It had begun with the phone lines. One by one, seemingly at random but with great frequency, telephone poles were found toppled, as if struck by a great blow. They lay across roads, or fell into houses, or were just smashed to kindling and left strewn across the street. Wires coiled, sparking, in puddles left by the rain of last night.
On the outskirts, it was the same story with the power lines – pylons lay as so much scrap metal on the approaches to Fuyuki. About half of Shinto and most of Miyama lost power entirely, and the rest was patchy at best. Engineers, shaken from their beds, asked themselves what on Earth could have caused such damage – a freak storm? They might have called it terrorism, except that what kind of terrorist could break a power pylon in half without alerting everyone for miles around with an explosion?
It wasn't terrorism. The culprit was after something much more large-scale than simple terror, and Fuyuki was about to find this out.
As the sun rose, it had been the roads. Transport, already struggling with the loss of the bridge, suddenly ground to a standstill altogether, and the streets thronged with pedestrians – commuters trying to go about their day, or else curious about just what had caused the endless gridlock. To their horror, some found the cause.
At almost every major intersection, someone had created barricades. Not simple roadblocks, either – whole cars and trucks had been seemingly crushed, burned, and dragged into position. A few of them still had their drivers inside, although none were alive. Whether this was cause for sorrow was up for debate, given their slightly… chewed-on condition. A few of them had the drivers displayed as twisted, mangled wrecks hanging from the doors or off the upturned wheels. In the heat of the day, a cloud of flies surrounded each bloated corpse.
The barricades could not be moved – how were the bulldozers going to get through? All the roads they might use to get there were clogged with traffic or pedestrians. An entire city tried to find alternate routes, only to find that there were none, only more scenes of devastation. In places, the roads themselves had been smashed to powder, riddled with potholes large enough to lose a car in.
Where these had gone down to the pipework and cables, whole neighbourhoods were left without electricity or water. This would be unfortunate, given what was coming.
The people of Fuyuki complained, and shook their fists, and blamed the government, or terrorists, or aliens, or whoever – and then they all tried to continue their day.
It wasn't to be.
In the late morning, it had been the emergency services. Starting by the sea and working south, a mysterious series of fires and explosions had worked its way through every fire station and police precinct across both Miyama and Shinto.
One by one, the disaster control centre lost contact with its stations, while reports of fires poured in, enough even with the downed lines to overwhelm the phone operators. Seeing the pattern, it tried to send out its fire engines, only to realise they were just as trapped as everyone else by the gridlock. They burned where they were parked, unable to respond in time to help just as everyone else was unable to respond in time to save them.
The traffic had forced everyone commuting to work out of their cars and onto the street – now, spreading fires caused everyone else to join them. The streets heaved with people, every one of them trying to get past each other. The police, as clueless as everyone else, tried and failed to enforce some kind of order onto the crowd. Unable to answer any questions or provide any relief, all they could do was try and prevent fights breaking out and organise volunteer bucket chains.
By the time the control centre managed to adjust to the fact that every resource it would use to respond to a fire was, in fact, on fire, it was under attack itself. A receptionist at the front deck noted a small blonde figure walking right past them. Five minutes later, the entire place was ablaze, half the exterior walls had been levelled, and everyone inside was dead.
As the sun climbed higher into the sky and the fires raged uncontrolled, Fuyuki began to realise there was no-one coming to save them.
At around midday, the attacks started.
The first was an office building in Shinto. The fire alarm had been set off, and the workers evacuated obediently. None made it to the car park that served as a muster point.
The second was a street in Miyama, blocked off at one end by a barricade and at the other by a house, collapsed into the street and still burning. About a hundred people had been stuck there, either unwilling to leave their cars, preferring to wait inside their homes and pray the fire didn't spread there, or simply unable to scale the barricade with its grisly decorations. Those on the other side reported hearing shrieks, screams, the sounds of blunt impacts into human flesh… and the high-pitched, cold laughter of a young girl.
All this came as rumour and hearsay to the centres of power, most of whom were only just getting used to the fact that the roads were blocked. Without reliable phone lines there was no way to receive information or issue instructions. Without transport there was no way to pass information via word of mouth. With their emergency services pulled in every direction by over twenty individual infernos, there was very little the authorities could do. It was down to the police on the street to deal with incidents as and when they occurred.
And none of them were anywhere near prepared to deal with the beast rampaging through Fuyuki.
In the afternoon, enough of a local response had been cobbled together to try and rescue the worst-hit areas, or at least assess the damage.
