Fate/Stay Fluffy 4

  John Soprano

  “Hubby~” I heard behind me. The fox pounced like the apex predator she was, wrapping her arms and three tails around my neck in a warm, snuggly chokehold. “Good morning~”

  I reached back to pat her head. I’d heard once that foxes were “dog hardware running cat software.” Turned out, that applied to kitsune too, or maybe just Tamamo.

  I’d quickly found out that there was a spot just behind her ears, where the furry appendage met her skull, that made her dissolve into a vaguely fluff-shaped puddle. It was the easiest way to get her to let go; otherwise, I’d never get anything done all morning. Which in hindsight, may have been her pn to extort more scritches from me.

  I sat at the table for a cssic “ichiju sansai” breakfast. As I’d expined to Missy, “ichiju sansai” literally meant “one soup, three dishes,” and was the typical spread in most Japanese households for breakfast.

  “Today, we have a miso soup with fresh cms, grilled mackerel, wakame seaweed sad, and pickled daikon. Healthy, delicious, and perfect to start the day,” she chirped.

  I gently tugged the fluffy limpet off me and set her down at my right. “It looks lovely, Tama.”

  She’d made breakfast every day since she was summoned. Funnily enough, the strictest rules around our new family divided up the most sacred domain that was the kitchen. Being a chef, I naturally objected to her invasion of my territory. It was the sole disagreement we had as husband and wife.

  Tamamo wanted to be a housewife. No, “want” wasn’t a strong enough word. She craved the domestic life. It was, quite literally, the fulfillment of her innermost desire. Godly power? She had that already. She just wanted a loving husband.

  And to her, her “wifely duties” were a vital part of the happy household she desperately longed for. I suggested simply cooking together, but she insisted that cooking for her “hubby” was a lifelong dream of hers. Her pouting was legendary.

  Thus, it was decided: Until the dishes were done, the kitchen was her territory and she guarded it as fiercely as a mother bear guarded her cubs. She actually hissed and bit me.

  After that, she was free to come and go as I handled the affairs of my restaurant and smokehouse.

  “You know, I don’t mind cooking sometimes,” Missy said as she took her own seat at the table. “You don’t always have to–”

  “No!” we shouted in perfect chorus. The delicate bance of our precious kitchen time would not be disturbed.

  Tamamo hissed, incisors noticeably longer than a human’s should be. “Begone, homewrecker.”

  “Homewrecker? I don’t care about your love life!” Missy yelped, outraged.

  “That sounds like what a homewrecker would say.”

  “I don’t believe this.”

  “Would you prefer freeloader?”

  “You don’t pay rent either!”

  “We’re married,” she said, as if decring the truth of the universe.

  “Are you though? Where’s your ring? For that matter, where are your tails, you dumb fox. Last time I checked, three wasn’t nine. Are you sure I’m the one who can’t count? Who named you ‘nine-tailed’ fox anyway?”

  “How rude! Three is perfect for cuddling! Nine? Now that’s just excessive.”

  I sighed in fond exasperation. Tamamo was a fox. Mischief was in her blood. Despite that, she was unwilling to tease me too much because that would conflict with her vision of domesticity and family warmth. That left Missy as the target of most of Tamomo’s fits of whimsy.

  My lovely wife quickly figured out what I’d known for a century: Missy Biron was a wonderful bullying target. She made all sorts of funny faces, the more flustered the better. Back when I had my store in Brockton Bay, I’d gone out of my way to use over the top Noble Phantasms just to see her gape like a goldfish.

  Now, Tamamo bullied her mercilessly, only granting brief moments of reprieve like a fox batting around a helpless rabbit for funsies. Theirs was a strange sort of friendship born out of Tamamo’s need to tease and Missy’s nature as bullying target.

  The two of them got along better than one might believe at first gnce. For all her pyfulness, Tama was a social maniputor, the social maniputor in fact. I didn’t think Missy noticed, but Tama subtly adjusted her own behavior to appeal to Missy.

  It wasn’t uncommon to see the two working out together, Tama insisting she ought to “keep her cws sharp.” The two also often went out, Tama with her bestial features disguised, and would return with a VHS tape from the local rental store so Missy could “educate” my wife on modern society.

  She didn’t need any of this of course, she was a Heroic Spirit with an unchanging body and information directly from the ritual. This was just her way of getting along with Missy, as one might do with a new roommate.

  X

  There were still two more months until the Grail War officially began, but we found we couldn’t wait much longer. We were all getting antsy sitting around in the Clock Tower.

