Chapter XLIII: Ave Caesar

"I have to say, you found those crabs much faster than I was expecting. You caught me quite off guard with the suddenness of it, I hadn't prepared to receive them that soon."

"It would have been much harder if we had landed on course," I commented mildly.

Da Vinci laughed, a little forced. "Yes, well, I'm afraid I'm no closer to knowing why that occurred than I was a few hours ago. Or rather, from your perspective, a few days ago."

"It's fine." I brushed off the implied apology. It wasn't fine, but there wasn't anything either of us could do about it. What was done was done. "I'm more concerned with whether or not it will happen again. If Aífe hadn't been here, we would have landed far behind enemy lines with only the United Empire to tell us what was going on."

Da Vinci grimaced. "Yes, well, that certainly would have been problematic, wouldn't it? If you're asking me for guarantees, however, then I can't give you any. Not yet. If we can figure out what went wrong, then we can fine tune things for future Singularities, but no matter how much preparation we do, things will get less and less certain the further into the past the Singularity is situated."

My lips pulled into a thin line. It wasn't the answer I wanted to hear, but when it came down to it, I preferred it when Da Vinci was honest with me instead of trying to soothe me with a pleasant lie. She probably knew that, which is why I was pretty sure she'd never lied to me, not when it really mattered.

She was perfectly okay with deceiving me in other ways, though, or just not telling me things she wanted to keep secret.

"Any news on that end, then?"

It wasn't entirely relevant to now, but knowing more about where and when we'd be going after this Singularity was solved might inform some of our choices about which contracts to pick up while we were here.

"Nothing substantial," Da Vinci said. "We've been getting some clearer readings on the next Singularity you're likely to tackle — the one in the middle of the ocean? But although we've managed to narrow down the era to the latter half of the sixteenth century, the other data is harder to interpret."

I nodded. It would have been better to know the where just as much as the when, but if it was situated over a hundred years after Orléans, then we could at least be secure in knowing our connection with Chaldea would be better.

"Do you have things ready, now? I've gathered as many bugs as I safely can in this area."

She nodded back. "Strictly speaking," she said, "this might classify as an unnecessary energy expenditure, but, well, it's for Director Animusphere in the first place, so she isn't here to yell at us, and there's no one outside to come in and audit our books right now, so it should be fine, as long as we don't do too many of these."

"I would have been perfectly happy to do this the way we did the crabs," I reminded her.

Da Vinci smiled wryly, cheeks dimpling.

"Yes, but it's much harder to lose a crab the size of your hand that will die after a few hours outside the water than it is to lose thousands of insects who might find their way into our food stores. It's more secure to send you the canisters and have you pack them full."

A perfectly valid point. Still. At some point, I wanted to set up a terrarium in one of the empty workshops at Chaldea. Having some spiders to weave with would give me more to do in the stretches of downtime between Singularities.

Getting Marie her body back was just more important, right now.

"Ready when you are, then."

"Then, in three…two…one…"

A heartbeat passed, and then, from Da Vinci's end, a neutral, computerized voice announced the successful transfer. Barely a moment later, three canisters appeared out of thin air, things of solid, reinforced glass with bulky caps made of some kind of sturdy, black plastic. They were situated, perfectly upright, in a triangle around me, each exactly six feet away in each direction, and they were about as wide as I was from shoulder to shoulder and tall enough to reach my diaphragm.

When I went over to one and inspected it, I found a handle that turned and a button of some kind on the top, which meant it was probably the "lid."

A yank on the handle did nothing. A twist and a yank had no effect either, and it was sealed on tight. My lips pursed. On my third try, I pushed the button in and twisted the handle, and this time, I was rewarded with the hiss of escaping air as the seal was broken and the lid released.

"You know," said Da Vinci, "you could have asked Mash to help."

Mash, who had remained mostly silent since the beginning of the conversation, startled at being addressed.

"I-I'm sorry!" she stammered. "I, um… Miss Taylor…looked like she had it handled, and…"

"You could also just have told me how it worked," I said to Da Vinci.

"Now, where's the fun in that?" Da Vinci asked, grinning. "Have you no sense of adventure? No urge to explore and discover?"

