Chapter Text
Umamusume. They are born to run. They inherit the names of horses from another world, whose histories were sometimes tragic and sometimes wonderful, and run ever forward. That is their fate. No one knows how the races waiting in the futures of these Umamusume will end. But they will continue to run, aiming only toward the goal in front of them.
Rin Tohsaka had prepared for the Holy Grail War her entire life.
She had prepared for Berserkers. She had prepared for Assassins in the dark. She had prepared for the possibility that she would face a Servant capable of leveling a city block, and that the only thing standing between her and a gruesome death would be the heroic spirit bound to her command seals.
She had not prepared for the heroic spirit to spend forty-five minutes in the bathroom.
"McQueen." Rin knocked on the door for the sixth time. "McQueen, we need to leave. There is a war happening."
"I am well aware of the situation," came the voice from behind the door, calm and dignified and accompanied by the sound of a hair dryer. "I will be presentable in a moment."
"You don't need to be presentable, you need to be armed."
"I fail to see how those are mutually exclusive."
Rin pressed her forehead against the bathroom door. The wood was cool.
It helped, marginally, with the migraine that had been building since the small hours of the morning, when her summoning circle had activated in a burst of light and deposited onto her basement floor not the legendary hero she had spent a decade's worth of jewels to call, but a five-foot-two girl with lavender hair, violet eyes, wearing an expensive looking coat and the unmistakable air of someone who had opinions about thread count.
Mejiro McQueen. Archer-class Servant.
Not Lancelot. Not Gilgamesh. Not any figure from the Throne of Heroes whose name might inspire fear in an enemy Master or at least carry a weapon.
A racehorse.
A horse girl.
The Grail had reached for the Throne of Heroes, missed, and grabbed something from the Throne of Horses, if such a thing existed.
And the horse girl was currently using Rin's good conditioner.
"We're going to Emiya's," Rin announced to the door. "He summoned a Servant two nights ago. If I'm going to survive this war, I need an alliance with whoever he pulled, because you, and I say this with respect, are an Archer who doesn't have a bow."
The hair dryer stopped.
"As I have said, Trainer," McQueen said with the tone of a woman explaining the color of the sky to a small child. "I am a long-distance specialist. As a Mejiro, the idea that I would need a projectile —"
"We're leaving in five minutes."
"Ten."
"Five."
"...Seven, and I will require a mirror."
Mejiro McQueen, Star of the Turf
Twelve starring roles. Twelve times the audience asked her to be their main character. When they called for her resignation, the pride inside her still burned. Absolute strength that bored, because she was that far above.
They made it to the Emiya residence two minutes later than they should have, because McQueen had spotted her reflection in a shop window and paused to adjust her ribbon, and Rin had been forced to physically steer her away by the shoulders like a woman redirecting a shopping cart.
The Emiya house was, as always, offensively normal. Warm light in the windows. The smell of stock reducing on the stove. The gate was unlocked because Emiya Shirou had the self-preservation instincts of a golden retriever, even in the middle of a ritual war that had killed both their fathers.
Rin knocked.
Emiya Shirou opened the door wearing an apron and holding a rice paddle.
"Tohsaka? It's kind of late."
"Emiya, we need to talk about the person you summoned."
Shirou's hand tightened on the rice paddle. "How do you know about that?"
"Because I summoned one too. Can I come in? This isn't a doorstep conversation."
"Oh," said Shirou. "Yeah. I just finished making dinner. There's extra."
Rin stared at Shirou's open, entirely too trusting face. An unknown magus had just shown up at his door, announced she knew about his Servant, and his first instinct was to offer her dinner. She stepped inside before he could also hand her the house keys. McQueen glided past with the posture of someone entering a formal reception.
The interior of the Emiya house was what Rin expected: clean, modest, the dining table already set. What she did not expect was the girl sitting at the table, legs swinging, chopsticks buried in what appeared to be her third bowl of rice.
Small. Four-eleven, maybe. Long amber-brown ponytail with a pink ribbon. A white-and-blue outfit with a short skirt that looked vaguely ceremonial and a white streak in her bangs.
And horse ears.
And a tail.
Her sky-blue eyes turned toward Rin with the immediate, unearned familiarity of a puppy who had decided you were friends.
"Oh!" The girl set down her chopsticks and grinned. "Trainer, you didn't tell me we were having guests! Hi! I'm invincible Umamusume: Tokai Teio!"
She stuck out her hand.
Behind Rin, McQueen made a sound.
A small sound. A teakettle in the half-second before the whistle. Rin turned.
McQueen had stopped walking. One foot was still behind the other, mid-stride, as if her body had received a command her legs hadn't processed yet. Her lips parted. Nothing came out. Her right hand, the one that had been resting at her side with habitual poise, opened and closed once around empty air. For maybe two full seconds, Mejiro McQueen stood in Emiya Shirou's entryway and looked like a person who had been hit very hard in the sternum and was deciding whether to fall.
"Teio," McQueen said.
Teio's grin didn't widen. It transformed. Every tooth involved. Her eyes went huge and luminous and wet around the edges, and she launched herself out of the chair with acceleration that Rin's magus training told her was physically impossible for a body that size.
"McQUEEEN!"
The impact was audible. Teio hit McQueen at what Rin estimated was roughly thirty kilometers per hour, arms wrapping around her midsection with a grip strength that creaked the Servant's ribs. McQueen staggered back half a step, the first time Rin had seen her lose her footing, and then her arms came up, slowly, carefully, as if handling something invaluable, and folded around Teio's shoulders.
"Teio." Quieter. "You're here."
