Chương 998: 12
011 - First blood
Tohsaka Rin
I'm… not having a fun day.
It all started when I discovered an enemy Master targeting our school first thing in the morning and only got worse during lunch break. Emiya-kun has a way of being infuriating and yet making me regret my objectively justified reactions later on.
I hold back the urge to sigh in frustration.
Truth is, I can't help but wonder about his offer and whether Emiya-kun intends to use this 'faction' of his as an excuse to finally build his infamous harem. Even knowing there can only be a winner of the Holy Grail war, I'd be lying to myself if I denied having at least considered...
I shake my head, placing the voluminous tome I was going through back on its place. It's too late for second thoughts now. Seems like I'll never get to watch Sakura and Mitsuzuri dancing in harem outfits after all.
N- not that those were ever anything more than idle fantasies anyway. I'm just a healthy teenager, just because I think about something doesn't mean I'd ever try to see it become reality!
… Back to the topic at hand, I'm having a bad day.
The worst thing so far though, is having to deal with this… clusterfuck. I grab my notes from the table and hold back another sigh at their sparseness. They're barely some scrawled lines. Then again I haven't had much time to dedicate to it.
Matou Zouken was a Dead Apostle who had been alive for god knows how long by using the Matou crest worms as a soul anchor. Or, at least, that's what Emiya-kun claims. It could all be a ruse to distract me from other problems, but it's too urgent to ignore and the little I have managed to dig up makes sense.
The Tohsaka have limited intel on those Crest Worms, but we have some. You can only coexist in an estate of polite cold war for so long without learning a thing or two about your… neighbours. Those things are a nasty piece of work and I can't afford the risk of letting them go unsupervised.
I've at least taken the time to take a look at the official Matou family tree, and the trend to use suspiciously similar names for Family Heads starts around five centuries ago, with one Makiri Zolgen.
That's way longer than the Heaven's Feel ritual has been in place, how has my family missed this for so long? Or have they just… ignored the fact that the Matou Head was a hideous abomination whose existence was considered a crime even by magi standards? It's the sort of incriminating blackmail that's more useful kept close to the chest, after all.
The mere possibility makes me feel a bit ill, I'll have to properly dig up the archives when I have the time, figure out what my family truly knew about Zouken.
In any case, it's not a pressing matter anymore. Because apparently Emiya-kun's 'faction' has the ability to deal a fucking five hundred years old Dead Apostle without even triggering my surveillance of the area. Somehow.
… It probably means Caster is part of that 'faction'. The weakest Servant in direct combat, and yet the most useful ally for any group. Fuck.
No, not the problem at hand. Focus, Rin, focus.
I pinch the bridge of my nose, hoping very hard that Emiya-kun won't throw more shit on my plate for a long while. Then I take a deep breath and firmly put all those thoughts aside for the moment. I need to deal with the potential tide of runaway carnivorous maggots leaving the Matou basement during the night and spreading like a plague through the city. My city.
Yeah, that's not going to happen.
First things first, though. I need to have words with Shinji. Distasteful, but it's only proper to warn someone when your plans involve their ancestral home, no matter how much right you have to act.
Steeling myself for an unpleasant conversation in the near future, I leave with Archer following right behind.
Finding Shinji isn't particularly difficult. For all he has a reputation as a ladykiller, truth is he brags too much, and is not very creative about his dates. I find him talking Hato-san's ear off in his second favorite dating haunt. He sees me through the café window and it's with a small satisfaction that I see him making up excuses and hurrying to meet me outside as soon as I give him the signal.
Cultivating a reputation is a colossal pain in the ass, but it has it's uses.
I don't bother looking at him, turning around to walk towards the closest place where we can talk without having to worry about eavesdroppers as soon as I see him step outside. That's how I end up being followed by a smarmy git into a secluded side-alley in the commercial district of Shinto city. It could perfectly be the start of a horror film. With me as the monster, that is.
"Well well, Tohsaka-san! It's not nice to interrupt a date like this, you know?" Said smarmy git speaks out loud as soon as we're alone in private. "If I had known you'd get jealous, I would have invited you to join us from the start! "
"Shut it, Matou." My hand goes to throw my hair behind my shoulder in reflex as I cut him before he can get steam. "We have urgent business to talk about, you can go back to whispering sweet nothings into Hato-san's ear as soon as we're done with them."
"Oh? Does that mean you figured it out already?" His face lights up in pleased surprise. "As expected from Tohsaka, it didn't take you long at all!"
Is he… taunting me? For an abomination like his 'grandfather' to be around all my life, without me even catching a whiff of the problem... No, chances are he doesn't even know what I'm talking about and has misunderstood something.
"This is Second Owner business Matou, I know you know what that means. Trusted sources have denounced your grandfather's experiments under the Mage's Association Law and I'll be performing an investigation today." I explain, taking glee on the way Shinji's smile is swiftly wiped from his face. "Depending on what I discover, you might need to find a new place to live in."
"What?" He protests indignantly. "You can't do that!"
"I have good reasons to believe your 'Grandfather' was a Dead Apostle and his dangerous experiments need to be dealt with." I retort smugly. There's just something about crushing Shinji that feels utterly… satisfactory. Like stomping on a cockroach."This is not your fault and the Matou accounts won't be touched, but your mansion is unlikely to survive the night."
"Tch! I don't think so! Rider!"
To my shock, a tall figure materializes before Shinji in a burst of golden light. A purple-haired woman dressed in black and covering her eyes with some sort of eye mask that's clearly mystical in nature. A very hot woman who would (look spectacular in a harem outfit). Not the time, libido!
The figure looks utterly relaxed, as if simply standing in front of Shinji would be warning enough.
It admittedly is, but that's hardly the point.
