You know, I'm ever so slightly dismayed that of all the people who've already favorite'd and alerted this story, the only person who bothered to review and/or submit a guess as to the identity of a Servant was an anonymous reviewer. Their identities can't have been that obscure, could they? Either way, Servant Assassin was the first to be guessed, and his identity was going to be revealed at the end of chapter's stat sheet, but I may as well give it to you now.
IDENTITY
Servant: Assassin
True Name: Hazama / Yuuki Terumi
Series/Origin: BlazBlue
Strength: C
Endurance: C
Agility: A+
Mana: ? (Due to unknown circumstances, cannot be quantified)
Luck: EX
Noble Phantasm: EX
SKILLS
Presence Concealment: A++
Presence Concealment allows Assassin-class Servants to hide themselves and erase all traces of their existence from the world, making them impossible to detect. At this level, Assassin is all but impossible to perceive, and can even unleash a surprise attack before his presence is noticed. However, he can only unleash one surprise attack in each Servant's presence before they will be able to notice his being there before he can release his attack.
Independent Action: EX
For reasons unknown, Assassin possesses the skill of Independent Action, allowing him to act without permission from his Master, and persist in the world without a Master. At this rank, Assassin can persist indefinitely, without needing a Master, and use any and all of his abilities with reckless abandon without worry of disappearing. In addition, he can outright ignore vague Command Spells, only having to comply with specifically-worded requests. Demands such as "withdraw" can be ignored, because he can just 'withdraw a weapon from his sleeve' to fulfill the request, or even postpone the 'withdrawal' to a later time. However, he cannot ignore "withdraw from your current battle immediately and return to base" due to the specificity of the order.
NOBLE PHANTASMS
I'm not going to unveil his other Personal Skills or Noble Phantasms just yet. Let's just say that Trollzama will live up to his nickname…
For every chapter that gets reviews and/or guesses, another Noble Phantasm, Personal Skill, or Servant identity will be revealed. Hopefully this will give some of the more silent watchers a bit of incentive to offer some constructive feedback for me, hm?
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Fate/Zero, BlazBlue, or any other series referenced herein. They belong to Type-Moon, Arc System Works, and their respective creators.
"Master, are you certain that this is a wise idea? You will be tipping your hand early, and eliminating an ally before he can realize his true worth."
Tohsaka Tokiomi chanced a look at his Servant, the man holding himself in a stiff, attentive stance, back and to the left of his master. One look at how his hands were placed was enough to know that it was an exceedingly deliberate placement: despite their alliance, Saber did not yet trust Assassin enough to not chance a surprise attempt on his Master's life, and thus kept himself in position for a perfect drawing strike. But while the information Tokiomi gleaned from this cast some light on his Servant's experience, it did nothing to give him any insight into the man's identity. The Japanese sword at his side stood completely at odds with his European looks, and he didn't know of any Western clans of demon-hunters that had taken their foe's bloodlines into their own, as the Tohno had. For every answer, two questions sprang up in its place.
But now was not the time to worry about such.
"Fear not, Saber. Yours and Assassin's respective abilities are the only reason that this plan remains unchanged. As it is, all you will have to do is put on a good show, convince any who are watching—and there will be people spying upon us—that Assassin is dead, and that you are Servant Archer. Hide your sword from sight, stay at range, and most importantly…"
Tokiomi took a sip of wine from his glass, savoring it before putting the glass down.
"Comport yourself as one would expect a Servant of the Tohsaka family to hold themselves. You are not a dog of the Einzbern, or a worm of the Makiri. You are a Tohsaka, and will keep yourself to a higher standard of behavior than they. Are we understood?"
An almost imperceptible twitch at the right side of Saber's face was the only sign of approval visible, and even that only persisted for a fraction of a second.
"Yes, my Master. I will prepare for our performance, with your permission."
At Tokiomi's nod of assent, Saber disappeared, leaving the nobleman alone with his wine… and his worries.
Risei should have checked in by now.
"I envy you, in a way."
Caster's voice shocked Irisviel enough that she nearly dropped the laptop computer in her hands, barely catching it with an audible sigh of relief.
"How come?" she asked, any sign of her earlier distress gone.
"Well, both you and Mas—Kiritsugu. I envy that you get to at least spend some time with your daughter," he spoke, voice full of longing and melancholy. "You got to watch her grow, spend time with her, show her that she was loved by both of her parents. I can't say the same for Mag—for my daughter."
