Fate Stay Night - Medea Caster route

by AquilaBosniaca

You've read the title, this is Caster route. What would have happened if that night the one to save Caster had not been Kuzuki, but Shirou Emiya? Just how would Shirou change at the discovery of the Holy Grail War? How would Shirou change Caster? And how much would someone like Caster change Shirou? (Good End- Finished. True End- Work in progress)

32. Chapter 32

*1 month later*

'...Yes… This is quite good.' Kiristugu thought after he opened the gun case.

It was a quiet spring afternoon, and at the moment Kiristugu Emiya was alone in the dojo of the residence. What the man was now looking at was the new gun that had arrived earlier that day, his custom-made Magnum Research BFR single-action revolver in .40-75 Government. An 'experimental' gun. The first of its kind.

To obtain this weapon Kiritsugu had to get busy since he had to indirectly contact the facility that could produce them, pay them a very generous sum to finance the project and the relatively quick construction of the gun, and instruct them in modifying the weapon in a way it could fit him best.

He still remembered how when he was looking for handguns that could shoot rifle cartridges, before he had decided to settle for the Thompson Contender, one of the 'normal' handgun of the highest caliber was the .500 Linebaugh, which had been created in 1986 by the American facility Magnum Research. But in the last years, as he tried to keep himself updated on the most cutting-edge weapons, he had heard some rumors that the same facility was interested in making handguns that could shoot rifle rounds, possibly, of the same caliber as his Origin bullets.

But in the end, after he had contacted the facility, he had decided to finance the construction of a gun that used the .45-70 Government instead of the .30-06 Springfield, the kind of bullet his Thompson contender used. He did so because in his circumstances the .45-70 would have been 'more powerful' and would have a better performance.

While the .30-06 is faster and delivers more energy at distance than the .45-70, at shorter distances the .45-70 delivers more energy than the .30-06. This caliber is used to hunt large-sized animals such as bears, mooses, buffalos, and bison, and often it takes only one shot to kill them. For this reason, Kiritsugu did not doubt that these bullets had the necessary power to penetrate the armors of the Einzbern's homunculus and be able to kill them.

There was to say that the trajectory of the .45-70 Government has a very accentuated parabola that makes it suitable for hunting only in short-range shooting, but it must be also said that the ammunition has earned a good reputation for precision even in long-distance shooting, where however the residual powers leave something to be desired. But that was not something Kiritsugu had to be preoccupied about, since for the halls of the castle it would have been more than perfect.

At that, Kiritsugu took the gun and started to carefully analyze it. Made entirely in stainless steel, and with an overall length of 38 centimetres, a height of 15 centimetres, a cylinder width of 4,5 centimetres, and some other modifications he had asked for, the weight of this gun reached 2,800 grams.

This weapon was 800 grams heavier than his modified Thompson contender... Not that the great weight would be a problem since for him now it weighed nothing.

After examining the gun he turned to his right, where a lonely Dragon Warrior stood at the other end of the building. He loaded the gun with the normal .45-70 rifle rounds, pointed it at his target, and proceeded to shoot it five times. While the bullets were not able to harm the Dragon warrior, they were powerful enough to make it stumble and fall to the ground.

At that point, Kiritsugu lowered his gun before he looked at it for a moment. After shooting it he could tell that thanks to its weight and good balance the handgun was easy to shoot even when using rifle rounds.

Just as it was told by the manufacturer, the gun's quality and accuracy were unparalleled.

It would have been more than perfect for his 'dangerous hunt'.

Being quite satisfied with its performance, he removed the cartridge cases from the cylinder and put the gun back in its case. He would have liked to use it with his Time Acceleration, but the last time he had done so while exercising with a Colt Single Action Army, which had not been enchanted or reinforced in any way, he ended up breaking the gun.

Sure, at the time he had casually shooted all 6 rounds in less than 20 hundredths of a second, but as he had expected, a normal revolver could not withstand that kind of abuse without any kind of magical intervention.

Still, there was no time to waste. He had already seen the combined effect of Medea's reinforcement and his Time Alteration. Doing further tests with a different gun would have been just a pointless waste of time.

Kiritsugu at that point closed the gun case and brought it with him as he got out of the dojo. After some moments, he entered the main building, and then he went to the living room and opened the door. There he found Medea sitting at the table, and next to her there was Shirou, who seemed to be taking a nap as he had his head posed on the table.

"Emiya, what is it?" Medea asked him with a low tone, almost whispering, as she turned to face him.

"I'm ready." Kiristugu quietly answered. "We can leave whenever you want."

"...Huh, don't you want me to first enchant your weapon and test-?"

"No need for it to be tested. And you can enchant the gun while we travel." Kiritsugu quickly told her.

"...As you desire. Just give me some time to prepare."

"How much time do I need to wait before you finish your preparations?" Kiritsugu then asked.

"Not much. I have already finished preparing everything we needed, all I need now is to just… put the finishing touches." Medea said as she got up from the table.

"Which are?"

"I have to obtain a physical body, Emiya. Without it, I cannot leave the city."

"...Right… but let me ask you, forming a contract is not enough?"

"Unfortunately no. Even though with your new circuits you now have plenty of mana, it is not enough to sustain me without the aid of the Grail. Forming a contract and leaving the city would just get one of us killed, if not both."

"How much time will it take?" Kiritsugu then asked.

"Oh, do not worry about that. For tomorrow afternoon we are more than ready to leave."

Kiritsugu remained silent for a moment before he said: "...That's way less than I expected."

"I know, but after all, we've been working on it for quite a while." Medea said.

"We? You mean…"

"Yes. As expected, Zouken's assistance proved to be crucial in the matter."

"...Good. I'll begin to prepare." Kiritsugu then said before he left.

After Kiritsugu left, Medea stretched for a bit before she turned to watch the sleeping Shirou.

She had already informed him that very soon she would have gone away with Kiritsugu for a pair of weeks, and she had already thought of who could take care of him during this period while she was away. At that she quietly got out of the room and closed the door, then she went to the landline phone, where she typed the number of the Tohsaka household and waited for a bit.

"...Hello? Aoi? …Yes, it's me. Do you remember that favor I talked about some time ago?"

---

*Evening of that same day*

Zolgen Makiri was now in his dark basement, and like a madman that toiled surreptitiously in dark rituals, with something closer to fanaticism than attention, he was carefully observing the dissected insect familiar on the table as he was taking some notes under the light of a single lit candle.

From when he had obtained this new kind of familiar, his whole world had changed. He had spent the past hundreds of years creating the best possible familiars that could help him to extend his life, and yet, the specimens that now stood in front of him far surpassed his familiars in any possible and imaginable aspect.

If he said that they were priceless treasures he would not be exaggerating, for this was like receiving the gift of immortality, or rather, something that could help him achieve it.

It had been months, and yet he still could not believe that he had been able to obtain such ancient knowledge and familiars. Unlike his older ones, if he wanted to modify and improve them he did not have to wait for entire generations to start to see the first signs of progress.

These new familiars did not need to breed for they multiplied thanks to a phenomenon similar to mitosis, and that meant that now he could directly modify one of them, and, by that phenomenon, he could immediately increase their number and do further modifications if he saw it fit. This versatility had given him almost an unlimited number of opportunities and options.

But unfortunately, not everything was perfect. Because of the very high mana cost his new familiars had, he now had barely 300 of them, but, their little number mattered little compared to some of the things he had discovered that they could do.

To help him to extend his life his familiar only required mana, and this meant that now he did not need to steal the life essence from other living beings. He could stay hidden in his lair without ever revealing himself or doing something that could ever attract unwanted attention. He now could use all of the time at his disposal to use his new knowledge to become immortal and finally achieve what he always wanted…

But that... had become a problem.

What was he trying to achieve? He could still not remember. His memories were muddled... twisted... distorted… if not outright missing…

That had been another cause of his obsessive study in this last period.

To distract himself from his thoughts, Zolgen had devoted himself entirely to his studies and research. He could discover the reason behind his desire after he achieved immortality… but those lapses of memory still tormented him from time to time.

"Hello Zolgen, how are you doing today?" Medea's image asked as she suddenly appeared behind him.

"Oh, mistress." Zolgen said with a surprised tone as he turned to face her. "I'm fine, thanks. May I ask you the reason for your sudden visit?" He then asked.

"I have come to retrieve the research about your command seals. It is time."

Without saying a word Zolgen immediately turned around and took one of the books present on the table, and then handed it to Medea.

"Here it is. A manuscript of over 400 pages that describes down to the smallest detail all kinds of information regarding the Command seal, their functions, and any possible way that they can be used. I hope that it may turn out useful."

After taking the book Medea leafed through it for a minute or so while from time to time she observed the back of her left hand, where the first set of the command seals she had stolen time ago, and never used, still resided.

After a bit, she closed the book and said: "Do not worry Zolgen, it will. From what I've seen your efforts were not in vain. Still, even if it did not, the simplest piece of advice or information could have also been useful to me." She said as she put the book into her robes. "Anyway, how are your studies progressing?" She then asked.

"They are doing well… but they are not going at my expected pace." Zolgen said with a disappointed tone as he turned to watch his notes.

"What is the problem?" She asked.

"While the familiars you have gifted me are incredibly powerful, I'm having some problems in increasing their number since they are very 'expensive' to make... and most important of all, I'm still not capable of fully comprehending them and utilizing all of their properties. I've yet to uncover all of their secrets."

"...It is a matter of time before you'll find the way to use them to their full potential. You have to remember that our two systems of magic have roughly 2700 years of difference, so it will not be an easy task… but I know that you will not disappoint me." Medea said. "But speeches aside, I have another task for you."

"What is it?" Zolgen asked as he immediately returned his attention to her, ready to hear his next order.

"As I had already informed you, soon I will leave the city, and I will leave Shirou in the custody of Aoi Tohsaka. I'm putting you in charge of protecting him and the family, but obviously, they don't have to know anything. If for whatever reason something should happen and their safety should be put in jeopardy, Shirou will have the absolute priority. And if you should feel that the situation has become far too dangerous, do not bother to save anyone else, just focus on immediately saving Shirou and putting him in a safe place."

"Understood." Zolgen said as Medea's mark appeared on his forehead for a brief moment.

"Good. See what you need to do." Medea's image then said before it disappeared.

After Medea's image disappeared, Zolgen returned to quickly finish his studies before he went to do what he had been ordered, but as he did, he had started to think.

Despite being under her servitude for a couple of months, he still did not know Medea's 'origins'. He still did not know where she had come from and how.

He was one of the three founders of the Holy Grail War, and he was the one that had created the Servant and Master system. That meant that he was the first to know that the max number of Servants that could be summoned during the Holy Grail War under normal circumstances was 7… but not only did he still not know how an eighth Servant could be present without him being aware of it, the greater mystery was how Medea had been able to obtain another set of command seals. The set on which he had conducted their studies.

When making the system he had made sure that only the members of the three families, and the worthiest of mages, would have been able to obtain the command seals… and yet, an eight Servant was present, and she possessed the command seals that gave her the possibilities to summon a ninth.

...But could it be that those, in reality, were her command seals? Maybe she has stolen them from whoever had summoned her… he did not know...

Zolgen knew that the summoning and death of Avenger during the third war had corrupted the Grail, but it should not have broken its system… it should not have changed the way things worked…

At that moment a bitter taste came to Zolgen's mouth, for he had realized that the corruption of the Grail may have made Justeaze's sacrifice useless...

...

...Justeaze…

...oh. Now that was a name he had not thought about for a long, long time…

---

*The morning after*

It was around 6:00 in the morning when Kiritsugu woke.

Immediately after getting up from his bed, he went to the bathroom, and there he washed his face with some cold water before he looked at himself in the mirror.