"You're HERE!" Teio's face was buried in McQueen's collarbone. Her voice came out muffled and radiant. "I can't believe it! I looked everywhere during my first night and I couldn't sense you at all and I thought maybe the Grail didn't summon you and I was going to have to do this whole war thing alone and — wait." She pulled back. Her eyes were glistening. "You look so good. Did you do something with your hair?"
"I conditioned it."
"It's so shiny!"
"Thank you. You have rice on your face."
"Where?"
McQueen produced a handkerchief. From where, Rin could not determine. She dabbed at Teio's cheek with the careful precision of a Renaissance restorer cleaning a fresco, and Teio stood there and let her, and the two of them were gazing at each other with an intensity that made Rin's internal compass start spinning.
Rin looked at Shirou. Shirou was watching the reunion with a mild, pleasant expression, the rice paddle still in his hand.
"So," Rin said. "Your Servant."
"Teio? Yeah, she showed up the other night."
"She's a horse girl."
"She calls herself an Umamusume, but yeah." Shirou said this in the same tone he might use to confirm that water was wet. "She's really fast. You should see her run. She did a lap around the block in like four seconds."
"Emiya."
"Yeah?"
"Your Servant is a horse girl."
Shirou blinked. "Yeah. Is that... bad?"
McQueen was examining Teio's outfit with a critical eye now, adjusting the drape of her miniature cape, while Teio chattered about the quality of Shirou's cooking and how the rice here was almost as good as the cafeteria at Tracen and did McQueen remember the time they had the rice competition and Gold Ship ate nine bowls and then fell asleep standing up.
"Emiya," Rin said. "We need to talk. In private. Right now."
Tokai Teio, Monarch of Miracles
The Monarch returned. Three times her body shattered, and three times she rose. The Arima Kinen, after a year's absence, was not her comeback but her coronation: the miracle that proved the Monarch surpassed even the Emperor who came before. She strode onto the turf a miraculous existence, and has never stopped giving people hope.
They sat in the adjacent room. Through the open door, Rin could hear Teio asking McQueen to rate the miso soup on a scale of one to ten, and McQueen responding that she didn't assign numerical values to cuisine but that the dashi was adequate.
"Okay," Rin said. "How did you even summon her? The ritual requires materials, a catalyst, a circle —"
"I tripped in the shed."
"You what."
"I was taking out the recycling. It was dark, and I cracked my shin on the old workbench, and I went down pretty hard." He rubbed his left shin absently, and Rin could see the fading yellow edge of a bruise above his sock. "There was some blood. I guess it landed on the floor in the right spot, because there was this flash, and then she was standing there asking me if I was okay."
"You activated a summoning circle. By hurting your leg. On accident."
"There was a circle on the floor?"
"There was a — Emiya, there was a Holy Grail summoning array embedded in your shed and you used it as storage?"
"I didn't know it was there! It looked like a stain."
Rin pressed both palms over her eyes. Somewhere, her father was spinning in his grave at sufficient RPM to power a small city. A decade of preparation, a king's ransom in gems, a bloodline's accumulated pride… and this boy had achieved the same result by barking his shin on a workbench in the dark.
"You're telling me," Rin said, very slowly, "that the catalyst for summoning a Heroic Spirit, a being of extraordinary power drawn from the Throne of Heroes, was you hurting your leg."
"I mean, she said it made sense. Something about legs being important."
"Of course she did."
"So what do you know about all this? What's actually going on?"
"What do you know about the Holy Grail War?"
Shirou thought about it. "My dad, Kiritsugu, was in one."
"And?"
"And then he cried a lot."
Rin waited for more. More did not come.
"That's it. That's everything you know."
"He said it was the worst thing that ever happened to him. But he also said he found me, so it wasn't all bad." Shirou paused. "He cried when he said that too, actually."
"Emiya." Rin pressed her palms flat on the table. "The Holy Grail War is a ritual battle between seven Masters and seven Servants. The Servants are supposed to be Heroic Spirits, legendary figures from human history summoned to fight. The last pair standing gets the Grail. My father died in the last war." She heard the sentence leave her mouth at the same speed as the others, flat and informational, as if she were reading a slide. She kept going. "Your father nearly died. People will die in this one."
Shirou absorbed this. He stiffened, but didn't say anything for a moment.
"...Okay," Shirou said. "What does that have to do with Teio?"
"Teio is your Servant. She was summoned by the Grail to fight in this war."
"She doesn't fight, though. She races."
"She doesn't get a choice. Neither does McQueen. The other five Masters out there have Servants too, and last war those Servants were Alexander the Great, Lancelot, Diarmuid —"
"Who?"
"— an Irish demigod, Emiya. From the last war. Who's going to spend his first night stabbing teenagers and horse girls if he's summoned again."
"Teio's really fast, though."
"Being fast doesn't help when someone is trying to stab you with the cursed spear of incurable wounds."
"I dunno," Shirou said. "If you're fast enough, it kind of does."
From the other room, Teio's voice floated through the doorway: "Trainer! McQueen says the soup is adequate! That's really good, she never says anything higher than adequate!"
"Thanks, Teio!" Shirou called back, visibly pleased.
Rin closed her eyes. Somewhere, deep down, she knew her Servant was comparing her as a Trainer to Shirou Emiya based on food alone.
And she was losing.
The alliance pitch went better once she lowered her expectations. Significantly downward. Geological downward. She laid it out simply: two Masters, two Servants, five enemies. The prudent move was cooperation.
Shirou looked at the table for a long time. He rubbed his thumb along the grain of the wood, back and forth, the way you do when you're not really aware your hands are moving.
"...Makes sense to me," he said. "Want me to make tea? We can bring them in."
"Yes."
The four of them sat around the dining table. Shirou poured tea. McQueen held her cup with both hands, posture immaculate, sipping at intervals that seemed almost metronomic. Teio had already finished her cup and was eyeing the pot. Rin had a legal pad.
