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.

 

[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.

…

 

[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.

…

 

[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.

…

 

[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?

…

 

[ArtemisAvant]

VII: Rearrangement of a Fixed Axis

…

Gloria startled like a bag of cats.

Which was to say she positively gangled, was disorderly, chaotic, confused and made a considerable amount of progress measured in the sum nothings towards appearing not so startled. Or anything at all like she handled staying up the nearly 12 hour period from drive by shooting to now well. Her strangled, snappish, jittery mood, the strained wrinkles on her forehead, and the wringing of her hands every time her eyes glanced at the whirring computer at the packed desk; all of it amplified up to eleven hundred when Emiya realized who exactly opened the door.

"Who the fuck are you?" Surly teenage disgruntlement dared him to provide an answer it didn't care for, and by that, Emiya meant possibly everything that came from his mouth. He scanned him up and down in the fraction of time it took for him to register and dismiss the sharp hostility. So, he thought mildly, this was the son.

Seeing the slice of morning light peek out of the Megabuilding H2's open to air center, a shaft of glare and incandescence, from out of the corner of his peripheral vision, Emiya realized his mistake. He had arrived at the inopportune intersection between rest and waking. Put a little less dramatically, the ride to school. Pale golden sunlight painted soft shadows, casting the surroundings into a dreamy pastel haze, soft and waking; it should have been abundantly obvious before it needed to be shoved into his face with five feet and some of cranky teenager. But who could blame him? Secondary education was a lifetime ago for him, and… yes. He blamed himself anyway. Unfortunately, blame had the most laughably unfunny irony of all. It proved completely and utterly useless at resolving situations. Worse than useless, if he was being unkind.

Instead of immediately answering, Emiya blinked with a look approaching a guileless, bleary-eyed idiot. It was not overly difficult to do so. He furrowed his brow, made a show of poleaxed confusion. "Ah…" By way of an apology, he offered. "Wrong room, I guess." Said the man who had a steel, cracked, briefcase in one hand, and only one hand, a dusty duffle bag on the shoulder, and damaged tactical black armor with a fine appreciation for musculature.

The younger Martinez stared at him with a look that said the shit Emiya was trying to shovel wasn't pushing up roses. Eyes lidded with poor sleeping patterns and the wariness of a sheepdog, Martinez stepped closer, totally heedless to the stink of heavy iron on the taller man, and snapped shut the door behind him. It looked like he was either about to slam his head into Emiya's chin, or bite out his jugular. Take your pick. "Choom, you got two seconds to convince me not to break my fist in your gonk mouth—" Correction: there was a third option.

"David!" The concerningly detailed threat— oh great now he was despairing over the youth's language, Emiya really was too old for this— was cut short, as Gloria slammed the closed door open about a half a second after it was closed. The shock of Emiya's appearance and his terrible timing evidently worn off by now. Her face wrestled between the furious urge to lecture David on not threatening dangerous men and maintaining an increasingly shaky facade of normalcy. She said, with a strained smile about to slip away. "Don't you have somewhere to be, Dee?"

David had this set to his jaw, awfully familiar to the one his mother wore if Emiya had to compare the two. The one that just screamed there would be no changing his mind. Come hell or high water. "Got no clue what you're talking about. Right where I have to be, feels like." Yes, just like the one where his mother would not let an amputated, dying man lie in peace.

Smile twitching at the corners, the nearly audible tension about to vibrate up and through Gloria's stress-abused veins, she hissed to her son. "Then get a clue. You got that Company Aptitude and Placement test today, and that's where I feel like you have to be."

"That was yesterday, mom."

"Then you have no reason to stand out here 'fraid of leaving do you?"

"Don't have a reason to leave neither! Not with this gonkhead here!"

"David–!" The loud, forceful exhalation as Gloria reasserted herself that she would not smack her stupidly stubborn brat of a son into somewhere between next week and listening to her for fucking once.

Emiya shifted on his feet, the duffle bags' strap had been digging into his shoulder. In an effort to lessen the irritation, he looked away and studied the interesting, unique and complex architecture of the segmented construction of the Megabuilding. Very much so. Such a… grand display of architecture required his full and undivided attention after all. The repeating floors that strained upwards in a vast rise of concrete and metal, littered with makeshift satellite routers and homespun drying lines and machines really, really took up his attention. Focusing his hearing away from the increasingly loud domestic in front of him, Emiya appreciated the sound of a populace waking up, or in some cases, he winced at the worryingly large number of misfortunate and junkies and squatters who groaned, moaned, or even worse panted like animals in their own sick and piled up refuse. So many trash bags just piled up, not even in a particular spot, but like a statement of a matter of course. As if said, this was just the way things were, old man.

Regretting his choice to look away a little, Emiya wondered if running-walking away from the situation might de-escalate it enough that they could all pretend this never happened. He chanced listening back to the conversation taking place in front of him between an increasingly twitching mother and her equally rising in defiance (and volume) child.

"Not a shit-fuck, crap, said crap. Ahem. Not a craphead, know there's something wrong! You haven't left to your job yet—"

"And I told you that they changed my shifts, told you right this morning when you woke up on the couch, again." Gloria's voice lowered. "You can't be missing attendance, David. You can't. Do you want to fail out?"

David's mouth thinned to a line of resolve. "Totally Can. More important things than missing attendance to become some future suit…" he trailed off, and Emiya saw why.

A crack, a splinter in the motherly concern and strained calm had appeared on Gloria's face. For a moment, she looked. Well. She looked exhausted. On the verge of giving up. She parted her lips, chapped and cracked with red slightly at the edges, and—

There was a memory, Emiya thought, so long ago that even the ashes it had become had settled into the earth and mixed into inseparable components. The first crack in his naive idealism. Of a thin, haggard looking man in a stranger's coat and dark, hand ruffling and worn and awfully weak against the scalp. Of a thin, small, so very small hand in his own, soft, childlike, that same terribly familiar weakness, the realization glacial. Slow, but catastrophic in its crawling advance. The questions when both were buried besides each other. If he had just known, he could have saved her. If someone had just told him, didn't keep him in the dark, maybe… Maybe. Those were lies, naturally. Sometimes their fates were sealed long ago by forces so outside of themselves that they could only laugh at their uselessness rather than rage and weep at the unfairness of it all. But that didn't stop him from dreaming of the possibilities again and again and again.

Seeing what may have happened if he had an inkling of doubt, had been just a little more than a naive fool, in front of him now, it felt like a spike lancing through his throat.

It was hope that cut the cruelest and deepest, he reflected. The hope things could have been different. The flimsy assertion he could have changed something, anything.

It was that same hope Emiya crushed now. "What exactly do you think you can do?" He said, softly. Spoken so calmly and almost, if one had to describe it, gently. Yet his words cut through the little bubble of intrapersonal relationships like a hot knife through congealed fat. The focus and intensity of Emiya's stare left no question to whom his question was addressed to.

A hand forestalled Gloria from interrupting, the crack in the solid steel briefcase placed directly in front of her eyes, a wide split in the reinforced and refined metal like an omen of disaster, a sign of shifting tectonic plates. A grinding of rusting sky-hung gears.

David gulped on the unwavering attention Emiya subjected him to, but stood his ground. Mulishly, he muttered. "Don't know, don't know a single deet about all this shifty stuff you two got going on." He still had to add a little snarky dig at his mother's patronizing.

Ruthless and uncaring of Gloria's obvious desire for her son to not worry, Emiya held out his hand ninety degrees to the side, dropped the briefcase, to which Gloria caught reflexively, and shrugged off the duffle bag to thump besides his feet. He then held out his free hand to prevent the door from snapping shut. "First, let's let your mother put that away."

"Then what," challenged David, obviously not in the mood to entertain any distractions.

"Then," Emiya mentally judged the time, and his memorized schedule of the NCART which by his estimation now meant that David Martinez would be inevitably late if he set out now. He quickly weighed the options set out before him, carrying David was obviously out, just for the unwanted and unnecessary attention it would draw to the Martinez family if they were further associated with him than they already were, and commandeering a vehicle to transport the kid would only bring up more questions and potentially get him further involved with Emiya, something both Gloria and Emiya did not want, so… Emiya leaned a little to the side, observing the stutter-step of Gloria as she hid the bag and briefcase in the bathroom, slotted in the vents of the washing machine room, respectively. No. He should do it himself.

"Then, I'll drive everyone to school."

Gloria peeked her out from the washing room, eyes wide and eyebags as prominent as a squirrel. She had the most disconcerted look on her face.

"You can drive?"

Emiya was starting to wonder just what exactly was Gloria's impression of him…

…

Emiya could drive, as his deft mastery of the stick and wheel proved as they burned a trail of CH00H2 down the freeway.

Gloria leant her head against the piled up recycling bags in the backseat, eyes closed but her breathing elevated enough that he knew she was closely monitoring what he said to her son, and ready to interject at any moment if he went off-road so to speak. As to why she was partially napping, that was due to the combined efforts of both David and himself, who both insisted she take a much-needed rest. It also meant, David was perfectly free to glare a hole in Emiya's temple, jittery leg wearing a hole in the footspace. Quite literally, as Emiya spied the paling impression of a footprint in the automotive carpet.

Emiya's eyes in contrast to David's glare, were firmly glued to the road and the apparently non existing traffic laws as sirens raced by him with the grating distorted metal music streaming out of a nearby family of motorcars paraded in black and red and a taste best left forgotten in the 1900s. "Corporate Plaza, hm." He said, with too little emotion to guess his thoughts. What a name. "I can imagine how expensive the tuition must be."

David barked out a chuckle. But there was no humor to it. "There's a point you're trying to make here? Or am I supposed to shut up and suit up?" The vitriol with this kid, Emiya remembered being much more sedate as a teenager. Notwithstanding his certifiably, if not illegal then certainly not a good citizen's idea of civil obedience: participation in a death game with walking WMDS and his own nightly practice with a highly dangerous forbidden art. Actually, compared to Emiya Shirou, David Martinez was downright a poster boy of obedience, community, and general sanity.

"Dee…"

Why, just look at the way David screwed his mouth shut at his mom's quiet chastisement, turning to glower out the window. By the time Emiya had learned his first illegal pastimes, there was no one to tell him exactly how stupid he was being.

Emiya observed David through the rearview mirror, lanky, slouching, the ungainly period between puberty and growth spurt, young. A certain kind of naivety to go up to a clearly dangerous man and demand answers. He glanced at Gloria's resting form in the back. Without her bulky EMT jacket, the woman seemed almost small, squashed up against the bags of recycling and unsuited clothing. The stewing silence didn't affect him, not nearly as much as it affected the increasing tempo of David's foot against the floor, so he was free to ruminate and decide on a suitable course of action that incurred the least risk and, at least, temporarily satisfied all parties.

He began, "Your mother saved me from certain death." Sharp pride for his mother straightened David's slouched spine a little, but the boy kept his eyes fixed on the passing blurs. In the rearview mirror, Gloria stilled the rise and fall of her chest, listening intently now. "However, due to that and the circumstances in which she found me in, your mother lost her job." An impressive glare there, Gloria. Carefully, Emiya did not mention the staggering debt her former employers forced on her. Before either Martinez could interrupt him, Emiya steamrolled over their surprise. "I owe her a debt and offered to repay her, simple as that."

It was not as simple as that.

David knew that, Gloria knew that, and soon, everyone driving besides them would know that as well. "Bullshit. You're trying to feed me this story, and I ain't having it. You know how many people she saves? Met zero of them." His voice lowered, his foot stopped tapping. "Only gonna ask this once more. What the actual fuck do you want with Mom?"

Emiya flicked the turn signal on, and easily passed a fiery red muscle car, as he prepared to exit on the nearest subterranean parking level for the city center. Idly, he wondered if turning on the radio might muffle their voices. "What I said." He stared into David's eyes through the rearview mirror. "As lovely as your mother is, I have no interest in pursuing a relationship with her. You may find it hard to believe that I am only paying her back a favor, but I can't change the facts." He said, blatantly changing the facts.

He reiterated, "She saved my life, at risk to her own financial wellbeing, and well, told me some things that I probably shouldn't have listened to, but were appreciated nonetheless." Emiya glided the aging car into a sloped turn that curved downwards into a shadowed tunnel under the aimless Koi Fish. "That means much more to me than her beauty." He said as he navigated a difficult trawl through blacked out corporate vehicles that crowded the fluorescent-it tunnel. "If it just so happens I can help her by gifting her with some funds, well… I don't need much anyway." Hopefully, David didn't question why that plentiful 'money' came in the form of a ratty duffle bag and suspicious briefcase.

David blinked. He gestured, a little wildly, a little lost, a lot angry. "So what? You just have enough money to throw around? And what, Mom just happened to luck out when she saved your' gonk ass?"

Emiya wondered if luck constituted being shot at and losing a job vital to a single adult household, and then additionally burdened under a looming debt. He doubted it, but… then again, Saber had A-Rank luck, hadn't she? And considering her fate and struggles… Perhaps defining luck was something best left for those who hadn't suffered under its tender mercies.

The small upwards curl to his lips suggested a smile. "All things considered, I believe I'm the lucky one in this case. If it weren't your mother," Emiya shrugged. "I wouldn't be here talking right now."

The car rolled to a gentle stop. The electric blue lighting of the fluorescent bulbs of the underground parking structure, mixed with the sunlight reflecting off the concrete structure, and covered the whole of their level into a liminal shade between the two.

Emiya clicked his seatbelt free and stepped out of the car. He closed his eyes against the ceiling lights beating down against them. Letting out a breath, more exhaustion than exhalation, feeling twenty again and his eyes seeing only the black kimonos in front of him like a black tide about to drag the world, him, everything that mattered under. Twenty five now and itching at his bones, a hollowness and unsettling restlessness as if he couldn't stay anywhere ever again. Thirty and running towards inevitability with a smile slashed across his mouth. Forty and dead; Emiya opened his eyes.

Over the roof of the car, he thumped his hand on the roof of the car, getting David's attention. He turned fully to face the kid, instead of talking to him through his reflection in a mirror. "David." The younger Martinez eyed his hand warily, suspicion written all over his scowling face. If Emiya just left it at this, the boy would worry and stress all over his mother's predicament, he was just that sort of dumb brat.

"What."

Emiya felt his lungs settle inside his ribs, the brush of his expanding torso against the press of his softly lined inner armor. The parking lot's air reeked of exhaust, cigarette smoke, and a hint of iron and vomit. "You might not believe me."

David looked at him like he was an idiot. "Might?"

Emiya shrugged with a practiced air of nonchalance. "You might think I'm full of shit." By the way David had the hint of a smirk peeking through his seemingly resting scowl, that might was more of a definitely. "But," Emiya stressed. "Do you think your mother is stupid? Everything you've thought about it, she's worried ten times over." He scoffed at David's eyes, at their pathetic surprise. "Thinking you have the right to worry about your mother is just pure arrogance."

David clenched his teeth, his jaw was shaking with rage. He was barely a moment from snapping and launching a fist at Emiya now. "See you talking lot of shit, but don't know the first thing of you. So, asking polite-ly" He emphasized, in a voice so thick with sarcasm it layered over the bubbling tension. " Who the fuck do you think are?"

"No one, nobody," answered Emiya. "Call me what you will. It doesn't matter." His hand was still on the car's roof. The metal was cold under his skin, the weak sunlight and heat runoff from the engine not enough to shield it from the air rushing past. They were going around in circles, saying the same thing over and over again with little to no variation. No wonder David was infuriated. Being confronted with your own weakness would do that, your helplessness in the face of the unexpected. "Worry about yourself before you try and take on someone else's burdens. If you're too thick to realize that, then you don't know the first thing about your mother's worries."

David said nothing. The thought had never crossed his mind. Just looking at him, it was obvious.

Emiya hung out his hand out the side, a little limply. "But . Feel free to prove me wrong," a little airily, like he didn't care either way. He smirked. "I won't be betting on you... That's someone else's job."

"Wasn't counting on it!" David shot back. Bluster, bravado. But something Emiya had said had chipped a piece of that confidence. his fists were still clenched, but they weren't gripped tight enough to drain the blood from his fingers. He still wanted to punch Emiya hard enough to wipe that smirk off his smug face, permanently, obviously, but he didn't move to vault over the car. He glanced down, into the windows of the car.

As Emiya had thought, David Martinez was a better kid that Emiya Shirou ever tried to be.

The parking lot still echoed with the words Emiya had spouted so cruelly when he slipped back into the car, and turned the ignition. Echoing with the hypocrisy of his own words, the memory he couldn't forget even as the person known as Emiya Shirou was buried under the deeds of Counter Guardian EMIYA, the truths he had to deny even as they forgave him for his failures. That there was nothing he could have done. But that was who he was, an idiot who couldn't accept the truth in favor of the beautiful lie that there should have been.

Neither he nor Gloria said a word, as he crossed onto the freeway again, until, firmly.

"You're an asshole."

"I've been told that before." He agreed.

"Piss off a whole legion of teenagers before?"

"It's a bad habit of mine, awfully hard to quit."

Then, quietly, so quietly it was lost under the rumble of the car, the sound of the wind racing against its exterior, the compiled noise of Night City. "... I won't thank you." Hmph. Then why bring it up at all?

"Naturally." Emiya looked towards the seemingly unending road in front of him, and all the ways it resembled what he left behind. After all, he was just repeating something someone once told him long ago.

…

The tap water in his hand rippled at him, distorting and obscuring his reflection in its flat surface. He didn't recognize the man twisting in the water.

He lingered too long, had already become irreversibly altered by his time here, whether he knew it consciously or not. A sort of Texture had etched itself front his skin, by the cut of the dust, the heated, breaths polluted by smog, or the smaller, infinitesimally insignificant things that no one could notice. Just as he changed the world, he marked a change in it as well. Like a biological organism reacting to a foreign body and forcibly trying to integrate itself into it, the effects of his actions and being would ripple out into larger, unstoppable consequences further down.

Internally, Emiya mused on the oddity of his pseudo-flesh desiring hydration, or the tight press of his stomach against his abdomen that signaled a stomach in dire want of fuel, or even how the corners of his eyes squeezed themselves of their own concern, eyelids fighting against his will to involuntarily close. When he had slashed and burned away pieces of his spiritual core, he had done so blindly, inaccurately and only with the slightest bit of safety measures in the form of Avalon. The severe dip in his Parameters to merely the standard prime of his life was only the beginning. His wraith-like, unnatural existence supported by the run off of his mana circuits, twenty seven nodes turned twenty short. By removing so much of what defined his existence as a Servant in a Class Container, the bits and pieces where Counter Guardian EMIYA did not qualify, filled out by Alaya's contract slipping him in to the Throne of Heroes, he had reverted to a state nearly alike to the same man who had died by rope. That apparently included all the foibles and requirements of appearing as a living creature. With a caveat. With a looming guillotine that he had yet to devise a satisfactory solution for.

What a pair the two of them made, tics firing off spasming muscles, irritable, and neglecting their basic needs to converse over a pile of money. Like a family of squirrels who forget to budget for winter… if the analogy wasn't too childish.

Neither of them made a move to shake the Vending machine down for its bounty even as it chimed again and again tunes and slogans so crude they couldn't be ignored. They were better than that, Emiya thought precociously. Ignoring how his traitorous fingers twitched everytime a catchy remix detailing another neon-bright, loaded with carbohydrates and conspicuously absent of nutritious factoids, packageable announced itself from the Entertainment Complex. The future was hell, apparently. A hell of manufactured pleasures and immutable distractions.

Gloria ignored the frustrating thing with a comparatively insulting ease and practice that spoke of well of, or rather poorly, how constant such advertisements really were in the not so distant future. Strands and entire locks of vibrant red hair fell out of her messily made ponytail and into her face, dulled, too shiny; Frustrated, Gloria blew them out every few seconds only to repeat the process in another few. Her ponytail hardly earned its name, smashed and loosely held together by hope and a prayer from when she had pressed her head against the side of her car to rest. It leant her already worn look an air of desperation he feared was all too real.

She was frowning at the messy accumulation of rolled up hundreds, the loose eurodollars he had looted from the Tiger Claws being slowly but surely rearranged into a readable amount. But then her gaze would drift, eventually, to the still unopened briefcase Emiya had placed upright on the ground.

Muttering to herself, Gloria had poured herself languidly over a high stool and extendable counter, hunched over like some strange spider. Or. A woman with no way out. The spider comparison was kinder. "...can convert the eddies easy enough, Drop Points take off a 45% cut for anyone without a red or black account, might have to switch, but somebody's going to start asking questions…"

Emiya made himself useful by checking over her calculations, and occasionally wiping off any trace 'evidence' from some of the eurodollars even though Gloria had, while teasing him for his stuffiness, told him that no one cared if a little red got on the green. He still cleaned them off anyways. Emiya asked, brow raised in interest, "A red or black account?"

Without looking up from her work, Gloria replied, "For your bank account. Black is for suits, red is for high risk, low time period account holders." She looked up. "Mercenaries and Edgerunners, basically. Drop Points don't take a cut of what you sell, but in return you have to pay a higher fee when you open a balance with them."

"And if this account holder mysteriously dies, I assume Drop Point will sadly collect the account balance for their own." Emiya finished the rest of what she hadn't said, getting the gist of it from his own experiences with the Enforcers of the Clock Tower. Predatory business practices, from the early half of the century to the latter half of the century, their methods might have changed, but the theory behind it all was the same. Though, accounting Magi weren't nearly so ruthless to take such a skyhigh cut in his experience. But when your clientele consisted of supernaturally enhanced super humans with a strong leaning towards unjustifiable violence and ruthless liquidation that was, perhaps, being too kind towards them.

"Now, I'm only trying to crunch the numbers to see if it would be better to open a Red account, and pay the high fee. Or stick to my medical C-class benefits— but I would have to close that anyways because those fuckers fired me." She hissed. Gloria rubbed at a point above her eyes and a little aways from her temple, obviously nursing an increasingly painful headache. "Fuck… Don't mean to sound shitty, but this isn't enough. Even if I manage to haggle a higher price against Lucy," Which, Emiya thought, was quite a gamble against someone with a rare skill and who knew your face and name to exploit against you and yours. "It's not enough."

"There's something else about these red accounts then?" Emiya posed in an attempt to prevent a stress-induced break.

She pressed her lips together, a bead of blood welling up along the worried edges. "Opening an account like that… It sends a signal." She huffed, pontificating little with her arms, not slamming them on the table but certainly setting them down with a slap. "Look. Everyone does something on the side. You take a bribe to spy on some weird-ass shed in the badlands, for a couple hundred eddies to keep Trauma Team coverage, or you act as a runner for one of the gangs, so you keep your lights on. That's just how it is. But once you open a red account that's it. You're telling everyone you're a dead man walking or the next bit of gore under your shoe. Different story, same result. "

The line of separation from criminal acts and the ordinary was blurred beyond all reasoning, but it was still there, still a stark reminder of what happens when you went over the edge. Violent delights, violent ends. Or so how the saying went. The delights often however, had little to no bearing on the ends. Opposing the social contract may have had its benefits, but the dissociation from society was inseparable. As one who had long crossed his name off that particular contract, Emiya had no qualms in saying, "Then I'll open up a Red account."

She stared at him, flatly. "You'll need more than a face and a name. Do you even have a birth certificate? Even Edgerunners have a past." She let out a noise like a sigh, like an empty breath. "And they take even bigger cuts from Red accounts trying to transfer funds. Safety and quality control deductibles." The bitterly flipped air quotes made it quite clear of what Gloria thought of that particular slogan.

It was being made abundantly clear to him how decidedly pointless he was in this battle.

Emiya had always struggled with the execution.

On the surface, saving another seemed like the simplest thing in the world. Just run towards, never retreating, never stopping, always, always helping the lives within his sight, but when it came down to actually saving another... That was such a complex and layered question of different pros and cons and frustratingly unclear moral leaps and ethical concerns. It was never as easy it appeared. Not for him, not for the way he lived. An irredeemably greedy and foolish individual, Emiya Shirou didn't wish to just save another human being from death, but to wish them happiness as if he had the ability to grant it. Deranged, morally corrupt, and a foundation made of only paper mache, that was how that man carried on till the end of his days. It could have been different, it should have been. There were other ways he could have satisfied the emptiness inside himself. Other pursuits he could have forged down with his ready stock of determination and selfishly selfless disregard.

But a sword was poorly equipped to handle the dreary, drudgery in the aftermath of a battlefield. Steel had to be melted down to form up shovels for the dead, to be smelted again to shape into ploughs for the new harvest.

Even only a minor alteration to this broken mentality, even narrowing the scope of his empty life to a single individual, as the Emiya Shirou devoted to Matou Sakura had learned, was unacceptable. The dissonance between EMIYA and the one who had forsaken those ideals over something as human as love threatened to shred his fragile physical shell even with only a fraction of his existence measured in the relatively tiny part of him called an arm.

No. He had not struggled over the execution, he had struggled over his own inabilities.

Emiya stared hard at the pensive, exhausted woman. Whatever criminal activities she had done before, were desperate, temporary measures to stabilize a fluctuating income that often disappeared in even minor crises. Gloria had maintained a precarious balance of paying the bills, starving and depriving herself and pressing her body into hard labor and then even committing criminal acts that would be called immoral and reprehensible by the wider populace, and the end of it all… none of it made a difference. Those sacrifices ended as routine. Deprivation and starvation were ruthlessly factored in as the norm and not something to endure once through a rough patch. Those crimes only became appallingly useless when measured up against the titanic weight of an uncaring system. Pathetic attempts and heady rebellion for some, but for others, crime was only the animal instinct of survival; All of it was equally crushed underneath the heel of Night City.

Her fledgling dips in the criminal underworld only serve to make her aware of the ugly depths and fragility of such a lifestyle, her civilian job dropped her without a second thought and then to further add insult to injury burdened her with a debt on top of the already unpaid bills piling up in every corner. It made his hand shake, the crude transparent organ in that he called a heart thump furiously in its cage of bones, and forced him to pace up and down the length of the Martinez's shared apartment to burn off these useless emotions.

Gloria only watched him with an empty gaze. Neither condemnation nor sympathy present themselves in those eyes, just. The mechanical motions of following his cynical back and forth, a dumb, atavistic grasp of movement.

He stopped in the middle, frustration and impotent fury at the injustice swallowed by the deep calm that always suffused him before he acted. "The briefcase, open it."

Her own face fell a little at that, but Gloria acquiesced. He had told her of his deal and trickery, and her not even questioning how he did the things he did now, beyond some grumbles of bio-mod bullshit and superpowers, simply told him that they would be better off selling the broken briefcase and using the money shard on there as a fancy, if hilariously overpriced, coaster.

