01-Love's Lovely Ranger Land: Please join the Self-Defense Force
02-Legendary Heroes War: Pay one catalyst and 10 mana to place the Servant Card in the field
03-Tactical Magical Espionage Action: Of Sit-Rep, Op-Sec, Fall-Back and Infiltration
04-Place of Learning: Actually the Place where Battles Happen
05-The Witch of Betrayal: A Love Letter to All Her Followers
Swordcraft Knight Rhapsody Shirou
Place of Learning: Actually the Place where Battles Happen
Yuuno Scrya was a very happy man. He was currently watching his two students desperately dodge and shield against barrages of powerful magical bullets, magically enhanced swarms of summoned creatures and two berserker drugged mages that were using cartridges like they were candy after having broken their own tournament seals in their rampage. He also looked oddly happy for someone whose students were in such dire straits.
By all rights his students should have been overpowered long ago. Not only had their powers been sealed down to C rank as specified by the rules of the tournament, but their enemies had broken the seals –a valid tactic according to the rulebook- and were putting enough power in a single spell to kill Shirou and Vivio many times over. Berserker as they were, nobody was certain if their spells were deliberately lethal or if simply they had lost the clarity of mind to decide against choosing to use lethal force.
But the truth is that finding out about the Throne of Heroes from Shirou's father had lit a metaphorical fire under Yuuno’s feet. He had felt incredibly enthused by the mere thought of something like the Throne of Heroes existing. Consequently, he had trained his students quite a bit more rigorously than he would otherwise have. The world seemed freer and bigger after this revelation, and a long suppressed sense of adventure finally freed itself from the old guilt he felt at the trials that had befallen on Nanoha after letting it truly loose for once.
It wasn't that he aiming to enter himself or his students into the Throne of Heroes. He just knew that he could push his students harder because people could be pushed harder. Because people had been pushed harder and thrived. Because he believed that both of his students had the potential to accomplish wonders, and that those wonders were of a scale that he hadn’t dared imagine since he’d begun reading his first Science Fiction book.
But between his students, Vivio was the hardest to teach. She was the product of centuries of careful breeding and even more careful genetic manipulations, tested by fate time and time again against factions with resources on interplanetary scales and motivated to do nothing but tear her line down by might or guile. She'd learn everything he taught her and make it into the most effective combination of it...with time. For all that she learned fast and that her instinct was spot on, she benefited the most from actually experiencing the act of acting her choices out, and dealing with the consequences of what she could do to refine her combat skill to its utmost.
So he taught her healing. And then he taught her illusions, transportation, summoning, bombarding, shooting, shielding, field spells, spell interception, mana conversion, evocation and everything else he could manage. And then he taught Shirou how to match, counter and overcome anything she could do, without turning him into a fighting machine useless against anyone other than Vivio. Though he still felt that it was Shirou’s own merits that had avoided that fate, not his own admittedly heavy handed interference.
In fact, Yuuno was the only reason why Shirou had enough power available to combat in the same scale as Vivio, thanks to a medical procedure –closer to a ritual, really- that he had essentially created himself. He'd also designed and developed the style that Shirou used, along with his device. And if that wasn't enough, he also had directly taught him almost every spell Shirou knew. In a sense, Shirou's current combat prowess was more of a testament to Yuuno's own mastery of all things magical than anything else. Even if by now, Shirou had come into his own, designing his own spells and tactics with only minimal input from him, the majority of his arsenal still came from Yuuno one way or another.
But the results were evident. Shirou and Vivio were steadily and stealthily disabling everything that their opponents used against them. He saw with pride as an illusionary copy of Vivio lead a small swarm of summoned metal birds right into a car sized fireball aimed at an illusionary copy of Shirou. The Vivio copy came out of the other end of the fireball, with her barrier jacket smoldering and scorched in places, and produced a pair of wicked looking swords before starting to swing them at the mage before her.
The illusion didn't succeed at striking the other mage even once, since its attacks kept on being dodged, but it succeeded in herding that particular enemy to where the real Vivio was waiting with an attack prepared. Her Impulse Cannon, if Yuuno didn't miss his guess. The resulting impact broke with great ease through the shield spell that their enemy raised instinctively, and imbedded him in the ground of the tournament's battlefield.
Shirou hadn't been resting in place, however. He had been hiding among the clashing rains of projectiles, easily navigating through the bullet hell of swords, magic bullets and flying summons with an ease that spoke of long practice. He was acting far more careful than someone who could fly so freely should, but when the other enemy charged him at unbelievable speed, his careful approach was rewarded with the perfect opening to dismantle his enemy with a short and decisive series of strikes that resulted in the other mage landing on the ground, pinned to it by blades a meter away from his partially interred teammate.
Yuuno was proud of his students. He was proud of Vivio, whose every instinct would show her a path that could lead her to victory, and who still had her whole life before her to grow even more. He was proud of Shirou, whose every action defied the fate that would keep him from following his ideals, chasing them with all his strength against impossible odds and succeeding. And he was proud of Nanoha, whose immense talents, great work ethic and incredible zero-to-hero origins had already carved her name in inter-dimensional history. He was proud of how Shirou and Vivio dealt with the desperate final recourse of their enemies, self-destruction, saving them from a pointless death and handily winning their match.
As someone who had come to see himself as a teacher before a Librarian or an Archaeologist, Yuuno Scrya was indeed a very happy man.