"You were a father?" Caster shook his head in the negative, looking out the window at Kiritsugu and Ilyasviel, hunting for acorns in the Black Forest.
"I don't deserve to be called her father. Not after what I've done." He turned away from the window and crossed over to the desk, ever-present staff thumping softly on the study's carpeted floor. "So as far as everyone else is concerned, you are to be my Master. Do we know all of our opponents? Are there any that won't fall for Kiritsugu's ruse?"
Irisviel turned from where Ilya had dumped some snow down her father's collar to see Caster paging through the information and dossiers Maiya had put together, a look of concentration present on his scruffy, stern features.
"No, don't answer that," he interrupted. "We're not going to have to worry about Tohsaka or Matou—or was it Makiri?—breaking conduct. Nor will the stiff from Clock Tower try anything. And since there's one more Master still unaccounted for, we only have to worry about… these two."
Caster dropped two folders on the windowsill, a red "CLASSIFIED" stamp emblazoned upon their covers.
"Kotomine Kirei, we know will be dangerous. But the wildcard in this Grail War…" Caster's eyes fell upon Ilya's sneaky expression, the girl's mitten-clad hands hiding a snowball from her father's slight smile.
"It's always the unassuming ones that'll get you in the end. No matter what, we can't take our eyes off of Waver Velvet."
"It was wrong, and you know it. You had no right to do that to those people, especially if they couldn't defend themselves at all. How are you not ashamed of yourself right now? After everything you've told me, I would've thought you were better than to lower yourself to this. Are you going to answer me, or are you just going to ignore me all night again?"
Waver lay facedown on his bed, the pillow pulled tight over his ears in a feeble attempt to block out Rider's voice. Why did he have to get a Servant who was so, so… self-righteous about everything? Honestly, it was just a little bit of hypnosis and memory alteration! It wasn't as if he'd rewritten their entire lives or anything!
"No, only the past few years, but that's bad enough, isn't it?"
"Gwuhaaah!" Waver bolted upright, staring wide-eyed at his Servant, finger pointed accusingly. "Did you just read my mind or something? Isn't that just as bad as everything you just accused me of!?"
Rider's glare was enough to cow Waver completely, sending the belligerent teen back under the pillow again, only this time in hiding.
"No, you were mumbling under your breath. You probably never noticed you tend to do that when you're angry or uptight, but you do, and it lets anybody read you like an open book." Rider sat down at the foot of his bed, dressed in what looked like military officer's casual fatigues, but not that of any army that Waver could think of. "But I'm curious, how is rewriting the past few years of these peoples' lives to make them think you're their grandchild any different than what your hated teacher would do in the same circumstance? Because I'm not so sure I see the difference."
The teen Magus could feel the blood rushing to his head, face turning splotchy from anger. He grit his teeth in frustration, hands white-knuckled. How dare that, that… stupid Servant even think to compare him to Kayneth!? That was like apples and oranges, or, or kumquat and grapefruit!
"Cause it doesn't hurt anybody in the long run! The memory alteration was a weak spell that'll break on its own in a few weeks, and by then the Grail War should be over and we'll have won the Holy Grail! It's just a short period that may or may not have happened exactly like they think it did, and it's not like I took the McKenzie's chickens to do the summoning! I bought those ones at a farmer's market with my own funds!"
Ire spent, Waver crossed his legs and folded his arms over his chest, one cheek puffed out and looking to the side. Rider gave a small hum of contemplation, before promptly popping Waver's morality bubble in one fell swoop.
"You say that there'll be no difference and no way to notice what happened. Well what happens when they see their utilities bills, see their grocery bills, and wonder why it suddenly went up after years of it being the same? You can't go to the companies and hypnotize the executives into believing that they actually charged someone wrongly. That's stealing, technically perjury, and just leads to more problems."
Rider leaned against the desk, arms crossed over his chest, and fixed Waver with a strong glare.
"So how are you going to fix this? Because I'm not helping you out of this mess; you made it yourself."
Waver didn't know how to respond. All he knew was that in the span of maybe fifteen minutes, Rider had sent him from being on top of the world to the bottom of a dung heap.
Man… maybe he was just as bad as Kayneth at times. How was he going to fix this?...
