HAZARDOUS MATERIALS AND UNFORSEEN CONSIQUENCES


Ominous Warehouse, Romania

August 6, 1994, 2030 Hours

"Showtime."

I hit the record button on the camcorder, and stepped back into frame.

Right... I had a whole thing I had put together to try to keep this quick. How did it start?

"Project Thaumatology, experiment log 01. This is uhh... Doctor Richard Masters, if anyone who isn't me ever watches these things back. This experiment will be occurring at... uhh... a facility graciously rented to me by my friends at the local university, and the time is currently..." I checked my watch, "8:30 PM... I think that's GMT+2 or something? Point is, it's late evening in a warehouse in the middle of Romania, and I'm about to do some mad science."

I reached over, and turned the camcorder towards the extremely scientific ritual circle set in the center of the room.

"As a preface, this experiment is intended to determine the exact nature of so-called 'magic' via testing with something called... uhhh... A Servant Summoning Ritual? Something like that. I don't know, it's a magic circle that I found extensive documentation on. What it does is less important than the fact that I have the information to actually perform this one."

I gestured towards the circle. "Prior research has led me to suspect that 'Magic' is actually a particular electrical phenomena, as first recorded by Victor Frankenstein—uhhh, see prior recordings for more information on that one—circa 1764 or somewhere around there? And as a result, I have constructed this test apparatus accordingly."

"The documentation I have based this experiment on calls for a series of concentric rings of highly 'magically' conductive material... they suggest blood, but I'm not a witch doctor so I have elected to use a set of HV electrical cables instead. Furthermore, there are a number of very particular patterns that the documentation calls for that need to be uninsulated from the surrounding environment... which I have created also using electrical cabling... which means that once this thing turns on there is going to be about 3 million volts running loose around here... Thus the insulation I've put down and am currently wearing. There are uhh... other components here that are not specifically called for, but seem appropriate considering what the documentation has to say about the... I don't want to call it a spell. That's why there are a series of Tesla Coils, a Magnotron, a couple of Van Graff Generators and other electrical paraphernalia placed around the circle. I'll uhh... there should be a writeup stored alongside this tape that has the full details, so I'll append the listing of components specific here for the sake of time."

I turned the camera again, this time towards the ominous metal box I had dug up from Vic's old house a few months ago.

"That said, there is... one more set of components that needs to be put in place before the experiment can begin. Their volatile and partially unknown nature has led to me being unwilling to leave them out in the open longer than necessary... along with the fact that they are uhh... partially... made of.. human.. remains."

I visibly winced at that. I still remembered the first time I'd opened the trunk, and seen the equipment inside. All the things I had been looking for, the perpetual motion generator, the capacitor banks, the discharge antenna, the control system... it was all there, but it had been sitting in a pile of bones and mummified human tissue. I was pretty sure the neighbors had heard me scream 'GOD FUCKING DAMMIT VIC!' when I first opened it. And it only got worse when I realized the human parts were built into the machinery I actually wanted, half the time seemingly as a macabre decoration, and half the time as an important structural component... and I still had trouble determining which was which.

Still, I could hardly just refuse to touch the things after I had gone to all this effort. I consoled myself with the fact that Vic had probably been a graverobber rather than a murderer... and that whoever the body parts had belonged to had died a long time ago.

That said, I still felt no small amount of revulsion as I opened the trunk and began to extract the components I needed.

"These devices," I started as I pulled out the skull that housed the discharge spike and capacitors (and god knew what else inside the braincase), "Were created by Victor Frankenstein several hundred years ago... why they include human remains is still... not exactly clear to me, but as distasteful as it is, I have few options where these particular components are concerned."

Case in point, the Perpetual Energy Generator... fused with the desiccated remains of a human heart, and hanging from what I was pretty sure used to be a woman's rib cage that seemed to function as a particularly disturbing protective casing.

I still wasn't quite sure what the human spine-cum-warmace thing was exactly supposed to do, but considering the wires trailing off it towards every other component, I was mostly sure it was some sort of central control or connection system or... something. Yeah, real scientific, Dick, just dump all the horrifying half-corpse mad science stuff into the magic circle and hope it turns out fine.

Still, I was pretty sure that whatever the hell I was doing right now was a damn sight more sensible than what (fucking) wizards normally did, 'Molten Gemstones' indeed. I wasn't sacrificing goats at least, I had that.

"Alright, and with that," I narrated as I put down the last of Vic's equipment (why the hell were there metal spikes coming out of the leg bones? Grounding?), "the last of the components should be in place, now there are just a few more preparations that need to be done. Which... includes laying a conductive liquid over the circle. Again, the documentation suggests blood, but I have something else in mind that should work just as well."