Now, it was painfully stupid to believe that the money promised to him by the same woman who sicced Max-Tac on him (that part he did not mention to Gloria) and who he had double crossed without a second thought, to then pay for a item that she didn't even receive a copy of, well. Behold, the limits of Emiya's stupidity.

Without further ado, behold how he went past them again. "We'll have to try it." Emiya decided, eyes flicking towards a red-inked, damp official letter of refused tuition from Arasaka Academy by grounds of David Martinez's guardian's plummeting credit.

Gloria took a fortifying swallow of her, no, actually Emiya's cup of water, her hands were so shaky they missed her cup entirely and found the cool synthetic material of his. Explaining, more out of way to stall, then any actual desire to clarify, she said, "Besides the Arasaka logo on this one, all money shards or cred chips are roughly the same. Traceless, unaffiliated and tax free cash. That's what they advertise." The illusion of free money never became any less appealing even with age. "The newer models don't need you to even chip them in, you just need to scan them with your Kiroshis." Her voice hoarse, she forced a sheepish smile that only ended looking painfully fake. "My optics are a bit old though, no updates anymore, so."

Before she could slot the glossy black chip of metal into her neck, Emiya had to confirm. "There is no telling what is on that chip. A virus, or some other hidden trap, malware we would not be able to detect until it is too late. Three and half million is a… a not insignificant amount, but there are other ways—"

"What ways?" But her tone softened, "Money talks. And there isn't any higher bargaining power than a million eurodollars. Three million… I never even scratched together more than a grand all my life… and now, three million." She pointed at the stacks of cash they had measured out on the table. "Not even ten times that scratch, would change a thing. I could pay all my bills and clear the debt yesterday, and they would still send me that email and physical paper in an hour. I still wouldn't have a job, not nearly the financial stability Arasaka Academy expects so they can keep those fat checks coming in." She rubbed the exhaustion from her eyes, something unbreakable and unbendable inside them. "Three and half million however, and they don't care anymore. Corporations only care what you can give them, and for a million dollars they'll fucking lick my feet. Even if it's fake, I have to take the chance. No matter what."

There were other ways. Emiya could fly to Arasaka Tower, break into one of the most highly secured locations in the world, blackmail, coerce, force at swordpoint the most adept Netrunners in the world to force every single ledger and each bit of computerized record to ensure David Martinez always had a place in Arasaka Academy, and escape. And in the process, killing tens and disrupting, possibly injuring hundreds in the process and furthermore only alerting the most powerful corporation in the world that the untethered, dangerous, and freakishly powerful man who had humiliated them, had ties to this small family with no protection or even a modicum of stability beyond a single parent. His actions always had consequences he couldn't foresee. Even if Gloria had agreed with his idea to doublecross the woman in the screen, agreeing that at the time he had made the switch between fake ghost program shards he had made the right call, when he realized it was Arasaka on the other end that was when that doublecross became definitely an error beyond any other.

For a man who wanted to save everyone, there was nothing less funny that he had doomed those he wanted to protect with those very same actions he took to protect them.

Emiya still had to try. "At least, let me take the chip."

Gloria refuted his argument precisely, mercilessly. "You don't have even the basic cyberware. And waiting the however long it'll take for you to go under, to even integrate your new implants into the system, for the same result?"

"It will not work." The point needed to be hammered home, each and every syllable cut across the air like a knife. Details laid out in damning red ink. "Relying on the integrity, the honor of a backalley deal where there was no shortage of betrayal… Such a thing can only be regarded as insane."

Determined, Gloria argued, "Then there's harm in doing it anyway. Better to try it and fail than to never have wasted our time tip toeing around."

Emiya felt his teeth grind against each other at the stubbornness of this woman. He had told her to open the briefcase, he had brought it here, what was that for but wishing that it be used? Yet… He wanted to shake her, demand that she stop, force her to confront on how utterly moronic she was being, he wanted her to know in no uncertain terms that she was making the wrong choice a thousand times over. And for what? And for what—

Gloria stared at him. Lips slightly parted, red hair the color of scarlet. Like a jolt of cold blue memory through his system. A sobering, sovereign reminder.

Emiya asked himself, silently, what would he do when faced with this same situation. What would he do? To save one person? Throw all away semblance of safety and to bet it all on the tiniest chance of success? Hell, if there was no possibility of success? What wouldn't he do?

Emiya cursed himself.

…

A.N.
On a bit of a lighter note. Gloria still doesn't know Emiya's name. Remember when she introduced herself back in II? Yeah, Emiya is so awkward he just, didn't, introduce himself in return. That's why she never addresses him by name, because she thinks he doesn't have one...The real mystery is what Gloria thinks Emiya is. Arasaka supersecret biotech, escaped lab experiment? A pile of sentient nanomachines that just chooses, for no reason, to use swords? An idiot?

 

[ArtemisAvant]

VIII: It Always Catches You

…

The rumble from the Metro was akin to a rocking chair, slow, methodical, a vibration that dragged itself through his arm and into the knobs of his spine, and finally slowed to a gentle kneading at the base of his skull to neck. Lulled to a false sleep, by the calming motion, Emiya let his eyes fall.

Trains were great, dumb beasts, metal carriages pulled along by fiery bulls chained to themselves and kept leashed by steel bars. In the grander scheme, they were fundamental, transportation and logistical instruments that often represented greater concepts of freedom, reprieve, and rest. Big and small, they upheld invaluable supply chains that often were the difference between life and a kinder version of it.

(—His ears never got used to the silence. Fuyuki, modern, traditional, trapped in between the two, metropolitan and beautifully anachronistic in a fraught divide that grew ever larger every year as time crawled ahead. There, noise had been a constant. The cicadas in the sweat-slick, sun-harsh months of summer to the torrential downpours of Autumn where the tires' slashing the water crawled into his head every night like nesting butterflies. But in No Man's Land, silence was the pounding, shattering, tension before the next whip-crack of bullets or the thunderboom of artillery. Back when he was still foolish enough to believe fighting for a single nation would be enough to deter the coming conflict, Emiya wore the bulky, dusted dark and gray of a military man. Projection hadn't yet declared him a native to the region yet. The rifle looked equally out of place in his hands, and mulishly, he itched for a blade to quell his uneasy heart.

"When I see you, I just can't ignore you, is that how it is?" The girl with hair like a stolen flower said to him, hands bloodying his hair as she ruffled the ragged strands. He shouted, declared her as an enemy. Betrayal, all the worse for how singularly and one-sided it felt. He could have saved them. He could have tried. She frowned at his childish petulance, completely at ease in the shelled, and soaked landscape she had watered with silver crosses and the Dead's vitae. Dark red, nearly brown. Sluggish black. Like blood on snow. On silk. Something irreversible. A stain that could not be washed away no matter how long you tried. Weren't they alike? Whenever he was aimlessly assisting in some minor task that anyone could have done, fixing a fence of the unfortunate people who couldn't flee, or thoughtlessly listening to every woe and weal of the men who could not find sleep any longer, she was right there with him. "No. Not just because of this," the Black keys dotted around the landscape, the dark garb of an Executor of a Church with no grounds here, and the complete and utter lack of regret and remorse on her frowning, kind, face, "... why is it, that I can respond to their thanks with a smile and yet you can only look like that?"

He could not give an answer that satisfied her or himself. "That's why I can't leave you alone." What she did not say, He was not her enemy. He never could be. He simply was no match at all against her. An enemy, after all, was one that you could look into the eyes of and see yourself reflected. And Emiya's only enemy was only ever himself—)

His arm had been chilled by the incessant whirr of the Metro's air circulation, recycling the worn smells of too much cigarette smoke, the wet, rotted sweet scent of men and women who had lost all control over their body, and an uncomfortable amount of sweat and rust. Jolted awake from the dream that was more memory than illusion, he blinked owlishly against the rough hand pressed against his shoulder. He was not all the way there, by the concerned look in Gloria's eyes. Some piece of him stuck like a fly in ointment, still somewhere in that memory of a shroud, a passing acquaintance with an almost disturbing devotion to curry, and the beginnings of a conflict that would pan out to a war that never came. He lifted himself off the seat, tongue clinging to his patella, and so was only able to show his gratitude by an appreciative nod. His hand wrapped around a steel pole, readying, steadying himself.

They had been silent ever since his near-outburst at her apartment, preferring instead to silently air out their confusion into the gray light of the rising day. Overcast, clouds thickened into a layer that refused even a peek from the sun. To break it felt faintly damning, blasphemy of a thing that hadn't need be said, but had been improperly communicated nonetheless. He couldn't seem to ask her if the promised money had been there. If the debts were paid.

Emiya broke it anyway. "I… overstepped previously." Gloria didn't move, but he was aware of her besides him, closer to him than the strangers on the NCART, but farther than a friend, family, or anything at all. And thus closet aware of how she slightly tensed at his words, the almost violent break in the bewildered peace. "Really, I went too far. It's up to you, how you would like the debt to be paid, so trying to decide for you after the fact, is just ridiculous."

Noise filled the hollow between them, a physical presence in the shallow shaking of the carriage, the constant mishmash of cars, people, snatches of music, and faintly, gunfire pulled into a bundle of sound that could only be described as Night City's, filling in the place of words. Gloria did not turn to look at him, and he kept his eyes stuck to the weathered lines of the homeless man clutching at a guitar case like it was his last chance. Grey light washed the already unhealthy complexion to something swarthy and starkly red by the large rash that crawled from neck to shardport. Pus and scabbed over brown surrounded the opening, and he twitched faintly in his sleep. A noisy and pained thing.

Human misery everywhere. Human cruelty omnipresent.

There were over a dozen people in this NCART line, and over half of them were in equal but different parts of accumulated despair— a man huddled over his himself, whispering into a call, desperate, curt words, a woman looked ill and lost, a delicate weave on her legs torn and ripped in a way that only made Emiya feel cold and empty, and several suited men and women who alternated between gazing blankly into the horizon, or up and into the jagged scar of Night City's skyline. Dreaming of things they wished for. Polarizing, dizzying height and excess or peaceful finality of the endless rat race.

Systematic failure on every level, there were no other words for it. Seeing this, it made him wonder, what hope did he ever have of saving everyone, even the few in front of him?

"I don't get you at all." Gloria shook her head. Her lips pursed in a harsh line, and from his periphery, he couldn't help but follow the indelible and infinite veins that spiraled up through the curve of her neck, and the pale blue bruising at her temples and the pronounced capillaries that spun underneath her eyes. She did not say anything else.

And they continued the little left of their ride in silence.

…

In the not so distant future of 2076, whatever idea of a food market there had collapsed into some super corporate web of slop, and synthetic consumerism. In the dystopian hellscape perfectly and yet uniquely encapsulated by Night City, there was only mass-produced garbage. Advertised, championed, and lovingly produced and sold with only a fraction of effort by All Foods, Purina, and a dozen of other Companies such as Nestle, and PepsiCo. All who competed to form the next snack bar capable of replacing at least seventy five percent of the nutrient deficient that arose from the sharp decline in most if not all populations of animals and crops. The world's biodiversity had been obliterated from fluctuating climates, massive natural disasters, and the radical desertification of most arable and livable land. The result: a nearly infinite variety of the same synthetic or cultured ingredient in scarcely different form and taste. Literal SCOP. Sawdust and worms. Meat and grit.

For the average Night City resident scraping it by, vending machines and crowded food stands with shaky business practices and their possibly related somehow-affordable prices dominated most of their day to day consumption. But for those who didn't even have that kind of scratch on them, there was MaxiMart. Serving massive chains and the lowest consumer alike, the Super-Supermarket as it was known, dispensed quite possibly every purchasable (and not) item across the globe. Packaged in twenty meter tall crates, or wrestled out by millimeter by millimeter, they sold in a cutthroat business strategy. Operating with costs that legally, raised enough red flags to qualify for a sovereign nation, they nonetheless maintained their complete domination of the market through being literally the only place to buy those goods, and reserving a space as rumor had it 1000 kilometers wide under the ocean, then transported into the market by shipping underwater freight trains churning into Night City's ports.

Uncaring of appeal, or anything as base as style, they sold directly out of those shipping crates, where a ramshackle market had cropped up all on its own, as business owners and corporate giants alike had to purchase from their seemingly inexhaustible, and infinite range of wares.

In a blue shopping crate marked with rust and big blocky letters that spelled, KITCHENRY (TO BE SALVAGE) in hastily sprayed black spray. Emiya scoffed at a sweating dock worker. "That can't be right, see here? You should have about five portable gas stoves here, propane not included, and I only need one. And a propane tank."

"Choom, these are vintage, ancient. Not a single person has walked in here in twenty years wanting one of these." The obese man clacked his prosthetic fingers noisily on some interface pad. Silver, and construction orange paint that melded somewhere in the Realskinn shoulder joint, but from elbow down, all metal, exposed, prominent. A mark of pride. "You sure, I can't interest you in something a little more available? We got plenty of cart sized stoves, and they're even wheelable." There was a cajoling uplift on the end of his words, a hope translated into spoken word.

"...No, just a singular portable gas stove will be fine, thank you." A hope crushed.

"Seriously, you're killing me here, man." Emiya was, in fact, not killing the man. Heat was. The dock worker had a complexion that could only be described as unhealthy. Tanned from his constant work outside, but the salt breeze and blaring ship horns had taken away most of the sensation from his face. "We don't have those, and if we did, they're not here anymore." He shouted a little when he spoke. It was as annoying as much as it inspired a sort of empty pity.

"That's fine, then I'd like to put it in an order for a new one, and since this is troubling me, I won't pay a cent extra."

Slightly hysterically, the dock worker yelled, "No one makes them anymore!"

Emiya weathered it as surely as he weathered the man's breath and spittle flying into his face.

Besides them, just outside the claustrophobic and sun-warmed corrugated steel shipping container, two women looked distinctly unnerved by the overly… ordinary scene. It just didn't compute. First of all, who made potentially net-changing deals while shopping for groceries of all things? Who even shopped for groceries anymore? The answer was a fat no one, eat your triple XXL burrito and deal. Adding to the incongruity of the situation was the intense focus the man in black gave to this overly dull task, he wasn't even paying attention to the handoff of a Shard containing a program that had snubbed the nose of the Arasaka Corporation, if only briefly and shallowly, still proved a mean feat. A hand off, mind you, that he was instrumental in setting up! The final location of which, was also determined by Emiya, as it so happened to turn out. It boggled the mind. It elaborated nothing and had the audacity to present it as simple reality when it deserved, at the very least, an explanation. He was a man brimming with unfathomable mystery. He was haggling for single eddies.

Explanation were not so forthcoming as anyone wished.

Twenty minutes later, a small smile on Emiya's oddly refreshed looking face, and a wrapped up stove under his one arm, cradled protectively against his hip. He walked over to the handoff in such a way Oblivious. Uncaring. He patted the stove fondly with his fingers. "Well, I think I've wrapped up my business here." He looked down at Gloria still with that almost stupidly relaxed looking expression, shock white hair almost transparent, blinding in the gray sun crowning him in light. "And you? Everything sorted out?"

Obviously electing to ignore his everything, Gloria turned to face a young woman seated, rather defensively, on an uncomfortable looking plastic chair that dug thin and un-sanded edges into her exposed skin. Her face morphed into something more warm, almost concerned. "I just don't think you know what you're getting into, Lucy. This program seems too hot, and Arasaka already showed an interest in retrieving it."

The young woman stared at Gloria. Disbelief evident. "You stole it." Curt, closed off. Arms crossed, legs seemingly relaxed, but solidly placed on the ground. "Don't see you got much room to talk." So this was one of the Netrunners of Gloria's crew, hm. Emiya set his purchase on the same table as the unsold Shard sat, clearly this would take much longer than his own hashing out of the details. His face fell.

There wasn't another chair for him.

Gloria wasn't disheartened by Lucy's clear desire to end this already. "Which is why we know exactly the kind of risk you'd be putting yourself in. You don't want to attract that kind of attention from a corp."

Lucy twisted her face, a familiar look on it, one that Emiya recognized in the dim, fleeting way of recalling. Something that had not been etched, carefully, deftly into the hippocampus by meditation and repeated attempts to recall those precious moments caught in time's sand, but instead an image that had been witnessed so many times by his eyes they had printed themselves there, like a polaroid captured light. It was exactly the sort of thing he never wished to see again. The look of a hunted animal. Desperate. A beast that would turn over and over on its rest, sleepless and pained, searching for a predator that never retreated, but only took. To others, it was only a guarded expression, full of secrets.

To Emiya, it was as familiar as blood. What he didn't understand was why she had tensed so powerfully that she nearly shot right off her chair when he walked over.

The girl scoffed, playing off her unease as only a bad habit. " As if you don't know how this works, Gloria. Really, spare me." She tapped her fingers against her arm, rhythm like a song crooning over radio waves. "You warned me about the little doublecross your," A flick of her eyes towards Emiya, "friend pulled. 'Get it, zipped and shut." She held out her hand, "Just show me the Shard first then, not that I think you'll test me, but…"

Emiya shifted, a little uncomfortable when he was so out of place, standing besides two sitting persons. Maybe he should leave? He still needed to get a proper tank that would fit onto his gas stove, and then, of course, actual food or at least something more passable than the junk shoved into the Vending Machine in Gloria's apartment. His mind deliberated and questioned what perishable goods he could even procure from this locale, while he listened with half a ear onto the cyclical conversation. Fish and Asian inspired dishes seemed to be unusually prominent, even accounting for the large Kabuki district and obvious influence of the Japanese Nationalized Megacoporation, so perhaps there was actually an alive maritime industry?

Gloria huffed. "Just so long as you know what you're getting into, here." She passed the Shard to Lucy, having removed it from its container apparently before Emiya walked over.

Lucy furrowed her brows, and pulled out a hand sized device that Emiya didn't recognize, slotted the Shard neatly into a port, and flipped her arm over, slid out a wire from her rest and connected it to the device which chimed with an affirmative ring upon the insertion. Her fingers flitted across empty air, eyes tracing something that Emiya couldn't see, maybe a handheld computer equivalent? Some secure laptop proxy system to separate malware from directly interfacing with Lucy? Suddenly, he had a realization like a strike of a hammer of wind. He wasn't beholden to stay quiet or play up a role. He could simply ask to sate his curiosity. A quieter, more pragmatic part of him also reasoned it would also help him understand why this Lucy seemed so wary of him. "Are you checking the Shard now?"

Lucy didn't jump, but she did still in place, for a tiny moment, her fingers frozen for a moment before they resumed their quick movement across some haptic interface visible only to her. She hummed an agreement.

Emiya ignored Gloria's stare pricking at his skin. "Not sure I've seen something like this before, mind telling me what you're using?"

Caught off guard, Lucy blinked, eyes shifting and contracting as they narrowed onto him, pupils well and fully on him now. She appeared languid, fluid, nearly liquid onto the chair she had pooled onto, but what was shown was often, the exact opposite internally. "Be serious, you're fucking with me. Never seen a cyberdeck before?"

"Oh?" Emiya considered the small device on the table with a new light. Not a very bright, enlightened light, but a new one all the same. "A cyberdeck, huh." He had no idea what a cyberdeck was, but from the context and emphasis she put on it, perhaps it was a core component of these transactions, insurance maybe?

Something in his tone gave him way, because Lucy fully turned to face him, looking at him with mildly disgusted confusion, as if she couldn't comprehend how he didn't have the slightest inkling towards what a Cyberdeck was. She sized him up and down, reading in his face that he indeed not, 'fucking with her'.

"What rock did Gloria pull you out from?"

An answer, under a malevolent monkey paw filled with all the World's Evil and puppetting/melding with an abused teenage girl about, oh, more than seventy years ago. Emiya shrugged, "A dumpster in Watson, probably."

She squinted at him.

He blinked back at her.

She turned her head away, "Whatever." The wire from her wrist retracted with a hiss and Lucy flicked the Shard that popped out of the cyberdeck back to Gloria who barely caught it before it hit the ground. "Shard's legit." She held out her hand, "Congratulations, on being the gonk dumb enough to try themselves against the Voodoos but not dumb enough to die. Like I said before…" A moment of hesitation. "25 K in full for the Shard." Her eyes flashed blue, but Gloria's did not do the same. Interesting. Some kind of electronic handshake that completed the deal, further shown by displaying a signal in their optics? A lot more convenient than he remembered, impatiently waiting as parties exchanged bank account details or lumps of hard cash that needed to be counted, or be confirmed by a computer and internet connection on hand.

25,000 eddies, just that amount felt a little wrong, far too much for something so small. But the humane cognition faltered when it came to grasping the full extent of larger sums, to put it into a perspective. Lucy's grand payment amounted to not even one percent of three and a half million. Pathetic in comparison to that awe-inspiring, breathtaking amount he had 'negotiated' for, but from the little he could glean from the closed off book called Lucy, she was the type to be all business when push came to shove. Oh, bluster was perfectly fine and that confrontational, aggressive style of speaking felt more like tacked on in addition to her than a true indication of her personality, a sort of personality he guessed all… Edgerunners, as Gloria had named them, took upon themselves in order to mesh into the culture. Similar to how cultural manners and outcasted social groups often attempted distancing themselves from their more 'formalized' mainstream, it was another conscious layer between the subconscious us and them that helped delineate a cultural subgroup. But he had lost himself down a tangent, beyond the peculiarity of her speech and mannerisms, 25,000 eddies was likely a fair deal in her mind. More than fair by the way she sounded pained by the amount being handed away. A rationalization and understanding he would stake on being more reliable than that corporate princess' exaggerated financial practices.

If he would be allowed to extrapolate, then this was clearly more than a easy day's work for Lucy to earn back, now taking into account her estimated skills and being in a rare profession that had considerable influence in this electronically-dominated world, and her seeming youth— a property that as Emiya had usually learned meant that they were either born into a criminal life, or were forced into it by extenuating circumstances, both of which would mean a certain level of ability in the criminal field for having survived despite their youth— He'd like to say she was above average for a criminal Netrunner? It should be said, however, he had no confidence in his understanding of that particular area of skill, and though he was on the more technically-adept side of Magi in his time, that was the thing. In his time. Today? He was decades out of date. And in the fast paced, quickly evolving, race of technology, that was practically centuries behind. So, 25 thousand, likely a great deal of her savings, which also indicated a great desire for this Ghost Program of the Voodoo Boys.

It put it into perspective, simply how wide class disparity had become in this world. The divide between rich and poor, middle class, it seemed, having fallen away entirely and in that vacuum, illegal and high risk desperates and those without any other options flooded into a sort of middle ground between the skyhigh rich corporate bigwigs, managers, officers and the like, and the slumming dayworkers who labored exhaustively for mere fractions of what they made in an hour shining their noses. And there was simply no point in trying to fit into the ultrarich of the one percent of the one percent above the corporate suits, they broke the scale entirely.

If she felt the same peculiar smallness you would feel after mentally trying and failing to comprehend the actual difference between 3.5 million to a comely 25 thousand, Gloria gave no signal of it. Instead, she chose to extend her hand out and pressing it, palm to palm to Lucy's. A flicker-film of blue passed over her pupils for a moment as the transaction completed, and the partially mental, electronic data handshake successfully ended. Emiya observed it all with a neutral expression.

From a certain standpoint, he admired what Gloria attempted here, to try and avail a younger, seemingly more inexperienced person who looked to be overreaching, a small fish trying to leap into an ocean, after all, only spelled doom for the ambitious and desperate. And Arasaka was the biggest fish there was. It was kinder than most would do, it was more than anyone else would even think of. Naturally, then it deserved equal admiration and appreciation. In fact, by extending this simple warning, it invited undue risk onto Gloria herself from a certain point of view. A point of view that thought only of displacing others in order to secure your own position, but a point of view many took nonetheless in environments where betrayal was not a Shakespearean tragedy but a fact of life. Or from a more utilitarian perspective, Gloria stood more to lose if she warned Lucy, by not warning her of Arasaka's interest, there was comparably less risk.

From another standpoint, Emiya refused that half-assed effort from start to finish. If you were going to help someone, then you better commit all the way.

Skkkkrch! With a scrape that resounded across the port, bounced from peeling sheet metal to choppy waves, Emiya dragged a seat and with it, both Lucy and Gloria's attention to him along within half the shanty town's attention. Sitting himself down with a satisfied fanfare, he set his elbow on the table. Figuratively and literally forcing himself into the table. He said, as if he hadn't made an exhausting nuisance of himself, and mildly, "As your deal with Miss Gloria is completed, you wouldn't mind if I made an offer of my own, would you?"

He had the oddest smile on his face, one that he himself had no knowledge of. Crooked, small. Like his lips, mouth, and cheeks, knew the technically correct motion but somewhere along the way, decided to do their own thing. It looked, a little, tired. Honest.

…

Daylight spun dreams out of the shadows of Night City. In the kind, damp gray air refracting and dulling the harsh clarity of day to something foggy, indistinct. Colors were pulled into together, resembling nothing more than innumerable blotches on a concrete canvas, details smoothed out until they became illegible. A city cast in stone, instead of glass. Marble and light, not steel and neon. Seeing it like this, he could almost forget it was the future.

He still had the portable gas stove placed snugly under his arm.

There was a certain predisposition among Heroic Spirits, an agreement, made not with overt wording or even a mystical binding, but an inviolable understanding of death and what it meant. The dead had no right to influence the world of the living. Whether this was something that was individually understood and grasped by the many ghost liners who answered the call to a time after theirs, or something that was impressed unto them by the feeling of their paper bodies that barely resembled their own, or even communicated through by whichever magi who formed that Holy Grail, he couldn't say. Perhaps the founding families of the Servant Summoning system had included a stipulation restricting the transfer from the Throne of Heroes to mortal earth to only those who would not overly affect the world. Some machination of the Counterforce could be expected. Exceptions, of course, existed, Servants who wished to return to life and so seeking a wish from the Grail, Servants who had no wish but to fight regardless of the destruction they caused, himself. If there was such an agreement, then Emiya had firmly declined it. He was, afterall, usually summoned in his past. It made a selfish, unbelievably conceited, sort of sense that he would be allowed to change it out of anyone. Though, the moral and ethical questions of changing his own past were not usually something he considered in his attempts to paradox himself out of existence.

