble Phantasms he'd found so far. He was sure there were thousands more, but he hadn't encountered them yet, and he could hardly trace something if he didn't know what he was supposed to be trying to create.
Fortunately, the Noble Phantasms that Archer had used most frequently in his career as a Counter Guardian had floated to the top of the Reality Marble, so to say. Among them, Hrunting, the Hound of the Red Plains, one of the swords wielded by the hero Beowolf that would unfailingly find its target and land the optimal slash as long as it had tasted a target's blood once before. That one would not be particularly useful against a gas grenade that needed to be crushed before it went off, but fortunately, the tracking sword was partnered with another blade in legend that Shirou had immediately searched for in the Reality Marble. He'd found it, though it was far less a sword than a club made of steel.
"Trace on."
Naegling, the Iron Hammer, flashed into Shirou's hands, for he needed both to heft the cumbersome instrument, and, letting gravity assist him as much as possible, he smashed the sword into the cursed heart, rendering it useless and shattering the cobblestones underneath.
"How did you do that?"
Shirou jumped at the sudden voice behind him, dissipating Beowolf's weapon for the more versatile Kanshou and Bakuya. His eyebrow rose at the person he found before him, unsure if he should feel threatened or not.
A little girl with pale hair, her body so thin she could be nothing else but starved, stood before him, a filthy sack substituting for any clothing she might have worn. Her sunken, dead eyes stared forward at him, the curious tilt in her head preventing her from appearing completely stoic.
Was she some innocent street urchin who had gotten caught in Assassin's field? Was she part of the spell itself? Either way, it did him no good to elaborate on his abilities.
"Where are your parents, little girl?" he asked carefully, not wanting to startle her if she was some innocent caught up in this mess, but unable to take the chance that she wasn't a trap.
"We're still looking for a mommy," the girl said, her expression still completely unreadable. "How did you do that?"
Shirou narrowed his eyes, keeping his swords at the ready. He could tell something was off about the child before him, but he didn't know if his blades would be able to hurt her. "I don't know what you're—"
"Not the swords," the child spoke again, cutting off his attempted deflection. "The fire. This place is our pain, our prison, our womb from which we can never leave. It is where we are churned and broken, cast down a river of hell. It is our nightmare. Not yours. But you shifted it. Your pain shifted it just for a moment, to the fire, the flames of evil. How?"
Shirou shrugged. "I don't know. But if this place is your hell, then the fire was mine."
"It's not just our hell," the child growled. "It is our existence, our life that never begins."
"I'm sorry," Shirou offered, though his eyes offered no compromise. He was sympathetic to the being that he was now sure was some kind of manifestation of Assassin; he'd been unable to move on from the New City Fire until his encounter with Archer. He knew what it was like to be bogged down to an existence you despised, its grip shadowing your every action. Without Rin and his Heroic Spirit counterpart, he would have never escaped and been able to move forward with his life. He had no doubt that for Assassin, as a Servant influenced by its legend on a fundamental level, it was ten times worse.
But that wasn't an excuse to just kill whoever you wanted. Not remotely.
The child cocked its head to the side, toxic green eyes staring up at him. "You're a strange one. Like us, but not. Were you able to grow up?"
"Yes." Shirou nodded.
"Oh," the child remarked, her face twisting in confusion. "Into what?"
Shirou paused before replying, wondering if he would think of a new explanation, some hidden revelation that would only come in this wondrous moment. Instead, he came up with the same answer he always did.
"A Hero of Justice."
The child frowned. "Justice? They tried to bring us to that. All around, the men with clubs would run through the streets, past the wailing women and starving children, talking lots and lots about us."
Shirou's eyes widened as four more children apparated behind the girl, all with different faces, but each one thin as a bone and dressed in nothing but rags. "They said, 'We must find The Ripper! We must bring The Ripper to justice!'"
"They cried on and on about justice," a child with a bandage over their eye proclaimed. "How it was great and everything would be happy again if we got justice."
"But we didn't want to find justice," one with a slashed nose whimpered.
"We just wanted to go back inside mommy," said another with an empty sleeve where he was missing an arm.
The original girl glared at Shirou. "We never saw justice, just like we never saw mommy. Both were swept away down the Thames. Maybe you will be too. Or trampled by a horse."
Shirou cocked an eyebrow. "Huh?"
The thunder of hoofs roared behind him and Shirou dived towards Shishigou's building just before something ran him down. He whirled back around as the specter of a horse drawn carriage charged down the cobblestone street and disappeared into the fog, the children nowhere to be seen.
