Fate: Grand Eroge Chapter 5 - World on Fire

Mash Kyrielight was drifting.

She should have been dead- the girl knew that much beyond the shadow of a doubt. The injuries she had taken in the explosion were fatal beyond the shadow of a doubt. She may not have picked up much in the way of medicine from Dr. Roman, perhaps the closest thing she had to a parental figure, but Mash was aware that she’d simply lost far too much blood to be saved.

And… she had been mostly fine with that. It wasn’t a normal reaction someone would have to their own impending demise, but Mash had never been a normal human to begin with.

The sixteen year old was the only surviving subject of Chaldea’s Sixth Experiment, the Demi-Servant Project, which intended to create a force of humans imbued with Saint Graphs that would allow them to use the powers of a Heroic Spirit. Presumably, this would allow the creation of Servants who consumed less Mana and make them easier to control in the field, by tying them down to a human vessel. The prospect was enough for Chaldea to sink innumerable resources and time into the Project, even though by their very nature the concept of a Demi-Servant was close to impossible to actualize. It was like trying to make spicy sugar or hot ice, a combination of diametrically opposed elements. But Chaldea was nothing if not persistent, and they continued their attempts, no matter how many millions of dollars were invested or how many corpses they needed to walk over to make it happen. In the end, the only thing they had left to show for their efforts was Mash herself, the only subject to have survived the process. Her ‘birth’ and subsequent failure to manifest the powers of the Heroic Spirit she knew slept within her also marked the end of the Demi-Servant Initiative as a whole, with Marisbury Animusphere deciding that the whole thing was an absolute failure.

Originally, Mash was to be disposed of after the Project was cancelled. She wasn’t really a person, after all- the girl was an artificially made human not unlike a Homunculus, designed and raised for the express purpose of being used as a test subject for this Experiment. She was their property, and in their eyes, a failed product. However, for some strange reason, Marisbury Animusphere directly overrode the research team’s decision, allowing her to live- at least for the few years she had left, considering that her lifespan had been decided at birth due to her nature. She was entrusted to Romani Archaman, who had been assigned as her primary physician, and he was the one to give her a name.

Sadly, it would be a lie to say that was where her troubles had ended.

Mash may have survived, but she still bore the scars inflicted by that disastrous Project. Having been designed without a personality in order to facilitate the fusion of a Heroic Spirit, she was little more than a living doll that lacked even a sense of self, her only ‘possession’ being the education that she was given while being raised. Even worse was that the details of her ‘nature’ were public knowledge even if the actual Experiments hadn’t been, so everyone in Chaldea knew who she was… and rejected her. The Magi who made up most of the staff didn’t even consider her a human being, not unlike their stance towards ordinary Homunculi, and didn’t even bother interacting with her or even considering her as someone who could be interacted with in the first place. The normal staff members on the other hand feared her, seeing her as some kind of real-life Frankenstein’s Monster, and made sure to keep their distance or make themselves scarce whenever she approached. To them, Mash Kyrielight’s very existence implied some uncomfortable truths, and they were very much fond of being ignorant. She’d rarely interacted with Marisbury Animusphere personally, but even she could tell that the new Director, his daughter, could barely seem to stand her. All in all, she was just as isolated as she’d been even before the Heroic Spirit had been summoned into her body.

Romani tried, he really did. The man had gone out of his way to help her from the day she’d met him. He’d helped her express herself, to the point where she truly did start to develop a personality of her own in spite of the way she’d been programmed. He’d introduced her to Lev Lainur, who had proceeded to become her Magecraft teacher and had always been kind to her on the few occasions they met thanks to her busy schedule, and Da Vinci, who had similarly treated her well in spite of her nature. Fou had appeared at some point and seemed to favor her, something she returned with fondness of her own. But it simply wasn’t enough. All of them were extremely busy people, or animal in the latter’s case, and couldn’t offer Mash the companionship she needed at that stage.

… And she wasn’t even sure if she truly wanted it either. Mash growing as a person had an unintended, distinctly negative side effect- it made her truly aware of her own mortality, that the clock was ticking down for her. A burden that would have been too great to bear even for normal children, thrust upon a girl who had barely been able to understand what it meant to be alive in the first place. She couldn’t help but ask herself if there was even a point to her own life, if she should even continue trying to reach out and form connections with others when it would all be taken away the moment she hit her expiration date. It was an unfortunate dichotomy, her heartfelt desire contrasting with the cold grip of reality. A question that she couldn’t find an answer to.

Of course, there was also her job to consider. Dr. Roman had spent a lot of effort getting Director Olga Marie to allow her to officially join Chaldea as a member of the staff, and after almost a month of non-stop begging had managed to wrangle permission from her. Mash had expected to be assigned to the Records department or maybe join Romani in Medical, but to her immense surprise she had instead been assigned as a Master Candidate- and the leader of A-Team, no less. It was something absolutely unfathomable to her, a job that was much more than she could’ve ever bargained for. Of course, Roman had told her privately that she was just meant to be the Leader on paper and that Wodime would be the one calling the shots, but that still didn’t detract from the magnitude of her task. Besides, could someone like her who already contained a Heroic Spirit within herself even summon a Servant? It was nerve-wracking, and it didn’t help that besides Pepe the rest of Team A, who were to head out into the field first, weren’t exactly the most… cohesive. Personally, if Wodime hadn’t been there, even Mash would’ve said that any semblance of teamwork was doomed to fail. And even then, she wasn’t looking forward to sharing a team with Beryl Gut, a prospect that caused her no small amount of stress.

In short, Mash Kyrielight was someone with many burdens and many questions, and it looked like she wasn’t getting closer to finding the answer to even a single one of them.

Then she met him.

Ritsuka Fujimaru, the final Master Candidate to be recruited to Chaldea before the First Order commenced.

She had encountered him purely by chance, following Fou when the little critter had suddenly gotten up from his perch in the corner of her room and taken off down the halls suddenly. While Fou was normally whimsical even at the best of times, and never really seemed to stay in one place, this time something seemed different. Normally, Fou tended to laze around whenever he deigned to stay in her room, barely moving unless it was to groom his own fur. So for him to suddenly bolt like that during his ‘lazy time’ as she liked to call it indicated that something had changed. What that something was, she couldn’t say- the little white beast didn’t correspond to any animal species she had seen in Chaldea’s database, and as such she really didn’t know anything about him except for those small habits he showed off from time to time. Hoping to learn something new about her charge, she had put down the book she was reading and taken off after him.

