A Demon Lord's Hero

by Fahad09

When I sold my soul to the Devil, I thought I was prepared for anything. I wasn't. I didn't expect him to be a her. Or dressed up as a magical girl carrying a pink wand tipped with a cheerful yellow star. Her being a prankster however didn't come as much of a surprise. You know, the Bible would have been a whole lot more interesting if they included stuff like this. Complete AU

22. Chapter 22: Blame Your God (part 3)

Author's Notes:

At long last I got a chapter out. I'm sorry that it took so long but I had a hell of a couple of months. First I received a Job interview to what looked to be a great job, which I spent a week getting ready for. Then on my way back home from the interview I got into a car accident which wrecked my car (No one got hurt thankfully), only to spend a week dealing with the insurance because I had the accident in the middle of national holiday, only to then catch some kind of stomach flue, which left me cling to the toilet bowl for a couple of days as if it was the love of my life...But on the up side it turned out I go the job, so it turned out to be a Great month overall.

That's kinda why my stories stalled for so long, I was getting overwhelming at work learning everything that I just didn't have time to write. But luckily I'm getting used to things and hopefully would get more free time soon. Oh, and the chapter BALLOONED AGAIN! I had predicted the entire fight could be fished at around 18K-20K at MOST, maybe even as little as 15K, but now were at 30K and its still not done! Sigh, I suck at estimating my word count, soon that note never trust me if I ever give an estimable for a chapter's size, I'm probably wrong.

And this story's anniversary was just two months ago and I can't believe I couldn't get the chapter in time for it. But man, I have to admit I never expected the respond this story generate or if it that it would grow to be this popular. I honestly feared I won't get past 300 hundred favourites when I first typed it out, and how I'm over 3800 and still rising. Thank you all for helping make that happen.

And on that note, here is the latest chapter, I hope you enjoy it.

---

Chapter 22:

Blame Your God (Part 3)

Faster than most humans could dream of, she struck, her nodachi streaking toward my neck, aiming to separate my head from the rest of my body.

In response to her attack I projected a weapon of my own. A nodachi, in every way identical to that which threatened to decapitate me, formed into my hand. With the knowledge engraved into its blade I swung back at its twin, wielding it with all the skill she was bring to bear against me.

Karasuba's eyes widened briefly in surprise as she caught sight of the mirror image of her own sword but did not allow herself to falter. Her strike, an overhead blow that came down at an angle, continued unerringly to my neck while my own attack rose up to meet hers.

I watched as both our swords swiftly closed into one another before they clashed, the edge of her blade meeting the flat of own and-

[[[Boost!]]]

-sheering through it like butter.

I threw myself back as the sword tore through the space my neck had occupied just a moment ago, the tip of the sword skimming so close to my throat that I could feel on my skin as it passed. My dodge had left me momentarily off-balance and in the short amount of time it took me to regain my footing Karasuba was already on me.

Using the momentum of her missed strike to fuel her motion, she spun around in a full circle, her hair trailing behind her like a cape as she brought her sword up and over her head before driving it straight down towards my forehead.

Not bothering to block the strike, not after what happened last time, I dodged instead. Sidestepping to the left while pulling my right foot and shoulder back, Karasuba's blade found nothing but empty space as I moved out its path as she swung down.

Dismissing the now useless nodachi from my hands, the blade breaking down to sparks and scattering, I found myself dodging once again as Karasuba brought her sword back around in a followup attack. A flurry of slashing steel chased after me then as Karasuba refused to let me rest. She rained down endless strokes of her blade in an attempt to bisect me, all of which I evaded.

Swaying, ducking, sidestepping, I moved out of the way of her attacks, using my clear advantage in speed to keep ahead of her sharp blade. As Karasuba brought her sword around in another slash, I took the opportunity to study the blade as it passed through the spot my chest occupied a moment earlier before I leapt back.

It was fascinating. The sword itself hadn't changed at all, its structure and make exactly how they always were. It still was an ordinary, if brilliantly crafted, sword and there was no more magic in its steel than there had been a minute ago. And yet, somehow, without altering its construction, the edge of the sword had become sharper. Not two, not four, but eight times sharper.

[Boost!]

I was so captivated by the effect the Boosted Gear had on the blade that I barely notice as Karasuba tried to decapitate me again, my body automatically reacting and ducking in time despite her sudden increase in speed.

Correction, make that sixteen times sharper. No, wait, that wasn't quite right. The sword's edge didn't become sharper, the shape of its edge was exactly the same as it had always been. It would have been better to say its edge could cut sixteen times better now. It almost reminded me of how Reinforcement-

[Boost!]

Without taking my eyes off the blade I absent-mindedly wove around another flurry of blows, three lightning-fast strikes that came slashing down at me so quickly that there was almost no gap in between, barely aware of doing so.

The small part of my mind still paying attention to my surroundings could have sworn that I heard Karasuba grow out in frustration but I immediately dismissed the thought as unimportant as I resumed studying the fascinating sword.

The effect of the Boosted Gear on the blade reminded me of how Reinforcement helped enhance a sword. It didn't just make the blade harder or more durable, it helped increase its efficiency in fulfilling its purpose. And a sword's purpose was to cut. So without altering its shape or sharpening its edge, the Boosted Gear enhanced the sword's ability to cut.

[Boost!]

Finished with my examination, I turned my attention back to the fight and projected Kanshou and Bakuya into my hands. As Karasuba's latest strike tried to split me from head to groin I crossed the married swords before me and blocked the strike.

"I get it now." I said with the nodachi's edge only inches away from my face, held back only by the might of the married swords. "That's why your Sacred Gear is affecting your sword as well as your body. The Boosted Gear doesn't increase its wielder's physical capabilities, it enhances their very nature instead. And in your mind you are not a 'woman' but a 'swordswoman'. To you, the sword is just as much a part of who you are as your own two arms and legs. So for the Boosted Gear to truly enhance you it must include your sword as well in its effects. That's the true nature of your Boosted Gear, isn't that righ..." I found myself drifting as I turned my eyes away from the blade to look at Karasuba only to find her...

...Was Karasuba pouting at me?

Yes, I realised with a stunned incredulity, Karasuba was in fact pouting at me. I blinked, then blinked again before I blurted out, "What?"

If anything, Karasuba's pout just grew more pronounced.

Karasuba continued to glare sullenly up at me through her bangs, our swords still held between us, their edges pushing against one another. She somehow managed to look almost childishly put off despite the current situation.

Finally with a sigh she shook her head resignedly before leaping back, clearing a wide space between us.

"Emiya," Karasuba enunciated, sounding so much like a parent reprimanding a particularly slow-witted child, "has anyone ever told you it's rude to ignore a girl when she's trying to kill you?"

"...No," I answered hesitantly, the question feeling slightly surreal, "I can't say anyone ever has." While Fuji-nee has called me thick-headed several times when it comes to a girl's feelings, I doubt this was what she meant.

"Ah," Karasuba nodded in comprehension. "That explains it. Well, it is." Karasuba removed her left hand from the hilt of her nodachi and laid it flat along its blade. "And here's why."

[Boost!] [Transfer.]

I felt Karasuba's energy spike, doubling in power once again, only for her power to be immediately cut in half as-

Strands of red hair drifted in the air, clipped straight off my scalp by the razor-sharp blade that now stretched from the hilt in Karasuba's hand to several meters behind me, passing straight through the space my head had been an instant earlier. The naked blade was lying flat against my skull, so close that I could feel the cold touch of its metal on my skin.

There had been no warning, no time for me to react. To my senses, the attack was all but instantaneous. By the time the word 'transfer' had reached my ears it was already over, and I found myself with a ridiculously long blade next to my face, passing through the spot my head had been. If I hadn't shifted out of the way, hadn't trusted my instincts and stepped to one side, it would have pierced through my skull and I would have been left with over sixty meters of cold steel running through my brain.

From the other end of the now immensely long sword Karasuba bared her teeth at me, revealing so many teeth from between her lips that I couldn't call it a grin, and she finished delivering the rest of her warning. "You just might end up losing your head."

Grey eyes wide, her lips widened even further, revealing more teeth to my eyes, as she tightened her grip on the sword before, in one single motion, she twisted and swung. I ducked and the sword soared over my head, ruffling my hair. Its miss didn't cause the stroke to stop, however, and it continued to cleave through the rest of the street, indiscriminate in its destruction.

It bit into the grey post of the traffic light, not even slowing as it parted its hard metal with ease and sent the entire thing toppling over like a tree, before continuing to tear through the air until it reached the skyscraper that towered over the street.

Out of all the buildings surrounding us, this was a thing of glass and steel. One of the wonders of modern man, it towered above our heads, so high it appeared to touch the clouds. Its surface was smooth, completely covered with pristine glass that reflected the sky on its surface, staining the glass blue. Yet for all of its architectural design and the achievement of its construction, none of it meant a thing as the sword cleaved into its side and sliced through it as effortlessly as everything else.

Glass shattered, thousands of glittering shards flying through the air before they rained down on the street, showering onto the road like rain. The entire bottom row of windows erupted as the sword passed through them like a shock wave, slicing through metal and glass with equal ease. And the as blade ripped through the opposite end, leaving behind a ruined building where once stood an architectural art, I was left convinced that the only reason the skyscraper still stood was do to its width. Had it been any narrower, nothing would have saved it from being brought down entirely.

As the blade exited the side of the skyscraper it tore through a second traffic light, this one putting up no more resistance than the first, before the blade finally completed its swing. Its tip ended up behind Karasuba, the grey-haired girl having no trouble holding the now massive sword in her deceptively thin arms. The blade had left a semicircle of ruin about her, and there was a brief moment of silence before the final pieces of debris it bought about finished falling to the ground

One crash followed another as the toppled halves of the traffic lights crashed into the glass-covered road, the sound echoing through the streets like gunshots. They shattered as they hit the hard asphalt, sending more broken fragments of multicoloured glass to join into the mix already covering its surface.

"So," Karasuba began, her voice easily carrying in the quiet street as everything settled down, her tone light and conversational, "don't go ignoring me again and I won't have to resort to something like this to gain your attention. All right?"

"Fair enough." I replied as I rose up from my crouch, brushing off the glass pieces that had fallen on my head and shoulders.

"Good." Karasuba nodded, pleased. She spared a quick glance at her left arm before she smiled and looked back at me. "And since you seem so fascinated with my Sacred Gear, let me tell you that you're only half right. The Boosted Gear does enhance its target's nature, not its physical capabilities; that's why my weight and height don't double whenever I use it. But~," Karasuba's smile turned sly as she widened her feet and hunkered down, "if you know just what to do, you can select which aspects to boost. Like so."

[Boost!][Boost!][Boost!][Boost!][Boost!]

The blade shot out from behind her, growing exponentially with each boost until it stretched out towards the horizon. It's reach was so long now that it dwarfed even the tallest skyscrapers around us.

"The one thing you need to understand, Emiya," the smile Karasuba gave me was positively wicked, "is that when it comes to the Boosted Gear distance, scale, and size mean absolutely nothing." Then Karasuba spun, long hair tailing behind her as she swung the gigantic sword around.

This time the skyscrapers did fall. So did the towers, the buildings and everything else standing in sight. Nothing was spared as she cleaved it all in two.

It was like watching the world fall and the earth shook as everything came tumbling down.

---

Dismissing my wings, the bat-like appendages folding along my back before they vanished, I allowed gravity to take hold of me and pull me to the ground. For a brief instant I fell from the sky, dropping like a stone, the wind buffeting my body while my eyes never stopped moving, searching for signs of another attack, before my fall was arrested as I landed on the side of a toppled-over skyscraper.

I had enough time to catch a quick glimpse of my reflection on the building's glass surface before impact. My legs flexed to absorb the force of the landing, the reinforced glass beneath my feet fracturing as it strained to bare my weight, a thin spider-web of cracks forming under each foot, but fortunately the glass managed to hold. Once I landed I found myself skidding down for a couple of feet until I found proper purchase on the smooth glass, the slanting surface of the building not helping.

As soon I found my balance I wasted no time dismissing my bow, knowing it wouldn't do me any good for now, and replaced it with the married swords, Kanshou and Bakuya, while my eyes never stopped scanning my surroundings. Despite not finding any signs of danger I did not lower my guard and stood ready, knowing that she'd be coming for me soon.

It was always hard to measure time in a fight. The adrenaline could play tricks with your mind, making the brief instants between sword strikes stretch out for an eternity or make entire exchanges feel like nothing more than a blink an eye. So it was hard for me to tell exactly how long we had been fighting but, if the position of the sun was anything to go by, it couldn't have been more than an hour, probably not even half that. And yet, in that tiny amount of time the entire landscape around me had changed.

When I scanned my surroundings, all that greeted my eyes was the scene of a ruined city. The damage was limited to an area of only a few miles wide, the financial district where our fight began at its epicentre, but what laid contained within the borders of that area was complete desolation. The once mighty structures that defined the city's financial district lay fallen, knocked over like a child's building blocks, their broken pieces scattered all about me. Nothing stood in the space that had become our battleground.

Even the skyscraper I stood on was no exception. It had once reached for the sky and rivaled the clouds in height but now, like everything else, it had been brought down. It might have even been the very same skyscraper that Karasuba had damaged at the start of our fight, the glass panels that covered its entire surface certainly looked familiar, but it was hard to tell with all the other buildings lying about it.

During its collapse it had ended up landing over another fallen structure, which ended up propping its form up and kept it from from collapsing completely onto the ground. Now its peak stood just a scant few dozen meters off the ground instead of the hundreds of its previous height. Yet despite this the scraper was by far the highest building in the area, for which reason I had chosen to land on it, as it offered the best view to search for my elusive opponent.

A full minute passed since I had taken root on the fallen skyscraper, and I failed to spot any signs of her. Soon a second uneventful minute passed, followed by a third and still there was no sign of an attack. The silence that gripped the air of the dead city was absolute, leaving me overcome with the sensation of being utterly alone in the ruins of this concrete jungle.

But despite the quite atmosphere I did not allow myself to be fooled and I never lowered my guard as I continued to scan the environment, patiently waiting for an attack that I knew was coming. In the brief exchanges earlier I had already gleaned some idea of Karasuba's style of fighting, and had already gotten used to this game of cat and mouse that she liked to play. Though I could find no sign of it I knew she was coming; the only question remained was whether I would spot her before she sprung her attack or after.

With the city so empty of other people, it should have been easy spotting another person anywhere in the city with my magical sense no where they hid. But, as I had quickly discovered ,my magical sense was all but useless for flushing her out. Karasuba had taken to deactivating the Boosted Gear whenever she disappeared from sight, reverting her magical levels to their original minuscule levels, leaving her invisible to my senses.

To compensate, I was forced to use my more mundane senses to find her. Reinforcing my eyes and ears, I searched the ruins, looking for any sign of my grey-haired opponent while I simultaneously focused on my hearing, listening for any noises that would point me to her. I looked both near and far, paying careful attention to the abandoned cars on the road below along with any rubble that she could be hiding behind, turning in place so that I could keep track of every direction. But so far I had spotted nothing, heard nothing, not even a squeak-

-I moved.

The glass panel shattered as a hole appeared in its middle. There had been no time to think, my body instinctively reacting without command when I sensed a sudden flare of power coming from beneath my feet, and I leapt back.

I barely had time to think before I was forced to move again, leaping to the side the instant I set foot on the surface of the skyscraper as I sensed another spike in power. Again the glass panel that I had just occupied shattered, a hole boring though its middle.

I skimmed off the surface of the scraper, zigzagging left and right, never stopping as I moved, keeping ahead of the attack as panel after panel shattered soon after I set foot on them, kicking up a fountain of broken glass as something speared through it. I inevitably ended up leaving a trail of ruined glass behind me as I ran across the surface of the building.

Through it all my body was fully on automatic, my reflexes keeping me safe without needing any mental commands while my I turned my mind onto the source of the attack. Perhaps it was all the adrenaline coursing through my veins but to me time appeared to slow, crawling to a near halt, and what was supposed to be brief instances, no longer than the smallest fraction of a second, felt stretched out into a small eternity. It was like the flickering shutters of a camera, my mind capturing each one of these moments like pictures.

I leapt off another panel, moving backwards this time, the jump granting me a clear view of the trail of broken glass panels behind me. I turned my eyes to the panel I had just left, focusing all of my attention onto it as I tried to catch a proper glimpse of the attack.

But even with my heightened awareness that slowed time to a crawl, I barely saw anything at all. One instant the panel was whole, the next, it shattered as something shot past my face. Passing so close that it kicked up the bangs of my hair as it tore up to the sky.

I watched with a remarkable degree of clarity as the tiny shattered fragments of glass hung in the air before me, glittering like raindrops as they slowly spun, held up by invisible strings. And there, standing in between the shattered fragments, like a tiny pillar that held up the heavens from falling to the earth, was a narrow blade.

I found myself staring into a single golden pupil from barely a hands-width away, reflected off the polished steel blade, before it was simply gone. I found myself staring at nothing but glass and empty air as the blade retracted as quickly as it had appeared, leaving no trace it had ever been there. My foot landed on the next glass panel and I leapt to the side, the chase resuming as the nodachi's tip kept thrusting through the panels like the rapid fire of a machine gun.

