Fate Stay Mama!

Day 2, Night - Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh, King of Heroes and Heroic Spirit incarnate, strolled along the darkened street, leaving a shaken teenage girl behind him. It had been a boring night and he'd been in a foul mood before he spotted Sakura Matou. But now he felt almost cheerful. Whatever happened next was certain to provide entertainment.

"Sakura-chan!" called a woman walking down the sidewalk and waving frantically. Middle-aged, but undeniably pretty, she didn't even notice Gilgamesh as she strode past him.

His half-smirk faded. It was so typical in this adulterated era for its mongrels to be blinded to the wonders around them. He slowed his pace, listening to what happened behind him. Perhaps Sakura would be pushed into providing quality entertainment right then. Hope sprang eternal.

But instead the woman and the girl had a conversation so quiet he could only catch stray words. He crossed the street so he could justify a look, and saw them finish their conversation and part, each of them continuing the direction they'd previously been going.

Hmph. Boring. Gilgamesh returned to his own stroll, thinking about how else he could enliven the tedium of modern life. But after a few moments, he noticed the middle-aged woman crossing the intersecting street near him. She must have used a different route to end up at the same place. It was almost like she was patrolling or something.

Abruptly, he swerved to follow her, keeping half a block behind her as she paced an irregular route on her wandering through the neighborhood. He was just about to give up—or move in and frighten her—when she stopped.

"Oh, you filthy thing!" she said, her voice carrying in the quiet neighborhood. "You don't belong here, I'm sure."

And then she pulled an orange glowing sword out of thin air, like a Servant summoning a Noble Phantasm, and drove it into something on the ground.

Gilgamesh stood stock still, and then walked swiftly closer. If she was a Servant he needed to know—but walking around in plain sight was not Servant behavior. No, she had to be human—yet that weapon! He didn't know everything in his vault, but such a glorious and powerful weapon he should recognize.

No matter. It was his in spirit anyhow, as everything worth having was. But he wanted to know what secret part of his garden it had been hidden in before he reclaimed it.

"Woman!" he called as he stalked forward. She turned around quickly, a surprised expression on her face as she tried to hide the large, glowing sword behind her back.

Then, looking embarrassed, she stopped the ludicrous effort and instead let the sword dangle from her hand as she said, "Good evening! A fine night for a walk, don't you think?"

Gilgamesh stopped a meter away and looked hard at the woman. "Where did you get that sword, woman?"

She glanced down at the orange sword as if surprised to see it and then gave Gilgamesh a wide-eyed look. "This thing? It's a souvenir. It's very shiny, isn't it?"

He gave her a level stare, silently inviting her to tell the truth.

She shifted her weight. "I got it when I went on an adventure with my son." A wistful look crossed her face. "He's off learning to be a king now."

"A mongrel like yourself must be so proud," said Gilgamesh with awful sarcasm. It went completely over the shameless woman's head.

She beamed. "Oh, I am! Very proud. But I miss him so much." Her half-veiled gaze swept over Gilgamesh. "You seem like a nice young man."

"I have held the title of king for too long to be—" Gilgamesh regretted it as soon as he'd started speaking, and cut himself off before he could finish the sentence. Why lower himself to inform this stupid woman?

She gave him an encouraging smile that he found intensely irritating. "Oh my, another king? How wonderful for you!"

Gilgamesh had had enough. He held out his hand. "Give me that sword right now, woman."

A horrified look transformed her face. "Oh, I couldn't. It reminds me of my son." She brightened. "But I might have some candy..."

Fragments of his younger self whispered laughing nonsense to him, which he ignored as a matter of course. But his momentary hesitation sent the woman fumbling in her coat's pockets.

Scowling, he reached to simply take the sword from her, and she held it out of his reach without even consciously noticing his effort.

"Now..." she began, glancing up.

"Woman, you aren't a suitable wielder of such a splendid weapon! Give it to me this moment or—"

Her eyes flooded with tears. "Oh, I know! I know I'm not! But I must keep it. I need it, you see. There's a strange woman breaking into people's houses and these terrible giant insects—I just killed one there, do you see?" She turned to point behind, keeping the sword on her far side. "Oh. It's gone. How curious. Just like back in—well, never mind that." She gave him a sidelong glance, clearly wondering if he was buying her story.

Though he never used his Clairvoyance, he always had a passive sense of the honesty of his subjects. From anyone else, he would have expected a whimsical attitude such as this to be a mask. But no, to her core this woman was truly of this nature. She reminded him of the lion cubs that he had lounged with as a young boy, playful and clumsy. Gilgamesh's mood, always mercurial, shifted in that moment, and he laughed. "Very well, woman. I'll give you a few days more with your 'souvenir'. But I will come for it in the end."

"Will you?" she said in interest, and then glanced down at the hand she held it with. "Now how did it work again...?" She gave an elegant twist of her wrist and the sword vanished.

Conspiratorially, she said, "Now it's safely out of reach of curious children." The look she gave him made it clear she considered him exactly that.

Mildly stunned as he realized she'd considered all this a game played with a child, he merely furrowed his brow as she gave him a little bow. "It was nice meeting you, young man!" and ran past him to the main street.

By the time he'd realized he'd been somehow gulled by the woman's sweet charm into giving up his claim on the weapon while he could access it, she was too far down the street for him to chase her. Gilgamesh, King of Heroes, did not stoop to pursuing women, even thieves.

No. If he waited long enough, an opportunity would arise to reclaim his treasure. And when it did, he'd be there.