Say Uncle! [Vlad/invite/No Atlases Allowed]

This entire endeavour was a nuisance.

Vlad, during his life, had had a fondness for more elite food - Rich wines, nice gamey meat, something wherein you could taste the intrinsic worth of the food. Maybe it was because that was what he had been served whilst growing up in Turkey, as they had been trying to distract him from the fact that he was a prisoner as if gilding the bars would make it any less a cage, or maybe it was simply something to do with his breeding. But as a servant, he was unable to enjoy those things.

This wasn't to say he was never able to enjoy these things; during the Great Holy Grail War, he had dined like a king at Darnic's expense and had been grateful for it. Had the bastard not ultimately betrayed him, Vlad might still feel indebted to him. No, it was another constraint forced upon him in this god-forsaken form. Because, of course, Vampires only cared for one thing - Blood.

Ultimately, the carrier of the blood didn't really matter all that much, what mattered was the sanguine liquid itself. He would have even dined upon the other servants of Chaldea were he not at least attempting to be civil. Just because his body was that of a feral beast did not mean that his brain had to be to. Yet, as he stared across the hall at all those beautiful, nubile young men and women (many of whom had died a pure virgin, making their blood all the sweeter), he felt his stomach rumble like that of a man in a desert.

In lieu of surrendering to those baser instincts, he had somehow managed to convince his "masters" (more like handlers, he thought bitterly) to provide him bloody meat, something which drew a few looks of disgust from those other servants with Magic Resistance or a high enough luck stat not to be affected by that blasted vampire seductiveness.

Oh well, he thought bitterly as he carved another nigh-raw forkful before devouring it ravenously, it could be worse. At least this reality's Darnic wasn't around. Or... that other one. He shuddered slightly at the thought. He hadn't even been a berserker in that form, and yet somehow his brain had been twisted into such insanity... Truly, he felt the saner one here and now. 

How laughable was that?

Experiential and long lived? Hah, how ironic. Sure, living to the age of 45 may be quite considerable considering other heroes like the Arthurian knights or the peers of Charlemagne, but comparatively 45 was nothing. There were heroes out here who looked half his age who had been alive ten times longer. It was simply that, unlike them, he was no magical hero - he was the living example of what human tenacity and courage could broker, even if that left his body ashen and more beaten down than others. He only lived fourteen more years than Nero herself, for god's sake.

The girl in question, Emperor Nero, had apparently chosen to sit down opposite him and declare herself to him openly. In another Grail War, declaring one's name so brazenly was as good as suicide, but right now it was not the words she was saying that interested him but the voice they were said with. Even with his eyes still downcast and focused on his plate, he knew it. Or, at the very least, he barely recalled it. It was like trying to reclaim a dream that had long since played out.

Finally looking up from his plate, those red eyes simmering in his sockets passively, his gaze finally met hers and he froze. That was where she was from.

The weight of the ocean should have been pressing down around them, the very air should have been filled with water and their masters should have perished already underneath those azure currents. Yet, the magic of the moon cell had suspended them in this field, allowing their battle to take place. The stakes were set - Two servants came in, one servant would come out and gain the right to continue their life for at least one more week.

The fight was a strange one, that was clear to see - On one side, a hideous old man with ashen grey hair and a wicked, almost perverted smile that seemed to make all who looked upon his visage its victim. Beside him, a strange harlequin with baggy clothes and fouled make up, with a sing-song voice that grated the ears of those faced to hear it. She was repugnant, and her body reeked of death and fetid corpses that she made her dinner. 

His opponent? Well, it was hard to tell. The master was... a young boy? No, a girl? Those images writhed in Vlad's mind, trying to find a victor. His master was just as much an enigma - a sexually promiscuous and barely-dressed Kitsune, Caster? Was her name Tamamo no Mae? No, it wasn't caster. It was an archer, a dark-skinned and white haired swordsman in red who classed as an archer by some insane leap of logic. His name... he had never known his name. No, it wasn't him either. The third person was clearer, the very image of grace and beauty. Emperor Nero.

Shaking himself free of those 'memories', at least for the moment, the elder gentleman appraised the girl carefully. He had memories of her plunging her blade into his chest, of his master fading into the abyss. Good, such a beast deserved nothing less than death but it made him look at this girl with a modicum of resentment. This girl had beaten him, somehow. Even if that wasn't truly him, even if that was just a foul mockery of his regal glory, it had still been at least partially Vlad Tepes. His wielding of Kazliki Bey was proof enough of that. 

Tired of this silence, and knowing that the longer it continued the more difficult fostering any form of relationship would be, he nodded politely. 

"Charmed, I'm sure." He was not sure. "My name is Vlad Tepes; King of Wallachia."