Naturally I wasn't content to allow this to continue and even as I dodged the attacks, my mind raced with a dozen possible tactics that I could use to flush Karasuba out, trying to pick one that would lead to the best result. But before I could, the decision was taken out of my hands when the attack stopped.

It took me a second to realise that the attacks weren't actually coming and another to realise that it wasn't a trick. I skidded to halt, my shoes momentarily sliding on the smooth smooth surface of the scraper, and quickly tried to discover Karasuba's whereabouts with my senses before she could go back into hiding.

Turns out there was no need, as Karasuba ended up coming for me.

I felt another spike of power, this time coming from directly behind instead of from below, followed by the sound of a shattering glass window. I barely had time to turn my head around to catch a glance as Karasuba rose up through the glass, a wicked smile on her lips as she roared out "Emiya!" and cleaved down.

Flinging Kanshou and Bakuya to either side, I threw myself forward and spun, quickly conjuring another pair of swords in time to cross them and block the downward strike of her nodachi from splitting in me two. The force behind the blow pushed me back, sending me sliding across a smooth glass floor as my feet were unable to find any purchase.

That was just fine though. Things were going just how I wanted them to.

Even with the Boosted Gear augmenting her strength, and her Touki adding even further weight behind her blow, I still retained the clear advantage in brute strength. Had I tried, I was certain I could have held my ground. All I had to do was dig my feet in a little and I would have brought her advance to halt.

But instead I allowed myself to be pushed back by the strike, and when she followed through with several more I pretended to be driven back by the onslaught of her blows, slowly leading her to where I wanted her to go.

What followed was a simple exchange of strikes, no additional effects from her Sacred Gear or any projections from my Magecraft, just an old-fashioned sword fight in which she tried her best to kill me while I did my best to lead her along. It was a tricky thing to do, getting the timing just right. I had to draw in at just the right pace; too fast and she would get suspicious and not follow me, too slow and I would miss my chance. Fortunately it seemed that Karasuba was more than happy to follow, her aggressive fighting style shining through as she eagerly leapt after every opening in my guard without a head for defence.

With Kanshou in my left hand, I interrupted the blow to my throat and reciprocated in kind with Bakuya in my right. Karasuba swayed out of the way, avoiding the attack with the smallest possible margin, the white sword passing so close that I imagined that I could feel the tip brushing against her throat, before she immediately thrust at my side. My own attack had left me slightly overbalanced, leaving a hole in my guard on my right side which Karasuba didn't fail to take advantage of. But before her thrust could pierce me it was knocked aside as Kanshou suddenly appeared in its path.

Seeing the chance, I took a single step back and swung at her wrist, which was still extended from her failed thrust. Instead of leaping back or guarding, Karasuba, as per usual with her overly-aggressive fighting style, pulled her sword up, once again barley avoiding losing an appendage, and brought it back down at my skull, using the same motion she used to avoid my attack to help set up her own. But before her sword was even halfway to reaching me, Kanshou was already there, waiting, and it deflected the nodachi aside while I used the opportunity to take another step back.

Again and again, the pattern repeated. I attacked, leaving an opening each time I did so, which Karasuba never failed to take advantage of, only to find the supposed opening in my guard blocked by one of my swords. And each time I blocked, I used it as a pretence to take another step back, steadily leading her step by step towards my goal.

It was an insane style of fighting, almost suicidal. Using the skills Archer had developed through countless hours of training, I deliberately left openings in my stance, holes in my guard that could be exploited, baiting her. And each time she tried to take advantage of those openings I was ready for her. The principle behind the style was simple, really: by leaving holes in my guard I would know exactly where my opponent would attack. And if I knew exactly where an attack was coming from, not only would I be able to guard against it but I could use that foreknowledge to create an opportunity to counter-attack. It was a reckless method of fighting, one where a single mistake could cost me my life. But in exchange for those risks, it was also a style that allowed me to match opponents both faster and stronger them me.

Karasuba however was neither of these things. In both speed and power I eclipsed her. And yet, despite not originally being intended for a situation like this, this style was a perfect counter for someone like Karasuba, who leapt at every lethal opening with blind abandon. Every time I left a deceptive hole in my guard, she would take it without hesitation, the thought of not doing so never crossing her mind. Thus, despite its risks, I chose to use this style because it allowed me to set the pace of the match.

Karasuba eventually noticed what I was doing, of course, there was no way she couldn't. There were simply too many flaws in my defence for her to brush them all aside as coincidence. Perhaps she might have let it go as an amateurish mistake born from overconfidence if she had actually managed to land a blow in or two, but after each strike was thoroughly deflected despite all the 'openings' she found, it was only a matter of time before she pieced it all together.

I could even tell the exact moment that it happened. Karasuba's eyes widened and she faltered in her attack, almost tripping over her feet. She glanced up at me, searching my face for confirmation of her suspicion and she found it. I could see the disbelief in her face change to awe, only to be replaced by something more manic. A euphoric grin stretched across her lips as she redoubled her attack, throwing herself at me with a renewed vigour as she all but hacked at the lethal opening I left her with glee.

Seems like she wholeheartedly approves of my method of fighting.

The battle carried on for the next several seconds as Karasuba kept driving me back, pushing me steadily closer to the edge of the skyscraper. It was then, when the edge of the battlefield was no more then ten yards behind me and at which point I would be forced either to learn to fight on air or to drop to the ground below, that I heard it. The near silent whirling that signaled their approach. It was a sound so quiet that, had I not been anticipating it, I would have almost certainly missed it, but it was most certainly there, and it was steadily growing louder as they closed in.

Never taking my eyes off Karasuba, lest I give the game away, I focused on the noise and mentally tried to predict the time and place that they would reach us. Unfortunately I discovered that I had been a little too eager in drawing Karasuba in, throwing off my timing just a smidge as it seemed that I was a couple of paces ahead from where I should have been.

Fortunately it was a problem easily remedied. When Karasuba came at me with her next strike I, instead of allowing myself to be driven back as I had so far, met her attack head on. I widened my stance as I crossed the black and white swords before me and outright blocked her strike, locking the nodachi in place while arresting the momentum of her charge, bringing her advance to a halt for the first time since the start of the fight.

Karasuba stared at me from the other side of the swords, a slightly bemused expression marring her face from the unexpected change in fighting method. That bemusement, however, was replaced with alarm in the next second as Karasuba noticed the sound of the whirling swords closing in on her.

I caught a quick glimpse of Karasuba's widening eyes before she ducked, dropping to the floor and just barely avoiding having her head shorn off by the original pair of Kanshou and Bakuya, the set of copies I had flung away at the beginning of the fight, as they were reunited at the spot her throat had occupied a heartbeat earlier. The spinning bright and dark metal discs clashed and rebounded off one another, ringing like bells, before they took off in opposite directions.

Kanshou and Bakuya, the married swords, fated to always be reunited with each other even should one or the other be lost. The bond of the husband and wife that birthed these swords drew them to one another, granting them a magnetic attraction so that one would always find the other.

When the married swords forced Karasuba to duck they created a break in the fight, a brief second of respite that was all the time I needed to begin my own counter-attack. I leapt back the instant Karasuba ducked under the swords and threw myself over the edge of the building and into the air, before I unfurled my wings and allowed the wind to carry me into the sky.

In the same instant I dismissed my swords, both sets of them, and projected a bow to take their place. Archer's metallic black bow filled my hands and, its weight familiar and reassuring, with a well-practised motion I pulled back until its string stood taught. I had wasted no time nocking an arrow, simply taking aim and releasing while projecting an arrow directly into the bow.

All of this I did in the same amount of time it took for someone to blink. And by the time Karasuba glanced up from her crouch, it was to find the first of my projectiles streaking towards her. She barely managed to react in time.

She dove to the side, throwing herself into a roll and out of harm's way, only to leap back and switch directions when she found herself in the path of another arrow. Again she was forced to back-pedal then dive to the side to avoid even more projectiles.

The situation was similar to how the exchange had begun earlier but only with our positions reversed. This time it was Karasuba who was forced to run and dodge as I barraged her with my attack, firing a rain of arrows from afar. She zigzagged left and right on the skyscraper's surface, retreating as she tried to put as much distance between us. She weaved, ducked and leapt out of the arrows' path, grey hair trailing behind her after every sudden turn and she almost appeared to be dancing as she dodged around the projectiles.

But despite her best efforts she couldn't avoid them all. I was too close, the distance between us was just too small to give her time to react while my shots came too fast, too rapidly for that to be possible. Without the need to nock an arrow every time I drew my bow, I could fire at what would have otherwise been an impossible rate and Karasuba simply could not keep up.

So those she could not avoid she simply cut down. Once again revealing her prodigal skill with the sword, Karasuba swung her blade in flurry of strikes, not even slowing her pace as she weaved and swayed to cut them down, striking the arrows mid-flight.

Yet it still wasn't enough. The sheer number I could fire was just too great and soon, despite her best efforts, several shots managed to get through her defence and score hits. They ripped through her clothing, revealing the soft flesh beneath, and left red lines on her skin with their passing, painful but not incapacitating cuts and gashes.

None of her injuries were fatal of course. I had no desire to see her dead, even if she didn't share that particular sentiment, so all of my shots were aimed away from anything potential lethal. Instead, I focused the majority of my arrows towards her limbs in an attempt to incapacitate her. She managed to avoid or block the worst of those but I still managed to score enough cuts and wounds to make it count.

In other circumstances those shallow cuts could have been brushed aside as inconsequential, as they bore no effect on the immediate outcome of the fight. But in a long battle as this one was turning out to be, it would make all the difference. The nicks and cuts would steadily begin to accumulate as the fight dragged on, and she would find herself slowed down, weakened as each of these tiny, seemingly inconsequential injuries slowly began taking a toll on her. And soon, she would find that each additional drop of blood she lost to those cuts was one she couldn't afford to pay.

After withstanding the hail of arrows for what must have probably seemed like a lifetime from her point of view, Karasuba finally reached cover. Retreating all the way back to the point where we started the fight, Karasuba threw herself into a large the hole in the glass panel, the one she had made on the surface of the skyscraper when she tried to ambush me.

Diving immediately into the hole Karasuba placed herself out of harm's way, protected from my arrows and hidden from my view as she hid herself within the protective interior of the skyscraper. A heartbeat after she disappeared from sight I felt her magical presence vanish as well, snuffed out like a candle's flame, leaving no sign of it behind. No doubt a result of her deactivating her Sacred Gear, and once again leaving me blind to her whereabouts.

Lowering my bow, I stared at the hole she'd disappeared into as I drifted in the air. As much as I would have loved to dive in after her, I didn't dare. Fighting Karasuba in an enclosed area would be a living nightmare. I had enough trouble at it was dodging her out in the open; trying to avoid those extending blades of hers inside a cramped corridor without room to manoeuvre would be beyond me, not without pulling out of one my more powerful Noble Phantasms or trying to cut her down before she had the chance to attack. Both things were something I'd rather avoid doing.

Besides, even if I went in after her I wasn't confident in my ability to find her. Karasuba seemed to have a certain knack for masking her presence that extended beyond her lack of magic. I'm not quite sure what exactly she was doing, but throughout the fight I never seemed to be able to spot her until she was practically on top of me, and I didn't relish the idea of trying to find her in the labyrinth that the building had probably become. It was probably the reason why she kept slipping in there. She was either hoping that I would chase in after her, or she knew I wouldn't dare follow and used it create a break whenever the fight wasn't her way.

Either way, going in after her certainly wasn't an option. And unless I was willing to bring the entire building down on her head and risk killing her, flushing her out wasn't viable either. That just left waiting her out again. Even after less than a full hour of fighting it became almost painfully clear that Karasuba, for all her cunning, wasn't exactly the most patient person out there. She never managed to resist the allure of battle for more than a handful of minutes before she came charging back in.

And so, resigning myself to another wait, I adjusted my wings and quickly began to glide back down to the ground. Outside of the simplest of manoeuvres I had absolutely no confidence in my ability to fly. Despite some genuine attempts to improve my flying skills since my reincarnation, I still found it difficult to navigate in the air and believed that I would always feel more comfortable with both feet on the ground. And besides, if I tried to fly and fight at the same time I'd probably end up breaking my neck by crashing face first into the side of a building.

So instead of risking getting myself killed in the most embarrassing way possible, I chose to land onto the side of what appeared to be an office building. It had toppled over alongside the skyscraper, practically touching it, and appeared to have far fewer windows on its white tiled exterior as it laid down flat on its side. It was also a good deal narrower and thus was a great deal closer to the ground than the skyscraper. Once I landed, I planned to settle down for another brief wait while Karasuba no doubt tried to spring another sneak attack on me.

Or at least, that was what I thought would happen.

It seemed that Karasuba was even less patient that I gave her credit for. I hadn't even made it to the office building when she came for me.

I was still drifting in the air, about a dozen yards away from landing, and I had my bow out and ready while I faced the skyscraper just in case anything happened. Which is why when I heard the sound of breaking glass coming from above my head and glanced up, I had the perfect view of a gleefully grinning Karasuba as she launched herself through the window and dove after me, glass scattering in her wake, sword held high over her head.

For all of my intentions to never lower my guard during the fight, the sight of a demented Karasuba descending at me like some kind Avenging Angel as she yelled out my name like a battle-cry was enough to catch me completely flat-footed, and I found myself freezing in place as I gaped up at her in bewilderment, with the only thought going through my head 'Oh Shit!'

As Karasuba fell from the sky she twisted in mid-air, tucking her knees into her chest while throwing herself in a forward spin. Head over heels she spun, sword still poised over her head. I noticed that her nodachi begin to elongate as she booted-

[Boost!]

-once-

[Boost!]

-twice-

[Boost!]

-thrice, each boost doubling her sword's length and by the time she completed her first full rotation and started on the her second, the blade had grown so long that it dug into the surface of the skyscraper, passing though it like water.

Dozens of panels shattered, sending glass fragments raining down after her as she fell. And still she didn't stop. She continued to spin, boosting her blade several times over during each rotation, making it grow exponentially in length until-

[Boost!][Boost!][Boost!][Boost!][Boost!][Boost!][Boost!]

"Oh Shit!" This time I yelled the words out loud as I dove to the side, using my wings to propel me away just as the massive sword fell from the sky and dropped down towards me. I heard the air screech like a bird as it passed me, the blade now so long that it seemed to span the length of the entire city. And I watched with a growing sense of incredulity as that sword went on to cleave the very city in two.

Concrete and steel split before its path, bringing further destruction to the buildings unfortunate enough to be caught on the blade's downward path. It struck the earth, cleaving through the asphalt-covered ground and steel pipes buried beneath as if they were not there, sinking deeply into the ground.

However, it didn't stop there and continued downwards, the blade continuing to sink deeper into the earth as its wielder's rotation continued carrying it through, burying itself into the crust of the earth. But as Karasuba continued her spin the blade began to rise up. This time it erupted from the earth from on the opposite side of the city, where it continued to cleave through everything in its path to the heavens as it soared up to sky.

[Cancel!]

The massive blade began to revert back to its natural form, shrinking in size and signalling the end of Karasuba's attack. The aftermath of said attack had left the replica of Kuoh city in ruins as a result of the line of devastation that literally ended up splitting the entire city in two.

Dismissing my wings, I fell the couple of feet and landed on the side of the fallen office building. Or at least, one half of said building, seeing as it was now cut down the middle into distinct halves. No sooner than my foot touched the ground, Karasuba dropped onto the other half of building. Her legs bent as she sunk down onto one knee while her nodachi, now reverted to its original length, sat snugly into her hand.

Behind her, the colossal top half of the skyscraper dropped from the sky, filling the entire backdrop with its bulk as it fell. The very earth shook as it landed, the vibrations rattling the entire building and travelling up my legs while the skyscraper appeared to explode. Like a dropped vase, the skyscraper's surface erupted as every glass panel covering it shattering in its fall.

The shock-wave it made was deafening, a force of air that was as much noise as it was wind and I found myself unable to hear a thing as I was caught in its embrace. Like a solid force I was buffeted by the air as it tried to knock me over, tugging on my clothes and hair. Across from me Karasuba remained unmoving in her crouch as her ponytail was pulled before her face from the blast.

Finally it was over, the sound dying down and leaving a welcome silence behind, one that was only broken by the tinkling sound of shattered glass as shards fell to the ground like drops of rain.

"…huff...huff..." Face soaked with sweat, hair plastered to her forehead, Karasuba remained kneeling on the ground, her exhaustion obvious as her shoulders rose and fell with every pant. For all the exuberance she challenged me with, it was clear that the battle was taking its toll on her. No matter how she pretended otherwise, the strain of channelling the Boosted Gear though her young body for any real length of time was simply too much, and the effects were beginning to show.

Karasuba tried to push herself to her feet but failed, her legs giving up on her before she was even halfway up and she tumbled down to her knees, sprawling on the floor and placing palms flat on the ground to stop herself from falling down completely.

Her hair fell around her like a curtain, blocking her face from view as she continued to pant on her hands and knees. It was beginning to look like I might have overestimated her abilities a bit. Despite her strong start she simply lacked the endurance to keep on fighting at this pace for long, and setting the deadline at sunset may have been a little too long.

