- Location
- Oregon, USA
This is incredibly accurate.
Personally, I think of it as a soft magic system that lets people build their own hard magic systems within it.
Fate/Recursive Wisdom (Fate/Stay Night)
- Thread starter James D. Fawkes
- Start date
Personally, I think of it as a soft magic system that lets people build their own hard magic systems within it.
To be fair, her situation is possibly the most inescapable by design. She literally has a kill switch ingrained into her body.
James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
Yes. Yukio's metaknowledge is spotty and full of holes, and some things he remembers are just wrong.
Shinji117
Endless Troller
- Location
- Rokkenjima (Sydney)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Technically a Greater Grail War might require a little more than just the seven teaming up- in Apocrypha, it was thanks to the survivor of the Clock Tower's 50 magus strike team unlocking that function of the Greater Grail that caused the extra Summon slots to be available. Of course, it's possible that system could be on by default and Darnic turned it off when he grabbed it, only for the the survivor to turn it back on. Or there's how at least one person involved in this War would certainly know how to turn such a system on, and would also have the motive to do that.
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Chapter 10: The Last Disciple
James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
Chapter 10: The Last Disciple
"So, what is the plan?" Medea eventually asked. "So far, you've detailed how you intend to deal with what you say are the two biggest threats in the War, but you haven't given us much on how we're supposed to approach the War itself."
"Ah," I said. "Right. Yes. So."
"You do have a plan, don't you?" she asked with a saccharine condescension, smiling at me with just a touch of smugness. "After all, you said that you've had ten years to think about these things."
"Ten years against two-hundred," I said wryly. "Zouken has more experience in his pinky finger than I do my entire life. Any plan more complex than 'kill him when he least expects it' is almost certainly doomed to fail." I took a deep breath. "But yes. I do have something of a plan. It's not the greatest, it's not the most detailed, but it should hopefully be enough to get the job done."
"So?" Aífe prompted a little impatiently, staring at me with those sharp eyes of hers.
"There are a couple of things that have to go right, first." I tapped Shirou and Rin's pictures. "These two need to summon their Servants. They're one of my contingencies for the possibility of the three of us biting it. We have about a week before that happens — Rin should perform her summoning on the night of the thirty-first, Shirou on the night of the second. Rin's will be fairly mundane, we won't need to do anything except sit back and let it happen. Shirou's, on the other hand…"
Medea arched an eyebrow. "Is there something unusual about it?"
I sighed and rubbed the corner of one eye. "There's no easy way to put this: Emiya Shirou is a hack. He's barely third rate as a magus, and while he does exceedingly well in his specialty, he's basically incapable of anything else. That puts things in a bit of a hard spot, because he won't do a conventional summoning. It'll be a slap-dash emergency right as he's about to get killed by Lancer for the crime of being a witness."
Aífe clicked her tongue in distaste. She sounded almost disappointed.
"The Hound has fallen that far?"
"I'm not sure how familiar you are with his legend as a whole, but he's a 'chivalrous' sort, in the classical meaning of the word. He'll do any job that's handed to him by his 'lord,' no matter how distasteful, and complete it with everything he is, even if he hates it. He won't like killing what he thinks is an innocent bystander, but he'll still do it."
Aífe frowned and looked down towards the floor, muttering, "Yes, that does rather sound like the Hound, doesn't it?"
That was, after all, how she had lost her son. One of the biggest oversights of the myth, in my opinion, not saying anything about how she must have felt about that. It didn't seem like a good idea to pry into it just then, either.
"And this Emiya Shirou will manage some kind of emergency summon right as he's about to die?" Medea mused thoughtfully. I think she was imagining how that might work.
"He should." I sighed and tapped the box holding the cloak. "That's why we need the cloak. In order to ensure that the situation develops such that Shirou will perform that accidental summoning, it might be necessary to, shall we say, nudge things into going the right direction. Having Rider there to do the nudging could mean the difference between Shirou's life and death, and Shirou's life and death will almost certainly mean the difference between Saber being summoned and available to aim at the Grail and not appearing at all. Or worse, appearing under the command of someone far less predictable and far less within our ability to manipulate, as well."
This War's version of Ryuunosuke. It was true that there were limits to the kind of person Saber would accept as her Master, but unless I was remembering wrong, she had relaxed her standards quite a bit after the sting of the last War's failure.
"So you want to make sure these two summon their Servants, first." Medea hummed, noncommittal. "They're your contingency, you said. And what about afterwards? What's next in this grand plan of yours?"
"Watching and preparing," I said. "It's not going to be the most glorious or exciting part, but most of the War should be our group stockpiling resources, preparing countermeasures to the enemy Servants and Masters, and making sure nothing unmanageable happens. Then, when we're ready and the situation is as ideal as it's going to get, we go into the Matou mansion and kill Zouken first."
"Not Kirei?" asked Aífe.
My mouth pulled into a tight line. "Kirei is the more manageable threat of the two. He's also content to sit around and not do much of anything until the end of the War draws closer. No, Zouken is the one more likely to screw things up, so Zouken is the one who needs to die first."
"There's also the problem of catching the attention of Gilgamesh should we target Kirei first," Medea added slyly. "According to you, at least."
I rolled my shoulders uncomfortably. "How much Gilgamesh will get involved for Kirei's sake is something I honestly don't know. I'm inclined to say that he wouldn't, if only because the only participant in the War he actually cares about is Saber, but if Kirei asks for assistance or we hit the church directly…"
The memories were murky. There was a clear scene in my head of Kirei's shocked face and Cúchulainn's spear piercing his black heart, but the timeline on where exactly Gilgamesh would have been at that very moment wasn't at all clear to me. I wanted to say he'd been playing the role of Shinji's Servant at the time, because that was the only reason I could imagine for him not squashing Medea when she kicked Kirei out of the church during the Unlimited Blade Works series of events.
"We don't want to tickle the sleeping dragon, if we can avoid it," I settled on. "Kirei and Gilgamesh are predictable, in the end. It's not too hard to figure out what they'll do or how they'll react. Zouken is twice as cruel and three times as conniving. He's far less predictable and far more inclined to come at us from an angle, and the instant he sees an opening, he'll take it. That's why he has to go first."
Plus, Kirei and Gilgamesh could both be beaten by Shirou and Saber and Rin and Archer. Bazett would crush Kirei in a straight fight, and she was another of my contingencies. There was no need to worry that Kirei and Gilgamesh might win.
None of them, however, knew how to beat Zouken. None of them could. He wasn't an enemy who could be destroyed with raw power or overwhelming force. He was the sort you needed to hit with a single, unexpected attack at his one, critical weakness, stripping his defenses bare. This team was the only one with both the means and the knowledge necessary to do that.
"And so the dagger…" Medea murmured.
"I can't think of any other way of getting around the rather inconvenient fact that Zouken's soul is currently in a thousand or more pieces."
An exorcist might work, but the only exorcist in town was Kirei, and I didn't like my odds of manipulating him into killing Zouken, not without tipping my hand to him.
"Where exactly do I fit into these plans of yours, Master?" Aífe asked bluntly. "I'm to be the hand you use to guide these events, you say, but there are a great many Heroic Spirits who might perform that job just as well, and yet you intended to summon me specifically. Why?"
Ah, right…
I took a deep breath and reclined into the cushioned back of my chair.
How to approach this one without offending her…
Well, she was an Irish warrior, the rough and tumble sort who could fight you one minute and an hour later, share a beer and a good time with you, and that sort of subculture tended to attract specific kinds of personalities. If she was the kind of woman that Cúchulainn liked and appreciated, to the point he was tempted to stay with her instead of going back to Emer…
"I need a teacher," I decided on. Blunt and honest were probably the best way of getting her on my side. "Like I said, Kirei outclasses me in every metric as a combatant. If I want to fight him myself instead of asking one of you to do it for me, then I need to be better, stronger, and more skilled, and I need to get there in less than two weeks."
I gestured to her. "You were the option I liked best. To my understanding, your sister is still technically alive and won't ever die, so she can't be summoned, and Chiron might be a pretty good option, but he steals the Archer class from Rin, and Rin needs to be the one to summon Archer. Your legend also has a tutelary aspect to it, and your horses and chariot are tied tightly to your myth. Getting you as a Rider kept all of the other important parts where I needed them to be."
I offered her a smile. "Plus, I always liked your story, as sparse and fragmentary as it was. It's not many women who can hand the chief hero his ass on a silver platter, even if you technically lost in the end."
Her answering grin was shark-like. "No, it's not." There was a predatory gleam in her eyes. "So I didn't misunderstand you earlier. What you're saying is that you want me to teach you the martial arts of the ancient Celts."
My heart skipped a beat. I swallowed against my own excitement. "If you'll have me," I demurred, "then yes. Are you willing to train one last disciple?"
She chuckled, low and almost sinister as she leaned forward, folding her hands together in front of her face. Her eyes seemed to gleam in the light of the old, yellow bulbs that lit up the room.
"A week, you said?" she asked rhetorically. "Two, before you think you might need to use it. The timeline will be tight, but I think I can turn you into a proper warrior before then."
One way or another, I heard, even if she didn't say the words aloud.
"And after we kill Zouken?" Medea interrupted, sounding less than enthused. "Are we to sit around on our laurels and wait for the rest of the Servants and Masters to kill each other, then swoop in to finish off this Kirei you're so worried about?"
I sighed and leaned forward, propping myself up on my knees. That was actually probably her preferred way of doing things, scheming in the background and moving cautiously, so what was actually bothering her was probably more to do with not making any moves at all on the other Masters and Servants.
"It's not the most glamorous thing," I agreed. "Unfortunately, the more directly involved we get, the more we expose ourselves, and the more we expose ourselves, the more attention we'll draw. The last thing we want is to pique Gilgamesh's interest too early."
I slanted her a look. "Besides, Caster, I thought you were more the scheming type than the take action type. Aren't you the kind of person who exemplifies the idea that behind every great man is a great woman?"
Her lips pursed and two spots of red grew on her cheeks. Deliberately, I forced myself not to smile.
There was an ordinary woman behind the venom and the ice. As ordinary a woman as she could be with how inhuman her ancestry was, at least. Her heart was hardened and she had put up so many walls that it was going to be a task and a half to worm my way through them, but she wasn't unreachable. Of course not — if a brick wall like Kuzuki-sensei could earn her affection with simple sincerity through no intentional effort, then could I not do so as well?
"In any case," I went on, "I don't have some grand, complicated plan micromanaging every step and every milestone that has to be achieved in order for the rest of it to come together. It's a fool's errand and a waste of precious time. Instead, I've got a series of prerequisites that must be met and a handful of strategies for dealing with each threat in the War. Hopefully, that will be enough."
"And if it isn't, you have your contingencies," said Aífe. She gestured to the pictures of Shirou and Rin. "These two children, as it were."
One of my eyebrows rose. "Technically, I'm a child, too, by that standard."
That was one of Gilgamesh's complaints, as I remembered it. That the Fourth Grail War was a grand battle between great heroes, and the Fifth was being fought by women and children.
"Only in the strictest sense," was Aífe's answering grin.
A breath huffed out of my nostrils, not quite a snort. That was the trouble, wasn't it? I'd spent the last ten years feeling like I was in my twenties and dealing with the disconnect between that and a body that was still going through puberty. That disconnect, the dysphoria resulting from the incongruence from how a significant part of me expected to look and how I actually looked had really screwed with me for quite a while.
There was no need to mention how much more awkward that had made being a teenager.
"So these two are one of your contingencies," Medea began, "and this Bazett woman is another?"
"She is," I confirmed. "In a straight fight? She can probably beat Kirei."
Something like, Bazett was stronger now, but the Kirei from ten years ago was more powerful overall? Well, one guy was "disqualified" because it was like an athlete caught using performance enhancers, Kuzuki could win as long as his style wasn't known, but of the Masters in the Fifth, Bazett was the best pure fighter.
I might have had a use for Kuzuki…if I could trust that he wouldn't sweep Medea off her feet entirely on accident. That would be an embarrassing way to miss her betrayal, underestimating the "power of true love." That was on the Evil Overlord list somewhere, wasn't it? Well, I guess it had some kind of application here, too.
