The police station. Interior.
The woman Assassin had disabled both the main switchboard and emergency generator in quick succession, plunging the police station into total blackness. She blended with that darkness, sweeping through the building like a wind. She occasionally encountered police officers and detectives patrolling with flashlights, but she was a creeping shadow, staying out of the light and never making a sound. She had free rein of the station.
In order to challenge that Heroic Spirit, I will need to risk my own life.
She mentally prepared herself as she raced through the station's long passageways. The special training she had undergone meant that she needed no light to move. Sensing the movement of air, the flow of magical energy, and the echoing sounds of wind, she was able to see her surroundings with her entire body, and even sense the flow of energy within them. This was another of the arts attained by the great chiefs: "Meditative Sensitivity: Zabaniya." A superhuman sensory ability that enabled her to feel currents of power such as magical energy, water, electricity, or wind whether natural or artificial, as if they were part of her own body.
She had made use of that power to locate the station's power source, and destroy it. That done, she made for the highest concentration of magical energy. Flowing down the stairs like a waterfall, she finally arrived at a space filled with disordered currents of it. That is, at the most spacious area in the police station the front lobby.
"...!"
At almost the same time the woman Assassin leapt into the lobby, the uniformed man in its center deployed magecraft to light the space, matching the positions of its existing lighting fixtures.
A mage!
Assassin promptly dematerialized, but even she was no match for the speed of light. In the instant before she disappeared, Assassin's image was burned into several pairs of eyes, the mage's among them.
A shadow dissolving into light. There was no other way to describe the ghostly figure that had momentarily existed in the doorway.
"What...?"
A Servant...?
The police chief was a Master with Command Seals; even that momentary glimpse was enough for him to be certain that what he had seen was a Servant.
That wasn't saber. I only got a glimpse, but those stats... Assassin!?
When a Master looked directly at a Servant participating in the Holy Grail War, they were able to obtain a certain amount of data. It took a form optimized to the mind of the Master in question; a page of a grimoire, or a sheet of parchment. Of course, they could not discern a Servant's true name, but they were able to read their general physical parameters and some of their special traits.
It had only been a moment, so he had not been able to parse most of what he had seen, but he had managed to sense that the Servant excelled in stealth and espionage. Even their appearance black from head to toe, as far as he had been able to see suggested Assassin.
Humph... So, a Master saw Saber on TV and decided to send in Assassin. We can't do anything physical to a Servant while it's in spirit form, but it's hard to imagine that it will stay that way for long.
A Servant in spirit form was incapable of taking any offensive or defensive measures. If a Master or other mage possessed the means of attacking a spirit body, they ran the risk of being one-sidedly annihilated. Consequently, remaining in spirit form around hostile Servants and Masters was not a winning strategy. The moment required to rematerialize could also create a fatal opening in a battle of instants.
Best to assume it's already materialized and is hiding somewhere, the chief concluded, and turned a wary eye to his surroundings. There were countless places to hide in the atrium lobby, including the exposed sections of second and third floor hallway.
His Command Seals were concealed under his gloves. How likely was it that he had been exposed as a Master? In the worst case scenario, the chief thought, the Servant might have come for him, and not Saber. He was struggling to plan his next move, when Hansa, who had gotten behind a pillar in a corner of the lobby without anyone noticing, drastically narrowed his options.
"Oh, was that your Servant just now, chief?"
A casual question. The chief glared at Hansa, immediately realizing what it meant.
"Son of a... You're overstepping your jurisdiction as overseer."
"I thought you didn't need a church overseer?"
Hansa flashed a malicious grin, crossed his arms and leaned against the pillar, as if to emphasize that he was just a bystander.
"Just a bit of passive resistance to a big shot who bullies the little guy."
An infidel priest.
If he was an overseer come to confirm the existence of the Holy Grail, then he was a target for Assassin to be wary of. If, on the other hand, he really was a neutral party and had been dispatched simply to verify the Grail's authenticity, then she had no more reason to seek his life than that of any other infidel in the city.
The "chief," however, she could not overlook. The overseer had asked him about "his Servant." Taking into account the many-layered barrier erected around the station, and the fact that he was both a Master and a person of status, even she, ignorant of constitutional government, could easily guess that the man who appeared to be the chief of this police station was probably involved in this Holy Grail War at a fundamental level.
In her mind, priorities shifted. At the present moment, the police chief right in front of her took precedence over the knight of the opera house. She would capture him, then extract information about the masterminds behind this Holy Grail War. Judgment, she decided, would come later.
Assassin materialized in a blind spot of the third floor hallway, and fixed her aim on the chief. She prepared the most suitable Noble Phantasm for capturing the mage for use. She still believed that the chief was her only enemy.
Until an arrow imbued with brutal magical energy came flying down the hall towards her.
"...!"
It came from a total blind spot. Without the keen sense she had acquired to run in the dark, she would not have even noticed she had been attacked until it struck her.
