35 Return of the King

"Welcome back everyone!" Romani enthusiastically greeted the 'field team', a wide smile on his tired face as he held his arms open and maintained a lax image if only for the sake improving the atmosphere having the fate of humanity shoved on your shoulders brought with it, "I've got Chaldea up running as best I could with what was left so I'm sorry if something is out of place, it'll take a bit to iron out everything..."

The doctor paused for a moment, running his gaze over the returning team, "I see everyone is in good health! And Miss Mordred, allow me to officially welcome you to Chaldea. I hope we all can get along."

Mordred narrowed her eyes in suspicion before giving the fluffy ginger a small nod, "...Sure."

Nicholas ignored the man and stared at the azure gem in his hand.

Cu had told him he'd store Olga's soul in it and the people at Chaldea could easily transfer it to a homunculus designed to her exact proportions.

Apparently that was the best they could do with what they had.

He didn't get how the man was so sure they had someone like that though.

And because Nicholas trusted him, he decided to go with it.

...It definitely wasn't cause he didn't know jackshit about souls.

"W-Why isn't anyone saying anything?"

Shaking his head from his thoughts, Nicholas started eyeballing the already nervous Romani, "Do we got someone who's good at making homunculu- humunculo..."

Martha sighed and corrected her Master with a small smile, "Homunculi. That's what he's trying to say." The Saint sauntered over to Romani and patted his shoulder, leaning closer to whisper, "Have a talk with him, please."

"I'll be in the cafeteria, I expect to see you there Master. I doubt going for so long without anything to eat didn't leave you famished." Bowing gracefully, Martha left the central command room with slow, graceful steps.

"Oh hey! Me too! Cook me a ton of food, titty lady!" Mordred chased after her and moments later, a very audible slap echoed throughout the now empty Chaldea... followed by a massive crash.

Romani nodded confusedly, "The Director issued a directive to not let the two of you interact under any circumstances for the preservation of Chaldea and it's staff but... I think that doesn't matter anymore." The doctor clearly didn't understand why but he put on a reassuring smile and gave the teenager a thumbs up all the same, "Nicholas, you're in luck. We have perhaps one of the best homunculi creators in the entire world at our side."

"Great." Nicholas smiled slightly, tossing the gem in his hand to Romani.

"W-Wait!"

Of course, the genius that he was, Romani couldn't catch it outright and ended up tossing it in the air as he stumbled backwards, struggling to stay upright while also trying to catch the gem again.

"Guh!"

The end result was him actually catching it... only to stumble over his own chair and fall back on his head... which in turn hit the side of a table, making the screen lying on it topple over onto his chest, knocking the wind out his lungs.

"Ouch?" Gudako shivered from phantom pain, "Is he alright?"

"This happens a lot more than you'd think, senpai." Mash giggled at his suffering, "You're better off just ignoring him..."

Gudako deadpanned, "Of course it does, why wouldn't it?"

She looked about completely done with their bullshit.

The red haired teenager yawned and stretched her arms, "I think I need a nap. You all enjoy... whatever the hell you plan on doing next." Gudako rubbed her suddenly drowsy eyes, "I need a moment to cope with all this... And the fact that that guy beat another guy calling himself a damn demon god to death... with his bare hands."

"Hey take my advice, just stop thinking about it."

Chaldea's 48th Master huffed at Nicholas' totally valid life hack and walked away lethargically, "Is my room still in one piece?"

Romani raised a trembling hand in affirmation, "Y...Yeah. All of the rooms are intact actually." He paused for a moment and glanced at Nicholas before continuing, "Except Nicholas'... Lev planted a bomb right under his bed... about the only bomb there was in that ward."

"That asshole." Nicholas clicked his tongue, his room had all his limited edition DvDs and video games that he definitely hadn't poached from Kadoc, "It's like he actually tries to make me hate him more."

"...Nicholas, you've been harassing him since you arrived." The Doctor slightly smiled, slowly sitting up, "But then again, if only we'd listened to you. This tragedy may have been avoided."

Nicholas sighed and offered one of the few friends he had left a hand, "Nah man, even I didn't see this one coming. I'll get the disney reject fuckers and their King."

He was actually going to have a whole monologue about killing someone for the first time, except Beryl but fuck that guy anyway, but turned out the Lev and Loony co weren't people to begin with. That meant he could rip them all a new one without feeling even slightly bad.

"Y... Yeah, I hope so." Romani looked discouraged but Nicholas supposed anyone would with how many folks they'd lost in an instant, "What do you want me to do with this gem?"

"It's Olga."

"Gotch-... wait what?! It's what?!"

"It's Olga."

"Ha... how does that even work?"

Nicholas shrugged, "It's magic, I ain't gotta explain shit. The guy I got it from told me he'd set it all up already. We just gotta shove it in a homunculus or something."

"It was Cu Chulainn. I suspect it's a product of the primordial runes he learnt from the Witch of Dun Scaith." Mash explained like the dutiful kouhai she was, "As for the how and why, I'm afraid none of us have any chance at deciphering it. All he told me was, 'What is a fragmented reality against the power of God?'... Does that hold some meaning?"

Romani considered her words seriously, rubbing his chin in thought, "Primordial Runes were the creations of the King of the Norse Gods, Odin. I guess it's not that strange for them to be able to manage something like that?"

Nicholas tuned out the nerds and pulled one of the chairs, straddling it, before staring at Romani curiously, "Romani, give it to me straight. How fucked are we?"

Lev had planted bombs all over the facility like he was trying to outdo all the terrorists in the world, and according to what he'd been ranting about, most of the staff was gone already.

The Doctor ignored the vulgar wording of the question and cleared his throat, "It's what you think it is, most of our staff is gone. All of the higher command is dead, we barely have the numbers to keep everything running... I'm sorry but there's nothing any of us could have done to avoid this."

He let out a long tired sigh, "The FATE system is running at full capacity now however, but that's about it."

"A-Team was preserved well enough..." Romani paused before letting out a defeated chuckle, "You tried to punch the explosion didn't you?"

Nicholas nodded.

"That was probably what saved them."

The teenager let out a relieved sigh, at least those guys were around and kicking. If they could be patched up, the other singularities would be a breeze... He wasn't ashamed to admit that outside punching shit, ALL of them were a lot more competent than him.

Closing his eyes, Nicholas rose to his feet and turned to leave the command room, "Bring Olga back and then we can do something about Lev's King."

Mash got up to follow him worriedly. The lavender haired girl clearly wanted to say something but stayed silent.

"Of course... but Nicholas, I need to tell you something else."

The teenager glanced back at Romani from the corner of his eye.

"As of this moment, everything outside Chaldea has stopped existing."

-

I wanted to make this a bit more lighthearted but the guy just lost most of his friends and bill too and now he has to actually look at what that looks like, with time to consider because he has nothing else to distract himself with.

Anyone know any fixes for tiredness?

Like, it's not physical I'm pretty sure but I'm sleepy all the time these days for some reason. I saw a doctor and he told me there's nothing wrong but ehhhh... And I hate needing 8 hours of sleep to function right already, why do I need to sleep even more?

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