Spoiler Warning: Fate Extra CCC, FGO Abyssal Cyber Paradise SERAPH and FGO Heretical Salem.
Chapter 1 Content Warnings: Abusive parent-child relationships (Meltryllis and BB) and sexual themes.
Chapter One: A Prelude
Meltryllis had a problem.
Truthfully, she had several problems. The conflagration of problems made her thoughts run in loops, approximating a sensation that must have been what humans called "anxiety". It all descended from a single, solitary problem. The "Genesis Problem", as her programmed brain filed it.
Her asshole mother never explained what "Servant Summer Festival" was.
Some of the other servants would tell jokes that went "If you don't talk to your children about [INSERT CHALLENGING TOPIC HERE], who will?". She never laughed at those jokes. Part of her considered that they should have been hilarious, tweaking the part of her personality that revelled in cruelty and suffering. They just never landed for whatever reason.
She pondered the deeper meaning of those jokes now as she lay on her bed and glared at the air between where she lay and the ceiling.
Lining every flat surface in her dorm room were countless model kits, painstakingly assembled and meticulously detailed. Tables and shelves were laid out in a beautifully cold calculus that allowed every figure to be displayed optimally. Her private collection, destined to be locked up behind closed doors and never seen by another's eyes.
All because BB didn't tell her to book a Servant Summer Festival table in time.
"Don't give me that look," BB exclaimed, mere seconds after enlightening Meltryllis about the harsh reality of convention deadlines.
"You told me in a single breath that other servants share my hobbies, that there's a whole convention for us to embrace these interests and that I'm too late to join." She glowered back, digging her razor-edged heels into the Novum Chaldea's stone floor.
"You're such a downer! Let BB share her wisdom with you!" The elder AI grinned wickedly. "You can team up with another club and share a table in the convention hall."
Despite Meltryllis's expectations otherwise, it was disturbingly easy to find someone willing to share a table. That led to equally unfortunate complications.
"You're a perfect fit for our club!" Kiyohime declared, clapping her hands together.
"I'm not asking to join," Meltryllis scowled down at the other woman. All she wanted was half of the table, not to lower her head to another servant.
"We're Princess Princess. As a prima ballerina, you're enough of a princess to join."
"Don't compare my art to the hierarchy of humans."
"Fine." The Berserker huffed, casting her gaze towards the ground. "You don't have to join. I'll grant you space at our table for your miniatures if you write a guest story for the new book. You should make it an angsty tale about Master and me."
"And if I don't?"
Kiyohime raised her head proudly, the ambient light making her golden eyes glow like passionate bonfires. At that moment, Meltryllis knew she had been outplayed.
"I'm familiar enough with modern writing utensils to use Find and Replace."
Meltryllis needed to write something - anything, really - by the end of the week.
If she understood Kiyohime correctly, the story could involve other servants from Chaldea. It was even expected that she'd write about other servants - original stories didn't sell as many books at ServantFest.
If Kiyohime's editorial threats were true then the draft could be about anyone. Meltryllis wasn't the most outgoing resident of Chaldea. That said, there were a handful of people that she knew more intimately than others. They could be a starting point.
The fragment of her personality borrowed from Saraswati hummed along, faintly and pleasantly, as if reverberating in harmony with that idea. Meltryllis shuffled up into a sitting position, resting her back against her pillow.
Who would the principal be?
Passionlip? No. There was no way she would dare expose her younger sister to the depavities that lurked in her imagination.
BB? Her mother didn't deserve the attention.
Master? Meltryllis raised a single arm, resting it gently against her chest. As per Kiyohime, the final story would feature Ritsuka Fujimaru. There was so much about Chaldea's Master that Meltryllis still didn't understand. She wanted to know more. She could have sworn there had been more. She didn't have much to work with there.
Robin Hood? Meltryllis narrowed her eyes as the man's name popped into her mind.
Back on the Moon Cell the green Archer was best described as her mother's "not-boyfriend". The two had technically been in a Master-Servant relationship, or at least that's how Meltryllis remembered it. Her mother gave him some attention but the full force of BB's obsessive love had been laser-targeted on someone else. They had been human, with a name and face that existed in the same void as Meltryllis's own memories of Ritsuka.
