Chapter CLXX: Chocolate Commotion
Pandemonium broke out in the cafeteria as everyone reacted at once. The legs of chairs screeched as their occupants leapt to their feet. Shoes squeaked as people rushed to stand. Nearly a dozen voices rose in shout, clamoring for attention until the only thing I could hear was a loud, indistinct buzz, because the individual words were lost in the commotion.
Rika was still screaming. Ritsuka was shouting, too, and it sounded like accusations or demands for answers. Even Emiya had come out from behind the counter to investigate, eyes wide and intense as he took in everything and tried to put the pieces together on his own.
And then the — fake — Mash who had been stabbed disappeared in a puff of smoke, leaving behind a large, chocolate heart with an enormous crack down the middle that leaked red ooze like blood. For a heartbeat, it hung in the air where she had been, and then gravity took hold of it and it fell to the floor, shattering with a crack and splattering the floor with more red.
There was a precious few seconds of pregnant silence as everyone tried to wrap their heads around it and what it might mean, and then they all broke out again, alarm replaced by confusion as each of them wondered — loudly — just what the hell was going on.
I was the only one who got to see Emiya’s face cycle through surprise, suspicion, understanding, exasperation, and then resignation. It seemed he had some sort of idea what might have just happened.
With one hand, I took aim at one of the heart-shaped balloons that sat above the tables, and with the other, I braced my arm to steady it. A quick Gandr snapped off of my fingertips and fizzed across the room, and then a loud POP echoed above all of the yelling and distracted everyone for a precious few seconds.
In the brief reprieve, I raised my voice and told them all, “QUIET!”
Silence fell over the cafeteria, broken only by Rika’s panicked breathing and the subtle sounds of cooking coming from the kitchen. How Renée managed to keep her focus with everything going on, I had no idea, but just then, I found it admirable.
One finger outstretched, I reached up to my face and swiped off one of the droplets that had landed on me, held it beneath my nose to give it a careful sniff — sweet and fruity, not metallic and visceral. Only once I was sure that it most certainly wasn’t blood did I chance licking it off of my finger, because I had a hunch that I wanted proven one way or the other.
I wasn’t disappointed.
“Cherry syrup?”
“What?” Rika squeaked incredulously, and then she dragged her fingertips through the red splashed across her own face and stuck one in her mouth. Her eyes went wide as dinner plates. “I-it is cherry syrup! W-what the fuck?”
“Of course it is!” Nero proclaimed like she had known it all along. “What else would it be? Mm!”
I turned to the only other person that seemed to have any idea what was going on. “Mash. Explain.”
Jackie thought I didn’t notice her as she snuck over to the broken chocolate heart to sample the “blood” that had spilled all over, but I was going to be having a conversation with her about eating off of the floor later, when this catastrophe wasn’t in the middle of freaking out all of the Masters and a third of the technicians.
“O-of course, Miss Taylor.” Mash closed her eyes briefly and sighed, like the whole thing had exhausted her already. “W-well, like I said a minute ago, I was…u-um…m-making some chocolate for…well…for…” The tips of her ears almost glowed from how pink they were turning, and she stalwartly refused to look in Ritsuka’s direction. “I-I was…um, mostly finished, and I was just about to start wrapping them up when…Mister Shakespeare arrived at my room.”
Ritsuka let out a low groan so that I didn’t have to, because I was already starting to see the shape of what had happened and how it had led to this.
“Let me guess,” said Ritsuka, “he’s behind all of this?”
Mash nodded meekly, staring at the ground in front of his feet instead of directly at him. “He, um…said some things about how chocolate is the flavor of love, a-and how a…y-young lady’s a-affections were nothing to laugh at, and how…how sincerity so b-beautiful deserved to be rewarded, even if no one else recognized it for what it was. I…don’t think I understand all of what he meant, but then…”
“Then he turned your chocolates into fake Servants,” Emiya concluded knowingly.
Mash nodded again, and then abruptly gained urgency. “That’s why…we have to find all of them! S-Senpai’s chocolate might have been the m-most important, but I made chocolate for the other Servants, too, so that they didn’t feel left out! A-and the Director, and Doctor Roman, too! I-it was just, um, S-Senpai’s chocolate that we… we had to find first, and Emperor Nero agreed to help me as soon as she heard what was going on!”
