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022 - It's always Tuesday in Chez Kotomine

Kotomine Church

The Kotomine Church has stood on the hills overseeing Fuyuki City for centuries, ostensibly to guide the faithful, but actually there for the slightly more important duty of keeping an eye on the hijinks of not one, not two, but three magus families playing with things beyond their comprehension. Which in the case of the Matou, Einzbern and Tohsaka involves luring even more magi into the city, assist them in summoning ungodly killing machines to duke it out under a thin veneer of secrecy in hopes of something punching a hole into reality and accomplishing something that probably shouldn't be accomplished in the first place.

The duty of the Church in this particular case is to make sure things remain… not civil, but civil enough. That nothing spills into the mundane awareness in spite of the literal heroes of legend throwing everything and the kitchen sink at each other. That the more inhuman magus with their insane ritual sacrifices and genocidal magecrafts are kept under control and, in simple words, maintain things reasonable.

It's a sad day when the Church needs to draw the line of reasonableness, but the other option is leaving the magi to their own devices, and they wouldn't know what that word means if it danced naked in front of them while holding the answers to life, the universe and everything.

They also need to ensure that the hole punched into reality leads to where it's supposed to lead and, in case it doesn't, keep anything that lurksthere from crossing over to here.

At least, that's how it was supposed to be.

That noble goal got slightly perverted with time. First it was the previous priest, one Kotomine Risei, blatantly breaking all the rules to help one of the participants during the Fourth War so there could be a proper winner already and get finally done with the whole thing and the danger it posed to everyone around. His intentions were admittedly good, his execution… left a lot to be desired.

It also failed, which is easily deduced by the fact that there is a Fifth War in place.

The current head, one Kotomine Kirei, has every intention of making his father proud and trample all over the spirit of the ritual. As opposed to Risei though, Kirei's intentions can't be said to be good. One could even say they're outright bad.

Maybe he won't be making his father proud, after all.

The building is practically empty at this time of the night, with Kirei himself standing in front of the altar and only one other figure around, sitting on the furthermost row of pews and covered in shadows. The scene is static enough that one could consider it frozen in time until, finally, Kirei frowns. That causes the figure in the back to chuckle in amusement and a red flash to illuminate the whole hall and materialize a third figure right behind the priest.

"What the hell, Master!" Lancer complains loudly as soon as he arrives. "Seriously, would it have killed you to let me fight until the end? It's not like you couldn't have pulled me out afterwards!"

"Oh, I could have. But then you would've enjoyed yourself." Kirei arches an eyebrow in an act of insufferable indifference. "And I don't feel like you've earned that."

"Please! I fought off two…! One..." Lancer frowns, realizing something really doesn't add up with his memories. "Huh."

"Quite. You went out to ambush a solitary Master. Instead, you sprung a trap, fought two Servants and we have absolutely no auctionable info from your actions." If the fact that his memories have been tampered through his bond with Lancer bothers him in the least, he certainly doesn't show it. "Beyond confirming that it's a bad idea to let a little girl handle your shaft."

"Is that why the Church prefers boys, Master?"

"Spare me the snark." Kirei huffs. "It's not me who spent half his life running away from a turophobic1 brat."

"That's not how it happened at all!" Lancer sputters in denial.

In his defence, tales about him and Queen Medb have gotten a tiny little bit completely out of hand in recent years, so it really isn't how it happened at all. It's also highly doubtful that the woman would have developed a phobia for the absurd cause of her death while she was still alive, anyway.

"That's how history remembers it." Kirei retorts with an arched brow. "How much does the truth matter after all these years, in the end?"

"One day, Master." Lancer growls "One day you'll take your taunts too far and I'll run Gae Bolg through your ribs and to hell with the War."

"Maybe so, but today is not that day." Finally done with poking fun at Lancer, Kirei focuses on more important matters with a slight frown. "I see your Status has changed. Your [Protection from Arrows] is gone… no. It's been transformed."

"Degraded, Master. The fucking brat somehow weakened my Spirit Origin." Lancer groans, allowing himself to drop on one of the front pews. "That [Touch of Corrosion] thing of his is real nasty."

"Hmm… If it's an affliction of the Spirit Origin, it might be possible to use Spirit Surgery to fix it." Kirei nods distractedly, causing Lancer to perk up hopefully for a moment… "Unfortunately, that's beyond my modest skills in the field. Do you have any other clues about how that particular mystery works?"

Lancer slumps again, glancing hatefully at the figure in the corner when it breaks out in obnoxious laughter at his misery.

