So, in other news, London has officially been completed. The last chapter was released yesterday. Which means... Soon enough, I'll be starting on the America Singularity. There's some stuff to do in the meantime and some things that will need to be addressed in the aftermath of that chapter, but it won't be too long now. Probably before Halloween, even.
That's what they believe his power is, but unless Scion said so in his interlude we don't know for sure. It is cheaper computational wise to just fake the time travel, remember the whole Cycle was mostly planed out until Eden using the phone while driving thanks to Abaddon ruined things.
And that even with the network crippled Shards do communicate and colabborate with each other, plus the Entities not wanting to waste more energy that needed. Is possible the time travel power if it was actually time travel was modified to actually prevent changing history in any significant way, again to save power and processing.
Edit: Basically think of Entities being those people who tweak things to get a speed boost in a game, only the games are the Entities powers. Yes they do have access to basically unlimited energy but are looking for a way to have both unlimited space and unlimited time so they can breed forever to infinite and beyond.
That's what they believe his power is, but unless Scion said so in his interlude we don't know for sure. It is cheaper computational wise to just fake the time travel, remember the whole Cycle was mostly planed out until Eden using the phone while driving thanks to Abaddon ruined things.
And that even with the network crippled Shards do communicate and colabborate with each other, plus the Entities not wanting to waste more energy that needed. Is possible the time travel power if it was actually time travel was modified to actually prevent changing history in any significant way, again to save power and processing.
Edit: Basically think of Entities being those people who tweak things to get a speed boost in a game, only the games are the Entities powers. Yes they do have access to basically unlimited energy but are looking for a way to have both unlimited space and unlimited time so they can breed forever to infinite and beyond.
Word of God is that part of the reason it did as much damage to Behemoth is because of timey-wimey fuckery.
It might be cheaper to fake it, but the Shards to do it still exist and the scale parahumans operate at is miniscule compared to an Entity.
Word of God is that part of the reason it did as much damage to Behemoth is because of timey-wimey fuckery.
It might be cheaper to fake it, but the Shards to do it still exist and the scale parahumans operate at is miniscule compared to an Entity.
We don't know in what scale the time travel was on in what rules it operated with. We know no undo were allowed by time travel at least or Fortuna definitively would have used that.
Then a slightly different option, as is clear, Taylor/Khepri still has a chance to become the Beast, if not now, then in hundreds or even thousands of years(which is more than enough to all Ward covering of Golden Morning explode into the smithereens and creation of new religion with Taylor as greate saviour). And here the timeless property of the Throne comes into play, where, technically, it is possible to summon future versions of any servant, or the servant's versions demonstrating his past incarnations can have properties that will be revealed only in the future.
Or, in the most extreme case, we can get a situation like with Nero/Draco, where Khepri is a 'what-if' Taylor from some singularity/lostbelt, who, through her being the Beast, has a number of advantages unavailable to other spiritual graphs.
Besides, even if Taylor didn't exist in other Timelines at the time of the Worm's outbreak, who's to say that the Tree of Time, having seen the result of Taylor's work (or, more likely, as a result of the machinations of the shard network that had gone haywire), couldn't create new Timelines?
By the way, speaking about the Khepri Religion, I would like to step aside and find out the opinion of local participants: What is the probability that the Endbringers and Scion, in one form or another, did not become containers for summoning their corresponding divine spirits?
That is, Leviathan can become a container for summoning both Jormungandr from Scandinavian Mythology and for Leviathan from the Bible, and the same Scion can clearly claim the role of a container for Yahweh, since there were cults of Endbringers, so why was there no cult of Scion, where he was given the role of some mythical deity, the same YHWH, for example.
It's an interesting idea to use the endbringers or others as pseudo servants of divine spirits. I myself proposed that a number of characters probably could be used as high servants if people think they cannot be summoned on their own.
I think however you are really stretching if you think Scion can act as a host for the Biblical god. Besides the fact that it would be a bad move as it would be powerscaling a religious figure, associating them with a mass murderer, and likely leading to a lot of religious people including myself leaving this fic for good.
It just doesn't fit.
A pseudo servants host is chosen based upon compatibility. Rin supposedly has a somewhat similar character to Ishtar, and her power set as well. Cu chulain was taught primordial runes and has a lot of skill with them and is also, somewhat importantly tho not really, a guy. Making him a good host for Odin.
Pseudo servants have to be close to their personalities and or powersets to act as a proper host.
It's why Jormungandr and the Biblical Leviathan work for Leviathan
Scion however... he's a mass murderer, emotionless and utterly alien. Say what you want, this is not a place to debate religion, but going by the text Yahweh is a being slaw to anger and abounding in love and faithfulness to humanity. Yes I know floods, disease, yatta yatta, but going by what we see of the christain/catholic/ Hebrew characters in fate that is the interpretation fate is going for.
Scion is just simply not a compatible host at all. His appearance is the only thing that connects him really to religious figures, those being Jesus and Buddha who are both qualifiers for the Saver class.
If you do want a divine spirit that would be compatible with Scion, Mahakala is a good example. Depicted as both a protector deity, yet also one that will one day destroy the universe by dissolving it into themselves. Not to mention being depicted as an evil/ wrathful depiction of the Buddha, which would fit with Scion making himself look like Buddha and other religious figures.
So, in other news, London has officially been completed. The last chapter was released yesterday. Which means... Soon enough, I'll be starting on the America Singularity. There's some stuff to do in the meantime and some things that will need to be addressed in the aftermath of that chapter, but it won't be too long now. Probably before Halloween, even.
oh nice!
London has been fun- you've taken some turns and you've really sold the frustration and inherent deadliness of the Singularity- and there is still plenty to go, but i'm really excited to see what you do with the American Singularity
For lots of reasons!
