Bygone Delusion (Cyberpunk: Edgerunners x Fate/Stay Night)

[ArtemisAvant]

I: To World's End

…

Awareness trickled back in, an unfamiliar familiar.

When was the last time he had fallen asleep, before that, when was the last time he had lost consciousness for that matter? Emiya woke up to hollow pain and drowning hunger. Oh. So it was that kind of summoning. Improperly done, stitched together only on a rare connection. Starved of prana, no… worse. Just what kind of summoning was this? All wrong. All bad. Twisted, hollow. Accordingly, his memory as distant and far away it usually seemed, now felt like a shore of gray sand so far away in the sand it melted into ashen clouds. Though, that particular feeling wasn't so uncommon for him.

Emiya, with his eyes still closed, focused on the signals the rest of his emptying servant container was telling him. He grimaced, the expression pained, like it was forced out of him. A cracked Spirit Origin, his own mana leaking out like blood from a nicked femoral artery. Also, he was missing an arm. The two were unrelated.

Judging from how clean the amputating cut felt, it must have been done with a premier quality blade. Bakuya for instance, could dismember him with ease, although he wasn't altogether sure why such an example came to mind. No, the smoking gun to his impending disappearance were the several holes interspersed through, the right side of his chest, three new vacancies in his gut, ribbon-thin slices arcing up through most of his vital organs and even nicking his spirit origin. Wounds that refused to heal even as his body insistently tried to pump mana towards them in the same manner blood clotted.

Much in the same manner, it proved uniquely useless. Emiya nearly snorted at himself, thinking how other Heroic Spirits would simply shrug off such wounds with laughable ease. A blue dog came to mind. But even if his reserves of magical energy were topped off, and if he was judging this correctly, if he actually was summoned with Master-Servant Bond — something he currently lacked; either way it would not change the result. Whatever had caused the wound was conceptual poison to Spiritual entities, a category he just so happened to fall in. Though… Emiya's remaining arm twitched, fingers flexing against his thigh. They felt no cloth, only the Kevlar weave of his pants. He didn't have his Holy Shroud either? Ah, he thought with not a small amount of bitterness, that kind of Summoning. Alaya usually isn't so sadistic, not that it even tries to pretend to have a personality at all… Maybe I am too sentimental, refusing to don a holy shroud doing a killer's work. Emiya internally sighed, best to gain his bearings and besides… beyond his twisted sentiment that had did not even boast a memory to fuel it, he could recall just fine that he had done far worse wearing that shroud. He tried with a mental tug, but he couldn't will it to himself either… Maybe not that kind of summoning after all.

Well, that was certainly interesting.

A side effect of this peculiar summoning or mounting evidence towards a conclusion he didn't particularly enjoy? That shroud wasn't useful in most circumstances, and more than that, as one of the few things that remained of his mortal life that he didn't feel the urge to break into tiny little pieces, Emiya wouldn't just abandon it so easily. Was he on another 'culling' assignment from the World as he just thought? No, that didn't quite fit either. If that was the case, the conceptual tool would have been similar to his outfit, able to be summoned with only a thought. If he recalled correctly, the only way for him to 'lose' such an item would be the particular quirks of the Servant Summoning Ritual. Certain items that were purposely left behind to act almost as lingering legacies could remain in the world, say for instance, Jeanne D'Arc's mantle, or Achilles' shield. Parts of the Servant that weren't Noble Phantasms, but things with a unique attachment that in a pinch, acted with impudence on a world long divested of faith. So… he must have given it to someone. Probably for the same reason he attempted to summon it now. To restrain and separate a spiritual entity from something else, and in his case, that something else being the World.

Emiya shot open his eyes, refusing to blink even as the sharp fluorescent lights of what could only be a vehicle flared spreading spots into his vision. Sharp turns, visceral nausea inducing up and down movement correlative to rough handling of a vehicle with weak suspension. Bloodwork, the acrid pungency that only resulted from emptied bladders and gullets, gristle and rusting steel. Lemon, bleach. Spots flared in his vision, an increasingly large swatch of his sight decaying and blackening. Ah. Those static blotching spots should be the bloodloss— prana depletion and impending disintegration of his Spirit Origin. Neatly explaining why those spots expanded exponentially much like fire melting through slashed wheat.

While he was unsure of why he was in a modern van…? Emiya corrected himself as he subtly examined the interior of the vehicle, high in synthesized materials and materials that required heavy industry to create; Why he was in a post-modern ambulance, or why the labels were in red blocky English, either way, Emiya couldn't deceive himself to the truth any longer.

He must have just emerged from the onset of the Fifth Holy Grail War in a timeline that veered dangerously far off its already lethal course.

Then I must have given my arm to Him along with the Shroud, Emiya determined. His fractured and spinning mind didn't immediately disagree with the thought, so that was probably the closest and most accurate conclusion he could draw from his available information. The question, however, remained. Why was he still here? If past memories were to be believed, the Servant known only as Archer would have disappeared in that Priest's Church, holding onto the splintered remains of his Spirit Origin just long enough to ensure that his arm was successfully grafted onto the boy. Suddenly, the cruel thought appeared, unbidden but relentless. Was Alaya supplying him with Mana, did the situation already spiral so far out of control that his other role was deemed necessary?

But neither the small linkage with either Tohsaka Rin, or Alaya and the accompanying well of limitless energy presented itself to him. Nothing. Only an unbound spirit haunting the Earth on its own accord. Emiya breathed a sigh of relief, inadvertently alerting the two other passengers inside the vehicle to his consciousness. Two paramedics. His eyes locked with a woman, then to her flaring red hair, then to her objectively attractive features; Proud and collected, a cool focus to her eyes, and then lastly, his eyes traced the metal vents that subtly lined her cheeks.

"Shit, the bastard's awake." Came from a direction above his head, from the driver he'd assume. And awake he was. About a few decades after his mortal life's execution, the late 21st century if he was judging the situation correctly. Cybernetic augmentation and enhancements only became commonplace, for civilians even, in those following decades— at least in timelines that didn't diverge too far from his own. And he knew it wasn't likely the next century, those timelines either ended up in apocalyptic fallout or in a technological societal upheaval that usually proved fairly… noticeable.

The red haired woman snapped out as series of instructions. "Blink twice if you can hear me." Bemused, he did as he was told, there was no point in hiding, so he might as well play along. "Good. I need to ask you some questions. If our scanners are correct, we aren't picking up any cyberware?, Blink twice if that's correct." Even the trained, tedium of corporate lines hesitated on that delivery. Disbelief. Emiya mentally readjusted his estimated times to later rather than sooner. More than merely commonplace, it seemed mechanical enhancement had become endemic.

Inwardly, he had a wry chuckle at that. When he was alive, he had considered stealing into the heavily secure, government blacksite research facilities concerning mechanical augmentation; seeing the widening gulf of his abilities to the threats he forced himself against and with the all the steel lining his mind at that point, he was seriously considering the advantages of loping off pieces of himself to replace with steel, not even considering his own sense of Self that could be irreparably damaged by such reckless self-mutilation. So intent he was on improving himself.

Emiya didn't recall such days easily, but he did remember the prevailing emotion, his motive, the driving force of that time. The simple thought, not enough. But unfortunately, even at the time of his death, such cyberization was clunky, prone to failure, prototypes of prototypes. Concept models in truth, and they often came with extreme side effects that even he considered unacceptable. Even a simple osmium bone graft assisted by a growing sect of Atlas researchers had been simply too costly for its miniscule overall effect on his capabilities, not to mention how such an operation would leave him immobile and needing months to years of recovery before he could even assume any intensive action.

But by the obvious mechanical details in the woman's eyes lit up by an inhuman blue, clearly scanning him from head to toe by the way she mechanically roved her eyes in a precise check of the most important areas, wounds, heart, throat, pierced liver and brain; There was, in her eye, reversed miniscule lettering scrolling across her pupils— information that probably described all the nitty-gritty details of his waning mortality. Too small and quick from him to catch any revealing details.

Hm. This must be more than a few decades after his death. Maybe even a century ahead of his original hypothesis. Biotic eyes… of all things. Even knowing that he had likely seen far more miraculous leaps in technology during his stint as a Counter Guardian, Emiya still could feel that old sense of wonder thump in his chest. Just how did they work? What distances were they capable of accurate representation, how did they bypass the neural antipathy against mechanical augmentation, especially one so direct? The rejection of foreign organs, especially so foreign to not even be considered truly organic? Mimicry of the occipital organs, or a total replacement of the part of the brain associated with sight, was a possibility that seemed no longer so far fetched. He itched to fiddle with the delicate machinery, like admiring a powerful engine roaring down the streets.

A memory of working on somewhat illegal motorcycles came to mind.

The woman— an EMT, not a paramedic, he corrected his previous thinking, the high-vis jacket screamed underpaid and overworked services— didn't bother shining a light in his eyes. Rude. He could have a concussion, Emiya thought childishly. He didn't, but the effort should be made. Or at the very least, the shallow imitation of one. Or did they have a sensor suite monitoring his vitals? Huh. He couldn't muster up a decent amount of indignation at the absolute invasion of privacy, more curious at the mechanics of it all. Like a fool with rotten teeth in a sweet store, the part of Emiya Shirou that had found satisfaction in fixing the broken things he surrounded himself with and combing through magically exact blueprints created by Structural Analysis found itself almost excited.

It was probably the realization that he was about to return to his duties that made him so relaxed in this unknown, unfamiliar, and unsafe situation.

Talking at him, but with a clinical detached tone that said in no uncertain terms that his answers were inconsequential, the EMT with red hair listed out. "Condition worsening, still no sedatives on hand that wouldn't increase blood loss. Bleeding on stump slowing, tourniquet holding steady, gut wound on lower abdominal has bled through. Liver failure imminent. Bandages need changing. Again." He almost felt guilty that she was going through so much trouble to keep him alive.

The other EMT instantly removed any guilt. "Leave it. If he doesn't have any chrome, he won't have any insurance." The sound of spitting, what loud disdain. "Trauma Team Coverage, my ass. Didn't I tell ya? Buddhist gonks like him don't even carry eddies." The man, hair the color a grease spill, shot him an unfriendly look over his shoulder. "Can't even sell his corpse to scavs. Fucking waste of time. My time." He looked back to the road. Shoulders stiff.

Well, Emiya had never claimed to any religion in his life, should he be offended? He felt a little offended on the part of the Buddhists. If they still maintained the beliefs they did while he was alive, he was all but sprinting down the path away from becoming a Buddha.

( —A gathering, a Cult. A woman of endless compassion. The most beautiful woman in the world smiled with stained lips. Malice beyond all belief. Taiga. His sister. His guardian. The last person he could call family. A child, there. The crack-boom of two gunshots. Excise. Excise. Memories pruned. The core being known as EMIYA cannot acknowledge that thing as himself—)

"Dump him, the night shift can get his corpse off the street."

The woman sighed, but her body language, though admittedly reluctant, was ready to agree with her coworker—

Then the bullets came.

A moment of frozen time, his eyes idly tracking the tricks of saline where they had punctured spare IV bags, his supernaturally enhanced eyesight following the tiny curls of metal where the sheet metal of the van had been punctured from the high velocity rounds.

Just His E Rank Luck to be dying and still be shot at.

Emiya locked eyes with the woman who had thrown her body over his. Idiot. Blind animal panic, steeled by despairing grit were all he could see. Then in the inverse naturally, what she had to see in his own eyes was pure and utter irritation. What kind of idiot tried to protect a dying man? His breath thundered in his ears against the oxygen mask. Battletested reflexes began to grind into rusted, screaming, motion. Twenty seven— Twenty circuits blazed to life. Seven had been in his left arm. Unimportant. Emiya Shirou only needed to imagine a world where the possibility of victory existed and project that world in reality. The complications of scarcity, obstacles, and difficulty were irrelevant.

Somewhere in the far away world, the monolithic forge began to churn.

Not bothering to use Reinforcement, the toughened plastic bindings tying him onto the medical cart snapped, and in the same instantaneous upwards motion, Emiya wrapped his arm onto the stupid EMT, and rolling with his back, turned them both onto the floor of the van. Just before they fell onto superheated metal and blasted casings, he snapped out his hand and caught them. Supporting both of their weight with his single arm. Though he hadn't been in an honest to god firefight for arguably an infinity, old memories died hard. Go low. Honestly, his lips curled into an empty smile, it was like he never even left. A light assault rifle by the pattern of fire, and a shotgun with an odd humming noise before the crack-boom of spreading bullets, and— Boom— There went the other EMT's brain matter painting the shattered glass and half a kilometer of road. Heavy pistol. Likely some advanced iteration of a fifty action express round, by the sheer concussive weight of the soundwave. Another death you could have prevented.

He scowled. They would be losing control soon. It wouldn't be the first time he had survived a horrendous car crash, military outfits and insurgents in his time both preferring to use homemade IEDs on any vehicle— but the still living EMT under him wasn't a magus with a body of swords or a Servant that only needed to brush off the dust from a car bomb. He must be more out of it than he thought if he was still deliberating, in situations like this. Action was paramount. Letting the body move the mind and reacting often divided the survivors from the dead. Moving quick, he mentally projected two nameless longswords in front of him, and pushed. The sharpened steel slid through the pleather seat, through the dead EMT's clothing, spine, flesh, and out into the exact middle point of the steering wheel. The other severed the right leg of that same paramedic and stabbed into the gas pedal, acting much like a foot placed so solidly on the gas that wouldn't be removed anytime soon. Fear Response. Locked Muscles. Same result, via different execution. Coincidently, the first sword also had the effect of blaring an ungodly loud horn. Annoying but negligible.

There. That would buy them time.

More bullets tore through the van, and all those interesting post-modern materials stood no chance, turning the ambulance into a parody of paper mache. It almost sounded like it too. Thin metal pocketed and ripped through had a audible quality all too it's own. Popcorn. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Emiya glanced down. The immediate shock had worn off. The woman stared up at him, unseeing, unabashed terror pathetically easy to recognize. She also had a pistol that was pressing against his midsection. Not pointed at him, but the shape of it was fairly unmistakable as it was pressing obliquely onto one of the thin injuries the Shadow dealt him.

Unbidden, a smirk came to his face. "Friends of yours?" He must have acquired bad habits from Rin. As the other joke he was about to make didn't bear repeating in polite company.

"Pendejo! Bastard!" She went red with rage. Although perhaps polite company didn't apply in the midst of a hail of bullets. "You think I have any idea who's shooting at us?" Definitely blaming Rin.

His smirk disappeared. "Hmm. No, but you probably have a good guess." Better than what he had. Before she could respond with reflexive anger, emotions being pushed to their limit by the unexpected and life-threatening situation and then some, he cut her off. Face carved out to stern command. "Most likely suspects, their temperament, and a rundown of their armament. Now." Mirroring the clinical detachment she had used to described his injuries, in a darkly ironic twist.

Her eyes blinked rapidly, cycling through her instinctive reactions. Some sort of calming ritual, he imagined. So not her first time in dangerous situations if she was recovering from shock this quickly, or perhaps that was another effect from her hitherto unknown cybernetic augmentation? Either way, she was strangely adaptable to what amounted to a direct shooting on medical personal and close up murder, even if she was in a profession where those were distressingly common. "W-we should have just passed Watson. That's… Maelstrom territory." To his blank look, she explained under the sound of whizzing bullets plinking and screaming against the van's body. "Insane psychotics who shove as much cyberware they can fit into their body. They," She swallowed, throat convulsing with controlled fear. "Must think we're smuggling cyberware. Or. They want another plaything to…" She shuddered. Involuntary fear reaction. Organic experimentation, surgical sadism. Expected. If unwanted.

The human condition. Equal parts wonder and disgust. Always.

"Got it." Emiya had all he could get out of the woman now. Anymore would be rumor-driven information or terror, both of which would only serve to distress her more and risk further panic. From the gunfire, there were probably five hostiles, possibly six if there was a driver. They also were likely about to run out of straight road, which meant a quick exit was paramount. He glanced back, at the inviting double doors. Then to the sides lined up like slices of swiss cheeses. No. Too obvious. The driver's seat and passenger door were also out for obvious reasons.

A gun cocked back in his head. The hammer ready to slam down. He focused on the thin metal flooring. It would last for his purposes. The hammer snapped forwards. Alteration, a simple magecraft that not even Emiya Shirou could mess up, forged into existence. And beyond the unknown manufacturing and interesting lack of plastics in the matted flooring, this was as easy as it got when it came to moldable material. He 'cut' a suitable outline.

Hm. A warning would be appropriate, wouldn't it? "Brace yourself."

The woman looked up, confused. "For wha—" The floor gave way underneath, a six foot rectangle of metal fell from the van's bottom onto the cracked asphalt below. Friction sparks blazed up and onto Emiya' skin, and his back scraped painfully against the bottom of the van, the bumper almost tearing a wide strip of skin off his back if he didn't have his armor there. And for the fact he was a Servant, and his physical existence was a little more than something that could be wounded by a car's bumper, he nearly forgot. The moment his head passed the back bumper, he snapped his head up against the air pressure, and identified their attackers. Not six but seven. Two on a motorcycle with that advanced shotgun, five in another van, side and back doors flared wide open, just now turning to notice their loud exit.

He glanced backwards; an uninterrupted road for them to skid to a halt on. He moved his thumb over onto the EMT's jacket, the hammer was already fired and now he only needed a thought to temporarily transform its surface to magnetize to the metal sheet— that should keep her safe and not scraped bloody on the road. He almost went to tell her to close her eyes, but they were already tightly shut. Not so stupid then. Preparations done, and the woman reasonably secured from danger, he jumped. High.

Nearly three times his standing height, arcing through the air, he projected his bow ready to fire a volley straight through their skulls, holding out his arm and preparing to draw back his other arm—

Oh. That.

Landing, Emiya pretended as if he just hadn't tried to shoot a bow with one arm. The bow fell away into blue particles. His already empty reserves, guttered and hemorrhaging, felt like a devouring abyss inside him with the additional wasteful expenditure. Another mistake like that, and he might end up dying before the woman was safe. One more projection and certainly not anything Caliburn-rated or above. He was fairly sure that at the edges of his outline, he was already vanishing into blue particles. His Spirit Origin unable to hold onto the concentrated mass of Ether that made up his Servant body. Unimportant.

A blue orb of the immaterial impossible appeared in his empty hand, a distortion that cast an eldritch light upon everything that witnessed its defiance of any common sense. Like a mirage, blink and you miss it, the impossible ruinous, beautiful thing suddenly vanished and in its imaginary place, materialized a blade of startling grace and clarity. Kanshou. He began to walk, holding the black curved blade low to the ground, then… began to run. Sprint. Blur. Even at his degraded, hollow state, Emiya crossed fifty meters in less than a second, Kanshou arcing up and through the hostile combatant motorcycle's wheel, carriage, through the shotgun-user's lower spine and out his solar plexus and into his friend's unsuspecting nape. It curved smoothly through flesh, metal, bone and arced a pale fluid like a scythe wicking off water. Kicking off the motorcycle before it could collapse onto its ruined frame, Emiya launched himself towards the still speeding ambulance, and with one vertical slash, bisected the vehicle entirely.

Propelling himself out of the wreckage, he re-oriented himself in the air, and smashed his boot through the other van's window and through a man more metal spider than human— but that was only an illusion to delude himself to the disgusting ease of his actions— and fully inserting himself into the driver's previously occupied space, Emiya whipped Kanshou into the passenger's still turning head. Pinning the skull to the headrest. He removed it with a wet rush of red and silver. Some sort of lubricant used with heavy cybernetics? A non organically reactive liquid used to supply, cool, and refuel extensive cyberware? They died all the same. Meat or metal, non existence came without stop.

In one motion, he flicked up lever at the edge of the driver's seat and for extra measure he stomped on the brakes. The seat leant fully back, tires squealed, the unstable vehicle spun out and they fell into a drift as the stopped tires uselessly peeled against the screaming asphalt; Momentum and weight carried the driver's corpse to fly into the three hostiles still alive, nearly knocking them in combination with the quickly changing velocity of the van. Stabbing Kanshou into the roof for leverage and stability, Emiya kicked one Maelstrom member's, female, expansive metal exoskeleton, head into the side of the van. It dented the wall and the head followed its example, a quick painless kill. She fell out, out the van, body and limbs flapping about in dead passivity. His foot hooked back to stomp the other two's neck into the side of the van, and…Was Stopped?

Somehow moving at the speed of a Servant, even a grossly weakened one, an iridescently blazing eye of another Maelstrommer moved in strange starts and fits, a buzzing red like a glitched stoplight. They lifted a heavy pistol to line up with Emiya's own mildly surprised eyes.

Just how far in the future was he, if cybernetic enhancement, or cyberware as that EMT had called it, could match him? What wonder, what horror. He ducked of course, but the Maelstrommer was already lining up another shot to explode Emiya's brain matter across the windshield, but then Emiya had already set his feet onto the van's bottom and gotten the leverage to twist and flick Kanshou out to deflect the bullet.

A mistake.

Unfortunately not able to aim where such a deflection went, the heavy caliber bounced past Emiya and through the dashboard. And the engine. And with almost devilish luck, it hit the fuel line judging by the hiss-spark of gasoline catching and metal groaning. Which meant… the van was going to explode. Soon.

Dismissing Kanshou, Emiya threw himself out the open back of the van, just as the explosion singed the back of his head. Without the helpful layer of metal sheet between him and the rough asphalt, it proved… Painful. Rolling out at neck-breaking speeds, his body bounced, twice against the ground before coming to a harsh, sputtering stop as his limp body slapped against the road.

Emiya lay there, a little dazed.

He really was out of fumes now. The tenuous link he had to the previously projected swords impaling the ambulance vanishing without his input proved it as such.

A crash, another explosion.

The sudden rush of wind felt as pointlessly cool on his skin as always. His life was defined by this, times of present, flashes of intense violence and in the between: The Nothing, then always violence again, uninterrupted but for brief flashes of regret. A sword unused was hardly a sword at all. A remarkable effort, he sarcastically gave himself. And for what? To save one woman? Seven for one, hadn't he gotten it reversed? He had hardly felt guilt over killing seven lunatics who had already proved their willingness to murder medical professionals, no matter how morally absent those same medical professionals were, but the fact he had immediately jumped to killing them? He probably could have even just disarmed them, neutralized them bloodlessly. Effortlessly. He was a Heroic Spirit, a Servant of the world, empowered beyond any mortal measure. Yet he had gone straight for cold blooded murder. There was a certain irony in that, that the power he so asked of the World to save was used so carelessly and immediately to kill.

An irony not lost on him, only to then fester in pitch-black disgust.

Emiya rolled onto his back, with a quiet thump as air was pushed out of his lungs. Thoughts pounded across his mind, the unstable tether of his existences wearing away the boundary of his tightly controlled self and the buried memories. Shallow thoughts that never left resurfaced like noxious bubbles rising to the disturbed surface. Really… Who was he kidding, he was a Counter Guardian all the way down now. Tarnished and rusted to the bit. A killer without equal. The first instinct of the hero known as Emiya Shirou was not to save. But to cull. No wonder he had been so quick to give his arm to the boy. Anything to destroy himself. Anything to commit self-destruction.

But those were old pains, ancient haunts, as much as he tried to apply them to himself now, they hardly hurt anymore. In its place, just dull exhaustion, the worrying creak of a blade worn too thin. He stared up and into the sky, exhaled. A nuclear red sunset, and the full moon glittering in its hollow certainty stared back.

Then, a familiar face entered his field of view.

The woman, the EMT looked at him, something in her gaze that said she knew he was about to die. "...who are you?"

He didn't have an answer. Even his name felt like a curse now. Better to vanish here and now, without a trace or lingering tie for her to remember him. "Nobody." He cracked a grin. Rin really was such a terrible influence.

Above him, he could see the woman's jaw clench in irritation. "Nobody disappears and reappears in seconds, faster than any Sandy. Nobody kills seven Maelstromers while nearly dead and without any cyberware!" Her voice had risen to a shout. Emiya wondered if his unique talent at making women irrationally angry at him should be classified as a Skill. "Nobody s-saves my life when I… was about to leave you for dead." She was conflating him, projecting more onto him than he was. Perhaps the allusion to the Hero of the Odyssey had done more harm than humor.

He grimaced, he needed to nip this in the bud. He should have said he was Nameless instead. This was the exact opposite of what he wanted. He spoke, coldly, flatly. "Forget it, forget this. You have a life, you have needs to provide for. There's nothing wrong with refusing to waste time on someone like me. Move on." But even as he was stating his reasonable demands, he could see it. In the stubborn set of her jaw, the determination in her eyes. Just his luck. She might have been a forged survivor and scavenger, but those were things she became. The unchangeable core of her was just like that king illuminated by moonlight, or that helplessly proud magus much too human for her own good. A good, unfairly ethical and moral person despite everything, all the more starkly shining for its rarity against what surrounded it. He let out a sigh that felt like it emptied out his lungs and then some. "Good grief…"

But in the end, it didn't matter. He was already disappearing, body beginning to float away in the polluted breeze. He would leave, a wraith vanishing to where he always ended up, back to the fragmented, illusory memories of Counter Guardian EMIYA. A shard of the whole, quickly forgotten against hundreds of the same.

Yet something stuck. A question that stuck with him through every sick opportunity he chased into the Fifth Holy Grail War. Something that remained after whatever shock had sent him here. The Shadow, another path, a strange inexplicable sense of lifted regrets as he saw the broken mirror gradually become so divergent it ceased to be him. Panes of silvered glass arranged to form a picture he knew, rationally, was himself, but in effect had diverged into a new being that could not be called the same. The equally incomprehensible happiness as he still stubbornly clung onto those abandoned ideals despite seeing the other better humane possibility. The lack of an arm. Clinging onto life just to sacrifice it. He didn't quite understand it himself, what he was feeling. Tired confusion, quiet understanding. An epiphany that hovered just out of reach.

But what, what was there left for him to wonder at? Why? Didn't he already know the answer? Expressed, precisely, mercilessly into every blade he stuck into that hill of graves? His eyes centered onto the blurring image of the woman. "If…" Emiya could not understand why then, he still asked, hesitatingly and halfway between lucidity and oblivion. "If you saw someone so like you it felt like the inspiration for all bad jokes, the same way of talking, the same strengths, the exact weaknesses, the same damn dream. But somewhere along the way, when you weren't looking, he ended up completely different from you. Giving up that childish dream. Changing into something else entirely. And he" Emiya couldn't feel his left arm, nor sense it in any meaningful capacity beyond the sensation of absence. But somehow, with the same instinctive knowing. He knew that the Emiya Shirou of the Holy Grail War who chose something over his ideal, who gave up the only thing that granted him joy. Managed to the fullest degree to become happy. The closest thing to contentment a broken sword could get at least. But a sword could never turn away from its purpose... and yet Emiya Shirou had chosen love above all else. So could he really be called a sword, distorted, inhuman, then? If that was the 'everything' the boy had lost, was it really even worth comparing the boy and the man? "...he was happy." Unmeasurable bitterness. Petty satisfaction. Still, he asked, "Wouldn't that mean your path, your life and the way you lived it. Was wrong from the start?"

The EMT, the woman with red hair like fresh coral stared back at him, the color seemingly pulled straight from the seafloor and a skeleton of it preserved, cleaned, bleached dry and hard. She hesitated on the strange, half-true, half-dreamt story he had weaved.

