"And who the hell are you, now?" Jalter snarls back, still in her accented English, as she was addressed in English first, stepping forward to confront this new Servant who simply giggles quite amicably, given the situation that we're all in.

"I should ask the same of you myself, but unlike you, I know who you are, thanks to the conversation that you two had with each other," the new Servant says, also in daintily accented English. "Zut alors! So this is what it means to announce oneself as a hero of justice...oh, I'm so excited, I'm so excited ~ "

The new Servant, clearly giddy with excitement, as if her own words didn't indicate that enough, trembles and clasps her cheeks like an overjoyed schoolgirl who can barely keep in her hype.

"Enough of this...!" Jalter hisses through her clenched teeth, and she reaches for the sword at her side.

I react more quickly as soon as I see her reach for her holstered weapon: swiftly drawing one of my Desert Eagles with my good hand, I snap it up to rest the iron sights over Jalter's chest and pull the trigger, firing to interrupt her. However, the enemy Servant with the cross-staff smashes the bullet that I shoot out of existence, the mana composing the bullet getting pummeled so hard that it disintegrates as though it were a tangerine getting hammered out of the air.

Tamamo also reacts to the sight of Jalter reaching for her sword, and she immediately hurls a set of eight talismans towards all of our enemies in general that detonate into a multitude of elemental effects, some fireballs, some icicles, and some bursts of sinister purple mana.

"Master, she's about to use her Noble Phantasm!" Jeanne screams at me, and when I turn to her, she's clutching her standard so hard that I feel like she'll snap it in half soon, but more importantly, the banner on her standard is once again glowing bright gold. "Get near me, quickly!"

Sure enough, I feel an intense surge of magic energy coming from Jalter's position, and as if that weren't indication enough, the enemy Servants have retreated behind her, as if to give her space, after they block Caster's attacks. Matthew feels this energy surge as well, and when I dash over to Jeanne to join my Servants, who're all huddling closely around Ruler, Matthew steps up next to me, bravely slamming her shield in front of us.

"Deploying Noble Phantasm!" Matthew positively shrieks, gritting her teeth in preparation of the enemy Noble Phantasm that is to come. "Lord - Chaldeas!"

"Luminosité Eternelle!"

Jeanne also cries something in French at the same time, and they both deploy their Noble Phantasms in rapid succession after one another - Matthew's giant blue mana shield erects itself before us first, and then whatever Jeanne does causes the ground around all of us to suddenly begin glowing with bright gold light that intensifies before swallowing all of us whole, just in time before Jalter in the distance ahead of us screams back while holding her own battle standard that is now burning wildly in her hands,

"Le Grondement de La Haine!"

The bright light from Jeanne's Noble Phantasm cuts off my vision so I can't see what's about to hit us, though I can hear the whooshing and screaming of flames as they seem like they're passing right by us without even touching us. The light itself lasts for roughly twenty seconds before fading away, and when I look around to see what's just happened, there's a giant scorch mark shaped like a funnel that expands towards us that's still sizzling and burning in a couple places, while everything behind us is just...gone. Whatever was standing behind us is now razed and smoldering, if it hasn't burned itself down to the ground already.

"Heavens, it's a good thing I decided to join the party before I got my own ass burnt by that!" yet another familiar voice chimes in, though this time it's a different accent, something that's, surprisingly enough, not French, and when my Servants and I turn around to see who's joined us now, we find this tall guy who's almost six feet tall standing in our midst behind the other new Servant whom we haven't learned the name of yet.

"Wolfgang, didn't I tell you not to say such crude things already?!" the first new Servant scolds the second new Servant, who's wearing a huge black coat with yellow, purple, and green designs and a purple coat cape around his waist. His hair is a wild mess, though - in an orderly, yet unkempt manner.

...why does everyone here except for me have light-colored hair?

"My apologies, my dear Marie, but that time it really was appropriate - "

Marie? The name Marie Antoinette immediately pops into my head, but since my knowledge of French history is admittedly quite lacking, I hesitate to assume that this is indeed Queen Marie Antoinette, though I suppose you could argue that she's the most famous (or infamous) one.

