Disclaimer: I do not own the Fate franchise it belongs to Kinoko Nasu and Type-Moon.
This Cannot End Well
Chapter 11
Luvia stared at her counterpart, lying sedated on a hospital bed hooked up to various life support machines and medical monitors. IVs trailed down from hanging bags of fluid, feeding multicolored liquid directly into the other Luvia's blood vessels. But that wasn't the surreal, disturbing part, not even close.
No less than twelve bounded fields separated the two iterations of the same person away from each other. Half of those bounded fields would instantly kill anyone or anything unauthorized trying to pass in either direction, each in a different if unimaginative way: burning, disintegration, flash-freezing, desiccation, irradiation, and even annihilation. Meanwhile, the other half of the bounded fields practically turned the room that the other Luvia lay in into a pocket space that was practically disconnected, a world of its own, even, from the rest of the building they were in. And that didn't factor in the walls of reinforced concrete, lined with lead on both sides, or the bulletproof lead glass through which Luvia was looking into the room. The door and its frame were encased in steel, while spells waited to literally fuse the door and its frame into the wall to form a single, solid, and seamless barrier.
But no, that wasn't the surreal and disturbing part either.
The surreal and disturbing part was how…similar, the other Luvia looked like her. They could use each other for mirrors, at how identical they were, right down to the cheekbones. Even her genes told the same story, how the woman on the other side of the glass was Luvia. The same mutations, the same markers in the exact same places, everything in her body that Luvia had inherited from her ancestors, the other Luvia had them all.
And there the similarities ended, and not simply because of the other Luvia's unnatural violet hair and irises. The genes too had been altered, impossibly enough marking the other Luvia as an Edelfelt and a Matou both. Somehow, the other woman had retained her Edelfelt ancestry, even as a set of mutations distinct to her and not shared with Luvia marked her as a Matou. Close enough that without knowing what to look for, others might think she was born one, only she wasn't.
And it wasn't hard to figure out how they did that, or rather, the form of the means thereof, if not its essence.
"There are worms all over the patient's internals." The doctor said, bringing up a holographic cutaway of the other Luvia, red markers glowing and diagrams flashing across the hologram. "They're swimming or crawling through her blood vessels and lymphatic system, latched onto her organs, and fused into her bones and nerves. One especially long worm has wound itself around her brain with tendrils reaching into its mass."
"How did they get in?" Luvia asked, already knowing but needing to confirm it.
The doctor looked very sick. "From files provided on Matou mysteries," he said. "As well as analysis of…um, the patient's own high-speed regeneration during our initial attempts at diagnosis and surgery…there are various ways they could have entered her body. Through the mouth, through the…ah, lower abdominal orifices, while the smaller worms could have entered through her ear canals and nostrils. And from what we've seen of the worms, they could also have simply…chewed their way through, into the patient's body."
Luvia didn't reply. Instead, she touched the hologram, pressing icons and bringing up points of interest. First, the other Luvia's brain, with the worm wound around it, then her womb, with several worms nestled therein in some bizarre and twisted parody of a child in its mother's womb. And finally, the other Luvia's magic circuits, they were…
…Luvia didn't know how to describe them, they were there but…unrecognizable, while the crest was just…gone.
But of course: the worms were the other Luvia's crest now.
"Can you get them out?" she asked.
"We'll do what we can." The doctor said before giving a small smile. "If nothing else, the patient offers an opportunity to push the limits of our abilities and resources, as well to learn about…"
The doctor abruptly cut off as Luvia grabbed him by the throat, and slammed him hard against the glass. The bounded fields flashed in warning, but Luvia ignored them, and raising her free hand, pressed down on the air, slamming everyone else in the room and surrounding hallways against the ground, crushed by gravity suddenly twice as strong.
"Watch your tongue." Luvia said, her voice terrifyingly calm, even as blue lines glowed over her face from her magic circuits. "Or I'll cut it out for you. Focus on your job. Do I make myself clear?"
Unable to speak, the doctor simply frantically nodded, before Luvia released him and everyone else. Ignoring their gasping and coughing, Luvia turned back to her other self, and crossing her arms over her chest.
