Chapter 17: Day 3
Breaking Dawn and Wakeless Dreams II
Day 3, Morning, Snowfield Police Station, Chief’s Office
A full day had passed in Snowfield since the deadly battle in front of the hospital.
The damage to Main Street had been explained away as an underground gas and water pipe accident triggered by the pipeline explosion that had left the crater in the desert.
The terrorists supposed to have attacked the police station had sabotaged the pipes before the attack, and the delayed effect on plumbing already damaged by the desert explosion and magnified the tragedy . . . or so the cover story went. Possibly it had been judged that the gas company would not last until the end of the Holy Grail War without an excuse.
The townspeople’s anger was directed at the nonexistent terrorists, but because news that those terrorists were still at large was spread at the same time, a portion of the citizens developed a sense of danger and began to avoid visiting the city’s urban areas without a good reason.
In the midst of that situation, one man’s muttering filled his spacious office.
“So, Gilgamesh, the King of Heroes, was taken down . . .” Snowfield’s chief of police, Orlando Reeve, muttered to himself with a frown as he went over the reports of one of his subordinates assigned to monitor Gilgamesh’s Master, Tine Chelk, and her faction.
He had guessed as much based magical-energy measurements he had conducted in his office the night before.
Kuruoka Tsubaki, the Kuruokas’ daughter, was believed to have somehow developed Command Spells while unconscious and become a Master.
He had dispatched officers to take Tsubaki into protective custody and confirm the intentions of her Servant, but their visit had turned into a melee between multiple Heroic Spirits.
Orlando had observed an extraordinary torrent of magical energy. An instant later, the Spirit Origin response he believed to be the King of Heroes Gilgamesh had fluctuated and was now becoming undetectable.
“Our most dangerous enemy is gone . . . or at least that’s how I normally ought to look at this.”
The chief had not despaired, but his face was severe.
He may have lost a powerful enemy . . . but the blow to his own faction had been devastating.
More than twenty of his subordinates—all but a few he had held back in case a third party attempted to exploit the commotion—had vanished immediately after the King of Heroes’ Spirit Origin faded.
If they had been killed, he would be able to give up on them and immediately shift focus to his next move.
He did not have enough of a mage’s mentality to be unmoved by the loss, but he was prepared for all of them to die, himself included.
But, while he was not going to complain, not knowing if they were alive or dead did force him to consider his next move.
There were not even traces of corpses—only the material damage remained.
Most of the nearby surveillance cameras had already been destroyed by the battle, but several surviving cameras had captured footage of a black mist welling up from the direction of the hospital.
It looked like little more than thin smog on video, but if some form of magical energy were at work, then it might appear thicker to the naked eyes of mages or Heroic Spirits.
Even his second in command, Vera Levitt, had disappeared.
The chief had lost most of his pawns, but he considered confirming whether they were alive or dead his top priority.
Even supposing that the mist did take their lives, the absence of bodies has to mean something.
Consider the motive. Save figuring out who did what for later.
Do they plan to use the corpses? Either by controlling them like zombies, or by extracting information about us directly from their brains . . .?
If they aren’t dead . . . they might brainwash them without killing them or torture them for information . . .
It was depressing to think that he risked his subordinates turning against him or having information stolen in either case, but the chief continued his conjecture.
Other possible reasons . . . Does Kuruoka Tsubaki’s Servant need to hide a large number of humans somewhere?
Either way, it boils down to a “whydunnit.”
Although, while I can manage painstaking investigation, deductions were never my specialty.
Its Master’s orders . . .? No, that couldn’t be it.
Kuruoka Tsubaki is comatose. She’s in no condition to communicate with her Servant.
. . .
Wait. Is that really true?
I’m deliberately severing the link, but according to Faldeus, Servants’ memories can flow into their Masters through the magical energy that connects them . . .
What about the reverse?
What if it read something from Tsubaki’s subconscious mind while she’s comatose and . . .
Just as the chief’s thoughts were accelerating, a voice that slammed on the breaks sounded through the room.
“Yo.”
The chief turned and saw his own Servant, Caster Alexandre Dumas père.
“What are you doing here, Caster?”
“Oh, I’ve just been lending a hand.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sorry, bro,” Dumas answered the chief’s suspicious question, “you cut off telepathy from your end. Then again, I didn’t try the phone ‘cause I was sure you’d stop me.”
“Wait, what are you talking about?” The chief asked despite suspecting he would not like the answer.
“Well,” Dumas continued light-heartedly, plopping down onto the visitors’ sofa in a corner of the office, “it was lucky I was watching the fighting from a step back. If I’d been at ringside, I’d be in that black mist now myself. . . . ‘Course, I probably could have focused on supporting your officers better that way.”
“. . .?! You were there?! I don’t remember giving that order!”