I arched an eyebrow. "The mechanism on a canister?"

"Well, maybe not," Da Vinci said wryly. "In any case, please fill those three canisters as full as you can make them. Don't worry too much about some of the samples dying. The miniscule amount of time they'll have to decompose is essentially insignificant for my purposes."

"Right."

I pulled in the bugs I'd gathered just for this, and my swarm arose from our surroundings — wasps and bees and butterflies, all sorts of fliers, and in their grips, they carried passengers that couldn't fly, the slowest, most cumbersome insects that they could still lift. For the remainder that outnumbered the fliers, they marched in neat lines and thick columns, moving as an orderly mass of chitin, legs, and antennae through the jungle of grass.

Mash squeaked and tried to get away, but unfortunately for her, my swarm came from all directions, leaving a clear spot only for her and her shield. She was hemmed in and there wasn't anywhere for her to go that wouldn't put her directly in their path.

Sorry, Mash.

I felt a little bad for making her so uncomfortable, but since there wasn't anything else to be done about it, the only thing I really could do was try to be as quick as I could.

The other containers, I unsealed as the first of my swarm stuffed themselves into the one I'd already opened. Then, the streams split into three different groups. One made their way for one container, one for the second, and the third for the third. They crawled up the glass sides and flew over the lip and threw themselves into the canisters as though sacrificing themselves to appease some cruel and unforgiving god.

And I guess I was the god in that situation.

"That is as fascinating as it is unsettling," Da Vinci remarked with morbid interest. "Your control of insects is so fine and so absolute… If only they weren't creepy crawlies, yes?"

"It took me a while to get used to it, too," I admitted. "But when your power is bugs, there isn't much other choice."

Even now, some distant, buried instinct compelled me to be revolted by the squirming black bodies writhing inside those canisters. The difference was, I had long since learned how to suppress that instinctive reaction to the point that I almost didn't notice it anymore.

"That should be enough," Da Vinci eventually said.

The canisters were filled almost all the way to the tops, but there was still enough space that I could have squeezed more inside if I had to.

"Should be?" I asked.

Mash, who had been watching the entire thing, looked queasy. If her shield wasn't so necessary to keeping a stable connection to Chaldea, I would've done this without her. Unfortunately, while the Roman camp had been conveniently settled within walking distance of the ley line that would one day sit beneath the church we had lived out of during our time in Thiers, that shield was still necessary to transfer things to and from Chaldea itself.

"It's more than enough," Da Vinci corrected herself. "Frankly, the third canister is just a precaution and isn't strictly necessary."

"Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it?"

Da Vinci smiled. "Precisely." Her eyes flickered to the side as she checked something on her monitor, and then she added, "Arash should be back soon, by the way."

I nodded, even as I set about closing the canisters back up. "Right. Did you get anything useful?"

"Not as much as I'd hoped," she told me ruefully. She heaved a sigh. "Well, it seems that because Servants are anchored more to you Masters than they are to the Singularity, they don't make good enough reference points for our sensors."

I frowned. The second canister hissed as the lid sealed tight.

"You didn't get anything?"

She held up two fingers. "As far as we can tell, there are at least two Servants in that direction, both of them with strong Saint Graphs. Any more than that, and I can only give you my guesses. At the very least, they seem to be separated enough that you might be able to take one down before the other appears to help."

My lips pursed. The third canister closed with another hiss.

"Any chance one of them is a stray we could recruit?"

"With how close they still seem to be? Almost none." Da Vinci shook her head. "It's just my speculation, but I would have to say that they're a singular force splitting up to accomplish separate missions. Given their location and the direction they likely came from, it's a strong possibility one of them is Julius Caesar."

"Which makes this the best opportunity we might get to take him out," I reasoned, and then I stepped back, putting some space between me and the containers. "Ready on this end."

I dispersed the rest of my swarm back into the background, sending the ones left to pick up where and what they'd been doing before I dragged them in so Da Vinci could collect her samples. Mash watched them go uneasily — now that it wasn't the middle of a battle, it seemed their presence bothered her more.

