Thrill of the Chase

(Sasaku)

Unlike in the previous battle, there was a full half an hour to setup various plans before Shirou and the others reached the church, but Sasaku had several locations to prepare before then, and worked with haste.

Hopefully Gilgamesh and the others will expect me to have traveled with the others and separated to overwatch. Once he's out of sight of Shirou we might be able to communicate safely though ultimately they'll have to handle the remaining three-on-three themselves.

Thanks to both the Tohsaka library and Medusa's information regarding her own Blood Fort system, attempting to use magic circle focal points to create small "Outposts" of the Realm proved a workable trade of magical energy for fast and well-controlled setup. Of course, like her own improved spear use, it helped that she wasn't using them for spell-based attacks, which would likely whiff against GIlgamesh's Magic Resistance.

I should thank Tohsaka for telling me about the Magus Killer's MO some day.

l

(Gilgamesh)

So that's where she was.

When the first volley came in, he immediately identified that Caster had set up on a building which was partially obscured by another one. This allowed her to move out and attack while preventing early discovery during his pre-battle survey of potential attack vectors.

Without further thought he dashed upwards towards her, pulling out a number of swords and daggers to block spears that were clearly being aimed at him. Intercepting another two volleys, twenty-one spears in total, confirmed his suspicions from watching Lancer parry similar attacks using Gae Blog. The spears seem to have issue phasing through Noble Phantasms, contact immediately forces them to become solid.

This was a very good thing, because otherwise Caster would have an unblockable and extremely lethal attack by timing her spears to materialize inside targets. Which she was probably doing at that moment.

Wait, is that Archer... bah! He pulled out a couple more swords, set near his feet as arrows came up from below. To make matters worse she had had some form of explosive shot though how it functions wasn't clear since he only saw it through Rider's (Blood Fort) and couldn't fully get his analysis on it as a result.

I could jank my acceleration to avoid her attacks, but that wouldn't let me dodge the explosive shot. And without line of sight getting a good analysis of her shooting from behind me isn't possible. Well... Pulling out a handy mirror Noble Phantasm, he set it off to the side to at least be able to see the reflection, though the item itself prevented engaging (Sha Naqba Imuru) since he directly viewing, well, the mirror. It would have to suffice.

However, not long after passing above the three humans and Archer, the expected attacks from behind ceased. He kept half an eye on the mirror though, just in case the Servant was charging her shot, but it seemed she had switched to swords. Odd given that there are no other Servants around to alarm them. No, wait, there's...

He flicked to the side as a cloud of smoke abruptly exploded from the side of the building in front of him, between him and Caster's presumed location, but no missiles came out of it. Repositioning?

Running up the building he throught about the rooftop topography that had been checked out earlier in the afternoon. Not only were the nearby office buildings at differing hights, rooftop construction existed on some of them, further breaking up sight and firelines.

Armor, some sort of instinct warned him as he approached the parapet of the roof. Though he was pretty sure that Caster wouldn't attack him at any ranges that might prevent being able to pull out defensive weaponry, and he didn't quite like the golden armor, it's probably a good idea...

The helpfulness of the Skill promptly proved itself as he crested the lip into the sight sky and a very large number of small ball bearings. Just before a gauntleted hand blocked his view of the incoming swarm, and protected his face from it, he noticed that at least some of them seemed to have been magically Reinforced. How did she learn to do that? The small steel balls bounced harmlessly off his body armor, but would have probably done some damage without it.

Several clouds of smoke decorated the rooftops of the nearby buildings. Most of them were simply from very smoky fires. A light prevailing wind served to spread out the obscurantists, which Caster had probably been planning on.

Gilgamesh was not in the least taken by surprise when spears came from his right. The first smoke explosion had probably been used to cover her repositioning there when he moved to the left and went up that building instead.

Rather than simply block, he sent five swords flying back in the direction she had attacked from, but unsurprisingly nothing happened. Moved again?

Picking one of the rooftops at random, he bounded over towards it. Most attacks wouldn't be able to get through the armor, and while he was fine with Kirei's foreseen death (from behind, how ironic) playing ring-round-the-roses was not what he wanted at the mom-

(Sasaku)

She grimaced as the now golden Archer was blown backwards by a pair of directed explosives but not particularly harmed. Sending another volley of spears as she hopped off the edge of her rooftop to travel to another building via the air at a lower level, Sasaku watched as her opponent recovered and blocked the spears through a couple of very small magic circles acting like small scrying-based cameras.

She didn't miss the fact that he made for a different rooftop that the one she had just abandoned, probably at random. After a bit of thought, she adjusted course and glided through an open window rather than move up to the roof.

No wonder why urban warfare is so difficult, she mused as Gilgamesh landed on his chosen rooftop, which was actually clear of explosives. Judging from the angle of elevation, the range should be...

(Gilgamesh)

Damnit, that's a good idea. He backflipped into the air, throwing weapons below him as numerous spears seemly erupted from the floor and slammed into them. Earlier he had expected Sasaku to either dodge,avoid or try to knock his attacks off course by shooting spears at them. Clearly, a selection of homing Noble Phantasms would overcome all these, at least ones which he could be quite sure wouldn't accidentally kill her (hardly any Noble Phantasm qualifying as 'less lethal').

Using multiple floors worth of building as a shield was rather inventive. It wouldn't stop a full reverse-causality type attack, but many of those were obviously lethal, if he could even use them fully, anyway.

