"...ter! Master, wake up! You've got an important call!"

I'm far more used to my phone's alarm clock waking me up, so the sound of Tamamo's and Yuuyuu's collective voices is a bit jarring at first, but nonetheless I react swiftly and immediately sit up in bed, my body reacting faster than my eyes can recover their vision. In doing so, I accidentally end up smashing my own face into the front of my own office phone that Tamamo is holding in her left hand, and ignoring the swift and earnest apology that Caster rapid-fires for a mistake that I made, I practically seize the phone from her to answer it.

"August speaking."

"We've located the coordinates to the next Singularity. Get down here, now!"

I frown deeply; that was rather unexpected. Shortly after I summoned Tamamo and Youkihi, Olga and I talked over the phone regarding several concerning matters, one of which involved the detection of future Singularities. Because SHEBA, along with much of Chaldea's operation-critical equipment and structures were damaged in Lev's act of sabotage, Da Vinci, Romani, Olga, and what few members of Chaldea's staff who survived the blasts needed to take the time to get everything repaired, and by the sounds of it, while they could call for third party assistance, it would take that third party at least a week to reach Chaldea's location in person, given its remote and isolated coordinates in the middle of the Antarctic shelf. And that's before we talk about how requesting third party support would basically expose the incident to the rest of the magical world. So the fact that I'm hearing Olga yell into my ear about the next Singularity being detected comes as a decent surprise.

"How the hell did you get SHEBA fixed so fast?" I grumble into the phone, having swung my feet out of bed to go get dressed. I swiftly mutter to Tamamo to fix me a quick breakfast as I step past her, and she nods urgently and beckons to Yuuyuu to follow her, and the two Servants hurry downstairs.

"It's not completely fixed yet, but Da Vinci and Romani were able to fix enough of its main components that it can at least start its primary operations again; having SHEBA positioned in between two servers ended up shielding it from a lot of the most damaging blasts too when Lev set his bombs off, so repairs didn't take that long to get it running again."

Frowning again while setting my phone to speaker so I can listen to Olga even while changing clothes, I toss on a red shirt with "HEAVEN OR HELL" etched on the front with black letters and a white hoodie jacket with the kanji "滅" written in red on its back, underneath the hood. A pair of clean jeans goes with it, of course, and I pull on a fresh pair of plain white socks.

"You're telling me Lev didn't think about putting one of his bombs in a better position to hit SHEBA better? That sounds awfully convenient."

"Hey, I'M not the one who had the brilliant idea to set bombs off in this place! Ask him yourself if he ever decides to show his stupid face again at some point!"

As Olga's yelling at me as she usually does, I formulate a hypothesis of my own: perhaps Lev didn't have the luxury of being able to place his bombs wherever he wanted; with Chaldea staff and the Masters running around, I'd imagine it was pretty difficult for him to have even planted those bombs discretely without getting caught in the first place.

"Yeah, don't worry, I plan on having a nice, long chat with him about his transgressions..." Having gotten dressed, I pick the phone back up, turn off speaker, and put the phone back next to my ear as I slide into my office chair to take care of what business emails I can before we need to get going for Chaldea.

"In any case, we've already managed to get LAPLACE and TRISMEGISTUS up and running, so your Rayshift's ready to go as soon as you get here! We'll debrief you once you get here, so get down here ASAP! No more than fifteen minutes!"

"Olga, I just woke up, goddamn it."

"I don't care! You're supposed to be our best freelancer, right? Not getting enough sleep shouldn't be a big deal for someone like you who runs around all night anyway!"

"Look, just because I do that sometimes, doesn't mean I - "

The irritated clattering of the phone on the other end being dropped onto its receiver in the Director's office cuts me short. Goddamn it, Olga.

Setting my phone back down on its own receiver, I browse my emails and answer what I can. I've made it clear to my business partners and clients that there can be periods of time where I won't be able to respond at all due to personal business, and I have business partners in place whom my clients can contact in emergencies concerning their cargo so that my absence isn't as detrimental to their own businesses. Still, that doesn't mean I should regularly practice complacency; I've even juggled calls with clients for my office job while in the middle of a mage contract, though such experiences are never on the pleasant side, as you might imagine.

Within five minutes, the door to the master bedroom swings open again, and in march the two Servants whom I've asked to fix me a quick breakfast.