"If you've got time to spout nonsense, then you've got time to attack them! Make yourself useful already and use your Noble Phantasm back on them, or something!"

"Ah, yes, yes, very well - " This second new Servant clears his throat before announcing grandly, "It's time for a public performance! Requiem For Death!"

Before us, a set of bright light-gold angels flash into sight, all playing various orchestral instruments in the direction of Jalter's side of Servants. I recognize the tune - it's Mozart's Requiem in D Minor. Guess I know who this is.

Sharp screams come from Jalter's side of things, as several of the enemy Servants have collapsed under the exposure to this music that's being directed at them. Jalter manages to stand strong, but only just, as she's trying to hold her hands over her ears without dropping her standard.

"Master, allow me!" Saber Alter requests, her Excalibur Morgan already brimming with her dark mana.

I nod. "Let 'er rip!"

And so surging forward, Salter crunches her left boot into the charred ground, and Mozart, seeing her step forward, deactivates his Noble Phantasm just in time before Salter unleashes her own Noble Phantasm.

"Excalibur - MORGAAAAAAAAAAAN!"

Swinging her dark blade upwards over her shoulder almost like she's swinging a baseball bat, Artoria Alter cascades the burnt street of La Charite with immense waves of dark prana that wash over the enemies all together, causing the ground to quake underneath its colossal pressure. And, curiously enough, just like Artoria's own Excalibur Noble Phantasm, Salter's tsunami of dark mana consolidates in the area of her targets and explodes upwards, creating an evil pillar of energy that rockets up into the sky like a beacon of hopelessness and despair. It continues to spiral upwards into the sunset sky even when the tidal waves of dark energy have passed, slowly dispersing on its own while trying to linger in existence for as long as possible before it finally fizzles out.

But even long before it does, Salter sets her corrupted sword down into the ground with its tip again, as usual, and with a scowl on her face.

"They have escaped," she grumbles, clearly disappointed that they didn't stand their ground and continue fighting.

"Fantastique, fantastique!" the first new Servant (not Mozart) exclaims, clapping her hands together. "It seems that for now, we have chased away the forces of evil! We're off to a good start, aren't we, Wolfgang?"

"Much better than what we felt that we would have when we first found ourselves summoned, that's for sure," Mozart sighs with relief, fixing his coat curtly. "But one enemy still remains, and she's been staring at you for quite some time, Marie."

We all glance down at the enemy Servant who's still here with us, the one Tamamo kicked the crap out of when she tried stabbing me in the back, still lying on her belly on the ground and, sure enough, gazing up at Marie with wonder.

"Perhaps she has taken a fancy in your behind, Marie?" Mozart wonders aloud, without even batting an eyelash.

"Th-There is nothing wrong with my behind, thank you very much!" Marie blubbers, quickly turning around so that she eliminates the possibility of the enemy Servant actually staring at her ass.

"Well, there wasn't anything necessarily wrong with it, if I may be more specific - "

"No one ASKED you to be, Wolfgang, now please, hold your peace!"

Since it's clear that it'll take those two a while before they can actually focus on the task at hand by themselves, I approach the enemy Servant on my own.

"What's your name?" I ask her. Not demandingly, but firmly, to get the point across to her that unlike Mozart and Marie, I'm not one to fool around as much.

The enemy Servant sits up promptly.

"They...they call me 'Berserk Saber'," she (?) says, and judging by her voice, she certainly sounds female, but her androgynous looks don't exactly help.

"Mkay."

Before I continue this discussion, I throw my left hand up into the air to perform another Comsat Scan, scanning our vicinity to make perfectly sure that the others have left us for good so that we can have this talk in peace.

"Master, hold still, I'll take care of this..."

While I'm scanning our vicinity, Tamamo takes this time to mend the deep wound in my right hand, which, from my fingers down, looks like I've dipped them in a can of blood-red paint...except it's most definitely not paint. Sharp pains dart up my arm from my injured hand as Tamamo treats it with magical first aid, but all I do is wince at them a little before concluding my scan.