"Alright," Rin began. "I need both of you to understand the situation we're in. This is the Fifth Holy Grail War. A battle to the death. Seven Masters, seven Servants. The winning pair gets the Holy Grail, which can grant any wish. The losing pairs die."
"Any wish?" Teio leaned forward. "Like, anything?"
"Anything."
"What would you wish for?"
Rin stopped. The question sat there between them, simple and enormous, and she realized she had spent a decade preparing for the war and almost no time thinking about the prize. Her father had wanted the Grail. Her father was dead.
"That's not the priority right now," Rin said.
Teio looked like she wanted to push, but McQueen touched her wrist and she settled back.
"The Servants are summoned from the Throne of Heroes," Rin continued. "Legendary warriors: Lancelot, King Arthur, Alexander the Great, figures with the power to flatten a city block. Every past war has featured spirits like that." She set down her pen. "And instead of summoning legendary heroes, the Grail gave us you two."
McQueen's teacup clinked against the saucer with the gravity of a judge's gavel.
"You seem to be under the impression we are lesser than your Heroic Spirits. Umamusume are spirits whose fans exceeded millions of people." She sniffed. "I agree we are not comparable to your dark age warriors, but not in the way you think."
"McQueen, the last Archer in this war was Gilgamesh. Who could summon and fire literally every legendary weapon that has ever existed. You don't even have a bow."
"Every Umamusume at Tracen Academy is trained in archery, as well as kendo and martial arts. Umamusume are not incapable of violence, Tohsaka-san. We choose not to engage in it, because brawling like feral mustangs is beneath the dignity of an Umamusume of any pedigree."
"Even Gold Ship?" Teio asked.
McQueen nodded once. "Even Gold Ship," she said.
"That means a lot coming from McQueen," Teio stage-whispered to Shirou. "After the thing with the carrot she didn't speak to Gold Ship for a week."
"We agreed never to mention the incident with the Manpukuji," McQueen said.
Shirou frowned. "Manpukuji? The temple or the giant carrots?"
"Yes!" Teio chirped.
"Back to the topic," Rin said with the effort one might use to push a stubborn horse along. "Even if you are proficient in kendo, we are operating at a massive disadvantage in this war."
Teio turned to Rin, "The Grail summoned us. Same Grail that summoned all those other people. Can it make mistakes?"
"...No."
"Then there you go."
Rin closed her mouth. The Grail's summoning system was designed to select entities of sufficient power to contest the war. If it had selected Umamusume, then Umamusume met the threshold. The system wasn't random. If McQueen was here, McQueen was supposed to be here.
That didn't mean Rin had to like it.
"Fine. You're strong. Your parameters aren't bad. But strength isn't the whole picture. The other Masters are mages. They'll use bounded fields, familiars, curses, things you've never encountered. If even one of the other Servants is a front-line combatant with a Noble Phantasm designed for killing, we need more than confidence."
"That's what you're for," Teio said. "You're the Trainer! You do the planning. We do the running."
"I'm not your trainer, I'm a Master."
"Trainer." McQueen set her cup down. "In our world, the equivalent is a trainer. A trainer studies the field, understands the conditions, and places their horse in the best possible position to win. They do not run the race."
She met Rin's eyes. That stare: the frank, locked-in appraisal of something that knows exactly how fast it can move and is waiting to be told when.
"You are my trainer, and I expect you to be excellent at it. I did not come here to lose."
"...Alright," Rin said. "I'll be your 'trainer.' But I need you both to understand what that means. The previous Holy Grail War ended with a fire that destroyed an entire neighborhood. Hundreds of people died. The Servant responsible was so powerful that the Grail itself couldn't contain the outcome."
Teio's ears flattened against her head. "That's terrible."
"And if we don't take this seriously —"
"Oh, I take it seriously. I just don't think being scared about it helps. Fear makes you tense up, and tension kills your stride." Her eyes met Rin's. Still bright. Still warm. But underneath, something that didn't blink. "If somebody tries to hurt my Trainer or McQueen, I'm going to be between them and that person! I'm very, very fast, Trainer."
"And you think that's enough? Against a demigod who killed a lion with his bare hands?"
"That sounds like a lion had a bad day."
"Heracles completed twelve impossible labors. If he were summoned as Berserker, his Noble Phantasm would grant him twelve lives. You would have to kill him twelve separate times."
"That does sound like a lot of killing," Teio conceded. "But I don't have to beat Heracles. I just have to outrun him."
"You can't outrun the war."
"I mean... how long is it?"
"The war?"
"Yeah, like, in meters. Because if it's over 2500 meters, McQueen's got it handled."
Rin turned to Shirou. "She's doing this on purpose."
"I don't think she is," Shirou said, and the worst part was that he was right.
"They are going to die, Emiya. They have no idea what's going on."
McQueen spoke up. "Trainer. You should not mistake her demeanor for naiveté." Her voice dropped. "Every Umamusume knows when she steps on the turf, it might be her last. One bad step at a full speed and that's the end. Teio survived three fractures. But for any of those in the moment, if she had come down on her foot at a slightly different angle..."
She didn't finish.
Rin glanced at Teio. The grin was gone. Teio was looking at McQueen with an expression that was far more quiet and knowing than usual.
"McQueen," Teio said softly.
McQueen's ears tilted toward her.
"I came back fine. Every time."
"You were strong," McQueen replied, barely above a murmur. "You wouldn't let anything keep you from coming back."
"After the third fracture. When I came back." She wasn't looking at Rin or Shirou anymore. She was looking at McQueen, and McQueen was looking at her, and the rest of the room had become background. "That was for you."
