Chapter 50 Long Time No See, Thus Goodbye
By the time they reached the top of the department store, it was nearly dusk. The slanted rays of light burned emotionlessly like guttering candles. Beneath a metallic sign lay a pool of blood that had long since congealed, yet there was no corpse to be found.
The scene had long been deserted.
Both the instigators and the participants of the battle seemed to have vanished. In the alleyway below, the passage marked by bullet holes continued until it hit a high wall. The sniping positions, marked by patches of blood, were now desolate and void of human presence.
The Chief was not afraid. If the opponent who had crushed Faldeus's forces posed a threat to the city, the Chief would lead his twenty-eight men to face the challenge without hesitation. Surviving an all-angle ambush wasn't entirely incomprehensible. As long as one led Clan Calatin and wasn't sniped to death by the first shot, the Chief's team could pull it off, even disregarding casualties—to say nothing of a high-ranking combat-oriented Heroic Spirit.
The difficulty for the Chief and his men lay in the ability to suppress everyone on the opposing side simultaneously. To take down enemies in different directions, separated by great distances, all at once... it was handled like a master-class Archer.
The problem was that both the True and False Archers, as well as the True Rider who could shoot arrows, had all been exposed by noon. Given their known strength, the Chief didn't think Faldeus would provoke them on the very first day. Faldeus had provoked another "extra-canonical figure" whom he believed wouldn't be hard to handle.
Coincidentally, among the people the Chief knew of unilaterally, there happened to be an existence capable of archery. Giving the snipers a lesson without killing them... this style fit the Chief's impression of his clear, refined swordsmanship perfectly.
The clues overlapped automatically without needing a prompt, yet the Chief's expression remained grim. Indeed, the Chief had thought about finding that human who had ditched surveillance again, but he hadn't wanted to meet him because of this.
The Chief braced his hands against the rooftop wall, leaning forward as his gaze scanned the pedestrians below. No sign of him within one kilometer; still nothing within three. Just as he was about to give up at around the four-to-five-kilometer mark, the backs of a young man and a girl walking together appeared.
The girl had golden hair tied up, her slender silhouette moving with a steady pace. She walked in quiet harmony with the young man; just being aware of her presence conveyed an aura of elegance. The golden hue shimmered. Her mere existence felt as if night had already fallen around her, casting down a faint, clear moonlight.
'While others are working hard, this guy has a woman accompanying him again. Does he view the Holy Grail War as a tourist trip to the countryside?'
The Chief thought gloomily. Even though he could only see them vaguely, he concentrated his magically enhanced vision on the suspects of this case. In any case, this world was smaller than imagined.
In a short while, the man would vanish beyond the limit of his sight. The Chief knew this fact and watched him go in silence. That is, until the young man suddenly turned his head as if sensing something. His gaze swept around before his brown pupils suddenly lifted, locking eyes directly with the Chief.
Peace instantly turned into horror.
"..."
The Chief took half a step back. A drop of sweat slid to his chin and fell as a bead of water. The young man's upward gaze remained locked onto the Chief—or more accurately, it included the officers standing beside him.
John, standing next to the Chief, was the first to buckle. Perhaps because he knew their previous surveillance was in the wrong, his eyes darted away and his entire face froze.
Even though the Chief and his men were the ones looking down from above, the oncoming sense of crisis carried no feeling of the other party looking "up" at them.
Finally, the red-haired youth's gaze narrowed and focused on the area around the Chief and his men in their police uniforms—specifically, on the Noble Phantasm armaments they hadn't had time to stow away in order to deal with sudden emergencies.
This was the moment the Chief truly felt goosebumps.
—He saw through us.
The reason was completely unclear. There was no logical cause, yet the Chief's physical senses crawled with a visceral terror. It was too late to take measures; the youth had learned something very dangerous.
"Put the weapons down! Don't let him see them!"
The Noble Phantasms granted by Caster provided no sense of security; on the contrary, they became the direct source of a dangerous intuition. The Chief immediately urged his subordinates to take the correct action, even if it looked unseemly and weak.
The young man seemed to have understood something important, his lightning-shaped brow furrowing slightly. As if wanting to grab the final piece of the puzzle, he turned around and extended a hand. A bow appeared in it.
'That's a test... he's reproducing a previous action.'
The Chief could clearly guess what puzzle piece the youth wanted. The youth had grasped the Chief's group's true nature; he no longer viewed them as ordinary people. If there was one
more thing Shirou Emiya needed to confirm... it was proof that the Chief's side was the same side that had monitored him yesterday.
Then the Chief realized—the very fact that they weren't baffled or ignorant of this gesture meant they were already exposed.
A blue arrow was slowly drawn back. But there was nothing the Chief's side could do. The rooftop was a space from which they could not retreat; it was a dead end on all sides. They could only go down the stairs, but in this situation, there was no time.
Then... he tilted the bow slightly upward.
The Chief and his men couldn't see the arrow itself, traveling at Mach 4 or 5, only the explosive boom that poured into their eardrums from above. Like blooming fireworks, metallic wreckage fell from above the building, bouncing once or twice upon hitting the ground.
Closest to the Chief was a fragment of a small wing. It was one of Faldeus's small drones.
The young man, having cleared the surveillance for the Chief's group, stowed his longbow. He said nothing, simply turned around again, and slowly vanished into the distance with the golden girl.
The Chief had no way to stop him. Whether he wanted to or not was secondary; the youth was actually beyond the effective range of everyone at the station.
The red glow faded, the night deepened, and the figures of the two were no longer visible. Only Snowfield City remained, its lights still shining in the darkness. Pedestrians on other streets either hurried past or walked in leisurely groups; no one paid attention to the meteor that had just streaked across the sky.
Perhaps he should be grateful the other party had done him a favor, but at this moment, the Chief was more relieved that the "meeting gift" sent by the youth was not a bomb.
The Chief only gave a bitter smile, silently letting cold sweat soak through his clothes.
Read ahead (60 chapters) by supporting me on buymeacoffee com/varietl or ko-fi edwriting