Just as I was debating on whether I should cross over to the other side and check up on her, or just wait for her to recover, a peculiar noise captured my attention. Focusing on the sound, I realised that it was coming from the grey-haired girl before me. Karasuba's shoulders was shaking, not rising and falling, but trembling and behind the curtain of hair that hid her face from view, I could tell she had a hand clamped over her mouth.

Then, unexpectedly, she snorted, a sound that was a cross between a puff of air and a chuckle, before she broke down into a fit of laughter.

I watched, bemused, as Karasuba sat back on her legs and laughed. She wrapped one arm her belly, the other holding her sword down by her side, as she happily chortled without a care in the world, an oddly pleasant sounding noise coming from her.

After a time Karasuba's laughter finally dwindled as she calmed down, though her good mood did not diminish in the slightest as she turned to look up at me, her brow still plastered with her sweat soaked hair, and smiled. It was a light expression, both open and carefree in a way I would have never expected to see coming from the homicidal girl.

"Well," she began, her words coming out slow as she was still panting for breath, though her grey eyes were dancing from beneath her sweat0soaked hair, "wasn't that something?" She barely managed to get out before another fit of light laughter overtook her.

Still laughing, Karasuba gave another attempt at standing up, only to succeed this time. Pushing herself up on unsteady feet, legs swaying as they tried find their balance, Karasuba stretched and let out a loud groan.

"It's been so long I've almost forgotten how it feels to just cut loose. That's the downside of living here: everything is so fragile that I always have to be careful where I'm going or what I do, or I just might end up accidentally snapping someone in two." Karasuba began to walk, her steps slow and stumbling at first but as she forced herself to keep moving they slowly began to grow more certain until she moved with all of her usual surety and grace. "Ah well, I guess that's just the price I have to pay."

Karasuba's feet took her towards the edge of the building and she ended up stopping right at its ledge, with the fallen skyscraper to her back. If she was in any way afraid of the drop before her Karasuba didn't show it. Instead, her profile appeared relaxed as she took one long, sweeping look over the view of city. After a moment she ripped her sight away from the vista and turned it towards her nodachi. Lifting the sword to her face, Karasuba's grey eyes opened completely as she carefully looked over the blade, only to crinkle shut again.

The once pristine steel of the nodachi's blade was ruined. Its keen edge lay broken, a serrated mess that more closely resembled that of a saw than a sword. Fractures spanned the length of the sword, distorting the reflection on the blade, from the width of hairlines to chinks so wide that I was astonished the thing didn't fall apart under its own weight right then and there. It was obvious to anyone that the sword wouldn't survive another swing.

"Ah," She commented, her good mood not dampening in the slightest at the sight of the ruined sword, "looks like this one is done for."

Giving her nodachi one final glance, Karasuba shrugged lightly before she carelessly lobbed the sword over her shoulder. Like a light-bulb hammered against an anvil, the blade shattered as it hit the ground, spilling so many broken pieces over the floor, leaving nothing but a hilt lying amidst the steel shards hinted to hint at its previous form.

A second nodachi already sat waiting in Karasuba's hands before the other had even hit the ground.

Once again, I was brought to mind of the similarities between the effects of the Boosted Gear and those of Reinforcement. Each boost enhanced the effectiveness of an object, making it more durable or sharper, but in return it put a certain amount of strain on the object. And just like with Reinforcement, if too much strain was put on an object it would break, which was precisely what happened to the nodachi. Unable to bear the accumulated strain of so many boosts, it shattered, crumbling into dust.

Just like the other three.

This was not the first time Karasuba had been forced to replace her sword during the fight. It was the fourth. All the others had shared a similar fate to the last one.

I had been confused at first why Karasuba's nodachi was so empty, why someone like her who so obviously hungered for battle lacked any history of combat engraved into the steel of her swords. But as the battle wore on and I saw how she was forced to replace her swords time and time again, I understood.

The reason why there was no history engraved into her sword was because none of her swords ever survived past the end of the fight. The effects of being boosted were too much for any of them to handle, and by a battle's end they ending up breaking under the strain to the last, forcing her to find a replacement after each fight.

"You know," Karasuba began as she turned back to take in the view of the city, her back facing towards me, "I love this town."

"Really?" I replied blandly as I followed her gaze and looked over the landscape of the city, "It doesn't look like it."

The heart of Kuoh city laid in ruins. Mile after mile of crumbling buildings lay fallen, forming a circle around us, and while most of the damage was confined to our immediate vicinity the rest of the city hadn't escaped unharmed. Like a fault line from an earthquake, a line of destruction ran through the city, stretching from horizon to horizon and splitting it in two. I didn't need to look back to know that line ran straight through the office building we stood on, dividing Karasuba from me.

City-Killers – That was what Dragons were.

I had honestly thought Karasuba to be an exception to this rule. While I had believed her to be dangerous and I knew of the skill she possessed, I just could never quite bring myself to believe that Karasuba held the raw power required to pull it off. If I had to compare her to one of my blades, I would have placed her in the an anti-unit category rather than anti-fortress. I had believed that with the limitation of a human's body, one not even fully grown, she would never be able to channel the necessary power to bring down an entire city.

I had been wrong.

She used the Boosted Gears in ways I never imagined possible, wielded it with a skill that was beyond anything anyone else her age could have managed. Not even Kiba could manipulate his Sacred Gear with as much skill as she did. And now, as I looked over the aftermath of our brief exchange, I understood why Sona and Gremory were so keen on getting her out of the city. She really could wipe it off the map in a single night. As it was, the loss of life would have been catastrophic had this been the real Kuoh rather than a replica.

And we were only just beginning.

"But I do love this place." Karasuba replied, not bothering to look back at me as she continued to look over the view. The wind pulled on her hair, forcing grey strands to dance in the breeze. "This, this is where I grew up. Both my earliest and happiest memories are all here. Even if I haven't really been living here for a while, it doesn't change the fact that this town is my home. And there is no place I love more. Its just," Karasuba shrugged, back still facing me, "I love destroying it just as much."

"...Karasuba. That's not love." I told her plainly.

"No..." Karasuba shook her head, sounding oddly melancholic, grey hair swaying in the wind like waves, "...it is."

The tone of absolute sincerity I heard in her voice left me confused, and I found myself watching the grey-haired girl as she in turn watched over the city she claimed to love even as she brought it crumbling down.

"Do you know why Dragons live alone?" After a long wait, Karasuba finally spoke up, still not turning to look my way. "Why is it that every Dragon you find, whether in fairy tales or real life, they are always seem to be alone? Do you know why?" Karasuba didn't wait for me to answer, instead she waved an arm before her. "It is because of this."

Her wave encompassed the view of Kuoh, or more precisely, the demolished buildings that she had personally brought down.

"Dragons, they kill. They kill everything."

Karasuba's arm dropped back down to her side. "They are the only race in existence that live their entire lives alone, in complete solitude. They have no families, no clan, no tribes. They have no culture; how could they when they rarely meet outside of battle? They never build, so even if they do gather together they leave behind no cities, no monuments. They never create, only destroy, so they have no works of writing, no literature of their history. All they leave behind is death and destruction. Fire is their only creation, Desolation is their legacy.

"They are even born alone. No sooner than their eggs are laid are they abandoned. Left alone to hatch, expected to fend for themselves from their earliest hours of life, the first sight that newborns usually see is that of an empty cavern. Never knowing a mother's warmth or a father's pride, or even who their parents are. "Maybe that's why they can destroy without a care. What is the murder of a mother to one that had never known his own? The destruction of a home to someone that had never had one? What meaning does another's life hold to those who had no one to care for but themselves?

"Dragons are born alone, and they will die alone. Born into this world with nothing, they will leave it with nothing.

"And that's why," Karasuba spun to face me, the smile on her face was almost melancholic as she watched me with eyes half open, "this will be my final year here."

I blinked, thrown off both by the sudden change in topic and the change in her demeanour. Watching her now she appeared almost normal. "What is that supposed to mean? Your final year?"

"Exactly what it sounds like." Karasuba's smile grew just a tab bit wider as her eyes drifted shut. "After this year is over I'll be gone. And this time, I'm never coming back."

"I...I don't understand." I admitted cautiously. Why would she want to leave? From all I've seen Karasuba actually seems to enjoy living here.

"Of course you don't." Sounding more resigned by my incomprehension than sad, Karasuba shook her head, her empty, meaningless smile firmly back in place. "But you're not a Dragon, now are you?" With that cryptic statement she turned back to face the city and waved an arm towards it.

"Haven't you been listening?" Karasuba questioned, not looking my way. "Dragons, we kill. Our power, our very nature ensures it. Death follows us whereever we go, as surely as the light follows the rising sun. Whether we want it to or otherwise, it will happen. And we have no choice in the matter."

"You always have a choice Karasuba." I told her firmly, "No one is forcing you to fight or even to kill. It's not fate that decides whether you fight or not, its you. You could live a completely peaceful ordinary life in obscurity if you chose to."

"Oh~?" Karasuba spared me a mocking smile from over her shoulder. "Is that so?" She raised her nodachi and I tensed in response, fearing another attack, but I relaxed almost immediately when I found her pointing the weapon's tip away from me, towards something in the horizon. It was pointed towards a building on the other side of the city, a wide grand multi-story structure that stood out from the other structures around it like a palace. It took me a second to recognise it.

Kuoh Academy.

"Then tell me Emiya Shirou," Karasuba lowered her weapon, "if I have so much control over my fate, then explain what happened then? Why had an army of Fallen so eager to reignite an ancient war descended on my city not two months prior?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" I asked, genuinely baffled. While it was true Kokabiel almost ended up starting a war, Karasuba was not involved at all. That Boosted Gear hadn't even factored into that near disaster. "What happened at the Academy had nothing to with you."

"Didn't it?" Karasuba quirked a brow as her smile turned sly. "Think on it Emiya, did it really have nothing to do with me?" She titled her head to one side, smile not fading. "Then how about the so-called 'Khaos Brigade', what about them? Did I have nothing to do with that either?"

"No. I can't deny that the reason why the Khaos Brigade came here was for you, but that wasn't your fault. Not directly anyway," I replied. "They were after the Boosted Gear. The moment they became aware of its existence they would have chased after it no matter what you did. It had nothing to do with you and everything to do with your Sacred Gear."

There was a silent moment as Karasuba looked down over the ledge at the city below, her back towards me. "...You still don't get it, do you?" Karasuba slowly shook her head as she gave a hallow sounding laugh. "You were so close but the answer went right over your head."

She turned away from the ledge and faced me while she still shaking her head in a mocking fashion. "Let's try this again shall we?"

Without looking, Karasuba pointed behind her at Kuoh Academy. "In that school alone there are over a dozen Devils attending, and that number only seems to grow with every passing year. And within a thirty mile radius from there are almost a hundred Devils, all housed within the city borders. That's more than any other city in all of Japan outside of the major metropolises. And they're not just your everyday Devils either, oh no, they are nothing so mundane as that. Among their number are royalty, Princesses of Hell, Kin to the Satans themselves. In no other place outside of Hell itself would you find so much prestige among Devils gather in one spot, and for some reason they decided to come here of all places."

Karasuba turned her arm and pointed towards the church, "And there. Until recently that church was nothing more than an old abandoned building. But ever since two years ago a flock of crows have begun to gather and make their nest there."

Karasuba began to approach me, steadily closing the gap between us with long, easy strides. "And let's not forget the Twelve-Winged Angel that paid us a visit so recently. Not even five of them left in all of existence and yet he saw fit to descend on Kuoh and grace us with his presence." Karasuba pointed to the sky with her sword. "And for the first time in almost a millennium we got to witness as one of God's mightiest creations waged war, right here, right over the skies of this fair city."

Karasuba halted in her tracks, her feet stopping right on the edge of the chasm that divided the building in two, stopping only a couple of yards away from me. "And then there is you." Her grey eyes bored into mine. "You who carry an entire battlefield with you wherever you go, a creature so twisted that even Dragons of old sneer at your very sight and name you Abomination. A being that by every right should not exist, and yet here you are standing before me, in the very same city I live in."

A mocking grin appeared on her lips. "Strange, don't you think?" Karasuba asked as she held her arms wide open. "That all of these creatures from both Heaven and Hell have all gathered in such a tiny little place? Whatever could have brought them all here, I wonder? Why, it's almost like something is drawing them all in."

"And that something is you?" I asked, cutting into the grey-haired girl's speech. "Are you telling me that they are all here because of you?

"Are you telling me they're not!" She yelled, suddenly angry, all signs of her previous aloofness fleeing before her rage. Her eyes gleamed with her boiling emotions as her voice echoed off the walls of the empty city. "Are you honestly going to pretend that I am not responsible for all of this?"

Karasuba glared at me across the gap, her grey eyes boring into mine, daring me to refute her, challenging me to claim otherwise...and maybe I might have imagined it but there might even have been a hint of pleading in them. And for the life of me I couldn't understand why it was there.

And at instant, despite her being only a couple of yards distant, so close that I could have stretched my out arm and touched her, Karasuba felt as if she was standing some place so very far away.

"When I was nine years old," Karasuba spoke slowly, pronouncing each syllable with care as if to make sure I understood every word, "this place was almost completely devoid of supernatural influence. There wasn't even a single Devil living anywhere for miles. Not a single one. But now, at sixteen, there are almost a hundred living within a stone's throw from my house, along with a host of other monsters. Do you think that they all gathered here by fucking chance?" Karasuba snarled, "That all of this is happening because of one fucked-up coincidence after the other?"

Karasuba glared at me from across the chasm, appearing so angry that I thought for a moment she may leap over the gap and attack me, only for her to suddenly slump, shoulders drooping as she deflated like a balloon, all the rage leaving her. "Think, Emiya," she pleaded, sounding every bit as tired as she appeared to be. "What is a Dragon?"

I was honestly baffled. The last few minutes had shown me a different side of Karasuba than I had expected to see here, and I had no idea what to think about it. Everything I knew about her told me she should have been attacking me non-stop, intending to cleave me in two, but here she was, using words rather than her sword. Still, despite the unexpectedness of it, it wasn't precisely an unwelcome development and I decided to do as she asked.

What was a Dragon? A Dragon is a supernatural being that traditionally takes the shape of a giant reptile with wings, though there are exceptions to this rule. They were also beings of potentially unimaginable power, considered to be the most powerful race in existence. While their strength may vary, even the weakest among their number were deadly, while the strongest were so powerful that not even the gods could match them. They are so powerful that it is said that their presence alone will attract-

My mind went blank as the realisation hit me like a bolt of lighting. "Oh..." I mouthed, feeling a little stunned as I began to piece everything together.

"Ah," Karasuba smiled sadly and leaned back. "So you finally get it now." She chuckled. "We Dragons will forever live in oh so interesting times."

'Even in the few instances where they don't want to hurt anyone they still end up getting people killed. Power attracts more power, and there is no race more powerful than the Dragons.' The words Gremory spoke from the meeting flashed through my mind, making me feel stupid for being so oblivious when the answer was staring me right in the face. 'Supernatural beings of all kinds will flock to her, drawn in by her power. Before long Kuoh will end up becoming a hotspot for supernatural disasters.'

Both Sona and Gremory had warned me that just having a Dragon in the city will attract other supernatural creatures. But I wonder why neither of them had ever considered that they might have been one of the supernatural beings attracted to her? That the entire reason why they moved to Kuoh years ago might have been because of the Dragon lurking within its streets?

Karasuba was here first, long before any of us arrived, when Kuoh was just another ordinary city. Kuoh only became a place filled with Devils only a few years earlier, after Karasuba had awakened her Sacred Gear. We knew that Ddraig's presence here would attract other powers, so why hadn't anyone suspected that we were the intruders, that we ourselves were the danger the Dragon drew in?

"Power attracts more power," Karasuba spoke, confirming my thoughts. "That is the rule of this world. And there is nothing more powerful than a Dragon. And a Heavenly Dragon, well, that's almost as strong as you can get." Still smiling, Karasuba turned and walked away, heading back to the ledge. "That's the way it always has been. Those who carry the Boosted Gear are fated to live in interesting times as their very presence continues to attract trouble like flies to a corpse. Without a single exception they all shared that fate, dying under the bulk of the numberless monsters that came for them."

She paused once she reached the edge of the building, her face once again hidden from view as she looked over the city, leaving me only a glimpse of her back and her grey hair trailing behind her.

Only it wasn't grey, but chestnut brown.

In my mind's eye I saw her clearly then. Not what she had become but the little girl she had once been. A child, innocent as her brother and with hair every bit as brown, standing little more than waist high as she watched over her home from the building's edge. And for the first time, I was overcome with a wave of empathy for Karasuba.

What must it have been like growing up like that? Hunted by both Angels and Devils alike as they were drawn in by the scent of Ddraig's might, the promise of his strength residing within her soul? They came to this city looking for her, even as they didn't realise they were doing so. Unknowingly they came, brining danger along with them.

