One step forward and three rollbacks...

Medusa (aka Servant Rider)

’Fate/Zero’? Medea blinks, looking a bit surprised (and dismayed) at this development. From the mutters of Lilith about some nonsense about how the Higher Up’s briefing (?) had mentioned that this Quest would have situations reflecting her sister’s situation in more ways than were comfortable, my Master over there is less than pleased by turns of events as well here.

….

Like finding a Contract that nobody in their right MINDS should be messing with has a title they weren’t expecting is any more disturbing than everything ELSE here and now is worthy of concern!?

I . . .I cannot . . .

I can’t put it off. I cannot deny the evidence before me that I’d been WILLFULLY ignoring.

Why can I NOT remember anything after my fight with MY Saber? Why can I not remember?! Saber and her sisters here remember things after their key battles! The more talkative version of Berseker’s Master over there? The one that keeps calling Shiro Emiya brother?! She can remember things from AFTER the Grail War, but not ME!

Nor not her subdued sister either, who I heard angered mutterings from Rei about something about a heart being ripped out of her body in between cursing the name of Nasu (whoever that is!) more than a few times there!

I’d failed my Master, my TRUE Master in my battle with Servant Saber. My true Master, my Sakura. . .

DAMNIT, I had LOST do Saber and had died, leaving Sakura to the mercies of that monster of a grandfather of her’s with those worms. Sakura thinks she’s alone and lost, without me to help!!

. . .

The worms…. I wanted to finish and win the battle with Saber (and kill that fool Shinji in the process) so I could serve my true Master…

Lilith

Just what exactly are you intending here with me and my sisters Princess Medea? the one Saber of the bunch who’d been the most suspicious of this group asks, sounding concerned by this development. If you intend to break our Contracts with . . .grk!!

The increasingly imperious Servant Saber finds herself interrupted as the apparent contract Medea had been tampering with flashes and joins with the speaking woman, doing a fine job of interrupting her by knocking her to the ground. But unlike Archer here, it looks more Painful than something that would cause laughter by her grimacing in pain.

Do you know what a Counter Guardian is King Arthur!? Rei blinks, not believing that this rather hard headed woman hasn’t grasped the obvious (or been WILLING to grasp it); an exasperating situation indeed! It means that basically to NOT mince words the poor soul who becomes one has to spend all of their afterlife doing dirty deeds, doing ANYTHING and EVERYTHING that they’re ordered by that Spirit in order for Humanity as a whole to survive from things and people who’d cause it’s extinction, even if and by usually damning means of massive slaughter of ANYONE and everyone around said danger. Guardians are something like that but MUCH worse . . .

Even IF you’d . . .we’d gotten our wish through the Grail to save Camelot? one of the other Saber ‘sisters’ who’d been most frustrated with her downed, stubborn sister, interrupting Rei’s diatribe/explanation.

She’s actually implying that the Sabers, when they made that Contract with the World, made it with Gaia?! She’s right! Gaia, the personification of nature? That bitch tasks her Guardians to perform similar tasks like what Counter Guardians do, but also have them hunt out and destroy threats to Her existence and her creation as well.

Sometimes that means slaughtering human beings who’d grown too powerful and threated Gaia’s existence by threatening ALL life on Earth. If . . .mankind grew too powerful and had through pollution and neglect destroyed the ecosphere of Earth, and slain Gaia in the process?

Oh Hade, Saber and he sister would have been tasked to go out (against their will and not under their own control) and slaughter every last man, woman and human child until slain in turn…if possible.

…

No wonder Medea and her friends here had been so froggy in breaking those Contracts!

As soon as our wish was granted and the terms of the Contract fulfilled? the one Saber sister continues, having no knowledge of my dark trains of thought. Soon enough we’d have OCEANS of blood on our hands! Don’t you understand that? Fulfilling that Contract meant we’d be plunged into a hell that we’d soon be . . . it would be against everything we believed in!

Uh no, the young winged man, John Quatermain corrected the speaking Saber while shaking his head. You made a Contract with the World all right, yeah. With Gaia!

