Chapter CLX: Philosopher’s Legacy

In the aftermath of Solomon’s disappearance, there was a long moment of silence as we all absorbed what had just happened. The complete dismissal of our having corrected five of his Singularities. The fact that he had killed three Servants so easily and utterly ignored two Noble Phantasms hitting him directly. The nonsensical bit about repaying a favor I had apparently done him without ever realizing it.

Even if Scion’s death had been an essential part of making his plan work, so what? What could I have done differently? Leaving Scion alive and letting him wear away at all of humanity across countless parallel worlds was never an option, and just the suggestion itself was laughably ridiculous.

But I had no idea what else he could have meant.

“That was him?” Tohsaka asked into the silence, voice trembling. “That guy was the one behind all of this? The one who made this Singularity and all of the others?”

It was only the presence of a swarm — however meager and however quickly they were starting to die as the remnants of the fog seeped in through broken windows — that let me keep my voice steady. “Yes.”

“I see.” He looked down at the Grail in his hands, the one he’d been about to hand over to us. His brow furrowed. “He called it a trinket. A powerful device capable of granting any wish you can think of, and he called it nothing more than a trinket.”

The implication hung in the air — that Solomon was so powerful that he had no need of any of them, they were just mundane tools he used for the job he needed done. It wasn’t any more comfortable a thought than the knowledge that he had ignored two Noble Phantasms as though they hadn’t even hit him —

Jackie.

“Jackie!”

This time, Arash let me go, and I took off in the direction I’d seen her body go flying, skirting around the large crater formed from Tesla and Arthur’s clash and doing my best to avoid the divots pockmarking the remains of the park. It was harder without a swarm to keep track of where they were, but if I stumbled a couple of times, I didn’t care enough to be more than frustrated that they were slowing me down.

I found her further in, resting against the stump of a shattered tree that had no doubt been destroyed during the melee between Arthur and the others.

“Jackie.”

“We’re here, Mommy,” she replied, looking up at me with a faint smile.

She was missing an arm. Her already tattered cloak had been ripped to shreds, but the rest of her was either unharmed or had been healed by my First Aid spells, leaving only the burnt stump that disappeared halfway down to her left elbow into glittering dust. Ropes of dried and drying blood splattered up and down what remained and painted her black clothes even darker, but she seemed in no danger otherwise.

I fell to my knees next to her, unsure of what to do. A thousand conflicting impulses warred inside of me, some of them familiar and some of them strange and alien in ways I couldn’t explain. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do here. A flash of memory of days of skinned knees and papercuts said to pull her into a hug and kiss her head, but another part of me shied away, even though I’d spent the last couple of nights with her curled up in my arms.

In some ways, it would have been easier if she was looking up at me with teary eyes complaining about how much it hurt. The answer to that one was so easy even I knew what it was.

Instead, I reached out with one hand and laid it atop her head, as though to reassure myself that she was still there. Lamely, I said, “You’re okay.”

She nodded and leaned into my fingers. “Mm.”

“Can you stand on your own?”

“We think so,” she answered.

I shuffled back a step to give her room, and she climbed to her feet without much issue, stumbling only once when she tried to put weight on the arm that wasn’t there. The fact that it was gone seemed more like a frustration and a surprise to her than a painful wound, and she was almost pouting when she said, “One of our arms is gone, Mommy.”

It was another one of those instances where she was simultaneously both the child she looked like and yet also completely incongruent with it.

“It’ll be fine,” I told her, remembering Boudica. “It might take a little while, but we’ll get you fixed up before you know it.”

Da Vinci would have an answer, and I clung to that. We didn’t have a powerful ley line beneath a mountain leaking more magical energy than I could use in a lifetime, but I was sure she could come up with some way of speeding up Jackie’s recovery once we got back to Chaldea and the whole clusterfuck that had just been dropped on us was taken care of.

Fuck. What did he mean, I could finally return home? Was there even anything left of Brockton Bay on Earth Bet? And even if there was, how was that related to the next Singularity?

I put the questions from my mind for the moment. I didn’t have any answers to them, not right now, and until there was something I could do about them, I couldn’t afford to let them distract me. We had a Singularity to finish correcting.