A propane tank, two bagged and frozen fish that nearly cost him an arm and leg, and certainly lost him an not insignificant amount of air from the shouting match that ensued as he vigorously debated with an equally spry seventy year old woman for the quality of her marine products. He won, though it was fiercely won and the old woman had smiled at him with puckered gums that told him she too won in some way. Twenty or so, twinkling, jingling bottles of spices, oils, salts, peppers and other so luxury items that he had enjoyed so frivolously in his youth, now packaged into tiny baggies and dried out husks that barely attracted the eye of even the most savvy consumer, useless as most of them were for the overall younger population. Additionally, the fact that most of the older members of the community who would recognize them as additives to food, would not buy them due to lingering paranoia over what exactly lingered in the seemingly harmless plant fibers and leaves. In their memory, the time of corporate bio plagues and devastating poisoning was only another bubbling conflict away. In that regard, he seemed like a man out of time. Buying and haggling over things that no one wanted, that no one cared for, and that went forgotten, dusty and rotting in a dark corner. Even with his frugal mindset, he felt positively scraped dry of the not so meager funds Gloria had practically shoved onto him, declaring half of the Tiger Claws' stolen bounty his now, damn any attempt to the contrary.

Before he could continue his navel-gazing and ruminations of life after mortality, a voice cut through the ennui of his thoughts like a scythe through breaded gold. "Here, let me," Gloria shoved a wagging hand into his personal space, eyes firmly on his bags with an air of exasperation. "Like looking at a coat rack, I swear. Haven't you heard of asking for help?"

Emiya elected not to comment on that particular chastisement, instead choosing to respond with a witty retort. "I didn't know I could. I thought we were instead choosing to ignore each other, five feet apart?" He quirked up his brow.

Gloria smartly did not engage with his petty display of childish pique, arcing a brow of her own to his, admittedly, exaggeratedly lopsided self. "Ignoring you is over, can't understand a damn thing about you, probably never will." She shook her head, and then looked him straight through the eyes. "You're just going to do what you want either way," Something in those soft pupils daring, Aren't you?

Emiya handed over a small partition of the many bags to Gloria. "Still, the way I went about it was painfully bullheaded and idiotic, no matter my intention or nature." He did not disagree, a corner of his mouth curled in rueful agreement even to her cutting, yet not contemptuous, appraisal on him.

She took the bags, swinging them onto her smaller shoulders with a passing familiarity, as if she had seen the action before, but had not ever done it herself. The brown packaging seemed new, strange, and altogether fascinating to her curious press of it between thumb and forefingers as she idly considered his words, and the corded section of paper ropes that cut into the line of her shoulder caught her off guard by the matching material. Gloria looked away, staring off at the rise and fall of waves stretching across the enclosed port of Night City. "Told you, didn't I? Prove to yourself that the way you live isn't wrong. Seems like to me, I'm just catching the consequences of my own advice." A short huff left her lips. "That's happening a lot lately."

It was not quite an apology, on either of their parts. The explanation, the excuse, they were missing, and in their absence, the regret and contrition felt ill at ease, a little misshapen. A warped puzzle piece that didn't fit neatly into either of their understandings of this passing event stuck in between the two of them.

He hummed, mind running over her words. "You're speaking of your son, David."

"I do that." She held a hand to her head, nursing a phantom headache appearing with just the mention of her son's name. Something he had seen countless times among parents, small or exaggerated on their features, from soldiers of fortune taking what may be their last glance to a sealed picture in their affects, from shell shocked survivors after the latest calamity he had been only to arrive late to, even some distant spark of recognition closer to home somewhere in his sea of repeated memories. It was just a shame then, that he, like all tools of war, didn't keep memories of the important things in life. The moments in between, the small pockets of warmth he had so callously thrown away in his life, the concerned nagging of a tired guardian. "Make everything about him, mean. He's… I've made him into my whole world." She said quietly. "Everything I've done is for him." She scoffed at herself, pulling herself into the recesses of the NCART Station. "That makes it sound so…" The noise lost to a rush of movement, stumbling, and running people of Night City, moving to and fro with the only transportation they could claim to own. He heard it still. Beautiful.

A little later after they had settled into a spot where they could change monorails, back to the Martinez' apartment, Gloria spoke up again. "I don't know. It's just. Sometimes, I think that's all I am." She wasn't looking at him. Her words were said directly to the air in front of her, and it was unclear who they were meant for. "A mother, a body. A thing that pays the bills. Eat, sleep, work, push, push. Rest," She drawled, in a way that made it clear how little she meant it. "Do it all over again. I barely even think. Just... Just. One thing: Hold out."

It would be a lie to say he understood. Instead of handing her an affirmation of her hard work, casting reproach on her selfish, moribund thoughts, saying anything at all; Emiya quietly stood by her side, gazing out into the gray skeins of light scattering over the buildings blotting out of the sky, against the metal that gleamed like suspended pools of water. Somewhere in the muffled distance of another carriage car, Yeah my darling, tear it up and burn it down then meet me, In the Afterlife on the crooning, distorted audio of a patchy radio. He stared into the city, and in the glittering rays of tinted glass, in every shadow cast by too-tall towers, in the bits of metal, pointed and jabbing high from their roofs, like spears pointed to the sky, in every dot of a person so small they seemed like nothing more than impossibly complex cellular life crawling over every surface: The City stared back.

Gloria rubbed at her eyes with her arm, taking a breath that only with Emiya's ears could you hear the slight hitch cutting it in two, and she rebuilt herself in the reflection of the Metro window. In the corner of his eye, inadvertently, in a voyeuristic intimacy, a stolen glance, he saw her, in the smudged plexiglass, mouth to herself.

Hold out.

…

The propane tank slid into the metal claw-like appendages of the waiting receptacle, a hiss-click of a proper connection, and by flicking the electronic ignition and dial molded in flimsy plastic, a blue flame shot to life, a burst of heat that brushed against his skin.

The table, extended portion cleaving the apartment's entrance to living room cleaning in two, had been cleaned from the eurodollars cluttering it and hastily scrawled on letters full of calculations and shaky ink. The letter detailing the politely yet no less damning termination of David's schooling nowhere to be seen. In its place, sat the bulky, yet comparatively unobtrusive supplies Emiya had bought today. Their paper bags were carefully sliced open like blooming dried flowers, and the thawing fish warmed in the metal sink with a steadily drip of water every so often. Observing the collected spices, herbs, and what little sources of nutrition he had been able to find, Emiya was akin to a feudal lord surveying the total sum of his lands. A lord of a sparse, barren, and certainly starving protectorate, of a kitchen that daylighted as a place to rest your head more often than not.

He didn't have a cutting board. It bothered him more than he thought was reasonable. They simply didn't carry one in the market area of the makeshift waterfront. Perhaps, they sold them in more lucrative, more upscale areas, maybe even through online ordering in Night City's guarded Netspace, things made by each purchase, custom and therefore, incredibly expensive and beyond even an indulgence. He found it disheartening in truth, that such a principle element of mankind's long history had been made into something barred from the vast majority of the population. Few were the handful that could afford such actual food, and not the make-do gruel and bars of convenience. Fewer were those who had the chance, opportunity, or lifestyle to even learn.

But the despicable loss of an integral part of human existence wasn't the hill he was dying on today. Thoughts of staging a culinary-based grassroots revolution in the heartbed of capitalistic consumerism were quashed underneath much more pressing concern.

The persistent lack of a board in which he could finely dice, slice, or mince ingredients. He frowned, he frowned heavily. There was a glaring lack of quality wooden sheets in his memory. How could he have forgotten to carefully and meticulously engrave such an important tool for any kitchen into his mind? Almost in tongue-clicking disgust, he shooed away the seemingly countless blades that sprouted like weeds in his Reality Marble. He had blueprints for chairs, pots, pans, and even an eye-opening amount of radiators and vintage air conditioning units stored somewhere, but not a single cutting board?! Emiya's hand slowed in their ingrained cleaning and preparation of the ginger, garlic, and little, nearly withered away vegetables he had managed to secure. Oh. Perhaps that could work.

He set down a peeled clove of garlic that was more papery outer layer than desiccated flesh, and mentally began the process of Tracing. Seven steps. A bullet loaded into the magazine, the magazine pushed into the hollow handle of a handgun he had never seen in his father's hands, but had found instead, much later in his effects left to a fatherless boy, the hammer cocked back as when he first dragged back the silver mechanism in the dull, procedural and meaningless way that the boy had done everything in his life that he could not find bliss in. mechanical perfection. The phantom boom-crack of the reactant expelling a bullet down the twisting barrel. And his Projection bathed the apartment in eldritch blue for a single instant. And after you had to blink out the unnatural light from flaring spots in your vision, in the un-shaped orb of condensed Prana, a sizable, more than half his height, wooden club appeared from seemingly nothing. Flat sided, intricate patterns carved and then vanished into the wood, glossy black 'teeth' following the width of it. A Macuahuitl club.

What felt like a lifetime ago, and was, Emiya Shirou, upon realizing the true, invaluable strength of his Projection and his intimate understanding of the weapons, histories, stored within; Had diligently traipsed around museums around the globe, taking visits whenever he could not find another injustice to throw himself onto. He found weapons from societies long dead, and carved their dead inheritances into his skull, traced the blades of warriors who had fought for civilization that had changed so much that if they were alive today, they would decry it as a blasphemy, and he had eagerly taken up those same blades and used them for his own selfish ends.

The macuahuitl sitting flat on the table was the product of such blatant graverobbing. Well, in that regard he was no worse off than the museums who had appropriated those artifacts from foreign soil. Emiya placed the herbs solidly onto the board, not without wiping them with a wet cloth— there was no meaning in cleaning his projections, they did not form with bacteria present on them but habits died hard even after eons of rust apparently— and then raising his hand again, summoned another projection. As these were not Noble Phantasms, their cost did not overly trouble him, though he admitted he may have been overdoing it.

He had chosen precisely not to purchase a set of cooking knives, which if pressed, he would have to confess was not out of any sense to save money, but rather an objectively useless sentimentality.

A miniature Kanshou formed in his hand, a perfectly weighted kitchen knife which for some unknown reason was made to appear like the Yin-Yang blades of legend. That it was simply there in his Reality Marble, the current iteration of himself found himself bemused at its inclusion right besides its legendary inspirations, but still. He couldn't find it in himself to will it to another corner of his rusted wasteland. It must have been a gift of some kind, the knife was simply too quality made to be a joke, and its creation was so new they had not developed any true 'memories' he could actually learn from them, which either meant they were used very sparingly or… in an idea that seemingly popped up without any context, they were meant as a symbolic assurance. That there would be a future to use them.

He projected a pan onto the propane burner — this Projection was simply because of the sheer pieces of even low quality pans and his purchasing principles— set the flame to on and went to work.

Under this strangely calm, sentimental atmosphere, he carefully prepared ingredients and developed a simmering sauce out of a procured bottle of wine Gloria had always forgotten to celebrate with, and deboned the fish as David Martinez came home cracking his neck, who then proceeded to do a second look, whiplashed, at Emiya casually preparing a meal in his and his mother's apartment.

"Why are you here?" David asked, flatly.

"Keep your voice down, I imagine you wouldn't want to wake your mother." Emiya chided. "As for why I'm here, shouldn't that be obvious?"

David had a look on a face that suggested, plainly, that no, it was not obvious. Then after a moment, settled down, hackles raised like a vibrating German shepherd in one of the seats in front of the table. Glaring at Emiya with a seemingly fixed scowl.

"Got to have some screws loose," muttered David, his voice low and a quiet murmur lost in the background blurring sound of fine dicing, cutting, and low bubbles escaping the heat. As for whether he was addressing himself or Emiya, who could tell.

Emiya did not disagree.

Emiya deboned the fish simply because any good cook prepared the dish to his customer's liking. Gloria and David were not an Asian or traditionally coastal family, who had grown up on sea life or more importantly, non-processed dishes. Though Night City boasted a port, by Gloria's unfamiliarity with the fish he bought, it was not a difficult assumption to make that she and her son would have little experience with seafood-based dishes. It was with this same reasoning he had also made an abundantly flavorful sauce and minced and diced the vegetables until they were nearly slurry, forming a paste. Which would be easier for their palettes developed on the chemical aftertaste of street food and nuked burritos. Doing anything less would run the risk of them reacting poorly to the food, which in turn would make them digest it less. The most important thing for any meal, was not its nutritious quality, or even its elaboration and presentation, but enjoyment.

Such was the reason he also flared out several wooden skewers from seemingly behind his back, David's eyes going wide as he tried to comprehend the sudden electrifying movement. And stabbed them into the macuahuitl club's obsidian blades, fixing them in place and then, taking the now deboned, descaled fish, head removed— he had thought of utilizing the head to make a fish based stock, but had to give it up, citing the lack of any large pots and secondary propane burner— Emiya threw fish high into the air, and flashing the Kanshou knife, flicking the blade out in nearly imperceptible cuts, the flying tuna was summarily divided into bite-sized cubes and fell, neatly, onto the skewers. David might have gasped, the sauce bubbled with awe, and the knife seemed to gleam with a proud figure despite its small stature. Lifting the sauce up to his critical eyes, Emiya examined it for a moment, before sweeping it across the air in what almost seemed like a totally superfluous movement. But, look! The cubes were now covered in the sauce he had taken out of the pan and transferred to a small bowl, perfectly and evenly so and without even a single drop of sauce fallen!

"What the fuck," said David, eloquently.

Emiya's answering smirk answered none of the fuck.

The glazed skewers sizzled upon contact with the heated pot, drew David's eyes back to the dark amber glaze, the white flesh of the fillets peeking underneath, the comforting hiss of the sauce on contact with the metal.

Suddenly Emiya spoke up, and looked directly at David for the first time the boy had entered the apartment. "You should wake your mother."

The unasked, Why? was all over the kid's face, suspicious and untrusting. The hungry glint in his eyes however weakened the attempt at intimidation. Emiya wondered if he should inform David to that. He did not. His distrust was only natural, seeing as Emiya was intruding on what was the Martinez's personal space, where they likely believed themselves safe from a hostile world, a world where he had intruded, without warning, both a potential threat to hardfought stability, and more importantly, a counter to that illusion of safety, a pin to the illusory bubble one could shield themselves from the truth.

Wonder and amazement did much, but in the face of destroying something much more precious to them, Emiya would always be an enemy first and stranger last to the boy known as David Martinez.

Emiya could not resolve these compounding faults, but that also did not mean he should. In a way, David was completely correct in believing such, even subconsciously. But accommodating it was another thing entirely. Emiya let a single, arcing brow lift upwards, slowly, terribly slowly. It said, condescendingly, Why else? "Dinner is almost ready."

Embarrassed by Emiya's judgment, David kicked off the stool and went to get his mother. Not without throwing him a middle finger, but that was just a matter of course. While David did that, Emiya busied himself looking for some manner of plates, although they weren't strictly required for this dish, he just felt uncomfortable if there wasn't at least the barest minimum of a set out table, and rooting through Gloria's cabinets, he felt his brows crawl higher and higher on his face. Who didn't even have a set of plastic bowls and plates? Really? Not a single plate? By Morgan's singular non-scheming bone(not the funny bone sadly), tell him they at least had forks.

They did not. What had he said before? Ah yes. There were no other timelines that could match the irredeemability of this one. But putting aside the Martinez's sad sad home appliances and goods, Emiya shut the gas off. If they did not even have a plate for him to set the skewers on, he supposed it was another enjoyable curiosity to have their homecooked meals directly off the grill. He still wanted plates.

Gloria pulled herself out of the small alcove besides the window, still blinking the sleep from her eyes, and a visible listlessness to her steps. She was in the process of crashing, Emiya observed. He didn't know how long she had been pushing herself to the brink of health and further with caffeine and stolen naps, but when you woke up more tired than you began, your sleep deficiency had reached toxic levels long ago. But this momentary weakness showed only a for a moment, like a flash from a shutter camera, look away, look back, the imperfection vanished as if it had been only his imagination. In a matter of seconds, Gloria forcefully pulled herself together. The sleep vanished from her eyes, and with a quick retrying of her ponytail, one could be forgiven to thinking her only an ordinary tired woman.

Emiya would not forgive himself if he did that, of course, but that hardly mattered. The faucet hissed to life, and he bought out the last tool of today. Contrasting all of the other purchases he made today, the silver(tin)-chromed, faux wooden paneling humble espresso maker he revealed out of its' paper bag was practically handfisted to him in order to force him to leave. They even threw in a additional bag of ground beans for him, unfortunately they didn't have any underground beans in stock— one of the downsides of maximizing space to even the millimeter he supposed.

She stared at the rather antiquated device, of which Emiya even had to manually install the batteries of, large block things which had nearly cost double of the espresso maker. Then at the charred, steaming skewer laid out simply, modestly, like it had always been there and was just waiting for her to see it. The sun shot through the Martinez's window, thin beams slicing through the miniscule gaps between metal slants. Pale blue light from off the muted Entertainment complex painted ghostly flames onto her skin. Then David flicked the lights on, and flooded everything with fluorescent sharpness, inside the illumination, she looked a little lost. Softer. A little small, and she had to raise her hand to shield her eyes from the sudden glare.

"Eat." Emiya said, his hand on his hip. She looked at him like he was a ghost. That was right, her eyes seemed to say. He didn't wear the armor going out. White shirt, black slacks, his hair falling into his face a little no matter how many times he tried pushing it up. It made him look, she couldn't help but think despite the almost Corpo-styled attire, younger. The shirt hung loosely on him, and from how he wore it, it made him look like he had only just rolled up its sleeves after returning from work. His face was calm, open. He held out a skewer out towards her. "You're hungry, so. Eat." An automatic rejection was on her lips, head turning towards her son, but David had already taken a bite, suspiciously, taste-testing it for poison by the slow, deliberate way he tried to determine something off about it, but his hands gave him away. There was one skewer in his mouth and two in each hand even before he finished swallowing.

Hesitantly, slowly, she took by the wooden stick, nearly dropping it, if not for Emiya's steady grip on one end, he had expected that too. She couldn't even ask if there was enough, because Emiya had sliced up enough fish to feed a family of four.

She took the skewer, with a firm grip this time, and slowly, took a small bite of the charred filet. Her face transformed: from the furtive, subtle tenseness of her eyes into a gentle widening of surprise, and the way her eyebrows lifted, the small noise of wonder she made in the small of her throat.

"It's good, right?" He spoke up. He looked into her wide eyes, ignored the renewed glare stabbing at his temple. She nodded quickly, protectively. "Are you sure?" He asked, in what would seem like teasing if not for how seriously he said it.

"You fishing for compliments or something?" She simmered down, blinking under his heavy gaze. Mumbling, "yeah, it's good… Really good."

He smirked. "I thought so. Someone who only exists for someone else wouldn't care about the taste. That belongs to you alone." Now, he had started speaking, he couldn't seem to stop. "You are the person who made those choices, those decisions. Trying to deny it by pretending it was all on someone else's fault?" His hard eyes that stared her down and pierced through all illusion, the stubborn set to his jaw, he was outright lecturing her now. "I don't want to see anything like that ever again… Or really," He let out a long sigh, pushing past the perplexed look on David as he tried to parse through whatever they were talking about, and the stunned expression on Gloria's face. He looked rueful, wry. "Just have some pride in yourself."

He let the espresso maker sit, the beans go unused, knowing it wouldn't be needed tonight.

It was a night full of stolen, surprised mirth. David who couldn't decide between eating enough to nearly distend his stomach, or sending sharp glares at Emiya every second, or Gloria's bubbling laughter, at his ridiculously exaggerated behavior, at Emiya's lightning fast quips. At Emiya's self-satisfied slant to his lips. Not quite a smile, but so close it hardly deserved mentioning the difference.

…

He flicked the final light off, and opened the sliding pneumatic door. Hiss-creak.

The warmth and heat from the cooking had faded a long while ago, and now in the clouded moonlight that lanced inside from the open doorway, the Martinez's apartment looked all frozen, bathed in the soft blue of the large device above the couch, melting into the translucent silver. The couch had been offered.

He did not take it. It felt a step too far. Some intrusions could be excused, forgiven, but there was another reason why Emiya Shirou had forwent rest at any and every opportunity. Perhaps it was juvenile self-derision, the pathetically ordinary belief he would hurt everyone around him if he lingered. Perhaps it was sentiment-driven penance ahead of the fact. He remembered the look on Gloria's face on a hundred, a thousand of others. The surprise, the dawning wonder. The slice of happiness he carved out by doing something so simple. The man known as Emiya Shirou had never felt more content than when he was helping others. Food was a salvation all on its own. So in life, he had often trekked across minefields, deserts and plains better described as shooting galleries, foreign borders declared by artillery and kilometers of barbed wire, all while carrying the precious resource. It was a gift ahead of the crime. By that time, Emiya Shirou had been declared an international terrorist, and the horror of sheltering him would have been unforgivable to the many.

Emiya, older, not wiser, just older and tired breathed out into the quickly falling night air. Seemingly alive once again.

Now, decades after his death and breathing, talking, eating, existing in the world where his bones had long been swallowed by the earth, and his flesh devoured by the worms, what little left of it that wasn't cremated by a vigilant Magus deeming him a Sealing Designate too dangerous to approach. He hadn't actually thought too much of what happened with his body after death, funnily enough, it never became a concern until after the fact. He still couldn't muster too much worry over the possible terrible implications being done to his expired flesh and bones, strangely enough. As if something told him that it would be taken care of, even though his memory didn't exactly provide any evidence either to the contrary or to support his baseless assertions. Regardless of the potential of some defunct Magus organization keeping his corpus in cold storage, Emiya demurred.

He felt, for perhaps truly the first time, what it meant to live in a world that had forgotten you. The crushing alienation, the unbridgeable distance, all the hallmarks of a foreign element and none of the inexorable ties that bound humanity to its present. That was previously there were none. Hunger, shelter, thirst, rest. Now in a body suddenly too mortal, Emiya could trick himself into believing himself alive again. All too temporary passions ran through his veins again, the smog and innumerable collections of scents pooled into his lungs, and every step he took, molded his foot to the ground underneath. It was addicting.

It was meaningless.

(—It was meaningless. Blood accelerated to his heart like rivers of fire, to each and every capillary, artery, exposed nerve, pulsating organ, the very scorched air in his lungs; One and all they dragged oxygen to his rusting body. Magical Circuits, pinpoint concentrations akin to the foci of old or like the barrel of a gun.. All were burnt out, overtaxed and over burdened. His head pounded with the telltale ache of exertion, hot blood, a lightness as if he was about to fly away, a desperate need for the emptiness of unconsciousness threatened to draw him to the black with every heaving lungful he forced himself to take. He couldn't tell left from right, up from down, his eyes were wide open but they were sightless. Unseeing. Spittle dripped from his mouth as he gulped down air like a starved wolf. Furiously trying to breathe above the hot, slick tiles, hands flat to the floor, knees kneeled and bruised to add another to a unending list of injuries.

He had made nearly a hundred (False) Magical Circuits, just to keep up with his unreasonable demands. Hot iron shoved into his spine and fire ants tickled his cerebral cortex with every nerve turned ragged, pitiful Circuit. His mind had been grinded down in recompense. He did not know what he did not know. Equivalent exchange. Happiness was built on the misfortune of others. Better that it was his. Abandoning all pretense of the Moonlit World's Veil, he had pulled out sword after sword, digging, carving, tearing armories from his own flesh. Reinforcement impossible to miss, glittering blue lines tracing his skin, Alteration made a spectacle, a finger's scrape, and furling metal into moved like liquid to make makeshift shields. Guns disabled with a touch, ammunition turned rubber and ordinance forced inert. Just to prevent a loss. Just for his own impossible hypocrisy. Only for his own self-satisfaction. His lips were pulled up in a joy so complete, it was blameless. On his too open jaw, mouth wide open and swallowing air, it must have looked like a devil's senseless pride.

They were on a mission to save the world, in the truest meaning of it all. Allied intelligence had confirmed that the enemy had taken control over the central nuclear reactors powering at least twenty cities, refugees, allied, opposing, numerous humanitarian settlements all within a 100 kilometer radius. A beheading strike was called for, organized, and set out within ten hours.

In the service of the world, to refuse to kill the enemy threatening it was not only stupidity of the highest order, it was a naked betrayal of mankind. Pity was for after the fact, and mercy was best left for the dogs. Emiya Shirou had known this. Accepted it. Ruthlessly, illogically. Madly, insanely… Happily. He would be shot a hundred times in front of a firing squad, and still laugh and grin, drunk off his ideals and drowning in the only thing in life that gave his hollow existence meaning. A priest had said, Rejoice. To be a Hero there must be a Villain, an injustice to be corrected, for the world to be incorrect and in need of saving. But a hero was just another flag to bear, and a flag could mean many things, contrasting, conflicting, even antithetical to different peoples. If it meant saving even one more person, Emiya Shirou would stand in front of the world a thousand times. He had been the very worst kind of hero. One without allegiances, with only a flag raised for himself.

Fitting then, for his own saved allies to sabotage and shut down all the thousands of safety protocols meant to prevent a cascading collapse, and ending ultimately into the warned atomic eruption. Nuclear Reactors, after all, were constructed with the utmost precaution and safety in mind. Redundancy after redundancy, measures and checks in every conceivable corner, all to ensure a disaster that scarred the Earth would not occur again. Then, this could only be called an act of terrorism that went against the very foundation of human understanding, decency, morality was not even in question. This could not even be deemed a war crime, to be tried in a cold international court. They had committed the sin themselves.

Of course, it was never so simple. The men who inputted the codes, ignored the red warnings and every bit of common sense that shouted them in languages from the new world to the old and images that predated shaking throats and curled tongues, they had been led to believe that they were preventing the very thing they were causing. The 'enemy' then had been told the same, that the forces Emiya had 'allied' himself were about to commit international genocide via purposeful radiation poisoning. One hundred soldiers, fifty on one side, fifty on the other if such distinctions mattered now that all them were victims of themselves and their leaders. In such a scenario, the fallout even if the nuclear failure was to be prevented, all those men would be held to be the greatest villains of humanity. It would be the catalyst to war, driven by pathological fear sculpted to such heights that the enemy ceased to be human and merely a foreign pathogen to be eliminated, made extinct.

The potential total loss of life of a nuclear reactor? Hundreds, maybe thousands if an evacuation was not issued. The sum potential of a global spanning conflict where nuclear ordinance had already become acceptable, was already instigated? Astronomical. Unprecedented. Apocalyptic.

