PRELIMINARIES: None of this belongs to me. Fate/stay night, and all characters, settings, etc. associated with it, are the property of Type-Moon. Type-Moon is not affiliated in any way, shape, or form with the creation of this story (a fact for which, I suspect, they would be profoundly grateful). I have made liberal usage of their characters and settings in this story; this was done without their knowledge or permission, and is technically an infringement of Type-Moon's copyright. As this story is, at the most pragmatic level, free promotion of the Fate franchise, it is hoped that they will regard this story (if at all) with a benign ignorance.

If you paid a wooden nickel for this story, not only have you been drastically overcharged, but whoever charged you has done so illegally, and I disavow any association with said individual(s).

It should be noted once again that as far as terminology goes, I am relying primarily on mirror moon's translation of the game (e.g., majutsu/majou as magic/sorcery) with the official release of the anime as a secondary source.

Please do not copy this story onto your own archive. It's an "in-progress" work, and one where I would like to keep a very, very tight leash on its distribution.

All feedback is welcome, up to and including line-by-line critiques (provided they fit in my mailbox).

Much gratitude goes to my Endurance: EX pre-readers, Kami and Shack, who have suffered for your sakes.

Now, sit back and either enjoy the ride, or (more likely) enjoy thinking of what you'll do to me at the end of it...

The Author

"Well, then..."

She laid her hands on the double doors to the church, then hesitated.

"What's wrong, Rin?"

Tohsaka Rin spun around and glared at the priest. "Nothing."

What was wrong, her--!

Kotomine Kirei knew exactly what was wrong. Emiya Shirou, being the complete idiot that he was, had gone out to tell his Servant to her face that he was abandoning her. Kirei, being the underhanded bastard that he was, had let him--and once Rin opened those doors, she would be faced with the results.

She was furious--at Kirei, certainly, but just as much at Shirou, if not moreso. After everything she'd done, after everything she'd squandered--she forced herself not to reach for the drained pendant still resting in her pocket--the idiot still went ahead and just threw his life away.

That jerk!

"Rin." Kirei simply watched her for a moment, that same all-knowing smirk firmly in place. When she made no move to respond, he spoke again. "Rin. The Holy Grail War has now officially begun. You are not allowed to come to this church again until the War is over. The only time it is permitted is if you lose your Servant..."

He paused, glanced at the still-closed doors, and grinned. "And if you ask for protection."

Rin's thinly-frayed temper snapped. "Go to hell, you phony priest!" she spat, then threw the doors open and stormed outside.

And stopped dead.

She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting. Servants could feed on human souls, she knew, and in the event of a broken contract, the first one a Servant would seek to devour was his erstwhile Master. What she wasn't exactly sure of was just how a Servant might go about it.

There was the boundary field another Master had set up at her school, but she couldn't picture Saber doing something like that. It just didn't fit her class.

So, she could only wonder. How had Saber killed Shirou? What had she taken? What had she left behind?

She hadn't known what she would see. But the answer she found was...

Nothing.

The plaza was utterly pristine, and completely empty.

"No way."

No body parts. No landscape damage. And no blood.

The Servant of the Sword couldn't be that tidy.

"She let him go...?"

Rin's world turned upside-down.

The sun rose in the west.

The sky was neon green, with mocha clouds.

Her life savings had been sunk into a beach resort in Antarctica.

She wandered home in a daze, neither seeing nor understanding, until she reached the intersection that could, depending on which road you took, lead to both Shirou's house and to her own.

Right up to the point where she absent-mindedly stepped on Emiya Shirou's lung.

"Is that all right?"

Kotomine Kirei turned to the Servant in blue who'd materialized beside him. "What do you mean?"

"You just said it yourself--the Holy Grail War's started." He looked over at the closed double doors. "So there's no problem if I go and take out a Master now, right?"

"Now that the War's started?" Kirei raised an eyebrow. "And why would I want you to do something like that, Lancer?"

