Are you sure? Because I could have sworn the "legacy of a misspent youth" phrase was used back in old Ranma fanfictions. But I really don't remember, which is why I'm asking. I swear that phrase was a lot older than the Gabriel Blessing's story.
Gabriel Blessing was writing Ranma fanfic in the 90's, before he started Fate stuff, most of it was originally on his personal website or various Ranma archive sites and only some of those works got reuploaded to FF.net later, so if you read it in a Ranma fanfic, decent odds it was also him.
I distinctly remember that the phrase "legacy of a misspent youth" shows up in a story that is pre-90s which is why I am asking where specifically that phrase is from. Because it keeps turning up in fanfiction but not in any fanfiction of a work where it was originally used.
I'm pretty sure it's just an actual turn of phrase, merely one that's no longer in use much. Asking where it's from is like asking where the phrase "jive lingo" is from.
You'd think after all the times people keeping secrets or secrets being revealed at the worst opportunity bit Taylor in the ass before she'd be more open to preventing it with her close allies now. Any number of servants could have the power to learn her history and reveal it in the worst way possible at the worst possible moment.
You'd think after all the times people keeping secrets or secrets being revealed at the worst opportunity bit Taylor in the ass before she'd be more open to preventing it with her close allies now. Any number of servants could have the power to learn her history and reveal it in the worst way possible at the worst possible moment.
i mean, this information is actually sensitive since if it's around publicly people in-universe can expect one magus or another to want to cause problems with it if they find out, (which is definitely likely to happen if it becomes common knowledge and thus it ends up on official logs or the like)
to be honest even without purposely revealing things, the secret will either come out eventually because enough small clues were gathered to make hiding it pointless or via a servant with the right skills getting invested in things, but there's reasonable justifications to hide it.
rather than playing coy, if Taylor says "yeah I don't intend to share all this stuff because it's legitimately a security risk" and just makes that clear it would probably go a long way to avoiding people going "i don't trust you because you're keeping secrets from us" ? drip feeding information with small hints just gets the suspense/suspicion up at this point?
You'd think after all the times people keeping secrets or secrets being revealed at the worst opportunity bit Taylor in the ass before she'd be more open to preventing it with her close allies now. Any number of servants could have the power to learn her history and reveal it in the worst way possible at the worst possible moment.
And if it's revealed then what? Marie knows and has final say as fas as Chaldea-as-organization goes. Romani of all people not in position to be indignant. Da Vinci worked with Brotherhood of Assassins has a long view. Gudako twins? Reminder: they already have/had Mordred, JAlter, Jack the Ripper, Medea on the team, Red Archer is also not a paragon. Checkered past passed being point of concern. There also question of what present people know of background of others from A-team Team A.
i mean, this information is actually sensitive since if it's around publicly people in-universe can expect one magus or another to want to cause problems with it if they find out, (which is definitely likely to happen if it becomes common knowledge and thus it ends up on official logs or the like)
to be honest even without purposely revealing things, the secret will either come out eventually because enough small clues were gathered to make hiding it pointless or via a servant with the right skills getting invested in things, but there's reasonable justifications to hide it.
rather than playing coy, if Taylor says "yeah I don't intend to share all this stuff because it's legitimately a security risk" and just makes that clear it would probably go a long way to avoiding people going "i don't trust you because you're keeping secrets from us" ? drip feeding information with small hints just gets the suspense/suspicion up at this point?
I wonder if Taylor could get away with telling part of her past. You know, "I used to be a supervillain before I made a bargain with the US Government and worked for them dealing with people with special powers for a couple years, then I transferred to Chaldea. Please keep this a secret, my past is classified."
It's the alternate timeline stuff she really wants to cover up.
I could honestly see it going down like this, with Taylor lying by telling the truth:
RIKA: Sempai, were you a superhero?
TAYLOR: …yes. At one point in my life I was a superhero.
RIKA: Eeeeeeeeeeee!
RITSUKA: Given the dark colors, I would have guessed villain.
RIKA: No way! Sempai was a dark and brooding and edgy -
TAYLOR: - edgy!?! -
RIKA: - superhero like batman! "I am the terror that flaps in the night!" Except she buzzes, because bugs.
RITSUKA: That's Darkwing Duck! Look at the mandibles on her mask! That's total villain styling right there.
RIKA: Dark, brooding and edgy ni-chan! I bet she even has an awful tragic backstory, where she struggles with her inner demons but ultimately chooses to be a hero because of her strong moral character!
Also the organization for preserving humanity wouldn't want the section of humanity infamous for only learning not to poke a bear after being mauled a few times to know there's a new bear in the woods. Not when the bear in question is liable to destroy the Earth if disturbed.