Picking up the disturbance of nearby magical energy and the faint creak of a bow being drawn, she realized she was being targeted.
The woman Assassin twisted, flexing her joints farther than seemed humanly possible, and evaded the arrow that had been closing in on her heart. It flew straight on down the corridor, and struck what was from the shooter's perspective the opposite wall.
The impact wrought incredible destruction. The wall burst apart. The room beyond peeked through a hole bored clean through the reinforced concrete.
She did not know how it had destroyed the wall. All she knew for certain was... that the strike had been powerful enough to being down any human, and possibly even an average Heroic Spirit.
X X
An isolation cell.
"...What was that sound?" Ayaka asked uneasily in the darkness. The crashes sounded like something breaking far off, but definitely in the same building.
"Maybe someone's come after you?"
"I suppose it's possible."
Pale lights sprang to life around them as Saber spoke. A soft, firefly glow filled the isolation cell, and illuminated Ayaka's blank stare.
Water drops about the size of marbles hung in the air. The light came directly from them.
"You can use Magic...?"
"Not Magic; magecraft."
"I'm not sure I understand the difference."
"Magecraft is what humans can achieve themselves with enough time and effort. Magic creates miracles beyond the reach of modern man... Or so I'm told. I'm not a mage myself, so I don't know the details, but apparently the advance of science has turned most Magic into magecraft."
Saber spoke like it had nothing to do with him. Ayaka stared quizzically at the water droplets serving as their light source.
At that, Saber shook his head a tad apologetically.
"Just so you know, I didn't make these."
"What do you...?"
Before Ayaka could even finish the question, Saber disappeared.
"Hey!"
Left alone in the cell with the shining droplets, Ayaka flopped back onto the bed with a sigh. A few seconds later, she got up again.
The door of the isolation cell clanged open, and Saber stepped through it as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. He jingled a bunch of keys and grinned broadly.
"I secretly borrowed the keys."
"'Borrowed'...?"
"Ah, a jailbreak. Hehe. It's a bit thrilling!"
"Where'd your knightly honor go?"
Ayaka sounded exasperated.
"I still intend to make reparations for the theater, of course. I also mean to keep my promise to remain in the custody of the officials here until dawn. Before that, however, I'll get you to a safe place," Saber declared, his eyes shining with excitement.
"...Have you considered that this cell is the safest place for me?"
"I wonder about that. This police station is odd. Apparently there are Bounded Fields set up all over the place."
Saber sounded as if he was repeating what someone had told him. Ayaka frowned.
"'Apparently'? Who said so?"
Saber held the cell door open with a fearless grin. The was no sign of jailers outside. All that could be heard were clamoring and shouts of protest from the other inmates.
Saber took Ayaka's hand and walked off out of the cell block. The shining droplets floated ahead.
"Well, you see, it's complicated."
"I don't really get it... What do you mean, 'Bounded Fields'? There are mages in this police station?"
"More than that; apparently they're designed into the building's construction. I was worried that, worst case scenario, everyone in the building might be a mage. Judging by my interrogation earlier, however, that doesn't seem likely." Saber's expression suddenly grew serious. "But this police station was definitely built for mages. If it's connected to the Holy Grail War, then this commotion doesn't bode well for us."
"Why not?"
"They probably originally intended to offer us an alliance, or at least try to get something out of us... But if those vibrations came from another Servant's attack, then they'll probably try to get rid of you before you have a chance to turn against them. Apparently there's a good reason to think so."
"What do you mean, 'a good reason'?"
Saber fell silent for a few moments, but when he had reached a point a short distance removed from the cells, he started to mutter under his breath. It sounded like he was objecting to something.
"Hey now... Tell me things like that sooner. If I'd known, I'd have cut down the door and gotten her out at once."
"Who are you talking to?"
"Oh, sorry. Just pretend I'm talking to myself," he offhandedly apologized before answering Ayaka's question. He still spoke as if he was reporting something he had been told.
"Apparently there's a spell built into the ceiling of that cell... designed to control the composition of the air, and suffocate the human inside."
X X
The lobby.
She noted the shooter's appearance as she dodged. A young woman dressed as a police officer. The large quiver on her back clashed jarringly with her uniform, and she was readying, not a standard-issue pistol or baton, but a bow as long as she was tall.
A Noble Phantasm! That woman must be... his Servant!
The woman Assassin sensed at a glance that the bow was a Noble Phantasm, and judged that an Archer Servant contracted with the police chief was dressed as a police officer and mixed in with the station employees. The woman had the presence of an ordinary mage, so she must possess a skill that concealed her nature as a Heroic Spirit. A proper Master with Command Seals could doubtless have told at a glance, but she had no Master, and thus no way of checking.
Having concluded that her opponent was a Servant, Assassin immediately shifted to an offensive posture. She controlled her center of gravity in order to start moving as she landed. The instant she did, however... she caught the faint sound of rubber soles rubbing the floor right beside her.
