Chapter Four

Mason and Sakura follow the cult members to the Ryuudou Temple, but lose sight of them when they reach the steps. Confused, the two of them decide to climb the steps to get a sense of where they might be. When they almost reach the top, they stop to fight a mangled body in purple robes. Sakura gasps while Mason tenses up seeing the dead body.

"Did those cult members do this?" Sakura asks.

"No," Mason answers. "Look how the body is torn up and the bones pointing outwards. He didn't die from someone ripping him up from the outside. More than likely something came out of him."

"That's horrible…" She trails off.

The body starts glowing and the body disappears into tiny yellow dots until they all dissipate. Mason is shocked and immediately frowns. It can't be a Servant. According to Dad's notes, Servants do this when they die; but that should not be possible at the moment. The next Holy Grail War isn't supposed to start for another forty years. There's something seriously wrong here and the fact that we followed the Cult of Nihilus here can't be a coincidence.

Sakura also takes a moment to think. Without a doubt that this was a Servant, but the fact that I didn't feel the Grail fill from this means that this Servant wasn't the real one. Taking what Mason said, it's more than likely the real one came out of this fake one. That would mean that there is an unbound Servant running around here and to add to the fact I feel another Servant up ahead means we are in a dangerous situation. Too bad I already gave my brother control of Rider.

"Come on Sakura, let's see what's up ahead. Maybe we can figure out what's going on." The silver-haired teen tells his companion.

Sakura is hesitant, but compiles to keep going. They reach the top and see two figures on the temple grounds talking. They recognize one of them being one of the teachers at the school, Kuzuki Souichirou, but they don't recognize the other one wearing a dark hooded cloak covering her face. Seeing as they know one of them, they decide to not stay in hiding and just talk to them.

"Souichirou-sensai?" Sakura asks.

The two figures turn to them and the teacher addresses them, "Matou and Emiya? May I ask what you both are doing here this late on a school night?"

Mason scratches the back of his head, "Well we were following some suspicious robed people but lost sight of them when we came here. Although we did see a dead body coming up here on the steps, so we came up here to figure out what happened."

"Yes I noticed that Assassin isn't responding to me whatsoever nor can I feel his presence." The woman says.

"Wait did you say Assassin?" Mason questions as he and Sakura tenses up having confirming their previous thoughts.

The woman looks over in their direction with a stern face. "And it is very telling that after he dies, you all appear before us intending on doing us harm."

"I can assure you that we have nothing to do with him and we haven't come to hurt you!" Mason tells her trying to defuse the situation.

"I wasn't talking about the two of you." She points behind them.

Sakura and Mason turn around and see the robed cult members they were following along with a few dozen armed men. Mason notices that the armed men are carrying blasters.

One of the robed men steps forwards. "We'll give you one chance to surrender to us peacefully Servant, if you decline then we'll kill your Master and the two teenagers and take you by force."

The group primes their blasters while the robed men remove their robes and bring out various swords and blades. Mason takes an instinctive step in front of Sakura trying to protect her.

"I'm sorry but I'm afraid that your threats mean nothing to a master of the magical arts from a Caster class Servant." The cloaked woman grows an evil smile and Souichirou takes a fighting stance to emphasize that he stands with her.

Sakura looks at Mason, "What should we do?"

"Well I say we will probably have a better chance sticking with our teacher and the Servant than with the cult." He tells her.

"Boy just because my focus is currently set on the group threatening me, it doesn't mean I'm willing to protect you and your little girlfriend here." Caster says.

Mason reaches into his left hand into his jacket and pulls out his dad's Calico M950. "I never thought you would. I'm just siding with you because I'm not crazy enough to fight both a cult and a Servant at the same time."

"Very well boy, if nothing else than you both serve as a distraction."

She pulls out a staff and starts floating upwards. Spell circles appear in front of her and shoot out beams into the group of men. The cult spreads out and they start returning fire. Tons of red bolts fly towards the three on the ground. Mason quickly grabs Sakura and runs behind a wall while shooting back at the attackers. Souichirou ducks and runs to the side, but is cut off by the men with the swords. Seeing no way out, the teacher starts his stance again and attacks the ones in his way. Mason pulls the gun to his left eye and takes shots into the group when he can.

Mason grunts in frustration, "Dank Farrik! This is not what I had planned today. This was supposed to be a simple investigation, not a warzone!"

"Sorry I'm not sure what I can do to help," Sakura says. While she may technically be a magus, she was never trained and can't think of anything to help. She too wasn't planning on a fight tonight.

"Listen, we need to get you out of here."

"But what about you?"

"I'll be right behind you. Seeing as I'm the one with a gun, I'm going to make sure to keep you covered while you run." He tells her.