Given the themes of this story and the circumstances under which it's happening, i don't see us getting through the story without Taylor getting at least some of the story pulled out of her. There have been enough hints that various people in the group know parts of the story, and the twins have been questioning for so long, that it's basically guaranteed to happen at this point. it's just a question of what is pertinent/what will Marie authorize
(also remember what Taylor said to Medea: at the end of the day, the world is worth more than any secrets, even yours, even mine)
That said i do generally agree that Taylor telling her story never really goes over well. it comes out too easily, she tells too much, everyone handles the entirety of it with no problems, etc. it just...never feels right, when it comes out in-scene, and it feels disingenuous to have it cut to black or fade out
Now i do trust Fawkes in this regard, he has written Taylor in this story rather well, but that is still a tall order, especially given how long it's been teased (both to the Twins and to the audience)
and there's a couple ways to handle this
the tried and true method of this story, where Taylor gives them the shorthand. actually beats a lot of the usual issues because she isn't telling her exhaustive life story, she's giving the spark notes version. a briefing. simple, to the point, little to nothing personal, easy to justify, easy to read, easy to digest, and even works with the running joke of Taylor giving really abbreviated answers
doesn't really live up to the spirit of the effort, though. after all it's been built up, that would actually be kind of the worst anticlimax
the alternative, she give them the bare basics- from another world, powers not magic, couple key historic differences, it's gone now- and she can just bring up a specific stories as they become relevant/as someone asks, which would suit the setup quite well actually, with the limits of the Twins never really getting the full story. again, would make sense, would fit Taylor's MO, but it would end up kind of unsatisfying in its own way
then you have the option to give them the full story, which runs the usual risks, but at this point may be the only way to actually satisfy the Twins and the narrative momentum, but at the risk of the performance falling flat and everyone involved now being at risk.
i've had this running in my head for awhile now, of how Taylor could actually do this, and i think the best option to avoid the major pitfalls and to give it its proper narrative weight is quite simply to not have it be one conversation. there's too much to cover, there's too much to explain. forget a life story, Taylor has to explain a whole WORLD to an outside audience just to provide context to her own story, and you just can't do that in a way that makes sense and satisfies all audiences in one go. So...don't do that. make it a class/lecture, in the same way that the Twins are currently receiving Magecraft lessons. this gives Taylor a chance to arrange her thoughts, come up with some charts and visuals (digital or via Shakespeare), confer with Marie, and tell a story.
Major problem with this being that it would take forever and a day. this could be its own Lunar Phantasia. This could be its own separate arc. there's so much story to explain within this story, and thus so many points for both the listening audience and the readers to find issue with it
(i'll admit, i'm biased on this one, but i've been trying to write a script for this for like a year now)
the one i personally find most likely is that similar to Aife, the relevant parties end up in a dreamscape of Taylor's, and experience specific and important parts of her life, and can thus ask specific questions without Taylor needing to sit down and tell them the entire thing. might still leave some unanswered questions, but would address the issue while not changing her and Marie's stance entirely
or we could get the joke answer, and someone sneaks into Shakespeare's workshop and gets his manuscripts.
who knows
I mean, I could also Goetia looking at Taylor and saying 'you're different, moving on' before going with the same type of dialogue that they gave in canon.
then you have this
Goetia can probably pick out that something is off about her
...and the author Evil Laughing is a decent indicator that might be the catalyst
Come on, solution is right there.
Shakespeare written Worm. It's already on a shelf. Almost literal Chekov's rifle.
- I was supervillain, superhero and a monster. I saved the world and got two bullets to the head for it. You want my story? Read a book.
First off, "Mash and Ritsuka sitting in a tree! K-I-S-S-I-N-G!"
Second, now that that is out of the way, I think I remember what is next but... wasn't there a Ruler that came into the story around this time? Or am I thinking of a friend summon that I tried out?
Third, uhhh... The mask... and Da Vinci casually dropping a bomb on the twins that the costume is an actual thing. Great, and it seems like even Ritsuka is reaching the limit of how much he is willing to let slide without an answer based on his reaction.
Will the twins learn how Taylor got powers? Will they learn of trigger events? If so, how would Taylor describe them?
"You go through the worst moment of your life... You break... and then you are left to pick up the pieces and put them back together with superpowered glue."
...Anyways! Nice chapter, I am looking forward to the next!
it's not like trigger events are that unique in fate, people have awoken dormant psychic abilities under what is essentially trigger events. usually mystic eyes or something like that, but gaining what is essentially a psychic link with all nearby bugs would not be that weird, especially when there's actual magecraft that does so already. no what would be weird is the specifics, her 'mutation' is a brain tumor, that's gonna stand out and will be what leads people further into her past.
it's not like trigger events are that unique in fate, people have awoken dormant psychic abilities under what is essentially trigger events. usually mystic eyes or something like that, but gaining what is essentially a psychic link with all nearby bugs would not be that weird, especially when there's actual magecraft that does so already. no what would be weird is the specifics, her 'mutation' is a brain tumor, that's gonna stand out and will be what leads people further into her past.
So, what I am hearing is that a lot of magi would want to try their hands at amateur brain surgery after the grand order is over. Only this time there would be less guns and more scalpels involved. And that would be an actively bad thing bizarrely enough.
So, what I am hearing is that a lot of magi would want to try their hands at amateur brain surgery after the grand order is over. Only this time there would be less guns and more scalpels involved. And that would be an actively bad thing bizarrely enough.
that's assuming they ever find out, which I mean, not sure how that would happen, maybe goetia blabbed? an enemy caster cast an analysis spell or something? it's very specific
Y'all don't understand. From Taylor's hints, ''tis obvious to the twins that she used to be some kinda badass in her youth.
But a something as pedestrian as a superhero/supervillain? What's this an MHA fanfic? Perish the thought.
