Contractual Obligations

"Well, I guess you aren't -too- old to qualify," the wand said with a blatant hint of doubt in its voice. "Wanna do it? Form a contract with me and become a magical girl, that is."

"That first line was aimed at me, wasn't it?" Rin frowned, feeling targeted. Sakura shrugged while looking around. "I mean, we are sorta out of the range."

"Not strictly true," Kuro commented to no one in particular. "I'm sure at least some magical girls ended up having careers and even dealing with bureaucracies. Both involving magic to transform and fight, I mean."

"Sounds like they became magi and went to the Clocktower," Rin muttered.

"Really?" Sasaku's tone was one of disbelief. "Did so many people watch magical girl shows that transforming via wands actually became a valid type of thaumaturgy? Because if you can literally convert friendship into magical energy..."

"That sounds horribly implausible," Shirou shook his head. "But I think Riders might average a few years over magical girls."

"Sorry to interrupt, but the only Riders in this world are those in a Servant vessel," the wand corrected him. Kuro grabbed at it and Caster handed the Mystic Code over. "What about me?"

"You're already a Servant with a contract," the wand pointed out. "You're not desp- er double-booking is considered rude among magical girl mascot characters who scout new sacr- recruits."

"It's super shady, yeah?" Rin pointed out. "I should have had some experience with it, just that somehow I can't remember..."

"Must be getting on in years if you're already suffering from memory loss," the wand said in fake consolation. "But anyway, hey, hey don't hit me! I do need to make a contract with a magical girl, otherwise we're going nowhere."

"Hmm," Sasaku reclaimed the wand and waved it about slowly while thinking. "What are the terms? I don't exactly have the freedom to wander about collecting jewels, seeds, lost words, cards, balls, or whatever other errands you might have in mind."

The wand immediately jumped into business. "Well perhaps a five-day trial period? Besides multiple-spell functionality, I can provide magical energy and of course an appropriate outfit and transformation sequence. And some relevant skills. It's quite a complete package."

Rin frowned at the mention of magical energy. It was clear to the magus that there was ample reason for an earlier version of her to try using the Mystic Code, but since she didn't continue doing so, there must have been some major catch, such that she was lucky to simply be able to get out of the contract."

"Sounds like trying to get someone hooked on drugs," Caster muttered pointedly. "But we don't have too much to lose trying. Let's be clear though, I won't stand for being automatically signed on for anything without full documentation beforehand."

"Agreed," the wand replied cheerfully, before its tone abruptly changed for the darker. "(Prism Trance)"

"Oh crap!" Rin recognized the phrase right as some sort of mist gathered around Sasaku, who had the wand in hand. "It's too late now! (Transform)!" The wand's voice, too, was distorted by the magical haze.

"Why is there blurring?" Kuro complained. "You're just cheaping out on the budget to sell special edition OVA DVDs aren't you?"

Shirou was about to ask Kojirou to intervene when abruptly the whole process came to a sudden and abrupt end. With no visible result. "You cheated," the wand said, sounding quite upset. "Why are there no magical girl versions of you with emba- er cute outfits?"

"..." Several of those present immediately thought something along the lines of she only exists due to being summoned as a Servant, so that makes sense.

"That's disappointing," Sasaku said in a tone that was flat to match the wand's earlier darkness. "I was looking forward to that... so you can't keep your promises after all..."

"W-wait a moment," the wand panicked, unable to escape due to Caster's two hands on it and Servant-level grip. "Now that I look closer, you're a Caster, so that's already like a magical girl right? Urk-!"

"Hmm. Liar." she replied with deadly seriousness, her eyes narrowing. "Breach of contract." Sakura jerked and looked away from her face as something like a sudden gust of wind blew out from the two of them tossing people's hair and clothes around. The wand started to glow painfully, scattering motes of concentrated magical energy about. "Wait! Wait! Ah, mast-"

With a sudden rainbow flash and sparkle, the wand disappeared.

"Oh no," Rin moaned for the second time that day. That was much much worse than earlier.

"Hm, that went as well as possible," Caster said thoughtfully, seemingly unfazed.

"I don't think you realize. That you've just gotten Zelretch's attention. By abusing one of his creations," Rin ground out while trying to put her clothes and hair back in order without the effort being noticed. "I mean, sure, it was clearly setting you up to be taken advantage of."

"Yes, but I didn't get assaulted, stabbed, ripped apart or otherwise harmed," Sasaku shrugged. "And now I have a bit of a clue on a critical component."

"You'll need to explain that from the top," Shirou clarified.

"Indeed. What Gilgamesh wanted me to explain was: someone or something has caused distortions which several Heroic Spirits in the Thone have noticed via their (Clairvoyance), but worryingly enough given their otherwise complete coverage of time and space, they can't tell where or when it is, was or will be."

"You expect anyone to take that seriously?" Saber sounded quite doubtful, reasonably enough.