"Now that you mention it..." the Servant named Marie gazes down at Berserk Saber as she bends her knees to level herself with the enemy Servant whom we've inadvertently captured, "...you do look familiar, Mademoiselle Saber. Pray, tell me your True Name, and I shall tell you mine." Marie suddenly giggles to herself. "Y-Yes, let us do that. Let us exchange True Names, just as though we were exchanging letters as young maidens!"

"Um, T-True Names shouldn't be exchanged in that kind of a manner..." Matthew mumbles awkwardly, not sure if she should interrupt here.

"Erm, well...if you insist, I'm not sure if I have any other choice, really..." Berserk Saber sighs lightly. I should also note that her (?) voice, too, is spoken with a French accent, so at the risk of offending those who have a pet peeve against people who assume nationalities on the basis of accents, I can only assume that she herself is French, just like Marie and Jeanne. "My True Name is Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d'Éon de Beaumont...but I understand that that is a bit too lengthy for anything that is not related to court matters, so please call me Le Chevalier d'Eon instead."

But even before d'Eon finishes saying her longer True Name, Marie is already looking quite pleased and excited, as if she wasn't already excited when she joined us a few moments ago.

"And my name is Marie Antoinette, Queen of my dear King Louis XVI," Marie smiles quite radiantly down at d'Eon. "You must have recognized me, my dear d'Eon. You had plenty of chances to attack us, yet you did not because you recognized me, yes?"

Bashfully nodding, d'Eon averts her eyes like she's not worthy of looking at Marie back in the eyes.

"...even if I have been summoned as your enemy, I refuse to raise a hand against you or your friends," d'Eon declares quietly. "That I will not do. I would have committed countless atrocities against my own country due to this accursed method in which I was summoned, but - "

"Uh, I hate to interrupt, but for the sake of knowin' what we need to do next, there's still a lot of catchin' up we need to do, and you two can talk later once we've gotten ourselves all acquainted," I cut in at a time that I think is at least somewhat appropriate for me to chime in. "I'm August, and I'm the Master of these Servants around us." I gesture to everyone except for the newcomers.

"August? As in the month?" Marie asks brightly. It's like her face is perpetually locked in a smiling expression. "My, my, what a beautiful name, August. But I suppose I should call you 'Master' from here on out, yes?"

"Either is fine, to be honest. And you're Mozart," I nod over at the guy with the wild light blonde hair.

"Yes indeed! You have good observation skills," Mozart beams.

"Er, no, Marie just called you 'Wolfgang', and your Noble Phantasm involved your Requiem in D Minor, so - "

"Oh ho! Not just any Master, but one who is a student of my music? Can you believe it, Marie? A Master who knows about my work!" Mozart also goes full squee! over the fact that I know the music of his Noble Phantasm by memory.

"Yes, yes, may he remember your music more than he remembers you," Marie smiles with absolutely no sign of animosity. "Anyways, Master, I hope that our entrance was well-timed, as it seemed that you and your Servants needed assistance?"

"We could have handled them ourselves just fine," Salter growls in a low voice, the only one in our party who is outwardly transparent about her displeasure at seeing Marie come in and interrupt what could have been a ferocious battle.

"Alter, now is not the time," Artoria growls right back to put Salter in her place while Marie also turns to Jeanne.

"I overheard your conversation with that other Jeanne," Marie says to our Jeanne. "You may not know of me, but I know of you, Jeanne d'Arc. I'm most honored to be able to meet the Saint herself in person...a meeting that I myself never even considered until now."

Jeanne also averts her eyes, unable to help her cheeks turning red again. "I-I'm no Saint, my Queen. I'm just...I'm just an ordinary village girl."

