The afternoon sun sparkled through the leaves of the summer forest, dappling the ground with bright spots. Birds chirped and whistled overhead, warning each other of the pack of two-legged invaders below. White butterflies danced in a stray sunbeam, and Kaiya Hisau, Chaldea's newest Master, watched in a distant, numb wonder. She'd been doing technical support in the Antarctic-based Chaldea for over two years and the Conservatory just couldn't recreate the sense of fresh summer air, or the sheer unpredictability of the animal noises.

"I'm glad it's so nice here," said Ritsuka happily. "If you're going to take over dealing with these little bubbles, it's only right you get the rewards." The teenage girl twirled in a sunbeam like she didn't have a care in the world.

But ah! Why would she? She'd saved all of humanity from the Mage-King's Incineration. Compared to that burden, giving some basic training to the likes of Kaiya would surely be a pleasant diversion.

Though she was only in her mid-twenties, Kaiya felt old and stiff looking at the younger girl's energy. To have that resilience—! The kid had lost just as much as Kaiya, no, more, and yet she laughed as a white butterfly settled on her finger, holding it out to Mash's holographic presence.

Kaiya couldn't laugh like Ritsuka, or concentrate on her work like Ritsuka, or even make friends like Ritsuka. No, Kaiya couldn't do much of anything useful these days. Except for this: she could, due to the growth of some personal parameters scanned by Da Vinci, take on the role of Chaldea's Master as a decoy to draw both attention and threats away from humanity's true savior.

The sunshine made Kaiya's nose tickle, and she sneezed, and sneezed again, swearing. "Dammit! Damn sun! Gah, I hate it!"

Silence fell in the glade, and Kaiya realized both Mash and Ritsuka were staring at her in transparent concern.

Then Ritsuka burst out laughing again. "I'll ask Dantés if he'll work with you—eh?" Then, as Mash waved a worried but intangible hand at her, she said, "Oh, uh, never mind." Her gaze slid sideways to the white-clad form keeping watch at the edge of the clearing.

Several other Servants had accompanied them on this training mission, but the Archer Arjuna was Kaiya's own personal Servant, as Mash had been Ritsuka's. She'd summoned him less than 48 hours previously, after Acting Director da Vinci had explained the reasoning behind equipping her with her own living weapon.

The control chamber's lights had flickered as somewhere, a Servant—probably Gilgamesh—drew on a Noble Phantasm. Da Vinci hadn't even glanced up as she said, "Summoning your own Servant will be the final step in unlocking your extremely latent Master potential. Once you've done so, you'll have the Command Seals that would let you temporarily contract with and empower any of Chaldea's Servant cohort or even any random wandering Servants met while working."

"You mean like Ritsuka does," said Kaiya, with a brittle enthusiasm.

With a little laugh, da Vinci had said, "Not that you'll need to do so, of course. We won't be sending you anywhere like that alone. But you won't be a very convincing decoy without the Command Seals."

It was important to Kaiya that she be a convincing decoy—she didn't feel like she was good for much else these days—and so now she was the Master of Arjuna, the mythical Hindu hero. He stood in the shadow of a big tree, his white outfit almost glowing in the shade. His dark hair curled over equally dark eyes that remained fixed on the depths of the forest. If he'd heard Ritsuka's comment, he made no sign.

Kaiya was fairly sure he'd been one of the resident Servants of Chaldea at some point in the past two years. But at a later point he'd been released and not resummoned in a manner that Kaiya, too wasted on basement hooch, had not then noticed as being strange. Not then… but now, unpleasantly sober, this oddly fresh air tingling in her nose, she wondered again what lay between Arjuna and Ritsuka.

Whatever it was, it seemed like Arjuna, at least, didn't recall it, but Kaiya had noticed the way Ritsuka's eyes widened when the white form shimmered into existence in the summoning circle, and observed the swift looks passed between Ritsuka and da Vinci. Later, her hand still aching from the newly imprinted Command Seals, she'd made an unusual effort to get an answer from da Vinci.

"Ah, you noticed that, did you?" said da Vinci airily, when approached in the control room. "You certainly do notice things."

