Assassin of Black


 * This article is about the Fate/Apocrypha Servant. For the Servant summoned in Fate/strange fake, see Berserker.

Assassin of "Black" ("黒"のアサシン) is the Assassin-class Servant of Reika Rikudou of the Black Faction in the Great Holy Grail War of Fate/Apocrypha.

Identity
Assassin's identity is Jack the Ripper, Legendary Serial Killer (伝説の連続殺人鬼 ジャック・ザ・リッパー). She is the perpetrator of a series of gory murders in 19th Century England. She grew up without ever having a home, and spent her time living in the streets. She was extremely thin, and lived outside even during cold weather. She only has memories of the alleyways shrouded in mist and stench. The areas where she slept were not places of rest, but rather nests covered in waste and feces where filthy rats ran about. She was in constant danger of being attacked at night while she slept, and upon waking up on the morning, someone may have easily died during the night. She constantly dealt with pitch black smog so bad that she often couldn't breath properly or even open her eyes.

She eventually reached the point where her mind could no longer deal with the conditions. Upon randomly finding prostitutes, she would impose her image of a mother onto them. While better off than her, they were still crushed by their daily lives, having been worn down to existences that simply struggled to live day by day. While suffering from poverty and wondering whether they would die from starvation or disease, they simply told her to leave. Aware that she would be rejected, she hung her head, held back the tears, and wandered the streets once more without change. If she came into contact with her "Mother" again, she would slowly approach within the mist, and after saying "I'm sorry", she would slit their throats. As they were in anguish, she began to dissect them while in tears. After obtaining a part of the woman, she would press it against her face and cry while remembering the warmth of her mother's womb.

While she is thought to be a legendary serial killer who knew of dissection and slipped into the darkness of night to quietly perform his work, the true form of Jack the Ripper is just a pitiful girl. It is believed that all of her victims were assailed when unguarded, and they were all found with organs removed in a somewhat skilled fashion. Her lamentations never reached anyone, and it is unknown how she eventually faded away after the murders. No one knows if she was killed, committed suicide, or simply passed away naturally. She will likely perpetually reign as an eternal mystery and eternal darkness carved into the history of England. While her identity was never discovered, her knives were left behind after her death and later obtained by Sagara Hyouma.

There is another incarnation of Jack the Ripper that can be summoned, and though this version qualifies for the Berserker class, it is suggested that this version is summoned under the Assassin class, while the other is summoned under the Berserker class.

Personality
She is a young girl who embodies contradiction itself, combining the dual natures of "day" and "night." She displays a childish manner of speech, but she is truly quick of thought. Rationality dominates her behavior, but there are many inherent weaknesses to her psyche. Her personality is both pure and cruel, and she is inclined to repay cruelty with cruelty and benevolence with benevolence. Killing to her is no more to her than it would be to pick a flower or step on an ant. Her psyche is inherently broken, and mistreatment toward her may result in irreversible deterioration. She uses first person plural pronouns, such as "us" and "we", to address herself, and often lamented the fact that all of the voices she heard on the streets would never mourn "them."

Due to her time on the streets, her ultimate wish from the Holy Grail is to return to the safe and comfortable warmth inside her mother. This desperate wish was the driving motivation behind the murders. While dissecting the women she labeled as her "mother", she would constantly apologize that she wants to "go back" while crying and rubbing a part dissected from the woman against her face. Rather than continue on the cold streets, she wished to return where it was warm.

If summoned by a female Master, she will begin to refer to them as "Mother." When she addresses them, they hear a strange sound, as though she is pronouncing both "Master" and "Mother" at the same time. She is extremely affectionate and childlike towards her Mother, but cruel and ruthless towards others. While she fawns over her wounded Mother, Reika Rikudou, she easily turns cold and maims her proper Master, Sagara Hyouma, with ease before returning to her concerned filled expressions towards Reika. After casually devouring him, she turns childishly bashful and asks Reika to pat her head. Despite becoming easily flustered by Reika's question a moment earlier, she can just as easily casually rip out and eat the hearts of loan sharks without any expression.

Reika feels that the Servant's disposition sometimes matching that of the Master is true in their case. She, who does not truly feel alive, and Jack, for whom the word "alive" may not even be applicable, met due to fate. She is surprised by the notion of having a home to return after having lived on the streets her entire life. Remembering her desperate struggle for survival, she cannot help but feel that "going home" is an occasion that has nothing to do with her. While Servants do not require food to survive, Reika tells her that she is going to cook dinner for her. While she is initially unresponsive to the idea, once Reika tells her it is a reward for her work, she smiles happily and dances around in joy.

Development
She was designed by Yuichiro Higashide and illustrated by Sanada Taketo for the original canceled online game project.

Role
Fate/Apocrypha Act1: Unbirth is a prototype story that does not relate to the events of Fate/Apocrypha.

Fate/Apocrypha Act1: Unbirth
Sagara Hyouma, a magus, wishes to summon Jack the Ripper as a Servant, but he fails to do so even with her six knives as the catalyst. He concludes that he needs to create the conditions where the blades were practically used in order to establish a better connection. He quickly decides to use Rikudou Reika, a prostitute he is living with, as a sacrifice. In his attempt summon Jack by killing her, her wish to live is what brings her into the world. While Sagara is the proper Master with Command Spells, she quickly shows that she has concluded that Reika is her Master instead. Before he can tell her to commit suicide after realizing something is wrong with the situation, she incapacitates him by cutting off his jaw and the hand with the Command Spells. She uses her skills to stitch up both their wounds while Reika is unconscious.