Lancer sighed. "Yeah...there is that. The start of the War didn't bother you much before, did it?" He glared at the supervisor's left arm...and the stolen Command Spells hidden beneath his robe.

Kirei only smiled. "Your former Master was an outsider. She was sent by the Association--"

"At your invitation--"

"And that," he said, ignoring the interruption, "in itself, rendered her an unfit candidate for the Holy Grail."

"Unfit, huh?" Lancer barked out a sharp laugh. "And the little lady who just left is different?"

"She was my pupil. More than that, she's Tohsaka--the head of one of the three families who first summoned the Grail. That, in and of itself, renders her fit." Kirei paused, then smirked. "What's more, I don't know that you'd find her such easy prey."

"What do you mean?"

"She's gone out of her way to avoid showing me her Servant." He smiled. "She knows that I was a Master in the previous War, and she suspects me. You won't catch her unaware."

Against a Servant, what difference would that make? Still...

Lancer sighed. "Whatever you say." Flimsy excuse or not--stolen Command Spells or not--at the moment, Kotomine Kirei was still his Master, and it was Lancer's policy to carry out whatever orders were given. "Too bad about Saber, though."

"Oh?" Kirei looked at his Servant with new interest. "Pity for an enemy, Lancer?"

"Pity for me." He sighed again. "I'd have liked to fight her for real, is all. Damn fine warrior, that one; she even managed to survive my Gae B--" Lancer cut himself off so abruptly, he bit his tongue, spurring a torrent of Irish profanity.

Fight against everyone, Kirei had ordered him--using a Command Spell for good measure--but do not defeat them. Survive your first battle against any opponent.

That was all he needed, for his Master to learn that he'd flat-out tried to kill Saber on their first encounter--not to mention Archer--

"Were you saying something, Lancer?"

Lancer blinked in surprise. He looked at Kirei for a long moment, then shook his head.

"Well, then. In that case, I believe you still have a job to do."

"A jo--THE HELL I DO!" The previous tension was gone; outrage stood in its place. "Are you kidding me? I've already fought two Servants tonight! You want me to go do another one?"

"Look at it like this, Lancer: The sooner you finish scouting, the sooner you can fight them for real."

Well, when he puts it that way...

Kirei's robe swayed as a great wind kicked up in the closed room. The double doors slammed open with a colossal boom, and a blue blur darted out through them.

Kirei did not possess a particularly active imagination. But even he could almost envision a trail of dust following Lancer out the doors, across the plaza, and up into the sky, and he chuckled as he moved to close the doors and shut out the winter night once more.

She came to a halt atop a building near the bridge connecting Miyama and Shinto. The wind was biting, this high up, but she paid it no mind.

Saber had no time for such things.

She had not lied, exactly, in describing her condition to Shirou. She had, however, neglected to highlight certain points.

"I should be able to maintain this body for about two hours."

The problem wasn't consumption of magical energy. Even while bonded with Shirou, she had not received any energy from him; that wouldn't have posed a problem unless she was forced to use her Noble Phantasm in battle. The dissolution of their contract had no effect on her in that regard.

But when she lost her Master, she also lost her physical link to this world. That was the most important function of the Master: to act as an anchor for the Servant.

Without that anchor, the world demanded the erasure of her alien presence. The Saber class, unlike Archer, did not possess the ability known as Independent Action, so she could only resist that decree with sheer willpower--but that drained her at a ridiculous rate. Every step--every breath--brought her closer and closer to oblivion.

It wasn't that she could retain her body for only two hours. Rather, it was only because of her massive energy reserves that she could stay even that long.

"I will just find a new Master in that time."

That was the greater problem. It wasn't as simple as finding a random person on the street and making a contract. It wasn't even as simple as finding a random mage and making a contract.

One could not make a contract with a Servant unless one already possessed Command Spells beforehand--and the only ones who had Command Spells were those chosen by the Holy Grail to contest for its ownership.

That is to say, other Masters.

But this early in the Holy Grail War, the chances of another Master having lost his Servant were almost nil. And no Master would willingly take on a second Servant; to do so would be to split his energy between the two, rendering both half as effective.

