Emiya grunted, kicking the leg into the environmental suit with more force, using both of his hands to pull it up and himself into it as he bounced on the front seat of the shuttle. At this rate, he would have to use Reinforcement to actually make it fit him, despite the cheery one-size-fits-all disclaimer.
Behind him, Mars was beginning to recede as he kept flying 'up'.
People should be preparing for their lunch breaks in Lowell City just about now. He had been out for hours.
Though not technically rated for interplanetary flight, his new ride had still managed to clear the red planet's gravity well under its own powers. The manuals he had dug out had stressed how ill-advised such a thing was and that it would not be able to handle re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. But with some additional research and rough number-crunching, turned out that shuttles could make interplanetary journeys, but only when pushed to their limits in terms of fuel.
Or well, the onboard flight VI had done the calculations.
He would be essentially gliding in, keeping all non-essential systems turned off after his initial acceleration; he wouldn't even be keeping any of the thrusters on through the smooth-sailing frictionless void.
All to maintain his fuel cells as long as possible.
But while constant thrust was not a requirement for travel keeping the mass effect fields that kept the shuttle light enough to move at the speeds it did, and the kinetic barriers which prevented space debris and radiation from killing him decidedly were. Which meant there would be a constant drain on the shuttle's power supply, even with him turning off his fusion torch thrusters. But that wasn't a very large one, since the system was quite well optimized.
Really, the biggest issue would be the kinetic barriers if something did hit him. The low-level sensor fields and the protection from all the radiation were a constant toll, but if something were to require the kinetic barriers to activate and deflect an incoming object or obstacle, it would practically take a chunk out of the capacitors and subsequently a considerable part of his fuel.
But it was simply a necessity for high-speed travel.
Even a grain of sand can do immense harm at high enough velocities.
He had charted out a route from Mars that would be aiming for where Earth would be when he arrived there so that he would be traveling in a straight line that met the planet going in a circular orbit. Easier said than done, that. Especially when the distances involved exceeded Light-seconds. If even the smallest error could cause a massive deviation down-range with a sniper rifle, with space travel the deviation quickly grew beyond human comprehension.
It was the sort of thing that required abstract maps and computer modeling for humans to adequately deal with: one could not simply look out the window and go 'huh, I took a right at Albuquerque, I should be there... Oh, there it was! Let me just turn around and get over there.' And it wasn't just the distances involved, either. It was the nature of traveling through a void that was the biggest issue, he suspected.
The naturally evolved senses lacked any points of reference in space, making it difficult to even keep going straight, and humans had a natural tendency to walk in circles when in unknown territory.
Emiya had no idea if this phenomenon would be replicated in three-dimensional navigation, but he sure hoped not.
It was like walking through a pitch-black hallway, completely blind. At the far end existed a door, but you did not know where exactly and could only see it when close enough and the littlest bit of light would become visible from between the cracks. Moreover, the door only opened once a year and if you were there too early or too late, you would actually walk past the door and keep walking for all eternity.
Which was probably why shuttles were equipped with a flight VI as a standard.
Too much room for human error here. The VI got him started and quickly enough taught him the basics of flying around, giving him a good idea of how Shepard had originally learned to drive. Only, it refused to fly to the moon because the amount of fuel would not suffice for safe travel according to its calculations, even after he brute-forced past all the other warnings.
This shuttle was only rated for flight on certain kinds of planets, like Mars or Earth, but he didn't quite care. He needed to get back to the moon, preferably before the Alliance or Cerberus caught up to him.
So completely ignoring and bypassing it with his newfound talent for spirit hacking, Emiya merely flipped the paradigm in his head and considered the shuttle an arrow and the planet he was looking for to be the moving target. Ignoring all the numbers, velocities linear and radial, acceleration, delta-v, and distances that were thrown at him as if they meant anything, he instead simply recreated the voyage in its entirety—Earth, Luna, Mars, Sun in the middle, shuttle and all—inside the constructed blue-grid starfall world with the VI's help.
It was all to scale and speed, the VI reassured him with what was almost indignity.
A super-long distance shot beyond anything he had ever tried... but the target seemed a relatively small one. At least when he ignored the real relative velocities. So with all that he shot forward in the direction he wanted to go as he assured the VI that he knew what he was doing and ignored its continued warnings. It meant well, but he had no time for it. And then as he began to reach for peak velocity with reasonable fuel consumption, he began turning everything off he could to save power.
It had the side-effect of shutting up the VI, which was a definite plus.
This included the finer seals meant to keep oxygen and temperature in control inside the shuttle, as the basic physical design and seals only really worked to keep the fine dust out. It wasn't exactly life support, but something like that. So while he still had some oxygen from the garage in the burning house he had left behind, it was already starting to run out. Both from his own consumption and from the leakage into the void.
But that was what the environmental suit was for, including the spare oxygen modules he could change out to keep breathing for the whole of the voyage. Of course, he would have to hot-swap his oxygen supply sooner or later, which would be interesting, considering the suit was not designed for such maneuvers to be done while in an unpressurized environment. Could he hold his breath or hold a hand in front of the seal where the supply would be pulled out? It was just a civilian model, which meant that this shouldn't be necessary, as there was usually always one place or another where one could 'fill-up' safely near the settlements.
Few civilians probably thought to fly from one planet to another in a shuttle.
Which was why he had been slowing down his heartbeat to minimize oxygen consumption. He ruefully noted that had been getting a lot of mileage out of his breathing techniques lately.
So the plan was for him to fly in the dark through the vast divide between Mars and Earth, accounting for the spin and speed of both objects, in hopes of getting back. And once he'd see something approaching in the far-off distance, he would begin to make course corrections as necessary. With the planets orbiting the sun, he couldn't simply look for Earth in the distance and start flying straight at it, lest he be forced to curve constantly to account for it approaching in its orbit around the sun.
Given that in this straight line flight he would run low on fuel somewhere around Earth, flying in a chasing curve would definitely end with him stranded in space.
Emiya looked at the rear-view mirror one last time and raised a hand, giving the shrinking red planet behind him a jaunty wave as he muttered, "Good riddance..."
;
Shepard woke up.
Sitting up, she rubbed her eyes as she looked around blearily. For a moment, there was confusion at the emptiness of the room before she realized where she was. Oh, right. I have my own quarters, now.
She got up, stretching and warming up as she downed a large glass of water. Stretching her neck, she began to prepare for the day.
Finally, after getting the morning routines out of the way, she glanced at the omnitool for the time. It was still half an hour before anything on the schedule, so she had plenty of time to relax. Just as she had observed in the party, there was a laxness to the regulations here. Certainly, the officers in charge of them valued discipline and order, but most of the N-liners she saw were all quite casual and rambunctious once let loose.
She had a long day ahead of her, so she might as well get one thing done right off the bat.
Opening her omnitool, she brought out her contacts list and began to write an e-mail. She was sure Emiya had already situated himself and wouldn't mind her sending a message or three. She wrote about the party, skimping on the details regarding her digressions and merely describing what she had been impressed by, mentioning she met someone who seemed trustworthy there.
I want to reassure him, don't I? Or was she reassuring herself?
Shepard shook her head, reading it through once, only to wince at all the spelling errors she had made highlighted throughout. Scowling, she corrected them and gave it a second read. Again, more seemed to pop out at her. It was like she began thinking with one sentence, jumping into another in the middle and finishing with a third. The auto-correct only made it worse, completely misconstruing what she was trying to say, making her forget and have to go back and then finding herself at a loss when she returned to where she had left it.
When she read her messages out loud, she usually felt like wincing every time. Fine. This should be fine.
Shepard was tempted to simply use the speech-to-text function or to send a voicemail, but she knew that it would be a necessary skill in the future to be able to write by hand, so she toughed through it. She could almost hear Emiya chiding her with a raised eyebrow when she'd thought about doing it the easy way just now.
Everything was an opportunity to learn and improve, however much she might want to shy away from it.
She pressed send and looked at the time. Less than five minutes remained before the wake-up call - might as well get moving. Getting her gear ready, she forgot all about the message on her omnitool.
;
Emiya had thought that as long as he would hit the target, it wouldn't be a problem to get to Earth. That as long as he managed his fuel cells, it would all work out.
Actually, it wasn't turning out quite that simple.
As once finally en route, he realized just how little he actually knew about space and traveling through it. Sure, on paper only some 80 million kilometers of nothingness existed between Mars and Earth, which sounded manageable enough compared to some of the treks he had done before. The shuttle had an eezo core and thrusters. Starships had eezo cores and thrusters, and they could do it.
How different could they be?
A prolific science fiction writer of the 20th century, Robert A. Heinlein, had once quipped that 'once you get to earth orbit, you're halfway to anywhere in the solar system', which Emiya had thought encouraging. That the problem of escaping Earth's gravity well was the biggest obstacle to space travel, and once one was outside of it, it would be child's play to get where you wanted since space did not have air resistance or gravity to hinder you.
And since Mars had such low gravity, getting off-world had been easy. He thought he was halfway to the moon by that paradigm.
Which sure showed him how much he knew about space.
It was around the time he had traveled for half an hour that he realized that he really wasn't getting anywhere like this. It wasn't that he wasn't moving or that he probably would not arrive around Earth as he had planned.
It was just that he would not be doing it anytime soon.
So after another hour of looking at Mars slowly shrinking behind him, he began absently doing some math in his head from what he remembered from the VI's models that he had used to plot his course. Forgetting the specifics of distances and velocities and accelerations had allowed him to just chart out the trip as if it was another arrow to be loosed, but it had made him completely forget the scale of things in all this.
Just with the rough numbers Emiya remembered, he concluded that it would take days if not weeks for him to arrive at the moon at this rate. That was about when he had thrown up his hands and just decided to do something about it. He wasn't about to fly back, though. That would have felt like giving up - which he refused to do now that he was actually 'in the air' already.
"Idiot. You haven't changed at all," he berated himself quietly.
So he figured it wasn't like he couldn't perform some quick engineering while on the move, right? Maybe tweak something or reinforce some part with magic to make it fly faster? The ship was pretty much flying by itself now without any input from him. So long as he didn't touch the mass effect fields, everything should be fine...
Emiya frowned, reaching for the glove compartment and looking for a manual he could use. No such luck.
"A hundred years ago you got all riled about a bar jump, now you're too stubborn to turn back when faced with being stuck in space for weeks without any supplies. Stupid, foolish, dimwitted, stubborn numbskull..."
It was one of those litanies that had more or less become permanently stuck in his brain due to how often he had been subjected to it.
Wracking his brains about what he knew about the shuttle, he palmed the helmet as he tried to rub the spot between his brows. The first thing about eezo hovercraft to note which he knew, was that they all worked using pretty much two major functions.
One, the eezo core which lowered the mass of the vehicle to make it easier to move. Two, a method of propulsion which usually handled both the lift and the moving forward. It was sort of like an airplane, where the engines generated speed and the wings lift - on their own neither was quite enough for the craft to fly. Of course in a plane, you would need to work on the engine to dramatically improve speed, whereas with eezo hovercrafts you could improve both to achieve that end.
Either by allowing the eezo core to make the craft even lighter which would allow it to go faster for the same amount of thrust, or by improving the thrusters directly. But the latter was a lot less familiar to him, compared to the eezo tech which he had already worked on with the various guns he had taken apart and cobbled together.
There were other designs that apparently combined the two in one eezo core in some way, but he hadn't stumbled into anything about how those worked. Comparatively, this vehicle's eezo core was a relatively simple design.
Hardly more sophisticated than the Hahne-Kedar pistol he had used.
Certainly, it was a high-end luxury shuttle - something in the range of a Porsche or a Lamborghini in his time, perhaps? But he doubted there would be anything too complex about how it functioned, as, unlike combustion engines eezo was a rather simple technology. Which meant that he probably could do something to speed up his journey.
So, he turned off all the power and instantly the shuttle slowed down as its mass increased. He would need to re-plot his course again anyway if he did manage to speed it up.
Emiya ignored all that for now as he began to work his magic instead.
"—Trace, on"—begin synchronization;
A wireframe blueprint of the entire shuttle filled his mind as he reached out into it. First, he simply took on the whole, getting a feel for the design itself and where everything was located. Then he began to prod and touch at different parts with his extended magical energy to see what each part did and tried to build a working model of the entire shuttle in his mind's eye. Finally, he exhaled slowly as he pulled his mind out from the shuttle.
His breath misted on his visor, the cheap design not incorporating anything to prevent it.
Should have gone back for the Onyx armor, it was a lot better. I could hot-swap oxygen in it just fine...
Emiya shook his head. Going back to Ares Station hadn't been an option anyway and complaining was just a waste of time and energy. Instead, he focused on his findings.
As he had expected, he really couldn't do anything about the propulsion as it ran on a commercial fusion torch, which wasn't very receptive to careless tampering. It was a relatively high tech piece of equipment. Literally rocket science to him, as the already antiquated parlance went. Something of a side-effect of eezo-based hovercraft was that getting off-world was pretty simple actually.
So as he had reasoned, the only part he could work on would be the eezo core.
The part which made the shuttle lighter, and negated all the troubles of old with weight and sufficient thrust when it came to breaking out from tyrannical gravity wells. The part that simply received an electric current and generated a mass altering field.
Besides, he wasn't sure that if he did boost the fusion torch thrusters that his fuel consumption wouldn't sky-rocket as well. It might get him forwards faster, but would it leave him with a powerless shuttle, the same way the sniper rifle had become in Brazil?
