Snow Flurries | Chapter X
Spencer
Spencer popped his knuckles. He never really could get the hang of cracking them all at once, so he tended to do it one at a time, mostly as a nervous tick. A tilt of the head then saw to his neck, and a pull of first his left arm, then his right, did the same for each of his shoulders.
None of this was exactly necessary, but it made him feel better about having to be awake at 4:37 in the god damned morning. Honestly, he didn't care if the tests said that this is the time when his magic was strongest. It was too late to stay up for, and way too early to get up for.
Nevertheless, Ko and Toby had clearly managed the former, given he'd found them waiting for him in the common room on the way to his scheduled summoning. His appearance had been enough to persuade Toby that it was time to head to bed, but Ko had insisted she'd stayed up to provide him with moral support.
"Ready when you are, Spencer," da Vinci said over the intercom.
"Well," Spencer said drowsily. "It worked out last time. Let's summon someone and hope nothing bad happens."
Spencer began to recite the summoning incantation - the same one he'd used in Okeanos. There was no point introducing variables to such an important event, no matter what Toby might think. Really, he was a strong believer in the power of the compatibility summon. He didn't need or want powerful servants that came at the cost of having to wrangle their personalities; he didn't have the temperament for it. Ching Shih had been basically perfect, seeing as she'd handled the complexities of combat by herself. His role had been to act more as an assistant than a master, and that suited him more or less perfectly.
"Come forth from the circle of binding, Guardian of the Scales."
The summoning circle flashed in a way that was becoming all too familiar, and Spencer briefly wondered if he was becoming desensitised to the reality that magic was real. This possibility was immediately dismissed. He wasn't desensitised. He was flipping tired.
The woman that stepped out off of the shield was young-looking. Well, that wasn't really fair - most everyone here was young looking; the Throne tended to deliver people at the hypothetical peak of their existence, and for a lot of people that left them in their early to mid twenties. Her hair was set in a sleek brown… he was pretty sure that hair style was called a bob. He didn't know the first thing about fashion, granted, but the color palette of the servant he'd summoned did rather amuse him; a shoulder-baring minidress he could only describe as
violently purple - the most ideal state of purple, in his opinion. Especially when paired with her equally-bright pink paisley tights, and-
"I'm sorry," he said, staring at her right hand, "is that a Nintendo PowerGlove?"
"It is," she replied with a playful shrug, her accent a lot more fancily-British than he'd expected. "Perhaps it would have been more appropriate to wear something from my own time for our first meeting, but, well… when I realized the sheer
variety of clothing options there were in this era…" She lifted her gauntleted hand to her mouth and let out a little giggle behind it. "I
may have gotten a tad carried away. My true name is Augusta Ada King, called to the class of Caster." She curtsied, remarkably gracefully for someone wearing a skirt that short. "And I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, Master."
He hadn't heard the name before. He was already preparing to ask for clarification or if anyone else had heard of her before-
"Ada Lovelace?!" Ko crowed over the intercom.
"Yes, history friend," his sleep-addled brain managed to work his mouth for him as he turned to look up at the control room, "please, assist?"
"She's the first computer programmer!" Ko said, like he should've somehow magically known that. "She invented the algorithm. The computer-y kind!"
… huh. Actually he probably
should have known that.
... wait, he thought,
oh wait!
"You're the reason I have a job!" Spencer blurted out, pointing at Ada. "Had a job! I no longer have that job!"
"Oh…! My apologies?" Ada replied, looking a little startled.
"Oh no, it's fine. This new one pays better. And technically better benefits. And only a little life threatening existential peril. The hours suck, though. I'm babbling. I'm also very tired. Let me start over. Hi, I'm Spencer. Welcome to Chaldea. We're gonna save the world."
He held his hand out. She smiled, and took it.
"So," she asked, "in the words of your countrymen, 'what do you do for fun around here'?"
"I. Can. Not.
Believe. This. Is. Happening!"
Well, at least one of Chaldea's staff was excited for this.
"I mean, I was certain that, you know, we'd never get an episode of Chopped ever again!" The young woman in uniform, a bright red MY NAME IS sticker declaring her to be "Priya," gestured grandly at the kitchen's new temporary setup. "But now we are! And I, Priya Vijayaraghavan, am proud to host this contest of champions! With Phyo… Fee-on Mac… a famous hero from history versus one of the new Masters!"
Priya, a once and future HR rep, had volunteered, both as the host of this assuredly cursed event and to assemble the baskets. The method she had chosen to accomplish this was rather inspired. In order to acquire an assemblage of unique and varied ingredients, she'd polled the servants, staff, and masters of Chaldea, who each suggested one ingredient. She'd then chosen from that pool of items to create the hell baskets at the core of this challenge.
Oh, no one actually knew what was in them yet. But Spencer had seen enough episodes of Chopped over group chat streams in Discord to know that there was only one type of basket to exist. He also knew that his own suggestion could only contribute to that, if chosen.
"The sooner we get this mess over with the sooner I can start cleaning it up," Emiya muttered from his post at the judges' table.
Once word of Indy's challenge had gotten around - Servants were huge gossips, who'd have guessed? - Priya had gone all-in with the preparations. Chaldea's primary cafeteria had been converted for this contest - a single table at one end for the judges, and the remaining tables facing the long opening into the kitchen proper.
"May you find sweet inspiration, may your memory not be dull," Despite (or maybe because of) his frantic preparations over the past few days, Indy was noticeably paler than usual and muttering some sort of litany under his breath. He hadn't quite realized, though, that he was wearing a microphone. "May you rise to dizzy success, may your wit be quick and strong…."
"Ah…" Doctor Roman said suddenly, still standing hesitantly behind his assigned seat between Emiya and Ko. "I… don't think I can be a judge. Sorry, everyone."
"Totally understandable," Ko replied immediately, as Emiya crossed his arms and Indy went rigid. "Have a good day."
"But- but- we need a third judge," Indy stammered out. "Because Ko. And the Archer guy. And then number three. So we can't have ties. And-"
"I'm not the sort of person who's very comfortable with judging others," Roman said, scratching at the back of his neck. "I don't know why I agreed to it in the first place."
Off to the side, Toby coughed, though it sounded suspiciously like he'd said "Reflex!" in the cough. Then he added another couple of coughs, because Abigail started patting his back, and he probably wanted her to feel like she was helping!
"Perhaps the lovely da Vinci would be willing to referee, then?" Fionn suggested.
"Do we really want to bring an Italian into this?" Ko asked, exchanging a look with Emiya. "I mean, there's already a pretty high chance of bloodshed..."
"Da Vinci-chan descended into one of Chaldea's inactive mana reactors six hours ago, and hasn't been heard from since," Mash sighed. "Since we have six more Masters, we need more energy to support the incoming Servants."
