Holding a kitchen knife to slash power lines, leaving a trail of sparks and lightning all the way

Chapter 10: Please ignore the title about wielding a kitchen knife against live wires while trailing sparks and lightning all the way.

"That fellow is an enemy! If we don't finish her off right here..." Saber said, turning back to look at Emiya Shirou.

"What are you talking about? I have absolutely no idea what's going on!" Emiya Shirou said, dropping words that utterly shocked Saber.

*Was I summoned here to fight, or was this just some kind of joke?* Saber's inner turmoil was far from as calm as her outward expression suggested.

"I still don't know who or what you are. But if you talk to me properly, I'll listen. So please, stop this kind of thing!" Emiya Shirou said something utterly ridiculous enough to make someone burst out laughing.

"What do you mean by 'this kind of thing'?" Saber asked, forcefully suppressing the urge to curse at her own Master. "If you are referring to what I am currently doing, I will never obey such a command! The enemy must be defeated!"

"Eh?" Looking at the stubborn girl before him, Emiya Shirou said with a hint of annoyance, "A girl shouldn't be brandishing a weapon in the first place, especially not when you're still injured. It's even more unacceptable!"

Standing not far away with her invisible sword raised, Lolita looked at her and asked, "It seems the Child of Light from Ireland managed to defeat you, Saber!"

"Hmph? Could it be that you fought that fellow as well?" Saber asked anxiously, staring at Lolita. Having fought such an adversary and emerged completely unscathed, her opponent was undoubtedly formidable.

"Well, of course. The hole in the guy behind you was actually made by the Child of Light, you know!" Lolita said as she stood up, transitioning from a deep squat to a ready stance, tensed and prepared to unleash her power at any moment.

"Archer, retreat!" Rin Tohsaka felt that if Lolita remained here, she would inevitably cause the two people who originally knew each other to clash, making the situation terribly difficult to handle. Therefore, at the cost of a Command Seal, she randomly teleported Lolita away...

"When will you put down your sword?" Rin Tohsaka asked.

Though bewildered by the Master who had just dismissed her Servant, Saber raised her sword and replied, "Facing an enemy, I will not lower my sword."

"A Servant known as Saber actually defying her Master's wishes!" Rin Tohsaka said softly.

"..." Hearing this, Saber had no choice but to lower her sword; after all, keeping it drawn would go against her code of chivalry as a knight.

Hearing the somewhat familiar voice, Emiya Shirou took a step forward and asked, "You are? ...Tohsaka..."

"Good evening, Emiya-kun!" Rin Tohsaka stepped forward and said.

...

*That bastard Rin Tohsaka actually randomly teleported me. By the way, where is this? We aren't out of the range of Fuyuki's Miyama Town and Shinto, are we?* Lolita had been dropped into a place that easily made one want to curse out loud: a desolate wasteland covered entirely in snow.

"Dammit! When I get back, I'm definitely going to teach her a lesson! It's as if I actually enjoy going to war with Saber." Complaining, Lolita unfolded the fallen angel wings behind her back. The wings of a fallen angel were genuinely convenient; no matter what kind of clothing she wore, it never obstructed them from spreading out, feeling as though they were purely composed of energy, yet warm and flesh-and-blood to the touch—how strange.

"Damn it, can I really only rely on the contract to sense Rin's direction? And it's so faint!" Lolita complained as she took flight, looking out over the virtually boundless snowfield. But right now, she had to hurry to Rin Tohsaka's side; after all, they were about to encounter that monster Berserker! In all three routes of the game, Rin Tohsaka's mortality rate was at least fifty percent.

Lolita was growing somewhat anxious. After all, if Emiya Shirou kicked the bucket in this world, she probably wouldn't fare well either, seeing as she used to be Emiya Shirou herself.

In the game, Emiya Shirou only had two choices: either drag Rin and run away, leading to a Bad End, or help Saber, get his abdomen hollowed out, and barely manage to escape safely.

But this wasn't a game after all. What if Emiya Shirou had a momentary brain-fart and chose a third option, resulting in Rin Tohsaka biting the dust? Who on earth would she cry to then?

And if Emiya Shirou got himself killed in the process as well, Lolita wouldn't even have anyone left to cry with!

Right now, Lolita was essentially holding a kitchen knife to cut live wires, trailing sparks and lightning all the way... cough, cough. She was wielding thunder to hack through roadblocks, speeding straight towards Rin Tohsaka's location at the speed of light.

Twenty minutes later, Lolita finally caught sight of the familiar city of Fuyuki and joyfully flew towards the church.

...

Tombstones flew through the air.

With every sweep of the giant, roaring titan's massive sword, heavy tombstones were casually cleaved in two as if it were a mere joke.

Amidst that chaos, darting bravely among the whirling gravestones, was a knight. With the thunderous sound of a gale-force blow from an axe-sword, tombstones were blasted into the air. Amidst it all, Saber confronted Berserker with power equal to—no, even greater than—just moments before.

"Ugh." Clearly outmatched, Saber took a minor injury after taking Berserker's full-powered blow head-on.

"Roaaaaargh!!" Berserker roared in madness, swinging a jagged, blunt greatsword nearly the size of Saber herself down toward the petite figure.

The dynamic between the two had now reversed. Compared to Berserker, who was hindered by the obstacles, Saber's advantage lay in her ability to treat those obstacles as if they didn't even exist.

