Lancer || Cu Chulainn (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
solas_ion) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
route_10652014-10-11 05:25 pm
solas_ion) wrote in route_10652014-10-11 05:25 pm
Entry tags:
☘ // history repeating
Who: Lancer and Carmen
Where: A largely nondescript restaurant on the coast of Goldenrod.
When: Saturday evening
Summary: Lancer tries to figure out what the heck Fate/Hollow Ataraxia even was.
Rating: T for probable descriptions of violence/blood.
Log:
This was the fourth day.
All reason told him that no, it was impossible for the time loop to carry over into Johto. And Lancer believed that, but still there was part of him (instinct?) which remained on edge. For now, the legendary hero in black sat at a table with his head leaning on his right hand, staring out a window at the water. His left shoulder was healing--luckily for him the wound didn't seem to be at risk of opening up again. The arm itself was still pretty limited, and it wasn't hard to tell his whole shoulder was carefully wrapped in bandages.
Fragarach; the weapon only Cu Chulainn could counter. Had killing its owner brought the looping dream of Fuyuki City to an end? Had Emiya managed to handle the rest once Lancer himself had died? His chest and shoulder ached, therefore it must have been real in some measure...but just how real was it?
...And why did it have to be her of all people that was behind it?
People tended to talk to friends when they had problems, right? (He wouldn't really have known; Lancer wasn't the sort to confide in most people.) But if the alternative was this awful headache he was getting from trying to reason the whole thing out after the fact, he'd decided to give it a try. Talking candidly with Emiya about his past had been...what was the word for it? 'Liberating', maybe? Hell if he knew, but maybe asking Carmen here would have a similar effect. And she was smarter than Emiya, so maybe he could make some sense of the whole thing talking to her.
Whether it helped or not, if--when 11:59 of the eleventh ticked right on over into 12:00 of the twelfth, Lancer couldn't help but admit he'd be a little more at ease.
Where: A largely nondescript restaurant on the coast of Goldenrod.
When: Saturday evening
Summary: Lancer tries to figure out what the heck Fate/Hollow Ataraxia even was.
Rating: T for probable descriptions of violence/blood.
Log:
This was the fourth day.
All reason told him that no, it was impossible for the time loop to carry over into Johto. And Lancer believed that, but still there was part of him (instinct?) which remained on edge. For now, the legendary hero in black sat at a table with his head leaning on his right hand, staring out a window at the water. His left shoulder was healing--luckily for him the wound didn't seem to be at risk of opening up again. The arm itself was still pretty limited, and it wasn't hard to tell his whole shoulder was carefully wrapped in bandages.
Fragarach; the weapon only Cu Chulainn could counter. Had killing its owner brought the looping dream of Fuyuki City to an end? Had Emiya managed to handle the rest once Lancer himself had died? His chest and shoulder ached, therefore it must have been real in some measure...but just how real was it?
...And why did it have to be her of all people that was behind it?
People tended to talk to friends when they had problems, right? (He wouldn't really have known; Lancer wasn't the sort to confide in most people.) But if the alternative was this awful headache he was getting from trying to reason the whole thing out after the fact, he'd decided to give it a try. Talking candidly with Emiya about his past had been...what was the word for it? 'Liberating', maybe? Hell if he knew, but maybe asking Carmen here would have a similar effect. And she was smarter than Emiya, so maybe he could make some sense of the whole thing talking to her.
Whether it helped or not, if--when 11:59 of the eleventh ticked right on over into 12:00 of the twelfth, Lancer couldn't help but admit he'd be a little more at ease.
no subject
Of course, that wasn't all there was to it, was there?
"...but I'll stay up with you, if you want. Until the date changes over for certain," she offered.
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But that brought more of an actual smile to his face; Lancer was starting to think he was being kind of an idiot over this. What was done was done, after all. He learned through experience that being miserable wasn't going to bring anyone back from the dead.
"The offer's a nice one, but I'd be pretty awful company. I'm all but dead on my feet lately, I'd probably fall asleep long before midnight."
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...Also, those egg rolls were looking delicious, thank you very much. It'd be a shame to leave them unattended now that the conversation was lightening up.
"But there's something to be said for 'early to bed and early to rise' — it's said to make a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."
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When one was usually the scariest thing around, there wasn't a hell of a lot to be afraid of. (Also, now that he realized they were there, he sure would be taking an egg roll.)
"Is that what they say now? I like to think there's some fun to be found in late nights when one's not half dead."
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(Fortunately, there were enough egg rolls for two, and boy were they ever delicious. Even if eating one gracefully was apparently not something Carmen was accomplishing very well at the moment.)
"Speaking of things keeping you up at night, how fares that little cat of yours?" she added.
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"Dunno, really. Every so often I have my Venomoth help it get some sleep, y'know? I've tried everythin', but I can't figure out why she's so damn screwed up. Tyrfing says I didn't even catch her; he saw her pick up an empty Pokeball and whack it on her head while I was stuck under a pile a' the things."
...So yeah, that sounded sane.
