spencer1519
(Verified Heretic)
- Location
- Oregon, USA
That is literally how they got me into the Nobumobile, yes. Though it was much more of a threat in my case.
It's Always Snowy in Chaldea [Fate/Grand Order Group SI]
- Thread starter October Daye
- Start date
Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
Local version of SSSSGridman?
I thought Americans gave tips because employers don't pay their staff a livable wage, and need customers to make up the remainder?
How popular is Musashi amongst Fate/ fans, I wonder? I like her, from what we've seen of her personality in story, but I dunno how she compares to more flagship characters like Rin, Saber, Nero and Tamamo.
I'm quite curious about whatever Adam has as an Element; must be problematic if it also got hidden, alongside his Origin.
Spectral Waltz
Scatterbrained Writer
- Location
- Walking the Endless Corridors
Oh hell yes. Nobu is always great, one of the most down to earth servants while still being completely bugfuck insane.
Musashi is popular mostly because she's very casual. Arturia, Rin, Nero, Tamamo, they're all extraordinarily uptight people for one reason or another. Now that straight-laced seriousness and/or the gap between their 'proper' attitudes and things like Rin being Tsun or Nero being a hedonist are part of the appeal for them, but Musashi is very relatable. She's a crazy-powerful swordswoman and possibly a Grand, but she's also just super chill and fun to be around.
Of all the Servants in FGO, she's one of a few that I think I would actually mutually get along with, and I think that a lot of other fans feel the same way.
It also helps that she's a recurring character. Most of the servants are effectively different incarnations of themselves each time they appear. London Mordred is basically nothing like Camelot Mordred after all. Musashi on the other hand is explicitely the same person at different stages of her own personal journey in each event and singularity, and it's pretty clear that each time she meets you it's because her own journey happens to be intersecting with your own. Because of that, she feels a little more fully-formed than many of the other servants that appear, since you see her grow and change with each interaction and get a sense for how the times you've met her have contributed to both her growth and your own.
Plus it's just... Really heartwarming to see how happy she is when she realizes it's you, that other crazy dimension-hopping guy/girl. And really heartbreaking when she finally dies and transcends to the throne to become an actual servant.
I know there's the New Orleans Saints sports team, but I'm really hopeful that's a sign of a stealth Saint's Row crossover.
floppy_seal99
D-O-G-A-R-S DOGARS!
- Location
- snooping as usual
"New Awlins Saints?" I'm not a big sportsball guy. Who dat?
- Pronouns
- She/Her
FOOL! Nobunaga does as she pleases!
Fixed that for ya.
Essentially, yes.
Yup, that's exactly it, but sometimes people give additional tips for other reasons.
Any time Musashi showed up while I was going through FGO JP, I was super happy.
Every time she showed up while I was going through FGO NA was... melancholy as shit, cause I know everything that's coming down the pipeline where she's concerned.
WHO DAT SAY DEY GON' BEAT DEM SAINTS!?
floppy_seal99
D-O-G-A-R-S DOGARS!
- Location
- snooping as usual
Absolutely. I'm effectively sports-illiterate outside of New England, but my mother had a genuinely wonderful time in NO while earning her degree at Tulane Law so I know a bit about that.
Only four things in the known universe can beat Dem Saints:
1) Corrupt refs (FUCKING ROBBED)
2) The number of candles on Brees' birthday cake (either 2nd or 3rd GOAT imo)
3) The convoluted mess commonly called the NFL salary cap.
4) Oh, and Tom Brady apparently. That was unexpected.
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Crazy Noisy Bizarre Town | Canon Rating: C+
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Crazy Noisy Bizarre Town
Canon Rating: C+
Spencer
Spencer hefted the slowly-filling bag of cash over his shoulder as he pulled the black card da Vinci had given him out of the machine. Money always took up a lot less space than he expected, and he really should have been used to it by now. He'd been inside the counting rooms at the casino he worked at years ago. He knew, intellectually, that ten thousand dollars in hundred dollar bills was less than an inch high. And that the same amount in twenties was barely four inches.
He was grateful that the card had been designed to just work on its own. Stick the card in the machine, press the on screen prompts as the card told the machine that it's funds were yes through the power of wizardry and the arcane, and then collect the two to six thousand dollars deposited into the tray.
Pull the card, move on to the next site.
It was an elegant system. It didn't draw too much attention, either. It left the vast majority of the money in the machine. He could have been pulling a lot more. But instead it was just an amount that fit in the collection tray that he could grab, wrap two rubber bands around, and dump into the bag.
"Checking in," he said, tapping the device around his wrist, "site twenty-two clear, moving on to twenty three."
"You're a little ahead of schedule if you'd like to take a break," Dr. Roman said over the comms. "You've got about fifteen minutes of slack at this point."
He hadn't actually intended to do that. He'd just gotten into the rhythm of thievery.
"I'll never say no to not working," he said, before setting the bag down pretty much on the spot and sitting down on a wooden box poking out of the mouth of an alley.
He leaned his head back against the brickwork of the building…
And snapped awake as he felt the tug of the strap from the duffelbag he'd looped around his wrist.
"Drop the bag, dickhead," A voice snapped.
Spencer looked up and saw what appeared to be two teenagers trying to rob him. The only thing stopping them had been the fact that Spencer had thought far enough ahead to grab the strap before it could come off his arm.
"Or what," Spencer said, on instinct, "you'll beat me up?"
"Or I'll cap your ass!" the taller of the two said, reaching behind him.
Oh shit, Spencer thought, nearly letting go of the bag before he remembered something.
"Shazam," he said, as he focused on the image in his mind of a lone tree in an otherwise empty field being struck by lightning. A point in the center of his chest began to warm, and that warmth spread out to his limbs in short order.
Before the gun could clear the would-be robber's belt, Spencer had already managed to utter a one-line phrase. "Nayka Wawa."
The other one, the shorter boy in the jersey who had been trying to wrestle the bag from him, suddenly dropped it. "What the fuck!?" he yelled as he noticed the tall one go slack.
"Hey man," Spencer said. "Drop the gun and go for a walk, yeah? You'll feel way better."
"Yeah, that makes sense," he responded, before letting the gun clatter to the ground and walking down the alley.
"What the-"
"And you don't want to rob me," Spencer said as he made eye contact with the shorter robber. "You want to take a nap."
He had just put the jersey on and was picking up the gun when the police cruiser rolled up by the alley.
"Oh hell," he muttered, before deciding that fuck it, this might as well happen today. "Hey guys? I'm gonna be ditching the whole ATM route thing. 'Cause I've been made by the cops and I'm holding a gun in an alley over an unconscious teenager."
The wrist band crackled with a little static before Roman's voice echoed over it. "It hasn't even been five minutes! How did this happen!?"
"Uh, can't hear you, you're going through a tunnel…" Spencer mumbled before switching the band off.
When he'd tested his hypnosis against volunteers in Chaldea, he'd learned some annoying facts about his ability to mess with other people's brains. The first problem was that he was bad at it. Or, more accurately, he couldn't make people do anything particularly unreasonable. He could manage a decent imitation of the jedi mind trick.
The other problem is that it didn't usually last very long. Ten minutes, tops. 'You want to take a nap,' was the most effective hypnosis command he'd discovered so far.
Which meant he had ten minutes to ditch the cop car he'd stolen. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It would give him the ability to get more distance and make it harder for the cop to chase him when he woke up.
"Great, first time on a solo mission and the entire opp is shot. There's no way I'm going to be able to hit any more… A… T… Heh."
He chuckled to himself as the cruiser coasted by an unfamiliar familiar building.
Sure, he'd never been in this particular casino, but if you've been in one casino you've been in all of them. And if you've been in one counting room surrounded by stacks of cash you've fantasised about grabbing a fistful of stacks and making a break for it. And if you knew three magic spells, one of which was hypnosis…
Fantastic the black card worked at casino atms. And the casino atms were stocked.
He muttered the incantation under his breath, then made eye contact with the person that had just put half their chips into the pot, and no small number of them the fancy placard kinds that represented the big dollars.
"You really don't have a chance against me. You should just fold. These cards I'm holding are definitely a royal flush."
"Damn, I can't beat a royal flush… I fold..."
"What the shit, Jerry! You had three queens!"
Spencer shrugged as he slipped his still facedown hand of absolutely nothing to the dealer to be shuffled into the deck. He'd won enough to make this part of the trip worth it, to get a reason for security to need to go back into the count room. He'd only had to get a few hypnotized answers to completely innocent questions to determine what his route was going to be.
The plan was simple. He was going to hypnotize the security escort, slip into the count room through the man trap and hopefully grab and dash fast enough that surveillance wouldn't be able to stop him before he found an exit.
Easy.
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuckity fuck fuck! SHIT!"
He bolted out of the side door, men in uniforms shouting behind him to stop.
To his dismay, the police cruiser he'd parked in the lot was surrounded by several other police cruisers and what he was pretty sure was a SWAT van.
It is shockingly easy to steal a SWAT van when you suggest that the cops are actually here to raid the casino and shut it down because you're a member of the mob and you're not going back to prison.
Sure, it meant a bunch of security guards got tackled by the police, but no one got shot so Spencer didn't feel all that guilty about it.
And after about a minute the suggestion wore off anyway so it's not like there was even room for anyone to escalate. Just a couple of seconds of confusion.
Spencer looked in the rearview mirror and frowned.
But how do I lose them? he wondered to himself.
The swat van was at the bottom of the river, and it turns out that what little self reinforcement he had gotten a handle on was just enough to get him far enough down river to get out of the water where no one would see him.
Spencer quickly opened the bag, a little afraid that he might have fucked up the stolen-
Nope, it was fine. The bag was completely dry on the inside.
"All hail the universal genius," he muttered, zipping the bag back up.
All he had to do now was make the rendezvous point a few hours from now and get out of this singularity so it could collapse in on itself, thus erasing all record and memory of anything he'd done here forever.
And no one had to know that he'd done anything more than rob a handful of ATMs.
...
He was keeping the gun. So he'd need to explain that.
And nothing else.
Canon Rating: C+
Spencer
Spencer hefted the slowly-filling bag of cash over his shoulder as he pulled the black card da Vinci had given him out of the machine. Money always took up a lot less space than he expected, and he really should have been used to it by now. He'd been inside the counting rooms at the casino he worked at years ago. He knew, intellectually, that ten thousand dollars in hundred dollar bills was less than an inch high. And that the same amount in twenties was barely four inches.
He was grateful that the card had been designed to just work on its own. Stick the card in the machine, press the on screen prompts as the card told the machine that it's funds were yes through the power of wizardry and the arcane, and then collect the two to six thousand dollars deposited into the tray.
Pull the card, move on to the next site.
It was an elegant system. It didn't draw too much attention, either. It left the vast majority of the money in the machine. He could have been pulling a lot more. But instead it was just an amount that fit in the collection tray that he could grab, wrap two rubber bands around, and dump into the bag.
"Checking in," he said, tapping the device around his wrist, "site twenty-two clear, moving on to twenty three."
"You're a little ahead of schedule if you'd like to take a break," Dr. Roman said over the comms. "You've got about fifteen minutes of slack at this point."
He hadn't actually intended to do that. He'd just gotten into the rhythm of thievery.
"I'll never say no to not working," he said, before setting the bag down pretty much on the spot and sitting down on a wooden box poking out of the mouth of an alley.
He leaned his head back against the brickwork of the building…
And snapped awake as he felt the tug of the strap from the duffelbag he'd looped around his wrist.
"Drop the bag, dickhead," A voice snapped.
Spencer looked up and saw what appeared to be two teenagers trying to rob him. The only thing stopping them had been the fact that Spencer had thought far enough ahead to grab the strap before it could come off his arm.
"Or what," Spencer said, on instinct, "you'll beat me up?"
"Or I'll cap your ass!" the taller of the two said, reaching behind him.
Oh shit, Spencer thought, nearly letting go of the bag before he remembered something.
"Shazam," he said, as he focused on the image in his mind of a lone tree in an otherwise empty field being struck by lightning. A point in the center of his chest began to warm, and that warmth spread out to his limbs in short order.
Before the gun could clear the would-be robber's belt, Spencer had already managed to utter a one-line phrase. "Nayka Wawa."
The other one, the shorter boy in the jersey who had been trying to wrestle the bag from him, suddenly dropped it. "What the fuck!?" he yelled as he noticed the tall one go slack.
