(Iri and Matthew's Room)

"I wonder if it's easier for them to learn these things with the System," Matthew wondered aloud while he and his sister worked on some math problems. A lot of the ones which the various contributing homunculi had produced for them seemed to employ an agrarian framing, with cats and goats filling in for cars and trucks. It probably helped that said animals were frequently in evidence around young members of their society which, after all, was generally kept secret, or at least out of view.

"Only when they're adults," Iri remembered from Emet's seminar. "They can't connect well before that point, so it wouldn't help."

"They must get a lot done, to get there in five years."

"I suppose so." A moment of quiet work followed. Interestingly enough to most casual observers, they had two sets, one of which was in English and the other in Japanese. While most of those in the Einzbern Estate knew German, in their family, only Sakura had spoken it. Though Mother never explained when or why she learned the language...

"I wonder if they usually teach things in dual languages?" Iri asked no one in particular. "It seems an odd way to go about it."

"Well, it helps to learn a language not as a standalone subject."

She looked up in surprise as they were joined without warning by two schoolgirls. Wait, what?

"Hi," Chloe poked her head around Sasaku who was in the doorway in front of her. The open doorway, which meant they were here on some business.

"Why don't you come in?" Matthew took it all in stride while his sister was caught up in her own confusion. Iri had been distracted by seeing the first visitor's backpack, or rather the strap of it and the side, which reminded her again of the first impression she had upon meeting her father's Servant from the previous war. She's shorter than I expected.

Which was not a visual illusion, according to Kojirou - the Servant had somehow lost about ten centimeters which, relatively speaking, was a lot. Chloe could look over her shoulder now, but not in the previous War. And while their parents made it sound that she had not lacked for presence, honestly she does.

"So, what brings you here?" Recovering, Iri hurriedly tried to tidy the low table which the two human children had been working on, but the attempt at haste only added to the mess. Sitting down, joined shortly thereafter by Chloe, Sasaku simply tapped her fingers on the tabletop and all the items on it quickly jumped into an orderly arrangement.

"That always looks kind of cool," Chloe commented as the Ruler took off her backpack, which at least looked like a standard one worn to school, and opened it before extracting what looked like several notebooks.

"We're here for your study session, by the way," the Archer continued by way of explanation since her companion seemed to be thoughtfully preparing several other things. Or perhaps, as was her wont, simply allowing the other Servant to keep on talking until she presumably eventually stopped of her own accord.

"You are?" Matthew asked in about the most direct way possible.

"Well that's technically true," Sasaku replied with a hint of amusement. The fact that, of the four, she was the only one wearing a school uniform and with matching backpack was apparently not lost on her. "So what happened was-"

"Leave it to this Ruby to tell !" her wand helpfully (?) suggested after having carefully positioned itself a little out of her reach with the table in the way for extra insurance.

"This should be good," Chloe cheerfully poked the flying Ruby which, despite trying to dodge, was unable to avoid the Archer's keen perception and aim.

(The previous day)

"... so we were wondering if you might be able to 'read off' more mundane material. Like say: the textbooks currently in use by Homurahara Academy - Elementary," Gudako concluded.

"Well, at least you're being obvious about the request," Sasaku sighed. "Is this really the best you could come up with, though?"

"It's really awkward trying to put together a program for them," the Master explained. "If we had access to everyone 'outside' things would be different - though even then, unsurprisingly our own system differs from standard education - but you have people a few years out from it and, of course, zero low-level teachers in Chaldea."

"I'll have to look and see," her Servant mumbled, already in thought. "You'd have to hope that the Grail isn't strict about copyright."

"Well, think of it more like a digital copy of the textbooks they already have at home. And just the publicly posted class syllabus. Also, literally for educational purposes, ten percent or so should be fine?"

Ruby couldn't resist popping up to add, "Seems like she's pretty easy to push into things, huh? Not that I dislike that sort of girl, wish I could push her though..."

"Eh," Sasaku looked askance at her wand. "It's an understandable ask, I'm sure if the Masters thought it was a waste of time they'd not have."

"Hmm, oh right. Chloe will also be joining the group for hopefully obvious reasons."

"... okay, but why didn't you wear your other dress?" Matthew asked innocently, provoking something like a cackle from Chloe.

"Ah, I like you," Ruby commented idly. "It's too bad you're a boy..."

"That's kind of rude," Sasaku scolded her wand. "I know you're stuck on the one track of magical girls but try to restrain yourself."