The time had come, and he was ready.

That day he would leave the city with Medea, and after all those months, his mission to save his daughter would finally start.

Just the sole thought that he would be able to finally see his daughter again almost made Kiritusgu intemperate, and this caused his hands to curl around the sink to the point he caused some small cracks. But he knew he shouldn't get caught up in emotions, and so through sheer force of will, Kiritsugu negated and suppressed everything he felt.

After calming himself, he looked down to watch his hands, then at his arms, and then the rest of his body.

His entire body was chiseled like marble-made flesh. Every single muscle he had became extremely dense and defined that it could be seen beneath his undershirt.

Even though in the last month he had stopped training so that he could focus on mastering his magic circuits as soon as possible with Medea's help, he had kept growing stronger.

As they had expected, continuing to take those concoctions of potions and steroids had been an excellent decision… But as he thought about them, Kiristugu thought that for the occasion he should increase the dosage.

After he finished cleaning himself Kiritsugu got out of the bathroom and returned to his room, where he opened the drawer that kept all of his different 'medicines'. After taking triple the normal dose of steroids, Kiritsugu dressed up, got out of his room, and went to the living room to have breakfast. But around 10 minutes later, after he had made something for himself and he had started to eat, at one point, Medea entered the room.

"Good morning Emiya." She greeted him after she opened the door.

Kiristugu turned to greet her, but before he could, he suddenly stopped. At first, he did not understand why, but as soon as he posed his eyes on her he couldn't help but feel that the woman was very different from the day before…

"What is it?" Medea asked as she noticed the way Kiritsugu was looking at her.

"...You seem… diverse."

"...Oh? Is it that obvious?" Medea asked as she started to look at herself with a satisfied look.

"...You have already obtained a physical body?" Kiritsugu then asked.

"Yes, I did. I've completed the ritual tonight, and it turns out that it was not that difficult to obtain it. All I needed to do was to retouch some parts of the Command seals I had, give them a bit more energy, and when I was done I simply used them to give myself a body. That was it." Medea said. "...But you know, something quite interesting happened after I reincarnated."

Upon hearing her the first thing Kiritsugu wanted to ask her was just where and how she had found a set of Command Seals that she could use, but he knew that he would not have a concrete answer. For this reason, he just asked her: "What happened?"

"You see Emiya, now that I have freed myself from my Servant vessel, it seems that I have fully reobtained all of my previous abilities. The same that I had in life."

Kiritsugu remained silent for a moment before he sharpened his eyes and said: "I guess that it is an excellent thing, but what does that mean for us?"

"...Hmm, there are many things that I could say, but I know that you will only be interested in one… Emiya, do you remember how my 'legend' went?"

"I don't remember all of its details, but I somewhat remember what happened."

"Good enough. Now tell me, what happened toward the end?"

"...The end? When Jason returned home from the royal palace?"

"After that. Right before the story ended. Before I flew away with my grandfather's chariot."

"..." Kiritsugu remained silent as he thought, carefully choosing his words.

"Before I left, what did I tell to Jason?"

"...As he was powerless to stop you, Jason had started to beg the Gods and the Erinyes to avenge him… while you…" Kiritsugu started to say before he fell silent, but after a bit, his eyes widened in surprise, and slowly he turned his head to look at her. "...You told him how he would have died decades in the future... you prophesied that he would have died a miserable death in his dilapidated ship."

"Exactly, and now that I'm free from that vessel that limited my powers, I have retained my clairvoyance. Once again I'm able to see the future." Medea said as her eyes shone with mystical energies. "...But while I do clearly remember never foreseeing how Jason would have died, and him taking his life shortly after I left, I think that this discrepancy in my memories is caused by the fact that I have been summoned after a different aspect, or version, of my story. Still, now that I have got rid of my vessel that represented that version of myself, and obtained a body, I have regained all of my original powers."

Kiritsugu had remained silent as he kept watching Medea with a speechless expression.

"...I know what you're thinking. I know what you want to ask me. And I'll tell you right here and now. Emiya, it is just a matter of time before you will be hugging your daughter." Medea then said with a sympathetic tone.

A long moment of silence passed before Kiristugu got up from his seat and asked: "...A… Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure, for I've seen it." Medea answered in a calm, almost comforting tone as she looked at the man.

"..."

Upon hearing those words, and realizing what they meant, a thrill of sheer euphoria that he had never felt before for how intense it was, went through Kiritsugu's spine… but after that brief moment of solace, everything just stopped, and ruthlessness invaded the entirety of Kiritsugu's being.

The truth was that doubt and terror had greatly afflicted Kiritsugu's very soul all this time long.

Deep down in himself, Kiritsugu had always feared that something could have gone terribly wrong. For each day that passed, a fear that something could have happened to Illya before he could even reach her arose. The terrifying thought that he would have never been able to save his daughter tormented him every day, almost every moment…

But now this fear that he had always felt, in a single moment, had turned into indescribable anger and grudge.

Now that he knew for certain that he would be able to save her, nothing would stop him.

No one would stop him from taking what was rightfully his. No one would stop him from doing the right thing for once in his life.

He will make sure that the future will be the same one that Medea had envisioned...

…No matter what he had to do.

"There is no reason to be so... agitated. Sit down and return to eat calmly Emiya, for we have nothing to worry about…" Medea said with a confident smile as she watched the man.

---

*Early afternoon*

"Do you really have to go?" Shirou asked again as he was clutched at her skirt, while he watched for some sort of sign from Medea that she would change her mind and remain with him.

"Shirou, I'm very sorry, but I've been telling you for a while. I have to go with Kiritsugu." Medea told him as she gently caressed his head. "But you do not have to worry. I'll be back in two weeks." She said to reassure him.

"...Really?" He asked.

"Yes."

"...But two weeks is a really long time…" Shirou then murmured as he looked down.

"I know, I know, but I swear that if I can I will come back sooner." Medea then said as she took Shirou in her arms to comfort him a little.

From when she had first told him that she would have gone away for a time, Shirou always seemed very disquiet. By observing this reaction of his, Medea had started to think that Shirou may have developed some kind of abandonment issue after the incident. Knowing that she, his role model and the only family he had left, would have gone away from him caused Shirou to feel unrest, and possibly, even a certain amount of irrational fear.

She knew that it would have been better if she went to help Kiritsugu when Shirou would grow a little older and more stable, but there was no time. Now that everything was in place it was better to just finish everything about Illya and his father as soon as possible... And it was not that she was about to leave him home alone...

"Aoi, as you can see Shirou is quite…-" Medea started to say as she turned to face the other woman.

"I understand, you do not have to worry." Aoi said as she watched the child in Medea's arms. "I'll take care of him as best as I can."

"...Again, thank you for this." Medea then said after a moment.

As Medea looked at Aoi, she started to think.

While the woman was not as devastated as the time she had brought Sakura back, Aoi did still look quite tired and depressed. Not that she was surprised about that, but what Medea had been surprised at instead had been Aoi herself.

Around two weeks before, Aoi had suddenly called her in the middle of the night, asking with an urgent and worried tone for her help regarding Sakura, who according to her had started to suffer from a strange malaise.

Medea immediately went to the Tohsaka Mansion, and in a short time, she had been able to solve all of Sakura's troubles. After examining her, she discovered that it was nothing serious as Sakura had just a slightly high fever, which had been the main cause for all of her troubles.

After doing all of her final checks on Sakura, Medea went to the overly worried Aoi and explained to her that it was nothing she had to be too worried about since what Sakura had was just a normal fever. The girl just needed a good rest.

At that, she was about to go away and leave the child to Aoi's care, but then Aoi suddenly stopped her and asked her to remain a little longer. When Medea asked her the reason for this request, Aoi remained silent for a moment before she said that she wanted to confide in someone.

And suddenly, Medea found herself listening to Aoi.

She was sitting on a chair in the sitting room as she was listening to the other woman talking. The subjects of Aoi's complaints were vague. At one point Aoi would talk about her daughters, then she would switch on to how everything for her was too difficult, and then to how the guilt of her actions was almost unbearable…

As she listened to her Medea was not surprised about the mental state of the woman. Aoi had recently recovered from her brain-damaged state, and after she did she realized that she had suddenly found herself alone, a widow, who by herself had to take care of her two daughters, one of which was in 'terrible conditions' because of her and her husband, and the guilt she felt for it was tremendous. As she listened to the woman's lament, Medea could not help but wonder if they had some kind of inheritance with which they could support themselves.

In the end, after she finished talking and had calmed herself a bit, Aoi ended up thanking her for her time and help.

To say that Medea was somewhat confused by Aoi's behavior would have been an understatement. Despite their meeting, and interactions, from what she could tell Aoi did seem pretty grateful to her, and it did not seem that she was scared of her like the first times they had met.

Since she was a bit curious, at the time Medea asked Aoi what she thought about her, and Aoi said that for all she cared, Medea was the person who saved Sakura. That was the only thing that mattered to her.

After listening to that, Medea did start to understand Aoi's reasoning. In the end, she had really ended up saving her and her family from terrible fates, but it still did not change the things she had forced Aoi to do.

At that Medea asked her what kind of resentment she had against her for forcing her to 'slander' Tokiomi and lie to her daughters, but to her surprise, Aoi admitted that she had no kind of resentment against her and that the less she thought about that subject, the better. She now just wanted to make up for all the wrongs she had done to her daughters. She had no time to waste thinking about what had happened in the past… she had no time for regrets… no time to think of what she and her husband had done…

Upon hearing those words Medea sensed that the woman was not lying, Aoi was telling her the truth... But she thought that there was something else that Aoi was not telling her.

In the month she had spent healing the woman, Medea had gotten quite familiar with her mind. And at that point, by using a little bit of magic, she reached deep into her thoughts, and 'saw' what Aoi was actually thinking.

Deep down in herself, Aoi thought that by forcing her into that situation Medea ended up doing her a favor in the long run. If after Sakura's return she had not told anything to Rin, one day her daughter would surely pretend to know the truth behind everything that had happened, and there would have been a good chance that she would have never mustered the courage to lie to her…

And never did Aoi want to know what Rin's and Sakura's reaction would have been if she told them the truth.

But after telling her daughter all of those half-truths and blatant lies, Aoi would not be surprised if Rin would never want to talk about that subject ever again, even when she would grow up. And she knew that she had not to worry about Sakura discovering or doubting anything, since Medea had convinced her that she and Tokiomi had been forced to give her away against their will.

Of course, Aoi did wish to tell them. A part of her did want her daughters to know the truth, of how their terrible mother was also responsible for what happened to them... But she knew that this knowledge was too dangerous. Sooner or later, it would tear her family apart.

But the day Sakura had come back, and Medea had given her that 'ultimatum', Aoi ended up making a clear decision: Her daughters had the priority over everything.

And now, all of that, was her burden to carry.

Seeing that the woman had no kind of resentment against her, and actually believed that she had helped her, Medea thought that she too could be useful to her.

And that had been the moment where Medea had asked Aoi if she would be willing to take care of Shirou when she would go away with Kiritsugu for a time.

At first, Medea was thinking of having Taiga and her family look after Shirou, but introducing him to the entirety of the Tohsaka household would have been a much wiser decision as she could use such an occasion as an excuse to make Shirou meet the two sisters.

After listening to her request, Aoi seemed to be quite happy at the thought of having Shirou around her daughters.

Whenever she had asked Sakura about her residence at Medea's house, Sakura always spoke about this other kid, and she had told her mother that he had always been very kind to her. Bringing him to their house would surely have a positive effect on Sakura.

But Aoi also thought that introducing Rin to another child of her age, who could have possibly become friends with her too, could be another good thing. The majority of friends that Rin did have had died in the fire, so meeting a new kid who Sakura already knew would be excellent.

