"It seems you did not follow my advice, Ritsuka," Edmond says while reading a book on his bed while Ritsuka was sitting at his desk doing some extra studying. "Didn't I say to avoid the King of Heroes so that something like this would never happen?"
"Well, you just said to avoid the person who was at the number one spot. How was I supposed to know that it was going to be Gilgamesh?" Ritsuka replies turning around towards his roommate. "And even still. I would've stood up to him even if I knew it was him... How strong he is from what everyone is saying. Even still, he was tormenting everyone!"
"You truly are a foolish person to oppose him so rashly. You were lucky with Artoria Alter and Jeanne Alter. But this is another level." Edmond puts his book down while shaking his head. "If you permit me to ask, what's with the pointless struggle against him? I would understand Shirou Emiya and Ishtar... but you have just met him today, correct? Or is it something else?"
"It's not really a grudge I have. It's more of... I have a bad history with the type of people like that. With people who think that they're all high and mighty by pushing people down below them." Ritsuka said with a sigh. "Everyone has had to have dealt with someone like Gilgamesh. It's just for me or other people... they weren't as super strong as people are making Gilgamesh out to be. But that makes this whole competition all the more reason to face him. We gotta win."
Edmond Dantes remained silent as he stared at Ritsuka with a look of interest. "You seem confident that you will be able to win against him. There... is something particular about you."
"Well. Gotta try right?" Ritsuka asks as his phone rings and takes a look at it. "Oh. It's Atalanta."
"You received her contact information? For what purpose?" Edmond questions.
"Marie made a group chat to see which person should get which event. Planning early so we can work harder tomorrow without delay." Ritsuka looks into his phone with interest before yawning. "I should get some sleep. We have training day, tomorrow right after class."
"... Rest well Ritsuka. Atalanta can be a strict mentor from what I can hear." Edmond said before closing his eyes.
'She can't be that hard, right?'
Chaldea Academy
By: NexusMHX
Chapter 7: Start of Training
Ritsuka woke up earlier than usual as he looks at his phone which read 6:45 and decided to walk to school early. A few students from Chaldea Academy were walking on the street happened to see Ritsuka and immediately started chatting to each other. Ritsuka confused the gesture decided to ignore it and continued walking to school.
On the way there, a few students that saw him were greeting him rather nicely and a few had even asked to shake his hand. All of them gave him words of encouragement and gratitude all the way until Ritsuka made his way to the classroom to see Shirou surrounded by people. Even then, there were many people just huddling around the classroom entrance so it was a pain to get in.
'Guess it's not just happening to me...' Ritsuka thoughts as he sits down. People started to notice him and people were at Ritsuka's desk talking to him from all corners as a nervous sweat starts falling off his head before a voice calls outs.
"May I ask what you are doing to my friend?" Everyone looks over to see Artoria Alter standing in front of the classroom before walking to her seat right in front of Ritsuka. Fearing the swordswoman, the other people that were huddling around not only Ritsuka but also Shirou went back to their seats.
"Thanks, Artoria. You saved me again." Ritsuka chuckles while rubbing the back of his head.
"You should learn to tell them went to back off. That goes the same for Shirou." Artoria Alter says with a glare towards the two. "Ritsuka you are too nice to others. Perhaps you should learn to tell others "No"."
"S-Sorry." Ritsuka bows his head from the glare.
"Good morning Ritsuka!" A cheerful voice comes from the side lifting Ritsuka's head up to see Marie walking towards him.
"Morning Marie. Quite the day..."
"You mean all of those people looking from outside the classroom?" Marie asks as Ritsuka nods. "Well after the big scene yesterday, I wouldn't be surprised that something like this would happen. Just know that I'm here for you if you need it!"
"Thanks, Marie," Ritsuka says with a smile. "It feels like things are going to change because of this whole ordeal."
"Don't sweat it, Ritsuka." The two looked back at Chu Chulainn who was sitting casually. "The stuff here comes and goes. You already made a name for yourself on the first day of school... Just call this a little push towards popularity."
"Like how death loves seeing you?" Shirou comments while a tich marks forms on Chulainn's head.
"Oi! Do you want to go!? I'll kick your ass!" Chu Chulainn exclaims while pointing at Shirou who stands up as the people huddling around his desk take a step back.
"Sure. Let's fight." Shirou said as energy sparks between the two before two pencils fly centimeters away from their faces.
"I thought I made it clear that there will be no Servant Duels until AFTER the sports festival. You two aren't children, are you? Because I'm sure that Illya and the others would be more than glad to see you Shirou. And" Atalanta comments with a calm yet irritated expression.
"Yes, ma'am."
After classes were done for the day, everyone from Class 2-B made their way to the track field all in their PE uniforms. Atalanta was looking at a list while pacing back and forth before catching everyone's attention.
