Something Wicked This Way Comes

"Well she definitely looks stable," Roman drawled, his voice dripping with sarcasm as he stepped into the abandoned warehouse. Well ... at least it was abandoned now. Two piles of ash sat just inside the doors, right where guards would normally have their posts. There wasn't much doubt what those piles had been, once upon a time – Roman was pretty sure he could see a tooth.

But it wasn't the cremated remains that grabbed his attention. Or the slit hem and shapely thighs of the woman standing next to him. It was the young woman seated in the corner.

She was short and young, somewhere in her mid-twenties at the latest. Mismatched eyes sat beneath mismatched bangs, and every time she blinked, the color changed. First one grey, one brown, then both grey, then one pink and one brown. At least the kaleidoscope eyes matched her hair - half of it was bubblegum pink, the rest a deep chocolate brown.

While that was disturbing enough, it was the blade she carried that caught Roman's attention. It was short and slim, made to stab and pierce and slip between a set of ribs, and currently covered in blood.

"Lemme guess. She's the witch, so you're the wannabe Jack-the-Ripper?"

The young woman met his eyes. She held them, unblinking, her head cocked to the left. Then she grinned, raised the blood-soaked blade to her lips, and ran her tongue down the flat of the blade.

"Yeah," Roman rolled his eyes, fingers drumming on his cane. "A paragon of sanity."

"I wouldn't go that far," the black-clad woman said, her voice a low, menacing purr. "Unstable, yes. Violent, absolutely. But she's focused enough to set to a task, so long as you keep it simple."

Roman sighed and followed the witch deeper into the room. Taking a seat on one of the shorter crates, he watched as ... he really needed a better name for this woman than 'Caster.' He watched as the witch took the blade from the small woman's hands. Without a second look, she ran her fingers down the sword, gathering the blood into her hand before kneeling down and beginning to draw intricate circles on the concrete floor.

"So she must be one of these ... 'Servants' you keep talking about," Roman asked, paying only half attention to the darker woman. "Just like you?"

"Hardly," Caster said, finishing the circle and using the blood to write something in a blocky script that looked like runes. "She's a failed experiment. When the priest's command seals stopped me from killing him, I tried to get around the problem by summoning a Servant of my own. Assassin wasn't summoned yet, so I called for this one in its place."

"And?"

"And what?" Caster spared him a glance before going back to her work. "She's a failure. An unbalanced mix of historical fact and legend, barely capable of holding itself together. Not like the stable incarnations the Holy Grail produces."

"Right. The 'Grail.'" Roman drawled. Well, if she was going to insist on this 'Holy Grail' nonsense and her little magic act, he might as well play along. "That why she hasn't said a word yet?"

A small smile flickered across the witch's mouth. "Go ahead, Assassin. We shouldn't leave him wondering."

The smaller woman came to her feet with one smooth motion. Smiling sweetly, the petite little figure cocked her finger at Roman, beckoning him forward. With a long-suffering sigh, Torchwick stood and walked over to the little lady. Then she opened her mouth.

Roman was incredibly glad that he never ate before a heist. As it was, he just barely managed to keep his stomach from spewing bile when he looked into that dark ... he couldn't call it a throat. The inside of Assassin's mouth was a mass of scars – angry violent lines that crisscrossed the inside of her cheeks, surrounding a short stubby thing that might have been part of a tongue. Burn marks covered what scar tissue didn't, off-white and sickly-looking.

Torchwick's business wasn't what anyone would call a conventional one. Or a particularly safe one. There was always the risk of a client not being 'satisfied' with a thief's efforts. Or taking offense if a job didn't turn out the way he or she wanted. Roman had seen the effects of torture before, seen the scars, the little puckers from electrodes and the dark red dots of needles. If he was a betting man – and he was, when he knew it was fixed in his favor – he would have bet a very large sum that someone had shoved a burning coal into this woman's mouth. After they'd chopped off her tongue.

"Well," he sighed, absent-mindedly swinging his cane by his side. "Someone definitely did not like you."

"You're following me."

"Of course I am." Weiss glared over at the black-haired woman, her shorter legs pumping to keep up. Blake seemed determined to get away from the school as fast as possible – which was fine – but it meant Weiss had to take two steps for every one of hers.

Apart from them, and the tall figures keeping pace behind the two girls, the street was completely deserted. The late hour, and the lack of other people meant each step echoed as Weiss' school shoes clattered against the concrete, a fast little click-clack as she tried to keep up with the taller girl.

"We can't just work together against an enemy Master and go our separate ways." She forced herself to breathe normally. The spells she had cast earlier already had her a little out of breath, but there was no way she was going to show any signs of weakness. Not now. "We need to make a plan, decide what our next move will be."

Blake came to a halt, her spine ram-rod straight as she turned. She looked over her shoulder, her golden eyes locked on Weiss, intense and piercing.

"Why did you want a truce?"

"I told you," Weiss said, fighting the urge to pant. "To take out Rider."

Blake snorted. "Her Master could barely keep a shield spell running. Long as someone kept the redhead distracted, either of us would wipe the floor with him." Turning all the way around, Blake narrowed her eyes, leaning forward just enough to make Weiss very aware of the difference in their heights. "So, why exactly do you need me?"

It took Weiss a second to answer – a second she bought by making a show of fixing her hair.

"Because this isn't about him," she said, once she was sure her voice wouldn't waver. "You're right. I know him. In a fair fight, he wouldn't stand a chance against me. Or you. He doesn't have the talent to summon a Servant on his own. Or provide enough mana to keep her stable."

