057 - The Truth Behind the Throne

Olga Marie Animusphere

Faced with the cheeky smile of a woman she thought long dead, Olga doesn't know how to react. She doesn't know how to feel! Is she happy that a woman she grew to respect so much in such a short time is still alive, after all? Is she suspicious about the identity of someone who shouldn't even exist anymore? Is she indignant that she has been worrying so much about someone who was just fine and dandy, sipping boba tea on her couch while Olga scrambled to keep the world going with all her might?

Which one would be the proper way to feel? Which one is the way she should feel?

She cannot tell, she has no idea how to handle the scene taking place in front of her eyes.

Her usual coping mechanism for a situation like this would be to simply get angry, to simply bulldoze through anything her heart cannot handle with sheer wrathful stubbornness. That's what she would normally do, she wouldn't even need to think about it, so naturally that response comes to her.

And yet…

"Tohsaka-senpai?"

The words escape her lips unbidden, shaky, incredulous, hopeful. Even as she numbly complies with Senpai's gesture to sit down on the other couch, Olga simply doesn't have it in herself to summon any anger at the moment. So she does the next best thing.

"What's going on?" That is, she avoids the topic. "What's this place?"

"I'm pretty sure I'm welcoming you into my home, girl." Tohsaka-senpai answers with an arched eyebrow and an amused expression. "But, by all means, correct me if I'm wrong."

"That's not what I mean!" Olga snaps in frustration, only for her steam to promptly run out the moment she tries to put her thoughts into words. "Singularity F was… this place should have… You should have…"

Tohsaka-senpai, who had been patiently listening to Olga's increasingly incoherent stammering, finally speaks up to complete that last aborted sentence. "Disappeared?"

Her voice is soft and gentle, but Olga flinches all the same. Looks like she didn't manage to avoid the topic for even five minutes, after all. Not quite trusting her voice, she gives a mute nod instead.

"That would've been true if the Emiya Household was a normal place, connected to a single location and tied down to the regular flow of time." Tohsaka-senpai explains, finally placing down her cup and reaching out with her now free hand to rest it on Olga's knee. "But this place can be found wherever a true believer of Demon Lord Re'em exists. In a very real sense, you could say this home is the heart of our little cult.

Olga's head snaps to the side (to hide a sudden blush) with a huff. A mere hand resting on one's knee has no business feeling as warm and comforting as it does.

To think such a thing was even possible… She knew this place was amazing, but this goes way beyond the pale. She'll have to raise her estimation of Medea's capabilities a couple notches at least. Truly, the Age of Gods must've been an incredible time to produce sorcerers like her.

"What was the deal with the Memory Crystal, then?" Olga challenges next, feelings still (raw and sore) chaotic and hard to understand. "I thought it was an attempt at making your feats known to humanity, even if your existence would be relegated to a fictional story."

"Ah, to send a final yell into the void, to perform a last act of defiance against one's inescapable fate… Not really my style, I think." Tohsaka-senpai muses. "I'm spiteful enough to consier a final fuck you like that, sure. But I'd rather spend all my energy fighting to my last breath. No, everything I told you back then is true, but the Memory Crystal serves a different purpose."

"Then, why?" Olga frowns, confusion and hurt coming back to the forefront. She's not stupid, she can tell the explanation they were given back then didn't create a misunderstanding by accident, it was designed to mislead, to be taken as something else than what it was. Tohsaka-senpai wanted Chaldea to get the wrong impression about what they were doing. "Why was all this cloak and dagger necessary, why leave us to make assumptions? Why not simply let us know what you were planning?"

"What, you wanted me to reveal all the secrets of our cult after just an evening date? I like you a lot, girl. But not that much." The cheeky answer makes Olga's barely recovered cheeks start heating up once again. G-Geez, Tohsaka-senpai really didn't need to put it like that. Olga's romantic life is enough of a mess as it is already. "Besides, we had to keep in mind operational security, we don't really know how secure your comms are. I doubt even you do yourself, considering how bleeding-edge and experimental the technologies are."

"Is it even possible to wiretap this sort of communication?" Olga frowns, forcing herself to turn her attention towards safe topics that don't make her rebellious heart beat faster. "Why would it even be a concern, even if it was possible?"

"Come on, surely you can connect the dots yourself. The Incineration of Human History… It was no accident." That's something Olga already knew, but the way the words are makes her stomach flip and her veins grow cold."Someone intentionally set the events in motion, and that someone is still interfering, ensuring the events develop in whatever manner fits their designs."

"Lev…" The growled-out name escapes Olga's lips like a curse.

This isn't a topic she particularly enjoys, but at least she's no longer having intrusive thoughts about sharing a cabin on a ferris wheel with Tohsaka-senpai. Or even worse, long strolls under the moonlight. Small mercies.

"I would be very surprised if the mastermind of such a grand scheme could afford to spend years hiding their true strength while they infiltrated Chaldea." Tohsaka-senpai shakes her head seriously. "I'm of the opinion that your little traitor was just an agent of the real enemy."

Now that her brain is no longer threatening to drown in serotonin and other equally pesky hormones, it occurs to Olga that Tohsaka-senpai seems awfully convinced of her theory. Far more than the points brought up could possibly justify. She knows more, and she's not sharing.

Olga knows why, of course. At the end of the day, they are mere allies of convenience. Different factions working for similar goals who just so happen to have Haku in common. Oh, Olga wants to believe there's some sincerity in their interactions, that they truly get along and that Senpai wouldn't have bothered taking her under her wing just to throw her away the moment she's no longer useful, but….

