“Things are bad,” was the enlightening commentary offered by the Master of Chaldea upon getting briefed on the situation upon his arrival to base. He was joined by Leonardo da Vinci and Mashu Kyrielight, the three of them hunched over a table screen from which they followed the countless cameras monitoring the isolated facility.
Assassin—no, Beast Chiyou continued her placid stroll throughout Chaldea. Those who caught a glimpse of the baleful light emitted by her body succumbed to their most fundamental impulses, thus abandoning their humanity.
“The problem is that those who resist that light have to engage those that don’t. Except for the moment of her arrival, nobody has really opposed her,” Mashu explained. “The ones worse off are the Berserkers; that light takes away any semblance of self-control. Miss Medb was almost torn apart by Cu Chulainn Alter. Ah, Miss Scathach is keeping him at bay right now.”
“What about the goddesses?” the Master pondered. “Gods are already driven by their own inhuman principles; I don’t think
Banner of Chiyou would work on them.”
“Well, it is as you say,” da Vinci replied. “The Gorgon twins are completely unaffected, but…”
“Chiyou would tear them apart.”
“Also, they are currently busy fending off Mister Fionn and Mister Fergus,
senpai.”
“Figures.”
“Artemis was also immune, but Orion wasn’t, so she took him and ran away somewhere. Perhaps they’re back at Okeanos, for all I know,” da Vinci continued. “Let’s see if we can get the Mesopotamians…”
“Yes, yes, Chaldea’s Number One, Most Erotic Goddess Nanaya-sama is here~©”
“Actually, Mother is a pseudo-Servant, so she is not entirely immune, so, well, she is trying to steal your stock of Grails and I’m having a bit of trouble holding her at bay—can you please send some help this way, darling?”
“I believe in you, My Goddess!”
“Iyaan~❤
With the vote of confidence of her man, a loving woman becomes invincible! But seriously, she’s stronger than me, so bring some help or we’re fucked, and not in the fun way.”
“I guess that means Jaguar Man is also…”
“But Quetzalcoatl isn’t. She can take care of that, and then send her to support Nanaya.”
“Aye-aye, sir.” da Vinci was already transmitting the message to the Sun Goddess. Then they checked on the kitchen…
“How are you doing, Šiduri?” asked the Master, although the sounds of clashing metal were already very informative.
“I’m currently soloing Minamoto no Raikou, Tamamo Cat and Boudicca. How do you think I’m doing!?”
“Alright, you’re clearly not in the best of moods right now.”
“Not the time, Master! Emiya wasn’t around when that monster walked by; you know where he is?”
“He was the second to meet her, Miss Šiduri. He is fighting Cu Chulainn right now,” Mashu answered.
“No surprise there. Anyway, I can keep these three out of trouble for now, but I’d love it if you could make it so I don’t have to solo these three monsters thank you very much!”
“Our Maid is so reliable.”
“
Senpai can be very cruel at times.”
“So, there’s really nobody available to fight Chiyou?”
“Well, last I checked Šarur is handling Herakles,” da Vinci began checking the cameras and the lines of reports delivered by those technicians not yet lost to Chiyou’s power.
“Yeah, I was wondering about our big guy. What about our other big guys?”
“Darius is locked in battle with Iskander inside the latter’s Reality Marble. Asterios has locked Hessian Lobo inside his labyrinth for the time being.”
“Huh. So, what else we’ve got?”
“The Knights of the Round are basically beating each other up at this point. Tamamo said something like ‘it would be totes bad if that light brought out my true self, so I’ll be off’ and broke the Servant contract from her side. You’ll have to summon her again.”
“Shit. What else?”
“Irisviel also seems to be immune to the light, but she’s not much of a combat asset so I left her to look after Kiritsugu and the little Santa Jeanne. Ah, Chloe is also inhuman enough to have resistance to
Banner of Chiyou, but she’s hard at work fending her ‘cousing’ off for now.”
“You mean the other way around, right?”
“I meant exactly what I said.”
“A completely unhinged Ilyasviel is scary,
senpai.”