His arm shattered, bullets pouring in past the chipped and splintering blades as his pitiful Projections failed against automated turret fire. The overheating core and radiation ripped through his skin, and his Magic Circuits boiled him from the inside out. Lightning ripped down his flesh, Kanshou and Bakuya were summoned dozens of times, crossed against his chest, held above his head, flickering against the organs he could not afford to lose, cutting through wires and circuitry, cleaving through meters of steel until even they wore dull. His helmet was ripped off by an explosive countermeasure that was separated from the main system of safeguards. The same explosive broke his neck, and if not for the fact that his spine was already only a collection of interlocking 6th century steel blades like rippling chainmail. Blood streamed down his face, collected into his tear ducts, and lined into the sharply defined muscles just starting to chip his face into cold stone. His feet only found footing watered with his blood, and he stumbled forward with every creaking, screeching step, tendons severed by jury-rigged shrapnel and self-directed pike heads embedded into every muscle in his legs clinking icily. He waded through a mere fraction of the safeties and securities meant to prevent the Reactor's already impending Meltdown, and found himself little more than a corpse by the time he had dragged himself into the last room.

Blue moonlight lanced through the darkened interior, off glass dials, scorched metal, plastic railings, resounding metal floor, each and every polished rivet reflected a conjoined interlocking image of the Counterforce. It was beautiful. It was carved into his soul, like a memory of a smile. It was perfectly meaningless.

The world, finally, had stepped in. One hundred for thousands, millions, billions. Blameless but culpable soldiers, not half, not a quarter, not even the specific few who inputted those damning codes, but all. The totality of one hundred lives extinguished in exchange for something as terrible and cheap as peace. A Nuclear Meltdown that through its figurative chain reaction threatened an untold number of lives, not a mere hundred. Punishment, sacrifice. The road paved by bones, the castles made of stolen futures. The future was on the grave of billions. This was only logical. The concrete example of a Hero told to him by the World itself.

What Emiya had bargained away his afterlife and sanity for, was nothing so expensive as preventing a war and the millions that would have had their lives, homes, and country destroyed by the fallout without even mentioning the cruel rain of radioactive material being lifted into the air and spread across kilometers, countries, nations, sweeping disease and genetic unraveling poison across the globe. No, his life was not worth so much. But saving the lives of those one hundred people?

The question had already been answered before it had even been posed. This story had been told before, and it would not change.

He had stared into the inhuman eye of Humanity itself and declared himself the sole mastermind responsible for the scarcely prevented meltdown of the Reactor. That there were no scheming figures in the shadows who decided that a collection of small country were well worth sacrificing to start a war, that both sides, allied, nationalist, native, insurgent, international were there and only there to stop him.

That he was nothing but a madman too insane to understand, belonging to nothing and nowhere, belonging only to his own twisted goals. And in that. He told the truth and only the truth. —)

…

 

[ArtemisAvant]

IX: Life's Short, Blame Someone

…

Emiya looked at his palm. He stood, leaning over the railing directly across from the door that opened into the Martinez's home.

Old memories, old thoughts, things he had turned over and over again in his mind, 'tasting' them until they became numb and monochrome. The handling had worn away the heightened emotions; edges bled smooth like coins rubbed into smooth bits of unidentifiable tarnish. It was a consequence of lingering in a place of linear time. It was a consequence of being pulled away from that same place. In the long infinity of his service as a Counter Guardian, places, things, and regrets all blended in some constant storm of action and absence without rhyme or reason. The only constant was slaughter. Alaya was not cruel, though it felt that way at times, only uncaring. The faces of those in front of him, the faces of those he had to cut down for the sake of the greater whole. Thousands of years, hundreds of battles, an uncountable number of summoning across the vast expression of the human urge for self-destruction.

Surely, he had gone mad long ago, staring at the endless prison outside instant and meaning and context, all the infinities between 0 and 1, and all the ends he reduced them to. There was no other explanation for having the same guardian of mankind also be its culling filter. Just as nuclear deterrents were used to determine peace, killing humanity to save humanity was so self-conflicting that it perpetuated its reason. The trolley problem, as trite as it was, had been flipped on its head. Kill 1 to save 10, to have that ten multiply into a hundred, a thousand, a fraction of that exponential growth heading toward extinction. One became a 10. Ten became a 100. As humanity stole the stars, the number of those sacrificed would outnumber them, too.

Alaya must have gone mad too long ago and dragged all of its appointed scythes with it. The great function of the Counterforce, Alaya, was contingent and existent on the fact of humanity's survival. As a result of humanity's continued existence, from the very moment humanity existed, so did it, and the exact moment humanity ceased to exist, so too would it. Then, it could be said that if Alaya fell in the future, it ceased to exist across all time and space— and yet, that did not include the function of parallel worlds. By using this cheat, Alaya could effectively witness its end and then repurpose an empowered human being to prevent it. When even that failed, by hook, crook, or unintentional probability, Counter Guardians were summoned to erase the possibility of nonexistence. If even a shred of knowledge that humanity could end, that the last human succumbed to death and humanity failed, in a biological sense, was comprehended and understood. Like a memetic virus, the knowledge would disseminate across the collective unconsciousness of mankind and corrupt its purpose of existing. Conceptual entities such as the Counterforce and Gaia were powerful and seemingly inviolable, but even the Planet could die. They were not unending.

In effect, it was a blind game. The Alaya of the future sent a dying message to its past existence, and the past Alaya mercilessly erased any possibility of that potential future. The parallel and alternate world foundation confirmed and supported the arising paradox.

This was why the Counterforce was not summoned before tragedy but instead in the midst of it. The Counter Guardian, EMIYA, was not summoned by the hopes of men but by their despair.

Surely one could understand the irrationality of this? How could a human destroy the possibility of an apocalypse without being aware of the apocalypse? Counter Guardians, however, by the very fact of their summoning, would be beholden to the knowledge of humanity's potential extinction and thus were removed from the collective consciousness's understanding of humanity. This was the reason why they were separated from time and space. Once Alaya claimed his afterlife, he no longer belonged to mankind and instead, like Alaya, became a result of it. Befitting his moniker as a Monster of Alaya, for what he could not be called human, he was only a thing, only a thing that killed to be one day slain in return.

The question was: had Alaya already peeked behind the curtain? Did its own formed consciousness doom mankind? Were all routes destined for a bad end?

The question had no meaning. Whether oblivion awaited or life continued to struggle far into the future, to know would be to go mad. In the face of determinism, even self-appointed mass murder was deemed acceptable to the unconsciousness of humanity.

And so his duty would never end, even as mankind strode blindly forward into inevitability.

But now, paradoxically, it felt as if Emiya was stopped still. Forced into one place, like time stood still and waited for him to catch up. In what must be a terribly unfunny joke, that statement had proved infinitely truer of his previous existence, yet his feet were immobile. His path had taken an unforeseen turn. Now… Free to linger on the passing memories of his time alive, drink old passions up, and drown in them all over again.

The day had set, and the sun had fallen hours ago.

He had less than twenty-four hours.

Independent Action granted him a maximum of forty-eight hours. That was his determined 'limit'. Only there and no further. Servants as supreme Ghost Liners recorded after death and summoned across time and space were wholly unnatural. As 'familiars', their very existence necessitated the existence of a Master, an Anchor. A tie to an unfamiliar time and space. Different from the dissolution of the self, caused by a lack of magical energy— the cost demanded by his nature as a Servant and thus made of Mana, condensed True Ether, specifically, even if the particulars were a little more complicated. Mana was necessary to maintain his existence against Gaia's rejection. She didn't take all too kindly to his existence as a creation of Magecraft. But that was a wholly separate problem, although tangentially related.

His 48-hour limit existed due to a more conceptual issue. The question was: why was this here? The answer: a Master. Servants existed outside time and space, a fact he understood intimately; their existence, in the first place, needed a reason. In the context of a Holy Grail War, that was the Master answering the question: This Servant was here because (I) summoned them. Otherwise, the Servant would find themselves dispersing into specks of Ether, as they had no Anchor to this time and space any more than to any other timelines or places, and so would go most naturally back to the Throne. Then, what Independent Action did was spoof the conceptual question and avoid the problem entirely. When prompted for an answer, the skill said something like: Shut up. La La La, not listening! Higher ranks of the skill allowed for more eloquent speeches to the problem, prolonging the issue, and the related, superior skill of Independent Manifestation spoke an understanding of: (I) 'think', therefore (I) Exist. 'Think' usually being replaced by the conditional context, such as, if this thing exists then so does this. But that skill was usually relegated towards more dangerous entities.

Emiya, being an Archer, had an Independent Action Skill rank of B. Fortunately, or not so fortunately, but rather as a complex series of quirks of his existence, that Skill had not been 'shaved' away while he cut down on his Parameters. This could be understood as a logic of if he had Altered this Skill out of existence, he would have immediately disappeared on the spot, or in a logic that didn't reverse cause and effect so much that the skill read as inherently part of his Spiritual Core as defined by Avalon. By the fact of his Contract with Alaya, or because of his being a Magus with Magic Circuits, or even the Innate Bounded Field inside him that stabilized his manifestation, he did not know. He feared the former. Was his being here conditional on despair?

Everything needed an anchor. His simply needed to be more concrete than emotional.

Emiya pushed himself off the railing and stepped towards the sliding door. He placed his hand on it. "Trace On," as quietly as possible, he pushed his awareness through Structural Analysis into the metal entrance. A hollow awaited him, as he expected. Inside: the mechanism of unlocking and locking the door, directed by an electronic signal and sensor for what was likely a portable key— or read directly into the cybernetics, as Gloria and David had seemed to carry no identifying device on them. Strictly speaking, he had actually locked himself out of the apartment since he stepped outside. Not that it mattered; he simply felt it was an amusing bit of trivia. Overall, the identification system and electronic switch were the most complicated pieces inside the door; the actual locking mechanism was a fairly simple mechanical bit slotted into place. And it was what he was looking for. Mentally, he projected a linked pair that took on Kanshou and Bakuya's likeness, but only they were the size of a pin. As for why he chose those two blades, it was simply because they were the most expedient option to creating a pair inextricably linked beyond the constraints of distance and which were immune against conventional countermeasures. Then, placing the Bakuya of the pair onto his hip, he inserted the Kanshou into the door mechanism, altering it to a point of delicate fragility so that when the door opened, it would Break. Then, in turn, it would break the Bakuya on his hip and alert him to any unwanted intrusions on the Martinez's abode. Another linked pair, a Kanshou, sat beside the Bakuya on his hip. That one corresponded to the window slits.

At his level of expertise in Alteration, at least when it came to bladed weaponry, he could easily mold the more abstract facets of an object, such as size, without changing its inherent properties. Setting it to a point where it would Break with any significant movement was his bread and butter. As another aside, changing or adding inherent properties or effects onto another was the guiding principle behind Alteration as a thaumaturgical system. Its goal, then, could be said to be changing something to hold all the most desirable properties of multiple materials. Steel with the flexibility of rubber, with none of the lost toughness. The hardness of diamond, but without the propensity to shatter. The theoretical path to the Root from Alteration would be the perfect material that continued every single property and effect of all visible and non-visible matter in the universe. This could also be said for everything in the universe condensed into a single point. A sort of origin of the Big Bang as it so happened to be regarded in Physics.

What he was doing then was so simple in that system that it could be called beginner's practices. But back to the now.

A relatively low-tech Alarm system, but Emiya mused, with his own over-specialized workarounds. If a Magus saw this, they'd spit blood at his casual use of Noble Phantasms for a glorified rattling tin-can tripwire. Honestly, he understood their pain. A simple bounded field would have easily done the same job and with better coverage and security. He fondly patted the door as he extracted his awareness from its construction. It wasn't a perfect defense system, but for his purposes, it would do. Defending against electronic intrusions, of course, would be impossible at his technological illiteracy, so he had simply used Alteration to shut off anything with a net connection (surprisingly near everything, the Vending machine, obviously, was his first victim of targeted communication castration) inside the apartment before he stepped outside.

His 'tripwire' would likely fail to alert him if there really was a targeted invasion, doors and windows being the most obvious spots to rig a warning or trap. Naturally, if they were that determined to attack Gloria and David, there would be little he could do more to shield them without physically being there.

In other words, it would be best for him to finish his immediate business of finding an anchor as soon as possible before the worst situations occur.

Emiya's footsteps echoed down the flicking hallway, the fluorescent lights somewhere between a slight greenish tinge and yellowing filament corruption. He passed by the ragged, the shelter-less, and those weeping softly into their own infirmities, metal bones shuddering at fears made manifest in unrestful rest. His boots clanked as he stepped into the metal cage of an elevator, barking bright advertisements in between droning news anchors casually reciting the death tolls of today, a bill passed by President Myers promising to raise the taxes another decimal point on Corporations. As he exited the elevator, a dozen late-night talk shows describing how the bill actually applied to only Corporations started after the bill's inception and not by a middling decimal point.

Out from the shadow of Megabuilding H4, Emiya stared up and into the dark sky, gray-black shapes moving against a darker expanse. Long flat planes stretched into that expanse, slathering electric blue across the now-defined clouds. Holographic projections of Night City, he felt, must have been visible from space. The glow from the city spread outwards, haloing the dark shapes of the stabbing skyscrapers in an almost golden eve.

A group of Tiger Claws loitered beside brightly polished bikes, leering at people unfortunate to be still up at this time of night and generally chattering to themselves in broken English and Japanese. Smoke trailed up, and from their mouths, and colored by the neon lettering they had parked next to KIROSHI in glowing tubes, they looked to be exhaling red steam, burning halogen, a blood mist, like they truly were demons they painted themselves to be. Their shadows stretched far and hung hazy with smoke.

He walked over to a nearby alleyway, a trashcan sitting by an unfinished can of spray paint. A piece of unfinished graffiti stared at him. He admired its prominent line structure, the sweeping yet unshaken work that denoted a confident hand. Hm. Usually, blood, silver, mercury, or other precious materials were best for working with Formalcraft Rituals, those materials having a certain sense of power or mysticism, left to them even with the modern age of skepticism and rationalism, but paint had a power all on its own. Especially the neon graffiti spray of punk aesthetics. Not much representing power in the minds and conceptual understandings of others, but the symbolism of art, art defined by rebellion and outcasts, which tended to be lumped in with fringe occultism, meant even the humble spray paint would function. He picked up the spray can and weighed the pigment left in the can. It should be enough for his purposes. Fiddling with the nozzle, Emiya changed the aperture into a thin stream. A shake, a hiss of aerosol. And there, a ritual circle, simple, barely more than a series of stabilizing circles and a converting matrix without language— this particular spell was so universal it had enough variations in so many languages that even Emiya could use it despite his extreme inclination and focus determined by his nature of a Sword Incarnation.

The neon green lit up, so faintly it barely reached the first measuring paint of the matrix inscribed within the circles. The leylines were so weak, they could barely even light up this minor ritual?

Formalcraft was centered on using rituals to utilize the world's Od, or Mana, instead of one's own Od, or even Prana, mixed Od and Mana. Therefore, for determining a nexus point of the Leylines, there was no better tool. This ritual used a line of thinking similar to triangulation, as Leylines were similar to the Magic Circuits of the World, only several times wider, and veined with countless tributaries and rivers, they were impossible to detect by mundane means— although most places of spiritual interest were often connected to nexus points of these leylines— thus, by using a light-up toy of a ritual, and by placing them at three distinct points, you could use simple triangulation to find the point where the World's Mana was at its most concentrated.

With his thumb, Emiya slashed the eloquent symbolism of his minor ritual circle into something vaguely resembling a lopsided smiley face. Whatever glow there had been died away. One down. If he wanted to find a decently powerful nexus point, he'd have to paint these circles across the whole city.

Emiya would need a vehicle, wouldn't he? He thought for a moment, considering the NCART, even borrowing Gloria's car again(he could easily trace a ignition key by Projection, key blades if you would), but those options felt a little cumbersome and not to mention, it was a little rude to borrow something without permission even if he'd fill up the fuel tank after and clean the car after. Hm. Those Tiger Claws had some bikes, didn't they?

"Eh? You're approaching me?" Their leader, apparently, began tapping his shoulder with a gleaming piece of metal. In the sharp clarity of the streetlamp they sat beside, solar-powered bulbs traced a decaying white fluorescence onto their shiny apparel, onto the plastic-like shine of their scowling Oni Masks. Blue-violet tattoos appeared, faintly, to be hovering over their skin. Chemical-drunk hair hung spiky across veined eyes bulging in their sockets. "Let me teach you a lesson, ya fool! This IS OUR TOWN, OUR TIGER DOJO—"

Then, Emiya stood over the unconscious gang members.

Funnily enough, Emiya had never ridden a motorcycle before. A scooter, yes, a truck, an improvised bicycle, several types of aircraft, and even once a submarine, thought that was not so much riding it as much as ensuring it didn't collapse. But a motorcycle? Never. Though the memory was like a corrupted, slide-like film reel, filmed over with a sense of sticky tar, Emiya recalled tinkering with illegal Yamatos in his youth. His semi-family, semi-family friends had been avid lovers of street racing and, with a passion that every hot-blooded youth understood, fiercely devoted their time to caring for their motorcycles. Hot-modding, expensive paints, and rare customization, always tweaking the parts for that personalized 'Zone' of control— even if he had never ridden a motorcycle before, like knowing the context surrounding an unknown word, he had a fairly stable foundation to begin learning. In other words, he knew all the fundamentals and all the theory, so all he needed to do now was put it into practice.

Emiya stared at the handles. The lack of an arm actually stung quite a bit here. Though as befitting the right-handed bias of most automobile manufacturers, the Yaiba Kusanagi CT-3X Variant had most of its functions situated closer to the right hand to be easily toggled through a bit of finger movement. However, the important front brake lever was placed on the left handlebar. Differently from how he recalled the Suzuki bikes he had worked on had placed it, crouching and ignoring the mumbling, drooling Tiger Claw who was cradling his friend like a Dakimiura, Emiya examined the right side. Good, he still had the rear brake. His stolen bounty was a 'Busa' type of bike, which meant he had to sit in such a way his entire body was snug against the chrome plating. That gave him quite a bit of leeway when it came to a secure grip, and turning the vehicle became more of an applied theory of shifting weights on a rounded geometric shape. So the issue ended up as a problem, not of stability, but stopping safely. He supposed he could just ease off on the throttle and simply roll to a stop.

Somehow, that didn't sit well with him, like using a sword meant for two hands with one hand, it just felt… disappointing.

The sleek lines, the razor-thin windshield visor in brake-light red, the rims of this vehicle blazing a furious ruby, its polished chrome finished to a mirror shine, so much so he could see his own face sighing wistfully at its impressive construction. Using a powerful work of engineering and aerodynamic design to anything less than its fullest potential just itched at his skin. What a waste. What a shame. Emiyas never threw anything away, and though he had nearly forgotten everything else, that name faithfully followed him after his death. Perhaps now, the space where his shed was jammed, packed full of broken machines and shards of shattered practice materials for Reinforcement, had been swallowed by Fuyuki's modern expansion, or even the city's delicate beauty crushed underneath the uncompromising wheel of industry… but as he had begun to realize. The things he had put down and tried his best to forget had a way of digging themselves back up again.

He seated himself into the bent forward position, resting his feet on the small metal flats, rugged soles conjoining to the slightly textured metal contouring, his hand fitting into the handle, fingers resting on the gas throttle and the light-up display right in front of his face lighting up with a locked symbol. Emiya watched it mildly, curious if there were any other safeguards against theft; he tested the throttle; the engine did not purr, and the silver bike underneath did not rumble against his body. He tried again.

Identification failed. The screen read out to him with a trill of distant irritation and long-suffering. To reset, please consult manual. Emiya raised an eyebrow, the manual? Not an email or cybernetic-based two-factor verification? He glanced at the unconscious gang member who had now moved on to patting his friend's hair with an out-of-place tenderness. He watched the other man's face scrunch in disgust at the breath being blown into his face. A muttered complaint of alcohol and its excessive imbibition mumbled out between snores.

Consulting the manual? Why not send it straight to an online verification system like the first assumed? Or was this a measure taken by the low-intelligence processing request system onboard the motorcycle that had been proofed against incredibly drunk owners who had perhaps, Emiya thought, looking closer at the man, tweaked their own cyberware to numerous malfunctions? He had wondered why the man had shouted, "THE WORLD" in the middle of Emiya knocking out his compatriots.

If he was correct, then… Emiya fiddled around, exploring with his fingers along the small, obscured places on the vehicle. Switching sides, he leaned over and. There. A perfectly camouflaged tiny bit sticking out of the side that wasn't repeated on the other side. He pressed it, holding it. Three times. A ding. Resetting! The screen announced happily. Yes, just like a vintage computer system. Three was always the magic number. He didn't earn the title of Fake Janitor for nothing! Smug, Emiya flicked through the resetting procedures, checking off No for most of the safety and feedback requests, even the hidden boxes that needed to be unchecked in tiny text to confirm that No, he did not allow companies to send data of his driving for future e-bucks.

Even after accessing some of the deeper settings and accessibility functions, he could not find any setting to change the brake lever, as he figured there wouldn't be, as that was a mechanical, physical part of the bike and not so easily changed without modification. Of course, Alteration would be able to solve this problem, but seeing as a futuristic motorcycle was a little more delicate and machined with many small parts, it was a little more complicated than Altering a sword and adding an already synergistic effect like magnetism onto his boots.

Emiya frowned. He was fooling himself. As if proud of the fact he had managed to wrest control of the motorcycle and neutralize its previous user without the extraneous use of magecraft, he now found himself loath to use it. A thought like: if he used Magecraft now, it'd be cheating. It'd be giving up. It seemed especially egregious, considering the problem originated from his missing arm. But maybe that was just him on a familiar path.

He had spent so long regretting his life that his first instinct was always to blame his younger, foolish, naive, idiotic self. Never mind how they were fundamentally, at their unchanging, wrought iron core, the same sword. Just one without the cracked and chipped edges of an ideal realized.

Gloria had often glanced at his arm and obliquely, during the dinner, mentioned that she had heard of a Ripperdoc, a more reputable Ripperdoc starting out a business in Watson, though she admitted he'd find a cheaper service at the back-alley Ripper she mentioned before. He had avoided the question back then, but perhaps avoiding a mechanical replacement was being stubborn for the sake of stubbornness at this point. If it was the breaking of his anonymity through intensive surgery he feared, then surely there should be some relied-upon method to quietly secure Cybernetics and attach them without leaving his DNA and traces in the system, no matter how quickly they'd dissipate into Ether, the records would still be digitally kept. Although he had another option for that particular lack, he had been considering as well…

Was he seriously considering attaching a mechanical arm to himself purely so he could ride a shiny motorcycle like a child being denied a new toy? He was having a bit too much fun, wasn't he?

In the end, the question of his missing arm and the solution would be put off for another day. How?

The bike was put into cruise control. Emiya simply decided to forget about stopping safely at all. That too, was an awfully familiar feeling.

…

Wind sliced through his hair, his hand had numbed from the stinging cold air as he blazed a trail through Night City. The city above, the streets below, screaming asphalt ahead.

A silver arrow shot from an impossibly powerful bow, the chrome bike hurled through traffic in blatant violation of any safety proceedings, weaving in and out of lanes in handling that'd just as easily spit out the motorcycle entirely as it was liable to crash like a blistering star. Emiya had set the cruise control at 120 miles per hour, and with every moment he spent longer on the vehicle, every passing instance where his surety increased and he grew more comfortable atop the silver bullet, he raised the constant speed by another ten.

Santo Domingo disappeared behind him, Arroyo's streets nothing more than a passing flash of grey and greyer, then Heywood, the Glens, land was swallowed up under his tires, Corporate Plaza. City Center. The world stood still in comparison.

Reaction speed honed, triumphed, and trumped by Heroic Spirits worked beautifully in tandem with the passing blurs, his heart beat against the steel skeleton of the motorcycle, blood flow matching the fuel's lines' powerful pressure, every muscle vibrating with the reverberation of the asphalt translate through the wheels. The engine roared out and into his every cell… So this was what they called 'freedom'. Situated on top of this beast of steel and chrome, Emiya felt he understood Saber's knights just a little now. A heady rush, an exhilarating terror balanced at the edge of adrenaline, enemy forward, disgrace behind, honor, and a shared dream worthy of dying for pounding at their breast. Connected to the world only by the living, breathing steed beneath, striding atop the world below like he owned it. The power to decide your own fate was palpable. The future lay on the horizon, suddenly so reachable.

It felt similar to a runner's high or even the pounding of his heart after a battle, all his senses alive to keep him alive.

And they did so now, too.

A moment like broken glass, the sound of revving engines, the flashfire bloom of accelerant being pushed out of a barrel— Emiya flicked his hand from right to left, squeezed the lever, kicked his foot on the rear brake, and twisted his body to the right and down, and slid. Lead passed over his face, reinforced eyes idly following the subtle distortions in the air caused by passing bullets. The silver Yaiba Kusanagi CT-3X pulled into a screaming drift as its tires dragged recycled rubber against the asphalt. A fleet of bikes shot ahead of Emiya's slowing vehicle, his bike left far in their dust, until the acceleration reasserted itself and the tires front and back spun desperately, trying to grip onto the asphalt even as they peeled away and coated the air with burning rubber. He narrowed at his eyes, vision narrowing on the bright, neon colors, the blue-violet tattoos like a shimmery mirage, the bikes. The Japanese delinquent aesthetic, the neon Yakuza without any understanding of the meaning.

The Tiger Claws wanted their bike back.

Unfortunately, Emiya would have to decline their generous offer of lead and ceramic blades in exchange. You see. He had gotten rather attached. Tires spun into similar but less extreme iterations of Emiya's own drift, pulled into sharp stops by reflexes boosted up by Speedware, Sandevistans activating in an injection of electricity down the spine, the Tiger Claws cackled like laughing hyenas as that powerful rush hit, the sound distorted by electronic noise, as they spun back around and raced back toward him. His lead, small as it was, quickly disappeared under the slight advantage of having two hands to handle, but this wasn't a race. This was a chase.

Him, them, the roaring machines underneath them, all of them were little more than streaks of color in a tight knit formation slowly closing in, like military jets on land, they left neon trails leading towards the suspension bridge leading into Little China.

Emiya widened his eyes as the sight came into view.

On the bridge, the nighttime traffic squealed out horns as, for some reason, there seemed to be a massive jam. A coordinated attack. Emiya pushed the acceleration even further. 200. 210. 220. A shotgun went off beside his ear; at this speed, keeping one's guns steady in the face of the enormous air pressure was practically impossible; missing was not a question of if but when not. His leg shot out and slammed into the stomach of the offending Tiger Claw. On his other side, a katana lanced out like a streak of lightning, only to miss utterly as Emiya, his leg still extended, kicked himself up and nearly leapt into the sky off his bike but failed to push up that last millimeter and instead, supported his entire weight on his singular hand directly on his seat. The curved blade just missed his entire body as most of it was suspended far higher than where the attack was meant for. Spinning himself around, and falling back down, he gritted his teeth. They weren't slowing down. They were keeping up with him to the bitter end even as the large stretch of highway occupied with cars approached faster and faster in their forward view.