Not the least of which because that's home to Taylor.
be interesting to see what's waiting
but even before then, i'm curious what will be waiting in the intervening chapters between missions
because what's it going to be this time?
is da Vinci finally going to get the simulator up and running? (seriously, that's been on the docket since Orleans. if it's going to be introduced early enough for it to actually be useful, it should probably be soon)
will Taylor finally get some spiders/her puppets? (less critical, but again, she's been wanting those for ages, and it'd be nice for her to finally have some projects to work on to keep her metaphorical hands busy)
Are they going to perform another summon? (they could always use more Servants, given the challenges they have coming up) or are they going to have some re-summons to perform? are we going to see some old faces (Nero? Atalanta? Medea?)? or are we going to get someone completely different?
is the team going to at long last get at least something of a brief on Taylor's past? because there's enough narrative momentum on that now- especially with Andersen, Jackie, the mask reveal, and...the end of London coming up- that they kind of need to get SOMETHING soon
lots of ways for this to go, lots of juicy possibilities.
and personally, i'm thinking at least one, maybe two of these are going to happen during post-London as opposed to post-America because...well, post-America and they've got a completely different set of problems to worry about, and past that is kind of past the sell-by date, as it were.
that said, i have been wrong before, so let's see where this goes!
(in a couple of months)
right?
like, yes, their dynamic is great, but it ends up feeling kind of disjointed from the rest of the Singularity.
and that's on top of it just...not, really feeling like America?
like, i don't want to take up too much space on this, but it really feels more like they took a trip through a mini-mall or a theme park rather than an actual country. which is weird considering they are supposedly fighting a war there
i realize part of that is the limitation of the game itself; there's only so much you can manage with limited backgrounds and sprites and text...but they've managed to tell compelling stories in other settings like Okeanos and the Lostbelts, so there's not much reason they couldn't do so here
and i've kind of mentioned this before, but i'm super excited to see what Servants show up. does anyone get cut? Who gets added?
because, personally? for a Singularity supposedly set in America, it does not feature almost any American figures, and the few it does show i find questionable/
Edison is fair enough, and i can even roll with him being a lion...but the entire bit with him literally eating the power of the presidents? that was nonsense.
if they wanted an outlaw? Why did they pick Billy the Kid over Butch Cassidy or John Dillinger? is it because they wanted a gunslinger? Wyatt Earp is right there, as is Wild Bill Hickok
if they wanted a Native American Heroic Spirit? again, Geronimo wouldnot have been my first choice. why not Sitting Bull, or Crazy Horse? or Tamanend? Or Tecumseh?
they're supposed to be at war for the country- where's Buffalo Bill? where's Bass Reeves? Daniel Boone?
and all that isn't even touching on the more folk hero types like John Henry or Joe Magarac (seriously, i would pay money to see Joe Magarac come bursting through the walls and dropkick Edison)
(i'll stop here because i got way too into this when i doubled back to rewatch the American Singularity and i have a LOT of notes on this, but I don't want to take up too much space and get too off the rails)
there's so much potential going into E Pluribus Unum, and with how much time and energy Fawkes has spent expanding and exploring each of the Singularities i'm can't wait to see which roads he takes us down!
Fair enough, I was hoping for some of the American servants that Nasu said were possible, like Berserker Young Lincoln, Saber/Rider Colonel George Washington... I'm just sad that my favorite potential Berserkers, Riders, etc are too new to be Servants.
Rider - Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. : Representative, and wartime commander, of the Tuskeegee Airmen
Berserker/Rider/Avenger - Audie Murphy: decorated soldier and later Hollywood actor, who had to tone down his actual actions on film to not strain the credulity of his audiences.
Caster - Walt Disney: 'Nuff Said.
Saber/Rider - George S Patton: He designed the last cavalry sabre issued by the US Army as anything but a dress piece, and wrote the training manual for it. (Admittedly, he's close to the recency limit as a WWI soldier)
But, if I'm not misreading anything: Either Al Capone or Elliot Ness could serve as a compatible Servant for Taylor based on her time in the Chicago Wards. [The Queen of Escalation does things Chicago Style]
It's a long way in the future still, but, (like most well written FGO fics*), if these singularities have been written this good, I really wonder how Camelot and Babylonia are gonna go down.
*aka nearly all of them since they haven't reached those singularities yet.
Either Al Capone or Elliot Ness could serve as a compatible Servant for Taylor based on her time in the Chicago Wards. [The Queen of Escalation does things Chicago Style]
Rider Bonnie & Clyde.
More seriously, Given that we Getting BBay and Dragon, i presume we get presence from other side of cross, not historical persons.
There's a reason the "teaser trailer" is just a teaser and not a reveal. I'm loving the theory-crafting here, but I'll remind everyone that I've confirmed none of it yet, just hinted.
But I can't wait until Chapter CLIX is out, just to watch everyone's head's explode.
I'll be completely honest, i've gotten to the point i more or less ignore the recency limit, because it's bullshit
and funnily enough it was my watch and rewatch of E Pluribus Unum that convinced me it's bullshit
because it gave us a bunch of Servants from the relatively recent era (if Geronimo and Billy the Kid can qualify as Servants, any of the early American big names can be as well), but i want to focus on two major ones
Helena Blavatsky is what we would call a modern mage. she only just missed out on seeing the turn of the 20th millenium. but uh, you know how old magic is weird and complicated and hard to replicate in the odd cases where it's not completely unknowable (to say nothing of the specific restricted magics, like the Church has)? well for no apparent reason, there is NO MAGIC that Blavatsky doesn't know. which...seems like bullshit to me. and i might be able to forgive that if it were made up somewhere else, but her magic power is A rank, so is her Luck, she has 4 skills none of which are under a B rank (including A rank territory creation) and she has an A-plus Noble Phantasm. despite having less pedigree than the Tohsaka family.
and she can change her class on the fly, apparently. somehow.
And then we have introduced to the scene Li Shuwen. Admittedly, the man was one of the greatest martial artists of his day and some say ever...but if you want to talk about older is better than Li Shuwen tosses that right out of the window because he was born in 1864 and lived to see the lead-up to the Second World War. and despite being so 'modern' he was a match for both Beowulf and Scathath. and not just 'didn't die' but 'am proud to fight either with or against him', despite both of them having over a millenium of mystery and legend on him
so...yeah
bit rambly, but i really don't care about modernity in regards to Servants in terms of either viability or strength. it's nonsense
hell, one of the most versatile Servants out there is Shirou Emiya, and he was born in 1987 and did nothing remotely interesting until the 2010s
Fate is a love-letter to history and the human spirit. pick a story you love, use it to make a Servant, and just go. it'll be just as viable as anything else
Well, the existance of Voyager alone proves you can summon not just spirits from the recent past, but from the future, even without the Counter Guardian shenanigans of EMIYA.
