SIGINT

Fate/Empty Providence

Apologies if we jumped the gun a bit. We're just at the field a little early, didn't mean to pressure anyone else who had stuff to tie up before that.

Fate/Empty Providence

Izumi Airi — Eastern Field

@Moonlit Sonata
@Berserk Gene

---

"Boss, you've got ten seconds to start making some goddamn sense."

Airi sighed heavily, the weight of recent events finally weighing down on her after so much time spent running dauntlessly ahead. She considered it something of a secret to moving forward — don't look too hard at the blurs. After all, you'll pass them soon enough, or you'll die.

But when the time came to stop and rest, she had to look. She had to confront the track she was running on, and the vision stabbed at her eyes.

"Okay, okay, Hana, look—."

"Nine."

"Kajin! Just listen, you fucking dickbag!"

...Had Berserker overheard that outburst? They were supposed to be headed to the thrift store soon...

"Look, it's...shit's not going down right over here." A ragged breath escaped her oft-stony demeanor, as she placed a single hand over the other side of her head, physically pushing against the headache that was rapidly forming. "You know the way Yuko explained this whole thing, right? It's not like that at all. There's a lot more people in the running than there are supposed to be, and there's this 'Ruler' person that she didn't say anything about..."

Hana was quiet on the other end of the line, but she could hear him seething. Long-distance conversations with him were always difficult. They were both very physical people - without that crucial means of communication, both of them were prone to finding themselves unable to express their feelings.

"And there's this guy. No one knows who he is, but...he's not part of the War, and he's just, he's fucking with everything. Fucking everything up. So, like I said, it's on hold for a b—"

"You know what's not on hold!? The fucking zombies!!" The phone screeched into her ear, almost cutting into static as Hana's voice rose above any normal parameter. "Airi, you fucking listen. Yuko's been telling me about those religious wackos. The church people, or, or the church itself, or whatever. They're motherfuckin' cold blooded. If they catch wind of what's going on over here, they'll kill everyone. They'll make everyone forget that this place was even a part of Tokyo. It'll be like we never fucking existed, man! And once they get a whiff of the vampire pie on the windowsill, it's game over, for us and your sister!!"

She couldn't remember the last time she had heard Hana so afraid, so visceral. She couldn't say that she knew much about the nebulous organizations that seemed to oversee so many things, but the threat looming over her hometown wasn't something that could just be brushed aside.

"We're trying to put a cap on the fuckin' Night of the Living Dead shit over here, but we're only human. It's slowed down a lot, since the curfew and all, but...it's not like the disappearances here have stopped." She recognized his tone. He had exhausted himself in his own anger. "The clock's ticking, Airi. And we don't even know how much time is left on it."

Her back slid down against the wall, seating her on the cold ground. The girl's head rested on her knees, as she closed her eyes, tugged in too many directions at once, burdened with too much at once. Don't falter, don't break. It's not what Asuka would do. She would have been able to handle this, somehow, someway. What would she do? What would a strong person do?

Each day the holy grail remained unformed, remained in Fuyuki, remained out of her hands...back in Tokyo, that strange plague would continue to spread, person by person. With someone precious to her at the center of it all — someone precious only to her. Someone whom any other actor wouldn't hesitate to eliminate, in order to quell the cancerous growth.

For each day that she pursued another goal, lives were lost and thrown away, for the sake of her love, her beloved and twisted justice.

"...Listen, Kajin." Airi's voice failed to return the boy's ardor, lethargic and weak. "There's...another reason I want to bring Asuka back. More than just because she's my sister. There's...something that I have to do." With her eyes closed, and her hand over her ear blocking out everything else, the phone was her world. The rocky ground was hard and uncomfortable, the wind chewed at the holes in her ragged clothing, but none of it moved her. None of it reached her. "I have to...apologize. For the life I lived. For the second chance that she gave me, the one that I...threw away, like a goddamn idiot."

"That's why, I have to do this right. That's why...I mean...if I really did go through this by turning a blind eye to everything, by letting it all go downhill, and sacrificing everyone else to stay on top of the mudslide...what would she tell me, if I brought her back that way?" The girl asked, not to the phone, but simply to herself, a question that she already had the answer for. "I can almost hear it in her voice. 'You should have just staked me'."

