"Let me get this straight: the Nobunaga you just killed had been recruited by the mastermind in order to create a Singularity. However, a number of you ganged up on him and stole the Grail piece intended to fuel this. But he couldn't be killed without interrupting your boss' plan." Gudao concluded.
"Indeed, you catch on fast. He would have become like some of the Singularity 'kings' you fought before; like the Dragon Witch."
"Wait a moment, so Singularities do take a while to form? Since we detected this one at the lower Detection Event threshold?" Jeanne asked the Archer quickly. "And does that mean we could have seen an Elizabeth-controlled Singularity?"
"Despite her behavior, it seems her desires are not so grandiose as to swell up into that? Speaking of which, I convinced the boss to entrust this to me." The nameless one took out what looked like a golden skull and handed it to Jeanne, who hoped it wasn't something more morbid like a gold-covered actual skull.
"What is it?" the Ruler asked with more curiosity than suspicion. A little bit more.
"The Grail fragment, of course. And an attempt to create a Spirit Origin, but it didn't work. Takenaka had been trying to put together a record for our boss, but it was probably doomed because Nobunaga was here. Ironicly, and very inconveniently, if he was removed, everything here would fall apart. Bit of a fool's errand perhaps, but after a week's worth of work ground to a halt, it wasn't too difficult to convince him that Chaldea might be better placed to complete the process and summon her with your odd system."
"Who?" Gudako felt like she had a good idea of that.
"Nobunaga, of course. A very specific one, of course; that was a problem not helped by the fact that Earth's dominant version is quite different."
"But of course!" Okita surprised everyone by shouting suddenly, before being overcome by coughing, which did not stop her from explaining. "We wouldn't have met historically, so how could I have forgotten that the Nobu I met in -another- Holy Grail War wasn't a man?"
"Well, the one who just died was the dominant one in this world, your perception might have been adjusted appropriately from the moment you were summoned," Gudao commented. "Oh, but according to the stories I heard, um both you and male-Nobunaga were in our own previous Holy Grail War. Sound familiar?"
"Well there was that too, I guess..."
"So," Gudako asked after a moment, leaving the Saber to her memories. "Were you lot seriously trying to kill our magical girl?"
"Um..." the other side's Archer looked troubled for a moment. "Our boss really wasn't going to give up trying until the last moment. But I don't think Mouri really wanted to kill her... ah as a Caster she probably isn't best at just running out and beating someone down."
"Just one Caster?" Kojirou shrugged. "Kiyohime is there, I'm sure it'll work out just fine."
"Yeah," Chloe didn't sound very confident about that though. "So that's really it, the Grail Fragment's in hand and we'll all get kicked back home?"
"Did you want to have a big tossup?" Stheno was free in expressing that she did not. "I'm just gad that getting here 'late' didn't result in having to deal with a massive fortress like you did with Boudica."
"Oh yeah, but your friend: that girl respawns, doesn't she?" the nameless one said as though it was not a major bombshell. "My Master said that they were not dissimilar, in terms of being Masters that can get summoned."
"She seemed pretty permanently dead until we summoned her a mere fifteen years later," Gudao quipped. "Of course, it seems like that priest Servant, Amakusa, did a major number on her and there's no backups. Wait a moment..."
"I see. I guess you don't have a system outside of the Throne that can hold and access records of Spirit Origins?" he thought about that for a bit. "Probably shouldn't say too much, seeing you've already had run-ins with our AI's little antics."
"You don't happen to have a copy of Sasaku." Gudako raised an eyebrow. "How come you know more about her than we do?"
"No, no stop." Gudao interjected. "Your Master can be summoned?"
"She got blown up by that girl there the last time she appeared on Earth, so I doubt she'll be interested in coming down again. Also, even compared to Servants it's really costly for her to travel about."
"Huh, it's my fault?" Chloe was surprised by that. "Who was her Servant in the previous War?"
"Tamamo-no-mae. Not Cat; don't worry about them sharing a name since the various Tamamos are not on good terms."
"By the way, do you know what a Kaleid Liner is?" Gudako asked quietly.
"I guess that's it?" Shimazu, leaning on his spear, glanced around at the week's comrades. "I'm pretty sure that Archer planned this from the start."
"I'd hardly expect otherwise from that one," Toyotomi sounded uncaring. "Though I'd like to have seen him get demolished by Chaldea after taking out their presumable 'ally'."
"Unfortunately for your desire that he suffer for accomplishing his mission, I should tell you that he happens to be known to Chaldea," their ever-mysterious leader had shown up again. "Didn't inform me until it was practically too late, but judging by your reaction that's normal for him."