He didn't exactly want to go floating by Earth with no fuel, unable to change course once the time came. He also had no intention of trying to perform a landing from space without a ship of some kind. Even without having to worry about burning up on re-entry into an atmosphere—the moon's surface still lacking one—the thought of continuing to accelerate until he impacted with the moon was less than pleasant.
Without an atmosphere, there was no such thing as terminal velocity or air resistance to slow him down.
On Earth, he could simply Project a parachute for a safe landing and had done so more than once to escape from incredible heights safely. But on the moon, none of that would work. It would be a very quick and rough landing and one he would not walk away from without wrecking his fragile body. He ignored the thought that his Servant-self might manage it just fine and technically he was supposed to be abandoning his body soon anyway, for now.
No, he had to increase his speed without affecting his fuel consumption too much.
And luckily for him, he could do that by increasing the size of the eezo core the shuttle used.
Besides, there was plenty of space there for more of the stuff, he noted as he had analyzed the core in the engine block. Well, not in the spot where the current core was held, but all around it if he moved some of the chamber walls around to optimize the arrangement. It was the result of normal design limitations—where you needed to actually physically put the engine together and be able to access it later for maintenance—which left so much empty space there.
None of which was relevant to him, able to use Reinforcement magic to reach within and shape it to his will without physical contact to any specific part as he was.
The metal flowed and shifted out of sight beneath his applied touch.
So if he projected some element zero, fusing it around the existing core and tripling the amount in the core, it should make his shuttle fly faster. He looked back, noting that he could still see Mars just fine behind him as he drifted slowly through space on his previous thrust.
Mm, I don't have all day.
Inhaling, he focused on analyzing the eezo core specifically, but unlike the featherlight touches three months ago when he had first been shipped to the basic training camp, this time he pushed his magical energy directly into the core.
He had to make certain that the grooves in the two parts were in the same direction, as eezo behaved somewhat like permanent magnets with how they generated their respective fields. When an electrical current flowed through eezo, it would create a field around itself—much like an electromagnetic field, around a metal wire under similar circumstances—that lessened the mass of everything inside of it. If the current was reversed, the mass of everything inside would grow heavier.
Thus, if he had the two eezo pieces grooved in opposite directions, one of two things might happen.
The better alternative was that they countered each other out and the stronger one won. The bad alternative to how it would work was that it might generate a warp field. Which would either rip him and the shuttle apart instantly, or it might just tickle him. Might. As in, Emiya did not have a 100% understanding of what he was doing here. Or if it would even result in the warp effect he had read about - that was currently restricted military information only used by biotics or high-yield anti-capital ship missiles, after all.
He knew that the amount of eezo was key in generating a potent mass effect field, in the sense that a bigger core would be more effective than a stronger current or a higher voltage would be. That much he had read from when he had looked up the guns' manuals earlier. He really hadn't had cause to read up on eezo technology beyond guns, which he suddenly felt a little bashful about. Still, that had been noted as a difficulty when it came to weapon designs, so it had stuck with him. And it should apply to a shuttle's eezo core just the same.
He tried to check if he could connect to the extranet to confirm, but he had already flown beyond Mars' buoy range. He had to base his solutions on only the things he knew, now.
It can't be helped; nothing new here. Let's do this.
"—Trace, on"—begin projection;
Emiya focused, his mind calming instantly from centuries of practice. He was the foremost Faker to have ever existed; this much was child's play to him. The world fell away, his senses growing silent as he began to assert his world on it.
The material was ancient, formed in small amounts by stars going supernova along with other exotic materials. It had unusual properties aplenty and was highly prized for its applications in dozens of fields. Yet for all that, he could still create the matter just as he could create most anything from this world - iron, too, was just another byproduct of a supernova and he had plenty of practice with that.
He exhaled, his breath steaming hot as the illusion was bound into reality.
Opening his eyes he couldn't see anything, right now looking through his magical energy at the result he was creating. The projection was flawless, he noted with a smirk - he wouldn't have settled for anything less. With this, the eezo core had tripled in size.
"—Trace off,"—all processes completed; he incanted absently as he turned on the power again and waited with bated breath for any sign of failure. A few seconds later he was satisfied to note that it all worked perfectly fine. The power consumption appeared to have increased a slight bit but it was still well within the bounds of acceptability.
Applying the lightening mass effect field and kinetic barriers, he noted how much more potent it now felt compared to before as his speed increased rapidly, the momentum maintained but velocity skyrocketing as his mass dropped. There was some flickering and excess in the field now though, as it now actually went well past the dimensions of the shuttle but he could probably trim that away with spirit hacking if he wanted to while re-calculating and shooting his new flight plan.
With this, he felt quite confident in getting to the moon within a reasonable frame of time.
Except for the fact that Mars still loomed behind him, quite large, only very slowly diminishing in size.
It works, so might as well do it properly.
So he turned everything off again—ignoring the shuttle slowing down again with the increase in mass—and returned his focus to the engine block, optimizing every spatial saving tolerance he could find and then absolutely filling the entire core with as much eezo as he could create.
It was now five and a half times as big as it had been before - a considerable increase considering the size of his shuttle.
He hesitated for a moment, considering whether it was safe to actually turn on the engine again, considering how he was absolutely pushing this to its limits. With a huff of amusement at hesitating after the fact, he turned it on and then went on to apply the thrusters for even more acceleration.
Before, Emiya had sometimes wondered what it would feel like to be an actual speeding bullet. Now he didn't have to wonder anymore.
;
"Ensign Shepard?"
She looked up, blinking at the pair of men who were walking up to her.
Behind them came one of her new instructors. It had been a long day of nothing but theory and repetition. Apparently, the foundation for the special forces lay not in merely hard training and good equipment, but also in a very wide base of knowledge. Something, which she had been woefully lacking in until now. Luckily it seemed that few among her current peers were any better, as far as the new relevant knowledge was concerned.
It was tough to listen in, trying to pay attention when so far she had happily zoned out before during any theory, back in basic.
"Yeah, that's me?" she asked, turning to face them.
"Lieutenant Kolkkonen, Alliance Intelligence, Internal affairs. This is my partner, Lieutenant Ashford. We would like to ask you a few questions, please come with us."
She blinked at that, understanding about half of what he had said. She turned to peer at the instructor who was standing behind them, calmly watching the situation.
"Sure, I guess."
They led her away, into an empty room and told her to take a seat. Sitting down opposite to her, setting themselves between her and the door, they began to tap away at their respective omnitools.
Looking up, the lieutenant who had introduced himself began to speak. "Ensign Shepard, please describe your relationship with Serviceman Emiya to us."
She frowned, looking between the two, but as neither spoke a word and only continued to stare at her, she tried to analyze what was happening. These two were cops, she would have known that even without their announcing of that fact or the different authority they bore. Cops were cops; people she had never gotten along with before.
Still, this was a different place. She swallowed the resentment for now.
"We enlisted at the same time and bunked next to each other," she answered, simply. Did something happen to him? Or did he do something again?
"Is that all?" the second cop asked, tilting his head as he stared at her down the length of his nose.
"Yes...?"
Neither said anything, but the one with the omnitool noted something down.
"When was the last time you were in contact with serviceman Emiya?"
"I uh, sent him a mail this morning," Shepard answered after a second. The key point was to tell truths whenever you could but to mix up the signals you gave off. Well, when you wanted to confuse them enough that they couldn't push some bullshit on you. She'd managed to get away from two arrests before, but that was different from this.
"And did he answer?" Kolkkonen asked, looking up from his omnitool without moving his head, peering up at her so that the whites of his eyes were visible beneath his pupils.
"Not yet. What's this about? What's happened to Emiya?" she asked, shooting back her own question before they could ask her anything more. She stared at them, neither reacted in any fashion to her questions.
She couldn't read anything off of either.
That worried her.
"Would you consent to us inspecting your mail history? Mind, your answer will not hinder us, but it will be noted in your record," The second man asked, tilting his head at her questioningly.
She frowned, before nodding her head. "Go ahead."
The second lieutenant raised his omnitool and tapped away, apparently capable of checking her mail without needing any assistance from her.
The man tapped away on his omnitool for several seconds, looking through various folders as he occasionally looked up to check on her. At one point, he frowned at the omnitool and looked at her intently for several seconds, but when she said nothing he returned to looking through her mail.
Shepard remained seated, arms crossed as she frowned at the two.
Finally, the lieutenant put away the omnitool and resumed staring at her as he placed his hands on the table, fingers laced together.
"Today, at fourteen hundred—local time—Ares Station reported that one of their personnel had gone missing during the night without a trace. Since then, Serviceman Emiya has been noted down as being AWOL."
Shepard blinked, uncomprehending as she looked at the man, turning to glance at the other man who was staring at her just as impassively.
"...Oh."
She had no idea what to say to that.
After that, it all seemed a haze to her. She wasn't been told anything else by them and they hadn't had any more pertinent questions, thus after telling her to contact them immediately if she thought of anything else, or was contacted by Emiya, they had let her go.
Shepard walked through the hallways, her steps echoing as she took one step after another. She felt adrift, lost. The day had gone past in a blur. She remembered nothing of its events. Not since the interview concluded. Nor really from before it either.
She arrived at her quarters, collapsing heavily on her bunk.
Just this morning, it had seemed like a welcoming abode, yet now she saw through that and realized it was nothing more than an empty room. There was nothing for her here. Pulling up her omnitool, she pulled up the message outbox. The message was still there, marked as unread and unreceived. She stared at it for a long time, sitting there in the dark. Sighing she closed the messaging application, staring at the interface instead.
It beeped suddenly, lighting up to note that she had received a message.
Sudden, irrational excitement bloomed in her as she hastened to open it, only to deflate as she noticed it was just a public notice.
She blinked at the header. It was a notice of the change of staff, along with the reason for it: "Burnsfeldt is gone?"
Jumping up, she walked out of the room. That man should have still been staying on Earth; she could still try to ask for his help. Right now, she had nothing and it was killing her inside. This couldn't be unrelated. She could feel it in her gut; something was going on here.
And she had to find out what.
;
Emiya looked out the window, noting the strange blue tint everything was beginning to take in front of him. It wasn't very pronounced yet but was definitely there.
"Blueshift?" he wondered aloud, incredulous. How fast am I going right now?
Looking at the dashboard, he noted that the speedometer had long since capped out.
For whatever reason, the speedometer in the shuttle was an analog, much like in a 20th-century car. He felt a little bit of pity for the thing, actually. He shook his head, getting rid of another such pointless thought that had begun plaguing him. He had been sitting quietly again, doing nothing at all as he simply looked around, waiting. Behind him, he couldn't see Mars anymore, but he wasn't sure if that was from the distance he had traveled or from the weird color distortion he was experiencing.
In his excitement, he had only remembered another half-hour later to correct his course to account for the new speeds he had reached, realizing with some horror that he had been well on his way to completely miss Earth for a good while there. Before that, he had done some rough re-scaling of the mass effect field's size around the shuttle, not wanting to waste too much power now that he was accelerating with thrusters again.
But now, with all that taken care of, Emiya had nothing but time to think and look back at recent revelations.
Especially that place in the deepest hole on Mars.
"What even was that place?" he asked no one in particular, those solemn statue-like figures involuntarily springing to his mind again. He remembered that great spectral cloud of wrath that hung about them, weak and helpless, yet defiant and determined to make itself known. To enact itself against something.
Might as well look into it now - not like I'm going anywhere.
Emiya closed his eyes, the insides of the dark skycar vanishing from his vision as he appeared in that world inside of himself. Swords dotted the landscape, great rusted cogs still spun in the burning sky above. He looked down, seeing the pistol in the dirt - half-buried and stained with rust and blotches of dried red blood around the muzzle.
He crouched down, looming over the thing.
"What are you?"
But the gun remained silent.
Reaching down for it, he hesitated for a second. Swallowing his hesitation, he grabbed it. Nothing happened: no booming voice, no overwhelming lingering malice, no alien sensations rippling through his mind.
It was just a gun.
He exhaled, closing his eyes and opening them again. He found himself back in the dark insides of the skycar. Outside, the moon shone a bright white, blinding against the darkness around it.
In his hand was the pistol. Emiya frowned.
Bringing it out was as easy as any other weapon inside of his reality marble. But it was a gun.
"—Trace, on"—experiencing the history of its growth, reproducing the accumulated years;
Extending his magical energy through his hand into the grip, he cautiously tried to sense out the weapon. Why had he been able to replicate this weapon? Guns had always been something he could create, but never replicate. They had to be empty, like most other mundane items.
The metal, wood, and plastics of their construction were all entirely mundane and understandable, but the whole of the concept of a gun never came to him like a sword, a lance, or even a shield would. If he wanted to project a gun, he would have to do it piece by piece and assemble it himself, be it by hand or in his mind's eye before it was bound. A much more expensive and time-consuming operation than nearly any sword in his armory required. Even shields and armor came more easily, and with those, he could even glean at the insides with enough time and effort.
Which was why he had come to prefer his bow for ranged combat. Nominally bows could be simplified enough to be made of two pieces: the bow and the string. He had gone beyond that and built the whole thing out of a single piece; graphene, as had become his usual.
But with this, he could only tell three things about this weapon in his hands, first of which was that as far as he could tell it was a tool meant for nothing but suicide.
Once perhaps it had been a weapon, a sidearm like any other. But that final use; whatever the emotions and resolutions those aliens had had in their last moment, the whole of what remained of that species coming together and dying with some strange purpose...
It had wiped away anything else in this gun, overwriting it with that final act.
It suffused the whole of it, permeating everything about it with that purpose. He could not understand it, either. It remained like mist to his hands. He tried to grasp it, finding shades and shapes in the nothingness, but still escaped his grasp.