Rin, Sakura, and Tom stood against the wall next to a pair of double doors. The Tohsaka sisters looked calm and composed, like convicts resigned to their deaths, or soldiers prepared to meet their end with dignity.
In contrast, Tom looked bored, smoking a cigarette and occasionally puffing out blue clouds of smoke.
There were raised voices through the door, muffled through the thick wood and the stone around, followed by loud crashing noises. Then silence, before the doors opened and a terrified-looking Flat emerged.
"The board will see you now." He squeaked out.
Rin and Sakura looked at each other, while Tom regretfully put out his unfinished cigarette in a pocket ashtray. The three of them filed into the room, largely empty but for the lords gathered on the far side.
Along one wall, there was Zelretch, looking completely unconcerned. Next to him, there was Lord Valueleta, along with Lords Olga Marie Animusphere, Reines El-Melloi Archisorte, and Waver Beckenstein-Velvet, all of whom looked angry but satisfied.
Along the opposite wall, there were several other lords, looking furious but cowed. And it wasn't hard to see why.
There, standing between them and behind a table bashed into two, was the Vice Director of the Mages Association, Lorelei Barthomeloi, Commander of the Chelon Canticle Brigade, and Lord of the College of Law.
The Supreme Magus of the Modern Era, a magus who stood infinitely close to a magician, and the only one who could be called a peer to the Lord of the First Magic.
"First question," Lorelei firmly said, eyes hard and expectant, but otherwise unreadable. "Can you handle the situation in the other timeline?"
"Yes." The three of them chorused, before looking at each other curiously.
"One at a time." Lorelei laconically said before narrowing her eyes at Rin. "Your reasoning?"
"I've done it before," Rin said in a matter-of-fact way. "And when I only had an improvised form of magical training, no thanks to my late father and his worthless apprentice's bumbling and deliberate sabotage. Now, though, I have my faculties in order."
"I see." Lorelei said before turning to Sakura. "And you?"
"Anything my sister can do, I can do just as well." Sakura replied.
"Indeed." Lorelei said, briefly looking amused before turning to Tom. "And you?"
"Enforcer, ma'am." Tom said. "Do or die, that's how the College of Law does things."
"Indeed." Lorelei said again, while also – again – looking amused at her subordinate from another timeline. "Very well, your orders: destroy everything. Leave nothing standing."
The Queen of the Clock Tower paused and nodded. "Do so," she continued. "And all will be forgiven."
Several of the other lords looked mutinous, but Lorelei's eyes briefly flickered in their direction, and they quickly backed down. "One more thing." She said, as an aide approached with a silver tray, several folded pages of parchment sitting on a gold-edged plate. "Letters of Marque, signed by myself and Wizard Marshal Kaleidoscope, granting a blanket mandate to resolve this issue by any means necessary. That said, do be discreet, Enforcer Sawyer, Murderer Blue, and Jeweled Sword Blue."
"It will be done, my lady." Tom said with a bow, the Tohsaka sisters bowing next to him.
Lorelei gestured, and the aide offered the Letters of Marque to the three soon-to-be trans-dimensional travelers. Each of them took a letter each, and briefly looked them over. Lorelei gave them a few moments, and then gestured dismissively, leading Zelretch to step forward.
"I will open the portal in an hour." He said. "Take the time to prepare, because there's no going back unless you succeed."
Sakura pressed her hand against the lock, and spoke the password even as a hidden mechanism drove a metal spike into her hand. "The tree that would grow to Heaven must send its roots to Hell." She said, quoting Friedrich Nietzsche, the password neutralizing the poison that impregnated the spike, and reversing the latter. The chains binding the case loosened, and Sakura ran her hand over a bladed attachment on the case's own lock.
"To live is to suffer," she again quoted Nietzsche. "To survive is to find some meaning in life's suffering."
Sakura's blood hissed as it boiled away, the iron therein forming the key to unlock the case. Then she opened the case, exposing ten lead vials filled with a black, mud-like substance drawn from the one-time Grail of Fuyuki City.
The condensed essence of Angra Mainyu, All the World's Evil.
