The Prop Room
I blink rapidly as I take in the new arrival. A man a few centimeters taller than me, in a spring-colored robe, a long mane of white hair flowing behind him as pink flowers sprout in his wake. Who… no, there's something about his color palette and fluffiness that's reminiscent of-!
"Fou?" I ask, and he pauses for a moment, then glances back at me, a strange smile on his face.
"I think this is the first time I've been mistaken for Cath Palug," He says, bemusement dancing in his tone. "Well, you can think of me as his friend if you want."
"Uh…" how am I even supposed to respond to that.
"Merlin. Why are you interrupting?" Asks Tezcatlipoca- wait, huh? Fou's friend turns back towards the Aztec god, and -oh! Ohhh!
…Oh?
"Yeah, I'm still lost," I admit.
"Don't worry. Your reliable big brother Merlin is here to set everything straight," says… I guess he's Merlin? Which would bake him Recorder's master, apparently?
"You don't look a thing like what I expected!?" I can't help but shout. "And what's with this sudden 'big brother' declaration?"
"Well, I can conjure up a fake beard if you really want, but I don't really see the point. It's a new era where charming young men and internet idols are more respected fonts of wisdom than the elderly, after all," Merlin answers. "-And I've already set off Hieda with these digressions, haha!"
"Recorder's watching too?" I reply. "That's good, I was a little worried-"
"To be honest, I'm not entirely clear on how he's able to observe me in here, this place was a black box to him before," Merlin ponders, tapping his chin. "Oh, never mind, he can't see anything, he just predicted I would be chattering!"
"R-right…" I mumble. Why do I get the feeling that the two of them have been bickering nonstop with telepathy this entire time?
"Oh, to be clear, Hieda's in mortal danger right now. It's really, really bad that I had to hop in here," Merlin says, smile falling away from his face momentarily. "But he's got Romani with him, so I'm sure it'll be fine!"
"I was wondering about what Daybit said before, but where's this weird confidence in Romani coming from!?" I guess he did beat up Beryl once… and didn't Beryl throw down with Hercules!? "Hang on, is Romani actually super strong!?"
"Eh…" Merlin waves his hand noncommittally. "Not really, but he knows how to operate the Rayshift equipment."
"Are you serious, that's your plan with that thing…?" Tezcatlipoca asks incredulously.
"We'll just dump him into the London Singularity and deal with it later!" Merlin says, giving a thumbs up.
"So is this urgent or not!?" I shout. I feel like we're getting off-track.
"A little bit. Ritsuka's got an Avenger class pattern, so he's going to keep going deeper in his dream no matter how many times you reset. If we're going to rescue him, we'll have to do it soon," Merlin answers.
"Wha- Since when was that on the table!?" I protest. "-No, wait, we're getting completely sidetracked! My deal with Tezcatlipoca, why-?"
"Why did you see fit to interrupt, Mage of Flowers?" Tezcatlipoca asks.
"I'm just trying to save you a little work, is all. The Witch of Envy is a false Beast, there's no reason for you to try this hard to eliminate her, or become her, or whatever your plan actually was," Merlin says, giving a small sigh as my blood chills again. This bitch was trying to- "I dislike Grand Casters the most, but honestly the entire Grand system needs a huge overhaul, honestly."
…Pardon me?
"Heh… hahahaha!" Tezcatlipoca starts laughing. "So does that mean you actually know what's going on here, Grand Caster?" Wait, so Merlin is-!?
"No, I just said I dislike Grand Casters, and besides, I'm still alive…" Apparently not!? Merlin shakes his head as Tezcatlipoca starts laughing even harder. "To be honest, I've done a lot of guesswork, but what exactly was your plan, anyway?"
"Oh, I'm completely winging it! You can probably guess parts of the initial plan, but when Natsuki Subaru popped in here reeking of VII, I had no idea which way was up anymore," She shakes her head, still fighting back laughter. "If you're saying Satella's being used as some kind of decoy-"
"No, that's not the case either… oh, good grief, are you and Daybit operating under the assumption that VII is still intact…?" Merlin lets out a groan.
What is he even- "Seriously, is one of you going to explain what's going on here!?"
"...Ah. Whoops. Did we already win, then?" Tezcatlipoca asks, clearly a little confused as well.