Aífe's eyebrows rose skeptically. "Really, now? The same Kirei that you said is a superhuman martial artist?"
I hid a smile behind another sip of my tea. "So is she. She makes up for whatever gap might exist between their respective skill levels with Rune Magic woven into her clothes. Gilgamesh's defeat, I can entrust to those two and their Servants. Kirei's, I can trust Bazett to handle."
"And Zouken?" Medea asked.
I grimaced. "Zouken is the one threat that we definitely have to handle ourselves."
There was only one other person who would technically be capable of dealing with Zouken more permanently, but even that situation required things to go a certain way before he was vulnerable enough for Sakura to deal the final blow. And Sakura had to be in a bad state for it to happen, too.
Neither of those was something I could put into motion myself. For a lot of reasons, not the least of which being that it required breaking my little sister.
"And if we can't?" Medea asked pointedly.
"We have to," I countered. "It's not a matter of want, Caster. There are literally three parties in this War capable of dealing with Zouken in a permanent sense. We're one. Another is Kirei, and I don't think I need to explain why it can't be him. The third requires jumping through half a dozen hoops and breaking so many things and too many people to be reliable or desirable." I jabbed my finger against my knee painfully to punctuate each word of the next sentence. "It. Has. To. Be. Us."
Medea didn't look happy about what I was saying, but at last, scowling all the while, she relented and agreed. "Very well. You said the method we have to use to kill him has to work on a distributed soul."
I sighed and leaned back into my chair, giving her a nod. "Right. Like I said, his soul is distributed across his blood worm familiars. Even if we destroyed his body, he'd just move his consciousness to another familiar, consume more biomass — probably in the form of the closest unsuspecting bystander he can find — and attack us when we least expected it."
I gestured again to the dagger.
"That's why I said we need to take advantage of the one and only opening he'll give us to kill him in one blow. If we can't kill him with the first shot, then he's almost guaranteed to win. Doubly so if he actually summons Assassin himself, because with his Noble Phantasm, Hassan of the Cursed Arm can kill anyone in the War, including both of you, with nothing more than a single touch."
Aífe's brow furrowed and her lips drew down. "How?"
"Delusional Heartbeat." I made a grasping motion with one hand, then clenched it into a fist. "It uses sympathetic magecraft to replicate your heart, and when he crushes the replica, your own heart will be crushed, too."
Medea straightened in her seat and Aífe's hand flew to her chest, right over where her heart should be.
"It goes straight through magic resistance," I added. "Saber might be able to survive it, under the right circumstances, but without her other Noble Phantasm, I wouldn't bet on it."
The both of them grimaced, and I left out one of the most important points: the only way to guarantee that Cursed Arm Hassan wouldn't descend on us immediately would be to make Zouken think I was there alone.
And so I would actually have to be there alone, with Aífe and Medea watching from as close by as I could feasibly have them without being detected.
"The good news is," I went on, "as long as we fight him on our terms instead of letting him dictate a time and place where he can set up an ambush, Assassin is an enemy that either of you should be able to defeat without much trouble."
"And if Zouken is killed first, then Assassin won't be a problem at all, will he?" Medea asked archly.
A smile pulled at the corners of my mouth. Medea huffed, because I'd just confirmed her suspicions.
"Would the same hold true for Gilgamesh?" Aífe asked.
The smile fled my face, and a sigh hissed out of my mouth.
"Would that it did," I answered. "Gilgamesh's Independent Action skill is just too high. Strictly speaking, keeping his contract with Kirei is just a matter of whim. Little more than mitigating a minor inconvenience. He doesn't need it at all."
Medea blew a huff out past her lips. "So he'll be a thorn in our side no matter what."
Quite a bit more than a thorn, I didn't say, and wasn't that the understatement of the year. The sentiment was true either way.
"King Arthur as Saber, a nameless Guardian for Archer, Culann's Hound as Lancer, myself as Rider," Aífe mused. She cast a glance at Medea. If she had any suspicions about Medea's identity, it didn't show on her face. "You as Caster, Cursed Arm Hassan as Assassin… That would leave Herakles as Berserker."
I blinked at her. "I hadn't mentioned that?"
"Perhaps," she allowed carefully, "but you must admit, there is much you've dropped on us all at once."
"Fair," I agreed. "In that case, yes, Herakles is Berserker. I think I mentioned that he has a stock of twelve resurrection spells? And of course, his Noble Phantasm will adapt with each death, so the only way to beat him is to kill him in twelve unique ways, each one needing to be at least an A-Rank attack, or else use something so devastating that it takes multiple lives in one go."
Medea let out a long breath that wasn't quite a sigh, dropping her chin into the palm of one gloved hand. "Yes, you did mention something like that. And how is it that you intend to defeat him if it comes down to it?"
"Throw Saber at him," I answered bluntly.
"Master!" Medea said, exasperated. "I'm serious! How are we going to beat Herakles if we have to?"
I wasn't smiling, and I wasn't laughing.
"I'm serious, too," I told her. "The best thing to do is to stay out of Illyasviel's way and off her radar long enough for Saber to kill him first. There is literally no way for us to beat him. The best we can hope to do is to stalemate him long enough for Illyasviel to get bored and leave."
I couldn't remember clearly how Herakles was beaten normally. The scene of Gilgamesh skewering him, that remained crystal clear, just because of how striking it was, and I couldn't forget how the Shadow had swallowed him in the Heaven's Feel scenario, but the only certainty I had for how he was beaten by Saber was that it involved Shirou, projection magecraft, and Saber's sword.
However you looked at it, the best option for dealing with Herakles was to let someone else deal with Herakles. Saber was the only one we could direct in any meaningful way.
"Well, I don't know about that, Master." Aífe grinned a bloodthirsty grin. "If Herakles and his Master want to test themselves against my fists, then I'd be only too happy to oblige."
"Let's…call that a method of last resort," I said politely. Aífe just chuckled and leaned back.
It was becoming clear to me that I'd underestimated exactly how much I was going to have to juggle her personality and whims, as well. Medea, I'd tried my best to account for. She was a known quantity. Not wholly predictable, but understandable enough that I thought I had a good grasp on how she thought and how she might act.
Aífe, on the other hand… In hindsight, I knew virtually nothing about her personality. Intellectually, I might have known she was her own person, but my plans had only ever accounted for her doing exactly what I wanted from her. I'd been thinking of her almost like she was a machine whose levers I could pull and control.
Sloppy, Yukio. Very sloppy.
"You realize that it's not just Herakles or Gilgamesh that we might wind up facing unexpectedly," Medea pointed out mulishly. She crossed her arms and her legs both. "What if we encounter Saber or Archer at an unexpected moment? Or perhaps this Kirei you find so intimidating sends his pet hound to sniff out our trail. What then?"
"Pet hound," Aífe repeated to herself, chuckling softly under her breath. "I'll have to hold onto that one…"
"Saber and Archer shouldn't be a problem," I said confidently.
"Oh?" Medea arched an eyebrow, looking down her nose at me. "Are you that familiar with the weaknesses of King Arthur and a nameless Heroic Spirit who can replicate Noble Phantasms?"
Implying that they really had weaknesses, aside from their respective neuroses. But the hero Emiya had proven that he was perfectly capable of putting aside his own goals if the situation was dire enough, and Saber's buttons would be virtually impossible for me to press.
There was no Lancelot here to weigh on her heart.
"Well, yes, but that's also not why I don't think they're an issue," I hedged. "It's because their Masters won't even consider the possibility that I myself am a Master until far too late in the game for it to matter. I told you, Caster, that's the biggest advantage we have in this War: I know the hands everyone else has been dealt and no one else even realizes I'm part of the game."
"And how are you so sure of that?" Medea pressed insistently. "What reason would any of these other competitors have to dismiss you so easily?"
Aífe chuckled, because she'd apparently already come to the right conclusion. "Because he's spent the last ten years convincing them that he wouldn't take part even if he had the chance."
Medea startled, looked at Aífe, then back at me, her eyebrows rising up behind her bangs. "What?"
I gave her a half-hearted shrug and a grim smile.
"I've positioned myself optimally," I agreed, because I really had, and I hadn't even realized I'd done it at first. "Kotomine Kirei already knows I wish him dead, but he thinks it's an impotent hate. He'll be amused if he ever does find out, but hopefully, by then, it won't matter. As for Rin and Shirou, neither of them think I have any interest in the Grail itself or its wishing power. When the time comes for them to start looking into other potential Masters, they'll disregard me entirely. If everything else goes right, they won't even find out I'm a participant until near the end."
Medea goggled at me, her voice filled with stunned disbelief. "They think you don't have anything you would use an omnipotent wish-granting device for?"
I shrugged. "Rin and Shirou don't have wishes, either," I told her. "Rin's in it for her family's glory, so that she can bring prestige to her lineage. If she actually won, she'd probably just wish for money. Shirou…" Well, it wasn't that he didn't have a wish, so much as he would never actually choose to make it, if he had the chance. "Shirou is a survivor of the fire ten years ago. His reason for participating is to stop it from happening again."
"I'm sure Saber will be thrilled when she finds out," Aífe remarked with another grin.
"Won't she just?" Medea purred, her lips curling into a wicked smile. It would have looked a lot more intimidating if her hood was up.
At that moment, the clock on the wall struck the hour and let out low, resonant chimes, and when I glanced over at it, a jolt of shock rippled through my gut as I realized exactly how long we'd been sitting there talking.
"It's already nine o'clock?" I asked the air.
I checked my watch, too, just to make sure, and sure enough, it told me the exact same thing. Well, shit.
Hurriedly, I downed the rest of my tea and set the saucer and cup on the table.
"Something wrong, Master?" asked Aífe.
"What's so special about nine o'clock?" Medea added.
"I meant to check on Bazett an hour ago," I told them both as I stood quickly. I'd already taken three steps towards the hallway before I remembered my manners, stopped myself, and turned briefly back to them. "Sorry, we'll have to continue this later. I have a patient I need to go and make sure is still breathing."
That was all I gave the two of them before I rushed off towards the stairs. Behind me, Medea huffed, and loud enough for me to hear, muttered, "I guess it's a poor contingency plan that dies before you even have a need for it."
Well, yes, that was true, but…
No, I was just as softhearted as my sister. It might be better to let Medea think that of me for now, that it was just cold pragmatism that drove my concern, but at the end of the day, I didn't have it in me to let someone die just like that. Not when there was something I could do about it.
Perhaps that was a flaw the two of us twins shared. In the end, neither of us had the ice in our veins that a true magus was supposed to, and so we both did foolish things out of compassion.
After all, only an idiot would think that a woman like Bazett Fraga McRemitz could be any kind of contingency plan.
"So, what is the plan?" Medea eventually asked. "So far, you've detailed how you intend to deal with what you say are the two biggest threats in the War, but you haven't given us much on how we're supposed to approach the War itself."
"Ah," I said. "Right. Yes. So."
"You do have a plan, don't you?" she asked with a saccharine condescension, smiling at me with just a touch of smugness. "After all, you said that you've had ten years to think about these things."
"Ten years against two-hundred," I said wryly. "Zouken has more experience in his pinky finger than I do my entire life. Any plan more complex than 'kill him when he least expects it' is almost certainly doomed to fail." I took a deep breath. "But yes. I do have something of a plan. It's not the greatest, it's not the most detailed, but it should hopefully be enough to get the job done."
"So?" Aífe prompted a little impatiently, staring at me with those sharp eyes of hers.
"There are a couple of things that have to go right, first." I tapped Shirou and Rin's pictures. "These two need to summon their Servants. They're one of my contingencies for the possibility of the three of us biting it. We have about a week before that happens — Rin should perform her summoning on the night of the thirty-first, Shirou on the night of the second. Rin's will be fairly mundane, we won't need to do anything except sit back and let it happen. Shirou's, on the other hand…"
Medea arched an eyebrow. "Is there something unusual about it?"
I sighed and rubbed the corner of one eye. "There's no easy way to put this: Emiya Shirou is a hack. He's barely third rate as a magus, and while he does exceedingly well in his specialty, he's basically incapable of anything else. That puts things in a bit of a hard spot, because he won't do a conventional summoning. It'll be a slap-dash emergency right as he's about to get killed by Lancer for the crime of being a witness."