Two half-Servants would be no match for one at full power.

That left Saber with only one course of action.

If no other Master had yet lost a Servant, then she would just have to alter that situation. In the two hours remaining before her body dissolved, she would defeat a Servant, then form a contract with that Servant's erstwhile Master.

Of course, to do that, she had to find a Servant, first.

You Heroic Spirits invited by the Holy Grail, gather here at this moment! For those cowards that fear to show their faces, spare yourself the humiliation that Alexander, King of Conquerors, would deal to you!

Saber felt her lips quirk involuntarily, even as she shook her head.

Even if she could bring herself to make such a ridiculous challenge, as the last War's Rider had--an unlikely event--and if Servants came in response--even more unlikely--she would then be forced to defeat every Servant who appeared.

If even one Servant remained, that one would strike her down before she could form a contract with one of the newly disarmed Masters. And that didn't even take into account what those disarmed Masters, if there were more than one, would try to do to each other in the meantime.

No, she would have to find a single Servant. Moreover, on this first night of the War, it was no sure thing that any other Servants would be out and about. Most likely, they would be holed up with their Masters--so, within two hours, she would have to find a Master's base, first.

And here, at last, Saber had an advantage.

She was an incomplete Servant. She was summoned, not as a copy of her heroic self resting on the Throne of Heroes, but from her deathbed, all those many centuries ago.

Because she was not yet dead, she could not dematerialize like other Servants. But because of that, when she disappeared, rather than dissolving into nothingness as a copy would, she returned to her deathbed--with her memories intact.

This was not Saber's first Holy Grail War. She knew of the three founding families, who would be most likely to produce candidates for Mastery--and thanks to her original Master's meticulous planning, she also knew of the bases of those three families.

The Tohsaka, who had provided this land for the summoning of the Holy Grail.

The Makiri, who had created the Command Spells to bind the Servants.

The Einzberns, who prepared the vessel into which the Grail would be summoned each War.

One of these three would be her best bet.

Saber looked to the west, then shook her head. The Einzberns' base was a castle deep within the forest outside of Fuyuki City. She knew it well, for her Master in the last War had fought on behalf of the Einzberns...but it was too far away. Even going at her top speed--even if she sacrificed her armor, and used the energy for an extra burst--she would never make it in time. Einzbern was out.

With much reluctance, she had to rule out Tohsaka, as well. Saber liked Rin; the girl was a fine mage, and a fine Master. Forming a contract with Tohsaka Rin would be the ideal outcome--and if Rin had summoned any other Servant, Saber would have chanced it.

But Rin had summoned Archer. And while Saber doubted the magical defenses of the Tohsaka mansion could do her any serious damage, given her class ability, they would slow her down--and that would be more than enough.

The wound she'd dealt him earlier tonight would make no difference from a distance. Archer would pick her apart before she even got close.

That left Makiri.

Saber closed her eyes for a moment, and recalled a strategy session long since past. With an effort, she pushed aside the rage even the mere memory of her Master inspired, and focused on the maps strewn across the table.

The Makiri--they called themselves Matou, now--had built their home not far from the Tohsaka mansion. She could reach it in about five minutes.

She didn't think about everything that could go wrong. The Matou's Master being out, there not being a Matou Master in this War--neither of those possibilities crossed her mind, let alone how improbable it was that she could defeat the Matou's Servant without her Noble Phantasm.

It wasn't a question of probability to begin with.

The likelihood of success was astronomically low...and just as irrelevant.

The only way for Saber to survive to morning was for this plan to succeed.

Finding the Matou household was easy.

Getting into the Matou household was too easy.

There was a Servant here; Saber could feel its presence. But there were no magical defenses against her; the door wasn't even locked, which she found hard to credit.

When she found no one inside, her instincts started screaming at her.

Every room was empty. It was as if no one had been there to begin with; if she couldn't still sense the Servant's presence, she would have given up.

But there was a Servant nearby, and she couldn't give up; even as the minutes ticked by and she grew ever weaker, she continued to search the dark, barren mansion.