"An ordinary village girl who led French troops to victory against the British and helped the Dauphin claim his rightful throne? If that is what ordinary village girls of France do, by God, imagine what all of the village girls of this country could do together!" Marie exclaims, jokingly, of course. "Well, except for the fact that unfortunately, it appears that the Dauphin whom you helped claim the throne is now no longer with us, his life taken by the hand of someone who claims to be you, my dear Jeanne. And together with the fact that Wolfgang and I have also been summoned into a past version of France that is clearly not how any of us knew of it, I suppose this is the reason why Master and his Servants are also here as well?"

"That's correct, Lady Antoinette," Matthew nods firmly. "What's going on here is a magical crisis that we call a 'Singularity'. What we know is that France is under attack by dragons, zombies, and skeleton soldiers that are terrorizing the land, and that the other Jeanne whom we have just fought against is leading them and her own contingency of Servants to facilitate the destruction of this country, and possibly even with a Holy Grail at her disposal."

"Oh dear...that's no good, that's no good," Marie shakes her head, finally dropping her perpetual smile for a sad frown. "And you all are here to help resolve this issue, then, yes?"

"Yes."

"Then by all means, allow us to join you!" Marie's smile bounces right back as she happily steps forward to me, with Tamamo, who's done healing my hand, grasping my right arm defensively, as if she doesn't want Marie to steal me away from her. "Though, just be careful around Wolfgang. He makes a lot of...crude jokes that are, more often than not, very inappropriate..."

I tilt my head in puzzlement. "...that's it?" I ask her.

"Well, it's just that I just can't stand them sometimes!" Marie pouts rather cutely, which reminds me of Tamamo whenever she's going full pout mode too.

"Don't you worry about my jokes, Master. Marie has had to deal with them for much longer than anybody else, so that's why she is making a fuss about it," Mozart chuckles heartily.

"It would not be a problem if you simply did not make them in the first place!"

"Oh, now you're just exaggerating, Marie."

I glance down at Berserk Saber while Marie and Mozart go at it again. "So...you said that you don't want to fight against Marie or her friends. I guess, just to make absolute sure, do you consider us Marie's friends, d'Eon?" I ask, and she nods.

"Now that you are the one whom the Queen considers her Master, I cannot go against her decision," d'Eon states, having stood up at Marie's insistence. "I understand that you may not trust me because only moments ago I was your adversary, but I wish to fight with you now, dear Master."

"Er, sure, that's fine, but I just wanna know for sure that you really aren't gonna do anything to us, and if we can't do that, then I'm not so sure if - "

"Master, try to establish a contract with Lady d'Eon," Matthew suggests. "I noticed that the other Jeanne didn't have any Command Spells, at least none that I could see, so even if she was the one who summoned them, she may not have complete authority over them as a normal Master should have, and after all, this is still a Holy Grail War, no matter how different it is from a standard one."

So I decide to give it a shot. I extend my hand towards d'Eon.

"Just shake my hand; that seems to be enough to establish a contract," I say with a conspicuous degree of incredulity, since even I still find it hard to believe that all I need to do in this Holy Grail War to induct new Servants into my command is to just have a handshake with them. But d'Eon takes it in stride and firmly shakes my hand, with two hands, even.

"Ooohh...!" she gasps slowly with much relief. "Th-The Mad Enhancement that was forced upon me during my summoning...it seems that it has cleared up...!"

"Huh? Wait, but...but how?" Matthew, upon hearing this, steps in, very much so confused at d'Eon's claim that her Mad Enhancement skill has been cleansed simply because she's entered a contract as my Servant. "Things like Mad Enhancement can't be removed so easily..."

"D'Eon is not meant to be summoned in the state that you had met her," Marie chimes in. "She ordinarily has no such Mad Enhancement. So while I myself cannot say for sure, I believe that contracting with a proper Master has restored her to her original state."

"But..." Matthew still isn't convinced.

"And normally, Servants switching Masters is supposed to be a really situational thing that only rarely ever happens, if I recall correctly," I add to support my self-proclaimed underclassman. "Even if this is an odd Holy Grail War that's going on..."

