SIGINT

Fate/Empty Providence

Izumi Airi — Eastern Field

@Moonlit Sonata
@Berserk Gene

---

Airi had seen it coming, but not from where. The entire area had suddenly become engulfed in color. An 'intent' that encompassed everything around her. She would have looked around, but she wouldn't have looked up.

Like a hook digging into her stomach, the girl nearly lost her lunch when Berserker grabbed hold of her, the field and sky zooming past like race cars on a track. Between the movement and the wild wind, it felt like being swept up by a tornado, and there was a brief, mad fear of being thrown through the air like a piece of debris.

"Wait, where's—"

The boy she'd been talking to just moments before. She had been snatched away from him just as they shook hands. The girl looked around, but her vision had exploded into color. The field, filled with people and that thing, had exploded into a cloud of mixed intentions. Had she been epileptic, it very well may have given her a seizure.

Ernest — Airi didn't actually know who his Servant was, but she figured he had one. But that boy had lost his at the graveyard. Was he— was he safe? Was he—

Clawing at Berserker's shoulders as the wind assaulted her eyes, she spotted him, similarly accosted by Ruler. For once, she had to give Sunglasses some real props. Her friends, those freshly-formed bonds with hardly even names exchanged, were safe.

"I can handle running myself, you know!" With that knowledge assuaging her deeper fears, she returned to her usual self, though she didn't physically struggle against her Servant's grip as she listened to his words. A siege...well, draining magical energy had certainly worked on her, so she could see that being a viable plan. Swallowing air to keep ahold of the contents of her stomach, she surveyed the situation. She couldn't sense mana, but at the very least, she could see locations, and some aspect of what they were up against...

A...thing of stone, surrounded by some kind of conglomeration of...forcefields? To call it even massive was a disservice. An impenetrable defense, and gigantic, swinging arms that destroyed the ground itself. Two arms on offense, two more rooting its position...

"Wait...what the...?"

"It's got...five brains? Six...? I can't keep up...!"

The fact that it was alive was enough of a shock. That the gigantic thing of masonry in front of her wasn't simply a castle, or animated clay. The thing in front of her was...thinking. Reasoning. Feeling.

And apart from the cloud of intent that pervaded the field like a blanket of choking gas, there were intentions emanating from inside of the giant as well. Deliberated actions with a set beginning and a desired end. In the chaos, and being thrown around as she was, it was difficult to pin it all down. But there was no doubt, that multiple intents were emanating from multiple points...

A soft navy...a deep green...parts of it even seemed...reticent. But, why would that...?

"Who the fuck summoned Voltron!?" Airi complained thoughtlessly, her loud voice for once being a benefit over the raging wind. Her temples began to throb as the colors assaulted her, but now more than ever, she had to focus on them...! Wherever they were coming from, the points of emanation of that 'intent', those had to be its cores, right? If it had anything like a weak spot, it had to be that...!!

Fate/Empty Providence

go go alliance of the illusionary eyes[/phone]

i want to write but i also want a keyboard first

Fate/Empty Providence

Izumi Airi — Eastern Field

@Yukitamas

---

When is big sis gonna be back? Is she gonna...bring food? I'm so hungry. But she told me not to move. She told me to wait for her. If I don't move, I can conserve myself. I won't have to eat as badly. It's been three days. I hope she brings food. I hope she brings them back. I want to see them again. I want to see her again. I want to eat something. I don't want to die alone. I don't want to be by myself. I can't do anything by myself—

---

"Heh! You're a weird guy!" Airi's smile beamed as he finally took her hand. "'Already unpleasant'? Friends part ways sometimes, or hell, even fight each other sometimes, but that's no excuse to not make them, jeez." The girl couldn't help but chuckle a bit at the way she was talking. Dropping her usual rough, acerbic demeanor wasn't something she did very often. But no matter how she spoke, she wasn't the type of person to hold back words, for any reason. "Memories are precious things, too, even if they hurt."

