An Offer You Can't Refuse

If we didn't eat now, there would be nothing left.

"Do you hate me?"

"I don't know. Maybe I should thank you? Thank you for not standing by unmoved when you saw those homunculi being treated like that. And for watching, step by step, as you raised her to become like you." Jeanne d'Arc sighed. "That was probably how I felt."

"Your heart really is a tangled mess of contradictions." Shirou teased. "Part of you wants it, while another part doesn't. Maybe that's just a trait common to women?"

Jeanne d'Arc immediately flushed red. "What do you mean, a trait common to women!? Forget that. Hey, Assassin, how are you going to get the serum?"

"Find whoever has it," Shirou replied as if it were only natural.

But Jeanne d'Arc was quite dissatisfied with that answer.

"Assassin, isn't that way too vague? There are so many people here. How are you supposed to know where Red Saber and her Master are?"

"—Boss, the usual. Two servings of meat!"

A girl in a red jacket walked in swaggeringly, her face nearly identical to Jeanne d'Arc's but with an utterly different temperament.

If she had been a man, people would probably have treated her like a gangster and kept their distance.

Yet she gave off an indescribably forthright air.

"See? Didn't she just show up?"

Shirou speared another piece of meat and tossed it into his mouth.

Jeanne d'Arc felt like an idiot.

That worked?

"Assassin? Why are you here?" After Mordred swaggered over and sat down with Shishigou Kairi, who was shaking his head with a wry smile, she suddenly noticed Shirou and jumped in shock.

"Perhaps this is fate," Shirou said meaningfully.

"Speak plainly."

"I came looking for you."

"How did you find us?"

"—You like eating just as much