"I don't know."

Emiya laughed, coughed. More of the latter than the former if he was being honest. Her response made sense. A completely reasonable response to a dying maniac spouting off his worthless regrets for a path laid by hypocrisy and borrowed dreams.

But, she wasn't done. She repeated herself. "I don't know…. But so what?" Even in his dimming sight, her expression burned, furious. "Fuck them. Fuck anybody who denies your dream." She crouched besides, him, leaning her intense gaze closer. "They, the Corpos, the world, Night City. Call it what you will. Reality even. They stole everything else from us. The sky. The stars. How you die. When you die even. You and I's lives were sold before we were even born to a husk in a fucking suit for what amounts to pocket change to them." Spite, malice, choking anger so fucking wrathful it turned on itself like a Ouroboros in it's senseless streak of devastation and utter destruction. He couldn't look away. "They don't get our dreams. They don't get to have that too. That is the one thing money cannot buy."

The immediate denial stuck in his throat. It was stupid. Idiotic, certainly. Overly optimistic and unreasonably kind in its own kind of spitting, petulant way. But to him, it held a cruel allure. A terrible, awful kind of beauty. The kind of sentiment that encroached on insanity. "Even if it's impossible?"

Her lips pulled up, teeth shining in such a way they cut through all his useless malaise. "Especially then. That gonk who is just like you? They're not. They can't be. They won't be. I don't get half of whatever bullshit you're spewing, but…" She denied him with a harsh shake of her head, hair like liquid fire as sunlight shot through it, the light seemingly burning each red lock from within. "Don't give up on your dream, because that's the only way you can prove him." —yourself— "Wrong."

A strange noise welled up in his throat. Laughter, a chuckle preempting an immediate denial. Her reasoning. It was spiteful. Unbelievably so. Childish in a way that not even Emiya Shirou in all his teenage glory would think of. The only way he could still be himself was by denying himself? The only path to peace, contentment, happiness if he were to be even more unreasonable, was by clinging even harder on that dream that had led him here and proving even then it was not wrong? That Emiya Shirou did not need to give up on his dream to be called human? What utterly deranged logic. What mad rhetoric.

How perfectly fitting.

There was no need to cock the hammer back, no need to pull from the mourning wastes of that land. The very shape of his soul had the image, and he simply needed to reflect it. At a thought, Avalon appeared above his torso. The blue gold and sheath of that ever-distant utopia. He had projected it before, even used its secondary function when assisted by a King Arthur though those memories always fell away like fine sands when he tried to picture them in any clarity. It was usually inert, useless without Saber's prana. Nothing more than an illusive dream all the more pointless for its piteous glory. But in select moments…

It had its uses. By virtue of being what it was simply, inexorably and ineffably. Avalon, his cracked Spirit Origin, the sheath of the Once and Future King, the cornerstone of his being here, the reason why he alone remained from the fire, or in a poet's flair…

His soul and what had shaped his soul.

…


A.N.

Alternate title; Fate/Bygone Delusion, or Cyberpunk: Bygone Delusion.

Here, since its' Shirou Day and all.

 

[doge]

I'm a big fan of Night City having to deal with outside context problems. Emiya running into Cyberpunk's life-is-very-cheap situation promises to be interesting too.

"Don't give up on your dream, because that's the only way you can prove him." —yourself— "Wrong."

Click to shrink...

Gloria is an honorary shonen protagonist now.

 

[sceptic62]

I mean, david learning how to be a tragic self sacrificing anime protag from the og surely won't have serious repercussions

 

[geogio13]

I cannot wait for the inevitable EMIYA vs Smasher fight. It is going to be so damn good that it hurts. And maybe David will even survive it this time.

 

[ArtemisAvant]

II: The Nothing Between

…

Mana had dried from this world.

The descent of Mystery had continued its slow, creeping end and came to the result all Magi feared but understood was inevitable. A rat's death. Unknown and spitefully forgotten. It was surprising then, that this 'end' had only occurred a few decades after his own end, Emiya thought rather meanly.

He truly was the last Hero of Humanity able to use Magecraft. A title that didn't come with any perks, unfortunately.

Such as one that would allow him to stand on his two feet after exerting himself like a fool once again. The woman, a 'Gloria Martinez' as she introduced herself after hauling his depleted body onto the NCART, had to prop his arm onto her relatively smaller shoulders. The result could only be described as awkward.

There was really no other choice. The patchwork job he had done to contain his spilling Core, his Spirit Origin, only meant that instead of the Independent Action Skill granted to him by the Archer Class being barely able to support his existence, it now subsisted on a bone-dry pool instead of figuratively clawing for groundwater in a vampiric desert. The mana-thin world didn't help either, the starved atmosphere pulling on his ragged threads of existence as the only mystically dense object in the atmosphere. Nature always ended up towards entropy, and the relatively super-dense Spiritrons(True Ether) that made up his Servant Container was like putting an unprotected human body into the vacuum of space. In other words, he needed energy. Fast. Before he popped like a sad balloon or had his own insides boiling in to out, preferably.

How then?

Consumption and devouring. "You. I don't know what kind of black-site bullshit you did back there," Taken out of his musings, Emiya turned his gaze away from the glittering skyscape of his tomorrow and unto Gloria. Her voice held, as shaky as a reed in a storm, but it held. "Y-You owe me."

"Do I?" He asked, not really paying attention to the conversation. Far more absorbed in focusing his eyes onto the miniscule details of the environment around them. From what he could tell, there was nothing that connected him to the dizzying, neon, decaying metal of this future. He was also, fairly sure, he was in the wrong continent away from the Holy Grail War. Had that rotten monkey's paw spit him out randomly, like Natto that had fermented too long? He wasn't that poor of a Heroic Spirit to be vomited out like spoiled meat, no matter much his subconscious might have agreed, was he? Had the grail been too full? Or had the Servant-eating Shadow already devoured what remained of the Holy Grail War?

Emiya briefly considered projecting Kanshou and Bakuya again. Not out of a desire to further unravel his tenuous form on this reality, probably, but as part of his procedure to reorganize, regroup after a mission, every Holy Grail War. It was his own method of clawing out a semblance of time in his duties of a Counter Guardian. A technique created by himself after long experience with burning parts of his own Soul away by replicating the experiences of Heroic Spirits via their Noble Phantasms. He had already known that memories and experiences could be stored in metal, swords, weapons especially. Tools of war held at one side for extended periods, entrusted with fate and life and death, became tied inexorably to mankind's drive of creation and thus heavily drawn to Human desires, impressions, dreams. Given long enough time, they could be almost said to develop a personality, a sort of Spirit of their own. Like Balmung with its quiet, and responsible dragonslaying stoicism against, Gram's explosive and precisely focused bursts of intensity. His technique then: it was as simple as reversing the equation, following the reasoning, couldn't he store his own memories in empty swords? Kanshou and Bakuya filled out his requirements perfectly for what he wanted, as they often did, masterless blades, devoid of any vanity, any pride. They meshed easily with his own hollow life, sympathizing with his own history. Thus, even a shard of the Counter Guardian EMIYA summoned to a Grail War or as in this case, another place and time entirely, had the ability to draw on previous memories, even from a Holy Grail War. It was as simple as altering a single line of his process, reproducing the accumulated years. Instead of drawing the original Kanshou and Bakuya from his Reality Marble, Emiya would draw the pair he had oft-used in his existence and then like a computer recalling 'deleted' data from the recycle bin, recall those skittering, fleeting memories in pristine condition.

He hated doing it, and he imagined his Self performing the duties for Alaya felt the same, especially when he was forced to recall every single memory seeing as it was impossible to narrow down his experiences outside of time as he was, though he had tried. Especially when it came to fragmented memories of that facility in the Arctic. Jealousy wasn't an emotion he grappled with often, but when it came to that shard of Counter Guardian EMIYA… an uncharacteristic ugliness was really the least he could allow himself.

All this he thought in the span Gloria spent formulating her reply to his inadequate response, Eye of the Mind(True) working fiendishly quick as he debated on how to manage his worsening situation and avoided thinking of exactly why he believed staying present was important.

She glared at him, trying to project a confidence she didn't feel— or a confidence she had to feel? Hard to say, harder to tell. A tough woman, he would give her that. No wonder she survived so long with her kind of personality in this kind of city. She took a fortifying breath, and opened her mouth. "You do. Owe me. Not for me picking you out of that trash heap," that explained the smell and the filthiness in his hair he previously attributed to having his self eaten into the tainted Grail. "But for this." She jerked her head at their surroundings, the monorail they glided through this staggering city on demon time. "You owe me. A few more minutes and Max-Tac would have us-you."

She was floundering. Repeating herself, as if trying to both impress onto him the severity of the situation and convince herself. Emiya kept his face carefully neutral. If this 'Max-Tac' was as dangerous enough to contend with his shown abilities, true. It certainly would have been a hassle freeing himself, especially as he wasn't sure if he could even Astralize in this state, and not have his projected Avalon falling out him and simply end up vanishing in a blink of an eye as his feeble spirit and core finally cracked, his being summarily ripped apart by the mana-starved atmosphere. But there was more to this 'reasoning' than a simple 'you scratch my back and I scratch yours' mentality. What was it? What was he missing? He scanned over the memories he had made since opening his eyes in that now-defunct ambulance.

"Oh, you're about to lose your job." he said, aloud.

It made sense, the holographic advertisements stretching up into the sky, the weary set to the shoulders of everyone he had witness this far, the dull sort of resolution their eyes, either buoyed by false chemical emotion or eyeing the windows with a bright glare that was a little too familiar. A dystopian corporate future. Stories that grew increasingly common towards the waning years of his mortal life. And in his work as a Counter Guardian, increasingly virulent. He had lost count of how many shortsighted plans to cull an angry population through some inane idea like a targeted virus, an empowered supersoldier 'beholden' only to them, or other ridiculous idea out of a sci-fi movie he had to end before the last credits. Inversely, he also had lost count of how many times a disgruntled employee thought of some revenge scheme that actually turned half of a country into techno-zombies—as if Dead Apostles needed competition in that necromancy race— was the rational response to losing work and support. He had to put down so many stupid absurdities without even being able to forget that he was still dragging his swords(himself) though their necks due to nothing more than the excesses of late stage capitalism and technology outgrowing humanity.

Emiya continued thinking out loud even as Gloria's face froze. "Losing a coworker was pretty easy for you to get over, so I assume your employers would have an equally lackluster response to such an attack," police presence proved also positively anemic, he only heard the sirens arriving by the time they had already limped their way to the NCART entrance, closer to an hour's response time than the advertised five minutes. "But a vehicle? That can't be so easily replaced for them."

His voice was dispassionate, uncaring. Jaded. Emiya had seen it all before, so many times it faded into ashen memoires. Different faces, different places, same result. "They'll probably pin you with the damages, and the debt." A death sentence in all but name.

Gloria Martinez had gone pale with the bright eyed stare of someone who knew they were about to lose it all, for a reason that was in no way their fault, but simply because the world was that senseless, that uncaringly cruel. But, her eyes never wandered to the ground streaming past below them.

Emiya frowned, thinking. "There's no use in trying to talk your bosses out of it, they're just trying to get their asses of the frying pan, and so on and so on," Corporations were notoriously difficult to handle that way, not kingdoms, not not kingdoms, subsets of the human demographic with their own unique cultures and cruelties, all semi-enforced by every employee. There was no convenient head of the snake for him to chop off. Just middling managers with unchecked power and enough corruption for even a Magus to recoil at. "So that only leaves dealing with the debt itself. Out of range of any normal paycheck, probably, otherwise you wouldn't be asking me." She looked to have that kind of pride in herself, her head still held high. "Maybe as a chef…" Emiya looked back on his missing arm. "I suppose not, and starting my own business wouldn't be quick enough besides."

That only left. Wetwork.

"Wait, slow down, wh-what are you. Why are you, don't you realize what I just tried to…" She looked at him like he was an alien. Oh.

He had just bulldozed right over her and any of her objections, hadn't he? He remembered seeing that look often, Emiya Shirou simply wasn't compatible with the ordinary populace. His ways of thinking distorted, his lifestyle unimaginable. Nobody could keep up with a man who detested rest, forgone any comforts, refused exhaustion and resented every failure like it was personally carved into their spinal cord. Nobody should.

"Don't worry about it. You said I owe you, didn't you?" He couldn't smile as stupidly naive as he could back then, but an empty smirk would do. "Just focus on that. I'm simply repaying a debt. Nothing more, nothing less."

She didn't agree with him, he could see it instantly, but still, her eyes hardened with resolve. Already determining that this was her only way out. She had a reason beyond surviving. Something worth more to her than life itself. A reason to put pride aside. Good.

"I have… friends, people in the kind of life that can get that amount of eddies." He still didn't have any idea what eddies were, or their monetary value in this world. Linguistic drift had advanced far past his own lexicon into the range of its own dialect.

Emiya also wasn't surprised that she knew such people, he had a feeling that most were either one step away from that kind of muddied existence or tangentially related. Sidework to keep a home afloat necessitated a larger income than what was usually legal the more a society deteriorated. As an aside, he had literally been repairing Yakuza motorcycles in his youth, and his father had been a hitman with delusions of idealism, Emiya himself had become an internationally wanted terrorist who had wandered from battlefield to battlefield training and supporting bloody revolutions and putting them down alike. Judgment was laughable at best, darkly ironic at its worst.

Emiya nodded. "Call them." He wouldn't truly involve them, seeing as there was no reasonable way for a shady, unknown figure out of nowhere to suddenly enter the criminal underworld, but some information would be useful to get a foot in that door. He grimaced, suddenly. He still hadn't resolved the immediate issue. Mana. His situation had stabilized but it was still a situation of being two days without water in a desert. The cold truth stayed the same, whether in the future or the past, Emiya Shirou couldn't help anyone if he couldn't help himself first.

He eyed the nondescript bulge in her jacket, an idea already forming in his mind. Without his arm and his non-existent reserves, he'd have to rely on firearms, like he had when he first started out, or when he was too busy driving himself to death to notice he had literally run out of prana and had burned his hair and skin from the overuse and pulling from his sapped circuits. Emiya liked to think he wasn't that idiot anymore. But privately whenever he couldn't help it, he just thought there wasn't anything left to burn.

Intent on reserving even a miniscule scrap of energy, he closed his eyes falling into a quiet not-sleep.

…

They had to switch lines in order to make their way to Gloria's apartment, the practice ludicrously ordinary in the face of the day. Although the infrequent vehicles streaking through the sky made such a regular chore quite tolerable actually. Something about how utterly nonchalantly those around them took it all in, something of the astonishingly pedestrian ease of it.

The sun fell far below the horizon when they finally stumbled their way to Megabuilding H4.

A door slid open with a pneumatic hiss, the scratched and worn scrap metal pulling back into the wall. Emiya observed it with a mild curiosity. Certainly, the infrastructure wasn't about to burst into flames with one well placed thermite charge, or evaporate under the slightest bit of strength like the paper, insulation, and plaster walls he remembered from his brief stints in America— hunting down a prospective Dead Apostle Ancestor. They still retained their overall cheapness however, judging by the millimeter thin hollow sheeting he spied threaded through the door's socket. Unpleasant. Urban warfare became a new kind of exhausting when both parties had enhanced senses and could easily punch through. Like the time he had finally caught up and slain that arrogant death-obsessed magus turned freakish alien vampire, the entire apartment complex had long transformed into a nest for the Dead.

It followed then, in a situation that would only become too familiar, Emiya Shirou had to atone for his weakness through the unnecessary sacrifice of others.

Emiya's eyes fluttered. Again, his thoughts drifted off, again he had gotten lost in his memories again. He needed to focus on the present, the now. Not to the strange, maudlin, extended flashes of his life that wandered through his mind like errant breezes with no home. Adhering to that resolution, he flicked his senses around the woman's interestingly sizable apartment: the wide metal shuttered window, the closed door on one side and rumbling washing machine on the other, the bed inserted into the wall that only had a thin privacy sheet to divide it from the overall room, the vending machine? What. Why?

He realized why with a faint horror, there was no kitchen.

"This really is the worst timeline," he murmured.

"Did you say something?" Gloria asked, helping his unresponsive body to lean against a wall. His tall frame fell onto the shiny decal of the wall, his head tilting back to make him wince as the hanging fixture in the middle of the room noticed his 'resting yet conscious' state, and instantly blasted him with advertisements and irrelevant information. "Sorry," She didn't sound too sorry. The apology more rote than genuine, the long day and life-threatening finally allowed to wear on her now that her body recognized its safety in familiarity. She swung her hand listlessly at the direction of the 'entertainment' equivalent. "It doesn't turn off, not if I don't pay first for the premium package."

Emiya distantly remembered that sort of rest-disturbing marketing being very illegal in his time. But the complexities of advertisements and their use was neither here nor there. More presently, there was a person sleeping in the middle of the couch.

A kid, direct relation likely, dark hair, shaved close, no similar cybernetics visible in his skin, skinny, underfed— probably from the apparent normalization of surviving on vending machines of all things— a blazer over a black shirt, golden cross, blazer in better condition than the other clothing, Arasaka Academy proudly emblazoned on it.

"Dee," Gloria walked over, brushing a strand of fallen hair from her son's face with a tenderness that was almost at odds with her ruthless professionalism while on the job. Her son twitched, sensing an intrusion in his sleep, features scrunching up in discomfort then relaxation as she smoothed them out. Her entire face softened. "Not again. How am I supposed to drag you into a proper bed?" She said, softly without any real annoyance, seemingly well used to her son waiting for her and then being unable to stay awake long enough to catch her coming in.

It was almost cute, Emiya thought, the gulf of difference between the current her and the 'at-work' her. Now he got it. Why she blustered and bluffed to get him to help, why she had responded to such a childish question with an equally childish answer. He didn't voice this relation, any interrupting feeling… unwelcome. His skin rolled, his being here a trespass onto itself. It almost felt voyeuristic watching Gloria smooth over her son's frown and his wrinkled blazer. It was a happiness he couldn't understand, not then, not ever. A part of him even protested it, unable to accept its imperfect reality. Look, it said. Their cramped living, the lack of security, the worn exhaustion, didn't they know, worry, realize? It could be all taken away in a single instant, how so very fragile something hinged a single fallible human to bear the weight.

But that's a lie, you're only angry that it couldn't be yourself taking up all that burden. Your perfect world is Stagnation. Infantilism. Emiya Shirou simply wanted no one to cry in front of him, but he was a greedy, selfish man. A world where no one cries is one that cannot exist. Unable to settle for anything less than a resolution that only could be called insane. He wanted those smiles to never tarnish, to never be haunted. A perfect ending that never ended. A world to be pruned.

It was a maddened, ludicrous hypocrisy he clung onto with revolting naivety, all the way up to his execution and past even that. A madness he only let go after a theoretical infinity. Which was why it shouldn't have stung so much to break that fragile peace.

"Gloria." Emiya watched as that warmth, and softness disappeared as reality reasserted itself and all the pressing weight of it returned. Her shoulders slumped, set into a hard line. The muscles at the back of her neck and back tensed, tightened into hard knots. It was like watching a beautiful painting rip itself into pieces right in front of him.

She straightened up, "...I can set up a meeting for you first thing tomorrow."

"No," he interrupted her. "That's not good enough." Emiya wouldn't see the next sunrise in his state. "We don't have time to wait around for a job that pays well enough and is available for an unknown quantity, or for me to establish trust and reputation." That was how the currents of illegal trade and services worked, which was why, in his mortal life, Emiya Shirou the fool running to his death at the cost of everything he threw away, had an altogether different way of making money. "If any of your friends are awake, ask them for any locations to be avoided, where the heavy hitters in this city concentrate, not a neutral meeting place, but a hideout, a base, somewhere people regroup and rearm."

He would do what he always did, steal from the 'strong'.

She looked at him with a wary stance. Her eyes flickering orange, with a revolving half circle gleam. Making contact? A call filtered through the biotic eyes? Her speech noticeably slowed, probably concentrating on multiple things at once being the cause. "I think, Lucy? Maybe that other woman, Ki… Ki ? too. The netrunners, I mean, they might be awake… Maine, that's my contact, always complains about getting into contact with them during the day." Netrunners, established language, slang transformed into a title, Emiya didn't think hackers would have run out of style that easily, so likely a different but similar meaning, related but not the same. An evolved skill set? Advanced? Or maybe he was overthinking things again and he needed to think only on the things he could solve now.

He closed his eyes in silent affirmation. If she didn't mention any other contacts, those were probably the only group she was affiliated with. Still, he asked just to be sure. "Any others you know? Specifically, someone else who could handle large sums of money and hiding its movements?"

Gloria hesitated, likely because he wasn't using the right language in the known configurations. "My son." No, she was hesitating for a different reason altogether. "He thinks I don't know, but he found a Ripperdoc that makes him push BDs. The hard to find kind. That man might be able to help." The way she said it…

He raised an eyebrow but said nothing. This Ripperdoc… was he her first contact with the ugly body scavenging business? If she was salvaging cyberware from corpses, then she'd need a 'doc' of some kind to take out the machinery, so it only made sense for her to deal with a shady doc-tor equivalent. And that name, Ripperdoc. His little theory rapidly gained ground. Being in similar professions, Gloria would have naturally made contact with a Ripperdoc some time or another, EMTs were often redirected to smaller clinics and emergency centers when hospitals filled up or when patients couldn't afford the kind of care hospitals could provide.

Either way, it wasn't his business on how she knew who she knew. "Write down any relevant addresses."

She blinked, eyes still a bright orange film over soft brown. "Why?"

Emiya gave her a look. "Did you already forget?" His fingers tapped the side of his head. "No cyberware," He wondered if she would get it if he made a joke about lamenting the technologically trapped state of the youth today, or would it fly over her head.

To her credit, she didn't flush in outrage like Rin might have, but the returning look she sent him was downright mean in comparison. "Hope you like red." She said drily, fumbling in her jacket, and coming out with something that only had the superficial resemblance to a Sharpie. She gestured towards his hand, Merlin's saggy left testicle, they didn't even have paper in this hellhole of a future? First the kitchen and now this.

He sighed with the energy of a man far too old for this, but nevertheless outstretched his hand.

Quickly gripping his larger hand, she jotted it down, cold ink against the flat of his palm, muttering under her breath. "What kind of 'ganic doesn't even have basic kiddie chrome." She gave him a lidded stare of disapproval. "Can you even find these places on your own?"

He weathered her increasing exasperation with only a mild look that promised only slight amusement. In response to her question of how he would find such places, "No promises." What he didn't say was that he had already imprinted the map of the unfortunately named Night City when she was carrying him through the NCART, a mental map that was further enhanced when he glanced at the holographic projection of the bus terminal.

She clicked her tongue, but said nothing more on that particular subject. Gloria frowned. Eyes dimming to their original color. "Lucy's still awake." Was that a hint of matronly disapproval for another's poor sleeping habits? "She wasn't able to get much, especially on such short notice, but if you want places with lots of scratch," Her face scrunched up in distaste, tapping the first address on his palm. "Here. A Tiger Claws run XBD set." To his silent question, she explained. "Porn. Prostitution. Filmed and recorded for braindances. Not a lot of girls come back from there. And if they do, they don't talk about it."

He ignored that his teeth began to grit by themselves. That hit… uncomfortably close to home, considering. Emiya didn't bother withholding his distaste. "Pleasant," he said, meaning the exact opposite. "And the other?"

Gloria was quiet for a long moment. "Lucy mentioned it as a joke… but apparently she'll pay any 'gonk dumb enough' to steal some kind of datashard off the Voodoo Boys, some new kind of ghost program," She slowed on the unfamiliar term, then going to a stop. "It's… She's offering a lot of eddies. Too much for a joke. Just that gig alone covers nearly half of what I owe."

She already got saddled with the debt? If nothing else, corporate insurances had become even faster at leaching money, Emiya reflected with cold humor. He stared at both of the addresses, one in Kabuki and the other in Pacifica. Nearly equidistant from their current position if he was correct. He also noted the other's lack. So she had a shred of survival instinct after all, making him have to go back to her if he wanted the money 'cleaned'. He approved.

"Tell… Lucy I'll do both." Emiya said. "If this 'crew' of yours also agrees to come and clean up and plunder anything I left behind… In exchange for a cut of the profits, of course." he was fairly sure they were already thinking of doing something similar, especially if they had a hacker-adjacent monitoring the area. It was what others had done to him before, when they realized it was far easier to use him than kill him, direct him to a location in need of 'help' and then sweep up the guns, drugs, and whatever else they could lift after he had neutralized any security or people to stop them.

Gloria's eyes widened, but she quickly grasped the subtle plays and observations Emiya and her contacts had made of each other without even directly communicating. For someone who routinely stole from the dead and her seemingly subtle maneuvers, she really was in the shallow end of this depthless pool, wasn't she? Though really, this… crew Gloria knew, they must trust her a lot to take her at her word alone of his abilities, and give him two such opportunities. Or were those two addresses just that stupidly dangerous that even a foolhardy foreigner desperate for a quick buck would think twice? Emiya didn't care as for the particulars of why, as long as it made his job easier and paid Gloria's debt off quicker.

He pushed himself off the wall, feeling cool air rush to the space previously his back had warmed with contact. Like a thin film of separation between him and physical space, a sense of unreality gripped him, and he seemed to be observing this all from very far away all of a sudden. Intrusion. Preparation. Anticipation. There were twenty seven steps up to the noose. One hundred people left to rot in the deteriorating reactor. Seven processes to Tracing. Eight steps in Kyudo.

The 'Nothing' had ended. Here was his normal. Here was him.

Emiya felt his mouth curl into a disgusted sneer. He had avoided the question long enough, he already knew what he would have to do. He turned sharply on his heels. And yet. He hesitated. Saying a goodbye felt far too intimate, painfully close. But whatever was left of his Japanese customary holdovers refused to allow him to leave without at least a word. "Get some rest."

Before Gloria could say anything, the door had already closed with a final hiss.

…

 

[HeroOfTime4298]

I'm really looking forward to how this progresses. You have a good 'voice' for Emiya, and it inspires confidence.

 

[ArtemisAvant]

III: The New You, the Old You

…

His preferred method, one that he had perfected over the course of his time as a Counter Guardian and refined through dull, tedious repetition until even the rusted edges had been sanded away, of dealing with those he had to kill was unfortunately much more difficult to execute with only one arm.

The closely nestled, swallowing each other in a clash of competing space, type of architecture and claustrophobic intimacy of the urban complex the Tiger Claws had taken over also hampered such an approach, even though he was sure of his ability to puncture the building with long range fire, well, once upon a time. Neither could he smoothly advance through the building, taking out individuals with his bow acting as an extremely close range, tight spread shotgun, as was the methodology he learned at the feet of the Enforcers and military operations he had stolen into. Firstly, he didn't have that kind of time to crawl through the building, determining enemy and civilian, a distinction made even more difficult by the criminal and predatory nature of this particular mission, nor did he have the mana to waste altering his bow to be able to pull the sling an arrow back with a single arm. Secondly, as he learned with his encounter with the Maelstrom gang that tried to hit and run Gloria's previous employers, mankind had advanced to possibly equal the level of a low grade Servant with the addition of powerful cyberware. Any sort of defensive and sound strategy then would be hampered by the enemies advantage of rushing him with speed-boosting cyberware or other technology that he hadn't encountered yet, the unknown likely proving lethal in his current state.