"Hey man," Spencer said. "Drop the gun and go for a walk, yeah? You'll feel way better."
"Yeah, that makes sense," he responded, before letting the gun clatter to the ground and walking down the alley.
"What the-"
"And you don't want to rob me," Spencer said as he made eye contact with the shorter robber. "You want to take a nap."
He had just put the jersey on and was picking up the gun when the police cruiser rolled up by the alley.
"Oh hell," he muttered, before deciding that fuck it, this might as well happen today. "Hey guys? I'm gonna be ditching the whole ATM route thing. 'Cause I've been made by the cops and I'm holding a gun in an alley over an unconscious teenager."
The wrist band crackled with a little static before Roman's voice echoed over it. "It hasn't even been five minutes! How did this happen!?"
"Uh, can't hear you, you're going through a tunnel…" Spencer mumbled before switching the band off.
When he'd tested his hypnosis against volunteers in Chaldea, he'd learned some annoying facts about his ability to mess with other people's brains. The first problem was that he was bad at it. Or, more accurately, he couldn't make people do anything particularly unreasonable. He could manage a decent imitation of the jedi mind trick.
The other problem is that it didn't usually last very long. Ten minutes, tops. 'You want to take a nap,' was the most effective hypnosis command he'd discovered so far.
Which meant he had ten minutes to ditch the cop car he'd stolen. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It would give him the ability to get more distance and make it harder for the cop to chase him when he woke up.
"Great, first time on a solo mission and the entire opp is shot. There's no way I'm going to be able to hit any more… A… T… Heh."
He chuckled to himself as the cruiser coasted by an unfamiliar familiar building.
Sure, he'd never been in this particular casino, but if you've been in one casino you've been in all of them. And if you've been in one counting room surrounded by stacks of cash you've fantasised about grabbing a fistful of stacks and making a break for it. And if you knew three magic spells, one of which was hypnosis…
Fantastic the black card worked at casino atms. And the casino atms were stocked.
He muttered the incantation under his breath, then made eye contact with the person that had just put half their chips into the pot, and no small number of them the fancy placard kinds that represented the big dollars.
"You really don't have a chance against me. You should just fold. These cards I'm holding are definitely a royal flush."
"Damn, I can't beat a royal flush… I fold..."
"What the shit, Jerry! You had three queens!"
Spencer shrugged as he slipped his still facedown hand of absolutely nothing to the dealer to be shuffled into the deck. He'd won enough to make this part of the trip worth it, to get a reason for security to need to go back into the count room. He'd only had to get a few hypnotized answers to completely innocent questions to determine what his route was going to be.
The plan was simple. He was going to hypnotize the security escort, slip into the count room through the man trap and hopefully grab and dash fast enough that surveillance wouldn't be able to stop him before he found an exit.
Easy.
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuckity fuck fuck! SHIT!"
He bolted out of the side door, men in uniforms shouting behind him to stop.
To his dismay, the police cruiser he'd parked in the lot was surrounded by several other police cruisers and what he was pretty sure was a SWAT van.
It is shockingly easy to steal a SWAT van when you suggest that the cops are actually here to raid the casino and shut it down because you're a member of the mob and you're not going back to prison.
Sure, it meant a bunch of security guards got tackled by the police, but no one got shot so Spencer didn't feel all that guilty about it.
And after about a minute the suggestion wore off anyway so it's not like there was even room for anyone to escalate. Just a couple of seconds of confusion.
Spencer looked in the rearview mirror and frowned.
But how do I lose them? he wondered to himself.
The swat van was at the bottom of the river, and it turns out that what little self reinforcement he had gotten a handle on was just enough to get him far enough down river to get out of the water where no one would see him.
Spencer quickly opened the bag, a little afraid that he might have fucked up the stolen-
Nope, it was fine. The bag was completely dry on the inside.
"All hail the universal genius," he muttered, zipping the bag back up.
All he had to do now was make the rendezvous point a few hours from now and get out of this singularity so it could collapse in on itself, thus erasing all record and memory of anything he'd done here forever.
And no one had to know that he'd done anything more than rob a handful of ATMs.
...
He was keeping the gun. So he'd need to explain that.
And nothing else.
Blinktwice13
Underpaid Struggle Bus Attendant
- Location
- Eastern US
- Pronouns
- He/Him
So THAT'S where he got the gun!
- Location
- Not here
Wait where did he use a gun?
Strayed
No Gravy Beam for you.
From the idiot who tried to mug him.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I mean, he looked like an easy mark. He looked like an out-of-towner and he wasn't wearing any Saints gear!
Just too bad he happened to know how to make people suddenly think the ground is the best mattress and now is the best time of day for a power nap!
It wasn't used, but rather mentioned/observed. It was in the previous chapter, about two thirds of the way through, in what, at the time, could have been seen as a noodle incident until you got to see it in this interlude. Relevant quote below:
It remains to be seen whether or not it becomes a Chekhov's Gun in subsequent chapters.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Schrödinger's Chekhov's Gun: any particular object, person, technique, spell, etc that may or may not be a Chekhov's Gun shall exist as both a gun on the wall and just a fun anecdote until deliberately proven to be otherwise.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
I said elsewhere that this would get Chaldea into shit, but then I remembered what Nobu's doing in the main story. Becoming Time Bandits was already going to happen, it seems.
GUDAGUDA Tiber Fever | Chapter XIII
- Pronouns
- She/Her
GUDAGUDA Tiber Fever | Chapter XIII
Adam | Indy
The door to Akuta's room cracked open slowly and stopped almost immediately. All Adam could see was one brown eye, staring murderously back at him.
"What?"
His heart was pounding in his chest - he'd all but sprinted down the halls to get here.
"My-my fiancée," he gasped out. "We don't know where she or Spencer is. We think she's been-"
"-not my problem."
The door closed.
"Fuck you too, bitch," he muttered darkly, turning away from the last Master's room, only to stagger as his legs finally won their argument with his body. He moved into a controlled collapse against the wall, panting, as he tried to martial his thoughts.
About one hour ago, an unknown vehicle had appeared in Chaldea. It had then collected quite a few of the organization's Servants - thankfully none of his - as well as both Spencer and Ko, before speeding off… somewhere.
Given that there was actually literal nothing outside of Chaldea, exactly where they'd been kidnapped to was quite the puzzle. Roman and the techs were working on that - something about following spiritron trails - but he was rallying the troops. Or attempting to rally.
"This is Ritsuka," the Japanese teen sounded worried through his earpiece. "I can't find Mashu anywhere either."
"Can't make contact with Drake, no one's seen Boudica or Priya that I've spoken with." Dory said, "I've got Mordred with me, still making a sweep."
"Nobody's missing on my end, but that seems to be the exception," Toby relayed. "Gonna go grab the Pharaoh. Roman, since it's sounding like an all hands scenario, I'm sending Abby your way."
"...Spencer is also nowhere to be found," Adam noted. "Hinako is… present. And not coming." The bitch.
"Roger that. And yes, this is a serious problem indeed," Roman confirmed. "But I think I have it. We've tracked them to the Italian peninsula, circa 61 AD. One year after the Septem Singularity."
"Doctor," Ritz's tone was deadly serious. "Do you think this might have something to do with whoever is responsible for the Incineration of Humanity?"
"I'm not ruling it out," he said grimly. "They've taken da Vinci too. Aside from you, Fujimaru, there isn't anyone more essential to Chaldea's operations."
A brief pause. "Akuta Hinako isn't coming unless it's directly related," Roman continued. "But I'm mobilizing the rest of you. Bring the strongest Servants you have - for if we cannot find da Vinci-chan and the others, I don't know if we can continue onwards."
Just what he wanted to hear when the biggest thing on his plate for the day had been further exploration of his not-Reinforcement.
Adam made a fist. "By my Command Seal," he declared, the back of his left hand burning. "Socrates - meet me in the Rayshift Chamber." It might have been a waste of resources - but he wasn't in the mindset for the inevitable "discussion" with the Ruler about his decision.
He didn't run to the Chamber - his already-racing heart wouldn't let him.
She had to be safe. She was tough, strong, and being trained by a very scary lady that he'd broken his "no Wikipedia'ing Servants" rule for.
Unfortunately, Scathach was also nowhere to be found, either.
The rest of them were already prepped to climb into the Rayshift pods when he arrived.
"Alright, you're here… fucking hell, man." Toby ran a shaky hand back through his hair to try and calm himself, all while very deliberately ignoring the Pharaoh beside him.
Dory approached, putting a hand on Adam's shoulder and giving it a small squeeze, softly speaking in the large chamber, "Would ask if you're okay, but, y'know, understandable freakouts. We'll find her."
"Yeah," he heard himself say. "We will."
"Right. Time's wasting," Roman's voice came over the intercom. "Are you all ready?"
Finn stood hovering to the side, hands clenching and unclenching impotently around his spear. He looked as though he wanted desperately to say something, but finally went with a simple, "Good luck," before turning and stalking out of the room.
Finn had admittedly taken Ko's disappearance as seriously as Adam had. Unfortunately, he was a babbler - and Adam had needed action.
The plan he'd put together had been simple. Sweep Chaldea. Search through all of time and space. Tear through any opposition to get Ko back.
Verbalize concerns about what his fiance had gotten into had not been on the docket. He had had to make that very clear to Finn.
On to step three.
They stepped into the tubes, and the pods slid closed.
The wash of sparkles, the flash of light, the sensation of going through a tunnel, a roar of not-wind - and then they were in the center of… some kind of stadium? It didn't look like the Colosseum - the stone walls and seating aside, it reminded him of a massive high school sports field more than anything - an ovaloid green surrounded by a red clay track. People were crowded onto the stands, waving gaudily colored flags; banners were draped upon the walls; cheers roared and rising, echoing all around them in the passionate ring he'd previously heard most strongly at a soccer match in Barcelona.
"Olympia Laudere!" A voice boomed from behind him. Turning to face it, he saw a young blonde woman in white gauze and red silk, standing imperiously on a small raised platform. "Umu! All challengers shall now take the stage!"
"Are you fucking kidding me with this right now!?" Toby was muttering angrily under his breath, growing into a yell as he went. "Nope, just, just nope, fuck this, fuck that, fuck her and fuck no! No, we are not fucking dealing with—!"
Spencer
"Oh we have to hit up the Pantheon after this," Ko said, stirring a glass whose main contents were crushed ice and sugar with her straw. "I wanna paint Kilroy Was Here around the skylight."
"I mean you haven't really sacked a place until you've defaced a couple of monuments. I was thinking of stealing the head off a statue or two," Spencer responded, sipping a drink that was either barely alcoholic or incredibly alcoholic and well hidden. The truth would reveal itself in about twenty minutes. He'd already drunk two of them.
"I want to burn the Vatican!" Jeanne Alter shouted.
"Can we?" Spencer asked. "Was the building around yet or…"
"Not 'til the 4th century at the earliest, unfortunately," Ko said, calling, "Sorry, Jalter!"
"... I knew that!" came the belated, highly indignant reply.
"Why are we burning down anything?!" Mash demanded to know. "Da Vinci-san, you're Italian, surely you won't stand for this cultural vandalism!"
"Actually," da Vinci said, gesturing with the cocktail in her hand, "this is a self-collapsing, destructive singularity - it most closely resembles Singularity F in that regard. Studying its collapse on-site will help us learn more about the mechanism through which the incineration of humanity gathers energy. So really, the more mayhem the better." She finished her explanation with a dark mumble into her glass about someone named Giovanni, and a long swig of her drink.
"But…" Mash still looked distressed.
"I knew that!" Jalter said again, almost out of the blue. "I'm not stupid, okay? I just… wanted to blow it up. On principle. Because we. are in. the place the Vatican... will be."
"Here, sweetpea," Musashi said (she… hadn't been with them, earlier. And where did she even get that bucket of margarita mix?), pouring the contents of her portable blender into a glass and shoving it into Mash's hands. "Have a margarita, you'll feel better."
"No, thank you-"
"Did I just hear someone turn down a drink?" came the voice of their hostess, followed by the lady herself stalking up the aisle. She was carrying a gaudily painted marble statue taller than she was in one hand, and an all-too familiar golden chalice, filled with a cloudy white liquid, in the other.