"Doo de doo, gonna sneak into a manor, kill a stuffy bastard, steal everything that isn't nailed down, maybe take a bath in his tub…"
Mere minutes before, the Tohsaka Manor in Fuyuki City was rather tranquil and idyllic. But now, some hooligan had chosen to break the quiet and tranquility and traipse up to the grounds, hands in his pockets, humming to himself, and talking out loud. But to those who were magically aware, who had temporarily augmented their selves, their equipment, or their familiars, a different story played out.
For Servant Assassin had come to play, and there was no telling what would happen.
"Oh? What's this?" Eyes still closed, Assassin leaned over the immaculate lawns of the manor, seemingly taking in the scent of fresh-cut grass. "Well, guess I'll just have to take the long way, now won't I?" Assassin's hand rose to his hat, held it down, and then in one swift motion, he jumped eight feet straight up from a standing start, just barely over the Bounded Field that would have alerted the Tohsaka head to his presence.
"Missed me!" He walked forward, then seemed to suddenly reverse direction while still propelling himself forward—the patented moonwalk, and had promptly avoided another Bounded Field's rotary patrol. A duck here, a lean there, and a moment later Assassin leaned forward on a forty-five degree incline—with his feet still flat on the ground.
"You've been hit by, you've been struck by," a balisong flew into his hand, and in one swift motion he opened the weapon, and stabbed it down into the crystal anchoring the Tohsaka's bounded fields.
"A smooth criminal!"
And then everything exploded.
When vision returned and the dust had dispersed, Assassin could be seen floating in midair, his severed head still set in a grin of success. Impaled upon his person was more than two dozen ethereal blue projectiles, and following the point of origin was a man seated upon an armchair, which was perched atop the veranda over the entryway to the manor's foyer. The silver-haired man clenched his fist, and in that same instant, the ephemeral projectiles littering the dead Assassin's body imploded in a blindingly bright flash, dying down to reveal no trace of the black-suited Servant, or any reminders of his being there.
"I'm amazed. You actually thought you could defeat me."
Without ever leaving his seat, the blue-clad Servant disappeared into thin air, and save for the armchair precariously perched atop the overhang, the night fell back into the tranquility of normality. Small rustles sounded throughout the shrubbery and grounds—the various familiars were returning to their various creators to report on what they'd seen.
And Hisau Maiya made damn sure that she'd caught as much as she could through the lens of her camera.
"Are you sure?" a voice murmured into the phone, excitement discernable through the low volume. "Mhmm, mhmm. Okay, I'll make sure you know where we end up going. I'll see you soon, okay Kiritsugu? Love you! Bye," Irisviel hung up from her cell phone and turned to Caster, a smile wide on her face. "Did you hear? Assassin's dead! It looks like he tried to kill the Tohsaka master, and Archer killed him!"
"Really? Show me the body," Caster fired back. "In my line of work, dead doesn't always mean gone. I'd keep your wits about you, because mark my words, this isn't the last we've seen of Assassin."
Irisviel frowned. No matter what she found out about the Servant that her husband had summoned, she couldn't get a read on him. He was a parent who felt he didn't deserve to be a father, he couldn't go into astral form, and he couldn't create a Territory like most Casters did. He didn't even need a Workshop, and those were the hallmark of a magic-user!
"Irisviel," his voice pulled the homunculus out of her thoughts.
"Yes, Caster?"
"The only scout we have in the city right now is Maiya, correct?" At her nod, Caster continued. "If you can spare some expense, I think I'll be able to get us sources of information spread throughout the entire city."
"Really!?" She turned to him, eyes wide in amazement. "What will you need?"
Caster looked to her, then turned to point at an advertisement in the phone book.
"Extra-large meat lovers pizzas. Twelve of them."
Aaaannndddd CUT!
It seems that in the process of writing this, I received another review, which successfully guessed four of the Servants, partially guessed a fifth, and yet, it still seems that Lancer and Berserker's identities have people stumped.
I hope y'all enjoy the chapter. Read, review, guess at the Servants' identities! Next time, the battle at the docks! Irisviel and Caster versus Kayneth and Lancer. Will Rider still drop in? Shall Tokiomi's Saber make his appearance? How did Assassin survive being beheaded? Will Berserker crash the party? And what are Archer's and Ryuunosuke's murderous exploits now? Find out next time, on Fate/Null Requiem!