151 Through The Fire And The Flames Fate Style

Entry 130:

Olga Marie Animusphere POV:

Expectation is a word that defines my existence and my suffering as I have lived to fulfill other's expectations, other's goals, and other people's ideas of the Animusphere name.

I hate it so much.

Loneliness.

Pain.

Despair.

Apathy.

These emotions defined my whole life. Few have ever tried to understand me and my accomplishments. Then I learned that I could not be a master or even a demi servant, and as such, my reputation fell further.

And then, my Father was killed by other magi looking to take his knowledge and his work for themselves, and when they succeeded, I was made the leader of my house. And thus bred more hatred and fear of me.

I was now the leader of an organization meant to save humanity from something that would destroy humanity in 2018, and I was flying blind as all of my Father's research was left to me encoded in a way I could not understand. No one but Lev knows this, and maybe Romani.

Lev Lainur was my only friend in my current existence as others sought my knowledge, my wealth, and my position. But Lev was different. He wanted to help me, and I believe in him. I am still believing in him.

Yet, as I was finishing my speech to all the other masters, I felt excited as I would finally be able to prove myself and truly make my own mark on history, and all those who mocked me and belittled me would be proven wrong.

But the universe decided to deny me again. And with a flash of light and a searing pain, I find myself here in this Singularity.

Now, I am running for my life through a burning city and all alone. Again. Where was Lev and anyone, for that matter?!

But as I was about to scream out again for aid, I was surprised as Linus Ozias appeared out of nowhere and handily took all of the monsters out with his- 

"What is that thing?!" I think to myself as his blade emanates an aura of malice and carnage but righteous carnage, and as I view him slaying groups of monsters but by the dozen with an almost fluid dance, I am almost enthralled by his power and grace.

After a couple of seconds, he eliminates all of them as the others watch in shock, and with one final swing, he cuts the final group in two horizontally. As he deactivates the blade, he smiles and says, "Well, it seems we have a bit of a situation on our hands, Lady Animusphere."

I can only nod as he helps me up and looks towards the other two and says, "Kyrielight San and Ritsuka San, I see you guys finally made it, and Kyrielight San, what is with the shield and outfit, even if it makes you look amazing."

I then use this time to regain my bearings as I dust myself off as I am the leader, so I must present myself as such.

  Soon enough, Mash comes over to us and asks, "Are you hurt, Director?" As I answer, I ask, "Kyrielight, I see you have become a demi servant, but what I want to know is how?! And you!"

I point to the orange-haired girl as I ask, "How did you become a master as you don't have any training, and what did you do to get Mash to do your bidding?"

The orange-haired girl then smirks and says, "I am just that amazing Director." Before I can scream at the lack of context, Mash says, "In the final moments before we were ray-shifted, I entered a contract with this delusional master of mine."

Ozias then says, "Well, as much as I would like to discuss the context of our problems here, I would like to ask if anyone else made it Director. Do you happen to know?"

I sigh as I say, "There is no one else, Mr. Ozias, as the only ones that made it were the four of us because none of us were in the coffins when the ray shift occurred, and even then, this should have been impossible."

The man then places his fingers on his chin and says, "I had come to the same conclusion, but I wanted to help that the others made it, and who knows, maybe they're still alive and they're coffins back in Chaldea."

I nod along with the others as I relent. "For now, I shall approve of your contract with the Demi servant, and since we should be right on top of the leyline, we should be able to reestablish contact with Romani."

I look to Mash, and she then places her shield onto the ground and uses her shield as it glows in a white/blue light.

Soon enough, I hear a familiar yet annoying voice. "Hello. Hello. Anyone there? I would congratulate you all for establishing the connection, but I need to confirm all of your statuses."

"Romani, why are you running the show? Where is Lev and everyone else?!" Put Lev on!" Romani then yells, "WAGHHHHHH! Director, you made it somehow? How did you-?"