One by one, each vial was carefully removed and placed inside Imaginary Numbers Space. "You're really going to use that then." Little Rin asked, floating over to hover next to Sakura.
"Don't tell me you're not looking forward to seeing me use it." Sakura replied with a cheeky grin.
Little Rin grinned back. "Well…" she said, and the sisters laughed.
"The most important question isn't whether I should use itor not," Sakura said. "But rather, where do I aim it to cause the most damage?"
"Ruby?"
"…that sounds just about right." Sakura said after a moment. "I'm going to need a map of that Fuyuki, to find a good spot on high ground to fire itoff."
"It's going to be very big and flashy!" Little Rin said, flying around the workshop.
"You say that as though it's a bad thing." Sakura said accusingly, and causing her sister to giggle.
"If it isn't flashy, then it isn't magic!" she cheerfully quoted Marisa Kirisame. "Danmaku's all about firepower!"
"Danmaku, eh?" Sakura said, before pointing her finger at a tattered collage of pictures that include Tokiomi Tohsaka, Aoi Tohsaka, Kirei Kotomine, Shinji Matou, Caules Forvedge, and Cecilia Icecolle-Forvedge, among others. Then she fired off a volley of Gandr rounds, and battering the collage even further. "Could be better, but good enough, I guess."
Turning to her sister, Sakura tilted her head. "Shall we go?" she asked. "Rin and Tom are waiting, and I'd hate to make them wait."
"Okay!" Little Rin said before fading into astral form, settling into place around Sakura as the latter left her workshop.
Zelretch eyed the soon-to-be trans-dimensional travelers (at least in Sakura's case, considering Rin and Tom were already trans-dimensional travelers). Rin and Sakura looked pretty much the same as ever, while Tom was…
"Okay, who do you think you are, Rambo?" Zelretch asked.
"You got a problem with Rambo, sir?" Tom asked back, and he really did look like Rambo. He wore a bulletproof vest over a sleeveless shirt, exposing muscular arms and a chiseled torso. There was even a tattooed Stars and Stripes on his right upper arm. His shirt was in dark grey, while both his vest and pants had the mottled grey and black patterns of urban camouflage.
His plasma gatling gun was holstered on his back, while plasma pistols were holstered at his waist. He also had grenades, steel wire, and even a twelve-inch knife. Rin and Sakura bet there was even more…
…stuff, in the pockets of his vest.
"Americans…" Zelretch muttered with a roll of his eyes.
"Hold that thought." Tom said, before pulling out a vial of black fluid. Dabbing his fingers in it, he used it to paint a pair of lines under his eyes, before tying a bandana around his forehead. "Right, now I'm sure I haven't forgotten anything else important."
"…you all know what to do." Zelretch said, pulling up a holographic map of Fuyuki City. "To end Matou's threat and save Tom's timeline from getting pruned, you must destroy the…Matou Hub, for lack of a better way to call it, here."
"That's Mount Enzo." Rin said at once. "Bastards…they hooked Ruby up to the Greater Grail, didn't they?"
"…I am uncertain, but it is a possibility." Zelretch said with a nod.
"That's fine." Sakura said with a nod of her own. "The Zarathustra Cannon's theoretically rated to have firepower comparable to an A-Rank Anti-Fortress Noble Phantasm. And before you say anything, remember that Zarathustra is powered by the condensed remains of a Divine Spirit, so I'm confident in my calculations and predictions. Whether the Matou Hub is at Ryuudo Temple on top of the mountain, or in the Grail Chamber under it, if need be, I'll just blow the mountain away."
Rin pinched her nose at the reminder of Sakura's experiments with Grail mud, but Tom and Zelretch just took it in stride. "At present, Fuyuki's fractured into fourteen different temporal zones." The latter said. "There's a safe zone, here, which is where I'll be sending you. Contacts of mine are there, though they're not natives."
"Why, though?" Rin asked.
"The temporal zones shift at random intervals, so unfortunately, you'll have to fight or figure your way through the zones." Zelretch said. "Well, in Sakura's case, it's easy enough. Get to the highest point in the city, and just nuke Mount Enzo. Rin and Tom, you'll need to find the local version of, well, Rin, and Shirou Emiya."
