Eeeeehhhh would still just have him fit in the Caster Classification since making things is quite literally one the the Defining traits of the Class
Hereafter [Worm x Fate/Grand Order]
- Thread starter James D. Fawkes
- Start date
- Crossover
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- They/Them
A worm fanfic called Brockton's Celestial Forge. Decently popular and I think kickstarted the "Celestial Forge" style fic and quest.
Guitar
art instrument
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Thank you! Didn't expect that to be an omake though, interesting.
To be more precise during covid lockdowns in 2020 Lord Roustabout noticed there was a collection of Jumpchain crafting perks called the Celestial Forge online which no-one had ever used. Due to this he spent an extensive amount of time hunting down the jumpdocs that every perk came from as far as possible anyway as some have disappeared.
From this he started writing a fic of it using the weight of the quill mechanic he invented where every 2000 words he wrote the protag would gain 100 cp and roll a d12 to determine the constellation within the forge then roll again to determine a perk within it and if enough points were banked it would be bought. After around a dozen failed starts this eventually led to bcf the first proper celestial forge style fic and inspired multiple others including with updated versions of the forge and with spin off collections such as the celestial menagerie which has the owner as a summoner of fictional creatures.
I would note though that while a great fic bcf itself is highly controversial as being the first forge fic Lord hit several unknown issues with the format especially with his lengthy descriptions which spills over so pretty much anyone whose pov is used is highly introspective and spends a lot of time thinking about things which for the protag's one drags the pace down as he can get perks from it which he then thinks about on top of it all.
Additionally, it hit a lot of issues with being a worm fic with a quickly growing in power protag and by the nature of the perks being from jumpchain it has a lot of crossover stuff which has led to fans of some of them being upset by how little they are used or in their view nerfed. Part of this is to not invalidate multiple magic and magitech perks lord made parahuman powers count as magic to forge interactions and since the forge is new data pretty much any shard uses the Sechen range thing to boost powers against the protag which along with lord's wogs about his initial plans have led to some people to believe he had an outline of the plot planned which had the protag far weaker which he then stuck with.
For example FMA alchemy exists which per the jumpdoc notes becomes a science like any other. The protag publicly used it once to extinguish a giant fire which people only saw the blue flash of Victor also during the rock meeting managed to steal the knowledge of how to activate a circle and nothing else. A group of thinkers and tinkers have secretly been working on it since first seeing the flash and had gotten pretty close to working it out and have since gotten very far due to knowing how to activate the circles but amongst their key members for this is Uber who apparently has been vital for developing the technique aspect of it.
Lord also treats the entities as being extremely strong which is passing over onto every shard power and has made controversial statements about them such as that sting alone tops Gurren Lagaan's best feats and could kill someone using Nasu Avalon as a defence. He also made the mistake of admitting he kept March (who was very hated for pulling a win with a ton of iffy elements to it) alive when she was dead to rights alive if crippled solely because he wanted to use her later.
- Location
- Planet Earth
It wasn't something no-one ever used, it was a combo project from /tg/; a list of perks someone compiled, along with a description of how she used them together in the chain she was writing.
Just because people later repurposed her work for the purpose of writing bad fanfiction with it doesn't mean she didn't "use" it.
Well I could actually see it actually injuring someone using Avalons defense mode it's just that they would probably heal reletively shortly afterwords mostly because Sting is the sort of thing to Explicitly be designed to punch through that manner of defense or at the very least open up a hole for you to then follow up on which will then kill the user of Avalon
I would put doubts on normal Sting stuff doing much to Gurren Lagan stuff unless you got real lucky and hit something critical important take for example how Scion Died
Other than opening the Avatar body portal wide open Flechettes Sting Arrow didn't do much but then got preceded by the Big ass Tinker gun which What actually struck the killing blow
I would put doubts on normal Sting stuff doing much to Gurren Lagan stuff unless you got real lucky and hit something critical important take for example how Scion Died
Other than opening the Avatar body portal wide open Flechettes Sting Arrow didn't do much but then got preceded by the Big ass Tinker gun which What actually struck the killing blow
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this is also not how the sechen range works, from what i've heard in BCF he had oni lee reacts to super speed accurately, any attempt at blitzing him failed, with the excuse being sechen range gave him a boost... but that's not how that works, sechen range is a lessening of power limits in specific circumstances, specifically where your mental state imitates your trigger event's mental state. had oni lee had super reaction speed in the first place and it got better? that'd make sense, as is, he just wholesale got a new power.
And also, like, shards can't just choose to do more for sweet sweet data, they work on hard rules and are very limited in how much wiggle room they got, only instances where we know that's not the case is when scion notices something and chooses to intervene, since he's the one with all the administrative power.
fact of the matter is that shards should neither be able to force sechen range boosts like that, and that sechen range boosts don't work like that.
From what i've heard, there's a lot of fanon in BCF like this basically, outside the issues with the format, there's also issues with the writing, a lot of fanon or outright inventions to facilitate people being credible threats to joe, think it's also affected several story plot points, like
coil isn't dealt with yet somehow even if all the tools needed are there and he could just kinda... do it, he gave lung a core, which allowed him to survive a heavily damaged brain, march joined lung for some reason even when she never would normally, damsels joined the empire, again even when she never would normally, two of the most oomph packet capes in Worm suddenly join enemies of Joe despite it making little in character sense, not that any of those 2 are a threat to joe anyway, since he's at the point of being able to solo scion and ignore even sting according to the wog's i've been shown.
also that's not something uber can do, dude learns techniques temporarily, but like, for how that's applicable to alchemy? it's stuff like drawing a perfect circle, pouring the right amount of liquid in a container, draw all the signs just right, he can't just get alchemy knowledge from it, unlike victor who gets actual knowledge as well as skill from people, uber gets only the technique, if one was to compare it to parkour, he'd be able to do a shoulder roll, but have little knowledge of how to breathe right, run right, keep the right tempo etc. he doesn't get the general skillset of parkour, just the one technique
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- Location
- Some City
so it's been a minute and discussion has largely moved past this subject but i need to talk about this because i just stumbled over this and have to say that when I think of Taylor becoming an Assassin-type Servant this is almost exactly what I envision:
This piece is called The Apparition, and is by The Phantom Painter. go check 'em out
This piece is called The Apparition, and is by The Phantom Painter. go check 'em out
looks pretty dope ngl, i can totally see an assassin taylor like that, probably covered in darkness/insects instead of hair thoso it's been a minute and discussion has largely moved past this subject but i need to talk about this because i just stumbled over this and have to say that when I think of Taylor becoming an Assassin-type Servant this is almost exactly what I envision:
This piece is called The Apparition, and is by The Phantom Painter. go check 'em out
Chapter CXII: The Wages of Guilt
James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
This story and this chapter brought to you by my wonderful supporters, whose kindness and generosity have made it possible to devote so much of my time and attention to writing, especially Eric, s22132, AbyssalApsu, Mark, and Alias 2v10. You guys are absolute legends. To show my gratitude, they had the chance to read this and upcoming chapters before the public release. You can find out more HERE.
And now that the shameless plugging is out of the way...
Chapter CXII: The Wages of Guilt
Breakfast turned out to be just as much of a disappointment as I think we were all expecting it to be. Marcus, who it seemed had either been nominated or volunteered to take over the job while Emiya wasn't available, undoubtedly tried his best, and he wasn't half bad, all things considered, especially since his normal position at Chaldea was in the engineering department. He was a decent enough cook, no doubt elevated by some of the recipes Emiya seemed to have left behind.
What he wasn't, however, was Emiya. Not an entirely fair comparison to make, since Emiya was consistently blowing the socks off of everyone who ever got a bite of his food, but one that was unavoidable when we had all gotten used to eating like kings. Even when he hadn't had much at all to work with, somehow, Emiya made it work and made it work well.
