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"I'm sorry, Master. I caused you trouble. Wasting a Command Seal because of my failure—"
"Don't." Maverick cut her off, eyes still moving. "Your life is worth more than a Command Seal. Right now the only question is how we deal with what's coming. Danny — six o'clock."
"On it."
The duel between MHX and Ushi Gozen had happened fast — blink-and-miss fast, the kind of exchange that looked like a blur even through a sniper scope. But Maverick had been watching the whole thing from a position roughly one kilometer outside Trifas City, and when the lightning column came down and he'd seen MHX's hands lock up, he hadn't thought about it. He'd just burned the Command Seal.
It had worked. MHX was back, completely unharmed.
The thing was — MHX could have dodged Ushi Gozen's finishing move without the Command Seal. The Agility gap was still in her favor.
But dodging would have meant releasing both blades. In the middle of a fight that intense, willingly dropping your weapons wasn't a retreat. It was a slow-motion loss. Maverick had seen enough of those to know the difference.
The Command Seal had been the right call. No second-guessing it.
While MHX was still processing the teleport, Maverick had already noticed Randy — alone, exposed, momentarily sitting on the Ox-King's back with his full weight — and had called the position to Danny without breaking rhythm. Danny had fired immediately.
Clean shot. Good angle.
And then Ushi Gozen had intercepted it on reflex without even looking up.
It was a genuinely unfortunate outcome. The kind of opportunity that didn't come around twice.
Neither of them said anything about it.
[Chat]:
[Cool_Guys]: what are you two going to DO. you're both so calm right now.
[Idol_Moment]: oh no. I watch Maverick for chaos content and now he's giving me COMPETENCE. this is an idol burden I didn't ask for.
[Demanding]: Maverick you're supposed to be panicking and getting hit by things. why is the shot missing having NO effect on your mood?
[Historical_Answer]: because they're going to bombard Laos
[???]: what
[Old_Meme]: don't worry about it
[Wait]: hold on. why does that thing keep getting bigger. is it — is it accelerating?
[Oh_NO]: IT'S COMING TOWARD THEM
[Great]: Maverick is about to have the worst thirty seconds of his streaming career
[Unhelpful]: Catch!
[Response]: catch WHAT
Maverick and Danny were not watching the chat.
They were watching the Ox-King Great Divine Messenger, which was, in fact, getting larger. Rapidly. The lightning discharging from its body had already reached the ground in irregular arcs, churning the road surface into craters. The golden horns blazed. The thunder wasn't coming in waves anymore — it was continuous, a sustained roar that was less sound and more pressure.
The thing was not slowing down.
MHX straightened up.
"Master. Let me charge again."
"Can you though?" Maverick's voice was flat, not dismissive — genuinely asking. "In that, you might not even get close enough to make contact."
"I know." She looked at the colossus bearing down on them. "But I can't stand here and watch it level the city. Those people didn't do anything wrong."
"I understand." He didn't argue with her. He never did, on this particular point. "I'll back you up with whatever I can. Two Command Seals left — spend them carefully." He glanced sideways. "Danny. You two—"
"Maverick." Danny's voice was sharp. "Since when do you hesitate like this? Look at the situation. We can't leave even if we wanted to. The best way out of this is to kill their Master."
"So we work together." She looked at the pale figure still lounging in the jeep. "And Mage — didn't you say earlier you could stop it?"
Mozart's expression shifted into something that walked the line between sheepish and theatrical.
"Did I say that?" A light laugh. "Hahahaha—"
[Chat]:
[Betting]: five Super Chats on Mozart actually pulling something off
[Counter]: he's a musician. he got classified as Caster for reasons nobody has fully explained. you think he's going to stop a divine-level Noble Phantasm with sheet music?
[In_His_Defense]: to be fair, Caster-class Servants have consistently been terrifying in this game
[Counter_Counter]: name one that wasn't
[Silence]:
[Point_Taken]:
This was probably why Maverick had never quite cracked the upper bracket.
