(Chaldea Cafeteria)

"Hmm, you're already here?" Shirou was surprised to see Gudao eating. Of course, not regarding the location but the timing.

"No, we're right on schedule," the Master replied. "Unless the pirates and Chloe are secretly more efficient at gathering Forbidden Pages for some reason."

"Anne and Mary? I'd make a joke about pirates looting forbidden things, but those Pages are never anything special. They're just tagged as forbidden for some insane reason. Hmm, I wonder if some of these materials are actually conventionally impossible outside of Singularities and their like," the Alter-Ego mused.

"Them and Blackbeard makes two Servants. Oh, and that look -"

"Yeah, I believe one of da Vinci's assistants called it 'very OG', thanks." Shirou waved an arm for emphasis. While he had been fortunate enough to, when alive anyway, never see Sakura in the form they had been initially summoned in, in the decade since he had last worn this particular uniform, the man had been very accustomed to the style of suit from his father's preferred tailor. However, due to being a single Spirit Origin, it probably wasn't feasible to change separately.

That did remind him, though - while Chloe had been rather taken aback upon her first encounter with the summoned Sakura, for whatever reason none of the homunculi around except perhaps the Masters seemed particularly disturbed by it. Perhaps because they tend to identify by energy signature?.

"Is everything alright with Sakura? I notice she isn't with you," Gudao remarked delicately. Well, while the first Ascension was usually done in a timely manner due to being relatively easy and a significant step-up from a Servant's initial summoned form, theirs had been delayed due to various concerns about what might result.

"As far as all the tests showed," Shirou answered vaguely at first before reconsidering. "You'll get all the results, but suffice to say we see better Spirit Origin stability. Oh, and more power. I'm just hopping in to pick up something for us, then we'll see."

He paused, wondering briefly if the homunculus was catching onto the subtext of that statement, before his initial question came back to mind. "Actually, speaking of tests, didn't someone get Summoned just a while ago? We were expecting to be interrupted by them coming in for the usual, but in the end ran through everything without seeing them."

"I wasn't in Chaldea," Gudao replied thoughtfully. "Well... since I know Gudako went out gathering, it was probably Sasaku."

"Sadly, though I look the part, I didn't conveniently get back my Master role," Shirou frowned. "So where's the Ruler? Thought she'd be more responsible than that."

"That would've been far too convenient indeed," the Master sighed. "Since Lainur's attack took out three of Chaldea's slated five Masters. Granted, with only eight operational Coffins we still couldn't properly Rayshift more than two plus six Servants. But we aren't running the system twenty-four seven either. I believe she's in her room."

"You say that, but we seem to be endlessly hoarding these materials... wait she what? Hold up, who was summoned, you know that right?"

"Gilgamesh. I believe you've met before."

Shirou met Gudao's bland gaze. "I'm not going to get involved in this."

Gudao simply raised an eyebrow and shrugged, indicating that Shirou had ended the dialogue, and probably some measure of skepticism. It was one of those odd mannerisms that tended to annoy him slightly.

l

(?'s Room)

"Oh no." Alarmed, the girl sat up abruptly; the smooth linen sheet that had been covering her form was helplessly dragged down by gravity, running down her chest like rain and pooling in her lap.

"What is it?" the man next to her grumbled with only a turn of the head in her direction.

"A storm is approaching."

"That tells me nothing," Gilgamesh grumbled as Sasaku hopped out of bed. "Is it important or not?"

"My late student is headed this way and seems to be rather irate. Given that they're the only Servants who don't live in this area, there must be something specific."

"That's an understatement," the boy retorted with a small amount of quiet alarm. A number of things had caught him off guard so far, but this one is an actual threat.

"Not really," she replied. "I don't think anyone but Shirou knows what her deal is, but it's even messier for their summoned version."

"Oh yeah, about that... it seems things went a bit differently for yours than the `average' - better, that is. Still though, messier or not, her simply being summoned means the situation is 'actually safe' as opposed to 'a bit safer'."

"So you're also familiar with the details of branching phenomenon? Part of one of your Noble Phantasms?"

"Not that, I got a briefing before coming back down. I definitely don't know the future, if you're wondering."

"In that case, you might as well get down to da Vinci's for the standard intro. I'll chat with Sakura; ah conveniently it seems she's left Shirou behind."

"That's not a good thing," Gilgamesh frowned.

"It is," Sasaku insisted. "Anyway, let's get going."

(A few moments later)

A couple of Chaldea's Servants looked quizzically as Sakura made her way down the main thoroughfare toward their residences; they knew full well that she didn't actually live there.

As the Alter Ego reached the turn into the corridor of apartments, she was abruptly stopped by a girl's head poking around the corner to check for incoming traffic, followed by Chaldea's newest summon boldly stepping out past her as though he didn't care who might be in the way.