"Haha… I'll try to be as concise as possible," Merlin says, an expression on his face vaguely reminiscent of the one I had back when I had to explain everything to Rem back in Okeanos. "The Crawling Chaos is distracted right now, so this is probably the best time to do it."
***
Fragmentary Record/Lostbelt
I'll just jump ahead to and start our story in 2017. Yes, I know it's confusing for you, Subaru, but please bear with me. It'll make sense eventually.
Put simply, Beast I, the King of Demon Gods, was defeated. It wasn't perfect, and it didn't come without sacrifice, but in the end, the Last Master of Chaldea, Fujimaru Ritsuka, was victorious. Even the trials thereafter, the remnant Demon Pillars who appeared to confront him were defeated.
…Not without a certain gate being opened, one that's in many ways the cause of our problems in our present year of 2015, but for the time being, let's skim past it.
The defeat of Beast I was the catalyst. A necessary step to usher forth the emergence of the eventual final Beast.
VII of the End, the Alien God, the Alien Planet… in short, the life's work of Marisbury Animusphere. It reached its full capacity, and bleached the Earth's Surface clean, causing a whole second series of adventures, the final of which is really the only important one for our purposes.
Mictlan, the South American Lostbelt - ah, Subaru-kun, you can just think of it as something similar to a Singularity. Lostbelts probably can't be born anymore, so it's not really important for you to know the details of their function.
The important part was, within that Lostbelt was a certain being, an all-powerful Alien existence that fell to Earth eons ago and lay dormant.
[One Radiance Thing], the Ultimate One of the Oort Cloud.
And, between the two of them, Daybit Sem Void and his Servant, the Grand Assassin Tezcatlipoca, hatched the harebrained scheme to awaken the thing and sick it on Chaldeas. That was where VII was lurking after all - if ORT destroyed Chaldeas, Marisbury's scheme would be foiled. There was just the teeny-tiny drawback of ORT probably also destroying the Earth while it was at it.
Daybit believed that such a sacrifice was worth it. To be honest, I can't firmly say that I disagree with him.
Oh, but for the record, Hieda did disagree when I told him about it, since he's enough of a miserable bastard that Marisbury's planned world didn't seem so bad to him.
With all of that being said, Ritsuka and the rest of Chaldea couldn't let the destruction of Earth slide, so they fought against ORT.
It was a really close thing. I was almost sure that Chaldea had won. But perhaps, just this once, my all-seeing-eyes deceived me.
His human body just couldn't keep up with it. Fujimaru Ritsuka died of exhaustion, and the Earth was doomed - or at least, it should have been. In some sense it was, because ORT certainly went on to shatter Chaldeas and most of the planet's northern hemisphere. But there was a catch, an in-many-ways unsurprising twist, that occurred at the moment of Ritsuka's death.
One of those observing wished for a do-over. To [Regress], so to speak. But major events are subject to Quantum Time Lock, and so there ought to have been no possibility. Just as Artoria cannot undo the fall of Camelot, neither could she undo his demise. But, as with most things, there is an exception - a category of existence specialized in usurping the Human Order.
The spot of Beast II was vacant. And so, by the power of an Outer God, she ascended, and turned back the clock.
***
The Prop Room
"Yeah, I already knew most of that," Tezcatlipoca says. "I hitched a ride, after all, in exchange for dragging Fujimaru's soul along with me. Now that he's revived, the deal is over and I can start actually acting against her. But what's with this whole 'erasing him from existence' scheme she's pulling at the same time? Oh, and for that matter, are you sure that the Alien God has been destroyed? Chaldeas sure seems active to me."
"Well, that's definitely an odd part," Merlin says. "And it's made more difficult by the fact that I can't actually observe the current interior of Chaldeas. But, as far as VII goes, I can verify that you were successful. The Alien God was destroyed, and I don't believe that The Crawling Chaos has the power to bring back defeated Beasts - not that she'd want to, in any case."
"Wait, but didn't you say that Beast I was defeated?" I ask.
"Ah… ahaha… I haven't actually been able to figure that part out. [Ars Nova] isn't the type of thing that can be undone, and yet…" Merlin trails off. "But believe me on VII - if that was still active, there's no way that its wreckage could have been included in Satella's Spirit Origin when she was summoned to this world."
Hang on, summoned…?