Aoi did want her daughters to have a tranquil and normal childhood now that it was possible, and having some friends was the first step toward that direction.

At that, Aoi told her that she would be more than happy to help her…

"Anyway," Aoi said, making Medea snap out of her thoughts and return to the present. "Is there something else you need to tell me before you leave?"

"No. Other than the nightmares I told you about there is not much to say. Shirou always does what he is told, and he is quite a good kid. Isn't that right?" Medea then asked him.

Shirou just silently nodded.

"C'mon Shirou, don't sulk. I'll come back soon. I swear." She said as she kissed him on the cheek. "And when I come back I'll bring you some presents."

"...I don't want any presents. I want you to remain with me." Shirou muttered discontentedly as he looked down.

Upon hearing those words Medea just smiled a little as she had to keep her composure, but deep down in herself, a cascade of wonderful emotions suddenly hit her.

The sense of belonging that Shirou gave her, his dependence upon her, and this adorable way of his did nothing but make her always feel an incredible bliss.

The wonderful things that Shirou would make her feel sometimes were almost indescribable. And she needed much more of this. Much more.

At that Medea hugged him closely and said: "Once I come back from this trip I swear that I'll never leave you ever again."

"Really?" Shirou asked.

"Yes. Really."

At that, Medea took the suitcase that had all of Shirou's belongings and gave it to Aoi. Then she let Shirou down and told him both to behave himself and to be kind to the two sisters, before saying goodbye.

As Medea walked away, both Shirou and Aoi wished her a good trip, before they turned and entered the home.

And there Shirou met for the first time Tohsaka Rin, who with arms crossed was standing in front of Sakura, almost as if she was shielding her sister from whoever would enter their home.

-

Kiritsugu at the moment was in the car that was parked in front of the gates of the Tohsaka mansion, and he had been waiting for Medea to return for a while.

As he sat in the car, Kiritsugu could not help but feel a bit impatient.

Even though Medea had predicted that he would be able to save Illya, he now was still feeling the very strong urge to… act.

He now just wanted… no, he needed to go. He needed to arrive at the castle as soon as possible.

But he knew that haste was a poor counselor and that such behavior could be damaging, so, to calm himself a bit he had started to smoke.

At one point, while he was watching the car roof as he smoked the cigarette, the passenger door opened and Medea entered the car, and immediately Kiritsugu snapped out of his thoughts.

After he had started the car Kiritsugu turned to look at Medea for a moment, and he noted the blissful smile she had on her face as she eyed the mansion.

Despite living with them for some months Kiritsugu still did not know what kind of relationship the woman had with the kid, and while he doubted that she was related to him in any way, it had become clear to him that Medea actually cared for him.

As soon as Medea put on the seatbelt he then started to drive.

"So Emiya, how did you organize our trip?" Medea then asked.

"It is nothing too complex." He answered. "Right now we are heading towards the airport of Oitā, where a private jet is awaiting us. And for tomorrow we will land in Stuttgart, a city in southwestern Germany that is not very far from where we need to go."

"How long will this journey take?"

"...First we have to arrive at Oitā, and it will take us around an hour to get to the airport. Then the flight alone, without mentioning the refueling stops, will last around 18 hours. In around 23 hours, we should arrive in Germany."

"Have you already thought about the airport security?"

"Yes. In both airports, we will enter and exit from side entrances to avoid the check-in and anyone from seeing us. But still, your magic to make us impossible to perceive would be handy."

"To what extent should I use it?" Medea then asked. "Do I have to use magic just on ourselves or even on the transport vehicles we will use? And when should I start using it?"

"After we have landed in Germany, use your abilities on the two of us to the fullest if possible. It is fundamental that the Einzbern agents that are scattered throughout the territory do not suspect or notice anything."

"Do not worry, I can guarantee you that no one will expect anything at all. Anyway, once we get there how will we proceed?"

"We will proceed by car to arrive at the mountain district where the Einzbern castle is located, a mountain district near the Rhine. Once we get to the forest, we will proceed on foot to infiltrate. There we should create a small camp, an operative base, where we will organize ourselves and our plans."

"Very well…" Medea said before she looked at the rearview mirror and saw the gun case of Kiritsugu's new gun on the back seat.

At that, she took it, opened it, and after a careful observation she started to consider how she could reinforce the weapon and what other effects to give it.

---

*Hours later*

Some hours had passed from when Kiritsugu and Medea had left Fuyuki City, and recently they had arrived at the airport.

After they got to the parking lot, they got out of the car and quickly entered the airport from a side entrance that had been left open appositely for them. And since Medea had applied magic on herself and Kiritsugu to make them almost unnoticeable to both normal humans and mages, none of the airport staff had bothered them.

As they waited for their jet, Kiritsugu and Medea were alone in a little terminal, one specially made for those who used private flights, and Medea was almost attached to the window as she looked at the planes arriving and flying away.

She would be lying if she said that she had not remained a bit amazed at seeing the planes.

She knew of their existence as when she had been summoned the Grail had given her all the information about the modern world, but seeing them with her own eyes was a very different experience.

As she watched those enormous 'birds of steel', Medea could not help but wonder for what reason modern magi saw the current human technology as something useless and inferior, when wonders such as these existed.

While she would be justified to say such things, as her magic was infinitely close to sorcery and was able to achieve things that humans would never be able to, modern magi had no such justification. And most important of all, she did recognize the merit and talent of the humans and gave them credit where credit was due.

Her 'flight' was not simple flying or floating, but rather something closer to transportation and control of matter. And for humans to achieve something similar without any kind of magecraft or magical intervention was a tremendous feat. From her time, the Bronze Age, human technology had advanced tremendously.

She then really started to wonder if it would be possible to combine her ancient magic with the most advanced technology, and what kind of results it could have.

Kiritsugu told her how he used his familiars to transport cameras, but what she would rather want to achieve was a union between them…

But before she could think of anything else, she snapped out of her thoughts when she a hostess arrived at the terminal and informed them that their jet was ready.

---

After a flight that lasted around 19 hours, Kiritsugu and Medea landed at Stuttgart. After getting off the plane they reached the parking lot, where a jeep left by some of Kiritsugu contacts waited for them.

They got into the car and then drove to Karlsruhe, another city in southwestern Germany that was not very far from Stuttgart. That city in particular, used to have arms factories, and while they were not in function anymore, there were still some articles that made Kiritusgu stop in the city for a while.

After buying some equipment, they resumed their travel and went to Nord-ovest, where the castle was located. And after some hours of driving, they arrived at their final destination.

"Now, these are some quite impressive bounded fields." Medea thought aloud, as she got out of the jeep and observed the bounded fields that extended for kilometers and covered the whole forest.

As she observed the scenery she could feel that the air around the entirety of the territory was filled with magical energies. This would be more than perfect for her as she could exploit them to use some of her most powerful spells.

"While the family is not as powerful as it used to be in the past, all the types of defense systems that Einzbern do possess are some of the best that the current millennium can offer. The castle and its territory are protected by powerful Bounded Fields, evil spirits, potent familiars, dangerous beasts, and artificial harsh weather. It can be considered a natural fortress that requires little maintenance, and in fact, few are the places that have a defense that can be compared to this."

"...Good to know. Now, how do you think we should proceed?"

"The first thing we have to do is to penetrate all of the bounded fields without damaging them and activate their alarm system. Of course, I entrust this task to you." Kiritsugu said.

Letting Medea, a Mage from the Age Of The Gods, handle this task would have saved an incredibly huge amount of time, and reduced the risk of them being discovered to 0.

"In half an hour I should take care of them all." Medea said. "Then?"

"Since you're still a supernatural entity I do not think that the harsh weather will bother or have any effect on you, but…"

"When we will create our base I'll raise a bounded field that will thermally insulate it, and then I'll raise another one that will camouflage the base with its surroundings. You'll not need to worry about the weather, nor of some sort of sentinels discovering us." Medea said. "Then? What else do you suggest?"

Kiritsugu opened his mouth to speak again, but when he suddenly remembered something, he stopped and remained silent for a moment before turning to watch Medea.

"...Because of your abilities, you know what needs to be done…" Kiritsugu then started to say as he thought.

"Yes, I do." Medea confirmed.

"...If you already know, then why are you asking me what should be done?" Kiritsugu then asked.

"It is because this is your mission, not mine." Medea answered. "Emiya, you have come here to rescue your daughter, and I am here to assist you in this endeavor. Just because I have a certain set of abilities you should not expect me to take the lead in this operation."

Kiritsugu remained silent for another moment before he said: "...I understand what you're saying, and you're right. It is my mission. It is my duty to save my daughter. But I think that there is another reason for you to act like this…" Kiritsugu insinuated.

"And you are correct." Medea quickly confirmed. "You see Emiya, the future is not carved in stone, for through 'enough' alterations, it can be changed. At the moment I'm making sure to remain on the sideline, and not do or say anything that could alter in any way possible the future I foresaw. According to my premonitions, everything will go according to our expectations, and there is no need for that to change. I hope you understand that I'm not refraining from telling you vital information on a whim."

"...You're saying that if I come to know something about the future, I could alter it?" Kiritsugu then asked, genuinely curious.

"Not really. But knowing what is next to come could possibly make you take a different 'path' from the 'predetermined' one, for it could be better and more convenient. And as you may understand, the unpredictable events those changes, even if little, could later cause could prove to be… possibly counterproductive. Something that we want to avoid at all costs."

"I see… I must go in blind." Kiritsugu said as he turned to watch the dense forest.

Now he understood why Medea had refrained from telling him anything at all other than the successful rescue.

According to her premonitions, their victory was assured, and rightly so, there was no need for things to change even in the slightest. But it seemed that this 'plan' to work required him to remain 'ignorant' about future events, but he did not have any kind of problem with it. The only thing that mattered to him was to reach his final goal.

"Now that we made things clear, let us waste no more time." Medea then said as she started to work on the bounded fields.

Kiritsugu just nodded, as he now knew the respective role that the two of them had.

---

*2 days later*

Two days had passed since Medea and Kiritsugu had first arrived in the Einzbern territory.

After Medea had quickly penetrated the bounded fields, they had carefully scoured the territory to find a good spot not very far from the castle where they could make their base. After finding the spot with the help of Medea's Dragon warriors, Kiritsugu had set up their base, a military tent, and after he had done so Medea raised all of the bounded fields that she retained to be necessary.

After they made their base, their preparation began soon after.

Since Medea had to 'let' Kiritsugu have full control of the operation to not interfere with the future she saw, it meant that Kiritsugu could do whatever he wanted, he had basically carte blanche, so he followed his usual methods.

Their preparation had been meticulous and intense, to say the least. Thanks to Medea's divination and her familiars, Kiritsugu had been able to study his targets, learn everything he could, and analyze all the possible approaches. All of this, without ever being discovered or needing to approach the castle and putting himself in danger.

In those two days, they had ascertained the defenses of the castle and its potential weaknesses. They had ascertained the existing thaumaturgical gap between them and the Einzbern. And they had ascertained their overwhelming magical and martial superiority over their enemies.

The Einzbern did have a considerable numerical superiority, but against him and Medea, their numbers were meaningless.

There was also to mention that the majority of the homunculi that were present in the castle were not models made for combat, but mages and alchemists that were created for the research of the Third Magic, and that would have made things just easier.

But in those two days, the most important discovery had been Illya's location.

Through her divination, Medea had been able to find Illya, and through her crystal ball, she had shown Kiritsugu his daughter in her room. The immense feeling of relief Kiritsugu felt when he saw Illya being mostly unharmed had been indescribable… but as much as he wanted and needed to go and save her right then, he had to first make the castle a secure place.