"Master, please eat up," Tamamo urges me, placing a small bowl next to my arm. I recognize the smell - it's tamago rice, which is a bowl of rice with a raw egg cracked over it, mixed with soy sauce, and sprinkled with seaweed furikake. Nodding my thanks, I take the bowl and immediately start eating.

"If you two need to get anything ready, do it now. Once I'm done with this work, we need to get over to Chaldea again," I inform them quickly.

"We're ready to go at any time, Master. Ready when you are, as they say," Youkihi nods back at me, adding a confident smile to finish her thought. Maybe it's just because I've gotten so used to working and operating alone, but even something as minor as that smile at the end of her thought comes off as quite reassuring.

"Got it, then. Let me just go through these last few emails..."

The normally talkative Servants of mine hold their tongues today, sensing the urgency in both my words and my actions as they watch my hands fly over my keyboard with breakneck speed typing replies to these last few emails in my inbox. Once I've handled all the emails that I can now, I get up with the half-eaten rice and egg bowl to head downstairs, with both Caster and Foreigner in tow; I instruct the two to wait for me in the basement near the teleporter and make a detour to the kitchen while eating the rest of its contents to leave the bowl behind in the sink to be washed later. Once regrouped with my Servants, we take the teleporter one at a time and find ourselves back in the teleportation reception room of Chaldea within fifteen minutes, as per Olga's instructions.

I beckon to my Servants to follow, and we exit the otherwise empty reception lobby to enter the long, winding corridors and make our way to the Rayshifting chamber. The lack of staff causes our brief sojourn to the Rayshifting chamber to be uninterrupted and uneventful, but I pay that no heed until we've reached the chamber itself.

"Finally, there you are! What took you so long!?"

As if I couldn't tell from before from our conversation over the phone ten minutes ago, a clearly irritated Olga-Marie Animusphere stomps over to me from Da Vinci's side as my two Servants and I head into the center of the Rayshifting chamber to join them.

"For your information, you called me at 7:29 AM, my time, and now it's 7:40, so don't you even start giving me shit about how I'm late," I point a firm finger in Olga's direction as we approach one another.

"I don't care! You not being here when I need you to be is irritating enough!" Olga hisses back, turning heel and walking with me towards the center as if she's leading me.

"So? Where we headed?" I ask as we meet up with Da Vinci. "And where's Doc?"

"In the observation room; he's working with Meuniere to maintain our Singularity coordinates," the genius Servant herself says, sipping on a rather large mug of coffee, judging by the smell of coffee about her. Taking one look at her and the growing bags underneath her eyes, I can tell that she's been up for longer hours than she's used to, and while she's certainly no stranger to long working hours, that still doesn't stop me from expressing my concern over it.

"Base repairs got you all working overtime, huh?" I remark to her quietly.

Da Vinci chortles and smirks, lowering her mug of coffee. "Yeah...'overtime' is one way to put it. While I'm most certainly capable of fixing this entire base up all by my lonesome, not being able to call in outside assistance to accelerate the process is admittedly pretty rough, especially with some areas being more damaged than others."

While listening to Da Vinci, I discretely wave down my Servants who are giving Olga-Marie sharp looks of disapproval at the way she's been treating me so far. Now that I recall, they've seen her act irritably and disagreeably like this ever since they were summoned, and after getting to know them for the past few days, I can certainly see why they'd be rather standoffish towards the Director.

"Even so, from what little I've seen, you've managed to patch up the most important stuff; Olga says you even got SHEBA working again to at least start scanning for potential Singularities, which is why I'm here now."

"Thank you, August! Sheesh, at least one soul around these parts who can appreciate all the backbreaking effort I've had to put into this place for the past few days!" Da Vinci cries aloud, putting the back of her free hand not holding her coffee mug up against her forehead. "Not that I particularly need the recognition, but it does feel nice to have that acknowledged!"

"What are you talking about?! I was the one who had to do all the magical reprogramming for LAPLACE and TRISMEGISTUS!" Olga butts in, as indignantly as ever.

"Yes, but last I checked, you weren't the one who had to go around physically repairing all the structures that were damaged," Da Vinci fires back. She isn't the type to verbally retaliate like this; in her normal mood she'd just act out the straight man role and merely point out the absurdity in the comments she'd hear, so for her to do that means that she's put herself through a lot during the past seventy-two hours or so.