"!"
Assassin felt a chill. She neither distanced herself from nor approached the bow woman; she leapt straight up with all her might. She flipped her body 180 degrees vertically, and landed on the ceiling of the atrium.
She saw a black man in the uniform of a police officer. hardly surprising. But he was swinging a weapon shaped like a naginata in a horizontal sweep.
If she had moved backward or forward, she might have been caught by that blade.
Another Noble Phantasm... What can it mean...?
Despite her doubts, Assassin kicked off the ceiling and aimed a kick at the naginata man.
"
Guh!"
He blocked by a hair's breadth with the haft of his weapon, but the kick still sent him flying down the hallway.
No resistance. Is he not a Heroic Spirit?
Despite her confusion, Assassin landed in a different spot, still wary of the female officer's bow. But while she kept her eyes on the far end of the hallways, she neglected the break room door in the wall opposite the atrium. No sooner did she pass in front of it than a large man smashed through the door, charging at her with a giant shield.
"!"
The giant approached her with the force of a cannonball, covering his body with the greatshield. But it was not the man's large build more than two meters tall that made Assassin sense danger; it was the density of the magical energy covering his equally large shield.
Another Noble Phantasm...!
In which case, it was dangerous to think of the attack as a mere charge.
Assassin leapt again, worried what hidden properties the shield might have. She landed in the gigantic umbrella of light that shone from the roof of the atrium.
Then she grasped the situation.
About thirty police officers had gathered unnoticed in the lobby, as well as in the open sections of second and third floor hallways. It was obvious that they had not just overheard the disturbance and come running. They grasped a wide array of armaments, each wrapped in unusually dense magical energy. It seeped out of them on numerous different wavelengths, warping the atmosphere of the entire room.
All of it pointed to one fact, a fact that could upset the entire concept of the Holy Grail War: Every one of those nearly thirty weapons was unmistakably a Nobel Phantasm.
"All ordinary personnel have been evacuated through the rear exit. The Bounded Field has been activated, so it's possible to conceal a degree of disturbance from curious onlookers," the secretary reported.
At the same time, one of the newly-arrived officers handed the chief a long object wrapped in cloth. Out of it, the chief drew his own weapon a Japanese sword in a black-lacquered sheath.
"...Looks like things are starting to get interesting," Hansa whistled cheerily at the spectacle of police officers armed with a plethora of anachronistic weaponry.
The chief issued orders with his glare, and several officers pointed those weapons at Hansa.
"Now that you've seen us, it's even less possible to send you home. We'll need you to stay quietly where you are until we're done with you," the chief coolly announced, his glare trained on the black-robed figure observing the situation from atop a lighting fixture.
"'Until you're done with me'...? That's a Servant, isn't it? What happened to yours?"
The chief's answer was simple and to the point.
"I have no intention of leaking information. I will, however, show you something that will leave you disinclined to resist."
"And what's that?"
"A mage's clumsy battle," the chief muttered under his breath. Then he quietly drew in a breath, steadied his breathing and the magical energy inside him, and clearly declared:
"The power of the heretical shams we've forged to bring down the mighty Heroic Spirits."
"..."
Staring down from atop the lighting fixture, the woman Assassin was steadying her breathing as well. What she had seen had certainly surprised her, but not enough to overcome her resolve, or her faith.
There were seven Heroic Spirits. Or was it six? For some reason the knowledge she had received from the Holy Grail was vague about the number.
But that had never bothered her.
Her actions would be the same if there were a hundred, or even a thousand, Heroic Spirits aiming for the Grail. It just so happened that there were about thirty here.
Eliminate them all.
She made up her mind. At the same time, she murmured softly. Murmured the name of the karma she bore of her own free will; the name of the power she had borrowed from the great chiefs.
"...Capricious Fleeting Shadow: Zabaniya..."
An instant later, darkness spread from the opening of the hood that concealed her features.
"...!"
The chief saw the "darkness" that stretched out from the probable Assassin coming towards him, and immediately leapt back. He escaped by a hair's breadth.
When the "darkness" reached where he had been standing, it shredded the marble floor like cheese.
It spread throughout the lobby, with the black-robed Assassin's head as its center. Even the officers armed with Noble Phantasms were hard pressed to do more than block or evade such an attack.
Then one of the officers at the chief's side lost an arm to the "darkness."
"
Gwah...!"
It coiled around the man's arm like a tentacle, trying to lift his whole body off the floor.
"..."
Silently, the chief leapt, instantaneously drawing his sword. The blade gleamed bewitchingly as it sung through the air, bisecting the black tendrils that grasped at his subordinate's arm. He felt resistance as it cut, and saw the severed "darkness" flutter gently to the ground.
Hair...!?
A mystic art that caused her own hair to grow explosively, and allowed her to control it more freely than her own hands and feet.
