Let Us Begin to Build

(Sunday evening, about 5pm)

(Shirou)

It's pointless to tell someone, 'go take a nap for ninety minutes before a pitched battle' I was grumbling to myself when Sakura got to her feet. I was thinking it was about time.

We had basically just lain down in whatever we had on, but that wasn't the reason why Sakura was brooding by herself. While it didn't seem likely to have been pre-meditated, Caster's very sudden switch in interest to her was still quite a change from what I at least was fairly certain was caution if not fear.

Sakura turned and was not surprised at all to see me looking back at her. Since she had gotten up, it was obvious not only that she had made a decision, but what it was. "Rider is asking for me," she said in a low tone, almost apologetically. Of course both of us know Rider was unlikely to be the origin of that request.

"Is she by herself?" I ask in a deliberately neutral tone.

"No."

We were planned to leave in an hour. Sakura seemed fixed in place when she saw me frowning in thought.

"Haven't you already made up your mind?" I pointed out simply. It hadn't even been a day since I found out she was even in the War, but possibly due to her special magecraft she had a better 'handle' on what my Servant was up to.

She paused to straighten her clothes unnecessarily (the relatively soft fabric didn't seem to even wrinkle). "Evidently not," she stated the obvious. "Shirou, that girl is terrified of something. The reason she's behaving in such an odd manner is..."

"She thinks she's going to die, even though she's arranged literally everyone else standing in front of her?" I ask with perhaps a bit of acid. "What, she can save other Servants from dying, but not herself?" I honestly wondered why the others seemed to think it was a legitimate possibility, given that she had admitted it wasn't even certain she could mess with the Grail system to accomplish such a thing.

"Not that," Sakura surprised me by saying rather forcefully for her. "Remember what she said to Rin? That wasn't really about Rin, but herself. I mean... she didn't say 'that's hell' but 'a hell' like there's several literal types which she's aware of."

"But hell doesn't exist, according to the Grail's information at least. The Holy Grail." I point out.

"The Grail-that-runs-murderfests. I wouldn't say that 'souls return to the Root' means you can't be trapped in some form... be it as a whole person or a soul." That with finality. We just let it hang for a moment. I wondered if perhaps Sasaku might be waiting on the other side of the line with Rider wondering about us.

"What do you know about the gods?" Sakura prompted me, bringing to mind her question to Caster about that which caused the latter's demeanor to snap about earlier.

"Only what she said in front of us: they used to be around, but not anymore."

"Hmm, about that; Medusa's sisters Stheno and Eurayle were True Goddesses, who were born perfect ideal idol-type divinities who never changed. Until she turned into the monster who devoured them."

"The Gorgon sisters right? Didn't one of the other gods mess up Medusa to cause that?"

"She never explicitly said either way, but the point was - even as a monster, Medusa was still more 'human' than the other two. True Gods cannot be summoned, for example. Maybe I can trust her because of that, but not her sisters. Though to be honest, humans can go insane, and it would've been a disaster if her mind had been transformed to match her current body."

"Sasaku can't go insane though, error correction." I pointed out. "And I'm not worried about her simply going berserk."

"... Shirou, do you happen to have some other source of power I don't know about?"

I blink, caught off-guard. "What?"

"You should have learned, from this War at least; without strength one can only... endure the terms dictated by those with it."

I'm struck by a sudden sense of realization. "... this isn't about me, is it?" Reaching out a finger to her face, I catch a tear falling from her... her...

Hasn't it gotten worse? I never really thought much about her eye color, besides that it was enchantingly rare, until this morning when it had obviously changed in an unnatural manner. But now, it was like looking into a deep well - and seeing something massive stirring.

"Ah." She turned away in embarrassment for a moment before returning. "Caster's trick didn't hold, did it?"

"No." Simply.

"It's probably a mark of the Matou magecraft, I guess." She said this as though it wasn't a great revelation. Which I suppose it wasn't since "she" had used it on Sasaku in front of me.

Something clicked. By that magecraft, Rider had somehow gone "inside" Sakura. If that could be used as an attack... So thats why she was more afraid of Sakura than Medusa.

"That's your 'source of power' then?" She thought about it for a while. "Not entirely, at the moment, but yes. But I had to accept help. Even though he had ulterior motives and planned well to betray me, he didn't count on Rider. She's may be an anti-hero, but she's my hero."

