(Outside the Rayshift Vault)
"Think we've got everything," Gudao nodded to himself, mentally checking off a list of preparations.
"Did you fit all the supplies in that?" Chloe looked askance at Sasaku's backback, recognizing it from before. While usually multiple Servants would be toting a bag or pack, and these frequently enough simply went missing in Rayshift transit, it appeared that things would be different this time.
"Well despite its modest appearance," Ruby began explaining of its own accord, "da Vinci passed it on since it works like a small expansion to one's Inventory."
"Sounds like an old classic: the (Bag of Holding) Mystic Code," Blackbeard grinned. "No one would suspect anything, except that you're clearly not an 1800s English schoolgirl."
"Good thing we have Marie with her (Charm) to play the high Charisma type," Gudako shrugged. Frequently people seemed to 'miss' the otherwise odd looks of their Servant groups. Granted, in the middle of any massive crisis, a group of foreigners, the usual explanation, looking foreign hardly mattered much compared to one's survival. Or perhaps fear of it ending for asking the wrong questions.
"Ok, ok, let's get going. Remember that we might be Rayshifting into an open warzone or some even crazier scenario." Gudao punctuated this reminder by being the first to hop into one of the Coffins used by the outgoing team.
"Everything is ready on our end," da Vinci spoke up through the communications link to Chaldea's Control Room. "Bring back something interesting from the Clock Tower there !"
l
(London, in the past)
"Hmm." Gudao looked around the alley his group had 'arrived' in, viewing the foggy and heavily shadowed passageway with disinterest. "Are we all here?"
"Here." Several voices could be heard as the Servants quickly moved into formation. But Gudako immediately noticed that one was missing. "Artoria didn't make it through."
"There's a good reason for that," a gruff but familiar voice from a short distance away answered her as the speaker confidently made their presence known by slowly walking into view.
"Oh my, you have a red version too?" Marie asked, quickly identifying a familiar face.
"Hold on," Jeanne warned the Rider after having had a good look at the newcomer, who she was able to identify once they had come close enough. "That's not Saber."
"Well I am a Saber... I see you have Saint Ruler here," the clearly armored figure, kit-wise a decent match for Georgios, frowned. "I'm Mordred, and yes I do look like Artoria. But I'm not the reason your ally couldn't Rayshift in with you."
The True Name caused a bit of a stir, before the silver-and-red knight remembered something critical for her introduction piece. "Wait, wait ! Right, greetings from Chaldea. I was here only a little earlier before you, so your systems probably directed you to where I was hiding out. Uh, long story short, there's currently some degraded form of Artoria Pendragon which the ruler of this Singularity is using in her plans, so I think you'll find I'm well-suited to this mission !"
"Uh... I see," Marie seemed more surprised than doubtful at this.
"For starters, we should probably get indoors so you can set up a Field to protect yourself from this fog. It isn't just your standard era-appropriate health-endangering industrial pollution, you know?" Mordred offered. "And there's someone you should meet - he got summoned by the World."
"Is this world going down the path of magical energy saturation?" Gudako asked the red Saber, who only shrugged.
"Don't know. I'm here because the enemy is using Artoria's identity 'as king' to provide them a conceptual grip on the area. Doubtless they will act on something as major as several Servants Rayshifting in. Which is to say, those clockwork guard dogs which are about to show themselves."
Mordred's prediction was realized almost immediately as a series of clanking, rolling and shuffling entities appeared down the otherwise suspiciously empty street.
"They're a sort of machine, but with a basic sentience that runs off both fuel and magical energy," the knight explained simply.
"Let's see... Sasaku, shoot them." Gudako directed.
Though she started by adjusting her backpack's positioning in order to raise an arm, the Ruler sighed with a wry expression upon realizing this and simply snapped her fingers instead. A series of shimmering green streaks promptly appeared, sprinting towards the approaching enemies...
And passed through them harmlessly without materializing.
"Their level is that low? Caster." Gudao raised an eyebrow, wondering how come the entities could function with a low enough level of Mystery to not be engaged by Sasaku's spears.