Well, Olga has been wrong about that one before.

In any case, she'll have to bring her observations up to Roman and Caster once they re-establish communications. Get a second and third opinion. When a leader's competence flakes in one particular field, it's her responsibility to bring experts to the table. And her ability as a judge of character is certainly suspect.

For now, she would be best served by letting the past lie and focus on the present.

Closing her eyes, Olga takes a deep breath… Her amber eyes are sharp and back to full focus when she opens them again.

"We can shelve that discussion for later." She finally announces. "It feels rather more pressing to hear what are you doing here in Rome, and how did you even become the Crimson Empress."

"Well, I don't want to pointlessly feed your very reasonable grudge…" Tohsaka-senpai trails off with a sheepish smile. "But that's kind of Lev's fault, actually."

Olga's next demand comes out much colder than intended. "Explain." Damnit, she's just managed to recover her composure and it's already getting strained again!

"We identified the lynchpin of this Singularity and deployed to counter it… Some time ago." Tohsaka-senpai explains with a sigh. "Since the current emperor was ill-prepared to face the incoming crisis and I was particularly well-suited to take control, that's what I did."

"I assume you intended to secure the Grail for your cult?" Olga arches an eyebrow, voice not quite accusing. As much as Chaldea could use the Grails, they don't truly have a claim on them. As long as the Singularity is solved, there's nothing they can complain about. "Lev may be dangerous, but the forces you have gathered here are on a whole different level."

"That was the plan, and it should've worked without a cinch but we… Got cocky." Tohsaka-senpai deflates. "We wanted to make the most of our visit to this Singularity and didn't go for the throat from the start, confident in our ability to secure victory when the time came." She continues sadly, distractedly reaching for her cup again. "But Lev used the Grail to do something I don't fully understand and now… Now I'm bound to the role of the Crimson Empress that was originally adopted as a mere convenience to help us reach our real goals."

As Tohsaka-senpai takes slow and forlorn sips from her straw once again, Olga (bitterly regrets the loss of the hand on her knee) reflects on that information. Can the Grail really do something like that? To enforce one's adopted role as if it was a tangible binding, turning title into duty… That sounds like the sort of rules-lawyering bullshit only fairies can pull off with any degree of consistency. But then again the Grails are bullshit in their own way, so everything is possible.

"To my knowledge, the only ways to break free are to either defeat the Purple Empress or to capture the Grail." Tohsaka-senpai continues after emptying her cup. "I would ask the Chaldeans support for this endeavor, else I remain trapped in my role forever or, more likely, until our mysterious mastermind no longer needs the Singularities."

That means either re-unifying the Roman Empire or to secure the Grail for themselves, any of which would help accomplish Chaldea's main goal of solving the Singularity. Really, the only choice here is whether she wants to secure the collaboration of the mighty Crimson Empress for something they would do anyway or to scorn her and venture alone to do the exact same thing, without powerful support.

The answer is a no-brainer, really. Even if Olga distrusted the older woman and suspected a trap, it wouldn't change the right choice here, just what she would do afterwards. Yes, the correct answer is obvious. And yet… Olga is feeling a bit contrary right now.

"Why don't you do that by yourself?" She questions instead. "You have a team of insane monsters on your side. Yamato Fucking Takeru isn't even your strongest Servant, for goodness sake!"

"Because the Purple Empress is perfectly capable of stalemating me." Tohsaka-senpai's answer makes her body stiffen. "Her selection of top-notch Servants is smaller, but her champion can contest mine. And she has numbers on her side."

"Well… crud."

"My thoughts exactly. That's why I'm requesting Chaldea's aid. Both unofficially as a fellow time-drifter wanting to solve this most foul Incineration of Human Order and officially as the Crimson Empress of this Roman Empire."

"I'm not sure how much we can accomplish if the Purple Empress has you deadlocked." Olga sighs. "That is to say, we'll do our best to fulfill our duty, but—"

"Now, don't make the mistake of seeing every problem as a nail, girl. Not every dilemma can be best solved through brute force." Tohsaka-senpai chuckles with a confident Olga suddenly finds herself envying with every fiber of her being. "And something tells me Haku here will be a pathway to many solutions some would consider to be… unnatural."

At Tohsaka-senpai's gesture, Olga turns around towards the rest of her group, who seem to have drifted towards the kitchen bar to give the two of them some privacy and are being attended by… Are these the maids from the France Singularity?

Taking another deep breath, Olga holds back the reflexive impulse for a shocked outburst and takes a moment to properly consider the idea. Assuming the Emiya Household truly works beyond the general rules of time and space to provide safe access to every Demon Lord Re'em cultist…

Well, it still creates more questions than answers, but it wouldn't be too far-fetched for the two Einzbern Homunculus to have survived the Singularity Collapse too.

"I'm not going to ask." She finally decides, turning her attention back to Tohsaka-senpai. "We have been relying on Fujimaru a lot to pull something off against impossible odds again and again, so I don't really have grounds to complain that you're doing the same."

"Quite so! Now, it's late and you all must be feeling tired after running around for the whole day." Tohsaka-san throws away her now empty cup to clasps her hands together. "This palace has great food and even greater amenities, so rest and relax at your leisure until tomorrow. Take it as a token of apology from a contrite empress, okay?"

"Ah! That's right!" Lancer's voice reverberates through the room, startling Olga with its sudden urgency. Is there something wrong she missed? "P-san promised to pamper me a whole lot tonight!"

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A relaxing dip in a Roman bath sounds delightful about right now. Olga is suddenly feeling very tired.

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