BOOM!!
Miyu watched the scenes unfolding around her, unable to find the words to describe the mounting horror.
The streets were engulfed in flames, the earth groaned and buckled under the weight of every massive footfall, and the citizens of Morioh were running blindly, their faces masks of pure terror.
"What is happening?!!"
"Is that giant ape someone's Stand?! This is way too much!"
"Please! Somebody help me!"
"My child is still trapped inside that collapsing house!!"
The desperate cries of the townspeople echoed through the air, creating a symphony of despair that seemed to amplify as the Great Ape's rampage continued.
This was the landscape of a living hell.
'...'
Homura Akemi was intimately familiar with this kind of atmosphere. It was a mirror of the despair she had witnessed during the Walpurgisnacht and countless other failed timelines.
But there was a subtle difference. This colossal primate felt even more overwhelming than any Witch she had faced.
THOOM!!
A massive beam of energy erupted from the Great Ape's mouth, striking a distant mountainside.
The resulting explosion sent a shockwave across the land that felt as though it could easily level a medium sized country.
The very crust of the planet vibrated with the release of so much power.
If this continued, the world itself might be torn apart.
"Archer!"
Miyu turned to Homura, her eyes pleading. The magical girl understood the silent request perfectly and immediately activated her temporal manipulation.
The world was once again bathed in the grey, static light of frozen time.
The Great Ape's massive limbs locked into place mid-stride, and the rising smoke from the fires hung like sculptures in the air.
Seeing that her time-stop wasn't being immediately negated by the maid, Homura realized that Sakuya Izayoi had finally prioritized the survival of the town over their petty skirmish.
In a situation this dire, continuing to undermine each other would be nothing short of suicidal.
'So, there are other Servants capable of stopping time besides me and the maid. There are at least two others.'
Homura noted this crucial piece of information, realizing how much she had underestimated the variety of powers present in this war.
"So... it looks like you're the ones responsible for this mess."
A familiar, cool voice drifted through the stilled air.
Homura turned to see a group of figures approaching. Sakuya stood at the front, followed by Josuke, Jotaro, Rohan, and Amber.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! You're Sakuya Izayoi!! The master of time exploitation!!"
Subaru Natsuki's eyes lit up with a sudden, frantic excitement. He couldn't hide his fanboy tendencies even in the face of a planetary crisis.
When it came to characters with white hair, Subaru considered himself an expert of the highest caliber.
His room back home had been practically a shrine to the aesthetic, filled with figurines and posters of every prominent white haired character in the ACGN universe.
Even if they only existed in legends from the East, he knew their faces and their histories by heart.
"!"
Hearing her true name uttered so casually by a total stranger made Sakuya narrow her eyes.
She studied the teenager, searching her vast memory for any hint of his identity, but she found nothing.
She had no idea who he was.
Yet his voice carried a tone of such absolute certainty, as if they were old acquaintances who had met many times before.
"And that one... is that C.C.?"
Subaru tilted his head to look at Amber. After a few seconds of observation, he paused, a look of doubt crossing his face.
'Wait, no. That can't be right. C.C. definitely isn't that small.'
Subaru's skepticism stemmed from the fact that Amber lacked the... distinctive symbolic physical traits he associated with the immortal witch from Code Geass.
"?"
Amber watched him, her expression one of complete neutrality. She had no idea what kind of "Secret Code" this boy was trying to use.
Step. Step.
"Good grief. Having all of you gathered in one place certainly saves me a lot of walking."
A new, languid set of footsteps echoed through the silence.
The group turned as one to see a slender, white haired youth walking calmly across the cracked pavement.
"YOU!!"
Josuke recognized him instantly, his jaw dropping in disbelief.
"Accelerator?! Wait... how can you even move in stopped time?"
Subaru's voice rose an octave as he "Invoked" another true name with the casual ease of a man reading from an encyclopedia.
"Hmph."
Accelerator didn't bother to ask how the boy knew his name. He didn't care. He continued to close the distance, his red eyes fixed on the gathered Masters and Servants.
Maintaining his current state was a massive drain on his focus.
He was constantly shifting parameters, performing thousands of complex calculations every second.
'Reflecting' the state of time itself was significantly more difficult than reflecting a bullet or a blast of fire.
But for him, the strongest Esper in Academy City, it was merely another equation to be solved.
Under normal circumstances, his ability would cause him to drift out of sync with the world's temporal flow, trapping him in a state of eternal stagnation.
However, since someone else had already "Stopped" time, it had created a unique vector that he could latch onto and turn to his advantage, granting him the freedom to act.
Of course, the timing had to be perfect. A single error in his calculations would leave him in a permanent vegetative state.
'So, several of our opponents have gathered here.'
'The giant monster is the Lancer, Son Goku.'
'Archer, Caster, and Assassin are all present.'
'If the one who was just defeated was the Saber, then only the Rider remains to be seen.'
Rohan Kishibe analyzed the situation, his mind working with its usual manga artist's efficiency.
"Was it you? Were you the one who kept negating Assassin's time-stops earlier?"
"Ha? Why would I waste my time on something so pointless and unrewarding?"
Accelerator's reply was dripping with disdain.
'If it wasn't him... then excluding Archer, the only one left who could override Amber is the Rider.'
'DIO.'
Jotaro and Rohan reached the same conclusion simultaneously. The realization made Jotaro clench his fist until his knuckles turned white.
"Wait! Now is not the time for us to be fighting each other!"
"We have to deal with the fact that Son Goku is currently a building sized ape threatening to wipe us out!"
"I don't care about your plans. I'm just going to clean all of you up at once."
Accelerator ignored Rohan's attempt at reason. He continued his arrogant, predatory advance toward the group.
"You don't understand what Goku is capable of--"
"No... wait. If it's Accelerator, he might actually be able to take Goku on."
"I don't know which version of him this is... but in his current state, he's clearly far beyond our control."
Subaru was sweating profusely now.
He wasn't exaggerating. Looking at the composition of the group, and excluding the now pulverized Itachi Uchiha, there wasn't anyone here who had even a remote chance of harming the white haired youth.
Rohan watched Subaru with a look of mounting suspicion.
This Master seemed to possess a specialized source of intelligence.
He knew the true names and capabilities of almost every Heroic Spirit they encountered.
Rohan and Jotaro had only heard rumors from Josuke and Sakuya about the Berserker possessing a "Wall" of some kind that made him untouchable.
Step. Step.
Seeing Accelerator continue to approach, Sakuya Izayoi decided she had seen enough.
WHOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH!
A flurry of silver knives whistled through the frozen air. They flew for several meters before suddenly veering off course or halting as if hitting an invisible barrier.
If time hadn't been stopped, those very same knives would have likely reversed their trajectory and pinned the attackers to the ground.
"Don't attack him blindly! Accelerator is a master of [Vector Manipulation]! He can reflect any incoming strike automatically!"
"Knives, bullets, punches... none of our conventional attacks can get through his [Reflection]!"
Subaru shouted his warning, his voice cracking with desperation.
"What did you say?"
"So he's effectively... invincible?!"
Rohan and Josuke exchanged a look of pure shock.
Everything began to click into place. They finally understood why Okuyasu, with his space erasing [The Hand], had been sent flying earlier without any obvious cause.
He hadn't been defeated; he had been reflected.
[Translated and Rewritten by Shika_Kagura]