(Training Grounds)
"You know, something's been on my mind," Shirou commented to his Saber sparring partner after they had finished for the day, yielding the space to Blackbeard and Chloe who were about to have a quickdraw shooting match; of course Chloe was using copies of the other Archer's own weapons.
"You'd best explain since I can't read it," Kojirou picked up his outer garment before donning it carefully to avoid creasing the mundane item which was hard to clean due to being impregnated with a variety of subtle magecrafts. He had others like it, made before and after it, but this one was special since it had been put together by his late wife and some of her associates in the traditional Japanese style, as opposed to his generally more modern world-appropriate clothes.
But of course, he wasn't one to not use a significant item, that would invalidate its purpose as an item. Perhaps it was not all that surprising that seeing his own blade not only copied but also constantly damaged in his own hands hardly fussed the swordsman.
"After I spent some time with my father's Lancer - uh, guess she's a Saber now - and Marie, I can't shake the suspicion that there's something quite wrong with the World System in general."
"Mhm." Kojirou raised an eyebrow but said nothing. However, it was unlikely that he had no thoughts on the matter considering the length of time and many interactions with Chaldea's second Saber, be it in the Training Grounds or drinking one another's style of spirits.
"Doesn't it seem that when people gain more enlightenment about the World, they always think more negatively about it?"
Ah. "Well, there's that, isn't it?" the older Servant replied, uncharacteristically non-noncommittally. "If you wanted to learn about the concepts leading to liberation from samsara you had best ask your friend from the Fuyuki temple."
"What? Issei?" Shirou pondered what Kojirou's appeal to non-expertise might mean. "But we already know that there exist eternal essences that cannot be destroyed. Wouldn't that be problematic?"
"It would be if that was your take on it," the other man pointed out. "Clearly it isn't theirs."
"What about you, that was within your worldview, yes?"
"Hmm, I honestly can't say. I'm certainly not the human who died, nor am I simply a standard copy of a Heroic Spirit that exists on the Throne."
"... I meant right now." Shirou blinked. "And you knew that."
"Ah well, properly speaking as ones without Heroic Spirit counterparts, we actually can still go the way of humans if we are un-summoned or otherwise killed. Arguably, the Emiya Shirou I knew from the previous Grail War isn't you." Kojirou eyed the ring on Shirou's left hand; he had of course seen it many times before and after the other had died, but in the times he had seen her the new Sakura wasn't wearing its counterpart.
"I suppose you're saying the real question is if it matters to each one of us, personally." As the pair stepped out into the corridor, they caught sight of Fou apparently teaching one of the younger cats a lesson in respecting the older beasts of Chaldea. Most likely, the kitten was in the litter that had been born just before the Incineration led to its unsuspecting mother and siblings being trapped in Chaldea rather than being able to return to their natural outside habitat.
"I can't help but wonder what sort of Phantasmal Beast Fou is." Shirou was immediately distracted by the two animals. The estates of the Four Houses were frequented, if not actually patrolled by, any number of the usual unexceptional domestic cat.
"Always thought he was some sort of dog," Kojirou shrugged.
Turning around after hearing this comment, Fou pawed the ground for a moment before uttering, "Fou-" in a disappointed tone.
"Well I didn't mean it in a negative way," the Saber replied immediately. "But even the biggest dogs seem immediately aware that you're above them." The two of them watched as the kitten playfully swiped at Fou's fluffy tail and was whapped gently on the head.
"I wonder if you could tell us about that Reverse Side, it's where most magi think Phantasmals exist nowadays," Shirou mused. The kitten ran off down the corridor pursuing whatever had taken over its mind at the moment. After a moment, Fou left in the opposite direction.
"What were we talking about again? Oh right, what did you think about Artoria's two-sword style?"
Kojirou shook his head, though in amusement rather than disappointment. "Compared to Chloe, Artoria is obviously better off picking one blade at a time and using it. And I must say since Merlin's little event concluded, Excalibur is definitely the all-round better of the two. Pity about the matching sheath though, Georgios said it would have been many times more useful."