Tohsaka Rin was a model student, a school idol and a powerful magus. With nothing but reference books, partially outdated research journals and a fake priest that doubled as a subpar magus as a teacher, she was not only superior to almost all of her peers in the same age bracket but she also surpassed even full-fledged magi at the peak of their skill when it came to magecraft. Even in her own family, she was one of the most skilled members in record.
And yet, she hadn't discovered that Emiya Shirou was a magus. Or worse, Takamachi Vivio, with whom she held regular contact as one of the people that the school population pretty much worshiped. It would have been fine on some level if he'd just been some informed mundane, but a magus is a dangerous creature that hides from the mundane world for their own purposes, shrouded in mystery by their own design. Knowing that they could use mysteries very distanced from any kind of magecraft she had heard of, at a level of power that allowed them to survive a defensive fight against Servants was simply contradictory to what she knew or even suspected of her.
Even assuming that it was somehow related to the Fifth, and that their teacher was the Blue, the True Magician’s magecraft still followed magecraft's rules as long as she didn't resort to her true magic. Not to mention that from her admittedly limited experience, passing down a True Magic was very time intensive and inherently difficult. Those two, assuming that they shared similar magical skill sets, remained enigmas. Well, Takamachi could still be an informed mundane, like many priests of the church, but she doubted it.
To think that Shirou'd been able to use mystery on a level that she'd thought it was a Noble Phantasm even before summoning and contracting with his own Servant filled her with an odd mix of admiration and contempt that she didn't know how to deal with. The voice of her Servant reached her and shook her out of her thoughts.
"It wasn't magecraft." He said. Rin resisted the urge to frown. "I have some skill with Orthodox Magecraft, and I can tell that it wasn't magecraft as it is understood by modern magi."
Without speaking out loud, Rin responded. "So you understand what he was doing? What was he doing, if it wasn't magecraft?" She asked. The simplest alternatives she could conceive of were one of the psychic powers that occasionally turned up or nonhuman heritage, but what she'd seen had been too complex and versatile for the first and it lacked the tell-tale signs that betrayed the second one.
"I don't really have a word for what was being done, but it wasn't magecraft," Archer explained. "In a sense it was similar to Marble Phantasms, in that the rules of nature weren't being interfered with, but it still was a deliberate interference with the natural flow of the world. It's closer to the results of purely technological devices than to actual enacted mysteries."
It didn't really answer Rin's questions. As far as understanding their mysteries went, she still knew next to nothing. And considering that they were enemies in the Grail War, that ignorance could measure the distance between her life and death. Emiya Shirou and Takamachi Vivio. She narrowed her eyes fractionally. She was on the verge of remembering something that could be important.
The lunch bell rang, and she quickly gathered her things and left for the ceiling with her astralized Servant in tow. Her classroom was much closer to the stairs than Shirou's was, so she found herself on the isolated corner of the school's rooftop before anyone else arrived. A quick check of her work showed her that everything was working exactly as it should. Behind her, Archer materialized without a word.
She took out her lunch from her bag, and rested her back against the fence that surrounded the place. She didn't eat. That would be rude, even if Emiya was taking his time to show up. A small alarm she had set up rung, and she turned her attention towards the door she had locked after climbing the stairs that led to it. It and the spell she had cast on the lock were simple precautions that wouldn't stop a magus, but would keep normal students from interfering.
Like she expected, the door opened without a pause. It meant that Shirou was competent enough to bypass her little lock at least, which taught her a little about his magic's abilities. So she was surprised when, instead of Shirou or Vivio like she expected, she saw a foreigner girl dressed in an unfamiliar school uniform. Before she could do much of anything, the two people who she was expecting followed behind the first.
Rin turned back to the foreigner girl again, to guess from her looks why Shirou would involve her. She was taken aback as soon as she recognized that the girl was Saber, the Servant that Emiya Shirou had summoned. The change was really superficial, Saber hadn't even changed her hair style, and yet she, who should have recognized her as a Servant right away, was actually fooled.
It was probably a hint at whatever hero Saber had been in life, but that wasn't the point of the meeting.
"I see that you didn't forget to come, Shirou. Good morning," Rin said with the same tone she'd use to mention that it was a sunny day. Shirou stood back and pushed the door closed.
"Good Morning," Shirou and Vivio responded in chorus. "We came as soon as we could," the redhead continued.
"Why don't we talk as we eat? There's no point in wasting the lunch break," Rin offered.
The others in the school's roof agreed and soon enough they all had opened their respective lunch boxes and begun eating. Shirou was the one who broke the silence to start the conversation.
"So, did you want to talk about the bounded field over the school?" He asked. He'd felt 'something' as soon as he'd entered the school, but it was while he was examining the Archery Club's equipment that he'd realized that he was practically sitting on top of a mysterious magic circle connected to a barrier that surrounded the school. It was in a magic style that was utterly alien to anything he'd met before, so neither Lotus Blade nor Sacred Heart had had time to make any sense of it.
"Yes. That field is the reason why I was here last Saturday. I noticed when it went up a few days ago, so I came to investigate as soon as I summoned my Servant." Rin answered.
A pause.
"Thank you for that time, Tohsaka. You really saved me," Shirou said, thankful.
"You already thanked me once, there's no need to keep doing it." Rin said, looking annoyed. "In any case," the magus said when she regained her composure, "that bounded field is a disgusting thing, like the inside of a stomach that will eat the blood and meat within it. Haven't you noticed how listless people are? I tried investigating during the lunch breaks, but all I could find were just decoys."
"Do you know who could have done it?" Shirou asked.