No, it's pretty obvious that Taylor was that one edgy Magical Girl with a weird costume who starts out as the antagonist but gets won over by the main cast in a dramatic fight where their conviction shined through and allowed Taylor to redefine herself from Mahou Shoujo Cockroach Girl into a beautiful butterfly emerging from chrysalis.
The only remaining questions are whether the Meguca in question was Olga, and if yes, where the rest of the cast is. Well, incinerated with the rest of humanity, presumably.
No, it's pretty obvious that Taylor was that one edgy Magical Girl with a weird costume who starts out as the antagonist but gets won over by the main cast in a dramatic fight where their conviction shined through and allowed Taylor to redefine herself from Mahou Shoujo Cockroach Girl into a beautiful butterfly emerging from chrysalis.
"It all makes sense! Clearly Senpai is a rogue cyborg created by the Nazi!"
-note: this misunderstanding is not helped by learning that Taylor did indeed fight Nazis in her hometown. Especially when some of them were named things like Storm Tiger and Hook Wolf.
"It all makes sense! Clearly Senpai is a rogue cyborg created by the Nazi!"
-note: this misunderstanding is not helped by learning that Taylor did indeed fight Nazis in her hometown. Especially when some of them were named things like Storm Tiger and Hook Wolf.
The very first Kamen Rider was kidnapped by the Nazi remnant group Shocker and turned into a cyborg, only to escape and begin fighting their animal and insect themed cyborg army.
So between Taylor's mask (which is close enough to the Kamen Rider aesthetic), Taylor's prosthetic arm, and her hometown having had animal themed Nazis, I'd say it's pretty reasonable for one of the Fujimaru twins to at least make a joke about it.
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, 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 CXLVII: Enemy in the Mist
Mordred was gone for about an hour, and we watched her path through the city on Flamel's diorama, the circuit she did throughout Whitechapel. She stopped several times, although without any other signs of enemy presence, there was no way to know if she was stopping to fight or just to look at something for clues.
Either way, when she came back, all she could tell us was, "Nothing. A few of them automata things and a homunculus or two, but that was it. Place is like a ghost town."
It was nothing that we hadn't expected. It wasn't like there was anything of interest in Whitechapel anyway, nothing aside from maybe the real, living Jack the Ripper, but an ordinary serial killer wouldn't have made it onto the enemy's radar to begin with.
"Then we'll go with Fran's idea," I replied simply.
No one objected.
Since we were all basically ready to go, it only took a few minutes to put on the finishing touches, and then we were gathered at the front door.
"I believe I'll be staying here, this time," said Flamel.
"You are?" asked Ritsuka.
Flamel nodded. "Quite frankly, I'm not the sort to engage in violence, and I would prefer to leave the fighting to those better suited to it. I'm far more comfortable here."
"But you came with us to confront Paracelsus," Mash pointed out.
"A unique situation," said Flamel. He grimaced. "I was originally there to help your investigation into the Association's destruction, if you'll recall, and while I had intended to confront Paracelsus if he showed himself to us, it was not the main goal of our outing earlier. I will, I think, join you when you go to investigate the ley lines," he added, "but if your goal is to face the Servant behind the Helter Skelter, then I think you would be better served taking all of your own Servants instead of me."
"So I don't have to stay behind again?" Jeanne Alter drawled. "I think I might actually like you, Gramps."
"We'll be here, as well," Tohsaka reminded us. "After all, there was only one mask in that package, wasn't there? Since it's still not safe for me to go out in the fog, Alice and I can stay behind with him."
"I'll be grateful for your presence," said Flamel.
"As will I," said Jekyll. "Seeing as I myself am in no way a suitable combatant against a Servant and haven't the talent as a mage to otherwise aid in your investigation, I shall busy myself with keeping abreast of my network's information and leave the defense of this apartment to Mister Tohsaka and Abraham."
Leaving us free to take Jeanne Alter, Arash, and Emiya to look for the mysterious B or M — whichever he was — and hopefully deal with him. Wouldn't that be convenient? Taking out two of the enemy masterminds on the same day.
"I'll be staying back, as well," said Andersen. "You don't need me, so there's no point in me going. I'll accomplish just as much here as I would going with you."
"Fine by me," said Mordred. "One less person I have to worry about protecting."
If it was meant to be condescending or demeaning, Andersen didn't seem to care.
"Exactly."
Frankly, I was glad not to have to deal with him either. Whatever else he was, accomplished author or not, his personality and his tendency to needle at things he should just leave well enough alone got on my nerves.
It would have been easier to handle if he could actually fight. Or even if he could just pull bullshit out of his stories the way Nursery Rhyme could.
With the groups decided upon, the only thing left to do was for our group to get out the front door, and the only thing stopping us from doing that was me. My mask. I had to wear it if I wanted to go out into the fog.
I still…wasn't quite sure what to think about it. About what it might mean to have another tether to my past, like it didn't want to let me go. The person who had originally owned it wasn't someone I wanted to be again.
But there was no helping it.
For a moment, I stared down at the cloth and chitin, at the iridescent lenses, and then I decided I had waffled over it long enough and lifted the thing up and over my head. My glasses came off, the arms folded and slid into my shirt like a clip, and pulling the mask over my head was so frighteningly familiar and nostalgic that my hands handled the adjusting and the fitting on autopilot as though no time at all had even passed.