"Alright! I am one hundred percent sure that everyone here knows the stakes for this year's sports festival." Atalanta said as everyone starts cheering for Ritsuka, Ishtar, and Shirou before the class rep silences everyone up in an instant. "However! That still means that we have to succeed in our own events to take down Gil's reign. Which means that we must all train properly! So I asked Coach De Rais to give us a proper workout schedule with stuff that I inputted as well."
Everyone groans at the words but no one actually raised up an actual complaint as they all stayed to listen to what they would be doing.
"10 mile runs, 700 pushups, 200 squats, lunges around the school-" Atalanta continues on for a while, listing even more daunting tasks before everyone starts their agonizing work.
"Basically everyone at school knows the competition by now..." Vice President Martha said while handling some forms to Jeanne. "You sure that you're just going to let this slide?"
"There's nothing we really can do, Martha. Ritsuka, Shirou, and Gilgamesh have made their agreement. And how it's looking, they're definitely going to stand by it no matter what." Jeanne said with a sigh. "Still. It's quite interesting to me."
"What is?"
"How Ritsuka has only been here for two weeks, and yet has made an impact of this scale. And he was even like this on his very first day of school. I guess that's something that a Master can do." Jeanne stares at the group outside doing an insane amount of training.
"True... That or it could just be Ritsuka as a person." Martha takes a seat next to Jeanne.
"Martha, you may be right..."
"Drained... Can't move another step. Need... sweets to live..." Ecchan flops onto the floor with a groan. "Without them... I'm gone."
"Yeah yeah, Ecchan. We all know about you and exercise and all that." Atalanta comments while looking at her clipboard. "Well, we all been working pretty hard. Let's take a ten-minute break and I'll rush to the store and get something to keep Ecchan conscious. After that, we'll be getting our events."
Atalanta runs off at insane speeds as always while Ritsuka can only look while trying to stand up. "This mystic code... needs more... Eeeeeuuuuuuugggggggghhhhhhh."
Ritsuka falls onto his knees in exhaustion as Edmond sits down next to him. "Now you see why I say to be prepared? Atalanta works us harder than ever before. Really pushing everyone's limits like never before."
"What I want to know is how she's able to do all of this and still able to go run to the store for Ecchan's sweets and back..." X lets out before taking a seat next to the group. "But this is a good training regiment to shape us for the future."
"When this is all over, I'm going to sleep... forever." Jeanne Alter comments before closing her eyes for a bit before immediately opening her eyes. "Ow dang it... That hurt my frickin head..."
"Aren't there exams before summer vacation?" There was a sudden silence as everyone looked at X. Even the ones that weren't part of the conversation came to the sudden realization of the predicament that they were all in.
"Eh. It's fine. We just got to study while doing this. No big deal, right?" Ritsuka said with a casual expression. There was silence before:
"HOW THE HELL CAN YOU BE SO CHILL ABOUT ALL THIS!?"
(And now. Chaldea Station)
"Um. Welcome to Chaldea Station. I'm Mashu Kyrielight, a first-year at Chaldea. I'm a host of this station. Thank you for tuning in." Mashu said with a bow towards the camera.
"I'm Ritsuka Fujimaru. I'm one of the people in the master's program and a second year. I'm a host as well." Ritsuka also bows. "Today, we have a few guests with us today. Can you please introduce yourselves?"
"Right. I'm Okita Souji! I'm a second year as well! It's a pleasure to be here!" Okita waves as she looks as Nobbu who is posing.
"I am the Demon Archer, Oda Nobunaga, the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven!" Nobbu unleashes in a loud noise as everyone stares in belief.
Ritsuka shrugs off what Nobbu said before beginning to talk. "In any case. Today's episode is really just a start into everything but we'll answer one comment from you guys. But before that, what do you guys think of today's episode?"
"Class Rep is working us too hard. I mean I know about that thing you made with Gil, but she doesn't have to work us this hard!" Nobbu said groaning. "My shoulders are stiff from all of those workouts."
"I think it's just you not being in shape Nobbu. Though I got to admit, her workouts were quite harsh. Ritsuka was handling it pretty well." Okita compliments Ritsuka has he chuckles.
"Thanks but I'm only able to keep on going thanks to the Mystic Code. Even with it, I was definitely feeling a lot of pain from it. Fergus Sensei is hard on us already so the additional stuff is quite the challenge." Ritsuka groans with a sigh.
"Let's stop talking about that stressful parts, Senpai," Mashu said as everyone nods before thinking. "How about we take a look at some of the comments that the audience may have given to us?"
"Great idea, Mashu," Ritsuka said before receiving a piece of paper before reading it. "This one is a bit big…"
"Hmm? Is there a problem, Ritsuka?" Okita asks.