She would almost think the Servant here was Assassin--but that was backwards. Assassin's class ability was Presence Concealment, and even though she couldn't find it, this Servant was doing nothing to conceal itself.

And at last, she found it--a tiny opening, hidden in a nook on the second floor. It led to a staircase, and without hesitation, she headed down, far down, below the first floor, below the ground--

And as she burst in to the basement, Saber stopped dead, and threw her hands over her face to try and block out the stench.

The air here was rotten.

There was no illumination, yet the room glowed with an unnatural, murky green light. Rows upon rows of crypts were carved out of the walls; open crypts, each filled with a corpse in some stage of decomposition. But not a natural decomposition; worms--tiny black worms swarmed over the bodies, devoured them, excreted them, filled the stale air with filth--

Saber's instincts screamed in warning, but she was slowed by her reaction to the room. She took the kick hard on the side, sending her over the edge of the walkway, and into a teeming mass of black worms below.

The worms scattered as she flipped in mid-air, landing firmly on her feet and with her invisible sword in hand. She scanned the room, looking for any sign of her enemy--

Her hands snapped up in reflex, bringing the unseen blade to block the nail-like dagger that sought her left temple. She turned her body to fully repel the assault, and got her first look at her attacker.

The Servant--it could be nothing else--was a tall woman, dressed in a black shift, with long, pale violet hair. A mask of some sort covered her eyes like a blindfold, but it didn't seem to hinder her in any way.

She took the motion of Saber's sword and used it to catapult herself back to the wall, arching with a grace and ease that belied her gangly limbs. She clung to the wall with her hands and feet like a spider, skittering into the shadows and--vanishing--

Reacting on pure instinct, Saber threw her sword behind her, blocking another nail aiming for her neck. She heard a disappointed grunt as she spun around, only to see the other woman retreat and vanish again--

She ducked a slash--again, relying wholly on the instincts that had seen her through countless battles--and this time, as she watched, she understood.

It wasn't that the woman was vanishing. It was simply that she was moving so quickly, her dark clothes melding into the viridian darkness, that Saber couldn't keep track of her. If it weren't for her instincts, Saber would already be dead four times over--

"What are you doing, Rider? Hurry up and finish her!"

That had to be the Master of the Servant--Rider--coming from somewhere above. But that didn't concern her at the moment. In response to the voice, there had been a twitch--involuntary, minute, but undeniable--in the darkness by one corner. She kept her focus there, even as she carefully didn't look directly at it. This next attack, she would...

"Enough. Stay your Servant, Shinji."

It felt like the air froze at the unexpected voice. For a long moment, no one moved; then, the woman in black emerged from the corner. Slowly, deliberately, she walked past Saber, towards a staircase jutting from the wall that led back up to the walkway, where a young man with dark hair and an arrogant sneer looked down on her. Rider's Master.

With the threat of Rider lifted for the moment, Saber finally relaxed and looked over to the voice whose source she'd missed in defense of her life.

It was an old man, standing amidst the worms. That in itself was surprising--she understood that it was only because she was a Servant that the worms were not instinctively seeking to devour her--but he was not alone. A young girl stood behind him, also in the worms, head bowed, clearly wishing that she were somewhere else.

"I am Matou Zouken, grandfather to these two," the old man said in a gravelly voice. "And you are a Servant--Saber, I'm guessing?"

She nodded. Here goes. "Yes. I am the Servant Saber...and I have no Master."

"Ho? Hmm...so you do not." He squinted at her. "And what business does the Servant Saber, who has no Master, have with the Matou?"

Saber took a breath, and instantly regretted it--she was still not used to the air here. She didn't let that touch her face, though. "As I said, I have no Master. The one who summoned me abandoned our contract, and withdrew from the Holy Grail War. I have come here seeking a new Master."

"I see." Zouken smiled evilly. "So you would have our Master support a second Servant?"

"Of course not." Saber returned a matching grin. "No Master would be so foolish. No, I have come to defeat your Servant, then form a contract with her Master in her place."

