(Daedra)
Rather than a Halloween festival, the evidence before her eyes suggested it was more of a "festival that happens to be occurring at Halloween time". Most likely because they were not acquainted with the actual event and just threw together different ideas for one of their usual inscrutable reasons.
Come to think of it, rather than a copy of, say, the local village's festivities, it seemed like they were simply recreating random bits of the local everyday life. It was just that the juxtaposition of elements from different countries arranged somewhat randomly made the overall result that much more chaotic and unrecognizable. For example, over there they seemed to be making sausage buns like she had eaten once in the village. And over there, loco moco was something from Hawaii, of course.
While it was not surprising that hardly anyone present save herself was a human, she could tell that most of the homunculi were working on their preparations, and none of them seemed to be actually 'celebrating' the occasion. One usually imagines a festival ground filled with people there to enjoy themselves, not space with all the stalls but hardly anyone buying or playing.
There was a small stir as a small group came in. All those near that entrance quickly moved over to say hello to their guests: three Servants, with two small ones being carried on their giant companion who, despite the Hall's high ceiling, still filled the vertical space impressively.
Daedra controlled her instinctive sense of nervousness. Servants were of course incredibly powerful, as anyone could tell from their magical energy signatures, but they were not the violent type outside of battle. Usually. On the other hand, as a trio of pirates came in, heading over to some stalls featuring Einzbern alcohol, followed by a pair of distinctive swordsmen, one in his usual purple-shaded kimono and his companion in a gorgeous deep blue dress, the amount of them really began to feel oppressive to the human magus.
More welcomes and indeed cheering announced the arrival of a knight in armor and a bannerwoman in half armor who were escorting Chaldea's two Masters, fresh from having resolved the latest Event. The Masters wasted no time looking around, tallying up their roster, doubtless. Though, she noticed that one of them did take note of her presence. Perhaps.
"Try not to wreck anything before the kids get here," Gudao was saying to the grizzled Blackbeard who was praising the particular drink he had been sampling when the Masters arrived.
"Don't worry," an elegant saint popped up, acting out fanning herself with a broad-brimmed hat. "I'll have no drunkenness in front of children, you may be sure of it."
"Chill out, we won't get drunk off this; take a sip yourself," Anne tried to push her own drink on Gudao but was rebuffed by the more level-headed Mary. "We'll keep in order."
"Well," Gudako commented, turning over to look at the entrance behind Daedra. "Seems like they're here earlier than expected. Hi guys !"
The human turned to catch sight of a group of four children coming in. No, clearly one was da Vinci due to the unique roller skates and color scheme. And in red with the floating accessory is...
The clothes didn't match the one photograph she had seen, but that toy-like Mystic Code did. Swallowing nervously, Daedra tried to move out of the obvious path the Servants would take to meet Gudako, but ended up backing into someone else who helpfully steadied her with a firm grip.
"Huh? You're... Siegfried?" Indeed, the apparent current leader of the Einzbern was easily identified as the only male with his House's icon, making the girl next to him the House's second in command.
"What a coincidence," he remarked jovially while not letting her go. "Sasaku, I'd like to introduce someone to you."
"Siegfried? Good to see you," the addressed Servant remarked as two Rulers quickly took custody of the Emiya and Matou children and began showing them the various attractions set up for the day.
"Same," he smiled. "This is Daedra, an expert on magic circles, specifically high-throughput ones like you've seen in the Enhancement and Summoning Rooms.
"Ah, I'm more of a theorist, really." She wanted to get out of the situation without drawing any further attention from Sasaku, who didn't currently seem particularly interested in her.
"That's technically true," a familiar voice from the side chipped in at this most inopportune of times. "Daedra is quite hands-on with experimental design and implementation though. The development of systems able to handle the use of Saint Quartz is mostly thanks to her."
"Exel here actually built parts of those circuits," Siegfried beamed. "Fortunately these systems were operational by the time we had to enact the Separation Order; I expect that, with your Grail privileges, you'll be working to tune some of them to be less grossly inefficient, to put it mildly."
"I would have liked to introduce my husband to you, but he must be doing the rounds," Exel sounded thoughtful rather than upset as one might expect. Huh?
"I didn't know you were married?" Daedra asked aloud before her mind caught up with the situation. Siegfried chuckled but everyone else nearby didn't seem to notice the question at all. Perhaps Servants didn't care and homunculi already knew.
"Well we never stopped being just because I was sent to work on Chaldea two years ago," Exel explained as though the other details were completely obvious. "He was reassigned here six months ago - just in time, one might say - but he lives in one of the Japanese halls, while I've been in one of the German ones all along.
"You could've mentioned it," Siegfried seemed increasingly amused by the whole situation.
"It would've been kind of awkward. Really," Exel dismissed the idea out of hand. "Even though he didn't get a second wife for some reason..."
"He got promoted," the Einzbern reminded her as though the implications were self-evident. By the way she nodded, it was.
"Can I ask how old the two of you are?" Sasaku asked suddenly. "Call it curiosity." By this point, it seemed like those around had taken up their own business leaving the four of them to chat quietly.
"Oh, let's see... I signed the covenant four years ago," Exel answered first.