Neil Armstrong being a summonable servant also tosses the modernity thing right out the window—born in 1930, died in 2012, and did his most notable thing in 1963. You could say he 'doesn't count' because he only gets mentioned in Extra iirc but like…he still exists. He was still recorded on the throne. Multiple people have mentioned the throne existing outside time and space already—if he's summonable in one Fate universe, then he should be summonable in ALL of them.
No, it was at the time of F/SN, but because Nasuverse narrators/lore expositors (as Rin was in Stay Night where the rule first appeared) are NOT omniscient/super-informed narrators/lore expositors said 'rules' are subject to editing if later expositors are backed by having greater knowledge/skills on the matter.
Also, IIRC, the phrase was NOT "modern humans cannot become Heroic Spirits", it was "for modern humans it is extremely difficult to get recorded as Heroic Spirits"... and promptly down the line we learnt that Archer is a modern day born Heroic Spirit (albeit one that reached the place via Pact with Alaya, but he is still one).
We ain't gonna summon him, and future folks (like the folks in Extra) can.
And from what I can understand, its not a complete "no, impossible", its more akin to a "cosmically unlikely scenario". Any modern Servant could technically be summoned here and the now, but it would take insane luck, and it wouldn't really even be worth it 99% of the time.
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.
If you aren't up for that for whatever reason, then you can support the story by leaving a like on the chapters and a comment about what you enjoyed or didn't enjoy.
And now that the shameless plugging is out of the way... Chapter CLI: Down in the Underground
I never wanted a night vision mode in my mask more than I did as we walked down that westerly tunnel.
The sparse swarm I'd brought down with us helped, but I had devoted them mostly to looking for any signs of secret entrances to villainous lairs, which meant they were mainly exploring the walls of the tunnel, not the floor. It helped to keep me oriented in the right direction instead of drifting to either side, but it made me effectively blind to anything that might have been on the ground to trip me up.
The flashlight function on our communicators also helped, but us Masters were sandwiched in the center of the column of our Servants, and armor like Mordred's and a shield like Mash's cast long, large shadows on the floor. The night blindness inherent in using flashlights only made the contrast starker, but it wasn't like there was enough light from any other source for us to navigate by anyway. We left the gas lamps from the station platform behind quickly enough that they might as well have been candles, and none of the maintenance lights were lit.
"Creepy," Rika muttered, but with how her voice echoed off the tunnels, she might as well have shouted. "I'm getting some serious flashbacks to Senpai's School of Caster Trauma."
I resisted the urge to arch an eyebrow at her. She wouldn't have seen it anyway.
"School of Caster Trauma?" Tohsaka asked, bemused.
"Rika and I were…last minute picks for the Master roster," Ritsuka explained as diplomatically as he could. "We didn't get the full training course in time and barely had any orientation before things went…wrong. Senpai had to give us some extra training between deployments."
"Ah," Tohsaka said in a way that made it clear he really didn't understand.
"So she did a scary Caster simulation thingy," Rika added. "To show us how scary it is to fight a Caster in their lair."
"It was impressive," said Emiya. "I suppose there's a reason why Taylor is the senior Master on this team, although it does make me curious where she got such experience."
Even if I was inclined to share, I wasn't quite sure how I would have gone about explaining it properly, so the only thing I could tell him was, "It's the way my powers are built. It's just a coincidence that I happen to benefit from time and a place to set up as Casters and magi do."
No one else seemed to know where to go with that or what question they wanted to ask for more detail, so for a minute or two, the conversation died and we kept trudging along. Eventually, however, as the topic faded, Mash found something else to focus on and broke the silence.
"It's very quiet down here," she said softly. "And the magical energy is…very sparse."
"Except for what's coming from the remnants of the mist," said Emiya.
"It's not a very fun place to play," said Nursery Rhyme. "There's nowhere to hide for Hide and Seek."
And no sign that anyone had been down here at all since this whole thing started, let alone M and the other masterminds. It wasn't impossible that they had been using the Underground as a way to sneak around the city without running the risk of us finding them, whether on accident in the fog or on purpose during the morning hours, but if they had, they hadn't left a trail behind for us to follow.
Of course, I wasn't sure I would have trusted it if they had. It would have felt too much like a trap. If it really was Moriarty at the end of all of this, then I wouldn't have dared to walk into it, just because I knew better than to think I could outsmart the guy famous for being the nemesis of Sherlock Holmes.
"Tch." Mordred scoffed, clicking her tongue. "This M guy could've at least done us the favor of leaving a sign out or something. 'Secret lair over here!' or some shit like that."
"Because you need it spelled out for you, British?" Jeanne Alter mocked.
"Fuck you," Mordred replied irritably. "I hate all of this cloak and dagger bullshit."
"Ha!" Jeanne Alter laughed. "Aren't you the one who rebelled against your pops and overthrew the whole kingdom while he was off in Rome or whatever?"
"Fuck off!" Mordred snarled. "This and that aren't even in the same goddamn universe! I did what I did because it was the only fucking shot I had at winning. When the time came to fight my father, at least I had the balls to go up and do it to his goddamn face!"
She wound back her foot and planted it solidly in the nearest rail, and the metallic bong vibrated through the whole tunnel, bouncing off of the walls until it was like a chorus of vibrating steel. I wasn't the only one that winced, but I might have been the only one who noticed the huge bend in the rail she left behind.
"That's why I'm here," she went on heatedly. "The only one who has any right to destroy Father's country is me! This fucker ain't got no right to go and try this shit, not while I'm here to say he can't! He needs to step back and get in fucking line or come up to my fucking face and ask my goddamn permission!"
"None of us likes the situation as it is," I said neutrally. I didn't judge what she was saying — our motives were different and the situations weren't anything at all alike, but I had taken over a portion of my home, too, and done some things I wasn't exactly proud of to keep it running. Some of that probably counted as rebellion against a lawful authority or whatever. "But hiding and biding his time serves M far better than it does us. All he has to do is run out the clock, while we have to find him before supplies run out and the city dies. There's nothing we can do to change that when we aren't even sure who he is."