"I have no objection." All eyes turned to the Servant who spoke from the walkway above with a surprisingly gentle voice. "Rather, I welcome the opportunity to eliminate an enemy so early on."

Saber raised her sword in response. "We are agreed, then--"

Zouken chuckled, the sound of rocks grating on concrete. "Now, now, let's not be hasty. There may yet be a more profitable solution."

Saber frowned. "How do you mean?"

"This is a most unusual Holy Grail War, Servant Saber. Proper Masters are few and far between, and this War's Caster is making an even bigger mess of things than her predecessor."

Saber's eyes widened. The last War's Caster had been a sadistic, insane Servant who kidnapped and tortured children, and summoned demons to fight his battles. To think that the Grail had actually found someone worse than Gilles de Rais--!

"But I suppose that's only to be expected," the Matou elder continued. "Everyone was caught by surprise this time--the last War was only ten years ago."

Saber inhaled sharply. "Ten years..."

"Indeed. The previous Wars have occurred in sixty-year intervals, so no one was expecting this for another half-century...the Matou included. Indeed, the first we learned of this War was when the Command Spells appeared on the wrist of my granddaughter, Sakura."

"I see. I--" Wait. Sakura?

Saber whipped around to stare at the girl, who flinched at the action.

Zouken chuckled. "As I said, it was unexpected. Magic in our family has all but died out. Sakura is adopted; she was given to us to revive our line and strengthen our magic. I had planned on our entrant in the next War being her child or grandchild, but..." He shrugged.

"I don't understand."

"Then I will be blunt: My granddaughter is not fit for battle. I had not raised her with that end in mind. Much like your former Master, she has refused to fight." Zouken shook his head. "It's disappointing, but those are her wishes. Still, she possesses the Command Spells, and with them we summoned a Servant. It would be a waste to squander that opportunity."

We? Saber frowned. Sakura might have summoned Rider, and her brother might be Rider's Master--something she still couldn't quite comprehend--but it was abundantly clear who was in control, here. "I still do not see what this has to do with me."

Zouken looked up at the young man alongside Rider. "Shinji."

"Yes, grandfather?"

"Show her the book."

Shinji's face wrinkled with distaste, but he left Rider's side and descended the staircase. He stopped just short of the landing, looking unhappily at the worms swarming the floor, and held up a small tome bound in red leather.

"That is a Book of False Attendant," Zouken said. "My grandson, Shinji, volunteered to take up the battle in Sakura's stead. That book was created with one of Sakura's Command Spells; it transfers control of Rider to Shinji. While it is in effect, the Command Spells on my granddaughter's wrist are obscured."

Saber nodded slowly. "I see."

"Necessity suggested it, but the method does have its advantages. Primarily, it forces other Servants and Masters to defeat Rider directly." Zouken coughed into one fist. "Shinji is now responsible for supplying Rider with magical energy; however, he is not her anchor to this world. That remains Sakura."

Zouken smiled unpleasantly and nodded towards Shinji, whose face had turned pale. "Should my grandson be killed, Rider will not disappear." He frowned. "However, this advantage is a vulnerability, as well."

Saber understood immediately. "Sakura."

"Indeed. It is not unheard of for Masters to target the family and friends of their adversaries. If Sakura dies, Rider dies as well, regardless of what Shinji does." Zouken looked over at Saber. "And that is where you come in."

"You wish me to act as a bodyguard."

He nodded. "Because Sakura is not supplying Rider with magical energy, forming a contract with you should pose little burden. Should Rider attain the Holy Grail, you will share in the benefits; should Rider fall, you would then have the opportunity to step forth and do battle yourself."

"By way of that Book."

Zouken grinned. "If Sakura so desires at that time."

If Sakura desires, huh? But it was not like Saber had a choice. She needed the Holy Grail; for that, she needed to remain in the Holy Grail War. And for that--

"Very well. I accept."

"Now, then! Let's pick up where we left off, shall we...Onii-chan."