March 14, 2018
Acting Director Romani Archaman was attempting to write a report, eat his lunch, read Magi Mari's Magical Mystery Blog, and listen to SHEBA's latest survey of the Fifth Singularity at the same time. He wasn't doing any of them well, not even eating, but there wasn't enough time in the day to accomplish everything he needed to do even if he did everything four at a time, let alone one by one. It didn't help that all the Servants knew where his office was, and anything they couldn't, wouldn't, or shouldn't bring to Ritsuka they brought to -
The door opened behind him. "Lord Romani."
Crap. Swallowing a bite of his salad, he turned to face his visitor, drawing himself up in his best approximation of the dignity of an Acting Director. It wasn't much. "I know I've told you not to call me… Never mind. What can I do for you, Ushiwaka?"
The young samurai in the doorway fixed him with a stern look. "Can you explain to me why Euryale is allowed to walk the halls instead of being put in some kind of box until we need her, or better yet, rendered down for resources?"
"...You're talking about what she did last week," Roman guessed.
"Yes, Lord Romani. I am talking about last week, when she bewitched Lord Fujimaru to do her bidding and Rayshifted the two of them into a collapsing Singularity without backup or oversight. For a nostalgic personal outing."
He laughed uncertainly and scratched the back of his head. "Please, at least call me Doctor. It really makes me anxious when you call me a 'lord'." At least it wasn't 'King', thank G-d.
She gave him an unimpressed look. "Dr. Romani, then."
Romani sighed. It was easy to see where she was coming from, unfortunately. "We considered it, but our options are limited. We don't have a good way to contain a Servant, so our options were to unsummon her or… let it slide. And she's gotten it out of her system; if we ended up re-summoning her with a new Spirit Origin, she'd probably try it again! So we decided not to take drastic action yet." Ushiwakamaru's expression was turning more and more sour. He followed up quickly with, "Ritsuka agreed! He said should let her off with a warning."
Ushiwakamaru frowned and muttered something Romani didn't completely catch about how maybe Fujimaru needed to learn to give up on a few people at least. "Disappointing," she said more loudly.
"I think he's trying to do what's best for Chaldea. You can ask him about it, though," he said, hoping to deflect.
"I'm not talking about him. What's disappointing is that you have priorities higher than my lord's best interests while he leads your battles for you!"
That was too much. Roman knew he shouldn't let a Servant get to him like this, but the accusation honestly hurt. He pushed himself out of his chair, matching her look. "If I could do what he can, I wouldn't let him out of the complex! Do you think I like commanding child soldiers?"
Ushiwaka shook her head dismissively. "What does his age have to do with it? He's old enough to choose to fight. But I know what happens when someone is both necessary and expendable. Not being able to use anyone else isn't an excuse for using him up."
"I'm doing everything I can not to."
"Except protecting him from people taking advantage of him."
"Everything I can, Ushiwaka. Being in charge doesn't mean I can change how things are."
"It means you're responsible for it, though."
He winced. "I don't think… I mean… Ugh." Talk about hitting him where it hurts by accident. If he hadn't been listening in during the London Singularity, maybe he wouldn't have to take the idea of being responsible for all this so hard. "If I've got a responsibility, then I've got a duty to deal with it in equal measure. We have a duty to humanity, and we can't just default on it because some of the people we have to work with are difficult!" Case in point, he thought, but was wise enough not to say aloud.
"My duty is to my lord, not 'humanity', whatever that might be. I won't allow his so-called allies to take advantage of his good nature." She fixed him with a brief but forceful glare. "If Euryale tries something like that again, the consequences will be out of your hands." Before he could form a response, she turned and stalked away.
Roman sighed and dropped back into his seat, his lunch forgotten. Maybe Magi Mari would have some advice that would make him feel better. He tapped a command and opened what was, somehow, the world's only surviving website.
"'Today's Tantalizing Tip: Welcome advice will come from an unexpected source!'... Are you kidding me?!"
March 15, 2018
"… so I told him I'd take matters into my own hands if it happened again."
Jing Ke nodded, reclining in her seat. "Makes sense to me. I guess if Master said so, you should let it slide for now, but you know how I feel. Divine Spirit or not, some people just need their throats cut." In the middle of the afternoon, the cafeteria was mostly empty around them, and Jing Ke clearly didn't feel any need to mince words with no one to overhear.
Ushiwaka smiled in satisfied camaraderie. Finally, someone who got it! Jing Ke was that most novel of people - someone easy to talk to. So many people balked when presented with completely reasonable suggestions.
The cafeteria doors opened for Lord Fujimaru, who waved in passing as he navigated between the tables toward the kitchen.
