(Outside the northern gates of Roma)

"You must be the guests from Chaldea," one of the guards said respectfully after an understandable moment of amazement at Georgios' armor. However, after the moment had passed, the soldier only handed over a sealed scroll without further comment. That was apparently the extent of their orders regarding the group. Nodding, the Ruler returned to the group before breaking the seal to read the message, which simply enough, provided directions to Fabius' private villa outside the city. With no other plans, the group started to make their way there.

Artoria did not seem surprised by Fabius' approach, simply pointing out that, "Discretion aside, there must be a runner headed to Fabius as we speak. He's probably also made any number of quiet preparations there, given it's his own property."

"This is quite exciting," Chloe seemed more intrigued herself. "Compared to the really odd 'war' situation in France."

"Perhaps. Though to the people living in those and these times, things like wyverns were rare but not unexpected, I suppose." Kojirou paused to think. "Perhaps Georgios has actually fought a dragon? Such Phantasmals might still have been found in those days."

"That's possible," Jeanne shrugged, shifting her banner which as usual had been resting on her shoulder. "Sometimes I do wonder if we Servants can end up remembering things simply because people think we did or experienced them. Though if the change was major enough you might end up with something like (Innocent Monster) or a variant."

"Can it basically stack up, like if your legend was that a fictional person who was framed for something. Like the Count of Monte Cristo. Or I suppose if people managed to convince everyone that you were actually totally evil when you weren't... would you just show up being evil anyway?" Chloe seemed somewhat worried by the possibility.

"In some of those cases, it would probably work out where your actual self would be an Alter. With the made-evil version of you being the standard one." Georgios went through the possibilities mentally. "But the standard version would have (Innocent Monster) and the Alter wouldn't. Granted, it probably isn't super consistent, since the stories could be different from one branch to another."

"Indeed," added Artoria. "Here, Merlin would a male by default, but if the Masters summoned a female version from another branch, she would be the variant. And the other way around if a Chaldea over there summoned the one I knew. I do think she would have been mentoring a male version of myself."

"But how would your legend work out if you had been a man all along?" Chloe asked. "You know, the whole heir and marriage thing would just proceed normally, right?"

"You do know that relationships can go off the rails even at the best of times, don't you?" Scathach pointed out their destination. "We're here."

l

A couple of armed guards were the villa's main security, and they quickly identified their expected guests, ushering them into an inner courtyard. Having been waiting for several days for exactly this occasion, Fabius' servants were relieved to simply be able to carry out their duties.

"Can everyone else step away from us for a bit?" Scathach suddenly asked the servers who were trying their best to not let themselves be caught distracted by the Chaldeans' foreign appearances. "There's a Servant-level signature approaching rapidly; I don't recognize it."

The group was immediately alarmed by this, springing into their combat formation. Darting off to the left side, Chloe brought out her bow, arrow to the string; taking opponents from their right made it harder for them to use shields. Artoria and Kojirou had swords to hand, quickly moving to ensure that anyone entering through the main door would not be able to advance in any direction without facing at least one of them.

Scathach was already placing down defensive runes as the Rulers closed up behind her to keep the Masters safe with their own armored bodies. All this pre-battle positioning took place within only a second or so. Which was entirely timely as a couple of seconds after that, the door practically burst open to admit a girl in luxurious red wielding, no carrying rather, a lyre instead of a weapon. Though it was always hard to tell, given how Servants might operate. She stopped a short distance into the room beaming all the while.

"Umu! It is good to see you again, Mas...ter?" She trailed off in some confusion upon realizing that she was being treated like a potential threat.

"Hello." Gudao said calmly from out of her sight.

"Oh, oh!" The unfamiliar Servant nodded vigorously as though having received some revelation from the innocuous prompt. "Greetings from Chaldea! Perhaps we haven't met yet; I am Nero Claudius, a Saber but more importantly Roma's first performing idol ! Now dating back to the days of Hannibal, even!"

After being prompted by one of the Masters, Georgios took up the lead. "Georgios. I, too, greet you from Chaldea."

"That's right, that's alright then!" As though the earlier tension had been all cleared up, Nero's initial cheer returned. "I suppose it's odd to rush to business, but I was asked to provide you critical support in this time. You see, the Masters (you seem to be different here, though) said to go out and help people in these sort of situations; needing a singer and musician to raise their spirits. After that Sasaku said it was very important to, uh, 'seed the probabilities of your variant type by showing up first', which I don't quite get, but apparently it has to do with getting fan support to be summoned later on."