"... ah yes, Avalon eh." Frowning as he remembered that particular Noble Phantasm, Shirou caught himself. "Well I guess the 'fairies' have it back now. I did apologize to Artoria for losing it before she was summoned to Chaldea by, uh, having it on me when I died."
"How did she take it?"
"Oh, said it wasn't hers to begin with. Which is I guess true from some points of view but there's nothing to be done about it now."
"Not like we could have really done anything with it, not even tried to store it or the like," Kojirou recalled. "It's the original from here, so why would it start breaking up when we took it out?"
"Hm. Suppose we'll never know, since it was so inscrutable when we tried to research it."
"Speaking of which, I take it you're no longer pulling double shifts on X's spacecraft?" The Saber led the way towards the cafeteria, since it seemed that neither of them were on a tight schedule for the day.
"Basically. Unless she gets back to us in a week or so the Masters are just going to disassemble it. Of course da Vinci will be taking the lead on this and Georgios will be around to handle documentation."
"Mhm." Kojirou let a few seconds pass before continuing with, "I suppose that there was no further information about that... thing they detected earlier?"
"No." It could simply have been a supremely rare sensor anomaly...
Investigations showed that Gudao and his team were logged as being recalled before the alarming energy signature was picked up on Chaldea's sensors, so it probably did not cause the Free Quest to collapse ahead of time. However, the news about Ultra Heroine Z being able to track X to a Free Quest strongly suggested that the Mastermind was not just passively seeding Singularities and hoping that Chaldea would burn out on its own.
(Back in the Training Grounds)
*whoosh* *whap*
Elizabeth and Kiyohime were engaging in a bit of dragon's breath practice, much to the excitement of a nearby Nobunaga who was excitedly talking about flamethrowers with da Vinci while the latter was observing carefully.
"Even though I understand that it's more of a 'magical energy thing' rather than only literally fire, I still don't understand why Elizabeth's breath weapon is sonic," the Rider commented to herself while taking notes.
"Don't humans now have sonic weaponry? I heard they were particularly effective against tiberium or something like that. Alien lifeforms, at least."
"Thankfully that is only fictional here. Though I guess the actual systems were tested for their less lethal attributes. Which a Servant's breath weapon is most certainly not. It's... probably about the whole idol gig in the end, huh?"
"Speaking of idol gigs," Elizabeth immediately caught onto the magical word. "It seems that Magi-Mari went on an abrupt hiatus. Word is they got into some sort of branding dispute."
"Magi-Mari, huh?" da Vinci might have looked like the target audience but, no, she wasn't nearly as interested in modern culture as Blackbeard was - even if she understood that was it a critical shaping component of the Human Order, there was not the same level of personal indulgence that the grizzly hedonistic pirate had. "She, uh, is the one who plays up a magical girl theme while performing sometimes, right?"
"One moment." Kiyohime stopped, perhaps feeling bored or rather annoyed that the Masters were not around as Martha had said on arriving to bring her over. "Magi-Mari is a magical girl."
"Wait, what?"
"... you must be rather out of touch with the Servant side of things," Elizabeth eagerly explained about her idol-inspirational figure. "Magi-Mari doesn't perform on human networks, she's on the Heroic Spirit social media platforms. How else would I have been able to attend her concerts? You must have seen her posts on FateBook or TMitter, right?"
"I can't say I really engage with those... does Chaldea even get a connection to something like that?"
"... wahaha, and that wraps up today's Chaldean Mysteries !"
"No, Nobunaga, this is actually kind of a big deal isn't it?! We've been working on trying to get reliable communications with anyone else and there's just people here that can log onto FateBook and post at other Heroic Spirits?"
"Oh, so you do know about FateBook," Elizabeth pointed out.
"Once you mentioned it, yes."
"Well for us it's more like being able to download random archived posts, really. Can't exactly post ourselves from Chaldea, and any chat rooms are very sporadic in who even is connected to them," Kiyohime explained before realizing what exactly the Rider was getting at.