"I know!" Mordred snapped, and then she gritted her teeth and looked away, scuffing her foot against the ground. "Just…pisses me off, is all. Reminds me of…someone I don't like."
"Someone you don't like?" Tohsaka asked.
She shot him a dirty look. "Who do you fucking think?"
It took me a second to actually put the clues together, but when I thought back to what she'd said when we first brought up the topic of who M might be and someone suggested Morgan le Fey, it seemed obvious. Of course, because what child who had a good relationship with her mother referred to her as a bitch?
"I'm…actually in the dark on this one, Mo-chan," Rika said, raising her hand. "Who…exactly are you talking about?"
Mordred's brow furrowed, and she grimaced, glancing back at Tohsaka. She looked like the idea of saying it out loud physically pained her, so I reached down across the bond of our temporary contract.
Want me to explain it? I asked.
Nah, was all she gave me as a reply. The tone she conveyed, however, was reluctant and grudging, like she knew she needed to be the one to do it but hated the fact that it had to be her.
"My fucking egg donor," she eventually said, but you might have thought she was getting a tooth pulled for how much she gritted it out.
"Egg donor?" Mash and Ritsuka echoed.
"Wait, wait," said Rika. "We're talking about Mama Morgana, right? The lady who, uh… Actually, now that I think about it, how does that work? Since King Arthur was secretly a girl and everything."
I honestly wasn't sure I wanted the answer to that.
"If there's one thing you should understand about Arthurian Britain, Master," Emiya drawled, "it's that so much of what went wrong boils down to the meddling of two mages who never learned to leave well enough alone."
"One of them just happened to be a bitch who never got over herself," Mordred muttered darkly.
"Fou fou-kyu fou fou," the little gremlin agreed just as darkly.
"That…doesn't explain as much as I think you think it does," Rika said.
It didn't, but Emiya was remarkably touchy about the subject of King Arthur, and I had enough tact to know that — even if he actually had an answer — asking him about the sex life of the woman he loved wasn't exactly the sort of thing you just did. Especially if she was his Servant and he saw it through the dream cycle, because that had to be incredibly awkward, and even more so to bring it up with her.
The thought brought me up short. Oh god, had Arash seen what I had gotten up to with Brian?
I felt my cheeks and the tips of my ears warm, and I was suddenly incredibly thankful both that Arash wasn't there with us and that it was too dark for anyone to see it and ask, because there were a lot of things I wasn't sure I should say about my past, but that was one of the things that I was taking to my goddamn grave. Lisa knowing had been an unavoidable hazard of her power, but my sex life was definitely not something I was going to talk about to the twins and Mash.
Emiya shifted. "Shh."
Rika looked back at him over her shoulder. "Did you actually just —"
"Master!" he hissed, and something in his tone must have reached Rika, because her mouth snapped shut and everyone came to a sudden halt.
A few seconds of silence passed. All I could hear was the sound of my heart beating and my breath slowly leaving my nostrils.
And then, I heard it, a soft, distant clang as something or someone carelessly hit one of the rails. Carefully, I sent some of my bugs out and had one land on each of the rails. The vibration that I would have struggled to feel with my own fingertips was like the world shaking to them.
"We're not alone," I whispered.
"Should we shut off our flashlights?" Ritsuka whispered back.
In a different situation, it wouldn't have been a bad idea. It was just that the lack of light probably impacted us more than it did the enemy, seeing as we had no idea how it was the Helter Skelter, automata, and homunculi were navigating the mist this entire time. They certainly seemed to have had some idea what they were doing and where they were going, so echolocation or infrared or something along those lines might have been a functionality built into them from the beginning.
It felt like none of those should be things that a nineteenth century mathematician knew enough about to recreate, but I had no idea how long magi had had access to spells that could do the same thing, so who even knew at this point?
Instead, I said, "Can any of you sense the presence of another Servant?"
"Outside of our happy little group?" Jeanne Alter asked.
"No," said Emiya. "They might still be too far away for us to sense properly yet, but I think the more likely answer is simply that this is another one of the enemy's patrol groups. After all, if M is hiding out down here somewhere, this is where it would make the most sense to have them, isn't it?"
Maybe. But there were all sorts of bluffs and double bluffs and triple bluffs that you could start to get into when you asked a question like that, such as trying to convince your enemy that there wasn't anything of interest down in the Underground by making it seem completely undefended. There were always risks and tradeoffs to gambits like that, so often the one that most people might find the safest was to have a defensive force protecting you just on the off chance someone did come to investigate or attack.
Of course, if you had some sort of Stranger ability or illusion-based power to hide your secret lair, then leaving your base otherwise defenseless was the right choice. Did this confirm, then, that M had no such thing? Maybe.
"I don't sense a Servant either, Miss Taylor," Mash said. "The remnants of the fog down here don't seem very strong, so I don't think it's hiding."
"More of those Helter Skelter?" Tohsaka suggested.
"Maybe."
Or an Assassin with Presence Concealment. But an Assassin who made a mistake like that was either a very bad one or a very good one, and right then, it didn't make much difference. We needed to keep going that way no matter what.
"Ain't what I would've liked," said Mordred, "but I got some steam to blow off, so it's all the same to me. Let's go smash 'em!"
"Speaking my language, British," said Jeanne Alter.
"Just keep an eye out," I told them both. "It might be a trap."
"Might be?" Rika echoed incredulously. "Senpai, we're literally trying to sneak into the bad guy's Bond lair to steal the Macguffin out of his Doomsday machine! This whole thing is a trap!"
"Mash," Ritsuka began, pretending she hadn't spoken, "you, too."
Mash nodded firmly. "Right!"
"Only sane woman," Rika grumbled to herself. "Only one in the entire group, I swear."
It wasn't that her point was necessarily wrong, it was just that it didn't make a difference if it wasn't. M wasn't going to come out and have a duel with Mordred if we went to Trafalgar Square and issued a formal challenge and he certainly wasn't going to hand over the Grail if we asked nicely.
So we started walking again, our feet crunching the blackened gravel that coated the ground and the light of our flashlights swaying back and forth with each step. My bugs continued feeling out the walls, looking for any inconsistency as they had before, with a smaller contingent spreading out ahead of us, out of the light of our flashlights, running a screen for whoever or whatever might be waiting for us.