I took a short walk to where I had left the spraydown hose for this room, and quickly walked back into frame with it.

"Namely, I'm going to use water. Again, this is... uhh, pretty dangerous, thus why I have all this protective gear on." I motioned to my rubber gloves and boots, the faraday mail that I had on under my lab coat, and the insulated coveralls I had underneath that. "Hopefully, the equipment itself should be fine working in these conditions. I have made preparations to try and ensure that nothing shorts out, but... well, we will have to see, won't we?"

With that, I hosed down the area around the circle with a light rinse of water. Not much, just enough to get the floor wet. I didn't want to overdo this, but just ignoring steps from the documentation was probably a bad move at this point.

"Alright! And with that out of the way... I think we're ready to flip the switch!" I said, no small amount of excitement in my voice. This had been a long time coming.

The switch in question was one of several fuzes in the breaker box on the wall near where I had set the circle up. It was hardly like those dramatic breaker levers that they always showed Vic using in the movies about him... but I wasn't really that good of a showman anyway, so it was probably for the best.

...Speaking of showmanship, I was desperately fumbling for one of either the most or least important pieces from the documentation, which I had kept in my pocket. The printed copy I had made of the Summoning Chant... a verbal component to this nonsense that apparently needed to be said out loud as the summoning was happening.

...Okay, yeah, laugh at me. It was probably superstitious bullshit and didn't actually do anything, but I wasn't going to rule it out as being important if I didn't have to.

As I pulled it out, I began reading over the lines again. If this thing was important, fumbling a line like a highschool drama kid probably wasn't going to do anything good.

"I hereby swear, that I shall be all the good in the world," Simple enough, if a bit melodramatic.

"…that I shall defeat, all evil in the world." Hmm... yeah that's a lie. Also that pause in the middle felt weird.

"My will creates your body, and your sword creates my destiny. " ...Wait, was I supposed to have a sword while I did this? Fuck it, too late now. I could get a machete or something for the next trial.

"If you heed the Grail's call, and obey my will and reason, then answer my summoning." God that sounded goofy even when I said it now, like a cheesy movie line or something.

"Fill, fill... fill fill fill... Repeat five times? What?" ...What the hell was I reading?

"But when each is filled... destroy it?" Ugh. "Okay, no. Fuck this." I growled, "I feel like a fruitcake reading this. We'll just do the non-verbal trial first and see if it works. I'm just going to flip the switch and see what happens!"

I dropped the page on one of the folding tables, and walked up to the breaker.

"Alright, here goes nothing!" I grinned as I pulled down my welding goggles into place. Retina damage was the last thing I needed right now.

I flipped over the small switch with a quiet click, and the unholy array of machinery burst to life.

The tesla coils hummed as lightning began to play over them, and sparks began to run across the wire-circle as the water became electrified.

ZAP

The first arc of lightning jumped from the fourth coil into the center of the circle in a long, dancing display of ethereal electric beauty. Despite the danger, I couldn't help but be mesmerized: this was one of the reasons I became a scientist in the first place after all, and certainly why I specialized in the fields I had.

ZAP

It was far from the last arc of electricity in the room. The process might have started slow, but I had been careful about setting this up, and soon all six coils were crackling, and lightning danced across the room. It was beautiful.

HEED THESE WORDS

I'm not sure how long into things I got before things got weird. I was kind of mesmerized by the marvel of electricity... but when things started getting odd, I noticed. It was expected for Vic's equipment to pull in most of the electrical arcs, it was part of why I put it there... what I didn't expect was for those arcs to begin running over the surface of the equipment like it was water. And... the water having sparks playing across its surface was also expected. But... those sparks beginning to form coherent patterns, that was different. I couldn't recognize the language... I saw what looked like Japanese... A few that looked Hebrew... A bit of Cyrillic for some reason... I swear I saw 'Scheiße' in there for some reason... I couldn't tell the rest.

If it ended with some naughty German words appearing in the water that would be one thing, but things kept getting weirder. Static electricity began to crackle across every surface. Even under all my layers of insulation I could feel crackling across my skin and strands of hair beginning to rise and stick to the inside of my clothes... and I wasn't the only thing feeling it either. Papers were being pulled around by the static charge all over the room... or maybe that was the wind that seemed to have picked up from somewhere? Either way, there were also sparks rising out of the floor and racing towards the circle. If I hadn't seen that happen with one of Tesla's weird projects I tested a few years ago that would have gotten me worried.

SEVENTH HEAVEN CLAD. IN THE GREAT WORDS OF POWER.

What did get me worried was when I felt my faraday mail being tugged on by... was that a magnetic field? There wasn't supposed to be a magnetic field, at least not this far back!

