As soon as the Spiritron lights fade from my vision, even before it recovers fully so that I can analyze my surroundings, I immediately summon my pocket runes and draw a pair of large handguns from them - a pair of Magnum Research Desert Eagles. This way, if we've Rayshifted right into actively hostile territory, I can respond to incoming acts of aggression instantly; even a split second's worth of time can be all the difference between surviving a hostile encounter and ending up as a corpse in the boondocks of history.

But once I'm able to scan our surroundings, it would appear that there was no need for my defensive posturing. We've ended up alongside a dirt path that cuts through some gently rolling hills, and we're the only ones in this vicinity as far as the eye can see.

Turning around, I quietly check our party. Caster, Foreigner, and Mash are all present and appear to be doing well; Tamamo is fluffing out her tail, with her eras twitching this way and that in excitement at being transported back into the past. Yuuyuu is cautiously thrilled, also looking around and taking in the pleasant sights of the rolling hills that we seem to have been transported to. Mash, on the other hand, has stooped down and picked up Fou, who's somehow tagged along with us and is batting his paw gently against Mash's left cheek. I'm not sure exactly how to describe Fou; he's like a puppy, or maybe a fox, with a moderate coat of white fur but with a big bushy tail not unlike Tamamo's, a long white mane, and two big ears like a rabbit's or a donkey's that are colored purple on the inside. He also likes rocking a white capelet around his neck for whatever reason. In any case, he's been with Chaldea for as long as I can remember, and he likes roaming around and doing Fou things like pilfer sweets from the cafeteria and drop-kick Roman whenever he gets a little too hooked on Magi Mari.

"Fou, just how did you Rayshift here with us? Were you hiding out in the Rayshift chamber again?" Mash lightly scolds him, rubbing the top of his hair, and he responds with his usual high-pitched "Fou!" call because that's the only thing he really says.

Gasping a little with delight, Yang tiptoes over to Mash at the sight of Fou in the latter's arms. "Omigosh, what's this adorable little creature ~ ?"

"This is Fou. That's right, I don't think either of you've met him before, right?" Mash turns to Foreigner and offers the little fluffy demon to her. "Would you like to hold him?"

"Y-Yes! Yes, of course!"

Unable to contain her excitement, Yuuyuu takes Fou from Shielder and cuddles with him, cooing with a high-pitched voice of her own and gently rubbing her left cheek against Fou's face.

"Fouuu..." Fou grumbles, squinting his purple eyes in reaction. He's not really a fan of whenever people do this, and Youkihi's far from the first to do so.

Seeing movement to my left, I glance at Tamamo stepping quietly over to me.

"Master...d-do you know that...that 'Fou' creature...?" she mumbles to me, her mouth near my left ear so that Fou won't hear.

"A bit, yeah. I don't know him as well as Mash does, but I know enough about him to know his tendencies and that he's been in Chaldea for a long time. So I'm not really that surprised that he's ended up Rayshifting with us."

"No, no, no, that's not what I mean..."

"Then what is it?"

Caster steals a disgruntled glance over at Fou, who's pawing a gleeful Yuuyuu's face in an attempt to get her to let go of him.

"...what I mean to ask is...he's not...he's not my competitor, is he now...?"

"Competitor?" Narrowing my eyes in visible confusion, I also glance over at Fou myself. It's like I subconsciously already know what Tamamo is referring to, because my two black eyes immediately rest on Fou's bushy tail that is hanging listlessly past Yuuyuu's arm. "Oooh...nah, don't worry about it."

Tamamo doesn't say anything; she just silently pumps her arms with reassurance that she doesn't need to worry about Fou taking her limelight away from her in the category of fluffy tails.

While the others are fooling around a little and wondering how Fou's managed to follow us here in this Singularity and how Rayshifting would even work for someone like him, I look down at the pair of sidearms that I'm holding in my hands: .50 Action Express Desert Eagles. The one in my right hand has a sky-blue slide and a white pistol grip, and the one in my left has a crimson red slide with a matte black grip. Technically speaking, Desert Eagles of this caliber are illegal in the state of California where I live, so officially the papers that I have registering my ownership of these weapons list them as being DE44CA's, or Desert Eagle MK. XIX's chambered for .44 Magnum, which are legal in California.

These pistols have been with me since very early on in my career as a freelance mage, because when I was first starting out, my experiences dictated that if I were to use firearms as my weapons of choice, I needed guns that were not only portable but also packed huge amounts of stopping power to take down enemies reliably. Standard 9mm's are easy to use and easy to train with, but they just don't put enemies down fast enough unless I go for headshots, and I don't always have the luxury of taking my time to aim for those kinds of precise shots.

So I would have gone with .45 ACP's when Chuck lent me a Desert Eagle that was in his collection, telling me that I ought to give it a shot, no pun intended. My initial experiences with it were subpar; coming to it from regular 9mm's like Glocks and Berettas, the Desert Eagle was unwieldy, heavy, and difficult to train with at first - but the stopping power in a fifty-caliber handgun bullet was unrivaled and was exactly what I was looking for. So as far as fifty-cal sidearm options went, there were the Desert Eagle, the Grizzly Mk. V, and fifty-cal revolvers like the Taurus Raging Bull Model 500 and the Smith & Wesson Model 500, and since I mainly trained with Chuck's Desert Eagle, I decided to stick with what I knew and ordered two custom ones from him, and they've been mainstays in my arsenal ever since.