"N-Nothing. I'll read it. This is from HalfAScribe."
"I've noticed growing occurances of OOC here. Gil may be an arrogant prick, and very brash and uncaring at times, but he knows to keep away from being a lowly bully. If anything, Gil would probably ignore everyone else and just try to have fun with Enkidu. Speaking of which, letting Enkidu be present this early on wastes potential character growth for Gil. Ritsuka's harem has little to no substance or romantic tension in it, so it just comes off as bland and uninteresting. As for Ritsuka himself, you haven't told us what his motivations are. As for the story, it shows that you have no idea where to go with it from the rambling bits of story you're writing. Attempted drama reads like a piece of soggy bread. And I don't know about others, but I couldn't care less about the servant duel system; it just seems really lazy. Also, you haven't really explained why Chaldea is there in the first place. It doesn't seem like they're taking care of singularities. We need more coherency, Author."
"Jeez. That's a crap ton of stuff. We need to have a peak on how many words can be on a comment or something!" Nobbu comments.
"Indeed… This is quite the size… Though it does show a few things in detail." Mashu says softly before receiving another paper. "Eh? There's more from the same person?"
"There's more!?" Everyone else exclaims.
"Also, Pyschominer pointed out in a previous review that OCD isn't just cleaning. That is correct. OCD would be when you want everything to be perfectly lined up and fitted. Just call him a neat freak, Author. No need to use terms you can't be bothered to google."
…
"This is an extremely harsh review to the author… What should we do?" Ritsuka said before receiving another paper.
"Don't tell me that there is more…" Okita says weakly as Ritsuka shakes his head. "Oh? What is it then?"
"It's a reply from the author," Ritsuka says.
"THAT WAS QUICK!"
"In any case. He doesn't really have a voice so he's having us answer. He would also like to tackle this together as it might feel like the guests might feel excluded. Luckily it splits into multiple parts."
"How nice of him…" Nobbu comments before receiving a paper. "Guess I'm first. It's the stuff about OCD."
I see… HalfAScribe, you do bring up some good points and I'll address them. I do have to explain because if nobody gets it, then it's a bad story. First of all, the OCD part. When I was young, I always thought that OCD was Obsessive Cleaning Disorder, not Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. That problem was my fault as I should've double checked that on Google. But now I know better. Thank you and Pyschominer for telling me this.
"Next is about the stuff with Gilgamesh and the way that he acts," Ritsuka said looking at his paper.
"What? Do we really have to explain something like that?" Nobbu questions.
"The person did put it down in their review. We just have to go through with it. Ritsuka. Can you continue?"
Gilgamesh is an arrogant prick and does generally care for people such as Enkidu and Ritsuka in FGO (After raising the bond level for a bit). Having Enkidu implemented late isn't something that I thought didn't make sense. Because the implications of Gilgamesh without Enkidu wouldn't change much. So when you meant with OOC, I really couldn't follow. How I write is how I perceive how the cast would act with the given scenario. Writing for different character tropes is still a struggle as I'm nowhere close to being good at writing. However, Gil can still be pretty petty for no reason. During Carnival Phantasm (I know it's a spinoff) Heracles' job to go get Illya batteries showed that Gil was going to attack Heracles for seemingly no good reason.
"Now… the harem. Wait. Senpai is going to have a harem?" Mashu questions as Ritsuka shrugs by the comment. "Wait… Who is in this harem? Is there a specified list?"
"I have no idea, Mashu. Only the creator knows. I know nothing about it!" Ritsuka exclaims.
'I think we all know who is definitely in it.' Okita and Nobbu think at the same time as Mashu clears her throat.
Next is Ritsuka's harem having no substance or romantic tension… I haven't even started working on that part. Artoria Alter and Jeanne Alter "fighting over him" is a competition to see who the better friend is. I mean think about it, people who hardly talk to other people because they're unapproachable would most likely have zero guards when it comes to crazy stuff. So there aren't romantic feelings as of yet. Plus, it's only the second to the third week of Ritsuka and Gudako's arrival. Love, at first sight, is both cliche and dumb and isn't a real thing in life. Progression in both interaction and character must be met before anything else.
"Alright! My turn! Something about the motivations for your actions Ritsuka… I'm confused." Okita comments said while reading the page. "What do they mean by your motivations?"
"Yeah, that part didn't make any sense. Maybe the author knows." Nobbu replies scratching her head.
Motivations What do you mean? Reason for joining Chaldea Academy? Facing Gil? Well facing Gil comes from his distaste for bullies (more explaining as the story progresses) and for joining Chaldea Academy, that will also be explained in a future chapter.
"Now the person is talking about what is going on the story. I guess he's talking about the pacing and other such. He's also giving his thoughts on the Servant Duel System." Ritsuka looks over it.