When talking about this subject with Medea they both came up with the only possible solutions: Kill all of the homunculi, or find a way to control them and make them neutral.

Both of them agreed that to kill them all would have been a waste of time… even though it would have been the more convenient option if they wanted to eliminate every trace of their passage, as they would have eliminated every witness and burned everything to the ground.

But they decided to think about what to do about all of the homunculi only after they had rescued Illya.

When Medea then started to wonder how they could make the homunculi non-hostile, Kiritsugu informed her that as the head of the family Jubstacheit commanded all of the homunculi and had absolute control over them. And so, their second most important objective had become to locate Jubstacheit and to take control of him.

But this task had revealed itself to be a bit problematic. When Medea started to look for Jubstacheit, she had realized that he was a golem, an artificial intelligence made to control the entirety of the castle and its inhabitants, and since he was fused with the building, it was difficult to pinpoint his location.

But as soon the problem presented itself, the solution came to them. There was a good chance that they would be able to find him once they would start their attack. As he realized that they were being attacked, Jubstacheit would surely command the other homunculi and start to order them on what they had to do and how to act, and when that would happen, Medea would trace back the signal and find the man's location.

Everything was ready. His target was in sight. Now all that Kiristugu needed to do was a flawless execution.

Kiritsugu at the moment was in the military tent, waiting for Medea to contact him. She had gone in advance to sabotage the Einzbern, but also to eliminate everything that could pose him any kind of threat between their encampment and the castle, so that it could be easier for him to reach it.

Once she would contact him, he would reach the castle and start their attack. But as he waited for her, he had been preparing his equipment.

He was now wearing a German Schneetarn snow camouflage, and when he would go out to attack the castle he would wear a balaclava to hide his face. It was fundamental that the Einzbern did not immediately learn his identity until Medea would reach Illya and secure her in her room.

While the snow camo he was wearing had the only function to make him not get spotted until he got close enough to the castle, the suit he had underneath had been reinforced by Medea with the function to protect him. Said suit had been enchanted with great care in the past months, and while it made him almost invulnerable to the physical attacks of the homunculi, it would not do much against the magical ones, so when fighting Kiritsugu's priority was to individuate the mages and kill them before they could cast their spells.

But there would be an image of Medea with him during the assault, she would be there to reinforce him, and to also apply a magical shield that would protect him from magic attacks. They were taking no chances.

The rounds he would use against the homunculus were special .45-70 hand-loaded ammunition filled with the maximum amount of gunpowder for truly massive stopping power. Thanks to Medea's reinforcement of the gun, and all other enchantments and upgrades she had applied to it, he did not have to worry about the overpressure of the ammo or any kind of stress he would put on the gun.

As he took the ammo and started to fill his ammo pouches and belts, at one point Kiritsugu took a single bullet and started to carefully observe it as he thought.

Not only was the ammo stopping power unmatched, but their lethality had also increased dramatically thanks to Medea's enchantments, for she had made them even more powerful, and enchanted all of his ammo with his Origins.

It all started around three weeks before when he was speaking about the homunculus of the Einzbern with Medea. They were in the living room, and at the time she had started to ask for information about their enemies…

---

"...are those homunculi that powerful?" Medea then asked him, a bit surprised.

"Yes, they are." Kiritsugu confirmed. "And from what I know even those who are regarded as failures, have enough magical power to pose a threat to the best Enforcers of the Association…. The most powerful organization of modern mages."

"...If the strongest ones are physically strong as Servants… then I do not doubt that they could still pose somewhat of a threat to you even with my reinforcement. But we have to look at the positive side of the situation." Medea started to say. "Homunculi are better defined as 'Magic Circuits with a human form' than people. And If I remember correctly, when we first met, you had a weapon that had a special enchantment that can be deadly for those that use magic circuits."

"...You're right," Kiritsugu said. "My mystic code would be excellent for our situation, but the problem is that it is not the gun itself to be enchanted, but the bullets. And I have a very limited supply of them."

Medea watched the man for a moment before she said: "Well, I could make more of them..."

"I know, but the problem is that my Origin is needed to enchant the bullets."

"...Oh… now I see." Medea said as she understood why Kiritsugu had not already asked her to make more of them. "...Then tell me more about them. I want to know."

At that Kiritsugu started to explain how the bullets had been created from his first and second ribs on both sides being cut off, extracted from his body, ground into dust, condensed with a craft to preserve his soul, and sealed within sixty-six bullets as their core. He then told her how the Origin Bullets, containing part of his soul, actualized his Origin of 'Severing and Binding' upon hitting the target, which he used to sever and bind mages' magic circuits. This would cripple the target, or outright kill it under the right circumstances.

"...and while I do not doubt that you're able to enchant them with the same effect, I do not think that you'll be able to produce a sufficient amount with… our current material." Kiritsugu continued before he looked down to watch his chest and started thinking.

Kiritsugu was not entirely sure if he could afford to remove more ribs from his chest. He was not preoccupied with the fact that it would harm his health, but it could possibly lower his combat prowess, something he wanted to avoid at all costs… but as Medea had guessed his Origin Bullets would be incredibly lethal against the homunculi, they were just too useful to not use…

But as he thought, suddenly, something came to Kiristugu's mind.

"...Medea, could it be that you have some sort of magic that could permit me to regrow bones?" Kiritsugu then asked.

Medea remained silent for a moment before she answered him.

"...Well… yes…" She started to say. "I understand where you're going, and I have to say that it would work. But I find the thought of cutting your bones and regrowing them over and over again to be a bit… barbaric… and unnecessary." She continued with a somewhat perplexed tone at Kiritsugu's idea.

"...Unnecessary? You're saying that there is an alternative?" He then asked.

"Yes, there is one, and it is also way less extreme. To enchant the bullets with your Origin all I will need will be your blood."

"...Just my blood?" Kiritsugu asked. "I'm not an expert… but isn't blood a weak 'vessel' for the soul?"

"No, it is not, but I understand where you're coming from. Many forms of knowledge, magic arts and crafts have been lost in the last millennia, so I'm not surprised that even some of the most common ones have been forgotten."

"...if I remember correctly, the craftsman who made me those bullets said something about how bones were the most optimal component to preserve my soul and actualize my Origin…" Kiritsugu said as his mind wandered back in time.

"Well, I think that it is time for a little lesson." Medea then said. "Before you look at what modern mages retain to be possible, to be correct, or to be more optimal, you should take a look at the past. In the religions of the world, the relationship with blood has been often ambivalent and contradictory. At times this fell within the sphere of the sacred, at others in that of the profane. Blood can be the bearer of life as well as death, and it can be an emblem of purity or impurity. Handling of blood can be prohibited or mandatory, but the fact remains that the value of this gesture is very strong and full of meaning. In many civilizations of my time, blood was considered a constitutive element of the human, animal, and even vegetable soul. For some the blood was where the soul resided; For others, the blood was the soul in liquid form that remained in the body after death, and that through libation had to be set free..."

As Medea kept speaking, Kiritsugu started to understand where she was heading.

"...But the question remains: What is the truth? Why is blood so fundamental? It is because as many in human history have rightly guessed, the life of all creatures, the life of their flesh, their essence, their being, is in the blood." Medea said, before she frowned a little for some reason. "And this is why blood has always been such an important and significant offering to the Gods, for with the blood it was possible to make atonement for ourselves on the altar; For it is the blood that makes atonement for one's life!" Medea said with a strong and strange emphasis.

"..." Kiritsugu remained silent as he did not know what to say. The situation had suddenly taken a strange turn he did not expect.

"...Oh, sorry… I was thinking of something else." Medea said as she snapped out of her thought. "Anyway, where were we? ...Yes, as I guessed, the use of the blood in the creation of certain types of objects is a form of craft that has been lost, but I know how to do it. So if you need those bullets, you'll have to give me some of your blood…"

---

(...Emiya, do you hear me?) Medea suddenly asked telepathically.

"Yes." Kiritsugu said as he immediately snapped out of his thoughts.

(Come to the castle. The preparations are complete.)

Upon hearing those words Kiritsugu frowned and cleared his mind from every unnecessary thought. It was time. The preparations were complete, now he had to persist, and overcome.

At that Kiritsugu immediately put on the balaclava, wore the ammo pouches and belts, holstered his gun, put his combat knife in its sheath, and got out of the tent.

When he got out he noted that the sun was setting and that the sky had started to get dark. The current snowstorm also made it a bit difficult to see, but this was not a problem for him, he still had time to reach the castle before night would fall. And these current circumstances would have just made it more difficult for the guards to spot him from a distance.

For around five minutes he walked through the dense forest and the deep snow, and when he had almost gotten out of it, he stopped as he was able to see the barely illuminated castle in the distance.

As soon as he stopped moving, a transparent image of Medea materialized beside him.

"I successfully sabotaged their communications systems, so once the attack starts the majority of the homunculi, except for Jubstacheit, will be unaware of what exactly is happening. All of the familiars and the traps around the castle have been eliminated as well, so you do not need to worry about them either. Now, all we need to do is to find the old man." She said. "Remember to stick to your role. Attract their attention by roaming around the castle and annihilating everyone you see until I will secure Illya and find the golem. When I've completed my objectives, I'll let you know."

Kiritsugu remained silent as he watched the castle.

"...Anyway, I think you want to know this. As I roamed in and out of the castle I noticed a serious flaw in its defenses: inside of if there are no traps." Medea said. "I think that the Einzbern thought that no one would have been able to enter their castle, and I can't blame them. As you said their defenses were really of the 'best kind', and if those who attacked the castle managed to get past all of the defenses and the guards in and outside of the building, some other traps would surely not be able to stop them. But while there are no traps, there will be many different ambushes waiting for you. Be careful."

Kiristugu did not say anything, and the only thing could think at that moment was that death waited for him in the slightest lapse of concentration.

After yet another long moment of silence, Medea's image turned to watch Kiritsugu.

The mask that the man was wearing concealed from her his expression. But from those vacant eyes alone, which were fixated on the castle in a disturbingly frenzied manner, she could tell what was going on in his mind.

And knowing his absolute lack of restraint and the kind of massacre he was about to commit, she was quite surprised at how calm he managed to look.

'...Poor devils…' She then thought as she turned to watch the building in the distance. '...trapped in their own castle, and forced to fight for their lives…'

Suddenly Kiritsugu started to move, and for a moment she watched him go. Now that the man had returned to health and his physical peak, Medea had been looking forward to seeing the 'Magus Killer' in action, but before she turned fully invisible and started to follow him, Medea's image noted that the snowstorm had suddenly stopped.

---

The guards of the Einzbern were standing in front of the gates of the castle. As it has always been.

Their function was to protect the castle, and open the gates for passage whenever necessary. Nothing else.

Created in the laboratory of the castle, and made with the finest of components and materials, they were some of the best models ever crafted by the Einzbern. They were their vanguard. The first defensive lines of the family.

For their sacred duty, they had been equipped with the finest of armors and weapons that the Einzbern could produce. Their 16th-century German gothic full plate armor had been enchanted to resist physical and magical attacks, and the halberds they were armed with were made of Rhenium, a metal incredibly resistant that is about three times denser than iron, making it far too heavy to be swung around in melee combat for anyone except for them.

To increase their efficiency they had also been built with a short-range mental connection that made it possible for them to communicate with other homunculi near them, this was useful to share information, and to also coordinate their actions.

And since they were homunculi they did not need to eat or sleep. It was for this reason that it was possible for them to always stand in their same position and fulfill their eternal guard until the day they expired.

But there was not much for them to do other than standing in their designated guard place. From when they had been created and replaced their predecessors, no one had ever attacked the castle, and for what they knew, it had never happened before. Not that they cared about it.

