#fate go au fic

[ziracona]

As promised! The finale of Act I for The Kid. : ) For the Tumblr readers, as always, a day or two early. [Fate/GO AU – The Kid (pt: 1, … 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, ?)] {Some spoilers for original Grand Order run/through Temple of Time}

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Mmmph…uhg. Head…hurts. chest…hurts… I…

Slowly, I blink, open my eyes. Where…am I? I…

There was a room, for a long time, and then another, big, empty room. With a sword. And I can’t remember why. I’m so confused. I can’t remember when I am, or why, or…M-my neck! I—

I feel a panic in my chest, and try to swallow on reflex, which should hurt, but amazingly it doesn’t.

It’s…bright here. The rooms should be dark.  And I was dreaming, I think. But I shouldn’t dream…? Why shouldn’t I dream? Right. I-I’m dead. But there were memories? O-of a fight, and a girl, and a boy, and I…had…

“Oh! He is up again!”

I’ve heard the voice, but I don’t know it.

I guess I’m not alone in here. Then I’m not in the big, empty room? I’m…

I try harder to focus my vision, and clear my head. It’s so much harder than it usually is. I feel like I’m going to vanish.

“Hey! Hey—Kotarou?”

Louder, clearer. That’s my name. And I know that voice a little. It’s…the…girl? I turn my head towards the voice on my left, and there are two blurry human shapes. A man, with green hair, and a girl with red hair, like mine.

HUH!? Wait. Th—but--then—it wasn’t a dream? I—

Memories come back quickly with the visual prompt, and my mind feels a little clearer. I keep blinking, fighting to be awake now for real, and my vision sharpens. It really is her. That happened after all? Really? …And…I’m still alive?

“How are you feeling?” asks my new lord, leaning in closer, troubled, “We tried what we could, to get you more mana! I was really worried, but the doctor said you’d be alright. Just needed a little time to recover.”

“Yes,” adds the man with green hair behind her, very apologetically. He was called…I…I heard his name. …David? “I am very sorry. I ah, I wasn’t entirely familiar with your history, and when we were banishing demons, I didn’t realize I should be controlling the area of effect on my banishment. I seem to have sort of knocked the wind pretty hard out of you. If I’d realized you were half oni, I’d have been much carefuler about that. I really didn’t know. Are you feeling alright now?”

“Oh…” I say slowly as my brain makes sense of that. So that’s what happened. I guess that makes a certain…sense. “Y…Yes,” I manage as I figure it out, “I think I’m alright now.”

“Good. I’m amazed by the recovery time, actually,” comes a cheerful, friendly voice I think I’ve heard before too, recently, but a man with peach hair I’ve never seen before moves into my field of view and stoops to place a palm against my forehead. My brain wants to jerk back from a strange human touching me, after the last month of memories, but I’m too exhausted and slowed to do anything but stare with eyes that aren’t seeing quite right yet. “You must have already been run ragged from the trap they’d been keeping you in, and immediately deploying a noble phantasm, then taking a banishment spell back-to-back, that’s some spirit origin you’ve got there. I suppose assassins need some hard survivability to fall back on now and again, but even so.”

He smiles at me. I usually view people with some wariness, because it’s only safe, and I feel even more strongly that way now, but this man has somehow got one of the most open and dependable faces I’ve ever seen. He must be…the doctor. That’s where I heard his voice, over the coms.

I guess it makes sense someone like that would be a doctor. And…that…i-it means he’s definitely on our side, then. Right?

“Again, terribly sorry,” says David with an apologetic little smile.

I try to focus back on him, and give a halting nod. My head is still struggling hard to catch up with reality. I seem to be having a hard time with that, since the trap. “…Did…it work?” I ask, turning to Ritsuka as I remember things that happened before, “Your plan?”

“Yes,” she says with a smile, “We did it!”

Oh good, I think with great relief. The idea of those people still being out there does not sit very easy with me, after the last weeks of my life. Months? I really have no idea anymore, I guess. Still. It’s…over. Wow.

Over. …Really…o-over.

“Thank you,” I say, looking up as the thoughts come full circle, “You saved me.”

She nods, and smiles. “You’re welcome. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“He up an’ alright?” comes a voice I recognize more quickly as the cowboy’s, and I turn my head and see him. Actually, I take in the room for the first time too.

It’s…a hotel room, I think. A little couch and lounge area on my left, and a chair pulled close to the bed, that David’s sitting in. There’s another chair on my right, and a little dresser thing opposite me, then a hall far on my right, with the smell of food coming from it. I see a lot of the ones from earlier—the Caster and whatever was with him, over in the sitting area, but not next to each other. The green-clad archer with a hood is sitting in the chair on the right side of the bed—looks like he was reading something. The cowboy’s come from the little hallway. I don’t see the red archer and the lancer, though.

“Yes, hi,” I respond a little stuntedly as the cowboy walks over, and I remember he was speaking to me.

“Glad you’re feelin’ better!” replies the cowboy enthusiastically, clapping me on the shoulder like we’re old friends, “Had us worried there for a second! But hey—” He adds, turning towards Ritsuka for a moment, “We did it, right? That’s everyone now.”

She nods, smiling.

“Mission accomplished,” says Billy the Kid proudly, spinning his gun out of its holster and back in for show.

“Well, assuming things go well with Emiya and Cu Chulainn,” says David with interest, “Then, what does that mean for the rest of us?”

The doctor gives him a slightly nervous glance, and then looks back at Ritsuka.

“For…? You mean, after? Oh. Well…” She thinks a second. “…I dunno, I guess,” she decides, flushing a little when she looks around the room and meets eyes, which have all stopped whatever else they were doing to focus on her. “I uh. Wasn’t sure I’d get this far, so I didn’t plan far enough ahead. S-Sorry. I really didn’t uh… Well, I-I guess I thought I’d figure it out when I got there—Oh!” she adds, looking at the doctor, “Uhm. Doctor Archaman wants a chance to talk to us all about something important, though, so, that, I guess!”

The Doctor looks immensely relieved, happy even.

Huh. I wonder what this is all about? Actually…I—I don’t even really know what she’s talking about.

“And uh, after…” she says, almost to herself, and trails off, thinking.

“I-I’m sorry,” I pipe up slowly, struggling to at least prop myself up in the bed a little, and making it up against the baseboard, “Uhm. …I’m not sure I understand…what’s going on.”

The others glance at me.

“I uhm. …You said you freed me without…wanting anything in return,” I say slowly. I was going to say something else after, like ‘but you really wanted nothing else after? Even now? …What does that mean?’ but, it feels too strange to say. What does that mean, if it’s true? Do we just…get un-summoned? Have the contracts ended, and hang around until our mana is up? I’m…I feel very lost right now. …I guess I also might not be completely conscious. So, maybe I should keep my…mouth shut…

“Yeah,” agrees Ritsuka, “Sorry. I should have had a better plan than this-“

“—Hey I think ya did real well,” interjects Billy with great certainty.

“You did,” says Doctor Archaman, mind completely occupied somewhere else pretty obviously, but apparently clocked in enough to comment.

“Well. I guess we do whatever you want,” she decides, glancing at me, then the others, “I mean. I told Doctor Archaman we’d hear him out. But aside from that…” She looks back at me. “What do you want to do?”

“…W…W-what do I want to do?” I ask, very confused.

“Yeah,” she says, then glances around at the others, “I mean. You don’t have to stay, if you don’t want. But. It’s not hurting me to keep you summoned either. You could…I don’t know. Go to a theme park?”

“Huh?” says Robin, clocking in to this conversation for the first time.

“Yeah, or. I don’t know,” she says, thinking very hard, “I bet you don’t get to go sightseeing much or anything. But you could. What do you do for fun?”

For FUN?

I look at the cowboy for help, because I don’t know what to do, and he’s the only one I’ve talked to. He looks back, but the look on his own face is indescribable. It’s not a bad look, but it’s like all activity behind his eyes has short-circuited for a second.

“We don’t,” says the person whose class I don’t know, over by the Caster at the far side of the room. His voice is confused, wary almost.

The Caster on the other hand looks positively giddy. “Well I do! When I can, which isn’t usual, but hey! We don’t –what is the saying—look a gifted horse in the mouth? Let’s go do something fun! Yes! Excellent! Come on, Salieri!” He grabs the one whose class I can’t guess—Salieri?—by the shoulder excitedly, but the other man is staring so blankly at nothing he doesn’t even seem to notice.

Ritsuka looks relieved and pleased by the Caster’s response. Slightly more worried by the look on Salieri’s face as he finally registers the contact from the Caster.

I’m so confused, I think desperately.

“For…how long,” says Billy in a very strange, almost cautious voice, still looking a little like his brain has stopped.

“Uhm,” says Ritsuka, glancing at him and the rest of us, then back to him, “Well, however long you want? —I-I wouldn’t try to make you stay around, if you don’t want! I-If that’s what you’re worried about or something! But.”

“I’m sorry,” says Robin slowly, setting his book in his lap, “Are you offering to…set us up with indefinite…vacation leave?”

“Uhm. I guess sort of,” says Ritsuka uncertainly, thinking, “I mean, I did tell you Doctor Archaman has something important I promised we’d talk about, and I think he needs help with a serious problem. But. That can’t take forever, and if you all want to stay after, I uh, don’t see why you couldn’t.”

The spirits in the room all trade absolutely befuddled glances, except the Caster, who looks like he’s having the best day of his life. And I guess David, who just has a completely unreadable expression behind the unwavering smile on his face. This is the most confused I think I’ve ever felt.

“…This doesn’t happen,” I say just sort of automatically. I think I…I must be waiting to wake up still. I haven’t yet, right? This can’t be…a real thing happening to me…? Can...it…?

“Yeah,” says Ritsuka sadly, not understanding that at all, “I’m sorry most mages are so terrible to you.”

“No, I-…”

But what can I possibly say.

I try looking at the cowboy again, but he gives me a completely lost shrug, and then a worried little smile, and turns to look at Ritsuka himself.

“I-I appreciate the offer. Uh. We don’t…know how to respond, because no one’s ever said anything like that to any of us before, and we don’t have any kinda frame of reference to process it with, so we’re all gonna take just a second to kinda run it through,” he offers awkwardly, “I uh. I don’t know if that could even work. I guess you do got your big mana pool, so maybe you could do it,” he adds slowly, “But it’d be dangerous…Mages would be bound ta notice eventually—probably pretty soon. Target someone with—”

“—But with eight heroic spirits watching out for her, how much trouble could she possibly get in?” says the Caster with great enthusiasm, almost ecstatic at this idea.

Okay, this can’t really be happening, right? This is a dream. Surely, this must be a dream. I have gone completely insane from having my head half severed for so many weeks, and I’m hallucinating now to comfort myself. Right? That almost makes sense.

Yeah. I think that’s the only thing that could make sense.

Nobody would be kind to me. Not like this, anyway. People didn’t even treat me this way when I was alive.

“Well,” says David with a wave of his hand, “We are all jumping the gun a little bit. We have to make sure that things went well with the other two, and the last of Ur-Shanabi’s leadership. Make sure her parents stay safe,” he adds to Ritsuka with a reassuring smile.

Huh?

“-And there’s whatever the Doctor here has going on,” He continues with a nod at him, “But why not simply take things a little at a time, no? I mean, we really should stay a while, to be certain Ur-Shanabi does not re-form and begin doing what they did to all of us again, yes? So, it makes sense to stay a while.”

“My uh,” adds the Doctor hastily, and looking a little bit sorry, “my thing is uhm. It’s pretty serious, and…dangerous…” He looks very far away a second, then glances back up, and that sincere, just a little sad smile is there again. “But uhm. I think David’s right. Whatever else happens, take it a day at a time for now. We’ve all run ourselves ragged, the last…what’s it been?” He glances at Billy. “Forty-eight or so hours? And most of you have been through hell for weeks, or, even months. You all deserve a break. It…would be nice, to do something fun. Live a little. Heroic spirits…really never get to.” He looks both very sincere, and happy for us, and somewhere behind that, deeply, irrevocably sad, when he says it. I think…something very bad must have happened to this man, and even as not quite there as I think I must still be, I feel bad for him, seeing it.

David is looking at him, and I see almost the same sadness reflected in his eyes for a second, which surprises me, because it’s the first time I’ve had any guess what David’s thinking at all. But he smiles that same bright smile, like a shield, and the sadness is hidden again behind it. “Yes. Exactly. And you’ll come with us too! We’ll celebrate,” he adds, grinning at Ritsuka, “Something nice, for all of us! A victory party!”

“Yeah, okay,” she says enthusiastically, “That sounds great to me! Once Emiya and Cu Chulainn are back, we can ask everybody what they want to do, and figure something out—”

“—And between now and then, everyone can get some rest,” says David with great finality, still beaming.

“Get off of me, or I’m going to remove your head,” says Salieri, who I’d forgotten about, and I look over and see the Caster still hanging off him, from both shoulders now, and looking incredibly unthreatened by this.

“Please don’t antagonize him!” says Ritsuka worriedly, very threatened by this.

“I just want him to have a good time,” says the Caster, reluctantly letting go, but never dropping his smile.

“I think rest is a good idea,” says the Doctor, glancing at the spirits in the corner, and then back at those of us closer to him a bit nervously, “But uh—I don’t think we’ve given proper introductions yet. I haven’t anyway. And I’m sure all this is overwhelming enough on its own.” He shoots me a pitying look.

It is. I feel very grateful towards him.

“I’m Doctor Romani Archaman. A lot of people seem to have trouble pronouncing that, so if you want to call me Doctor Roman instead, that’s fine with me,” he continues with a kind smile, and then indicating the green-haired archer I already know as David, “This is King David, an Archer. You’ve met Billy the Kid, Gunner, and Ritsuka Fujimaru, human mage.” They nod or shoot me a smile. Billy flicks the brim of his hat up like a greeting. He moves on to indicate the other Archer, the Caster, and Salieri in turn. “That’s Robin Hood, Archer. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Caster, and Antonio Salieri, Avenger.”

Avenger. That’s…a hard class. I wish I knew what to say to him, but I don’t think he wants my condolences.

“The other two who were with us before, the Red Archer is Emiya, and the Blue Lancer is Cu Chulainn,” he finishes, “They’re out dealing with a problem right now, but I think they’ll be back pretty soon.”

“Thank you,” I reply, “I’m Fuuma Kotarou, Fifth Head of the Genji Clan. Assassin.”

There are little comments of assent or introduction from the circle, and it’s all much easier to process than the talk of infinite vacation leave. Did I imagine that? I have to have, right? I’m so confused right now. I should probably try not to act confused though. I want to be useful, to thank her for rescuing me, and that won’t help.

“Well, feel free to get some sleep if you like it,” says Billy the Kid as people disperse a little, coming over to take the seat King David was in before now that he’s vacated it to speak to Doctor Archaman, “But if you ain’t so tired, there’s good food, an’ Robin an’ I were gonna play some cards, if you want in.”

I thought I wanted sleep, but the idea of food outweighs that, and I manage to sit up a little.

“Thanks,” I say. Wait. Food? As a— “Are you…you said there is food for us?”

I look up for my Master, and she’s already vanishing into the little hall I smell food from, so I look back at Billy.

“Yeah, she’s unusual,” he says with a very proud grin.

“That doesn’t begin to cover it,” says Robin Hood, moving his chair over to Billy’s side of the bed, “But it’s completely in a good way.”

… “I…am not completely certain I’ve actually woken up again. Or that any of this is happening,” I tell them, a little worried it’s not a good idea to say that.

“Yeah, I felt that way too,” agrees Billy, nonplussed, “We never get treated ‘cept like shit. It’s happenin’ though.”

Huh. I’m still not totally sure I believe him, but. I … I guess if it’s a dream, at least it’s a really, really good one. And…even that’s quite the rare gift. We’re not supposed to dream like this anymore.

“Okay. Game’s called Faro. Easy to learn—trust me. ‘N I’ll go easy on ya,” says Billy the Kid.

“He will,” agrees Robin tiredly, “But only the first time. Then he’ll take you for all you’re worth.”

Scary…

“Ritsuka’s playin’ Bank, ‘cause I already taught her ‘n she’s actually pretty good at it,” he continues, then pauses to call to the rest of the room, “Anyone else want deal’d in?”

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“So, be real,” I say, landing silently on the edge of the roof behind Archer and adjusting my grip on my spear, “The kid wanted us to talk to her, ‘just in case,’ but there was never any other way this was gonna go; the others sent us because they needed someone who could make sure we don’t just get her, we get all the information she had backups of too.”

“No,” replies Archer, side-eyeing me for a moment, “If the others wanted to send someone to torture out information, they would have asked Salieri to go.”

I snort. “No way; he doesn’t have the patience for that. Alone, he’d rip her head off in under a minute.”

“Look, it hardly matters,” says Archer with a sigh, turning to actually face me a little. “… What, does it bother you to be the one who seems good at this?”

“At killing?” I ask, genuinely surprised for a second, but no, that’s not what he means. He means ‘at being cutthroat’.

I consider.

“No, not really,” I decide.

He tilts his head like assent. “…Funny they’re wrong, though.”

“Hm?”

“Please,” he says, scanning the building ahead again, and then glancing over at me, “You’re not cutthroat. You picked two kids in a grail war as your allies. I’ve seen you die at least eight times in the stupidest of ways, just because there was something especially rotten you didn’t want to do.”

I can’t figure out if that’s a dig, or a backhanded compliment, or…?

“Oh, you can talk,” I decide to shoot back, because it’s the easiest response, “Under all that superiority complex, edgy shit you got going on, you’re really just a lifelong pacifist who got tired.”

Oooh, low blow. He did not like that.

For a long few seconds, he just narrows his eyes and looks at me, then he turns away, expression hard.

I think maybe I took that one too far.

“There. Top floor. See it?” he asks, and I do, immediately. Just for an instant, but the tiniest change in mana sparks in the third room from last on the far right. Hell of a bounded field hiding her, but we finally found the signature we were looking for.

“We got her,” I say, grip tightening.

He nods, eyes on the window.

-

It doesn’t take long.

I don’t know what I expected.

But it wasn’t what I got.

I forget, but he’s not like the rest of us. He’s not dragged around to mage summons off and on, and frozen on the throne otherwise. He’s in that reality marble of his, for a few moments, and then thrown out by the Counter Force to deal with some new threat. I forget that he’s not like the rest, because I see him so much. But he isn’t.

We entered the room silent, the curtain blowing behind us. Him ahead, me just behind, waiting.

He raised his sword calmly, and she saw him as she turned.

She was smart enough not to attack immediately. She knew her work well enough to recognize me and what I was, and not to recognize him and know he wasn’t one of hers. She asked.

He said, “I am an agent of the Counter Force. Sent to bring peace and stability whenever the living humans of a time throw the world too far off balance. I ensure the survival of the human race. Whatever the cost, whatever the call, whatever the reason. Without quarter, or excuse, or appeal. You cannot have aimed your hand at the Throne itself, and not expected this would come much, much sooner, than later.”

Director Ayase had nodded, slow, calm. Almost still, even in motion. “So. An answer to what happened last night that finally makes sense. I don’t suppose you people let humans off with a warning?”

He said nothing. He didn’t move. Weapon still, leveled, in the dark.

That was her moment to appeal, but she did not.

“And you?” asked Director Ayase, turning to me instead.

I raised my spear and grinned a smile of sharp teeth. “Revenge.”

“I didn’t realize that was the Counter Force’s business,” she’d said, turning back to Archer.

Expression almost blank, he held her gaze, and said, “One might say, it is our only business.”

That was her second moment to appeal. She did not.

She tried to kill him.

No equivocations, no fleeing, no apologies or attempts.

Only violence.

And she tried to kill him, not me. Not me first. Of all the things. I didn’t care enough to remember the exact words, but she said something about him still just being a glorified familiar, even if his master was the Counter Force, and she’d activated every trap ready in that room and tried to rip him to shreds. I could see on her face that she really thought she could do it, too. Certainty. As much as I’ve seen it, and as used to it as I should be, just how people with money will really, truly believe they can out-flank god herself will never cease to amaze me.

She did not.

I could have killed her, but I didn’t care who did it, and he didn’t need protecting. He was quick.

I had forgotten that he would be quick.

But, he always is. I certainly remember it now. Not quick to move, but quick to kill. Quick in the act of killing. Quick in making it over. He hit her, once, and she was gone, the next instant. Like an execution, not a kill.

I guess when your only job is revenge, that’s what mercy is forced to look like.

And it was mercy. Brutal, and ugly, and unmemorable mercy, but mercy still.

We went through the room after. He set her down, against the foot of the bed. Not undignified, not special. A neutral, basic respect. Like it was rote. And we found what we needed, and we left.

I watch him now with a little more interest, and a little less annoyance, than usual, as we head back. A flicker of mana on rooftops and through trees.

“Hey,” I say finally as we go, and he stops then and waits for me.

“I didn’t mean you got tired of being one,” I say as I join him on the rooftop. It’s getting close to dawn, but it’s still so dark, you wouldn’t be able to tell by looking. I only know because I can recognize the way it feels. “I just meant you got tired.”

He furrows his brow in I think genuine confusion, and then I see it click.

Archer opens his mouth and starts to say something, then doesn’t. I wait.