"I wish I were with her," Ko muttered under her breath. Apparently weaning herself off the painkiller cocktail wasn't going well.
"But we need a third judge!" Priya whined. "Because I'm obviously the Ted, and between the lady over whom these two are fighting and the Archer Without A Name-"
"How did I even get dragged into this..." Emiya's shoulders were slumped, but nobody cared about his opinion anyway. Well, Spencer did, a little. But not nearly enough to put a stop to any of this.
"We need a third, just as compelling--"
Something in the kitchen rattled, and Priya cut herself off with a surprised squeak. Moments later, a pillar of shimmering light burst from one of the woks that had been laid out for the two competitors.
"
Clear the path!" a high pitched, almost squeaky voice commanded. "Enma is passing through!"
A very small, redheaded, pigeon-toed girl glided majestically forth from the cooking vessel. On her head was a hat that resembled the head of a bird, on her feet were a pair of platform sandals and white socks, and she was draped in an absolutely dazzling feathered cloak with a flame motif. Clashing somewhat with this Elton John cape was the plain white apron she wore beneath it.
"What the fuck," Ko whispered, nearly unheard under the commotion.
"Aaaaaaaa!" Indy exclaimed delightedly, his eyes widening even as he bounced on the balls of his feet. "She's so cute!"
Ko's eyes bugged. "Lovely please don't antagonize the infernal deity-!"
"Aaaaaaaaaaa!" Ritsuka boomed from the crowd, far more high-pitched than his throat was probably comfortable with. "Cuuuute~!"
Next to him, Mash's head bobbed up and down, a wide smile splayed across her face.
The utterly adorable 'infernal deity' hadn't immediately smited them for blasphemy, so it seemed like they were in the clear. Puffing out her chest, the apron-wearing, child-shaped person crossed her arms, staring at the assembled crowd with beady red eyes.
"I am Beni-Enma!" she proclaimed. "Tormentor of Hell! Proprietress of the Enma-tei! Here to fulfill her duties for the living!"
Toby, still in the seat he'd plunked himself down on the moment everyone had filed into the cafeteria, seemed to be of two minds. One was obvious, by the way he was staring, his jaw hanging open.
The other of his two minds was the death grip he had on a beaming Abigail's wrist to keep her from running over to pet the birb.
"So…" Priya's eyes were very wide. "You're… volunteering to be our third judge?"
"That is correct, dechi."
"And-"
"-I am familiar with the rules of this competition." The tiny girl held up a finger. "One. The contestants will have one hour to prepare 3 identical courses of food. Two. Each plate will require the use of the four mystery ingredients. Three. The criteria for judging are taste, presentation, and creativity."
The self-proclaimed judge of hell fluttered over to the seat that had been reserved for Roman.
"And four," she added, looking directly at Fionn with narrowed eyes, "no outside assistance. This includes Internet and Noble Phantasms - this is a battle of talent and skill alone, dechi."
Over the course of that sentence, the Lancer's face went from smug to concerned as he realized he would not, in fact, be allowed to suck his thumb of wisdom during this contest.
"Trust me, honey," Ko said with a small smile, "that rule is for
your protection."
With a tumbling spin and a flurry of multicolored feathers, Enma leapt from the spot to stand easily atop the back of the central judges chair, balanced without a wobble, "Let not the ingredients sit!" Raising a hand, she chopped it down at the competitors, declaring, "The sparrow's affairs all depend on its flavors… Now, go back to the five basics of flavor! Open your wicker boxes!"
By all accounts, the two baskets containing the ingredients looked completely ordinary.
'So why do they exude such a menacing aura?' Spencer wondered. Indy and Fionn both reached into their baskets at the same time, removing the first ingredient stored there.
"Salmon!"
Ko let out a snort of laughter that she just barely managed to contain by slapping her fancy new artificial hand over her mouth.
Fionn closed his eyes. "Not again," he mumbled, into what he, too, hadn't realized was a hot mic. Adam's face was unreadable.
"Udon noodles!"
Immediately, Spencer side-eyed Toby.
"What?" the lawyer asked defensively. "It's a perfectly normal ingredient! She polled everybody besides Ko, Indy, and Fionn, what makes you think Ritsuka didn't suggest it?"
"Because, Toby," Spencer said quietly with a smug, knowing smile.
"Ritsuka doesn't know it's a potential Musashi catalyst."
"So I'm setting out bait for a multiverse wanderer," Toby muttered. "Sue me."
"'Marshmallow cereal!'" Priya called out, her fingers in quotes as the familiar red boxes were placed on the prep stations.
Away came the hand as Ko bubbled over into uncontrollable giggles. "Where did you get Lucky Charms in
Antarctica?" she asked.
"Best of luck, m'colleague!" Adam Smith called from the crowd, holding up a sign with some kind of math pun on it that Spencer was… seventy percent sure was upside down.
Socrates, the rhetorical jackass that he was, muttered some query that Spencer and everyone else pointedly ignored. It had only taken them a couple days to figure out that any answer - to
any question - was a trap.
And last of all...
"THE FECK
IS A PINEAPPLE?!"
Adam let out a mad cackle. "Welcome to Thunderdome, bitch!" he shouted, a maniacal grin stretched wide across his features.
"Interesting," Emiya murmured. "Two processed ingredients and two raw. Could it be a Hawaiian… no, maybe a general Pacific theme? Priya, how did you say you picked these again?"
"Oh," she waved a hand modestly, "I put all the suggestions in a bowl and pulled out four of them. I didn't have a theme in mind, it just sort of worked out that way…."
Spencer couldn't help but grin. He had hoped for chaos, and truly… chaos had manifested.
"The sparrows shall judge your souls!" the tiny frightening demon child declared. "The court to determine the fate of the wicker boxes' contents… convenes now!" The moment Beni-Enma had finished speaking, Adam was off to the fridge, muttering under his breath the entire way.
"No! No!" Fionn, on the other hand, hadn't moved, gripping the pineapple as if it were a severed head and pointing at it. "I'm serious - where is the pine tree that this alleged apple grew on?! You show me that!"
"Wait til he finds out what every other language calls it," Spencer whispered giddily.
A faint smile crossed Toby's face. "... oh, he's gonna lose his shit."
Dory frowned, leaning forward to prop his chin on his hand to watch as Indy returned with a large bowl filled with items from the pantry. "Mm. Probably. It's not an easy basket."
Fionn didn't quite slam the offending fruit onto his workspace, but it was a near thing as he glared at the ingredients. Tearing open the plastic udon package, he gave the contents a long, almost nervous sniff.
While Indy poured milk into a pan, the blond grabbed a pot. The two of them descended into a flurry of chopping, cutting, and other culinary… things.