"Teio —"
"It was." Teio's voice had gone quiet in a way that didn't suit her. "Your career was over. Ligamentitis. The kind that doesn't get better."
"I am aware of my own medical history," McQueen said, but there was no sharpness in it.
"It was raining. At the track. After I heard about it. I found you on the grass."
"The storm was breaking," McQueen said. "The sun was coming through."
"And you were just sitting there."
"I was."
"So I sat down next to you. The grass was soaked —"
"You ruined your uniform."
"I didn't care. I took your hand."
"You did."
"And I told you I'd win the Arima Kinen for both of us."
McQueen's jaw tightened. "You said that if you worked hard enough, you could make a miracle happen."
"Because it was true. Every time I felt like giving up, you pulled me forward. Every time I thought I was going to break —"
"I was there," McQueen said.
"You were right there." Teio's voice cracked. "You were the kind of strong Umamusume I could chase after forever. So I promised you, it was my turn to run for you."
"I told you that you couldn't. Not in your condition. Not 2500 meters. Not the Arima Kinen."
"And I told you I didn't care about the numbers."
"You never care about the numbers."
"And then I won."
McQueen's hand was resting on the table. It was not steady.
"The entire stadium was crying," Teio said, and the grin resurfaced. "The announcer was crying. Our team was crying. Everyone was, just, gone."
"You were crying," McQueen said.
"I was crying because I won. You were crying and everyone saw because —"
"The camera operator made an editorial choice that I did not endorse."
"You were on the big screen for forty-five seconds. Your face was doing the thing."
"My face does not do a thing."
"It does a thing! Trainer, tell her."
"I wasn't there," Shirou said. But he was leaning forward, elbows on the table, and he had the look. Rin had seen it once before, when he'd talked about Kiritsugu finding him in the rubble. The look of a boy who understood, down to the marrow, what it meant to make an impossible promise and keep it.
"You promised you'd win for her," Shirou said. "And you did."
"Yeah." Teio grinned at him. "That's what miracles are, Trainer. You decide they're going to happen, and then you make them happen anyway. No matter what."
Shirou nodded slowly. "I think I understand that."
Rin watched the boy who wanted to be a hero recognize something of himself in a horse girl. Of course the Grail gave him this one.
She looked at McQueen. McQueen, whose composure had survived twelve Grade 1 races, a career-ending injury, and a summoning into a ritual war, but was currently developing hairline fractures over the memory of a girl holding her hand in the rain and saying it's my turn.
McQueen met Rin's eyes. Her expression said, very clearly, do not comment on this.
Rin had many things she wanted to comment on. She had never, in the entire history of human rivalry, across every culture and era she had studied, encountered a rivalry that involved hand-holding in the rain, tearful dedications, and a promise to run for you.
"That's a very moving story," Rin said, with the carefully neutral tone of a woman choosing not to step on the landmine.
"Right?" Teio beamed. "McQueen's my rival. The most important person in the world to me."
Rival. Said with the full-body sincerity of a wedding vow.
McQueen dipped her head. "You are also my rival, Teio. That has always been true."
They looked at each other. Rin looked at Shirou. Shirou was refilling the teapot.
"Are they..." Rin started.
"Rivals?" Shirou finished. "Yeah, it would seem so."
"I was going to say something else."
"Like what?"
His face told her nothing. The man had watched his Servant declare another girl the most important person in the world to her, and his read on the situation was rivals.
"Never mind. Noble Phantasms. We need to discuss your Noble Phantasms. Right now. Immediately."
McQueen straightened. "Duty of Dignity Calls. Any race exceeding 2000 meters, I possess a stamina reserve that activates in the final half. I do not accelerate past my opponents. I endure until they break."
"And below 2000 meters?"
"I don't race below 2000 meters. On turf."
"What if a fight happens at close range?"
"Then it is not a race. A Mejiro does not brawl. I will create the distance I require."
Rin looked up. "Teio. Yours."
"The Teio Step!" Teio stood up, knocking her empty teacup sideways. Shirou caught it without looking. "I can hit top speed really fast. No wind-up, just tappy-tap-tap and I'm there," she said with a little dance.
Rin paused. A Servant with high Agility who could accelerate to top speed in two strides. "That's actually not terrible."
"Not terrible!" Teio pumped her fist.
"Don't celebrate. Not terrible gets you killed against a Servant with a ranged Noble Phantasm. Anything else?"
"I have the miracle thing. Three fractures, three comebacks, one Arima Kinen."
"Miracles are not a combat mechanic."
"Tell that to my legs."
Rin exhaled. McQueen's Endurance was extremely high, which was genuinely extraordinary. Teio's acceleration was a real asset. Neither of them had any interest in fighting, any experience with bounded fields, or any apparent concern about the five unknown Servants currently loose in Fuyuki.
"Speaking of which," Rin said. "The other five Servants. Any idea what might be out there? Do you know if other Umamusume were summoned, or are we the only ones?"
Teio and McQueen looked at each other.
"We can't sense other Servants," McQueen said. "We don't have that capacity."
"You can't — you can't sense Servants? At all?"
"We're Umamusume, Trainer. We sense turf conditions and pace. Not magic."
"Great. That's great. So we're blind."
"But," Teio said, leaning forward, "if other Umamusume were summoned, that changes everything. Because I know everyone at Tracen. Like, everyone. I know how they run, what distances they like, what makes them choke. If it's all Umamusume in this war, we already have the whole scouting report."
"And if it isn't?"
"Then someone's got a knight and we're back to the outrunning plan."
"There is no outrunning plan. I have never approved an outrunning plan."
"You haven't disapproved one either."
"I'm disapproving it now."