"I'm punching them both in the face." Rin said without preamble, and causing Zelretch to palm his face while Tom and Sakura snickered. "I mean, how incompetent can you get, letting things get this bad? Wait, no, from what Tom's told me, I know how. That moron Shirou's too busy playing at being Superman, while my counterpart's being just as much of a moron to reign him in. If anything, I'd bet a thousand pounds that she's actually enabling him."
"To say nothing of letting their kid almost get kidnapped." Sakura added in a sing-song voice.
"Shirou's going to get a kick in the balls." Rin hissed, and Zelretch again palmed his face while Tom gave a long whistle.
"Anyway," Zelretch said while giving his apprentice the stink eye. "My contacts have already secured the safe zone, making it a logical place for you to setup a base camp. Fortunately, the fracturing of the local space-time continuum can be used to our, well, your advantage."
"In what way?" Rin asked.
"Ever played video games?"
"No."
"Yes."
"Yes."
Rin closed her eyes and looked down with a sigh, while Tom and Sakura shrugged. "Don't you save every once in a while?" Zelretch asked, and the two gamers among the three's eyes widened.
"Well, now that's handy." Tom said.
"Could be useful, in case things get too…heated." Sakura said. "Then again, it's no reason to get careless."
"Quite," Zelretch said with a nod. "Just to clarify, it won't save you if you get killed, but in case you get too badly injured, you can conduct an emergency teleportation to get you back to base camp to patch and freshen up."
"Still useful." Tom said.
"Agreed." Rin said.
"Now then," Zelretch said, picking up a nearby case, and opening it to expose several metallic armbands inside. "Take one each, and place it on your arm. Make sure it's nice and tight, then send some prana into them."
The three of them did as asked, before looking expectantly at Zelretch as the armbands beeped and gems flashed. "That should protect you from any chronometric side-effects as you travel between the temporal zones, while masking you from any chronophages drawn by what's happening in that timeline."
"Chronophages?" Rin echoed, and Zelretch hissed as he realized he'd let slip something he shouldn't have.
"Actually apply yourself as my apprentice, and I'll tell you more." He said before sternly turning to Sakura and Tom. "As for you two, you didn't hear anything, and I didn't say anything either. Trust me, it's more trouble than it's worth."
"…I'll take your word for it, sir." Tom said, and Sakura nodded.
"Likewise." She said.
"Once you're at the base camp," Zelretch continued. "My contact will synchronize those armbands with a temporospatial array I provided, allowing for the emergency teleportation I mentioned earlier."
Sakura's eyes lit up. "Will it now?" she asked with a grin.
Zelretch rolled his eyes. "By all means, look it over." He said. "I'd be very impressed if you managed to figure it out, seeing as your problem is energy supply, and not the actual teleportation process itself. Or am I wrong?"
"Eh, just being able to streamline energy consumption will be a huge boon." Sakura pointed out.
Zelretch clicked his tongue, and ran a hand through his hair. "Any questions?" he asked.
"Do we have a time limit on this?" Tom asked.
"Yes and no." Zelretch said. "Time is relative, after all, so in theory, you could always retreat here if need be. Except I'm closing the portal once you pass through, so you'll have as long as it takes before the Counter Force prunes the timeline."
"Well, that's reassuring…"
"Look on the bright side, it'll be painless."
"…like I said, reassuring."
Zelretch coughed, and then pulling out his – the original – Jeweled Sword, used it like a key to open a portal. Rin narrowed her eyes at the sight, her genius intellect already coming up with ideas and connecting the dots, nor was she the only one. Next to her, Sakura was doing likewise, her equally-genius intellect spinning the wheels in her head.
"If there's nothing more, then you may proceed."
Thunder boomed in the distance, as energy beams displaced the surrounding air. Tom immediately unholstered his plasma gatling gun, and opened up at a group of mutants boiling out of a shimmering wall of light in the distance, before switching modes and firing off tank round-sized bolts of plasma that simply vaporized pig-men one after the other.
