011 - A trick of the mirror

Avatar of the Sky

After taking down Archer and fending off Assassin's ambush, there wasn't much that could stop the interlopers anymore. They made their way towards the Greater Grail with purposeful strides, protecting the Chaldeans from the cursed skeletons and their intended attrition with insulting ease.

Had the Avatar of the Sky been in full use of their faculties, they would've noted something amiss. The whole Singularity is naught but a cursed ruin, but it was supposed to serve a function, to play a role. Or maybe to be the stage upon which certain roles are played. The interlopers made a mockery of it all. There's no struggle, no greater purpose to be found here. Just a highly-competent group of magi steamrolling trials not meant for them.

Had the Avatar of the Sky been allowed proper use of their own abilities, the hosts under their command would've rushed to the field. With the backing of a Holy Grail, their numbers would be enough to blot the sky, a howling swarm of death and decay, more than capable of putting up a fight, of being a credible threat where the cursed skeletons simply… weren't.

But the Avatar of the Sky can only listen and obey, their Spirit Origin mostly replaced by cursed mud barely capable of replicating the basic functionalities of the real thing. And thus they watch and wait for their moment, to play their own role and nothing else, as instructed.

This is the sad truth of a Shadow Servant, there's very little Servant remaining in them. The process of Blackening taken so far, replacing so much of their original nature, that what remains is little more than a puppet, bearing just enough pieces of the original to blindly mimic a pale shadow of their former might.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen, for the Avatar of the Sky lacks even the basic sense of self required to begrudge their own state. At most, a random flash of the original's behavior might occasionally shine through without rhyme or reason, to better make a mockery of what they were supposed to be.

The interlopers approach the ambush point and the mud puppet tenses up. Rider and Assassin are already in position and their trump card is ready to be deployed. Their goal isn't to eliminate the threat here, but to ensure only the Chaldeans enter the cavern hosting the Greater Grail. If the mud puppet retained enough of the original's mind for it, they would question the validity of this strategy, or the overall sanity of their commander.

But they cannot question, so they simply obey.

Casting their gaze towards the ruins of a once-magnificent mansion on the city outskirts, they start poking at the rabid beast prowling its derelict halls.

Olga Marie Animusphere

As the Lady Director of Finis Chaldea, Olga has interacted with a lot of important individuals. Clock Tower officials she had to schmooze are a given, of course, but she's also had to wraggle talented colleagues and subordinates within her own organization. Oftentimes more talented than herself.

As a rule of thumb… Talented people don't have small egos, ensuring they remain on track instead of wandering off to pursue their own interests has been one of the most infuriating parts of her job for the last three years. Authority isn't enough to curb these people's tendency to ignore the team's needs to do their own thing, you need to display an ego even bigger than theirs and an aggressive attitude that will cow them into submission.

Of course, Olga isn't particularly enthused about having to act like she deserves her position, but better act like a hypocrite than watch the whole organization collapse around her.

Anyway, the point is that she's grown used to acting in a certain way, she's also grown used to her subordinates' reactions to said acting to follow certain, predictable patterns. When she read the riot act on Fujimaru, she had expected the other girl to answer in a number of ways. People with big egos share certain behaviors when pressed, if only because there aren't that many ways to react to a superior chewing on you without backing down.

… She should've remembered that Fujimaru is an infuriatingly nice and helpful person.

"Ah… you're right, Director." She answers easily, looking sheepish and honestly embarrassed about her own performance. "I guess I just got carried away, sorry about that."

Considering Olga had been expecting some form of self-righteousness, justification or redirection and subconsciously preparing herself to push forward and verbally bulldoze over all attempts to avoid admitting fault, ruthlessly bringing up the heat until it stewed her -assumedly- unruly subordinate until she cracked, well…

These words left her feeling uncomfortably out of balance.

"Well… yes." She coughs nervously, crossing her arms and looking away with a huff. "See that it doesn't happen again."

It wasn't her brightest moment, but it would've worked well enough if not for that brat Einzbern choosing that precise moment to let out a very importunate giggle that makes Olga feel like her cheeks have caught fire. She knows the giggle wasn't simply poor timing on Einzbern's side. There's no way to misunderstand the amusement in these red eyes or the smirk on her pale face.

The brat is laughing at her. The nerve! Why, she should—

"As an apology…" Hak– Fujimaru speaks up, still looking appropriately contrite even as she interrupts Olga's (internal fuming) considerations. "There's something I'd like you to have."

Well, now she's starting to feel bad. Overexerting herself or not, Fujimaru did a good job deserving of acknowledgement and congratulations. Half the reason Olga came down on her as hard as she did is because she's used to dealing with uncompromising, pompous, self-entitled jackasses who don't know when to cut their losses and admit fault.

Had she known she was going to get this reaction, Olga would've taken a very different approach to disciplining her subordinate.

"T-that won't be necessary." She tries to back down without losing too much face in the process. "Just taking your job and safety seriously from now on will more than suffice as an apology!"

"But I insist!" Fujimaru protests earnestly, reaching with both arms to clasp Olga's hands with her own in a very inappropriate breach of protocol. "If not as an apology… Would you accept it for my peace of mind, at least?"

"V-very well, I suppose I could make an exception, since you feel so strongly about it." Olga looks away, feeling her cheeks grow to greater and until now undiscovered levels of warmth. Now it looks like she's doing Fujimaru a favor just by accepting a gift! Where did things go so wrong!? "What did you have in mind, Fujimaru?"

