Disclaimer: This ff includes spoilers for entirety of Re:zero WN/LN up to the last chapter of arc 9. Be warned.
Author comment: This is rewrite/continuation of Subaru's One Knight Wonder by James_S_0
Chapter summary: Who would have thought that a simple party and invitation for a drink would derail Subaru's story in the most glorious fashion? Subaru certainly didn't.
A new era of reconstruction has begun in the city of Priestella. After a gruesome attack by the Witch Cult, the once shining Watergate City lay in ruins. The battle was hard fought, but with the combined efforts of all five Royal Candidates for the throne of Lugunica and their attendants, the forces of Priestella managed to liberate the city. Two Archbishops of the Witch Cult were beaten: Regulus Corneas was reportedly slain by Reinhard van Astrea, with the assistance of Natsuki Subaru and his liege Lady Emilia, and Sirius Romanee-Conti was captured by Priscilla Barielle and the Songstress Liliana.
To celebrate the occasion, one of the candidates – Anastasia Hoshin – organized a party in the now somewhat repaired City Hall. Not many people were allowed in, of course. The list of invited guests included: all five royal candidates and their attendants, important members of the city's hierarchy (that only included Kiritaka Muse, the last member of the Council of Ten, and Liliana Masquarade, the city's famous Songstress), as well as a couple other wealthy citizens not worthy of the further description.
For Anastasia, or more precisely for Great Spirit Echidna, who currently possessed the body of her master, it was an opportunity to make the amends, since she was the one that dragged them here in the first place. There was the second reason, of course, that being the discussion about the expedition to Pleiades Watchtower. She suspected that she could acquire some help from the guests of the party.
Priscilla and her camp were out of the question – she would never help her out without a personal benefit. Crusch and her camp could be acquired with some concessions, as their alliance still technically remained, but they were of little value for their price, since Crusch and Felix are unable to leave the city. That left only the Sword Demon as a potential recruitment option, and only after he will make peace with his wife. That left only two options – the Emilia Camp and the Felt Camp. The spirit was too cautious to ask the Felt Camp for help, the Sword Saint was a very strong asset, yes, but the Slum Princess was too shrewd not to not use that debt against her later on. The Emilia Camp was a better option, they could follow the idea of using Sage's knowledge to treat the victims of the Authorities of Lust and Gluttony. Echidna knew that the most important member of this camp (in her own opinion) – Natsuki Subaru – held a personal reason to seek the cure for these conditions.
Anastasia had always been the type of person who valued information, especially information about her competition:
Even before arriving here, she knew that Lady Emilia's spirit, "The Beast of the End" Puck, was currently out of commission (there were no witnesses to the spirit appearance in the past year, not to mention that her rival's search for a specific kind of mana crystal made her feel that way).
Priscilla Barielle was likely a Prisca Benedict, a presumed dead member of the Vollachian Royal Family who fell during the ascension of current Emperor Vincent Vollachia nine years ago. She was doing a poor job of hiding this secret (if she was hiding it at all, it might be her way of promoting herself), as the similar name, similar appearance to the presumed dead princess of Vollachia, and more importantly, the Yang Sword that she wielded gave it away.
The Crusch Camp was currently crumbling due to the rumors that Crusch Karsten had "turned from the proud matriarch of the Karsten family to a completely different, fragile and unremarkable woman". She was not sure what was going on there exactly, but a sudden personality change could not occur without a reason.
Felt had a strong connection to the criminal underground of Lugunica, something that had not changed since her becoming the Royal Candidate. Anastasia overheard about some shady dealings going on between her and local gangs.
The merchant princess had a decent amount of private information, as well as a fair amount of dirt on all the Candidates and even their knights. There was but only one exception – the famous Lolimancer Natsuki Subaru. No dirty secrets, no known bad habits, absolutely nothing. In fact, even though he was the kind of person who could not keep his mouth shut, there was still no reliable information about him before the day he encountered the Sword Saint and saved his future liege (Anastasia managed to snag a copy of the Reinhard's report of the event).
The knight's origin was also unknown – his appearance and talents suggested either Gusteko (he possessed an incredibly high spiritual affinity, something common to the northerners) or Vollachia (there was a certain resemblance to the ruling emperor, suggesting he was a potential lost relative, a brother or cousin perhaps?), however his tastes suggested he was from Kararagi, something which suprised her when she invited the Camps to Priestella. He seemed to have been born into a rich family, had rather weird mannerisms, and wore an outfit that neither Anastasia nor Echidna had ever seen before.