Giving the two big sidearms a quick and unnecessary spin in my hands, I store them away back into their pocket runes. It's nice to be able to use them again.

As I'm putting my guns away for now, Mash approaches me this time, letting Yuuyuu have a bit more time playing with Fou with Tamamo creeping over to the two of them to cautiously observe Fou's behavior.

"Master, I've confirmed our time axis coordinates; we are now in the year 1431," she reports.

"1431..." I quickly wrack my brain, putting my knowledge of world history to the test. History was one of my favorite subjects in school, which made me kind of an oddball back then because nobody else really liked it. "That's in the middle of the Hundred Years' War."

Mash nods. "This should be during one of the war's respite periods, when there was not much fighting going on."

"At least not in this area. But are we sure we're in France right now?"

"Yes; our geographical axis indicates that we should be in France."

I take another look around, as if that's somehow going to confirm our locale. But as I look around, the top of my peripheral vision catches my attention, and I arch my neck upwards to get a better look. Mash notices my eyebrows narrowing deeply, and she, too, looks up at the sky with me.

"What's wr...uh, what is...?"

A slight scratch of radio static buzzes from over Mash's shoulder, and there floats a blue hologram with Roman's likeness depicted in its center.

"Alright, we're connected, Da Vinci! It's not the best quality, but at least we have a video feed, and we can clean up this signal later. Everyone okay over there - wait, why're you two just staring up at the sky like that?"

"Doctor, I'm adjusting your feed. Can you tell us what the heck we're looking at?"

By this point, both Servants beside us, overhearing our conversation, also join us in staring up at the sky. A colossal ring of light is the best that I can describe it - there's a perfect white circle inscribed into the heavens above us that pretty much takes up the entire sky, and that's not an exaggeration by any means. The most eerie aspect of it is how there is nothing on the inside of this ring; white rays of light congregate outside its circumference, but nothing within. In a weird sense, it reminds me of how Saturn's rings appear as rings to photographs and telescopes but in reality are composed of countless particles of varying sizes, or at least that's the impression that it's giving me.

"...this is..." Roman's voice becomes slow and filled with a mix of awe and creeping tension. "...a ring of light...? No, some form of magecraft cast over the satellite orbit or something...?"

"It's huuuuge!" Caster exclaims indignantly. "Honestly, what kind of heathen mage would have the balls to cast such hideously and unnecessarily extravagant magecraft like that? I mean, I know I can get pretty showy, but this's just on another level!"

"Another level is a good way to put it - it's freaking gigantic. It could easily be the size of the whole continent of North America..."

"I guess that means we've already found a clue as to what's going on with these Singularities, even if we don't know what it is exactly or what it's meant to do..." Youkihi adds, still snuggling with Fou who's also looking up at the sky apprehensively with the rest of us.

"I take it that neither of you have an idea of what we're dealing with here?" I ask my Servants, who both shake their heads.

"I figured I'd check just in case, but there really aren't any records indicating anything like this happening back then. I mean, if something like this really did happen in actual human history, we'd already know about it...but in any case, like Yang said, this's gotta be one of our leads in figuring out Lev's plans and the whole incineration of humanity that's supposed to be going on, or uh, supposed to have happened. We'll be sure to analyze it further on our end, so in the meantime, you lot just concentrate on surveying the Singularity. Like I said before the Rayshift, you should start by searching for potential leylines and establishing that summoning circle ASAP."

"Roger that."

Nodding back at Roman's hologram, I immediately get to work: pointing my right index finger up in the air above my head, I silently discharge a vicinity scanning spell that behaves like echolocation, in that the spell sends out a magical signal in all directions in order to scan for other presences, both normal and magical, in my area. When I cast it, everyone else winces a little in surprise, as this is the first time I'm casting this Comsat spell, as I like to call it, around them.

"W-What was that just now, Master?" Caster asks curiously, looking up at my finger to try to figure out what I'm doing.

"Scanning spell; I'm checking our vicinity for potential threats and other presences. That feedback you all showed is normal; this spell works by passively interacting with sources of mana, and since this's your first time getting hit by it, it's a bit jarring at first. You'll have to get used to me doing this quite a bit, though, so apologies in advance."

"What about regular humans? Or other entities without active mana sources?" Mash asks.

"I still detect them - if the spell runs into something but doesn't find a mana source that it can interact with, then it'll let me know regardless. But since they have no mana for my spell to interact with, they don't notice the spell at all, which is rather convenient. And speaking of normal humans..." I lower my right gloved hand and look to my left. "We got incoming."

From down the dirt path coming up the hill on which we're standing approaches a small contingent of soldiers, dressed and armored appropriately for the era. However, they're very quiet and tense, judging from the looks on their faces when they walk into our line of sight and the lack of noise coming from their group with the exception of the clanking of their weapons and armor. As they see us blocking their way and stop hesitantly, unsure of who we are and why we're wearing such strange clothes, I quietly take note that if Mash is right about this specific period of time being a "respite" in the Hundred Years' War, then there shouldn't be a reason for these soldiers to be behaving this way, much less be out and about patrolling like they are.