That was the chief's initial assessment, but, looking at the rents in the floor, he slightly revised his ideas.
No, this isn't hair anymore. She's taken it into the realm of blades.
So, this is her Noble Phantasm.
"...Almost like Medusa in Greek myth."
Still, it was manageable now that he knew the trick.
If the fight had been one on one, or if his group had consisted of ordinary police officers, they would not have been able to make a move. But the officers gathered here were blessed with Noble Phantasms and trained to slaughter Heroic Spirits. If they lost this head-on collision with Assassin, they would never be able to challenge higher-ranked Servants such as the King of Heroes, the as-yet unseen Rider, or the newly-materialized Saber.
"I see. An ideal opponent for our first stepping stone." The chief refocused on Assassin, and issued orders to his nearby subordinates in a tone of icy command. "Have no fear. It doesn't matter if we destroy the lobby; suppress her by any means necessary."
The chief held his sword in his right hand, and drew a gun from his breast pocket with his left.
"I'll
use up this block before you destroy it."
It was a mystic tool, loaded, not with ordinary bullets, but with special rounds designed to activate spells.
The chief aimed his gun up and fired, as if to signal a shift from defense to offense.
He wasn't aiming at Assassin. He was aiming at the traps built into the ceiling of Orlando Reeves' police station his mage's workshop around her.
The built-in magecraft activated, temporarily strengthening the barrier around the police station lobby and isolating almost as thoroughly as if it had become another world. If a tank were to open fire inside the lobby now, no one outside would here a thing.
At the same time, several demon beasts and several dozen evil spirits were summoned around Assassin, and pounced on the "intruder" the chief had designated with unmistakable hostility.
Should I make that priest a target too? The chief wondered, glancing toward a corner of the lobby.
He could see the eye patched priest pouring coffee from a siphon on the reception desk into a paper cup, apparently unconcerned with the situation.
No. He can wait.
The chief clicked his tongue in annoyance, and turned his eyes back to Assassin, who was unleashing fresh hair-tentacles from near the ceiling.
The evil spirits fluttered through the air, and the panther-like demon beasts circled Assassin, walking upside down on the ceiling. They would all pounce simultaneously, and the officers with long-range Noble Phantasms would fire in unison, shooting through spirits, demon beasts and all.
It was a brute force approach, but it would be enough to measure whether or not their attacks would work on the Heroic Spirit.
The chief recited a brief incantation to control his familiars, and the evil spirits lunged toward Assassin in unison. The officers readied their Noble Phantasms. Then...
"...Ichor of Reverie: Zabaniya..."
No one in the lobby caught the black-robed figure's murmur. Just as only one other person could hear the "song" that emanated a moment later from Assassin's throat.
"
Ugh! What the?"
Hansa had been about to sip his coffee now lukewarm due to the blackout when the cup nearly slipped through his fingers. He pressed his hands over his ears, and turned to look at the source of the sound. He could see that the Heroic Spirit was indeed singing through an opening in the explosion of hair.
Narrowing his eye, Hansa attempted to rationally analyze the sound.
"Well now... this lady's got a range most people can't hear."
As he said, the noise was inaudible to the chief and his officers. But that didn't mean their bodies were deaf to Assassin's song.
Soon, it's results began to register in their eyes.
"
Ngh...?"
The chief sensed an unusual heat coming from his own magic circuits. At the same time, the scene around him began to spin drunkenly.
What? What's happening to me?
The change sprung on the chief and his officers before they could grasp what was happening.
"Wha?"
One of the officers was being attacked by a demon beast. He caught its fangs on his curved sword.
It was more than just the one beast. All the familiars that should have been attacking Assassin were beginning to lash out at the surrounding police officers.
And that was not all. The officers themselves were unsteady on their feet, as if they like their chief were experiencing something like vertigo.
"She's... making our magic circuits go out of control...!"
Despite his faltering legs, the chief managed to call off the beasts. An instruction to his familiars was enough. If he had tried to use offensive magecraft, the magical energy would likely have escaped his control and destroyed his own body.
It probably has a direct effect on the brain of even a non-mage.
It was possible that the reason for their intoxicated state had nothing to do with magic circuits that something had delivered a direct shock to their brains but at the very least it seemed to be entirely separate from the hair-extending technique.
I was careless. She must have two assassination techniques worthy of the title "Noble Phantasm."
The woman Assassin leapt from atop the lighting fixture, thrusting at a newly-created opening in the officers' ranks. At the same time, the hair spread throughout the lobby began to converge. It was being sucked back into the black robes that covered her head.
The black-robed shadow leapt from pillar to pillar, seeming to ignore gravity. It was the same way she had moved at the opera house, and like then, it looked to anyone who saw like she had split into countless copies.
And, like at the opera house... she leapt out behind the man who appeared to be leading the police officers with the force of a cannonball.
"Chief! Behind you!"
"!"
