Bridge
Clink Clank
“. . . Huh?”
The next thing Ayaka knew, she was in the middle of an intersection.
It was the intersection in front of Crystal Hill, near the hospital and the police station.
The nearby asphalt was badly torn-up, and in the distance, she could see blockades indicating no entry as well as police cars and construction vehicles parked to hide the street from view.
Nearby, police officers were looking around like she was. She could not see Saber, who had gone a considerable distance away to fight, but at least the orb of water floating around her was still there.
“We came back . . .?”
X X
Coalsman Special Corrections Center
“Oh . . .? So, they made it back in one piece. It’s a good thing I had the street cordoned off,” Faldeus said with a shrug, then informed his trusted assistant Aludra while he watched the footage through the surveillance cameras placed throughout the city.
“Now, we’ve had one nerve-wracking day after another, but there are only a few more to go. We’ll have to start arranging events in earnest. . . .”
“What first?”
Faldeus answered her with a wry smile and a wink.
“For now, let’s see about getting some stomach medicine.”
X X
Central Intersection
“Oh! There she is! That’s her, Jack! That girl is Saber’s Master!”
Flat was excited that he had found Ayaka.
“Approach with caution,” wristwatch Jack admonished him. “You saw how much power Saber wields. We won’t last a second if she turns out to be hostile.”
“That’s true, but I just can’t stop thinking about that Master. . . . I know. Jack, can you turn into a white flag?”
“I was able to become a watch thanks to the inanimate object theory, but I’ve never heard anyone suggest that Jack the Ripper was actually a white flag.”
“They’re out there if you look! I just know it! Human possibilities are kind of close to infinite, so you must have about five thousand true identities!”
“That’s considerably fewer than infinite. . . .”
That typical exchange helped Jack to feel that he and his Master really had returned to their original world.
“But,” Jack told Flat again, all the while keeping an eye out so that he could protect Flat if a mage or Servant attacked as they approached Saber’s Master, “I doubt I’ll be much use in combat from now on. The bowman in front of the hospital stole my Noble Phantasm, and he’s not the only Heroic Spirit to show how great the difference in our capabilities is.”
“Don’t worry. I told you, if we think of it as hard mode, we can work around the difference in stats somehow.”
“. . . I suppose I should be grateful that you put concern for me before yourself when that Assassin questioned you about the Holy Grail.”
“What do you mean?!” Flat exclaimed, his eyes bright. “I want to find out who Jack the Ripper really was too, you know!”
“. . . You might just end up disappointed,” Jack continued. “There’s a good chance that some piece of trash just happened to not get caught. . . . In any case, stop idolizing a thing like me. When my identity is finally revealed, I’ll merely gain the right to atone for my crimes. Learning my true identity would be salvation for me, but not atonement. And it’s not healthy to idolize a criminal in the first place.”
Once he was done lecturing Flat, Jack’s tone softened.
“But the days I spend like this with you . . . What remains in your memory will be undeniably ‘me.’ If I settled the question of my identity with the power of the Holy Grail, I will most likely disappear, and that genuine Jack will stand before you. If they try to kill you, show no concern. Kill them or escape them at once and forget them as soon as you can.”
“Jack . . .”
“But . . . I’d be grateful if you would remember the ‘me’ who is talking to you now.”
Jack spoke like they were his last words. He must have been certain that it would be difficult for him to win through the battles to come.
Flat turned to him with his usual smile.
“I’m the same way. Whatever your identity turns out to be, it’s a separate issue. As far as I’m concerned, Jack is the Jack that I’m talking to right now. If someone told you to atone for the crime of murder, I’d testify for you! I’d tell them, ‘This Jack is a genuine fake; he doesn’t need to atone for anything!’”
“. . . Hehe . . . Ha ha ha! You’ve got that backwards in more ways than one!”
Jack laughed out loud.
The un-mage-like young mage and the serial killer laughed cheerfully together.
They walked with a spring in their steps, as if they were not afraid of anything, and decided to make contact with the girl who was Saber’s Master immediately.
“Hey there, Ayaka!”
“Huh?! Who are you?!”
Ayaka turned to look in the direction of the sudden greeting and saw a young man in his late teens, maybe almost twenty, standing and waving to her.
“How do you know my name . . .?”
“Oh, so you really aren’t the same person,” the young man said, seeing Ayaka’s wary reaction. “That makes sense. I mean, your flow of magical energy is totally different! But is your name really Ayaka too?”
“Huh . . .?”
Ayaka stared at the young man, confused.
“Who are you?! Do you know about me?”
“I’m Flat. Nice to meet you. There’s another girl with the same name and face as you, and I’m friends with her. But . . . your magical energy currents. I thought so. . . .”
The young man looked at Ayaka and started saying something to himself.
“Wait,” Ayaka asked, nervously backing away. “Tell me! If you know about me—if you know who Ayaka Sajou is—tell me . . .!”
