(Cafeteria of Chaldea)
(Exel)
Despite taking their leave, Doru didn't have a particularly pressing schedule. Herself similarly, they decided to eat something more conventional in the cafeteria. Even though the event had spread itself though the Ninth Hall, it hardly approached the scale of the cafeteria which had to deal with under a thousand people eating multiple meals there daily, even if most of them did so on a staggered basis.
"Oh hey, that's Daedra." She spotted the magus sitting by herself in a corner, eating with a blank expression. "Why don't I introduce you?"
"I don't think that's really necessary..." though doubtful, he nevertheless followed her over to meet her human colleague.
"Hmm? Oh hello again," Daedra greeted the two of them in a distracted manner. "Having an early dinner too?"
"Why don't I get you something from the day's menu?" Doru volunteered. He always did tend to avoid dealing with humans, which wasn't much of an issue professionally given his field. She nodded in agreement and he set off on the self-imposed errand.
"Your husband, right?" The human in front of her asked. Even though she had left the Hall before Doru came in to meet Sasaku, it would have been an easy guess.
"We were coming in for a meal and thought I should introduce the two of you," Exel confirmed Deadra's hunch.
"Appreciate the thought, but I wouldn't want to be a third wheel," the magus demurred. There was a brief pause in the conversation as Exel took a moment to understand the figure of speech.
"That's not really how our relationship is?" she finally came up with in reply. "I hadn't realized it was a big deal, wanted to clear it up."
"I was more surprised that anyone got married, really," Daedra explained. "Not to throw any shade though, I mean pretty much all of the humans here are single, too."
"Don't your own Houses need heirs though?" Admittedly the reason she knew about this was due to the situation with the other three of the Four Houses.
"Yeah... but we're not the ones carrying on our magecraft lineage in the first place." Unlike no few of her peers, Daedra didn't seem to think that there would be any success for her outside of her position with the Four Houses.
"I heard about that; seems risky though, thousand-year old line and the last person with the Magic Crest gets blown into pieces," Exel commented as Doru returned with their servings of the day's stir-fry and rice.
"I don't think it occurs that frequently..." was the nervous reply.
"Transferable magic circuits and stored spell information wouldn't be so disproportionately valuable if the family didn't voluntarily bottleneck itself," Doru sounded confident of the analysis. "A single person couldn't make full use of all the spells and you've been stuck with centuries of essentially one or two people doing research at a time. Obviously it isn't just a straight numbers game, but conversely there are also gains from collaborative efforts, so if the Four Houses get 100 person-years of research done in a year... well it's not going nowhere."
"I guess so?" His wife was rather taken aback, or perhaps simply surprised by his outspokenness. Well, we do tend to develop the most rapidly after becoming adults. Then again, while Chaldea had under a hundred humans, the grand total was a few hundred. And even if they weren't all doing 100-percent research, there were thousands more homunculi at work on any number of tasks, including research.
"Mhm." Like Exel, Daedra might have lost focus about halfway through that. But because it wasn't what she had in mind to start with. "Speaking of which-" she lowered her voice. "Though the Wizard Marshall is Chaldea's headliner, everyone knows Tohsaka was running everything. You were in Fuyuki where her House holds territory, right?"
Exel, having learned her own trade from the Tohsaka side, immediately guessed what the magus was thinking. Doru, who the question was actually addressed to, probably didn't. "Worried the Clock Tower will try to muscle in if he didn't have someone in hand to replace the Vice-Director?"
"I doubt they'd let any single person lead all of it after learning what happened here," Doru preempted their human colleague. "There will be no end of trying to carve us up and trade the bits for advantage."
"Indeed, complicated to say the least." Daedra muttered hesitantly.
"Clearly they'll see their way to demanding we simply unsummon all the Servants, disarm, then lie down and let them have their way with us; since we definitely lack both the means to defend ourselves or escape from under their power."
l
"Be sure to drop by our rooms, ok?" Gudako reminded da Vinci and Sasaku as the two Masters made took an early leave near the end of Chaldea's first ever Trick-or-Treat Tour. "They're connected so pick whichever door."
"We'll basically be right behind you, though." Ruby commented, having had enough of flitting around the Seventh Hall which happened to be the last of the nine to be visited.
"Siegfried's place first," Kojirou reminded the group, which was by this point just the children and three Servants accompanying them.
"It feels like Chaldea is even larger than the Einzbern Castle at Fuyuki," Iri commented after some time of boring trek back to the upper half of the installation. "But it's much newer than the castle?"
"That's a story all by itself," Kojirou chuckled. "This used to be a series of old mines of some sort. Chaldea actually gets larger the further down you go, because that's where the deposits were."
"Sounds like a good start," da Vinci commented. By the time she herself had been summoned a lot of the mundane construction work had already been completed or was in progress. "How long to convert that into this, though? I can't imagine it was a fast process."