"And besides...you're making assumptions, you know?" The movement of Nakae's hand was a soft, dark blue, with a little bit of orange mixed in. Not a combination she'd seen before, but she didn't glean anything harmful from it. "Who says we all gotta kill each other? The grail revs up when seven Servants eat dirt, right? There's way more than that running around, here. Also, you're not a Servant." Airi raised an eyebrow at his rather strong verbiage. "So...saying I'm going to kill you at some point, isn't that a little, I dunno. Dumb? Mad? I'd really have to go out of my way for that, dude."

"So, if it's worth it even if something bad happens, and there's no guarantee that something bad will happen anyway, there's nothing strange about it."

Fate/Empty Providence

Izumi Airi — Magical Block Party

@Moonlit Sonata
@Berserk Gene
@DrowsyPangolin
@Yukitamas
@Holy Grail
@All

---

"Fuck. In hindsight, I should have asked if you could sense command spells, or something." Airi replied to Ruler, now holding an impressive stack of styrofoam plates that had been ruthlessly emptied of their contents. On her eighth burger now, she was slowing down, but Airi simply wasn't a person to let food go to waste.

That woman from the church was here...this was the second time they had seen each other. Airi briefly paused to note her conversation with the Archer-class servant, but no more than that — eavesdropping was in poor taste. More and more people were arriving in general, which was a good thing, to her.

Matsunaga stuck out to her in particular. There was something about a person who practiced martial arts — not just 'knowing the moves', but truly making the practice a part of you. It affected the way a person walked and stood, and held themselves. And for her, at least, there was a certain level of respect to be had in that alone. She nodded at his arrival, leaving it to Ruler to explain it to everyone once the congregation had— what the shit, is that a guy with blue hair!?

...Well, he's hardly the most ridiculous-looking guy here.

"Need a way to sense magi or Masters, huh..." Airi frowned, for once not thinking out loud simply because there was nowhere to start. She didn't live in that world. She had no idea what to even ask about for getting to something like that. Honestly, as far as the Grail War proper went, her plan for drawing out 'enemy' masters had just been to stomp around until someone came after her. "...You know anything, Ernest? Crocs?" Maybe one of them would have an idea. It was certainly a more manageable proposition than trying to sense the Black-Haired Man himself.

“Berserker sort of was one but that thing, that black haired man was it?… If it was a demon then it’d be under that other girl. If it’s really not part of any servant then it can’t be a demon.”

Airi turned towards Nakae, who was still quite a bit taller than her despite being younger than most of the other Masters. Honestly, she had been starting to wonder why it was all 30-year-olds here. "Oh hey, we saw each other at the church! You said you were heading to a convenience store." The girl recounted, with a grin. "You missed out, man. Ruler announced the free food like, right after that. You coulda saved some money."

The guy's outfit was a little thrown-together, and he looked...kinda ill? Well, he did lose his Servant, that couldn't have come easily to him. "Uh...well, that's good. I don't know a whole lot about Demons, I just know they're bad news." The girl admitted, slowly munching on the further half of burger number eight. "Apparently a bunch of my relatives died from one...Or like, a half-one...I never knew 'em or anything, but still, like, damn, you know?"

It was small talk for her, at least on the surface. But the memories of what had been in that box in the rubble of her home, the family history that had been hidden away, were still very fresh in her mind. There was so much that her mother hadn't told her. Maybe she had planned to, once Airi was older, but...

“So, are you confident in winning once we deal with this stuff?”

That was a question that threw Airi for a bit of a loop. She actually blinked at Nakae for a moment, as though he had brought up something that she hadn't expected. Her answer, though, didn't take much consideration. In a moment of being caught off-guard, the girl simply blurted out her feelings on the matter.

"I'm, uh, not really thinking about it."

