A GHOST IN A STRANGE LAND
CHAPTER 20
HISPANIA, AD 60
UNITED ROMAN EMPIRE CAPITAL
"Miserable, puling little godling."
In his quarters high atop the Imperial Palace of the United Roman Empire, Lev Lainur stalked from wall to wall, the air around his form shimmering with his rage. "A priceless, irreplaceable resource expended, and he can tell us little more than we already knew! Gods…in the end, little more than upjumped mortal filth!"
He stopped his pacing, coming to a halt in the center of the room, as voices began to echo in the depths of his mind.
"BROTHER. WHY DO YOU CONTINUE TO OBSESS OVER THIS? WE OBSERVED THIS 'KRATOS' AS HE BLUNDERED ABOUT THE SINGULARITY. HE IS NOTHING TO CONCERN YOURSELF WITH. HE IS BARELY BETTER THAN THE MORTAL TRASH HE DEFENDS." Zepar. Of course he would be the first to speak.
"AND EVEN IF HE WERE SOMETHING TO BE FEARED, WE ARE IMMORTAL. SHOULD WE FALL IN BATTLE, WE WILL BE BROUGHT BACK AGAIN, AND AGAIN, AS LONG AS OUR LORD COMMANDS IT OF US." Phenex. Ever the True Believer.
"AND WE HAVE SEEN WHAT THIS 'GOD' IS CAPABLE OF. EVEN IN THE UNLIKELY EVENT HE SHOULD MAKE IT PAST YOU, THAT WILL ONLY ADD TO OUR KNOWLEDGE OF HIS ABILITIES. AND WE WILL ADAPT, AND ADJUST, UNTIL THIS FOREIGN GOD IS GROUND TO DUST." Forneus. He could, as the humans say, hear the gears of his brother's mind turning as he schemed.
"Nothing to say, Amon?," he asked the air, his tone contemptuous, though truly, he was surprised the most opinionated of the 72 had not chimed in yet.
"I have nothing to say at this time. I continue to watch, and to see if this 'Chaldea' or their pet god will merit my interest require my attention." Was he less agitated, he might have noticed something off with Amon's tone and cadence - but as it currently stood, he was simply happy to not have to deal with Amon's mockery of his failures in Singularity F for once.
"It irks, still. A precious, unique resource, expended, and we have little to show for it. Losing the Singularity was well within the plan - we never saw fit to dispatch one our number to oversee the mad Caster's little farce, but to gain almost NOTHING from it…" He growled, some of his True Voice overlapping with his mewling human disguise. "It CONTINUES to gall me. To be thwarted twice by these Chaldean RATS….." Bad enough he'd failed to finally make that Animusphere girl pay for all the irritation she'd caused - but that he, a Demon God Pillar, had been forced to retreat by a mere god…..
"YOU SPEND TOO LONG IN THAT HUMAN FORM, BROTHER. I FEAR IT BEGINS TO CLOUD YOUR JUDGMENT." Bael.
"It is a necessary sacrifice - we still require the mortal peasants to fuel the United Roman Empire with their labor. Until we have burnt Rome to the ground, I must hide myself, lest we lose them." It was a weak excuse even to his ears, and he knew it.
"OR MAYBE YOU CLOAK YOUR POWER, CONCENTRATING IT, KNOWING THAT, ACCORDING TO ALL OUR PREDICTIONS, CHALDEA WILL DISCOVER YOUR SINGULARITY NEXT, BROTHER, AND YOU SEEK TO HAVE EVERY SCRAP OF POWER AT YOUR BECK AND CALL TO INCINERATE THE INSECT THAT DOMINATES YOUR THOUGHTS." Barbatos. Never one to mince words.
"I do NOT FEAR him! Not any HUMAN, and not any so-called GOD!" His hands smashed through the table in the center of the room, heedless of the noise it would cause. The servants knew better than to enter his chambers, ever.
He heaved breaths into his human lungs, hating the feel of the weak mortal flesh he was cloaked in. He would have closed his eyes, tried to force himself to calm down, but every time he did, he saw it, replaying across his mind's eyes.
That roaring, massive form, awash in red energy, bearing down on him.
Information. He was one of the Pillars that governed the Information Sector, and he didn't have enough damn INFORMATION! If he just knew more, he could KILL the irritant like swatting a fly…..
…..information. Collect information.
Within the inhuman recesses of Lev Lainur Flauros' mind, an idea began to form.
CHALDEA
"Look, I don't see what's so hard about this," complained the Avenger. "Despite what I said, I don't have any idea HOW I got to be here, or WHY I'm here! I'm as surprised as the rest of you. I was expecting to fade out like 'me' did and end up wherever I was headed next - the Throne, or maybe Hell. Then I found myself next to one of those 'Coffin' things - awesome name for 'em, by the way - heard you all talking, and realized I was still kicking."
She looked from disbelieving face to disbelieving face. "It's the damn truth! Those lines I fed you were because you only get one chance to make an entrance, so you have to look as badass as you can when you do!"
"I don't think she's lying," Da Vinci ignored the outraged face Avenger made. "Unless one of the Masters actively chooses to, we shouldn't be able to bring a Servant back with us on a return Rayshift. Cu Chulainn was probably some fluke that resulted from the combination of factors of Chaldea being held together with shoestring, bubble gum, and duct tape in the wake of Lev's sabotage, us deliberately pulling Kratos back as a plus-one from the janky initial Rayshift, and the fact that he was extra cargo, and contracted with Cu Chulainn meant he also instinctively pulled the Servant with him."
All eyes turned to the Caster, who had his feet up on the table again, and was leaning back in his chair. Feeling their eyes on him, he shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine. I certainly wasn't expecting to be here." Some part of him was glad Kiyohime wasn't around - she'd have burnt him alive for the blatant lie.
He knew DAMN well why he was here, and who was responsible for it - and why he was a stupid Caster. Damn meddler. HE wouldn't be getting any fine Irish whiskey - or shouldn't be, but that would require Cu himself to forgo the fine brewed spirits of his homeland. Not happening.
Curse his having to share a body with a freeloader.
"Look, I'm not saying I'm not happy to be here - there's every possibility that when I go, I'm going to somewhere very, very toasty. This place is a damn sight better than that. Much cooler than my likely final destination, if nothing else." She glanced around the conference room, taking it in again. "But if you're looking to blame someone for this, it ain't me!"
Medusa, from where she was standing by Kratos' side, was glaring a hole through the Servant (she'd refused a seat, and had never taken her eyes off the pale Jeanne). "You're hiding something, Avenger. You're not lying when you say you don't know why you're here…..but you're uncomfortable with those words. You know SOMETHING."
Avenger flushed, and almost seemed to deflate, shrinking in on herself. The brash confidence and arrogance she seemed to naturally project vanished, being replaced by….uncertainty?
It was a very, very strange look on her.
"Hand to the Bible - if a Bible wouldn't burn me - I truly, honestly, do NOT have clue freakin' ONE why I'm here." She said, her voice subdued. "But I have a suspicion. When I stabbed Charlie, he was already making to take my head. I only survived because the ceiling was falling, and the cross in the church got in the way, and took the blow for me."
