Kiritsugu. What do you want to be when you grow up?
When he was young, an older girl had once asked Emiya Kiritsugu this question.
A hero of justice, he had answered then, casually, the way any ordinary child might, innocent and unconcerned. He had not known what kind of numb and hollow life that answer would lead him toward, because children were simply like that. Some wanted to become Kamen Riders and beat the bad guys. Some wanted to become magical girls and vanquish evil.
The only difference was that his childhood and everything that came after had kept him holding to that ideal all the way to the present, even knowing he had probably taken many wrong turns along the way.
Save people. Save people. Save people. His entire life, drifting and yet clear, had quietly passed in that kind of justice.
He had rescued refugees in Afghanistan. He had assassinated mercenaries in the Middle East who slaughtered innocents without cause. In the shadowy world of mages, he had taken the lives of those who used ordinary people as raw material, investigating every villain he could find and killing them.
How many people had he saved over the years? He didn't know. His assistant Hisau Maiya was one of the ordinary people he had saved after she lost her family in a conflict and had nowhere left to go.
But... was simply saving people truly justice? He had never doubted himself about this. His hands were stained with blood just the same.
He only knew, clearly, that it was useless. No matter how many people he saved or killed, it made no difference. Conflict between people continued without end. The struggle never ceased.
And so he grew progressively more numb, forcing himself not to think about the future, simply pressing as close to the ideal as he could manage.
This world was broken in certain places. Not just in his personal view. Even the Einzbern family believed the same thing. That family of homunculi had carried on from generation to generation for the sole purpose of winning the Grail and saving humanity. Otherwise they would not have had him come to win the Holy Grail War rather than simply sending a monitor to seize the Grail after his victory.
He and the Einzbern family's millennium-long wish were, at their core, the same kind of thing.
But what true salvation actually meant, he could not say. The Einzbern family could not say either.
Only this: they were all calling for a miracle, all attempting, with the Grail's help, to recreate the miracle of salvation in the present world.
"Knowing for certain you'll lose and still pressing on, doesn't that get exhausting?"
"Saber also knows she will lose. And if I don't continue fighting, that knight-king will not let me go. Her sword would be at my neck the moment I gave up. I glimpsed her dreams briefly during an earlier rest and could feel that much."
"I mean, Kiritsugu. I'm asking you. Just you. If no one were threatening you, and if simply dropping out of this war meant you could take me and Illya away from this already-lost Holy Grail War, would you be willing to give it up?"
"..."
The eve of the banquet battle.
Irisviel and Kiritsugu spent their final time alone together on the watchtower of Einzbern Castle. As for the Saber girl, she was downstairs eating heartily.
Irisviel held her husband's arm, resting gently against his side, and looked up at the glittering stars.
"Giving up participation. Taking me and Illya together to find some quiet place to live. Throwing aside the Einzbern family's millennia of wishes and whatever other troublesome things. Completely. Kiritsugu, what do you think of that kind of fantasy?"
"...It's impossible. The Einzberns would never let us go."
"Then let's just destroy them! (◍˃̶ᗜ˂̶◍)✩"
Irisviel turned her head and puffed her cheeks in mock seriousness, that expression of childlike indignation somehow making people want to smile despite everything.
One person destroying a magical family that had persisted for centuries. That was rather beyond anyone's means.
So it was a joke. The resistance to abandoning participation was of an almost unimaginable scale.
But after saying it, seeing her husband's continued silence, she let go of his arm.
Because she had said multiple times that it was only a hypothetical. And the fact that even within a hypothetical fantasy he was unwilling to respond directly made his answer plain enough.
"Illya and you are very much alike, Kiritsugu. Always running from the choice between family and ideals."
Irisviel smiled with a quiet, fading sadness. Neither Miss Illya nor Kiritsugu had any intention of backing down, not even for the sake of family. The same stubborn, immovable persistence, as though stamped from the same mold.
"You met Illya? When? Why didn't you tell me?"
"That time, the time we hunted the illegal Servant. I told you I got lost in the forest. In truth, I sneaked off to see Illya for a moment."
They really are so alike. Both carrying that solitary, hollow feeling.
Both so fragile inside, yet both forcing themselves to keep composure and wear a mask of indifference.
They both seemed to be losing something, until all that remained was a single obsession. Living only for that blurred, uncertain fixation, as though it were the very meaning of existence.