"Oda-san," Mash began, before the tiny warlord sloshed her cup in the Shielder's direction.
"This is a party!" Nobu declared. "If that margarita is still full when I next see you, there will be a reckoning! A terrible reckoning the likes of which you have never seen, Eggplant! And you!" She whirled on Ko, nearly taking off Spencer's nose with the tip of the statue. "Are you not entertained? I don't see a pile of loot anywhere around you!"
Spencer took the opportunity, while Nobu's back was turned, to quickly grab Mash's drink, knock it back in one gulp, then set the glass down in front of her.
'You're welcome' he mouthed, giving her a double thumbs-up as she stared at him in horror.
Ko hoisted the da Vinci-made duffle from under her seat. "Oh, I picked up a couple of things at the markets - it's all tucked away so I don't forget where I left it."
Nobu let out a loud whoop. "Marvelous! You won't be able to sit atop your heaped prizes with a drink in hand, of course - you can always use mine, if you like."
Ko put a hand over her heart and bowed in her seat. "I would be honoured, Oda-dono."
"Aw, don't be like that!" Nobunaga pouted. "Call me Nobu like usual!"
Ko grinned, and toasted her. "You got it, Nobu!"
Spencer took a moment to zone out of the conversation, observing the interior of the party bus they'd been… kidnapped? Invited into? Well, that was a moot point. It wasn't too dissimilar from the party busses that used to bring people down from Portland to the casino he'd used to work at. At the back of the bus was a TV connected to the karaoke system, with bench seats running along both sides, with a path down the middle. The bench seats were occasionally broken up by embedded coolers containing drinks and light snacks.
Balloons floated around the ceiling, having come loose from where they'd once been tied to the overhead bars. Ko batted one away as she sang into the wireless mic some song about 'becoming an otaking.'
He had no idea what that meant, but Mash looked visibly horrified by it. There were only so many conclusions one could draw from that. It was probably something no responsible person should be doing. Spencer continued trying to figure out Mash's reaction until he caught the phrase 'the way of the otaku,' and at that point stopped wondering; he remembered Mash's reaction to Dr. Roman's love of Magi Mari. Which spawned another thought, should they tell Roman he was being catfished by an incub-
The bus jolted as it drove over a small bump, and Spencer lost the thought.
"-ever in a million years think our first Singularity would be for a hen do?" he heard Priya ask the Boisbleu twins.
"Honestly if you'd asked me yesterday, my money would have been on Miss Bathory kidnapping us to plan a surprise party for Ritsuka," one of them said bluntly. "At least we can drink here."
"And pick up ancient reagents all in one place," the other added - her eyes were lighter, was it Noisette or Yolande who had the dark eyes? "It's not quite the Terrasses du Port, but for our purposes…"
"Well I'm certainly not complaining," Priya said, grinning at the brunette seated across the aisle from her. "Thanks again for getting us in on this one, Greta."
"Of course," Mata Hari replied with a frankly dangerous wink. "What are friends for?"
"Spencer-san," Mash whispered, shaking him out of his eavesdropping, "does Ko-san understand that sacking a city usually means killing a lot of people?"
"Hazard of the trade," Ching Shih said without hesitation, reaching between the pair to grab another CBD gummy shaped like a diamond ring from the box behind them. "Some people just have no appreciation for the value of their lives when compared with their goods."
"Has anyone been killed so far...?" Spencer asked uncertainly. "I don't think I've seen more than ten people the whole time we've been here, and most of them ran the second they saw us. Actually," he spoke up, "that's weird, isn't it? I thought Rome was like the biggest city in Europe, where is everybody?"
"Probably down in Pompeii," da Vinci said, refilling her drink from Musashi's blender. "It's summertime, no one wants to be in the city unless they have to be. Besides, the population of a given Singularity is almost always lower than it would've been in proper human history."
"Next stop, Domus Transitoria!" came the call over the bus' PA. "The Domus Transitoria will be our next stop!"
"About bloody time," Boudica crowed in delight from beneath the brutal-looking helmet she'd just happened to have on hand when they picked her up.
Drake squinted at the speaker over their heads. "Eh?" Batting aside one of the balloons that had started to drift down from the ceiling of the bus, the pirate turned to Nobu. "You've got a twelve-year-old behind the wheel of this thing?"
"The Rider class container came with driver's ed," Nobu said with a shrug. "Nobukatsu's a grown man, he'll figure it out."
"He sounds cute!" Musashi shoved her drink into Ko's off hand and trotted up the aisle. "I'mma go say hi!"
"I'm going with the Grand-Bisexual," Spencer said, getting to his feet. "Musashi's tastes are impeccable and I must bear witness. Excuse me."
With one hand on the overhead bar, he followed the path the sword saint wove to get to the front of the bus, peering over her shoulder as she leaned against the front seat.
"Oh my god!" Musashi blurted out. "It really is a super cute boy!"
Musashi was, as always, exactly right in this, the area of her expertise. Nobukatsu was wearing what Spencer could only describe as a pastel-toned bus conductor's uniform, complete with bowtie and jaunty beret.
Drake's initial guess was, in Spencer's assessment, atrociously off-base, or at least unkind. If anything, Nobukatsu looked like the kind of guy that would get carded for alcohol until he was forty, and even then only because he'd finally look older than twenty four. A beard would instantly make him look much older, if he could grow one.
And holy shit was that a thought and a half…
A strangled, high-pitched noise escaped his throat before he managed to cut it off.
Musashi was already smirking at him as he felt his face heat up.
"It'snotmyfaultyou'reright!" he stumbled out, looking anywhere but at Nobukatsu.
"Hey," Musashi asked the bus driver, leaning out further around the drivers seat to lean on the dash, "you come here often?"
"To this bus? Or to Rome?" Nobukatsu asked uncertainly.
"Sure," Musashi said smoothly.
"N-no," he responded, clearly uncertain how to handle her attention. Instead, he kept his eyes glued to the road ahead of them.
"As long as you don't crash the bus you both have permission to court my little brother! I look forward to the bribes you will present to me for his hand!" Nobu called from a few rows back.
Spencer's head whipped around. "I was no-"
"It's on!" Musashi crowed.
"I am not competing with the Grand-Bisexual!" Spencer yelled back. "Also," he added to Nobukatsu, more quietly, "I am sorry."
"Big sis can be a lot to handle. You're doing pretty well, so far," the Servant said, still looking forward. "She hasn't shot you yet. I think that means she likes you."
"I think you need this more than I do," Musashi said, handing Spencer a margarita, from somewhere.
He drank it gratefully. This was only the third one. He'd be fine.
The butler was middle-aged, with very tidy curls and a plain but well-made tunic. Equally well-made was the sword he was randomly swinging at them - could've gone to the final round of Forged in Fire easily, unless Spencer missed his guess.
"I will die at my post before I allow the apartments of the Domina to be sullied by the footsteps of barbarian harlots!"
"'Barbarian'?" Nobu's smile was no less dangerous for its authenticity as she threw back her head and laughed with wild abandon.
"You guys touch your food with your bare hands," she jeered. "Most of you don't even wash 'em first! Half of you have never even seen calligraphy, let alone held a brush!" She plucked the sword out of the man's grip with one hand and poked a finger in his gut with the other. "You people can't even figure out how to keep your emperor in line!"
So saying, she lifted him off his feet by his belt and moved him out of her way like an inconvenient cat, strutting up to the door he'd been guarding. "Don't shit on yourself and then complain about how other nations smell," she concluded without so much as a backward glance.
If the man had anything to say in reply, it was cut off by Boudica casually knocking him unconscious with a single bop of her fist. "I'm going to check on Mash," she announced, swinging the rolled-up tapestry in her other hand over her shoulder and heading back to the bus. "I think she needs someone to talk to."
"Bring me back another margarita!" Jalter called after her.
"Ah, it's locked," Nobu said under her breath, stooping to slip a hand under the massive door and lifting it loose of its hinges and latch in a single fluid motion. The door flopped into the room and onto a Persian rug with a dust-cloud-raising whump, revealing a sitting room featuring what was very obviously a barely-disguised sex couch.
Nobu put a hand on her hip with a huff of satisfaction as Ching Shih and Drake rushed through the now-open door, and looked back over her shoulder at Ko with a fierce grin.
"Don't be shy, now," she said, crimson eyes flashing. "Remember whose party this is!" And she ran inside.
"She's so pretty," Ko whispered as she and Spencer waited for the dust to clear, waving a hand in front of her face. "God, she must think I'm such a creep for staring. Did CLAMP ever do any Servant art for FGO?" she asked suddenly.
"Uh… maybe?" Spencer said as Yolande and Noisette exchanged inscrutable glances. "Who's CLAMP?"
"X/1999 and Rayearth and all that," she said, shaking her head as they followed the raiders into the boudoir. "Doesn't matter, I was just thinking she looks like the kinda women I liked when I was sixteen. Elegant, and delicate."
"... you just saw her tear a door off its hinges with one hand," Priya pointed out with a frown.
Ko shook her head in wonder. "I know, right? Not a movement wasted. Total MILF."
"I am nowhere near drunk enough for this," Spencer mumbled as he watched an entire marble statue get hoisted into the Chinese junk floating above the currently only mildly-burning city of Rome.
The ship's hull had opened like a hungry mouth to allow the statue's entry, and it was almost cartoonish the way the splitting wood planks resembled teeth.
"Ha!" I could hear Drake shout from her own ship. "You call that sacking Rome!? I'll show you sacking Rome! Behold! The Wild Hunt! For treasure!"
Portals rippled through the air as hundreds of Drake's ships manifested themselves, and he took another drink of margarita as Ching Shih's curses echoed in his head. She had much finer control over her fleet, but it could not be denied that Drake had the volume.
'Only in her bloated chest, little brother!' he heard in his head.
Spencer nearly choked on his drink. He hadn't meant to send anything through the link. But that was probably the alcohol.
He quietly burned a couple of command seals with the command of 'loot all the things.'
Hey, ain't no rule saying he couldn't.
Across the square, Boudica led a horde of grimy-looking folk in what looked like plaid pyjama pants toward the bakery district. Several of them appeared to have super saiyan hair, which was probably historically inaccurate, but it looked neat, so Spencer didn't much care.
"D'ya think Indy would rather have unpasteurized honey, or fresh saffron?" Ko called out of the merchant's wagon she was digging through
He had no idea what either of those were used for.
"Porque no los dos?" he offered.
"Damn," Ko said, opening the box she'd just pulled out from under a nobleman's bed and examining the contents, "for a country where only like four people are allowed to wear the color in public, a fuckton of these rich bitches seem to own purple nightgowns on the dl."
"You're surprised by this?" Ching Shih asked, rapping the side of a mahogany armoire as though trying to calculate whether it was actually worth the extra weight. "Men always want to play with their clothes - my first husband's favourite bed game was to have me and my second husband dressed up as honorable consorts and have us address him as though he were the emperor."
Ko bit her lip consideringly. "I can't decide whether I want to see how many bits of purple I can steal and how many patricians I can make lose their minds with worry," she said, "or if I should just pile them all in a heap somewhere under a big Lost and Found sign and see who has the balls to pick them back up."
"There's no point to the first idea," the old pirate advised, "unless you know some modern miracle for removing 'stubborn stains' from silk without ruining it. Little brother," she broke off abruptly, "when was the last time you drank something without alcohol in it?"
Spencer froze, mid-crunch of the nuts he'd been fishing out of the charcuterie platter Nobu'd bullied the staff into bringing them. "Uh…" he said, thinking back, "it was… some time today, I'm almost certain."
His Servant's cold stare told him all he needed to know of her opinion on that, and reluctantly he reached for the carafe of water on the nightstand.
There was the sound of gunfire followed by a loud crash, and Ko leaned over to push aside the curtains for a glance out the window.
"Aw," she said mildly, "Nobu already rubble-ized the Colossus Neronis. I wanted to do that."
"Hey, Nobu?" Ko said, pausing in the middle of sorting her pile of ill-gotten gains. "How do you feel about jade bangles?"
"Mm?" Nobu looked up momentarily from a map of the known world she'd snagged from the last library they'd looted, before waving a hand and going back to examining it. "Don't worry about my taste, you always pick nice stuff."
