"Do you want to see Kiritsugu again?"
Anthony fixed his gaze on Shirou Emiya and spoke those words without warning — and in that instant, Shirou seemed to lose himself for just a moment. Then he raised his head and saw Anthony's expression, still wearing that easy, weightless smile.
He was silent. For a long moment, he didn't speak at all.
"Excuse me — who exactly are you…"
It was only after a long silence that Shirou finally murmured the question, almost to himself. And this time, Anthony waved it off.
"I've already explained this several times."
Anthony said: "I'm a friend of Kiritsugu's. And for the purposes of this Holy Grail War, I'm also a Heroic Spirit who has descended to participate — in the capacity of a Heroic Spirit, I can be considered, more or less, a King of the Underworld."
In that moment, Shirou Emiya kept his eyes on Anthony and barely moved at all.
It was as though he hadn't yet managed to come back to himself from this sudden windfall the heavens had dropped into his lap.
To call it a gift from fate felt far too abrupt. But to call it a gift from a King of the Underworld made it feel far too weighty. It left one feeling, unavoidably, a deep and trembling reverence. Faced with a bounty this sudden, his heart was flooded all at once with a tangle of anxiety and bewilderment.
Until Anthony's voice cut through it all:
"He actually wants to see you quite badly, you know."
Anthony glanced at the state of the group chat, then closed it and spoke in an unhurried tone:
"Especially after learning about the path you'd go on to walk. He looked rather worried about you."
"Is that so?" "Mm. Worried you might repeat his mistakes, that sort of thing — quite a lot of it, actually."
Anthony raised an eyebrow slightly and looked at Shirou Emiya:
"So then — what's your answer?"
Shirou opened his mouth, but before he could get a single word out, he saw Anthony give a casual wave in his direction.
"Actually, forget it. I'll just have him come out and tell you himself."
Anthony said: "At the end of the day, I'm not your family. This kind of father-and-son time is better left to the two of you.
"And besides, just standing here monologuing on my own is getting a little dull. If he comes out himself, you might actually believe all of this — and manage to get your head around what's happening right now."
And so, in that moment, Shirou Emiya arrived at his first real impression of the Heroic Spirit he had summoned.
A little capricious — there was even a certain do-as-I-please quality to him — and yet, unexpectedly, someone who understood people with unusual depth. To the point that everything he did had, in fact, been quietly considerate of your feelings all along.
Before Shirou could think any further, a thunderous roar suddenly rang out beside his ear.
He jerked his head up — and there before him, in front of Anthony, the Origin Furnace let out a violent, earth-shaking cry, and in that same instant the soul-flame blazed to life.
And Anthony, for his part, had already @-ed Kiritsugu Emiya in the group chat.
[Sovereign of the White Holy Seat: @Ally of Justice — get ready, resurrection time is up next.]
[Sovereign of the White Holy Seat: And watch yourself in your next life — tell Shirou everything about the Holy Grail War.]
[Ally of Justice: Aren't you coming?]
[Sovereign of the White Holy Seat: What would I be coming for? And besides — weren't you going to be his guide through all of this?]
[Sovereign of the White Holy Seat: This kind of time is for father and son to catch up. Wrap it up quick, get the Grail situation sorted out, and there'll be plenty more days ahead.]
[Ally of Justice: …Thank you. Sincerely. For everything.]
In the midst of the void, Kiritsugu Emiya drew a long, slow breath, and closed the unseeing eyes of his soul.
Grateful — profoundly, deeply grateful — for Anthony's help and understanding.
Just as Anthony had said: to him, the road Shirou would walk in the years ahead was of genuine and weighty significance.
Then — if the goal was to keep Shirou from repeating his mistakes — what could possibly be better than pointing out that wrong road himself, in person, so that Shirou could steer clear of it?
And so, in that moment, Kiritsugu Emiya felt something — a calling, rising from below, from the mortal world.
The soul drifting in the void felt the pull of the Origin Furnace drawing it downward, and fell.
At the same time, Anthony transferred the last of the points needed for Kiritsugu Emiya's resurrection without holding anything back, and one by one, fed the remaining Life Crystals into the Origin Furnace.
With each crystal added, the soul-flame within the Origin Furnace refined itself another degree.
Patching up the corruption the Black Mud had eaten into Kiritsugu Emiya's life force — this was how it had to be done.