"I've got this feeling that I've seen it before, but nothing really comes to mind." He finally answers after a deep breath to keep his temper. "He did say it was something no proper magus would ever do, though."

"I'll make some enquiries, but that's an ironically vague hint. For a group formed around the concept of 'doing anything to reach the Root', there's a surprising amount of things no 'proper' magus would ever do."

"He tried to shoot me with a ranged version first, but [Protection from Arrows] triggered just fine." Lancer remembers pensively. "Whatever it is, it can't be shot straight at metaphysical targets or he wouldn't have bothered with close quarters at all."

"Please." An arrogant voice interrupts from the figure in the pews. "It's obvious what the stray did."

As the figure speaks, the darkened back rows get mysteriously brighter, revealing a blonde man of red eyes and inhumanly handsome features.

"Oh? Care to correct our ignorance, my King?"

"No, I don't think I will." The blonde man refuses idly, producing a cup and wine bottle from a golden portal to pour himself a drink. "I'll let the stray enjoy his moment of glory, it'll make it all the more delightful to take everything away from him when he believes himself at the cusp of victory."

"The cusp of his victory?" Kirei doesn't react outwardly, but he's surely bothered by that comment. The implications are a bit… disquieting, after all. "Does that mean we'll be sacrificed for your stage, my King?"

"Who knows? You have proved to be a… passable manservant these past years, but we both know our association is about to come to an end." The man answers carelessly, apparently more focused on twirling the wine in his cup than the actual conversation. "Do your best to set up a proper stage for my appearance though, and I might deign myself to descend upon the stray before he humiliates you overly much."

There's some uncomfortable silence at that declaration. Kirei no doubt revising his plans with the new information while the blonde decides the conversation is over and leans back on his seat, calmly drinking his wine. Lancer shifts in place restlessly, transformed spear still in his hands and wondering how to bring up the topic of… Oh, whatever.

"So, what 'bout…" In the end, he just tackles the problem head on, lifting his spear to show it around. He's never been the most patient man, and subtlety simply isn't his weapon of choice. "This."

Since Archer got ahold of it, the cursed spear has… changed. Gone is the barbed red spear glowing with bloodlust and wickedness, in its place a futuristic-looking handle sporting long blades of multi-colored solid light on both sides. It's still technically a spear, but it's very much not Gae Bolg at the moment.

"Hm, yes. That." Kirei eyes the thing from afar, hands behind his back and a grimace of distaste on his face. "Have you tried dismissing it and summoning it again?"

"It's literally the first thing I tried."

"No need to take offense, Lancer, it was a perfectly valid question. But if that didn't work…" Kirei takes a moment to visually examine the spear. Still from far away, of course. "I'm fairly sure I could use a Command Spell to return your spear to normal."

"Great! What are we waiting for, then?"

"Can you still fight with your weapon like that?"

"What? I mean… Yeah, I guess?" The question catches Lancer by surprise, but it's still interesting enough for him to give it serious consideration. The thing can still be considered a spear and, even if it wasn't, he's pretty sure he can hold his ground with any melee weapon you care to name. "This thing is still sharp and sturdy, and that's all I really need. But I can't unleash my Noble Phantasm's True Name like this."

"Well, I don't feel there's a need to waste a second Command Spell, then." Kirei concludes, nodding in satisfaction at Lancer's evaluation. "I'm sure you will manage regular combat just fine like that, so repairing it will be kept as a trump card."

"Oh, come on!"

"Didn't you bemoan the lack of worthy challenges, mongrel?" The blonde man in the back quips with an infuriating smile as he gets up to leave. "Rejoice then, for you might find them now!"

Both the priest and the blonde man leave the halls in different directions. One takes the back door, no doubt intending to enjoy the suffering of those kids he thinks Lancer doesn't know he has bottled up in the cellar and tortures for magical power. The other uses the front door, and is no doubt heading towards somewhere with whores and booze to sneer at from his high throne without actually partaking.

Jerks.

"I just wanted to fight worthy opponents!" Lancer complains to the only one who wouldn't complain. The abomination against the natural order of things he has no choice but to call his spear at the moment. "How is it fair that I get all this shit?"

The spear politely doesn't bring up Lancer's many, many misdeeds in life. Which is good because Lancer isn't in the mood to take sass from an inanimate double-bladed dildo and there's always manure somewhere he can use the thing to shovel around.

…The most fucked-up ones weren't actually his fault anyway.

1 Turophobic: Afraid of cheese.