Fourth, Fifth and More

(Illyasviel)

"And that's everyone..." Despite being quite spacious, the Emiyas' living room was decidedly cramped with three Servants (the massive one more than made up for the tiny one), three humans and herself.

The Archer, Kuro, made to sit on Shirou's lap before being shooed away by a disgruntled Matou who was herself pressed up against him, definitely not due to lack of space. Her presence here was quite interesting - she had been called off watch since, according to Shirou when asking Tohsaka, Matou could apparently 'use' Caster's Bounded Field. Which was a bigger mystery since that Field stems from the Servant's (Territory Creation) and should be beyond human control.

"Then, I want to ask onii-ch-"

"Er yeah, about that, Gilgamesh already said you're older than me."

"Tsk." Playing the cute and easily-manipulated child was more useful than can be stated with words. "You don't seem surprised by that."

He paused for thought before deciding to carry on with the derail. "You doubtless know that my Caster, despite looking like she'd go to elementary school with you, happens to be a millennium old."

I did. "I'm not a Servant, nothing about those should surprise anyone."

Tohsaka nodded, probably thinking about her late father's Archer, Gilgamesh. But, "Kuro there is you, but younger and a Heroic Spirit. Surprised?"

I simply gave her a flat look that hopefully made the magus feel like an idiot while filing away the information for later. Simply listening frequently yielded a very high return on the investment (minimal time) but there was one thing that had been on my mind recently.

"That aside, on- ah, Shirou, you have father's Avalon?" His suddenly blank expression answered positively. Rin looked confused, then suddenly understanding.

"What about it?" he asked cautiously, figuring that directly answering was unnecessary. Realizing that Matou looked about to pounce for some reason, I hurriedly waved away the issue. "Nothing. Well, if the Einzbern knew you had it they would've probably sent a hit team to retrieve that. But they think Lancer had it on her when she returned to the Throne, since it wasn't on father's corpse."

"Is this about the possibility of you having an actual Noble Phantasm?" Tohsaka asked. "But Kuro, you don't have anything like that, do you?" Archer shook her head.

"It's about why father died so quickly after the War," I explain my speculations on the matter. "He wouldn't if he had the sheath, but he did and decided to forgo it anyway."

"Saving Shirou?" Tohsaka asked though with a bit of a doubtful tone, and understandably so. "It's unlikely you could ever make the calculus work on that. Plus Einzbern would kill Shirou just for that interaction, one-sided as it was."

"Calculus as in what, save more people?" she muttered half to herself, but perfectly audible to me. "Are we talking about the same Emiya Kiritsugu here?"

"Like you know anything." I glared her down until Kuro, surprisingly enough, intervened with, "I think... it's more that what counts is the total number."

This comment caused me to frown before I realized it and stopped. "That's not quite right. How old are you anyway?"

"This again?" Shirou interrupted, perhaps suspicious of an evasion. "Twelve." Kuro replied right afterwards.

"What happened in the Fourth Grail War?" I quickly follow up, with a growing sense of unease about what her answer might be.

"There wasn't one," she answered simply.

How can that be possible? "Wait, then you never met Lancer, Artoria Pendragon, that is?"

"Not directly, though I did encounter her Class Card. But she's a Saber."

"What? Oh... oh. Yes, she would be if she had (Excalibur), but el-Melloi summoned a Knight of Fianna, Diarmuid, with dual swords. So to fit Artoria into the Lancer vessel... it picked the Princess Knight who had (Caliburn) and (Rhongomyniad)."

"What does Pendragon have to do with Kiritsugu's motivations?" Tohsaka circled the topic back around.

"A simple thing really. While they had a brief truce, she and Gilgamesh got into several debates about being a king. At some point Archer said that if one values life, preventing humanity's extinction would be worth almost anything, including almost every individual in humanity itself. His point being, I think, that one can save a life, but one can also make a life."

"I don't quite follow," Matou interjected abruptly. "Sasaku said something similar, but about simply outgrowing humanity, I think."

"That's not the same thing at all," Shirou corrected her. "Caster was saying that the Counter Force would be triggered into action if she posed a threat to humanity, so she wanted to go elsewhere to build her offshoot civilization."

"Hmm," I muse on this bit of information. "That might be difficult since I can see now that Gilgamesh might want her for something like that. But under him."

"Under him?" Matou snapped suddenly as though it touched a nerve. "And what does that mean?"