"I know that it was done by a Master, and it has the whole school inside it," Rin explained. "The preparation phase for it is very slow, so I had time to check some suspects. I've got some ideas, but I don't have any proof yet. …Well, I knew there was another magus in this school, but a magus doesn't necessarily equal a Master. And when I checked that person, I didn't find any command seals."
"So we have no idea who it could be," Vivio said between bites. Beside her, Saber was quietly devouring her own lunch and watching in silence, letting the Masters talk while she looked out for enemies or spies.
"Well, there are cases where an amateur becomes a Master by accident," Rin admitted. "But since all we know is that they don't feel like a magus, then either their knowledge of magic is incomplete or they are very good at hiding. The latter would be very unlikely, unless..." Rin trailed off, turning to Vivio. "You are a magus and they are hiding as well as you."
"I'm...something else," Vivio admitted. "But we'd have found out if there was someone else like me in the school."
"Tohsaka." Shirou said, looking at a spot on the wall. "Are all the decoy's you've found like that?" He asked as he pointed at the place he was staring at with a finger. When the other people in the school's roof turned to see, they first saw simply an empty stretch of the wall. But by examining the spot a bit deeper, the unremarkable piece of the school's construction revealed a magic circle of an unknown make.
"Yes," Rin said, after looking at the circle for a moment. "But destroying it won't do anything, it just reappears somewhere else in the school if you do that."
"I see. The reason I mention this is because this morning in the Archery range I saw another one just like it." Shirou explained. "Only it was a lot bigger. I'm thinking that if all the decoys were like this one-"
Vivio finished the phrase "-then the one in the Archery range could be the nexus point. Why didn't you say anything earlier?"
"I didn't know what the field did until just now." Shirou said. "And I didn't want to be overheard in case the field let somebody do that."
"Wait. You detected the field so fast but you didn't know what it did?" Rin asked the boy, showing minute signs of her beginning to lose her cool.
Shirou shook his head. "I can detect distortions in the natural order of things, not actual magical energy." He volunteered. This only seemed to incense the black haired girl even further, though it only showed as a tick in her eyebrow.
"Fighting right now will only turn the students into potential casualties," Vivio noted. "If we wait until the clubs go home before taking down the field, the students won't get used as hostages."
"Then we'll do that," Rin said with finality. "You don't mind if I watch the Archery Club practice, Shirou?"
"No problem," Shirou answered. "Anyone can watch the practice as long as they don't interrupt it. The school wants to encourage people to join or support the club since we won all those tournaments last year."
"Well, our school got quite famous because of that, so it's only natural that they want to continue that tradition," Rin said. "I heard you even got a dan rank after a tournament?"
"Those are just rumors," Shirou refuted. "I just got complimented by some of people in the public." They were actually some of the judges who also worked as judges on the highest level dan ranking examinations, and their praise hadn't been small, but Shirou hadn't known that. And he would have preferred to avoid the praise if he'd known.
"In any case, we are done here," Rin said. "Let's meet again later. Good bye." With that, the girl left the roof, avoiding all the traps she had set in the meantime.
"Alright." Shirou said. "Good bye Rin."
"See you later, Rin!" Vivio exclaimed, finally speaking after letting the other two teens talk.
"Saber?" Shirou prompted the Servant.
"Archer was a few blocks away with his bow out," she explained. Shirou nodded.
"So," Vivio began saying. "You two are using each other's first name, already."
"I- We are?" Shirou asked. "I didn't notice," he said as he tapped a finger on his chin.
Shaking her head with a mock rueful smile, Vivio spoke, "if you're done with your food, let's go find Sakura. I heard that she was looking for us before class."
"Alright, just let me finish here," Shirou said.
After Shirou finished his food, the three of them went off to find Matou Sakura, but they didn't find the girl in any of the places they went to. After checking up the Archery range and her classroom, they finally gave up on finding her before classes begun again. Hurrying back, they returned to their own classroom in time to hear the bell ring and signal the end of the lunch period, after which the teacher entered the room.
The class passed by slowly, as if acknowledging the presence of the bounded field in the background gave it a greater foothold into Shirou's and Vivio's senses. Saber was a picture perfect student, studiously taking notes on the topic of the class without looking even the least bit distracted, even if Shirou knew that she was probably looking out for the enemy Master or Servant that had put the students in danger.
Shirou eventually managed to focus himself on class and focus on his work, pushing the murderous bounded field to the back of his mind. But even though it helped, he couldn't help but notice how the rest of the class seemed to squirm lethargically in place, or how even the teacher seemed less focused in his lecture than usual.
The final bell came far later than any of them expected, but they wasted no time in getting up and leaving their seats. Several classmates approached them to talk or just to hang out, but they were able to excuse themselves without much difficulty. However, they couldn't move too fast, since the halls were still full of the students that were leisurely leaving the school. Or perhaps lethargically was a better world, since they were still being affected by the field around the school.
They walked side by side in a relaxed silence, ignoring the stares and whispers directed at them. Shirou and Vivio were popular among the populace of the school, and Saber was a beautiful foreigner, so it was normal for them to be stared at from afar. At the same time, all three of them were also used to it, and were able to ignore it in favor of mentally preparing for the confrontation that would come when, or if, the Master or Servant responsible for the field reacted to their planned destruction of the field.
However, trouble found them before they reached the archery range. In their path, a boy with dark wavy hair and a smirk on a face that was filled with an indistinct mix of arrogance and pride stood alone in the way to the range, content with waiting for them to come closer. When they got close enough, he finally spoke. "Vivio! I've got something to ask you." Sparing a glance filled with a complex expression at Shirou and Saber, he continued. "Alone."