I'd said it before, but we were screwed once we lost Emiya, and that prediction looked to be coming true, ameliorated only by the fact that we didn't intend to be without him for much longer. That knowledge probably helped Rika stomach her breakfast a bit better, but the miserable look on her face the entire time told me that she was all too aware that we still had lunch, dinner, and then at least another breakfast to go before we went down to the Summoning Chamber to bring him back.
It was damning with faint praise, perhaps, but at least it was better than soggy cereal.
The rest of the day was largely uneventful. Most of it was spent getting Bellamy and Hippolyta settled in, finding them rooms and introducing them to the other Servants that they hadn't had the chance to meet yet, then an informal tour of the main parts of the facility, like the library, the gymnasium, and the simulator.
The simulator in particular seemed to fascinate them the most. They asked a lot of questions about what it could do and what its limits were, and as the one who had the most experience using it, it fell to me to answer those questions, although even I only knew so much. They were both disappointed to find out that it still needed a little bit of fixing before it could accommodate Servants.
I could see that becoming a common issue as we contracted more Servants. Chaldea as a facility was fairly utilitarian in its layout, so even though we had an expansive library and such, the sterile white of the walls and floors and the suffocating nature of being unable to leave the building would probably drive more than one of them into the simulator just for the chance to visit places they weren't able to otherwise.
I couldn't say I didn't understand the desire, though. I'd spent two years here, so I was used to just how bland and impersonal most of the place was, but even I found myself wanting to stretch my legs and take a run through a park or the city streets, the way I had when I was younger, instead of a track or on a treadmill.
Hippolyta, at least, also liked the gym. I made a mental note to check with Da Vinci about whether or not the machines were rated to handle a Servant's performance, because it could be a little problematic if Hippolyta accidentally broke one of them when she pushed it harder than it was capable of dealing with.
Aífe would probably be delighted to finally have a training partner, though. She might have found it fulfilling to put the twins through their paces every day, but eventually, she was going to want to stretch her own metaphorical legs, and Hippolyta seemed like she was on a similar wavelength. I'd had the thought before, but they were either going to get along very well or not at all.
After lunch, I begged off the rest of the welcoming committee and went to check in with Marie, who it turned out was still in the Command Room going over the data from the Okeanos Singularity. She looked much better than she had when we first came back — much less like she was standing on a precipice and holding onto the edge by her fingertips — a huge relief compared to how bad it could have been.
There was still a tension in her shoulders that eased when I walked into the room and her eyes swung over to scan my face. I wondered how long it was going to take before those fears stopped haunting her and hated that the answer might be 'never.'
There were times when I thought Lev had died too quickly.
"Director," I greeted her respectfully.
"Taylor," was her somewhat less formal response. She glanced back at her console, filled with charts and meters and percentages for things that I didn't completely understand. "Was there something you needed?"
"Ritsuka and Rika had an idea," I told her, "and I thought we should run it by you before making any promises about whether or not it's going to happen."
Her brow furrowed, confused. "An idea?"
"They wanted to have a movie night," I explained, "as a sort of…bonding exercise with the Servants. I thought it a workable enough idea on its own, but we'd need to find a place with enough room to accommodate all of us and get your permission to set everything up."
"Hey, that actually sounds like a great idea," Romani chimed in. "What movie were they thinking about showing?"
"Titanic."
Immediately, he grimaced, no doubt thinking about the Singularity we'd all just come back from, maybe even having that same thought about how it would have been bad luck to watch it before we left for Okeanos. One side of my mouth curled upward, and I said, "It seemed appropriate."
"I…can see how that might fit," he allowed grudgingly, "it just seems a little…a-ah, gauche, I guess?"
"Are you sure you even know what that word means?" Marie asked him dryly.
"I couldn't think of a better one, okay?" he lamented.
"Perhaps the first thing I should have asked," I began, "is whether we even have the movie on hand."
"Of course we do," Marie replied immediately. "The library stores more than just books. We should have a record of just about every movie that's ever been made."
"Wait, really?" asked Romani, surprised. "We actually store movies down in the library?"
Marie huffed. "Of course! You're the Head of Medical, aren't you? You should know at least as well as I do the importance of the Masters' mental well-being in the success of the Grand Order! That includes safe means and methods of recreation in their downtime!"
"W-well, yeah, but, um," Roman fumbled, "it just…didn't seem like…something you cared about all that much, Director…?"
Marie rolled her eyes. "Don't be an idiot," she scolded. "The Masters' performance is a direct reflection on my competence as a Director. Of course I care that they're all in the best condition possible!"
"Do we have a place we could show it, then?" I asked. "One big enough for a group of at least ten?"
Marie's lips pursed, and she crossed her arms as one hand rose to her chin, her thinking pose. For a handful of seconds, she didn't say anything as she went through a mental list of viable rooms that fit the criteria.
"The auditorium might work," she said at length, slowly and cautiously, "but that might be too big for such a small group, so… Maybe…"
She sighed. "I'll talk to Da Vinci," she promised, and she sounded like she hated the idea that she even needed to. "I'm sure it should be feasible to use the same room where we conduct Master orientation, especially now that we're…n-not using it for that purpose anymore."
Because there were no new Masters in need of orientation, she didn't say, but I heard it all the same. In a different world, one where the sabotage hadn't happened but there were still Singularities in need of repair, it was probably where we would have conducted our briefings before and after each Singularity, but with only three Masters, the space was simply unnecessary. It was easier to just do them in the Command Room instead.
I was about to leave it at that and turn to leave when I remembered something from Okeanos, a mental note that I'd jotted down.
"Oh, Romani," I said.
He blinked over at me. "Yeah?"
"Mash needs to learn how to swim."
He gave me a bewildered, incredulous look. "She doesn't —"
And then, he caught himself, and he grimaced. "Right. Of course she doesn't know how to swim. It wasn't something that Marisbury considered important."
"She doesn't —" Marie choked. "And we sent her into a Singularity where she spent most of the time in a deviant ocean? One where we couldn't even have calculated something like the strength of the underwater currents?"
"Come to think of it, this shouldn't be a surprise," said Romani. "Mash told us she didn't know how to swim during the briefing the day before we Rayshifted them into the Okeanos Singularity, Director."
"I didn't think she meant she didn't know how to swim at all!" Marie said hotly. "But just…i-if she meant that she didn't even know the basics…!"
Romani sighed and leaned back in his chair. "It wasn't like we had much choice, Director. Mash's shield is an integral part of a number of functions we use to do things like contact the team and send supplies. We literally can't afford to keep her inside the facility during Rayshifts."
"I'm well aware of that!" Marie snapped. "But still! The idea that we sent her into a situation where her life may very well have depended on a simple skill like swimming and she didn't know how…!"
She looked like she wanted to hit something, but in lieu of doing something so undignified, she leaned over her console, hunching, her fingers gripping the edge so tightly that her knuckles were an even starker white against her already pale complexion. Her hair hung down, hiding her face, but I could well imagine how she would be biting her bottom lip until it almost bled.
"I knew he had done plenty of deplorable things to her," I heard Marie murmur, although I was sure I wasn't meant to, "but just how is it that…even now, I'm still…"
From her other side, where she couldn't see him, Romani favored her with a sad, pitying look, the sort of resigned look of someone who knew just what Marie was doing to herself right now and knew that there wasn't anything he could say to make it better.
Was there even anything? I didn't have the whole picture, not even close, but just from what I did know, it was readily apparent that Marisbury had treated Mash more like an experiment — a lab rat — than a person, with all of the ugly parts something like that would entail. I still needed to get the finer details out of the two of them, but I was a little leery of pressing too hard, because Marie had been absolutely inconsolable when she found out exactly what her father had done to Mash.
One of the hardest parts of growing up was realizing your parents weren't perfect angels who always made the right choice and knew better than you did. Realizing that your father made Victor Frankenstein look reasonable and well-adjusted had to be even harder.