All this for him? Forgive him if he wasn't flattered.

Emiya was not a Rider. He had never qualified, and his 'legend' was never centered on commanding a powerful creature or magnificent ship underneath him to move forward into the unknown. But, if he would be so arrogant, that did not mean he could not Fake it. Max Acceleration. Approximately 240 miles per hour. At this speed, entire sections of the city would vanish from his perspective in the space of a stolen breath. Not enough. "Trace on. Selecting body. Sympathizing and Emphasizing. All parameters categorized. Reinforcing." 250. Over 300 miles per hour. The dial shattered. The wheels spun so quickly that the axles turned red hot. Wind buffeted his face like a hammer. The G-force surpassed five Gs. Right now, Emiya felt well over five times his body weight with each and every movement. The stopped cars sprinted towards him in his vision so quickly that a blink would mean missing out on his death. If he was not Reinforcing his entire body, he was just as likely to kill himself by knocking himself unconscious.

"Trigger…"

A fierce grin pulled his lips back, and his teeth gleamed in the light of Night City. "Off." Steel blades, so densely interlocked they became interwoven into a smooth surface, angled upward, suddenly materialized underneath the vehicle, and like any moving object when confronted with a slope, the Yaiba Kusanagi CT-3X flew.

The arrow had been shot; the target was before him, and Emiya did not miss.

Twisting his body, wrenching his core muscles in a motion to angle the bike horizontally, Emiya slammed onto the suspension bridge's riveted supports in a suicidal rush. Tires dragged on the bolted surface, rubber stealing rust and paint flecks as the bike desperately grabbed onto the only surface it had. He should have bounced right off; he should have fallen off immediately after a brief but disappointing skid of nearly smooth tires, friction burnt to nearly black tar, almost about to drip onto the gaping onlookers.

Emiya shot up the bridge, riding up horizontally on a diagonal steel beam in all defiance of gravity and common sense. Every rivet jolted him from his seat; his legs had practically molded to the plating to hold him in place, iron bars locking him into place instead of flesh and muscle to keep him from falling off. Every safety warning and speed measured in the Kusanagi's advanced interface had frizzled out and given it up as a bad job. It blazed an angry, despairing red glare onto his face. Driving up the steel beam in all defiance of friction and gravity, Emiya projected another steel ramp of blades, set horizontally this time so he drove away and off the bridge's supports.

Tiger Claws, ordinary night city residents, the few beat cops caught up in the massive traffic incident, an Arasaka truck with red electronic eyes, a stranded car full of Edgerunners open-mouthed at the sky, a family of Nomads, one even going so far to take off their cowboy hat and rest it against her chest.

One and all stared up at the soaring motorcycle like a streak of silver shot through the night sky.

Emiya fixed his eyes on the massive eighteen-wheeler that had caused the traffic jam on top of the bridge leading from the City Center to Little China. At his current momentum, even if he reinforced the bike himself, the meaning of physics would still impart to him a very important lesson called Newton's third law. Which meant he'd need to, shall they say, improvise.

Angling the bike with his legs, Emiya orientated it into a straight upright position, the nose of the Kusanagi pointed upwards, and the back wheel situated to land first. That position would take a great deal of the force off from himself when he landed, him being imminently more breakable than the Reinforced structure of the Kusanagi. He hit the roof of the truck's cargo. The noise was like a gunshot in the falling silence. Steel groaned, metal warping at the force, and like a rock off the water, Emiya, the motorcycle included, bounced. He twisted the entire body of the motorcycle again. Before, he was simply on top of a raging beast clad in chrome, but now, he felt one with it. A part of him as much as he became everything in the world upon the moment of drawing the bowstring back. Its wheels were sideways to the ground, he was sliding with his legs underneath him, and it fast approached at a steep angle; he was about to land at a speed that would smear him across the pavement.

Just like riding down a mountain. He just needed to reorient the picture so that the mountain was flat and he was at the terrifyingly sharp angle, nearly parallel to the ground.

"My Body is Made of Swords."

Emiya snapped his arm out to the ground just before they were about to make contact and dragged. By hitting the truck's roof first in the position he did, he imparted most of that vertical momentum into horizontal momentum, which meant they were going forward more than they were going downwards. Sparks shot up like a trail of fireworks as his fingers cut through the asphalt like five impossibly sharp blades— too quick, with a thought, they increased their edges. Suddenly jagged and serrated, the reverberations sent up through his one last arm felt like he was dragging a chainsaw across the bone. Then his right foot, the steel boot, hit the ground, sole burning as it pulled across the asphalt. The first impact felt like he kicked a solid steel wall, each and every joint about to pop out, bones creaking ominously. The second felt like the flexed tendons in his ankle were about to give way under the enormous pressure. Finally, the tires hit, and they squealed; whatever was left of their textured rubber surely turned into molten tar against the pavement. Normally, it would be impossible to keep at that angle, so nearly flat to the ground. Especially given the multiple forces acting against it, the motorcycle was more likely to flip up and slam into a building, exploding into a fiery shower of liquid steel and shards of carbon fiber. But he said it, before. He was one with the motorcycle. If anyone had been so insane to look directly into the sparking, burning crash at that precise moment, and with bionic eyes, and zoomed in, close, closer so that each and every cell of the tires were visible to their eye, they would have seen blades. Irrespective of how ridiculous one must be to place nanoscopic blades onto a tire, they stabbed furiously into the asphalt and dug out imperceptible bits in protestation as they slowed their insane momentum.

If anyone were watching, they would have seen the blades slow and even grind to a halt.

He had stopped. Emiya and Kusanagi. Man and bike. Pushing himself and the bike upright, Emiya lifted his head up and stared across the wide gulf of stopped cars and traffic. At the Tiger Claws, who had pulled to a stop before they smeared themselves across the bumpers and windshields of other vehicles.

He quirked his lip and blaming the adrenaline and exhilaration coursing through his blood, gave a mocking bow of his head.

The Kusanagi rumbled, engine purring, and like a tiger snapping its jaws in triumph, it shot up and sped forward with its front tire lifted, departing off into the night, no one nearly crazy enough to follow it and its rider.

…

It smelled like the dried, crushed carcasses of insects. A great bulk of desiccated, crisped, and many small bodies all squashed underfoot, endless bodies, a ceaseless tide of whirring, buzzing, humming, unpredictable stinging and biting and gnawing, in the accumulation of hundreds, forming the dirt, the earth, and the soft, sticky mud underneath. It smelled like loamy earth, stagnant and pointless drivers gurgling with choked squalor, like melting plastic, a cheap Christmas ornament brought too close to the candle.

Gently, the silver sickle of a motorcycle rolled to a stop, and Emiya lifted himself off its sleek radiance. Throwing one leg over its body at a time, he stared into the deep dark of Reconciliation Park; Its carefully curtained patches of chemically neutered flora, the shadows cast not by looming growth but by the inescapable towering structure of Arasaka and the curving highways slashed through the park.

Perhaps he should have come here from the very start. It only made sense that the last piece of nature, manufactured and biologically pointless as it was, would also be home to the focal point of many leylines. Life endured. Life persisted. Mana, the breath of the planet poured itself even through ruined and rotted streams. Though it could be said that Gaia detested humanity and wished for its destruction, this was untrue. A simplification that arose from a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of life.

Life killed. From the most simple proto organisms, opening up the predecessors of lysosomes to unleash a horde of starving enzymes to pierce through other singular cellular organisms through their cell membranes, consuming the RNA, proteins, carbohydrates, and lipids. To the bored chick cannibalizing its siblings to fill its whining stomach. Life was cruel; Life was vicious. It was no mistake, then, that humans had always attempted to conquer, dominate, and force their environment to complement themselves rather than anything else. Biological imperatives worked through vestigial survival instinct and into cultural belief.

Even crushed underfoot, choked by pollution, and smothered by cold metal and concrete, this park still counted as life. Gaia was not dead. Its death cry had not called and heralded the end of civilization. So long as natural life persisted, the planet would not die, and so it breathed Mana through clogged, tarred, and with lungs blackened on warfare and exhaustive resource stripping slowly but surely hollowing out the crust of the planet.

Put like that, Emiya almost felt guilty for trying to attach himself to the leylines still. If not for the fact that, that even the dying planet's breath was on an order of magnitude several layers above his own relatively pathetic Od generation.

He supposed that was how most humans thought. The superficial reasoning of the plenty. There was so much; Surely his own slice of heaven didn't cost so much? And they would be correct. But exponential and expansive growth had a way of swallowing up even a seemingly infinite resource. For the sake of such temporary blisses as profit margins and slashing expenses, more and more waste was poured into a quickly growing hole. Efficiency battled with gross corruption and misuse of resources in self–defeating wars; laziness and hollow pleasures had always been a part of mankind, and their excesses were seen only more clearly in this time when humanity was just beginning to feel the true cost of those many failures.

Emiya waded deeper into the flora, stepping over the piled up cardboard and rattling cans of crushed aluminum. Gravel popped underfoot, little rocks and bits sliding and gardening against each other as his weight was pressed onto their surface. The smell had been infected with burning plastics and the all too familiar scent of human excrement. Grey-green water reflected the ethereal blue of the heatless lamps dotted over the park.

His path slowly led him, not to the small Japanese-styled Gazebo in the center of the park, but to the edge of the curving pools of stagnant water made to only barely resemble sweeping rivers carving through the landscape. Their beds were made of smooth cement, their drains were stopped years ago by the thrown coins, waster and detritus of a countless number of humans. He hopped over the railing, staring into the lightless water.

As a Servant and as a carrier of a Texture, Emiya was naturally more attuned to the supernatural. This 'sense' was a skill practiced by most Magi as a way of detecting Magecraft and other unnatural phenomena before it had to be seen because, usually, that would mean it was being used offensively or horrifying directly onto one's person.

He grimaced. But took a long breath and leapt into the water regardless. Shock-cold liquid rushed to surround him, vaguely sticky. It pooled into the little cracks between his armor and his clothing, the chilled, sludge-like slurry seeping into every centimeter he could feel. It pulled at his eyes, grabbing, grabbing him in an attempt to enter every orifice.

Kicking his legs, Emiya pushed his form down, further down. The water, paradoxically, felt warmer the further down he went into the unexpectedly deep channel. Heat formed by the intense devouring bacterial and viral war fought on the stubborn algae and consumed, re-consumed, and excreted detritus. Heat shed off by rapid mitosis.

Due to his unbalanced shape profile, fluid dynamics contorted his body to move him 'forward' in a corkscrew, his one arm acting as both a stabilizing fin and cause for spinning. He reached out, and his fingers grazed the pulsating mass congealing at the bottom of the water. It was not alive, or rather, not one actual complete creature. Instead, bacteria mats and algae grew thick onto the topmost layer of trash, excrement, and rotting leaves. Underneath was an entire trillion-strong colony of similar mats and growths, each layer built onto another, not of any coordinated design but simply out of the instinctive drive to propagate in the most expedient manner. He tore millions off with each push and rip of his hand until the pulsating began to thrum through the entire body of water, a low noise beginning to be heard. Not suddenly, but as if it had always been in the background, and only now, after revealing it under the thick layers, was it heard.

Finally, his fingers grazed something smooth, metal. Fitting his fingers into the openings of the drainage grate, Emiya pulled his entire body down to plant his feet solidly on the bottom of the concrete bed. In this warm, lightless liquid, he had no other way to orient himself beyond the drainage pipe, so there was actually a small but not insignificant risk of him drowning if he was being particularly foolish.

With a flex of his muscles, Emiya braced himself against the concrete bed of the false river and pulled. Immediately, his hand nearly slipped from the slippery algae patina over the metal. His feet had no stable structure to stand on, and there was little concrete not covered by refuse. But… this was something that could be done with magecraft. Emiya had not forgotten the mana starvation that rendered him barely more dangerous than a veteran special forces operative. Currently, his available Prana was limited to only what he could produce through his own Magic Circuits, subtracted from the cost of maintaining his existence. Therefore, unless he had some way to resupply with an external source or the quality of the Mana in the atmosphere suddenly improved as unto the Age of the Gods, he needed to be restrictive in his uses.

So, using the abnormal physique of a man who had a grip like sandpaper and the resilience of, well, really himself, in that regard, he was the foremost example of stupidly overcoming nearly obstacles by sheer, bullheaded persistence. As it was then, it proved true the same now. His face sharpened, every stark line deepening under the force of his exertion. Water billowed out from the drain, him, as it seemed to vibrate with the strain. Tiny, muffled pops, metal bolts being snapped off one by one, and the noise thrumming the water rising in frequency, pitch, and volume until it sounded like a bass speaker booming right next to his ear. Finally, with a sudden release of strain, the drainage grate flung itself out of the water, a meter-by-meter square sheet of machined metal.

A moment of stillness. Then, the inevitable result of a concentrated volume piercing a vacuum. Higher pressure to lower pressure. The constant in the universe, everything tended towards entropy. It was nothing but a ripple on the surface of the ripple, another gaseous bubble rising to the surface, and then it popped. In the hollow left by its passing, ripple began to spread out. More, faster. A dark divot appeared on the surface of the water. It deepened. Grew. Suddenly, as if it had gone from zero to a hundred in a second, there was a whirlpool furiously dragging the water in a rapid spiral toward its unblocked drainage.

Dragged through that enormous force, Emiya tumbled gracelessly through what felt like kilometers of tunnels, through winding, steep hollows, through mold slick concrete and then, abruptly, empty air. He fell.

Gasping and quickly catching his breath with concentrated recovery breaths, two short inhales followed by a falling exhale, Emiya pulled himself upright under a deluge of water.

This was it, this was where the Mana, the leylines of Night City concentrated. The Sewage and Waste treatment Plant lurked underneath the metropolis, like a shadow of the steel, glass jungle above, here it was nothing but lightless pools, endless water, and humidity so thick it collected along every surface.

Caged lights lit up the walls, dim, useless things that barely pierced the gloom so pervasive here. Deep below, all around, there was the everywhere-sound of great, large machines doing their work. Every piston, every turning and purifying sea of water ran around him; from where he had been deposited by the sudden whirlpool, he stood open a grated catwalk above a seemingly impenetrable abyss. The water fell, clashing, crashing, and shattering upon the metal catwalk, but he could not hear where it hit the bottom. The noise was swallowed by the sound around him. Or perhaps it was so far below that it could not reach.

Here was the nexus. Here was the focal point of spiritual condensation.

Emiya ran his hand over his face, brushing the thickened water off his eyes and hair. His eyes shot open, clear and unseeing, into the deep dark before him. As an Archer, a Class priding itself on constantly moving, repositioning, and refusing to stand still and be easy prey for other Heroic Spirits more adept at close-range combat, and although he was a poor example of an Archer currently and an even poorer Magus, that much proved true for him as well. Establishing a link to any place far and away from his expertise. Yet, Emiya had determined several possibilities to solve his problem of an anchor.

One. He could Possess a corpus. A physical body. In other words, following the understanding that Heroic Spirits were nothing more than supreme Ghost Liners, dead human wraiths summoned to act as familiars, he could do what all wraiths did and possess a body. This would provide a reason for his existence quite neatly and would doubly mean that he would have another source of stability for his damaged Spirit Origin. The physical body represented the soul, and the soul reflected the physical body.

The pitfalls in this possibility: Emiya needed to possess a living body mostly similar to his own; otherwise, he would instinctively reject it and lead to nothing but the quick destruction of both himself and the now emptied body. And, of course, there were the ethical and moral quandaries of taking a living, breathing body to be used as his temporary body for nothing but the sake of survival. He had wondered if he, due to his Reality Marble, would be able to possess a sword. Perhaps it was possible, but no sword in this era would be capable of housing his intelligence and complexity to any satisfactory degree. And projecting his own was also out, seeing as all of his projections were considered a part of him, his Reality Marble, recorded and understood by his Distortion, thus already possessed.

So, possession was denied.

Two. Forming a Contract. The most direct route, and the one he disliked the most. He admitted it was not inconceivable to find suitable candidates with Magic Circuits who would be able to support his phantasmal existence. Even if they did not have Magic Circuits, any human being or living thing belonging and anchored to this timeline would be sufficient. It would be easier, in fact, to utilize the latter instead of the former. Magic Circuits in this waning era would likely be of lesser quality than even the modern magi he knew, additionally decaying and atrophied due to lack of use. As for why he preferred to contact those with Magic Circuits, seeing as how he was seemingly determined to uphold most of his upkeep by limited usage and his own Magic Circuits? It was due to the depth of Existence. Forming a contract with another was a spiritual, mental, and deeply intimate procedure. It was a connection that surpassed the boundaries of time and space, after all. This posed inherent risks. Mental contamination, namely. Connected in such a manner, his existence would bleed into theirs, as would their own into him; this usually manifested in the form of sharing memories through the Dream Cycle. But what was a human's life compared to his? He, who had lived centuries, millennia in maddening, mind-breaking, impossible realities and unimaginable theaters of every war witnessed by humanity and inflicted by humanity? Without the passionless, colorless filter of a Holy Grail or safeties inbuilt into the Servant Summoning System, the depth of his life would overwhelm theirs, and if they were lucky, they would be quickly killed by swords bursting out of their own skin. If they were unlucky, they even had the possibility of being grafted onto the record of Counter Guardian EMIYA entombed in the Throne. He could perhaps waylay this contracting with many people at once and by instructing those with Magic Circuits to partition their minds, letting them try and research this with memories of the completed spell done by the Atlas Institute of his time, but that seemed even to him an unacceptable level of risk for unsure and murky hopes. There was no guarantee those with Magic Circuits could determine a safe way to experiment with partitioning their mind and being able to separate and excise portions of their mental cognition infected by Emiya's existence. And adding more people only meant that more people were put at risk when it came down to it.

Thus, contracting became a last resort.

Three. Binding.

Emiya's hand shot out, palm to air, fingers outstretched; he closed his eyes, and like the inhalation and exhalation of a great beast, undiluted Od poured out of him. But, he was not beginning the Aria that would establish his inner world onto Reality and proclaim him and him alone as sovereign, supreme, and spectator all in one. Otherworldly green lightning snapped against the air, violent, pulsating, but unlike its mundane iteration, charged ions snapping between two opposing electrically charged regions neutralizing the difference in an awesome display of divine fury, the green did not snap to the most polarizing metals or even to any object in the closest vicinity. Instead, it fried and sang sparks through the air, caged like a prowling beast.

He opened his eyes. He felt it, the heartbeat of the planet. His fist closed, and like gripping the wires of an active transformer, his heart seized— every chamber, atrium and ventricle painfully still, then jumping and beating a hundred kilometers all at once, aorta, artery, vena cava boiled his blood even as that same very blood was used to cool his systems— his Magic Circuits burned inside him, feverishly pouring out his own lifeforce to insulate him against the corroding effects of the planet's own. Steam hissed from his skin; sweat glands vented like the coolant fluid of a nuclear reactor. Gradually, even his darkened, tanned, thick skin began to redden under the extreme conditions. What he was doing was nothing more than a novice electrician trying to connect the disparate systems of two megacities' power grids.

As a Magus, he had been third-rate, a new-generation Magus without a Magic Crest, lineage, or even a proper element. He could not perform even the most basic of spells of most disciplines, and the ones he could cast were weak, faltering, and often failed explosively, sharply. Yet, in life, he had been deemed dangerous enough that even as his actions threatened the secrecy of the Moonlit World, only a full team of Enforcers and at least two Brand ranked Magi from the Clocktower were allowed to approach him. To capture, contain, and study his personalized magecraft that, as much it was deemed forbidden, was closer to True Magic than anything else in their declining age. He liked to think that somewhen, Rin had been giggling madly at them, lowering themselves to fear Emiya Shirou as much she mourned his utter idiocy. He had been nothing but smart, determined, and driven to the point where he had abandoned everything he had to chase that fleeting ideal. Of course, back then, the acting Vice Director would wipe the floor with him and use his body as a cleaning rag, but in that regard, he had been glad that he was not considered a Dead Apostle, the creatures who most often manifested Reality Marbles.

Therefore, attempting to bind himself to the Leylines of the surrounding area, of what you could call Night City, was nothing short of wishing for a miracle. Emiya shot open his eyes, sweat pounding down in great rivers down his skin, a strange, sticky feeling built up in the back of his mouth, and the very tips of his fingers, first, heated, flesh peeling and bubbling from the ludicrous heat, then, alternatively numb as icepicks. But this had been done before, in recent memory even! Before the shadow-clad man of the mountain had been summoned, there had been another Assassin of the Holy Grail War in a total aberration and flaunting of all the guidelines of the Ritual. The Caster of his Holy Grail War had summoned another Servant in the face of all proceeding convention. Indeed, it shouldn't have been possible, but some clues were discernible from the peculiarities of that Servant. He had been a wraith, a figure given popularity and fame with no true deeds. He had no Noble Phantasm. Even as a figure of legend summoned where his power should have been its peak, (False) Assassin seemed equal in strength to the Servants in that war. But perhaps that was not so much an indictment but a compliment considering the identities of most of that Holy Grail War. But most importantly… he had been relegated to a mere temple guardian.

He had been a spirit bound to the land.

Emiya had gripped the Leylines, he had grasped them by hook or by crook, his own Magic Circuits spilled fire into his veins, open and activated, and he was nothing more than an extant wraith given life where he should have none. Faking a miracle was his entire life. What was nothing more? With only the slightest hesitation, he 'grabbed' his Magic Circuits and Linked them to the planet's.

For a moment, Mana surged through his body, more Mana than he had ever had in life… No, that was patently untrue. Alaya had been an infinite source, where the little he could draw on was barely a cupful in an ocean, a world of only oceans, from mantle to crust, to core all energy. He could survive this. He had survived this!

Then. The City saw him.

It saw him— Emiya, paralyzed in the face of it, unable to stop it, scarcely even cognizant of the overwhelming sensation of intrusion, nothing he could do at all. There was no warning. No revelation, no illuminated understanding, no two minds touching each other. What was it? An infant proto-deity? A malformed nature spirit spoken into life by all the useless prayers of millions dying underneath its uncaring heel? Gaia? Alaya? It slammed into him. The despair of existence. The weight of it. His total insignificance against even this minor slice of billions.

Rejection.

His back snapped against the railing behind him, ahead of him, shrinking in the distance, then a second impact. Emiya smashed into the far wall of the massive abscess they sat on. Vomited out, thin, long fingers reaching into its innards, its rotted bowels, and plucking the invader, him, out. Explosively.

Emiya felt gutted, emptied. His form wavered. Distantly, against the consuming ringing of his head, concussion, shattered ribcage, pulverized organs— he didn't even have the time to Reinforce himself against the shockwave, and he was reminded painfully, pitifully, how human he really was. His eyes fluttered open; spots and sprites danced wildly against his blurry, shaken, spinning vision. Up was down, down was sideways, and he could feel his heart in his eyes. He was sliding down the slick walls of the Waste and Sewage Plant. Caught up in its much more powerful flow, the leylines had swept along his pitiful stores of Od into its river and left him with nothing but guttering embers. Not even enough to sustain himself. Not enough for even the cheapest Projection of nameless blades. His Magic Circuits felt torn open and ripped from his body, and only through luck was he able to keep them and his existence tethered to this body of Ether.

Emiya hit the black water like a rock.

…

He wasn't sure how he pulled himself out of the deep guts of Night City. Wet, ragged, and looking not unlike a sodden cat out in the cold rain, Emiya wished dearly that the description fit. It would have been a kindness to be a chilled-sick cat now.

"Hey, you ok, choomba?" He didn't even realize he was on his knees. The voice came above him, and in his ears, it sounded kind. The hand on his shoulder shook him again, and when only a weak grunt answered him, it moved to his armpit and hoisted him upright.

Emiya hung in the stranger's grip, all of his bones feeling like broken glass in his bruised skin, and when pulled upright, they rattled like empty wind chimes. He lidded open a single eye. The other eye was experiencing some sort of nauseating roll of double or triple vision. If he dared try to open them, he'd pour out fetid water into the stranger's shoes.

By happenstance, by fate, he was in front of the late-night bus stops of Night City. By and far mostly automated, the stranger in front of him could only be another late-night creature—a nocturnal occupant of the city. The big, friendly man of Latino descent patted Emiya on the shoulders with an openly concerned expression. "Lemme see ya, oof! Fucked you up, someone." He had a grin on him. "Anyone I should be worried 'bout?"

Emiya coughed. "Do-Don't know. Pick," a longer, more wet cough was forced out of him, sending him heaving and nearly toppling over. If not for the sure grip the stranger still had on his arm. Emiya wiped his mouth. It felt warm. Cold. Contrasting sensation and sensory input. Backlash from the failed binding. He said anyway, "Pick any fight with the city lately?"

"No way, fool!" The stranger laughed heartily. Loud, deep from his stomach, spreading out till he had to lean back his chest and heart it echo down the quiet streets along the river's edge. Some hissed-curse. "The cajones on you… What. You tried to fistfight god yesterday and decided to try smaller fish?"

"Something like that," Emiya lied. His limbs still were weak lumps of flesh, bone, and pain. He pulled himself on the offered hand. Pain was the body's way of telling you to stop. Shame that he had never listened to good advice. He looked the man in the eyes. The easy lines around them, the weathered lines around his mouth that sparkle of constant smiles, and the cool surety of a man who knew violence. The gold chain reflected the red neon in the distance, cyberware lines brassy and shiny. A Valentino. A gang member. The instinctive thanks died in his throat.

Emiya understood, with startling clarity, exactly how vulnerable he was right now. The fleeting embers of his Prana were quickly used to sustain himself and gradually repair the many damaged organs and injuries from the sudden explosive rejection. Any stray bullet could kill him. His mortality had never been made more apparent. He dragged the gratitude through his mouth nonetheless. It seemed to him, incredibly significant that he do so. "Thank you."

The stranger let out a whistle. Kindly, he did not respond to the thanks with anything but curving eyes and deepening crow's feet. "Cool guy, huh? Won't see me prying you open for secrets. But, ah. Shit. Friend, you need a ride home?" His hand rubbed at his shaved head, looking pained and awkward. "Mama Welles would have me tanned if I just left you here."

Emiya stared at him.

