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“What are you doing here?” Shirou asked in a deadpan voice when he opened the front door.
“Hmph. I heard the dog mention you were holding festivities of celebration tonight, so I came to see if they were to my standards.”
“I don’t remember inviting you.”
“I am a king! My mere existence is my own invitation! Fuahahahaha!”
Shirou sighed. “Fine. Just, try not to kill anyone.” He stepped back from the doorway to allow Gilgamesh inside. “And take off your shoes.”
Gilgamesh entered the house and took an unimpressed look around. “Your sense of interior design is just as dull as Kirei’s, mongrel.”
Ignoring him, Shirou went back to the living room where the rest were waiting. “We have… another guest,” he said defeatedly.
Saber, Rin, Sakura, Rider, Lancer, Illya, and Taiga looked up at him as he entered. Then all except the last practically jumped out of their seats when they saw who came in behind him.
“Shirou! What is he doing here?” Saber demanded. “It is bad enough you have let Caster and Lancer into this house—”
“Hey!” said Lancer.
“—but now you bring that man as well?”
“I didn’t bring him. He invited himself in. He said Lancer told him about it.”
“I did not!” cried Lancer, who then turned to Gilgamesh. “You eavesdropping bastard!”
Gilgamesh laughed again. “What a pathetic gathering you have here. Quite entertaining indeed.” He looked at Saber and smiled.
Saber, for her part, scowled and held out her hand like she was going to summon Excalibur, but she was quickly tackled by Rin with a cry of “You’ll destroy the house!” before that could happen.
Sakura seemed equally mad, and for a split second Shirou thought he saw something squirming and dark flickering behind her, but it might have just been a trick of the light. Rider had a glare that seemed fitting for her Noble Phantasm, and Illya had her arms folded on top of the table with her chin resting on them like she was too tired to deal with this.
“Ooh is this another friend of yours, Shirou?” asked Taiga, completely oblivious. “You sure have a lot of foreign friends. I like your jacket, mister!”
“He’s not a friend…” said Shirou as Gilgamesh laughed yet again. It was starting to hurt his ears.
“You did not tell me you knew a woman with such good taste, mongrel,” Gilgamesh said. “Now tell me, what is the occasion you have gathered for?”
Shirou went over to turn on the TV and the game system beneath it. A voice with a thick Italian accent yelled, “Nintendo! Woo hoo!” before a turtle with goggles sitting on a cloud holding a stoplight appeared on screen.
“We’re playing a racing video game,” Shirou said. “I’m sure that’s nothing that would interest a great king like yourself so—”
“No, I shall stay,” Gilgamesh said. “It shall be amusing to watch.”
Great.
So, with Gilgamesh sitting in the back causing a dark cloud to fall over the majority of the participants, they began their tournament. The first set of races were between Shirou, Saber, Rin, and Sakura.
“Shirou, how do I go forward?”
“With the A button, Saber.”
“Yes, thank you. Oh, Shirou. I went the wrong way. How do I turn around?”
Rin was not having much better luck. The “mages hate machines” rule clearly applied to video games as well. Shirou was fairly confident she’d never held a game controller in her life. “Dammit! I won’t lose!” she yelled, then proceeded to fall off the edge of the track.
Sakura wasn’t too bad. She and Shirou had played a few times before in the past. Still, she was merciless. “Sorry, Nee-san,” she said without a hint of remorse as she threw a red shell at Rin, despite the fact that she had already lapped her.
In the end, Shirou won, with Sakura taking second. In every track, it took Rin and Saber another five minutes to finish after the first two had crossed the finish line.
“Ugh, how are you so good at this game!” Rin cried, slamming her fist on the ground and glaring at Shirou. Saber seemed equally annoyed at losing.
Shirou held up his hands in defense. “I’m not, I swear. You’re just—”
“Just what!”
“Inexperienced?”
Taiga nodded. “It’s true,” she said. “Shirou sucks. Hehe, in all these years he’s never once beaten me! In fact, no one can beat me! That’s why they call me the Kart Queen of Fuyuki!”