“Yeah, and I don’t remember getting it. Good to know both our memories are in good shape. We could be witnesses for an alibi; that’s an important role in plays and novels.”
“. . .! Do you understand your position? My officers and I can be replaced, but if anything happens to you, our Heroic Spirit, our faction is finished.”
The chief’s words were charged with quiet anger, but Dumas brushed off his feelings with a shrug and answered as flippantly as if he were ordering breakfast.
“Not really. There are plenty of ways you could make it work. It’s about time we got some Heroic Spirits at a loose end, with just their Masters killed—just make a contract with one of them.”
“Do you think you can get out of this with assumptions like that?”
“I’m saying that you wanted in to this war, so don’t chalk it up as ‘finished’ so easily.”
“. . .!”
At Dumas words, the chief paused to take several deep breaths in silence, wiped all trace of anger and impatience from his face, and resumed speaking with careful self-control.
“. . . I suppose you’re right. Sorry. Even if all of our forces, including the two of us, die, we shouldn’t consider that the end.”
“Haha! I like how it only takes you a second to cool your head.”
“I’ll take that as consolation . . . but cooling my head won’t help me to improve our situation.”
“Then have some good news—my treat. Your officers who disappeared are still in good shape.”
“!”
The chief’s eyes widened slightly.
“I can still sense the weapons I cooked up,” Dumas continued with a cheerful grin. “I may not be much of a Caster for this Grail War, but I can at least tell if things I’ve been mixed up with still exist or not. Going by my feelings, the weapons I gave them are still somewhere in our world . . . but not somewhere you could walk to. . . . That’s my honest opinion.”
“But the fact that the Noble Phantasms are intact doesn’t guarantee their users’ safety, does it?” The chief asked suspiciously.
“John’s alive, at least,” Dumas answered.
“I’ll explain that later. It just means I’ve got a Noble Phantasm I hadn’t told you about yet.”
“. . . No. If you say you’ll explain later, I’ll wait. My officers’ safety takes priority.”
The chief swallowed whatever he had been about to say and returned his attention to the problem at hand.
“Still . . . I don’t understand. Are they inside some kind of ward? . . . Don’t tell me it’s a Reality Marble?”
A Reality Marble.
At the thought of the term, the chief mentally let out a little groan.
“A Reality Marble . . . That’s great magecraft, right? Builds up a little world out of a mental landscape and jams it into our world?”
“Your understanding is a little crude, but not entirely mistaken. . . . Hmm, a Reality Marble or similar magecraft would certainly be capable of isolating a certain number of people. It wouldn’t surprise me if a Heroic Spirit had a trick or two like that up their sleeve . . . but it ought to require a massive supply of magical energy. It could hold the people who disappeared captive for a short time, but not over an extended period.”
Even in the world of magecraft, Reality Marbles were said to approach Magic.
Considering the magical energy of mages, even a Heroic Spirit should not be able to overwrite reality with their “world,” sometimes even bending the laws of physics, for more than a few minutes.
It would be a different story if they had a source of magical energy to maintain it longer, but their surveillance system ought to detect some sign of a movement of magical energy on that scale.
It’s possible that Faldeus has already picked it up and is withholding the information . . .
No . . . there’s also the massive magical energy reading that did suddenly appear last night.
We should keep running the surveillance system, but if it’s possible to completely conceal a flow of magical energy on that scale, we’ll need to try other approaches as well.
While the chief sank into thought, Dumas was reading a newspaper lying on the reception table.
“Hey, more bad news. Get a load of this—there’s a hurricane heading straight for us. Think a Heroic Spirit could be behind that?”
“. . . The hurricane developed far to the west of us. I’d like to think it’s unrelated. Still . . .”
“Going by that sour face, I’m guessing you’re not so optimistic. That’s good. Whether it’s connected or not, wind and rain is gonna blow our plans all out of whack. Looks like a whole bunch of your country’s big shots died in one day, too. That’s another storm to worry about.”
“I’m concerned about that . . . but I doubt I’d get a satisfactory answer about it out of Faldeus or that old bitch.”
The timing being what it was, the chief suspected everything taking place in the United States of being involved with the “Fake Holy Grail War” in Snowfield. But even if it were connected, he frustratingly lacked any immediate way to be certain.
In central Snowfield, with the situation only growing worse, the chief realized his own powerlessness.
No, I already knew that.
I was always prepared to be outclassed in terms of ability. Still, we . . .
The chief clenched his fists.
“So, what’re you gonna do, bro?” Dumas asked casually.
“What do you mean?”
“When are you gonna go save them? It’ll depend on where they vanished to, but if a Heroic Spirit like me can sneak in there, I’ll give it a shot.”
The chief frowned.
He did not know everything about the Heroic Spirit he had summoned, but he did have a general grasp of his capabilities.