Uesugi nodded with some amusement. "He does get the job done though, so I'm sure you'll get to see your sister in due time."
"I should hope so," Takenaka mumbled, though not unhappily. "A week's dash to produce a historical work, not bad even if it's technically not historical for this branch. By the way, boss, you know that Chousokabe was replaced by someone else; a variant of himself, rather?"
"Yes, well Shimazu and Uesugi seemed to think that Archer didn't come from any Earth-bound branch."
"I see. Does that sound rather ominous to anyone else? Just me?"
Toyotomi shrugged. "Surely you'd know by now that there's a lot just outside the atmosphere of this planet. The very existence of branches tells us even more about the World's underlying structure."
"Ahem." Flourishing his spear, Shimazu clearly indicated his intent to Uesugi as the latter took out her sword in turn. "Might as well have a few rounds before we head back home?"
"The current situation really is odd," Matsudaira commented to Takenaka, who was writing down something in the time left to them. "Normally the World can keep all the different branches well organized, but these Singularities make a mess of that."
"It's like the oddest multi-versal crossover type of mashup fighting game?"
"Perhaps. Oddly enough, both sides managed a victory of sorts, thanks to that Archer."
"Ah yeah, oddly convenient like he knew both that the boss' plan wouldn't work, and Chaldea would show up."
"What do you mean, they took over a week to arrive?"
"Just enough time to get all the preparations done, and let Nobunaga get antsy about his Grail piece, I'd say."
"I wonder what would happen if we both slammed Triple Thrusts together?" Kojirou wondered aloud. "Would it just break our blades?"
"If they hit squarely, I think your weapon would break first." Chloe had found it amusing, heard well after the battle of course, that Kojirou had ruined the copy of his Bitchu Aoe by using one of his (Tsubame Gaeshi) slashes to try and cut aside Okita's (Mumyou Sandanzuki).
"The effect is exponentially more destructive than a normal thrust, but not infinite, so I think your friend is right," Okita agreed with her. "But I'm pretty sure you'd just snipe my hand since that sword has more reach. Unless I'm remembering incorrectly, you didn't make the mistake of trying to redirect my technique twice."
"No I didn't," the Saber replied with surprising cheer. "Well, I must say: though brief, our duel in the previous war hasn't been overtaken by anything in my mind since then."
"That's odd, I would have thought your numerous battles would have brought some greater battles," the pink one responded seriously to the compliment.
"I wouldn't treat them as comparable," Kojirou paused, thinking of something. "Well, I haven't had a proper chance to test if I've actually got the technique correct, since it can be imperfect and yet crack most defenses. By the way, can you break a Holy Sword with it?"
"Depends on what level of Holy Sword you have in mind."
"Hmm, the one of the Princess Knight: Caliburn."
"Didn't that one have a legend in which it broke? Probably doable, but I doubt it would be possible to directly oppose a higher class sword like Excalibur."
"Guess you're right then, my current weapon would break before yours," Kojirou concluded, knowing that he couldn't break Artoria's Caliburn even after various attempts with Reinforcement and rune-based enhancement.
l
(Back in Chaldea)
"Who would have thought to watch a cat cook dinner," Theia quipped while watching the kitchen on the Servants' side take on the flurry of activity which was Tamamo Cat marshaling the many and varied ingredients that had been kept stored there.
"Were you breaking up all of these useful materials into quantum particles?!" Cat seemed rather upset at the notion, despite the fact that the items in question would pile up like radioactive byproducts otherwise. Those around found the sight of a beast triple-wielding kitchen knives quite an impressive sight. Of course, being a Servant, Cat didn't need protective equipment or mana-cleansing in order to handle the exotic ingredients.
This was all interrupted by a sudden rumbling which caused alarm to shoot through everyone present, except for Cat who didn't take any heed of it.
"That can't have been 'just' an earthquake right?" Theia asked someone standing next to her. "Are we on alert status?"
A brief pause followed for the one asked to remember that Theia, as a veteran, didn't have the same strength of link to the System. "We're in the all clear, they're investigating."
"Concert, woof." Cat told them casually.
"Huh?"
"Huh... I don't get it, but we'll need to work on something for that," da Vinci frowned. Having been taken away from the work on monitoring the Event was not ideal, but being told that Elizabeth's voice could somehow pass through the Training Ground's above-Vault-tier protections to shake Chaldea was not encouraging.
"Seems to be just the sound though," was the evaluation of the first responders who identified the Servant source and were able to convince her to hold off on 'practice' for a while. "The interior damage did not pass the ablative layers, we are well within expectations."