But at one point, during their umpteenth watch duty, as they saw the sun slowly setting in behind the mountains on the horizon, the snowstorm ceased, and something immediately put them on notice.

A strange figure, emerging from the forest, had been spotted in the distance by one of the guards.

Sighting herds of wolves or wandering evil spirits were not uncommon, but what was uncommon was the humanoid figure passing through the Bounded Field made to reject all of the entities coming from the forest… without even activating its alarm system.

When the figure had approached close enough that all of the guards could clearly see it, they immediately grasped their halberds with both of their hands and got ready to fight despite the circumstances.

The sight before them was stark.

All of them had been made solely for the scope of combat, so they could somehow tell how strong their foes were, and they knew that the person that was approaching the castle was a threat they could not possibly ignore.

It was a wandering mountain of resentment. Towering. Fierce. Terrible. Something that they could not even hope to defeat on their own.

Immediately all the homunculi tried to contact the rest of the guards present in the castle to warn them of the imminent attack, and to ask for reinforcement. But only when they noted that their communication system did not work, did they realize that the attack, in reality, had already started.

Without saying a word to each other one of the guards with great agility jumped over the gates and ran with great speed to the castle.

At the same time, a majority of the guards immediately started to approach the threat with a pincer movement, while the rest remained still in their position, carefully observing the events that were about to unfold to fully understand the threat of the enemy.

Kiritsugu on the other hand was just silently walking as he watched 15 guards approaching him, while the other 4 remained behind, still in their place.

The noisy rustling of the homunculi armor got louder as they approached him, and his right hand was right on the grip of the gun, ready to spring.

At one point the man suddenly stopped walking, but the guards kept going closer.

As they got closer, with what light was left, the guards saw more clearly the strange equipment the man had. They did not know what exactly it was, but they could deduce that those clothes he wore were some kind of camouflage. But as they kept on advancing and observing him, one of the guards on the left flank suddenly halted, and the rest immediately followed.

That guard in particular, had noted the gun and the ammo on the man's hip.

From the knowledge he had been given when he had been created any kind of modern tool made by humans was not used by mages, as they saw it as something primitive and inferior to their magecraft. But as always there was an exception that proves the rule, and the one particular individual that used such instruments in their world immediately came to his mind as he had been an agent of their family.

From what the guard had come to hear, something strange had happened during the ritual of the Holy Grail War, and Kiritsugu Emiya, their representative, had disappeared without leaving a trace at the very end of the conflict.

The news of his death and failure to win the war had been a hard blow to the entirety of the family…

But if the person that was standing in front of them was truly him… why did he come back now? For what reason? Why was he concealing his identity? And why was he armed?

…He had to let the others know.

After immediately sharing the information and quickly discussing it with the other homunculi through their mental connection, in mere instants, they reached their conclusion and verdict.

The reason did not matter. Regardless of his identity and reason, this person had violated the boundaries of the territory and had approached the castle armed. For this, he had to be eliminated immediately.

After estimating that the target was around 20 meters away from them, in unison, the guards decided tha-

(Emiya, I've almost reached Illya's location. You can start.) The real Medea suddenly informed him through telepathy.

The signal Kiritsugu had been waiting for had arrived…

It was time to perform beyond one's limits.

And in that first moment, as time hung in the air, before any of the homunculi had even the time to realize what was about to happen, Kiritsugu's arm had already accelerated from nothing to inhuman speed, and his gun was already pointed against those who stood in his way.

"Time Alter - Decagon Accel." Kiritsugu chanted without any trace of emotion in his voice.

The thunderous sound that came right after boomed and echoed throughout the entirety of the forest, and at that same time, all 15 of the homunculi that had approached him immediately fell dead to the ground.

The din their armors made as they all fell at the same time was almost deafening, but after all of the noise subsided, silence reigned.

The few homunculi that had remained behind silently looked upon their fallen comrades with what could be described as shock.

The helmets of those guards had been destroyed and almost completely blown up; What little remained of their heads had become an unrecognizable mess of gore; And above their body, a fine red mist hung in the air.

They did not know what exactly had happened, they did not know what kind of weapon or magic their foe had used, but they had seen and felt how all of their companions had died in less than an instant.

Immediately they turned their attention from the corpses of other guards to the man, and they saw how he had not moved from his initial position. He was now standing there, in the same place where he had first stopped, reloading his smoking gun in no hurry. No kind of haste could be sensed in his movements... as if he had all the time he needed.

For the first time in their lives, the homunculi guards felt in danger. Their instinct at the moment was shouting at them to act before it was too late, for what had happened was about to happen again.

Yes, they knew that they stood no chance, but they had to protect the castle from this menace at all costs!

At that, all of them valiantly started to dash toward the man as they hoped to kill him before he could strike again, but that was only a vain, and useless, attempt to prevent the inevitable.

As soon as Kiritsugu finished loading the last bullet in the gun, with cold indifference he chanted those words again.

"Time alter - Decagon Accel."

And at that, Kiritsugu once again accelerated beyond what he had always thought to be impossible.

He raised his head from the gun he had finished loading, and he started to look at his surroundings to see if anything had changed.

His perception had accelerated to the point where everything, except for the homunculi, had stopped moving. He could see snowflakes and leaves that floated in the air being still, completely motionless. It almost seemed that he had stopped time itself.

After seeing that nothing strange had happened and that the number of enemies had not increased, he cocked his gun and turned his eyes toward his enemies, the homunculi.

Even though their movement speed far surpassed that of humans and mages even at their highest peak, to the point where they should have been impossible for him to perceive to the naked eye, for him now they looked sluggish, slow, and weak.

After focusing on the closest targets and deciding who to shoot first, Kiritsugu pointed the gun against them and carefully aimed, before he started to shoot each one of them with surgical precision.

Each time he shot Kiritsugu could see the bullets exiting the barrel of the gun and slowly traveling toward their targets, and if he bothered to wait long enough, he would see the bullets smashing through the visor of the helmet, destroying the head of his target, and blowing up the back of the helmet as blood gushed out of it.

After shooting the remaining homunculi he lowered his gun and once again looked at his surroundings.

"Release Alter." Kiritsugu then chanted when he was sure that everything in front of him had died.

As soon as he said those words the overlapped sounds of gunshots, and his limbs moving faster than the speed of sound, once again caused an explosive blast, and all of the homunculi fell at the same time to the cold hard ground.

From his point of view, time had returned to flowing normally. Now the only thing he could hear was the sound of the wind howling.

As he reloaded his gun, Kiritsugu started to think.

Even with his minimalistic approach, his Time Alteration was still a form of High Thaumaturgy that went far above the level of basic physical enchantment as it caused inconsistencies between the flow of time inside and outside the field present in his body. Once the movement was complete and the field was removed, the natural forces of the world would forcefully adjust the 'incorrect time' present in his body. In order to get back in sync with the normal time flow, adjustments occurring within his flesh greatly damaged him. But thanks to Medea's magic, which itself was on a Higher Plane of Thaumaturgy, infinitely close to Sorcery, Kiritsugu's body was now magically reinforced to the point where these 'fixes' could not even damage him anymore.

After he finished reloading his gun he started to walk through the snow now stained with blood and littered with corpses. And as he was about to reach the gates, an invisible force suddenly slammed them open, and without ever slowing down the man walked through them and kept marching toward the imposing doors of the castle.

In the meantime, the sun had finally set behind the mountains, and a terrible night fell upon the Einzbern castle.

At one point Kiritsugu suddenly stopped walking, and at that, above him, Medea's image suddenly appeared.

After the image raised high in the air she held out her right arm and her staff appeared in her hand. At that, she pointed it to the doors of the castle, and in an instant, she shot a single beam of light that completely vaporized them. After that, she disappeared from the sky and returned to Kiritsugu's side.

Kiritsugu then returned to walk and approached the ruins.

As he got closer to that 'chasm' that Medea had left, he started to hear voices and shouts coming from inside the castle. In them, confusion, fear, and panic could be heard.

He then walked the stairs and then through the smoking rubble, and when he got out of the cloud of smoke and dust, he could see the scenery in front of him.

The entirety of the entrance hall of the castle was now filled with guards shouting orders, and other homunculi following those orders or tending the wounded.

As he looked down and saw some corpses, he deduced that the reinforcements that the guards had requested had arrived, but when they were about to exit Medea had fired her beam, and many of them had been caught by it.

In fact, all around himself, many homunculi had been crushed by the rubbles, while many others had been hit by Medea's light beam and had been almost completely vaporized except for some parts of their bodies.

But as he kept studying his surroundings, something suddenly caught Kiritusgu's eye. At the top of the main stairs that were in the middle of the hall, he noticed a single homunculus that wore armor decorated with gold and had white plumes on his helmet standing there.

Kiritsugu immediately recognized him as a captain or one of the highest-ranking knights of the guards. They were some of the most dangerous beings present in the castle.

But when one of the homunculi passed nerby and noticed him, instantly, everything stopped, and everyone present turned their head toward him. All 30 homunculi present in the hall were now focusing their attention solely on him.

And almost immediately, everyone jumped into action.

Some started to draw their sword, others started to chant their spell, others started to dash toward him with their halberd and lances…

But again…

"Time Alter - Pentadecagon Accel."

And in the blink of an eye, in less than ten hundred of a second, all the homunculi present in the hall had died.

The explosive sound that came immediately after Kiritsugu released his Time alteration echoed through the halls and the castle, and this sound was accompanied by the thud of all the homunculi falling.

The majority of them just lifelessly fell, while those who dashed toward him violently crashed to the ground causing a lot of noise.

But even after all the bodies fell Kiritsugu was still carefully looking around his surroundings as he was ready to spring again.

He looked at every corpse that filled the hall to make sure that they gave no sign of life.

Everything was silent, again.

Just now Kiritsugu had accelerated 15 times the 'normal speed'. If he wanted to, he could go even faster as he could use the Time Alteration to a much greater degree, but he had decided to always limit himself to 10 times the speed except for certain cases like this, where the enemies were far too many. He did not want to spend too much mana and strain himself unnecessarily. While the Time Alter could no longer hurt him, to use it to such an extent did tire him.

After he had ascertained that all of the homunculi had died and that there was nothing else that could pose him any kind of threat, Kiritsugu began to walk again.

---

It had been over half an hour since the attack had started, and Kiritsugu was still wandering through the long corridors of the castle.

Some minutes after the attack had started Medea had communicated to him that Illya had been secured in her room and that she had started her search for the old man.

Everything until now has been going according to the plan, and as he waited for Medea to find Jubstacheit, he kept on decimating the homunculi that still opposed him.

Until now he had effortlessly broken through every kind of formation and defensive line they have put on against him.

The homunculi were not badly organized, rather, they knew exactly what to do and how to act, but no matter what kind of defenses, tactics, strategies, or ambushes they came up with, they could not actualize any of them as they still died as soon as they revealed themself.

From when the attack had started their numbers did nothing but dwindle very rapidly, and Kiritsugu had guessed that this had started to affect the morale of the remaining homunculi as the latest attack seemed to be almost desperate.

Yet he still pressed that advantage.

He gave them no quarter and no mercy. He had to maintain the offensive. He had to break them before he fought them.

It already occurred that he had come across some homunculi that as soon as they saw their comrades dying ran away and barricaded themself inside some rooms.

Since they were not threatening him, and he wanted to send the message that those who surrendered would have been spared, Kiritsugu had let some of them live.

But as he thought about it Kiritsugu had already lost count of how many homunculi he had killed as their number had already gone over the hundreds. And while he did not remember all of them, in that intense half-hour he had fought some outstanding individuals.