"You're kidding me, right?" Jeanne seemed to have taken away something from that stream of consciousness.

"Hold that thought," Chloe interrupted the Ruler. "Sasaku, as in the Caster? We couldn't seem to summon her in Chaldea."

"You need to summon her?"

"Was she around from the start of Chaldea, then?" Scathach asked. "If so, clearly you're from another branch and not just the future of ours."

Gudako looked at Nero quizzically. "Well, she knows the pass code, so I'd guess so."

"You're shorter than I expected," the Servant replied. "But still, to think that both variants of you were here? This is a bright day for Roma, no, the world!"

"Ahem. It must have been the Founder's divine guidance that brought you back to us in such a timely manner." Fabius' relief was obvious as his group of Romans entered the villa at this point. "As you might imagine, we were having difficulty convincing your comrade to remain with us rather than go north alone to try and meet up with you."

"Did you expect to be able to just find us by wandering around north Italy?" Artoria asked while frowning.

"I would have been able to ask around, obviously," Nero's confidence in her plan showed. "Besides, I was supposed to help you, get some materials, and collect the Friend Points to keep Chaldea supplied."

"Friend Points?" Chloe mumbled. "Not Quantum Pieces - magical energy?"

"It's proof of friendship, apparently?" It seemed that Nero wasn't particularly knowledgeable about it herself. "It just comes back with you or something, You don't gather it for supplies?"

"Speaking of friendship, your esteemed friend's efforts have been very uplifting in these days of distress," Fabius grabbed at his chance to get a word in. "However-"

"It was nothing, I was simply bored while waiting and decided to practice my singing."

"Of course. Still, while Roma certainly has the most people, there are other cities and fortified towns which are in a much more precarious state, order-wise. It would be very stabilizing for the Republic if you could go on a 'tour' as she calls it, of these locations."

"Thank goodness Martha isn't here," Gudako muttered, about the time that Gudao rather carelessly asked, "I seem to remember certain stories about Nero's skills as a performer..."

"Those are... a different matter right?" Turning red, Nero waved her hands about before settling on Jeanne. "You're a Ruler, right? You have (True Name Descernment) right?"

"Well, yes." Jeanne shared a brief glance with Georgios. "Indeed, you are Nero Claudius."

"Before we leave, do you have time for one more song?" Gudako suddenly asked.

"Oh, so you get me after all. Of course I wouldn't refuse a Master's request."

"Great. How about the one famous in Chaldea." Gudao seemed to catch on to his fellow's request, grinning. "You know. Akogare~tion."

"Wait a moment, that isn't one of mine, I only did it in a pair," Nero frowned, realizing at that point that something was up.

"Don't worry, it's Chloe here's favorite song. You wouldn't disappoint such a fan, surely..."

In one of the theater's of Roma, the sound of Akogaretion being played on a lyre echoed around for what definitely the song's first in the world.

"So," Gudako asked Jeanne where they were seated somewhere discreetly in the back. "Her True Name is literally 'Nero Claudius' is it?"

"Yes." A moment of silence passed. "We're probably thinking the same thing about who that girl really is."

"If she isn't that Nero, it clears up a lot of questions that would otherwise come up, for sure," Gudao added. "Given that any number of variants might be theoretically summonable, having one of them as a Servant actually meet us first does make her much more likely than the... alternatives."

"I don't think the Grail System would actually let the Mother Harlot be summoned," Georgios added. "Also, if she's from the future, even in a different branch, perhaps that means your Caster might become eligible for summoning at some point."

"That would be nice," Gudako said simply, keeping her other thoughts to herself. "Does Fabius' plan seem sound to everyone?"

Artoria nodded her approval. "It's not the most complicated campaign, but it does fit well with our current goals. Though, looking at the audience here," she motioned towards the crowd below, which contained many excited youth, "It does seem the Romans are quite sturdy in spirit."

"Hold up for a moment," Gudao interrupted the conversation with something else in mind. "Just to be clear, the Rulers are quite sure that this Nero is one of the pretenders following the 'Nero returns' myth, and not actually Nero returning, yes?"

"She seems able to sing," Jeanne remarked, remembering how several of them had raised an eyebrow at Nero's rendition of Elizabeth Bathory's song. "And is a she. Well..."