Flat answered Ayaka’s strange request with a nod. He looked serious.
“Sure. . . . I understand. Like I thought, you don’t really know what you are, do you?”
“. . .”
Ayaka fell silent.
Flat took that as a yes and started to say something to comfort her.
“You see, your body—”
First came the whistle of something slicing through the air.
An instant later, just as the red that blossomed from the torso of the young man who called himself Flat tinted Ayaka’s view, came the crash of shattering asphalt.
“Huh?”
Did the sound come from Ayaka, or from Flat?
Flat thudded to his knees on the spot.
“. . . Flat?”
Jack’s voice filled the area.
He had been wary of the mage called Ayaka.
He had also been on the alert for attacks from Saber and other Heroic Spirits.
Both Flat and Jack trusted the nearby police officers, their allies, but this was still their first contact with Saber.
But Flat had been pierced by a long-range attack that did not rely on magical energy from a faction that had nothing to do with Saber.
Jack, having lost the greater part of his strength, had no way to defend his Master from that kind of modern warfare.
“Ah . . .”
As Flat looked at the hole torn in his gut, he was able to analyze with complete calm that he had probably been shot from diagonally upward—from the roof of a building.
He raised his head to look.
“It’s so bright. . . . I can’t quite see,” Flat instinctively raised a hand and muttered as if nothing was out of the ordinary. The sun, which had begun to sink westward, was in his eyes.
“Sorry, Jack. . . . I screwed up.”
He thought he could hear Jack shout.
He felt him trying to turn into something incredible and do something in the direction the bullet had flown from.
But Flat knew.
He was probably already too late.
Flat’s reinforced eyesight had spotted multiple snipers stationed on buildings in multiple directions.
“. . . Sorry, Professor.”
Then, with a faintly lonely smile, he said his last words.
“Sorry . . . everyone . . .”
A second high-pitched whistle sped in front of Ayaka, and another red flower bloomed.
It bloomed about a meter above the first one.
In other words, where the young man who called himself Flat’s head had been.
“Eee . . . Ah . . .”
It was not the first time she had seen a person die before her eyes.
But it was the first time she had seen the head of a person who had been smiling and talking to her until a few seconds before disappear.
While Ayaka Sajou screamed, the body of Flat Escardos collapsed in the sea of red it had poured out.
X X
Somewhere
“What is it, Svin?”
The young man questioned by the mage walking beside him looked confused and sniffed several times before speaking with a sense of unease that he could not explain.
“No. I just had a feeling like . . . a smell that was all over disappeared. . . .”
X X
Coalsman Special Corrections Center
“Confirmed destruction of target’s head. Beginning additional assault.”
“Good. Don’t hesitate to destroy the Magic Crest as well. It belongs to the decrepit Escardos family.”
Faldeus sipped black tea and checked his monitors as he listened to the reports over his radio.
Additional gunfire was making the young man’s corpse lying on the asphalt dance.
Unlike Rohngall, it was not a puppet but a real body.
“You know, I think that people who inspire others are the most dangerous of all,” Faldeus told Aludra as he elegantly sipped his tea.
“In this case, I’ve been wary of Flat and Saber, who have been making one new ally after another. If there’s any chance that the two of them made contact in the world inside the ward, we have to eliminate them immediately or my stomach will be the one to die.”
“Saber’s Master as well, then?”
“After Flat if possible . . . or so I’d hoped, but that’s no longer an option.”
The girl who was Saber’s Master was already surrounded by a water-like dome of magical energy, and Saber, who had rushed to her side, was carrying her indoors in his arms.
“I’m also interested in that Master’s identity. We’ll investigate her a bit before we eliminate her.”
“Is this your ‘stomach medicine’?” Aludra asked as the gunfire on the monitors finally came to an end and the sound from the radio died down.
“Yes, that’s exactly what it is,” Faldeus answered with a shrug and a smile.
“The best cure for stress is to eliminate each of its causes.”
Just as Faldeus was about to finish the last sip of his tea, one of the monitors in front of him went dark.
“. . .?”
At the same time he realized that it was the camera showing Flat Escardos’ corpse, he received a radio message from his sniping team.
“. . . Please respond. This is Spade. . . . om . . . ard!”
“What’s wrong? Has something . . .”
When he tried to respond, the radio went dead.
Then, another monitor surveilling the central intersection went dark.
“. . .!”
Faldeus decided that this was an attack and automatically switched to mystical communication with his teams scattered around the scene, but . . .
“What is it?! What the hell is it?!”
“Come on, fire!” “Oh . . . It’s hopeless.” “Damn it! Why is this . . .”
“It’s a monster!” “Just shoot it! Hurry up and kill it!”
“No . . . Why . . .” “A mage . . .?”
“Stop! Sto . . . Aaagaaaaaah!”