I looked around and saw... my god, there were these huge, dancing streams of light playing around the ceiling. They were... it was like an Aurora Borealis, at this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the world... Localized entirely within my lab. It would have been one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen if it wasn't terrifying. The colors swirled and danced like a rushing river and like the lightning beneath them at the same time. I had trouble pulling my eyes away, but underneath them something even weirder was happening.

There was this... ball of glowing light right in the center of the circle, floating just a few feet off the ground. It was humming like a power station, and most of the lightning was flowing into it and... Vic's machinery seemed to be floating around it, sort of swirling, pulling in bands of dancing plasma from it like a plasma globe, and glowing so bright I couldn't even see them. It was... it was ball lightning. I had heard about this before, but it was so rare... I never thought I'd see it in person! I hoped the camera was still running, because this shit was getting crazy!

I began to approach the display... and as I watched, smoke began to run around the outer circle of wire, and a plume of white flame shot up out of it! It was burning hot and blindingly bright, even from several feet away, and lightning seemed to play through the flames.

"SHIT!" I shouted, almost instinctively jumping back from the burning electrical inferno as acrid blue smoke began to billow out of the fire, lightning jumping through it like a dirty thunderstorm as it swirled into the aurora above.

I needed to put that out! I didn't know if something was going wrong or right or what, I just knew I needed to stop this! I turned to ru—

—a bolt of lightning hit me square in the back. I never saw it, but I certainly felt it. It was the feeling of ten thousand burning iron rods being rammed into my back, of molten metal being poured into my veins. It was the feeling that meant I had really fucked up.

Thousands of volts arced across my body as I collapsed, spasming wildly. I had thought I was protected, I had taken every precaution with this, I had multiple layers of insulation and faraday protection on every part of my body, I should have been safe...

I wasn't.

COME FORTH FROM THE CIRCLE OF THE BINDING, GUARDIAN OF THE SCALES!

I didn't hear or see what happened next. My world went black and silent as I fell to the floor in agony, my muscles seizing. As loath as I am to admit it, this wasn't the first time I'd had a stray arc of lightning jump through me in my career. I had suffered 'mild' electrocution and shocks on plenty of occasions. It always hurt, I knew that much. It was a burning, agonizing pain that ran through your entire body like nothing else, forcing your muscles to burn as you completely lost control. There was nothing like what electrical shocks did to you... and at that moment I was pretty sure enough electricity had used me as a shortcut to kill me.

Every part of me was in agony. My muscles were spasming, like I was having a seizure. My mouth kept seizing, but no sound came out. I was pretty sure I tasted blood, had I bit my tongue? I couldn't breathe. I couldn't breathe. It felt like my heart had stopped. Was this what it felt like to die? If I was dying, why wasn't I dead yet!? This was hell! I wanted to die if it meant this nightmare would stop!

And then... the current dissipated, and my world went still.

...

...

...

...

"... Are... Master..." A voice I didn't recognize called my name in the oblivion. Was that God? Was this it?

Instinctively, my fried body managed to automatically choke out the one response so burned into my muscle memory that it transcended even getting my heart to beat.

"T-thaGHts DUH-DocTuher-her Ma-HACK-astsssHERsssth T-tuh Y-yuogh..." I choked out, my own vocal cords fighting me every step of the way.

I heard the voice say something indistinct, and another voice bark something short and equally indistinct, and then something flipped me over onto my back.

I felt something pull off the helmet I had been wearing, and... something soft touched the back of my head.

I forced my eyes to crack open... and I saw something beautiful.

Above me, looking down was... an angel? It was a woman, a beautiful woman, she made every woman I had ever seen look plain by comparison. She had these... shining, golden eyes, framed by long bangs of glossy red hair that hung down over me. Her skin was... it wasn't pale, it was like marble... no, marble had darker patches in it, this was like fresh snow on a bright morning, it was perfect, so free of blemishes I couldn't even see pores, and seemed to almost glow in the light cast by... something.

The woman had a worried expression on her face and... wait, did she have a horn?

I didn't get much more time to look at her face, because the woman pulled away from me. I... I didn't want her to go, if she was an angel here to take me to heaven or something... I didn't want to be left wherever here was!

I forced myself to try sitting up... but all I really managed was to raise my head and look down at my body. Just in time to see that beautiful woman slam an equally beautiful fist straight into my chest over my heart.

THWACK

I felt another jolt of electricity as the blow connected, and my body cratered around the impact, my spine coiling as my head and legs raised into the air in a C-shape... but it didn't hurt like before. It felt like something clicked inside of me and...

I gasped, long and deep, like someone who had just barely escaped drowning... and I felt my heart pounding in my chest like I was a kid who had just turned out the lights, racing to my bed before the monsters got me.