The stranger blinked. "Ah. No worries, mano. Big, scary guy like me? Yeah, I wouldn't take it neither." He could see the man roll his tongue in his mouth, thinking. That's… Emiya wasn't… "Here." Suddenly, something was pressed into Emiya's hand—paper, crinkly and crumpled in his fingers.

The stranger, the kind man, jabbed a thumb behind at the softly glowing terminal. "Should be enough to cover 'ever you gotta go. Up and 'em now! You're a man, aren't you? Can see it in your eyes, got somewhere you need to be. Something you still gotta do."

Emiya opened his mouth, about to refuse the sudden generosity.

But with a warm wave behind him, the large stranger had already thrown his leg over a running bike and drove off with only the feeling of eurodollars in Emiya's hand, and the sudden, unexpected kindness leaving him more knocked off balance than the leylines nearly killing him.

In this dazed state, Emiya stood dumbly at the NCTC Transit terminal, waited until the hissing, folding doors beckoned him inside, pressed the shaking bill into the receiving slot, and sat in an empty bus at the very back.

Above, the glittering, dim stars stretched from the rusted edge of the desert to the dark, moving shapes of the waves.

…

The rising sun split into scattered, flooding, pervasive beams. Blinking with every pass of a building that blocked the horizon through the rumbling, tired movement of the lumbering public transit. Even through his thick eyelids, he could feel the searching, meddling graze of it on him. It ran through like a charming will o' wisp, leading all who dreamed towards the inevitable end—waking, thrashing, a cruel return to reality. Dreams fell away in the cold light of waking. But dreams were necessary so that humans could move forward.

36 hours had passed. 12 hours remained.

He was running out of options.

(—He was out of time. Did he ever have time? Were they only gamblers, jingling dice in a cruel god's palm for stolen joys? This was not his thought. Emiya had never been one to grow maudlin and, yes, pathetic in the face of what others called failure. He was too little human for something so ordinary, he was afraid. Rust had not built upon his joints; they did not creak and protest with locomotion slogged down with the helpless' faces. Data accumulation had been progressing at a snail's pace. Emiya Shirou had only begun to stumble on his steely path. No, he had only just been forced to face its thorns fully.

He could not save everyone. Something ground to a stop in a world darkening ever so slowly. The great gears of a forge collided against each other as if they were trying to splinter and crack themselves into chunks of falling sky metal. Happiness was built on suffering. His suffering was not deemed enough. Even a hero who was a villain to all still must adhere to the constraints of time, ability, and lack.

The situation followed: In a city swallowed under its own swelling weight, skyscrapers pushed atop the ramshackle graves of thousands, and the gleaming, blued steel seemed to be beacon of tomorrow even as under it's laborious shadow the oppressed residents of that city only could cry and curse uselessly. Envy, unchecked ambition, a city of the modern age held as an example to all and thus showing all of its most disgusting peaks and valleys.

He had been slowly chipping away at the virulent criminal syndicate that preyed upon the contextual despair that everyone under that shadow felt, and working with a group entirely of like-minded friends; they managed to scrape out something like shelter for some people. He had first heard it, wandering in the streets, nothing but a passing mumble of cobbled-together words. A passing fad, a sense and pedantic wish that most shared, for a better life. Then. Like he had been lost for a hundred years and suddenly returned to a different world, it was everywhere. In every bustling side alley, in each hole-in-the-wall restaurant he had tried learning the recipes, from the slums to the more stable neighborhoods, on the walls of every base of the syndicate.

Human belief was a powerful thing. The thing that made the divine. Godstuff really. The first deities on earth, more undecided nature spirit then alien machine gods, had been empowered and defined by humanity. Natural phenomena explained by a face and a familiarity. But the Age of Gods had ended. Such a thing shouldn't have had any effect or resulted in any harm outside the mundane unless...

As always, a Magus was involved.

He knew it like a soldier hearing the first warning provocations slung subtly on the news. He knew it intimately, closely, like it recognized him as much he did it. The birth of a Daemon. Perhaps it was this experience with spiritual entities slumbering close to hearth and home that saved him, the thing that was shorn away by the golden light of the Once and Future King in his Grail War. It was not talent, battle worn instincts, or anything so easy.

Luck, maybe.

Blood looked different in a city. It shone like metal, dripped and refracted light as though focused through a prism. He should know.

Mass possession. It corrupted from the inside out. He heard it first: a wet slurp like a dead fish moved from water to stand, a gurgle of flesh moving as a wave. Emiya Shirou turned to the woman he called *****, one of the first who taught him to turn his hand like this, see? When handling a chicken, it was best to break the breast bone after you had cut away all the limbs first. Her eyes were taken first. At first, nothing but a tiny speck in the dark pupil. Easily mistaken for a reflection of something bright and white in the distance. He stopped forward, her name on his lips. His voice died in his throat. The small thing grew, quick, fast. Too fast to think. The speck overtook the pupil, cracked the thin membrane between sclera and iris in a second, and then, like a mouth swallowing an egg, her eyes burst from inside out as the transformational aftereffects of daemonic possession manifested in her. The body took on the shape of the soul. The body took the shape of the thing inside it.

He could not look away. She was already dead before he understood it. Black spots, like a simple mold, sprouted from her exposed flesh, and like the cold poultry, the empty chest cavity that he pushed flat against the cutting board, he heard a crystal clear snap. Bone marrow sucked down through a long straw. The spine bent in half. Something wet landed on his face, on his open mouth.

He tasted her on his tongue.

Her ribcage opened luridly, gratuitously, grossly excessive. Wet muscles, flayed skin underneath, the pearly white of bone— bone never looked that clean, he thought inanely— then, the wet, ragged sound of inhalation. Filling. His eyes were forced, like a machine's cold hands were placed flatly on his face, peeling open his eyelids to look directly at the thing's face. The black, oily flesh and glossy spots had spread like exponentially added tumors and like something dragged up from the depths of the earth, where water boiled a thousand leagues below by cracks in the mantle. It took on an odd, scaly texture. By now, her skin had cracked wide open, revealing something incredibly scarlet. Smooth dark skin split along massive fissures opening up to reveal packed muscle already sporting much of that same black spotted pox. The white he had mistaken for bone earlier pushed up and out with a moist pop. Teeth.

It refused to end quickly. It forced itself on him, slowly and teasingly. Revealing every cruel, painful centimeter of her total violation. The ruby-black orbs that had pushed away her eyes watched him almost eagerly. Curiously. What it had begun realizing and what he had not was why he was the only one unaffected by this sudden, total possession because of what lay inside him. In an ironic twist, he could be said to be similar to this thing birthed from the Sixth Imaginary Element in their relation to humanity.

In an instant, the shining, steel city of horror and glory had been made into a scene out of a busy slaughterhouse. Blood poured out from every packed street in such gross amounts that it seemed pulled directly out of a bad indie gore slasher. Skin was discarded like dirtied cleaning rags, left to slide along red-slick trails down to the rest of the torn clothing. The speed of such transformation and sheer violence of it had made the underbelly resemble the interior of a jungle. Festering with humidity and sweet, rotten scent and hideous heat. Rapid mitosis and cellular growth at ridiculous speed— but biology had no answer to what laughed at the laws of physics imprinted on the Texture of the World. Flesh grew and sprouted in such amounts it could not be explained by consuming and reusing what it had been birthed from. *****'s total mass did not equal even a fraction of the growths that sprouted from her stolen corpus. Flesh pushed into her, unknowable energy forced into physical form as the Texture undulated against the unnatural. A flood of meat, gristle.

The small warmth they had lived in, a home with memories made permanent in shining pictures; It would have been kinder to have never known of it if this was the result. Red, chunky viscera streaked against the peeling wallpaper, the carpet was ruined. Sticky strands of snapped tendons, pink and white lines of muscle and fat stuck to everything, and dark, spilling hair dripped slowly from where the outpouring of alien flesh had displaced the scalp and thrown it into the ceiling.

The tumors along it lidded open, the spherical lumps peeling back with a sound like a blade against a whetstone. A hundred eyes on *****'s body stared at him. Around him, the shattered and twisted bodies of everyone he knew and loved around him do the same. They spasm. Spinning around in circles and turns that quickly intake information at a speed of conversion and understanding that would be impossible for any biologically limited cognition. As suddenly as it had begun, the ruby-black eyes stilled and, as one, focused onto him with a broad, vast, otherworldly intelligence.

The realization hit him like a jolt of cold blue moonlight.

It was yet unborn. What he was witnessing was nothing but the tiniest ripples caused by its impending entrance into the world. An impending calamity's shadow, the visual point of darkness cast by the impending meteor's own burning through the atmosphere, too late, too little. He had been wrong. Mass possession was too kind an understanding.

This was a sacrificial altar of millions in the making.

The grand making of immortal life, the actualization of Heaven's Feel. Ascension by a city lined up to burn. He had thought he understood selfishness. He had thought he had witnessed enough tragedies and cruelties mankind inflicted on itself he had become… a little numb to it. The thought came to him.

Life existed to die.

If it was like that, then he should have killed her from the beginning.—)

Emiya woke up. For an infinite moment, fear gripped him. Yes, fear; Emiya was not yet so inhuman to forget terror. He did not know where he was, when, or why he hurt everywhere. Infantile worry wormed into his soul. His heart accelerated into his chest, and every beat pulled against bruised and fractured ribs. Each and every expansion of his chest cavity felt like he was being torn open inside out. Blind panic was an understatement.

But like a cold touch of iron, endless calm forcefully crushed that fear. Old nightmares were banished by the sun, and he did not have time to whine and moan like a child. Emiya, with mental fingers like iron claws, grasped his eyelids and peeled them open. He opened his mouth, took ahold of his fluttering lungs, and squeezed them. Air shot into his lungs, raw, painful, cigarette smoke and black tar; there was still water inside. His grip relaxed, and his lungs rushed to fill the space, expanding so quickly they brushed against his healing ribs. He squeezed again. Exhalation. The water pushed out of his throat, and he coughed miserably it all out. Faster now. Accelerate the absorption of oxygen. Hyperventilation began to dilate his eyes into flat discs of total black. It felt like there was a knife in his chest. Unimportant. As a body made of ether, the most important factor of his being was the Prana he generated, nothing else. His current source of Prana generation was his Magic Circuits, a pseudo-nervous system that converted, the rather obscure term of, Life Force and magical energy. Od. They functioned similarly to a biological organ and, indeed, depended on biological activity in order to function.

Therefore, to ensure the quick regeneration of both his Prana and his injuries, he needed to circulate blood to all his vital systems and force them back into vital working, digesting, producing, and multiplying.

Returning to his eyes, Emiya compartmentalized the world in front of him. The bus, signs of mud tracked onto the aluminum-bright floor, yellow bars smudged with faint imprints of oil from many human hands and further sanded with grit. Shoes. Boots. Heels. Sometime when he had apparently fallen unconscious, people had entered the transit system—early workers and those just coming home from long nights. An eclectic mix of disparate and varying ranges of exhausted people took only the slightest of glances at him.

Looking outside the windows, he sought out the closest landmark visible from everywhere in the city. The holographic displays falling towards the sky. And then, measuring that against the next most visible landmark of Arasaka Tower, he should be… in Wellsprings of the Heywood region. His eyes went over to the glowing display scrolling past the higher panels of the bus. Tracing the colored lines representing routes, he should be one exchange off from returning to Gloria's Apartment. Doing a quick mental calculation, he overlaid the bus route map with the metro's, specifically scanning for where the stations and stops intersected.

The next stop, he determined. That was when he should get off to enter the NCART. Emiya leaned back in his ill-fitting, plasticky seat. His hand brushed against his hip. The yin-yang Bakuya and Kanshou minis that were meant to be there were gone. He grimaced. He hadn't thought to check if they had been broken by the violently opposing magical energies or were missing because of more ugly reasons. However, it only reinforced his need to return—

The bus jolted.

Thrown against the seat in front of him, Emiya blinked spots out of his vision. His head pounded against his suddenly aching skull in protest. He brought his hand up, feeling cold and wet; it came away red. A strangely familiar, lecturing male tone chided in his head, this was why you wear seatbelts, Emiya. Take this pain as a lesson. He shot his hand out to steady himself, blearily leaning out through the empty center of the bus to look at what had caused their sudden stop.

They had a light collision with another vehicle. Hideously orange, watermelon pink, and chemical green greeted him with an insult to all trucks everywhere. It looked like, and this was before someone puked neon punk paint over it, someone's first idea of a monster truck. A massive silver engine belched black smoke, and all the windows had been smashed out to resemble the invisible gleaming jaws of some dental-phobic shark. It was an affront to all aerodynamic design. Its fuel efficiency surely rated in the F- tier. Its occupants were worse. Eyes wide in fascinated repulsion, he found himself matching perplexed looks to another curious onlooker, a dark-skinned man with a mouth full of XXL Burrito. Another head popped out, and she felt their stares on the back of her neck and looked back self-consciously, clutching at her blue purse. Her pink jacket looked overly large on her as she turned around with confusion. At the very front, an elderly couple held their hands just that little bit tighter.

He saw them emerge. One, two, three, five laughing, drunken, and high as the clouds giants squeezed out of the ruined vehicle. Their heights and sizes seemed utterly disparate, random; some would put professional bodybuilders— steroid-using or not— to shame, while others were downright skinny in comparison but walked with an odd feline grace if that grace was currently swigging down a half liter of some chemical convocation that faintly glowed even through the dirty glass of the bus's front windshield (no driver, automated routes, therefore an excuse to not clean it). There was pink shirt, Leopard jacket. An oddly normal-looking woman among the giants but fit completely at ease around them. Two men, Bald and Eagle respectively, because one had the word, Bald, a misspelling of Bold, Emiya assumed, stamped right across his forehead below a magenta mohawk, and the other had thought replacing his eyes with an avian's own was a completely reasonable idea. Another woman the same size as the previous two, enormous and bulging with thickly veined muscles, a little shorter but made up for by having her torso width nearly equal to both of theirs combined. She had Croc-odile patterned boots that sparkled in the sunlight. Another smaller man, somewhere between the size of Leopard shirt and Bald, lovingly caressed the ugliest shotgun Emiya had ever seen.

Boom-crack. That shotgun tore the automated sliding doors open, falling glass twinkling on the ground like scattered pearls. The sudden flash and loud sound made Emiya close his eyes in sympathy, and the noise resounded in his head like a tune playing underwater. All bass notes. A man playing a song at the bottom of everything.

Leopard crushed broken glass underfoot, looking all for all the world like a conquering king came to survey her newly pillaged lands. She bottled her drink, tossing it flippantly behind her --Eagle catching it-- and sashayed her way through the central aisle, surprisingly steady for someone so clearly drunk. Clink, crunch, clink. Glass shards cried out with every step she took. Behind her, the other four Animals filed in, laughing and joking about the crash. Emiya couldn't seem to understand what they were saying. It seemed to him to be something else he was witnessing. A film shot through an aperture underwater through the window of six-inch thick, smudged glass. Bald waved his hands around, clearly demonstrating how the thirty-five-foot bus came out of nowhere but how he had 'fucked' it up real good. Though they were so loud, it somehow still seemed like a surprise when he realized they all surrounded the man, who tried, vainly, to disappear into his seat and finish his burrito. Leopard extended a finger, and one glitter gold nail traced the veins under his throat. She smiled meanly. "What's a big boy like you doing alone? Kinda stupid. Not kinda. Just stupid." She gestured questioningly at one of her subordinates, friends, goons. Shotgun nodded easily, big teeth wide and gun slung easily over his shoulders. "See, even Slim agrees with me, and he's been trying to fuck me—" She whispered the rest into the man's paling face. Breathy and overclose.

Emiya stood up, or at least he tried to do so. He stared at his hand on the seat in front of him. Oh. His limbs were still that weak? He stared down at his legs. They didn't have the dignity even to shake; they just simply were lumps of useless flesh… No. In the first place, what was he thinking? What was he intending to do when he stood up? The question repeated itself as though it was always meant for him. What do you think you can do? In a tone so cutting, it could only be from a place of concern, he heard someone else say to him, you're injured. Frankly, you shouldn't even be standing right now. You're untrained, and you can't even be a proper Master without supplying your Servant with magical energy... For your own good. Quit while you're ahead. Idiots don't have any place in a war.

Ah. He had his limits, too.

Emiya stood up. His first step went unseen, unnoticed. The second step splashed into the puddle that had built up under him. That drew some eyes. Eagle stared at him, or maybe he was looking at a rodent a mile away; it was honestly difficult to tell. The third step, Shotgun bumped Leopard, distracting her from her blatant sexual assault. She looked at him, at the blood trickling down his face and his slow, pained walk forward. Dismissal had a certain air about it that couldn't be mistaken. It stung, it slapped against self-esteem, and it spit on your face. Emiya walked forward, a pace away now from their crowding in the middle of the bus.

Shotgun swaggered towards him; really, there was no other way to describe the sheer slimy saunter he pantomimed with his titular gun as he angled it threateningly at Emiya's face. "Got a look trying to say something on your face… ugly face too."

Emiya never had an opinion on his face's objective beauty, but he imagined he made quite a sight, blood collecting onto his chin and limp white hair against darkly tanned skin. He let out a long sigh. "No. I guess it won't be that easy." He said more to himself than anyone else.

"Take a look at this guy, thinks he's some kind of Morgan One-hand!" Sensing an easy target, Shotgun had been throwing increasingly descriptive insults at him, his missing arm, several questioning his ethnicity and poser-dyed hair.

Emiya stared down the barrel. He smelled the gunpowder, the heated gasses lingering in the rifling, the faint underlying hint of iron below. He glanced at the man shrinking in his seat—the naked fear in his body language, the eyes that were slowly beginning to deaden. Then, at the woman who was so still in her seat, he could have mistaken her for a statue if not for the quiet, shuddering breaths wracking through her frame. The elderly couple silently and shakily trying to leave, forgetting their bags and one much-loved book. Emiya lifted his head to the roof. To the sky. What had he thought before? Human misery. Human cruelty, omnipresent.

"Before this starts… If any of you can call the nearest medical professional, I'd appreciate it."

He looked down and stared Shotgun into his glazed, red-lined eyes. Looked them all dead on and said mildly, "I can't do it myself, you see."

The noise stopped. Everything went quiet. All was animal noise, breathing, blood rushing in the ears, nerves singing electricity. Shotgun broke it first. Laughter, cackling, wild, and breathless erupted from them in a cacophony of mirthful sound. Emiya watched them emptily. Then, like it was from a great distance, he saw the end of the gun lift lazily towards him.

Shotgun depressed the trigger first, the space between finger and trigger infinitely smaller, but Emiya was already going low and rammed his shoulder into Shotgun's stomach; before the man could get back on balance, Emiya gripped the back of the gangster's shirt, roared and poured all his trembling strength into lifting him up and into the bus's roof. The shotgun went off again. Someone was screaming, but Emiya moved forward like he had no fear of death. He let go of Shotgun's shirt and pulled back his fist like cocking back a revolver. The firing pin slammed forward, the arrow loosed, and his fist cracked cartilage, teeth, and nose underneath its inertia. Leopard had pulled out a knife, but with Shotgun's body in the way, she could not swing. Bald and Eagle were smashing down seats to get around him. Croc waited like a looming mountain in the far front rows.

Shotgun thrashed, kicked out, and landed his foot into Emiya's stomach, suddenly him stumbling back and flailing to a seat. Breath burst out of him as his spine cracked against the hard plastic. Instinctively, he arced his back and collapsed onto the dirty, wet floor. Eyes screwed tight with pain, Emiya forced them open only to see Leopard had vaulted over and was now about to carve him up like a pig. Scrabbling, Emiya threw himself to the left as her knife sunk into the seat he fell on; a noise like a dying balloon came out, and he felt her elbow awkwardly hit his torso. He stared at the blade that nearly took out his eye for a fraction of a second, eyes wide, before moving in a burst of frenzied limbs. Shattered glass was everywhere, and white plush rained down from the poorly crafted seats from the two missed gunshots. Pushing Leopard off him, he shimmied himself to fit painfully under the seating. Avoiding any further stabs and slashes. Just as he was about to roll out and spring back up, his foot was grabbed!

Bodily pulled forward through plastic wrappers from years past and specifically one XXL Burrito dropped in the confusion, Emiya had only a second to read on a man's face, Bald, before a fist slammed his chest to audibly, visibly dent the bus flooring with or through Emiya's body. If he had anything left to vomit out, it would have come out then, and as circumstances would have it, Emiya's breath came out instead. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't even see. His eyes bulged out of his sockets, he was hit so hard. It felt like his heart had been stopped. Then, the second fist hit. And he really heard his heart stop. Sandwiched between a hard place and a harder fist, there was really only one way this could go.

Punched through the bus's flooring, Emiya gurgled on the cold, gravelly ground, writhing in instinctive excruciation as his limbs twitched like dying spider limbs.

"My noghujose!"

"The fuck you say?"

"My nose, you gonk! It's bwoken!"

Heavy boots stepped out of the bus, each step seeming like it was about to overturn the bus. "I. Will. Get. Him."

Groaning, Emiya threw out his arm and, grabbing onto the axle, pulled himself away from the opening. Concealment, not cover. If Shotgun began shooting, that monster of a firearm would go right through the thin material of the bus's construction. Shooting fish in a cardboard barrel. He had to move. He had to fucking breathe. He breathed. Colors danced in his vision; hues saturated so heavily he swore he saw the Kaleidoscope. He got up in a manner of speaking. And stared down Croc with her ugly boots and ridiculous muscle mass.

He had to lean himself against the bus, fingers scratching for purchase on the flat sides so that he didn't fall.

Knuckles popping like gunshots, Croc flexed her big, meaty hands that looked the size of his head. Emiya pushed himself off the bus and rolled his shoulder, swinging out his arm to flow the blood back in. His breathing still felt terrifyingly short, his toes tingled oddly, and his head. Well, it was best not to describe what was running through his head right now. Mostly a rendition of unhelpful beratement and vicious vitriol that sounded awfully familiar said in his own cruel voice.

She swung first, and her punch made a crater into the bus's metal. He ducked the second fist and brought his own to connect with her stomach with the entire rotational force of a man after his third trip to the hospital. She grunted but barely budged a bit. It hurt, clearly, but not nearly enough to put her down. But he was expecting that, and when she brought her elbows down to shatter his back, Emiya spun and slammed his elbow into her knees. Her entire frame trembled, and she stumbled back.

When putting on incredible mass, the human body was not meant to grow so much and place so much weight on the bones. Therefore, that pressure and ungodly strength were most felt at the joints. He lunged forward, and her arms went up to protect her face, but his hand transformed into a claw at the last moment, grabbed her wrist, wrenched it to the side, and introduced his forehead into her throat. Shock, incapacitate, neutralize. All words for the same fluid motion. Croc gasped wetly. Her hands reached up to scrape at her windpipe, and while she flailed, he was already working on her knees. He stepped back. His leg snapped out and shattered her knees, and she lurched to the side, and it came down to smash her head against the asphalt. Before he could further break the elbow joint, a gunshot thundered out and winged him, twice in the chest and once in the stomach.

He fell backward.

"Fuck. What the absolute, shitting hell was that? That guy was insane!"

"Did you see the way he came at Samantha? Christ alive. She ok?"

"Thank Jesus, he's dead."

Emiya was not dead. He breathed slowly, painfully. Only one bullet had pierced through him; he couldn't tell if it was a clean shot or not, but the others had hit his armor and stuck there. As bullet-resistant as his torso was, it was only that resistant; the impact alone did a number on his breathing.

"Annie, Annie, look! He's getting back up again." He was, knees bent, legs curled up like springs, go go go! And already running by the time the warning had been understood by the woman with the Leopard jacket. Legs pistoning underneath him and asphalt running out beneath him, Emiya leaped and slammed through the already cracked glass where the shotgun had torn gaping wounds. His one arm braced in front of him in a half X finished the glass off. He landed roughly in the opposing seat and fell there, only able to move if he ignored the paralyzing pain and focused on the stinging across all his skin. He threw himself up and kicked Leopard in the stomach hard enough to crack her spine against one of the few remaining handpoles. Shotgun was trying to pull up his gun, but Emiya had already swung his arm in a haymaker to clip him hard in the temple, even as every torn tendon and ligament in his shoulder burned. The shotgun went off, and a new set of holes appeared in the bus's roof. Noise winked out. His hearing deafened by the hideously loud noise.

But there were four animals in the bus, and not enough hands to hit them all, and together, Bald and Eagle grabbed him and, with a synchronized movement, slammed two uppercuts into Emiya's stomach. He flew out of the bus's roof and landed badly on the edge, sliding off like a wet rag. At this point, frankly, he should have been dead. He felt dead. His arm snapped out, and uncaring of how the bullet wound in his torso tore, sucking air in with a strange noise, he pulled himself back using the newly made hole as leverage and threw himself up on the bus. This was no reinforcement, no magecraft, but his sheer stubbornness and the reality of being a man who was closer to a sword parading around in a meat suit. He felt pain, but it did not stop him. His organs were superfluous. His heart unnecessary. His limbs merely tools. His lungs, merely engines. All he needed was his brain and senses.

But that was just sophistry. Emiya had neither the reserves nor the suicidal urge to activate his Reality Marble inside his skin without the absurd healing of Avalon connected to Saber's mana. He was nothing but determined and just clever enough to learn his abilities the best he could. Never once retreating, Never once being understood.

Emiya fell back down the hole he made with his body and slammed his fist into the watching Eagle, slamming into him and finding his face, its temples between his fingers; Emiya tightened his grip. He clenched down. Eagle's mouth was open, but he couldn't hear the noise pouring out. Red liquid gushed around his nails, skin breaking under keratin and extreme pressure. He was pulled off and thrown into a pole; it broke under his weight, and he fell into the crushed rubble of the destroyed seats.

He groaned, choking on the floating asbestos and plush. His arm went up and slammed the palm against whatever flat ground was left, pushing him up. It looked, for a moment, like a rising corpse's unnatural movement to drag itself out of its grave. Emiya looked up and stared at the hurt, injured, and weakly furious Animals stumbling ahead of him. The bus lurched to one side as Croc spilled into the bus from the ground. She glared at him with blood-filmed eyes.

He dragged himself up as they did, too, except Shotgun, who had been hit so hard that he was falling out of the hole where Emiya had originally been punched out of the bus. Likely unconscious. Eagle's face was a rictus of snarling, wordless rage with bloody streaks running down parallel on his face. Bald was the least hurt of all of them, but he stared at Emiya with unabashed fear, gradually turning to anger. Leopard was shakily lifting her arm to point the knife at him.