"Well that's not disturbing at all," he muttered.
He heard children giggling as though in response, and he recognized some of their voices from the group that had just confronted him.
Something else was wrong here though. He'd already been attacked by a girl he saved from being raped, for, of all reasons, not letting it happen. He'd being listening to the screams, and giggling from the shadows. He'd been swept from one place to another by the fog, and…confronted by children speaking as though they were one being. But there was something beyond that.
"This place is our pain, our prison, our womb from which we can never leave."
"We just wanted to go back inside mommy."
…go back…inside?
What could that even mean?
The one missing an arm was the one to say that.
What if he hadn't been missing an arm? What if he was born like that? Back inside… why would a child want to… unless.
"Oh," Shirou muttered with distaste.
If they were aborted, it would make sense that they'd want to go back into their mothers' wombs… but for them to even have that inclination, or much more importantly, the capacity for thought necessary to have it, they would have somehow needed to be kept 'alive' in some sense.
For now, all he could do was guess, but his expectation was that the little girl with the pale hair and green eyes was…
Wait—
If they were all aborted children, and this one deranged spirit had latched on to them, collected them, imprisoned them, turned all of them into a vicious murderer.
And she killed whoever she wanted because this was how she saw the world: A horrid nightmare where good people existed only to be extinguished. Where the police existed to frighten children, and where rapists did whatever they wanted. The air itself was poison. Everything in this place was sick. No wonder she thought killing was okay.
Of course, she could have chosen to see the world differently. This was the idea she began with and the idea she ended with, so she never even tried to see any good in the world. So even if she hated everything about this world, she would never want it to change, because that would invalidate her very being. If the world had even the faintest spark of hope in it, this Jack the Ripper couldn't possibly exist. It was fake, just like this world.
Just like him, in a way.
It wasn't human. The kids were, to some extent, but the Ripper wasn't. Like him, it had come to exist from the will of others, the suffering for it, and his father's ideals for him. The only difference was that Kiritsugu hadn't been psychotic.
Turning around, he crept into the rundown building.
The inside was just as wretched and decayed as the rest of the eerie world. The entrance hall was made of rotting wooden planks, the hall breaking off into a few other rooms with a near collapsing stairway leading up to another level. Even within, a layer of mist permeated every inch of the air.
"Shishigou!" Shirou called, keeping Kanshou and Bakuya at the ready. "I don't want to fight you! This place is dangerous!"
"Gee, I hadn't noticed," a crinkling, sarcastic voice shouted down from above. "I thought this was a bounded field full of friendly wraiths, you know. Trying to eat away at our sanity is just their way of saying hello."
Shirou frowned. He didn't have much room to complain, but why was everyone's first response to genuine offers of ceasefire either blustering threats or a sarcastic taunt? Oh well, with his prana sense still compromised, keeping the mercenary talking would make it easier to find him and might even provide him with a few answers.
"Look whatever you have against me, this place is way too dangerous to be alone in," Shirou pointed out as he carefully made his way up the decaying stairs. "We need to stick together."
"Right, which is exactly why you just left the Yggdmillennia girl to fend for herself," Kairi sneered. "Sorry, kid, but I'm not most mages your teacher taught you how to fight. I wouldn't have lasted as long as I have in this business if I was."
Shirou cringed. Leaving Fiore behind hadn't been his best choice. Objectively speaking, it would be safer for both him and her to stick together. But after what Shishigou had said about Kiritsugu, he'd rushed after him without thinking.
He made it to the upper level, gazing all around to keep from being blindsided. "How come you think Kiritsugu Emiya was the Mage Killer? He wasn't capable of being someone like that. Whoever told you he was lied."
A deep chuckle emanated from a nearby room, two weathered doors providing a hint of vision within. "Don't know what Kiritsugu Emiya you knew, kid, but I'm guessing he was somewhat nicer to you than anybody else. Somehow."
Shirou narrowed his eyes as he advanced on the room. He pressed most of his body against the outer wall and peaked into the room through the minuscule cracks in one of the doors. He couldn't see much but managed to catch a hint of Kairi's black leather jacket.
"Why do you think that?" he called out, just to make sure there was actually someone in the room. "Because of some rumors?"
"Because I met him."
Shirou flinched despite himself.
"It was a job to take down a real sick bastard the Association had been after for a while," Shishigou continued. "By the time your old man was done with him, he wasn't human. Humans… they don't die like he did. And Kiritsugu, he didn't even blink. He annihilated the guy's defenses and turned his body into mush and all he did was pop another cigarette into his mouth."