"Hey Sakura, what's up?" the Ruler asked casually, belying the caution with which she met the woman's inky black eyes. "Visiting someone?"

"Sure," Sakura replied flatly, barely shifting her gaze towards Gilgamesh. "You."

"Hmm, I wasn't expecting that." Letting go of Gilgamesh's hand, Sasaku turned slightly as though to return the way she had come. "Conveniently, my place is nearby."

"Has da Vinci checked you in yet?" Sakura asked the Archer, who simply shrugged. "I was on my way there."

"You're late."

"There was a variance," Sasaku corrected her late student with faint amusement. "I have time, let's chat."

"Does he know the way to da Vinci's?"

"You can just call me Gil, you know?" Gilgamesh stepped in. "It isn't even the first time we've met either."

"It is for some of me," Sakura remarked with an air of dismissal. Refusing to take the bait, Gilgamesh turned to head down the opposite side of the main passageway.

"Um, that way's an unfinished part of Chaldea," Sasaku said quietly.

"Right." Keeping any worries close to his chest, the Archer went around Sakura, leaving the way she had come.

"Hmm," Sasaku smiled slightly at his back while motioning with her head. "Come on, let's not block the way."

Ruby idly and quietly flapped about behind its contractor while she sat down at her room's low table. "Well, you're here to ask about Gil, so ask."

"I'd say," Sakura commented while sitting down opposite the Ruler. "What's his deal anyway, not as though he's been busy making friends since being summoned here?"

"Well basically he's looking for an alternative to the hazy existence on the Throne. You see, the issue with that is..."

Sakura, about to interrupt the tangent, paused upon spotting Ruby pulling out a syringe filled with gleaming green droplets suspended in a clear cream-colored solution. "Wait a moment, what are you -?"

Blinking in surprise at her counterpart's abrupt change in expression, Sasaku reached up over her shoulder and grabbed Ruby just as the wand jabbed the needle into her neck; it wasted no time administering the dose before being casually thrown across the room to bounce off a flower component of the ward on the wall.

"What did you do," the Ruler frowned, rubbing a fingertip over the fine hole that had already regenerated.

"It's just a standard high-grade truth serum," Ruby commented while floating near the ceiling to one side. "And a special additive that removes inhibitions."

"You could've just tried absinthe," Sasaku grumbled. "Oh, if you're thinking it would be hilarious to record this, Gill will break you, so you know."

"I'm just doing what I can for the peace of Chaldea," the wand responded gibly. "Speaking of which, I'm going to 'peace out' as they say."

"Well now that the troublemaker has escaped the scene," the magical girl raised an eyebrow as her freewheeling Skill disappeared, "You might as well ask whatever's on your mind. I won't mind."

"Why didn't you tell us about it?"

"Which 'us' though," Sasaku corrected her. "The Masters know about it, doubtless they thought it a personal matter and didn't generally speak about it."

"You know I'm not referring to a reporting chain," Sakura frowned. "Um, you know that, right?"

"Ah sorry," the Ruler apologized sincerely, "You know I believe that good processes exist for good reasons. But it wasn't really official until recently, so there was nothing to announce."

The Alter-Ego paused for a moment, furrowing her brow in a mixture of confusion and frustration. "That's what I'm talking about though, I mean he just showed up and-"

"Oh. Oh ! So that was it," Sasaku exclaimed in surprise. "That was all on my initiative though, I mean Gil clearly literally couldn't have set up anything here."

"But... huh? But didn't you tell Illya not to summon him or something like that? Wait-"

"Nah, I remember what I told her and that it was only I would be able to summon him. Which as you know, I did. That should already tell you where I stand in all this since I could have clearly just not done any summoning to avoid it. Things went very differently from my expectations at the end of the previous War, but in any case, the current way Chaldea is set up won't allow him to just hijack it."

"So that was your main worry."

"Ah well, he's quite cute and fundamentally different from the baseline version of the King of Heroes, but it's a moronic plan to let him have the chance to grab it all and only then find out if I had pegged him correctly or not. Also, by now I've had a lot of time to do some background research and what-not. By the way, I'm now able to actually talk about him with some other mes in Chaldeas and yeah, that confirms it."

"I see, it seems I got worked up over a misunderstanding..."

"Hmm, I suppose it would make sense for me to be a bit proactive about this," Sasaku mused to herself. "Though I didn't want to run all around Chaldea right now," she sighed.

"Huh?"

"Oh. Well don't worry about it, since it doesn't matter now."

(In the Mages' Quarters)

What was that all about, really? Sakura asked herself while returning to her place, almost bumping into a homunculus who was apparently leaving. "Oh hey, Exel. Fancy meeting you here."

Exel blinked in surprise, her ruby-red eyes apparently not having noticed the Servant in front of her, or her energy signature at that. "Hi. Actually I'm moving in here."