"For now," Romani said, "I'll sign off on it, Taylor. Officially, if I have to. Even if we didn't have much choice before, I think you're right to say that it's something we need to fix for the future. There's no telling when it might become an issue again, so it's better to get it out of the way now, while we still have the time." He frowned. "You know where the pool is, right? Not that too many people use it, since we're in the Antarctic and all…"
I nodded. "I know. I'll get her started on it tomorrow, while the twins are busy with their lessons."
Romani sighed. "That should be fine. That way, they'll all be distracted until Da Vinci is ready to try bringing Emiya back."
A nifty side benefit.
"Treading water is the absolute minimum!" Marie barked suddenly. She was still hunched over her console. "I expect her to at least be proficient at the breaststroke and the backstroke by the time we're ready to deploy you into the next Singularity, even if it won't be necessary there!"
It wasn't like I was some kind of Olympic swimmer myself, but —
"Of course, Director."
It was one of those things you had to have a minimum level of proficiency in as part of the Wards. You didn't have to be a professional lifeguard, but you at least had to know how to swim and how to rescue someone who was drowning. I'd never had to really use any of it myself, but I remembered enough that I thought I could teach Mash at least that much.
With all of that taken care of, I bade Marie and Romani goodbye and left the Command Room, and I found there wasn't much else for me to do today. When I checked in with Arash to see how things were going with our new arrivals, the twins were still giving Bellamy and Hippolyta a tour of what they knew of the facility, but looked to have covered most of the essentials and were showing them around the dorms.
I wondered where they were going to wind up picking their rooms. Chaldea had enough space for around five-hundred people, last I checked, which had left a lot of rooms empty even when we had our full staff and a complete roster of Master candidates. Aífe, Emiya, Arash, and most of the other Servants had all picked out rooms that were within a relative spitting distance of us Masters, but El-Melloi II had chosen something a little more isolated — far enough for his own privacy, at a guess, and maybe enough for a workshop so that he wasn't disturbed in the middle of a project.
Come to think of it, beyond the spells he'd used to help us out in Septem and the basics he was teaching the twins, I didn't remember him ever saying what field he specialized in. Master's Clairvoyance hadn't helped either, because most of his skills and his Noble Phantasm were geared towards a backline support role and didn't have much application to magecraft at all.
And now that I thought about it, he probably wouldn't tell me even if I asked. I was still keeping my powers and how exactly they worked from him, after all, and as far as I knew, Marie hadn't given him clearance to know. That was another thing I was going to have to bring up with her, how much I could tell the others about who I was and where I came from. Did those secrecy rules she had drilled into me still apply when one of our Servants was from an alternate timeline himself and wasn't particularly shy about the details of it? Two, even, if it turned out this wasn't Emiya's native timeline either.
Even if they didn't, I wasn't sure how much I was comfortable sharing. How much I was willing to explain when "aliens" was part of it and there was so much context that they would need just to understand where I'd started.
By the time I made it back, the group had split up and gone their separate ways. Ritsuka and Rika, with their duties as tour guides done, had slipped away to flop onto their beds and relax, and I couldn't blame them. Aífe and Jeanne Alter had gone off to do something — what, I didn't know, but Aífe was undoubtedly still keeping her eye on Jeanne Alter to make sure she didn't get up to anything mischievous — while Hippolyta and Sam had each picked out a room of their own.
I caught up to Mash before she could go off to do whatever it was she was going to do with the rest of her afternoon.
"Oh," she said when she saw me. "Miss Taylor. You're back. Was there something you needed?"
"I talked to Romani and the Director," I told her without preamble. "Starting tomorrow, I'm going to be teaching you how to swim."
She blinked at me, confused. "You are?"
"It's an oversight we should have taken care of before Okeanos, if we'd known it was an issue we needed to address," I said. "Even if we've resolved the Okeanos Singularity, however, that's no guarantee that being able to swim won't be relevant in a later Singularity. The Director's left it up to me to see to it that we shore up that hole in your skill set."
"I see." She nodded, like that made complete sense to her. "If Director Animusphere says so, then it must be important."
It probably did. Mash was not as single-minded about her duty as a member of Chaldea as I had been about stopping the apocalypse during my Wards days, but she was just as dedicated as Marie and I. With my conversation with Romani and Marie still fresh in my mind, I couldn't help wondering how much of that was actually Mash's choice.
"Fou," the little gremlin purred suspiciously, but I ignored it. Mash appeased him by offering scratches under his chin.
"Are we starting right away?" Mash asked. "I…don't think I have a swimsuit, Miss Taylor."
"Chaldea has a stock of them, just in case someone should need one." And failing that, I was sure Da Vinci could make one for her without too much trouble. Now, whether it would be at all appropriate for a learning environment instead of relaxing at a beach, that was a different question entirely. "But no. We have the rest of the day off, so go ahead and enjoy it. We'll start tomorrow instead, while Ritsuka and Rika are having their next lesson with El-Melloi II."
I wouldn't put it past Da Vinci to make her a really flattering bikini…that Mash probably wouldn't be all that embarrassed about wearing, considering what she went around in as a Servant. That was already about as skimpy as a one-piece swimsuit anyway.
"Okay!" And then, she bent into a short bow, and I could only watch awkwardly as she said, "Please take good care of me, Miss Taylor."
"Of course," I replied for lack of anything better to say.
Just where was Mash picking up all of these Japanese mannerisms? Had Romani introduced her to anime at some point as some kind of "fuck you" to Marisbury?
"You know where the pool is?"
"I've never used it, but yes," said Mash. "Are we meeting up there?"
"Yeah. We'll find you a swimsuit that fits and then get you started."
"I'll see you then, Miss Taylor."
And then she went off to enjoy the rest of her afternoon — doing what, I could only guess. Reading, maybe. I couldn't remember Mash ever showing an interest in video games, although I didn't put it past Rika to get her hooked on them, and while the fact we had movies probably also meant we had tv shows, I couldn't remember Mash ever being particularly interested in them either.
It was a startling reminder about just how little I knew about Mash. Two years I'd spent in this place, working fairly closely with her for most of it, and I wasn't even sure what her hobbies were. I'd been content not to know, focused as I was on the things in front of me and the mission that had been handed to me.
Maybe these swimming lessons would give me a chance to rectify that a little.
I considered, for a moment, heading towards the library to do some research on England in preparation for the next Singularity, but I didn't remember Romani or Da Vinci ever saying what era it was going to take place in. It might not have been a problem for a country like America, with a scant two-hundred or so years of history, but the history of Britain spanned two-thousand years just in the common era, and getting any depth on a span of time that long was the sort of thing that took years of study.
For another moment, I considered going back and checking with Romani and Marie to see if they had narrowed down a tentative date for when the next Singularity was going to take place, but after a few seconds of thought, I decided against it. As much as I might want to get a head start on things so I could be prepared for our next outing, things were going to be plenty busy enough in the coming days and we had all just gotten back from an intense fight against two near immortal Servants and another one of those monstrous Demon Gods.
Just this once, I think, I could afford to give myself a break. There was an unfinished novel calling my name, and that was as good a way of spending the rest of my afternoon as any.
So that was what I did. I went back to my room, pulled out my half-finished novel, reclined on my bed, and picked up where I'd left off what had been for me almost two weeks ago.
The next time I saw the twins and Mash was when dinner rolled around, and any semblance of a good mood Rika might have managed to build up in the hours since her little tour with Hippolyta and Bellamy in tow soured immediately almost the instant she stepped into the cafeteria. Marcus might have been trying his best, but it was yet another meal without Emiya, and no matter how hard Marcus tried, that wouldn't change.
Even Mash and Ritsuka couldn't cheer her up, and all things considered, that was saying something. I couldn't think of anything to lift her mood either. The only thing that would make her happy was having Emiya back, because it wasn't just his food that she was missing, was it? She wanted her "house husband" back.