"You're lying," Shirou refuted, failing to keep the rising anger out of his voice even as he circled around to the other door to flank the mercenary. "Kiritsugu… he wanted to be a hero."
"Strange definition of hero. I kept track of him after we went our separate ways, figured it was best to know where the most dangerous man in the world was so I could be anywhere else. Sniping, poisoning, bombs in public places, you name the underhanded tactic, he used it to get the job done. Hell, he once shot down an entire jet liner just because his target was on it."
Shirou's brow furrowed in rage. Not just because Shishigou was disparaging his father's memory, but also because the picture he was painting of a ruthless killer willing to cross any lines for his objective was… more than a little familiar. It certainly fit Archer perfectly.
"He wanted to be a Hero of Justice," Shirou murmured, trying to convince himself as much as Shishigou. "He wanted to save people."
Shishigou snorted. "Whose justice, kid? Because unless his idea of it was killing everyone so they couldn't hurt anyone else, I don't think he was doing a very good job."
Shirou reinforced his leg and kicked down the door, shattering the rotting wood into splinters, Kanshou and Bakuya ready to disarm the man so he could talk some sense into him.
Unfortunately, there was no one else in the room. Just a black jacket on a chair and a walkie-talkie glowing with reinforcement magic, likely what had increased its volume and intake throughout the house without static. On the far side, a large open window provided a view to the misty street below.
"Of course, I can't say I didn't learn a thing or two from him," Shishigou confessed over the talkie. The distinctive click of a button sounded over it immediately afterward.
Three tiny red lights suddenly blinked into existence on all three sides of the room, all attached to palm sized brown blocks.
Taiga had dragged Shirou to enough action movies for him to recognize plastic explosives. His eyes widened in panic as renewed his reinforcement and shot out the window, throwing up a rushed projection of the last shield he had used, Leonidas' hoplon, behind him to absorb as much of the blast as possible.
The explosion erupted just as he crossed the threshold of the window, the ancient wooden building going up in a thunderous blaze. His shield held, but due to the angles of the explosives, he was still caught by plenty of concussive force, throwing him across the street and smashing him into the side of the opposite structure. Among the many grievous injuries he had endured in his life, it was definitely not the gravest but it was far from pleasant. If he hadn't had his shield, he would have been burnt to a crisp and even then, he would have been paste on the wall if not for his reinforcement. As it was, his clothes were black with soot and his muscles felt like he'd just taken a punch from Heracles, but he was alive.
Now he just had to make sure he stayed that way.
He twisted his body as he fell, getting a decent look at the street below. Shishigou was there shoving a pair of binoculars into his belt, probably how he'd watched for when he entered the room, and pulling out his shotgun. Without a doubt, he'd be able to get a shot off before Shirou hit the ground. And with the heat seeking properties of his ammunition and Shirou really not wanting to trace another shield so soon after both Rho Aias and two of the hoplons, that might be troublesome.
Troublesome, but not unmanageable.
"Trace on."
Two blades appeared in his hands, Kanshou in his right which he threw at Shishigou to knock his gun out of his hands, though not before the scarred man got a shot off. He then curled the vital points of his body behind the now weaponless arm, his efforts proving successful when he felt the infernal stabs in the limb that signified that Kairi's finger ammunition had struck, the rush of rot that began to surge through his body signifying that the gandr curse had begun its job of killing him.
A job that would go uncompleted as he stabbed both wounds with the blade he'd summoned to his left hand, a jagged, ornate knife that should never have seen combat, yet was perfectly suited to disposing of any pesky curses before they could fully take effect. Despite all the crap his time fighting Caster had put him, Rin, and especially Saber through, he had to admit Rule Breaker was a useful consolation prize.
He dissipated the dagger as soon as he finished stabbing himself and once again flared his legs with reinforcement, his muscles screaming in agony as they reminded him that as good as he was with the magecraft, one wrong step would turn him into paste. So, after he successfully avoided breaking half the bones in his body and rolled to his feet with new copies of Kanshou and Bakuya in hand, he decided he'd give that trick a break for a bit.
Kairi's shotgun had been sliced in half by his earlier sword toss and the mercenary was frantically pulling out a pistol and fragmentation grenade from his belt. Shirou narrowed his eyes and threw both his swords downrange, knocking both weapons out of Kairi's hands as he charged, new projections of his signature weapons instantly appearing in his grip.
Kairi's eyes widened and he turned to run, only to dive to the ground as the thrown copies of the married swords raced back towards their partners.