I understand her point now. Maybe she does like Sasaku, but even if she secretly distrusts Caster, Sakura still has strength to deal with her. For some reason Sasaku never directly pointed out that I lacked strength apart from her. Well, there's Sakura and Rider, and Saber too, but she didn't try pushing that line even before they came into the picture. I'm not sure what that signifies, though.

"Are they complaining about me keeping you?" I asked, returning to the main topic at hand.

"Rider is, though Caster seems to have been expecting it," she replied after a while with one of her signature little smiles.

l

(Sakura)

When we entered Caster's room, the small Servant looking positively tiny beside Rider's majestic white-and-gold form, she only smiled with a hint of amusement as though guessing my thoughts.

"You know," she said to Rider, though the comment was obviously addressed to me, "it is written 'test me... if I will not open for you the windows of heaven' so do not hinder them as that heaven belongs to such."

"I can definitely believe you're a Caster," Rider grumbled, but acceptingly. A couple of chairs, which I recognize as belonging to the dining table, appear in front of us.

I confidently take one. "Sasaku, I'd like your word on one thing."

"Ask."

"Promise me you won't destroy humanity, or take it over, or... well you know what I mean clearly enough."

Caster blinked in surprise, neither accepting or declining. "Don't you trust Ayala's Counter Force to prevent either of those?" So she's going with that.

It was time to test if I've read her correctly. Though I did have the advantage of her conversations with Rider, she probably was perfectly aware of that. "By saying that, you're suggesting it's possible to bypass if not defeat it."

"Hm. Well I'm given to understand it's like an instinct and those can be gamed. What do you want to claim for them, the Earth? Gaia already has its own competing claim on it. Add in the Moon too, there's some scary stuff there apparently."

I refuse to be taken in by this second evasion either. "First, you still haven't granted or turned down my request. Second, what's the catch in that offer?"

"If you're actually genuinely concerned for their continuing existence, I will grant it provided you understand it isn't pacifism you've asked for, and secondly, well," this seemed to tickle her sense of humor, "humanity isn't using most of the energy from the sun, or its mass. And none of the other stars around. You might not be surprised to know you can't cram a trillion people on a planet, at least we didn't."

"Why would you explain that?" Shirou asked sharply, not sounding as though he expected an answer. "Sakura, why did you ask that?" he continued.

Caster waved a hand as though to let me go first.

"Your Servant strikes me as rather cynical, but for some reason about herself and her home as well. Though lyou told me she spoke about the end of humanity in her world, she just demonstrated it wasn't, in itself, a goal. But Sasaku's second answer told us what that goal was-"

"To build," she finished for me. "But you're wrong, I didn't destroy humanity, my master did, but I was definitely cheerleading since we were told not to do any more than that. Don't misunderstand, I fall into one of the more extreme camps on the Council and it's despite me that rebels are still hanging around in the dark regions."

"You know that I don't understand any of that, right?"

"Our civilization, well the main body of it, is built around our founder who isn't a person in the usual sense. Essentially, take your own galaxy, except he's the one in the center everything orbits. His greatness is so incandescent it would absolutely destroy even us if we got close enough, like if you fell into the sun. Because rebels obviously try to get far away from us, and him, they're described as being in the 'dark regions' though they are also living around suns, or inside ships anyway."

"Spaceships, I assume," Shirou added. Nodding, she turned to answer the unspoken question.

"They had a few city-ships, basically a mobile city-state-sized civilization. They range from the size of Fuyuki to... Tokyo plus towns, I suppose. But that's chump change to us, we have larger ones, fleets of continent-sized city-ships that are colonizing other stars. In space you don't really slow down much so the rebels are cruising off into the void, unchased, at like one percent of lightspeed."

"We're getting off track," Rider said in a disgruntled tone. That we were.

"Just one more thing," I say apologetically, though to hide that this was really the biggest one to have answered. "Why us? You could clearly have found better people."

"Clearly?" Sasaku replied quizzically. "It doesn't seem that way to me at all." She seemed about to leave it at that before adding, "If you mean the magecraft thing, it's easier to build something new with a clean slate. But it's also the case that I have a penchant for building with the least ones - it doesn't mean staying small forever.

She thought for a moment. "It's not just good luck that I happened to be one of the most access-enabled and knowledge-greedy people in a, what, trillion-strong civilization, who also researched civilization-building, uplifting and whatnot. It's specifically why it was me."