"Retrieving the canisters in three…two…one…"

The canisters blurred around the edges, and then they vanished. From the background on Da Vinci's end, a cool, computerized voice announced, "RETRIEVAL SUCCESSFUL."

A second time, she looked over at something on her console, and a pleased smile broke out over her face.

"They've arrived without a hitch. Naturally, since I'm the one who prepared them," Da Vinci said. She turned back to me. "As for going after Julius Caesar — if it even is him, he won't be a pushover. He's been summoned into Roman territory, after all. Having said that, I know you better than to think something as simple as a challenge would give you pause. The only reason I'm not more against the idea is that you have quite a competent team with you."

"Does Doctor Roman know?" Mash asked.

"Romani is currently out cold in his bed," Da Vinci said matter-of-factly. "It took a lot of convincing, but I eventually managed to make him see my perspective on the matter, so he's getting some sleep while things are still relatively calm."

And that meant he wasn't awake to flip out about us taking what he would view as a huge risk. Well played, Da Vinci.

"I see." Mash nodded serenely. "That's good. Doctor Roman needs to take better care of himself."

"If only it were as easy as having you tell him so," Da Vinci said wryly. "Well, I'd better go see to those samples and start the printing process. Between the crabs you provided earlier, Taylor, and those bugs now, I should have enough organic material to start building Director Animusphere her new body."

A jolt of excitement shot through my stomach. "Good."

"The on-duty staff will continue to monitor your condition in the meantime," she went on, "and Bradamante and Siegfried remain on standby, in case of emergency. As for your operation against Julius Caesar and whoever that second Servant might be… Well, I don't have any practical means of stopping you, so I'll leave the planning and execution up to your judgment. Just be careful."

"Understood."

She smiled. "Good grief, it seems Romani is starting to rub off on me, too." She shook her head. "Oh well. Ciao ciao!"

And with a final, cheery wave, her image blinked out and the hologram disappeared.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

There was a brief moment of silence where nothing happened, like Mash was waiting for someone else to contact us, and then she walked over to her shield, stepping gingerly towards it as she looked for any bugs underfoot, and picked it up. She spent a short few seconds checking it over as surreptitiously as she could, and I didn't have the heart to comment about how it was bug free, because I wasn't sure how to do it without embarrassing her.

Once she was done, she turned back to me. "Miss Taylor."

I jerked my chin back over my shoulder. "Let's get back to the rest of the team and let them know. Arash should be there pretty soon, too."

She nodded. "Right."

I spun on my heel and started walking back to camp, and Mash fell into step behind me as I brought the bugs at camp back to the forefront of my attention. The twins remained where I'd left them — talking and bonding with the soldiers under Boudica's command — while Emiya cooked lunch with Boudica herself over the firepit. Aífe was having sparring matches on a clear patch with Spartacus while a group of soldiers watched on, having doffed her armor and the outer layer of her clothes.

Arash hadn't entered my range yet, but he'd only gone out a few miles, so it shouldn't be much longer before he did.

After a short trek through the forest, we stepped back into the clearing that held the camp, and Mash followed me as I made a beeline for the twins. A few of the soldiers turned to look, but when they saw it was just us coming back, they nodded and went back to what they'd been doing prior. Mostly, that was loitering, chatting with their comrades, or servicing their gear.

The twins had gathered a little following while we'd been gone, a small group of the younger, less experienced soldiers of the Gaul Expeditionary Force, who were listening as Ritsuka and Rika regaled them with tales of their childhood.

"She pushed me!" Ritsuka was saying.

"You were just standing there staring!" Rika retorted defensively. "If it was up to you, you never would've jumped in! Of course I pushed you!"

"I didn't know how to swim! I could have drowned!"

"Oh, come on, Onii-chan! Mom and Dad were right there. If they seriously thought you were in danger, they would have jumped in to get you right away!"

"What if they weren't in time?"

Rika snorted. "People don't drown that quickly, Onii-chan. Besides." She flapped her arms suggestively. "You had floaties on."

"Floaties?" one of the soldiers asked.

"They're these sort of…tubes filled with air," Ritsuka explained, gesturing with his hands. "You put them around your upper arms and they're supposed to keep you afloat in water."

