March 13, 2019
Ritsuka chanted over Mash's shield as he had so many times before, sending a beacon out beyond the world from the isolated summoning chamber near the heart of Chaldea. Mash herself was standing by as she'd always done during summonings. She might not be able to fight like a Servant anymore, but her dedication remained awe-inspiring and possibly a little worrying. Her shield hadn't left Chaldea's summoning chamber for more than two months. It was starting to feel like a permanent fixture there, and Ritsuka wondered if she was okay with that, how she'd feel if the new staff decided to bolt it in place or something. He'd argue against it - it belonged to Mash if it belonged to anyone - but the newcomers from the Mages' Association tended to treat him with wary derision - a pathetic excuse for a mage who somehow now outranked them and treated the living legends they walked the halls with like friends, instead of fantastically dangerous sapient magical weapons.
Ritsuka nearly shrugged in the middle of the ritual. Their loss, really.
"Here is my oath:
I shall uphold all the good of the world.
I shall stand against all the world's evil."
By now, the summoning ritual wasn't the least bit unusual for him, but it still touched some kind of primal wonder as the lights flowed out from the ritual circle. Even on the twentieth try that day, when his magical circuits were starting to feel the strain. He was pretty sure he could recite the summoning formula in his sleep, and probably already had at some point, but when he felt the catch in his soul that meant someone had responded, it was hard to claim it wasn't worth it. He'd never get tired of it.
"From the circle which guards the World,
Come forth, guardian of the balance!"
Golden light gathered itself atop Mash's shield, arranged itself into a humanoid form. Details resolved themselves from the floor up: dress shoes, pinstriped trousers, an ornate waistcoat, oh son of a bitch it's him.
"Mash, call Holmes now," Ritsuka said rapidly, feeling something akin to when he went into combat: Focus, clarity, and a little perfectly healthy dissociation to push his worries inside where they wouldn't get in the way of survival. He took the couple of seconds he had left to take a deep, theoretically calming breath and try to put a neutral expression on his face. Was today the day that oath to stand against all the world's evilcame back to bite him? He was about to come face to face with some of it again, not a week after escaping Shinjuku by the skin of his teeth.
No. Calm down, Ritsuka. It's going to be fine.
He'd never been worried about a summoning before. Intimidated, sure. Disgusted, occasionally, when Giles stuck his head out of the Throne and had the door slammed on him. Briefly scared when a Berserker showed up and bellowed at him. This was the first time he'd felt like the Servant summoning might be something to be apprehensive about, and he hoped it didn't last.
The summoning light kept gathering into the shape of a person. A half-cloak with blue lining. Mechanized cane that doubled as a silenced airgun. A collar like butterflies taking flight. A pale, narrow face starting to show age lines, carefully-trimmed moustache, greying hair swept to the side. The new Servant's merry, sardonic eyes were the last part of them to appear, already meeting Ritsuka's eyes. A crooked grin spread on his crooked face. "You summoned me? Why, what a peculiar Master you must be!" he said with relish. "My Class is Archer. I shall hold off on revealing my True Name for now, but I am strong, that much I can guarantee!"
Despite his focus, Ritsuka wasn't sure whether he wanted to smile at the audacity or frown at the potential for disaster. Instead, he held himself impassive as he watched the newly-arrived Servant, drumming his fingers against his thigh. One second, two seconds, three seconds, as the Archer's eyebrow slowly raised.
"Nope, can't do this your way. Hi, Archer. Please tell me my name." Ritsuka didn't call him Professor, or Moriarity. Whether or not he could actually fool the Servant, he'd rather not give away that they'd met before. A Moriarity who went through Shinjuku with him might be tolerable in Chaldea - with some precautions - but one who hadn't would be poison, plain and simple. If he didn't know Ritsuka, he had to be unsummoned immediately.
Those cheerful eyes twinkled; oh, what a friendly old fellow he was! "Do allow me to keep my True Name secret for now, Master."
"No, I said my name," Ritsuka replied with false calm. He took a moment to be grateful that he'd summoned Moriarity so soon, while the memories of the elaborate assassination attempt that was Shinjuku were so recent. His natural inclination was to err on the side of friendliness; if he'd had more time to get over it, it'd be much harder to stand his ground. Good thing he had all that fresh anxiety, right?
