[Gallagher]

Erik, after an entire night spent with the great wizard, had long since changed out of his stuffy coat and the armor beneath it. He sat on the floor clad in pale pink shorts small enough that they might as well been underwear, and an electric blue shirt printed with a black skull and lightning bolt on the chest. "My grandma isn't anything like that," he replied, grabbing his own hefty handful of popcorn as he looked over at Merlin.

His eyes went wide as her form changed, and he dropped his snack on the floor, scooting around to face the cartoony beast. "Does that make me Little Red Riding Hood?" As he asked, a thin, red cloth shimmered into view, seeming to solidify as it floated down onto his head. Without touching it, Erik mimed tying the strings into place like the girl had. The corners of the cloth stretched into those strings right between his fingers, and as they solidified as well, two large poofs appeared at the ends.

[Poggio]

“Nay, ye squiffy son o' a sea biscuit eateth'r.” She answered the telepathic link cooly. Non-corporeally, Mary watched Mr. Kite. Days of patiently watching him did not change Mary's impression of Mr. Kite. Her eyes narrowed as her so called master attempted to parade her in front of others. “Hang th' jib. I be nah f’r showin' off like yer Curly wurly” She snickered.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

"I would not be so sure, Isaac." Assassin has not dislodged herself from her hanging position, though she has taken the opportunity to cloak herself from passing eyes once more. "While there may be others like yourself, drawn to this war more by happenstance than by intent, it is those who HAVE been preparing for this that we must be vigilant of. Even that brazen little boy could be dangerous, if underestimated."

She finally rights herself, settling beside her Master. "It's nearly time. What would you have me do while the meeting is in progress?"

[Suzerain of Sheol]

"Oh my Gods, you are such an adorable little dork." Merlin sembles back into her human form, ready to watch the next episode. As she does, though, the church bells ring from the main hall, marking 9 AM.

"Aw, jeez, we're pretty much out of time," she laments. Growing suddenly somber, she continues "You'd better call your Servant, Erik, the others will be here soon." She decides to not mention that she basically forgot about Don Quixote. There was popcorn, and cartoons, and... yeah.

Looking at the seemingly-naïve boy who's become her friend, the ancient wizard feels a sudden surge of worry and sadness. It was so nice to have been able to take a day to enjoy being human again, but now...

I don't want him to die. I'm not supposed to interfere, but... I don't know if I'll be able to help it. Why do I even have all these powers if I can't even save one innocent person? Why does this even happen? Am I the only one who'd rather have a party than a war?

She knows what's coming, but she chooses not to acknowledge it, not to look at the future that's written before them.

Maybe a miracle will happen and they'll all decide ultimate cosmic power isn't worth dying over....

[Doctor Gabriel]

“Oh, for the love of-”

Mr. Kite took a deep breath and exhaled as much of what he wanted to say to her a few seconds later.

“So not only do you think I’m a child, but a moron as well,” he sighed, lighting another cigarette, “I have no intentions of trying to parade you around in front of our enemies. I was trying to see if I could actually get you to come here, so we could talk. I have a mountain of questions for you and I’m still holding out hope I’m going to like at least one or two of the answers.”

He threw a cautious look over his shoulder.

“And because, confident as I may be in my abilities, I’m pretty sure I’m still nothing before… Whatever she was… I’d feel a hell of a lot safer with you around.”

Mr. Kite was far too sober to be dealing with his servant at the moment. He did what he could with his special cigarettes, but she seemed to grow more irrationally abrasive and needlessly cruel with each of their conversations. His mind had gone to a rather dark place and he couldn’t keep a macabre smile from spreading across his face.

“That is of course assuming you’ll even bother to protect me. Can’t say your attitude towards me thus far has given me any reason to trust you with my life. Hell, I couldn’t even trust you with my flask. Maybe it’d be better that way...”

[Salone]

"Oh, hell if I know. Stay out here, socialize with the others I guess. Get ready to run, or at least cover our escape as soon as this is over. I've got a bad feeling about this."

He took one last drag of his cigarette before tossing it down to the ground, ignoring the annoyed looks of the few people who may have witnessed it. Isaac made his way across the street and on to the grounds of the Church. And Catherine, he called out to her mentally, stopping to turn back to where she had been perched. Keep your deck and demons at the ready. It's going to be a right mess out the gate, I can feel it.

[Poggio]

“A Flask?-” her voice grew from its snicker to a chuckle. “What’s a flask t’ an entire house o’ liqu’rs ‘n swill?” Had he not burned out his senses from drowning in drink, Mary was sure Mr. Kite would know she had been with him. But she watched. And what she saw over the past day made her even more disgusted with the lad, even if it was masked in her laugh. “Well rejoice Lad” she said on the tale ends of her mirth “ye can always trust a dishonest scallywag t' be true thar needs fer booty. We needs nah raise th' jolly roger yet. I be here. Ye can natter t' me as be.”