I save the Director the embarrassment of having to stand where she is in awkward silence at being unable to respond by chiming in, "So if SHEBA's back online for the most part and we have the coordinates for the next Singularity, why're the two of you down here? Is there something we need to discuss before we go?"

"Yes, actually, a couple of things in fact." Da Vinci first points her slender index finger of her free hand not holding her coffee mug around the Rayshifting chamber, specifically at the damaged Coffins that still stand as grim reminders of Lev's sabotage. "First, while SHEBA may be back online and our Rayshifting capabilities have been restored, we haven't had the time to repair the Coffins yet; the most we've done is remove the bodies of the former Masters and clean them up a bit, but even that's not completely done yet."

"We've tried testing their Rayshifting capabilities, but they're all too damaged to Rayshift properly still," Olga adds, shaking her head. "Which means - "

" - if we're gonna Rayshift, it'll have to be without the Coffins," I conclude, finishing Olga's thought for her.

"Right. We know that it's theoretically possible to Rayshift without a Coffin, but using a Coffin increases the chance of Rayshifting success to the point where the margins of error that can be made in the process are minimized to trivial levels." It's Olga's turn to point, this time up at me. "Because you're just one of our freelancers, you haven't received proper training as one of Chaldea's Masters, which means you'd technically be more at risk here because you can't use a Coffin..."

"But that being said, you are a very talented mage in your own right. Perhaps in unconventional ways according to the rest of the magecraft world, but Chaldea has never been concerned with the issues of magecraft conventions like perhaps the Mages' Association is, or at least not as much," Da Vinci nods.

"So, what, that automatically means that I'll be able to handle Rayshifting without a Coffin just fine?" I smirk back at the two Chaldeans, folding my arms while I do so.

"Well, you know how Rayshifting works already; even if we haven't specifically trained you as one of our primary Masters, Olga trusted you enough to have given you the same training material that we gave our primary Masters so that in case of an emergency, you could act as a backup Master if we so needed, which is pretty good for someone who's only meant to be one of our freelancers, if I might say so myself."

"Master, the Director intended for you to be one of the Masters?" Yuuyuu blurts out in surprise, but I shake my head quickly.

"Like Da Vinci said, at most only as a backup. So in case one of the primary Masters needed to sit a Singularity out or something and they felt like they needed someone to replace him, that would've been one of my responsibilities. I was never intended to be in this kind of a situation where I have to be the only Master going into Singularities to resolve them." I turn to Olga now. "And speaking of trust, this probably isn't my place to say this, but just for your own safety, Olga, try to refrain from trusting outsiders like me like this to the point where you'd let me learn all about Rayshifting. If someone like Lev's able to turn heel and blast this place, there's no telling what a freelancer like me who decides to go rogue will do."

Predictably, the Director pivots on her heel to turn away from me. I can't see her face like that, but I do manage to capture a glimpse of her face as she's turning, and she doesn't look happy, needless to say. The fact that she's not even bothering to snap back at me with some kind of comeback is proof enough of her anger.

"Let's just say that it was a risk that Olga took and it paid off and leave it at that," Da Vinci says quickly, mediating this newborn conflict between me and the Director. "Because now, at least we have a way, as questionable and haphazard as it is, to continue our mission. It's not like anyone's out here to critique our methods of completing our objectives, now, is there?"

"Careful, don't jinx us now..."

"Oh, don't you worry about me. And besides, we all know that Roman's the King of Jinxers around these parts..."

"Hey, I heard that!" Dr. Roman's voice blares over the intercom from the observation room behind and above us, and both Da Vinci and I break out in laughter, though we're the only ones to do so because Olga's not in the mood and Tamamo and Yuuyuu aren't privy to the inside jokes that we have going on here in Chaldea. "And we're good to go here, or as good as we can get in our current situation."

"Understood; I'll give them a quick debriefing and we'll be all set."

As Doc and Da Vinci are talking, the door to the Rayshifting chamber slides open again, and I turn around to see Mash, already in her combat suit and shield, hurrying to rendezvous with us here.

"I'm sorry for my lateness! I didn't know Mr. Il would be here so soon!" she apologizes profusely, stopping before me and bowing her head repeatedly.