"You are a Master?" I blurt before I can recover from the surprise. "But that's impossible, you don't have–!"
"You are always looking down on me, Tohsaka! But I'm the strongest now!" Shinji croons in satisfaction. "Strip down and kneel, and I'll allow you to be my sex slave!"
"Wow." And with that, the magic is gone. I can't help but raise an eyebrow at the bold declaration. Is this guy for real? "... You've gone drunk with power, huh?"
"You don't get a choice in this, Tohsaka!" He continues gleefully, smiling victoriously as he points at me. "Rider, knock her out!"
"Tch!" What a pain! "Archer!
"Nani!?"
To Shinji's horror, the short figure of Archer materializes on a vantage point over a lamppost, forcing Rider to abort her charge and dodge backwards with a hail of rainbow-colored arrows. I growl in frustration.
This couldn't be easy, couldn't it? I only wanted to carry an investigation and right a wrong gone on unaddressed for centuries, maybe indulge in a bit of cathartic and perfectly reasonable property damage in the process, then focus back on how to win a War I've prepared for all my life and yet I'm already at a disadvantage in.
Instead, I'm having my first Servant fight with a sleazeball that shouldn't even qualify as a Master in the first place.
… Maybe he actually doesn't, Shinji could be some sort of decoy. Then again the Matou designed the Command Seal system, if there's someone capable of devising a way to use them without having magic circuits, it would be them. Or maybe he had circuits all along, somehow hidden from detection.
I watch Rider avoid Archer's follow-up by dodging tri-dimensionally, using the walls of the buildings, and even upside-down surfaces, with the same ease as solid ground. Rider looks like some sort of demented jumping spider.
For a while, I can only stand in place, watching in awe as the two Servants go at it without either of them seemingly making progress. Rider is being forced to move around while Archer remains stationary, but fatigue doesn't work for Servants the same way it does for humans. It's all a matter of prana supply, and Archer's arrows are pure energy, costing quite a bit of energy themselves.
… Can the [Riding] skill be used to 'ride' footholds? Because it's that or accepting that Shinji somehow summoned Spider-woman as a Servant. She could be Arachne or Anansi, maybe. There aren't that many spider-based heroes of legend.
Finally though, my brain is rattled back into working order when Rider throws one of her chained daggers at my face. Archer is forced to protect me at the cost of letting Rider herself get into close quarters.
I would've liked to protest and claim that I could've protected myself, the chained daggers don't feel particularly powerful, clearly not a Noble Phantasm but some nameless tool instead. I have some strong shields in my repertoire that would have dealt with them easily enough.
Unfortunately, I didn't even realize I was in danger and needed to raise a shield until a rainbow arrow knocked the dagger away right in front of my face.
… Right, Servants aren't humans. They're nowhere near human. Assuming I can 'handle myself' in a fight between Servants is the epitome of Stupid. The sort of Stupid you don't live to regret. So I better make myself useful by getting away from their fight and focusing on the Master.
A glance behind me confirms that Archer can hold her own in a melee, wielding her bow as some sort of two-handed club with enough skill to keep up with Rider. The emotions coming from the bond are calm and collected, and she doesn't seem particularly pressured by the new situation.
Right, I need to trust Altera to do her part.
Eyes locked on Shinji, I reinforce my legs to close the distance between us as fast as possible, enjoying the shocked look in his eyes as he turns around and tries to run away. It doesn't work, of course, I'm too fast and Shinji is just a moderately sporty teenager. I'm on him before he's managed to take more than four steps.
There's a [Gandr] curse in my lips as I trip him, the momentum causing him to turn around and fall comically on his back. I have a finger aimed straight to his ugly, panicked face before he can even register the situation he's in, and my spell lets loose as soon as Shinji tries to speak.
"[Gandr]!"
"Hiiiiii!" He squeals like the pig he is. "RIDER!"
My eyes widen in shock for the second time when Shinji's Servant materializes in front of him, blocking the curse point blank with her body. That was a Command Spell! There goes the theory of Shinji being a decoy, no matter how little sense things make.
On the other hand… what the fuck!
The [Gandr] curse is a relatively simple spell, used more to poke and prod enemy defenses than out of any real hope of breaching them. Defense is easy and, even when it hits, it just causes sickness. Any competent Master would rather take it head on and power through the effect than waste a precious Command Spell.
Possibilities run through my mind. One: Shinji really isn't a magus after all, and thus can't defend himself. Two: Shinji has some trick that lets him summon his Servant without wasting Command Spells, or can somehow recover them. Three: Shinji is an incompetent idiot. The last one feels particularly right to me, but I'm pretty sure that's just my distaste for him talking.
Fortunately for my continued survival, Rider choses to carry her Master some distance away instead of immediately lashing out at me. Though, judging by how swiftly Archer hurries to step beside me, she might've never had the chance to do that in the first place.
We study each other warily in a tense standoff and I feel my frustration mount once again when I notice how low the sun has gone while we were busy. I can't afford to waste more time here, there's a ticking bomb to disarm before nightfall.
"I have no time to chase after you, Matou, I have bigger fishes to fry today." I throw my hair behind my shoulder, doing my best to look in control of the situation. Technically I just wiped the floor with Shinji, so it's not even a lie. "Just remember that Homurahara is neutral ground. Leave it alone and you'll be left alone in turn."
"Tch. Whatever!" Shinji spits out. "Rider, you useless bitch! Get me out of here!"
As the two of them disappear into the city, I shake my head and focus back on the more pressing business. Taking down a Master here would've been a nice extra, but that's not a priority and Shinji doesn't seem to be much of a threat in the first place, I'll deal with him later.
Speaking of him, didn't I interrupt his date with Hato-san? What will the poor girl think if he never returns?
… Whatever, not my problem.
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