Like riding a bike. I didn't want to admit it, but some part of me was afraid that falling into old habits would be just as easy — easier, even, with this thing on my face.
When I looked through the lenses again for the first time in over two years, the world that greeted me was a bit muted. The colors weren't as sharp, the lights weren't as bright, the darks weren't as dark. The wonders of polarized lenses, designed to reduce glare and protect from intense light. Maybe Da Vinci could see to doing something for my glasses, too, although I wasn't sure how effective that would be when they didn't wrap around my face the way the mask did.
"That," said Rika, "is somehow even freakier than the last time."
"Looks kinda strange to me," said Mordred, peering at me queerly. "Don't fit with that uniform of yours at all."
Because it was never meant to.
"Let's get going," I said. Even to my ears, it came out altered and buzzing, distorted by Da Vinci's addition.
"Okay," said Rika. She gave me a wary look. "That's…totally not creepy at all. No siree. Not one bit."
"As long as it works," said Arash.
"Maybe she'll scare the enemy, too," Emiya suggested slyly.
I turned to him, but he couldn't see the look I gave him through the mask, so the effect was ruined.
"We think it looks cool," said Jackie. I couldn't not reach out and give her a pat on the head to show my thanks for her support.
If only being a mom could always be that easy and that simple.
With my mask secured and me protected from the fog, there was nothing else stopping us from leaving, so we all made our way to the front door.
"Bye-bye, Jackie," Nursery Rhyme waved. "See you later."
"We'll see you later, Alice," Jackie replied with a wave of her own.
"A moment, please," Renée said as she strode in from the tea room purposefully. "Before you go…"
She held out a small bundle, a square-shaped something wrapped up in a cloth napkin, and presented it to us.
"I believed it would be to your benefit to take something to snack on for your patrol, to tide you over until supper," she explained, still monotone. She turned red eyes on Emiya like a challenge. "Please take them with you."
Emiya bristled, having obviously seen something in her words that he took as an insult, but whatever it was, he managed to hold his tongue.
Ritsuka and Rika shared a look, looking down at themselves helplessly and gesturing to their pockets, which were entirely too small to fit what I was sure were more of those pastries she'd made before. I wasn't any better off, seeing as my equipment pouch was filled with other resources and didn't have room.
It was Mash who accepted the bundle delicately and with grace. "Thank you, Miss Renée," she said. She tucked it away in a compartment situated in the back of her shield. "I'm sure they're delicious."
Renée offered a shallow bow. "Take care," she bade, still in that same monotone that had become characteristic of her. Somehow, it didn't make her sound less sincere.
With those final, parting words, we left, stepping out onto the streets of London and the fog that awaited us therein. Fran gagged for a moment on the smell and the suffocating thickness, but didn't have any trouble with it aside from that.
Of course not. She'd been fine when the twins, Mash, and Mordred brought her back from Frankenstein's mansion, so it only made sense that — however it was she was able to do it — she could survive the mist just fine now as well.
"Never smells any better," Rika said miserably.
"Hopefully, we can get rid of it soon," her brother said.
If our luck held out.
"Come on," I said. "We'll find a patrol group with Helter Skelter in it and Fran can try tracking the owner from there."
"Sounds like a plan," said Ritsuka.
"Uhn," Fran agreed.
So we started out and away from the apartment. Unfortunately, with the fog in full force, I couldn't just start looking around the streets with my bugs, which meant we had to go looking the old fashioned way, and that was naturally made all the harder by the fact that there was so little visibility.
How had they gone on patrols the last few days like this? It had looked so easy and purposeful from watching the map.
Fortunately, however, Da Vinci's improvised gas mask proved just as effective as she promised. I breathed and breathed easily. The fog did nothing to me, and better yet, the filter made it so that I didn't even have to deal with the smell. In stark contrast to how we'd arrived here just a few short days ago, I was completely unbothered, and although I felt the friction of the fog against my skin and under my clothes, rubbing up against my magic circuits like static electricity, it was nothing more than a little discomfort, easily ignored.
Not once did I feel the urge to cough. Not once did my eyes water. I was perfectly protected.
I'm going to have to try and do something nice for Da Vinci later.
What I could give her that would compare, well, that one was something I was going to have to give some thought. What did you get for the woman who had everything?
We wound up wandering for the better part of an hour, just stumbling through the fog, and while my bugs couldn't help us more directly, having them come in and out of my range in their various configurations kept us from going in circles. Instead, we took a meandering sort of line through the city, weaving back and forth from street to street to cover as much ground as we could, and keeping our eyes and ears out for any sign of a patrol group with Helter Skelter in it.
We were halfway to Soho by the time we finally found one. A standard sized squad of the sort we'd been seeing ever since we started actually exploring, with four of each kind of enemy, plodding through on some unknowable route looking out for…what, we still didn't know for sure.
I wished we'd had the chance to ask Paracelsus about it before he was killed.
"Master!" said Mash, who was the first of us to detect them. Unfortunately, she also alerted them to our presence, and the whole group turned towards us, the Helter Skelter lumbering out of the fog as the automata spun about dashed with gangly speed.
"Take them out!" Ritsuka ordered her.
"Right!"
"My fucking pleasure!" Jeanne Alter crowed.