When, some minutes later, they finally came into my range, a breath hissed out of my nostrils. I wasn't sure whether to be relieved or disappointed, because while it would have been nice to stumble across another Servant or M himself down here just that easily, it would have felt a little too easy, and if it wasn't M but another one of his patsies, then we'd just be giving ourselves away.
"It's a patrol group," I announced. "Three homunculi, three automata. No Helter Skelter."
Mordred's mouth twisted into a scowl. "Damn, that's no fun."
Flamel stroked his beard. "Perhaps, without Babbage to make more, the enemy is being somewhat more selective regarding the deployment of the remaining Helter Skelter. They require quite a bit more, after all, than the construction of homunculi, especially if Paracelsus produced them en masse in vats."
"Ew," said Rika.
"How did you think he made them?" Jeanne Alter asked her. "Planting a few seeds in the ground and watering them for a day or two?"
Rika stuck her tongue out at Jeanne Alter.
"Take them out quickly," I ordered Mordred. "We can't waste any time playing around with them."
"Yeah, yeah," she replied. "Not like they're that much fun to mess around with anyway. Fuckers are too weak for that. I'll be sure —" she kicked off the ground and raced down the tunnel — "to crush 'em real fast for ya!"
"Hey!" Jeanne Alter squawked as she raced after Mordred. "Who said you could go off and do it by yourself, you bitch!"
"You know," Rika said in their wake, "I can't decide if they're Naruto and Sasuke or Zoro and Sanji."
Who?
"More like Legolas and Gimli," her brother said.
Oh.
The rest of us followed more sedately, but only because us Masters were only human and couldn't run anywhere near as fast as our Servants could, and the Servants sticking with us weren't willing to leave us behind. It wasn't long before the echoes of battle bounced back to us off of the walls, the crash and screech of the automata's bodies cracking and shattering beneath the edges of Mordred and Jeanne Alter's swords, and quieter, the meaty squelch of the homunculi being cleaved into pieces just as easily and just as brutally.
By the time the rest of us arrived on the scene, it looked more like a battlefield or the floor of a slaughterhouse. Hunks of bloodied flesh were strewn all over, washed out by the stark light of our flashlights, and shards of whatever it was the automata were actually made of were scattered like pieces of broken pottery. A finger there, a smashed head there, half of a limb over there, creating a morbid tableau that looked more like the aftermath of a Slaughterhouse Nine attack than a battle.
Mordred and Jeanne Alter stood at the center of it. Splashes of blood from the homunculi ran in ropes and splotches over their armor, but of course, neither of them was at all hurt.
"See?" said Mordred, grinning as she turned to us. The blade of her sword rested against her shoulder, stained with blood and oil. "Like I said. Easy!"
"Never doubted you for a second!" said Rika. She deliberately avoided looking at the carnage on the ground.
"No Helter Skelter whatsoever," Flamel remarked. "Hm. Perhaps I was more right than I thought I was, and M truly does intend to use them as little as possible."
"They were Babbage's inventions in the first place, weren't they?" Ritsuka reasoned. "Without him, any that M has around are now all he can use, so it makes sense that he would be more careful about using them."
I'd had a similar thought before. In the midst of all of our other preparations, I'd forgotten to check the map to see if their trackers had moved or if they'd simply dropped — useless — to the ground when the Helter Skelter vanished with Babbage's defeat. The fact we hadn't run into any on our way to the Underground said nothing, since we hadn't run into any patrol groups sheerly because it was so close to the apartment.
"It begs the question, however: how many Helter Skelter does M have left?" Flamel said. "For that matter, what level of quality are they? The common types, the middling command units, or the elites that we've seen so rarely? Perhaps the latter are the only ones I could see as being truly worth keeping in reserve."
"We shouldn't make any assumptions just yet," I said. "The Ley Line Terminal isn't too far ahead of us. Let's see if there's anything for us to find there."
So we continued on, stepping past the gore and the mess and further down the tunnel. I kept my anemic swarm looking, of course, but the further we went, the more I was convinced that we'd chosen the wrong line to investigate. That one patrol group wound up being the only one we encountered, and I wasn't sure if that was because M had realized where we were and pulled back to stay hidden or simply because he really hadn't dedicated that much of a force to patrolling the Underground.
Before I knew it, we'd reached the next station, and although I'd known what we would find because of what I had — or rather, hadn't — seen with my bugs, that didn't make me any happier to find it completely empty and untouched. At the center of the station, sandwiched between the two platforms, I stopped and announced, "This is it."
It looked a lot like the one we'd come from. Similar design, similar architecture, only no steel girders forming pillars through the center. The signs posted on the walls and hanging from the ceiling said "Temple Station."
Technically, the center of the Ley Line Terminal was actually a bit further northward, but London had strong ley lines, and this particular Terminal was absolutely massive, stretching out from the British Museum all the way to the middle of the river. If Ley Line Terminals could be compared to stars, then normal Terminals were, to my understanding, like main sequence stars, and this one was a supergiant.
This wasn't technically the closest we could get to it on this line, but I had enough range to see where the closest point was, and there wasn't anything else there either.
"Nothing," Ritsuka noted. "Is he just not here?"
"This particular Ley Line Terminal is rather large, is it not?" said Flamel. "We may have more luck investigating it closer to the center — that is, along the railway that crosses closest to the Mage's Association."
"It's the next line we'll investigate," I confirmed. "For now, the next station is in Westminster, closer to Buckingham Palace and the House of Parliament. After that, there's another Ley Line Terminal near the St. James' Park Station. We'll look there next."
"This is starting to look more like a wild goose chase," said Tohsaka. "Are you sure Babbage wasn't leading you on?"
No. The only thing that made his hint credible was the fact that he'd had to fight so hard to give it to us, and even that could have been a ruse or an act he was forced to put on. The trouble with that was the obvious problem, namely —
"It's the only lead we have, right now. Unless you have any suggestions?"
I looked back at him over my shoulder, but he just grimaced and looked away. Alice heaved out a sigh. "At this rate, there won't be anyone for us to play with today."
"It's okay, Alice," said Jackie. "We can have another tea party later."