Though Fionn had gotten off to a slower start - the Lancer had very carefully sniffed each of the ingredients, and there wasn't a single electric tool on his station compared to Indy's… at least three, they both appeared to be roughly in the same place, ten minutes in. And despite his earlier confidence, Indy wasn't nearly as calm and collected as he'd initially tried to portray. The man frequently wiped sweat from his brow, and twice, needed to put down his knife and take a few deep breaths before cutting again.
"Oh, right!" Priya jolted herself from where she'd been standing in rapt attention. "I have to narrate! The viewers demand it!"
"Who then be demanding this?" Abigail asked incredulously, in that weird old-timey - even more old-timey than regular old-timey - diction of hers.
"Hello!" Spence answered immediately. "This viewer. Me. I do not know what they were doing at alllllllll~"
"Mm… surely they cook?" Abigail asked, with a tilt to her head as she spoke.
Making her way over to the prep stations, the Indian woman waved at Indy several times before getting his attention.
"So, Adam!" she flashed him a smile. He twitched in the direction of his milk-and-noodle mixture.
"What are you making?"
"Well, I'm, ah, going for gnocchi - David Chang style," Indy sidestepped Priya to give the pan a shake. "Yeah. And uh, baked salmon."
"I see!" Priya nodded vigorously. "I notice you haven't touched your pineapple at all, though. Do you have any kind of strategy there?"
"Yes," Indy muttered distractedly. "Step one - keep the meathead from learning how to work it. Oh fuck excuse me!" The milk was really steaming - and the man lunged to turn the heat down.
"Priya Vijayaraghavan!" Beni-Enma squeaked adorably, one hand on the hilt of a katana longer than she was tall. "You are distracting our contestants and biasing the outcome!"
The HR rep deflated. "Oh… alright…" Making her way back over to the judge's table, she pouted for a moment before, after her eyes flicked towards Ko, she turned to face Fionn's Master.
"Anything to say about the two competing for your hand?" she asked hopefully.
Ko burst into laughter. "Competing for my hand? Are you fucking serious?"
"Well, uh..." Priya said, visibly taken aback. "Maybe I'm not in possession of all the facts, here…"
"I've already made my decision," Ko emphasized, "and they both know that. They just can't
accept it, so they've gotta settle this in the ring of honour. Like, win or lose, I'm still marrying Indy - this has been established. I know that, Fionn knows that, Indy knows that. But
somehow…" She cast about for a moment, and finally shrugged, shaking her head. "Look, you know how it is; sometimes guys see you're pretty, and come to decisions about that, and proceed accordingly, and none of it has anything to do with reality."
"... I'm gonna be honest, you lost me at 'guys see you're pretty,'" Priya said with an awkward laugh.
"Oh, honey, no…!" Ko cried, eyes going soft as she laid a hand on the host's shoulder. "It's in poor taste for a beauty to make those kinds of jokes!"
"Well that explains how
that summoning happened…" Emiya muttered as Priya giggled nervously.
"People in glass houses, Mr. 'Harem Protagonist EX'," Toby called from the stands. "You of all people don't get to say that, ya know?"
Emiya said nothing in response. Whether this is because he didn't hear, didn't care, or was otherwise preoccupied, was a matter for debate. And Toby also couldn't keep heckling, because a moment later Abigail pestered him, Toby flushed, and started stammering something to her in a whisper.
"Okay, so," Priya said, clearly desperate for a subject change. "Any thoughts, Archer…?"
"
No." Correction: it was because he was otherwise preoccupied. The man's eyes were practically glued to the kitchen, flitting between the amateur chef and the Heroic Spirit both trying to turn their respective slapdash ingredients into a respectable meal. Clearly Emiya didn't have time for any of the woman's nonsense, so he ignored it.
"Right! Moving on!" Though with Beni-Enma's shake of the head, there wasn't really anywhere to move on
to.
Twenty minutes passed, and things began to settle into a rhythm. Fionn was easy to follow - everything he chopped or cut or took from the pantry went into a single large pot on his stove. It was obvious that he was making some sort of soup, or stew, or something like that. Indy, on the other hand, had a flurry of machines, the oven, two pans on the stove, and an explosion of ingredients scattered on his station. There was no way that Spencer had any idea what was going on, but presumably the guy had a plan.
Suddenly, as he was spooning what looked like grey paste into a plastic baggie, Indy cursed up a storm, and sprinted for the pantry.
"Uh, why's Indy lookin' frantic?"
"His gnocchi's not coming together I don't think, hard to tell from this angle." Dory muttered, sitting up and peering as best he could from the viewing area. "Hard to
visually tell what's going wrong specifically on that end. He's not abandoning it, though, so my guess is he's trying to save it."
The man came back from the storage area with, of all things, one of those wire ladles used for deep frying. Spencer wasn't sure how that was a solution - he didn't seem to be making any moves towards the deep fryer - but at least Indy looked less frantic.
More time passed, Fionn chopping up vegetables and udon, Indy scooping some kind of paste out the other side of a ladle, and taking breaks from that to mess with the machines themselves.
"So…" Toby prompted the foodie of the group not competing.
"Indy's making something like gnochi, while baking the salmon with a number of herbs." Dory explained. "Fionn's making a stew with everything in it. Y'know, aside from the pineapple."
"Did… did Fionn just
sniff the pineapple?" Spencer asked, "Again?"
"Yes he did. Though… honestly more surprised that he hasn't tasted it. Or tried to cut into it. Like, Indy's got the right idea, don't give him ways to prepare and all that. But he can't do that for too much longer." Dory looked to the clock. "He's got twenty minutes. If you're figuring out how to do things, Servant speed and precision or no, that's barely enough time with all the other finishing work."
Apparently, Indy was thinking the same thing - he finally grabbed the pineapple by the top, and decapitated it with a very dramatic chop from his knife. Placing it cut side down, so that it could lie flat, he then cut off the skin and took four wide strips from the fruit, sprinkling some sort of powder he'd made earlier on them, and tossing them onto one of the kitchen's grills.
Fionn, who'd been paying attention to the normal human's technique, replicated the skinning of the fruit with much smoother motions. Unlike Indy, however, he had no powder to put on it - gingerly, he cut off a small chunk of its flesh, and placed it in his mouth.
"... what the feck is a pineapple," he repeated in a whisper, his mouth agape in horror.
"A worthy opponent, that's what," Spencer muttered under his breath, getting a snort from Dory beside him.
Disgust manifesting on his face, Fionn took the entire thing in both hands and crushed it between his palms, letting some juice fall into a bowl he'd placed below, with a shockingly small amount of splatter.
"Hot," Ko declared - quietly, but matter-of-factly.
"Competitors! You have five minutes!" The cooking birb called out, "The plates should be ready for presenting before the judges then. You should begin plating soon!"
