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Without the Wind King Barrier active, Artoria's combat power took a significant hit.
Significant enough that Lily couldn't properly orient herself in the air after the throw. She managed to get into a damage-reduction stance — arms in, chin tucked, body angled — but "managed" was doing a lot of work in that sentence. Arash had sent her in a very specific direction, and that direction ended at the amusement park's spinning teacup section, which she hit with enough force to carve a respectable crater.
She stood up from it, shook the debris off her shoulders, and looked around at the crowd of park visitors who were backing away in a wide, rapidly expanding circle.
"That wasn't intentional," she said, mostly to herself. "But throwing me toward a crowded amusement park does somewhat undermine the original point of moving the fight away from civilians..."
She didn't get to finish the thought.
The intuition hit first — a cold certainty, no specific direction, just move now — and Lily was already raising Caliburn before she'd consciously identified the threat.
The blade caught the incoming sword.
The impact was enormous.
Lily, sword and all, was launched sideways with the force of a freight train.
"WHAT THE HELL?!" A man's voice, furious, somewhere behind the chaos. "WHO TOLD YOU TO BARGE IN RIGHT NOW?!"
Lily was still processing the voice when something caught her.
Something large. Something that hadn't been there a moment ago. A soft, sudden resistance that arrested her backward momentum — just for an instant, just long enough to register — before the thing she'd hit let out a sound somewhere between a shriek and a squawk, and then both of them were falling.
To understand the current situation, we need to check in on Chen Ge.
If you had to describe Chen Ge's emotional state in song form, the most accurate choice would be Jay-Z's "99 Problems" — specifically the part where all of them arrive at once.
After Astolfo's revelation, Chen Ge had gone very quiet.
His face, which had been flushed scarlet, was now the specific shade of pale that happens when the brain decides to stop processing information for a moment and just sort of... wait.
The chat was not waiting.
[DenialMode]: This is impossible. Astolfo cannot be a boy. I refuse.
[RealityCheck]: Brother, I say this with love: you need to accept this.
[GenderReveal]: Sisters, it's our time. The boys are in shambles.
[PinkHairEnthusiast]: Actually I've always preferred shota, so this works out great for me personally.
[Coping]: It's a futa. It has to be a futa. This is my reality and I'm staying in it.
[Encouragement]: CHEN GE! Even if it's a boy! EVEN IF! Your love transcends gender! GO FOR IT!
[Horrified]: The person above has lost their mind. Please help them.
[NewShip]: A blonde priest and a pink-haired boy. I didn't know I needed this pairing until thirty seconds ago.
[Husband_Counter]: I declare Astolfo my 17th husband.
[AuthorComplaint]: Author!! Stop doing the "draw a girl and say it's a boy" thing!! This is harassment!!
[Philosophical]: I respect the first person who drank milk. Even if it came from a bull.
[MaleGayCheck]: Wait, where did all the gay guys in chat go? They were right here a second ago.
[SilentGayGuy]: ...
[MopReport]: Anyway, if you want to see something truly chaotic, switch to Maverick's stream. The chocolate-covered person chasing him with a mop is Derek. It's going great over there.
[CrossStreamDrama]: BRO WHAT
The chat population had approximately tripled as viewers from multiple streams converged on the situation. Maverick fans discovering Chen Ge's stream. Chen Ge fans discovering Max's stream. Max fans watching Maverick flee from a mop. A complete ecosystem of chaos had spontaneously assembled itself.
Chen Ge was not reading any of it.
He was staring at the middle distance with the expression of a man whose afternoon had taken several consecutive turns he hadn't budgeted for.
Then something glinted in his peripheral vision.
A curved ahoge. Golden. Unmistakable.
"Wait—" Chen Ge started.
That's Artoria.
He did not finish the sentence. He did not have time to finish the sentence. Because Artoria, having been launched by some off-screen impact, arrived at their position at considerable speed and connected with the hippogriff in a collision that produced a spectacular amount of noise and set all three of them — Chen Ge, Astolfo, and Wuai — into a very uncontrolled descent.
[WuaiLastWords]:Wuai.(Why. Why is this my life.)
The landing spot, as determined by trajectory and gravity and the universe's apparent sense of humor, was the commercial street where Max and Medea were currently in the middle of their fight with Shuten-dōji.
Wuai absorbed most of the impact. Heroically. Involuntarily.
The battlefield went completely silent.
Everyone — Max, Medea, Shuten-dōji, Maverick, Derek, the chat — took a moment to look at the pile of people and one extremely resigned hippogriff that had just appeared in the center of the fight.
[ProcessingError]: Did... did things just fall from the sky AGAIN?
[Cataloguing]: First Derek dropped in, then Artoria, now Chen Ge, Astolfo, and a hippogriff. Fuyuki City's airspace is having a rough day.
[Recognition]: Wait. WAIT. Is that Kenneth? Is that CHEN GE?!
[CrossoverAlert]: HOLY COW. Chen Ge accidentally teamed up with Max and Maverick. He wasn't even trying!
[TopTierContent]: The algorithm specifically blessed this man. There is no other explanation.
[MaverickStream]: WHAT IS MAVERICK DOING THOUGH. Someone please explain why he's running from that man with the mop.
[MopSituation]: ...I don't want to explain. Someone else do it.
Chen Ge extracted himself from the pile, looked at the assembled group — Max, Medea, Maverick, Shuten-dōji, a mop-wielding Derek in the background — took a breath, and opened his mouth.
Before he could speak, the golden-haired man who'd been causing havoc at the amusement park arrived, having apparently followed the chaos to its source. He was not in a good mood. He expressed this by walking through a streetlamp.
Max recognized him immediately.
He stood there for a moment trying to figure out what could possibly have made this particular Servant this angry, given that his canonical patience was considerable. Whatever Chen Ge's group had done in that amusement park, it had been sufficient.
The man surveyed the assembled disaster, said nothing further, and crossed his arms.
And then—
"Master!" Astolfo's voice, bright with alarm. "Something's wrong with my eyes — I can see two suns in the sky!"
Maverick, who had temporarily escaped the mop situation, looked up.
"Your eyes are fine," he said slowly. "Because I'm also seeing two suns."
A beat of silence.
"...Hey, Chen Ge." Max turned. "What's Artoria's last name?"
Chen Ge opened his mouth.
Closed it.
"I... don't know yet."
He sounded like a man who had several other problems to deal with first.
Up above, undeniably, impossibly — two suns burned in the afternoon sky over Fuyuki City.