"...Does that even actually work?"

"Who knows?"

For a while, it was only breathing between the two of them. But as weak as her voice was, the girl's stance was firm. There was no rushing this. Her method was bound by a foundation, and to undercut that foundation was to destroy the value of the method.

That was why she had to chase this. That was why she couldn't ignore the Black-Haired Man, or the fact that the landscape of the ritual was so drastically altered. That was why she had to get to the bottom of everything.

...So that, when Airi faced her sister again, she could greet her with a smile.

"Ugh..." Hana sighed into the receiver, blowing more static into his close friend's ear. "You've always been like that, you know?" As he pointed it out, Airi could almost hear the reluctant grin in his voice. "Looking back, I think that's why I joined up with you, after all..."

The girl's body leaned back, opening its eyes once more. "Alright, boss. We'll do things your way, like usual." He relented, "Yuko and I will keep things under wraps here as much as we can. Leave Tokyo to us. You...you do this right. Once the gang is back together, I'll punch you in the face for all the trouble you're putting us through. But for now...you do this right."

---

Idiot. It's not like I know any other way to begin with.

---

A short girl who would be unassuming in any other context. But here, despite her statue, physical and societal, that girl held her head high. A faux master, perhaps. A temporary contender, perhaps. But her fists, and her resolve, were neither fake nor transient.

A short girl who wasn't afraid to stand up in a room of saints, kings, and magi, and shout what she believed in at the top of her lungs.

The clock is always ticking. Life's too short to save your words.

Her dark hair was unkempt as always, giving the appearance that it had, at one point, been tied into a neat pair of twintails, which had since frayed and nearly come apart. Her overtop, the same white hoodie that she had kept for years, was worn and scuffed, and her faded jeans were no different, with a threadbare gash at the right knee that only grew larger with each passing day. Even the pair of relatively solid-looking running shoes around her feet looked like they had been sanded down at the soles by concrete and asphalt, and many, many nighttime walks.

She was the very opposite of royalty, a walking antithesis to sovereignty in every aspect of her gait and appearance. A person who had inherited nothing. A person who could never be a called 'magus'.

And yet, here she was.

"'My discretion', come the fuck on." She jeered at her own Servant, stretching the pockets at the front of her hoodie as she rested her hands there, casting a pair of bright blue eyes across the field. "I'd be here even if I wasn't invited."

In a way, she wasn't invited at all. Invited by the Grail itself, maybe, in some twist of circumstance. Fourteen was a tough number to reach, it seemed. By Ruler, maybe, only by virtue of that indefensible right that an impartial overseer wasn't within their power to deny. But in the end, that was all. A singular entity, the bare minimum level of acceptance required for entry. A complete nobody, shoving their way to the front of the line, because somehow, at some time, they had found a golden ticket on the ground and happened to pick it up.

Izumi Airi was perfectly fine with that.

The way she held herself was overtly aggressive. Hands balled into fists as they rested in that tattered hoodie, chin up, back straight, and a mean look on her face, nose crumpled as though someone had just shoved a fistful of garlic in front of it. When she spoke, her voice was steady, loud, and held nothing back.

In the back alleys, on the darkened and deserted sidewalks, that kind of look had kept her out of trouble, and that brutal honesty had made her irreplaceable friends. What it would all accomplish here and now was anyone's guess.

But there was one thing that no one could doubt, from the very first glance. Whatever it did accomplish, everyone would see.

"Sunglasses called everyone here, right? Or all the Servants, at least." Airi mentioned, to Berserker, completely failing to keep to any kind of indoor voice. She had already given him all kinds of shit about his outfit on the way there, but the guy was just being himself at the end of the day. It would almost be respectable if it weren't for the crocs. "Jeez, does he know that you can give people a kick in the ass without making them kill themselves? Like, seriously, you'd think he's never heard of a fucking time-out."

It would be the first, and maybe the only time that each and every contender was gathered to one place. It meant a lot of first impressions. A procession of people who wanted the same thing as her in the end, who would look at her, judge her, and decide for themselves who she was or wasn't. And the girl would do the same in turn, without apology.

