(A/N) We're back everyone! The Pa treon fellas got this one a few hours early so that they could decide which scene would be illustrated on QQ/SB. Big shoutout to them!
Speaking of shoutouts, NoSchittSherlock out here doing great beta work again. Go check out his profile on this site and on Spacebattles for his sick EMIYA fic Actually Satan.
X
The pair stood side-by-side in a field of corpses.
Though the scene of hundreds of lives being ended at once represented an undeniable tragedy, the Sekirei and Ashikabi displayed an apathy in the matter that bordered on offensive.
"Now what?" asked Karasuba anticlimactically. She carefully stepped over the mutilated torso of something that was once human-shaped in order to get closer to the white-haired man.
"Now, we look for anything that could lead us to the magus that made this camp," he answered, then frowned. "Our target's research is pretty advanced. I've never seen Dead Apostles so young with such lucidity. They weren't all the way human, but they seemed to have been able to preserve a somewhat human lifestyle."
She agreed easily with a quick nod.
"Okay. Ah– this is broken, by the way."
She handed a broken sword back to him and it took him a moment to process what he was looking at.
The mangled mess in his hands was the Monohoshi Zao.
It wasn't really a Noble Phantasm, but by no means was it a flimsy blade. Even if one wielded it improperly, it would not have destroyed the weapon to such a degree.
He had given it to her knowing that breaking it was not something that a human could do, self-reinforced or not.
…But she wasn't a human. He continued to underestimate her in ways and for reasons that he couldn't really understand.
Once more, he recalled their first encounter.
Was she really this strong back then too?
He resisted the urge to shake his head. Never mind that for now.
The projection disappeared.
"I'll give you something a little sturdier this time," he told her. It wouldn't do for her to be empty-handed if they ran into the magus.
"No, no. It's fine. Can you make me another one of those?"
He blinked. It was more efficient for him this way, but…
"It won't do you any good if it breaks again."
"I'll be more careful. I promise!"
He gave her a flat stare.
"Well, if you're sure," he acquiesced. "Any particular reason why?"
The woman hummed.
"I don't know. I like it?"
It came out as more of a question than an answer.
They didn't have time to be talking about this. A second Monohoshi Zao replaced the first and was handed back to her.
They walked deeper into the village. All housings were already behind them, but the high wooden gates still went on for a while yet. A forested area kissed the outskirts of the hidden Dead Apostle town, and it being contained within the boundaries was the only thing that differentiated it from the rest of the mountain's environment. The only thing giving away that there was anything to be found beyond that point was the cobblestone path splitting the trees.
And so they followed it. They didn't know what there was to be found on the other end considering how nondescript it was, but it served no purpose to leave any stone unturned.
What they found wasn't quite what either of them was expecting.
It was a huge building: at least fifty meters tall and almost twice as large. Shirou was shocked that they weren't able to notice something so colossal from the entrance of the village.
In fact, it was impossible to believe. Another bounded field? Certainly, he would have caught onto the fact that something was amiss if that were the case.
They approached cautiously– or rather, he approached cautiously, and Karasuba followed beside him with half an eye on his shoulder so that she didn't accidentally bump into anything while the other half joined her opposite eye in admiring the ornament at the end of the katana that she was picking at.
Probably the strangest part of the building was that it didn't fit. Not only in size, but in style. It was a perfect example of modernity, whereas the villages –both the apostle village that they had cleared as well as the villages hugging the base of the mountain– were something closer to the Tudor style in their architecture.
It held none of the traditional tones that were usually favoured by magi, but it made sense that a magus who delved into Apostle research cared little for that sort of thing.
Once the pair reached the doors of the building, they paused. The only way in seemed to be through the large metal doors that rested completely flush between cement walls. No door handle was in sight: not even an indication of which way the door would open.
The Sekirei immediately understood his conundrum and presented herself between him and the door. She eyed it pointedly and tapped her weapon's hilt against it.
It took him a moment to realize what she was implying. He blinked.
Seriously? Could she really– ah, er… hm…
He gave her an awkward thumbs up.