To say she was surprised to find him licking a boy who was fast asleep on the floor would be an understatement. One of the few things Mash had noticed about Fou right off the bat was that he seemed to be intensely misanthropic for some reason. Apart from her, Fou never stuck around anyone else and always tended to go off on his own when there were more than two people in the same room. While it wasn’t uncommon for wild animals to be that way and eventually grow out of the habit, Fou had never once given anyone else his acknowledgement in all the time she had known him.

And the boy in general was an oddity too. She’d never met anyone who had been around her age in Chaldea before, mainly due to the criteria they had for recruitment. Non-Magus staff were recruited specifically if they had a prodigious talent of some kind, which wasn’t usually something you saw in teenagers. On the Magus side of things, while the recruitment of someone young was possible, it was extremely unlikely that he would’ve been left alone if that were the case. A prodigious Magus would have a connection to some Faction or the other in the Clock Tower, and would’ve been quickly integrated into that group from the moment he had arrived. She’d seen it happen many times before, after all.

So who was he, and what was he doing here?

It was with that curiosity that she had helped wake him up, only for her world to be changed forever.

His name was Ritsuka, and he was perhaps the most human person she had ever met. Mash didn’t understand why she felt that way, but the moment she laid eyes on him, it was as if she knew deep down that he was someone she could easily relate to, someone she didn’t need to feel threatened around. The latter wasn’t something totally unique, but the former definitely was. He just had a very approachable aura that seemed to dampen the need for any kind of hostility from her, kind of like Pepe but without the air of cryptic mystery the older man often gave off. That impression only intensified when he woke up and spoke to her. Mash couldn’t deny that she’d been caught flat-footed when he talked to her like… like she was just another person. It was something she had never experienced before. Even those who cared for her like Romani or those who were at least kind to her like Lev didn’t treat her that way, like she was normal. She didn’t begrudge them for it, especially after all the help they’d given her without asking for anything in return, but that didn’t mean she failed to notice it. However, Ritsuka was different, even if it was only because she’d managed to run into him right after he got to Chaldea. Before he could learn the truth about her. Because he didn’t know, he treated her like a peer, she’d been burned too many times to think of any other conclusion.

And even with that knowledge, the next half an hour that followed was like something out of a dream. It was probably the longest Mash had ever spoken with another person in her life, over a painfully mundane topic no less, and she was as happy as a clam. For the first time, she’d nearly forgotten her own circumstances, and genuinely felt like a normal girl. So much so that she’d almost gotten genuinely angry when Da Vinci had interrupted them, even though she logically knew that they couldn’t just stand there in the halls talking when there was only hours left till the First Order and Ritsuka still needed to get oriented. Almost, because the Caster’s actions had resulted in both of them falling over and her newly designated Sempai ending up in her lap, making her realize belatedly just how handsome he was. After that, she was more grateful that Da Vinci had whisked him away, because she wasn’t sure she could’ve looked the boy in the eye after that.

Of course, she immediately took off back to her room after that, for the sake of doing some… research. As the assigned Leader of Team A, even though she was basically just a figurehead, Mash actually had access to a lot of the files in Chaldea’s database. Of course, included in those files was the employee roster, and hopefully the data on one Ritsuka Fujimaru. It didn’t take her long to find it, once she sorted them by the date on which they’d become a part of the organization, and with a swipe of her finger she pulled it up on the screen of her tablet. To her genuine surprise, she found out that he’d been essentially snatched up by Director Olga Marie as soon as his Rayshift and Master Affinities had been discovered by one of their Recruiters, probably marking the first time the woman had actively been involved in anyone’s recruitment since she’d taken up office after her father’s sudden death. It struck Mash as unusual, because normal protocol would dictate that he be ignored because he was actually a civilian and not a Magus. While Chaldea was technically obligated to recruit a small number of civilian Master Candidates by the United Nations, they hadn’t exactly been playing by those rules- because unlike their other staff, who were recruited if they had talent regardless of whether they could use Magecraft, Masters could be literally anyone who had the right attributes. The ‘civilian’ Masters were usually just the less talented children of certain Magus Clans planted in a way to make them appear as if they were ordinary people before they were sent over to the base. So for an actual civilian to be recruited literally at the last minute was something of an anomaly. But the girl could understand where the Director had been coming from, in a way. These Affinity scores were probably the highest ever recorded, even outstripping the talented Magi on Team A by a fair margin. It was absolutely ridiculous how much potential he had as a Master, although it seemed to be inversely proportional to his potential as a Magus considering his lineage, or lack thereof.

That aside though, Mash noticed something that was far more important to her specifically when she was looking over his profile- and that was the fact that he really was just a normal human, perhaps the most mundane individual to ever walk those halls if his Affinities weren’t taken into account. He’d just been an ordinary high-schooler before his recruitment, living in a small family with his parents and his younger sister, Lizzie. Her initial impression of him had been right, and that brought her no small amount of happiness. Deep within her heart, a desire had been sparked to be able to speak with him again like two ordinary teenagers. This desire was stoked further by the implicit understanding she had that he probably wouldn’t want to speak to her after the others told him about what she was. That also meant that if she really wanted to talk to him again, she needed to do it as soon as possible. Maybe if he stuck with them during the operation, she would get more opportunities, but Ritsuka unfortunately hadn’t been assigned to Team A because of time constraints. He’d simply been recruited too late in the game to join Mash’s team. Even so, she wished she could see him again just one more time, to get another taste of the normality she’d never experienced before.

… She really should have been careful what she wished for, because she did in fact get to see Ritsuka again that day- as she lay dying in the wreckage of what had once been her Klein Coffin.

When Mash had laid eyes on him again, the pink-haired girl had been overcome by a sense of visceral horror. While she was glad he had managed to survive that sudden explosion that had come out of nowhere with only a few injuries by the looks of it, she knew that he had no time to waste and that he needed to get out while he still could. She didn’t… she didn’t want him to die with her.