"No, I mean," Ko elaborated, getting up off the floor of the bus, "this one's too small for me and it's too pretty to throw aside. Here, lemme see…"
Before Nobu could do or say anything, Ko already had one hand clasped around the warlord's wrist and the other slipping the bracelet onto it. She grinned at the results.
"There, I knew it'd fit you; your hand's like half the size of mine."
Spencer raised both eyebrows as Nobu's face flushed red, eyes widening and a tiny choking sound came from her throat.
"Sorry!" Ko flinched back, letting the smaller woman loose of her grip. "D'you have a thing about being touched? I'm really sorry."
"I do not have a thing about being touched!" Nobu shrieked. "Just- warn me next time! I've said this before!"
"Okay," Ko said, wilting a little as she retook her seat on the floor of the bus. "I'm sorry I hurt you."
"'Sorry I hurt you', huh?" Nobu muttered, going back to her map. "Damn right. That innocence is gonna kill somebody one of these days…"
"Oh, senpai," Ko said in embarrassed sympathy as she took in the familiar blue bodysuit, "Nobu dragged you into this, too?"
"Whaaaaat?" Cu asked, scrunching up his nose and turning back to Nobu. "'Senpai'? What kinda weird timeline is this?"
Ko's eyes bugged immediately. She leaned around the Lancer. "Nobu why did you summon a completely separate instance of Cu Chulainn?"
"It's hardly a bachelorette party without a stripper, is it?" Nobu asked with a smirk.
"This is.... thisis.... way better than anything I had even considered planning," Spencer remarked as Ko buried her face in her hands.
"Naturally!" Nobu said proudly, slapping Cu on the ass.
"'ey! Hands off the merchandise!"
"All my party strategies meet with success!" she went on, ignoring him. "Like when I threw Mitsuhide's entire dinner service in the koi pond to intimidate Takechiyo!"
"... who dat?" Spencer asked.
"Kumquat and Tokugawa Ieyasu," Ko mumbled into her hands.
Nobu's laughter was like the clink of a cheap chandelier. The kind made in China and destined for McMansions: joyful and unrestrained, and gaudy in the most delightful way. "You only know Kumquat as Kumquat!?" she asked. "What's up with that? Didn't you have any history lessons growing up?"
"Nope!" Spencer chirped. "World History and physics were mutually exclusive classes at my high school!" No that wasn't right. That was geography and physics. What conflicted with world history? Eh, probably doesn't matter, he thought to himself.
"No way! A Master of Chaldea who doesn't have a clue about history?" Nobu shook her head. "Well, it can't be helped! At least it means you don't have any inherited grudges."
"I assure you I have at least three, but you are not any of them," Spencer promised.
"Are you sure you're cool with this, man?" Ko whispered to Cu, face bright red, barely able to look at him.
"You kiddin'?" He grinned wolfishly. "I can't believe someone finally figured out a way to get paid for doin' this! I might have to get some business cards printed. Now where do I set up?"
Spencer was starting to wonder if Nobu had zero nudity taboos whatsoever. In fact, no one seemed to mind the fact that he was sitting bathside drinking more drinks.
"Roman, we're fine," da Vinci was saying into her comm, reaching backward out of the bath to dry her hands. "We're at the bachelorette party. Didn't you see my note?"
Oh wait, the ride over. The… Nobukatsu thing.
They probably thought he was gay as hell. They weren't wrong. They were just… working on incomplete information. Maybe Nobu didn't know what bisexuality was. Also, poor Katsu, stuck on the bus. That was sad. Very sad. He should get to have fun too, poor guy.
"First of all, what kind of tone do you call that? Second of all, no, we are not coming home right away, the entertainment hasn't even started yet."
There was also the fact that he wasn't staring at all the topless women in the bath. Because he had seen boobs before. Because the internet existed. He'd been inoculated. He had a tolerance. Thank you modern society.
"Well offer Rob time and a half to cover their shifts! He's a janitor not a goat, he can watch a monitor!"
"Oi, oi, oi, what's with that towel?" Nobu demanded, wide-eyed, as Ko exited the changing room. "Isn't it too tight?"
"Can't really be helped," Ko said with a shrug, hands holding the bit of cloth in question as closed as it would go. "Even if I were thinner, I'd still be too big for most things around here. People just aren't as small as they used to be, where I'm from."
"And thank god for that," Nobu muttered under her breath, before saying aloud, "So why don't you just take it off? There's no one here but us."
"Once again, liller- little- ah, words, li-ter-al-ly right here," Spencer said, barely looking up from his poolside drink.
"... well maybe once I'm in the water," Ko hedged, stepping into the bath.
"That's the spirit!" Nobu cried, laying a hand on her shoulder as she took a seat. "No reason to be embarrassed by a chest like that!"
"It's really more the tum…" Ko muttered, hugging her midsection.
"Shut the hell up," Yolande drunkenly interrupted from the bench across the way. "Don't think you're fooling anyone - you're one of those girls who gains weight all over so it doesn't show! You've never had to worry about getting a food baby a day in your life, admit it or shut up!"
"Why don't you take your own advice, poussin?" her sister retorted. "She always gets like this when she's had a few," she added by way of explanation to Nobu and Ko.
"Then we'll ignore her rudeness for now," Nobu said with a dismissive wave as the sisters continued to bicker. "It's only natural that she'd be envious of my bride."
"My what!?" Ko asked in alarm. "Your what?"
"Ohshit!" Spencer slurred, "izzit a double wedding? Do we get double cake!?" Also yay! She didn't mind Ko staring at her after all! Neat.
"Do you find the thought unpleasant?" Nobu asked.
"Well no," said the double-bride-to-be, eyes wide, "but I would have thought a time traveler would have better sense than to propose after I was already engaged to someone else."
"That man," Nobu growled. After a moment she shook her head, and tucked a stray hair behind Ko's ear. "We are not talking about him. Today is about you."
"And strippers!" Spencer shouted, partly to relieve the tension but mostly out of impatience. "Where dat Cu at!?"
Nobu raised an eyebrow. "You certainly know what you like, don't you? Surrounded by naked women and you're all respectful, but that goes out the window when he shows up, eh?"
"Come on, Nobu… everyone's seen boobsh. How many times you getta see the hound of Ulshter do a pole dance? This. Is. anunique. Experience." Spencer looked down at the drink in his hand. "Oh, man, I am plastered."
"So are some of the finest erections in Europe," Ko replied, toasting him. "Clink clink, bitch."
Spencer held his head in his hands, letting the goblet tumble to the tiled floor. "Remember me as I was… Ya know, in case I die… of poison… Wait… isn't Mash immune to… Why did I drink all Mash's drinksh?"
"Not all of them," Mash said mournfully, staring into the bottom of her cup. Suddenly, she downed the remainder of the beverage in a single gulp, and threw the empty cup across the room so hard it tore a chunk out of a fresco on the opposite wall.
"Why do I always have to be the responsible one?" she demanded.
There was an awkward silence. Even the Boisbleu twins looked up from their argument in surprise.
The water of the bath splashed as da Vinci moved to sit beside the Shielder, laying a hand atop hers. "It's okay, Mash. There's a time for seriousness and a time for fun. And this is very much the latter. There's nothing wrong with enjoying yourself."
"Yes there is!" Mash half-screamed, half-cried. "I don't even know who this Heroic Spirit in me is, and I have to trust that they're gonna stay, and help, and-!" She trailed off into another frustrated sob, tossing another cup at the fresco, which finally cracked the wall itself. "It's not fair! You think I like living like this?!"
Awkwardness sealed the lips of the collected party after that, until that seal was broken just a few moments later.
"I think you're scared shitless that you're gonna fuck up your life if you do even one dumb thing," Ko said quietly. "Which you shouldn't be, because everyone who knows you wants you to succeed."
Mash's lilac eyes were wide with shock, staring at Ko, only to snap to Drake when the scarred woman laughed.
"No matter how many times you fuck up," the pirate said, "even if you do something crazy instead of straightlaced, everyone here remembers what it's like to be afraid as a kid. Have fun!" She stood to make her point, hands proudly on her hips as she grinned down at Mash. "Make mistakes! Live a little! Just learn from the times you fail."
There was a brief moment of silence.
It was then broken by Mash wailing again, while Da Vinci continued to pat her on the back, and surreptitiously wave away the extra-large frothy glass Musashi kept thrusting in her direction.
"But m'gritas-!" Musashi whispered, only to get a glare over Mash's head from the inventor.
Drake snorted, snatching the glass from Musashi as she moved through the water. "Oh give it a rest, da Vinci, it's been mankind's go-to social lubricant since the beginning of civilization! You think you're gonna sit here and reinvent the wheel?"
"When I do," da Vinci pronounced, sounding genuinely offended by the suggestion she couldn't, "it will be able to handle parking on a hill without losing its damn mind, I can tell you that much."
"Oh yeah? Somethin' to see if you do." The pirate captain sat on the other side of Mash, and tenderly passed the drink into the girl's hands, "Listen, you're not a pirate, a scallywag, or anything else like that. Doesn't suit you. But that doesn't mean there's no fun to be had in ya." A conspiratorial grin crossed her face when Mash's eyes met hers. "Tell ya what, when we're done here, gonna take you on a little expedition that I think you'll enjoy. You get to go crazy, have as much fun as you want, and I'll worry about being the responsible one. Sound good?"
"And what will that be? We've already picked the best homes in the city clean." Ching Shih asked.
"Chariot racing." Everyone turned to look at Jalter, still leaning against one of the walls. The Avenger had refused to get in the baths with the rest of them; her eyes flicked around the room, as if daring each of them to challenge her idea. Drake blinked at her, as though seeing her for the first time, then grinned.
Mash sniffled, wiping her nose on her arm. "I-I did read about those. In the Hippodrome, right? T-though I guess it'd be a circus, since it's Rome…"
"Sounds like fun." Drake wrapped an arm around the girl's shoulders, smiling warmly. "Doubt your little passenger could complain about it, either."
"I… think I like horses?" Mash said timidly.
Ching Shih nodded. "It's decided then."
"... he would've loved you," Nobu was telling Ko quietly. "People always remember his jokes, but he wouldn't have been so funny if he didn't care enough to pay attention to everybody."
Before Spencer could ask who 'he' was, music - modern music - started playing from speakers that had apparently been placed at strategic locations. It was a bit of a surprise, and Spencer looked around in confusion until he noticed a small DJ booth, at which Nobukatsu, still wearing the bus conductor's outfit, was messing with the audio levels.
He moved over to the booth to get a look at the setup, mostly out of curiosity and in no way a desire to avoid the awkwardness of the Mash situation that he was too drunk to be of any assistance with. He didn't really know too much about the intricacies of this kind of thing; mostly what he'd done was setup and tear down for the pow wows. But he still thought this kind of thing was cool. And it was an excuse to hang out with Katsu.
"Hey man, what's all this for?" Spencer said without stumbling over any of the words, with perfect diction and linguistic grace.
Katsu looked at him like he was speaking Greek.
Spencer took a deep breath and then said more slowly, "Was this for?"
"You should sit down before you fall over," Katsu said, indicating the seat next to him in the booth. After sitting down, Katsu smirked and pointed at the exit to the men's changing rooms as the music got louder. "This... is for that."
What emerged from the changing room did actually give Spencer a heart attack. He died, right then and there, he was convinced.
It was one thing to have gotten Cu, the lancery one, in the skintight blue bodysuit, to do a pole dance. What emerged from that room to Curtis Waters' Stunnin' was the very same man, wearing the outfit that previously Spencer had only seen on Nero Bride. The front zipper opened all. The way. Down.
"Awbjgfragbuwhuh," he said eloquently.
"Yup," Katsu agreed, sipping directly from a bottle that had a rope handle tied to it, something that smelled alcoholic but was completely lacking in vibrant colors or crushed ice.
Their deep conversation was drowned out by the uproarious whoops and hollers of all the other women present.
Cu stabbed the Gae Bolg into the stone work, using it as an impromptu pole, which was incredibly impressive because he was pole dancing on a stick rather than a proper rotating pole. It was a magnificent display of control and dexterity and yep, he'd just died again.
Overlapping cries of "take it off! Take it off!" echoed through the baths, but Spencer couldn't actually distinguish who specifically was yelling. The cut of the outfit did allow Cu to shrug out of the top of it, a little, exposing his shoulders through the first 'dance.'