She loved them both deeply. However cold or glorious they might appear to outsiders, as a wife and as a mother she could always see through to what was inside them. Perhaps there was some rare instinct at work. At the very least, she could sense clearly that Kiritsugu and Miss Illya were beyond any reconciliation -- not only because of identity and past experience, but because of their desires for the all-purpose wish-granting machine.
Miss Illya wanted the Grail. Desperately. That lonely little girl was also longing for a miracle, a happy ending that could overturn an unlucky fate.
"No fantasies. Only reality. But facing reality, and yet still longing for a miracle."
"Clearly loving your family, yet because of reality, unable to bring yourself to express it. Clearly loving your family, yet because of reality, running from the response. Why can't there be just a little more room for beautiful fantasies? Everything you both wish for is, at heart, a beautiful thing."
"How contradictory... Illya and Kiritsugu are both so contradictory."
Her family seemed to live in constant contradiction.
And she.
Could change none of it.
After saying those words, Irisviel gave Kiritsugu the Avalon, the utopian land far from the mortal world. The great final battle was coming, and this magical artifact named after the fairy land could heal the wounds of its bearer and halt the aging of their bodily functions, achieving a form of alternative perpetual existence.
The prerequisite, however, was that King Arthur needed to be nearby, otherwise it could not be used.
This was the fundamental reason Kiritsugu had been able to survive Gilgamesh's relentless bombardment -- not that Gilgamesh's aim was poor, but that his Noble Phantasms had indeed been capable of killing Kiritsugu, only to be healed each time by this artifact.
As for why she handed it away, Irisviel said simply that Kiritsugu needed it more. She did not elaborate on the real reasons.
Perhaps it was just as she said. She had no wish to make any choice between her husband and her daughter.
She, who had never had the right to withdraw from the Holy Grail War in the first place, had no need to use this artifact to heal herself any longer.
"Contradictory..."
Recalling Irisviel's final quiet sadness. Recalling Miss Illya's pain and grief at the very end of the banquet battle. Recalling the Saber girl's desperate, cornered struggle.
Moving through the dark, expansive exhibition hall inside the civic hall, a faint thread of bewilderment had entered the hollow of Kiritsugu's eyes. Nearly his entire life had wavered between killing and saving, until Irisviel appeared and gave it new color.
He had never answered directly when Irisviel asked whether family or ideals mattered more. He did not dare answer. If this were a few years earlier, he would surely have said the ideal was most important. But now, even he wasn't entirely sure.
Having seen the Saber girl, Iskandar, Illyasviel, and so many other Servants all willing to fight and die for their ideals, he had begun to feel, somewhat, that dying on the road of chasing an ideal was not so terrible. At the very least, that too was a kind of incomplete answer.
He could not be certain that the all-purpose wish-granting machine's answer to saving the world would match his own wishes.
But at least the answer he arrived at on the road of his own pursuit, even an incomplete answer, could let him live without regret. Because incomplete meant that time could slowly fill in the gaps.
Whether he was the one to fill them, or someone else, at least there was a direction for improvement that grew with the times.
Whereas a so-called perfect answer left nowhere left to go. It lacked any capacity for further progress.
In a certain sense, he was truly contradictory. Still longing for the all-purpose wish-granting machine to bring forth a miracle, yet dimly feeling that simply dying here as this Holy Grail War ended, exhausted and at peace, might also be a kind of release. At least it would spare him from continuing to take lives in order to save others.
Bang.
Clang!
A burst of submachine gun fire. And then the sound of steel on steel.
The crisp sound of bullets being blocked, even severed.
"Oh? Detected already? Worthy of a mage-killer. I was confident I had not leaked any magical energy, and yet you noticed the enemy from nothing more than the faint shift of a shadow."
The vast, empty exhibition hall gradually lit up. Rows of fluorescent lights flickered on across the dark ceiling one by one, illuminating the hall and the figure in the black cassock within it.
He held six Black Keys in his hands, blocking the incoming submachine gun fire with effortless ease. The daily attire of a Holy Church agent was built to withstand impact, not at the level of a magical artifact, but far beyond any comparison to a simple bulletproof vest.
"Kirei Kotomine. So the dark dealings between the Holy Church and Tokiomi Tohsaka were real. The makeshift magical workshop in the civic hall -- this was Tokiomi's and Risei's handiwork, wasn't it?"
Kiritsugu looked at the agent who had been officially declared withdrawn from the Holy Grail War not long ago, and immediately matched the face to his intelligence.