And then: embodiment.
A measure of the finest Employee-of-the-Month Muzan's flesh and blood tossed in. A splash of K-ampoule over the top. And just like that, inside the Origin Furnace, a body began to take shape with startling speed within the flames.
Shirou Emiya watched that body slowly, gradually resolve into a silhouette he recognized.
His eyes went wide before he could help it — he looked as though he would have crawled straight into the Furnace to see more clearly if he could.
That was Kiritsugu Emiya.
But then Anthony waved a hand — and the body that had been taking shape was severed. In an instant, flesh and blood fell away, and a translucent, crystalline skeleton sank down into the depths of the Furnace.
Shirou Emiya looked up, utterly lost, and fixed a baffled gaze on Anthony.
"Don't worry — technical calibration."
Anthony said, in an unhurried tone: "The soul is untouched. It won't interfere with the resurrection itself — at most this is just a bit of prep work for things after he comes back."
And without the slightest hesitation, he continued feeding in flesh and blood and ampoules.
The body took shape again and again — and again and again was stripped away, the bones sinking into the Furnace's depths.
It burned through a few points, yes, but Anthony, with his empire of holdings, had long since stopped caring about a sum this small.
No matter how many points this cost, it didn't matter. By the time this run through the Fate world wrapped up, his employee headcount would grow by god-knows-how-many times over. Every point spent right now was an investment.
The only question was just how much Mr. Kiritsugu would be able to deliver.
These bodies were all prerequisites for a perfect resurrection — in every meaningful sense, each one embodied the physical essence of Kiritsugu Emiya.
For Anthony, they were all useful raw materials.
Might come in handy later.
As for this Holy Grail War — cultivating Shirou was, of course, a given. But Kiritsugu, Anthony had no intention of letting slip by either.
Convenient enough, after all.
And so, after more than a dozen skeletons had accumulated, Anthony finally set down that repetitive work.
Then he looked at the body that had taken shape, and gave a small beckoning motion.
And in an instant, the soul that had been hovering within the Furnace snapped its eyes open.
The roar of the Origin Furnace faded, dying away by degrees, until all that was left was Kiritsugu Emiya, lying on the floor, gazing up in a daze at a sky full of stars.
He had come back.
And so he sat up, exhaled a long, slow breath — and felt something he hadn't felt in he couldn't remember how many years: a lightness, utterly foreign and utterly welcome. Ever since the Black Mud had eaten into him, he hadn't drawn a single breath this free.
Then he turned his head and looked at Shirou Emiya — and his face broke into a vivid, unmistakable smile.
Eager. Yearning.
Even though he had already glimpsed the broad shape of things from the story Anthony had shared with him, even now he couldn't hold back that anticipation.
And yet within that gaze there was also something like anxiety — anxiety about whether his guidance of Shirou would actually have the effect it was meant to.
Anxiety. Yearning. And woven through it all, a quiet pride at the road Shirou had walked, touched with the faintest thread of guilt. All of it gathered together in those two eyes, a tangle of emotions too complex to name.
In the end, there was no sound, no words — only Kiritsugu's last utterance:
"Shirou."
Kiritsugu Emiya looked at Shirou Emiya, and on his face was the same complicated smile Shirou had seen, long ago — with gratitude and quiet pride at its very heart.
"Have you been all right, these past years?"
No more words were needed. Shirou Emiya stepped forward without a moment's hesitation and threw himself into his adoptive father's arms.
"It's been so long."
Shirou Emiya looked up at Kiritsugu, and for a moment couldn't find the right words at all — until, at last, in the silence, he finally spoke:
"I… never gave up."
Then he thought he heard a soft, quiet sigh — and felt Kiritsugu's hand come to rest gently on his head, ruffling it.
"You've done well. Far, far better than I ever did. I'm proud of you."
In that moment, Shirou Emiya tilted his head up in a daze and saw again the complicated expression on Kiritsugu's face.
And before long, that expression grew serious. Kiritsugu looked Shirou squarely in the eyes:
"But you've been drawn into the Holy Grail War now. So there are things I have to tell you."
At last, Shirou Emiya gave a firm, decisive nod.
Anthony watched this scene of deep paternal bond unfold — one hand idly adjusting the flame of the Origin Furnace, setting it to hum once more — while his other hand reached out and opened the group chat's live broadcast. He felt a complicated warmth rise in his chest.