The chief swiftly turned, reacting to his subordinate's shout. He narrowly evaded the assassin's hand closing in on him.
It landed on the head of the berserk demon beast that had stopped in front of him. Then...
"Cyber Fantasy: Zabaniya..."
The Heroic Spirit whispered, and, at almost the same instant, the beast's head burst apart.
"...!"
Was that... another Noble Phantasm? Just how many does she...?
The chief groaned inwardly, but it did not look like Assassin was going to give him time to think rationally. She used the force of the explosion to flip over, and a weirdly elongated arm stretched towards him from her back.
"Delusional Heartbeat: Zabaniya..."
"
Ngh!"
Seeing the length of his opponent's arm, the chief judged that even if he drew back, it would still overtake him.
In which case... my only option is to cut through it! He judged, and drew his katana.
Its edge sliced into the long, warped appendage, but Assassin kept coming. She stretched out her hand to the chiefs body, heedless of the blade lodged in her arm. Her fingertips were mere inches from the chief's chest, when...
A loud gunshot sounded, and Assassin was sent flying.
"...Are you unharmed, sir?"
When the chief turned to look, he found his secretary aiming a large revolver. It was clearly not police issue. Based on what it had done to the Heroic Spirit, it must have been another Noble Phantasm.
The weapon ought to have been too modern to qualify, but the potent magical energy seeping out of it seemed to declare that it had existed since the age of the gods.
Not even a Heroic Spirit could take a bullet fired from such a gun and emerge unscathed. Or so the police thought.
Witnessing the black-robed assassin return nimbly to her feet, they readied themselves for more.
The chief called out to the enemy Heroic Spirit, putting distance between them and keeping his eyes trained on her all the while.
"I'm surprised. It seems your Master isn't stingy with Noble Phantasms. Judging by the number you just used in a row, they must be a mage with considerable reserves of energy. Ask your Master if they would be willing to form a united front against Gilgamesh."
The chief considered that it was probably useless, but he proposed an alliance anyway in hopes of gauging his opponent's personality. Even if they refused, sounding out the relationship between this Heroic Spirit and her Master might point him toward a way to resolve the situation.
"You must have noticed the battle in the desert yesterday. Don't you think that eliminating those freaks would be to our common benefit? Ask your Master that."
Assassin's answer, however, was nothing the chief had anticipated.
"...I have no Master."
The voice of a young woman came from beneath the black robes. The chief already knew from her earlier whisper presumably the name of a Noble Phantasm but some of the officers blinked in surprise.
"I have no wish to serve a mage. Nor do I desire the Holy Grail."
"What?"
The chief was dubious. Assassin's dark eyes showed clear determination.
"I will smash the Holy Grail War, which has lead the great chiefs astray," she declared, further increasing her alertness to the enemies surrounding her.
Thanks to Febrile Inspiration: Zabaniya, which made her skin as hard as Demon Realm Crystal, she had suffered no direct damage from the bullet. But magical energy was rapidly leaking from her body where it had struck. Perhaps it was an effect of the Noble Phantasm.
If the bullet had actually penetrated flesh and made a deep wound, it would have depleted an average Heroic Spirit's magical energy on the spot.
As they fight... they are adjusting to their Noble Phantasms.
A mere few minutes of battle had convinced her that she was fighting humans, not Heroic Spirits. Their Noble Phantasms, however, were unmistakably genuine.
She did not know or care how humans were able to wield Noble Phantasms, but it appeared that they were not used to using them in actual combat. Even during this short battle, however, she could tell that their bodies were acclimatizing. The more they fought, the more power they would draw from their Noble Phantasms.
Even restricting her attention to nearby weapons, the power of their strikes and slashes was beginning to rise. Some had even begun to display traits unimaginable in ordinary weapons, such as a blade that emitted flames from its edge.
I can't let them draw out this battle.
She had no reason to enter into negotiations. She pondered how best to utilize the chiefs' techniques in this situation. She no longer needed to listen to anything her opponent said.
Or so she thought.
"Don't be ridiculous. An Archer with the Independent Action skill would be one thing, but if you fought like you just did without a Master, you would have vanished a long time ago."
"..."
The words of the man who appeared to be leading the enemy group tugged at her mind.
She had wondered about it herself. She had been racing around the city for two whole days without rest, and mostly without dematerializing. But she still had not vanished. She was still brimming with magical energy...
She had been thinking that her own immaturity had prevented her from properly channeling energy into the techniques that comprised her Noble Phantasm.
No. That doesn't matter now. The enemy in front of me comes first...
The woman Assassin tried to drive her doubts into a corner of her mind, and re-adjust it for combat. Those questions, however, were about to be answered.
With nearly the worst answer she could imagine.
"Splendid! A mudslinging contest after my own heart!"
Without warning, the sound of clapping, and a strangely cheerful voice, echoed through the lobby.