He furrowed his brow slightly. Though he had long suspected that Tokiomi would invite Kirei in as a combat ally, actually facing a Holy Church agent who had survived countless battles, face to face, gave even Kiritsugu a certain degree of pressure and sense of threat.
An agent was not a mage. Simply destroying the other party's magical circuits was not a reliable path to a lethal result.
After all, what the Holy Church's agents were known for was not their magic but their refined, expert martial technique.
"Assassin has already departed. Are you still going to persist in this? Continuing to sully the Holy Church's reputation for impartiality?"
That Assassin had departed was a fact confirmed by Illyasviel's own mouth.
So Kiritsugu did not believe Kirei still had a Servant.
The Holy Church was not to be trusted. But Caster Illyasviel's credibility was another matter.
"Saber has also departed. The one persisting is you -- a mage-killer somehow cooperating with a Clock Tower Lord, which is rather contrary to your reputation as the natural enemy of mages."
Kirei raised the corner of his mouth, expression unreadable, and spoke lightly. He genuinely hadn't anticipated that Kayneth and Kiritsugu could end up together, since the two had been mortal enemies through the banquet battle. Seeing them together was admittedly somewhat bizarre.
Though he was hardly in a better position himself, having backstabbed his own teacher while allying himself with Tokiomi's sworn enemy, Matou Zouken.
"Besides, I have been waiting a very long time for you, Emiya Kiritsugu. On the night the Grail descends, how dreary and insufferable it would be without you, this mage-killer."
"?"
"Do you know this, Kiritsugu? I have been paying attention to you since before this Holy Grail War began. Your life is filled with madness and destruction. You are a wandering lost soul drifting through this world, killing and saving people in places all over without purpose -- clearly just a filthy bounty hunter who inherited Natalia Kaminski's trade, yet each time you went out the risk and the reward made no rational sense. As though for you, surviving was fine, and dying on a mission was fine too. Drifting through life in a purposeless haze, existing just barely. It made me wonder what kind of person you truly were. To me, you were endlessly fascinating."
"...You're a bit strange, Kirei Kotomine."
Or rather.
You're being a bit forward.
What did he mean, "endlessly fascinating." What did he mean, "I've been watching you for a long time." It sounded odd.
"We are the same kind, Kiritsugu. Especially after meeting your daughter, that point became even clearer to me. Why did you join the Holy Grail War? Why are you so contradictory? If you wanted to save people, there was no need to become a killer. If you wanted to kill, there was no need to rescue civilians in conflict zones."
Kirei laughed again, not caring about Kiritsugu's cold, unmoved expression. A genuine laugh.
Before, Illyasviel's threat had always been present, and he had never come face to face with this man throughout the war. But that didn't mean he had lacked his own particular attention toward him. With Illyasviel there as a fellow twisted kindred spirit, his interest in Kiritsugu had only grown. Now the excitement in his chest was so intense that the Black Keys in his fingers were trembling almost imperceptibly. He knew Kiritsugu was one of his kind. He anticipated, eagerly, watching this kindred spirit crack apart and fall.
This was the nature of villains. Tormenting decent people was one thing, but tormenting someone identical to yourself carried a deeper sense of achievement. What a pity that Miss Illya had been a hedgehog with thorns, and he had never dared cross her without knowing how many Command Seals she could endure. And by the time he had enough Seals to cross her, she had already departed.
Of course, the Holy Grail War would not only happen once. He intended to survive until sixty years later.
Then summon Illyasviel once more... and at the very moment of her victory, gift her with the despair of corruption.
"What daughter? What are you talking about?"
Kiritsugu's expression didn't change. His voice didn't hesitate. He simply didn't understand.
But unfortunately, Kirei would not give him the chance to play dumb. He had been waiting for this moment for a long time.
"Illyasviel von Einzbern. The Heroic Spirit Servant of this Holy Grail War. The one who killed five Heroic Spirit Servants including Saber. Her publicly stated identity, however, was the Age of Gods mage Medea, the Witch of Betrayal."
"..."
"Heh heh. Shall I help you remember? Your own Heroic Spirit Servant killed by your own biological daughter. Your own victory buried by your own biological daughter. What a beautiful family. A parent-child devotion worthy of envy and admiration."
Kirei clicked his tongue appreciatively, and noticing a flicker of change in the expression of the man he had been watching all this time, felt a measure of satisfaction rise within him.
Not for one moment in his life had he felt this invigorated. His mind seemed to be trembling.
Illyasviel had taught him what joy was. She had swept away the emptiness and confusion of the past.