Aífe clicked her tongue in distaste. She sounded almost disappointed.
"The Hound has fallen that far?"
"I'm not sure how familiar you are with his legend as a whole, but he's a 'chivalrous' sort, in the classical meaning of the word. He'll do any job that's handed to him by his 'lord,' no matter how distasteful, and complete it with everything he is, even if he hates it. He won't like killing what he thinks is an innocent bystander, but he'll still do it."
Aífe frowned and looked down towards the floor, muttering, "Yes, that does rather sound like the Hound, doesn't it?"
That was, after all, how she had lost her son. One of the biggest oversights of the myth, in my opinion, not saying anything about how she must have felt about that. It didn't seem like a good idea to pry into it just then, either.
"And this Emiya Shirou will manage some kind of emergency summon right as he's about to die?" Medea mused thoughtfully. I think she was imagining how that might work.
"He should." I sighed and tapped the box holding the cloak. "That's why we need the cloak. In order to ensure that the situation develops such that Shirou will perform that accidental summoning, it might be necessary to, shall we say, nudge things into going the right direction. Having Rider there to do the nudging could mean the difference between Shirou's life and death, and Shirou's life and death will almost certainly mean the difference between Saber being summoned and available to aim at the Grail and not appearing at all. Or worse, appearing under the command of someone far less predictable and far less within our ability to manipulate, as well."
This War's version of Ryuunosuke. It was true that there were limits to the kind of person Saber would accept as her Master, but unless I was remembering wrong, she had relaxed her standards quite a bit after the sting of the last War's failure.
"So you want to make sure these two summon their Servants, first." Medea hummed, noncommittal. "They're your contingency, you said. And what about afterwards? What's next in this grand plan of yours?"
"Watching and preparing," I said. "It's not going to be the most glorious or exciting part, but most of the War should be our group stockpiling resources, preparing countermeasures to the enemy Servants and Masters, and making sure nothing unmanageable happens. Then, when we're ready and the situation is as ideal as it's going to get, we go into the Matou mansion and kill Zouken first."
"Not Kirei?" asked Aífe.
My mouth pulled into a tight line. "Kirei is the more manageable threat of the two. He's also content to sit around and not do much of anything until the end of the War draws closer. No, Zouken is the one more likely to screw things up, so Zouken is the one who needs to die first."
"There's also the problem of catching the attention of Gilgamesh should we target Kirei first," Medea added slyly. "According to you, at least."
I rolled my shoulders uncomfortably. "How much Gilgamesh will get involved for Kirei's sake is something I honestly don't know. I'm inclined to say that he wouldn't, if only because the only participant in the War he actually cares about is Saber, but if Kirei asks for assistance or we hit the church directly…"
The memories were murky. There was a clear scene in my head of Kirei's shocked face and Cúchulainn's spear piercing his black heart, but the timeline on where exactly Gilgamesh would have been at that very moment wasn't at all clear to me. I wanted to say he'd been playing the role of Shinji's Servant at the time, because that was the only reason I could imagine for him not squashing Medea when she kicked Kirei out of the church during the Unlimited Blade Works series of events.
"We don't want to tickle the sleeping dragon, if we can avoid it," I settled on. "Kirei and Gilgamesh are predictable, in the end. It's not too hard to figure out what they'll do or how they'll react. Zouken is twice as cruel and three times as conniving. He's far less predictable and far more inclined to come at us from an angle, and the instant he sees an opening, he'll take it. That's why he has to go first."
Plus, Kirei and Gilgamesh could both be beaten by Shirou and Saber and Rin and Archer. Bazett would crush Kirei in a straight fight, and she was another of my contingencies. There was no need to worry that Kirei and Gilgamesh might win.
None of them, however, knew how to beat Zouken. None of them could. He wasn't an enemy who could be destroyed with raw power or overwhelming force. He was the sort you needed to hit with a single, unexpected attack at his one, critical weakness, stripping his defenses bare. This team was the only one with both the means and the knowledge necessary to do that.
"And so the dagger…" Medea murmured.
"I can't think of any other way of getting around the rather inconvenient fact that Zouken's soul is currently in a thousand or more pieces."
An exorcist might work, but the only exorcist in town was Kirei, and I didn't like my odds of manipulating him into killing Zouken, not without tipping my hand to him.
"Where exactly do I fit into these plans of yours, Master?" Aífe asked bluntly. "I'm to be the hand you use to guide these events, you say, but there are a great many Heroic Spirits who might perform that job just as well, and yet you intended to summon me specifically. Why?"
Ah, right…
I took a deep breath and reclined into the cushioned back of my chair.
How to approach this one without offending her…
Well, she was an Irish warrior, the rough and tumble sort who could fight you one minute and an hour later, share a beer and a good time with you, and that sort of subculture tended to attract specific kinds of personalities. If she was the kind of woman that Cúchulainn liked and appreciated, to the point he was tempted to stay with her instead of going back to Emer…
"I need a teacher," I decided on. Blunt and honest were probably the best way of getting her on my side. "Like I said, Kirei outclasses me in every metric as a combatant. If I want to fight him myself instead of asking one of you to do it for me, then I need to be better, stronger, and more skilled, and I need to get there in less than two weeks."
I gestured to her. "You were the option I liked best. To my understanding, your sister is still technically alive and won't ever die, so she can't be summoned, and Chiron might be a pretty good option, but he steals the Archer class from Rin, and Rin needs to be the one to summon Archer. Your legend also has a tutelary aspect to it, and your horses and chariot are tied tightly to your myth. Getting you as a Rider kept all of the other important parts where I needed them to be."
I offered her a smile. "Plus, I always liked your story, as sparse and fragmentary as it was. It's not many women who can hand the chief hero his ass on a silver platter, even if you technically lost in the end."
Her answering grin was shark-like. "No, it's not." There was a predatory gleam in her eyes. "So I didn't misunderstand you earlier. What you're saying is that you want me to teach you the martial arts of the ancient Celts."
My heart skipped a beat. I swallowed against my own excitement. "If you'll have me," I demurred, "then yes. Are you willing to train one last disciple?"
She chuckled, low and almost sinister as she leaned forward, folding her hands together in front of her face. Her eyes seemed to gleam in the light of the old, yellow bulbs that lit up the room.
"A week, you said?" she asked rhetorically. "Two, before you think you might need to use it. The timeline will be tight, but I think I can turn you into a proper warrior before then."
One way or another, I heard, even if she didn't say the words aloud.
"And after we kill Zouken?" Medea interrupted, sounding less than enthused. "Are we to sit around on our laurels and wait for the rest of the Servants and Masters to kill each other, then swoop in to finish off this Kirei you're so worried about?"
I sighed and leaned forward, propping myself up on my knees. That was actually probably her preferred way of doing things, scheming in the background and moving cautiously, so what was actually bothering her was probably more to do with not making any moves at all on the other Masters and Servants.
"It's not the most glamorous thing," I agreed. "Unfortunately, the more directly involved we get, the more we expose ourselves, and the more we expose ourselves, the more attention we'll draw. The last thing we want is to pique Gilgamesh's interest too early."
I slanted her a look. "Besides, Caster, I thought you were more the scheming type than the take action type. Aren't you the kind of person who exemplifies the idea that behind every great man is a great woman?"
Her lips pursed and two spots of red grew on her cheeks. Deliberately, I forced myself not to smile.
There was an ordinary woman behind the venom and the ice. As ordinary a woman as she could be with how inhuman her ancestry was, at least. Her heart was hardened and she had put up so many walls that it was going to be a task and a half to worm my way through them, but she wasn't unreachable. Of course not — if a brick wall like Kuzuki-sensei could earn her affection with simple sincerity through no intentional effort, then could I not do so as well?
"In any case," I went on, "I don't have some grand, complicated plan micromanaging every step and every milestone that has to be achieved in order for the rest of it to come together. It's a fool's errand and a waste of precious time. Instead, I've got a series of prerequisites that must be met and a handful of strategies for dealing with each threat in the War. Hopefully, that will be enough."
"And if it isn't, you have your contingencies," said Aífe. She gestured to the pictures of Shirou and Rin. "These two children, as it were."
One of my eyebrows rose. "Technically, I'm a child, too, by that standard."
That was one of Gilgamesh's complaints, as I remembered it. That the Fourth Grail War was a grand battle between great heroes, and the Fifth was being fought by women and children.
"Only in the strictest sense," was Aífe's answering grin.
A breath huffed out of my nostrils, not quite a snort. That was the trouble, wasn't it? I'd spent the last ten years feeling like I was in my twenties and dealing with the disconnect between that and a body that was still going through puberty. That disconnect, the dysphoria resulting from the incongruence from how a significant part of me expected to look and how I actually looked had really screwed with me for quite a while.
There was no need to mention how much more awkward that had made being a teenager.
"So these two are one of your contingencies," Medea began, "and this Bazett woman is another?"
"She is," I confirmed. "In a straight fight? She can probably beat Kirei."
Something like, Bazett was stronger now, but the Kirei from ten years ago was more powerful overall? Well, one guy was "disqualified" because it was like an athlete caught using performance enhancers, Kuzuki could win as long as his style wasn't known, but of the Masters in the Fifth, Bazett was the best pure fighter.
I might have had a use for Kuzuki…if I could trust that he wouldn't sweep Medea off her feet entirely on accident. That would be an embarrassing way to miss her betrayal, underestimating the "power of true love." That was on the Evil Overlord list somewhere, wasn't it? Well, I guess it had some kind of application here, too.
Aífe's eyebrows rose skeptically. "Really, now? The same Kirei that you said is a superhuman martial artist?"
I hid a smile behind another sip of my tea. "So is she. She makes up for whatever gap might exist between their respective skill levels with Rune Magic woven into her clothes. Gilgamesh's defeat, I can entrust to those two and their Servants. Kirei's, I can trust Bazett to handle."
"And Zouken?" Medea asked.
I grimaced. "Zouken is the one threat that we definitely have to handle ourselves."
There was only one other person who would technically be capable of dealing with Zouken more permanently, but even that situation required things to go a certain way before he was vulnerable enough for Sakura to deal the final blow. And Sakura had to be in a bad state for it to happen, too.
Neither of those was something I could put into motion myself. For a lot of reasons, not the least of which being that it required breaking my little sister.
"And if we can't?" Medea asked pointedly.
"We have to," I countered. "It's not a matter of want, Caster. There are literally three parties in this War capable of dealing with Zouken in a permanent sense. We're one. Another is Kirei, and I don't think I need to explain why it can't be him. The third requires jumping through half a dozen hoops and breaking so many things and too many people to be reliable or desirable." I jabbed my finger against my knee painfully to punctuate each word of the next sentence. "It. Has. To. Be. Us."
Medea didn't look happy about what I was saying, but at last, scowling all the while, she relented and agreed. "Very well. You said the method we have to use to kill him has to work on a distributed soul."
I sighed and leaned back into my chair, giving her a nod. "Right. Like I said, his soul is distributed across his blood worm familiars. Even if we destroyed his body, he'd just move his consciousness to another familiar, consume more biomass — probably in the form of the closest unsuspecting bystander he can find — and attack us when we least expected it."
I gestured again to the dagger.
"That's why I said we need to take advantage of the one and only opening he'll give us to kill him in one blow. If we can't kill him with the first shot, then he's almost guaranteed to win. Doubly so if he actually summons Assassin himself, because with his Noble Phantasm, Hassan of the Cursed Arm can kill anyone in the War, including both of you, with nothing more than a single touch."
Aífe's brow furrowed and her lips drew down. "How?"
"Delusional Heartbeat." I made a grasping motion with one hand, then clenched it into a fist. "It uses sympathetic magecraft to replicate your heart, and when he crushes the replica, your own heart will be crushed, too."
Medea straightened in her seat and Aífe's hand flew to her chest, right over where her heart should be.
"It goes straight through magic resistance," I added. "Saber might be able to survive it, under the right circumstances, but without her other Noble Phantasm, I wouldn't bet on it."