Making you her’s even IF you opted in not making a Wish upon a Grail because--hey!—Gaia provided the MEANS of fulfilling your wish, even IF said means turns out to be too fuckin’ evil and costly? Make any difference according to the fine print of the Contract?

Nope! John chirps unhappily, continuing shaking his head slowly. You were going to be Gaia’s cleaner whether you took the Wish or not because by BEING here in the Grail War? Just by being here by the fine print of the Contract? You got ripped from your time to here to change things. Make a new time stream off branching from that last battle where your son had mortally wounded you and Camelot was going to fall with your last breath in this timeline here in Japan with the Holy Grail War. Make a thriving and wonderful Camelot legacy and change your Fate.

But win or lose, You were still screwed. At least up until you all started time looping and Medea having stabbed your Contracts, John finishes, nodding to himself having done his duty in informing the Sabers of their situation. That and having done a good job of distraction

The Sabers look at John blankly before John’s words sink in. THEN they go ghostly pale, or at least up until, and then they all (except for the Fate/Zero Saber) flinch in pain as Medea reads off the headers of their respective Contracts.

Naturally, the ONE Saber we’d been rather HOPING to have been HERE so we could sigh a sigh of relief at a dodged bullet and move on has failed to BE here. We know this because….

Oh great, I grumble, seeing NONE of the Sabers having reacted to when Medea reads the Contract for the Saber from the Heaven’s Feel route from this reality that Rei tells me is based upon a Japanese erog video novel.

Oh, yes I knew that our dearly departed friend from our last away mission had a thing for yuri and had tried to commission my sister Rei with a job that she’d refused after doing some online research on the matter. That and learning the full details of what was to be drawn there.

It involved Saber Alter (the corrupted version of Saber) from the Heaven’s Feel route from Fate/Stay Night, her Master Dark Sakura, Rider (aka Medusa) a lot of duct tape and three gerbils…

No, I don’t want to know more than that. Point in fact I kind of wish that Rei hadn’t even told me that much about it, thanks!

But speaking about knowing, I’m rather wondering just HOW me managed to quicken the Fate/Zero Saber and her Master here earlier. Did one of our spells reach too far? Maybe one of the items that Rei had cast, blasting one of the other Berserkers into the depths of the sea (if only for a time) did it?

I see that the Master of Saber Zero seems to have be partially wet still from everything and smells of seawater?

Damn, did we almost HIT her and Saber Zero when we were fighting that other Berserker, only the jet wash of the object’s passing knocking Ilya’s mother into the water?

Wait wait, Irisviel von Einzbern interrupts my musing, coming over to me and John (who’d moved back over to my group to give the Sabers . . .space after having been distracted by him), figuring that the female Servants might not exactly appreciate that (IF they figure out that it had been deliberate).

Irisviel von Einzbern , hands on hips, seems to have overheard that one and rightly knows that this could be trouble. Being that by now she’s figured out through her daughters and a bit of input from Berserker over just how BADLY overpowered Rei’s plasma weaponry is and how IF Rei had been of a homicidal mind on things, Irisviel would have Not survived Rei’s retaliatory blast for Irisviel’s jumping out and trying to attack HER.

Could have been much worse and at least it looks like (I hope) that she does realize a magic user just going out and trying to cast an unknown spell at people, and looking VERY hostile while doing it (even if afterwards it turned out that it had been because Irisviel was Ilya’s mother), some justification had been there for Rei’s actions….

After all, Rei had been TRYING to get Ilya (both of them) to some place safe enough to wait long enough for them to wake up (or determine when it was safe enough to wake them magically).

Anyway…

See that there seems to be one Saber missing even IF she is one from the Fifth Grail War vice the one I was part of: the Fourth, she says pointedly and seeing to take a small measure of satisfaction from the small hiss of frustration Rei gives off upon those words. I suppose that there is something concerning about our wayward Servant here, I take?