“Help m . . . Gah . . . Bwah . . .” “It’s not hu . . . Aaah!”
The monitors continued to go dark one after another, and the screams of the sniper team continued to ring out, as if in harmony.
Soon, a team that had been monitoring the situation from a short distance away reported in.
“Jackal here! Faldeus! What the hell is that thing?! You never told us about this. . . . You told us Flat Escardos was a mage! What the hell is going on?!”
“Please calm down! A monster . . .? It could be Flat’s Servant transformed. It should run out of magical energy and dissipate soon. Please hold your ground!”
“No! Something I think was a Heroic Spirit did transform, but it disappeared, just like you said! That thing’s a different . . . Shit! Oh, oh, that thing’s not human, and it’s not a mage either! What the hell is it?! Forget hematophages and Heroic Spirits! It’s an honest to God m . . . m-m . . . maaararaarabyah!”
With an ensemble performance of screams and sounds like something being folded, the line went silent.
And it did not stop there. One after another, the surveillance systems that Faldeus had installed throughout the city were going dark.
In just a few dozen seconds, every surveillance camera in Snowfield had stopped working.
Faced with that situation, Faldeus dropped his teacup. He did not even hear it shatter on the floor as he muttered:
“What in God’s name is going on . . .?”
X X
Somewhere in Monaco
“I see. . . . So, Flat Escardos has come to an end.”
That man, the owner of a certain casa who had until recently been conversing with Flat over the phone, offered a silent toast to someone who had long since vanished from the world.
“I will give my blessing to the great achievement of my old neighbor, Messara Escardos.
“However . . . if the thing you gained at the cost of a young man with a future is ‘the past,’ then I certainly don’t consider it cause for celebration.”
X X
Clink, clink, clink.
When I realized that was the sound that accompanied the end of everything, I thought, Oh, it’s begun.
I soon realized what the clinking and clanking was.
It was the sound of empty shell casings ejected from the sniper rifles that had put an end to Flat Escardos falling from the tops of buildings to the ground.
It was a sound that tumbled dozens of meters down through the air to finally arrive beside the flesh that had been Flat Escardos.
“I” kept waiting for a long, long time.
The time had finally come for “me”—born for the sole purpose of “existing”—to be meaningful.
Oh, that’s right. “I” have to move. “I” have to move on to the next phase.
I already understand.
I understand what I ought to accomplish.
The greatest and final purpose bestowed on me by the Escardos family.
The purpose for which I was born.
Isn’t that right, Flat?
Oh, yes.
It’s over.
It has come to a close.
I have fallen to ruin.
I have arrived.
I am complete.
Loss was always the final piece.
Following the principles of my birth, I rebooted myself.
I recalculated the duty I had been tasked with.
Would my path be difficult or easy?
There was no point in speculating.
In either case, I had no choice but to see it through.
Nothing else would give me meaning.
Continue to exist. Continue to exist.
I need only become a true human and continue to exist in this world.
Yes, I promise you, Flat.
I’ll do your share of continuing to exist in this world as well.
Even if that means . . . wiping the species defined as “humans” from the face of the earth.
X X
The Clock Tower
“Shit. . . . I still can’t get through. . . .”
An area of the Clock Tower.
In the preparation room of the School of Modern Magecraft, Lord El-Melloi II was muttering impatiently as he made call after call on his cell phone.
Since their last call had abruptly cut off with the sounds of shouts and what might have been a building collapsing, he had been completely unable to get in touch with Flat.
“Should I try calling the chief of police instead . . .? No, I don’t know his personal number. . . . I doubt I could reach him by calling the stations, but . . .”
He laid his hands on his desk and considered for a short while, then stood up as if he had come to a decision.
“I have no choice. . . . This really does call for—Gwah.”
No sooner had he opened the door than his body was shoved into the room.
On closer inspection, he saw that there was a powerful ward modeled on a white snake over the entrance.
“. . . The obstinate weave of this spell . . . It’s one of Adashino’s wards! Damn the School of Political Science and Law. . . . They never know when to stop!”
He looked out the window and saw that several homunculi in the service of Goredolf Musik of the School of Political Science and Law were standing watch. It was apparent that they meant to keep Lord El-Melloi II under house arrest.
“What now? . . . Should I contact Reines or Melvin to . . .”
El-Melloi II was pondering the issue when he realized that there was an unfamiliar noise in the room.
It came from a small vanity case lying in a corner of the preparation room.
The case ordinarily held his spare cigars, but there was an electronic sound coming from inside it.
“. . .?”
El-Melloi II suspiciously opened the case and looked even more confused when he saw what was inside.
“What’s going on . . .? This wasn’t here a moment ago. . . .”
The thing that had appeared inside the case while he was not looking and was playing an old ringtone . . . was a cell phone colored a blue deeper than even lapis lazuli.
Next episode [Fake07]
Originally Posted by Deathhappens
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