Chapter Twenty-Nine: Killer Queen Has Already Touched You

"So... so close..."
Kiritsugu Emiya leaned heavily against the wall at the far end of the street, unable to control himself any longer as he suddenly coughed up a mouthful of blood.
He wiped the blood from his lips with little care, forcing himself to stand, but in the end his strength gave out and he slid helplessly down the wall.
"For me, quadruple-speed Time Alter is still too much, isn’t it?"
In that instant, as the dangerous little car exploded, Kiritsugu had activated the magic that this name was destined to wield.
Time Alter—the Emiya family’s unique magecraft, passed down through the generations in their magic crest, a means to reach the Root.
Put more simply, it was a magic for manipulating time. If deployed as a Reality Marble, it could accelerate or stop the flow of time within its domain.
But ultimately, this remained a theory without form. Otherwise, Reality Marbles would not be said to be the magecraft closest to True Magic—for such things, in theory, erode the world with one's inner landscape.
It wasn’t until Kiritsugu’s father’s generation that the technique of placing a small bounded field within one's own body was cleverly achieved, demonstrating the true power of this magecraft. Though Kiritsugu cared little for the Emiya legacy, he was nevertheless fond of this magic etched within the crest.
By accelerating himself, Kiritsugu had narrowly escaped to the edge of the blast, but as the price, the capillaries in his body, forced back to a unified time flow when the magecraft ended, had ruptured in great numbers.
At this point, even the deathly pallor of Kiritsugu’s face twisted in pain. After several gasping breaths failed to steady him, he clutched at his ribs, where a dull ache radiated.
He immediately reached a conclusion—his internal organs had been damaged by the explosion.
If the fringe of the blast had such an effect, the power at the center could well be imagined. Had he been a moment slower in activating his magecraft, he would have been a mangled corpse.
The magic crest on his body lit up on its own, drawing prana to implement healing magecraft, but it was only a stopgap measure.
"Still, it’s enough. Good thing I brought the sheath."
Having summoned Saber, Avalon retained some residual prana, enough to barely provide some healing.
Relying on this, Kiritsugu placed both palms against the wall, pushing himself up like a man drained of all strength. He could not afford to worry about aftereffects now. With this trap dealt with, he had to rush to Maiya Kyuu’s side while he still had the strength to fight.
But the next moment, his face—just beginning to calm from the pain—twisted once more.
Through the dissipating smoke at the heart of the explosion, the blue little car slowly rolled out, its skull-like ornament atop once again locking onto his position.
"Impossible! I saw it explode with my own eyes!"
A mystic code with auto-targeting, stealth, and the ability to create a powerful explosion would fetch a king’s ransom among magi, and Kiritsugu had heard of such things before.
But for it to recover completely unharmed after self-detonation—this monster was beyond his understanding.
Yet the withered, deadly attack did not halt for an instant. Faithful to its master's command, the car advanced toward him, its chilling voice pronouncing his doom.
"The previous explosion did not hit a human—look here!"

Like the reaper’s scythe poised to claim a soul, Kiritsugu was now utterly helpless.
Was it time to use a Command Seal?
To think he might have to waste one without even facing the true enemy. If he summoned his Servant now, the commotion would surely alert the opposition. A miscalculation—such a grave one.
Kiritsugu raised his hand, beginning to call on the Command Seal with his mind, while simultaneously emptying the last bullets from his automatic submachine gun in a futile gesture, tossing the weapon aside as soon as it was spent.
"By the power of the Command Seal..."
But then, something unexpected happened—the little car did not pursue him further, but rolled instead toward the discarded gun.
This realization made Kiritsugu instantly grasp the crucial point. He abandoned the idea of using the Command Seal, hurriedly pulled out several bullets, and tossed them one by one into the distance like treats for a puppy, igniting them with basic fire magecraft.
Bang, bang...
With each bullet flaring to life, the little car obediently followed the trail of heat, slowly rolling away.
"So it’s heat, after all?"
Kiritsugu let out a breath of relief. Among common auto-targeting devices, heartbeat and breathing were the usual triggers. No wonder he hadn’t reacted at first to something that pursued by heat.
Watching the car move further away, Kiritsugu prepared to flee. This seemingly invincible thing could only keep up with a fast remote-controlled car, so with this distance, he should be able to escape.
However, fate had other plans.
Just as the car was about to leave the street, it suddenly stopped, ignoring the decoy and turning its gaze back to Kiritsugu.
"What? But my body temperature..."
Alarmed by this abnormal behavior, a flash of insight struck Kiritsugu.
He remembered.
"So it’s magecraft after all?"
During his career as a mage killer, Kiritsugu had discovered by accident a little trick that let him find and kill his targets.
When a magus activated their circuits, their body temperature would rise—perhaps as a side effect of channeling prana.
With this knowledge and relentless study, Kiritsugu learned to distinguish between ordinary people and magi.
And just now, though the ignition spell was basic, multiple uses in quick succession had made his own heat signature far outstrip the fleeting warmth of the decoys.
"What irony," he thought, forced to smile bitterly at his own failure in the field he excelled in most, as the little car crept closer, heralding his death.

—

"That’s enough,"
Roland watched Maiya Kyuu before him with a casual air. The dagger had already been knocked from her hand, and Killer Queen, standing between them, delivered a merciless kick to Maiya’s stomach—a blow so fierce that she was sent flying like she’d been hit by a car, smashing one of the tightly shut exit doors.
The exit was but a step away, yet she no longer had the strength to crawl out. All the more ironic, she had chosen this deserted, abandoned building specifically to dispose of Roland’s body after killing him, never expecting it would become her own grave.
"I told you, don’t resist needlessly. It only angers me and brings more pain. Today, I’m the true victim here."
Roland’s voice was cold. "Wouldn’t it be better to just die cleanly? Or are you still hoping Kiritsugu Emiya will come to save you?"
Maiya did not answer. Supporting herself on the ground, she slowly pushed herself up.
She gazed silently at the exit, memories flashing through her mind as she awaited death’s arrival.
As though in response to her faint hope, that low, familiar voice rang out from the street outside.
"Maiya!"
Kiritsugu, dragging his battered body, reached out reflexively when he saw Maiya’s broken form, calling her name.
But to Maiya, this was merely the arrival of another kind of despair.
"Kiritsugu Emiya, you actually made it out? I was just about to collect your corpse. Well, you’ve saved me a trip," Roland said coolly.
He must be protected, no matter what.
Maiya, dazed, looked back. Roland leaned languidly against the wall in a seductive pose, one hand curled into a fist, thumb slightly bent as if about to pull a trigger.
Somehow, some last wellspring of will surged within Maiya. With all the strength she could muster, she shouted at the approaching Kiritsugu.
"Kiritsugu! This is the seventh Master—his ability is explosion! Anything he touches—"
But before she could finish, Roland’s cold voice sealed her fate.
"Killer Queen has already touched you."
Roland pressed his thumb down.
"Maiya—!"
To the sound of Kiritsugu’s anguished cry, Maiya’s body shattered piece by piece, dissolving into smoke and vanishing.