Oh boy oh boy oh boy let's dig in.
Memories come unbidden to your mind and you try shake them free as you walk forward. Legions of the dead, marching with rifles at their shoulders and blank, empty faces. A woman with serpents spun from hair, statues littering her lair before being crushed to rubble underneath her reptilian tail. A town filled with fog and the mad giggling of a murderer, throats slit and hearts gouged out for all to see.
Oh my, Ed
does have quite the history. He's tangled with TUS, Gorgon proper and even Jackie the Ripper if I'm not misleading myself. No wonder he'd have a rather dim view of the lot of them.
Nevertheless, you find the door eventually, and right as you move to knock it hisses open, leaving you looking down at a young man who only realises he's about to bash into you when there's an inch in it. He yelps and backpedals, holding up his hands with an apologetic, nervous smile, immediately starting to speak in as hurried a tone as he possibly can.
"I'msorryIdidn'tseeyoutherethatwasmyfaulthowareyou!"
He's too young to be a doctor, maybe just on the cusp of twenty, with lavender pink hair and deep purple eyes behind a pair of round glasses. Most of the rest of him is covered up by a white and green lab coat, but you can see a pair of white slacks and matching shoes beneath the hem of the coat. Around his neck is a little keycard on a string, which identifies him as "Matthew Kyrielight, Assistant Medical Staff." Well, one mystery solved.
You absolute fucking madman you deadass r36'd Mashumellow. I expected a lot of things from you but this was not one of them. I genuinely had to read this passage two or three times to get it because my mind kept going 'oh you mean Roman obviously'.
You fucking weeb, instant minus 1,000 points.
For those of you unaware, Fou/Four/Faux depending how you romanised it was at the end of Arc 1 of F/GO proper revealed to be Primate Murder, Beast IV, the White Beast, the Cath Palug, the Beast of Conflict. Basically, he had been saying his own name in Pokemon-speak the entire arc and nobody noticed because nobody wanted to romanise it as just 'Four'.
Regardless, we have no idea what role Fou
r might play in coming updates so it'd be best to keep an open mind about the little critter and search for any kind of foreshadowing, not just what fits our preconceived notions.
At Matthew's instruction, you remove your coat, before turning to give him a look when he trails off at the sight of your chains.
"Never seen a Mystic Code before?" you ask.
"Mystic Code? I thought you were just one of those 24/7 submissives I heard about."
The metal is cool against your bare chest as his hand slides under your shirt, though you can't help but stiffen up noticeably when it passes over the upper part of your torso, just a bit to the left.
"Are you-" he begins, pulling the diaphragm away just a bit, before you shake your head and push his hand back.
"I'm fine," you lie, giving him another disarming smile. "Just colder than I remember. I'll keep the shirt on, if that's okay."
I know this is meant to be foreshadowing to some kind of mark or reminder of emotional turmoil for Ed, but all I can think about is how Christian Grey has a no-no spot on his chest in I think about the same place too and that's rapidly draining the pathos. I mean he's already wearing a chain harness and admitted to having been in bondage before, the evidence is piling up.
You're halfway through Matthew sticking a thermometer in your mouth when the door hisses open again, and you lock eyes with the man standing in the doorway. He's...well, "soft" is the first word that comes to your head. Light green eyes that look as inviting as a meadow at midday, salmon pink hair that would fall halfway down his back if it wasn't tied up in a ponytail, and a youthful looking face with gentle, kindly features. It's almost impossible to tell how old the man is, though you'd have bet not a lot older than Matthew. He's holding his own identical labcoat underneath his arm, some kind of roll wrapped in tinfoil in his hand, and as your eyes trail down, you realise that his features are about the only thing you could really call "soft."
He wears the same slacks and shoes that Mashu does, but on top he's wearing nothing but a tight black t-shirt that clings to every muscle on his torso, and there's certainly plenty to cling to. For a doctor, the man keeps himself in shape, and you can't help but admire the wiry build he's got beneath the shirt. Not anything like someone trying to build muscles, but they're functional and very, very pretty. His arms are just as well defined, toned without bulging out, but you really don't want to end up leering at the head medical authority of Chaldea if you can avoid it, so you flick your eyes back up and give him a smile, starting to explain as he opens his mouth.
Ed: "uwu softboy"
*looks down, sees the Chaldea uniform undershirt painted onto his surprisingly toned abs*
Ed: "
owo hardboy"
Roman shakes his head and laughs, before turning back to you with a distractingly warm smile on his face. "I'm his guardian and his teacher. I picked him up about ten years ago, and ever since we've been pretty much inseparable. Olga wasn't pleased when she realised that recruiting me meant taking him on board, but you can't ever have too many people around to help heal others, right?"