“. . . You almost fooled me earlier, but I can’t afford to send you to the front lines. I haven’t ordered you to go that far, and I don’t intend to. If you’re going to insist on acting on your own initiative again, I’ll restrict your movements even if it means using a Command Spell.”
The chief’s tone was severe. Dumas wiped his usual grin off his face and answered in earnest.
“No, you did order me. And first thing, too.”
“What do you . . .”
“Brother, you asked me to make weapons for your officers—to give ‘the strength to fight’ to a bunch of people who are novice mages and compared to Heroic Spirits aren’t much different from the brats rocking in strollers out there in the park.”
Dumas flipped through the newspaper, pointed to a page of a serialized short story by an author living in Las Vegas, and tapped it with his finger as he began to expound.
“I’m an author, brother. What ‘strength’ can I give you guys? What ‘weapons’? Is it the ‘Noble Phantasm’ that latched onto me from who-knows-where when I became a Heroic Spirit, whatever that is? The Item Creation Skill I got served as a garnish? Well, that’s one answer, but it’s doesn’t get to the heart of the matter.”
At that point, Dumas stopped his fingers and lifted the newspaper between them.
“There’s only one thing that I can give to other people! Yes—stories!”
The next instant, Alexandre Dumas sent the newspaper fluttering through the air and loudly proclaimed, amid the rain of letters:
“Fiction or nonfiction! Plays I edited or my own autobiography! Fantasies worked out from A to Z inside my head! Lofty personages and historical ways of life reworked into history! The compiled history of the world’s cooking! Every last one of them is a ‘story.’”
Dumas continued in a clear voice, like he was performing a scene in a play.
He was not raising his voice, but it echoed in the pit of your stomach, like the song of a huge whale heard close up.
The chief judged that even if it were only an illusion, the words were sufficient to create that illusion. He did not ignore it as more of the Heroic Spirit’s usual banter.
Seeing the chief’s attitude, Dumas went on in high spirits.
“It’s true that when Mr. Garibaldi said he was gonna start a revolution, I supported him with ships and money and weapons. But that was a ‘story’ too. The moment other people found out that gold, guns, and glory had fallen into someone else’s hands, those things gained a bunch of meanings. Alexandre Dumas, author of Les Trois Mousquetaires, supported the hero causing a sensation! I might not’ve had much effect back then, but it was enough to influence one person’s life. I glanced at some info about me online, and that story was there all right. That at least shows that people remembered it for a hundred years and a bit.”
After hearing Dumas’ speech, delivered like an actor in a play, the chief fell silent for a few moments, then ordered his emotions as he began to speak.
“. . . I understand what you’re trying to say. But that has nothing to do with you putting yourself in harm’s—”
But Dumas cut him off.
“John Wingard.”
“. . .?”
The unexpected proper noun from Dumas caused the chief to freeze for an instant.
“Vera Levitt, Annie Cuaron, Don Hawkins, Chadwick Li, Yuki Capote, Adrina Eisenstein, . . .”
The chief immediately recognized the list of names that Dumas rattled off as he carefully picked up the sheets of newspaper that he had just sent dancing through the air.
They were the names of all the members of “Clan Calatin,” the fighting force he had organized.
It was only a list of names, but the chief felt an undeniable power behind the words and continued to listen without interrupting.
“. . ., Sophia Valentine, Eddie Brando . . . and last but not least, you, brother—Chief of Police Orlando Reeve.”
“. . . I knew you had been looking up details, but I didn’t expect you to memorize all of their names.”
“Oh, not just their names—their faces, voices, personal histories, and everything else I could learn, down to their favorite herbs and spices. But you’re the type to memorize all your officers’ names yourself, aren’t you, brother?”
Dumas was not boasting. Once he had finished his matter-of-fact statement, he placed the neatly folded newspaper on the table and moved to the chief’s desk.
The Heroic Spirit planted both his hands on the desk, leaned his large frame forward, and addressed “his own words” to his Master.
“The names I just listed were the ‘cast of characters.’ They’re already major characters in one of my works.”
At that point, Dumas grinned broadly, spread his arms wide, and concluded:
“I don’t fancy myself as God, and I’ve got no intention of controlling ‘em. But the program is a once-in-a-lifetime Holy Grail War—probably the first and last one you and your people’ll ever see. And I provided a bit of the script in the form of ‘weapons’ and ‘power.’”
“I’ve given the actors a little twist, but I don’t know how it’s gonna turn out in the end, even for me. Doesn’t that sound like the ultimate play—the ultimate life? Doesn’t it make you want a front-row seat?”
X X
Within the Ward
“You mean . . . this is a fake world?” Ayaka Sajou muttered disbelievingly, slipping through the church doors and looking out at the world spread out under the blue sky.