Romani was white as a ghost. "You can't possibly be suggesting…"
"I don't KNOW, alright!," yelled Avenger. "My luck isn't good enough for something like that to save me. And God wouldn't do something like that to save something like me. 'Me', he would, in a heartbeat. But a sinner like yours truly?" She sighed. "But then, here I am, where you say I shouldn't be, and I have to ask myself, two coincidences in a row, all centered around 'me's' angry baby sister?"
She glared the man down. "The hell am I supposed to think?"
No one had anything to say to that.
"So then, what do we do with her?" asked Cu, still as nonchalant as ever. "We had to switch Medusa out to keep from blowing things when it was time for me to go in just a few hours ago. Can we handle another Servant haunting the halls of Chaldea?"
"THAT at least shouldn't be a problem, thanks to this shiny new Grail you brought home to Auntie," said Da Vinci, still toying with the Grail, which she had quickly liberated from Mash's possession. "This baby should give us enough juice to handle a few more Servants, both in Singularities and around Chaldea. No worries on that front, even if Kratos wasn't shouldering most of the load for all the non-me Servants."
"We could certainly use more help….," began Romani, tentatively.
"Much as I hate to agree, the Doctor is right," said Medusa, her tone begrudging. "But Avenger….would that it would have been ANYONE else from that Singularity."
"Oh, blow it out your ass you stupid snake," spat Avenger, rolling her eyes. "Whatever issues you have with me, I kept up my part of the bargain I made with you bunch in that cave. I kept my nose clear, I kicked ass, and I sang like a damn canary about my former minions. Even you have to admit I was useful."
"I admit that I wonder what you would look like encased in granite," replied Medusa, her tone glacial.
"Ladies…please!," Romani was up and out of his chair, hands vaguely waving about the air - much as he might have wanted to separate the two, his survival instincts were screaming 'Servants' and 'do NOT get in the middle of this if you want to live'.
Cu, on the other hand, was grinning like a fool.
"I think, of any of us, Kratos should be the one who decides. He is the one who would have to continue to Contract with Avenger, after all." Mash's soft voice broke the increasingly heated staredown between the two Servants, both of them starting as the girl spoke.
Medusa, for her part, flushed, and sheepishly bowed her head in apology as she turned to Kratos. "No, Mash is right. I…..apologize for letting my emotions get the better of me."
Avenger, for her part, merely shrugged, and rolled her hand in a gesture that, to the best of his knowledge, meant 'hurry it up'.
Kratos sighed, for a moment, missing the Valkyries of his Midgard - those few that had survived Ragnarök. They, bloodthirst aside (their glee at wishing to hear how Gna had met her end had been…jarring, from the warrior women who had, up to that point, been so stoic), at least understood discipline. Which was more than he could say to the Servant he still found himself bound to.
Jeanne's copy was irritating, abrasive, insolent, and reckless. Her thread still burned in his mind, constantly echoing with rage and anger that was all too familiar to the Spartan. He had hoped to be rid of her with the collapse of the French Singularity.
But, her words were correct - she HAD kept her side of their bargain. She had fought for France - despite her animus for the land - and had not raised her hand to any but their enemies.
He sighed, again. He anticipated many headaches in his future. He wondered if they brewed willowbark for headaches, as Faye did, still. "She may stay." Medusa's expression was resigned, but not surprised - she likely expected his answer.
Avenger, however, had not - her jaw had dropped in shock. "Wait, really?"
"Yes." His eyes narrowed as he turned the full force of his gaze on the Servant. "However, I expect better of you than you gave in our recent campaign. You lost control, acted foolishly, and endangered both your allies and our mission at times. I did not tolerate that from my son - and you, I care for less."
"Yeah, yeah, I get it. Hopefully shouldn't be an issue - I had history with damn near everyone we were fighting in France. It shouldn't be personal like that until we get to Lev and whomever else he's in cahoots with." She blew her bangs back with a huff of breath. "If you think I won't be able to keep my head when it comes to that, kick me back to here and let me ride the bench. I won't argue. After seeing you tear that gate off its damn hinges, I'd prefer to stay as close to your good side as I can."
Romani clapped his hands. "Then, unless there are any other objections?" He glanced about the room, eyes jumping from face to face, and receiving only shaken heads in response. "Then, welcome to Chaldea, Avenger." He frowned. "Would…..you like to come up with another name? Once, I thought seeing an Extra Class was a once in a lifetime thing - but after we encountered three in our first Singularity…..it's not outside the realm of possibility we might end up summoning another Avenger, and then things would get confusing."
"Wait, three?," asked Medusa. "The real Jeanne was a Ruler, and the copy here is an Avenger….was the third….?"
Da Vinci nodded. "Yes, Baldur. From the scans we got, he was apparently a Servant Class called an 'Alter Ego'. It seems to be what you get from a mashup of different parts - in this case, human Jean d'Arc, the Baldur of this world, and the Baldur of Kratos' world. Or, at least, that's the working theory." She shrugged. "It's a bit of unexplored territory for us, so we can't be sure of anything until we run into another. For all we know, it could be what happens when you take something not of this world and force it into a Servant Container, instead of my theory."
She turned to Kratos. "And yes, I said it before, but I was remiss in only touching on the known Extra Classes when I taught you about Servants, Kratos. I'll remedy that the next time we sit down together. Thankfully, you've met the two we know about, so you have real-world experience of them to go with the lesson."
Kratos grunted, accepting the apology for what it was. He honestly did not feel that put out by the woman's oversight - while it had taken them by surprise, she had acted based on the information she had, that these Extra Classes were rare things. And there had been so much information to impart to him - if it had not been the Extra Classes, it would have been something else that would have fallen by the wayside.
Romani cleared his throat. "Getting back to the main point, Avenger, is there something you'd like to be called other than your Class name, since you'll be with us on a more permanent basis?"
The Servant flopped back into her chair. "No fuckin' clue. 'Jeanne' doesn't feel right - and knowing my abysmal luck, the second I start asking you to call me that, you'll pull 'me' on a Summon and I'll be back to square fucking one." She lolled her head back. "Let me think on it."
"Alright." He turned to Mash. "Mash, if you wouldn't mind giving Avenger a tour of the facilities - I'll have Da Vinci find her some quarters while you're doing that."
The girl nodded, and Avenger allowed herself to be led from the conference room. "Stop by Medical after - I'd really rather prefer to look you over right now, but you haven't been complaining about any pain or anything from your fights, so there's probably nothing dire to patch up."
"I will, Doctor Roman." She smiled, a soft little thing. "I do need to check up on Senpai, after all, and tell her we've resolved one of the Singularities. It's been a week since I visited her."
"Is there any change in the girl?," asked Kratos, as the door hissed shut behind the departing Mash and Avenger.
Romani shook his head. "Not a thing. Da Vinci's been devoting what time she can to finding an antidote, but….."
"There's just too many fires to put out," piped up the woman herself. "And the blood samples I have of that poison are…weird. It doesn't behave like anything I've ever seen." She huffed out a breath. "There's nothing I CAN'T do, but it's all a matter of having the time to do it."