"Wouldn't that make it harder to swim?" the soldier nearest to them — Marcus, he'd introduced himself as, a relatively young, recently promoted centurion — asked.

"Of course it does," said Rika. "But this big baby was too scared to learn how to swim properly until middle school. It's one of the few things I learned faster than he did."

"Well," I chimed in wryly, "they do say that girls mature faster than boys."

The soldiers around them laughed at Ritsuka's expense, although Ritsuka himself didn't look particularly offended or embarrassed.

"No wonder Senpai's such a badass, then!" Rika said brightly.

"A badass?" Marcus asked curiously.

Rika nodded vigorously and made an energetic thrusting motion with one hand, fingers curled like she was holding a knife. "She killed a dragon by stabbing it in the eye!"

Impressed murmurs circulated the group, and some of them looked at me with new respect. Others seemed more skeptical, like they couldn't believe a beanpole like me could actually do that. Or rather, that a tall, slender woman had the strength to do any such thing.

Welcome to the fantastic sexism of imperial Rome.

It wasn't like the rest of this era was much better, though.

"What about you, Marcus?" Ritsuka asked with a friendly smile. "I mean, to make Centurion so young, you must have some pretty good stories, too."

"Well, I can't say I've ever killed a dragon," Marcus said with a humble laugh. "I'm not sure anything I've done can really compare to something like that, either, but…"

"But?" Rika prodded.

"There's a story that's been passed down in my family for generations. About a great warrior from the time of the first Caesar." The more he talked, the more animated Marcus became. "They say he was left with his cohort to defend a gate against a great army. Outnumbered, outflanked, and outmaneuvered, he and his men fought a desperate battle just to hold the enemy off."

Marcus waved his arm as though swinging a sword. "He hacked and he slashed and he stabbed until his sword was blunt, and then he used his knife to carve off his enemies' hands. As his comrades died around him, he deflected numerous javelin throws and he blocked countless volleys of arrows with his shield until a single lucky shot made it through and pierced his eye."

"Geez," said Rika. "What a way to go!"

Marcus shook his head, grinning broadly. "He didn't die!"

"He survived an arrow to the eye?" Ritsuka asked, impressed.

"Guess he wasn't reincarnated as a dragon in France, then," said Rika.

I arched an eyebrow at her, but she just grinned cheekily at me.

"No, he ripped the arrow from his own eye," and here, Marcus mimed the action himself, "and kept fighting! For hours and hours, he stood as a bulwark before the enemy army, even as his own comrades dwindled, until at last, the fatigue started to wear him down and he couldn't stand anymore. Seeing him weakened and defeated, the enemy commanders called for their soldiers to stand down and walked over to this man to offer him terms for his surrender."

Marcus's mouth pulled into a giant grin. "And he ripped his blunt sword from its sheath, slashed open the one's throat and split the other in half!"

"Hardcore!" Rika said appreciatively.

"The battle continued for some time after that," Marcus went on, "but he and his men held the line until the end, and because of their bravery and dedication, Caesar was able to soundly defeat Pompey mere days later. For his service to the Legion, he was named Primus Pilus, Caesar's most trusted subordinate."

"I dunno, Senpai," said Rika, grinning at me impishly. "I think that might beat out stabbing a dragon in the brains."

Somehow, if she knew half of the other things I'd gotten up to during my career, I think she might have changed her tune again. An arrow to the eye was one thing, but surviving getting sheared in half was a bit more impressive, in my humble opinion.

"I talked to Da Vinci," I said, changing the subject. "She didn't get the results she was hoping for, but Arash should be able to tell us more. He should be here —"

Just then, as though summoned by my words, a small, human sized object moving at speed entered the edges of my range, disturbing the surrounding bugs with his wake.

"— soon."

The smiles and cheer evaporated like so much boiling water, traded in for stoic professionalism.

Aífe, I began across the bond to our newest contractee.

Just a moment, Taylor, was her reply.

Across the camp, Aífe suddenly shifted her stance and took Spartacus head on, grappling him about the waist so she could throw him to the ground with an echoing thud. She twisted around him, grabbing his arm and yanking it painfully behind his back as she knelt on his spine — a pin if ever there was one.

