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The chat exploded the second Archer's hand shot out and locked Artoria Lily's wrist.
[Outraged]: He is NOT playing fair right now!
[TrustTheProcess]: Okay but can we talk about how this is literally a Master and Servant who can't stand each other? I am BEGGING them to fight themselves first.
[Skeptic]: Yeah, that's not happening.
[ArtoriaProtectSquad]: Oh my GOD another Archer?! Is the Archer class just broken or something?! He stopped Artoria from drawing her sword with one hand! ONE HAND! Maverick is cooked!
[Eternal_Believer]: Chill. Trust Maverick. Trust doesn't need a reason.
[Analyst_Andy]: He just got the jump on her, that's all. Agility stat's probably a bit high. Did you miss the part where Artoria sent him flying with that kick?
[PlsKickMe]: I really want to be kicked by Artoria too. Asking for a friend.
[Simp4Lily]: Envy Maverick so much rn.
[Unhinged]: Artoria's feet are small, soft, and smell like—
[WhiteKnight]: SHUT YOUR MOUTH. Say another word about my Artoria and I will personally warn you with Caliburn. You absolute beast.
And that was stream chat for you. Didn't matter how serious things got—the second people started typing, the whole thing devolved into chaos. Big personalities, small attention spans, and somehow it all worked together into this weird, chaotic community that Maverick had accidentally built.
He didn't have time to read any of it right now, though.
Lily had saved him.
He was still processing that.
The way she'd done it, though—less "graceful heroic rescue" and more "supersonic flying kick to the ribcage"—had nearly separated him from the Li-Ning jacket he'd been wearing since Tuesday. He felt the fabric stretch against his shoulders as she'd spun past him, the force of her momentum rippling through the air like a shockwave.
But saved was saved.
Lily had a clear conscience about the whole thing.
Artoria Lily touched down on the restaurant floor with a heavy, deliberate stomp, her small frame radiating the kind of focused intensity that made the air feel heavier. In the half-second between landing and the follow-through, her Spiritron Dress rippled into place—the transformation seamless, like she'd simply always been wearing it. Her hand found Caliburn at her hip, and she drew it in one clean motion, already charging forward before the blade had fully cleared the scabbard.
"Go to hell, you sneak attacker!"
[CLANG!]
The thing people sometimes forgot about Artoria Lily was that her kindness had limits. She was gentle, yes—warm, earnest, the kind of person who'd feed a stray cat in the rain. But that warmth was reserved for people who'd earned it. For the treacherous, the cowardly, the cruel—for someone who'd ambush a man at dinner and nearly taken his head off—Lily had grown up in the brutal, unforgiving landscape of ancient Britain.
She didn't hesitate when she swung her sword.
The problem was the bow.
Caliburn rang out against it like a bell—a sharp, bone-deep clang that rattled through the ruined restaurant. The black-haired Servant, the one she'd kicked halfway across the room not thirty seconds ago, had somehow found his feet, shifted back into his full Heroic Spirit attire, and positioned himself directly between her and his Master.
His expression was calm. Almost apologetic.
"I'm sorry." His voice was quiet, measured, the kind of steady that came from someone who'd made peace with a lot of difficult choices. "I don't approve of what my Master did either. But I can't stand aside and let you kill him."
Their weapons ground against each other—Caliburn's edge pressing into the curve of the bow, sparks jumping from the friction. Lily's jaw tightened. Her Strength parameter was C rank, solid enough, but she could already feel the resistance in his stance. He wasn't just blocking; he was holding, absorbing the force and redistributing it. If she kept this up, she'd be the one getting pushed back.
She felt her magical circuits hum to life in response—the familiar surge of power rolling down through her arms and into her grip.
Mana Burst.
But he was faster than she expected.
Even while maintaining the block, his free hand moved. A magical arrow took shape from pure ether, constructed in real time from the ambient prana in the air, and he nocked it to the bowstring in one fluid motion while their weapons were still locked together.
There was a single second where Lily saw what was coming and knew she couldn't stop it.
Then the roof of the restaurant came off.
The concussive blast hit her like a wall of solid air. She felt Caliburn ripped from her grip as the impact threw her backward, through the hole where the wall used to be, and out into the open street beyond. She hit the ground rolling, skidding across the pavement, and finally came to rest against the base of a lamppost with a grunt that had very little dignity in it.
The chat, watching through Maverick's stream feed, was completely losing its mind.
Back inside what remained of the restaurant, the Archer's Master pumped his fist.
"YEAH! That's what I'm talking about! Nice work, Archer!"