"If nothing else, we'll have some time to spare until we find the next Singularity," offered Romani. "It was a stroke of luck we found the French Singularity so fast. I don't anticipate we'll find the next one anywhere as quickly." He pushed himself up from his chair. "And on that note, Kratos, if you'll indulge me and let me confirm you didn't take any serious wounds, then I can…."
"The next words out of your mouth, mister, had better be 'eat a real meal for the first time in a week, and then get some rest'," said Da Vinci, her tone promising dire consequences otherwise.
"...head to the cafeteria, then my room for at least 8 hours," finished Romani, somewhat lamely.
"Good to hear," said Da Vinci with a smug little smile. "Kratos, you get some rest, and bring your shield with you tomorrow morning. I'll see what I can do to patch it up."
"Man alive, that Simulator sounds wild," said Avenger, her head still turning back to look at the door that led to the massive room. "Shame I couldn't check it out."
"It's largely on restricted access until we get more repairs done to the base," said Mash. Avenger had been….honestly much easier to handle on this tour of Chaldea than for the entirety of the Singularity. Certainly less abrasive - she supposed all the sights and sounds of the base were distracting her. "Kratos trains me there in the evenings, after dinner. If you really want to see it, you could always join us."
"Yeah…about that….." Mash continued walking, then paused and turned, as she realized the Avenger had halted in her tracks, and was chewing on her lower lip.
"So, spill the beans, Squeaks. Got any tips for me?"
"S….squeaks?," stuttered Mash. "And….tips for what?"
"Yeah, Squeaks. You squeak when you get flustered. Or when someone does this." The Avenger poked her in the side, and Mash couldn't help the 'eep' that escaped her lips. "And tips for staying in that big grump's good graces. I'd like to avoid having to constantly tell him I'm sorry every time I fuck things up or manage to push one of his buttons."
"Don't be sorry, be better." Avenger blinked, tilting her head in confusion at the other girl, who had recited that phrase almost reflexively. "It's one of his favorite sayings - I heard it a lot when he first started teaching me how to fight, and I kept apologizing for being so…..bad at it." Mash sighed, remembering those early days. They hadn't been much more than two weeks ago, but they felt like so much longer in her past.
"Kratos has….very, very high standards, both for himself, and anyone he lets get close to him. When he agreed to train me, he said he wouldn't do it as he had been, but he would still push me hard….and he does." Her evenings after Kratos dismissed her were still largely a blur - she generally stumbled back to her room, showered, and then collapsed into bed. She didn't even notice when Fou would trigger the door and hop on her bed, as she had in the past, so drained was she.
"It's…he still demands a lot out of me, but he isn't really that bad when I make a mistake. It's only when I keep making the same mistake that he gets angry." Mash looked the Avenger in the eye. "He's always been very clear about what he expects from me. I know…you and him don't really see eye to eye, but he was pretty clear about what he wanted from you all throughout the Singularity."
Avenger considered for a moment, then shrugged. "Yeah, guess I can't argue that too much. He laid out the terms of our deal pretty damn clearly when we first hooked up. And he was pretty tolerant of my bullshit right up until I let my temper get the better of me. Be better, huh?" She rolled her eyes. "Would sound like some stupid self-help shit coming from anyone else, but I can see him belting that line out as grave as the damn reaper and meaning it. And can I help you?"
This last bit was directed not to Mash, but to someone who had been hovering just a bit away from the girls.
"Oh, Mr. Meunière!" Mash's face brightened as the blonde man walked over to them.
"Mash," he said, greeting the girl with a soft smile. "You're back, then?"
Mash blinked, then nodded. "You must not have been on shift, then." Meunière dipped his head in acknowledgement of that. "Yes, we just got back - we managed to resolve the French Singularity and make it back in one piece."
Meunière let out a deep breath of relief. "Good for you…both on fixing that mess and making it back alive. Hopefully that'll mean the end of 12-hour shifts for a bit, at least until we find the next one." He turned his attention to the other Servant, who was staring at Meunière with narrowed eyes. "And…I assume this is someone from the Singularity? I'm sorry for not recognizing you, my duties don't usually involve a view of what's occurring there…would you be Jeanne d'Arc?"
"Nope, sorry. We're all out of Saints." Her expression turned a touch unhinged, as a mad grin cracked her face. "All we've got today is a bad photocopy of the Maid of Orleans." She stuck her remaining hand out. "Avenger, the Dragon Witch of Orleans, at your service."
Meunière paled. "Oh." He glanced at her outstretched hand, then her expression, then her hand, then her expression again, before finally reaching out and hesitantly taking her hand and quickly shaking it. "Pleased to make your acquaintance. And I really need to be going, or I'll be late for my shift."
With almost indecent haste, he scurried off. Avenger watched him go, then turned to find Mash leveling a look of disapproval her way. "You didn't need to scare him like that. Mr. Meunière is French…..he was probably just excited to meet a hero from his nation's past."
Avenger shrugged. "Yeah, I probably didn't have to…it just bugs me. Everyone always seeing 'me' when they look at me, and not seeing…whatever the hell I am." She blew out a breath. "Problem for another day, though."
They resumed walking, an uncomfortable silence hanging between them. Avenger, unsurprisingly, was the first to break it. "So what's the story behind it?"
Mash blinked, confused.
"The sword. I saw one on your hip when I limped down the stairs on 'me's' shoulder, and you didn't have it before you got bum rushed by that Berserker." Her voice began to take on the tone of a child asking for a story. "So what happened?"
For a second, Mash wasn't in Chaldea. She was back in that castle, fighting for her life….and then there was a screaming man before her, and a sword in her hands….and then she was stabbing him in his heart.
Mash felt her gorge rise.
"...H….here, Avenger. These are the quarters set aside for you." She swallowed thickly, her heart racing. "I'll let you look them over and get accustomed to them. I….I need to go."
Avenger stood there confused for a long moment as she watched the girl rush off. "What'd I say?"
DA VINCI'S WORKSHOP
THE NEXT MORNING
Kratos raised his fist to rap on the door to Da Vinci's workshop, not entirely sure why he still bothered. Before he could even touch the metal of the door, it slid open.
Da Vinci's voice called out from within the room. "Come in, Kratos! Good to see you're as punctual as ever."
Kratos made his way into the cluttered room, a familiar scent wafting across his nostrils. Ah.
In the corner of the room, Da Vinci was feeding fuel into the fires of her forge, working the bellows.
It was the first time Kratos had seen the woman in something other than her elaborate dress. She was dressed…well, not more simply - as her clothing was as fine and as detailed and decorated as ever. But perhaps 'practically' fit. Trousers, a fitted shirt, and a thick apron - and her hair was firmly tied back, and further secured in some kind of net. A device rested on her forehead, loosely secured by a band that wrapped around her head. Likely protection for her eyes - though Kratos suspected that was far from its only purpose.