“…Is this an apology? Of some kind?” he asks finally, confused and almost amused, “Or are you insulting my level of professionalism?”

“Neither, I think,” I say, “I just think you make a poor cleaner.”

He snorts. “And who let Medea escape injured in that holy grail war where her master sold the execution right for his own servant to another contender..?”

Damn. Gonna be like that, huh?

But the tension from before is gone.

“That’s integrity,” I shrug him off completely.

“Sure,” he almost laughs. I return the grin.

Huh. This almost feels familiar too. Can’t remember any good times with this guy to be remem—

“Wait, shit, did we go fishing-?”

“What?” says Archer, completely taken aback.

“Was there like, some time we both got summoned somewhere, where that would have been a thing? For the life of me I can’t remember, but I can almost swear,” I reply.

“Why did you have to say that?” he asks, a matching look of consternation on his face as he thinks, “Damn it. Now I kind of remember that too. Why the hell would we-? Was Gilgamesh there?? AGAIN?”

“God, I hope not,” I say, “I fucking hate that guy.”

“Yeah, me too,” says Archer, thinking hard at the middle distance.

There’s a moment of us digging for old memories, and then I shake it off and turn to him, swinging my spear around to lean on it casually. “Well. Either way. At least now it’s done, and we can go back.”

“To what?” he asks automatically.

Huh. Good question. “Shit, I haven’t thought about that. Are we all just getting unsummoned?” I ask.

He shrugs.

Hm. Well. “Guess we’ll find out?” I offer, and it’s so weird a situation to be in, I laugh.

“I guess so,” he replies with what’s almost a laugh, shaking his head a little, “…I guess so.”

-------------------------

“It’s all taken care of.”

“All of it?” checks Ritsuka again, eyes huge.

“I promise you,” says Emiya with a patient smile, “They’re okay. We checked, and your brother is still out of the country. Your parents will be with family for the next month. No one who knew anything is around to do anything about it, and any records and backups have been destroyed.”

“They’re safe,” she checks.

He nods.

“Safe, and Ur Shanabi is dead,” chimes in Cu Chulainn, raising his glass of water.

She just looks at them for a few seconds in silence, then her eyes well up and she throws her arms around him, then motions Cu Chulainn close enough she can reach both, and gets him too.

“Thank you so much,” comes her muffled voice.

“Hey, you saved us from a fate worse than death. It’s nothing,” says Cu Chulainn.

“Yeah, we’re the ones need to be thankin’ you,” I chime in. She raises her head to look over at me. “I mean, I was dead! For months, I think. And you swoop in and save me, save all of us?”

“Dismantle a corrupt organization,” adds Robin, joining me.

“Yes. Save all of us, fight an impressive battle,” says Mozart from over in the corner.

“And the best part: we all made it out alive and fairly unscathed!” adds David gleefully.

I nod. That’s a damn good point. We really did great here, I think.

“…I. Wow,” she says, staring at all of us in turn with big eyes, “We really did it, didn’t we?”

“You did,” says Doctor Archaman with his soft smile, looking genuinely about as happy as we are. I can’t really figure the guy out, but no matter how he got mixed up in this, I guess he’s pretty okay.

“You helped too,” I say, feeling charitable.

He looks surprised, and then looks down and kind of smiles.

“You did!” agrees David readily, “Quite a bit! You blew the vault. Did some big magic medicine work. Ran an attack.”

“Alright alright,” says the Doctor quickly, “We all pitched in. You too. Even half dead, you really saved us there,” he adds, to Kotarou, who is watching all of this still from the bed. He’s sitting up now, and looks a whole lot better, and ain’t bad at cards, but I guess he’s probably pretty overwhelmed still. I would be, if I tried to think very rationally about everything going on, and I’ve been up the longest.

“Way to go team!” cheers Ritsuka, raising a fist. There’s a little chorus of assent or relief from everyone. Robin claps me on the back, and I elbow him in a friendly way back, and grin. Even the Avenger looks happy for the moment. Proud maybe.

“So—a celebration?” suggests David.

“Celebration?” echoes Emiya, turning to him as Ritsuka lets go.

“Yeah, it’s what she suggested. –Oh you two weren’t there for that,” I say, “But uh. Well. I’ll. Let her sorta.” I gesture, to try and pass the baton.

“Oh yeah! Right,” says Ritsuka, turning back to Cu Chulainn and Emiya, “When you two were gone, we started talking about what happens next. Uhm, I promised the Doctor we’d all hear him out, about this security situation he has at his organization. He said he could use help, if we’re willing to do that.”

They glance at the Doctor, and so does Robin beside me, and interesting look on his face. Huh. Wonder what that’s about. Maybe he already knows somethin?

“But before then, we thought we’d all go out and do something to celebrate! If—uhm, if you all feel well enough,” she adds.

We glance around at each other.

“I do,” offers Mozart with great enthusiasm.

“And she said after whatever the Doc’s got, we can all just stick around or do whatever,” I add, overtaken by a sudden Irish drive to add chaos to the moment.

It’s so worth it for the looks Emiya and Cu Chulainn both get on their faces instantly. Cu Chulainn like, triple takes, and Emiya looks like all activity behind his eyes short-circuits for about three seconds.

“I’m sorry—what?” says Emiya, trying to recover, and turning to Ritsuka. Behind him, Cu Chulainn’s eyes are just huge.

“Well, I mean,” says Ritsuka, suddenly uncertain over this response, “It’s not like I can’t sustain you, since I have so much mana. It would be really mean to just send you back to the throne, and, there’s no reason it would be bad for you to get to stick around. It sounds like you never get to do anything enjoyable, or rest, so it would maybe be pretty good. To uh…You know.”

Emiya still looks like he’s hitting error codes in his brain. Cu Chulainn has a massive grin starting to form.

“I mean—You don’t have to stay with me,” hurries Ritsuka, misinterpreting Emiya, “—y-you can go wherever you want! And if you didn’t want to stick around, that’s okay too. I just figure. Maybe you all would want uh. Want a break.”

“Well I do!” calls Mozart again, “And so does Salieri.”

Salieri turns to give Mozart the kind of look Emiya is still giving Ritsuka.

“Well shit,” says Cu Chulainn excitedly, “You’re actually serious?”

“Yes?” she says, confused.

He tries to say something, and then just starts laughing. So hard he kind of doubles over, and slaps a hand on Emiya’s shoulder to steady himself. Emiya turns and gives him a blank look for a few seconds, and then shakes his head and slowly comes back to himself, starting to smile as well.

“Are you two okay?” asks Ritsuka.

“Yes,” says Emiya over Cu Chulainn’s shaky, “Oh yeah,” through his laughter. “This just never happens,” continues Emiya, “It’s enough to apparently give someone a little bit of a nervous breakdown.”

“I’m not having a nervous breakdown,” manages Cu Chulainn as he continues to laugh, “It’s just funny!’

“It’s funny?” asks Ritsuka worriedly.

“Not in a bad way,” Robin answers for them, moving forward, “In a kind of cosmic way. It’s like being horribly cursed your whole life, only to win a 900 million dollar lottery.”

“Oh,” says Ritsuka, clearly not getting it at all, but encouraged at least.

“We can figure the rest out later, can’t we?” pipes up Mozart enthusiastically, “I say we go with the mood, and celebrate! What’s the last time anyone here has been out on the town?”

“’Out on the’—” starts Emiya, incredulous.

“Won’t that be a risk?” asks Salieri, which is the first thing I’ve heard him say in a while. It’s a wild sight, him next to Mozart, who’s a beacon’ ah light without a care in the world, n’him surrounded by an aura like he’s trying to compress all the rage and confusion and murderous intent I seen in him in battle, into a little one foot radius around his body and probably a couple ulcers, just to not destroy everything around him. Never seen someone look so clocked out in such a specific, intentional way. Kinda impressive actually. Like a bomb held together by force of will.

“Being spirits, you mean?” asks Doctor Archaman. He considers. “…Well, we—you—took care of Ur-Shanabi’s leadership. No one around should know to look out for you. What happened with Mercury, they possibly could be looking for Fuuma Kotarou, but they won’t be yet. Their priority will be figuring out who did this, and why. There’s always the chance of being spotted, by other mages, but I don’t think anywhere that would qualify as ‘out on the town’ is somewhere we’d be likely to be spotted. Or for mages to be. So…So long as you don’t do anything to draw attention to yourself.”

“Like…how we look?” asks Ritsuka.

I glance at her in surprise, then down at myself.

Oh. Haha. Yeah…The whole ‘cowboy’ thing might not scream ‘heroic spirit,’ but it sure screams somethin’. And I’m the most modern hero here, ‘cept apparently Emiya. An he sure don’t look it.

“Ah—uh, yes,” says Doctor Archaman awkwardly.

“We’ll go grab clothes first then! Something to blend in,” says Ritsuka excitedly, “I know a little shop that would be perfect, pretty close.”

The rest of us trade glances.

“Well, I’m in!” I decide, fully pumped. She turns and grins at me. Heh heh.

“I…guess?” says Emiya, almost mystified, while Cu Chulann offers something a little like finger guns from behind him, and Robin nods dissociatively.

“You already know I am!” chimes in Mozart, grabbing Salieri’s arm, “Come on, Antonio!”

Salieri just stares at him blankly. David nods sagely, and claps an arm around Doctor Archaman’s shoulder. Which is kinda hard, because he’s way shorter’n him. “You as well, Doctor! You’ve got a ruined lab coat, bedclothes, and that swimsuit, and none of those won’t grab attention.

Doctor Archaman looks chagrined.

I look at Kotarou.

“Uh…” he says when he notices, and returns the eye contact, “…okay?”

He sounds so unsure, poor guy. I’d be so lost too.

“Let’s do it,” I affirm.

Ritsuka nods. “Great! We can take the train.”

“We can?” Cu Chulainn asks her dubiously.

“No, she’s right,” sighs Emiya, “You see weirder stuff on the train.”

“Really?” I ask.

Emiya and Ritsuka both nod.

To my incredible astonishment, they’re right. We take the train, and barely get a look. I hear someone sigh. Two girls ask if they can take a photo and if David and Kotarou are cosplaying as ‘Guy and Azel’. Doctor Archaman panics and says yes. Other than that, we are left alone.

Ritsuka hops off the train and we follow her through city streets that still seem unimaginably big and full and clean, compared to what I knew. Like a maze, but, she seems to know it by heart, and we wind through the labyrinth to a quieter street and a white and blue building called 2nd STREET Total Reuse.

We get a bit of an odd look walkin’ in, but I guess the cashier ain’t paid enough to care, and Ritsuka goes up and excitedly asks a few questions about where stuff is, and the lady barely pays mind to us at all after that. I get dragged with Kotarou down an aisle, since we’re about the same height, and Ritsuka seems to be havin’ the time of her life pitchin’ ideas to us. So goofy. I can’t think of the last…ever? I guess…yeah, least as far as I remember, I ain’t ever gone clothes shoppin’, even just for the practicality of a disguise, since I was a heroic spirit. Usually if your master wants some incognito, you just go into spirit form ‘n wait.

It's fun. I never had cash to shop as a kid, but the few times when I was real little, ‘n my mom took me for fabric for Sunday clothes ‘n a treat, and the few times again once I started scorin’ as a thief, ‘n first used some spoils?

It was fun then, and it’s fun now. She’s passin’ out jackets and shoes and wonderin’ to herself out loud if it’s fine for me to keep my cowboy hat. It’s so…normal, and different, and carefree. Even just an instant in time, it’s great. Like stepping back into a day I was really alive.

Poor Kotarou looks like he’s still mentally almost 100% clocked out. I hear the others chattin. David seems to be draggin’ Doctor Archaman around the store, and the poor man’s just lettin’ it happen. Guess they must’ve really connected back when David knew him as a boy—rare to have that happen, but I guess I’d feel something like the same seein’ Ritsuka again after a long time. Mozart’s tryin’ to do the same to Salieri, and it’s a plain wonder the man ain’t killed him yet. They got a real complicated relationship. Salieri keeps arguing his clothes are actually normal enough to pass for contemporary, which might be true, because it’s kinda a dated suit, but it’s just a black suit. Mozart ain’t havin it, and Ritsuka leaves us to double-team him, and I have to assume he loses, because next time I see him he’s tiredly wearing a more casual suit jacket, and talking to Cu Chulainn by some shoes.

“You holdin up okay?” I ask Kotarou, glancing over as I’m finishin’ what I got goin’ and step back out of the changing room to see he’s still just holding an armful of things Ritsuka gave him, with his face blank.

He kind of blinks, and slowly turns his head to look at me.

“Oh. Uh. …I don’t really know,” he offers after a moment.

I nod. “It’s a whole lot.”

“Does…?” he hesitates, and considers, then looks up again, seeming more awake, “Does this all feel like it’s not really happening, to you?”

He said somethin’ like this back at the hotel, too. Guess he’s still feelin pretty rough.  “Mmm, it did at first,” I reply, thinking it through sincerely, “But I’ve been up for like, 48 hours now. Somewhere around day two, I think, I decided it must be real.”

“…Really,” he says thoughtfully, more to himself than me.

“It is surreal,” I say.

He nods slowly. “It feels like…I was going to say ‘something that would happen to somebody else,’ but, it’s not even that. It feels like something you wish could happen to even just somebody else, a little like you. But wouldn’t. Like you might say, ‘well, in another life, I got a master who just let me goof off and buy things.’”

That is a fair point.

“Guess it does. …I s’pose that means we’re livin the dream, huh?” I add after a second with enthusiasm.

He blinks. “…Does it?”

I consider again, then nod. “Think so.”

“Huh,” he says, thinking that through, “That just doesn’t seem like something that could really happen to me.”

I shrug. “Me either. But I think when somethin’ too good to be true finally happens, you just gotta embrace it whole-hog, ‘n go with your own momentum. I mean, it’s gotta be once in a lifetime, right?” I smile and nudge his arm with my elbow. “Better make it count.”

He thinks, and then smiles a little, and nods again. “I guess so.”

“I mean, we got the bad flip side of that too. Only a handful of us got trapped in death-torture device shit for a couple weeks, so, y’know. I figure we almost earned it.”

I get a real smile that time. He still looks pretty glazed over, but a lot better than he did.

“Plus—Damn Robin!” I interrupt myself, spotting him, “Lookin’ good!”

He pauses where he was about to step past the aisle, and glances at me and gives me an amused sigh and a smile. “This is literally just black jeans and a green shirt. You know that.”

“You’re wearin’ the hell out of it though,” I say.

He rolls his eyes but he keeps smiling.

“Go on,” I say to Kotarou, slapping him on the back to bring him back down to earth, and gesturing to the changing room. He nods and vanishes inside.

“So,” I say as Robin walks over, “If you could do anything in the world to celebrate, what would it be?”

“I don’t know. Get off the throne?” jokes Robin, sliding over next to me.

“I meant in a mundane way,” I say, fake miffed, “And you know it.”

“Mmm, alright,” says Robin without missing a beat, “Mundane celebration, mundane celebration…hm. Maybe I’d…Go visit the old stomping ground?” he suggests, looking surprised at his own idea.

“Like, go home? See what’s changed?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Maybe. Dunno.”

That sounds a little interesting to me too.

“What about just today?” I try.

“Just today?” he echoes, “Well…I guess I’d…” He glances at me and then grins. “Go drinkin’.”

“Yeah?” I ask.

“I mean, why not? It’s not complicated, or elaborate, but I miss spending time eating and drinking with friends between work. Just relaxing, sharing stories.” He gestures with an arm.

“Me too,” I agree, “And it wouldn’t hurt if it was somethin’ sweet! That girl gave me a chocolate earlier, and now my damn mouth can’t stop thinkin’ about the fact that sometimes food is sweet.”

“God, yeah,” agrees Robin with a faraway look on his face, “Man, it would be nice to get drunk. Not much, just a little, you know? Take the edge off.”

I nod.

“You think we can do that?”

“I mean, why not?” I say, “We’re already decided on goin’ to get food or somethin’.”

We look back out over the others we can see. Everyone but Kotarou seems to have their new outfit by now. Emiya looks so mundane dressed casually, and even Cu Chulainn looks virtually normal. It makes me almost feel like, even if it’s just for the next few hours, we’ll really get to be: people, alive, carefree. The little stuff you don’t miss enough till you’re dead ‘n gone. Doctor Archaman is up at the front with David, payin’, and they look so casual I could almost believe they’re family, doin’ something they’ve done 100 times. Any other day. ‘N Rits is over with Salieri and Mozart, trying to keep the Avenger from going insane, by the look of it. I know that, because I’ve met them, but if I couldn’t sense the mana from here, they’d just look like a couple old friends having a fight they don’t mean.

Behind me, Kotarou steps back out of the changing room. He’s got grey pants and red trimmed boots, a deep grey shirt. He could be Ritsuka’s classmate, like that.

He glances at me a little awkwardly, pushing some hair out of an eye, and tries to smile, and I feel the thought even more. We could all be anybody right now.

What a rare gift, no matter how long it lasts. I guess somebody up there’s still lookin’ out for me.

Robin looks over and smiles too, and then double-takes hard and says, “Wait a second.” He looks from him, to me, to himself. “Did she color code us??”

Huh.

I look down at my jeans and brown t-shirt. Up and over at Emiya in his black pants and dark red jacket, Cu Chulainn’s blue flannel and jeans, Mozart’s purple dress shirt and black pants and fancy green scarf, Salieri’s black suit and matching red scarf, David’s cream button-down and black pants with a little green vest.

“God Damn! She did!” I exclaim.

That’s so funny.

“Huh…” says Kotarou, looking down at himself.

“Look!” says Robin, about to lose it, gesturing towards the counter, “She even did it to herself!”

Oh damn, it’s true. She didn’t even need to buy anything, ‘cause she had clothes already, but she’s picked up a white jacket somewhere, to replace the one totaled by that trip to shreds in Ur-Shanabi.

“Well I’ll be,” I say.

“Not the Doctor, though,” says Kotarou with interest.

“David picked his,” says Robin, waving that away, “I saw it.”

From the way the poor man is wearing a slutty little white v-neck with red trim, and looking absolutely miserable about it, I am not surprised one bit to hear that.

“Come on!” calls Ritsuka from the front, seeing us and waving us over, “I think we found a good restaurant!”

I glance at Robin and Kotarou. Kotarou blinks, and then gives a shaky little smile.

“Somewhere we can drink?” asks Cu Chulainn with interest. She nods.

“Well, well, well,” says Robin, immensely pleased. He claps us both on the shoulder, gives me a grin, and heads over.

We follow.

-------------------------

“Alright, alright!” says David cheerily, sliding up to the table with my tray of drinks from the café outside.

“Hell yeah!” says Billy excitedly, taking the hot chocolate he asked for and setting it next to the half-finished glass of liquor on the table at his place.

“Seriously?” says Emiya.

“I ain’t gotta limit myself to one drink,” he scoffs, taking alternate swigs from both.

Emiya grimaces.

Yeah, I feel that. I can see drinking both, but alternating? Billy’s my boy though, so I keep my mouth shut and take another sip of the sake we were offered when we sat down. I don’t really care so much what I’m drinking, so long as it takes an edge off, and it is damn well doing that for me.

“And for you, Chavera,” says David, passing another hot chocolate to Ritsuka, who beams and picks one of the marshmallows off the top to chew on, before taking a swig. No wonder she and Billy get along.

“This is good stuff,” says Cu Chulainn, ignoring all of them in favor of the shochu he’s been devouring at a genuinely impressive rate. He’s not wrong. I’m pacing myself a little by mostly sticking with the lighter alcohol, because there is a very specific level of drunk I like to get, but I’ve had some of it too, and it’s quality.

“And dinner was amazing,” agrees Ritsuka, who’s still getting through the last of hers.

I’ve never had okonomiyaki before, but I would agree with that as well. This is pretty much exactly what I was hoping for when I told Billy how I’d prefer to spend my celebration. Go me.

“And you,” says David finally, passing the Doctor, who’s declined drinking alcohol, the last cup in the tray.

“Thanks,” he says, taking it and setting it by his plate.

“Okay, so. We’ve definitely met before,” says Kotarou, gesturing to himself and me, picking up where the conversation was before David’s return. He points to Billy and me then. “You’ve definitely met before.” He points to Cu Chulainn and Emiya. “You two have very definitelymet before. Many times.”

They give unhappy sounds of assent and turn to their alcohol.

“You’ve met, but only you remember it,” he says, indicating Emiya and me again.

Yeah. Very annoyed I don’t remember that one. Emiya doesn’t look exactly thrilled that he does, though, so probably we tried to kill each other. I guess it can’t matter now.

“You two know each other,” he continues, gesturing to Doctor Archaman, and David, “And you two know each other,” he finishes, indicating Salieri and Mozart.

“That seems about right,” I say.

“Archers really get around,” he says contemplatively.

I grin. Dunno why that’s so funny to me. Do we? Maybe we do.

“But this is your first time summoning heroic spirits, right?” he checks, glancing up at Ritsuka. She nods.

“Hell of a first time,” I observe.

“Atta girl,” cheers Billy, who is a little bit drunk.

She grins and flushes.