"Please don't address me with such familiarity, Matou-san." Vivio responded, sounding offended while talking in a polite tone. Shinji's expression flinched at the rebuke, but he looked ready to persevere.
"I'll go ahead to open the clubhouse. Vivio?" Shirou asked, but not before glancing meaningfully at Saber.
"I'll go with you. If you have anything to say, I'm sure that it can wait until the Archery clubs is done, Matou-san." Vivio told Shinji. With his smirk finally falling off his face, it was replaced by a scowl that took away any notice of good looks of his face.
"It can't wait," Shinji insisted, taking a step towards Vivio. Saber immediately steeped between them and put the tip of her wooden practice blade in his throat, still inside the fabric she had enveloped it with.
"Don't." She warned him frostily. Her glare was like a physical pressure that forced the student several steps back, his scowl twisted in partially concealed fear. Unseen to everyone else, a spirit jumped back to his side. Saber's glare slid over to it before she lowered her training sword and returned to Vivio's and Shirou's side.
Shinji glared impotently at the three before turning around in a huff, only to see Tohsaka Rin and Mitsuzuri Ayako exiting the main building of the school and walking towards the archery range. When the two girls ignored him and walked around him, the boy's hands tightened into fists at his side before he stormed away.
"That was odd," Shirou commented. "But I still have to open the range."
A small group of students, all members of the Archery club, had stopped around the commotion. Seeing this, Shirou hurried to unlock and open the range, followed by all the people from the club that ad already arrived. He had exchanged glances with Saber and Vivio after she had confronted the student, but they hadn't spoken a word of what had happened.
As Shirou and the rest of the members from the Archery club began to practice, split into groups by seniority in the club and skill, while Vivio, Rin and Saber sat on some chairs that had been placed in the archery building for spectators at some point, along with a pair of first year girls that sat at the other end of the row of seats. Meanwhile Ayako and Shirou were seamlessly taking turns in giving instructions to the various club members, guiding them through the warm up.
"The boy that bothered you had a Servant with him, Vivio." Saber said as soon as they sat, taking care to keep her voice from reaching other people.
"Did you know what class the Servant was, Saber?" The blonde girl asked.
"I think it was a Rider, or an Assassin," the Servant said after a moment's pause. The Servants belonging to the knight class were already identified, and the huge Servant of the Einzbern could only be a Berserker. Furthermore, a Caster most likely wouldn't be in the front lines where they could be discovered by other Servants and defeated outside their own territory.
"Wait, are you saying that Matou is a master?" Rin asked, somewhat incredulous.
"There was an astralized Servant with him." Saber said. "In the last war there was a master that used an ally as a decoy Master, and another who split the Command Seals and the prana connection between him and his ally."
"You remember previous summonings? That's impossible," Rin said, shocked. "Servant's shouldn't be able to remember other times you've been summoned."
Saber didn't react, and Vivio decided to ignore the tangent, and instead asked. "So Matou-san is the one that put the barrier on the school?"
Rin answered, "Yes. The spirit that Saber saw must have been his Servant. He's not a magus, but he's the kind of person that'd try to do something so repulsive, so I can believe that he'd do something as awful as placing this field on a school."
This time, Saber spoke, "not necessarily. It is also possible for a Master to use another Master as a decoy Master until their usefulness comes to an end."
"So you think that someone else is making him do this?" Vivio asked. "It does seem a little foolhardy to set up a spell that while you're still at ground zero," she commented.
"If it's a Bounded Field," Saber said, "it could be designed to avoid affecting him, or maybe being the Master grants him protection from its effects. If there is a real mastermind and that person realizes that there is more than one enemy Master that could be targeted simultaneously by activating the field, then it would be logical for a villain to strike and eliminate as many enemies as possible, without regard for anyone who dies in the process. We should consider attacking before any innocent bystanders are put in danger."
"Matou-san isn't the kind of person who follows orders well," Rin said. "But if he really is the Master and he isn't a magus, then he needs as many people as possible to be in the school when he activates the Bounded Field. Luckily we have until tomorrow to-"
Rin's voice died in her mouth. The main seal of the bounded field, invisible to all who didn't possess magic, glowed an ominous red in an otherwise empty wall. The people with Magic Circuits could feel an invisible pressure as the air filled with a murderous intent, while the world took a muted red tint, like it was bathed in blood. The people without any kind of magic fell down to the ground like sacks of meat.
Rin, Saber and Vivio were on their feet and shielding themselves from the Bounded Field in a flash, but everyone else in the room was already on the floor or still falling down, bar Shirou who was holding Mitsuzuri in his arms and some of the people who'd fallen on other people and on the various objects around. But Shirou's gaze wasn't on the girl in his arms, it was directing a pleading look at Vivio.
Saber didn't stay in place. Before anyone could do anything, she had exchanged her school uniform and wooden sword for her armor and invisible weapon. Without a word, she had covered the distance between her and Shirou to stand between him and the glowing magic circle in the wall. Shirou's head moved to follow her then, but he only noticed that something was wrong the moment that the wall of the Archery room exploded to pieces.
He hugged Mitsuzuri's body to his own more tightly to him in response, but Saber was able to prevent any debris from hitting the Captain and Vice-Captain of the Archery Club. The Bounded Field that was pressing down everyone abruptly fell to pieces as soon as the wall its nexus was on was destroyed, but it was swiftly replaced by the purple tint of the barriers used by the Bureau.
