C232: First down?
Alt Title teaser: Stay Strapped or Get Clapped.
Date published: 6/23/2025.
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After settling down the situation with Washio, the duo rested for some time but during the whole situation, Axel never found out who Rider was, so he is looking forward to seeing his son in action during the war.
What Axel did do during this time period is provide Washio with the necessary tips he needs to properly utilize whatever fragment of his draconic powers he has been able to unseal. Also it seems to be Sakura's fault for weakening the seal. Well, Fault might be an overstatement as she had simply introduced Washio to magic and him awakening mana had weakened the seal itself. It will continue to do so over time now even if properly unsealed.
He will gradually unlock new abilities, affinities and racial skills due to being both his and Kaoruko's child. The [slime body] racial skill effectively is the reverse of Washio's dragon scales where physical attacks simply go right through them and this is a skill utilized plenty of by all his children who have gone off to their adventures.
This reminds Axel of a story that Serena told him about how she had used this skill to avoid her arm being split in half when she fought the early show version of Zabuza. She had used her illusion magic to play it off as an Illusion clone being the one struck but she stopped playing around and took him down.
Axel hopes that Washio will be smart enough in regards to when he should use his scales versus when he should use his different powers. The optimal situation would be for him to learn the dragon magic spell [Reverse Flow scales]. A buff on his dragon scales which allows reflection of magic projectiles which his slime form is weak to since he did not inherit any natural resistances except fire which he has due to draconic inheritance.
Yet Axel is not able to immediately relax as he found out that someones servant has begun to fight. It doesnt look like it's another servant just yet which gives him an inkling of who it might be but it's better for him to come and watch as well as intervene should the situation turn precarious.
Disappearing from his home just shortly after he changed into his pajamas, he finds himself in the center of Miyama town Fuyuki. In the middle of a road is Lancer who is slowly writing down runic sigils to disable a series of traps that were left in the streets. Alongside Lancer are two individuals, one man and one woman. He recognizes Bazett who had attended the meeting he hosted but knows nothing about the gentleman next to her.
"How much longer Lancer?" Bazett questions with an annoyed tone as this is the third one they have found like this on their way after figuring out the identity of one of the other participants. Naturally Bazett wants to avoid Rin if possible but they unintentionally keep stepping into the traps she and her Archer had prepared the few hours before the meeting with Axel.
"I'm not a caster, master. I'm already hurrying as fast as I can. The owner of these traps is a real freak with how complicated the runic overlays are placed in this way. The level of mastery is something I would expect from my teacher but even she isn't this evil"
"Are you saying that the servant of the master we are tracking might be Caster?" Takehiro speaks up as he offers a question to make sense of the situation.
Bazett instead shakes her head, "Possible but also unlikely as the general area is the residential area which means that the Tohsaka heir might have set these down."
"Why are you so scared of her. I get she has an amazing teacher but this is magic from the age of myth, surely you arent insinuating that a modern magus has discovered the method to use ancient magic?" Takehiro retorts to Bazett as the very idea appears like complete and udder nonsense.
Bazett's face grows dark at the little insult thrown at her, as if treating her like she is crazy but she cant very well explain the feeling she experienced when she saw the spear that Axel took out. The very premise that a spear which is considered the pillar of Heaven, is in Axels possession or that he was able to replicate one to such a powerful degree is already on the far side of absurdity even in the age of gods.
"Lancer, do you know anything about the Legend of the Rhongomyniad?"
"Ehh, an odd question but I guess. I know there is a goddess who bears the same name and that my master wanted to meet her plenty of times but never could. My master contemplated committing a few atrocities just to be deemed an evil being and have the other goddess put her down." As Lancer recalls the ancient tale, he shivers from the malevolent aura that had enveloped his teacher for a few months of time before she gave up on the idea. Yet the very shiver is what twisted his magic work around as the trap instead was activated in it's entirety, blowing Lancer up in a huge explosion. Though the magus also quickly found that a barrier was also made at the same time around the immediate area.
"LANCER" x2, both Bazett and Hikari call out in panic but as the dust settles, they find the lancer is still alive but very bruised with a few cuts on his body due to the explosion acting like a live grenade which selectively swallowed only Lancer.
Cough Cough Cough. "Just my luck. Well…at least this traps gone" Cu Chulainn complains as he chooses the brighter side outlook for once.
"But whether the enemy master we are tracking or the one responsible for this trap knows about our position now is questionable" Bazett, ever the pessimist states as she has them rush to their destination while being on the lookout for more traps. If they do encounter more then it confirms that the enemy master is the lord of Caster. This presumption is due to how the location the trio is moving towards is slightly more isolated due to being a technical villa (kind of like the Matou mansion which is made up of 2 or more buildings, ie: House, storage, guest house).