"Oh, you're going to love this!" The girl exclaimed excitedly, (unfortunately) finally releasing Olga's hands. "Watch and learn."

More than the words, it's the sudden feeling of flowing prana that warns Olga of what's going on.

"An odd choice of words for a trigger." She observes with an arched eyebrow. "A bit presumptuous, too."

"It's only by watching and learning that humanity grows." Fujimaru denies, tilting her head in confusion. "I don't see how that's presumptuous."

"Oh, you meant–! Of course you did…" Stupid Fujimaru and her stupid earnestness, of course she wasn't trying to browbeat her own superiority into the world around her, that's what a normal, proper magus would do. "Fujimaru, you are way too nice for your own good."

"Nonsense, one can never be too nice." She protests lightly. "Besides, I'm not that nice."

"You wouldn't last an hour in the Clock Tower." Olga says, shaking her head with wry amusement.

"Then it's fortunate I'm not a magus!" Fujumaru replies with shameless cheer before raising a hand in front of Olga. "Anyway… Here."

The hand opens, revealing a delicate silver ring with a pair of beautiful feathered wings on the head and a filigree of inscriptions along the shank and shoulders.

"When did you–?" Olga starts asking, only for what she's seeing to properly register on her mind, causing a more pressing question to pop on her lips. "A– A ring? You're giving me a ring?"

"Yes?"

"You are a threat to any pure maiden's heart rate." Olga mutters to herself, shaking her head to try and get her brain back into working order. "Why a ring? No, why this ring? I doubt this is mere jewelry?"

"I'm not sure I can make mere jewelry with my magecraft, actually." Fujimaru muses on some rather worrisome words with a distracted tone. "But no, the [Angel Ring] is supposed to keep the wearer safe, like a personal guardian angel."

"Why not keep to yourself if it's so good?" Olga questions, eyes narrowing with suspicion as she examines the ring closely. "What did I just say about overexerting?"

It feels… similar to the perfume bottle from before, though not exactly the same. Life-aligned, in the positive sense. It baffles the mind that someone so well-suited for weapons and combat as Fujimaru would also have an affinity for revitalizing charms like this. Then again, all the non-weapons Olga has seen so far are pretty similar to each other so maybe there's a correlation there?

"A single projection will not overextend me, not unless I try to make something really ridiculous. Like True Longinus, or a black hole." Fujimaru rolls her eyes at Olga's questioning, casually making another comment with extremely worrisome implications. "Anyway, everyone else here has a Servant of her own, or they are Servants. So I want to make sure the Lady Director is safe."

"Still…" Olga bites her lip indecisively. Having someone so blatantly worry about her safety is a nice change and this is a rather beautiful ring… "You're the one who will be fighting, you should worry for your own safety first."

"I do worry for my safety. But Lady Director's words about taking safety seriously don't apply to me alone." Fujimaru uses Olga's own words against her, making an uncomfortable amount of sense. As expected, really. They are Olga's words, after all. "Chaldea would end up in shambles if something happened to you! Doctor Roman would be in charge and everything."

"I'll only begrudgingly accept because that last argument holds far too much weight." Olga finally acquiesced, feeling a shiver running down her spine at the mental image of everything she's worked for during the last three years collapsing over the head of a certain fool while he covers his head and cries for the help of that Magimari of his without actually doing anything to try and solve the problem. Besides, projections like this one aren't meant to last long, so it's not like she's making a life-long commitment here in the first place. "Very well, Fujimaru. I'll wear your ring."

She tries not to blush again at the pointlessly bright smile on Fujimaru's face and does a passable job at it, even as she slips the gifted piece of jewelry into her ring finger and all sorts of (sweet) pervasive and (intriguing) unwelcome thoughts come to mind on their own accord.

(No, she's not thinking about ringing bells and white dresses! Shut up! No, you shut up!)

"▂▂▃▃▄▄▅▅!"

Suddenly, everyone goes quiet and very still. It's enough for even Olga, distracted as she is by intrusive thoughts which have no place in the field, to immediately notice something amiss. The relatively relaxed atmosphere of the group as they made their way to their destination is nowhere to be found all of a sudden.

What's more, she could've sworn…

"▂▂▃▃▄▄▅▅!"

"What…" She trails off, feeling her lips strangely dry all of a sudden. After nervously running her tongue over them, she tries again. "What's that sound?""

"▂▂▃▃▄▄▅▅!"

Matou and Tohsaka-sen... -san trade a nervous glance.

"They didn't." Tohsaka-san deadpans, a hint of incredulity in her voice. "Nobody's that dumb, right?"

"Never overestimate the intelligence of your enemies, Nee-san." Matou answers with some resignation. "It certainly looks like they did."

"And we were so close to the Greater Grail… They've timed this well." Tohsaka-san groans in dismay, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Fuck."

"Fuck, yes!" A very different voice cries out in elation, utterly shattering the atmosphere. "I told you!"

"Illya?"

"I told you guys! We should've taken care of that before someone decided to use it against us!"

"That was just an excuse and you know it!" Tohsaka-san accuses hotly. "You only wanted to pick a fight with it!"

"Just because my motives were impure doesn't mean my reasoning was invalid!" The brat retorts gleefully, not seeming ashamed in the slightest about being called out on it. "And now I'm calling dibs! Berserker, this is our chance! Let's show that fake who the strongest in the world is!"