Spencer was transfixed as the first song came to an end, and realized the next song hadn't started playing. He reached past Katsu, who had also died, and fumbled blindly for the right button to get the next song playing.
"Hey man," Spencer said, "you did like… a real good job here… you're a cool guy Kazoo- Kazsu. Kazsu. If yer ev'r 'round Chaldea I'll buy you a drink 'r somethin'. Yer a hard worker, so… diligent… you should get to have fun too." Spencer patted Katsu's head. "The coolest."
Katsu made an indeterminate noise before jolting away from his hand, "Not in front of my m-big sis," he mumbled.
"Oh, sorry," Spencer said.
They both went back to staring at Cu, who was now entirely toppless, the multitude of zippers slowly exposing more skin.
"... I didn't think humans could bend that way," Katsu said.
"Yup," Spencer responded.
"Should you be lifting that?" Priya asked, eyeing up the plaster statue in his arms.
"Oh gib me a few hours and I'll be nice and sober prolly," Spencer responded. "And what's the worst that could happen? Huh? I drop the loot?" He made a shrugging motion and the head of the statue tumbled to the ground, cracking in half as it landed. "Oops."
"Are you sure you only brought three bags?" Ko was wheedling with da Vinci, still trying to get the paint off her hands from her impromptu renovation of the Pantheon.
"As I've said, I was picked up outside my room. I could only grab the ones in there, not from my workshop or the armory, and genius or no, I can't make more with such limited tools. We'll just have to make do."
"We could also burn the rest of the loot," Boudica suggested, with Jalter nodding behind her. "It is traditional. We could also salt the earth, next!"
"We'll head down to the harbor first," Nobu decided. "Break that chariot race tie with a boat race! Then maybe I can pull together some fireworks for us, if-"
Nobukatsu tugged on her sleeve, interrupting her.
"Eh? What is it?"
"Mo-" Nobu glared at Nobukatsu. "-big sister, your grail is running low."
"Mm, how low are we talking here?"
"Um, an hour or two…?"
"Have the fake Olympics ended yet?"
"I believe they're in the middle of their closing ceremonies."
"Then we've got plenty of time!" She put the young man in a loose headlock and ruffled his hair. "Traffic coming out of Pompeii's gonna be a bitch, don't worry so much, you'll turn into an old man."
"Oh," came a velvet-soft contralto voice from the corner, making everyone's heads whip around in surprise, "I believe he's worrying an entirely proportional amount, considering the existential threat that Furiko's intended has on a leash."
"Hi, shishou," Ko said, in the oddly self-conscious tone of voice Spencer had previously only ever heard her use in reference to unexpected appearances by Loki or Odin in a movie or tv show.
"Were you here this entire time?!" Nobu squawked, hand scrambling behind her for a musket.
"I am an Assassin," Scathach said mildly. She pointed her spear at the huddle of Chaldea staff members, making one among their number 'eep' quietly. "As is Mata Hari, whom you also completely failed to notice."
"I noticed!" Spencer said proudly, raising his hand.
Scathach patted him on the head. "Well done, lad."
"Yay! I did a good job!" Spencer dimly realized he was far too excited about being praised.
"The point stands," the spearwoman continued, eyeing Nobu up and down. "Inevitably, Adam Ziegler will come looking for his bride, and he will have Socrates with him when he does. I suggest you resolve whatever business you have with her before then."
"I for one would love to not be here when the physical incarnation of fuck-all-magic collapses the singularity around my ears," Spencer remarked.
"Fiiiiiiine," Nobu pouted. "Pack it up, Nobukatsu, party's over."
"... but I just got these robes...!" Mash whined.
Adam | Indy
"Well, that wasn't so bad," Adam sighed as everyone slid clear of the Rayshift pods. In the man's hand was a gaudy crown of gold-plated silver, festooned with more moonstones than the average Apollo mission.
"To match oneself against the greatest warrior of all time was thrilling," Socrates agreed, fingering the bronze medal around his neck. Behind him, Achilles, wearing more gold than Mr. T, preened.
Once Roman had confirmed that Ko was simply at a bachelorette party with Da Vinci (and a few others), Adam had been able to finally let go and enjoy Nerofest. Even if he hadn't won a medal, he'd beaten all of his old high school records; the crown had just been a bonus.
"Wasn't so bad my left buttock," Toby grumbled, his cane practically slamming into the ground with every step. "Did all of you completely forget about the almost constant assault on our eardrums? I'm going to have tinnitus at this rate."
"On this, we are in agreement," Ozymandias pouted - though the arrogant pharaoh would have denied even knowing of such an expression's existence. "Had we been in the civilized world, I would have ordered her executed the second time she dared try to sing."
"God, if only…"
"I think Nero-chan tried her very best," Ritsuka countered, maybe slightly defensively. "She probably wanted something relaxing and, ah, self-actualizing after what happened during Septem."
"It was a completely glorious experience!" Achilles flipped his green hair back, for what had to be about the thousandth time. "Who'd have thought the woman could organize such a festival!"
"Could've done without her specific musical accompaniment, but you're gonna tell me you didn't have fun once we knew Ko was safe?" Dory said, a bronze riflery medal proudly worn around his neck.
Smug bastard. A few centimeters to the left and that medal would have been his.
"Hah!" Mordred leaned out around his master to point at Toby, a small number of gold and silver medals clinking together from the motion. "They're just salty that Poindexter won the lottery for the crown."
"How dare you," the king of an antique land puffed up. "I have no interest in such a gaudy piece of jewelry!"
The Sun King had, in fact, held on to his ticket quite tightly during the drawing, Adam recalled. But he wasn't going to strip the man of his self-delusions; that was Toby's job. Such as it was.
"In any case," Adam pointed out, as the door into the corridors of Chaldea opened before them. "The point is-"
Ko's eyes met his, just before she was swung and dipped into a kiss by a stranger. Her hands flew up, gripping the other person's shoulders, clinging tightly to folds of red cloth.
Ritsuka stared.
Spencer, Dory and Toby stared.
Achilles, laden with more medals than any one human neck should be able to hold, stared.
Ozymandias, arms crossed over his chest, quirked an eyebrow.
But mostly, Adam stared.
"... WHAT KIND OF MONKEY'S PAW BULLSHITTERY IS THIS?!" Fionn blurted out from over the loudspeaker.
The short, Marie Kondo-looking woman - she wore a red cloak and a peaked hat, a katana at her side - broke off from her stolen kiss to face Adam. Staring the taller man down, her hand pointed first at her own narrowed eyes and then to his own, a vicious, possessive snarl etched on her face.
"Interloper," she hissed.
Adam's hand was already in a fist, the red markings on its back glowing.
"By my Command Seal-" he began, the blood roaring in his ears-
- but the woman was already gone.
"... well," Ko said eventually, wiping her lips and staring thoughtfully at the lipstick that came away on her hand, "that certainly happened-"
"-TOBY!" Spencer screamed from somewhere behind his fiancée. "MEME-OSAAAAAAAS~"
Adam | Indy
The door to Akuta's room cracked open slowly and stopped almost immediately. All Adam could see was one brown eye, staring murderously back at him.
"What?"
His heart was pounding in his chest - he'd all but sprinted down the halls to get here.
"My-my fiancée," he gasped out. "We don't know where she or Spencer is. We think she's been-"
"-not my problem."
The door closed.
"Fuck you too, bitch," he muttered darkly, turning away from the last Master's room, only to stagger as his legs finally won their argument with his body. He moved into a controlled collapse against the wall, panting, as he tried to martial his thoughts.
About one hour ago, an unknown vehicle had appeared in Chaldea. It had then collected quite a few of the organization's Servants - thankfully none of his - as well as both Spencer and Ko, before speeding off… somewhere.
Given that there was actually literal nothing outside of Chaldea, exactly where they'd been kidnapped to was quite the puzzle. Roman and the techs were working on that - something about following spiritron trails - but he was rallying the troops. Or attempting to rally.
"This is Ritsuka," the Japanese teen sounded worried through his earpiece. "I can't find Mashu anywhere either."
"Can't make contact with Drake, no one's seen Boudica or Priya that I've spoken with." Dory said, "I've got Mordred with me, still making a sweep."
"Nobody's missing on my end, but that seems to be the exception," Toby relayed. "Gonna go grab the Pharaoh. Roman, since it's sounding like an all hands scenario, I'm sending Abby your way."
"...Spencer is also nowhere to be found," Adam noted. "Hinako is… present. And not coming." The bitch.
"Roger that. And yes, this is a serious problem indeed," Roman confirmed. "But I think I have it. We've tracked them to the Italian peninsula, circa 61 AD. One year after the Septem Singularity."
"Doctor," Ritz's tone was deadly serious. "Do you think this might have something to do with whoever is responsible for the Incineration of Humanity?"
"I'm not ruling it out," he said grimly. "They've taken da Vinci too. Aside from you, Fujimaru, there isn't anyone more essential to Chaldea's operations."
A brief pause. "Akuta Hinako isn't coming unless it's directly related," Roman continued. "But I'm mobilizing the rest of you. Bring the strongest Servants you have - for if we cannot find da Vinci-chan and the others, I don't know if we can continue onwards."
Just what he wanted to hear when the biggest thing on his plate for the day had been further exploration of his not-Reinforcement.
Adam made a fist. "By my Command Seal," he declared, the back of his left hand burning. "Socrates - meet me in the Rayshift Chamber." It might have been a waste of resources - but he wasn't in the mindset for the inevitable "discussion" with the Ruler about his decision.
He didn't run to the Chamber - his already-racing heart wouldn't let him.
She had to be safe. She was tough, strong, and being trained by a very scary lady that he'd broken his "no Wikipedia'ing Servants" rule for.
Unfortunately, Scathach was also nowhere to be found, either.
The rest of them were already prepped to climb into the Rayshift pods when he arrived.
"Alright, you're here… fucking hell, man." Toby ran a shaky hand back through his hair to try and calm himself, all while very deliberately ignoring the Pharaoh beside him.
Dory approached, putting a hand on Adam's shoulder and giving it a small squeeze, softly speaking in the large chamber, "Would ask if you're okay, but, y'know, understandable freakouts. We'll find her."
"Yeah," he heard himself say. "We will."
"Right. Time's wasting," Roman's voice came over the intercom. "Are you all ready?"
Finn stood hovering to the side, hands clenching and unclenching impotently around his spear. He looked as though he wanted desperately to say something, but finally went with a simple, "Good luck," before turning and stalking out of the room.
Finn had admittedly taken Ko's disappearance as seriously as Adam had. Unfortunately, he was a babbler - and Adam had needed action.
The plan he'd put together had been simple. Sweep Chaldea. Search through all of time and space. Tear through any opposition to get Ko back.
Verbalize concerns about what his fiance had gotten into had not been on the docket. He had had to make that very clear to Finn.
On to step three.
They stepped into the tubes, and the pods slid closed.
The wash of sparkles, the flash of light, the sensation of going through a tunnel, a roar of not-wind - and then they were in the center of… some kind of stadium? It didn't look like the Colosseum - the stone walls and seating aside, it reminded him of a massive high school sports field more than anything - an ovaloid green surrounded by a red clay track. People were crowded onto the stands, waving gaudily colored flags; banners were draped upon the walls; cheers roared and rising, echoing all around them in the passionate ring he'd previously heard most strongly at a soccer match in Barcelona.
"Olympia Laudere!" A voice boomed from behind him. Turning to face it, he saw a young blonde woman in white gauze and red silk, standing imperiously on a small raised platform. "Umu! All challengers shall now take the stage!"
"Are you fucking kidding me with this right now!?" Toby was muttering angrily under his breath, growing into a yell as he went. "Nope, just, just nope, fuck this, fuck that, fuck her and fuck no! No, we are not fucking dealing with—!"
Spencer
"Oh we have to hit up the Pantheon after this," Ko said, stirring a glass whose main contents were crushed ice and sugar with her straw. "I wanna paint Kilroy Was Here around the skylight."
"I mean you haven't really sacked a place until you've defaced a couple of monuments. I was thinking of stealing the head off a statue or two," Spencer responded, sipping a drink that was either barely alcoholic or incredibly alcoholic and well hidden. The truth would reveal itself in about twenty minutes. He'd already drunk two of them.
"I want to burn the Vatican!" Jeanne Alter shouted.
