There were few things that could clear a plaza of people faster than a spell designed to do just that by the Servant of the Spell.
A gunshot would do the trick every time, though.
"Honestly," said Caster, pouting into her crystal ball on Waver's desk, through which they could see the general panic in the Fuyuki central plaza. "How untrusting can some people be? I gave the Master of Assassin a perfectly serviceable poison rifle, and he still brings his own! Rude!"
"Um-!" Waver started, eyes widening in panic. They kind of needed the Master of Lancer alive for now, having him sniped was not part of the plan-
"No, it's all fine," Caster huffed. She motioned for Waver to look closer.
In the ball, Waver saw Kotomine Kirei unharmed by Emiya's shot – and equally unharmed when Assassin went for him personally. As the figure transformed, and revealed itself to be Lancer, Waver breathed a sigh of relief. "Guess we don't have to worry about Assassin any more."
"No, this is where Assassin teleports away via Command Spell…" Caster said distractedly, and right on cue the struggling figure disappeared from beneath Lancer's foot. "There we go. Emiya knows when to cut his losses, and he hasn't used a Command Spell so far. He knows what he's doing. Still a jerk, though!"
Next to her, Waver laughed weakly. "You sabotaged all the weapons before giving them to him, Caster. Seems to me he was just being sensible."
"Well, yeah, but he didn't know that!" Caster sulked, pantomiming great offence. Waver was grateful. Anything to take his mind off the next step of the plan.
… except that now was the time, wasn't it? There was no use in putting it off any further, and now that Assassin was far away and unlikely to be in a position to interfere, there wouldn't be a better opportunity.
"I guess… we proved your theory, Caster," started Waver. "Lancer really thought Assassin was Emiya, and seemed to be reacting to the other false presences too."
"Mmm. Good thing too, otherwise all that work I did would have gone to waste! Now I know I'm on the right lines, I think I'll be able to decouple whatever Lancer's actually feeling from a physical presence entirely… which offers me a lot more options, of course. I wish we'd had a chance to test a few more things, but Assassin was an asset we could only use for a limited time, and our ability to fool Lancer's presence detection was the main thing to nail down." Caster's sunny disposition dimmed slightly.
Waver swallowed. "…look, Caster. You don't have to do this right now."
Caster waved him off. "No, no. This is the time. It's just… well, I'm about to go and fight Enkidu, you know? Even I'll get nervous before doing something like that…" She looked at Waver, and smiled. "Oh, don't worry. I'm sure I'll be fine! If it all gets too much, we can just escape and come back later. And if we really can't do anything else, we can always go after Kotomine Kirei ourselves! This is in the bag!"
By now, Waver knew enough to tell when his Servant wasn't being entirely honest.
But the last thing she needed was for her to think he had anything less than one hundred percent faith in her, so he forced a smile back. "Right! Until I know everything you know, you're my teacher and I'm your student. That's what we agreed, right?"
This time, Caster's smile was a bit more genuine. "Right!" She stood, and patted her cheeks. "Okay, no more moping. Game faces!"
With a click of her fingers, her gauntlet teleported onto her left hand. With a twirl, her staff appeared in her right. And with a flourish of both, a portal swept over the pair of them, and they were in the plaza.
Not ten feet away, a perplexed-looking Lancer stood.
"Oh?" they said. "What a busy day this is. Are you also here to ambush me, Caster?"
Caster's dazzling grin showed none of her previous uncertainty. "I sure am! Except, um…" she poked her fingers together embarrassedly, "Assassin did such a good job of being sneaky that I thought I'd look kind of silly trying to do the same thing, so I thought I'd not bother…"
That, Waver supposed, was his cue. He palmed his face. "Caster, this was not the plan. This is… so far from the plan. We may as well start over, to be honest." He looked at Lancer. "I'm so sorry about this."
"Well, I mean, it would just be super awkward to go again now," argued Caster. "Come on, Master, we've come this far, let's just roll with it. What's the worst that can happen?" She gave a thumbs up and a cheesy grin, which Waver sighed further at.
Despite how ridiculous all this felt – and it really did feel ridiculous – there was a point to it.
While they bantered, Caster continued to lay down subtle spells. Some of these were coded into buttons on her gauntlet – and her playacting hid these being pressed. Some of these were keyed to specific phrases, which she would fit into her patter.
Quite a lot of what Caster did was set up beforehand. A magus from the Age of Gods really would have been able to pull off the things Caster could do at the drop of a hat… but for Leonardo Da Vinci, she needed a little more time and a couple more tools. Her gauntlet and staff made up a lot of the difference, as focuses for precise magical energy manipulation.