Sensing the two Servants behind me stepping up to my defense at the sight of the soldiers stopping uncertainly before us, I raise both my hands a little out to my sides to stop them both.

"These are just normal soldiers; they don't pose a threat, so stand down," I warn them quietly.

Mash steps forward instead, though, and calls out to them: "Hello, excuse me. We are travelers, would you happen to - "

But Shielder doesn't get very far into her greeting when the soldiers, upon hearing her talk, begin freaking the hell out and immediately begin posturing themselves defensively, and one of the soldiers who appears to be the squad's commanding sergeant or officer is already barking orders at the rest of his comrades.

"Hmph! You were saying, Master?" Tamamo smirks a little my way as she swifty pulls out a handful of talismans from her left sleeve. Does she have pocket runes like I do that she hides inside her sleeves or something? I'll have to ask her at some point later.

"Er...no, that - that was my bad, Miss Tamamo, I should've - I should've thought this through a bit better and greeted them in French..." Mash sighs apologetically, pulling her shield up in front of her in response to the soldiers' posturing. "Even if I spoke modern English to them, they probably still recognized enough of it to know that it's English..."

"Oooh, Yuuyuu gets it! They think we're the English, coming back to try to make war in France again, right?" Youkihi says brightly, and she beams at her own deduction.

"Pretty much. Mash, try talking to them in French; you're the only one who can speak it among us," I order Shielder quickly, who nods and calls out to the soldiers in French. Since I don't know any European languages other than English, I'm not sure if there's like a Middle French like there is Middle English; maybe that should've been something I needed to take into consideration before having Mash try to negotiate with the soldiers. Was Middle English spoken around this time? I can't remember, my linguistics history is lacking.

But the French sergeant barks back in response, and I don't need to know the language to know that he's still maintaining a hostile stance. And sure enough, Mash shakes her head.

"He refuses to cooperate, Master. He also said my French is weird..."

"Figures."

The sergeant barks something again, and two soldiers begin charging at us with their spears. Mash begins to step forward to block their advance while both Tamamo and Youkihi, the latter dropping Fou beside her to spring into action, also begin to lunge forward -

- but I'm faster. Before anyone knows what's happening, I'm already standing in front of the two soldiers, treading the space between their two polearms, and as they're turning their necks in realization that I've somehow reached them before they could notice, my two hands are already up in the air, with their index and middle fingers outstretched, and drop quickly down to my sides in fluid swiping motions.

Marking the swiping motions are two eerily silent arcs of soft blue light that are barely visible in broad daylight, but when they pass through the spears on either side of me, the spears spontaneously bisect themselves, the upper halves holding the spear blades clattering awkwardly onto the dirt beneath us.

The two advancing soldiers, upon realizing what I've done to their weapons, react immediately: one of them ditches his spear-turned-stick and simply opts for the medieval method of punching me in the face with his armored gauntlet, with the other keeps his glorified staff to try to beat me over the head with it. Once again, though, their arms only manage to take their attacks so far before my own two hands, set at several fingernails' distance away from their chest armors once my feet are bunkered down into the dirt, surge forward in a pair of simultaneous one-inch punches that send the pair of French soldiers flying back to the rest of their comrades.

The sight of their two comrades getting blasted off their feet intimidates the rest of the squad, but the sergeant, still unfazed, keeps barking orders in French, compelling the rest of the men to advance together, with two of them helping up their allies whom I've knocked back back onto their feet.

But they don't get very far before the soldiers in the front ranks of their advance run headfirst into a hastily erected barrier that appears suddenly before them, effectively quelling their advance, and I sense three heat signatures rushing to my position from behind. Sure enough, both Tamamo and Yuuyuu join me abruptly, with the latter having summoned three of her blue flame fairies that hover over her shoulders.

"I could've handled them on my own, but I guess this'll do," I remark to them while Mash, too, hurries forward to join the action.

"If you just went off like this and did everything, then there wouldn't be a point to us being here!" Tamamo frowns up at me. "Like, I get that you're the lone-wolf type, but c'mon, have a bit more faith in our abilities! You even had the two of us spar each other, didn't you?!"

"I did, but then you two turned it into something of a fight to the death by the looks of it..."

"It was very fun though! We should do it again," Youkihi suggests cheerfully as always. "But first, let us handle this rabble who's dared to take up arms against Master."

Reaching up with my hand to scratch my hair underneath my snapback, I relax my own defensive posture. "I don't think we need to...look."

Between the sights of a strange magical barrier and Yuuyuu's strange fire fairies, the French soldiers are backing away slowly, petrified at these acts of magic that they clearly have never seen before. The sergeant is silent now, though to his credit, he still maintains a defiant look in his eyes as they flicker back and forth from Yuuyuu's blue fairies to us and to Tamamo's barrier, but a few of the soldiers are not so mentally capable and have lapsed into quiet but frantic ramblings of prayer.