Ushiwaka straightened up, letting go of her irritation for the time being. "Good afternoon, my lord!"
Jing Ke chimed in with, "Hey there, Master! Late lunch or early dinner?"
Fujimaru slowed down. "Neither right now. I'm going to help Emiya prep the curry for dinner." He gave a self-deprecating smile. "It's just a lot of vegetable chopping, but, look, something I'm actually qualified to do!"
"I think you've got more useful skills than just food prep. But be sure he makes enough this time," said Jing Ke with a smile.
"Yeah, that's a mistake nobody wants to repeat," he said. Ushiwaka gave him a quizzical look, and he answered her unspoken question. "The last time Emiya made curry, Lily got in a fistfight with Spartacus about not leaving enough."
"He's that big an eater?" Ushiwaka asked.
Fujimaru shook his head. "No, she is. I have no idea where she puts it all, but apparently when a King takes the last serving of a dish, it's oppression? Anyway, I'll catch you two later." He waved, continuing on down the hall. "Don't dethrone any Emperors without me!"
Ushiwaka considered for a moment. She had a matter to bring up with him, if she could bring herself to do it.. "My lord!" she called after him. Fujimaru turned around, walking backwards with eyebrows raised. "May I assist you?"
He stopped, smiling as if at an unexpected pleasure. "I'd like that, yeah."
"I'll pass, if that's all right with you," Jing Ke said. "Emiya gets touchy when he sees me in the kitchen."
"You know, if you showed up there doing something other than trying to sneak into the liquor stores, he'd probably relax," Fujimaru pointed out.
"Psh. Someone catches you Presence Concealing near the saké just one time…" Jing Ke shook her head.
"Ha! How many times did they not catch you?" Ushiwaka asked knowingly.
Jing Ke just laughed. "Who could say? I'll see you two at dinner. Have fun with the menial labor!" She gave a shallow bow and sauntered off.
"Looks like it's just us," Lord Fujimaru said cheerfully, turning to Ushiwaka.
"Very well, my lord!" She held up a hand and clenched it, grinning. "Together, we shall make short work of those vegetables!"
That turned out to be an optimistic proclamation.
Emiya and Boudica shared responsibility for the kitchen, and neither of them thought small when it came to meal preparation. They couldn't, really; a score of mortals and almost twice that many Servants ate a lot of food, especially when it was good, and it almost always was. When Ushiwaka and her lord reported for kitchen duty, they found a dauntingly-sized pile of potatoes earmarked for that night's meal.
Lord Fujimaru set to work with his habitual good cheer. He wasn't especially fast or skilled at peeling, but he was conscientious and had clearly done the work before. Ushiwaka herself had grudgingly learned the basics of food preparation at Kurama Temple, though she'd skipped out whenever she could. Potatoes might be novel, but if you'd diced one sort of tuber, you'd pretty much diced them all. Still, she didn't regret offering to help.
Her hands ran on autopilot turning Fujimaru's peeled potatoes into even, finger-width cubes as she mulled over whether or not to bring up the dream with him. It was a dilemma. She probably should disclose it, but that would involve that most loathsome of all emotions, awkwardness.
Lord Fujimaru tossed another peeled potato into her bin, "It's nice to do something that isn't a life-or-death struggle or, uh, preparing for a life-or-death struggle. Stuff like this makes Chaldea feel more real to me, you know? For a while, I couldn't shake the thought that I was imagining everything, or got caught in some kind of reality TV show."
"Some kind of what, my lord?" Summoning-granted knowledge wasn't helping with that one.
"Sorry, that's a hard one to explain," he said. "Um, like an elaborate practical joke meant to make me think all this was real for other people's entertainment."
"It sounds like people have not changed much since my time." She chuckled. "That sounds like something my mentor might have done. Probably only to someone they really disliked, though."
"Kiichi Hōgen? Was he really a tengu? There's a lot of stories, and some of them are contradictory."
"They may all be true. They were a tengu, but they had as many identities as the leaves on a tree - man, woman, bird, tanuki, whatever they felt like." Distance lent the memory of her mentor's quirks some fondness, but she still frowned in well-remembered irritation. "Kiichi the swordmaster was just one they favored at Kurama Temple."
"That must have been complicated."
Ushiwaka tilted her head in thought. "I didn't find it so. They were whimsical, arrogant, sometimes frustrating. Wise, when they wanted to be. But complicated? More the opposite, really."
He chuckled. "Straightforward, arrogant, and whimsical? Sounds like they'd fit in here."