"But if it is other Umamusume, you should know about them. Like Gold Ship, for example. If Gold Ship got summoned. Okay, so, at Tracen, Gold Ship was on the fourth floor, which was a mistake, because she threw a watermelon out the window during the summer festival and it hit the assistant's car—"
"It was not a watermelon," McQueen corrected. "It was a pumpkin."
"Was it?"
"The watermelon was the separate incident involving the pool."
"Oh, right! The pool thing! Trainer, did I tell you about the pool thing?"
"No," Shirou said, because apparently the universe had decided he was genuinely interested.
"So Gold Ship—"
"I am going to stop you," Rin said, "because Gold Ship, whoever she is, is not relevant to the fact that we might die tomorrow."
"Gold Ship is always relevant," Teio said, with a sincerity that brooked no argument.
"She isn't, though. She objectively isn't."
"Have you met Gold Ship?"
"No."
"Then you don't have enough data to make that claim."
Rin looked at the ceiling. "McQueen, does your rival always do this?"
"Yes," McQueen said. "One adjusts."
"I am not going to adjust. I am going to keep all of us alive." Rin sat up straighter. "Which brings me to logistics. Specifically, where everyone is sleeping tonight."
McQueen folded her hands. "I will be staying here."
"Excuse me?"
"Here. At the Emiya residence. It is," McQueen searched for an alternative to cruel, "inadvisable for Umamusume to stable alone."
"No."
"Trainer—"
"No. Absolutely not. I have my own house. My house has wards. My house has a workshop."
"Your house doesn't have Teio."
"That is not a factor in security planning!"
McQueen stood with her hands clasped, chin raised. She had the bearing of someone who had been told no many times in her life and never once considered it binding.
"An Umamusume separated from her stable suffers diminished performance. It is a physiological reality."
"You're a Servant. You're made of mana. You don't have physiology."
"I have physiology. I took my temperature this morning."
"You used my thermometer?"
"I sterilized it."
"That is not the point!"
"The point is that Teio and I are both stronger in proximity. This is true of all Umamusume, and especially of rivals."
"You keep saying that word."
"Rivals?"
"You say it like it means something else."
McQueen regarded her. "It means exactly what it means. She is the one I measure myself against. The one who makes me run harder. In every race I have ever won, the reason I won was because somewhere in the field, Teio existed, and I could not allow myself to be less than what she made me. My legend does not exist without her own."
Rin thought about wet grass. Cold rain. One girl's hand closing around another's. A promise made in the sunbeam of a breaking storm.
"Sure," Rin said. "Rivals."
"Yes."
"Who held hands in the rain."
"Yes."
"And dedicate races to each other."
"Are you going somewhere with this?"
Rin said nothing for a moment. "Just… no reason. No reason."
McQueen's chin lifted a millimeter. "I will be staying here, Tohsaka-san."
Shirou, consulted next, had no objections.
"Sure. I've got spare rooms. Fuji-nee uses one sometimes, but the others are empty."
"Emiya, a girl you met nine minutes ago just announced she's moving into your house."
"McQueen said Umamusume don't stable alone."
"You don't even know what that MEANS."
"I think it means they don't like being alone?" He shrugged. "Horses are social creatures. I don't like being alone either. The house is too big for one person."
Rin knew the story, or the shape of it: the fire, Kiritsugu, the empty rooms. She didn't push.
"Fine. McQueen stays here. She patrols at night; she has the Endurance for it. Teio scouts during the day. I'll maintain my workshop at my house and commute for coordination."
She heard herself say it. Commute. Walk back and forth across Fuyuki alone, without a Servant. She looked down at the command seals on her hand. Three red marks on her skin, like a brand. The skin around them was still tender.
"If there's an Assassin-class Servant in this war," Rin said, and stopped.
McQueen said nothing.
"If there's an Assassin, and I'm walking home alone —"
"You would be dead before you sensed the approach," McQueen said.
The room was quiet. Shirou looked at Rin. Rin looked at her command seals. The tender skin. The red marks. Her father had had marks like these. She remembered them on his hand when she was small, before she understood what they meant.
"I'll need a room," Rin said.
Shirou didn't ask why she'd changed her mind. "There are several."
"One with a lock."
"I can install one."
"Tonight."
"I'll get a screwdriver."
The sleeping arrangements took another forty minutes, mostly because McQueen insisted on inspecting every available room and rating them on criteria that Rin did not fully understand, including "air circulation appropriate for light conditioning," "proximity to morning sun exposure for coat maintenance," and "ambient noise level compatible with pre-race visualization routines."
McQueen selected a room and pronounced it adequate. "A Mejiro requires proper rest to perform. This will suffice."
"We were in the same dorm at Tracen," Teio said, bouncing on her heels, "but never the same room. This is going to be amazing. McQueen, we can do morning stretches together! And evening cooldowns! And I can braid your hair before bed like I always wanted to—"
"You always wanted to braid my hair?"
"Obviously! Have you seen your hair?"
"I see it every morning. During my routine."
"I'll be so gentle. You won't even feel it."
"That is not the concern. The concern is —"
"McQueen."
"...Fine. You may braid my hair."
Teio made a sound that fell somewhere between a cheer and a dog whistle, and McQueen's ears did a complex rotation that Rin interpreted as the Umamusume equivalent of blushing with your whole skull.
"There's only one futon in there right now," Shirou said. "I can get another one out of storage —"
"Tomorrow's fine!" Teio said brightly. "I'll just share McQueen's tonight. Fair warning, though. I migrate. By like 3 AM I'll be on your side."
"You will remain on your designated half."
"McQueen, it happens involuntarily. Heat is a resource."
"We will establish a boundary."
"You can try."