Meltryllis wasn't sure what the Archer got out of the contract. He was a sad sack who tolerated her mother's abuse for some mysterious higher purpose. Validation? Attention? Staying alive? A desperate wish for the Holy Grail? The sex? It couldn't have been that great.
She frowned to herself, spinning those questions around in her mind. Maybe she could hang a story off of the answers.
Carefully weaving her arm between the two models on the bedside table, Meltryllis reached for a notebook.
If BB considered her contract with Robin Hood still valid, he absolutely did not.
Any chance meeting involved Robin escaping as quickly as possible. He dove through open doors, burst into sudden sprints and even leapt behind furniture to avoid crossing paths with the AI.
Despite the seemingly endless parade of dramatic reactions, there was one specific incident that Meltryllis remembered clearer than the others.
The scene played out in Novum Chaldea's cafeteria. BB announced her arrival to breakfast with louder than normal fanfare, complete with overriding the lighting and bathing the room in an abhorrent shade of neon pink.
As if on cue, Robin downed his cup of coffee and flicked up his hood. Before the Archer fully vanished, he looped his arm around the waist of a man sitting beside him. The two of them were both gone by the time Meltryllis realized what had happened. The only evidence that anyone had been sitting at the table was an empty mug and a half finished croissant.
She later learned the other man was Charles-Henri Sanson, an Assassin servant who served on Chaldea's medical team. He wasn't from the same historical period as Robin, nor was he from the Moon Cell. Robin wasn't exactly a team player - it was one of the few things she agreed with him on - which raised questions about how the two men became so important to each other.
She knew why, at least in the carnal sense. She was the Alter Ego of Pleasure, after all. How Robin transformed from the trash she knew from the Moon Cell to a man who would whisk away a lover was beyond her imagination.
Thankfully locating a medical team member was as simple as going to the medical office.
Sanson lifted his head towards the office door before Meltryllis spoke. He sat at a desk, a pen in one hand and a mug in the other. The black trench coat she recalled from the cafeteria was replaced with a starched lab coat that matched his white hair.
"Mademoiselle Meltryllis? What brings you here?" He spoke with a soft voice and an irresistible accent. Her instincts were spot on: this man would be an excellent addition to her ensemble.
"You're going to critique my ServantFest story." She didn't mince words, nor did she even bother to even sit down.
"This must be because I was the manager for St. Orleans last year," Sanson reflected thoughtfully, placing his mug back on the desk.
She had anticipated a surprised or confused reaction, not a confident confession about his experience. That was going to change at least one of her outlines.
"No." Meltryllis folded her arms across her chest. "It's because I'm writing a story about the green Archer."
Sanson slowly nodded his head and asked a loaded question in a single word: "Why?"
There was no way he could have predicted the torrent that would follow.
"Because BB claimed there's more servants in Chaldea who are interested in kit building at ServantFest but then she told me that I was too late to book a table and then she said I could share a table with another club but the only person who would offer me space was Kiyohime and she'll only do that if I write for her book and it's stupid dolls and figures don't have proper place at the convention and have to compete with these books, so how am I supposed to find f-"
"I can see this is very important to you." Sanson held up a hand and interrupted Meltryllis before she could stumble over the word that would have followed. "How far have you gotten?"
"I have ideas." Her blunt demeanor returned. "Thoughts. A lot of thoughts."
"Do you have a draft I can review yet?"
"No."
"The first thing you'll need to do is to write something. I can't critique a story that doesn't exist," Sanson directed, clicking the pen in his hand. "Meet me here tomorrow morning with your current manuscript. We'll review it in the simulator together."
"Why the simulator?" Meltryllis pondered what Sanson was planning. She could have sworn she saw him smirk as he dodged a proper explanation.
"It has uses beyond combat training."
Author's Note: Overture is my excuse to be unrepentantly weird and strange in fic. Hopefully it still manages to be enjoyable!