By now, Ritsuka’s face had slowly started to turn red, too, because he wasn’t so ignorant or oblivious that he couldn’t read between the lines of what Mash was and wasn’t saying. Whether he understood all of it or not, however, he kept his silence and didn’t let himself ask.
Maybe he was afraid of being wrong, of what it would mean to take the risk and have it fall apart. Or maybe he just had better sense than to bring it up now, of all times, when we had more important things to focus on.
A consciousness brushed up against mine. Master?
Crisis averted, for the moment, I told him, but there’s a problem we’re going to need to take care of soon and fast.
Understood, was his reply.
“How many of these…chocolates did you make, Mash?” I asked.
“Enough for all of the Servants, and then for the Director, Miss Da Vinci, and Doctor Roman,” Mash answered. “So…th-thirteen more, total, Miss Taylor!”
Thirteen more. Presumably, each one would make for its intended recipient, and while the one that had just been destroyed hadn’t shown any indication of superhuman ability or Servant strength and speed, that didn’t mean the others wouldn’t have anything like that. We should probably assume that they were going to be stronger than they looked and put up a fight to get to the person they meant to deliver their Valentine’s to, if only so that we wouldn’t be surprised if they did have something like that.
“Ritsuka?” I turned to him. “Shakespeare?”
Ritsuka shook his head, frowning. His cheeks and ears were still faintly red. “He’s not responding. I think he knows that we know.”
It was tempting to tell him to use a Command Spell so that we could force Shakespeare here to put an end to this quickly, but I wanted to save that as a last resort. Firstly and primarily, because I wasn’t sure he even could; if I was remembering right, a lot of stuff he could do was self-sustaining once it got going and had to “run its course.” We’d waste a Command Spell bringing him here, and then another to make him stop something he couldn’t stop, and in that time, who knew what sort of havoc his chocolate monstrosities could wreak?
“Fire and forget” spells were named aptly.
Secondly, I knew Marie well enough to know she would want to punish him over this when she found out. Knowing her so well, I was pretty sure that one of those punishments would be forcing him to clean up the mess he made, and I had to admit, that idea appealed to me on some level, too. I wasn’t proud of the bit of vindictive satisfaction I got from imagining him in overalls swabbing the floors with a mop.
If we truly couldn’t find Shakespeare without a Command Spell, then we could cross that bridge when we came to it. Until then, we had some chocolate Servants to hunt down first.
“Jackie,” I said, and she froze, like she realized she had been caught, “you’re with me and Arash. Ritsuka, take Mash and try to find Shakespeare. Emiya, I need you to go fill in Da Vinci, since no one here has a contract with her, while Rika and Nero go and help Romani.”
“As emperor, it is me who should be giving the orders! Mm-mm! The only one who should command Emperor Nero is her praetor, her best buddy!” Nero said pompously. She immediately followed it up with, “But you have long since proven your acumen, so I shall allow it!”
“Master?” Emiya asked.
“You heard her,” said Rika. “Da Vinci-chan. Go.”
Emiya sighed and quickly undid the knot tying his apron around his back, slipped it off over his head, and tossed it onto the nearest table. Over his shoulder, he called, “Renée!”
A familiar head of white hair appeared at the counter where Emiya normally served food. “Yes?”
“I have something I need to take care of, so you’re in charge of the kitchen for now,” he told her. “I’ll be back later.”
If Renée was excited to have the kitchen to herself, she didn’t show it, not obviously. She just nodded and said, “Of course.”
With that taken care of, I gave the order to everyone: “Go!”
We all left through the cafeteria doors, and the instant we were outside them our group split up, each of us heading in a different direction. Immediately, I reached out for the bond connecting me to each of my Servants, both those I shared with the twins and those who were only contracted with me.
Be alert, I relayed to all of them, trying my best to ignore how thin my mind felt. It was better than when I’d tried it in London, but not by much. Imposters are currently loose in the facility. If you come across a doppelganger, it’s just chocolate animated through magecraft. Destroy it while doing as little damage to the facility as possible.
