Chapter CLXVIII: Spirit Refinement
January melted into February without any word at all about what we would be facing in the next Singularity, or even when and where exactly it would be taking place. No updates came our way to let us know the date of our deployment so that we could make our preparations or when we might expect a briefing on whatever information might have been gleaned about the mysterious American Singularity.
For Ritsuka, Rika, Mash, and even most of the Servants, there wasn’t much immediate concern. They had some worries, yes, but between the simulator finally being able to account for Servants, movie nights that let them all experience modern entertainment, weekly Servant meal days where the Servants got to enjoy first rate cuisine cooked by Emiya and Renée, and also weekly trips into Rome to enjoy the baths in Nero’s palace, everyone had some way of blowing off steam that helped them deal with the nerves and the boredom.
I seemed to be the only one who struggled to keep it out of my mind. No matter how many scrimmage matches we had in the simulator to practice our synergy and hone our minds to the task of managing our Servants, no matter how often we relaxed in the baths — whether in Rome itself or in the simulator’s ridiculously accurate recreation — and no matter how great the food that was served to us every day, I couldn’t shake the sense of foreboding.
Damn him, but Solomon’s words refused to leave me be. What did he mean when he said I could finally return home? Was he just talking about going back to America, or was he specifically referencing Earth Bet? What about making peace with my demons? Was I going to meet some people from my past — old friends, old foes — or had he set things up so that I was going to encounter a Servant who could do to me what he’d attempted to do with Ritsuka after Forneus was killed in Okeanos?
Those questions intruded on nearly every moment in Chaldea, whether I was chatting with Sylvia in the simulator, giving Mash swimming lessons that she was increasingly outgrowing, or reading to Jackie. The part that made it all more maddening was that the only way to answer those questions was to know what we were going to be dealing with in the next Singularity, and without any new information, all I could do was stew in them and worry.
There was no way the others wouldn’t notice, but I brushed off their concerns as gently as I could. I couldn’t explain to them the depths of my problems, and while Da Vinci, Marie, and Romani now all knew about as much about my past as they reasonably could, none of them could really help, and whenever I asked for news, Da Vinci could only grimace, shake her head, and tell me that there wasn’t any.
I did my best to distract myself. I redoubled my rune training with Aífe, I pushed that extra little bit during my morning workout, I tried to keep my focus on Jackie and giving her the childhood she hadn’t been given while she was alive, but all that really managed to do for me was make sure I was tired enough at the end of each day to fall asleep quickly.
It got bad enough that Marie dragged me into her office one morning in early February and told me, in her stern, ‘I am the Director and you will listen to me’ voice, “Stop it.”
Of course, I didn’t quite realize what she was talking about, not at first. “Stop what?”
“You’re catastrophizing,” she said, the hypocrite that she was. “Stop it. All you’re doing is driving yourself up the wall, and you’re no good to anyone if you go mad wondering what that bastard meant when he said all of those things to you.”
“I think it’s a legitimate concern. Don’t you?” I countered. “If he was telling the truth, if we really are going back to Bet for the next Singularity, if I have to deal with everything I left behind after Gold Morning —”
“If,” she cut across me snappishly. “If, if, if! That’s the problem, we don’t know what the King of Mages meant by any of it. The only thing we know for sure about the next Singularity is that it’s taking place in America.”
“And he called me out specifically!” I argued back, voice rising. “By name! That’s twice, now, after Flauros himself said that I was one of the targets he was hoping to get rid of in the Sabotage — you didn’t forget that, did you?”
Because I certainly hadn’t. It was one thing when I was just a Master on Team A, as valid a target as Wodime or any of the others by virtue of my position, but it was another thing entirely when the enemy outright said that he’d gone out of his way to single me out in particular. After London, after Solomon all but did the same, I wasn’t going to wait for the third time to start assuming enemy action.
“Of course I didn’t!” she rebuked sharply. “Just like I haven’t forgotten that he…he targeted me specifically, too! But if you kill yourself worrying over whether or not the next Singularity is tailored for the sole purpose of eliminating you where all of their other efforts failed, then you’ll have done their job for them, and we will be down our best Master!”