She shrugged, finishing off the eighth burger, and looking for a moment like she was contemplating a ninth. But her stomach was already about to explode, it felt like. If she started eating another one, she wasn't sure whether or not she'd be able to finish the whole thing — and she'd much rather just stop than have to leave something half-eaten. She had gotten as much as she could out of the free food deal. With any luck, she'd be able to coast on it for a while before she had to spend money on food again.

"Well, you know...treating this like it's some kind of opportunity to get ahead, using it to scout people or throw them under the bus, or shit like that...that kind of teamwork doesn't get you very far." Airi said simply, setting the stack of empty plates aside. "I ran with a crew back in Western Tokyo...sometimes, we'd tussle with gangs that weren't put together very well. And you know what? It showed. It showed in the way they walked down the street together, in the way they fought...and you damn well better believe it showed in what they were able to accomplish." It was a rural area, or at least, as rural as Tokyo could possibly be, which wasn't very. There had always been the sharp and painful contrast between the Shinjuku high-rises she saw when visiting Yuko, and the empty lots that littered the place she and Hana called home. "A team like that is just the sum of its parts. We took 'em down like it was nothing, no matter how many of them there were. My crew was just three people, but our teamwork wasn't some half-hearted bullshit. I didn't roll that way back then, and I'm not changing up my style now."

Wistful memories...she kinda missed the simpler days. Before the box. Back when it was just the three of them, taking on common street thugs and tracking down drug dealers. No complicated magical shit to worry about. No meandering family histories. Just a lot of life lessons for the wrong kind of life, ones that she took to heart anyway, because that's how she had survived in that world.

More than that, though...more than she missed those days, she missed the days that had come before them.

"Yeah, there'll be a time when we're all enemies again. And I'll think about being enemies at that time." Airi admitted, "But, right now, it's the time for us to be friends. And I'll think about being friends at that time. There's no sense in tripping myself up on anything else."

---

That's why, I have to do this right.

What would she tell me, if I brought her back that way...?

---

With a rare smile, the girl extended out a hand to Nakae, offering a handshake.

"So, how about it? Wanna be friends?"

Izumi Airi's voice was oddly devoid of its usual roughness at that moment. It was still unmistakably her, but at the same time, there was an earnestness there, a simple joy that she partook in as any human did. In that crystallized moment, she was just a youthful person who enjoyed making connections with people for its own sake.

Fate/Empty Providence

I like the recap! It's super helpful to have that kind of stuff around. Thanks!

Fate/Empty Providence

Hehe~ I'm trying to tone it down a bit so that she can still be taken seriously, but I can't help but enjoy how utterly unrefined she is in this setting.

Fate/Empty Providence

Izumi Airi — Eastern Field

@Moonlit Sonata
@Berserk Gene
@DrowsyPangolin
[@All]

---

"Oh, hpey, are you phe ohn who waph comph—" Airi attempted to start a conversation with Ernest, but her mouth was full of burger (slightly less burger now, having sprayed a bit here and there). She finally managed to finish it off after a few seconds, turning back to her Servant. "Oh fuck off, dude, I haven't eaten since I got here."

...Does she know what the term 'potty mouth' means?

"Anyway..." Now not burdened with a mouthful of dead cow, the girl turned back to the necromancer with slightly less of a scowl now that she had finished her fourth burger and wasn't fucking starving. "Are you the one who was talking through that creepy-ass zombie earlier?" Their appearances were different, but their manner of speech were recognizably similar. "Hey, if you're the one who's Servant got offed, we're kinda in the same boat, dude. Not to, like, shit on what happened to you or anything, but I'm kinda glad it's not just us." Thumbing back to the croc-bearing man whose sense of fashion could only be described as Chaotic Mad. "I'm Izumi Airi. Mind if I just call you Ernest?" So many foreigners mixed up in this. At this point, it seemed like a reasonable assumption that anyone with katakana in their name could cast magic.