The both of them grimaced, and I left out one of the most important points: the only way to guarantee that Cursed Arm Hassan wouldn't descend on us immediately would be to make Zouken think I was there alone.
And so I would actually have to be there alone, with Aífe and Medea watching from as close by as I could feasibly have them without being detected.
"The good news is," I went on, "as long as we fight him on our terms instead of letting him dictate a time and place where he can set up an ambush, Assassin is an enemy that either of you should be able to defeat without much trouble."
"And if Zouken is killed first, then Assassin won't be a problem at all, will he?" Medea asked archly.
A smile pulled at the corners of my mouth. Medea huffed, because I'd just confirmed her suspicions.
"Would the same hold true for Gilgamesh?" Aífe asked.
The smile fled my face, and a sigh hissed out of my mouth.
"Would that it did," I answered. "Gilgamesh's Independent Action skill is just too high. Strictly speaking, keeping his contract with Kirei is just a matter of whim. Little more than mitigating a minor inconvenience. He doesn't need it at all."
Medea blew a huff out past her lips. "So he'll be a thorn in our side no matter what."
Quite a bit more than a thorn, I didn't say, and wasn't that the understatement of the year. The sentiment was true either way.
"King Arthur as Saber, a nameless Guardian for Archer, Culann's Hound as Lancer, myself as Rider," Aífe mused. She cast a glance at Medea. If she had any suspicions about Medea's identity, it didn't show on her face. "You as Caster, Cursed Arm Hassan as Assassin… That would leave Herakles as Berserker."
I blinked at her. "I hadn't mentioned that?"
"Perhaps," she allowed carefully, "but you must admit, there is much you've dropped on us all at once."
"Fair," I agreed. "In that case, yes, Herakles is Berserker. I think I mentioned that he has a stock of twelve resurrection spells? And of course, his Noble Phantasm will adapt with each death, so the only way to beat him is to kill him in twelve unique ways, each one needing to be at least an A-Rank attack, or else use something so devastating that it takes multiple lives in one go."
Medea let out a long breath that wasn't quite a sigh, dropping her chin into the palm of one gloved hand. "Yes, you did mention something like that. And how is it that you intend to defeat him if it comes down to it?"
"Throw Saber at him," I answered bluntly.
"Master!" Medea said, exasperated. "I'm serious! How are we going to beat Herakles if we have to?"
I wasn't smiling, and I wasn't laughing.
"I'm serious, too," I told her. "The best thing to do is to stay out of Illyasviel's way and off her radar long enough for Saber to kill him first. There is literally no way for us to beat him. The best we can hope to do is to stalemate him long enough for Illyasviel to get bored and leave."
I couldn't remember clearly how Herakles was beaten normally. The scene of Gilgamesh skewering him, that remained crystal clear, just because of how striking it was, and I couldn't forget how the Shadow had swallowed him in the Heaven's Feel scenario, but the only certainty I had for how he was beaten by Saber was that it involved Shirou, projection magecraft, and Saber's sword.
However you looked at it, the best option for dealing with Herakles was to let someone else deal with Herakles. Saber was the only one we could direct in any meaningful way.
"Well, I don't know about that, Master." Aífe grinned a bloodthirsty grin. "If Herakles and his Master want to test themselves against my fists, then I'd be only too happy to oblige."
"Let's…call that a method of last resort," I said politely. Aífe just chuckled and leaned back.
It was becoming clear to me that I'd underestimated exactly how much I was going to have to juggle her personality and whims, as well. Medea, I'd tried my best to account for. She was a known quantity. Not wholly predictable, but understandable enough that I thought I had a good grasp on how she thought and how she might act.
Aífe, on the other hand… In hindsight, I knew virtually nothing about her personality. Intellectually, I might have known she was her own person, but my plans had only ever accounted for her doing exactly what I wanted from her. I'd been thinking of her almost like she was a machine whose levers I could pull and control.
Sloppy, Yukio. Very sloppy.
"You realize that it's not just Herakles or Gilgamesh that we might wind up facing unexpectedly," Medea pointed out mulishly. She crossed her arms and her legs both. "What if we encounter Saber or Archer at an unexpected moment? Or perhaps this Kirei you find so intimidating sends his pet hound to sniff out our trail. What then?"
"Pet hound," Aífe repeated to herself, chuckling softly under her breath. "I'll have to hold onto that one…"
"Saber and Archer shouldn't be a problem," I said confidently.
"Oh?" Medea arched an eyebrow, looking down her nose at me. "Are you that familiar with the weaknesses of King Arthur and a nameless Heroic Spirit who can replicate Noble Phantasms?"
Implying that they really had weaknesses, aside from their respective neuroses. But the hero Emiya had proven that he was perfectly capable of putting aside his own goals if the situation was dire enough, and Saber's buttons would be virtually impossible for me to press.
There was no Lancelot here to weigh on her heart.
"Well, yes, but that's also not why I don't think they're an issue," I hedged. "It's because their Masters won't even consider the possibility that I myself am a Master until far too late in the game for it to matter. I told you, Caster, that's the biggest advantage we have in this War: I know the hands everyone else has been dealt and no one else even realizes I'm part of the game."
"And how are you so sure of that?" Medea pressed insistently. "What reason would any of these other competitors have to dismiss you so easily?"
Aífe chuckled, because she'd apparently already come to the right conclusion. "Because he's spent the last ten years convincing them that he wouldn't take part even if he had the chance."
Medea startled, looked at Aífe, then back at me, her eyebrows rising up behind her bangs. "What?"
I gave her a half-hearted shrug and a grim smile.
"I've positioned myself optimally," I agreed, because I really had, and I hadn't even realized I'd done it at first. "Kotomine Kirei already knows I wish him dead, but he thinks it's an impotent hate. He'll be amused if he ever does find out, but hopefully, by then, it won't matter. As for Rin and Shirou, neither of them think I have any interest in the Grail itself or its wishing power. When the time comes for them to start looking into other potential Masters, they'll disregard me entirely. If everything else goes right, they won't even find out I'm a participant until near the end."
Medea goggled at me, her voice filled with stunned disbelief. "They think you don't have anything you would use an omnipotent wish-granting device for?"
I shrugged. "Rin and Shirou don't have wishes, either," I told her. "Rin's in it for her family's glory, so that she can bring prestige to her lineage. If she actually won, she'd probably just wish for money. Shirou…" Well, it wasn't that he didn't have a wish, so much as he would never actually choose to make it, if he had the chance. "Shirou is a survivor of the fire ten years ago. His reason for participating is to stop it from happening again."
"I'm sure Saber will be thrilled when she finds out," Aífe remarked with another grin.
"Won't she just?" Medea purred, her lips curling into a wicked smile. It would have looked a lot more intimidating if her hood was up.
At that moment, the clock on the wall struck the hour and let out low, resonant chimes, and when I glanced over at it, a jolt of shock rippled through my gut as I realized exactly how long we'd been sitting there talking.
"It's already nine o'clock?" I asked the air.
I checked my watch, too, just to make sure, and sure enough, it told me the exact same thing. Well, shit.
Hurriedly, I downed the rest of my tea and set the saucer and cup on the table.
"Something wrong, Master?" asked Aífe.
"What's so special about nine o'clock?" Medea added.
"I meant to check on Bazett an hour ago," I told them both as I stood quickly. I'd already taken three steps towards the hallway before I remembered my manners, stopped myself, and turned briefly back to them. "Sorry, we'll have to continue this later. I have a patient I need to go and make sure is still breathing."
That was all I gave the two of them before I rushed off towards the stairs. Behind me, Medea huffed, and loud enough for me to hear, muttered, "I guess it's a poor contingency plan that dies before you even have a need for it."
Well, yes, that was true, but…
No, I was just as softhearted as my sister. It might be better to let Medea think that of me for now, that it was just cold pragmatism that drove my concern, but at the end of the day, I didn't have it in me to let someone die just like that. Not when there was something I could do about it.
Perhaps that was a flaw the two of us twins shared. In the end, neither of us had the ice in our veins that a true magus was supposed to, and so we both did foolish things out of compassion.
After all, only an idiot would think that a woman like Bazett Fraga McRemitz could be any kind of contingency plan.
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
Surprise! The final infodump chapter. Ugh, I kept this going on so long that even I wound up forgetting exactly what had already been covered in 8 and 9, despite rereading them whenever I'd been away from this for too long.
Chapter 11 is where things start to get moving again. 8, 9, and 10 wound up covering and establishing a good chunk of Yukio's metaknowledge, including the fact that it's incomplete and sometimes incorrect. 11 kind of scaffolds off of it to show where the plans are going to take them next, and then 12 is putting them into action.
Chapter 13 isn't quite done yet, but it'll give a little more buildup to things before I start skipping ahead again. 14 is where I'm going to have some fun with a few things, and 15 is probably the last chapter before the Grail War actually starts.
Chapter 11 is where things start to get moving again. 8, 9, and 10 wound up covering and establishing a good chunk of Yukio's metaknowledge, including the fact that it's incomplete and sometimes incorrect. 11 kind of scaffolds off of it to show where the plans are going to take them next, and then 12 is putting them into action.
Chapter 13 isn't quite done yet, but it'll give a little more buildup to things before I start skipping ahead again. 14 is where I'm going to have some fun with a few things, and 15 is probably the last chapter before the Grail War actually starts.
Icipall
Don't worry, we can fanfix that!
- Location
- Cold snow fields of Finland
Ah, yes, the classical sense.
Shirou must summon Artoria. This is non-negotiable.
Feeling some overconfidence here. Butterfly effect can be a bitch.
Yes, that is rather inconvenient. Truly.
Should I prepare celebratory drinks, or a casket?
Smooooooooth.
Yeah, letting Sakura sip the Angry Mango kool-aid is a big on-no.
The power of True Love.
Sneaky.
Well, hopefully she isn't already awake, ready to decapitate you when you enter.
jwolfe_beta
Semi Genre-Savvy Overlord
- Location
- Canada
Yes but which version? There are so many to chose from.
I'd say both. If the casket is unneeded it can serve as fuel for the party's bonfire. And if it is, well in some cultures drinks of varying sort of involved in funerals.
Icipall
Don't worry, we can fanfix that!
- Location
- Cold snow fields of Finland
jwolfe_beta
Semi Genre-Savvy Overlord
- Location
- Canada
Depends, does Shirou has a snowball's chance in hell of generating/providing enough prana for them to exist?
Icipall
Don't worry, we can fanfix that!
- Location
- Cold snow fields of Finland
That's what he's cooking skills and *ahem* reinforcement are for.
- Location
- Somewhere over the Rainbow
Hey, he never lied.
He doesn't have a wish for the grail. If they make the mistaken conclusion that it means he can't be a participant, that's their fault.
Sidhe semantics FTW.
How likely is it that Yukio ships Taiga & Waver?
Icipall
Don't worry, we can fanfix that!
- Location
- Cold snow fields of Finland
Exactly. That's what makes it so sneaky.
James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
So sneaky that he was hiding the fact that he was doing it even from himself, at first.
Icipall
Don't worry, we can fanfix that!
- Location
- Cold snow fields of Finland
@James D. Fawkes
Out of curiosity, how would Yukio react if Shirou, instead of Saber Artoria, ended up summoning Bunny King Artoria?
Out of curiosity, how would Yukio react if Shirou, instead of Saber Artoria, ended up summoning Bunny King Artoria?
James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
BSOD. Straight up, he wouldn't know how to handle it and it would throw him for an absolute loop.
Icipall
Don't worry, we can fanfix that!
- Location
- Cold snow fields of Finland
...Dammit, now I want to see that.
Well, if his plans fail to take into account the fact that he's living in an eroge visual novel, he has only himself to blame.
- Location
- Oregon, USA
I would pay money to see Gilgamesh get surprise Fragarach'd during the climax where he tries to draw Ea.
Just, Bazett jumps out from beneath the sneaky cloak. "Gotcha, Sucker!"
Just, Bazett jumps out from beneath the sneaky cloak. "Gotcha, Sucker!"
