Chapter 2, Part 1
sundown draw
open the Amber Hunt

[ [ March 15
[ [ 17:04

She didn't want to admit it, but Archer was getting bored. She had been looking down this makeshift periscope of lenses and mirrors all day.
The view was great from up here. Sitting atop the tallest building in the entire city, she had a clear impression of just how much the world had grown. Seeing an ordinary town boom to reaches that even the capitals of her own era would envy, she had idly pondered about the economics of such a thing for a few minutes… before realising that she'd had no idea about the field even in her own time.
Peoplewatching had been interesting at first as well, but it had gotten dull after a few hours, especially since she couldn't hear the conversations to learn about their lives. She considered a little magical eavesdropping, but had ultimately resolved to mind her own business.
And so, there was nothing to do but stare at a certain pair until her eyes started to hurt.
"Master," she sighed, "I really think we're done here. I've been waiting since dawn. Saber isn't letting his guard down at all."
I apologise, came his voice. But we do really need to take that shot as soon as we can. Andri overheard them talking, and it sounds like Saber isn't a joke. We need to deal with him as soon as possible.
"Saber is supposed to be the strongest class anyway, I know, I know."
You're a sniper, aren't you? he pointed out. And not even a Servant can move at the speed of light to deal with your attacks. So just wait for him to materialise and it'll be over right away.
Well, she couldn't deny that her synergy with Assassin was flawless. With both close-range and long-range attacks that it was impossible to react to until they had already landed, Berserker had proved that the only thing that one could really do to defend was endure the blows head-on. Dealing with two Servants at once who could neither be seen nor struck…
Perhaps some truly exceptional Magecraft could have done something to make their lives more difficult, but Archer was no pushover even in that department, and modern Magecraft from the Age of Man would never be able to compete with its ancient ancestor from the Age of Gods.
In short, all their bases were covered. So why did she still feel anxious about this plan?
She shook her head, trying to take her mind off it.
"So, Master."
Hm?
"This Holy Grail grants wishes, doesn't it? I already told you mine," she said.
She had been quite open about it, in fact - it was the conversation that they'd had when she had first been summoned that day. Nothing good, she reasoned, would come from concealing her intent. Archer's desire was simple: a blessing on today's world. She wanted to observe it, identify its struggles, and then help to mend them. After all, she felt somewhat responsible for it, like a mother for her child.
Perhaps she didn't know exactly what she would give yet, but she would learn that through their enemies. That was why she had adamantly refused to target Saber's Master, only Saber himself.
But she had not learned her own Master's wish to be granted. He'd had nothing to say at the time. Her words hung in the air, awaiting the fire that drove Sigmund von Drang.
So you want to hear what I want from the Grail? Nothing, I'm afraid.
But there was no answer.
"Nothing? Then why are you here?"
It's not the Grail itself I want. It's about the journey, isn't it? he replied.
"That's a lovely cliché, but we're talking about a trophy that can do anything," she frowned. "At least come up with something."
I'm afraid I just have no interest in it. I'm here because I was asked to be. And, well… as a knight, how could I turn down an invitation to the most glorious battlefield of all?
"Is that why I'm going to be sniping Saber from a kilometre and a half away from anything resembling a duel, while Assassin waits in the wings to stab him in the back and her Master listens in on the strategy discussions of every single opponent simultaneously?"
A beat.
I'll take what I can get.
She sighed. "Well, I agree pragmatism takes priority when we're talking about a life-and-death situation like this. But, you know, I'm not actually a sniper or anything…"
She understood that sitting around like this with nothing to do was most of a marksman's job. In fact, waiting was essentially the entire task. Unfortunately, the mental endurance to do such a thing… Servants, as a rule, did not have enhanced psychological strength in the same way that their bodies were superior to ordinary humans. There were, of course, standout individuals of iron will among Heroic Spirits, and Archer would even have estimated that the majority of them had stronger wills than normal people by necessity.
But she was not a warrior. She was a princess. She had never done anything like this in her lifetime, and she certainly didn't have the kind of cognitive stamina that a sniper needed.
Sorry. Just this once, I'm going to have to ask you to stick it out a little longer, Sigmund apologised. I swear we'll take the other Servants on properly, but this is the one opponent we can't beat in a fair fight.
An involuntary smile crept onto her face as she noticed the pang of genuine disappointment in his voice. She supposed that for her Master, only here to test his mettle as a swordsman, the fact that they had to resort to these tactics to deal with the Heroic Spirit of the sword was probably heartbreaking.
"I'm sure you'll get a chance eventually."
It was obvious that a Servant would obliterate a human with ease, and a mere alchemist was no exception, in spite of his hobbies. Confident he may have been - perhaps it was even earned, but - without a proper time and place, she didn't plan to let Sigmund jeopardise the both… no, the four of them. Assassin's Master was effectively the team leader, but he was her client, and the Master-Servant contract with Archer herself went without saying.
But, if possible, she wished for a situation where he could actually fight like he came here to do.
"It isn't like you were flooded with opportunities at home, right?"
As part of a family who already gave up research in favour of coasting by on the backs of their ancestors? Not really. That's why I took up the sword in the first place.
"I guess it's true that men only want what they can't get, no matter the era."
She supposed that it was also true that if they could get it, they would have had no reason to want it so badly.
I'm sorry to interrupt, Andri cut in, but please don't get yourselves distracted.