“It seems oddly fortuitous we’d have had so many meet each other before, and remember it,” says Kotarou with building interest, “I’m not sure I believe in fate as such, but, doesn’t it almost seem…”

‘Meant to be?’

Hm…

“Yeah, I think it’s nice,” says Ritsuka, “It’s like a reunion, in ways.”

David nods sagely and smiles. Beside him, Doctor Archaman watches that and smiles a little too, then takes a sip of his drink.

Man, I still cannot get a read on that guy at all. I’ve been trying, ever since Emiya brought it up, but. As sure as I am something is going on, for the life of me, I can’t pin down what. He seems nice. He seems normal. He seems fine, and mundane, and kind even. A little bit of a coward, a little out of his depth, but, I know he’s neither. No coward would have done what he did last night, or today, and no one out of their depth with heroic spirits can patch together a shattered spirit core. So why is he…?

And he’s damn convincing…

It makes me feel unsettled, but. Then he says literally anything, and I don’t anymore, because he’s the least worrying person I’ve ever met. It’s so frustrating. And he-

“…Is this…?” The Doctor’s face changes dramatically, almost to a disbelieving grimace. He takes another sip, and gives David an indescribable look. “Is this just a cup of warm milk and honey?”

David absolutely loses it in the chair next to him—like this is the funniest fucking prank on the planet.

Doctor Archaman is still giving him this look like he cannot believe he would do this, and I can’t get what’s funny about it at all. The hell?

“Seriously?” he asks, “Are you kidding me? You went to a coffee shop and ordered me milk and honey just to…”

He gives the sigh of someone shifting the weight of twenty years of exhaustion in the breath and shakes his head, but he almost cracks a smile too. David is just grinning elated at him.

“That’s so fucking stupid,” says Doctor Archaman, who I’ve not heard use this tone before.

“It’s funny,” argues David happily.

“Oh, whatever,” says Doctor Archaman, but he’s still drinking it.

“It’s good for you!” says David, pleased, grabbing his arm, “Makes those bones strong!”

“You’re unbelievable,” says Doctor Archaman, not looking at him, but he’s not mad anymore.

I look at Emiya. He’s watching too, and we trade a ‘Oh I saw it, but I don’t know what the fuck it was,’ look. Everything those two do just gives me more questions. Doesn’t alarm me. But the fact they’re so covert about shit that doesn’t alarm me at all, does alarm me a little. Uhg, I hate this.

Whatever, I think, turning back to my own drink.

“Well, I think it’s all wonderful!” says Mozart, circling back. He clinks his glass against Salieri’s cheerily. “Over two-hundred years, and we finally see each other again! And with the same master even! Not at war! What are the odds?”

Salieri sighs and looks at his empty cup. He sat down by me, originally, to get away from that man, but Mozart just dragged a stool over, forcibly somehow shoved it into the space between us, and is now practically in the guy’s lap. Poor bastard.

I refill his glass. He gives me a tired, grateful sigh, and downs it in one gulp. Jesus, and I used the shochu.

“Yeah, it’s real nice! I’m always happy to see Robin, and havin’ partners at all in any summon’s rare enough,” says Billy, raising his glass to me. I meet him with a smile, and we drink.

Somehow everyone kind of ends up looking towards Cu Chulainn and Emiya, I guess seeing them as the next logical speakers, and when they become aware of it, they trade disgusted glances.

“Don’t look at me,” says Cu Chulainn, “I’m never happy to see this bastard’s face. I just can’t get away from him.”

“Yeah, I’m so pleased every time a new opponent walks into the room, and it’s you again,” says Emiya, dripping sarcasm. Cu Chulainn grins.

“I can’t tell if you’re actually friends, or not,” says Ritsuka with a little worry.

“Oh, they’re friends,” says Billy the same time I say, “Friends,” tiredly, and Mozart says, “Inseparable.”

Neither of them like that one bit.

“Well, he’s not so bad I can’t work with him,” offers Cu Chulainn, deciding the meat on his plate is more worth his time than this conversation, and digging in, “Plus,” he continues, mouth chock-full, “less annoying to have him on my side, than taking way more of my time than it should to kill.”

“Yeah, that’s less annoying to me too,” agrees Emiya. I fuckin bet. I would not love to be killed by that specific lancer. He’s terrifying in combat. Even stalling against him wouldn’t be fun.

“I think it’s great to see old friends,” says David, very pleased.

“You couldn’t have even gotten shots in this?” asks Doctor Archaman, still stuck on the drink, “I…I did specifically say ‘oh just anything with caffeine,’ and you got one of the only things at a coffee shop that doesn’t have some.”

David shrugs.

“How about you?” says Ritsuka, smiling at Kotarou.

He flushes and smiles back. “Uh. I…don’t actually remember the summoning I met Robin Hood on in any detail, just that I’ve met him before for sure, somewhere. But I uh—I’m just glad to be anywhere other than where I was the last night.”

She looks happy for him, and Kotarou seems grounded by that.

“You can say that again,” agrees Billy.

“We’re all pretty lucky,” I say, raising my glass, “All things considered.” Most of the others toast that. It’s…all things considered, almost unbelievably true.

“You won’t say anything, but I know even you have to be pleased, spending time with me like life is normal again,” says Mozart to Salieri, sipping his sake happily.

“You really don’t get it, do you?” says Salieri finally, turning to give him such an exhausted look that I feel worse for him than I already did.

“Mm?” says Mozart, glancing over without a care in the world.

“I’m not happy to be here with you,” says Salieri, in great distress, “I would love to be summoned anywhere else. I am expending every amount of effort I am able, not to kill you right now. This is not relaxing and enjoyable: it is a nightmare.”

“It can’t really be that hard,” says Mozart, lowering his glass.

Salieri gets a look on his face that says Oh Yes It Fucking Can pretty clearly. The poor man looks so miserable and strung out.

“We’re having fun right now, though,” says Mozart.

“You, are having fun,” says Salieri.

Mozart sighs and sets down his cup, then shifts to face him. “Alright, Antonio. What would it take for you to have a good time?”

“You really don’t seem to grasp this situation,” says Salieri, almost amazed this time.

“You say, ‘the throne, blah blah blah, Avenger, perception, innocent monster,’” he waves his wrist in a circle, “’You’re compelled to kill me. You’re not doing it though.’ But resisting hurts? Like a command spell.”

“Not…exactly. It’s…” He hesitates, and glances at Ritsuka, then the rest of us.

“Come on,” says Mozart, “I’m taking it serious! I’m trying to help! Let’s figure this out.”

“You cannot just ‘figure it out,’” says Salieri in great distress, “It is what it is! My nature is changed. I am supposed to be the figure who kills you. I am half Antonio Salieri, and half just this concept of a man who is consumed by the desire for your murder. It’s not that ‘I’—the ‘I’ you think of, am compelled. It is that ‘I’ am made up, of multiple parts now. And not all of them are Antonio Salieri. Even if I put forward as much effort as it is possible for me, and more, I still cannot control the part of me that is not me, forever.”

Mozart watches that. For once, his smile disappears, and he looks almost concerned, or thoughtful.

“You do not ‘know’ what I am like,” pleads Salieri, encouraged by this, “because…I am not the man you knew. I am a part of him, or, he is a part of me. But the heroic spirit ‘Antonio Salieri’ and the man called that in life are not the same thing. I know, what I will do. Because I am in here, experiencing it. And I don’t…want to kill you. ‘I’ do, but the part of me you speak to, does not. But…I…I know it’s a battle I will lose. Because I have to win, every second, of every day, to not kill you. The rest of me only has to win once. Even for an instant. I am many things, Amadeus, but you of all people know me not to be perfect. I am not you.”

There is quiet around the table for a moment, everyone listening now. Thinking. Ritsuka looking so sad, and worried.

“…So, if you were ‘invented,’ to kill me,” says Mozart after a moment, thinking himself, “Would that do it?”

“What?” says Salieri.

“If you killed me,” asks Mozart earnestly, “Would that…’fix’ you? Would the rest of you go away, mission accomplished?”

Salieri looks so genuinely horrified by that. “I am not going to kill you!”

Mozart looks to the rest of us and holds a hand towards him like See??

“No! I—I mean, I will not choose to. I don’t…Amadeus-” tries Salieri frantically.

“-Would once be enough?” asks Billy.

“-No—no it would not,” says Salieri, looking relieved by the interruption, “You would return to the throne. It would not be permanent, so, I would not…cease.”

“What about the version who killed me though? Would he be fine after that?” asks Mozart.

“The-? What?” says Salieri.

“The one in the specific summons,” says Mozart, as if this is the most normal line of questioning in the world.

It’s very clear from his face that Salieri has no idea, but is not interested in this becoming a proposition even if so.

“Hmmm,” says Mozart with interest.

“…Amadeus, that would not…” starts Salieri worriedly.

“—Oh, you’re right. Leaning into your desire to murder me is probably not a good idea anyway, and I don’t want to die!” says Mozart, tone 180’d back to light again, “It’s not very fun.”

“Ah,” says Salieri, greatly relieved and a little shaken. He glances at Mozart, then takes a drink to steady himself.

“I do wonder if we could get the throne on a technicality, though,” says Mozart, picking up his glass and staring past it with great focus, “It’s worth the try, right?” He looks over at Salieri. “I mean, you are always welcome to make me die in the Shakespearian manner, and see if that would help.”

Salieri chokes on his drink so horribly I am sincerely concerned it might be killing him. Past me, Emiya chokes almost as hard, and Cu Chulainn spits his drink out and starts laughing uncontrollably. I am lucky I was between sips, and am just stuck staring at nothing and fighting for my life as I try to run that through my head without reacting. At the end of the table, I hear David hacking his lungs up too, and Doctor Archaman fighting a losing battle not to devolve into laughter.

Still coughing up his lungs, Salieri makes it upright enough again to give Mozart, who is beaming, the most pathetically betrayed look I think I have ever seen.

Holy shit.

Cu Chulainn and the Doctor are about to get to me. I am fighting not to laugh in this poor man’s face but oh my god.

“What?” says Ritsuka, deeply confused and worried. She looks from one person to another. “What? I don’t get it? What does that mean?”

“No one tell her,” chokes out Emiya with murderous intent, trying to get alcohol back out of his lungs. Which causes Cu Chulainn to lose it completely all over again, and it takes me with him this time. Billy is giving me such a confused look too, and that’s only making it worse.

“I don’t know either,” says Kotarou when she looks at him. God bless, I think, bending over the table to cover my face as I lose my struggle.

“Everything is terrible enough without you constantly mocking me,” says Salieri very quietly, a cloud of melancholy descending around him like a pillar of fire.

“But I’m not!” protests Mozart with his bubbly energy unaltered, “I mean it. I’m always down for a good time.”

I’m beginning to think Cu Chulainn, David, and I are never going to make it back off this table, and Emiya is starting to crack too.

“What the fuck is goin’ on?” asks Billy, kind of excited by this energy.

“No one tell the kid!” says Emiya again, this time in, I assume, all of our heads but Ritsuka’s, “I’m not kidding. I will end you.”

“We would have to be able to breathe to do it anyway,” I manage to think back from the table. My warrior’s heart feels Cu Chulainn agreeing with me from his own aching ribs three seats down.

“Uhm. Okay,” says Ritsuka kind of nervously, “I’m not really sure what’s going on, but, please don’t be mean to Mr. Salieri.”

“I’m not!” protests Mozart, intent, I’m sure, on making this even worse. “I love Salieri. I’m just trying to put some options on the table.”

Through the fuckin’ gasps for breath coming even from his thoughts, Cu Chulainn holds it mentally together enough to get a, “Including ‘on the table,’” through to the mental group chat before succumbing completely again, and it’s a fuckin’ murder-suicide to everyone else who knows what he’s talking about. Even caps Emiya, and I see David go back down at the end of the line.

We are strung out to be laughing like this like fucking high schoolers, I think, trying to regain any semblance of composure. Damn I hope Salieri was not one of the people who heard that.

Salieri gets up from the table and starts to leave.

“Wait! Antonio!” says Mozart, hopping right up after him, “Come back—I’m only saying it could be worth a shot.”

I consider going after them to make sure the Caster doesn’t get his head ripped off, but that now seems between them and God.

“Should I go after them?” asks Ritsuka, still completely lost.

“Uhm,” manages Doctor Archaman, who was spared Cu Chulainn’s comment, without a mental link, and is recovering faster than the rest of us, but not quite there yet, “Maybe? I’m not really sure. …I’m actually very un-sure.”

“Whoooo,” says David, wiping tears away with his palm, “What a morning, right?”

“Uhm...I guess I better should—I mean—I better. I should—I probably should,” stutters out Ritsuka, hopping up.

“I’ll come with ya,” offers Billy.

She starts to give him a grateful look, and then her expression changes.

“Everyone! Get out here! I don’t know what’s happening, but it’s really bad! Now!”

I have not heard the Caster frantic before.

“NOW!”

I am up before Salieri speaks, the others around me doing the same. I don’t know where those two went, but Mozart said ‘out,’ and we all think the same thing, and tear for the door. The Lancer doesn’t even bother, shattering a plate window and skidding out onto the street, fastest route between two points a straight line, and I follow on his heels.

I know the second I am out what they saw.

The sky.

“What?” I hear Ritsuka gasp. Fear, confusion.

Billy must have carried her with him.

I only vaguely register that.

Around us, humans in the street are pointing, whispering. Some calling out in alarm.

“Is that a bomb?” asks Ritsuka in a terror that must only come from living in the shadow of knowing what a nuke could do to a city.

It’s not though. I could feel that, if it was, even from a distance. But it’s.

It’s not heat and light. It’s nothing.

What the hell?

At the horizon ahead—

SHIT!

I turn and look, and it’s not just ahead of me. It’s behind. Left, right, all around.

Horrible, empty whiteness, at the edge of my vision. Like the world is an unfinished drawing outside the city.

It’s moving.

Oh fuck it’s moving.

Like a wave? No. Like…a scanner almost. Like a searchlight. The white emptiness on the horizon is streaking towards us, at a horrifying pace, and there is…nowhere to go.

Oh fuck. Everyone is about to die.

‘Everyone’? How big can—

“No!”

The most agonized sound I’ve ever heard.

I turn, and behind me, I see Doctor Archaman stumbling out into the street seconds after the rest of us, stuck running on human legs at a human speed.

There is an indescribable horror and terror and heartbreak on his face.

Like he’s done this.

No.

“This can’t!” He looks to David, who has gone white as a sheet, in desperation, “I-It’s not supposed to happen now! It can’t happen now! Not until the end of the year! This is impossible! There’s no WAY!”

He’s almost shouting at the sky, like he’s challenging the world itself on the reality before him.

“It can’t,” he whispers, broken and frozen in a moment of time.

Not like he’s done it. Like he…failed to stop it.

Something almost clicks in my head, but I know it’s too late now.

It is going to be too late for all of us in a second here.

No other idea what to do, I find Billy and move up, take his hand.

He’s set Ritsuka down. She’s still right by him, staring in horror at the whiteness descending on us all. When he sees me take his hand, he looks up into my face, and I see whatever he was thinking of doing, he lets go of the idea and accepts what I’ve figured out, looks at Ritsuka, and puts a hand on her shoulder.

She turns, face ghostly, and he gives her a look that says, “I’m sorry,” and she gets it too. Shaking, she takes the hand he holds out, and he pulls her against his chest. She buries her face there and shuts her eyes.

Ahead of us, Kotarou worriedly looks back at her, then moves closer and steps between her and the skyline, so she can’t see anything at all past him and Billy, and places a hand on her back.

In the streets around us, people begin to panic. Screaming, crying, standing still. Some run. I hear people deny this is happening; I hear a lot of them say ‘bomb,’ in a kind of horror I cannot being to describe.

I see Kotarou shut his eyes too, and hear him whispering words I can’t make out. I’m sure though, from the intonation, it’s a prayer.

I guess I should say one of those myself.

If there was ever a time.

“B'ní?” calls David frantically. He dashes so fast to Doctor Archaman I don’t see him move, and grabs the man’s arms. Doctor Archaman looks at him like a man drowning looks at the last piece of driftwood in a hurricane. “Think! There is a reason we met! We must have something!”

“We-?” Doctor Archaman looks at the skyline in desperation, and I see something like hope flicker to life on his face. “Archer!”

All of us look at him.

“Fuck! Emiya!” he corrects, pulling away from David to move, “Blade Works! It’s a reality marble? How long-? How many people—?!”

Emiya gets what he means immediately. “Go,” he says, I’m not sure if to him or to Cu Chulainn, or both, because both split the second he says it. He looks at me, too, like I’m meant to get something, and a second later I do. Oh shit.

“Billy!” I call as I hear him begin the incantation, “Get closer!”

I let go of him, and he grabs Ritsuka and runs.

“Please! Everyone! Anyone who can hear me! I can protect you!” calls Doctor Archaman desperately, screaming at the shop fronts and passers-by, the offices and stopped cars, workers, civilians. Anyone who could possibly hear, “Please! Get close! That thing is going to hit, and kill us all! If you get close to the man in red, we can save you! Please! Please it’s insane, I know this is insane, but look at the sky! Listen to me!” He turns in desperation and finds Mozart in the crowd, “Do something to show them!”

Mozart drags Salieri behind him and runs for Emiya, the sound of a piano suddenly in the air around him and bursts of flashing lights and sparks that mean nothing but spectacle appear around him, and people turn and look.

“Come on!” I call, shoving, trying to get people to move, “We can help you!”

It’s enough. Not for everyone, but in the face of the nothing descending on us, some people move when they see the lights around Mozart, and others follow, just to be trying, some last, desperate human attempt at life. I start throwing open doors, calling into buildings. The wall is getting here faster. On my far right, I see the Lancer who was doing what I’m doing a few seconds ago has now given up on persuasion and is just throwing people towards where they need to be.

Behind us, I hear Doctor Archaman call for Mozart to make the area of effect visible, and a second later a bright ring of gold light appears about fifty feet ahead of me. It’s much, much bigger than he made the phantasm last time. This must be the best he can possibly do.

Even so, it’s so little to a city of people. I see civilians in the street ahead of me rushing, trying to follow the shouts of, “This way!” and “Hurry! You can make it!” they are giving each other now, trying to reach us, trying to reach whatever is promising hope in the face of death like this. There’s no way they’re all going to make it.

I try. I run for them, and start doing what Cu Chulainn was. I see him far on the right, doing the same. Trying to catch people before the light, and throw them back towards the circle of gold Mozart laid for us. I try the first few times to not hurt them, but as wave of nothing tears towards us and the seconds I have left fall to single digits, I give up and just exchange broken bones for the surety whatever this awful, oppressive, horrifying nothingness bearing down us is, won’t get them.

It is like nothing I have ever seen, or felt. I dash between parked cars and am too late—watch the nothing wash over a man with his arm outstretched towards me. I see the terror on his face as it gets him. I grab his hand and pull, praying, and he comes back out of the nothing but a feeling passes from his hand into mine like my head has been ripped out by the nerve endings at the base of my skull, and left empty, and for a moment, it has been. I forget to move, or think, and the wall erasing a world reaches for us, and something grabs the back of my collar, and I am flung backwards. I hit the ground, and my head resets—pained, but still there, still my own, and I see Kotarou land with the man I saved in his arms, looking as terrified as I feel. He gives me an arm and I’m back up with him, returning to the wall of nothing now with the surety that anyone I am too late to save, is facing a fate worse than death. Somewhere behind me, I am aware of Billy and David and Salieri doing the same in other directions, Doctor Archaman and Ritsuka shouting, and Emiya reciting the last line of Unlimited Blade Works.

I grab people I don’t take time to see. I move like I have never moved before, in those last two seconds.

Behind me, I hear Doctor Archaman’s voice shout, “Now!” and I hear Emiya’s voice call out ‘WORKS!’

There is a surge of mana. People are clustered so tightly, clinging to strangers. We see the emptiness of the world erasing around us, sky, city, people, life. And as it touches us, we don’t.

Amidst screams, the landscape changes, and the sky is wrong, but it is sky. Empty, unmoving clouds, and gears the size of skyscrapers. There is a sun overhead somewhere behind the haze, and sand beneath our feet. An empty, barren hill and plateau, littered with swords like the headstones of a graveyard.

We all wait, a moment, to see if it will take. Wait for the whiteness to crack inside the grey sky here. Waiting to die.

It does not.

The seconds pass from four, to twelve, and we realize it is not going to.

We are not dead.

At least, I realize, finding Emiya, sweating, breathing hard, raised hand still outstretched, As long as the phantasm lasts.

[starry-bi-sky]

mmmmmm read a disciple shen yuan/shizun luo binghe fanfic about two days ago where the first chapter was the Immortal Conference arc, and SQQ was the one who had to be pushed into the abyss (he was still the villain) except Luo Binghe was refusing and was like, lowkey losing his mind about SQQ being so close to the edge. SQQ ended up having to be the one to fall in himself because of the system's punishment system. The rest of the fic is leading up to that moment. But like, MMM i've been obsessively thinking about that first chapter for DAYS ever since.

now i've been in svsss for a grand total of *checks watch* a week. but god obsessed with that. I want to write/read a fic where disciple SQQ goes a little nuts down there. Like keep all of the things that make SQQ, SQQ, but just. Throw in a little bit more trauma in there. A little bit of a mental break. Let him go a little nuts as a treat. Just a tad unhinged. I wanna see him go, just a little, "god fuck it, i've tried so hard to change this shitty story's outcome and it feels like everything i've done has been for nothing. I'm going to die in this world no matter what I do, I've been doomed from the start, so might as well die the way I want to." and he just, breaks a little! Under all the stress.