- Location
- Oregon, USA
I mean, given Shirou's origin and element, he would probably summon a wielder of Excalibur even without a proper catalyst in Avalon. That, or his connection to Emiya would override them, meaning we'd have both Archer and Saber Emiya fighting in the same grail war.
Of course, the Assassin class is still open. And Arturia is qualified for it canonically, even if we've never seen it. So the possibility exists.
EDIT: sorry, my post wasn't displaying on this page for some reason so I thought that the thread had moved to a new one.
Of course, the Assassin class is still open. And Arturia is qualified for it canonically, even if we've never seen it. So the possibility exists.
EDIT: sorry, my post wasn't displaying on this page for some reason so I thought that the thread had moved to a new one.
LostArchivist
Sane, unfortunately.
- Location
- The State of Confusion
Hmmm. I wonder if it would be that implausible for something to trigger the failsafe, or if someone took the last slot already, so as the last Master eligible to summon and with the Grail's corruption, it just resets the summoning process and he gets an entire faction's worth of Artorias suddenly landing in his workshop.
The expressions on literally everyone would be totally worth it.
Chapter 11: Prognosis I
James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
Chapter 11: Prognosis I
Fortunately, my inattention had not cost Bazett her life.
It had not done anything to improve it, either. She had recovered some of her color, but she was still a little anemic — and no wonder, with how much blood she had lost. It was still something of a minor miracle that she hadn't bled out before I could make it to her.
Magic Crests were bullshit.
She was healthy enough that I could have brought her out of her coma and let her sleep the rest of it off, but that wasn't part of the plan, so I let her sleep the sleep of the heavily medicated for a little while longer.
I wasn't one-hundred percent sure when I would actually wake her. There were spells to deal with the unpleasant parts of a coma patient, particularly things like muscle atrophy, but it wasn't like I could wait until the night before the final battle and expect that to go over well in any way at all.
"So," Medea's voice purred, and I nearly jumped out of my skin, "this is your so-called contingency plan for this Kirei fellow that frightens you so much?"
"After a fashion," I said, refusing to look back at her, like I had known she was there all along. "I had to reattach her arm and she lost a lot of blood, so for now, I'm keeping her asleep."
Had I already mentioned that part? I'd lost track. There was so much we'd crammed into the last few hours that I honestly couldn't remember all of the details we'd gone over, and I'd been practicing this for so long that it was hard to separate what I'd actually said from what I'd been imagining I would say for almost ten years.
"You know, I could heal her instantly, if you like," Medea offered silkily. "It would be no trouble at all, Master. She could be up and getting ready with us with just a few short words. It wouldn't even require that much mana."
And then there would be little to nothing stopping her from charging off to go after Kirei, or worse, making up plans of her own that would get tangled up with mine. She had even less reason to trust me than Medea and Aífe, and the last thing I needed was her and Medea conspiring together whenever I was out of earshot.
I hadn't lied about what I hoped for Medea to get out of all of this, but I wasn't fool enough to give her another perfectly viable Master candidate she could run to this early in the game.
"No," I said aloud, and I gave her a totally true reason without revealing all of it. "My plans are delicate enough as it is, vague as they might be in general, and I don't need a walking complication to be up and about early enough to screw them all up."
Done with checking up on my patient, I stood up from her bedside and rolled my shoulders. There was a series of satisfying crackles from between my shoulderblades.
"It's almost like you don't think she'd agree to go along with them," Medea mocked me.
"I don't," I agreed. "Frankly, I don't know much about her aside from her name, a vague idea of her skillset, and a few minor details about her relationship with Kirei. To be honest, Medea, as long as she has more options, I don't trust her to do anything but leave as soon as she gets her bearings. So I want to make sure she doesn't have any better options than to stay with us."
Medea cut right to the issue: "Manipulate her, you mean."
"Isn't that how all forms of negotiation work?" I countered, channeling my sister's nonchalance. "Besides which, if she left us now, she'd be as good as dead. Her Command Spells have already been stolen, her Servant is calling the man who stole them 'Master,' and the only thing she'd accomplish by going after them is being forced to fight her former Servant to the death while Kirei smiles from the sidelines."
A grim fate, no matter how you sliced it. Better, maybe, than what little I remembered of her story, but then, what wasn't better than being forced into a time loop with no apparent way out where even death itself served as no reprieve?
"And if by some miracle she made it through all of that, a golden king would cut her down like a rabid dog?" Medea asked.
"And he wouldn't think anything of it."
If Kirei didn't dismantle her himself. She was the better fighter these days, perhaps, but Kirei's weapons weren't just his fists or his Black Keys. He was also well-practiced in the art of ripping people apart and tearing them down with just his words.
"How convenient," Medea said scathingly. "It just so happens that her doing things your way is for her own good, is it?"
I couldn't help snorting, and that seemed to throw her off.
"What?"
"I'm not going to pretend I don't benefit from this," I told her. "Frankly, if it was just about Bazett's own good? I'd bundle her up and ship her off on the next, most convenient flight back to Ireland, where she'd be safe, healthy, and able to recover without any of the burdens of the rest of this War."
You could even say it was the most ethical decision, from the position of a physician. Say that five times fast.
"But there are no guarantees in this Grail War," I went on. "Even if we do everything I've said to prepare, that might not be enough, and we might all die without accomplishing anything. If Illya and Herakles come for us too early, if Zouken catches on, if Kirei catches on, if Gilgamesh catches on — any one of them catching us before we're ready will likely result in the three of us getting killed."
Unfortunately, I wasn't a physician. I hadn't gotten a medical license. I had sworn no Hippocratic Oath. Medicinal magecraft only made me better able to keep myself and my sisters alive, and it did not come with any other rules or regulations that restricted how I could act.
"And so you'll conscript her into a fight that isn't hers?" Medea bit out.
"Isn't it?"
The nightgown I'd dressed Bazett in after I got up this morning came from this mansion's storage, which meant it was probably my grandmother's, and it came with long sleeves. I pulled the sleeve of the left arm up, past her elbow, until the red ring of my less than perfect reattachment was visible. For how rushed I'd been, I liked to think I'd done a fairly good job of it, even though I could well acknowledge that a more experienced healer would have done it perfectly.
There were also the fading remnants of a bruise on the back of her hand from where Kirei had carelessly ripped out her Command Spells, but I couldn't do anything about those. I was better at physical surgery than the spiritual kind he employed.
"She came to Fuyuki for the purposes of participating in the Holy Grail War," I reasoned. "In so doing, she trusted her back to Kotomine Kirei, who is not only supposed to be an impartial arbiter of this contest, but also a comrade in arms who she has fought beside. I would say this is very much her fight, and I will be giving her the chance to rejoin it from a position of greater strength."
"In a way that benefits you."
"And you," I countered. "And Rider, and Fuyuki, and the whole world and everyone in it, if you expand outwards on the ramifications of what happens if we need her and she isn't there to help."
It shouldn't need to be restated: the Grail could not be allowed to manifest. Angra Mainyu could not be allowed to be born. Kirei would not stop until he'd received the answer he wanted from that outcome, and so Kirei had to be killed to prevent an unconscionable amount of lives from being lost, starting with this city of over a million people.
I slid the sleeve back down over Bazett's arm.
And then, I took a gamble. "To tell you the truth, Medea, I'm terrified. I'm dancing along a knife's edge, playing in a game where it seems like I'm the only one who truly understands the stakes that would care to do anything about them. If I make the wrong mistake at the wrong time, then I'm dooming not only the world, but everyone in it that I actually care about."
There was something of a relief in finally saying it. In admitting that I was one man trying to fight the apocalypse, and if I screwed up, then the world was fucked. To finally share with someone who knew what I was even talking about and would take it seriously. But this moment of vulnerability was also a manipulation — to open myself up, even just this tiny bit, and extend a modicum of trust to a woman who was used to receiving none.
I couldn't be sure I wasn't rushing it. This wasn't a video game with a dialogue tree with clear choices and fairly obvious "correct" paths. No Paragon points or Renegade points, no flashing indicators or colored text, only me and my inherited understanding of human psychology.
There was no response. I didn't dare to look directly at her, not if it risked giving away my intentions.
"I don't have the luxury of being nice to everyone or doing what's best for them," I went on, hardening my voice deliberately. "Where and how I can, I have to close down their options to the ones that will work best for me."
"Then what you said earlier was a lie," she countered frostily. "You don't want me to be 'true to myself,' as you put it. You just want me to do what you tell me to do."
I smiled.
"I didn't, actually. Lie, that is." Now, I turned to face her. "I planned around finding you, yes. I even have a few ulterior motives for it, too, and you're not wrong to say I benefit from having you as an ally."
She snorted derisively.
"But you weren't necessary," I told her. "As long as I got the Rider Servant I needed, I could have left you to reach the Temple and inevitably die. Entirely ignorant of the threats you would have faced, one way or another, you wouldn't have made it to the end of this War. But…that was just too sad, don't you think?"
A woman who had never been able to hold her own happiness in her hands… Yes, there was no way I could have stood by to let her die so terribly again. Rin wasn't quite as empathetic as I was, I could freely admit, but even she had sacrificed her most precious gemstone for the sake of saving Emiya Shirou. Or would do so in the future, rather.
"And I'm to believe that it was…what? Sentiment that led you to seek me out?" Medea sneered. "You admit you're manipulating us for your own ends, and then you expect me to believe that you came to me because you're just that soft-hearted?"
"Is it that hard to believe?" I countered. "Remember, I already know how this Holy Grail War is supposed to end. Couldn't I have just left it to go the way it was meant to and gone somewhere safe and secure to wait it out?"
Her brow furrowed.
"I'm here to correct a few injustices that would have remained unaddressed." I gestured towards Bazett. "And to save a few lives that would have been lost, or ended in tragedy. Like yours." I sighed. "But getting involved means I have to play for keeps. It means I have to do triage and decide who I prioritize to what degree, because I can't save everyone."
"And I suppose a witch like me is very far down on that list, aren't I?" she demanded acidly.
"How am I supposed to answer that?" I retorted calmly. "Medea, if I lied, you would hate me, and if I told you the truth, you wouldn't believe it. Nothing I say could change your mind either way."
Tamping down on the heat in my gut was hard, but a skill I'd won from years of practice, first in high school and later at the Clock Tower. Snapping at her and getting angry wouldn't make Medea any more likely to listen to me.
Not that she seemed particularly inclined to do that anyway.
She scowled, and then, after a moment, she abruptly disappeared and left. I could only guess that she hadn't had a response to that, not one that she thought didn't sound petulant or childish. She seemed determined to see the worst in me, and while I liked to think I was a decent enough person, I couldn't say she was entirely wrong to think so, either.
A bout of weariness struck me, and I felt more like seventy than seventeen. The weight of all the compromises and lesser evils I'd had to choose to make it even this far was like a leaden cloak around my shoulders.
I was playing chess with people's lives. Even if I was well aware of the gravity of my decisions and what they would mean for the people they affected, it didn't change the fact that I was indeed manipulating them for my own ends. Altruism or not.
A sigh whistled past my lips, and I looked down at my unconscious patient.
"You understand why I'm doing things this way. Don't you?"
She didn't respond, because she couldn't, and right then, a thread of real guilt wormed its way through my belly.
Screw it. I could leave the big, moralistic questions for the morning, when I was better rested.
A good night's sleep did not magically solve all of my problems, not even a little bit, but I felt much better prepared to face them than I had when I went to bed. The wonders of being well-rested did not begin or end at the physical…or something like that.
I went about my morning rituals as I usually did. I woke up, caught a quick shower, ate a breakfast and drank a mug of tea that jolted me awake with a shot of caffeine, and I was just about to leave and head on over to take my sister to school when I caught sight of the red pattern stamped across the back of my hand like a tattoo. My Command Spells, the marks of mastership.
In other words, the deadest of dead giveaways that I was officially a Master in the Fifth Holy Grail War.
There was no way that Rin wouldn't recognize them for what they were. No, she was way too smart for that. The instant she saw them, she would know exactly what they were and what they meant, and so many of my plans would be blown to kingdom come. Unraveled, before the War itself even officially started.
Damn it.
