kaisou | Open log

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WHO: Ritsuka + anyone
WHERE: just some random street corner
WHEN: 1st of July
WHAT: Ritsuka found herself whisked away to another world? Must be Tuesday...
WARNINGS: Probably none, this time

There's a new face in town! Or at least, there's a redheaded young woman who, while not appearing particularly bewildered or confused, most definitely is spending some time looking over the surrounding buildings and cityscape. As one does when trying to figure out where one is or how to get where one needs to go. In any case, it's definitely true no one here's seen her in town before!

Should you approach, though, she'll promptly swap from that evaluating stare to a friendly grin.

"Oh, hi there! Are you from around here?"

If you're especially observant, though, you might notice a set of red marks on the back of her right hand. But that's probably not important, right? Right.

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Had this been Ritsuka from earlier in her time in Chaldea, she would have struggled to follow much of that explanation. As it is, there's still probably a thing or two she doesn't fully get, but for the most part she understands the gist of it.

And the salient point she's drawing out of all of that...

"Wait, you mean this isn't a singularity that needs to be repaired?"

Or maybe he's just mistaken? Some singularities could get pretty strange, after all.

"..."

Once again, he was very aware of the feeling of learning something he was going to hate.

"I--well, we need to do something about the veil, but--what the hell is a singularity."

Wait, what? He doesn't know that? Ritsuka's honestly a bit surprised, she's just gotten so used to everyone she deals with from the mage world already knowing about these things. So it takes her a moment to fumble together an explanation.

"Oh, it's like, um... What you were saying about parallel worlds, where one event that shouldn't happen does happen. Except that instead of it disappearing on its own since it can't really exist, it gets... stuck, I guess? Usually because of something powerful like a Holy Grail affecting things.

"So Chaldea sends someone to fix or remove whatever's causing it, so that the timeline can go back to normal like it's supposed to."

"...That's...not a thing. That's not something that's ever happened."

That very intelligent response was all he could seem to get out at first, staring at Ritsuka like she had three heads.

"That's--the Pruning Theoretical Phenomenon is something handled by the Counter Force, it can't just get stuck--what the hell do you mean a Holy Grail?"

Oh, there was the tension headache kicking in.

"Yeah, that's what it's called!"

Pruning, that's the word. You'd think she'd remember that after.... Well, actually, maybe best not to go too deep into how and why she knows so much about these things.

"And a Holy Grail is basically a vessel of a large amount of magical energy, isn't it? So... When someone who's not supposed to gets a chance to use that kind of power, it means whatever changes they make are too strong to be pruned normally. And then it becomes a singularity.

"The little ones can be unstable enough that they'll still fall apart on their own, but Chaldea's been going after them anyway because if we can retrieve the Holy Grail that's powering it, Chaldea can use those resources for energy."

You don't want to know the insane energy budget Chaldea has. You really, truly don't. And yes, this means that Ritsuka has personally retrieved who even knows how many such grails, all without feeling compelled to make any wish for herself. ~~Future Grand Ruler class Servant, anyone?~~

Waver tried very, very hard to rationalize any of this in a way that made sense, pinching the bridge of his nose. It wasn't that he didn't believe Ritsuka--this whole thing sounded too insane to lie about--but that so much of it flew wildly in the face of anything he knew or understood as logical. If he chose to look at it as 'any sufficient collection of energy becomes a Holy Grail' and not 'there are multiple apocalyptic events taking the form of batteries', then he could at least accept it was possible.

"And that's how you're able to support more than one Servant." was what he opted to focus on before the whole thing drove him insane. "It's not that your own magic capacity is beyond anything remotely imaginable, but it's supported by Chaldea's energy resources."

Edited (typo) 2023-07-02 14:51 (UTC)

Look, technically all a 'Holy Grail' is is a massive amount of magical energy collected via ritual and shaped in the form of the grail vessel in the first place. It's surely not that weird for fluke 'grails' to exist elsewhere, right?

(The advantage of being as utterly ignorant as Ritsuka is in the way of the magecraft world: she has absolutely not idea what isn't supposed to be possible.)

"Right, most the time we use Chaldea's power to keep the Servants manifested, as long as I make a contract with them. Though if there's an emergency and they need to be unsummoned, Chaldea keeps a record of all their Saint Graphs to summon again later."

So no, she has no special capacity on that front. Although being able to possess and maintain that many contracts simultaneously is arguably also odd in and of itself even after taking the energy factor out of the equation, but that's another matter.

And there was the look again, of Ritsuka having grown three heads.

"Th-...yeah, the record is called the Throne of Heroes, are you implying Chaldea has a backup version of that?"

"I think it's a little different?"

Perhaps surprisingly, this is one of the few things Ritsuka actually does mostly understand.

"All the Heroic Spirits are recorded in the Throne of course, but whenever one is summoned by Chaldea's system, Chaldea records that Servant's Saint Graph. So that if the Servants do have to be unsummoned, Chaldea can summon the same ones as before again instead of not knowing which one it'll be."

Which also means...

"And that way, even though normally the Servants won't remember anything when they go back to the Throne, if Chaldea resummons them they can still have their memories of Chaldea, at least."

Waver pushed up his sunglasses again and pressed both hands to his face as he tried to contend with everything he knew as a reasonable set of logical rules were shoved in a blender.

