It was an issue he had consciously avoided all this time. He never expected Jack of all people to push him into facing it once and for all.
With the defeat of Goetia and the restoration of the Human Order Foundation, they had lost a precious friend and a single Servant. Mashu had returned to life, but she no longer had access to the abilities of Servant Galahad. Of course, enough Servants had chosen to stay in Chaldea that Mashu’s loss of combat capabilities was not of critical importance, but it was nonetheless a bit of a shame not to be able to rely on the superb support capabilities of an ultra-rare Shielder-class Servant. Had he not another Shielder-class Servant in his roster, he would have simply adapted to the loss of her defensive skillset and learned to rely on his remaining Servants to compensate.
The problem was that, indeed, he
had a second Shielder-class Servant available.
Having summoned her right before the assault on Solomon’s temple, he had chosen to leave her behind as part of Chaldea’s final defensive line. He had carefully avoided taking her to any of his outings for investigations or collecting materials. However, when he was informed of an incident at the slowly recovering London singularity, and little Jack had insisted on joining him for this expedition, he had told her to find free companions she would feel comfortable working with. He had been expecting the likes of Atalante or Nursery Rhyme, so why was this lewd goddess standing next to his little Assassin, smirking at him with that insufferably sexy “I know exactly what you’re thinking” look?
“Jack…this is the…friend you want to bring?”
“So I’ve been reduced to a ‘this’. My Master sure is bold.”
“Um.
Nanaya is our friend.”
Taking a deep breath, he finally faced straight at the Mesopotamian goddess of voluptuousness and sensuality. He commended himself on his success at keeping his eyes on her face.
“Really, Nanaya?”
“Master, you have pointedly avoided me all this time; what do you know about who I have or have not fraternized with?”
It annoyed him, but she had a point. It wasn’t like he had not seen her at all since he summoned her, though. He would never forget that incredible practice match between Mesopotamian and Celtic Servants. The clash of Nanaya’s
Ešhilianna and
Chariot My Love had become one of Chaldea’s 108 legends.
“Jackie and I get along swimmingly, right~❤?”
“Um!”
The Master raised an eyebrow at the saccharine smile shared by the ladies. But Jack did look comfortable and pleased around the goddess, so he would have to accept the situation.
“Well there’s a story there.”
“Not really,” retorted Nanaya with the teasing tone of one who got an inside joke and secretly mocks your ignorance. “It is obvious if you think about it. Now, l believe we have to shift…?”
It was stressful. Made even worse by the humiliating awareness that it was stress of his own making.
Jack zigzagged a few steps ahead of them, almost like a hound in search of prey. Her small silhouette was only sparsely cloaked by the London fog, no longer of supernatural origin—at least not entirely. It was, at least, no longer dangerous to a magus of his (poor) caliber to linger around.
“I am fairly sure I was not brought here for sexy times, so…can anybody tell me what the situation is?”
To his left, Nanaya was an oasis of color in the drab greyness of the British capital. Her sparkling gold adornments and weaponry made her like a second sun, exalting her beauty to the point she was the only thing worth looking at in that gloomy world.
He shook the devilish charm of that goddess out of his head, only to find himself captured by her placid smile.
“Master?”
He sighed.
“You realized why I never brought you along before, right?”
“Of course. I will not apologize.”
“Of course,” he replied in a much flatter tone. Yet, they looked at each other, and some sort of ease settled between them. Perhaps this, too, was a goddess’ wisdom of sorts.
In any case, he did brief her on the situation at hand: people were slowly returning to reoccupy the foggy city, but children were disappearing.
“Hmm…yes, it would be hard to assume it is common criminal activity. But, if it is a supernatural agent, that leads to questioning who it is and how it made it here. There is no longer a Grail at work.”
He shrugged. Perhaps it was merely intuition born from experience, but he could tell they would end up stumbling their way to the answers as usual.
“More importantly, Master: what do you feel when you look at that?”
He followed Nanaya’s eyes, stumbled for a moment, checked back to confirm what Nanaya was looking at, and finally released a choked sound like a Helium balloon being deflated.
“You were doing so great,” he murmured with immense regret as he failed to pretend the woman to his left was not checking out Jack the Reaper’s ass. “Does this have to do with the reason you became friends with her?”
“Hmm. As per my divine portfolio, I am drawn towards all matters sexual.”
“There’s nothing sexual about that little girl!”
Three seconds later, he was averting his gaze from Nanaya’s painfully flat stare.
“…sure, keep saying that to yourself, Master. Maybe one day you will believe it. Now, as I was saying, I felt a pull that drew me to that child. However, I soon realized she is wholly innocent.”
“And she is staying like that,” he declared with coldness that surprised him. Nanaya mirrored that coldness in her flat stare.
“Master, even I am capable of feeling slighted. And when I am slighted, divine punishment soon follows.”
Their steps became slower. Jack’s small figure put more distance and become somewhat faint within the fog.
“Even a goddess of sex has principles. No, it is precisely because I am a goddess that I am more strictly bound to principles than humans.”
