(Stheno & Euryale's Room)
"According to the System's time-keeping, Earth would be entering into 2020 - were these normal times," Gudako commented to her hosts of the moment.
"Is that so? It hardly seemed like a festive occasion," Euryale replied brightly while sipping her wine. It seemed that Blackbeard could obtain almost any alcoholic item, but obviously the pirate didn't know about every one that existed. On the other hand, he was always open to new requests, much to the delight of those who procured his 'goods'.
Less so for those who wanted to get buzzed, as Edward Teach brought out alcohol that for pretty much any intent was mundane in nature, and thus did not affect Servant-level drinkers.
"Hmm, I doubt I'm wrong here but: Master, I'm quite sure you don't care about the human days," Stheno retorted in a drawn-out manner. "For us it's also a calendar from way in the future."
"That's true," the homunculus agreed easily. "But I thought you might be interested in what humans get up to."
"No."
Gudako shrugged, taking a sip of her drink before glancing over at Sasaku who was on an adjacent side of the square table the four of them were sitting around. The other girl just swirled her wine idly.
"Before you ask your question, why are you lot interested in humanity yourself?" Euryale picked off where her older sister had left the conversation hanging.
"Who said they were?" the Ruler asked casually, leaving back using her hands for stability as they were all seated on the floor since the tables in such rooms were all low. "We thought it was critical they continue existing so the World wouldn't throw a fit..."
"But here were are," Stheno cut her off mid build-up. "Since you've brought this Ruler, I'll be frank that, no, even the gods can't really just overturn the World's Order. As you have experienced, being outside of the World isn't the same as having influence over it."
"You should consult your wand for details," Euryale added. "According to our information the master of the Second Magic is rather heavily to thank for the existence of groups backing Chaldea from Void Space."
"We'd heard," Gudako replied. "Do you have an idea why so many of the potential Rulers are all following one particular divinity?"
"That's because you're using his Holy Grail System," Stheno huffed. "If you couldn't guess, there's at least theoretically, other ways to create Servant-level vessels and, yes, copy soul bits off the Throne."
"Like these Class Cards and Kaleidosticks?" Sasaku took out the card she had received back from da Vinci. "It's a sort of record type, but I can't read it directly."
"We're not familiar with the works of the Old Man of the Jewels." Euryale signaled her dismissal of the topic by reaching for the half-empty wine bottle.
"Is it safe to assume that full gods on their own Throne are even more powerful than Heroic Spirits?" Gudako switched up her line of inquiry.
"Presumably. It's a bit tactless to ask the ones all the way at the bottom of the list such that we're more powerful at the Servant-level than our pure goddess state," Stheno answered with a touch of bitterness. "But it's very non-trivial for them to interfere, and as for actually coming back..."
"You're idol-types, yeah? Can you teach Elizabeth to sing at some point before she forces our hand on the whole concert thing?" Gudako brought up something that had been on her mind for a while. A little while.
"I don't know why you think that's a thing we can do," Euryale frowned.
"You don't sing?" Sasaku asked.
"We don't teach," Stheno corrected her.
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(Training Grounds)
"I see." A small pulse of Shirou's magical energy condensed into a shimmering rune, written into the air with the solidity of fine gossamer. However it almost immediately disintegrated back into energy that evaporated away into Chaldea's environment.
"... not bad," Scathach muttered. "Normally we'd be very restricted by what's in our Spirit Origin. Perhaps there's advantages in not having a particularly well-set legend."
"Human legends can change over time, right?" Sakura was of course nearby as she was also part of the session. "Does your current Spirit Origin reflect the last human legends of you before the Incineration, or something like your last state?"
"That's very hard to say," the Caster replied while putting away her wand for the druid staff which would feature in her next demonstration. "Unlike how it might feel, Chaldea really doesn't doesn't have a firm place or time, and I was summoned under those circumstances. Post-Incineration, that is."
"I'm a bit surprised that anything even works to be honest," Shirou admitted. "You'd think the damage would be so great that we'd just be left as a mass of chaotic ether or something like that."
"Not so. Bubbles like Chaldea, the Land of Shadows, this Mooncell thing all maintain their own structures. Even Singularities do, oddly enough for all that their purpose is destabilizing the World."
"Um, I think we're about up. Time-wise," Sakura spoke up hesitantly.
"Huh, what? Oh yeah," Shirou realized she was right. "Apologies, you were about to start on the staff, right?"
Chaldea's first Caster shrugged. "It was just an overview, we'll continue some other time. Really, it's great there's a couple more people who can truly learn things here; normally Servants might be able to improve certain Skills, but adding new capabilities is a very rare sort of Rank Up. Definitely not something even I can overcome except in special cases."
"Ah, so you were going though to see which Skills of ours might be improvable," Sakura guessed.
"Indeed. Well we're all on our own schedules, so we'll do the staff-work next time. Or perhaps more on the fundamentals of Runes, since you're able to pick it up."