Sakura had already teleported into the melee, beam sabers cutting down mutants left and right as she fought alongside white-uniformed homunculi carrying massive halberds. Then with a gurgle, a giant blob of flesh with random eyes and limbs poking out of its mass pushed through out of the nearest temporal zone.
It engulfed two of the homunculi, the women's screams cut off by all the flesh around them, followed by the faint sound of breaking bones. Sakura and the halberdiers fell back, while other homunculi formed up a firing line, hands extended.
Spells were spoken and beams of light carved into the blob, which screamed in pain before surging forward.
"SAKURA!" Rin shouted as she leapt high into air, folding her legs inward as she curled and then uncurled. "FOLLOW-THROUGH!"
"Hadron Formation," Sakura began, charging up a quantum singularity, while Rin bit down on a gemstone.
Then she landed on the blob, electricity exploding around her and letting her simply blow all the flesh around her away. Amazingly, it still lived, flowing back together around a now-exposed core that looked like some sort of malformed fetus.
"Erebus and Nyx." Sakura finished, opening up the event horizon next to the fetus. It didn't have time to scream as it and its body were sucked in, before the quantum singularity imploded. Mutants screamed at the sight, howling at Rin and Sakura, who looked at each other and shrugged before charging ahead.
All around them, the battle continued, white-uniformed homunculi fighting with halberds and spells, supported by golems of varying sizes. The ground was slick with blood and corpses, the homunculi more than a match for the mutants pouring out of the temporal zones. But there were more mutants than homunculi, and they should have overwhelmed the safe zone already…
…but for a crippled young woman piloting a mechanical war machine bristling with particle cannons, in addition to drones also armed with particle cannons. Sakura glanced in her direction once, gasped, and then teleported over.
"Fiore…?" She gasped, reappearing next to the girl and hovering in the air. "How…?"
"…you must be Murderer Blue." Fiore said after a moment, a moment spent vaporizing a group of pig-men along with dozens of mutants with a single volley. "It's nice to meet you, but maybe we can talk later?"
"…fair." Sakura said. "Hadron Formation: Erebus and Nyx – Cosmic Waltz!"
Multiple singularities opened up and swallowed up pig-men and mutants by the hundred. Then she almost fell out of the air, as a very familiar voice spoke over loudspeakers across the safe zone.
"Temporal shift imminent…standby…standby…standby…"
Then in an instant, the walls of light flashed bright and then to nothing, cutting off the Matou monsters from further reinforcements, allowing the homunculi to finish off those left behind. "Containment teams to the front line." The orders came over the loudspeakers. "All combat units on duty withdraw for resupply and medical attention. Combat units on standby, secure forward positions. I repeat…"
Sakura glanced once at Fiore, then biting her lip, teleported to the command tent on top of the nearby hill. More homunculi were there, and they pointed their weapons at Sakura at her arrival, only to be waved down by a boy wearing a white and gold uniform over black shorts.
Sakura, though, had eyes only for the spectacled young man in a similar uniform.
"…Caules." She said softly in recognition.
"Um…yeah…" Caules Forvedge Yggdmillennia chuckled nervously. "…um…I've read the data about the…other me…I'm sorry…?"
A/N
When Flat gets afraid, be afraid.
In all honesty, I'm not really sure when Tom turned into a loveable parody (?) of American action heroes. Then again, he was always an affectionate reference to an American classic character, so I don't think it's that much of a stretch.
Chronophage, literally time-eater in Greek. Not canon, but something I came up with that seems strangely plausible with all the strange stuff that FGO regularly adds to the setting these days. Basically, a predator or parasite in the space-time continuum, which Zelretch has to regularly deal with. Anything more than that…I haven't figured it out yet, lol (in-universe Zelretch just doesn't want to talk about them and everything else he has to deal with all the time).
Finally, we have Zelretch's contact(s), which turn out to be the Yggdmillennia Army. Because they're the only ones – apart from Kiri who needs (psychiatric) help – who remotely have a proper (para)military force in the setting. Well, Tom's timeline's Matous might count, but they're a bunch of soldiers-of-fortune working for fleshcrafters, worms-that-walk, ugly bastards, and other disgusting things.