What must it have been like growing up with that knowledge? Knowing that every monster that stalked the street, that every Fallen that wandered the night looking for victims, that every Devil that corrupted a soul in the city, that all of them, every single one, were only there because of you? To a child of nine, what must it have felt like to realise that you were a danger to everything you knew and loved, just by being near them? What must have she felt when she found out the truth? Shock, disbelief, confusion, rage, fear?

Despair?

"They will come for me." Karasuba turned her head upwards, ignoring the city below in favour of watching the sky above, "And there is nothing I can do to stop them. I tried, believe me I tired, but it's no use. They just keep on coming. So what choice am I left with? If I stay I will end up being nothing but a danger to them." Her next words came out in a near silent whisper. "...And I can't have that, now can I?"

"Which is why..." Karasuba drifted off, pausing mid speech. She was still looking upwards, her eyes silently searching the sky for something that I couldn't see. After a minute of silence she spoke up, never taking her eyes away from the sky, voice soft but the conviction in it still clear to hear. "...I'll leave. Before my power grows too much, before I ruin everything, I will leave." Karasuba looked away from the sky and back towards me. Her eyes crinkling shut as a smile that had never looked so empty reappeared on her lips. "And this time, I'm never coming back."

In the empty city where only the two of us existed, a wind blew. Streaming through the abandoned streets and over rooftops, it buffeted us, setting our clothes to rustling as we stared across at one another.

Karasuba raised her sword and set it on her shoulder. "And since this will be my final year and all, I'll be sure to give them a proper goodbye."

"By them," I said, already having a pretty good idea of who she was talking about, "I take it you mean your parents?"

"That's right." She turned her head to one side and stare off into the distance, towards the residential district where we had just come from not an hour earlier. I didn't need to guess whose house she was looking at. "Like I said, this my final year, so I thought it's only proper that I give them a proper farewell. I'm graduating."

"Graduating?" I frowned, sending her a perplexed look. "But that doesn't make any sense. You're only sixtee-" It hit me before I could even finish speaking. "I see. So that's why you skipped a year. I thought it was strange that someone like you would do so well academically."

"Do I look like the type that would have my head stuck in book, Emiya?" Karasuba snorted, some of her usual self returning as she flashed me a smirk. Shaking her head, she carried on, "Academics, grades, math, history, I couldn't care less about any of that."

"Then why did you do it? It couldn't have been easy to work in all that studying along with your training."

She gave me a lazy shrug. "What else could I have done? What else can I offer them that they would want? They have no interest in the supernatural world or in power. They just wanted to live an ordinary life and start a family together. It was just their bad luck to have ended up with a child like me." Karasuba shook her head, sending her grey locks swaying. "What misfortune they had to have. Must have been born under an unlucky star or something."

Karasuba laughed bitterly. "For most of my life I've caused those two nothing but trouble, and now I'm about to up and disappear on them. Really, after all that the least I could do is suck it up and hit the books. I hated studying but every parent wants to see their kids graduate someday, right? As a daughter who has caused them nothing but suffering, I wanted to give them something nice to remember me by. To see their little girl graduate, my own little farewell present. One last fond memory before I disappear for good."

"Wait." I interrupted, catching something off about what she said. I thought back on Sona's reports and I realised what was bothering me, "That can't be right. You've been getting excellent grades for years, its the only reason why you were even allowed to skip a grade. But if you've only been doing so to make sure you graduated early then that means-" The look on her face stopped me cold and the realisation poured over me like a bucket of icy cold water.

"How long?" I asked, watching the weary smile that sat on her lips, something that had no place on someone so young. "How long have you been preparing for this?"

Her smile just grew a tad wider in return. And I knew the answer.

From the very beginning.

She knew right from the very start, from a child of just nine, that she wouldn't be allowed to stay. That one day she would have to leave their side, and never return, and she has been preparing for it ever since.

Before I could think of anything to say, I found that the time for talking was over.

"Well, looks like I've stalled for long enough." Karasuba swiped her sword before her as she turned to me. "Let's pick up where we left off."

Karasuba's breathing had been evening out over the past few minutes as she used the opportunity to rest up while she spoke, and as of now there was not so much as a single sign remaining of her previous exhausted state. Not even the sweat remained. She looked fresh and ready for another round of fighting.

Normally it would have been impossible for a human to recover so thoroughly in just a few minutes, but I had a feeling the little recovery perk that her Sacred Gear granted her had a hand in it.

"One final question." I called out before she could attack.

Karasuba paused, halting mid-motion just as she was about to tense her legs and leap. She tilted her head as she watched me with her grey eyes, seeming to consider my request. After a moment she shrugged, eyes narrowing again as she smiled and lowered her blade.

Taking that as consent to ask, I quickly voiced the one question that had been plaguing me from the start. "What do you want?" When I only received a confused look in reply I elaborated. "From me. What do you want form me? What's the point in all of this?" I waved an arm around to indicate the battlefield. "I don't understand why you are doing all of this except that you came after me specifically. So what is it that you want from me? What are you hoping to gain from all of this?"

It was brief, gone so quickly that I almost could have sworn that I imagined the whole thing, but for a brief moment Karasuba seemed to hesitate, almost falter even, before she quickly pulled herself together and smiled.

"What do I want?" She chuckled as she flashed me a hungry grin. "Emiya, what makes you think I want anything out of you other than a good fight?"

"No." I shook my head. "If that was the only thing you wanted then there are other ways to get it. You had plenty of opportunities to seek out others to fight." Sona said that Karasuba was first spotted during the School Visit, and if that was true then it that meant she was in the school at the same time Sirzechs and Serafall were. And there is no way in hell she could have missed their presence. If it was powerful enemy she wanted, then she she had no reason not to go after them and yet, she came after me instead, completely ignoring the Lords of Hell as if they weren't worth her time. "You could have even provoked me into fighting you by attacking any of the other Devils in school. But you didn't, instead only came after me. You ignored everything and everyone else, no matter how strong they were, and fixed your sights on me alone. Which means you want something that only I can give you, something beyond a fight. So what is it I have that you want?"

"Emiya, you're not giving yourself enough credit." Her smirk grew wider, affording me a glimpse of her teeth. "There are not a lot of people that can give me a fight like you can. And as for why I want to fight you. Well," she shrugged, "what other reason would I need to fight someone strong other than the thrill of the fight itself?"

And somehow, despite the bloodlust that started pouring our of her again, I knew her words to be a lie.

But she didn't give me a chance to argue, as in the next instant she leapt, clearing the gap between us and bringing her sword to bear against me.

And so our fight resumed.

---

I remember when I saw Servants fight for the first time.

Inhuman.

That was the thought which immediately came to my mind. Even had I not been a Magus, I would have known. Their movements were too fast, reactions beyond anything my mind could comprehend, for me to ever mistake them for human.

Ignorant as I had been then, watching them fight in my school's courtyard, an Archer in red and Lancer in blue, I knew that they were only things in the form of a human. Anyone would have known; they were simply that different.

But most of all, I remembered feeling overwhelmed, helpless before their strength.

Sword strikes so fast that they left after-images, spear thrusts that appeared as nothing but blurs, my eyes unable to track them. I knew that I could not stand against them. Had I tried there I would have been cut down in a single strike. They were beings so beyond humanity that it was almost laughable to think one could stand up against them.

So I couldn't help but wonder, if anyone happened to walk into our fight like I had back then, would they be thinking the same thing about me?

Our blows rained against one another, the black and white of my Chinese swords and the grey of her blade left arcs of light in air as they streaked towards each other. The entire street was filled with the sound of the clashing of our weapons as we launched blow after blow in an unending storm of sharpened steel. Weaving, dodging and ducking under the other's strikes as we circled around each other, almost dancing as we retaliated with strikes of our own.

We flew down the street of a residential block, the city's financial center left long behind us over the course of the battle, never pausing for breath as we fought, leaving behind nothing but after-images in our wake. Neither one of was willing to relent in our charge. We launched attack after attack through the space between us, cutting down anything unlucky enough to have been caught in our path. The trail of bisected cars and fallen trees left behind us could attest to that.

Every strike and counter-strike that I found sent my way was one meant to kill, each a lethal blow. But in spite of that, despite knowing that a single slip up would end up costing me my life, I found myself enjoying the fight.

It was a rather startling revelation. I had never thought of combat as something fun before, just a means to an end, a tool I could use to save others. Fighting in and of itself had never been enjoyable for me. Perhaps it was another unintended side effect of my reincarnation, maybe it had to do with my recently discovered Pride, or maybe it was due to something else entirely, but as I found myself trading blows with the potentially sadistic grey haired girl across from me, pitting both my skill and metal against hers, I felt a thrill course through my veins and found that I was in fact having fun. And if the demented grin that was splitting her face was any indication, then Karasuba was too.

Had fights always been this exciting, or have I only just now begun to notice?

So caught up in exploring this train of thought was I that I failed to pay enough attention to my surroundings, and the distraction ended up costing me as I didn't notice the lamppost until I clipped it with my shoulder. With the speed we were travelling at that was no small thing. It set me spinning, almost knocking me completely off my feet and sending me skidding on the road before I managed to get my feet under me in time.

The entire thing was over and done with fast, in barely a fraction of a second, but for Karasuba it was more than enough. Never the type not to take advantage of every opportunity, she pounced.

Thinking fast I weaved around the lamppost, putting it between the both of us in the vain hope that it would slow her strike down. It didn't. Her sword ended up cutting through the metal post as easily as it had the air, forcing me to leap back to avoid the strike. But it still ended up doing the job as Karasuba was forced to divert her course and move around the base of the lamppost to get to me, stalling her for just the fraction of an instant I needed to fully regain my balance and put up a solid guard.

Seeing that the opportunity was lost, Karasuba aborted her charge and instead dropped down lower to the ground, widening her feet as she brought her weapon to bear before her, gripping it in both hands and leveling the tip straight towards me.

I didn't even need to wait for the spike of energy to tell me what was about to happen, having already experienced this particular attack too many times already. But this time, instead of going with my usual response to it, which was to dodge out of the way, I decided to try something different.

Letting Bakuya slip from my grasp and fall to ground, I bought my now free my hand to grip Kanshou, my right hand holding it by the hilt while the left was near the tip, gripping it by the back of the blade. I held the blade in front of me, flat side facing both Karasuba and me as I waited for her to launch her attack.

I didn't have to wait long, as I felt the now familiar spike of her power, the tell-tale signs of her upcoming attack. And as she transferred that power to her sword, I took note of where exactly her sword tip was pointed and carefully moved Kanshou so that it was positioned between me and projected path that I mentally predicted.

And this time when the blade elongated, travelling at speed I had no chance of reacting to, it didn't find flesh or empty air, but the forged steel of a Noble Phantasm blocking it's path. Using it like a shield, Kanshou held strong under the onslaught of the sword, showing no signs of the strain it was under as it blocked the attack. But I, on the other hand, did not fare quite as well. I had been expecting powerful force behind the thrust and had prepared for it accordingly by making sure I had proper footing and redoubling my grip on the blade. Now it seemed that I had underestimated the amount of force because, while I succeeded in maintaining my hold on Kanshou easily enough, my footing was a whole other matter and I was sent skidding back, feet dragging on the ground, head whip-lashing as the elongated sword pushed me away.

I must have traveled a good dozen meters before the sword reached its maximum length and I managed to bring myself to halt, skidding for a couple more feet as I bled off my momentum by digging my feet into the ground.

When I lowered my blade I found Karasuba starting at me with eyes wide with shock from up the street, and I had a pretty good idea why. Even though I had been knocked back a fair distance I had still managed to successfully block that thrust for the first time instead of just avoiding it. And if the look she was wearing was any indication, she must have never seen it happen before.

Soon though the stunned look was wiped off her face. "My, my." Karasuba grinned eagerly as she widened her stand even further, lowering her center of gravity closer to the ground and tightening her grip on her sword as she pointed it towards me. "You just keep getting more interesting, don't you Emiya?"

Again I felt a spike of power, and again I positioned Kanshou to take the brunt of the attack, successfully blocking it with its side.

But this time, it didn't stop with one.

The instant I had blocked the first blow, it was followed by another, and then another, and the next thing I knew I found myself faced with countless dozens of blows shooting towards me as Karasuba's sword extended and retracted like the piston of a car engine. It almost felt as if I was faced with a hail of bullets rather than thrusts from a single sword.

The smart thing to do would have been to dodge. Just evade her attacks by leaping to one side or the other and use my speed to keep ahead of her. Karasuba still needed to aim before she fired and that took time, too much time. In the time it took her to point the blade at me, tighten her grip to make sure the sword wouldn't get knocked out of her hand when she fired it and then flood it with the Boosted Gear's power, I would have already been gone.

It was how I had managed to keep ahead of this particular attack so far. And I would have had an easier time of evading it than standing my ground, that's for sure. Dodging would have been both the smarter and safer thing to do, so it was what I normally would have done. But if I did dodge, it would have also meant that I had to back down from Karasuba, and not because I had a plan or trap I wanted to set up, but because I couldn't face her onslaught head-on. And for some reason, a part of me seemed to rebel at the mere thought of backing down from Karasuba.

So I refused to.

Planting my feet, I stood my ground and met each and every one of her strikes head-on, blocking them all with the flat of Kanshou's blade.

Each blow was fast, unbelievably so, and all but instantaneous to my senses. Like grey streaks of light they leapt from her sword towards me, traveling too fast for the eye to see. Not even my keen eyes were able to track them. Had I tried to block them by reacting as I saw them coming I would have been skewered long ago; it just wasn't possible. So instead of trying to block the strikes after they were fired, I instead blocked them by predicting where they would land and placing Kanshou in its path before the attack even began. After all, no matter how fast something traveled, it couldn't outrace something that was already at the finish line.

My arms blurred as I set Kanshou in the path of each thrust, sparks erupting as the nodachi scraped along the its surface, hitting it with enough force that it sent the steel blade ringing with every blocked blow, reminding me of raindrops hitting on a tin roof. Again and again she tried to skewer me, firing a flurry of attacks in a hope that one would slip through my guard, and each time she tried it was only to find Kanshou waiting for her, barring her sword's path.

That was the flaw of her attack. While the speed at which her sword extended was beyond my ability to react to, she herself wasn't. Karasuba couldn't just fire her attacks at will, she needed to maintain a solid grip on her sword whenever she was about to fire lest the rebound knock it out of her hand, and every time she was getting ready to fire her power would spike, alerting me that an attack was about to launch.

My eyes kept perfect track of the nodachi's tip, following its every movement with ease. I blocked strike after strike, holding my ground as kept as I made sure to keep proper footing after what happened last time. I felt the strain in my arms and shoulders as each sudden impact on Kanshou threatened to rip the sword out of my hands, my muscles and tendons fighting to keep it in my grip. But despite it all I didn't relent and held firm, neither giving any ground nor falling back an inch.

Then without so much as a warning, the attack ended.

I hadn't noticed at first, my attention so entirely focused on the tip of her sword while I held Kanshou poised and ready as I waited for the next spike in power that would herald her next attack, that it must have taken me a good few seconds to realise that one wasn't coming.

Glancing up to see what had changed, I found Karasuba still standing in the same position she had held before. A wide stance, with one foot before the other, sword still pointed towards me with a hungry grin sitting on her face. For a moment I felt confused by what had caused her to stop, until I sensed the power building up inside of her.

Unlike the sharp spikes I had sensed from her before, this was different. It was a steady build up in power, and I could sense how she carefully gathered and shaped it inside of her before pushing it into the sword, demonstrating a level of finesse she had not shown so far. I could see the effects it had on her nodachi, its metal hardening, growing denser without changing its shape.

It was at this point that I felt my common sense take hold again as warning signs flashed through my mind, all but commanding me to dodge. It didn't take a genius to realise that whatever attack she was about to send my way would be on a whole other level from anything she had done so far, and standing in its way would be a pretty stupid thing to do.

With the far longer build up this attack was taking it gave me ample time to avoid it and by look of things, it didn't seem like Karasuba could move while she focused on gathering her power. All I had to do was move. Get out of the way or even use this opportunity to attack her while her defense was down, and I wouldn't have to weather whatever it is was she about to send me way.

And I was about to do it too. I had already tensed my legs in preparation for the leap even as I mentally charted the course I was to take, but that was all brought to a halt when I caught sight of her face.

Karasuba's grey eyes were smoldering with excitement, practically gleaming with an unholy light while her lips were set in hungry, tooth-baring grin. When she caught my eyes it quickly become clear she knew what I was thinking of doing because her grin quickly turned mocking, before she very deliberately quirked up an eyebrow, challenge obvious.

Ah, well, that changes everything.

All thoughts of fleeing disappeared from my mind as I settled down and began my own preparations to counter Karasuba's attack. Seeing that I was going to stand my ground Karasuba's grin turned excited again, something that I found myself mimicking.

Had I tired to run from the face of whatever Karasuba was about to send my way, then that would have been precisely what I would be doing, running away. And a part of me raged at the mere thought of running away, from anything, and especially from a girl three years my junior who only had a fraction of my strength at her disposal.

It was stupid. I knew it was. The part of my mind that I mentally had labeled as 'Archer' was pointing out the dozens of reasons why what I was doing was the height of stupidity in the most sarcastic manner imaginable. But I just couldn't seem to bring myself to care.