Thirdly, he only had the one arm. Hard to use a bow with a draw weight in the hundred of kilograms. Past that if he Reinforced it. Though he supposed he could set up his bow, use Alteration to sink it into the ground like some mounted ballista and with a careful application of constant Alteration, draw and loose until all hostiles ceased. Costly, overly optimistic, and dangerously unrefined and specialized. In short. No. That would not be happening.

Emiya stepped onto the roof, landing silently despite leaping directly from the street, eyes flicking over the HVAC units and the tiny points of structural weaknesses he could surmise at a glance, water damage, cracks from dry weather, improper construction, and where the builders had obviously cut corners by dumping fresh cement mix not finished reacting. With his hearing, he could hear the faint noises and thuds as flesh smacked into flesh, grunts and by the sweetly rotten scent that drowned his nose from the stink of bodily fluids— drug-induced whimpers. It was an all too familiar scene his mind painted.

The strategy he decided on then, was a simple one. Overwhelm.

Locating the source of the fleshy noise, Emiya lifted his boot, without bothering to Reinforce himself, and then stomped. D Rank Strength was a hell of a thing— the rooftop caved in, a total and utter collapse. Directly onto the filming equipment and the drooling gangster who had been leering at the couple on the bed, skull instantly caved in on impact. Emiya flung himself downwards, landed and scanning the room in an instant, shot towards a Tiger Claw still thinking of drawing their: factory-made katana, prefabricated skeleton in a foundry, and which had killed seventy two before being thrown into the back of a trunk and given to— Emiya's fist buried itself through the man's chest before the katana had finished copying into Unlimited Blade Works, and with a noise that was hauntingly alike to the monsters in human skin and not he had slayed with the Enforcers, Emiya pulled the still beating heart of the man free.

And ate it.

As a spiritual entity dependent on Mana, there were only a few options for him to stay tethered to this reality, and his Independent Action was quickly reaching the end of its line. He needed energy, and even a third rate Magus like himself knew there were only so few hows to get it.

Still forcing the hot blood and shredded alveoli filled with intangible Soul down his throat, Emiya took the katana out of its now-freefall and threw it. A razor sharp disc of neon green and pastel purple that launched through the air with a deadly buzz and straight into the Tiger Claw that was just now pulling up his pants from the wet bed. It buried itself directly through the spine of the man and then through until it stuck into the next wall, vibrating with a humming from the sheer force Emiya had thrown it.

A tantric ritual was impossible, and making a contract with Gloria would be pointless as she didn't have any magical circuits and thus sustaining a Heroic Spirit by herself would kill her quickly, making the entire thing quickly pointless. Therefore he needed to turn to alternative methods at present. However, as he wasn't associated with any vampiric qualities when he was alive, unlike Rider, the freshly converted mana barely wet the cracked earth in a bleached ocean. Another minute, hour, of existence.

Hmm. He'd have to do this with as little projections as possible, as little mana as possible, unless he wanted to swallow down more hearts. But that was only another delusion, Keep lying to yourself, Emiya. When it came down to it, you'll do anything for the sake of those ideals.

Shouts were coming up from the staircase, the rest of the Tiger Claws alerted to the intruder in their midst. Just how was this any different from his duties before? Emiya grabbed a pistol that lay on a counter, automatically checking the slide, noted the clunky, almost plasticky make of the hideously bright thing. Some ceramic compound that had popped up in relevance and frequency after the near depletion of oil and diminishing life expectancy recycled plastics, Emiya determined, having a second person understanding of these things. A Kenshin, if the laser-etched signature was to be believed, but it had a strange buzzing to its frame. His eyebrows lifted, a railgun? An electromagnetically tense barrel?

He aimed down its sights, surprised at the holographic interface that popped up. Quite a bit of advanced tech to put in a simple handgun, in his opinion. The more rugged and simpler the construction, the more reliable. As was the reasoning why Ak-47s persisted in every conflict he had participated in, from a hundred years from now to half a millennia in some timelines. They had even crossed over into pruned timelines and unusual phenomena such as Singularities due to their conceptual durability and reliability transferred across the Human Order. Complicated bits of engineering with fancy electronic specialties functioned but, in his experience, never when you needed them most, where the rubber met the road. They would fail first, long before willpower and determination faded. But perhaps with the advent of increasing standardization and machine perfect edges of parts, more complicated weapons became more viable even at commercial availability? He didn't know, and he wanted to know. But for now.

How did it fire?

Leaning the pistol over the railing, Emiya aligned the sound of the boots running up the stairs, and pressed the trigger. It didn't fire. Wait, no… it was charging. Intuitively, half-remembered experiences of relatively ancient arcade games driving him, Emiya waited on some bygone recreational instinct, and at some arbitrary apex of pressure, released the trigger, his aim still perfectly aligned to where the jack booted Tiger Claw had begun ascending the stairs. A cut-off yelp, and the sound of the concrete cracking, once, twice. Burst fire. A… unique choice. He repositioned his aim, arm smoothly moving in a perfect x-axis to a position where fired bullets would line up exactly where another Tiger Claw was exiting an elevator, he pressed the trigger but didn't hold it this time. A bullet slammed into the metallic painted face mask, exploding the ceramic pieces through teeth and mouth. Another press. The Kenshin fired again to put a hole in the screaming man's cerebral cortex. Silence. No use in prolonging a painful death.

He frowned at the pistol in his hands. Muscle memory conflicted with the unusual recoil and his ears were confused about the irregular noise it made when firing. Not to mention the charging. Alternate fire, of all things, decided by pressure and timings. What happened to good old mechanical switches? How on earth would this become intuitive to use? For specialists, they might prefer this kind of well-practiced, fluid, elegant mechanic that reduces any unnecessary motions in the end, but for the too-green and grunts? Armies, big and small, had to be constructed in such a way they operated on a margin of the lowest common denominator, you wouldn't expect intelligence from trainees. There was no accounting for one idiot seeing something they were told explicitly not to do and doing it anyway. Humans were just like that. Fools, losers, and failures that gave rise to a civilization. So giving a gun like this to the standard military brat and expecting him not to try and fire it, only to get confused on why even though his finger was still on the trigger but nothing came out of his metaphorical phallic instrument, and then pointed it to his eye expecting some kind of obstruction, only to blow his brains out— whoever designed this gun, all Emiya was saying, must have had a much higher opinion of the standard intelligence of the rank and file then he did. Or was this another consequence of the population density increasing to such an abundance that human life had become even less important than it had in the overcrowded, overburdened Earth of the early twenty-first century?

He noted that observation for later, and refocused on putting his new toy through its paces.

Emiya resolved to learn by doing, and with one smooth motion he sprinted back to his previous position and flung himself over the railing and onto the very surprised Tiger Claw trying to get her dead friend out of the way, he fired, the bullet moving with his momentum to pierce directly through the soft top of the woman's skull. He landed directly in front of her still moving corpse that hadn't figured out its death, and kicked it in the midsection. Hard. The body flew into the three Tiger Claws at the base of the stairs, Emiya jumped down after it, and kicking off the side of the building instead of the blood slick steps, for a greater velocity to catch up to the kicked corpse, he brought his arm over, almost hugging the corpse, and fired once, twice, thrice. Two in the right shoulders, one more in the closest knee. Using the corpse as a shield from the spray of bullet fire, Emiya collided with one dead, two injured Tiger Claws, and neatly lifting himself off the pile of limbs, he pulled the trigger twice more.

Blood wet his boots. The gun felt hot in his hand.

The floor below the top opened up into more rooms filled with camera equipment, and more relevant, several gangsters already readying their weapons. One was already upon him, moving in that same flicker motion that could only be some sort of speed enhancing cyberware, speedware if you will. This version showed itself to be even faster than his previous experience! A machete emblazoned with pearly fangs drove towards Emiya's neck at a speed that was almost comparable to subsonic bullets, the air pressure visibly distorted around the blade, then Emiya shot him twice in the chest, arresting a good portion of the Tiger Claw's momentum. Emiya capitalized on it, snaking out with his arm and slamming the superheated barrel of the gun into the knee of the man, and then whipping it back into the man's falling temple. His thumb moved. The magazine ejected, and he flicked the end of the gun to send it flying towards the Tiger Claws preparing to shoot through their friend and into him with pinpoint firepower. Time seemed to slow as supernatural reflexes worked in overtime. His vision narrowed onto the magazine, drowning all distractions out, and there. The miniscule glint of brass casing like the point of a bullseye.

Emiya's arm blurred. Gun lined up perfectly to its target. Trigger down.

He shot it out of the air, igniting the bullets not yet spent to explode. An improvised fragmentation device sent them barreling towards cover, even with its weak payload, but with Emiya now able to discard his emptied pistol… He grabbed ahold of the dazed, dying machete-wielder and held him out as a shield, walking out with what seemed like suicidal confidence as he held a man with a single arm fully upright.

Bullets slammed into the man, and the speedware instinctively activated to no effect as his legs blurred in the air— to no effect, he couldn't twist his body from Emiya's grip. His arms uselessly pounded at Emiya, scratching and clawing with weakening desperation.

Emiya advanced calmly through a hail of gunfire until he heard quiet clicks in loud silence. As the jerking body in his arm gradually stopped moving, he dropped it with a soft thud on the ground, and stared at the two Tiger Claws who had foolishly bottomed out their magazines in hopes of stopping him. One shakily raised their hands up in the universal gesture of surrender while the other, terrified, tried to reach for a secondary weapon to fire at him, pulled it out and— Emiya snapped out his hand out, fingers tightening on the barrel and his grip secured, directed it towards the Tiger Claw's surrendering friend. It fired with a harsh reverberation and the shatter crunch of bone and brain. Emiya lashed out with his leg before the second Tiger Claw could react to unintentional friendly fire, horizontal momentum smashing two into the wall with lethal crushing force. Neatly disarming one of their smoking pistol in the process.

He flipped it in the air, fitting it back to rest in his palm now, aimed at its previous owner and depressed the trigger. Another bloodstain added to the wallpaper. Heavier caliber, he judged somewhat distantly. Similar to a Desert Eagle if he had to make the comparison. A Nue.

But the other part of him was once again wondering why he was here. Participating in another wanton slaughter. Logically, he knew this was the most expedient and efficient choice, but in the thick of it, stained with enough blood enough to give him a sick recreation of his mantle? Emiya wondered if he didn't want this, even a little bit. People sought out the familiar and gravitated towards their previously tread tracks for good or for ill. Ultimately, the human condition strove towards normalcy. He was the same… Just a man, a machine trying and failing to pretend to be something it was not.

He heard through the fog clouding his thoughts, more shouts, more bodies to be entombed in his memory. Swords to become gravestones in his rusted Reality Marble.

A trickle ran down his neck, cool against his heated skin. The blood from the heart he had consumed.

Come on, Hero. There's still work to be done.

…

"Seems like someone had fun." Hiss, spark, a noise similar to the 'catch' of an old radio system when it shut off. Familiar noises, so familiar they had become almost a calming background texture. Lounging in an ice bath, Kiwi as she preferred in this current group, scrolled through the camera footage that hadn't been scrubbed or physically destroyed. She had long opted to quit diving for this little excursion, not deeming it worth the cool numbness afterwards. Whoever Gloria's friend was, they were professional at least, she'd give them that. Not even a flicker on any of the basic security system the BD-addicted gangoons had set up in this little carved out fiefdom of Kabuki.

Most of the footage she managed to tease out of the local net there had been a microsecond of movement, then flash, the last captured frame of a bullet striking the lens. But the comms chatter proved interesting, the last bits of dialogue before the end shooting an interesting picture. Filtering out the surface level English-Japanese poser speak, and the extensive cursing— fucking fuck indeed, Kiwi would have that particular scream rumbling a long time in her skull sponge— she managed to glean a decent description of the man. One armed, as the now dead Tiger Claws were so fond of screaming out in disbelief, voices pitching so loud it fried the audio, tan skinned, and in disturbingly utilitarian black armor. Some even described the figure as white haired ganjin, but that was conflicting with descriptions of him being so covered in blood that he was a demon. But more importantly, one man.

Corp, obviously. Whether he was still affiliated or a deserter who managed not to get his implants locked down by automatic protocols was something else. An Intelligence Operative gone too deep? Right now, she was leaning towards a Millitech asset, SpecOps, or the not so secret Branch of the NUSA that had their fingers in all sorts of pies; a military asset who had been enjoying a quiet retirement but somehow got kicked in the ass hard enough they making trouble beg on it's knees. It matched the suicidal strategy that was employed. Practically guns blazing, pistols akimbo, staring down death and god with chromed teeth.

Even Maine pretended that he used cover, not that it helped much with his ridiculous bulk, but when she compiled a simple program to calculate Gloria's friend's position, a reverse of the common ricochet cyberware that any Netrunner worth their salt could figure out from a glance, he was either somehow directly in the open and surviving heavy arms fire, or somehow moving like a tin pinball fired by a tank barrel. Moving at a bullet's velocity and changing direction on a dime's diameter. A Sandevistan she assumed, along with one of the more exotic dermal implants, maybe a Peripheral Inverse? The iconic cyberware was specialized for cutting edge military grade conflicts in disgustingly close urban environments, which would match her growing profile of an ex SpecOps.

The only problem with that theory was, Kiwi reflected sticking a cig in one of her mouth ports— a function it was decidedly not designed for; Was that Gloria Martinez was painfully smalltime.

A cyberware scav, and Meatweagon EMT employee— make that formerly, fired just today wouldn't you know it— simply didn't have those kinds of connections. A Santo-born kid that knuckled down with a gritty determination that would have won awards in the no one cares dead end awards, her life was as thin cut and dry as week old Locust Pepperoni Pizza. Another story of how hard work could not, would not trump fortune. But props to her for trying.

Kiwi paused, pulling back up Gloria Martinez's NCPD file on her cyberdeck, her eyes roaming back onto the connected link to her son, little David. Shit, he was already that old? Christ, she had stuck to this crew way too fucking long. Sooner or later she'd get burned, Night City wouldn't have it any other way. Still idly flicking through the Martinez's profiles while debating the finer merits of retiring and throwing all of this mess onto her protege's chipped shoulders, Kiwi choked on her cig.

The Father. She hadn't even thought of that angle, because it was so ordinary. A Santo girl, knocked up by a shitty excuse of a semen donor, forced to raise her son alone on an insufficient minimum wage. But if, and bear with her abandoning her tried and tested cynicism, that father wasn't the run of the mill gonk who forgot to wear a plastic head, but a soldier? Now that lined up the dots to knock them dead.

Kiwi breathed out a cloud of ash and smoke. "Shit." She crushed the cig in her palm, letting the soggy dregs fall into her warming bath. Gloria wouldn't have known, of course. Those strong silent types were like white candy towards ditzy brained teens, the so called, 'I can fix them' types. Her mind raced, filling out supposed holes that she had simply ignored before. David, Gloria's precious 'mijo', how and why he got into the Arasaka Academy, the sheer ruthlessness, even wrath that their mystery man went through that Tiger Claw base, even Gloria, barely a squirt compared to Maine and still wheeling and dealing with him with a fearless haggling spirit.

Their 'ghost' was on a mission, and family could be one hell of a motivator.

Kiwi sat back in the icebath, the cheap chips of melting ice like soft knives against her skin. She had done this long enough, that she no longer woke up gasping and shocked shitless out of her mind whenever she exited out a dive with the latest Corpo atrocity under her belt and festering in her skull, long enough that icebaths were a personal habit rather than desperate rookie's first attempt at a deepdive into the kiddie Net. Long enough she was all ice when she pulled up her contacts list, dialing a nondescript icon of Moonchies.

"Candy Bar. Sorry, Lucy, that guy–guy-man. Unconfirmed, Spec, Special Ops-Operative. Ara-Arasaka Intelligence, m-maybe. Careful. You be careful."

She wondered if she should mention her private theory of that Corporate SpecOps being Gloria's baby daddy. Eh.

It wasn't her problem.

…

Emiya needed a solution to his… performance issues.

By the Root, just the look Rin would give him if he would be so stupid to say that outloud. He shook off the small humor the thought of his former Master brought him.

It still itched, hung oddly on him even after he took care to clean himself thoroughly after combing through the bloodsoaked complex thoroughly. The feeling of being unclean, of being so dirtied he couldn't stop the heady crimson sin from sinking into the lines between his skin, violation and revulsion and immorality that was hypocritically meaningless as it was useless. He had taken care to destroy any leftover data, especially that of a forced kind, carefully looting corpses, and safes; None of it had helped. The durable bag he had taken from there, slung onto his shoulder, still stunk of the accumulated sweat and sharp bite scent of inked cash and credit shards, the credit cards of the future— if his intuition was correct, one of these' netrunners' would be able to glean a substantial amount of money from it.

The cleanup reminded him, perversely, of housework. Busy, dull, and tedious work. But there was no satisfaction in it from seeing a job well done, or eyeing well-polished floors and gleaming countertops artfully empty, just the stale lukewarm knowledge that he was making progress towards an undefined total.

It made his previous actions all the more distasteful. All the slaughter, all the more meaningless.

Consuming souls especially, and doing so in the way he had done wasn't sustainable, not to him. The idea of becoming a bloodsucking monstrosity just to continue existing in the world. There were worse fates out there but not many. Even Emiya could admit to himself that he'd likely end himself when the chips came down again. And even if there were 'acceptable targets' for that sort of behavior, the reward never matched the loss. In the recesses of his mind, where his conceptualization of a Hero of Justice lay, Emiya just could not justify to the impossible ideal, that devouring souls was in any way acceptable, especially weighed against only the mere possibility of him saving more. His 'life' wasn't worth much. Don't get him wrong, he didn't adhere to the common belief among Heroic Spirits that as ghost liners and those departed from this world, they shouldn't inflict change upon the living, he knew himself to be too stubborn to sit back and do nothing after all, but this and that were different things. A question of morality instead of ethical quandary. Once maybe, but never twice. Or in other words, he just kept stupidly sticking to some idea of how 'things should be done' instead of searching for the most efficient route.

I haven't changed at all, Emiya hated it. Hated his unchanging nature. Unable to accept any compromise, stubbornly forging on with not even the slightest intention of stopping, nothing in his sight but a beautiful lie. Yes, that was the nature of the man who had taken up Alaya's offer.

But he had veered off topic.

Emiya considered what he knew of spirits, Servants, especially. Maybe he would have to rethink his previously dismissed idea of linking himself to the leylines, though he may not be a part of the Caster Class, he still was a Magus, and in the fuzzy memory of an extraordinarily patient and yet equally prideful blonde woman hammering the foundations of Thaumaturgy into his dense skull, sometimes literally; He should be able to recall how do even that relatively simple act. At least, he figured he could do so. Probably. He'd have to first perform some minor Formalcraft rituals to locate a sufficient nexus of leylines for him to access, but those were so easy that even his overspecialization didn't detract from the tried and tested mundanity of those spells. The leylines themselves would be dry, and likely faltering things, parched veins of mana nearly extinguished from the dissipation of Mystery in the present, but if he also took into account they would be also untouched and unused from that subsequent lack of Magi… they may make a decently small crutch for his existence. It may even reset his Independent Action Skill if he was clever about it, the end of which was rapidly approaching.

Independent Action. A B-rank skill, boasting of two days of function without a Master tethering a Servant's existence to the present. The 48 hour time frame, as in field testing proved, constrained by that length of time being the ideal conditions and not taking account factors like: combat, Noble Phantasms or in his case Projections and his Magecraft, extraneous drainage, damages and thus healing, and environmental factors like how much Gaia wanted to unravel your existence. Despite all that, being able to reset that skill would definitely help with his current disappearing state.

Though… Emiya narrowed his eyes at a distant point outside the rumbling NCART carriage— trying doubly hard to not get distracted by the intricate yet rushed mechanisms of the Monorail— if he was remembering correctly, even Caster in his war, despite forming a base on Ryuudou Temple, had needed to contract with a Master. Or had the latter come before the former in that case?

His reluctance to form a contract with a Master derived not only from the strain of such an exacting connection which would most likely have to be made with someone without the Circuits or the Grail as a mediator to handle the weight of his existence, but also from a purely selfish standpoint… He didn't want to get attached. Emiya didn't fully understand what compelled him to remain in this future but had convinced himself that it wouldn't be for long. Yes, the woman's words at the end sparked a resonance of sorts inside him, deeper than his conscious mind could perceive, preoccupied as it was, and like he was still that same fool, he had followed that resonance to where he was now without even a skant look back.

But, but… but what? A short time, a long time, there was no meaningful difference especially seeing as he didn't care not to change the future as a lingering wraith. From the start, his ideas were flawed, rooted in shaky foundations and pathetically easy to collapse.

Emiya shook his head off of his sinking introspection, whatever his reasons were, they would not matter if he were to still exist come the end of the next day. The consumed soul via heart could last him to that time, but then the minor buffer from his Independent Action Skill would vanish and the mana needed to maintain a Heroic Spirit conceptualized into the Archer Class Container would quickly fall upon him wholly and thus, swiftly disintegrate him.

To think that the enhanced Container which made him so superior to any combatant of this era, and had allowed him to barely keep up with actual legends, now threatened to end him through just the matter of upkeep.

Emiya stopped, not physically as he smoothly changed NCART lines to ride onto the dis-used Pacifica, flashing a looted NCART Pass from a Tiger Claw that would not be using it in the foreseeable future. Hm. There was something, not wrong, per se, but misleading about that thought. Yes, his parameters allowed him to stand in the same arena, but it was his sheer stubborn mastery over the only skills Emiya Shirou could master that allowed him to 'keep up', even beat in certain circumstances those staggering legends. Only a paragon of specialization, could stand shoulder to shoulder with heroes beyond the ken. His agility, his mana, his physical strength, they hardly had anything to do with that.

He was going about this problem all wrong, trying to approach it in the manner of Caster or even Rider. It seemed he became too used to imitating others, too used to taking it too easy when he realized that the Emiya Shirou of this Holy Grail War wouldn't need to be killed. Complacent, even with the threat of the Shadow. He had forgotten: the only thing Emiya Shirou needed to succeed was imagine a reality where victory was possible, then project that reality onto existence.

He needed mana, he needed a master. Sling the arrow onto the string, take aim at the target. Release. He took the whole problem and removed the moral quandaries and the mire of his own selfishness, and pictured it, rather stupidly, into a question of getting from point A to point B. Or in other words, from the perspective of an arrow launched from a bow. If an arrow was too heavy to reach, shaving it down or changing the draw weight of the bow was an option. If the target was too far away, step closer, if that wasn't possible, raise your arm and adjust.

Emiya examined himself in the reflection of the window. Shaving it down…?

Self-mutilation via magic, could that even be possible? The kind of spiritual surgery he was imagining, had been more in the realm of Atlas geniuses, and though he was sure he had met plenty in his line of work, those meetings weren't exactly conducive to sharing an academic discussion on how to manipulate the physical form. But if he restructured the problem, and treated himself simply as another sword… It was as simple as shaving off excess ornamentation, removing unnecessary frills, or even a simple crossguard, the leather wrappings, the pommel, or other similar extraneous details. Leaving only a naked blade with only the tang. The bare necessity. Naked steel. Or put into another viewpoint, comparing his supply and demand of mana as fluid dynamics, his 'output' was unnecessarily large for the enemies he was facing, and his 'input' was little to nothing. It only made sense then, to lower his own performance to account for his low resources.

There was no one that knew his body more than himself. With only the basics of Magecraft available to him he had held back monsters whose only enemy could be considered the total scope of humanity and presented himself to a surprising standard against heroes who had triumphed against those same calamities, and while Emiya could not call himself the master of Structural Analysis , Alteration or even Reinforcement. He could confidently say that, if only by sheer experience, he would be able to contend and even match experts in those same fields. At least, in swords. And what was he but a sword?

He might even be able to try a similar tactic to handle the issue of his lack of a Master. If he could trick his Servant Container, his body into treating his own Circuits as a pseudo-Master, rerouting the connection to loop into itself one might compare it to, then it would reset his Independent Action skill. Or actually make it moot? Though that seemed too far-fetched for him to confidently do. Perhaps if he took whatever line that differentiated the connection from, say the Holy Grail, to a Master and simply combined the two? Treating the leylines as a Master? That felt more feasible. There was a similar practice done with Masterless Servants, summoned by the world themselves or by something related to their legends, Emiya recalled. Though those occurrences were limited to unstable timelines where Gaia's restrictions had become heavily impaired , allowing strange oddities and phenomena to exist where they shouldn't.

Emiya stepped off the NCART line to emptiness, a deserted station with only refuse and littered trash swirling around in the concrete dust.

Ah. He was nearly there.

…

If Kabuki was the cheap homecoming for a culture he had willingly forgone, Pacifica was an uncomfortably accurate reminder of what exactly he had run headfirst and full tilt towards.

(—They had another fight. The same old argument retread a thousand times, a hundred thousand, only a hundred thousand. I'm going to fix that distorted life of yours. But he didn't Want it fixed. He wanted it to stay this way, always wanted the end he hadn't fully understood back then with such terrible clarity as he did now. He was hurting her. He was always hurting her. It would have been kinder to hit her, he thought. At least then he could cut off his own arms then do it again. But if his way of life was the tool used to injure, then wasn't there really only one way to resolve this? She knew. She always knew what he thought better than he did. She talked him out of it, that was them. From the end of that conflict all the way to their next coincidental meeting at the ticking tower above the dragon's corpse, she was always helping him out of the messes he threw himself into. All the way to the flash of a red coat and a streaked face through the focus of a noose—)

The shattered urban environment, the boiling undercurrent of lawless violence that was only policed with more extreme violence, countless plastic tents and pilling trash burning the air dirty, so very similar to the refugee camps Emiya Shirou visited in his time alive. Concrete everywhere, empty windows where the glass had long been dusted or broken by undeniable gunfire— really. Nothing had changed. Decades or centuries, the uneasy equilibrium of human existence refused to change even to the miracle of technology.

Emiya hoisted the bag higher up on his shoulder, feeling the strap dig into the natural hollow where his trapezius met his deltoid muscle. His destination was the ironically named Sapphire of Night City hotel, abandoned and more importantly then taken over by the Voodoo Boys. From what he could observe from a cursory glance at the idling members around Pacifica, they functioned as a loosely community driven governing force, enforcers of the gang walking and mingling with the local populace with nearly zero distinction. Rather than a gang in truth, they seemed more like a self-armed militia that occupied a new niche created from evolving technology. Netrunning.

In a world where cyberware was not only a requirement but a symptom of existing, those who could remotely hack into those mechanical pieces of the self would be naturally regarded as living terrors to be avoided or killed as soon as possible. The Voodoo Boys then, were the shadow in the night of those terrors. Almost like magi, he joked to himself. A nightmare, that very conveniently, did not apply to him. Due to the nature of him being completely flesh and bone, yes flesh and bone constructed out of superdense magical energy but flesh and bone nonetheless.

Gloria had chosen a job for him that meshed with his current circumstances and abilities extremely well, or maybe fortune had finally turned to his favor. It was definitely Gloria's handling. The description for the item he had to steal, however, was nearly blank. Beyond datachip, and ghost program, he knew practically nothing of it except its importance to this Lucy. Which meant, Emiya sighed, he had to gather its location, he had to disable whatever protections would arrayed against him and any intruders, and he would have to ensure its validity. All independently. Subtly. With enough speed and stealth to ensure that they did not notice his intrusion before he was able to secure his quarry safely.