"Considering Gilgamesh made me swear to work on it, I certainly have to. It's the reason we got lucky enough that he, and not another version of him, got summoned. Even that took a lot of string pulling from all the way over there, as I understand it."

"I hope he had a better plan than that, than what you had," Rin muttered, still worried about the day's events.

"He identified three critical components necessary to construct what he referred to as 'Chaldea'. Number two is a major source of magical energy, because number one is a Grail System. Number three though will be harder, since he didn't know where or how to obtain a past-future parallel-world observation device. You get where this is going."

"Observing parallel worlds falls under the Second Magic, but the Jeweled Sword doesn't allow you to do that." Sakura pointed out.

"His best bet was to find an inventor Caster or so on who might be able to handle that. However, since I cannot, and we cannot, that means triggering a new round of the Holy Grail War ritual for another chance at summoning such a Caster. It's only one more reason to get a complete Grail System, as the current setup is a less-than-ideal implementation."

"So that's what he wanted from you?" Shirou asked, frowning. "He could have spoken directly to us about it and avoided a great deal of trouble."

"Oh no, complications like Kotomine aside, he wanted a lot more," Sasaku said after some hestitation. "But due to his schedule, I guess, he decided to take a raincheck on some of those until getting summoned again."

"A moment," Illya said abruptly, picking up on the Caster's implication with some nervousness. "He's more like Kuro than you. Even though he has some memories from later on in life, he also doesn't want to be like that version of himself."

"You forget, whatever age you have him pegged at, he's had another ten years since being summoned. If anything, he's well overdue compared to-" She stopped short and sighed. "Look, just drop it, we got side-tracked. We need to seriously double-time the Jeweled Sword, since it is unlikely we can use the Grail directly with so many Servants, and we will run out of magical energy by conventional means."

"We could have gotten it from that wand, you know," Rin grimaced at the thought, but had to admit the wand had a point.

"No, that wand hates whoever it is contracted to, and it certainly isn't going to be used like you're thinking. It's really an 'enabler of magical girls' and not a multi-purpose magical energy source. That contrasts with the Jeweled Sword, which you are supposed to build. And, well, Gilgamesh didn't inform me about the wand, so it probably wouldn't have worked out one way or another. Remember, it couldn't find any magical girl versions of me."

"You mentioned he planned on being summoned again, is he just giving up on this War?" Shirou went straight to the main issue on his mind.

"Basically. Keep quiet about it, but he intends to return to the Throne due to having absorbed some of the contaminated mud from the Grail. His older self might have too great of an ego to be overly affected by that, but obviously we'd have other problems in that case."

(Illya)

The homunculus sat up on hearing Caster's explanation about Archer's state. All of a sudden, things began to fall into place in her mind. It couldn't be... She made brief eye-contact with Shirou, but apparently he wasn't on the same wavelength as her.

On the one hand, it seemed overly complicated, but at the same time, there were too many coincidences that had 'worked out' to reach this situation.

Father was near the epicenter of the Fuyuki fire, since he and Lancer went specifically to destroy the manifested Grail. Thus, it was likely he was affected by its contamination as well. It would have killed him sooner or later, but added to the fact that Gilgamesh had sarcastically recommended, through Lancer that is, that he work for Alaya, meaning the Counter-Force...

If it was possible for him to become a counter-guardian, if one has to die before being recorded on the Throne as such, it makes sense to accept death early if the alternative is being affected by the contamination, and that different future version of you being recorded. But it also saved Shirou, who in turn ended up picking up Caster...

It was too coincidental, unless that is, Shirou usually ended up in the War. Though, again, if Father had the time, it would mean teaching him magecraft, most likely if only for self-defense. But then Avalon's presence would mean the most likely servant to be summoned was a variant of Artoria Pendragon, probably as a Saber if the class was unfilled. Based off her own near-death experience with Berserker, the Princess Knight and even more so her King of Knights versions would be completely unsustainable for Shirou.

Hmm... Earlier, she had naively thought Kotomine's Archer was just happy to have found someone to chase after the whole debacle of the previous War. But it seemed likely that he had been waiting for exactly someone like her to do the work he assigned her. Actually, Caster had said as much, if anything she was not quite up to spec in that regard.

And he also made arrangements for me! she realized with a bit of shock. Since Kotomine was not likely to only knock her out if he was using Black Keys.

"Illya, are you alright?" Kuro asked with some concern, having moved over to look at her more closely. Illya pushed her away for room to stand up. "I just need to... rest a bit. Berserker, despite his consideration, drained me pretty badly, after all."

Ignoring her protests, Kuro decided to help Illya over to the room shared with her two maids.

"By the way," Sasaku called out from behind her. "Gilgamesh wanted to meet us at Fuyuki park after midnight. He said it was important you be there."

Illya just nodded her acceptance. Archer probably knew about the Lesser Grail mechanics, but that couldn't be his angle.