Moments like this, a bag of sunflower seeds would really hit the spot.
Pity he couldn't eat anything.
Every time the thought crossed his mind, Anthony felt a fresh stab of grievance. The day he was truly resurrected, he had absolutely no doubt — the first thing he'd do was wander the whole world, eating his way through every bite he'd missed.
[City Ghost of the AAA Metropolis has joined the stream.]
[Teran Demon-Clan Spy has joined the stream.]
Every time something like this was airing, the whole crowd of idlers with nothing better to do would pile into the stream to spectate.
[City Ghost of the AAA Metropolis: What's happening now?]
[Sovereign of the White Holy Seat: Just hit the father-and-son emotional reunion arc. Should be getting to the tutorial segment pretty soon.]
[Sovereign of the White Holy Seat: @Teran Demon-Clan Spy — you can start getting familiar with the process ahead of time. Might be a little while before it's your turn, though.]
[Teran Demon-Clan Spy: Mm. Understood.]
Seeing Theresa's reply, Anthony typed a few more lines into the bullet chat, then turned his attention back to the scene unfolding before him.
Kiritsugu was back now. The Holy Grail War going forward was a foregone conclusion.
Left in the group chat: Minato, himself, Carmen, and Little Tess, who'd just arrived.
None of them were easy cases. Barring any surprises, the next one should be figuring out how to fish Minato back. Carmen's side was a slow grind. Which meant — next up he'd need to think about how to handle Little Tess.
Thinking about it, Anthony's head ached even more than before.
Not because of Theresa as a person, particularly. He didn't mind what Theresa had done. As long as he could confirm the core intent was good, he didn't worry much.
Maybe you'd botched something. But honestly — out of the whole group of dead people in the chat, those who hadn't botched anything at all were, it seemed, rather few and far between.
As long as they could be pulled out, that was enough.
Core intent was good? Then the worst case is: resurrect them, find a way to fix things. With himself and everyone else in the group all resurrected, there would definitely be ways to change things. Mistakes only become irreparable when death makes them so — but then again, hadn't they all just entered a resurrection tournament?
Like Kiritsugu was doing right now.
Since Theresa's intent was good, Anthony didn't mind helping to make amends. They'd all already joined the group chat — so he'd see them through to the end, and he'd benefit from it along the way.
What gave Anthony more of a headache was figuring out how to run Theresa's resurrection match.
That Lumberjack situation — on one side, absurdly overwhelming power. On the other, the kind of presence that rolled along and flattened everything in its path. And there was a very high probability he'd need to deal with the Präsident situation on top of it.
Once he finished up the Kiritsugu business, patched up the Underworld, then he'd need to start actually thinking in that direction.
And going further still — even in this Fate world run, Anthony had started to have some thoughts.
After witnessing Brother Monkey and the Lumberjack — those two hell-tier raid bosses — Anthony had already made up his mind.
Going forward: anything that could be grabbed, anything that would be an upgrade — best to find a way to get a hold of it.
And speaking of the best thing theoretically obtainable from a Holy Grail War — wasn't the Third Magic supposed to be floating around somewhere?
Anthony looked down at the glass panel in his hand, lost in thought — and gradually, an idea began to take shape.
Meanwhile, on Shirou and Kiritsugu's side, the explanation was winding to a close.
Having heard everything Kiritsugu had to say, the look in Shirou Emiya's eyes was no longer that clear-eyed, uncomprehending blankness.
At the same time, the gaze he turned on Anthony carried a few more shades of something unreadable.
Obviously, at this point, the oblivious kid had finally worked out exactly what the situation was.
And if one were to measure the time — from Anthony repelling Cu Chulainn to now, only a few minutes had passed.
Kiritsugu had kept it as concise as he possibly could. And at that moment, Anthony glanced up — then gave a casual wave of his hand.
Instantly, the might of the Artificer descended upon this place, wrapping itself around the entire estate and sealing it shut against all entry.
There was still a Red A and Rin Tohsaka outside, and business wasn't finished yet — it wasn't time to let them in.
Drawing on the experience he'd built with the Artificer's Cage earlier, he completed the seal, then turned his head toward Kiritsugu and Shirou beside him.
"Now that you've got a basic grasp of the situation — let's talk about what we do next."