And then, everyone would move forward. Just like her, everyone would run wildly forward, without looking at the blurs. After all, if they didn't, they would be left behind.


In contrast to the pervasive and shadowy mysteries surrounding the city, the one that preoccupied the girl's mind at this moment was quite the simple one.

What does 'forward' mean to them?

Fate/Empty Providence

"I will bring snacks."

Fate/Empty Providence

Izumi Airi — Church Interior

@Moonlit Sonata
@Beloss
@Holy Grail
@DrowsyPangolin
@Cu Chulainn
@Yukitamas

---

"Wait wait wait waaaait waitwaitwait, hold up. This thing's killed a Servant already!?" Airi leaned forward incredulously, "That's not the sorta shit you just mention offhand! Jeez!"

That critical piece of information changed everything, in her mind. It confirmed two speculations - one, that her own Servant wasn't the only one to have an encounter with the man. And two, that his aims included the destruction of Servants, despite being a true third-party entity, as Ruler had confirmed.

With a heavy sigh, Airi leaned back in the pew, resting both of her elbows high on its back as her brain slowly processed each piece of information in turn. What that man wanted. How to stop him. Who she could trust. Who she couldn't trust. Who was powerful. Who was weak.

What to do. What to do. What to do.

Clock's ticking, hand's spinning, planet's revolving, tick tick tick.

"...This place ain't safe."

Airi concluded, speaking in a low voice with her head down - not to anyone in particular, but merely stating aloud the conclusion that she had come to herself. "He's a third party, right? He's not a servant, right? So, this 'neutral ground' isn't any more 'neutral' to him than the rest of the city." The girl raised her head, scowling at the circumstance. "Clearly, he can locate Servants and Masters, somehow, so he probably knows we're all here. He sure as hell knows you're here, because where the fuck else would you be. And just as clearly, it has something to gain from targeting both Servants and Masters."

"So, what's stopping him from crashing in through the roof like the meteor that killed the fucking dinosaurs, right now, right this minute? Either he doesn't want to, or he can't." She was speaking just as acerbically as before, but her tone was more controlled. "If he doesn't want to, then he must have everything he wants already, which I really fucking doubt. And if he can't, it can only mean that he'd rather avoid a big, showy conflict with multiple enemies. Or, in other words, he's scared of us."

After all, he had only shown himself twice, so far. Once, in a mere half-second glimpse to kidnap Stirner and eliminate Berserker in a single move - only the latter condition of which Airi had prevented, by nothing more than happenstance. And another time, to quickly slay a single Servant who was, from the sounds of things, unaccompanied.

None of that spoke to an ultra-powerful being that could topple over the Grail War like a game of Jenga. No, to Airi, it spoke of a single-minded assassin, scoping for opportunities and picking off contestants where it could gain a decisive advantage, one by one.

"He doesn't want to take us all on at once. In fact, it seems to me almost like he's trying to limit his engagements with us, even though his goals involve killing." Airi pointed out, her voice twisting distastefully over the word 'kill', as though it were an especially bitter foodstuff. "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."

Airi stood up to her feet, finally - on top of the pew, still, which now bore scuff marks from her dirtied tennis shoes. Strength was back in her body, now. As short as she was, even standing on a chair put her at about even height with most of the church's other inhabitants, but she was fine with that. Despite her ragged demeanor, clothes torn, patched, and stained, hairstyle coming apart at the seams from days without maintenance, she held her head high, pulling her hood overtop as she did.

If there was a certain 'common sense' shared among mages, which allowed them to survive in the world they called their own, then for simple thugs who lived their life on the streets, the same held true. In this ritual, created by mages, presided over by mages, enacted by mages, that unique perspective was itself a powerful wild card.

Can never do enough on your own - for someone as hard-headed as Airi, it had taken a box-cutter to the gut when she was 15 to learn that lesson. And now, whether it was in Tokyo or in Fuyuki, she rolled with a crew.

"The Anti-Interference Coalition."

"Who's in?"