After thinking for the briefest of moment, Scathach began drawing runes of Shattering in the air, tapping each one lightly with her wand to send it on its way. Each machine hit shook briefly before simply falling apart, spilling what looked like perfectly normal Industrial Age components on the ground.
"There should be some special gears in there," Mordred said calmly, hand on sword but not outwardly concerned from her position next to Georgios at the front. "If we gather some of them, they'd be both a useful source of information about the magecraft used and a useful resource."
"da Vinci's expertise would have be useful for that first investigation," Marie commented as some lone steps came from the side.
"Hmm, what's this?" Sasaku, who had been carefully watching the rear angle of the party turned towards the newcomer as a schoolgirl ran up to her. The two were about the same height, at first glance. "You shouldn't be running about at a time like th-"
There was a brief moment of realization that the uniform worn by the other girl, entirely matching her own, was like it completely inappropriate for the current era and location. And that she had just been stabbed in the stomach by the bold Assassin.
"Huh?" Jeanne, reacted immediately, swinging her banner at the enemy Servant, who ripped her own weapon free, causing more damage on the exit, and practically dashed backwards out of reach. Marie tried attacking with her range, but the Assassin simply disappeared back into the alleyway she had emerged from.
"Oh no," Gudako muttered as she and Jeanne quickly moved to cover the injured Servant who dropped to the ground. blood staining her white shirt on its way down, pooling in her skirt and spilling onto the roadway. The usual shimmering effect of its magical energy dissipating into the environment was absent, a sign as to the current high density of mana in the group's surroundings.
But no one had the time to spare observing it.
"(Presence Concealment)," Sasaku explained with eerie calmness for someone holding a gaping wound in their own body shut with their hands. "No Ruby, it's a bit too late to go for defenses now, and I can't use my magecrafts while transformed."
"Very bold for an Assassin, to strike into at a group of six Servants," Gudao commented, gesturing for Georgios and Marie to spread out to cover the sudden gap in the group's perimeter. "But they did extract masterfully. Scathach, a moment here please. Georgios, hold the front for now."
"That one thrust did a ton of damage," the still-bleeding Ruler informed the group's Caster who bent over her to examine the damage. "If you can help stabilize it, I'll be able to regenerate the rest with some time, though. Not as bad as (Gae Bolg)'s anti-healing property."
"We should make haste for our base," Mordred told everyone. "Out in the open we're vulnerable from all angles, and I don't want to leave my ally alone if the enemies are getting this serious."
(A nondescript house)
Walking up to one of the identical front doors in the row of silent houses, Mordred tried the doorknob and nodded upon finding it locked. She then took out a key and let everyone in to the "base".
"The living room is this way," the red Saber explained, leading Marie who was carrying the bloodied girl. Despite their fears and very reasonable caution, there had been no serious Servant-level resistance. Perhaps they had simply pierced and then outrun the hostile machines' encirclement.
"You can put her down on that sofa..." Mordred paused upon noticing that someone was already sitting on the mentioned furniture, his easy posture at odds with the tension of everyone else present. "Er yeah, this is my ally -"
"Shirou." Of the group, only Sasaku remembered the young man in front of her as he appeared in the Fifth Grail War they had experienced together. The two Masters were only born about four years later, and the other Servants had only seen pictures of him in his thirties except for da Vinci who had actually met him before the bombing attack on Chaldea which killed the leader of House Emiya at the start of the Incineration of Human History. "You came back, I see."
"Ah, my little Caster," he replied with immediate recognition while standing up to make room for Marie to lay the addressed Ruler down. "You look cuter than before, but I doubt it matches your personality any better."
"You became a Heroic Spirit?" Gudako sounded astounded, or perhaps awe-struck, by the possibilities that had apparently been proven true.
"No, but I am currently a Servant." Shirou raised his hands as a pair of familiar twin shortswords appeared to fill them. "You might not believe me, but some version of me ended up working with the original first Chloe. Only found out myself after, you know, dying."
"...wait, you didn't end up becoming a Counter Guardian did you?" Sasaku, remembering Chloe's warning delivered in the previous war with a bit of worry.
"You remembered that too?" Shirou released his weapons with a smile. "Can't tell by looking at me? I'm with the Grail like you Rulers. Before you ask, yes I already knew about the Class change."