"Eleven years," the Saber agreed. "With planning help from... I can't remember the name, some company from Iran the Edelfelts introduced us to."
"Pretty far afield," Sasaku pointed out. "Then again, not just Japan but many other countries must have their own systems of magecraft that are not under the Clock Tower."
"Going back far enough, there were different gods as well, but right now we're in the odd position of only being able to interact with slightly different versions of ourselves," replied da Vinci. "Something seems odd about that, but I can't quite pin down what exactly."
"If this is an observatory, does that mean you can see the stars from below the mountain?" questioned Matthew, seeing that the conversation was not headed towards his interest at the moment.
"Quite the opposite," da Vinci informed him. "The main thing being observed is Human History, which is mostly on Earth."
"Sounds like a boring job."
"Well, when someone broke history, it pretty much crippled the World system, leading to this crisis. So: boring would be good," Kojirou remarked dryly.
"By the way, we're here," Ruby interrupted the group after having confirmed their destination on some sort of holographic 3D map.
"Iri, why don't you see if Siegfried's in?" Kojirou suggested as the Servants made room for the two children to approach the door. Nodding, she knocked twice and, a second or two later, the door opened.
"Come in?" Millia asked after consulting with Siegfried. "Don't block the corridor."
The group filed in, looking about while the two homunculi presented Iri and Matthew with a pair of small boxes. It didn't seem like they shared the room, which only had a bed for one, and the only thing that looked special was the computer sitting quietly on a table, which looked like one of the terminals usually seen in Vaults and the like, rather than the more common laptops used for casual or personal work.
"A number of us put together a variety of different sweets," Siegfried quickly explained the boxes' contents. "Though the boxes are the same, each item in one is different from the others, so I wouldn't eat them too quickly."
"What about us?" Ruby asked while zipping around da Vinci and Sasaku.
"The event already ended," Siegfried said firmly, not interested in playing along.
"I-in any case, I think you have one more call to make, so don't keep them waiting on our account," Millia added with a touch of nerves for some reason. "Um, and since there are some handmade chocolates, put them in the fridge when you get back to your room, please."
"What's this, Valentines three months early?" Ruby quipped.
"Never mind that," da Vinci carefully moved the hovering wand out of her way. "We do need to get a move on."
"Thank you !" chirped Iri.
"Thanks !" Matthew quickly followed suit as the Servants behind them began leaving the room after da Vinci.
The Masters' rooms were not far from Siegfried's, though it was still a couple of minutes at the children's pace.
"The two of them aren't married, are they?" Iri asked Sasaku who happened to be the nearest to her. "Sieg didn't seem to have a bed like our parents'."
"Like you thought; no." Kojirou answered instead from behind them. "Millia may be a bit younger than him, but she was picked specifically for Chaldea. Put another way, the acting head of the Einzbern Estate branch is someone else again, just as the Estate and Chaldea have different Grand Arias."
"I wonder sometimes if they have a leader just to have one," da Vinci mused. "Don't the Masters run things in Chaldea?"
"Probably need to maintain some minimum of a formal structure," Sasaku guessed. "I guess it works well enough for them."
"Ahem. Ok, go ahead and knock on their door," da Vinci interrupted their discussion to prevent distractions.
*knock* *knock*
The door opened to show Gudao who stepped back, welcoming the small group in. His room looked much like Siegfried's, along with the computer terminal.
"Sorry to take up your time," Gudako said apologetically to the Servants, who simply shrugged it off. When one doesn't need sleep or even particularly feel fatigue, having something interesting to do covers many potential inconveniences.
"Let's get to the point." Gudao retrieved a shoebox-sized container from the bed behind him, opening it without further ceremony. The two Masters then reached in, each pulling out one of an identical pair of knife-sized crystalline daggers. The runes cut into the blades and decorative work on the petal-shaped guards caught and broke up the room's light for a visually dazzling rainbow effect.
"These aren't sharp, if you were wondering," Gudako addressed Sasaku in particular. "They aren't Jeweled Swords either, but are functional Mystic Codes."
"Azoth Swords," Kojirou remarked idly, drawing a couple of surprised looks from the other two Servants. "Rin showed me hers before we went to the Clock Tower; since she was carrying one of the Four Houses' Jeweled Swords, she would leave it with Sakura for safekeeping and I assume it's in a Vault in Fuyuki."
"Isn't this based off the Jeweled Sword though?" Sasaku, looking at the one closest to her, was comparing it to the blueprints which she had occasion to examine before the ending battle of the Fifth Grail War.
"Good catch," da Vinci said approvingly. "The Four Houses' Jeweled Swords use an odd multiple, three to seven, of these forced together such that all but one end up forced into an odd state allowing some use of the Multi-Dimensional Refraction Phenomena. A single one does nothing of the sort, and is more of a wand-type Mystic Code."