"But whatever is truly going on, we know now that Master has the power to contract with even enemy Servants, so long as they are willing," Artoria points out. "Naturally, some will be more difficult to convince, but from here on we should strive to capture any enemy Servant we encounter."

"Capturing..." Salter turns even more sour, scowling harder than ever at this notion.

"We don't know how big the enemy forces are, if those're the only Servants Jalter's got or if she's got more - " I respond to Salter's skepticism, but d'Eon jumps in.

"The corrupted Jeanne d'Arc is using the Holy Grail at Orleans to generate the wyvern armies that have been terrorizing the country," she informs us, immediately reminding me that now that we've got her with us, she can basically tell us everything we need. "As for Servants, the Servants you fought just now are the only ones she has managed to summon. There is another Servant, but it appears that she did not summon him, and his name is Gilles de Rais."

"G-Gilles...?!" Jeanne blurts out in surprise, unable to contain herself. "He is...?!"

d'Eon nods sadly. "Yes...he is aiding the corrupted Jeanne in her plans to burn the country to the ground. She appears to be treating him as her second-in-command, of sorts..."

"Is he perhaps the mastermind behind it all...?" Lily asks timidly as usual.

"Mastermind? Hm, now that you mention it..." d'Eon considers. "The corrupt Jeanne seemed to treat Gilles with more, erm...'respect' than the rest of us, though I'm not sure how appropriate my use of the word 'respect' was just now."

"Just knowing what she's like from what little we've seen from her, that's gotta say a lot about this Gilles fellow, doesn't it," Tamamo frowns.

"For now, everyone, let's head to that forest nearby. It's a bad idea for us to be talking out here in the open in the middle of a battlefield..." Matthew suggests, and we all chuckle at our insensitivity and follow Matthew, who leads us to the forest over where Roman's detected a strong leyline for us to rest near.

"I've been thinking," Jeanne says aloud as Matthew uses her cross-shield as an examination platform so that Roman and Da Vinci can study the leyline near which we're camping out for the time being more closely.

"What's up?" I ask her. We're all sitting around on logs again just like last time, though Marie is sitting on a glass horse that's sitting down on the dirt with us. Apparently one of her powers is to create objects out of magic glass, which explains the glass rose that she tossed in between us to stop the fight.

"This...this is still a Holy Grail War, correct?"

"As far as we know, yeah. A really, really weird one, but...still one nonetheless."

"I see. So knowing this, we know, thanks to the confirmation provided by Mademoiselle de Beaumont - "

"Ah, just...just d'Eon is fine, Lady Jeanne," d'Eon quickly corrects her.

"I-I'm sorry - provided by d'Eon," Jeanne rectifies herself, "we know that the other me - uh, dark...Dark Jeanne - ugh, this is quite confusing. Master, I'm sorry, what did you call her before?"

"I called her Jalter," I say simply. "Short for 'Jeanne Alter', since we have another Alter Servant with us." I point over to Salter.

"Jalter...then I shall call her that too. We know that Jalter possesses a Grail, which she is using to create wyvern armies to bring ruin to France. If this is truly a Holy Grail War, even if it is a distorted one, if someone is already in possession of the Grail, that means that either the Holy Grail War is already over, or it hasn't even started yet in the first place. And if the War was over, none of us would be here - at least, none of us Servants who were summoned specifically into this Singularity, like myself or Lady Antoine - "

"Just call me Marie as well, my dear Jeanne," Marie says cheerfully.

"I-I'm sorry! Uh, M-Marie, and...and Monsieur Moza - "

"Just call me Mozart, my dear," Mozart echoes Marie, even giving her the same kind of smile, and most of us let out amused chuckles as we watch Jeanne go red a third time in a row.

"Today's...today's been a long day..." Jeanne sighs heavily.

"It most certainly has..." Artoria agrees. The two of them are, incidentally, sitting right next to each other, so their facial similarities are all the more apparent.