This weapon only existed for someone to point it at themselves—to end their life—for reasons he could not understand. Nothing more. Perhaps if he turned it on himself, he could gain a glimpse of that reasoning?
He shook his head.
Secondly, the thing that had allowed him to replicate it became obvious now. It was a gun - a pistol to be specific, even by whatever standards those aliens must have had in that ancient time. But it was more than that, too.
During his life, he had been no stranger to guns.
Pistols, in particular, had been something he had extensively researched and used due to their nature. When you wanted to appear dangerous without raising too much notice, a small pistol on your hip did a world's worth more than a large sword in your hands ever could.
There was a dichotomy to pistols too, making them quite similar to swords in a sense.
They were practical tools, often cheaply assembled in factories and lacking any and all personal touches by a craftsman for the individual weapon—a very select few pieces aside—yet, they were carried around as sidearms. They followed by your side, like a loyal retainer. Day in, day out. Quiet, but always there for you. As long as you knew and maintained your gun, it would you just as well in return.
Thoughts and feelings lingered in guns, just as well.
He knew this, even if he couldn't understand them quite as well.
The hundreds of hours spent practicing with them, the thousands of repetitions of each component action. Desperate struggles and easy victories, great achievements and horrible atrocities - all were ingrained into those tools. They were just as romanticized in men's minds as swords were. And just like the swords of the men that had come before, they could carry deep emotions and histories, absorbing everything they went through and compressing those events into something more. Just like a duelist's rapier; a samurai's katana; the gladius of the Roman legionnaires; blades passed down from chieftain to warrior; from king to knight; and many, many other examples of various men throughout time.
They were as much symbols as they were tools; gathering the emotions, thoughts, and concepts of those around them like lightning rods almost as well as swords did.
As far as the concept of creation and the basic structure went, guns simply could not compare to older weapons in complexity or depth. But when it came to the experiences of growth and the accumulated years, they would not lose out. The eras of the gun had seen conflicts on scales that had never been fought with spear, sword, or bow, after all.
Emiya would never admit it to anyone, but he had something of a fascination with guns as well. Then again he was fond of all arms, tools, and devices, really.
He had considered such things about guns before but had never gone too far with them. His capture and execution had come in the way during his life, and afterward, it had become a moot point. Guns generally did not perform terribly well against spiritual bodies, in either case.
Moreover, they scaled terribly in power even purely in the physical realm.
Emiya exhaled, chasing away those thoughts as he tried pressing the button he knew was built into the grip. But nothing happened. He sighed, as the weapon had been configured for three fingers, it refused him. It was like the grip safety on 1911s or trigger-safety on Glock pistols, requiring a special kind of grip to even activate.
A grip he could not naturally replicate.
But he simply extended his magical energy and forced it to work for him, ignoring any such incompatibilities.
The orange, glowing blade shot out with a low thrumming hum, extending from the grip forward along the length of the barrel. It was a single-charge blade created out of something resembling the omnigel held within omnitools. It was held in place by some sort of mass effect field, which caused the entire blade to glow as it did.
I think I remember reading about these. Omniblades? They do not see much use, as the distances in conflicts have not shrunk since the first introduction of repeating firearms, Emiya thought, observing the blade carefully.
He understood now, for there was one exception that did overcome that rule of his replication, but only partly. Gunblades. Combining a blade with a gun, so that the line blurred just enough. They had been something of a curiosity, both to him and to their original users and creators, and were rarely anything more.
But now he felt the need to bring it out as well.
The first one he had ever seen and thought worthy of the title gunblade, beyond a mere novelty item.
"—Trace, on"—begin projection;
The 19th-century gunblade appeared in his other hand instantly. For a moment, he felt silly holding the two gunblades in either hand, one archaic and old, the other futuristic and older still.
Emiya exhaled, feeling a little bit warm.
Shaking his head, he looked at the one he had just pulled out from his reality marble, the weapon he had encountered during his lifetime.
It looked like a Bowie knife blade that had been seamlessly fused with a revolver, combining the 30cm long blade with the 12mm caliber revolver. He had seen it at an antique auction right before the 'action' had kicked off, and had been absolutely fascinated by the thing. While getting his hands on the weapon hadn't been strictly necessary, he had still taken the time to take a closer look during the ensuing firefight.
He had even shot it a few times, just to see that it actually did work.
Of course, he had put it back afterward. After having made sure that he hadn't broken anything or scuffed the polish. He had even fixed one of the springs before it broke without removing any of the patina as repayment.
Among the many craftsmen who sought to create gunblades, only a few did Emiya consider to be of true note, and among them, one stood out to him. Joseph-Célestin Dumonthier. The man who had made the bowie-revolver that had caught his eye, originally. A French gunsmith and inventor who worked in both France and Belgium, where he took out at least ten patents in 19th century Europe for various firearms designs, including but not limited to a simpler revolver-knife gunblade in 1840 and his cane pistol in 1870. He also created various smaller novelty pistols, combining often the features of a folding knife, corkscrew, and a single-shot pistol into one compact design.
The French certainly had their priorities sorted out. Wine, dine, stab and shoot. Everything you would need for a proper evening party in one simple package, Emiya thought with an amused smirk, the creator's thoughts still having lingered in that particular piece.
Most of Dumonthier's designs were percussion or pinfire designs, from an era when reloading was not as simple as simply pushing in a new cartridge. This had made the idea of combining a ranged weapon with limited ammunition with a melee weapon much more practical than in the eras of quick reloading. Not much, but just enough for people to accept such things.
His most successful weapons were probably the 1846 Norwegian Postførerverge gunblades, for the postal guards who required a self-defense weapon that suited their needs. Looking like a simple dagger with a small curving hilt, its quillons functioned as hammers for the twin barrels on either side of the blade. But his finest work was undoubtedly the knife-revolvers, which saw use in the Crimean War among various European officers. Unlike other craftsmen—who merely milled in the blade and fitted it into an opening in the barrel, or attached a firing mechanism into an existing blade—Dumonthier wanted his weapons to be one whole.
Not a gun welded to a knife, nor a knife milled to a gun. But a gunblade. Thus he created the weapon Emiya was holding now. It's pretty warm in here, he noted again as he exhaled, checking his magic circuits absently to see if they were running. Hmm, guess not.
It was one solid piece of shining steel, from blade tip to revolver grip. There were no seams or divide between the 'revolver part' or the 'knife part', there was merely the gunblade. Of course, the rotating barrel, the single/double-action trigger mechanism, and the hollow handle to house the spring were all distinct parts, as they had to be. But the frame itself did not separate between blade and gun. There was a balance. The synergy and harmony between the two, that created something more than just a gun and a blade.
It was a true gunblade.
It's beautiful, Emiya shook his head as he realized he had been daydreaming about weapons again. Losing himself in details like this was no good, even if his body always felt a little warmer at the sight of a good weapon. He felt a drop of sweat roll down his face as he looked at the gun.
But it was a beautiful piece, with detailed engravings and with a rich history to it. The concept of creation, the basic structure, the composition material, the skill of its making, the experience of its growth, and the accumulated years... They were all splendid. From beginning to end, this had been created to be something special and it had been used in a way to match that.
Well, there were others as well, such as the German revolver-sword that had been used for hunting. But none of the others had been used in any notable fashion. This one had been through quite a bit in the hands of the European officer who had originally bought it, just prior to leaving for the Crimean War, its owner even having met Florence Nightingale once, when...
Emiya shook his head again. Focus on Mars.
To his mind the strange pistol he had acquired on Mars did not quite meet those conditions of being a proper gunblade; not strongly enough in physical design, at least. The blade could only be activated once per charge and it was fairly fragile. More of an emergency function than a truly balanced design. Additionally, it was more of a separate piece, that hung onto the frame of the pistol through the mass effect fields than anything else.
Perhaps that meant those who had created it had believed in both functions equally, valuing the blade just as highly as the gun, for it to have achieved that balance regardless?
He frowned. With kind of combative context had those aliens been preparing for and fighting in, to value close combat so highly? Even in the era of single-shot guns on Earth, the concept of creation had not been strong enough to create many noteworthy gunblades. And wasn't that contradictory with how it should have been overwritten by the ending they had wrought for themselves?
By the 'legend' of this alien noble phantasm?
Not unless the thing they sought to cut down from the beginning was the same as what they had shot in the end... Emiya thought, suddenly. But that made no sense. Why would they have suddenly become their own enemies? And they had shot themselves, not cut.
He shook his head, this was getting him nowhere. He looked out into the emptiness of space around him, the blue hue of the sun and blackness of space helping him calm down some. Looking over his shoulder again, he wondered if it was it the red coloration of the stars behind him that made him feel so hot in here?
The third and final thing weighed on his heart heaviest of all.
Among the cacophony of chaotic alien thoughts and emotions he had sensed, he could recognize reliably only one. With the alien mindsets of the weapons' original owners, he lacked the frame of reference to truly understand their minds. It went beyond the surface of things like language or customs, cutting down to the level of the difference in logos - the spark of reason which animated them.
But even so, he could understand that one tiny fraction of what had been engraved into these suicide guns.
Was it his own rebirth in fire? The hells he had journeyed through, desperately seeking his place in the world? Or was it simply related to his current existence as a 'hero of justice'? Whatever it was, even across wholly different species and tens of thousands of years...
He would never fail to recognize a cry for salvation.
"'Save us', huh..." Emiya muttered, looking at the guns with a frown before he shook his head. They were long gone: he could do nothing for them, now.
'You could solve the mystery of their deaths and put those lingering grudges to rest' a voice inside of him whispered, but he squashed it ruthlessly as he exhaled hot air through his nose.
He had done his job and now it was time to go back.
;
"Shepard? What is the matter?" Anderson said, blinking as he had opened the door to his room.
"I..." Shepard hesitated. "Sir, I need your help."
"I was just about to leave..." he said, frowning as he looked back inside the room. He was already wearing his full uniform along with a packed suitcase ready by the door. His shoulders slumped and he smiled a little. "But I suppose I can spare a few minutes. Come in."
Shepard let out a sigh of relief as she entered, closing the door behind her. The Staff Commander's quarters were quite a bit more impressive, if not in size then in décor at least.
"Well then, have a seat and tell me what is the problem."
She sat down by a small leather chair, placed next to a round table and two other similar chairs. Anderson seated himself opposite to her, looking at her intently.
"It's about someone I went to basic training with: he's gone missing, and I know it's got something to do with Burnsfeldt."
Anderson blinked at her heated voice, before frowning. "Do you have any proof?"
"No—But..."
Anderson sighed. "Shepard. Assuming he is away without leave, that makes it an internal matter. You must understand, that I don't have any authority in an internal investigation. This is a matter where even trying to find out what is going on could get you—or even me—into a lot of trouble."
Shepard hung her head, clenching her fist. She just needed to figure out what to say, she knew she could get this man's help with the right words.
"Besides, what reason would Lieutenant Commander Burnsfeldt have for doing something like that?" Anderson finished, shaking his head with a small grin.
"He hates Emiya and..." She blinked as she realized she hadn't thought her words through. Certainly, the man had been angry and had run off from the party, but did that mean anything? But he was missing. "Burnsfeldt is missing - just like Emiya. There has to be a connection there," she insisted.
Anderson blinked. "Now, that might not necessarily mean anything, He is an active-duty special forces operative, with a rather well-known and valuable specialization. The Alliance has need of men like him, more than you know. That you haven't seen him might not necessarily mean anything."
"He never showed up to the lectures he was supposed to be having and no one even realized he was missing until then. The other instructors had no idea where he is, either. After the party; after I called him an asshole, he just stormed off and no one's seen him since. I asked around," Shepard continued, staring at Anderson. She knew that something was going on.
"That still does not mean that he's connected to your friend's disappearance in any way," Anderson objected, sighing.
"Maybe, but Emiya told me to be careful about Burnsfeldt. We only met him once, and Emiya could tell right away that something was up with him—and when I called him an asshole, I said 'Emiya was right'. That was what really got to him, not just what I said." Shepard nodded to herself, almost feeling pieces falling in their place inside her head as she spoke out the words.
Anderson blinked. "Perhaps, but how does that relate to Burnsfeldt?"
"He hacked the Shanxi-exercise feed and watched over us the whole time. He's the best engineer within light years, right? A specialist in security systems. The two guys who were asking about Emiya said he'd 'disappeared without a trace' in the middle of the night from his base. How could he do that? They should have cameras and locked entrances everywhere, right? It would take someone like Burnsfeldt to just make him disappear like that!"
"Two men? Investigators came to question you? In-person?"
"Yeah, two of them. Lieutenant Cole-key-nen or something like that. I forgot the other guy's name since he didn't say anything anyway. They looked through my mail and then told me to call them if I figured out something. But they didn't tell me anything other than what I just told you, and, I don't trust them. I just..."
Anderson frowned, staying quiet as he went through what she had said in his head. He looked up, narrowing his eyes at her. "Are you sure your friend did not simply leave on his own?"
"No, he wouldn't do—well, he might, if he thought it was important enough. But he wouldn't be able to get past the security systems, right?" Shepard answered and Anderson raised an eyebrow at her. "He's... focused. If he thinks something is worth doing, he'll do pretty much anything to get it done. But he..."
She suddenly turned thoughtful, going silent.
"Is there any possibility he might have gone on his own somewhere?" Anderson asked intently, realizing that she was hesitating now.
"It's... It's possible. But I don't know what it might mean."
Anderson leaned forward. "If I'm going to help you, you will have to trust me and tell me everything. Is this a... volatile circumstance?"
Shepard blinked, not certain what that meant. "I... don't know. Maybe? It's not something I'm sure about—I mean, it might just be wishful thinking on my part, but—I think he faked a medical condition to get out of being forced into N-school."
