"Yesterday, a traffic accident on the Kobe Bridge caused a tanker truck to plunge into the river. A subsequent gas leak triggered an explosion, which momentarily swept the river's water up onto the street and flooded the surrounding area..."
"Professor, why is the water not flowing back into that crater?"
"Ah—this is a new variant of gas developed by the gas company. Its advantage is that when an accidental explosion occurs, the blast yield is enormous, and it leaves behind residual radiation that blocks water flow..."
"I see."
...
Whether or not it was the catnip that had done it, that second blast had actually been even stronger than the first. Most of it, though, had been warped by Love Train all the way out to an unpopulated stretch of the Sahara Desert.
News in this era came either from newspapers or the radio. Keeping things hushed up was relatively easy.
Nobody was smiling. After witnessing the sheer scale of that unknown Noble Phantasm, none of the teams could manage a smile. In fact, the Phantasm itself had registered no prana signature at all—yet that immense crater that had severed the river told everyone there was something deeply strange about it.
That raised questions worth chewing on. A Noble Phantasm that could level terrain and produce a mushroom cloud—was this really something that should have belonged to that certain scientist? But that didn't line up with the identity of a Horseman of the Apocalypse either.
Or was it that she actually had the authority to borrow such a thing?
In any case, on the first day of the Holy Grail War, one Servant had already dropped out entirely. Which confirmed what everyone had suspected: Ruler really would move against the participating Servants herself.
"Meow."
Morning. Yimi extended one small hand and gently pressed down on Ritsuka's chest, kneading like a cat long denied.
"Mash, no more..." Ritsuka was still asleep.
Yesterday had worn her to the bone. After being confronted with that hideous scene, she'd personally put down the serial killer—only for the man to look pleased about it—and had scared the little boy badly enough that she'd then had to walk him home.
They hadn't made it back to the hotel until well past one in the morning. Once in bed, her head was so full of the after-images of what she'd seen in the sewer that the anticlimactic ending only made it worse. It had left a knot in her chest.
Yimi slid off her.
Middling. Not as nice to knead as Origami.
She'd been about to wake Ritsuka up and go see if this world had catnip, but since Ritsuka was this tired, the cat would let her sleep a bit longer.
She put on her hat, tucked her tail away, and checked herself in the mirror. She didn't think she looked particularly good, but at least she was a clean kitty.
Yimi headed out, pressed the elevator button—she'd watched Origami and Ritsuka do it enough times to have picked it up—and rode down.
The kitty looked up at the auntie sharing the elevator with her. "I know how to use the elevator."
"Oh? Well, how clever you are, little one." The auntie smiled and obligingly clapped for her.
Vanity satisfied. Once the elevator opened, Yimi made a beeline for the supermarket she'd spotted during yesterday's scouting. Small hand braced on the counter, she looked up at the cashier.
The cashier gave her a rehearsed smile and bent down. "What is it, little lady? School should be out by now for an elementary schooler, shouldn't it?"
"Do you have any grass that makes you feel floaty and is nice to chew?"
"...Little lady? Who's your guardian?!"
...
The big-big cats here were really rude. The kitty had only asked a simple question and the woman was already raising her voice, even reaching for her phone like she meant to catch her.
Fortunately Yimi was a quick-witted kitty. The second she sensed trouble she bolted.
High-rise worlds like this were no fun. Even just walking along the street, people with nothing better to do kept asking where her mom was, or why she wasn't at school at this hour.
However heated the nights in Fuyuki got, by day the city still wore the face of relative peace. Trying to track down other Servants during the day was pointless—for secrecy's sake, two Servants who ran into each other in broad daylight generally wouldn't fight.
She ran all the way to the local park and sat down. Her ordinary constitution meant she was actually a bit winded. She flicked the fatigue off herself—which caused Tokiomi Tohsaka, who had just woken from his morning lie-in, to suddenly feel like he'd finished a kilometer sprint.
Then, because school must have just let out, she spotted yesterday's red-haired boy—the one who resembled her Master.
He was playing by himself with a slingshot.
"What are you playing with?" Yimi came over, curious.
"Playing with my slingshot. This can shoot stones." The small boy looked at the girl who'd suddenly appeared, curious in his own right. "Who are you?"
A really cute girl. A bit familiar, too—like they'd recently met, though he couldn't quite remember...
Yimi plucked the slingshot from his hand and turned it over in her palm to inspect it.
"You put stones right here, then aim like this..." The boy didn't seem to mind having his toy snatched away. He went so far as to teach her how to use it.
"Oh." Yimi raised it and aimed at a sparrow in the treetops.
"No! You can't hit birds!" The boy hurriedly grabbed at her.
"Why?" The kitty was baffled.
"It's really mean. The poor little bird. If you're going to hit birds, I won't let you play with the slingshot." He snatched it back and hid it behind himself.
This newly-formed little cat found him bewildering. Back home, the kitty had often fought with the flying cats (owls) that liked to stare at Mom, and Grandmother never once scolded her. Sometimes Mom even threw her over to make her go pick on one.
"From now on your name is 'the one who won't let people hit birds.'" Yimi raised her hand ceremonially and bestowed the title.
"What a long nickname..."
"Then you can just be 'Bird-man.'" Yimi trimmed it down a notch.
"...Even weirder."
"Bird-man, do you—play flip-card?" Yimi eyed his pocket.
"Flip-card?" The boy didn't follow.
"It's this." Yimi pulled out the thick stack of cards she'd won in the Dating World.
The boy leaned in to examine the cards in her hand, his eyes lighting up a little. "I've never seen these. How do you play?"
In this era, at least in Fuyuki, trading cards apparently weren't a thing yet.
Yimi felt a flicker of disappointment. No chance to win new cards.
But she rallied quickly and divvied off a portion of her cards for him. "I'll lend you these. I'll teach you. Start like this..."
Yimi walked him through the rules and had him lay out his first card on the ground.
Then, channeling a touch of prana, she one-shot it.
"I win."
"Huh?" The boy blinked, then, at Yimi's direction, laid out his second card.
One-shot again.
"Hm?"
The boy had no idea what was happening. And he'd already lost every card in his hand.
"Now you owe me... one, two, three..." The kitty pursed her lips into three little petals and counted her pile. "Owe me thirty-two cards."
"Huh? But I—I don't have them..."
"Small-fry, small-fry." Yimi abruptly leveled a finger at his nose in indictment.
"Wh-why are you yelling at me all of a sudden?" The boy flushed and hid his hands behind his back, looking anywhere else. "I-it isn't nice to insult people."
"Force of habit."
That immensely destructive and consequential Noble Phantasm from last night was still fresh in her mind, but you couldn't possibly connect the child who had deployed it with the one standing here.
Walking alongside Irisviel, Saber paused to stare at Yimi for a while.