Calmly yet quickly running once more to collect ingredients - in this case, a loaf of bread, and a large green glass bottle - Fionn cut four slices and spooned some of the pineapple juice onto it before placing the damp bread onto his own grille. Opening the bottle, he poured a liberal amount of pale yellow into four tankards before adding in the remainder of the pineapple juice.
I suppose, Spencer thought to himself,
that if I had no idea what a pineapple was or what to do with it, I'd probably resort to just using the juice somehow, too.
"Shit shit shit shit shiiiiit-!" Indy's messy station was making it nearly impossible to fit all four plates and the various things he'd cooked at the same time; he had a sheet pan in one hand and a spatula in other, carefully moving the salmon filets onto the plates.
"Two minutes!"
Fionn had it much easier. A single large pot, a ladle, and the grilled broad, which he seemed to be leaving on until the very last moment before floating them in the stew.
"Time's up! Step away from your stations!"
The two competitors stepped away from the counters, and Priya wheeled over a metal cart to put the plates upon.
"Alright," Indy let out a small, nervous giggle, as his dishes were served first. "So, judges. Ko. Today, I've made for you a cereal-crusted salmon with rosemary and sage, over marshmallow-cinnamon grilled pineapple, and udon noodle spaetzle Parisian. Enjoy?"
Emiya was looking at the dish with an openly skeptical expression; the birb was stony-faced and unreadable.
When Emiya moved some of the food to his mouth, there was a brief moment where it almost seemed like he forgot to scowl.
"I'm gonna be honest," Ko said with an apologetic wince, "this is very nearly a nightmare basket for me. Indy'll tell ya flat out, I don't like seafood or pineapple, I'm not the biggest fan of udon, and the only reason to buy Lucky Charms is to eat the marshmallows and throw the rest away, in the ultimate move of teenage decadence."
Emiya's left eye twitched, while Beni-Enma's hand twitched towards her sword.
Ignoring them, or perhaps reveling in their disapproval, Ko smiled at her fiancé. "That said, any day I get to eat Indy's cooking is a good day. Case in point, this pineapple is delicious. Even if you did intentionally wait til the last minute to sweat Fionn out about it, ya little schemer," she added dryly, "don't think I didn't notice that." Cutting another piece and stuffing it into her cheek, she concluded, "But yeah, salmon's not as juicy as usual, but otherwise this is pretty good. The noodle-y boy's an especially good thought, nice recovery in the moment."
"This salmon is definitely dry," Emiya confirmed. "And grilling the pineapple with spices is hardly a creative transformation." He took another bite. "... it is tasty, though."
"My salmon is also dry," their mystery judge declared. "But the pineapple is juicy, so having them both in one bite makes up for it. The transformation of the udon into spaetzle is very creative - I would have wanted something more to compliment it, though. You show good fundamentals and creativity. Five out of ten, dechi."
Indy's face twisted in confusion at that… was it a compliment? It felt like it might have been a compliment.
"I give you a fine salmon stew!" Fionn declared, stepping forwards as his bowls were served. "Along with a pineapple melomel - truly a noble warrior's drink; the juices attempted to slay my very tongue!"
"Weird flex, but okay," Spencer muttered. If he was honest with himself, he was probably biased. A little. But Indy's dishes looked more interesting, looked like they had a lot more thought put into them, and were more in line with what this competition was allegedly about. Soup was reasonably simple - even Spencer couldn't screw it up too badly. It was
safe and it was also
boring. Even if it tasted better, it was gonna get docked on presentation.
Spoons dipped into the bowls. The birb remained stoic, but Emiya's scowl managed to be scowlier this time around.
"-ugh!" This time there was nothing apologetic about Ko's wince as she swallowed, coughed, and immediately reached for the booze to wash it down. "Dude. Fionn, honey, I'm sorry, maybe we should've let you use the internet."
Indy was
grinning.
"Adding pineapple juice to toast was minimally creative, but only because it was edible." Emiya's steely gaze didn't waver. "The stew has some decent vegetable choices that are cut well, and the salmon was done. But the stock is cloyingly sweet… and
peppery. Tell the truth, did you just empty a pepper grinder into this soup?"
"Half of one. Thank you," Fionn said, just the slightest bit primly.
"Yep, yeah, that would do it," Ko nodded, lowering her mead with a shudder and reaching for the soggy-looking toast. "Protip for next time, my guy: campfire surprise for a hundred dudes has different seasoning requirements than stew for four."
"Not
that different," Spencer heard Caster Cu say behind them with an audible smirk. "He just doesn't know how to properly cook either of those things."
Beni Enma set down her spoon delicately into her bowl. "The Archer in Red is correct. If you intended to tenderize the salmon with the pineapple, you should've put it in at the start. You were clearly too scared of the ingredient."
"I've had worse soups…." Priya said with weak generosity, having claimed the fourth portions for herself of both dishes.
"Taste is only one aspect of the judging process. Another is the transformative aspects of the meal, and those were quite frankly subpar. Particularly the drink," Emiya stated flatly. "The udon was cut well enough, and so were the vegetables and salmon, but you didn't really
do anything with either."
The two Servants shared a glance before looking to Ko, who shook her head, a slightly pained expression on her face as she clicked her tongue.
"You're lucky he challenged you to a contest where he had the theoretical chance of losing," she told Fionn, a guilty smile on her face. "If he'd
really wanted to humiliate you he'd've had you wrestle with archaically-formatted tax data from the '80s until you realize why the job pays the equivalent of a hundred and fifty litres of milk a year, you bloody snob."
"Alright, the judges seem to have made their decision," Priya said, setting down her bowl. "And the winner of this competition will beee–"
Oh no. Spencer knew where this was going.
"Priya so help me if you try to go to a commercial break I
will throw Toby's cane at you, and he will let me!" he shouted.
"You will in my bollocks!" Ko fired back, glaring into the audience. "There wouldn't
be a show if she hadn't organized it, you ingrate."
"Maybe I should have been a judge," Roman mused. "It all smells so good…."
Beni-Enma rapped a small gavel (wait where did she get that?) against the table, and the room fell silent.
"The winner: Adam Thursday Rodriguez Ziegler, dechi!"
"YESSS!" Adam (
Thursday!?) cried out, literally jumping with joy.
"Since when do you have four names!?" Spencer demanded.
"Who named you Thursday!?" Toby shouted at the same time. "I knew about Rodriguez, but
Thursday!?"
Adam Thursday now had his phone out, and after a few taps, started blasting
We are the Champions (to the delight of a facepalming, openly-cackling Ko) and playing air guitar - badly. He also, Spencer suspected, had taken a picture of Fionn's face at the news.
Graceful in victory,
Indy Thursday was not.
Sure, he may have won the battle. He won the war before the battle even started. But now that Spencer - and everyone else,
including Fionn - all knew his middle name was Thursday, who was the
real victor?
Not Thursday.
Adam | industrious | Thursday
Socrates.