"Still, huh?"
"Yeah."
Sofie was getting frustrated enough that she almost started biting her nails. She knew better than to dismiss Saber's intuition. Nobody survived what he had without at least knowing if they were being watched.
Their only goal today had been to just look around the city for potential battlefields, but they were walking around the financial district in broad daylight right now. It seemed that whoever had their sights on them, at the very least, they weren't planning to act while she was in a crowd of people. That was a good sign.
But it also implied the converse. If they left this area for somewhere more secluded, there would be no more reason to hold back. Saber was in spirit form right now, tailing close behind her, but if he moved to try to hunt the hunter, then she would be wide open by herself.
The sun was setting. If they didn't figure this out soon, then this was going to end real soon, and real badly.
That was why she had been tapping away at the keypad of the flip phone in her pocket for the last ninety seconds.

The purpose of such a thing was twofold.
The use of numbers as a form of high-speed incantation wasn't uncommon in the least no matter the region, and Sofie was no exception in that regard. Actually for someone who was so intent on compatibility with the modern age, numbers were quite possibly the ideal way to shorten the 'code' of the thaumaturgies she invoked.
Secondly, it also wasn't unusual to store a formula inside a Mystic Code for later casting to begin with. The only thing unusual was that she had made it out of a mass-produced electronic device.
It wasn't only that Magi were generally antiquated and out-of-touch that they did not engage with modern technology. Rather, the fact that culture existed at all was for the same reason as any culture.
Magecraft drew from Mysteries, and thus valued two things: scarcity and history. The consumption civilisation of the present era thwarted both. There was theoretically no reason that a communication device from twenty years prior would have been unacceptable to use in the modern day, for the same reason that a firestriker from centuries prior still had plenty of value.
In practice, however, the rate of technological advancement had outpaced that of human lifespans many times over, and so the world and its tools were barely recognisable if compared to just one too many decades in the past. The quality of goods and tools rapidly and continually rose. The creators of those goods and tools would encourage replacement of the old with the new, and the average person would acquiesce when financial strain was not a factor. It was no mere vice, but simply a case of maximising one's own autonomy by increasing the quality and versatility of the goods and tools available to them. Thus, disposal of things that had accumulated too many years was a necessity - the opposite goal to a Magus's. Both the rarity and the lifetime of almost everything produced by modern civilisation was massively reduced; a state of affairs that would make the Magi of five hundred years ago fall into despair. Even her teacher was no exception to that.
But Sofie Huangjing Le-Mei was. From her point of view, nothing about this was unsalvageable.
Only a fool would deny that consumption civilisation was capable of creating masterworks. The reason that it was so incompatible with Magecraft was that its ability to create them was too high. But mass production and mass disposal, logically speaking, could cancel each other out. If replaced goods were disposed of as a matter of course, did that not mean that a kind of scarcity would come to exist among the rare survivors?
Those of faint heart had tended to dismiss her as delusional for pointing out such a thing. Indeed, they would have probably been right if they had been talking to anyone else. But Sofie knew she was gifted, and more importantly, she wasn't a coward. A twenty-year-old cellphone was not going to have the output to compete with more orthodox Mystic Codes, but it didn't need to: it only needed to have functional utility, a qualitative measure of worth rather than quantitative. After all, if her Magecraft was a bullet, she was personally serving as the barrel of that gun, and she wasn't giving that role up to mere equipment.

All that said, it was going to be a moot point if she didn't know where she was going to be shooting real soon.
She was standing in a crowd, that was for sure, but it wasn't that dense. She suspected that she had to be being followed, and yet nobody here seemed to have their eyes on her.
They must be hidden somewhere.
That much was obvious.
Assassin, then? No, it was possible that someone was simply concealing themselves. Invisibility Magecraft required far too much magical energy, more than enough to sense it - akin to how wearing black at night only made one more visible to thermal imaging - so that was out of the question, but if they had something more advanced and more subtle, then it was possible…
She was getting a headache. Sofie knew better than anyone that execution was everything, and it was almost worse than meaningless to speculate on the mechanics of spells that she had yet to encounter, but she was out of other options. She had to take some kind of guess as to what she was up against to even start to fight back.
So, no matter how she─

Someone was approaching. Amidst the crowd, there was a small, pale girl walking right toward her with a visible sense of purpose, silver-white ponytail shaking back and forth. No magical energy that she could immediately sense either… She looked a little strange, but nothing that seemed to go below the surface.
"Saber, is this…?"
This wasn't their stalker. That much was immediately obvious. In the first place, there was no subtlety in her presence or movement, and this kid was smaller than Sofie herself. She very clearly posed absolutely no threat at all.
"No chance," Saber agreed. "There's no killing intent at all."
But she was making eye contact, so it was clear that she had some kind of bone to pick.
"Hey there, missy. Something wrong?" she asked. "I'm a little busy right now, so can it wait?"

Archer furrowed her brow. "Oh, that's new."
What is it? Sigmund asked.
Saber's Master had been approached. Just by looking, it seemed that the white-haired child who had suddenly strode up to her wasn't a Master, but all the same, there was clearly some sense of urgency in their behaviour as they talked to the girl.
They exchanged a few words, and they started to walk.
"I think she just met up with someone."
Magus?
"I can't tell, but there's no Servant…"
The lenses and mirrors shifted in the air, the image on the glass following the two as they moved toward the buildings around the edge of the square. They didn't go far, just stepping into a quiet alleyway before continuing to talk. Saber's Master sat down on a box, and the outline of a third figure began to──
"Saber materialised," Archer said.
Then the new person is in the loop about Magecraft? concluded Sigmund. Maybe they're in league, or some kind of informant…
"Impossible to say, isn't it?"
Well, we can say one thing for sure. We don't have any unwanted witnesses. This is our window.
"You're sure?"
Quickly. This could be our only chance.
Centering the mirrors, Archer raised her index finger at the image of her target, and took the shot.