He still retains the traits that makes shen yuan, shen yuan, like his overwhelming kindness. But he's just! yk. A little less patient. Paranoid. Jumpy. Colder. A little more aloof and closed off. A little more Shen Jiu. He's no asshole child abuser, but he was a Number One Hater in his past life and he's leaning into that old habit a little more now.

(On a totally coincidental not-at-all related note, there's not enough SJ-and-SY-are-the-same-people fics out there that i've found. This is totally unrelated...)

The Endless Abyss turns the mind into an over-sharpened blade, and SQQ is both fascinated and perhaps a little excited to explore a place that doesn't have a lot of info on it in the mortal realm, but still terrified out of his mind. And he's no Luo Binghe, he doesn't have the sheer brute strength and power to just bulldoze his way through, so he has to be a lot more sneaky and cunning if he wants to survive.

The fic itself role-swapped LBH and SQQ so that SQQ was the half-demon (which lowkey fucks) and LBH the human, but I'm equally-if-not-more obsessed with the idea that LBH remains the half-heavenly demon and SQQ the human. If only because I keep thinking about SQQ befriending some demons (particularly and specifically a group of succubi) and they grow very attached to this Human Cultivator so through magic plot stuff they create some kind of seal/illusion/talisman that makes SQQ appear as a demon because a human cultivator in the endless abyss may as well be the equivalent of putting a giant neon target on your back.

And iirc Shen Jiu was taught demonic cultivation by that one guy(?? i've only been here a week so im not caught up in ALL of the lore yet) so that could totally happen here.

(On the other end of the realms, poor Shizun Luo Binghe is just. losing his fucking mind over losing his most precious and beloved disciple. About .5 seconds from burning down the peaks himself. somebody sedate him.)

The Endless Abyss sucks and SQQ is having a really terrible time and can feel himself going lowkey mad, but also holy shit look at all this WORLD-BUILDING. look at all this flora and fauna, and oh if he had the equipment for it he'd be writing all of this down. ALL OF IT. He was kinda-sorta-already planning on never leaving the Abyss as some sort of fucked up self-exile and self-preservation thing, but now he might? actually just?? never leave if he can help it, like he lowkey likes it down here.

anyways the next time anyone ever sees SQQ again he's got hair so long its almost touching the ground and he's either in rags and half-feral or he's been completely dolled up by his adoptive succubi sisters and still about three seconds from biting anyone who tries to touch him. (he's also lowkey trying to book it back down to the abyss even if he has desperately missed all of his friends and shizun)

[betweensaintsandmonsters]

okay okay vampire obi-wan and anemic human anakin who goes to be his meal at like a fancy vampire bistro that pays willing humans to "donate" blood (get bitten) and tastes like shit whomst obi-wan then tries to take care of (in all the ways he can from sunset to sunrise) first so his food tastes good (bc anakin keeps coming back) and then because he cares

sends cookbooks to his apartment, tries to get him to go to the doctor, sends him other little gifts when he sees thinks that make him think of anakin, obi-wan just like wants to take care of his boy because he's clearly not taking care of himself (he signed up to be vampire food so that much should have been obvious) and obi-wan just wants him well is that too much to ask?

they fight about this often. (first: "how did you get my address?" "It's on the form you filled out to be here" "invasion of privacy much?" then: "you could always just... choose someone else?" "and let another vampire suffer from your lack of self care? absolutely not."") ("i don't know why you're putting so much into this? "i must have nothing else to do.") ("if this bothers you so much... just let someone else feed off me." "no.")

anakin stops showing up to be dinner for a few weeks and obi-wan gets worried. but he's not sure how far he's allowed to go in his worry, they're technically just... predator and prey (though obi-wan wouldn't describe them like that) it's just that no one tastes like anakin (that's definitely it) and nobody sasses him like anakin, and nobody is anakin and anakin is missing and clearly if he's been gone this long he can't possibly be okay

(and obi-wan is right, anakin isn't okay. he's in the hospital with an arm that might need to be amputated (but it was obi-wan's favorite place to drink from since he won't touch anakin's neck for reasons he WON'T explain)

(if you asked obi-wan why he didn't bite anakin's neck to begin with, he'd heavily imply there's no reason, but when pressed, it would be that anakin let's out this breathy moan when he's bitten, and it's music to obi-wan's ears, a symphony to his soul, he doesn't think he'd survive it if that was right in his ear, he'd have to kiss the boy then and there, have to keep him, and he can't do that, so his neck is off limits. it is IMPERATIVE anakin does not know this)

and he's lost a lot of blood and he's suffering and not alone because ahsoka and padme keep visiting, but he doesn't know how much he misses obi-wan until he isn't seeing him)

so one night obi-wan goes to anakin's apartment to see he isn't there and hasn't been there in weeks based on sent, and panics because what if he drove his beautiful boy away, or what if someone went after him, and obi-wan can't go in bc vampire rules say he needs permission and also it's good manners.

eventually anakin comes back to him, sans one arm, apologetic because "i know that's where you liked to bite" as if that could possibly be the reason that obi-wan is as upset as he is when he comes in. "i'd understand if you need a different meal," he says, as if that's all he is when obi-wan refuses to bite him because for the first time, he looks fragile and that's heartbreaking

so anakin leaves and obi-wan is gobsmacked, flabberghasted, realized anakin waited to have this conversation as close to sunrise as possible so obi-wan couldn't follow him out of the bar, but he doesn't realize that his vampire would absolutely run into the sun for him (except quin and satine 1000% don't let him "that's not how you get your man, he doesn't want a pile of dust, where's that going to get you, man, think for just a fraction of a second")

so obi-wan send anakin more little gifts, things he can puzzle out one handed as he gets used to being an amputee, trinkets he might enjoy, notes that are meant to make him smile, or that say he'll find somewhere else to feed on the boy if that's going to get him to come back when nothing else has worked. all he wants is to let anakin know that he's he's appreciated, make him feel wanted and loved.

eventually anakin sends him a note back with his phone number and then texts him to come over. he makes obi-wan stand on his stoop for an excruciating amount of time and he gets a lecture about personal space, and respecting people's wishes and "it doesn't matter that you're 300 years old, some people just don't want anything to do with you!" and anakin tries to say all of this with a straight face, before he cracks because he misses obi-wan and it is an act, and he's been in love with this vampire since he decided it was his job to take care of one human that wasn't taking care of himself.

then anakin kisses him and gives him a goofy grin and asks "what are you doing just standing there?"

"are you inviting me in?"

"i guess i am. you're stuck with me though, i'm your problem now."

"darling, you've been my problem for a long time, and i wouldn't have it any other way."

and eventually they fuck, and obi-wan bites anakin's neck, and here's his symphony played out in the most desirable circumstances. and they live happily ever after

(until anakin pesters him about making him a vampire "so i can be your problem, permanently" and they argue about it, but agree that anakin gets a life first "you've gotta be at least 40 before i turn you, i'm not going around looking like i forever robbed the cradle!" "you're not even 40! 25." "nope." "fine, 30 then, final offer." "and if I say no?" obi-wan's grin is feral, like he knows he's lost but he's still willing to play the game. "i know you won't" so does obi-wan)

[cubbyhole-for-flea-bee]

Apologies

[shadow-pixelle]

Here's a random DCxDP snippet!

Wrote this on Monday. Was gonna post it yesterday and then kinda... forgot. It's a completely disconnected snippet- that is, I have no context for what's going on here, what kind of AU it is, or much of anything else at all. Also currently have no plans to try and expand it, though I might mess with it in the future when I have time? We'll see.

Honestly 80% of the reason I'm posting this is because I sent it to Kali and absolutely devastated her with the worldbuilding, so shrug.

--

“I need you to understand,” Danny said, gripping the side of the table. Tucker put a hand on his shoulder for support, and he leaned into it slightly, being very careful to keep his focus on any Bat other than Hood. “And I mean really understand, that this isn’t just- a crime. It’s not that simple.”

“Phantom…?” Red Robin sounded confused, and slightly wary.

Danny couldn’t blame him, given the situation. Ancients, Danny had just had to give up his secret identity just to make sure he didn’t try and kidnap a Bat. Nothing about this situation was normal or reasonable.

“The Infinite Realms has a lot of beings in it.” Tucker said carefully, and Danny could kiss him for being willing to lead the conversation. “Like, a lot. And they’re all ghosts in some form. But the thing about ghosts is that they can’t be killed. They’re already dead, or- like, similar to dead? The only thing you can do to stop them is imprison them or End them.”

“And Ending someone is serious.” Sam took over, stepping forward to lean into Danny’s side. “Ending someone… nothing comes back for that. When we say Ended, we mean it. There is nothing left.”

“The previous Ghost King was a being called Pariah Dark.” Danny began, fixing his eyes on Batman for someone to focus on. “He was insane, a tyrant and a conqueror. Violent. Unwilling to compromise. Anyone who stood in his way was dealt with, one way or another. He wanted to claim everything.”

“No-one tried to stop him?”

Danny’s eyes flicked to Nightwing as Tucker laughed, raw and exhausted. “He was the Ghost King. He ruled the entire Infinite Realms. He carried the sort of power that gods dream of.”

“The Ghost King can force his word, his Rule, on pretty much every being in the Realms. As close to absolute power as you can get, in the end. Everything in the Realms is made from ectoplasm, and the Ghost King can manipulate that at levels most people can’t even start to believe. There’s only two types of beings that can even try to resist that.”

“One’s the Ancients. They’re old ghosts, the oldest you can get. Incarnations of gods, concepts, things like that. But the problem with that is that they’re also limited, kinda. They can disobey the Crown, no matter what sort of Rules it puts out, but fighting back? They can stop him, sure, that’s how Pariah Dark got sealed away the first time, but they can’t stop him being King. They can’t take the Crown, even if they win. They’re bound too much to the things they incarnate, the gods they were and are. They can’t be the Ghost King. Those ties stop them being as firmly Ruled over, but it means they can’t take the Crown away. All they can do is delay it.”

“The second,” Danny took over again from his friends, grateful for their support, as the various Bats around the room looked horrified. Afraid. And for good reason, really.

It was only going to get worse.

“The second were beings called Halfas.”

A breath.

“Halfas are the only beings in the entire Infinite Realms that aren’t entirely ecto. Not alone. They’re… well. Half.”

“Half beings.”

“Half living, half dead.”

“And because of that, they’re the Balance.” Danny leaned into Sam, letting Tucker step closer again. “Equally alive and dead. Equally bound to their ecto and not. Halfas were the Balance because they cannot be Ruled.”

“From what we understand, Halfas were created by the Realms itself.” Sam said quietly. “They existed to be the Balance. Slipping from living to dead to living whenever they wanted, all the powers of a ghost and all the benefits of a living being mixed into one.”

“They were rare, because they couldn’t be killed. Kill the human side, and the ghost half keeps them alive until they recover. You can’t kill a ghost, and anything that could contain a ghost, the human side walks right out of. They were there as Balance, between the living and the dead. Advisors to the Ghost King, helping to keep things smooth between the living and the dead whenever they had to interact. Balance. Beings that couldn’t be Ruled by the Ghost King because they were as much alive as ecto.”

“They were there to stop tyrants.”

Tucker nodded at Robin’s quiet voice, and paused. It was an offer to Danny, he knew, to take this part as well. He and Sam knew everything about this. Danny didn’t need to be the one to explain.

He spoke up. “From what records say, there were around six thousand Halfas at the start of Pariah Dark’s reign.” He told them. “They were the Balance. They saw what Pariah Dark was doing and had a duty to stop it. Up until ten years ago, there were no Halfas in existence.”

The group seemed to pale.

“Halfas can’t be killed, but anything can be Ended.” He said quietly. “Pariah Dark went around every single Halfa that came to stop him, and he destroyed them so utterly that they cannot exist any more. Not as ambient ectoplasm in the Realms, not as shades or smaller spirits, not as a being in the reincarnation cycle waiting to live and die. Every single one of those Halfas no longer exists, because he destroyed everything that made them them and then destroyed all the remaining pieces as well.

“Dark Pariah was a tyrant. And he was the reason that I learned everything about my entire species from second or third hand knowledge. Everything that I know about myself? I either figured it out myself, found it in some of the few books that still exist about Halfas, or heard it from the Ancients. And those last two didn’t know much at all, in the end. Halfas were so rare that the only thing most beings got were rumours, and the Ancients weren’t an exception to that, and not many Halfas ever bothered to write things down about themselves and their powers. They couldn’t die, after all.”

Danny shivered, a little. Sam and Tucker leaned in more on either side, keeping him upright as much as the table was. None of the Bats were moving.

“I’m telling you this because I need you to understand,” he said again. “Pariah Dark was a tyrant. A nightmare. The worst thing to happen to the Realms ever. He committed so many genocides that there aren’t records of it any more, and the only silver lining,” he spat the words, mocking, because there is no silver lining in senseless slaughter, “Is that all but one of these were against the living. They were allowed to exist as ghosts. Pariah Dark was a monster.”

Danny wrenched his eyes away from Batman and looked directly at Red Hood. He pushed down the impulse to take him away, to hide him, to get him to Frostbite for help and maul and destroy anyone who got in his way, who tried to threaten him-

He pushed down his shudder, and looked Red Hood directly in the eyes.

“Pariah Dark was a monster, and even he would consider what was done to you unforgivable.”

Hood jolted. So did the rest of the Bats, looking for all the world like they’d just restarted breathing again, no longer frozen in time.

“We can’t explain to you what we’re seeing.” Sam said from his side, and she sounded almost apologetic. “It’s- literally, there are no words in any living language to explain what it looks like. And we’re only Liminal, a little bit dead. We don’t see as clearly as beings like Phantom do. But it’s-”

Words seemed to fail her, and Tucker reached around Danny’s back to squeeze her shoulder in comfort.

Danny tried, pulling his eyes away from Hood again so he could think past the urge to steal him away and hide him somewhere safe. “It’s like I’m looking at a baby.” He tried to explain. “Or- I don’t know. A puppy? Whatever cute little thing you want to go with. Something small and delicate and needing to be looked after. Something that shouldn’t be on it’s own, because it’s too young to survive. Like someone took a premature puppy, and then just.” He paused. Gestured. “Just mutilated it. Whatever horrible things you can think of, the most evil things you can imagine at all, just. All of that. And then left it crying in the trash to rot and die, except it can’t die.”

None of the Bats that he could see out of the corner of his eye look well. Hood was-

His core, the half-mangled thing that was barely there, barely able to exist and yet still trying desperately to survive, was shrieking in horror.

“Phantom’s a Protection spirit.” Sam murmured, into the silence of that. “He’s a guardian, every instinct he has is aimed at keeping people safe.”

“I can’t look at you right now.” Danny confessed to that tiny lost child. “If I look at you too long, I just- Every instinct I have is telling me to get you away, to take you back to the Realms and hide you somewhere safe while I get a doctor or twelve, and that if anyone else gets even close to you they need to be mauled. I transformed because those instincts were even worse in ghost form, and I didn’t want to hurt anyone who wasn’t responsible for this.”

“I want to wrap them up in vines and strangle them.”

“I’d kinda like to suffocate all of them in sand and then mount them on a wall or something.”

“And they’re Liminal.” Danny added. “They’re not even fully dead, barely even dead at all. Any being of the Realms that sees you is going to want to help, or at least get vengeance, because it’s-

“It’s not even something Pariah Dark would do, and he committed a genocide of an entire people just because he didn’t want to be held accountable and couldn’t stand having people he couldn’t control in the Realms.”

For a long, long moment, no-one spoke. None of them even seemed to be breathing.

Danny flickered his eyes across Hood one more time, then focused on Batman again.

“So,” he said, as firmly as he could. “I’d quite like to know who did that to him. Because my next step is going to be to call the Council, get war declared on them, and then erase them.”

[honeydots]

always innocent in red

[fineapplequeen]

Oh yeah baby let's fucking gooooo, I've been waiting over half a year to get chapter 35 out I'm so fuckin pumped!!! BIG spoliers in the comic ahead, NO lineart, you'll take my crappy sketches and you'll LIKE it!!

Scribbly makes my chest feel bubbly

[velvetwyrme]

A soft scene from chapter 3 of Flipping Fate, the (reader insert) fic I'm co-writing with @collegecomics18!

(alt version used in the fic under the cut)

[indigo-constellation]

dumps au art here- none of this has been written and will not be written for a while

also gay people are real

[hopeworth]

dawn breaks anew

shanks & luffy | teen and up audiences | time travel au | 7.9k words

He laughs, grin stretching into a wide, familiar shape. “I’m Monkey D. Luffy! I’m the next King of the Pirates!” Oh. Luffy laughs at his slack-jawed surprise, laughing and laughing and—oh. There’s an infectious joy to his whole-body laughter, an irresistible charm to the edge of his D-shaped grin. It’s Captain’s smile. It’s Captain’s joy, his freedom, his words. Shanks is hungover; he’s seeing double; he’s hallucinating; he’s fourteen and his Captain is the freest man in the world; he’s fifteen and this boy is throwing his words out into the wind as they break free into the open ocean. A frayed breath catches in his throat at the sound of Luffy's laugh. // On the dawn of the Great Pirate Age, a time-traveling Pirate King and a future Emperor of the Sea meet.

[beautyconsumer]

I genuinely believe Jason and Grant are soulmates, this is also me dropping hints that I plan to write a soulmate au about them.

The age difference narrowing when Grant dies, both of their soulmarks changing when one of the two dies but instead of fading like normal it just sinks deeper into their skin

Think about it, Grant's naive tendencies making him blindly believe that his soulmate would fix all his problems and becoming obsessed with the idea that Jason is his as soon as he meets him.

And Jason being reluctant or hating the idea of a soulmate because why would destiny or some stupid upper authority dictate who he loves?

[elemental-plane]

CHAPTER TWO OF CHANGE THE FATES DESIGN IS OUT!!! i know i only ever really talk specifically about candela on this blog, but it'd mean a lot if y'all checked it out! (it's good, i promise!)

change the fates design - Chapter 1 - elementalplane - Critical Role (Web Series) [Archive of Our Own]

[fortune-maiden]

Random TGCF AU of the day:

Space-time shenanigans result in main canon He Xuan wandering into an AU where the fate swap didn’t happen.

He ascends as a civil god, and is doing quite well for himself, only his presence has unexpected ramifications for a few people

SWD can no longer save his brother via fate swap. He is not giving up obviously and will find another way no matter who he has to screw over (though HX would really really like it if he didn’t screw someone else over thank you very much), but in the meantime he is very much devoted to keeping his little brother safe and under control.

A necessity probably given that this little brother is an anxious mess afraid of his own shadow, with only shades of the bright determined Shi Qingxuan of the main timeline. He’s got all the comfort and wealth he could ever need and zero sense of confidence or independence.

Also different is the new civil god Ling Wen. She’s closed off and unpopular and may or may not be responsible for some sabotage He Xuan keeps encountering. Oh well it’s nothing to worry about. With dwindling followers she’s well on her way out anyway…

[rhaenys-queenofkhyrulzz]

Cover of Saudade

Saudade- (n.) a nostalgic longing to be near again to something or someone that is distant, or that has been loved and then lost; “the love that remains” When Seon-ho's brother survived that fateful day, Nam Jeon sold him to Ihwaru in a fit of rage. Years later, an 18-year-old Seon-ho is now the most shamefully sought after kisaeng amongst Goryeo's rotten upper class. His reputation reaches far and wide- even to the ears of the young nobleman, Yi Bang Won, who intends to find out the reason for these rumours himself. This leads to years of painful love, a relationship of convenience and something dark and twisted that seeks to consume them all. OR kisaeng!Seon-ho has to deal with his political ambitions colliding with his messy love life for many years down the road

read on ao3

[ziracona]

I finally got the intro to arc 2 done. Hope you have fun with it! As always, Tumblr gets the update first but before the final editing pass--a little glass half full, glass half empty ^.^' Enjoy: [Fate/GO AU – The Kid (pt: 1, … 22,23, 24, 25, 26, ?)]{Some spoilers for original Grand Order run/through Temple of Time, vaguer situational spoilers for later arcs}

.

.

“Roman?”

“Mmmmmhmmmph,” I groan unhappily, unhappy to have heard anything. I shift a little, trying to stay unconscious, because it’s better in here.

“Sorry, but you gotta wake up sometime soon. We’ve got like 100 people with guns who aren’t super happy about the 200 new people we just dropped on them without guns,” comes a woman’s voice, “You and I can take a real rest when we’re dead. Or when nobody’s looking. Which I wish was right now, but.”

I hear her, unfortunately, and I’m awake enough to know what the words mean, so I sigh, then scrunch up my face and drag my eyes open. I do not expect to find the blurry face of Da Vinci looking right down at me from above.

“…Da Vinci?” I double-check, squinting up at her. Yeah. I’m pretty sure it is.