"That's fine; Olga called me in, and so I came early because she'd get pissed off at me if I'm any less than two minutes early," I reply dryly. "And you can just call me August, it's going to be a mouthful saying 'Mr. Il' when we're on task. I take it that the four of us are all Rayshifting?"

I point around at myself, my two Servants, and Mash.

"Yes, that's correct. Under the Director's orders, I am to assist you going forward in resolving future Singularities," Mash nods firmly. "I'll be in your care, Senpai."

I grin a little at being called "Senpai". I just a find it a little funny that someone who's been at Chaldea longer than I have is calling me that...but that's probably not something I should say out loud.

Seeing that the gang's all here, Da Vinci turns back to me from the observation room above us and clears her throat.

"Before I give you the actual debriefing regarding your current mission, August, there is something that we should mention first, something that precedes our entire mission of resolving Singularities that we detect," she says. Her voice changes appropriately to assume a tone of straight seriousness, devoid of the self-flair and genius talk that she likes to pepper her speech with, so her words are worth paying attention to now. "Director, would you like to explain?"

Still in the foul mood that I put her in, Olga does reluctantly turn to face me and the rest of the crew, though understandably she still has a nasty look in her eyes.

"The day you summoned Caster and Foreigner here, after you left, we discovered that SHEBA observed the disappearance of the future of humanity," she announces rather bitterly.

"Disappearance of the future of humanity...?" I repeat after her slowly, piecing the meaning of the words together, but Tamamo is faster on the uptake and pipes up,

"As in - humanity went extinct?"

"Not just extinct; it's been eradicated. Or rather, the more proper term would be incinerated," Olga specifies. "The day of Lev's sabotage, when the blasts went off at the same time as the Rayshifting process, my consciousness ended up getting Rayshifted to Singularity F due to TRISMEGISTUS's interference. Mash and Master #48, her name was Ritsuka Fujimaru, I think, Rayshifted there too in an effort to keep the mission going despite the sabotage. Long story short, we encountered Lev there in that Singularity, as you know..."

She lets a brief pause interrupt her, and I hear Mash squeezing the handlebars of her cross-shield next to me a bit more tightly, but she continues on nonetheless.

"He said that humanity's fate is already sealed, that humanity is already dead and gone; like I said, incinerated. When he showed us what CHALDEAS looked like, it was bright red - meaning that the world was engulfed in flames. It's never supposed to look like that."

"But CHALDEAS as it is now is back to normal. As a matter of fact, on our records, CHALDEAS never entered that state at all to begin with," Da Vinci adds with a curious tone. "So either Lev deliberately showed the Director and Mash a form of CHALDEAS that was somehow fabricated with illusion magic simply as an intimidation tactic, or CHALDEAS really did assume that form according to his perspective. Because we'd rather go by our own records and not off some traitor's allegations, for now we're writing this off as some kind of backhanded intimidation attempt to scare Chaldea into not doing anything, but obviously that's not what our mission entails. But looking over our Rayshift records and watching Lev's little rant towards the end, I get the feeling he wasn't just trying to bluff."

Listening carefully to both Da Vinci's and the Director's testimonies, I deliberate slowly back to them.

"So if I'm getting this straight...basically, the world's supposed to be destroyed, but for some reason it's not?"

"Essentially, yes. Chaldea has a special magnetic field that's protecting it from magical interference, so we wouldn't have had the same fate as the rest of the world if it really had burned down, but if what Lev is saying is true, then there may be a potential third party involved here with this...'Incineration of Humanity' that isn't accounted for. If it had just been Lev claiming responsibility for this, then it'd be easy to know what to do. But because there's a clear discrepancy in his claim and what's actually going on, there's someone - or something - who isn't accounted for, like I said. The fact that you and your Servants were able to teleport back home and then come back is proof enough of that."

"But then I'd have to bring up the issue of the credibility of Lev's claims," I interject. "How much do you guys think he's telling the truth? Because for all I know, he's a goddamn terrorist who sabotaged one of my places of employment and injured and killed my coworkers, and even if I didn't know many of them all that well, I'm still not going to take kindly to that. So naturally, I've got no reason to believe what garbage comes out of his mouth. Granted, you two knew him better than I do, so what's the take here?"