However, her second wish had gone unheeded. Instead of leaving her behind like he should have, he pulled her out of the rubble and collapsed alongside her. He told her that the way out had been blocked off, but Mash couldn’t help but wonder if he could’ve found another means of escape if he hadn’t concerned himself with her. Unfortunately, things only continued to get worse from there, as just when Mash was starting to think that the situation was still salvageable for the others, CHALDEAS turned a bright red- and it was declared that mankind’s future was in jeopardy.

By that point, Mash had already begun to lose her ability to think coherently as her injuries took their toll on her. The only thing she could focus on at that point was the boy who held her in his lap, something she found faintly ironic. Knowing that she had little time left before she passed, the girl asked Ritsuka what was likely to be her final request: that he hold her hand. His quick agreement and the sudden surge of warmth she felt when he took her hand in his made her the happiest she’d ever been in her whole life.

Looking at his face one last time, Mash suddenly realized with a sudden burst of clarity that he was… crying, tears falling in trails down his cheek. Crying, for her.

Then he spoke again.

“I just wanted you to know that I’m glad I got to spend my last moments with a friend.”

A friend.

Had someone ever called her a friend before? Had she ever known anyone who could even be called a friend before?

And yet… this boy who she’d only just met was willing to call her his friend, to show her kindness, to mourn for her. Mash had never experienced such a thing before, and she couldn’t help but feel a surge of affection for the one who had shown her something new, something she never really knew she wanted despite her circumstances.

That was the final thought in her mind before the Rayshift sequence commenced, leading to where she was now- drifting in some unseen realm between life and death, or maybe even between Chaldea and Fuyuki.

She should have been dead.

And she had once been fine with that.

But not anymore.

For the first time in her whole life, Mash Kyrielight desperately wanted to live.

She wanted to be with the person- no, the people who had seen value in her life even when she had not. The person who’d taken care of her and given her name, and the person who had seen her as a friend worth shedding tears over. She didn’t want to leave them alone, facing an uncertain future on their own.

So she prayed. Desperately calling out to the Heroic Spirit who slumbered deep within her, begging for the chance to keep going. Mash wasn’t sure that Spirit could even do anything, but at that point it was the only thought that came to mind.

There was a moment of silence, reminiscent of the Servant’s attitude in all the time they’d been together, silently watching from the back of her mind.

Then a male voice rang out in the confines of the void.

“…Very well. In return, you must eliminate the cause of this Singularity. Prove your worth, Mash Kyrielight.” He said, and the girl felt a sudden surge of power flooding her body as the contract was sealed and everything began to go white.

‘Please be safe, Sempai.’ She thought, as her body was transformed into something beyond the scope of human limits. ‘As your Servant, I’ll do everything in my power to protect you from now on.’

Honestly, the first thing that hit me once I woke up again was the sensation of sheer surprise at the fact that I was even alive somehow.

The second was the all too familiar sensation of a small animal licking my cheek.

“Fou, is that you?” I groaned, wincing as I tried to regain my bearings. Alive I may have been, but at one hundred percent I was not.

My whole body felt weird as hell, as if I’d shed a layer of it off somewhere, and it was uncomfortably hot. Like holy hell was it muggy in here.

“Fou… kyuu, kyuu!” The familiar voice of the small beast rang out, and I let out a sigh of relief.

Looks like I wasn’t the only one who made it out of there alive. I guess with me and Fou accounted for, that only left…

Oh no.

A surge of energy burst through my system and helped me force my eyes awake as I sat up with a gasp- just in time to see a fucking skeleton get bodied by a massive black object that slammed into it and sent it flying a couple feet like your average goon in an Indian action movie. However, my eyes didn’t linger on that for more than a split second, because they shifted to the familiar person who had been the one to deliver the finishing blow.

“Mash!” I called out, my eyes wide as I looked at the form of my distinctly non-bifurcated friend. Before I knew it, I’d crossed the distance between us and hugged her, something wet staining my cheeks as I realized she’d somehow made it out ok. “Y-You’re…”

Shit, was I crying? I managed to hold myself together before, but I guess the relief had gotten to me.

[Your Affection with Mash Kyrielight has increased!]

“… I’m fine, Sempai.” She said, and I could hear the smile in her voice as her own arms wrapped around my back. “And I’m glad to see you’re ok as well.”

…Well, it was too late to worry about maintaining my dignity I guess. Sue me, I was just happy to see her alive and…

“Hold up, what are you wearing?!” I nearly shrieked after we broke apart a few seconds later, my brain finally processing that small detail my eyes had been trying to tell me about for the last couple of seconds.

In a far contrast to the almost school uniform-like outfit she’d been wearing before, now she was decked out in what could… charitably… be called armor. No, it was definitely armor- if it had been designed by the author of ‘Highschool DxD’. It looked like it was supposed to emphasize her figure more than protect her in battle, and that was putting it lightly.

“I… I’ll explain later.” Mash replied, blushing at having her wardrobe choice pointed out. “For now, please take a look around you, Sempai.”

I proceeded to do just that, only to blanch as what felt like a rock of solid anxiety settled in my gut.

“… Are we in hell?” I couldn’t help but wonder out loud, my eyes wide open in surprise and unmitigated horror.

That was the first thing that popped into my head when I took a gander at our surroundings. To put it in simple terms, it was an urban hellscape. That heat I was feeling? Well, it probably had something to do with the seemingly endless inferno that burned in a perfect ring around the edges of the city. There were smaller tongues of flame on buildings throughout the inner perimeter of the literal firewall as well, but those were tamer in comparison, more like flickering embers.

It went without saying that no city should look like this under any circumstances.

‘Aren’t we supposed to have been traveling to the past?’ I wondered, absolutely befuddled. ‘No way did any urban area actually look like this without going on international TV!’

“No, Sempai.” Replied Mash, shaking her head. “This is the target of our Rayshift, Singularity F. Or rather, Fuyuki City in the year twenty-oh-four.”

“Fuyuki?” I murmured, momentarily stunned once more. “Seriously?”