It was a beautiful cityscape, the kind of scene that would be picked out for the cover of a tourism pamphlet.
It lacked the weight of history, but the well-ordered blocks of buildings displayed harmony, and the casino hotels and municipal offices in the city center stood out as especially grand.
The city scenery was the same as ever.
But even Ayaka could tell at a glance that the situation was not normal.
For one thing, she could see no one in the city except herself and the police officers.
For another . . . the church and Main Street in front of the hospital, which had been so showily destroyed the night before, had been restored as if nothing had happened.
“It’s all fixed . . . How?”
“No . . . It looks less like it was repaired than like it was never damaged,” Saber—Richard the Lionheart—who was linked to Ayaka by magical energy responded.
As he said, there were no traces of repairs on the street, and skid marks and stains that looked days old remained as they had been.
Ayaka still could not quite bring herself to believe it.
“If this really is a fake world,” she asked Saber, “can magecraft do something like that . . .?”
“Yes, although this is coming close to Magic. But it’s probably just barely achievable if you poured a ridiculous amount of time, skill, and resources into it, so I guess it is magecraft and not Magic.”
Saber sounded almost relaxed. Ayaka heaved a half-exasperated sigh.
“You know, this situation seems really weird to me . . .”
“Yes, it is. But at the same time, it stimulates my curiosity. Doesn’t the thought of whoever cast this great magecraft excite you?! What will we do if the great Merlin, or someone like him, turns up? In terms of this era’s values, I think I ought to get their autograph.”
“I don’t care,” Ayaka shot back a perfunctory response. “And I don’t know much about this ‘Merlin’ guy.”
“Maybe, but he’d be a powerful enemy. What should we do? Throw him at the moon . . .? No, I’m sure that was just one of Mother’s embellishments . . . Still, he’s a legendary mage . . . If we’re lucky enough to catch him, maybe I could hold him by the leg and swing him around as my Excalibur . . .? He might make a powerful magic sword . . . It’s worth asking if I do get to meet him!”
Ayaka looked at Saber, who was quietly getting worked up and muttering nonsense to himself with a grin, and kept walking, thinking to herself that he had certainly inherited his mother’s imagination.
“More importantly, is it true that we can’t leave unless we defeat that mage . . .? Isn’t there a safer way that we could, I don’t know, sneak out . . .?”
Saber had just been seriously injured, and Ayaka wanted to avoid conflict as much as possible, but a denial came from a direction other than Saber.
“I think that would prove difficult. There is a possibility, but who can say how long it would take to find a way without anything to go on?” The female police officer told her with an expression like an android whose emotions had not been configured.
“Umm . . . Vera, right? Thank you for answering so thoroughly.”
A world with few signs of human life.
The area around Ayaka and Saber, however, was an exception: ten of the police officers whom they had met in the church were surrounding the pair as they walked.
The officers had informed Ayaka that the world they were in was part of a closed space, and Ayaka had formed a temporary alliance with them to eliminate the source that had created it.
As far as Ayaka was concerned, it was better than being arrested, and Saber saw no reason to object to the temporary alliance, so they had ended up joining forces without much hesitation.
Vera Levitt.
That was how the leader of the police officers had just introduced herself. Ayaka glanced at her and asked, still warily:
“Are you, umm . . . a Master in the Grail War?”
“No, I’m not. I can’t tell you the details, but think of me as a member of a faction working for a Master.”
“So, the police are in league with the mages who set up this Holy Grail War? But probably not all of you—the ones who questioned me didn’t seem to know anything.”
Saber plainly stated his conjectures with his usual candor.
“But judging by the importance of your battle in front of the hospital, it’s reasonable to suppose that you sent the majority of your forces there. And given that no reinforcements came, I’d guess that a bare minimum stayed to guard the Master you work for and you have around thirty police officers working with you. Am I right?”
“. . . I don’t consider that information necessary for our escape.”
“You’re certainly honest.”
“What do you mean?” Vera asked suspiciously but remained expressionless.
“It’s entirely possible that you’d dispatched another hundred officers to other important locations,” Saber explained, “but your brief silence and the way your eyes moved made it obvious that I guessed right.”
“. . .”
Vera fell silent.
“. . . Wasn’t it kind of mean of you to go out of your way to point that out?”
Ayaka sounded disgusted.
“No, it’s not like that!” Saber hurriedly countered. “I wasn’t mocking her or showing off! Her reactions to an unexpected conversation were easy to read because she’s fundamentally honest. I meant that it’s a virtue that she can be honest despite being a mage. There was a mage called Saint-Germain who hung around me, and I could truly never tell if what he said was true or if he was making it up.”
At that, other voices chimed in.
“Saint-Germain . . .?”
“The alchemist?”
The officers walking nearby muttered to each other.