I stood back up and offered a hand to Jackie, and she was all too happy to take it with her remaining one, smiling, like she hadn’t just lost an arm trying to kill the most powerful mage in history.

Everyone’s eyes immediately zeroed in on Jackie when we made it back to the group, and whatever their feelings were, however complicated everything was, Ritsuka still let out a sigh of relief. “Jackie’s okay, then.”

Tohsaka goggled at him. I couldn’t blame him for that. Servants were complete bullshit, but stuff like being able to regrow lost limbs with enough time and energy wasn’t exactly advertised on the list of things that were obvious about them.

“That can’t be a comfortable state to be in,” Flamel remarked.

“We’ll figure something out,” I said vaguely.

Notably, Rika didn’t have a quip prepared. I guess Solomon had spooked her just as badly as he had the rest of us.

“Not…to put too fine a point on things,” Romani’s voice interrupted, “but…”

“Y-yes,” said Marie, and although she was trying her best to sound stern and authoritative, the slight tremor in her voice gave her away. “Nagato Tohsaka. Your contract as a Master of Chaldea —”

“You don’t need to go that far,” Tohsaka cut her off. “I get it. Even if this thing could grant my wish, that guy… This is way over my head. If I took this and he decided to come back for it, then there’s nothing I could do except die.”

He thrust it into Ritsuka’s hands, who fumbled with it for a second because of how unexpected and sudden it was, and then pulled his hand away as though it burned.

“Take it,” he said bitterly. “It’s not worth the cost I’d have to pay to make use of it, so the only thing I can do is hand it off to you so you can do…whatever it is you do with these things. I’m ready to go home and get back to my life.”

Ritsuka handed the Grail over to Mash, who accepted it and carefully stashed it in the compartment inside her shield. A moment later, a beep sounded over the communicator.

“H…Holy Grail retrieved,” said Romani. “The era should…begin to correct itself, now.”

“Here.” Tohsaka fussed with the band on his wrist for a second, and once he had it off, he shoved this over to Ritsuka, too. “That’s also property of Chaldea, isn’t it? I won’t have any use for it now.”

“Ah, thank you?” Ritsuka said uncertainly.

Jekyll’s head jerked, and he set about removing his own borrowed communicator. “Mine, as well. Although it seems we had not much use of it in the end, there seems little point in attempting to keep it for myself. It will merely be corrected like all else in this…Singularity, yes?”

“Yes,” said Marie as Ritsuka accepted Jekyll’s communicator. “You wouldn’t be able to keep it no matter what. That just leaves one more.”

Ritsuka’s head turned to Flamel, and so did mine, Rika’s, and Mash’s, and he hesitated. “Yes,” he said, “about that. I…realize that my earlier deception will have done me no favors in regards to your esteem, but I would hope that I might impose upon you… That is, if it is even possible, and I confess that I haven’t the knowledge to say one way or the other —”

“Master?”

Flamel broke off with a gasp. “Renée?”

She stirred in his arms, eyes fluttering open, and as she looked up and realized where she was, she stiffened, fingers frozen halfway through the motion of clutching at his cloak.

“My…apologies,” she said immediately. “I…did not mean to inconvenience you, Master, but I could not… Please, allow me to stand. I don’t mean to be such a burden.”

“You silly girl,” said Flamel, but he was smiling as he looked down on her. “You are not a burden to me, never a burden. And even if you ever had been, it is one I knowingly took upon myself. There is nothing for you to apologize for.”

“I allowed myself to be kidnapped,” Renée said as though she had committed murder.

“You followed my order,” Flamel corrected her. “You could not have known that Puss in Boots was waiting for you to do just that, and he could very well have… No, no, my dear, the important thing is that you survived. None of what happened can be blamed on you, and I won’t hear a word otherwise, do you understand?”

Renée looked down, refusing to meet his eyes. “Yes.”

“Are you certain you’re well enough to stand?” Flamel asked.

Renée nodded. “I believe so, yes.”

