Snow Flurries | Chapter IX
Adam | Indy
Everyone looked smaller in a hospital bed. His fiancee was no exception.
Furiko was at the very end of the row of beds his friends were on. Some of them might have said something as he passed them by. It didn't matter.
"Bwah-!" the red-headed man in his way squealed as he elbowed his way to her side.
"Ko?" his voice trembled. "Dear?"
"Ayyyy, issa lovely," she cried, waving her (now bandaged) arm like she thought it still had a hand at the end. Apparently realizing her mistake halfway through, she lowered it sheepishly. "Aw. Poor lovely. Sorry, I fucked up - I really wanted us to win and I figured this'd be worth it, but I didn't think about how you'd feel before I did it, and that was really inconsiderate, making longterm medical decisions about myself that affect your life-"
"Ahem." A gloved hand settled on his shoulder. "She's going to be fine, Adam. Da Vinci is in her workshop as we speak - her prosthetics will be just as good as the original. She's going to be alrigh-"
"I asked her if I could be ambidextrous like her and she said yes!" Ko babbled, her voice almost childlike. "An' I wannahandwarmer, so I can hol'yer han'when's cold. A real da Vinciiiiii!" That last bit she shouted at the top of her lungs, stretching her shoulders until one of them loudly popped. "'cause my life is dope! and I do dope shit!"
Umm.
"Per her request, we didn't put her on morphine, but… without her medical history, we didn't want to risk any adverse reactions. The only real option here was psychedelics, hence her current state," said the - oh, right. He'd elbowed his way past her doctor. Who was also the head of Chaldea. Their boss.
He'd apologize later, but that didn't mean he was sorry.
"-but again, her prognosis is good, and you should all be very proud-"
"Ko," Adam said, his voice breaking. "We're getting married. Like, as soon as possible. Once you're not, uh… I can't… this can't… if anything had happened…."
Furiko smiled, and had already opened her mouth to respond when the
literal bane of his existence materialized on the other side of the bed.
"Bra
vo," Finn said flatly.
"Seriously?" Ko said with a sigh. "Fiiiinn-"
"First a cheap silver ring that was already acquiring a patina, now the second-worst proposal I've ever heard. You
do know how to make a woman feel special, don't y-"
The glove he'd snatched out of a nearby box of disposables ones should have made a crisp and oh-so satisfying
crack when it impacted the Lancer's face. But the rather sad
plop would do just fine.
"SATISFACTION!" someone roared, and Adam was vaguely aware that both his arms had been pulled behind his back, and that he was crouching, braced against the ground as if he'd been about to leap over the bed to tackle the larger, more able-bodied, highly-trained killing machine.
"Oh fuck," he heard someone mutter from one of the other beds, but that wasn't important.
What
was important was how said killing machine didn't even have the grace to take his shouted challenge seriously - oh.
It
had been him shouting, then.
The arrogant thumb-sucker had the audacity to guffaw.
"You can't be serious." He was all but rolling his eyes. "I'm not going to kill a defenseless scribe."
"Calm down," Roman hissed in his ear. "You don't want to do this, calm down Adam-"
But he was calm. After a fashion.
And yes, he did.
"I am the injured party," the words came as if from a distance. Half-remembered scraps from fantasy novels and the like. "The choice of weapons is mine."
Finn wasn't smiling anymore.
"Boy…" he stated. "I have slain gods, crafted spellwork that endured unto the incineration of human history itself, committed to memory the rules and stratagems of over a thousand games, composed countless riddles, answered countless more, and satirized the kings under the earth in their own halls. There isn't a contest in the world that you have a prayer of defeating me in."
But there was.
His heart still pounding in his chest, he spoke a single word. And with each subsequent clause and clarification, he had the pleasure to see Finn Fucking McCool lose just a bit of his composure.
Bennett
Jamaica's barking, followed by Abby's scared yelp, pulled Bennett out of the half-dozing drowsiness he'd let fall over him. One hand fell onto the top of his dog's head, the other reaching around to give her some quick cheek scratches so that she'd calm down. The dog, however, decided that she'd rather get up and make noises at the door, noises which quickly turned into more barking when he heard what was probably a second set of knocks on its surface.
"Jamaica, come here!" The dog gave a small growl, but did turn away from the door, and hopped back up onto the bed with Bennett. "Who is it." Bennett didn't mean for his tone to be so… well,
bitchy. But he was tired, he was
still in pain, and he still couldn't see properly.
"It's Mash and me." Bennett perked up. When last he'd been awake, everybody had still been in the Singularity. It was over already?
That was it?
"... come in, I guess." The door to his room slid open, and he saw the two of them, no longer wearing the Rayshifting 'plugsuits'. The two of them still looked exhausted, but he barely noticed those particular details.
No, Bennett's eyes rested squarely on the wheelchair Mash pushed into the room, a clipboard and pen laying on the seat. Once the two were squarely in the room and the door had slid shut behind them, Mash picked the clipboard up from the seat, and cradled it protectively in her arms.
"... gonna be honest," Bennett started, "kinda surprised it's you two. What about the others?"
"They're in the med-bay," Ritsuka said. "We can bring you to see them, except for Jacob-san; Dr. Roman said he was under observation because of… ano, a heart murmur? I think that's—"
"Fujimaru,
stop," Bennett interrupted, shooting ramrod straight from his initially slumped posture. He could feel Abby shrinking down further behind him, putting himself in between her and the other two at the sudden change in his tone. Bennett felt a twinge of remorse at scaring her—but
for fuck's sakes people.
Apocalypse or no, there were
rules. He'd worked as a med tech, he'd worked as a healthcare attorney, and this?
Not sharing people's medical info? It was literally rule
zero. And here was the Last Master of Chaldea, just blithely ignoring
basic privacy—did Dory even
know that Ritsuka had been told his private medical information?
Did he need to have
words with Dr. Roman?
"You can't be telling me that stuff. Does 'HIPAA' mean anything to you, or do I have to explain it?"