“Well, what else could he have meant?” I demanded of her, even though I knew she didn’t have any real response to it. “Huh? Why tell me I was going home and settling my demons? Why focus on me at all, to the point where he called me out for getting soft?”
“I don’t know!” she barked back at me. “But what I do know is that it won’t do you any good to spend every day for the foreseeable future driving yourself insane with the same questions! You should know better than anyone else — you work with what you have and count your blessings when you get more! If you can’t get your head on straight and remember that, then maybe you really should sit the next deployment out!”
The shock of it stole the breath from my lungs and the words from my lips. A ringing silence followed, broken only by the huff of the two of us catching our breath, and I had to take a step back, examine her, from the angry flush of her cheeks to the glare she was boring into my head and the heave of her chest as she gulped down air, and realize that she’d meant every word.
“You’re serious.”
For a second, she looked like she’d surprised even herself, and then she scowled and said, “I am. Your decision to contract with Jack the Ripper was one thing — even if it was an entirely emotional decision, it was still tactically and strategically sound — but you’re no good to anyone if you can’t focus on what’s in front of you.”
That’s the problem, I wanted to say, I am focusing on what’s in front of me. Except she had a point. Maybe not the one she’d tried to make, but the larger, more important one: until we knew more about the next Singularity, worrying about its exact shape was just a waste of time and energy.
The trouble was, just saying so and admitting it didn’t change anything. I’d already known I was worrying too much and that there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Having Marie bring it up when I was already well aware wouldn’t magically make it so that I could ignore it all and it wouldn’t miraculously banish the questions from my mind. Focusing on the here and now, on what was in front of me, and on what I could change with what we knew hadn’t helped.
“You don’t think I’ve been trying?” I finally asked her quietly. “I’ve been doing everything I can to get it out of my head — and the only thing that accomplished was to bring us here, didn’t it?”
Her brow drew down, furrowed, and her lips thinned into a line. She crossed her arms over her chest. “What is it that you’re really afraid of, then?”
It was blunt, but I preferred blunt, and right then, I think I needed it, because… What was I really afraid of facing in Bet, if that was where the next Singularity took place? What could I have to deal with that really worried me, more than anything else, more than just…being back in a place that had made me into a person that I wasn’t exactly proud of anymore?
I…wasn’t sure I really knew. God, there were so many answers. So maybe it was about all of the things I might have to face that changed depending on the when of the Singularity, just as much so about the where. And if I thought about it like that, what was my worst case scenario? What would be the biggest problem for me to face if we wound up back on Bet?
My immediate thought was having to go back to the time when I was at my darkest, when I was at my most ruthless, when I did things that, in hindsight, I really did wish I’d done differently. Dinah had once told me that if I’d stayed in Brockton, stayed an Undersider, I would have gotten meaner, darker, crueler, but I wasn’t exactly ashamed of that person. I couldn’t say I liked her, Skitter the warlord, not exactly, because she was who she needed to be at that place and that time to do the things that needed doing and face the problems that needed facing.
Weaver, then? No, of course not. Weaver was a lot of things, but she wasn’t… There wasn’t anything really offensive about her. What I regretted about her, about that time of my life — if ‘regret’ was even the right word — was how focused I’d been on the end of the world and how little room I’d left for anything else in my life. It wasn’t something I had a problem owning up to or admitting, and I’d like to think I learned from that part of me.
So what about Taylor? Boring, ordinary Taylor, suffering at the hands of a trio of petty kids with their petty cruelties. It was laughable — what was there to be afraid of? Sophia? I’d come to terms with her pettiness, her smallness, long before I ever sat down in front of her during Gold Morning. Emma? I mourned the girl who was once my best friend, but the bitch who had taken her place was someone whose death I barely noted, that was how little it had all mattered to me at the end. Madison? I honestly couldn’t say I knew or cared what had become of her after I joined the Wards. I couldn’t muster more than a mild curiosity about whether or not she had even survived the end of the world.
And the rest of their little high school troup was so forgettable that I didn’t even remember all of their names. Julie? Julia? I think there was someone like that hanging onto their coattails. Everyone else was just faceless blobs, and maybe that wasn’t fair and maybe that wasn’t right, and maybe I should have been more scared of what that might mean for how much I might have lost as Khepri, but they were just…hangers-on. Interchangeable cogs in the Trio’s sophomoric machinery. Petty and forgettable.