Anderson's eyebrows rose up at that as he leaned back. He opened his mouth, frowning and closing it again.
"That's... That's a little bit hard to believe. To be honest. For a variety of reasons. Do you have any proof of such?"
"Well... Do you remember that box breathing thing you mentioned? He was always doing something like that before he did something crazy. He said it would help in calming down by controlling your heartbeat, or something, when I asked him one time about it. And they said he was having panic attacks or something? If you can calm it down, couldn't you also make it go crazy?"
Anderson frowned. "Well, there is a certain connection between the sympathetic and the automatic nervous system, but that's..." He paused, frowning. "Are you sure?"
"No. But..." She hesitated.
"But?"
"He seemed so calm the whole time. Just like back in the city whenever we got into a really tough spot - like it was all just going according to plan."
Anderson nodded slowly, not really understanding, waiting for her to go on.
"I woke up the night before and he was lying on the floor. He was so sweaty - it almost looked like he was almost steaming. I thought he was dead for a second. And then he stood up and looked like nothing was wrong, telling me he was 'fine'. And I believed him." She looked up at Anderson, then. "It just seemed weird to me; I thought it might have been a dream, until the next day they took him out of the N-school list because he was having panic attacks and couldn't sleep because of PTSD, or something."
The Staff Commander frowned, before shaking his head. "I really shouldn't be getting involved here, but something about all of this does seem odd."
He stood up, grabbing his suitcase as he activated his omnitool.
"Flight Lieutenant Thompson, are you still with me?"
"Yes sir, prepped for flight and ready to go. We are a little bit behind schedule, but I can still catch up."
"Contact the Hastings and tell them I will be delayed for a few hours. Have the shuttle ready, I will be heading for Mars, shortly." Anderson said and turned to look at Shepard. "Are you coming with?"
She blinked, before nodding vigorously and getting up herself to follow him as he began to walk out.
"Understood, Staff Commander. Preparing for lift-off. The bird will be hot in five. Thompson out."
;
Emiya twirled his thumbs.
He was already growing bored again. He had looked at the gunblades for a while, but already he had nothing more to do with them so he had simply set them aside.
Almost reaching for another oxygen canister to switch out his current one, he only remembered a second later that he had just switched it out some fifteen minutes prior. The supply gauge was still well in the green. He sighed, letting his head loll back into the seat, and wished again that he could have rubbed his temples through the environment suit. And then he finally remembered that he had something in the back which might be interesting to work with: the pilfered omnitools and guns from his captors.
He hadn't had a chance to open up a rifle or omnitool with his own methods yet, after all.
Problem was that the two most valuable omnitools were on his wrist right now. He had put them on right after killing their previous owners, before putting on the environmental suit. To get at them, he would need to open his suit which was a monumentally bad idea, considering that he knew that all the oxygen inside the shuttle would have already dissipated into the void.
But that was fine. He should start with something easier and less valuable for his first experiments anyway.
Reaching back for one of the grunt's omnitools he considered it for a moment. He closed his eyes, extending his senses as he ran the already familiar setup as before.
The hammer to the back of his head was cocked.
"—Trace, on"—begin insertion;
He winced as the hammer dropped, yet nothing happened.
Like a dry fire with a gun or a bow, with the magical energy having nowhere to go it bounced back at him and caused some damage. A minor headache, nothing more; merely on the level an apprentice magus might suffer from a failed attempt at communing with their familiar. He had used as little as he thought possible for this attempt, just for this reason.
"So I can't dive in if there's no power," Emiya noted, looking at the simple silver bracelet.
The power source had been removed, so it seemed almost obvious that there was no way spirit hacking would work, if the machine itself could not work without a constant supply of electrical charge. I wonder what would happen if I were inside when it ran out of power? He shook his head at that morbid thought and inhaled deeply.
There were risks to turning it back on though.
Who knew what kind of surveillance programs and bugs were in there. It might even explode the moment he connected the power supply back in, some hidden timer starting inside the moment the user died by his hands. Well, that last one was unlikely to happen, but it was still a possibility he had to consider.
He sighed, accepting that he would have to waste some magical energy if he wanted to play it safe. Not that he had any real need for stockpiling it at the moment. Taking the power source and placing it in his hands next to the omnitool, he closed his eyes.
"—Trace, on"—begin projection;
Opening his eyes, he looked at the heavy metal cube now in his palm. And by heavy, he meant heavy. Fifteen centimeters of hardened steel and lead on each side, it would contain most any explosion he could foresee occurring from such a small device. It would also hopefully jam any outgoing signals, allowing him to deal with the omnitool in an isolated state.
Then again, considering where he was right now, that wasn't exactly an immediate worry.
He almost wished he had access to the extranet since there really wasn't much to do here. But unfortunately, there was no coverage here in-between planets, and there was no tightbeam communicator in the skycar that was necessary for such long-range communications.
The cube fell into his lap, and he barely had time to pull out his hand from beneath it before it fell down. It settled somewhat painfully on his thighs.
"Oww," he muttered, frowning. With some effort, he lifted it onto the passenger seat next to him, with the omnitool he had chosen sealed inside of it, along with its still separate power cell.
Perhaps performing these kinds of experiments in a skycar wasn't the best idea, but it wasn't like he had anything better to do, either. Closing his eyes, he stepped out of his body. For a moment there was a worry that the shuttle might zoom into the distance, leaving him floating and stranded behind in the void of space. But luckily he seemed to be tethered to the shuttle or his body for now, keeping him from being left behind.
Emiya frowned, considering something for a moment.
Did mass effect fields affect spiritual bodies? He seemed affected by gravity, after all. Reaching out, he almost stuck a hand outside of the shuttle. Maybe not the best idea to start with myself. He projected a simple iron sword and extended it outside while still spiritualized. It didn't feel like anything happened to it; it did not experience any drag like he half had expected despite it possessing no mass at the moment.
He pulled it back in and looked at it. It looked just fine. Shrugging, he dismissed it and inhaled to calm himself. He extended a hand out through the shuttle and the mass effect field. He felt nothing unusual again.
Bringing back in the hand, he looked at it. Nothing. He moved to sit in the back, on the empty seats, and materialized to take a closer look at his hand. Nothing seemed out of place. Shrugging, he spiritualized again and stood up.
Emiya's head poked through the field and he looked around. Everything outside still appeared roughly the same but looking down at the shuttle he blinked. The hulls seemed to be exuding a blue smoke-like haze, or aura, as it continued to move.
It was quite beautiful, though he had no idea what to make of it.
He shrugged and sat back inside and moved to the front again. Enough horsing around. Turning around so that he was facing his body, half-inside the windscreen and dashboard of the skycar, he looked at the metal cube.
Extending his hands inside it, he willed it to be able to touch the physical. He placed the power source back in and then turned the omnitool on. He closed his eyes and again—
"—Trace, on"—begin insertion;
The metaphysical gun went off successfully this time. The hole in his head tore through, sucking everything with it as his world went black. Lightning and frost rippled in turn, fire and wind tore at him as his senses went mad with static. It was nothing new; the deluge of chaotic sensory information had been there every time so far.
And again, as if being thrown into the deep dark depths of some arctic ocean, he opened his eyes to find himself in that strange world.
Darkness, never-ending. Blue grids, archaic even for someone from his era. Pixelated starfall beyond. I still don't understand much of this. He sighed, pulling up the mental image he had of the omnitool bracelet in his mind's eye.
A great ring appeared. Extending from horizon to horizon: it went over the vault of the black sky like a cold, metallic rainbow, burrowing deep beyond the blue grid that represented a walkable plane in this place. He looked up and he looked down, noting that he was in the exact center of this massive ring now.
Emiya sighed. He hadn't expected something like this, but there had been a slight part of him that thought of himself as some small creature inside of the circuitry to be interacting with the computers like this. That the ring must have been absolutely huge in comparison to himself was something of an obvious conclusion in such a world-view, however subconsciously.
"Whatever, it's fine."
He began to focus on his senses again, pulling out everything he could detect and putting it in a place that made sense in this world. Focusing, he began to chart out everything that was actively going on in the omnitool. He found messages, files, programs, and applications, all doing their own thing.
He eyed through them but dismissed most as inconsequential.
With a frown, he took everything he thought might be useful later and compressed it into a 'ball', putting it somewhere where nothing could touch it. Then, he tore out everything that seemed like it was trying to connect to something else. If he didn't know what a program was trying to do, he lobotomized it entirely and moved on.
Emiya had chosen an omnitool he perceived as less valuable specifically so that he could be as rough as he wanted to and see what happened. If he fried the whole thing, that was completely fine.
He had more of them in the back, after all.
;
"Let me handle the talking. Technically, you shouldn't even be here," Anderson said, looking over at Shepard. She nodded, understanding that he was giving her a lot of leeway as it was.
"Landing at Ares Station, touchdown in twenty seconds, sir."
"Understood, we will be there for some time, so no need to keep the engines running, flight lieutenant."
"In that case, I'll go for a fuel run by the depot after landing, sir."
"Understood," Anderson responded, before turning to Shepard. "Time to seal up."
She nodded and they put on their hardsuit helmets. Shepard's unmarked while Anderson's had his stations of rank along with the N7 mark proudly emblazoned on his chest on the hard plate. It was the only specialization mark which one was allowed to wear, though for no real practical reason. Mostly it was a propaganda measure; to parade around humanity's heroes wherever they went. No one cared about the G or M sevens, after all.
Or that was the feeling she had gotten from all the cameras that had been focusing on Anderson at the party.
She blinked, looking up as the shuttle began to depressurize. Leaving Earth, they had had oxygen inside in the cabin. But as they began to land, suddenly the air was being sucked out, to minimize oxygen waste once they opened the shuttle doors.
The shuttle lurched a little as they landed, no more than the feeling of someone walking past you, really. The warning light went red, signifying a pressure drop as the last announcement and then the shuttle door opened. Shepard and Anderson jumped out and began to walk away as the shuttle flew off to go around to the other side.
Ahead of them, someone was coming out to greet them. Half-running, half-walking to turn around to look at the shuttle flying overhead, it was obvious their visit was both unexpected and unannounced.
As the figure approached them, he seemed to spot Anderson's rank and N7 insignia. He froze for an entire second before throwing a sloppy, if quick, salute at them.
We would have been made to run laps for that, a week back, Shepard thought with a blink as she settled behind Anderson's right side. She would pretend to be his aide, saying nothing and hoping no one questioned her presence, having seen enough of the type running around with the big-wigs since joining the N-line to emulate it.
"At ease, lieutenant," Anderson said, saluting—much more crisply and with better form, Shepard couldn't help but note—as he stared at the men.
"Sir! Lieutenant Patterson of Ares Station, chief engineer of the western wing. We weren't expecting someone to be arriving—there's been something of a mess today, I'm terribly sorry. If we had known to expect your arrival—" The lieutenant began to babble, obviously nervous at the N7's appearance.
"No need to be worried, Lieutenant Patterson. I'm not here for any heads. I heard one of your men went missing last night. Is there anything you can tell me about that?" Anderson spoke, calming down the lieutenant.
"You mean the new arrival? No, I— I'd just met him, he arrived yesterday and I went out to meet him when he got shipped in. Quiet kid; seemed sharp and with good manners. Did his first day of work and then this morning he was just gone. Hours later, while the MPs were looking for him outside and in Lowell City, the internal affairs guys show up and take over everything!"
"Just gone? What do you mean?" Shepard asked and suddenly the lieutenant looked down at her, uncertain how to react to her. She lacked any obvious insignia or symbols of rank. She hadn't even acquired anything to show her ensign status yet. Yet she was wearing the Navy colors in the Navy standard hardsuit.
If he didn't know better, he might have thought her a fresh recruit.
But she was walking next to a Staff Commander; a real N7! Ignoring the oddities, Patterson answered.
"Well, I just heard the military police guys talking about it. Just a bit. Apparently, nothing was caught on camera and the security logs and VI can't explain it at all," he explained, glancing at Anderson as he began to speak, to see if he should have ignored her. Noticing that Anderson did not interrupt him, he continued with restored confidence. "They just found his bed empty, with his omnitool gone. Nothing else—not even his hardsuit—nothing else is missing; he shouldn't have been able to leave. We checked: no other missing suits either. Just gone, like smoke in the wind."
Shepard looked up at Anderson, giving him a pointed look through the small, slightly tinted visor.
"Hmm. It does seem like there is something afoot here. Did the internal affairs already sweep the place? Have they closed off anything?" Anderson asked.
Patterson paused, hesitating. "I really wouldn't know, sir. But they left hours ago and everything seems to be business as usual again. Even if everyone is left confused and shaken by what's happened. People shouldn't just go missing like that."
Anderson nodded. "Well, then. Takes us in and let me speak to the ranking officer on station."
"Ah, yes sir. That would be Lieutenant Commander Dostov, right this way, sir."
They moved to follow and it finally struck her that they were on another planet. The realization came out of nowhere and she had to stop and look around, making a full turn to take it all in.
It looked...
It didn't look like much, actually. It just looked like a dusty landscape. Even Brazil had been more exotic, really. It didn't even look as red as it had in the night sky, the one time she had seen it.
She frowned.
This was where Emiya had wanted to go? She felt somehow ashamed of her disappointment. As if she was betraying him somehow in thinking that of this place. As if she should have been awed by the place he had wanted to go to. Or had he felt the same way? Is that why he left?
For a second, hope bloomed in her chest and she blinked.