There were several affirmatives from Aífe, Siegfried, and Hippolyta, who didn’t need anything more than that from me to act, but Bellamy, Jeanne Alter, and Mordred weren’t at all satisfied and asked for answers instead. I didn’t have the time or the focus to offer them the full explanation just then, so I kept it simple.
It’s Shakespeare’s work, although that didn’t seem to answer things for them well enough either. He turned Valentine’s chocolate into fake Servants. They’re delivering themselves to you. If you’re not sure if you’re seeing the real deal or not, give them a small cut. Their blood is cherry syrup, not blood. You’ll get the full explanation later.
Grudgingly, in the case of Jeanne Alter and Mordred, they let it go at that with the promise to collect, and I eased my grip on those bonds. The rebound actually made me stumble mid-step, but Arash appeared next to me and steadied me.
“Chocolate Servants?” he asked, bemused.
“Later,” I promised him, too. “The Director?”
He shook his head, and when I took off, he and Jackie kept pace with me. “I haven’t seen her all morning. Do you want me to go look for her?”
As tempting as it was… “No. The fake Mash didn’t fight back, but we have no idea what these chocolate Servants are capable of. Since we’re probably going to have to face three of them on our own, I’d rather we didn’t split up.”
Arash nodded and didn’t try to convince me otherwise, so as we ran, I reached for my communicator and tried to connect to Marie’s. The handful of seconds it took before she answered me felt like an eternity.
“Yes?”
“Where are you?” I asked her immediately.
“What?” was her confused reply.
“I’ll explain when we get there,” I said shortly. “Where are you?”
“The Command Room,” she said. “Where else would I be?”
It would honestly have been more convenient if she had been in her office. That door was easier to lock and more secure. But it was also convenient, since we’d been heading vaguely in that direction already.
“If you can, lock the door until I get there,” I told her.
“What? Why would we lock the — hey, who do you think — w-what the hell is going on here?”
“D-doppelgangers?” Romani’s voice yelped in the background. There was a commotion that I linked to the technicians, although it was impossible to make out who was there and what they were saying.
Shit. Of course the chocolate Servants already had a lead on us, because it couldn’t be easy, could it? What a clusterfuck.
With one smooth motion, I unsheathed my knife and tossed it to Arash. “Jackie, Arash, go on ahead to the Command Room!”
They accepted my order silently, taking off at speed and leaving me behind.
“T-Taylor!” Marie’s voice squeaked through my communicator. “Th-there’s another me, and another Romani here!”
“Don’t engage!” I said firmly. “They’re made of chocolate, but we have no idea what they’re capable of, no matter what they look like!”
“CHOCOLATE?” Marie sputtered, halfway between apoplectic and bewildered. “W-what do you mean, they’re made of chocolate?”
“Shakespeare made them out of Valentine’s chocolates.”
“Shakespeare?”
“Mash can tell you more later.” If she didn’t spontaneously combust of embarrassment first, anyway. “We already dispatched one in the cafeteria. Emiya is going to let Da Vinci know what’s going on while Ritsuka and Mash hunt down Shakespeare. We’re trying to avoid using a Command Spell if we don’t have to. Nero and Rika went to find Romani; if they’re not with you, they’re probably checking his office, first.”
My footsteps were the only ones I could hear anymore. Arash and Jackie had long since left me behind.
“The other Servants?” Marie asked.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“I’ve already contacted all of the ones I can to let them know what to expect.”
“All of the — just how many of these chocolates are there?”
“Thirteen.”
“Thirtee —”
“Director Animusphere!” Marie’s voice sounded, and it was distant enough that I realized right away it was the doppelganger. “I have something I need to tell you! It’s really important, so it can’t wait!”
My mind short-circuited for a second. What? I thought Mash had only meant to confess to Ritsuka. He was the one she obviously had romantic feelings for. She had never given any indication whatsoever that she felt that way for Marie, not even once. Not a single longing glance behind Marie’s back, not one wistful sigh.
Had I missed it somehow?
“Don’t!” Marie herself said. “Not another word! I won’t hear it!”
“Doctor Roman,” Romani’s voice began — his doppelganger now, it had to be. “I have something incredibly important I need to tell you, and it can’t wait a second longer!”
