When they stepped into the dark room, the first thing that surprised them was how utterly spacious it was. The room's dimensions were not this big from the outside, as it stretched at least three floors. The second surprise came when their eyes fell on the centrepiece of the workshop: a robot arm laid on its side that RITSUKA guesstimated to be about 8 meters tall, mostly covered in white panels. The sounds of mechanical works from before were naturally louder now and came from the other side of the arm.
"Keep close; keep quiet," Sakura whispered to him before slowly and silently moving through the shadows towards the main attraction of Vill-V's workshop. RITSUKA nodded and followed after her, hugging the walls when— BANG "Ah!" —a nearby vent cover blew open and startled the Shielder.
The culprit for nearly giving him a heart attack was none other than one of the ELFs. "Good, I managed to give that Assassin the slip." Su sounded pleased with himself before turning towards them. "And it seems Mobius's plan went exactly how she wanted it to."
"Don't rub it in," grumbled Sakura as their cover was immediately blown by Su's sudden appearance.
"Who's there? Serenity?" The voice of their Master called out a couple of seconds before he emerged from behind the fist of the robot. He was in a brown mechanic's overall caked in oil, with some even on his face. Surprisingly (or not), he wasn't upset at seeing them. "Oh, it's you guys. Impressive that you got in," he remarked with a cheery smile across his face before Vill-V peeked out over his shoulder.
"Oh, you three! Let me guess, Mobius put you guys up to this, right?" She was equally at ease about seeing them. When they (namely RITSUKA) hesitantly nodded in confirmation, the Alter Ego let out a small chuckle before disappearing behind their project to resume working on it.
"So… What exactly are you working on?" The Shielder asked his doppelganger as he and the other two joined them around the mechanical arm. "I mean, I can see what you're working on, but what are you guys working on?" RITSUKA didn't know why, but he got a sense of deja vu looking at the boxy white arm.
While the side facing the entrance was complete, the other side was definitely a work in progress— revealing the glassy silver underframe that was covered on the opposite side. From the equipment on top of white sheets of metal on the central table, Ritsuka and Vill-V were in the process of welding together the remaining panels. On another table were what was likely the blueprints for their project, along with a powered-off television.
"Weeeeeelllll, it's a bit of a long story, to be honest. To start—"
"Master wants to fulfil a childhood dream and I'm helping him." Vill-V cut the long story short, earning a pout from Ritsuka.
"Yeah… I mean, can you blame me for wanting to recreate it when given the chance? Honestly, this was a long time coming," he defended himself, sounding proud of achieving his dream.
"How big will it be once completed?" RITSUKA inquired, still in awe at the size of the project his Master was undertaking.
He would quickly come to regret asking that though as Ritsuka immediately listed off its stats with a gleeful grin. "It will stand at 19.7 meters in its initial mode, and an additional two in its alt mode. It would be 23.7 metric tons to start too but we can't really get that as we have to substitute materials here and there. There's also the other things like—"
"Master, breathe," Vill-V interrupted him with another laugh though clearly sharing in his excitement.
"...So it is just a giant robot," Sakura remarked after a moment with a small hum. It was something basically all of them saw coming but there was one question above all. "Why the secrecy with this?" Sure, Cursed Arm mentioned that it could be exploited but who would want to steal a giant robot? As far as they knew, there were no survivors on the bleached Earth by this point—and what Servant would want to take over Master's pet project?
"Oh, that was Vill-V's idea of a test or something. I don't mind anyone finding out," shrugged Ritsuka, turning everyone's gaze towards the engineering Servant.
The grin present on her face grew wider as she explained her intentions with the security guards. "I wanted to see if Mobius would come to see what Master and I were working on herself or send someone else in her place," she snickered before adding that she did expect RITSUKA but not Su or Sakura. "How'd you get roped into helping?" Vill-V asked the Assassin.
"...I had nothing better to do." The unconvincing answer only earned Sakura another snicker from Vill-V. "In any case, we learnt what we came here for. We'll leave you to your devices then. Good luck." And just like that, Sakura vanished as if she were never there in the first place.