"Romani, focus on where is Lev and the rest of the staff and why are you in charge?" Romani sighs and says, "Director, it's hard to say, but there's no one else here as currently, the surviving full-time staff is less than 20 people, which includes me and Dr. Lev was supervising from the command room, and there's no way he could have survived the blast."

I almost choke on tears, and thankfully, Ozias asks for me, "Romani, what about the other Master candidates? Are they all right?" He then looks to the monitor and says, "Sadly, they are in critical condition as the coffins are unable to be opened as they are too covered by rubble, and eventually, their life support will give out."

Ozias then asks quickly, "I read in the manual that the coffins had a cryopreservation mode. Can you turn it on from the monitor at your console?" Ritsuka then asks, "Wait, there was a manual?"

Not focusing on the idiot, Romani then says, "Honestly, I'd forgotten they had that feature, but director, are you willing to go through with this as cryopreservation without their approval is illegal."

I immediately respond, "Do it. I'd rather have them live and complain about it later than be dead, and I have to tell the other magi families what happened to them and how I could have saved them."

Ozias smiles, which may or may not have made me blush as he says, "Do not worry, Director, we will be able to save them, and worse comes to worse, we have to explain why we froze them. Maybe when we wake them up, we should offer them popsicles?"

No one can prove that I chuckled at that terrible joke, as the situation and the stress may be getting to me. If only Lev was here. Romani then says with a heavy tone, "Regarding the facility status, it has lost 80% of its functionality, and there's only so much a remaining staff can do. I'm shifting our remaining manpower to repair the ray shift device to get you all out of there, and once we're done, I can request more supplies for this facility to repair."

Ozias then says, "If we're able to get out of there, I should be able to provide enough materials as I have my own skills when it comes to technical repair, and it's not the first time I've worked with Machinery that delves in space and time."

I praise the first Magi for having this man with me as, based on my assessment, his magecraft is top-tier. How has he been able to go on so long under the nose of the association? Not even mentioning that Mystic code he was using.

I have heard that his family was amazing at creating valuable Mystic codes and various other forms of magecraft, but the family itself had died out. Maybe he was hiding all of these advancements to use for later when he arrived.

"Thank you, Mr. Ozias. I shall be able to grant you a reward for your services once we get out of here." he smiles and says, "You may just call me Oz Director, as calling me Mr Ozias makes me feel old." 

I then focus back on Romani. "It physically pains me to say this, but until we return, Romani, you are in charge of the facility and make the ray shift repairs your top priority as we trek through the singularity and solve the problem."

Romani then smiled as he said, "So you finally found your courage, Director. I would congratulate you, but I must return to the repairs. I will let you know if anything further comes up, but I do have to ask: when did you become so brave, Director?"

He had a perfect sentence in the beginning, and then he ruined it: "My family holds the responsibility to keep this timeline together, Romani, and this place is seemingly only full of low-level monsters, and with our current numbers, we should be able to make ourselves useful in this Singularity. For now, though, we are just going to seek to analyze what's causing this anomaly in spacetime."

The others nod at what I said as Ritsuka looks completely and utterly confused, which is sadly understandable given her lack of training and backing from an actual Magus family.

Romani then says as he signs off, "Thanks to our re-establishment of our communications. I should be able to speak with you in short bursts, so let me know if you need any assistance in an emergency."

I wish to answer that statement, but it would be depressing for morale as no one is coming to help us, and I can't afford to do that as we would not have enough time to regain the numbers and funding. 

"That will be impossible as with the current status of the association, the whole harass me due to my supposed mismanagement of the situation, and if that came to pass, I'd be toast. I cannot go back empty-handed, Romani."

He sighs as he cuts off communication, and I look to the other three. "I apologize, but you all are stuck with me for now. Now, Oz leads the way for now as we need to investigate this town, and we will find where the difference in history occurred."

Oz then smiles in an almost excited smirk as he says, "Already calling me by my nickname, Director. It makes me happy that we are already so close."

I am so going to regret this as I then hear Ritsuka wishing for an explanation from Oz.