Where other streamers trusted their own reads, their own instincts, their own strategy — Maverick trusted his Servant's judgment. Even when that judgment was visibly questionable. Even when it was going to cost him. Something about the way MHX talked about the people in that city, about the obligation she felt toward people she'd never met who existed in a simulation — it moved him in a way he didn't entirely know what to do with.
He just backed her up.
Danny was different. With Danny, it was harder to tell how much was genuine and how much was performance — the straightforwardness, the refusal to cut and run, the brisk "we work together" as if it were obvious. Maybe it was real. Maybe she'd decided that cooperating looked better for content.
Either way, it had the same effect. MHX looked over at her, and something in MHX's expression relaxed slightly.
That was enough for Maverick.
[Chat]:
[Suspicious]: I demand an investigation into whether Maverick is using a bot account. these are not words a person of his caliber would say under pressure.
[Defending]: don't say that — Silver worked the same way when I watched him during that collab. some people just get quieter when it counts.
[Confused]: who's Silver?
[Ignoring_That]: the question stands: how does their current lineup actually stop this thing?
[Desperate_Hope]: ...Mozart?
[Laughing]: Mozart. You're putting your faith in Mozart.
[Desperate_Hope_2]: I'm putting my faith in Mozart.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
One of the few true geniuses in recorded human history. An 18th-century composer and performer whose work had survived not because it was preserved but because it was impossible to forget — music written with an instinctive fluency that nobody before or since had fully replicated. The kind of talent that didn't feel like a skill so much as a fact of nature.
When Danny had rolled his summon, she'd stood there in silence for a long moment.
She knew the name. Everyone knew the name. But this was the Holy Grail War. The battlefield was populated with demigods, divine-lineage heroes, creatures that had bent the laws of physics before the concept of physics existed. Against that backdrop — a composer? A Caster whose legend was built on concert halls and royal commissions?
She'd spent the first hour treating him as a fifth party member with Master insurance. If he couldn't fight, at least he could take a hit.
His attitude hadn't helped the impression. Frivolous, evasive, the kind of personality that deflected serious questions with a smile before anyone could follow up. The strategist had slotted him into the rotation as a background asset and moved on.
But in the jeep, somewhere between the Trifas City exit ramp and the sight of a mountain-sized divine Noble Phantasm accelerating toward them, Mozart had said — casually, the way he said most things — that he could stop it for a bit.
Danny had not asked him to clarify what "a bit" meant.
She was regretting that now.
The Ox-King Great Divine Messenger's silhouette filled more of the sky than should have been physically possible at this distance. The lightning coming off its body was no longer discrete strikes — it was a continuous curtain, dragging across the ground on both sides as it moved, leaving scorched furrows in the earth. The roar of it had moved past hearing and into something felt in the back teeth.
Danny looked at Mozart.
Mozart looked at the approaching Noble Phantasm.
Then his gaze slid sideways, briefly, toward something on the city wall that only he seemed to have noticed.
He smiled.
He uncapped the conductor's baton, twisted his wrist — the motion oddly elegant, fingers curved like he was about to begin a performance — and turned back to face what was coming.
"Alright, alright. Since you all trust me so much—" the smile settled into something slightly more serious than his usual register, "—I'll give you a proper demonstration of what genius actually looks like."
A beat.
"Fair warning: I'm improvising. If I genuinely can't stop it, don't hold it against me."
He raised the baton.
"Then — please listen."
The air around him shifted. Something that had been dormant in the space around Mozart began to move — not visible, not quite audible, but present in a way that pressed against the inside of the ears.
"This Requiem — for the God of Death."
[Chat]:
[Quiet]: ...
[Also_Quiet]: ...
[Waiting]: the chat is quiet. the chat is never quiet.
[Reverent_Somehow]: something is happening
[Mozart_Believer]: I knew it. I KNEW it.
[Everyone_Else]: we did not know it
[End of Chapter 158]
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