The Socrates.
And he, Adam, had summoned him. Not the first philosopher to exist, but the First Philosopher nonetheless - it was said that all of Western Philosophy were mere footnotes to the foundations that Socrates had lain.
And now, albeit after both he and Socrates had had separate conversations with Roman and da Vinci both, they were actually going to learn
magic from the man.
"Despite what my summoner may believe, I am no teacher."
Socrates stood - or paced, rather - in front of a whiteboard in one of Chaldea's conference rooms. All of Adam's friends had joined for the session, and even Ritsuka was in attendance; kid even had a tablet as opposed to most of their notepads. While Adam had his laptop from one universe over, there was something more visceral about taking notes on paper. Plus, there was a much lower chance of him getting distracted this way.
"He is under the mistaken belief that I possess wisdom," the bearded man continued. "And I have no desire to disappoint him - so if we make any small insights together, I hope he will judge that satisfactory."
Yes, yes, Socrates was putting on his humble cape. It was his modus operandi - lure people into answering questions, and then through contradiction and cross-examination, find some kind of truth.
"So, as a useful starting point…" Socrates stroked his beard. "What
is magic?"
It probably said something that nearly everyone - Ritz was too young and naive - immediately looked at Toby.
"Oh
hell no," he said, laying his cane against the table to cross his arms in an X in front of him. "I spent two years watching the best Socratizers in the United States at work, and then another three years
getting Socratized. It's one of
y'all's turn to deal with this shit."
Despite Toby's refusal, Spence, it seemed, wanted his turn first - the guy was halfway out of the chair, waving his hand.
The Ruler blinked. "What… are you doing?"
"I am holding my hand in the air waiting for the teacher to call on me, so I can deliver an answer!" Spencer replied. "Because that is how school works."
"But I am not a teacher," the Greek said patiently. "Speak freely."
"Okay then… do you mean magic magic or magecraft?"
"Is there a difference?" Socrates asked, though his tone was less a question and more a prompt.
"Yes." Spencer said cheerfully, and refused to elaborate further.
"Ano…." Ritsuka's hand was halfway up before he remembered the Ruler's instruction. "Magecraft is magic that we can use? I think?"
"Ritsuka," Spencer hissed sotto voce. "You didn't raise your hand."
Ritz gave their friend a worried smile, before busying himself in his tablet.
"Sorry, we're sarcastic li'l shits," Dory apologized to the teen before looking back to Socrates. "From what little I know, they've defined 'True Magic' specifically as things that science cannot do, while 'magecraft' is stuff science can replicate done via unnatural means, or something. The definition of magecraft isn't something I know super well."
Socrates frowned. "So magic is beyond science? The two exist in separate spheres?"
"Ehhh," Ko said, waggling her artificial hand back and forth, not looking up from her own note-taking.
"That can't be it," Adam felt forced to speak up on that. His spirit was laying bait, to be sure, but some things were sacred. "The point of science is that it's fairly all-encompassing. Crescat scientia vita excolatur, and all that."
"Okay, so it's weird, right?" Spencer said rhetorically. "Magic, capital M Magic, can be shorthanded as stuff humans can't replicate with technology or techniques - we just
shorten it to 'Magic is beyond science'. But it's… it's like flying. Flying
was a sorcery, bordering between magic and magecraft, and then the Wright brothers happened and now it's just magecraft. I don't think we ever actually got an example of a Magic getting downgraded like that, because the, what, five?" Spencer said, looking at Toby until he nodded, before continuing. "Of them we know about are so bonkers. But a human with two sticks can start a fire, so magecraft can too. I think. Probably."
Adam was well aware he didn't know anything about Fate magic. But while the other's statement might have been accurate, it didn't
feel right - they weren't getting to the heart of the matter.
"If human ingenuity and science can
feasibly replicate the end result, given
infinite time and resources, even if the exact method isn't known at this particular moment?" Toby hedged. "It's magecraft. That 'infinite time and resources' is the key here. The end result may be within the bounds of science, but magecraft is the shortcut to end all shortcuts, and lets you fudge all that messy methodology stuff."
"While this is accurate," Socrates acknowledged. "It doesn't answer my question. You have described the capabilities of Magecraft - you have marked its limitations. But that isn't what Magecraft
is."
Glancing up from his own notes, Adam noticed that Spencer seemed to be having difficulty digesting that.
"Don't answer the question, Toby," the man muttered to himself, spinning his cane. "Let them try, don't answer it…"
"An umbrella term for weird shit of variable degrees of explain-a-bility?" Ko suggested, picking up speed with every word as she looked back and forth between each of them in turn. "I mean, I realize this is linguistic hair-splitting, but the words 'magecraft' and 'magic' are just descriptions for phenomenon that meet certain criteria. The term for a thing is not in itself the thing, the thing - or in this case, things, or collections of 'things' - are just so difficult to pin down in specifics without fragmenting into subclassification that you need broad names for them just to keep everything tidy. Like, mechanically we might not know what precisely separates magecraft from magic in practice, or even what magic actually is in a broader sense, but we know generally what people tend to
mean when they make a distinction between the two, and the social shorthand of that lets us have conversations about them without… having to have this conversation every time. No offense," she added.
Adam felt like applauding, but refrained himself. Socrates, for his part, appeared to be mollified by his fiancée's - well - punt on linguistic grounds. Wittgenstein would be proud.
"Then perhaps a more practical question?" the all-but-self-professed teacher suggested. "Why have you not yet summoned another Servant?"
"Doctor's orders," Ko said, shrugging. "Gotta make sure the new hand is settling in properly and isn't going to act as a catalyst every time I summon from now on. If you wanna speculate about that line of reasoning, you can talk to the guy who went to medical school, 'cause I'm not gonna argue with him with my grade nine understanding of biology."
"And yourself, Jacob?"
Spencer raised his hand again, excitedly.
"Because Mordred was basically eating my soul to manifest," Dory explained. "This ate up enough of my energy that parts of me were literally dying and we want to give it some time to un-die before I put strain on myself again." So saying, he glanced over at Spence questioningly.
"Oh I'm just holding my hand up so I don't forget that I had a thing to say but didn't want to talk over people," Spencer said.
"Quite so," Socrates noted, ignoring him. "To draw forth a spirit from the Throne of Heroes requires energy from the summoner - we are no longer part of the Form of the World, and therefore our presence is an affront. Through the mixture of our energy with yours, the tension between reality and our existence is lessened." He paused. "Why is this no longer a concern?"
"Because we have Circuits now?" Adam ventured. "That was the thing all of you were so fixated on - and the vomiting and the dying ended after that."
"Correct," his Servant acknowledged. "In gaining circuits, you now possess a reservoir with which you may store the energy your body produces. This energy - od - can be combined with that of the world - mana - to create an energy with which one may enact myriad effects: prana."