Not something Emiya did frequently, beyond his early attempts at ferreting himself into highly secure government facilities to secure controversial data exposing corruption or state warcrimes in order to release that information to what he thought were trustworthy authorities. Although, Emiya Shirou realized the futility of such actions quickly enough. Maybe those same authorities simply didn't move fast enough for the obsessed fool, maybe corrupt systems created corrupt systems that failed people far too much for the so-called Hero of Justice to accept them in his impossible ideals. Still…

The situation was different, the morals practically nonexistent, but the overall rules of engagement shouldn't change so much.

Emiya, approaching one of the many decaying, rotting cars in the shadow of the equally deteriorating megastructure, lifted one-handily a truck had nearly molded to the asphalt by time and weather, and shrugging off the duffle bag, placed it securely in the space formerly occupied by an engine block.

He observed his destination.

Half built, crumbling with exposed rebar pointed towards the sky it would never reach, and with a side that crumbled from purely man made reasons as evidenced by the helicopter buried in its structural foundation, and a beautiful stone facade inspired by the old cities of the Mediterranean, the Sapphire of Night City lived up it's name. A chipped jewel perfectly representative of the dirty corporate hellish paradise it emerged from, like a glint of icy blue in a fetid mire.

The hotel was semi integrated, it seemed, with similarly unfinished skyscrapers, linkages made by repurposed cranes that had rusted into place, and what were clearly newly built passages built out of steel wires and slabs of tiling taken from other parts of Pacifica. It hugged the Combat Zone known affectionately as Dogtown, looming over the improvised walls there, but just far enough away that whatever ex-military force hadn't decided to level the offending structure with artillery fire like it clearly had done so with other surrounding areas.

In short, there was far too much ground for him to cover if he wanted to acquire that datachip in any reasonable amount of time. His eyes scanned the skyline, observing any clean infiltration points, noting and discarding an enormous crane machine that had fallen over, destroying a smaller building that he could theoretically scale and then leap onto the a thin concrete pillar that had collapsed in such a way it made a floating ramp stuck out of the hotel. No, his chances were far better if he took the south side, where another skyscraper, slimmer and covered in shattered glass, had tilted over, and even now leaned perilously close to the slicing off the top of the Sapphire.

He wouldn't even need to go up through the interior of that building, just a simple Alteration of his boots to magnetize and he could practically run up one of the sides where the glass had necessitated a metal framing, and then with a leap, he could aim for a open window on the twentieth floor of the Sapphire and then decided what to do from there.

So he did just that. Emiya couldn't help the grin that crawled on his features, who would have thought that childish want of any boy bursting with too much undirected energy had, Running up a smooth glass skyscraper would be a legitimate strategy Emiya employed.

Peerless horror and soft wonder, that was what Magecraft really was.

…

 

[Solarshade]

Yet another very good chapter. Though I did notice this:

shredded alveoli

Click to shrink...

was mentioned while eating the heart, and was slightly confused since alveoli are in the lungs. Though I guess when you pull a heart out of someone's chest you probably are going to get some bits of the lungs around it thinking about it.

 

[HeroOfTime4298]

Nice chapter!

 

[Fanficologist]

*Slam table* MORE!

Also, lolz at Kiwi assuming Archer was David's dad.

 

[sceptic62]

Don't want to jump the gun, but his solution is literally carve away as much ghost liner meat as possible and shove his circuits into cyberware, no?

And he ironically can't get cyberpsychosis, besides being a servant, Emiya's structural analysis would let him literally perfectly grasp the nature of his augmentations and their connection to him.

 

[ArtemisAvant]

IV: What else, we can do

…

It was, Emiya contemplated, probably not the smartest idea to begin attempting what a certain troublesome Master of his would describe as the magically charged stupidity of the highest order. While undertaking an infiltration with an unknown level of risk and against opponents who he hadn't experienced before with new and unique abilities he had an equal dearth of knowledge of. Ranging from probably to absolute fact.

But to Emiya, it felt as though it was a rather convenient time. Not that he was overly confident to the point of suicidal arrogance, unlike a particular golden king, but taking into mind that his Mana (and therefore time) was a extremely finite and limited resource, and that with every passing moment he exerted himself even minutely, he burned that 'fuel' like a Semi chugged diesel…

Well, as a certain adorable King of Knights would say; Time was the enemy.

Also the fact that the Voodoo Boys, beyond the 'traditional' methods of simply shooting him a new set of scars, even if that traditional now included two new varieties of firearms that Emiya couldn't rightly call himself an expert in. The fact was: their main claim to fame was completely ineffective against him. Netrunning, or hacking if you'd prefer, lost a good degree of its effectiveness when it was up against someone, i.e. himself, without any convenient electronic vulnerability to exploit, i.e. cyberware.

Additionally, his outfit had been made with materials that probably had fallen into common use by this time, but what was once composed of the highest advancements in lightweight, yet still effective, armor. It didn't come cheaply, was all he was saying. Along with his own unique application of thaumaturgy to enhance the construction of his chest piece, it wasn't an exaggeration to say he could withstand a concentrated burst from an assault rifle even at close quarters or for his purposes, an attack from pale recreations of Phantasmal Beasts made by lunatic Magi.

Although, higher calibers would probably kill him outright… his Endurance Parameters was never the highest, and with his Magical Energy being so low, his Parameters were reduced already by several magnitudes. That dovetailed with trying to Reinforce his armor, which again, would only vanish his existence later rather than sooner. That later being measured in the seconds.

In fact, thinking of it like that, it made only sense to try and 'shave' off his Parameters further, though that could be a fallacy of the thinking best known as, if it isn't already perfect might as well half-ass it all the way.

Perched ontop of the shattered glass skyscraper he mentioned earlier, Emiya closed his eyes, and uttered, "Trace On". Beginning self-hypnosis, performing initial Structural Analysis on body, ignoring Projection: Avalon, finishing Structural Analysis. Now came the tricky part, he had already determined that the metaphorical 'point' where he needed to 'shave' would likely be found in his Spiritual Core, the only part of his recreated body that wasn't a perfect one to one recreation with his mortal life's corpus. But that Core had been damaged through the conceptual poison of the Shadow and the several lethal wounds it left him, which made determining what to remove ever trickier, though it might help that Avalon was there, slotted neatly in his body and therefore— in the most elementary terms, he should be able to use it like an object visible through a thin piece of paper and therefore trace out the image he wanted around Avalon's silhouette. Cutting out the extraneous material which was really his Spiritual Core, but hopefully the spiritual components that represented the enhancements granted to him upon being summoned as a Servant rather than something say, his ability to define himself as human. Or another more severe portion of his self-definition.

However, as he had already known and now re-determined, he could not accurately Structurally Grasp his Spirit Origin, not because of his usual restrictions like Divine Materials, or surprisingly even something like it being constructed by beings removed from humanity; but simply because it was too complicated for him. Like a day one mathematics student viewing the vast equations of spacetime being curved by mass and energy as posited by Einstein in its entirety, they could look upon it and recognize it as an equation, they might even be know many of the symbols depicted in it, but the true depth and complexity would be out of their limited understanding.

So he cheated, "I am the Bone of My Sword."

Partially manifesting his Reality Marble inside himself, the complexity and combined biological marvel and nightmarish quagmire of the human body suddenly became readable. Whether this was a consequence of his self-hypnosis reaching deeper heights or the internal reflection of his Reality Marble affecting his body to truly become more aligned with a Sword, the difference didn't particularly matter to him. Emiya supposed it might interest a dedicated researcher, and obsessive Magi like Rin, but he had never been interested in the potential of what his unique existence meant to the greater questions of Magecraft, only in how it could drive him forward in his feckless dream.

Then, mentally picturing his use of Alteration as a whetstone, Emiya took it to his Spiritual Core and dragged.

Instantly, his perception… Wobbled. The surface of what he thought was his skin felt, suddenly saw brilliant colors of rotting fish. His nose buzzed with furious distraction, intangible shadowy fingers wormed out of his skull— the effect could only be described as the uncomfortable feeling of someone walking on his grave while he was still clawing his way out. Nearly losing his footing on the perilous height he was at, Emiya mentally clamped tight down on his awareness. Those were unimportant distractions, ultimately useless if not for the confirmation that he was doing something. Now. Continue. Something swam through his head. He ignored it.

There was a definite change, visible to his internal perception. Mental Contamination uncertain, proceeding. Changes in mentality unknown, Reality Marble exhibiting a more pronounced ash-grit texture of its 'ground'. Unlimited Blade Works, all weapons accounted for and inventoried. Sky lightening in coloration, red nuclear sunset fading into a peach evening. Unusual but not relevant. Emiya mentally commanded to continue the process. There was a passing thought he should experiment with his changed physical abilities and feel out if there were any significant changes before going on further, but with his current state, accurately judging the changes to any kind of precision that occurred would be impossible, so he dismissed the thought for later.

Emiya couldn't suppress the genuine satisfaction that his half-baked, highly theoretical and unsteadily imagined idea actually was creating tangible results.

Now, what happened if he 'shaved' off a bit more at a time?

…

On the twentieth floor of the Sapphire Hotel, the day bloomed with unexpected freedom. Brisk, sea air floated in from the salted shores, and through what felt like miles of empty windows, it swept through with an almost refreshing scrape against skin. The bracing, cool air super-contrasted the sweltering, buzzing heat of millions of scavenged comps and poorly cooled technology. All running at a fever pace, with an environment best described as punishing, it really was no wonder that most of the Voodoo Boys who maintained and watched the systems chose to take frequent breaks from the tedium of watching miniscule changes in dials and cracked screens, and instead walk listlessly through the picturesque corridors of flowing curtains and open finery that was the twentieth floor.

One such 'guard' or better described, server rat, a job in which entailed making sure nothing blew up in the, who would have guessed, server farms of the Voodoo Boys, blew out a ring of smoke. He stared outside, eyes locked onto a distant horizon with a ponderous expression. What did this man think of? What thoughts were hidden behind this facade or generic ignobility? Did he take pride in his watch? Or was it just another menial task meant for a grunt to complete?

Those questions would go unanswered as Emiya, quite literally, jumped into the building, landing with a not so soft roll that sent glass shards skidding across the half-way covered royal blue carpet. The two locked eyes, one stupefied Voodoo Boy gangoon who couldn't believe the idea his eyes were attempting to convey that a man had leapt into the twentieth story for building from another collapsed building as if it was a ramp, and one Servant who wasn't so much of a Servant anymore.

Momentary peace never lasted, as the guard and Emiya both entered into reflexive action. The server rat spitting out his smoke and hurriedly rushing through a stuttered panic across a suspended holocall, but before he could send out a shout… Emiya burst across the short distance, hand clamping around the other man's throat and pushing forward with the accumulated momentum into the nearest immovable object. Ergo: bodily slamming him against the empty window frame. Spittle shot out of the man's mouth, a sign of the little air he had in his lungs further decreasing. Yet something was amiss! Emiya's arm shook with the strain of holding an entire grown man by itself. A Servant shouldn't have had this trouble, even the weakest able to bodily press a fully grown man as if he were a mildly resisting grocery bag.

A war of attrition began! Would Emiya be quick enough to shut off this man's consciousness before he could send an alert to all his other friends in the area, or would the Voodoo Boy manage to warn everyone else of the intruder?

Naturally, Emiya couldn't let that happen even if it was only an infinitesimal chance that the server rat would be able to regain his coherence of thought to convey such a warning. The hammer cocked back, the trigger pulled. The chemical reactant ignited. Magical circuits, full to bursting from sudden inexplicable excess, readily responded to his trained call. Emiya directed the violent river of power to his eyes. "Stop panicking, there is nothing to worry about." He commanded, enforcing and layering his intentions thoroughly with Hypnosis.

The man only struggled further.

Well, honestly he wasn't sure what he expected to happen. Magecraft was, as proven, a skill that degraded excessively quickly with time. Already a poor hand at hypnosis, the skill had only fallen further into disuse after his death. Counter Guardians didn't leave any witnesses to hypnotize. Ever.

Somehow he didn't mind the loss of one of the inherent skills of a Magus too much.

Emiya settled for a different approach. "Calm down." Softening and drying his voice to the dull monotone of a soldier, Emiya also let go of the iron clamp around the man's neck. A two pronged assault of confusion upon the man, still reeling from the surprise of seeing him leap in. The server rat fell to the floor, eyes agog and mouth desperately sucking air in biological instinct. Good, he was still in a state of pure reactivity. Faking a smile, Emiya further acted on the stunned state of the man, and pulled him up.

"Nobody's supposed to be here, so," He scratched at the back of his head in a sheepish manner. Curving his eyes into concerned crescents, Emiya said. "Fuck man, you really suprised me." He opened his eyes with a look of wide-eyed worry. "You okay, dude?" Now, here was the crystallization of all his previously unbelievable actions. If he had done it correctly, and spun the man around in so many differing directions that his head would be putty, then he would have no choice but to blindly accept whatever Emiya told him. "Man, the boss won't be happy about me almost messing up the deal! Hey, pretend this never happened? Hm? What do you say?" … It all relied on the server rat's next action.

The guy pulled a gun on him.

So maybe his infiltration techniques were a little rusty.

…

Three attempts later, and two bodies stuffed into handy supply closets— Emiya simply threw out the supplies previously occupying the space out the glassless windows, and the third Voodoo Boy thrown into a crawl space behind and up and away a hollow wall, complete with curious spider playing with her drool.

Emiya walked with the cadence of a soldier besides a downright frosty guard. He made sure to inject a hint of nervousness into his march, hitching his steps ever so slightly as he mentally directed himself to move in a standard march pace and then slowing down as if catching himself in a habit he had yet to fix. A soldier returning to 'civilian' life only to find the battle had not left. That was the cover he had chosen that best fit his needs.

"Yeah, the boss is making a deal for that program y'all cooked up. The ghost shit-, I mean, stuff." It was the accent, Emiya realized now, his usual blankly rude transatlantic English fresh off the plane was too foreign for Night City's almost slurred curt roughness. Now, his voice had that aggressive twang common to the harried residents of the neon city. "Needed to go over the finer deets with your own bosses, so he sent me out to look busy." Replete with all the vernacular and paradoxically equal to longer shortcuts of common turns of phrase.

His 'fellow' bodyguard eyed him warily, one hand reaching at her throat. A freshly blooming bruise had begun showing with the most interesting bile-yellow constellation. "So you say." Short, blunt. Heavy Haitian accent. That was her in a nutshell. Guard Number Four seemed plenty unfriendly, but he suspected that was more her general demeanor rather a reaction to him slamming her into the ceiling to knock the breath out of her lungs and then following up that painful surprise by catching her by the throat and slamming her back down onto the ground. Probably. Emiya gave it a fifty out of a thousand odds, against. "I did not hear of this meeting." She said, as if she should have. Suspicion did not flatter her already brusque tone.

Sending her a look of confusion, Emiya drew his brows tightly together and scowled. "You didn't?" but pretend to brush it off with a blithe blase. "Sounds like a you problem. I'm just here for the eddies," he said, with more honesty than any would believe. He jerked his head forward. "Got a problem, take it up with your boss. Communication kills. Non-Communication ruins." She was already suspicious and disinclined against him, and he only needed to play the unfriendly poorly adjusted corporate soldier of fortune right back. That would be the 'expected' response. Reacting in kind to her aggression, as a soldier with a chip on his shoulders a mile wide would. It helped in another way too, the more she disliked him, the more she would wish to end this encounter sooner and the sooner he could retrieve the datachip.

Her eyes narrowed, dangerously and her lips thinned into a small, curt line. "I will."

This, Emiya thought, was a woman who counted her grudges and ensured no debts. Which meant, he was in prime position for her firing path when, not if, his deception was uncovered. Joy.

She strode swiftly down the stairs, without waiting for him to follow her, intent on finding out exactly what this supposed 'meeting' Emiya had conjured up was. As to why she hadn't just contacted this boss of hers over a holocall? Thanks to his careful Structural Analysis of his previous three failures and the holocall features that were built with their optics, Emiya reasoned that his intrusion would soon be discovered when people began to fail respond on time so needed a way to disrupt communications, then he applied strategy to application onto the third guard he had incapacitated. Using Alteration, he had attempted to send a simple rebooting command to the local network to restart here. Therefore disabling the communications here in a subtle but effective manner. It would, naturally, raise the overall alarm of the Hotel, but that was unavoidable in the long run and Emiya had judged the risks well in advance.

By all accounts and his own judgment, it seemed to have worked. Judging by the fact she had to confirm his identity in person. Which also meant he had the perfect trail to follow to find this Ghost datachip.

A clever solution, but inherently risky as it relied on precise timings and multiple factors he only barely understood. Frankly, Emiya was surprised it had worked this long at all. Very surprised.

The woman pushed open an escape stairway, not even holding it long enough for him to cross. He darted in, barely managing to not have his nose bashed against the metal weight. Hmm. No, that made more sense. She was bringing him into a trap wasn't she? The look on her face depicted stark impassivity, and uncaring sternness, but her overall body language told the truth, the set of shoulders and the flaring of her nose was as hostile as it got.

She spoke, voice flat and harsh with restrained hostility. "There. First floor." She halted in her movements, indicating that he move ahead of her. "Move." Putting words to nonverbal communication felt a little pointless, rude even, no?

Emiya inclined his head anyway, showing his understanding and agreement. Actually, he was a bit curious as to why the Voodoo Boys standard operating strategy had changed. Before they shot him on sight and even when he subdued them and tried his infiltration strategy, they immediately sought to kill him anyway. A very ruthless approach to an intruder, but he was supposedly logical for an apparently well secured base of operations. Was this person simply a different sort to the run of the mill members he had encountered before? If anything, his initial assessment of her person was that she was even more single-mindedly dedicated. She had mettle in her, mettle or madness, it was difficult to tell precisely.

His eyes caught on a glitching, sparking security cameras as they descended the claustrophobic, dimly lit stairwell. Huh. Had his Alteration trick done that damage? He internally reassessed, if that was what he had caused by only a relatively simple command to Restart and Update Request as he remembered from his early experiences with Window systems… then using Alteration on complex computers was more of a scorched earth maneuver then the subtle infiltration that he had envisioned. Still potentially effective, but it also kindly explained why he was being led into a trap. A trap that he willingly walked towards, but a trap was a trap even if the cage bars were made of gold.

But those explosively inactive cameras…

Although, thinking back on it, Emiya had used Alteration to send a message. A magic that was more suited to twisting and changing the inherent properties of a material to, hopefully, whatever the caster wished, rather than for transcribing a relatively gentle Shutdown and Reboot command. And at his level of mastery, he could magnetize non-metallic surfaces, and twist even a Noble Phantasm into an functional arrow— though that only applied to mysteries he had an incredibly strong affinity towards with plenty of applied study and theoretical testing. It had been nearly a year of continued experimentation research before Caladbolg II and Hrunting had become regular tools in his arsenal. So perhaps his on the spot idea should better be likened to using a sledgehammer to open a padlock.

Sure it did the job and opened the lock, but in the process, you shattered the lock, the metal connections, and now you had several sharp and unpleasant shards on the ground. A bull in a china shop, to put it into another analogy. For the Voodoo Boys' delicate Servers and local network, it must have seemed like an all powerful electronic attack of massive proportions to cause such damaging shortages to all subsystems, including the camera system… Something like using a root access key to shut off important functions that wouldn't be normally shut off. All the fiddly bits and the sensitive information stored on those drives and sensitive server farms got washed out with the sudden and heavy-handed override.

Or was he miscalculating the impact of magecraft on a mana-starved world?

The scarcity of Mystery meant that his mysteries would have a minor increase in effectiveness, but the overall increase in Skepticism and scientific rigor replacing Mythos and Conceptual Belief would as soon as render his abilities completely ineffective— and as they clearly hadn't, and since his honed experiences hadn't faltered once since in this world. It was best to assume standard effectiveness and not make such leaping extrapolations. Fact: his Alteration had sent a standard command to whatever central computing system kept a Local Network to reboot and restart, feigning as a perfectly ordinary request. Fact: the entire Local Network had actually shut down, resulting in total communication blackout for the Voodoo Boys, which was the intended effect, but not the expected result. The logical conclusion would be then, to assume that his actions had performed as desired. But, as an argument, that had been a throwaway action, more him flexing his abilities onto the new reality he was presented with, experimentation in truth. Logically, he was being paranoid. Sensibly, he was completely justified.

There was another answer. Multiple actors on the stage. He was not alone. Reasonably speaking, any prize worth paying for meant some measure of demand, and demand preferred company. And in indulging in that possibility, wasn't it more likely that someone had seen what Emiya tried to do, and thought they should finish what he started, so to speak?

Which would mean, then, that he was dealing with a Netrunner. Or a team of such, although he recalled most hackers preferring to work alone in any and most cases. Those types seemed to abhor company, perhaps seeing as hackers weren't usually very friendly with the law and polite society. In any case, it would have to be one of considerable skill and confidence, naturally, as they would be 'attacking' on the Voodoo Boys home turf. Now that idea had popped in his idea, it became worryingly and unfortunately credible. Someone hijacking his signal, and then taking advantage of the resulting panic to slip in and start to proceed with their own objectives.

Emiya breathed in evenly, keeping his magic circuits hot, and his muscles subtly flexed, ensuring that his body was perpetually in a ready state. Heat radiated out from him, a great and heavy furnace quietly buzzing with anticipation. He only needed to pull and release some tendons in his arm and abdomen, the long descent had his legs plenty warm already. Then either way, if this second actor or his potentially underestimated Alteration proved to be true, he would be ready to act. The longer he thought about it, this secondary invader seemed more reasonable to him. It handedly explained why the Voodoo Boys had changed their strategy. In showing up the way he had, immediately after such an crippling attack regardless of its true origin, there was no doubt in their mind that he was linked back to the source of it. And, if he was to continue his deduction, his lack of cyberware might even stand out as a sort of void to the technologically adept organization. There were two ways to interpret such a void, a lacking, or a level of shielding that was so far advanced it had become undetectable. With the information they had available, it was only reasonable to assume the latter. And as the Voodoo Boys specialized, even prided themselves on their Hacking or Netrunning, he had become not only a physical threat but an existential one to their way of life.

So, they simply had to capture and see then, of course, what made him tick at any and all costs. A perfectly rational response when faced with such a threat. Adapt, consume, evolve and overcome. Law of the jungle, twisted into human trappings.

Which was probably why they were playing along with his deception. They hadn't even been fooled by his act, but found it more useful if they pretended they did as then they could keep an eye on him directly under a veneer of ignorance. All very, does he know what we know? Or does he know that we know that he knows? Espionage in miniature, the grand game of deception, the favored hidden dagger on both sides. Emiya couldn't keep the rueful twist off his lips even if he tried. He had gotten tired of that game before he had even known it.

However, that did bring into question: Did that mean they were truly bringing him to the datachip he needed? Or was this woman simply leading him to a position best suited to capture him? They could be one and the same, but at the same time, if it was him on the other side, he wouldn't risk losing what must be an important asset to an unknown factor like himself.

Which meant, caution over dismissal being the rule, he needed to ensure that he was taken to that datachip. The best way to do that… would be to flip the board in its entirety.

Suddenly, Emiya stopped in his tracks. Making the woman behind him nearly collide into his solid back. The air thickened with rising tension, sweltering dry humidity stinking subtly of sweating human bodies stuffed into a place gone too long without a proper dusting. Sweat trickled down into their eyes, but nobody blinked. Was he about to act? Was this an imminent attack? How would he act, thoughts like this must have raced through the woman's head. Her stress levels ratcheted up exponentially, jump starting a rush of adrenaline to shoot through her veins. She was likely remembering the blink and you miss it attack he had used to incapacitate her previously and quickly devising countermeasures for his extreme speed. The best way of course, was to attack first. Force reaction before action.

But in the tiny avenue before her resolve crystallized into action, he acted first!

"Actually, do you mind if we make a detour?" He said, casually. This was it— This was the… attack? His voice suddenly dropped all the pretense of an accent, and simply became his own everyday speech of dry calm. Emiya turned, noting the sharp tension in every one of her limbs and the hand twitching at her hip, and he flashed a congenial smile without teeth.

"I need to go to the bathroom."

…

A.N.
Something something cliffhangers.

 

[ArtemisAvant]

V: Nameless Dead

…

The mirrors had been pre-cracked, Emiya observed, turning on a gently rusting faucet and finding himself only a little surprised it still turned on.

He brought his hand under the water, cold of course. Turning it over and wiggling his fingers in his best attempt at actually cleaning the appendage. In the meanwhile, he wandered his eyes through the spiderweb of glass and all its reflections. The woman who was his guard and only lead looked at him with a face cast from stone and eyes that gave nothing away. If he was actually here to use the restroom, well, some lingering remnants of his upbringing still persisted and he didn't think if he asked her to at least look the other way she'd agree. No, she was completely and utterly alert to any tricks he might pull.

Fortunately, that was exactly what he wanted.

This was a good time, Emiya closed his eyes, mentally refocusing. The spiritual 'surgery' he had done ad-hoc reflected back at him. He felt his mouth form into a neutral considering line. So they weren't temporary, he had actually altered his Spirit Origin, or Saint Graph. With inexpert and clumsy 'hands', he had 'shaved away bits of his core into a less mana-intensive engine. Even to him, the alteration looked clumsy, and his current parameters hadn't quite settled down into an equilibrium yet. His Saint Graph still trying to naturally heal and contour into the new shape he had tried to set out for it. Avalon complicated matters. See, Avalon took the shape of his soul as he was alive. Sometime before his death, the memory faded and worn, Emiya thought he might have returned the faerie artifact to King Arthur's resting grave, or perhaps it was taken by some magus who managed to incapacitate the young foolish him (a foolish idea, Faeries were uniquely terrible to those who touched their interests), either way he only carried it's imprint on him by the time he had begun the work of a Counter Guardian, a fact that made him a little grateful.

But forging past sentiment, the actual result of his tampering culminated into what he currently saw. Emiya flexed his hands, not directly feeling the sharp decrease in strength, but consciously aware of how now he struggled when before it was simply a matter of mental adjustment. Servant skills, enhanced parameters boosted by his placement into a Class Container, and who knew what else had been shorn away, leaving him in all too familiar state. Somewhere between the prime of his life, Emiya mused, and his height of his magecraft mastery. However short the distance between those two were. Right now, he had the physical and mental acuity of only a very fit and focused individual of the former modern era. It wasn't all bad news. By shaving off such parameters, Emiya had instinctively converted those extraneous bits of his Saint graph into Prana, a conversion likely in the one percentile of efficiency, but even that was enough to leave him flush to bursting with excess Prana. He didn't have the confidence to revert those changes, but Emiya considered the tradeoff acceptable. Especially the fact that his mana circuits were now producing enough to maintain his weakened existence, though— he couldn't directly tell the exact output of Prana currently, after taking into account his existence tax, he couldn't be sure if that would later turn out to be a net gain, or as was more realistic, a net loss when he inevitably used up this surplus.

Even if he was rightfully concerned as to what the unforeseen consequences and issues might arise from his tampering, he considered this a major success.