“Oh wow, you actually woke up,” she says, patting my shoulder sympathetically, “I know you’re beat to hell, but, I’d love it if you cared to confirm what happened.”

“…Where is everyone else?” I ask, blinking and trying to shake off the lingering weight in my head. I feel sort of terrible, and sort of peaceful, somehow at the same time. It’s bizarre. Right. I shouldn’t feel peaceful at all right? Because there’s a lot of people to explain things to, who are upset and worried. And then there’s the whole situation to…to try and fix…

I look back up at Da Vinci, since she hasn’t answered me. My vision is starting to clear, and now that I can see her face, I realize she looks…sad. No, sad and happy. Nostalgic? Homesick? She’s looking at me like I have seen David look at me a few times now, when he thinks I’m not paying attention. Like it’s painful, in a way that is deeply good.

I…feel guilty, that I don’t know her. For all I know, she could be lying about knowing me, I guess, and I’m not a naïve person, but, I don’t think she is. And it makes me sorry.

There’s a little crackle in my head then, which I feel an instinct to panic at, because, you know, how could that be a good sound for the inside of a head? But then I hear her thoughts slipping through the space between us:

“I missed this. How can I be so sad? How can I miss him so painfully, while talking to him, face to face? I feel like I’m watching a memory, but, I’m not. Not this time.”

My stomach drops as I realize I’m unintentionally getting her thoughts.

“He looks so like he always did. Tired and cheerful and steady. He was our rock, and I’m not really sure I ever thanked him for that. That wasn’t my job. My job was keeping us alive, and giving him a hard time. But still, someone should have said it. It wasn’t easy. I know, because once he died, I had to be him. Dying the best you can for the people around you, and asking those kids who are like your own by now to live, and live happy, with the weight of the world on their shoulders? Is even worse.”

It ends then as soon as it began, with another crackle in my head like static, and I know I did not make that happen, but I still feel deeply wrong. I know whatever caused it, it wasn’t her either, and it was an intrusion; I wasn’t meant to hear it. I wish I’d been awake enough to think of a way to stop it.

I…I should be thinking about how to play this, or that this is confirmation then, that I am certainly going to die, because that’s important, but then, I’ve known that all along, right? And it’s not what I’m thinking. I’m thinking: “Wow. After everything, you have someone who misses you this much.” I should feel anything but reassured, but it’s all I feel. Peace. Or…gratefulness. I guess if only one of us two being able to remember it all, in the end, was enough for me then, then only one of us remembering at the start, here, is good enough for me, too.

Okay focus. She’s still staring into space. Maybe you can…

“Da Vinci…?” I ask, deciding to act like nothing just happened and hope she doesn’t know, “Did something happen? You look worried?”

“Not really,” she sighs, refocusing her mask with precision and speed, and putting on a smile while making a grand little shrug, “But you sure left us a situation. You try explaining the shit we just pulled to a room of angry mages sometime, and see how you like it.”

“Did anyone-?!” I ask with sudden fear.

“—Nobody got hurt,” she chides, “You think I wouldn’t have mentioned that? Your staff heard what you said before you passed out. We’ve got a bunch of confused civilians, which aren’t a threat, and a Holy Grail War’s worth of heroic spirits, which are, but are too much of one for them to want to start something. If they wanted to try to shoot us, they’d be doomed. And we have no reason to want to shoot them either. So no one did anything. It’s just been extremely uncomfortable.”

“Where am I?” I ask, blinking at the ceiling above me, and turning my head to try and see the room, and somehow only then realizing I’m using her lap as a pillow. Shit. I try to shoot up immediately, but she snags me and drags me back down. “-H-Hey!”

“Easy!” comes Makeda’s voice, from somewhere.

HUH?

“Hold still if you would? We’re sort of in the middle of something,” she says apologetically, and I see her as she steps into my field of view.

That’s reassuring, I think with intense distrust. “The middle of what?”

“Welllll,” says Da Vinci awkwardly, “Heh heh. Uh.” She gestures to the ground, and I turn my head from my prone position and see intensely complex sigil work on the ground. Makeda is holding a brush and ink, and seems to have been in the middle of adding more.

“What the hell are you two doing?” I reiterate, because this has absolutely cleared nothing up.

“We’re doing a spell,” says Makeda, “A divination. There’s a lot of strange stuff going on—I expect with you too, after the way you passed out. I’m happy to explain all of it, but a lot of it seems to be connected to you, so we’re using you as the focal point. I need you to more or less stay still. You can move your arms, and head, if you want!” she adds like it will cheer me up.

“We uh, thought you’d be unconscious longer,” says Da Vinci apologetically.

“It won’t hurt you,” promises Makeda.

I sigh. I know, I realize as I think it, and wonder why I was so concerned in the first place. I guess it’s that as out of control as all of this is, I want as many fragments of control as I can get, just to hang onto. Okay, Romani. Deep breaths. Calm down, and focus.

“Alright, go ahead. But please, do explain,” I add, unhappily accepting my fate. Couldn’t they have just gotten me a blanket and pillow or something?

Da Vinci sympathetically reaches down and rubs my shoulders absently, which in other circumstances sould be incredibly weird, but given…everything. I just really don’t care. I sigh again and accept it.

At least it feels good, and I feel like I’ve been thrown down a flight of steps.

You could have picked a better bench, though, I think just a little bitterly. I have no idea what conference room we’re in right now, because they all look the same, but the padding is too firm for a nap to be ideal. I’m going to be so sore after this… I guess at least Da Vinci’s contribution might save my neck.

“Well, you passed out, and we got to talking,” says Makeda as she goes back to finishing the edges of her sigil circle, I’m pretty sure massively sugar-coating the situation after I passed out, “And it was very easy to pick up that Chaldea wasn’t on the same timeline as us—that is to say—in the common sense. It’s our metaphysical timeline, obviously, but they seem to be a full two months ahead of the rest of the world.”

“So, for them, three days ago was the turn of the year,” says Da Vinci.

“Right.” I knew that part, and I guess Da Vinci can see it on my face, because she nods.

“I thought so,” says Da Vinci, pleased, “Just to cement a few things, can you confirm what happened when you exited the shadow border?”

Sure. Why not. “I got hit with a second set of memories,” I reply, “Both felt equally real, which was very disorienting, because they contradicted. The influx of that much detailed, emotional, and complex information all at once, overloaded my already very tired brain, and I passed out for…?”

“Two and a half hours,” says Makeda, glancing over.

“-Two and a half hours,” I finish.

“And this new set of memories?” prods Da Vinci.

I shrug the best I can on my back with my head in her lap. “About what I think you already expect. It was of being here, when Chaldea went through the turn of the year. I survived a bombing that took out most of the base, and the betrayal of a staff member. Ritsuka Fujimaru’s brother, Akira, and Mash both survived the bombing miraculously, by being rayshifted out. Our director ended up with them—Olga Marie Animusphere. We—the surviving staff—were able to fix enough equipment to contact them and try to help. They’d been transported to one point of history targeted by Goetia, Fuyuki city, during a holy grail war. A servant who’d lost his master helped them, thankfully—uh—an alter, of our Lancer, Cu Chulainn—oddly. They were able to succeed, and repair the broken point in time, just barely. The traitor to our organization, Lev Lainur, attacked our director, and took her out of commission, indefinitely. Then was killed. It was terrible. They’re just kids, and they went through hell with no preparation. I couldn’t be more proud of what they accomplished, or feel more awful, that they had to do it at all.”

They’re quiet this time, both of them. I guess it was more than they thought I’d say.

Honestly, it still feels so real I could throw up, and like a bad dream. I feel even more guilty over that. I get this…free sense of dissociation, to help me cope, and I didn’t even have to be there to see it first hand. God. The poor kids. Ritsuka too. Ritsuka, Akira, Mash, all the civilians—even our heroic spirits, who are tanks among men have all been put through hell. We need a break. They need a break.

“I’m sorry,” says Da Vinci, stopping her shoulder rub to pat me on the shoulder, “That is about what we’d gathered, though.”

“It’s not your fault,” says my father, popping up from over the back of a nearby chair he’s apparently been sitting in, and I just about jump out of my skin.

“Were you there the whole time?!” I ask.

“Of course,” he says in disbelief, “Did you think I wouldn’t keep an eye on you?” He clicks his tongue at me and crosses his arms over the back of the chair to lean on it. “As I was saying, you did everything the best you could, and it sounds to me like it’s been enough. The Fujimarus were ecstatic to see each other, and he and Mash both had a lot to say about how you got everyone through this.”

I don’t know if I believe him, but I’m too exhausted to consider arguing with my dad right now. I guess I appreciate it either way.

“Where are the kids?” I ask as it occurs to me, and I accidentally start to sit up on impulse, and am very kindly pushed back into place by Da Vinci, “—Sorry.”

“They’re outside,” says Da Vinci, “It’s just Sheba, me, and David in here with you. The kids all wanted in, but we forced them to stay outside—both so we could do the spell, and just in case there was anything you wouldn’t be ready to tell them as soon as you woke up, with whatever was going on. We three already know all your secrets.”

“Thanks…I think,” I say, then double-take, “Wait—you know all my—?!”

“Yes. Obviously,” she replies proudly, “Remember? I knew you later. It’s all old news to me.”

I start to say something, but then I remember what I accidentally heard, and I don’t. She looks at me quizzically.

“…When did we meet, the first time?” I ask instead as something occurs to me.

She smiles a softer smile, pleased. “Oh. A few months from now. –Or, a few days, depending on the memory set.”

Ah. I smile back as it clicks. “You’re the first successful summon, aren’t you?”

“Clever boy,” she replies.

“And you chose to stay and help? And became the…’technical advisor’?” I ask.

She nods. “Most of the building was blown up. Why not give me a title? You were the only staff head left. Although, I guess by now you know that.”

“Yes,” I say, glancing away and fiddling absently with one of my gloves. Even if I wasn’t close to everyone here, and some of them were awful people, it’s so much death. And not everyone deserved it—not by a long, long shot. It’s…

“You really need to start watching your health better.”

I look up in surprise to see David shaking his head at me.

I give him something between a grimace and a smile. “If I had any choice in the matter, believe me.”

“Well, if you won’t do it yourself, I will,” he warns pleasantly.

Terrifying.

“You do remember both sets of memories fully, right?” asks Sheba. She seems to have finished her sigil, because she walks back over and kneels by the bench and holds out a hand for me. I take it, and feel her magical energy fill the room like a wave lapping at the beach: soft, gentle, but unstoppable in sheer mass and power if circumstances change. “We weren’t totally sure that after…”

“-Experiencing a temporal displacement overlap?” suggests Da Vinci.

“-It would be smooth,” continues Sheba, “That’s also part of why we wanted you to get a chance to talk to us first. Everyone out there is hoping you’re ‘their’ Romani, but, you’re ours regardless of what information you retained. We both knew you from before,” adds Sheba, gesturing to Da Vinci and herself with her free hand.

“-And any version of you is my ‘Romani Archaman,’” says David, playful inflection on my new name.

“We just couldn’t get rid of him,” explains Sheba tiredly.

Unsurprising. David is a force. “Well, everyone’s about to be relieved, I guess, because I have all of both,” I confirm. Hadn’t even occurred to me that people would be worried about that, but, of course they would be.

“I’m not surprised, but it’s still a relief to hear,” says Da Vinci, “By all accounts from the Chaldea staff, it’s January, and you’ve been here the whole time. Actually—you are on-camera, vanishing, the second the door to the Border opened. There’s a little ‘flicker’ and the you at your desk is gone. The you at the Border flickers twice, like an electromagnetic spike, and then the video is normal, but you’re a half foot to the left.”

“Fascinating,” I say, not sure exactly what that means, “I’d have thought it would be when we finished the zero sail, not opened the door. I wonder if it’s a temporal delay, or if there’s more weight triggered seeing yourself face to face when it comes to time fluctuation than I’d thought?”

“So, convergence set aside for the moment without enough information to pursue it, what’s the point of divergence?” asks Makeda, something in her tone suggesting this is a much more important question.

“Oh, uhm…” I scrunch up my brow, thinking it over, “…The…day I heard about Ur-Shanabi, I think.”

David looks very interested by this.

“It’s…strange. My memories since the Incineration are very strong in both versions, but…the time at Chaldea leading up to it is…foggy,” I continue, a little disturbed to find this as I go, “…I. I hadn’t noticed, until you asked, but…”

“It’s the same for the others,” says Makeda, “When we heard their accounts, we checked some of the readings from SHEBA-“ She pauses to give me a coy smile in recognition of the device being named for her, and I flush.

God, I used to have so much game. The only thing my second life is giving is anxiety.

“—and saw a lot of distortion. After being quizzed closely, everyone here we’ve been able to talk to, only remembers the time before what I’m assuming is the day a version of you heard about Ur-Shanabi, and the time since December 31st on. They have…ideas, and impressions—generalities—of the rest of the time. But, it’s more like it’s there to sustain the jump in time, than of enough material stability to be truly real.”

“That’s so bizarre,” I say, truly fascinated, and again starting to sit up on instinct so I can truly think. Both women pull me down this time. Right. “Sorry. So, the version of me who summoned you inside Unlimited Blade Works, that timeline, I do have concrete memories of the days since I heard about Ur-Shanabi. Which makes the second set the anomaly, I think.”

“I’m inclined to agree, to a point,” says Makeda.

“To a point?” I ask.

“In the other timeline, the one that’s mostly just since the end of the year, did you not go to Ur-Shanabi, or not hear of it?” asks Da Vinci, ignoring my question.

“I never heard of it,” I say, “Which…should be impossible. It’s not like I heard about it in the other in some passing comment.”

I do not love that. Or that they could guess so on their own. I don’t have a good feeling about this.

“Do you think someone meddled with your memory?” asks Sheba.

“…No,” I say, glancing down at her, “I…think someone meddled with time.”

“Yes,” agrees Da Vinci, “They absolutely did. But we weren’t sure if they did both.”

“Why though?” I ask, “Shit—wait! If Chaldea is past January first, then, we’re no longer somewhere we’re seeing the effects of Goetia’s actions before he’s taken them are we? So-”

“-No, we’re still ahead of schedule,” says Makeda calmingly, giving me a smile.

I can still feel her magical energy pulsing through me and the room slowly, in steady beats, like a heart at rest. It occurs to me to wonder finally what exactly she’s doing.

“That’s what we were able to use your SHEBA observational lens to discover. It’s the first—well, second, after making sure you really were alright—thing that we checked. It’s like this space, just the building, is in its own bubble,” adds Makeda.

“Couldn’t Goetia be in one too?” I ask dubiously.

“No,” says David happily. I look over at him. “She checked,” adds my father smugly, pointing to Makeda.

“Really?” I ask.

She nods gracefully, long hair cascading over her deep brown shoulders. It’s been so long, but I’ve never forgotten how smart or how beautiful she was.

“Thank you, Makeda,” I say softly.

“For you? Of course,” she replies.

“So, you’ve already found him then?” I ask as it occurs to me.

“Uhhhhm,” says Da Vinci, and she teeters a hand in a ‘kind of’ gesture.

Makeda sighs, looking worried. “It keeps…changing.”

“Every time we lock on, the coordinates shift,” says Da Vinci.

“He’s moving?” I ask in surprise.

“No. The coordinates shift as if they’ve always been something else. The log always reads completely changed, all two hours of it, in an instant—as if it’s performed one search function, and gotten the same answer. But what’s on the screen changes about every two seconds—it’s half real, half moving, and half make-believe,” says Makeda.

“That’s not…possible,” I say, thinking quickly. I’m missing something obvious, because I’m exhausted, and I can’t afford to.

“No, it’s not,” agrees Da Vinci, and I look up from where I’m still stuck on her lap, and see her watching me with those fixed, calculating clear eyes. I think about what I shouldn’t have heard her think, and for some insane reason, I feel desperate to live up to my own future reputation.

“…It’s not real yet,” I say. It was a question when I thought it, but it’s a statement as it exits my lips.

“That’s what we think,” agrees Makeda, closing her eyes, and I feel an intense increase in her magical output.

For few seconds, we are all quiet, waiting. I feel her familiar circuits where her hands hold mine, and I feel a sudden pause in the heartbeat-like pulse of her magical energy.

It’s like time has stopped.

The energy holds, but she opens her eyes, which glow like a breathing galaxy.

“I’ve got it,” she says in an inhuman voice, and then the tide of her energy ebbs back into her, soft and controlled like it filled the room, and she releases my hand.

“What’s the news?” asks Da Vinci excitedly, seeming to forget she’s holding my head, and bending over so far towards Makeda that her stomach is smashing me.

“Can I get up now?” comes my muffled voice.

“Yes,” says Makeda apologetically.

Da Vinci sits back and I drag myself up, still and sore, and lean against the bench seatback, rubbing my face, and trying to get sensation back in my limbs. Makeda climbs up beside us, on my other side, and, apparently feeling left out, David drags his chair closer, then climbs back in.

“We were right,” says Makeda, to both Da Vinci and me, “It’s a spell.”

“A…” That is cosmically not what I thought was going on, or said. I—I guess she means about Goetia’s location not being real yet.

“A spell…” says Da Vinci, who I personally think from her expression, also did not actually think that’s what was going on.

Weirdly, I look at David, and he, alone, seems unsurprised. What do you know, old man…

“Can you elaborate?” I ask.

“Well,” says Makeda, “We’re not a singularity, and we’re not a lostbelt.” A what? “We’re built a little like one or the other though. Or a wish.”

“Like a grail?” suggests Da Vinci rather dubiously.

“Only in vague concept,” says Makeda, then, reconsidering, “…But, in vague concept, not a bad analogy. The ways in which we are similar to a singularity or lostbelt is in nature—partially complete and partially real, still growing—not in function. Functionally, more like a grail. The same way holy grail rituals have set rules and functions, so do most rituals and big magic. And this is certainly a function of intricate structure.” She suddenly looks embarrassed to be explaining this, to me, I assume because of my rank.

“So, the timeline we’re on has been altered. In a very significant way, from its original. It’s not a naturally occurring alternate timeline, but an intentionally constructed one,” I say, then pause, to consider. “…Any guess as to by who?”

She looks at me for a long few seconds, and then says, “No,” but I can’t help but feel there’s more to it than that.

“Okay,” I say, not pressing her for the moment, and moving on to the question I don’t want to ask, but know I have to, “…Can you tell if this…aberration, is it dangerous, like a singularity? Is it…are we hurting the world, by existing?”

Makeda shakes her head.

Oh thank God.

“Whatever we are, we’re not convergent, or concurrent,” adds Makeda, “Even if we’re not an alternate timeline in the natural sense, whatever bubble we are, it’s its own in the same way one would be. It’s magic, but, it’s magic not growing or building in opposition to, well, anything. It’s…disconnected. In ways that are zero sum.”

“Alright,” I say, feeling a few worlds better, “Then. …Whoever, and whyever they started whatever this…spell is, if it’s still in construction—if the magic is still in process—that probably means we either need to dismantle it, which, if it’s not dangerous, I’d very much prefer not to do, since in this timeline we could save a whole lot of lives by reaching Goetia before he acts, and uh, well, I have to assume this version of all of us would probably die—or, we’ve got to finish it—the spell, I mean—get it to cement—so it doesn’t deviate, or unravel.”

“Exactly,” agrees Makeda, “I think that’s where we should start.”

“Great! A plan,” says David happily, “So, how much are we telling the others?”

I hold up a hand. “Before that—you said this is some sort of spell. You mean magic—not magecraft, but magic. Like, First Magic.”

“I do,” says Makeda, “It’s the only class of magic that could do something like this.”

“What do we know,” I ask, ‘we’ meaning ‘her’.

Makeda sighs and places her chin in her hand, bouncing a leg absently as she thinks it over. “This?” she decides after a moment, glancing over at the rest of us, “Doesn’t leave this room. Not until we’re sure it should.”

I nod, and see Da Vinci move in my periphery.

“Alright,” says Makeda, and she opens the little lamp she carries, and smoke billows out, forming distinct shapes in the air as she sways her fingers through it, like the shadow puppet show of a master.

“Da Vinci and I have matching knowledge of another timeline. That alone isn’t odd. But in it, we know of events and people spanning from before the Age of Gods,” A sprawling mountain and a cloud city appear, floating islands of smoke, desert kingdoms, "to the distant future.” Building shapes from countries around the globe and centuries apart, fell into a timeline. Frontiers, temples, castles, modern skyscrapers, and past them, massive space ships. “We, should be here.” She indicates a modern urban skyline in her set of smoke-made history. “And we are. Ritsuka should be, and she is. Akira wasn’t at Chaldea, but him being here isn’t really odd. You’re mostly where you should be. But some people, are missing.”

Here, she makes a handful of figures out of the curling whisps, and then passes her fingers through them and watches them go.

“What’s more,” she continues, “A lot more, is that there are a considerable amount of people who shouldn’t be in this time, who are.”

Makeda raises a hand to her lips and exhales like she is blowing a kiss. Smoke forms humanoid figures along far separated points on the timeline, and they lift from those places by floating cities and icy mountains and desert sands, and settle into the urban skyline.