Spencer lowered his hand, disappointed. "Yeah, that's the definition I remembered so I don't need to say it anymore."
"The application of Magecraft," Socrates concluded, "is the creation of these effects. But the theory behind it - is mere natural philosophy."
"You're gonna have to unpack that," Dory said dryly, "because I've seen the words 'natural philosophy' misused so many times I don't know what version you mean it as."
"Magecraft is not a thing separate from the world," Socrates clarified. "But is part of the world and bound to it. There are rules and laws which may be discovered, and the appearance of the esoteric is merely due to the veil of ignorance which surrounds us all."
"And," he continued, resting his hands at the head of the table, "now that the use of od will no longer lead to the degradation of your bodies, the natural place to begin is learning how to access it."
Well, now they were cooking with gas. Adam leaned forward, craning his neck; to his side, Dory perked up, a glance at his notes showing that he'd made some barely legible scribbles with some lines between them. The others were, in their own way, also suddenly far more attentive and serious than they had been.
"We finally done briefing the case?" Toby asked, his good leg tapping a fast and annoyingly unbalanced beat on the floor. "Can we move to the practical stuff now?"
Everyone stared at him, but he kept tapping away, undeterred.
"... who hurt you?" Ritsuka finally asked, confused.
"Law school," Toby replied.
"Revealed preference," Adam cut in immediately, pointing at him. "You wanted that path."
"I knowwww," Toby sighed.
Adam didn't know if he should take offense. Revealed preference was a useful tool, dammit; people needed to appreciate it more.
Dory held up a hand, less in a classroom manner than to draw attention to himself. "So, wait, I thought turning on circuits required conditioning due to the self hypnosis aspect. That, and that it was dangerous as fuck?"
Socrates stroked his beard. "Can one ever truly harm oneself?"
"Yes. Easily," Dory replied drolly. "For most definitions of self and harm."
"But" Socrates held up a finger. "It is against human nature to harm oneself, for none who knows or believes in a better course of action will ever continue on their present course when they are able to choose the latter. It is merely ignorance which causes harm - while knowledge can only improve a thing. And knowledge of the soul is, of course, the highest of all."
Ko and Spencer exchanged an awkwardly amused look, but said nothing.
Adam furrowed his brow - learning from Socrates in person was as frustrating and obtuse as trying to parse the man from his writings. He was leading them to a thing, trying to spur on a discovery from within themselves-
"So being a magus is to carry a mindset antithetical to that of a normal person," Toby grumbled, breaking the other man from his train of thought. "Got it."
"To be a magus is to walk with death," Spencer bobbed his head in agreement. The way he said those words implied he was quoting; Spence wasn't one for nonstandard sentence structure, or that blunt a fatalism.
"Mm…" Ritz seemed deep in thought as well. "So our circuits are… part of our soul? And to activate them is to embrace that part?"
Socrates' smile confirmed they were on the right track.
"It's like… wearing a tie," Adam said slowly. "Or putting on a uniform. Bringing a different part of ourselves to the forefront."
The others seemed to be following this line as well, and so Socrates held up a hand.
"A soul is a contradiction - singular, yet divided. You must all think of a mindset so as to bring those qualities you associate most with the art you are learning to the fore. Fundamental to this are your own perceptions of what it is you are doing. Then, a word or phrase as well, for it is in words that we can most affect that which is unseen. In this, I cannot help you. As is written above the door to the great Oracle at Delphi: Know Thyself."
And like that, the gang had their first homework assignment.
Jacob | Andoriol
"-and make my vow: I shall be all that is brightest in heaven! I shall be covered in all that is blackest in hell!"
Ko's preferred aria was easily the most dramatic of any of theirs. He'd occasionally wondered where exactly she'd gotten that translation and had the chance to memorize it. Becoming 'the brightness of heaven covered with the darkness of hell' was certainly more on-brand for magi than 'being good and defeating all evil'. He might steal that for his aria.
"Thou seven heavens, clad in a trinity of words, come past thy restraining rings, and be thou the hands that protect the balance!"
The golden light from the completed ritual began to fade, revealing a petite silhouette in a dramatic peaked cap… before a dark mist seeped from below it. Even as the shadowy intrusion engulfed the summoned form, the fading light crackled forth once again, an unseen wind blowing Ko's hair back and momentarily battering the glass of the observation deck window. As the breeze got stronger, his friend started to brace herself - only to be unceremoniously knocked on her ass as the raw power she'd poured into the summoning burst from the circle.
The woman that stepped out from the pillar of light was, like many of the female Servants, unfairly gorgeous. More lithe than most, a golden scale cuirass over a skintight purple bodysuit with affectations towards being a swimsuit, finished off by a brief, armored skirt. Her bare arms were a riot of tattoos, some in a spiral pattern, others resembling strange animals, and her dark auburn hair, almost maroon in the artificial light, fell in two thick braids over each shoulder.
Aaaand he was staring because she was pretty. This was a bad habit.
"From the Land of Shadows," she said in a smoky contralto, "I am come forth, into the class of… hm. Assassin, apparently. I suppose it will have to do."
Ko stared up at the woman in undisguised awe.
"What is thy bidding, my master?" she asked, still on the ground and pointedly
not rising, her eyes fixed on the woman.
The Servant's eyes narrowed. And wasn't
that intrinsically concerning?
"It's a rare talent," she said flatly, "making sincere obeisance look like mockery."
Ko froze, and let out a barely-audible chuckle, understandably nervous.
"Certainly it's more useful than an improvisational streak that makes you think a hand and your ability to organize your own mind are a fair trade for a single victory," the auburn-haired woman went on, sounding no more impressed than before as she stepped off the shield. "Have you even noticed you've been speaking multiple languages per sentence all week?"
"What?!" Indy yelped.
Ko winced, and got to her feet, dusting off her pants. "Aw, tell everyone, why don't ya…"
"My fiancée has been Mat Cauthon'ing and I didn't even notice?!"
Da Vinci sighed from her place at the console, monitoring the summoning. "You've all been wearing your translation talismans, Adam," she reminded him. "Because Fujimaru-kun does not feel comfortable with his English - and many of the staff do not speak the language at all."
Indy was letting out a long, low, pained note.
"Training starts immediately," Scathach was stating, when Jacob refocused on the actual summoning room. "Take me to the least-breakable room you have."
Ko's grin was almost feral as she turned and dashed for the door. "Understood, master!"
"Do I look remotely Japanese to you…?" the Servant sighed, rolling her eyes and following at a more sedate pace. Servant training actually sounded like a great idea, Jacob wondered if he could sit in–
Before any of them could properly react to this latest development, there was a knock at the door to the observation deck. Without waiting for a response, a small giant opened it, and walked into the room.