"To be more complete, I total ten, five plus five," Siegfried answered for himself. "Doru, if you were wondering, would be five plus two."
"I, too, was a five-year," she amended her earlier statement with some pride. "But enough of our life cycles, you will want to see what some of us have set up over there."
l
(Doru)
As far as he could tell upon entering the Ninth Hall, events had not left it behind yet. Stepping in, Doru was not at all surprised to suddenly be met by Siegfried, given who had specifically called for him to be present. Exel, though, was more of a surprise.
The two men shared a brief nod. Their brief exchange of messages via the System had already covered the needful. "Can you introduce me?" he asked instead.
"I will," Exel volunteered instead. "There's a bit of time until the trick-or-treating for the children start, will that do?"
"Most likely," he replied gravely while taking her hand. "Well, let's meet Our Lady and see what she has to say." They quickly made their way over to where the Servant, unseen but locate-able by her flying wand, was in the middle of a group of stalls.
"Excuse me, if you have a moment?" Exel boldly made her way up to Sasaku and tried to get her attention. Conveniently, as it seemed, she was in the middle of small talk with several homunculi who didn't mind the interruption, and not her fellow Servants.
"What is it?" she asked after allowing herself to be drawn over to the side.
"Please let me introduce to you my husband, Doru." His wife cut to the chase. "You can guess he's trained in House Matou..." she trailed off slightly to leave him an opening to continue.
"I learned under Sakura," he explained simply, expression turning serious as he approached the day's concern. "However, there are some things we didn't cover which have come to the fore."
"I'm told she advanced the family magecraft since I left," Sasaku replied politely. "As you were part of that, I'm not sure how I can help you, if that's what you were asking?"
Doru exhaled slowly. "Matthew has a few rather special specimens of Crest Worm, which I am not familiar with, that are causing issues." This caught the Servant's attention immediately.
"Mhm, I see. What sort of issues?"
"They're too complex compared to the norm; not integrating properly. Sakura might have known how to handle it, but not anyone else present in Chaldea, maybe even in the Four Houses."
Sasaku took a moment, likely thinking back to the events near the end of the previous War. Fortunately while they would have been fifteen years ago for Sakura were she present, to the Servant it would a few days, then her death, and a couple of weeks since being summoned. So there was hope that she might remember some critical detail.
"This came up when we were dealing with Zouken," the Servant finally surmised. "Has he begun behaving differently recently? Oh, but you wouldn't be able to tell..."
"There are a number of people from Fuyuki here who knew him decently enough to say, and I've asked around. There's also his sister," Doru reminded her. "I'd feel confident in saying there are no concerns on that front."
"Did Sakura happen to tell you that it's possible to transfer your consciousness to a... group of such familiars?" She was able to read the answer off his face. "Well, it would be odd for her to do that, since it would require research; the technique being lost and all."
"So it is possible to transfer bodies, then?"
"Well, if it's a corpse that's complicated, I imagine. A living person, you'd have to be able to overpower them in some sense or perhaps come to some arrangement. But it won't allow you to get around soul degradation or your spiritual lifespan constraints, if that's what you were thinking. Sakura knew that long ago, from Zouken's case."
"We will be running a second series of scans in a few days time," Doru brought up his diagnosis plans. "Obviously Doctor Romani will be there, but if you could attend, that would be appreciated."
The Servant expressed some surprise at the request. "Is there some particular concern on your mind?"
"Well, there are three of these special Crest Worms: two along the upper and lower spine, and the largest near the heart. If it happens that we need to operate, better earlier than later in this case, but even examining the worms is not riskless."
"By the way, just going off visuals, Iri doesn't seem to have inherited from the Matou, despite the Four Houses' Information Sharing?"
It took a while for Doru to process the question. "She has some ability to use the magecraft via the Emiya method. But the standard procedure didn't work; no reason was given by Sakura, who did it personally for the children."
"How odd," Sasaku mused as da Vinci came over looking for her. "Ah, yes?"
"Everyone's about to start the trick-or-treat part," the Rider explained. "... is something important going on?"
"Not at the moment," Sasaku replied. "But who is giving the treats?"
"Ah, the route is mostly for the eight Halls. Then they'll head to Residential, stop by the Masters' and my place, and end at the children's room," Siegfried appeared, having followed da Vinci. "You're welcome too, you know."
"Hah," the Servant chuckled. "Unlike da Vinci, I don't really have the right mindset for that."
"That's odd, I thought the bell was part of our costume," Ruby spoke up, perhaps out of boredom or a desire to see more of Chaldea. About this time, Martha pushed it out of her way while commenting, "Those two goddesses don't either, but they sure love being pampered like it."
"Well we're not quite sure what would happen if I took it off, given that Tamamo Cat isn't here," Sasaku began explaining. "And as for those two, they were like that literally from their base concepts, so yeah..."
"I have more to arrange," Doru said politely while bowing out of the group with Exel. "I'll let you know when everything is ready."
"Right." She switched her attention to the couple for a moment. "Shouldn't you at least, I don't know, catch up or something? It's been a few months and all."
"Erm..."