  In essence, Tamamo and I were Rulers. It was our job to preserve the secrecy of the Moonlit World and safeguard civilians. Though we had no direct connection to the Greater Grail, when the Command Seals began appearing, we knew about it almost instantly thanks to our network of shikigami familiars and rune-based listening wards.

  There was a great deal of hubbub surrounding Bazett Fraga McRemitz and Atrum Galliasta. I knew the first to be an accomplished enforcer and the master of Lancer, Cu Chuinn.

  The other, I had to admit, I forgot about completely until his name came up in hushed whispers. The Galliasta family tried to keep his participation under wraps, and to their credit, they succeeded for the most part. It wasn’t their fault that they hadn’t accounted for a caster of Tamamo’s caliber.

  Considering there were only seven possible csses and “Galliasta” wasn’t the name of a major character, I could only assume he was the moron who’d go on to summon Caster: Medea of Colchis. The Witch of Betrayal would then, surprise surprise, betray her master, becoming a rogue Servant.

  “So we have one person who’s going to get herself killed immediately, and another who’s going to abuse his Servant before said Servant inevitably betrays him,” Missy said with a tired sigh. She was busy taking notes on the events of the Fifth War as I knew it.

  Her time at the Clock Tower had not endeared mages to her. To be fair, she wasn’t wrong. Magi were culturally backwards, arrogant assholes who did reprehensible things in the name of progress.

  “He also goes on to sacrifice children in order to convert them into magic crystals. He thinks it’s novel and groundbreaking, but it’s actually ughably inefficient. Medea kills him because she sees Jason in him,” I added, happy to throw fuel on the fire.

  “What the fuck, John? We’re going to kill him, right?”

  “Medea handles that for us even if we do nothing.”

  “Before he kills children?”

  “Sure, why not? When did he get his Command Seals, Tama?”

  “Two days ago,” my wife said. She had her head in my p and was only half paying attention to our conversation. “Which means he’s officially a participant. Strictly speaking, him killing children means we now have the right to intervene as overseers.”

  I nodded. My fingers ran through her luxuriously soft hair and felt her entire body purr. “You’re right. He’s fair game now. The question is, who should we give the Command Seals to? We still need seven competitors.”

  Missy stood, her magic pocketwatch in hand. “Don’t know. Don’t care. I’m going to go murder him now. Where does he live?”

  “He’s got an estate in Wales,” Tamamo said with a yawn. “I’ll come help you in a moment. He hasn’t even summoned his Servant yet so it’ll be a cakewalk.”

  “How do you know he hasn’t summoned anyone yet?”

  “Do you have any idea how hard it is to acquire an appropriate catalyst on short notice? He’s looking for the Dragon of Colchis if hubby’s right, which means he’s going to need something from the right location and time period, preferably something that’s mystically attuned and personally relevant to the summoning target.”

  “And he can’t have that picked out yet because only the three founding families are guaranteed spots in the war,” Missy said, reciting her old lessons.

  “Yup. Odds are he has a few potential targets picked out, but would be forced to settle for whichever catalyst his social network can scrounge up on short notice.”

  “Huh. Fair enough. I guess, because your summoning was so easy, I never thought of it that way. I mean, you let yourself get summoned via fried tofu.”

  “I’ll have you know, it was hubby’s warm heart and deep love that drew me in,” she sniffed.

  “Right… And that’s why you insisted on an enchanted mini-fridge just for your tofu,” Missy shot back, voice drier than the Sahara.

  “I didn’t say it didn’t help,” Tamamo replied, utterly shamelessly. She got up with a catlike stretch. “Alright, let’s go murder some poor magus. Hubby, you can think about what you want to do with the Command Seals when we get back.”

  “Girls’ night out?”

  “Sounds lovely.”

  X

  Atrum Galliasta

  A shiver of dread crawled down my spine. I bolted to my feet, my research notes scattering across the floor. Panicked, I examined the estate’s bounded fields, only to find nothing amiss.

  My estate’s bounded fields boasted eight focal nodes that drew upon a set of two, intersecting ley lines. As the home of a storied house of magi, its defenses were formidable. Infiltration, a frontal assault, both were impractical, far beyond the power of even an entire squad of enforcers.

  I took a deep breath and allowed myself to rex. The bounded fields were fine. I slumped into my seat with a quiet sigh. There was nothing to fear. All I needed to do was wait while my agents acquired a suitable catalyst from the Age of Gods. Once I summoned a Servant, I would be beyond the reach of my rivals.