"Can we?" Spencer asked. "Was the building around yet or…"
"Not 'til the 4th century at the earliest, unfortunately," Ko said, calling, "Sorry, Jalter!"
"... I knew that!" came the belated, highly indignant reply.
"Why are we burning down anything?!" Mash demanded to know. "Da Vinci-san, you're Italian, surely you won't stand for this cultural vandalism!"
"Actually," da Vinci said, gesturing with the cocktail in her hand, "this is a self-collapsing, destructive singularity - it most closely resembles Singularity F in that regard. Studying its collapse on-site will help us learn more about the mechanism through which the incineration of humanity gathers energy. So really, the more mayhem the better." She finished her explanation with a dark mumble into her glass about someone named Giovanni, and a long swig of her drink.
"But…" Mash still looked distressed.
"I knew that!" Jalter said again, almost out of the blue. "I'm not stupid, okay? I just… wanted to blow it up. On principle. Because we. are in. the place the Vatican... will be."
"Here, sweetpea," Musashi said (she… hadn't been with them, earlier. And where did she even get that bucket of margarita mix?), pouring the contents of her portable blender into a glass and shoving it into Mash's hands. "Have a margarita, you'll feel better."
"No, thank you-"
"Did I just hear someone turn down a drink?" came the voice of their hostess, followed by the lady herself stalking up the aisle. She was carrying a gaudily painted marble statue taller than she was in one hand, and an all-too familiar golden chalice, filled with a cloudy white liquid, in the other.
"Oda-san," Mash began, before the tiny warlord sloshed her cup in the Shielder's direction.
"This is a party!" Nobu declared. "If that margarita is still full when I next see you, there will be a reckoning! A terrible reckoning the likes of which you have never seen, Eggplant! And you!" She whirled on Ko, nearly taking off Spencer's nose with the tip of the statue. "Are you not entertained? I don't see a pile of loot anywhere around you!"
Spencer took the opportunity, while Nobu's back was turned, to quickly grab Mash's drink, knock it back in one gulp, then set the glass down in front of her.
'You're welcome' he mouthed, giving her a double thumbs-up as she stared at him in horror.
Ko hoisted the da Vinci-made duffle from under her seat. "Oh, I picked up a couple of things at the markets - it's all tucked away so I don't forget where I left it."
Nobu let out a loud whoop. "Marvelous! You won't be able to sit atop your heaped prizes with a drink in hand, of course - you can always use mine, if you like."
Ko put a hand over her heart and bowed in her seat. "I would be honoured, Oda-dono."
"Aw, don't be like that!" Nobunaga pouted. "Call me Nobu like usual!"
Ko grinned, and toasted her. "You got it, Nobu!"
Spencer took a moment to zone out of the conversation, observing the interior of the party bus they'd been… kidnapped? Invited into? Well, that was a moot point. It wasn't too dissimilar from the party busses that used to bring people down from Portland to the casino he'd used to work at. At the back of the bus was a TV connected to the karaoke system, with bench seats running along both sides, with a path down the middle. The bench seats were occasionally broken up by embedded coolers containing drinks and light snacks.
Balloons floated around the ceiling, having come loose from where they'd once been tied to the overhead bars. Ko batted one away as she sang into the wireless mic some song about 'becoming an otaking.'
He had no idea what that meant, but Mash looked visibly horrified by it. There were only so many conclusions one could draw from that. It was probably something no responsible person should be doing. Spencer continued trying to figure out Mash's reaction until he caught the phrase 'the way of the otaku,' and at that point stopped wondering; he remembered Mash's reaction to Dr. Roman's love of Magi Mari. Which spawned another thought, should they tell Roman he was being catfished by an incub-
The bus jolted as it drove over a small bump, and Spencer lost the thought.
"-ever in a million years think our first Singularity would be for a hen do?" he heard Priya ask the Boisbleu twins.
"Honestly if you'd asked me yesterday, my money would have been on Miss Bathory kidnapping us to plan a surprise party for Ritsuka," one of them said bluntly. "At least we can drink here."
"And pick up ancient reagents all in one place," the other added - her eyes were lighter, was it Noisette or Yolande who had the dark eyes? "It's not quite the Terrasses du Port, but for our purposes…"
"Well I'm certainly not complaining," Priya said, grinning at the brunette seated across the aisle from her. "Thanks again for getting us in on this one, Greta."
"Of course," Mata Hari replied with a frankly dangerous wink. "What are friends for?"
"Spencer-san," Mash whispered, shaking him out of his eavesdropping, "does Ko-san understand that sacking a city usually means killing a lot of people?"
"Hazard of the trade," Ching Shih said without hesitation, reaching between the pair to grab another CBD gummy shaped like a diamond ring from the box behind them. "Some people just have no appreciation for the value of their lives when compared with their goods."
"Has anyone been killed so far...?" Spencer asked uncertainly. "I don't think I've seen more than ten people the whole time we've been here, and most of them ran the second they saw us. Actually," he spoke up, "that's weird, isn't it? I thought Rome was like the biggest city in Europe, where is everybody?"
"Probably down in Pompeii," da Vinci said, refilling her drink from Musashi's blender. "It's summertime, no one wants to be in the city unless they have to be. Besides, the population of a given Singularity is almost always lower than it would've been in proper human history."
"Next stop, Domus Transitoria!" came the call over the bus' PA. "The Domus Transitoria will be our next stop!"
"About bloody time," Boudica crowed in delight from beneath the brutal-looking helmet she'd just happened to have on hand when they picked her up.
Drake squinted at the speaker over their heads. "Eh?" Batting aside one of the balloons that had started to drift down from the ceiling of the bus, the pirate turned to Nobu. "You've got a twelve-year-old behind the wheel of this thing?"
"The Rider class container came with driver's ed," Nobu said with a shrug. "Nobukatsu's a grown man, he'll figure it out."
"He sounds cute!" Musashi shoved her drink into Ko's off hand and trotted up the aisle. "I'mma go say hi!"
"I'm going with the Grand-Bisexual," Spencer said, getting to his feet. "Musashi's tastes are impeccable and I must bear witness. Excuse me."
With one hand on the overhead bar, he followed the path the sword saint wove to get to the front of the bus, peering over her shoulder as she leaned against the front seat.
"Oh my god!" Musashi blurted out. "It really is a super cute boy!"
Musashi was, as always, exactly right in this, the area of her expertise. Nobukatsu was wearing what Spencer could only describe as a pastel-toned bus conductor's uniform, complete with bowtie and jaunty beret.
Drake's initial guess was, in Spencer's assessment, atrociously off-base, or at least unkind. If anything, Nobukatsu looked like the kind of guy that would get carded for alcohol until he was forty, and even then only because he'd finally look older than twenty four. A beard would instantly make him look much older, if he could grow one.
And holy shit was that a thought and a half…
A strangled, high-pitched noise escaped his throat before he managed to cut it off.
Musashi was already smirking at him as he felt his face heat up.
"It'snotmyfaultyou'reright!" he stumbled out, looking anywhere but at Nobukatsu.
"Hey," Musashi asked the bus driver, leaning out further around the drivers seat to lean on the dash, "you come here often?"
"To this bus? Or to Rome?" Nobukatsu asked uncertainly.
"Sure," Musashi said smoothly.
"N-no," he responded, clearly uncertain how to handle her attention. Instead, he kept his eyes glued to the road ahead of them.
"As long as you don't crash the bus you both have permission to court my little brother! I look forward to the bribes you will present to me for his hand!" Nobu called from a few rows back.
Spencer's head whipped around. "I was no-"
"It's on!" Musashi crowed.
"I am not competing with the Grand-Bisexual!" Spencer yelled back. "Also," he added to Nobukatsu, more quietly, "I am sorry."
"Big sis can be a lot to handle. You're doing pretty well, so far," the Servant said, still looking forward. "She hasn't shot you yet. I think that means she likes you."
"I think you need this more than I do," Musashi said, handing Spencer a margarita, from somewhere.
He drank it gratefully. This was only the third one. He'd be fine.
The butler was middle-aged, with very tidy curls and a plain but well-made tunic. Equally well-made was the sword he was randomly swinging at them - could've gone to the final round of Forged in Fire easily, unless Spencer missed his guess.
"I will die at my post before I allow the apartments of the Domina to be sullied by the footsteps of barbarian harlots!"
"'Barbarian'?" Nobu's smile was no less dangerous for its authenticity as she threw back her head and laughed with wild abandon.
"You guys touch your food with your bare hands," she jeered. "Most of you don't even wash 'em first! Half of you have never even seen calligraphy, let alone held a brush!" She plucked the sword out of the man's grip with one hand and poked a finger in his gut with the other. "You people can't even figure out how to keep your emperor in line!"
So saying, she lifted him off his feet by his belt and moved him out of her way like an inconvenient cat, strutting up to the door he'd been guarding. "Don't shit on yourself and then complain about how other nations smell," she concluded without so much as a backward glance.
If the man had anything to say in reply, it was cut off by Boudica casually knocking him unconscious with a single bop of her fist. "I'm going to check on Mash," she announced, swinging the rolled-up tapestry in her other hand over her shoulder and heading back to the bus. "I think she needs someone to talk to."
"Bring me back another margarita!" Jalter called after her.
"Ah, it's locked," Nobu said under her breath, stooping to slip a hand under the massive door and lifting it loose of its hinges and latch in a single fluid motion. The door flopped into the room and onto a Persian rug with a dust-cloud-raising whump, revealing a sitting room featuring what was very obviously a barely-disguised sex couch.
Nobu put a hand on her hip with a huff of satisfaction as Ching Shih and Drake rushed through the now-open door, and looked back over her shoulder at Ko with a fierce grin.
"Don't be shy, now," she said, crimson eyes flashing. "Remember whose party this is!" And she ran inside.
"She's so pretty," Ko whispered as she and Spencer waited for the dust to clear, waving a hand in front of her face. "God, she must think I'm such a creep for staring. Did CLAMP ever do any Servant art for FGO?" she asked suddenly.
"Uh… maybe?" Spencer said as Yolande and Noisette exchanged inscrutable glances. "Who's CLAMP?"
"X/1999 and Rayearth and all that," she said, shaking her head as they followed the raiders into the boudoir. "Doesn't matter, I was just thinking she looks like the kinda women I liked when I was sixteen. Elegant, and delicate."
"... you just saw her tear a door off its hinges with one hand," Priya pointed out with a frown.
Ko shook her head in wonder. "I know, right? Not a movement wasted. Total MILF."
"I am nowhere near drunk enough for this," Spencer mumbled as he watched an entire marble statue get hoisted into the Chinese junk floating above the currently only mildly-burning city of Rome.
The ship's hull had opened like a hungry mouth to allow the statue's entry, and it was almost cartoonish the way the splitting wood planks resembled teeth.
"Ha!" I could hear Drake shout from her own ship. "You call that sacking Rome!? I'll show you sacking Rome! Behold! The Wild Hunt! For treasure!"
Portals rippled through the air as hundreds of Drake's ships manifested themselves, and he took another drink of margarita as Ching Shih's curses echoed in his head. She had much finer control over her fleet, but it could not be denied that Drake had the volume.
'Only in her bloated chest, little brother!' he heard in his head.
Spencer nearly choked on his drink. He hadn't meant to send anything through the link. But that was probably the alcohol.
He quietly burned a couple of command seals with the command of 'loot all the things.'
Hey, ain't no rule saying he couldn't.
Across the square, Boudica led a horde of grimy-looking folk in what looked like plaid pyjama pants toward the bakery district. Several of them appeared to have super saiyan hair, which was probably historically inaccurate, but it looked neat, so Spencer didn't much care.
"D'ya think Indy would rather have unpasteurized honey, or fresh saffron?" Ko called out of the merchant's wagon she was digging through
He had no idea what either of those were used for.
"Porque no los dos?" he offered.
"Damn," Ko said, opening the box she'd just pulled out from under a nobleman's bed and examining the contents, "for a country where only like four people are allowed to wear the color in public, a fuckton of these rich bitches seem to own purple nightgowns on the dl."
"You're surprised by this?" Ching Shih asked, rapping the side of a mahogany armoire as though trying to calculate whether it was actually worth the extra weight. "Men always want to play with their clothes - my first husband's favourite bed game was to have me and my second husband dressed up as honorable consorts and have us address him as though he were the emperor."
