The cat had become a Master.
The new safehouse Ritsuka had found was a room rented from an old woman—out of the way, no foot traffic, and in 1995 the paperwork wasn't exactly stringent.
The downside was that no one was going to bring meals up to the door the way a hotel would.
Ymi raised the back of her hand. "By the power of the Command Spell, Berserker, go buy—breakfast."
"You—!"
Lancelot, stunned, took Ritsuka's money under the compulsion of the Command Spell and stormed out the door.
Five minutes later, he slapped a few sandwiches down on the table. "Is this what you'd waste a Command Spell on?!"
Maybe because the contract had been signed with Ymi, his Mad Enhancement no longer affected him at all—but along with that, the parameter boosts that Mad Enhancement had brought him were gone too.
"Aw-w-w." The little cat narrowed her eyes happily and stuffed the sandwich into her mouth, her short legs swinging back and forth where they couldn't reach the floor.
Strange food. Sour and sweet and salty all at once. She didn't hate it, didn't love it.
"Command Spells are very useful, Ymi—you should hold on to them and save them for critical moments." Ritsuka said the words without lifting her head from where she lay on the bed, eyes glued to a contemporary manga she was leafing through.
The manga from this era really wasn't very interesting.
The Doctor still couldn't be reached. There was nothing to do during the day, and this era didn't have nearly as much in the way of entertainment, so reading something to kill time was about all there was.
"Mrow?" Ymi looked up at Lancelot. Ritsuka had a point—maybe she should use a Command Spell to make him search the world for that grass that smelled so good.
She kept staring at Lancelot until a chill ran through him, and then the kitten gave up on the idea.
He'd tried to grab her yesterday the moment she described it. Clearly, this world didn't have that grass with the floaty smell.
"Still, I'm a little curious—since it's supposed to be Servants who supply mana to other Servants, why is it that the Master can give me so much mana?" It felt inexhaustible. Even the Noble Phantasm she absolutely couldn't bring out under Kariya's contract was something she could now use without restraint.
"Don't know." The kitten had originally been planning to give the Command Spell to Ritsuka and had ended up with a Servant by accident.
"It's probably tied to her 'Authority,' isn't it?" Ritsuka answered for her instead. "I don't have to supply Ymi with even a sliver of mana—I'm basically a figurehead who handled the summoning. To be honest, even if I died in some accident, Ymi could still operate independently, right?"
"I see. A Servant of such overwhelming power can only be Ruler—anything less wouldn't be fair to the other competitors. But these days, even the Ruler has designs on the Holy Grail?" Lancelot looked over at Ymi, only to find her holding a hair dryer and blowing it at herself, eyes squinted.
Ignoring the noise the dryer itself made, the warm sensation was still very pleasant for the kitten.
Well, given that she was a clueless little child, it made sense she couldn't be expected to officiate the Holy Grail War with proper neutrality. What a mess.
Ritsuka picked up her own sandwich. "It does make things more convenient, actually. Whatever else, we definitely can't do mana transfer for Ymi the way we would for Mash..."
"Mana transfer?" The kitten crawled over and looked at Ritsuka, having unfortunately latched onto that particular phrase.
"Ahem! Children don't need to know about that." Ritsuka pinched Ymi's tiny hand. The pure, curious gaze stabbed her conscience.
"Mm... cat's done." Ymi slid off the edge of Ritsuka's bed, took the sandwich's paper wrapper, smoothed it open, folded it carefully several times, and only then threw it away. "Going out to play."
"Be back before dark, okay? Try not to let anyone follow you." Ritsuka kept flipping through the manga, waiting for the Doctor and the others to make contact. With the life-saving Command Spells, she wasn't even afraid of Kiritsugu Emiya suddenly attacking, and Lancelot was here on top of that.
Ymi put on her hat, picked up the slingshot she'd won yesterday, and headed for the park.
It was the weekend, and there were noticeably more people in the park today—but she didn't see the red-haired boy.
She didn't see any sparrows worth shooting at, either.
No one to play with. No one owed her cards.
The kitten looked around, scanning for fresh victims.
She spotted a kelp-headed kid about her own size and trotted over. "Do you know how to play card-slam?"
"Huh? What kind of weird game is that? Wait—who are you, anyway? Why are you suddenly talking to me?" The kelp-head looked her up and down.
"Card-slam is when you slam these cards." Ymi pulled out her cards.
The kelp-head's eyes locked on her hands instantly. To a kid in 1995, a fistful of glossy plastic cards was undeniably attractive.
"How do you play?"
"Ah... um, I'm here." A slightly flustered voice came from behind Ymi. It was the red-haired boy, who looked a lot like the Master.
He glanced, conflicted, at the kelp-head Ymi had latched onto. The unexpected part was that Ymi really had come back today—but her cards were already in play, so all he could do was stand to the side and watch.
"Lay them out like this. And then?" The kelp-head arranged his cards according to Ymi's instructions.
Then he was wiped out instantly.
"I won."
"What? That counts as you winning? Hold on—why did you go first? It's my first time playing, I should get to go first!" The kelp-head was at least sharper than the redhead.
"Fine, you go first." Ymi laid out her cards.
Then, when the kelp-head copied her motion and tried to slam his card to flip hers, she used her mana to pin it firmly in place so it wouldn't budge.
"Tch—it's because I've never played before..."
"My turn!" Ymi wasn't going to wait around. She grabbed her own card and swept his away in one strike.
"You cheated, didn't you?"
"Nope." Another one-shot.
"Damn it, you're messing with me, aren't you?"
Still a one-shot.
...
The cat was today's winner!
"Trash, trash!" she taunted, pointing at the kelp-head out of pure habit.
"What did you say?!" The kelp-head turned red, jerked his head aside, and stalked off. "Play by yourself, then."
"I keep telling you, cursing isn't nice." The red-haired boy walked over to plead with her. "You're a girl—you really shouldn't go around cursing at people."
The kitten didn't follow. "If I don't curse at other people, should I curse at you instead?"
"Uh... if you really want to curse at someone, you can just curse at me." The red-haired boy said it in a small voice. "Want to play cards with me today? If I win, you give the slingshot back to me."
"And if I win?" Ymi looked at his empty hands.
"If you win, I'll let you curse at me..."
"Then I don't want to play cards anymore. Slingshot." Ymi tugged at yesterday's spoils.
"Oh... I'll go pick up some bottles for you to shoot at. Don't shoot the birds, okay?" The red-haired boy looked a little disappointed, but he recovered quickly and ran off to gather some empty drink bottles people had thrown away.
He lined them up neatly on the edge of a flowerbed, then hunted down a small stone of the right size, one that wouldn't hit too hard, and handed it to Ymi.
Ymi took aim for a moment.
Fire!
Crack. The stone shot out, struck the ground, ricocheted in a perfect arc, and—through some miraculous coincidence—landed squarely on the head of one Waver Velvet, who happened to be passing by.
"What are you doing?! You hit someone!" the red-haired boy yelped.
"Here, take it back." The kitten, knowing she'd caused trouble, immediately shoved the slingshot at him.
"Ow—ow—where the hell did this brat come from?!"