"Does it really matter?" Mash broke in, a light tap on Ritsuka's arm keeping the young man from speaking. "They are your friends, are they not? Under the circumstances, wouldn't you functionally be each other's next of kin?"
No, Bennett wanted to say. No, they were not each other's next of kin. Agreeing with Mash here was fundamentally the same as accepting quite a few things that Bennett deeply wanted to deny. That this was it. That they were stuck here. That they couldn't go home again.
So instead, he didn't answer.
"They are in pain," Ritsuka said, closing his eyes. "Do you want to see them?"
"Of course I do," he practically bit back, inwardly wincing at the hostility he'd said that with. "It's just…" Bennett trailed off. What was he supposed to say, here? That he suddenly felt like an outsider, even with his in-group? They'd gone through something more than he had—
become something more. And here he was… less, now. Heck, he'd even gone to the trouble to get his own damn
replacement.
What place did he even
have with them, now?
"We did bring something with us to help," Ritsuka offered, gesturing towards the wheelchair. Bennett eyed it with distaste, but… he couldn't really argue, could he.
"And then what?" Bennett asked.
The two of them traded a look, identical expressions of confusion on their faces. "How do you mean?" Ritsuka asked, taking the lead.
"I see them," Bennett said, waving at the chair. "I see they're safe, they're reassured I'm safe. And then what? I don't have Magic Circuits. I can't—"
"Bennett-san," Ritsuka interrupted. "This was not our first Singularity."
Well, no shit Sherlock. But what did something so
brutally obvious have to do with—
… oh.
He'd been too focused on his own self-loathing, on the wheelchair, on everything to see what was in the Chaldean's
other hand.
"I never used any of them." Ritsuka turned what had to be a Lesser Grail—raw magic in physical form, enough to make
miracles happen—over in his hand, fingers curled around the stem. "I always thought that we might need them later… but I think we can spare one."
Bennett didn't notice he'd been reaching out for the Grail until his hand entered his own, still-limited field of view.
"You signed up as a Master Candidate, Bennett-san," Mash said, a faint smile obscured by her clipboard. "You can hardly do so without the proper tools and equipment!"
"Well what are we waiting for?" Bennett practically lunged for the wheelchair...only to have the Shielder's clipboard thrust into his face before he could even get off his bed.
"I need you to sign out the wheelchair," Mash said, waggling the pen in her left hand, towards his right.
He looked at the clipboard. Then he looked at Mash. Then back at the clipboard again. And then back at Mash.
"... why."
The pinkette tilted her head, curious. "... because that's the procedure."
Bennett turned his head towards Ritsuka.
Ritsuka was giving him a Look.
Right. One step at a time. But even so…
"I'm left-handed," he told Mash, reaching across his body to take the pen from her.
While Bennett did get to see everybody, they were in no condition to be receiving him. Dory, Spence, and Ko were all incapacitated in some form, whether through exhaustion or injury, and Indy was… frenzied, he wanted to say? He'd seen his friend in similar states before, but to the best of his knowledge, Indy had never been quite so worked up.
Ritsuka and Mash had been particularly vague regarding what actually happened, to boot, and Bennett was of the opinion that it was because they weren't quite sure either. Fighting erupted when the Argonauts struck, the team split apart for a hammer and anvil strike, and in all the chaos Fionn managed to spirit Ko away to relative safety.
Relative in this case meaning 'she'd still managed to lose a hand, but hey, at least it didn't have her command seals on it'. Note to self? Lecture the most obnoxious spook in the gacha on what it means to
protect your goddamn Master.
All of that, and not two minutes after hearing it? Ritsuka shoved a Holy Grail into his hands and had him make a literal wish for magic.
It was now the next damn day, because he'd been knocked flat on his ass after that. And in that time, Bennett got to learn something firsthand that he'd basically taken for granted. Namely?
Up until yesterday, Bennett had known, intellectually, that having Magic Circuits meant your body ran hot when they were active. That was, after all, one of the ways that the Magus Killer apparently identified a magus in a crowd: he looked for whose body temperature was higher than it should be. He'd thought that Shirou's account in the visual novel would have prepared him for this.
One day later, he could definitively say that
no, it absolutely did not. He was hot and achy, but he wasn't sweating either, which would have cooled him down. The heat made every breath feel stuffy, like he was stuck in a New Orleans summer again, and it made the ache in his leg all that much worse.
To sum it up? He felt like shit!
So here he was, once again reporting to the medbay, because soul surgery
sucked. Not under his own power, mind—Abby was
enjoying wheeling him around in the wheelchair. Maybe a little bit too much, if the dings on the armrests were any indication. He'd have to find a way to get her in front of a TV with some Mario Kart… no, Bennett, that was the haziness talking.
"Ayyyy, Cripple Gang," Ko called languidly as they entered, waving an arm that ended in a stump. "Reunited and it feels so good."
Bennett was growing overly familiar with the layout of the infirmary by this point, he decided. The eight beds were arrayed in two rows of four, the feet of each bed facing another one, leaving a walkway large enough for another bed and a half in between them. Spence and Ko both laid in beds on one side of the room, opposite the door, while Dory propped himself up on his bed, which was pushed against the wall on the door's side.
"On the one hand," Bennett started, leveling a one-eyed deadpan stare in Ko's direction. "I feel kind of attacked by that. One the other—
oh, wait."
Ko giggled. Dory giggled (before he muttered an "Ow."), and Spencer let out a single dry 'ha'. Curses be upon Indy for still being stable enough after a
second bout of impromptu soul surgery as to not need to be under observation. And Ritsuka, for obvious reasons, was also already on his feet again.
"It's good to see you up and about Toby. Metaphorically speaking, if nothing else." Dory smiled before tilting his head up to look over Toby at the younger Master and Servant pair behind him. The man had been extremely unconscious when Toby last had a chance to see him, so it was nice to see he was lucid this time. "Have y'all regaled him with the tales of our victory?"