"Until next time." The pair Servant took their leave without delaying.
"Hmm." Scathach didn't have anything scheduled for the current time, and was pretty sure that the other two didn't either. Unless it was a very specific sort of appointment.
Come to think of it, I haven't really gotten use of the full advantages of coming back in the state of my teaching days, the Caster mused. But there's no one who really checks the right boxes, now is there...
Since it was sort of in her future, she wasn't entirely sure how it was that she was around to be summoned, though the occasion itself only caused a brief disorientation thanks to the helpful Grail-provided situational brief. But she was quite sure that some white-haired mother type character had shown up to her older self at some point to discuss her life as guardian of the Land of Shadows...
(Near the Gate of Skye, ? ? Time Period)
"You really could have started something out here," her surprise visitor from 'outside' commented while looking around. "All things considered, I'd say if you can keep the keep the gate controlled solo, it would be entirely possible to build a whole city just outside or maybe even just inside."
"It's a bit late to bring that up," the lone ruler of the Land of Shadows replied as they drank in front of the massive Gate she protected. "I've long since stopped being human, despite my form."
"I was never a human myself, despite my form," the Servant replied calmly. Of course the way she looked was far from the norm in humanity, but with Servant vessels, odder things were possible.
"Of course." For a while the only sound was that made by the whispering of freezing cold drafts around the Gate.
"I happen to know of a teaching position that would be an excellent fit for your skillset," Irisviel continued, ignoring Scathach's skeptical expression. "Worry not, it'll come around at a time when this Gate won't be an issue. Or perhaps I should clarify that you won't have to ever stop guarding it to go elsewhere."
"I'm not unfamiliar with your Holy Grail Wars, but unfortunately there's no way the Throne of Heroes would know about me, as this place is essentially cut off from its gaze or recording."
"Worry not," the homunculus repeated her earlier assurance airily. "Unless you've developed critical new educational Skills in solitary guardianship, a younger version of yourself who was still partially human will fit the bill."
"Oh, so you already knew that, then?"
"Ah yes, or at least the possibility. Did you notice anything change recently?" Irisviel abruptly changed the topic in a rather suspicious manner.
"Not really, not that news comes by here either, as you might imagine," Scathach responded dryly.
"You see! I'm here because Human History has already been Incinerated. At the moment, if you actually let everyone inside that Gate out, there'd be no place they could get out to. Of course that would make a mess when the current crisis is resolved."
"Wait, what?!"
... or something like that. Someone must have told her about the Fortress of Shadows. In any case, it was likely that the reason she was summoned in this particular stage was since it was her still-human self that was at her 'prime' as a teacher, mentoring the famous Cu Chulainn.
However, to her disappointment somewhat, and equal surprise at being disappointed, somehow the demographic of the Security Organization, which she had expected to boast many powerful warriors, was not such. Being summoned as a Caster meant she in a second instance lost out on a great deal of combat prowess compared to some hypothetical fully-experienced Lancer version of herself.
Still, she could understand, after some re-acclimatization to the company of so many allies, why Chaldea seemed to have gone down this path. As Gudao had suggested after hearing the warrior's evaluation of the bastion's population, the need to efficiently build and structure compositions to avoid 'gaps' and exploit conceptual vulnerabilities was to be expected for a group that needed to hit above their weight on deployments.
"On the other hand, a few more powerhouses would be comforting, I agree," the Master had acknowledged.
It would also be nice if it wasn't so oddly slanted towards girls who didn't have much combat-relevant legend.
"Um? Scathach?"
She realized that she had been idly eying that Spartan Shielder while also blocking his way in. The Training Grounds, for obvious reasons, wasn't very open in terms of its entrance. "I wasn't expecting anyone now."
"I was about to practice some unarmed styles with Cat, actually." If Agesipolis didn't seem like the stereotypical Spartan, it was perhaps because he would normally have been one of the last kings. Though as he had come through Sasaku somehow, his origin was not from within the World proper. Chaldea seemed to pick up all these odd exceptions somehow, and Scathach could not shake the sense that it was all jigsaw-puzzling into something quite fearsome.
"Hmm that one. Her wild fighting style certainly is hard to pin down."
Agesipolis nodded agreement. "Somehow she always gets into openings. Much more of a technical fighter than you'd expect of a Berserker."
That's quite a keen eye, she thought idly, having had the same impression after a match where the range of her dual spears somehow couldn't stop the feline brawler from sliding through. Even with only her Caster-level Agility, it wasn't just a difference in statistics at play. "She fights in a really sloppy manner, but somehow it isn't actually."
"Yes... she reminds me of those crazy people that would try to get under pike formations."
"That's right, you were in the time of the Successor States, it's easy to forget since you use a relatively older style of shield and helmet." Scathach had overheard Euryale's comments on said equipment. Of course the Gorgon sisters had not survived into the Diadochi era, since the story of their deaths was known then.