Rin looked at Vivio in surprise. A magic symbol shaped like a triangle had appeared below the blonde's feet instants before a purple spherical bounded field appeared between hero open hands and expanded at the rate of an explosion. Every time the field touched one of the unconscious students, they disappeared, with the single exception of Ayako, who was laid on the ground by Shirou and vanished when the boy touched her forehead.
"What was that?" The black haired magus demanded.
"A Barrier," Vivio answered. "It will contain the damage to this place, without any witnesses."
Rin bit back a retort. It was not the time.
"Archer, can you come?" She asked through their connection.
"Lancer was also caught in the Bounded Field, Rin," came the measured response from the red clad Servant. "I'm moving to intercept."
Speaking out loud, Rin turned to Vivio. "Lancer got caught in your Bounded Field, but Archer is intercepting him." What the magus wanted to know the most was if Vivio had done that on an accident or if she'd planned to take Archer out of the equation from the beginning, but she knew better than to ask. Instead, what she was going to say died in her mouth when a roar filled the Archery Range.
Behind the wall that had been destroyed was a giant. Standing taller than anything inside the Archery range, the giant dominated the room without an effort. Its mere breathing was loud enough to make it hard to think, and its enormous muscles promised doom to anything that became its target. The giant carried an Axe-Sword made of stone that stood taller than normal people, and weighted far more than one.
Saber pointed her invisible blade at the general direction of the giant with her expression frozen in a determined frown, her muscles tensed in preparation for the coming combat. The continuous roaring, huge muscles, crude weapon, maddened panting and lack of any actual armor of the Servant before her told her that it belonged to the Berserker Class without a doubt. She clearly remembered that the last time she fought a Servant of that class, she'd achieved victory through pure luck. The emotional impact of the fight had made that kind of detail much clearer in hindsight.
This time, she aimed to win in straightforward battle against Berserker, treating him as if he was just as skilled in battle like the last enemy of this class she had faced. With this in mind, she took the initiative and jumped forwards towards the giant, only to stop and plant herself long enough to parry a diagonal downwards chop that cratered the ground of the building. She used that opening to step forwards and swing her sword towards the taller Servant's neck, only for the surprisingly fast reverse swing to force her to jump back out of range.
Of course, the other Servant didn't just allow her to widen the distance between them and chased her, but she was marginally faster. When the mad Servant swung his giant ax-sword in an arc Saber rolled under the blow and came up to strike him, but their weapons clashed instead. Despite the powerful forces involved, neither Servant moved an inch. Both clashes had happened in less than half a second.
For the three humans that were still in the out-building, the short clash had felt like two bombs had gone off almost simultaneously. And while Shirou and Vivio had been partially protected from the shock wave by their Barrier Jackets, Rin had no such thing to protect her from the busted eardrums and mild impact, having expected no such thing from her experience with Lancer and Archer's battle in the school the previous night. Even so, the three of them unanimously decided to get out of the building.
Several explosions shook the walls and the ceiling of the building, the clash of the powerful combatants great enough to crater the ground and open wide gouges on the roof and walls. The holes allowed the building to vent some of the pressure generated by the clashing Servants, but by giving air a somewhat stable if dynamic shape. A system of localized high and low pressure spots formed, threatening to bring the building down on their heads.
"We've got to find the Servant that made the Bounded Field!" Rin yelled over the sounds of battle. "If we let it go, then whoever is in charge will make it target normal humans!"
Shirou looked like he wanted to answer, but instead he jumped off to the side. Vivio did the same in the opposite direction after grabbing Rin, barely managing to dodge an invisible restraining spell that jailed the spot they were standing at in the ground. Shirou and Vivio didn't actually communicate their plan. Rather, both of their reactions accurately predicted and took into account each other's reaction.
Shirou was the first to see the apparent cause for the spell. And seeing the identity of the perpetrator he couldn't help but exclaim, "Kuzuki-Sensei!"
And indeed, the stoic teacher was charging at Shirou at incredible speeds. During his involuntary exclamation Shirou had lowered his blade, making him look wide open against any attack that his charging teacher would use. However, he was repeating the tactic he had used back when he arrived at the school almost two full days back, lowering the tip of his blade to the ground to cast a defensive spell.
"," Shirou proclaimed, settling into a stance that would allow him to react quickly to any change in the battlefield.
Less than a second later, the teacher's strike was blocked by a slab of compacted ground stronger than rock that nonetheless was broken by the impact it received. The biggest piece of debris broken off the defensive wall was sent hurtling in Shirou's general direction and managed to score a glancing hit on his waist. However, when the teacher attempted to break off to attack from another angle he found that the ground in a perfect circle all around him also rose to impede him.
Instead of casting the defensive spell around himself, like he had the previous night, Shirou had cast it on the ground around his teacher in order to trap him. Pointing his sword at the suit clad teacher warily, he nodded in Vivio's direction. The blonde girl then took Rin's arm and pulled her forwards with her as Kuzuki-sensei got completely surrounded by the walls and as the Archery building finally gave out before the might of Saber's and Berserker's battle.
"Let's go, we've got to get out of the open," Vivio said as she urged the other girl forward.
"But Kuzuki-sensei isn't a magus," Rin pointed out, trying to keep up with the other girl's running speed. "The one that enhanced him must have been close. Even a Caster can't cast something so difficult from too far, and we're going into a building filled with potential hiding places."
