Munich, Germany
Another cracking report of Assassin’s rifle sang into the night, halting the apparent Lancer-class Servant from advancing once again. They were at a stalemate, just as Amun had wanted it. Neither the Servant nor her Master had any idea that he was the Master of their aggressor. It gave him a perfect chance to analyze the situation before he chose his method of attack.
He had run after instructing Assassin to open fire at the enemy Servant through his mental link. To anyone around, he would have seemed to be a civilian, running from the sound of gunfire. Instead, he was ducked in the shadows of an alley, loading his revolver with ammunition made with mana. As his Servant kept the enemy pinned down, he could remove the threat easily.
Both he and Assassin had the same idea for dealing with enemies. They would kill the Master, leaving the Servant a non-combatant afterwards. The best way to do this was to keep both the Servant and Master off guard, or in this case misdirected. Assassin could not score a victory in this situation, but he could. He was maybe twenty five meters away from where the master was taking cover behind a concrete pillar. There was direct line of sight from him to Amun.
The enemy magus didn’t seem to have any poignant characteristics. He seemed average in most every way and wore a plain brown suit. The man had darkish hair mostly unkempt. Amun couldn’t tell what kind of Magus he was, but it was apparent that he was terrified and not well prepared for battle. Such a man had no place in this war. It would be best just to eliminate him and continue on to real targets.
His Servant looked to be a female samurai of sorts, wielding a weapon that consisted of a pole with a curved blade upon its end. She was exceedingly beautiful and had long flowing ebon hair flowing from the end of her helmet. The rest of her was mostly obscured by her traditional armor.
Amun had no way of gauging her skill as a Servant, of course, since she was currently pinned down by his own Servant’s attack. Not that it mattered, really. Within a few moments her Master would be dead and she would be without a contract. If she still held a grudge, Assassin could finish her off easily.
He aimed the revolver, keeping the entirety of the barrel within the shadow as to not give his position away. Using the iron sights he leveled his aim upon the Magus’s head. His thumb gingerly pulled back the hammer and he held his breath. It was not his wish to kill people in such a way, or at all, but the responsibility the grail represented meant he needed to make some difficult decisions. His finger squeezed the trigger.
The familiar concussive blast of the magnum gave him a kick in the chest as the report was felt more than heard. Fire erupted from both the muzzle and from around the end of the cylinder and the magically enhanced bullet scorched from the gun. The recoil was easy to contain and the bullet flew true.
The bullet he used had a spell infused into it. As such, after it left the barrel it borrowed some of the kinetic energy to fuel the spell. By the time it reached the target, it was more a ball of volatile mana than a slug. The bullet would explode on impact with the force of a standard grenade, insuring a kill. It wasn’t the cleanest method, but it was highly affective.
It happened quickly, of course. Amun was nearly dumbfounded as there was a crack of the concrete pillar behind the Master with his Servant then immediately shielding him from the ensuing blast. He had MISSED? That seemed nearly impossible… He didn’t even see the bullet’s point of impact because it was obscured by the man’s head. How on Earth did it miss him and hit right behind him?
The Lancer servant made no hesitation in her retaliation. With near impossible speed, she lunged into the air to attack him. He could barely raise his hand to try and defend himself as her weapon was singing towards his skull.
Another high pitched crack sent the enemy Servant’s aim off and splashed Amun with her blood. Assassin’s bullet tore through her shoulder and her blade hit the ground next to him. The force of the blow through the air was still enough to knock him backwards, and he raised his gun and fired upon her as he fell. When he hit the ground he covered his face with his hands as the round exploded in her armor, splintering it.
“Lancer! Get us out of here, now!” Amun heard from the other Master. It had been in English and sounded American. Useful information.
The Servant hissed and lunged back to her Master, picking him up and placing him on her back. Strange… he didn’t seem to be injured to badly. She had taken the debris from the round hitting the concrete, not him. She turned to run and Amun ordered Assassin to continue firing on them. He raised his own gun as well.
Assassin’s bullet sung and then hit harmlessly behind them… just as Amun’s had earlier, and the pair took off. It would be useless to fire on them with his pistol, even if there wasn’t something odd going on. They were too fast and out of viable range by the time he could have pulled the trigger.
He sighed and holstered the gun. /Let’s head back for the night, Assassin. We need to talk about what happened and see if we can figure out what’s going on with that Master./
Assassin’s agreement came into his mind as he calmly began to walk back to the hotel. Sirens could be heard in the distance, obviously drawn by the repeated gunfire.
**********************************************
“Your thoughts, Rider?” Luviagelita asked her Servant.
“The Master with the Assassin class Servant had the correct strategy, Fraulein Master. The fact that his enemy had some odd sort of defense was just an uncertainty that curses any battlefield,” he replied.
They were situated on the roof of the building that the Alchemist had been using as cover, watching the skirmish from behind her glamour. It had apparently been good enough that Assassin had not noticed them the entire time, but that could have been due to him being preoccupied with the other target.
Luviagelita nodded and asked, “The bullets should have hit, correct? Both of them?”
“Yes, but their vapor trails became quite odd as they approached him,” Rider answered.
She folded her arms under her chest and turned to him. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“With my sight as good as it is, I can see the trajectory and path of the bullet, even to the point of seeing the miniscule vapor trail left behind it,” Rider explained. “What is odd is that as it approached the man, multiple vapor trails began to appear, most still heading for his head. But there were a couple that were altered enough that they would miss. Eventually, the bullet took one of these paths, the other trails stopping all together. After it had missed him, it somehow reoriented itself in the original path.”
Luviagelita stared at him and said, “That’s manipulation of Reality, Rider…”
“Indeed, much like this Second Magic you are wanting to master,” he replied.