I guess, then, that it wasn’t really my past that I was scared of facing if we had to go to Earth Bet. No, not at all. The problem was… The problem was…
“What happened,” I began, almost a whisper, “after the end?”
It took Marie only a second to make the connection. “After Gold Morning.”
I gave her a jerky nod. “After the world was saved and Scion was defeated and Contessa brought me here… What happened? Who made it out of all of that? Who died? Did… Was everything okay after that, or did something else happen, something that I could have been there to help with, or something that I inadvertently caused by doing things the way I did, and…everyone that was left…”
I’d fought against the end for a lot of reasons. Some of them were completely selfish, like a refusal to just lay down and accept the end, or bullheaded, like a refusal to be one of those petty bastards who sat on the sidelines and watched people get hurt, or prideful, or any number of less than noble motivations, and some of them had been as simple as having friends, family, and people I cared for whose deaths I couldn’t accept, couldn’t just sit back and watch.
“What I’m scared of,” I eventually decided upon, “is that it all meant nothing. That I did all of that, gave up so much, sacrificed so many things and left behind so many people, and all I managed to do was delay the inevitable.”
It had been more than two-and-a-half years now. If they all managed to pick themselves back up, sort out all their major problems, and survive for that long, then they were probably okay for the long term. But what if they hadn’t? What if we went back to Earth Bet to find nothing but a wasteland and a bunch of mass graves to mark where all of my family and friends had succumbed to the hardships of trying to eke out a life in the aftermath of the apocalypse?
What if I’d managed to save every other Earth out there, except for my own?
And that thought, more than anything, bothered me. Alec was gone, killed by Behemoth before the final showdown even kicked off. Brian was…probably gone, and I’d come to terms with that. Learned to live with it, even if some part of me clung to a tiny shred of hope. But my dad? Did he make it out? I was pretty sure Lisa and the rest of the Undersiders had survived Scion. Were they still okay? Even if I had to accept never seeing them again, I could deal with that knowing that they were safe, as safe as they could be.
What if they weren’t?
“…I’m not sure it would do any good to try looking at Earth Bet with LAPLACE,” Marie said at length. “In the first place, it might not be the correct Earth to look at. There were portals left behind that people had access to, right? Things were bad enough that the survivors might have migrated to another Earth, and there’s no way we can spare the power necessary to go searching. For that matter, if all of human history has been incinerated as part of…the King of Mages’ plan, then…”
Then there might not be anything to find in the first place. There wouldn’t be anything to observe except whatever the incinerated Earth looked like. Would it even be possible to look back over the last two years and see what had happened before the Incineration, but after Gold Morning, or would it just be a blank void painted over retroactively?
Fucking…time travel nonsense.
“I don’t have any better ideas,” I admitted.
She heaved out a sigh, expression miserable. “There isn’t really anything we can do. Unless…” She slanted a guarded, uncertain look my way and hesitated for a brief moment. “Unless you wanted to sit out the next Singularity.”
It said something about the whole mess that the situation was that the thought of it tempted me, if only for a split second. But no. That wouldn’t solve anything. That would just be me running away from things like a scared little girl hiding from the monster under her bed.
“The twins have come a long way in the last six months,” I said by way of answering, “but no matter how far they’ve come, they’re not prepared for dealing with Earth Bet. Not even if we briefed them on everything to expect,” I added, and Marie’s lips drew into a tight line. “Especially not if it’s Bet after Gold Morning. Teacher would have a trap laid out for them within a week.”
Fuck, that just occurred to me. What if Teacher was the one with the Grail? Bad enough having to deal with his normal bullshit, what about if he had Servants around to help? I didn’t even want to imagine what kind of shitshow that would be.
With my luck, he would have half a dozen Casters and put them all to work fortifying whatever hole he squirreled away in. There might not be any other option than to raze it all to the ground and pick through the pieces after it was over, and that felt like its own kind of failure.
“If you’re sure,” she said.
“I am.”