“Really, I could go on like this the whole day: Kintoki is handling the onis; Artoria and Jeanne have their hands full with Amakusa, both Gilles, Saint Martha and Jeanne Alter; Karna is taking care of Arjuna, of course, and the less that is said about Tesla and Edison, the better.”
It made them want to bury their faces in their hands.
“Master, Chaldea may just well be this planet’s strongest fighting force, but we all have to admit it: this place is kind of a madhouse in its best days,” da Vinci declared. “Chiyou hit us at our greatest weakness: the very nature of Servants.”
Seekers of justice, glory, or just plain violence. The most ambitious, enthusiastic, selfish, and conflicted personalities in history and legend.
He had expected this development, but not nearly to such a degree.
“We’re really screwed, aren’t we?”
“It gets worse if you voice your feelings like that,
senpai!”
**********************************
Assassin did not—could not—stop moving.
It was a dance of bullets, cutting winds, and lightning. Her steps were faster, her predictive ability and superior agility allowing her to stay ahead of Rider’s barrage. Her evasive action left a trail of rubble as buildings, carts and stands were obliterated in her wake. The sounds of musket fire and environmental destruction competed with the roaring sky. Assassin could not hear her own heavy breathing, and her nostrils were filled with the scent of ozone.
It was difficult, and nerve-wracking, and it felt like her chest was about to explode, but—
“I can win,” she murmured, abruptly changing direction and leaping acrobatically away from lightning. Firing twice while in midair, she forced Rider to interrupt her attempt at striking her down and put some distance.
This was just like King Thórberg: she needed to move Rider into a disadvantageous position. No, even before that, she could—
The exchange continued for another minute: hunter and dancer trading shots and pressure waves with increasing ferocity. It was truly like a dance, and with every passing second, they seemed to grasp their rhythm to match it to the other’s. An incessant succession of grazing, glancing blows. Rider’s cutting air nicked at Assassin’s chest armor and the frills of her skirt, but there was no time to switch between offense and defense—there was only unstoppable attack and superhuman evasion.
And then Rider cried out in pain, covering an eye from which blood flowed profusely. Assassin capitalized on the moment of disruption and fired a second musket, making a second wound blossom on her belly.
“Fuck! What did you—aaargh!” Rider only hurt herself further when she pulled out the shard of stone Assassin’s first shot had knocked from the ground into her eye. A Servant normally would not be harmed by ordinary debris laying around; Assassin had concluded one of her Skills allowed for feats such as this. Any further attempt to press on her advantage, however, was interrupted by the impossible succession of lightning bolts all but raining upon Rider’s surroundings, forcing the horned Assassin to leap the hell out of dodge.
It was only by sheer millimeters that Assassin managed to avoid the rabid dog leaping at her from behind, foaming mouth wide open to crush her neck between its jaws.
And it was not alone.
It was as if Rome’s surviving fauna had chosen to ally with Rider: dogs, cats, donkeys, a veritable swarm of rats, and even a gods-damned lion—Assassin blamed Nero for that one—prowled in the vicinity, staring at her with predatory eyes. The wind howled, and for the first time Assassin noticed it was not only wind that screamed its fury at the world. The spirits of Rome’s dead, denied even their final release, flitted about in the stormy sky, moaning their unjust fate and seeking a target for retribution. And in the midst of this menagerie of madness, the wounded Rider cackled in gleeful, vindictive laughter.
“Look at it! Look at it, you worthless little devil! You are less than a maggot to me! Gaze upon my Wild Hunt, and despair!”
Assassin admitted to herself that things were not looking that good anymore. However, the plan did not change: Rider wasn’t hardy in the slightest, so she just had to land a proper shot. The problem was that she wasn’t hardy either, she just was damn good at avoiding harm. But there was no way she could keep up with such numbers.
“So this is your Wild Hunt, Matron of Witches? Speaking of witches, you are missing those. But I guess there aren’t many of those around.”
“Hmph. So you’ve really figured out my identity.”
Assassin shrugged.
“There aren’t many exotic dancers connected to the Wild Hunt, ya know. You are the daughter of Herod; the one Flaubert chose to call Salome. But I guess I should properly call you
Herodias. That’s the name you use in that form, isn’t it?”