My first instinct was to go to my phone, call up my sister, and make up some excuse for why I couldn't take her to school. Maybe that I had caught something on my trip to England and wasn't feeling well, or maybe that I'd been busy yesterday and woken up late, so I wouldn't be able to meet her in time to take her to school. Maybe I could just say that I was going to be too busy today to take the time out to go with her.
But the squirming feeling in my gut wouldn't let me do things the easy way. Not for Rin. Not for this. These may well have been the last days I would ever spend with her, the last memories I would ever make of the sister I loved more than life itself, and I didn't want to regret that I hadn't spent more time with her, just in case one of us didn't make it out of this thing alive.
Of the two of us, I was the one more likely to die, in that case.
So I went and I found a pair of gloves, a comfortable, well-made leather set that I'd bought in England out of an abundance of caution and not a little paranoia, and I slipped them on before I slid into my coat. The boy in the mirror suddenly looked more like a young man, closer to the mental image I had of myself — that is, of the past self I had inherited ten years ago.
I was on my way out the door when the most predictable thing ever happened: one of my Servants stopped me.
"Going somewhere?" Aífe asked as she shimmered into existence.
Double damn it. Of course one of them would notice I was leaving and come to see where I was going and why. No Servant worth their salt would pay so little attention to their Master as to completely miss that he was about to head out someplace on his own.
It was just fortunate that Aífe was the one who had come to check. Medea would have been far more suspicious and far harder to deal with.
"The same place I go every morning," I answered, deliberately vague.
"Without one of us to protect you?" She lifted one eyebrow. "After all that trouble you went through to tell us about how dangerous things are, you're going out alone?"
Well, yes, but if I worried about all of the things that could kill me every time I stepped out of the door, I wouldn't even leave my bed in the morning.
"The first and biggest clue that something's happened will be changing my routine," I told her. "So the best way to throw off anyone who might suspect I've become a Master is to act like I haven't. You're welcome to come along, in spirit form," I added. "Just as long as you don't give yourself away."
She frowned, and then her form shimmered again as she disappeared. I couldn't see her, I couldn't sense her, but I got the feeling she was still there, regardless, and that she was going to follow me while I went to meet up with Rin.
It wasn't like I could stop her, not without a Command Spell, and that would be such a colossal waste that I didn't even entertain the idea longer than it took for it to pop into my head. Besides, of the two, Aífe was the more straightforward, prone to facing her enemies head-on, so she was the one I thought I could trust with this secret more, and that was why I actually wasn't all that bothered to have her with me.
She also wasn't the one with a Noble Phantasm that could break her own contract with me. It was a little easier to share vulnerabilities when I didn't have to worry that she was going to go off and find a new Master the instant one tempting enough presented herself.
My shoes were the last thing I slipped on, and then I was out the door and making my way over to my family's ancestral home. Aífe trailed me silently all the while, keeping an eye out for enemy Masters and Servants, but I wasn't worried. I was the last person anyone would suspect, after all, and I'd made sure to convince all the usual players of it. And besides that, there were almost no other competitors who would actually risk an attack in broad daylight. Not in the city itself.
To my delight, my dearest sister was waiting for me on the street right outside our house's bounded field. I couldn't help the smile that broke out across my face.
"Good morning!" I told her brightly.
"Just when I thought I could go a day without you embarrassing me," she retorted dryly.
"You say that, but you were waiting for me," I said slyly.
"O-of course I was!" She huffed. The tips of her ears were turning red. "It's more trouble than it's worth to deal with that disappointed puppy face you would have given me if I left without you!"
"Disappointed puppy?"
"Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about." She looked away. "You've been using it on me ever since we were, like, six years old, and you always get me to do things your way when you look at me like that."
My smile grew broader.
"Really, now? Is that the secret to convincing Tohsaka Rin of my brilliance? I just have to look like a disappointed puppy?"
She rolled her eyes. "It's just so pathetic that I can't help but feel bad about it, so I wind up going against my better judgment."
I laughed, unbothered. "Well, you need to get to school either way, so we should get going to make sure you're not late."
I offered her my arm, but she just raised one of her eyebrows at me. "Really? You don't remember what I told you before? We're not walking together arm in arm."
She deliberately switched her grip on her school bag so that it was in the hand that would face me when we started walking. I shrugged.
"Have it your way."
We set off as the winter sun struggled its way into the sky. The clouds still covered it up above, leaving the whole city cast in a sort of twilight, like it was closer to midnight than morning. With Rin there by my side, I was struck by a sudden intense longing, a nostalgia for the days several years back when she and I had actually gone to school together.
Of course, I hadn't wanted to spend any single day more than I had to in high school, so I just had to go and test out. Most of the high school experience was happily left behind, but the sense of normalcy that came with going to the same place every day and seeing the same people, I had to admit that I missed it.
So, this is what you were trying to hide from Caster. Aífe's voice inserted itself into my head so suddenly and so unexpectedly that I very nearly jumped out of my skin.
"Something wrong?" Rin asked from next to me.
"Just had a scary thought," I told her with a smile and a little laugh.
She raised one eyebrow at me again, but let it go. "If you say so."
I don't know what you mean, I told Aífe.
Please, she retorted, do you really think either of you were being subtle? A child could have seen that neither of you really trusts the other.
My lips pursed, but I refrained from commenting. Anything I said to deny it would probably be painfully obvious as a lie.
And you said a lot about these dreams of yours and the identities of the other Servants, she went on, but I noticed you said nothing of Caster's identity. That means that either you don't know it, which you already proved wrong last night, or you do and think it would prejudice us against each other.
Aífe, it turned out, was actually pretty smart, not a blunt, bullheaded battle junkie. My, but what else had the legends failed to mention?
Her legend isn't kind to her, I replied neutrally.
The latter, then, she concluded. I won't demand you tell me who. It's enough to know that it puts this much distance between you.
It's not about her, I said, coming to Medea's defense, because it really wasn't. Not totally, at least. It's about the Grail. She has a wish. I can't afford to put my trust in a Servant who seeks the Grail. Not until she's given me reason to.
You trusted me, she pointed out. At least enough to reveal this weakness of yours. Lover? No, sister. I can see the resemblance between the two of you. Especially in the eyes — that shade of blue is quite striking.
That's different, I protested.
It is, she acknowledged readily. That is, if you're willing to believe that I have no wish for the Grail.
Ironically enough, the fact that she'd even brought it up just convinced me of it even more.
I have no reason not to, I told her. After all, there isn't much in your legend you could want to change, and the only thing I can think of that wouldn't cause you even more pain is… Well…
My son, she finished for me. It's not that it isn't tempting, but… No. You can rest easy, Master. My wish is simple and one I must grant with my own hands: I want to train a student who can surpass Cúchulainn.
I put two and two together and nearly stumbled over my own feet. That's a little much to be putting on my shoulders, don't you think?
"You sure you're alright, Yukio?" Rin asked me.
"I'm fine," I reassured her. "I think I'm still a little asleep, though. I had a late night."
She snorted. "And I thought I was the one who had trouble with mornings."
"We are twins, after all."
You were the one who said you wanted me to teach you my martial arts, Aífe said, sounding amused.
There's a difference between that and expecting you to make me better than the Irish version of Herakles! I said.
Well, there's the question of whether it can be done in the span of a single month, even by a teacher as talented as I am, she said wryly. However, Master, is the prospect truly so daunting that you're not even willing to try?
What a loaded question that was. The Japanese in me was ready to deny it — outside of manga, it was generally considered brash, rude, and downright arrogant to be prideful or brag. Forgetting that, the measuring stick she was threatening to put me against was a guy both clever and strong enough to stall Gilgamesh for half a day. Even the parts of me I'd inherited from my past self were tempted to laugh it off as impossible.
But…
I suppose that would make me your last disciple, wouldn't it? I asked her.
If I wasn't willing to greedily reach for everything I could, then might as well just give up right there. I couldn't afford to take half measures, not at the level Grail Wars played out on. I had already resigned myself to the likelihood that I wasn't going to live past this one, but there were people I cared about that I absolutely needed to make it out of this. People it was worth putting myself through hell for, people I wanted to save.
Wasn't that why I had committed to rescuing Medea? Back then, I thought, 'I want to save her.' If I was truly so half-hearted about this, then I would have given up the instant she bit back at me.
Then I will expect nothing less than your utmost commitment, Yukio, she said.
No pressure, huh? But…nothing worth achieving was ever truly accomplished without effort. For Rin's sake, for Sakura's, for Medea's, and even for Shirou's, I could put myself through whatever hell Aífe concocted, if it meant I was strong enough to protect them.
Eventually, the trip had to end, and the school gate with all of its arriving students soon came into sight.
"You've been quiet, today," Rin commented.
"I have a lot on my mind," I admitted. It had the benefit of even being true.
She snorted. "Who is she?"
"You, of course," I told her bluntly and honestly. Her cheeks bloomed red.
"That wasn't funny the first time," she said tersely, "and it's not funny now."
"Who's joking?" I asked rhetorically. "My beloved sister is soon to be entering a battle royale with her life on the line. Of course I'm worried."
Her cheeks turned even redder. "Well, you don't need to. I have no intention of dying in the Grail War."
"Neither did Father," I retorted quietly.
And he'd died anyway, stabbed in the back by the man he'd entrusted with his own safety as part of a conspiracy with the Servant he had summoned to fight for his wish. The man who should have been safest in the whole Grail War died just the same as any other, and his children were even now paying for it.
She didn't have an answer to that. I let out a long sigh.
"I'm not going to try to convince you not to take part," I began. "It's important to you. I get it. You feel like you have to compete. I really do understand. Even so…"
I trailed off impotently, unable to find the words to finish my thought. Asking her to promise she would come back alive… It just felt like I would be tempting fate. Asking her to be careful felt the same way. Like I'd come this far by avoiding treating the entire situation as seriously as it warranted with her, so the instant I did, I'd be dooming her.
The image of her, collapsed against a blood-spattered wall, was one of my worst nightmares. Having the flesh and blood Rin right in front of me and seeing the inside of Emiya's home had replaced the simplified, stylized anime figures with the real thing, a horrific tableau of my sister, pale and lifeless on the wooden floor, her trademark sweater wet and sticky as it clung to the wound Kirei had torn into her belly.
The possibility of that becoming real terrified me, and I fully expected that scene to visit me in my dreams at least once over the next month.
"I won't leave you alone," she replied just as quietly. And then, with inflated bravado, "Besides, you don't have anything to worry about, do you? Naturally, I'm going to summon the best Servant, so I'll never be in any real danger to begin with."
I laughed, but my heart wasn't totally in it. Not when I'd seen all of the horrible things that could happen to her in just the version of things I remembered clearest. "Of course. As expected of Tohsaka Rin."
"That's right! Just who did you think you were dealing with? Shinji?"
The laugh that one startled out of me was a little more genuine. "Never!"
We parted ways shortly before the school gate, where Mitsuzuri was waiting. I made a quick detour to check up on Sakura, mindful of my Command Spells — if they started throbbing, then Sakura had already summoned, and I risked giving myself away to her. Fortunately, there was no reaction at all, and I got to see my littler sister as she went about her archery practice, if only for a minute or two.
It killed me a little inside every time I had to look at her and know she was suffering, and I felt it all the more keenly now that the time was finally about to come where I could actually save her. It made it all the harder to turn away from her and leave, but it wasn't time, not yet. Zouken would get his, I guaranteed it, I just had to finish preparing before I took on the most dangerous man in the city.
Just a little bit longer, Sakura.
The trip back from the school was colder and lonelier without Rin. Aífe's invisible, intangible presence was a paltry comfort, because although I knew she was there, I couldn't see her, touch her, hear her, or feel her warmth. I might as well have been truly alone for how much that it felt like I was.
What it said about my life, that the people who knew the most about me were technically a pair of women who were over a thousand years dead.
I had barely stepped through the front door of my new mansion before Aífe shimmered back into existence in front of me, arms crossed over her chest. Somehow, despite being almost sixteen centimeters shorter than me, she seemed to tower.
"Let's get started," she said. "I want to see what it is I have to work with when it comes to my newest student."
Fortunately, my inattention had not cost Bazett her life.