Emiya pushed himself until he fell onto the broken pole on the floor. He picked it up. It fitted into his hand rather comfortably. The shape was a bit off since it was a bit like a metal pipe instead of a straight blade. Leopard stood up, going to slash at him, a mistake! A thrust was always faster than a swing. His yellow pipe cracked against her hand, shattering bone, and the knife clattered onto the floor, her hand, face, and expression contorting in pain. He brought the pipe back up.

Before he could slam the end of it into her temple, Bald had gotten over his fear and tackled him like a charging bull. Emiya hit the back of the bus's emergency exit hard as an automated voice rang out.

"Emergency Exit, Emergency Exit." It complained each time Bald threw him into the bulging plexiglass and sheet metal. "Emergency Exit, Please Pull... Pull... Pull." Emiya jammed his pipe in the hollow between the shoulder blade and muscle in the lower region of the back correlating with the liver, even trying an awkward stab into the armpit. His knee repeatedly rammed into the man's stomach, his crotch, and he kicked weekly at his knees when he ever got the chance. Finally, Emiya got the hint and realized this roided-up wall of a man wouldn't be going down easily, so he used his weapon for better means. He threw it, a curving disc of yellow, at Leopard, about to do the same. It rang against her forehead like a deep bell, and she fell backward. Throwing his arm up onto the higher handholds, Emiya grabbed ahold of them and lifted himself up as Bald prepared to charge again. His boots impacted against sharp teeth. Snapping the man's head back. But Bald just rushed forward heedless. And Emiya only had time to widen his eyes before he was caught by the waist and slammed onto the ground. Spittle burst out of his mouth. Fire lanced up his back, and he had only a moment to process the consuming shock.

He saw, like an executioner's blade, a massive fist raised back. He threw himself to the side, and the fist shot through the floor. Emiya threw himself back and wrapped himself around the massive man like a snake, bringing his arm around the thick neck. Bracing his arm against his left shoulder, Emiya clenched down on his teeth and choked Bald. The man's arms couldn't reach his back, muscles bunching up too much for even the most flexible circus performer to scratch this giant's back. But that didn't mean Bald made it easy; he thrashed, he kicked like a mule, and he jumped up like a bucking horse to slam Emiya into the roof. Again, with the back. Again.

Bald's knees hit the floor with a visible tremor of the ruined bus. And then he fell completely, face smushed into the collection of glass, plush lining and blood. Emiya rolled off of him, wheezing, out of breath, and beginning to feel exhaustion crawl up his vision in wavering black at the edges. But his sight wasn't so poor to not see through the clear line of sight down the middle of the bus.

To see, Croc had picked up Shotgun's shotgun and was aiming it at him.

Emiya's eyes widened. The whites fully visible in them. He could see it in her eyes; she was going to pull the trigger; damn the fact, the spread would shred through her friend as well, pain and anger forcing her into a state of pure survival—a figure blocked the path.

Eagle. He looked loppy, out of it, but still cognizant enough to see the man who had tried crushing his head between his hand.

Emiya stumbled upright.

They walked towards each other in heavy, harsh footsteps. Then, with moves so telegraphed, even a fresh-faced, first-timer, new to the ring, boxer could move out of the way, they pulled back their fists. Eagle was faster. His fist impacted Emiya's face and threw him boldly into a seat. Scrambling his fingers on the smooth plastic, Emiya threw himself back and slammed his fist across Eagle's face. Eagle took a step back. That was right, you felt that in your aching head, didn't you? Emiya was not a kind man. He would always aim for the most vulnerable points if it would end the fight sooner. He threw another fist into Eagle's bloody face. He launched a kick in the man's knees, grabbed him, and slammed his head into a pole, then a seat, then back into the edge of the seat. Hard plastic indented the man's forehead and sent him raring back, clutching his face in agony. Emiya pressed his boot into the man's chest and pushed. Noise entered his perception like a train rattling, whistling closer. Deafened ears cleared to hear Croc's furious shouts to get out of the way. Emiya obliged.

His fist shook with every hit, blood mixing from the torn skin of his knuckles and Eagle's battered, beaten face as Emiya hit Eagle over and over again. Red cuts appeared as it was cut on the decorative cyberware on the man's skin. Slowly, the second giant went down, and Emiya continued punching and punching until he could see the raised barrel of the shotgun again. But by then, they were so close that Eagle was falling onto Croc, who couldn't scramble away fast enough because of her shattered knee. In the confusion, there was no clear shot.

Emiya stood atop the hole, staring down at the two Animal members. He crouched and, to Croc's large eyes, picked up the shotgun pistol.

He lifted up to observe it and flicked on the safety, he pulled back the pump slide with one hand and saw the gleaming brass casing inside. By the weight, it was the last shot. A four round chamber. He raised it into the sky, pulled the trigger. The retort resounded through the silent bus. He dropped it as the ejected shell casing clattered on the floor like a silent bell.

Then, limping a little, a lot, he stepped over the hole and kicked Croc in the head. Once. Twice. His leg pulled back, Emiya leaned over and looked. She was out cold. He set his foot back down. Almost tripping, falling into the puckered outline of his body through the thin flooring, Emiya lifted himself and weakly pulled himself to the bus's front entrance.

Bumping his hip into the red button that signaled an opening, he fell more than walked out of the descending steps. His boots hit the asphalt, and walking past the harassed black man and stunned woman in a pink jacket and a blue purse, he moved past them without a word.

Then, suddenly, Emiya stopped. He looked in their vague direction and asked. "There…" His throat was sandpaper, his saliva glass shavings and sawdust. "A ripperdoc nearby?"

"Uh, think Doc Ryder? Yeah, Doc Ryder is kinda close?"

Emiya nodded stiffly. He closed his eyes and took in a short, harsh breath. "There's at least a hundred eddies in the bus's inbox. Whatever's in there is yours if you get everyone to someone that will treat him, Ryder, a meat wagon ambulance. Anything."

He lowered his head and said quietly. "Please."

…

A.N.

First: Sorry how long this took to come out, relatively. Some stuff came up personally, exciting and fun stuff, but still stuff that doesn't leave time for writing. Second: I hope the grammar and prose is lot clearer in this one, I'm trying some stuff out.

Third: On the subject of Nerfs. Since this keeps coming up, I'll address it now. yeah, I get it, Emiya feels weak, deliberately so, instead of a Servant or Heroic Spirit or even a incarnated Counter Guardian, or any of his usual iterations, he's this. Dying, constantly mana-starved, and even shaved down to be even weaker. To me, those are the Circumstances of his being here. A natural consequence of the setting and him shaping himself to better survive in it. In a narrative sense, that's inline with the theme of Cyberpunk and Night City in general. You have to change to fit the world, not the world changes to fit you. I can see why they're considered nerfs, and yeah, they annoy me too sometimes. Like, even if this feels a bit childish to say, who wouldn't want Emiya to face off Adam Smasher at their fullest capability.

Also, in a different perspective. All Emiya's Nerfs, are things that could be easily overcome with time, resources, and help. If he simply waited for even a day or two, he'd have a good surplus of energy, if he took the time and secured another source of magical energy from the very beginning, he'd never really worry about it again, even the problem of an Anchor might be solved by simply giving it more time. Even the problem of any arm, as many people have pointed out could be solved by either going to a Ripperdoc or just regenerating it with copious amounts of magical energy. if he started, simply, from the very beginning and sought out to correct any of the things killing him beyond an immediate a patch up-solution, he'd be golden. But that's the thing. He doesn't Stop. He can't help but insert himself into other people's problems and take them on whether or not he'll kill himself doing so. Emiya (Archer) naturally, is the Emiya Shirou who literally sold his afterlife to do just that! Moreover this is Heaven's Feel, Emiya.

There's an interesting bit of contrast, with that route's Shirou, as Emiya Shirou further deviated from his Ideals, Emiya (Archer) seemed almost to grow even more attached to them as if to oppose him. He even saves Emiya Shirou, by gifting him an arm, the one person he hates because it would have a higher chance to save Illya, and Rin. A bit like, "because his way of life denies me, I have to be even more bullheaded about mine'.

Cyberpunk, Night City, doesn't forgive thinking like that. Or in other words: It's the wrong city for a man like Emiya.

And for a bit of a spoiler for the following chapters: This chapter in specifically, is used a sledgehammer to Emiya that if he keeps going on like this, something really will break. Even Emiya can't ignore how he barely walked out of a fight with only a handful of thugs.

 

[ArtemisAvant]

X: Last Stardust

...

Emiya never thought of himself as a workaholic.

He was diligent and productive even though the analogy felt a little cruel in this world of crippling poverty and wealth disparity where one's worth was not determined by their inherent value but by a number decided by someone else's calculation. Dehumanization, he recalled, was a well-worn tool for both internal and external affairs. Enemies became monsters with only the lightest application of imagery and sensationalist slogan, and on the homefront, the next most crucial station of war, transformed men and women into beacons, bastions of inspiration and light. Symbols of perseverance, pillars of the community, examples to follow— humanity seemed awfully easy to shed for how highly it was prized.

But he had never craved the work. He remembered it clearly as if he was watching it as a spectator; coming home stiff, shoulders sore weights, spine aching and hunched, and a distinct ungainly gait to his walk as one of his legs had fallen asleep without any intention of waking up anytime soon as he worked his fingers to nibs trying to fruitlessly fit them into a radiator's internal engine. The prolonged soreness and soft pain in his body afterward, the everywhere-ache in his back especially, as he curled it over spare machinery and mechanical insides like a crow pecking out gold; almost appreciated for its undeniable proof of his diligence. That it was, in some way, earned.

Emiya limped under the shadow of Megabuilding H4. Now, older and far more aware of his distorted nature, he recognized that strange, paradoxical feeling for what it was. A tool was made to be used. He was the same. It was only… He had forgotten that he also held the handle— a Master and a Servant. A good craftsman cared for his tools as much as he used them to their fullest. The blade unsharpened could not wound, the spear fixed improperly and gone uncleaned after many skirmishes snapped under the charge, and the bow that refused to be unstrung would one day splinter into a thousand pieces.

It had been a long time since he could aim himself. An old dog could not learn new tricks, but who was he to say it couldn't relearn old ones.

"A fool will always be a fool."

It sounded, just a little, soft for censure.

…

Even in the harsh, piercing, and uncompromising gray light of day, the short hallway from apartment to apartment never seemed to change.

It peered down with its dim green eye onto the trash-filled alleys and corners with cool indifference. It seemed, illogically, that the illumination from the ceiling crowded out the clouded sunlight, casting the corridors of the Megabuilding, floor to floor, in all the same paint no matter the time of day or night. Trash bags thrown out carelessly littered themselves in predetermined spots that either existed in harmony or in a territory dispute with the endless homeless population— a population refreshed with the cycle of tenants of the apartment structure becoming non-tenants just as the dirty, unwashed faces disappeared quietly.

Yet somehow, despite how logic dictated that these spots of incorrectly disposed waste would fill up and eventually spill over completely into what little space there was, they had somehow fallen, almost strategically, into a large heap below. This heap would then be grunted at by a poorly paid waster worker who took three or even four bags if they had their favorite song playing on Body Heat FM and slowly maintained a tentative equilibrium in an oddly synchronized movement. None of this was ever communicated, at least politely, without shouted threats and cranky aspersions on someone's love life. Still, all seemingly joined seamlessly together to form the unchanging, liminal space of Megabuilding H4 by laziness, defeatism, and an apparently unparalleled ability to ignore the overwhelming stench of slowly decaying waste. And, of course, the fact that the building supervisor had shot the health inspector the previous seven times and exploded the last one— the most recent time, the health inspector had carried a bulletproof vest and a Defender Light Machine Gun into work that day.

Emiya's feet didn't want to work properly. Some tendon, flayed nerve ending, or cramped muscle worked against him every stumbling, slanted, and obtuse step of his paths. His steel-toed boots rose and fell like the heavy, awkward first steps of a newborn fawn trying to lift lead buckshot out from its mangled legs. Bowlegged, the black stiff treated Kevlar creased and creaking, he stepped on his ankle and felt the bone cold against the ground. He required a crutch to climb the single flight of stairs from the elevator to the apartments, holding the smeared, uncomfortably sticky railing like a lifeline. If he fell, Emiya joked silently, he would be well overqualified for that particular senior discount. Help, I've fallen and can't get up!

The stairs ahead loomed. The landing seemed impossibly far with his obese turtle pace. He crawled up anyway. He saw the back of the hare. His own back, in that damn white and blue t-shirt, the back of a hundred Emiya Shirous, all younger, all taunting, all striding forward where he stumbled and fell constantly, asking in that stupid voice. Can you keep up? In what felt like a small eternity, finally, Emiya stared over the end of the stairs.

The same hallway, the same atmosphere of dead ends and trash slowly rotting away. The same door. Open.

It was past dawn, past seven and eight, and quickly approached the sharp-lit heat of noon. There wasn't any reason for the door to be open at any time; even an idiot had to know that. To have it open, then declared a truth Emiya could not avert his eyes from.

There were twenty-seven steps from the stairs to Martinez's apartment; it took him only twelve. By the ninth long stride, his eyes had caught on to the faint, silver scars left in the limp green door of the apartment, the points where it had been forced open. By the tenth, he realized the slumbering lumps of the local homeless population were totally still; by the eleventh, he smelt the hint of blood on the air. A scent he remembered over and over again, like a song stuck in his head, he would mouth along the lyrics to even if its tune had long disappeared from history. Emiya swung into the forced-open doorway and stared into Gloria's and David's Apartment.

He could not say his hopes were dashed because that would imply he had any from the beginning. Emiya wasn't excessively cruel to himself after all; he did not take some sort of masochistic enjoyment out of his own pain and, like most things with the nerve endings to recognize it, avoided pain if it was at all possible. But as he silently took in the subtle yet damning evidence of what lay before him, Emiya could not lie to himself either.

The things he wished for, unconsciously, the things he tried to protect, the things he carelessly left behind. Even as he brought happiness to those before him, the few in the dark were left behind. Even if he saved those he left behind, he'd ignore the lives of a hundred more; with every life in his vision, there were a hundred, a thousand, a hundred million more he had to ignore... From the start. This was only a convenient fantasy. There was no end to a path paved by the destroyed wishes of those trampled underneath it.

Ahead, stamped on pointed, jagged red liquid, slashed and then filled into the floor and splashed up the wall read: FOUND YOU NO-BODY.

…

The sky broke.

Rain poured out. Sheets and sheets of precipitation fell down like crashing waves, the force of each droplet sending them crashing back up and falling right back down in a stream of violent pull and push. Each street shone eerily and magnificently, with a mirror shine and wet perfection. The clouds had finally fused into each other and outweighed their own buoyancy, or perhaps Night City had stirred them into life. Through lungs of errant static electricity, through throats of steam vents, the disturbed consciousness of the City demonstrated its fury through the sky above and the rushing storm drains below.

The tracks vanished into tracks of water, and whatever clues that were left behind didn't point to any specific location, at least not with what Emiya knew of the city and its many, many gangs. Maybe a more experienced and born and raised street kid would know the exact location of who had taken Gloria and David through merely the taste of the human blood smeared across the wall and etched in the floor.

He could not. He could only suspect the obvious. Maelstrom, as befitting the sudden turn of the water for the worse, and yet he also wondered if that was abate and switch tactic. The evidence presented to him: the human blood and the rough opening of the door both pointed towards that more savage and ill-disciplined gang of metal-obsessed sycophants, but at the same time, that so-called evidence could easily be smokescreens for the true party behind this. Would Maelstrom really go out of their way to track him down and even kidnap Gloria and David— kidnap, not kill them right here and then. What were their motives? A desire to inflict savagery onto them? Then, the question must be asked: what about the people outside in the hallway? Examining their cold, fleshy bodies, six more corpses to add to his tally, he saw that the wounds, thin and sharp and quick, had been through the neck and head. Skilled kills. Unlike the crudely painted and pointedly distressing taunt in the apartment. It spoke of a wholly different modus operandi. Would Maelstrom be that precise in their breaking and entering?

In accounting for enemy action, you always had to contend with a boundless lack of information. You would likely not know their patterns, choice of weaponry, tactics against specific countermeasures, or overall size and disposition to all types of warfare. Modern warfare became a race to determine all the various ways to most efficiently and situationally close this gap in knowledge. Satellite imagery, covert surveillance, and intelligence operatives snuck into cradle over fist. All approved operations taken by advanced countries trying to conduct warfare against others.

Information was key in all warfare. Artillery may be king and infantry queen, but explosive ordinance and paramilitary were worse than useless if they were not deployed intelligently. Emiya placed his hand against the floor and pulsed the construct of his prana inside. Structural Analysis beamed the information of the surrounding apartment in a wireframe model, from the defined definitions of the living space, the holes were nails and staples had been shot in, holes made by covered bullet marks from years ago, stains washed over by paint, and most pressingly, the exact depth and shape of the slashes and damages down to the floor.

His level of Structural Analysis did not reach into the sphere of psychometry (at least with anything that wasn't a blade but that was not truly Structural Analysis either). Still, as water eroded lines into stone, he could extrapolate from the more permanent effects others made to an environment. For example, the blood from the writing gently dripped through the floor to rain down on Ms. Jan's apartment, specifically her twenty-five-strong illegal chicken pasture she had set up in the middle of the room. Five centimeters deep, thin cut, most optimal choice a bladed weapon, rather than an ax, Mantis Blades most probably— the travel path indicated a swing, one with a sharp point digging out material, rather than a meditated carve-through by knife or many slashes of a katana per se. By the minute, metal shavings and lack of torn-up carpet littering the area, they were unserrated.

Emiya delved deeper into his observation. He closed off his other senses: the pain in his body, the slight tinnitus in his ears, the ache of exhaustion behind his eyes, and even the cool fluid movement of air and blood through his veins. Everything. The world pulled into a black, lightless space where his only focus and light was the wireframe monochrome model of the apartment. Floor plans, trajectories, and figures were outlined in pale blue to represent their absence in the present. The blood was spilled afterward, deliberately so. From the blood spatter, it gushed out in an unbroken stream, which was then applied by… a ten-centimeter object, uneven, multiple appendages, by a hand. Gloved, or metal.

Blood didn't lie, and the pressure it splashed into the wounds in the floor and wall told him that either Maelstrom kept packaged blood bags handy with them or somehow inserted a valve-controlled tube into a victim.

There was no mud or dust left by footprints he could so easily spy at a glance, but with Structural Analysis, he saw them. Most common shoe imprint: 27 cm. A larger foot size, which led him to believe it was a group of all men, six. No, seven. If he compared the residue from the complex mixture of dust and impurities found directly outside the door, they would be exactly the same. Unfortunately, with so many footprints converging in a relatively small apartment and all with roughly similar residues, determining an accurate count of how many entered proved all but impossible.

David and Gloria's own footprints were impossible to track as well; their imprints having stepped around the room in familiar patterns and brought in traces from the same places meant that any measurement of where exactly they were and what they were doing before the attack would require years of careful sifting and massive amounts of contextual information.

The time of the attack was indiscriminate, made even more uncertain by his own tampering with the machines. It likely took place before 7 or 8 am and any time after 3 am, which was the last time he checked the mini Kanshou and Bakuyas on his hip before entering Night City's Sewage and Waste Treatment plant and losing all track of himself.

There were no ballistic traces, no lingering gunpowder, or even signs of a scuffle. Which in itself was a clue. Though one that corresponded to a number of theories, all of them unhelpful and increasingly worrisome.

Emiya ended the minuscule flow of prana from his fingers, and the world trickled gently back into awareness. He stood up and surveyed the scene again.

Here was what he envisioned happened: Gloria would likely be awake, given her earlier and consecutive rest times, either sitting on the couch or finishing up daily chores around the house— the washing machine and dryer were both empty, laundry bins both two days full, David's offset by a day— since the vending machine was disabled, she was likely considering either going out for an early breakfast and bringing some back for David, or going without entirely. David was either still asleep or begrudgingly awake. (Emiya was not familiar enough with the young man enough to tell his sleep patterns with any confidence.) Then, a sudden and inexplicable shock through the system. To both at once. A Netrunner's hacking of the cybernetics within their bodies to provide an immediate and deep sleep, he assumed with the lacking trace of chemicals that would linger if the method of non-lethality was of that nature. This process would likely be subtle and quiet. Any other more extreme methods would have been picked up by his Structural Analysis. A few moments later, or perhaps precisely at the moment the hacking was confirmed, a group of five to eight men entered and swiftly secured the room. Already having killed the people outside. Three to four would confirm Gloria's and David's identities, bagging them up and securing them for transport, while another would begin ransacking the room and creating the taunt with Mantis Blades. After the declaration was finished, another person would start filling it with blood. After only five to fifteen minutes (depending on the skill level of the assailants, less than five minutes if they were true professionals), they left with Gloria and David.

Emiya considered his options. Considering Megabuilding H4's state of disrepair and his own confirmation of how easy it was to avoid the few cameras on his way, was it worth it finding the security office of the whole building and combing through it trying to find a glimpse of his attackers, or should he assume that with a Netrunner they would obviously destroy any traces of their presence. That destruction would likely lead to some clues— any enemy actions would. But he also had to judge his own actions based on an incredibly limited time frame.

He had less than twelve hours. Missing person cases rapidly decreased their chances by each and every hour.

Everything he did from here on out needed to be as carefully considered and reasoned for with the utmost seriousness.

There was no room for mistakes.

No room for hesitation.

Emiya walked out of the room to the familiar dim green light. Swiftly striding over to the edge, like they were stairs made just for this; he looked over the edge. To the dark below. His heart swung madly in his chest, each thump as if it was bouncing like a pinball between his curled ribs and where they connected to his spine.

He stepped off.

(—He was a man always smiling. The world changed around him, but the faint, slight slant to his lips remained unchanged. It was a constant surreality that seemed to Emiya Shirou to define the world and not the world defining it. Hence, the church filled with Kotomine Kirei's grin. Windows arched over cool spun silver light, moon water on a shadowed land of darkly varnished wooden pews in a cold march. All the candles seemed to have their wicks removed, for they never lit and instead stood pristine, wax soldiers with shiny new armor and armaments. It was difficult to tell if the church had ever sat anyone or, for that matter, granted absolution to any sinner.

He stepped into the waiting dark, and it filled him with stolen grace.

The shriveled-up dead surrounded him—no, that was not true. They were him. And not quite dead. Crude IV tubes snaked around them like dead vinery. Darker, less flexible tubes sprouted from their bellies and asses into a larger feed. A mixture of magecraft and applied technological progress in a hideously cruel efficiency. That one there, see, his face with the empty sunken eyes without a trace of despair on his small, dried face? The one who constantly rubbed her fingers against the stone floor; she had gone past the tips and the knuckles, and the sound was more scratch than scrape. Emiya Shirou knew the truth as sure as he dreamt the fire every night. These empty husks were the same as the boy who walked in and out of hell.

What bade him survive was not a mystical destiny, not prophesied fate or burdened legacy, not a sword of glorious light or a voice whispering in his ear leading him down a road impossible for him to even imagine, but instead the most damning thing of all. Luck.

Thunk, thunk, thunk.

Heavy footfalls echoed down the stairs. Each creaking, each thump on old wood, and the slow, amused steps of a man emerging out in the gloom. Kotomine Kirei. Both arms were behind his back, as was his fashion until he outstretched his hand in an invitation. In the dark, red command seals glittered like jewels. A hound at the smiling man's beck and call. Shall they go up to discuss?

They talked of many things, of the fire, of the Grail.

In a darkly humorous twist, the priest asked the young man for a salvation he'd only to come to want, desperately, powerfully, like a man desired a pistol in the desert, inside that cold church. The punchline: He said no. The King, in her unmoved heart, said yes.

Her blade felt like ice against his throat. He could not say what he said, or done, or didn't do wrong. Every choice ran through his head like lightning on a wire. They played out in his head like scenes, places, then the words he had said, the ones she had said. All the ones he didn't. All the ones he thought she might've. They laughed, they cried, they argued, and they fell in love. They understood each other on such a terrifyingly complex level that sometimes it felt like the world wasn't real before her.

This was a dream, he remembered. It was on the beach, gray sand bleeding into his skin. It was in the forest, trees dancing and cawing with every brush of wind. It was in the sand he saw her hair spread out against the blue horizon as if she was gently asleep. It was in the dark of night he stared into the stars and thought they would only be beautiful reflected in her. It was in every moment afterward and every hell he walked into willingly. This dream was unending. But he thought that, too, of love and memory. For both her and him, the time they spent together was nothing more than a dream at the end of their lives: short, frenetic, chemicals bleeding through to the brain, dancing and dying neurons, and the last sigh taking it all away. The difference, Emiya Shirou was one those fools always almost dying. He saw her every time. She only was ever-dying once.

In another life, he would have asked her to marry him in a church, unlike this. —)

…

"You're late."

Emiya stopped, looking left, right, and down. Though no one should have any reason to call out to him, he recognized the unknown voice was meant for him, like the tree remembered the ax as well as the chainsaw. He seemed to inspire that kind of tone with others, a sort of long-suffering, despairing, and waspish tone. Emiya readjusted his coat, feeling the black weave settle over him. He strode forward, conscious that the first thing he thought to project for this was his father's work coat. It fit his height but bunched up tight around his shoulders, a fact only a little alleviated by his missing arm. The second thing he Traced lay on his tip, clacking a little whenever the tool in his father's coat brushed up against it.

A meter away, a vending machine flickered and glitched violently, and then a distorted voice rang out instead of an exaggerated slogan. "Missed the meeting, don't look like you're arriving late either, going the wrong the wron-wrong way." Emiya walked past it. Uncaring as the glitching, red-green, blue LEDs behind the plexiglass sheen snapped and crackled in his wake.

He replied. "Things came up. And I'm afraid that a raincheck is out of the question."

On his right this time, one of the many flickering advertisements shifted into a young woman's silhouette. Lucy. A hum distorted through whatever net-threaded audio systems she was hijacking in order to speak to him. "...way you're heading. One-way ticket."

He almost laughed and did, in fact, chuckle. Once upon a time, he might have said something very similar to, ironically, himself. "Been told that before," he quipped. A self-amused smirk stuck out wide on his face. "I didn't listen then either." It almost felt like this was the world's way of telling him this was a mistake. That he was walking along that same road to the same meaningless happiness, meaningless balance, meaningless justice.