Having broken their will to fight, I wave my Servants down to have them remove their magical instruments, and once they've done so, I glance over to Mash.

"Try talking to them again, and make sure they know that we're not here to fight them," I clarify, and Mash nods before speaking out to the sergeant a second time, who understandably is more receptive to Mash's audience this time around. As Mash is conducting talks, I catch Caster folding her arms out of the corner of my eye.

"I still think it would've done them some good to knock some sense into them," she grumbles.

"They're locals; we've got no reason to harm them. And maybe next time don't freak out so much just because people are coming at me with spears."

"Freak out!? Master, your life was in danger just now!" Caster turns to me in full, with her lips pursed together tightly during breaks in her talking. "Of course we'd want to beat these guys up! They were coming at you with full intention of doing very bad things to you!"

"That's right, Master. It's our duty as Servants to, well, serve you. If we see enemies coming at you like this, we can't just not sit around and let you do everything," Yuuyuu nods strongly in a rare instance of taking her co-Servant's side. "Not to mention, you may know a bit about what we can do, but we don't know what you can do."

Frowning back at my two Servants, I silence myself. Youkihi has a point there; I've had them spar the other day so I have an idea of what their combat capabilities are like, but this is the first time that my Servants are seeing what I can do. And I've read before that Servants are much stronger than their own Masters, being Heroic Spirits and all that, so they must be under the impression that they're the ones who need to do the heavy lifting.

As I'm deliberating this to myself, Mash turns to me again.

"They've agreed to stop fighting. The commanding officer said that he doesn't want to lose more men, not when these soldiers here are pretty much some of the last able-bodied soldiers he's got left."

"That sounds like they've been fighting quite a bit. Didn't you say that this was supposed to be one of the breaks in the fighting?" I ask.

"It was, so I asked him about it. In 1431, Charles VII of France signed a peace treaty with Philip III, who was an ally of England. So while there may have been skirmishes here and there, for the most part there shouldn't have been much widespread fighting."

"But that's not what we're seeing here, is it."

"No, it's not. I was told that King Charles is already dead here in this Singularity, and the CO claims that he was burned to death by 'a witch's flames', and once that happened, things just started going from bad to worse. This witch is apparently named 'Jeanne d'Arc'."

My eyebrows furrow even more than they already are. "Jeanne d'Arc? As in the saint?"

"The year should add up...yes, she died on May 30, 1431. So this is soon after she was burned at the stake after being captured by the English. The CO said so himself; he said that he was part of the Siege of Orleans and was present at the coronation ceremony of Charles VII, and he and his men were furious when they'd heard that she got captured and executed by the English."

"But how does he know for sure that it's Jeanne d'Arc we're dealing with here?"

"Well, he knows what she looked like before she died, and he said that Jeanne d'Arc flew by this location where he'd be posted on a dragon, and he got a glimpse of her that way. Her skin and hair color are apparently different, but other than those, he's confident that it's the same Jeanne d'Arc that he fought under in the past."

I still maintain a skeptical look on my face. "Getting resurrected and flying around on a dragon? Sure as hell doesn't sound like the Jeanne d'Arc I know."

Another static of radio buzz crackles over Mash's shoulder.

"This is a Singularity, after all. Weird stuff's bound to happen, so keep your guard up," Roman calls before popping a bite-sized Tootsie Roll into his mouth. "Mmm, these chocolates are delicious ~ "

"The CO even called her the 'Dragon Witch', or at least that's the nickname that she's gotten from the French people after she appeared and started wreaking havoc on the country," Mash continues. "Just like her name suggests, there are dragons flying around attacking the country at large, and because of them, the English have retreated back home."

"It's like the Hundred Years' War isn't being fought against the English, but against dragons now," Yuuyuu remarks. "Oh, and I've always wanted to see a dragon in person! I wonder if they're like the ones back home ~ "

"Probably not; since we're in France, you're probably going to see Western dragons. Mash, ask the CO if he can point us in the direction of this Jeanne d'Arc...Alter, I guess we'll call her, since that doesn't sound like the real one."

So Shielder reopens talks with the French sergeant briefly.

"He says he doesn't know her location now; he knows that Orleans, the French capital, is probably serving as Jeanne d'Arc Alter's headquarters of sorts because reports say that's where the dragons are originating from. But where she is now is anyone's guess."

"Then let's head there. Ask him what direction we should be heading in if we want to get to Orleans."

More translation.

"He says he can't give us proper directions without a map, which he's got one back at their base, which is a fortress nearby. If we follow him, he'll be able to show us."

"Hm, that's fine too. Tell him we'll tag along."

Once the message is relayed, the French sergeant orders his men forward, and we step aside to let them pass and bring up the rear. Tamamo points off into the distance from our location in the hills:

"There's the fortress in the distance there. I could just have everyone fly over there, Master, if you'd like."

"Fly? How so?"

"By using these ~ !"

Raising her arms up over her head, Caster conjures into view a large peculiar mirror. It's got a wide darkish blue, almost indigo rim, ornamented stubs, and solid gold inlays, and it's just about the right size for an average-sized human adult to stand or sit down on it if needed, though I'm not sure how much of a good idea standing or sitting on a mirror is, exactly.