She made a face. "Please, no, my lord. That would be… Augh. I can't complain about the quality of their instruction, but I would like to be done with it. That was one of the reasons I left Kurama." Her hands hadn't stopped while she talked - slicing things was something she could do without thought - but when she reached for the next peeled potato she found none. She swept the pile of potato cubes off of the cutting board into a tub and glanced up.
Fujimaru looked embarrassed and grabbed another potato to peel. "Whoops. Sorry, got distracted."
"What's next after the potatoes, my lord?"
"Well, after this, there's the onions." Fujimaru gestured toward the next table over, where a hill of onions loomed. The yellow-white mound probably weighed half as much as Ushiwaka did. A single paring knife gleamed at them, stuck perfectly upright in the topmost onion. Her lord regarded the pile with a touch of exasperation. "Emiya's a little melodramatic sometimes, isn't he?"
Ushiwaka nodded, frowning. "My lord… The consequences of preparing that many onions could be unfortunate." A glance showed her he was thinking the same thing.
"Yeah. I wonder if Emiya has any goggles in here?"
She considered the problem. Her eyes narrowed. "I know of one Servant who will help, if he knows what's good for him."
"My lord Yoshitsune, Master, you may leave these onions to me." The Servant who called himself 'Benkei' surveyed the pile and nodded to himself.
He'd been summoned a week ago, and Ushiwaka wondered if he'd realized that she'd seen through his disguise the moment she'd laid eyes on him. It was infuriating to have Benkei's old rival pretending to be him, but for the moment, it didn't matter. Both of them had been her retainers in life. Benkei wouldn't have considered disobeying her. After what he'd done to her, Hitachibou Kaison wouldn't dare.
"I suppose you wouldn't let a little thing like chopping onions bother you," Ritsuka said, oblivious to the substitution.
Kaison gave the onions an intimidating frown. Perhaps the fool expected them to quail before him. "Of course not. It is a simple matter of willpower! A man who could withstand a hundred arrows without falling - how could such a one be stopped by root vegetables?"
Ushiwaka thought she saw trepidation beneath the bluster, and hid a smirk. Call himself 'Benkei', would he? Pretend to a better man's legend? As if he was worthy to touch the hem of Benkei's robe. The cowardly wretch deserved worse than merely onion in the eyes.
Lord Fujimaru eyed the pile warily. "Is it okay if we work… over there?" He pointed to a station nearly on the other side of the kitchen, where presumably the onions' miasma wouldn't reach.
Kaison gave a solemn nod. "Stay as far away as you need, Master. My task has often been to stand between harm and my liege."
Ushiwaka felt her breath catch from sheer outrage. How dare he? Here? To my very face? Her eyes narrowed at him as the memory surfaced.
"Hitachibou Kaison is not here, my lord," Benkei rumbled, as they looked down from the manor windows at the army which had come for her head. Condemnation rang in his voice. "I did not think him so craven as to abandon his lord in her final hours."
"If he sees some point in continuing to live in this world, then let him remain until he can no longer stand it," Yoshitsune replied dispassionately, refusing to admit how badly this final betrayal stung. "I was a fool to go on as long as I have."
Her heart hammered in her ears and pumped icy water through her veins. She wouldn't have it said she'd slain him with his back turned. She'd call his name sharply, his real one, and when he turned, all it would take would be a single cut -
She wrestled the fury down and unclenched her hand from Usumidori's hilt. This faker was just an annoyance who might still be of some use to her lord. That was all that mattered. Putting on an impassive face, she tried to tune out the rest of the banter between her lord and her wayward retainer.
When Lord Fujimaru clapped Kaison on the back and walked away, she walked with him, holding in her anger. No, she thought, helping Fujimaru haul their potatoes as far away from the onions as they could get, she wouldn't kill Kaison. She still wanted to, a little, but he didn't deserve a quick punishment. She'd make use of him until his game grew old, at least -
"Ushiwaka? Ushi? You okay?"
She stopped short, startled. Lord Fujimaru was leaning in front of her, looking concerned. Her head cleared in the time it took her to blink.
"I… Yes, my lord! It's nothing. Just an old memory."
"Oh." He nodded as he picked up his paring knife again. "Memories can be a problem."
She resumed dicing the potatoes as well, a little slower and more thoughtful than before. She swallowed and tried to concentrate on warming the ice that seemed to settle in her heart. That cold, desolate anger belonged to Yoshitsune. She did not want to be that woman here. When she felt sufficiently thawed, she explained, "My memories are strange to me, sometimes. I recall everything up to a point as if I lived it, but after that, they feel odd. Like a house that I've had described to me a dozen times, but never set foot in."