She explains the nature of the Holy Grail War to Reika upon arriving at her apartment. She is able to transfer the Command Spells from Sagara's hand to Reika, but she is not a magus or a proper Master. This requires that she devour souls in place of being unable to restore prana from her Master. She uses Sagara at Reika's suggestion, and they decide to participate in the War together. Jack's memories appear in Reika's dream during that night, and she sees Jack cutting open a woman to return to where it was warm. They target a loan shark company full of "bad people" the next day in order to gather energy for Jack. She uses the Mist to kill them all, and then they return home for a meal afterward.

Fate/Apocrypha
While Assassin was originally meant to be summoned in London, it became enemy territory after Yggdmillennia seceded from the Mage's Association. Assassin was instead chosen to be summoned in Japan near a leyline that suited her. After the murder spree in Japan, she and Reika arrive in Bucharest, Romania several days later. Searching out people to kill for her to eat, they hear of the "children of Ceaușescu", and Reika acts as bait in order to capture one for information. After she is attacked by two men, one is slain by Assassin and the other is kept alive to gather information. Though the man tries to resist, it is futile with only the strength of a human, and she incapacitates him to stop further resistance. After Reika obtains the necessary information, Assassin is allowed to eat him, and they go on to slaughter the man's comrades, leaving fifteen corpses in total before moving on to Trifas. Though the circumstances of the murders are strange, all of their hearts being ripped from their bodies, the authorities believe it to be from an internal struggle amongst the criminal groups, but one paper jokingly publishes the headline "The Return of Jack the Ripper?"

Abilities
Her weapons include four strangely-shaped knives, two butcher's knives, and a black, bloodstained scalpel. Compared to other Servants who have garnered legends over centuries and millennia, she is a young Heroic Spirit of only one hundred twenty years. Even with the fame she garnered that gives her the necessary "monstrosity" befitting of a Heroic Spirit, she cannot hope to match those worshiped as gods and heroes with such little history of her own. She can be called a completely unknown Servant, and she has never participated in the Holy Grail War. This suits Hyouma's plan, as he wishes to avoid the weakness granted to those of the Assassin class. It is normally fixed that only one of the Hassan-i Sabbah can be selected as Assassin, so it is possible to develop countermeasures against them simply by having their identities as Assassin exposed. With a different Heroic Spirit, it is possible for him to best make use of the class. Her Noble Phantasms are The Mist and Maria the Ripper.

She has the qualifications to be summoned as either Assassin or Berserker. She obtains Mad Enhancement when summoned as Berserker, which causes a Rank Down in Luck and Mana and the loss of verbal communication and complex thinking in exchange for reinforcing all other attributes. She is only able to be active at night while summoned as Berserker, and The Mist remains active at all times while targeting all entities possessing prana within range of the ability.

Reika cannot act as Jack's main prana supply due to not being a magus, and while the cost of an Assassin-class Servant is less draining than a Saber or Berserker, she still has to acquire it from other sources. She eats humans souls to replenish herself, feeling considerable hunger when low on energy. Due to her nature as chaotic evil, an existence that preaches chaos in the face of order while carrying out evil deeds, souls of the same nature are more easily digested. Eating evil people is the best for her because it is more polluted and delicious. Hyouma works well for her, especially his quality as a magus. She sucks out all of his blood, leaving him much like a pile of dead leaves with the exception of the hand that had his Commmand Spells. She mainly eats the hearts of her other targets instead of devouring them fully.

She prefers the cover of night to conceal her exposure, and due to her provocative manner of dress, she rarely leaves her abode in daytime. She has the normal Presence Concealment Class Skill granted to the Assassin class, which allows her to almost completely eliminate her presence toward others. This allows her to easily carry Hyouma down the street behind Reika without exposing herself at all. She is even able to elude the senses of Servants, but the ability fails upon the execution of an attack. She has her own unique skill, Murderer of the Misty Night, that compensates for the weakness of Presence Concealment and utilizes both their strengths to allow for a perfect ambush. The skill is associated with her nature as a serial killer rather than that of an Assassin, and it permits a preemptive against all opponents. The skill is unconditionally successful during the night, and if utilized during the daytime, the success is determined by a luck roll.

Her unstable nature grants her a natural protection against mental interference magecraft. Mental Pollution provides a probability that it will be rendered ineffective on its use. Masters of an Evil alignment that perpetrate acts of cruelty towards her can further increase its rank and its capability to defend against magecraft at the cost of possibly causing irreversible damage to her psyche. She has her own ability that affects the minds of others, Information Erasure, which removes any records or memories of her true name, abilities, or appearance following the conclusion of an engagement. It not only targets witnesses of the her fights, but also the opponent and even digital recordings by a closed-circuit camera in broad daylight will be changed. Physical evidence of the engagement is not altered in any way, and her identity may be revealed through logical deduction.

She has a very low rank in Surgical Procedure that uses techniques over one hundred twenty years old. While it is somewhat unreliable simply by its crude appearance upon its application, the procedures manage to attain the intended effect after being boosted somewhat with the application of prana. It can be applied to either Jack or her Master, and it stems from the anatomical knowledge and skills with dissection required to remove the organs of her victims. It allows her to heal Reika's stab wounds. Reika finds that her wounds have been stitched up, but it is done in a crude method looks like the black thread is creeping about haphazardly like an earthworm. While it seems like her wounds may not even be closed properly, the bleeding and pain have completely subsided. The same chaotically done surgical procedure is also able to keep Sagara alive after Jack cuts off both his jaw and one of his hands.