Subaru also clearly had some sort of connection to the Witch Cult, as he was the one who first acted against the Sloth, Wrath, and Greed, and of course his hatred for the Cult was well known. The members of her Iron Fang who helped him kill Sloth figured that he was likely a surviving victim of the Cult, given he knew the nature of the abilities that the Archbishops possessed. The wildest theory that Echidna suggested to her partner was that he might be a former Archbishop himself, who for some reason decided to kill his colleagues in the name of a woman who resembled the Witch that the Cult supposed to worship. That would make him even more dangerous to her than he already was. Worse still, was the sheer influence he wielded, both in his home camp and outside of it, especially with the events in Priestella solidifying his place in Lugunica even further.
So there was a third reason for this party – to get the half-elf's knight sufficiently drunk in order to get to learn as much as possible about his origins. Fortunately for her, it seemed that quite a lot of other people also wanted to see how the famous knight would look and act like in a drunken state.
"No, I won't."
Subaru repeated those words for the twelfth time tonight. He had been constantly bombarded by requests from people to have a drink or two to celebrate their victory. Unlike everyone else, he had managed to avoid alcohol completely since the party began. All the Candidates had at least one glass of wine – that included Felt and Emilia. The first was just barely over fifteen, and thus her knight allowed her to. The second politely took only one glass of wine, but refused to drink more, since she remembered rather embarrassing drunk incident that happened a year ago. Crusch drank a glass, despite Felix's concern for her health. Anastasia drank two glasses, mostly to keep appearances, and Priscilla finished two-thirds of her bottle, surprisingly showing zero signs of inebriation. Al, Ricardo and Otto had already emptied a bottle each, while Heinkel drank one and a half and was already in the familiar state of drunken stupor. Garfiel was drunk too, he had clearly developed a taste for it during this first drinking session. The Shield of Sanctuary was much more looser, especially with an orange ball of fluff clinging to his shoulder – he was much more receptive to the advances of Mimi Pearlbaton, who was equally drunk, despite the wishes of her brothers Hetaro and Tivey, the former two only drinking for a bit. The brothers wanted to use their Divine Protection of Trisection again, but were convinced by others to let go. Julius and Reinhard in a knightly fashion emptied one glass each. Felix in an unknightly fashion almost finished his bottle. Wilhelm also drank quite a lot – he had a wife to mourn. Rachins, Camberley, and Gaston drank surprisingly little, sharing only a single bottle between them (maybe they just did not like the wine?). Kiritaka and Liliana a shared their bottle as well, although the Songstress drank way more and was currently drooling on his shoulder (which did not bother him at all).
There were only three people who had not touched alcohol thus far – Schult was too young to drink, Beatrice, despite her being the oldest person in the room, said that her Mother forbade her to drink (which was a lie, of course, she just preferred to respect her contractor's opinion about it). The last person was Subaru.
"Come on bro, you already had your eighteenth birthday and we didn't even celebrate it properly!"
"It's twenty, is it not?"
"It's eighteen or sixteen in most countries on Earth, besides, we in Lugunica, fifteen is the normal drinking age here."
"Natsuki-san, just have a one drink with us, that's all we ask."
Al was simply looking forward to having a drink with his bro, he knew the situation of the past few days had been quite stressful for him and had probably cost him a couple of loops (it certainly did for himself, anyway). Otto, however, had an incredibly malicious intent. That intent was to fulfill his personal vendetta for making him the butt of the jokes of the entire Emilia Camp. He thought that today's events would give him reason to tease him for at least a month. Unfortunately for him, the Fate thought otherwise.
Most people noticed how worried Subaru had been since the beginning of the party, certainly assuming that they knew the reason behind it. After all, this was the second time that the one he loved the most was threatened by the Witch Cult, so it made sense why he was so anxious about it.
The first attack had happened a year ago, and it had taken the efforts of more than half of the White Whale Subjugation Force, including the renowned Sword Demon and the Blue, to be there with him to prevent the tragedy. At that time, Emilia had been specifically targeted by the Sin Archbishop of Sloth, Petelgeuse Romanee-Conti, in his mad efforts to revive the Witch of Envy. Not only that, but Subaru was forced to slay one of the three great calamities along the way: the dreaded White Whale. Something that everyone in that ballroom thought was impossible, especially since it happened just days after Subaru's embarrassing debut in the capital.
And a second time, was just a few days ago, Emilia was once again targeted by the Witch Cult, this time she was kidnapped by the seemingly invincible madman who destroyed the entire fortress city of Garkla and its inhabitants all by himself — the Sin Archbishop of Greed, Regulus Corneas.
The actual reason why Subaru refused the offers was rather obvious – Return by Death, or more specifically, the taboo that was associated with it. Getting drunk was a great way to lose control of yourself, and make a nasty slip of the tongue. He really did not want to accidentally commit a massacre. Normally, Subaru would not be too worried about maybe saying something mean to Otto or making a fool of himself (again), but the images of the consequences of his own hubris were still quite fresh in his mind.