"I'd say you don't have to knock, but you Greeks always were serious about hospitality and all that, so the tiger isn't going to be changing its stripes anytime soon." She pumped the bellows one last time, then stepped away from the forge. "So, let's see the damage."
With a grunt, Kratos raised his left arm and unfolded his shield - then lowered his arm a bit so it was more eye-level to the woman.
Da Vinci slowly ran her hands across the metal, gently pulling it this way and that as she probed the damage and examined it from various angles. "Worse than it looks, but you were right, it's pretty much useless for defense until it gets fixed." She affixed a small loupe to her right eye, and leaned in close.
After a long moment, she let out a sigh. "And I can't tell what sort of materials it's made from, either. It looks like the base is just well-forged steel, but on top of that is…nothing I've ever seen before."
"Can you fix it?" asked Kratos. "It…..was a gift to me from my wife. It has value to me, beyond its use in combat."
Da Vinci leveled a confident smirk his way. "I might not be able to recognize whatever else was used to improve it - probably stuff that doesn't have a good analogue in our world, or just doesn't exist here - but that doesn't mean our world doesn't have its own set of wonders." She held out her hands. "Give it here, and let Aunt Da Vinci work her magic."
Kratos detached the shield from his arm and handed it over. Da Vinci turned it over in her hands, giving it a more thorough examination now that she could see all sides of it. "Whoever did the improvements, it's excellent work. I might not be able to recognize what they used, but I can recognize a quality job when I see it, and the smith who worked on this was a master."
"It was Brok…and Sindri." The mention of the dwarf's name sent a pang through Kratos - he still hadn't decided if he believed Sindri to be somehow involved in the battle that had landed him in this world, or if it had been just a coincidence. "Then later, a comrade of theirs, Lúnda. The dwarves….."
He thought back to his time with Brok in Svartalfheim. "Brok told me that dwarven magic was capable of using things that could not be grasped…..the relationship between that which could be touched, and what could not be. He said….'the nature of a thing is more important than the form of a thing'."
Da Vinci's brow was furrowed, and Kratos could almost hear her mind working furiously. "That's….hmmmm. Deep…..but it's probably something unique to their race. But Norse myth had more than a couple of instances of odd materials being used in the creation of legendary items." She tilted her head. "If you wouldn't mind indulging my curiosity, do you have any other examples?"
Kratos indicated his axe, in its harness on his back. "While I did not see its making, they created the Leviathan Axe for my wife. Supposedly, it was forged from 'the echoing screams of twenty frost trolls'." He summoned Draupnir to his hand. "I did witness the creation of this spear. One of the items used was the 'sound of the wind'. I…..even saw Brok acquire it, by merely opening his bag and then closing it, as we rode a lift up a mountain." Draupnir receded back into the ring. "I cannot explain it - one moment, the winds howled around us, and the next, they were silent."
Da Vinci was grinning. "That's a trick I'd like to learn for myself. Oh, the things I could make with conceptual materials like that!" She shook her head. "But I can dream later. There's some tea on the table and snacks if you want them - no lessons today, you've all got the day off to rest after what you went through to resolve that Singularity." She smirked, anticipating his protest. "But there's also a whetstone, oil, polish, and some other tools if you'd prefer to do some maintenance on your weapons while you wait for me to fix up your shield. I know you don't like being idle terribly much."
The woman was as good as her word - a variety of tools were laid on the table, awaiting his presence.
Kratos settled into the chair and loosed the Leviathan Axe from its harness, setting it on the table before him. He slowly began to run the whetstone across the blade of the axe, restoring what edge it had lost across the Singularity. Once it was razor sharp again, he inspected the handle, while taking occasional sips of tea.
English Breakfast. Not his favorite of the varieties Da Vinci had introduced him to, but acceptable enough.
Across the room, Kratos could hear the sound of the bellows, and the echo of a hammer on metal as Da Vinci worked the forge.
"Kratos?" A grunt. "Couple of questions, if you don't mind." Another grunt - this one one of the more affirmative sounding ones.
Da Vinci wandered over to one of the nearby shelves, scanning over the various containers and items resting there until she located what she was looking for, a clear bottle filled nearly to the brim with purple dust. "Firstly - and you don't have to answer this if you don't want to, but…..what exactly WAS that fire that came out of your Blades?"
She looked over at the man, who was rewrapping the leather around the handle of his axe, his back to her. "You mentioned how the Blades are bound to you way back when they first showed up here - that Berserker trying to claim them obviously triggered some sort of protection to prevent that. But the fire that erupted from it….." She made her way back to her forge, setting the bottle down. "We saw your Blades catch fire during the Singularity - we assumed it was an ability like the cold of your Axe. But then….whatever that fire was at the end, it shorted our scanners out, it was so powerful."
She uncorked the bottle, and sprinkled some of the dust over the metal she was heating. Coming along nicely, so far. "It's mostly just to assuage my curiosity, but what was that?"
Da Vinci continued her work, knowing the man would answer in his own time - either declining to speak of it, or elaborating - she would get at least that. After a week of spending several hours a day with the man, teaching, learning, or just talking, she felt pretty confident in the rapport she had built with him. She had a general idea of his boundaries and he, well…..she didn't really HAVE boundaries, so it all worked pretty well.
"These Blades were forged for Ares for his Champion - I spoke of this." Da Vinci perked up. Looks like it was storytime. She sent a pulse of magical energy to one of her recorders - she didn't want to take the chance that she might miss a single word. "I did not speak of how they were forged. Hephaestus himself forged these, in the depths of the underworld, using Primordial Fire itself."
Da Vinci's eyebrows shot up. "That's…" She stopped her work, turning to face the Spartan.
After the revelations of what slept within the Blades, he expected a look of manic excitement on the woman's face - but instead, she looked…..distressed?
"Those things were bound to you, tied to your arms for years, weren't they? That explains the damage Roman saw on the x-rays. Oh, those absolute BASTARDS of gods!" Sadness was quickly giving way to anger, and if Kratos was any judge - and anger and he were old, old friends - it was a towering rage building in the Italian Servant.
"They don't still burn you, do they? Oh, I can try to make you some arm guards to keep the fire from doing that….it's Primordial Fire, but I'm the Universal Genius, nothing is beyond me." She made as if to return to her shelf of materials. "We've got some wyvern scales from Orleans - lots of them, in fact. We could start with those, and if they don't do the trick, then…."
"Da Vinci." Kratos' voice broke the woman from her mania. "The Blades no longer burn me as they did. With Ares' death, they ceased to be bound to my arms, as they once were. I was able to…..set them aside, for a time, then. It was only after I left Greece that I realized I could not leave them behind, that they would follow me." A grunt. "As you yourself saw."
"Then….they don't hurt you, anymore?"
"Not physically." He held up a hand as she began to open her mouth. "The only harm they do is the memories they carry - the reminders of the acts I carried out while under Ares' service. To use them in battle causes me no other harm."
"Ok, that's good…" She let out a deep breath, beginning to return to her forge. "I'm sorry if I overreacted, but….well. After your response to Mash noticing you were on fire in Orleans was 'It will pass', you can forgive me for thinking your standards of 'acceptable pain' might be a tad different than the rest of ours. You honestly sounded more bothered by the question than being, y'know, on FIRE."