"This is my Noble Phantasm ~ ! My beloved Suiten Nikkou Amaterasu Yano Shizu-Ishi ~ !" Purring affectionately, Tamamo briefly holds the mirror with her own hands before letting it go into the air, and the mirror proceeds to begin revolving around her like a moon or satellite, carefully avoiding the others around her in the process so it doesn't run into any of us.

"...long-ass name for a Noble Phantasm. You couldn't, like, shorten it or something?" I watch the mirror float around us for a minute or two.

"H-How rude, Master! The name is one of the most important things to a Servant's Noble Phantasm! I demand an apology!" Tamamo pouts hard up at me for the first time today, and I'm sure there will be a lot more where that came from.

"Sorry. I guess more to the point, how the hell are we supposed to fly on it, exactly?" The disbelief in my voice is palpable, even while I'm keeping it low so that we don't make the soldiers in front of us more uncomfortable than they already must be, given that we're speaking in a language that their enemies across the Channel speak, or at least some strange futuristic version of it to them.

"Oh, you know, just sit on it," Tamamo shrugs as the mirror floats past her. "Since I'm the one controlling them, you don't need to worry about steering it yourself or anything."

"'Them'? You can make multiple?"

In swift response, Caster conjures up a few more copies of the same mirror, all of which begin revolving around their own master in the same direction as the first.

"As many as I need! Well, that's not really the case, practically speaking my maximum is eight. Any more than that and I start having trouble micro-managing them all," Tamamo admits. "And not to mention the mana expenditure that comes with controlling all the mirrors at once."

"Miss Tamamo, can't you fly on your own? I remember during our spar the other night, you took flight at one point during our skirmish," Yuuyuu remembers aloud curiously as Fou walks close by her feet; it appears that Yuuyuu's efforts to get Fou acclimated to her have paid off.

"I can, but I'd rather not do it for long periods of time. Flying is very mana-intensive, I'll have you know," Caster raises her finger at us like a cram school instructor would. "Short periods of flight, especially during battle, are no problem. But long-distance flights are a different story. That's why I use my mirrors for that; they make flight more efficient. Most Servants can't even fly at all, so you're very lucky you got someone like me to answer your summons!"

"Aha...she's got me beat there..." Yuuyuu chuckles awkwardly with a hand on the back of her head.

"Master, how are you feeling? You seem to be doing fine now, but you are in control of three Servants at once and we don't have Chaldea's mana reserves back online yet, so you'll have to support all three of us on your own for this Singularity," Mash reminds me as we finish our slight descent down the hill, and from here on out it's just a straight, easy path to the fortified outpost in the distance.

I nod back at Mash confidently. "I'm doing fine; it's not as bad as I thought it'd be at first. The couple of days I had having Tamamo and Youkihi around did their job of giving me time to get used to having them around. How about you, though? Notice anything different, having to work with a new Master?"

To my silent surprise, Mash shakes her head. "No, I haven't felt much different...as a matter of fact, Master, your mana signature feels very similar to my previous Master's. So I haven't had to go through much of an adjustment process, if any at all."

"The previous Master...Ritsuka, I think her name was. Olga told me that there wasn't anything really special about her, that she was only accepted into Chaldea's Provisional Master Program in order to help fill their desired quota. No real experience with magecraft, no real talent for it either, and not much in the way of Magic Circuits. So to say that I'm a lot like her is..."

Following my train of thought, Mash quickly starts waving her hands in front of her, alarmed at the implications of the words she's spoken to me just a minute ago.

"W-Wait, no, no, no, I - I didn't mean it like that!" my self-proclaimed underclassman cries out in a desperate attempt to take back her words.

"Miss Mash, as kind of a girl as you are, not even my positive opinion of you and your hard work around Chaldea will grant you amnesty from me if what you're saying is that my Master is a third-rate mage," Tamamo frowns deeply over in Mash's direction, eyeing her with narrowed golden eyes.

"I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say it like that!"

"Ehehe, it's fine, it's fine. Miss Tamamo has a tendency to twist things way out of context, you see. Living with her for the past few days at Master's place has certainly shown that," Yuuyuu giggles, patting Mash on the back reassuringly.

I let the girls gossip and talk to help pass the time while we reach the fortress so that I can occupy my thoughts with what Mash said about her previous Master. Tamamo, though, since she can see that Youkihi is getting along quite well with Mash and doesn't feel like getting all friendly with Yuuyuu, turns to me, probably hoping that she can strike up a conversation with me instead, but she hesitates upon seeing me with a contemplative look in my eye.

"Master? May I ask what's on your mind? If you'd like, you can share it with me, your ever faithful and lovely Tamamo ~ ?" Caster coos to me in a small voice. To her credit, her voice here really does sound quite lovely.

"Oh, I was just thinking about the previous Master a little."

"Hmmm...still on your mind, what Mash had to say about you?" Tamamo's voice loses about half of its loveliness; she really didn't take to Mash's comment well at all.