My lips thinned, but that was all I let show on my face. As long as it wasn't the same kind of tea party that had nearly gotten me and the twins killed.
"I'm sure Renée will be happy to make some tea for you, if you ask," I said.
Jackie smiled up at me. "Mm! We want to try some tea from Mommy sometime, though!"
A pang of old pain curdled my insides, but I still promised her, "I'll have to make you some the way my mom made it for me when we get the chance."
"We can't wait!"
We pressed on, going further down the line, and it wasn't long at all before we left Temple Station and its gas lamps behind us. Once more, we had to turn to our flashlights to see anything at all, and there wasn't really much to see. It was just tunnel and tracks, stretching on and into the dark, past the light of our flashlights.
It took us another half an hour to reach the next station, and this one seemed to be made almost entirely of naked concrete. Concrete walls, a concrete ceiling, concrete pillars. Several signs declared it to be Westminster Station, and several more pointed to different exits, each of them with different labels, like "Westminster Abbey" and "House of Parliament" or "Big Ben," all of the famous London landmarks.
"Hey, wait a minute," said Rika. She squinted over at one of the signs. "Weren't we just around here yesterday?"
"We were," I told her. "We fought Babbage and the high spec just a block or two from here."
She grimaced, then shook her head and gave an exaggerated shrug. "Well, I guess it could be worse. If this guy was right under our feet the whole time, I would've been pissed!"
A sentiment I agreed with.
"We could have checked for M down here on our way back to the apartment yesterday," Mash mumbled, and while she wasn't wrong, I didn't think it would have been the best idea to try.
If M really had been down here and we came to investigate it yesterday, then we might have walked right into his lair, and into any traps he might have set to defend it. Frankly, it was better we were doing this with Flamel here, because at least he was a competent Caster. The only thing we would have been able to do to avoid getting destroyed by whatever defenses M might have was huddle behind Mash and Mordred and hope their Magic Resistance and Mash's shield could protect us.
"We didn't have Abraham with us yesterday," I said, summarizing my thoughts.
Flamel smiled. "I'm flattered you regard me with such esteem, my dear. I only hope I might live up to it."
So far? He'd done a pretty good job of it.
I checked my communicator for the time and had to hold back a scowl. "We'll look into the next Terminal, then the rest of us will leave through St. James' Park Station to check the Piccadilly line. Tohsaka, do you think you can make it back to the apartment with just Alice?"
Tohsaka's lips pursed, and he looked back the way we'd come from, at the dark tunnel that seemed to swallow up the light of the lamps. Eventually, he said, "It shouldn't be any trouble. I trust Alice to protect me in case we run into anything on the way back."
Nursery Rhyme smiled. "Nothing will happen to Papa while I'm there!"
I didn't expect them to run into anything at all, and even so, I didn't like sending him back with just her, but it would be inconvenient to have to split the group up even more. If M had picked up any other Servants that we didn't know about, then splitting up could get someone killed.
There was just nothing for it.
We left Westminster Station behind and continued west down the tunnel, and once more, it wasn't long at all before the light of the gas lamps faded behind us and the only thing we had to navigate with was our flashlights. We ran into another group of automata and homunculi, but having so many Servants on our side was just overkill, and they were all taken care of with the usual ease I'd come to expect.
It still took some getting used to, being the one with overwhelming force. I'd been on the backfoot, the underdog, for so much of my career that it was just strange. Surreal. In a good way, but still.
The next Ley Line Terminal was situated right near where Westminster Abbey was on the surface, and I'd almost come to expect the fact that there was nothing there for us to find. No hidden doors that led into a secret tunnel, no false walls or secret passageways, not even an illusion cast over a hole in the tunnel that opened up into a hidden lair. By the time my real body and the rest of the group made it there, I had already explored every part of it that I could and come up empty.
The rest of the team wasn't any happier to find that out either.
"Man, what a ripoff!" Rika vented. "Hey, Senpai, are you sure Babbage was trying to tell us to look in the Underground instead of underground? Because, like, if he was trying to tell us to start digging in the nearest park, I'm gonna be real upset! Boss Lady will be getting my manicure bill!"
"Calm down, Rika," her brother said. "There's more than one tunnel for us to search. Just because we didn't find anything in this one doesn't mean we won't in one of the others."
"Are we really gonna have to search all of them?" Rika asked, dismayed.
Mash and Ritsuka traded grimaces. They didn't look any more thrilled by the idea than she was.
"We'll see," I told her. I had some small hope that the next line would be the right one, just because it got so close to that huge Terminal that sat under the Clock Tower.
Rika groaned. "We are, aren't we?"
"Fucker just can't make it easy for us, can he?" Mordred said sourly.
If it really was Moriarty, then no, he really couldn't.
As expected, there was nothing else between that spot and the next station either, and a short while later, we came upon another set of platforms, lit by yet more gas lamps. It looked much like the others before it, at least in structure, with pale, yellowish brickwork along the walls, although the coloring might have had as much to do with the lighting as anything else. Linoleum tiles patterned the stairwells in small, palm-sized squares.
I hadn't realized linoleum was that old as a material. Or was this an instance of the more modern Underground bleeding into the past?
Signs around the platforms declared that this was St. James' Station, our last stop in this tunnel.
Tohsaka, spying the signs, let out a grunt. "I suppose this is where we're meant to part ways, then?"
I turned to face him. "Yes. You shouldn't have any trouble making it back to the apartment, but there's enough leeway that you can contact us if something goes wrong and we can send Mordred or Jeanne Alter to help out."
He eyed the two of them, one of whom gave him a disinterested glance when her name was mentioned and the other of whom shot him a grin. "Lucky me," he said.
"Don't rush," I warned him. "Take your time and be careful. You should have at least half an hour to spare by the time you make it back to the Mansion House Station."
"Of course. I might not be much of a magus, but I'm not stupid."
He turned around, fiddling with his borrowed communicator for a moment, and then the flashlight function flared to life and cast an intense, bright circle along the ground.
"Let's go, Alice," said Tohsaka. "The last thing we want to do is be caught down in this place when the fog rolls in again."
"Coming, Papa!" Nursery Rhyme said brightly. She gave Jackie a wave. "Bye-bye, Jackie! See you later!"
