Kuro was sitting on the edge of the bed she was assigned to share with Kuruse. Even though the boy's mansion was big, it didn't have enough rooms for everyone to have their own bed, and since Kuruse was Kuro's Sekirei, they had been assigned to share the same room.

It had yet again reminded Kuro of Saber, though the King of Knights hadn't seemed quite so excited when she suggested that the two of them slept in the same room. And she had never suggested that they shared the same bed. Kuro hadn't exactly been comfortable as she battled with the strange raging hormones of her small Sekirei body, as Kuruse grabbed at her in her sleep.

Giving up on getting much sleep, Kuro when to her phone and got onto the internet, hoping to find out a bit more about her situation. She wanted to conform that she was still in Shirou's old world. Though what she found was more than what she had expected for.

She was looking down at the smart phone in her hand, half reading the old news clipping. It was a news article done on Fuyuki City. Or rather, what had once been called Fuyuki City, before the MBI purchased the half the city south of the river and the surrounding forest, the half that was referred to as the Shinto District, declared it an independent nation and renamed it Shin Tokyo. The article contained details of the mass construction being done in the city, and all the repairs being made to the part that had been burned to the ground during the world-famous Fuyuki fire which practically burned half the town to the ground. The same fire that had practically given birth to Emiya Shirou.

Thinking back, Kuro thought she recognized some of the buildings she had seen in the city center. Rin had always said that all those rush job buildings set up after the fire all looked the same. Kuro hadn't even noticed that they weren't just similar, they were the exact same buildings.

If at any point Kuro had crossed the river to the north, she would have found herself back in the same old streets where she had grown up as Shirou. The part of the city that was called the Miyama District.

Equipped with the knowledge that he was in Fuyuki, the Sekirei War took on new context.

Why was this happening? The Holy Grail had been deconstructed in the year 2000. Shirou had been there. So why is it that Kuro finds herself in the same place, twenty years later, with nearly the same events going down. Did someone find a way to recreate the Greater Holy Grail? Were the Sekirei just a substitute for Heroic Spirits in another horrible ritual? Was anyone really stupid enough to create another Holy Grail War?

Of course someone was that stupid. There was always a magus willing to pursue any line of research, no matter how bloody it would turn out. Even if it was dangerous enough to possibly destroy the world. The fact that the Clocktower willfully allowed the Holy Grail War to happen again and again, despite the threat it posed to the secrecy of magecraft, was proof enough that there were magi in the world who could give it a try. But in Fuyuki? Why didn't Rin put a stop to it?

Closing the internet app, Shir… Kuro opened up the dial screen and started to punch in Rin's phone number. When she was immediately thrown to a recorded message informing her that the number had been disconnected, she began to fear the worst.

"Don't worry. She probably just stopped bothering to keep having a phone." Kuro said to herself, trying to think of a way to get into contact with his… her old friend.

While it was true that Rin hadn't been as bad as other magus when it came to modern day appliances, given that she went to a normal high school where using a computer was a must, she didn't exactly have a lot of people who she would have used a phone to call. After Shirou disappeared, it was doubtful that she would have kept her old phone line alive. This was a problem in and of itself, since who around Rin could she actually call who would be able to get them in touch again?

…She could call 'that man'.

A shiver went up the spin at the mere thought. Shirou had been shocked to find out 'that man' had a phone. Shirou just could not imagine anyone ever calling him. It just wasn't something that was done. You didn't just call the Wizard Marshal to go a grab a beer or invite over to dinner. And if you were in an emergency situation than he was likely to make it worse, if he wasn't the cause of it. The man was insane. Kuro didn't even want to imagine what the man would do if he found out about her current condition. Death was probably preferable.

No. There was no way she would reach out to that vampiric asshole.

Hardly anyone in the moonlit world actually knew how to use a phone, and the number of people who Kuro could actually trust was an even shorter list. Kuro created a mental list of every person Shirou had known who she could trust, trying to find one who would have a phone or email account, someone who wasn't so ingrained in the bullshit culture of the Clocktower that they thought that a computer was no more useful than a pen and parchment.

Kuro started to punch in another number, hoping that the guy she was thinking of hadn't changed his phone number in the last sixteen years, or gotten himself killed for mouthing off to the wrong person.


Waver Velvet, or Lord El-Melloi II as some may call him, was on break.