"The wards don't work well against the concept of sound?" Kyron's experience around the generators told him that magical wards, while stronger and more efficient when more specific, always had conceptual limits in coverage. In short, serious tradeoffs but also limitations of how one actually laid down wards in the first place; there wasn't some generic do everything we want please ward. "We don't have sound-proofing wards."
"She better be worth it," the Servant grumbled to herself. "The Event's particle cloud is dispersing? That's a good sign, I hope. Comms, standby in case they contact us. Rayshift Vault teams as well."
"Aww, that was really rocking though," Anne praised Elizabeth's performance. Though not as enthusiastic, Mary nevertheless approved of the would-be idol's free-spirited style.
"Maybe you could consider holding it after one of the Free Quest sections?" Agesipolis suggested. The hoplite general had been training with Scathach nearby, and the homunculus who was asked by their collective to deliver the stop message had roped the Shielder into their errand. Understandably, they didn't want to risk being accidentally killed walking into Elizabeth's practice song without protection.
"Since the Masters are out, we have time for you to first show me your combat skills," Scathach said. "For someone with Dragon's lungs, I hope you won't disappoint."
"That might be premature," a nervous homunculus interjected, sensing danger ahead. "Could you wait until da Vinci improves the Training Ground's containment?"
"Purely close combat skills," Scathach amended her assessment intent. "That safe enough?"
"Thanks." She let her relief come through, which was saying something, since they didn't really express emotions as naturally as humans.
(Iri and Matthew's Room)
"...it's hard to say how much that holds, even in the mundane world," Anaz replied to Matthew's question. Besides the three humans, Millia had also 'dropped by' for the small history lesson. Definitely not coincidence, but the Four Houses' historian didn't care to bring that up.
"Because even if they have it 'wrong', the perception itself is what matters?" Matthew pressed the question forward a bit.
"It seems possible that the underlying structure is based on sentient perception, but that's, uh... well it's more that many variant cases exist in nearby branches. Like say, Illya and Chloe, yes?"
"Anything done in secret, so Mysteries, can bend a lot of rules. You don't necessarily even need Magic to outright break some, if the rules actually exist..." Millia suggested, rather than deal with the issue of her House's Founder and the Servant.
"Like how the Kaleidosticks let you get around 'no duplicates' by transferring from your other self," Iri added brightly. "Is it mostly about being creative?"
Anaz blinked. "Ruby isn't what we'd call a 'reliable source', Iri."
"She's also made by a Magician, so you can hardly call Ruby's capabilities standard in any way," Millia frowned. "There exist many powerful wands, Mystic Codes in general actually, but making one sentient just because is not normal."
"Because we are reasonably sure that the Throne of Heroes and the Grail can access all branches and times, ruling anything out is very hard. It might even only have existed in a branch that did not continue, but as long as it did, it can theoretically be accessed." Perhaps due to her personal interests, or just taking the opportunity presented to her, Anaz started on another tangent.
Might Millia have something interesting that might slip? Even with generous access via the Information Sharing, it was hard to even know what questions to ask.
"Like our parents?" Matthew asked casually as though it was not a major question.
"... who said that?" Millia replied after an awkward pause.
"Kojirou. Well, he was talking about Aunt Rin, but when we asked Sasaku, she went very quiet." Iri confessed.
"Saber isn't really knowledgeable about these things," Anaz pointed out quietly. Though he was of course held in high regard by the Four Houses for his early and pivotal contributions, magecraft was not one of them, which the man himself did not mind admitting. Just because his wife was a magus didn't mean that the Servant suddenly viewed the whole enterprise in a flattering light.
"He was asking Sasaku though," Matthew continued.
"... did he say what her response was?" Millia couldn't help but be curious despite herself. Perhaps the Masters knew, but if so they had decided it should be secret.
"A non-answer. Apparently she does that a lot? Hmm, Father said she was truthful but not very helpful."
"Can't say I'm surprised," Millia admitted. Unlike most of the humans present in Chaldea, Anaz was not surprised by Millia's comment, due to having had the chance to speak to the Masters of the previous war when preparing her records on the Servant for her employers.
"It's just odd that no one noticed what happened to the old Einzbern," Matthew jumped back to a previous topic suddenly. Or maybe he noticed that a switch away was appropriate.
"Probably some of them noticed," Millia informed him. "They just didn't want to get involved. And we continued all our contracts without interruption."
"That was probably most of it," Anaz agreed with her. "Just keeping quiet and not doing anything flashy makes it really easy to be forgotten. As it was, the Founding Conflict might not have started if the Einzbern didn't keep on sending hit teams to your parents' house."
"That situation sounds familiar..."