I began to cough like I had water in my lungs as I rolled over onto my side, my face stopping an inch away from the leg of the woman kneeling over me, my eyes just about level with her thigh...

Wait, why could I see the skin on her thigh?

I blinked as heavy coughing continued to throw me around like a ragdoll. Everything hurt, my chest and throat most of all.

What the hell just happened?

"Wh-who are- you?" I managed in between violent coughs.

"..." I heard the woman's voice, but she didn't say anything I could parse as a word.

I began to get my breathing back under control as I hacked up a gob of viscous spit and blood(!?) that must have gone down my throat, and spat it onto the floor underneath me as I began to shakily pull myself up, a small trail of mixed fluid coming from my mouth... okay, maybe just into a sitting position for now, holy shit did everything hurt.

I moved my tongue a bit experimentally... it hurt, but it felt like it was still there. Thank god, I hadn't bitten it off. Must have just nicked it or something... still hurt though.

...Why was it so dark in here? I hadn't noticed before, but it was really dark in here, like... oh. The lights were out. And the fire was still burning. And... wait who the hell was the guy in the suit?!

"Who are you?" I asked again, this time more clearly.

The man looked at me, and nodded.

"I am Nikolai Tesla, the spirit you summoned here to aid you. I believe I am to act as the Archer of Black? Something like that, I'm sure you know better than me."

...What the hell was that guy saying?

"What the hell did you just say?" I asked.

He blinked. "Sorry, was there a miscommunication? I was summoned here to fight in the Great Holy Grail War. It was you who summoned me, wasn't it?"

...Great Holy Grail War... that rang a bell...

Shit.

"H... holy shit..." I muttered, stunned, "did... did it actually work?"

I had done it. I had cast a spell. It might have nearly killed me and caused a blackout and started a fire, but I was a fucking wizard. And I was fucking right!

"I KNEW IT!" I shouted (which hurt), "I KNEW ALL THAT SHIT WAS A BUNCH OF SUPERSTITIOUS BULLSHIT! IT WAS JUST ELECTRICITY ALL ALONG! PRANA MY FUCKING ASS!"

I found myself back on my feet, arm shakily thrown into the air... I guess the rush of victory did what will alone couldn't.

Will was struggling to keep me up though, and I began to collapse back down quickly, only to be caught by something... someone warm and soft who hoisted me by my armpit and threw my arm over their shoulder.

Who... I turned to see who my rescuer was and... there she was again. That beautiful woman with the red hair.

I blinked.

She was... there was more to her than I had first thought. Her skin was... almost like a soft plastic, or latex maybe with the way it seemed to glow when the light hit it. It was pure and white and all that, but it wasn't normal. Her hair was that same glossy red but... that wasn't what red hair normally looked like. Now that she wasn't hanging over me, her eyes seemed to be covered by her bangs, but she seemed to see through it just fine. Oh, and she did have a horn poking out of her forehead.

It was this big brass (or gold?) thing that sat on this big curved plate that was mostly hidden by her hair... and it wasn't the only metal thing she had on her. Behind her head I could see this sort of microphone-shaped thing sticking out just past her shoulder where her ear should be... and I could feel something hard poking into me that told me she had one on each side.

...Why did I recognize those things?

I squinted at the woman, those things sticking out of her, they weren't...

"Hang on... I... I don't think I caught your name."

The girl looked at me... or I thought she looked at me anyway, her bangs made it hard to tell, and cocked her head to the side.

"..." She... was that a grunt she made? It was some sort of indeterminate feminine noise. It was cute, I could give her that, but hardly the answer I was looking for.

I swear I knew those metal parts on her from somewhere... I just needed to jog my memory somehow! I looked down towards her body and...

Oh.

Well, that was a sight that was probably going to return to me in my dreams every night for the rest of my life, but it was probably not good to stare. I quickly looked away, my face flushing a bit.

The rest of her was, admittedly, just as pretty as her face.

"Uhh, here, take this until further notice. Hazardous work environment, you know?" I shrugged off my lab coat and offered it to her.

Thankfully, she accepted the offer of the coat, but also hurriedly propped me up against one of the folding tables as she rushed off, presumably to find something more covering... judging by her complexion I wasn't the only one who was a bit flustered... I kept finding my eyes drawn back to her...

I couldn't stare though, I needed a new spot to rest my attention... uhh... that ceiling beam looked pretty—wait a minute, there was still a fire burning in here!

Fucking hell! That girl might be pretty, but it wasn't worth burning over! I needed to get it together or the whole building was going to go up!

I quickly swept the room, searching for the other person in here, only to find him examining my equipment around the magic circle, in the middle of the still-burning electrical fire, standing like nothing was wrong.