Rin sat on the engawa with her legal pad. Somewhere in the city, five other Masters were sharpening their legendary heroes for combat. She was moving into a boy's house to share a hallway with two horse girls who were about to share a futon because of a stabling regulation that she was sixty percent certain they had invented on the spot.
"Emiya."
"Yeah?"
"If we die in this war, I want you to know that I blame you personally."
"That seems unfair."
"You summoned a horse girl who thinks wars are measured in meters. By tripping."
"In her defense, she's been really helpful around the house. She helped reorganize the pantry."
"Incredible. When Lancelot shows up with an F-15, I'll take shelter in your pantry."
Shirou blinked. "Why would a knight have a —"
"Never mind, Emiya." Rin looked up at the moon, wondering what was up there that had convinced Kiritsugu to tell his son nothing about the 4th War but still allow him to stay in Fuyuki with a live summoning circle.
From inside the house, Teio was saying, "McQueen, which side do you want? I kick in my sleep so you should probably take the wall side —"
Rin looked at her legal pad. PLAN, it said, underlined twice. Below it, in McQueen's handwriting: STABLE TOGETHER. She had not seen McQueen write this. She did not know when it had happened.
Below that, nothing.
Rin picked up a new pen. She sat with it for a while. Then she wrote:
Step 1: Survive tomorrow.
Step 2: Figure out what the hell is going on.
Step 3: Win the Holy Grail War with two horse girls who are definitely, absolutely, unquestionably just rivals.
She underlined step three.
Around Fuyuki, Masters contended with their newly summoned servants.
Fuyuki Church
The argument had been going for forty minutes.
Kirei Kotomine sat in the third pew with a copy of The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, open to a passage about silence. He had not turned a page in some time. He did not need to. The reading material in front of him had become secondary to the reading material standing on a pew.
"—didn't say you had bad taste, I said the curtains look like something from a funeral home. There's a difference, and the difference is that funeral homes are depressing."
"They ARE from a funeral home! It's a CHURCH! And I will not have my safehouse look anything less than number one in presentation, even if it IS a church!"
"It's not YOUR safehouse! You got here twenty minutes before me!"
"And in those twenty minutes, I organized the candles by height, swept the nave, and established a watch rotation! What did you do?"
"I found the best pew! This one's got the perfect angle to the door, you can see anyone comin' and you've got a straight shot out the side. It's cool as hell!"
"Hmph. You picked it because it's the most comfortable."
"...It can be both!"
Vodka, his Servant, nominally, was standing on said pew with one boot planted on the armrest. Daiwa Scarlet, also his Servant, because the Grail had a sense of humor he was still processing, had her arms crossed and her posture blade-straight and was losing the argument anyway because she kept engaging.
The Grail had delivered him two Lancers, and declared their spirits too fundamentally entangled to be summoned as anything but a pair.
One, five-foot-five, cropped dark hair curling out at the ends like she'd walked through a wind tunnel and decided it suited her, shorts and a leather jacket, the bearing of someone who had learned to ride a motorcycle before she had learned to lose gracefully. And the other, an inch shorter, auburn twintails, a tiara, gold epaulettes on a royal blue and white dress, the posture of someone who had never once in her life been late to anything.
They shared a single set of Command Spells, which meant using one on either of them was functionally using it on both.
Kirei turned a page. The passage was still about silence.
"The curtains stay," Daiwa said, with the finality of someone issuing a decree. "I'm in charge of safehouse aesthetics. That's final."
"Since WHEN?"
"Since I'm the one who actually has standards! You'd just hang a motorcycle poster on the wall!"
"First of all, that'd be sick. Second of all, yeah, actually, that's the whole argument. That'd be way cooler than..." Vodka gestured at the heavy drapes. "Whatever vibe this is going for. Haunted grandma?"
"It's DIGNIFIED!"
"It's depressing! Trainer, c'mon." Vodka dropped off the pew and turned to Kirei. "Back me up here. You really wanna run a war outta a place that looks like this?"
Kirei looked up from his book. He regarded Vodka with the unhurried attention of a man studying an insect under glass. Then Daiwa.
"The curtains," he said, "are original to the building. They were selected by my predecessor."
"See?" Daiwa's chin lifted. "They have history."
"My predecessor," Kirei continued, "had no taste."
Vodka barked a laugh. Daiwa's expression underwent a rapid and complex negotiation.
"That — that isn't the point! The point is that we are not redecorating a church in the middle of a war!"
"You just said you were in charge of safehouse aesthetics! You literally JUST said that!"
"I said I have standards! Having standards and redecorating are completely different things!"
"Name ONE difference!"
"The difference is that I decide what stays and what goes, not you! That's what number one means!"
"You can't just call number one on a church!"
"I can call number one on anything I want! That's what BEING number one means!"
Kirei watched. The book rested in his lap, one finger holding his page, a formality, since the page would not be changing. The two of them had turned fully toward each other now. Daiwa's arms were still crossed but her weight had shifted forward onto her toes. Vodka had her thumbs hooked in her jacket pockets, leaning back, grinning with teeth. The church, the war, the five other Masters currently sharpening their servants; all of it had become scenery. They were in their own world. The closed circuit hummed.
Despite the crowd still watching them, the Desert Fathers might have said, they are lost in their own.
Kirei felt something. It was not irritation.
Interest. That was the word, if he were forced to name it. No one in this church was paying him enough attention to ask. The quiet interest of a man who has spent his life watching people suffer and has just been shown something new. Not agony. Not despair. Something more specific. Two people who could not stop fighting and could not stop needing the fight. Who wounded each other with precision and healed each other with the same blows. Whose misery was indistinguishable from their joy.
It was, in its own small way, beautiful.
He closed the book.