"I can't just leave you here." She says.

"You're not. You're just getting a headstart."

"But-" Sakura is cut off by feeling a force of energy pushing her into the woods.

Mason extends his hand at her, "Sorry I'll explain later, but getting you safe is my number one concern!"

Sakura continues to fly far out until she can no longer see the temple. She then feels a thud hit her as she lands in front of a tree. What was that just now? Did he push me out here somehow? That would mean I was right about him having some sort of power. She then hears a crunch of leaves and turns around. She sees four armed cult members pointing their blasters at her.

One of them calls out, "Looks like one is trying to escape over here! Unlucky for her, we have orders not to take prisoners of anyone but the Servant. Light her up boys!"

They all start shooting at her and she is unable to react in time. She gets hit by the bolts multiple times before she falls over, but they continue the assault on her for another few seconds before calling it good. They marvel at their job and turn to resume the patrol to keep anyone else from escaping. They did not notice that the person they thought they killed starting to move. She puts herself together and her wounds start to heal. She then slowly becomes covered in a dark shadow. The Black Shadow rises and reaches one of its tendrils towards the four men. One of the men's legs is grabbed and pulled towards the Shadow. The other three look behind and look in horror as the fourth member is consumed viciously in front of them. They start shooting at the Shadow, but it appears to be unfazed by the blaster bolts. It quickly grabs another and slams him hard into a tree making his blood and body splatter everywhere. They turn to run, but one doesn't get fair before being grabbed. He tries his best to hold onto the tree he is by, but he is pulled even harder. His grip is tight and it becomes a dangerous game of tug of war. Though it seems as if he is the unfortunate loser of this deadly game as his arms are torn off him. He screams in pain and as he is pulled into the Shadow. The last member took this chance to continue running, but looks behind to see the Shadow is done with her friends and is now coming for her. All she can do is run from the monstrosity that her team came across.

Mason ducks back behind cover and silently curses to himself. He didn't plan on being in a battle tonight, so his ammo quickly ran out. Luckily for him it seems they are mostly focused on the Servant, though by what he can see she is getting slowly overwhelmed. Seems like her mana is fairly low and she is unable to keep up the barrage of spells without giving up on defending herself. Souichirou doesn't seem to be faring much better. Although his previous assassin skills are impressive, the cult members seem to be trained enough to be a match for him. The man has numerous cuts and bruises on him.

Mason decides to help his teacher first and rushes out of his spot. Using the Force, he increases his movement and pulls one of the cortosis blades off the ground that was laid by a dead cult member. Souichirou is busy blocking attacks in front of him to be able to defend from the one behind him. Mason manages to reach the teacher in time to stop the vibrosword from slashing his back. Souichirou notices this and takes the advantage to place his hand on the cult member's throat and yank it out. Mason Force lifts the various blades around him and hurls them towards the closest cult members near them. They take a brief second for a breath.

"Thank you Emiya," Souichirou puffs. "It seems like I'm a bit rusty to keep up with all of these guys by myself."

Mason waves him off, "Don't thank me yet. There's still a couple dozen of these guys left."

Mason then pulls a blaster to his left hand. He then blocks any attack with his blade while using his other hand to shoot at them. It seems a bit underhanded, but Mason doesn't care since he's just trying to survive this or else Taiga will probably march down to Hell and make that place look like paradise compared to what she'd do about him dying. He shivers at this thought.

Caster readies another spell, but sees a tree being thrown at her. She quickly drops to the ground to avoid it. Looking around she finds the one who did it. It's a figure with black armor with a crimson red blade she has never seen before. She assumes this to be the leader of the group. She takes the readied spell and fires it at him. The armored foe outstretches his hand and the concrete ground rises up to block the spell making it explode on impact. The dust settles and the leader is standing unharmed. Caster clicks her tongue. The man then shoots lightning out of his hand. Caster thinks it's just a common lightning spell from a magus and sets up a simple shield. Unfortunately for her, the lightning gets through and shocks her. She drops her staff and falls on the floor. The leader keeps up the lightning assault on her as she screams in pain. Souichirou and Mason turn after hearing the scream. Although the Master doesn't change his stoic expression, he is horrified seeing his Servant in this state.

"We've got to help her!" Souichirou yells running towards Caster while Mason follows.

The cult leader notices them coming and pushes them with the Force. They both get thrown back, but Mason Force pulls the leader with them. The three stumble up and prepare to fight. Seeing Mason as the main threat, he swings his red blade at the boy. Mason blocks it with his cortosis blade, and he is thankful he picked the right sword to grab since there aren't many weapons that can resist a lightsaber.

He turns to his teacher, "I'll deal with this guy. You go help your Servant."