"We've all been in a bit of 'all hands on deck' situation until about now," Exel smiled gently. "Chaldea was definitely not perfectly prepared for all this."
"Even a genius is hardly ever perfectly prepared," da Vinci commiserated. "But I'd say everything's held up rather well under these stresses."
The two homunculi nodded in unison as an impatient Chloe showed up to complain that the group was holding up the event schedule and just snowballing from the people sent to retrieve them. This provoked some laughter, but the point was taken.
"I've been wondering," Iri said suddenly as they traversed a ramp downwards into Chaldea's lower levels. "We can't go outside, but what's there?"
"There's nothing," da Vinci replied in a casual manner. "Or Void Space if you need to put a name to it. Um, how would I best illustrate that..."
Thinking for a bit, she took one of the candied applies on hand and held it by the stick, with the apple dangling under her hand. "Imagine a tree that is shaking in the wind, and the apple is Chaldea. The Separation Order is like when the apple falls off the tree. Even though the tree is on fire, we won't be burned because we're not attached to it."
"So... there's no 'outside' anymore?" Matthew asked curiously.
"When everything becomes more stable, the World will put us back in place," Scathach volunteered. "It tends to try to keep everything in order."
"How long will that take?" Iri wondered. "Our summer vacation should have ended a long time ago."
"That's very diligent of you," Ruby floated over to say. "I think this is more of a 'temporary homeschooling' arrangement, though."
"... uh, thanks, Ruby." da Vinci sighed in relief as the wand's owner retrieved it.
"Well, despite looking like she's going to school herself, I'm sure Sasaku can teach," Ruby added slyly. "Yes, even though you're already wearing the right uniform to be on the student's side of the desk..."
"Wow, thanks !" the Servant idly swished her wand about while ignoring the digs. "I'll talk to Siegfried about who can teach stuff. Er, he seems to have gone off somewhere though."
"It's oddly convenient, becoming a Servant," Chloe grinned while eating her own candy apple. "Not only Grail knowledge, I also got hold of what the original Chloe learned, I think."
"It's very odd to know things without having learned them," Artoria commented while looking at Sasaku's clothes and realizing the odd similarities... "Forgetting things happens, but remembering new things is quite the reversal."
"Are these gardens?" someone asked. It was Matthew who had noticed a number of the icons on the various, fairly large at that, doors they were passing. "There aren't many potted plants around."
"Sort of," a nearby homunulus told him. "Let me show you the one up here..." As they approached the mentioned door, he stepped over and tugged the door open; it traveled smoothly on a roller track to allow access without blocking the corridor.
Inside were a large number of plants growing on trays or in troughs. Besides the obvious greenery, most of the room was a gleaming white, though the overall effect was anything but monochromatic since the lighting in the room was an unusual rainbow coming from lights of many different colors strategically placed to ensure even coverage of each type.
"Wow..." Iri was awestruck, or perhaps rather overwhelmed by how both normal and otherworldly the display before her was. "Are those... normal plants?"
"That looks like the lettuce that came with my burger," Chloe pointed out a head that was near to the front. "And those must be the green onions used in the pancakes you were telling me about."
"Plants can help convert carbon dioxide back to oxygen," their host of the moment explained proudly. "Er, since we planted these, of course we picked ones good to eat. The various lights are all LEDs, and the combination is roughly what works best for the plants. They don't need to sleep, and can keep growing for us as long as they have light and nutrients."
"This is so much cooler than our garden, or that farm that school took us on a field trip to," Matthew responded approvingly. "But don't the lights waste electricity if no one is there?"
There was a brief pause.
"Plants eat light," Artoria suddenly started. "They also need water and fertilizer, right?"
"Humans and plants have had a good relationship for a long time," da Vinci took up the explanation. "There's no sun in Chaldea, so we have to provide the light."
This explanation seemed to satisfy the children, but had provoked another question in Chloe. "But the power plant is outside, isn't it?"
"Chaldea has steam turbines," da Vinci was more familiar with these because of their magical components. "So we actually do have our own power plant."
"I'm kind of wondering what fuel you're burning," Sasaku commented dryly. "And where the waste heat goes, but I can guess..."
"Way to just say that and leave us hanging," Ruby scolded her. "By the way, I don't know myself."
"It's magical energy," one of the friends of the homunculus farmer told the group. "Call it the Ritual of Heating up Rocks."
"So, like a hot spring?" Kojirou suddenly sounded interested. "Is that where hot water in Chaldea comes from?"
"... unfortunately not," was the apologetic correction. "Water passes through pipes heated by the rocks, boils and turns the turbine. It then repeats the loop. Chaldea's hot water supplies are just water and an electric boiler."
"Oh."
da Vinci found that exchange very amusing, however. "Maybe one day we should build an onsen ourselves. I mean, if we were back in Germany we could presumably literally keep digging down until we had access to geothermal energy."
"But if you dig down too far, you'll reach the edge of the Realm and there's just Void Space past that, right?" Sasaku inquired, receiving a nod in reply.
"Welcome to the Sixth Hall," one of its residents who had been on the lookout for them greeted the group. "After the Dumpling Event, some of us thought to make such items for today's festival. Please, come in."