Though I’d never been there myself, Fuyuki was a pretty large city that I was at least tangentially aware of. It was no Tokyo or anything, but it was still a popular place for tourists to visit, and I’d done a bit of research on it a while back- which was why I was absolutely confident that there was something extremely wrong here. As far as I knew, Fuyuki hadn’t suffered from a major disaster like this at any point in its history, especially not in twenty-oh-four, the most they had then were a couple of crazy gas leaks that wrecked a few places, and even then the damage wasn’t that bad.

This was literally the setting of a Roland Emmerich Movie.

“I’m afraid it is.” Said Mash, shaking her head sadly. “I don’t understand why it is like this, but this area corresponds to what I’ve seen about Fuyuki City in Chaldea’s Archives.”

Yeah. I wasn’t about to argue on that point. All evidence pointed to this place really being Fuyuki, as crazy as that was.

No, instead I needed to focus on what to do next. We were stranded out here in the middle of a burning Fuyuki, surrounded by-

“Gi-GAAAAAAA!” Screeched another skeleton, drawing both our attention to a sudden cluster of them that had appeared at the end of the alleyway street we were on.

Now that I wasn’t seeing stars and had a relatively clear head, I was able to take in more details about these newcomers.

My conclusion? They were basically the exact picture of fodder enemies you’d see in your typical RPG. Walking skeletons dressed in rags, some of them holding either a chipped sword or a spear while one of them was holding a bow and literally had an arrow lodged in its own eye socket. They seemed to be color coded as well- brown rags for sword skellies, blue rags for the spearmen and green rags for the singular archer. There were about six of them in total.

Before I could even formulate a plan of escape, since there was no way I was going to try my luck fighting them directly even if they looked ridiculous, Mash suddenly moved to stand protectively in front of me, the shield she was using from before materializing in her hands with a flash of blue light.

“Linguistic communication is impossible. Identifying life-forms as hostile.” She said, and I couldn’t help but flinch at the sudden pressure her words seemed to carry. “Master, your orders please. You and I… will overcome this together!”

Her heartfelt request was enough to kick my brain into high gear again, causing me to shove my doubts and questions away in lieu of mustering whatever tactical ability I could muster. I could stand around clutching my head like a Psyduck in confusion after we escaped this clearly hostile environment.

“Right!” I called, my faint experience in the Simulator coming to mind. I had no idea why Mash was acting as my Servant even though she was just a human like me, but at least for the sake of reference I decided to treat her like she was one. “Ignore the vanguard for now, break through and get the archer at the back! You can focus on the others afterward!”

“Alright!” She replied, and dashed towards the group of undead without any further hesitation.

Now, I had no idea what Mash’s new specs were, since I obviously hadn’t gotten the chance to sit down and talk to her about it like I had with Arturia. However, logical inference, and popular tropes, suggested that she clearly had some kind of Endurance Build. The fetish armor and the giant shield, which was cross-shaped and roughly the same height as her, were pretty big clues in that regard. I didn’t know the particulars, like what her Skills or Noble Phantasm did if she even had them, but I didn’t need to either. Call it a hunch, but these guys didn’t seem like anything more than trash tier mobs.

As for my orders, well, that was a particular brand of Gamer PTSD kicking in. In that Dating Sim I played, ranged enemies always had a particular ability- they could shoot past your Heroines if they didn’t specifically have anti-projectile abilities and nail you directly. I’d lost the three star bonus for going through a fight undamaged on multiple occasions precisely because of that stupid mechanic. So when I saw that archer skeleton in the back, the first thing that came to mind was the overwhelming desire to get that thing dealt with first before it somehow sniped me. Admittedly, it probably wasn’t right to be using that type of knowledge in this situation, but sue me I literally had no other kind of tactical experience.

Still, Mash performed much better than I expected. After I gave the word, she basically locked onto the green skeleton at the back and completely ignored the others. Of course they tried to lunge at her when she got close, but one swipe of her shield literally scattered them like bowling pins. Within a few seconds of reaching the group, she was right in front of the archer, who had barely notched an arrow to his bow before Mash struck. I couldn’t help but wince as she swung her shield like a baseball bat and nailed the poor guy right on the dome, quite literally knocking his head right off his body and into the wall of a nearby storefront. Before the skeleton could even touch the floor, Mash turned to his companions, who were shambling towards her while making the same screeching groans as before. Watching her go to town on them, I couldn’t help but wonder one thing, where was all of this before? No seriously, if she was this strong, how did she get so critically injured by the bomb in the first place? Was it just that strong? Seriously, I thought that she was an ordinary but sheltered girl before, but by the looks of things she was actually Captain America’s secret love child. If Mash’s shield wasn’t so big and cross shaped, she would probably have been fighting almost identical to him.

“Phew.” Sighed Mash, letting out a breath of exertion after putting the last skeleton back in the dirt. Much to my surprise, they disappeared into motes of miasmic purple light like they were Percy Jackson Monsters, leaving nothing behind except the odd bone here and there… Loot. “I had my worries, but your orders were excellent, Sempai.”

“I’m flattered, but you did all the work here Mash.” I replied sheepishly, feeling a little embarrassed that all I could really do was stand there while my friend fought to protect me. Like it was one thing when Arturia did it in the Simulator, but another thing entirely when your ‘Servant’ was someone you actually knew that wasn’t a legendary hero. “By the way, I’m sorry if this is a personal question, but… were you always that strong?”

“…No.” Mash replied, after a slight pause. “In combat training I always had to stay after class. I couldn’t even do a single pull-up. The reason I’m able to fight like this now is because…“

She was cut off by a sudden beeping noise, one that I realized was coming from my own person. A quick glance showed that the source of the noise was the communicator I’d been provided, which had been tucked away into one of the pockets of my uniform. Taking it out, I pressed the button on the side of the silver disk, and blinked in surprise when a literal hologram popped out.

“Right, I finally got through! Hello? This is Chaldea Command, do you read me?” Called an incredibly stressed looking orange-haired man, before he was suddenly shoved to the side by a more familiar person.

“Ritsuka, are you all right?” Asked Hinako Akuta, her face rigid with worry.

