[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/ILmLCSt.png[/img]
[color=7ea7d8][h2]Evan Strauss[/h2][/color][i][h3]Strauss Workshop, Shinto Town[/h3][/i]
[@Art of Fun]
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[color=7ea7d8]"And that one's done. Next one, come over here...tch, this would be a lot easier for reference if I could just name you lot, you know."[/color]

[color=2e2c2c]"We would appreciate it if you did."[/color]

Continuing the work on his workshop and other such fortifications into the night, Evan perked up as something caught his notice.

His familiars were naturally still spread across the city, and with the exception of one poor bastard who had been stuck in a bag by what was most definitely a Servant, then cut off by what was at the very least a high-thaumaturgy Bounded Field, then hopelessly destroyed, they had all been going along with their assigned duty and had been observing the city on his behalf. 

Entering workshops was obviously foolish, but watching the public areas? An entirely different matter. Besides, Assassin was in charge of going where they couldn't.

-And they had picked up some very interesting things on the first night. Servants streaking across the city, already fighting. A bank robbery for some godforsaken reason. A litany of other occurrences. Master's Clairvoyance was naturally active across the board for these public events occurring across the city, but moreover, this presented an opportunity that a Master of an Assassin was prepared to take advantage of. That was to say, checking out the competition more properly.

There was a certain taboo, he felt, to taking offensive action on the first night. Besides that, blindly attacking the competitors before he knew the precise nature of their valuables was foolhardy like nothing else. 

For instance, if he had attacked that girl with the accordion in an attempt to take it from her, he never would have obtained a potential line of access to "that man", which had a value that dwarfed even a thousand golden accordions.

So, in that regard, attacking anyone outright was necessarily impermissible. Instead, he'd simply send out some testing volleys to evaluate the other pairs of the war, namely their magi. It wouldn't do to get into a battle of Servants at this stage for similar reasons, so the best solution was to use his Servant as an intermediary for a battle of magi. 

One could say that the "dueling" culture of the Clock Tower was rearing its head in Evan's decision to do this, albeit muted. This wasn't done out of some desire to enter an 'honorable magecraft duel', but rather to get a feel for how his opponents' abilities "on paper" translated to reality.

Well, at any rate, the preparations for something like this had been attended to during the daytime, and Assassin had been entrusted with something from him just in case chaos like this happened during the night, so it was all perfectly fine.

[i][color=7ea7d8]"Alright, Assassin, you're free to give it a shot if you think there's an opportunity. Enhance it a bit more if you can before you head over, then once you're there, Burst it as you toss it in and head off immediately. I doubt this'll do anything too significant given who it is, but it'll be a good test for later."

"Ah, right, and assume [i]that Servant's[/i] appearance while you're at it. It can't hurt."[/color][/i]

Peering at his creations, the alchemist resumed his work. 

Hopefully the other magus wouldn't disappoint.