The new Servant chuckled, practically radiating good-natured confusion. "Well, Master, I'd have to be quite brilliant indeed to know the name of someone to whom I haven't been introduced yet…"
Ritsuka nodded thoughtfully, making sure not to drop his eyes. Uncertainty would look exploitable. "Yeah, you would be, wouldn't you. Da Vinci, begin unsummoning protocol -" he started, raising his voice.
Moriarity's facade of affable perplexity dissolved into laughter. "Ahaha! Oh, good show, Ritsuka my boy, very well done!" the Professor said quickly, glancing around as if expecting an attack. His expression was worried and proud and slyly ingratiating all at once. "Though I am a tiny bit hurt that you'd dispatch me so readily after all we've been through together!"
"Sorry, Professor. I had to know." He wasn't sorry at all - wasn't letting himself feel sorry - and made sure not to sound it. He'd seen the flicker of calculation in Moriarity's eyes, seen him weigh the danger against the possible advantage, Ritsuka's mercy against his wariness. It was a shame. He liked this wicked old man, just a little, even trusted him after the fallout from his plot. He just couldn't let his guard down around him. Not yet, maybe not ever.
"Of course you did! And an excellent play it was. When you hold the upper hand, don't hesitate to use it." The damnable part of it was that Moriarity did seem genuinely proud, and something in Ritsuka responded to that, making him want to smile. He tried to quash the feeling and didn't quite succeed.
There was a tapping sound from the observation window above, and both Ritsuka and Moriarity turned to see Sherlock Holmes looking down at them, one fingertip touching the glass. He clasped his hands behind his back and regarded Moriarity with a jaundiced eye, one articulated waldo holding a single magnifying glass in front of him like a monocle. After just long enough to make a point, the waldo folded itself back away into his overcoat, and the tall detective turned and left the window.
The meaning was not hard to discern.
"Ah. I see I am… preceded by my detractors." Moriarity's words were tinged with bitterness. He lowered his voice. "I can't blame you for being cautious about me, Master, but I do hope you have your eye on him as well. If only for fairness' sake." That last clause came with an indescribable tinge of irony.
Now that he'd established that he could be in control, Ritsuka felt a little better letting some of his wariness show instead of trying to control his expression so tightly. "I haven't forgotten your lesson in not taking anything for granted, Professor," he said wryly.
"That's a good start, then," Moriarity said, smiling despite the implication. "What's next?"
"Senpai," Mash said, looking between them, "you must need a break after all those summoning attempts. Why don't I help the Professor find a room?" Whether she still had the strength of a Servant or not, the glare she was giving him showed no sign that she was intimidated. Quite the opposite, in fact.
"Nah, we can both go," Ritsuka said. Mash gave him an are you sure look, and Ritsuka gave her back a tiny smile and a nod. "Let's show our new Archer around Chaldea." Moriarity was going to be trouble, but keeping a lid on that sort of trouble was Ritsuka's job, maybe even more than bumbling into Singularities and having his bodyguards knock them over.
It would be fine, he told his anxiety as they headed for the door. Better to have the evil mastermind on your side than the other way around.
Right?
Later that night, more than a dozen Servants stood, sat, or lounged on couches in one of Chaldea's surviving rec rooms as they attended their Master, waiting to hear their fate.
Mash solemnly handed Ritsuka a piece of paper. He consulted the list on it, cleared his throat, and spoke. "Okay, the ballots are in: Four votes for Gladiator, three votes for The Lion King, one vote for Star Wars Episode IV, none for Seven Samurai- huh, didn't expect that - three for Godzilla, four for Pride and Prejudice, and…" He sighed. "...only two for Pacific Rim. I guess my description didn't do it justice."
"I tried, Senpai," Mash said apologetically. "It sounded like fun."
"Well, Kintoki couldn't make it tonight, so maybe it's for the best. I think he'd dig that one. Okay, everyone, it looks like it's a toss-up between Gladiatorand Pride and Prejudice. Anyone have an actual coin to flip?" Caesar, Nero, and Marie's clique looked excited at the results; the only one who looked truly disappointed was Blavatsky, who muttered something about wanting to see more movies with spaceships.