“I’m fine!” I replied, absolutely relieved that she had made it out ok beyond the shadow of a doubt. I’d been almost sure when the PA had only registered the presence of one Master Candidate, but it was nice to have confirmation. “Mash and I got Rayshifted to Fuyuki City from the Command Room! We’re both ok, I think, but I don’t know what happened to anyone else.”

She let out a small sigh as her expression softened for a second, before it sharpened again into a glare.

“When I catch up to you, we will be having words, Kouhai.” I tried to stop myself from wilting at the sheer rage in her tone, but judging by the way Sempai seemed to gain a hint of satisfaction in her eyes, I don’t think it worked.

[Your Affection with Hinako Akuta(?) has Increased!]

“I probably deserve that...” I mumbled quietly, sheepishly rubbing my head. I’d folded way too easily back in the Command Room, and had likely given her a hard time.

“…Here. You can take over.” She said to someone offscreen, probably that orange-haired guy. “I’ll go try the Summoning again.”

Sure enough, the guy from before popped back in, looking even more frazzled than before.

“Man, she really could stand to be a little nicer…”

“Dr. Roman, the line is still open.” Reminded Mash, frowning at him.

‘Dr. Roman’ cleared his throat hurriedly.

“So the two of you were Rayshifted, huh? I’m impressed that you managed to make it in one piece without a Coffin, but I’m also glad that you’re safe.”

“Thanks, Doc.” I replied, flashing a little smile. “I’m glad we’re safe too.”

He let out a bark of laughter at that, before doing a double take as his eyes slid over to Mash.

“Mash, what’s up with that outfit?!” He nearly screamed. “It’s shameless! I didn’t raise you to dress like that!”

Oh, so it wasn’t just me then. That was great, because Mash was so nonchalant about it that I was starting to wonder if I was the weirdo here.

… Wait a second, Dr. Roman was Mash’s dad?!

“I transformed into this to protect Sempai. Please check my condition, I think you’ll understand the situation better.” She replied, completely unfazed.

“Your physical condition?” He wondered, narrowing his eyes at something offscreen before nearly falling out of his chair in surprise. “Wh… Whoa, whoa, whoa, WHOA! Physical strength, Magical Circuits, everything's improved! You're not so much a human, but…“

“Yes, I'm a Servant.” Mash said, as if that wasn’t something totally crazy. “I don't remember how it happened, but it seems I survived the explosion by fusing with a Servant. The same Servant that… hasn’t responded all these years. But at the last second, he offered me a contract. In return for the abilities and Noble Phantasm of a Heroic Spirit, he wanted me to eliminate the cause of this Singularity.”

Dr. Roman was staring at her, open-mouthed, and I couldn’t blame him because I was doing the same thing too. Fusing with a Heroic Spirit… was that just a thing that could happen? The crash course I got from Da Vinci on the topic never really made it sound like it was even a possibility.

“A Heroic Spirit and a human, fused…” Muttered the doctor finally, taking another look at those reports. “A Demi-Servant? That's Chaldea's Sixth Experiment. I see. So it finally succeeded, huh? Does this Heroic Spirit still have his consciousness?”

“... No, he gave me his combat abilities then vanished.” Said Mash, looking a little disappointed. “He never revealed his True Name even at the end. So I don't even know which Heroic Spirit’s power I’m using… nor what kind of Noble Phantasm I'm holding. At this point there's too much I don't know.”

That made two of us then, because I was completely lost. The only thing I really understood was that whatever Heroic Spirit fused with her basically just gave her a task and then left to get milk without actually telling her how to use her powers. What an asshole. Would it have killed this mystery Servant to at least tell her what powers she had?

“Hey, look on the bright side.” Said Dr Roman, smiling. “Not every Servant who gets summoned is cooperative. Now that you're a Servant, this is in our favor. After all, you're completely trustworthy. Ritsuka, was it? It looks like you're the only one who Rayshifted there safely. Also, the data is saying that Mash has become your Servant- the first Heroic Spirit you’ve entered a contract with.”

[Congratulations! For officially forming a Contract with a Heroic Spirit, the Stamina Bar has been unlocked!]

I flashed him a thumbs up to show that I understood, while taking a peek at the blue bar that had appeared in the corner of my vision before I responded.

“I think I get the gist of it, but I have a question- what are we actually supposed to be doing? Should we just try to get to a safe place so we can be Rayshifted back, or…”

“Right, the situation’s changed rather drastically, hasn’t it?” He asked rhetorically, before shaking his head. “Well, the current mission has two new goals…”

Suddenly, the hologram flickered and was filled with static, Dr. Roman’s face flickering in and out of focus.

“Doctor, you're breaking up. 10 seconds until the connection is lost.” Mash said, and I couldn’t help but wonder how exactly she knew that.

“Huh, so SHEBA’s output is unstable because we switched to the backup generators? Oh well, I'll brief you later.” He replied, typing something furiously on a nearby console. “Both of you, I'm getting a strong Leyline reading about two kilometers from where you are… The Tōsaka Manor, according to our Map. You’ll probably find a direct Terminal in the basement. Try to get there somehow. That way, it will stabilize our connection. And listen, don't do anything reckless, will you? I'll try to bring the power back up as soon as…“

The doctor wasn’t able to finish his sentence before the connection was lost entirely, and the communicator deactivated.

“Well, it couldn’t be helped.” I sighed, stowing it away in my pocket before turning to Mash. “We do have an objective though, so we should get going.”

Hopefully there we could get some more concrete instructions. But I was worried about something- just what kind of state was Chaldea even in? Doc had mentioned something about power…

“Right. You’re so dependable, Sempai.” Said Mash, drawing me out of my musing and making me stare at her incredulously. “I was actually terrified, so thank goodness.”

[Your Affection with Mash Kyrielight has increased!]

‘So am I!’ I screamed mentally, though I managed to school my face into a nervous smile.

Fortunately, a Hero appeared before I could try and figure out something to say.

“Kyu. Fou, Foou!” Called Fou, who I just realized had vanished to God-knows-where this entire time. He scrambled up my leg again to make it back to his perch on my shoulder, and to my surprise I was already getting used to carrying him around like that.