To Berserker, obstacles of this scale should have been trivial.

Yet, one could hardly say they had no impact at all.

On a battlefield, these were merely minute differences, but it was precisely such tiny margins that tipped the scales of a balanced duel.

"Get over here! If you stand too far forward, you'll get caught in the crossfire!" Rin Tohsaka shouted at Emiya Shirou, who was frozen in shock at the scene before him.

"Huh! Wait..." Emiya Shirou finally snapped back to reality, yet the first thing this idiot thought of doing was trying to warn the young girl fighting that monstrous entity right before his eyes.

However, he was met with a stern reprimand from the girl called Saber: "What on earth are you thinking...?! Didn't I tell you to run away?! Or what, could you not hear me?!"

What's going on? I was clearly just worried about her, yet she's yelling at me in an absolute rage!

"Ah—no, I heard you. But I couldn't just do that." Emiya Shirou still seemed intent on explaining himself. Didn't this idiot realize that doing this would only distract Saber?

"What? How on earth did you reach the conclusion that you couldn't do that?! Emiya-kun has no means of fighting; staying here will only get in the way. Don't you understand?! If you try everything and still die, there's nothing that can be done, but to be killed without having done a single thing—isn't that just dying in vain?!" Rin Tohsaka yelled angrily at the foolish boy in front of her.

"???"

*Though I don't know why, Rin Tohsaka is genuinely angry. Strangely enough, being yelled at like that didn't make me angry at all. You'd better dare!* Emiya Shirou thought to himself, then obediently ran over to Rin Tohsaka's side.

Author's note: To keep Lolita out of trouble, this author is enduring it. To stop this idiot from dying, let's grant him a bit of protagonist armor.

"I have to ask. Is it really necessary for Tohsaka to get angry about that? Even if I were to die in vain, it shouldn't have anything to do with Tohsaka, right?" Emiya Shirou actually had the guts to ask.

"Of course it has to do with me! Since I said I'd let you off the hook for the whole day, it would be a huge headache for me if you didn't make it back home!" After all, he had gotten dragged into this because of her, and she was the one who brought him to this church, leading to their encounter with Berserker and his Master—a silver-haired little girl named Illyasviel. But come to think of it, aside from his blue eyes, Archer looked almost exactly like this little girl in front of them. Eh? Wait, didn't Archer use modern weaponry earlier? Could he be someone who became a Heroic Spirit only recently? No, that couldn't be right; those heaven-defying stats couldn't possibly belong to a newly minted Heroic Spirit.

"I can't stand this. Anyway, while you're still in one piece, hurry up and run away from here... That brat named Illyasviel genuinely looks like she intends to slaughter every single one of us." Rin Tohsaka only then remembered how she had managed to lose her focus in the middle of battle, and quickly vented her anger at Emiya Shirou to cover up her previous mistake.

"I know that. But I don't have any reason to run away. Saber is fighting like that, how could I possibly leave by myself?" Our hero continued playing the fool.

"That's the kind of line spoken by someone who actually has the skills to back it up. You, who can't provide any support whatsoever, will only die in vain if you stay here. This is the last time. Don't worry about it, just run away quickly!" Rin Tohsaka said to the idiot continuing to act the fool before her. Seriously, why must he be this foolish?

"There's no such thing. As long as a person is still breathing, there should always be something they can do. Besides, Tohsaka, are you trying to push something you can't do yourself onto someone else?" Emiya Shirou retorted.

"..." Rin Tohsaka looked at Emiya Shirou with a deadpan expression, then opened her mouth to say: "You've got a point. Forcing you to do something I can't manage myself—the one who should be ashamed is actually me." After all, wasn't she also incapable of abandoning Saber and running away alone? *Sigh, Archer, where are you?*

"Besides, it's not certain that there's any need to run. And at this rate, Saber won't lose, right?" Emiya Shirou said, watching Berserker swing his greatsword wildly while failing entirely to land a hit on Saber.

All of Berserker's attacks missed, wreaking havoc on the surroundings like a typhoon. Amidst those gaps, amidst the swirling wind and kicked-up dirt, amid a rain of severed tombstones, Saber stepped forward without a single speck of dust touching her armor, delivering a strike to Berserker.

There was no greater display of divine skill. Witnessing this combat that could never be achieved by mere flesh and blood, the fear that had lingered moments before completely vanished. To be honest, a clash of such supreme caliber left both of them completely enthralled. Meanwhile, Rin Tohsaka completely forgot how much mana Emiya Shirou, a half-baked magus, was actually capable of supplying to Saber.

Watching the knight's figure press forward unflinchingly and challenge the enemy without a moment's hesitation right inside a whirlwind that would turn anyone into minced meat upon contact, their anxiety was completely swept away.

Scene shifts to Lolita.

"Phew. Looks like I made it just in time." With the fierce evening wind blowing past, Lolita stood on a distant hill, nodding in satisfaction as she observed the battlefield.

"Well... it's a good thing we were attacked right here... otherwise, I would have missed it."

In the game, due to the multiple routes, the location where Emiya Shirou and the others were attacked by Berserker varied.

In the Fate route and Heaven's Feel route, it happened at the boundary between the western residential district and the commercial area; in the Unlimited Blade Works route, it was the graveyard in front of the church.

If she had run to the wrong place, she would have simply had to chalk it up to bad luck.

PS: The title might have been a bit over the top. Hehehe!