Ko bit her lip consideringly. "I can't decide whether I want to see how many bits of purple I can steal and how many patricians I can make lose their minds with worry," she said, "or if I should just pile them all in a heap somewhere under a big Lost and Found sign and see who has the balls to pick them back up."
"There's no point to the first idea," the old pirate advised, "unless you know some modern miracle for removing 'stubborn stains' from silk without ruining it. Little brother," she broke off abruptly, "when was the last time you drank something without alcohol in it?"
Spencer froze, mid-crunch of the nuts he'd been fishing out of the charcuterie platter Nobu'd bullied the staff into bringing them. "Uh…" he said, thinking back, "it was… some time today, I'm almost certain."
His Servant's cold stare told him all he needed to know of her opinion on that, and reluctantly he reached for the carafe of water on the nightstand.
There was the sound of gunfire followed by a loud crash, and Ko leaned over to push aside the curtains for a glance out the window.
"Aw," she said mildly, "Nobu already rubble-ized the Colossus Neronis. I wanted to do that."
"Hey, Nobu?" Ko said, pausing in the middle of sorting her pile of ill-gotten gains. "How do you feel about jade bangles?"
"Mm?" Nobu looked up momentarily from a map of the known world she'd snagged from the last library they'd looted, before waving a hand and going back to examining it. "Don't worry about my taste, you always pick nice stuff."
"No, I mean," Ko elaborated, getting up off the floor of the bus, "this one's too small for me and it's too pretty to throw aside. Here, lemme see…"
Before Nobu could do or say anything, Ko already had one hand clasped around the warlord's wrist and the other slipping the bracelet onto it. She grinned at the results.
"There, I knew it'd fit you; your hand's like half the size of mine."
Spencer raised both eyebrows as Nobu's face flushed red, eyes widening and a tiny choking sound came from her throat.
"Sorry!" Ko flinched back, letting the smaller woman loose of her grip. "D'you have a thing about being touched? I'm really sorry."
"I do not have a thing about being touched!" Nobu shrieked. "Just- warn me next time! I've said this before!"
"Okay," Ko said, wilting a little as she retook her seat on the floor of the bus. "I'm sorry I hurt you."
"'Sorry I hurt you', huh?" Nobu muttered, going back to her map. "Damn right. That innocence is gonna kill somebody one of these days…"
"Oh, senpai," Ko said in embarrassed sympathy as she took in the familiar blue bodysuit, "Nobu dragged you into this, too?"
"Whaaaaat?" Cu asked, scrunching up his nose and turning back to Nobu. "'Senpai'? What kinda weird timeline is this?"
Ko's eyes bugged immediately. She leaned around the Lancer. "Nobu why did you summon a completely separate instance of Cu Chulainn?"
"It's hardly a bachelorette party without a stripper, is it?" Nobu asked with a smirk.
"This is.... thisis.... way better than anything I had even considered planning," Spencer remarked as Ko buried her face in her hands.
"Naturally!" Nobu said proudly, slapping Cu on the ass.
"'ey! Hands off the merchandise!"
"All my party strategies meet with success!" she went on, ignoring him. "Like when I threw Mitsuhide's entire dinner service in the koi pond to intimidate Takechiyo!"
"... who dat?" Spencer asked.
"Kumquat and Tokugawa Ieyasu," Ko mumbled into her hands.
Nobu's laughter was like the clink of a cheap chandelier. The kind made in China and destined for McMansions: joyful and unrestrained, and gaudy in the most delightful way. "You only know Kumquat as Kumquat!?" she asked. "What's up with that? Didn't you have any history lessons growing up?"
"Nope!" Spencer chirped. "World History and physics were mutually exclusive classes at my high school!" No that wasn't right. That was geography and physics. What conflicted with world history? Eh, probably doesn't matter, he thought to himself.
"No way! A Master of Chaldea who doesn't have a clue about history?" Nobu shook her head. "Well, it can't be helped! At least it means you don't have any inherited grudges."
"I assure you I have at least three, but you are not any of them," Spencer promised.
"Are you sure you're cool with this, man?" Ko whispered to Cu, face bright red, barely able to look at him.
"You kiddin'?" He grinned wolfishly. "I can't believe someone finally figured out a way to get paid for doin' this! I might have to get some business cards printed. Now where do I set up?"
Spencer was starting to wonder if Nobu had zero nudity taboos whatsoever. In fact, no one seemed to mind the fact that he was sitting bathside drinking more drinks.
"Roman, we're fine," da Vinci was saying into her comm, reaching backward out of the bath to dry her hands. "We're at the bachelorette party. Didn't you see my note?"
Oh wait, the ride over. The… Nobukatsu thing.
They probably thought he was gay as hell. They weren't wrong. They were just… working on incomplete information. Maybe Nobu didn't know what bisexuality was. Also, poor Katsu, stuck on the bus. That was sad. Very sad. He should get to have fun too, poor guy.
"First of all, what kind of tone do you call that? Second of all, no, we are not coming home right away, the entertainment hasn't even started yet."
There was also the fact that he wasn't staring at all the topless women in the bath. Because he had seen boobs before. Because the internet existed. He'd been inoculated. He had a tolerance. Thank you modern society.
"Well offer Rob time and a half to cover their shifts! He's a janitor not a goat, he can watch a monitor!"
"Oi, oi, oi, what's with that towel?" Nobu demanded, wide-eyed, as Ko exited the changing room. "Isn't it too tight?"
"Can't really be helped," Ko said with a shrug, hands holding the bit of cloth in question as closed as it would go. "Even if I were thinner, I'd still be too big for most things around here. People just aren't as small as they used to be, where I'm from."
"And thank god for that," Nobu muttered under her breath, before saying aloud, "So why don't you just take it off? There's no one here but us."
"Once again, liller- little- ah, words, li-ter-al-ly right here," Spencer said, barely looking up from his poolside drink.
"... well maybe once I'm in the water," Ko hedged, stepping into the bath.
"That's the spirit!" Nobu cried, laying a hand on her shoulder as she took a seat. "No reason to be embarrassed by a chest like that!"
"It's really more the tum…" Ko muttered, hugging her midsection.
"Shut the hell up," Yolande drunkenly interrupted from the bench across the way. "Don't think you're fooling anyone - you're one of those girls who gains weight all over so it doesn't show! You've never had to worry about getting a food baby a day in your life, admit it or shut up!"
"Why don't you take your own advice, poussin?" her sister retorted. "She always gets like this when she's had a few," she added by way of explanation to Nobu and Ko.
"Then we'll ignore her rudeness for now," Nobu said with a dismissive wave as the sisters continued to bicker. "It's only natural that she'd be envious of my bride."
"My what!?" Ko asked in alarm. "Your what?"
"Ohshit!" Spencer slurred, "izzit a double wedding? Do we get double cake!?" Also yay! She didn't mind Ko staring at her after all! Neat.
"Do you find the thought unpleasant?" Nobu asked.
"Well no," said the double-bride-to-be, eyes wide, "but I would have thought a time traveler would have better sense than to propose after I was already engaged to someone else."
"That man," Nobu growled. After a moment she shook her head, and tucked a stray hair behind Ko's ear. "We are not talking about him. Today is about you."
"And strippers!" Spencer shouted, partly to relieve the tension but mostly out of impatience. "Where dat Cu at!?"
Nobu raised an eyebrow. "You certainly know what you like, don't you? Surrounded by naked women and you're all respectful, but that goes out the window when he shows up, eh?"
"Come on, Nobu… everyone's seen boobsh. How many times you getta see the hound of Ulshter do a pole dance? This. Is. anunique. Experience." Spencer looked down at the drink in his hand. "Oh, man, I am plastered."
"So are some of the finest erections in Europe," Ko replied, toasting him. "Clink clink, bitch."
Spencer held his head in his hands, letting the goblet tumble to the tiled floor. "Remember me as I was… Ya know, in case I die… of poison… Wait… isn't Mash immune to… Why did I drink all Mash's drinksh?"
"Not all of them," Mash said mournfully, staring into the bottom of her cup. Suddenly, she downed the remainder of the beverage in a single gulp, and threw the empty cup across the room so hard it tore a chunk out of a fresco on the opposite wall.
"Why do I always have to be the responsible one?" she demanded.
There was an awkward silence. Even the Boisbleu twins looked up from their argument in surprise.
The water of the bath splashed as da Vinci moved to sit beside the Shielder, laying a hand atop hers. "It's okay, Mash. There's a time for seriousness and a time for fun. And this is very much the latter. There's nothing wrong with enjoying yourself."
"Yes there is!" Mash half-screamed, half-cried. "I don't even know who this Heroic Spirit in me is, and I have to trust that they're gonna stay, and help, and-!" She trailed off into another frustrated sob, tossing another cup at the fresco, which finally cracked the wall itself. "It's not fair! You think I like living like this?!"
Awkwardness sealed the lips of the collected party after that, until that seal was broken just a few moments later.
"I think you're scared shitless that you're gonna fuck up your life if you do even one dumb thing," Ko said quietly. "Which you shouldn't be, because everyone who knows you wants you to succeed."
Mash's lilac eyes were wide with shock, staring at Ko, only to snap to Drake when the scarred woman laughed.
"No matter how many times you fuck up," the pirate said, "even if you do something crazy instead of straightlaced, everyone here remembers what it's like to be afraid as a kid. Have fun!" She stood to make her point, hands proudly on her hips as she grinned down at Mash. "Make mistakes! Live a little! Just learn from the times you fail."
There was a brief moment of silence.
It was then broken by Mash wailing again, while Da Vinci continued to pat her on the back, and surreptitiously wave away the extra-large frothy glass Musashi kept thrusting in her direction.
"But m'gritas-!" Musashi whispered, only to get a glare over Mash's head from the inventor.
Drake snorted, snatching the glass from Musashi as she moved through the water. "Oh give it a rest, da Vinci, it's been mankind's go-to social lubricant since the beginning of civilization! You think you're gonna sit here and reinvent the wheel?"
"When I do," da Vinci pronounced, sounding genuinely offended by the suggestion she couldn't, "it will be able to handle parking on a hill without losing its damn mind, I can tell you that much."
"Oh yeah? Somethin' to see if you do." The pirate captain sat on the other side of Mash, and tenderly passed the drink into the girl's hands, "Listen, you're not a pirate, a scallywag, or anything else like that. Doesn't suit you. But that doesn't mean there's no fun to be had in ya." A conspiratorial grin crossed her face when Mash's eyes met hers. "Tell ya what, when we're done here, gonna take you on a little expedition that I think you'll enjoy. You get to go crazy, have as much fun as you want, and I'll worry about being the responsible one. Sound good?"
"And what will that be? We've already picked the best homes in the city clean." Ching Shih asked.
"Chariot racing." Everyone turned to look at Jalter, still leaning against one of the walls. The Avenger had refused to get in the baths with the rest of them; her eyes flicked around the room, as if daring each of them to challenge her idea. Drake blinked at her, as though seeing her for the first time, then grinned.
Mash sniffled, wiping her nose on her arm. "I-I did read about those. In the Hippodrome, right? T-though I guess it'd be a circus, since it's Rome…"
"Sounds like fun." Drake wrapped an arm around the girl's shoulders, smiling warmly. "Doubt your little passenger could complain about it, either."
"I… think I like horses?" Mash said timidly.
Ching Shih nodded. "It's decided then."
"... he would've loved you," Nobu was telling Ko quietly. "People always remember his jokes, but he wouldn't have been so funny if he didn't care enough to pay attention to everybody."
Before Spencer could ask who 'he' was, music - modern music - started playing from speakers that had apparently been placed at strategic locations. It was a bit of a surprise, and Spencer looked around in confusion until he noticed a small DJ booth, at which Nobukatsu, still wearing the bus conductor's outfit, was messing with the audio levels.
He moved over to the booth to get a look at the setup, mostly out of curiosity and in no way a desire to avoid the awkwardness of the Mash situation that he was too drunk to be of any assistance with. He didn't really know too much about the intricacies of this kind of thing; mostly what he'd done was setup and tear down for the pow wows. But he still thought this kind of thing was cool. And it was an excuse to hang out with Katsu.
"Hey man, what's all this for?" Spencer said without stumbling over any of the words, with perfect diction and linguistic grace.
Katsu looked at him like he was speaking Greek.
