'Oh, just peachy…' There was an air of exhaustion in the thought. While physical fatigue couldn't be conveyed through their Master-Servant bond, the fact that he couldn't divert much attention to talk to her clued Faker enough of his plight at the moment.
'You better have held out, you smiling red jerk…'
'Only… for as long as it takes you to—NGH—to get back here!'
He was losing focus even more now. She had to hurry! Hence, she cracked her reins and summoned the lightning to empower her wyverns straight and true.
Heartless was certainly holding out. From the distance, she could see the Doctor in a mad dash of shooting spells and avoiding gunfire either through enhanced speed or that odd magecraft that had him almost teleporting behind his foe. But for a mage capable of manipulating powerful golems, Zero had resorted to using a pistol and was shooting wherever he sensed Heartless would pop out from.
A firearm against near-instant teleportation and Gandr spells… It was a weird fight for mages, that much Faker could ascertain.
Zero wasn't dodging, but no shock or bolt magic from Heartless could pierce through his flimsy cloak's apparent anti-magic defences. He wasn't hitting the Doctor, but every time he aimed and fired his gun, it was almost as though he could predict when and where Heartless would appear to fire spells from. It even had the Doctor trying fake-outs or feints, but those too were predicted and nearly had the man shot through.
It was only when Zero shrugged or seemed to say something that made Heartless pause for a moment. Just a moment.
'Oh… oh no…' For the first time since meeting him, Faker sensed a slight shift in her Master's demeanour through their bond. It was a unique feeling completely unexpected. It was as if he'd been shaken to fear, though the man never showed such emotions at all before. 'Faker, by my Command Seal, prioritize taking my files and delivering it to its intended recipient.'
She felt a slight fire of energy flow into her as she was compelled to speed towards him and not to attack Zero. She sensed something odd as he didn't even order her to save him. 'Master? What's wrong?!'
'By my second Command Seal, I order you to prioritize escaping rather than saving me.'
Another fire of energy sparked within her, forcefully making her avert her aim from Zero entirely. 'Oy! Master?! What's the meaning of this?!'
How was she to help him but not save him? Why was he stopping her from attacking Zero? Something was definitely wrong!
'By my last Command Seal, I order you, Faker—!'
DAN
A gunshot interrupted their mental link. Then, through her sharp eyes, Faker saw it. A crimson hole had punched through the man's chest. Zero's pistol smoked as its bullet seemed to cause the smiling magus' body to convulse before it fell back to the ground.
All hell broke loose within her body as the Command Seals commands conflicted with her intense desire to crush their foe's head under her chariot's wheels.
"GET AWAY FROM HIM, BASTARD!"
Faker was quick to throw all caution to the wind at the sight of her Master's impending doom. He wasn't dead yet. That much she could feel from their bond. But he was weakened, an instant effect of being shot through with a bullet akin to the many that interfered with her magicks. It likely tore at his magic circuits as he attempted to use magecraft to escape.
For a spell to be hit, it ruined and messed up the sequence. For a magus actively casting a spell, that was a fate worse than death as it sent his magic haywire within his body. For a Master to be subjected to it while commanding his Servant with Command Seals fueled by his own ravaging mana, the end result was a Servant who could somewhat ignore the compulsion of the Seals while still getting empowered by them.
If Heartless died, she would disappear too. But if she could make Zero disappear, the problem fixed itself!
So, she put her all into ignoring her dying Master's orders and rushed the masked bastard with all she had.
She was the shadow of Iskandar, the right-hand man of the King and was able to keep up with the swiftness of his lightning.
Faker became lightning. And she was going to strike down Zero where he stood with the power of the heavens—!
All of a sudden, her battle instincts kicked in and told her to dodge.
But as swift as she was flying, she could only turn her head to the side and see the muzzle flash in the distance before heat and blinding light flashed over her form.
BANG BOOM CRASH
'Fa—Faker…!'