“That's right, you're with us as well, aren't you Fou?” Mash realized. “Thank you for cheering us up. Though I should have let the Doctor know that you were with us…”

“Kyu. Fou, kyaao!” The little critter replied, and I could’ve sworn he let out a little scoff at the end there, causing Mash to giggle.

“I suppose it’s fine… I’ll just let him know later.” She said. “First, let's head to the coordinates he mentioned. Once we get there, we should be able to set up a base camp.”

“Sounds like a plan.” I agreed, and the three of us set off through the burning city.

Honestly, I was kind of surprised at how smooth the journey to the Leyline had gone, after all the things that had gone wrong, except Mash gaining Servant powers, for us to end up in this position to begin with.

Sure, we encountered more of those skeletons, but Mash had been more than enough to take them out easily without much input on my end. We had a really simple strategy when dealing with them- go for the archers first, then focus on the melee units. With how slow they were and their shambling gait, it was laughably simple for Mash to do just that and then sweep the rest aside. Using this method, we’d both made over a kilometer without suffering a single scratch and were still going strong.

So what was I doing while Mash was tearing apart skeletons like they owed her money?

The only thing I actually could do, think.

Before we set out, I took advantage of the Menu’s Pause feature to take a glimpse at the new stuff I’d unlocked so I could see whether it could come in handy or not, or at least use it as reference to get a better idea of how the Game worked.

First in line was the first Achievement I unlocked.

[Crimson Moon Over the Snowy Mountain: Prevent Hinako Akuta(?) from being sealed in her Coffin and joining the ???? in the future.]

There was… a lot to unpack there, and it was literally the first thing on the list.

‘Sealed in her Coffin’ was pretty clearly a euphemism for dying in the blast, considering she probably would’ve entered her Coffin and gotten blown up like the others if I hadn’t accidentally delayed her.

But that second part…

The System somehow knew the future. Or, a future at least, enough to make Achievements like this. That much I was absolutely certain of at this point. I suppose it needed to, considering that there was clearly some criteria for being considered a Heroine, and it definitely had the means to considering the rampant time manipulation it could pull off.

And in that timeline, let’s call it the ‘Reference Timeline’ for now, because no way was I going to invite an existential crisis right now by calling it Timeline Alpha or some shit like that, my fellow Master candidate was supposed to bite the dust. I’d inadvertently saved her by Unlocking her Route and then using the Avalon Cookie.

That was all well and good, great even. Another comrade to help face whatever the hell was going on here was always welcome, not to mention it showed that this System was actually capable of letting me do some good. There was just… one small issue though.

If Akuta-Sempai was supposed to die, then who the fuck was she supposed to join in the future?

Was she going to become a zombie and become part of a necromancer’s legion or something? Like I didn’t know much about the state of dead-raising arts beyond Heroic Spirit Summoning because I hadn’t exactly gotten that much time to talk to Da Vinci, but wasn’t that kind of crazy?

Additionally, did that mean the other Master Candidates who got killed would also be recruited into this mysterious organization? There was no way that could be a good thing, right? Common sense told me a definitive no.

I honestly wasn’t even sure how to tackle this revelation. What could I even do about it? There was no way I could reasonably give out a warning to the others without coming off as incredibly suspicious, and I already had my hands full with all the shit that was going on right now, such as the blast and Chaldea’s possible crippling right when we were about to go on an op to save the World. My brain had zero space for possible future threats on top of that. Even with the ability to permanently freeze time on demand and give myself unlimited thinking time, that didn’t change the fact that I was still a normal ass guy, not Lelouch Lamperouge.

So that’s why I decided to do with this information what I did best- shove it in the back of my head and save it for later. Instead, I turned my attention to the Reward I had gotten from that minefield of an Achievement.

[Platinum Summoning Ticket: Allows for one Summoning Ritual to call forth a ‘Heroic Spirit’ Attribute Heroine that could not otherwise be summoned at the point in time this Item is used.]

It sounded pretty good, but I couldn’t help but wonder what the Game meant when it talked about Heroic Spirits that couldn’t be summoned ‘at the point in time’ it was used. As far as I knew, the Summoning System wasn’t set up like an actual Gacha with Story Banners and Limited Banners despite the element of gambling involved when doing the ritual.

Were there Heroic Spirits that you needed to clear specific conditions to add to the ‘Summoning Pool’ or something?

I guess it didn’t really matter either way, since I had no idea what powers each Heroic Spirits had and as such didn’t really have my sights set on summoning a specific one. Sure, there were Heroes I really wanted to meet, but from a purely logical standpoint I didn’t have any preferences. Any and all help was welcome.

Making a note to use the Ticket if I ever summoned another Servant, I moved further down the list to the Perk I had gotten from Sempai.

[Deep Blood: Your blood possesses an attractive quality and is much more delicious to any Heroine with the ‘Vampiric’ Attribute, additionally allowing them to gain much more nourishment from smaller amounts.]

… Was Hinako Akuta a freakin vampire?

That… Well, it did explain the question mark after her name at least, and the general vibe she gave off. I didn’t know much about real-life Vamps, but if their longevity was the same as in fiction then it was entirely possible that she had changed names a bunch of times throughout history, and the one she used now was just the current iteration.

How did I feel about this sudden reveal?

Not much, actually. Like even if she was a Vampire, she’d become a part of Chaldea and was even on the front lines to save Humanity. She couldn’t have been all bad. Plus most of the people I was around now were all unique in different ways, Da Vinci was a living ghost, Mash had fused to a living ghost, and a great number of my colleagues were actual wizards. A vampire added on top of that really didn’t change much.

What affected me more was the name of the Perk though, which was so hilariously ironic that it made me laugh out loud.

Seriously, [Deep Blood]? I could see how it fit, in a way, but it was funny that it seemed to imply the opposite of what its namesake did. They both shared the common trait of making one’s blood more attractive to vampires, but the OG Deep Blood straight up vaporized them If they drank it while my version was the other side of the proverbial coin.

I… probably should have been more worried about being literally turned into a magnet for bloodsuckers by the System, considering it said ‘Vampiric Attribute’ and not Vampires outright, but I felt like that was something kind of manageable. Crazy as that sounded.