Fate/Empty Providence

Izumi Airi — Church Interior

@Moonlit Sonata
@Beloss
@Holy Grail
@DrowsyPangolin
@Cu Chulainn
@Yukitamas

---

"I'unno, I wasn't fuckin' there. I missed the thing." Airi folded one leg over the other atop the wooden pew in the front row, raising her head up at Ruler indignantly. She had intentionally chosen to ignore his reaction to the 'gaudy dude' comment. "I only got a second-hand account from 'Zerker. From what I heard, dude went fuckin' sanic speed through the wall and bodied the kid. Through another wall. I woulda thought the kid was dead on impact, but he was pretty adamant that Stirner was still alive, somehow. And if he's not going to give up on him, then I'm not going to give up on him, either."

It was in her best interest, regardless. She needed another person to anchor the Emperor to this world, and there was no better candidate than his original Master.

But even more than that...it just seemed like the right thing to do. What happened to that guy, that kid about her own age...did he really deserve that? If he still has a chance, through some twist of fortune or reason...doesn't he deserve to take it, alongside the Servant he summoned himself? Airi knew more than anyone just how in over her head she was in this War. The best thing she could do was make sure that 'her' Servant, the one to whom she had entrusted her own wish, was placed in good hands.

"I guess the most distinct things about him was, you know, the whole thing about his speed and power completely surpassing a Servant's, without being a Servant himself?" The girl continued sardonically, stressing the particular detail once again. "You're telling me...there's a Servant in this war who can just shit out things that are themselves stronger than Servants? That's fucking..."

Crazy. It was absolutely crazy.

But at the same time, it made sense. It put Ruler's actions in perspective. He wasn't immediately striking out against the unknown third-party interference, because that interference was actually the result of a Grail War participant. That meant his 'impartial' hands were tied. Just great. Wonderful. Awesome.

"Uh...physical description...I mean, he was there for like, half a second maybe, so I'm not gonna paint a picture of him. Most-all Berserker managed to get was that it was a black-haired man." Airi told the man flatly, "Kinda long-ish, maybe...and something about his eyes being off."

Despite her aloof demeanor, Izumi Airi was watching Ruler closely. Partially to judge the attitude of the arbiter towards the war itself, but more than that, the momentary crack in the man's poise hadn't gone lost on her. He was worried. And as the person in charge of the entire Grail War, the only thing he could possibly be worried about was the Grail War itself.

In other words, a shiver down that man's spine, meant that the entire premise all of these people were fighting over was very likely flawed.

Fate/Empty Providence

Izumi Airi — Church Interior

@Moonlit Sonata
@Beloss
@Holy Grail
@DrowsyPangolin
@Cu Chulainn
@Yukitamas

---

"Damn, it got crowded in here real quick..."

A girl in a dirtied, white hoodie slowly lifted herself from the pew, still obviously dizzy. She had been trying to sleep off this hangover feeling or whatever the hell, but people just kept coming in the door and talking and shit. Kicking a few boxes away, she eventually assumes something of a sitting position, not quite ready to stand yet. Her body had been through probably the worst ordeal she could remember - having all of its magical energy drained after having never used it before, and then burning through all three command spells in the space of about five minutes. In other words, she had spent the morning doing a bunch of shit that a person like her should never have had the right to do.

But, she was still here. She'd never had the right to do half the shit she's done, but as long as she remained in the world after the fact, it was all just as good.

It seemed like she had avoided death, this time. Both she and Yuko had wildly underestimated the amount of magical energy required to keep a Servant materialized, or at least that particular one. She just didn't have what it took, plain and simple. It was only by sacrificing all three Command Spells to be used as raw energy, that some magical loser like her could keep someone like the Emperor in this world. And even that...how long would it last? She needed to find him a proper Master, ASAP. If she tried to do this on her own, she'd die and Berserker would disappear. That was the worst possible outcome.

Correcting that fate would be her first goal. For now, though, it was worth looking over the other people that had assembled...the other contestants in the War.


Lesse...