I do listen to their conversation as I wish to understand the depth of his knowledge, and surprisingly enough, he knows quite a lot for the average magus. In his explanation, he's able to cover the basics of servants as well as what a singularity actually is in relation to the rest of human history.

To keep it simple, servants are a piece of a heroic spirit summoned in response to an event, whether that be for a Holy Grail war or being called upon by the will of humanity itself, Alaya. Each servant is defined by the legend or lore surrounding them, with each one granting them an ability while also making them highly superior to the average human.

Essentially, we are unable to summon the full heroic Spirit due to the amount of power and mystery required in the world to summon them, and thus, we are only able to summon pieces of them through the different classes in the form of servants.

The spirits themselves are only spiritual bodies produced by Earth and the information it holds on each individual servant.

This Singularity is a cut-off point in time that could lead to other problems in the timeline if given enough time to fester. It's like putting a rock into a flowing river, and that rock grows over time until it eventually clogs the river.

Based on my basic knowledge of the Singularity, it seems like this was a failed Grail War that occurred back in 2004, but with different servants. 

( I hope I'm doing this explanation well enough here because the Fate lore is deep and feels deeper than the Mariana Trench.)

Ritsuka, in the beginning, was doing quite well, and then I saw smoke coming from her ears, and she shut down. We are doomed.

As we approach the bridge, more skeletons and hooded figures approach us but are easily taken out by OZ and Mash. Oz seems to show more and more interesting techniques as he uses reinforcement to increase his strength and perception and keeps track of multiple opponents at once. In all honesty, it would give a servant a run for its money.

Such a promising potential made me wonder why he decided to join the project. I will have to do a thorough question session later as, based on what I can see from the man, he is very whimsical yet serious at the same time.

He also understands that all of us are not as strong as he or Mash, so he is helping us take our time and not overloading us. I would thank him for that, but I do not want to appear weak.

But then, after dozens of skeletons appear, Oz puts his hand in front of Mash as if saying don't worry, I got this, and before I can yell at him for his overconfidence, he proceeds to summon a yellow ball of light that feels warm.

And with that one ball, he fires it out and explodes, disintegrating the small army of skeletons in front of us. He then looks back, gives us a very cheeky smile, and says, "You guys don't have to worry. I'm pretty strong after all, if only just a little bit."

I was definitely not amazed, and you cannot prove a thing. "Oz, we are going to have a very in-depth conversation when we return to the facility. I hope you understand this."

Oz looks back at me and says, "Director, if you want to invite me for a date, just say so." Ritsuka then gasps and says, "Oz, are you two-timing right in front of me? I thought we had something special." Oz then puts his hand on her shoulder and says, "We will always have that special time we spent together in the infirmary. Don't worry."

I am surrounded by idiots. But I understand what he is doing along with the delusional Master over there as they're trying to lighten the mood from the terrible environment we find ourselves in, and sad to say, it's working as I'm chuckling here and there.

But then I am reminded we are 14 years in the past in a messed up part of history, and we need to destroy the Singularity, so I refocus.

"As much as your jokes are unfunny, as we need to make our way across the bridge towards the mountain, it seems like the cause of the singularity is there." Oz just smiles and says, "Don't worry, director we will be fine because hey, you promised me a date or to talk shop, as we may Magi say nowadays."

He is so lucky that he seems so powerful and that we're not at the association, as they would tear him apart as soon as he started talking. Especially the orange-haired girl as well. She is gaining some decent experience as a master and helping to direct Mash in battle. It seems that Oz's experience is rubbing off on them.

Just by being in his presence, we feel safer and more powerful is it a type of magecraft that uses an area of effect to increase our individual strengths and learning capabilities?

But then Oz gets serious and says, "I understand your need to get the Singularity, and this project is done, Director. I've read up on your history, and I know your struggles, at least from the papers. I see we are with you to the end. I hope you know this."

He is so lucky that that face is so handsome, or else I'd be slapping it. How dare he attempt to empathize with my situation.

Where were you before?