Yukitamas

Fate/Empty Providence

Oh shit son.

To be fair we should've expected this. Actually this isn't too surprising, but fuck.

Fate/Empty Providence

I somehow feel like this is a terrible idea on a Rider's part.

I'll see if I can get my Dragon Ball-esque reactions going on.

Fate/Empty Providence

"Get the Masters out of harm's way! If your Master is safe, then start attacking, we need to find some sort of a weakness!"

It wasn’t just that. Even if they decided that they can’t beat it and run away how can they really prepare for it? It appeared without warning, who’s to say it can’t disappear again?

“Can it just appear? Was it hiding all along?” he asked to Ruler. But hiding something like that seemed too ridiculous, how could that hide? Despite the fact that he wasn’t a magus the fact that it did something, that it was improving itself and shifting itself was obvious. Why didn’t it just do that before appearing? Was it that it couldn’t surprise them if that was the case?

But as frightening as the surprise was, confusion sown, if it was so fast and strong then why didn’t it configure itself in this mode, changing its body and “arms” and “blade”. If it was connected to individuals who were interfering with, and watching the war then surely they’d know what a servant was like, and how to exceed them.

For some reason there was something noble, and yet terrifying in its swing. If it was strong with no apparent weaknesses then why was it strong? Why was it strong? Why why why?

It was strong because it was large.

It was strong because it was fast.

It was strong because it was skilled.

The first thing was the only thing unique to it. IT was just a larger servant, but that made it a threat to the masters. But even if you removed the masters from the battlefield it’d still be incredibly dangerous.

Would it be able to stand a chance against that girl?

...Somehow he felt as though he could imagine her victory. It was not human, but a castle was a thing that protected people . How could that which tormented people not defeat their protections? A castle was strong in the stead of normal people, but it could not conquer that which was beyond people. The dragon always kidnapped the princess despite the castle.

It was strong and fast, and too large to fight as an equal. But it was skilled because it could move with intent. Where was that intent coming from? From this giant of stone. It had to have a will, it had pain after all. It wasn’t just a robot acting according to moves programmed into it, it changed specifically into this. Was it adapting? Or was it mimicking?

“Why is it changing only now?” he cried out to Ruler, unable to think of the solution. He knew so little, too little. It was large because it was a castle, it was strong because it was a castle, it was fast and skilled because this was a war of crazy things that shouldn’t be. If that girl was there, then why not a castle like that? What was hiding in this world all along? Would it be strange for a undefeatable castle to appear, in a war like this? If they found a weakness then couldn't it just change to make it disappear? if they turned a strength of it's own self against it couldn't it remove that? What were its limits? what could it not do?

But if it had a scar then that meant it was hurt, right? In some form, in some way.

“Why not before? Why is it only fighting like this now?” It was the only thing he could think of, ultimately. He could only offer dumb, obvious answers as to why it had the physical parameters it did, but why did it change like that and why did it not strike like that in the beginning?

"There has to be something, it could have just struck like that from the beginning and been like that before it came!"

Maybe it'd be a line of thought that would waste everyone's time and get them killed, but it was the only thing still. So he shouted his thought to the overseer until he was heard over the gales and those who spoke, giving their voices to the tortured winds instead of withdrawing within their mental links.

Fate/Empty Providence

That's cold man.

Fate/Empty Providence

The question is can someone say Cao Cao's name near the golem and allow him to appear within the golem, behind the anti-spirit shields and defenses?

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"Everybody move!"

He craned his head towards the source of the warning when suddenly his world came to be that of violent winds, from the rush of air that cried out in disbelief from the sudden presence of the looming castle, to the speed of Ruler in his protective action.

His head felt like it was being jumbled as much as the burgers that were even more of a mess now. Clumps of ground up beef falling apart and mixing in with dust and dirt until they were just as much a part of the ground as the earth. If he didn’t have help he’d be just like that. Toshi shook his head before forcing himself to look towards the towering golem, eyes struggling against the winds and trying to focus as the light that only he could see radiated from it.

“That…”

It wasn’t nearly as bad as the portal. Compared to that this was all a soft breeze. He was still as helpless as when Berserker dealt with the raining blades, but now he knew what to expect, and his mind began to start rolling again much faster.

“There’s something to it’s middle, something that was hurt a long, long time ago. It’s white… like Berserker was. Is it demonic? I don’t know. Berserker wasn’t a demon, he was an Oni. But in there… in it’s middle, inside.”

He scoffed to himself before taking in a deep breath. Of course something important would be in the middle. But what did it mean for it to have a scar like that? What was this thing?