"What the Hell are you doing!?" I shouted, prompting little more than the suited man looking up from the side of the coil he had been inspecting.

"What does it look like, Master? I am inspecting the work here. I must say, some of this wiring is profoundly shoddy, even for an experimental set-up."

"Is this really the time for that?!"

"What would... oh yes, the fire, presumably caused by said shoddy wiring. I suppose you want me to do something about it?"

"There's an unextinguished electrical fire over there, a woman with no clothes over there, and over here there's a doctor who probably needs to go to the hospital! I don't care what you do, literally anything else would be more useful than what you are currently doing!"

He chuckled at that. "Alright then, I'll see about dealing with the fire. Tell me, are there any appropriate fire-suppression systems for electrical fires in this building?"

"Fire Extinguisher! Wall! Over There!" I pointed to the large red canister hanging in the clearly marked emergency cabinet about 20 feet down the nearby wall.

"Ahh... that would be it, wouldn't it? Fair enough." He turned away from the fire with a mind-boggling lack of urgency, and jumped.

And then he was just... over there. It wasn't like he jumped, or ran, there was just this sort of static fuzz and then he...levitated? Damned fast levitation, he basically flew. It was... casual, almost effortless. Even aside from the flying, that wasn't how a human was supposed to move.

This thing... was this what I had summoned? I had expected... I don't know, Conan or something. Not a thing in a suit with seemingly no care for the world around it. What was it, anyway? The documentation had said something about 'spirits of heroes past', but I certainly couldn't think of any heroes who dressed like that, much less acted like that.

As the thing started spraying down the summoning circle with fire foam, I looked at it a bit closer. I... wasn't the superstitious type, but this whole thing was pretty occultish with the summoning circles and magic chants and the blood... and the suit, the demeanor, the power that this thing had... What if I hadn't summoned a hero, but a demon? Maybe it was... some error I'd made in the ritual setup, or... no, no it couldn't be, demons weren't real, right?

But then... what the hell was the thing standing in front of me?

"There you are Master," the thing in the suit said as it approached me, its face still unnervingly impassive, "The fire is extinguished, I believe the woman is getting herself dressed, and everything pressing is out of the way. With that in mind, I believe we haven't been properly introduced. I am Nikolai Tesla, the modern Prometheus, inventor of alternating current electricity and many other things besides, and currently the Archer of Black in the... I believe the Fourth Holy Grail War? I'm sure you'll know more than me on that front."

A hand was outstretched, and instinctively I grasped it and shook. "Dr. Richard Masters, PhD..." then the realization hit me, "Wait. Tesla, the Nikolai Tesla?"

The cold look on the man's face melted as a wry smile cracked his lips, "In the flesh... in a manner of speaking I suppose. I take it you know of my work?"

"Know of your work? I've been—hell I've made an entire career out of picking up the scraps you left behind! I've spent the lion's share of the last decade scrounging your old test sites for research data! This is... this is huge! I mean shit, if this hocus-pocus those loons were hoarding can be used to get ahold of other people... it's not really my field but I'm pretty sure every anthropologist from here to Tokyo would be salivating at the thought alone! We've got to run things again, I just need to-"

As I turned towards the breaker box, I suddenly noticed the scorch-marks smeared across the wall in a radial pattern around it, and the acrid smoke rising out of it.

So that was why it was so dark in here. I'd probably knocked out power for the whole building at least.

"... Huh. I didn't even notice that."

"In my experience electrical shocks do tend to put blinders on you like that." Tesla commented, "This is far from the first time an experiment I've been involved in has gone awry... though I must admit, you've piqued my curiosity. The Holy Grail explained what is going on here in a... cursory sense. The year is 1994, correct?"

"Uhh... yeah, August 6th unless that shock put me down for longer than I thought."

"Hmm... slightly over 50 years since my death. Since we aren't speaking German right now I suppose that at least answers that one. Tell me, did that whole 'Manhattan Project' business turn any fruit? Actually nevermind, there are more pertinent things at hand. You talk as if you know less of what is happening here than I do. You do understand what exactly you have gotten yourself into, correct?"

My heart sank. "Uhh... some sort of weird wizard deathmatch where ghosts of historical figures fight over a magic cup that grants wishes?"

Tesla sighed. "In the most general sense, yes. The 'Holy Grail' allowed you and thirteen others to summon Servants like myself here to fight for the right to a wish granted by the thing. Personally, I want to see my Wardenclyffe facility completed, and the global World System it would bring about finally realized. We'll see that damn fraud stop me this time..."