"Um… not yet?" Mash's tone was remarkably sheepish, and given that she was on Bennett's right, he couldn't easily turn and look at her (hopefully the bandage on his eye could come off soon… his depth perception was already bad enough with both of them!). That said, he could absolutely guess what her expression was, he'd seen it enough times, if in sprite form. "We were busy, and it slipped our minds? I suppose?"
"S'alright," Dory said, dragging out the word in an exaggerated tone even as he waved off the issue, instead looking to Bennett, "So what's been covered?"
"Well, here's what I know," Bennett started. "Y'all got wishcraft soul surgery. Argonauts jumped you during recovery. Y'all fought. Y'all won. Somewhere in this mess, Ko managed to leave a hand behind in the Bermuda Triangle."
"We were able to bring most of it back in a bag, actually," Spencer mumbled.
"It was the cost of bustin' a cap in Jason's ass." Dory said with a nod.
"... I'm sorry, what?"
"Boom," said Ko with a heavily-medicated smile. "Headshot."
"That…" Bennett found himself at a bit of a loss for words. "Really shouldn't have been something that worked, though?"
"I mean, it was
Jason," Spence said with a dismissive wince.
"His weakest class or no," Bennett retorted, "he was still a Greek Saber!"
"Yes, he was," Ko agreed, still looking terribly pleased with herself, "so either Nasu bullshit is all about exceptions and interplay of conceptual forces rather than purely age- and gameplay-based power levels, or I'm the oldest and most powerful member of this group and you should swear fealty to me."
"Okay, Midoriya," Spencer said dubiously.
"Those conclusions aren't actually mutually-exclusive," Dory pointed out helpfully.
"Ko," Bennett said, with as much patience as he could muster. "Elaborate. What. Did. You.
Do?"
With an unbothered yawn, Ko stuck her remaining hand down the back of her shirt and started scratching. "Mmm… remember that bullshit Sieg pulls in Apocrypha that doesn't really make any sense where he can mantle Siegfried for short periods of time by burning command seals?" she asked.
Up went his eyebrows, forward went his shoulders, down dropped his jaw.
"Why would you think you could do that?"
"I didn't," she said, yawning again. "I thought I could speedrun a session in the Animus and have my ancestors bleed through and shoot for me. Which it turns out I can."
"That's…" Bennett trailed off. "Theoretically possible? Hard, yes, still doable though. But—"
"Oh, and I overclocked the rifle with my last command seal." Bennett frowned. Okay, fine. That was clever, but it still shouldn't have— "It was one of Ching Shih's."
… oh.
"As in, manifested as part of her Noble Phantasm?" Bennett asked, hoping for clarification. "Not just a random gun she pulled out of a crate and handed to you?"
Ko gave him what he assumed passed for a deadpan stare in her current altered state of consciousness. "Does Fionn seem like the kind of Servant who would steal his Master a bargain bin rifle?"
Yes, Bennett thought to himself. But he would rather not let that argument come back to life, so he very wisely chose not to respond to the question. For once. Now that being said...
"It sounds like you managed to luck your way into making a Broken Phantasm," he suggested.
"That's what da Vinci said."
Finally Ko looked like she was taking this seriously. "She was pretty pissed at me about it, actually."
"Yeah, 'cause it could've done worse than just take a hand," Bennett said, trying to keep his tone even. "But even still, that shouldn't have been enough to get through his Magic Resistance, what with Medea right there, so I'm going to ascribe this to 'something we don't know enough about' and leave it there."
Still, offing a Servant… with a janky, bootleg method. It reeked of what Bennett would like to call the 'Sakura Special': a particularly fortunate confluence of factors and
traits that made what wouldn't otherwise have worked suddenly become very effective. That said?
The odds were astro-fucking-nomical. More likely she literally caught Jason at the one instant Medea had her metaphorical pants down and was prepping to kill Jason herself, meaning her defensive enhancements weren't there… yeah, that was probably it.
The door to the medbay slid back open, and a glance over his left shoulder showed him Dr. Roman and da Vinci entering the rapidly-becoming-cramped space, the former with what looked to be multiple paper charts in his hand, the latter carrying a tray filled with… pastries? Yes, a tray filled with pastries, which she somehow, through some sorcery or another, managed to place where all of the bedridden (and the one wheelchair-bound) Masters could all reach it at the same time. The second it was down, Ko scooped nearly half its contents into her lap with a tiny whispered 'yay'.
"Fou!"
Oh, and there was a Fou, too.
A pleased little chuckle escaped Dory, extending a hand off of his bed towards the floor, giving his fingers a wiggle. Fou, not one to pass up an invitation, swiftly bounded over and up his arm onto the man's chest, where the offered scritches were delivered. The bearded man used both hands to softly scratch behind Fou's ears, smiling at the small pearlescent ball of fluff.
"Eeeeee, he's so fluffy-! Toby!" A grin spread out across Dory's face as he looked to his friend. "You gotta feel how soft he is!"
"Jamaica will smell him on me and get jealous," Bennett replied. "So I will
not be doing that until I get my dog's permission."
"Booooo."
Roman leaned in to whisper something into Mash's ear. The girl's expression brightened up
instantaneously, and a moment later she was tugging Ritsuka out of the room in a frenzy. It was a bit difficult to make out what she was saying, given the low volume and the rapidity of her speech, but Bennett could swear that she was using the word 'Senpai' a few too many times for it to be a comprehensible sentence.
"And with that out of the way…" da Vinci tapped the wall console near the doorframe, and the medbay door slid shut and locked with a soft hiss and pronounced click. "It is time that we all talked."
That little nugget of worry bloomed to life in the pit of Bennett's stomach again. With that tone, and the people currently present, unable to get away from what could only be an interrogation waiting to happen? Yeah, Bennett thought to himself, this was
not going to be fun.
"Is this about all that stuff I said when you first interviewed me?" Spencer asked.
Wait wait wait wait wait
what.
"Spence? Buddy?" Bennett was almost afraid to ask, but he had to.
"Yes?"
"What did you say…?"