Holy shit, Ruler's outfit. The dude wears sunglasses indoors. Sunglasses. Indoors. There is simply no excuse for that. He was hiding his eyes, but even with that in mind, he certainly seemed to be keeping his poise, despite the overwhelming number of patrons. So this is the guy... Her first impression of him was that she wanted to vomit just looking at the sheer amount of fucking jewelry hanging off his clothes. It was hard for her to put her faith in an image like that, to say the least. Ugh.


Other than him...

Some dude with a wicked beard who seemed really goddamn full of himself. Master looks like that woman with the messy hair. She seemed polite, but there was a bit of shrewdness there. Not any more than would be reasonable, given the situation, though. Jesus shit, that dude is tall. What did he say his name was? Roast'em? Airi wasn't the best with foreign names, but it seemed important.


Some really hot white-haired dude...oh, hey, he's wearing a hoodie, too! Hoodie bros! She was kinda half-conscious at the time, but Airi remembered that he was here when she had been brought here by Boxzerker, whom by the looks of it had kinda fucked off to go do his own thing, which was fine with her. She could still sense him, so he was doing fine, wherever he was. For now.


Some guy that...wait, what? Airi's eyes narrowed at the thing that she didn't, at the time, understand to be a puppet of sorts. But something was...off about it's Intent. Everyone had small movements and things here and there - even something as simple as breathing was sometimes accompanied by conscious thought. But this person-shaped thing was completely devoid of even that. Something with no will of its own. Her stomach churned, as her mind played back her encounter with The Dead, back in Tokyo. It was almost the same...not quite the same, but...

Her memory of that time was tinged red. She remembered throwing up. She remembered, a dead thing, shambling towards her, and something, something told her to kill it. No, 'told her to' doesn't even begin to describe that impulse. Just looking at that...that lump of flesh, was making her more and more nauseous. Maybe if she just pretended it wasn't there...it was backing away towards the door anyway, so averting her gaze was easy. The last thing she wanted was to go crazy like that again.


...Aaand some sickly-looking, dark-haired guy who had just walked in. Damn, he looks like he's been through hell. He's yelling at the tall dude about something...

Something about his eyes...they had a familiar sheen to them.

All in all, two Masters, two Servants, and one Weird-Ass Thing. And one Ruler.

"Your Servant died?" Airi turned to Nakae, following Ruler's own words. Her arm was rested on the back of the pew, her body turned sideways to give him another glance. One of her disheveled twintails, unfurling from lack of care, fell over the back of the wooden seat, wavering slightly as the very faint blue glow in her eyes was masked by the church's ambient light. "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?"

If that was the case, her Berserker, the Emperor, should have headed towards him...she had definitely missed something, despite overhearing most everything that had gone on in the church during her ongoing recovery. Had her Servant tried to intervene, and failed? Was he injured? He shouldn't be, everything seemed fine with their link for the time being, but if he had been involved in something like that...


"Oh, wait, shit!" Her head snapped back to the disgustingly gilded image of Ruler's form, pointing a languished finger at him in her fading exhaustion. "You never answered about what happened with Stirner! The monster! The, the fuckin', I dunno, third-party thing!" The girl was breathing a bit heavier than usual, and her body felt like a rock at the bottom of the ocean. But still. The other Masters and Servants in the room weren't even in her peripheral vision at this point. "That was why he brought me here, wasn't it!? The hell'd you go distracting him and dodging his question for!?"

Her memories were foggy. She didn't remember the exact context, but she knew that her Servant, in loose terms of being 'hers', had started grilling Ruler on some important thing, before the guy just randomly decided to send him on a sidequest or something. She didn't fully understand his intentions, apparent or hidden, due to the fact that she had been barely conscious at the time, and unable to react. But all the words were coming back to her, now, including her own words that had been left unsaid, now taking to the forefront of her mind.

"So, so, okay, just hold up a moment. What I was told - not by an expert, but, this is just what I thought was happening here - that a Grail War is a fight involving Masters and Servants." Airi leaned forward in the pew, trying to force strength into her legs for the eventual moment where she would need to stand again. The fact that she was speaking in the presence of many, many people more distinguished than she didn't seem to occur to her in the slightest. "Whatever the shit happened to Stirner was not one of those two things. The hell's going on?"