Even easier than they had yesterday, our group mowed down the enemy. Six Servants against four Helter Skelter, four automata, and four homunculi could only have ended one way to begin with, and although Mordred was a little more cautious with Fran along, the whole team was still far outmatched, and it was the work of less than a minute to wipe them all out.
It helped that most of the Helter Skelter were only the bronze ones Da Vinci had talked about earlier. The weakest ones with the flimsiest armor, Mash with her recent upgrade, Mordred with her own incredible strength, and Jeanne Alter, who could deal a killing blow to Herakles, all cut through them like a scythe through wheat. The automata shattered, limbs scattered as their joints snapped. The homunculi were sliced clean through as though they were made of paper, leaving behind splatters of red blood on the stone streets. The Helter Skelters' armor crumpled like cheap plastic.
The only exception was the single green Helter Skelter, what must have been the "leader" of the group, and now that Da Vinci had explained what their colors meant, the presence of one green one in every group made a whole lot more sense. I hadn't paid much attention to that before, but thinking back on it, I was pretty sure each patrol we'd run into had had a green one in it.
Even that one, however, only lasted a few fractions of a second longer than any of its lower quality cousins. More of a problem, I thought, in larger concentrations, but with only a single one in the entire squad, handled just as easily as the rest.
"Man, that was way too fast," Mordred complained when it was all over. She let her sword fall to rest against one shoulder with a metallic clink. "Having you guys along to fuck them up just makes this way too easy. Especially now that Shieldy over there has stopped pussyfooting around."
"I-I'm sorry?" Mash squeaked.
"What'd you expect, British?" Jeanne Alter drawled. "They're cheap knockoffs in London. Of course they suck."
If they were French, they would have surrendered, I imagined Aisha sniggering. I did my best to keep the smile from sprouting on my face.
"Fuck off with that shit," Mordred groused. "And it ain't your fault, Shieldy. This was always gonna get easier when I wasn't handling it solo. 'S how teams are supposed to work, innit? Many hands and all that shit."
"I do have to wonder if the enemy will eventually run out of homunculi without Paracelsus there to make more," Emiya remarked idly. "Or maybe he built a vat of some kind to mass produce them."
"We'll have to destroy it if he did," said Arash.
That would require us finding it first, and frankly, if he hid it well enough and far enough away from the enemy's Angrboða machine, whatever that thing wound up being, then we might never actually stumble across it. It might just be something we had to write off and let the correction of the era fix — provided it even existed, of course.
"We'll deal with that if and when it comes up," I said. "For now…" I gestured to the broken heaps that were once Helter Skelter. "Fran, is this good enough for you to work with?"
Fran's lips drew into a tight line, and she picked her way over to the scrap gingerly, then crouched down and started to examine the pieces, rolling them over with her fingertips. She didn't even seem to notice the oil leaving black smears on her white gloves and splotches on the fabric of her white dress.
Now that I thought of it, she was actually wearing a wedding gown, wasn't she? What a twisted man the original Frankenstein must have been to put his creation in a dress like that, especially if everything else about her backstory was true to the novel.
A minute or two passed before Fran nodded. "Uhn."
She stood and straightened, then thrust her arm out to the left and at an angle, one finger extended. A black smudge on her fingertip was like an arrow. "Uhn."
I followed the direction she was pointing, did some mental calculations. If I was right, then she was pointing in the general area of Westminster, which meant that we might have been mere miles away from this thing when we were following Nursery Rhyme and we hadn't ever realized it.
"Alright," said Mordred, grinning. "What're we waiting for? Let's go!"
"Wait a moment," I told her. To Fran, I asked, "Are you sure you can follow that the whole way?"
Fran grimaced, and her finger fell. "Uhn… Uh-uhn…"
That was what I thought.
Rika turned to her brother, who translated, "Maybe."
I accessed my communicator and pulled up the map function. "We'll have to triangulate it. That should give us a much more accurate location."
Mordred's nose scrunched up. "Triangulate?"
"Take separate vectors, preferably a good distance apart, and calculate where they intersect by forming a triangle," Rika explained. "Easy-peasy!"
I wasn't the only one who turned to look at her.
"What?" she said, crossing her arms defensively. "It's just math. It's not that hard."
"Compared to English, right?" Ritsuka teased her.
"Grammar rules are a pain in the ass!" Rika complained dramatically. "I spent a whole year dreaming in participles, adjectives, and dependent clauses!"
"Trust the English to come up with the most fucked up language in the world," Jeanne Alter said sardonically.
"Fucking Angles," Mordred agreed.
"I mean, that's kinda the point of triangulation," Rika said, but the joke went completely over Mordred and Jeanne Alter's heads.
"We'll make our way into Soho and find two more groups." I marked our current position on the map, so that we could use it later, and then drew an arrow away from it in the direction Fran was pointing. "If Fran can do the same thing with them that she did with these ones here, then we can see where they all cross over and that'll give us a much smaller area to look through."
"See?" said Rika. "Triangulation, triangulation!"
"Whatever," said Mordred. "If it helps us find this thing, then I guess we can do it that way. Just seems like a waste of time to me."
"Uhn…" Fran mumbled.
"The less we argue about it, the faster we'll get it done," I told Mordred.
"I get it, I get it," she groused. "So let's just go and do it already!"