A few quiet minutes passed as Da Vinci hammered away at the metal. Then….
"Da Vinci." The woman hummed, a question in the noise. "Thank you. Your concern is…..appreciated."
"I think that even though you've only been here a short time, you've figured out that we care about you for more than the fact that you can fight for us." She sprinkled another handful of purple dust over the bars, then a pinch over his shield.
A grunt. "You mentioned another question."
Subtle. Well, it wasn't like you'd ever find his picture next to 'emotionally open' or 'wears his heart on his sleeve' in the dictionary. But she could accept his desire for a change of subject. "Well, with Baldur from your side of things managing to follow you here - even though it sounds like it was a very unique set of circumstances, I wanted to ask if, one, you think there's any chance of a repeat performance. And two - would you be willing to give us an outline of any of your enemies who you think there might be a chance of putting in an appearance."
She gently lifted his shield and laid it atop the fires, letting the heat start the process of warming it up. "It's not an immediate thing - from what Avenger said, it sounded like that catalyst Lev had was the only one. But….better to be prepared, just in case.
Kratos said nothing, running a cloth over the metal of the Leviathan Axe, cleaning it.
"From what you've told us, I imagine that Odin, at least, would make that list, and Ares. But I can't imagine that's all of them. That Barbarian King, for one, is a possibility." She grasped a bar of metal with a pair of tongs, and began to hammer it into shape. "I'm not going to insist like I did when we wanted you to summon a Servant. This is….well, quite a bit more personal than that was - not that that wasn't personal, but, well, a person's past is THEIR past. Just give it some thought, that's all I ask."
Kratos nodded, setting the Leviathan Axe aside, and pulling the Blades of Chaos from their harness. These at least should not need much more than a simple cleaning - they were considerably more durable and resistant to wear and tear than his other weapons. The consequences of being forged by a god, rather than a mortal - even mortals as supremely talented as Brok and Sindri, he supposed.
"On the subject of Servants, how are things going with Medusa?" Da Vinci's foot was pumping the bellows as she hammered away, steady, rhythmic. "She did say she wanted to observe you on a trial basis before making her decision about staying. Has she given any hints one way or another?"
Kratos shook his head, rubbing furiously at a particularly stubborn bloodstain on the Blades. That one might have been allowed to linger long enough that there was no removing it - it would be there until the Blades fully absorbed the blood. Precisely why he had told the Head that any meat he tried to cook with them would be ruined. "She has said nothing to me. During the Singularity, she was as reliable an ally as I could have asked for. She was the one to warn me of Kiyohime. In truth…while being a 'Master' still sits ill with me, it is not as…..distasteful as I felt it would be."
He sighed. "I hope she chooses to remain, and continues to aid us. She is a powerful ally…and much easier to tolerate than some others."
Da Vinci's face twisted in a grin. "I can guess who you're talking about. And, on that subject, brace yourself, because…."
The door to the room slid open, and a pale head of hair poked itself into the room. "Huh, so that's where you are." Avenger strolled into the room, looking around as she did. "Neat place, what's it for?"
Da Vinci had returned to her work. "This happens to be my workshop, Avenger - which you'd know if you'd read the sign on the door."
The Servant started, having apparently not noticed the Caster working in the corner. She huffed, trying to hide her reaction. (She failed.) "Yeah, can't read."
Kratos blinked. "You cannot read?"
Avenger shook her head. "Nope, not a lick. 'Me' never learned during her life, and I guess that's one of the things Gilles remembered about her when he was making me, so I got it too." She shrugged. "Or didn't got it, I suppose."
Da Vinci had lifted Kratos' shield up with a pair of tongs, and was examining it. "But, shouldn't Mash have pointed my workshop out when she was showing you around yesterday?"
Avenger fidgeted. "Yeah….about that. We only got about halfway through the tour before I might have…" She groaned. "I don't know what I did wrong, but I did something to make Squeaks run away from me. So I've been wandering around all morning, sticking my head into rooms to see what they are. Keeps me from being bored out of my mind."
(She wasn't looking for the girl to apologize. Not at all.)
"What did you do?" The glare he pointed at the pale Jeanne might have been mildly less severe than he normally would have directed her way during the Singularity - out of consideration for the fact that he would have to find some way of existing alongside this Servant for the foreseeable future.
Avenger threw her hand up in the air in exasperation. "That's the thing, I don't have the first fucking clue! All I did was ask about her new toy - that sword I saw she picked up between getting put through a wall by that Black Knight and me limping down those stairs to see you guys put Baldur down."
Oh.
"The fight with the Berserker was…difficult for Mash. There are things that happened there that I do not fully understand. We have yet to truly speak of it." The sword's appearance, he believed, had something to do with the Servant bonded to her. He, Romani, and Da Vinci had briefly discussed this the previous day, before going their separate ways, and they were largely in agreement on that fact. They were, however, divided on how to approach Mash about it.
Romani, and to a degree, Da Vinci, felt that giving Mash her time and space to bring it up was likely the wisest approach. And while Kratos did not disagree….he recalled how his inaction, and his silence, had allowed some truly worrying traits to begin manifesting in Atreus, after the boy had been told he was, like his father, a god. Part of him wanted to sit Mash down and to deal with this issue, before it could fester - but that was likely his fears of repeating his mistakes talking.
"If it's any consolation, you didn't really have any way of knowing," said Da Vinci. "As long as you apologize, I don't think she'll hold a grudge."
Avenger sniffed. "IF I run across her, maybe I will."
Da Vinci snickered, quietly, adding a note to her mental file on the Avenger - 'tsundere'. Thankfully for her, the sound of her work at the forge covered it up enough that Avenger didn't hear, and she was spared the woman's ire. "Since you're here, Avenger, I can ask you something I've been wondering about. Why haven't you regrown your arm yet?"
Avenger snorted a laugh. "Same answer as to why I didn't read the sign - can't."
Da Vinci's tilted head indicated that she was going to need more than that. Avenger sighed, pulling a chair out from the table and flopping into it, then snatching some cookies off a plate. "I wasn't really a Servant when Gilles made me - just a kind of dream - or I suppose a fantasy - given form. No real connection to the Throne, no actual Spirit Core or Saint Graph or any of that other shit. I was only able to fake being one because I was running off a Holy Grail - right up until Baldur ripped that shit out of me."
She rapped her fist against her breastbone. "Bastard reached into me and yanked out the thing keeping me around, so I started fading out fast - and I wouldn't have lasted long even if he hadn't given me what would have been a killing blow to even a real Servant. Since I wasn't real, without the Grail, without something to feed me mana - and a big something at that, I'd be fucked."
She stuffed a cookie into her mouth, chewed noisily, and swallowed. "This is all info I got after the fact, mind. All that was going through my head at the time was 'Fuck ME this hurts like a bitch' and 'If I live through this I'm going to flay that fucker alive.' So, when Gilles stuffed his Spirit Core into where the Grail pretending to be my heart used to be, the fact that my brain was thinking nothing but 24/7 revenge porn meant I was pretty much guaranteed to be reborn as an Avenger."