Perhaps the girl was ill, or perhaps it was something else, but it seemed like she was attempting to strain herself over something. That was, charitably speaking, bizarre - Servants, by and large, were not supposed to be capable of getting ill. They were spirits, and thus they were immune to the 'thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to', as an old man once put it. The only exceptions to this were diseases and poisons tied to another servant as a form of noble phantasm, such as the Jack's fog, or something they had during their original life that was so heavily tied to their legend that they were forced to wear it like a badge of shame forever more.

Vlad had, in his childhood, been a rather good student - He had learned multiple languages and focused on history and had generally ensured that the world at large was something that he understood. Yet, in all those history lessons, he wasn't sure that he had ever covered Lady Nero. The Grail told him many things about her, but during their last fight he hadn't seen her fall victim to any sort of migraines or sickness worthy of note. Perhaps it was something that was activated like a penalty if she didn't do something every so often?

He was still thinking about this as she spoke, and might have ignored what she was saying entirely if it had not been for her sudden desire to stand up and put her face next to his. He wasn't backing away, but it was clear from the look in his eyes that he was questioning which of them was truly the Berserker here. She seemed emphatically more insane than he did, and she didn't have the excuse of the berserker class.

Then she said that little phrase of hers - Umu.

Umu. What in hell's name did Umu mean? She had said it almost ritualistically when they last met, or at least when she had met the foul imitation of him, but here and now it seemed like something she wasn't even noticing she was doing. Was it something she did in an attempt to make people like her more? But it was teeth-grittingly irritating. Like having sandpaper drawn against his ankle - not strictly speaking painful but certainly unpleasant.

"I'm flattered, surely." the elder gentleman said, disinterestedly. He wasn't really flattered at all; in fact, it was confusing to him why she thought that he would care that he looked like someone she used to know. If he had said that she looked like his niece or that she looked like some random court wench, why would she have any reason to be interested in such a recollection? It was said there were 2 people in the world at any moment who looked exactly like you, and if you factored that in over the course of history then you will almost certainly run into similar people. It was no-

"Nero, don't talk with your mouth full!" His words came out of his mouth without thinking about them. They weren't angry, but they were more like paternal chiding. He hadn't even thought about what he was doing, his natural fatherly instincts still lingered from when he raised Vlad and Zaleska. That... was probably only going to add fuel to the fire of this girl's belief that he was some sort of father-figure, or at least uncle-figure. Just what he needed.

She apologized about eating with her mouth open, and Vlad nodded as if he was accepting the apology. He didn't know about her homelife, about Agrippina's poor parenting skills, about how she felt like she had been betrayed by those who loved her. All he knew about was the fact that she had been misbehaving and now she wasn't so as far as he was concerned this was at least in some small way a victory.

However, then she espoused an affection for modern food that he was not able to share. Maybe it was because it was hard to match the food of the modern day to that which was prepared for kings, or maybe it was because he had been too distracted during the Great Holy Grail War to truly sit back and just enjoy good food, but either way he had to say that it was a huge decrease in quality. Of course, Nero had served in the position of Emperor just after the age of gods and he had served as king during the 13th century. Their food would have been hugely different as it was.

"Are you feeling alright?" he asked, a touch of concern slipping into his voice as he watched her cringe from some invisible pain. Perhaps his prognosis of her suffering headaches were more accurate than he had guessed. A hand moved up to her forehead, checking her temperature without much overt thought.... she seemed fine heat-wise so it wasn't a fever; Maybe she had been poisoned?

The hand, and the concern, slipped away the moment that the girl stood up brashly, declaring herself to be of the saber class. Of course, he already knew that. One doesn't wield a sword with such extreme skill without being in that class. Though, in all fairness to her, she wasn't even aware that they had met before, which he supposed he should be grateful for. She was already calling him uncle, much to his chagrin, and who knew how much worse her interest in him would be if she knew that they had already crossed blades.

"My class?" he asked, confused as to why that should matter to her. "I'll give you seven guesses, and the first six don't count." The legend of Vlad Tepes was one that fit in so many classes that this game was almost a little unfair - Assassin, borne from his wide-scale purges of the traitors of Wallachia; Lancer, the bearer of Kazliki Bey; Rider, the man who rode down all those he tried to flee the field of battle; Avenger, the man who single-mindedly sought vengeance against the Turks for what they had done to his family and his country. Considering all these, it was disgusting that he had been brought into the Berserker class and mutated like this.

Crossing his arms and smiling slightly, his fangs somewhat more obvious now, the class may give her some trouble.
"If you really must know, I'm Berserker." It really seemed like he wasn't telling the truth; most Berserkers growled and were reverted to little more than animals, whereas he was clearly the more aristocratic of the two, even if she was the more verbose. Yet, megalomania was a madness as well, and it just so happened that he was plagued by madness that was so intense he was no longer sure what part of him held disdain for being treated so strangely by this child - Dracula or Vlad Tepes.