"Anyway. Yeah. Oh, hey, you're— oh wait, no, different guy. Damn, is every Archer in this war a white-haired prettyboy? Is that a Class Skill?" Casually referring to the mysterious servant of the bow as she grabbed hold of a fifth burger. They had a decently-sized chat group together, five people, not bad. "Anyway. Yeah. It's kind of a big deal. I mean, I said it before, but, the Church isn't even a safe place with that guy running around. Ruler, serious question, what would you even do if you were trying to shelter a former Master, and whats-his-face just plowed through the wall like the fucking Kool-Aid Man? Can you even actually do your job right now?"

Maybe she was giving him too hard of a time, given that he'd clearly put forth his best efforts to deal with the situation with the barbecue and all, but Airi wasn't the type to pull punches, verbally. The Archer Servant hadn't been there at the Church, so it merited repeating in any case. "People can't even drop out of the war safely. So we gotta group up and do something if we wanna have an actual Grail War without it turning into a massive fucking mudslide."

After downing a fifth burger in record time, the unpleasantly loud girl began reaching for a sixth with no hesitation. "Props for the free food, by the way." She mentioned to Ruler, turning back to Ernest. "And I think we do have a way to track down where he's been operating from recently...or narrow it down further, at least..." Her speech slowed down somewhat, as she came out of her usual ramble and into a more serious dialogue.

"Stirner Cartisius. This guy and me were planning on going after him anyway, but it'll be better with a group." Airi didn't go for a seventh burger — not yet, at least — arriving at the figurative meat of what she wanted to say. "We can't track down the Black-Haired Man, since he basically doesn't show up on radar. But we do know that he kidnapped a mage, who is also a Master in the war." She recounted, "'Tracking down other Masters' is a thing that most people here can do. Even if we don't find the culprit, finding where he took Stirner will probably give us some intel on him, since it'll be an area that he's been to before, at the least. And if we get really lucky, he'll be cornered up there and we can just collapse on the guy like you mentioned."

'Safety in numbers' was rule number one in her world. To the others, the prospect of partnering up with other Master/Servant pairs, or even revealing abilities to them, must have been a hard pill to swallow. But for Airi, that reticence was something that she simply didn't understand. She was glad that Ernest seemed to be on-board with the Anti-Interference Coalition — having his own Servant killed by the guy probably helped with that. Airi hadn't been sure how well she'd be able to get along with mages in general, based on Yuko's description of them, but this guy and her were already pretty much on the same page, from her perspective, despite their wildly differing backgrounds and demeanors. If nothing else, that was something that Airi could be happy about.

"He was on the northwest end when he got sideswiped. So based on that n'the other stuff, maybe Ruler can do like you said and point us somewhere, without giving away people's info? Otherwise we'll have to go to the hotel they were at and do like forensics n'shit. Hopefully someone else has a third piece of info that can narrow it down more...as fast as that guy is, he can probably cross over the city without too much time, so the locations of his previous appearances might not even mean much."

Having given her piece, Airi finally began on burger number seven, turning back to her Servant. "Hey, though...you said 'black-haired demon', earlier...do you really think that's what he is? Like, 'Demon' with a capital D?"

Fate/Empty Providence

Apologies if we jumped the gun a bit. We're just at the field a little early, didn't mean to pressure anyone else who had stuff to tie up before that.

Fate/Empty Providence

Izumi Airi — Eastern Field

@Moonlit Sonata
@Berserk Gene

---

"Boss, you've got ten seconds to start making some goddamn sense."

Airi sighed heavily, the weight of recent events finally weighing down on her after so much time spent running dauntlessly ahead. She considered it something of a secret to moving forward — don't look too hard at the blurs. After all, you'll pass them soon enough, or you'll die.

But when the time came to stop and rest, she had to look. She had to confront the track she was running on, and the vision stabbed at her eyes.

"Okay, okay, Hana, look—."

"Nine."

"Kajin! Just listen, you fucking dickbag!"

...Had Berserker overheard that outburst? They were supposed to be headed to the thrift store soon...

