Omake:
What starts out as uneasiness builds to an impossible mountain of dread, over the course of the dragon carriage ride. A thousand what-ifs whirl around in my head, and what little conversation I'm able to make with the driver does nothing to stem the rising fear. The scenery rushing by, all of the familiar landmarks of the Mathers territory - only drive home the reality of this upcoming moment of truth.
Everything should be fixed, now. Williams did her part well enough, and Chaldea was able to pick up the slack. But even so, I can't help but worry. We only resolved Pandora's intervention - I never learned what became of the others' fights at the watchtower. Emilia, Julius, Ram - could one of them have lost? I have no idea. And as for Beatrice…
As we finally reach Roswaal's manor, the vertigo reaches its peak, and I brace myself against the carriage rail as I find my unsteady footing on the ground outside.
I take one hesitant step forward - and then the mansion's doors are flung open.
"Subaru!" The love of my life shouts, and through the tears already welling up in my eyes, I see Emilia running towards me. "Subaru, Subaru, Subaru! You're back! You're really back-!"
I want to put on a heroic grin, but it's all I can do to stop myself from bawling as relief crashes over me. "Y..yeah. I'm back."
And then, everything goes wrong.
"Hm? Hmmmm? That's not right," A familiar voice says from behind me, and irritation swallows every other feeling.
Of course she's here. I thought I had left her on Earth, but then she turned up to harass me in the capital. I thought I was just barely able to avoid her getting on the dragon carriage, that maybe I'd bought myself a day or two of release, but here she fucking is.
Francesca Prelati reaches over my shoulders and stretches my cheeks into a smile. "Smile, Subaru. It's your big reunion, right?"
Naturally, I punch her.
Tumbling off the Precipice in this Journey Through Time: Hatred IF (Part 1)
***
Just ignore her.
It's so easy to say, and I agreed with it at the time. But looking at her now, it's not so easy.
I hate Prelati. I truly despise her, from the very core of my being. Her personality would be enough on its own, but the litany of crimes in her past… and of course what she did in those twenty loops I forgot…
She deserves to die. Even if she is faking a surrender, I'm sure the others will understand. They have to.
I should ignore her. That would be the right path for a hero. But… I'm not perfect. I'm just a little too flawed, a little too petty.
"Stop the carriage," I say with grim resolve.
"Senpai, are you sure…?" Mash asks. "Weren't you saying that we ought to ignore her?"
"...Sorry. I'm going back on that call. This could be a real chance to resolve things. I have to at least try," I mutter.
"Be careful, Subaru. You can't trust her," says Jeanne.
"I know that… if she tries anything funny, you guys can just kill her," I say.
And so, against everyone's better judgment, we stop to hear what Francesca Prelati has to say.
***
I step out of the carriage, Jeanne by my side (as our resident Prelati expert), and I shudder as her disgusting voice finds my ears.
"I give up! It's your win, Subaru!~" She says with a trembling voice, crocodile tears streaming down her face. "You can go ahead and demand anything that you want, just please forgive me!"
"Forgive you? You've got to be fucking kidding. Do you really think you have any way to appease me?" I groan, rolling my eyes. "Well, if you hand over the grail right now, I might… no, actually I definitely won't spare you. Fuck it, let's just kill her."
"That's fine," Prelati says, all tears suddenly gone. "But hey, don't you want to do it yourself?"
"...What?" I ask, as Jeanne grips her flag uneasily beside me.
The Alchemist smiles, reaching up and pulling a small sheathed dagger from between her cleavage - actually, she's pretty small so do the logistics of that even - no, shut up, don't acknowledge her body! She's wearing lingerie for a reason, if you acknowledge it you lose!
"I mean it. You can go ahead and kill me, if you want. You know I can reincarnate, right?" Prelati giggles. "It's only fair if you murder me a few times, after all-"
"Shut up," I cut her off from blabbing about forbidden things.
"Hm? Is that no good?" She tilts her head. "I mean it, though. You can do whatever you want to me now. I had my fun, I'm ready to kiss and make up." The girl winks.
"Would you quit it with the damn flirting!?" I shout. "And while you're at it, go back to being a man, this is just awkward!"
"Awww, that's no fun… I picked this form out for your benefit, you know?" Prelati pouts.
"In what world!?" All you're doing is making me uncomfortable.
"I mean… like I said, you get to take your revenge on me now.~" She springs towards me, and Jeanne begins to blur into motion, only to hesitate, because this isn't an attack. Francesca smiles with poisonous sweetness as she presses the handle of her dagger into the hands I raised to defend myself, and presses her throat to the bare blade.