The voice was powerful, and made everyone who heard it feel like they were suffocating. Each clap caused a tension like the distant report of a sniper rifle.
"Who goes there?" The chief called out, looking around. But the owner of the voice was nowhere to be seen. In fact, he had a feeling it was coming from the station's parking lot outside the barrier.
But that should have been impossible; the lobby was totally isolated from the outside world. The police turned to look at the front entrance in spite of themselves.
Almost as if it had been waiting for that, an abnormality appeared in the barrier. It's influence had turned the entrance pitch black, but now an index finger ran vertically down the glass part of the door... almost as if it was making an incision.
A young man appeared through the door, seeming to push open the gap his finger had made.
"I've been spectating from outside. Truly a splendid fight," the young man declared, energetically clapping.
The police officers looked at each other. The chief, representing his subordinates, repeated his question.
"...Who are you?"
The young man, however, ignored the chief's words, and continued to monologue sonorously.
"Magnificent. You really are superb. I don't know what trick your using, but really, mere humans challenging a Heroic Spirit! I'll admit I thought you were biting off more than you could chew, but I'll be damned if it isn't shaping up to be a wonderful bout!" Stifling a chuckle, the young man spread his arms wide and began to walk into the center of the lobby. "A lovely fool of a Heroic Spirit who attacks openly despite possessing the art of living in the shadows, versus a mage who leaves his Heroic Spirit behind and puts himself in the line of fire. Quite an entertaining show."
"..."
The chief wordlessly scrutinized the man, still ignorant of his identity. He received no visual information as a Master, so the man was clearly not a Heroic Spirit. He must be Assassin's Master, then, but Assassin was distancing herself from the man, and seemed confused.
Another Heroic Spirit's Master, then?
Either way, the fact that he had torn through the barrier so easily meant that he had real power.
The chief decided to keep his guard up, and continuing listening to the man's monologue in hopes of learning something. While making sure that the words did not contain some kind of
kotodama or incantation.
The young man, utterly unconcerned by the tense atmosphere, began to opine like an excitable spectator at a baseball game.
"Let me see... In my humble opinion, if you keep going like this, around the time she's slaughtered seven tenths of you, the remaining officers will fully accept their Noble Phantasms as parts of themselves, and awaken. Once that happens, the odds will be fifty-fifty. But if even one mage capable of seeing through the nature of her Noble Phantasm remains, the scales will tip in favor of the ladies and gentlemen of the police." After taking the initiative to forecast the flow of the battle, the young man continued: "Exquisite. I mean that. If you make use of your experience in this battle, and manage to replenish your numbers, then you may indeed be able to fight classes for the battle-mad, like Saber or Archer, head on."
He did not seem to be an ally, at least, but the chief could not be certain he was an enemy. He might work for Faldeus or Francesca. But that possibility was not enough to make the chief let down his guard.
One officer gingerly approached the man, pointing his Noble Phantasm dagger in an attempt to stop him from moving. Then...
"However."
The young man lightly brushed aside the officer's hand, dagger and all, with his left arm.
Squelch.
There was an unpleasant, wet sound. Then the chief bore witness to an uncanny scene. The officer's hand below the wrist was gone, almost like it had been bitten off.
"What the...?"
The officer stared at the blood gushing from his wrist, his face a mask of confusion.
"I'm stumped for a death worthy of concluding such a fine match."
The young man was still smiling. He was also holding the officer's severed hand.
That was when the officer realized what had happened to him. He became aware of the pain at the same time. His scream echoed through the lobby, just a little bit late.
"
...Ah... AaaHHhh... AAaaAAAaaahhhhhhh!"
"Ha ha! That's a good scream, if a bit conventional. Will you give me a more entertaining one if I cut off your left hand too?"
"That's far enough!"
Seeing his subordinate clutch his own wrist and fall to his knees, the chief fired his gun without hesitation. Like the one he had fired at the ceiling earlier, it was a special round designed to activate the surrounding traps and magical energy reactors.
"Team two surround the man! The rest of you keep your eyes on the Heroic Spirit!"
Countless evil spirits and demon beasts emerged from the mystic formulas built into the floor in time with the chief's order, letting out eerie cries. No sooner had they pounced on the young man, however, than...
"Don't twitter so; it's revolting," the young man muttered without dropping his carefree grin. He lowered the fingers of his right hand, and slowly looked up.
As he did so, all the newborn familiars were crushed by an unseen something, and burst against the floor like water balloons.
"Wha?"
The chief and all his officers were speechless.
There was no sign that the man had used offensive magecraft. It was almost as if the twisted pressure he gave off had rejected the familiars' very existence. In fact, his mere presence made the officers' skin shiver with fear, and they did not know why.
He was just standing there.
The man lightly squeezed the officer's right hand, which he still held in his left. An instant later it was as dry and withered as a mummy. Then it crumbled to dust and vanished without a trace.