Strategically, it seems she wants to turn it into a question of whose energy runs out first. It was probably a workable strategy, he had to admit. It was possible to simply start leveling buildings using various Holy Swords but that would rapidly burn through his energy supply, and if she had presumably prepared fallbacks to densely built-up areas of Fuyuki, which could have been set up a day or more in advance, it would hardly be possible to clear cut everything.

Switching rooftops, making sure to throw more swords down in advance to correct for the lower detection range due to the floor, he examined the next volley and frowned. She was probably moving around the buildings in the airspace between them, but the several seconds of delay between a spear leaving her and reaching him meant the information was of limited use.

But she's able to track me, not just through smoke clouds, but buildings as well he realized. It can't be just technology if she's jumping around, so a magecraft solution... Looking around he noticed that many of the smoke sources gave off dense clouds that flowed downwards as well as horizontally due to wind. Furthermore, the odd topography caused even a relatively steady wind to push smoke around rather erratically.

There must be magic circles which are obscured by smoke, from some angles, but not others.

(Sasaku)

Gilgamesh jumped to a nearby rooftop and immediately took apart a magic circle by hitting it with some anti-magic Noble Phantasm. She shot some spears at his back, but he immediately moved, so they missed.

The improved explosive devices don't do much, even fragmentation ones can't scratch that armor. On the other hand, he seems to take care against the spears. She had snuck in a few specially Reinforced spears, but while they did not shatter on hitting a weapon in defense position, they were also unable to do anything besides bounce off. Furthermore, while the reinforced point did not break, this was more because the spear was not shot at high speed due to the distance.

She thought about the distances involved. If I start near the top, and move downwards and further away at the same time, the angle will be the same. But the intervening buildings will force increasing shot velocity, which will make the range obvious if he notices when blocking them.

"Shirou, how's the battle going on your end?" It wasn't possible for her to keep at it for too much longer, because the amount of information handling it took was leading to a steadily increasing energy drain.

"Kuro took out Kotomine, and everyone is ganging up on Berserker. But Lancer, Assassin and all the other Masters aren't around."

"I'm currently moving our battle away from you, so communication might be patchy. Make sure to be careful as the church may be booby-trapped, so send in Kuro first to check for wards, runes and so on."

"What? You need to draw him back to use Rider's Noble Phantasm..." There was a brief pause. "You never actually planned to do that, did you?" Another pause. "I should've known, since there was no way Gilgamesh couldn't have known by just seeing Rider directly."

"I'm sorry."

"You should be."

(Gilgamesh)

While it was hard to tell if removing her magic circles was having any real effect due to their likely redundancy, he was able to tell via the spears' heading and speed that his target was trying to move away, rather than around him. She can't have been thinking to just run away, surely he smiled to himself while following. The high-rise area transitioned to softer terrain with lower density residential zones in that direction, making her current tactics a lot less effective.

I was hoping for something more dramatic, exchanging clouds of missiles, rather than being one-sidedly pelted through buildings. Hurriedly giving chase, he jumped into the last tall building before taking out a long strip of cloth. I didn't want to use invisibility for this, but since you elected for magical spying...

Jumping down a stairwell several stories, he exited through an open window, heading directly for Sasaku who was jumping across the various houses in the area without looking around. It seemed like she was simply heading away from the church as fast as possible, probably her plan from the start. It's not a bad one, just rather unexpected. Since Lu Bu has powerful armor and Cu Chulainn has (Protection from Arrows), their odds are not much worse without her, while they are terrible if I was there.

As though spooked by something, Caster abruptly took to the sky. He checked, but there was nothing up there. Regardless, due to having several levitation or flight Noble Phantasms available, he could probably go higher than she should... once I get closer, what about a selection of spears?

As the distance began to narrow, Gilgamesh prepared a dozen weapons, then on a while doubled the number. Reaching up, he prepared to store the (Cloth of Concealment), but at that moment-

?

His eyebrows raised as something, somethings rather, slammed into his still-invisible back with ridiculous momentum, flinging up upward even faster. Spears from below?!

Bringing the first spear to mind into his hand, he thrust at Sasaku as she abruptly cut whatever flight she had and began dropping. He threw several at her but she, predictably enough, randomly changed acceleration enough to avoid them as more of her spears came from below.

I see, there must be some special rule about those. And Caster probably thew some fine dust behind her or so on then guessed where I was, he mused while speeding up for another pass. Unfortunately, even if they came from the ground at maximum speed, they can't pierce the armor. Maybe a small dent, he'd have to check it later.

As the ground drew closer and closer, Sasaku abruptly changed tack again, moving straight up, but doing so meant coming just a bit too close to Gilgamesh, which he had been waiting for. She was completely caught off guard as several chains appeared behind her, on the opposite side from Gilgamesh, and snatched her out of the sky.

l

(Kotomine Kirei)

Berserker had held out very well, all things considered, but all that was driven out of his mind as a flash of smug satisfaction reached him from the link with Archer. Took that brat long enough, he grumbled, sensing that had the Servant played around more much longer, his damaged heart would have finally given up. Well then...

"Gilgamesh."

"You're still alive? Busy now, don't hold out on my account."

He wished he could see that annoyance's face at the moment. "Archer, by all my six Command Spells, kill everyone in Fuyuki." The sudden lack of smugness or any response was more than satisfying enough though.