The memory of Emilia's gorgeous face sullied with blood, her amethyst eyes turning empty and lifeless, the beginning of necrosis, and her last living expression of not even understanding what was going on... All of it was incredibly painful, one of the worst memories he had thus far, on par with the Great Rabbit, on par with his first return to Arlam during the first days of the Royal Selection, on par with the crazed Emilia giving him a Kiss of Death, on par with Rem chasing him, on par with the Unthinkable Presents, on par with the unleashing of the Witch upon Sanctuary, on par…
His memories of the false pasts began to overwhelm him, making him instinctively to reach for his shoulder. Thankfully, there were two reasons why he did not have a self-harm episode in front of all the partygoers. The first was that he was wearing a long-sleeved outfit, and the second was that a small hand of the Great Spirit of Yin was currently holding his own. Gradually he calmed down, but continued to refuse any offers to drink.
"Stop pressuring Betty's contractor! If it is Subaru's decision not to indulge himself today, then you should stop pestering him about it, in fact."
Through their contact, Beatrice noticed his sudden and very strong emotional distress and decided to show him her unwavering support.
Subaru silently thanked Beako for that. She had no idea just how much her words and her mere presence had helped him. Thus far, she had been the only person on his side.
The thing is, deep down inside he wanted to drink, in fact, he wanted to be blackout drunk right about now. If he did not have to worry about it, he might have resorted to alcohol earlier.. Or maybe some illicit substances, Lugunica's laws were rather lax about them. He had already come across a few: Rem wanted to feed him a Fannel fruit to make him more relaxed, Emilia and later the children of Arlam village gave him a Boko fruit to keep his mana reserves up, there was also the tea Ram made for himself. Come to think of it, there was almost no control over these. Subaru, being Japanese, was rather traditional on the matter, especially when it came to hard drugs.
"Maybe this is something I can push for Emilia to implement once she becomes queen?"
As he considered the nature of narcotics legislation in Lugunica, the final and greatest blow to his confidence was dealt:
"Don't worry Subaru, I promise everything will be fine, you worked re-e-eally hard, so I want my knight to relax and have fun."
Emilia too wondered what Subaru would look like when wasted. After all, the last time he was inebriated, she already went way over-board, drinking herself to the point of drunken amnesia. Besides, from her perspective, Subaru always pushed himself way too hard and he definitely needed some rest.
Subaru looked at his liege with a half worried, half betrayed expression. For him, she was someone who he thought would be on his side as well. As it turned out, he was completely wrong. Worse yet, Emilia was the person who had the most sway on his decision. Dejectedly, his expression asked, no begged, for her to reconsider, however the half-elf did not relent and continued to smile at him, reassuring him that everything would be alright.
After another deep breath, Subaru finally surrendered.
"I just can't refuse any request from Emilia, can I?"
"Well alright, fine, I'll have one drink."
Subaru angrily emphasized the word "one" as much as possible. More than one person in the room grinned at his declaration.
That was a mistake.
Meanwhile, far away from Priestella, hidden deep underneath the Pleiades Watchtower, behind the black door, a person imprisoned in her own dimension – Shadow Garden, the one that everyone feared, the one whom people called the Witch of Envy, Satella observed Subaru with great interest.
Things were happier now, all things considered, and so Satella was happier as well: Envy inside her was mostly calm, at least compared to the usual – the taboo had not been violated for almost a year now. Her beloved looked really cool in the events of Priestella, especially when he faced that nasty Regulus. She was a bit saddened by his deaths at the hands of Sirius, but he seemed to be doing quite well despite them. There were quite a few deep-seated problems buried in her lover's mind, but so far he was holding up well, even his smile was quite genuine. It was not exactly good enough, in Satella's opinion, but it was way better than during the early Royal Selection or during the events of the Sanctuary.
Like Beatrice, she too was on her lover's side when it came to the matter of drinking (Satella was always on his side in all matters, but that was beside the point), so, even though he eventually reconsidered, she decided to do something nice for him. After some negotiation, she managed to convince the nasty part of herself – the Witch, to temporarily stop enforcing the taboo. Instead, she will do that herself, she will stop him from saying something that will cause him harm, but won't hurt him as usual, hence she's just going to give him a gentle warning. In hindsight, she probably should have tried this sooner, but she still thought that this might help in his current situation. After all, it was a brief moment of peace for him. Let him have some fun.
That too was a mistake.
Update: Slight revision of this chapter. Mostly fixed grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure. No serious alterations to the plot.