Shirou evaporated the airborne copies and raced forward with his held ones. With Kairi on the ground, he'd have him at sword point in seconds. Then, he would force him to calm down and work with him to find a way out of this hallucinatory hellhole. And since he would not be killing the man once he'd beaten him, perhaps he could sort out exactly what had gone on with this world's Kiritsugu Emiya and how it related to his own father, and the ideals he'd be given by him.
Of course, that plan hit a snag when he saw the back of Shishigou's palm flash red. He thrust his blades forward for a killing blow to keep it from happening, but he was too late.
"By my Command Seal, to my side Saber!"
A scarlet flash erupted between Shirou and his opponent as the redhead pulled back his swords to defend himself from an incoming silver and red longsword wreathed in crimson lightning. He felt like he'd been rammed by a freight train and his arms buckled as he was once more sent flying down the street, ending up in a moaning heap on the ground.
"F█TH██!—eh? What the hell is going on, Master? Where'd father go? Who's this idiot?"
Shirou groaned as he pushed his swaying body to its feet, finally getting a good look at his new assailant. Even in his current, less than optimal situation, he had to do a double take at the sight of her.
While Jeanne had shared many facial features with Saber, Mordred was practically her twin, only with messier hair, slightly sharper cheeks, and more furious that Saber had been even when confronted by Gilgamesh.
His eyes danced over her sword, his Reality Marble taking it in instantly, Clarent: Radiant and Brilliant Royal Sword.
It was… less impressive than Shirou expected. It was still a Rank C Noble Phantasm, and he had no doubt Mordred could turn him into paste with it, but for a sword that was meant to be the successor to Excalibur, it seemed lacking. Of course, his analysis of the blade's history soon revealed why. Mordred claiming the holy sword without having been properly anointed king had weakened the properties of the blade, her treachery tarnishing the holy sword into a demonic one. Her improper actions had weakened her resources.
"Wait, now I remember you," Mordred declared, snapping her fingers in realization. "You're that kid from the church. You're part of the Periwinkle Faction."
"Blue…" Shirou muttered instinctively. He didn't want Rin getting word that he let their past name be said without attempting to correct it.
"Eh, whatever," Mordred waved off, smirking like a hunter that had cornered their prey. "The point is, you're father's ally. Which means he'll come for you."
"No games, Saber," Kairi ordered, stumbling back to his feet. "He's way too dangerous to leave alive. Kill him now!"
"What? But master—"
"We will find a way to kill your old man another time! Right now, we need to get rid of the guy who walks off being blown up and makes Noble Phantasms out of thin air!"
He wouldn't say he was 'walking it off'. Being in the midst of an explosion was as painful for him as it was for anyone else. He'd just learned to push through whatever agony he was in until the fight was over, and he was preferably next to Rin so she could heal him, keep from actually dying. Still, he supposed leaping out of a building turned fireball, disarming his opponent in midair, stabbing himself to stop a curse, rolling through a two-story fall, disarming his enemy again, and charging him like a bat out of hell might have made him seem somewhat intimidating from an outside perspective.
"What?" Mordred raised an eyebrow in confusion before locking her gaze onto Kanshou and Bakuya. Her eyes narrowed. "So he's got some fancy swords, I don't see how—"
"Saber!"
"Right, right, killing him," Mordred muttered, a crimson tempest surging all around her as she raised her sword. "Get clear, master."
"Don't need to tell me twice," Shishigou said, running the opposite way, the fog consuming him completely, ensuring it would be next to impossible for Shirou to find him again.
At least, if he survived. His scan of Clarent had informed him of Mordred's parameters and besides her luck, she had nothing below a B, plus a Prana Burst if she needed extra strength. She was near equal to a full power Saber, who had decimated Archer in an instant during his war. If he could force his reinforcement to work without turning his body inside out, he could hold out for maybe a few—
Mordred was on him before he had time to think of anything else, Clarent coming in for a series of quick slashes. Shirou threw up his learned defense from Archer, creating deliberate holes is his defense, counting on his opponent to go for them so he'd know where to block.
Unfortunately, Mordred disagreed with that idea. She didn't see through the tactic, no. It just seemed that she didn't care to bother with the openings. Her technique, if it could be called that, was more like a Berserker than Saber's elegant style. She rained down blow after blow, counting on brute strength to see her through his defenses, a not at all undeserved assumption as she continuously caught each of his blades without the other's support, battering the swords until Shirou was sure they wouldn't survive another clash.
At last, she raised Clarent high and brought it down in a brutal overhead swing, the steel screeching lightning and screaming for blood.