"Not really what she said, per se, but...I did get a chance to read up on the previous Master's file; you heard what I had to say about her on my part. The biggest takeaway is that from a mage's perspective, she's very uninteresting because her Magic Circuits weren't anything to write home about. I'm the same way, actually; the Magic Circuits I got aren't special at all, so that'd explain why Mash hasn't felt much of an adjustment shock having me as her new Master, if at all."

"Now that's just bogus, there's no way you don't have quality Magic Circuits of your own!" Tamamo again pouts up at me, but with much less venom this time. "You managed to summon me, one of the very best Casters to ever be summoned! If I were in one of those popular mobile games that're all the rage right now, I'd be Five Stars out of five! A Super Super Rare!"

"But those kinds of rating systems are always ambiguous and vague. What if you're just a Four-Star or worse instead?"

"That wouldn't happen, no way! Maybe some of my other tails would be, but not me, nuh-uh!" Clearing her throat abruptly to change the subject, Tamamo points a finger up at me. "Listen, Master. Just because you feel like your Magic Circuits aren't all that great doesn't mean you should put yourself down any more than you need to. I like Masters who know how to be humble, but being a doormat's lame and no one likes that - no one decent, at least. The fact that I decided to answer your summons is proof of your caliber as a Master. Sometimes it's not about the quality of your Magic Circuits, you know."

"Well, yeah, I know that. How else do you think I've lived through all these years of being a mage..."

Yuuyuu, having begun to overhear the conversation going on between me and Caster, turns to us from Mash to join us and nears me.

"Might I add that you've managed to summon a Servant like me, whose class not even the mighty research institute of Chaldea has been able to identify before my appearance," she adds delightfully. "So I second Miss Tamamo's notion, Master. Even if your Magic Circuits themselves may not be of high regard, the same can't be said of your caliber as a Master."

Unable to help myself, I chuckle a little. "I don't know, I'm not held in very high regard as a mage."

It's Yuuyuu's turn to pout at me this time. "Yuuyuu doesn't care about what other people thinks! Yuuyuu thinks that you are a great Master!"

"But I haven't even done anything yet."

"Maybe not around Miss Tamamo and Miss Youkihi, but I happen to know that you've helped the Director in many ways during her initial assumption of office," Mash also joins us, having seen where the conversation is centered now.

"Oh ho? Master has been working with Chaldea for quite some time now, has he?" Tamamo peeks out from my left to peek out at Mash. "Every time we ask him about his involvement with Chaldea, he always makes it seem like he only works on and off for you lot, calling himself a 'mere freelancer' and all that."

"Well, officially he is in fact a freelancer in Chaldea's eyes, but the truth is that he's been working with Chaldea ever since Miss Olga-Marie became Chaldea's director," Mash begins to explain, but she stops herself and glances awkwardly back at me. "Um...Master, is it alright for me to, uh, talk about this?"

I shrug nonchalantly as my two Servants eagerly look back up at me as if they're the ones asking for permission. "Sure, why not. We got a bit of time before we reach the base."

"A-Alright. Um...so yeah. The Director and Master have actually known each other for a while, according to Dr. Roman, anyway. So when she became Director, Miss Olga-Marie immediately turned to Master here to assist her with Chaldean operations wherever he could, and he did so by managing transport of supplies and equipment to Chaldea during the first six months of her tenure until she learned how to do it on her own."

"Transport of supplies and equipment..." Yuuyuu turns to look up at me. "So that was what your business was for, Master?"

"Well, it wasn't just to help Chaldea, remember that my dad established the business first and I inherited it from him," I remind Foreigner. "Olga at the time became Director at a pretty rough point in her life; I don't know if I should be saying this aloud, but for the sake of conversation, the reason why she became Director is because her dad, the previous Director, died suddenly and she was the only one who could replace him as the only heir of the Animusphere family. So long story short, she was going through a bunch. It actually wasn't Olga who asked me to help; it was Roman who did."

"R-Really? The Doctor did?" Mash seems genuinely surprised by this, so they must've not told her.

"Olga was never the type of person to ask anyone for help; you should know that, Mash."

"Er...right, that's...that's certainly true..."

"So Roman had to reach out to me and ask me to give her a hand somehow, and that's how I first got started working as one of Chaldea's freelancers. Their first one, in fact."

"Wait, how did the Doctor know who you were? Did the Director tell him about you?"

"I'm not sure exactly, now that you mention it. I do know that Roman's part of Chaldea's core staff and has been working there for a while, kinda like Lev. I even wanna say that he was a close friend of Olga's dad - that's my best guess, anyway, because her dad knew my dad and me, and so he could've had instructions for Roman to reach out to me in case Olga were to ever get herself into trouble. Again, I don't know for sure, though."

"Gunununu..." I hear Tamamo grumbling in a low, rumbling growl to my left, and she certainly doesn't look too pleased with what she's hearing. "That Director girl...not only does she act like a bitch towards Master, but she even has the 'childhood friend' card she can play on me...such an annoying opponent..."

"I'm not quite sure why you're treating Olga as a sort of rival or something, but let's maybe not jump to conclusions here," I suggest calmly but firmly, which seems to do the trick in getting Tamamo to calm down. "Like, I don't mind if you go head to head with Yuuyuu over stuff, but try not to get Olga involved."