She pulled the lid off the teapot, sniffed at it, then rolled her eyes. "What, no milk to go with the cookies? Lame." That didn't stop her from messily devouring another cookie. "But the long and the short of it is that my 'birth' as a proper Servant came when I was down one arm, full of piss and vinegar and hate for the jackasses who backstabbed me, and well aware I wasn't the real Jeanne. So I can't regrow the arm anymore than, I dunno, a famous pirate could regrow their eye if the thing that got them the invite to the Throne happened after they lost it and they started wearing an eyepatch."
"It's probably worse too, since you were a created being. That pirate might get their eye back if the point at which they were their most powerful was when they still had two eyes - the Throne might record them like that instead of with the eyepatch, in that case." Da Vinci frowned. "But you, well, the Throne probably didn't even consider you 'real' until Gilles gave you his Spiritual Core - that's your 'starting line', for lack of a better term. The fact that you were running off a Holy Grail that was specifically being used to destabilize Proper Human History couldn't have been doing you any favors, either."
Avenger snorted. "Yeah, no shit. Frankly, it's a shock that Gilles managed to save me. With my shitty luck, I should have exploded or something while Gilles was trying to do magical surgery on me. C'est la fucking vie." She pointed at a plate of cookies next to Kratos. "You gonna eat those?"
Wordlessly, Kratos pushed the plate closer to the Avenger, who fell on them with a relish. "So this is what you've got with me. Only one arm, but still handi-capable as fuck. I can still use Stumpers here to work my fire tricks, so it's not completely useless."
Da Vinci.
GRINNED.
Kratos felt the cold of Fimbulwinter run down his spine.
"Avenger….I have a proposition for you."
CHALDEA MEDICAL
Avenger glared at Romani, though there was no heat to it. "I still don't see why we couldn't have done this in that fancy-ass workshop. Woman looked like she had every type of gear you could imagine, from the sci-fi shit this place is swimming in to stuff that looks like it belongs in my backyard in some backwood alchemist's lab."
Romani gave the Servant a small smile, his demeanor still patient despite her continual complaining. Kratos supposed that was one reason he was a doctor, in the end. And this was a difficult patient. "Da Vinci might have a broad range of really excellent….well, everything, but for the scans we need to take, Medical has the specialized tools for that." He waved a clicking device over the stump of Avenger's left arm. "While Servants can heal from their Master's mana alone, our Director anticipated situations where we might be short-handed enough that we'd need all hands on deck, or otherwise to hurry someone back to combat readiness."
He waved his hand around at the room. "So Chaldea's medical facilities can treat Servants - to a degree, as well as humans. And hence why you're here."
"Fine. Just wish they wouldn't stare so much. They never seen a one-armed copy of a Servant before?"
There was barely anyone else in the room. Romani was there, obviously, and Kratos had accompanied Avenger, as she did not yet know the layout of the base well. Mash was there, visiting a still comatose Fujimaru - the girl had been talking to her friend when they entered. Upon seeing Avenger, she had shrunk in on herself, and lowered her voice to a whisper. Otherwise, there was only one other person in the room, an attendant to Romani that Kratos had not yet caught the name of.
And they had barely even acknowledged Avenger's presence.
Romani's smile didn't falter in the slightest. "Just a bit of patience, this shouldn't take too long. If Da Vinci is really going to try to craft a prosthetic arm that can keep up with a Servant, we're going to need as much data as we can extract from you. And the next set of tests will probably be more to your liking - we'll need to see what you can do with it, and yes," he said, seeing Avenger's face light up. "That means we'll need to see how you manipulate fire, too. We'll probably have to do that outside, which means setting up a Bounded Field and….."
As the man droned on, Kratos walked over to Mash, who was talking quietly to the sleeping girl. "Mash."
"Hello Mr. Kratos." Mash grasped the sleeping girl's arm by the wrist, and waved her hand at him. "Are you here to see Senpai, too?"
He shook his head. "Avenger, I believe, seeks to apologize to you for yesterday." A grunt. "Though she denies any such desire. As well….." He paused, seeking the words. "She told us of what happened. Should you desire to…..speak of it, I would listen."
"Oh." She took a deep breath, then let it out. "I….when I'm ready to talk about it, I may take you up on that, Mr. Kratos. Just…..not now. I still need to get my head in order." She smiled at him, a more subdued smile than her usual beaming one. "But thank you."
A grunt. He would need to find Caster, then - he continued to see imbibed spirits in his future. "And Avenger?"
"She didn't really do anything wrong, it was all me…..," Mash shrugged. "But, if she wants to….we are going to be working with her from here on out."
She stood. "Be right back, Senpai."
Romani was continuing to poke and prod at the Avenger as they made their way back over to where the woman was sitting. "Ok, things are looking good. The nerve endings, or the Servant approximations of them seem to be responsive enough that Da Vinci should be able to connect a prosthetic to your arm, all we need now is…."
Avenger's face screamed boredom. "So, I'm sure you've got your reasons, but why ARE you keeping a possessed girl around? You going to play Twenty Questions with the demon inside her, or something?"
Romani blinked, brought up short by the question. "...what?"
Avenger waved her stump in the general direction of the comatose Fujimaru. "Sleeping Ginger over there. I may not be a real Saint, but that's another thing Gilles remembered when he was putting me together out of memories and spare parts, so I got a few of those abilities, though I don't really touch them if I can help it. But when I look at that girl a certain way, I can feel something BAD curling up inside her."
"You….." Romani was at a loss for words. "No, that just can't be…." As he turned to face their only Master, the blood drained from his face.
Fujimaru was sitting upright in her bed, her eyes open - though they were rolled back into her head, showing only the whites.
Scalpels sprouted from in between her fingers, and in the time it took Romani to blink, they were gone - flying across the room.
Directly at him.
A massive form crashed into him, and the combined jolt of that impact and his hitting the floor, and Kratos' roar of pain as the scalpels that were meant for him dug into Kratos' shoulder snapped him from his paralysis.
"AUTHORIZATION ROMANI-ONE, DA VINCI TO MEDICAL IMMEDIATELY!"
Kratos rolled to his feet, doing a passable impression of a pincushion, with a brace of scalpels sticking out of him. He made as if to reach for his axe, then hesitated. "Romani?"
Gingerly, Romani picked himself up from the floor - he could already feel the bruises starting to form. Still, better those than dead - Kratos hadn't had time to be gentle. "I'm ok, but Fujimaru….." The girl was crouched on all fours on the bed, spine arched, almost like an animal at bay. He didn't even know where she had gotten those scalpels from - had she, or the thing inside her to be correct, been slowly stealing them in the two weeks she had been lying in that bed?
"We can't hurt Senpai!" cried Mash, her Servant armor flashing into form around her.
"Ok, but she doesn't seem to have any issues about hurting us!" yelled Avenger, with a pointed look at Kratos. "This girl important or something?"