From the beginning, there hadn’t been any other choice. As they were now, I think the twins of today could have handled Fuyuki, Orléans, and probably Septem without me. They’d come a long way since those first days fumbling around in the forests of France. But Earth Bet? A Singularity where all of the worst parts of my home were thrown at them with Servants in the mix? No. There were just too many things that could blindside them and get them killed.
Marie didn’t try to change my mind. She didn’t, as Da Vinci would have, leave the offer open and tell me I could take it at any time. She knew me too well for that.
“Then there’s nothing else we can do, is there?” she said grimly. She shook her head. “Still. I’m telling you — no, as your Director, I’m ordering you, Taylor! Stop worrying about it and focus on the things you can change now! If our worst fears are eventually confirmed, then we can deal with them then!”
It wasn’t that simple, it couldn’t be that simple, and Marie knew it, too. Even so…
My lips quirked up into a small smile. “Of course, Director.”
Naturally, it was harder to put into practice than that. I did my best over the next couple of days to not worry about the future, to not think about what might be waiting for us in the next Singularity, and to some extent, talking about it with Marie seemed to have helped. The questions didn’t disappear and the worries didn’t vanish, but it was easier to set them aside and continue on with life in Chaldea while we waited.
“Did the Director’s pep talk help?” Arash asked me one morning.
“Some,” was the only answer I could give him, because I wasn’t at all surprised he knew about it. “But it was never going to be that simple to fix it all.”
He hummed an acknowledgement. “For what it’s worth, I hope you wind up being worried over nothing.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
I had some faint hope that just knowing one way or the other would help me to put everything in order. That it was the uncertainty, the not knowing for sure that we would be going to Earth Bet, that made it so unbearable, and that once I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I really was going to have to go back and face all of the things I’d left behind, I’d be able to look it straight on and start making plans.
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But some part of me dreaded what that would mean, too. We’d done everything we could to protect my past and keep it out of the records, to keep anyone from having to lie or hold the secret when this was all over, and just telling them the cliff notes version of Scion already felt like stretching that. Marie had even dropped the slyest of hints about the fact it all happened on an alternate Earth without ever actually saying so, giving us all the ability to pretend no one knew for sure.
If the next Singularity really was Earth Bet, however, then there wouldn’t be any avoiding it. So much would have to come out, just so that the twins and Mash could be fully briefed on what to expect on the ground. The only things that might remain, the only shield we would all have against the Association’s questions, would be the full knowledge of what Scion was and how passengers worked, as much as Marie and I actually understood them. Those last few secrets might make all the difference.
And Solomon might just decide to fuck us all over at the end and spill all of it to everyone in earshot, just because. Provided, of course, that the next Singularity didn’t do it sooner, but since he was behind it in the first place, I guess that was basically the same problem, wasn’t it?
Until we knew for sure one way or the other, though, I just…had to be okay. Copacetic. Hope for the best, but prepare for what may wind up being inevitable.
It was February the twelfth — a Friday, for whatever that meant anymore — when next I heard anything at all from Da Vinci. Our usual group had just finished eating lunch, and we were all lounging about while our food digested and making small talk.
“Ugh,” Rika complained. “That was super mean, Senpai! Why did you make us face off against Salter again? I was fine forgetting how close we all came to getting pasted!”
Well, maybe Rika didn’t consider it small talk.
“It puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?” I answered her. “Shows you how far along you’ve come since we first faced her back in Fuyuki.”
And they had. They’d been clumsy and uncertain back then, but watching them tackle the challenges of the first Singularity with the benefit of more confidence and more experience had just highlighted how much they had improved over the past six or so months.
“It did seem a lot easier than I remembered it being,” said Ritsuka. He favored Mash with a smile. “Of course, Mash has gotten better since then, too.”
The tips of Mash’s ears turned a dark shade of pink, and she ducked her head. It did nothing to hide the pleased smile that tugged the corners of her mouth upwards.
“It’s only because Senpai has done such a good job as my Master,” she demurred. “And…because Sir Mordred helped, too. Without her, I might never have unlocked any more of the powers belonging to the Heroic Spirit inside of me.”
“Well, she definitely seemed happy enough to fight against King Arthur,” Ritsuka said.