Since she was the only one with any complaints about it — although Jeanne Alter did have a dry comment about how boring it was to chase down a bunch of tin cans — we set off from there to find two more patrol groups with Helter Skelter whose remains Fran could use to help pinpoint where the main controller was. As I said, however, we tried to put some distance between them so that we could get a more accurate triangulation, and that took us into Soho proper first, along a familiar route that we had traveled down just a day or two ago.
Of course, it looked a whole lot different covered entirely in the fog, especially since that made it hard to see any of it at all, so it might have been a bit more accurate to say I recognized the colonies inside the buildings around us and the shapes they revealed through their movements. The street itself looked largely the same as the rest of the city, and the fog obscured most of the rest.
Happily, I also discovered that the people of Soho had since recovered from the enchanted sleep Nursery Rhyme had put them all in, including the elderly man who owned the bookstore where we'd first met up with Andersen. I had to admit, it was at least a little tempting to leave a note or something to let him know he'd had a squatter sitting in his store for at least a few hours. Andersen would probably be mortified.
It might give him a heart attack to have something like that appear so suddenly and inexplicably, though, so I decided against it. Even if it would have served Andersen right.
For whatever reason, it turned out that Soho was still relatively empty. There hadn't been much in the way of patrol groups on our first time through, and that carried over, because we had a hard time finding another Helter Skelter to dismantle for Fran. Eventually, however, we heard the telltale plodding, the delicate plinking, and the lumber thumps, and all we had to do was follow those to find what we were looking for.
Just like all of the other patrols we'd encountered up until then, four of each, led by a green Helter Skelter. They went down much the same, too, handled just as quickly and as easily as every one of them so far. They just didn't stand a chance against a group made of so many Servants.
Somehow, that made it easier to accept that I didn't have much chance to do anything either. Not that I couldn't have done anything, but that the enemy was so contemptuously weak for what and who we had on hand that it would have been a waste of my time and energy to even bother. It was just faster, easier, and less effort for the Servants to handle everything.
"Damn," said Mordred. "That wasn't any better. Those things just folded way too easily."
"Now you're just starting to sound like Super Bitch," Jeanne Alter drawled. Mordred looked over at her, arching an eyebrow.
"Who?"
"She's talking about Queen Aífe, who is back at Chaldea right now," said Ritsuka.
"Probably a good thing we left her behind," Emiya said wryly. "These things wouldn't even have been much of a warmup for someone like her."
But there were other times and places where having her already here with us might have been a bit more convenient. On the other hand, if Aífe had managed to defeat the Jabberwocky somehow and killed Nursery Rhyme, we wouldn't have picked up Tohsaka and made an ally here, would we?
I tucked the thought away and turned to Fran. "Fran?"
Fran nodded. "Uhn."
She stepped up to the largest pile of scrap that remained of the Helter Skelter and knelt down as she had before, inspecting the pieces gingerly with the tips of her fingers. It provided a strangely incongruent scene, like she was afraid of dirtying her hands, and yet she still didn't seem at all bothered by the greasy black stains being left behind on her gloves and gown.
After a minute or so, Fran stood back up and pointed unerringly to the left and slightly behind us.
"Ah, uhn, uhn," she said.
I pulled up my map again and marked our current position, then added another arrow. When I imagined the lines that extended out from those arrows, I could already see the place where they would intersect. Somewhere in Westminster, just a few blocks away from where we'd fought Nursery Rhyme and fallen into her trap.
But I wanted one more data point to use, just so we could be absolutely sure where we were going. Having that third point would give us the exact angles of our triangle, after all, just in case Fran's direction wasn't as exact as we would like it to be.
"One more," I said as my arm dropped. "Somewhere about halfway between here and Hyde Park should do."
Mordred grunted. "Sooner this is over with, the better. I hope one of those mastermind bastards is waiting at the end of this — I'm gonna need something to beat up on by the time we're done, I just know it."
"Barbarian," Jeanne Alter jeered.
"Ain't like you're any better," said Mordred. "You're bored out of your mind, too, ain'tcha?"
Jeanne Alter scowled and huffed, but didn't deny it.
We set off again, making our way westward through Soho and towards Hyde Park. I made sure to look in on all of Nursery Rhyme's victims as we went, checking to make sure they had all managed to break free of her spell, and I found that all of them had. They had all come out of the whole thing none the worse for wear, and I had to wonder if they even realized what had happened to them or if they had all decided it was some kind of bad dream or nightmare or something.
It was probably better for them to keep living in ignorance if they had. Easier to live with it if they dismissed it as the result of bad seafood or something and never had to really face the real danger they'd been in.
Eventually, right on the western edges of Soho — and therefore very close to the last of Nursery Rhyme's former victims — we found our third patrol group, all but identical to the previous two. This group, too, was led by a single green Helter Skelter.
The enemy had to know we'd killed Paracelsus already, didn't they? So did they really have some other way of producing more homunculi, or were they just going to use what they had until they ran out without any care at all for the resources they would be bleeding in the process? If we knew the answer to that, then it would tell us quite a bit about B and M and how they thought. If this went on long enough, we would find out sometime in the next couple of days.
The fact that the group was the same as all of the previous ones also meant they were handled just about as easily as the previous ones. Six Servants really did make for a ridiculous advantage in combat, even if Jackie wasn't exactly a frontline fighter or anything, and it was a bit refreshing to be the one with overwhelming firepower for a change.