The newcomer was a Chinese man with terracotta skin, his shining black hair tightly bound in a topknot before cascading past his shoulders. He wasn't the size of Heracles, but at almost seven feet he was closer than anyone else in the room. His neck was nearly as thick as any of their thighs; fierce green eyes were set in a face that naturally seemed to scowl, punctuated by a short, well trimmed beard that followed his jawline and came to a dagger-sharp point. A thick robe of black silk, with intricate gold and bronze designs and a blood-red lining was draped on his massive frame, looking as ill-suited to his being as it was perfectly tailored to his form.
"Who is this man he is very tall," Indy muttered under his breath, nervously humming.
"Hello new Masters!" the man boomed out, a wide, toothy smile unnaturally stretched across his features. "I suppose I should be thanking one of you for my presence here!"
"Hello new Servant!" Spence shouted right back in the exact same tone. "I don't know anything about that but I like the cut of your jib!"
Jacob bobbed his head, amused even if he was doing his best to be polite. "It's a pleasure to meet you."
"... I'm pretty sure I know who this is," Toby whispered fretfully. "But this just raises
so many more questions."
"Ha-ha!" the man with no concept of an indoor voice exclaimed, before he rushed to Toby's side and lifted him into the air with a bear hug. "So it was you, then!"
Toby, gasping and wheezing, smacked on the Servant's arm with his cane, repeatedly, as the life was summarily crushed out of him.
"Lord Yu, please," da Vinci chided. "Humans in this time are more fragile than you may remember."
"Oh very well," Lord Yu grumbled, releasing the poor, pale lawyer-to-be. "Jacob, I am Xiang Yu, Rider! And my Master is the love of my life, and the mate to my soul. Even if the seas should dry and the mountains crumble, I would know her. Ah, y-you know, Hinako. Akuta Hinako."
He flashed another wide smile. It had very clearly been practiced in a mirror. By candlelight.
Toby had frozen, possibly because he was still recovering from the very large man's bear hug.
The addressed Dory raised a hand. "Pardon, I haven't met your beloved yet; I was under the impression that we'd only had Ritsuka as a Master prior to our arrival."
"And you did, Jacob!" Xiang Yu nodded vigorously. "But this brave, little… small… tiny crippled man saved her from the brink of death!"
Toby, a pained look still etched onto his face, looked to be about to offer some kind of objection, but shut his mouth with a very audible click.
"And so she has agreed to assist Chaldea in its restoration of the Human Order!"
He looked down for a moment, and kicked lightly at the ground, shockingly quietly given the construction of the room, let alone the half-expected but nonexistent cratering.
"Spencer, she… ah… objects to taking me into a Singularity," he pouted. "So she is to try for another -" cutting himself off, he rushed to the large window over the summoning chamber. "Ah, there she is, that woman more deserving than an emperor!"
The aforementioned woman that had stepped through the doorway to the summoning room was, without any exaggeration, gorgeous. Even compared to the female Servants, or the form Leonardo da Vinci had crafted for herself, all of whom were amazingly beautiful. It was somewhat uncomfortable actually: smooth skin, soft features that somehow retained an edge of refinement, full lips and large eyes without even remotely straying to disproportionate. Brown-black hair in twintails that reached to her calves, a simple pair of glasses on her face, with loose, if well tailored robes and sweater.
Xiang Yu's beloved apparently lived up to the hype, stoic or not.
"Let's get this over with," she muttered, though her words were still audible in the control room.
With zero fanfare, the woman clapped her hands together once with a loud sound before holding out a hand.
Light
erupted the very moment she finished the gesture. It had flooded the design over the shield before rupturing forth into a pure white geyser of power.
"Meep." Indy's eyes were very wide.
Goddamn. Jacob couldn't help but blink past the afterimages in his eyes.
Even Rin, the fucking prodigy, needed an incantation and proper timing. What the shit.
The Servant who appeared in the circle was a pale Japanese woman of average height, with a pure black sailor uniform and blood red bow, a black scarf draped casually around her neck. She floated slightly above the ground; as she tilted her head, considering her new Master, her extraordinarily long hair actually making noise as it shifted against the shield.
"Rider: Oryou-san." She lifted her index finger to point at the man in white who had manifested a moment later, precariously balanced and half sitting on one of her slim shoulders. "Also, this is Oryou's human, Ryouma-"
"How do you do!" he said with a cheerful tip of his hat, the other hand holding on for balance.
"-please take care of him. He gets in trouble when Oryou-san is not around." She said cheerfully, the motions making her hair grind like a knife on a stone against the shield.
Hinako remained silent. So did Oryou, apparently content with her brief introduction.
'Paired servants? Or is he part of her phantasm or skills the way Iskander's stuff was?'
"Ah…" Ryouma trailed off with a nervous smile. "I'll... be in your care, then."
"...Acceptable," Hinako stated, before turning to leave. The paired Servant(s?) hesitated for a moment before following after her.
"Wonderful!" Xiang Yu was practically bouncing on his toes and holding up a fist in excitement, his voice booming in the enclosed space. "Adam, I've never had to test a Japanese before! Only the finest shall be worthy of defending my Master!"
Ignoring Indy's slightly confused look, Jacob nodded absently, before turning to Toby with a questioning look. "So, infodumps incoming?"
The other man shrugged. "Don't got much to tell you," he said. "Dude's a diplomat and happens to be a dragon's pet-slash-husband."
"Marvelous," Xiang Yu rumbled. "You don't have the eyes for Clairvoyance, Bennett, but I wish to dissect your brain when you die!"
Abby, who had apparently been present the entire time, appeared in a shimmer of purple light and
glared at Xiang Yu, hands on her hips. The Chinese Servant seemed to take it as a challenge, and what had to be the world's most vertically-differentiated staring contest ensued. Jacob's mind struggled to find a way to defuse the situation; his friend group being what it was he had something on tap for those sorts of morbid comments, but handling overprotective eldritch children and massive socially-awkward warriors was a bit outside his wheelhouse.
Some very uncomfortable and quiet moments later, the door to the observation room opened without fanfare, revealing Hinako's flat expression and part one of her Servant floating behind her.
"Ah, my dearest," Xiang Yu immediately spun on a dime and knelt, arms out in something between worship and supplication, bringing him down to only a foot taller than the rest of them.
Lucky man, definitely. Jacob thought to himself as the women walked in, the diplomat following close behind them.
"My lord," the Master inclined her head towards the Rider. "Are you quite finished… socializing?"
"Ah, Miss Hinako?" Jacob smiled, both because they had someone of that level of power backing them up, and also that she'd broken up the awkwardness before. He gave a small bow. "It's a pleasure."
Hinako's flat gaze was utterly devoid of humanity. "Master Jacob. I am aware of our mission. Unless we are actively resolving a Singularity, I see little need for us to interact. Are we clear?"