"Oh man," Spencer said with a nervous titter, "What
didn't I say? I sang like a canary, man. I told them everything I could think of."
"Oh, for the love of—
really!?"
The shaggy-haired man pouted. "They put a Dr. Roman and a Mata Hari in front of me! What did you expect!?" He briefly looked in Roman's direction, before immediately looking elsewhere.
"I don't know how to feel about that," the doctor sighed, hand scratching the back of his head. "So can we just… move on?"
"Specifically?" Dory said, still engrossed in stroking Fou's fur. "Toby. Buddy. I know you're our resident lore encyclopedia and played the crap out of the games. The
rest of us need a proper overview." He nodded at Roman. "From what they've said, you went on a rant to end all rants in yours, but it wasn't systematic or organized. We need to know what we're up against properly. Main threats. Immediate threat. Big weapons and goals. Big roadblocks to taking them down."
"Alright, so the biggest thing we need to worry about—"
"Ah-! Wait. Sorry." Dory managed to look sheepish and contrite, lowering his hand that he'd snapped up to interrupt. "I know you like to tangent. Just to emphasize, we're going for a summary here. Just the bullet points. If we need clarification we'll get into it later."
Ah. Okay then… right, right, where was the best place to start here? Was it chronologically, threat order, get the biggest thing out of the way first? Hmm, actually, chronologically until the end of the Singularities, then—
"Shouldn't we wait for Indy?" Ko asked around a mouthful of pain au chocolat, derailing his train of thought before swallowing. "I mean what's the point of a meeting if we're just gonna hafta fill him in later anyway?"
"Adam is not present for the same reason that Fujimaru and Mash are not," Roman stated flatly. "Everybody is entitled to their secrets. The moment it becomes necessary for him to know, I will tell him myself, I promise. But until then…" Roman deflated. "Please."
There was something
weird about seeing King Solomon, of all people, look so… glum. The Caster at his side patted his shoulder, her hawklike gaze daring any of them to disagree.
"Okay," Ko said quietly, sounding considerably more sober. "Objection withdrawn."
"That said," Dory said into the silence that ensued, "we're the lucky brats in on the secrets. Toby. You're the resident barrel of exposition. Exposit away."
Well, he didn't exactly need any more invitation, now did he?
"So," he started,
keenly aware of how da Vinci's gaze was moments away from becoming a predatory glare, "let's begin at… well, now. We've just completed the third Singularity, Okeanos." Bennett paused a moment. "Uh. Do you have a whiteboard or something?"
Silence. In the corner of his eye, he saw Dory perched over a clipboard that he'd gotten from somewhere or other, Fou now curled up against his side.
The silence was broken by the muffled thump of a gloved hand against a steel wall.
"Just… get on with it," the acting head of Chaldea growled.
Oh… oh dear.
Okay, he was gonna get right on with that then, his desire to sketch out what he was saying be damned.
"So, the Singularities!" Bennett said, injecting more cheer into his voice than he was actually feeling.
"Wake me up when we get to Agartha," he heard Spence mumble drowsily. "That's as far as I got." Bennett leveled a glare in his direction, but figured he probably wasn't gonna get away with procrastinating on this any further than he already had.
"Master Spencer." Da Vinci's words were like ice, and immediately the man was squirming under her gaze. "Humanity is
gone. Outside these walls, there is
nothing. Until you five showed up, there were one hundred and three humans left in the universe, and only a single Master among them. I would appreciate it if you could give this conversation your full and undivided attention."
"...Yes ma'am."
Well. Bennett had to admit, the woman had a way with words. And if that didn't pull the severity of their new situation in stark relief, little else would.
Unfortunately for him, he was now in the awkward position of having to follow
that up. Bennett cleared his throat, trying to break the sudden tense silence that fell after da Vinci's proclamation. "So, the next Singularities are, in order: Londo—oh," he cut himself off. "Oh
fuck, I almost forgot how soon that is. Shit."
"Toby," Dory sighed. "
Buddy. C'mon. This early?"
"It's the
next Singularity," Bennett defended, turning to face Roman. "Long story short, Doc: the mastermind behind the incineration of Humanity is keeping a close enough eye on the London Singularity to interfere directly, and sorry to say? It's the Ars Goetia piloting your corpse."
Roman's face soured. "I'd hoped that Spencer had misspoken," he said softly.
"The Ars Goetia is a
person in this universe?" Ko asked, wide eyes darting back and forth between Bennett and Roman.
Dory held up a hand, Fou having curled up around his neck like a scarf, the other hand holding up a biscuit for the fuzzball. "We might want to start with him, then? Rather than the overview."
"In my past life, I wrote a codex of all the magic I'd learned," Roman said softly, his eyes distant. "A focus for the seventy-two demons I had bound to my will. The
Ars Goetia."
"To expand on that," Bennett continued, "and disclaimer, I'm working off of memory here, but the demons are commanded by… it's either the strongest among them, or a controlling conscience that arose out of the hive mind, I
do not remember exactly. The Demon Pillars from the previous Singularities? Those were among the seventy-two. Goetia himself though?" Bennett couldn't help but shudder a bit. "He has access to all of the knowledge, magecraft, and skills you had back then, Roman. Including the blessing from God preventing his possession from destroying your body."
Da Vinci's face was drawn and pale. "None of you can go to the next Singularity, then," she stated. "Solomon had insight into the hearts of men - if he learns even half of what you know…."
"Clairvoyance EX," Bennett murmured. "It is
that scary. That said, if we can't send Ko, we can't send Indy either. They've spent enough time together that directly seeing Indy's past may let him glean something from Ko's that we'd rather keep hidden."
"As if I'd let you throw him under the bus anyway," Ko muttered, cramming a kouign amann pastry into her mouth.
"I mean," Spencer began, "If you need a plausible reason to sell to Ritsuka why we aren't going, the last time you sent five untrained masters into the field, one lost a hand, one lost a leg… basically, the other three almost got the good master killed multiple times, and they
really should be in the simulator training. I hate the idea of sending him alone, but… we are terrible."