"Hang on," Jing Ke said, sounding suspicious. "That's seventeen votes. There's only fourteen of us."
"I gave Foua ballot," Mash piped up. From her shoulder, Fou made a quick sound of agreement.
A few Servants gave the beast sidelong looks, but Ritsuka just nodded as if that made sense. After Solomon's Temple, he wasn't going to be surprised by, or complain about, anything Fou did ever again. "That still leaves us with two extra." He panned the room with a wry look. "Anyone want to come clean?" There were a lot of shaking heads, but he couldn't tell which ones were innocent and which were hiding something. With a long-suffering sigh, he looked back down at the tally sheet, trying to guess who voted for what. Fortunately, second-guessing Servants was something he was practiced at.
"It seems as if the only way we'll get to the bottom of this is seeing who voted for what," said Amadeus, wearing a mischievous smile. "Not that I'm looking forward to knowing who voted for what at all."
"These ballots were supposed to be secret," Medea said, trying not to look anxious. "Why don't we just vote again?"
Shakespeare laughed. "Some secrets you keep well, Witch of Colchis, but everyone here knows you chose The Lion King, just as I did!" There were nods all around, and Medea tried to make covering her face with her hands look like she was just massaging her forehead.
"Umu! Shakespeare was the third vote for that?" Nero asked.
"But of course! My own Hamlet, interpreted for children by singing African beasts? Absurd and delightful! How could I not cast my lot for it?"
Meanwhile, Ritsuka had come to a conclusion. "Gaius," he said over the conversation. Talk quieted, and all eyes in the room turned to Caesar who, to his credit, didn't flinch in the slightest. "Please tell me you didn't vote twice. The instructions on the sheet explicitly say, 'Do not vote twice'." He tapped his finger on the sheet with each word for emphasis.
Full of well-practiced dignity, Caesar held up his right hand like a Roman orator. "Dear boy, I swear upon the honor of the noble gens Julia, I did not vote twice for this night's movie selection!"
Ritsuka held the Servant's eyes. He'd done the math. "You're also not supposed to vote more than twice."
"Ah, now, that is a matter for debate, Master! I say to you that it would not violate a single word of -"
"Nope, never mind, tie's broken. Sorry, Nero, looks like Gladiator didn't win," Ritsuka said, rolling his eyes in exasperation. He'd learned better than to let Caesar's bullshit gather momentum. Give him half a minute to extemporize, and everyone in the room would be thinking maybe it was okay if Caesar blatantly ignored the rules as written because of semantics, and anyway democratic institutions sometimes needed to be overridden by the insight and brilliance of one great man with a vision, a vision for which movie everyone would enjoy the most…
Ignoring the background noise of Nero scolding her revered predecessor, Mash met Ritsuka's eyes with the same resigned amusement he was feeling. "I'll make sure the instructions are changed on next week's sheet," she said.
"Thanks, Mash. I'll get Pride and Prejudice rolling." It was a shame about the movie choice. Chaldea's translation charm made watching foreign films effortless, but he'd really rather take advantage of it without resorting to British period dramas.
A few minutes later, the room had gone quiet again as the audience began their journey into the extremely repressed world of early 19th-century Britain. Ritsuka settled onto a couch next to Mash. Another issue had arisen with the movie: it wasn't exciting enough to distract him from moment to moment. His eyes were on the screen but his mind was on other things, like the samurai whispering to Jing Ke at the snack table.
Just ask her out. You've asked out girls before.
Yes, because asking another freshman out to a movie was the same as attempting to start a romance with a reincarnated legendary samurai while stuck in a secret Antarctic base. Thank you, inner voice.
What's the worst that could happen?
In Chaldea!? Did his inner voice even hear itself?
What does that change? Look how much time you've already wasted.
If he could glare at his inner voice, he would have. As it was, he was frowning at the screen as if Kiera Knightley had personally offended him. He'd been in mourning through January, thank you very much, and then he'd had to deal with the emotional fallout of suddenly getting a bunch of mail from his family all at once when the satellite link finally came back, and then he'd pulled Demon God Baal's trap card and got sent to Grimdark Neo-Tokyo. What was he supposed to have done?