Unlike the first one, the captains and the elité knights he had later come across had been 'relatively' difficult to eliminate. They were so incredibly agile and fast that even when he used the time alteration to shoot them they were able to deflect the bullets with their weapons or avoid them, no matter how many times he shot them.

When he realized that he could not kill them with his gun, instead of accelerating further to overwhelm them with bullets to the point where they could not be able to deflect or avoid all of them, he let them come closer.

They may have been faster than his bullets, but they were not faster than him.

And in fact, when they got into his range, with his superior speed Kiritsugu took his knife and swiftly stabbed them in their vital points through the armor joints before they could ever start to react. Or when he had to, with his monstrous strength he would just tear straight through them and their armor. His approach and actions varied according to the situation and the number of enemies.

But until now no one had gotten close to taking his life. Each encounter had tended to last less than a second.

At one point as he wandered aimlessly through the castle, Kiritsugu had found himself in a four-way hallway. When he walked into the middle of the said hallway, he stopped and turned to watch the left hallway, then the one in front of him, and then the one to his right.

As he started to consider where to go next, in the corner of his left eye, for the slightest of moments, he saw the glimpse of a figure moving out of sight at the end of the left hallway.

Instantly, without turning and spending even a moment on focusing or gauging the distance, he drew his gun and shot a single round to his left.

After firing Kiritsugu immediately turned his head to where he saw his target, and he saw that he had successfully hit it, even though his aim was a bit off. While at the end of the hallway there was no corpse, it was clear that he had grievously injured the target as at the end of the hallway a single severed foot lay on the ground.

As he cautiously walked toward the location of his enemy, Kiritsugu could hear someone panting and crawling on the ground.

When he arrived at the end of the corridor, with his eyes he followed the trail of blood that had been left behind from the foot, and he saw the homunculus that had tried to crawl away from him. But as his Origin had already destroyed many of its magic circuits, the homunculus at the moment was being overwhelmed by convulsions and could barely move any further.

Even if the homunculi he shot somehow managed to survive the bullet, there was no way for them to survive the enchantment it had.

But as Kiritsugu observed the homunculus, he saw how strange it was.

Oddly, the clothes the homunculus had were quite… bizarre. It was not one of the strict uniforms that the homunculi usually wore, nor was it some kind of armor. They were some rather confusing robes that from head to toe fully covered the homunculus… and they somehow looked familiar to him, as if he had already seen them before.

…It then came to Kiristugu's mind that they looked very similar to the robes the Servants Assassin wore, except for the part that instead of being completely black, the robes of the homunculus perfectly matched the color of the walls of the hallway.

…

…

…

'!'

Right before the realization struck, and Kiritsugu heard a slight rustle coming above his head, his hand had already started to move on its own.

As he raised his head to the ceiling and saw five homunculi, armed with rapiers and wearing those same robes, dropping toward him, he was raising his gun toward them. But as that happened Kiritsugu also saw in front of himself the walls at his sides warping, and other homunculi starting to come out of them.

He then even heard from behind the sound of someone running in his direction.

Kiritsugu immediately estimated that there were 5 targets above him, 3 in front of him, and maybe just 1 behind.

He had fallen straight into an ambush, and Kiritsugu knew that he had no time to activate the time alteration.

His enemies were far too fast and rapid… but so was he.

In an instant, Kiritsugu immediately shot all the homunculi that were falling on him, killing them on the post. And while he was not using the time alteration, he had been still fast enough to the point where only one loud gunshot could have been heard.

As soon as he did that two of the three homunculi that had come out of the walls lunged themself and their weapon at him. Kiritsugu simply let go of his gun and quickly caught with his right hand the rapier of the first homunculi that reached him, blocking it from hitting him in the chest, and then with a flash movement with his left hand, he grabbed the head of the homunculi and violently smashed it in the wall, turning it into fleshy pink pulp.

As that happened the second homunculi also tried to hit him, but Kiristugu dodged the strike and with a right uppercut immediately destroyed the head of the homunculus. Then, as behind him he heard the sound of air being cut, he turned around and used his left forearm to block the incoming strike.

When the blade of the rapier that was directed toward his head struck his arm and broke, the homunculus that had come from behind realized that he had lost his weapon, and he tried to back up, but Kiritsugu immediately stepped forward as he took his combat knife, and slashed him before he could even start to jump away.

The strength behind that slash had been so enormous that the homunculus ended up being almost completely cleaved in half.

As soon as Kirtsugu killed that homunculus he then heard the homunculus behind him chanting a spell, so he ducked as he turned around, and right in time he managed to avoid a bolt of lighting.

In response, Kiristugu threw his kinfe, and violently the knife tore straight through the homunculus chest, leaving a gaping hole behind before it got stuck in the wall behind the homunculus.

Right when Kiritsugu had killed the last of the homunculi, those who had been dropping from the ceiling finally hit the ground, quickly followed by all the others.

The entire event had happened in just over half a second. The whole encounter could have been described as an almost incomprehensible blur of motions.

And even though Kiritsugu was not in danger anymore, he was now in a defensive stance, and his limbs were ready to spring again.

From when the attack had started this had been the first time where he had struggled and risked his life.

He could not help but think about how the lack of information about this kind of enemy could have been fatal…

...but as he thought about it, Kiritsugu genuinely did not know if he could consider himself lucky, as this encounter and his triumph had been surely predicted by Medea.

After some time passed Kiritsugu realized that no one else was going to attack him, and so, ready to immediately activate his time alteration to not get caught by surprise again, he went to take his gun from the ground and then his knife stuck in the wall.

As he walked to take his knife he reloaded his gun, and after he took the knife embedded in the wall, he cleaned it from all the blood and entrails stuck on it.

But when he suddenly heard a sound coming from behind him he immediately turned around and pointed his gun forward, but then he lowered it as he saw that the origin of that sound had been the very first 'assassin homunculus' that he had shot. The homunculus was still barely alive.

But as Kiritsugu looked in his direction, something else suddenly caught his eye.

He raised his head, and at the opposite end of the hallway, he saw Medea's image standing there.

"I've located the old man. Come." The image told him as she indicated the hallway to her right, before disappearing.

Upon hearing those words Kiritsugu frowned. Soon, everything would be over.

Kiritsugu walked where Medea's image had told him to, and as he passed by the dying homunculi, and he finished him off by blowing off his head. But when he arrived where Medea's image once stood, Kiritsugu noted a knight walking at the end of the hallway where Medea had pointed to.

When the knight saw him he unsheathed his sword and started to run toward him, but as he watched him Kiritsugu had already figured it out that the knight was trying to attract his attention so that other homunculi could sneak upon him.

As the walls at his sides and the ground beneath him started to warp, Kiritsugu had already drawn his gun.

"Time Alter." Kiritsugu chanted.

---

Jubstacheit Von Einzbern, the head of the Einzbern family, opened his eyes and sighed as he returned to watch outside of the window he was facing.

Once again, the umpteenth ambushes he had prepared had failed. Even though he had noted that one of them had lasted 'slightly' longer than all those that had come before.

He did not know how to describe the current situation as serious… if not desperate.

Before night fell they had been suddenly attacked by an unknown enemy force, and even though it had been not even an hour from the start of the attack, almost half of the population of the castle had been killed, and they had lost the majority of their best models.

Jubstacheit had tried his best to coordinate the guards as the enemy had taken down their communications systems, and yet, despite the best efforts it had been in vain. No matter what kind of defense or counter-offensive he tried to make, his 'troops' were immediately annihilated.

He had already come to the bitter realization that this foe that had suddenly decided to attack them was far stronger than them and more organized.

But while he first thought that they had been attacked by a big and well-organized group, he remained quite shocked when he had come to learn that the enemy that was killing all of the homunculi was only one.

And the worst part of this whole ordeal was that this was the only information he knew about the said foe. The man was all by himself. All the communications with his homunculi were quickly cut as soon the enemy spotted them. His homunculi did not even have the time to give him any other kind of useful information about the enemy, other than him being alone.

Jubstacheit had concluded that it was simply impossible for all of this to have been caused by only one person. There had to be someone else to assist with the attack. It had to be. One could not just come into his castle and-

Another sudden boom sent him out of his thoughts, again.

Even though Jubstacheit was now in his office, from time to time he could hear those single explosion sounds coming from the distance before he felt numerous homunculi dying. And as time went on those sounds had started coming closer, and closer.

Jubstacheit could almost feel it. He knew that his time had arrived. And yet, he was feeling only a sense of calm. As the head of the family had tried his best, and yet, it had not been enough. It had been an utter defeat in every aspect as their foe was much more powerful.

At one point Jubstacheit turned and went to sit at his desk, ready to 'welcome' the invader as that was the only thing he could do.

He was a golem, not a homunculi model made for combat, and even if he had been, to fight the invader would have been just a pointless struggle.

He will die with dignity, but before he does, he will come to know for what reason he had been attacked, and especially by who.

As he sat there waiting, Jubstacheit could not help but keep wondering who had attacked them.

The only organization that was powerful enough and that could afford an attack such as this was the Clock Tower, but not only did they have no reason to do so, Jubstacheit knew that the homunculi of his family were far more powerful than the majority of their enforcers. And for all of his knights and guards to have died at the hands of a single enforcer was simply impossible.

…Could it be that the one to attack them was a powerful dead apostle? …Maybe even an Ancestor? But what could they have ever done to attract the attention of such powerful beings?

But at one point, as he waited for the intruder to come at him, Jubstacheit started to feel a strange feeling… as if he was not alone in the room. At that, he started to look around with his eyes, and suddenly, he managed to notice someone standing on his left side.

Jubstacheit turned to this person and saw a woman standing in front of the same window he was looking out of a few minutes earlier.

"...You managed to notice my presence. Impressive." The woman commented with a neutral tone as she kept looking out of the window.

"...So, I take it you are the one behind all of this." Jubstacheit said after a moment before he got up from his chair and calmly walked to the side of that being as he eyed her.

As soon as he saw her, Jubstacheit had realized that who stood in front of him was someone who shouldn't exist in this Era. Just being in the very presence of this being made it clear that he stood in front of something as ancient as it was powerful.

"You guessed correctly. And I expected nothing else from the head of the Einzbern… another brilliant family..."

"...Are you a Servant?" He then asked after some other moments of observation.

"Yes… or rather, I was, as you may notice." The woman answered.

"...How interesting." Jubstacheit then said as he watched her.

Jubstacheit at the moment was quite surprised.

He had no idea how this Servant had arrived there, or even how it had been possible for her to still exist even after the end of the war. The Master and Servant part of the Grail system had been built by the Makiri after all.

But as he thought about it, Jubstacheit thought that this abnormal Servant may have been the cause of the strange way the war had ended, or that she may know what had happened. If he lived long enough, he may even discover the truth behind the events that happened toward the end of the war.

"...Since you are the one responsible for all of these events, and also a 'guest' of my castle, I think that it is my right to know the meaning of this. What is the reason that brought you here? Why are you attacking us?"

"...Revenge, I guess." The woman answered after a moment of silence.

"...Revenge?" Jubstacheit asked, a bit baffled. "What possibly could we have done to you?"

"You? Nothing. The Grail War? Everything." She answered. "Because of the corruption caused by your family, it was possible for evil entities to be summoned… And what a disaster it was. Now I'm just returning the favor. You, just like the other founding families, uncaring of the consequences of your actions, have willingly ruined and destroyed the lives of countless people without ever facing any kind of consequences for these actions. I will stop all of this. Once and for all."

"...So, this righteous cause is what brought you here?" Jubstacheit calmly asked with clear doubt and disbelief as he also raised an eyebrow.