[Doctor Gabriel]

...Was that a yes?

Mr. Kite decided to assume that the incomprehensible pirate had indeed confirmed she would protect him. If happened was he was mistaken, he’d learn that soon enough.

“It wasn’t about what was in the flask, though it's contents were more expensive than everything in the garage combined,” Mr. Kite shook his head, the whisky had been mourned and moved on from. He reached into his coat and produced the worn, leather bound journal that contained every piece of magical knowledge he possessed. He flipped through it with a melancholic look of nostalgia dancing through his eyes above a warm smile.

“Besides this,” he snapped the journal shut before anyone nearby could get a good look at the secrets it held (or Berserker could turn it into another scrap of paper) and hid it within his coat once again, “that flask was all I had left of the father I can barely remember. That’s why I reacted so violently when you turned it into a map, not because I was some baby crying over his bottle being taken away. But because you’d stolen something precious to me and I couldn’t fathom why.”

Mr. Kite filled his lungs with smoke and sighed it out again. He didn't care anymore, whatever nonsensical reason she had to justify her actions wouldn't bring the flask back. There was no point wasting energy on something you couldn't change.

Instead, he pulled out his phone and began searching for some hint as to Assassin’s possible identity given the few clues he’d gleaned from their encounter. It was more productive to gather information that may help them win than to mope.

French woman.

Demons.

Lightening?

“What was that a map to anyway?” he mumbled absentmindedly as he scoured the internet, “I didn’t think Berserker had the ability to turn things into maps. Or… Not be berserk, come to think of it.”

[Gallagher]

"Oh, yes, I wonder if he wants any popcorn," Erik replied, missing the way the great wizard looked at him while he searched for his servant. He couldn't see him, but he could still feel his mana through their bond. The simple hood he'd created faded in small specks of light. "Saber? Can you stop being invisible now?"

[Doctor Gabriel]

Adrien Dupont had been coming into the same bakery before work, sitting at the same table, then leaving at the same time for the past five years. He’d found the place to be a perfect little oasis exactly in the middle of his route to the office and, before he knew it, a routine had been established.

His job required constant adaption to new situations and individuals, so he valued the little taste of predictability between his hectic home life, with his second child making the humble little three bedroom a veritable carnival of screeching and bodily fluids, and the office that the bakery gave him.

He’d memorized the script so completely that the lines and cues were second nature to him now.

30-something businessman with prematurely greying hair enters Stage Left.

He approaches the counter and places an order for one blueberry bagel and a small coffee while trying to hide his wedding ring as he flirts with the young woman manning the till.

Grabs a newspaper from a nearby rack while he waits for his order then sits at a table near the window.

Reads his paper while enjoying his breakfast for approximately 15 minutes before tossing his cup and napkins in the nearby trashcan and resuming his commute to work.

This simple routine was the constant in his ever changing life that kept Adrien grounded. Allowed him to sweat the small stuff, so to speak, and keep him sain.

Unfortunately, just as he’d opened his paper on one particular morning, a 50 year old man dressed as if he’d stumbled out of a Renaissance Fair materialized in the corner behind him. Adrien eyed the stranger curiously as he looked around wildly before he found a suitcase under a nearby table.

He watched the odd old man spring at the suitcase then dash out of the bakery, holding it like a leather olympic torch above his head and screaming at the top of his lungs.

“MI REY! I HASTEN TOWARD YOU WITH THINE TREASURE IN HAND! WAIT FOR ME, ERIC! WAIT FOR ME!”

The peculiar man gone, Adrien simply sipped his coffee and went back to his newspaper.

Sweat the small stuff.

[Gallagher]

A long few moments passed without any sudden appearance, or yelling, or any other sign that the servant had heard him at all. But, when he focused, Erik felt Saber's mana signature moving somewhere in the city. That was good enough. So, he looked at the great wizard once again. "We can't watch another one then?"

[Suzerain of Sheol]

"Not today, but sometime soon," Merlin tells him with a forced smile. They're all so near now, she can feel them, fourteen souls who could not be more different, all come together here, under her supervision, to murder each other. While she could technically... probably... keep them waiting forever, she does have a job to do at the end of the day.

"Erik," she says turning to the young man who towers over her. "If you could gather up the rest of the snacks and bring them downstairs to the table, that would be great."

Nothing for it, it's time to let everyone in. Her Command Spell wouldn't bind them forever, anyway.

With sadness, the great wizard lifts the veil on her bounded field, allowing the chosen fourteen inside.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

He is the first to arrive, entering from the rear recesses that linked the papal apartments and the cathedral. The archers are nearby, out of sight, one would hope preparing for imminent battle. Heinrich is more than willing to do the heavy lifting in this partnership, regardless.