The only thing I could do was give her a slight nudge and a look of confidence, trying to assure her without words that she had nothing to worry about and Emiya would be back before she knew it — back, snarking, and perfectly happy to keep being her Servant.
The small but genuine smile she gave me in return told me my message had been received.
Climbing into bed later that night was a relief. It seemed the pattern would keep holding that the thing I wound up missing most during our deployments was just a good, quality mattress to sleep on, because a cot in a cramped cabin aboard a rocking ship was just nowhere near a modern, mass-produced bed.
And also indoor plumbing. The ways and places that people relieved themselves before every house had a toilet didn't bear mentioning.
The next morning, I woke up refreshed and feeling better than I had for most of my time on the Golden Hind, and after a morning workout — where I was joined by Aífe, who was putting the twins through a lighter routine to ease them back into things — and a plain breakfast, I had the rest of the morning to myself.
I thought about going back to my book again, but then I remembered Marie's reaction the day before to finding out Mash didn't know how to swim at all and her even worse reaction around the time I first joined to finding out what her father had done to Mash, and what needed to be done about that seemed suddenly quite clear to me.
That was why, instead of going to my room, I made my way to Marie's office, where she would undoubtedly be filing some of the paperwork for our recent Rayshift and all of the resources we'd spent doing it. Sure enough, when her door whooshed open, I found her at her desk, pouring over a sheaf of paper, with a pile of more organized into two foot-high stacks nearby.
When she looked up and found me in her doorway, her brow furrowed. "Taylor," she said by way of greeting. "Is there something wrong?"
"I talked with Mash yesterday afternoon," I told her, "and she agreed easily enough. I'm going to start her swimming lessons later today, while the twins are with El-Melloi II." And then I added, "I think you should be there, too."
Marie startled. "What?"
"You should help me teach Mash how to swim," I said plainly and bluntly.
Marie flinched, her already pale face turning even whiter.
"Th-that's not…" she began. "I-I couldn't possibly…th-there's too much for me to do! I'm the Director!"
I wasn't going to let her use that as an excuse.
"Two years ago, you took hours out of your day to help a crippled girl learn to walk and talk again," I reminded her mercilessly. "For six whole months, you supervised her recovery, despite also having other responsibilities that you needed to see to, and for almost eighteen months more, you took more time out of your day to teach her everything she needed to know to have a place in your organization — not just a place, but a coveted spot on your vanguard team."
"Th-that was different!" Marie insisted. "A-and back then, we still had a full staff!"
"Maybe," I allowed, "but that's not why you don't want to do it, is it?"
She flinched again, head dropping, and her bottom lip found its way between her teeth, as sure a sign as any that I'd hit the nail on the head. I stepped closer, made my way up to her desk, and leaned in a little.
"I haven't forgotten what you were like when you found out what your father did to Mash," I murmured softly. Her head jerked up to look at me. "Back then, all that time you spent watching over me was as much a way of distracting yourself from having to think about it as anything else."
Her hands curled into fists. Even though she didn't say anything, that was an answer in its own way.
"I could tell you as much as I want that you're not at fault," I went on, "that Mash doesn't blame you for any of it, and I just have to watch the way she talks to you to know it, but that isn't going to stop you from feeling guilty about it, is it?"
"Th-the things my father did to her," Marie said, voice quivering, "and I had no idea…"
And one of these days, I was going to get the full, unvarnished truth about what exactly those things were. My imagination conjured up images of the monstrosities Bonesaw had created back when the Nine visited Brockton Bay, but that didn't quite fit for obvious reasons, chief among them that Mash wasn't some cobbled together mass of twisted flesh.
"So you're just going to run away from it whenever someone reminds you?"
"I can't change any of it!" she burst out. She bit her lip so hard that it turned white, and her head fell again. "I can't change any of it, and there's nothing I could possibly do to make it better. M-Mash…has every right to hate me, and the fact that she doesn't…"
"So you're just going to torture yourself?" I asked. "Take all of that blame and turn it into guilt to make up for the fact that Mash doesn't hate you even a little bit? Like it's some kind of penance for your father's sins?"
"Somebody has to, don't they?" she demanded. "And as his daughter… As the one who inherited both his Magic Crest and his position as Director of Chaldea, it has to be me!"
I wanted to call it twisted. To point out that, as I understood the sequence of events, Romani was here and taking care of Mash for longer than she was Director, and he, as a grown man and a medical professional, hadn't been able to stop whatever Marisbury had done to her, so even if Marie had known and tried to intervene, she wouldn't have been able to stop her father. That if, in that case, Romani couldn't be blamed for what Marisbury had done, then Marie couldn't either.
But guilt didn't work on logic like that. It made excuses and invented reasons to be right, to justify its existence, and I wasn't Doctor Yamada. I couldn't coach Marie into forgiving herself.
"Then do something about it."
Her head jerked up again, and I met her gaze firmly.
"If you feel like you have to share some of the blame for what happened to Mash," I went on, "then actually do something to try and make things right. Your father only gave Mash the things she needed to be a member of Chaldea, right? The stuff she would need to do her job. So give her what she needs to be a person."
Marie's eyes turned down, towards her desk. "I… I don't…"
I reached out and took one of her balled up fists, laying my hand over hers, and softer, I said, "I can teach her how to swim. I have the training for it. So you…you can teach her how to enjoy it."
"I…" Her voice trembled. "I don't know if I can. I-I'm not… I-I've heard what everyone says about me, b-behind my back. About how…how h-hard I am on everyone. How mean. B-but I don't…"
I don't know how to be anything else, she couldn't finish saying, but I heard it anyway.
"Have you ever tried?" I asked gently.
The furrow of her brow was more of an answer than anything she could have said aloud. I pulled my hand away from hers.
"I'm not going to force you right now," I told her. "Take a few days, if you have to. But once she's got the basics down, I'm not going to let you run away from this."
Slowly, I turned and walked away. I gave her ample time to call out to me, to stop me, to say anything else at all, but she let me leave without so much as another word. I couldn't see if she looked up to watch me go, and I didn't want to make myself look less confident by looking back to check, but the door whooshed shut behind me in an otherwise empty silence.
For a moment longer, I stayed and listened, but of course, even if she started sobbing or something, the room was soundproofed, so I wouldn't have heard anything through that door anyway.
The only thing I could do just then was leave and go about the rest of my day, so I did.
Lunch was much the same as breakfast had been: not bad, better than what we'd been eating back when we had the full kitchen staff, in fact, but missing the spark that was Emiya's cooking. Rika's opinion very obviously fell along the same lines, because again, she didn't look like she was enjoying it much herself.
The anticipation hung in the air, heavy but unspoken. Emiya would come back, and all would be right in the world, or at least the kitchen and the cafeteria. It was just a matter of a few more hours and Da Vinci letting us all know, and then we could go back to feasting like royalty.
Rika wasn't the only one looking forward to it.
The hour and a half afterwards, I spent reading some more of my novel while I waited for my food to digest, and then, right around the time the twins would be heading off for their next lesson in the fundamentals of magecraft with El-Melloi II, I stuck my bookmark between the pages to save my place, set my book aside, and made my way towards the pool. The adjacent locker rooms first, more specifically, because I happened to be one of the people who had been issued a standard swimsuit by Chaldea.
After all, I had been dropped off here with — quite literally — nothing to my name but the clothes on my back. Marie had offered to get me something more personalized, but quite frankly, I didn't care enough to bother. It meant something to me that she had offered, but it wasn't like I had an hourglass figure or a bust worth showing off, so a standard, solid color one-piece was fine.
