"Okay, until we meet next time!" Elizabeth cheerfully waved goodbye to Nero as the Chaldean group left the red Servant to her project work.
"Huh, we're headed back north again?" Euryale asked in confusion as they walked out of the area of Nero's theater - which seemed to have its own Bounded Field bubble within the slightly larger space of the Event pocket.
"The directions don't mean anything," Artoria explained for everyone present. "On a standard map, it might look like we're turning around and heading north, but once you reach the boundary, there's no real distance between there and the outer edge of the next area.
"Do all the edges just connect with zero distance?" Gudao asked doubtfully.
"Not zero, you do use magical energy and the sleigh to travel after all," the Santa explained. "But more importantly you can only go to the next section. Probably because Merlin is setting things up as he goes."
"So it's basically a linked list then," da Vinci noted down. "If the sleigh activates the reference for the next region..."
"But Void Space has something analogous to distance," Gudako frowned. "That's why there's ranges for things like detection and Rayshifts."
"Right, but these areas are all within a greater grouping, namely the Event, which allows them to behave in this way."
"Better than walking all the way," Asterios agreed. He was still the sleigh's caretaker, of course.
"In any case, we should be landing in a different time, so to speak. So even if this place had been right after Boudica's, we would have to walk to the boundary and then jump to the next space. Besides, we're not going to pre-Camelot, but rather..."
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"Yes, this looks like London," Gudako remarked while looking around the foggy alleyway that the sleigh had dumped them into upon arrival.
Artoria shook her head while drawing her weapon. "Wrong London. We've been intercepted somehow."
"Oh no," da Vinci frowned while looking at her instruments. "If this mist is interfering with the readings, it might be like the situation in the Singularity. Which means...
"Hey, Elizabeth, can you blow away the area in front of us?" Gudao asked quickly. "Our backs are to the boundary, so it isn't as though someone can flank us."
Nodding, the dragon lung-equipped Servant brought out her microphone stand and planted on the ground in front of the group, while taking a breath.
"We're not here for that story," someone replied calmly while seeming to appear from the mist, so thick was it that one's senses could be easily fooled even without its mysterious properties.
"Crap... hold for a sec," Gudako whispered to Elizabeth, recognizing the voice. "To think we'd blunder into this pair again."
Realizing what was at stake faster than the female Master, Marie quickly pulled her back to a much safer place behind her, as Gudao voiced her thoughts aloud, "Nursery Rhyme and... Jack the Ripper, wasn't it?"
"Oh, it's you again," the little girl they remembered from a London street some time ago showed herself, forming out of the mist next to the older Rhyme. "Where's the sister who was with you?"
"Maybe she's recovering from a stab wound," Euryale remarked acidly, eyeing warily the oversized-by-comparison knives said Ripper was openly brandishing.
"No, I doubt that," Rhyme disagreed with the notion, finding it absurd. With a glint in her eye to match the ominous gleam right from the beveled edge of her knife, where the dark coating gave way to clean metal ground to a cutting blade, Jack floated forward toward the offending goddess.
...
"Now, Berserker !"
*whoof*
With a speed that belied its wielder's bulk, Asterios' axe whipped out at Jack mid-leap in an attempt to reach Euryale perched on his shoulder.
*clang*
Jack responded with even greater speed, receiving the blow on one of her knives. Though the weapon was definitely bent by the impact, it held - however the smaller Servant was nevertheless thrown backwards by the momentum transferred from the axe which probably weighed as much, perhaps even more, than she did.
*fwa*
Still, as she was flung away from her target, the Assassin threw her other knife. However, anticipating this, Euryale simply slid down Asterios' back as her partner also ducked to keep his head safe.
da Vinci whipped a handgun out from her backpack and tried taking shots at the now-retreating Jack, but the latter's Evasion was far too good. Even Euryale, shooting from around Asterios' leg, was not able to hit.
"Alright, hit it." Gudao calmly directed Elizabeth. Almost immediately something like spectral speakers started to appear as her Noble Phantasm began to manifest without any hesitation. "I'm going to let you hear the biggest hit in the Servant world! Time for the finale!"
"I don't want to hear it. The ripples of the turning pages, the jostling of the bookmark." Nursery Rhyme held out a hand as though to physically hold back Elizabeth's voice, but it soon became apparent that her own assembly of spellbooks and other grimoires were appearing in response to her own Noble Phantasm's call.
Gudako quickly hopped over to Artoria as the clearly upcoming clash began to develop. Obviously this was with Marie covering her and keeping an eye out for any possible re-emergence of Jack the Ripper.
"(Báthory Erzsébet) !"
Whatever Rhyme declared was lost in the quite literally deadly blast that came forth and ripped its way over the space between the two opponents.
"I really hope her singing beats Rhyme's, uh, rhymes?" Euryale pointed out with a sense of irony.
"We can do better," Gudako grinned as Artoria aimed her sword straight at Nursery Rhyme's last location.
"(Caliburn) !"
Moments after the fine needle-like ray of concentrated energy passed through the maelstrom of Elizabeth and Rhyme's clashing energies, the pressure from the second of the two abruptly ceased, leaving Elizabeth's Noble Phantasm free to lay waste to a large swath in front of the Chaldean position.