"Don't look at me," Artoria grimaced. "I'm pretty sure most Emperor Neros were men. But you know, the Nero-as-a-bride thing was also a thing, so I have no idea."

"She also doesn't seem to have Divinity," Georgios pointed out. "So I think we're rather safe in thinking she isn't secretly Nero returning to destroy to take over the Romans again."

"So back to our travel route. First stop is Arretium, yeah?" Scathach motioned to Gudao, who took out the marked map which Fabius had given them for the journey.

"First main stop on the via Cassia. But the point of the inland route is to show off along the way so that word spreads of not only Nero but us. Hopefully Hannibal and the mastermind will be prompted to action."

Moving at a Servant's speed, it would have taken only a few days to reach Arretium, but following the impromptu Roma-Chaldea joint plan, the group departed the capital with a number of Roman envoys to deliver orders from the dictator for every man to arm himself and defend his town or city, among other things.

"I do hope the signal fire system will work for this," Scathach grumbled. "If there was time, setting up an alert system with runes would have been surer and we're not being covert anymore."

"It would be hard to keep this covert, for sure!" Nero continued playing her lute enthusiastically while dancing her way down the roadway. A number of nearby sheep paused in their grazing to look in surprise at the commotion.

"Since we're in between stops, can you play something else?" Chloe asked, though she was more focused on the road ahead than anything else. "Like, Oath Sign on that?"

"For you? Easily done," Nero beamed, probably glad to have been able to actually play most of the smaller Servant's requests. "After this one."

"Hm? Wait. Stop." Everyone turned towards Chloe, who had been studying the approaching town through the conversation. "Oh no. Everyone get close to Jeanne. Banner!"

Blinking in surprise, the Ruler still unfurled the flag and raised it up towards the sunlight pouring down from the Italian noon. "(Luminosite Eternele)!"

Ethereal light spilled out as Jeanne's magical energy flowed into the rippling Noble Phantasm.

Far overhead, a small speck appeared far overhead in the distance. An Archer like Chloe might have even been able to make it out as more like a fine sliver that blocked a tiny portion of the sun's radiance.

Almost instantly, many more of the objects materialized in the sky, slamming into one another as the group plummeted on an arc towards Arretium. The resulting cloud of fine black shards grew slightly as it screamed down onto its unsuspecting target, filled with people who had come out to see the traveling group that those who had run ahead told them about.

A storm of chips and fragments, glowing from the resistance of air encountered while traveling several times the speed of sound, crashed into Arretium. Most of the humans who were out in the open market, forum, or streets were directly ripped through. Fragments of stone, brick or other debris from anything struck proved equally lethal to others who might have been sheltered within or on the southern side of various buildings, given that these secondary projectiles were also flying at very high speeds.

With something like the sound of a resounding drum, a great cloud of dust was kicked up from the town. Of the group, only Chloe was able to see well enough through it to make out the mangled forms of people staggering about in the city gate, unable to understand what disaster had befallen them.

l

(Gudako's My Room)

"And though we didn't realize it at the time, many other population centers in central Italy were struck in that attack. Especially Roma itself." Georgios concluded.

"In a sense, that was the response we had baited out," Jeanne continued for him. "Further north, Massalia was specifically singled out and attacked as the Carthaginian-Gaul alliance forces marched up to siege it."

"Does that method of attack sound familiar?" Martha asked with a bit of bite.

"Huh. You're saying a hostile version of me was doing artillery attacks all the way from Massalia to Roma?" Sasaku asked for clarification. "Where was she even shooting from?"

"Up in Britain, near where Camelot would later be built," the knight Ruler replied quickly. "Chloe was able to identify not just the direction, but distance, by observing a second round of attacks coming in. Of course Mediolanum was only the southernmost fortified location which the Gauls had created exactly to prevent northward movement through their lands..."

"So her objective was to break the historical series of events by killing too many people for the World to correct," she guessed.

Martha shook her head. "No, she wasn't calling the shots. While we know she was using a Holy Grail's worth of energy, more, to perform the strikes, it was at the behest of Boudica, who came up with the plan and gave it to her."

"The Butcher of Septem was a Berserker, you see," Gudako explained. "At least, we saw her decide to follow Boudica's genocidal orders to the point of killing herself over it."

"That's pretty... heavy stuff."