"Come on. Go ahead." She whispers, and I grit my teeth, trying to pull away.
"That's enough," Jeanne says, moving to pull her off of me-
"I have hostages," Prelati says, and the Ruler freezes again. "Berserk Archer was able to save and secret away a few hundred children in Orleans. If anyone other than Subaru kills me, I'll hand them over to Gilles when I reincarnate."
"You…!" I hiss.
"That's it. That's the right face, Subaru. Now, how about you listen to me? I want to make amends. We can work together, save all of the children, get the grail, and you can even kill me - wouldn't that be great?" Liar. There's no way it's a plan that one-sided in my favor. There's a catch. There has to be- "Is that not good enough for you? That's fine. You can go even harder on me, if you want." She leans even closer to me, the dagger drawing a small rivulet of blood from her neck, and whispers, "There's plenty of things a man can do to a woman to punish her, you know?~"
"Like hell I would!" I shout, and Prelati laughs, letting go of my hands as she hops back.
"I'm serious. This body's got fully functional organs - I can show them to you!" She pulls her shirt up, and I instinctively start to turn away, but she stops before revealing anything indecent. Actually, no, the zipper-like series of monstrous teeth running horizontally across her stomach is hardly decent. "Do you want to see them? My organs? I got them nice and presentable, just for you, Subaru~!"
"You're so damn gross!" I regret talking to her. Professor Velvet was right. Just what the hell did I think was going to happen?
"Ahahaha! So mean!~" She laughs- and then she springs towards me. That's enough, and Jeanne moves to intervene - but at that point a ring of sea fiends erupts from the ground around her and I, holding the Ruler back for just a moment.
I stagger back, but manage not to fall over as her arms wrap around my neck, and her legs wrap around my waist. Prelati's lightless eyes come nearer and nearer to my own, and I feel as if I'm about to fall into the swirling blackness of them. For one terrible moment, her sweet-scented breath brushes against my lips-
And then, just before her lips can meet mine, I plunge the knife into Prelati's chest.
"Ah…" She mumbles as she falls slack to the ground in front of me. "I… lov.."
Francesca Prelati dies with a contented smile - and I'm left standing here, the blood on my hands slowly growing cool.
I blink once, and then twice, as my heart continues to pound in my ears and blood continues to pool, mixing with the dust of the road into thick brown mud.
She doesn't disappear. I don't know why, but for some reason I was expecting her to - despite the obvious reality that Francesca Prelati is, was, a living human.
I feel strange. None of this should be new to me - I killed Betelgeuse, after all. And though I don't remember it, my hands are the ones that choked Meili Portroute to death, in one of the loops at the tower. When it comes to corpses, I've seen enough of them to get used to it. There was even the more or less accidental death of Louis Arneb.
And yet, this isn't how I've felt before when it comes to killing my enemies.
I shouldn't feel guilty for this. Prelati deserved it. So it's fine.
It's fine that I don't feel even the slightest degree of guilt for this.
***
As Paris looms in the distance, I barely manage to restrain a groan. Because, waving excitedly in the middle of the road, is Francesca Prelati. Again.
"...Can we just run her over?" I ask.
Marie laughs half-heartedly. "Normally I'd say no, but-"
"Heeey! I got the grail for you like you asked!~" Prelati yells, and sure enough a sparkling crystal appears in her hand.
"…You've got to be fucking kidding me," I mutter.
Just like that!? She actually did it!?
No, calm down. Calm down. Just take the win! Even if there's no catharsis, even if you haven't grown in the slightest, you can still accept an easy victory, right, Natsuki Subaru?
But as we pull to a stop, the sense of dissatisfaction builds and builds. I'm missing something. One last punchline.
It's as I exit the carriage and see the sadistic smile on her face that Ifinally get it. "Those hostages of yours. What happened to them?"
She said if I killed her, she wouldn't hand them over to Gilles de Rais.
"Hm? I killed them, obviously." I can see her lip twitching, the wicked laughter about to bubble out of her throat-
"[Minya]!" I fire almost by reflex as sheer hatred courses through me, and a purple crystal drives itself into her throat, and begins to spread along her body.
No voice can exit her throat- which is why it's that disgusting mouth I saw on her stomach that speaks.
"Ha..ha…haHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA-!"
Francesca Prelati dies in howling laughter as purple crystals consume her body.
"And to drive it home the grail vanishes as well" - is not what happens. The grail, all too real, floats gently to the ground as Francesca's body crumbles away.
An improbable easy victory with no climax, that I did nothing to earn - if it was going to be like this, give me back my twenty four loops, dammit-!