"Oh! You mean rather than 'False', she's just an out-and-out fake? Just say it that way, good grief. I guess I figured she wasn't a fit for the sin of [Analysis]. So that's what it was… good grief, what a roundabout way of doing things," Tezcatlipoca sighs, falling into a sitting position. "I guess she'd need [Independent Manifestation] to follow Natsuki Subaru from singularity to singularity, but just which Divine Spirit was insane enough to pull that out of a Beast's corpse and staple it to her?"
"No, seriously, back up! What do you mean, 'summoned'?" I ask. "Satella is sealed in Lugunica.. or I guess in that book, now, but-!"
"No, Subaru, let me make a distinction. There's a difference, after all, between the Satella in the other world-" Merlin says, waving his hand - and sparkling powder falls off of the hand bearing my command spells, revealing… "-and the Watcher class servant that was attached to you without your knowledge."
…a second set of Command Spells. Three black arms, gripping each other, encircling the three star-like emblems I'm so used to seeing there.
"... I get what she was aiming for in hiding it from you, since you can't keep a secret, but," Merlin says as he shakes his head, "to be honest, I think it was more a decision out of laziness than anything. That woman is a total mess. Her goal is a total mess too, by the way - even if you can make a path back to that other world, she won't find what she's searching for there either. There's no person in existence that can love something like her, not in the way she wants."
There's a million things running through my mind at this point. I don't really think one round of questions is going to get me anywhere. But, for now, I'll stick to the most important thing to ask.
"Then… when you asked for a Command Spell-" I gaze slowly at Tezcatlipoca.
"Yeah, I was asking for one of those. I only needed one in order to command your Watcher to kill herself, after all," She answers, and I feel a surge of fury fill me. "Hey, calm down. It's fine now, water under the bridge. I was just mistaking her identity. You can't fault a Grand Assassin for wanting to kill a Beast, right?"
"That's-!" Logic says I can't. But, even so… even so…! "You-!"
"Now, now, Subaru. This isn't the time for that. You can hash it out later. Don't you remember what I said before? Ritsuka's only sinking deeper and deeper right now. If we want to save him, we need to get moving soon," Merlin interrupts my fury.
…Right.
"Right, there was something like that!" I shout. "So, if I'm following everything… that guy we were fighting, he was the real deal, not a Figment?"
"Eh, the body's a figment, and TATARI's rumors were needed to reconstruct his shattered mind," Tezcatlipoca says. "But the soul belongs to the real Fujimaru. A real Fujimaru, anyway. What happened to the one that the Crawling Chaos stole away six years ago? Is she just holding on to his body to stick what I've produced here into it? What happens after that?"
"Your guess is as good as mine," Merlin answers. "But it won't matter if we foil her here. I don't know how she's addled his mind into wandering deeper into the dream, but you should be able to deal with it, right Tezcatlipoca?"
"Ugh, I feel like I just keep saying this but wait a damn minute! You're sending her to rescue Ritsu-kun?" I protest, pointing at the obviously evil god.
"You and her, actually. As a Master-Servant pair," Merlin answers with a smile. "It's not a bad idea, if I do say so myself."
"Which part of it isn't bad, exactly!?"
"Ah, that's no good. I'm not breaking my contract with Daybit. If Natsuki wants my help, he'll have to think of something else," Tezcatlipoca says.
"Well that's good, because I don't!" I say, crossing my arms.
"Yeah, that's fine!" Tezcatlipoca retorts, crossing her arms.
"Fine!" "Fine!" We both look away from each other.
…
For a moment I glance at Merlin's face - yeah he can't seem to believe this childishness either.
Dammit…
"If you don't do something, Ritsuka will probably end up lost forever. I can't do anything about it myself, there's something forbidding my entry into his dreams specifically," Merlin says with a bit of irritation I might be imagining in his voice. "So would you please…"
"Ugh, fine!" I shout. I really, really don't want to do this, but-! "Tezcatlipoca. I'll sell you my Authority of Gluttony - so become my Authority of Gluttony."
That was the trick, right? That's how Louis Arneb was able to enter my body the first time, because I was already a suitable vessel for the thing she bore.If that was the case, then-
"Well, if you insist," before I can even turn and face her completely, Tezcatlipoca - Louis Arneb - dives into my chest and melds into my body.
***
Author's note:
Give it to me straight. Is this chapter the shark jump, or was that dozens of chapters ago?