"Go ahead."
He expected many things. For her to poke the weapon, scabbard and all, straight through the metal barrier as if she were burying a stick in dirt was not one of those things.
The show of strength left him speechless long enough for her to yank the sword right back out and her squeeze her hand into the opening that she made for herself. Karasuba pulled her arm to the side and the block of metal groaned, shrieked and contorted along with it.
With a few more manipulations, the door was given a hole large enough for them to slip through. Theatrically, the grey-haired woman motioned for him to go through first. She smiled.
"After you."
"How kind," he mumbled dryly. It took the man very little manoeuvring to fit through the large gap.
The moment that both of his feet were planted on the floor inside, he noticed two things.
The first was that the building's interior was just as impressive as the outside. It was less of a magus workshop in the ways that reminded him of sterile laboratories. If anything, it looked like an incredibly well-furnished house. A fur carpet was carefully positioned between a pair of couches, and a kitchen straight out of a sales pamphlet peered over a half-wall. If it weren't for the tingling in his nose, he wouldn't have thought of it as a workshop at all.
The second was that all the lights were on.
"The magus is here," he warned his partner. "Or at least, someone is."
"Indeed. I do hope that you like the place: I designed it myself after all. I'm quite proud of it."
It was a man's voice. Both he and Karasuba were quick to locate the source.
As far as magi went, there was absolutely nothing unique about his appearance: long, curly blond locks of hair, an arrogant grin and clothes so pompous that they looked as if they were taken from a life-size dress-up doll. All par for the course.
If anything, it was a little hard to believe that such an unconventional breadcrumb trail would lead back to someone like this.
The magus brought a hand to his cheek and sighed dramatically.
"I didn't think that my little hobby here would catch anyone's attention, let alone to the point that the Magus Killer would come knocking on my– ah, rather, would breaking through my door be more accurate?"
"You're making dead apostles and they're going around killing people," Shirou shot back straightforwardly. "The Association was bound to send someone after you eventually: if not me, then someone else."
The magus didn't look worried at all. In fact, he chuckled lightly as if the white-haired man had told a mildly-amusing joke.
"You don't even know what I'm trying to do here," the blonde researcher argued good-naturedly. "My research–"
"That's very nice and all," interjected Karasuba, tapping her Ashikabi on the shoulder," but we can kill him now, right?"
Instead of answering, Shirou traced a handgun and quickly tried to shoot the other man. Unfortunately, their target was competent enough to defend himself. The bullet split in half in mid-air and missed the magus entirely.
The spellcaster didn't know how the blonde managed to do that, but it was very rare that he fought an opponent whose craft was straightforward enough to understand at a glance. If he had to figure out the abilities of every person that he killed, then he wouldn't have gotten very far in his way of life.
The best way to deal with esoteric abilities was to circumvent them entirely.
Before he could do anything else, Karasuba rushed ahead. She swung her sword in the air in front of her randomly as she closed in on the magus.
…No. It wasn't random. Loose strands of incredibly thin wire caught the light as they fluttered harmlessly behind her.
Their enemy huffed.
"You could see that, could you? You have good eyes."
The woman stopped on a dime and spun. Dozens more wires were dispersed by the edge of her blade.
"Good instincts too," he added. "But can you–"
He wasn't given a chance to finish his sentence before her blade lopped off his nose.
"Gargh!"
The magus stumbled back and grabbed his face in pain, but had to forget about licking his wounds when the white-haired man suddenly appeared in the woman's shadow.
The magus was angry.
More wires appeared as if from thin air and formed a net-like barrier between them. Shirou's eyes momentarily widened in surprise when he found himself unable to cut through whatever material it was made out of: instead, his weapons sunk right into it along with the rest of his body.
It was like a spider's web.
"Say goodnight, Magus Killer."
Electricity sparked in the enemy's hand –some sort of elemental spell– and the appendage shot towards his exposed chest at lethal speeds.