After all, I had a Servant on my side now. I doubted there were any vampires out there who were stronger than literal Heroic Spirits of legend. Akuta-Sempai didn’t really give off the same aura of power and majesty that Da Vinci and even Mash, to a degree, did, so I doubted vampires were all that strong in general. Plus there had to be some kind of Holy Magecraft I could use to beat them back.

Yeah, it looked like it would be a minor inconvenience at most, nothing to worry about.

Next!

[Shield of the Beloved: All Heroines whose Routes have been Unlocked within your vicinity gain a boost to their Physical and Magical Defenses proportional to their Bond Level.]

… I was starting to see a trend here, one that I wasn’t sure I liked.

All my Skills were going to only be useful for other people, weren’t they? No, I knew they would, because it was the same in the games this thing was ripping off. Yet at the time the implications of that hadn’t really sunk in because it was a videogame where the Main Character was little more than a player avatar who no one really cared about.

But this was reality now, and there were no do-overs if I got killed, so it was much more aggravating.

Still, I couldn’t deny that it was a pretty good Skill. An Omni-Defense Buff whose only condition was that I needed to be in close proximity to a Heroine for it to take effect. Much more reliable than Instinct’s gacha roll to see if it would even trigger. It was probably kind of redundant considering my front-liner Heroine was Mash, who already looked to be a tank, but if I ended up traveling with someone like Sempai I guess it would come in handy.

And that was everything, except for the Gallery which just had a picture of me and Mash from back in the Command Room. There was of course a lot of stuff to unpack that came with them as additional baggage, which is what I ended up thinking about as we made our way across the ruined city of Fuyuki.

“Sempai.” Spoke up Mash suddenly, breaking me out of my musing. “We will soon reach the point the Doctor specified.”

“Gotcha.” I replied, nodding easily.

I had the sense we at least walked over a kilometer, but Mash was the one with the map so I deferred to her on that. For a second, there was a peaceful silence between us, before Mash finally uttered what was on both our minds.

“There are only flames as far as the eye can see.” She said, looking at our surroundings sadly. “It's nothing like the Fuyuki in our data. According to our data, it's an average regional city. There's no record of such a disaster occurring in twenty-oh-four... The Mana density in the atmosphere is also abnormal. In fact, it's a lot like Ancient Earth…”

That was more or less my thoughts on the matter too, except for that last part about the Mana in the atmosphere. I’d been racking my brain to see if there was any kind of disaster in this general area before I opened the Menu, but there was actually nothing. After that failed, I just kept my eyes peeled for any sign of what had happened, hoping that perhaps trying to find evidence at ground zero would give a better result.

But there was nothing around that could qualify as such, and that terrified me much more than I already was.

It was almost intentional how there was no evidence that could be found, not even a fragment of a clue. Any billboards or signs were completely scorched to the point of being unreadable, and the streets were somehow spotless despite literally looking like they rose up from the underworld. But above all that-

“Yeah, and there’s something that’s been bothering me.” I said, my face set in a frown. “Where are all the bodies?”

Mash’s eyes widened in shock as she let out a gasp, realizing that I was right- we hadn’t seen a single corpse on the way here. I mean, I wasn’t enthusiastic to see one by any means, but the fact that there wasn’t a single body anywhere to be seen was incredibly suspicious. Especially considering that Fuyuki was a pretty big city, not a small town in the middle of nowhere with a triple digit population. You could argue that the skeletons were what had happened to the former inhabitants, but that didn’t quite make sense either- they dissolved after they were killed, and they were all roughly the same size. No child skellies or anything.

“That is suspicious Sempai.” She replied, her brow furrowed in thought. “Maybe…“

“Kyaaaaaa!” A faint scream split the air, causing both of us to snap our heads in the direction it was coming from.

“Let’s go!” I cried, breaking into a run as I made my way over the ridge ahead of us.

That sounded a whole lot like another human, and given the circumstances it was likely someone else from Chaldea, so I didn’t want to waste a second.

“On it, Sempai!” Mash agreed, keeping pace with me easily.

She could have easily gone ahead, but it looked like the Demi-Servant didn’t want to leave me alone in this unknown environment. I appreciated it. The moment we started down the small hill in front of us, we saw the source of the scream- and it was someone I never expected to see.

“... What are these, anyway?!” Screamed Director Olga Marie, the pale-haired woman trying and failing to fend off a veritable horde of skeletons by firing blasts of colored light from her fingers. “Why do these things keep happening to me? I can't take it anymore! Come save me, Lev! You were always there for me, right?”

In her defense, hysteria aside, she probably would’ve been able to take them on if there were like three or four of them. That spell she was using was enough to knock down one skeleton after like two shots, and she could fire them fairly quickly. Unfortunately, as far as I could tell there were at least ten of them in the group steadily advancing towards her at the bottom of the hill, definitely the biggest group of them I’d seen so far. Perhaps the silver lining was that there weren’t any archers amongst them, meaning the Director still had the range advantage as long as she could keep away from the spearmen.

Still, she was definitely in trouble, considering that the skeletons were right on top of her. And there was no way I was going to hang her out to dry, on multiple counts, so I decided to do something I would’ve never done if I didn’t have Mash on my side because of how stupid it was. I raised my fingers to my lips and let out my best taxicab whistle, making my lavender-haired friend jolt in surprise next to me. Just as intended, it drew the attention of both Olga Marie and the skeletons, who rather unnervingly turned in unison to face us.

“Mash, go!” I called, thinking quickly, before my gaze flitted to the stunned Director and I cupped my hands in order to make my voice carry over a little. “Director, get back!”

“Right, Master!” She barked, her shield materializing in her hands.

Both of them did exactly what I told them- Mash dashed forward with a burst of speed, the wind generated from the act nearly bowling me over, while Olga unfroze and took the opportunity to back away from the momentarily distracted skeletons.

Two seconds later, she was upon them, catching three swords on her shield without flinching and shoving their owners back, away from our VIP.

I ran down the hill behind her, somewhat thankful that I kept up my physical conditioning all these years as I reached the Director.

Olga Marie didn’t seem to have any visibly physical injuries, and though she was staring at me as if she’d seen an alien, so I turned my attention over to Mash’s battle taking place a couple of feet away and activated my Circuits.