Her Master's voice was all she could hear for she was deafeningly stunned as she crashed into the earth. Having been struck by an explosion mid-flight, she and her chariot had veered away from their intended target who'd calmly stood by as she sailed overhead. The evidence of her instant defeat was the giant skid marks of her crash landing and the fragmented grains of blue light the Hecatic Wheel and her wyverns dissipated into.
THUD SMASH
"GAH!" Dust and charred dirt were thrown into the air as something huge and heavy thudded beside her crater and slammed against her torso.
At first she thought it was the crimson golem again, somehow recovered and now making her sink deeper into the earth. But upon opening her eyes, Faker's groan was met by yet another armoured golem different from the last and the others before them. Unlike the blocky ones, this one was as angular and sleek as the red beetle. But unlike the red piece of shit that wouldn't stay down, this blue and far smaller model looked far less special.
A lesser version? A mass-production type for ease of summoning? Faker wasn't certain. It didn't radiate the same amount of ferocity or power and was likely designed to be small enough of a frame that it had remained hidden in the treeline until ordered to attack. Despite its size and less threatening make, its fists were heavy enough to pin her down. It had to grapple her to keep her steady, but still. "Another… one of you—? Damned… insect! Squash one… and another takes… ngh… its place?! GAH!"
She struggled under its hold, now turned to squeezing and not just pinning. She needed to free herself and get moving. It might not be able to kill her, but she couldn't stay still. She had to—!
"You didn't really think I was a fool to face a Servant without a backup plan, did you?" Zero's voice came from behind the metal beast. "For a Heroic Spirit used to war and combat, wasn't this supposed to be expected?"
From under the golem's limbs, Faker spied Zero to walk past her and approaching Heartless' prone body as the Doctor lay in a bed of grass-stained by his own blood. Beyond the two, in the distance, another behemoth of the same model as the one holding her down emerged from the treeline carrying a long-barreled weapon that spewed smoke from one end. Instinct alone told her that that was the one to shoot her out of the sky.
They'd been outmatched from the start, she realized. One was a pain, but three? Had Zero been holding back all this time? Why? For what reason had he played the cat-and-mouse game with them?
"Though your Servant seems to be lacking compared to the reports I received about her, the intelligence on you being a stoic and unassailable magus was definitely not mistaken, Adashino Kuro." None of her questions would get answers as Zero's monologue reigned supreme over the downed Master and Servant pair. "You've lasted far longer and remained sane even after being subjected to the latest model of anti-mana rounds. Truly, you're a more interesting specimen than your peers. Most of your kind would've been reduced to a slobbering and begging mess after taking even one of my special rounds, but you remain focused and smiling till the end. And yet…" He raised his gun and trained it over Heartless' weak and trembling frame. "It seems the man without a heart can be made to quake in fear after all."
Faker tried to move. She really did. But whatever that explosion did to her, it frazzled her nerves as well as the mana flowing in her body. But she sensed it had more to do with the armoured blue titan pinning her down as its fists exuded the same magic-interfering sensation as those annoying pellets she'd been pelted with.
"Last chance, Doctor. Submit."
Heartless did not answer. He couldn't when his throat was too busy gurgling against air trapped in his lungs and overflowing blood from internal bleeding. Zero was practically taunting his victim.
But Heartless wasn't called heartless because he would yield like a puppet. He struggled and dug his hand into the earth stained with blood, masking the movement as a feeble and failed attempt to drag himself away from Zero.
'By my last Command Seal, I order you…' Faker's eyes widened as she sensed the familiar energy flow into her. The quick flash of a spent Command Seal remained hidden from Zero's view. 'Seek out a new Master… within the Clock Tower… and… do your best… to attain your wish, Hephaestion!'
"Still struggling… Quite tenacious for a dead man." A spit from the man stained Zero's mask with blood before—
DAN
—more splashes of red splattered against his sleeve, caused by the scattered life liquid from the hole that punched through Heartless' empty chest. His last words existed only as his dying breath and the order he gave Faker.