God of War: Ragnarök had just been released, so he had canceled his classes and told all the whiny shits who plagued his free time to go fuck themselves and that he had important work to do. The Undying God difficulty level wasn't going to beat itself.

Waver took some pleasure in not being surprised at fucking all when it turned out that Tyr was the bad guy after an early fight removed Odin from the picture. It was just the style of the long running God of War series. They wouldn't have paid so much lip serves to the God of Justice being the only reasonable god out there if they weren't going to have him be a self-righteous asshole with his own agenda and a plan to use Kratos to fight his battles for him.

Still, it was a good story, and the combat, though not as satisfying as some of the earlier games due to the camera hugging the player too close for you to get a good look at the action, was at least challenging and immersive. He'd give it an 8.5 out of 10.

Waver had grinded for hours, trying to get his equipment to the top tier so that he could tackle the last and hardest challenge in the game, a sort of boss rush set in Valhalla, in which you were expected to fight and kill twelve legendary Norse heroes, each one having the stats of a normal boss, one after another. And in undying god mode, there was no healing and no checkpoints for the entire fight. One mistake and you had to start the two-hour long encounter all over again.

The current boss was Siegmund, his body cursed to take on the form of a man-wolf creature. The battle crazed beast being forced to act as one of Odin's guard dogs even in the afterlife. Because of the boss's quick movements and tight camera, the player had to rely entirely on the radial alert machinic and use the quick turn buttons to make sure they could stop the beast from simply moving around their guard and attack their back side before they could wrestle their camera around to point in the right direction.

He was most definitely the most annoying of the stages that Waver, since you had to get a dozen tenth of a second parry windows in order to beat him, but the old magus was nearly through with it. Just two more parries and he will have perfected this stage of the boss rush. He performed the quick turn, facing the charging beast. He was ready for the… *Buzz!* *Buzz!* *Buzz!*

His phone went off, breaking his immersion and causing him to parry one twentieth of a second too early. Kratos took a claw to the face and his health bar dropped down into the reds. "FUCK!" Waver swore, pausing the game and grabbing at his phone. It was a good thing his phone was reinforced with magecraft, else he would have likely crushed the thing in his rage. He didn't recognize the number, and it was from out of country. "Japan." The man growled, sliding his finger across the screen to answer, he brought the phone up to his ear. "I swear, if this is a telemarketer, I am going to curse you to death over this phone line." He was already preparing the runes necessary to preform such a feat. He only stopped when he heard a small chuckle on the other side of the line.

"You have no idea how good it is to hear your voice, Waver." A child's voice said from the other side of the line.

So, it was someone who knew who he was. Dammit. Any magus worth their magic circuits would have enough magic resistance to survive an attempt to curse them over a phone line. He'd have to hunt them down the old fashion way in order to get his vengeance… maybe he has been playing too much God of War. "Alright, you know my name, now who is this?"

There was a short pause on the other end of the line before the person answered. "It's me, Waver. It's Emiya."

Waver's grip on his phone began even stronger and his eyes widened. All thoughts of his gaming session faded away in an instant. Different thoughts of vengeance came to his mind, rage that anyone would try to pull a prank like this on him. But at the same time, he couldn't help but feel the sting of hope. "…Prove it."

"Alright… A few months before I was stuck with my sealing designation, I had to stop you from trying to assassinate the writers for Final Fantasy 10 part 2." 'Emiya' said, bringing up the past.

"…While that is true, a lot of people could have found out about that." Waver said, feeling a twitch in his temple at the mention of that bastard spin-off game.

There was a pause as 'Emiya' tried to think of something that would convince Waver as to who he was. "Alright, at one time, you were showing me your memories of your time with Rider during the Fourth Heaven's Feel, and in one of those memories you ran into a young girl who happened to be my older sister figure, and Rider told you to make her your love interest character."

Waver froze, thinking back to that embarrassing time with his former servant, Alexander the Great, and the preppy Japanese girl. "Those crazy bastards." Waver mumbled, bring a hand to his face and rubbing at his eyes.

"Come on Waver, it was cute. You know Fugi-nee chose to become an English teacher because of you." Emiya teased.

"Shut the hell up, Emiya!" Waver shouted angrily before taking a deep breath. "It… it really is you."

"Yeah, it's me." Emiya said.

