Looking at the figure only a few feet away from him, he tried to stand up but staggered a few times because of the sheer terror he was feeling at the moment. Shirou swallowed hard, and with trembling hands, he shaped the newspaper on the table into a baton and hardened it.
"Trace on." After Shirou said those two words, green lines appeared all over the newspaper and it visibly solidified.
Ezekiel, who sensed a small trace of mana from the green lines, spoke with a small chuckle: "Magic huh... I never thought of you as a magus, old man. A spar it is..." With that said, Ezekiel summoned his guitar-axe in his right hand and pointed it at Shirou.
Seeing the axe, Shirou tried to put all his focus on whatever magic he was using.
"Strengthening components materials."
Almost immediately, Ezekiel swung his axe at Shirou's right side with considerably less force than when he was fighting Archer.
Seeing the axe coming towards him, he barely managed to deflect it with his reinforced newspaper baton. But this success also gave him false hope. The false hope that he would be able to prevail in this fight.
"Oh? Quite sturdy for a five-second craft."
Shirou couldn't even focus on what the man was saying as he was overwhelmed with the absolute desire to get out of here alive. He held his baton upright in front of him and waited for the next blow to come.
Unluckily for him, the next blow came when he least expected it. Ezekiel closed the already short distance between them with a sudden burst of speed and punched Shirou right in the solar plexus, sending him out of his room and into the courtyard of Emiya Mansion.
Ezekiel scratched the back of his head with his empty hand and spoke as he watched Shirou flip over and over and gasp for breath.
Shirou was on his knees, arms clutched tightly over his abdomen as he gasped for air. The pain was intense, yet the shock and adrenaline numbed it, if only for now.
'Am I going to die here? What about my promise to Kiritsugu and my dream of being a hero of justice?' Ezekiel was already at his side. Shirou tried as hard as he could to stand up to defend himself, but the punch he had just taken made it impossible.
Seeing his pitiful state on the ground, Ezekiel sighed and shook his head in disappointment. Then he suddenly kicked Shirou in the left shoulder, knocking him back for several meters.
After a few rolls, Shirou jumped to his feet with the momentum he had gained from the kick and started running towards the shed in the courtyard.
"What happened to the way you were just now, weren't you ready to face me? Sigh... You are nothing like him after all." Seeing Shirou's fleeing back, Ezekiel followed him towards the shed with calm and steady steps as he hummed a melody. Shirou's steps faltered as he reached inside the shed, the pain catching up to him as the melody came to an end.
Feeling his gut telling him to turn around, Shirou did so immediately and saw the axe blow coming vertically from above. This time he unfolded the reinforced newspaper he was holding and used it as a shield. The newspaper disintegrated immediately and with the force behind the axe swing, Shirou hit the shed's back wall with his back and slid downwards to the ground.
"At this point, this is more like just punching a sandbag which has his face taped on it." Ezekiel began to walk closer to Shirou's body.
'Damn! Not here, not like this, not by someone who kills people so senselessly!" While Shirou was doing his inner monologue, he did not notice that in the farthest corner of the shed, hidden by boxes, a summoning circle was getting brighter by the second.
'Huh..?' Ezekiel noticed that red markings appeared on the back of Shirou's right hand and the LED eyes on his mask widened.
"Is tha-" Ezekiel was cut off in mid-sentence as he had to defend himself against the invisible sword blow coming at him.
Shirou raised his head and was met with an unexpected sight.
Standing in front of him was a girl with blonde hair in a bun and a knight's armor that added to the noble feeling she already exuded. She seemed to be carrying an invisible weapon in her hands, and with a single attack of her invisible weapon, she managed to blast Ezekiel out of the shed. Even though he managed to deflect it.
The girl turned around, looked deeply at Shirou, and began to speak.
"I ask of you, are you my master?"
"Master..? What are you talking about?" Shirou couldn't wrap his head around any of the events that had happened to him tonight.
"I, the Saber-class servant, have come in response to your summons. Master, your orders." The blond-haired knight, currently called Saber, replied.
Shirou was about to say something when he felt a burning sensation on the back of his right hand and winced in pain.
Saber either didn't notice or didn't care about Shirou's condition as she continued talking: "Henceforth, you hold my sword in your hands and I hold your fate in mine. Our contract is thus formed." Without waiting for another word, Saber quickly left the shed and faced Ezekiel, who was waiting for her in the courtyard.
Shirou followed with difficulty and called out in a confused tone.
"Hey, what do you mean contract?"