She certainly had. I’d been tempted to deny the chance outright and make the twins fight King Arthur with just Mash and maybe Emiya, but in the interest of giving them a fair shot, I’d let them pick the one other Servant they could take with them. Mordred had all but demanded it be her, and the twins had been fine with it. I hadn’t seen a reason to say no.
“Still kinda wish you’d let us have Cú,” Rika muttered petulantly. “Even if it was just a fake, I owe him a bop on the noggin.”
“I don’t think the simulator can give him enough of a personality to take and follow orders,” I said, because it was one thing to make an enemy that acted based upon the data from when we actually faced her and another to program an interactive companion who could follow complex commands. “We’ll have to test that and see if it’s even possible to command Servants that don’t go in with us.”
Or I could just ask Da Vinci. She was the one who fixed and maintained the thing, so if anyone had any idea, it would have to be her, wouldn’t it?
“I guess it does kinda ruin it if he doesn’t actually react when I hit him,” Rika allowed reluctantly.
“What did Mister Cú do?” Jackie asked curiously.
Rika grimaced, and she shared a look with Ritsuka, and they both glanced my way, like they knew what I would do if they tried to explain everything to Jackie. Being entirely fair, I was decently sure Jackie would understand all of it, because she must have seen things just as bad while living on the streets.
Prostitutes and the homeless were even more susceptible to that kind of violence than the average woman walking down the street.
That was when our communicators all beeped, featuring a message from Da Vinci — ‘I have a surprise for you, so please come to the Summoning Chamber at your earliest convenience!’ — and from the looks on everyone else’s faces, they had all gotten the same message.
“The Summoning Chamber?” said Ritsuka, confused, and confirming that his message was the same as mine.
He looked to me for answers, I didn’t have any better idea what this could be about than he did. Rika, however, suddenly perked up, smiling broadly.
“Oh!” she said. “Oh, oh! Do you think we’re gonna summon Captain Pillows?”
“Captain Pillows?” Jackie asked.
Ritsuka opened his mouth, paused for a moment, and then said, “You know, we just might be?”
“And you can introduce Captain Drake to that song you sang at our beach vacation!” Mash added enthusiastically. Ritsuka, however, groaned.
Rika nodded. “Yeah!”
Beep was the sound of another message arriving to each of our communicators:
Please bring Jackie and Aífe with you as well!
Rika’s face fell. “Does that mean…no Captain Pillows?”
“Maybe…?” Ritsuka offered half-heartedly.
I reached down my bond to Aífe. We need you to meet us at the Summoning Chamber.
Got it, she replied, no questions asked. I’ll be there shortly.
To the twins, I said, “Well, there’s only one way for us to find out, isn’t there?”
So we left the cafeteria behind and made our way to the Summoning Chamber together, Jackie tagging along. She didn’t ask any questions either, just trusted that, whatever was going on, there wasn’t any need to worry.
With Da Vinci… Well, no, I couldn’t say that trust would be misplaced, could I? As eccentric as she acted, she was also just as reliable. She wasn’t really that much of a mad scientist.
Aífe, Marie, Da Vinci, Romani, and even Meuniere were already waiting for us when the doors to the Summoning Chamber whooshed open to admit us, and Da Vinci greeted us all with a smile.
“Good afternoon, everyone!” she said. “Sorry to interrupt whatever you might have been in the middle of, but something I’ve been working on quite a bit over the last couple months has finally borne fruit, and there seemed to be no better time than the present to share it with you all!”
“This isn’t another summoning?” asked Aífe.
“I’m afraid not,” said Da Vinci. “Although the last one went as smoothly as we could have hoped, we’re not looking to expand our roster more just yet. No, no, I’ve called all of you here — and you and Jackie in particular, Queen Aífe — for something else entirely.”
Marie and Romani, at least, seemed to have some idea what she was talking about. “Wait,” said Romani, “does that mean you actually finished it? I thought you were still expecting it to take another month or two!”
“I was — a month ago,” said Da Vinci, smiling and wagging a finger at him. “Since then, I’ve been hard at work, and I’m proud to say that I’m fairly sure I’ve managed to refine the process well enough for use. I wouldn’t have brought everyone here otherwise.”