“Oh, I guess he really is famous. He always said he’d dropped in on all kinds of people. . . . I sympathize with the people he bothered. But then, the kind of big names that went down in history probably had no problem accepting his odd ways,” Saber added with a shrug.
“Are you really a Heroic Spirit?” One of the officers asked. “You seem awfully relaxed . . .”
The young officer had been too focused on the battle with Alkeides to see the details of Saber’s duel with the King of Heroes. That was why he found Saber unbelievably carefree compared to the Heroic Spirits he had faced—Assassin, who had attacked the police station, and Alkeides.
The other officers admonished their young colleague—“Hey!” “What’ll you do if he takes that as a challenge?!”—but in Saber’s mind, the young officer’s words recalled a certain voice.
“You’re always like that, brother.”
“You race across the battlefield like a devil, but you completely let you guard down in peacetime!”
“Do you even understand what it means to be king, brother?!”
“And you are?” Saber asked the young officer, fondly remembering his relative’s exclamations from his lifetime.
“. . . John Wingard. You can call me John.”
“. . .!”
Saber’s eyes widened in surprise.
The police officers and Ayaka were startled by Saber’s sudden change in expression, but Saber himself paid them no mind and said, with a look of joy:
“I see . . . So, your name’s John!”
“. . .?”
“This must be fate. Let’s be friends, John. Think of it as going with my carelessness.”
Saber walked amiably up to the officer and patted him on the back.
John, who had no idea what was going on, looked cautious.
“Where’d this come from?! What’s my name got to do with anything?!”
“Oh, well, you see . . .” Saber glanced away, apparently conflicted. “Have you figured out my True Name? Whether I can tell you depends on that. . . . Oh, hang on. That means I just gave away that the name ‘John’ has something to do with my True Name. All right, wait a moment while I figure out how to gloss that over.”
“It’s already hopeless. Just give up,” Ayaka said with a sigh, although she did not appear angry.
Ayaka understood that True Names were important, but the Heroic Spirit had introduced himself to her despite her protests that she did not want to know, so it was clear to her that the chances of keeping it hidden were slim.
A proper Master might have ordered him not to reveal any information connected to his True Name even if it cost them a Command Spell. Ayaka, however, did not even think of herself as a Master, and was assuming the position that if Saber were going to give it away on his own, there was nothing she could do about it.
Ayaka was still exasperated, but Saber ignored her and presented the excuse he had come up with.
“I know . . . The makers of the wonderful modern music I heard last night . . . Elton, Lennon, Williams, Travolta . . . I just thought that you might have musical talent, seeing as you have the same name as them.”
“But ‘John’ is Elton John’s last name . . .” One of the officers pointed out. Saber, however, began to hum contemporary music with unnecessary skill in an effort to play it off.
“That doesn’t seem like something a Heroic Spirit who’s supposed to hide his True Name would say . . .” Vera, who had been watching, muttered to herself with a rare look of confusion.
In the fourth Holy Grail War in Fuyuki, there had been a Heroic Spirit who loudly announced his name to people he was meeting for the first time . . . but Vera had no way of knowing that anecdote. She conjectured that this Saber was either highly unique or a cunning Servant calculatedly playing the clown.
Given his eccentric behavior, such as declaring that he would pay for the damage to the opera house in front of TV cameras or dematerializing in front of non-mage police officers, she was leaning toward the latter.
Based on that conjecture, Vera deliberately doled out a small amount of their information.
“. . . The chief seemed to have an idea of your True Name.”
Vera shared information with the chief, but that information was not passed on to the other officers.
The chief had been reasoning analogically based on the information that Saber had “blond hair streaked with red” and the speech he had given in front of the opera house. Spreading information before they were certain could prove fatal if they turned out to be mistaken.
As a result, she did not attempt to identify him as the Lionheart and instead attempted to keep him in check by suggesting that they knew his identity.
John heard his superior and asked Richard again.
“All that aside . . . aren’t you still a little carefree for a hero? You didn’t make a fuss about trusting us or showing us your back; what’re you planning to do if we attack your Master here?”
“That’s an interesting question. . . . What do you think I should do, Ayaka?”
“You’re asking me?!”
“You’re the one whose life would be in danger. I’d like to ask you how to deal with enemies while we have the chance. I wouldn’t want to accidently kill one with a counterattack only to end up making you sad because you didn’t want me to kill anyone.”
Richard was practically saying that actually dealing with them would be easy. One of the officers, who felt slighted, called with a slightly disgruntled look:
“You seem awfully sure of yourself. Are you trying to say you could hold back against us and still not—”
John stopped him with a hand.
“. . . What, John?”
“. . . Haven’t you noticed? We’re being watched.”
The officer looked at John and was taken aback.