It had not done anything to improve it, either. She had recovered some of her color, but she was still a little anemic — and no wonder, with how much blood she had lost. It was still something of a minor miracle that she hadn't bled out before I could make it to her.
Magic Crests were bullshit.
She was healthy enough that I could have brought her out of her coma and let her sleep the rest of it off, but that wasn't part of the plan, so I let her sleep the sleep of the heavily medicated for a little while longer.
I wasn't one-hundred percent sure when I would actually wake her. There were spells to deal with the unpleasant parts of a coma patient, particularly things like muscle atrophy, but it wasn't like I could wait until the night before the final battle and expect that to go over well in any way at all.
"So," Medea's voice purred, and I nearly jumped out of my skin, "this is your so-called contingency plan for this Kirei fellow that frightens you so much?"
"After a fashion," I said, refusing to look back at her, like I had known she was there all along. "I had to reattach her arm and she lost a lot of blood, so for now, I'm keeping her asleep."
Had I already mentioned that part? I'd lost track. There was so much we'd crammed into the last few hours that I honestly couldn't remember all of the details we'd gone over, and I'd been practicing this for so long that it was hard to separate what I'd actually said from what I'd been imagining I would say for almost ten years.
"You know, I could heal her instantly, if you like," Medea offered silkily. "It would be no trouble at all, Master. She could be up and getting ready with us with just a few short words. It wouldn't even require that much mana."
And then there would be little to nothing stopping her from charging off to go after Kirei, or worse, making up plans of her own that would get tangled up with mine. She had even less reason to trust me than Medea and Aífe, and the last thing I needed was her and Medea conspiring together whenever I was out of earshot.
I hadn't lied about what I hoped for Medea to get out of all of this, but I wasn't fool enough to give her another perfectly viable Master candidate she could run to this early in the game.
"No," I said aloud, and I gave her a totally true reason without revealing all of it. "My plans are delicate enough as it is, vague as they might be in general, and I don't need a walking complication to be up and about early enough to screw them all up."
Done with checking up on my patient, I stood up from her bedside and rolled my shoulders. There was a series of satisfying crackles from between my shoulderblades.
"It's almost like you don't think she'd agree to go along with them," Medea mocked me.
"I don't," I agreed. "Frankly, I don't know much about her aside from her name, a vague idea of her skillset, and a few minor details about her relationship with Kirei. To be honest, Medea, as long as she has more options, I don't trust her to do anything but leave as soon as she gets her bearings. So I want to make sure she doesn't have any better options than to stay with us."
Medea cut right to the issue: "Manipulate her, you mean."
"Isn't that how all forms of negotiation work?" I countered, channeling my sister's nonchalance. "Besides which, if she left us now, she'd be as good as dead. Her Command Spells have already been stolen, her Servant is calling the man who stole them 'Master,' and the only thing she'd accomplish by going after them is being forced to fight her former Servant to the death while Kirei smiles from the sidelines."
A grim fate, no matter how you sliced it. Better, maybe, than what little I remembered of her story, but then, what wasn't better than being forced into a time loop with no apparent way out where even death itself served as no reprieve?
"And if by some miracle she made it through all of that, a golden king would cut her down like a rabid dog?" Medea asked.
"And he wouldn't think anything of it."
If Kirei didn't dismantle her himself. She was the better fighter these days, perhaps, but Kirei's weapons weren't just his fists or his Black Keys. He was also well-practiced in the art of ripping people apart and tearing them down with just his words.
"How convenient," Medea said scathingly. "It just so happens that her doing things your way is for her own good, is it?"
I couldn't help snorting, and that seemed to throw her off.
"What?"
"I'm not going to pretend I don't benefit from this," I told her. "Frankly, if it was just about Bazett's own good? I'd bundle her up and ship her off on the next, most convenient flight back to Ireland, where she'd be safe, healthy, and able to recover without any of the burdens of the rest of this War."
You could even say it was the most ethical decision, from the position of a physician. Say that five times fast.
"But there are no guarantees in this Grail War," I went on. "Even if we do everything I've said to prepare, that might not be enough, and we might all die without accomplishing anything. If Illya and Herakles come for us too early, if Zouken catches on, if Kirei catches on, if Gilgamesh catches on — any one of them catching us before we're ready will likely result in the three of us getting killed."
Unfortunately, I wasn't a physician. I hadn't gotten a medical license. I had sworn no Hippocratic Oath. Medicinal magecraft only made me better able to keep myself and my sisters alive, and it did not come with any other rules or regulations that restricted how I could act.
"And so you'll conscript her into a fight that isn't hers?" Medea bit out.
"Isn't it?"
The nightgown I'd dressed Bazett in after I got up this morning came from this mansion's storage, which meant it was probably my grandmother's, and it came with long sleeves. I pulled the sleeve of the left arm up, past her elbow, until the red ring of my less than perfect reattachment was visible. For how rushed I'd been, I liked to think I'd done a fairly good job of it, even though I could well acknowledge that a more experienced healer would have done it perfectly.
There were also the fading remnants of a bruise on the back of her hand from where Kirei had carelessly ripped out her Command Spells, but I couldn't do anything about those. I was better at physical surgery than the spiritual kind he employed.
"She came to Fuyuki for the purposes of participating in the Holy Grail War," I reasoned. "In so doing, she trusted her back to Kotomine Kirei, who is not only supposed to be an impartial arbiter of this contest, but also a comrade in arms who she has fought beside. I would say this is very much her fight, and I will be giving her the chance to rejoin it from a position of greater strength."
"In a way that benefits you."
"And you," I countered. "And Rider, and Fuyuki, and the whole world and everyone in it, if you expand outwards on the ramifications of what happens if we need her and she isn't there to help."
It shouldn't need to be restated: the Grail could not be allowed to manifest. Angra Mainyu could not be allowed to be born. Kirei would not stop until he'd received the answer he wanted from that outcome, and so Kirei had to be killed to prevent an unconscionable amount of lives from being lost, starting with this city of over a million people.
I slid the sleeve back down over Bazett's arm.
And then, I took a gamble. "To tell you the truth, Medea, I'm terrified. I'm dancing along a knife's edge, playing in a game where it seems like I'm the only one who truly understands the stakes that would care to do anything about them. If I make the wrong mistake at the wrong time, then I'm dooming not only the world, but everyone in it that I actually care about."
There was something of a relief in finally saying it. In admitting that I was one man trying to fight the apocalypse, and if I screwed up, then the world was fucked. To finally share with someone who knew what I was even talking about and would take it seriously. But this moment of vulnerability was also a manipulation — to open myself up, even just this tiny bit, and extend a modicum of trust to a woman who was used to receiving none.
I couldn't be sure I wasn't rushing it. This wasn't a video game with a dialogue tree with clear choices and fairly obvious "correct" paths. No Paragon points or Renegade points, no flashing indicators or colored text, only me and my inherited understanding of human psychology.
There was no response. I didn't dare to look directly at her, not if it risked giving away my intentions.
"I don't have the luxury of being nice to everyone or doing what's best for them," I went on, hardening my voice deliberately. "Where and how I can, I have to close down their options to the ones that will work best for me."
"Then what you said earlier was a lie," she countered frostily. "You don't want me to be 'true to myself,' as you put it. You just want me to do what you tell me to do."
I smiled.
"I didn't, actually. Lie, that is." Now, I turned to face her. "I planned around finding you, yes. I even have a few ulterior motives for it, too, and you're not wrong to say I benefit from having you as an ally."
She snorted derisively.
"But you weren't necessary," I told her. "As long as I got the Rider Servant I needed, I could have left you to reach the Temple and inevitably die. Entirely ignorant of the threats you would have faced, one way or another, you wouldn't have made it to the end of this War. But…that was just too sad, don't you think?"
A woman who had never been able to hold her own happiness in her hands… Yes, there was no way I could have stood by to let her die so terribly again. Rin wasn't quite as empathetic as I was, I could freely admit, but even she had sacrificed her most precious gemstone for the sake of saving Emiya Shirou. Or would do so in the future, rather.
"And I'm to believe that it was…what? Sentiment that led you to seek me out?" Medea sneered. "You admit you're manipulating us for your own ends, and then you expect me to believe that you came to me because you're just that soft-hearted?"
"Is it that hard to believe?" I countered. "Remember, I already know how this Holy Grail War is supposed to end. Couldn't I have just left it to go the way it was meant to and gone somewhere safe and secure to wait it out?"
Her brow furrowed.
"I'm here to correct a few injustices that would have remained unaddressed." I gestured towards Bazett. "And to save a few lives that would have been lost, or ended in tragedy. Like yours." I sighed. "But getting involved means I have to play for keeps. It means I have to do triage and decide who I prioritize to what degree, because I can't save everyone."
"And I suppose a witch like me is very far down on that list, aren't I?" she demanded acidly.
"How am I supposed to answer that?" I retorted calmly. "Medea, if I lied, you would hate me, and if I told you the truth, you wouldn't believe it. Nothing I say could change your mind either way."
Tamping down on the heat in my gut was hard, but a skill I'd won from years of practice, first in high school and later at the Clock Tower. Snapping at her and getting angry wouldn't make Medea any more likely to listen to me.
Not that she seemed particularly inclined to do that anyway.
She scowled, and then, after a moment, she abruptly disappeared and left. I could only guess that she hadn't had a response to that, not one that she thought didn't sound petulant or childish. She seemed determined to see the worst in me, and while I liked to think I was a decent enough person, I couldn't say she was entirely wrong to think so, either.
A bout of weariness struck me, and I felt more like seventy than seventeen. The weight of all the compromises and lesser evils I'd had to choose to make it even this far was like a leaden cloak around my shoulders.
I was playing chess with people's lives. Even if I was well aware of the gravity of my decisions and what they would mean for the people they affected, it didn't change the fact that I was indeed manipulating them for my own ends. Altruism or not.
A sigh whistled past my lips, and I looked down at my unconscious patient.
"You understand why I'm doing things this way. Don't you?"
She didn't respond, because she couldn't, and right then, a thread of real guilt wormed its way through my belly.
Screw it. I could leave the big, moralistic questions for the morning, when I was better rested.
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
A good night's sleep did not magically solve all of my problems, not even a little bit, but I felt much better prepared to face them than I had when I went to bed. The wonders of being well-rested did not begin or end at the physical…or something like that.
I went about my morning rituals as I usually did. I woke up, caught a quick shower, ate a breakfast and drank a mug of tea that jolted me awake with a shot of caffeine, and I was just about to leave and head on over to take my sister to school when I caught sight of the red pattern stamped across the back of my hand like a tattoo. My Command Spells, the marks of mastership.
In other words, the deadest of dead giveaways that I was officially a Master in the Fifth Holy Grail War.
There was no way that Rin wouldn't recognize them for what they were. No, she was way too smart for that. The instant she saw them, she would know exactly what they were and what they meant, and so many of my plans would be blown to kingdom come. Unraveled, before the War itself even officially started.
Damn it.
My first instinct was to go to my phone, call up my sister, and make up some excuse for why I couldn't take her to school. Maybe that I had caught something on my trip to England and wasn't feeling well, or maybe that I'd been busy yesterday and woken up late, so I wouldn't be able to meet her in time to take her to school. Maybe I could just say that I was going to be too busy today to take the time out to go with her.
But the squirming feeling in my gut wouldn't let me do things the easy way. Not for Rin. Not for this. These may well have been the last days I would ever spend with her, the last memories I would ever make of the sister I loved more than life itself, and I didn't want to regret that I hadn't spent more time with her, just in case one of us didn't make it out of this thing alive.
Of the two of us, I was the one more likely to die, in that case.
So I went and I found a pair of gloves, a comfortable, well-made leather set that I'd bought in England out of an abundance of caution and not a little paranoia, and I slipped them on before I slid into my coat. The boy in the mirror suddenly looked more like a young man, closer to the mental image I had of myself — that is, of the past self I had inherited ten years ago.
I was on my way out the door when the most predictable thing ever happened: one of my Servants stopped me.
"Going somewhere?" Aífe asked as she shimmered into existence.