“Actually, they shouldn’t be at all,” she says, eyes on something far away, no changes in her smoke story this time, “At least many of them, should never have existed. Yet, here they are.” She looks at me. “And not transported, and confused. Here they are like they’ve always been, with normal memories and normal lives, somehow, in spite of everything, alive.”

“People who should never be?” I ask, a sinking feeling in my chest.

“It will take a little while to explain to you fully, but for now, people who lived in versions of time that only existed at all by destroying the time around them, and whose broken time had to be corrected, that is, erased,” says Makeda softly.

I nod, and keep quiet. I can imagine, since I’d been a little afraid after waking up with two sets of memories, that I could be a version of me that shouldn’t exist.

“Our reality, it’s real,” says Makeda, refocusing, “But instead of starting at the beginning of time and moving forward, as time is meant to, it starts here.” She indicates a point not long before what she’s designated as ‘now.’ “And it grows forwards and backwards from there. No, grows isn’t the right word. It…’becomes set.’ Like a writer starting a book in the middle: the beginning happened, because otherwise the characters wouldn’t be who they are, or have memories of their upbringing, or loved ones they share a past with. But it’s not stable, until it’s on paper, because once the writer forgets, there will be nothing to hold it all in place.”

A terrifying metaphor, I think, but I don’t say it.

“Whatever, or whoever, caused this,” says Makeda, “it hasn’t stopped working. But it’s magic still in progress. At a guess, something has to be…done, or ‘finished’—fulfilled—for the ritual to be complete, and the timeline to stay. If it doesn’t, it’ll collapse back in on itself, and…”

“…And we all cease to exist,” I say shakily.

“Well,” she offers me a sympathetic smile, “This version of us.”

That’s great for the heroic spirits, I guess, but it really sucks for the rest of us. God, especially the ones she says ‘shouldn’t exist’ at all anymore. It’s…a heavy fate, that. Not to be taken lightly…

“And this point?” I ask, tapping the little swirl of smoke she’s left to indicate the start point. The smoke is surprisingly warm to the touch, and almost thick enough to feel soft to me.

Makeda watches me with her bright eyes full of their knowledge and sight. “You, Solomon.”

I am so taken aback I don’t know what to say.

“Me?” I check after a full ten, very suddenly awkward seconds.

“Don’t you mean ‘Romani’?” asks David, whom I’d completely forgotten was even in the room with us, and it makes me jump.

To my surprise though, when I look over, he’s not joking. He’s being pointed about the name.

“What,” he says, looking from one of us to the other, “That’s about when you would have been ‘reborn’ into a last life, right?”

He points and I look at the timeline again, and my breath catches in my throat.

“How many terrible things did I cause?” Wait, did I say that out loud?

“Not terrible,” says Da Vinci, patting my shoulder with one of her gloved hands, “So long as we can keep this thing going, it’s good.”

“Very, I would say,” agrees Makeda, and again, I see in her face that there’s something she knows she’s not telling me, and I’m sure she has her reasons, but it distresses me a lot not to know. This is beyond high stakes universe poker. This is all or nothing, eleventh hour Russian roulette shit.

“That’s not all,” adds Da Vinci, stretching, and looking very gleeful to have her own lore to share, “I ran some tests when you were out because something about Ur-Shanabi has been bothering me ever since the others told me about it.”

“And?” says David with interest.

“And,” says Da Vinci, looking annoyed to be interrupted, “There’s been a change in the world state. You know how in a holy grail war, the ritual is designed so when a heroic spirit dies, their energy is used to fill the grail—to power it, more or less.”

We give our various forms of assent.

“Well, it struck me really odd the Counter Force would let something like that go on so long without proper recourse, and it wasn’t apparently even Alaya that finally sent in the Counter Force Agent we’ve got—Ritsuka summoned him. But, when something like a grail war is on, the Counter Force tends to be less active. Rituals bring their own, shitty ass rules, and tend to be allowed more—some might even say inadvisable –catastrophic damage.”

“Yes,” agrees Makeda, “It’s about the way magic works. Even the universe itself, is bound by rules. That’s why the Counter Force has to use agents in the first place. Even power has limitations.”

“So, I looked into it,” continues Da Vinci, “And the way this thing works, the whole world is…sort of designed to soak power up, from everything, but especially from people.”

“That’s horrible,” I say, disturbed.

“Not really,” she disagrees, leaning forward and gesturing broadly, “See, it’s not like a leech. It’s designed to soak power out of people only when they’re trying to give power—like—it’s in a hyper-high-performance catalyst state. But it’s not forcing anything—people aren’t all slowly taking magic-radiation-damage or something. It’s just wildly amplifying and accelerating physics around energy and its transfer, when it comes to magic specifically. Heroic Spirits, though, we’re made of magical energy. And with the rules around magical energy, and the transformation and transfer of it altered—altered to make the change in form easier, not just when it’s offered from or created by humans, but in all forms. Well. ...”

“The physical structure of anything made of magical energy entirely has become a vulnerability,” I say, mental calculations locking into place, “The same way Achilles’ heel would be, or Samson’s hair.”

“Exactly,” says Da Vinci, way too happy about this.

“Well that’s genuinely terrifying,” I say.

She shrugs, a grin on her face. “At least we know what we’re up against. Half the battle.”

“I suppose so,” I agree a little uncertainly.

“Anyway, the other half of the issue may be that we’re not the only ones to have figured that out,” adds Da Vinci.

“Meaning who?” I ask, “I mean—obviously if Ur-Shanabi had it working, it was only a matter of time before someone else did too, but. The world is currently…well, incinerated. It seems like one problem takes care of the other, in the temporary anyway.”

“Well, you know how when she described what was happening with Goetia, you said ‘it’s not real yet’?” asks Da Vinci.

Makeda raises a hand and gestures to her smoke tapestry, and it begins to curl and dissipate, leaving a few floating ‘islands’ almost, as it were, along what was once a solid timeline. “Goetia’s attacks, when they come for real, target specific points in history, to de-stabilize and collapse the timeline. We know where, from our own memories, and the data we’ve been able to run with the effects already in place here. But the thing is…”

Slowly, almost delicately, Maketa weaves her fingers into the smoke, and then tugs like the is pulling it apart, and the image shifts from a 2D image, to a three-dimensional timeline, pieces splitting away in different direction. Of these, a select few’s smoke begins to shift into shades of pink, and I am sure this must be the ones Goetia has picked, because I recognized the 2004 Fuyuki a version of me has just vicariously experienced as one of them. Other pieces stay their original, almost purple shade of grey, and then a few more begin to turn a cyan blue. These, as Makeda makes a circular motion with her index finger, begin to rotate.

“They aren’t the only points reading as anomalies,” said Makeda, turning to look at me, “Da Vinci is till collecting data, and we expect it to take a while, but…”

“What we know for sure, is the Counter Force is—or at least was—active in all of them,” says Da Vinci, “But as far as we can tell, Goetia wasn’t.”

I look at the blue points on the map unhappily, and let out an exhale. “And…these all activated in the years between now, and 1985.”

Da Vinci gives me a sympathetic grimace.

“Well, think of it this way!” suggests David, “That certainly limits the damage, and narrows down the search area. Besides.”

He tries to reach way forward and tap Makeda’s smoke diagram, and his hand goes right through it, dissipating an image.

“Since what Ur-Shanabi did was considered ‘breakthrough research,’” he continues, totally nonplussed, “I would bet a lot of money that the points before the last couple years won’t have deeply significant change. If they had, someone in the mage world would have heard about it.”

Da Vinci and Makeda both look annoyed by this, but Da Vinci mutters, “…He’s probably right,” rather unhappily, and my father grins.

“See?” says David, reaching too far forward to try and pat me on the shoulder, and just having to latch onto it instead to not fall off the chair, “All good.”

“Well, that part is an overstatement, but, he’s right it’s not an immediate threat,” says Makeda, miffed, and she waves her hands and the smoke curls back inside the lamp she wears at her belt. “In the meantime, you should go talk to your staff and the others and let them know you’re alright.”

“Yeah,” agrees Da Vinci happily, swinging her feet in anticipation while she watches David very awkwardly make it back upright in his chair, “I’ll keep running calculations and try to get some kind of gameplan together. But we need more data before doing anything concrete.”

“I’ll help,” I say, honestly just relieved to have a little breathing room.

“You will NOT,” says my father sharply, “Not until you get some proper sleep! Look at you!” He gestures broadly with both arms. “You’re a wreck! You’ve been up for three days straight, and went comatose from memory bombardment for almost two hours! You’re exhausted! You transplanted a magic crest, onto yourself, then summoned two heroic spirits inside a reality marble, and stayed up for another forty hours!”

“I, uh,” I try awkwardly, taken aback.

David crosses his arms and eyes me. “You and Ritsuka are both going to take a rest. You act like you forget, son, but you’re only human now. The last thing anybody needs is you to work yourself to death. Or past usefulness.”

I wish he didn’t have a point, but I feel like death warmed over. Still… “I should be able to help though, and it’s-“

I was going to say ‘my fault in the first place,’ but all three turn to look at me as one with such a united front of deeply terrifying energy, like a pack of guard dogs just itching for the command sick ‘em to come,that I don’t.

“…I think David is right,” says Da Vinci, recovering her mask of pleasantness first, and smiling at me with her eyes shut. She pats me on the shoulder. “You can come help in the morning.”

“…Yes,” says Makeda simply, but the way she says it has an undercurrent of chilling.

I’m not getting out of this… “Alright, alright,” I say as I feel the pressure in the room begin to grow tense again, and I put my hands up, “I’ll rest. But, I do need to talk to staff first, at least a little, to explain things—and the kids.” God, poor Mash. She is so inclined to worry, too.

“That’s fine!” says Da Vinci, her same eyes-shut smile still on, “Just don’t stall too long.”

“Yes,” agrees David, hopping out of his chair and offering me a hand, “Let’s do that.”

I let him help me up, but the second he lets go, I almost lose my balance, with my legs so completely asleep, and me so dead-tired. The instant I do, David, Makeda, and Da Vinci all make a move at the same time to help me, and I can’t help but laugh, a deep, full body laugh, as I catch myself and then straighten up on my own, feeling a lot better now.

“It’s so funny,” I say, glancing from one to the other with a smile, “I’ve been the most isolated I think I’ve been my entire existence, for months, and now that things have really fallen apart, I’m surrounded.”

Da Vinci smiles back. “Good.”

I nod. “Good indeed.”

As I wait for my painfully asleep legs to get some feeling back in them, I survey the room for real for the first time. “Where are we right now, anyway? Which conference room is this?”

“It’s the one closest to the command room,” says Da Vinci.

I nod. Finally getting a little painful feeling back, I take a few steps towards the door, testing my balance. Ow.

As we begin to walk, my whole little horde of tag-alongs staying suspiciously within ‘he might fall again’ distance, David says, “Question, Miss Da Vinci. You seemed to know Ritsuka, from Chaldea, but it’s her brother here who’s done this Rayshift, which should be how you meet, or met her, in the future. And then you said it was odd for him to be the one in the Fuyuki singularity, but not very odd. So, was it both of them who helped you, originally?”

“No,” says Da Vinci, seeming surprised—by the question, or by it being from my father, I’m not sure, “I’ve never met the brother before, although I knew he existed.”

“Interesting,” says David.

Interesting indeed.

“Where are the kids?” I ask.

“Didn’t I tell you?” asks Da Vinci, “They’re outside.”

“W—You mean in the hall?” I ask, taken aback, “They’re not resting?” Ritsuka is dead on her feet, and Akira and Mash just returned from a rayshift like three hours before we arrived!

Da Vinci shrugs. “Like father like-” She stops and almost seems a little flustered, then just offers me an impish grin.

Weird, I think, since it’s really no secret I see Mash as a daughter, to anyone. I guess I probably deserve that though. …Damn it! WHY didn’t I do a better job at teaching her to prioritize her health? Stupid! Kids watch what you DO, not just what you say! Stupid stupid! Bad job, Romani! Bad job!!

“Okay, well, let’s fix that too,” I say, increasing speed towards the door. God knows we ask enough of them as it is. I hope they haven’t been too exhausted and miserable out there.

------------------------------------

“I just can’t believe you’re here!” says Akira, beaming at me, “I mean, what are the chances?!”

“I know!” I chirp. I’ve been grinning so hard the past few hours that it hurts my cheeks, but I’ll never stop! “And you?! Holy crap! The Last Master of Humanity??”

“No-no!” he corrects, his mouth full of the pb&j he’s been working, raising a hand and then pointing from me to him, “The Last Masters of Humanity.”

I laugh.

“Like, go Fujimaru twins, am I right?” he asks, mouth even fuller as he takes another bite.

I elbow him. “Don’t do that! Didn’t dad teach you manners? Not in front of a kouhai!”

He chokes on the pb&j and desperately grabs his milk bottle to help wash it down, then after a solid swallow, gives his friend an apologetic little, “Sorry Mash.”

“Oh, it’s okay,” she replies hurriedly, flushing at us both, “I know you’re hungry and tired.”

“Well, you must be too, right?” I say, offering her a box of pocky.

Hesitantly, the purple haired girl just a year or so younger than me, takes the box and opens it, giving me a little smile.

Mash is neat. We’ve all only been talking for like, two hours or something—it can’t possibly have been that long since my group even arrived—but, I like her. Somehow, she feels like somebody I’ve known all my life. I guess she just must be that kind of person. And, it makes me happy. And relieved.

She’s timid, and quiet. Big eyes, soft voice, always watching the stuff around her like a baby deer taking in the world. But, from Akira’s stories I’ve been getting, she’s also like, super brave and dependable. And a ‘Demi-Servant,’ which, as far as I gather, is a heroic spirit kind of reverse-possessing someone, so instead of them getting the body, they let a normal living human use their power. Apparently, back when the building exploded, Mash got trapped under a fallen pillar, and my brother went and was going to die like a hero holding her hand while another bomb went off, so she wouldn’t be alone (a story she told me trying not to cry, and while staring firmly at the ground, while he turned the reddest I’ve ever seen him, and also looked so, so smug). But instead of either dying, they were saved by whoever is letting Mash use their heroic spirit power, and got rayshifted out.

Rayshifted, as far as I gather, is like teleporting and time travel. Okay, mechanically, it’s more like going to another plane in D&D, where you’ve got a thread connecting your body to a duplicate body, but if one dies the other is in big trouble—you know what—I don’t get all the science. Miss Da Vinci said you’re broken down into your spiritrons, and those are transported to other coordinates in time and space, and re-assembled. So, I wouldn’t know how to do it, but, I get what it does, which I think for me is the important half.

Anyway, when time got incinerated in the city, apparently it was because specific points in history were getting messed up, and my bro and Mash went and repaired one. So one ‘Singularity’ is now stabilized, and, if they fix them all, the world will come back.

So far, it’s been a crazy ride—I mean, his story might be even wilder than mine. And we’re both not even totally done telling the stories. We’ve really only covered bare-bones.

But anyway, to me, the important part is that he’s here and okay and alive, and that this can all be fixed. And, that I’m really glad Mash was here. Akira is brave, but we’ve always done stuff together. We’re strong because we were born with somebody to lean on—I think that’s part of why I’ve been able to do so well with these heroic spirits helping me, despite not being very good at magecraft: I literally came out of the womb as part of a team.

Akira’s the same. We’re strong when we have somebody to lean on, and to prop up, but not alone. And, while I wasn’t here, Mash has done that for him—really reliably!

Plus, I think, smiling as I watch her chomping on the pocky with more gusto than I’ve ever seen anybody else eat it, like a toddler trying ice cream the first time, I bet they’re good for each other. He’s got a lot of charisma and adaptability and he knows how to make you smile when it’s rough, so you can keep going. Mash sounds like she’d be there to be a voice of reason, and pull you up when you fall, but might need somebody who can make her feel like it’s okay for her to smile and talk more too. I bet they’re going to be great friends.

“I’m glad he was the first one you summoned,” says Akira, who has already forgotten what I just said, and gone back to talking with food in his mouth—indicating Billy with his head. “He smiles a lot.”

“He smiles a lot?” I echo.

“Yeah,” agrees Akira, giving me a grin, “You don’t have me there to crack jokes when you need them, so you need somebody else to remind you it could always have been worse, and it’s gonna get better.”

I snort, but then I think about it, and I smile. He’s not totally wrong, and even more than that, it’s reassuring. Twin-morphic-resonance. We were thinking the same thing.

------------------------------------

“How’re you doing, you sad bastard?” asks Lancer, sidling over to where I’m sitting slumped against a wall near the conference room, holding a bottle.

“I feel like I might do nothing but throw up for the next year,” I reply dryly, annoyed to have to pry my eyes open again at all. It just makes the headache worse.

“Well hey,” he says, sliding down against the wall next to me, and slapping me on the shoulder, “You got the world record now, for longest sustained reality marble. That’s gotta count for something.”

“Great. Put it on my tombstone,” I reply, shutting my eyes again and leaning my head back against the wall.

“Oh, get over yourself. You’re not even injured,” he replies in an annoyingly amicable way.

I sigh. “Why are you over here bothering me. What do you want?”

There’s a clink as he taps something glass—I have to assume the bottle—against the metal guard on the back of my hand.

Annoyed, I crack open an eye and glance over. He’s raising a large bottle of what up close I can tell is definitely alcohol of some kind.

“Come on,” he says, “Gotta push through.”

‘Push through’?! I think, irritated, I just sustained a reality marble for almost three days. I’ll kill you.

“Alcohol isn’t exactly going to make a headache better,” I reply dryly.

He snorts. “Not going to make it worse.”

Yes it will, stupid. “What do you care, anyway. Go bother someone else,” I reply.

He rolls his eyes and removes the glass cork, then takes a swig. He holds the bottle out to me.

I’m annoyed, but I’m too tired to keep arguing, and I want him to go away, so exhausted, I take it, and drink. I'm even more annoyed that it's actually pretty good.

“Not bad, huh?” he says, grinning at me.

Oh go fuck yourself, I think. “How’s the doctor?” I ask instead.

Lancer shrugs. “Seems fine now. Everyone who’s useful at that kind of magecraft is in the command room, trying to figure out how the hell this happened. Everyone else is supposed to rest up.”

Great, is there a bed somewhere then? That actually might help. “Anywhere better for that than here on the floor?” I ask.

When we arrived, after what was more of an awkward than dangerous standoff when the doctor fainted, we were more or less asked to stick around this general area, and it would have been more trouble than it was worth not to comply. Besides which, as tired as I and everyone else are, the civilians who are actual living humans have it worse, and some of them are injured. They were given access to a large conference room and as many pillows and spare blankets as the staff here seemed able to find. Us spirits, and the Fujimaru kids, stuck around near the command room to wait for the doctor to wake up.

“They’re working on it. We brought in almost two-hundred people,” says Lancer, a little more seriously, “And the facility was bombed not long ago, so a lot of their shit is under rubble right now.”

“Bombed?” I ask. News to me. But then, I missed a lot the last few hours. Basically as soon as I could tell there wasn’t going to be a fight, I went to collapse and rest somewhere, with as much dignity as I could, before my core knocked me out completely.

“Yeah. Right—You left,” says Lancer, cocking his head and thinking, “Some guy turned traitor, and took out a lot of the staff a couple days ago—to them, right at the turn of the year. They’ve been scrambling ever since.”

I nod, too tired to ask a lot more right now. “Anything pressing, for us?”

He shakes his head. “Nah. You can pass out.”

On the floor? I’m not sure I’m that desperate. Not with this group of people.

Lancer takes the bottle back and drinks, then passes it back to me. I give in and take another swig. Energy is energy, and it’s not bad. Even if it won’t help the headache. I guess I’m physically past caring about that.

“…It’s weird, isn’t it?”

I glance over at Lancer, waiting for him to elaborate. His tone has changed. It’s light, but there’s an undercurrent of seriousness, study, almost. He’s not really looking at anything I can tell, though, just eyeing the empty hall.

Finally, he turns his face back towards me, and smiles, but I don’t believe the smile. I don’t really think I’m meant to. “It’s familiar.”

Is it?

I’m skeptical, but, as he says it, and I turn my own head to look over the nondescript, white-blue walls, it’s…

“There’s…a cafeteria. That way,” I say, not sure why, pointing to my left. “Two halls down.”

I haven’t walked that way at all.

Lancer nods. “There is.” We meet eyes, and we both understand something I almost wish we didn’t.

“…We’ve been here before,” I say. It’s not a question. “Together.”

He nods, very slowly.

“How did you know?” I ask.

“I…remembered,” says Lancer, thinking, and quieter than usual, “And I didn’t. ‘I’ haven’t been here. I’m sure ‘you’ haven’t either. But some version of us has. Because I remember, a Christmas with you.”

“…And…Robin?” I ask, perturbed by the sudden inkling. It’s not a visual memory. It’s like…information, like the throne fills in when we’re sent to a different area. Or the familiar emotion a smell brings, if you knew it well. “…No. David and Robin, but not you…” I add to myself, under my breath. The hell? Were all of us…?

But then, Da Vinci said that, didn’t she? That she knew all of us aside from Salieri.

“It’s our own future summons,” I suggest, “That we’re remembering.”

“But if it is,” says Lancer skeptically, “That would mean we’re all about to die. Then get re-summoned, and be remembering the re-summoning. We can’t remember the summon we’re on.”