Of course, the one thing I hadn't been able to compromise on — literally hadn't had the luxury to compromise on it — was the swimming goggles with my prescription fitted into the lenses. It was by no means the biggest thing Marie had done for me, nor even the most expensive, but the fact that she cared enough for something that would have been so minor by comparison spoke more to her character than anything she might have said or done in her position as Director.
I made sure to grab a swimsuit that looked like it would fit Mash while I was there. It wasn't like her standard outfit as a Servant didn't already give me a fairly decent idea of her proportions, so it wasn't hard.
I also grabbed a pair of towels on my way out and padded down the hallway in my bare feet, trying to ignore the shivers that shuddered up and down my spine, because the room might have been fairly warm and humid, but the floors were still chilly.
A voice up ahead told me that Mash was already there and waiting, so as I rounded the corner and came out into the room with Chaldea's Olympic-sized swimming pool, I held out the extra swimsuit.
"Mash —"
Only whatever I'd been about to say died on my tongue, because Marie, dressed in a dark, frilly one-piece decorated with an artistic rendering of the celestial spheres, already stood there with her. When they heard my voice, they both turned to me.
"Oh," said Mash. "Hello, Miss Taylor."
"…Mash," I greeted her. I looked towards Marie. "Director."
She didn't answer the question I didn't actually ask, she just acted like there was nothing at all unusual or strange happening. As though I hadn't all but threatened to drag her down here if she didn't muster the courage to come down here of her own volition.
"Well?" said Marie, a little impatiently. "Now that we're all here, let's get started already!"
I had to fight down a smile. I wasn't sure how successful I was.
"Of course, Director."
Next — Chapter CXIII: Return of the Red Hound
And now that the shameless plugging is out of the way...
Chapter CXII: The Wages of Guilt
Breakfast turned out to be just as much of a disappointment as I think we were all expecting it to be. Marcus, who it seemed had either been nominated or volunteered to take over the job while Emiya wasn't available, undoubtedly tried his best, and he wasn't half bad, all things considered, especially since his normal position at Chaldea was in the engineering department. He was a decent enough cook, no doubt elevated by some of the recipes Emiya seemed to have left behind.
What he wasn't, however, was Emiya. Not an entirely fair comparison to make, since Emiya was consistently blowing the socks off of everyone who ever got a bite of his food, but one that was unavoidable when we had all gotten used to eating like kings. Even when he hadn't had much at all to work with, somehow, Emiya made it work and made it work well.
I'd said it before, but we were screwed once we lost Emiya, and that prediction looked to be coming true, ameliorated only by the fact that we didn't intend to be without him for much longer. That knowledge probably helped Rika stomach her breakfast a bit better, but the miserable look on her face the entire time told me that she was all too aware that we still had lunch, dinner, and then at least another breakfast to go before we went down to the Summoning Chamber to bring him back.
It was damning with faint praise, perhaps, but at least it was better than soggy cereal.
The rest of the day was largely uneventful. Most of it was spent getting Bellamy and Hippolyta settled in, finding them rooms and introducing them to the other Servants that they hadn't had the chance to meet yet, then an informal tour of the main parts of the facility, like the library, the gymnasium, and the simulator.
The simulator in particular seemed to fascinate them the most. They asked a lot of questions about what it could do and what its limits were, and as the one who had the most experience using it, it fell to me to answer those questions, although even I only knew so much. They were both disappointed to find out that it still needed a little bit of fixing before it could accommodate Servants.
I could see that becoming a common issue as we contracted more Servants. Chaldea as a facility was fairly utilitarian in its layout, so even though we had an expansive library and such, the sterile white of the walls and floors and the suffocating nature of being unable to leave the building would probably drive more than one of them into the simulator just for the chance to visit places they weren't able to otherwise.
I couldn't say I didn't understand the desire, though. I'd spent two years here, so I was used to just how bland and impersonal most of the place was, but even I found myself wanting to stretch my legs and take a run through a park or the city streets, the way I had when I was younger, instead of a track or on a treadmill.
Hippolyta, at least, also liked the gym. I made a mental note to check with Da Vinci about whether or not the machines were rated to handle a Servant's performance, because it could be a little problematic if Hippolyta accidentally broke one of them when she pushed it harder than it was capable of dealing with.
Aífe would probably be delighted to finally have a training partner, though. She might have found it fulfilling to put the twins through their paces every day, but eventually, she was going to want to stretch her own metaphorical legs, and Hippolyta seemed like she was on a similar wavelength. I'd had the thought before, but they were either going to get along very well or not at all.
After lunch, I begged off the rest of the welcoming committee and went to check in with Marie, who it turned out was still in the Command Room going over the data from the Okeanos Singularity. She looked much better than she had when we first came back — much less like she was standing on a precipice and holding onto the edge by her fingertips — a huge relief compared to how bad it could have been.
There was still a tension in her shoulders that eased when I walked into the room and her eyes swung over to scan my face. I wondered how long it was going to take before those fears stopped haunting her and hated that the answer might be 'never.'
There were times when I thought Lev had died too quickly.
"Director," I greeted her respectfully.
"Taylor," was her somewhat less formal response. She glanced back at her console, filled with charts and meters and percentages for things that I didn't completely understand. "Was there something you needed?"
"Ritsuka and Rika had an idea," I told her, "and I thought we should run it by you before making any promises about whether or not it's going to happen."
Her brow furrowed, confused. "An idea?"
"They wanted to have a movie night," I explained, "as a sort of…bonding exercise with the Servants. I thought it a workable enough idea on its own, but we'd need to find a place with enough room to accommodate all of us and get your permission to set everything up."
"Hey, that actually sounds like a great idea," Romani chimed in. "What movie were they thinking about showing?"
"Titanic."
Immediately, he grimaced, no doubt thinking about the Singularity we'd all just come back from, maybe even having that same thought about how it would have been bad luck to watch it before we left for Okeanos. One side of my mouth curled upward, and I said, "It seemed appropriate."
"I…can see how that might fit," he allowed grudgingly, "it just seems a little…a-ah, gauche, I guess?"
"Are you sure you even know what that word means?" Marie asked him dryly.
"I couldn't think of a better one, okay?" he lamented.
"Perhaps the first thing I should have asked," I began, "is whether we even have the movie on hand."
"Of course we do," Marie replied immediately. "The library stores more than just books. We should have a record of just about every movie that's ever been made."
"Wait, really?" asked Romani, surprised. "We actually store movies down in the library?"
Marie huffed. "Of course! You're the Head of Medical, aren't you? You should know at least as well as I do the importance of the Masters' mental well-being in the success of the Grand Order! That includes safe means and methods of recreation in their downtime!"
"W-well, yeah, but, um," Roman fumbled, "it just…didn't seem like…something you cared about all that much, Director…?"
Marie rolled her eyes. "Don't be an idiot," she scolded. "The Masters' performance is a direct reflection on my competence as a Director. Of course I care that they're all in the best condition possible!"
"Do we have a place we could show it, then?" I asked. "One big enough for a group of at least ten?"
Marie's lips pursed, and she crossed her arms as one hand rose to her chin, her thinking pose. For a handful of seconds, she didn't say anything as she went through a mental list of viable rooms that fit the criteria.
"The auditorium might work," she said at length, slowly and cautiously, "but that might be too big for such a small group, so… Maybe…"
She sighed. "I'll talk to Da Vinci," she promised, and she sounded like she hated the idea that she even needed to. "I'm sure it should be feasible to use the same room where we conduct Master orientation, especially now that we're…n-not using it for that purpose anymore."
Because there were no new Masters in need of orientation, she didn't say, but I heard it all the same. In a different world, one where the sabotage hadn't happened but there were still Singularities in need of repair, it was probably where we would have conducted our briefings before and after each Singularity, but with only three Masters, the space was simply unnecessary. It was easier to just do them in the Command Room instead.
I was about to leave it at that and turn to leave when I remembered something from Okeanos, a mental note that I'd jotted down.