Also, he must note it was surprisingly difficult to wash his hands-hand with one hand. Emiya winced as a memory shot across the scattered mess inside his head. Like he had thought the same thought so long ago head all but forgotten it until this moment. A jingle of silver keys, hollow purple dulled across the dying sunset, a color made only more forlorn by the warmth of the fading sky, and a rueful feeling like, ah. They're the same as me. The water trickled to a close. His fingers, pinched shut the faucet's opening as a subtle groaning echoed to his hearing alone. Idly, he reinforced the closure, ensuring that the metal would give out before any of the welding or contact points would.

Not anymore, Emiya thought to those meaningless days past. Thought or hoped, it didn't make a difference. He had a mission, and no time to gaze pathetically towards a past he had burned away through his own damned ideals. Emiya coldly forced himself back into the present.

By his estimations the water pipes would explode to a negligible pressure explosion as liquid built up and received no outlet from his carefully ruined faucet, in a timeframe of a few minutes to any second. The groaning began to grow loud enough that the woman began to look suspiciously around. Closer to any second than a few minutes, Emiya judged. Circuits hot, Unlimited Blade Works loaded into the chamber, hammer cocked back. Anticipation, waiting, always the waiting.

It happened with only the slightest increase in groaning as a paltry warning: the pipes, the faucet, and a good portion of the sink exploded. In the same instant of the explosive release of pressurized water, Emiya traced Carnwennan.

Penumbral Dagger of Abolition. A dagger supposedly given to Artorious Rex Pendragon by God, graced with the power to shroud its owner in shadow, most famously used to slice a witch in half. Anti-Thaumaturgic properties, active effect, Abrahamic Divinity trace amounts— Divine materials still within Tracing range. High compatibility for Shirou EMIYA, once glimpsed in Arturia's memories transferred via the Dream Cycle in a life long forgotten except for a shadow cast in moonlight. Cataloging. Replicating presence of Arturia. Packaging. Sending false identification tags to Carnwennan. Waiting. Waiting. Wielder (Duplicate, false— the King is: dead, in Avalon, in Throne of Heroes, Location Unknown. Time of return: N/A) identification tags accepted. Active effect now linked to mental trigger. Prana reserves decreased, approximation≈ 85%. Total Od permanently lowered due to amputation, accounting. Accounted. Mana present in air; Stale, unused, polluted with high Human Concept, no sign of Grain corruption, Human Foundation Order connected, Panhuman History continued, Gaia present, timeline and impurity irregularities acceptable. Generation of Prana within acceptable parameters. High inefficiency of Od-Mana conversion noted and taken into consideration.

Pull.

Effect activated.

He vanished with the eruption of water. And in the chaos of the sink blasting across the room to smash through a loose plaster, and metal peeling like a rusted iron flower, tarnished petals snapping out with lethal speed, Emiya deftly shot his hand through a wall. There. Electrical wiring buzzed against his hand, with another mental flick, Emiya Reinforced the wattage of the electricity weakly supplying light. And then he Reinforced it some more. He Broke it.

In a dazzle of glass, bursting light, and burning filaments, the bathroom shattered into light so bright that if anyone wasn't blinded by the sheer lumens, they would have seen Emiya's silhouette obviously painted in the bathroom. But no one could see that, and in the ensuing localized blackout Emiya had created, Carnwennan shrouded him so thoroughly in the falling shadows that it was as if he had disappeared into thin air.

…

If the subtle approach failed, then it was only reasonable to go straight to the most expedient and direct route. But then again, Emiya never claimed to be reasonable. Yes, this route again forced him to take a slower, quieter approach, as much his 'infiltration' could be said to be quiet considering all. Yes, he did not have a reasonable argument as to why he persisted in it still.

Emiya stuffed himself though the long hollow walls, forcing him to angle his body completely horizontal as he tried to not breathe in too much decaying insulation and insect-laden dust. He thought wryly, they never mentioned this part in the movies. How tedious and even boring this could be. The shortcuts for an audience's entertainment, he supposed. Sneaking through the air vents had become a joke a decade old in his time, and engineering had only grown more resource scarce. No one was going to be building conveniently crawl-spaced size air ducts for him to crawl through. The half-finished construction of the Sapphire also disabused the particular Hollywood misrepresentation of information, instead of a tangled net of supporting rafters and the like, the innards of the building spanned a hollow shell of nearly twenty floors of scaffolding and loose wiring as the Voodoo Boys built around the shaky supports like metallic overgrowth. Every unsure step would send a rattle through hundreds of meters of scrap metal and recycled wooden flooring, and while not immediately giving away his skulking about, each creaking floorboard would certainly draw undue attention.

Carnwennan stuck to his person on his ever-useful cargo pants. Really, the utility of having multiple pockets and multiple belts to fasten could not be overstated. Pants, pockets, and a good old belt, iconic, indelible, irreplaceable staples of handiwork never changed, far flung future or not. But beyond admiring the durable ruggedness of his Kevlar stitched pants with multiple pockets, something had certainly stirred the Voodoo Boys up into a frenzy. That something being himself, and the possible second saboteur notwithstanding.

He was getting comfortable, wasn't he? Ducking to and fro miniscule places that could fit his tall frame barely consumed any of his attention. Mostly, he focused on tracking one very aggravated woman. His ears trained on the distinctive sound of his former guard's step cadence. Sharp, quick. Harsh as if she was trying to stomp the heels of her boots through the concrete and cement. Strange. It was almost as if she had been infuriated to the point of fruitlessly stomping her feet. Emiya shook his head mockingly. Living for eons, and he still couldn't understand women at all. What did they call that? The divide between the sexes? Maybe he was just too old-fashioned, set in his ways, at this point.

Hmph. If he was joking around like this, he might as well build himself a home here.

Anyway, the reason he tracked her in particular was two fold. One, seeing as the suspicious stranger with obvious intention for a certain datachip suddenly disappeared, she would immediately head to the location of that object and ascertain its safety through force. Or two, if this not-gang had a little more cohesion and procedures in place than he was assuming, she was certain to go to the person with the highest authority and then warn them of the present threat. In person seeing as the communication were still absent. And in that case, by following her silently to this authority, he could then attack and neutralize from there, handing himself a much greater advantage. So in short, this was all a continuation of his previous plan simply made more tangible through a, what did they call it, provoked response? Of course, determining which of the two options or other subset of actions, like fleeing from fear of punishment or even destroying the data chip herself she could take would be a feat better suited for a supercomputer with infinite time on its hands. Ergo, all but impossible for him. He could make inferences, but without a clear insight into her personality and goals, the best thing to do now was simply wait and follow.

Down through the tangled complex, his former guard walked-near ran deeper and deeper into the unfinished heart of the Sapphire. Interestingly, each time she brushed past a fearful Voodoo Boy she calmed them with a fraternal clap on the shoulder. Combined with a verbal form up and shape up saying, if Emiya was to guess.

So her position was higher than he previously thought. He also noticed, or perhaps he should say remembered, the 'invisibility' of Carnwennan had its limits. Or counters in this case. Cyberware with optical enhancements, visual acuity that transcended human limits, and limited dark vision— coupled with ancient military tech like thermal imaging and even the customary old green night vision meant that a concentrated look into a suspicious shadow would out him instantly. Here, the crude construction and emergency power saved him. There were simply too many places to hide, especially as she went further into the dugout foundation of the Sapphire, and enough shadows that with Carnwennan, he had his pick of the litter.

His own experience helped, additionally not everyone was equipped with thermal imaging, or were so paranoid to have it own constantly— even in a highly trained special operation squad, people often defaulted to preferring their own natural sight rather than scan around with only thermal scans and it was in that human fallibility Emiya exploited then and now— the Voodoo Boys were many things, refugees turned governing body, hardened criminals with a penchant for white collar crime of the highest illegality, fiercely anti-corporates judging by the twentieth FUCK ARASAKA spray paint he passed. But, evidently, strictly trained professionals they were not.

It was as simple as perching his body over the emergency red hot sodium lights and dashing to the one or two scanners' blindspot when they did a double take at the odd shadowy blob.

Finally, his former keeper reached her ultimate destination. In brusque, clipped speech— Emiya knew many languages but funnily enough he never went out of his way to learn Haitian— she gestured at a man that could only be vaguely called as such. Thick corded cables intersected and poured out of his stretched taut skin in places Emiya knew firsthand were major arteries, and they shone with an unnatural pulsating orange visible even though the sodium red of the emergency lighting.

"Brigitte—!" So that was her name, Emiya mused peripherally. The obvious leader of this base laughed in an obviously dismissive, even derisive, manner at her impassioned concerns, pointing at a nearly ten meter tall black panel overflowing with red error messages. That was probably the representation for the server farm, seeing as it was connected to a towering monolith that he previously believed to be an unconnected major support for the Sapphire. It stood from the bottom, blasted out of the dark underbelly and nearly all the way to the glassless windows of the twentieth floor. The sheer amount of data surely contained there… hard drives had terabytes of data stored in handheld portables when he died, and it was already advancing into even more ridiculous sizes by every minute of dedicated and well-funded research by very interested parties. By now, the data contained here would be astronomical in scope. Larger than some countries' total media, past, present and even future. What were they doing here? This went far beyond corporate theft and blackhat netrunning for blackmail and data reaping. This kind of investment didn't go without an equally grandiose purpose.

This was a criminally held structure operating without any kind of international oversight? This was acceptable? Even more terrifying, Gloria's contact, this Lucy, didn't even bother mentioning it. Purely concerned with a datachip about a fraction the size of it. What was this 'ghost program' to be more valuable than billions of terabytes of data?

Just how out of his depth was he? Emiya felt for the handle of Carnwennan, the boiled ox-hide leather a calming plainness. Calm. Reorient. Reexamine and change perspective. If he was out of his depth, then he only needed to create a ladder. Information, context, and leverage. How many high stakes deals had he overseen, witnessed, confronted in his life? In the lawless, wild might makes right wastelands and endless battlefields, Emiya had wandered through, such deals were dictated not by long forgotten notions of honor, fair play, or even international law, but by reputation. Strength, and of course, old fashioned blackmail and mutually assured destruction for the closest thing to trust.

All this, the server farm, the visible degradation of the future's safety and sense, and the startling influence that a gang held, they were just extraneous details. This 'ghost program' had to be far too valuable for the sum that Lucy had advertised for it, and in the most base of concerns, that meant Gloria was well within her right to demand a higher payment to clear her debt faster. One backed by the fact she, through Emiya, was able to get her hands on this 'ghost program' at all. Not that it not being directly her efforts made any difference, in this sort of world underneath the underneath, connections mattered more than direct power. In fact, Gloria knowing such a person with Emiya's abilities might even paint her in an even more mysterious and correspondingly dangerous light.

Surety of mind established, his purpose set and tightly controlled. Time to act.

Now, Emiya shot open his eyes— the hammer ratcheting back in a metallic sound of anticipation, the bullet loaded into the barrel, the explosive unreal that was Od and Mana poured into the potent solution called Prana ready to be inserted into his Circuits, the old memory of a hot iron being shoved through his spine an almost fond old phantom pain— all he needed was to secure that program!

Prana blazed through his muscle fibers, filling up space between cells, between atoms, imaginary substance pooling into every vacuity, subsequently reinforcing all all his limbs to inhumane heights; The Carnwennan Projection summarily dismissed. It would not be needed any longer. He flung himself down from his overwatch like a meteor. The concrete cratered under the force of his landing, and cracked further as he kicked off it to instantly snake his hand through Brigitte's instinctive draw and fire of a handheld automatic, a simple hypnosis spell gathered at his fingertips and activated upon landing on her neck. He instantly knocked her out and flung her limp body off to the side before she even fully saw him.

Then. Emiya moved again, flickering his body away with another kick off the ground to avoid the smattering of— explosive shells, incendiary, self-activated— shells that whizzed through the part where he originally stood. Another blast, different gun, high voltage rounds, literally crackling with ice-veined electricity, Emiya slid underneath them, and launched up with his back to slam his fist into the apparent leader of this portion of the Voodoo Boys directly in his stomach. Digestive acid ejected itself forcefully, but the leader refused to go down with a single punch. Even one reinforced by Emiya's considerable skill and aim. That was a liver shot. Coincidentally known as the knockout button in full contact sports. Disengaging, Emiya straightened up, slow and easy. He shook his wrist loose. Subdermal armor, his knuckles still tingling with the recoil-snapback of the non reactive alloy bending underneath the force. Bent but not broken. Reinforced organs as well judging by the lack of reaction. That explained the cables then.

The leader looked him up and down, a sneer grinning at his heavy lips. One of his eyes had been extended out, a high powered scope taking up a good half of his left skull hemisphere. Steaming casings popped out of the boxy looking sawed off shotguns, or laser cut off if Emiya was being pedantic. The man slid his two shotguns against his pants, slotting in more shells in the clearly practiced maneuvering. He was saying something in Haitian at him. A taunt or a battle jeering, likely.

Naturally, Emiya didn't respond at all. Much to the other man's waning amusement. Those guns were awfully troublesome. The high spread of the shortened barrels meant that even with Emiya's enhanced agility, he'd more than likely get clipped, and even a glancing shot by those electrical or flaming ammunition would break through his concentration and disrupt his Reinforcement. If he still had his Servant parameters… but he didn't. He had something much more suited for a man such as himself.

Suddenly, without any warning, Emiya launched himself at the man, taking off from a dead stop to bone shattering force. In barely a microsecond later, two booms rang out. The echoing strike of manmade thunder predated the two regions of intersecting death that was directly in Emiya's path.

A clang like a hammer on an anvil swallowed the artificial thunder. A wide tower shield, proudly emblazoned with a roaring lion and now less proudly adorned with sixteen scorch and burn marks slammed into the leader's chin, and then while the man was still reeling from the impossibility of a medieval shield appearing out of nowhere, Emiya pulled his arm back and slammed the blunted tip of the shield hard into the Voodoo Boy Boss' throat. Nine kilograms, or twenty pounds seeing as they were in the home of the customary system, of heavy castle forged steel straight into a man's windpipe.

Obviously, the leader choked. Organic appearing-eye popping out of his skull. Not done, Emiya swept out the large man's feet with a kick that could have cracked knees. On the long way down, he flipped the shield, the flat dented lion leering down vengefully at the bulging-eyes of the man and brought it down. The last thing the boss saw was a grinning lion, getting closer, closer; the always pleasant realization clear against all the ringing confusion of the storm of the last second: oh this was going to hurt.

All the power in the world and he had been a starving, thirsting, walking corpse, but strip him human again and Emiya was practically breezing through any obstacles. It went to show. Everything had a price, and fool to the one who forgot that. Emiya glanced down at the crumpled up heap of Brigitte, the broken and bloodied nose of the boss. Although he admitted, this price might have been not so aptly deserved. He may, may have been a little too excited. Slightly intoxicated from the release from the heavy weight of impending non-existence and looming return to his janitorial duties, like a man suddenly out of an exciting prison for the first time in years, Emiya could admit it to himself, he had let himself get carried away.

But, regardless, all was over and done with now.

Slowly, Emiya stood up. Oddly enough he didn't dismiss the shield as he did with Carnwennan. Moving to the small juncture where the stairs ended in this nadir, he considered it's dimensions, and then with a shrug of his shoulders, forcefully jammed the wide shield as a makeshift door. That would buy him some time, time he needed as someone would have noticed those gunshots, and time that also had to be used seeing as he was forced to knockout the leader instead of pulling information out of him. But ah… Emiya didn't believe in torture's effectiveness— in effect, pain become much less loosening someone's lips, and degenerated into approaching outright sadism. And seeing as how most people would say anything to escape from the pain, that made it's veracity even more circumspect— and seeing as how badly his hypnosis skills were, he'd more likely to jumble the man's brain into spaghetti before pulling out any useful information from him. A conversation, he could also admit, was the last thing on his mind.

So it was back to the good old fashioned, looking around and picking up anything that was shiny and or looked vaguely like what he needed. The blank monitor was an obvious choice, hooked up to the server farm as it was. Now, just how was he supposed to turn it on? There didn't happen to be a handy tactile switch right? A symbol on a button showing a circle bisected by a line anywhere?

The screen flicked on as he approached it. No flicker-sense of a triggered motion switch, no visual recognition of his person which should have alerted anyone that he wasn't supposed to be here regardless, and no immediately discernible reason for a screen turning on without any input.

Wasn't everything supposed to be defunct due to a currently unaccounted for attack? His brow raised, Emiya took a cautious step forward.

A clear, elegant voice sprouted from the clunky, cobbled out of spare parts computer thing. "No need to be afraid, Yurei-san."

Amusement spelled out in concise, refined speech. In the monitor, a grainy image of an Asian, Japanese woman waited. Courteous smile on lipstick, aristocratic features that sharpened even that gentle expression into something vaguely disquieting. It was like her bones were too pronounced to be the same kind of humanity as the rest of them. Haunting beautiful, obviously, but in a way that discouraged hopeless romantics. A sculpture of a woman.

A white ring burned around her eyes, in them, haloing her dark pupils. "You are very talented, Yurei-san. I have seen little better so thoroughly dismantle another. It was very impressive watching you work." So... The second infiltrator then, was it?

Emiya noted her English was accented, heavily so. "As are you." He replied. For a moment he considered offering to speak in Japanese… but he decided against it. Better to keep his hand close to his chest in this case.

Her gentle smile uplifting slightly at the corners, she paid no mind to his recalcitrance. "I see we have both observed the possible greetings and now, as they say in your city, shall we get down to business?" Her voice kept that same light, even tone as if they were merely discussing the weather and were not talking in the very heartblood of a heavily armed criminal hideout. "I assume you are here for the Shard?"

Shard. Chip. Datachip. Datashard. So is that what they called them these days?

Emiya inclined his head, listening with one ear to the sound of the Voodoo Boys mobilizing directly behind his shield wall. They had heard the gunshots and decided to organize, then. Smart. He leaned on his hip a little, letting his muscles unspool out from their heightened state. They wouldn't attack for a good while now. Rounding up their fellows to attack in a concentrated effort spoke well of their decision making, but on the other side of that coin, it could also be described as cautious. They were rightly so, of course, but it bought him some time for this.

"I could be."

"You are. A man such as you would not come here for anything less." She said, completely confident. Her earring gleamed in the light of her surroundings, but he couldn't make out a thing from its gold reflection. Not even when he subtly reinforced his eyes. Hm. So it was like that.

"Hmm." Instead of responding to her statement, he let it sit in the air. "Seems like you got to it first then." She didn't respond affirmatively or negatively to his assumption. Hm. He let a smirk slip onto his face. "Makes this a bit out of a pointless conversation then."

Unfazed. Her rouge painted eyelids inched upwards in carefully portioned disapproval. "A shame you think as such, Yurei-san. But perhaps you only believe so out of your own efforts."

Touché.

"Very fitting for a Yurei, no?" The banter flowed easily, naturally, mostly from effort on her part, Emiya was only halfway engaged. The Voodoo Boys were nearly ready to charge, and mentally searching through his Unlimited Blade Works, he once again mourned how very literal that naming sense was. He could hear the countdown, in Haitian again, but even a fool would recognize a set pattern going down—

In a delicate tone, she interjected through his internal scrutinization. "You seem distracted, Yurei-san." A hidden offer if he'd ever heard one. Something like, would you like me to take care of that for you? that went loudly unsaid. Like discussing a ringing alarm clock, a forgotten flame left unattended, the women on the screen used the exact same tone one might choose to describe a fleeting irritance for the apparent distraction. He almost felt sorry for the Voodoo Boys now. And Emiya thought his luck was poor.

She must be a Netrunner of some skill, especially if she was this comfortable in assaulting an organization renowned for exactly that. To add to insult, there was also the attitude she unconsciously or perhaps consciously adopted towards the Voodoo Boys. As if they were nothing more than a nuisance. Untrue obviously if she decided to handle things in a somewhat personal fashion for this 'ghost program'. But how untrue was the question? And of course, what were her motivations in seeking out that program. Similar to his? Or…

Playing along with her , Emiya shrugged. Looking completely disaffected by the incoming assault on his person with incredible violence. "Do I?" Thirty to forty combatants, the most immediate persons within range without their communications network— heavily armed, lethal weaponry, willingness to use lethal force included. He said, mildly, "Maybe you're just not saying anything worth my attention."

A loud silence followed from the elegant woman.

The image on the screen obscured any revealing details, obviously through some digital visual software that automatically scrambled her location— not something most would even think of, blurring the image of a reflection from someone's earring? Ridiculous assurances, which spoke of a wealth and power that deserved such securities— he also assumed it hid any micro expressions that would give away her thinking. Proven, Emiya thought, by the obvious smoothness and non reaction when he so obviously insulted her. Eyes well used to shooting a target over 2 kilometers away, could easily spot the too smooth pixelation of her features that showed the program's hand. Oh, it was designed to be 'natural' but even with that intangible human quality, machines were helpless to not display some kind of pattern. Naturally, all these efforts at deception and uncovering deception were utterly meaningless on both their parts as Emiya didn't understand such micro expressions anyway. He, in a friend of his' words, was always a bit of an idiot when it came to these kinds of things. Such manipulations and cold reading in his opinion were overrated and prone to catastrophic failure anyway.

Also, the Voodoo Boys had finally made their move.

Quickly linked explosives jury rigged to aim their destructive payload in a singular direction finally erupted, shattering his steel shield imbued with a slight defensive hardening mystery in one go. Shards of furled and blacked steel faded in a flurry of flickering blue. The unstructured prana eagerly sucked up by the starving World. Emiya considered tracing the exact same shield and planting it in the same place, if only for his amusement at the Voodoo Boy's confusion and dismay. But… leaving a problem where it could continue to fester never sat well with him. So instead, Emiya just reached down and grabbed a handful of shotgun shells on their fallen leader's belt.

Structural Grasp, Alteration, and hint of Reinforcement later, he held out his hand like a gambler about to roll his last fortunes and threw.

A shout rang out as multiple fast moving objects pierced through the smoke, warning others of the attack, but human communication had the all important fallacy of time, in other words it was too late to do anything but allow some Voodoo Boys to duck for cover. It didn't matter.

First: the shotgun shells he had taken from the incendiary side suddenly burst precisely 0.5 microseconds after leaving his hand, an explosively fast reaction that produced more force and pressure than the extreme heat it previously held. Second: the electrical shells made up of a complex alloy mixture that had yet to be discovered in Emiya's time but was now perfectly understood by him after a single use of Structural Grasp, blew outwards in fragile soft metal confetti. The magnetized chaff, blown outwards from the modified incendiary shells, flew towards the next most polarized material. The cyberware on the Voodoo boys and metal bits on their weaponry. That was Alteration.

Then came Emiya's Reinforcement. Lightning surged, bolts of arcing energy so high in voltage it struck vivid blue cracks through the air. Blinding. Beautiful. Distracting. Immobilizing. Emiya dashed through the smoke, eyes swiveling in supernatural speed to root any combatants still standing or merely pretending to be knocked by the intense shock. Three, Four, Four and One, One twitched their gunarm to aim up to Emiya's face. Electrical insulation already present, concussive shock rating weakened by already present defenses, some firearms uniquely sparking? Electronic firearms? Insulation too invested to be a simple inbuilt safety measure against ordinary use. Electrical based warfare seemingly far more common in the future than expected. Countermeasures already existed. Emiya flattened his body to the side, forcing the gunman to take even longer to aim for the smaller profile, but by the time they had gotten to a good sighting, Emiya had already reached them. Neatly disarming them by slamming his palm into their wrist— crack, a high yelp— Emiya continued the motion, grabbing onto the now broken wrist and rotating his entire body. Flipped the gunman over his shoulder and breathless on the ground, still pinning the painfully twisted arm against his body, Emiya snapped it across his leg, against the elbow joint. And then he was bursting off again, in a blur of reinforced movement.

The next Voodoo Boy had pulled herself off the ground, when her stomach went concave from Emiya's knee assisting in it's rise, she hung in the air for a single moment, spittle and vomit flung out of her mouth and suspended in motion, when he grabbed her by her shimmery jacket and slammed her into a nearby railing. Her head rung like a bell, he quickly Altered her jacket to form seamlessly and form a makeshift straightjacket tying her to the railing.

A bullet cracked against his armor, slight webbed crater on foremost layer of torso piece, spread took rest of the impact, high velocity round, low caliber. Conclusion: Barely a bruise. The second shot buzzed past his shoulder, Emiya went low and swung back up with an uppercut that bounced the woman's skull against the low ceiling. Too much force, possible physical trauma induced aneurysm. Lighter skeleton than assumed. No, instinctive activation of leg cyberware, assisted jumping. Fear response, to dodge away, redirected force resulting in greater risk of permanent injury. He really needed to form at least a layman's understanding of all this human-enhanced cyberware before his ignorance put worse than a bullet into him and worser to another. When he had a little more time on his hands, there was going to be nothing he didn't know about cyberware— he'd read the manual, front to back, and sideways before he'd get caught off guard by another superhuman ability being casually tossed by regular humans.

Catching her in a gentle neck brace formed by his grip, Emiya shot the simple hypnosis sleep spell through her neck to her spine. She slumped in his grip, and he laid her down, after a shallow Structural Grasp to ensure no severe bleeding was inside her skull. Ignoring the complex machinery inside, tempting him to study it, he confirmed her state and smoothly ducked.

The pneumatic sledgehammer put a hole in the wall and not his head, and as Emiya spun around to catch the next swing with his hand on the long handle, he raised his eyebrow at the still buzzing with electricity Voodoo Boy staring up a man much taller than his skinny frame, completely interwoven with lean muscle, and bullet-resistant armor. The lack of the arm didn't even seem to register the fact Emiya had caught his weapon as he stared to the calm, almost casual eyes that regarded him quietly. The shock, the fear, the sobering realization after the immediate adrenaline had faded that this man had taken out nearly thirty three of his friends and who knows how many more his fellow Voodoo Boys, it was all too much.

The boy fainted on his feet.

Emiya snapped the sledgehammer with his foot, throwing the heavy pneumatic head off into a dusty corner, going back to the knocked out Brigitte and leader and the woman on the screen, he offhandedly crushed any weapon along his way underneath his Reinforced boot. Carbon fiber shards, aluminum, and ceramic polymer shards crunched underneath his feet as he went back up to the screen. Unfazed from the attack or his counterattack which had only taken thirty seconds, the woman on the screen observed him coolly.

He slightly bowed his head. "Sorry, had to step out for a bit."

"It is no issue, Yurei-san." Her eyes hardened. Ah… that familiar tone, which was concerning for its familiarity all on its own. "What I do take issue with, is your previous ill-mannered insults. When exchanging pleasantries, it does not do to tire of their length and say any discourteous thought that drifts through your head." She leaned back, huffing a little. "Your time is not worth so much as it can be wasted by simple niceties, no?" A statement hardly pretending to be a question. She had the bearing of royalty, he could say that at least. Piercing gaze, poise totally out of place in this dank darkness and ramshackle collapse, the absolute confidence of her place and her position in the world.

The last time he had been so thoroughly rebuked, well, actually there were too many times for him to count. His master Rin was probably the most recent, but from observing Emiya Shirou in the many Holy Grail Wars Emiya had been summoned to, Saber had nearly always become thoroughly tired of her master's bumbling ways and proceeded to take it up as her duty to educate him by the second time the fool rushed to certain death. Unfortunate then, that the courtly manners and chivalry the King of Knights tried to instill in that boy had faded away long ago.