His voice was different, but it was definitely him. So, Waver took a second-deep breath and let it loose. "YOU BLOODY ASSHOLE!" He screamed into the phone. "Sixteen years! Sixteen fucking years without a single goddamn word! We thought you were dead!"

"I was dead." Emiya said quickly, interrupting Waver and giving him pause.

"…What?"

"After a fight against one of the Dead Apostles, I was grabbed by the Clocktower's Enforcers, taken away to a lab. But before they dissected me, Alaya appeared." Emiya said.

Hearing the name of the Will of Humanity, felt his heart sink. "Emiya, please tell me you didn't."

"I'd like to say I'm not that stupid… but considering that fact that I told her to go to hell, you could say I was even stupider." Emiya said with a laugh. "Even though I didn't accept her offer, she didn't want people experimenting on trying to make more Reality Marbles, so she caused by body to spontaneously combust. Then she took my soul and placed it in another body. I woke up in some kind of science fiction test tube about three days ago. I only just recently confirmed that I was in the same timeline."

"…I need a smoke." Waver said with a sigh, reaching for his cigar case. Once he had lite one and took a long puff he tried to continue the conversation in a more casual manner. "So, what was the afterlife like? Did you get a peak?"

"No. Seamless transition from being burned alive to waking up in a large jar of strange fluids. Though apparently sixteen years went by." Emiya said before asking his own question. "Rin, I haven't found a way to contact her. Is she… doing alright?"

"…I hope you enjoyed your time back on this side of the void, because she's going to murder you when she finds you." Waver said, thinking to the short-tempered woman. "She took your disappearance hard, harder than the rest of us. She kept saying that you were still alive somewhere and had just gone deeper into hiding. She claimed that sooner or later, something would happen, and you would pop out in order to be the stupid hero we all knew you were… Sixteen years is a long time to remain optimistic. She only managed to last for five." There was nothing but dead air on the other side of the line. Waver knew he was being cruel, but it took real pain to drive the point home to someone as stupid as Emiya Shirou. "Maybe you'll actually think about the people you're leaving behind next time you are about to decide to throw your life away. *sigh* Who I am I kidding, you'll never fucking change."

"Waver, I…"

"I don't want hear your excuses." Waver snapped, cutting Emiya off before he could make his same old arguments. After a moment of silence, Waver decided to push the topic of conversation along. "You said you woke up in a test tube. Homunculus?"

"I wish it was that simple." Emiya said with a sigh. "Apparently I'm in a body belonging to an alien race called the Sekirei. Or they claim they are part of an alien race. To my knowledge all of them were born on Earth and I haven't seen any proof of their claim, but their magic cores are different from the artificial circuits used in the homunculi I've seen in the past."

"…Magic core? You have a magic core!?" Waver half shouted, nearly dropping his still burning cigar in shock. "A third-rate moron like you gets a magic core. Life is so unfair." Waver could only dream of having that much Od. Skilled and knowledgeable as he was for a man who might as well have been a first-generation magus, he had barely any prana reserves at all.

"Is that really what you are going to concentrate on?" Emiya asked.

"Yes. It is." Waver freely admitted.

"Waver, I think the Sekirei are being used as a replacement for Servants in someone's attempt to recreate the Holy Grail Wars." Emiya said, attempting to sound serious but only further emphasizing the odd qualities of his new voice.

"Let me guess. It's the MBI, isn't it." Waver said, taking a shot in the dark.

"How'd you know?" Emiya asked, probably hoping for more information.

"Emiya, they are a trillion dollar global-mega-cooperation that specializes in experimental medicine and own their own private city in JAPAN. Anyone with half a brain could tell you they're evil. That, and your caller ID places you in Japan." Waver said, taking a drift on his cigar before adding. "I personally thought it was going to be zombie related, since that is the standard cliché, but aliens works too."

"Does the Clocktower know about this?" Emiya asked.

"Not sure. It's possible that they have people investigating. It's also entirely possible that someone up top is in on it. Both the Clocktower and Church took part in organizing the Grail Wars before finding out about how the grail had been corrupted. Wouldn't surprise me at all if some of them are trying a different method to achieve the same results." Waver said, tapping his finger. "If it is based on the same principles, then there is a chance that they have been taking information about the ceremony from the families that had been involved in setting the grail up in the first place. Might be able to find evidence of espionage."