When Vivio slowed down to a standstill, Rin thought for a second that she had convinced the other girl against entering the building, until the empty air in the entrance of the school building ceased to be uninhabited in favor of welcoming a tall woman with long purple hair. Almost immediately Vivio corrected herself, because before the individual before her wasn't exactly a human woman. She was tall, dressed in a tight black leather short dress and long leather boots with purple highlights, blindfolded and even sporting a sigil tattooed on her forehead, she was undoubtedly a Servant.
Vivio's advantage in combat had always been her uncanny instincts, which granted her the kind of awareness in battle that other people would need decades in combat to train. And those same instincts told her that in a fight against the woman in front of her, she was not going to win. But she could delay her for a few seconds, minutes if she was very lucky. Or at least outmaneuver her a single time.
The purple headed servant did not speak however, it was a person somewhere within the school, hidden from sight. Despite that, Vivio and Rin both recognized the voice from the first word, "kill them, Rider!"
And it was at that moment that Vivio made her move. When the blonde rushed forward at her maximum speed, Rider didn't even shift her stance. And when she was close enough to hit the Servant with a punch, the woman instead used a short knife at the end of a chain and punched her straight through the heart. Or so it seemed. The illusionary silhouette that Vivio had sent forward passed through Rider like a ghost and immediately jumped up, unimpeded by the floor of the next floor.
When her strike was ineffective, Rider dismissed the illusion as a distraction and looked over the grounds of the school, to where Rin and Vivio had landed safely a good distance away from where they'd been. But instead of rushing after them, the Servant began walking towards them in a deceptively slow ground eating stride that was far more intimidating that just charging in would have been.
At that moment, Sacred Heart's voice come from Vivio's body. "「Contact Mode」" A faint flash was emitted from her Barrier Jacket, signaling the successful mode shift to her most powerful defensive state. It involved dedicating every ounce of magical energy and processing power that Sacred Heart had into strengthening Vivio's defenses, leaving everything else, like flight or offensive spells, disabled. Like with most spells that Vivio had known since she was young, that one had only grown stronger as she aged and trained.
In the middle of the school's grounds there was another fight going. Or rather, the fight was happening above it. At some moment while Rin hadn't been paying attention the situation had changed dramatically. Kuzuki-sensei was still trapped in a wall that prevented him from moving away. Before the eyes of the Japanese magus, the defensive spell activated and created a curving wall that prevented the teacher from jumping away.
But Shirou wasn't occupied with his trapped teacher. Instead, he was flying in the air, exchanging magical attacks with a hooded person of indeterminate age, who was firing bolts and lances of magical energy that were skillfully dodged by the red headed magus. The sword in his hand had been exchanged for a metallic solid bow that he was carrying in his off hand, while he used his free hand to direct some of his own shooting spells in some direction.
It looked like a stalemate. While it could take many of the teen's spells to defend from a single one of the Caster class Servant -and she was sure that the other figure in the air had to be a Servant- sometimes two of the opposing magical attacks collided in the air and dispelled. Furthermore, the boy had to defend from only a small fraction from than what Caster was firing, because in the air he was far faster and maneuverable than the Servant.
But Rin wasn't about to bet on Shirou overcoming a Caster class Servant using magic, aerial combat or not. She looked around the school, trying to find anything she could do, when she saw a slab of rock, floating in the air between Caster and the general region where Vivio was using some kind of short ranged high speed movement spell to keep away from Rider. She was somehow withstanding powerful blows enough to retreat and leading the Servant in a merry chase, but Rin could see that using so much magic was beginning to put a stain on her body.
Before her eyes, she saw Shirou use a spell visually similar to what Vivio was using to close in to Caster and fire an arrow point blank. The resulting explosion managed to create a cloud of dust that prevented Rin from seeing what was happening, until Shirou came out of the cloud in a way that suggested that he had just attempted to punch Caster. Rather than be satisfied with that, one of Shirou's feet began glowing bright as the boy swung around in a spinning back kick that dispersed the dust but missed hitting the Servant. Caster had flown back to avoid the attack, and was clearly casting a spell that would either hit too hard or too fast for Shirou to defend in time.
The boy mage seemed to decide that staying close was against his best interests, and again used a high speed mystery to reappear closer to the ground but still facing Caster. The Servant decided against casting a single spell at that distance, knowing from experience that the boy would be able to dodge at that range. But she knew that by having put himself close to the ground, the youth had closed off many retreat options to himself. As she was casting spells, preparing to flood the area the boy was in with enough spells to make dodging impossible, Caster swooped down to box the boy in an even smaller area.
Just as Shirou had planned.
"Saber!" He yelled. "Now!"
The blonde Servant seemed to have been expecting the command because as soon as Shirou began speaking, she used both her own strength, the wind around her blade and the angle of her strike to send Berserker up in the air. The mad giant was unharmed by the maneuver, but he was unable to propel himself meaningfully and would be at the mercy of gravity until he touched the ground again. Knowing that her window of opportunity was short, Saber flew in a straight line that went past Caster and ended up where Rider was at the moment.
Caster had also heard the command and attempted to break off, but she had been committed to her course of action and she could only twist her body to minimize the wound that the passing Saber put on her torso. But that wasn't all, by any means. The whole plan had been to line up the two Servants the humans were fighting so that Saber could deal a surprise attack that would injure them enough to drive them off or make them weak enough that surviving them was manageable. Shirou had told this to both Saber and Vivio using telepathy, and then had spent the rest of his fight trying to set it up.
The problem had been that Caster was flying in the air and very unlikely to return to the ground, so Saber needed a way to quickly return to the ground and go after Rider once she had cut Caster. Knowing that, Shirou had levitated and directed a slab of rock from the archery building's roof so that Saber could use it as a platform to jump back down swiftly, and then informed Saber.