"I-In any case, not many people know about it, but Master has been an essential part of Chaldea's staff for a while now. It's just that because of his nature as a freelancer, all the work that he's done for Chaldea has been behind-the-scenes, so it never gets him any recognition," Mash continues.

"I'm surprised you know so much about it, though," I remark with another small grin, gesturing back at Shielder in return.

"Well...you see, I spend quite a bit of time with the Doctor and Miss Da Vinci, and sometimes even the Director if she feels like it, and they sometimes talk about you."

"Ah, that makes sense. I'll have to go back and remind them to keep their lips shut a bit tighter when I'm somehow part of the conversation when I shouldn't be."

"I-I'll tell them for you, so don't worry about that..."

Another jolt of radio static buzzes quickly before a worried Dr. Roman appears holographically again.

"Uhhh, I just felt a chill down my spine because I thought someone was talking about sewing my mouth shut. By chance it wouldn't have been one of you guys, right?" he asks nervously, eyeing each of us one by one.

"Nah, don't worry about it," I smile naturally back at him. "How're things going on over on your end?"

"Our end...everything looks nominal; we've got reads on everyone in the group, and I don't see anything weird in your a - "

We watch as Roman cuts himself off as he leans forward in the hologram to take a closer look at the computers in the observation room.

" - actually, uh, belay that, we're picking up some hostile signatures approaching that fortress you're headed to. And by 'some', I mean about a handful of dozens."

Just about the same time, I notice several of the French soldiers in front of us begin talking to each other in urgent voices, and I spy some of the pointing off in the distance. Looks like they're aware of this imminent danger, too.

"Given that their CO said that these are some of the last men he's got who're in shape to even go on patrols right now, that's not a good sign for the rest of the base," I quickly recall. "Mash, tell them that we're headed ahead first to handle the threats approaching their base and watch our six. You two, on me!"

Not waiting for Mash to confirm my order, I break off suddenly into a brisk jog that swiftly accelerates into a moderate sprint, leaving the soldiers in my wake. Now that the soldiers aren't blocking my line of sight, I can see for myself the threats that Roman's referring to: they're skeleton soldiers, most likely familiars of some kind reanimated to provide a degree of combat capability for their summoner. While they more or less pose the same degree of threat to me as the French soldiers we've met, that's certainly not the case for the fortress and its defenders who are their targets, especially not with their current number that's advancing towards the base.

Slowing my sprint down to a careful, deliberate gait, I draw my pair of Desert Eagles again, flick off the safeties, and take aim. The hostile skeleton soldiers are already beginning to engage French soldiers defending the perimeter of their beleaguered fortress, and judging by the soldiers' reactions, this doesn't seem like the first time they'd had to deal with these skelly boys.

I haven't had much of a chance, if at all, to touch up on my shooting ever since I summoned my Servants and became a Provisional Master for Chaldea. These skeletons'll have to be my warm-up.

Gripping the magwells of my handguns tightly, I subconsciously let my shooting fundamentals come back to me as I take aim with my right pistol. The stereotype that Desert Eagles have mean recoils is true to an extent, and even more so when you're shooting them one-handed, of course. And it's not like the perk of using magical bullets is doing me any favors here, because I'm still shooting a ton of densely packed mana in the shape of a big bullet through a big gun. So maintaining tight grips on my weapons, including ensuring that my hands are flush with the pistols' beaver tails, is the first step to controlling the recoil. I line up the iron sights of my blue and white Desert Eagle with my right eye, my dominant eye, while keeping my posture and back straight, avoiding letting my neck droop down to the iron sights to maintain optimal accuracy and good sight pictures on target for follow-up shots, which is especially important to me because I'm dual-wielding. I keep a good angle on my elbow to help maintain a good stance and to help manage the recoil of my weapon. I avoid knuckling the triggers and keep my index fingers relaxed against the triggers, as tensed trigger fingers can potentially result in mistimed discharges. The biting cold of the triggers against my exposed fingers that are not gloved so that I can feel the weight of the triggers directly bites my muscle memory into remembering the amount of force I need to use to smoothly fire a round.

All this in just a split moment as I select my target, a skeleton enemy savagely attacking an already injured soldier who won't last long against this new wave of hostile forces. A pair of special hearing protection runes, modeled after headphones that amplify low-decibel sounds but suppress impulse noises like gunshots like the MSA Sordin Supreme, rotates into view over my ears to cover them just before I pull the trigger for the first shot.

The deep, booming report of the Desert Eagle cracks out through the field, bouncing off the fortifications of the outpost and traveling over the open space of the rest of the fields beyond. The heavy fifty-caliber shot, composed of densely compressed mana concentrated in a bullet-sized package, strikes my intended target right in the side of the skull and cleanly removes the skull entirely from its neck, dissipating in the process to avoid potential crossfire.

After this first shot, I slightly lower my right hand to raise my left to alternate pistols, so now it's my red and black Desert Eagle's turn to shoot. Maintaining the same sight picture, I transition to the next target, prioritizing the skeleton warriors already in the middle of assaulting the defenders, and pull the trigger a second time, with a second booming report thundering across the field and path and ripping the second skeleton warrior in half like the first. Small but noticeable wisps of magenta-colored residual magical energy tumbles lazily out of the muzzles of the handguns.