"I'm not really sure about the terms of my 'employment', to be honest," the addressed Ruler replied.
"Probably fiendishly complicated, since you have Zelretch's little friend hanging around you there," he indicated Ruby, who for its own reasons was lazily floating back and forth despite being apparently uninterested in the nearby conversation.
"She does her best," Sasaku replied neutrally. "By the way, I noticed this Bounded Field uses the same structure as a Realm. Did you get the (Realm Creation) variant Skill?"
"Close, but it's actually listed as (System Creation) after the Grand Aria Systems, you know. Not that I caused it, you understand, but it seems that the World had you tagged as being in the Emiya house, so the Four Houses could 'inherit' your magecraft basis, when you died."
"Ah." She remembered a then-odd tangent in the previous War when Gilgamesh had asked her about her family name. Unfortunately, he had been satisfied by her confused explanation that the question made no sense, so that tidbit had passed her by.
"By the way," Mordred commented to Gudao as the two of them accompanied Scathach to examine the boundaries of Shirou's Bounded Field. "I assume that one of your three Rulers already told you, but I wasn't a human even before becoming a Heroic Spirit."
"We read about it a bit less directly than that; via records about Merlin..." the Master explained.
"That pain in the neck? Isn't he trapped in Avalon forever?" The Saber paused. "Then again, wouldn't be surprising if he got bored and decided to find a way out. And succeeded somehow."
"Seems to happen a lot," the Land of Shadows' queen agreed.
"Shirou tells me you have your own bit of history rebelling against human rulers," Mordred continued conversationally. "Seems to have worked out a bit better in your case, huh?"
"You should already know, since you're from whichever Chaldea presumably got our Saber in the swap," Gudao shrugged. "I wouldn't claim there was some great underlying narrative behind it, though. Not that we ever attempted to fabricate one, which is what it would have taken."
"I doubt any of your like would have summoned a Knight of Treachery," said knight corrected him. "He's the one from Chaldea, I just appeared here because there's a Knight of Knights who needs to be toppled. Doubtless, regardless of how the Singularity resolves itself after that, I won't outlive my father long."
Gudao nodded, understanding something that Mordred couldn't due to not being familiar with Chaldea's Artoria. "It's a good thing we only have a Princess Knight then."
"Did you have much chance to scout out the city?" Scathach asked while placing down some runes.
"The humans are dying out, nothing special besides all the mana doing that," was the reply. "Those machines, we previously didn't engage them because it might give our position away, as you could see. Also if they're that individually weak... probably more like a moving alarm system? Or tripwire."
"Met that enemy Servant?"
"No. But it's telling that not long after Caster here started breaking the machines up, a hostile Servant appeared. Shirou guessed right," she admitted. Of course, her first instinct had been to apply Clarent to the annoying rattling things.
l
(Chaldea Control Room)
'"Not a great start," da Vinci commented after the Communication Room picked up a signal from Scathach's ritual spell. "At least, if she can heal the damage in a few hours, it wasn't as though we lost anyone. Now that fog explains why the Singularity had such a high level on the detection scan."
"It would seem like the setup for a large-scale spell?" Sasaku asked from where she sat on a sofa next to Emiya Shirou. The news had spread like wildfire back at Chaldea, but everyone in the Control Room tried to contain their excitement in order to stay on track resolving the Singularity. "Shirou says it feels like an attempt to create a Grand Aria, but in totally the wrong way."
"Well, he is the expert," da Vinci responded while quickly asking for Emet to attend the discussion.
"The Masters informed me that there are come scenarios where the world becomes filled with some form of dense mana, but this would seem to be too early in the timeline for that," Shirou mused. "By the way, historically it seems there was some sort of disease outbreak around this period, so I wouldn't hold out too much hope for the humans. Unfortunately we can't tell if the disease occurred originally or if the World's correction just tells us there was one."
"It might not matter," the Rider shook her head. "Since your current London could be another branch anyway. I notice you didn't have any details on the Servant who attacked you; was it that effective of an ambush?"
