"...I see. Farewell then, my prisoner. My final effort. We will not speak again."

She had been born wanting to be a hero. She lived her life desiring to be a king. That was the vision she'd spotted sailing over the waves of her sea when she'd been too young to understand anything. It was her love for the man who wore the glittering crown that first pulled her up from the water. It was a desire to be called his son that twisted her flesh into the shape she'd worn ever since. Arms and legs strong enough to hold a people's hopes aloft. Hands with a good, firm grip that would never relinquish a sword if that man would only trust her with one. As beautiful a face as she could conceive of, to sit beneath a crown and invoke the dawn in every eye that beheld it.

But the king had heirs aplenty. He commanded enough heroes to last him a lifetime, and had slaughtered many more by his own power. He saw no value in either title for her. Instead he called her 'Valkyrie'. Instead he called her 'Weapon'. And for love of the man who wore the glittering crown, she'd tossed aside her dreams to fit his vision. And when he was cruelly cut down by the cowards he called his enemies, she did not rise to take his place. Once more she cut away everything that did not fit, so she would be light and fit and strong enough to burn the world in his name. It was only in the ashes that she'd found her crown.

But she, too, had been cut down by cowards before she could build a land that lasted into the future.

She'd been born again wanting to be a hero. She lifted herself out of a bathtub clutching at the chance to walk the path of kingship one more time. Incarnation, and the chance to contend in earnest with the world one more time. To prove that she could do it right from the beginning. Learning the nature of the land in the current age only made her anticipation burn stronger. As fine a thing to want as a hero could dream of. It felt fitting that she'd beheld a face that looked strong and determined in the way that would compel her to climb out of the water again. That would be one more thing she could fix this time.

Saber rises to her feet and stretches her arms toward the sky. Already she can feel the flood of mana rushing into her system. But this is not a moment of celebration. She is merely taking what she requires to perform the only act that matters. Her tattoos glow with such intensity they begin to drip light down her torso. Where the rivulets of light roll off her body they coalesce into chains that hang from her waist. Another and another and another, until they form a barbed and rattling skirt.

The light spatters itself across her body like paint. It spreads across her canvas, transforming her into a vision of revenge for this new history and all its glittering excesses. It locks her in plates of fitted carbon composite armor, harder than any steel she'd ever known, blinding white and cut through with diamond strips that let her runic tattoos shine through and continue their good work. The plating extends beneath her new skirts and consumes her chain leggings. The boots that encase her feet, by all appearances, seem equipped with some sort of rocket.

The blade of her sword rusts away even as she grips the hilt with a desperation that betrays her attachment to the plain, unspecial old weapon. A new edge errupts in blue-white light as it grows to the proportions of a greatsword sized for her towering frame and emits a constant thrum of dangerous feeling energy that denotes it as a laser sword. Something much more akin to the weapons wielded by Odin's true Valkyries, and yet somehow entirely wrong seeming in her hands.

The vague shape of wings wraps itself over her forehead, covering her eyes in a visor of dull gold and silver in three sharp, segmented lines joining together in a "V" atop her nose. Meanwhile, the shadows deepened by the glowing of her runes coalesce instead of scattering, forming a proper cloak wrapped around her shoulders that drapes down to her ankles. It is black on a level that feels wrong, feels hungry, feels ready to swallow starlight and never release it again. Shapes like hands and claws seem to tear at the edges before they dissipate into ephemeral nothing. 

This is what power is worth. A Valkyrie is an ancient warrior wielding superior technology; as the latest incarnation of one it falls to her to don a fitting mantle so as not to disgrace the sisters gone to the final rest ahead of her. She is an ancient's idea of the future, a petty revenge against the aesthetics of the planet she now walks, a sterile sort of clean with a monster's sensibilities tucked away at the edges. She opens her mouth to sigh, and it is even more full of sharp and jagged teeth than it was before.

When she spoke to Lancer, she'd dared to count herself among the heroes. Perhaps that was arrogance. Diaofei's heart was too hurt and full of regret to accept the kind of figure she'd spoken of. It [i]had[/i] been a fitting way to be summoned: for the second time, she'd pulled herself from the water only to learn she'd done it wrong. 

Her Master did not need a hero. She did not need a king. She didn't even require a Saber. Let go the pain. There is only one name responsible for this betrayal:

[b]Actia.[/b]

She crosses the field with ghostlike steps. Her visored gaze meets Jezara's eyes as she briefly slips past her new partner. A fist slams into Angelesia's stomach, and an arm extends to catch her when she slumps. A shoulder holds the third place regional swordfighting champion as well as any bed. 

"Saber is dead," she breathes in the echoes of several voices at once, "I am Avenger. But I shall honor her final pact. Once the war is all that remains, I shall ensure that you are its lone and unquestioned victor."

Avenger hops lightly into the air and seems to glide along some unseen surface in the air before she alights on the transformed Princess' back.

"Come. We have much to do." she says, looking up at the sky that now twisted itself full of storm clouds on her behalf.