"...Nah." The woman then said with a shrug. "I just wanted to tell you something to distract you and buy him a little bit more time." She continued, before from outside the office another explosion boomed, but this was much, much closer.

As Jubstacheit turned to face the door he felt the last defensive line of homunculi die.

He realized that the invader would arrive at any moment.

"Then why are you here? What do you want?" He asked again as he turned back to the woman, but now with urgency in his voice.

"...I don't want anything from you, Jubstacheit. But our dear friend, however, wants to reclaim something of his. I'm here just to watch you die." The woman said as she finally turned to face him.

As soon as she finished speaking the doors of the office slammed open, and a man almost completely drenched in blood stood at the entrance.

Jubstacheit turned to face the intruder, and when he saw him, despite everything, somehow he immediately recognized the man.

"...Emiy-?!" Jubstacheit started to say, shocked.

But before he could even finish calling out his name, a loud gunshot immediately cut him off.

Jubstacheit remained silent for a moment, with his eyes now fixated on the gun that had suddenly appeared in the man's hand, before he looked down to watch his abdomen, and saw a blotch of crimson staining his white robes.

As he started to feel the tremendous pain, his head started spinning, and after a moment he fell with his back to the ground.

After he fell he could only look at the ceiling while he could barely breathe and move, but in the corner of his eye, he could see the woman beside him that was looking down at him with indifference. And shortly after, Emiya got into his sight.

When Kiritsugu arrived at Jubstacheit's side, he started to reload his gun.

"...W…Why?" That had been the first thing Jubstacheit asked with one of his last breaths. "...Emiya… why have you betrayed us?"

No response came from Kiritsugu, and he just watched Jubstacheit in his eyes as he reloaded his gun.

"...Emiya ...Over 300 homunculi lived in this castle… before you arrived…" Jubstacheit said before he had to recover his breath. "...what made you do all of this?"

At that Kiritsugu had inserted the last bullet in the cylinder, and he cocked the hammer of the gun.

"…I'll admit it… It had been my greatest mistake to hire a killer like you… sooner or later… I should have expected some kind of betrayal…" Jubstacheit said since Kiritsugu refused to answer him.

When he finished speaking Kiritsugu pointed his gun at his head, but Jubstacheit Von Einzbern, the head of the Einzbern for the last 300 hundred years, instead of focusing on the gun and showing any kind of fear, looked Kiritsugu right in the eyes and gave him a disgusted and disappointed look.

"…May an eternal curse fall-"

Kiritsugu blew Jubstacheit's head off before he could finish cursing him.

A moment after the gunshot had finished ringing out, Kiritsugu holstered his gun, while Medea crouched and placed her right hand on the chest of the deceased Jubstacheit.

After a minute or so she removed her hand, got up, and took a step back. Seeing her doing so, Kiritsugu did the same.

Medea then silently made a gesture to the corpse to rise, and after it did, on its own Jubstacheit's corpse walked to his chair and sat down.

"...As already foreseen, our theory was correct. Jubstacheit may have died, but his body is still a terminal that we can use to impart orders to the rest of the homunculi. I'm now using it to give the order to surrender to anyone that has survived." Medea said as she looked at the corpse. "...And as we're speaking the Dragon Warriors I have just deployed are cleaning the castle of all the corpses you left behind… and even of those fools that will still fight back. Now you have to not do anything else. Leave everything to me." She continued.

The two of them then remained in silence for a pair of moments before Medea broke the silence again.

"...Well, with the death of Jubstacheit, the position as the head of household remains vacant. From what I understood the future heir should be Illya, but since she is far too young for such a position the only person that can take it should be…" Medea started to say as she turned to watch Kiritsugu. "You. Congratulations on becoming the new head of the family, Emiya." She told him with a smile.

The man remained silent for some long moments before he spoke.

"...What is your price?" He asked.

"...Emiya, what are you trying to say?" Medea asked after a moment.

"You helped me to save my daughter, and I know that you want me to pay you back. Just tell me what you want and let's get this over with." He said with a tired, yet cautious, tone.

"...It seems that you have forgotten why I've helped you to begin with." Medea said. "I did what I did because I needed Illya to be saved. Not because I wanted to help you for some reason, nor because I would gain something from all of this. But because I wanted the life of that little girl to be saved. That's it."

"..."

"...But if you want to pay me back in some way, giving me one of the best stocks of those artificial magic circuits that those homunculi have would not hurt. In the future, they could definitely become useful for… something."

"..."

"Well, useless talks aside, I think that now it is time for something far more important." Medea then said as she raised a fist, opened it, and from it, a black butterfly came out.

Kiritsugu watched the insect flying right past him and getting out of the room.

"Follow it. It will take you to your daughter." Medea continued.

After looking at her for a moment Kiritsugu nodded before he turned around and started to walk out of the room.

"...But before you go, we have to talk a little." Medea then said as she suddenly grabbed his shoulder from behind, stopping him from going away.

"What is it?" Kiritsugu asked as he slightly turned his head.

"...Emiya, you did it. You saved your daughter, and now you're about to finally see her again… But tell me, what comes next?"

"...What do you mean?"

"What will you do from now on? I want to know."

"...?"

"...I mean, these are just examples, but will you take into consideration living here in the castle with Illya? Or you will transfer somewhere else with her?"

"..."

"Do you want your daughter to live a normal life, and be in danger as there can possibly be people still looking for you? Or do you want her to be isolated and recluse here, in a secure place?" Medea asked. "...If you think about it, the last option would not be that terrible. She would not be alone since you would be there for her, and the other homunculi present in the castle would surely be able to keep her company… albeit they could be boring for her."

Kiritsugu remained silent. He did not know what to think, let alone what to say. Until that very moment, he had not thought of what would come after. Saving Illya had been literally his only thought for the last months.

"...And what about you? Will you start a new life? Or will you pass the rest of the life that you have left in misery and self-loathing?"

"…"

"…You know, I'm quite disappointed. I thought that you were the kind of person that would have already planned everything, even what came after." Medea sighed.

"…" Kiritsugu kept remaining silent as myriads of thoughts suddenly flooded his mind.

"Let me tell you right here and now, if you will not be able to live a normal life, your daughter will be able to do otherwise. Remember Kiritsugu, she is now everything you have… She is your priority."

Medea also wanted to say something about how in his grief Kiritsugu may end up doing something stupid and leave Illya alone. But then she thought that it was better if she did not give him an idea, as he, unlike Aoi, was the kind of person that could actually do it.

"...And it's not just that. Will you find yourself another woman and remarry? Or will you remain a widower?"

"...Why should I do such a thing?" Kiristugu asked a bit baffled as he snapped out of his thoughts.

"I know that this subject is quite delicate, but there are many things to consider. You have to remember that Illya does not yet know that she is now motherless. And while having someone else take that role in the future could feel wrong, it could be better than being without a mother. Having a mother figure may have some positive effect on your daughter's mind in the future… But that is up to you to decide…"

"...I… I do not know…" Kiritsugu then said as he looked aside.

He was now completely… unprepared. Those were some things he should have already thought about…

"I know. I'm just filling you with questions that I want you to think about in the future." Medea said.

"...What have I done to deserve this?" Kiritsugu then asked both himself and Medea. "...After everything I did… How could I ever live a normal life?" The tone of fatigue, resignation, and even guilt, was clear in his voice.

"This is not about you, it is about your daughter." Medea then reminded him. "Until now you lived always following your dream, so the next thing you have to do is clear: You have to live for Illya. It's simple. Do something good for once in your life. She does not deserve to suffer from your actions."

"I know… but I… I do not deserve any of this… I do not even deserve to see Illya ever again…" Kiritsugu said as he watched down the hallway outside the room, while the memories of where he killed Illya flourished in his mind once more.

The sight of the corpse of his daughter in his arms still felt real, just like the defending screams and cries of her mother.

"But Illya deserves to have a father. We already talked about this, remember?"

"…But I-"

"If you continue like this our discussion will become redundant. You have to stop it." Medea said. "...And don't you think it is a bit late to have afterthoughts after having committed such slaughter?"

"…"

"...Think whatever you want, Emiya, but remember to not be too hard on yourself. At the end of the day, after everything you did, despite every selfish action you have committed at the expense of your family… you can still hug your child…" Medea's image said with a somewhat melancholy tone as she started to disappear.

Kiritsugu did not say a thing, but he understood the numerous meanings and the sheer weight behind those words.

"…You may not have realized it, but you're a lucky person Kiritsugu…" The image said as it disappeared completely. "…a very lucky one."

After Medea was gone, Kiritsugu remained still in that now silent room, as he thought about the woman's words.

…And as much as he hated it to admit it… Medea was right.

He was lucky. He had always been. It's just that everything that ever happened to him, he had brought it onto himself in his selfishness. There had been no one to force him to do everything he ever did, as he did it of his own volition. And now, there was no one to blame but himself.

…The fact that until now he had survived everything, and was about to finally see his daughter, was another example of his enormous luck.

After Kiritsugu had snapped out of his realization, he started to follow Medea's familiar.

But after some minutes from when he had started to follow the familiar, as he walked through those hallways that never seemed to end, in the corner of his eye Kiritsugu suddenly caught the glimpse of his reflection in a window, and he stopped to look at it.

Only when he turned and saw it did he realize how much blood he was drenched in.

He watched his reflection, then his hands, then his arms, then the rest of his body… his camouflage, once white, was now almost completely red, and Kiritsugu could not help but feel an enormous sense of disgust at that moment.

Almost immediately he tore off the camouflage and the balaclava from himself, and after he had done so Kiritsugu returned to watch his reflection, just to see that it was still not enough. Blood still covered the majority of his body.

As he started to look around Kiritsugu realized that he was familiar with this part of the castle, and quite quickly he found a bathroom where he could clean himself.

There he turned on the tap water and started to clean himself at the sink.

While he was washing his hands and face he was thinking. The reinforced suit he was wearing was almost completely black, and the blood on it was difficult to spot, but he still could not present himself to Illya in those conditions.

As he did not have a change of clothes, Kiritsugu turned around to look for a towel or something with which he could clean his suit, but for some reason, he found his clothes and his old trench coat on a coat hanger on the wall.

As he watched them Kiritsugu didn't even wonder why they were there, and after a moment he just started to undress.

After he had gotten out of the bathroom, Kiritusgu was completely clean, wearing his classic outfit. After he closed the door behind himself he started to look around, and after some moment he spotted the familiar who had been waiting for him. When the familiar returned to fly, he returned to follow it.

As he kept on following the familiar Kiritsugu then reached a part of the castle that was filled with roaming Dragon Warriors, and without giving them much attention he walked past all of them and kept following the familiar.

But when he reached a certain hallway, there he saw some corpses that had not been left by him.

He could see that the guards that once guarded that part of the castle had been electrocuted, or burned to the point where they had been melted with their armors, or made into pieces, or had been turned into simple stains on the wall.

He walked past all of those corpses as he made sure to not step in the puddles of blood, and when he turned the corner, he saw an image of Medea at the end of a hallway.

When the familiar landed on Medea's image shoulder, she turned to face him and she nodded at him before she slowly disappeared, just like the wall behind her.

After a moment, a door appeared where the image once stood.

Kiritsugu had already seen that door through Medea's crystal ball. That was Illya's room.

But for some reason unknown to him, upoon seeing it, Kiritsugu gulped, as he started to feel suffocated.

He then started to walk toward the door, and for each step he took, he felt his body becoming heavy and heavier.

At that Kiritsugu could not help but think of how tired he was.

…Of how tired he had always been.

After he arrived in front of the door he gently knocked on it, and after a moment, he could hear some little steps coming closer.

"Who is it?" Illya asked as she opened the door and looked up.

As soon as she saw her father Illya immediately froze.