For the past several seconds, John had been sweeping his gaze over their surroundings with a grim expression and cold sweat beading on his forehead.
Richard, on the other hand, looked at John, impressed.
“I’m surprised—you noticed in an instant. Either way, I don’t think you’d be so cowardly as to attack Ayaka from behind . . . but I see you’d make a good knight as well as a good official.”
“?”
Ayaka did not understand what he was talking about, while the police officers turned their attention to their surroundings. Like John, caution and surprise were causing cold sweat to form on their faces.
“. . .”
Only Vera remained cool. She shifted her attention to the pistol holstered at her hip and asked:
“Two . . . No, three. Can I consider that to be your forces?”
“Huh? What?”
Ayaka looked around again . . . and finally noticed.
A heavily bandaged man she had seen the other day was standing on top of a building . . . and a lance-wielding man on horseback was peering at them out of an alleyway.
“That’s . . .!”
“Yes, I introduced the archer to you once before, Ayaka. I’m impressed, Vera. I didn’t expect you to sense Lock—Assassin while he’s hidden.”
“I couldn’t sense him. But I judged that you would need one more to cover all your blind spots and protect Ayaka Sajou.”
“That’s even more impressive. I see. The people around you must shine brighter in battle with you leading them,” Richard casually remarked. As he did so, the archer and the others vanished like a mist lifting.
“What’s going on?” John asked, still tense. “What are they?”
“My comrades. When I’m certain that you won’t target Ayaka, I’ll introduce them to you along with my True Name.”
“Comrades . . . Did you summon them from outside this ward?”
Richard answered Vera’s doubt with a shake of his head.
“They’re half fused with my Spirit Origin. They just came with me automatically.”
“. . . As a check on us, that was careless. We’re guessing your True Name. Don’t you think that information will bring us a step closer to the heart of the matter?”
“Are you concerned for me? . . . I knew that you were more like knights than mages.”
“. . .”
Vera remained expressionless but narrowed her eyes.
“Oh, I apologize if I offended you,” Richard answered cheerfully. “That wasn’t an insult. I value chivalry, but I don’t disdain mages. I’m praising your humanity. You’re cool and collected, but you aren’t callous.”
“. . . That doesn’t answer my question. You’ve been letting your guard down with us too much. You’re putting all your effort into protecting Ayaka Sajou . . . but you seem to be lacking any idea of ultimately defeating us once our alliance is over. As someone in this alliance with you, that strikes me as cause for concern.”
“In other words . . . I seem like I must be plotting something, so you can’t trust me to watch your backs?”
“What? . . . Saber isn’t that kind of . . .”
Ayaka started to protest, but Saber stopped her.
“It’s fine.
“Thank you, Ayaka. Well, I understand her caution as someone responsible for an organization. But if we want to return to our world safely, it will help to clear up any ill feelings in our alliance.”
Having said that, Saber came to a halt in the middle of the carless street and addressed the police officers.
“I suppose you’re right . . . I still haven’t managed to get serious about concealing my True Name . . . No, about this entire Holy Grail War. I was only in earnest about my personal ‘war’ with that golden Heroic Spirit.”
“You aren’t taking it seriously . . .?”
“Yes. I’m not going easy out of disdain for you. I’ve already explained this to Ayaka . . . but I simply haven’t found a wish for the Holy Grail.”
“You . . . don’t have a wish?”
Vera was doubtful.
With a few exceptions, the Heroic Spirits summoned by the Holy Grail formed contracts with living mages in order to make use of the Grail’s wish-granting powers.
If Saber had no wish, then why had he manifested?
Is it because the Grail is a fake . . .? No, but . . .
Vera tried to reason it out but determined that she ought to leave anything further to the chief and Caster—Dumas—and continued to listen to Saber’s words in silence.
“There were things I prayed to God for when I was alive. It’s not easy to tell whether my prayers were answered . . . but they were things I can’t wish for on the Grail, or rather, there would be no point wishing for them. But since I was summoned here like this, I suppose I must have some wish that even I don’t know about yet.”
Saber gave a casual shrug and flashed a friendly grin at the police officers.
“Basically, until I find that wish, I’m not thinking about going out of my way to kill you just to win. My top priority right now is to return Ayaka to her homeland unharmed.”
“My homeland . . .?”
For some reason, it was Ayaka who asked the question.
“You came from Japan, didn’t you? Am I wrong?”
“No . . . you’re right, but . . . Oh, it’s nothing. Sorry for interrupting. Just keep going,” Ayaka mumbled evasively and became lost in thought.
Saber was concerned about Ayaka but brought his speech to the police officers to a conclusion.
“So, I will keep our alliance as long as you have no intention of harming Ayaka. Yesterday’s enemy becoming today’s ally was an everyday occurrence in my day.”