If that was not enough, he picked up the dagger the hand had been holding, and brought it to his lips. He took a bite out of it like it was a cookie. Then, just like that, he poured the fragments down his throat.
"Hmm... This texture... Truly a delicacy worth of the title 'Noble Phantasm.' A toy like this is too much for a human."
What the police officers had just seen was hard to believe. They were sure now:
The man was not human.
He was not even a Heroic Spirit.
He was a "thing" on a different level entirely.
In the now-silent lobby, the man spread his hands as if giving silent thanks. Then he faced the bewildered Assassin with an air of reverence, and kneeled.
"A bit late for self introductions, wouldn't you agree, my dear?"
"...?"
Inside her black robes, Assassin furrowed her brows in confusion.
"My name is Jester Karture. As your Master, I will affirm all that you are..."
At the word "Master," an additional tension ran through the surrounding humans.
The young man who called himself Jester pasted a fiendish grin on his face, and stared up at Assassin. His gaze seemed to lick every inch of her body.
"And as an inhuman Dead Apostle, I will take all that you are."
Dead Apostle.
Assassin felt her whole body shudder at those words. Not with fear of the monstrosities called "vampires"; because she had come to the worst possible conclusion about the situation she had been placed in.
Aimless bearers of death.
Messengers of destruction that drive out humans.
She had never met a Dead Apostle face to face while she was alive, but she had heard tell of them. Every time a great war with the infidels broke out, terrible monsters appeared on the battlefield to rain destruction indiscriminate of creed. At the time of the first great war, it was said, a monster that kept countless beasts in its body had stained the desert with blood. At the time of the second, several monsters different from the first one had come, and only gone after they had raged for three days and three nights. When the third war came, yet another monster had appeared, but apparently it had been slain by the ruthless generals of both factions. All she could be sure of, however, was that every one of those monsters had been a herald of slaughter that resented the very existence of the human race. And that they had been called Dead Apostles.
The man had called himself by that grotesque name. What else had he said?
My... Master...?
A chill ran down Assassin's spine.
Impossible. I'm sure I... dealt with... my Master...
As though he had glimpsed her thoughts, the man who called himself Jester Karture rubbed his own chest with an almost ecstatic expression.
"I'll never forget the touch of your palm, like a stern kiss. It seized my heart. Dying once was such a shock even my face changed."
"...!"
Jester's words confirmed her fears. This was indeed the man she believed she had killed.
Then... I still exist because this monster... is sharing his magical energy with me...?
An irrepressible disgust raced through her. It felt like every drop of her blood had been defiled by toxic sludge.
An inhuman thing.
And that was not all. The little she had heard of her speech and conduct was enough to tell her that this man was a danger to all humankind.
The fact that such a creature's energy was flowing through her was unpardonable. She detested her own immaturity for failing to even notice that she had been collared by a Dead Apostle so much she could not bear it. Before she knew it, she was stepping forward, determined to at least cleanse that impurity herself. Determined to destroy the monster before her eyes, and purify herself.
She also felt an impulse to destroy herself, but that was forbidden by her faith. She felt ashamed even thinking of such a thing was proof of her immaturity and tried to focus all her energies on eliminating her Master her enemy.
But...
"...By my Command Seal, I order you: Go as far from this city as possible," Jester said, grinning.
At the same time, Assassin's body gave off light.
"...!"
Assassin tried to shout something, but before she had the chance, the light enveloped her entire body.
And just like that, she was gone.
Jester surveyed the remaining police officers, shrugged, and declared:
"I suppose this is what you'd call 'passing the baton.' I need the Holy Grail too, you know? What I mean to say is...
"Why don't you blood bags hurry up and drop dead?"
X X
Somewhere in the city.
"A Dead Apostle...? A Dead Apostle! A Vampire! Seriously?"
Caster, listening to the voices from his computer screen, clapped his hands in surprise.
Communicators were built into some of the police officers' Noble Phantasms. He was not, properly speaking, a mage, so they were a bit of a stopgap measure, be he had gone through the motions and, with the addition of his Noble Phantasm Modification skill, he had managed to complete them. They were now functioning more as bugs than as communicators, but Caster considered that part of his after-sales service, and felt no real guilt about using them.
"Things just keep gettin' more interesting. But are there too many unbelievable bits for a play? Oh, who cares? I'm just here to watch and heckle this time around." Caster's expression grew more serious, and his voice dropped to a mutter. "But this might be bad news for my bro and his crew."
Caster sighed. He was reminded of something that had happened when he was alive.
X X
Paris, the first half of the 19th century.
A time when a young Caster had only just arrived in Paris. When, out of a desire to see genuine Parisian drama, he had visited a certain theater in Saint-Martin.
The title of the play was
Le Vampire.
After getting caught up in trouble several times, he had finally managed to reach his seat. Sitting next to him, however, was a rather eccentric man. Just when he seemed to be totally engrossed in reading a book, he would raise his head and jeer, "You call that a vampire? Rubbish!" or grumbled, "These actors lack imagination and creativity..."