Besides, Sona did say I needed to exercise my Pride more often. And I had always thought pride was synonymous with stupidity.

I dug my feet into the ground, as in literally burying them into the asphalt of the road as I lifted one foot up before slamming it back down, then doing the same with other. Releasing my hold on Kanshou's tip, I instead moved my left arm behind the blade and set the flat of the sword against my forearm. I wouldn't be able to move the blade as fast this way but in exchange I would be able to put more weight behind it. I had the feeling I would need every bit of extra strength I could get.

Preparations complete, I looked up to Karasuba, and she must have been waiting for me to finish because the moment our eyes met she began her attack. Grinning manically, Karasuba thrust her sword forward as her power spiked once again. Karasuba hadn't tried to change the course of attack and aimed right at the dead center of my body, right in the path of where I had placed Kanshou ready and waiting.

I blocked the thrust.

And was sent flying.

The sheer force behind the thrust was immense, beyond anything I had imagined possible. My arms barely managed to keep Kanshou in place as I was sent rocketing back, hurtling through one end of the street to the other in less than the blink of an eye, feet digging trenches in the road's surface as I tried and failed to arrest my momentum while tearing through anything that happened to be in my way. Letters and envelopes exploded into the air around me as my slammed into, then through, something, and I caught a brief glimpse of a crumpled mailbox before I was sent hurtling away.

I fought against it, threw every ounce of weight I had in me against my sword even as I dug my feet further into the ground to gain more purchase as I tried to bring myself to a halt, but I didn't even manage to slow myself down, the earth breaking beneath my feet as I was driven further back. The sword just kept extending, neither bending nor breaking even as I strained against it, pushing with all of my-

-then the pressure on Kanshou disappeared.

Even without the nodachi propelling me I was still pushed back for several more meters before I managed to stop myself, my feet digging into the ground as the earth crumbled beneath them until I finally managed to bleed off enough momentum and skidded to a halt.

Despite being freed from the assault I found myself just standing there, panting lightly as my mind tried to process what had just happened. Giving my head a firm shake I slowly lifted Kanshou off my forearm and lowered it, winching slightly at sharp pain I felt coming from there. Without needing to look at the arm I knew that, superhuman toughness or not, I was going to find a bruise forming there. Still, it was nothing that a couple of minutes wouldn't fix, so after giving my arms a brief stretch and shaking the stiffness from them, I focused on the scene before me.

Looking ahead, past the twin trial of trenches that stretch from beneath my feet and ended at what must have a good three miles away, was Karasuba. She was panting, clearly exhausted from her last attack as she stood bent over double, sweat dripping off her brow. She only managed to keep standing by propping herself up on one knee with a single hand, while the other held her nodachi limply by her side.

The nodachi was already falling apart, crumbling like sand, and I watched as she loosened her grip and let the sword slip from her fingers to tumble to the ground and shatter. She had barely released the sword when a new one appeared in her hand to take its place.

"Yeah," I muttered as I pulled first my left, then my right leg free from where they were buried from the ground and set foot onto the paved road. "I'm never doing that again." I promised myself as I began to make my way froward, towards Karasuba, all the while doing my best to ignore that tiny little voice in my head that sounded like Serafall as it cheered, 'Again! Let's do it again, that was fun!'

Giving my head another firm shake to displace that voice, I picked up my pace and hurried along while I seriously began to contemplate seeing a therapist one of these days. Goodness knows that I probably needed one even before I stared hearing all these voices in my head.

As I closed the distanced between Karasuba and me, walking in an unhurried, steady pace, I caught sight of something. Glancing down, I stared at Kanshou from where I gripped it in my right hand, frowning thoughtfully as I examined it. Lifting the blade up towards my face, I ran my eyes over its surface and focused at one particular spot.

Kanshou was damaged.

It was tiny thing, nothing more than a scratch. A near invisible line no thicker than a strand of hair that stretched for a couple of inches over Kanshou's black hexagon-patterned surface, no doubt a direct result of the last strike it had withstood. All told, it was a harmless thing and barely even noticeable. Even I wouldn't have caught sight of it if not for my structural analysis and I doubt anyone would even realise it was there unless it caught the light at just the right angle.

It also irritated me in a way I couldn't begin to explain.

I didn't know why it did. The damage, if you could even call it that, was purely on a cosmetic level and wouldn't take away from the blade's performance in any way. It was but a tiny blemish, a microscopic flaw in an otherwise flawless blade, and yet, for some reason, it annoyed me far more than it should have. Like a splinter in my finger or something caught between my teeth, the thought of it wouldn't leave my mind.

Releasing my grip from the hilt of the blade, I allowed Kanshou to slip through my fingers and fall to the ground. The blade spun once as it fell but before reaching the ground it began to fade away, breaking down and dispersing into motes of light as I dismissed the sword with the a single thought, both it and its partnered blade, Bakuya, disappearing. The with another thought I projected a new pair, the black and white blades forming straight into my waiting hands. Lifting them up, I gave each one quick look over before I nodded, pleased, and returned my focus ahead.

There, that's better. Flawless and firm.

Returning my attention to Karasuba, I found that she was already showing signs of recovery. She was still panting as she stood bent over double, but not as badly as she been before. At this rate she would be raring to go after a few more minutes of rest, and I knew that if I wanted any chance of putting her down fast and clean it would be now, while she was still weak and vulnerable.

Naturally I did no such thing. Instead I maintained my steady pace as I grew closer to her while she in turn steadily recovered her strength. Putting her down had never been my goal in the first place. If it had been, there was numerous other ways I could have gone about it. Instead what I wanted to do was reason with her, and find a way so that we could coexist without death or bloodshed. And there was no way that was happening when she was so keen on fighting me, so it was best just give her the fight she wanted and it get over and done with. Hopefully when she got it out of her system she'd be easier to work with. It was, in part, the reason why I had never retreated or backed away from her at any point in the battle so far, even when it would have been to my advantage to do so. I had promised her a fight and I intended to give her one.

Besides, in this case time was as much of an ally to me as it was to her. One way or another everything would be over by sunset, so if she chose to use to this time to rest instead of fighting it didn't make much difference to me other than making my life easier. Which is why I allowed her this chance to rest without interrupting.

Besides, she always seemed to be rather talkative while she rested.

At this point I was a still a good two miles away from Karasuba, but I decided to speak up anyway. Without bothering to raise my voice, certain that the Boosted Gear had enhanced her hearing along with the rest of her body, I said, "Six times."

Seeing her look up, I felt that my guess was correct and she could hear me despite the distance. Grey strands drifted before her eyes as she focused them on me, and I carried on speaking. "That's your limit," I clarified, "six times. You can't boost yourself any further than that."

Even if the Boosted Gear was matched to their wielder's soul, even if they had been born with it and had their entire life to adapt to it, it didn't change the fact that the human body was never designed to hold a Dragon's might. Dragons were just too powerful, almost beyond comprehension, and no matter how much they tried to adapt to it a human would never be able to draw out more than the smallest portion of their power. If anyone tried to they would die. It was as simple as that.

Mind you, that didn't make them any less dangerous, as even the smallest fraction of a Heavenly Dragon's strength made them ludicrously powerful, which just goes to show you how strong Ddraig must have been.

But the point was that there was a limit, and over the course of the battle I had been looking for it. I observed Karasuba, watched how she fought and searched for patterns and weakness to exploit, as all the while I kept a careful count of the number of times she boosted. Every user of the Boosted Gear had a limit, and Karasuba was certainly no exception. All I had to do was find out what it was. And I had.

Karasuba's limit was six.

"You had me fooled at the start when you just kept on boosting with no end. It almost felt like you could have kept going as long as you wanted to, and I had no idea how you kept doing it." My eyes shot to the ruined nodachi lying at her feet, now nothing more than clumps of steel dust. "At least, I hadn't until I noticed that you weren't actually boosting your body, just your sword. I'm not sure how that works exactly. I thought that the Boosted Gear considered your sword as a part of yourself, but there seems to be more to it than I first believed because you clearly can boost your sword alone.

"That's when I began to put the pieces together. You don't have a single limit, but two. One for your body, the other for your weapon. You reached your body's limit at six boosts, but you kept boosting your sword without a care. After all, why should you care? If you pushed it too far the worst that could happen was that it would break, and if that happened all you had to do was replace it with another one. You certainly have plenty to spare."

All told it was a rather ingenuous solution to the problem of the limitation of her human body. If there was only so much of the Boosted Gear's power you could hold inside of yourself, all you had to do was find something else to boost, something with a larger limit than your body. And as the case was, Karasuba chose to use her sword.

While that may not have been as effective as boosting herself, I knew better than anyone how much more dangerous a person could become with a powerful enough weapon in their hands. Thinking about it that way Karasuba's method wasn't too different from my own. She just strengthened her blade, while I made mine, but the end result was that we both fought with a blade more powerful than we ourselves were.

"Then there were the times you boosted yourself for a seventh time." I said as I carried on walking. The entire time I approached, Karasuba didn't say a word, just silently watching me as she tried to recover her breath. At one point she managed to pushed herself off her knee so that she stood up straight again, though she did wobbled for a moment before she succeeded. "That too had me stumped at first. You almost had me convinced that your actual limit was seven until I started to notice that you never actually held onto that power for long. As a matter of fact, whenever you boosted for the seventh time you would immediate transfer away your power, exactly half, into you sword, reverting you power level back to how it was before your seventh boost. When I noticed that it became easy to figure out what was really going on. It's not that you choose to transfer your power after your sixth boost, its that you have no choice but to get rid it. You can't hold on to that much power for long, can you? Maybe a second or two, but that's it."

The Boosted Gear had several other lesser abilities along with its power to double its wielder's strength, and among those abilities was a skill known as 'Transfer'. Just as the name implied, it allowed the user to transfer all the power they had gathered from boosting into another person or object.

Not raw power though. No, if it was just that then transfer would not be anywhere near as terrifying as it was. What made that skill so frighting was that it didn't transfer the user's raw energy, it transferred boosts.

That was how she could extend the blade of her sword so far, so fast. If she had boosted her nodachi directly, at most its blade's length would only double. But if she transferred the power she gained from her seventh boost directly to her sword instead, well, that was a different matter. Boosting six times was the equivalent of increasing your power sixty-four fold, so by boosting one more time, only to immediately transfer half of that power into her sword, she would effectively be boosting it six times instead of just one.

Really, the Boosted Gear had such all-encompassing power that it was practically unfair.

Still, as impressive as all that was, I couldn't but help feel…

"Is this all you can do?" I asked honestly, not even trying to hide my disappointment.

That, more than anything I had said so far, got her attention. Whatever weariness remained on her face was wiped away by a quick flash of anger as Karasuba leveled a glare at me, grey eyes locked on to mine. "What exactly are you implying by that, Emiya?"

"Exactly what it sounded like." I answered as I steadily approached her, though I was still a long ways off. For all the walking I had done, I still had not yet reached her side, which I suppose just goes to show how far I was knocked away. I glanced at the buildings around me before I turned back to Karasuba and I looked her over. "Is this all you can do?"

She was a mess. Her pristine clothes were ruined, ripped and torn in several place with red angry cuts peeking though the gaps. Yet in spite of the number of her wounds there was remarkably little blood staining her clothing. Though they were mostly minor injuries, little more than nicks, they should have bled freely, especially in an ongoing fight, but other than a few red smears there was hardly any blood there. Her healing factor was no doubt responsible for that quirk.

Still, even with her healing keeping her going, I had already begun to notice a drop in her performance. She was beginning to slow, not by much, but just enough to be noticeable, and the stretches of time she need to rest had been steadily growing even as the time between rests shortened.

Karasuba was tiring herself out.

It wasn't something that would stop Karasuba from fighting until the end, but it did mean that she had already reached her peak in this battle. Exhaustion would dull her strikes and blunt her ferocity in a way words and reason could not. It was a little sad, but it was all down hill from here as Karasuba continued to steadily pile on wounds and wear herself out.

If this was really all she could do, then the worst of this fight was already over.

In comparison I had ended up faring much better. Sure I had my own share of cuts on my clothing, fighting in a shower of broken glass tended to do that to you, but none of them managed to break skin. Thanks to my hardened body I had managed to come out of this fight practically unharmed.

"Really, is this it?" I repeated, "Don't get me wrong, you are strong." I pointed Bakuya towards the pile of falling buildings back at the city center. "If you can bring down half a city so easily then you can't be called anything but strong. It's just that..."

"Just what?" Karasuba promoted when I trailed off.

"...You haven't scored a single hit so far."

And it was true.

We had been fighting for what must have been hours by now and yet, despite limiting myself to only Kanshou and Bakuya from among my Noble Phantasms, Karasuba had failed to score a single hit on me. She had come close, but not once had her blade so much as touched my skin.

And that, more than anything, left me feeling disappointed in a way I couldn't begin to explain.

It was weird. I should have been happy that this was her limit. For all the danger that she posed, and she most certainly was dangerous, Karasuba lacked the power to bring down an Ultimate-Class Devil. Without the advantage of surprise she had no real chance. Her fighting style allowed her to catch her opponents off guard, so I wouldn't say her chance was absolute zero, but in a head-on fight she'd be crushed. She was impressive and more than strong enough to kill High-Class Devils in their dozens, but an Ultimate-Class? That was beyond her. For all that she had been able to push me in this fight at times, there had not been a single point at which I had been legitimately concerned for my life. She had managed to surprise and even startle me, but not to the point where I genuinely felt that I may die. I should have felt relieved knowing that, and yet I wasn't.

After everything that had happened, I was expecting...well, more. After the encounter at school, then the confrontation with the Khaos Brigade, along with all the repeated warnings I had been given, I had begun to paint a pretty large picture in my head on how powerful Karasuba was, and now that we were fighting she was just failing to match up to it.

Was that it? Was that all there was to it? Had I painted too large a picture of her, one that was impossible for anyone to match? Was it all in my head? The oppressive presence I had sensed when I had first laid eyes on her, the fear I felt whenever she came too near, was it all in my own mind? Did I imagine the whole thing, or was there something more to her that I was missing?

Only one way to find out.

"I even took what might have been your strongest attack head on, and I walked away with nothing but a couple of bruises – which are already beginning to heal – to show for it." Which was true. I could already feel the cleansing effects of Avalon soothing the pain as it restored my body to its previous state. "When you take your age into consideration you just might potentially be the most powerful wielder of the Boosted Gear in history, and as impressive as all of this is...is that it? Is this all you can do? Because if so, then all your boasts about claiming my life are starting to sound like exactly that. Boasts."

It was more than a little reckless, but sometimes the only way you can get to see a tiger roar was to poke it. And it was obvious that my words had their intended effect, if the steely glare that was being sent my way was any indication.

"You-" Karasuba ground out between clenched teeth, hard steel grey eyes locked onto my own. But then, instead of charging like I had half-expected her to, all of the rage seemed to drain away, disappearing as quickly as it had appeared, replaced with a wry smile as Karasuba huffed out a laugh and shook her head.

"My, how rude of me. I didn't know I was boring you, Emiya." She stood up straight and seemed to stretch, before dropping into her usual stance. "Well now, that simply won't do."

Her usual smile settled onto her face even as her eyes narrowed. Shifting her grip on her sword, Karasuba raised her nodachi high above her head. "After all the trouble you went through setting all this up, I can't have you leaving here disappointed, can I?" She titled her head to one side, as if thinking on something. "Or with your head for that matter."

Then she blurred, her power spiking again as she boosted and launched herself towards me, covering most of the distance faster than most people cold blink.

Unfortunately, in her haste to get to me, Karasuba ended up making a mistake.

Generally, weapons with a longer reach tended to give their user an advantage. It was an almost universal rule on the battlefield: all things being equal the fighter with the longer range won more often than the one with the shorter range. After all, if you could attack at your enemy but they couldn't hit you in turn, you would win by default. And Karasuba's nodachi was practically as long as you could get when it came to swords, and when you compared it to my own blades, well, the advantage was all too clear.

But like with everything else, long weapons came with their own disadvantages. Not only were they cumbersome to wield indoors or in densely packed areas, but they were terrible at striking at someone who stood too close to you. That was its fatal flaw. A spear could easily kill an enemy who stood two or three meters away, but if they were right beside you, then a spear became as useless as a big stick. It was why spearmen were so careful to keep their enemies at a distance: they knew too well the dangers of allowing them to get too close.

A nodachi had a far longer reach than my blades, but if you got in close enough, well within their wielder's reach, then it became all but impossible to use it to cut. Kanshou and Bakuya, however, didn't share this problem. The short blades were chopping weapons, so while they lacked the range of nodachi or even a common katana, they could cut or stab targets even if they stood chest-to-chest to me.

Karasuba streaked towards me, blade held high above her head in preparation to bring it cleaving down, but it was too high, and it left her wide open. So before she even got the chance to bring her sword down, I moved.

The ground cratered beneath my feet as I pushed off, all but catapulting forward through the air. I had waited until Karasuba was almost on top of me before moving, the very last second, when she was too committed to her attack and wouldn't have enough time to react to my own.