"Ok. Maybe we should take a break for now and you show me this chat room you mentioned."
(In a Discordant Chat Server)
"I can't believe it, Magi-Mari on a sudden hiatus?! How am I going to live now?"
"Don't get your feathers in a fix, haven't you heard about Elizabeth's upcoming double?"
"Sorry, but I think the only people who want to listen to that dragon girl must already be living in hell or something."
"Hey, don't insult hell-dwellers!"
"Everyone's talking about the new break-in figure Nero Claudius, I tell you she's got some sweet collabs lined up."
"How would you know?"
"I happen to be working for on one of the concert setups. So much work..."
"That doesn't sound verifiable at all."
"It's all the same to me. Believe it or not, there's Masters pulling the strings on these Events so the production values are insane."
"What? Masters are getting involved? That's just absurd. Don't they have more pressing matters to handle nowadays?"
*User I has entered the chat*
"Guess who just got tickets to Magi-Mari's latest concert in the Shining Blue?!"
"... you got scammed."
"No way! Ok, I'll have to handle some justice, later."
*User I has left the chat*
*User X has entered the chat*
"Hello, we've received reports that there have been scammers selling fake Magi-Mari concert tickets. Also Saber badges. If you have any information on either please call the Galactic Police anonymous tips hotline at..."
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(Cafeteria)
"It has to do with the time rather than place, doesn't it?" Blackbeard concluded while drinking with Shirou, Kojirou and da Vinci.
"But the Throne of Heroes exists across all times?" Shirou questioned the pirate gentleman's hypothesis in turn.
"Well, if we extend what Kiyohime and others have said," he replied shrewdly, "It isn't as though Heroic Spirits are simply frozen on the throne. Even if it doesn't mesh neatly with ours, there's some flow of time, or let's say sequence of events, that goes on."
"The only people who testify to those goings-on are really unreliable though," Kojirou pointed out. "Not that Kiyohime lies, obviously, but you know she sees and speaks though Madness Enhancement."
"That's probably the point, considering how our more systematic attempts at communication have gone," Blackbeard shrugged. "It must be something to do with Mystery or whatnot. What's odder is that we must somehow be sitting in a similar position outside the usual sequences of cause and effect, given that the history of the Four Houses, let alone Chaldea, beforehand doesn't actually exist."
"Ah, you've actually got it right, I think." Shirou realized. "We can communicate with other Chaldeas, restricted not by space obviously but event- or information-wise. It's almost like the speed of light, speed of causality thing, except that the World actually can process causality instantly."
"Yes, with the likes of Okita's (Reduced Earth) technique, a Servant can essentially start moving and then hit something at a distance before light can actually reach it.," Kojirou nodded. When he had managed the feat, it had sort of broken Tohsaka's sense of reality for a bit. As it turned out, the issue was not that science had developed to the point that it encroached on Mystery, but rather that there was not something like a science of Mystery. Or she had been muttering something that like that anyway, he didn't pay too much mind to things that didn't interest him.
"So the underlying rule is actually something resembling the Novikov self-consistency principle, or rather a parallel worlds generalization of that" da Vinci piped up.
"Yes, it applies to a greater unified System of branches," Blackbeard agreed. "For example Merlin couldn't have had us make our own set of presents to deliver before we delivered them, another Chaldea made the ones we gave out, and we made two sets: for the following two Chaldeas."
"Ah." Shirou raised an eyebrow as a revelation came to him. "So the reason we weren't deleted when our history was Incinerated might be because actually someone else restored our history. So the Singularities we have encountered weren't blocking our existence, but possibly another Chaldea's."
"... aren't some of Chaldeas' backers, like Heroic Spirit Chloe and Zelretch usually outside of standard branches?" da Vinci blinked. "I mean, by that logic, the original Chloe might have intervened once or even set up a Chaldea which could then start up the same trick Merlin did."
"There would have to be some starting point, yes." Shirou drew a circle intersecting a number of smaller lines with his finger. "Even with many branches, you can't have some sort of loop where each one of us was helped by another one. If you take the summation of the branches, there must still be consistency in terms of a greater sequence. Now, someone like Zelretch can act from outside to start the tree, so to speak."