"Oh, Romani," I said.
He blinked over at me. "Yeah?"
"Mash needs to learn how to swim."
He gave me a bewildered, incredulous look. "She doesn't —"
And then, he caught himself, and he grimaced. "Right. Of course she doesn't know how to swim. It wasn't something that Marisbury considered important."
"She doesn't —" Marie choked. "And we sent her into a Singularity where she spent most of the time in a deviant ocean? One where we couldn't even have calculated something like the strength of the underwater currents?"
"Come to think of it, this shouldn't be a surprise," said Romani. "Mash told us she didn't know how to swim during the briefing the day before we Rayshifted them into the Okeanos Singularity, Director."
"I didn't think she meant she didn't know how to swim at all!" Marie said hotly. "But just…i-if she meant that she didn't even know the basics…!"
Romani sighed and leaned back in his chair. "It wasn't like we had much choice, Director. Mash's shield is an integral part of a number of functions we use to do things like contact the team and send supplies. We literally can't afford to keep her inside the facility during Rayshifts."
"I'm well aware of that!" Marie snapped. "But still! The idea that we sent her into a situation where her life may very well have depended on a simple skill like swimming and she didn't know how…!"
She looked like she wanted to hit something, but in lieu of doing something so undignified, she leaned over her console, hunching, her fingers gripping the edge so tightly that her knuckles were an even starker white against her already pale complexion. Her hair hung down, hiding her face, but I could well imagine how she would be biting her bottom lip until it almost bled.
"I knew he had done plenty of deplorable things to her," I heard Marie murmur, although I was sure I wasn't meant to, "but just how is it that…even now, I'm still…"
From her other side, where she couldn't see him, Romani favored her with a sad, pitying look, the sort of resigned look of someone who knew just what Marie was doing to herself right now and knew that there wasn't anything he could say to make it better.
Was there even anything? I didn't have the whole picture, not even close, but just from what I did know, it was readily apparent that Marisbury had treated Mash more like an experiment — a lab rat — than a person, with all of the ugly parts something like that would entail. I still needed to get the finer details out of the two of them, but I was a little leery of pressing too hard, because Marie had been absolutely inconsolable when she found out exactly what her father had done to Mash.
One of the hardest parts of growing up was realizing your parents weren't perfect angels who always made the right choice and knew better than you did. Realizing that your father made Victor Frankenstein look reasonable and well-adjusted had to be even harder.
"For now," Romani said, "I'll sign off on it, Taylor. Officially, if I have to. Even if we didn't have much choice before, I think you're right to say that it's something we need to fix for the future. There's no telling when it might become an issue again, so it's better to get it out of the way now, while we still have the time." He frowned. "You know where the pool is, right? Not that too many people use it, since we're in the Antarctic and all…"
I nodded. "I know. I'll get her started on it tomorrow, while the twins are busy with their lessons."
Romani sighed. "That should be fine. That way, they'll all be distracted until Da Vinci is ready to try bringing Emiya back."
A nifty side benefit.
"Treading water is the absolute minimum!" Marie barked suddenly. She was still hunched over her console. "I expect her to at least be proficient at the breaststroke and the backstroke by the time we're ready to deploy you into the next Singularity, even if it won't be necessary there!"
It wasn't like I was some kind of Olympic swimmer myself, but —
"Of course, Director."
It was one of those things you had to have a minimum level of proficiency in as part of the Wards. You didn't have to be a professional lifeguard, but you at least had to know how to swim and how to rescue someone who was drowning. I'd never had to really use any of it myself, but I remembered enough that I thought I could teach Mash at least that much.
With all of that taken care of, I bade Marie and Romani goodbye and left the Command Room, and I found there wasn't much else for me to do today. When I checked in with Arash to see how things were going with our new arrivals, the twins were still giving Bellamy and Hippolyta a tour of what they knew of the facility, but looked to have covered most of the essentials and were showing them around the dorms.
I wondered where they were going to wind up picking their rooms. Chaldea had enough space for around five-hundred people, last I checked, which had left a lot of rooms empty even when we had our full staff and a complete roster of Master candidates. Aífe, Emiya, Arash, and most of the other Servants had all picked out rooms that were within a relative spitting distance of us Masters, but El-Melloi II had chosen something a little more isolated — far enough for his own privacy, at a guess, and maybe enough for a workshop so that he wasn't disturbed in the middle of a project.
Come to think of it, beyond the spells he'd used to help us out in Septem and the basics he was teaching the twins, I didn't remember him ever saying what field he specialized in. Master's Clairvoyance hadn't helped either, because most of his skills and his Noble Phantasm were geared towards a backline support role and didn't have much application to magecraft at all.
And now that I thought about it, he probably wouldn't tell me even if I asked. I was still keeping my powers and how exactly they worked from him, after all, and as far as I knew, Marie hadn't given him clearance to know. That was another thing I was going to have to bring up with her, how much I could tell the others about who I was and where I came from. Did those secrecy rules she had drilled into me still apply when one of our Servants was from an alternate timeline himself and wasn't particularly shy about the details of it? Two, even, if it turned out this wasn't Emiya's native timeline either.
Even if they didn't, I wasn't sure how much I was comfortable sharing. How much I was willing to explain when "aliens" was part of it and there was so much context that they would need just to understand where I'd started.
By the time I made it back, the group had split up and gone their separate ways. Ritsuka and Rika, with their duties as tour guides done, had slipped away to flop onto their beds and relax, and I couldn't blame them. Aífe and Jeanne Alter had gone off to do something — what, I didn't know, but Aífe was undoubtedly still keeping her eye on Jeanne Alter to make sure she didn't get up to anything mischievous — while Hippolyta and Sam had each picked out a room of their own.
I caught up to Mash before she could go off to do whatever it was she was going to do with the rest of her afternoon.
"Oh," she said when she saw me. "Miss Taylor. You're back. Was there something you needed?"
"I talked to Romani and the Director," I told her without preamble. "Starting tomorrow, I'm going to be teaching you how to swim."
She blinked at me, confused. "You are?"
"It's an oversight we should have taken care of before Okeanos, if we'd known it was an issue we needed to address," I said. "Even if we've resolved the Okeanos Singularity, however, that's no guarantee that being able to swim won't be relevant in a later Singularity. The Director's left it up to me to see to it that we shore up that hole in your skill set."
"I see." She nodded, like that made complete sense to her. "If Director Animusphere says so, then it must be important."
It probably did. Mash was not as single-minded about her duty as a member of Chaldea as I had been about stopping the apocalypse during my Wards days, but she was just as dedicated as Marie and I. With my conversation with Romani and Marie still fresh in my mind, I couldn't help wondering how much of that was actually Mash's choice.
"Fou," the little gremlin purred suspiciously, but I ignored it. Mash appeased him by offering scratches under his chin.
"Are we starting right away?" Mash asked. "I…don't think I have a swimsuit, Miss Taylor."
"Chaldea has a stock of them, just in case someone should need one." And failing that, I was sure Da Vinci could make one for her without too much trouble. Now, whether it would be at all appropriate for a learning environment instead of relaxing at a beach, that was a different question entirely. "But no. We have the rest of the day off, so go ahead and enjoy it. We'll start tomorrow instead, while Ritsuka and Rika are having their next lesson with El-Melloi II."
I wouldn't put it past Da Vinci to make her a really flattering bikini…that Mash probably wouldn't be all that embarrassed about wearing, considering what she went around in as a Servant. That was already about as skimpy as a one-piece swimsuit anyway.
"Okay!" And then, she bent into a short bow, and I could only watch awkwardly as she said, "Please take good care of me, Miss Taylor."
"Of course," I replied for lack of anything better to say.
Just where was Mash picking up all of these Japanese mannerisms? Had Romani introduced her to anime at some point as some kind of "fuck you" to Marisbury?
"You know where the pool is?"