Saber grinned as if to ask, “What about in your era?” Vera considered briefly, then surveyed her fellow officers and nodded.
“Understood. We won’t accept everything you’ve said on faith, but we will keep our agreement.”
Once he was sure Vera had finished, John spoke to Ayaka.
“Umm . . . Sorry about that. It was only to test your partner, but I still talked about stabbing you in the back. That’s not something a cop should be doing. Sorry.”
“Huh? Oh, don’t mention it. . . . Saber started it, anyway,” Ayaka answered bluntly.
John let out a sigh of relief.
“Thanks. . . . You’re awfully tolerant for a mage.”
“That’s because I’m not a mage.”
“Huh?”
John and the other officers looked confused.
Ayaka, however, seemed unwilling to explain further, because she shrugged and began walking with Saber.
Ayaka Sajou.
Vera did not let it show in her expression, but she was reconsidered Ayaka Sajou.
Who is she?
According to the records of her interrogation, she was a tourist visiting the city . . . but further investigation had revealed that the records of her entry into the United States had been falsified.
She must have entered the country illegally through some kind of string-pulling, but Ayaka herself seemed strangely unaware of the fact.
There was also information that the chief had shared with Vera but had kept from the other members of Clan Calatin because it might cause confusion.
There is a mage by the same name . . . but she—Sajō Ayaka—is confirmed to be active in Romania.
I saw a photo of her face, and she does look almost identical apart from her hair and eye color.
If she’s a fake, then for what purpose? If she planned to take Sajō Ayaka’s place, why did she change her hair color?
Sajō Ayaka is supposed to have an older sister, but there’s no record of her having a twin.
In any case . . . I’ll have to keep my guard up.
Now that they were unable to contact the chief, Vera was for all intents and purposes the leader of Clan Calatin. She decided work with Saber and Ayaka while maintaining the bare minimum of caution.
They possessed numerous “Noble Phantasms” of their own, but considering their individual combat ability, she determined that antagonizing Saber would be inadvisable.
At that point . . . Saber voiced a question as he walked.
“Hey.”
“What is it?”
“You said you’re going to eliminate the mage or Servant behind this, didn’t you?”
“. . . Yes. We theorize that that is the most reliable method of destroying this ward-world.”
Saber thought for a moment, moved his mouth slightly as if talking to himself, and then:
“. . . Yes. I suppose so. My comrade ‘Caster’ agrees that that would be the simplest way.”
“Your ‘comrade’ . . .”
“Think of them as something like that bandaged archer and the others.”
“. . .”
He even has one that acts as a mage? Vera recalled the mysterious entities—entities that were probably part of the Spirit Origin that was Saber—whose Spirit Origins seemed weaker than proper Servants but still far stronger than ordinary mages grew even more wary than before.
Saber’s words, however, threw cold water on both Vera’s caution and the other officers’ determination to give their all to escape.
“Still, most of my ‘comrades’ aren’t too enthusiastic about it.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? You’re asking why not? . . . Are you sure you’re not overlooking an important possibility?” Saber stopped again and said, giving them a glimpse of his serious face as a Heroic Spirit, not the carefree attitude he had shown them so far.
“The girl you were trying to protect . . . little Tsubaki, wasn’t it?”
“!”
“I heard about her from a mercenary I met yesterday. I heard about her . . . but have you considered that the one who shut us up in this world . . . could be Tsubaki’s Servant?”
“. . .”
Vera and a few other officers who had been prepared for that possibility lowered their gazes slightly, while John and several others who had just realized were momentarily taken aback and then began to make a variety of expressions.
“Of course, it could be that crazy thing that fought the golden Archer at the end, or some other Servant I haven’t even seen . . .”
Saber paused, then asked the cruel question in a matter-of-fact tone.
“But if that little girl is the cause, will you be able to kill her?”
X X
At the Same Time, A Closed-off Town, Inside Crystal Hill Casino
While Saber and the police officers were walking along Main Street . . . a different group was moving quite nearby.
It was not the second group of police officers, who had split their forces.
They had never joined up with Saber and the police officers in the first place.
One of them, his eyes shining as he spun a roulette wheel by hand, exclaimed:
“Oh, wow! I only watched at Mr. Fem’s casino, so I couldn’t tell, but now that I get to spin a roulette wheel myself, it’s lighter than I thought!”
The young man—Flat Escardos—shouted like a child. An answering voice came from the watch wrapped around his wrist.
“I doubt anyone but you would think of that in our situation.”
Then, the Heroic-Spirit-turned-wristwatch—Berserker, a.k.a. Jack the Ripper—stated his impressions as he surveyed their surroundings.
“Hmm . . . A totally silent casino with no hustle and bustle is a little eerie.”
“What? You know casinos, Jack?”