Irritated, Kaiya said, "I hardly needed to be Holmes to notice Ritsuka looking worried."

Holmes, eavesdropping shamelessly, said, "I did warn you, Acting Director. Kaiya Hisau's upbringing has made her extremely sensitive to human body language."

Kaiya glared at Holmes, displeased by both his evaluation and apparent access to details about her childhood Kaiya had made certain weren't in any written records.

Testily, da Vinci said, "And as I recall, you considered it a virtue at the time."

Holmes laughed. "I still do, Acting Director."

"Even with…?" da Vinci tilted her head toward where the newly summoned Archer waited on the other side of the room's window. But Holmes only smiled without answering, and da Vinci sighed. "Kaiya, Arjuna is a hardworking and obedient Servant. Keep him away from Karna and don't ask him too many personal questions, and you'll be fine."

"Was it something to do with Karna that got him released last time?" It was the nerves at her new position that made Kaiya persist. She didn't care about her own safety, but she wanted to do this right for Ritsuka's sake. Roman, who had been her friend before—before, would have wanted her to do this right.

da Vinci hesitated, the tiny pause of somebody rearranging a truth so it's not quite a lie. Kaiya knew it well. She was an expert at it herself these days. "It's a matter of not invading privacy. But Arjuna's rivalry with Karna is part of their myths. It doesn't take a genius like me to see keeping them on different teams is a good idea."

"Nicely done, not a yes or a no," Kaiya had said acidly, and then flushed, waiting for the expected reprimand.

Instead da Vinci patted her on the shoulder. "Exactly so. You'll be fine, Kaiya."

"Something's coming," called Robin Hood as he emerged into the clearing, interrupting Kaiya's reverie. Arjuna had vanished as she'd been distracted by her own thoughts. She glanced around and found him a few paces behind her and to her right, in the position he'd consistently adopted since she'd summoned him.

He met her gaze with the same cool stare he'd turned on her as he knelt in the summoning circle. He hadn't said much so far except to acknowledge or clarify her instructions, but she didn't need to hear the words to guess what he thought of her. She'd cleaned herself up for the big summoning day, enough that she'd pass inspection to most mortal eyes.

But his gaze had immediately ripped all that away, revealing the quivering failure she was underneath. She'd had a long, breathless, despairing moment in which she'd expected him to reject the contract, reject her, and fade away again.

(She'd warned da Vinci it might happen, and da Vinci had just patted her shoulder in that way she had when she was trying to be kind to people much less intelligent than herself. Roman would have understood. Roman would have—but that was going nowhere.)

But Arjuna hadn't rejected her. He'd simply looked away, taking in the details of the Summoning chamber and the people who stood with her. Then, without a word, he'd stood and placed himself for the first time behind her and to the right.

"Werewolves," reported Mash after getting an update from da Vinci. "A small pack."

Ritsuka gave Kaiya a dazzling smile. "Just hang back and watch this time. Work on getting a sense of what Arjuna can do. Later you can experiment with giving him specific instructions."

More than a little uneasy, Kaiya nodded, rubbing her hands on her arms at the sudden prickle of goosebumps. Ritsuka moved away to confer with Robin and Siegfried, and Kaiya sighed. Specific instructions. She had no idea where to even start with those.

"Master," said Arjuna quietly. "If you can't defend yourself, please wait with your back to this tree." He indicated said tree with a graceful twist of his hand. "I will not require your… combat guidance, so please focus on other things. Perhaps you can observe Ritsuka."

Then the werewolves poured into the clearing, yelping and howling for the blood of humans. Kaiya tried to watch Ritsuka, but if the girl did anything more than really energetic armchair quarterbacking, she missed it. Instead her gaze was unavoidably drawn to Arjuna, who stood a little away from the rest of the Servants and picked off werewolves with what seemed at first like uncanny precision. Then Kaiya realized that Robin Hood was just as precise, but while Robin's shots were full of a graceful, flowing movement, his cloak rippling around him, Arjuna's movements were far more efficient and he remained still, like a pillar of stone.