It's not about what you did, it's about not making excuses to wait until something else interferes, you idiot. She's important to you, right?
Well, yeah. Extremely. But that just made it -
He was so wrapped up in his internal argument that he didn't notice that Mash had scooted out of the way until Ushiwakamaru vaulted the back of the couch and promptly sat in the spot she'd vacated. He gave Ushi a surprised glance and got a bright smile in return before she turned back to watch the movie, popcorn bag in hand. Thankfully, she'd dismissed her armor, but she was close enough that her flowing sleeves brushed against his arm when she moved, sending tingles all the way up to his shoulder. Her proximity took up so much of his attention that the movie screen might as well have been turned off.
Okay. Maybe his inner voice had a point.
Fortunately, he had been working out a plan. It was a simple plan whose most difficult part would have to be done by someone else, which was par for the course for him. He'd give it a shot tomorrow, he decided. Hopefully, da Vinci would come through for him.
March 14, 2019
Seeing da Vinci behind the Acting Director desk where Romani used to sit made Ritsuka's chest twinge. She'd changed half of the decor but kept a surprising number of his personal effects - pictures on the walls, a keepsake or two, and some religious paraphernalia he didn't know the names of, let alone the purpose. The furniture was the same but the space she'd made now housed a few gizmos, a technical drawing of a Rayshift coffin in a classic Renaissance style, and in pride of place on the wall, a small but beautiful portrait of Romani he assumed she'd painted herself.
Da Vinci leaned her elbows on her desk and laced her fingers together beneath her chin, framing her picture-perfect face in a way that he was certainwas intentional. "So, what is it exactly that you're asking for, Fujimaru?"
Ritsuka dropped into the seat across from her. Maybe he was asking too much? But on the other hand, maybe he wasn't asking enough. He forged ahead. "Let me have a day here once in a while to not do…" He searched for words. "...All this."
"All this?" Da Vinci sounded amused.
Ritsuka waved his arms around erratically. "Everything! Everything I normally do. I've been…" He looked down, sighed. "I've been at war for, uh, about two years now. So if I can't get away from here, can we make here… away?"
Da Vinci gave him a considering look. "Go on…"
"Give me one day, maybe once a month or whatever, we can work that out. One day that's just mine without anything scheduled, and free rein in one of the simulator suites at full power, enough for a campout on the beach, or a chunk of modern Tokyo, or whatever. If I can't leave HQ, at least help me have one day when I don't have to be the Master of Chaldea before everything else." He started ticking things off on his fingers. "No training. No missions. No interruptions. No Servants who need something from me, no command oversight, definitely no teasing over the comms when I least expect it."
"No Servants at all?" There was a knowing tilt to da Vinci's smile.
She'd already seen through him. As expected of da Vinci, he almost heard Mash say. "Also no questions you already know the answer to," he shot back, giving her a mock glare that she just chuckled at.
Da Vinci tapped her lips with a finger and thought. "It would be a hassle to organize, and keeping the Servants out of your way would practically need its own dedicated task force, but… I think it's doable."
Ritsuka relaxed, eyes widening. "Really? "Despite her iron control, she seemed a little taken aback by his obvious relief. "'Cause that would be… I don't know. Good. Different!" He sighed. "Really different. Movie nights are fun but as last night reminded me, I still have to ride herd on everyone."
"You know that if there's an emergency, we'll have to interrupt you," she cautioned. "And we'll have to do some amount of passive monitoring. We need to know if you get hurt, kidnapped, pulled into a micro-Singularity, fall into a nightmare and become comatose, et cetera."
"Monitoring for the usual nonsense, check." Every now and then Ritsuka was forced to acknowledge how absurd his life had become.
"How does the end of the week sound?"
Ritsuka blinked. "Wait, that soon?" He was so delighted that it took him a second to process. "...You were waiting for me to ask, weren't you?"
Da Vinci nodded. "I was expecting it before Shinjuku. I'll set the simulator up myself if you like. Any requests?"
"Um, maybe. Could I get back to you on that tomorrow? There's someone else I need to ask about that," he said, rubbing the back of his neck in mild embarrassment.