Tesla shook his head and continued. "Anyway, the point of the matter is that by summoning me, you've put a target on your back. This game is one of elimination, and as of currently there are at least seven 'wizards' and their Servants hunting for us, or they will be in short order."

"Well... shit," I dumbly responded. "I mean, that's bad, but that's not... that much of a change of pace. I'm pretty sure that all the out-of-town folks coming here already wanted my head on a platter. Wizards don't like the idea of sharing their research data with the wider scientific community apparently, but... isn't this thing supposed to be a team affair? Half the reason I came here was because there's a group of rogue wizards set up in this country who are apparently more progressive in outlook than the rest."

Tesla shrugged. "The Grail did not see fit to explain that part of the situation, but you are correct in saying that this is a team affair. As I said, you summoned me as Archer of Black. If we are lucky, those 'wizards' after your head will be joining Red... and I suppose those 'progressives' would ideally be our compatriots in Black. That is if we are lucky anyway... I suppose we had best make preparations for going it alone. Let me guess, you will need me to lecture you on your function as Master in this arrangement?"

I rubbed at the bruising running up my left arm. "Uhh... I'll be honest the documentation I had on the matter was very vague, and being entirely real here I was mostly doing this as a way of proving what magic actually is... my considerations as to the consequences were more limited than they probably should have been."

Tesla nodded. "As expected. Alright then, where to start... I'll preface by saying that my own understanding of this is highly limited. In life I knew nothing of 'magic', and as a creature made from it, I only understand the most bare essentials to preserve my own existence. As far as the Grail explained, my form here is not as physical as it seems. I am a sort of... aetheric construct I suppose, composed from 'magical' energy and given form through a complex series of pseudo-circuits through which the energy flows much like a—hopefully alternating—electrical current. However, while this allows such things as my transformation into a bodiless spirit form and feats far beyond what my mortal body could manage, it means that I require a constant influx of power from an external source to exist. You are that source, Master."

I blinked. "Wait, what? How am I a source of energy for you? Don't tell me I was secretly some sort of magical prodigy all along!"

Tesla shook his head. "No, you certainly aren't. It's odd, I can sense the pact that is supplying me with energy, but you have about as much magical energy in you as the concrete you are currently standing on. You are my Master, but if you alone were providing me with energy I'd likely be gone in minutes. Give me a moment."

Tesla closed his eyes and spun on his heels, putting a finger in the air as if he were testing for the direction of the wind.

"It would appear that the primary source of magical energy flowing into me is..." He pointed towards the cramped unisex bathroom I had seen the woman from earlier disappear into, "in there!"

"The only person in there is that woman from earlier, the one who wouldn't give me a name."

"Then she is the one who is providing me with energy... interesting. It seems that whatever bastardization of the summoning ritual you performed, it tied that woman into your pact along with you. Technically speaking, you are both my Masters."

That was... not good. I didn't know who that girl was, I didn't even know how she got in here... wait how the fuck did she get in here? Hadn't I locked down the building before I started all this? If she was here to kill me then her saving my life made no sense, but...

I knocked on the bathroom door. "Hey! I need to talk to you!" I shouted, "I don't want to walk in on you, but—"

I nearly fell inwards face-first as the door swung open without warning, revealing the mystery woman herself. She had found clothes... somewhere, and hoo boy was it something.

She was wearing a flowing knee-length white dress with golden ornamentation, long gloves that completely covered her arms, and a pair of... weird armored boots that went up under the hem of her dress around her knees. She'd also gotten a veil from somewhere embroidered with decorative flowers along the headband... all in all it looked like she was preparing for a wedding. But... when I looked closer, the outfit seemed old. It stank of dust and seemed ragged in areas, and was distinctly discolored to a dirty, slightly off-white, like eggshells.

And man she did not look happy about that.

"Whu- where the hell did you get that?" I thought out loud.

She frowned at me, and pointed behind her... oh, she'd dragged Vic's storage trunk into the bathroom with her... wait why the hell did she do that?! Why were there clothes in there? How had she known there were clothes in there?

"Who are you?" I thought out loud again.

She huffed, and rapped a finger on the trunk.

"What... what are you trying to say? That was Victor's, it was buried under his house for like 200 years and all it had in it was some mechanical components I needed that had bones fused into—"

Wait... no, that was ridiculous. No way.

I looked back to the scorched test setup on the other side of the room. Underneath the fizzing fire foam and lingering smoke... yeah, all of Frankenstein's gear was all missing.

A perfect life form, made by Man in the image of God.

Victor had been... a butcher. There was a reason why the novel based on his life had him making a monster out of stolen body parts, it was something I knew he tried to do in life, but... No. He couldn't have succeeded, that was impossible.