Carefully and gently, Flamel set her down, first her legs, and as she found her footing, he kept his other arm around her shoulders to hold her steady. Only once she was standing surely and confidently did he let her go, hovering and ready to catch her if she showed a single moment of weakness.

She turned to the rest of us and bowed her head, dipping into a curtsy. It looked a little strange in the white dress Zolgen had stuck her in, at least compared to the maid uniform she’d worn before.

“Forgive me,” she said. “I caused all of you an inconvenience.”

“It’s not your fault,” Ritsuka told her.

“We would’ve had to fight those guys anyway,” Rika added. “And…actually, the only reason we managed to get to them is because they kidnapped you, so… It feels kinda weird to say it, but it was kinda a good thing we had to come rescue you?”

“Ironic,” said Emiya. “The only reason we managed to get the Grail at all was because they got greedy and decided to kidnap you.”

Renée stilled again, and the tiniest of furrows marred her brow. “The Grail has been retrieved.”

“Yes,” I said. “Tohsaka grabbed it for us while the rest of us were rushing to chase an enemy that was summoned at the last second. Mash has it now, and the Singularity is being corrected.”

Tohsaka glanced at me askance — and so did several other people — but didn’t contradict me or admit that he’d originally taken it for selfish reasons. Frankly, the only part that really mattered to me in the end was that he had given it up, so I didn’t feel the need to rehash that part now.

“I see,” said Renée, and she gave nothing of her thoughts away. I thought I sensed a thread of uncertainty from her anyway. “This will be goodbye, then.”

“Uhn,” said Fran.

“That,” Flamel interjected, “is what I was meaning to discuss a moment ago. Director, it is possible, is it not, for Servants contracted with your Masters to return with you to your era? That is, Jackie and… Forgive me, Sir Mordred, I don’t mean to assume…”

Mordred made a sound in her throat. “Ain’t like I got anything better to do. ‘Sides, if I stick around this place, I’m just gonna go poof like everything else, ain’t I? You guys want me, I guess I could stay with ya.”

“Who says we’d want you?” asked Jeanne Alter.

“Wasn’t asking you!” Mordred shot back, but it lacked any heat.

“Sure,” said Ritsuka.

“I think Super Action Mom’s gonna adopt another kid,” Rika agreed.

“She can sure fucking try!” Mordred said with a savage grin.

The twins looked to me, and it said something about their trust in me that they were still looking my way like that even after everything Solomon had said to try and break it. The twinge of guilt that squirmed in my belly was soundly ignored.

“Do you think you can handle being a Servant of Chaldea?” I asked Mordred. “Taking orders from us in battle, waiting sometimes months between deployments, and not being able to join every one of them?”

“What, you think my life was just one adventure after another all the time?” Mordred replied. “Yeah, I can handle all of that. Long as you don’t fuck me over, I can do all of that just fine.”

Into my communicator, I said, “Romani.”

“Adjusting Rayshift parameters,” he said, ahead of me. “I’m accounting for…Jackie and for Sir Mordred.”

“Yes,” said Flamel, “about that. Director Animusphere, would it be possible for you to take one more with you?”

Renée’s head spun towards him. “Master?”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“Residents of a Singularity belonging to proper history can’t be retrieved from a Singularity,” Marie explained, “not just as a matter of mechanics, but as a matter of principle. Our job is to restore history to its proper course, not alter it by…kidnapping our favorite historical figures.”

For a second, I had a wild image pop into my head of a tied-up George Washington slung over Mash’s shoulder as a mob of colonials chased after her. I didn’t have any idea why I thought of that, but the image was so ridiculous that it managed to brighten my mood just a little.

“Ah,” said Flamel, “but if, like a Servant, the person in question does not belong in the era being corrected or even in any era of proper history? If, more to the point, the person in question was born in that Singularity as a result of the actions of a person who does not themselves belong in that era and would not otherwise have been born without that intervention —”

“Then yes,” Marie answered. “Chaldea could accept that person as a…temporal refugee, of sorts.”

“Abraham,” Jekyll began.