But if that was the case, didn't that mean that he had run away because what he had wanted hadn't been what he had gotten? She didn't like that thought. Emiya was... Emiya was someone who would have toughed it through. No, he would have blown away everyone and then gone on to do whatever he wanted without worrying about what anyone else thought about him.
Still, this planet wasn't what she had expected.
"Shepard?" Anderson turned around, calling to her through the comms. It took her a moment to realize that she couldn't hear anything outside of her helmet. The comms made the direction of the sound around her seem natural, as she could point out that Anderson was in a certain direction when he spoke. But aside from that, she couldn't hear anything.
Just her own breathing inside of her helmet. Her heart was beating in her chest and suddenly it felt tight, as the understanding of the strange place she was in settled into her consciousness. She felt overwhelmed for a moment, but she inhaled slowly and controlled her breathing as she moved to follow Anderson.
"Yes, sir?" she asked as she caught up.
Anderson looked at her for a second, before nodding and continuing to follow after the lieutenant.
They arrived at a ramp and walked in through a door, leaving Shepard confused as to whether they would be wearing their hardsuits inside as well, until suddenly the room began to pressurize. Controlling herself, she carefully kept from revealing her surprise at everything and anything around them as they continued to move through the facility.
Arriving at a relatively fancy-looking office, lieutenant Patterson knocked on a door before peeking inside and whispering something to whoever was there. He then stepped to the side and saluted Anderson once again.
"By your leave, sir?"
Anderson nodded with a look of measured gratefulness, letting the lieutenant walk away as he turned to the door and walked through. He gave one last look to Shepard, reminding her to keep quiet with his eyes as they entered.
Inside a man stood by a desk, saluting Anderson somewhat more respectably. Anderson saluted him back and they both relaxed.
"Staff Commander. It's a privilege to make your acquaintance. What brings you to my little corner on this ball of dust?" The Lieutenant Commander, a portly man who seemed to spend more time behind a desk than on his feet, asked. Perhaps it was the weaker gravity, but he seemed somehow less solid than the people of similar proportions she had seen on Earth.
However, unlike Patterson at least he was clean-shaven and had a regulation haircut. A noticeable irregularity on the station, as most seemed to have little care for their appearance. It seemed more like a civilian facility to her, after basic and the special forces so far.
"We were just in the area. My protege here, Ensign Shepard, had a fellow she knew in basic. He came here and we figured we could drop by for a visit. I hope we aren't a bother," Anderson explained lightly.
"Mhm." The Lieutenant Commander nodded. "And unfortunately, he seems to be missing at the moment, no?"
"Indeed," Anderson said, sighing. "We had no idea, really. It came as a total surprise."
The portly man nodded with understanding. "Well, I really can't tell you much. The Alliance Intelligence Agency came by, two officers from the internal affairs department. They have taken away all of the records and evidence of that case, and I really cannot divulge anything regarding an active case until terms of internal disclosure are sent back to me. My apologies, for coming all the way, but I really cannot help you."
"Of course. We have no intention of prying or shoving our noses where they do not belong. I apologize for the bother, we'll take our leave now," Anderson said, bowing slightly as an apologetic gesture.
Shepard reacted at that but kept her face under control as she kept silent.
"Oh, by the way..." Just as they turned to leave the office, the Lieutenant Commander turned to look at them as if he had forgotten something. "If you happen to drop by Lowell City, do watch out for the emergency vehicles there. Terrible business, that fire."
Anderson blinked, before nodding. "Thank you, we shall keep it in mind."
They left, walking back the way they had come. Shepard had tried to memorize the layout of the place but had quickly lost herself in the labyrinthine halls of the station. It seemed so cluttered and claustrophobic, with always something to bump into if her gaze strayed even a little.
"Is it a dead end?" Shepard asked, finally unable to contain herself any longer.
"They've been told to shut up, I won't pry any further here. But if Alliance Intelligence is involved, then it's sure to be ugly. He gave us a lead, however. Probably not something officially related, but something his gut is telling him and he can share without reprisal."
"The fire?" Shepard asked and Anderson nodded. She considered it, not quite seeing the connection, but seeing no other leads accepted his judgment on the matter. "What's so bad about the Alliance Intelligence?"
Anderson looked down at her, considering what to say. He looked away. "Ask me in two years. Until then, pretend you'd never heard about it. Makes it simpler for everyone involved."
She blinked at the curt answer as he simply continued walking. Frowning, but not pressing the point, she moved to follow him.
"Flight lieutenant, how long until we are ready to leave?" Anderson asked, raising his comm.
It took several seconds until an answer came back as they walked. "Five minutes, sir. Mostly done. Where do you wish to go next?"
"We'll head to Lowell City and take a look around. Have you heard anything on the common comms?"
"Actually, there seems to be something going on by an apartment building downtown. Some kind of fire, or something, sir."
"A fire? In this atmosphere? I see. Without a dedicated fire department, it would pose a problem for the city. Plot a course there once you're in the air, we will be heading for the airlock now," Anderson said, closing the comm as he frowned in thought.
"They don't have fire departments here?" Shepard asked as that had stood out to her.
"Hmm? Yes. With the low atmosphere, fire does not really spread all too much. Even inside houses, the construction usually allows for the oxygen to be simply removed by opening an airlock or by draining the oxygen inside through the filtration systems. Usually, it is done slowly enough to avoid sudden depressurization, but it can't always be avoided. I'd expected perhaps an office fire or an engine meltdown. But an entire building? For a fire to be a problem would mean that it is some form of exothermic reduction-oxidation reaction, which implies military-grade incendiaries..." Anderson mused out loud as he walked.
Shepard blinked in complete confusion at the last few sentences he had muttered, trying to appear as if she understood it all, but finding very little success.
Noticing this, Anderson laughed.
"Don't worry. You'll be receiving a general education somewhere along the way, I'm sure. Chemistry might seem like a bore, but once you're in the field and learn how to make your own explosives, it suddenly becomes a lot more interesting," he reassured, laughing good-naturedly at her expression.
"If you say so..." she muttered, not bothering to note that she had been coasting along even in basic when it came to theory.
"Haha. Well, I might as well explain it in detail. For something to burn, it will require three things. First, sufficient heat. Second, enough oxygen to maintain the reaction. Third, a fuel source to consume. Remove any one of these three things and a fire can't burn."
Shepard blinked, understanding it a little. "Oh, so throwing water on a fire will cool it down, cover it from the air and make the material wet so it won't burn?"
"Close, but not quite. The fuel itself generally won't be affected by becoming a little wet; that's simply affecting the first two. So don't go thinking that water will put out every fire," Anderson corrected her and she scowled. " In fact, throwing water on a burning liquid is generally a terrible idea. Unless, you, of course, want a huge fire, which changes things," he continued, with a sudden and distant look in his eyes. He shook his head, looking at her again. "But you're clever. You'll do fine as long as you can keep your eyes open and your nose in the books."
"I guess..." she muttered not entirely sharing his enthusiasm, as they arrived back at the airlock. Anderson seemed to find her reluctance quite amusing, as he smiled while they put on their helmets and sealed their hardsuits again.
Walking out, they arrived by the dust-covered landing port just as the shuttle began to lift off on the other side of the facility.
They watched it glide over and touch ground before they both jumped in and settled down for the ride.
;
"—Trace, off"—all processes completed;
Emiya sighed as he returned to the shuttle's inside again, throwing back his head and rubbing the bridge of his nose. He wasn't sure if he was capable of getting a headache, but it sure felt like he was about to have one soon.
He had thought he could simply rip out everything he did not want and still have a functional omnitool, but apparently, that was not the case. Or rather, no way in hell would it be that simple. He hadn't ever really dabbled in programming, but his friend had. And oftentimes he would rant and rave about how nothing he ever made would work as he wanted it to. How removing one thing affected twenty others and re-implementing it would introduce thirty new errors that hadn't been there before.
Emiya had used to simply tell him that as long as he put in the effort and carefully went through his creation, these kinds of things would not happen. The friend had never taken that lying down, shouting that unless one actually wrote code, they would never know what it was like.
How naive Emiya had been, scoffing at that back then with the arrogance of analog artisan, because as it turned out that the friend had been right all along.
"Or is this perhaps karma?" He laughed lightly.
He shook his head, removing the power source from the omnitool, and then let himself fall back into the body. He wondered what had happened to that man after his execution. Hopefully, he went on to live a good life afterward, but he doubted it.
That guy was the type to always get into trouble he couldn't get out of by himself.
"Ah, whatever. I'm jumping in the pool at the deep end. I should first learn how to swim in the shallow first, as it were."
Emiya shook his head, noting only now how hot it really was. That's strange.
He blinked, noticing that the faux-leather upholstery seemed to be bubbling at one spot. He raised an eyebrow, reaching for the Dumonthier gunblade and using the knife to poke at it. It felt like melted plastic.
He frowned, then. Oh, damn it!
Emiya suddenly realized something he had entirely forgotten about starships. Heat management! In a void like this, heat could only effectively transfer through whatever solid objects it was in contact with, meaning rather than cooling with the surrounding air—regardless of how thin it was on Mars—it was all now being contained in the shuttle.
That's bad. That's real bad. The environment suit is rated for extreme colds, as Mars is rarely warm. There's no telling how long the suit can last in extreme heat! Emiya realized with growing panic.
It wasn't just the engine, but also all the circuitry creating a little bit of heat, all of which added up to this. It wasn't radiating it out into space at a quick enough rate to cool either, thus it was all building up inside the shuttle.
Damn it, damn it! What do I? Oh, fuck it! Emiya focused as he extended his magical energy into the shuttle. He closed his eyes and found the point generating the most heat and spoke the words—
"—Trace, on!"—begin projection, hypothesizing the basic structure—altering;
The sword appeared instantly inside the small space where it should not have fit. Which was why he had twisted and bent it so that it squeezed just within the engine. Jumping out of his body, he reached into the engine as a spirit and wrapped his fingers around the hilt and began to push magical energy into this nameless sword he had plundered from a certain King of Heroes.
Immediately, ice began to appear.
Only a little, as he did not wish to rapidly cool down the metal, which might warp or damage it. Instead, he only created enough ice that it began to form and melt into water. Where the water was actually coming from in this vacuum, Emiya had no idea and he didn't really care as he kept slowly pushing the ice outwards to replace all the ice that had already melted and absorbed heat from the engine, turning to water and vapor and disappearing as a stream behind him.
He exhaled, sitting back into his body and noting that it was much cooler again. "Holy... That was..."
Emiya didn't even know what to say. He really was out of his league. The next time, get the damn manual before you need it, Stupid, foolish, dimwitted, stubborn numbskull! He leaned back, raising a hand to his visor and pressing his palms against where his forehead was.
He reviewed what had happened and then chided himself for losing his cool like that as he calmed down. Projecting a noble phantasm was a little bit overkill actually. It wasn't that expensive, but he could have projected something cheaper. Like a sword just made out of ice; it would have been pretty darn cheap in comparison.
Funny thing was, he couldn't project liquids. But making a sword out of ice and letting it melt was apparently completely fine!
Emiya shook his head, dismissing the noble phantasm in the core of the engine and replacing it with a simple ice sword instead as he leaned back and just breathed. I really don't know what I'm doing here...
Exhaling slowly, he put his hand on the dashboard and began to use Structural Analysis on everything to make sure nothing important had been melted or broken. Just to be sure, he reinforced the metal chassis a little, which would allow it to resist heat a bit better and made it tougher in case something unexpected happened again.
Continuing to regularly project ice swords into the engine and letting them melt and vaporize and then be ejected to vent heat, he went through the all systems one by one.
Everything seemed to be fine, so it had just been a close call.
He also noted that the eezo he created seemed to erode in use. Not noticeably, but still enough that it would eventually all disappear if he continued to use it. He wasn't quite sure what that meant, but he simply continued to keep an eye on the slowly disappearing core. At this rate, it would still last him over a week, but the fact that he couldn't explain where it was going or why it was disappearing as was did trouble him.
But of course, there was more.
Emiya suddenly went very still. After all, he had just seen a small arc of lightning across the chassis of the shuttle. That couldn't be anything good either.
And suddenly he had remembered that FTL ships had another limitation to their operation times, in the form of static build-up forming in the eezo core. Which, if left to build up until saturation, would kill everyone inside of the ship. Realizing that he had not accounted for that at all, either, Emiya suddenly felt very hesitant to so much as blink, lest he electrocute himself to death by triggering some internal surge.
Normally the shuttle was only meant to fly inside Mars' gravity well and at very low velocities, thus the static build-up would be minimal. But the build-up was still there and could have theoretically built up just as it had now, thus there was a grounding rod in the hull near one of the wheel-like protrusions on the bottom of the shuttle, which would let excess static build-up dissipate upon landing before they became dangerous.
But he had nowhere to land right now.
And there was nothing around him that would let him get rid of the excess static build-up. Which means... I have to project something again. But what?
One set sprang to mind immediately.
During his life, he had traveled extensively to collect swords once he had realized the true scope and nature of his power. Antique shows, auctions, museums, and private collections alike had been toured as he ravenously replicated everything he could find. And once he had gone to southern Norway as he had heard about the Sverd i Fjell there.
They were three swords thrust into a cliffside by side as a monument for a historic battle that happened over a thousand years prior, made completely out of bronze. These Swords in Stone weren't really any good as weapons for a variety of reasons, the least of which was their excessive weight. Based on migration period swords, which used to be wielded with their signature round center-grip shields, even the real swords of that design were rather 'top heavy'. That the tapering really was awful on them didn't help, nor did the fact that the entire hilt was a part of the whole piece, rather than an actual, functional hilt peened onto the blade.