The shorter goddess stepped deep within his personal space, but it was not his virtue that he feared for.
“You seem to have a dire misunderstanding about me. This time, I will forgive, for it is not a sin to be ignorant. Should you not take steps to correct such ignorance, I will not be as lenient the next time.”
They finally came to a stop. They stared at each other and, for once, it seemed her unsurpassable charm was not in effect. Maybe that, too, was in some way a goddess’ mercy. And he was grateful, for he needed a clear head to say what he needed to say.
“…you are right. I’m sorry, Nanaya. I made no effort to understand you.”
“No, you did not.”
“I failed to approach like I did every other Servant.”
“Yes, you did.”
“I was just…I thought…”
“You assumed I was some simple deviant and thought your purity was in danger, or something stupid like that.”
He winced. It sounded incredibly lame when she put it like that. She began walking again, and he closely followed.
“For starters, Master, dear: I am confident you are not so ignorant as to believe I am the most immediate threat to your chastity in Chaldea.”
“I try not to think about it!”
“Yes, I notice you do that a lot. Stop doing that. It is rude to those who shower you with their affection.”
He rolled his eyes, his troubled mind creating headache-inducing images of the infamous “My Room” trio.
“You know it’s not that simple.”
“Perhaps. But it is also not as hard as you have made it in your head, Master.”
Her head darted around, checking their surroundings, and for a moment the young man thought she had seen something. However, she continued their awkward but necessary conversation.
“As for me, well; when that time comes, it will be because you wish for it more than you have wished for anything else in your life. And it will be only when your deeds have made you deserving of my desire. But enough about me; share your thoughts on Jack for me. Because that is most certainly not the body of a child.”
“No! Let’s talk about you! Talking about you is great!”
The laughter in Nanaya’s throat was not allowed release. The Master felt her companion’s body tense, and a second later she was standing in front of him like her Servant class’ namesake.
“I felt a Servant for a moment, but now it’s…wait, is it
Presence Concealment?”
“Jack—”
“If I noticed, she noticed!”
Indeed, Jack had stopped, drawn her weapons and lowered her center of gravity, ready to attack. The other two caught up and looked for anything in the mist. Nanaya was the most active of the three, walking circles around the Master in case he was targeted.
“Mother, there is something disgusting here. We detest it.”
The Master frowned at the child’s tone. She spoke hateful words, but she sounded more afraid than angered.
“If there is a Servant using Presence Concealment, then it has no reason to come out unless it wants to make the first attack,” he pointed out. He thought of calling out to the hidden person, but he did not want to attract whatever else that might be out there.
Nanaya sighed.
“Fine. I’ll make him show himself. Close your eyes, Master. Don’t look this way, Jackie!”
He did close his eyes, and it was probably the only reason he did not lose himself.
This was it, the full expression of Nanaya’s existence as
Mistress of Luxuriance—and that is not quite right; it was obviously downgraded as a Servant—manifested as an interference effect that inevitably draws others towards her. Even if he could not see her, he could clearly hear her fingers sliding along her golden hair, and he could fill his nostrils with her enthralling aroma. The tips of his fingers tingled as if they could feel the unparalleled softness of her fair skin, and he gritted his teeth as he resisted the primitive, fundamentally
male urge to
make that woman his. It was made so much scarier by the awareness of their Master-Servant contract likely being the sole reason he could resist at all.
A voice in the distance was the unexpected blessing that pulled his thoughts away from the ocean of lust he was stranded in.
“Gaah!
Aléjate de mí, perra malnacida!”
“Oh, it was a woman,” idly commented the goddess, and an instant later Jack shot into the mist towards the source of the Spanish speaker. Two seconds later, the ringing sound of metal meeting metal reached their ears loud and clear.
“Jack!”
“Master, stay close to me! We do not know if there are others.”
“But I can’t give support I can’t see he—”
Jack’s cry of anguish choked the Master’s words, and a second later her small figure shot out of the fog towards the pair before crashing and rolling a few times on the pavement.
“Jack!”
The child grunted as she slowly got back on her feet, all the while pulling a (kitchen?) knife out of her left forearm.
“She’s a bad woman, Mother! I won’t let the bad woman hurt you!”
The desperation in her voice made his lips tremble. He wanted nothing more than to hold her and tell her she didn’t have to fight anymore.
A figure stepped out of the mist. A woman seemingly in her twenties, clad in a form-fitting, short-skirted dress of a fabric too thick to be cloth and too thin to be leather. Her hands were empty, but that did not mean anything when it comes to Servants. Her eyes studied him and Nanaya, as if she were warier of them two than of the one who had attacked her. Her steps were those of a woman walking into a ballroom, not a killer poised to strike.
“Mother, stay back! I’ll tear her apart!”
“Jack, wait—!” But Jack did not wait, and when she lunged at the unknown woman, she leapt to the side and into the nearest building. Jack followed, and the other two could only track their spirited combat through the sounds of metal against metal as they ran across several rooms and upstairs.
Strangely enough, Nanaya relaxed her posture and stood next to the Master.
“…Jack is going to lose.”