Spartacus laughed all the while, delighted, like he felt none of the pain at all.

"That's my win," she declared with her trademark grin.

"Glorious! Glorious!" Spartacus shouted. "This exquisite pain is surely a sign of my love! More! More!"

"Sorry, big guy," said Aífe as she stood. "Duty calls."

"Then it is time to face the oppressors!" Spartacus leapt to his feet, even as his arm snapped back into place with a meaty pop. "Truly, a glorious day! My coliseum grows ever larger!"

"Sure."

The group around them began to disperse, and the two of them started over towards us.

"Boudica! Emiya!" I called over to them. "Arash is back!"

Along the pathway cut through the trees that we'd used to make it here, Arash decelerated and approached the entrance to the camp at a lighter jog so that he didn't bowl anyone over on his way in. The soldiers keeping watch let him pass without incident.

Emiya and Boudica both looked up at us at my words, then over to Arash, then huddled together to murmur something back and forth before beckoning the camp cook over to keep watch on what they were preparing.

Well. They weren't the only ones cooking, but they were the ones who cooked for us and our most adjacent squad. I didn't imagine it was impossible for them to feed four-hundred-sixty-seven people on their own, but I doubted it would be easy or convenient.

They made their way over towards us and arrived shortly before Arash did.

"Lunch will be ready shortly," Boudica promised. "All that's left now is for it to cook for a little while."

"Oh, oh, what's on the menu?" Rika asked excitedly. "Some more tempura, maybe? Sushi? Don't tell me, okonomiyaki?"

"Do you like crab, Master?" Emiya asked, smirking.

Rika's face twisted with disgust. "Oh god, please don't tell me…"

"He's teasing you," Boudica promised her. "It's just a normal stew."

"Do you have something against crabs?" Marcus asked curiously.

She turned to him with a haunted look. "If I never have to see another crab ever again, it'll be too soon."

"No crab legs, then?" Emiya teased her.

"If I throw up, it's going all over those fancy boots of yours," Rika moaned. "How much are you gonna like those crab legs when they're painting your shoes green?"

"Enough joking around, you two," I told them both, and then I turned to Arash as he swerved through the crowd to reach our group. "Arash."

Behind me, while she thought I couldn't see her, Rika stuck her tongue out at Emiya.

"Master," he replied solemnly. His eyes flickered across the group, then to Aífe and Spartacus as they joined us, too. "Everyone."

"Da Vinci told me there were at least two Servants around where you scouted," I began.

Instantly, everyone straightened.

"Two Servants?" Mash asked. "Then, the United Empire is making a move…"

Arash nodded. "I understand she didn't get as clear a reading as she wanted, but I managed to get a good enough vantage point to see what we're looking at." He turned to me. "Master, can you bring up a map?"

I held out my wrist and activated the map function on my communicator, producing a hologram that depicted the local area. Arash studied it for a long, quiet moment, and then reached out with an index finger.

"Their main camp is right here, where the land starts to even out," he told us, "about forty-seven kilometers northeast of us." His finger swung down to land on the dot of a town or city. "Which puts them about ten kilometers north-northwest of this settlement, Rodumna. Right now, they don't seem all that interested in it, so we can probably count on them leaving it alone."

"It's been a shipping hub for as long as I can remember," Marcus added helpfully.

"So they'd prefer to keep it intact for their own use later on," Emiya commented, nodding. "That's why they're leaving it alone for now."

"Right." Arash moved his finger up and towards the east. "There's also a force of about twenty men heading this direction. If I had to guess, they're headed here." He tapped at a point on the map, marked by the rough, jagged lines of higher elevation. A mountain or large hill. "There's a pass here that will take them straight through." He swung his finger around again and settled it on another dot. "It'll put them in position to sack Lyon again."

"Oh no," Mash gasped.

"We have to stop them," Ritsuka said insistently.

"Don't get ahead of yourselves," I told him calmly.

"Senpai!" he protested.

I ignored him and turned back to Arash. "Do we know where these two Servants are?"