"There," Mordred said when it was over. "There's your third group. That gonna be enough for you?"
"Fran?" I asked leadingly.
Fran picked her way through the wreckage over to the remains of the green Helter Skelter, then bent down as she had before and spent a minute or two carefully sifting through the parts with her fingertips. Once she had found what she was looking for, she turned her head, looking back over her shoulder, and lifted one arm.
"Uhn."
Her finger pointed unwaveringly towards where I knew Westminster to be. I brought up the map again, adding the third dot and the third vector, and then I drew straight line from each dot until they intersected right along —
My lips drew into a line.
You have to be kidding me.
Jeanne Alter peered at the map. "That where we're going next?"
"Yes."
Emiya looked at it, too, and he made a noise in his throat as his brow drew down. "That's…what I think it is, isn't it?"
"Not that far from where we fought Nursery Rhyme," Arash noted.
"Where we first met Mommy," Jackie said fondly, as though she hadn't tried to kill me back then. I didn't bring up that part.
"Wait, really?" said Rika. "So we coulda taken care of this, like, two days ago?"
"Yes, we could have."
She groaned dramatically. "Oh, man!"
That wasn't the part that had me so annoyed. No, the part that bothered me was the oversight, because this made it obvious I'd fallen into a bit of a mental trap. My thinking had been that anyone willing enough to screw over humanity by using the Grail to create this Singularity and arrogant enough to want to make a statement about their own power would choose as base of operations the greatest symbol of political power in the city — specifically, the most famous seat of the Queen of England's power, Buckingham Palace.
No matter how much actual authority she commanded these days, the Queen was still technically the ruler of Britain. What better way to make a statement about conquering the city or your own importance than sitting on her throne? It was the obvious choice. Mordred had even gone and checked it out herself, because she considered it the only place her mother would be if Morgan le Fay had actually been summoned.
But if it was so obvious, then maybe it was too obvious, in which case, the next best thing would be…
"That's not what I meant," said Emiya. "That building right there, where all of the lines meet, that's —"
"The Palace of Westminster."
Where the Houses of Parliament met. In other words, where the real decisions of the British government were made. It might not have been as flashy or as big a statement as Buckingham Palace was, but it was the place of true political power in the city.
Mordred made a face. "What?" she said, drawing out the word. "There's more than one palace in this city?"
"London is almost two-thousand years old," Emiya pointed out. "There's several."
Mordred's expression became pinched. "Shit."
"Bumpkin," Jeanne Alter said with a leer.
"Fuck you," was Mordred's eloquent reply.
And Jeanne Alter, of course, just had to say, "You're not my type."
Mordred scoffed, and instead of letting them keep going, I interrupted with, "There's no telling if they've been at the House of Parliament the entire time. It's possible that their base is mobile, and B or M rotate it every day or two, just in case we could trace its location. They might not be there tomorrow."
"And then we'd be back to square one," Ritsuka concluded grimly.
And we'd have to triangulate the location a second time, hoping that they hadn't packed up and moved everything to the complete opposite side of the city. It was what I would have done in their shoes to keep the enemy chasing something that was constantly just out of reach.
"Right."
"Uhn," Fran grunted sourly.
"Then we don't have any time to waste, do we?" said Mash. "We need to get down there as soon as we possibly can. The sooner we defeat B and M and retrieve the Holy Grail, the sooner the people of London can return to their normal lives."
"Shit," said Mordred. "Well, when you put it that way, Shieldy, what are we waiting for? Let's go see what these sick fucks are up to down there."
So we did. Mordred led the way, of course, and I made judicious use of the map we had to make sure that we didn't go off course, but between that and Mordred's intuition, we managed to avoid wandering off course. Navigating in the fog hadn't become easier, but it was doable, if only because we had an actual destination in mind this time.
As we approached the building from the north side, however, both Mordred and Mash began to slow, and the rest of us, sensing that there was something we were missing, slowed to match them.
"Is something wrong, Mash?" Ritsuka asked.
Mash pressed her lips together tightly. "I…it's hard to tell with the fog so full of magical energy, Senpai, but…up ahead, I-I think…there's a source of magical energy."
"Yeah," Mordred agreed quietly. "I'm getting that feeling, too. Whatever's over there, it's putting out a lot of power right now. That's the only reason we can even notice 'em."
I grimaced.
"We could go look, Mommy," Jackie offered.
I thought about it for all of a split second, but —
"No," I told her. "If we can notice him, then there's no way he can't notice us, too, not with how many Servants we have all in the same place. Going after him as anything other than a group won't end well."
Mordred nodded. "Bastard's waiting for us to come to him."
So the absolute worst thing we could do was walk into his trap without any plan whatsoever. A harder thing to manage when we didn't have much of any idea what we were dealing with, but there were ways around that.
I gave Jackie a gentle tap on the shoulder and leaned down.
"Backtrack and circle around the building," I murmured to her. "Hide on the roof and wait for my say-so, okay?"
Jackie nodded seriously. "Okay, Mommy."
I gave her an encouraging squeeze, and with nary a flutter of her cloak, she vanished into spirit form and was gone. The skin of my prosthetic arm tingled as she passed.