"I've never used it, but yes," said Mash. "Are we meeting up there?"
"Yeah. We'll find you a swimsuit that fits and then get you started."
"I'll see you then, Miss Taylor."
And then she went off to enjoy the rest of her afternoon — doing what, I could only guess. Reading, maybe. I couldn't remember Mash ever showing an interest in video games, although I didn't put it past Rika to get her hooked on them, and while the fact we had movies probably also meant we had tv shows, I couldn't remember Mash ever being particularly interested in them either.
It was a startling reminder about just how little I knew about Mash. Two years I'd spent in this place, working fairly closely with her for most of it, and I wasn't even sure what her hobbies were. I'd been content not to know, focused as I was on the things in front of me and the mission that had been handed to me.
Maybe these swimming lessons would give me a chance to rectify that a little.
I considered, for a moment, heading towards the library to do some research on England in preparation for the next Singularity, but I didn't remember Romani or Da Vinci ever saying what era it was going to take place in. It might not have been a problem for a country like America, with a scant two-hundred or so years of history, but the history of Britain spanned two-thousand years just in the common era, and getting any depth on a span of time that long was the sort of thing that took years of study.
For another moment, I considered going back and checking with Romani and Marie to see if they had narrowed down a tentative date for when the next Singularity was going to take place, but after a few seconds of thought, I decided against it. As much as I might want to get a head start on things so I could be prepared for our next outing, things were going to be plenty busy enough in the coming days and we had all just gotten back from an intense fight against two near immortal Servants and another one of those monstrous Demon Gods.
Just this once, I think, I could afford to give myself a break. There was an unfinished novel calling my name, and that was as good a way of spending the rest of my afternoon as any.
So that was what I did. I went back to my room, pulled out my half-finished novel, reclined on my bed, and picked up where I'd left off what had been for me almost two weeks ago.
The next time I saw the twins and Mash was when dinner rolled around, and any semblance of a good mood Rika might have managed to build up in the hours since her little tour with Hippolyta and Bellamy in tow soured immediately almost the instant she stepped into the cafeteria. Marcus might have been trying his best, but it was yet another meal without Emiya, and no matter how hard Marcus tried, that wouldn't change.
Even Mash and Ritsuka couldn't cheer her up, and all things considered, that was saying something. I couldn't think of anything to lift her mood either. The only thing that would make her happy was having Emiya back, because it wasn't just his food that she was missing, was it? She wanted her "house husband" back.
The only thing I could do was give her a slight nudge and a look of confidence, trying to assure her without words that she had nothing to worry about and Emiya would be back before she knew it — back, snarking, and perfectly happy to keep being her Servant.
The small but genuine smile she gave me in return told me my message had been received.
Climbing into bed later that night was a relief. It seemed the pattern would keep holding that the thing I wound up missing most during our deployments was just a good, quality mattress to sleep on, because a cot in a cramped cabin aboard a rocking ship was just nowhere near a modern, mass-produced bed.
And also indoor plumbing. The ways and places that people relieved themselves before every house had a toilet didn't bear mentioning.
The next morning, I woke up refreshed and feeling better than I had for most of my time on the Golden Hind, and after a morning workout — where I was joined by Aífe, who was putting the twins through a lighter routine to ease them back into things — and a plain breakfast, I had the rest of the morning to myself.
I thought about going back to my book again, but then I remembered Marie's reaction the day before to finding out Mash didn't know how to swim at all and her even worse reaction around the time I first joined to finding out what her father had done to Mash, and what needed to be done about that seemed suddenly quite clear to me.
That was why, instead of going to my room, I made my way to Marie's office, where she would undoubtedly be filing some of the paperwork for our recent Rayshift and all of the resources we'd spent doing it. Sure enough, when her door whooshed open, I found her at her desk, pouring over a sheaf of paper, with a pile of more organized into two foot-high stacks nearby.
When she looked up and found me in her doorway, her brow furrowed. "Taylor," she said by way of greeting. "Is there something wrong?"
"I talked with Mash yesterday afternoon," I told her, "and she agreed easily enough. I'm going to start her swimming lessons later today, while the twins are with El-Melloi II." And then I added, "I think you should be there, too."
Marie startled. "What?"
"You should help me teach Mash how to swim," I said plainly and bluntly.
Marie flinched, her already pale face turning even whiter.
"Th-that's not…" she began. "I-I couldn't possibly…th-there's too much for me to do! I'm the Director!"
I wasn't going to let her use that as an excuse.
"Two years ago, you took hours out of your day to help a crippled girl learn to walk and talk again," I reminded her mercilessly. "For six whole months, you supervised her recovery, despite also having other responsibilities that you needed to see to, and for almost eighteen months more, you took more time out of your day to teach her everything she needed to know to have a place in your organization — not just a place, but a coveted spot on your vanguard team."
"Th-that was different!" Marie insisted. "A-and back then, we still had a full staff!"
"Maybe," I allowed, "but that's not why you don't want to do it, is it?"
She flinched again, head dropping, and her bottom lip found its way between her teeth, as sure a sign as any that I'd hit the nail on the head. I stepped closer, made my way up to her desk, and leaned in a little.
"I haven't forgotten what you were like when you found out what your father did to Mash," I murmured softly. Her head jerked up to look at me. "Back then, all that time you spent watching over me was as much a way of distracting yourself from having to think about it as anything else."
Her hands curled into fists. Even though she didn't say anything, that was an answer in its own way.
"I could tell you as much as I want that you're not at fault," I went on, "that Mash doesn't blame you for any of it, and I just have to watch the way she talks to you to know it, but that isn't going to stop you from feeling guilty about it, is it?"
"Th-the things my father did to her," Marie said, voice quivering, "and I had no idea…"
And one of these days, I was going to get the full, unvarnished truth about what exactly those things were. My imagination conjured up images of the monstrosities Bonesaw had created back when the Nine visited Brockton Bay, but that didn't quite fit for obvious reasons, chief among them that Mash wasn't some cobbled together mass of twisted flesh.
"So you're just going to run away from it whenever someone reminds you?"
"I can't change any of it!" she burst out. She bit her lip so hard that it turned white, and her head fell again. "I can't change any of it, and there's nothing I could possibly do to make it better. M-Mash…has every right to hate me, and the fact that she doesn't…"
"So you're just going to torture yourself?" I asked. "Take all of that blame and turn it into guilt to make up for the fact that Mash doesn't hate you even a little bit? Like it's some kind of penance for your father's sins?"
"Somebody has to, don't they?" she demanded. "And as his daughter… As the one who inherited both his Magic Crest and his position as Director of Chaldea, it has to be me!"
I wanted to call it twisted. To point out that, as I understood the sequence of events, Romani was here and taking care of Mash for longer than she was Director, and he, as a grown man and a medical professional, hadn't been able to stop whatever Marisbury had done to her, so even if Marie had known and tried to intervene, she wouldn't have been able to stop her father. That if, in that case, Romani couldn't be blamed for what Marisbury had done, then Marie couldn't either.
But guilt didn't work on logic like that. It made excuses and invented reasons to be right, to justify its existence, and I wasn't Doctor Yamada. I couldn't coach Marie into forgiving herself.
"Then do something about it."
Her head jerked up again, and I met her gaze firmly.
"If you feel like you have to share some of the blame for what happened to Mash," I went on, "then actually do something to try and make things right. Your father only gave Mash the things she needed to be a member of Chaldea, right? The stuff she would need to do her job. So give her what she needs to be a person."
Marie's eyes turned down, towards her desk. "I… I don't…"
I reached out and took one of her balled up fists, laying my hand over hers, and softer, I said, "I can teach her how to swim. I have the training for it. So you…you can teach her how to enjoy it."
