I wanted to get this up earlier, after concepting it like a half a year ago, as another extension of the myriad past "look into the future when more Servants are around" Chaldea (and specifically that OLD omake of MHX being captured by Medea), but after I finally decided to do it following this latest chapter and some discussion my birthday happened so I took the weekend off from things like this. That said, the weekend is over, so.
I would say "guess what the original idea for this was based on" but like I don't know what to tell you if you don't get it. Also: This is absolutely, 100% Moriarty's Fault.
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The Hardest Choices Require The Strongest Wills...?
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As Chaldea's Servant populace grew, the number of...
strange incidents that began to happen around them rose dramatically as well. While Nobunaga and Okita's random "events" were common from the start, little things like Ritsuka or Kana falling asleep for days and waking up and immediately summoning a new Servant, or Nero deciding it was yet again time to hold a tournament of a completely baffling nature, or someone modifying half the Servants' Saint Graphs into wearing swimsuits and going rather nutty, or alternate universe magical girls, or Ibaraki-douji trying to look impressive and getting bullied, or Ishtar trying to look impressive and being bullied, or the terrifying attack of the horrific beast Gudako, or the time Heracles ended up winning a car on
The Price Is Right were increasing in number.
Still, it can easily be said that the event known only as "The Saber Wars" was one of the weirdest things to happen to the organization. After a short few days of yelling, screaming, alternate universes, hair that goes through hats, one bowl of ahoge tempura, and a very stiff amount of denial from multiple Servants already in Chaldea, it ended with two Servants joining the organization. This was generally not a good thing, as one of the two was a barely restrained Totally-Not-Assassin only held back because Older Sister Shiki tended to be
right there whenever she tried to start shit, and the other was a recluse who tended to only leave her room to eat and pick up her mail order items.
She didn't even bother explaining where she was mail ordering them from, or how they were getting to her. (Leonardo knew, but getting answers out of Leonardo Da Vinci is like getting the cat to give up on its catnip. Gilgamesh PROBABLY knew, but if he deigned to answer it'd just be something about the Original Mail Order Catalog and how he used it to acquire stuff for his treasury, and how Amazon was a pittance compared to it.) It was quite frustrating to anyone who even bothered with her.
Still, odd though she was, the small How-Is-She-A-Berserker Alter at least tended to not cause problems for anyone else, so she was ignored. This was... generally a mistake, but no one realized it until The Incident.
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Angra Mainyu was an asshole. While not quite the chuuni tsundere levels that Jeanne Alter was, or the extreme chuuni levels of the Count of Monte Cristo, or the general pain in the ass that Gorgon sometimes was (then again, when Stheno and Euryale are the ones holding your leash...), or... really as far out as any of the other Avengers, for that matter, that doesn't change that he was a constantly snarky, amoral asshole who claimed that he only joined because the food was good. While he wasn't totally useless in combat (he was actually one of the best Servants around at killing crabs, somehow, which became relevant during the prior mentioned swimsuit incidents), most of Chaldea generally considered his summoning to be something of a mistake.
Still, Kana had an inset belief that if they could level grind Angra Mainyu enough they'd get a prize, and Ritsuka was done with this shit enough that he could see where her logic came from, and Angra made funny noises whenever he came back from being forced into said level grinding, so it was decided that as long as he was kept far away from any Grail - including Irisviel, not because they feared that he would corrupt her, but because they feared that she might corrupt him somehow - and as long as he didn't do anything like actual torture to Chaldea employees, he would be allowed to stay.
Unfortunately, this left him bored a lot of the time, which is what led to this.
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"Yeah, this is definitely the one. My evil senses are going off the chart, whoever this guy is has got to be peak evil." Angra stood outside a door, nondescript outside of a sign that said 'Keep Out Or Else' in bold lettering, as well as a skull with an ahoge. "Definitely looks like the entrance to a truly evil lair, too. And the most evil kind of evil..." He shuddered.
"Teenagers."
He cracked open the door, which was unlocked for reasons of 'the plot of this omake falls apart if it wasn't, come up with a reason on your own.' "Heyo, room service!" He peered in. "I'm here to deliver, uh..." His eyes widened. "...ok, yeah, didn't expect this, I guess."
Indeed, while the room was in a general good state of maintenance, there was so much
stuff everywhere that it still looked like a massive mess. Angra couldn't see the Servant he was looking for through the large shelves, desks, and cabinets of stuff piled up and around, so he decided to take a look around. Eventually, he found a patch of room that wasn't completely cluttered, and it was here that he found his target - a small girl, wearing extremely concealing clothes, with a set of headphones on and eating some manner of sweets.
Angra smiled. Slowly, he crept up on the girl, reaching for her headphones. In one swift moment, he grabbed them and started to yank them off. "PHONE CA-"
Then he fainted, because of a sudden and inescapable case of lightning.
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"Leave."
"You
zapped me with lightning and I am not leaving until I hear an apology."
"No. Leave."
"Naaaaaaaaaaaaa."
X Alter glared at the annoying Avenger. Since he had woken up, he had become oddly recalcitrant. She couldn't figure out why - if he didn't want to be zapped, then he wouldn't have grabbed her headphones. Mysterious Heroine X understood that, and she was an idiot, so this Servant should have figured it out quickly too.
What was worse, though, was that he was starting to shuffle around the room and toy with things, and some of them were her things so she couldn't just zap him again. "The hell is all of this, anyway?" The Avenger looked over when she didn't respond. "Hey, don't ignore me! I know you can hear me, you were
just responding to me."
She rolled her eyes. "Most of it isn't mine. I throw my trash away. Blame Mysterious Heroine X, she lives on that side of the room and refuses to clean up." She glared again. "Chaotic alignments are the worst."
