"I'm not clean anymore..."
A ghostly, trembling hand pushed the manhole cover aside from below. It scraped across the asphalt with a sound like nails on a chalkboard, and from the darkness beneath, a figure emerged.
Slowly. Painfully. Like a creature crawling out of the abyss.
Amber hauled herself out of the sewer and collapsed onto the alley pavement, arms spread, staring up at the night sky with the hollow, thousand-yard stare of a woman who had seen things that could never be unseen.
She was covered — head to toe, no exceptions — in a substance that she refused to identify, categorize, or acknowledge the existence of. Her hair was plastered to her skull. Her clothes were ruined beyond salvation. The smell was... the smell was a war crime.
Tears rolled down her filthy cheeks, cutting clean tracks through the grime.
"I'm ruined."
"Now, now, Master." Archer's voice materialized beside her, cheerful and completely unbothered, because of course Spirit Form meant he didn't have to physically exist in the sewer. "The process was a bit... unconventional, I'll grant you. But the result speaks for itself! We survived. That's what matters."
Amber didn't move. She lay on the pavement and stared at the stars and contemplated the series of life choices that had led her to this exact moment.
"If I'd known this was going to happen," she said flatly, "I would rather have died in the bombardment."
"Don't say things you don't mean."
"I mean every word." She sat up. Regretted sitting up immediately, because sitting up meant she could smell herself better. "And explain something to me, Archer. We dodged the attack. We survived the cannonfire. We were fine. So why — why — did you insist on diving into the harbor and then swimming into the sewer system?"
The tears kept coming. Not from sadness. Not from fear. From the soul-deep trauma of doing the backstroke through a river of human waste in a municipal drainage tunnel for the better part of an hour.
There were no words. In any language. In any era of human civilization. For what she had just experienced.
Archer, still safely invisible in Spirit Form, answered with a grin she couldn't see but could absolutely hear.
"Simple. We shook off our tail."
Amber blinked. "Our what?"
"Our tail. The surveillance. Don't tell me you hadn't noticed, Master."
"Noticed what?"
A pause. The kind of pause that carried an entire unspoken essay about the difference between an Emperor's situational awareness and a college student's.
"We've been watched," Archer said. "Since the church. Since day one. Something — someone — has been tracking our movements. Monitoring us. I've felt it every time we moved through the city."
Amber's spine went rigid. The sewer smell was suddenly very far away.
"Is it the Assassin?" she asked, her voice dropping. "But Assassin was fighting Saber at the docks—"
"I'm not certain of the source. It could be Assassin — or a fragment of Assassin, if the Hassan-type can split into multiple bodies. It could be Caster's familiar. It could even be a Noble Phantasm with surveillance capabilities. I couldn't pin it down." He paused. "But the feeling is unmistakable. I've been an Emperor, Master. I've lived my entire life surrounded by spies, informants, and people who smiled to my face while plotting my removal. I know what being watched feels like."
Amber sat very still on the pavement, processing this.
Come to think of it... she had felt something. Over the past two days. A prickling at the back of her neck. A vague sense of unease that she'd dismissed as paranoia — the natural anxiety of being hunted in a death game.
But it hadn't been paranoia. Someone had been watching them. Tracking them. Cataloguing their movements, their habits, their patterns.
And then a much worse thought hit her.
"Wait. Watching us? As in, the whole time? As in, when I was—" Her face went pale. Then red. Then a shade of purple that didn't exist in nature. "You didn't peek at me in the shower, did you?!"
"...Master. I am an Emperor. Do you have any idea how many women I've—" He caught himself. Recalibrated. "The point is, you are not nearly as interesting to me as you seem to think."
"That is not reassuring!"
"It wasn't meant to be. Now — back to the matter at hand." His voice shifted, shedding the banter like a coat. "The reason we went through the sewer is simple. The moment we entered the water, the surveillance vanished. Completely. Whatever was watching us either can't operate underwater, or would expose itself by following us in."
Amber frowned. "So... the sewer was to shake them off?"
"Exactly. If we'd just climbed out of the harbor onto the shore, we'd have picked the tail right back up. But by taking the sewer — underground, out of sight, with dozens of possible exit points — whoever was tracking us has no idea where we resurfaced."
He paused, and she could practically hear him preening.
"You didn't think I was just wandering around aimlessly yesterday, did you, Master? I was mapping the city. Street layouts. Sewer access points. Residential patterns. Escape routes."
Amber stared at the manhole she'd just crawled out of. Then at the quiet residential street around them — a villa district, upscale, the kind of neighborhood where houses had private gates and the lawns were professionally maintained. Most of the homes looked empty. Vacation properties, probably. Dark windows. No cars in the driveways.
"And this neighborhood?"
"We passed through it briefly yesterday. Never stopped. Never went inside. Whoever was watching us won't associate this location with our movements — and even if they eventually search this area, there are dozens of villas to check. Most of them empty, all of them stocked with food in the refrigerators."