By now the first fires had burnt themselves out, or been extinguished by bucket chains carting water all the way from the beach in a frantic attempt by the locals to save their homes. The first responders came onto the scene, hours too late, to see just what on Earth had happened.
It was a mess.
The only word for it was carnage. The burnt buildings, the wrecked cars, the uprooted trees and downed lampposts and phone lines… a typhoon could have hit and not made much of a difference. But all that was expected, given the state of the city.
The bodies, sadly, were as well.
What was not expected were the messages. Burned into walls, daubed in blood on the roads, and in one case even made by arranging corpses like some ghoulish art project, were two words.
ASSASSIN.
SURRENDER.
Serenity perched on the ruins of a house and looked down at another scene of horror, and shook her head. Below her was what had been a suburban street. Now, the asphalt was melted, its acrid smell tickling the back of Serenity's nose and mingling with the scent of charred wood, dank water, and powdered brick. And blood.
People, covered in dust, were working to excavate the collapsed buildings, put out the fires and search for survivors. Serenity could already tell it was futile. There was no-one left alive here.
Such devastation, the peace of Fuyuki broken, and for what?
It wasn't the death that bothered her… not really. Over the course of long years as Hassan-i-Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountain, she had taken thousands of lives. She hated it, but she could hardly deny that she had gotten used to it, enduring a life of suffering with only her faith to assure her that it would work out in the end.
Even then, though, she had only rarely killed thousands in a single day.
It had to be Berserker. Only the fire demon was both powerful enough to pull something like this off, and unhinged enough to think it was worth it. Rider may well have been able to do this, especially if she could summon her Tarrasque as more than an empty shell, but she was also a literal saint. Archer may have been ruthless enough, but this wasn't her style. Saber… no. The Knight of White Lilies was not capable of this, in any sense of the word.
Caster was an unknown, and could well have been skilled enough with flame magecraft to shut down a city. But what purpose did it serve?
No, Berserker was Serenity's top suspect. But why, why had she called for Assassin's surrender? It made no sense.
Sadly, Serenity would find no answers here. There was no sense of a Servant – Berserker was long gone, no doubt to wreak havoc elsewhere.
Which left the question. What should she do?
She had no intention of surrendering, of course. Playing the game of the Servant of Madness, whatever it was, could surely only end badly. But… what did Berserker hope to gain by asking?
No matter. Those were questions for her Master, not her. All she had to do was as she was ordered. And right now, her orders were, 'Find Berserker.'
Assassin, came Kiritsugu's voice in her head. Head to Shinto immediately. The cultural centre has collapsed. Hurry.
Yes, Master.
Serenity turned away from this sorry scene, and dropped down, heading as fast as she could towards another. Invisible, silent, Serenity passed over the heads of the panicked crowds.
When she came to the river, she simply leapt over it, and carried on.
The good news – well, good for the purposes of finding Berserker, not so good for basically anything else – was that Berserker was doing pretty much the opposite of lying low. The bad news was that she was being annoyingly canny about it. This was the fifth site Serenity had visited, searching for her target, and Berserker hadn't been at any of them.
Serenity was very possibly the fastest Servant in the War, with only Archer maybe outpacing her, and could cover a lot of ground in a very short space of time. With Kiritsugu and his familiars, and with Maiya keeping in radio contact, there wasn't a whole lot of Fuyuki where they didn't have at least some idea what was going on. Every time any of them picked up on something happening, Serenity would rush over… only for Berserker to have vanished.
It was a good strategy. Berserker could cause untold damage in a hit-and-run attack with a combination of sheer strength and that flame power, and after dematerialising could be gone in seconds, only to pop up elsewhere before anyone had even finished responding to reports of the first attack.
Worse, the crowds of people she had forced onto the streets meant that other Servants had to be careful about picking a fight themselves. You would have thought that the secrecy rule would have gone out the window by now… except that Berserker hadn't technically revealed herself. She wasn't leaving any witnesses, at least. No Servant wanted to be the one to let that djinn out of its lamp.
All those people in the way also meant a lot more potential collateral damage. Berserker obviously didn't care, but Serenity couldn't imagine Saber or Rider starting a brawl knowing that a street full of people would be in the crossfire.
And speaking of…
Up ahead, Serenity could feel a Servant's presence. Landing on a rooftop near her destination, she instinctively hid herself in a shadow, and peeked out.