  “You should really learn to trust your instincts more,” I heard. The voice was beautiful, a song that tickled my ears and promised so much more.

  My head snapped up in shock. There, leaning casually against the wall, were two women. One was a blonde with short, cropped hair and piercing green eyes. She was dressed in dark, navy jeans, an olive-green tank top, and a leather jacket.

  It was the other who spoke, and the one who captured my attention. She had vibrant, pink hair and eyes that shimmered like pools of gold. Fox ears perked up neatly even as three, fluffy tails swayed mockingly behind her.

  She was dressed in one of those eastern garbs, a rich blue like the ocean. The hem of her dress was cut low, exposing her shoulders and breasts like a common whore. The pale valley was pleasing to the eye, no doubt a pitiful attempt to extract what meager advantage she could.

  She smiled, an expression of indescribable complexity. It spoke of innocence and seduction, angelic devotion and vindictive judgment. Her lip peeled upward, just enough to reveal glinting incisors, and I suddenly felt like a rabbit staring down a cobra.

  A Servant. It had to be. With the prana I could feel, she had to be a Caster specialized in seduction and stealth. “H-How?”

  “Oh, it was nothing special,” she demurred. “I merely possess some modest talent in onmyodo.”

  My mind raced to conclusions I could not deny. The blonde was a Master. She’d summoned a Caster from Japan. I tried to put a name to the Servant but could not.

  Like any reasonable magus, I’d ignored Servants from the barbaric backwater. Those yellow monkeys wouldn’t have anyone worth summoning anyway. How was I supposed to know one of my competitors would be an idiot?

  No, she had to be relying on the buff Servants received on their native soil. The location was one of the few constants of the war, after all.

  “You–Why are you here? The War cannot begin until–”

  “All the Servants are summoned,” the blonde bitch interrupted me. “Trust me, we know. Six Servants must be sin in ritual combat for the seventh and their Master to receive their wish. Naturally, killing you now is meaningless.”

  I let that thought settle. An alliance. She wanted an alliance. I ughed. She’d summoned some pathetic, barbarian Caster and now needed a real Servant to carry her through.

  I felt my usual confidence returning. This was a bluff, a ploy to put me on the back foot so that she could dictate the terms of our agreement.

  “You’re scouting out other Masters,” I said with a smirk. “You thought that if you could summon your Servant first, you’d be able to leverage Caster’s magecraft to gather information on other Masters.”

  “Something like that,” the blonde shrugged. She didn’t say much, no doubt because her yammering would only unravel her bluff.

  “Not bad, for first generation trash.”

  “Excuse me?”

  I made a show of looking her over. She was athletic, with a pleasing form that told me her body was itself a bargaining chip. “What else could you be? Dressed like a whore. Didn’t know any better than to summon a woodnd pest. You thought some bitch from Japan would have an advantage, only to end up with a Caster barely worth the name, didn’t you? That’s the real reason you’re here. Admit it, you ruined your chances of winning and now, you’re just trying to survive the war.”

  Just in case, I reached into a hidden drawer to grasp the wardstone. The Galliasta family had centuries of expertise in alchemy. Combat alchemy was well-within my abilities. My personal research focused on crystalizing ambient magical energy into energy sources for ter use.

  These two harlots had left my bounded fields intact in the name of stealth, a foolish choice. The bounded fields would convert any external expression of magecraft into crystals at my command, leaving them utterly helpless. Servant or no, they were rabbits in the lion’s den and they didn’t know it.

  “Wow… Tamamo, are you done yet?” the Master said dully. “Please tell me you found the files.”

  “Yup, I’ve got them right here,” the fox chirped happily. Just then, half a dozen familiars in the form of translucent, blue foxes, dashed through the walls. Each carried my notes in their mouths, treasures worth more than that blonde’s pathetic family could compile in a millennium. “He really likes to hear himself talk. He didn’t even notice all the shikigami I’ve got running around.”

  “You dare!” I snarled. A mage’s workshop was sacred, his notes even more so.

  “I do. And might I say, your prana-gathering process is disgustingly inefficient. I mean, if you’re going to be evil, at least be productive about it.”

  I felt blood rush to my face at the sheer gall of the bitch. Death was too good for her. Her suffering would be so great, the memory of this iteration would carve itself into her legend on the Throne.

  I reinforced my body and kicked my desk towards them to buy time. Stumbling back, I actively took control of the bounded fields. So long as I had that connection, I had two ley lines worth of prana and their own magecraft would be rendered ineffective.