"We're sure it was an Assassin with (Presence Concealment) using the heavy fog as a sort of conceptual cover, you know, since even residual energy signatures would blend in to all the environmental mana currents. Besides that, she was wearing a uniform," Jeanne answered. "At most we got a glance at her, and my (True Name Descernment) didn't have time to activate."
"Ran any searches on the uniform?" da Vinci asked, looking surprised by the wry expressions that appeared though the communication channel.
"It was a copy of this Homurahara one," Shirou chuckled, poking Sasaku's shoulder for emphasis. "Of course, she didn't realize the significance until after being stabbed."
"Not a subtle choice," Georgios agreed. "But it worked largely because she's used to being able to at least sense someone's level, so to speak."
"Eh, even my Skill didn't have time to go off," Jeanne disagreed with him. "We were in formation, so the Assassin picked the weakest point on the perimeter. Of course the Masters were in the middle with me."
"Speaking of weakest, with one thrust an Assassin got through your defenses straight on?" da Vinci asked incredulously. Not because that Class couldn't pull off some amazing sneak attacks, but the team's account made it sound like a simple stab did the Ruler in.
"She wasn't transformed," Marie spoke up, seeing that the girl in question wasn't particularly quick in answering.
"We were expecting something stronger to appear," Gudako shook her head ruefully. "And it did, but..."
"Just like in the old school days, when schoolgirls are stabbing one another in the street with knives," Shirou added with an ironic tone. "Given the current situation, that's not too far-fetched. With all these alleyways, a sturdy close combat weapon will go a long way."
"And what is the current situation?" Anaz had also been called up to the Control Room for this. "Besides this killer mana-dense fog issue."
"Seems like some sort of revolutionary movement was gathering momentum before the fog set in. Neither are likely to be historical or natural." Shirou summarized his findings from the brief time advantage he had over the Rayshift team.
"To be clear: I had nothing to do with that, it was before I appeared," Mordred added quickly. "I'd never be caught starting a revolution on the workers' behalf."
"Uh wait, by workers you don't mean it was some sort of Leninist uprising, do you?"
"It seems to be that, really. I know, wrong time period, but all that suggests to me is another Servant appeared besides the two of us," Shirou suggested. "After all, there's plenty of magical energy for the World to pull out more of us."
l
(Elsewhere in London)
"Ah, humans are so weak..." The magus in an elegant tailored suit sighed in disappointment to a much larger version of the robots that had been lost attacking what was presumably the Chaldean Rayshift group. "Perhaps living in world dying of a drought of mana has caused them to evolve in such a direction."
"I do not believe the fundamental parameters of human construction have changed that greatly since the Age of Gods," the mechanical Servant Charles Babbage corrected him. "Their perception has changed, creating new strengths outside of Mystery and conversely weaknesses to it. Rather say: the flesh has always been weak."
"Things can be done to remedy that though," the alchemist Paracelsus added, though not on his own behalf since clearly the idea that a Servant was made of flesh was absurd - they were spiritron-based beings.
"You are both on the clock," a jet black-clad Artoria Pendragon reminded the pair, her crown darkly gleaming on her pale hair as the Saber came to check in on their work. "The mistress has made clear she is not currently interested in pushing your side-projects."
"Chaldea has sent a kill team," the magus Lev Lainur informed her. "But they went dark after making a splash. Doubtless they will be conspiring with the revolutionaries."
"It is not unexpected, and the mistress already told me." Artoria regarded him with a frown. "Will you be leaving since they have responded?"
"I think not," he replied after a moment. "You have a good chance of pulling this one off. Human rabble can't even survive breathing the air for much longer and a few Rogue Servants don't change the real calculation: if you can take down a Chaldean strike force."
"But are you planning to actually fight them...? No, I thought not. Well, as you wish." She turned to leave the trio, since the contents of her message were already known to the intended recipients.
"What about you?" Paracelsus asked quietly. "It will just be a different 'someone else' who will have the crown after all."
"Don't be a fool," she replied while adjusting how her swordbelt, with Excalibur on it, sat on the waistline of her dress. "Stick to your alchemy."
"According to the last transmissions of some of the scouts, a red and silver knight was with the group," Lainur warned the dark Saber. "The Chaldeans are expecting you."
"I heard."