"I…" Her voice trembled. "I don't know if I can. I-I'm not… I-I've heard what everyone says about me, b-behind my back. About how…how h-hard I am on everyone. How mean. B-but I don't…"
I don't know how to be anything else, she couldn't finish saying, but I heard it anyway.
"Have you ever tried?" I asked gently.
The furrow of her brow was more of an answer than anything she could have said aloud. I pulled my hand away from hers.
"I'm not going to force you right now," I told her. "Take a few days, if you have to. But once she's got the basics down, I'm not going to let you run away from this."
Slowly, I turned and walked away. I gave her ample time to call out to me, to stop me, to say anything else at all, but she let me leave without so much as another word. I couldn't see if she looked up to watch me go, and I didn't want to make myself look less confident by looking back to check, but the door whooshed shut behind me in an otherwise empty silence.
For a moment longer, I stayed and listened, but of course, even if she started sobbing or something, the room was soundproofed, so I wouldn't have heard anything through that door anyway.
The only thing I could do just then was leave and go about the rest of my day, so I did.
Lunch was much the same as breakfast had been: not bad, better than what we'd been eating back when we had the full kitchen staff, in fact, but missing the spark that was Emiya's cooking. Rika's opinion very obviously fell along the same lines, because again, she didn't look like she was enjoying it much herself.
The anticipation hung in the air, heavy but unspoken. Emiya would come back, and all would be right in the world, or at least the kitchen and the cafeteria. It was just a matter of a few more hours and Da Vinci letting us all know, and then we could go back to feasting like royalty.
Rika wasn't the only one looking forward to it.
The hour and a half afterwards, I spent reading some more of my novel while I waited for my food to digest, and then, right around the time the twins would be heading off for their next lesson in the fundamentals of magecraft with El-Melloi II, I stuck my bookmark between the pages to save my place, set my book aside, and made my way towards the pool. The adjacent locker rooms first, more specifically, because I happened to be one of the people who had been issued a standard swimsuit by Chaldea.
After all, I had been dropped off here with — quite literally — nothing to my name but the clothes on my back. Marie had offered to get me something more personalized, but quite frankly, I didn't care enough to bother. It meant something to me that she had offered, but it wasn't like I had an hourglass figure or a bust worth showing off, so a standard, solid color one-piece was fine.
Of course, the one thing I hadn't been able to compromise on — literally hadn't had the luxury to compromise on it — was the swimming goggles with my prescription fitted into the lenses. It was by no means the biggest thing Marie had done for me, nor even the most expensive, but the fact that she cared enough for something that would have been so minor by comparison spoke more to her character than anything she might have said or done in her position as Director.
I made sure to grab a swimsuit that looked like it would fit Mash while I was there. It wasn't like her standard outfit as a Servant didn't already give me a fairly decent idea of her proportions, so it wasn't hard.
I also grabbed a pair of towels on my way out and padded down the hallway in my bare feet, trying to ignore the shivers that shuddered up and down my spine, because the room might have been fairly warm and humid, but the floors were still chilly.
A voice up ahead told me that Mash was already there and waiting, so as I rounded the corner and came out into the room with Chaldea's Olympic-sized swimming pool, I held out the extra swimsuit.
"Mash —"
Only whatever I'd been about to say died on my tongue, because Marie, dressed in a dark, frilly one-piece decorated with an artistic rendering of the celestial spheres, already stood there with her. When they heard my voice, they both turned to me.
"Oh," said Mash. "Hello, Miss Taylor."
"…Mash," I greeted her. I looked towards Marie. "Director."
She didn't answer the question I didn't actually ask, she just acted like there was nothing at all unusual or strange happening. As though I hadn't all but threatened to drag her down here if she didn't muster the courage to come down here of her own volition.
"Well?" said Marie, a little impatiently. "Now that we're all here, let's get started already!"
I had to fight down a smile. I wasn't sure how successful I was.
"Of course, Director."
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
So a certain Servant's return kind of got pushed back to next chapter. It just... This chapter as it is already does a lot, and while I could have squished the summoning onto the end and pushed this chapter out to about 7K or so, it would have felt like too much was going on and it probably would have felt out of place with the rest of the chapter.
I got to do a few things with the characters and give a few characters some growth. As the editor put it, when Taylor finds out the full extent of what Marisbury has done to Mash and all of its consequences, she'd be ready to bust through the gates of Hell to ensure he suffered as much as he deserved.
I got to do a few things with the characters and give a few characters some growth. As the editor put it, when Taylor finds out the full extent of what Marisbury has done to Mash and all of its consequences, she'd be ready to bust through the gates of Hell to ensure he suffered as much as he deserved.
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- Location
- Argentina
They are literally holding hands and raising a daughter together.
- Location
- 4726 SW 17th Terr
A family can be a an anxious mom a scary mom a bumbling dad and a wine auntie and their three kids
I don't think Marie talks like that, Taylor maybe, but it sounds most like Rika to me
Edit: or as someone later pointed out, it could maybe also be Jalter
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Isiri Pudireach
Predictive text can go duck itself
Guess it's gonna be a LB like that one comic where they cleared Solomon with Romani alive.
- Location
- 4726 SW 17th Terr
It'll be funny if Taylor is being a mom and Rika is getting jealous
I already am feeling the diabetes from that and I didn't even read the scene yet!
Isn't this one the current chapter?
Isn't this one the current chapter?
Why should it fail? I'm sure Assassin Emiya would be glad to help them, and he would get along with Taylor pretty well. Or maybe awful.
- Location
- Three feet to the left
- Pronouns
- He/They
Watch it be Alter EMIYA or something...
Windborne
Devourer of Stories
- Location
- Oregon
So its been a long while since I've commented or given critique in thread here. But I saw something so egregious that it needs to be stated, potentially even corrected, @James D. Fawkes. You utterly killed my suspension of disbelief with regards to Taylor's past this chapter.
Taylor shouldn't only remember just enough to teach Mash the bare basics. Taylor lived in a costal city with a father who worked for years with Dockworkers. If she wasn't thoroughly trained how to swim from the time she was a baby to the point that swimming was completely second nature to her by the time she was five I'd say it was an impossibility. I say this as someone who went through such training when I was a year and a half old and swam for years after, I will never forget how to swim; even if I were to suffer complete memory loss I have 100% confidence my body would know exactly what to do to survive. It's beyond just muscle memory or knowing what to do. It's as natural to me as walking or breathing, and it's been that way for as long as I can remember, literally.
So Taylor ought to be able to do a hell of a lot more than teaching just the basics. And that's not even getting into the fact that Bet's society as a whole probably mandated swimming lessons once Leviathan began his attacks just as potentially necessary means of survival for everyday citizens when it comes to things just like Endbringer Shelters and Sirens were. Taken all together I just can't see how Taylor would be anything, but extremely proficient at swimming.
Other than that it was a fine chapter, and was another very good cooldown chapter after Okeanos.
Taylor shouldn't only remember just enough to teach Mash the bare basics. Taylor lived in a costal city with a father who worked for years with Dockworkers. If she wasn't thoroughly trained how to swim from the time she was a baby to the point that swimming was completely second nature to her by the time she was five I'd say it was an impossibility. I say this as someone who went through such training when I was a year and a half old and swam for years after, I will never forget how to swim; even if I were to suffer complete memory loss I have 100% confidence my body would know exactly what to do to survive. It's beyond just muscle memory or knowing what to do. It's as natural to me as walking or breathing, and it's been that way for as long as I can remember, literally.
So Taylor ought to be able to do a hell of a lot more than teaching just the basics. And that's not even getting into the fact that Bet's society as a whole probably mandated swimming lessons once Leviathan began his attacks just as potentially necessary means of survival for everyday citizens when it comes to things just like Endbringer Shelters and Sirens were. Taken all together I just can't see how Taylor would be anything, but extremely proficient at swimming.
Other than that it was a fine chapter, and was another very good cooldown chapter after Okeanos.