26 Get Ready

Nicholas silently watched his boss do her work like a proper magus while his servant went about moving the rubble out of the rundown Church before sitting down on her knees and clasping her hands together in a silent prayer.

"Look at that, she's an actual saint."

He himself was lying sideways on one of the many pews strewn about the dilapidated buildings, his head propped up and resting on his hand as he tapped the other one on the hardwood underneath him.

From the lawn outside, the marble pathway and walls all around the perimeter, even someone like Nicholas could easily tell that the place had a lot of money put into it before whatever the hell had happened to the rest of the city curb stomped all that effort.

All that remained was a rundown building with cracked walls, broken windows... oh and chunks of the ceiling were outright missing,

"You know Nicholas, you could at least try to help?"

Olga looked up from the ground, placing her hand on the symbols she'd drawn, "Or you could at least look like you don't like that you're completely useless at the moment."

"Meh... No point in trying to be something I ain't." The pale haired teenager shrugged without an ounce of shame, "I'm just content to watch you do something other than that boring shit you're usually up to."

"What does tha-"

"Calling him completely useless is something I can not abide by."

Olga was cut off by Martha who slowly opened her eyes and looked at the two with large blue eyes, "I believe I've informed you of the multiple servants present in our immediate vicinity..." She paused, letting Olga nodded hesitantly, "Why do you think we've yet to encounter one even after we so boldly announced our presence?"

"Yeah, you go, Martha." Nicholas pumped his fist, listening on curiously.

Even he didn't know.

Actually, he may have been counting on someone charging him after that.

Olga narrowed her eyes in thought, "...They don't thin-"

"Indeed, they seem to believe I was the one who did it and are simply biding their time for the moment, trying to assess the threat. After all..." The Rider class dragon vanquisher smiled, slightly raising her hands to either side, "What mere 'human' from this age could halve a city so casually?"

"Right..." Olga bit her finger, nodding slowly as she turned to stare at an unamused Nicholas with a small grin, "That happened, it's still hard to believe that this obnoxious idiot has that kind of strength."

Actually, it was hard to believe ANYONE could have that kind of strength.

She got a middle finger from Nicholas in response to her kind words.

"If anything, it's praiseworthy that a teenager could make heroes of legend stand down, even if they're just taking time to properly judge the threat." Martha commented offhandedly as she rose to her feet and gave Nicholas a thumbs up accompanied by the sort of grin a Saint shouldn't have, "I'm damn proud of you, Master."

"Geh."

Olga recoiled physically at Nicholas' smu-, "Wipe that grin off your face!"

"Heh."

Nicholas only grinned further as the woman surrendered and went back to her work.

A few minutes passed in a comfortable silence, the sort that served as a momentary respite from the fact that most of Chaldea had been probably destroyed, and they were stranded in an unknown place, surrounded by hostile forces even if most of said forces were nothing more than an annoyance.

"Sooo, how're you gonna become a satellite?" Nicholas broke the silence with a question that had been on his mind ever since Olga told them she could.

Olga smiled confidently, "Astromancy is the study of the stars... Putting it in terms you can understand is slightly difficult though..." The Director of Chaldea rubbed her chin thoughtfully, ignoring the dirty look Nicholas was throwing her way, "Wait, I got it. You know how stars are in the sky, right?"

"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" Nicholas was unamused with the mockery of his superior intellect, just because he didn't like to think much didn't mean he couldn't goddamnit.

Martha appeared next to him and knelt down to whisper in his ear, "Don't worry, Master. I'm proud of how you're letting her do it."

Nicholas shrugged again.

Olga had been close to having a panic attack when they found her, even if she hid it well. If throwing weak jabs at him made her momentarily forget about it or at least put it to the back of her mind, he didn't mind at all.

Unfortunately for her though, he never forgot a thing.

He would have his, one way or the other.

"Not at all." The pale haired woman giggled into her hand, "You could say I'm going to replicate the way the stars watch down on everything with the magical energy available here... Actually, it seems this was grounds for some sort of evocation ritual already, an incredibly massive spell from what I can see."

At that moment, before the conversation could proceed any further, fate decided to smile down on them.

"Hello? Hello? Is this getting through?"

The voice came from Nicholas' communicator and it was one all three of them recognised before the first word was completely spoken.

"Romani, you're alive?" Nicholas pulled it out damn near instantly, "Goddamn."

It was the first time Olga had seen him sigh in relief.

"Oh Nicholas, hey there... Wait no, Mash was right! You ARE there! That's... that's a relief."

"Not just me..." Nicholas pointed his device Olga's way, letting her look at the video feed before turning it back to himself, "We picked up a little kid too... She may have been about to cry."

Romani recoiled physically, "The Director?! But how? She was completely incompatible with the rayshift... and she wasn't in a coffin either." The doctor then started muttering to himself, "There's no body here but I guess that makes sense? This isn't my department of expertise."

Nicholas ignored the rant completely, "What about... everyone else?"

"...I" Romani stopped and lowered his head apologetically, "...I'm sorry. Almost all of our staff is gone, the highest authority still alive is me… We're barely keeping the ship sailing. The A-Team can be salvaged though, I don't know how but it appears the explosion was... diverted? It's like it brushed against them and passed over. I've activated the cryofreeze built into the coffins until we can get the medical ward fully up and running again."

Nicholas sat back down and sighed to himself, "Bill's gone then."

Therein came the problem with forgetting absolutely nothing.

He recalled seeing the man being shredded apart in vivid detail, he just didn't want to accept it.

"Good work Romani, that was the best you could have done." Olga spoke seriously, carefully retrieving the phone from a numb Nicholas' hands, "You mentioned Mash, can I take that as affirmation that someone else from Chaldea is here?"

Nicholas tuned her out, pursing his lips as Martha hugged him from behind, trying to comfort him when there was no need to, "It wasn't your fault, Master."

"Lady..." Contrary to what one would expect, the teenager deadpanned, "Do you think you're dealing with a shonen protagonist?"

It wasn't his fault and he wasn't about to bitch and moan about how he 'could have done something'.

It didn't matter, what mattered was that he thought he knew who the perpetrator was.

There was no such thing as indirect involvement unless the one who did it was a little kid, everyone was fully capable of making their own choices.

Whoever had done it was the one solely responsible for 'it'.

And he was going to pay.

"I've directed both Mash and Ritsuka to your current location already, her shield should provide much better communication and information access."

"What if we were to find them ourselves?" Martha offered, not removing her hands from around Nicholas' head, "'Speed up the process' as you say it these days?"

"No need to do that, lady. I've already pointed 'em your way. Damn nice punch you threw back there, lad."

All heads turned to the silent intruder who'd answered the question.

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Hope you liked it.

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