"She's our last real Master - the only one to survive Lev's sabotage - we CANNOT lose her!" stated Romani. "But we…..oh dear…"
Hissing, the girl sprang from the bed, touching off a medical device and swiping at Romani's head - missing by only the barest of margins as Kratos shoved him back, towards the door.
As he felt the wind from that slash touch his brow, Romani noticed that the girl's fingernails had grown long, and jagged.
"Mash, defend the door and the Doctor! Do not allow her to leave, or to harm Romani." yelled Kratos, bodily blocking the possessed girl from taking another leap at Romani. "Avenger…..we will restrain her."
Avenger rolled her eyes. "Yeah, this is gonna suck." Still, the Servant began to slowly edge around to the girl's flank.
Romani found himself shoved against the door, with Mash, and more importantly, her shield firmly in the path of any further scalpels. "Mind your strength! This isn't another Servant, but just a regular mage - she's a ton more fragile than what you've been fighting!" Hurry it UP, Da Vinci!
Avenger leapt back as Fujimaru slashed at her, the girl's teeth snapping at the air. "Yeah, IF I can get my hands on her, MAYBE I'll worry about that. And why the fuck is a one-armed woman being told to restrain someone? Going to get a one-legged man for an ass-kicking contest next?"
Kratos lunged at the girl's back, but she charged Avenger, feinting a thrust with those claws, then sliding under the woman's arm, bending at the waist and skidding across the floor on her knees. Lightning fast, she leapt up, planting a foot on the back of Avenger's head, and using it a plant to rocket straight across the room at Romani, again.
Mash braced her legs, but in the instant before Fujimaru's claws would have scraped off her shield, there was the rattling of chains, and the girl's flight halted, and her snarling body was jerked to the ground.
Kratos jerked at the chains of the Blades, trying to pull the girl back to him, but she had dug her claws into the floor, and was resisting with far greater strength than she should possess.
Another scalpel flew through the air, and was narrowly intercepted by Avenger's gauntlet. "Where the fuck is she getting those from? And how'd she throw it?"
"Her teeth." Kratos growled. A greater measure of his strength would rip the girl from the ground, but it might well also tear her asunder as well. They needed to break this stalemate. "Go."
"Yeah, yeah." Cautiously, watching for any more thrown projectiles, Avenger approached the girl. As she neared her, Fujimaru tore her hands from the ground, and allowed herself to be yanked across the floor.
Kratos stumbled, the sudden absence of the force pulling against him caused him to involuntarily lurch backwards, and Fujimaru pushed off the ground as she slid, flying between Kratos' legs.
She may have thought to rob him of a portion of his strength, given the awkward position she had made of his footing, or possibly to knock him from his feet and to escape from the chains binding her while he regained his feet, but neither was to come to pass. Kratos moved with a grace that belied his size, turning a spinning leap and then reasserting his strength. The girl had no time to dig into the ground, and this time came flying directly at Kratos.
Claws out.
Avenger leapt from the side, crashing into the frenzied girl, seizing one of her arms, but was forced to continually move her head, jerking it out of the way as Fujimaru attempted to claw the Avenger's eyes from her head.
The door hissed open.
"Someone get this hellcat's other arm before she tears me a new one!" shouted Avenger.
"What in the devil is going on here?"
Da Vinci had finally arrived.
"Fujimaru's possessed." Romani shook his head as Caster opened her mouth. "No time! We need a binding circle, right now!"
Da Vinci's staff appeared in her hands. "One binding circle, coming right up! Mash, I'll take over defense here, go make sure Avenger doesn't get gutted."
"Sooner would be better than later!" shouted Avenger, as she was now dodging both the girl's free arm and her teeth.
Mash quickly crossed the room, and seized Fujimaru's arm. "Senpai, if you can hear me, fight this! Just hold on, and we'll get that thing out of you!"
Fujimaru, or, more likely, the demon inside of her roared, thrashing its body wildly, now that it was fully restrained. "She's going to break something important if she keeps this up!" yelled Avenger.
"Once the circle is scribed, what then?" asked Kratos, sweat staining his brow as he desperately tried to moderate his strength - to bring to bear enough to hold the girl, but not too much to crush her legs.
"We'll need someone to recite an exorcism ritual…I never thought I'd lament the lack of any members of the Church here at Chaldea, but I'm really feeling it right now!" Romani darted his head around the room, possibly wishing that an Executor would conveniently pop into being.
Da Vinci's eyes were closed, the crystal atop her staff glowing bright. "Don't look at me. A slapdash binding circle like this is going to need me to concentrate on it to keep it stable…..and….there!"
An intricate array of lines and runes flared into being underneath Fujimaru, and the thing shrieked with the girl's voice, a keening howl. "One Devil's Trap, courtesy of yours truly! If you're going to do this, we need to do it fast!" said Da Vinci, with a pointed look at Romani.
"I'm Jewish - it's a Catholic ritual!" cried Romani. "Avenger has some connection to Sainthood, couldn't she…."
"CAN'T-READ!" shouted Avenger, holding onto the girl's arm for dear life. "And even if I could, you don't want to risk your precious Master with something like me!"
"And Kratos is a pagan at BEST, and Mash…..wouldn't be the best idea! And Rebecca cowering in the corner there is an atheist!" Da Vinci's staff flared with power, and the circle followed suit, the surge of power pulsing against Fujimaru, and momentarily pausing her struggles. "Romani, you're literally and figuratively IT!"
For a long moment, Romani was motionless. Then, a shudder seemed to go through his body, and he nodded. "...fine. Keep that circle up, and hold her tight."
He drew himself up, his spine ramrod straight, and he began to speak.
"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus"
The effect was immediate. If the girl had been fighting tooth and nail against both the hands that were holding her, and the circle that was restraining her, at the first syllable that left Romani's mouth, she went berserk.
"Motherfuck…." Avenger's curse was cut off as she was nearly thrown free, only holding on by sheer dogged stubbornness.
"Ergo draco maledicte et omnis legio diabolica adjuramus te!"
Impossibly, despite the chains tightly wrapped around her legs, and the god grasping them, the girl still was attempting to kick Kratos in the face.
"Vade, Satana, inventor et magister omnis fallaciae, hostis humanae salutis!"
Da Vinci poured her will into the circle, feeling the…..THING that was pitting itself against her. Powerful - yet it felt almost…..incomplete. Had whatever happened in Medical forced it to act before it was ready? If so, that was a blessing - whatever was inside of Fujimaru, it was plenty strong as is - what sort of horror could it have become with more time?
"Ab insidiis diaboli, libera nos, Domine! Ut Ecclesiam tuam secura tibi facias libertate servire te rogamus, audi nos!"
Mash's eyes were wet as her friend, her Senpai began vomiting a black, viscous ooze from her mouth with increasingly pained noises. She sounded like she was dying…..
Romani's voice began building in volume, as he neared the end of the chant. "Terribilis Deus de sanctuario suo! Deus Israhel ipse truderit virtutem et fortitudinem plebi Suae! BENEDICTUS DEUS. GLORIA PARTI!"
There was a pulse of power, and Fujimaru's back arched, and her body was wracked with spasms. More black ooze dripped from her eyes, and wisps of smoke seemed to leak from her very skin.