The roar of thunder. Assassin noticed the wind becoming even stronger; any further and it would lift her off the ground. She was basically shouting at her opponent mere meters away at this point.
“You are neither the Biblical princess nor the dancer of the seven veils in Strauss’ opera. You are the Germanic goddess, the medieval matron of witches and Wild Huntress, Herodias!”
Rider Herodias laughed twistedly at the other girl’s declaration.
“Good! Good, good! As expected of the likes of you, very knowledgeable!”
She laughed, and flashes of lightning and roaring thunder joined her in praise.
“Good, good. Now die.”
A sudden and utterly unpredictable blast of wind knocked her off her feet. The many beasts that had tried to lunge at her were also pulled off the ground like the hapless victims of Rider’s magic that they were. Assassin heard her vicious opponent’s shrieking laughter one last terrible time.
“Die, die, die, die, die! [I]
[/I
Sieben Schleier der wilden Jagd]Tempestuous Wild Dance of the Forever-Damned
!”
Assassin would not give Herodias the pleasure of listening to her screams, so she could only grit her teeth and close her eyes as she found herself trapped inside a tornado. Despite sharing her terrible situation, Rome’s maddened animals still struggled to reach her and sink their fangs in her skin. Far more successful were the ghosts of the dead, swirling around inside the calamitous phenomenon to lash at her, ripping her skin and clothes with abandon. Ascending a whole kilometer in a few seconds, the battering winds, the rapidly changing air pressure, and the falling temperature all threatened to break her body’s endurance.
Spiraling, ascending, completely beyond her control. Assassin was pulled upwards within the incessant column of raging air currents, debris and maddened living and dead. It was a death of a thousand cuts, from the ghostly claws to the friction with the very sand and dust pulled into the tornado. And when she reached the birthing supercell at the top, at a height greater than the world’s tallest mountain, the momentum mercilessly flung her further upwards, like a petite rocket dreaming of breaking the shackles of Earth’s gravity.
Her consciousness gone, Assassin was shot into the stratosphere.
**********************************
The conclusion reached was that their best choice was to actually leave their hiding place and look for Servants that could help them fight Chiyou. It took a while to convince Mashu to stay at the control room watching the cameras, but it was for the best—da Vinci would have enough problems protecting the Master as it was.
They were fortunate enough not to bump into Chiyou—neither Master nor Servant were confident in their ability to resist her baleful light. They found trouble quickly enough, anyway.
“Mother!”
It was both endearing and terrifying, the delight in Jack’s lovely face upon catching sight of the Master, her smile as gleaming as the blades in her hands. About to take a step forward, da Vinci found herself blocked by the Master’s outstretched arm. Instead, he took the decisive step.
“Jack.”
No more could be said. One who is ruled by its base impulses and desires will not wait for speeches. Da Vinci could only gasp at the Assassin’s impossible speed, and an instant later a dagger tore through the young man’s clothes and dug deep into his abdomen. To his credit, only a muted grunt escaped his lips. Ignoring Mashu’s urgent cries from the transmission, the Master reached for his little Servant’s thin shoulders. The girl, in fact, had been stopped by the flow of crimson vitae pouring out of the wound, as if not expecting a stab to cause bleeding.
“Jack,” he repeated, pulling the girl’s attention to his face, and the expression on it.
“Mo-Mother…? What—Mother, you look like you’re in pain.”
“Jack, you can’t…” He winced, but urged himself to speak. “You can’t come back in right now.”
“Eh?”
Aware of the danger implicit in that hollow, dejected sound, the young Master quickly pulled the waif into his embrace. He hugged her the way she liked it: intensely, strongly, closely, as if he could truly shove her into his innards that way. And truly, it did wonders to her mood, eagerly returning the embrace while letting go of the weapon still embedded in his belly.
“You already saw it, right, my girl? That monster.”
“Um.”
“Even if you—” A gasp. Jack was pushing herself against him, and the blade swayed inside his guts. “Even if you come back to me, that monster will kill me, Jackie. I don’t want to die; I want to be with you forever.”
“We want to be with Mother forever too.”
“I know. But that won’t happen like this.”
“…then, then what should we do, Mother?”