"There, we would disagree. Miss Stalker." Emiya replied. "My time is very valuable to me." Rare things generally tended to be, even if he tended to disagree personally. "So spending it entertaining some bored princess, feels quite painful in truth."

Her eyes narrowed, a slight downwards tilt of the finely brushed hairs. "So you respond to fair criticism with further proof of your crassness. Perhaps I had the wrong measure of you."

"Perhaps you have." A smirk played on Emiya's lips. She was irked, a thin crack in her impenetrable facade. Something human shone through the cool confidence of the elite, for a man who had followed nothing but lies and been betrayed countless times… it could be even said to be refreshing to peel away the superficial shallowness called self-importance. "You can consider me just another man with too much power in his hands," He paused, corrected himself with a small laugh, "hand. A mercenary without loyalty, morality or anything so silly as manners. Which is why. I won't just hand over this Shard to you."

Her expression smoothed out again, the false smile plainly frozen on her features. The airbrushing software clearly at work again. Conversations, for these types of people, the kind to believe in the adage of time is money, never spoke freely or casually. If they seemed to do so, they were merely putting on a thin veneer that barely concealed their insatiable appetites. So then, assuming that was true of this woman too, she must have had a reason to speak to him. And certainly wasn't for his less than stellar manners or fleeting curiosity as proven by her still deigning to speak to him even after he had been so explicitly dislikable and disagreeable. That left only one reasonable conclusion to be drawn from his available information.

He had said it before, hadn't he? They were both after the same thing.

It seemed the Voodoo Boys weren't foolish enough to carelessly leave such a valuable bargaining chip thoughtlessly connected to a node where any hacker-Netrunner could breach. It all came to physical connections in the end.

The woman in the screen watched him carefully. "As I thought. My measure of you was mistaken from the start. Now then," She cleared her throat, but he had a feeling it wasn't because she was nervous. "As they say, all the chips are down…" Accent peeking through quite strongly, a note of distaste there too. "Let us make a deal, Yurei-san."

Emiya crossed his arms—this was just getting annoying now. Aborting the motion, he felt the arm about to go to scratch the back of his head, an awkward habit that somehow still lingered. So he just kept it hanging to his side, his empty hand feeling a little useless. "Let's."

Next time, he would bring a coat.

…

"So, in the first place, just what has everyone so worked up over this ghost program?" Emiya asked, actually quite curious over what had caused the entire debacle. For such a small thing, so much trouble. Trouble came in all shapes and sizes, after all.

The low hum over the server farm vibrated all the little hairs on his body incessantly, a sort of low ultrasonic frequency that rubbed at his gums with his shaking teeth. Emergency lights dyed in a paradoxically concealing deep orange red further blanketed the claustrophobic depth. Sodium vapor lights, excited gaseous particles that radiated out a light that had a certain way of reducing any other color but its own smothering own, were the radioactive cherry on a carcinogenic cupcake. Actually, sodium vapor lights didn't deserve all the blame, their effects were more a principle of the light wave emission spectrum that all but removed the color indexing spectrum rather than actual malicious intent.

(—But the blue of the World's Contract, the intangible unreality of magecraft practically consumed that choking light, even swallowing the noise of the blaring clarion was purposeful. Made of direction and arcane in its unknowable calculation and infinite depth. An unnatural tint of blue, not truly blue but simply in the shape of the highest color on the visible spectrum, a representation of the Radiance and enormous density of the energy a World Spirit had as so a natural result of its being. Not even that impossible real quieted the hushed, closed mouth sobbing. The silent tears that threatened to shatter a heart of glass. Everything he always strove to obtain in front of him. Everything he had left behind, dragged after him like dead weight that he forced himself relive—)

"You are asking me?" Still overly neutral, Miss Stalker brought a hand demurely to cover her mouth in a show of poorly hidden amusement. Saccharine sweet, she said, "I am honored by the trust you place in me."

"Trust, hmm." Emiya supposed they could call this arrangement trust. Trust in the expectations they presumed of each other, he trusted her to act in her best interests, to not do anything that would endanger her current goals here. She trusted him in return to act in the persona he had shown her— not a lie in truth, but enough half-truths and obfuscations that there really was no better conclusion for her to draw— and to work firstly, for greed. Mercenaries were mercenary after all. He shrugged. Abrasive, too. "Just like to know I'm getting my money's worth."

Her dark eyes studied him, and she overlaid her fingers in her lap, austere metallic phalanges clinking even through the call. Those looked cold, Emiya noted rather illogically. Sure, metal tended to conduct heat far more rapidly than organic materials like flesh, bone and keratin. The argument gained speed in his head; And even if those were equipped with some over-engineered micro generators to mimic natural human heat convection, the way the cool metal seamlessly melded with skin, well, it attracted his attention at the very least.

They just looked a little uncomfortable, that's all.

More grimly, he thought; another decorative accessory like her fluorescent ringed pupils? Gold and white, aurum and ivory, a far off jewel compared to the dull, threaded black of his armor, and non-reflective dull black again only lined by white at the insistence of someone he had long forgotten the identity and name of. An image with very obvious intentions, but nonetheless, her composure, rich finery and expert manners, all this and more reinforced a certain idea in others' eyes. An appealing, if not charming woman from a powerful family. Whose very perception inspired trust. People listened more to those who held themselves with confidence, to those with appealingly symmetrical faces, to even those with abject wealth and power.

Charisma borne of primal social dynamics such as that, like vestigial organs, usually ended up being more trouble than they were worth.

But to Emiya, who had stared down rulers, warlords and everything in between along with every flavor of affluent intellectuals with aspirations for absolute power and influence regardless of the cost, personal or collateral— although mostly in situations where he was to face them in pitched battle— her charisma might as well have been cheap perfume waved under his nose as if to entice a slobbering dog.

Consequently, he remained completely neutral under her piercing deliberation.

She nodded, satisfied somehow even through his boorish indifference. "The Shard we seek, would be better described as a peerless treasure whose price, as your client may have forgotten to inform you," Doublespeak, and sowing discord, lovely, spoken so naturally he could hardly notice it in her cool, factual explanation. Lovelier, "should be better estimated in minor countries' total networth." She said, voice inflectionless, "After all, any program that can slip into Arasaka ICE and reap untold terabytes of unaltered data on the world's greatest mega corporation is one whose value cannot be overstated." Her lips curled. "Of course, that is the 'truth' the Voodoo Boys would have you believe. Their 'ghost' program is hardly so subtle or insidious. They may have gleaned surface level statistics and meagre intelligence from the lower echelons of Arasaka, namely the forgotten remnants of the old Tower, but trying to slip deeper into Arasaka security, only served to alert others to the fattened rats gnawing at the wiring."

Emiya rubbed his chin, "Then it sounds like my client saw through the hype and paid me appropriately." There was an implicit question in any explanation from a 'trustworthy' not quite ally, definitely not friend, and uncertain enemy. Was she being honest about the capabilities of this item, or was she downplaying its effectiveness in order to make him lower his guard… Unfortunately, he didn't have anyone else to verify it for him, or the skillset necessary to discern if she was lying through her teeth on every word she spoke.

A congenial, placating mysterious smile might as well have been attached onto her face for how well stuck there. Like fermented beans on rice. Difficult to stomach. "Perhaps," she said, agreeing.

"But that doesn't explain why you haven't sent your own 'help' to retrieve this shard for you the moment you realized it needed a more… physical touch." He wondered out loud. "And…" Emiya dragged the word out. "I'm unsure if this little rat program really is so small, if it deserves the personal touch of yourself." Pointing this logical fallacy to her explanation, smug confidence poured out from his every pore. "Seems rather overkill for someone with your abilities."

"You flatter me, Yurei-san." The woman in the screen was unmoved. "If we are returning to the courteous praises," all his boundless smugness instantly turned into a scowl. " Then I surely must not have to inform you as to why sending even an elite team to confront, how did you put it? Ah, someone with your abilities, would conclude in, no? The risk of destroying the Shard, whether by spiteful intention or through collateral, is simply too high. "

"Maybe." Why did he continue to bother trying to win a battle of politeness with her? It was clear he was vastly outmatched in that regard. Emiya put his foolish pride away, sobering. He had thought that was her reason, but it was interesting to get confirmation. The cameras were broken, by now what he could definitely assume was a consequence of her breaching of the Voodoo Boy's local net, so then just how was she tracking his progress? Advanced sensor suites inbuilt into the walls that she had wrested control over from the Voodoo Boys? Emiya didn't recall seeing anything nearly so sophisticated in their insulation— but perhaps blurry satellite imaging and finicky thermal imaging had shrunk to a point where it competed with the dust mites. Or was she simply making a highly informed hypothesis of his skills and danger by the fact he had gotten this far with nary a scratch? That could be it, but she spoke as if she had personal, almost intimate understanding of his capabilities. A little unsettling, to say the least. She couldn't be seeing out of the optical cyberware of the Voodoo Boys, could she? To disrupt a local net, then somehow continue to remotely view through cyberware, that to their owner's perspective had been rendered disconnected due to the local net's shutdown, spoke of a mastery that bordered on fantasy. Or masquerade a shutdown local net to use for her own observational purposes, on the hometurf of known netrunners? He simply did not know enough…

"Maybe meaning yes, I suppose." She gestured a hand out to the side, a peace offering in the ease of an open palm. "I can see you are uncomfortable with well deserved compliments, but do to take care that your self-abasement does not cause you to underestimate yourself."

She really was buttering him up like a garlic and herb roasted lobster. Emiya almost went to scan his surroundings for the darkened interior of an oven, trussed up like a prime piece of shellfish he was. The pangs from his stomach were making themselves known in rather colorful methods, weren't they? "Let's move on from useless gratification, shall we? Now that I know," he said, in a manner that spoke how exactly little he did know, "what I'm dealing with… Your offer. Convince me."

Quietly, she watched him. With a slow delicateness, she wondered, "After defending your client's identity and intentions previously, you so easily turn your back to them? A man who holds himself to no one and nothing is a dangerous man indeed."

Emiya scoffed. "I haven't been convinced yet, have I? Don't be so arrogant, maybe I'm only after your offering price if only to compare it to my own." Which… was exactly what he was doing. Not that she would have any idea of that, funny. No one ever expected Emiya to be honest for some reason. It was as if Emiya naturally presented this conniving, untrustful, deceptive, manipulative bastard facade. Honestly, it was a little hurtful. Sharing with himself a thin smile, Emiya continued, "For that matter, are you even sure you can buy me?"

She stared. Unblinking, eyes a little wide. The most open and honest expression so far on her beautiful face.

A tad uncomfortable with that genuine scrutiny, Emiya suppressed a fidget to turn his body language away and duck his head. "What?" He asked, curt. Defensive.

"No. It is nothing," she replied in a tone that strongly said otherwise. The self-satisfied smile playing at her lips, and the hand that went up to chastely hide it only intensified the worry niggling at the back of his head. He had made a blunder, again, hadn't he? "Merely surprised at your audacity, Yurei-san." But even her admonishments seemed lighter somehow. More poking rather than sharply prodding.

Emiya didn't like it.

But before he could muster up some suitably rude and offensive thing to put her on the backfoot, she continued as if nothing had occurred at all. Her voice was deliberately light and even, as she delineated out the terms she was offering. "The standard asking price for these sorts of commissions, subtracting the fact you are already at location and beyond any sort of significant risk, but adding in the quality and assurance of your work I have witnessed," Crunching the numbers silently inside her head, the women in the screen paused or a notably dramatic enough time, and then stated quite clearly.

"1,000,000 Eurodollars as a starting price."

He choked on air. He knew she was rich, obviously by the understated quality of other clothing, and the trained grace she held herself with, but to throw a million dollars, no matter how senseless inflation had become for simply retrieving to what amounted for a USB stick?!

Taking his strained silence for something else, she feigned a frown. Then nodded as if convincing herself of a difficult proposition. "1.5 million then."

Afraid of how much higher she would raise that staggering amount, Emiya quickly coughed into his hand, a pleading gesture for her to stop.

She didn't. Her eyes innocently wide in exaggerated surprise, she gasped. "I did not think I would offend you, Yurei-san! As an apology, please. Another million then, which would bring your 'price' to 3.5 million."

"That's… you added two million." He sounded numb, defeated even to his own ears. With that money, he wondered disantly, how many non-stick pans and pots could he buy with that? Enough to use Michelin star approved steel only once and still manage to cook for one's entire life and several generations after. Dumbly, that's a lot of pans.

She agreed, gravely. "A very meager apology from I to you."

Emiya had been raised comfortably, every need provided for by the the hefty offshore bank accounts Emiya Kiritsugu had carefully and indifferently amassed over his work, a lifetime of cutthroat and blood cut missions undertaken at a pace most would consider suicidal leaving the man to have a 'reasonable nest egg' after his retirement. And then... After. He had lived from hand to mouth, subsisting off the grace of strangers as those accounts, and when even that was too much for the suicidal fool, survived through the insanely stupid idea of Projcting food and drink until he made it to someplace where he could trade his services for actual resources, Emiya Kiritsugu's loving last insurance for his son meant nothing in the barely civilised battlefields and wartorn countries Emiya Shirou had lived and died in. It was no wonder his body had charred and darkened with grit when he lived like that, like running an engine with its own exhaust as fuel, it was inevitable something had to give, and his body, as ever, was the first to give in long before Emiya Shirou's ideals would even crack. He never truly experienced the powerlessness and heartless indifference that was poverty in truth, but the hunger forever gnawing , ganshing, wanting and the endlessly spanning desert called thirst that gave no mercy? It had been carved into his bones. Both the value of a single dollar to its tremendous uselessness had sunk into his flesh and skin. Even if he forgot the specifics of those memories, the paths he tread long since disappearing into the unforgiving sand, even those who he had tried so desperately to save dead and unremembered, these were more than memories, these were physical legacies, scars that were not scars, but that had stained him in much the same permanence, that made up every atom of this pseudo-physical form.

They centered him. He took in a breath, feeling the dust and grit of poor ventilation, the warmth under his feet from the geothermal activity. A reminder of where he was, when he was, and what he was doing. Exhaled the confusion, the apprehensions, and lingering cultural hangovers out. When next he spoke, it was with an unshakeable calm. "That will do." Emiya planted a smirk on his face. "You'll get your Shard."

She said nothing during his short moment, but raised an eyebrow at how quick he was to recover. "I never doubted—"

Emiya interrupted her. "If you make sure that your 'help' forgets I was ever here. I'd like to actually enjoy the fruits of my efforts."

Her eyes narrowed. "Do you think so little of integrity? Of dignity and deals struck in honor?" Now she sounded a little too much like Saber. In words only. Certainly not in the open expression or the startling frank genuineness, although to act with the same doubtless chivalry and genuine nobility of the King of Knights was a difficult path that many had tried and failed to walk. The woman in the screen, with enough money to forget its value, was a far cry from that idiotic ideal.

Emiya shrugged, the words washing over him like water off a duck. "Like you said, I'm just that sort of man." he rolled his shoulder, something coursing through his frame, alertness, a return to action, movement. "A drop off location or handoff?" he stated, making sure that she knew that for the time for banter was done and over with.

All business now, her eyes flashed orange. Holocall. "I have organized an agent of mine to meet you outside. They will find you." He had assumed as such.

Then, nothing. She had disconnected.

Something like a sigh left him as the screen snapped to an inky black. Whatever life that was present in the machine, absent, the quick rush of dark almost cold. Seemed like whatever interest the woman on the other side had in him quickly evaporated when he took her deal so easily. Hopefully.

There was a sudden weightlessness, the drop off tension leaving him like a rubber band that had been stretched taut too long and now when released, had the stretch marks leave him gray and painfully loose. A part of him knowing that for now, the danger had passed. The tension snapped, the arrow already loosed and now it was the small, almost peaceful, wait for the arrow to hit its target— a strange analogy for an archer to make perhaps, but Emiya didn't miss. The negotiations were completed, the threats dealt with or pacified accordingly, and the all too human machine known as EMIYA could finally shut off overheated magical circuits. It wasn't so much as a well worn exhalation after a long day, Emiya Shirou experienced exhaustion, weariness, and pain like everyone else.

He just much preferred them over the hollow sense inside himself that never left.

Which was why, he immediately set about to scouring the entire Voodoo Boy hideout for the Shard he had bargained for without even having.

How hard could finding one tiny, smaller than a flash drive, little chip worth 3.5 million eurodollars be?

As it turned out. Not very, with a liberal use of Structural Analysis, Emiya approached a section of the towering pillar of Servers and Data Storage, just half a meter away from the monitor in which he just negotiated a deal with, sunken into the wall of scrolled red binary code and liquid crystals, a tiny recesses that was so smoothly integrated into the glossy black, that it was nigh undetectable through any normal means that didn't literally include stripping down the entire base screw by screw. Insulated by uncommon materials and with a Faraday Cage around it to block even the minuscule chance of being interacted with through some electronic wavelength even though the Shard's carrying capacity didn't include such a wireless feature, the Emiya reached out with his hand, and pressed a seemingly integrated button to open the tiny safe.

A drawer slid out with a hiss of air, and in the center of a strange almost liquid foam that retreated under his fingertips, the Shard sat.

Emiya hefted the nearly weightless thing up, eyeing it with both natural vision and the 3d blueprint top down, side to side, sliced perspectives of Structural Analysis. The level of microscopic intricacy beggared belief and then mugged it at nanoscopic metaphorical gunpoint. If his contemporary flash drives were towering cities full of skyscrapers upon a fingernail, then the Shard here was a country entombed into the length of a microchip and the width of a melting piece of ice. Both the durability and the making of this, boggled the mind. Laser cut as just a start and then further altered at the microscopic level by using biomechanical virus bacteriophages that had been neutered to execute only miniscule tasks, those servitors then built the rest of the Shard's necessarily minuscule infrastructure out of superconducting material and silicon by carving out the structures. The bedrock for these microscopic structures was of a synthetic material that superficially resembled graphene, but its atomic structure and properties were so divergent from anything Emiya had ever seen that it took several moments for him to comprehend, much less understand it's composition as still Carbon. Safe to say, that it wouldn't break by a careless drop or even gentle stomping.

He marveled at the peerless ability of whoever created the first Datashard, how it's making was so engineered and the resources used to make it so commonplace and cheaply refined that with the current industry base of the world's corporations and it's sheer efficiency in make, that it was so commonplace as to entirely replaced USBs, flash drives, and any storage medium from his time to the now even though all it's capabilities exceeded theirs by a ridiculously wide margin. He turned it over in his fingers, projecting a wedding ring case— the most discrete yet secure container for such a small thing that he was able to imagine near instantly— on the nearest flat surface. It really was a marvel, and from the mind bogglingly complex and breadth of code he could barely 'see' with Structural Grasping, it had been used to store an even more beautiful labyrinth of programming genius. Priceless to the point where it had become like the advent of denim jeans in his day for its sheer utility, a utterly unique gem in which it had no equal save for itself, and with the Voodoo Boy's mastercraft safely and securely writ upon its nanostructures, well worth the absurd price of it's retrieval.

He placed the Shard delicately besides the ring case. Before finishing his business here, he admired it one more time, within him the wonder of a layman seeing a work of art that even in their uneducated and novice eyes seemed to be the pinnacle of skill and singular talent. He then turned over his open hand so it faced palm side up and…

Projected an exact copy of the Shard complete with the Arasaka Ghost Program.

…

 

[ptbptb]

By his estimations the water pipes would explode to a negligible pressure explosion as liquid built up and received no outlet from his carefully ruined faucet

Click to shrink...

What the heck crazy kind of plumbing do they have in 2077(ish)?

If pipes blew up every time you turned the tap off you wouldn't be able to walk the streets for all the plumbers queueing up to repair people's flooded apartments and houses.

The only way it would work would be if
1) Water is only let into the pipes from the mains when the taps are already open.
2) All plumbing is intentionally made so that the pipes in people's apartments will explode under mains pressure*.
3) Water connections from the mains to the individual apartments is constantly adjusted to keep up with how far open the taps are.
and
4) Every tap is electrically wired, and probably on Bluetooth.

* In skyscrapers, and to a lesser extent shorter high-rise buildings, it isn't so much 'mains pressure' as a complicated system of water tanks, risers and pumps is used to keep pressure to the plumbing at reasonable levels.

 

[HeroOfTime4298]

Another amazing chapter! Keep up the good work!

 

[ArtemisAvant]

What the heck crazy kind of plumbing do they have in 2077(ish)?

If pipes blew up every time you turned the tap off you wouldn't be able to walk the streets for all the plumbers queueing up to repair people's flooded apartments and houses.

The only way it would work would be if
1) Water is only let into the pipes from the mains when the taps are already open.
2) All plumbing is intentionally made so that the pipes in people's apartments will explode under mains pressure*.
3) Water connections from the mains to the individual apartments is constantly adjusted to keep up with how far open the taps are.
and
4) Every tap is electrically wired, and probably on Bluetooth.

* In skyscrapers, and to a lesser extent shorter high-rise buildings, it isn't so much 'mains pressure' as a complicated system of water tanks, risers and pumps is used to keep pressure to the plumbing at reasonable levels.

Click to shrink...

When writing this, i mostly added the embellishments of it actually blasting the faucet off and other more explosive reaction for the sake of... cool, I will also say it was a offshoot of how the building is so incomplete that the voodoo boys had to make their own plumbing. And since I can't imagine they don't have any plumbing experience, you get boom!

Or something, wouldn't put it past Cyberpunk to have number two be a possibility.

 

[Young Pyromancer]

Sick. Hand off the copy, keep the original? You can even dispel it later and make them think they lost it.

 

[St0rmweaver]

Projected an exact copy of the Shard complete with the Arasaka Ghost Program.

Click to shrink...

Alright, I admit it. I smirked. I Archer-smirked even.

 

[ArtemisAvant]

VI: City Ruins

…

The air was brisk, the sun just beginning to lift over the cramped horizon, the sea breeze awash with chemical runoff and that particular Night City eau de cologne, decay and destitution. Pacifica arose to the new day to a shared cultural norm. A hangover, two decades of hard narcotics in and twenty shots too much, if it caught your fancy.

Emiya strode right out the front door of the Sapphire Hotel, un-accosted.

Walking into the dusk lit parking lot, he squinted against the fluorescent glare of the streetlamps and the blinding far-off headlights of a SUV. Heavyset, blackout, tinted windows. That kind of SUV. The silhouette of a tall man waited in the headlight's epicenter. Details were sparse to none against the too bright glare. The man was well filled out, but no obvious signs of weaponry, and yet Emiya felt that belief held as much water as it did when looking at himself. Footsteps echoing against the cracked asphalt with the caw of seagulls, he approached without pause. A carrier bag he had 'appropriated' from the Voodoo Boys hung limply in his single hand.

At five meters, he heard a "Stop." Heavy Japanese accent, heavier than the woman in the screen's by far. Almost similar to the country dialect, but not the twang he associated with it. "Wait there. I will come to you."

Emiya did as he was told, even hanging his arm to the side to show his lack of armaments Closing his eyes, mostly out of the desire to not blind himself before he was thirty going on several eons, he drawled out, "Delivery's in the bag, if that helps."

The other man didn't respond to his helpful addition. He heard two steps towards him, the bag taken out his hand, and a rustling as the man fished out the case the datashard was stored in. A harsh, snappish tone rang out. "There is another item here."

Emiya said, without missing a beat, "Consider it as my compliments to your boss."

The man barked out a laugh. Long, loud, like he heard the funniest joke in the world. "Boss?" He still sounded like he was laughing, the restrained mirth just underneath his words. "You think too small, faithless mercenary."

Emiya frowned, disliking the turnabout. Now that the shoe was on the other foot, having the inside joke be on him rather than the other way around was more discomfiting then he recalled. "Enlighten me." He didn't disagree with the other man's more than accurate assessment of his character. Faith had never quite agreed with Emiya.

(—a beautiful woman. Compassion like the mother of God. Theotokos. Bodhisattva. She was the most perfect woman in the world and he had to kill her. Before he did. She broke him first. Breaking him ever so slowly with words he should have never heard. The Sword rusted. The Sheath was given away long ago. The forge clouded with choking smog and the sky darkened to a point where the sun went forgotten. The only faith he kept, the admiration he had for those impossible ideals… twisted until they too snapped under the strain—)

Emiya shook his head, shaking off the inexplicable malaise that crept over him like a bad dream.

The other man refused to elaborate, taking a wealth of amusement from Emiya's ignorance, "Enlighten yourself. The truth will out, as you will see soon." Snatching the bag out of Emiya's hand, something being deposited on the ground nearby, sharp footsteps leading away, the click-shut of a car door, and the revving growl of the engine starting up again. Left to stand there in the dust of the abrupt, certifiably rude departure, Emiya lowered his arm back to his side again. He opened his eyes. A sleek steel briefcase waited in front of him, red patterns outlined with glossy black, additional electronic countermeasures disguised as set dressing he assumed, from the gentle hum of power.

He picked it up, set it on top of the decaying truck where, coincidently, his other spoils of conquest sat underneath. Not that he believed his mysterious contact would short him on her part of the deal, at least so obviously, but sue him. Emiya was curious. He thumbed the latch open, and with a hiss of sealed, cool air, the briefcase snapped open. Inside, a single black datashard sat surrounded in geometrically violent waves of pyramidal gray foam, like a crystalline ocean.

A money shard. The Arasaka Logo on its surface like a knife's grinning edge.

Huh.

Suddenly, red pulsing warning bore down on him with a klaxon call resounding across the horizon, a pushing sensation scattering away any and all debris and dust on him, he looked up into the blaring noise and light and confusion and saw: clearly printed on the side of the descending AV, MAX-TAC in metal branding. Then, in sharp, arrogant white graffiti. The Last Dream of Electric Sheep.

Ah. She called the police. Emiya pondered if this was her revenge for all his insults. That's a little petty of her. He joked, with a calmness, that perhaps he should not have felt in that particular moment. Not that he had much room in that nitpicking argument of unsaid specifics and unspoken rules of terribly lopsided deals, they had only ever agreed that her men would let him go. The police, much to his wry amusement, never factored into the equation for him. Something he was paying for now, it appeared.

Antigrav thrusters displaced the aerial vehicle's own considerable mass onto him, the sheer noise that erupted from its warning speakers like the ringing bell of death's knell. Five tactical ropes fell down to the ground, whipping about in such a frenzy that a stray line sliced a thin cut on Emiya's skin. Like a scratch on polished steel.

Metal jacketed boots shot down to ground even with the reverse pressure of the antigrav, tons transmitted into minor tremors that reverberated through Emiya's feet into the core of his femurs. Five sets of Kevlar blue, and ceramic plating wrapped up in a threatening dull black, lifted themselves up in eerie synchronization, instead of five pairs of eyes, he faced more like thirty in an alien sheen of green sensors, six per a man or woman. Brimming with cutting edge cyberware, enhanced far beyond even the physical peak of humanity, and with the morality of trained sociopaths, MAX-TAC sized up Emiya. Night City's Apex Predators. They found him wanting.

"I don't suppose you would believe I came by this legally, would you?" Emiya directed a pleasant, placating smile towards their mouthless masks, while closing the briefcase.

In answer, five firearms lined up with his head.