"It's not like I'm going to dimension hop to find a girl version of Matthew," Ruby retorted. "Though I bet she'd look like her mother."

"Please don't bring in stuff from other branches," Chloe said. "I know it's me speaking and all, but doing it for your own amusement is just-"

"The purple isn't genetic," Matthew recalled. "Mother's original hair color is brown like Iri's."

"Ah, I see." Chloe caught on immediately. "Comes along with your house's magecraft, then? Same here I think, the original Chloe changed to become like this over her lifetime. Though there's no way to separate that part now, I obviously didn't look like this when not Installing her Archer class card."

"Did you look like Aunt Illya?" Iri asked after thinking about it.

"Uh, yes, given that I am her, from another branch, you know." Chloe chewed her lip for a moment as though it had brought back some troublesome memories.

"Yes, this calls for some magical image projection !" Ruby volunteered, producing something like a lens and projecting magical energy through it. "Behold Prisma (star) Illya !"

There was a brief moment as everyone involved processed the holographic image, slowly rotating in the middle of the table, of a magical girl.

"Oh, that makes it really clear," Matthew said simply.

"Hmm, so you actually did use pink that time," Sasaku was clearly mentally comparing their outfits.

"Feels nostalgic for some reason," Chloe muttered. "I wonder how my original self is doing, handling the Class Cards with Miyu. We'd only gotten through Rider and Caster, guess Saber too since I got her pretty good, last I remembered."

"... what do you remember after that fight?" Ruby asked after a moment.

"Nothing. But Chloe's Holy Sword Projection seemed to be doing pretty well against her Excalibur, which I'd say is impressive since a magical girl shouldn't usually be able to match Servants."

"Wonder if something like 'used a Holy Sword to oppose another' is what caused you to become summonable." Sasaku seemed to be mentally taking notes for later reference. "But anyway, let's get back to it: math.

The Ruler handed each of the other three present one of the notebooks, all of which had their owner's name on it and the title simply 'Math'. "Just open to the first page," she directed the group.

"How did you manage this?" Chloe asked, immediately recognizing the contents, despite having experience with another Homurahara's selection of textbooks.

"Seems like this one starts off right in the middle of the text where we ended for summer," Iri commented analytically. "It also looks different and is, uh, printed on a normal notebook somehow?"

"Yeah, I made them directly last night," Sasaku told them. "The notebooks are from a Friend Point summon, so I guess that's why they look like the ones I remember from your parent's Grail War time."

(Masters' My Rooms)

I wonder how well it'll work out for them," Gudako commented cheerfully to Gudao after checking the time and remembering various arrangements for the day.

"Which them?" he answered shortly. "The children, Chloe, or Sasaku?"

"All, of course."

"Well, Ruler will report first, and you can probably hear from Chloe later on, or indirectly from Blackbeard. The children, whenever we next visit them. But there's no real way it won't end well, just how much and in what specific ways," was his answer, really a full analysis as the pair had already done beforehand. Even if they had a bit of theater as though seeing Japanese-style school notebooks, of all things, had suggested the following request, the other party would definitely not have fallen for it. But in a way, that was all 'part of the process'.

"Chaldea has a World Systems Theorist, right? He would find it an interesting case study, attachments dragging one back in to rebirth as it were. After all, it was at least partially her relationship with our parents that caused Our Lady to find a way around supposedly not being able to return - practically a reversal of the idea of escaping from the cycle of rebirth."

"It might be more like the bodhisattva ideal, provided I actually remember what it is correctly, but no... definitely not interested in welfare of 'all sentient beings'. And fundamentally, for her nation the idea of returning is held up like as something rare and worth remembering. So many are born immortal that the few who were specifically given it are exceptional."

"Right... it's odd to think how we are so different from the humans, but there's at least one other society that can be so different to us both. Orthogonality, I suppose." Gudako nodded to herself. "My mother said that it wasn't about her caring or not caring, but if she committed to something then she had to fulfill. I'm sure you had the same idea though, yeah?"

