Alex tries to usher me out of the dojo.
“We have to get out. This isn't a place for normal humans.”
She sounds frightened.
How many Servants are coming? Why?
“We'll be safer inside the dojo. They can't get through if Rider's there. Until Saber beats him, we'll be safe.”
Alex looks at me as if I had suggested Rider would be defeated by a paper bag.
She actually seems to be holding back laughter.
“You're pretty confident in Saber. I'm going to be sad watching you cry after she dies.”
I blink.
“....................!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Is that Berserker?
How quickly does he recover?!
The side of the dojo is turned into fine powder within seconds.
Not even splinters, just sawdust.
A black bear on a black horse.
Berserker glares at us.
The other wall shatters into a pale yellow....
..Sand?
Rider smashes through, both feet planted firmly into the side of Berserker's face.
A scepter, or a cane, something of the sort, comes lancing down on Berserker like a beam of light.
Somehow, he raises a sword to stop it, and getting his legs over him, kicks back on Rider, sending the golden King to smash into the sand.
“We are leaving!”
Alex screams, dragging me through the door of the dojo, as if the wall were still there.
Saber is already there, grinning fiercely, Archer over her shoulder with Regulator pointed at where Rider and Berserker smash at each other with enough force to shatter solid stone.
Is that Assassin in the shadows as well?
She grins at me.
Saber points Excalibur at Alex.
“Give him to me.”
She demands.
“RIDER!”
“..............!!!!!!!!!”
Berserker flies in like a missile, hitting both Saber and Archer.
Rider lances out from under the dojo, which is now more of a wrecked pavilion than a building.
Berserker, to his credit, is already there, and manages to even loose a few arrows before he has to draw his strange saber out again.
They all miss by a wide margin.
The strange cane and saber meet again, as Saber rolls backward back onto her feet, transferring the momentum of the attack into a standing position.
Archer does some kind of acrobatic flip back onto his feet, before holstering Regulator and pulling out a rifle.
“LONGINUS!”
Suddenly a crimson burst of light arcs into his back, but at the last second spins violently, as if deflected by something.
“Gah!”
Archer is blown off his feet again, as the Lance shimmers and vanishes.
I don't have an opportunity to get a good look at Lancer.
He's moving too fast for my eyes to do much more than track him as a blur, and dodging deadly accurate shots from Archers rifle.
“Archer?!”
Saber doesn't have time to worry about Lancer.
Berserker falters under Rider's relentless assault.
The cane lashes down from above like the fury of the sun.
Not about to lose a – at the very least nominal – ally, Excalibur dips in to deflect the blunt weapon.
But before Saber can follow up, a bolt of lightning blows everyone off their feet.
Caster clings to a tree, fingers outstretched.
“Good to be working with you again, Servant Saber!”
The eyes under his hood sparkle with excitement.
“Haven't had a battle like this in a long time! Ha ha!”
“Oh no, not you!”
Saber looks like someone meeting their old high school bully at a reunion, to find neither of them had changed at all.
“Hit the brown one!”
Assassin sounds as though she's enjoying the spectacle immensely.
“Now that's just offensive! Some of my best lovers were brown!”
Archer dips and weaves through a dizzying array of stabs by Lancer before smashing him in the forehead with the butt of his pistol.
He has just enough time to dodge the fireball flung at him by Caster.
“Damn!”
My eyes turn to Saber, who is engaging Rider and Berserker at once.
It’s almost like watching an exceptionally complex dance by three people at once, as Saber, Berserker, and Rider all try to kill each other with varying strikes, parries, and simply trying to get one between the other.
Excalibur drives towards Rider's navel, only to be intercepted by Berserker's attack, which arcs towards her neck, is caught by Rider, who.....
Each wants the other two to fight each other, in a dizzying sort of alliance between three enemies.
Rider's smile is wide as he ducks low and sweeps wide, catching Berserker by surprise.
Berserker hits the ground hard, but even jarred manages to lash out a kick.
Saber takes the opportunity and cuts at Rider's exposed neck, only to find her sword intercepted by Rider's crook and driven instead toward Berserker.
Berserker rolls, and Excalibur slices nothing but stone, leaving Saber off balance and vulnerable to attack, but Berserker interrupts, hurling a long spear out of nowhere towards Rider's back.
The stalemate continues.
I'm grabbed roughly by my shirt.
“Stop staring and run!”
Alex pushes me towards the exit of the courtyard.
Suddenly she's forced to dodge a bolt of lightning.
“I'm afraid this is where you end, McRemitz.”
Haruhi?
Then the ground explodes all around me.
A pair of stockings race past me with the flash of a gem.
“Mother?”
“Shut the hell up and run! Explodieren ihre Unterwasche!”