"The Servant Duel System? I don't see a problem with it." Mashu said. "Maybe the thought of it was bad?"
"Eh. But it's awesome! We can see awesome fights between two Servants!" Nobbu exclaims.
"Hey… It's not just the duel system. It's like the genre of this fanfiction. Genre is like the foundation of every single story." Okita said.
"You got that right. Genre depictions and styles are the necessity of seeing how all of this is going to go. In some ways." Ritsuka said agreeing with Okita.
The main point of your criticism and honestly made me a bit irritated but understandable from the genre of the Fate Series (except What's Cooking in the Emiya Household or Carnival Phantasm (though that also includes some fighting)). Chaldea Academy is supposed to be a slice of life/comedy/schoolife/action series. The slice of life/comedy and school part of this fanfiction has similar pacing to anime such as: Acchi Kocchi, Kin-iro Mosiac, Lucky Star, Gochuumon wa Usagi Desu Ka?, etc. It's just normal school life and has skits that only see fit to have an impact on the audience. Occasionally I plan on writing segments where there are true conflicts like the Sport's Day Tournament Arc (thank you Fazrulz. Sport's tournament sounds like an awesome name). This means that rambling story bits as you called them are the MAIN CONCEPT of this fanfiction. Additionally, the SDS (Servant Dueling System) ((THIS IS MY ABBREVIATION)) is just here in this fanfiction so that random fight won't destroy the school while also being organized. While it seems lazy, it's true purpose is important to their world and the system of the academy.
"Oh! Here's the final part of the review. This misunderstanding why Chaldea is here." Nobbu said with a sigh. "That took so long to do…"
"Tell me about it. We can't do another review after this one. I'm sorry for anyone that wanted a reply (there was none really) and we'll hope that we'll get you next time." Mashu said with an apologetical bow. "There will be peaks next time."
Finally, this is an AU where Servants attend high school. There won't be any singularities (unless a good reason comes into my brain) and in this, Chaldea isn't a base. It's a SCHOOL. It's nothing to think too hard about. But honestly, all of the criticism coming from this one person actually made me ponder a bit. You were a bit harsh with the comment but it really gave me more to think about. Thank you HalfAScribe for the insight and I hope that I clarified anything for you.
"Whoo. Looks like that's all the time we have for today's episode of Chaldea Station. Sorry that it seemed kinda big." Ritsuka said with a sigh before smiling. "And thank you, Okita, Nobbu for being guests for this show."
"Well thank you for having us Ritsuka. Hope we can come again!" Okita said with a smile.
"You better not forget about us. That goes double to the author." Nobbu said shouting at the author who just shrugs.
We'll see about that
"Oi!"
"With that being said. This is Chaldea Station signing off! Bye!" Mashu said as everyone waves to the camera.
Wassup my homies! This is NexusEX bringing you another episode of Chaldea Academy. I actually made this a long time ago but then studying for finals came up like it smacked class 2-B right after the sport's festival. In any case, this came out late so I wrote Chaldea Station which actually wasn't part of this chapter and I also rewrote half of the chapter in the time. And I didn't push off my studies. I finished most of the finals so back to working on these fanfictions... Well, you guys got to wait until July because that's my writing schedule and even still, you have to wait until after Anime Expo for obvious reasons.
So not much of an episode today as we're slowly pacing the story in some regards. There are some laid out jokes and such but that's not what I wanted to talk about today. What I mostly want to talk about is Chaldea Station. This segment is like a reality talk show (like Jimmy Kimmel) and I want to know if this is something that you want to see more. This one was something I'm not proud of but I did it because I needed to point out a few things and a long author's note just didn't seem like the right thing to do. Plus it's a start, I want to make it the style of Lucky Star and you guys are starting to understand what kind of anime that I'm liking.
Don't have really much to say in this except thank you for reading. This is just blowing my mind with how massive this story is progressing. Though slice of life/comedies don't really have much impact but I'll still do my best! If you liked this fanfiction, why not try giving it a follow and favorite for more content. And if you want discussion topics on Chaldea Station or want your opinions on the area as a whole, please leave a comment and you'll most likely get in because not a lot of you guys comment... so comment and be included! In any case, this is NexusMHX signing off (I realized that NexusEX could be interpreted in weird ways because of the s*x part. I had to change my FGO account name because of that. So now it's NexusMHX). Stay classy my friends!
(PS. Immediately after finishing this segment. I rolled the gacha in JP and got Jeanne Alter! THIS FUCKING MADE MY DAY LET'S GO! Tip if you're using nox on computer. Make multiple JP accounts and abuse the login bonus. You can really get an enormous amount of saint quartz from doing this. Ok BYE!)