“No one calls you that, Fuji-nee…”
As they switched to the next participants, Shirou looked back to see Gilgamesh still watching them amusedly. It gave him a feeling as if he was trying to solve a complicated math problem with the teacher standing right over his desk.
Next up was Taiga, Rider, Lancer, and Illya.
“None of you have played before, right?” Taiga asked as the countdown began. When the other three gave their positive affirmations she added, “So don’t feel too bad if you get too far behind. Like I said I’m a real… champ…”
When the second the “Go!” logo appeared, Rider’s kart had zoomed past hers into the lead. Taiga scrambled to keep up, but she couldn’t seem to pass her.
Illya seemed fairly frustrated, puffing her cheeks in a pout as she kept running into the grass. Lancer was scowling, and when he fell off the track for the fourth time he yelled something that Shirou guessed was a swear word in Old Irish.
Taiga had climbed up to her knees as she tried desperately to win. “You really haven’t played this before? At all?” she asked Rider with tears practically spurting from her eyes.
Rider even managed to fall back to second place just momentarily as a blue shell came flying towards them, letting Taiga take the hit before speeding back to first place for the goal. “I have not. But I have the ability to ride anything, even if it is digital,” she said in her usual monotone.
The second cup ended with Rider as the winner, and Taiga sobbing in her arms on the floor.
“Well…” said Shirou, averting his eyes from his teacher/guardian crying over a video game, “everyone has gotten a chance to go now, so I guess whoever wants a rematch before we break for dinner can go next.”
“Have you forgotten my royal presence?”
Shirou looked back at Gilgamesh, who was leaning against the table like this was his house. “I thought you just wanted to watch,” he said nervously. He had a terrifying vision of Gilgamesh, angry at losing, destroying the place in a fit of rage. “The controls are kind of tricky. I bet Servants in general just have a hard time with these sorts of things. Rider was able to win because of her class skill, but Saber and Lancer were never able to get the hang of it. After all they’ve never even seen video games before. It's no wonder they couldn't do it.” He was aware that the two he’d just named were now glaring at him too for throwing them under the bus.
“You dare to doubt my ability! Be grateful that the king is allowing you to participate in a game with him personally! I shall face you and Rider in a final match to determine the true victor,” Gilgamesh said, practically shoving Lancer out of the way to take his place.
“A-alright,” Shirou said. The result will be obvious, though…
The three of them sat next to each other, controllers in hand, as they prepared for the start of the race. Shirou tried to ignore Gilgamesh in his peripheral vision as the beeps counted down to the start. He slammed on his A button as hard as he could when the “Go!” appeared, not paying attention to his competitors, only focusing on going as fast as he could.
So when he heard a collective astounded “What?”, he had to look around at the others and on the screen to see what was going on. First he saw the spectators’ and even Rider’s face looking at the screen in surprise, and then he saw what they were looking at.
Gilgamesh had passed him.
And he’d passed Rider.
He was zooming through the track, drifting and swerving turns he seemed to know like the back of his hand. He was good. He was really, really good.
“Huh?” Now it was Shirou’s turn to be surprised.
“Fuahahaha! I said you should not doubt my ability! I have spent ten years experiencing all manners of modern entertainment, and I have mastered all of them, as the king!” Gilgamesh said. He executed some sort of masterful spin to dodge a green shell.
So what he’s saying is that he did nothing but play video games for ten years…
“As the King of Heroes, I claim my rightful victory!”
“That was quite an amusing party, mongrel,” Gilgamesh said, sliding his shoes back on and getting ready to leave. “The food was tolerable as well, even for one with a refined palate such as myself.”
Shirou had his arms folded as he stood watching him. Not only had Gilgamesh completely swept them in the races, his obnoxious behavior left the rest of them all exhausted. He felt ready to go to bed despite it only being 8 PM.
“I shall return next week at the same time, and we shall do this again.”
“What? Hey wait!” Shirou called out, horrified, but Gilgamesh had already shut the door behind him.