“Director Animusphere,” said her doppelganger, “I know something happened that affected the way you looked at me. I wanted you to know, whatever it was that I did wrong, I’m sorry. I know I’ve made a bunch of mistakes, but I try my hardest every day, and I think you’re doing an amazing job as Director! I wouldn’t want anyone else leading us through the Grand Order!”
Marie — the real Marie — choked. I could only imagine what must have been going through her head, what those words meant to her. Knowing as I did how much her father’s sins in regards to Mash had weighed on her, how much she struggled with the expectations of being Director of Chaldea — both her own and those of the staff — this must have been hitting way closer to home than she was comfortable with.
“Doctor Roman,” said Romani’s doppelganger, “I know taking care of me all of these years can’t have been easy. You had an important job as the Head of Medical, and having to look out for me at the same time must have been so hard on you. That’s why, I want you to know that I appreciate everything you’ve ever done for me! I don’t know what it’s like to have a father, but I like to think, if I could have had one, I would have wanted him to be a lot like you!”
“Oh,” Romani said softly, so quiet that I almost didn’t hear it. “Oh, Mash…”
There was another commotion, the rustle of cloth and the hum of steel cutting through the air, and then a crack like wood snapping. Marie screamed.
“What the hell?” Romani demanded.
“Director?” I asked urgently.
We’ve dispatched the chocolates, Master, Arash told me, and I had to grimace. If only we’d been fast enough to get the chocolates before they got to the door and started all of this.
“Sorry for the mess, Director,” Arash said aloud. She didn’t seem to hear him, still screaming. “They were a little more fragile than I was expecting them to be.”
“Marie!” I shouted into my communicator. “Marie, listen! It’s not real blood! It’s just cherry syrup!”
“CHERRY SYRUP?” she screeched, an octave higher than normal. She was still freaking out.
“Cherry syrup,” I repeated. “Deep breaths, Director. It’s not blood. It’s cherry syrup. That doppelganger you just saw was an illusion. It was just a piece of chocolate.”
Marie heaved in deep, hard breaths, gulping them down as she tried to get herself under control. I wished Arash had managed to reach them before she had ever laid eyes on her copy, because if she was reacting this badly, then he had probably just unintentionally dredged up the trauma of what had happened to her during the Sabotage.
I knew probably better than anyone else in the facility how much that sort of thing stuck with you, how hard it was to dislodge.
“Director,” I said, calm, even, and gentle, “it was just chocolate. Lev isn’t here. Flauros is dead. No one’s hurt, everything’s fine, just breathe for me. Can you do that?”
I had no idea how effective this all was, and I barely knew what I was doing, but somehow or another, it seemed to be helping. Marie’s breaths were coming out slower and less harsh, steadily evening out into something that wasn’t likely to make her faint and sounded less like a panic attack.
“That’s it.” I closed one eye and looked through Arash’s, which was a bit disorienting to do while I was running through the hallway, but I’d had loads of practice. “Just keep breathing. In for seven, hold for five, then out for eleven.”
What I saw looked almost like a murder. Marie and Romani hadn’t been drenched as badly as Rika and Ritsuka had been, but ropes of red stained them from the hips on down, with tiny flecks splattered like drops of red ink over their faces and torsos. Little dots here and there that were only noticeable since Romani’s coat was white and I was looking for them.
Romani looked disturbed — seeing his exact double get killed couldn’t have been easy — but Marie was almost bent double, clutching at the edge of her console’s desk to keep herself from keeling over. Her face was drawn into a rictus of terror, and her chest heaved with every breath, but I’d become intimately familiar with her breakdowns and what they looked like and it seemed that we’d managed to avert this one.
“Just like that,” I told her as soothingly as I could. “All you have to do is focus on breathing. In, hold, then out. In, hold, then out.”
In the background, most of the technicians had leapt out of their seats and were now pressing themselves against their own consoles in an effort to put as much distance between themselves and the carnage as possible. Even Sylvia, who normally seemed fairly imperturbable, looked as though the whole thing had hit a nerve.
“Arash!” Arash’s voice suddenly called.