Shirou didn't even have to protect himself. Monohoshi Zao sliced straight through the web and lopped off the offending arm in the blink of an eye. Though the sword didn't strike anything else, the wielder's powerful swing left the entirety of the room at the magus' back in tatters.
"…What are you, I wonder?" the disfigured researcher spoke with a nasally voice.
The blond-haired man's question did not suit the tone of the situation whatsoever. His arm was gone, and so was part of his face. Blood caked it from the cheek down, and yet an inquisitive smile was still set firmly in place.
A spider crawled out of his ear.
Shirou had a bad feeling about this. Something was off about this man. Something more than just having a magus' moral compass.
The white-haired man reinforced his body and removed himself from the entanglement without issue. He turned to his partner.
"Let's end this now!"
Obviously, the magus wasn't about to sit still and let them kill him. Innumerable wires shot out from all of his body's orifices. So many were they that being able to see them stopped being an issue entirely.
Dealing with them might prove to be more difficult, however.
Even Karasuba was thrown off by the sheer quantity of string-like appendages. As powerful and skilled as she was, even she was having a bit of difficulty keeping herself unharmed with nothing but a single blade.
Shirou wouldn't even dream of relying on his swordsmanship in a predicament such as this one.
"Rho Aias!"
A pink, petal-shaped forcefield appeared to protect him. In the face of a Noble Phantasm, the onslaught became inconsequential.
Knowing that he was thwarted on one end, the magus put all of his efforts into taking down the woman. The deadly wires raining down on her doubled.
"Get behind me!" Shirou yelled at her, but she didn't listen.
Her concentrated expression widened into something resembling a smile. Her swings were so rapid that it was almost like–
He couldn't stop his jaw from falling open.
One second she was on the defensive, and by the next, the wires were shredded.
Was he imagining things? It wasn't possible for her to do that, was it?
It must have been because she did it again.
Karasuba was on top of the magus before his heart could beat twice. Reinforcing his eyes, Shirou watched the man spawn more of the spider-silk-like wire from his body in slow motion. It tried to strike her down from all directions before she could do the same to him.
The attempt was not successful. In the same instant, the wires were cut, his remaining arm met the same fate as his other one, and his head was removed from his shoulders.
Three strikes were delivered instantaneously.
Shirou's brain was working at a thousand miles per minute. It really was what he thought that was… not that seeing it happen twice made it any easier for him to believe his eyes.
Tsubame Gaeshi was a superhuman technique that was meant to be delivered with the Monohoshi Zao. Aside from the fact that it was only thanks to his Unlimited Blade Works that it could be reproduced at all and thus something unique to him, the reality of the matter was that not even he could replicate it to this degree.
A Sekirei was at a level far beyond what a human could achieve.
Shirou suppressed the mental gymnastics and told himself that he'd address them another time. For now, they had to deal with the corpse of their target.
Karasuba wiped her brow.
"This one put up quite the fight," she remarked approvingly. "This little getaway of ours has been pretty nice. We should do it again sometime."
The hairs at the back of his neck began to tingle. His instincts screamed at him to bring his eyes back to the felled magus.
Spiders of all shapes and sizes were crawling out of and around the body.
Something wasn't right.
"That wasn't very nice, you know," complained a woman.
It wasn't Karasuba's voice. It held none of the rasp that he had become accustomed to, and the inflection was almost childlike.
He was still as a statue, but his eyes swivelled back and forth in a desperate effort to spot the newcomer. Even his partner seemed a little unsure about what was going on.
"I'm right here, you know."
"Ah–?"
X
It all happened faster than Karasuba could react.
One second she was basking in the afterglow of a pleasant jaunt. The next, her Ashikabi was frozen in place, shellshocked, as a woman's hand pierced right through his gut from the back.
The Sekirei didn't quite know what to do with herself. She watched him slump to the ground like a sack of potatoes. The woman who struck him down allowed her appendage to hang out in front of her, the downed man's blood trickling down her fingertips.
At first, Karasuba stared at the woman and soaked in her features.