At that moment, Shinji was sent through a window in the second floor, breaking through the glass and spinning in the air until he fell on the ground on his left shoulder with a nasty crack and a pained scream. The boy laid crumpled on the ground, but he was in the right position to see Saber strike Rider and send her hurtling into the school building, crashing through several walls. A splatter of blood fell on the ground where the two Servants met, but Saber managed to avoid getting even a single drop of blood on her person.
Seeing Rider being struck down so easily, Shinji's expression twisted in anger and he yelled at the leather clad woman, "you worthless Servant! At least kill someone you useless thing!"
Nothing seemed to happen for a couple of seconds except for Saber rocketing back towards Berserker, who had been held floating a foot above the ground thanks to a levitation spell cast by Vivio. Saber stopped midway to her destination when a pulse of power and a bright light came from the place where Rider had been flung into. In an instant, everybody present, except probably for Berserker, realized that the only person who was visible from where Rider had been thrown was Souichirou Kuzuki, still pinned in place by Shirou's defensive spell.
Shirou reflexively released the spell, making the raised walls around the history teacher crumble to dust and allowing the teacher to jump to the side and away from a white comet of light that passed through the place he had been a fraction of a second earlier. The bright white line of light curved upwards, revealing that the white light had only been the trail of something so bright that it hid anything that could be seen inside almost perfectly.
"You dare!" Caster said between gasps from her place in the ground, her voice magically amplified. The servant was glaring hatefully at Shinji before muttering something between her teeth. In response, Shinji's arm began glowing with an ominous purple light and began raising higher and higher in the air, to the point where it lifted the boy off the ground altogether before leaving him there dangling like a puppet.
Shinji wasn't moving his free arm beyond a few twitches that made him moan in pain, and with good reason. The shoulder holding him in the air wasn't the one on which he had fallen earlier, but it had been left immobilized by his awkward position while his other arm was most likely broken by the fall from the a floor up. Coupled with that, the most he could do with his free arm was make it move a couple of inches before the pain made him stop. With his legs swinging uselessly below him, the boy could only twist his head to stare at the limb that was holding him aloft.
It was at that moment that Shirou realized what Caster was doing. But by then, it was already far too late for him to do anything. Even though he immediately flew at Shinji and tried to think of something to do, all he managed to do was stare at the fear in Sakura's brother eyes as the light on the other boy's arm flashed and then moved down sharply to cut through his own neck.
Shirou's feet hit the ground with a solid thump by the other master's side, only to see the body and head of the other boy go up in purple flames as soon as he landed. Turning back to Caster, he only managed to see a shadow envelop both the Servant and her Master before they vanished with it into the air. Returning his gaze back to Shinji's remains, he saw as the body had been quickly consumed by the flames until there was nothing left.
For a moment Shirou was left at a loss of what to do. But his body acted out of reflex, turning towards Berserker and falling into a defensive stance. That is when he saw her. The same red eyed, white haired and purple clad little girl from the market. The one that Saber had called a Master.
"You're very skilled, onii-chan," the girl complimented. "The Traveler must have taught you well."
Shirou stared at the white haired girl uncomprehendingly. "Who?"
A short glance to the side at Vivio revealed that she didn't know anything about it, either. Rin didn't say anything and nothing showed on her face, but it was clear that she wanted answers. Shirou turned back to the white haired little girl, the question plain on his face. “I don’t really keep up with other magecraft users.”
Seeing that Illyasviel still looked unconvinced, Shirou elaborated, "my father barely taught me the most basic things about magecraft and its world, but if there’s one thing that he made clear is that groups of magi are like minefields and that finding magi who I could come to like or respect was almost impossible, so I should just keep my distance.”
The girl wearing a purple hat didn't look happy at that, but she seemed to stop dismissing his words on principle. "Even in the last corner of Earth there's no guarantee that you won't be found, onii-chan. Your father made many enemies, after all."
"I already know what I plan to do with my life," Shirou responded after a small shrug. “And it will keep me away from magi unless they threaten the secrecy of magecraft."
Illyasviel was silent for a moment, before she asked with a subtly mocking tone. "So what did you learn magecraft for, gambling? Acting? Someone like the Traveler won't take a student without a good reason."
"Are you talking about Yuuno-sensei? I've never heard of anyone called the Traveler," Shirou said.
"The Traveler is just what people call him, he never gave a name," Illyasviel explained. "He is also the only person known to cast a barrier as big or as strong as this one," she finished, gesturing to the purple tinted ruins of the school. "And unless he's here and hiding, he must have taught you how to cast one."
"My teacher taught me almost all the magic I know, but I'm not very good at casting barriers," Shirou admitted. It was as a silent admission that Vivio was the one most likely to have done so, since the Tohsaka family magic couldn't and Vivio was his ally.
"If it’s like that, I guess I can forgive you for not showing up last night, onii-chan. So I won't kill you today," Illyasviel said carelessly, making her careless words sound even more terrifying. Nobody seemed to know how to react as Berserker carefully, almost gently, picked her up and sat her on his shoulder.
"Bye! You can call me Illya if you want!" Illyasviel said, waving at Shirou with all the innocence of a little kid. The ease with which she could talk about killing and possibly commit the act was more than a little unsettling, but the redhead had a question.
"Wait!" He yelled. Obligingly, Illyasviel stopped and turned on her seat to see him. "Why do people know my teacher? What happened?"