Closing my eyes and nodding, I silently pull out an item that I know had belonged to our deceased team mate who’d died from a hale of bullets that hit squad had unleashed when they’d crashed our party ever so long ago but not so long ago (re: 74413).

At least I had the pleasure of having vaporized the gonads off of the scum with a well-aimed plasma pistol bolt in revenge as we escaped to regroup. Just wish that we didn’t have to go and break the seal on our dead friend’s personal electronics, since custom is to return it to the surviving relatives upon returning to base and all that. But of course Quests kind of trump even that Military custom here, alas.

Then we end up here and now that we’ve gotten to a spot where it wouldn’t do to put it off any longer.

Pulling up an file relating to the route in question, the image alone is worth a thousand words as I hand it over to the silver haired and red eyed homunculus female and ENLARGE the image with a flick of two fingers on the interactive display screen.

http:// www.an imenew snetwor k.com/ thumbna ils/max 500x600/ encyc/ A1616 6-327 701389 8.14067 4193 7.jpg

Seeing her eyebrows almost disappear up into her hairline as well as her eyes growing as large as almost dinner plates is rather telling. Still…words DO go along with these pictures and MIGHT be a good thing (i.e. appropriate for the in a movie) to add aloud (aka reading it word for word to her), but honestly? I don’t FEEL bloody like it, and I doubt she’d appreciate my efforts.

But as a side note, that red shroud that’s wrapped around Shiro’s right hand in the picture there would go a LONG way towards just why we seem to have one that here with the real Shiro being mystified where it came from and what It is for: it appears to be a duplicate from the Heaven’s Feel route.

Wonder if that means that there are other duplicated equipment and skills which have yet to appear in the others here, Masters and Servants alike?

What is this? whispers Irisviel, gesturing at the computer screen still in her hands.

Hm, no scoffing at me having presented to her what was a promotional poster for an anime in her voice here? Does that mean that she sees the characters as living flesh and blood vice characters done in anime style and coloration? That will be . . .awkward here sooner or later when it finally comes to light, maybe.

That is what happened in one of the . . . .alternate routes the Fifth Grail War, I sigh as I gesture to my my dead friend’s PDA before one of the Saber’s who’s recovered (I shall wager this Saber is both from the Fourth Grail War AND is a friend or some such with Irisviel here). We had hoped with the appearance of third Saber, your Saber, here . . .

I happened to notice the Command Sigil that happens to be branded on the Irisviel’s hand and managed to put two and two together, thanks, in case you were wondering…

Meanwhile, Saber Zero stops in her tracks as if she’d walked right into a wall, her eyes bugging out and jaw dropping in horror as she sees . . .herself in the picture, a corrupted and darkened mirror parody of what she knew herself to be.

She’s obviously horrified and maybe I should have avoided showing that to her, but . . .things have to be revealed sooner or later anyway. I and my sisters were always better with the tear the bandage off the wound fast than slow anyway approach to revealing bad news. Trying to go slow and gentle always seemed to backfire, making the recipients suspicious like we were trying to hide things.

…Meant that we wouldn’t have worry about a chance of dealing with Saber Alter, I continue, gesturing for her to wait a moment before she can interrupt things AGAIN. We have finally accomplished much but now we need to get BACK to our Home Base to start on the next part of our mad schemes to try to save this city and all the other hijacked lands around it. That and we have a set of patients back there we need to check up on. But with her being not from that timeline? That Route? We may still have to deal with an evil, corrupted version of your Servant here.

The others (except for the STILL laughing Archer) turn our way, shaking off whatever funk that had settled upon them after the shock of the Sun in obvious curiosity over what I, Saber Zero, and Ilya’s mother are chatting about here.

Saber Zero OBVIOUSLY has a lot of bloody questions now to ask, I’m sure.

Look, we all now know what my groups Quest is here in general right? I ask everyone, gesturing slightly up at the Sun as if to remind those who’d perhaps forgotten (if THAT was even POSSIBLE).

Muted affirmative grunts and nods greet that question, much to my satisfaction. Do hate to have to have to explain THAT if they couldn’t grasp it by now, for it would be Mission Impossible.