"I'll take that under advisement," da Vinci noted dryly. "Given that we had several months between the last few Singularities, I assume the pattern holds true?" She directed this towards Bennett, as a question. At his nod, she held up a hand. "During Singularity F, Master Fujimaru was even less experienced than you all were in Okeanos. We will find a more plausible reason."
"He's been empowered as an unwitting agent of the Counter Force," Bennett replied.
"Toby stahp," Spencer muttered, but it was too late.
"Of
course he didn't stay inexperienced for long. That's how the Counter Force
works."
"You aren't making the argument you believe you are, Bennett," Roman noted. "If it was the Counter Force that ensured young Fujimaru's survival… how would you explain your own arrival?"
"Too easily," he replied. "Something changed, which necessitated more than just Ritsuka. I just… don't know what it is yet."
"Kinda what we're here to figure out, man. As well as how to deal with it," Dory said, shifting where Fou had settled onto his clipboard. "So, what're we up against?"
"Well…"
Bennett let himself get into a groove. He plotted out, to the best of his remembrance, what was coming in the Singularities: what caused the Singularity, who had the Grail, allies they could likely count on, enemies that would be in their path. He knew he would have to go deeper into everything at some point—Goddess Rhongomyniad and Tiamat in particular were prickly, and probably needed dedicated meetings to fully flesh out what he knew of them—but right now, he needed to give an overview.
And that overview ended with what he recalled of the order of operations at the Final Singularity.
"The final battle against Goetia, the overly simplified chain of events was as follows," Bennett continued. "Arrive at the Temple of Time. Quite literally
every single Servant encountered through the Singularities summons themselves to assist, and hold off the Demon Pillars so Ritsuka and Mash can get to Goetia. Goetia unleashes a Noble Phantasm. Mash blocks it… but at the cost of her own life."
"Naturally," Spencer interrupted, sticking a finger in the air to attract their attention his way without lifting his head from his pillow, "this angers Ritsuka, who then proceeds to take the shield and beat Goetia to death with it, except not actually, because
Servants, insert jazz hands here. At which point Dr. Roman shows up, Goetia flips the hell out because he realizes what's about to happen, Saturday morning cartoon style, and you do the Ars Nova. Basically depowering Goetia and winning the Grand Order at the cost of your own existence."
"Anything after that point?" Bennett took the opportunity to break in. "It depends on if anything major changes during that final battle."
Everyone paused to look at the reincarnated Solomon, who still hadn't said a word in some time.
"Do you know which of the rings it was?" Roman's voice was utterly, completely placid. "To use Ars Nova. Do you recall which of the ten rings it was?"
"Not… offhand?" Bennett frowned, worry creeping slowly in at the edges of his mind. "Some part of me is saying you wore it as a wedding band, but I'm not sure?"
"Then," Roman said, pulling off the white leather gloves he always wore. "I believe I know what the divergence between your knowledge and reality is."
There was no ring.
There was no final ring of Solomon. There was no way to sever God's blessing from the corpse. The one win condition that they had in their back pocket? Gone.
Despite all his best efforts, Bennett couldn't stop the slightly hysterical chuckle from escaping. His uncovered eye was wide, and he could feel the heat of stress, along with the bile-heavy taste of panic rising up his gorge. But could anybody blame him? They were fucked!
What the fuck were
they supposed to do to counteract that!? This was it! Game over! Goetia fucking—
"Oh!" And just like that, the utter seriousness of Romani Archaman dissolved, as he made an all-too familiar head-scratching gesture, identical to his in-game sprite as he chuckled awkwardly. "Ah, sorry for freaking you out—there is still a ring. I just… don't wear it anymore. Don't worry. I know where it is."
OH THANK FUCKING GOD.
Dory held up a hand, looking up from his note-taking, "Okay, seeing that response, how bad is this 'servant bullshit' that's keeping him alive? 'Cause it seems bad, might be worth focusing down on that some."
"Uh," Bennett started
very eloquently, until he took a moment to collect himself. "T-the in-depth explanation would n-need a lot of notation to uh, keep everything straight, but basically? God needed something a certain way, so God
said it was. And He can't just
un-say it."
A pained look crossed Dory's face as he pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing, "Okay. Right. Great. Roundabout as hell. Got it. I'll make a note to come back to that."
"Okay, so, to try and sum this up?" Dory groaned nearly a full hour later.
"Singularities will usually have more allies but get nastier. They're caused by a super powerful demon god, who's squirreled away in a reality marble outside of normal spacetime that makes him actually immortal and is charging a doom laser that will vaporize
literally everything, mostly because he's an asshole. The big problems being the Singularities, that he can use bits of the giant doom laser in combat, that he has this anti-Summoning and Noble Phantasm crap, and has bullshit Clairvoyance that if he sees us, he'll also get our metaknowledge, which
may have already triggered."
Bennett was about to speak when the other man held up a hand. "Yes, technically he's a Beast and there's a lot more of them, one of which is adorable and thankfully not mean." Dory set his hand atop the aforementioned Beast's head, scratching between the blue-white ears, "But that's mostly a 'Future Chaldea' problem. Here and now, the main threat is Goetia. That cover everything?"
"Well… more or less, yeah," Bennett hedged. "Obviously there's more specifics, but that summary will do until I get a chance to just... write it all up, I guess."
A chirping noise came from Roman's vicinity - pulling out a cell phone, the doctor sighed.
"Adam's headed this way."
Apparently he'd decided seven hours was enough prep time for a day.
"I'll fill him in. I'll keep the jargon to a minimum." At Roman's significant look, Dory winced. "And I won't tell him about you, I get it."
"I don't know what that man was thinking," da Vinci sighed. "Challenging a Servant. He's going to be humiliated. If not maimed."
Ko said nothing, just smiled quietly to herself. Though her eyes were pretty spacey, so it was entirely possible she hadn't been listening.