I'm not quite sure how that wasn't clear. "Uruk, Babylon, they're not around now. Camelot and Britain as Artoria knew it, as well. Gilgamesh proposed dividing up the world between him, her, and Alexander. At least initially, anyway."

"But Alexander the Great conquered Persia, which is where Babylon was."

"He wasn't 'the Great'. Just like how Gilgamesh was not yet the king that Enkidu fought, and Artoria had drawn the Sword of Selection but not become king, he too was at the time when his father Phillip of Macedon was alive, before Corinth."

"Ah," said Saber suddenly. "He wanted them to each start off with a new kingdom, be it Babylonian, British, or Greek, and then fight it out. As kings rather than Servants."

"Something like that. Well actually... he asked Artoria to marry him, but not very seriously. I don't really know the details, but it seems like he was trying to jab at Alexander rather than being seriously interested in her. Which offended Lancer somewhat, but only when Gilgamesh killed Alexander did everything fall apart."

"Given the timing, it's likely Kirei had already taken over the contract." Tohsaka mused. "And when he thought to do it again, Gilgamesh was prepared."

"That would be my guess," I nod, remembering the events of the last few days of the previous War with odd clarity. "It should have been an easy victory for Kotomine, but he was distracted long enough that Artoria was able to take out the Grail. Or perhaps he didn't have the Command Spells to make Gilgamesh take her out."

"But why blow up the Grail, and half of Fuyuki with it?" Shirou exclaimed, remembering the events that followed soon after.

"The Grail is corrupted. Like the evil dijnn wish-granter, it will maximize destruction. Gilgamesh certainly knew the moment he saw it, and we did from... Mother's link to it, once it had manifested.

"What?"

"The fire was what happened after (Caliburn) had burned out some of the gathered energies. Though it was more like trying to put out an oil well fire with high-explosives - if she had (Excalibur) it might have worked, or the mature version of her Rhongomyniad."

"Wouldn't Gilgamesh have used his (Ea) on it if he knew it was that dangerous?" Kuro added.

"Servants can't simply attack the Grail, it's something that's woven into them at summoning. Command Spells can overcome that, or at least Father guessed so, correctly. Unlike Kirei, he already agreed with his Servant on what to do, so both of his remaining Command Spells would have served."

"So what you're saying is that the Fire was the least destructive potential outcome." Sakura commented while glancing at Shirou who seemed deep in throught

"Sadly no, if it was possible to re-direct all the energies elsewhere, like upwards, the damage would be been greatly reduced. But due to the Grail System's corruption, it deliberately destabilized the Grail to forestall such good fortune. It was basically a minimax-type scenario."

"What would the worst-case scenario be?" Shirou mumbled.

"Who knows what a fully-powered wish-granter might be able to do. Outright human extinction is definitely possible, though much worse potentially depending on the details of what was actually wished. As far as I remember from the discussions after Mother's death anyway."

"About that," Kuro added quietly. "What happened to her, here?"

"After half of the Servants died, she went comatose as the Grail began to manifest. That also allowed its corruption to spread to her. I don't know the details."

"I don't get it," Tohsaka inquired, furrowing her brow. "She wasn't Artoria's Master, so how was she linked to the Grail?"

"..." I sighed. Well it was hardly as though the Einzbern would let me live whatever I did or didn't do. Or failing that, my own lifespan anyway. "To bring forth the Grail requires a great deal of magical energy, more than can be held within the Grail System directly. As a result, a Lesser Grail is maintained which collects the souls from the first few Servants to die, and then uses that to actually summon the Greater Grail, which is able to hold all the summoned Servants' souls and perform the wish-granting."

"Mother was a Lesser Grail," Kuro said after a brief pause in the discussion. "Wait, then in this War, you..."

"Yeah, it was always impossible for me to win this War."

l

(Medusa)

"We have a problem," I realized suddenly upon Einzbern's latest revelation.

"We have plenty of problems," she grumbled back. "But what specifically?"

"Is it possible that you're also a Lesser Grail? I mean the Count and also the energies I absorbed from you that changed my form..."

"How many Servants have actually died so far?" Sakura asked. "Lancer and Assassin?"

"Those two, certainly. I can tell they've been 'collected'. Berserker is also..." she pauses but continues without flinching, "I think he went off after Gilgamesh and got so far from Fuyuki by the time he died that his soul is very fragmented. It might be irretrievable."