“Well, not exactly,” Luviagelita corrected. “This is akin to something like a Reality Marble. It’s not true Sorcery, but it is very close. Think of this as just being able to twist the fabric of this reality, while obtaining the Second Magic would make one able to tear it altogether.”
“I see, so is that why the bullets reverted to their original orientation?” her Servant asked her.
She nodded in response and said, “Yes. Reality was only shifted, not completely replaced. The amount of mana needed to hold the alternate reality is very high, so the less time it needs to be bent, the better.”
“Even so, the skill required to do this must be very high, correct?” Rider asked her as they began to head back to the stairwell.
“Incredibly so, which seems odd that the ill-prepared Magus had something like that. He seemed completely incompetent otherwise,” Luviagelita replied.
“Or there’s another possibility: It is something that the Servant is doing,” he stated.
She nodded opening the door and beginning to walk down the many flights of stairs. “That may be possible, but then why would she not defend herself at all?”
“It may not be an action, but an item of sorts,” Rider explained, following her. He was in Spirit form of course. In case anybody happened to be out and saw them walking about.
“Yes,” Luviagelita mused, “A Noble Phantasm of sorts. She gave it to the Master so that he could be protected by it.” She smiled to him and said, “That was a good deduction, Rider, even if we don’t know whether or not it’s true.”
“Thank you, Fraulein Master,” Rider said with a quick nod of his head. “So what are our plans now? More reconnaissance?”
“I’m afraid so,” she said with a sigh. “We’re still mostly in the dark about what we’re up against, so we need more information before we blatantly attack the others.”
“It is nothing to apologize about,” Rider said. His features sobered a bit and he continued,” I know exactly what it’s like to operate with too little of information.”
***************************
Finding a Hotel had been easier than she thought. The lay lines covered most of the city here, unlike back in Fuyuki. Instead of a few hotspots, there was running mana everywhere under the city. That was good for a summoning, but it was going to make trying to track down where the actual Grail would be summoned a complete chore.
Rin sighed and lugged her massive suitcase on the bed, making it lazily bounce. She took off her coat and slung it on the back of a chair and then moved to unload the things she would need for the summoning. Her fingers undid the latches to the suitcase and she threw open the top to it.
The first things she brought out were to be her foci. It brought a smile to her face to see the plain white shirt and blue skirt that Saber had worn while she was with her Shirou and her so many years ago. She also picked up the aging boots the Servant had donned and placed them all upon the bed.
She had no idea if that would be enough to call the blonde-headed warrior, but she had no other means of pulling her. To be completely honest, they never had learned who she had been so there was no way for them to look for any of her possessions. Her clothes were the only thing she left behind and would hopefully suffice.
Thinking about Saber brought a flood of memories to Rin. Some of them good and some of them not so good. But if it had not been for that war, she most likely would never have gotten her Shirou. Even so, it was blind dumb luck they had lived through it.
She spent the next hour arranging the room to be optimal for a summoning, moving most of the furniture away from the center. When she had made sufficient room, she placed Saber’s clothes in the middle of the room. She was not going to physically draw an array on the ground, opting to create it from her own mana. This way, the circle would be OF her and a strong bond with her Servant could be formed.
When she had completed the preparations, she checked the clock by the nightstand. It was just after midnight. She still had close to two hours before she would perform the actual summoning and decided to take a long bath to relax herself. Stripping off her clothes, she headed into the hotel room’s restroom.
It wasn’t that she was tired, she was in fact well rested after she had said goodbye to her husband ‘properly’ the night before. She took the bath to help calm her nerves. One of her most hated quirks about herself was that when the pressure began to build, she found herself overanalyzing everything to the point of making it fail. Just as she had when she summoned her last Servant.
To combat this, she made herself as relaxed as she could. She needed to think straight to do this. This time she couldn’t afford to miss her target, as it was not only her life on the line, but her whole families. She didn’t know much about this war or the other Masters that would be in it, but it was almost certain that Luvia would be here. Meaning Rin already had someone gunning for her as soon as they found out she was here.
After her soak in the tub, she dried herself off and put on simple clothes that would be comfortable and not get in her way; a black long sleeved tee-shirt and jeans. She grabbed her AZOTH dagger from off the bed and walked in front of the bare area that would be her circle. Swallowing the frog in her throat she awaited the clock to approach 2.
As the final minute clicked away, Rin used the dagger to prick her finger. She let her blood travel down the edge of the blade and began to pool her mana. The Tohsaka crest ignited on her arm in an alien green glow as the entire room hummed with excited particles. She held out the dagger in front of her and began to bleed mana through it.
When the clock struck two, she forced her mana out of the blade and onto the floor. She had blueprinted it before releasing it and it formed an intricate array of blazing red illumination. She muddled through her incantation while concentrating on completing the circle. The mana snapped as it connected ends and the circle lifted off the ground slightly.
She felt the response from the Grail as the room became flooded with foreign mana. Her heart raced as she called out the last words of her summon and was engulfed in an intense light. The boundary between worlds collapsed, opening a door to the Throne of Heroes. Pain shot into her left hand as the Command Seal was interwoven into her circuits and nerves alike.
At last the summon completed and the light vanished. Rin exhaled deeply and nearly fell backwards from exhaustion. Her eyes were still blinded by the light and she impatiently waited for them to adjust. She could feel every muscle in her throat clench in anticipation as the room slowly began to take form in her vision again.
Another blink and she could see. She looked up and her eyes widened. The dagger fell to the floor with a loud clank as she whispered, “Impossible…”
A line she used to recite to herself immediately came to mind as she looked upon her Servant. When it really counts… White hair and darkened skin made up his features, not to mention he was now a near mirror image of her husband. She bit her lip and said aloud, “Archer…”
I screw up.