"Let's move past that," Roman said hurriedly. "Ah… oh! Some of you requested these, but I did it for all of you." He held up a manila folder. "Elemental affinities, circuit counts and quality, as well as other results from your check-ups."
Bennett accepted his with a slight nod, and flipped open the chart. He had to blink and resettle his glasses—only having one working eye was going to give him an eyestrain headache—but he managed to refocus on tbe words in front of him.
Circuit count: five. Obviously a fairly small number, especially when the average magus was reputed to have somewhere between fifteen and twenty-four, but even Holy Grails had limits. The more important part was the other aspects. Blue-blooded magic circuits these were not, but not for lack of trying. 'High quality' was underselling it, he had to admit; get a couple more Grails, some applied theory, and a bit of elbow grease? While he wouldn't be hitting Aozaki Touko levels, he thought there was a real chance of at least fighting at that tier.
The other information was more valuable, though. Origin— thankfully blacked out, redacted. But his Element?... or perhaps, Element
s was more accurate.
Ice and Fire.
A dual Element, and complementary at that. But at the same time… Bennett frowned. This wasn't like Harry Potter, where he could just do the steps and out popped a spell. With a few very notable exceptions, if a magus wanted to use magecraft, it
needed to be conceptualized by way of their Element. It was a necessity, when so much of magecraft relied on self-hypnosis, to be able to form that mental connection.
Bennett thought of that ever-striving 'Hero of Justice' himself, Emiya Shirou. Theoretically, Shirou could toss a fireball, or conjure a blast of water. But it had to be the fires of a forge, used to heat the metal that it could be pounded into a blade; similarly, not just any water would do, it
had to be the water of a quench tank, conceptually speaking.
In the same vein, if Bennett wanted access to water with an Ice element, he needed… hot ice. Despite the situation, Bennett couldn't help but laugh at that. An old inside joke, suddenly becoming relevant? If they ever made it back to their reality, he would never hear the end of it from—
"Aw, yeah!" Ko crowed, abruptly shoving a paper from her chart at Bennett, knocking him out of his stupor in the process. "Called it!" It took him a second to refocus on the page, but when Bennett saw it clearly?
Master Candidate #53
Element: Imaginary Numbers
Origin: Imaginary Numbers
Imaginary Numbers. And more than that.
"You… just told her what her
Origin is." Bennett turned to Roman and da Vinci, his grip on the arm of his wheelchair slowly turning his knuckles white. "Wwwwhhhhhyyyyy!?"
"We wouldn't have, if she'd guessed wrong." Da Vinci sipped at her coffee, ignoring the twitch in Bennett's uncovered eye with what had to be practiced grace. "She just wanted us to look into her suspicions."
"I mean, I didn't get mine right, not on here." Dory said, holding up his paper, a prominent black bar visible even from across the room.
"Why would you ask to know your Origin?!" Bennett hissed at Ko. "Do you have any idea just how badly even knowing the damn thing can screw with your head? It can literally change how you see and interact with the world, at the drop of a hat!"
"I know," Ko replied with a shrug that made him want to strangle her. "But I argued and the doctor agreed that guessing correctly is basically functionally the same as knowing already. Least this way if I start turning into shadow-goop I'll know why."
"But why were you even
guessing?" Bennett asked, exasperation rising to heretofore-unknown levels.
"Because," Ko said slowly, "I was
high. Do keep up, Toby."
… that explained it, actually. Too well. All too well.
But it didn't excuse just how
stupid it was, either!
... ugh. If he was gonna have to keep dealing with this every damn day, he needed a
drink.
"Unless it's crucial to survival," he said slowly, making eye contact with the good Dr. Archaman himself, "I don't ever, not even the slightest bit, not even in a million years, want to know what my Origin is. Are we clear?"
"Crystal," Roman answered back, followed by a loud slurp of his coffee. "Hmm. Da Vinci, was this the French Roast?"
"Arabica," the Caster answered, swatting Roman lightly on the arm. "And stop slurping!"
… Bennett
was feeling rather parched, and he didn't exactly see a water cooler in sight. Well, he supposed to himself, if the only thing to drink was da Vinci's coffee? Needs must, he mused while wheeling himself to the carafe and pouring a cup of the accursed devil's brew. He took a sip, grimacing out of habit rather than at the taste. Then another sip. And another.
Leonardo da Vinci's sigh was long, drawn-out, and long-suffering. "This is going to be a
thing with you, isn't it, Mr. Bennett?"
"I didn't exactly see a water cooler," he replied churlishly, very pointedly ignoring the snickers from the others.
"You like Krabby Patties, don't you Squidward?" Spence said suddenly, the odd nasal tone somehow dripping with smugness only matched by the sudden, obnoxious,
knowing grin on his face.
Bennett really,
really wanted to get the last word. But he couldn't think of anything to say. So instead…
He slurped.
And da Vinci groaned.
Dr. Romani Archaman
The summoning chamber had been, for a long time, one of Roman's least favorite rooms in all of Chaldea. It was the place where so many Magi, seeing only an end and uncaring of the inhumanity of their means, had seen fit to reduce Mash to an object. To make a living, breathing girl into nothing more than a chain, to wind around the neck of whichever Heroic Spirit deemed their cause just.
Ever since Lev blew up most of Chaldea and its staff with it, he'd had to swallow the distaste that rose in his gorge whenever he set foot here. They had a job to do, and his reservations about the locale had no place in it.
"The mana reactors ready?" Roman asked da Vinci around a bite of his snack. Hey, he had to eat too. And the novelty had yet to wear off through the years.
"The techs managed to fix another one and get it set as the new failsafe, so there's only four more to fix before we're back at full operating capacity," she told him, tapping away at a tablet in her hands and casting occasional glances at Roman's munchies. "How many new Servants are we expecting to show?"
"Unless Fujimaru does something weird?" Roman shrugged. "Three. Adam and Bennett are both in good enough condition to summon a Servant, but the others are in no shape. And Akuta hasn't left her room since her first summoning, so that'll have to wait."