She was full-figured and obviously not afraid to show it. Her dress shirt was buttoned up so loosely that the entirety of her lacy bra poked through, and her short skirt showed off long and lithe legs. If anything, the look kind of clashed with the woman's brown-haired pigtails which almost seemed childlike in comparison.
Her eyes dropped down to her Ashikabi.
Ah…
He wasn't actually this pathetic, was he?
Was he?
Was he?
Was he?
Was he? Was he? Was he? Was he? Was he? Was he?
Disgusting. Worthless.
"Hey. Get up," she ordered gruffly.
No answer.
"Get up," she tried again.
He wasn't listening to her. An Ashikabi should listen to his Sekirei. Didn't he know that? He was going to die if he just stayed there.
"Get–"
She threw herself to the ground and rolled away just in time for a torrent of something to pass over her head. It tore through the cement and steel holding the building together; her back was exposed to open air as the walls collapsed.
"You're fast," the strange woman told her. "And strong. I'm kind of flattered that you two would come after little old me– ah! Not that you'd know that it was me to begin with. Man, that kind of puts a dampener on things, doesn't it?"
Her senses were screaming at her. Karasuba only had enough time to throw up her blade in a guard before another torrential wave of white mass slammed into her. She was carried straight through the previously-made hole in the building and was sent cartwheeling through a dozen or so trees outside.
If she had been a human–
No.
Even as a Sekirei, anything less than Number Four would have died.
For a moment, Karasuba could only lay on the upturned earth beneath her and gasp for breath. Her eyes were wide open and her chest heaved painfully.
She tried to fill her lungs with air, but it wasn't–
A spider the size of an apple crawled onto her face.
She swatted it away and threw herself back onto her feet. She was just in time to prepare herself for the hundreds and thousands of spiders that rained down on her from the canopy.
Normally, the arachnids would overwhelm her regardless of how swift she could be. With the sword that had been given to her, however, she could strike thrice at once.
She didn't know why that was, but she didn't overthink it; it could have been a peculiarity of her Ashikabi's ability or maybe it was simply a matter of her being limited by lacklustre tools all this time.
Either way, what she had to do did not change.
The strange woman appeared in front of her again as if from thin air. One moment she was nowhere to be seen, the next she was sitting on a low-hanging tree branch, her legs dangling about lazily.
Karasuba smiled wide, and yet her eyes were opened even wider.
She knew it: this person was much stronger than she was.
It was such a foreign thought. From the moment that she had awoken in MBI's laboratory to adulthood, she had understood two things: that humans –the natives of this planet– were ants compared to Sekirei, and that Sekirei were ants compared to her. Miya hardly counted, so the logical conclusion was that this world was beneath her and had zero value by consequence.
Her first meeting with her Ashikabi was the first sign that this world might have held a little more value than she originally thought. And even then, there was doubt.
There was no doubt now.
For someone like her, with her current options being what they were, dying like this was the best possible outcome.
She would fight until her Ashikabi's dying breath, however soon that may be.
The sword in her hands hummed as she made it cut through the wind faster than any other weapon that she'd ever held before.
It was exhilarating. It was only thanks to her Ashikabi that she had this opportunity. There was no doubt: right now, she was at her strongest. This blade was the means, and this opponent was the motivation.
Her whole life had been leading up to this moment.
The brown-haired woman pouted, unafraid of the imminent danger.
"No, no! Don't do that!" she whined. "There's no point in doing all of this if you die now!"
Karasuba wasn't listening. Over and over again, the tool tried to cleave into the enemy. Over and over again, she missed completely. The enemy didn't look like she was dodging, but the attacks didn't land regardless.
The enemy frowned.
"Aw… this is so sad!"
A hand grabbed Karasuba by the head and planted her face straight into the earth. The ground cracked at the point of contact.
A head lowered to whisper something into her ear. No matter how much the Sekirei struggled, she couldn't break free.
"You're so lovely, and yet every time you struggle, you fail miserably," the enemy stated matter-of-factly in a hushed voice. "It's ruining the fantasy a little, frankly. Acting like a weakling isn't a lovable quality at all, you know. I should–"
The head disappeared. It vanished from the neck and shoulders that it was attached to entirely. The enemy's body fell to the ground, and the arm holding her in the dirt lost its strength.
