(Summoning Room)
"Hmm, ok... well then can you guide them to da Vinci's place for the usual routine? I'm sure she already knows, but remind her we want that report on Okita pronto," Gudao instructed Sasaku as they waited for the rest of the staff to clear out of the Summoning Room.
"Wait, me?! But why?" The Saber protested.
"You're the first Servant-level being with a serious transmittable disease?" Gudako asked rhetorically. "Most of us don't have the protection of overlapping protective Mystics and the like, so while I'm sure it probably won't turn out to be the worst-case scenario, we don't want to end up looking back and saying, 'Ah, it turned out to be the worst-case scenario.'..."
"The Rider was already told to prepare when we got back from the Honnoji Event," Kojirou remarked apparently spontaneously. "She knows her stuff; we might even get to cross swords before the day is out."
"R-right." Okita seemed to follow their reasoning though it had initially taken her off guard. "I remember a Caster, Tamamo-no-Mae, did something that could counteract it for several hours."
"Hmm, I hope we can do something a bit more long-term than that," Sasaku frowned, having been reminded of both Tamamo and her own deaths in the previous War. Which was likely what Okita had been thinking of. "Let's take this one step at a time."
"So, what's on your mind?" Gudako asked her fellow Master as they made their way to the Training Grounds to check on Blackbeard and the pirate pair.
"Not now," Gudao replied briefly as the group of four crossed some sort of invisible exclusion zone boundary marked by a pair of homunculi apparently loitering in the corridor. The route from Summoning Room to da Vinci's Workshop had been cleared, just in case.
"Hmm, I really thought we had a chance to pull out Shirou," Chloe sounded disappointed, though she should already know from recent history that the system tended to pull long stretches of random Craft Essences which help keep da Vinci and her assistants busy.
"Just keep thinking that, and if it actually happens, you can keep that last memory of fulfilled expectation," Kojirou replied dryly. "I don't think people use so much magical energy for so little in any other Holy Grail War."
"Yes, but they don't usually get to keep around a whole ton of Servants," Gudao shrugged as they approached the Training Grounds. "If Daedra and the others improve on it, that would be great, but otherwise energy-hog or not, we'll be prioritizing it."
"I must say though," Blackbeard was hardly shy about inquiring of the Masters, "This is 'cool', of course, but I don't see the use case for such a weapon. We can't even bring it with us, unless you have one of the two girls pack it along."
Chloe had picked up and was eyeing one of the rounds analytically. "Oh, I don't think there's much reason for Servants to use these. Your own pistols should have better effect."
"I'd like to see an organized testing of these things," Gudao agreed with the smaller Archer without providing any answer. "There should be a target already prepped for this, right?"
"Why don't you load one in and do a trial shot?" Anne slyly suggested to Blackbeard. "But wait until we get the Masters safe behind one of the walls."
"That sounds needlessly ominous," the male pirate frowned in an exaggerated manner. "This is using a standard charge, yes?"
"We don't really know if the gun can take it though," Chloe corrected him. "Somehow just touching it gives me the sense it'll work out though."
"Wait, wait a second." Everyone paused as Gudako suddenly interrupted the discussion. "Isn't there a proof round there for checking the gun before we use the new rounds?"
"... I don't think any of them looked different?" Putting action to words, Mary opened up the box and took only a few seconds to tally up the contents of the box, confirming the unfortunate truth.
"That puts a damper on things," Gudao shook his head. "And she'll be busy with the new Servants, too."
"You don't have anyone, in all of Chaldea, who can make a single round?" Anne asked in disbelief.
"Oh, these were all made by da Vinci in the first place, we never had reason to manufacture these for anything before, so we don't even have blueprints on hand," Gudako told her. "We're gonna... let's see, take it back to our room until she's done and can work on this project since it isn't that important. You can all take some time for yourselves until then."
(My Room)
"So, who's got you worried?" Gudako asked as soon as the doors closed behind them. She looked around for a clear spot, eventually placing da Vinci's box on a shelf.
"It's Chloe. You think she ever handled a gun in her life before?" Gudao answered her question with a question.
"This about what Emiya said about the Heroic Spirit?"
"Only partially. Our Chloe pointed out that it's likely the Prisma Phantasm series isn't so much about her, but the original Chloe. Which makes sense, if we think about the magical girl thing from another angle and suppose that the original was herself a magical girl. The fact that in our Chloe's world, her Rin started off the quest for Class Cards with that Archer Card provided to her by Zelretch is kind of telling since we now know that the Heroic Spirit is definitely not new to working with that Magician."