Though admittedly, they were just monuments planted into stone. Thus their point of balance was intentionally towards the tip that was thrust into the ground since no one wanted them to topple over and fall on someone on accident. Then again, that made them more like arrows and made them easier to make fly with tip-first without the pommel taking the lead. Normal swords had a tendency to want to go pommel first if not carefully aimed. Also, they weren't sharp so their usefulness was questionable.
Oh, and they were 10 meters tall and wider around than he could wrap his arms. Which complicated things when it came to trying to use them in a fight. He had on occasion tried to magically chuck them at people, but it never really felt like it worked very well, so he had mostly forgotten about them.
Until now that is.
They were huge. Which was actually good for once.
That would let them store a lot of static charges, almost like the ground on a planet. They were bronze. Which wasn't very conductive compared to copper or even steel. Which was even better, since he didn't want to short circuit the entire thing by letting too much static escape too quickly, lest something starts to burn or melt. Slowly venting out the excess static was good. It was really good.
He had to go through three projected giant swords until he felt safe enough to move again inside the shuttle.
"Am I going to have to do this the whole way to Earth?" he wondered and realized that, yes, he really would.
But luckily, the trip wasn't that long anymore, since his modifications had worked just as intended. There were merely some bugs in the implementation, still, that was all.
He could already see Earth in the distance as a small, very blue dot.
After another tense two hours through space in his ad-hoc starship, he could finally access Earth's extranet, which let him read up on some of the starship engine literature, which made him almost want to go back in time to slap his younger self who had thought that shuttles and skycars were the same damn thing.
Shuttles could fly around on planets and even make the distance between planets. Skycars definitely could not. Their kinetic barriers weren't even rated for space travel. Any stray object probably could have sheared the skycar in half. Hell, this model—while quite beefy for what it was—couldn't even get out of Earth's atmosphere on its own normally.
That he had thought to perform interplanetary travel with it was...
"I am an idiot."
But still, he had made it all the way to the moon like this.
There it was, right outside now. He almost felt like he could just reach out and touch it as he spun around to reach its orbit.
He tried really hard not to think about the six electrically charged giant bronze swords floating behind in his trail in space right now. He really did. Surely it was safe, space was huge, after all? He didn't want to just dismiss the swords, as he wasn't sure what that would do to all the electrons stored up.
Would they arc out as a massive lightning bolt? He really had no idea.
Emiya looked away from the window, where Luna's white cratered surface dominated the view, glancing down at the fuel gauge. He would not have enough power at this rate to make a landing and then take off again. The moon's gravity wasn't much, but it was enough that it would take the last of it if he tried.
Yet, did it matter?
Wasn't it fine as long as he just got to the moon? Why was he holding something in reserve, even now?
"Mission accomplished. Good job, me," he told himself dryly as he sighed. Why hadn't Archimedes contacted him? Or the Moon Cell? He should have already been within the immediate range of passive scans. Why wasn't anyone reaching out to him?
A beep on the console got his attention, suddenly. Someone was hailing him. But he realized it wasn't the Moon Cell or Archimedes near instantly. With an annoyed frown, he pressed the button to allow communication.
"Suave-450-CRB, this is Armstrong control, come in."
"This is... Suave-450-CRB," Emiya answered, hesitating for a moment with the name. He hadn't actually checked the skycar's register, but he knew that it was a Suave model.
Which was a bloody low-atmo speedster; not meant to climb even climb into the stratosphere on Earth. Yet, he'd flown it between two damned planets, stubborn fool that he was.
"Are you experiencing any technical difficulties at this time? You are in orbit around Luna and have not engaged engines in 14 minutes and 30 seconds according to our sensors. We have a tow-ship ready if you are in any need of assistance."
"No, just... enjoying the view. Everything is fine up here." Emiya huffed, looking at the dashboard and imagining what they must think of him.
Some madman who had flown in from Mars on a short-range skycar? It was probably like being a harbormaster and one day finding someone coming in with a rowboat, and when they jumped on dry land, they hand you over a passport from the country across the sea.
They must have thought he had been flying for days or weeks to get here.
...But, they had simply been worried about him, then. No need for him to be snappish.
"Understood. Your vehicle is licensed to operate inside Mars airspace only; should you wish to make a landing on Luna, please prepare appropriate paperwork before making an approach. Do you understand?"
"Yes. My apologies for the trouble."
"Very well. A notification has been added to your registry; it may be challenged in any Systems Alliance courthouse, within the following 21 standard Earth cycles. After that, it will be added as a permanent mark on your record. Have a good day, Armstrong Control out."
The line went dead.
Emiya huffed in amusement. Had he just received the interplanetary equivalent of a parking ticket? He snorted at that, shaking his head. The more things change... I probably should just dismiss those swords, or they might fine me for public littering, too. Without anything to act as a conductor, the electrons shouldn't be able to do anything harmful. Probably.
A simple effort of will and he felt the swords in space disappearing. Nothing happened. Then again, they were all thousands and thousands of kilometers away, so it was all probably fine.
Probably.
He considered his situation.
Performing every check-up on himself that he could think of right now, he couldn't find anything wrong with himself. Neither from his time on Mars nor from the period in transit. No strange hallucinations or sensations. He tested his memory and physical coordination as much as the skycar's internal space allowed, finding nothing wrong with himself.
Then again, it shouldn't matter much at this point.
He had been away without leave from Ares Station for long enough for it to have become a serious problem.
Not only was he away without leave, but he had already evaded their probable attempts to find him for long enough to raise some eyebrows. Moreover, he had killed and burned the body of an Alliance officer, which may or may not have been found out already. The sword he had used would burn down the house, but he wouldn't bet on it cremating the corpses thoroughly enough to hide all the evidence.
Especially from a modern-day forensic team.
There was no place for him to return to in the Navy, now. Outside of a military jail cell, at least.
Then again, he had only joined because he had wanted to get to Mars. Considering how easy it turned out to be to cross the distance, as long as he had a high-end luxury skycar or shuttle and a full tank, he was beginning to feel like all of that had been a massive waste of tim—
No.
He could not think that. The time he had spent with her had been worth it all. That much, he could declare without hesitation. But it was over, now.
Wasn't it?
He looked up, staring at the moon just outside. He was still in slow orbit around it.
"Archimedes hasn't contacted me at all. Does that mean he expects me to make it back on my own entirely?" Emiya frowned. Even setting foot on the surface of the moon wouldn't do much, since the actual photonic crystal structure was hidden deep within.
At this distance, something should have already happened. He sighed, dismissing the Dumonthier knife-revolver and the strange alien gun which had been on the passenger seat the whole time since he'd put them aside.
Emiya looked out, noting the blue orb in the far distance. Shining so bright and beautiful, it looked somehow different from space, yet he couldn't quite put his finger on it. It all seemed so distant and small from here. I died there once, he thought suddenly.
Or had he? He had ignored that question for months now. Ignored the nagging feeling for months as he did not want to waver from the mission. Yet here on the cusp of his return when all had been accomplished, he could deny it no longer.
He needed to know.
The dashboard computer functioned just like an omnitool, allowing him to access the extranet. Typing in his own name, the date of the last sunrise he had seen as a living man and the name of the country the court had assembled in.
The results came back nearly instantly, staring back at him.
"Hah—! So that's how it was."
;
Shepard looked around, wondering what to think of this as a ride. She would probably be seeing insides of shuttle's like this many times again in the future.
The military model of shuttle lacked any windows, having thicker armor to maintain hull integrity, even though standard protocol was to always wear hardsuits while in transit through low-atmo planets. Pumping oxygen in and then depressurizing every time the shuttle doors had to be opened was a waste, after all.
The trip was short and they jumped out without actually landing, as the shuttle pilot informed them that he would be maintaining his position above them due to not finding any good spots to land nearby. The shuttle was relatively large. Most of the other vehicles around here seemed much smaller in comparison, she noted.
The sleek models in front of houses and parked on the ground seemed more like sleek cars to her than like the shuttles in the military she had seen so far. In fact, there was more than one wheeled vehicle around as well, as they walked through the uniformed people who had gathered around the house up ahead.
As she saw it, she gasped.
She had never before seen a melting house. The bottom walls looked like they had been warped first and then begun to bulge outwards, with the paint and color all turning black from the heat. Then, the entire structure had begun to tilt to one side. Finally, it had seemed to collapse in on itself somewhat by the roof. She swallowed, looking at the strange sight, not sure what to think of it.
"This has to be the work of high-yield self-fueling incendiaries," Anderson said, his voice tight. He inhaled sharply as if expecting to be able to smell the scent of burned material in the air.
She looked around, noticing the police vehicles and what looked like city engineers, all standing around and staring at the house or discussing among themselves, as they stayed outside of a cordoned area. Anderson kept walking, finding a man who looked like he was in charge of the proceedings here.
"Hello, David Anderson, Alliance Fleet," he introduced himself and the man blinked at him, before noticing the N7 on his chest.
The man looked up, glancing at the obviously Alliance shuttle flying overhead before he looked down at Anderson again.
"Uh, Commandant John Baxter, Lowell City Police Department." He looked back at the house, obviously considering something before looking back at them. "Does this shitshow have something to do with the military?"
The suspicion was plain to hear, but Anderson handled it expertly. "That's what I'm here to find out. Are you in charge here?"
The Commandant nodded, throwing a thumb towards the city behind his back. "The bigwigs went back already, telling me to handle this. What a mess. It's been cooling down for hours and we still can't go in."
"Can you tell me anything about what happened here?" Anderson asked.
"Sure, no problem. We got called in by the neighbors when they realized the house next to them was melting like wax. They were a little worried, perfectly reasonably as we found out when we showed up. Something started a fire in the house and we haven't been able to find out any more since."
Anderson nodded at that, staring silently at the house, understanding that they would not be able to find out more until they gained entry to the building, it seemed that like all the gathered personnel they would have to wait until things cooled down.
"How did the fire not die out? Shouldn't there have been systems to stop something like that from happening?" Shepard asked, nodding at the house.
The Commandant blinked, looking up at Anderson who looked at him expectantly. Shrugging, he began to talk.
"Yeah, that should be the case. The house plan lists a segmented floorplan that allows every floor and room to be sealed off and slowly vented, but the fire seems to have been self-fed to the point where it just kept going until it melted all the vents shut." He shrugged.
"So the fire is feeding itself?" Shepard confirmed and he nodded.
"There's also traces of some new cryo-tech being used, something called 'Bose-Einstein condensate'? I've no idea what the stuff is, but it seems to have contained the fire for a few hours until the supply ran out and the fire just continued burning. Expensive stuff, too." Baxter further explained.
A man to the side huffed. "More than the entire departments' budget for a week went up in smoke, I hear."
"Who owns this place?" Anderson asked, ignoring the man by the side. "Have you been able to get in touch with him?"
"It belongs to one Joseppi Cardotin. Tried getting in contact with him, listed as a practicing M.D., down by the central hospital. Lived here apparently. Haven't been able to find him at all. Doesn't look good," The Commandant said, sighing at the end.
"How long has it been burning?" Anderson asked and the Commandant shrugged.
"We came here a few hours ago, but we can't really say since it's been pretty much contained. The neighbors were the first to notice anything, but that's just a few minutes difference from our first patrol on site."
"Why did the house melt like that? Shouldn't it have caught fire, too?" Shepard asked, looking around.
"The atmosphere is pretty thin here, missy. It's almost like a thermos can, making it so the heat can't escape. Plus with how cold it is outside, it keeps cooling the external walls even as it's heating up from the inside, so we get this..."
He waved at the house, shaking his head.
"As far as we know, the only thing burning was what started the fire originally, the rest is just the contained heat melting stuff. We're pretty sure it's already out and have been making small holes to help cool it down faster. Don't want to make too big a hole and let it cool it too quickly though; could bring down the entire house. It's a weird situation and one we've never encountered before," he finished explaining, shrugging before muttering in a quiet voice that the paperwork would be a pain in his butt.
It probably wasn't supposed to come through the comms, that last complaint.
"Sir, I think we're about ready to send in the drone." A man came up, holding his omnitool at the ready. "The temperatures just hit the safe zone."
"Hmm? Very good, begin when ready and give me a feed to watch," the Commandant spoke and the man nodded in response, tapping away at his omnitool. He took out a small ball, about the size of the grenades Shepard had seen before, and held it in his hand while looking at his omnitool.
It made a spark, twitching in his hand once before it began to float. Suddenly, it was encased in glowing red layers, turning into a much larger glowing red ball that floated in the air. "Drone active, checking feed."
The Commandant turned on his omnitool and began to watch, along with several other members around them doing the same. Anderson and Shepard joined a man who was watching the feed, as no one thought to chase them away.
"Moving in."
The drone surged forward, slipping in through a small hole into the building. It was pitch black inside. A scan pulsed, followed by a searchlight turning on as the drone continued advancing inside. It looked like the entire house had been made out of melted ice that had only just begun to solidify again. It somewhat reminded her of those weird houses she had seen in Barcelona with Emiya.
She shook her head; not the time.
"Sir, the scans are showing a basement floor not listed in the floorplans," the drone operator announced.
"What?"
"And it looks like it's where the fire originated. Shall I move in?"
"Yes, of course," the Commandant answered, frowning.
The drone kept floating inwards and slowly the air itself seemed to become hazy by the residual heat. Even outside, here on the cool surface of Mars, wearing their hardsuits, all of them began to feel more than a little hot at the sight of the house's insides.
"Sir, heat levels rising too high. I can't go any further. We'll have to wait until it cools down further."