"Since everyone here but Sasaku knows," Kojirou added abruptly. "I should mention that Rin and Sakura are, biologically, sisters. Sakura was adopted by the Matou."
"Sasaku didn't know about Aunt Rin?" Iri asked in surprise. "That can't be right."
"I didn't know," the Servant clarified simply for her. "But don't worry about that."
"Okay." Gudao pulled everyone back on topic. "Though by some measures this is a bit early for it, take these as encouragement and more importantly an aid in developing your abilities. Since these are a type of-" he raised an eyebrow at Ruby, "wand, you will benefit from getting them now rather than waiting."
At this point Gudako took over. "We are also informing you that, by unanimous vote, the two of you have been granted Inner Circle observer status by special dispensation. The details aren't too important except that you'll be learning magecraft with some of our classes."
"Who voted?" Matthew asked naturally enough.
"Literally Saber and Siegfried," Gudao said simply.
Kojirou was not surprised that everyone was, by this point, looking to him to provide further explanation. "Einzbern raised the issue and made the proposal earlier today. I thought he had a good point."
"I want to clarify that we wanted them to tell you since, you know, it had been their decision to make. But they insisted otherwise since Chaldea is under our jurisdiction. Internally, anyway. The Clock Tower would never accept the idea of Chaldea being headed by two homunculi," Gudako remarked.
"Since, you know, the Four Houses entity is headed by a homunculi and a Servant," da Vinci pointed out. "Hardly any better, you know?"
"Ah, we know." The Saber practically laughed at this. "I forget that all of you weren't around from the very beginning. Illyasviel, The Founder now is it? She pretty much expected something along the lines of a second Founding Conflict whenever we were found out by the Clock Tower. et al Which will probably be exactly when we succeed at restoring human history, ironically enough."
"So. Enemies will be coming after us again." Iri made the statement firmly, while eyeing the glittering weapons held by the Masters. "Like before the Founding."
"Not like that-" Kojirou started gently, but was interrupted.
"They will have to go through everyone else in the Four Houses first," Gudao delivered the implied promise with a hard tone, but Gudako raised a hand before stepping in."
"Our current survival is proof that the Separation Order, as enacted by the Grand Aria system, does what Gilgamesh thought you might be able to achieve." The Master addressed the second half of that to Sasaku. "A means of escape, separation I think he said to you, am I right? Yes, the name is from that line."
"Hmph." The Ruler didn't seem particularly happy with the reminder. "I suppose he had good reason, since a capability like this is needed to, as you say, simply survive a crisis like this, let alone reach the mastermind to resolve matters."
"That's quite enough," da Vinci prompted the Masters to hand over the ritual daggers to their new rightful owners. "We're primarily thinking of your training, so study and practice hard, okay?"
"Do you already have these?" Matthew inquired while testing how the Sword felt in his hand.
"We have these." Opening the palm of his hand, Gudao quickly closed his fingers around the shafts of two black all-iron spears that appeared for him: one thinner and shorter than its partner. "Look familiar?"
"Does the (Realm's Armory) still have an infinite number of those?" Sasaku tried a quick count of how many the Skill would report and found it returned the same sort of conceptual error for the counting operation as in the previous War. "Guess so."
Gudako had been distracted by something for the last bit of the discussion, which apparently was not a passing matter. "You're going to be responsible for your own Mystic Codes, so put them somewhere safe. Did your parents train you in the gem magecraft yet?" The two addressed thoughtfully shook their heads. "Hm, not a problem. Saber, Sasaku, can you watch over them? da Vinci, we need to go to the Control Room, there's a situation."
"Something happening?" Kojirou caught on immediately.
"Another Detection Event. No alarm since I think we are picking it up at some distance..."
(Outside Iri and Matthew's Room)
"Hope you had some fun, get some rest, ok?" Kojirou and Sasaku walked Iri and Matthew back to the room they shared before saying their goodbyes.
"We will, thanks a lot !" The pair seemed cheery and still full of energy after a busy day.
"You know, I'm reminded about Elizabeth's Event," Sasaku commented to Kojirou while the two Servants made their way to the Briefing Room. "Was the festival today meant to be something like a coming-of-age party?"
"Like I said, Siegfried brought it up to me today. Obviously planning had been ongoing for some time," the Saber simply shrugged. "I didn't know about the blades specifically, but presumably they were intended to be presented at some point."
"It seems oddly convenient that so many important figures were in Chaldea when everything went down," Sasaku commented as Ruby, seeing that the day's fun was over, disappeared back into her Inventory causing her dress to be replaced with the usual uniform. This in turn led to Kojirou chuckling to himself at the sight.
"Ahem. It wasn't exactly a coincidence," he said after a while. "We had some reason to fear that something was about to happen, a persistent Detection Event that didn't seem to be instrument error."