"You really are kept in the dark, aren’t you?" Illyasviel said with an odd tone that Shirou couldn't decipher. "The Traveler is the Twelfth Dead Apostle Ancestor.”
“What?”
The explanation was so unexpected that Shirou didn't think of stopping Illyasviel from leaving. Thankfully, he was not alone.
"Yuuno-sensei is not a vampire," Vivio said with such conviction that Shirou wondered why he'd thought otherwise for even an instant.
It was Rin who answered. "Not all Ancestors are vampires. Some of them are beings that killed one and that no dead apostle is willing to cross, or powerful beings that drink blood."
“Wait!” Shirou said. “Will somebody please explain when did this Traveler fight a vampire, how did anyone find out how it happened?”
It was Illyasviel who answered. Even though she was almost outside the school, in the near perfect silence of the barrier she didn’t have to raise her voice to be heard clearly across the distance. “The twelfth was circling around a detachment from the Clock Tower through the countryside, but when he got within ten kilometers from the nearest inhabited state he was caught in a bounded field that killed him in an instant. The fastest kill of a Dead Apostle Ancestor on record.”
And then she left without another word.
Shirou turned to look at Rin, prepared to ask her what she knew about the situation with the ancestor, but she was staring to the side, looking at the distance where the sun’s bright light could be seen in a giant hemisphere that towered above the buildings.
“Archer and Lancer are still fighting?” Vivio asked.
“Yes,” Rin admitted. “From what I understand, Archer has confirmed Lancer’s identity after surviving his Noble Phantasm, but it seems like their clash damaged the barrier and they had to stop on account of all the witnesses. Lancer is trying to return to the barrier to keep fighting”
“Barriers don’t act like that,” Vivio said. “Either they remain whole, or they are broken. It shouldn’t be possible for a hole to just appear in one like that.” But even as she said that, she dropped the Barrier and allowed it to vanish completely. There was no point to keeping it up if it was no longer necessary.
Rin looked on as the damage dealt to the school building seemed to vanish with the barrier, leaving them standing in the middle of the school’s courtyard. A group of students that were joking around among themselves walked around the three magical teens while ignoring them like they were invisible. Saber stood to the side, once again clad in the uniform that Shirou had given her. Shirou could see the grass on their clothes, as if they had been lying on the ground a short time ago.
“Captain Emiya!” Came a shout from the side. When they turned to see who it was, they saw Mitsuzuri still clad in the uniform of the Archery team waving at them. “Are you alright?” The vice-captain asked when she got close enough. “I didn’t expect whoever was behind those gas attacks to target a school, but everyone in the Archery club was still lying on the floor when I came out to find you. Did they get you too, Captain?”
“We’re alright, Mitsuzuri,” Shirou answered, visibly placating the other girl.
Without missing a bit, Rin added “we were just trying to find the place from where the gas came, since it looked like we weren’t affected by it like everyone else. This was after trying to wake you, of course.”
“After a while everyone seemed to wake up, so we were just on our way back,” Vivio mentioned. Saber had walked over to stand beside Shirou, opposite from Vivio who was on his left.
With that, the group returned to the Archery building to tend to the other members. It seemed like they were uninjured and merely unconscious, since the bounded field used by Shinji’s Servant had only lasted a few seconds. The fact that those few seconds had been enough to knock out almost everyone in the school was terrifying enough.
While Shirou and Mitsuzuri continued leading the day’s practice of the Archery Club, Vivio managed to convince Rin of following them home to answer a few questions on Illyasviel’s parting shot, while Saber kept a watchful eye on Archer’s invisible form.
At the temple on top of the mountain, a Witch cared for a teacher.
Guarding them both from the gates of the temple, a guardian stood unnoticed and vigilant.
At the church on the outskirts of the city, a Priest cut a connection to a familiar and leaned back to ponder the situation.
Walking away from the school building, the Master of Berserker and her invisible Servant met up with her maids, who had been searching for her and who had made a straight line for the bounded field that had contained the Servant battles.
As it roamed the city in spirit form a spirit hungered for the conclusion of the battle it had just been in, delaying its return to its Master.
On a raised balcony, a smile crossed the face of the king who stared at the battlefield like it one stared at a rotten log that had just sprouted an orchid.
TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 5
Glossary:
Split Sky (斷空): A bounded field in Earth's nomenclature, and a field enchantment in the Bureau's, Split Sky turns a relatively small section of the ground around Shirou into a powerful automatic defense that allows him to prepare spells with longer casting times. The spell is first prepared by Lotus Blade, and then applied to the ground by touching it with any part of the sword, usually the tip, and enchanting a section of the ground with a radius similar to Shirou's height.
The enchanted ground will then act independently from Shirou to defend him against attacks from all directions, even from above and below. Although it has a surprisingly low cost to cast (equivalent to C or B rank spells of the Mid Childa magic style), it has to be carefully tailored to the user or the enchantment will also attack the caster. For this reason, it is also useful as a trap spell, or an area denial one, as the spell be maintained indefinitely with a proper source of energy or half an hour, if it is not attacked.
Now onto the proper author’s note. It’s been months. If not a year. I began a Master’s in physics, which took a lot of the time I had been using to write, and several sections got rewritten at least a dozen times or got left untouched for weeks while I tried to imagine the best way of writing what I wanted to happen.
That said, I do plan to continue this fic, and I hope that the next chapter won’t take another year to publish. It will probably be at least a month, though.
Again, I hope that you come with me with your comments, suggestions, complaints and questions. Good bye!
Originally Posted by Fafnir
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