“Jackie!” Jackie’s voice echoed.
“I have something really important I need to tell you!”
My teeth ground together. Fucking…shit. Could they have had worse timing than this?
Arash whirled around, a motion so fast and so abrupt that it threatened to unsettle my stomach, and with familiar speed, he manifested his bow, drew back, and fired off a pair of arrows. Before they could even make it through the doorway, the pair of doppelgangers took an arrow each to the chest, right in the heart, and the illusion popped like soap bubbles. Another pair of chocolate hearts fell to the floor and split open, spilling more cherry syrup.
The one saving grace was that Jackie and Arash were already there and standing between everyone else and the door. I was sure there was some sort of complicated psychological theory that explained why, but Servant on Servant violence was easier for everyone to deal with, made only easier by the fact that the action was further away than the fake Marie and Romani had been.
Marie still hadn’t quite managed to calm down by the time I finally made it to the door and finally saw with my own eyes the sickly puddles of red splattered across the floor. If there was one thing I could be thankful for, it was that they weren’t drying quite like blood did. Instead, the syrup was turning a paler shade of brown, highlighted with islands of vivid red where the concentration was thicker.
I wasn’t sure it said anything good that I was familiar enough with the exact color of dried blood to tell the difference so easily, but it was four years too late to do anything about that.
Stepping around the puddles was a bit of work. Either Shakespeare’s modifications had vastly increased the amount of cherry syrup his chocolate doppelgangers could hold or Mash had stuffed her chocolates almost to the brim, because that looked like a full pint from each chocolate, which was frankly ridiculous. Between the puddles themselves and the splatters that exploded out of them, there was almost no place in the doorway for me to safely place my feet.
Nearly every eye in the room swiveled around to look at me as I entered, and when I said, “Director,” even Marie flinched away, shutting her eyes tightly — so that she didn’t have to watch my heart get gouged out by an arrow, I realized.
“Romani,” I greeted him, and he recoiled, bracing for the same thing.
So I did the only thing I could think to do and ended the call on my communicator, then opened a line to Rika instead. “Rika. Romani is here in the Command Room with the Director.”
“Oh, goodie,” Rika’s voice said from my wrist, relieved. The entire room seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief when they realized I wasn’t another of the chocolate fakes. “I was getting kinda worried, you know, since he wasn’t in his room or anything. We ran into the Best Buddy Choco Servant, bee-tee-dubs, so there’s that taken care of.”
One, two, three… That made five out of Mash’s thirteen chocolates. The rest, fortunately, were all something the other Servants could handle on their own, I would think, especially if they didn’t fight at all and went down in one hit the way all of the ones I’d seen so far had. Probably not a good idea to bank on that, but…
“Any trouble?” I asked.
“Nope!” Rika replied. “It went pop without a fight! I think I’m gonna need some serious therapy after this, though, and I won’t look at chocolate the same way ever again! But otherwise, you know…no trouble.”
Good. Hopefully, that trend would continue and this could all be over and done with before lunchtime, although I wasn’t sure anyone would be in the mood to eat for a while after this.
“Mark off that location for later, then go join Emiya and Da Vinci,” I told her. “Once everything’s secure there, meet up with Ritsuka and Mash and help them look for Shakespeare.”
“We’re not gonna deal with the rest of the Children of the Candy Corn?” she asked.
Children of the… What? Was that another reference? Nevermind. It wasn’t important. I got the gist of it either way.
“I’ll check in on them and see if their doppelgangers have given them any trouble, but if they haven’t been fighting back, then no one should be having a hard time taking them out,” I said. “In the meantime, we need to find Shakespeare. If he could do this to Mash’s chocolates, there’s nothing to say he couldn’t do it to all of the sets you’ve been handing out today, too.”
Apparently, this hadn’t occurred to anyone else, because there was a pregnant pause before Rika let out a low, horrified, “Oh, crud.”
Exactly.
The call ended with a short beep, and when I turned my attention back to Marie fully, she had calmed down at least enough to demand, through gritted teeth, “What…exactly…is going on?”
“Jackie,” I said sharply, and Jackie, having bent down to dip her fingers into the cherry syrup left behind by Marie and Romani’s fakes, froze. “We don’t eat off the floor. Understand?”