But... this was literally a locked room puzzle. She couldn't have gotten in here unless she was already in the room. She had specifically dug clothes out of Vic's storage trunk. The components Vic had called his 'greatest creation' had gone missing when she'd shown up. The components that were partially made from human remains.

The facts all seemed to be pointing to one thing, but that thing was fucking insane. Yet... when all reasonable options are exhausted, what is left but the absurd?

"You... you're not Frankenstein's Monster, are you?" I asked, my voice quavering a bit with uncertainty.

She hissed at that, and shook her head violently from side to side. I... couldn't really blame her, being literally referred to as a 'monster' couldn't feel nice.

She rapped a finger on the lid of the trunk violently, next to the lettering.

"Sorry... should I just call you Frankenstein then? Uhh... Fran maybe?"

She shook her head and rapped on the lid again.

"Eee-uuhh-vvvuh!" She enunciated forcefully.

Huh. So she could talk... more or less.

"Eve? Is that your name? Alright then... that works... but... okay, did you actually come out of the trunk somehow? Those components I was using... was that you?"

She nodded. God damn it.

"Okay... so you're Eve, the 'greatest creation' of Victor Frankenstein... which he butchered, shoved in a box and buried under his house for 200 years."

She nodded, but scowled when I said Vic's name.

"Ah... I can imagine you weren't on the best of terms then?"

She shook her head.

"Alright, well on the bright side he is uh... long dead, and his entire family line is extinct."

She seemed impassive at that.

"And uhh... on the dark side, the thing I did here that uhh... brought you back I guess, it uhh..."

"Oh enough!" Tesla shouted from behind me, "You are stumbling over your words like a schoolboy talking to his crush! You, woman! What this blubbering fool is trying to say is that his experiments with magic have bound the two of you to me in a Servant contract and embroiled you both in a battle to the death between powerful magi for control over the omnipotent wish-granting Holy Grail."

She blinked. "W-whaaa?"

I sighed. "That makes two of us, and I'm pretty sure he's barely any less in the dark than we are. I think we're all in way over our heads here... it's just that for me that's the usual."

She shifted uneasily.

"Shit, look," I said, offering her a hand, "I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm really sorry for accidentally bringing you back to life in the middle of a deathmatch between psychotic wizards, but for better or worse we're both pretty much stuck in this together."

She thought for a moment, and then shook my hand.

"Aaaaaaa-" She seemed to be struggling for the word, "Aaaa-a-Accepted! Accepted."

...Alright. I needed to get to grips here. I was the Master here... apparently. That meant I was the one in charge here.

Okay, so my experiments had accidentally raised a woman from the dead who was a 200-year-old cyborg and also summoned the superpowered ghost of Nikolai Tesla, who was currently bound to both me and said cyborg via magic soul contract, and we were implicitly obligated to get involved in a giant wizard war in the name of a magic cup that grants wishes. It wasn't a free-for-all, but we had been assigned to the Black team, who we didn't know the identities of, and at least half of the people involved wanted me dead personally even outside the context of the War because I had pissed all over their eggs by writing down notes about how magic worked so if I was unlucky the rest of my 'team' would just kill me outright... and also on top of all of that, I had managed to black out the power for not just this building, but most of the city from the looks of things.

Man, I just had to find new ways to get in over my head, didn't I? To think at one point the worst I'd done was run for student council as a pirate...

Alright, options.

"We should probably get moving." I said, my mouth running in front of my brain, "I can't imagine the police are going to be happy about me knocking out the power like this... shit, all the equipment is evidence now isn't it? Tesla, do you mind getting the equipment here packed up? You probably know your way around that stuff better than I do. Fra-err, Eve, sorry, do you mind coming with me? I'm going to need to get the car started out front."

She winced at the slip, her face slipping into a snarl for just a moment before she nodded and followed after me.

"Very well Master, I'll clean up your mess for you... but only because I want to ensure that my coils are taken care of properly." Tesla gave me a wink as he set off to dismantle the summoning circle. I didn't pay him much mind as I quickly made my way out of the building with Eve close behind me.

"Right, we'll need to get all of that stuff out of here ASAP, and then..." I looked out at the parking lot as I stepped out onto the freight dock.

Shit, I forgot that I didn't have the rental truck I'd carted everything here in. The only vehicle here was my 1970 Mustang, and that couldn't even carry all three of us, much less half a ton of electrical equipment.

"Okay... new plan. We're going to take everything useful, get rid of the rest however we can, and then we're going to get the fuck out of here before the cops show up!" I blurted. I swore I could already hear sirens in the distance. I was not going to jail.

Alright then Master, don't worry, I have just the thing.Tesla said... said?

I looked around, but the suited Serbian was nowhere to be seen.