The Commandant sighed. "Fine, back away a bit to keep the drone from malfunctioning. We were pretty sure that there wouldn't be any evidence, anyhow. We'll have to do a more thorough dig later. For now—"
"Wait," Anderson said, catching everyone off guard. "Turn a little bit to the left, I think I saw something."
The drone operator blinked, turning to look at the Commandant who turned to look at Anderson. Baxter shrugged, nodding to them to try it. The drone operator obeyed.
"See, there. Can you lift that thing out?" He pointed at an omnitool feed.
"See what?" The operator asked, peering at his own omnitool's feed. Anderson walked up to him, moving to point at what he had seen. "Oh, yeah. Hold on..."
He pressed some commands and a small arm extended outwards, moving to pick up what she had seen.
"Huh, it's pretty heavy, what is this..." He blinked as the thing was revealed. "Some kind of environment suit? But how did it handle the heat?"
"That's a Devlon Industries Explorer heavy armor," Shepard said, distantly recognizing the white ceramic plates somehow.
They all turned to look at her.
"Yes, yes it is. That's military-grade equipment," Anderson said, sighing deeply. "I'm sorry about this, but could you continue deeper? If the drone breaks, the Alliance Navy will compensate for the damages."
The drone operator frowned, looking at the Commandant. He exhaled, before shrugging. "Yeah, alright. Keep going."
Continuing deeper inwards, the quality of the video feed worsened, forcing them to pull back out. They dug a little here and there, scanning what they could find. But there was simply so much melted stuff that it was hard to distinguish anything.
Shepard frowned, feeling utterly useless as she simply stared at an omnitool feed. There has to be something I can do...
She looked around, analyzing the surroundings.
"Huh?"
She began to walk away from everyone else. She had noticed the vehicles around here as they had arrived and now she noticed one that stood out. There were wheeled vehicles and there were short-range civilian shuttles arrayed near houses and around the cordoned-off area. At a glance, she could tell which belonged where and to which house. All, but one. A neat-looking black shuttle, with tinted windows and sleek lines. It just seemed off to her, where it had been parked. Not quite by in any apartment, nor quite between any. Almost like it had been parked by someone who had merely dropped by for a quick visit.
She walked up to it, taking a circuit around it. There was a logo on the side, proudly declaring it a Cord-Hislop Aerospace product. She looked at the ground, noting the dust. It wasn't packed, like near the spots where other cars, shuttles, and skycars that were parked in the general area.
Like it wasn't often here, or it hadn't been here very long.
Standing up, she moved to try and look inside the shuttle. Even when shrouding her eyes with her hands, the window was tinted too dark to see through. Frowning, she leaned back and looked at the door. She couldn't see any kind of visible handle on it.
Doesn't that mean it works like the car doors I used to break open all the time? I don't have a 'jack', but...
Shepard looked at the all police cars parked around the melted house. She knew the police had them, too. They needed them to be able to get into cars if someone was trying to resist arrest or was in danger inside a car. The one she had had was based on one of those, in fact.
As long as she wasn't caught, it was fine, right?
She walked back, keeping an eye on everyone. They were all busily looking at the melting house and the drone's feed at the moment. No one had so much as noticed her walking off, it seemed.
That worked for her just fine.
She found a police shuttle with the doors open and began to look around. She found something that looked promising after half a minute of looking. Sneaking away after making sure no one had noticed her, she got back to the suspicious car. Lifting up the small box, she pressed the 'open doors' button.
click—Click
Reaching out, she opened the shuttle door and peered inside. She blinked, freezing. There was a shotgun on the passenger seat. And right next to it lay an omnitool with the power source pulled out. With trembling hands, she reached forward and took the omnitool.
She plugged in the power and turned it on.
A familiar lock screen greeted her. She swallowed, feeling her heart suddenly beating in her chest like a hammer. Reaching out with a single finger, she repeated what she had watched him do a hundred times before, the password much too simple.
It opened.
'You have one(1) message from [Jane Shepard]', the words on the omnitool stared at her. She felt herself swaying then, reaching out for the shuttle for support.
"Emiya..."
;
Archimedes looked up, noting the sound on his terminal.
"Hmm, and what exactly are you—Ah?"
He tilted his head, frowning at the influx of data and reading from somewhere outside the Moon Cell. Blinking at the location, he frowned. "Ah—!"
Noticing that it had actually arrived hours earlier but its priority hadn't been flagged as high enough to interrupt his earlier work, it only came before him now.
Nodding to himself in finally remembering what exactly it all was, he began to eye through the information. It was not so much that he had any interest in any of the findings, but he wanted to make sure it was all in proper order. First and foremost came the data that had been stored on the primitive computer on the higher levels, near the surface.
At a glance, it looked like some kind of encyclopedia or perhaps a manual, but the more he read, the less interested he grew about it all. Translating it was a cinch for someone of his talents as he used the Moon Cell's vast processing power to go through the data.
"How haphazard and sloppy. What monkey wrote this? There is no structure or reason to any of this. It is as if someone merely took a hundred scholars' teachings and poured them in at random. Or did they expect someone to sift through all this based on feeling it out? Even if you were in a hurry, have some pride."
This was worthless to anyone who might want to search for anything specific there, as he understood quickly enough. One could only peruse and puzzle through the various topics and try to make some sense of them while holding fingers crossed that they might hit upon a relevant topic. No scholar or true archivist would have created something like this, he thought as it continued to offend his sensibilities with every passing title and word.
"Even in that old fool Aristotles' time, they understood the value of structuring and sectioning of subjects. This is simply revolting," Archimedes decreed, before with a flick of his hand struck aside the display. The data list disappeared from his sight into some archive or other in the Moon Cell's depths.
He began to look through the other data, which hadn't simply been there for grabs, but had been scanned and analyzed by his program and been brought back. Material composition, construction methods, the effects of weather and radiation over the millennia on the ruins.
"Well now, this is..."
Archimedes peered at his findings. It was almost as if someone had brought in much of the equipment at the top-most layer at a later date, at the same time as the lower base had been constructed. It was still a long time before the most recent visit by the Umbral Star, but knowing that it had often made circuits and reaped the harvest in cycles meant that that fact did not bother him at all.
It was merely curious; some leftover tokens from several cycles ago, perhaps.
But nothing he cared about, setting aside the data for perhaps later perusal. For now, he would take a look at what the Moon Cell had actually wanted. The data concerning the experimentation on early humans.
"Archimedes."
The man wheeled his head around at the call of his name. Where did he come from?
Someone had appeared behind him as if stepping forward from shadows. He turned around slowly, glaring at whoever had interrupted him, eyes narrowing at the newcomer. But then he blinked, straightening up as he stared at this person before him.
Clad head to toe in black apparel and with a face-covering helmet, this could have been a wraith from the blackest pits of the underworld with all the menace it exuded.
Yet it seemed familiar, still.
"Who...?"
The figure seemed to blink, tilting its head before it raised a hand to its face, and with the motion one would use to move a strand of hair from one's face, the helmet disappeared. The white hair and frowning mien of the guardian greeted him.
"It's done."
Archimedes blinked. Even without the helmet, the extended collar hugged the throat and covered half of the newcomer's face, making recognition take a few seconds. Additionally, the strongest point of reference in Archimedes' memory, that garish red cloak, was gone.
"Nameless?"
Then he finally remembered everything else about the Mars' ruins that he had already long forgotten about. It was sooner than he'd expected for the man to return, but not outside the realm of possibility. Archimedes' body language changed as he crossed his arms and leaned back to peer at the man over his nose.
"You certainly took your time with it."
"You requested that I avoid making waves," Nameless countered instantly, without so much as a twitch or a blink of an eye.
The administrator frowned.
Something about this man had changed. His entire being seemed different. Ready and vigilant, somehow. Almost jittery and in a hurry. What had happened to this man off the moon? Archimedes had made a point to forget all about him, once the ball had gotten rolling, too.
He shook his head, It does not matter.
"As you say, you may leave now - I have no further use for you," Archimedes dismissed him, turning around. Yet that presence behind him did not waver one bit.
"Tell me about the findings."
He froze, blinking. He turned around to look at the man behind him, standing there expectantly. As if it was Archimedes' duty to answer any and all inane questions this fool might have.
The mathematician scowled.
"What of them? There was nothing of note there."
"You call that lowest level nothing of note?" Nameless raised an eyebrow at that. "The grudges in the air were palpable, almost enough to affect the physical world. A noble phantasm had been forged by that event."
"Yes, yes. The pitiful few who in their extermination must have opted to die out by their own hands, carving out a little hole in the fabric of time. Nothing more—"
"Extermination? By whom?" Nameless interjected again, his presence somehow sharpening.
"That much should be obvious, even to you. Then again, I forget who I am talking to." Archimedes snidely ignored the question.
Nameless stepped forward, glaring. "Just answer the question."
He only received a sniff and a shake of the head for that from the mathematician.
Nameless sighed, trying a different approach. "There was an advanced species there a long time ago. If something came there and wiped them out, doesn't that matter to the Moon Cell?"
"The Moon Cell is very much aware of the cause and time behind those extinction events and they are of no note."
"Then for what purpose was I sent out there?" Nameless asked, grinding his teeth.
Archimedes scowled, not wanting to admit to how petty the reason had truly been. It was the very same line of questioning that had made him decide to cease asking the other heroic spirits he had consulted before.
"Then what was it that caused the deaths on Mars?"
This finally broke Archimedes' last hold on his temper. "Velber, who else! I am not some scribe for you to question! Leave, now!"
"The White Titan of fourteen thousand years ago? But these ruins far predate that era." Nameless was not moved at all by Archimedes' wrath as he looked away, speaking to himself more than the Administrator. "But... No, that still doesn't make sense. Why did the Moon Cell want to know about Mars, Archimedes?"
The mathematician continued to sullenly glare at Nameless, refusing to dignify him with an answer.
They glared at each other for a solid minute, before Archimedes finally let out an aggrieved sigh. The sooner I get rid of him, the sooner I can return to my work. I will have to install stronger firewalls afterward, to keep him from barging in later.
"There were signs of early human lifeforms on Mars. That was all."
Nameless nodded. "The test tubes. It looked like they had a wide variety of samples. Did you find out anything?"
Archimedes sniffed at the question. "Obviously I did. There were signs of genome splicing and breeding attempts. But the results were obvious and their folly resulted in just what you'd expect. It seems like they were extracting sequences and copying parts of the genome, trying to reach some specific kind of mutation by repeated cross-splicing. For what purpose, I cannot even guess."
Nameless nodded, as he listened.
Archimedes ignored that, continuing now that he was talking about it by his own momentum. "Did they not even realize that performing such experiments on Mars would inherently contaminate their subjects' origin? Ridiculous. Ah, that would explain their grizzly ends. Hah, they turned themselves into monsters and could not take it, ending their own lives. How pathetic."
The mathematician shook his head at that.
"...What are you talking about?" Nameless blinked, frowning.
"Hmm? Origin; the human origin. The starting point for sapient beings: the point from which the spiraling line known as the 'soul' stems forth. Existences born on Earth can only acquire specific origins, befitting the planet's existence. The concepts which are a part of 'the World' as it pertains to them. Those that bear another origin are undoubtedly recognized as alien existences. The soul shapes the corpus, thus their external appearances would have changed to match their inner degeneration." Archimedes drawled, obviously enjoying the look of complete incomprehension on Nameless's face. "I would have expected you of all people to understand that."
"Hold on, what?"
"Your origin is certainly a rare one, is it not? 'Sword'? The old divine spirits were concepts made alive through recognition and reverence. The pieces of the slain war god, scattering down to Earth must have contaminated—"
"You're saying those who killed themselves were human once? Or that they were the progenitors of humans?" Nameless questioned, interrupting Archimedes.
He growled, growing annoyed at being ignored so flagrantly.
"But... But what about their galaxy-spanning empire? The construction of the mass relays? The Citadel?"
Archimedes blinked at the guardian, not quite understanding the questions. Nameless frowned, looking intently at the administrator.
"You mean... You don't know? You didn't know?"
"Know what?" The mathematician asked, glaring at the implication. What is this nonsense he's talking about?
"What about Lowell City? Does the Moon Cell care about that place at all? No, no. There have been generations born there, without issue. Is it because of the Age of the Gods' passing? No, that doesn't make sense, either. Did that even occur here in the first place?"
Archimedes peered at Nameless, raising a single eyebrow as if asking 'is any of that supposed to mean something?'. A sudden look of realization and suspicion entered the white-haired man's eyes, then.
"What about Armstrong?"
Archimedes scowled, looking at the man before him with growing annoyance. "What about him? That useless man is a joke, even compared to the likes of you. Though... With his noble phantasm, the journey would have been a cinch... No, no. The magical energy expenditure would be..."
"You really don't know anything, do you?" Nameless interrupted him, causing the administrator to blink. Nameless' shoulders slumped as he looked away. "How exactly did you expect me to get to Mars, Archimedes?"
Archimedes sneered at the question. "The West European Plutocracy has plenty of old spaceworthy vessels—I made certain to check from the Moon Cell's observational records, they've been kept in working shape even since the aerospace development ban was put in place—and you obviously managed to appropriate one of them for your use. Do not imply I sent you on an impossible task, wasting the Moon Cell's and my own valuable time and resources like that would be an affront of the highest order."
Nameless blinked at that. There was a moment of pure silence, as he seemed to process that as he shook his head in disbelief.
"You really didn't know. No, you don't even care. It should have all been staring at you in the face, all this time. Then..." Nameless inhaled, his brows furrowing as he stared at the floor. He looked up, locking eyes with Archimedes. "I'm going back out. There has to be something more to this."
Turning around to walk away, showing his back to the Administrator who was grinding his teeth at this moment.
