"Archer. Don't you think that was a little excessive?"
Amber was clinging to the framework of the cross-sea bridge with both hands, her knuckles white, her hair whipping sideways in the freezing wind, and her voice carrying the very specific tone of a woman who had nearly died and was not happy about it.
Below her, the bridge's steel support beams were visibly warped. Not damaged — warped. Bent slightly out of true by the sheer recoil of whatever unholy weapon her Servant had just fired. The engineering marvel connecting the mainland to the port district had been physically deformed because a dead French Emperor had decided to play sniper.
Amber's condemnation was heartfelt, passionate, and completely ignored.
The Emperor didn't even turn around. He'd already dismissed the cannon — a weapon so absurdly oversized it looked like it had been ripped off the deck of a battleship — and was now holding his hands up to his eyes in the shape of binoculars, squinting toward the distant warehouse district two miles away.
"You wound me, Master. I was helping them. That poor Swordsman was going to have to run for at least another two minutes before reaching the Lancer. I just... expedited the introduction." He paused. "And nobody got hurt! Mostly."
Amber stared at the back of his head.
"...Is there a possibility," she said through gritted teeth, "that when I say 'excessive,' I'm not talking about the people you shot at — but about the fact that you didn't warn me before firing a cannon the size of a minivan, and the recoil nearly launched me off a bridge that is three hundred feet above the ocean?"
A pause.
"Ah." Archer scratched the back of his neck. "Well. Even the most capable Emperor has the occasional oversight. Nobody's perfect, hahaha."
"..."
Amber closed her eyes. Took a deep breath. Counted to three.
Then she extended her middle finger at his back.
Archer — who apparently had eyes in the back of his head, or at least the supernatural awareness of a Servant — caught the gesture without turning around and wisely chose not to comment. Instead, he executed a flawless tactical subject change.
"Speaking of which, Master — want to get closer and watch? The fight over there is quite the spectacle. Honestly, if I'd had warriors like that under my command back in the day, the whole continent would've fallen in half the time."
Amber shook her head immediately. "No way. Get too close and we become the mantis stalking the cicada — too focused on the prey to notice the bird behind us." She paused, then added more quietly: "Just... stay here and tell me what's happening. Are they strong? Stronger than you? That shot you fired was—"
She trailed off, but the slight tremor in her voice said everything.
Archer's expression softened. Just a fraction. Barely visible.
"In close combat, I might not match either of them," he admitted, and the honesty in his voice was surprising. "But at range? With distance between us?" The grin came back. "Victory is mine. Every time. After all, I am an Archer — a long-range Archer. Which means, Master, it's your job to make sure nobody gets close enough to make it a fistfight."
"...Great. So my role in this war is basically 'don't let the giant man get punched.'"
"Precisely!"
"I hate this."
"You're doing wonderfully."
Amber sighed so hard it fogged the air in front of her face.
But she had to admit — despite everything, despite the near-death bridge experience, despite the freezing wind and the aching feet and the fact that she was sitting three hundred feet above the ocean in flip-flops — the trembling in her hands was starting to fade.
And that was Archer's doing.
He'd noticed. Of course he had. The way her hands shook after the cannon fired. The way her breathing had gone shallow. The way her eyes kept darting to the water below, calculating the fall distance with the involuntary precision of someone whose survival instincts had been cranked to maximum.
She'd been terrified.
And Archer — this loud, ridiculous, chest-thumping Emperor who acted like every interaction was a stage performance — had responded the only way he knew how. Not with reassurance. Not with gentle words. With distraction. Stupid jokes. Exaggerated faces. The comfortable rhythm of bickering that kept her brain occupied with annoyance instead of fear.
It was clumsy. It was transparent. And it worked.
Because behind all the theatrics, the shot he'd fired had also given Amber something else entirely: awe.
She'd never seen anything like it. The cannon had materialized in his hands like it was made of light — no loading, no preparation, no mechanical action at all. One moment there was nothing, and the next there was a weapon the size of a small car, glowing with prismatic energy. And when it fired, the projectile hadn't been a cannonball or a shell. It had been a rainbow. A compressed beam of pure, radiant force that had screamed across two miles of open harbor and hit with enough impact to shatter warehouses.
The bridge supports — forged steel alloy, engineered to withstand hurricanes — had bent from the recoil.
And Archer had fired it one-handed, like it was a toy.
This is what a Servant is, Amber had thought in that moment, her mouth hanging open, the wind forgotten, the cold forgotten, everything forgotten except the blazing trail of light cutting across the night sky.
This is what the Holy Grail War is.
A figure from a history textbook — a man who'd been dead for two centuries — transformed into something beyond human. Something that could reshape the battlefield with a single shot. Something that turned the laws of physics into suggestions.
Compared to that, his ability to see clearly at a distance of two miles barely even registered.
"Hey," Amber said, pulling herself back to the present. "Question."
"Ask."
"The other Master — the one with the Swordsman. She's alone right now, right? Her Servant is down at the docks fighting Lancer. If you wanted to, you could just..." She mimed a cannon with her hands. "Couldn't you? From here? Take her out?"
Archer nodded slowly. "I could. Even though the Swordsman threw her into that cluster of trees for cover, a direct bombardment would eliminate her easily enough. My accuracy at this range is... well." A modest pause that was not modest at all. "Sufficient."
"So why don't we?"
What happened next almost made Amber lose her grip on the bridge railing.
Archer turned to face her — and his expression was pouting. Lower lip pushed out. Eyes wide and glistening. Brow furrowed in wounded innocence. The expression of a kicked puppy.