"You refuse till the end. I would've found you quite useful as a loyal pawn. A shame."
Zero then made to leave, turning back on his murdered victim after fishing out a blood-soaked envelope from the dead man's person.
"Wait—!" Faker struggled to screech against her clenched teeth as the giant that held her slammed her into the earth again. "Come back here—! You… bastard!"
"Not quite composed, yet you share the same tenacity of your Master, don't you, woman?" The man turned halfway, his mask reflecting her visage as the blue titan held her several meters away from him. The other blue giant of the same model had already arrived to stand guard, a long-barreled rifle now trained on her in defence of its puppeteer. "It seems you're not quite the Servant I expected. Any true Heroic Spirit would've been able to escape the N-class model's grip, yet it seems the magic interference loadout is affecting you quite heavily. Isn't that right, 'Faker'?"
The man seemed to sneer at her class name, likely knowing full well she wasn't as properly summoned as any legitimate Servant. After he claimed to be the Master of that red-haired bitch, it was obvious this magus wasn't like the others.
He could tell clearly what Faker was. And he had the means to crush her if need be.
This was not what she expected of someone she briefly caught a glimpse of in the Einzbern forest a few years ago. But that didn't mean she wasn't ready to die taking him down for the sake of her fallen Master, Heartless' last orders be damned!
"I… will kill you… you asshole!" Through grit teeth and the tight hold her captor held over her, she vowed vengeance. "On my honour… as a warrior, my blade will be the one to sever… your neck—!"
SLAM
"—GAHAH!" Faker spewed blood and spittle as she was unceremoniously slammed into the dirt. Weak and without a Master, it took all she had to not dissipate when she was shot by the other titan with the ridiculously explosive rifle. Her flesh seared and charred, she smoked and barely twitched with life as Zero continued to stare down her form.
"Hmm… I find your existence intriguing." He hummed in amusement. "If you so believe you can accomplish that, you are free to try. If you'd like, I'd even humour you."
The man then used one hand to grip the face of his mask before the hidden mechanism behind it allowed him to slide it off with ease. He then pulled down a mask that covered his lower mouth to reveal the face of a young man who looked to not have even reached the age of twenty. "Here. Feast your eyes on my visage, false Servant. I'll allow you to commit to memory the face of Lelouch vi Britannia, should it help your endeavours."
He was well and truly mocking her. As a Servant, she could recall and be able to kill him whenever, but as of the moment, his encouragement served only to fuel her distaste for him. So lost was she in her anger that she couldn't see the amusement in his violet irises.
Then, it clicked. She decided to throw a cheeky shot. Focusing all her mana through her body, they concentrated on her heterochromatic eyes and prepared to enact her final gambit. Though the giant's grip had thrown her mana flow into disarray, she was a warrior and spell crafter from the Age of Gods! She would not be dissuaded by mere injuries.
But so lost was she in her concentration that she failed to notice the acknowledging glint in his smirk. Nor did she see the spark in the shape reminiscent of a flying bird.
"So this is the hypnotic power that sought to match my own." To Faker's surprise, she only had a moment's warning before the ground before her was shot and exploded, summarily interrupting the preparation of her Mystic Eyes. "Honestly, it's quite fascinating if a little underwhelming."
"Y-you… Bastard…!" She hissed in pain as she rolled and struggled to even crawl on the ground. All the while, the man dons his mask once more and gloats with his iron giants standing guard.
"You may pose a threat and I should end you right here and now, but my darling dearest wishes to have another spar with you in the future. Quite frankly, I'm not about to steal a kill she wishes to savour." The man easily turns his back on the hostile Servant glaring murder through his flamboyant coat bristling in the wind only because she could hardly stand. "We'll see each other again in the future. Be sure to survive until then, my dear Faker."
And with that, he and his mechanical puppets take their leave. The silence of the park grounds is marred only by the still-blaring sirens in the distance.
The calming scent of the verdant fields had long been replaced by the pungency of smoke and spilt blood.