For the rest? Well, that was where Caster's genius at almost every human endeavour came into play. And acting was no exception.
… admittedly, Waver was less enthused about being roped into it all himself. Being the straight man was no fun! But, you couldn't call yourself a student of a world-famous polymath and only focus on one thing. Caster had had Waver try his hand at everything.
For their part, Lancer seemed to be taking it all in stride. "Well, I admire your candour if nothing else. However, I request that we not fight here. If you insist on doing so, I shall become upset, and I won't guarantee your Master's survival."
"Oh, not a problem!" Caster said. "Naturally, we were watching your conversation with Assassin. Fighting in a deserted area suits us just fine."
Waver recognised the code. Nearly ready then. He took a deep breath, subtly.
"Ah, I did wonder," Lancer said. "Your trickery with false presences is really quite something. I couldn't be sure if you were there or not. Strange, though. I had thought you were in alliance with Assassin and her Master, or at least I felt you leave amicably from their lair. Yet you come at me separately rather than in concert. Did your pact fall through? Or did you want all the glory for defeating me to yourself?"
"Um… yes!" said Caster unconvincingly, fiddling with her staff and refusing to meet Lancer's eyes. "It was definitely all for the glory and for no other reason. Especially not because my student wants to be able to brag about something, anything, and as his overachieving mentor I kind of promised that I'd take on the most powerful Servant for him…"
Lancer laughed, while Waver felt his face flush. Dammit, Caster, that was too close to the bone!
Real reactions add authenticity~! came Caster's reply. And we can't have Lancer figuring out why we actually want to fight them…
Out loud, she said, "Well, enough talk. If you wouldn't mind, I can transport us to a place where there won't be any collateral damage?"
"And, no doubt, where you have prepared the ground extensively to your advantage," Lancer said with a smile.
Caster rubbed her head. "Ehehe…"
Lancer spread their hands. "I don't mind. Come at your strongest or your weakest, it makes no difference to me."
"Okay then!" Before Lancer could change their mind, Caster twirled their staff around, and planted it on the ground. "Mirror World Portal, set, activate!"
By now, the odd inverted feeling was familiar to Waver, and he kept his feet as he, Caster and Lancer all appeared in the Mirror World copy of Fuyuki.
Not, and this was important, 'the copy of the part of Fuyuki they'd been standing in'.
Caster had indeed been busy here. Part of her experiments had been expanding the size of the Mirror World pocket as far as it would go, and now the other dimension stretched across the entire city. They were in the middle of New Town, the business district, where tall office blocks rose high on either side – and that wasn't a mistake.
Just as Lancer had implied, Caster and Waver had indeed spent a lot of time setting this confrontation up. In the Mirror World, there was no chance of their preparations being scrutinised, and they could build up as much as they liked – that Lancer was willing to be drawn here was just a bonus.
If they were very lucky, separating Lancer from the real world would also cut off their energy – but Caster didn't think the connection was as weak as that, and indeed Lancer was looking around with a sense of wonder rather than panic.
"Ah, how nostalgic!" they said. "I had not realised this place was still here, or that it could still be reached from the world of man. How peaceful it is here…" They smiled at Caster. "Yes, indeed this is a wonderful solution. Here, we can fight as much as we please without harming anyone or anything. Thank you, Caster."
"No problem!" Waver felt a force take hold of him, and he lifted into the air. Next to him, Caster rose also, somewhat more smoothly. "Well, I don't suppose there's anything you want to say before we start?"
"If I think of anything, I will let you know as it occurs to me," Lancer said. Despite Caster and Waver rising further and further into the air, they did not deign to move.
"Good to know!" Caster fiddled with her gauntlet, exposing an array of buttons on her knuckles. "Then, without further ado…"
She slammed her fists together, and every single one of the traps she'd prepared for this exact moment went off.
Not, it should be said, all at once. That would defeat the point entirely.
Instead, Waver had to shield his eyes as the mines Caster had left around their landing point in Mirror World unleashed an array of effects on Lancer, in sequence. Rather than a single strike, the ground shook and the air split with the sound of an assault that just kept on building. Energy blasts, sonic waves, curses and space-warps and conceptual effects he couldn't even name – they kept going off, one after the other, until the flashing light and dust clouds hid Lancer from view entirely.
Waver took a half-step back in mid-air from the shockwaves, until he forced himself to look straight towards to explosions. This, too, was a lesson.
For her part, Caster watched carefully.