"The north ley line," Kirei said, "runs under Miyama. A Master lives in Miyama. One of you will scout it tonight."
They both stopped. Turned. For one moment, the closed system opened a crack and admitted the existence of a world outside itself.
"I'll go," Vodka said. "Night scouting's cooler anyway."
"You will not. I'll go. I'm faster, I'm quieter, and I don't get distracted by motorcycles, or whatever you'd find out there."
"You don't know what's out there! That's the whole point of scouting!"
"Hmph. I know what's NOT out there, and that's a reason for you to come along and slow me down."
"Slow you DOWN? You wanna test that? Right now? I'll race you to Miyama and back before you've finished fixing your hair!"
"My hair is always finished! I prepare it the night before! Like a responsible person!"
"Responsible! You're callin' yourself responsible while we're arguing about curtains!"
Vodka was already heading for the door. She stopped at the threshold. "You coming or not?"
Daiwa was three steps behind her.
Kirei stood, tucked the book under his arm, and walked toward the rectory. Behind him, the argument pivoted seamlessly from reconnaissance jurisdiction to hair care to a sub-argument about who had won more races at 1600 meters, which was irrelevant to scouting but appeared to be critical to the relationship.
Whether the Grail had intended to summon horse spirits from the future instead of Heroic ones, or it had merely slipped while reaching for the Throne, Kirei would make it work. He had been given a weapon. The weapon happened to be two girls who argued about curtains. But the argument had lasted forty minutes without either of them tiring, and their mana reserves hadn't dipped, and the intensity of the bickering had only increased.
Endurance, he reflected, took many forms.
He closed the door. The sound dropped by perhaps ten percent.
He opened the book again. He did not read.
He listened.
Vodka, Prodigy of Fuchu
A filly won the Derby for the first time in sixty-four years. She was always looking far away, aiming at a place out of anyone's reach. The path less travelled lies among the thorns.
Daiwa Scarlet, Miss Perfect
Tomorrow too, the scarlet wind blows. All she sees is victory. All she wants is glory. The queen's march has no end.
Matou Residence
Sakura had not expected a luchador.
The Servant who materialized in the Matou house was five-foot-four, brown-haired, wearing a red masquerade mask with a white frame that covered half her face. A brown bird sat on her shoulder. It looked like a hawk.
She had not expected horse ears and a tail, either.
"¡Buenas noches, Trainer!" El Condor Pasa struck a pose in the doorway, one hand raised, cape flaring behind her despite the complete absence of wind. "Your Servant has arrived! The Worldwide Umamusume, champion of Tracen, challenger of the Arc: El Condor Pasa!"
Mambo chirped.
"And Mambo," El added graciously.
Sakura took in the sight before her. "Welcome. Would you like to sit down?"
"First!" El held up a finger. "I must inspect the training grounds." She was already walking. "A champion requires three things: a worthy rival, a track that tests her spirit, and—" She stopped in the kitchen doorway. "Is that curry?"
"I made extra," Sakura said. "I wasn't sure what Servants eat—"
El was already sitting at the table. Mambo was perched on the soy sauce.
"Trainer," El said, with the gravity of someone delivering a battlefield assessment. "This curry is exceptional."
"You haven't tasted it yet."
"I can tell." She tapped the side of her mask. "An Umamusume's instinct."
Sakura watched her Servant eat three full servings of curry in eight minutes while narrating her own performance in the third person. Mambo ate rice off a saucer. At some point, El produced a small notebook and began sketching what appeared to be the dining room framed like a wrestling ring.
"The angles are poor," El said, frowning at the sketch. "If an enemy attempts a huracanrana from the north hallway, we have no angle of—"
"That's the bathroom."
El studied her diagram. Crossed something out. Drew a new arrow.
"Backstage," she said, nodding.
Sakura sat down across from her and poured herself tea with the steady hands of someone who had decided, very quickly, that understanding was optional and patience was mandatory.
El Condor Pasa, The Phantom Bird
She challenged the world. Jumped over every wall. The condor flew higher, proud and fearless, toward the top of the world. She fell just short. She does not regret a single stride.
Ryuudou Temple
Grass Wonder held a teacup and sipped it, taking in the sights of the city from the edge of the temple grounds.
Five feet even. Tawny hair past her waist, a white spot above her bangs. Blue eyes. She wore a modified uniform with an air of tradition. Excessively traditional. Aggressively traditional.
Next to her, Seiun Sky sat at the pond, holding a fishing rod.
Powder-green hair, a sunflower hairpin, a white outfit reminiscent of clouds, her eyes closed.
"How lovely. The stonework, the water, the care in every detail," Grass Wonder's tail swished. "One can feel the tradition breathing here. It speaks to something I've carried with me a long while."
Water churned as Seiun moved her rod through it.
Grass Wonder looked down, tilting her head and gave a quiet laugh. "Sky, you are aware the pond hasn't been stocked, aren't you?"
Seiun opened one eye. "It's about the catch, Grass, it's the waiting." She closed it, and moved her rod through the water once more. "Y'know, kinda like carrying something with you all the way from Kentuck—...mm, what was I saying. Lost my train of thought."
A hairline crack sounded across Grass Wonder's cup.
Seiun Sky opted for silence.
Grass Wonder, The Phoenix
She overcame a fracture, endured months unable to run, and then the engine ignited. Grass Wonder, winning like a dream. The Arima revival. The record shattered. A dream horse whose limits no one has ever seen nor ever will.
Seiun Sky, The Trickster
The runaway fox who stole the Kikuka Sho from under the field's nose. The trick worked once. Perfectly, completely, irresistibly. It never worked again. Some tricks are only meant to be performed once.
Einzbern Castle.