"Hi, Illya." Kiritsugu told her with a kind smile and a warm tone as he entered the room and made sure to close the door behind himself.

"D-D… Daddy!" Illya almost screamed in happiness before she jumped on him to hug him as her expression of disbelief turned into one of pure joy. "I had heard that you and mommy would not come back anymore! They had told me that you and mommy had died! But I knew that you two would have come for me! I knew it! I knew it!"

"...Good girl. You knew that... I would have never left you alone." Kiritsugu told her as he gently caressed her head.

At that Illya tried to kiss him on the cheek, but the short beard that Kiritsugu did have stung her.

"Daddy, you know that I don't like your beard!" She then pouted, unhappy that she couldn't kiss him.

"Oh, right… I'm sorry… I've let myself go a little in the last period…" Kiritsugu told her with a smile as he kneeled.

"Mommy should have looked after you, you're always so careless…" Illya started to say before she stopped for a moment. "…Daddy, where is mommy?" She then asked after a moment before she started to look around, as only now she realized that she was not with her dad.

"…"

Kiritsugu did not say anything, and he just strongly gritted his teeth and shut his eyes.

"…Daddy? …Are you crying?" Illya then asked him as she noticed his pained expression and the tears forming in her father's eyes.

As soon as she said that, suddenly, Kiritsugu hugged her very tightly

"...I'm sorry Illya … I'm so sorry… I'm so sorry…" Kiritsugu told her, almost whispering before he started to cry.

Illya remained still as her father cried, but while she wanted to ask him why he had started to cry and to comfort him in any way she could, a terrible realization slowly started to creep in…

As the two of them were caught in their little moment, they did not notice the bird looking at them from outside the window.

---

The real Medea was now standing on the rooftop of the Einzbern castle, and after she had observed that little scene through her familiar, she opened her eyes before she sighed.

Illya had been saved, and she had been reunited with her father. Any kind of debt she had toward the little girl had been repaid in full, and Medea was quite satisfied by the result of her work.

But as much as she wanted to be happy for Illya and Kiritsugu for their long-awaited reunion… she just… could not.

The reason was that upon seeing Kiritsugu hugging his daughter, unexpectedly, Medea felt a begrudging envy.

She was now feeling the kind of jealousy that only an in part divine being like her could truly feel in its entirety and intensity.

…And she hated all of it.

The fact that such a failure of a father, a man who in his selfishness had sacrificed his family for the sake of his dream, was able to hug the child he had abandoned, almost made her become yellow with envy and tremble with anger.

The worst part was that all of this was far from over for her.

She knew that she could not just leave Kiritsugu in the state that he was. If she would not intervene, the man would die in 5 years and leave Illya alone, in a similar way he had done with Shirou.

Yes, Medea at first did wish to let the man die, but the very reason why she had helped Kiritsugu was so that he could save Illya, and she could not leave a child like her alone with a dying father.

She had already seen the future where she would not extend Kiritsugu's life, and she had seen how Illya as well had become scarred for life in a similar way Shirou had at Kiritsugu's death.

There was simply no way that she could let that happen.

By that point, Medea had already thought about the ways she could cure both Illya and her father, but while she could definitely undo everything the Einzbern ever did to Illya without many problems, there was still not much she could do for Kiritsugu.

The curse of the Grail had already afflicted and permanently damaged the man's soul, so removing the curse that still dwindled in his body was the only thing she could do for him, as he was far too gone. But the removal of the curse in combination with the magic circuits she had implanted in him would have extended Kiritsugu's life for another 5-10 years. Admittedly, much more than the man deserved.

And since she had also foreseen that Kiritsugu would have decided to settle in the castle, secretly becoming the new head of the family unbeknownst to the rest of the magi world, she knew that he would once again ask her for her help.

And Medea had already prepared all the materials that she would need to 'fix' both the castle and the remaining homunculi, as Kiritsugu, in a moment of both guiltiness and 'generosity', would wish for the homunculi that remained to have the ability to live normal lives.

The only reason she would accept to help him was that it would be demoralizing if not outright depressing for Illya to live in a broken castle and be surrounded by people that would live less than 10 years.

At one point as she stood there, Medea decided to sit down on the cold rooftop and she started to look at the moon that had started to rise on the horizon.

She had foreseen that Kiritsugu would contact her in the morning as he now was completely focused on Illya, and since she had nothing to do as her minions were already doing all of the work, now she could only wait… and she knew what would come next.

As she sat there, after having seen that scene that had made her so mad and envious, terrible memories started to resurface, and there was nothing that Medea could do to stop from stopping them.

As she carefully reflected on her past actions and on that cursed day, at one point it started to snow again, and as the snow slowly started to pile on her, Medea remained completely still, as the snow, compared to her memories which she was focused on, was not bothering her at all.

And after some wearing hours that never seemed to end, finally, it stopped.

Those memories, along with her overwhelming pain, anger and envy at one point finally went away, Medea had been able to free her mind from all of those thoughts... but they had comsumed her, and inside of her had remained nothing but a gaping void...

One that she desperately needed to fill.

As she sat there, covered in snow in that freezing weather, Medea felt empty.

She knew that the only person who could help her feel better even in the slightest was basically on the other side of the world, and at the thought of that she could not help but think of how far she was far from home, she then felt even more lonely and miserable…

But then, a warm feeling slowly started to arise in her.

Medea smiled a little at the thought that she now actually had a place to call home, and that someone was waiting for her return.

At that moment as she got up and the snow fell from her, Medea, almost desperately, swore to herself that from the moment she would get back to her home she would latch onto Shirou and cuddle him every day, kiss him to wake him up, greet him with hugs, spoil him as much as she could…

She had to fill that void she had caused to herself in any possible way she could.

-

Appunti.

There is a reason that grows in me, and a fear that arises. In a single moment, the unconsciousness vanishes.

---

Author's note: So, let's start in order.

1)The Bfr revolver was first created around 2001-2002 (not very sure about the date as somehow I was not able to find any info about it), but since I really wanted Kiritsugu to have it I made this little retcon. We could say that this is one of the modifications or consequences, Medea has caused with her presence and actions in the timeline.

2) About Medea's regaining her body, I wanted to write a scene about it, but it would have been not very interesting as it just consisted in her modifying the command seals she had and obtaining a real body.

3) About Medea regaining her original powers, I wanted her to have a conversation with Kiritsugu about the demi-gods and how different they were from each other. In that scene, she would have mentioned Heracles and made some paragons between their powers. Where Heracles, son of Zeus, the King of the gods, had massive physical strength and martial prowess, she, nephew of Elios, The sun itself, was able to comprehend even the most complex of magics. I cut it out as it was unnecessary and quite boring.

Always regarding Medea's power, please, do not write anything on how I'm supposedly making Medea too powerful by giving her foresight as she actually had it in her real legend, I beg you.

4) About the scene where Medea watched the planes, I do genuinely think that unlike 'modern' mages she would be fascinated by modern technology. She comes from The Bronze Age, and seeing just how much technology has evolved would leave her almost speechless as at her times even things such as plowshare could be considered as the latest 'technological peak'.

5) About the attack on the Einzbern Castle, some of you may retain the whole massacre unnecessary as Medea, now that has all of her power back and is at her peak, could have resolved everything quite quickly, but as I made Medea say, that was not her mission.

This was Kiritsugu's mission. He was the one that had to save his daughter. That was something that he had to do, in one way or the other.

Canonically, after the war Kiritsugu had been cursed and was not in the condition to save Illya, yet, he still went to try to save his daughter, again and again. And surely, if he managed to actually reach the castle, he would have not just asked nicely the Einzbern to give him his daughter back.

And even if I made Medea resolve everything, just where would have been the conflict? Where would have been the drama?!

6)About Kiritsugu's character, I know that in some previous chapters he may have felt out of character, and while I've not done a great job at depicting him, even canonically after the war he had become a hollow shell of a man, a shadow of who he once was.

Now, just like in canon, his only goal was to save his Illya, and it is for this reason that when Medea was to do surgery on him I made him be quite preoccupied. For if something wrong happened to him, his only hope to do something right in his life would be turned to ashes. I have to see how to make that scene better as it can be easily improved.

Also, I really like to 'interpret' the scene where Kiritsugu tears the clothes off himself as him finally rejecting once and for all the "hero of justice" persona, and freeing himself from all of his burdens as a hero.

7) About Kiritsugu's time alter, I do think that it is entirely possible for him to use that level of Time Alteration with Medea's support. Thanks to her reinforcement Kojiro, Fake Assassin, was able to fight off Berserker, and while he was not able to harm Heracles, it speaks volumes of how skilled Kojiro was as simple power is not enough to fight off someone like Berserker, and how strong Medea reinforcement was as it made it possible for Kojiro to stand against Heracles In the first place.

And it is for this same reason that I made Kiritusgu be still too strong for the homunculi even without the Time Alteration. He was already an able 'fighter' on his own, then we add the potions and magical support of a Mage from the Age of the Gods and he becomes an entirely different beast.

8)Always regarding Kiritsugu, while he has decided to settle at the castle, it's not that he will never let Illya out and interact with the rest of the cast. I think that staying low for a year or so would be the best possible action for him, and when he will retain things be over and that no one is still looking for him, he will take Illya to Fuyuki during certain periods of the year as the only person he trusts enough to look after Illya is Medea. Strange, isn't it?

9) About Medea, I'm very disappointed that the 'motherly part' of Medea's character is never explored in Fate at all.

While she is a witch, even in her legend, regardless of what she did to her sons, she is still recognized as a mother first, and as a witch second, and that played a huge role in her legend that cannot be undermined.

There is no need to say that becoming a parent is the most important achievement or event in a person's life, and to remove or simply ignore that 'part' from the story and being of any character, especially one like Medea, is an enormous blunder. But we are not here to talk about these things.

Returning to Medea's character, since the version of her that I'm using is the one that murdered her sons, she is also the most 'damaged' version of herself, if you understand what I mean.

Medea has killed her sons for the sake of revenge, and while it may have been worth it at the time, now, 3000 years later, in a land strange to her, she is completely alone, with any kind of sense of fulfillment gone, while 'her pain', one that only she can truly feel in its entirety, is stronger than ever as she has witnessed someone 'somewhat similar' to her reunite with the child he had abandoned.

As she told Jason before she left, 'her pain was gain when he could not mock it', and there she is, completely alone in the cold, without enemies to mock, without sons, and most important thing of all, with her hands still stained with innocent blood that she will never be able to wash away.

This is the point where Medea starts to realize just how much wrong she had done in killing her sons for revenge… as strange as it sounds. But she is that kind of character after all, and I have to make her reach that realization, in one way or the other.

And about her and Shirou, as you have figured out I want her to find her happiness in him, but not because she loves him, or because she owes him her life or any of those things, but because he is actually the only person that she has any kind of attachment or affection to. He is the only person she actually cares for.

To say that Medea has some kind of attachment and abandonment issue would be an understatement, and it is right through Shirou that she would get closer to her "redemption" as a mother.

I only hope that I get it right.

---

Anyway, now that I finished with my rant, I have to tell you that this time too I do not know when the next chapter will come out, but to let you know the next chapter will be about the day-to-day life of our characters.

As always, there is a major spoiler ahead, so if you're not interested in it, thanks for reading, and stay safe.

---

…

…

…

MEGA SPOILER FOR NEXT CHAPTER. DO NOT READ IF YOU DON'T WANT TO GET SPOILED.

THE SPOILER IS VERY BIG. ARE YOU SURE THAT IS IT WORTH IT? SOMEONE IS GOING TO GET HURT!!!

Tell me guys, what does our favorite priest Kirei Kotomine have in his basement that could easily make Medea go mad with rage and grief?

:D