Eventually, it was over, and Waver was left looking at where Lancer had been. The echoes of Caster's initial strike bounced oddly off the silent city, and he wondered just how much power had gone into it. If Caster had done what she'd just done to anything else, what would have been left?
The dust cloud cleared – and, because Waver had seen this cartoon, he wasn't surprised in the slightest when Lancer appeared unharmed. There were a couple of scratches on their arms, and their cheek was grazed, and within a moment even those faded to nothing.
"I sincerely hope that wasn't your best," they said. "Some of that was potent enough, but you will never damage me with such slapdash tactics. If you insist on dragging this out, I'll stop pretending not to notice your devices where they hide." They lifted a bare foot and brought it down – and where it landed there was a crunch. Another of Caster's mines faded into view, sparking as it was crushed beneath the incredible force.
Caster didn't seem worried. "My best? That wasn't even meant to harm you, I'm afraid. There's a process to this, you see; there's a little thing we invented since you've been gone, and I don't mean my little toys! That just then, Lancer, was science." She peered closer, adjusting her glasses. "Let's see, both forearms and your left cheek showed the most damage – so, given what I aimed at those areas, it looks like spiritron dispersion, death curses and space-warping are the way to go, in that order! I didn't really expect much else to get through, but you never knew…"
She clenched and unclenched her fist, and her gauntlet… unfolded, growing in size and gaining mass form nowhere until Caster held a full arm cannon, glowing with blue energy. "I had high hopes for this," she said. "As Servants we're all made of magical energy no matter what form we're currently taking, so I thought, why not just disperse that directly? Working on that level should allow me to bypass any defences you might have – your Endurance or Magic Resistance shouldn't matter. It's a Da Vinci Grail War special!... although with the Grail keeping you summoned I doubt I can simply erase Servants entirely." With a barely-audible whine, the blue light intensified. "Still, this is all theoretical, so let's find out! Stand still like a good test subject, Lancer!"
Ah. Waver recognised that, now he saw it. For all that Caster claimed it was an anti-Servant measure, she'd first demonstrated it to him early on in the War, when he hadn't quite got a handle on his Servant's capabilities and had been busy panicking over El-Melloi sending an invisible spirit to spy on them or assassinate him in his sleep.
The idea was that it would just scatter any magical energy the beam touched, whether bound into a spell or familiar or not. It was essentially the last word in magical duelling, and Waver was definitely going to grab one if he couldn't make his own before the War ended. If it could deal with Servants, though…
While the lights on Caster's gauntlet were blue, the Spiritron Dispersal Cannon itself wasn't visible to the human eye. It did, however, leave a black streak across reality in Waver's spiritual senses, as though someone had simply erased part of the world and your eyes hadn't caught up to what your brain knew yet.
That non-beam blasted forth – and Lancer swayed out of the way.
Before Waver could shout in triumph, they waved their hand through the disconcerting patch of space that Waver's eyes refused to believe was a dark void. It emerged smoking, Lancer's hand thinned as though dipped in acid – but still present.
"Hmm." As Waver watched, Lancer's hand returned to normal. "Potent, I'll admit. Still, you will take a very long time to wear me down this way. So long as I remain in contact with the Earth, I will be restored no matter what you do."
Caster grinned. "So long as you remain in contact with the Earth, hmm?" Her cannon began glowing again, and Waver swallowed and reached into his pocket, hand settling round the object inside. His thumb found a button.
I'm ready, Caster, he sent, and pressed it.
Lancer's eyes widened, and they moved – but not before yet another of the hidden mines went off beneath their feet. This one, Waver knew, was not meant to be part of the initial assault. This one didn't explode with fire, or lightning, or any other esoteric effects.
Instead, all its explosive power was put into force.
Lancer blasted skyward like a cork from a bottle. There wasn't a scratch on them, but their eyes widened in honest surprise. Before they even cleared the building tops, however, chains flew from their sleeve to anchor them to the ground.
They were severed before they could even tighten by three precise shots from Caster's Spiritron Disruptor, and Waver thought he saw Lancer frown.
Waver withdrew what was in his pocket. This looked almost like a joystick handle, elegantly designed to perfectly fit Waver's hand, with a button at the top and various dials around the base. He pressed the button twice – and in the office blocks, two windows shattered as a pair of beautiful brass missiles activated and streaked towards Lancer.
Lancer intercepted them with a casual wave of their hand.
The concussive explosions threw them even higher.