Waver's man line of work, outside of his teaching, was acting as an agent for Reines El-Melloi Archisorte, acting as her private investigator and spy when needed. He had been told in the past to investigate the MBI, but beyond the founders' backgrounds, it hadn't been a fruitful search. Trying to spy on an organization like the MBI was like trying to find a sunken pirate ship in the middle of the ocean. If you don't have a lead, you aren't going to find shit. There was simply too much stuff to dig through it all.

"How much do you know about the MBI?" Waver asked Emiya.

"I'd never heard of it before I woke up inside one of their tanks. Beyond them being somehow involved with the Sekirei and that they are forcing the Sekirei to fight, I don't know anything about them." Emiya admitted.

"Why am I not surprised. You never did pay any attention to the research side of things." Waver couldn't help but to roll his eyes. Emiya was a spellcaster at heart, viewing magecraft as a mere tool rather than a way of life, like the other magus did. "The founders of the MBI were all third-rate magus from Japan. None of them had any family crests or even a family work shop and all of them had shit magic circuits. Each of them went to a normal university and became skilled with computers. They erased recorded evidence of magecraft from databanks for a living. They were nobodies, less than nobodies, until around nineteen years ago. That's around the time they came forward with a new invention, a mundane machine which could produce low level alchemy without the use of any form of magecraft."

"That explains some of the weapons I've seen." Emiya mumbled.

"As you can imagine, people were pissed. Saw it as some kind of heresy, using technology to preform alchemy. But the group started to use that technology to mass produce new medicines, made billions of dollars in a few years, and then bribed the Clocktower into simply not caring. Alchemy had never really been magecraft anyways, or does it follow the same limited resource logic, so it didn't matter if the world was made aware of its principles and could use technology to replicate it, so long as none of it lead back to the existence of the magus. The MBI then proceeded to make so much money that they basically conquered the mundane world."

"Do you think that they would try to revive the Holy Grail Wars?" Emiya asked.

"Definitely. If they thought that they could get away with it. And considering their specialty is burying information, they probably could." Waver said. "One of the founders, Hiroto Minaka, was one of the guys in charge of getting rid of all the evidence from the Fifth Heaven's Feel. From what I heard, the man's become obsessed with legends."

"…You have to be shitting me. No one would…" Emiya seemed to be struggling to find words.

"What is it now?"

"Right now, I'm in an alliance with one of the masters of the MBI's war. The guy isn't a magus, just some rich kid. The weird thing is, he's convinced that the entire thing is just an elaborate game. I thought the kid was just being naive, but… you think it's possible that this entire thing was set up for some obsessed rich guy's entertainment? It could be entirely possible that there isn't any Holy Grail equivalent at all. From what you know, is Minaka crazy enough to...?"

"Yes." Waver said, answering the quest before he could finish asking it. "That bastard definitely has a few screws loose. Though I would suggest against writing the entire thing off as a rich guy's sick game. If Alaya felt the need to drop your ass into the middle of this, then that means that whatever is going down, it is a big enough threat to warrent the attention of the Will of Humanity."

"Either that, or Alaya felt like getting revenge on me for telling her to fuck off." Emiya grumbled.

Waver frowned. What about this situation would make Emiya say something like that? Being given a second chance at life isn't exactly something to be upset about. Especially when it didn't seem to cost him his soul. "The Will of Humanity isn't that petty."

"Since when have you had faith in humanity? Maybe I should be the one questioning whether or not you are the… *yawn* real thing." Emiya said, a long, childish yawn interrupting his words. "Waver, it's really late over here, and I haven't gotten much sleep lately. I'll try to get into contact with you again later. And tell Rin that I'm… alright."

"Sure. Try to be open at the same time tomorrow." Waver said.

"I'll try, but no promises. I'll talk to you later." Emiya said before hanging up.

"So, Emiya's back." Waver looked down at his phone, thinking about everything that he had just heard. His mouth slipped into a smirk. "Maybe there is still some hope left for humanity."

However, something about the whole thing was bothering him. It was something to do with Emiya's voice. It wasn't just young. It was almost like it was…

Waver's eyes widened and he quickly started to mess with his phone, sending a 'face time' call request back to the number Emiya had used to call him. After three rings, Emiya answered and Waver got his first good look at him as Emiya stared down at his own phone in shock, probably unfamiliar with the concept of video calls.