"As if," Archimedes growled, stopping him. Nameless turned around, looking back at the man. "You know it for yourself as well, don't you? The dead cannot walk among the living."
Nameless blinked, frowning, and Archimedes took that opportunity to press.
"Those who have died cannot enter the world they have left behind. This goes for anyone who has died, doubly so for heroic spirits. Regardless if you lived and died thousands of years ago; your ripples still echo throughout time. There is no more place for us in the world of the outside. To exist after our end would invalidate our deaths and put in question everything about what we had achieved within our lifetime. This goes for anyone who made a mark on the world, be it historically or in the nature of its current existence. To defy that is to defy the Moon Cell's prime directive of objective observation without affecting the world that remains unaware of its existence. This boundary is absolute, without the Moon Cell's explicit assistance. Without my explicit assistance. You are not going anywhere."
"'Who made a mark on the world', is it?" Nameless asked as he straightened up, pulling down the shirt collar that was hiding his face to reveal a crooked smile.
It seemed like the kind of expression one would wear when one knew something no one else did, and that one thing changed everything in the world.
"You said there existed no records of Emiya Shirou in this world; how fitting it was for a Nameless to exist like that, to have been entirely forgotten by the world. Didn't you?"
"Something to that effect, perhaps." Archimedes frowned before understanding hit him. "But no, you fool. That does not make you exempt from that rule. Rather, it binds you even more severely to it. You are nothing, there is no place for a no one, outside of the imaginations of the rabble."
Nameless blinked, before shaking his head with a chuckle that grew into a grin of wicked amused.
"I think you're making a lot of assumptions without having covered all of your bases," Nameless said, laughing as he stood there with his arms crossed. He looked at the Administrator before him and smiled, as if honestly glad to have met this man. Something about that expression turned Archimedes' stomach in knots.
It wasn't merely the fact that he was now being openly mocked by the Moon Cell's equivalent of a janitor.
It was the face of a man who could walk up the steps of the gallows without a single hesitation looking so happy after a century of gloom.
The strangeness of it all only served to anger Archimedes further.
"It doesn't matter what you think! The only way you could have returned is by abandoning the body you were handed. By letting yourself dissipate and let the Moon Cell create your spirit core anew with the memories of the outside included."
"Oh, so that was the only way of getting back, was it? I figured that you would leave me no other options." Nameless turned around, glaring at Archimedes. "And what if I had planned to never return at all? If I had stayed out there for as long as I felt like?"
"Hah, do not think me a fool. That body you were given was dying the moment you possessed it; prolonging that process was no more difficult than actually curing it. Its brain would have begun to fail within days of the codecast's activation. You never had any choice in this matter, guardian."
Nameless blinked at that, before huffing with another rueful grin.
It wasn't the reaction Archimedes expected.
"You really had all your bases covered, even if you don't know why you're doing anything. I'm impressed; I really should take notes. Especially in always making sure to double-check the basis of my plan in reality."
Archimedes growled then, clenching his fists as he glared at Nameless' overbearing jibe, barely understanding what he was saying despite the obvious mocking edge, which only served to further incense him.
"You know, I'm actually reminded of a friend I once knew. He was rather like you," Nameless continued as he looked to the side with a faraway gaze, and Archimedes blinked at that complete aside in the conversation.
"What does that have to do with anything?" the administrator asked, confused.
The corner of Nameless's mouth twitched with continued amusement, the beginnings of a smile sprouting true.
"He never held back his tongue, speaking his mind honestly and without candor. It made him a lot of enemies, but I remember thinking back to him fondly at times. Mostly because he could just say one thing and cut through all my thoughts until only the truth remained." Nameless looked up, locking eyes with Archimedes. "Thank you, Archimedes of Syracuse. You may not understand the men of this world, but you are without a doubt a brilliant Heroic Spirit, capable of changing the world with your every action. Without you, I'd never have gotten a chance for any of this. You have cut through my ennui and delusions without even meaning to."
Archimedes sniffed at that, realizing it was all some kind of subtle jab again, that he could not understand, which only caused Nameless to smile all the more widely.
"One more question and I shall leave you be. It pertains to the nature of answers, you see. And who better than the man who shouted 'heúrēka' as he ran naked in the streets?"
Archimedes growled, gnashing his teeth at that remark.
Nameless nodded as the mathematician hadn't actually refused, crossing his arms and raising a single pointed finger as he continued.
"If you were to have performed a complex problem a long time ago and had arrived at a solution after a long time of effort and toil," Nameless began asking, motioning with his one hand to illustrate.
And despite himself, Archimedes' interest was piqued.
"And then, you had set aside that problem—solution and all—to focus on other things for a time. If you had after that long, long time, forgotten the answer and misplaced everything you worked on so hard, long ago, so that you can no longer find it no matter where you looked... What would you do?" Nameless asked, his voice and gaze heavy as he let his hands fall to his sides again.
Archimedes blinked at the expectant gaze.
The answer was trivially obvious, wasn't it?
"Re-do the problem, from the beginning," Archimedes said with a disdainful sniff. "If there were no faults and I make no mistakes, I will eventually reach the answer again, assuming no errors and that I have all the variables remain the same. That much should be obvious, even to a repugnant fool such as yourself."
"Yeah..." Nameless looked away, the weight of attention transforming into a self-reflecting wistfulness. "Yeah." He closed his eyes and inhaled, looking as if he was taking on the world on his shoulders again, squaring up in preparation to becoming burdened by the effort again in a manner that suggested a level of familiarity that frankly disgusted the administrator. "That's what I thought, too. Which is exactly why I can't stop now."
Archimedes sighed, shaking his head. What an annoying man, I should have never relied on him. Well, as long as he's back, it does not matter. He can rot away for the rest of time, for all I care.
"If that is all, you may leave."
Nameless raised a hand to his face, scratching his nose in a surprisingly boyish manner as he smiled at Archimedes' reaction.
"Then, by your leave." His eyes danced with mischievous merriment. "You were right all along, you know. In the eyes of the world, I am just a nameless hero of justice." With those words, he swung out his arm and called forth the red shroud. It settled around his arms and waist in a flutter, as if a great wind was pushing against him before it settled down.
Nameless smiled, placing the outstretched hand on his hip and raising the other up in a casual gesture, palm up.
"—Trace, off"
And disappeared in a burst of scattering light, vanishing without a trace.
"What a disgustingly melodramatic man."Archimedes scowled, shaking his head as he returned to his findings, day already half-ruined. It wasn't like that fool could do anything as a guardian bound to the Moon Cell.
So what in Styx's name was that satisfied face for?
;
CODEX:
2. [ Combination Arms & Gunblades ]
During his life, Emiya encountered various weapons in his life, made from the late medieval era onward all the way to the modern era, created in attempts to combine melee and ranged weapons into a single hybrid weapon.
The earliest attempts he had encountered at using combination arms were made in Europe at the end of the 15th century, with the advent of wheel lock mechanisms really allowing them to breakthrough. Though matchlocks were also used in earlier guns, they were much less successful due to the danger of the wick falling off, a concern that also had limited the use of mounted gunners. Snaplocks were also used but faced similar issues due to the pan cover requiring a specific position to be used and the danger of the ignition powder falling out if it was used as a melee weapon.
The first weapons were axe-heads mounted on crude one-shot pistols, often used in the form of hand axes after the single shot was spent. They saw use among the Polish cavalries between the 16th and 18th centuries, the 17th-century Swedish navy and the Indians also greatly valued such weapons, decorating them with inlaid gold and religious symbols and carvings. The first swords began to appear first around the 16th century, among French and German hunters who often ran into tenacious boars and massive bears in the yet untamed woods of Europe.
Hunting knives, shortswords, spears, axes, maces, shields, and rapiers were combined with the wheel lock mechanism, which made them often both horribly expensive and unsuitably heavy for uses other than showing off. Of course, wheel locks were quite complicated and expensive, comparable to mechanical pocket watches in complexity and cost to create, thus they saw little demand from most people. It was not until the cheaper and more reliable flintlock mechanism appeared that sword pistols began to appear in any numbers of note.
Due to the danger of the bullet and powder being jarred loose with heavy melee combat, these weapons were quite unreliable unless one always began with firing the bullet before engaging in close combat. Due to this there never really was a widespread demand for them.
But those who had an interest in such things at the time had never let that stop them.
One such model of sword pistol was even adopted by a formal military force, in the form of the Elgin Cutlass pistol. They were single-shot percussion pistols combined with a short, wide blade under the barrel, and were little more than cleavers milled into the barrels of a gun. They saw only official use on one expedition and were soon enough phased out of use. Rather than being its own weapon, it would be more accurate to say that the Elgin Cutlass pistol was something that was a part of the Bowie knife's legend than something actually standing on its own merit. After Jim Bowie's death in 1836 in Alamo, the popularity of that knife design had exploded as legends of him grew. Allegedly, the first Bowie knife had been forged out of a meteorite, even, though little evidence for such exists.
Pinfire ammunition and revolvers changed everything again, and in the 19th century, there were several talented gunsmiths who had an interest in creating combined arms. Names, such as Lefaucheux, Lepage, Dumonthier, Rauh, and Waldhorn have mostly been forgotten today, but once they stood at the forefront of firearms design and they had all made attempts at combining the two distinct weapons at one point or another. Creating curiosities of all kinds, each sought to further their mastery of both weapons.
But the problem was still that the two weapons had usually completely opposite needs in performance. Thus one usually ended up with a gun that was too long, too heavy and too difficult to aim with, and a sword that was poorly balanced, of dubious construction at the hilt and that had a chance of going off in your sheath.
Overall, they did not see much use.
There were combined gun weapons that worked, of course. But those were more often small knives attached to rifle barrels as bayonets, axe-heads attached to muskets and maces with multiple barrels. Henry VIII's famous Walking Stick is still proudly on display in the Tower of London's Tudor display room, as an example of mace-guns. Emiya had even seen a flintlock pistol-whip, once, which worked as the whip part did not much care about the gun's weight in functionality. In Burma, there were even rifles and pistols in the shape of a dha sword, where the barrel functioned as the hilt and the stock of the gun as the sheath. Those were weapons which did not have as strict limits to the weight and handling as swords, and even then they were somewhat unwieldy.
Really, the most common and effective versions were made with shorter blades, cutting down on the weight and handling. Many German wheel lock knives that somewhat worked and even a few double-barreled Katar punch-daggers that weren't entirely useless existed, but ultimately they were still not really one weapon.
In the modern era, with smaller and more compact gun mechanisms becoming increasingly possible to create, the pendulum had swung towards building the entire pistol mechanism in the hilt of the knife, thus further straying from combining the weapons again.
In France, the 'apache revolvers' saw quite a bit of use in the criminal underworld. Combining the features of a knuckleduster, a small wavy knife-blade and a simple pepperbox-pinfire revolver that could be folded to be held in the pockets safely, it was a rather distinctive piece of the 20th century Paris.
The Soviet Union had many designs, including the OZ-54, NRS-2, and the "chamäleon" which Emiya had never managed to find himself. The Chinese also had the QSB-91, and then there was the commercially available Stinger knife-pistol, which he had also run into.
One notable example of a Japanese katana blade attached to a Nambu type-14 pistol had been confiscated by the American forces during the second world war, but Emiya found the thing horribly unwieldy in all aspects. Only the katana blade had been of note in the eyes of his reality marble; the fusion and craftsmanship behind the construction so shoddy.
Usually, any combined arms were treated more like bayonets—of which he had replicated many—than one whole; that is to say, something which was simply attached to something else. The blade-part was what his reality marble noticed, rather than the bulky hilts or built-in firing mechanisms, or the gun it had been affixed to. Simply put, the concept of gun and blade were often too distinct in both the creators' and users' minds, leaving the weapons as something of a half-assed and unfinished product that never amounted to anything.
Partly this was due to the wildly conflicting methods used for crafting the blade and the gun halves, and the different metals and properties necessary for them. Gun parts had to contain and direct the slow burn propellant, while the blade had to be hard enough to hold an edge while not being too brittle. This often meant that the two parts were crafted by completely different people with no direct contact with one another, further muddying their origins. Indeed, Emiya had several combination arms in his reality marble, but only the blades had been replicated in full. All the other parts were simply hollow and empty, much like those early projections he had created as a child. Nothing was recorded in the guns, little could be done with them. Wielding and projecting them was unsettling; as if reading a book with half the pages missing.
Or rather, as one weapon overshadowed the other entirely, it was often more like a book with only with a fraction of the pages filled, and rarely with anything of use. In history, battles that saw bayonet kills were quite rare; the bullet often much more effective than the blade in all cases. There were memories of affixed bayonets and of fleeing enemies, but rare was the actual conflict that saw their use.
Due to this half-replication—with a few rare exceptions—they lacked spiritual weight, which combined with their low power made them mostly useless in Emiya's eyes.
;
Thanks to PseudoSteak, Tactical Tunic, and Tisaku for proofreading.
Thanks to daniel_gudman for helping me with space stuff and giving me advice on how to improve some scenes. Also, told me to re-edit the whole thing, so I did :D
Thanks to PseudoSteak for proofreading, again!
Thanks to daniel_gudman for pointing out how I could edit the chapter and rewrite it to be a bit more cohesive.
Thanks to Zealot & monkdale for space stuff.
As before, the codex section is more of me realizing that "I can't just keep this part in the middle of the story! It's just too much!" and sulking as I make it into a separate entry. Also, my take on Dumonthier is something like what FGO does to a lot of heroes and historical figures, so take it with a grain of salt :V
29.10.2021 edit note: Fuck, I loved this chapter.