“You’re serious,” said Marie, brow furrowed. “It’s actually ready?”
“All that is left now is to test it,” Da Vinci answered. “Hence why I asked both Jackie and Queen Aífe to come.”
“Well, I’m lost,” said Rika. “What are we talking about, exactly?”
So was I. What was it that Aífe and Jackie had in common that this thing, whatever it was, affected them both?
“A system for the editing of Saint Graphs,” said Da Vinci, still smiling.
Mash gasped. “That’s possible?”
Da Vinci’s smile tightened, and she made a strange gesture, lifting first one shoulder, then the other, and then back and forth like she was juggling an invisible ball. “To a degree,” she eventually admitted. “We won’t be doing anything drastic, such as altering classes or anything like that, but in theory, we should be able to make smaller changes. For example…”
She tapped her staff, and above the faceted gem in its top, a hologram appeared, depicting —
Jackie gasped. “That’s me!”
— Jackie, dressed in something far more modest than her current outfit. Large portions of her current clothing remained, including the tights she wore on her legs and the black vest, but more layers had been added to cover up her skin. A knee-length skirt with a slit up either side to keep her range of motion, a pair of biking shorts to cover her upper legs and that thong, and a dark gray shirt with sleeves that ended just below her elbow, tied off there with maroon-colored ribbons, which matched the silk cravat fastened with a brooch around her neck. Even the bandages had been replaced by sleek, black gloves, giving her an almost professional look.
“I went through a few designs before settling on one that didn’t fundamentally alter her existing clothing,” Da Vinci explained. “If need be, we can make further changes, but since this is also a proof of concept, I thought it better to limit things a little. What do you think?”
“It’s good,” was the only answer I could give her, because it really was. I looked down at Jackie. “What do you think, Jackie?”
Her response was a broad smile. “We like it!”
“Would you like to try it on?” asked Da Vinci.
Jackie looked to me almost like she was asking permission, and when I gave her a nod, she turned back to Da Vinci and gave a nod of her own. “Mm!”
Da Vinci gestured to the plinth that served as the base of the summoning system with a sweep of her arm. “Then if you would step this way, Jackie? I realize that you haven’t had the chance to experience the FATE System for yourself, but I assure you, all you need to do is stand on the platform.”
Jackie left my side and made her way over to the raised base where the other summonings had been performed, and she hesitated for a bare second, then hopped on up to stand in the center. Near me, Mash made an abortive motion to follow her, but stopped before she could go more than a single step.
“Miss Da Vinci?” she asked. “Don’t we need my shield?”
“Not for this, no,” said Da Vinci. “In fact, in the future, I should be able to perform this function remotely in my workshop, if and when we need to make use of it again. For now, however, Jackie is already here, and we’re not performing a summoning, exactly, so much as using the system’s infrastructure to edit the data contained in her Saint Graph. Meuniere, if you would?”
Over at the console, Meuniere nodded. “Right! The module is loaded, the design has been received, Saint Graph stability shows no signs of deviation or damage, and spiritron flow is optimal. Modifying Spiritron Dress in three…two…one…”
He pressed a button on the console, and Jackie let out a gasp as the platform beneath her feet lit up in the familiar design of the magic circle we’d seen at every summoning. Three rings of light rose up around her, hovering, and then spun about with a familiar grinding noise as they whirled. Jackie’s cloak and hair fluttered in the wind, and it was strong enough to lift my hair up just a little, too, like a stiff breeze on an autumn day.
And then, suddenly, the rings collapsed inwards, and Jackie’s body disappeared beneath their light. I squinted against the glare, but it was as though Jackie herself had become a being of light and energy, because all I could see was a vague silhouette in her shape and size.
Before my eyes, that silhouette morphed and changed, and the ragged cloak shrank away as though it was being absorbed into her body. The thin beams of her arms thickened and grew, undulating in the wind, and the flapping hem of the cloak hugged closer to her thighs — the skirt taking form, I realized, as the sleeves must have on her arms. A pair of tendrils grew from just under where her elbows were meant to be, wiggling and writhing.