A sigh to his left was enough to know what da Vinci felt about that. "Remind me to check in on our honeymooners at some point. Are we sure it wouldn't be better to wait?"
"Bennett's injuries are about as 'better' as they're going to get at this point," Roman pointed out. "As for Adam, he's been working himself into a frenzy prepping for this challenge of his."
"And you want to give him something else to do so he doesn't run himself into the ground," da Vinci finished with a smile.
"I'm no psychologist, not my specialty. But even I can see he needs a distraction," Roman said, favoring her with a smile of his own. Then he collected himself, wiped off the chocolate and grease from his fingers, and with the push of a button, fired up the mana reactors feeding the summoning chamber.
A dull hum filled the room as mana channels glowed blue, shining brighter and brighter as mana flowed through constructs similar to ley lines. They all fed into hookups connected directly to Mash's shield, the centerpiece of the Round Table itself—a gathering place for heroes, and as such, one of the very few universal catalysts that existed. It could even reach out and forge a connection to those that would otherwise be incapable of hearing the call.
Ritsuka strode up to the designated area with the nonchalance of a veteran - Roman mentally chided himself. After four Singularities and more than a dozen summonings, the teenager
was a veteran.
"Heed my words. My will creates your body."
The young man, who had borne so many burdens, stood before the shield with hand outstretched, eyes closed and a look of concentration on his face.
"And your sword creates my fate."
"I hereby swear:"
"That I shall be all the good in the world."
"That I shall defeat all the evil in the world."
With each completed phrase, light poured forth from the summoning circle, brilliant blue transmuting from shining orbs above the shield's surface to a solid ring of light.
"Thou Seventh Heaven, clad in the three great words of power. Come forth from the circle of binding, Guardian of the Scales!"
At the final line of the chant, the ring erupted into a pillar, cascading blue upwards and then, just as suddenly, descending like a wave to wash over the circle.
Roman's breath caught in his throat at just who young Fujimaru had summoned.
"Servant, Avenger," the deathly pale woman clad in black sneered. "Summoned upon your request. What's with that look? Come on - here's the contract."
The corrupted Jeanne d'Arc that Ritsuka had faced in Orleans - powerful, yes. But that Ritsuka would summon an Avenger at all - let alone this particular Servant… Roman frowned.
This was worrisome. Indicative of a negative mindset. And it was a hint to Roman that he and da Vinci needed to pay more attention to their charge.
Ritsuka had so far displayed an uncanny knack for wrangling even the more strong-willed among those Servants he had summoned - Achilles and Vlad sprang to mind - but an Avenger was on another level entirely.
"Troubling…" he said, mostly to himself, but keenly aware that his companion could hear him.
"I'll speak to Fujimaru-kun," the Italian Caster promised. "And to the real Jeanne, to make sure there aren't any… incidents."
More items on an ever-growing list of responsibilities - Roman was keenly aware that without da Vinci, he would have been overwhelmed by everything long ago.
So many decisions rested on his shoulders now.
"Why are we even doing this now?" Adam muttered, pacing back and forth before the circle.
"Calm down, Adam," da Vinci counseled. "Your emotions can affect the summoning ritual. Deep breaths."
"I am calm!" came the reply, snapped as it was through gritted teeth. But, reluctantly, eventually the other man's shoulders started to lower, and his footsteps slowed, eventually coming to a halt in the circle designated for Masters during the summoning procedure.
"Heed my words…."
Adam was still reading off the cue cards da Vinci had prepared for the new Masters - apparently he didn't trust his memorization skills. But even if his rhythm was lacking, the power of the Summoning ritual was such that the pace of the words mattered far less than the intent behind them. As the bronze-green light faded, Roman took stock of the new Servant, hoping Adam's second summon would prove less… niche, than the first.
Thankfully, this one appeared to call back to an older, and more powerful age: an elderly man, wispy white curls crowning his head and descending into a thick beard. But this was no mere scholar - his pug nose looked as if it'd been broken many times, and properly reset only a few. A greek-style tunic, its grey fibers sun-bleached, hung loosely over his frame, exposing dense, corded muscle.
Roman's brow furrowed as he tried to place the character. Tiresias? No, he didn't appear to be blind….
"Do," the old man asked slowly, "you know what have you done?"
Adam frowned, thinking.
"...P-Possibly?" he ventured. "I have some ideas, but, uh… it's-it's-it's been made…
very clear to me that I have all the knowledge of a child, here. And none of the wisdom."
The old man's smile sent shivers down Romani's spine. Oh, no. It couldn't be…
"Do you know who you have summoned?"
"Someone who enjoys asking questions," came the quick, crisp, glib reply.
"Ha!" The man's laugh echoed, but not in the air. No, Roman could swear he felt it reverberate in his
soul. "Then attend, young seeker of knowledge. For while I possess no wisdom of any worth, perhaps we may find some together. I am Socrates-"
Oh
fuck. Roman locked eyes with da Vinci, and then moved his gaze to the large red button on the observation console. An emergency Un-Summon ritual, prepped after the debacle with Mash.
"-Ruler."
The two of them all but fell back into their chairs in relief.
"Socrates," da Vinci breathed.
"Santo cielo, what did we do to deserve him?"
While not one of the most traditionally powerful Servants, the Gadfly of Athens was one of the greatest
threats on the Throne of Heroes - a man who had nearly destroyed the entirety of magecraft in the cradle with his ceaseless dissection of Mystery itself. A man who had boasted of his approaching ascension to the Throne to the assembled leaders of Athens after they'd sentenced him to death.
"He's a Ruler," Roman reached for his mug with trembling hands. "He's bound to protect the system. He can't destroy it."
"Are you telling me this, Roman?" da Vinci asked pointedly. "Or just reassuring yourself?"
He didn't know. God help him, he didn't know.
"We'll need to speak with Adam," Roman said, instead of giving her an answer. "Bringing Socrates to a Singularity… I can't even begin to count the ways things could go wrong."
"... Hello?" Adam's voice crackled over the intercom. "Doctor? Da Vinci?"
