(Chaldea Training Grounds)
"So, this 'Christmas' thing really caught on, huh?" Nobunaga was chatting with Artoria, who was in turn whiling away time as the various items were in production. Of course, Observation was keeping tabs on the status of the Event, which began to shrink in on itself not long after the Chaldeans returned home, but had eventually stabilized.
"I suppose so," the Princess Knight replied absentmindedly while looking at her new sword. da Vinci had run some scans on it when they returned, of course. Some of the Rulers used (True Name Discernment) on it, and Sasaku for her part used various analysis Skills since her version didn't give answers from the World like the others. And of course, some sparring with Scathach and the usual combat enthusiasts. Checked out.
She and Gudako had then gone out on the next scheduled Free Quest, and the moment Artoria tried to actually fire off the Holy Sword, the blade shattered far below even Caliburn's safe energy load. That didn't mean it was lost of course; however bringing it 'back' required a very large amount of magical energy, and that one broke just as easily.
A few other tests followed, including Nobunaga trying her guns, which turned out could damage this Excalibur due to the gunner's good match against Mysteries. On the other hand, it functioned as a normal weapon adequately - but so did Caliburn. Caliburn would also break if you significantly overloaded it, but that was not unexpected.
"Hello there," spoke a suddenly appearing, to Artoria at least, mortal. "Hmm, thought I would be early enough to prep beforehand."
"You are," the addressed Archer shrugged. "This was a different series of trials. So anyway, the Masters said you wanted to try out my guns but they didn't give any details."
"Right. Well how should I explain... since we gained the use of Sasaku's spears, the Masters have been exploring any other, more usable, alternatives. I see you get the jist of it."
"Hmm, spears you say? Ah, but of course I can see you're interested in technological development. In any case, I have guns to spare since after all, they're for arming armies with." Nobunaga seemed to be in high spirits as she passed the homunculus one such example.
Doru ran his purple eyes across the weapon. On first glance, and indeed after some initial inspection, it was simply a smoothbore matchlock arquebus in form and function. However what made it potentially a critical piece of hardware was its Servant-level power signature.
"These don't appear with any additional powder and shot, by any chance?" he asked hopefully, but Nobunaga shook her head.
"That'll be problematic, logistically speaking," he mused, mind already moving away from the weapon in his hands.
"I thought you can retrieve things from the Armory anywhere in Chaldea?" Artoria asked in surprise.
"We can take out 'a spear', multiple times maybe, but anything else mundane or not is very troublesome to move. These are muzzle loaders by the look of it, and don't have bayonets so perhaps isn't the best fit for our expected use case."
"And what might that be?" Nobunaga sounded curious.
"Defending against higher-level entities, of course." Doru made it sound like it was a most sensible expectation to be confronted by an army of Servant-equivalents. Which in a way, it was in Singularities though even those groups could not actually prevail had they to face all the Chaldeans together.
"Aren't most of us right here though?" The Princess Knight pointed out after a moment wondering what she might have missed. "At most six of us can Rayshift out."
l
(Holy Night Free Quest)
"This really makes one wonder," Gudao surveyed the battlefield as horrifying humanoid Reindeer and moving snowmen appeared. Though they had some fairly minimal encounters previously, the shrinking of their native habitat, that is the Event, had sent the mobs into a frenzy seeking what else but magical energy.
"What might that be?" Agesipolis asked politely while scanning their surroundings, a long and heavy kopis moving back and forth in this hands as though he expected a sudden attacker to appear on his right.
"Why are there always mobs showing up? One would think they can just respawn endlessly but they would have just clogged up the world if that was so."
"I believe they are around because you're here to actually observe them existing," Sasaku said from nearby as a number of her magic circles started spraying bullets of magical energy across the approaching figures. Those that were fatally struck simply collapsed, generally evaporating back into their constituent mana that returned to the environment.
"Cats go out for prey, woof." The Berserker Cat was quickly hopping over to collect what the fallen enemies left behind, some sort of low-grade Spirit Core of compressed magical energy in the shape of a stereotypical Christmas sock.