On a six-foot-three wall of muscle with a jaw like a battering ram.
Amber's stomach did a barrel roll.
"You — what are you — stop that."
"You don't understand me, Master," Archer whimpered, and the sound coming out of that body was so fundamentally wrong that Amber had to physically look away.
"If you don't want to tell me, fine. Just — stop. Stop making that face. I'm going to throw up."
"You call it 'disgusting,' but I call it 'emotional vulnerability.' As my Master, I would expect you to understand my—"
"I'm an ordinary person, Archer. Compared to a brilliant, far-sighted Emperor like you, all I can do is try not to get in your way."
A beat.
"Master. I didn't expect you to be so... self-aware."
"Don't push it."
"Alright, alright." The pout vanished, replaced by something sharper. More real. "The reason is simple, Master. She's bait."
The wind howled between them, carrying the distant sounds of combat from the docks — metal on metal, the crack of concrete, the muffled percussion of Servants trying to kill each other. But up here, on the bridge, the world narrowed to two people and a conversation.
"Bait," Amber repeated.
"Bait." Archer settled into a cross-legged position on the bridge railing — casually, as if sitting three hundred feet above the ocean was the most natural thing in the world — and began to explain.
"Think about it. The commotion down there is enormous. Every player in the city is watching that fight right now. Every Servant, every Master — all eyes on the docks. And in the middle of it all, there's a lone Master sitting in a tree with no Servant to protect her. Exposed. Vulnerable. A sitting duck."
Amber's eyes widened. "You think someone's going to go after her."
"Someone will go after her. It's too perfect an opportunity to pass up. I know I would." His grin sharpened. "And when they do — when whatever Servant makes a move on that unprotected Master — we'll be watching. From up here, with the best seats in the house. We get to see a third Servant reveal themselves without lifting a finger."
"So you didn't attack them to help the Swordsman."
"Of course not."
"You attacked them to create this situation. Force the Swordsman into a fight with Lancer, leave his Master exposed, and use her as bait to draw out whoever's lurking in the shadows."
"Now you're getting it."
Amber stared at him. "That is... genuinely diabolical."
"Thank you."
"It wasn't a compliment."
"I'm choosing to take it as one."
Amber chewed her lower lip, processing. The gears in her head were turning now — slower than Archer's, sure, but turning nonetheless.
"Okay, but wait. You just shot at them. If you're trying to build an alliance later, how does that work? 'Hey, sorry about the cannon blast — want to be friends?'"
Archer's expression didn't change, but something flickered behind his eyes. Amusement, maybe. Or approval.
"Your brain may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, Master, but your instincts are remarkably good."
"Say what you need to say. Skip the insults."
"If it comes to alliance-building, I have more than just the cannon. I've also got this." He held up one hand, and a sleek, ornate pistol materialized in his grip — smaller, more elegant, clearly designed for precision rather than devastation. "A surgical shot. Enough to look like I'm helping without revealing the full scope of my arsenal."
He twirled the pistol once, then let it dissolve back into motes of light.
"And if anyone asks who fired the first shot — the cannon blast? We blame the Rider."
"The Rider?"
"Every Holy Grail War has a Rider. And Riders are known for having the most diverse Noble Phantasms — chariots, ships, flying contraptions. It's the perfect scapegoat class. Nobody questions it when a Rider fires something weird."
"...You're planning to frame a Servant we haven't even met yet."
"'Frame' is such an ugly word. I prefer 'strategic misdirection.'"
Amber opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. Then just shook her head slowly.
"You really are something else."
"An Emperor." He bowed with a flourish. "But there's one more thing, and this one is serious."
The humor drained from his voice like someone had pulled a plug. When Amber looked up, Archer's face was stone.
"I want to draw out the Assassin."
"The Assassin? Why—"
"Because of you, Master."
Archer's finger pointed directly at her chest.
Amber's breath caught.
"No matter how weak an Assassin-class Servant is compared to the other classes," Archer said, his voice low and flat, "they are still a Servant. A superhuman entity. Faster than any human. Stronger than any human. And their entire kit is built around one thing: killing people who can't fight back."
He let that hang in the air for a moment.
"Now picture this. I'm two miles away, locked in a firefight with another Servant. Cannons blazing. Noble Phantasms flying. And while I'm distracted — while I can't come back fast enough to save you — an invisible killer materializes behind you and puts a blade through your spine."
Amber's face went pale.
"How do you survive that, Master?"
The silence stretched. The wind howled. The distant sounds of combat echoed across the water.
Amber swallowed hard. "I... don't."
"Exactly." Archer's jaw tightened. "The Assassin is the one class I cannot counter with firepower alone. I can't shoot what I can't see. I can't protect what I can't reach. And in a war where every other Servant fights in the open, the Assassin is the only one who fights from the shadows. The only one who targets Masters instead of Servants."
"So you want to find them. Before they find me."
"I want to expose them. Force them into the light. Make them reveal their position, their capabilities, their Master. Because once I know where the Assassin is—" The grin came back, but it was a different kind of grin now. Colder. Sharper. The grin of a man who had won wars by knowing where his enemies were before they knew where he was.
"—I can make sure they never get close to you."
Amber looked at him for a long moment. The wind tugged at her hair. Her fingers had gone numb on the bridge railing.
Then, very quietly, she asked: "So what happens next?"
Archer turned back toward the docks. The distant sounds of battle had shifted — the rhythm changing, the impacts growing heavier, a climax approaching.
"Now we watch, Master. The battle down there is about to change. And when it does—"
His eyes narrowed.
"—nobody's going to be lonely tonight."
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