"... you think someone's helping him."

"I know someone else is helping him," Weiss shot back. "Which means that I'm not just facing a Servant and an incompetent mage. I also have to deal with whoever is smart enough to use him as a decoy. And I'd rather have someone on my side for when Rider's real Master shows up."

Blake just looked at her for a second, narrowed eyes flicking back and forth as she stared into Weiss' face. Finally, she sighed and pulled away, turning back to the road.

"Any idea who that is?" she asked softly as Weiss fell into step beside her.

"... it could be anyone," Weiss said after a moment. To be fair, it wasn't technically a lie. It could hypothetically be anyone, even if she did have a damn good guess who it was. "The Arcs are an old family, even if their magic is dying out. They probably have a few favors they can cash in."

Blake huffed and kept moving, slipping down side streets until she came to the edge of the residential district. They walked in silence for a while, passing housing developments and apartments, Archer and Berserker leaping up onto the rooftops when a late night drunk stumbled out onto the street.

Every so often, Weiss stole a glance over at the other Master. Long black tresses flowed behind her, bouncing with every other step she took. She moved like a woman on a mission, not tense or stiff, but there was something about the way she carried herself. Relaxed, but ready. Yellow-gold eyes stayed locked on the road ahead of them, darting back and forth as she scanned the street for any more potential attackers. Gold eyes that ...

Weiss swallowed and looked back at the road. This isn't the time.

"I don't suppose you have any idea who Rider is," she hissed, needing something to break the silence.

"She's Greek, obviously," the dark-haired girl said, still looking ahead. "An Amazon?"

"Maybe. But the only Amazon I know off the top of my head is Hippolyta."

"I didn't see a girdle," Blake said, her voice dry. "Maybe he got lucky and summoned Diana Prince."

"Don't get cute," Weiss snapped, glaring up at the taller girl. "Unless we figure out who Rider actually is, her Noble Phantasms might turn out to be more than Archer or Berserker can handle. Especially when neither of them remembers who they are."

"And there's still Assassin to deal with," Blake growled. "Don't suppose you've seen Caster, Lancer, or Saber yet."

"Saber is with the Einzbern clan. I don't know who they sent, but that was the rumor going around."

The dark-haired woman gave a quiet hum, and kept walking, lost in her thoughts until they finally stopped in front of the gated entrance to her home. A long wall edged with stone ran the length of the property, ending in an old gatehouse in a local, eastern style. It took Blake a few seconds to find the key and slide it into the lock, heaving until the gate door slid open.

She stepped into the yard, Berserker right behind her, only to turn and find Weiss tapping her foot on the other side of the gate.

"Aren't you going to invite me in?" the shorter girl said, scowling.

"... excuse me?"

Weiss gave an exasperated little sigh. "Splitting up gives Rider, or Assassin, or whoever else two isolated targets. If we stay together, we make it that much more difficult for them to get to us."

Blake nodded, but Weiss could tell she still didn't quite understand. "That's why we walked back together, but ..."

"And all we did was agree that Rider has someone else pulling her strings. That's hardly a plan," she snapped. "We need a real strategy, and your place is as good as any."

"So why exactly do I need to invite you in?"

Weiss rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. Seriously, she thought, what about this is hard to understand?

"Because I'm staying here, you dolt."

"Nice shot back there." Berserker said, glancing over the edge of the roof at the two young women walked into the house, bickering quietly. "How'd you know I'd deflect it?"

Archer looked over at her ... well, Berserker was fairly sure she did. It was hard to tell with the white and red mask hanging down over her face. "Lucky guess."

Berserker laughed. The chances of that happening were slim to none at best – there was no way Archer could have known that she would react in exactly that way, that the blonde wouldn't have taken it as just another attack against her. "Hey, I know this'll sound weird, but do I know you?"

"Why do you ask?"

"I don't know, it's just ..." the blonde trailed off, keeping one ear open for the sound of the two girls talking in the house below. "I can't shake the feeling I've fought with you before. When you used that fake-out on Rider, I knew what you were doing. Even through the haze, I knew to ricochet that shot back at her."

"You have good instincts."

"Yeah," Berserker nodded, a wry smile cutting across her mouth. "But this isn't the same. We've fought beside each other before, haven't we?"

Archer stared at Berserker for a moment before shaking her head. "No. I'd remember."

Berserker sighed from frustration and nodded. It made sense. She might not know her name, or which one of them she'd been summoned as, but the blonde still had her memories. Most of them anyway. Maybe she wouldn't remember the red-clad servant right off the bat, but after fighting together ... she was definitely familiar. She should know who Archer was. Then again, no one from her home had ever dressed like that.

Berserker took her eyes off the yard for a moment, and looked over at the Schnee Servant. She just couldn't shake the feeling that she knew this woman. Plus ... there was an odd look to the eyes behind that mask. Something ... off.

The dark-haired Servant cleared her throat. "It's ..." she started, trailing off as she stared out at the surrounding houses.

"Hmm?"

"Nothing." Archer shook her head, a quiet chuckle coming from behind her mask. "Maybe we knew each other in another life."

"Maybe," Berserker nodded, staring at the city. "My people had a few legends about that sort of thing. They said that souls can sometimes be born again, given new life, a new chance to ... not fuck up as badly."

"And you believe that too?"

The blonde warrior let out a short little laugh, the sound completely devoid of humor. "Never really had much choice."

Writer's Note: And we're back. Anyway, please leave a review if you can - it always makes my day to see 'em, and I like to hear what people thought.