  The desk barely toppled forward. No, it was as though the room had lengthened. My office was rge, but now it was suddenly as long as the hallway outside. I hadn’t felt any mystery activate.

  “Wha–”

  The blonde raised a single, arrogant eyebrow. “And? What do the notes say, Tama?”

  “Yeah, hubby was right. He’s got a pn to kidnap children to turn them into magic crystals so he could fuel his Servant more effectively. Honestly? He’s fairly novel for a magus; he’s even trying to incorporate modern industrialization principles.”

  “The Nazis turned genocide into an industrial process too,” she spat. She pulled out a pocketwatch that I immediately shot at with a bullet of prana, only for a glowing talisman to block the attack. “I’m going to kill him.”

  “No way! He’s mine. He’s been staring at my chest the whole time and it’s really annoying. Only hubby is allowed to do that.”

  “Seriously? That's your issue with him?”

  “Yeah? I mean, that and how poorly designed his whole prana conversion ritual is.”

  “I don't believe you.”

  “Anyway, did I ever tell you why I qualify as a Caster?”

  “No, only that you're not technically a Caster, or any kind of Servant.”

  “Yea… I have curses at an EX-rank. I mean, I'm pretty good at every form of magecraft because I'm as brilliant as I am beautiful and fluffy–”

  “And modest,” the blonde muttered under her breath.

  “Hush, you. But yeah, it's mostly the EX-rank curses thing.”

  “We take turns?”

  “Nope,” she chirped happily. She smiled, as beautiful as an angel and as sinister as the devil. “I don’t share my men, Missy-chan~”

  “Ugh, gross. John and I aren’t like that.”

  “Keep it that way and I won’t have to turn you into a rabbit.”

  “Fine, whatever.”

  EX-rank… How did a barbarian from Japan end up with an…

  I had to run. She was from the Age of Gods. She had to be. I tried to turn but found myself frozen, amber pools staring me down with vindictive malice.

  I tried to activate my magecraft. The emergency mysteries embroidered into my clothing. The bounded fields. My family crest. Nothing worked. It was as if some great power, an entity that utterly dwarfed humanity, snipped every thread of prana, like a gardener pruning a bush.

  “Y-You can’t,” I stammered. “There must be seven Servants to–”

  “We know,” her Master said, eyes rolling condescendingly.

  “But no one ever said you need to be one of those seven,” her Servant finished for her. She took a nguid step towards me. “‘Woodnd pest’ am I? ‘Barely worth the name of Caster,’ hmm? Wanna know something, Galliasta?”

  “W-What?”

  “Consider this your final lesson.” Her eyes turned into slits as she bared her fangs. Her every step was as quiet as the grave yet resounded like funeral bells in my ears. “There is no creature in the heights of Takamagahara nor the depths of Yomi as vindictive, petty, and vengeful as a fox.”

  X

  Luviagelita Edelfelt

  I woke up to a brick flying through my window. Years of honed instincts as a mercenary kicked in. I was up and ready to fight before the shattered gss could hit the floor.

  No, it wasn’t a brick. It was a shoebox. There was a paper talisman taped haphazardly on the lid that reinforced the box’s durability and allowed it to bypass my bounded fields. It was impressive work, so impressive that when I found out who sent this, I might not kill them.

  I cautiously cast several diagnostic spells on the box but found that it was just that. There were no traps I would associate with my family’s many enemies.

  I opened the box and smiled. A severed hand wasn’t actually the strangest gift I’d ever received, but it came pretty close. The Command Seals etched onto it certainly made it the most valuable.

  I took it back. Whoever this was, I would be sure to express my gratitude, perhaps only a single Gandr would be punishment enough for disturbing a maiden’s slumber.

  Author’s Note

  As far as I’m aware, Heroic Spirits are summoned into Csses, spiritual containers that restrict their abilities and emphasize certain aspects of their legends. This mitigates some of the cost of summoning a legendary figure.

  Tamamo no Mae was not summoned with the help of the Grail. She’s not bound to the Grail’s rules, nor is John cking prana to sustain a full Heroic Spirit. She is, for all intents and purposes, Tamamo the Heroic Spirit, not Tamamo the Caster.

  Yeah… Galliasta gets zero screentime, but I’m led to believe that he’s exactly the kind of person who’d mouth off to an unrestrained Tamamo.

  In other news, Luvia is now a Master, which might mean there is a new Caster, or even two considering her family’s magic.

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