He looked at both of them and spoke in a calm, even tone:
"In theory, we don't have many opponents. The objective is to destroy the Grail — that part goes without saying."
Watching Kiritsugu give Shirou an emergency briefing on the fact of the Grail's corruption, and seeing the urgency and gravity that settled over Shirou's face, Anthony smiled.
"Destroying the Grail requires the Grail to manifest first — which means, in theory, we need to eliminate the other groups from the field. However, I have a somewhat different line of thinking."
"I intend to test out that line of thinking. If luck is on our side, we might be able to bring the Grail into manifestation with just the Lesser Grail."
"That convenient?"
Kiritsugu seemed genuinely surprised. Anthony gave a clean, decisive nod.
"So the target is clear enough. The one group that would get in our way — there's a certain priest who has to be dealt with. Oh, and of course — there's a certain someone perched on a lamppost…"
What kind of era was this, honestly — people were out here claiming lampposts now. A bit much, really. But then again, that was its own kind of absurdly difficult situation.
Just hand that one off to Upgraded Shirou. Easy.
He looked at Kiritsugu — a meaningful, measured glance — then turned to Shirou:
"And there's someone else who will come looking for you. In all likelihood, we'll need to deal with them too."
Looking at Shirou's blank expression, Anthony paused for a moment, then addressed both of them:
"Finally — the Lesser Grail group is, naturally, one we'll need to make contact with. Any other group is not our concern. Let the Grail get sorted first, then we'll deal with them later."
"As for our first target — let's set it as the Lesser Grail. The Berserker group."
Illyasviel.
The name surfaced in Kiritsugu Emiya's mind with complete naturalness — and in the same instant, his expression went a little tense.
Anthony looked the two of them over, up and down, and after a long pause, spoke:
"That said — in your current states, fighting is going to be a little difficult, I'm afraid."
"Wait — you're not going to fight yourself?"
Shirou blinked, startled — and the look he turned on Anthony was tinged with something faintly puzzled.
What he got back was a look from Anthony that radiated something disturbingly close to fond exasperation.
What are you thinking. Your Uncle Anthony is a support. Have you ever seen a support get in there and kill things?
"On that note — once the Grail is dealt with, I'll be leaving. But after I go, you'll still need enough combat power to handle whatever's left."
Anthony stepped forward, clapped Shirou Emiya on the shoulder, and said, utterly straight-faced:
"Don't worry. The things you can beat — you'll definitely be able to beat."
"Leave it to me."
And so Anthony's face broke into a cheerful smile — and then he looked over at Kiritsugu, and his smile grew even more radiant.
"Don't look at me like that — you're getting in on this too."
"I don't even have any equipment anymore."
Kiritsugu said, with a hint of helpless resignation. From a personal standpoint, of course he wanted to be in the fight. But right now — the great Magus Killer, freshly resurrected, didn't have so much as a single gun left to his name.
But then he saw the smile on Anthony's face, undiminished.
"Like I told you — don't worry."
Are you seriously questioning an Artificer's capacity for sheer production output?
And so, in that single moment, the Origin Furnace flung itself wide open — and within it, tens of thousands of amber-orange rounds materialized, cycling in the glow of their own magical light.
Every last one of them forged from Kiritsugu Emiya's bones.
One human body, over two hundred bones — not every one as large as a rib, naturally, but together, a single skeleton yielded thousands of Origin Rounds.
And the total Anthony had prepared was twenty skeletons' worth.
Beyond that, Kiritsugu also saw something that could only be described as a magnificent, ferocious beast of a weapon, forged by the Artificer's own technology.
Six rotating barrels. Modifications so extreme they verged on the grotesque. Muzzle energy on par with an artillery piece. And underpinning it all, the Artificer's own blacktech — ensuring that even at three thousand six hundred rounds per minute, not a single barrel would overheat.
A Gatling gun.
A Gatling gun that spat blue fire. Not only had Anthony outfitted it with +9 Tracking and +16 fire-rate enhancement from his soul-forging work — it fired nothing but Origin Rounds.
And so, as Kiritsugu stood in blank, stunned silence, Anthony stepped forward, clapped him on the shoulder, and gave him a grin that was equal parts smug and warm:
"Is that enough for you?"
Were you just questioning an Artificer?
"So then," Anthony said at last, smiling:
"Are you ready to go see your daughter, Mr. Kiritsugu?"
____
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