“Yes, Mommy,” Jackie mumbled reluctantly. Of all the times for her to act her apparent age, it just had to be now, didn’t it?
To Marie, I said, “Mash made Valentine’s chocolates for Ritsuka, all of the Servants, and apparently for you and Romani as a way of showing her appreciation to everyone for everything they’ve done over the course of the last six months,” or longer, it seemed, in the case of Marie and Romani. “Somehow or another, Shakespeare involved himself and brought the chocolates to life so that they could literally deliver themselves to their intended recipients. In addition to the first one that was destroyed in the cafeteria, Mash told us that there were thirteen more, one for each of the Servants, Da Vinci, you, and Romani.”
With every word, the terror that had gripped Marie slowly dissipated, and it was quickly being replaced with indignant anger. By the time I finished, her brow had furrowed. “But not for you?”
I blinked. What? I…guess I hadn’t really given it any thought. And Mash had said she was only mostly finished, so maybe she’d meant to make more for other people and just hadn’t had the chance before Shakespeare stuck his nose in.
Marie shook her head. “Not important, nevermind. You said Shakespeare is behind this?”
“Ritsuka attempted to contact him when this all started, and he didn’t answer,” I said by way of answering. “If he’s not guilty and there’s some kind of imposter running around the facility, he’s not doing a very good job of convincing anyone.”
Marie reached up to pinch the bridge of her nose, but after a second, seemed to realize what she’d just done and looked down at her red-smeared hand with a grimace, still stained with flecks of syrup. Two red smudges now stood out on either side of her nose, bright against her pale skin. With obvious disgust, she tried to ignore it and soldier on.
“And the other chocolates?”
“We’ve destroyed five. Unless they get violent and prove to be stronger than they seem to be, the rest of the Servants should be able to handle the remaining eight,” I said, and then added, “But as you heard me say to Rika, that’s not to say there won’t be more that show up. Rika has been handing out boxes of chocolate to the staff for Valentine’s day, so if Shakespeare gets his hands on them, there’s nothing stopping him from a repeat performance.”
Romani was the one who heaved out a heavy sigh. “Ah, geez. That’s just what we need right now, a bunch of chocolate Servants running around and terrorizing everyone.”
Marie didn’t look any more pleased by this idea than he did. I said nothing. Privately, I wasn’t sure if it would be quite as bad as this first batch was, but only because I wasn’t sure what Emiya had put into the chocolates he made for Rika to hand out and how much of the cherry syrup spilling out all over the place was because of how Mash made her chocolates and how much was what Shakespeare had done to bring them to life.
They would cause too much trouble regardless.
“I’ve already alerted all the Servants contracted to me, and Ritsuka and Mash are looking for Shakespeare.”
Marie grunted. “As much as I want to lock down the entire facility, Chaldea is too large. He could be anywhere — hiding in spirit form, even!”
I wished there was a better answer to that, but, “That’s why I told Ritsuka to use Command Spells as a last resort.”
Marie scowled, no happier about wasting such a valuable resource — renewable or not — than she was about the rest of the situation, but she didn’t have any better ideas for how to find him, and that only soured her mood further. She had to take a deep breath to recenter herself and focus.
“Obviously, the first priority is the elimination of these…chocolate Servants,” she said, “and then finding Shakespeare so he can either explain himself or reveal the imposter.” She huffed. “I’ll be sure to think up a suitable punishment for this nonsense — for frightening the…the staff and for causing such a commotion with this prank! Next…”
She turned her scowl down at the mess still drying on the floor and all over her skirt, hose, and shoes.
“We need to get this mess cleaned up. Forget about tracking it everywhere, it’s a safety hazard!”
Remembering the idea I’d had earlier, I mentioned it to Marie, “Maybe we could get two birds with one stone and make Shakespeare clean it up.”
Marie’s eyes flashed, and I could see immediately that some part of her very much liked that idea. No magic, no Noble Phantasms, no one allowed to help him, just a bucket and a mop and good, old-fashioned elbow grease. For someone like Shakespeare, manual labor was probably something he abhorred.