“You know who she is?”
Nanaya nodded. She was somewhat interested in her Master’s expressions every time they heard Jack’s cries of pain inside the building.
“My Skill,
Sexual Techniques, at rank EX also allows me to identify a Servant’s true name and entire status information, if that Servant’s legend is in some way connected to sex.”
“Figures.”
“In any case, that woman is the one enemy Jack will never be able to defeat. Get ready to catch her.”
A terrifying, squelching sound of metal tearing through flesh was quickly followed by glass breaking as little Jack was thrown off a window at the highest floor. With a cry, the young Master rushed to catch the freefalling Servant, with not very smooth results.
“Uwah!”
Nanaya winced at the loud thud of two bodies impacting each other, and then calmly walked towards the entanglement of limbs.
“…seriously, Master? I know it is somewhat dark out here, but not to the extent you should have that kind of trouble.” She paused. “Don’t tell me Master was that kind of character after all.”
The young man could only emit some garbled sounds what with his mouth smothered by a little girl’s crotch. Nanaya rolled her eyes.
“Master, please stop sixty-nine-ing the barely conscious little girl.”
“Waabwehwoo (I hate you).”
“Mother…” The little Assassin said in a feeble voice. The half a dozen knives buried in her body had a lot to do with it. “You are hugging me wrong…”
He groaned.
Nanaya looked up at the broken window, where the offender watched with the same tense wariness.
“Alright, you have had your little squabble. I apologize for the girl’s recklessness, but I am sure you understand her circumstances.”
The woman did not respond, but Nanaya knew she had her attention.
“Why don’t you come down and we can talk like decent people? I don’t have to tell you that, if you run, I will chase, and when I catch you, I will crush you.”
The Master had already corrected his indecent hold on Jack and now allowed her to rest on his lap while he applied a healing spell. To his surprise, the knives piercing through her body disappeared in ethereal dust—Gradation Air.
“Nanaya…” He said warily. He would rather avoid further conflict with the one who almost killed Jack, if at all possible.
“Do not be fooled, Master. This woman is a very weak Servant. The only reason she won is because her opponent was Jack.”
At last, the woman spoke. It was a throaty, rough voice that poorly matched her beauty. It made him think of a chain smoker.
“I acted in self-defense.”
“You did, and that is why I offer civilized dialogue instead of merely extinguishing your life right this very moment.”
For a moment, the dark knife-user faced down the golden goddess like the moon looking down upon the rising sun. Nanaya’s claws swayed eloquently, and the woman in the building sighed in reluctance obeisance.
“…I will walk down the stairs.”
“I’ll be waiting~❤”
“Nanaya.”
The goddess tried to assuage her Master’s worries with her radiant smile.
“Do focus on looking after Jack, Master dear. This Servant is not even close to a threat to me. If she is the culprit, I’ll get her to stop. If she isn’t, then I am sure she can find the culprit for us.”
“You still haven’t told me who she is.”
“That woman was a prostitute, and procurer of child prostitutes for the wealthy, a child murderer and a clandestine practitioner of abortions. That woman embodies every single thing Jackie loathes. And in the same way, she embodies a fate Jackie cannot overcome. That is why, even if Jack is by far the superior Servant, she will never be able to defeat that woman.”
“I am perfectly capable of introducing myself.”
The woman stepped out of the front there with surprising calm. She looked down at the defeated Assassin, and the Master clutched her closer to his chest, warily facing the unnamed murderess.
“So that child is indeed Jack the Ripper? Or, I guess, an interpretation of it. Unlike me, Jack the Ripper was never caught, after all…”
“Yes, you had a bout of perfect luck, having our Jackie as an opponent.”
“For a change.” Her voice as drab, lacking either animosity or enthusiasm. The voice of an old, jaded woman. When her eyes fell on him, the Master inched half a step back; the most he would allow himself before discomforting the girl in his arms. “And I take you are a Master. I can also deduce you were not the one who summoned me. I don’t think I am in a Holy Grail War.”
“Most certainly not,” answered Nanaya in her Master’s stead. The woman sighed at these words.
“…well, that leaves me back where I started. Young Master,” she then said, moving a step back to put some space between herself and the young man. “Based on the current circumstances and my reputation, I understand that you do not trust me. However, I can perform healing on that child.”
His expression hardened, but the woman did not react to it.
“I do not think I have the answers you seek, but I will tell you whatever I can. I am probably more confused by this situation than you are, so I hope that, by assisting you, I can learn how I ended up here and how I can leave. If I may be honest, I find myself annoyed by this purposeless summoning.”
The Master sought Nanaya for advice. What he got was a shrug and the ensuing sway of beautiful breasts.
“Aren’t you the one who is all into giving evil Servants new chances? Let her heal Jackie. If she does anything uncalled for, I’ll kill her and that’s that.”
Her bluntness made him grimace.
“When you say that I find myself wondering who the truly evil Servant is here.”
“Oh, I am,” immediately retorted the unnamed Servant. “Believe me. I am.”
Originally Posted by Sandstorm77
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