"There's a lot we don't know about her context though, it might turn out that the human idea of immortality being a somewhat negative long-term outlook might hold when not in a society which is similarly immortal. But as seen so far, it's not foolish to hope that for the sake of their parents, she'll take care of their children, and then hopefully the children's children," Gudao completed the thought for her. "It's too bad we might not be around to see any nieces or nephews from them. "

"There's still like ten years and the work of Servant-level researchers like da Vinci to solve that. Our odds of an extension, if not useful immortality options are pretty decent." Granted, 'decent' was wildly optimistic for the two of them in particular. There was, after all, a serious price to be paid just at the door of having good magical circuits, before one even spoke of augmentation procedures and Grail fragment fusing rituals. Though they frequently spoke as though expecting a twenty-year lifespan as Illyasviel had expected for herself, even that had no real statistical basis since she was unique and they were the first generation of their type.

l

(Memorial Room)

Anaz looked over the small room that had been set aside to house a stele in remembrance to those who died a few months ago; in the attack just before the Incineration of Human History and era, if one wished to call it that, of the Separation Order.

The actual stone component had been fashioned from what had originally been overburden produced by expansion of Chaldea's lowest sections into its mountain. The homunculi stoneworkers had chosen a number of particularly dark-hued stones from what had not been earlier removed from the mining works, carefully fashioning and fitting them together to form a single monolithic rectangular tablet-shaped block, arranged so that its differing tones ran in bands from left to right like ruled lines on paper.

This now-singular stone piece appeared to float in its clear protective column, also rectangular in cross-section to accommodate said contents, that sparkled gently as it broke up the rays from the surrounding lights. Anaz didn't know if the nearly invisible flaws in the single-crystal diamond casing before her were an inevitable part of manufacturing such a large item, or perhaps left in - maybe even deliberately seeded - in order to enhance the overall effect, much like how natural diamonds almost never were perfectly flawless.

She didn't know, of course, that the careful selection of flaw distribution was a critical step in producing single-use artificial gems, a Tohsaka house specialty, like the Saint Quartz.

Whoever was responsible for arranging the deceased's names had budgeted spacing for seventy-seven names, though a number of unused spots sat at the bottom of the list of human names: those still in stasis, whose prognosis were certainly grim but not yet certain. While it was easy to imagine how the currently existing names had been engraved and then the resulting depressions filled in with gold, how they intended to add the additional names, if necessary, was a bit more of a mystery.

Standing out by its unexpected presence, a few fresh flowers lay in front of the suspended stele. Such things didn't exist in Chaldea, as the various plants that filled the room were taken from their place in other 'working' applications, as Chaldea did not have more traditionally decoratively-specialized flowers. In particular, whoever had last done plant work brought in several herb plants, which perfumed the air in a way.

The two lists of names were simply ordered alphabetically, with no other information provided. Down among the fifty-eight homunculi named was Siegfried's predecessor. And on a line above that, among the -G-s-

Garnet.

"In the end, all returns to dust, huh?"

"Hm, that's an interesting take," someone who had apparently been within earshot responded. "The numerous historical characters walking about suggest otherwise."

Anaz frowned, recognizing if not the individual herself, that it was one of Garnet's fellows. "Heroic Spirits are pretty much the definition of exceptions proving the rule, since they are outside the World."

"All of Chaldea is outside of the World at present, what's left of it anyway," Emet replied in a straightforward manner. As usual, when engaged in conversation, it quickly became apparent that their type hardly held what humans considered true emotions. She didn't think of it as a true limitation, they weren't machines by any stretch and did understand what emotions were, they just didn't subscribe them to them personally. All of them, that is.

While she was thinking this over, Anaz realized that her conversation partner was one of Chaldea's Systems Theoretical Development members. People like her in particular would not be speculating idly about how far the Four Houses might be able to stretch their magecrafts. "Tell me something: does Chloe show up in your System?"

"No. Depending on circumstances, older Einzbern do not connect to it as strongly as their magical potential would imply, compared to the younger members." She didn't even hesitate, itself interesting in what that implied. Although, come to think of it, such details might now considered relevant to her field since the Masters had approved studies on using the System as a substrate for Servant-level records. Gudako had told her even as much as their considerations regarding a Grail terminal, since the Grand Aria System was not actually able to control the Grail System let alone the Holy Grail, both critical components used in Servant summoning.

"The Masters intended to introduce us, but we should probably continue this discussion somewhere else."

Emet simply nodded agreement. Not for the first time, Anat was reminded that, in general, the Four Houses didn't really need Garnet or any other individual homunculi to 'watch' those working with them, provided they were in some way within a Realm's influence. Of course their 'chance' meeting couldn't have been planned, since she had spontaneously decided to visit the monument, but it was definitely not sheer coincidence that Emet was there at the same time.

Because, after all, the homunculi did most of the maintenance on the memorial area, but it was really only the humans like herself who visited it.