"Or the Mastermind of the Incineration, since they didn't remove themselves. Either that or their home is still intact?" Kojirou, sounding bored, motioned for Blackbeard to replace the empty bottle of sake with something else. "But however if they're outside, how can we get to them?"
"We're outside too," Blackbeard corrected the Saber while producing some whiskey that happened to catch his fancy at that moment.
"Do you literally have all the best stuff in there?" da Vinci caught sight of the label and immediately began positioning her glass to be next after Kojirou finished pouring for himself, the Saber inhaling the alcohol's scent with an expression of concentration.
"This looks so illegal," Shirou smirked, remembering that Kojirou had made a similar remark in the previous War after pouring rice wine for Sasaku. Of course, as a Ruler now that Servant looked even younger.
"Don't I know it," the drink-procurer Blackbeard chuckled. "Well I am considered to be Evil. But I don't give drinks to Chloe, if you were about to accuse me of that."
"I thought these are mundane, they shouldn't have any effect on Servants like us?" da Vinci cheerfully enjoyed her first sip.
"If you wanted to actually get drunk, it would need to be some sort of appropriate Material brought back via Rayshift," Shirou clarified. "Obviously the Masters forbade doing that. Can't say I blame them."
"By the way, you're not a Master anymore?" da Vinci glanced at his hand, though obviously she had examined him during the routine initial post-summoning scans.
"Apparently Sakura and I got disqualified, or rather our current incarnations don't qualify," he shrugged. "It's ironic really, we decided to have those two take the first real, uh, combat Rayshift since it was both safer for them but also since... they had successors. A moot point now since 'outside' doesn't exist anymore."
"... and that meant you were available to be targeted instead of inside a sealed Coffin in a Vault?" Kojirou frowned.
"I was there," da Vinci jumped in at this point. "They insisted. It's their way, they're adults."
"Hah " Blackbeard chugged the last bit of whiskey and jammed the flask into his coat only to pull out a tall bottle of vodka. "If you were thinking that some sort of mighty god was punishing you for being cowardly, who got up and gave you immortality?"
"Lev Lainur, it would seem," the Alter-Ego replied soberly. "Granted he slipped up in not summoning Sakura into a class like Berserker. Or maybe he had concerns about what might happen if he actually succeeded with that."
"I can believe that second one," Kojirou muttered to himself before returning to a normal tone. "If you have Archer Class Skills, and Sakura has Caster Class Skills, does your Spirit Origin have all of them somehow?"
"Technically it does," da Vinci volunteered the information. "But they can only be used by the appropriate... emanation?"
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(Sasaku's Room)
"You know, I've been wondering but what's up with this room?" Sakura commented to Matthew while looking around the place that her children had been bunked up in since Shirou and she had been summoned. It was laughably obvious that the Masters were worried about them, well herself specifically, being around the two unsupervised. But after the first time that she had gone for Matthew's scheduled lesson and found that not even the room's designated occupant Ruler was in evidence, it seemed those concerns were firmly in the past.
"The etchings?" the boy asked while switching his attention from the cat with him to the almost mural-like surface of the nearest wall. Appearing indeed as something fine etched, the practically fractal design spread up the ceiling and down across the floor, though they were dim and hardly visible without close examination. However the bi-colored green and pink elements sometimes clashed and sometimes cooperated with one another, in no obvious pattern that lent itself to the eye.
"No, they're something like a ward or magic circle - formations where the form is critical to the function. But what that function is..." the Caster-half of their Alter-Ego Spirit Origin eyed what looked like a leaf in green being pierced by thorns in pink with some unease. There were many other similar abstract depictions of conflict, though there didn't seem to be any humanoids or even animals in evidence. Over there some wheat was being choked by proliferating darnel weeds, and in a corner a sapling was being strangled by a parasitic vine.
