Demon of Justice
(Sakura, continuing from previous chapter. About 4pm by now)
"Wait, WHAT?" Shirou jumped to his feet in surprise. "You didn't think this was worth mentioning?"
"I just did," his Servant replied calmly. "He was quite literally a mass-murdering bastard in the first place, so I'd say it was quite justified. Full disclosure, I would be required to unless some exemption applied."
"So, he was running experiments or something?" Rin asked with a bit of confusion. "That seems odd for a Master who would have traveled here for the War."
"He was breaking down people for the magical energy inside them like it was a factory line," Sasaku said by way of explanation. "It had been set up some time in advance; his idea was to gain an advantage resource-wise. As a result, when I pointed out that it made the energy unusable by me, he did not take it well."
She lifted the sleeve on her left arm to show the red marks of two Command Seals, which looked like a sword and flower. "I couldn't use these before, but they're a potential reserve energy source. Another reason to summon Saber, as I should have the status of both a Servant and Master now."
"Only two." Sakura commented.
"He used one for, what was it, 'hold still so I can fuck you,' which I had warned him against doing, but," Sasaku shrugged. "He very squarely tripped a particular condition which, long story short, caused me to... let's say go berserk and kill him."
"Well damn," Shirou muttered. "He wasn't by any chance targeting girls, was he? There was a spate of missing people; not Fuyuki specifically, but they made national news."
"Yes, he was," she replied. "From what I gathered their od was a good match for his use. Unfortunately what I found from his notes was not very enlightening, though combined with the Tohsaka library's information on Formalcraft, it might be possible to produce something I can actually use, without needing a specific Skill like say Rider's. Or Kuro's."
"So when I met you, you had just killed him?" Shirou still seemed a little put off by the idea. "What happened to any girls he hadn't killed yet, the police are still searching for them."
"I threw Atrum, I think his name was, into one of his machines after confiscating his command spells and that left no corpse behind. I met you a couple of days afterwards," she recounted for him. "Let's see, I couldn't finely manipulate the girls' cognitive states, but then again he had been drugging them, so I simply gave them cash he had around and sent them directly to random hotels around to sleep it off for a day or so then go to the police. Oh, I cleared and cleaned up his workshop as well."
"That was quite diligent of you," Rin grumbled, doubtless remembering how her home had been 'cleared' by Sasaku just the previous evening. "Can I take it, then, that there's no need to worry that magecraft will be exposed if the police do search the place?
"Not unless they can do better than a Servant with full information about everything in the area," Sasaku said. "Ah, I couldn't use any of his stored magical energy, human sacrifices and all, so I broke everything down and let it dissipate into the air as mana."
"Well anyway, though I think magi in this age don't necessarily take issue per se with what Atrum was doing," she raised an eyebrow as though this was particularly absurd, "You now know not to do this. This is basically how you'll have to learn about the structure of an entire civilization, unfortunately. I never taught children, and in any case, a lot of information is lost, so I have to relearn it myself."
"You really like referring to us as children, huh?" Shirou frowned. It's not as though she incorrect though, as we're years behind a magus like Rin, Sakura thought to herself.
Caster blinked in surprise before answering. "You don't understand; I'm expressing an obligation to you, my juniors. Parents give to their children, not take. You teach children not because they're ignorant, but because they are able to learn and not be after it." Sakura made a sound of disagreement, though she understood the point in abstract, if not in experience.
"I'm much closer to your level than a magus might think," Sasaku glanced at Rin who returned the gesture quizzically. "I'm not referring to magecraft, that's just another item in the toolbox. Original-Me would qualify as superintelligent, but I've essentially fallen all the way back to before being Uplifted. It would be maddening for someone for whom the exercise of intelligence is one of the purer delights of being alive."
"Would be?" Rin muttered. "It isn't though?"
"Your computer isn't likely to have a mental breakdown if you remove some of its RAM. Anyway I have bigger things to worry worry about, and besides reclaiming that is pretty high on the priority list. Let's see;" she noticed Shirou's skeptical look but ignored it. "It's good you're relatively young, so there's say thirty years to research some workable form of life extension, hopefully one that scales into a pathway for lesser immortality."
"Then I have to research Uplifting which will be amazingly hard and probably involve bootstrapping myself upwards to superintelligence, if it's even possible, but at least after that Uplifting other people is basically trivial in comparison and allows exponential growth as well. Well humans in this age can already use magecraft, so you needn't have that added to you."
"Wait a moment," Sakura added with some concern. "Magi have experimented with extending lifespans, but the soul seems to degrade after a century or so."
"For you, sure," Caster shrugged with indifference. "That means that they didn't fully realize life extension, like curing smallpox but dying of cancer. It's also the case that, if it's that difficult, you're really playing the game of buying time to first up your intelligence level to allow solving the full problem."
"Have you actually successfully done this before?" Shirou asked.
Sasaku shook her head. "There's only two people who can Uplift in my entire civilization, because they've kept a monopoly on it and there's been no research. There aren't any new people at the human level, and there's no need to Uplift our children as they are born like us. I don't expect to be shot for researching it though, obviously, otherwise I'd have no desire to do so in the first place."
"But you seemed quite worried about being brought back," Sakura commented, remembering what Rider had said on the subject.