“Forgive me, Doctor, for not attempting to include you in this,” Flamel told him. “As it seems, however, both you and Miss Fran happen to belong in the category of people who belong to proper history — if not, as the case may be, necessarily this era in particular. I imagine Mister Tohsaka has likewise banished any thoughts of being spirited away to the future so that he might see what becomes of it.”

“And abandon my daughter? I’m more responsible than that,” said Tohsaka.

Marie huffed, but if she had any comment about his statement, she held her tongue. I was grateful — the ensuing argument wouldn’t have been productive or useful at all.

“You need not apologize, Abraham,” said Jekyll reasonably. “I have no illusions about my place amongst these fine folk and their institute dedicated to preserving the proper course of events — or lack thereof, in point of fact. Only, I worry that there is one person whose thoughts you might not have taken into account before deciding upon this course of action.”

Flamel heaved a sigh. “You’re right.” He turned to Renée. “Renée? I would like for you to go back to Chaldea with these people.”

Her lips pursed just a little as her brow drew just the tiniest bit down. “Have I…displeased you in some way, Master? I…know you said that it was not my fault, but I still…”

She hesitated, glancing over at us. Ah. She didn’t know that we knew about the Stone hidden inside of her.

“The only mistake was mine,” Flamel told her gently. “I believed myself too clever — that no one would suspect me of hiding my Philosopher’s Stone inside of you, indeed, that no one would have any reason to suspect such a thing so long as they did not know my true name. As Makiri Zolgen and his conspirators proved, however, I was very much a fool to think that it could last under scrutiny, let alone that none might ever suss it out. The ruse was doomed the instant Paracelsus declared my name for all to hear.”

Renée’s fingers curled in the fabric of her dress, and her eyes dropped to look at some spot somewhere in the middle of his chest. “Then why…”

Flamel offered her a kind smile and reached out to set both of his hands upon her shoulders. He leaned in as though sharing a secret with her. “Because I want a better future for my one and only daughter than to let her simply vanish into the mist with the rest of this twisted London.”

Renée’s head jerked up, and the most intense expression I had ever seen on her face pulled her mouth open and her eyes wide. “M-Master?”

“I confess, I haven’t much experience with fatherhood,” Flamel admitted. “Dear Perenelle’s Magic Crest was cursed, you see, and by the time we married, she had long since given up on the idea of children. Even so, I think I can state with confidence that any father worthy of being called one would wish his child to live a long, happy, prosperous life, and you cannot do that if you disappear with everything else that is removed inside this Singularity. My only regret is that I won’t be able to witness it for myself.”

“You,” she began, “don’t intend…to come along?”

“No,” said Flamel. “Doctor Jekyll is my Master, and although he might not be the most competent of mages, I intend to honor my contract with him and stay until he has been safely returned to his proper place in history. Too…” He sighed. “The Philosopher’s Stone is a great temptation. So long as the people of Chaldea keep its existence within you secret…”

He lanced a meaningful look at each of us Masters.

“We will,” Ritsuka promised.

I kept silent. That wasn’t a promise I could make. Unless Da Vinci or Marie ordered all mentions of it erased from the records of this Singularity, then the Association would find out, it was just a matter of time.

If Flamel realized any of that, he gave no indication. “…then the only method by which I might be forced to make one is the leveraging of your life against me. Better to avoid that situation entirely.”

“Master…” Renée said softly.

“I have given you everything I could to prepare you to live a life of your own,” he told her. “What you do with it once you are free to live it, I have no right to say. Only that you are my legacy, Renée. The greatest work I ever completed. I think, if she had ever been blessed with the chance to meet you herself, to love you as I have come to, then Perenelle would agree with me.”

Renée’s head dropped again, and her fingers, still curled in her dress, trembled. Off to the side, Rika sniffled and wiped at her eyes.

“If,” Renée said hesitantly, “if that is what you want, then…”

“It is,” Flamel said. “The only thing I might wish for upon the Holy Grail.”

“Goddamn,” Mordred muttered, sounding jealous.

“Uhn,” Fran agreed, forlorn.