She swung her sword down, so fast that her blade was nothing but a crescent streak of light, but it was still too slow. Before her sword came anywhere near me, I was gone. I stepped forward right into her range, so close that I was almost face to face, placing myself in a position that made it impossible for her to bring her nodachi to bear. But the same could not be said about my own blade, for even as I took myself out of the nodachi's reach, I brought her into Bakuya's own. And though she showed no fear, I could see the realization dawn in her eyes even as it happened, but by then it was already too late.

I struck.

The white blade leapt from my side without command, its tip eagerly diving straight toward her unprotected side. Without looking I felt certain the strike would land. With me already so close, and her momentum practically throwing her into my blade's path, there was nothing she could do. Not even if she somehow managed to double or quadruple her speed would she be able to avoid it. So I watched with certainty as the white blade arced towards her.

But just as the edge of my blade was about to bite into flesh-

[Boost!]

-it... missed?

Not by an inch or even a foot, but by yards.

I watched in disbelief as Bakuya's edge continued to cleave through nothing but air, the white blade arcing through the empty space where Karasuba had been while the girl in question stood well back, so far beyond the reach of its tip that I couldn't have scratched her even if I stretched.

In the brief instant of battle, where milliseconds stretched for minutes, my mind raced to understand what had happened. But no matter how many times I ran the scene through my head I couldn't understand what I was seeing. One moment Karasuba was before me, then the next, without so much as twitching, she was standing two meters further back, and I had no idea how she had gotten there.

Nor did I have the time to think on it, because no matter how it had happened, what it meant was that Karasuba was now two meters further back than she was supposed to be, which not only placed her out of reach of my swords, but had also placed me right smack-dab in the middle of hers.

My mind rang with alarm as I looked up only to find the edge of Karasuba's blade but a hand span away, cleaving right down toward my skull. Even as Kanshou rose in a futile attempt to block it, I knew it would be too late. As Adrenalin pumped through my veins I flooded my limbs with Prana, Reinforcing my legs to their absolute limit even as I leap back and to the side. The ground shattered under the force, two cones of ruined gravel spreading from beneath my feet as I pushed back and to the side, trying my best to put my body out of harm's way.

And I made it.

Despite how close I had come to being bifurcated, I managed to get my body out of the way, all but throwing myself backwards and to the right. The nodachi's edge reached head level before it sunk down to the earth, completely missing me-

[Cancel!]

-pain flared as cold steel tore into my flesh.

For the first time since the battle had started, Karasuba managed to score a hit.

Biting deep into my shoulder, then through it, the nodachi sunk into my flesh with ease. It was only thanks to Kanshou blocking the rest of its path that it was prevented from going any further and cleaving me entirely in two.

For a moment my mind was filled with shock and pain as I found myself staring into Karasuba's smugly grinning face, before my reflexes cut in. Uncaring for any addition damage it may cause I stepped back, pulling myself off the nodachi with a sick squelch as my flesh clung to the blade, before leaping back once I was free, putting as much distance as I could between us.

Thankfully Karasuba didn't follow me – whether because she couldn't or just chose not to, I couldn't tell. Still, I wasn't taking any chances, and I kept backing away, only stopping once I had at least a hundred meters between us.

I had one hand pressed against my wounded shoulder, trying to stem the bleeding, while with the other I held Bakuya up before me, pointed towards Karasuba. But it looked like I didn't need to be on guard as Karasuba appeared content to stay where she was.

"So," Karasuba smiled, somehow managing to sound smug even as her shoulder rose and fell with every rough breath, "are you entertained now?"

I barely heard her. My mind was too busy trying to process what the hell had just happened. Even now, without the constant threat of decapitation, I couldn't understand she had done. Karasuba hadn't moved, I was sure of that, her feet hadn't left the ground at any point since I started my own charge, and yet she somehow managed to double the distance between us instantly, only to then immediately cut the space between us in half. It was almost as if-

"Wait," I asked, incredulity staining my voice as the realisation dawned on me, "did you just boost space?"

That...that shouldn't have been possible. There were no records of the Boosted Gear being capable of anything like that. While some of the previous users could manipulate an object's dimensions, if any one of them had the power to manipulate an actual dimension then no one had ever managed to write it down.

"You look surprised, Emiya." She tilted her head in faux confusion as she peered at me through one open eye. "Could it be you've already forgotten? I warned you, didn't I?" The smile Karasuba spared me was positively wicked."When it comes to the Boosted Gear, distance, scale, and size mean absolutely nothing."

"...so you did." I answered after a time, vaguely recalling her say those very words at the start of the fight. It's just, I didn't expect her to mean them so literally when she said them.

If she could use the Boosted Gear to boost something as abstract as distance then what else could she boost? Time? Was it possible for her to create something similar to Kiritsugu's Time Alter?

I didn't know, but the implication alone was quite frankly frightening. Thankfully, it seemed that whatever technique she had used seemed to take a lot of her, so it shouldn't be possible. For now. Give her time to mature and master the technique, then who knows what she'd be able to do. The world was going to be a scarier place when Karasuba eventually grew up.

With an ease born from practice I ignored the pain as I removed my hand from my shoulder, fingers slick with blood, and turned to examine the wound while making sure to keep one eye trained on Karasuba. The wound was deep but clean, and nowhere as bad as it could have been. Her strike had cleaved right through my left collar bone, cutting through the bone as easily as it had flesh, but it had missed hitting anything vital. Had she gone just a couple of inches lower then she might have ended up nicking an artery or even a lung, but as it was the worst of the damage was the blood loss and disabling of my left shoulder.

Neither of which posed a serious problem to me.

Even as I turned away the wound was beginning to close, the sound of steel scraping along steel reaching my ear. Left alone I'd be good as new in a few minutes. Already I could feel the bleeding beginning to stem.

And it seemed Karasuba caught it too.

"Ho~," Karasuba's eye widened as she peered at my wound with thinly-veiled interest, though I wasn't sure how well she could see from where she was. "That's some healing you have there. I knew Devils healed fast, but that…"Karasuba paused, halting with her mouth open mid-word. Shutting her mouth with an audible click, Karasuba focused on my wound with a thoughtful frown. "Emiya, there is a sword poking out of your shoulder," she said, sounding as nonplussed as I had ever heard her.

Apparently, she could see well enough.

"Yes," I answered without looking, "yes there is."

Karasuba stared at me in disbelief, caught off balance by either the sword in question or my nonchalant response to it, before finally snorting and laughing. "Only you, Emiya," she chuckled as she shook her head. "Only you could have a sword poking out of yourself and consider it normal."

"...?" That was strange, the way Karasuba worded it...she made it sound as if she knew me. But unless she had learned about me from someone, that shouldn't have been possible. "You say that as if you know me rather well."

"Oh?" she peered at me, smiling with her eyes crinkled shut. "You don't remember? Or maybe you just didn't notice. Tell me, when exactly do you think we first met?"

"The fist time I ever laid my eyes on you was in school, when you were watching me through the window."

"That was our second meeting." She answered with a wide smile, catching me by surprise. Karasuba made a show of tapping her chin. "Though I guess I can't really call it a proper meeting either, since we never got the chance to talk. But then again our first meeting was even worse, so I guess it counts."

I racked my mind, trying to remember the event, but I came back empty. If I had met Karasuba any time earlier then I couldn't recall.

"It's fine," Karasuba spoke up, cutting me off. "You were rather distracted at the time, so I can forgive you for forgetting. And like I said, its not like we had the chance to talk." Karasuba's attention shifted from my face to my now mostly healed shoulder and hummed. "That's going to a pain to deal with in a bit," She commented with a thoughtful frown, before shrugging carelessly. "Ah well, looks like I'm going to have to end up removing your head after all. I'll take my time digging through your corpse to figure out how you tick afterwards."

Karasuba raised her nodachi again and held it before her, ready for another round. I responded in kind, dropping lower in my stance as I held Kanshou and Bakuya by my side, edges facing outwards. Though instead of charging at me like I was sure she was about to, Karasuba threw me another question instead.

"Still disappointed?" Seeing my confusion, Karasuba nodded to my shoulder, smile still plastered on her lips. "I scored a hit."

Despite the lingering pain from the wound, I felt the beginning of a smile tugging on the edge of my lips. "So you did," I admitted with a nod, feeling a small stirring of pride in my chest at her accomplishment-

And wow, did I ever need to see a therapist. Where the hell did that come from? I mean I always knew there was something wrong with me but man I must have needed that therapy even more than I thought if the fist thing I felt when Karasuba succeeded in cutting me up was pride...and sadly that wouldn't even be anywhere near the weirdest thing I would end up talking about in that session. I wonder if the therapist would classify Archer trying to kill me as a form of suicidal behaviour? I wasn't-

Steel tore through the air above my head as I ducked and leapt to the side, dodging another extending thrust of Karasuba's nodachi as she tried to take advantage of my distracted state. Not half a second later Karasuba was on me, sword swinging as we resumed our fight.

Unwilling to commit fully to any attack after what happened last time, at least not while my injury continued to heal, I pulled back and allowed Karasuba to chase me down the road. Using Archer's fighting style again, I blocked every strike that was sent my way, occasionally retaliating with one of own more to disrupt Karasuba's charge than to hit her. Karasuba rarely ever blocked those, preferring to rely on her speed and reflexes to keep herself from harm, weaving and dodging around blows rather than bringing up a solid guard.

Forsaking any form of defence, Karasuba threw herself at me, gleefully swinging her sword at every opening she saw. Even after figuring out Archer's fighting style, she hadn't stopped attacking the holes in my guard. Instead, she enthusiastically aimed for them, especially those that would lead to potentially fatal wounds. It was almost as if she was fascinated with this style of fighting.

Though I didn't have much of a leg to stand on, as I too was fascinated by the way she fought.

To put it simply, Karasuba fought dirty.

As the fight dragged on the more I realised how much Karasuba loved to play dirty. It quickly became clear that the concept fair play or honourable combat had no meaning to her. She used every little trick at her disposal, attacked when you least expected and was more than happy to take advantage of any slip of your attention. Traps, ambushes, tricks, she used them all and more, and it was quite frankly fascinating to watch the amount of tricks she could pull with her limited tool-set.

She would have made a terrible knight but a dangerous killer. She wasn't a swordsman in the truest sense, though she clearly enjoyed the clashing of steel and would have been all too happy to exchange blows all day long if she could. She didn't fight as one. Instead she fought like a professional solider or assassin, willingly using ever dirty trick if it meant get the killing shot in. It was the type of fighting style that Saber would have disapproved of while Kiritsugu would have praised it wholeheartedly.

"You know," I commented lightly as I deflected another blow, "I think my father would have approved of you." Then I thought on it a little more before amending, "Presuming, of course, that he didn't just put you down on principle first."

"Oh?" Karasuba arched a brow, looking more intrigued than offended by my father's willingness to kill her, not halting in her attempts to kill me as we talked. "That's some family you have there, Emiya."

I snorted. "You have no idea." My father's past alone would have filled dozens of books, probably did now that I thought of it, and that wasn't even including Kiritsugu's own father. And I didn't even want to begin to think about Ilya. "But you're one to talk; your family isn't exactly normal either." I said while recalling Karasuba's own father, Ichirou.

While I couldn't quiet place my finger on it, there was something about that man that just wasn't normal. Unsettling even.

But it appeared that Karasuba misunderstood who I had meant.

For the first time I saw something that I could only have described as scorn appear on Karasuba's face, her lips twisting in a hateful sneer even as she skipped back to avoid a blow. "Ah, I see you met the worm."

"Worm?" I asked, back-pedaling as she retaliated with a flurry of quick strikes. "Who are you talking about?"

"Issei," she hissed just as she threw a particularity nasty strike, one that would have split me in two from the bottom up had it hit.

"What?" I knew their relationship was pretty bad, but- "Why do you call him that?"

"What else would you call a wingless dragon? Scaless, fangless and clawless." Each strike grew more furious, less graceful with every swing as her anger built. "What else could it be but a worm? A Drake?" She all but spat out. "While I trained and sweated, he did nothing but sit in his room all day with his dick in his hand and whine about how unfair the world is," she snarled. "What the fuck does he have to whine about when he had everything I ever wanted handed to him on a silver platter."

"He is your brother-" I didn't manage to finish the words before I was forced to raise my sword to block a blow as Karasuba swung her nodachi more like a club than a sword.

"HE-IS-NOT-MY-BROTHER!" She screamed in denial. "NOT MY TWIN. NOT HIM. NEVER HIM."

It was twisted, the range of emotions I felt coming from her, the bitter hate in her voice more intense than anything she had shown so far. And beneath it all, almost entirely hidden under the scorn and hatred, was pain. It was so clear in her voice, raw and angry like an old wound that had never properly healed nor scabbed over into a scar, festering instead for years afterwards.

This was a hate that went beyond simple sibling rivalry or the reasons she claimed. This went deeper. Whatever it was that drove those two apart, it didn't appear as simple as it first seemed.

"He was supposed to be like me," she carried on. "My twin, my equal. And instead he became like that! I wouldn't allow that thing, that worm to be called my twin!"

"Aren't you being a little unfair?" I questioned as I blocked her blows, having an easier time of it despite her increase in tempo as her rage made her form grow more sloppy, "He didn't have a Heavenly Dragon helpfully guiding him into growing strong like you did."

I immediately knew that was the wrong thing to say.

Karasuba froze, literally froze stock-still place, sword pulled back behind her in preparation for a swing that would never come. I felt concerned as she stood there, unmoving, not even trying to continue the fight, only for Karasuba to fold into herself a heartbeat later as she laughed.

"You...you think-" She couldn't even finish the sentence as she was overcome with laughter, wrapping an arm around herself and bending forward as she laughed. "You think Ddraig helped me?" She managed to make the question sound incredulous even through her laughter.

"This is Ddraig we're talking about. Ddraig. A creature so cruel that every member of the Three Factions, a group of people who were actively trying to commit genocide on each other, were willing to put aside their differences and united together, during the middle of a god damn war, all so that they could bring him down. He is a beast that brought so much death and destruction to the earth that he wiped out entire civilizations from history just because he was bored.

"And you think that Ddraig would help me? That he would just walk up to me and eagerly offer me power while he wagged his tail behind him like a puppy? Are you fucking kidding me!" She yelled out in anger, all humour disappearing as her face contorted with rage. Grey irises stared at me for a long while before they were hidden behind lids as Karasuba brought her face under control, her empty smile returning.

"Well, you're not wrong." Her voice gaining a malicious edge. "Ddraig did make me strong, just not in the way you're thinking. Let me tell you how."

---

It scraped across the wooden floor, like the clawed feet of mice scrambling on boards, though far larger than a mouse had any right to be, disturbing the peaceful silence of the night.

Moonlight slipped through the blinds, throwing bands of light across the otherwise darkened room and illuminating the toys that littered the floor. In one corner of the room, across from the bedroom closet, sat children's bunk beds. Their two occupants slumbered peacefully, tucked in beneath their blanks, completely unaware even as something clawed its way to them, hiding within the shadow.

Dark and unseen, it moved, only illuminated by the bands of moonlight peaking between the blinds, as it drew ever closer.

"Hello?"

A child's voice, thick with fear, whispered from one of the beds.

In the lower bed, wide brown eyes peeked cautiously out from beneath the covers. Tiny hands, those of a child no more than eight or nine, clenched the top of her blanket and pulled it up to her chin as she peered around her once familiar room, now made strange by the shadows of the night, searching for what had disturbed her rest.

"Is anyone there?" She whispered again, wide eyes peeking over her cover's edge as they strained to pierce through the darkness. "Mom? Dad? Is that you?"

But other than the silence that gripped the room, she received no reply. Peering around herself one more time, the young girl relaxed, having finally convinced herself that there was nothing there. Leaning back down onto her pillow, she shifted around, searching for a comfortable spot, before she finally settled in and allowed her eyes to flutter closed as she steadily began to drift back to sleep.

-Scuttle-

"Ah!" She sat up, gripping her covers closely to her chest as she frantically glanced about herself, her breathing coming out in quick pants. Her head swivelled left and right as she tried to spot the source of the noise while she strained her ears to see if she could hear it again, but other than the pounding of her heart she heard nothing.

Swallowing once, she mustered her courage and called out, "Hello?" Despite her efforts, her voice came our as a frightful whisper. "Anyone there?"

When no reply was offered, she tried again, "Come out, there is no use in hiding, I know you're there. I can hear you." Though she tried to sound brave, the nervous quiver in her voice betrayed her. "Come out now and I won't be mad." She looked around once, before adding, "Promise."

But again, there was only silence.

With her blanket already pulled up to her chin, she reached out and tugged it higher, pulling it above her nose so only her eyes were visible, which darted left and right as they tried to spot the intruder in her room. When she still failed to find anything she turned her gaze up towards the bed that hung over her head.

"Issei," She whispered. "Issei, are you up?"

She waited, hoping for an answer as she watched the bottom of his bunk bend, but when no reply came she tried again, a little louder this time. "Issei?" She glanced around herself before looking back up. "Issei, I think something's in here."

But despite her pleading, the only sound she heard was the peaceful breathing of her younger brother as he dozed above her.

-Scrape-

"Ah!" Clamping two hands over her mouth, the girl scrambled backwards in her bed in a panic, backing away to the wall. Her eyes darted around the room, searching for the flash of red she was certain she had caught sight of a moment earlier.