(Kojirou)

Saber watched Illya's back for a moment before Shirou glanced at Sakura and said, "There was one other issue she should have brought up, but apparently there's something else on her mind." He left it for Sakura to explain about the situation between Illya and the Einzbern, which she did briefly.

"Hmm," Sasaku muttered thoughtfully after being filled in, "Getting all the way over there would be a logistical nightmare. Not only is the Grail system here in Fuyuki, there are leylines here already in our sphere of influence."

"Are you just going to abandon them?" Sakura asked in some disbelief. "I didn't think you'd see it that way."

"See it what way?" Caster replied with a tinge of suspicion touching her voice. "Don't tell me you've made commitments on my behalf."

"No, I just didn't expect that response."

Sasaku chuckled. "It probably didn't occur to you that your children would be tiny minority in a nation full of homunculi. No, it doesn't necessarily matter to me, but I did make commitments to you, so don't give them away."

Sakura colored and kept silent. Rider, shrugging, commented instead, "It's surprising given that you've been exactly 'gathering allies' throughout the War."

"Oh I understand that angle," Caster nodded. "But Illya's plan is too ambitious for now, and by the time we do manage something like the Jeweled Sword it probably won't matter unless many lines of research prove infeasible. Staying under the radar is very valuable for pretty much all likely future paths - a convergent instrumental subgoal - and starting a war with a major magi family is totally not covert."

Rin raised an eyebrow. "Putting aside that making something that uses the Second Magic is also rather overt, do you actually have those 'future paths' in mind or do you just mean Gilgamesh's plan?"

"Of course I have them. Well the most immediate steps are all also convergent:" Sasaku idly ticked them off on her fingers, like a shopping list. "Jeweled Sword, then ideally bootstrap myself to superintelligence, if not then some combination of overclocking and networking. That probably means needing to construct multiple Swords and also some way to add more magical circuits to actually use all that magical energy, which is useful regardless anyway. Should I continue?"

"I should add," Illya said, rejoining the conversation abruptly. "That it is possible to enlarge your magical circuits to the scale of the Grail System. On the other hand, if you did that you'd end up trapped in whatever 'box' you installed yourself into, as moving would be very impractical."

"That's oddly specific," Sasaku blinked, wondering why the homunculus hadn't tried to push her plan. "Still the scale of a Grail System would clearly be a good starting point, given that we need to deal with one. Wait. Is the System a Servant?"

"She was a homunculus, like my mother and I. Our ancestor, in the way we have them," Illya replied point-blank.

Caster exhaled sharply, her expression becoming severe. "Is she likely to interfere of her own accord?"

"I should think not, if only because it's been literally centuries and anyone would have gone insane in that time."

Sasaku appeared skeptical of that last. "Any person, sure. We have plenty of 'boxed' artificial intelligences at home and they're about as sane as a computer might be," Sasaku glanced at Rin. "You have problems dealing with technology, but I assure you that well-constructed AIs are easier to handle than standard computers."

"Well, magi have always been willing to tolerate some amount of waste or ethical compromises," Sakura muttered.

"Is there a point to this digression?" Rin scowled. "We should have laid out an agenda for this, instead of roaming from item to item at random."

"You're right," Caster nodded, but sighed. "I am sorry if you have been given a contrary impression, but I am presently disinclined to take up the cause of your... people."

"Do you just expect them to free themselves?" Sakura growled. "Not everyone has a built-in magical contract breaker like you."

"This isn't about their condition, we simply lack the means to reasonably commit to anything within a useful timeframe." Upon hearing this, Sakura got to her feet and left in silence. After several seconds, Shirou followed her.

Shaking her head, Caster took a book out of her Armory and handed it to Rin. It was the one containing the Jeweled Sword blueprints from earlier. "What I extracted from that wand was a, very brief mind you, glance at how it drew mana from various parallel worlds. Without an actual spirit to handle the specifics, which this does not seem to have, the task might be easier, or harder, to accomplish."

Rin turned to look at Illya, who was taking the opportunity to leave. "Are you actually able to simply construct a Jeweled Sword given enough magical energy?"

"No. I need much more information to even begin approaching what is even possible given my magical circuit bottleneck. As it is, my magecraft is more efficient the less Mystery is involved, while this project touches upon the working of the Second Magic. As odd as it seems, building a city is very mundane and thus doable compared to this. Admittedly, this is a classic catch-22, I need the higher intelligence level, magical circuits, magical energy, information and so on, before we have a Jeweled Sword."

"I might have information on the original Sword," Illya said, turning around with a sudden burst of inspiration. "Memories of it passed down from that ancestor of mine."

"Huh," It seemed that the disclosure caught Caster by surprise. "Now that changes everything."

l

Notes:

Caster was hesitating between referring to the homunculi (collectively) as 'people' or 'nation'. It isn't that she thinks they are an 'it' given that she's talked with one who clearly isn't a thing. She picked people because they don't meet whatever definition she has for a nation (probably independent government).