Talavera left us alone with the Archduke Sancai, who led us down a long hallway to the ‘darkroom’. It was truly a dark room, with all the windows blacked out, and only a single ring-shaped infrared lamp hanging from the ceiling. Disembodied limbs, wires, and circuitboards littered the floors and tables— it was a frightening sight, and I instinctively gripped Hizen’s lifeless hand.
“...Um...uh…”
“...Something wrong?”
“...I...uh...th-that stuff on the floor…”
“Oh, my spare parts! Do you like them?? I’ve spent years collecting them...some of them are gifts from Our Lord herself, and some of them I’ve had Talavera bring in for me. You can find a lot of good ones out by the Planks.”
“...Planks?”
“Y’know, the place where they discard people. I guess you wouldn’t remember, huh?”
“…”
“It may seem a little...macabre, but I need to collect and study these in order to improve my craft. Once upon a time, a past version of myself built Talavera practically from scratch, y’know. I’d really like to get to that level of mastery again.”
“That’s...nice…”
“Within me rests the knowledge of the ancient Earth; deep within in a place that I cannot reach...time away from time, life away from life; cleav’ed so by the inscrutable divine blade…”
“…”
“Did you like that?? Please tell me. I thrive on external validation.”
“Uh...I’m not sure I even...understood what you said…”
“You don’t have to understand; you just have to feel. Such is the essence of ‘music’, the great philosophy of my past self...!”
“…”
“...You didn’t like it, did you? Oh well, whatever…”
“Um...A-Archduke...what exactly are we gonna do here...?”
“Oh, that...well, simply put: we are going to bring chaos to the planet Mars.”
“Chaos??”
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Yes, indeed...order can only be broken through disorder. You will become the vanguard of chaos that you were always meant to be! And I, the Grand Exalted Archduke Sancai, will bring you to life…!!”
“...I still don’t understand…”
“Ugh, story of my life...alright, listen: I first became aware of your existence after a certain incident at the Nebula Access Shrine.”
“Oh, the explosion...”
“No, something before that— rumors about shifting tiles.”
“Tiles…?”
“The ceramic tiles on the steps of the shrine. Every once in a while they would mysteriously change positions...so people said. The rumors were never proven, but it was enough to make me suspect that, finally, a Founder had been born on Mars.”
“A Founder...is that like one of those Earth wizards?”
“Nail on the head, friend. Earth wizards come in two flavors-- Founders, who control the earth and solid matter, and Flyers, who control the sky and photons, and other aspects of space-time.”
“Space-time…”
“However, once in a blue moon, someone is born with both sets of powers. In all of recorded Earth history, at least before my past life came to an end, it has only happened once. But then, when I heard of the explosion of light at the same shrine, I had the sneaking suspicion that it had happened again. So I took a little trip into the Nebula’s databanks that was definitely authorized and totally allowed, and found a specially marked folder of archived mind-code, belonging to a Servant named Meissen…”
“...And you found those Earth wizard powers in my brain??”
“Precisely~.”
“But...I’m not from Earth. Am I??”
“Oh no, you’re 100% Martian. But, you see, the Nebula itself was based on a similar World Operating System that governs the Earth, called the Cloud. Any process that existed on Earth could potentially reappear here at some point...and the Flyer/Founder system seems to have done just that. So now that we know it can definitely work here, in the brain of a Servant, no less...all we have to do is activate it~.”
“Oh…”
“...You don’t seem excited. Why aren’t you excited??”
“I...I want to be excited, really, but...this is all so confusing...from what Talavera told me on the way here, and what you’re saying now, it kind of seems like...you’re trying to get me in a fight with Our Lord??”
“Does it~?”
“I-I mean, it seems like you and these POOL people don’t like Her, and you don’t like the Ordered World, and you want to get rid of all the rules and everything...and apparently there were these crazy space-time chaos powers in my brain that you want me to get back...and I’m just drawing the logical conclusion…”
“Are you~?”
“Y-yes! I think so! And I think if that’s what you’re trying to get me to do, then you should just admit it!”
“Should I~?”
“Okay, don’t then! But before you do anything, you should know that, I-I c-ca-can’t…I-I mean, I can’t do that kind of stuff!! I don’t know how to fight! And even if I knew, I couldn’t...I-I wouldn’t…!”
“...So don’t.”
“???”
“All I want to do is give you your powers back. What you choose to do with them afterwards is up to you. The power to choose...this is the heart of chaos. The ideology that reigns over the Earth…”
“...You want Mars to be a place like Earth...?”
“...It might be better off.”