“Just…” His voice became weaker by the second. “Just stay by my side, Jackie. Just stay with me…and help me, will you?”
“Um!”
He could not stop himself from smiling at the serial killer’s pitiful innocence. To be loved by that child, for all its implicit dangers, was to him a privilege.
“Such a good girl…” he whispered, stroking the crown of her head to her delight. And then, his legs gave up, and his body collapsed on the ground.
“Jack!” da Vinci promptly called out, her commanding voice stopping the child’s crying voice growing in desperation. “Jack, his wound! Treat his wound or he’ll die! You can do that, right?”
“Ah, um, yes!”
The Renaissance genius sighed while the little girl hurried to apply her Surgical Technique.
“Seriously, you are such a headache, my boy,” she said with a tinge of amusement. “But I guess things like this are what make you the best Master.”
“Um, Miss da Vinci…? Was…was that really necessary…?”
“It was to him,” replied the pan-artist. “To overturn the idea that ‘because they have become fully driven by their impulses and wishes, communication is impossible’, he had to prove that ‘he can reach out to his Servants through their impulses and wishes’. Jack the Ripper has not overcome
Banner of Chiyou. We are just using the wish that drives her current actions to our advantage.”
“But, that will not work on everyone.”
“True, but this is his way as Chaldea’s Master. He would not be cherished by so many Servants if he were not like this.”
In any case, it was a start. Jack the Ripper was a damn fine Servant to have on their side, but she would not be enough. Nothing would be enough against that monster. But it was a start.
**********************************
**********************************
When Assassin opened her eyes again, she remembered. Everything.
“I…I am…a fool.”
Her name. Her origin. Her legend. Her skills. Her hopes, fears, and wishes.
It was cold, impossibly so. She could see the vast darkness of outer space. She slowly turned her head to the side, and gasped.
The world was there, before her eyes. At a height of over thirty kilometers above ground, the smooth curvature of the blue planet was plain for her to see. At the uppermost layer of the atmosphere, she could even glimpse at its thin blue line outlining the Earth. She was still ascending, although not for much longer. To her fortune, she had not reached escape velocity. Compared to the precipitous speed inside the supercell, this was closer to rising in a helium balloon. But none of that concerned her at the moment. There was room in her mind only for the scene in front of her eyes.
“This is…the world.”
Their world. The planet shared by all. The planet humanity had rejected, asserting its independence from Gaia. So callous, so selfish, so deplorable. But, was she in a position to judge?
Just like mankind had declared it would remake the world to its convenience, had she not aimed to reshape mankind?
It all came back to that idea: humanity. So feeble, so weak; perpetually striving for eternity, even harming itself in the process.
The King of Magic was right, after all. She understood humanity now. Perhaps not entirely, and her derision towards humans was in no way diminished, and she still did not agree on many things, but she understood them enough.
But that was a matter for another time. She had to deal with the Chiyou issue, but Herodias stood on her way.
Assassin looked down, at the immense supercell covering a good part of the Italian Peninsula and the Tyrrhenian Sea. It was impossible to see her, but she was definitely where she had last seen her, laughing and gloating in the eye of the storm, all the while the Eternal City was torn apart.
In any case, to Assassin it meant her opponent was still.
“Initiating Noble Phantasm,” she murmured in a flat, inexpressive voice. A single musket came into being in her right hand.
At long last, her ascension came to end, following by that moment of perfect, weightless existence.
“Starting verification of the eight seals.”
Her stomach squirmed as she began to freefall.
“Verification of seals one to four complete. Adjusting Noble Phantasm rank to D+.”
A suddenly rise of magical power was infused into the loaded ammunition, doubling its destructive power. She had to close her eyes as her speed rose, but sight was no longer necessary. She would fire with her will.
“Verification of seals five to eight, failed. Verification complete. Noble Phantasm ready for firing.”
She sighed. It would be sufficient. Her Noble Phantasm was not particularly powerful, but it was reliable, just the way she liked it. Thus, it was with joy and pride that she shouted its true name.
**********************************
A straight line of silver-blue light, like God’s fluorescent crayon, split the sky, and the tornado, in halves.
Originally Posted by Daneel Rush
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