Saber stood before a barricade, their clean white and blue finery out of place amid all the metal, soot and blood. Their wide-brimmed hat was pulled low, hiding their eyes, and their rapier remained in its sheath at their hip. They stood very still, staring at the scene before them.
The barricade was one of the more disturbing Serenity had seen throughout the day. Like the others, it was made from cars, piled up three high all across the road so that only a small child could have squeezed between them and the buildings on either side. These cars, however, had been sealed together, through a combination of sheer strength crushing the metal together like clay and extreme heat welding it into one solid mass.
Berserker hadn't bothered to take the people out first.
One man sat in a pool of blood, where his head had been crushed by the two other cars Berserker had piled on top of his own. One old woman seemed to have died from a heart attack, and a girl that looked to be her granddaughter had cut herself deeply trying to drag both of them out through a window. A family of four had cooked inside their own car when Berserker had sealed them inside.
Saber's fist tightened on their sword. Any weapon forged today would have cracked from the pressure.
With a flash of bright steel, Saber lunged and drew in the same motion, exploding forth so quickly that even Serenity blinked. There was… a flurry of activity.
Saber stood on the other side of the barricade, and it collapsed in their wake. Metal shrieked against metal, and cars slid to either side as Saber sheathed their sword.
They dissolved into a shower of soft white petals just as the first medics, policemen and onlookers came round the corner to see what the noise was. Within moments they were gone – but Serenity still caught a glimpse of gritted teeth and cold blue eyes before the petals mixed with ash.
For her own sake, Berserker had best keep up her game of hit and run.
None of the other Servants were likely to give her any quarter today.
Ibaraki released the man she held by the jacket and let him slump to the floor of the tiny apartment. In the next room over, his wife lay in a mangled heap. There was an annoying mewling thing in a cot over in the bedroom, but she'd get to that soon enough.
She'd long ago stopped counting how many people she'd drained of prana. It buzzed through her spiritual self, heady and thick like the very best alcohol. Her entire body felt buoyed up by it, lighter than air and yet more solid than stone. She felt more powerful than she had since being summoned.
Of course, it was natural that this should be so! She was a mighty oni, made to prey on the puny humans that shrieked and flailed as she clutched them. Yes… it was only natural and proper that she should rampage, strike fear into the hearts of those with the misfortune to stand in her way. It was what Shuten would have done, and Ibaraki would do the same.
But by the gods, she was sick of the taste of human by now. Surely this was enough?
Every time she considered stopping, though, leaving the people alone and retiring to rest and enjoy herself, Saber's words came back to her.
"Should you fail to defeat her, however will you gain the promised Command Spell? Such a princely bounty…"
Enough? To fight six heroes called from the Grail?
Never. Not even close.
So Ibaraki pressed on. Created chaos, did things she hadn't even see Shuten do, stirred the mortal world into a frenzy like a disturbed ants' nest, all to give her cover to keep on moving. As soon as even one Servant found her, that was it – she couldn't afford the delay of stopping to fight. Unless Ibaraki could escape almost immediately, every other Servant would sense what was happening and pile on.
And Ibaraki wasn't ready for that.
When she finished in that apartment, she moved on to the next by dematerialising and lunging through the wall to fall upon the terrified old man on the other side. She could have simply barged through – these flimsy modern buildings were nothing to her now. But destruction was not her goal. Prana was, and secrecy. Let those foolish heroes look for her in places of carnage. She would quietly continue gaining strength elsewhere, only to reappear and cause another distraction.
Ryuunosuke had been left behind. He'd whined and protested, but the truth was Ibaraki was moving too fast for him to keep up. The fool kept suggesting things for her to try, or things he'd like to see. Most of them would have taken up far too much time, but just to stop him from sulking Ibaraki had indulged him as much as she could. Honestly. The idiot would have fit right in among the crueller oni of Mt Ooe… but he really needed to learn when was and wasn't appropriate to lose yourself.
Eventually, she was done, and Ibaraki paused for breath. She needed to move on, she knew that, but… for a moment, she let herself relax. Stepping outside onto the balcony, she took in the afternoon air. It was hardly peaceful – the air was full of soot and smoke and ash from a hundred places around the city, and screams and sirens sounded from far off. But Ibaraki took the moment to take in the scene anyway.
If the other Servants hadn't been united against her before, they certainly would be now. All those unwritten rules, the etiquette of the Grail War, Ibaraki had just spat on it all. Using the city itself as her sword and her shield… it was ambitious. But, really. They brought it on themselves. Going after her, for no reason other than that she was designated the villain in their play for heroes… what did they expect but that she'd throw herself further into the role?