Avenger laughed. "Yeah, I am the worst!" He then looked worried. "Though... wait, X is here? Like, crazy hat girl? She's not gonna show up and start hitting me with her sword again, is she?"
X Alter shrugged. "Last I heard, Penguin Saber gave her to Medea. It's been a few days though."
The Avenger blinked. "Penguin Saber?" His eyes narrowed. "Wait... oh." He smiled. "OH! Pffff... you really... her name... BWAHAHAHAHA!"
After a good chuckle, he stopped. "Ah, that's good shit. Sorry for sneaking up on you, I guess! Name's Angra Mainyu, the weakest Servant ever, at your service!"
She stared at his smiling face for a bit and then turned away. "...sorry. Now leave."
His smile widened, becoming predatory. "Now, wait a minute! We just became friends! Surely I can't leave now!"
X Alter's head impacted off her desk. "why must everyone who claims to be my friend annoy me."
Unlike most of those friends, however, Angra was a master of baiting, and had by this point cottoned onto the correct wait to get her to listen. "You know, I was planning on using this at some point on Ibaraki, but since we're now friends..." He held a hand up.
Immediately, X Alter's eyes focused to a laser edge. "Give."
He smiled.
"I have her now." Waving his hand around, he watched her eyes slowly swivel to follow. "Wellll... I dunno... We ARE good friends, sure... but what's in it for me?"
"GIVE."
His eyes widened. "Alright, alright, I'll give! But first, you have to tell me..." He rummaged through the stuff with his other hand, pulling something fairly large out. "...what this is!"
X Alter considered, for a second, how much the masters would complain if she chopped his arm off, and whether or not it would be worth it. Eventually, she sighed. "It's a glove I bought a few months back. Supposed to grant ultimate power with enough candy. Doesn't do anything." She moved her sword closer. "Now GIVE."
Angra rolled his eyes, tossing his ultimate prize in her general direction. X Alter's eyes widened for a moment and she stood up, nearly leaping out of her seat entirely - but with the quick movements expected out of a servant with B Agility, she managed to nab it out of the air. Smiling slightly, she quickly undid the wrapper and stuffed the piece of chocolate into her mouth.
While she was doing that, Angra took a look at the glove. Soon, he noticed something. "Eh... I mean, I bet I know why this glove isn't working. It's missing bits." He held it up to her. "See, look? It's got these little indents on the fingers and the middle of the back of the hand. It's missing six pieces."
X Alter took a closer look. Indeed, the glove did have indents. She quickly thought back to the instructions that came with the glove (only a fool of an evil overlord didn't read the instruction manual!), and frowned. "...did they want me to insert the chocolates?"
Angra shrugged. "I mean, I guess. There's definitely space for something."
She frowned deeper. "That's stupid."
Angra smiled again, a deep, predatory smile. "Yeah, but if it's stupid and it works then it's not stupid, so you should definitely test it."
X Alter rolled her eyes. "Why would I do that?"
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"I can't believe I've done this."
Angra was busy looking over the glove and comparing it to the manual. "Ok, so that's desire... sugar content... place where the sale happens... cost/price ratios... manufacturing time... and demand. Yeah, this should be set. Put it on, and try it out!" X Alter, who at this point just wanted to get it done with so that she could extract the chocolate back out of the fancy glove, put it on, and the instant she put it on, she froze. "Well, how is it?"
And then, something horrible happened. Something terrible, awful, and which caused a shudder to ring through Chaldea. Putting on the glove, now fully powered up, gave X Alter insights into things she never could possibly have known before, and that...
...that put a smile on her face.
Angra, being essentially drenched in evil anyway, was one of the few beings to not react to this. "So, it worked?"
"Reality can be whatever I want."
With a simple raising of the glove, things moved and shuffled around the room. Angra found himself caught in the maelstrom of movement, effectively passed off through the air by the many things shuffling their way into neatness and orderliness, and eventually fell out onto a conspicuous bar in the upper end of the room that was probably originally intended to split it before MHX put her stuff all over the place.
X Alter, still smiling, looked up at him. "When I'm done, half of all Mysterious Heroine Xs will be alive. You will be remembered." She nodded. "I call this mercy." And then she snapped her gloved fingers.
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Elsewhere in Chaldea, Mysterious Heroine X had finally escaped from the vile, evil, hateful claws of the dread witch Medea! If not for poor Saber Lily she'd have escaped days ago, but it seems like the witch had managed to corrupt even a true figure of purity such as Lily! Why, Mysterious Heroine X had half a mind to add Medea to the list of beings who must be murdered!
Unfortunately the horrible, dastardly ghostly Shiki had showed up before the final blow was struck, so she had to beat a hasty retreat. Doubly unfortunately, Medea had said as she was leaving that she expected the horrible, awful, no good, Saber-looking dress she was currently in had to be returned unscathed, or she would keep her for longer, and after the incident with that Faking-She-Was-An-Alter-Ego EVIL SABER the Masters would probably just let Medea hold onto her for a bit to keep her out of everyone's hair. But even this was fine - all she had to do was get to her room and change, and then she could use her catlike tread to sneak up on and get the drop on Medea, and this time without Shiki to stop her! Surely, there was room in Ecchan's side of the room for her dress. She never minded.
As MHX plotted her great thoughts of revenge, however, she stopped paying much attention to the outside world, and this proved fatal, because by the time the rumbling reached her, it was too late.
When it did catch her attention, she quickly looked up. "Wait, wha-" And then her eyes widened, for bearing down the halls towards her was a massive tidal wave of sweet bean paste.
"oh no".
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And so it went that another version - by some metrics - of Arturia Pendragon met another version - if you consider "stole his body for a while" as another version - of Shirou Emiya, and proceeded to enable each other in ways that no one would have ever asked for before that. Truly, just another day at the madhouse that is Chaldea.