I had to admit, I was a little jealous, too. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that my dad and I had started drifting apart long before I got my powers, but my career as a cape — first as a villain, then as a Ward — hadn’t done us any favors, and much like with Brian, I hadn’t had the courage to check if he’d made it out of Brockton during Gold Morning. I still didn’t know if he had survived or if I’d been orphaned entirely two years ago.

If I had gotten the chance to hear him say something like that so earnestly and tenderly… It wouldn’t have magically fixed things, but it would have been a strong start.

“I…don’t mean to interrupt,” said Romani, “but we’re running low on time, here. Am I including Renée in the Rayshift or not?”

“Yes,” Renée said, “please, Doctor Romani.”

“Right,” Romani replied, “I’ll… Director? A-are we…?”

Marie was quiet for a moment, but then, “Do it.”

Flamel heaved out a quiet sigh and stepped backwards with a sad smile. His fingers lingered, trailing down her arms, and Renée lifted them, letting him catch her hands with his.

“I cannot promise you their success,” he told her, near a whisper, “nor that every moment you spend in the world from which they come will be wondrous and filled with happiness. Life, as I’m sure you have learned by now, is not nearly so simple nor so easy. But I want you to promise me that you will not wallow. Think of me, remember me fondly, but do not allow my memory to hold you back. Your future is yours now, Renée. The only thing I can ask of you is to seize it and discover the woman you want to become. Whoever she is, I’m sure I will be just as proud of her as I am of you now.”

“Ah, geez,” Rika whispered, wiping her eyes on the back of her sleeve. “Right in the feels!”

Renée’s lips pressed together tightly, bottom one wobbling just the slightest. She didn’t cry, but there was the slightest tremor in her voice when she said, “I will.”

When he let go of her hands and stepped further back, she turned slowly towards us, pausing for a short moment, and then took fistfuls of her dress and curtsied again, dipping her head.

“Please take good care of me.”

“Of course,” said Ritsuka immediately.

“It might not be much,” Mash began, “but I’m sure everyone at Chaldea will give you a warm welcome, Renée!”

“H-hold on,” Emiya murmured to himself, “does this mean…I’m going to have to keep sharing the kitchen?”

Rika gasped. “It does!” she answered, delighted. “Oh, man! My tastebuds are gonna be spoiled rotten by the end of this, and I’m gonna love every second of it!”

Emiya sighed heavily, and Arash chuckled at his predicament, but his heart wasn’t entirely in it. I think the knowledge of what Solomon had said still sat with him, the way it did me. The weight of it was like a thick blanket smothering the back of my mind, always there, lingering and oppressive.

There was going to be a reckoning after this. How soon, I wasn’t sure, but there wouldn’t be any escape from it. Hopefully, I could get to Marie first and finally ask how much of her original prohibition regarding my past still applied and how much we were going to have to share with everyone else. I wasn’t sure I was going to like the answer, whatever it turned out being.

“Nagato Tohsaka,” Marie said, interrupting whatever else might have been said, “regarding your contract with Chaldea.”

Tohsaka sighed. “Don’t tell me. You want to renegotiate it? Now, when I don’t have any other choice?”

“Don’t insult me!” Marie bit out, temper short. There was no way she hadn’t realized the same things I had, and it couldn’t have done any favors for her patience. “I’m just telling you, we’ve entered the details into our records. Your head of house, whoever that happens to be in this era, will be compensated for your assistance in accordance with both the standard base pay along with the hazard modifier for Singularity deployment.”

“Hazard modifier?” Tohsaka asked.

“Extra pay for dangerous work,” I answered for her. “You get more money for doing something that has a high risk of injury or death. How much more depends on the job and the employer, but Chaldea is generous.”

“You’re working to repair proper history, after all,” Marie added. “It’s only natural that you be compensated properly. Or, in this case, your heir.”

“I see.” Tohsaka let out a long breath. “Well. I suppose that’s something I can take comfort in before I get sent back to where I’m supposed to be.”

Idly, I did have to wonder exactly how much money his family was going to get. Presumably, with the hazard pay included, it wouldn’t be pennies, but it definitely wouldn’t be anything like what the twins and I could reasonably expect.

“Miss Director,” said Nursery Rhyme, who had been quiet all this while, “can we go with Papa?”