"Wa…Waver?" Emiya said, his eyes were wide with surprise. Or rather, her eyes were wide with surprise.

Waver couldn't help himself. He broke out laughing. "Oh my god! This is just too rich! The savage Second Magus Killer is now just a little girl!" Waver openly laughed, holding his side. "Holy crap. I've got to tell everyone. Zelretch is going to love this."

Emiya paled at the mention of the Wizard Marshal. "Waver, don't you dar…" She couldn't finish as Waver had already hung up on her. He left the apartment with a rare smile on his rough face. He just had to tell Reines about Emiya's predicament. His lady master would get a really kick out of it. She always did love to see other people suffering.

Waver was in such a good mood, he even forgot about his video games.


That night, Kuruse dreamed of battle.

The ring of metal striking against metal filled the air, so loud and rapid that it was nearly deafening. Kuruse watched in shocked admiration as the two male Sekirei fought against each other. Their speed, strength and skill were on a whole other level from anything she had ever seen before.

One of them was a spearman with a long blood red weapon that practically oozed bloodlust. The man wore an excited grin as he exchanged strikes with his opponent, as if he had never felt more alive than he did during battle. His red eyes seemed to shine from the reflection of the sparks flying off of the clashing weapons, and even in the dark his deep blue hair and clothes had been easy enough to spot.

The other fighter was a second tall man, one with darker skin and steel gray hair. Kuruse was shocked when she saw the man's weapons and realized they were the same black and white blades that she had seen her own master using back in the forest.

The fighting between the two was intense, far more intense than anything Kuruse had seen between any other Sekirei before. They continued to clash again and again without ever letting up, ripping apart the soccer field that they had been standing on. Even when the red spear would break one of the silver haired Sekirei's weapons, he would conjure another one up to replace it in the blink of an eye and just kept fighting.

"Wh…what's going on?" Kuro said, staring at the two fighters with wide eyes. "What are they?"

The blue haired man with the spear's eyes snapped towards Kuro at the sound of her voice. The look of a predator clear even at a distance. Kuro staggered back at the sight of those eyes before turning and running into the school building she had just came out of. The small girl ran for all she was worth, but it was no use.

Even as she ran down one of the halls, the blue haired man caught up to her. "Sorry kiddo, but we can't have any witnesses." The red spear shot through the dark, straight through Kuro's chest.


"Master!" Kuruse shouted, bolting up in bed, one hand going over her own chest as she struggled to get control of her breathing. "It… it was just a dream." She said, trying to convince herself of that, even though it had felt like something more than just a dream.

But before she could calm down, she noticed something missing. "Master?" She said as she looked around the room to find that her Ashikabi wasn't in bed with her. "Master? Master, where are you? Master!?" Kuruse said as she started to pull away blankets and pillows, looking for the small girl who was her master. It took her a few seconds to notice a sheet of paper on the nightstand.

'Dear Kuruse

I had to leave early in order to perform my duties guarding Hayato while he is at school. I'll be back around 4 pm. Try to take this time to rest and get familiar with your surroundings.

Kuro.'

"She… she already left?" Kuruse said, her bottom lip quivering as she realized she had overslept and missed her chance to see off her Ashikabi or guard her on her way to school. "At least she's alright."

Kuruse's mind drifted back to the bizarre dream and to the blue haired man with the spear. Or rather, her mind drifted back to the spear itself, and perhaps to the way that the man had been moving, the skill that he had shown with it. It all felt so very familiar to Kuruse, as if she had seen it before. As she thought about it, her body shifted into that same crouching stance that she had seen the man use and one of her tridents appeared in her hands.

The stance didn't work for her. Not with her trident. The weight of the weapon was too different from that strange red spear. "Gáe Bulg…" The name came to Kuruse, though she didn't know where it came from. She just knew it.

Gáe Bulg, the spear of mortal pain, the weapon of Cú Chulainn.


That God of War comment was a joke about the next God of War game, not the one that has been released. I didn't spoil the current game, just guesses of the plot that the next game is going to have. Considering that neither Tyr or Odin have even made an appearance, and that it is a God of War game, Kratos doing what he does is kind of a given and I don't feel like I have spoiled anything other than what didn't happen in this current game.