Continuing to alternate shots from my pair of big handguns, I continue my attack, walking slowly but deliberately closer and closer to the outpost to approach the enemies and French soldiers alike. Each shot causes the slide of either of my Desert Eagles to rock back strongly, and out of the briefly exposed actions flies a bullet casing also made of compressed mana that, now that its use as a container for the bullet it once held has been consumed, disintegrates and dissipates into the air before it can hit the ground. I've trained myself to alternate shots like this because in the case of emergencies where I need to go full mag dump season on an enemy or enemies who are too close for comfort, I have the ability to unload two pistols' worth of firepower at once rather than limiting myself to only one.

As I shoot, I keep mental track of how many shots I've fired. Seven rounds in each handgun, fourteen shots each. I remember to keep ones in the chambers, though, for facilitated reloading; if I shoot the final bullets in the chambers, my handguns will lock back their slides, and that forces me to press the slide releases to lock them back into place after reloading. It doesn't take much time, but I like to reserve mag-dumping like that for more dire situations, and now is not one of those times.

Speaking of reloading, once fourteen shots are expended between my pair of handguns, I lower my hands somewhat and concentrate mana back into my hands. The most convenient element of using handguns as a mage is that because the magwells also serve as the grips, mages like me who've mastered the art of crafting mana bullets on the fly are able to directly form bullets inside the magwells, straight back into the magazines, with each bullet crafted pushing the spring of the magazine back down just like conventional bullets would when loaded into a magazine. With diligent practice both in and out of combat, we can immediately reload pistols like this with very little downtime between reloads, though naturally this is subject to differ among different handgun models, the number of bullets crafted, and the type of ammunition crafted. To onlookers, it simply looks as though all I've done is lower my hands for a brief moment, then raise my firearms back up to proceed straight back to shooting another fourteen shots again.

The initial volley of my heavy mana bullets frightens the daylights out of the French soldiers at first, who panic even harder as though they're coming under enemy cannon fire, but they quickly realize that I'm the source of these cannon-like sounds that they're hearing, especially when they begin to see skeletons seemingly randomly getting blown into random parts and halves of themselves before their very eyes. Watching slack-jawed and wide-eyed with quite the interesting mixture of horror and wonder, they watch me obliterate these skeletons with one well-placed shot apiece. As I blast apart the last skeleton, Caster and Foreigner finally catch up to me, shocked to see that there's nothing left for them to clean up on their own.

"Oh, hey. Glad you could join me," I greet them nonchalantly as ever, turning to them as I reload my handguns a third time.

"D-Don't make it sound like we were late! How the heck did you even kill them all this fast!? It hasn't even been a minute since you started attacking them!" Tamamo screeches at me in disbelief, surveying once more the dirt path passing by the fortress and the field that lays next to it that are now both littered with a random assortment of formerly magically animated human bones.

"More than that...gosh, Master, you're awfully fast...!" Yuuyuu sighs; she, too, puts her hands on her hips, probably because she's bummed out that she didn't really get to do much so far along with Caster. "Between that flash-step from earlier and to your sprinting speed, just how fast are you...?"

While listening to my Servants voice their complaints - are they even complaints? - I notice one of the French soldiers who's dressed markedly different from the others separate herself from the thin ranks of the French defenders and approach the three of us while Mash hurries to rendezvous with us with the rest of the French patrol close behind her.

This soldier approaching us now has straw-blonde hair tied into a luxuriously long Rapunzel-like braided ponytail that reaches all the way down past her waist, wears clean white armor plates and gauntlets that protect her arms and torso, yet for some reason leaves her chest, thorax, and legs exposed when conventional wisdom dictates that they should probably be covered too. But where her armor doesn't cover, a navy blue skirt and cape does instead. A peculiar trident-like white metal plate is fixed against her face, specifically her forehead, though I have to question how the hell it manages to stay on like that, much less how uncomfortable it must be to walk around with a metal plate that vaguely looks like a Nintendo 64 controller glued to your damn forehead. At her left side is holstered a silver and navy blue sword, and in her left armored hand is a big battle standard embroidered with a golden fleur-de-lis of the Royal French coat of arms. She's definitely taller than Yuuyuu, probably more in line with Tamamo for height.

As much as I'm taking note of her appearance, what she looks like isn't as important as the mana signature that I'm reading from her, which is definitely not of a normal human's. I suppose I didn't cast my Comsat spell from earlier far enough.

Clearing my throat after slipping my handguns away back into their pocket runes, I turn to this French soldier, who stops a few meters away from me once she's got my attention, and my Servants in turn eye her with cautious suspicion, for they both recognize what she is.

"I take it that you're no regular French soldier," I call out to her, knowing that if her identity is what I think it is, then speaking to her in English should be just fine, and sure enough, she nods back firmly and responds with a beautifully French-accented voice:

"Indeed, your guess is correct, Master from a distant land. My name is Jeanne d'Arc; pleased to make your acquaintance."