"Lev was one of Chaldea's longest working staff members, having joined back since 1999. He was the one who invented SHEBA that year and assisted in the subsequent inventions of other structures we have here, so he's been part of Chaldea's core staff for a very long time. In fact, he'd been around for the entirety of the Director's tenure here, and she relied on him quite heavily in the beginning for her duties as Director while she was still learning the ropes," Da Vinci explains, glancing over at Olga in the middle of her explanation, whose eyes are fixed down at the floor at her feet.

So that's another reason why Olga's been taking this situation as badly as she's been.

"So for him to have gone off like this means that he had a solid reason to do so; it would take as much for someone like him who'd been working here for almost two decades to betray that same organization in this manner," Da Vinci continues grimly. "That's why we're choosing to give him the benefit of the doubt that there's at least some truth behind his allegations, that humanity really did get incinerated from his perspective, or from the perspective of whoever he's working for...whatever 'King' he was referring to."

Recovering from her brief slump, Olga snaps her gaze back up at me. "And so because of that discrepancy, we expect Lev to come back again at some point somewhere; he's sure to find out that his plan to destroy humanity failed somehow, and he'll show up again either trying to figure out why his plan failed or focus on making sure his plan succeeds this time around, or maybe even both."

I frown a little but make sure it looks like it's not anything worth nothing. I figure that they would've alerted me to something as important as this a bit sooner, rather than telling me about it minutes before we get our asses Rayshifted, but I'll keep this to myself for now; nodding in confirmation, I briefly readjust the snapback cap on my head.

"I'll brace for him trying to do both. So I assume that not only am I gonna have to resolve these Singularities, but I'll also have to dig around for clues that might explain why Lev's plan of incinerating humanity didn't work in the process?"

"That's correct. Now that we had a rat bastard like Lev go turncoat on us like this, I'm not leaving anything to chance," Olga snarls quite aggressively, which, while it frightens Mash a bit next to me because the Director never shows anger quite as raw as this, makes me smile a little bit with content. The Director needs to show more emotion like this, not necessarily to scare her own staff, but to demonstrate to herself that she does have what it takes, mentally and emotionally, to be the Director of Chaldea. "Failure will not be tolerated. Am I clear, August?"

"Not always, but today you are." Grinning while tugging on the edges of my black fingerless gloves, I brace for the expected cry of anger from the Director, but to my silent surprise, Olga doesn't give me the usual treatment.

"Then let's finally debrief you on your current mission, shall we? Roman, take it away ~ " Da Vinci calls up to the observation room while draining the rest of the coffee in her mug.

"Meuniere, make sure my phone doesn't go screen-saver mode, I can't miss Magi Mari's new counseling session today - anyways, sorry, sorry, I'm here, yes, right, the debriefing - "

"Dr. Roman's obsession with digital magical girls continues as strongly as ever, huh...?" Mash remarks offhandedly, causing the Chaldeans and I to chuckle with varying degrees of amusement, or in Olga's case, extended irritation. I can hear Roman clearing his throat over the intercom.

"So, your first objective, the investigation and correction of the Singularities. I'm sure you already know about this in some form, whether it's reading the material that Olga gave you or because Olga informed you directly, but Singularities are critical points in human history that have allowed humanity to progress as far as we have. Without those pivotal moments in history, the world wouldn't be as we know it today. Rather, Singularities are the name we've given those eras of human history that have developed problems that threaten to prevent those pivotal events in history from happening or at least knock human history off-course. Your task is to Rayshift to those eras, investigate the cause of those Singularities, the problems that've created those Singularities, and rectify them."

"Hold on a minute. If human history isn't actually incinerated, then how do we know that these Singularities are even going to affect anything at all?" I question while taking a look around at the Chaldean staff around me.

"That's the tricky part that we don't know about and the other half of the reason why we're still giving Lev the benefit of the doubt. SHEBA has detected the presence of this second Singularity, which means that there's something going on there that threatens to divert the course of human history anyway, and that much we can't deny. It could be that Lev, like Olga said, has realized that his plan to destroy humanity didn't work and so is working on making sure his plan succeeds this time around. This is just my own speculation as well, but maybe Lev's plan just didn't happen to work the first time, but it will soon if we don't do anything about it. Just the fact that a Singularity is on our radar potentially means that the next time you teleport home, you won't have a home to go back to."

"D-Destroying Master's home..." I hear Yuuyuu mumble angrily over my shoulder. "...Yuuyuu...won't forgive that...!"

