"To say that you don't want to engage her in combat, then deliberately raining arrows down upon them under the assumption that they'll get her attention... You really want to try and pawn off your work on others this time around, don'tcha?" Keisuke half-joked as he readied his weapon. Atalanta's Noble Phantasm had, in fact, wiped out a vast majority of the skeletons that had been milling about between their current location and the giant cloud of smoke in the distance, and seeing as how the Saber in their group—well, one of them, at least—was already moving to clear out the stragglers, Keisuke was inclined to direct them forward.
Doubly so considering that a few of the Masters with them had already shown signs of fatigue. The trip was honestly no worse than a... Rather bumpy ship ride across the ocean. Or a plane encountering heavy turbulence. Nothing
too bad for him, at least.
...
Maybe being an Enforcer meant he was
too used to that sort of problem, rather than those two
not. Either way, though, there was something to be done about the whole 'leadership' thing...
"Alright, it looks like any semblance of 'stealth' may as well be thrown out the window, so I say we just rush on over to see what's been opened up to us. Clear out any enemy that tries to stop us, all right?" Keisuke said towards the group, glancing over them all before nodding and beginning to break into a sprint towards whatever the hell was giving off the black cloud of smoke. Of course, something like that heavily implied flames, and so the Enforcer already had something of a sneaking suspicion for as to what was going on. The question now, though, was whether or not they could arrive before any clues in the area could be burnt to cinders before that.
@KoL
His Master being slightly tardy made Ozymandias take pause, as he had never been the one to be made to wait during his lifetime... Well, as a pharaoh, of course. The time during which his father had control of the throne was a different story, as those were times of naivety and childish relaxation, but that seldom mattered now. With a slightly stern look on his face, Ozymandias turned to take in the words of the old man that had gathered them and listened intently. Though he only knew of the location he spoke of because of how a Servant's knowledge worked, it was no more than that. All he knew was that this was a war they were walking into, and he had
plenty of experience dealing with those.
With that matter settled, the Servant followed his Master into the next room over and looked upon the object that had just been given to her with a bit of intrigue before shrugging his shoulders. What caught his attention, though, was the portal set up in front of him, shimmering like a mirage in the desert, yet eerily ten times as realistic (which, to be fair, made sense). The magicians under his command had tampered with no such forbidden realms under his watchful gaze, and so to see something like this in front of him gave rise to... Mixed feelings. On one hand, such petty things would be nothing compared to what
could have been done, but at the same time...
Time passed forward and not backward for a reason.
"...Hm."
No more was said from the pharaoh's mouth as he stepped forward through the portal and into a grassy field so unlike the deserts of his homeland. The verdant greenery caused him to pause for a moment, but only to remember the fact that there were indeed more realms than his kingdom contained. Of course, the sun watched over all indiscriminately, but experiencing it up close was another matter entirely. If only there wasn't the faint smell of ash and the sight of skeletons, though; that left a slightly bitter taste in his mouth, for sure.
Nanase's remark following the cat-eared huntress' Noble Phantasm brought Ozymandias out of his (slightly irritated) mood, with him returning half a smirk as he planted his staff in the ground.
"The grandeur of a pharaoh's true abilities... You have yet to see them, correct? Let me say this: that hail of arrows is nothing compared to what I have. Of course, I will show a fraction of my power... If I must," he responded before noticing one of the other Masters—the one of the Archer, if he recalled correctly—taking charge and moving straight to the source of the smoke in the distance. While he would prefer to lead rather than not, it might be better to spend this time saving his energy for any fights where his participation became mandatory.
"Follow that man," he said to Nanase, lifting his staff and pointing at Keisuke as he ran ahead. "Do not fall behind."
@Riegal
As Keisuke moved closer to the giant black cloud of smoke, his suspicions were indeed confirmed—a city was in flames, and people were fleeing from it in chaos. The skeleton soldiers seemed to be ignorant of them, though, as none of them seemed to be attacking the civilians who were running for their lives. Rather, their focus was now on the Masters and their Servants who were now charging towards the city. For some odd reason, though, there seemed to be less skeletons grouped in that area than there had been on the outskirts, but to the Enforcer that mattered little, if at all. Expertly cutting his way around any enemy that dared swing its weapon at him, Keisuke soon found himself at the gates to the city. This would be less problematic, of course, if the skeletons that he had just cut down weren't being replaced by more that seemed to be crawling up from the ground, temporarily cutting him off from the rest of the group.
Closing his eyes and thinking for a moment (again, in the middle of a panicked crowd, no less), Keisuke breathed deeply as he began to run deeper into the city. The others wouldn't take long to catch up, but that didn't mean he could dawdle, after all.
As he worked his way closer to the epicenter of the chaos, Keisuke noticed that the amount of skeleton soldiers (as well as the amount of broken skeletons) had gone up exponentially, a fact that didn't necessarily bode well for him. What he
did notice, though, was a quick glimpse of two figures fighting over his head. One,
a blindfolded woman with a pair of daggers; the other,
a cloaked figure wielding a staff firing absurd amounts of magic bullets from a series of giant magic formations that seemed to spontaneously appear behind her whenever she swung her weapon.
"Atalanta, do you recognize either of those two Servants?" he asked, cutting a few of the skeletons in front of him down in a single horizontal slice before diving off to hide behind a wall to try and monitor the Servant fight from below.
"I'm almost certain that the rest of the group's going to raise enough of a commotion to make them retreat, so before they do, can you try to ascertain if you know them or not? Do NOT attack, though; I don't want them turning both of their weapons on you instead of each other, though you may be able to dodge their attempts without much trouble."Of course, the giant mob of skeletons probably meant that the one who was controlling them (the cloaked one, if appearances meant anything in regards to Servant traits) was already aware, though, but at the very least it was possible that his presence alone might not be anything for her to worry about right now.
The faint sounds of explosions from behind him, though, might speak for the opposite.
Ozymandias, of course, took the lead in front of his Master, taking care to not move fast enough to the point where she might tire (though that in and of itself was quite unlikely), and his smirk turned (very quickly) into a frown as he noticed that there seemed to be a sea of skeletons (and people) in front of the entrance, and the skeletons seemed to be running straight for the rest of the group.
How vexing.
Slowing his movement down to a standstill, Ozymandias stood by on top of the hill he was looking down at the skeletons (who, unlike the civilians, were actively charging at their group) and, once they moved far enough away from them, raised and slammed his staff into the ground. In an instant, far above the group, what seemed to be a large cannon materialized in midair and fired a giant white laser onto the mob. The ensuing explosion scattered bone fragments and the like across the area, leaving a small spot of scorched earth in its wake as the pharaoh looked around for more. He couldn't exactly blast the people running from the fire; Nefertari would never forgive him if she knew he had done such a thing for no reason other than to speed his own life up. But this? This, he could do.
"Master! We shall remain here and provide support for the vanguard!" Ozymandias said, pointing his staff at another stray group of skeletons and blasting them apart with another laser from the sky. "Once a clear path to the city's gates is made, we shall move in with them! Is that clear?"
How strange it was for him to be giving orders as a 'Servant', though. Truly, this was a role he would have to get used to.
Well, if he was to be berated, then let it be so.
@Rin@VitaVitaAR@Grey Star@Raineh Daze
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