A full minute passed, then another, and she continued to huddle, afraid, in her bed, eyes wide and unblinking as they scanning the room, hands still clamped over her mouth. But as the seconds continued to tick away, her fear began to fade, and as it was wont to do, irritation quickly began to take its place, fraying at her patience and fueling her frustration. Until, in flash of anger, she kicked off her blanket and yelled out, "Enough, this isn't funny." She levelled her best glared around the room, her tiny hands clenched into fists as if she would try and pummel whatever it was that dared defy her. "If you're not going to go away, I'll-"

Her eyes snapped to one side as she caught sight of a flash of crimson scales, glimmering like jewels of burning fire, as it disappeared under her bed.

She watched the edge of her bed warily, ready for anything to appear, but when nothing happened she knew it was she who had to approach. So, swallowing once, she mustered her courage and began to make her way to the edge of her bed, crawling on her hands and knees.

One hand moving before the other, she slowly pulled herself forward to the edge, ignoring the pounding in her chest as she crawled across her bed, only stopping once there was no more room to crawl when she finally reached the end. Hesitating only briefly, she took a single deep breath before slowly lowering her head over the side, peering over the rim with one eye, then when nothing happened, the other.

Seeing nothing but the wooden boards of her bedroom's floor, she leaned over further, pulling the upper half of her body off the side of the bed so that she could glimpse through the gap under her bed. She paused in the last second, but before her courage could completely desert her, she forced herself downwards to the floor and looked at what laid beneath her bed.

But what she found beneath the shadows of the bed was no monster, no intruder stalking her in the night. There was nothing but old books and toys gathering dust from where they had been stowed away long ago.

Seeing there was nothing there, the girl couldn't repress a sigh of relief even as she mentally mocked herself for-

"Whatever are you Looking for, Hatchling?"

The voice hissed in her ear, so close she could feel the moist heat of his breath on her cheek.

"AAH!" The girl screeched as she slipped off the bed, dragging the covers down with her as she tumbled to the ground, hitting the floor with a thump and landing in a tangled heap. Not bothering to check over herself she quickly scrambled to her feet and tried run away, only to immediately trip when her feet got tangled up in her covers, sending her crashing again to the floor.

Desperately she started to crawl away, clawing her way forward in her terror even as she franticly tried to kick her feet free. She only managed to get a couple of feet away before, at last, she managed to free herself and she quickly scrambled to her feet and she rushed to the door, all but lunging towards the light switch next to it.

Light bloomed as she slammed her hand on the switch, illuminating every corner of the room, and she spun around, hands held up before her and a scream on her lips, only to pull up short when she found herself facing...nothing? To see….nothing?

Heart pounding, she frantically glanced about herself, long brown hair whipping about her as shedscanned her room, her shoulders rising and falling as her breathing came out in loud pants.

"Kara-nee?" Karasuba almost jumped out of her skin at the sound of her brother's voice. A head popped out from over the edge of the upper bunk, hair in a tangled mess. Sleepily looking about himself in confusion, the young boy's brown eyes finally settled on his sister just as he let out a large yawn. "What's wrong?" He drowsily asked. "Is it morning already?"

Despite the cold sweat that still covered her face, Karasuba's panicked breathing was slowly beginning to calm as she got it back under control. Shaking her head, Karasuba replied, "N-no, Issei. There's nothing wrong, just a bad dream," trying to reassure herself as she did so. Seeing her brother's head droop, her eyes softened. "Oh Issei, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you. You can go back to sleep now."

"But Kara-nee," the boy whined even as he tired and failed to stifle another yawn, "I'm not sleepy anymore~, really I'm-"

Without getting the chance to finish the sentence, Issei's body drooped over before slumping to his side and tumbling into bed. His breathing lengthened as he fell asleep almost as soon as his head had hit the pillow.

Karasuba couldn't help but release a giggle at her brothers antics, though she tried to stifle it behind her hand lest she wake him again. Turning back to the wall, Karasuba reached out a hand and was about to flip the light switch before a thought occurred to her.

With a thoughtful look on her face, Karasuba turned to look towards her bed, before turning back to the light switch. Vision jumping between the two a couple of times, Karasuba glance around the room before she let out a loud, self-deprecating sigh. With the lights still on, she scrambled up to her bed before kneeling and checking underneath it, making sure that there was nothing hiding there.

Still not completely satisfied, Karasuba continued to search the rest of the room. She looked in every corner, beneath the dresser, in the closet and even pulled open every drawer. Only then was she finally satisfied that she and her brother were the only ones in the room.

A now far more relaxed Karasuba returned to the light switch and flipped it off before rushing back to her bed, making sure to pick her cover from off the floor on the way. Just as she was about to slip into her bed, she paused and glanced up at her brother's bed.

Reaching up, Karasuba gripped the edge of his bed and placed one foot on her own before she hoisted herself half way up. Once she was leaning over his bed, Karasuba reached out with one hand and pulled the blanket that Issei had kicked off at some point back over her brother.

"Night-night."

Dropping back to the floor, Karasuba crawled onto her bed, before flipping onto her back and pulling her own blanket over herself. Snuggling in, she shut her eyes and began to drift back to sleep

-Scuttle-

Frowning, Karasuba ignored the sound, firmly determined to give it no attention. When the sound persisted, she flipped onto her side and faced the wall, before clamping her hands over her ears when that didn't help.

"Go away," she demanded, eyes clenched and hands over her ears as she pulled her knees to her chest. "Leave me alone. You're not real!"

"Oh, But I am So very Real Hatchling."

Managing to restrain her reaction to only a flinch, Karasuba did not otherwise react to the voice other than by opening her eyes.

"It is Only You who are Looking in All the Wrong places."

"Oh yeah?" Pushing herself up into a sitting position, Karasuba turned around and glared at the empty room, thoroughly determined not to show any of the fear she felt. "Then where the Hell are you?"

Karasuba felt the bed beneath her shake as the beast laughed.

"Oh Hatchling," It rumbled, voice thick with sadistic amusement. "If it is a Monster that You Seek, then You Need Look No further than the Boundaries of Your own Bed."

She stared down at the bed she was sitting on, sensing that the shaking had started right beneath her, then towards the its edge, and understood what she had to do. Despite her previous bravado, Karasuba's fear was clear by the trembling in her hands as she forced herself to crawl again towards the bed's edge, ignoring the butterflies the swarmed in her belly. And with every step closer she took, she felt the bed rise and fall, as though she stood atop the chest of a massive being as it breathed.

After what felt like an eternity she finally reached the bed's edge. With only a moment's hesitation and a shaky breath, she tensed and was about to throw her head off the side of the bed and peek under, when she was stopped.

"No, No, Not Beneath the bed, Hatchling." It laughed, a rumbling so deep she felt it as much as heard it, as if it found humour in her misunderstanding. "On top of it. Why Search Below when There lies a Monster already Waiting For You Upon your Bed?"

She felt his breath behind her, warm on her neck, and Karasuba swirled around in a blind panic, eyes whipping around as she scanned her bed, only to see nothing but her pillow and jumbled blanket from where she had kicked it off.

"Liar!" She yelled out as she attempted to calm her breathing and placed a hand over her pounding heart, trying to sound angry rather than afraid. "There is no monster here. There isn't anyone here but me."

"Exactly." She felt the voice hiss by her ear, breath moist on her cheek, now little more than a whisper. "The only Monster here...Is You."

"Enough!" She almost yelled out, before recalling who slept above her and managing to clench her teeth in the last second so that it came out as a hiss instead, even as its mocking laughed echoed all around her. Choosing a direction, Karasuba levelled her best glare and all but snarled, "This isn't funny anymore. Show yourself. Come out, Now!"

"Well, if You Insist."

Slithering scales, like those of a great serpent, coiled around her, so crimson they appeared to have been dyed in blood. They surrounded her from every direction and trapped her in their grip like ruby walls. Karasuba glanced around herself in half-panic, half-confusion as she tried to understand what was happening.

"Are...are you a snake?" She managed to ask.

The scales shimmered as they shook, like the dancing flames of a fire, and Karasuba realised that it was laughing.

"No, No, Hatchling. I Am Not One of Those who Slither in the Grass like Worms. If You Wish to Know Me then You Need notLook Towards the Earth.Turn Your Sights a little Higher if You Wish to Find Me."

The voice came from above her and Karasuba reflexively craned her head back, but all she saw was more crimson scales coiling about her.

"No, even Higher. You need But Look to the Heavens to Find One like I."

Without thinking Karasuba obediently looked even higher, and only at the moment that she finally caught sight of him did she realise the truth.

That what was surrounding her was nothing more than the tip of its tail.

A mouth full of ivory fangs, each bigger than she was tall, smiled down at her. The crimson head it belonged to towered above her, held aloft by a long serpentine neck, far higher than should have been possible in her tiny room. And yet, it managed to fill it with room to spare. Even the wall somehow managed to hold its bulk which could have matched a mountain in size.

That was the first time Karasuba ever met one.

A Dragon.

"Greetings, Hatchling," It nodded its scaled head in an almost polite manner as it watched her with slitted emeralds, the only part of its face that was not red. "So We Meet at Last. I am Ddraig, and You, Hatchling, have Kept me Waiting."

"Oh, What is This?" It cocked it's head to one side before it lowered its head and brought it next to hers. Its voice took on a faux curious tone as it pretended to finally notice her reaction. "What's the Matter Hatchling?Why do You Shiver in Fright? See Something you Don't Like?"

Ddraig laughed when Karasuba screamed and scurried away, somehow managing to fall backwards off the bed despite the scales that should have been there to block her way. Not caring about her good fortune, Karasuba continued to scramble backwards as soon she hit the floor, ignoring the pain she felt from landing on her back. But it did little good, for even as she placed as much distance between herself and the bed as she could, Ddraig followed after her with ease, its reptilian head hovering right above hers, propped forward by its massive neck, even while it body reminded behind.

"Why do you Scurry, Hatchling? Why do You Cower Away in Fear? Don't you See, We are Not One to Run. But to Fight, to Kill! We are Dragon! And It is Not Fitting for One such as Us to Flee in Terror. It is They who must Flee from You, Hatchling. For What Else can they Do before a Monster but Flee or Die?" It paused, before resuming. "Then Again, they Will Die in the End either way, so it Truly Matters Little what they Do."

Whimpering with terror, face white as a sheet, Karasuba tried to scurry away, putting as much space between her and this terror from her worst dreams as she could. Ineffectually so, as she never realised how little she moved, with sweat-soaked hands slipping on her floor and limbs numb with fear.

"Why do You Continue to Flee?" The Dragon asked, sounding almost genuinely curious were it not for the very human-like smirk it bore on its reptilian face. "We are Supreme, Hatchling. We do Not Run, for We are Dragons, Killers of Worlds. So Come, Stand Tall. Don't Cower like a Rat in the Night."

Having enough, Karasuba spun around and scrambled to her feet before running, uncaring of which way she went so long as it was away.

"Where are you Going?" It called after her, chuckling as it did so. "We are one,You and I. There is No Where You Can hide Where I can't find You, No place You Can Flee Where I won't End Up Right beside You.You Will Forever carry Me with You wherever you go. For I Am You. And You Are Me. A Monster. Your very Soul Has Marked you So, Or Else You Would Not Be Carrying My Might in the Very Essence of Your Being. You Are a Monster, No Less than I, And Running will Never Change that Truth, Hatchling."

Karasuba finally managed to reach the end of the room when she ran into the closet, crashing into it in her haste. Her fingers, made numb by her terror, scrambled to latch onto the handle, failing to find purchase time and again before they finally gripped it. She swung it open, all but throwing herself into it and pulling the door closed behind her.

She crawled to the back wall before putting her back to it, watching the door outlined by the light managing to slip in through the edges. Knees brought to her chest and her arms wrapped around them, Karasuba huddled in the corner, watching the thin wood door that was all that separated her from the monster with terrifying eyes.

"Why do You Hide?" She flinched when the door rattled in its frame as Ddraig reached it, almost leaping out of her skin. Karasuba watched the shadows shift as Ddraig brought its head closer to the door. "Come now Little One, Let Me get a Good look at You. Don't be Shy," it purred. "Step into The Light."

Karasuba threw her arms over head as she tried to push herself deeper into the corner. "Please don't eat me. Please. Mom, Dad, help me."

"No one will come for you." Ddraig spoke with a finality that left no doubt he spoke the truth. "Yell as Loud as you Wish, they Cannot Hear you, Hatchling, No One can. There is only You and Me. AS it Always Will Be."

The shadows shifted again as Ddraig settled down outside of her closet's door, and she knew then that there was no escape.

"I Am Ddraig, the Dragon who rules over the Heavens. Or Will Rule. Having stolen the Principle of Domination from God, There Lies only one Who Stands in the Path of My Dominion: Albion. But He too will Fall, like so Many Others have Before him." Karasuba sensed more than saw Ddraig turn his head towards her. Even through the door she felt those cruel emerald eyes focus on her. "And You, Hatchling, will Become the Instrument of my Vengeance. I will Grant you a Measure of my Might and Forge You into a Weapon like No Other, So That at Long Last, Through your Hands I Will Finally Reap my Revenge. And All Above will be Mine to Rule."

Ddraig never left.

All night he sat there, continuing to speak to the child even as she remained petrified in fear, hiding in the closet. If he had any concern for the state of his listener then he didn't show it, and he carried on speaking of his plans throughout the night. So that was how she remained, huddled, scared and alone while a monster hissed poison into her ears.

When morning came that was how their parent found her, huddled in the corner of her closet, asleep atop a pile of clothing. When their daughter told them about crimson Dragons and monsters under the bed, they felt concerned. Not over the Dragon, which they were convinced was nothing more than a nightmare born from a child's over-active imagination, but over their daughter's state. She appeared haggard and tired, and yet her eyes never seemed to stop moving, jumping from place to place as if she was sure something would leap from the shadows the moment she stopped looking.

So while they didn't believe her tales, it was very clear that she believed. So to reassure her, one of them remained by her bedside for the following night, and the one after, not leaving her side until morning.

And it seemed to work, for no crimson monster came to disturb her sleep that night when they stood guard by her side, and the following mornings their daughter returned to her usual happy, energetic self. Even when they stopped, the nightmares stayed away.

At least, for a time.

Soon they returned. Monthly, and then weekly, they slowly slipped into her nights, until it seemed as though every night held nothing but a waking terror, and nothing they could do seemed to help. Doctors found nothing wrong with her, and not even when they remained by her side did it seem to help. She would wake up screaming, staring into space, and see things that no one else would see, and at times she wouldn't even notice they were there, yelling out for them even though they were right beside her.

Things continued this way for a while, and it began to take a clear toll on the girl. Every morning she would appear more tired, more closed off, not even opening up to her twin brother, until their daughter became little more than a ghost of her former self.

"I don't want to be a monster."

Karasuba clenched her eyes shut, hands firmly clasped over her ears, but to no avail. She could still hear him. No matter how hard she tried to block it out his words seemed to slide past her fingers and seep into her brain.

Whispering words of what it meant to be a Dragon.

"But You Are, Hatchling. You are That and More." Ddraig chuckled with amusement as he circled her, invisible to even her eyes. "You will Become the Destroyer of Cities, the Bringer of Ruin. Your Presence will Herald Devastation and your Breath will be Fire." He brought his head closer to her ear though he need not have done so, green eyes gleaming in the dark with sadistic joy. "Ah, I Can See it Now. All the Death We will Bring Together, the Civilizations we will End. In the Past I have Laid Waste to Civilizations as Easily as I Brought Low the Gods they Prayed To, and So It Will Be Once Again.Everything Will Perish at Your Touch, and All Who Lay Eyes on You will Know Fear. It will be Just Like Old Times. Death will be Your only Legacy, Hatchling, and Through those Blood-Soaked Hands of Yours I Shall Reap my Revenge."

"No, no, no, you're wrong." Karasuba rocked on her heels as she drew her legs up to her chest, eyes clenched and hands over her ears. She looked thinner now, more bony than slim, and the pyjamas that fit her snugly only weeks ago now hung loosely over her frame. Her eyes were lined with shadows, and even her hair hung limply by her side. "I'm not a monster. You're wrong. Just go away!"

Yet, she knew that his words were not entirely lies.

She saw it when he spoke. When he described the destruction he had caused, the lives he had taken, she saw the images, memories perhaps, of Ddraig doing so. And she knew not if it was just the Dragon playing tricks on her or whether they were visions of a possible future, but sometimes those images would be superimposed with herself, and it was she, not Ddraig, who killed and fought.

And despite herself, she felt a thrill run through her soul at the violence, the excitement of the fights, and understood some of the truths in his words. A part of her understood, if she had to choose between cowering for the rest of her life or having others cowering from her, she would choose the latter. There may have even been a part of her that might even enjoy it.

And she hated herself for it.

"Mom, Dad." Karasuba buried her face in her knees and pleaded. "Help me."