"And in accordance with the Director's new objectives for you, you're also to conduct investigations that may explain why Lev's original plan to destroy humanity have failed for whatever reason, in the possibility that there might be an unknown third party involved in the so-called Incineration of Humanity," Roman tacks on. "Your second objective is to investigate the Holy Grail - we have reason to believe that these Singularities are caused by Holy Grails, because they're relics that have incredible amounts of magical energy and all that, you already know about them. Mash and Olga confirmed the presence of a Holy Grail in Singularity F, which then confirms that Lev is using these Grails and misusing their powers to change the course of human history, let alone destroy it. I mean, Grails are literally the only things that can let him do something like that in the first place. So while you resolve these Singularities, you've got to either secure the Holy Grails or destroy them."

"Isn't there only supposed to be one Holy Grail at a time per Holy Grail War? Why Grails, plural?" I ask again.

"This is no ordinary Holy Grail War, August, I'm sure we've told you this before. You can hardly even call this situation we've got on our hands now a Holy Grail War in its conventional sense; the only thing that makes this a Holy Grail War at all is the fact that there's a Master, Servants, and Grails involved," Da Vinci says while hitting me with a wide shrug.

"And besides, you're the one who went against protocol and summoned two Servants at once. If a Master can be contracted to two Servants at the same time, then it shouldn't be that much of a stretch to believe that there are also multiple Grails at work. So aren't you pretty much answering your own question here?" Olga scowls deeply at me.

"Uh, yeah, thanks to a certain Director blastin' off a Gandr shot at me," I hiss back, fighting fire with fire. Admittedly it's one of the better ways to deal with Olga's disagreeable personality at times.

Da Vinci sighs, clearing her own throat loudly again; she's definitely not quite in the mood to deal with the two of us young'uns going at each other like we usually do.

"So the fact that there're multiple Grails at work is honestly not a big concern on its own; if anything, that's good for us because we know what the sources of these Singularities are going to be, so it makes tackling the Singularities as a whole a lot easier to approach if we have one objective that's constant among all of them."

Folding my arms, I recount my stated objectives aloud. "So I have three objectives: investigate the cause of the Singularity and resolve it, secure the Grail powering the Singularity, and look for clues that'll explain why Lev's initial plan to incinerate humanity failed, or so we think."

"Yep, you got it," Roman calls down from the observation room in confirmation. "Just keep in mind, though, the whole investigating why Lev's plan failed can change on the fly depending on what you discover, but you could probably figure that one out on your own."

"Then why did you bother saying it?"

"Oh, you know Roman, he loves saying things you already know," Da Vinci shrugs again with a candid smirk of her own. "You know how much I have to deal with that, you've been around the block for long enough."

"It's a habit, alright!? Training the other staff is bad enough as is!"

"Training the other staff...? I thought the Doctor was, uh, well, just a Doctor in charge of Chaldea's medical examinations and the like..." Mash wonders aloud.

"Ahaha...well, he's also been part of Chaldea's core staff for a while now too. He usually just sits in his office all day on his phone with his precious magical girl idols or whatever the heck they are, so no one except for the old-timers know about that," Da Vinci chuckles.

"Ohhh, I see...so that's why he's been able to assist in much of the operations lately following the sabotage..." Mash frowns a little. "I was wondering how he already knew how to manage the observation room like he'd done so in the past..."

"I've made sure to hire the best of the best for our staff. I'm well aware of my reputation among our staff, at least before the sabotage, but if there's one thing I really take pride in, it's my ability to find people who're more than qualified for the jobs here. That means I make sure that everyone we hire is able to perform multiple roles in the case of operational emergencies," Olga declares. The way she says this makes her sound like she's low-key boasting, which is pretty rich coming from someone who can't even Rayshift under normal conditions - but again, I keep that comment to myself.

"Yaaaay, the Director praised me...I'll have to go tell Magi Mari about this later tonight..."

"You mention that stupid name around me again, and I'm going to confiscate your phone and dock you three months' pay, goddamn it!" Olga barks back at Roman, who yelps over the intercom.