"Now that's unexpected," the human replied, her previous thoughts derailed by this small mystery. "What's up?"

"Ah well the Masters insisted, so Doru and I had to give in," Exel shrugged as though it was self-explanatory. "It's unlikely Chaldea will have a sudden influx of non-Servants so yeah."

"I see." Sakura didn't really understand some of the details of homunculus culture, even though she would have been there from before it actually `started'.

l

"Ruby, where are you?" Sasaku asked after she was alone in her room. "There you are. Thank you."

"What's this about?" the wand replied a little sulkily.

"You helped inject some credibility into the conversation, didn't you?" the Ruler chuckled. "It would have been harder to convince Sakura without your intervention. Especially since I couldn't ask Kiyohime for help on such a subject."

"Wait a moment," Ruby realized there was some subtext to its contractor's gratitude. "You mean that-"

Still smiling, Sasaku expended some of her magical energy to remove the effects of Ruby's surprise medication. "Don't worry, it's less of a 'just as planned !' thing as I guessed something would happen based on talking with Tamamo Cat."

"I can't help but notice you ended the effect before saying that," Ruby pointed out, somewhat upset.

"Yeah well your extra bonus feature would have probably led me to be very mean to you, and you don't deserve that. This time."

"... this is exactly why your Magical Girl class level is so low," the wand grumbled.

"Honestly, I thought we were using the multiclass archetype system, since Servants like Elizabeth don't divide their levels between their Lancer and Caster classes."

"That may be so, but then it's an issue of not meeting feat pre-requisites."

"Aww, and I try to be a good magical girl too," Sasaku frowned.

"Sometimes I wish it was possible to tag in another Kaleidostick to deal with you," Ruby sighed. "Oh well, we all have impossible wishes."

"Don't magical girls do impossible things all the time? With the power of friend points and the like."

"Sadly you're a terrible magical girl. I know, it hurts me too."

"Pity. I wouldn't mind something like a Raging Heart myself."

"You hardly seem to need something like that one... and no one will understand that reference."

"Oh well, it would've been too convenient to power you up with Chaldea-standard mana prisms."

l

(Training Grounds)

"Here." Gudako handed da Vinci a heavy-framed revolver. The Rider ran her eyes across the weapon's dark blue surfaces, instantly noting the copper inlay decoration that had developed an even green patina of vines and flowers leading up to a circle of thorns in gold near the muzzle.

"Where's the cylinder release?" she asked after some examination of the controls.

"Fixed cylinder, you use a loading gate," Gudako explained. "These are all copies of a gun the Einzbern had around. It's one of those things that became a dead-end after we started copying semiautomatic rifles."

"What's with all the runes on it though?" Chloe wondered aloud. "Not that I recognize all of them, but it's quite a lot of work for a single weapon that's never been used."

"Oh what? I've shot it plenty of times, and it's been in regular circulation for the last couple years. Though I doubt anyone was issued it for standard practice sessions, it would have been maintained and shot on a schedule. But this and Gudao's are the last two made I think, you could say it's the culmination of a lot of research and work to assemble."

"What did they make after that?" da Vinci inquired naturally enough.

"Well the gunsmiths just continued with rifle work and the usual maintenance. The Mystic Code experts went on to make things like the assembly of ones we use, or things like the clothes the Four Houses use."

"Clothes?" Chloe frowned. "You can make Mystic Codes out of fabric?"

"Not exactly, but these things can host runes written in something analogous to invisible ink. At the cost of being essentially ablative in nature the protection can be extended somewhat. Like if you think about a school uniform, it has no helmet, right? The amount of magical energy that can actually be stored is very small though."

"What about something like jewelry?"

"Obviously those are the opposite; very easy, since gems are the basic building block for Gem Magecraft. You could also make something like a brigandine with many flat plates of gems which can give you a whole wearable arsenal of sorts, in theory anyway."

"You never tried?" da Vinci frowned.

"It's too inefficient. We may never run out of magical energy, but we only have so much at a time. Not only are defenses most likely to go onto people who will be trying to not use them in the tactical sense, we heavily prioritize actual development since that brings, well development."

"This sounds like that old `guns and butter' story."

"Yes, but no. We're busy building farms and power plants which can be wrangled into more of everything. You might want to refer to work on capital accumulation and technological advancements."

"Um... right."

l

Notes:

Of course the other three slated Masters were Shirou, Sakura and Rin. There's no "Team A" etc since the history of this doesn't have that.

If you're wondering what that `variance' thing they mentioned was, look up 'osha variance'.

For the curious the reason why they even bothered trying to place runes on cloth in the first place is exactly because of things like uniforms (for Iri and Matthew). Obviously in many other cases you could literally carry a pocket of loose gems if you had to.