Unbeknownst to them, the back of Cu Chulainn's one piece suit is dyed a light blue color from the trap. As the Lancers clothing is already blue to match his own hair (dark blue), nobody realizes this minor difference as they simply attribute it to the remaining majority of the lancers clothing which suffered from the explosion while his back was left unharmed.
Far away, Rin shakes away from her head as she uses her magical senses to find out what disturbed her sleep as she quickly realizes that one of her traps was set off. Before she can even properly get excited tho, she does learn that the area of the explosion was in the nearby residential area, just a few blocks away. She also notices that the tracking aspect of the trap is also active and constantly moving.
She grows happy that her magic worked and that she has the constant location of one of the enemy servants but not wanting to draw the ire of her teacher, she only writes down the general area that she placed the trap and then which direction the ink is going towards for investigation later as she simply returns back to sleep as she is quite mentally exhausted already.
On the other hand, Archer who doesnt really need sleep, also feels a pulse but doesnt have as high magical accomplishments so he sneaks into his masters room and finds the journal entry as he too realizes it was a trap his master used which had capitalized on his own 'brand' of life force to create traps that target enemy servants. He chooses to head out by himself to see the situation.
Along his journey, Archer keeps an eye out for the tokens. Each master was allowed to take an additional bracelet with them that shares the energy link between master and servant so the 'ancient' heroes could go about and collect the tokens themselves if given the time.
As such, during his little expedition, he had found 3 thus far. He did sense a few more but they led him too far in another direction so he first scanned the ones he had and 3 of the 7 pips got activated.
With that done, he finally arrived at the street that the trap was laid in. He finds traces of the leftover traces of mana and identifies a group of three who had been here. His master did inform him that there was a small group that had 2 individuals near each other during the meeting. Possible allies yet he feels like something is missing.
Shortly after he finds a complete lack of evidence, he progressed onwards to where the mystical tracking ink is leading him to.
He quickly finds his old home. Memories sprout of his former home, the life he lived and the war he fought in. Yet while the house remains mostly the same, there are a few things that were different. The primary thing was a refurbished side house that had plenty of medical tools arranged around it and even its own generator if anything happened. The second is a newly formed graveyard, one that has a single newly placed tombstone; "Kiritsugu Emiya November 11th,1980- February 18th, 2004. "Killer, Savior and a Father." (sources say February of 2004 for this war but not specific day so im doing that)
Archer trembles as he learns that the burial must have happened just a few hours ago as it has only just become the 19th the past few minutes. It feels like a completely new hit to his mental state as he feels a slight jealousy at the current Shirou who got to keep company their 'hero' for so much longer than himself. Though this Archer knows of The Magus Killers crimes, it was only many years after the war unlike the current who learned it personally from the man himself.
Archer sneaks into a neighbors home and collects a few flowers from their garden to plant at the grave as he hears a ruckus start while a barrier is set down around the house. Archer takes up a vantage point on the roof of the house to get a view of the situation.
Due to him getting lost in memory lane, he had bypassed the group of three since they were still being slow and wary of traps. As such, they had only just arrived but with a quick encounter with both Shirou and Saber, a fight just now broke out.
Sword meets spear as the first proper fight of the war is between Lancer and Saber, just like the previous war. Yet the result is quite different as Bazett along with Hikari corner Shirou while Saber barely holds her own due to the lack of energy provided to her from Shirou.
Hikari has a knife that was given to him by Bazett which he holds menacingly to the teenage boy while Bazett has a gun in hand, pointed straight at Shirou.
"Surrender or die" Bazett gives her demands. Though Takehiro seems to share a different opinion.
"Are you sure this is the proper way to handle this? He can simply use his command seals to bind his servant in place and then drop out. We don't have to kill the kid, he looks like he has already been through alot" Shirou still has not changed out of the suit he wore for the funeral as he was in mourning when the vagabonds before him showed up and started attacking him.
"We had an agreement, so stop interfering. He is a master, just like us. Until his servant dies, he is a threat as his life is threatened so he could screw the rules and unleash a noble phantasm if he wants to take us down with him." Bazett begins to educate her partner but in doing so, allows Shirou a moment to slip away while the female magus unleashes a shot from her gun that narrowly misses the boy. He runs through the house and enters his adoptive fathers former study.
He did not expect that he would enter this place so soon after his death and definitely not to hide from potential murders. He hoped to talk them down somehow but he is frankly not in the best state of mind to do so. As such he quickly uses the key Kiritsugu gave him and unveils the holy mother load of weaponry.
He takes the closest and prepares it as he takes aim at the door with his chosen weapon as the ammunition was just next to it in the rack.
Both Bazett and Hikari burst through the door as they find Shirou Emiya, with a long barrel Smith & Wesson revolver in his hands pointed right at them. The make and model dictates that it is a 500 magnum, the Bone Collector.
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Alt Title: Encountering traps, Concerned Archer, Trapped Master.
Word count: 2261
Drop a comment if you wanna judge my writing or the story. I'll try to respond, especially if you're confused or anything.