Jackie waved back. "Bye, Alice!"
I tugged on the bond connecting us. Jackie.
She looked up at me.
I want you to follow them in spirit form, I told her. Just to make sure they get back okay on their own. Let me know if they run into any trouble.
She smiled. Okay, Mommy!
She vanished, presence and all, and a shiver swept down my spine at just how easily she had slipped from my senses. A vague tingle in my prosthetic was the only sign I had that she passed me by, because every other trace of her was gone the instant she shifted to spirit form. The only saving grace was that she had no reason to use her Information Erasure skill on us.
Presence Concealment was a terrifying ability.
"Come on," I said to the rest of the group. "Let's look through at least one other line before we stop and eat those snacks Renée made for us."
We climbed up onto the platform one at a time, although the Servants made the jump with an enviable ease. I missed my flight pack, just then, and the convenience it gave me of being able to just skip the obstacle of anything taller than my ribs. After that, it was up the stairs and back out into the gloomy light of midmorning London under a cloudy sky.
From what I heard of it, London without the fog machine mucking things up wasn't usually much better.
I made sure to gather up my anemic swarm and secret as much of it as I could into as many hiding places as I could get away with as we climbed the stairs. It wouldn't let me do much, but at least I would be able to carry them from line to line and use them in each one.
We came out on the other side of Buckingham Palace from where we'd originally fought Nursery Rhyme, with St. James' Park between us and our next destination, and while it would have been quicker and easier if we could have taken a path straight through the park, the lake that spanned a large portion of it made that impossible. We had to take a route around it instead, swinging to the west and coming within spitting distance of the palace itself.
It was a bit convenient in another way, in that, if somehow Mordred had been wrong and M had indeed taken up residence there, we got close enough for the sensors to pick up on it. Unfortunately, however, there was no sudden call from Romani or Marie to alert us to a Servant's presence or a massive magical energy response. It was hard to see, but there weren't even any lights on in the windows or guards hanging around the perimeter. It seemed that Buckingham Palace really was completely empty.
"Man, I wish we could visit," Rika said as we passed by. She cast a long, wistful look through the bars of the wrought iron fence surrounding the place. "I've always wanted to meet the Queen. I hear she's a tough old bird."
Nobody tell her that Queen Victoria was notorious for her healthy sex life, I thought wryly.
Emiya snorted. "Thinking your job at Chaldea might earn you a knighthood, Master?"
"You never know!" Rika said defensively. "All you gotta do is defend the realm and stuff, right? Isn't that what we're doing right now? Technically, kinda-sorta?"
"I think modern knighthoods are mostly just fancy titles, Senpai," Mash said apologetically. "But, maybe Queen Victoria really would have given us knighthoods, if she knew why we were here! I-I think so, at least…"
Knighthoods for an American, two Japanese kids, a…whatever nationality Mash counted as, and a bunch of ghosts of heroes past? I wasn't sure how that one would get explained in the paperwork.
"Pretty sure I could give ya one, if you really want it, Master," Mordred said, grinning. "'Course, you usually have to be a squire for a few years first, and I ain't exactly King of Britain right now, but unless Father shows up, I think I'm the closest thing you're gonna get."
Rika winced. "Uh, I-I think I'm gonna take a rain check on that, Mo-chan. Besides, it was a stupid idea anyway. It's not like I could take the certificate into school and show everyone I got knighted by Queen Victoria in 1888!"
"No one would believe you in the first place," Ritsuka added with a smile.
Mash giggled and Fran chuckled.
We took a right at the palace, kept going for a little while, then went left onto a footpath that traced the outer edge of the Green Park and stayed on that until the next station came into view ahead of us. It was cut out of the gently sloping hillside, a ramp leading down into a white stone facade, framed on either side by sturdy walls. The words "Green Park Station" were emblazoned on a sign above an open entryway, and above it, standing at the apex of the hill, there was another structure, sort of like a large bus stop. A quick look with my anemic swarm revealed a staircase that led down into the hill, and then further down into the station itself.
We entered unmolested, with no sign of any sort of resistance, and descended down the stairs into a much more cramped platform. The previous line, the District Line, had been two railways running in parallel, but the Piccadilly Line was a singular railway, and that made the tunnel and the station much smaller and a much tighter fit. If the trains were still running, then it would have made it a much more dangerous bet to jump down and follow it.
Fortunately, we weren't going to go anywhere near as far with this one as we did with the District Line. The Piccadilly Line took a pretty sharp turn right around the area of the British Museum, and it intersected with the Central Line close enough there for us to hop over to a nearby station on Tottenham Court Road and investigate the Central Line east of the Museum. There was no point in following the Piccadilly Line as far north as it could go — there was nothing up there we cared about, as far as our investigation was concerned.
So that was what we did. We went east along the Piccadilly Line, navigating awkwardly through the tunnel with our flashlights out and trying to keep a good enough eye on the tracks that we didn't stumble over them. Having my swarm, as anemic as it was, helped me to keep my footing sure, but without it, I was sure I would have been tripping every third step or so.
Mordred and Mash had the worst time of all of us, of course. Mordred, because she was in that suit of armor that seemed so especially designed to give her a larger, more masculine outline, and Mash because of her shield, which became more of a hindrance than a help with everything being as close quarters as it was.
It meant that it took us about forty-five minutes to go from Green Park to Holborn, forty-five minutes where nothing attacked us, nothing jumped out at us, and we found nothing of interest.
"Geez!" Rika complained. "Where is this guy? My shoes are gonna wear out at this rate! I'm gonna need new shoes! I'm billing him for them!"
"I…don't think that's how your Mystic Code works, Senpai," Mash hedged.
"It's the principle of the thing!" Rika insisted.
"We'll eat Renée's snacks and take a short break at the next station, Rika," I promised.
She groaned. "Ugh!"
"Uhn, uh-uhn," Fran said sympathetically.
"And I still can't understand what you're saying!" Rika said, frustrated.
"Uhn…"
She sulked the rest of the way to Russell Square. It was, fortunately, only about half as far from Holborn to there as it was from Green Park to Holborn. On the other hand, we took our time as we scoured the tunnel, and there was still no sign of M, his underground (or Underground) base, or Angrboða. Even when we passed straight through the influence of that enormous Ley Line Terminal, we found nothing.