"She's on the roof," Sella reported, in the tone of someone delivering news of a natural disaster.
Illyasviel von Einzbern set down her cocoa. "Which part."
"The north tower."
"What's she doing?"
Sella opened her mouth. Closed it. Tried again.
"I believe she is... fishing."
Illya was already walking.
The Servant who had answered her summons was five-foot-seven and built like someone who could pick up a horse.
Or, was one, judging from the ears and tail.
She wore a red outfit, white pants, gold accents and had long, silver-grey hair and rosewood eyes. Features that would be captivating if the eyes didn't hold utter chaos within and her head had a hat and headpiece that made her look like she'd escaped a padded room.
She had introduced herself as Gold Ship, Berserker-class, before immediately asking if the castle had a bathtub.
It did. Illya had told her she had fifteen minutes. She'd taken forty-five. Illya had sent Sella to remove her. Sella had returned, ashen-faced, and said only "She's still in there" before pouring herself a brandy.
And now the roof.
The fishing line dangled over the edge of the tower into the empty courtyard below. It was an actual fishing line, conjured from nothing. Berserker-class Noble Phantasm reserves apparently covered sporting goods.
Illya climbed the final stair and stepped onto the battlement. The wind was bitter. Gold Ship was sitting cross-legged on the parapet, rod in hand, perfectly content.
"Gold Ship."
"Yo, Trainer! Perfect timing." Gold Ship reeled in the line and held up the empty hook like a jeweler presenting a diamond. "I'm about to make history. First deep-sea catch from a landlocked European castle. The altitude actually helps: cold air sinks, which means fish rise, which means we're basically at sea level if you think about it vertically."
"We are on a tower. In a forest. There are no fish."
"Not with that attitude. That's the problem with castles, nobody commits to the aquatic potential. You've got stone walls, you've got a courtyard, you've got gravity. That's three-quarters of an ocean right there. Water and fish are, honestly, minor details."
Illya breathed in through her nose. "Why do you even have a fishing rod?"
"Built it." Gold Ship held up the rod with both hands like a trophy. "The reel's the crowning achievement, found the perfect rotational mechanism in your guest room. Smooth action, zero friction, beautiful craftsmanship. Whoever made that doorknob was basically a fishing prodigy and didn't know it."
Illya looked at the reel. She recognized it. It was from the second-floor guest suite.
"That is an eighteenth-century Austrian fixture."
"See? Eighteenth-century Austrian engineering. They knew what they were doing. In that case, this is heritage fishing. We're honoring your ancestors."
Illya was the heir to the Einzbern legacy, the vessel of the Holy Grail, and the master of the most powerful Servant class in the war. She had spent her entire life preparing for this moment. The Grail had seen her bloodline, her circuits, her resolve, and had given her… this.
"You are going to come inside," Illya said, with the crystalline authority of eight centuries of Einzbern breeding. "You are going to return that doorknob. You are going to explain to me how you intend to fight a war, because so far your Noble Phantasm involves losing the start of every race, and then you are going to sleep in the room I've assigned you and not touch anything else in this castle. Are we clear?"
Gold Ship looked at her. Then she broke into the grin of someone who has just discovered a small and very angry kitten.
"See, that's what I'm talking about." Gold Ship's grin widened. "Fire. A trainer who beats her chest and roars. That's the stuff." She shoved the rod into Illya's hands. "First exercise: deep-sea tower fishing. Builds patience, forearm strength, and spiritual connection to the castle's aquatic destiny. Three casts minimum or it doesn't count."
"I am not fishing off my own castle. I am your Master. This is a command structure, and—"
"Trick's in the wrist. You wanna snap it forward like you're punching a cloud, then let the line drift. The courtyard's got great acoustics, so if there are fish down there, they'll hear the hook coming. That's science."
"That is the opposite of science—"
"Cast one! Let's go let's go let's go!"
She did not cast. She was holding the rod because Gold Ship had put it in her hands and taking it back would require engaging with Gold Ship's premise, which she refused to do. This was the trap. Any reaction, casting, refusing to cast, putting the rod down, throwing the rod off the tower, was participation. Gold Ship had engineered a situation with no non-participating exit.
Illya stood on the battlement of her ancestral castle, holding a fishing rod made from stolen fixtures, line dangling into an empty courtyard, while her Berserker hummed something off-key and kicked her legs against the parapet.
"...This is a waste of time," Illya said, not putting the rod down.
"That's the spirit! Waste it harder! Really commit!"
"We have a war to plan."
"Multitasking. I'm great at multitasking. We fish with the right hand, we plan with the left hand, we conquer with the third hand."
"You don't have a third hand."
"Not yet. That's what the war's for. Holy Grail, one extra hand, boom: ultimate fishing-combat-planning organism. Write that down, Trainer, that's our wish!"
"That is not our wish."
The line swayed in the wind. The stars were very bright. Somewhere below, Sella poured another brandy.
Illya reeled in the line, checked the hook, and cast it again. She did this without conscious decision. She would think about that later.
"Don't tell anyone about this," she said.
"Too late. I already told the moon." She pointed upward. "And the moon told the stars. That's how astronomy works. Information travels upward."
"That is not how astronomy works."
"It is now. New rule. My castle, my astronomy."
"It is my castle."
"Our castle. Team castle. The fish will confirm it when they arrive."
Illya cast again. The courtyard remained empty. It would remain empty.
Gold Ship, Unsinkable Ship
Nobody could control her. Nobody was supposed to. She won when she wanted to. She lost when she didn't care. The gap between her ceiling and her floor was wider than anyone else, and she lived in the whole range at once.
Somewhere beneath the earth, the mud of a corrupted Grail churned.
Every champion is born on the corpses of a thousand dreams.