"Sending her around to flank them, huh?" Emiya said, barely above a whisper.
"She's not a frontline fighter. Better to play to her strengths."
As a happy coincidence, it put her in the least danger, too.
"Tch," Mordred scoffed. "Well, whatever. As long as she doesn't steal my kill, she can go fuck off, for all I care."
"Your kill?" Jeanne Alter teased. "You'll have to get in line, bumpkin. This guy's mine."
Mordred grinned savagely. "Then I guess whoever gets to 'em first gets the kill, bitch."
Jeanne Alter grinned back. "Try and keep up."
Frankly, if I had my way, I think I would have had Arash or Emiya just find a building a safe distance away, and then take whoever or whatever it was out from there. Quick, clean, and effective. With the fog, however, that simply wasn't possible.
"Mash," I said, "be ready. If this guy attacks first, you're our first line of defense."
Mash glanced over to me, but nodded. "Right! Senpai, Miss Taylor, I'll protect you!"
"I know you will, Mash," Ritsuka replied warmly.
"Emiya," Rika began, for once serious, "that goes for you, too."
Emiya huffed out a quiet laugh. "It goes without saying, Master."
Around the building, we slowly went. To our right, the open street, with streetlamps lit and guttering flames attempting desperately to push back against the oppressive mist that strangled their light. To our left, a wrought iron fence jutting up from a concrete base, and beyond it, the shadowy silhouettes of towering spires. Just barely visible beyond them was the stone edifice of the House of Parliament, with blackened recesses where the windows must have been, sucking in what little light made it that far.
The main building was all but invisible. The dark roof was nothing more than a vague splotch of gray that disappeared into the mist.
Eventually, the fence curved, swerving away from the street and towards the building itself, and we had little choice but to follow it until the main structure of the palace slowly resolved out of the fog. Arched doorways were cut out of the stone nearby, curving into a sharp point in the center, and led into little alcoves that protected the heavy wooden doors from the weather. An unlit lamp hung in each one, casting them all in shadows, as though to say that the entire place had been vacated.
"We're getting closer," Arash warned.
And beneath the suffocating blanket of the fog's dense mana, I still couldn't feel anything else. I wished I could let out my ravens to check, or even pull a swarm together to get a feel for our surroundings, just so I knew what we were going to be getting ourselves into.
But I couldn't, and both for the same reason. I couldn't wait for this fog to be gone.
At the very least, I had a decent enough view of the interior of the building. The bugs inside awoke to my command and flitted about, surveying each room, examining the furniture and the carpeting and the empty spaces between — and finding nothing. Having no idea what it was supposed to look like at this point in history, I couldn't have made as bold a claim as to say that it had been left the way it was the last time Parliament had met here, but at the very least, I wasn't finding any obvious signs of a workshop or the other trappings of a mage.
That, however, when combined with the presence we were creeping towards, was the obvious sign of a trap. The only trouble was, for B or M to have set this up as a trap for us, they would have had to know that at least one person in our group could track their Helter Skelter back to them, and we ourselves hadn't been sure about it until a few hours ago. Flamel had suggested the idea, of course, but up until today, we hadn't ever committed to it.
Could they have mocked up some sort of beacon to distract us and then placed it here in that short a time? It felt like asking a bit much from anyone, even a Servant. Not impossible, not when the meaning of that word had become so narrow over the past five years, but it would mean our enemy was more dangerous than I had hoped they would be.
"They're not inside," I announced to everyone.
Mordred looked at me askance. "What? Like they're standing around in the courtyard or something? They expecting a fucking honor duel?"
"I don't think it's going to be that convenient," Emiya drawled.
"It's more likely to be a trap," Arash added.
"Then we spring it," Ritsuka said confidently.
No one argued. It seemed we were all generally of the same mind about how to handle whoever or whatever was up ahead, even if only just to get rid of the obnoxious fog.
Not too far from where the fence curved in, the building did the same, creating a sharp corner for us to turn. When we reached that corner and turned it, however, we found waiting for us —
"Holy crap, it's huge!" Rika exclaimed.
— an enormous Helter Skelter, black as pitch and three or four times as large as any of the others. In sheer size, it couldn't compare to the Demon Gods of the last two Singularities, and in terms of monsters I'd faced, Leviathan was taller still, but was still twenty-something feet tall and proportioned to match. Just looking at it, I had to think it was the extra large one that left those tracks at the Clock Tower.
That armor plating was going to be a lot more of a pain in the ass than any of the other ones we'd fought.
And as though her words had been its cue, its gears whirred and its limbs jerked as it awoke from whatever sleep mode it had been in. It turned its massive head our way, the lenses set into its faceplate gleaming menacingly. Its arm moved, lifting up a massive cleaver that resembled more some sort of industrial cutting machine than a handheld weapon. Gouts of steam gushed out from between the plates of its armor, hissing almost like a snake about to strike.
"Oops," Rika squeaked sheepishly.
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
So I could have pushed this out a little bit further, because I originally intended to get the fight in at the end of the chapter instead of ending the chapter right before the fight, but that would have meant another 1-2k words, probably, and while that's not necessarily abnormal, 6.4k seemed big enough for me. The fight can just happen at the start of next chapter instead.
We're not quite in the home stretch for London, but we're getting close. This is definitely firmly in the final third of this Singularity.