"The Fuyuki proto-Singularity?" Sasaku asked. "It started 'near' us so you picked it up before it formed, and went on alert?"
"That was our earlier guess, but it seems most likely that, given how unpredictable Holy Grail Wars can be, things did not develop as the mastermind had hoped. In part due to the combination of Artoria Pendragon and the other Chloe von Einzbern teaming up." The Saber paused to recall the events leading up to the sudden 'summer vacation trip' to move the humans of the Four Houses to the Chaldea facility.
"da Vinci suggests that the readings we saw were that version of Chloe using a form of our current Singularity-Chaldea communication protocols, which we couldn't recognize at the time. I mean we just copied it afterwards, but anyway... of course, this explanation is much messier, and implies a number of other forces are interfering."
"Such as Zelretch."
"Yes, but not just him." A thought brought another laugh to Kojirou. He seemed a lot more able to do so than Sasaku remembered from the War. "Quite a few of the humans would freak out if they saw the kids carrying those."
"I take it the Blade Generators are secret?"
"Inner Circle, but more that without Structural Analysis... they look exactly like the Sword that Rin 'schooled' some idiots with. Even if someone was allowed to analyze a blade, they obviously wouldn't know what a Jeweled Sword actually is."
"Sounds like you have some interesting stories there." Sasaku wondered, though, why he was volunteering some of those details. She didn't think that the samurai had liked her very much; if it wasn't for that Executioner Servant, it was not (as she saw it) beyond possibility that, after the last battle was said and done, Kojirou could have simply decapitated her. He was at that moment Shirou's Servant, so Sasaku wouldn't be able to stop him with Command Spells.
"There's a few. Our introduction to the Edelfelt family came by way of Rin and Luviagelita deciding to throw down in an impromptu wrestling match on a lark of some sort. I think the families had some history, but those two had never met personally so it was necessary to defend their honor or something."
"Who won?"
"Rin would have edged out a win if it was points, I think. Learned from a Servant and all. But Edelfelt realized that Rin was using Reinforcement even in their 'casual' fight - instinct from sparring with me, you know - and decided to escalate to using gems. Maybe also to show off her family's wealth since they were presumably more able than Tohsaka to throw around jewels."
"Mhm. And?" Sasaku couldn't quite imagine the sight but still found it an irresistible combination of hilarious and serious.
"Rin took out the Jeweled Sword and I had to stop her because Edelfelt didn't realize it wasn't a standard Azoth Sword and might have actually gotten killed had she tried to block a blast from that. Also at that point, someone tried to prevent me from interfering with a Dispel Magic magecraft and discovered what a Magic Resistance Skill does."
"Sounds like a mess," the Ruler commiserated, though she was grinning. Kojirou definitely had a bit of a smile too, though.
"It was around then that El Melloi II showed up. Probably one of the few around who could recognize a Servant from their magical energy signature level. Good man, freaked out a bit when we delivered the message that Gilgamesh suggested regarding the Fuyuki Grail System. Not a fan of the boy, it seems."
"So he managed to dismantle it and then reassemble the whole thing in Chaldea?"
"Yes for the first, but he taught us enough to do the second, which was secretly performed years before we actually reported Chaldea to the Clock Tower as an observatory to-be-built. But there's one thing I wanted to ask you."
Sasaku paused. They were not far from the Briefing Room, but she suspected the request was a private one. "I only recently got summoned, not sure that I can do much for you."
"It's about your version of (True Name Discernment). Unlike the other Rulers, you have to actually look up data in the Grail's records, right?"
"It's a lower rank for that, but yes." The rank was not of interest; Kojirou seemed to want the benefit of her variant in particular. But, he still hesitated to ask for a moment. "Are there any versions of Rin that became Heroic Spirits?"
"..."
"Ah," he said, trying to brush off the request. "I mean we all know that Chloe isn't the same Illyasviel we met. And even Artoria has herself and an earlier version of herself..."
"If it was a straight 'no' I would've given it to you equally straight. But I'm afraid that anything else I say would only give you false hope," Sasaku answered in an neutral tone. She was about to speak further, but was interrupted by-
"Since you mentioned the Illya-Chloe example, you should know that meeting Rin-'Kaleido Ruby' from the same branch would be similar. Which is to say explicitly: they wouldn't be your wife." Ruby popped up to say. "And if she was the sort to become a Heroic Spirit by, say, clinging to magical girlhood despite clearly aging far out of the proper range while wallowing in denial of the fact..."
"Heh, that sounds quite different from the Rin I know," Kojirou nodded, realizing what the wand was trying to do. "Guess I shouldn't have put your contractor in such a pinch, huh?"
"Oh no, by all means. I love that. Just remember that the whole parallel worlds sitution makes things get very complicated very fast whenever the Grail or Throne get involved." With that bit of advice Ruby quickly beat a retreat before Sasaku could think to press it for details.