"So... you think some of her unexplained behavior is from the Heroic Spirit part of her Spirit Origin, even though it seems generally passive in both Wars she's been in?" Gudako sounded convinced already despite voicing evidence to the contrary.
"Might be one of those 'more specific thus more powerful' sort of things. If her big priorities were warning Emiya about the Counter Force and trying to get Ruby into more contracts with people? I can sort of see the second, how the first comes about I don't know."
"Isn't it obvious from her explanation? Emiya frequently becomes one of Alaya's servants which ends up pretty badly for him."
"Right. But she can't actually prevent it, since if that happened, it would be a causality paradox. She might be able to prevent all but at least the one that inspired her to start on it," Gudao pointed out. "Not watertight either way, I know."
"If she is dealing with the master of the Second Magic, a lot of rules might get bent into knots like those old feats of strength with iron pokers," Gudako suggested in turn. "But I think that based on her particular nature, Chloe should be safe from something as extreme as being taken over."
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"I must say, Tamamo Cat's cooking surpasses anything I've eaten when alive," Marie's unchanging dark hues belied a currently cheerful atmosphere as a small group of Servants happened to be having dinner together. Because of the long-established rules about the cafeteria table layouts, everyone had to sit in a group unless they specifically waited for a lull.
"I'd say the same, though I guess it doesn't carry as much weight," Artoria added her own compliment to Chaldea's beast of cooking. "We can certainly say no one outside of Chaldea can experience this."
"More like no human," Elizabeth reminded her, munching on a piece of meat that she had cut a bit too large. "Or rather, they could experience it briefly before dying. Somehow it feels like Cat tends to overcook meat, then again maybe it's for the best given what these cuts are from."
"No need to be so doubtful," the mentioned Cat replied while herself going through what looked like a sampler of, of all things, various vegetables. "Magical energy aside, it's all nutritious. Scathach even said a balanced diet could help one become stronger and improve Skills."
"Eating a steak of seared phantasmal improves Skills?" A coming-by-for-food Shielder's attention was caught by this as he eyed the menu's latest addition. Of course, Cat's style with words was not so much informative as it was amusing. For her.
"Considering that Scathach really cares about training and so on, I'd take her at her word," Elizabeth grumbled, having been taken for multiple training sessions when she would rather have been practicing her singing.
"Had guessed the butchering work was for rare magecraft materials, not food," Agesipolis shrugged aside the thought after noticing that Cat was busy eating her own food at the moment. Even with her amazing culinary skills and kitchen presence, it was unlikely she could eat and cook, in different places, at once.
"They're both. But eat heavyweights like dragon steak in moderation !" the Berserker happily downed a small red fruit that might have passed for a cherry tomato in a more mundane salad.
"Wyvern." Artoria and Elizabeth both said in the same tempo.
"Bringing back a dragon's reverse scale is already pretty expensive energy-wise, I can't imagine trying to haul back all the meat," Marie agreed with them.
"I'm looking forward to some of these getting allocated space for farming," a homunculus remarked to her colleague while they ate a light "dinner" consisting of a salad containing the much-approved vegetable and some scrambled eggs with rice. For various reasons, Chaldea's main stockpiles consisted of rice and dried meat in air-tight vacuum sealed containers and large cans of vegetables produced as part of the Einzbern farming operation.
Obviously, since Chaldea was leaning into its ability to generate magical energy via the Blade Generators and efficiently converting it to mundane electricity, a large amount of fresh vegetables and even some obliging fruits were constantly growing in the lower levels. With light and thus vegetal growth ongoing at all hours of the 'day', so to was the work of the farming crew who did so in shifts.
However, some recent Friend Point summons had brought in new plant samples which were quickly isolated, studied and then experimentally grown to see how they might fit into, or not, the pseudo-ecosystems of Chaldea's farm Rooms. Of course, unlike the usual open-air farm, even if the situation might get out of hand in one Room, it could all be cleared - meaning the goats would be brought in to strip it all down - and then replanted as desired.
Thus far, Chaldea's systems were not balanced because their 'agriculture' only really sufficed to provide fresh vegetables and some eggs to supplement their initial stockpiles. It would take far more effort to make more than a dent in the energy intake of over eight hundred fifty people. Any edible food that happened to appear from the Friend Point channel could not support even a single person of that.
