081 - Intermezzo (Part I)
Keeping track of time is hard when one's trapped within the black waters of the Sea of Life. [Invictus] is unmatched when it comes to ensuring I don't lose my mind through the many -and oftentimes painful- changes I'm undergoing, but it's not a miracle solution that one can just throw at every problem. I could have theoretically been counting seconds since I first landed here, but that requires a special level of masochism that even I'm not quite ready to embrace.
Has it been a week? A month? A year? Does it even matter, when the Singularities don't have a conventional relationship with time in the first place?
I wonder how Haku is doing. Has she driven everyone crazy yet? Poor Olga's entire worldview must've been upended five times with her first deployment alone! And I'm sure she had Da Vinci drooling over the potential of her Reality Marble in no time flat. How is everyone's favorite eggplant handling Haku's Haku-ness? How is the good Doctor taking her presence, did he know we were coming?
Something brushes against the back of my leg, pulling me off my reverie and, in spite of everything, I find myself smiling. Right, I have no idea how much time I spent here, but I can at least track my own progress with Tiamat. It's been a while since she gave up on blindly warping my body, and even longer since she last tried to just twist me to her will.
Communication is still impossible, but the Blackened Sea has slowed down as the Mother Goddess turns more and more of her attention towards me. Piecing her thoughts and emotions is hard even for me, but I can at least tell that she's doing her best to figure me out.
Lately, she's started experimenting with a solid body of her own to interact with mine, hence this… something that's brushing against me. So far, it's been mostly tentacles and other even less defined limbs that science doesn't even have a name for, but she's learning. As the something tentatively, almost shyly wraps around my leg, I let out a hum of approval. Not a single thorn or spike that might hurt my body, not even a rough edge to scrape my skin with.
Yes, she's definitely starting to figure out this whole 'physical interaction' business.
Encouraged by her success, more tentacles join the first one, wrapping around the rest of my body and writhing with clear excitement. I can only hold back a resigned sigh, she's still getting carried away. This is her current stumbling block. As she reaches out to me, touching and exploring my body, without experiencing any backlash, she inevitably finds herself growing more and more confident, pushing further and further.
… Until she inevitably pushes too far and that backlash arrives.
That makes her pull back her limbs in a panic and refuses to physically touch me again for a while. But I'm still within the Sea of Life, so she can't exactly ignore me either. After a while, curiosity overcomes wariness and the process starts anew.
I hope Haku hasn't gotten too far into the Singularities yet, because I still have a long way to go here.
Olga Marie Animusphere
The Septem Singularity has left behind plenty of questions in need of an answer.
Servants displaying skills beyond their parameters. Strange, never-seen technologies brought into reality by Haku's magecraft. The Cult of Re'em showing off what looked like one of their trump cards. Lev's apparent death. The missing Grail… And something that sounds unimportant in comparison, but hits much closer to home: Mashu finally deploying her Noble Phantasm unassisted.
That's why she's currently standing behind the reinforced glass window in the observation room of one of their test chambers, where Mashu is trying to repeat the feat in a controlled environment.
"True Name...frozen deployment!
This is the castle of fantasy that holds many paths and wishes...
Answer my call…"
"[Mold Camelot - Even now, A Castle of Frail Visions]"
Space itself warps dangerously as layer after layer of solid white noise materialize inside a chamber that shouldn't be anywhere near enough to contain them all. Mashu's Noble Phantasm, a 'Castle of Frail Visions' indeed, though Olga has witnessed the deceptive might of these illusory walls more than once, when push comes to shove.
Here in the test chamber, the Noble Phantasm appears to be… weaker, or rather fainter than in Olga's memories. Maybe she should've expected that, since there's no great and imminent danger for the walls to challenge, but that doesn't really matter. The important thing is that it worked. Whatever allowed Mashu to block Ibuki Douji's attack, be it fluke of epiphany, wasn't a one-off thing. Her ability to deploy [Mold Camelot] at will is here to stay.
"Well, Da Vinci?" She questions, turning towards the woman in the control seat. "What do you think?"
"First of all, I'm calling off any more experimentation in this field until further notice." Da Vinci declares in an uncharacteristically serious voice before reaching for the intercom. "Mashu, no deploying [Mold Camelot] unless it's an emergency, okay?"
"Da Vinci-san?" The girl in the test chamber tilts her head in confusion. "Is there something wrong?"
"I wouldn't call it wrong per se, but [Mold Camelot] is quite a bit harmful for your body in its current state." Da Vinci explains. "Nothing so dire that we need to seal it away, but frivolous usage is out of the question."
"A self-harming Noble Phantasm?" Olga asks with a frown. Those aren't very common ,but they're well-documented and never a fun thing to deal with.
"Not… exactly, no. It all comes down to Mashu's nature as a Demi-Servant and to how her Noble Phantasm came to be." It doesn't escape Olga's attention how the intercom is turned off again before Da Vinci answers, but she doesn't comment for now. "The whole point of a Demi-Servant is to channel the power of a Servant through a mortal vessel, but this isn't their Noble Phantasm. It's Mashu's."
That throws Olga for a loop. "But Mashu isn't a Heroic Spirit?"
"Not yet."
Da Vinci's words are like an ignition switch going off in Olga's mind, making her eyes widen in realization as her brain finally puts the pieces together. The Chaldea Security Organization is currently involved in the Grand Order, maybe the greatest adventure in the entirety of Human History.
And Mashu is at the forefront of Chaldea's efforts, second only to Haku herself. If someone is going to create a legend worthy of reaching the Throne, that's her.
"Oh." Olga mutters, not sure what else to say.