He shouted, in the hopes of Ruler being able to hear him, bellowing out his lungs to the point that his voice wavered and almost cracked.

“In the middle, it’s core, I guess. There’s something there, something that can feel pain, or felt pain in the past. Don’t ask how. I don’t even know what it is or if it’s important. Something about it is like an Oni too, I think!”

What kind of stuff was he saying. It was hardly useful, was it? But why, what was it? The castle that walked, the castle that hid a secret within. He should be fearing for his life, but the strange sight made him wonder about it. What was this? What was in there? It wasn’t anything weird or mindboggling after being shown these myths that should shatter any conceptions of the world. But it was a simple question that hung in his mind.

“How do we get in?..”

He tried to break off from Ruler, to stand on his own feet, to look at it clearly and witness it on his own. He raised a hand to shield his face and found that his stomach squirmed once more, this time due to simple biology rather than any response to trauma. He didn't feel good, but he felt way better than before. The simple comfort of food, even if it was interrupted, and the offer of safety for a short time was something that let him stand up again.

Ah... but next time he hoped he'd get time to actually finish eating something instead of having it spilled over the ground.

Fate/Empty Providence

In other news castles are freaky-deaky weird when you look at them with weird eyes.

Fate/Empty Providence

@SIGINT

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?"

He shook his head. “I can eat still. Besides, I need something for later.” Left unsaid was the somber fact that it wouldn’t matter if he died in the near future. But he wasn’t going in this with the intent to lose. With a much more normal, albeit still voracious hunger of the student who was equal parts too lazy and apathetic to cook something and yet enjoyed the simple pleasures of life, especially in his solitude, he began to grab at what he could, starting on his own binging. Without much care for his manners he ate, swiftly, silently, a bit clumsily, in a manner that made the number of napkins at his part of the table slowly build up.

“I don’t know anything about them. I don’t even know anything about magic or anything. I guess to put it one way I knew about the supernatural, but nothing about it, the same way normal people know about a train, but nothing about how they work, what models they are and the details. A train is just a train, the supernatural was just the supernatural. I fell into this war's lap in a way."

He rubbed at his face and shook his head again, towards her before returning his focus to the food again.

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

"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."

"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."

Exactly what he was doing in a way, but also because he was too weak to stand on his own.Still, even if someone wasn’t doing that, friends?

"That’s an odd way of putting it. Friends is a strong word for people you work with for a short time before killing them. If anything, isn’t that the cruelest or worst way to put it?”

He put his burger down, and waved some juice stained fingers at his direction. His lips moved and his face slowly craned down as though it was going to plant itself onto the table.

“ That sounds way worse than anything else. You’re making something that’s already unpleasant even more painful, more horrible. It sounds sad. It sounds dumb. It sounds mad.”

…

Ah, those were suppose to be in his head. He ended up whispering it, didn’t he? Whispers that snuck under her words, skulking about, trying to be unheard. It felt a bit like how those who would be thinking of the future instead of the now with this joint-venture were acting. He whipped his head back up to see if she noticed, face suddenly presented with hers as she reached out. His locks of hair sprawled out of his face, revealing his eyes clearly for once from the motion, leaving him a bit surprised and almost flinching back from her.

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.

It hurt, it hurt ah… it hurt. He looked away, then looked back at her, torn between seeing her to protect himself and trying to escape it completely. “Let’s be friends.” It was a thing he heard of course before, but he couldn’t accept it. It’d fall apart, and he’d be alone, and that was the best. What was the point of being around someone like him with these eyes? What was the point of someone like him being with others? To be around others was painful, but that pain was still better if he couldn’t put a name to it.

It’s just pain, nothing more. Stay nothing, be nothing, you have to or else it will hurt even more.

Even when he looked his gaze seemed to want to avoid her and his eyes focused on strange places, places that people did not usually focus on with other people.

Even after seeing that he didn’t want this. What was good? Everything felt more like a lack of bad to him, especially now.

He reached out with his hand, he’d take what was good and learn about it. Betray? Learn? Well, maybe this play at whatever this was would end with her simply dead from something else. His e hand moved before he thought about it, and his mind was simply trying to catch up, to offer justification. In the end, faced with all that was punishing in the world he found himself with want. Want to push him into the madness that was to continue to fight, to go despite knowing that she without doubt waited at the end of the road.

I want to be happy.

Is this a way? What was the path to it? It didn’t matter what it was, but he’d take them as offered until he finally found his way.

This was a war about wishes, right?