Several explosions issue from both Alex and Haruhi.
I feel someone strong picking me up.
“Kiritsugu, how did you start this mess?”
Father asks, hurtling towards the gate to the school.
“REGULATOR!”
“EXCALIBUR!”
“NIVIANE!”
“LONGINUS!”
“........................!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
The sounds behind us grow thunderous as everyone uses their noble phantasm, the silence broken by Archer.
And then.
Everything gets very, very quiet.
“Ruin.”
There's a sound like the drain being pulled from the bottom of a lake-sized bathtub.
And that's when the Servants, the Masters, even Mother, all begin to scream.
I hear Andrea cry out from behind the dojo.
Maybe she was trying to sneak around.
Even Father stumbles, and it's not hard to see why.
I feel it myself.
It's like all the magic is getting drained out of the world through a black hole.
It's like a singularity in the schoolyard, ripping reality apart.
My eyes are drawn to Rider.
His grin has finally faded, replaced by a deathly glare.
A small drop of blood rolls down his cheek.
In one hand he's raising a orb of sand.
The sand pours through his fingers, but the orb doesn't grow smaller.
Lancer is crying openly as he claws the ground, dragged along by some unseen force.
Saber is curled in a ball, rolling on the ground.
Archer is not much better off.
Both of them are sobbing.
My head throbs.
I feel like my very soul is being ripped out of my body with this thing.
Lancer is leaving furrows in the dirt as he tries not to fall towards Rider.
But no matter how much he struggles, he still slides towards the King in Gold.
“Peasants. Well fought peasants, I'll give you that. But you need to learn how to lose. I suppose few of you know who I am, so I will give you the benefit of the doubt today.”
Lancer is begging to no one as he comes within a few meters of Rider.
“You need to be quiet. Ruin.”
Lancer's scream is distorted as his whole body stretches horrifically, until the top of his head and the bottom of his feet meet each other on the surface of the orb, two meters from the rest of his body.
Stretched like a preztel, I can't even begin to imagine the pain Lancer is experiencing.
It seems to be cut mercifully short when the rest of his form is drawn in, and the sobs and cries for forgiveness are cut short.
Caster drops out of the tree, clutching at himself.
Assassin is already on the ground.
They aren't crying, but I guess that's because they're farther away.
Berserker struggles to stand, but each time falls over, growing closer to the orb with each attempt.
His arm is half buried in the ground just to keep him in the same spot.
Saber's armor seems to be saving her, digging into the ground with each plate. But it's fading, leaving behind nothing but a simple blue dress.
The silver plates seems to flicker and twist, drawn into the orb of sand. Drawn into Ruin.
“This is but one of my Noble Phantasms. Ruin, the Despair of the Mighty. For I am the King of Kings, the Pharoah before Pharoahs. I am Ramssess II, Ozymandias, King of Kings.”
He raises the orb higher, and the pounding in my head grows stronger.
“Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.”
Ozymandias crushes Ruin with one charcoal hand.
And all the magic it had absorbed is forced back out with feeling.
A wave of warped reality smashes through Berserker, through Saber, through Archer and Assassin, smashing into Father and I like a roiling cloud.
We hit the wall surrounding the courtyard as if thrown by a giant.
Father takes the brunt of the impact, and even though he's tougher than most men, I'm concerned when the stone cracks under the force.
I find myself in a heap near the gate, with Father, Mother, and Haruhi.
Rider, confident that none of the other Servants would stop thrashing in time to stop him, merely walks over to Alex, and holds her over his shoulder like a bag of rice.
And then something bright yellow flashes, and he's gone.
There's a moment of silence.
The most frightening thing being Saber's soft crying.
It's that night.
After that battle, everyone was content to go their separate ways.
Even Berserker had lost too much energy, and decided to run instead of continuing the fight.
Archer and Andrea were able to walk back, but Saber wasn't so lucky.
Arturia had been tasked with keeping the noise inside the schoolyard, so she was furthest away.
She was also the only one able to cast any kind of magic.
We're sitting around the table now, everyone shaken by tonight’s events.
Archer looks so weak I begin to think I could beat him in a fight.
Andrea, for her part, seems almost dead, staring blankly ahead unless addressed directly.
Mother looks a little better, but not much, and Father keeps flexing his hands and wincing.
Aunt Ilya is resting. Even though she was furthest off when Ruin activated, her status as a homunculus – and an old homunculus at that – made her particularly vulnerable.
She's actually on IV while everyone else is eating.
Myself, I feel as though something awful tried to rip my arms off, but I'm not entirely drained.
I manage to make a some plain rice and bland tea for everyone without making a horrible mistake.
Everyone is silent, waiting for someone to say the first thing.
I------------
Author
Topic: Fate / Lunar Sun (Read 26488 times)