"Hmm. Yes it's true that sometimes the enemies are what we're actually looking forward to. Or at least their drops," Sasaku agreed easily. Cat had also been taking the opportunity to gather some herbs; her excellent 'senses' meant they had a good likelihood of actually surviving the Rayshift back to Chaldea.
"I don't think that the magical girl and horde mode genres are a good match," a hard-worked Ruby grumbled. Since she could fly while transformed, Sasaku was hovering slightly over the ground, lazily making circles around her Master and the Shielder protecting him while dragging around the magical formations that weaponized Ruby's energy throughput.
"I believe these parts usually take place off-screen," Gudao attempted to console the Kaleidostick. "Or I guess it'll be a montage flicking through brief sequences of Chloe looting Forbidden Pages or Cat harvesting socks made of Christmas-flavored energy."
"Why are they forbidden anyway?" Sasaku inquired. "I didn't see anything exceptional about them, unless the actually blank pages count."
"Did you actually try reading them? the homunculus asked in turn.
"Like I said, there was nothing special about their contents or makeup."
"Forbidden. Because." Agesiolis observed.
"You've got to be kidding me..." the Ruler mumbled after some reflection on the statement. "Well now I feel stupid for taking the issue so seriously."
"I don't get it," Gudao remarked. "So there's no reason for it?"
"Not functionally. Just being forbidden makes them mysterious, that's all. Maybe we shouldn't over-analyze such things, might break the Mystery and whatnot."
"Did the pages you read actually make it back to Chaldea?"
"I don't know, we just jammed them into my backpack or whoever's pockets and were happy with whatever we could take back out when we returned to Chaldea, didn't we?"
"Sounds about right."
l
(An Imaginary Place)
"Hello girls."
"Please don't," one of the Sakuras responded before the others. Although it hadn't been obvious to him the first time around, Shirou could tell by now that there wasn't just some group of five, or seven, or however many entities present. Rather there were many of them, a large number, a lot and it wasn't clear if the individuals he met these few times were actually individuals or just facets of some larger reference class, to borrow a term from... who said it again?
"I didn't want to be too formal..."
"Quit being coy, we all know if you woke up, it'd be with nothing on. What did you rouse us for this time?" one of the bored-sounding ones retorted.
"Just wanted to check in." Shirou looked around at the location which seemed like some sort of very large lawn or garden, completely open without wall, fence or pickets in sight. Oddly enough, the 'inhabitants' were scattered about around where he had arrived, sitting among the ankle-high grass as though there was nothing else of interest around. Which perhaps there wasn't. At least it's better than some other settings I've seen here.
"We've mentioned before: there's no one around until you come around, yeah? It's like you just left and then turned around and came back."
"That's not quite true, though?" One a little further back contracted her fellow. "At least I have some extra memories all of a sudden, compared to 'last time'."
"Huh, so it is..." someone said with a note of surprise. "Would be nice to get out and actually experience it but meh, I'll take it."
"Might there be ways you can do that, actually?" Shirou asked quickly.
"I doubt you'd be particularly happy with that, but in any case real me wouldn't let any of us take the wheel."
"No not that, but could you take over some other body?"
There was a pregnant silence for a time and half a time. "Sounds like you know of a pathway to abilities that some might consider to be... unnatural."
Shirou simply shrugged this off. "The World will already try to remove any Servant, including us. We might care to calculate the costs involved, but not care about its value judgments."
"We can't really separate and leave, even if you had people literally willing to get absorbed by the sort of process that causes Counter Forces to throw tantrums."
"There might be a more, how should I put it, scaleable process..." is how he chose to characterize it.
"Sounds like you've put some thought into this, why not run it past us then? If that wasn't already part of your plan," one shrewdly remarked.
"Can you transfer your consciousness into one of the advanced Crest Worms - like what Matthew has? I think there might be at least a viable pair, though we'd have to wait to check until he's old enough that we can, um, extract? them."
"No. It's hard enough for humans, at our level something like that wouldn't be anywhere near enough as a vessel. Besides that's a terrible life situation."
"Well, I had been thinking that outside we have a source of pretty decent un-souled bodies, at least if I understand how the homunculus reproduction works. Or doesn't work, actually."