And Kiritsugu, this contradictory man whose history resembled his own past of having once pushed himself toward self-destruction, brought him the pleasure of a brand-new plaything.
"She gave me the answer. I am a madman. A born villain."
"And what about you? Kiritsugu, my fellow. Can you not see it too? We are both villains without passion for the mundane world. Why do you pursue the so-called all-purpose wish-granting machine? Can you truly not see your own nature? Never mind. I can offer you guidance now. I can help you develop the potential of a pure villain within you, just as your daughter Illyasviel cooperated with me. Come with me, and together let us turn this world into a paradise of destruction and suffering."
He extended his hand.
As though guiding a lost lamb.
Rather than killing Kiritsugu directly, he preferred to see the man become, like Tokiomi, a toy he could torment freely at his leisure.
Just as Illyasviel had tormented him, always throwing a bucket of cold water just when he was about to start enjoying himself, with absolute force and overwhelming pressure.
Besides, he very much wanted to see: when the next Holy Grail War came and Illyasviel was summoned once more, if her father had become a rabid dog by then, what kind of extraordinarily fascinating expression she might wear.
Father and daughter, mother and daughter. Entertainment within a family had so many possibilities.
"Bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang!"
The response from the lost lamb was simply to squeeze the trigger.
Clearly trusting firearms more than any self-proclaimed salvation from a lord of villains.
"What a pity. For a fellow, the most respectful thing I can do is break your hands and feet and reduce you to a quiet body like your wife."
The single Command Seal on the back of his hand blazed red. The next instant, magical circuits spread invisibly across the Black Keys' blades.
Kirei swung his weapons with casual interest, and the incoming bullets were instantly swept aside. Command Seals were not limited to summoning and reinforcing Heroic Spirit Servants. They could also be used directly on oneself, though the effect was significantly reduced, more like simple reinforcement magic. Almost no Master would ever be this extravagant with them, but for a man with an entire arm of Command Seals, that concern was irrelevant.
Just like Clock Tower Lord Kayneth: have the resources, use them.
"What did you do to Iri!"
"Surely you've already guessed, coming here. No need to pretend otherwise. Would people like us actually care about a wife? Or is it that you regret not being the one to kill her yourself?"
Kirei clearly had his own unique understanding of Miss Illya. He believed Miss Illya was simply and purely a villain. No one understood her better than him. So in his view, since Miss Illya was like that, her father -- whose behavior and manner so resembled his own -- was naturally the same as him. A bastard who didn't care about feelings.
Of course.
That was what he told himself. In truth he simply wanted to see Kiritsugu break.
Since he had no chance of breaking Miss Illya anymore, breaking the girl's father was at least a form of compensation.
"Do you know how she died? Heh heh. I drove three Black Keys into her abdomen. I broke her arms and thighs. Oh, and at the time, that one called Hisau Maiya who was near death grabbed my ankle trying to stop me, but unfortunately I accidentally stamped down and her ribs along with her heart..."
"Bang!"
A large-caliber bullet fired from a large-caliber weapon resembling an oversized revolver.
The magical blade formed on the hilt of Kirei's Black Key was shattered in an instant, as though struck by an overwhelming, unstoppable force.
"A magical artifact designed against magical energy? How humorless. Lacking in levity."
Sensing that his Black Keys were suddenly unusable, Kirei rapidly performed a backflip, nimbly increasing distance and evading the bullets that followed close on the heels of the Black Key's destruction. Though it appeared he had fallen into a disadvantageous position, he still talked like a pressure vessel that had been sealed for far too long.
After all, he really had been suppressed for far too long. Illyasviel had kept him on far too tight a leash.
"Actually, I had no desire to kill Irisviel. But can you guess who it was who made it absolutely necessary, who told me that if I brought her back still breathing, I would be killed in turn?"
"Shut your mouth, Kirei Kotomine!"
"It seems you've already guessed. Yes. It was your own daughter, Illyasviel, who required me to personally kill her mother on that night."
The Origin Bullet failed to activate?
No. That was it. He was using Command Seals as the magical energy source for the artifact. When the Origin Bullet took effect, the Command Seals supplying the energy had already vanished from his arm.
Noticing this, Kiritsugu watched Kirei adopt the opening stance of Bajiquan and bit down hard, forcing the turmoil in his mind to settle, continuously reminding himself not to be moved by the enemy's words. Those were all traps designed to disrupt his rationality.
"Don't bother. I have already met Illyasviel's true Master, Francesca Prelati. Not one word of your lies will I believe."
"Whose Master