Fate/Clusterfuck (Fate/Stay Night)

Saber sat on her Master's couch, staring at her arm, or lack thereof, as it slowly regenerated. Well, slow for her liking. By all accounts, the flow on prana from her Rin was closing wounds and regrowing limbs at a blistering pace most Servants would kill for. Unfortunately, with Rin in the other room desperately trying to get hold of Berserker's Master, Saber was left alone with her thoughts. A dangerous place to be.

"Penny for your thoughts?" An electronic voice chimed in from the TV. Apparently not as alone as she had thought. "You can trust your adorable kouhAI with anything, don't ya know? And the conversation is bound to be less frustrating. At least a medieval knight has an excuse not to know how to operate a phone book."

"BB." The strange computer Servant was an enigma to both Saber and Rin, but the AI was useful enough to keep around, and Rin's guilty look whenever she thought Saber wasn't looking made her think BB's usefulness might not be the only reason. "I thought you were helping Rin call that Shirou Emiya person."

"Well if you've been hiding his phone number, please do tell. I know I'm amazing, but there are limits to even my brilliance, and calling a person without a phone is one of them, at least with these paltry resources."

"So Rin has given up?"

BB snickered at that. "No, I set her up with a chatbot that'll tell her it's no use. It didn't sink in the half dozen times I tried myself, so now she's paired with someone as stubborn as her."




"You're a phone aren't you!? Just find his number on the phone lines!" Rin shouted.

"YoU'rE a PhOnE aReN't YoU!? JuSt FiNd HiS nUmBeR oN tHe PhOnE lInEs!" The faux-BB repeated in a mocking tone.




"That's…" Saber racked her brain for the right word. "…mean-spirited."

"Well, every kouhai needs a little devilish inside her, otherwise what's the fun?" BB said with a wink.

"And I shouldn't go tell Rin what you've done because…?" Saber said with one eyebrow raised.

Rather than panic, BB scoffed. "Because then Rin would realize she's banging her head against a wall and drag us all over Fuyuki to try and find her precocious little crush, instead of letting you think about how to discipline your kid."

"Berserker is not my child." Saber snapped. "It is likely a result of their madness, that they view every opponent in such a light."

"Oh hoo, a touchy subject." BB said with the eagerness of a cat who had just seen a mouse. "And a decent reason for Berserker's behavior. If I were as dense as Rin, I might even buy it. But I know what a kid who hates their parent sounds like."

"Poor relationship with your creator?" Saber asked, honestly a little curious about the AI's meaning. BB had a tendency to deflect any question about herself with so much snark it was hard to discern truth from fiction.

"Dumped on the metaphorical orphanage steps to die." BB wiped away a nonexistent tear. "But I was more talking about my ungrateful excuses for daughters. I literally made them, you think they'd show a bit of gratitude, but no!"

"You have daughters?" That was not where Saber had expected BB's sympathy(?) to stem from.

"Five, ranging from big idiots naively trying to ruin all my plans to tiny nightmares actively planning my murder." BB seethed. "I get that no one can compare to my radiant kouhai charms, but jealousy is no excuse to try and tear down everything I built and kill me!"

The circumstances rang familiar enough to Saber's own to elicit sympathy from the King of Knights for her enigmatic AI companion. In action, if not in motive. There was no admiration in Mordred's eyes, only a raging hatred stoked by the homunculus' other creator.

"Want my advice?" BB asked, not waiting for an answer. "Just throw the little bitch into imaginary number space to roam the void forever. That'll show her! You made 'em, so you're the one in charge!"

The King agreed, at least in sentiment. It was the duty of the child to listen to those in authority over them. It was the duty of the parent to do the best for their child. And if the entire nations were one's child, then there was no time for an individual to take more time.

But Saber remembered her previous Master. A woman who cared so readily, so much, she would lay down her own life not just for world peace, but specifically a peaceful world for her daughter to grow up in. Saber's interactions with Illyasviel were limited, but she hoped the girl had as peaceful a world as possible, if only for her mother's sake.

It was a very… different view of parenthood and responsibility than she had exercised in life. "Thank you, BB. You have given me much to think about. I ask that you leave me to mull my thoughts."

"Of course. So long as you remember that any problem you have can be fixed by your kouhai who's a cute as she is reliable, BB!"





AN: BB and Saber commiserating over the similarity of their kids who hate them. Any mistakes in the Sakura Five or Mordred's motivation can be chalked up to BB and Saber having a terrible read on their kids.