RITSUKA, on the other hand—"...You need an extra hand?" It didn't take a second before Vill-V pulled him to help hold some parts in place while she secured them to the arm. That left only one other person.
"You're Su, right?" Ritsuka asked the ELF who decided to stay behind with them. As he had been basically locked in Vill-V's workshop for the last several days, he hadn't gotten the chance to meet the new ELFs properly.
"That's correct, and you must be the one and only Fujimaru Ritsuka. I've heard a lot about you," Su replied with a smile. "I was not expecting that the young man Fu Hua was infatuated with would have a reputation like yourself."
"Fu Hua? You mean Hua?" Ritsuka asked in confusion. Didn't the people of RITSUKA'S world only have one name?
"Oh, that's right. I meant to say Hua," the ELF hummed but frankly, it didn't sound like he cared about that weird slip-up, only amused. "As I was saying, I was surprised to hear about your accomplishments considering what card fate had dealt RITSUKA. Then again, the alternate fate he could have had was much worse."
"You're not really making sense…" Ritsuka's eyes narrowed suspiciously at the smiling ELF who was acting too much like a certain Caster than he was comfortable with. Cryptic comments like that were setting off red flags in his head. His remark though only made Su chuckle as he circled around Ritsuka.
"I'm saying how it is: you are, by all accounts, a strange person, Fujimaru Ritsuka. You have a tenacity that I've rarely seen shared by anyone else—in fact, you remind me of an old friend of mine and I'm not quite sure if that's a good thing."
"...I'm no one special if that's what you're trying to say."
Another soft chuckle came from the ELF. "Don't you think it's a little too late to say things like that?" He asked with a curious hum. "But I suppose that is a constant with you. RITSUKA says the same thing, no? As far as I know, there is only one you who no longer claims to be normal—but the less said about him, the better. I dare say he's the strangest version of you out there. Still a nice person though, so long as you don't get on his bad side but the same could be said for you from what I've seen."
By this point, Ritsuka had a good idea of what was up with Su; the question was how and why, not what anymore. "You're not really an ELF, are you?"
"I think the answer's obvious enough." Su only continued to smile before deciding he was needed elsewhere. "I better help the others; I expect they'd have been caught by your other Servants by now."
"Let me out of here! I'm innocent, I tell you!"
"Elysia, stop banging on the door. I don't think there's anyone out there."
Ritsuka watched in silent thought as Su floated off and disappeared around the arm. After a few more seconds though, "Better worry about that later…" It would likely bite him in the ass, but he had more important matters right now. Finish the second arm now; deal with the potential problems some other time. Turning back to the others, he put everything in the back of his mind and went to help Vill-V and RITSUKA with their current task.
Several more days passed after the somewhat successful mission to discover the secret hidden within Vill-V's workshop without much to note. Mobius's reaction to what they were up to could be chalked up to "Oh, okay then," before she went back to her own projects. She did reward them for their troubles by giving them permission to have the ELFs accompany them.
"You were going to let us roam around regardless," Elysia remarked when hearing the "reward," only for Mobius to tell her to be quiet. Either way, Ritsuka, Vill-V, and several other Servants would continue working on the secret project with laxer security. Some others would visit and help out here and there but for the most part, they were doing whatever they pleased.
Sakura naturally was one the regular visitors along with Su, who liked to tag along with her whenever he wasn't with Kevin. Frankly, she didn't understand the intricacies of what they were building, but that it was mainly a replica that ironically couldn't replicate the full capabilities of what it's based on. Why there was so much effort put into a 1-to-1 model, she also didn't understand, but Ritsuka deserved one after all he's been through.
Of course, it couldn't be that simple as Sakura woke up one morning to alarms across the Storm Border being rang. The announcement being replayed made the situation clear: a new Singularity had formed and Master's super secret project had disappeared…
A/N: I don't really know how the plot is slowly morphing into that of Gundam but it is now. Either way, here's the next chapter and a certain character is showing his hand. Guess we know why he's not responding to main story's Merlin's calls. Other than that, we finally getting to the "event" that I've been slowly moving towards for like 3 chapters now so see you all next time!
…I should probably update the tags to include Gundam now ehe