"Oh?" Da Vinci's eyebrow raised in a way designed to let him know she was only pretending to be surprised. "Let me know what you decide on, and I'll get it done."
"Thanks, da Vinci." He started to push himself up, then stopped, because there was one other thing he wanted to bother her about and with how busy she was these days it was probably better to get all his questions answered at once, so he bit the bullet. "Hey, uh. My family's been emailing me again, and I'm really not sure what I can tell them except that I'm still stuck here. Any word on when I can actually go home?"
It was a good thing he'd tempered his expectations, because the look in da Vinci's eyes said what he needed to know before she said a word. "You deserve it, Fujimaru. You truly do. But even if I hate to say it, you're still needed here." Da Vinci shook her head. "Right now, the Mages' Association and the UN are both breathing down our necks, the new staff is… inexperienced…"
"And assholes," he muttered.
Da Vinci went on with only a tiny sigh to show she'd heard. "...And the strategic situation is uncertain. According to Holmes, three more Demon Gods escaped the Goetia collective before you finished it off. Sending you away from Chaldea could be ruinous for everyone if we had to respond to another threat. Unfortunately, you remain the only Master we have."
"No word on new Master candidates?" he asked quietly.
"They're still trying to decide what to do with the injured candidates. They're stable in the cryotanks, but once we start resuscitation, there's no putting them back. Either we succeed at healing them or they die." She shrugged elegantly. "And very few magi families want to send their scions into what's already proven to be a meat grinder. Recruitment is difficult."
Ritsuka nodded. "So it's still just me," he said, with no small amount of melancholy. It's not that big a deal, he told himself. He hadn't really expected anything else. It would have felt really strange to have backup. And there was a dim but surprisingly intense feeling of anger at the idea of sharing Chaldea's servants with other Masters, a feeling that got brighter and more pointed when he considered what he'd learned about magi and how they'd probably treat Servants. Not that mistreating them wouldn't end up a self-solving problem, but it was the principle of the thing. "No vacation, then," he said, a bit more lightly.
"No vacation yet, my young friend! I am working on a chance for you to go home, at least to visit. Negotiations continue, and I am after all a genius in all forms of human endeavor - which most definitely includes both politics and bureaucracy. They'll cave in eventually."
"Thanks for the help, da Vinci. I was worried this would seem like a silly request."
For a brief moment, da Vinci lost her smile. Usually, that was a sign of impending disaster. In this case it was only alarming because Ritsuka had just enough time to see a flash of the deep and abiding sorrow before it reappeared. Before he could even think of saying anything about it, da Vinci shook her head, giving him a gentle look. "There's nothing frivolous about needing a rest, and there's certainly nothing frivolous about wanting to find a way to be closer to someone you care for, and who cares about you in turn. It's a fundamental part of human happiness, and everyone deserves a chance to have it if they want it." A hint of her usual cheer returned. "Trust me on this. Romance is, after all, another human endeavor, which means…?"
Whatever she was hurting about, it only took one look in her eyes to know that it wasn't something she wanted to share. Ritsuka made himself smile back, going along with her obvious deflection. "You're a genius at it?"
"Full marks, Fujimaru! I see you know your da Vinci well. Now," she said before he could reply, "why don't you let me get back to finessing our reports to the Association and go ask… whoever it is you need to ask about that night out, hm?" She winked at him and turned back to her papers.
Author's Notes:
The hardest part of writing a coherent story for me is trying to gracefully fill in the gaps between the scenes I'm excited about; the way they fit together may be obvious in my headbut I still have to connect the dots on the paper too. Because of that, this chapter started to get so long that I decided to break it in two. The next chapter still needs work, but it should be coming out in a matter of days instead of weeks.
Writing Moriarity is so much fun. I hadn't even intended to bring him in, but I wanted something symbolic of how Ritsuka can't relax just because Goetia is gone - maybe even the opposite, in fact. I quite like the Epic of Remnant arc; the stories feel more personal and pointed than Timeless Temple's magic wars. Fortunately they never released Agartha, which sounded like it was going to be a terrible, misogynistic mess, but what was left was quite strong.
No theme for this chapter because it's basically just the first half.