A few seconds after it began, it ended, and the light faded into color and flesh. There, standing on the platform, was Jackie, only now she was dressed in the outfit from Da Vinci’s hologram, down to the ribbons that tied her sleeves to her forearms.
Jackie looked down at herself, twisting and turning to try and see her new clothes. The familiar shapes of her sheaths remained, and so did the vest and the tights, but now, nearly every inch of exposed skin had been covered. Not only was she more modest, but now she was stealthier, because I could only imagine how easily she would blend into the shadows now, especially at night.
“It worked,” Marie breathed, sounding stunned.
“Oh my god!” Rika gushed. “She looks even cuter in person! Like a little Victorian murder machine!”
“I don’t know if I’d put it that way,” Ritsuka hedged, “but yeah. Definitely better than what she was wearing before.”
Jackie turned to Da Vinci, and Da Vinci smiled and gave her a nod. “That’s it, Jackie. You can come back down from there now.”
And Jackie hopped down from the plinth and rushed over to me, throwing out her arms so that I could see the entire thing at once. “Mommy? Do you like it?”
I gave her a smile. “You look good, Jackie.” I nodded over in Da Vinci’s direction. “Now, what do you say?”
She gave Da Vinci a bright, megawatt smile. “Thank you, Miss Da Vinci!”
“It was no trouble, Jackie,” Da Vinci said smoothly, amused by the byplay. “No trouble at all.”
“So how do I fit in this?” Aífe asked, although she seemed like she had something of an idea. “This thing…it can’t give us access to other Noble Phantasms, can it?”
Da Vinci’s tight smile made a reappearance. “Unfortunately, not in its current iteration. It might not even be possible without needing to resummon you directly from the Throne, and I’m sure we would all prefer to keep that as an option of truly last resort, wouldn’t we?”
A sigh hissed out of Aífe’s nostrils. “Then why am I here?”
“Because,” said Da Vinci, “while I can’t add a Noble Phantasm into your Saint Graph, I can, shall we say, tweak your skills to give you access to a version of one of your Noble Phantasms, of a sort. Now that Jackie has proven the concept of editing a Saint Graph is possible, shall we see if it would be possible to reach into the Throne and use the data there to modify the appropriate skill?”
Wait, what?
“Th-that’s possible?” Mash asked incredulously.
Romani coughed into his fist. “Theoretically…”
“It’s actually you who proved it, Mash,” said Da Vinci, smiling at her.
Mash blinked. “I-I did?”
Rika gasped. “When she went Super Saiyan!”
“That’s right!” Da Vinci agreed. “During London, when you unlocked further depths of the power belonging to the Heroic Spirit inside of you, you unlocked a new skill and increased the strength of the ones you already possessed. You underwent what I have decided to term a ‘Saint Graph Readvent’ — Ascension, if you want something short and pithy.”
She gestured to the plinth again. “What we’re going to attempt to do here with Aífe is essentially the same thing — we’re going to modify her Saint Graph by tapping into the Heroic Spirit on the Throne and remapping certain parts of the data there onto her current data.”
That was… That was very easily a game changer, if it worked out the way Da Vinci was saying it would. We already had several very strong Servants, and if we could increase their strength like this, then that was going to make a big difference in the caliber of enemies we could handle in the future. It could even be the thing we needed to find and exploit Solomon’s weakness, whatever that wound up being.
But it also sounded too good to be true.
“What’s the catch?”
Da Vinci held up a finger. “The catch is similarity. There’s going to be a very hard limit on exactly how far we can modify and strengthen a Servant’s existing Saint Graph. Aífe, for example, I’m afraid we won’t be able to do more than once, if only because her Saint Graph is already approaching the limits of what she can do as a Rider. However!” She smiled again. “I think your one skill, Discernment of Potential, functions closely enough that we should be able to restore some degree of your tutelary aspects, Queen Aífe.”
Just like that, she dropped another bombshell on us and told us all that the one thing that had been missing from Aífe the entire time could be replaced. Even Aífe looked stunned. “You’re sure of that.”
It was phrased like a statement, but it sounded like a question.