"Hold there for a sec. No, I think it wouldn't work for us, we can't really separate out. The question of transferring or vessels doesn't even come into it. Also, odd I don't remember this, but what do they usually do with the bodies that don't properly become homunculi?"
Shriou blinked a couple of times. "After inspection, they 'recycle' them, which currently means they're buried in some specific area - but not individually marked. Granted, they might keep a few around for further study since the exact mechanism that fails isn't really well understood. Though they have been improving on the success rate."
l
(Barren Sword-Filled Landscape)
"Now that's just disorganized," Sasaku commented, having arrived as requested along with Gudako to make the promised dropoff of Christmas goods. By the way, while da Vinci had made the sleigh replica collapsible, a Coffin still couldn't fit it and an actual person; apparently Fou hearing about Merlin's previous appearance 'volunteered' to go along.
However, they instead homed in on the original sleigh sitting in the middle a non-nondescript wasteland. If one discounted all the broken weaponry lying about, that was - describing them all would probably take a lifetime.
"Got 'the goods'?" their nameless host asked conspiratorially.
"Should we have taken our time a bit more?" Sasaku asked with a frown for some reason.
"I was just starting to get bored of waiting for you, actually." He watched the Ruler unload the items from her backpack. "Don't worry about it."
"I see." Gudako caught her Servant looking with some curiosity at the Chloe who appeared on cue to collect the first set of gifts. "Sounds like you had your fair share of work, holding this together."
"Um, yeah. Part of the job description and all that, you know." He seemed almost embarrassed about it, though covered by inspecting the new sleigh carefully. Well, it would be critical for the next group to use it.
"Everything check out?" Sasaku asked after half a minute of silence. Shirou nodded to her and gave Chloe a thumbs-up; the Archer then threw the sack which she had been loading with presents into the sleigh before disappearing in a splash of magical energy.
A moment later, she reappeared and made to pick up the sack newly produced by da Vinci via a similar method like for the backpack all the items had come in. Of course, lacking Santa-ness Sasaku could not fill and bring it directly, though that would have been more convenient. However Sasaku made to block her, to Gudako's surprise.
"Something wrong?" the male Archer asked, similarly surprised by the turn of events.
"Why are the three of you all different?" Sasaku asked Chloe directly.
"Oh, you could tell?" her husband asked the Ruler instead. "She'll be headed over to the next Chaldea to take up Merlin's -Santa Quest-."
"Sounds like you have your fair share of work," she repeated an earlier line with a raised eyebrow for emphasis.
"I'll be going back after we've wrapped up here, another me will be summoned in the next run of the Event, and then he'll summon another two Chloe's who'll handle the next two, etc."
The third Chloe nodded. "As I'm not a Caster, I can only really -reliably- summon him. Provided you're on the Mooncell support list roster, anyway."
"Can I ask how that synchronization works since that exists in the future anyway?" Gudako questioned.
"I can just tell if it will work or not, there's no explanation about why, perhaps Zelretch might know but he isn't sharing."
The Mooncell Servant simply shrugged, handing Gudako a small present box in bright wrapping. "You should be able to get this Grail Fragment safely back to Chaldea now.
"Thanks !" She looked over it for a moment before realizing that the whole present was actually the fragment. "We'll take good care of it."
"Don't forget the Card," Chloe prompted.
"I hadn't." Emiya pulled out the gilded item and, after looking it over for a second, held it out to his Chaldean visitor. "Do you know how to use these?"
"What is it?" Sasaku asked, examining it. "Some sort of database record?"
"Huh? Where did you come by that?" Ruby appeared with a sudden outburst. "Class Cards don't belong here."
"He made it of course," Chloe answered Ruby first. "You're right in that it's essentially a sort of record."
"It's in a Kaleidostick-compatible format," Emiya continued for her. "But they can be useful when summoning, almost like a super-catalyst one might say. That's part of why she can summon me that easily - Chloe always gets summoned with that one card. Ah, but not the one you know, since she comes from using a card of Chloe's legend."
"If you haven't watched enough Prisma Phantasm or Kaleid Liner, just ask your Chloe how to use it," Chloe said, rather than explain or give any demonstration. "Um, have fun with that."
"I have a feeling that I'm going to regret this present of yours," Ruby groaned while fluttering about sharply for emphasis.