I know that there are a Lot of questions still to answer here but I would like to do that on the march back to the spot which is serving as a Home Base and such, I begin. One of them besides finding more clues and assets in rescuing everyone from this planet would be to magically track down the remaining Ilyas, of course…

But first thing first, this all started when Medea’s . . .sisters for the best term we’ll use right now, made a Wish aloud and . . .

Irisviel

But-but I have to get my husband! I interrupte, protesting and practically dancing from foot to foot and torn between needing my husband here (he’s . . .better suited to these high risk situations) and needing to track down my daughter . . .daughters (!) who are out there still. He’ll need to know about this as well and . . .

Righty, mutters Lilith, nodding. We have a husband and wife team as well as their children fighting in these Grail Wars? Of course.

Why? Why are these people doing THIS?! It’s not like I WANTED for my child to be here and fight in the Fifth Holy Grail War! Not like I wanted her to become the key component to the Summoning ritual that would call forth the Grail for the winner to make a Wish, and extinquishing her life in the process!

I went into this War, the Fourth War, to Spare her this fate. I was supposed to be the means of summoning the Holy Grail in the end of the Fourth Grail War! My life was to be sacrified in order to make that come true and my husband’s wish to world peace become true! It was!!

I was to save Ilya through my sacrifice. . . and now not only do I get word from my own daughters that . . .

I need my husband… Too much…

. . .

I need my husband. We need to get together with these-these Champion people (who are supposed to be some kind of version of Counter Guardians but more powerful by the looks of things) to fix all this. Get anyone and everyone (or at least my family here) to SAFETY, damnit!

. . .

Okay, take deep breaths and calm DOWN Irisviel! Panicking blindly will not . . .

Change of plans, we’ll go down to where your husband is and THEN we’ll all chat on the way back to our Home Base and answer all questions through a little story telling, okay? Lilith, the whited haired young girl nods towards her blue haired counterpart . . . the actual leader of this motely group?

Heh, I . . .had thought that her husband Fred had been the party leader but now that you mention it I . . .

What in the Hell am I doing?

That . . .that would be nice, I manage to say.

We’re going to go get Daddy? one of my daughters blinks, sounding off set.

Oh, right. Both I and my husband never returned to Germany after the Fourth Grail War, having died here in Japan according to what she told me. Right, Ilya said that. Both of them.

. . .

I . . .God, I’m going to have to come up with some kind of way to identify one from the other here because up until now Ilya had been an only child and now we have. . .

This is NOT what I was expecting at all when I came here to my husband’s homeland!

Let’s just make sure that your husband IS where you say he is, Medea adds, pulling out and putting up a scrying spell right here, in the middle of the street. Hate to say it, but with everything being rather scrambled as they are, he might instead be in a another place, reenacting a scene later into the Fourth Grail War than what we found you and Saber experiencing. Let’s do this right!

Earlier, with the sisters of Medea who’d made a Wish . . . .for a chance at a new life and a fresh start, free from the stigma of being the Witch of Betrayal . . . Three identical women who’d been making their way to some place they’d hoped they’d find a new Master to replace the worm they’d slain soon after their summoning suddenly find themselves frozen in place, unable to move and resist what happens next. They are quiet shocked and scared up until they here these words.

Wish granted! a beautiful, otherworldly voice says into the darkness of night.

And suddenly they find their minds mind becomes as if it were a spindryer and their memories the laundry. Memories of bitterness and hatred, the years of memories of being betrayed and betraying others in revenge in retribution fall away just as quickly as the blue haired woman change from those of thirty years old in appearance (but a bit older due to their divine heritage) to that of young teenage girls. In other words, what they had been just right before being forced upon their fate as witches, forced by the goddess of love to become enchanted totally with Jason of the Agronauts and betray their kin and kingdom.

1. Being they still were dressed in the purple robes of their dark profession, hoods and all, they look rather silly being that they were somewhat shorter than they had been more moments before…

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