The Master just nods and rushes towards the cult members surrounding Caster. Mason shifts his gaze back to the one in front of him. The leader starts his barrage against the former Jedi. Mason goes into his Soresu stance and begins to block his attacker's strikes. He has never been more happy that he decided to pick the third form of lightsaber combat than now. He is blocking attack after attack. His opponent is getting frustrated.

"Damn you! You must have had Jedi training. Only those weaklings would willingly choose the defensive Soresu lightsaber form!" The leader barks out. He pulls out one of the other lightsabers off his belt and ignites it. Now with two red lightsabers, he takes the Jar'Kai stance. "Although I don't know why one of your kind is on this pitiful planet, I do know I will take full advantage of the fact you don't have a lightsaber with you. That cortosis blade may resist a saber for now, but I will be able to break it before you have a chance to fight back. Now die at the hands of Storr!"

Storr spins towards Mason and resumes his barrage. Mason continues to block the man's attacks. The strikes are much more vicious and harder. Mason can tell the leader's words were right as he can feel the blade starting to feel weaker and is bending. He tries to figure out a plan to get out of this situation but looking around he can't see anything to help. Caster seems to be unconscious and Souichirou looks like he is walking on death's door trying to defend her. Mason then looks at Storr's belt. There are a few more lightsabers on it, but the man is not giving Mason any time to pull one of them to him. Even if he did then Storr will probably destroy it before it reaches Mason. Block after block Mason starts to pant and to his unfortunate luck his blade finally snaps. Mason falls backwards onto the ground as Storr points his red blades at his throat.

"I'll give you this Jedi, you have lasted longer than any other I have ever faced. If you had a lightsaber then you may have been able to manage to get one over on me, but you would still end up losing. Now die-" Skorr gets cut off by a blood curdling scream from the woods.

Everyone stops and looks towards the woods. They see a cult member running with blood all over her with a terrified expression on her face, but before she could get far she gets grabbed and dragged back into the woods. They all watch as she disappears into the darkness and hears the sounds of screams then a sound of crunching. Slowly they see a Black Shadow emerge from the woods. The cult member begins unleashing blaster bolts into the Shadow while a couple of members try to strike it with their blades. They bring their blades downwards but once when it touches the shadow, the blades and themselves are sucked into it. The bolts seem to unfazed it and it begins its attack on the remaining people in the area.

Mason takes this opportunity to pull a lightsaber from the distracted Skorr and ignites it. The lightsaber emits an orange blade. Skorr is caught off guard and is struck on the shoulder. Mason then Force lifts the cult leader and hurls him into a group of other cult members knocking them all down. He then runs towards Souichirou and Caster. The Master of Caster is on the ground barely breathing right next to his Servant.

"Souichirou-sensai!" Mason calls to him.

The school teacher looks at his student, "Emiya you survived."

"We gotta get you out of here to a doctor!" Mason exclaims.

"I'm afraid this is the end for me. I've already lost too much blood. Take it from an ex assassin," Souichirou coughs up blood. "A few stabs to the lungs is very fatal and that's not including all the other wounds I have. I will most likely die before making it down the stairs." He shifts his gaze to the woman next to her. He brushes his hand over her blue hair. "She on the other hand has a chance of living. I am no magus, so I was unable to provide her with any sort of meaningful mana. You on the other hand seem to have some sort of power in you. I plead with you to take her with you. I'll use my last few moments to give you time to escape this hellhold."

Mason looks down for a second, "Alright I'll take Caster with me. Is there anything you would like me to tell her?"

"Tell her although our time was short, I did enjoy having her with me and to keep fighting." Souichirou stands up shakily and stumbly tackles the nearest cult member.

Mason watches him walk away before picking Caster up in his arms. He then starts Force running towards the stairs. To his luck, the Shadow seems to have the cult members busy so he is able to slip on by. He continues down the stairs away from the battle turned slaughter.

I hope Sakura managed to make it out alright, he thinks to himself before looking at the woman in his arms. I have a lot of explaining to do at home. Shirou may be willing to have an open mind about it being the "Hero of Justice" that he is, but Taiga is a different story. He shivers again as he makes his way home.

Authors Note:

Well here's the next chapter. Skorr is once again another OC I made, so I hope y'all not mind that. Given that Mason arrived on Earth during Order 66 and the Empire would be only be ten years old, having someone from the Empire here like Vader wouldn't make sense since they would be too busy with maintaining order in their own galaxy. I also didn't find it anywhere about what Sakura's magical abilities are before see goes all dark mode, so I just went with her being untrained at this point. Which is fine with me because it gave me an excuse to bring out Black Shadow. Anyways I don't have much else to say, so thanks for reading and I'll talk at y'all next time!