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...And then eventually Carmen just kind of shook her head with a laugh.
"You're far from the only one with that problem," she said. "It's hardly unusual to find a Pokemon with that kind of quirky personality — I should know, I've got more than a few of them myself — but it seems like those cats in particular are proving to have some of the most baffling ones I've ever heard of."
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Even if her million-yard stare freaked him out.
"I mean hell, I don't like cats, but I ain't heartless." Lancer shoved another egg roll in his mouth, momentarily showing off far sharper than average canines.
...Which was probably ironic.
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She paused. "Allusions to present company entirely unintentional, I've also always gotten along well with guard dogs," she added, thoughtfully dipping her egg roll in a bit of the sweet and sour sauce. "But that's more that they tend to like me, rather than me being particularly partial to them."
A handy trait for a master thief, after all.
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"...I've found animals are usually good judges of character. S'part of the reason I like this place so much. Then again, maybe these guys are a little better at it than your normal dogs and cats."
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...as she, you know. Frequently did. With unsettling regularity.
......she was really trying to get better about that.
"They really are, aren't they? And the intelligence some of them display is absolutely uncanny." She smiled. "One of mine regularly goes out and makes friends on the Network all by himself. I wouldn't say he's necessarily the best judge of character, but that's only because he's the type to assume that everyone is his friend right from the start. It's...sweet, honestly."
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"I get what you mean. Can't say I've had any regularly on the Network-..." Pause. "...at least not that I know of." Gods only knew what thy got up to behind his back.
"Past couple years I've noticed all of mine are pretty clever. Especially Olldóiteán and Tyrfing--he was actually Emiya's, until the kid left. Best nonhuman sparring partner I've had in a long time."
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...
...Whatever she was imagining Shirou Emiya to be like, her imagination was probably not corresponding well with the reality of the situation, um.
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"Interesting? That's one word for it--kid's dumber than a brick, but stubborn as hell. You probably know the type."
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In fairness, her henchmen tried very hard, really they did, but sometimes they were just utterly impossible. That wasn't ACME's MO at all, though; they took the brightest and best and trained them to be even better. (Just look at her, after all.)
"I thought you said he was the one who worked out that something was wrong, back home?"
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Beat.
"Hell, even killing him didn't stop him for more than a couple hours."
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......
WELL OKAY THEN.
"Dare I ask how he managed to recover so admirably?" Carmen finally managed, for lack of anything better to say.
Because so help her, if Lancer said the kid was too dumb to recognize that he was supposed to die from a fatal injury, she was just...
Educational systems, why.
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"I think Tohsaka had something or other to do with it." He was oddly casual about this. Obviously it made sense, because magic.
"Usually when I stab somebody, they stay dead. So I ain't sure how exactly."
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"Is that what you meant when you said he'd fought you before, and knew what your lance could do?"
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"...Do you know why I'm called 'Lancer' at all?"
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She frowned a minute, brow furrowing as she mulled things over. That's right, she did remember some of it — in that sort of fractured way that tends to come with knowing information without really knowing why it's important, so that interconnectedness of context isn't quite there to hold it all together.
"And you could've been a...Berserker, instead of a Lancer. They're like slots that legendary heroes can be fit into. Summoned into, rather. By mages? For the sake of a...holy grail that isn't the same one from the King Arthur legends. It's something like that?"
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She did have most of the important parts, from a Servant's perspective, so that wasn't too bad.
"Yeah, there's seven of us--'heroic spirits', we're called--summoned into the classes Saber, Lancer, Archer, Rider, Caster, Assassin, and Berserker. The Holy Grail's said to be an omnipotent thing that grants any wish of the last Servant and Master pair remaining, so in an ideal war that didn't take a wrong turn anywhere we'd just kill each other like normal knights."
Wasn't a bad deal, as far as he was concerned.
"Thing is, mages like keeping their magic and all that secret, so the war's fought at night away from your casual observer. I met Emiya on one of the first nights; he was in the wrong place at the wrong time while I was fighting Rin and her Archer."
Who was....also Shirou, if Lancer recalled what he'd learned in Johto correctly. Who knew how the hell that worked. It sure didn't make the other Servant less annoying.
"Policy is 'no witnesses', you know? I didn't like it any more than he did, but rule's a rule. So I stabbed him, realized...maybe an hour or so later that he didn't stay down, so I went to stab him again to finish the job."
Good times.
"That's when he summoned his own Servant, and that's how I met Saber."
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"If that boy and his girlfriend were both Masters, wouldn't that mean they'd eventually have to turn on each other in order to win the Grail?"
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Lancer really was just an absurdly simple person when things came right down to it. His only wish was to fight, so just being in the war itself was fulfillment enough even if it had taken a sharp turn into chaos.
"But that's exactly what it means, in concept. I think alliances are probably pretty normal but only one Master-Servant pair can actually win. That said, if I remember what Emiya said here, it ain't an issue. The Grail was destroyed at the end of the war I was summoned in, so that's kinda that."
Because that was a normal thing to just casually say.