"It sounds like you never got the chance to get used to them. I wonder how much of us is our memories, and how much is us living with them?" He raised his voice a little to speak over the loud chopping sounds coming from the other side of the room. "Do you know whether other Servants feel the same? I know Alexander is hazy on his adult memories."
"Perhaps I will ask him."
The noise from behind them was becoming harder to ignore. Lord Fujimaru paused mid-potato to turn and look. "Wow, look at him go!"
Tears were streaming from Kaison's eyes as he peeled and chopped, his hands moving faster than any mortal chef's. The thunk of his knife against the cutting board was like a drumroll. He was already a quarter of the way through the pile of onions, though he might have been slowing down a bit. He had to be more than half blind.
Ushi raised her voice. "Chop faster, Benkei! I am impatient to taste this curry our homeland has adopted, and Chef Emiya is waiting!"
"As you wish, Lord Yoshitsune!" The chopping sounds accelerated, as did the tears. Kaison's mouth began moving in what she thought was some kind of mantra. Begging for forgiveness, maybe. One could hope.
Just barely loud enough for her to hear over the noise, Fujimaru said, "You know Emiya isn't actually held up waiting for the onions, right?"
"Don't worry," she said, loud enough for Kaison to hear. "Like he said, Benkei was never troubled by a little discomfort." Fujimaru watched Benkei for a few seconds, but when there was no disagreement, he shrugged and turned back to his potatoes.
A few potatoes later, Ushiwaka cleared her throat. "Ny lord, I have something of a confession to make."
"Oh?" Fujimaru looked back up. "…Should I be worried?"
"I don't think so, my lord."
"Okay." He set his potato down and waited attentively. "Hit me."
"A few days ago, I had a dream of your past. A conversation with Emiya at the night in the first Singularity you traveled to, the city on fire."
He relaxed a little, then tensed again as she explained. "Huh, that was not at all what I thought you were going to say. Which is fine! It's fine."
Ugh, there was the awkwardness, right on time. "I did not mean to… eavesdrop, my lord," she said after searching for a fitting word. "I could not help it." Not that she would have if she could. Her curiosity had always been greater than her self-restraint, never a high bar to cross anyway. Better to let that remain unsaid, though.
"Don't worry about it, it's just the whatchamacallit, the Dream Cycle. Half of my dreams these days are some hero's memories." Despite his words, he seemed distracted, and maybe a little uncomfortable. "So you got to hear me whining, huh? I was really hoping only Emiya and maybe Fou would have had to put up with that."
Unsure what to say, Ushiwaka defaulted to heedless honesty. "Your complaints might not have been very heroic, but your commitment certainly was."
"Oh, you saw that part, too? I don't know if that's better or worse." He put on a smile that didn't reach his eyes and glanced away. "Well. I still don't think I'm the right person for the job, but like Emiya said, it doesn't matter whether I've got what it takes or not. I can't just… not try. So, I'll keep going as long as I can either way."
I was a fool to go on as long as I have, her memory said again.
"My lord." When he looked back to her, she leaned forward in emphasis, hoping the earnestness in her voice meant something. "Emiya told you to trust that you were good enough, and he meant it. Resignation is no substitute for hope. Believe me, I know." Her smile faltered for a second before she propped it back up. "You are more capable than you think. If you cannot believe in yourself, then believe me when I say that you can lead us to victory. If this 'Solomon' says the halo above those Singularities is a portent of our defeat, then we shall tear it from the sky together!"
Fujimaru boggled at her for a second. "Did you just… 'believe in the me that believes in you' me?"
She hesitated, unsure why he was looking at her like that. "I… suppose you could say that?"
He laughed a few times, disbelieving, then took a deep breath. "Well, when your childhood hero tells you that, you've got to believe them, right? It's practically a law." By the end of the sentence, he was grinning, and the room seemed a little brighter as she saw some of the worry leaving his face.
Her own smile turned into a matching grin. "Perhaps you should put that on your list of rules for Masters."
"I absolutely should," he said. He held her eyes for a second, then coughed and continued, "Um. Okay! Let's finish these potatoes. Emiya said he'd show me how he makes the sauce once the vegetables are ready."
"Oh! An opportunity for lessons from a master is not to be missed, my lord. We should hurry!" Over her shoulder, she snapped, "Benkei! Faster!"
"Yes, my lord!" The sound of chopping sped up again.
Author's Notes:
I really like Kaison/Benkei. His silliness comes from a very human place compared to some of the other Servants, who seem to have quirks for quirks' sake.
The theme for this chapter is 'Brighter', by Patent Pending.
Will you wander with me to the edge
Take a breath, tell the world that we're not finished yet
Cast a net to the stars and see if we can get
Closer to the light at the end