"But anyway! The point I wanted to make was that despite the fact that the Holy Grail is here in form in this Singularity, Servants like myself or Marie or Mozart have been summoned here anyway. My hypothesis for this kind of a scenario is that the Grail is reacting to its premature possession in unlawful hands by summoning us as a sort of countermeasure, of sorts. After all, Rulers like myself are summoned when the Grail feels that its jurisdiction is being threatened and that its own actions must be taken to prevent it."

"But that's not what happened in the Singularity we handled before this one," I shake my head in disagreement, inspecting my right fingerless glove that I've put back onto my hand, even though it's still stained with my own blood and its fingers, thanks to the cut that I ended up inflicting on myself when I punched the enemy Lancer's blade. "Salter was in possession of the Grail, but we had to step in to handle that situation by ourselves, pretty much. Well, I say 'by ourselves'..." I put up air quotes with my fingers, glancing at Matthew, Lily, and Artoria.

"But that Singularity appeared once before. Jeanne's theory could be true, because we met Cu the first time it showed up," Matthew deliberates. "Cu was perhaps fulfilling the same role as Marie or Mozart or Jeanne as the Grail's reaction to being in premature possession, or whatever it's being used for."

"But you didn't meet any Ruler-Class Servants the first time around, did you?" I ask Matthew, who shakes her head.

"No...the only friendly Servant whom we met was Cu Chulainn. We didn't meet any Ruler-Class Servants the first time around..."

"Though, to be fair, this Singularity seems like it's already a lot bigger than the first one you guys're talking about," Tamamo says, grooming her big fat fluffy tail with a comb that I don't recall her ever carrying with her on her person. "If Miss Saint's theory is accurate, maybe it also depends on the scale of the Singularity itself?"

"And you lot don't even know how the Grails came to be in the first place, or how they ended up in these so-called Singularities..." Mozart muses. "How very strange."

"Yes, that's part of the reason why we're here," Matthew nods. "To find out how these Grails got here so that we can better understand the nature of these Singularities."

"Wonder if it's even accurate to call it a Holy Grail War anymore," I murmur aloud.

"Well, if we wanna be technical about it, we're still fighting over the Grail, yes?" Tamamo points out, though she doesn't look very happy when she says this. "Even though I have my own thoughts about it..."

"To finish my thought, if the Grail has summoned Servants like us to counteract the Servants summoned by Jalter, then there is likely a chance that the three of us are not the only ones summoned to combat the unlawful possession of the Grail," Jeanne concludes. "So I suggest that we try to search around for more Servants who have found themselves summoned into this Singularity and do not know why they have been summoned. Once we locate them, we should explain to them the situation we are currently facing and have them join us to fight against Jalter and her own forces."

"That's fine, but the problem with that's that we'll need to scour the whole country just to find if there are any more," I reason. "We had that problem earlier today; we tried looking around for towns and villages where we could figure out more about the enemy forces, but this one was the first one we found that actually got us any information at all, and that was only because we fought the exact person we were trying to gather information about. So if we're trying to look for more Servants, granted, that's a bit easier than gathering information, but we'll still need to split up and try to search for them manually. There's also the problem of time management, if we'll even have the time to spare to go around looking for people before Jalter herself decides that it's time to really step things up and set France on fire - "

I suddenly feel someone enter our vicinity, but only barely. It's like a hundred and fifty meters away, but it's still enough for me to notice it and deem it a potential threat. Because at that range, if I can notice that presence, it's not exactly trying to be sneaky.

Swiftly standing up and pulling out my MK-17 from its storage rune, I face the direction in which I've felt the presence enter the forest, smack off the safety, and pull the trigger once.

"Show yourself!" I call over into the forest once my rifle report dies down after echoing against the trees around us. "Or we can go out and hunt'cha down, either way's fine with me!"

A few minutes later, into our line of sight walks one of the Berserk Servants who was with Jalter. It's the one with the regular cross-shaped staff and the pelvic curtain that shows off the sides of her glamorous and well-toned thighs.

"Hello, everyone," she coos rather pleasantly, though there's something off with the smile that she greets us with. "This is a fine evening for us all, don't you think?"

She doesn't have a French accent in her voice. How strange.