Sakura wasn't quite sure how she was extracting the themes of the scene in front of her, but there was clearly something else to it, a 'more' that was not revealing itself. Without conscious thought, she extended a finger to the first petal that, falling from a ruined flower, fell into her line of sight. A slight gently darkening mist slowly extended from a fingertop, reaching out to the drawn flora as though attracted despite itself.
"Uh, mom..." Iri said nervously, heard softly as though the girl was at some distance.
"Hmm yes, if you wanted to know, you could have just asked?"
*! !* Sakura practically jumped backwards away from the suddenly-seen schoolgirl standing at the door, wand in hand. Unfortunately this caused her heel to slam into the side of the room's cat who had been eagerly darting towards the open door, sending the now-hissing animal flying backwards several human paces before stopping itself.
Closing the door neatly with a thought, the returning Ruler let go of Ruby's handle in order to wave over the annoyed feline. Indeed, if it had been earlier thinking of leaving, not that anyone present could ascertain such an intention, it clearly changed its mind at the prospect of... lying on top of Sasaku's feet, much to Iri's amusement. "I know the real question is less of if I would tell you, but more of would you actually trust the answer." She reached out to a portion where a sun and moon faced off against a phalanx of stars, and the lot began to shimmer with magical energy and evolve visibly.
"You see, it's not possible to hide away and use Ruby's magecraft; specifically one of the conditions is there have to be 'friends' around," the formation's crafter explained as though it was a fairly obvious thing widely known. Perhaps it was, given the general depiction of magical girls in media.
"You're going to run out of room," Sakura replied dryly with the first thing that came to mind.
"Huh? Oh nah, what you can see is only a projection of the accident, not the substance of the formation. It would be not unlike me handing you a single low-resolution picture of a city and expecting you to understand the whole collective from that. The actual item is etched into the space itself, which you should be familiar with from my (Realm Construction), though I believe you currently have the more standard Casters' (Territory Creation)."
"But you never answered what it is."
"Iri, Matthew? I know I never said you couldn't, but anyway now please do explain it if you remember."
After a moment, Iri cleared her throat nervously as though reciting something a particularly complicated formula, "Isn't it the 'etched magic circuit'-based pseudo neural network extension magecraft?"
"Oh !" Sasaku looked impressed for a moment before pausing. "But what does that mean? Ah. Well that's ok." She reached up to poke an idly floating Ruby. "Explain it."
"What, it's like when you need to rent some processor cycles, right?" the Kaleidostick replied lazily.
"That's kind of right," its master shrugged. Initially it didn't seem like she was about to elaborate, but then she changed her mind and continued, "Well for this type of set up, processing and storing are intrinsically linked. Anyway, I can't explain what any arbitrary section actually does, if that is even a meaningful concept, since these things are rather opaque even to the constructor. I mean, they're emergent structures that are best described by complexity theory in the first place."
"So you can use both magecrafts now, I take it?" Sakura asked once she could get a word in.
"Technically they're both in my Spirit Origin, but I can only access any one type in its associated state," the magical girl explained slowly, gesturing towards her wand. "When I switch over, it actually becomes hard to even understand what I was doing just before."
"Eh, but in that case..." the Caster looked askance at what was in front, no all around her. "But these are not just parts jigsawed together."
"They actually are in the process of construction, but like I said actual final properties are emergent," Sasaku shrugged. "Yes, it's like playing chess-by-mail with yourself, not easy even when you are sending those letters at the speed of a Servant's thought."
"Since it's a magecraft, could you teach," Sakura looked over at Iri, "someone else how to become a magical girl?"
"Not without me being able to make a proper contract with them," Ruby answered immediately. "Which as you might have heard is a bit hard as I'm apparently just a Skill now. Hmph."
l
Notes:
For anyone who noticed, Matthew here first used 'etchings' not to describe the appearance - because he knew what they were - but as a technical term in the same way that Iri does later on. This one is though just Sasaku's terminology (already seen in AnotherAria before) as for her the exemplar action is 'etching' as opposed to say 'drawing', 'painting' or 'forming' a magic circle.
Would Sakura know what that was? Once Iri said it in her answer, yep.