“This is largely untested, so very little of it is sure,” Da Vinci said carefully. “I’m confident enough in our success, however, that I wouldn’t have suggested it otherwise. In any case, the worst case scenario is that we fail, and then we will simply be where we were before, won’t we?”
It still sounded too good to be true. Not everything had to be like that moment of desperation where I had Panacea play around with my Corona, but it was still hard to believe that there weren’t any drawbacks to this situation at all.
“If I need to make it an order, I can,” Marie said. “It shouldn’t need to be said how much this could change things if it works. This isn’t the time for hesitation.”
“You’ll have to forgive my skepticism, Director,” Aífe replied coolly. “It isn’t every day when things you believed impossible become possible.”
“Ah, but Queen Aífe,” said Da Vinci, lips curling into a grin that looked half manic, “that’s precisely the kind of Heroic Spirit I am! One who makes the impossible into the possible! If you cannot trust in the process, then trust the hand that crafted it!”
Aífe looked at her and met her gaze, and for a long moment, they stared at each other in silence, one stony-faced and one still grinning. Finally, Aífe’s lips pressed together and she gave a nod, and then she marched over to the plinth where Jackie had just been standing. She stepped onto it and turned around, crossing her arms.
“Whenever you’re ready.”
Da Vinci made her way over to the console and gently nudged the technician there out of the way, telling him, “I’ll handle it this time, Meuniere, if you please.”
“Sure,” said Meuniere, stepping aside, “if you say so.”
Da Vinci’s staff vanished into spirit form, and so did her oversized mechanical gauntlet, and she set both hands on the console’s touch screen. Her fingers danced across its surface, tapping away with a speed that would have made professional typists green with envy.
“Beginning the procedure now,” she announced, and as she did, the magic circle designed into the platform lit up again, casting Aífe in a pale, white glow. “Establishing baseline parameters. Heroic Spirit ID: Aífe. Mythological origin: the Ulster Cycle, Ireland. Servant Class: Rider.”
The glowing circle flashed, and just like with Jackie, a trio of rings rose into the air around Aífe and hung there as though waiting for permission.
“Establishing connection to the Throne of Heroes,” said Da Vinci. A moment later, her console beeped. “Connection established. Target Noble Phantasm: Aite Láechrad. Skill to target for modification: Discernment of Potential. Composite skill identification: Wisdom of the Great Teacher. Synchronizing with Heroic Spirit Aífe.”
Once again, as they had with Jackie, the rings of light spun, and a wind kicked up around them, tossing my hair about — mine and everyone else’s in the room. Faster and faster and faster they went, and the wind grew stronger and stronger with them as a high-pitched whine filled the whole chamber. The light from the rings seemed to seep out of them like running ink, streaking towards Aífe and sinking into her skin, but they were moving so fast that I wasn’t sure I wasn’t imagining it.
And then, at last, they collapsed inwards and towards her body, coating her like glowing paint. Unlike with Jackie, however, her silhouette didn’t change and her clothing didn’t morph. Her shape remained exactly the same.
Slowly, the glow began to fade, revealing exactly the same woman underneath. The faint echo of that high-pitched whine, however, was a little slower to leave my ears.
“Synchronization complete!” Da Vinci said triumphantly. “Skill modification: success! Connection to the Throne of Heroes terminated.” She looked towards the platform with a smile. “Well? How do you feel?
Aífe didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she took a slow, deep breath, letting it seethe out of her mouth like a sigh.
Abruptly, her face stretched into the shark-like grin I’d seen on her so much in Septem, all edges and teeth. “Say, Master,” she said almost coyly, “you wanted to learn how to use my runes properly, didn’t you?”
She looked at me, her eyes glittering. “How would you like to give it another try?”
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SKILL RANK UP!
Discernment of Potential: B → Wisdom of the Great Teacher: A+
A skill that denotes one’s status as a great teacher who has raised many students. With the exception of burdens of the body such as divinity and those particular of certain heroes, almost all Skills can be displayed with a proficiency up to the level of A Rank. Towards those she recognizes as possessing latent potential, it is also possible to endow these skills upon others, including living humans. Furthermore, the farther away from Aífe’s own natural talents or those of her student a skill is, the more effort must be exerted to display it at a respectable level.