While Roman would have loved to speak to the young Master, his mouth just so happened to be filled with coffee at the moment, so that task fell to his partner in Chaldea. Said partner bent over to take the mic, shooting him a dirty look all the while.
"Summon successful, Adam," she said, hiding her panic well. He admired that about her. "Thank you. That will be all."
The summoning room didn't require much in the way of downtime, but the two of them kept Bennett in the waiting area for a good five minutes while they calmed down together.
"Alright Bennett," Roman breathed into the room's intercom, heart still pounding, hoping his voice had recovered. Behind him, Da Vinci was smoothing down the front of her dress. "Whenever you're ready." The man in question looked up at the observation deck with a nod before facing the shield, Abigail beside him.
Oh. "Uh, Bennett, before you summon, can you send Abigail up here to us?"
"May I not stay?" the Servant asked, her voice plaintive. Bennett looked up to the observation deck with a frown, but Roman caught the instant realization passed over him, and the Master turned to address Abigail face to face.
"Abby, they want you up there so nothing goes weird with the ritual," he said, clearly trying to keep his tone as light as possible. "You can come on back down once I'm done, but in the meantime, I think da Vinci and Roman could use your company up there, okay?"
"Mm… okay." Despite her pouting, the Servant dematerialized in a puff of purple smoke, only to reappear beside Roman a moment later, her eyes
squarely on Roman's snack stash. "Good Physick, mightn't I have a piece?"
"Grk." Roman couldn't help the somewhat strangled grunt from leaving his throat. She was asking for his
bacon!... but look at those
puppy dog eyes she was putting on. But… his
bacon!
"Go right ahead, hun!" da Vinci cut in, smiling at Abigail.
Challenging Roman to object. This was a losing battle, he decided right then and there. Better to cut his losses. He could always ask Emiya to cook up some more wonderful, sweet,
delicious chocolate-covered bacon later. Wait, no. Maple brown sugar
candied bacon. With a chocolate dipping sauce. Ooh yes, his mouth was watering just thinking about it—
The sound of da Vinci clearing her throat brought his attention back to the present, and Roman realized he'd let himself daydream a little bit. Enough to not notice that Bennett was asking him for permission to start, for the third or fourth time.
"Y-yes!" Roman cleared his throat, and pressed the button for the intercom. "Mana reactors holding steady. Bennett, you're cleared to begin."
"Thank you," he said, and limped forward to stand before the summoning circle, his cane-assisted gait still uneven and unsteady. But before long, he stood as stable as he could, and shifted his cane to his right hand to let him raise his left, emblazoned with his Command Spells, towards the circle.
"Silver and iron to the origin," he intoned, voice steady. "Gemstone and the archduke of contracts for the foundation. Let tribute be paid to our great ancestors."
Roman watched as the shield pulsed, blue and red. It was an unusual color combination, he thought to himself, perhaps due to the man's Element. Or maybe his temperament, he thought with a silent chuckle.
"The alighted wind becomes a wall. The gates in the four directions close, coming from the crown, the three-forked road that leads to the kingdom circulates. Fill. Fill. Fill. Fill. Fill. Repeat five times. Once filled, simply shatter."
Mana congealed from the red and blue glyphs, rising from the shield's surface and beginning to spin. Sparks flew between them, a solid ring of light, rising and growing as the ritual went onward. Alighted wind becomes a wall indeed, Roman thought to himself.
"How are the readings?" Roman asked da Vinci.
"Unremarkable," she replied. "But if he's going to modify the aria, it would be right about now."
His attention shifted back to the ritual in progress. He had to hope…
"From the seven heavens, clad in three words of power, arrive from the ring of deterrence, O keeper of the balance—!"
Despite all the grumbling Bennett had made about once again not having a catalyst for the summoning, he didn't change the aria, Roman thought to himself with relief. Thank goodness; they'd had more than enough excitement last time. Now, it was only a matter of seeing who answered the call.
As the light died down, the first thing he saw was the
hair. Slicked-back black hair which defied gravity, whether through sheer gumption or copious amounts of hair gel, framed a walnut-brown face that stared down with unearthly amber eyes and a cocky smile. A white mantle, held in place by a clasp with an ankh dangling from it, shrouded his shoulders, but left most of his upper body bare. He was utterly festooned with imperial finery, shimmering gold atop sheer linen, arms stacked with armband after bracelet after cuff, each more ornate than the last.
The Servant let out a boisterous laugh, sweeping his mantle entirely over his shoulder as he stepped forward to greet his summoner.
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings! Look on my works, ye—"
He froze.
Roman was treated to a front-row seat as Pharaoh Ramesses II, Ozymandias, paled until he was practically an ashen gray. The Servant's expression twisted into something almost unrecognizable, flickering through what Roman could only consider mortification before settling into carefully-schooled neutrality.
Master and Servant simply
stared at each other. The silence swiftly became heavy, stifling, and awkward. It was only when Abigail rejoined Bennett down below that Roman realized he'd been so fixated on the pair as to not even notice her disappearance.
"Goodman?" she asked, looking worriedly up at Bennett. The word seemed to finally break her Master out of his stupor, and he took a deep, shaky breath.
"... why couldn't you just
let my people go?"
Bennett didn't bother to wait for an answer. He simply turned around, transferred his cane back to his left hand, and let a somewhat confused Abigail help him exit the chamber.
"What just…?" da Vinci trailed off, staring at the Servant who, even a minute later, was still gaping at where his Master had turned away from him. "Is he…?"
"It seems so," Roman said, eyes glancing at the plate of bacon in front of him. He pushed it away, guiltily.
"And this was—"
"Compatibility?" Roman finished for da Vinci. "Yeah..."
Three new powerful Servants. The first a clear sign that their most experienced Master was experiencing distress. The second, too dangerous to consider bringing to a Singularity. And the third an outright crisis of faith.
"Oh," she said softly, her thoughts clearly mirroring his own. "Well.
Shit."