“No,” Marie said immediately. “Even if we wanted to arrange for something like that, it’s not possible. Rayshifting can only function because Singularities are fundamentally unobserved areas of spacetime. Actual time travel is beyond anything we could accomplish without Lord Zelretch.”

“And he’s not here,” Tohsaka concluded. “Tch. Although he probably did arrange for me to be here for this, didn’t he?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“So Papa is going to leave me behind?” asked Nursery Rhyme.

Tohsaka sighed again and turned to face her fully, kneeling down to her eye level. “I can’t take you with me, Alice.”

“But you could stay here,” she insisted. “If you had the Grail, then we could stay here together, forever and ever. We can take it back, Papa. There are so many friends who could help us.”

Several people stiffened, including Mordred and Emiya, whose hands slowly drifted out, ready to summon his favored blades. No one moved to attack just yet, but they were ready for it if the fight broke out again.

“I can’t,” Tohsaka told her. “As wonderful as you’ve been the last few days, there’s another little girl waiting for me to come home. You’re a Servant, Alice, you’ll be fine without me. Someone else will summon you someday and you’ll have loads of fun with them, I’m sure. You can play all your favorite games together and throw tea parties every day. But that little girl waiting for me back home won’t ever have another papa without me. I can’t leave her behind to stay here with you.”

Jackie tugged on my hand and whispered, “Could we take Alice back with us, Mommy?”

It wasn’t impossible, I had to acknowledge. If it was possible to Rayshift her back with us, then the contract with Tohsaka would be broken after we left this Singularity and there was nothing stopping us from making a new contract with her. She could become a Servant of Chaldea, and I had to admit, with the Jabberwocky and Bandersnatch and all of the other things she had access to, she’d be a fairly strong one, especially for a Caster.

I wouldn’t say that I didn’t have any reservations. I still remembered the trap she’d laid for us back when we first met, and the lingering resentment and fear of how easily she’d almost killed all three of us Masters probably wasn’t going to disappear anytime soon. But if I could recruit the girl who was responsible for so much of the torment I’d suffered during high school to fight the end of the world, if I could even entertain the idea of letting Bonesaw tinker with my brain, then I think I could learn to let go of those feelings and work with Nursery Rhyme, too.

“Tohsaka,” I said, “if she wants to, Alice can come back to Chaldea with us. Jackie would love the company.”

“We would!” Jackie agreed easily.

“H-hold on!” Marie sputtered.

“Is there anything that would stop that from working, Director?” I asked before she could gather steam.

Grudgingly, Marie had to admit, “No. There’s nothing that…says it’s impossible to bring her back. B-but still!”

“It’s okay,” Nursery Rhyme said. “Miss Director, Miss Taylor, you don’t need to worry about making special arrangements for me.” She turned to Jackie and offered her an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, Jackie. It would be fun to go with you and play lots of games and have a tea party every day, it really would! But…”

She turned back to Tohsaka.

“…just like Mister Flamel said, Papa is my Master. I want to stay here with him until the very end. If that’s okay, Papa?”

Tohsaka let out a long, slow breath through his nostrils, closing his eyes briefly, and he favored her with a small smile. “Yeah. I guess I can give you at least that much, can’t I? I’d be a very poor papa if I didn’t.”

“Oh,” said Jackie, “that’s too bad. We were looking forward to playing with Alice.”

I squeezed her hand. “You still might get the chance.” I gave Nursery Rhyme a pointed look, although she couldn’t really see it through my mask. “After all, there’s no reason we couldn’t summon her to Chaldea ourselves later on.”

“Maybe!” Nursery Rhyme agreed brightly. “And when that happens, we’ll be best friends forever, Jackie! But for now…I guess this is going to be goodbye.”

“Yes,” Romani said, “and we’re running very short on time, so if everyone who’s coming back is accounted for? Right?” He didn’t wait longer than a second or two for an answer. “Then we have to do the Rayshift now. The Masters, Mash, Emiya, Arash, Sir Mordred, Jackie, Miss Renée, Jeanne Alter, if you have any final words to say, now’s your last chance.”