Emiya frowned. "I'll take that as a no then." Internally, he didn't nearly feel as laissez faire as he had displayed. The earlier calm thoroughly shaken from him like dust brushed away by thrusters disproving God. Something he felt was quite fair given the circumstances arrayed against him. Their equipment was on a completely different level to the basic mooks and grunts he had been playing around with all day. Just from a glance: military-quality, advanced and prototypical, with peerless material sciences on full display nevermind the surly exorbitant prices, then highly personalized to a degree where he saw white scarred tally marks on the sniper barrel of one woman's rifle. Two hundred marks did not inspire confidence, even for a man who would have arguably infinite times that number on his own bow. Moreover, this was a highly trained and experienced team who worked together in seamless coordination even to his eyes. He wasn't the most familiar with that advanced multi-person tactics either, preferring to work alone for most of his life and afterwards. His best option was probably then: Retreat and live to die another thousand deaths another day.

Well.

There was only one thing for it, wasn't it? "Trace On." Twenty immaterial reactors burned to life transposed somewhere between his physical body and something unobservable by any material instrument, the hammer struck, the trigger pulled again and again and again, the bullet was already accelerating in the barrel, and Emiya blurred forward.

The briefcase moving at nearly supersonic speed rocketed towards the closest man, the Assault member of this squad by his titular rifle and well-equipped portable foundry churning out grenades on his hip, but to Emiya's decreasing surprise and increasing humorlessness, all five of them reacted by only the tiniest margin slower than Emiya's own supernaturally elevated reflexes.

The Assault Max-Tac Officer ducked, slammed the barrel of his rifle to collide with Emiya's ribs, and with his other hand, shot out his own hand to choke on Emiya's wrist. Bruising, bone grinding. His wrist bones, the ulna and the radius about to snap like chicken wings.

Silver blades like the evolutionary sickles of a Praying Mantis slid out the slender woman's arms and they flashed towards Emiya's neck in a deadly arc. Ah. The traditional consumption of their mate's head. Buy him dinner first at the very least. Hit and dump seemed, unfortunately, very to the letter in this case. The Sniper had already flipped and disappeared from view, but the prickly sensation on the back of his neck told him in no uncertain terms that if he let his guard down for any moment he would feel a bullet gently vacate his gray matter through his temples. The Heavy-set other man of the group had already begun firing into Emiya's torso, one handed hip firing an enormous machine gun that spat out— were those Depleted Uranium rounds? You never forget the particular burning feeling as those split against your skin, and ah, there, the familiar molten sparks going through his skin— and the other hand slammed a fist against the steel briefcase preventing it from impacting his team member's skull.

Several things happened in the half of a nanosecond as Emiya moved and they reacted. One. Emiya realized with apprehension and not a little awe that humans without the strength of mystery were actually matching a Magus, a man who had become a Counter Guardian, who had served as one for even longer, and two: his torso armor had already been cracked. Three, the solid steel briefcase broke before the Heavy man's fist. Four, the Assault officer was about to pull the trigger and unload fiery lead into Emiya's stomach and finally... Five. Those Mantis blades were about to separate his head from its shoulders and it wouldn't do for them to get lonely.

Emiya spun, flicking his wrist and with one fluid motion, broke the Assault officers astoundingly tight grip on his arm and flung the briefcase into the air. And with his now freed hand, he slapped the rifle to fire it's bullets into the machine gun currently creating a new league of baseball-sized holes in Emiya's lower intestines, and rotating his body, Emiya twisted his head out the way of the Mantis operator's blades only to suddenly snap out his hand onto her collar and throw her moving form towards the Heavy. Rolling with the redirected momentum, Emiya threw himself in a spinning horizontal flip that brought him over the Mantis Operator's flailing form and also over the Assault and Heavy's attempted disengagement. Still in that almost frozen flow of time and falling through the air— Flying was just missing the ground repeatedly— Emiya instantly projected Bakuya in his one hand to deflect the Sniper bullet from decapitating him, and with a mental murmur of: Sword Barrel, Full Open... Fanning. Incandescent light thumped into the world like the heart organ of an invisible giant, blue filaments coalescing to form into the wireframe of silver crosses, swords. His extended Reality Marble poured out of him for only a moment, the innate bounded field pressing against his skin like frenzied water stretching out a too-small balloon.

It shot down three other nameless swords to launch at supersonic acceleration towards the three three Max Tac officer's Achilles tendons and forearms tendons below him. Another nameless blade shot through the briefcase's handle, catching it by the blade's crossguard and launching it high up and nailed to the side of a far off building. As for the first three, He didn't expect them to hit, or do anything more than be a minor distraction, but they gave him precious breathing room to act.

Projecting another gravitationally locked yet static-appearing sword to at the exact point in space a little lower than the apex of his leap, Emiya then launched himself off that stationary object to crest even higher in the air, to survey where that bullet had exactly come from and fire Hrunting— of course, that was when the second flying AV collided with him straight on.

Pain. Black and white. Spiraling instinctive insanity of trying to resist unconsciousness. Ultimately ending failure. Blunt force trauma better measured in what hadn't been bruised and beaten black and blue. (—Moonlight. Sunset. His heart thudding in his chest like a fool. The King did not have a heart—)

A barked shout awoke Emiya from the brief second of unconsciousness as extreme physical trauma suddenly shut down his consciousness, "Lieutenant Crow, you will explain your authorized hijacking of Corporate: Militech asset or face penal duty for the rest of your foreseeable life counted in the seconds before I pull the trigger on your implants!"

"Target's immune to conventional quickhacks, sir. Protocol has my back on this, fuck off."

"That's another twenty thousand eddies writeup for your continued existence, Lieutenant bitch!"

"Thanking my stars everyday for the extended lease on life, Sergeant Dobs."

First, the phantom pain of watching Emiya Shirou jump in the way of Berserker's swing, and now this. Far too familiarly, Emiya realized with the pain that radiated from his stomach out to roughly his entire body, that he was still on the AV's front grid, and that the car of the future and Lieutenant Crow's twenty thousand slap on the wrist was rapidly approaching the ground. Him first. And they were about 300 meters off the ground. A parabolic arc that dipped downwards— no wonder it hit so damn hard. Shaking his head off the static creeping into vision and the lightheadedness he associated with extensive bruising which included all his fragile, burstable organs, Emiya pushed himself off the AV's literal gold-plated grid, fighting off his own weak limbs and the forces of inertia and acceleration that tried to keep him stuck there like a fly smushed on the windshield. Figuring out quickly his own grip was insufficient, Emiya projected a glove prickling with miniature swords, a climbing glove once modified by himself that was significantly cheaper for him to cast but that wasn't important right now 280 meters off the ground and accelerating! With that very demanding incentive he dragged himself forward with the help of the added friction, pulling his heavy body across the hood to the side of the AV. With a twist of his torso and a rush of Reinforcement, Emiya brought up his steel toed boots to kick through the bulletproof window. And leapt inside on the swing back.

Inside: a terrified man and three, ahem, loosely dressed woman– correction, two loosely dressed woman and one very pretty man, oh, even that was cybernetic these days? — stared at the lunatic who had literally just recovered from a head-on collision with a flying car and then dragged himself into it.

Head dizzy, Emiya flashed them a closed-eyed smile. "Ladies, gentleman, whichever you prefer." Smoothly figuring out how to open the sliding door and doing just that, he ignored how the rush of the rapidly decreasing sky nearly swept him off his feet. Shouting over the wind, he did a jaunty little salute. "Time to leave. Hope you enjoyed flying Air-Emiya." Now was a good time to mention he likely had a concussion.

And then he threw them bodily out the window with barely a thought to Alter their clothes so they flared out like a parachute, catching their momentum. With the last one, one lady who wore so little she didn't have enough for him to Alter, he grabbed ahold of her by her waist and leapt out with her screaming obscenities that'd make a sailor blush all the way down.

Oddly enough they were right besides the fallen glass skyscraper that he had ascended to infiltrate into the Sapphire, and thinking quickly Emiya projected another gravitationally locked sword for him to leap off and shooting another sword to pre-shatter the glass in his way, rolled his way through the angular challenged building.

For a moment, like a flashbang, the glass breaking, the splintered shafts of light reflecting off the falling tinted glass like sparks, the revealed darkened interior pierced by sudden, flooding light.

They fell through the decaying and ruined cubicles as they descended at a steep angle through, both horizontally and vertically, the building. Carpet burn traced up a fiery line on his back and legs. His eyes were numbed by the leaking blood and screaming woman. There was a ficus and a succulent stabbing into his pant's legs and enough office supplies ruined by the ocean air's erosion to classify as non-refundable seemingly permanently stuck to his face. A cubicle approached at them painful velocity— he kicked himself and still crying the additional weight of the woman off the ground, throwing himself up to the ceiling set out an angle, smashed apart the rotted wooden blades of a ceiling fan, and just narrowly went over that cubicle to resume falling at a friction-burning acceleration. Then, there. The accumulated debris and mass of tinted light peeking out from the piling up trash. Emiya braced himself as they quickly fell to the other end of the glass waiting for them. Just like riding a slide on a water park: Feet first. Keep your head tucked in, and oh. Only one at a time. He broke all those rules already, so, by the inverse rule it would be fine, right?

No.

Smash. The yawning drop, which was not so yawning now, half a story's height from a crashing skycar down and through an entire dedicated for demolition skyscraper later. Office supplies falling down around them with the finally shattered glass, paper scattered around like tarnished, tarred feathers, the coming pavement! The not so empowered beyond mortal ken of a Servant fell like a meteor and collided with the ground in a similarly destructive crash.

The ground protested. Emiya felt the little breath he had left in his bruised lungs and cracked ribs as they landed leave him, and since he so obviously took the brunt of the fall… the woman who fell with him landed a moment later. Directly onto his injured stomach. A quick check, and, he breathed out a long sigh, safe. She was safe. Beyond some bruises, she would be fine. Only then after confirming such did he release his protective grip on the hysterical woman, who quickly realized she wasn't in immediate danger of dying, and jumped off him like he was a dirty bug on her shoe. Dragging himself up, Emiya ignored the woman as she either thanked him profusely in her mother tongue or forever cursed him to always have sheep with boils and parasites, he wasn't sure nor did he particularly care.

Getting up from a car crash in the sky and then falling through a building tended to have that effect on him. It meant something that in your immortal unlife that you couldn't say with absolute certainty that no, this was definitely the first time getting hit in the air by a flying car happened. What that meant… probably nothing good.

Mentally directing prana to repair his physical body— even though he had 'shaved' his Servant enhancements away, this form was still nothing more than condensed True Ether and therefore easily fixable by means of throwing a gross amount of prana at the problem. A tactic he felt fairly sure to have used inventively in a Holy Grail now lost to memory. Aches and pains faded away as burning magical energy suffused his injured body, replaced with the not so pleasant feeling of flesh filling up the empty spots, divergent but ultimately similar in effect from Avalon's inhumanely perfect stitching and glowing substance insertion into the emptiness of his wounds. His internal debate on the incredibly important differences between magically assisted rejuvenations would be perhaps interesting to explore, if the Mantis Operator hadn't happened to blur into Emiya's vision from the next corner. Skidding on the cement and concrete like it was gray ice and she was wearing with black rubber soles, so much so that he could hear the boots squeal while she dragged the blades through the ground to slow herself. Sparks licking at her frame, making her impossible to miss. Fast. Very fast. In the extremely close quarters from before, all the MaxTac he had fought had reflexes that rivaled his own, but in terms of outright movement capability, it was clear that they all had divided roles and specializations. The similarities to class containers did not elude him, nor were they particularly appreciated as of now. Lancers. Why did it always have to be Lancers?

He glanced at her blades.

6 years serving, 2 years in intensive 'reconditioning' and behavioral observation, Higurashi 20-13 Mantis Blades reimplanted after her placement on C-Squad, Max-Tac. She had killed a total of fourteen people while paralyzing two for life and rendering two others complete amputees; She had cut off all their limbs. In her tenure as a Lieutenant for the Cyberpsycho Suppression Unit, she killed twice that, and injured thrice the number killed.

The information slammed into his head as Mellissa Rory's Higurashi 20-13 Mantis Blades planted itself into Unlimited Blade Works proudly beside the blades and weaponry of other penal legions he had encountered in his existence.

Emiya stood fully upright, keeping a wary eye on his surroundings for the barest glint of the Sniper. The information he had gleaned from her Mantis Blades also informed him that this particular Cybersquad had never lost a target, though they had often came in with their quarry cold. A little over 75% of their missions , kind of cold.

What else he now knew: Sergeant Dobs was the Heavy man with armor that could take the lower end of a round fired from a tank and not actually a sergeant but a Lieutenant Commander and commanding officer here, Cross was the Assault specialist who had nearly broken Emiya's wrist. Crow was the rebellious, genius Netrunner who had hacked into an AV to use as a ramming stick against Emiya, and the Sniper Girl had never told Melissa her name which oddly enough Ms. Rory respected enough to never ask even though all their names were easily locatable through the shared Max-Tac registry. All of them professionals who had done this for years on end. In a career with a turnover rate as ludicrously high as putting down heavily armed, insane cyborgs would have you imagine, theirs was a rare feat.

And all of them fully prepared to put Emiya down with extreme prejudice for the unforgivable crime of standing in front of them.

Forget petty, the woman beyond the screen and more money than god really put too much faith in his abilities. Just what did or who did she think he was?

If it was like that, Emiya harrumphed, he just had to ensure he didn't disappoint then.

Bakuya burst into existence in his hand, two pairs of bottlegreen sensors lingering on the unexplained appearance, but if Melissa Rory was otherwise surprised she didn't show it, merely settling into a lower set stance that emphasized the range of her Mantis arms. Despite her more slender and smaller appearance, Emiya knew from the intimate experience of her Mantis blades that she had a nearly equal armor plating to the Sergeant Dobs, the Heavy. Glancing cuts, even from a Noble Phantasm just simply wouldn't be able to cut through so much padding and Kevlar, if even non NATO approved ammunition couldn't even make her pause, then a sword wouldn't have much better luck. If only by the sheer width and extent of her protection at least. There was simply too much material to actually cut through to cause any true damage rather than affecting merely decorative damage, not without a sure, full on, hit.

He stepped forward. She hovered in place with the strange afterimage visage of Speedware, figure blurring as if to suddenly approach from myriad directions. His eyes narrowed in confusion, wondering as to why she was attempting to show an intimidation tactic now so long after the fact—! His eyes widened, just in time from Bakuya to flash up in a blur of white as a bullet streaked through her hazy image and attempted to burrow through Bakuya's blade to put a hole through his spine. A tracer round! That could be seen from half of Pacifica... There was no time for careful contemplation and consideration of her skills, he needed to act first before the Max-Tac officers could set up a greater trap onto him.

Emiya blazed forward, bringing down Bakuya with a heavy handed downward strike, forcing Melissa to use both of her Mantis Blades to deflect the blow, metal screeching as the laser forged, titanium alloy hammered by a thousand machine arms, audibly peeled against a weapon forged by a wife's sacrifice and a husband's mastery more than a millennia ago. Taking advantage of her surprise at the impossibility, Emiya launched a roundhouse kick to shatter her ribs. A complicated twisting maneuver, where Melissa flashed into a hundred afterimages again— a secondary Speedware? He was expecting her to be still on the cooldown period that he had taken advantage of on every other encounter! The real Melissa threw herself up and out of the afterimages with an automatic pistol drawn and pulled. Seven gyrojet guided bullets were neatly cut down as Emiya flicked Bakuya with his wrist.

"Cyberpsycho confirmed to have constant Reflex implants active. That's twice he deflected a sniper round, fuckity fuck cuntspittle! Confirm command." Without waiting for a reply on whatever communications line she was using, she rushed back towards him, Mantis Blades slicing at his wrists, head, neck, tendons, thighs, liver, heart. A hundred strikes were thusly exchanged in quick succession, and Emiya began to feel sweat drip down his back at the fiendishly quick pace they fought at. His usual style of swordsmanship was vastly more difficult without a secondary blade to counter and parry, forcing him to use Bakuya's objectively smaller length to hold off the layered attacks from multiple points, so he would just have to change tactics. Advancing on her as she went to disengage, Emiya slammed Bakuya into her Mantis Blades with terrible force, each blow coupled with the shrieking of metal and the squeal as the joints on the cyberware protested the harsh treatment. A bullet cut his hair by his ear before he could force a clear advantage, Emiya was only just able to angle his head to the side to avoid the shot in time. More a warning shot, meant to deter him from attacking then a genuine threat to his life. However, that felt almost too much of a rookie mistake for such an obvious professional to make. She should have changed position after failing to kill the target after two shots, every good sniper knew that when your location was precisely known by the enemy, your effectiveness decreased drastically, but thinking laterally, she also couldn't not provide support and further lose their numbers advantage on him which meant— Emiya threw himself out the way as a hail of bullets shot through his previous location. Which meant, that bullet about to crown his head in crimson was only a distraction for the real threat. Enter: Assault. The calvary in the form of 300 pounds of armored gunslinger had arrived, standing on top a moving car without a driver, holding his rifle with one hand and with his other already pulling the pin of a grenade.

The fragmentary device flew towards Emiya, his eyes instantly tracing its arc and judging by its commercial design, it wouldn't explode in any time for him to worry about it. Then Cross, the assault, pulled out a revolver. He wasn't going to? No. He was.

Shooting the grenade just as it neared Emiya, Emiya was forced to throw himself to the side and in plain view of another sniper shot, but before he could stand up…!

Mantis Blades had nearly bisected his face in half, if not for Bakuya holding them off. His lips spread in a self-satisfied smirk. Prana shot through his system, the boundaries of his Reality Marble broke through the thin separation of his skin and the World's Texture, and six nameless swords sprouted out from Emiya's body, piercing through Melissa through the shoulder rotator muscles, her knees, and straight through the vulnerable machinery of her mantis arms.

He still had aces up his sleeves, though maybe if those aces didn't also include him producing blades from inside his body, he wouldn't be so loathe to use them. Honestly, if such an opportunity presented itself, to not take it would be insulting. Really, he just respected their abilities too much not to capitalize on their few mistakes.

"Mantis Blades!" Cross called out, "I repeat, Target has instantaneous Mantis cyberware all over his body. God, you're a special kind of freak aren't you?" In spite of his capricious and dismissive words, the man had a tone that bordered on sensual. Excited. That being, his sheer joy didn't prevent Cross from acting to kill and another grenade burst in front of Emiya's face, totally uncaring of their paralyzed comrade. Emiya threw her behind him with somehow greater consideration than her actual team, but it wouldn't be nearly enough distance put between her and the explosion, unless… Emiya reinforced his skin.

The incendiary splashed his skin like hot fry oil, but with his strengthening magecraft so focused on his foremost skin layer, his epidermis, dermis, and hypodermis all reinforced to the highest level of mastery possible in this fading age, the incendiary only melted to the muscle, and no further. Bursting out the explosion, Emiya dashed at heel-snapping paces, side to side, as Cross threw grenades out with one arm and quick-detonated them by shooting them with his pinpoint accurate assault rifle. A tactic that would severely chew down even the toughest Cyberpsycho's defenses, and with his nearly limitless supply of grenades for all situations, Cross could apply EMP and other dangerous effects with deadly pinpoint efficiency. He was basically firing air burst explosive rounds with the running speed of a motorcycle and the adaptability of a small squadron with an advanced virtual intelligence calculating the timing of each shot all combined together with the vicious animal cunning of a prolific serial killer.

It was unfortunate then, that Emiya had the agility to dodge bullets and the much more relevant ability to throw Bakuya with impunity. A spinning disc of ivory buzzed through the air even as two magazines and several grenades failed to deter its rotation, culminating in that disc forcing Cross to leap off his high vantage and reposition. But as Emiya approached the falling and thus vulnerable man, he saw the reflection of a grin in those insect-like sensors. Emiya cracked the ground for even more forward momentum as he saw the blinking red on Cross's hip. Kamikaze. The man quite literally prepared to go down in a blaze of glory. Reaching out with his hand, Alteration ready to cast on his fingertips, Emiya stretched to touch the blinking grenades—

Silence. The dead white noise ringing in his ears. The retort of a gun that had no right to be this powerful. The consuming, sound-swallowing gunshot of a powerful sniper rifle carving through flesh, bone, and air. Pain. Visceral, uncomprehending, a sense of betrayal like the sky was actually green the whole time. A hole appeared in his hand, a hollow right in the center of his palm, two of his fingers were blown off, most of his palm was dark red bone. In his haste, he had forgotten the omnipresent threat. The Sniper had shot his hand to prevent him from disabling the suicide grenades on her teammate. A two pronged trap! He was wrong, it was three. She had been low-powering her shots from the very start, since the very first shot he had deflected with Bakuya. Like the Kenshin he had used hours before, that was no chemical propellant-powered round. Even as the phantom pain shoved icy-hot needles down his arm and up into his brain, like angry hornets biting into his grey matter, Emiya couldn't help but admire that clever bloodthirst.

Logically, he was dead to rights. The grenades on Cross's waist were even larger and thus likely stronger than the ones he quick-detonated in the air, Emiya was too close, his feet were not on the ground— even if he had a lifetime to react, if his feet were not on the ground he had vastly reduced agility. Projection would take too long, his Reality Marble's activation being disrupted by the unexpected wound. He had overextended in order to reach Cross in time.

He admired their absurd conviction, but No. If a bullet could have stopped the man known as Emiya Shirou, then there would be no fool atop that hill. If all the odds and then some arrayed against him could bring him down, then what was all his life for?! His teeth creaked, as he clamped down on his jaw.

"Pathetic! Useless, Idiotic! If you need to rely on rotten tricks like that to stop a fake, then just give up already!"

Emiya pushed forward past all screaming pain, pushed himself at the costs of everything else, all that mattered was right in front of him. His reinforcement burned across his skin, green-blue circuitry shot through every limb, carving a trail up his bloodied temple. The world shuddered. No, that was wrong. It pulsed with a dead heartbeat of a long forgotten art. Prana roiled off him in nearly visible waves of ethereal vapor, steam. His body began cooking itself, quickly hitting forty four degrees Celsius as his Magic Circuits used his blood as cooling agents. Hm? If it was just that much, he was barely even trying.

Altering the reactive materials inside the grenades on Cross to useless lumps with only a brush of his fingertips, he reached up, and gripping the edge of Cross's torso armor, with a hole through his hand, bodily flipped him over and slammed him head down in a less than textbook Supplex. Learned that one from Luvia, sorry Rin, he mentally apologized seeing as he quote on quote learned it from watching Rin experience what Cross must be feeling as of now. Confusion, dismay, and a certain sense of embarrassment as your entire body was lifted single handedly and thrown onto the ground like a misbehaving child.

Emiya saved Cross from that feeling soon enough, projecting a twisting sword whip, an Urumi to be exact that had quickly gained popularity in the late BCE and early Common Era and lost it just as quickly for most novices with its unfortunate tendency to cut the user's own extremities clean off if sufficient care was not prioritized. Dulling the blade and cold forging the metal together, he quickly trussed up Cross before Emiya got shot, again.

Although, there weren't any skycars who had the bravery to venture into the Voodoo Boys playground of Pacifica, so maybe expecting another car to smack him out of the sky was more of a personal fear rather than logical. Bakuya materialized in his hand again, ready to deflect any bullet from taking its wielder's second life. The sudden generation of Prana he had done before had been all forced into his hand, and instead of the gaping absence it was before, now it was only a dollar coin sized hollow circle in his palm, all his fingers restored. His grip was a little weak, but deflecting a bullet was second nature to him at this point. Even if Bakuya was blown out of his hand, he'd protect all his vital organs. It could not deflect a direct shot from the full power of that sniper, but neither did the Sniper have that long. If she charged a shot without changing position, he could easily dodge her, since he already knew her position through feeling the trajectory evaporate his hand. Emiya waited, knowing that they would come to him.

And so they did.

Roaring down the street with a hijacked van, so that's what the Netrunner had been doing instead of protecting Cross, Sergeant Dobs leaned out of its side and fired a stream of pyrophoric death up and disturbingly through the street, benches, sidewalk, the stray scrap of paper from Emiya's descent through the skyscraper, any and anything that was in it's way to Emiya. Another sniper bullet reflected off Emiya's back without him even looking, that was too obvious, Miss Sniper, you should have shot somewhere else than the textbook blindspot, but he supposed getting rattled as one man survived all their moves with apparent ease was only natural. He prepared to stop Dobs, the seventy going on eighty van about to remind him about why you shouldn't get up after taking a skycar to the face in Night City.

Why? Because they run you back over again.

Emiya stood his ground against all conventional sense and even some forms of non-relevant senses. Twenty meters out. Fifteen. Five. He locked 'eyes' with Sergeant Dobs. The van broke first, swerving at a squealing stop to swing Sergeant Dobs out like the world's heaviest cannonball at Emiya, hot non-fissile material death raced towards Emiya, but ducking to the side, Emiya threw Bakuya just before Sergeant Dobs landed on top of him, and thus quickly enough that Dobs couldn't pull his machine gun out the way. Sparks flew up like a hundred sparklers set off at once, as Bakuya carved a no doubt crippling gash into the barrel and feeding mechanism of the bulky weapon. Discarding the torn, destroyed firearm, the Heavy proved to Emiya, to the world he wasn't compensating with a big gun.

The first punch had Emiya shaking in the knees, the second moved with astonishingly fast alacrity and slammed into his ribs making him float briefly, and the third felt like he was catching a speeding bus with his bare hand. Emiya had the briefest moment to regret his choices in life, before Dobs pulled Emiya towards him by way of Emiya's own grip on Dobs' fist, to deck him with a metallic fist hard enough to separate his jaw from his skull. Grip faltering, Emiya involuntarily let go of Dobs' fist, which quickly reasserted its presence in Emiya's intestines through the bullet cracked armor. Black shards pushed deeper into his riddled stomach, going up and into his ruined insides like teeth of broken glass.

Stumbling backwards, Emiya nearly dropped to his knees after being hit with enough force to take a man's head clean off his shoulders multiple times. Nearly. Not nearly enough. Emiya wiped the blood from his mouth, pink drool where his teeth had cut the inside of his cheeks, and rolled his single shoulder. Jaw snapping back into place with a disturbing squelch of cartilage and abused tendons. Head ringing like a bell. But, Emiya was already pushing off any flimsy ghosts telling him to stop. He never stopped.

Dobs raised a hand in the air, signaling to his fellow Max-Tac officers that he would handle it. Personally.

Well. It'd be rude for Emiya to refuse, wouldn't it? Maybe, he was getting caught up again, swept along by adrenalines and the almost addictive thrill of challenge, but… he wasn't thinking anything about that. He was thinking how he was going to punch Dobs in the face. Repeatedly. Right now, he wasn't bloodying his ideals, he wasn't saving another by killing ten more.

Emiya tightened his hand, fingers barely responding as the hole in his palm protested the action. Any grip on a sword would fail him sooner rather than later until that healed. Instead, tearing a strip off Cross's uniform, Emiya wrapped his hand in cloth until it was forced into a fist.