Double damn it. Of course one of them would notice I was leaving and come to see where I was going and why. No Servant worth their salt would pay so little attention to their Master as to completely miss that he was about to head out someplace on his own.
It was just fortunate that Aífe was the one who had come to check. Medea would have been far more suspicious and far harder to deal with.
"The same place I go every morning," I answered, deliberately vague.
"Without one of us to protect you?" She lifted one eyebrow. "After all that trouble you went through to tell us about how dangerous things are, you're going out alone?"
Well, yes, but if I worried about all of the things that could kill me every time I stepped out of the door, I wouldn't even leave my bed in the morning.
"The first and biggest clue that something's happened will be changing my routine," I told her. "So the best way to throw off anyone who might suspect I've become a Master is to act like I haven't. You're welcome to come along, in spirit form," I added. "Just as long as you don't give yourself away."
She frowned, and then her form shimmered again as she disappeared. I couldn't see her, I couldn't sense her, but I got the feeling she was still there, regardless, and that she was going to follow me while I went to meet up with Rin.
It wasn't like I could stop her, not without a Command Spell, and that would be such a colossal waste that I didn't even entertain the idea longer than it took for it to pop into my head. Besides, of the two, Aífe was the more straightforward, prone to facing her enemies head-on, so she was the one I thought I could trust with this secret more, and that was why I actually wasn't all that bothered to have her with me.
She also wasn't the one with a Noble Phantasm that could break her own contract with me. It was a little easier to share vulnerabilities when I didn't have to worry that she was going to go off and find a new Master the instant one tempting enough presented herself.
My shoes were the last thing I slipped on, and then I was out the door and making my way over to my family's ancestral home. Aífe trailed me silently all the while, keeping an eye out for enemy Masters and Servants, but I wasn't worried. I was the last person anyone would suspect, after all, and I'd made sure to convince all the usual players of it. And besides that, there were almost no other competitors who would actually risk an attack in broad daylight. Not in the city itself.
To my delight, my dearest sister was waiting for me on the street right outside our house's bounded field. I couldn't help the smile that broke out across my face.
"Good morning!" I told her brightly.
"Just when I thought I could go a day without you embarrassing me," she retorted dryly.
"You say that, but you were waiting for me," I said slyly.
"O-of course I was!" She huffed. The tips of her ears were turning red. "It's more trouble than it's worth to deal with that disappointed puppy face you would have given me if I left without you!"
"Disappointed puppy?"
"Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about." She looked away. "You've been using it on me ever since we were, like, six years old, and you always get me to do things your way when you look at me like that."
My smile grew broader.
"Really, now? Is that the secret to convincing Tohsaka Rin of my brilliance? I just have to look like a disappointed puppy?"
She rolled her eyes. "It's just so pathetic that I can't help but feel bad about it, so I wind up going against my better judgment."
I laughed, unbothered. "Well, you need to get to school either way, so we should get going to make sure you're not late."
I offered her my arm, but she just raised one of her eyebrows at me. "Really? You don't remember what I told you before? We're not walking together arm in arm."
She deliberately switched her grip on her school bag so that it was in the hand that would face me when we started walking. I shrugged.
"Have it your way."
We set off as the winter sun struggled its way into the sky. The clouds still covered it up above, leaving the whole city cast in a sort of twilight, like it was closer to midnight than morning. With Rin there by my side, I was struck by a sudden intense longing, a nostalgia for the days several years back when she and I had actually gone to school together.
Of course, I hadn't wanted to spend any single day more than I had to in high school, so I just had to go and test out. Most of the high school experience was happily left behind, but the sense of normalcy that came with going to the same place every day and seeing the same people, I had to admit that I missed it.
So, this is what you were trying to hide from Caster. Aífe's voice inserted itself into my head so suddenly and so unexpectedly that I very nearly jumped out of my skin.
"Something wrong?" Rin asked from next to me.
"Just had a scary thought," I told her with a smile and a little laugh.
She raised one eyebrow at me again, but let it go. "If you say so."
I don't know what you mean, I told Aífe.
Please, she retorted, do you really think either of you were being subtle? A child could have seen that neither of you really trusts the other.
My lips pursed, but I refrained from commenting. Anything I said to deny it would probably be painfully obvious as a lie.
And you said a lot about these dreams of yours and the identities of the other Servants, she went on, but I noticed you said nothing of Caster's identity. That means that either you don't know it, which you already proved wrong last night, or you do and think it would prejudice us against each other.
Aífe, it turned out, was actually pretty smart, not a blunt, bullheaded battle junkie. My, but what else had the legends failed to mention?
Her legend isn't kind to her, I replied neutrally.
The latter, then, she concluded. I won't demand you tell me who. It's enough to know that it puts this much distance between you.
It's not about her, I said, coming to Medea's defense, because it really wasn't. Not totally, at least. It's about the Grail. She has a wish. I can't afford to put my trust in a Servant who seeks the Grail. Not until she's given me reason to.
You trusted me, she pointed out. At least enough to reveal this weakness of yours. Lover? No, sister. I can see the resemblance between the two of you. Especially in the eyes — that shade of blue is quite striking.
That's different, I protested.
It is, she acknowledged readily. That is, if you're willing to believe that I have no wish for the Grail.
Ironically enough, the fact that she'd even brought it up just convinced me of it even more.
I have no reason not to, I told her. After all, there isn't much in your legend you could want to change, and the only thing I can think of that wouldn't cause you even more pain is… Well…
My son, she finished for me. It's not that it isn't tempting, but… No. You can rest easy, Master. My wish is simple and one I must grant with my own hands: I want to train a student who can surpass Cúchulainn.
I put two and two together and nearly stumbled over my own feet. That's a little much to be putting on my shoulders, don't you think?
"You sure you're alright, Yukio?" Rin asked me.
"I'm fine," I reassured her. "I think I'm still a little asleep, though. I had a late night."
She snorted. "And I thought I was the one who had trouble with mornings."
"We are twins, after all."
You were the one who said you wanted me to teach you my martial arts, Aífe said, sounding amused.
There's a difference between that and expecting you to make me better than the Irish version of Herakles! I said.
Well, there's the question of whether it can be done in the span of a single month, even by a teacher as talented as I am, she said wryly. However, Master, is the prospect truly so daunting that you're not even willing to try?
What a loaded question that was. The Japanese in me was ready to deny it — outside of manga, it was generally considered brash, rude, and downright arrogant to be prideful or brag. Forgetting that, the measuring stick she was threatening to put me against was a guy both clever and strong enough to stall Gilgamesh for half a day. Even the parts of me I'd inherited from my past self were tempted to laugh it off as impossible.
But…
I suppose that would make me your last disciple, wouldn't it? I asked her.
If I wasn't willing to greedily reach for everything I could, then might as well just give up right there. I couldn't afford to take half measures, not at the level Grail Wars played out on. I had already resigned myself to the likelihood that I wasn't going to live past this one, but there were people I cared about that I absolutely needed to make it out of this. People it was worth putting myself through hell for, people I wanted to save.
Wasn't that why I had committed to rescuing Medea? Back then, I thought, 'I want to save her.' If I was truly so half-hearted about this, then I would have given up the instant she bit back at me.
Then I will expect nothing less than your utmost commitment, Yukio, she said.
No pressure, huh? But…nothing worth achieving was ever truly accomplished without effort. For Rin's sake, for Sakura's, for Medea's, and even for Shirou's, I could put myself through whatever hell Aífe concocted, if it meant I was strong enough to protect them.
Eventually, the trip had to end, and the school gate with all of its arriving students soon came into sight.
"You've been quiet, today," Rin commented.
"I have a lot on my mind," I admitted. It had the benefit of even being true.
She snorted. "Who is she?"
"You, of course," I told her bluntly and honestly. Her cheeks bloomed red.
"That wasn't funny the first time," she said tersely, "and it's not funny now."
"Who's joking?" I asked rhetorically. "My beloved sister is soon to be entering a battle royale with her life on the line. Of course I'm worried."
Her cheeks turned even redder. "Well, you don't need to. I have no intention of dying in the Grail War."
"Neither did Father," I retorted quietly.
And he'd died anyway, stabbed in the back by the man he'd entrusted with his own safety as part of a conspiracy with the Servant he had summoned to fight for his wish. The man who should have been safest in the whole Grail War died just the same as any other, and his children were even now paying for it.
She didn't have an answer to that. I let out a long sigh.
"I'm not going to try to convince you not to take part," I began. "It's important to you. I get it. You feel like you have to compete. I really do understand. Even so…"
I trailed off impotently, unable to find the words to finish my thought. Asking her to promise she would come back alive… It just felt like I would be tempting fate. Asking her to be careful felt the same way. Like I'd come this far by avoiding treating the entire situation as seriously as it warranted with her, so the instant I did, I'd be dooming her.
The image of her, collapsed against a blood-spattered wall, was one of my worst nightmares. Having the flesh and blood Rin right in front of me and seeing the inside of Emiya's home had replaced the simplified, stylized anime figures with the real thing, a horrific tableau of my sister, pale and lifeless on the wooden floor, her trademark sweater wet and sticky as it clung to the wound Kirei had torn into her belly.
The possibility of that becoming real terrified me, and I fully expected that scene to visit me in my dreams at least once over the next month.
"I won't leave you alone," she replied just as quietly. And then, with inflated bravado, "Besides, you don't have anything to worry about, do you? Naturally, I'm going to summon the best Servant, so I'll never be in any real danger to begin with."
I laughed, but my heart wasn't totally in it. Not when I'd seen all of the horrible things that could happen to her in just the version of things I remembered clearest. "Of course. As expected of Tohsaka Rin."
"That's right! Just who did you think you were dealing with? Shinji?"
The laugh that one startled out of me was a little more genuine. "Never!"
We parted ways shortly before the school gate, where Mitsuzuri was waiting. I made a quick detour to check up on Sakura, mindful of my Command Spells — if they started throbbing, then Sakura had already summoned, and I risked giving myself away to her. Fortunately, there was no reaction at all, and I got to see my littler sister as she went about her archery practice, if only for a minute or two.
It killed me a little inside every time I had to look at her and know she was suffering, and I felt it all the more keenly now that the time was finally about to come where I could actually save her. It made it all the harder to turn away from her and leave, but it wasn't time, not yet. Zouken would get his, I guaranteed it, I just had to finish preparing before I took on the most dangerous man in the city.
Just a little bit longer, Sakura.
The trip back from the school was colder and lonelier without Rin. Aífe's invisible, intangible presence was a paltry comfort, because although I knew she was there, I couldn't see her, touch her, hear her, or feel her warmth. I might as well have been truly alone for how much that it felt like I was.
What it said about my life, that the people who knew the most about me were technically a pair of women who were over a thousand years dead.
I had barely stepped through the front door of my new mansion before Aífe shimmered back into existence in front of me, arms crossed over her chest. Somehow, despite being almost sixteen centimeters shorter than me, she seemed to tower.
"Let's get started," she said. "I want to see what it is I have to work with when it comes to my newest student."
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
What's this? Yes, that's right! The wait was only two weeks long this time! I just finished Chapter 14, so here's this one for everyone to enjoy!
Have some more of Yukio and Rin being the best thing this fic has to offer. And Medea working through her feelings and refusing to trust Yukio. And Yukio being conflicted about treating people like pieces on a board for the sake of saving the world. Have lots of stuff, because the ride is getting ever closer to the beginning of the Grail War, and the characters' time to prepare is swiftly running out.
Have some more of Yukio and Rin being the best thing this fic has to offer. And Medea working through her feelings and refusing to trust Yukio. And Yukio being conflicted about treating people like pieces on a board for the sake of saving the world. Have lots of stuff, because the ride is getting ever closer to the beginning of the Grail War, and the characters' time to prepare is swiftly running out.
- Location
- Oregon, USA
You know, part of me thinks it's a shame he's interfering.
Like, his presence in the timeline is basically a butterfly effect, so it would be interesting to see if it affects anything. And even besides that…
He'll never know which timeline he was inserted into.
Like, his presence in the timeline is basically a butterfly effect, so it would be interesting to see if it affects anything. And even besides that…
He'll never know which timeline he was inserted into.