Caster thought it odd for a man about twenty years his senior to make a fuss about such things. In the end, he decided to ask the man directly.
"If you don't like fairy tales like vampires, then what are you doing here?"
The man shook his head once and answered:
"Vampires, a fairy tale? Preposterous! They actually exist. I've met them. That's why I was looking forward to this play. But just look at it! You call that a performance? They don't understand the first thing about vampires, and they're not even trying to!"
I've ended up next to an amusing fellow, Caster thought. He decided to ignore the play and ask the man about vampires.
"I met the first one in Illyria. Night after night, I ended up conversing and dining with a living, walking corpse."
"Dining?"
"We didn't sip blood together, if that's what you're getting at. Ordinary meals... But he wished to die as a man. I heard his wish. While he was sleeping in the graveyard while he was dead I took out his heart and burned it. But it was only later that I met a 'vampire' in the true sense. One with more power came to see the man who'd broken bread with, and given eternal slumber to, a vampire."
The man stared into the distance as he spoke, as if he missed the past. After he had related his back and forth with the "powerful vampire" for a while, he uttered the vampires' other name.
"They're called Dead Apostles, and they're obviously different from evil spirits or fairies that possess people. Despite being part of the earth, they despise humanity. In fact, they are the planet's own shadows, with wills of their own."
"They hate people?"
"Yes, they do. I can't speak to every Dead Apostle, of course, but there is a clear wall between them and humans. A manmade blade could never penetrate it. Only a blade consecrated by God, or some other 'power' of the same kind, can pierce them. In any case, if you think of them as just another kind of ghost or demon, you're very much mistaken."
"You're saying the 'vampire' in this play is just an evil spirit...? But I suppose that's only to be expected, if the actors have never seen a real vampire."
"You don't have to have seen one to play one. Human imagination enables anyone to arrive at an illusion," the man responded in a calm tone.
He went on to regale the youngster seated next to him and "eager to learn" or a variety of other topics, from various accounts of his own experiences, to the makeup of the city of Paris, to tales of the emperor Nero and literary recommendations. His conversation was unmistakably backed by experience. At some point, Caster ended up hanging on the man's words, rather than on the play.
After a while, however, the man glanced back at the stage. His face changed color, and he began to heckle the actors again.
"Oh, not like that! They're not ghosts that make you pale with mere terror!"
Suddenly the man announced, "I'm moving to a seat where it's easier to protest!" and rose from his chair.
"Oh yes. Fate must have a hand in this. Tell me your name."
Caster answered, a little embarrassed to be asked by a man old enough to be his father.
"My name is Dumas... Alexandre Dumas."
"Is that so? My name is Charles. God willing, we will meet again."
As he watched the man's retreating back, the youth prayed that he would indeed see that fascinating man again.
Although Caster Alexandre Dumas did not know it then, the man he had just been speaking to was one of the most famous authors in France, and had written one of the works that formed the basis for this
Le Vampire.
He was also the one who would later introduce Caster to the literary world.
X X
The present.
"Ah... I was sure Mr. Charles would be in the Throne, since the likes of me got there. I wonder why not. I was always indebted to the man..."
Caster muttered words that evinced a fundamentally different respect from those he used to his Master, then hurriedly turned his attention back to the matter at hand.
"Oh man, if he really is a vampire, they haven't got a prayer
with their current gear."
Sighing, Caster made his keyboard clatter.
"Right now they're customized to boost 'human power'... But... a vampire a Dead Apostle well..." Caster muttered, laughing self-deprecatingly as he fiddled with the bits of data that appeared one after another on his computer screen.
"But man, to think I'd actually get mixed up with them... Ya live and learn. 'Course, I'm already dead."
X X
The police station. Corridor.
Saber was walking down a corridor in an area a long way from the lobby, when he suddenly stopped, and turned to look at something. He was staring in the direction of the lobby where the chief and his officers were fighting, but he had no way of knowing that.
"What's the matter?" Ayaka asked.
Saber narrowed his eyes slightly, and answered:
"...I sense the presence of a monster."
"A monster?"
"...Yes. It's an old story." There was a hint of sadness in his expression, rare for a man who usually exuded a wild air. "It was during a war. Monsters forced their way into a battle between me and my rival, slaughtering men of both camps. I sense a similar presence now."
"I don't really get it, but does that mean a monster got summoned as a Heroic Spirit?"
"No, I don't think so. It's not a Heroic Spirit. I don't know whether or not they can even go to the Throne in the first place."
Saber, experiencing a sense of foreboding, determined to be more wary of his surroundings and get Ayaka outside as fast as he could. He recalled those monsters' peculiarities as he began to walk, and continued:
"To make a long story short... in your culture, they would probably be called 'vampires.'"
Originally Posted by asterism42
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