Sergeant Dobs inclined his head, a measure in respect as his chin lifted, both of them knowing that this was no cyberpsycho attack but another meddling to place innocent lives on the line, and, suffice it to say, the leader of this Cybersquad didn't much appreciate being used as glorified attack dogs even if he wasn't about to refuse the order or the slaughter. Still, despite the lacking morality and easy approach to massive casualties, Sergeant Dobs was a man who respected the chase. The dueling wills, skills, and desperation of two animals only separated by the badge one wore. A Cyberpsycho who viewed the world as a cage stuffed full of slobbering mutts, as he had impressed onto Melissa through judicious, overwhelming violence. His preferred method of execution? A bullet through an old, dying dog. Right in the point where spine met skull. The least he could do then, was wait for Emiya to prepare to meet his end with some measure of respect, one madman to another. Their eyes met, one pair of steel gray to bottle green sensors. On an unspoken signal, they charged.

Emiya's fist snaked under Dobs' haymaker, and trapping it between his chest and arm, prepared to snap the elbow, only forced to duck away as Dobs' other fist rocketed towards Emiya's temple. That engagement came away with both sides losing. Neither achieved anything substantial on their opponent. Emiya was quicker and lighter on his feet, and hit like a truck to boot, but he only had the one arm, while Dobs hit like the truck's angry stepfather and was nearly as quick and fast, if several tons heavier on his feet.

They rushed together, Emiya launching up two, three kicks to Dobs' legs, earning nothing more than a quiet grunt from the larger man despite the fact he felt steel cave in, while Emiya was forced to scarcely deflect and glance away several punches that even while glancing chipped his armor and cracked the bones in Emiya's forearm. Prana rushed to fill those cracks, weeks and nearly months of recovery condensed in the span of moments. It felt like pouring gnawing, biting, stinging, acid spitting ants into a cauldron of pain. It was unimportant. Emiya kicked off Dobs' solid thigh to disengage this bout, shaking his arm from the mind numbing pain radiating out from it's fractured-broken bone.

That was Reinforced too. By the Root, just how hard was the Sergeant hitting him? If 4000 newtons was how much it took to break a femur, and he assumed his forearm was only a little weaker than that, adding up to the exponential increase of durability from his Strengthening magecraft, Dobs must have been hitting well over the tens of thousands newtons of force with each punch. Or more like the total weight of an entire train and its extended family was dropped on Emiya, repeatedly, concentrated at the size of a massive fist.

Emiya shook his head from worrying estimations and focused on how the other man was barreling down at Emiya— and oh this was going to hurt. Shoulder charging the living servant into a broken pickup truck, the truck giving away before Emiya's back and spine did, Dobs brought both his arms up in the shape of a hammer, about to make paste out of Emiya's head, only for Emiya to bring up both his legs and mule kick Dobs' chest hard enough to launch the other man skidding back. Getting his breath back, Emiya tried capitalizing on his advantage by springing up and flying out with a kick to the Sergeant's tactical mask, snapping his foot across Dobs' face, once, twice. Not twice. The second kick, Dob caught Emiya by the foot and launched him flopping across the cracked asphalt.

Scrambling up, Emiya was in just time to feel Dobs' fist bring him flying upwards, and catching the expected blow with his fist, Emiya extended his arm to push himself with the knuckle breaking uppercut and using the air pressure pushing him back down, swung his legs down to clap around Dobs' head and twist. Using all the torque of his clamped thighs and his abdominal muscles, Emiya roared like a beast as he flipped a several tons man with literal metal for bones bodily onto the ground.

A crater formed under the impact of the Max-Tac Sergeant, as Emiya thudded on the ground right beside him, multiple muscle groups sprained from the supreme effort. His entire body was on the very of staging a mutiny at his rough treatment. Unfortunately, His Body was Made of Swords.

Both of them struggled to get up from the dizzying slam.

But in the end, organic flesh bone and skin rebounded from exhausting punishment faster than the shattered and dented machinery in Sergeant Dobs' heavily modified cyborg body. If a little more pathetically.

Emiya sat heavily on his ass, feeling it thoroughly handed it to him. Had the Max Tac team even known a tenth of his abilities beforehand, they would have chewed and spat him out next week. They still had, but Emiya had taken out three of them without resorting to his more dangerous Noble Phantasms and therefore outright lethality. As he considered how he might have been able to kill, and seriously injure at least all those remaining with a broken Caladbog, Emiya noticed something. A red dot right in the center of his vision. Smack dab in the center of his forehead.

Oh.

Now. Here was an easy question. Could he survive an electromagnetically charged sniper bullet through the skull? Was he quick enough to flashforge a projection strong enough to stop a high powered sniper round from exiting his head? Emiya voted, "No." That… wasn't just his inner monologue.

"Stand down, officer." Dobs growled out, with a notably unmuffled voice. For a moment, the red dot lingered, waiting, eager. Expectant for the bloom of red against Emiya's tanned skin, and then. As suddenly as it appeared, the red dot flicked off.

As abruptly as it began, the violence had ended. Anticlimactically, almost painfully jarringly so.

"That's no Cyberpsycho. Felt his bones break under my fists, skin peel and flesh peel. And no psycho would leave a fellow freak like the officer alive." An excuse. For Emiya's benefit, not just whoever Dobs was speaking too as well. The Max-Tac Captain paused, listening to the Sniper presumably on the other end. "Rory's alive too? Fuck, maybe's he's loony afterall." Picking himself up with the audible screech of ruined cyberware and hydraulics, Dobs loomed over Emiya, peering down at him with one half of those compound eyes and the eye peeking out the broken remains of his tactical mask. It leered at him. "You hear that, loony? You're a Joe, now. Ex-comm-unicado. A nobody. And we were never here. Far as I'm concerned we shot up some gonk in a glitzy AV."

Oh? Was that it? A matter of escalation, any further and the explanation for the unprovoked and non-judicial use of Max-Tac would start people asking question, start costing. A random, stronger than average civilian in the street turned into minced meat? As seen by the uncensored Netrunner who used AV's as weapons, civilians in Max-Tac's way barely even deserved a number. But, several highly trained, well-outfitted, and high maintenance elite Max-Tac Officers requiring extensive repairs and supplies? That raised some eyebrows.

Which meant, Emiya could do this.

He spit out the blood pooling with saliva in his mouth. "Crystal. I'm a dead man who beat up three of your guys with my one arm tied." he tore the wrapping holding his fist together apart, and held his now open hand out. Some things never changed. Emiya Shirou, whether a foolish youth or a jaded cynic, never could stop running his mouth. He just learned how to wield it more pointedly. A fault he fully and unreservedly pinned on Rin.

Dobs' single exposed eye gleamed with plastic satisfaction, petty humor over cool calculation. "Xactly. A dead man with my Lieutenant ready to pop your head's cherry at any time." he leaned in, breath stale and cold like a corpse. Oil and aerosolized sickly sweetness. "I can introduce you two. If you like."

"I'll have to decline. I've known too many troublesome women already." Emiya smirked.

Dobs clapped his hand, clasping it with a grinding force that seemed almost unintentional if not for the thin cruel smile on his face. "Shame that. See, my Lieutenant has a thing for Stiffs. A man like you, halfway there already? You're perfect." he shook his head mournfully. "I wouldn't even have to write up another report on her feeling up the boneys in the morgue."

Emiya raised an eyebrow but didn't comment on that particular insight on the Max-Tac sniper's 'lovelife'. "Sorry then."

Dobs exhaled loudly. A harsh exhale through the nose. What amounted to a chuckle or even laughter from the man, Emiya supposed. Releasing Emiya's grip from its prison, he began walking towards his downed team members. Calling over his shoulder, "Enough of the touchy feelies, Joe, you know how it goes. I see you again, and you're exactly that. And if I don't, the same."

Emiya watched him pick up Cross one handed, and then with an almost amused look at the state of Melissa, stacked them on top of each other to hoist them on his shoulder to walk towards the dropping NCPD AV picking them back up.

Only after the AV blared off with the same bell-like klaxon, did Emiya release a sigh, and let his head fall back, projected blades ready to skewer Dobs in front of him, and three Hruntings ready to fire at the Netrunner and Sniper vanishing without even a hint of blue. Completely exhausted and nearly drained of the surplus of magical energy he had shaved off his spiritual core.

He was being completely honest with Sergeant Dobs, after all. Troublesome women were troublesome.

…

This was a world apart from itself.

A sublet of land precisely sectioned off so only sunlight pooled in from underneath the clouds. Gently vibrating yet noiseless purifiers built in the hexagonal dome artfully mixed hand mixed charcoal, twice refined minerals and a mix of mountain spring air thrice filtered and reduced from one of the very few last natural wonders of the ancient country of Japan. Such were the clouds made in this unnatural natural world. Real, genuine trees that had been uprooted from their former twenty extinct national parks before their land had been swallowed by the growing leviathan of industry, and in their leaves, trickled the sunlight like liquid gold, dappling and sifting it so it streamed through like an old dream. Akin to an old record playing alone in a dark room. So forgone its owner no longer bothered having it anymore.

"Hanako-sama." Even the aides who maintained this gentle illusion, smiled with faces full of wrinkles and plenty of crow's feet. Old, hobbling women who had been saved from a life otherwise full of hardship. Their backs were stooped like leaning sunflowers, crooked stalks with that bent to bow their weighty heads full of hair like ash and taut silver tidied high in restrictive buns. There were no men allowed on the premises but the select few that had been guided and trusted by the lord of the land. Gelded in every except the physical, and sometimes, even that. A head of security, bodyguards meant to be on hand, unseen but always near, a pilot to operate the Osprey.

It could not be likened to a gilded cage, if it was so obvious. What it was in truth, was Saburo Arasaka's personal domain, a fiefdom he had carved into his homeland, a carefully decided slice of the past he looked back on with, what anyone else would call mist-gilded nostalgia but on the man who had decided the current world order was, an disgustingly exorbitant display of wealth, power, and complete dominance of what he had built. Still, likening it to a gilded cage made it seem much less imposing so pretty bars in the shape of extinct flora and an environment decided by man in its totality it was.

The pretty bird in the cage, Hanako Arasaka, held out her hand to the side upon hearing the gentle voice of the aide call out to her. A motion that seemed to occur before the words had even been given time to digest through her ears. As the sweetest cawing parrot, it would be too pitiful if she did not know everything that went on in her forced domain, whether it had yet to occur or had already occurred, she was here, in the many rooms designated as public in the expansive traditional mansion Saburo had ordered constructed, instead of in the small palace in which she could think herself private. Think, but not believe. She waited there, kneeling, with a dull sort of anticipation for the delivery she had orchestrated. There necessitated no words between her and these strange, almost inhumane women and men who attended her in this place. Such a thing was almost kindness, if not for how utterly disconnecting the interactions felt, done over and over in seemingly different times but seemed to be only variations of a theme, seeing how their inflection, their delivery, and even their old, gnarled appearances hardly differed. They smiled but they did not laugh, they spoke with perfect mannerisms and politeness so much so that her own beautiful, serene speech reflected their poetry, but they composed nothing for themselves. They did not have crooked backs before entering the property. They were not old women when they entered. They had always been old women as long as she had known them. Not older, not younger, only old.

Hanako had never seen any of the many caretakers here change. They were as unchanging as the sweet golden sunlight streaking through the leaves here. Still, as she knelt beside the warm porcelain gently curling steam upwards to linger vapor into the lantern's glow, and then further into the unseeable, into innumerable repeated memoires of the same perfectly made herbal drinks; She returned her hand and placed it quietly on the low table. There was no need to question its legitimacy. If it had been brought before her then it surely passed all examinations and vigorous testing for malice or hidden malware by the very finest Arasaka had to offer, from their mainland as well even. This could only be the genuine 'ghost program' the mild irritants known colloquially as the Voodoo Boys could have produced, any other possibility seemed pathetic for even being thoughtlessly proposed.

Why then… Hanako felt foolish for even wondering, were there a pair of modestly knitted gloves, mittens even, but she feared describing them would infect her with terrible rustic sentimentality they carried so easily, and with that peculiarity, also sat a wedding ring case beside it.

More than a little bemused, Hanako decided to set aside those inexplicable gloves, made of quaint, antiquated, and obviously common material, and snapped open the cardboard, faux satin, black felt box in front of her. It held…

Nothing. The foam indentation where she could tell an object of similar size and lightness of the Shard was still present as if such a thing had existed before she observed it, and disregarding a faint scent of ashes from an unfathomably obsolete forge, there was nothing to indicate that anything had ever been inside the case. Quantum superposition, there must have been the Shard present in the box when it was closed, and yet when opened, two distinct possibilities emerged despite all evidence declaring it to be impossible. One, the shard would still be there. And two, what she witnessed, the Shard was not.

She closed it silently, unable to keep the inappropriate upwards slant to her lips. There should have been no possibility of her receiving anything less than what she requested. There should be a Datashard containing a program that had been used to trawl out relatively ancient theories of where Alt Cunningham's Construct had gone, then confirmed suspicious of her digital ghost in the Blackwall, Netwatch, Militech's assault on the Tower in Night City. Quantum superposition was only that, the two distinct possibilities of being absent and present which had coalesced in the unobservable reality of the closed case, collapsing into the singular once opened. A singular possibility which should, naturally, be that the Shard was there, present and soon to be studied, dissected, and taken apart by Arasaka to never have its kin use whatever exploit in Arasaka ICE again. An impossibility lay before her so innocently, she almost thought it an accounting mistake. An error made by the unerring aides. That these were in actuality, and quite possibly, the most pitiable-looking courting gifts she was to receive from a suitor and not, in fact an empty wedding ring case with shard absent and mysteriously present mittens of all things. Mittens.

Then a message shot across her wide awareness of the Net, one of the few freedoms she was allowed, firstly, because Saburo Arasaka was many things, but even he knew that the wide uncontrollable maw of the Net in her youth was the next frontier to be conquered, and then, after the Datakrash, because of her invaluable skills that would be a grand waste to let languish. The message told her of the completion of an assassination on a slightly useful Militech asset, an event she didn't care to be notified of, and of the task she actually paid her small measure of attention, not a singular mention. Not of the retrieval of a corpse , not of the man without even a hint of cyberware aptly handling numerous forces that would have worried even Arasaka Elite forces, and not a single explanation for the glaring deficiency of such… There were few explanations and yet all of them painted impossible pictures. However, to anyone similar to her father, these explanations were not explanations but excuses, and poor ones at that. And excuses, as it so happened, were only given for failures.

Another failure that didn't quite feel like one in this peculiar mood of hers.

It was a child that raged, mourned, and desperately questioned how they had been bested so thoroughly. Hanako had taken up many a role in her life. But a child's grappling and tumultuous adolescence burdened with emotions she had never been given a chance at. If she were to describe the curious curiosity that gripped her now, it could only be likened to the same wonder Saburo Arasaka tried to remember by creating this gilded paradise of yesteryear. A hint of awe, a shade of bewilderment, and genuine amazement that all her rational beliefs and assumptions were so easily overturned.

A thing of beauty, calamitous, a thing that threatened to shake oneself to the core, and yet seemed to demand attention for merely existing. As if it had a quality, a precious property only by the simple fact that it was there. A thing that never faded from memory, even though it was like a passing cloud, transient and uniquely perishable.

Or perhaps she was simply waxing idle illusions to distract herself from the staggering mistake of her estimations, and the sobering realization that no matter what she thought of this peculiar curiosity, she would have to inform Father, regardless that the knowledge had already been passed to him, ten times over.

And yet.

She couldn't help but wonder.

Why, oh why, the mittens?

…

 

[HeroOfTime4298]

You keep one upping the chapter before, and I can't complain about that.

 

[Ace98]

You know, when the Mantis Blades showed up, I was somehow expecting Mr. One-arm to go two-armed, even if temporarily, because the mantis blade is also a arm.

I suppose that wouldn't have been a good idea because of the netrunner, but still

 

[Mrtts]

Is there a reason for the gloves?

 

[Vianca]

So, is Emiya going to buy himself a robotic arm or go for a cloned one?

 

[St0rmweaver]

Is there a reason for the gloves?

Click to shrink...

It's mittens.

"Time to leave. Hope you enjoyed flying Air-Emiya." Now was a good time to mention he likely had a concussion.

Click to shrink...

Can't help but think this concussion-enabled quote would be something that the miss picks up on given her burgeoning interest in Emiya.

It's crazy that with how nerfed Emiya is, he still held his own against a spec-ops team specifically designed against superdudes.

I can't wait for all the inevitable upgrades he gets.

 

[ArtemisAvant]

Bringing over some questions and answers from Spacebattels I thought might help clear up some confusion!

Spoiler: Questions and some Answers

Akimbo is having a gun in each hand. He is missing an arm. Is he going to regrow his arm or get a cybernetic arm?

He can get mana from blood without eating souls, or from food.

I do not like the direction of mutilating his body to nerf him. You could have restricted him from using magecraft or projections from having low mana.



With a Servant body he should be immune to any weapon without mana. That could have been avoided if this was Emiya before he died or if he had a real body instead.

Click to shrink...

This is actually a bit of mean joke played by Kiwi, she knows that the Tiger Claws see as him without an arm, but also can tell from the reverse ricochet program that he's right in the open like an idiot. Basically, she's calling him an old action flick gunslinger, straight out of Bushido Ten if you will, while making fun of him for trying to do it with only one arm.

As for the mutilation, that was more out of a desire to use Heaven's Feel Archer, both because nobody uses him in any crossover I've read and I think that's bit of a shame, and while working on this fic, him appearing only after the conclusions of his role in Heaven's Feel means he has to have no left arm. It's a restriction yes, if we're thinking purely in utilitarian views, but I like to think of it as giving Emiya more opportunities to demonstrate the less used, aspects of his skill and experience instead of going for the most time-efficient, effective abilities.

So does Emiya plan to like grow another arm or will he start adding some chrome?

Click to shrink...

That's a secrets for later chapter!

If the Cyberpunk timeline is one of the timelines of Type-Moon universe here, it may be that there was a native Emiya Shirou who grew up in a world going to shit and as an adult did his hero of justice thing in an incredibly cynical world.

Maybe he fought in South America and met Morgan Blackhand and a bunch of other stuff. Might be that he'll be considered a clone of an infamous criminal of the 2010s. Maybe the Fujiwara-gumi got big during economic upheaval and Shirou met with Yorinobu when he was in his biker phase.

Interesting that here Hanako looks more like her 2020 depiction where she's more of a rebel, and caged by her granddad while in the game 2077, she's gone to be one of her grandfathers former supporters.

Click to shrink...

Wherever he is, Emiya Shirou lives an 'interesting' life. We can only speculate(for now)!
Some grow to exist in the cage, even love it.

Taiga would be happy that Shirou got fluent enough in English to read some English novels for fun.


It'll make sense when he realizes he was dealing with someone with disgusting levels of money, where the mentality becomes 'throw enough money'.


His 'usual style' would be fighting defensively while waiting to see what is specifically needed for the situation. Fiendlurcher had a really good essay on how Emiya fights.


Dedication to the bit

Click to shrink...

Douglas Addams reference get!

The Arasaka are basically fantasy rich, money isn;t a number to them. It's the Answer.

Hm, thanks for showing me that essay, fascinating really inspiring stuff! Emiya is mostly just internally complaining that he can't have two swords to match two mantis blades. Its like their taunting with dual wielding right in front of him! I might edit taht later to add a note about Kanshou and Bakuyua enhancing physical resistance and magical resistance, together, and a little about defensive style, but maybe not as it might miss up the flow. Depends if it annoys me or not!

If he is a spirit why did he not get away by turning incorporeal? It is not like he cared about hiding his magic. He has the body of a Servant but can still be hurt by weapons that have no mana in them? That is a big change from canon. Magi can hurt Servants with weapons because any amount of mana put in a weapon is enough to make them get hurt by them. Normal people without magic cannot do that.

It would not be a good fanfic if he was immune from everything if anything supernatural is gone. But with the body of a Servant he should not be taking damage.

Did he lose his Minds Eye?

Click to shrink...

I think I mentioned it in previous chapter, a bit sneakily, that Emiya discarded the idea of Astralziing, or turning incorporeal, because he has the Projected Avalon inside him holding his wounded Core together. Since Projections don't astralize with him as they don't count as being summoned with him, like his armor or body, it would just fall out and probably clatter noisily to the floor while he's all embarrassed. I usually don't mention it because in my head, its' already a known quantity to me, and I have a bad habit of not repeating myself.

There's somewhere, I don't remeber off the tip of my head where, I read and agree with that Emiya is different from most Heroic Sprits because his Mystery is so much lower. As a Counter Guardian and and not a bonafide legend recorded in the Throne of Heroes. His body is that of a Servants, but the Servant body is one recreated from the one he had while alive. As he was a basically just a ordinary modern human --- ignoring UBW--- his mystery is comparable to that of a just a regular Magus. Which is to say, perfectly bullet-able. His conceptual weight , or mystery, or a Heroic Spirit's Legend stuffed into even a limiting Class Container, isn't large enough for him ignore mundane weaponry.

His minds eye, as I see it, can't be lost. It's his experiences, his theoretically infinite span fighting threats both below and far beyond him. We even see him 'using' it as he's able to predict in midst of high speed combat most of the surprise moves Max-Tac makes before they make them. Its' especially used when facing off with the Sniper, though she eventually manages to sneak one true hit, but experience isn't perfect after all,.

So sounds like Shirou can still create broken phatasms. I guess it's reassuring knowing he can just randomly nuke parts of Night City if worse comes to worse.

Click to shrink...

He can! He just, as you might have noticed, being very Shirou right now. When he doesn't mention, outright, is that he subconsciously was still in the mode of a Counter Guardian when he woke up and through to the Tiger Claws, but when the disgust and self-hatred hit, he unconsciously resisted the idea of killing anymore. So went non-lethal as possible through the Voodoo Boys and even with max-tac. he even makes dumb Shirou sayings during the fight. It becomes more noticeable if you might notice, right after he gets so hard by the flying AV he loses consciousness for a second.

wonder if we'll reach the point where Emiya deploys his reality marble in full in a crossover setting. because so far I haven't seen a single fic that managed to reach that point.

Anyway this chapter was much better than the previous ones, even if there are still a few orthography and grammar issues the text flowed much more easier and cleaner and made for an very enjoyable read.

Click to shrink...

I hope so, I really do! Orthography huh, yeah, I can see that, for sure. getting better is always a good sign!

On a completely unrelated topic, there's an idiom/colloquialism for getting rejected romantically, "Getting/giving (the) mittens" that was born from British high society where the proposed to woman would give mittens as a consolation prize.
I'm sure that was something that Shirou never encountered in the highly old fashioned Clock Tower and was completely unaware of the implications

Click to shrink...

Coincidence?! I think not! (bro I had no idea... that's' hilarious!) Ahem. All according to Keikaku.

What or who is the anchor for Emiya? He needs more than mana as a Servant or spirit to keep existing.

Click to shrink...

No one. It seems that he going to cheat his way to Independent Manifestation skill.

Click to shrink...

The fanfic suggests the author is not aware of anchors as being necessary and that he thought Servants only needed enough mana.

I do not know the particularities of Mystery, but Magi would still be able to use the od from their magic circuits and crests even if there is less prana than 70 years ago.

Click to shrink...

Emiya is abusing his Independent Action skill man. Did we read the same fic?

Click to shrink...

I think Avalon could 'potentially' be used as a psuedo-anchor, it would mask him from anything rying to delete him just like having a master would.

That is if an anchor is even needed in this setting really the world may be too far gone for that.

Click to shrink...

We did. Without an anchor, how much mana he has does not matter. Independent Action has a time limit that cannot be extended by how much mana a Servant has. The author did not know that when he wrote this fanfic. I am pointing out this is not canonical so the author can choose to fix it or not. A fanfic can still be good without adhering to canon.

One of the chapters talk about Gaia wanting to unravel his existence.

Click to shrink...

Since the next chapter won't address this, I might as well now. Emiya is currently in a very unstable and unsafe situation right now. he's focusing on solving immediate problems so that he has time to solve others. His main issue was Prana depletion, and so he reduced his Parameters to reduce the upkeep of his self. That as a nice bonus, gave him a nice surplus of Prana, topping him off as he converted the Ether of his Parameter into Prana for himself. Gaia is still alive, otherwise Notes would be happening much, much sooner, although Gaia is likely weakened due to the rapid devastation of the planetary life and flora due to Corporate Wars and bioplagues, Emiya of course would not notice this as he's not a very theoretically and research focused Magus besides noting the weak Mana in the air. Also, he doesn't know about Cyberpunk's lore.

The second and less pressing issue, of course is that Emiya being a sort of Super ghost, needs an anchor to remain attached to this time and world. His Independent Action skill, in which I wrote about in a small paragraph, lets him stay for 48 hours ideally without a Master/Anchor.

Now, here's the thing. It hasn't even been a day yet. From the time he arrived, or so far as we can tell, he woke up in Gloria's van apparently in a trash heap somewhere, it was late evening. 5:00 to 6:00 pm since it's January(revealed in the summary). When he walked out of the Voodoo boy's base, it was just starting to be morning, so 5:00 to 6:00 am. That's only twelve, 12, hours. He has 36 left to go to find a Anchor, whether by contracting with a master in which he outlined would probably be a Bad Idea considering the Weight of his Existence(how long he has been alive relatively to anyone) and the lack of a Holy Grail to offset that and his mana upkeep from a Master.

Emiya get's shit done.

We're only a several chapters deep, here I want to say something cheesy like trust the author, but uh... that' sounds like heavy amount of responsibility.

I'm thinking he copies the mantis blades and uses the arm attached as a substitute

There was something about conceptual poison that stopped him from actually regrowing the arm

Click to shrink...

Nice chapter but
I hope you give his arm back because there's literally way too many different nerfs applied just to bring Emiya down to the level where a team of Max Tac is a serious threat to him, it stretches the suspension of disbelief.
Anyways thanks for the read.

Click to shrink...

That's still a secret~

Conceptual Poison, Or Sakura' Shadow is incredibly effective against Servant and Servant type entries because they're spiritual bodies. Even if they're effectiveness is degraded on Emiya because in his own words he's nota proper Heroic Spirit either, he still is obviously severely affected by them. At the end of his role, he's pieced by multiple ribbons, back to back, tanks a Mana Blast that shattered all rings of Rho Aias, and then cut off his own arm off to graft it onto Shirou, lingering long enough despite lethal damage to ensure it was grafted on by Kotomine Kirei.

What I will mention here is: Emiya isn't regrowing the arm by just Prana into the absence, both because he does not have that kind of surplus and availably to spare and because the Arm still would exist, no? generally if a Servant lost a limb, it could be considered to have dissolved and eaten by Gaia as it no longer was connected to the overall stabilizing whole, but that's not what happens. The Arm is grafted. It still is existing in the world. It's like an ORT situation in my head (you know when it's core was outside it's body, but it couldn't regenerate a new core because it was tricked into thinking it still had it since the core-now-heart still existed), the Arm still believe sits; connected to Shirou EMIYA, Counter Guardian, but its actually connected to Shirou Emiya, Sakura's personal Hero. If Archer tries to regrow his arm, it could end up correcting the impossibility--- but since we are also in clearly another world and timeline, wouldn't taht mean the Arm should already be decided as missing? That's another thing. EMIYA doesn't know that. All he knows is that he's in the future.

Tl;dr, Emiya doesn't have enough mana to outright regrow his arm right now, even though he conceivably could, and won't out of personal reasons that may or not be clarified in the future.

Did he go back and collect the money shard? That's all I wanted to know in this chapter.

Click to shrink...

That's... for the next chapter!

But yeh he does. I mean, who wouldn't?