“Momentary Reinforcement!” I chanted, and Mash gained a slightly reddish aura as her strength increased from the Spell.

It may have been overkill, but I wasn’t taking any chances with the one person who was keeping me safe.

Sure enough, that power boost was all she needed to start mowing down the skeletons as easily as before. I mean, she’d been doing fine already, but the fact that there were so many of them meant that it had been taking her longer to work through them. With the added buff from Momentary Reinforcement though, even glancing blows were taking down skellies left and right.

Within the span of a minute, she cleared them out and made her way back towards us with a smile, her shield disappearing from her hands in a flash of blue light.

“Hostiles eliminated. Thank you for your support, Master.” She said to me, before turning to the other woman. “Are you hurt, Director?”

The Director looked like she was going through a full system reboot as she looked from me to Mash, and then back again.

“… What’s going on?” She asked, absolutely befuddled.

I held back a grimace at that, because those were definitely not the words I wanted to hear from the person who had the highest chance of knowing what was going on.

“Director?” Asked Mash questioning, before she seemed to get some kind of realization. “About my situation. I know it's hard to believe, but the truth is…“

“You’re a Demi-Servant, right?” The woman asked, her eyes narrowing as she regained some of her composure. “It's pretty obvious that you fused with a Servant, considering that shield and your performance just now. What I want to know is why it's successful now all of a sudden!”

“... I’m not sure, Director.” Mash admitted, her expression becoming one of mild discomfort.

Dr. Roman’s comment about Mash’s condition being related to one of Chaldea’s ‘Experiments’ was starting to make a lot more sense. Judging by what had been said so far, everyone knew that Mash had powers, but they just hadn’t activated till now for whatever reason.

I had a bad feeling about that, but I didn’t get to think about it much before Olga Marie’s gaze turned to me with a hint of irritation but also… recognition?

“You’re her Master, correct? Ritsuka Fujimaru?” She asked, and I blinked as time ground to a halt.

[A - That’s me, Master Candidate 48. Pleased to make your acquaintance.]

[B - Yes, Madam Director. I’m not sure how, but I’ve ended up as Mash’s Master.]

[C - Yeah. Who the hell are you?]

Bruh, Option C was just… nevermind.

Anyways, after a moment’s thought it was obvious that Option A was a well-disguised trap. The difference between the two may have seemed superficial at first glance, but a Dating Sim veteran like me could easily pick up on the meat of it. Option A was informal, treating the other party as an equal while Option B was deferential, showing respect to a superior.

If I were dealing with someone like Romani, Option A would’ve been fine but Director Olga Marie was clearly of the ‘Rich Ōjo-sama’ archetype, and would probably take it as an insult especially with tensions being as high as they were now. And the last thing we needed was drama within the group right now.

So B it was.

“Yes, Madam Director.” I said automatically, bowing respectfully, before straightening up again. “I’m not sure how, but I’ve ended up as Mash’s Master.”

[Olga Marie Asmleit Animusphere’s Bond has reached Level 1! Olga Marie Route has been Unlocked!]

It really spoke to how desensitized I was that I couldn’t even bring myself to really freak out about the fact that the Game had made my actual BOSS a Heroine. I did, however, get the feeling that I was going to be cooked in the near future.

Joy.

That aside, my intuition was apparently on point because Olga nodded, satisfied with my response, even if the irritation on her face really didn’t fade much.

“I suppose if anyone could’ve awakened that Servant within Mash, it would be the Master Candidate with the highest recorded Affinity.” She muttered to herself, rubbing her temple with a hand. “At least something’s finally gone right…”

“…” I wasn’t sure what to say in response to that, mainly because I hadn’t properly heard most of it, so I kept quiet.

Still, being the Director of Chaldea must’ve been a tough job because Olga really looked like she was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. It almost made me feel bad for my rather unflattering analysis of her earlier. Even though it was true.

“Fine!” She said suddenly, making me nearly jump at the sudden rise in volume. “Fujimaru, although it was a little unorthodox, I'll approve you and Kyrielight's contract. Now from here on out, you'll follow my commands. First, let's set up a base camp at the nearest Leyline Terminal. That way we can contact Chaldea again and you two can give me a proper explanation on everything that’s happened. So in this town's case…”

“This is the point, Director.” Interjected Mash, pointing to a spot on the ground. “The Terminal point is at your feet.”

“Whoa! Oh r…right, I knew that, I knew that, of course!” Lied the Director through her teeth, her cheeks flushing furiously in embarrassment. “Mash, place your shield on the ground. I'm going to set up a summoning circle, with your Noble Phantasm as the catalyst.”

“... So she says. Are you all right with that, Senpai?“ Asked the Demi-Servant.

Under ordinary circumstances, I probably would’ve been surprised at her sass, but I was too busy having a horrifying realization at Mash’s words earlier as it caused a number of clues to connect in my mind.

“No, actually.” I said, turning back to them with what was likely visible fear in my eyes. “We need to get out of here, ASAP.”

Olga Marie looked like she was going to scold me for contesting her opinion, but apparently my expression was more intense than I thought it was because whatever she saw on my face stopped her dead. Instead, it was Mash who spoke up.

“Sempai, what’s wrong?” She asked, her voice tinged with worry.

“… Mash, Director, we’re in an impact crater.” I said, swallowing thickly.

“What?” Asked Olga Marie, confused. “What are you talking about, Fujimaru?”

“The Leyline thing we were looking for was supposed to be in the basement of a mansion.” I said, laying out the observations that led me to this conclusion. “Instead, it’s at your feet. I thought we were at the bottom of a hill earlier, but when Mash said the Terminal was here it hit me that we were actually inside a crater this whole time.”

“You’re… right…” Replied Mash, the realization dawning on both of their faces as I explained myself.

“Director, until now Mash and I hadn’t found any evidence about what happened here. No bodies, no trace of any damage other than burned buildings, nada. It was more like a natural disaster, and a weirdly clean one at that.” I continued. “But this? Something literally wiped this place off the map, down to the foundations.”

I sighed, trying to still the furious beating of my own heart.

“And I really don’t want to be here if whatever was responsible for this decides to come back.”