“Ah,” said Flamel, “thank you for reminding me, Doctor Romani, this will just take a moment.”

He strode swiftly over to me and dropped down on one knee, holding his hands out to Jackie. “If you would give me your hand for a moment, dear girl, I’ll see about that arm of yours.”

Jackie looked up at me for guidance, and I gave her an encouraging nod, so she slipped her hand out of mine and held it out tentatively for Flamel. Flamel took it gently in his own, his hands so much larger than hers and so much older, and then he whispered an incantation. The stump of Jackie’s other arm began to glow with red light, much the same as all of Flamel’s other spells, and then the flesh began to fill back in rapidly. It built up like Lego blocks, stacking one on top of the other so quickly that I didn’t have time to even be grossed out by the flashes of bone, muscle, and sinew as they rebuilt themselves.

A second or two later, and her arm was back, good as new. Jackie gasped and lifted it, marveling at it as though it was some new and interesting thing that she had never seen before.

“Our arm’s back!” she breathed excitedly. I gave her a nudge, and when she looked up at me, I nodded towards Flamel. It took her an extra second, but then she turned to him and said, “Thank you, Mister Flamel!”

He stepped back, smiling kindly. “Think nothing of it, think nothing of it at all. It was the least I could do as thanks for finding Renée for me earlier.”

“That it, then?” Jeanne Alter asked; she’d been surprisingly considerate, so far. “We’re done with all the mushy stuff, it’s time to go home?”

And I would have to face the inevitable deluge of questions everyone would no doubt have about Solomon and what he’d said about me, to me, along with all of the things those implied. I still wasn’t sure I had an answer to any of it, let alone one that I was comfortable giving to the rest of the team and our paltry collection of technicians.

“Yes.”

I guess I just had to hope that Marie would have a better idea of what to do about all of this than I did. At the very least, she might be able to convince everyone to put the issue off long enough for the two of us to sit down and plan out what all could be said and what all we had actual answers to. I think that was the most I could have hoped for, under the circumstances.

“Okay,” said Romani, “I’m locking down the parameters now. Everyone who’s coming back is accounted for and registered in the system.”

Mordred turned to Fran. “Guess this is it, huh. Sorry we’re leaving out of the blue like this. Ain’t really time for me to think of a proper goodbye or nothing, you know?”

“Uhn,” Fran said with a nod. “Uh-uhn, ah-uh-uhn. Uh-uhn!”

“Yeah, doesn’t really feel all that satisfying either, does it?” Mordred agreed with a grim smile. “At the end of the day, we got that M bastard, but even if he’s the guy who did all of that to Babbage and Paracelsus, he was just a pawn, too, wasn’t he? We couldn’t even touch the head honcho.”

“Bastard didn’t even fight fair,” Jeanne Alter grumbled.

“We’ll be seeing him again,” Emiya said, and it came out like a warning, “one way or the other. At the end of all of this, if nothing else.”

And hopefully, we’d have a plan of action to take the fight to him next time. Whatever it was that let him shrug off two Noble Phantasms had a weakness, it had to, we just had to figure it out first.

Mordred nodded. “Yeah!” She grinned and thumped her free hand against her chest to the clang of her armor. “And when that time comes, I’ll shove my sword up his ass and make him regret ever doing that to Babbage! Alright, Fran?”

“Uhn!” Fran nodded firmly.

“Rayshifting in five…”

“Bye, everyone!” Nursery Rhyme waved. Next to her, Tohsaka gave us a respectful, solemn nod.

“Four…”

“Farewell, my friends,” said Jekyll, offering us a smile. “May fortune smile upon you until the end of your journey.”

“Three…”

“Goodbye, Renée,” Flamel told her softly, “and never forget that I love you.”

“Two…”

“Father!” Renée cried in a sudden burst of emotion. I wasn’t the only one surprised when she threw herself into his arms, wrapping her own around him in a tight hug. Even Flamel himself looked startled.

“One!”

“Thank you! Thank you for everything!”

And then the world opened up beneath my feet, and the misty remains of that London park vanished into nothingness.