"You checked the refrigerators?"
"I am nothing if not thorough."
Amber wanted to be angry. She wanted to hold onto the righteous fury of a woman who'd been dragged through a sewer without her consent.
But she couldn't. Because he was right. About everything.
Saber's Master was dead because she'd been left exposed. The lesson was right there, written in blood: in this war, the Masters were the weak link. The targets. The pressure points that every enemy would aim for.
And Archer — for all his bluster and his ridiculous personality and his complete inability to warn her before doing terrifying things — was trying to keep her alive.
She sighed. Long, slow, exhausted.
"Fine. You win. The sewer strategy was... sound."
"Was that a compliment? Master, I'm touched—"
"Don't push it." She reached into the pocket of her soaked, reeking jeans and pulled out something small. A phone. Cheap. Prepaid. The kind you could buy at a convenience store for thirty dollars.
She held it out.
"Here. This is for you."
Archer materialized. Just his upper body — shoulders, arms, head — flickering into visibility in the dark alley. He looked at the phone in her hand with an expression of genuine surprise.
Then the surprise turned into a smirk.
"For me? A gift? Master, I'm flattered, truly. I always knew you couldn't resist my charm. But I must warn you — a romance between Master and Servant is doomed. There's simply no future for—"
"If you finish that sentence, I will shove this phone somewhere the sun doesn't shine."
"...Understood."
Amber took a breath. Then another. Let the banter drain away and replaced it with something quieter. Something more honest.
"Look. You've made your point, and I can't argue with it. Staying together puts us both at risk — me because I'm a liability in combat, and you because protecting me limits your mobility. If you hide me somewhere safe and operate independently, you can fight at full strength without worrying about me."
She turned the phone over in her hands.
"I bought this yesterday at a convenience store. Paid cash. I don't think anyone saw me. My number is already saved in it." She held it out again. "If you need to coordinate — strategy, Command Spells, anything — just send me a message. I'll follow your lead."
The smirk was gone from Archer's face.
"I know I've been holding you back," Amber continued, and her voice was steady even though her hands weren't. "I know I'm not a fighter or a strategist or anything useful in a war. But I'll do everything I can to support you from here. Whatever you need."
She looked up at him.
"I believe in you, Archer. So you'd better bring back the Holy Grail. And you'd better come back to me."
Silence.
The wind moved through the empty villa district, rustling the ornamental trees that lined the street. Somewhere distant, a dog barked. The night was quiet and cold and, for just a moment, almost peaceful.
Archer stared at her.
Believe.
Such a simple word. Such a dangerous one. The kind of word that turned a casual arrangement into something heavier — something that carried weight and expectation and the kind of trust that couldn't be betrayed without cost.
He'd planned to do his best. Fight hard. Give it an honest effort. And if things went south — well, he had Independent Action. Three days of autonomous operation without a Master. Worst case, he'd survive on his own.
But "believe" changed the math.
Because this girl — this ridiculous, filthy, sewer-scented, completely ordinary girl — had just looked him in the eye and said she trusted him. Not his power. Not his legend. Him.
And an Emperor who'd been trusted... couldn't just "do his best."
He had to win.
Archer lowered his head. Just for a moment. Just long enough for the weight of the word to settle onto his shoulders like a mantle he couldn't take off.
Then he raised it again. And when their eyes met, the grin that spread across his face wasn't the usual performance — the theatrical, larger-than-life Emperor act that he wore like armor.
This one was real.
"Well then, Master. I suppose I have no choice."
Amber smiled back. Small. Tired. Genuine.
"Glad we're on the same page."
A beat of comfortable silence.
Then Amber looked down at herself — at the unspeakable filth coating every inch of her body, the ruined clothes, the matted hair — and then at the pristine white exterior of the nearest villa.
"...If I go inside looking like this, I'm going to destroy someone's house."
"We'll pay for damages."
"With what? I've only got five thousand left after your shopping spree yesterday. You spent fifteen grand on clothes, Archer. Clothes!"
"An Emperor must look the part, Master. You can't put a price on—"
"I literally just did. Fifteen thousand dollars."
"Details. Once we win the Holy Grail, I'll wish us into billionaires. Problem solved."
"That's... an incredibly wasteful use of an omnipotent wish-granting device."
"If it solves the problem, it's not wasteful. Now — shall we go find some food? I believe the kitchen of that villa over there is fully stocked."
"Oh, you cook?"
"I was thinking you would cook, Master. It's been centuries since I've had a home-cooked meal."
"Absolutely not. You're cooking. That's an order."
"You can't be serious."
"Command Spell serious."
"...You wouldn't."
"Try me."
"...Fine! But if an Emperor's cooking isn't to your standards, that's a you problem!"
"Deal. Now let's go before I pass out from my own smell."
Together — the filthy girl and the invisible Emperor — they walked toward the nearest villa, bickering the entire way, their voices fading into the quiet night like the last notes of a song that wasn't quite finished yet.
Show Some By Powerstones
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