"You remember that much, do you?" Shirou commented, probably remembering how his earliest impressions of his Servant were of a rather lost and confused girl. Assuming that wasn't an act, though if so getting attacked by Kuro was a terrible lapse.

Sasaku only grinned at this jab, though. "Error correction. Not many of us have it, but original-me seems to have also abused it to allow the World to mangle my memory but without being able to prevent me from recovering without having to turn me into a vegetable. It may also have double-purpose as a fail-safe," she admitted. "In that if that wasn't possible, I'd be a vegetable rather than turn into a rebel. Eh, well that's what I would have done, so I'm not complaining, obviously."

We could sit around interminably discussing random topics which she seems to have at her fingertips, but...

Shrou spoke up before I could break the brief silence. "Can you actually do crest transfer so easily?" he put to her directly. Well there are probably... ways... I try not to let my mind dwell on that, though.

"Normally, no," Caster replied easily. "Provided Sakura can indeed absorb it, it's more like grafting in bits of yourself back into yourself. The actual surgery and recovery are basically trivial for me."

"..."

"Let's do it then" I said finally.

Sasaku didn't move, but looked sideways at Shirou. "No objections?" she asked aloud after a moment of this.

"No."

And that was that.

"Right," Caster said, suddenly all business. She thought for a bit as a scalpel, or something like it, appeared in her fingers. "Well, 'conveniently' there's still a marker..." she muttered, tapping the blade against the side of her neck. Isn't that place where the Count grabbed her by?

Her eyes fluttered, unfocused, in concentration, before she abruptly placed something about the length of a finger but half the thickness on a summoned plate. She held it out towards me with a satisfied smile.

"This reminds me of a particular ritual," she said abruptly. "Hmm, yes, this is a seminal moment, so lets..."

Placing the plate with its gristly burden on her lap, Caster raised her now-freed hands. For a moment as she shifted her gaze upwards, flame, just like this morning.

"(Let us begin to build)," she intoned with an air of gravity that shook the air, no the entire space we were in. It was as if, no it was the words rippling outwards through the entire Field covering the house.

"I thought you used 'This is a day of judgment'," Shirou commented after the moment had passed.

"Write it down, that's for attacks, this is for other things," she said idly while picking up and handing me the plate. Medusa eyed me supportively as I examined the rather disconcertingly worm-shaped bit of Servant-flesh. She reached out and took my hand. "Let me help."

I nodded, holding out my other hand, palm open facing down towards my 'present'. At first, nothing much, but there was a small sense of familiarity there, which I focused on, reaching out but not physically, trying to connect.

I barely heard Shirou swallow nervously as what seemed like several fine, black, threads extended downwards and made the desired contact. Sinking in with no resistance whatsoever...

As though it was a skewered piece of meat, the filaments dragged the slowly-darkening spiritron-flesh upwards until my fingers could easily close in around it.

"I suppose that's it," Sasaku said a little sadly but with a tinge of pride. "I can't connect with it anymore." Turning my hand over, I looked at what I had gained. The discoloration had not faded, rather concentrated itself into veins that looked like shadows at first glance.

"Alright," Caster switched to a cheerful tone. "Sakura, over here for a sec." I turned towards her just in time to spot her finger as it flicked against my forehead.

"...!"

I yelped and practically jumped backwards in my chair as the whole room flipped around and my back connected with... Rider's chest? But she was in front of me!

For that matter, Shirou had suddenly teleported to the side. No wait, that's the same chair, I'm lying on the bed looking at him. Blinking in confusion, I glared at his Servant as she exhaled in relief, or perhaps exhaustion.

"Surgery's over," Rider said by way of explanation after she was sure I wasn't about to flail around. "It was six 'just now' and you were out about half an hour. How do you feel?"

I glanced at my left arm, seeing nothing. Feeling nothing had changed. "Nothing," I reported.

You seem to know exactly where it went though," Shirou pointed out, watching me make a fist and then experimentally flex the limb. Didn't feel like anything had been done. "I suppose that means it worked perfectly," Sasaku said.

"Wait, was that it?" I asked in disbelief.

"It was half an hour," she pointed out. "I would imagine your spell would allow you easy use of it, but then again physical circuits are only half the equation, and your soul needs to make a connection perhaps."

"Should we still go on the attack?" Rider broke in.

l

Notes:
Next time: the attack happens.