Illyasviel seemed done, but then she added. "The main family was worried because, well, Lu Bu. They were right, too. Even with his Skill (Defiant) disabled by (Madness Enhancement) the fact that I didn't raise its rank higher to eliminate his self-will but actually reduced it instead meant he could still do so of his own desire."

"You planned to have him attack them afterwards," Saber interjected. "A Servant like that would give any magi family some pause."

"Oh more than planned, he already agreed to it. They were 'above' me after all, and thus were prime targets for him. But more importantly, while here I was able to quietly experiment on my maids."

"Er, ok?" Sakura doesn't seem sure if she liked the sound of that.

"Not in a bad way. Well most homunculi don't have fully-developed wills, but Mother and myself suggest this isn't necessarily the case. Anyway, the Einzbern family is mostly homunculi controlled by very few human magi."

"Ah." Shirou caught on immediately, probably from the discussions he mentioned with Caster. "You plan for them to join you in separating from the family."

"Not separatism, takeover. However, it's good that you brought this up, because-"

"You need us to do it for you," Saber interjected in a deadpan tone.

"That too," she continued as though it was a scripted interaction. "More critically though, I cannot care for, or lead them as my own lifespan will run out in a year or two. Since your Caster is apparently already 'doing a thing' with Servants, I think this would dovetail perfectly."

There was a brief moment as everyone took in the various issues that had just been aired.

Sakura spoke first. "So you're asking for an alliance then? Since, naturally, you would be the head of the 'new' Einzbern."

"Wait a moment-" Shirou started, at the same moment I asked more privately, "Don't we have enough on our plate without trying to fight a major family?"

"We're in deep trouble, energy-wise," she replied. "Leylines aren't enough, ordinary people aren't unless we have a whole country's worth, and there aren't enough magi around. Einzbern homunculi can be stronger than most human magi, and 'reproduce' much faster."

"You are not planning to enslave a new nation for magical energy generation." It is more a statement of fact than just belief. It wouldn't be like her, and it's more that I just don't know how she intends to go about it. But the answer is surprisingly simple. "It's just taxes."

I felt a little foolish, or perhaps realized how jaded the world had made me, to jump to the worst possible solution. It makes sense, magi can give up quite a lot of magical energy without harm, as long as it does not drain their actual life force. Now obviously, they need it for their own research and so on, but Illyasviel's people probably wouldn't see such a need.

"For now it's worth considering. Shishou said that the foundation stones are 'crushed' under the weight of the building, but it would not stand without them. It is not only foolish and short-sighted to oppress those under you, but simply wrong, because-"

"Because 'it is not just the duty, but joy, of the greater, the powerful, the wealthy, to not only protect, but advance the good of the lesser, the weak, the poor,' is it?" I'm glad she actually taught that, since it seemed rather incredible when she spoke with me.

"Anyway..." Sakura began after listening to Shirou's brief objection in the time of our more lengthy telepathic conversation. "I believe properly we should defer to Caster in this matter. If she is dead then we'll... handle it if it comes to that?"

Illya took the proffered opening. "If you're worried about Gilgamesh, I'm pretty sure he'll bring her back safe and sound."

"And untouched?" Shirou asked with a hint of skepticism.

"What?" she responded with initial confusion. "Oh, I see. You haven't met him personally. He's very much a boy, if you catch my drift."

"... somehow it feels like we dodged a major bullet because my father, er, failed to summon him in a more powerful form," Rin said with a different sort of confusion.

"You did, according to the man, er boy, himself. Well, he said his older self messed up a lot of times, and I suspect he meant parallel worlds rather than just historically. But he also said he had help from an even older version of himself, so perhaps he was simply warned in advance."

"There are three versions of the King of Heroes." I raise an eyebrow to highlight the implications of this. "And somehow they can interact and 'help' one another in the Throne."

"Apparently. Well there's a second version of me right here who became a Servant while being younger and not even going through a Grail War, so who knows."

l

Notes:
minimax: Related to game theory. In this case, one side is trying to minimize the damage, while the other acts to maximize it.

Phillip of Macedon was killed at the theater in Corinth, so it fell to his son, Alexander, to take on the invasion of Persia among other things.

Sakura can only have "brief" conversations with fake Caster. While telepathic communication with Rider is much faster than speech, speaking with fake Caster is actually much slower.