"And Still you Call Out for Those Weaklings?" Ddraig cocked his head, genuinely baffled by this reaction. "You are a Dragon, Hatchling. Dragons have no Kin, no Family. Bonds of Blood mean Nothing to Us. We are Born Alone and will Die Alone. Even if they Did Come, What Good can they Possibly Do for You? They Cannot Fight for You, or Hunt for You, So Why do you Persist in Calling Out to such Fragile Beings?"

After pondering this mystery for a time, Ddraig finally gave up and shook his head. "Ah Well, it Matters Little I Suppose. Either Way they will Soon Perish Beneath a Dragon's Claws just like the Rest of Their Pitiful Race."

"I won't let you!" Karasuba's head snapped up in rage, a fire of her former self burning in her eyes as she glared at Ddraig. "Do you hear me? I won't let you hurt them!"

Ddraig laughed, a sound like lightning rumbling deep in his chest. "Oh, Hatchling," he crooned, sounding almost fond as he spoke, "it isNot I Who will be Doing the Killing. It will Be You."

There was an iron certainty in his words born from experience, from someone who had seen it happen a thousand times before and will see it happen a thousand more. "When you Hunt, it is only Natural for You to Begin close to Home. And Who Better to Start with than Those Who would Chain you Down? Better to Enjoy their Deaths early on than Risk Having them Stolen by Another."

"I won't!" Karasuba promised, trying to hide the fear and uncertainty she felt in the face of the Dragon's words."I won't hurt them. I won't hurt anybody!"

"Oh, but You Will," Ddraig reassured her with a calm certainty that did nothing to dispel her fears. "You Will. Allow Me to Show You How."

"SHUT UP!" She shook her head, refusing to see the images of her parents' mangled bodies it tried to send to her mind. "I don't want to know! I don't want anything to do with you, you stupid overgrown lizard! Go away! You hear me? Just go away!"

Karasuba scrunched her face shut and clamped her hands harder over her ears as she rocked herself, humming to herself in an attempt to block him out. It was futile. She had tried it a dozen times before and she knew that if Ddraig wanted to be heard, he would be heard.

Which was why it came as such a surprise when she was met by nothing but silence.

When Karasuba first noticed, she cautiously began to open her eyes, peering around herself in confusion. She didn't remove her hands from her ears, all to aware that it might be another trap. It would not be the first time Ddraig had amused himself by giving her hope, only to snuff it out a moment later. But as the seconds ticked by and nothing happened, Karasuba began to lower her hands and relax, hopeful that Ddraig had left her alone for the night.

Then the shadows moved.

-Rattle-

Karasuba almost jumped out of her skin when the door shook, vibrating as someone tried to pry it open. Without thinking, she leaped forward and latched onto one of the shelves attached to the back of the door before pulling with all her might, unwilling to let Ddraig in.

She fought against him, pulling back so hard that her fingers turned out from the force of her grip. Even as the door shook she didn't relent, just gritted her teeth and pulled with all the strength born from desperate fear. But that only encouraged Ddraig to pull harder. The corners of the shelves bit painfully into her fingers as she was pulled along the floor, dragged forward by the opening door.

Soon, though, her fingers failed her and the door was ripped from her grasp. As light flooded in from the open door Karasuba threw her arms over her face-

"-Kara?" She didn't know how long she had been sitting there when she finally registered it wasn't Ddraig who had spoken to her. "Kara, Honey, are you all right?"

"Dad?" Karasuba cautiously lowered her hands, blinking at the brightness, to find her father looking at her with concern from outside the boundaries of her closet. "Is that you?"

"Yeah, Honey, it's me." Ichirou's brow was furrowed with concern as he looked at his eldest daughter huddling in the closet, looking more like a cornered animal than a child with her eyes so wide with panic. Almost immediately, however, that expression melted away as his eyes narrowed and that relaxed, familiar smile of his returned to his lips. He took a step into the closet and held out his hand. "I heard you-"

"Don't come near me!" The utter terror in her voice caused him to flinch, and without thinking he found himself pulling his hand back and stepping back out of the closet. And even as he moved away so did Karasuba. She moved away from the door, propelling herself backwards with her feet until her back slammed into the wall. Even then she didn't stop trying to put more space between her father and her, her feet sliding on the wall as she attempted to push herself deeper into the closet even as she pressed her face flat against the wall.

"Please. Just don't come any closer."

"Okay. Okay, I won't." Ichirou promised her, his expression not shifting away from his laid back smile. Moving slowly, so as to not startle her further, Ichirou lowered himself to the floor, crossing his legs as he sat just outside of the closet. "I'm not coming any closer, see? I'm just going to sit down right here and relax."

Karasuba watched him from inside the closet, eyes so wide that all he could see was white. "J-just go away" she stuttered, still pressing herself against the wall. "Please? Please go away. I don't want to hurt you, Dad."

"And you won't, Honey." Ichirou made no move to get away as he gently laughed, "I know I may be getting on in years but I'm not that old Kara. Your old man isn't so fragile that a little girl could hurt him."

"...But I'm not a girl." Unlike the loud, panicked voice she had been speaking with so far, Karasuba's reply this time came out as little more than a whisper, and Ichirou had to strain to hear her. "...I'm a Dragon."

"Are you now?" Quirking a brow, Ichirou's smile took on an amused edge. "Funny now, I don't recall seeing any scales growing out from you when I bathed you as a baby. Did those come out recently?"

"Ddraig says I am." Ignoring the levity that her father tried to bring, Karasuba continued to answer in a heartbreakingly fearful, so different from her loud, brash self. "He also says that Dragons have no family."

"Oh, does he now? None at all?" Karasuba shook her head at the question. "No papa?" Another shake of her head again. "Then what about a mama?"

"No mama. They come from an egg. All Dragons do."

"A Dragon is it? Well, that settles it then." Ichirou slapped a hand on his knee as he gave her an easy smile. "You can't be a Dragon then."

"But Ddraig says-"

"Honey," Ichirou cut her off, though he made sure to keep his voice gentle to let her know he wasn't mad, "you didn't hatch from an egg. You came from your mommy's tummy." Placing his hands behind his head, Ichirou leaned back as his eyes got a far away look. "You may not remember it, but I was there in the hospital when you and Issei were born. I remember it perfectly, the first time I laid my eyes on the both of you. You two were so tiny back then, like kittens. The both of you could have probably fit in a single one of my hands, though your mother didn't let me try. She was too scared I may end up dropping you, and promised to castrate me if I tried. Not to mention, the both of you were completely bald too, just like an egg. And trust me when I say that if your mother had given birth to an egg, I would have noticed. You're no more a Dragon than I am."

"But what if I am?" Karasuba looked away in shame, staring at the floor beneath her feet. "What if I...what if I really was a monster?"

"So what?"

Karasuba whipped her head up in surprise, only to find her father staring at her as seriously as she had ever seen him. Though his smile was still in place, his eyes were fully open and focused unblinkingly on her in a way that she would have found unsettling were it not for the love she saw in them.

"It doesn't change anything even if you are. Human or not, you are still Hyoudou Karasuba, and no matter what, nothing is going to change that." Ichirou watched his daughter, making sure that she understood his words. "Hyoudou, then Karasuba. The family name, then our own. Have you ever wondered why that is? Do you know why we keep our family name before our own?"

When Ichirou paused, Karasuba knew he was waiting for an answer and she shook her head.

"That's because family comes first," Ichirou told her seriously, meaning every word. "And even if you really are a Dragon, you are still and always will be Hyoudou Karasuba, my one and only daughter. And that's the way things always have been and always will be. Nothing is ever going to change that."

"Do you really think if you sprout a couple of wings or grow some fangs it will actually make a difference?" Ichirou gave her a look that made her feel a little stupid for even considering it, thought its effect was tempered by his smile. "You are you,human or Dragon. Monster or beast, you would still be Hyoudou Karasuba, a member of this family, a sister, and our adorable little girl."

Ichirou shook his head. "Don't you see? It doesn't matter what you are, because who you are will never change. Ever. Dragon or not, you will always be my daughter."

"...Promise?"

"Yeah," he nodded firmly, "I promise. Now, come on." Ichirou leaned forward and stretched out his left hand, placing himself past the boundaries of the closet that he had been careful not to cross, holding it open before his daughter's eyes. "Let's get you out of that closet and into your bed. Don't worry, I'll stay with you until you feel better. All night, if I must."

Karasuba stared at the offered hand with something approaching disbelief. It was such a simple thing, an offered hand of help, but to her, who had been lost without hope in the dark for so very long, the sight of it was like a ray of light after the long night. Gentle and so very, very warm.

Ichirou continued to hold his left hand open patiently, not allowing himself to budge as his daughter looked up from his hand to him with a hope so fragile that he felt something ache in his chest.

He never wanted to see such a thing on a child's face, let alone one of his own.

"Can I...Can I really-" Karasuba stuttered, trying and failing to put her feelings into words.

She didn't need to.

"Of course you can." Her father answered without hesitation, his eyes warm as his familiar smile grew just a bit brighter.

And with that, Karasuba stretched out her left hand in turn.

Cautiously, like he may pull back back at any moment, she reached out to his hand, pulling back slightly when her fingers brushed against his. Hesitating once more, Karasuba looked uncertain, before she steeled herself with what was left of her tattered courage and reached out to grasp his hand with all her might.

He responded in kind, gently wrapping his fingers around her own and holding them as if he would never let her go.

And just like that, it was as if all was right in the world.

"See?" Karasuba looked up to her father's smiling face. "I told you everything would be alright."

And that's when things went to Hell.

Insolence!

Scales sprouted out from the flesh of her left arm, coating her entire hand in a gleaming crimson gauntlet, while her soft fingers transformed into hard, unforgiving claws, their tips sharper than any sword. Without a second of warning those blood red claws clamped down onto Ichirou's hand like the jaws of a Dragon, parting through his flesh with ease and biting to the bone.

Ichirou stared in incomprehension at the now blood-soaked gauntlet that covered his daughter's hand, his mind not registering the pain of his own mangled hand. What had happened was so far beyond the scope of his understanding that he was left unable to respond even when an emerald jewel grew from the back of the gauntlet and a vertical slit appeared in its center. That slit shifted, like the pupil of a reptilian eye, to focus on him, staring up at him with more maddened malice than he would have ever believed possible.

Without a single command from Karasuba, who could do nothing but stare in horror with her face splattered in her father's blood, the Boosted Gear began to gather power even as it tightened its hold on Ichirou's hand, burying its claws straight into the bone. The crimson gauntlet glowed from within, producing an incandescent light that caused it to shine like a flame, pushing away all the shadows surrounding them while it grew almost blindingly bright. And just as it appeared it couldn't get any brighter, it pulsed once, and-

Perish!

A lance of red-hot light shot out from the Boosted Gear, so bright that it was like looking straight at the Sun. Karasuba managed to turn her face and shut her eyes in time to avoid being blinded and still she could see it through her lids. She felt her eyes dry as a wave of heat washed over her face, heating her cheek and singeing her hair.

Then the light was extinguished, plunging the room back into darkness.

As soon as she could see again, Karasuba whipped her head back towards her father. "Dad-" the rest of her words died in her throat.

Her father stood before her, alive and almost competently unharmed, except for one thing.

-his entire left arm was missing.

From the shoulder down it was simply gone, leaving nothing but a blacked stump of flesh that had been cauterized by the same heat that had vaporized the arm. Ichirou stared down at his missing limb in incomprehension, his usual relaxed smile nowhere to be seen as he tried to understand what had just happened.

Then the pain hit.

A strangled scream was ripped from Ichirou's throat as he dropped to the floor, clutching the shoulder of his missing arm in agony. The sounds he made was so animalistic, more like the screams of dying rabbit than a man, that Karasuba could scarcely believe it was her father that was making them.

"Dear, what's going on? Are the kids-" Aiko, having been woken up by all the commotion, froze in the room's doorway, having caught sight of her maimed husband, her face turning pale. "Ichirou!"

Rushing to her husband's side, Aiko dropped to her knees and tried to hold him, only to immediately let go when he yelled out in more pain as she inadvertently grabbed his wounded shoulder. "Dear? Oh God, your arm! Honey, please hold on. I'm going to call an ambulance. Please, just hold on."

While behind her, above all of their heads, wide terrified eyes watched.

Issei stared over the rim of his bed, having seen all that happened. His eyes jumped from his injured father, who rolled around in agony on the floor, to his panicked mother, who was only growing more hysterical with every second, to his sister, who was still splattered in their father's blood. When Karasuba happened to look up and catch his eyes, he flinched, and huddled further in his bed in fear.

Of her.

Fear of her.

"See?" Ddraig whispered smugly into her ear as she watched her world fall apart around her to the sound of her father's screams. "You Are a Monster. Every Bit of One as I Am."

She ran.

Karasuba turned away and ran. She sprinted past her parents and out the door to her room before rushing down the hallway and onto the staircase. Taking two steps at a time, she hurried down the stairs and onto the ground floor before throwing herself towards the entrance of the house. Barely slowing as she pulled on the door and threw it open, Karasuba rushed out onto the quiet night streets and ran.

Without any direction or purpose, she ran.

Just ran and ran, until her home disappeared from sight behind her, until her mother's hysterical crying faded into silence, until the only sounds that could be heard in the empty streets were her bare feet hitting the road and the dark echoes of Ddraig's laughter trailing after her.

---

*Chapter End*

Author's Notes:

Blame God – that's what Raynare told Issei as she killed him in very beginning of the series, that if he wanted to blame someone for what was happening to him, he should blame god for putting the Scared Gear in him. It was then repeated throughout the series that the Boosted Gear was no blessing, but a curse, that for all the power it granted them, none of its former wielders ever managed to live happy lives and all died miserably. That even if you tried living a peaceful live, the Boosted Gear will draw all walks of Beings to you, never allowing you to live in peace and putting everything around you in danger. Suffering, that was what it meant to have the Boosted Gear. And so was one of the greatest lie in anime history was spoken.

Of course, since DxD is a Harem/Ecchi/Comedy, we all know that did not happened, quite the opposite really. Issei's life, which was more or less unhappy one without any signs of getting better, became wonderful, almost heaven really, and it was all thanks to the Boosted Gear. Without it, Issei's life would have been much worse than what it became.

But, I asked myself, what would happen if the Boosted Gear did exactly what it said on the Box?

That's how Karasuba came to be.

Karasuba in this story isn't Shirou's rival, - she ain't no Kenpachi, a juggernaut that fight only for the sake of it (though she is partly that), nor is the big bad wolf of the story, here, she's the victim. Karasuba was never meant to be strong, she was meant to be like broken glass – cutting you even as it lay shattered. Haunted by the curse of the boosted gear – twisted her to near madness – until...well, I won't spoil it for you, but let's say that the twist of Karasuba's past is far from over.

In the DxD fanfics, we are so used to thinking of the Boosted Gear as the ultimate wish fulfillment device, that we never think about the consequences. I think that's why most didn't realise despite the hints I dropped throughout the story that Scared Gears are more than just magical power boosts. I think that was a big part of why a lot of fans hated Karasuba's reveal at first (other than her coming from a different series), its because every OC characters from DXD fanfics that gets the Boosted Gear become an extreme wish fulfillment Fic and they feared the same thing would happen here. In those OC fics, the character gets everything, power, girls, respect, and they give up nothing in exchange (at most a few weeks of training). But that's not how things work, everything has a price, especially power. Sometimes one too big to pay.

Issei was a normal teen who was unhappy with his lot in life, he had no girlfriend, no chance of getting one and was despised by practically the entire school. But he got the Boosted gear and his life turned great. He has girls, magical power, reputation, immortality and more.

Karasuba was the opposite she was a girl that was happy with her lot in her life. She had a family that she adored and loved her in turn, she was doing well in school and was on her way to becoming a first rate athlete. Then the boosted gear came into her life and turned it shit – a living nightmare.

She almost ended up killing her father. Did end up maiming him. That is the curse of those that hold the Boosted Gear. Never envy them, pity them.

Especially in this world where the Sacred Gear is matched to the user's soul.

Can you imagine what it would feel like to be told that you were a monster, a killer? That your very soul was a match to Ddraig, a beast that killed millions? Karasuba was a monster who doesn't want to be one. Imagine what it feels like to be scared of the monster under the bed, only to discover that the only monster in the room is the one sitting on the bed. You.

And another thing, this Karasuba isn't the same one from Sekirie. In that series Karasuba was artificially aged and raised for war – She had no parents, no one to love and raise her, and the people who took care of her saw her as nothing more than a living weapon. That's how and she ended up how she did. But here, she had parents, was loved and cherished for her entire life. So how did she end up so similar to the original?

Even monsters were children some time. Even Killers, the worst dictator, or the greatest of humanity's monsters were once nothing more than weak helpless children, tiny babes who were just as scared of the Dark as you and I were. Many of you asked how somehow like Karasuba came to be in the DxD world, when she was born to happy loving parents here compared to being raised as a weapon of war in Sekirie.

Well, you're about to find out.

Ah, there is so much I want to say, but I'll save it to my forums (because the AN is growing out of hand) plus I don't want to spoil too much. Well, I hope you enjoyed the latest chapter, and don't worry, plenty of good part and twists and surprise are coming up in the next chapter.

The climax of the fight is coming, so look forward to it, and please make sure to leave a review on your way out. And thanks for reading.