“Sure.”

Fate/Empty Providence

It was, perhaps not too surprising that he went for the food first. Without a word he went to the table to pick up a drink of what was on offer, slinking through the crowd that was admittedly, a bit strange to be around. This gathering was hardly the atmosphere of that of a war. It was more like an….an american picnic or something? Well, that’s what it made him think of anyway.

The others were enemies. He didn’t need the excuse to avoid them but it wasn’t weird for him to not come up to them chattering. Enemies, each one of a them another person between him and victory. Kill them all, beat them all… They all have servants, so many legends like the demented things he’s seen. They’re all like those berserkers… No, none of them could be like her. Even then...

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?"

At this he finally spoke up, leaning over and slumping onto the table as best as he could, barely avoiding placing his arms and face in some food. Noisy wasn’t she? It was what got them all grouped up in the first place so he couldn’t complain, but she was a weird girl.
“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.” It was a childish reassuring thought, with the logic of a fallacy. If it was so dangerous he hoped it wasn’t under her, that it couldn’t be shackled by her. She was already something she didn’t want to fight and he hoped someone else would kill her. Things wouldn’t work out that pretty he felt, and it felt like it’d be likely she’d be the last one standing. Please die, please don’t be there at the grail at the end of all this bloodshed, that was the fervent wish born of fear and pain that he whispered as he took a bite to eat.

“This beats sitting around with a frozen dinner, so even if nothing happens I won’t complain about my time being wasted." With the food returning back to his mind he craned his head over his shoulder to stare at Ruler. What a strange man. He was a person who seemed to hold a sense of responsibility but went beyond that as well, taking into account considerations and concerns other might consider frivolous or trivial in the wake of a war like this. In a way to him, he seemed less like a judge and more like a nanny, or a well-meaning person. What was he exactly? He was some hero, right? but what kind of hero flips burgers during a war meeting? There were a lot of people here that were weird, but for some reason he felt like that man and the girl whose initiative started this meeting in the first place were the oddest. Even weird became normal if it was the majority, in the presence of all these magi, they seemed to be normal in a weird way. What then, did they think of him? someone who seemed to be charging into his death, he'd probably be considered the weirdest of them all.

"So, are you confident in winning once we deal with this stuff?" he decided to ask the girl.

Fate/Empty Providence

Your Servant died?" "Hey, wait a minute...that gaudy dude mentioned someone was about to lose their servant when I got brought here...did you come here from the graveyard?"

His brow twitched. Nakae glowered for a moment, although not really at her. Ah, it was a good thing he couldn’t see things on himself, or otherwise… “Yeah, I did.”

His attention returned to the supervisor. The odds that were probably very generous on part of this judge, this... Ruler told him were received with a nod. He knew that, he knew that he was basically going to die if he fought. It wasn't anything brave. It was only brave to gamble with something if it had worth and was important. If it was something that didn't really matter whether you had it or not then there wasn't any bravery in risking it. He wasn’t brave at all. But he was rather grateful about that salvation from that the gaudy man granted him. "Yeah... thanks for that." He couldn't meet the man's shade-covered eyes and instead looked over to a corner that didn't seem to have anyone lingering. "Yeah, it wouldn't just be death. You saved me in more ways than you know with that."

He slinked back towards the pews, silent as the conversation turned to the strange happenings and monsters that plagued this war that were apparently very abnormal. If that was normal, in any sort of degree then what would be abnormal? He didn’t want to know, not at all. He was abnormally powerful, strange, and apparently something that made Ruler feel disturbed, even as he accepted the existence of that. He couldn’t believe he would feel something worse than that,

But…

"So, the solution here seems really simple to me. How about we stop fucking fighting each other, chasing after everyone's favorite Magical Big Gulp like a pack of autistic ferrets, because you can damn well guess that's what he's hoping we do. He's given no indication that he can or will attack a group, so we make a fucking group and come down on his ass like an eighteen-wheeler."

He stepped out again after taking a glance at every other person present. He couldn’t beat them, he couldn’t beat their servants, not even if he knew about them. If he knew something then maybe… he’d at least know how deep a hole he was digging himself.

He couldn’t do anything alone, he needed to know more and try. This was a way to fulfill both of those criteria. He’d be seen as weak maybe, being the first to latch on like this. He was weak, and there was nothing wrong with being seen as that. He didn’t have anything to be prideful about now, especially as he could still taste the tinge of sour of whatever mess the traces of his last meal was. Actually, despite everything he felt pretty hungry and thirsty.

"I'm going to a convenience store first however."