Once the fight was over. Arjuna glanced at her, met her eyes, and a shadow crossed his face. Suddenly her heart was pounding and her face burned as adrenaline burned through her. It was the first overt sign of his disapproval, and it made what Kaiya's friend Tsubaki had always called her 'madness' flash upon her: that desire she always felt to throw a drink in the face of anybody looking down at her. The desire to escalate, just to see where the other person would stop. It had gotten her into a lot of trouble in high school, trouble her mother had resolves in unusually diplomatic ways. Kaiya had learned to manage it after, at least until the world had ended.

It had only ever been a game, back then. Back when Tsubaki and Gretel and Zanzi had been alive, back before Lev had betrayed them and destroyed the world. Ritsuka and her Servants had brought back the world, but the lives lost in the explosion that had kicked off the apocalypse were gone for good. Tsubaki and Gretel and Zanzi had all been in the control room.

Now… now the madness was something else, and it was a game most of the resident Servants had been always willing to play with her, until Ritsuka had asked them to stop.

"Sorry, squishy mortal," Beowulf had boomed, embarrassingly loudly. "The little Master says Chaldean staffers are too precious to brawl with. So I will drink with you, but when you get feisty, that means it's time for beddy-bye.

Kaiya had been drunk a lot back in those days. It had been Roman who had pulled her out of that ditch, given her his friendship, his ear, and his shoulder. And then he'd…

No.

Kaiya met Arjuna's eyes defiantly as he approached her, but all he said was, "Did I perform to your satisfaction, Master?"

"Perfectly," Kaiya said sourly. "Maybe if we're lucky we can find something else to kill."

Arjuna only raised an eyebrow, and once again stepped to stand behind her right shoulder.

"Don't," she added sharply. "You don't have to stand there. Look at the rest of them." She indicated the other Servants, drifting around Ritsuka in the wake of the battle like butterflies around a flower. "None of them follow Ritsuka like this. I don't expect it of you."

She realized he was closer than she'd thought when he said softly in her ear, "But I expect it of me, Master. Ritsuka's many Servants have many jobs. I have one: to take care of you. Everything else is secondary."

An irrational white hot rage swept over Kaiya. She turned to glare up into his dark eyes. "Who told you that? Who told you your job was to take care of me? I didn't. Was it da Vinci? Holmes?"

Arjuna once again raised one perfect eyebrow. "I am your only Servant, Master. I know my duty."

"Bullshit!" Kaiya shoved Arjuna in his white-garbed chest. "Taking care of me is not your job. Your job is to get out there and do cool things. Show off. Make it so anybody trying to hurt Ritsuka comes for me instead."

A smile, dark and twisted, flashed across his face and was gone so quickly she thought she might have imagined it. "I'm not going to protect Ritsuka, my little Master. I'm going to protect you."

"Son of a bitch!" muttered Kaiya. She glared around, looking for something, anything,to do so that she didn't escalate. Ritsuka, talking cheerfully, was dividing up the Servants into pairs so they could scout the surrounding area for anomalies.

Well, she and her unwanted babysitter made a pair, right? She'd go out and find some bad guys herself, and he could protect her.

She stalked past Ritsuka and into the woods. "Hey, Ritsuka, there's more of those wolf guys here, right? And, like, some source to this nano-Singularity? Let's go fucking find it." And without waiting for Ritsuka's response, or indeed any response, she pushed her way into the forest.

Arjuna followed her, silent save for the occasional twig crunching underfoot. She herself made no effort at all to walk quietly. She could imagine her mother's eyes narrowing, nearly the only sign of emotion on her expressionless face, but Kaiya didn't care. She'd come to terms with failing her mother at least a year ago, and right now there were furry nightmares to lure out.

Something snarled off to her left. Arjuna's bow sang twice and the snarl ended abruptly. Kaiya didn't look. She didn't stop, either, even when Ritsuka called her name from distantly behind her. It wasn't until Robin Hood dropped from a tree before her and gave her a friendly wave that she came to a halt.

"Heya, Kaiya," said Robin. "Ritsuka'll catch up soon. Let's wait for her, yeah?"

A bow creaked behind Kaiya as Arjuna said, "Get out of her way, poacher."