There are more exits to the church than he would prefer, though the state of hyper-alertness the enemy masters will no doubt be in upon leaving the meeting will not make for an easy opening strike. Despite his drive to begin exterminating the opposition as soon as possible, the old executor thrives on patience. Better, then, to use this opportunity to single out the weakest and the strongest, and if the Lord should happen to throw him some quivering morsel here in the early stages, Father Heinrich will be only too willing to do God's work on this day.

Arriving at the long table where they would dine and plot each other's murder, the priest decides to remain standing, straight and still at one of the corners. The sound of descending feet comes from a nearby staircase, and Heinrich does nothing to mask the predatory stare he fixes on the young man who emerges.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

If she showed all-too-human weakness earlier, in front of her Servant, it is now gone. Far from feeling numb or emotionally-dead, Leila instead has entered a kind of meditative state, operating as best she can via pure reason and analysis. She has never fought a mage-war before; the only violence she has known in her life came in the form of car bombs and suicide vests, and such strategies will not avail the victor of a Holy Grail War. The enemy must be out-thought, out-fought, and destroyed with clinical precision. Every weakness cataloged, every threat prepared for. She has been weighing the opportunity cost of simply draining the ambient mana as soon as the ban is lifted, but she cannot trust Rasputin to be able to save her against the enemy Servants unleashed, even if they cannot manifest their Noble Phantasms. No, a rapid retreat will be in order, the external cellar of a nearby boutique had been agreed upon, and if not there, any door she can open should, in theory, lead her to Rasptuin's territory.

She wants to be frightened, but emotions will not serve here. Cautiously accepting that she cannot yet be harmed, Leila makes her approach, crossing the massive parking lot outside the cathedral (one might wonder what it had been in ancient times, if one's mind were not taken up with plans of war). There are citizens everywhere; if fighting breaks out here, the casualties will be fantastic. Drawing near to the entrance, Leila's eyes fall on a pair dismounting from a motorcycle.

She knows instantly that they are her enemy. They would be an unassuming young couple on any other day, but the perturbation of air mana caused by their breathing tells her everything she needs to know. For a difficult moment, before they notice her, Leila tries to imagine those youthful faces melting in agony at the clutch of her Tetra, a vomitous thought to the woman she had been only a few days ago.

Or perhaps, this was who she always was, and those years of happy marriage had been a mirage. How could she have gotten to this moment if not by preparing for it her entire life? No, Leila Aliyah Elshstein is prepared to kill these two souls before her -- and if they have any right to be here, they too will be more than ready to return such malice.

And yet for that, the most difficult part may be in finding what on earth to say to them now. Nothing blandishing, no feigned sympathies, nor denial of the truth. Grudging respect? They have not earned it.

"I see you prefer to keep your Servant close." A horribly awkward way to start a conversation, but how could conversations with one's victims be anything but?

[Suzerain of Sheol]

"Unless you command me otherwise, mistress, I will remain without and keep watch for the activity of our enemies." Pelles feels at once serene and despicable standing again on holy ground. "Know that I am but a thought away, should you find yourself in danger." His hand aches for the presence of the divine spear, still sealed by Command Spell, but hour of vindication is not far off, now. Christ wept in Gethsemane, knowing what impended. The Fisher-King prepares for bloody execution, knowing the same.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Be brave, mon amour, Assassin silently wishes her master as he sets off. It will be Hell anew, waiting, holding her fiends in check, but oh, the delight to the set them free when the moment comes. The shredding of flesh, the scorching of nerves, labyrinthine teeth grinding bones, the strangulations, the sheer carnage she can unleash!

True, dear Isaac asked her ever-so-nicely to restrain her predations from the populace, but even still, a glut of victims is about to present itself. Maybe that boy from earlier; if he has such a fetish for bleeding, she can certainly give him all he'll ever want and more. Hanging his flensed carcass from that statue on the church-tower would be an ecstasy of sacrilege. A golden child for the golden whore, ha!

La Voisin studies the distant, dazzling figure on the rooftop, so offensively gazing down at her. Oh, come now, we're all whores. Spreading your legs for God Almighty doesn't make you any different. They all used to pray to you, right before they would come to me. I'd have cut that holy bastard out of you and splattered him with a hammer, and damned if you wouldn't have thanked me for it! Garce Pharisaïque! You're no better than any of the others.

Taken up with her disgust at being on holy ground, Assassin nonetheless can't escape the sensation that she is not alone. Her clairvoyance marks out the Masters, Ruler, and five other Servants. Not six. She chortles at the realization.

"Oh, mon Dieu Impie! What sort of game have we begun?!"