"Ayeeee - ! R-Roger that, Director! Anything but her! A-Anyways - last thing, I swear, August! Once you Rayshift into the Singularity, I'll need you to find a leyline and make a summoning circle; Mash and Olga did this back in Singularity F, so that's why we're also assigning Mash to you because she can set the summoning circle with her shield, as you saw her do for FATE, when you summoned your Servants. You can then use that summoning circle to summon additional Servants, but you probably don't need to do that between the two Servants you already summoned who're both ridiculously powerful anyway and your own skills, but it's still there as an option in case you feel the need to call in more support on scene. We'll also be using that summoning circle to transport supplies, since we don't anticipate these Singularity investigations to be resolved in just a day."

"I'll handle that responsibility and remind you of it when we're in the Singularity, Senpai," Mash offers, and I nod back.

"The three of us are ready to go now, and I assume Mash is too, unless there's any more exposition we need to get out of the way before we go."

"You've read the manual on Rayshifting that I gave you before you left, right?" Olga double-checks as Da Vinci bids me good luck with the mission and leaves the chamber to go join Roman and Meuniere in the obs room.

"I did, yeah. What about Caster and Foreigner? Will they be alright?" I point my thumb over my shoulders at my two Servants, who each take a step forward upon being called.

"They should be, yes; the bigger concern is you, because it's much more difficult maintaining your presence when you Rayshift because you're a physical, living entity that we're displacing while Servants are ultimately just magical energy at the end of the day. Don't take this the wrong way, August, because I know you're the type of guy who would, but it doesn't matter what happens to them; if something goes wrong with their Rayshifts, you can always just summon more Servants using Mash's summoning circle like Roman said."

I raise my eye back at her.

"I don't really care about the whole Servant Expendable part, but if that's the case, why did you even bother having me summon Servants like that if I was supposed to just summon them on site?"

"Didn't I already explain why?"

"No, that's why I'm asking because this got brought up."

"Ugh..." Olga-Marie rolls her eyes, and I can hear her foot tapping with impatience below us. "I had you summon those two because you've never summoned Servants of your own, so that way, you'd get used to the feeling of having Servants under your control for the purpose of your mission here."

"But I don't recall the other primary Masters doing that themselves."

"Look, you ask way too many damn questions. And of course we didn't have them summon Servants pre-emptively like you did, that'd mean there'd be forty-eight Servants running around in Chaldea all at once! We meant Singularity F to be their training grounds of sorts - or rather, their proving grounds. But now that you're our only Master, we can give you special privileges like letting you have your own personal Servants who'll stay with you even between Singularities."

"Special privileges, huh? Thanks for them, I guess."

"I never asked for your thanks, just do your job like we want you to."

The four of us remaining in the chamber watch the Director swiftly exit the chamber.

"Geez, what's with that Director bitch? First she calls us expendable, and then she treats you like this?" Tamamo snarls after her quietly, and I can hear her teeth scraping against each other behind my shoulder. "The nerve on her...!"

"Calm down, Miss Tamamo, I'm sure she's just having a bad day..." Yuuyuu, being the kind girl that she is, quickly turns to her co-Servant, trying to get her to calm down, and I also turn to assist her.

"Yeah, leave her be. She's young, only a few years younger than me, and she basically got her job as Director thrust on her when her dad died suddenly. And lots of things happened in the last three days, so it's just natural that she acts like that. If nothing else, I'm pretty used to her giving me shit all the time. Other than that, everyone ready?"

Tamamo, Yuuyuu, and Mash all nod firmly, and Mash directs us to the designated Rayshift area that they've prepped before our arrival that we'll use in the absence of Coffins. Drawing from what I know of the Rayshifting process, I cast a Spiritron reinforcement spell at our feet to facilitate the Spiritron Conversion process. Functionally, it'll act like one big Coffin for the four of us, though it obviously won't be as effective as an actual Coffin.

"Alrighty, Rayshifting sequence booted up. We'll see you on the other side, everyone!" Da Vinci calls over the intercom once the Director joins them in the obs room.

A French-accented voice then comes over the intercom; Meuniere's voice.

"Unsummon Program start. Spiritron Conversion commencing. Rayshift starting in three, two, one..."

A large blue rune flashes beneath our feet, with rays of light beginning to beam up into the air of the chamber past us.

"All procedures cleared. Grand Order commencing operation! Good luck, everyone!"

A/N

Imagine rebooting a story, working on it for two weeks, and then not updating it for another month. So much for trying not to go radio silent again after the first time. KEKW