Ibaraki was almost certain that she would not last another twenty-four hours. What she was doing… it was working well, and every hour made her more powerful. But in the end, she knew, with a sinking sensation in her gut, that she was living on borrowed time. You couldn't challenge the entire Grail War and expect to live.
But she'd damn well do her best.
She'd at least take down Assassin with her. Ibaraki didn't expect the little sneak to actually surrender, and didn't intend on stopping her rampage even if they did. But at least she could force the other Servants to call for it, as an easy way of getting Assassin out in the open. If she was lucky, Assassin may well be the next target after she was… after her.
Ibaraki shook her head. Enough of this gloomy navel-gazing.
With a light skip, Ibaraki vaulted the balcony and launched herself into open air, aiming for a suburban street.
She rose, and savoured the moment at the apex of her flight before falling. It was high time, she decided, for another fire to be started. Humans being humans, they had panicked, but some among them were organising to put them out. Yes, a quick burst of flame, a refill of prana, and she would be off.
The nice thing about fire was that it kept on going even without you there feeding it. It served as a weapon, a distraction, and an area-denial tool all at once. Most oni could produce heat with their imitation of Prana Burst – but Ibaraki was far above those common thugs, an entirely different breed, and flame answered her call like a faithful dog. She summoned it now, wreathing her blade in it so that when she landed she could slam it into the ground and annihilate everything around her in an expanding inferno…
…it really was taking her a long time to fall, wasn't it?
As Ibaraki had the thought, she suddenly accelerated towards the ground. She fell, spiralling out of control as she went far, far further down than she had jumped up. The ground rushed up to meet her at a terrifying speed, and she balled herself up and braced for impact.
When it came, it was like being hit by a falling star, and Ibaraki lay in the crater she had made, dazed. Above her, she heard a voice.
"You see, Master? A little space manipulation, a little gravity assist, and half the work is done for you! And the best part is, since it's the common sense of Gaia, which is to say physics, doing this, even Magic Resistance is powerless to resist!"
Ibaraki picked her head up off the ground and looked.
Standing above her, on the edge of the crater, was a Servant. Ibaraki was hardly inclined to call any human gorgeous, but this one was – pale skin, dark hair, her features a work of art. Excited blue eyes met cold reptilian ones, and the sheer intelligence behind them raised Ibaraki's hackles.
"Oho? Tougher than you look! Master, do stand back, dear, and let your teacher handle this…" The Servant put one hand on her hip. The giant, ornate brass gauntlet she wore on her left arm shouldn't have gone with the blue and red dress, but both were items of such incredible intricacy and beauty that they matched perfectly. Both were made by the same person, if Ibaraki was any judge – the Servant before her.
"I would say Good Morning, Berserker, but you've rather spoiled that," she said. "There I was, enjoying my beauty sleep, when the most frightful racket startled me out of bed. I poked my head out of the house, and saw an awful mess outside! 'Well, Caster', I said to myself, 'we can't have that!' So I woke up my poor Master, just as tired as I was, and out we came to see what we could do to help. A few little tracking spells later, a mass hypnosis to clear the area of our inconvenient audience, and here we are! Now, what do you have to say for yourself?"
Ibaraki didn't dignify that with an answer, just lunged from her supine position straight at Caster. With her newfound power coursing through her veins, she was lethal, unstoppable, and moved faster than the foolish spellcaster could react. Her claws ripped into the figure without any resistance…
…and Caster's body smeared across thin air like paint on canvas before disappearing.
"Whoops!" said Caster, reappearing on the other side of the street, next to an especially puny-looking boy in some kind of green uniform. "And that, Master, is why you never stop and talk with a demon face-to-face if you can help it. Best to keep your distance!"
The street was oddly deserted. The people that crowded every other part of Fuyuki were nowhere to be seen, and although the cars were still blocking the road there was no-one inside. Caster's work, no doubt.
"Caster," said Ibaraki, trying her best to remain dignified despite having just assaulted empty air. "I'm leaving now. If you do not stop me, I will not have to hurt you or your Master. Goodbye."
Without waiting for a response, Ibaraki pumped power into her legs and leapt, Disengaging as she did so.
A second later, she made a second crater next to the first, and growled under her breath.
"Oh, no, please don't leave!" said Caster. "Who knows what you might take it into your head to do? And besides…"
A long staff topped with some kind of blue star appeared in her gauntleted hand, and her radiant smile lit up the street.
"… my student needs a lesson in how to fight."