Then, all was quiet.
"Did….." Mash swallowed, her mouth almost too dry to speak. "Did it work….?"
Avenger's entire body was tense, waiting for the girl to move, to try to fight free once more. "I…..I don't feel anything inside of her anymore that shouldn't be. I think….."
"Um…..guys?" Fujimaru's eyes were open, but her pupils were once again visible. She coughed, and spat out a thick gobbet of ooze. "What…..what's going on? Why'm I back at Chaldea? Who's the one armed chick? And why does it look like I'm about to star in some sort of combination gunge/bondage porn thing?"
Romani stumbled down the hallway, determinedly putting one foot in front of the other.
It was late - very, VERY late. He'd been running tests non-stop on Fujimaru for hours - kicking himself all the while.
How had he missed it? How had he not put two and two together? The Assassin had been possessed by something, and hadn't poisoned his blades, but merely smeared his own demon-tainted blood on his knives. Once that blood had been introduced into Fujimaru's system, it had used the girl's blood as a vector to slowly take her over - it had attacked the transfusion blood as it had already adapted to the girl's circulatory system, and having to adapt to another set of foreign blood would take time - time it clearly wasn't willing to spend.
Stupid, stupid, STUPID.
Eventually, he'd run out of tests to run, and was beginning a second suite of tests, just to be sure, when Da Vinci had pulled out her tranquilizer gun - the one with the darts she had been jokingly claiming were filled with her special blend of 'Naptime for Romani'.
He got the hint. If the gun hadn't done it, her glare would have.
Truthfully, he was tired enough that he was shocked he'd made it back to his room before collapsing. He'd crashed, and crashed HARD once the excitement of the exorcism had passed, but he'd held it off with caffeine and the NEED to assure himself he hadn't bone-headedly missed anything ELSE with regards to Fujimaru. Now that he didn't have that to fret over, the exhaustion he had been putting off was back, with a vengeance.
And it had brought friends.
At least there was good news - there didn't seem to be any lasting negative effects done to Fujimaru. She was bruised and would be sore, and she'd need a bit of physical therapy from her two weeks lying in bed, but otherwise, she seemed to be in the clear. So that at least was the silver lining on his bone-headed mistake.
His arm felt like it was made of lead as he raised his palm to the reader outside his door. He lurched into his room, already shrugging his lab coat off his shoulders - he was caked in dried sweat, and a shower sounded absolutely heavenly, but he didn't have the energy to stay awake long enough to manage one. And if he passed out in the shower, Da Vinci would read him the riot act to end all riot acts.
No, bed, and now. He'd regret it in the morning, when he would wake up with an almost visible layer of funk hanging around him, but…..
There was someone sitting on his bed.
Sluggishly, he blinked eyes, willing them to focus through his weariness. Armor, silver hair, one arm… "Avenger?"
"Took you long enough." In the blink of an eye, Romani found himself slammed against the wall, the Servant's face inches from his.
"What?" he yelped.
"You SHUT UP, and keep your mouth shut, or ELSE." Avenger's eyes narrowed. "I felt it. When you did that exorcism…..I may not be the fucking 'Maid of Orleans', but there's JUST enough of 'me' in here that I could tell….there was legit Power when you did that."
Her spear appeared in her hand, and she rested the point against his neck. "Whatever you are, Doctor Romani, it's not human - or not JUST human, because no mere human could get Him, or one of his assistants to answer like that. So, you're going to tell me what the hell you are, and why I shouldn't tell everyone about the possible snake hiding in their midst like that bastard Lev, right FUCKING now."
The door to Romani's room slid open, and Avenger staggered out. Her skin, pale already, was bone-white, her eyes unfocused. She stumbled forward in a couple of wobbly steps, before she stopped, and wrapped her remaining arm around herself.
She was shaking.
The hiss of the door closing caused her to jerk, her eyes staring at the door, through the door for a long minute.
Then she fled down the hallway.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Well, and here we are.
Originally, I was planning on having Ritsuka down until London, when she'd join. But, as I've said a couple of times, feedback in the post-Fuyuki interlude had me move my timetable up. As I thought about things, that's where the JAlter alterations to Orleans came from, and then this started growing in my head.
The possession angle was always what I was going to go with for Fujimaru, but not THIS resolution, per se. It was only once I decided to move the timetable up some that this crystallized. So get ready for the Red Gremlin to make her proper debut next chapter.
Now, Roman, Solomon himself, not detecting that she was possessed. An obvious issue. I'm generally going with the belief that Roman has to actively LOOK for that - he doesn't have a demon-dar or anything like that since he was, by his wish, reborn as a regular human, albeit with his rings and some of his abilities still intact. So, in general, I'm assuming he saw the demon blood acting sort of like poison, and went from that assumption, and never thought to check for possession. A bit of a possible kludge for the story to go this direction, but Roman is as human as the rest of us, and makes mistakes just like all of us do.
Meanwhile, Avenger was bored out of her skull - not that that takes much - and just started looking around the room and noticed Fujimaru with the fragmented bits of having once been a Saint that are still rattling around inside of her. She may or may not have been trying to scan Kratos when she noticed what was going on with Fujimaru.
Also not exactly playing too strict with the possession thing - there's no indication that Shaytan in Cursed Arm's arm could do that, but I liked the idea, and decided to run with it. In the long and the short of it, it's the plot device that had Fujimaru down for the period I needed her out of commission.
Dust of the Realms. Void Dust. Close enough for government, errrr, Chaldean work. Luminous Alloy and Blazing Embers, also not terribly hard to find a couple of close substitutes. Aurora Steel for one, and it even comes from a Midgardy Lostbelt. Ghost Lantern is one thing that could sub in for Blazing Embers, and there's at least a couple other options.
Given how taken by utter surprise canon Chaldea was by Alter Egos, Foreigners, Moon Cancers, and Pretenders, (CCC has been a bit, but I don't recall them being well-versed on Alter Egos and Moon Cancers in that one - and I know they were completely pants by the appearance of Foreigners and Pretenders) I'm assuming they only know about Rulers and Avengers at the start of the story. And that's not even counting one-ofs like my Better Half's Space Son, who was a Voyager Class in Fate: Requiem, but got changed to a Foreigner for FGO, or other really unique cases.
JAlter as Romani's Secret Keeper. Another thing that leapt into my head when I first started thinking of Orleans, JAlter joining the team, coming back to Chaldea, and how she'd assist in getting Fujimaru back on her feet. I don't have any plans of having the Romani reveal come one second earlier than it does in canon, but I will admit some part of me has latched onto the point in Camelot when Holmes is warning you about Romani, and JAlter defending him. Still, ZERO plans on having that reveal come early, just because it's a such a pivotal moment. I also potentially have ideas about JAlter getting some development out of this - you'll see the crumbs of that start to show up in the next chapter. Because she isn't going to both be under Kratos' watchful eye, and get this revelation and NOT be changed, if nothing else a little bit, by it.
This chapter brought to you by the Lillim Harlot map theme and Cinco De Mayhem.