Arash nodded and tapped the spot where he'd said their main camp was. "There's a token force here holding camp under a ranking officer, but they're supported by a Servant, a large fellow in ornate armor, red clothing, and wearing a laurel crown."

My eyes went a little wide. Given what we knew, there was only one Heroic Spirit that could possibly be.

"Julius Caesar," Aífe said with relish, her mouth pulling into a vicious grin.

And it seemed she had reached the same conclusion I had.

"Most likely," Arash agreed. He tapped the location of the other group. "The other Servant looks to be leading the attack force, another officer in Roman armor and wearing Roman colors. This one, I'm…less certain on. Frankly? The whole group was moving way too fast to be ordinary humans, but not so fast that they could outpace us if we chased them, so we may actually be looking at a Servant who can duplicate himself into lesser copies."

That…sounded sufficiently bullshit to be a Noble Phantasm, actually. But what feat or legend did it represent, and who did it belong to? The trouble was, considering Rome's emphasis on the military, most of Rome's famous war heroes could feasibly have just such a Noble Phantasm.

"A guy who copies himself?" Rika squeaked. "What is this, X-Men?"

"About twenty, you said?" Aífe asked thoughtfully.

"Give or take."

"Do you have any idea about who it might be?" I asked.

Arash shook his head. "No. Sorry, it doesn't ring a bell."

I turned to Boudica, but she just smiled apologetically and shook her head, too.

Emiya shrugged. "Ancient Rome wasn't a field of study I focused on."

Aífe frowned at me. "No. There's no one I'm familiar with who would fit that description."

Spartacus laughed. "The oppressors are legion! The oppressors are faceless! Who would recognize the oppressors except by their cruelty and vice?"

"That means no," Aífe said dryly.

"Unfortunately," Boudica added.

Yeah, that's about what I thought it meant.

"If they're heading to Lyon — to Lugdunum — then they're probably going to attempt to take the city back," I reasoned.

"Or it's a trap," Emiya cut in. "They might be trying to make us split up. Divide and conquer. In that case, we'd be walking right into it."

"So we should just let them attack the city?" Ritsuka demanded hotly.

"No," I said. "No, we probably shouldn't, trap or not. If they're Servants under the United Empire's banner, then we're going to have to face them eventually, whether we like it or not. It would be better to do that now, when they're isolated, than let them return to their capital and bolster the enemy Servants we'll have to face there."

Emiya made an approving sound. "So we take them out one at a time and whittle down the enemy forces before we try going after the head of the snake. There's just one problem."

"Aside from your mixed metaphors?" Rika snarked.

Emiya ignored her and looked straight at me. "If the enemy has the Grail," he began, "then what stops them from summoning yet more Servants to their side?"

My lips pursed. Jeanne Alter had attempted the same thing, hadn't she? And I'd made the argument back then that the possibility made it necessary to go after her as soon as we could.

It applied here, too, but it was much trickier. One, because we didn't know who had the Grail, or at least control over it, not with anything close to certainty, and two, because we weren't just facing a single Servant leading a small squad of other Servants and an army of mindless wyverns, we were facing a well-oiled machine that had successfully subverted half of one of the largest empires to ever exist whose current numbers we didn't know for sure, let alone future numbers.

"And how would they control these Servants?" Aífe countered. "So far, they've had the fortune of summoning Heroic Spirits that would agree with their position. Do you think that might last forever, even as they summon yet more Servants to shore up their numbers?"

"Without Command Spells, they don't really have any means of exerting control," Arash said. The twins glanced down at their hands and the red markings emblazoned across the backs. "In the last Singularity, Jeanne Alter seemed to have used some sort of…Madness Enhancement type skill to twist her Servants into following her. Right, Master?"

"Dracul said about as much, yeah," I agreed. "And it fits with our encounters with her other Servants."

"But that won't work in an organized military," Arash went on. "Not if you want them to follow orders instead of going off to do their own things. Spartacus is one thing, because he wants to be here, but having all of their Servants controlled by a leash as unreliable as Madness Enhancement…"

"It wouldn't work in the long term," Boudica concluded.

"And even if they can just keep summoning Servants," said Ritsuka, "what's to stop them from doing that anyway?"

Emiya dipped his head, conceding the point.