But she shook her head. “For the rest of the facility, maybe,” she said. “But for such high traffic areas like the Command Room and the cafeteria? Absolutely not! We can’t afford to wait on him to clean up some of the most vital rooms in Chaldea!”
A fair point. It was also probably bringing up a lot of unpleasant memories for several people to have what looked an awful lot like bloodstains plastered over the floor, so maybe my initial instinct wasn’t the best solution to our current problem. I didn’t really have any better ones, though. How did you punish a Servant? They didn’t need sleep, they didn’t really get tired the way living humans did, they didn’t need money for really anything except a handful of luxuries that weren’t strictly necessary —
Ah. Luxuries. It felt like disciplining a rowdy child, much more than anything I’d had to do with Jackie so far, but in lieu of other options, I guess taking away some of his privileges really was the only other way for us to punish Shakespeare.
Later. For now…
Beep-beep!
As though he had read my mind, Ritsuka contacted me, and when I answered my communicator, his voice came from the other end. “Senpai.”
“Ritsuka,” I replied. “Any luck with Shakespeare?”
Ritsuka heaved out a sigh. “He didn’t even try to hide. He was in his study, frantically scribbling away in a book titled, ‘The Chocolate Lady’s Commotion: The Curious Case of Mash Kyrielight.’ Mash wasn’t…very happy with him.”
Her and half of the facility by this point. Most of the Servants were probably fairly ambivalent about the whole thing, but the staff? Especially those who got a front row seat to his chocolate fakes running around and had to deal with cherry syrup going everywhere? He hadn’t won himself any points.
“Is he still there?”
“He was going to try escaping, until I threatened to burn a random book from his office every hour that he stayed in hiding.”
“The travesty!” Shakespeare’s voice cried from the background. “The inhumanity! What sort of monster threatens a man’s collection of literature? What sort of monster threatens a man’s life’s work? Master, how cruel!”
I allowed a very small part of me to sympathize with Shakespeare, just for a moment, over the books that had all been threatened, and then I let it die.
“We’ve dealt with the two meant for Romani and the Director, and also the two meant for Jackie and Arash. Rika and Nero should be on their way to you by now,” I told Ritsuka.
“Right,” said Ritsuka. “What do you want us to do with Shakespeare for now?”
I could have given him an answer myself, but I turned instead to Marie and put it in her hands. “Director?”
Marie’s lips drew into a tight line, and careful of the mess still on the floor, she stepped closer to me so that she could speak into my communicator without having to yell from halfway across the room.
“Keep him there,” Marie ordered sternly.
“Director?” asked Ritsuka.
“You have permission to use a Command Spell, if you have to,” Marie said. “But whatever happens, Shakespeare is not to be allowed to leave that room until this is settled. I’m coming down there myself.”
Shakespeare let out a strangled moan of despair, and Ritsuka did his best to pretend it wasn’t happening. “Of…of course, Director Marie!”
With that settled, Marie spun about and barked, “Romani!”
Romani jolted as though he had been shocked. “Y-yes, Director?”
She gestured to the room, to the mess on the floor and outside the door. “I’m leaving you in charge of the cleanup here! I expect you to handle it quickly!”
“Of course, Director!” said Romani, echoing Ritsuka.
Marie whirled back about to face me. “Let’s go,” she said. “The sooner we deal with this, the sooner this whole fiasco can be over with.”
We marched out of the Command Room, Marie in the front and Arash and Jackie trailing behind me, leaving Romani to handle things in there for now. By the look on her face and the set of her shoulders, Marie would not let this slide easily. One way or another, she was going to extract her pound of flesh from Shakespeare for this, and by the end of it, he would hopefully have learned his lesson about pulling this sort of thing in the facility on all of us.
I was just glad it had been handled so quickly. I could easily imagine a situation where the chaos lasted a whole day or more and we ran around aimlessly trying to figure out who was attacking us and how they’d managed to get into Chaldea, cutting down dozens of chocolate doppelgangers, all wearing the faces of friends and allies and spilling secrets left, right, and center. A Stranger nightmare straight out of the Protectorate’s handbook of worst case scenarios.
Fortunately, as weird as it was to say it, this one time, we’d lucked out.