Ever since the question had come up, they had pondered and tried to game out among themselves what it would take to actually close the cycle such that Chaldea would be more like a space-colonization setup rather than its original bunker-type setup. Of course, now that the hostile forces had truly kicked things off, being a bunker was definitely much appreciated. At least for the present there was no need for aggressive rationing. Although they'd never understand it, Chaldea's cats in particular would be in trouble since it was pretty much a given that no rodents would be coming in from Void Space and the feline dietary needs were not particularly well-suited to substitution.
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(The Moon)
"Honestly, I think he's gone along with everyone else. Shouldn't you focus on helping the Masters restore humanity for now?" As Tamamo saw it, it didn't make sense for a human to be reborn as a homunculus let alone some random girl Servant from goodness knows where.
There was only a moment, the span of a breath, to wait.
"Can't be anyone gone by the time I was summoned, so he has to be one of them !"
Ugh, really. Of all the times to be clever... well really it was just Kiyohime; she always went nuts over Anchin, right or wrong, logical or illogical were just different means. All while she remained blissfully, even aggressively, unaware that it was basically nowadays impossible for her to actually be summoned with him since it seemed that the whole 'mistaken identity' had become a fixture of her various Spirit Origins. Some had it even worse than her standard Berserker one, odd as that might sound at first blush.
"Something on your mind?" A voice pulled her attention away from the text chat and Tamamo turned to see Hakunon walking up.
"Just trying to keep Kiyohime on track, you know how she's like," the Caster replied, careful to avoid sounding too serious about it.
"Hmm, keep up the good work." Her Master seemed to have something else on her mind, so Tamamo quickly brought up a piece of news from before Kiyohi's usual derail, "By the way, that's another Chaldea summoned an Elizabeth from the Singing Pumpkin Event. Uptake seems to be pretty good, all things considered."
"Great, another branch inoculated. Though I do wonder how you keep straight all these different Chaldeas that roam in and out of our communications range, just thinking about it makes my head hurt."
"That's a good question ..."
"Anyway, guess that's another one of BB's little games paying off. You have to give the devil her due, but damn me if she doesn't love making sure you feel every bit of the due you have to give her... By the way, have you seen Mr Nameless around? I wanted to ask him about that Honnoji Event he went out to, did he head out again already?"
"I think your Archer and Melt went out surfing somewhere," Hakunon's Caster replied, leaving out that a certain Empress had also taken the opportunity to begin making waves, as it were, on the beach which would probably need some repair work afterwards.
"Right. Oh well, let's see. Hey Robin, you're around, right? Let's go have a cocktail party on the beach map."
"Great timing, boss. It'll be set up by the time you load in." The green Archer's relief was audible as he appeared right on cue and then disappeared hurriedly to set upon this new task.
"You know," Tamamo commented. "He and Nameless have a similar sort of thing going on, don't they?"
Hakunon bit her lip wryly. "When you put it that way, I wonder if being stuck serving Alaya or BB for all eternity is worse. Any other work must be like a dream vacation with that kind of day job."
"Uh Master... Robin Hood is a Heroic Spirit who does other things and also exists on the Throne. Nameless doesn't get any such time off, he's only ever manifested when it's a job, even if the details may be rather exceptional in this current one."
"True, it's easy to forget since we didn't have to pay some extortionate sum to get such a skilled Servant on basically indefinite retainer."
"Indeed." Tamamo turned back to see Kiyohime strenuously complaining about being ignored, wondering if she should formulate a less inflammatory explanation than 'I was chatting with my Master about love' but on second thought...
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Notes:
The event Gudao referenced is at the end of (Another Aria, Ch 53: Jeweled Sword), long story short: Chloe did a few things like cut Sasaku causing her to bleed on Ruby (not active) and then the Caster hit her with the wand, which formed the contract. Ruby sweet-talked her into not status-clearing it, and then she died, and now it's stuck on her Spirit Origin. This was also when Ruby quietly took and deposited a picture of Sasaku posing (yes, it's the picture mentioned when she was summoned) which fills in the FGO equivalent of the initial Card art on summoning (compare with Caster Illya or Miyu's art). With no additional context, the characters at the time assumed it was Chloe being mischievous or random childish impulse.
Of course, the reason (few chapters before that) why she was wearing that particular uniform instead of the one matching Sakura or Rin when she had actually gone to school with them a few days before was due to Gilgamesh (Gil-kun, the young pre-Enkidu one) who was interfering in that War and the previous one in order to help a Chaldea get set up.