The answer was probably nothing. Maybe their Grail had a limit on the amount of mana it could produce at one time, because as I understood it, that was one of the limiting factors on the ones we had recovered from Fuyuki and Orléans. But even if it did, we couldn't realistically know what that limit was, so it was functionally limitless as far as we were concerned.

"Then even if it's part of their plan, we have to split up and take both of them out," I said. "One team is going to have to go after the attack force to intercept them before they make it to Lyon, and one team is going to have to go and take out Julius Caesar."

"But who should go after which Servant?" Mash asked worriedly. "Senpai… Miss Taylor, is it really okay to split the Masters up again?"

I looked at the twins, but there was no sign of fear on either of their faces. Anxiety, a little bit. Nervousness, some. But outright fear, there was none of it.

Their expressions told me they were perfectly willing to take the fight to either of the enemy Servants. Even if they were afraid, even if they were scared of screwing up, all I had to do was say they had to go and they'd go.

"No," I said. "However we look at it, the attack force is only meant to be a distraction. That means that the Servant leading it probably isn't all that large a threat. We have six Servants here ourselves, counting Mash. The bulk of our strength should be focused on Julius Caesar, because he's definitely the larger threat."

"So we send someone who can handle the attack force alone and dedicate everyone else to Caesar," said Emiya. He rolled his shoulders. "Alright. I think I can take care of a single Servant and his army of clones."

"You'll never get to find out, because I think it should be Boudica and Spartacus who go."

Emiya's mouth dropped open and his eyebrows rose towards his hairline, utterly gobsmacked.

"Senpai," said Rika, "I think Emiya is trying to catch some flies!"

Emiya's mouth snapped shut with an audible click, and then, in a voice almost an octave higher, he let out a strangled, "What?"

"The ones who handle the attack force," I repeated. "We'll send Boudica and Spartacus."

"I'm not objecting," Boudica began, "but why us?"

"This unknown attacker is likely to fight like a well-oiled machine, especially if his squad is all copies of himself," I reasoned. "I don't doubt Emiya's competence, but it's better to send a group that can also cover each other's weaknesses. You and Spartacus have been fighting side by side since you were summoned. You probably won't be better coordinated than them, but you only need to be coordinated enough to not be overwhelmed by theirs."

With Boudica to focus on defense and Spartacus on attack, they should be able to cover each other's weaknesses enough to handle this mystery Servant and his Noble Phantasm. Whoever this mystery Servant was, he would undoubtedly be a Roman hero with a distinguished military career, made stronger by being summoned in the Roman Empire.

But Spartacus too was a Roman hero summoned in the Empire's height, and he only got stronger the more he was injured. With Boudica to protect him from getting killed in a single hit, the worst case scenario should still see him become a terrifying combination of Crawler and Lung.

"I agree," Arash chimed in. "We still don't know the limits of this Noble Phantasm. It's better to play it safe and send at least two Servants to fight him."

"Leaving the rest of us to handle Caesar?" Aífe drawled. She arched an eyebrow. "Don't you think four Servants to take him on is overkill? One should be enough."

"I'm guessing you think you're the one?" Emiya asked, smirking.

"Of course," she replied. "Do you think a single man, Servant or not, is more impressive than the sorts of foes I felled in life? Knowing, as you do, exactly how it was I acquired my horses?"

"I guess you have a point," said Emiya, shrugging. "After all, it wasn't a man, but a single teenage boy who handed you your only defeat."

If Aífe's glare could kill, Emiya would have keeled over on the spot.

"Ouch," Rika muttered. "I felt that one."

"Whether Aífe can take him by herself or not," I cut in, attempting to forestall further argument, "we're not taking any chances with the most famous Roman general to ever live. Especially not if he has reinforcements that he can command."

I jabbed my finger at the map and marked out the spot where Arash had said their main camp was.

"While Boudica and Spartacus engage the Servant moving to sack Lyon, the rest of us will launch an attack on their main camp. Our objective is the United Empire Servant Julius Caesar."

I swept my gaze across the assembled group, from the Servants to the twins to the Roman soldiers who were gathered around us.

"One way or another, we're taking him down."