She was too fast for him to dodge, so he reinforced his arms as best he could and crossed his swords in front of him to block.
The strike before may have been a freight train, but it had also not been directed towards him, Mordred merely lashing out after being summoned by Command Seal and whatever rage she'd been embroiled in. Now, she put all her strength into her attack, and it felt like he'd tried to catch a battleship. The worn projections of Kanshou and Bakuya shattered to pieces and his arms squelched like popped water balloons, blood gushing out of the wounds from the gandr fingers and Rule Breaker. He went flying back and smashed through the wall of the building at his back, the rotting wooden somewhat cushioning his fall.
"Ow."
Key word: somewhat.
He shook his head, trying to clear the ringing in his ears and the blur from his vision. When he finally succeeded however, he was confronted by the same pale child he had seen before entering the house.
"Down the river you go."
He blinked and the child evaporated from a slash of Clarent.
"Damn spirits. I already killed them, they're not allowed to come back," Mordred muttered, bringing her sword to his throat. "Well kid, you did better than most would against me. Since you know father, you can understand just how little chance you stood against the only knight to ever surpass him."
Despite the demonic sword an inch from his throat, Shirou couldn't help but raise an eyebrow. Surpass Saber? It wasn't an impossible feat, but from little he'd seen, Mordred hadn't done so just yet.
"That said," the Knight of Treachery snarled, her eyes narrowing at him. "I'll make your end quick if you tell me where he is. We have business to settle."
Shirou met her hard eyes glare for glare. "Even if I knew where she was in this place, I would never sell out Saber like that."
Mordred's mouth broke into a crazed grin. "Oh, yeah? Well then, as repayment for being a loyal ally to the King of Knights, I'll be sure to make you scream, bastard!"
"No, you don't!"
Mordred's eyes widened as she whirled around, only to be smashed into by a towering gray figure, sapphire light blazing all around him and his massive greatsword. The Knight of Treachery was sent skidding down the street, crushing the cobblestone to dust underfoot.
"Who the hell are you supposed to be?" she roared at the new arrival.
"Saber of Black?" Shirou gasped, as confounded as his would be killer.
Indeed, his rescuer appeared to be none other than Siegfried, but his presence made absolutely no sense. Though, it was theoretically possible that the explosion had attracted him to their location despite the fog, Archer of Black had been the only one of that faction's Servants in the entire city. There was no way they would have missed the Dragon Slayer's sizable magical energy signature, and especially no way that Darnic would be dumb enough to send a Servant who would be massively vulnerable to sneak attacks if his identity were to be discovered after Assassin.
"Go, Mr. Emiya," the apparent Norse hero pleaded, Balmung raised before him. "I'll handle this."
'Mr. Emiya? Why did he…?' his thoughts ground to a halt. 'You have got to be kidding me.'
His gaze whirled back and forth between the black Command Seals on his own right hand and the titanic knight before him, unable to believe the utter ridiculousness of what was plainly before him.
"Sieg?!"
This ended up being far darker than I'd originally planned it to be. Can't tell if that is a good thing or a bad thing.
Now, the announcement. As many of you have undoubtedly noticed, this chapter is late and I am still behind on my other monthly story, Fairies of the Shattered Moon. Despite my best efforts, I have proven unable to consistently recover the monthly schedule while maintaining 'RWBY Zero's" weekly one. As that story should be finished later this year, I have decided to implement a temporary fix for the monthly schedules, one that involves the input of you readers, and those of my other stories.
I will post a poll on my profile. Both Third Faction and Fairies of the Shattered Moon will get their January chapters, and then it will be put up to the readers which one will get updated each month, starting with February. To ensure that neither story falls too far behind, if either one wins two months in a row, the other story will automatically get the next month.
This very much temporary, as once RWBY Zero concludes, which I expect to happen sometime around September, Fairies of the Shattered Moon shall become the weekly story and Third Faction will become the sole monthly story once more, as my beta for that story Draconic and I work better with a longer timeframe for that story. The poll will be open until Febuary 3rd, so that readers of this story will have time to get the announcement and vote.
I wish to offer you readers an enormous apology for inconveniencing you due to my overestimation of my own writing speed capabilities. I am immensely grateful for the support you all have provided me for all three of my stories and I hope you will continue to find my future narrative endeavors enjoyable.
An extra huge thank you to my patrons: ArcherMcMuffin, Gregg Tracton, Keith Traction, StabKingPro, Annaya Chan, and Benjamin Norris.
Thank you for Reading! I hope you enjoy what comes next!
Go Forth and Conquer!