Okay, so here's the real interesting thing. Roman is described only as putting on gloves to continue the examination with no mention of an ordinary pair, meaning he isn't hiding one of the Rings of Solomon like canon. iirc in mainline the Grail War that Olga's dad (because fuck any way to romanise that stupid name) won with Caster Solomon was ten years ago. Roman still may or may not have more to him than meets the eye, but tying Mashu-Matthew to him so closely raises a lot of alarm bells, so allow me to put forth my crack theory nice and early;
It's Matthew that's Solomon in disguise, and Roman is his old Master.
There's a man with black hair and glasses who seems to be holding some kind of odd-looking sword, a vacant expression on his face, a petite woman with fluffy orange hair and a pink sweater who seems nervous just to be in Chaldea at all, another woman with strawberry blonde hair and the strangest expression of serene happiness as someone bumps past her and she ends up stumbling around.
I figure these are meant to be Crypter cameos but I deadass do not recognise any of them so it's all falling by the wayside to me.
None of them really catch your eye as you approach the doors to the command center, except for one. A woman with skin pale enough to look unhealthy, long, dark hair spilling down her back, so helpfully revealed by the black backless dress she's worn. With matching black-and-silver opera gloves and thigh-boots, you half want to crack a joke about goths in your head, but another glance stills that particular reflex. Her lips are black as night, and her eyes are a pale, sickly yellow.
Grail mud abuser. Fantastic. Just absolutely perfect. You make a mental note to keep an eye on her
Now this part is interesting because it places us even more firmly within a Cascade Failure adjacent timeline in which grailmud/grail residue is a known and widely used mutagenic agent. Of course as far as I can tell this woman doesn't match anyone from the CF Master cast, closest would be Emiliana but I severely doubt she survived in the first place if Ed was in New Orleans and tangled with TUS, and B) even if she did she'd never join Chaldea. So naturally the other option to consider is that it's nobody from the RP at all because it's not directly canon and Squirt's just misdirecting anybody who'd want to read into this too much. The next question is whether any of these cameos matter at all or they're just to ruse us before the bombs go off with No Deviation like Squirt keeps telling us.
You see a flash of familiar, scarlet hair, of pale, pointed ear.
You're running before you even realise it, turning and all but sprinting away. Your mouth makes the noises people expect, that you've forgotten something, you're sorry for running into them, please move, anything to get them out of you way so you can just run. The rooms and command center are both in the third floor and that makes it easier, makes it simple for you to take a look at your map as your hand trembles and bring you to your room. It's locked, and you're about to get ready to pry the steel door open before the communicator on your wrist beeps and the door hisses open, and you all but stumble in, the door shutting behind you as you frantically try to figure out how to lock it.
A click and a light turning red is about as good a sign for it being locked as anything, and now that you're alone, you finally allow yourself to relax. Your chains are tightening around your limbs so hard it almost hurts, but you can't stop, like a fist clenched for so long it's forgotten how to relax itself. Your hands are shaking and your legs feel weak, and when you sit down on the bed your stomach feels like it's twisted itself into about a million different knots at the same time, somehow.
Breathe.
You force yourself to start taking deep breaths, in and out, held and released in a rhythm. That calms you enough that you can reach into your coat with shaky fingers and dig out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter, and you know that will calm you much more. It takes you three tries to light it, and you hiss as you burn your finger on the second, but the pain is good, keeps you focused, distracts you from everything else. Your first breath of poison is like water in a desert, smoky-sweet vanilla rolling onto your tongue and into your lungs as you hug yourself tighter and shiver on the bed.
She didn't see you.
She didn't see you.
Edward realises that we're in an Astral Chain situation and the sibling we didn't pick is going to be a supporting character, then flees immediately for fear of being robbed of his voice and forced to T-pose helplessly during every cutscene.
But seriously though, jeez dude. Ed's got some serious baggage to be working out with his family if he's willing to forsake even the veneer of cool detachment and skedaddle from the room at the first sign of her. Imagine how relieved he'll be when she's blown to smithereens.
There's still time, still a way out. You'll be late for the briefing but that'll work in your favor, piss off Animusphere and tell her you want to go, submit to the memory erasure, make sure that you put this as far away as possible and never come back, that's how it'll be, that's how it has to be.
You can't be here while she's here.
If your sister knows where you are, if she realises that you're here, she'll drag you back and you can't go back.
Oh, jeez, not even that. He'd rather be Neuralyzed and dumped in the Nevada desert with minor brain damage than have to be in Chaldea with her.
"Edward? Edward, are you okay? It's Romani!" Of course it's the medical head. Probably think you've gone crazy. "Please, open the door. I just want to make sure you're okay! You don't have to come out, I can stay in with you if you need!"
What will you do?
If it's
that bad, then when a medical professional is knocking on your door asking after your wellbeing there's only one option young man.
[X] Open the door. Roman's not a magus, he has no way of knowing your history. If he's after you, it's because he's worried. He was friendly and kind and inviting when you were in the medical ward, and right now you need to feel like you're not alone, even just for a moment. You don't have to tell him anything, but if he's there, you know you can use him to feel better, parasite on his company until you're able to control yourself. Then you can work on leaving.
Avail yourself of the softboy of ambiguous identity.
.