Deep breath.

"Who in the hell set all this up? The Clock Tower has to know about something on this scale, does this fall under Spiritual Evocation's jurisdiction? Sounds like shit Sola-Ui would encourage just to spite me."

Oh good, more questions she can actually answer!

"Chaldea was started by Marisbury Animusphere, but he died before I was there. I think they said it was suicide? So his daughter Olga-Marie took over as director for a while."

And then she died (sort of).

"But right now it's being run by Goredolf Musik after he bought all of it."

"...Wait, Animusphere? The jackass who never shows up to meetings and offloads everything on his kid? I didn't even think Marisbury existed, and all this shit is his pet project in your world?"

Actually, that made some sense. Nobody who hid that much was ever up to anything good.

"Fucking hell. As to the rest, I don't know the Musik family personally, but I'm aware of them. They're alchemists like Ir--like the Einzberns, which is already more than I know of Marisbury."

"I didn't really get to know Olga-Marie very well..."

Since, y'know, she died and all. Which is probably implied in that statement.

"Director Goredolf acts like he's full of himself but he really cares about everyone a lot. And he's a great cook, too."

"...I don't like that I'm considering the implications of burning down the Clock Tower for not the first time in my life, Fujimaru."

The more things changed, the more they stay the same.

"At least he sounds like the rare occurrence of a mage who gives a shit, so congratulations on that front. I can count the number of those I know one one hand."

Honestly, that first comment should probably surprise and/or concern her more... But Ritsuka barely knows anything about the Clock Tower, and the kinds of people who wound up surviving and running Chaldea generally didn't have the most positive things to say about it anyway.

"Really? I guess I've mostly just met the people who worked for Chaldea..."

She doesn't really count some of the versions she met in singularities. After all, most people would get a little crazy if they got their hands on a grail's power, right?

"I envy that considerably, but that's well beside the point."

Okay. One thing at a time.

"Let's rewind for just a second. Addressing the matter of singularities, I'm confident that isn't what this situation is. There's no singular concentration of energy I know of that is or could be mistaken for a Holy Grail; the situation is far more complex than just that. Not to mention that magecraft itself follows entirely different rules here, to say nothing of the Spirit Realm or the gateways therein."

That just earns a bit of a confused frown from Ritsuka.

"Huh? But what else could it be?"

It's not a lostbelt, for sure. And some singularities can get pretty darn weird in her experience, too.

But more importantly, if it isn't one, then how and why is she even here?

"It's easiest to think of this as another reality entirely; completely separate from our own respective timelines or any other running parallel to them. Most of the others here come from similarly separate worlds, but it's this one that seems to function as an anchor point of sorts pulling others in."

That sounded like the simplest way to illustrate the point, when the point was nigh incomprehensible.

"It's not predictable who comes or goes and when, or whether they return or not. But there's nothing to panic about, not yet--I've been back home, and no one even noticed I had left in the first place. Whatever you're dealing with, it should hold until you get back."

At least Ritsuka has enough experience with alternate timeline/world nonsense that this... more or less makes sense. Sort of.

Not that that really helps with the feeling of no longer having any idea what she's dealing with.

"But..."

If everyone back at Chaldea is safe, that's a relief, to be sure, but that doesn't really make the feeling of everything suddenly being turned on its head for her any less.

"'But that's impossible', right? Or maybe just 'completely insane'?"

There was something both sympathetic and very tired in Waver's voice; he was perhaps a little less prickly than the one she knew, but only a little.

"It's okay. You're not alone in thinking that, and most of the people that have gotten stuck here are just as out of their depth. They're even a decently supportive group, weird as that seems to say."

But then what am I supposed to do?

She can't bring herself to actually say it, though. At least not right now.

"I see..."

Sorry, Waver, she's dealing with a bit right now.

"...Hey."

Weird that he was suddenly reminded of Irisviel of all people at the moment, but there was something distinctly similar--the air of being caught so far off guard that one's entire purpose was turned on its head. Maybe he was imagining that, but...

"Actually, I'm glad you're here. This world isn't in as much crisis as it could be, but that doesn't mean the situation's entirely safe. And if you've been able to fight with so many Servants on your side, you must be a hell of a lot tougher than you look. Caster's got someone supporting him, but Nagiko doesn't. And I can't forge a contract with her or anyone else."

It should be painfully obvious that he's just trying to reassure her. To try to give her something so that she doesn't have to feel so bad and useless.

The problem is, it kind of works.

"You can't? Even though you're a Master, too?"

"I-...well. If it were a matter of life and death on any side, obviously I would."

At heart, Waver was the personification of a soft spot for upset teenagers. Even the ones that gave him migraines and spiked his blood pressure. He shrugged, adjusting his sunglasses in a vain effort to hide the slight trace of red his face was turning at the question.

"...But I don't have any intention of making a contract with any other Servant except mine. I wouldn't entrust anyone else with my life like that."

That... actually makes sense. And definitely fits in with what she knows of the Waver she met. ~~Have you SEEN his final ascension?~~

"I guess that makes sense."

She means it, though. She might be the type to trust just about everyone she meets, but she knows that some people just share a special bond like that with each other and no one else.

"Guess I'll have to go look for Nagiko, then."

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