This time, Waver definitely wasn't mistaken about Lancer's annoyed expression, and they aimed one hand at the ground and the other at Waver himself. In an eyeblink, golden chains shot forth, bullet-quick – only to disappear into a pair of orange and blue portals Caster summoned with a laugh, each cluster emerging from the other and finding no purchase.
Waver fiddled with a dial, and clicked again – this time, the missile that launched from a rooftop was Spiriton Dispersal model which exploded in a burst of non-light as soon as Lancer kicked it away, and Waver saw the hem of Lancer's trousers looking decidedly tattered.
This had been Caster's solution to the insane amount of multitasking she would need to perform if they were going to have a chance against Lancer – anything that could be automated was, and the activation handed off to Waver. Caster, then, would handle any moment-to-moment spellcasting and adjustments that needed to happen.
This was, largely, what Caster had done with the three-day ceasefire Lancer had imposed. The poison weapons for Assassin and her Master were child's play, they'd taken Caster about five minutes to think up and a further ten to fabricate. Most of the effort had gone towards preparing this space with all the bombs, mines, missiles and everything else that Caster thought she might need to fight even somewhat evenly against Lancer.
Well, that and Caster's 'big project'. But completing that meant getting through this, ideally alive.
With a wave of her staff, phantom copies of Waver and Caster split off in every direction – two, then five, then a dozen, some flying to the ground and setting up barriers, some darting into buildings, some rising higher into the air – and one staying right where it was. Waver felt himself moving in unpredictable patterns as Caster adjusted the spell keeping them aloft… and above, still tumbling, Lancer's eyes tracked every single pair.
Experimentally, another chain whipped through where Caster and Waver had been – smashing straight through the very real barrier that the illusion had raised. The false Caster faded from sight with a wave, followed by every other illusory pair. Looking down at his feet, Waver realised his own body was invisible too – even from inside the veil, there was only a ghostly impression.
This was why Caster working out how to fool Lancer's Presence Detection had been an essential prerequisite to starting this fight. Now, instead of trapping themselves in a fight against a foe who was too powerful to stop and couldn't be deterred or misled in any way, it was a shell game where Caster matched her own wits against her opponent.
Waver would bet on his Servant's wits against anyone, any time.
Up above, Lancer hovered, head cocked. "Interesting," they said. A small smile graced their face. "True, without access to the ground, you could eventually chip your way to my Spirit Core. Your trap was well set… but."
There was a golden flash.
Lancer stood in a crater in the middle of the road, without a scratch.
Around them, rubble fell, chains retracting from office windows and deep gashes carved into rooftops.
"You may have underestimated me, I think," Lancer finished.
Next to Waver, Caster clicked her tongue and lowered her arm, cannon glowing. Sorry, Master, she sent, didn't quite manage to catch all the chains this time!
How many of our duplicates did they just destroy?
Over half, Caster sent. Lancer is… very quick. Hang on while I make a few more…
Once again, illusions split off.
"Cute," came Lancer's voice. "True, I can't tell the real presences from fake. Your spells are, I admit, very effective." They raised a hand, crackling with golden lightning. "Fortunately, I've found enough brute force usually solves questions of targeting."
Caster fired once again, a thicker beam that sent bizarre contrails spiralling across Waver's spiritual vision. Lancer spun to one side, kneeling to drag their hand through solid concrete. Like a child splashing at the seaside, they flung it up and out in Waver's direction, a seemingly casual motion.
The street exploded.
A solid wall of weapons erupted from the road in a wave – faster even than Lancer's chains, fast enough that Waver had barely enough time to open his mouth to yell before Caster grabbed him and he felt his ears pop from a change in pressure. Between one blink and the next, Waver found himself shifted from about twelve feet above the ground, to hundreds, almost at the upper limit of Caster's Mirror World bubble.
Below, a narrow wedge of Fuyuki, over a mile long… just wasn't there any more. Even the rubble had been sliced and smashed by Lancer's attack, appearing more as gravel than anything else. At the thin end, Lancer stood, smiling up at them.
Um… Waver started.
Not to worry, Master, said Caster, although Waver could feel the tension in her mental voice. As long as we spread the duplicates out enough with portals, that attack shouldn't catch them all next time! Besides… every one of those attacks brings us closer to our goal.
Yeah… yeah. Caster was right. If they really needed to, they could just leave right now.
That being the case, now was the perfect time to really see what they – and Lancer could do.
Lancer was an impossibly powerful Servant – under most circumstances, Caster would have no chance against them. But right here, right now, in a closed space filled with their own weapons, with Lancer was willing to let them get the first shot in?
They had a chance.
… or at least, Waver really hoped so, or else no-one was even going to find his body.