"Huh? There were still hoplite formations in those days, it was just not useful as an open field line unit. If anything it's surprising that block tactics were used here where there's Anti-Army Noble Phantasms - those are like humanity inventing heavy artillery centuries ahead of time."
"You're not the first one to have noticed that such things only crop up enough to become legends, but not ever in any real way that would significantly distort human progression from a timeline where they existed only as legends without the actual storied-effects," the Caster pointed out.
"Oh, did one of your students figure that out?"
"I'm referring to the Masters. Their working theory is that the balance is essentially kept by the World, or more specifically: after it does pruning what survives are those balanced outcomes."
"That's an interesting thought, it would seem that -"
"Wahahaha !" A storm was approaching, specifically a Tamamo Cat moving so fast it seemed she left afterimages down the corridors leading to the Training Grounds. "I'm not late !"
"You're not."
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(Lounge)
"And we would watch fireworks, " Chloe reminisced as Artoria nodded, having seen them herself. Nearby, Elizabeth was getting sucked into a game which, in a surprise reversal, had her in the role of a Producer managing up-and-coming performing idols.
"I can't tell if it's more human to use explosives for entertainment, or to use explosives to kill one another," Marie mumbled to herself.
"I'd say it depends on who is making the decision," the Princess Knight quickly replied.
"Too bad there's no outside to go watch fireworks," da Vinci mused while thinking about firework designs. "Come to think of it, why does Caliburn have that sparkle-like effect?"
"I really doubt it's a deliberate feature."
"Fireworks though, huh?" Gudako stretched lazily, a little cat-like. "The year-end festivals sure were interesting." Although like her peers Gudao and Siegfried, she had been 'born' in the Einzbern Estate's best-equipped facilities, in Germany, Illyasviel had made the decision to have them raised in the Einzbern Castle, Japan, in order to stay under the Clock Tower's radar, as it were.
"Yes, and sparklers and yukata," Ruby added helpfully.
"Are there concerts?" Elizabeth asked a loaded question purely by instinct, as she was desperately trying to keep one of her in-game idol candidates from failing a concert mini-game event.
"Somehow just hearing that in Ruby's voice makes it sound so suspicious," Chloe said, eyeing the wand as though sizing up its intentions.
"Argh," Elizabeth groaned, caught up in her own conflict. "We lost to the rival boy band group."
"I think you've hit the mid-game difficulty jump," Chloe commented, being familiar with the game in question. "Unless you've got the early game locked down pretty well, the first contest is really hard to win. But there's some new training options for your group, so you can catch up pretty fast."
"Speaking of new training options, I wanted to see what that Class Card we got does," Gudako addressed Ruby directly, "Have you two had a chance to get on that with Scathach yet?"
"Her working day was filled with evaluating Shirou and Sakura, remember?" da Vinci looked around, but the pair wasn't around. "Well she'd be free now, except that I assume there's a report to write."
"No, she doesn't really write reports personally," Gudako informed the inventor. "Not a natural at documentation like you. It's easier to discuss it with her directly and we'll take notes which summarize the information better for our own team-planning."
"Speaking about that," da Vinci recalled, "How did that Grail data scraping thing go? Neither of you two said anything about it."
"Um... hey Sasaku, explain it to her."
"Yeah, well basically there's some sort of cooldown on using my (True Name Discernment) variant to keep pulling up stuff. Plus apparently from inside Chaldea, there's issues forcing me to break up any large entry into multiple queries so basically I'm unlikely to have pieces of useful information ahead of us knowing we'll actually need it."
"I see." The Rider sounded disappointed, but it didn't dampen her forward drive. "But you can still find any mundane information?"
"Sort of, since the further anything gets from Heroic Spirits-slash-Servants the worse the results are. And of course questions regarding -modern- mundane stuff behaves even worse."
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Notes:
For those interested in context-tracking, while Fate Grand Order started in Japan mid-2015, and the main NA server mid-2017, in Grand Aria it's mid-2019. Chaldea is located in Germany, in some (undisclosed) mountainous area within the Einzbern-owned lands - the main land route to it goes through the Einzbern Estate which was slated to act as an initial defensive bastion. It was not dug out using large tunneling machines (though they got some help with planning from companies) but "by hand" essentially using human-scale equipment and a lot of magecraft (since pretty much any homunculus from their group has some ability to handle runes for example).
This was all mentioned in various parts, but the time is especially important here, mostly because unlike standard FGO, you have the likes of Shirou and Sakura having a family and the (new) Einzbern being established. Also, the current population (excluding Servants) is 68 humans, 781 homunculi, 43 cats, 1 Fou and some combination of chickens and a few goats. Chaldea doesn't have any Crest Worms around, except the ones with the purple-haired Matou-associated homunculi and Matthew.
Though there's a lot more of them in Germany than Japan, the Fuyuki area (before shifts to Chaldea) was where the most important work was done because it was simply physically further away from the Clock Tower. Initially it also had the benefit of the Fuyuki leylines, but this wasn't so major after the development of Blade Generators.