"Yeah, I doubt that we got either of them," Gudao immediately warned, while waving Gudako over to the sleigh which was still on the ground from when they had been pulled into Rhyme's pocket area. "Come around and keep an eye out while we charge this up... Artoria, something up?"
The Santa was pulling out not one, but several items from her sack and carefully arranging them on a flat slab of pavement nearby. "I think we were supposed to deliver these, so let me get these down rather than getting dragged in a second time for their sake."
Gudako turned around and caught sight of a couple of the presents presumably intended for the two girls they had just driven off. "Huh, is the devil of the TSAB really a good role model for that pair?"
"Don't ask me, it's what came out. Which of course means it's Merlin's idea, so blame him if it goes horribly."
"I'd like to be gone before they decide to come back for another shot so get it done and let's go !" Euryale felt less calm about the suddenly more combative turn the Event had taken.
"... well, I can guess how those two were able to intercept us," Artoria commented as the group 'landed' at their next destination: an area that looked very much like the location they had just left behind, except without the obvious signs of Area Noble Phantasms demolishing the landscape.
"Indeed," a nearby, very imposing, robot-looking Servant replied calmly. "Nursery Rhyme is one of those that can very easily move about the World space."
Gudao looked over at da Vinci, who didn't see indications of any other entities besides the obvious Babbage. "Did you come in with them, by any chance?"
"That I did. However, as it seems despite my expectations to the contrary, they succeeded in finding 'Santa' on their own terms." Babbage eyed Artoria's additions neutrally. "In any case, my job for this manifestation is done."
"Perhaps, but not quite your involvement... one moment here..." The Santa was trying to extract a rather complicatedly-shaped item from her sack.
"Need some help?" Marie stepped up to lend her friend a hand and the two were eventually able to unveil a miniature engineering demonstrator. da Vinci looked at it with some interest, which was quite understandable.
"Is that a functional steam engine?" Gudako asked, her curiosity also piqued as well.
"I can see a burner, boiler and that must be the output shaft powering a flywheel," Gudao pointed out some of the obvious components. "Oh, there's a generator there, and then a motor turning another flywheel. And a setup with twinkling lights.
"So it's about electricity?" Babbage sounded slightly disappointed by this conclusion.
"Quite a lot of things do start with boiling water and turning turbines," da Vinci tried to sound positive about it. "Even when your heat is from a nuclear reactor or the sun, turning water into steam is so useful."
"Well, you'd pick the best tool for the task, I suppose."
"This might be a bit odd of a request to make, but could you take care of those two for the remainder of the Event?" Gudako asked Babbage directly. "I think, since Rhyme has some new stories to read, it should be easier on you now than before."
"I'm hardly their caretaker," the robotic one replied, not unkindly. "However, I do not mind their company either; we did manifest together for some reason, which still intrigues me, I must admit."
"Probably because you can avoid being stabbed in the gut by that maniac Jack," Euryale grimaced. "Hardly a pleasant way to end one's Servant career."
"Situations in which he has everything aligned should result in instant death, by my calculations." No one found this insight particularly encouraging, and it showed.
"... right. Anyway Santa's got a schedule to keep and she can't be late, or miss, any of them," Gudao tried to bring the dialogue to a fitting close.
"You know, given some of the things that we've hacked together in Chaldea, someone like the father of computing would be quite welcome," da Vinci said before they parted. "You know, many aspects of magecraft look old fashioned, but have their own type of Mystery-based complexities."
"That's quite a recommendation coming from the famous inventor," Babbage nodded goodbye respectfully. "Hmm wait, you yourself are-"
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(Mooncell)
"So it would be possible to bring forth a new Type if the created megastructure was large enough?" Hakunon asked her self-proclaimed Kouhai. "Are these Ultimate Ones like the genius loci envisioned by humans, then?"
"You still have to realize that the smallest body, physically speaking, that has qualified is the Moon, which clearly is a lot more than just dead material," BB replied, waving her pointer about by way of illustration.
"Can you say if it's mass, sentient or intelligent life, magical energy, or something specific that leads to their emergence?"
"Wait. You can't be thinking about getting a new Type Moon to defend the Mooncell? They don't work like that."
"No, but something that Em- er, our Nameless friend said gave me a pretty good idea for something... but we'd need to get the right type of nation-building Servant for this project."
"Umu, she's of course ready for anything you might have in mind !" A certain red Saber immediately appeared and butted into the conversation.
"Sorry Nero, but for this particular application we happen to be looking for a specific type of building. Anyway, I believe you actually came to invite us to one of your drinking parties?" Hakunon had made sure that Elizabeth would keep quiet about the very non-Nero Nero that seemed to be appearing in the Earth-based branches.
"Yes, isn't it a good time to sip something cool in the moonlight?"
"It's a fine time." She glanced at BB who seemed upset at the disruption. "Did you already invite the Alter Egos?"
"I was going to, of course. Once we knew you'd have the time..."
"Let's just go drop in on them, then." The Mooncell's ruler turned to see a pouting BB. "By the way, feel free to drop in at some point. And send Nameless over once he returns."
"That man won't be back from the current Event he deployed to for several days, you know," Tamamo popped up, as usual never one to let Nero steal a march on her. "I'm pretty sure he will have ... reasons to hang around for a while."
"Is that so? Ah well, fine. Let's not fuss about it for tonight."