"Look, it's...shit's not going down right over here." A ragged breath escaped her oft-stony demeanor, as she placed a single hand over the other side of her head, physically pushing against the headache that was rapidly forming. "You know the way Yuko explained this whole thing, right? It's not like that at all. There's a lot more people in the running than there are supposed to be, and there's this 'Ruler' person that she didn't say anything about..."

Hana was quiet on the other end of the line, but she could hear him seething. Long-distance conversations with him were always difficult. They were both very physical people - without that crucial means of communication, both of them were prone to finding themselves unable to express their feelings.

"And there's this guy. No one knows who he is, but...he's not part of the War, and he's just, he's fucking with everything. Fucking everything up. So, like I said, it's on hold for a b—"

"You know what's not on hold!? The fucking zombies!!" The phone screeched into her ear, almost cutting into static as Hana's voice rose above any normal parameter. "Airi, you fucking listen. Yuko's been telling me about those religious wackos. The church people, or, or the church itself, or whatever. They're motherfuckin' cold blooded. If they catch wind of what's going on over here, they'll kill everyone. They'll make everyone forget that this place was even a part of Tokyo. It'll be like we never fucking existed, man! And once they get a whiff of the vampire pie on the windowsill, it's game over, for us and your sister!!"

She couldn't remember the last time she had heard Hana so afraid, so visceral. She couldn't say that she knew much about the nebulous organizations that seemed to oversee so many things, but the threat looming over her hometown wasn't something that could just be brushed aside.

"We're trying to put a cap on the fuckin' Night of the Living Dead shit over here, but we're only human. It's slowed down a lot, since the curfew and all, but...it's not like the disappearances here have stopped." She recognized his tone. He had exhausted himself in his own anger. "The clock's ticking, Airi. And we don't even know how much time is left on it."

Her back slid down against the wall, seating her on the cold ground. The girl's head rested on her knees, as she closed her eyes, tugged in too many directions at once, burdened with too much at once. Don't falter, don't break. It's not what Asuka would do. She would have been able to handle this, somehow, someway. What would she do? What would a strong person do?

Each day the holy grail remained unformed, remained in Fuyuki, remained out of her hands...back in Tokyo, that strange plague would continue to spread, person by person. With someone precious to her at the center of it all — someone precious only to her. Someone whom any other actor wouldn't hesitate to eliminate, in order to quell the cancerous growth.

For each day that she pursued another goal, lives were lost and thrown away, for the sake of her love, her beloved and twisted justice.

"...Listen, Kajin." Airi's voice failed to return the boy's ardor, lethargic and weak. "There's...another reason I want to bring Asuka back. More than just because she's my sister. There's...something that I have to do." With her eyes closed, and her hand over her ear blocking out everything else, the phone was her world. The rocky ground was hard and uncomfortable, the wind chewed at the holes in her ragged clothing, but none of it moved her. None of it reached her. "I have to...apologize. For the life I lived. For the second chance that she gave me, the one that I...threw away, like a goddamn idiot."

"That's why, I have to do this right. That's why...I mean...if I really did go through this by turning a blind eye to everything, by letting it all go downhill, and sacrificing everyone else to stay on top of the mudslide...what would she tell me, if I brought her back that way?" The girl asked, not to the phone, but simply to herself, a question that she already had the answer for. "I can almost hear it in her voice. 'You should have just staked me'."

"...Does that even actually work?"

"Who knows?"

For a while, it was only breathing between the two of them. But as weak as her voice was, the girl's stance was firm. There was no rushing this. Her method was bound by a foundation, and to undercut that foundation was to destroy the value of the method.

That was why she had to chase this. That was why she couldn't ignore the Black-Haired Man, or the fact that the landscape of the ritual was so drastically altered. That was why she had to get to the bottom of everything.

...So that, when Airi faced her sister again, she could greet her with a smile.