“Only as information. It was either given to me by the Grail, or perhaps due to a theory that my true identity was an immortal gambler. In any case, I can guess how much noise this place is ordinarily filled with from its gawdy décor.”
“Yes, it certainly makes you uneasy,” the pair’s “companion,” who had been watching the exchange, added with a shrug. “It looks like there’s power, but I’m surprised how much quieter it is with no one working the slots.”
The man looked to be in his mid-thirties and was distinctively dressed in a priest’s cassock and an eyepatch.
Four peculiarly dressed young women followed behind him, each surveying their surroundings with serious expressions.
The priest’s name was Hansa Cervantes.
He was an overseer dispatched by the Holy Church, but he and his nun subordinates had been enveloped by the “black mist” and trapped in that world.
“I think the police are here too. Shouldn’t we meet up with them?” Flat casually asked the overseer.
“I provided the church, but if this is part of the Holy Grail War caused by a Servant, then helping them to escape would be unwarranted favoritism. That goes for you too, of course. I’ll share information, but I don’t plan on helping you destroy this ward-world.”
Once Hansa had realized that he had been pulled into a ward modeled on the city, he had set out to investigate alone. In the process he had encountered Flat and they were now joining forces to survey the city.
“Oh, really? . . . Well, I guess I can’t complain. I wouldn’t enjoy winning a game where the judge was taking my side, anyway. Plus, if you did that, I’ve got a feeling the Holy Church would end up taking the Grail.”
Flat regretfully related his negative impression of the Holy Church, but Hansa nodded with a wry smile.
“Yeah, you’re right. I’d probably do that if I got orders from higher up. It’s always been obvious that nothing good would come of letting mages get their hands on something that grants wishes.”
“And the Holy Grail War having an overseer originally only applied to a Japanese city called Fuyuki, right?”
“But it’s a fact that we’re using that as our excuse to intervene. My bosses might change their policy if they ever realize just how different this Grail War is from the one in Fuyuki.”
Hansa deliberately refrained from saying whether that change would be for the better or the worse and shifted his gaze to the nuns.
“. . . Well?”
“It’s no use,” one of the nuns answered politely with a shake of her head. “We were unable to detect the presence of a mystical core forming the ward in this area. It may be skillfully concealed, but in that case, it may prove difficult to locate with our equipment.”
“I see. . . . I thought they might be drawing on the Grail’s power directly, considering they’re recreating the whole city . . . but that doesn’t matter if we can’t locate the core.”
Whether they were looking for the Grail or the core of the ward-world, they had guessed that there would be something suspicious about the tallest building in the city center, but it appeared they had guessed wrong.
“The power is on, right?” Flat asked.
“Yeah,” Hansa answered, looking up at the chandeliers on the ceiling. “But who knows where it’s coming from, so who knows when it will stop?”
“I’d . . . like to try going up to the top floor while the elevators are still working.”
“Oh? You think the ‘core’ might be there? It’s true that the area extends above and below the building. It might be worth checking . . .”
“Oh, no,” Flat stopped him with a wave of his hand. “I didn’t mean that. It would be a lucky break for us if it were up there, though.”
“?”
“It’s because from up there . . . I can see over the whole city.”
“. . . Do you have a plan?”
Flat answered Jack with a slight nod, slapped his own cheeks to psyche himself up, and said:
“If I take a look at it . . . I might be able to figure something out . . .
“If I can find a place where the guard is thin, I might be able to get in touch with the ‘outside’!”
X X
At the Same Time, Los Angeles, U.S.A.
“. . . Repor . . . z . . . $# . . . special alert . . . are advised . . . z . . .”
“. . . The hurricane is moving . . . z . . . normally . . . inconceivable . . . z . . .”
“The National Weather Service . . . appropriate . . . z . . . ignoring the ordinary name list . . . z . . .”
“. . . A special . . . designation to . . . z . . . # . . . $ . . .”
“. . . z . . . li . . . z . . . ber . . .”
At that point, the voice of the emergency management radio became even more distorted and the sound of static completely dominated the cramped space.
The driver’s seat of a truck lying overturned on the side of the road.
Due to the fierce winds and driving rain, water began to intrude through the broken windows.
The radio continued to hum with static, heedless of the situation, but it was only a matter of time until it was completely submerged.
The driver appeared to have long since evacuated. A scattering of fallen billboards and broken trees was visible nearby, but there was not a human to be seen.
The record-breaking hurricane had formed suddenly and without warning.
Central Los Angeles would escape with only a few more damaged cars and buildings . . . but those who endured the raindrops pelting their faces to look up at the sky in the midst of the storm would later say:
Four huge tornadoes came down out of the sky.
They strode across the land, shrouded in flashes of lightning . . .
Almost like the feet of a gargantuan beast braving the skies and threatening to trample the very world to pieces.
Originally Posted by You
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