"Not being brought back, but having a non-conscious copy around which the World can dissect for information. Those are different, and it would be negligent of me to not take steps to mitigate the possibility of the latter."
"I'd have thought you'd take any chance to stay alive," Shirou said.
"Think about it, if you decided to allow copying yourself to carry out suicide missions, you still must be willing to do them, otherwise the copies wouldn't either. In a sense, I can accept collateral damage because I am willing to -be- collateral damage; otherwise would be highly hypocritical."
Sakura thought a bit about that last bit. Caster's explanations and plans seemed consistent, but Shirou wouldn't be so cautious without cause. Furthermore, there was that one thing from the morning, which... she caught Sasaku's gaze and returned it, but saw nothing extraordinary this time either.
"Are you actually some sort of evil goddess?" she said half to herself. It seems like one of those too-good-to-be-true stories. Thoughts about the Count's help came back, unbidden. But I was able to deal with him...
"Define evil," the tempter replied. "Your actual gods and goddesses would be shot in my civilization for what they did."
"They aren't around anymore," Rin spoke up.
"Indeed," the hanging judge agreed. "And I am."
There followed a brief silence.
"Well, it's not like I ask or want anyone to worship me though," Sasaku added after a while. "That would get me shot for sure."
Sakura looked at Sasaku's eyes again. "You do look the part though," she said deliberately.
"What?" Sasaku turned her head to face her, then towards Shirou. "Did you... no I can tell you didn't know." Her piercing gaze returned to Sakura who at this point had instinctively scooted behind Shirou.
"How was that possible," the Servant muttered to herself. "No wait..."she raised a hand to her neck where I, no the Count-using-my-body grabbed her and frowned in thought.
Shirou gaped as a knife constructed of some green material appeared in his Sasaku's hand, obviously withdrawn from her Armory. He quickly raised his hand which bore the Command Seals.
Sasaku just raised an eyebrow at him before thrusting the blade into her own neck.
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(Flashback: A Servant-dream Sakura had earlier that evening...)
(?, a Spartan officer in the First Grand Banner Army of the Lacedonian Alliance, in North Italy)
"Hmm," said the young Seer spotting me exiting my tent. "I see, I see."
"Good morning," I said, turning away in the direction of my unit. "Were you signed up for land in North or South Italy?" she asked abruptly, but without any hurry.
"That is only settled on retirement or demobilization," I replied quickly, getting an irritating sense that she wasn't asking from not knowing the procedure.
"Usually." She agreed. "Our Lady instructed my mother the Seer who instructed me to say to you; 'The land which you fed with the blood of that one, it will repay you with harvest.' Go and tell your unit, so that they know their position is secure."
"Why?" There was no need to go over details which she obviously knew.
"Because afterwards Our Lady said, 'One who questions, but obeys, has shown his character in a way one who has not yet reached the point of questioning has not.' Thus she decided to make her pleasure known clearly."
"A moment. Was she really not angry, just on account of your father's words?"
"General Agesipolis spoke correctly, that you fulfilled the command 'surely' as you were ordered. He is overly careful, in the manner of one used to the ways of the old gods; you were never in danger of Our Lady's anger."
"I thank you for delivering the message in full." I had no doubt that the reason she had been sent instead of a messenger was for the explanation I had just received. "I only did as I was told."
"Can I ask; why are you Seers if this many leaders have also seen Our Lady?"
She smiled with the knowing air of one who had asked a similar question herself before. "First, she shows herself to you, we simply see her. Second, it isn't about seeing her form."
It was only several years later (between campaigns) after I eventually married her, that I had the courage to ask about that again. Because, in the later times that I encountered Our Lady, I had not seen the thing that frightened me so much when she examined me during the first one.
"Is it because her eyes glow like coals breathed upon?"
It was the morning after our wedding night. She looked at me with amazement and simply said, "Now I understand why my mother said to take my time with you."
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(Shirou, present time)
The knife fell from Sasaku's hand, and hit the ground before disappearing.
"Don't," he warned Sakura who was about to rush over to the Servant. "That definitely won't kill her, anyway."
"Damnit," Sasaku laughed with a bit of an edge to it. "I can't believe you got this past me."
"Are you going to tell us what is going on?" Shirou demanded.
"Your wife subverted approximately... two to five percent of our Grail-mediated contractual link, maintained a siphon for between... three and six hours despite my internal error-correction Skill, and by her own words has successfully made off with a copy of some part of the information in my memories."
"What?" Rin asked.
Sasaku turned her head slightly to look straight over Shirou's shoulder into Sakura's eyes. "This morning. When I was examining your eyes at nii-san's request."
"Yes," she admitted quietly.
"But you didn't tell Shirou. Why?"
"After breakfast I was thinking it was only a brief trick of the light." Sasaku smiled as though knowing it was an evasion, but let it stand.
The various blood splattered around began to shimmer and disappear as Sasaku chuckled, her earlier good mood restored in full. "If you had summoned earlier, I might have been spared some trouble."
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Notes:
Next (two) parts will probably be Bazette/Jeanne vs Kirei and co.
In case you look up superintelligence, Sasaku (and original-Her) is totally organic. Some types of magecraft do allow for tricks like parallel or sped-up thought etc (see: Atlas) but she doesn't know about them.