***
"-Rayshifting complete. Welcome back, everyone," Doctor Romani says.
I'm still grinding my teeth in annoyance as I exit the coffin. "Ugh, I still can't believe that's the ending we got." We didn't even meet any of the Paris defenders!
"Now now, Subaru! Just be glad everything turned out well!" Marie says with a beaming smile as she exits another.
By the way, we only had the ability to safely bring back one Servant, so we wound up leaving the weakened Jeanne and the secretly possessed Mozart behind.
"Oops, I guess I should be calling you Master now, right?" She continues, winking and causing my heart to skip a beat.
"N-no, you can just call me whatever you prefer!" I stammer.
"Oh!" Gareth shouts as she exits her coffin. "Does that offer apply to me too?"
"Oh, sure. I mean, the whole 'Master' thing is a bit weird to me. I get it's an Earth magi thing, but spirits in the other world were always a bit more…" I trail off. "Well, Beako was always calling me 'Betty's Subaru', for example."
"Hm? Do you want me to call you mine, then?" Marie asks with a giggle.
Ah.
"Th-that might be a bit much…" I mumble.
***
As I head back to my room, my mood slowly starts to improve. We won. The fact remains, we won. In fact, we didn't even have to sacrifice anyone! Kongming? More like Fraudming! Half of his scheme was totally pointless!
"Yeah. In the end, I can accept-" I say as I open my door.
"Welcome back, Subaru!" Says Francesca Prelati, dressed in a maid outfit. "Would you like Dinner? A Bath? Or-?"
Naturally, I slam the door and start running.
"Maaaaaash!" I scream in terror.
***
"You signed a freaking Geas with that!? Are you insane!?" I shout, my fist slamming down on the director's desk.
"This was my call to make, Natsuki." Olga Marie responds. "Prelati has been a valuable member of Chaldea so far, and there are multiple systems that we really stand no chance of repairing without her assistance."
There's no way we can trust her, no matter how useful she is!" I protest. "I get that she might just reincarnate, but can't we, I don't know, rayshift her into the sun or something?"
"What do you think rayshifting is…?" The director mutters, pinching her brow.
"You're so cold, Subaru~," Prelati moans. "Even after I went to all the trouble of storing my memories in the grail so my present self could remember all of our interactions!"
"Okay, there was a living Prelati in the modern day - I get that - but how the hell did the you from the singularity predict that you'd be here to receive those memories?" I groan.
"Hm? Hmmmm? I don't get why that would be a mystery, Subaru," Prelati says, leaping onto the table and taking half-dancing steps from one side to the other between various paperwork as Olga glares at her. "I mean, doesn't Chaldea just seem like a ton of fun? I'd have to be involved, unless something completely amazing was happening somewhere else."
"You damn lunatic," I mumble.
"Ahaha!" She laughs, tumbling forward into a handstand so her eyes can meet mine again. "What's that, are you - you, of all people - worrying about me taking risky actions?"
"Like hell," I groan , falling back into my chair and leaning back. I close my eyes and massage my brow, trying to quell my rising headache. "I don't even slightly care, so go get lost outside or something, Prelati."
Something settles on my lap, and I open my eyes to see her black orbs peering back at me. "Hey, Subaru, that's mean. You know, right? I'm the only one who can understand you, really. Won't you call me by my first name already?"
"I won't."
She grins and darts forward, but I manage to block her kiss with my hand.
"I don't know what clauses you've got in that Geas contract, but couldn't you have included something to stop the sexual harassment?" I complain.
"Hmmm? The [Star Sword] doesn't seem that upset," Prelati says, squirming on my lap, and that's the final straw.
"Okay, get the hell off!" I shout, pushing her - and as she tumbles backwards, her head strikes the edge of the Director's desk with a nasty crack and she goes limp.
…
Olga Marie speaks after a moment as we both stare at the limp form lying on her carpet. "Is she… dead?"
"Th-there's no way. A magus should be able to survive at least this much," I mutter, and yet. "...There's no pulse."
The Director groans. "I bet that bitch did this on purpose. I'm going to need a new carpet."
"I… didn't- "I feel sick. Why does manslaughter make me feel so much more disgusting than when I actually killed her on purpose? "I didn't mean to-"
"...You're a bit too kind, Natsuki. Don't bother feeling bad about her, she'll show up again later," Olga Marie says.
She's right, of course. When I finally make my way back to my room, what awaits me is-
"Welcome back, Subaru! Would you like dinner? Or a bath? Or-"
"I want you to leave!" I shout.