Spencer took a deep breath and then said more slowly, "Was this for?"
"You should sit down before you fall over," Katsu said, indicating the seat next to him in the booth. After sitting down, Katsu smirked and pointed at the exit to the men's changing rooms as the music got louder. "This... is for that."
What emerged from the changing room did actually give Spencer a heart attack. He died, right then and there, he was convinced.
It was one thing to have gotten Cu, the lancery one, in the skintight blue bodysuit, to do a pole dance. What emerged from that room to Curtis Waters' Stunnin' was the very same man, wearing the outfit that previously Spencer had only seen on Nero Bride. The front zipper opened all. The way. Down.
"Awbjgfragbuwhuh," he said eloquently.
"Yup," Katsu agreed, sipping directly from a bottle that had a rope handle tied to it, something that smelled alcoholic but was completely lacking in vibrant colors or crushed ice.
Their deep conversation was drowned out by the uproarious whoops and hollers of all the other women present.
Cu stabbed the Gae Bolg into the stone work, using it as an impromptu pole, which was incredibly impressive because he was pole dancing on a stick rather than a proper rotating pole. It was a magnificent display of control and dexterity and yep, he'd just died again.
Overlapping cries of "take it off! Take it off!" echoed through the baths, but Spencer couldn't actually distinguish who specifically was yelling. The cut of the outfit did allow Cu to shrug out of the top of it, a little, exposing his shoulders through the first 'dance.'
Spencer was transfixed as the first song came to an end, and realized the next song hadn't started playing. He reached past Katsu, who had also died, and fumbled blindly for the right button to get the next song playing.
"Hey man," Spencer said, "you did like… a real good job here… you're a cool guy Kazoo- Kazsu. Kazsu. If yer ev'r 'round Chaldea I'll buy you a drink 'r somethin'. Yer a hard worker, so… diligent… you should get to have fun too." Spencer patted Katsu's head. "The coolest."
Katsu made an indeterminate noise before jolting away from his hand, "Not in front of my m-big sis," he mumbled.
"Oh, sorry," Spencer said.
They both went back to staring at Cu, who was now entirely toppless, the multitude of zippers slowly exposing more skin.
"... I didn't think humans could bend that way," Katsu said.
"Yup," Spencer responded.
"Should you be lifting that?" Priya asked, eyeing up the plaster statue in his arms.
"Oh gib me a few hours and I'll be nice and sober prolly," Spencer responded. "And what's the worst that could happen? Huh? I drop the loot?" He made a shrugging motion and the head of the statue tumbled to the ground, cracking in half as it landed. "Oops."
"Are you sure you only brought three bags?" Ko was wheedling with da Vinci, still trying to get the paint off her hands from her impromptu renovation of the Pantheon.
"As I've said, I was picked up outside my room. I could only grab the ones in there, not from my workshop or the armory, and genius or no, I can't make more with such limited tools. We'll just have to make do."
"We could also burn the rest of the loot," Boudica suggested, with Jalter nodding behind her. "It is traditional. We could also salt the earth, next!"
"We'll head down to the harbor first," Nobu decided. "Break that chariot race tie with a boat race! Then maybe I can pull together some fireworks for us, if-"
Nobukatsu tugged on her sleeve, interrupting her.
"Eh? What is it?"
"Mo-" Nobu glared at Nobukatsu. "-big sister, your grail is running low."
"Mm, how low are we talking here?"
"Um, an hour or two…?"
"Have the fake Olympics ended yet?"
"I believe they're in the middle of their closing ceremonies."
"Then we've got plenty of time!" She put the young man in a loose headlock and ruffled his hair. "Traffic coming out of Pompeii's gonna be a bitch, don't worry so much, you'll turn into an old man."
"Oh," came a velvet-soft contralto voice from the corner, making everyone's heads whip around in surprise, "I believe he's worrying an entirely proportional amount, considering the existential threat that Furiko's intended has on a leash."
"Hi, shishou," Ko said, in the oddly self-conscious tone of voice Spencer had previously only ever heard her use in reference to unexpected appearances by Loki or Odin in a movie or tv show.
"Were you here this entire time?!" Nobu squawked, hand scrambling behind her for a musket.
"I am an Assassin," Scathach said mildly. She pointed her spear at the huddle of Chaldea staff members, making one among their number 'eep' quietly. "As is Mata Hari, whom you also completely failed to notice."
"I noticed!" Spencer said proudly, raising his hand.
Scathach patted him on the head. "Well done, lad."
"Yay! I did a good job!" Spencer dimly realized he was far too excited about being praised.
"The point stands," the spearwoman continued, eyeing Nobu up and down. "Inevitably, Adam Ziegler will come looking for his bride, and he will have Socrates with him when he does. I suggest you resolve whatever business you have with her before then."
"I for one would love to not be here when the physical incarnation of fuck-all-magic collapses the singularity around my ears," Spencer remarked.
"Fiiiiiiine," Nobu pouted. "Pack it up, Nobukatsu, party's over."
"... but I just got these robes...!" Mash whined.
Adam | Indy
"Well, that wasn't so bad," Adam sighed as everyone slid clear of the Rayshift pods. In the man's hand was a gaudy crown of gold-plated silver, festooned with more moonstones than the average Apollo mission.
"To match oneself against the greatest warrior of all time was thrilling," Socrates agreed, fingering the bronze medal around his neck. Behind him, Achilles, wearing more gold than Mr. T, preened.
Once Roman had confirmed that Ko was simply at a bachelorette party with Da Vinci (and a few others), Adam had been able to finally let go and enjoy Nerofest. Even if he hadn't won a medal, he'd beaten all of his old high school records; the crown had just been a bonus.
"Wasn't so bad my left buttock," Toby grumbled, his cane practically slamming into the ground with every step. "Did all of you completely forget about the almost constant assault on our eardrums? I'm going to have tinnitus at this rate."
"On this, we are in agreement," Ozymandias pouted - though the arrogant pharaoh would have denied even knowing of such an expression's existence. "Had we been in the civilized world, I would have ordered her executed the second time she dared try to sing."
"God, if only…"
"I think Nero-chan tried her very best," Ritsuka countered, maybe slightly defensively. "She probably wanted something relaxing and, ah, self-actualizing after what happened during Septem."
"It was a completely glorious experience!" Achilles flipped his green hair back, for what had to be about the thousandth time. "Who'd have thought the woman could organize such a festival!"
"Could've done without her specific musical accompaniment, but you're gonna tell me you didn't have fun once we knew Ko was safe?" Dory said, a bronze riflery medal proudly worn around his neck.
Smug bastard. A few centimeters to the left and that medal would have been his.
"Hah!" Mordred leaned out around his master to point at Toby, a small number of gold and silver medals clinking together from the motion. "They're just salty that Poindexter won the lottery for the crown."
"How dare you," the king of an antique land puffed up. "I have no interest in such a gaudy piece of jewelry!"
The Sun King had, in fact, held on to his ticket quite tightly during the drawing, Adam recalled. But he wasn't going to strip the man of his self-delusions; that was Toby's job. Such as it was.
"In any case," Adam pointed out, as the door into the corridors of Chaldea opened before them. "The point is-"
Ko's eyes met his, just before she was swung and dipped into a kiss by a stranger. Her hands flew up, gripping the other person's shoulders, clinging tightly to folds of red cloth.
Ritsuka stared.
Spencer, Dory and Toby stared.
Achilles, laden with more medals than any one human neck should be able to hold, stared.
Ozymandias, arms crossed over his chest, quirked an eyebrow.
But mostly, Adam stared.
"... WHAT KIND OF MONKEY'S PAW BULLSHITTERY IS THIS?!" Fionn blurted out from over the loudspeaker.
The short, Marie Kondo-looking woman - she wore a red cloak and a peaked hat, a katana at her side - broke off from her stolen kiss to face Adam. Staring the taller man down, her hand pointed first at her own narrowed eyes and then to his own, a vicious, possessive snarl etched on her face.
"Interloper," she hissed.
Adam's hand was already in a fist, the red markings on its back glowing.
"By my Command Seal-" he began, the blood roaring in his ears-
- but the woman was already gone.
"... well," Ko said eventually, wiping her lips and staring thoughtfully at the lipstick that came away on her hand, "that certainly happened-"
"-TOBY!" Spencer screamed from somewhere behind his fiancée. "MEME-OSAAAAAAAS~"
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- Pronouns
- She/Her
That's literally just how Indy, who at this point has never seen Nobu before (but if that "interloper" title is any indication…), describes her.
EDIT: the bisexual Servant counter (for our Chaldea) includes Cu, Achilles (and any other Greek men that show up, they're probably all male-leaning bi, let's be honest here!), Musashi, Nobukatsu, Scathach, and several others. Yes, including [REDACTED].
The too-young-to-have-a-defined-sexuality group is Mordred and Abby. And in the case of the former, gender identity. Because before we forget, Mordred is… somewhere between five and eight years old. Issa teeny babby! (who would toss a sword between my eyes for daring to say that, but still!)
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Blinktwice13
Underpaid Struggle Bus Attendant
- Location
- Eastern US
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Nobu: MAI WAIFE!
Indy: Excuse me?
...I know the stripper Cu part was not written for me, but it was totally written for me. Thank you guys so much.
I did not expect Mash to hit the existential crisis threshold this early, but alcohol will do that for you. Poor lil' eggplant.
Scathach: You do know your fiancé has the one Servant even I'd consider not fighting, right.
So there's a fair bit unresolved, and I really hope Nobukatsu joins Chaldea at this point. As fun as this chapter was, I can easily see a degree of interpersonal drama in the near future. Not just with Nobu, but between Indy and Ko as well. Heck, even Fionn doesn't sound pleased.
While I personally don't drink that much as a me thing, Spence was very relatable. All the way through. Godspeed, friend. I saw a man like that with all of that I too would die and come back again.
Also yeah... if I had been stuck at Nerofest, I'd have been tempted to haul out Mesketet too. Very relatable, Ozy and Toby. Very, very relatable. At least it wasn't the holidays so she couldn't Padoru you all into submission?
Indy: Excuse me?
...I know the stripper Cu part was not written for me, but it was totally written for me. Thank you guys so much.
I did not expect Mash to hit the existential crisis threshold this early, but alcohol will do that for you. Poor lil' eggplant.
Scathach: You do know your fiancé has the one Servant even I'd consider not fighting, right.
So there's a fair bit unresolved, and I really hope Nobukatsu joins Chaldea at this point. As fun as this chapter was, I can easily see a degree of interpersonal drama in the near future. Not just with Nobu, but between Indy and Ko as well. Heck, even Fionn doesn't sound pleased.
While I personally don't drink that much as a me thing, Spence was very relatable. All the way through. Godspeed, friend. I saw a man like that with all of that I too would die and come back again.
Also yeah... if I had been stuck at Nerofest, I'd have been tempted to haul out Mesketet too. Very relatable, Ozy and Toby. Very, very relatable. At least it wasn't the holidays so she couldn't Padoru you all into submission?
Jim Starluck
CO, ICS Vanguard
- Location
- Cincinnati, OH
First Fionn, now Nobu...
...Ko is a harem protagonist, isn't she?
...Ko is a harem protagonist, isn't she?
Blinktwice13
Underpaid Struggle Bus Attendant
- Location
- Eastern US
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Kiss kiss fall in love
Chaldea Security Organization Host Club
- Pronouns
- She/Her
No. No, please God no, don't say its name. It KNOWS. If you dare say its name—
Hashire sori yo
... no. Oh God no, it's here. It's found us!Kaze no you ni
Run! Run for your lives!Tsukihimihara wo
OH GOD PLEASE NO PLEASE ANYTHING BUTPADORU PADORU!
Bachelorette party tradition: there is always at least one crier. Either the bride gets cold feet, or someone is scared they're gonna be single forever, or the junior bridesmaid doesn't have the stamina for all the loud partying, or someone recently got bad news that they thought the party would distract them from but then they got too drunk to not be sad, or their period is starting in like two days and the hormone fluctuations combined with the binge drinking has made their emotional state do cartwheels, or someone falls and hurts themself, or a dude at the bar is mean to someone, or it's cold, or Nashville wasn't as fun as everyone told you it would be and you spent all this money to be here, or you realize your friendgroup is drifting apart right before your eyes, or...
Poor Fionn. "When I said she could do better I meant me!"