Around them, the restaurant patrons who hadn't already fled were now sprinting for the exits, knocking over chairs and each other in their desperation to get away from whatever was happening. Their screams faded into the street. Glass crunched underfoot. Somewhere, a fire suppression system had triggered, and water was beginning to drip from the exposed ceiling beams.
Kiritsugu watched it all with the bright, satisfied eyes of someone who thought this was going great.
His Servant did not share this assessment.
Archer's favorability rating, already sitting at a bleak 30%, hadn't budged—but his expression, visible only to the audience watching through the game's ambient cameras, said everything. He gave his Master exactly one glance: the look of a man who had chosen his battles and decided this one wasn't worth having right now.
Then he took a running leap out through the hole in the wall to go find Lily.
The silence he left behind was loud.
Kiritsugu stood there, fist still half-raised, the victory pose slowly wilting. He'd been in the middle of a sentence—something motivational, something about teamwork—and his Servant had just... left. Hadn't acknowledged him. Hadn't even looked back.
An NPC had walked out on him.
In a game.
The embarrassment of it settled over him like cold water, and embarrassment curdled fast into something uglier.
"Oh, so that's how it is." He lowered his arm. His voice dropped, took on a sour edge. "Unbelievable. I'm talking to you, and you just—what, you're too good to listen? You think you're something special?" He kicked a fallen chair out of his way. "You're a game character. That's it. That's all you are. When you get back, I swear to god, I'm gonna sit you down and explain very clearly how this works. I'm the boss. I'm the boss. You're the tool."
He spat on the floor.
"They're all NPCs anyway. Who cares if they die? Why are you out here playing noble knight for code? This is embarrassing. You're embarrassing both of us—"
He kept going. The rant spiraled, growing more elaborate and increasingly unhinged, the monologue of a man who'd been ignored and was handling it very badly.
The chat watched him with the kind of disgusted fascination usually reserved for nature documentaries.
[Speechless]: Bro said "why are you playing noble knight for code" while he's ALSO just code.
[PhilosophyHit]: Actually that broke my brain.
[JusticeForArcher]: Ten packs of Flamin' Hot Cheetos says this guy gets killed by his own Servant before the arc ends.
[NoBet]: That's not even a gamble at this point, that's just predicting weather.
[AvengeMaverick]: Go Maverick GO. Handle this man. I'll send you 10 rockets.
[Disgusted]: He called them "just NPCs" and then complained that his NPC doesn't respect him. The cognitive dissonance is incredible.
Through the stream feed, the chat had caught every second of Kiritsugu's meltdown in perfect clarity. Maverick's camera angles had been ideal—the man's expression, his posture, the petty viciousness of his little speech, all of it framed beautifully by the still-settling debris.
Maverick hadn't said anything yet.
He didn't need to. His face said it all.
There was a particular kind of contempt Maverick reserved for specific types of people—and someone who'd take a Servant like Archer and treat them like a cheap weapon, who'd sneer at an NPC for having principles, who'd throw a tantrum when that NPC chose to act with more dignity than their Master—that type landed squarely in Maverick's personal hall of shame.
He'd seen enough.
Without a word, he smoothly transitioned from bystander to shooter. The sniper rifle came up, scope to eye, the crosshairs finding Kiritsugu's head through the settling dust and debris with practiced ease. His breathing slowed. His finger found the trigger.
Sneak attack for a sneak attack. Fair enough.
He almost had him.
Then the ceiling finally gave up.
The central section of the restaurant, structurally compromised since Archer's arrow had removed the roof, chose this exact moment to collapse. Beams and plaster and shattered tile came down between them in a cascading roar, throwing up a thick curtain of grey dust and debris that swallowed the room whole.
Maverick fired anyway.
The shot punched through the cloud.
And somewhere in the haze—
"AGH! WHAT—that HURTS! WHY does this game have pain settings?! WHO TURNED ON PAIN?! WHO DID THAT?! Come out and face me right now, I'm not even—I won't kill you, I just want to TALK—"
The scream was somewhere between rage and genuine distress. Maverick heard the man scrambling, moving blind through the dust cloud, and couldn't get a clean bead on him. He shifted positions, circling the debris field, the scope tracking motion he could barely see.
Kiritsugu's voice was still going, a continuous stream of threats and wounded pride and confusion, all of it bouncing around the collapsed walls. He didn't know where the shot had come from. Didn't know who'd fired it. The uncertainty was making him loud and erratic—brave the way cornered animals are brave, all noise and no direction.
Maverick lined up the second shot.
The bullet found its mark with a sound like a door slamming.
Kiritsugu's foot left the ground.
And then, in a very literal sense, it left the rest of him too.
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