The man's eyebrows went up in surprise even as he bit back his immediate dismissive reaction, instead searching for a more diplomatic way to say 'We're clear, but given the picture is terrible, I've elected to ignore it'. This wasn't like a normal workplace, they'd have to interact outside of the Singularities at least a
bit. She knew that, right?
Without waiting for an answer, her attention returned to Xiang Yu. "Are you finished, Lord Yu?"
"Of course, my love!" Springing forward, the man caught his Master around the waist, and with a careless toss, threw her over his shoulder.
"No!" she shrieked, as he carried her back out through the still-open door to the observation deck, his laugh filling the hall with every step. Despite the twist of her lips, the brilliant red of her otherwise pale cheeks and the crinkle around her eyes indicated the mortification was at least partially a front. "My lord! Please! Not in public! Not in front of them…."
Jacob's eyebrows went up. That was a dynamic and a half and he was unsure if he should interfere.
Oryou began to drift with the pair when the Rider passed the woman's newer Servants, but Ryouma gently grabbed the back of her shirt collar with an ease born of long practice, and she nonchalantly turned back to look the rest of them over instead.
"Wow," Ryouma gave a nervous little laugh, pulling his still floating companion along with him. "Uh… sorry. I think. I'm Sakamoto Ryouma-"
"-and Oryou-san is Oryou-san-"
"-and I do hope we haven't gotten off on the wrong foot."
"You have nothing to apologize for." Jacob nodded, smiling at them with honest warmth, shoving his concerns about their Master aside and extending a hand."But it's a pleasure to meet you both."
It was honestly a pretty big room.
Not quite the size of a football field, but it was big enough that it'd take a hot minute to sprint from the doorway at the end with the summoning circle to the far end where the observation deck and control room were at.
Jacob wasn't used to having his back to the audience, but he'd done enough conducting to at least be able to compartmentalize the feeling.
He was, surprisingly, the last up. By two whole days, in fact. Apparently, fueling Mordred fighting Heracles and later the entire clusterfuck of a final battle was actually worse than fueling Fionn and losing a hand.
It'd actually reopened the hole in his heart. Which explained why his chest had ached something fierce.
Jacob rubbed his fingers together slowly, massaging the half numb hands, only hearing the knuckles pop rather than feeling it. Instead it was mostly a tingling buzz. He hadn't entirely lost feeling in them, but according to Roman, he was lucky they hadn't had to cut anything off due to gangrene.
Some nerve endings were probably worth keeping all of his fingers, but still.
His concerns, worries, plans, all of that had to be shoved aside.
A little grin crossed his face. He was going to be really cranky for like, a week or so until he could adjust to the constant, irritating sensations his nerves were sending, like touch-based tinnitus.
The watch beeped and he quietly pushed the button to turn it off. Five minutes to his peak. Technically 2:14, obnoxiously off kilter. He hadn't gotten the hang of opening his circuits on command yet, he was working on it, but even
feeling his od as a distinct thing was difficult, so it was hard to tell when the circuits were
on. Regardless… mental conditioning could be done.
A twitch of his right thumb, the mental click of a mechanism as he softly murmured, "Safeties Off."
Jacob took a slow breath, five count in through the mouth and nose, fifteen count out through the embouchure with no pause. Full tidal volume.
Five count in. Fifteen count out.
In. Out.
"Heed my words. My will creates your body."
Focus. Emptiness. The circle. The lines. From the diaphragm, pitch, control, tempo.
"Your sword creates my fate."
Eyes open but unseeing, the same as he'd done when auditioning for band, for becoming band captain, for acting, for his driving test.
In. Out.
"I hereby swear:"
The light was blazing, shifting, intricate and interwoven, but his eyes unfocused. The world around him had fallen away, all there was… was him.
Empty.
A vessel.
The symbols. The chant. He was here to save the world, and his focus was upon the call. Someone he could work with. Someone to save humanity
"I shall be all the good in the world."
Reduce suffering. Stop harm. Improve lives. Enjoy life and help others do so as well.
"And I shall defeat all of its evils."
Those that would vaporize the world. Those that would destroy humanity. Those that would inflict cruelty upon all.
In. Out.
"Thou Seventh Heaven, clad in the three great words of power. Come forth from the circle of binding, Guardian of the Scales!"
An aurora erupted from the circle, blinding his eyes but he forced himself to stare into the light, hand held up and refusing to flinch at the sound and light.
The light faded, and his eyes finally attempted to refocus on the red, gold, white and… pink?
Oh.
He'd known it was possible, he'd definitely made a connection with her in Okeanos, and apparently that's a large part of how summoning worked.
Full lips, the jagged scar across her face, the extremely distracting cleavage her coat was practically designed to show off. And then brilliantly blue eyes opened, her lips quirking upwards into a smirk.
But given the nature of Heroic Spirits, and heck, of Singularities correcting time in general, the gorgeous pirate wouldn't remember any of that. And he doubted he'd make quite as good of an impression without the framing of Okeanos. A sad truth of only the most important aspects transferring back for summons.
"Oho? So you're the new master? I'm Francis Drake."
Probably best to at least
try to be professional and not be weird about having met her beforehand. With a smile, Jacob put a hand to his chest and bowed slightly, "My name is Jacob, one of the Masters of Chaldea. It's a pleasure.
Something in her smile changed. "So I'm to be below you? That sure sounds promising!"
"Hah!" The bark of laughter escaped Jacob before he could help it. Wagging a finger at her warningly even as heat flooded his cheeks. "You stop that."
"Ohhh?" She stepped off the shield with what could only be called a purr, calmly walking straight up to the master, smirking up at the bearded man. "You don't plan to cash in that rain check?"
His train of thought hit a cow.
"Wooooo!" he heard Indy call out, one floor up and a mental country or two away. "Go Dory Go!"
The flash of a grin on her face, the sultry smirk when he'd stammered out the line, the warmth in his arms and the scent of the ocean and rum and powder.
"I… had not expected it to come up… or still be valid." He was proud he hadn't stammered.
The intercom clicked on. "Brother Dory," Spence's voice echoed over the speakers. "Lock the reliquary." There was a loud scuffling sound, and the intercom clicked off.
Jacob snorted, shaking his head.
"You have a reliquary?" Drake asked.
"Not to my knowledge."
"Then we're cleaning out his room later." She smirked. "I take this as a challenge."
Chuckling, he gave a shake of his head. "Entirely understandable. Sadly limited on what to take, so pranking is probably more on the table."
Her grin widened as she threw an arm around his waist, making his arm go around her shoulders. "We'll make do somehow."
Without a care in the world, she began to move towards the doorway, "And maybe this time you'll actually put hands on something other than my hat or boots."
If his face hadn't already felt like it was on fire, now it
definitely did
"So," she drawled. "Where can a pirate get drunk in this joint?"