Could he have been further north? Maybe. Could he have been further west than we wound up going? Possibly. But unless he could move his machine around at will and had free access to teleportation, neither of which were necessarily impossible, getting his patrol groups in place over as and where we'd encountered them the last few days would have been too much of a hassle if he was too far away from Westminster and Soho. Those were, after all, where we'd found the largest concentrations of his forces, and where we'd fought Mephistopheles, Paracelsus, the high spec Helter Skelter, and Babbage.
He was somewhere along one of these lines that went through central London. I was sure of it. The only trick was finding out which one.
Russell Square Station was much like Holborn and Green Park, and like the rest of the stations on the Piccadilly Line, fairly small. It had only a single railway line, so it had a single platform, and aside from the signs directing people about, it looked much the same, too. I just wished our search along the way had been a little more fruitful than the others had been.
True to my word, we took a little break and sat down on the stairs, until Emiya produced a small table and some chairs for us to sit at. They all, at least, looked like they belonged in this era, like something out of a historical drama, with plush, velvet padding and finely carved wooden frames. Mash retrieved Renée's cakes from the compartment in her shield, and Emiya even went so far as to add plates and silverware for us to use, too.
Rika was the most obviously grateful for the break, but Mash, Ritsuka, and even Fran couldn't hide from me their own relief as they sank into their chairs. I guess we had been at this for close to three hours now, and three hours of walking in the dark wasn't exactly fun.
Speaking of which…
Arash, I said, giving a gentle yank on the line of our bond, Tohsaka and Nursery Rhyme should be arriving back at the apartment soon. Once they're settled in, come and meet up with us.
Nursery Rhyme and her fairy tale nonsense should be more than enough to protect the apartment. The Jabberwocky had stood up to the combined might of everything we'd thrown at it, after all, and basically shrugged it all off.
Got it, Arash replied. I'll catch up with you guys as soon as I can.
With that taken care of, I went back to my cake and let myself relax and enjoy the sweet burst of sugar and fruit that exploded on my tongue with every bite.
We sat and rested for a few minutes once we were all done eating, but after that, it was time to get back to work. I had less than an hour before I'd have to pull out my mask and put it on as the fog rolled in, so the longer I could go without it, the happier I would be.
Russell Square Station opened out into an ordinary street about a block northeast from the British Museum, not far from another small park appropriately named Russell Square, and the Tottenham Court Road station was only a street or two southwest of the Museum. It was not nearly as much of a hike as it could have been, although we had to pass by the ruined remains of the Museum to reach it.
I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but for there to be no sign of the scraps we'd left behind of the Helter Skelter that had accompanied Paracelsus wasn't quite it. Had they really just disappeared when Babbage died? It seemed that way. If they were an expression of his Noble Phantasm, then without him here, there was nothing to sustain them, was there?
That just left the question of exactly how Angrboða was still around. I guess Babbage had built it entirely independently of his Noble Phantasm. If he'd just constructed it from resources inside the Singularity itself, then we'd have to destroy the machine to make it stop and manually retrieve the Grail that served as its power source. We just had to find it first.
The next station on our list was in a large building sat on the corner of an intersection, but just across the street from that building was another entrance, just a set of stairs that descended into the pavement and disappeared beneath the sidewalk.
"This is it," I said. "We'll take this line east and look for the Ley Line Terminal along the way, then come out at the Bank Underground station and head back to Jekyll's for lunch."
And try to figure out where the hell else M could be. There was another Terminal to the west along this line, but aside from trying to avoid attention, I couldn't see why he would have gone there instead of the biggest Terminal in the city.
"Right!" Mash and the twins said, echoed by Fran's, "Uhn!"
"Let's go kick this bastard's front door in!" Mordred agreed.
"And burn the house down while we're at it," Jeanne Alter added for good measure.
"I think the scariest thing to happen this entire Singularity is the two of them getting along," Emiya drawled.
Mordred and Jeanne Alter both flipped him the bird. The funnier part was that they didn't seem to realize they'd done it in eerie synchronicity, like they were two people sharing one brain.
Alec and Lisa probably would have had a witty line for them about that, something to tease them about just how closely they'd mirrored each other. They really were getting along way better than I would have expected before we came to London, especially considering how prickly Jeanne Alter was in general.
Without further ado, we stepped down and into the station. I let my swarm back out surreptitiously, dropping them in unnoticeable clumps out of view, and set them to spreading out. At the bottom of the stairs, in the station proper, I expected there to just be another normal subway station, just like the ones before it. Linoleum tiles or bricks of whatever pale stone had been used in its construction, maybe some steel beams riddled with rivets the size of chicken eggs.
What I found instead, however —
"What the hell?"
— was a forest of branches and thorns.
Mordred asked the question that was on the tip of everyone's tongues:
"What the fuck is this?"
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
So this wound up quite a bit bigger than usual. To be fair, I had a lot to cover for this, and I still didn't cover everything I wanted to cover originally, but when I think about where I intended this chapter to end when I first started writing it, I think that it's maybe a good thing I didn't. The cliffhanger I originally meant to leave everyone on would have been hanging for an extra week, because next chapter is an interlude, and that might not have felt particularly good.
I could have kept going. But as is proven in two chapters, the text it would have taken to get there could fill an entire other chapter, and at that point, the question would be, "Why isn't this just two chapters?" And it would have meant delaying the original release of this chapter by several days more, so yes, at that point, "why not just split it into two chapters?"
Anyway. Lots of setup in this chapter. Foreshadowing for several things to come. I said not too long ago that we're in the latter third of London, and now, we're close to the home stretch. London's endgame approaches. That doesn't mean we're done dropping hints.
What the hell indeed, the thorns and branches makes me think Maleficent, or her original ballet version Carabosse, Which the interlude title also makes me think. But why would she show up here is the question.
I'd had a similar thought before. In the midst of all of our other preparations, I'd forgotten to check the map to see if their trackers had moved or if they'd simply dropped — useless — to the ground when the Helter Skelter vanished with Babbage's defeat. The fact we hadn't run into any on our way to the Underground said nothing, since we hadn't run into any patrol groups sheerly because it was so close to the apartment