Silence on the other end, Emiya paused at the curb. Holographic printed green crosswalks laid out before him, and an automated woman's voice rang out from the stoplight— Don't Walk. Don't Walk. He walked. Don't walk. Cars blazed past him, their horns ringing in his ears long after they became merely shiny blurs in the distance. This part of town, all the cars were shiny, polished, and painted like a mirror. Tinted windows and speeds, he felt, were a little silly. The voice had left as the advertisement boards slowly receded in the face of carefully curated glass and streets.

He stepped onto a glass overhead pedestrian bridge. Above, immense streams of light coalesced into a blue and orange koi fish swimming in a pool of nothing but air. Against the black glass reflections of the surrounding fishbowl, they looked trapped. Stuck in stygian iron, and as the advanced glass making up most of the circling skyscrapers absorbed more light than its older counterpart, their radiance was a dim thing unless one looked straight up heedless to everything else. He saw her before he heard her.

"NCPD showed up at Gloria's." Lucy leaned up against the railing, a curl of smoke rising from the thin cigarette stick in her mouth. Her hair, pearlescent and cut in a fashionable bob, stuck out like a sore thumb. "Automated alert for all members of the crew when police come looking for trouble," was her explanation, said almost apologetically. "The boss made it a rule. City like this, anything can happen. Hard to know who's gonna rat you out or flatline all of a sudden."

Emiya moved to walk past her.

"Saw the scene… too clean for Maelstrom annnnd you're not listening." She confirmed his suspicions. He heard the cigarette go out, the butt of it smashed into the ground. "...Gloria should have warned her damn self." A sound like a clicked tongue, a muffled curse.

He stopped and turned right back around. Lucy startled at his sudden approach, hackles raised and shoulders hunched as if she expected a hit. She looked a little as if she was asking for it. He walked up to her, and only a step's distance away from her, he looked her straight in the eyes. He scoffed at himself. Did he really look intimidating in someone else's eyes? Then he bent down, picked up the still-burning cigarette, and tossed it into the trash can over the railing and a drop below.

She stared at him. Pale. Drawn. Bloodless in the light. Dark circles underneath bold makeup. Everybody was always running from something. The question was: did she have anything she running to?

He sighed, running his head through his hair and letting it fall into his face. "Smoking in the rain is one thing, but leaving your trash for somebody else to pick up is another."

Her eyes went wide and round. Her lips parted a little as if to say something, but somewhere along the way, she had forgotten the words.

He smiled at her. "Since I'm not your father, or your brother, or anything at all, I won't lecture you anymore. But that goes for you as well." He shook his head. "Good grief, trying to stall me with those half-hearted convictions. You're quite the handful, aren't you?" Acting like that was only a recipe for getting hurt later down the road.

Ah, what the hell. Unable to resist those illusory, half-remembered, always-there habits, Emiya reached out and ruffled the girl's hair. Once twice, until she numbly batted away his hand, looking exceedingly put out and confused; a rather funny mixture. If, a little ridiculous looking on someone trying so hard to act cool and indifferent.

He put his hand in the air, a gesture of surrender. Then, stepping back, he let it hang up there, even as he turned and walked away and close to the looming black twice over the bridge. A wave, a goodbye, an acknowledgment. It lingered there in her eyes until it, along with the rest of him, disappeared into the shattering rain.

If this was a mistake… then at least it was a familiar one. He could be forgiven, he thought wittily, for falling into old habits.

…

"Welcome to Arasaka Tower."

He couldn't hear the rain pelting against the glass, Emiya realized, standing in the cold entrance of the lobby. Clean, sleek lines shot out from where he stood, paths denoted by geometric lines like austere golden circuitry. Dark tiles covered everything, the floor, the walls up to their cold white lighting, and the smooth black panels that dragged themselves skyward. Above eyesight, to the point where he had to crane his head up to look, the logo of Arasaka dyed white loomed like a promise wrapped in steel.

"Weapons and other hazardous materials are not allowed on the premises. Have a pleasant day!" The automated voice quieted. Cool, foreboding silence stretched over the empty lobby.

He stepped forward through the body scanner, and almost immediately, it blared an angry red; no alarm went off. Just red particles against his skin and the unmoving forms of the guards with guns in hand. So he was expected. The question, then, being: who was expecting him? Emiya, with a deliberately casual air, placed his hand into his pocket. Tension thickened in the air like a tangible, physical thing.

He didn't imagine it to be that elegant woman on the screen, as much as she had shown herself to be perfectly willing to stoop to underhanded methods. Something he perhaps should have understood from the very moment she deigned to converse with him. And yet, who else would go through so much trouble? They wanted something, and he was sure of that much. If it was simply to send a message, he imagined he'd still be finding bits of Gloria and David in the apartment.

Was it his abilities he had shown with reckless abandon? The curiosity of his Magecraft and his inexplicable skills? Skills and abilities were replicable given time and money, and Arasaka, as he had learned, had a near monopoly on both. The answer seemed to be, logically, only his Magecraft. And yet… for all he had been using it without a care for the secrecy of the Moonlit World, Emiya had never needed to utilize anything of his trump cards. His blades were extraordinary but ultimately ordinary relative to what he could produce; he had not even used a Noble Phantasm or a Broken Phantasm, for that matter. Alteration and reinforcement had some practical value, no doubt, but they seemingly were matched by advanced technology and the accelerated arms race in the form of combat implants. Projection then seemed the most likely answer; his insulting, roguish use of near-perfect replication at a dime would surely interest some, but was that truly something arguably the strongest mega-corporation in the world would deem worthy of attention?

No, he was not so arrogant to believe himself special. There had been other better, faster, stronger, more charismatic heroes. Humans. Mankind was a race of fools, losers, failures, and the painfully ordinary. It was only because of this that Heroic Spirits, Ghost Liners, had their legends carved into the Throne of Heroes. They defined the limits. No, they expanded the limits of what the human race could hope to achieve. And for that reason, they ascended into a place beyond time and space. The history of humanity was a long, endless cycle of stupidity, genius, small successes, and countless failures, and yet… they had crawled out of the dirt, blinded themselves in the sun outside their caves, and dreamt of the stars far out of reach. He may be only a nameless bowman, a counter guardian cleaning up mankind's unending messes, but now, in the future, he had died and sold his afterlife for, though he may only have been placed onto the throne out of no deed of his own... The Counter Guardian, known as EMIYA, was only ever a hollow man who didn't want to see anyone cry in front of him.

He envied their short, pointless joys, their meaningless sorrows, and petty tribulations. The future was not carved out by a single man's insignificant wish but by those who went unrecognized by the Throne of Heroes. He had fought for that future; he had killed for that future. Wasn't it fitting, then? That he demonstrated to this declining, dying world what they could be?

Here he was, standing against the world, the world's eyes on his back: A fool from the past asking the world behind him if they could keep up.

"Sir, take one one more step forward—"

"I'm afraid I'm going to step forward with or without you."

Emiya cut the man off. It should be easy for them, after all. He was only ever a Faker. "Trace." Green-blue circuity lanced up his skin, shining through even his coat. Reinforcement pushed to the maximum. His Magic Circuits burned through him like he was the fuel, and his Reality Marble pushed against the thin confines of his skin. A distortion pulsed around him, the heartbeat of another world pushed out by his clarity of self. "On.

"Grit your teeth. No miracle is ever free. No happy endings are bought without misfortune. Wishes are bought with unthinkable sacrifice." Emiya stepped forward. The gun raised shakily, almost as if it was pulled up regardless of the man's own will. His eyes were wide, shaky brown over his sleek sunglasses. Emiya's arm moved, elbow cinching; a gun, a dagger, whatever he had, was about to be revealed. "And this wish is the most impossible of all!"

Muzzle flash, expellant being pushed out of the bullet over the speed of sound, the world as if frozen, three lines of fire converging onto his position. Another man leaping over the rest with Mantis blades extended to pounce and tear into his flesh. The telltale activation of Sandevisitan blur. Kerenzikovs dragging their users into the same slowed time, perception dilating seconds into minutes. Green-blue lines spread over his coat.

It tore off Emiya in a flurry of dark fabric and black Kevlar, hardened to a point where it was more steel wall than clothing; Emiya burst forward under its shadow, avoiding the Mantis Blade user who stabbed furiously, uselessly into the sensor. In an instant, he was a step away from the closest man, lunging his arm out; Emiya snapped out a dagger that cut through the firearm in an instant. In a blur of motion, he stabbed himself with that same dagger, pressed into the gunman's hands!

A flash of violet, unpredictable light, and a torrent of blinding, impossible shadows. But even as the first man fell to the ground, Emiya was already upon the next gunman, dragging her gun downwards and snapping out his leg to shatter her wrist— but before he could disarm her further, the Mantis Blades user was upon him. He ducked to the side, leaning to the left as red-black blades carved through the air in deadly razor edges. He leaned to the right, ducked under the next wide swing, reached up to awkwardly hug the man by the neck, and threw him high into the air; even with a Sandevisitan's enhanced motion, one could not make themselves fall any faster without any impetus— bullets punched him in the shoulder, his stop making him an easy target.

Emiya grunted but began sprinting in a circling approach; his form was not as dizzyingly quick as a fully cybernetic body operating with a Sandevisitan, but with his incredible vision, it was almost as if he could see the future in where the gunman was aiming. He threw himself into a leap and, spinning in midair, grabbed the second item the sensors pinged on him. A M-10AF Lexington, issued to one Gloria Martinez, one of the impossibly few, actually legal to carry firearms in Night City. Narrowing his vision, he accounted for a hundred or so external factors, his inertia, the angel of which he fell through the air, a cold barrel, the slight imperfection within the barrel from when David had once thought it was a chew toy much to Gloria's horror, and being reminded of then, Emiya checked the safety. Off. Trigger ready. Everything was within his range. He had already declared his target. The bullet was already fired. The small caliber round impacted the under barrel of Masamune rifle, kicking it up even as its own recoil shot it downwards, and the sudden conflicting, contrasting motion tore it out of the woman's hands just as Emiya sprung into a roll, landed, and lunged.

Violent, violet light spun the room into a surreality. Another unexplained blinding light, another inexplicable occurrence. Emiya took aim at the Mantis Blades user dashing towards him, twice in the shoulder, three in the knees; bullets spiraled into metal furls as the man's Sandevisitan activated and his blades blurred, carving them into metal bits. But Emiya was already pressing the gun into the man's knee. Not even a Sandevisitan was faster than a bullet at point black. Blood and bone burst from the man's leg, and then three more gushes of blood erupted from the man as Emiya moved to his other knee, his ankles, and then twice in the exposed machinery of his mantis blades. Then, ducking the volley of bullets coming at him, Emiya fell onto the man, and another disco ball of kaleidoscopic, malicious lighting filled the lobby.

Rolling off the man, Emiya assumed the prone position, his arms fully extended and his breath still as the grave. He pulled the trigger. He missed, just grazing her head. No. He had only missed when he chose to. Missing, in fact, was his target from the beginning.

The third gunman cried out as their tactical glasses shattered against their face. Blinded and clutching at her face, she pulled the trigger on her assault rifle blindly. As he ran, Emiya shot again, impacting the rifle to clatter noisily out of her already loose hand. Clipping the gun to his belt, he transferred the dagger to his hand. Jagged, thin, overly sharp to the point where it looks like it'd snap at any application of pressure, it could hardly be called a weapon at all. Flipping it in his hand, he held it by the sharp end, the blade already digging into his skin. He was moving too fast, and momentum dictated that he could no longer stop and not hit them. They collided in a tangle of limbs, and the mess only grew more disorienting as that same light lanced across the room in beams of incandescent malice and magic.

Emiya stood up. Prana sloughed off him in waves and was visible to even a mundane eye by the roiling mist evaporating from his body. Just this once, just for this passing life, he was asking everyone to follow him to this hypocritical dream's end. Contracted to easily four Anchors and suffused by the inherent bleed-off of their souls, Emiya visibly stood taller. Injuries scarred over, vanishing into etheric particles. Bruises and blemishes to his armor were encapsulated by a wreath of mana and refreshed to an almost sterling silver quality. Even without Magic Circuits, as Caster could, he could also gently drain them into unconsciousness and restore his own reserves.

However! There seemed to be a fatal flaw to this strategy, as he used Rule Breaker to forcefully contact himself to others. Should those other contacts not also be stolen away? In that case, he would only be contracted to the last person who he forced to stab him…

Of course, Emiya knew this and cheated in the only way he could. At the moment of impalement, Emiya overlaid the Rule Breaker stabbing into him in the present with all the Rule Breaker stabbed into him previously. In effect, he had changed the issue of having his contract stolen by being stabbed to his contract being stolen by everyone all at once. This also allowed him to cancel any contract that he sensed to be on the verge of corrupting another with his existence simply by not overlaying that accumulated experience of being stabbed by that particular individual the next time he used Rule Breaker. It was an ability that was only possible with his unique Tracing, a variant of Rule Breaker's ultimate trump card fashioned into a use that only applied to this niche, a specialized moment in time. His own Rule Breaker II. The simultaneous theft of all previous contacts by all the previous contacts plus another. A thoroughly ridiculous idea for a foolish man. A man contracted by the world, upheld by the world and using the world. A Counter Guardian. The feeling this simultaneous stabbing produced was, perhaps, best left to the unknown.

He stepped out into the lobby proper.

There, he faced down an army without end. Arasaka Elites poured into the room from behind the far wall, from both ends, from the two corridors on the left and right, legions of heavily modified men and women streamed out in an unending tide. There were enough guns and advanced weaponry in the room to cost well over a million Eurodollars. There were enough bodies between him and his way forward that Emiya, against all of them, with his thin, slim black gear and his exposed arms and their cutting-edge weaponry and sleek, threatening red and whites —looked like the funniest, most one-sided fight in the world. Turrets slotted out of the walls and took aim at him with their heavy caliber rifles with ammunition roughly in the infinite. Ten, twenty, fifty. A hundred, two hundred. Their sheer rate of fire would drown him in bullets, if nothing else. Suddenly, he jumped back. Boom. Dust swelled out and swept over him. Bristling with advanced weaponry and fiery ordinance, the oily black steel of the Arasaka ACPA stared him down with red electronic eyes brimming with furious violence.

Emiya returned the favor right back. He threw his arm out the side, and a crackling distortion into the world collapsed into the shape of Kanshou. He pointed it at the mech, pointed it down the length of the men and women, and spoke to whoever was behind those eyes. "If this is all you have to face me…" He scoffed, and then that noise broke and transformed into wild, unrestrained laughter. "Then just get the fuck out of my way."

For a moment, the unlinking red on the mech seemed to brighten as if to disagree. Then, adding action to punctuation, it launched its missiles. Rocket-powered explosives shredded through the spot where Emiya stood, impacting in successive staggers; the first missile blew metal shards and concrete dust high into the air, and the second hit barely a moment after the first and threw the thrown-up shrapnel and debris wide across the lobby. The third just felt unnecessary and unforgivingly brutal. The fourth, then, could only be said to be a demonstration of the crushing strength of Arasaka in overwhelming finality.

Slowly, the dust cleared, and a few brave, inquisitive Arasaka elites shot several rounds into the cloud. The sound registered. The crack of bullets on concrete and steel and not pulped flesh. Suddenly, the mech snapped its head up, information beamed straight from the Tower's AI finally catching where the intruder had gone. Fifteen meters in the air, Emiya was perched on the wall, clinging with his boots stuck to the smooth dark paneling. That opening was just what he was waiting for! Emiya kicked off the wall and threw himself into the air, mouthing, to ears still ringing with ballistic missiles, "Sword Barrel. Full Open." The world groaned. Something pressed into the boundary. As if struck by mass hallucination, the grinding of immense gears and the feeling of hot ash and grit were felt on the skin, even if they had long removed their skin. They appeared like they were merely hidden by a trick of perception. Swords. Dozens, hundreds. All arrayed above them like a rain of steel. Nameless, exact copies of the same arming blade used once by a loyal infantryman in Camelot.

Only awaiting acknowledgment, they hung in the air as one man's army against another's.

In his descent, Emiya angled himself towards the ACPA. Pulling his arm back, he threw Kanshou like a disc of silver spun moonlight. Like a stroke of lightning, it sheared off the mech's right side and missile launcher, snapped to place into the expensive stonework, embedded all the way to the hilt, and still buzzing. And yet… with only one arm. With only one pair of the married blades, there was still the left side, a heavy caliber machine gun dragging hot lead up to cut him in two. Emiya flung out his arm, delaying his descent by half a second and angling him more to the side of the mech, but the mech's targeting system was far faster than gravity's acceleration. It was not faster than Kanshou again.

Spinning round with incomprehension, the mech gazed with machine eyes at its loped-off left side with total confusion. It flicked back to Emiya, to the black blade, feathered and elongated to an almost grotesque beauty, in his hand. The white blade circled him in the air like a pristine falcon. The black blade in his hand?!

If there was nothing else, Emiya could be said to be a master at it; let it be this. He had carried these blades through every hell on Earth and some of this planet's crust. Although he had stronger, much more esoteric affecting blades within his Reality Marble, he nonetheless preferred Kanshou and Bakuya to an extent that was, perhaps, self-obstructing. But Emiya was a stubborn man who held onto things with a desperation that should perhaps frighten. There was no contest. He had mastered every facet, every quirk and trick with these married blades.

He landed.

The many refractions and blades emerging like feathers from Bakuya receded. He let it clatter to the floor. Emiya looked up and observed all the stunned men surrounding him., as the mech's core exploded uselessly behind him. He said simply. "Fall."

Blades thundered down like meteorites as if fired from a tank; they impacted the ground and shot up massive plumes of dust like the displacement of water. Steel shattered and chipped upon contact with the ground, and shrapnel spun out and sliced silver lines into Emiya's cheek. The air was full of steel, cries, and shouts, and the exulting crash of swords, uncountable.

Like graves, they stood, nailed into the ground, or lay broken upon the ruined atrium. But they were not graves, only like them, and the soldiers of Arasaka lifted their eyes and saw they were not dead. By all rights, they should have pointed their guns at the man and shot him a hundred times over. They could not. By either their firearms being impaled by an impossible blade or by the sudden understanding of their mortality, who could say? Who would believe them? It was a feat that had to be seen to be understood. It was a feat belonging to myth and legend.

Emiya was not summoned as a Saber; despite… this, he did not cut down the enemies in front of him with a blade and through all obstacles and fate. He had been summoned as an Archer. He was always summoned as an Archer. He was a Counter Guardian. If there was an enemy he must kill here, it was not these men.

It was whoever lay at the top of this tower.

…

She watched the red dots on the screen fade into gray listlessly. The cool white warnings in English first, then Japanese underneath that concisely explained how, despite all reason and evidence to the contrary, the man who had walked into Arasaka Tower alone climbed every stair, cleared every level of nearly the full force of their available forces here in Night City and some being pulled, even now, from regions farther afield. Even with it displayed as such a matter of fact, in the monochrome stripped-down view as verified by the tower's artificial consciousness, it seemed a little stupid. Unthinkable, and for its forthright display, even more obtuse and humorous for it.

What made this fact only more unbelievable and ridiculous was that the man seemed to be speeding up. As gray dots accumulated and onsite personnel took away the wounded to be sent out back against him— oddly enough, they had barely any injuries and only a strange weakness quickly burned away by an Arasaka-brand stimulant— he only moved faster, poured out more inexplicable weaponry, and pulled out more impossible feats from his seemingly bottomless depths. A war was being waged within the 140 floors of Arasaka Tower, and somehow, in this fortress created to withstand a nuclear detonation and then some, with every floor having to be crossed, all elevators disabled and doors locked with interplanetary grade mechanisms and materials; they lost ground. In fairness for the loyal men and employees of this branch, they could not bring their full might to bear. Swarms of man-sized drones could not run free through the cluttered office space and sensitive labs without further incurring increasingly heavy financial losses, and the disparate, fractured chain of command of a corporate shark tank meant most who could organize a defense utilizing those powerful technologies were far more concerned with keeping their million Eurodollar hide safe from the unstoppable madman.

Naturally, Hanako could change this with merely a thought. Few had higher authority than her, and those few would hardly begrudge her for taking control of those assets to stop an imminent threat. Yet she did not. The true cost of this attack, and it was an attack now, and no longer the whiny petulance of some lone mercenary banging at the doors— was in their image. At this very moment, Millitech executives spoke of an attack on Arasaka soil and their impotence regarding this. That same Militech exec received a 12,000 voltage for his trouble by overclocking Arasaka Netrunners, who successfully breached the weak ICE of that conference. In secret talks amongst Kang Tao, whispers were slung around heedless and carelessly in the dark as if they could ever be safe there, discussing the potential of Arasaka's downfall and their sure-to-plummet stock in the wake of this unprecedented public image disaster. Rats moved off sinking ships the quickest, and as many had called it, the ruthless and merciless corporate ladder was the biggest rat race of them all. Members of the Night City board doubtlessly were making several plans to capitalize on this, either by swelling out Arasaka in exchange for a life of constant hunting or making covert moves to throw their petty rivals under the rug and swipe the blame for their departments, whether or not that department knew of their incoming 'clean house' or not.

These waves, as fierce and turmoil-ridden as they slammed against Arasaka, were only temporary. They would fade. But even so, she could not easily dismiss the rippling effects which spread out from this man. In the end, it seemed she was the one who underestimated him and, not, the other way around. Truly, she had not thought he would go so far. He had the bearing of a man who threw himself recklessly and foolishly into the closest conflict in a bid to die. In a way, she supposed that was not incorrect. She had only underestimated his talent for failing at dying.

Truly, she had not understood the sort of man he was at all.

A croak of laughter, like the withered bark from a great tree, crooked and bent. Despite its inherent frailty and underlying age, it still straightened her spine to a steel rod. "You were correct, daughter." Although it was only a projection, a holographic display, an imperfect rendition of her father in particles of manipulated light. She still felt the ugly weakness course through her at just the sound of his slow, hoarse voice. "Lift your head. When he arrives, I wish to see him personally."

"Of course, otou-sama." Hanako lifted her head only slightly, just enough to meet the fine, silken inner yukata her father had taken to wearing. "I will contact you when that time comes." A moment where she felt his gaze weigh on her, heavy and searching. Whatever he found her lacking or was somehow pleased with her spineless deference. Either satisfaction or distaste, both were impossible to tell from him.

He did not say another word, and the projection shut off with a wink and the minor brightening of the office space as the lights automatically adjusted.

It was one thing to know, intellectually, that one's biometrics were perusable; it was altogether another thing to feel another consciousness reside in the same body and see out of your eyes. There was nothing she could hide from her father, as he owned everything she had ever known. She took a fortifying breath under this suffocating feeling, having known it ever since she was old enough to understand lies from truth. And walked, steady and sure, to the boy gently waking up as she deactivated the System Collapse program on his implants.

She steepled her hands against her stomach, the cold metal a grounding reminder as much it brought up an instinctive recoil of her skin through her dress. "Hello, David."

One's first impression had many virtues and vices attributed to it, though she found, often, that one's first impression mattered not so much as the last's. Perception coiled and uncoiled in great waves of mutable material, one could not use it as a clear measure to view the world. The only effective lens to understand, Hanako found, was impressing unto others what mattered most to them. For some, this was simple, pathetically effortless recognition. A place to belong. The safety one sought in enormous sums of money. Then, simpler and paradoxically more difficult to control, dreams. Thrill. The satisfaction of watching numbers increase systematically. Success and what others had led them to believe amounted to success.

In that regard, David Martinez was an ultimately simple and understandable creature. He grasped his situation quickly for a boy out of Santo Domingo. Wealth spoke with a loud voice. Arasaka spoke louder.

"Good. You are cautious of your unfamiliar, unnatural surroundings." She said, in a carefully curated voice in gentle, soothing neutrality. "In exchange for your lacking banal threats and vapid intimidation display, I will endeavor to treat you with the same courtesy. You are currently on the highest floor of Arasaka Tower, approximately 118 floors above your usual classroom."

He swallowed noisily. "...got to ask. Why?"

"Because it was simple. Because I could, because Arasaka wished for you to be here, and you are." Hanako inclined her head slightly to the side, humming to allow him a moment to compose himself around this new information. To taste dissatisfaction. "There are many reasons but none, I think, you will find reasonable."

"Talk like you have me spread out like a book. So hit me, what makes you think I got any reason to listen to you?"

"Straight to the point. Refreshing, almost. If not for the crude implication." Hanako smiled a little at him; perhaps he reminded her of her younger brother; perhaps it was only a tool used to reassure him of her intentions. She liked to believe it was both. That was the joy of being born to this weighty legacy. Choices and the belief you could have it all, the power to make it true.

"David Martinez. Born inside an ambulance, your umbilical cord cut by an Edgerunner's Mantis blades, despite this intriguing opening, your life proceeded in ordinary obscurity. The only fact of note was the assault on your person by the son of a 6th Street fixer. Interesting, not out of any feat or occurrence that proved your so-called uniqueness, but for your unusual reaction. Before you broke, the other boy's hand broke first. Bloodied, bruised to a degree that merited swelling and a small, untreated fracture in your jaw, you laughed at the other boy who cried due to the pain."

Glumly, he glared at her.

She acknowledged his glare but, in return, informed him in no uncertain terms by her arched brows exactly how threatening and infantile she found his glare.

"Thought you were going to get to the point? I swear, it's like all you corpos watch the same two BDs. Beat around the bush, talk in circles, say shit I already know." Bluff, bravado, and a total lack of self-preservation skills, the result remained the same. Where others fell silent, where they were inside their heads as if they would be safe inside there, David would not. A word came to mind, scrappy.

"Very well, then let me, as you have put it, 'say shit you already know'." Amused, she watched him buck and pull on his bindings. "Ultimately, this occurrence had no interest to me. What did, however, was what happened afterward. Fifteen minutes after you had laughed the other child to flee out of embarrassment, you pulled yourself up, wiped the blood from your face until you could see once more, and walked the way home. Upon reaching your home, you immediately headed to the home-comp and searched how to conceal bruises." David paled slightly. "Then, you stole into your mother's effects and tried, clumsily, to brush the purple-yellowing blemishes away by way of heavy concealer and blush."

Hanako paused, and then her eyes alight with sharp triumph, said quietly, "What do you think I took from this, David Martinez?"

David started defiantly at her, but it was an empty defiance. The pointless bray of a broken horse, the whine of a beaten mutt, and the solitary cry of a canary hoping to bring its own end into existence.
She closed her eyes and opened them, softer now, curling them around the edges in a way she knew dimmed the bright halos inside. "This next part will be difficult, I will need your cooperation."

She nodded to Oda, her bodyguard, and knowing her intention without a word, he cut the bindings off of the boy. She extended a hand. "Do I have it, David Martinez?"

…