"The fuck?!"

Oh you know we don't have time for this! It's a function of the Servant contract, I can communicate with you remotely without anyone else being able to listen through it even when I'm physically manifested. Now quit being confused and go get that car of yours running before the police arrive! I'll be out in a moment with the most useful of the equipment.Tesla... fucking beamed into my mind with telepathy or whatever. Man fuck this day.

I had well-past topped out on the Weird-Shit-O-Meter at that point, so I didn't even question it, I just motioned to Eve to follow me as I fumbled for my keys under three layers of singed protective clothing. A few minutes and a dramatic superman flight by Tesla later, and the trunk of my car had been crammed full of packed-down science equipment, and Tesla was back inside making 'final preparations' for cleaning the rest up before the cops got here.

Alright, that about does it. Start the car.Tesla said.

"But you're still inside." I stated dully, fully expecting some absurd nonsense to come from the ridiculous man to explain this.

Indeed I am. It is unnecessary for me to physically accompany you away from the building; once everything is in order here I can just enter spirit form and rematerialize at your side when needed. Besides, your car only has two seats, doesn't it?Tesla elaborated more or less exactly as I expected.

I sighed, and turned the key, bringing the car's engine to life with its typical mechanical roar. Eve jumped back in her seat at the sound... right, she probably had no idea what a car was, did she?

"Fasten your seatbelt ma'am," I motioned to the strap of cloth holding me in the driver's seat, "because I definitely hear sirens, and I'm sure as fuck not slowing down until I don't."

I slammed the car into gear and the tires squealed as I stomped the gas and roared out onto the street. A quick glance saw flashing lights in the distance. Not after me in particular, but like hell I was leaving that up to chance.

With a practiced flick of the hand, one of the cassettes I kept under the dashboard slotted in and began to play. The sound of screaming guitars and pounding drums quickly harmonized with the roaring of my engine as I began accelerating on a straightaway out of town.

"Tesla!" I shouted over the roar, "Whatever you're going to do you'd better do it quick, because I saw the cops on the way out and I'm not going to jail!"

Speak of the devil, Master.Tesla's disembodied voice was full of mirth that filled me with dread.

As if on cue, I saw a fiery blue flash in the mirror, followed quickly afterwards by the roaring BOOM of a blastwave.

I swerved as the air pressure jerked me in the seat.

"WHAT THE FUCK?!" I bellowed, "TESLA WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO!?"

I told you Master, speak of the devil. As far as anyone will know, there was simply an accident at the facility. No evidence, no crime. In my past life I used this technique many times.Tesla explained.

My god. He blew it up. That maniac. I wasn't sure what was more shocking, the fact that Tesla's idea of covering my ass was straight-up terrorism, or that he'd apparently done this frequently while he was alive.

I suppose it was true what they said, never meet your heroes.

"I had stuff in that building you asshole!" I shouted at the disembodied voice.

Exactly, and now you don't. No evidence, that's the entire idea.

Did... did terrorism just come naturally to turn-of-the-century Serbians?

I looked across the clutch to Eve, who was currently gripping onto the sides of her seat for dear life, but otherwise seemed to be handling her sudden introduction to cars surprisingly well.

"You didn't have anything else in that trunk, did you?" I asked.

She looked confused for a moment, and then slowly shook her head. "N-no... Nnnn-nnothing else. Wwww-wanted it gone... aaa-anyway? Anyway."

It was hard to hear her over the car and the music, but her voice seemed to carry oddly clearly despite the lack of volume.

"Well, I guess that's lucky for you then! I'm never getting my deposit back!" I half-joked, "Anyway, after that there's no way in hell we can stay here. The cops might be shit, but if the government had half its shit together they'd probably be running a manhunt for us across the next three postal codes after a stunt like that! Which means we're going to be on the road for a while while I think of what the hell to do!"

I opened up the throttle as I headed onto country roads. It wasn't subtle, but... man it had been a long fucking day, and after all the fucking nonsense that I had just gone through, I just wanted to drive. Fuck the cops, fuck the Association, and fuck the consiquences. All of that could be Tomorrow Me's problems, the night was young and I was going to make the most of it.


A/N: Behold for the nature of the beast is revealed. Word of note, that setup Masters put together here would be literally incapable of summoning any Servant other than Fran or Tesla, as the electricity he was powering it with itself was serving as a catalyst and would have overidden any actual catalyst used. Also, just to be clear on this, Masters' conclusion on the nautre of magecraft is here is very wrong, he just hasn't interacted with anyone who can properly disprove it. Do keep that in mind. Also, keep in mind that what happened with Fran here was not True Resurrection, it will be elaborated on later, but for the moment... yeah no that's still impossible.