He’s right. “That…seems a little far-fetched. But I don’t know what else it would be,” I say. Maybe I do.

“Parallel timeline?” suggests Lancer.

“Our memories, or, sense of them, is way too keen for that…unless, there’s a reason we’re being allowed this much,” I add, thinking.

He shrugs, seeming to completely relax again suddenly.

“What?” I ask.

He glances at me and smiles. “Ah, nothing. I could tell you remembered stuff too. Figured if we were about to die, we’d both have some kind of bad feeling. Or one of us would, at least. But neither of us does. If we aren’t about to die, the memory stuff is a problem for future us.”

The way you live your life, I think, smiling at the absurdity in spite of myself. He holds out the glass and I take it and drink. “Well, good luck to them then,” I say tiredly.

Lancer grins and holds up the bottle in toast. “To them. Probably gonna fuckin’ need it.”

------------------------------------

“So, that about bring everyone up to speed?” asks Da Vinci pleasantly.

The Chaldea staff around us trade looks, confused, but glad to have answers, even if they’re answers they don’t understand. The civilians who aren’t resting, and chose to attend, seem to be feeling an even stronger version of the same response. Something like ‘Oh thank God somebody has an idea.’ –I guess I can kind of relate. I flip up the hood of my cloak, and relax a little against the back wall. Even if the situation sucks, it’s reassuring to have some answers. Plus, the doc and his two casters look a lot more relaxed, so, I gotta believe they have a plan forming now, at worst.

In the front, I see Ritsuka’s hand shoot up, and just a half-second later, her brother’s beside her. Da Vinci nods at them both.

“So…” says Ritsuka with great focus, glancing at her brother then Da Vinci, “If our best move is to stabilize things enough we can find Goetia, then what’s our next step to stabilizing?”

“Our next step,” answers Doctor Romani with a tired smile, “Is for you to rest—for everyone, to rest. Those of us who do analysis, we’ll take shifts, so we can keep running tests on the situation. Everyone else, we need to be in tip-top shape.”

One of the kids goes to ask him a question—the brother—Akira? – and Doctor Romani cuts him off with a gentle hand.

“-Akira, Mash, you two just got back from a harrowing experience. Eat, sleep, and then report tomorrow for a physical exam and mental health checkup. Ritsuka, you just helped sustain a reality marble for the better part of three days. After almost dying, and contracting a grail war’s worth of spirits. You do the same. On the subject of spirits, obviously Emiya needs time to recover, but as much as possible, I want everyone else to, too. Rest up, because we need you sharp. We’ve uh—finally—got accommodations and rooms worked out. Sylvia has a print out with room assignments, as well as directions to bathrooms, the cafeteria, and medical quarters.”

“And after we report?” asks Akira.

Doctor Romani sighs. “…We don’t know for sure yet, but, it’s pretty likely we’ll be having to send out small groups to contend with both the targeted singularities, and the new anomalies. We’ll let you know more when we do. But for now, the assignment is rest.”

“Yes sir!” calls out the little purple haired girl—Mash—almost over the end of his sentence. She turns pink and stutters out an apology.

“I can’t believe he wasn’t lying about the daughter thing after all,” mutters Emiya in disbelief nearby.

I try not to laugh.

“And that goes for the Doctor, too! I’m afraid he’ll be out of commission while he sleeps,” says David in a friendly tone with more than a little danger hiding inside it warning against being challenged, “There are other people on standby at the medbay though—don’t worry.”

Doctor Romani sighs again. “Any last questions?”

“I got one, but not for him,” says Billy’s voice in my head, “Robin, uh—everything he said—you got the gist of it, yeah?”

“I did,” I reply, mostly ignoring the end of the briefing in favor of this.

“Well, if some human mages figured out some kind of First Law type magic altered the world state, I can see those greedy bastards runnin’ around breakin’ all kindsa shit tryin’ to get more power—ain’t like mages ever been careful before,” he replies, “But they ain’t the ones who changed it. Too much experimenting. And I believe the Doc didn’t do it. I know the kid didn’t. So who do you think did?”

“Why would I know?” I ask, turning to lean against the wall and trying to find him in the crowd so I can give him a look, “I’m not a Caster, or any kind of magic user, for that matter. If they don’t know, no way I do.”

“Well, sure,” says Billy awkwardly, and I find him in the crowd finally, near the far left side, already watching me. To my surprise, he looks…deeply contemplative. “But you would know who would want us to have a chance to see each other.”

“Come again?” I say, truly taken aback.

“I…thought it over,” says Billy, meeting my gaze, “What got said back in the bar—about how everyone but Kotarou seems to come in a set? Think about it.” He ticks off on his fingers. “You, Me. Emiya, Cu Chulainn. David, the Doctor. Mozart, Salieri. Doesn’t it seem way too random to be random?”

… “I take your meaning…” I offer slowly, “…I do. …But. …No one would. Right?”

Billy nods, looking concerned. “I could only think of Geronimo, for us. But, I don’t think he’s ever even met any of the others. They sure as shit don’t remember him. And I can’t think of anybody else. But it can’t be coincidence, right? Two is coincidence, three is a pattern—that’s the sayin’.”

“Well…whoever did, it seems non-malicious, right?” I say after a few seconds of thought, “Even as much as Emiya and Cu Chulainn bitch at each other, they’re not actually mad to both be here. And it’s a straight-up gift to most of us. I don’t think we need to be worried about it.”

I look across the room at Billy, and the expression on his face says he could not be more sure that I’m wrong.

“I think you want to know a donor, not just a robber,” offers Billy.

And when I consider the re-painting of the whole world going on around us, I realize pretty quick he couldn’t be more right.

“Alright!” comes Da Vinci’s voice, loud through the speaker system, and sharp, snapping me back to attention, “That concludes the briefing! Everyone rest up. We all need it, and it's a big day tomorrow.”

------------------------------------

It’s quiet in the room. Somehow, it feels almost like being home. I really like it.

I mean, it doesn’t look like home. The walls there are not the off-white of paper walls like I’m used to at home, and there aren’t all the pictures and posters Akira and I hung up on them; it’s kind of sparse in here—just white-blue walls and floor, the Chaldea emblem on the wall, a desk and an empty shelf, and our beds—but, just the same. …It feels like getting in your bed at home does. Dunno why. Maybe because Akira is here, and we’re always okay together.

“Aki,” I say. He’s been quiet, but I know he’s not asleep. He doesn’t like, snore when he sleeps, but he breathes louder, and I know the sound super well. He isn’t doing it right now.

“Suka,” he replies. I can tell he knew I was awake already too.

“…Are you okay?”

I haven’t gotten to ask that before. We always had Mash, or Doctor Romani, or Billy, or somebody else nearby. I mean, I could ask, but he couldn’t have said the truth, if I had, and I couldn’t have either.

“…”

I hear him sit up, so I roll onto my side and look over. Even in the dim light from the hall outside, spilling under the door, I can see him enough to make out his expression, and see he’s looking at me, too.

“…No,” he says simply. He leans against the wall, and tucks his knees up to his chest.

I climb out of my bed, and walk over to his, clambering up beside him. Taking my place next to him, where I always am, I sigh, letting out some real tension finally, and I feel him lean his head on my shoulder.

“How about you?” says Akira.

“I’m not either,” I say quietly, “…But. You know. It doesn’t matter.”

It’s weird. I wish it did, but, I feel selfish, and bad, for wishing it did.

“Yeah,” he says in the same subdued tone as my own.

“…We’re gonna be okay,” I promise, looking over.

He exhales slowly. When he speaks, I can hear an attempt at a smile in his voice. It makes me sad… “Are we?”

I take his hand. He squeezes mine, and we sit in silence for a few minutes, just thinking, and breathing together.

“…You wanna tell me about it?” I ask finally, in the stillness of the room that feels like my bedroom at home somehow, even though it’s on the other side of the world, at the end of it, “About it for real? With all the bad parts, and awful feelings, and stuff you’re afraid to even think? The stuff that wakes you up at night?”

He thinks about that. “Yeah. I would. But you go first.”

“…I got somebody killed. For real, forever. Not because I wasn’t fast enough to help. The heroic spirits helping me killed them, for doing bad stuff. And now they’re just dead.” I think about that for real. About Mr. Toujou. Miss Ayase.

I turn and look at Akira, and see his eyes reflected back in the dim light, like my other half.

“…I feel bad. I didn’t want it. But, what’s worse is…I don’t feel very bad. I know I should feel worse than I do. I know I should feel guiltier, and have tried harder. But, Mr. Toujou threatened to kill you, and Mom, and Dad. He was going to kill me, and make me kill my heroic spirit. They were torturing people. Director Ayase was running that whole place. And I…I saw, what they did to Billy, to Robin, Cu Chulainn, David, god, Salieri. …Kotarou. I just…”

He's still watching, listening. No judgement.

“…I’m scared it’s gonna change me,” I whisper, letting go of his hand to bury my face in my knees. “What if I become bad? What if I care less someday? I don’t want to stop being me, but I feel like I’m already letting myself down.”

“…” Akira watches me a few more seconds, then looks away. “…I saw a bunch of people die,” he whispers, “When that bomb went off, there was fire everywhere. Parts of the ceiling had fallen on them. The walls. Some had even burned alive. The worst part, was that not everybody was dead yet. And…” His eyes tear up. “…Mash was there. A column had crushed her body. Everything in her midsection must have just been pulp, and I couldn’t lift the column, and it wouldn’t have mattered if I could. She was dead, it was just taking a while. And I could hear another bomb ticking down. I was so scared. I wanted so bad, Suk, to live. I wanted to run out that door, and not look back. But god, she was so scared. She was crying, and shaking. I knew the scariest thing on earth, to her, was to die alone. And I knew I wasn’t gonna achieve anything, except a few seconds being less bad, if I stayed to die with her. If I died, you and Mom and Dad would all be so sad, too. It would have been so easy, to leave her. I wanted to leave her.”

I realize he’s crying.

“…But you didn’t,” I say.

“I’m scared it doesn’t matter,” says Akira, “Matter enough? I thought about it. She was so pitiful, and helpless, and I thought about leaving her to die alone, to save myself.”

“But you didn’t,” I say again, putting a hand on his back.

He nods, breathing slowing back down. “I know. …What if I do someday, though?”

Oh. We’re exactly the same, huh.

“…You won’t,” I say after a few seconds. “I know, because I know you better than I know myself. Even if you did, I’d still love you, and I’d forgive you, and you’d still be good, but you won’t. Because you’re glad, right?”

He glances at me.

“You’re glad you stayed. And not just because you got a miracle, and survived. It was scary, when you were deciding, but after, it was easy, right? Like peace.”

“…How did you know?” he asks, shifting to face me more completely.

“I saw how you looked at Mash,” I reply easily, smiling, “You were grateful, right? That you got to save her.”

He nods. “I was really glad.”

“Then don’t worry. You aren’t how you feel, you’re how you choose to be. And you’d always save her. I bet you know that already, deep down. It’s just really scary, the first time you have to act the way you always thought you would,” I say.

“You realize you’re not holding yourself to the same standard, right?” replies Akira with a tired smile, plopping a hand on my head, “You’re worried you’re bad because you aren’t feeling guilty enough.”

“-W—no—and I didn’t try hard enough!” I argue.

“Didn’t you?” he says, unimpressed.

Did I? I’m not sure anymore. I’m so jumbled up, it’s hard to tell.

“You know how when we were kids, you always really liked the character who was the hero’s friend, who got trapped sort of turning to the dark side—not because they were bad, but because sometimes someone had to do something a little bad, so the hero didn’t have to?” asks Akira, “They were such a good friend, they’d even lose themselves, so the hero didn’t have to?”

“Is that what I’m turning into?” I ask nervously.

He grins and shakes his head, like I’m being stupid. “No. But you should love yourself at least as much as that, if you ever started to. Those people who died, it was to protect your friends right? And you feel guilty you didn’t try harder to keep them alive, even though probably there was no way to do it at all?”

But…what if there was? And I’m just not good enough to find it…

I nod, and look at the sheets.

“So if you even did anything wrong, which I think you didn’t, even a little, you only did it to protect somebody you love,” says Akira, like it’s so easy, “You put them before an ideal that was gonna hurt them. That’s not bad. That’s love. You’ve always been good, and you always will be Ritsuka. And if you ever have to do things you wish you didn’t, I already know the only reason you’re gonna do them is so someone like me doesn’t have to. I hope you never, ever have to do that again. But if you do, thank you.”

He reaches over, and he pulls me into a hug.

It’s a little unexpected, since we were talking, but, I think I needed it. I feel the urge to cry build up in my throat, and lean in against him, wrapping my arms around his back.

“I know you want to save everybody, and have everybody be good, and never hurt anyone at all,” whispers Akira, “You want to love everybody, and see it all turns out alright. So thank you, for taking a bullet for everybody else. I know it hurt. And I know it hurts to ever act how you don’t want to be. But thank you, and I love you for it. Thank you for loving me enough to do the hard thing yourself.”

“Do I have to do it?” I whisper, voice shaky, trying not to cry. I can’t, so I stop talking, and lean my head into his shoulder, doing it silently.

“No,” says Akira, “You never have to. I hope next time, I’m the one who does.”

I don’t want that at all. I’d much rather it be me.

Oh.

There’s something in that thought that gets through the way the rest of what he’s been saying hasn’t quite been able to. Maybe…maybe not every part of it isn’t bad, about me, even if most of it was. Maybe there’s a little piece of love in there too, after all.

“Let’s hope neither of us has to ever again. I want to grow up a little slower,” says Akira.

“Me too. But so long as I get to do it with you, I think we’ll both be okay,” I whisper back.

And it helps.

In the way my twin has only ever been able to help me.

Akira and I talk, for several hours, when we should be sleeping, but, I think we both need this a lot more. I talk about helplessness and weakness and my inability, and the weight of quick choices, and my fears. He talks about failing to save somebody, and needing to never do it again, and how lonely it feels to survive.

But, it’s not all bad.

I already knew it wasn’t, for me, but somehow when I say the good and all the bad together to Akira, I really hear how much is good in a different way—even with the parts that are bad; like, how I was so scared Toujou would kill him and Mom and Dad, and how Emiya said he wouldn’t blame me if I made him die there to save them, and how he thanked me after. How he promised he’d keep them safe from Ur Shanabi, and did it too. How Salieri makes me so sad and worried, and said he’s not like a real person, but I gave him food, and talked to him the same, and I didn’t think it would matter, but I saw him smile at the shop. How Doctor Roman bought the goofiest swimsuits in the gift shop, to try and help me relax, and wore it all through an operation. How I was a little worried about tying my pool of energy to somebody I didn’t really know, but he keeps coming to check on me and make sure I’m okay, and he hasn’t betrayed me or hurt me once. I keep gambling, and winning—I said that to Akira. He said, ‘No. You keep putting faith in people, and they keep proving you right.’

I’m not sure if it’s different. But, I like the way he says it.

It’s been scary. I watched the world wipe away, like a bomb was taking out the whole planet. But, we saved people—people that weren’t alive in the version of the world Akira knew about, here in Chaldea. Maybe it’s only ninety-six people who wouldn’t have made it, but that’s so much more than zero. I’m really proud of it. Even in the horror, we’ve done little things okay.

It's the same for Akira. He doesn’t tell me until the next morning, when we’re getting ready for the day, but, he feels awful for what happened to Olga Marie, but he says he also saw her change—grow—that, in the short time they worked together, she got less mean, and less hard, and he was proud. She said she didn’t want to die, because she hadn’t proven herself yet, but he said, ‘I wish it felt like it might have mattered to her that she did, to me, in Fuyuki…’ I said, ‘I think it would.’ He smiled. And he talked about Mash, who’s shy, and awkward, but she’s brave, too. He said she’s gone from being barely able to say no to a request, to risking her life to protect him—and she’s not just braver, she seems happier. Not that all this bad stuff happened, but she’s really…alive. He says Doctor Roman told him that talking with Akira after the mission was the happiest he’s ever seen her. It would be great, if nobody had died, and she still got to feel that way, but the fact it happened a bad way, doesn’t make the goof part not good.

I can tell he’s different, too. Akira’s impulsive, like me; Mom and Dad call us ‘the tornado twins,’ because we ran around causing messes on accident so much when we were little. I know he hasn’t changed much, but, I can see him thinking hard now, and I know he’s thinking about how to make everybody happy and safe. I wish he hadn’t had to grow up a little so fast. I wish it hadn’t happened at all. But, for parts of him to grow into early, I’m really happy he picked such a nice one.

We talk for several hours, quiet, like we used to when Mom and Dad had said it was bed time and we better not, and we’d whisper to each other through the wall of our rooms anyway and be bad, because we were too excited about a trip the next day. I know they were right, and so is the Doctor now, but I think this time we were too, because at the end of it all, I climb back in my bed, and I hear Akira whisper, “Hey, Suka? I really love you, you know?” and I whisper back, “I love you even more,” and we go back and forth trying to one-up the other for a minute, and then call it a tie, and the room gets quiet, and I really rest for the first time since this all started, since the day I got Billy out, like I’ve learned how to sleep again by talking with my brother.

Maybe I have. Maybe if he can be proud for me, and I can be sure for him, we can both really be…okay.

------------------------------------

Timeline: Two Months, Sixteen Days, Two Hours Forward. Coordinates: -4.R48X91, -R1.559X46 Graph: 10912.1326

The jungle is dark and full of shadows, but it is not quiet.

That is a good sign. There is nothing more fearful, in a jungle, than the absence of noise. Can you even imagine the terrors it would take to scare every type of beast living in one, into silent submission or flight?

So, it is a clearly good sign.

What is clearly not a good sign, is the man-made structure up ahead.

Kuhaha, I mutter as a scoff in my throat. Irritating, being dropped here for this. Not that I’d prefer a master; I wouldn’t. But I’d prefer some damn idea of what I’m being flung here to do.

It isn’t like planning or persistence are issues for me, which is probably why the Counter Force chose me, but it’s not my job, and I don’t love being spat out by it. I shouldn’t be here at all. And if I’m in the prison tower after this again, I’ll hunt her and that demon down myself.

Still. I let myself melt into the shadows and fade in and out, towards the building. It’s an ugly thing, built at odd angles and jutting out, like boxes of different sizes stacked haphazardly about. I have become curious, so, I may as well indulge. Despite my distaste for the system, it does tend to throw heroic spirits at the more disgusting humans in this miserable world, and I have a taste for blood.

There is movement behind me.

How. The HELL, did I not notice the-?!

Cursing, I swing around, and am uppercut in the face by a massive blunt object the size of a bed.

Shit, I think it is a bed, I register as I fly backwards, breaking through two trees before catching onto a third one with a clawed hand and swinging around it with my momentum, landing back on my feet with an aching jaw.

Fast—hell—too fast! I feel almost no spike in magical energy, but the red figure who attacked is a blur, tearing at me at a sickening speed. Tch-!

I leap up, and call black flames to my hands, raining them down on the thing, but it dodges and weaves, and I see it raise a gun, so I mentally calculate the time it takes for a bullet to be fired and aim taken, and dodge, leaping from the tree I’m clinging to, smack into the path of the gun, because it THROWS it at me! Not shoots! No! It throws the whole gun at me!

It doesn’t even hurt that much, but it catches me by surprise, and expecting that, the red figure takes that fraction of an opening, leaps, and kicks me out of mid-air, through another three trees. I hear trunks snap and thud around me, and curse as I dig my claws into the ground to bring myself to a stop. It’s going to draw guards, like this.This thing is probably their perimeter security. I need to retreat, if I want to at least avoid being identified.

I sink into the shadows, and begin to melt from one to another, and the stupid thing appears from among the trees at a full-tilt run again, going right for me—I swear! The damn thing locks eyes! It’s a human, too—a heroic spirit, it must be, and it’s running at me like a football player going for a tackle.

FINE! If that’s how you want it!

I dash forward myself, and having run away before, I catch her by surprise, ducking under her arm and slicing her through the gut with a black-fame’d claw.

She cries out, more in surprise than anger or pain, and whips around to follow me like she hasn’t even noticed.

Tch. It didn’t go as deep as I meant.

The woman twisted on impact, like even too late to dodge, she somehow knows the best place in her gut to take the hit. This is a pain. I’m not really hurt yet, but neither is she. I need to make this really fast, or whatever is in that building that the Counter Force found important enough to throw me at, is going to come out here, and I’m not a man who likes to rush in blind. I should take this more seriously.

Annoyed, I catch another tree and swing myself around it again, sliding past her as she barrels after me, and slicing into her leg.

Almost too easy. She caught me by surprise, but she’s not as fast as me, just odd.

Moving faster, I tear off into the cover of shadows again, her, single-minded as a bull, plowing after me through the underbrush, then I turn and leap to a tree, propel myself off the side to another, and then from it, dive down at her, tearing a gash across her chest as I go past.

Breathing hard, she hesitates, turning to see where I went, and I use the opening to dash in and swing at her back with a claw, and my fingers sink in and find flesh, just as I feel a vice-like hand clamp down on my neck, raise me up, and slam me hard into the ground

JESUS! How strong-?!

It actually stuns me. Just a split second, but she slams me down so hard that the ground dents around me, and I’m at least two feet down, in a crater, throat burning.