Fate/Empty Providence

Discussing as per @Moonlit Sonata's suggestion, but we can move this to a private chat if participants are inclined.

@Player 2@Berserk Gene
At this point, Airi's realization that she can't act as a magus will likely drive her to do what she can in other respects, and leave it to whoever else to act as Norton's Master. I think it would be fine for Airi to officially dissolve the Master-Servant relationship she has with Norton once he's stable without her, but remain allies with him as she continues to act alongside them. Kind of like a Hisau Maiya role. That seems like the most naturally-flowing way to go about things, from my perspective.

So, I think it would be fine to simply continue with what was planned before I came back, and I'll fit in Airi where I can.

Once she leaves the church, her first goal is still to find and rescue Stirner - I don't know what Player 2 has planned for his reappearance, but maybe Airi can play into making their reunion a reality somehow.

Fate/Empty Providence

Hey, so, uh...

I'm really sorry for dropping off of the map like I did. I'll refrain from going into too much detail, if just because oversharing is a bad habit of mine that I'm trying to break. I'll leave it at "severe and sudden shift in personal life circumstances".

But vanishing like I did, from here especially, was something I regretted. I don't know if people would still trust me to be present after something like that, and I don't know what kind of role here is still available for me. I'm also kind of treating myself as untrustworthy still. But getting back into writing is something that I want to do.

I haven't gone back and read over everything that occurred since the incident, but I'd like to ask @Moonlit Sonata if it's possible to continue to play Airi from here as an independent actor. My current understanding is that Airi has no command spells left (we had originally discussed her handing over one, but having her hand over all three once my absence became egregiously long is fine with me), so I'm not sure if her contract with Norton is completely dissolved on those grounds, or if they're still technically linked. In either case, the plan was always for her to cede official control back to Stirner once they had rescued him, so maybe it works out?

Fate/Empty Providence

Izumi Airi — North Miyama

@Berserk Gene

---

"Take my hand, Lass. Acknowledge me as your Servant."

What, that's it!? Not even tapping her heels three times, or waving a wand, or anything? Nope, apparently Grail Wars are powered by hand-holding and friendship. Learn something new every day.

Being urged along with such ferocity, Airi didn't have much time to really examine the situation. All she really had to go on was how she felt. Which was probably for the better — if she had to sit there and weigh the pros and cons of all this, she may well have come to the conclusion that she shouldn't blindly trust random people that fly out of walls and wantonly destroy city infrastructure while wearing an outfit fitting for a sunday morning cartoon.

But when forced to think fast, her underlying principles shone through. Help people. Save people. Those things are true regardless of the situation.

"...Yeah. Yeah, okay. I'll do it." She decided, pressed for time, grasping the man's hand with her own marked one, her 'Master's Right' almost burning her skin as she did. "I acknowledge you! I acknowledge you...as my Servant!"


There was a tug. At least, that's what it felt like, at first. But then, she realized that it was more like a dizziness, and it wasn't just her hand that was burning anymore.

...Water? Thirst? Hunger?

Something is missing. Some resource has run dry.

As her vision begins to darken around the edges, she can't help but wonder what it is. What it was that she possessed merely a moment ago. What it was that she had held onto for her whole life without knowing its name.

Cold. Her body feels cold...

With a shiver, even in such thick clothing, her legs give out for a moment, and she finds herself staring at the ground with a bewildered expression. Her hand is burning as though she had jammed a fork into an electrical socket, and yet the rest of her body feels like she just took a bath in ice water. Her jaw shakes, as her teeth begin to chatter slightly, and her right thumb twitches in the man's grip.

"F...ffu...ck...k..." Her voice is disjointed, and her head falls over like a plate knocked off of a table, dragging her neck and shoulders downward as it rests in her lap, harsh denim against her brow. The girl's head is pounding, her eyes have gone dark, she's besieged by chills, and nothing makes sense.

The hell...kinda fine print...is this...?

I'm such a...dumbass...

Fate/Empty Providence

@Berserk Gene I'm doing alright. I'm basically doing in-house work right now (despite the fact that I work at an agency, bleh) so security breaches don't affect my work as much as they really should, currently.

So, don't hold up on my account, is what I'd say.