An explosion sounded a fraction of a second later. A pressure wave sent the grey-haired woman rolling to the side.
Her muscles trembling from exertion, Karasuba slowly pushed her legs back under her.
"Don't let your guard down. That wasn't anywhere close to being enough to kill her."
She felt a tightness in her chest.
Shirou was staring back at her. A strange black bow was held in his hand.
Shirou was making a pained expression, which made sense considering the hole that was–
The hole was gone.
…That wasn't true. The hole was still there; it was more accurate to say that the hole had been "filled". Tiny blades the size of pencils weaved together and stitched Shirou's wound.
"You're alive."
Her statement came out flat and without emotion. Even before Shirou had appeared before her, it was easy to conclude that Shirou was still alive since she wasn't deactivated through their bond.
And yet, seeing Shirou like this felt different, somehow.
She was happy that Shirou wasn't dying. She was happy that she no longer had to be resigned to death. While her own demise was never something that she actively wished for, neither was it something that she shirked away from, so why…?
Shirou nodded.
"I am. Sorry. I was caught off guard. I didn't expect someone like her to be here."
She tapped the hilt of her sword repeatedly in an effort to calm the hammering in her chest. Her heart wouldn't let up and it was bothering her.
"Do you know who that person is?" she asked.
"She's a Dead Apostle," Shirou answered simply. "One that's infamous among Apostle hunters."
That confused her. She made her thoughts known.
"One of those vampires? They weren't strong at all."
"They were young," he countered. "This one's old–"
"It's not nice to talk about a lady's age, you know."
Their enemy interrupted their conversation as though her head had never been blown up at all.
A swarm of spiders piled on top of each other and began to contort in unnatural ways. Slowly, a noticeable figure began to take shape until the brown-haired woman was completely reformed. Not a hair was out of place.
"Gee, Magus Killer. Are you sure you're human? Hehe… hehehe!" Their enemy laughed into her sleeve. "I didn't think that you'd get back up after that. Seriously! You're not human, right? Are you? Are you not? Are you? Are you? I wanna know."
Their enemy was ignored.
Shirou patted her on the shoulder.
"We might not make it out of this alive. If I were alone, my loss would almost be guaranteed," Shirou admitted. "If we work together, though, I might have a way for us to come out on top."
Throughout this whole ordeal, Karasuba could only think of how novel this whole experience had proved herself to be. She could almost laugh.
The enemy sighed wearily.
"Well, if you're so intent on making this difficult…" an exaggerated bow was given. "You can call me Doctor Arach. As a self-proclaimed medical professional, I'm very happy that such ideal samples took my bait and found themselves in my humble little nest."
Karasuba wasn't really paying attention to what the enemy was saying. She and Shirou would kill her. They would win.
The enemy seemed mad.
"Hey, hey. Are you listening? Gosh… it wasn't fun to fit myself into that gross, unlikeable human body for so long, you know? I spent a lot of time trying to fool everyone properly! Acknowledge my labour of love a little, won't you?"
Yes…
She and Shirou would win.
She and Shirou. The two of them.
She and Shirou…
"Ashikabi."
Without taking his eyes off of the enemy, Shirou tilted his head her way. Shirou's eyes were forced to look at her when she planted a kiss on his lips, making them go wide.
This time, she would take things one step further. The black wings that sprouted from her back devoured the surrounding light hungrily.
The enemy watched on curiously. The brunette's head tilted from side to side, content to let them carry out whatever it was that they were doing.
Regardless, that woman was inconsequential. She would be dead once Karasuba killed her after all.
"Death shall be my pledge," she began to chant. She could feel something coursing through her veins, and she knew that Shirou felt it too.
"Karasuba? What are you–"
How silly she had been before. What she had shown until now wasn't anything special, right? To call that meagre showing "the peak of her abilities" was awfully presumptuous.
Well, here it was.
"This body will turn to steel with my Ashikabi."