"Ugh..." Hana sighed into the receiver, blowing more static into his close friend's ear. "You've always been like that, you know?" As he pointed it out, Airi could almost hear the reluctant grin in his voice. "Looking back, I think that's why I joined up with you, after all..."

The girl's body leaned back, opening its eyes once more. "Alright, boss. We'll do things your way, like usual." He relented, "Yuko and I will keep things under wraps here as much as we can. Leave Tokyo to us. You...you do this right. Once the gang is back together, I'll punch you in the face for all the trouble you're putting us through. But for now...you do this right."

---

Idiot. It's not like I know any other way to begin with.

---

A short girl who would be unassuming in any other context. But here, despite her statue, physical and societal, that girl held her head high. A faux master, perhaps. A temporary contender, perhaps. But her fists, and her resolve, were neither fake nor transient.

A short girl who wasn't afraid to stand up in a room of saints, kings, and magi, and shout what she believed in at the top of her lungs.

The clock is always ticking. Life's too short to save your words.

Her dark hair was unkempt as always, giving the appearance that it had, at one point, been tied into a neat pair of twintails, which had since frayed and nearly come apart. Her overtop, the same white hoodie that she had kept for years, was worn and scuffed, and her faded jeans were no different, with a threadbare gash at the right knee that only grew larger with each passing day. Even the pair of relatively solid-looking running shoes around her feet looked like they had been sanded down at the soles by concrete and asphalt, and many, many nighttime walks.

She was the very opposite of royalty, a walking antithesis to sovereignty in every aspect of her gait and appearance. A person who had inherited nothing. A person who could never be a called 'magus'.

And yet, here she was.

"'My discretion', come the fuck on." She jeered at her own Servant, stretching the pockets at the front of her hoodie as she rested her hands there, casting a pair of bright blue eyes across the field. "I'd be here even if I wasn't invited."

In a way, she wasn't invited at all. Invited by the Grail itself, maybe, in some twist of circumstance. Fourteen was a tough number to reach, it seemed. By Ruler, maybe, only by virtue of that indefensible right that an impartial overseer wasn't within their power to deny. But in the end, that was all. A singular entity, the bare minimum level of acceptance required for entry. A complete nobody, shoving their way to the front of the line, because somehow, at some time, they had found a golden ticket on the ground and happened to pick it up.

Izumi Airi was perfectly fine with that.

The way she held herself was overtly aggressive. Hands balled into fists as they rested in that tattered hoodie, chin up, back straight, and a mean look on her face, nose crumpled as though someone had just shoved a fistful of garlic in front of it. When she spoke, her voice was steady, loud, and held nothing back.

In the back alleys, on the darkened and deserted sidewalks, that kind of look had kept her out of trouble, and that brutal honesty had made her irreplaceable friends. What it would all accomplish here and now was anyone's guess.

But there was one thing that no one could doubt, from the very first glance. Whatever it did accomplish, everyone would see.

"Sunglasses called everyone here, right? Or all the Servants, at least." Airi mentioned, to Berserker, completely failing to keep to any kind of indoor voice. She had already given him all kinds of shit about his outfit on the way there, but the guy was just being himself at the end of the day. It would almost be respectable if it weren't for the crocs. "Jeez, does he know that you can give people a kick in the ass without making them kill themselves? Like, seriously, you'd think he's never heard of a fucking time-out."

It would be the first, and maybe the only time that each and every contender was gathered to one place. It meant a lot of first impressions. A procession of people who wanted the same thing as her in the end, who would look at her, judge her, and decide for themselves who she was or wasn't. And the girl would do the same in turn, without apology.

And then, everyone would move forward. Just like her, everyone would run wildly forward, without looking at the blurs. After all, if they didn't, they would be left behind.


In contrast to the pervasive and shadowy mysteries surrounding the city, the one that preoccupied the girl's mind at this moment was quite the simple one.

What does 'forward' mean to them?

Fate/Empty Providence

"I will bring snacks."