"Oh indeed." Da Vinci chuckles. "I suspect her nature as a living Servant is the only reason she can bend the rules like this. She counts as a Servant, so she can call for a Noble Phantasm. And she has a Noble Phantasm to her name, regardless of any contributions from the Servant within her. Only… she doesn't have it yet."
"The Throne is atemporal." Olga continues the logic train in a fascinated mutter. "She's calling forth a legend that doesn't exist yet."
"It's not an undocumented phenomenon, but it's exceedingly rare. Heroic Spirits are less and less likely to reach the Throne as the Age of Man progresses and Mystery fades away." Da Vinci nods along. "Interestingly enough, she's still receiving support from the Heroic Spirit within her. But it only makes sense for Mashu's future Legend to be connected to the Servant whose power she's borrowing in the first place."
There's… no. There's something more here. Something prickling at the back of Olga's brain. Something that this whole conversation brings to mind in spite of not actually being related to Mashu. But she can't quite put a finger on…
"Lady Director?"
"Right, I can follow so far." Olga shakes her head, focusing on the present and making a mental note to revisit these thoughts when she has the chance. "So what's the problem?
"The problem is [Mold Camelot] requiring things out of Mashu that simply aren't there yet. A lack of hardware, if you may." Da Vinci sighs, making the computer display a holographic chart of Mashu's status, flashing red everywhere. "She's side-stepping this lack of hard requirements because Noble Phantasms are Crystalized Legends, but flash-forging essential components on the fly every time takes a toll on her body and soul."
"How much of a toll are we talking about?" Olga frowns. Desperate times call for desperate measures, but if this is going to put her in any serious risk… "How many times can she deploy it before it isn't safe anymore?"
"Hard to say just yet, I'd need more study before I can give reliable numbers." Da Vinci shakes her head. "Five to seven times are allowed even by the most conservative estimates and the additional data points would help me nail it down further."
"Five to seven!?" Olga repeats in dismay. "That's little more than once per Singularity!"
"Now, now… There's no need to be so alarmed, Lady Director. The situation may not be ideal, but we have all the tools we need to overcome it." Da Vinci chuckles again. "Whatever these mysterious components are, logic dictates they will be crafted at least partially by Chaldea. Which in turn means we have, or will soon have, the means to create them ourselves. I may not currently know what these components are supposed to be, but I just need to reverse-engineer them from these readings."
"You make it sound easy." Olga's expertise in the field is barely enough to know such a feat would be anything but easy.
"Don't worry a bit, Lady Director! It's a simple matter of looking for what isn't there. And then I just need to put it there!" Da Vinci says something incredible without a care in the world. "This is nothing for the genius of the one and only, inimitable Renaissance Woman, Leonardo Da Vinci!"
"Right…" Olga doesn't know what she was expecting, really. "Like that transport Haku made on the third day?"
"Oh, the [Mars Pattern Rhino APC]! That craft was an absolute beauty!" Da Vinci cups her cheek with a sigh and… is she swooning? Then, before Olga can properly process the absurdity of it all, she regains her poise and frowns instead. "Well, no, the thing was actually ugly as sin, but the science behind it was something else! Entirely new principles taken to extremes I can't even imagine! Did you know it included some sort of soul-based artificial intelligence? Not very advanced, but the first principles behind it are so divorced from our own tech tree that it blows the mind!"
Olga lets Da Vinci's enthusiastic science rant fade into the background as she opens the intercom again and dismisses Mashu for the day. If nothing else, the session has been productive. Not all news is good news, but they now have another trump card to call in an emergency. It's better to have and not need than to need and not have, or something like that.
At least, that'd be the case if she didn't have to worry about Mashu going against orders and overusing it during an emergency. Her dear friend is worryingly blasé about the concept of self-harm and it's a coin toss whether close proximity to Haku will make things better or worse. They might feedback on each other just as well as they might finally realize how it fucking feels to see it from outside.
And, speaking of these two…
"Oh, I almost forgot." She speaks out lod, turning her attention back towards Da Vinci.
"If we just had some spare brains I could make som–" It takes a moment for the self-proclaimed genius to cut off her rant and face towards Olga. "Yes, Lady Director?"
"That first night in the Tohsaka-senpai's Palace…" Olga trails off before finally asking her question. "Who was in charge of confirming Haku and Mashu's existence?"
"That first night? I think it was… Oh, you mean when little Mashu finally gathered her courage and paid Haku's bedroom a night visit?" The way that Da Vinci's voice goes from mildly confused to knowing and suggestive in the blink of an eye very much doesn't make Olga blush. "Don't worry, I kicked everyone else and took care of the observation myself."
"That's not nearly as reassuring as your words imply it should be, Da Vinci." Olga frowns, resting her arms on her hips to deliver a warning. "I swear, if you've been—"
"There's a recording." Da Vinci comments in a painfully fake idle tone, making the warning die on Olga's lips. "I can make copies."
"..."
"Would you… like one, Lady Director?" Da Vinci continues, suggestively waggling her eyebrows.
Olga valiantly fights off the temptation, the full might of her pride and willpower throttling the treacherous snake whispering sweet lies into her ear… For approximately four seconds.
"... You have my secure address for classified reports." She finally says, turning around to leave the observation room. "If anyone hears about this, I'll have your ass on a platter."
"Kinky~"
Olga ignores that last comment, just as she ignores the way the tips of her ears feel like they're about to catch fire. It's not like she asked for the recording out of any… lascivious interest. This is just… research! Yes, this is research for when she finally—! That is to say… She wants to make sure Mashu wasn't mistreated! Yeah! She's not doing this just to drool over her two crushes wrapped around each other in the throes of their sapphic passions, that'd be uncouth! And way below her station! And! And…
'Por qué no los dos?'
Damnit, Tohsaka-senpai. Why did you have to put it like that?
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