“Hold still,” she says like a mildly-irritated reprimand, and that tips me off like nothing else has. She’s not even mildly threatened.

Shit-

“I don’t need mercy!” I shout, raising a hand towards her face, and managing to dig my fingers into the side of it, drawing blood, but her eyes are fixed on me like steel, and she’s already calling hers out, too:

“I will purge all that is toxic, all that is harmful.”

“I follow a path that is beyond love and hate!” I spit, digging my claws deeper and feeling my mana surge around me.

            “For as long as I have this power-“

“Enter Chateau D’If!”

I do it—I’m faster.

Around me, I feel my body speed up, my mind sharpen, until the pace is so frantic, time may as well stop around me. Wrenching myself from her grasp, I rip a claw up and through her torso, scouring her body with black flames, curses of death. I move at the same time left, right, behind her, above, tearing her back, her legs, her arms, her face; I am everywhere, I am fire itself, I am death and hate in that moment, I am the concept of inescapable suffering and the unconquerable march of the reaper. In an instant, I attack from every conceivable angle, and cover her body in the flames of the cursed poison inside me, then skid to a stop on her left as the phantasm breaks and ends around me, the world catching back up.

You’re finished, I think, relieved, and surprised to be threatened enough to be relieved, No one can survive those flames.

And no living witness to a phantasm, no identity given away.

Her uniform, as I’m only now recognizing it to be, hanging in tatters around her, blood seeping from her chest over breasts and down her torso, past the hole through her stomach, and along shredded leg muscles, she blinks in surprise at where I was, then turns to see me where I am now, as if she can still sense it. Her face is not twisted in pain or anger. Her eyes are red, like mine, and burn, like mine, but burn a different color. Blood seeps down her forehead, and it’s like she doesn’t feel it, the way I don’t. And she looks at me, but not the way I am looking at her. She reaches out a hand, but not the way I reached out mine, and she calls:

            “I shall lead everyone to happiness!”

She’s still using it, I realize, taken aback. She has to know using that much energy would kill her instantly, with my flames consuming her body at speed already. She’s going to take me out with-?

“Nightingale Pledge!”

A waterfall of white flames erupts around her and the black flames of my phantasm that are burning out her life, and behind her, a massive figure the size of a building appears—like her—I think it is her, but made of white flame as well, and with a sword, and she raises a hand and the sword comes down with a ferocity and speed—I try to move, and find I can’t, and it hits me.

And passes through.

I breathe raggedly, reaching a hand to my chest, and I find myself undamaged, only—Wait. My flames have gone out?

They always glow around me and my claws, but-

Shit!

I look back at her and see they’ve vanished around her as well, and as she stands there, unmoving, the slashes across her face heal, and the hole in her stomach closes, and-

Mer…

I see her. I see me, in the Chateau D’If, and—?

“Mercedes?” I ask, taken aback, and I forget for just an instant, to move.

She is on me like an attack dog, her force and size knocking me to the ground again, and I see an outstretched hand holding a pad with what can only be chloroform on it from the smell—Stupid! Poison won’t even work on me! I just used my own-

My back hits the ground and the pad rams into my face, and WHY THE FUCK IS IT WORKING?!?

What the HELL is going on with her?! WHY-?

Damn it! Her phantasm! That’s right—some part of me remembers; it blocks the effects of other—

“Mercedes!” I try, voice muffled by the pad, “Get off of me!”

I could stab her until she lets go, but now that I remember who she is, I suddenly don’t want to; I also suddenly remember she’d probably die before thinking to move, the insane  nurse! Instead, I try to just grab and pull her off, but it’s like wrestling a goddamn rhino.

What kind of insane strength do you HAVE, woman?!?

“Please sit patiently. You are in need of treatment,” she states calmly, pinning me down without mercy, and not budging an inch.

“I do not need treatment!” comes my muffled voice as I thrash around under her, trying not to breathe, “I’m fine! Get off! We’re on the same side!”

“I’m sorry, but you are clearly disoriented and unwell. You may be suffering an injury to the head,” she says with sympathy, “I am not Mercedes.”

YOU BITCH! Do you remember me too, and you still-?!

Shit, it’s getting hard. We don’t exactly do body functions the way humans do, but it doesn’t matter, because her chloroform is seeping in not exactly the way it’s supposed to either. Holding my breath seems to slow it down, but I think it’s sinking into my skin anyway. Also, it’s also agonizing, which it shouldn’t be, because I don’t actually have human lungs! I should be able to hold out until it starts damaging my prana cycle, and instead she’s…fucking somehow forcing my body to think it’s functioning like it’s flesh and blood! “You remember me?” I manage.

She tilts her head and blinks at me, considering my face, staring deeply.

“…No,” she decides.

LIAR!

“Listen to me!” I choke out, “I don’t want to kill you, but if you don’t get off me, I’ll rip you to shreds! We both need to get out of here, before the people in that building get here to check out the massive disturbance you caused!”

She turns her head to look, then looks back at me.

“Oh.” Her eyes widen. “I do know you.”

Finally! Thank-

I relax for just an instant, and she dumps a whole bottle of chloroform onto my head, then slams me in the gut so I involuntarily take a breath, before I can even process what just happened.

Shit…

“I’m sorry,” she says, sounding genuinely sorry, “You were agitated and needed to be sedated. I decided the best way for you not to hurt me like you want, is for you to go to sleep.”

“You bitch…” I wheeze weakly, forgetting not to take a breath, with my head suddenly so hazy. This is so stupid. I’ve made so many mistakes in a row, and it’s just because I remember her! This is why it’s a mistake to ever let anyone get close to you—only someone you trust can ever stab you in the back! Why did I do this?! I’m so frustrated I almost do hope she just bashes my head into a puddle now. Maybe I’d finally learn that lesson.

“That’s extremely inappropriate language,” she reprimands harshly, as if she’s disappointed in me now, too. Gripping the lapels of my coat firmly, she jerks me up, and hoists me over a shoulder in a fireman carry.

…this sucks.

“Just…kill me,” I hiss out unhappily. Damn it. My head is starting to feel numb.

“I told you—I am not going to kill you,” she replies, “You need treatment.”

Great.

I feel a gloved hand pat my head. “That’s good. Please remain calm. Your anger was consuming you so much you could not listen to reason, but do not worry; I will find a way to cure you even if I have to kill you.”

“…please don’t,” say dryly, giving up and hanging limp over a shoulder.

“I am Florence Nightingale,” she says, ignoring me.

No shit. “I know…who you are,” I manage between labored breaths.

She glances at me and tilts her head again, curious this time. “Then why did you call me-?”

I pretend to pass out, because I don’t want to answer, and I’m exhausted now anyway.

“Hmmm. Poor man,” she says with a sad sigh, and forges on.

Angel of Crimea, more like Angel of Brute Force Sanity, I think, but I’m not as annoyed as I could be. I’m not as sick as I’m acting, either. The effects of her drugs will knock me out if I’m not careful, but they only worked full force when she was smashing me in the face with them, and with her noble phantasm wearing off now too, I could choose to activate my poison resistance and shake off the effects. The thing is, though, I actually don’t really mind letting her have her fun, and just going along with whatever it is she’s planning. I could fight back now, or break free, and run away, but I don’t really have a reason to.  I mean, she’s not going to kill me, no matter what she said; she just isn’t like that—and it isn’t like Alaya gave me instructions, so if it can’t be bothered to lift a finger, why should I run around slaving for some malicious god? Besides, as much of a pain as that crazy nurse can be, she can also be fun, and the fact she’s here at all is interesting.

The fact both of us are?

Maybe there is a reason, I think, contented, and I begin to plot.

[shadow-pixelle]

Help the snippet grew legs

I did more snippet. I actually did more snippet checks nearly two weeks ago now, but then things went to pot a bit and I didn't post. Because I am a living disaster.

But yeah the last DCxDP snippet I wrote has grown legs. In fact it has grown so much legs that I know where it starts as well as where it goes from the last snippet onwards for a while.

I don't know how we got from the start to here, but that's not my problem right now.

This however is not the start. This follows up directly from this post from a month ago.

--

Jason had been on edge since getting back to Gotham. The sort of on edge that made him want to go patrolling Crime Alley, just to make sure everything was alright. Which was ridiculous, because he’d only been gone for a week, and more importantly he was exhausted and patrolling when he was this tired was asking for trouble.

Mostly, he just wanted to go home and sleep, but he needed to head to the Cave to check on some information regarding this case, just to make sure it was closed and stayed closed, so he turned his bike to go and do that first. At the very least it would be quiet there, since it was just late enough in the night that all the Bats would be swarming out on their own patrols.

So of course Babs patched herself into his comms not two minutes after returning.

“Hood.”

“Hey, O.” He said, because he couldn’t really be mad at her for any length of time. And it wasn’t like it was her fault he was on edge right now. “What’s up?”

“Are you heading to the Cave?”

“Yeeesss...?” Jason frowned slightly, leaning forward. “Why, is something wrong?”

“No, just need to warn you, we’ve got visitors.”

Jason jerked in surprise, then swore as he regained control of his bike. He pulled to a stop so that Babs wouldn’t lambast him about it, before replying. “Visitors?”

“Red Robin made some friends while you were gone.” She told him, with an odd tone in her voice. “They’re doing something involving the Lazarus Pits.”

Jason went cold. “They’re- what?”

“The Pits.” She repeated. “They- Hood, we don’t know anything about them. But Red Robin says they’re trustworthy, and yes we checked for mind control and things. There’s nothing. But they know more about the Pits than anyone we’ve ever met.”

Jason laughed, strangled. “What, really?”

“Really. I think they might know more than Ra’s does.” Babs sounded nervous, he realised with another cold flush, and he started his bike again and pushed off.

“That’s not suspicious at all.”

“No, it isn’t.” Babs sighed. “But Red trusts them, for some reason, enough to bring them to the Cave for whatever project they’re working on. The others are there too, he’s not alone, and we’re keeping an eye on things, but…”

“Yeah.” Jason knew. They were Bats, paranoia was in their nature. The fact that none of the Bats that had come into contact with these unknowns seemed bothered at all was… intensely concerning. “You want me to take a look or avoid it?”

“...You can come by, if you want. I’m watching remotely in case we need a League alert or something, but…”

“I hear you.” He sighed. “Who’re we dealing with?”

“They all look to be about mid-twenties. The main guy calls himself Phantom. The other two defer to him on just about everything, so he’s definitely the boss. No real description, he’s not human and only sometimes has a human shape. Fairly middling height and frail-looking when they do, white hair and glowing green eyes. Most the time he’s wearing a sort of hazmat suit of some kind, but that shifts sometimes. When he’s not human it’s pretty much impossible to describe him, but I guess the best way to put it is that he looks like space.” Babs immediately filled in.

“The other two seem to be some kind of subordinates. The man goes by Duulaman, he seems to be a mix of tech guy and magic. Phantom also seems to know his way around technology pretty well, hardware while Duulaman does software. His magic is Egyptian themed for the most part, and seems linked to his technological ability otherwise. Fairly tall, dark skin and blue eyes with a green shimmer, black hair. He wears glasses but I’m not convinced that they’re actually necessary rather than being some kind of device for either his magic or technology. Also, we can’t hack him.”

“What, at all?”

“Admittedly I’ve not tried too hard, I don’t want to make them hostile if they’re not going to be, but I think he uses his magic to amplify what his technology does. Just what little I’ve seen is incredible.”

“Huh.” Also concerning, but in a different way. Though if Babs wasn’t trying too hard then it might just be that Duulaman’s tech seemed harder to deal with than it is. “And the third?”

“A woman, Caucasian with black hair and mostly violet eyes. Little bit of a green shine there, too. She’s the tallest of the lot of them, pretty thin but not as frail-looking as Phantom. Not sure of much more about her, she doesn’t seem to have the same sort of technological abilities as the other two and she’s mostly been standing to the side like a guard or acting as an extra pair of hands whenever either of the males need something. Name seems to be Belladonna, but both males have been giving her a few different plant-related nicknames, so I’m not certain which one’s real.”

“Great.” He sighed again. “Don’t suppose there’s any way to get an idea of that?”

“Not likely. Other possible names are Nightshade, Overgrowth, Foxglove, Yew, and Daffodil.”

“Daffodil?” That didn’t quite fit the theme, though the fact that the woman had a theme of poisonous plants was concerning. Then again, neither did Overgrowth.

“Daffodils are poisonous, apparently.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah.”

Babs went quiet for a while after that, letting Jason drive, and only spoke up again when he reached the entrance to the Cave.

“Be careful, Hood.”

“Always am, O.” He replied, slightly nervous despite himself. A part of him wanted to just run back to Crime Alley and go to bed, not deal with whatever disaster Tim had apparently brought into the family trying to study fucking Lazarus Pits, somehow. He just… didn’t want to deal with this.

But he had to, because if there was any chance the other Bats were under some kind of subtle mind control, they needed someone outside to go and take a look, and with Jason knowing about it ahead of time, there’d at least be a chance for Babs to call in the League if she saw a change.

The Cave was surprisingly quiet when he entered, though in a way Jason wasn’t surprised. The place was practically made to amplify certain sounds, and his bike roaring in was definitely one of them. Plus there was the fact that there were three unknowns in the Cave, so no-one was going to be talking about anything private or secret. Still, it was disconcerting to enter the Cave when it was so quiet, with none of the others calling out a greeting and no sounds of sparring on the mats. It just felt wrong, and Jason felt a chill run down his spine even as he stopped his bike and headed further in.

The chill only got worse when he saw the group. Most of the Bats were just hovering around the Cave, doing nothing in particular and obviously only there to keep an eye on the unknowns. Red Robin was the only one over by the workbench that had obviously been hurriedly pulled together from about four other smaller workbenches, leaning over it with his back to Hood. One of the strangers was with him, and Hood could suddenly understand why Oracle had said Phantom was difficult to describe. For the most part, he definitely looked like Oracle had said, a black hazmat-like outfit and white hair. Given the way he was leaning over the table next to Red Robin, it was hard to see much of him, but he did look fairly frail.

Except when Hood blinked, the man suddenly looked… well. Not human. At all. He could see what she meant by looking like space, because he just… cracked. Like a swirling void full of stars.

Then Hood blinked again, and he was back to normal, and all three strangers were straightening. The woman, maybe-Belladonna, looked up first from where she was hovering- not literally, unlike Phantom, who Hood now realised was literally floating at Red Robin’s side- behind Duulaman, met Hood’s eyes despite the helmet, and paled sharply. Duulaman looked up next, and both their eyes flashed a bright green- a toxic green, one only a few shades off being very familiar- before both swore sharply.

That was when Phantom turned around.

Hood froze. Not just from the sudden chill, fear biting down his spine in a way he hadn’t felt in a long time, but from the look. Something about Phantom seemed familiar, in a dangerous way. Floating slightly in the air, white hair waving like it was caught in an invisible breeze, and eyes shining a just as brilliant green as the other two but solid rather than mixed into their apparently-original colours. The being- because he wasn’t a human, no matter what he looked like most of the time and no matter what the other Bats thought, that wasn’t a meta or even an alien, he was something else- stared at him, a hazy mist of breath clouding in front of him, eyes wide.

There was a crackle of something like electricity and machinery starting, and Phantom disappeared. Hood suddenly felt like he could breathe again.

“Oh Ancients.” Duulaman murmured, looking pale. He was still staring at Hood, as was Belladonna, both of them looking horrified.

“Phantom?” Belladonna called, eyes darting upwards for a moment before returning to stare at Hood.

Slightly uncomfortable with the attention now, Hood looked up.

The Cave roof had been replaced with a starry sky. Based on… everything else about this situation, that was probably Phantom.

The electrical sound came again, somehow sounding apologetic and Hood had no idea how a noise like that could sound like that, and Duulaman sighed. “English, Phantom. Or at least something living, please.”

“Sorry.” The mass of space on the roof said, with an undertone of electricity and ice. “Just… Ancients.”

Belladonna laughed, a small, horrified sound. “You’ve got that right.”

“What happened to you?” Duulaman asked, and out of the corner of his eye Hood saw the rest of the Bats stiffen.

His focus was on the mass on the roof, though, which slowly crept down- like some demented dripping tap of space, Hood thought hysterically- to settle between Duulaman and Belladonna in a mind-twistingly strange blob.

The shape shimmered, and Phantom’s human form appeared, the space-blob folding away like it had never been there. He looked at Hood again, then winced and deliberately turned his head to focus on Duulaman as he leaned into his side. Light flickered again, and then-

Phantom shifted.

White hair swapped to black, the strange hazmat suit disappeared in favour of jeans and a long sleeved shirt- which looked immensely out of place compared to his… partners? Underlings? Outfits; Belladonna had a dramatic black dress lined with vines and pale flowers, and Duulaman leaned into the Egyptian theme with an outfit like a pharaoh. Compared to them, Phantom looked incredibly normal. Like a regular guy in his mid-twenties.

He looked over at Hood again, eyes now blue with only a faint green shine, and Hood shivered. No matter that he looked normal, something about the being still screamed unnatural.

“Phantom?” Both his partners asked, sounding surprised.

“Sorry.” He said, in a raspy voice. “It’s- easier, this way. Kidnapping isn’t exactly a good idea right now.”

“Kidnapping?!” Several of the Bats chorused, and Hood saw Batman stiffen ready to lunge.

Hood just couldn’t stop staring.

He was aware, faintly, of the conversation going on around him. More than aware, really; he was a Bat by training, he didn’t just… tune out of important conversations. Everything that was being said was being catalogued for later, held in the back of his head for evaluation once he had time. But at the same time, it was just… difficult. As much as he was aware of the conversation, he wasn’t really listening. A part of him just… couldn’t stop watching the three. Even as Phantom very deliberately looked away from Jason, almost like he couldn’t bare to look at him. As Duulaman put his hand on Phantom’s shoulder and Belladonna leaned into his side like they were anchoring him, while neither of them looked his way for more than brief glances that every time warped their faces into grimaces.

He was fully aware that the other Bats were interrogating the three. Something they really should have done long before this, before they brought them to the Cave because they were doing something with Lazarus Pits and knew too much about them. And he was well aware that none of them were making getting the information difficult. They talked easily, like none of it was a secret- and maybe it wasn’t. These Infinite Realms, these ghosts, everything about the Ancients and the halfas that Phantom apparently was, maybe none of it was a secret. Or maybe it was just that none of them cared, because-

Phantom looked him in the eyes for the first time since the start of this whole thing.

“Pariah Dark was a monster, and even he would consider what was done to you unforgivable.”

Jason jolted, pulling away from that horrible chill and the feeling that there was something incredible in front of him- something horrifying, something nightmarish and awful. And he listened, really listened, as Phantom laid out as best as he could what it felt like to look at him. It felt like drowning, almost, and somewhere in the back of his mind past the crystal haze of shock it felt like he was screaming. Jason just listened and stared as the three of them laid out how things felt to them- how he felt to them, and wasn’t that just hilarious, that there was something so deeply wrong with him that even these strange beings, these half-dead and partly dead people, were able to look at him and know immediately that something is wrong here.

He wondered a little if it was like the uncanny valley. If looking at him made these people, who were apparently ghosts or at least close to it, unnerved because there was something wrong here, something not quite correct for what it should be.

Of course he would be fucked up. He was already well aware that the Pit had done terrible things to him. What was one more?

Phantom glanced at him only once more, then focused on Batman.

“So,” he said, in a firm voice obviously used to being obeyed. “I’d quite like to know who did that to him. Because my next step is going to be to call the council, get war declared on them, and then erase them.”

Neither Belladonna or Duulaman objected. In fact they seemed like they agreed, or possibly they just didn’t intend to contradict the person that was their leader.

Jason wasn’t sure. He was still too busy being shocked, lost in a hazy daze of… something. He couldn’t have spoken even if he wanted too, and all he could do was stare at Bruce as well, waiting to see what was next.

Batman didn’t speak.

He wasn’t sure he was surprised.

The silence stretched, reaching a minute, two. Phantom continued to stare at Batman, who stared back, a firm line in what Jason could see of his mouth. No-one else moved.

Jason took a shuddering breath, and a step back. It was more of a stumble, really, and it broke the holding pattern the rest of the room was in. Eyes snapped to him.

The three- ghosts? Realms beings? Whatever they were- looked directly at him with only a slight wince. Phantom tensed slightly, like he wanted to spring, and both Duulaman and Belladonna did the same in response, hands grasping at their leader as if to keep him in place.

Jason took another trembling breath, and bolted.

Someone- Dick, he thought, but he couldn’t quite tell over the shuddering sounds of his own breaths and heartbeats- shouted after him, but Jason didn’t stop. He just ran, going straight for his bike and leaving.

The chill lingered in the back of his chest the entire time. Jason couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so cold.

He hadn’t even realised he’d been warm, until he saw Phantom. Now there was just the chill, slowly seeping into his bones. He wasn’t even sure that was Phantom’s fault, though.

After all, Bruce had been silent.

Why would Dad tell them who hurt him? It wasn’t like Jason was his son, or anything. It wasn’t like it was only the League, like it was only the Joker, like it wouldn’t deal with so many of their problems without them needing to do anything.

He somehow wasn’t surprised.

So Jason ran.