Robin stared past Kaiya at Arjuna, and then very obviously rolled his eyes. "It's going to be like this, is it?" He stepped out of Kaiya's way and gave a very elaborate bow, gesturing for her to continue on. "Have fun keeping her alive, Prince."

Scowling, Kaiya stalked on. The animal trail she'd been unconsciously following widened ahead, turning to run alongside a stream. The trickle of water covered Arjuna's footsteps behind her. Slowly, as nothing growled and she was able to imagine herself alone, as the fresh scent of the water filled her nose and the birdsong continued pleasantly, a little of the painfully-on-edge tension that had haunted her since Arjuna's summoning lifted. But after around fifteen minutes, her feet began to hurt. She'd spent more than two years walking on smooth floors and exercising on machines. She stopped to run her hands through her ragged hair, wiping away beads of sweat, and to stretch her back with her hands on her hips.

As she did, she glanced over her shoulder, half-hoping Arjuna had evaporated. Instead, there he was, ruining her sense of solitude, watching her with that carefully blank expression that troubled her so much. She stared at him for a moment, trying to understand. Then her eyes widened as she realized why exactly it bothered her.

Once again a shadow darkened his eyes and she promptly whirled away to continue her march, at double-time now. She couldn't run from him, but a little voice in her head urged for her to try. It was the voice of survival, a voice she was good at ignoring these days. Her mother would be so disappointed. But it was the memory of her mother that had given her the answer.

For most of Kaiya's childhood, her mother's face had been similarly blank. But her mother had been a damaged woman, and the blankness had genuinely reflected her limited emotional capacity. Only her eyes had ever shown her real emotions; any smile she wore for the teachers and bureaucrats had been a mask.

But Arjuna wore a different mask: a mask that didn't ever smile, or show any other hint of humanity. People didn't wear masks unless they had something to hide, and in his case that shadow in his eyes gave her an uncomfortable hint as to what it was.

The ground grew softer and the underbrush crept closer to the stream's edge. The formerly pleasant rushing of the water began to worry her at how it covered her Servant's footsteps and she veered into the forest again. As soon as she was under the canopy, she tripped over a tree root in her haste. She caught herself as her mother had trained her, and came up to Arjuna close behind her, holding his white-gloved hand out to assist her her to her feet. When she looked furtively into his face, no shadow lingered, only a polite concern she could almost believe.

"I'm fine," she told him, just as more snarls emanated from the forest ahead and behind them. The werewolves that had been missing for the last twenty minutes had finally decided to put in an appearance.

He nodded. "Then stay down."

She obeyed, keeping below his arrow line as he picked off each of the six werewolves in a blur of motion. The last one fell dead at Kaiya's feet, killed not by an arrow but by a curved white knife that appeared in Arjuna's hand just long enough to spatter warm blood across her cheek before disappearing again.

Breathing hard, Kaiya started to stand up, noticing that somehow Arjuna's clothing was still unblemished. But Arjuna's hand pressed down on her head, keeping her low as he raised his bow to target something higher in the trees.

"Hey, hey, hey, I just got here!" called Robin, appearing from the perfect camouflage of his cloak, perched on a tree branch. "Am I interrupting something?" He ran a jaded eye over Kaiya kneeling at Arjuna's feet, and added, "Because if I'm not I thought you might want to know that Ritsuka found the heart of this place. It's a village tavern. I think they're about to start a drinking contest." As Kaiya half stood up, he added, "Yeah, I figured that'd get your attention. Come on. I'll show you where it is."

Arjuna caught her chin as she rose, turning her head toward him. With his other hand, he wiped the spatters of blood from her face. She watched, wide-eyed, as the blood shimmered brightly on his glove for only a heartbeat before fading away to leave the fabric pristine, hiding all marks of what he'd done.

She met his eyes, where once again the shadow lurked. She could sense the cruel smile hiding under his expressionless mask. When he brushed his now-clean thumb over her cheek again, she shivered and jerked her chin away.

"Not coming?" said Robin from the tree. "I can tell Ritsuka you're busy."

"No," said Kaiya, and her voice was steadier then she expected. "Right now a bar and Ritsuka's company sounds just right." Pulling away from Arjuna entirely, she turned and walked toward Robin and temporary oblivion of alcohol.