"Whoa! Wh-wh-whoa! What do you think you're doing?!"
"Are you okay?!"
"No!"
"Neither am I, so don't let go! Just a little longer, come on, please!"
"N-n-no! I can't, waaaaaah!"
The last thing she saw was the sky coming apart.
Chaos had broken through Zeus's corpse and was on the verge of swallowing half of the planet. And for some reason Matthew had grabbed her hand and pulled. Mash followed suit, yet she was already gone from Ritsuka's sight by the time everything changed.
The catman was gone. In his hand's place, the thing holding her now was seawater. Waves, hurling her through the middle of a storm. She was screaming: had he just had the brilliant idea to jump all the way into Atlantis? Had that been his grand plan to save her? Well, so much for that. Now they were going to drown instead of being torn to bits, for all that was worth.
Rage aside, she needed to keep herself afloat. She would not drown.
But if she was going to drown, which really seemed to be the case, it would not be because someone decided to do something stupid and dragged her into their nonsense! So she would keep going. Even as her vision blurred and the lights of a distant shore flickered in and out… She kept swimming toward it, until her body pleaded no more.
Elsewhere in Shinjuku, a young man fell into a reception lobby.
No sooner had he hit the ground with a thud than confetti rained down and signs reading "WELCOME TO YOUR NEW HOME" sprang up from the floor. The usual nonsense, except the BB Channel's theme wasn't playing, and outside, rain hammered the windows. Eventually the confetti ran out in silence, and Matthew got up and looked around.
No one else was there. Not Ritsuka, who he'd been holding onto until the moment the shift happened. Not the rest of Chaldea's staff, who BB had promised would be brought here in a worst-case scenario. Just him, alone in the entire building.
"BB? Ritsuka? Mash?" A pause. "...New Director Goredolf? Is anyone here?"
He kept calling out, moving through the corridors on the upper floors, checking room after room. The building was enormous: BB had probably bought something bigger than she needed, but he couldn't help feeling grateful. Every door he opened answered him the same way: dark and unused, electronics still unpacked, beds made long in advance for no one to use them.
Eventually he returned to the reception desk. The only thing of worth was a printed list: names and room numbers, every slot on Chaldea's staff roster mapped out in meticulous advance, two empty fields beside each name.+
And his was the only one marked as present in the area.
There was only so much he could do about that now. So to the kitchen he went, found it fully stocked: BB had been working on this for longer than he'd realized and made himself some mediocre milk tea. Then, without thinking, set a second cup on the counter.
He stood there looking at it for a moment. Right. There was no one else here.
He had noticed, while making the tea, that his Command Seals remained though something about them felt odd. He hadn't tried yet, because it had seemed pointless. But surely that wouldn't stay true forever. The city skyline didn't lie: this was Tokyo. So.
"By my Command Seal, Archer. Come to me."
The upper segment of the sigils, the cap of the battery shape, faded further. No shift in pressure. No answer. Matt held his right wrist with his left hand and felt for any of the others. Saber. Caster. Assassin.
Nothing.
He crossed to the nearest unseen crevice, in this case, the gap behind a cabinet and reached through into Imaginary Space. His pocket was still there. Though it felt smaller than he had last felt it on Olympus…
It was late. He was alone. He found an umbrella at the reception desk and stepped out into the rain.
Her coming to, at least, wasn't seawater though it still wasn't as warm as she would have liked. The blanket wasn't hers. Neither was the bed. Her hand went to her pocket on instinct: ID card, comms device, journal, all accounted for, all still shut. Good. Then, the room's actual problem.
A man in a police uniform, seated in the doorway and a younger lad, probably her age, standing next to him. Ritsuka read the distance immediately: this large man was making himself non-threatening to the, in comparison, small woman she was. He had probably been waiting hours for her to wake up. That one was likely going to be the good cop, with the boy being the bad cop, judging from his glare. Procedure running as usual.
"Oho, so you're awake, are you?"
"She stirs at last," the younger one muttered, arms crossed. "About time. We were beginning to wonder if you needed being sent to the hospital instead of the interrogation room."
"How long was I out?"
"Straight to the point? A few hours. You were easy enough to carry, missy. I promise you this promising young man behaved like a gentleman." A pause. "I did notice the Summoner Mark on your hand has almost faded. Have you been in some kind of fight? Anything unusual?"
The younger lad shifted, glancing at her hand with a sharpness that didn't match his stiff posture. "A Summoner Mark? Then she's an user, although." He stopped himself, jaw tightening. "Why would it be in such condition?"
"If only you knew." But… Summoner Mark? That was some new terminology for her Command Seals. He probably knows what it means, or what they can be used for. This wasn't Olympus. Where was she? It felt like a normal city. The posters on the wall were in Japanese, with maps of Tokyo, so this was probably that? But how, why?
"You wear the look of someone who has seen far more than you should had. And that uniform..." He gestured vaguely at her Chaldea attire. "Your uniform is not from any school we recognize. Explain yourself."
"Easy now, Sakimori. The little missy's just woken up."
"As far as we know, she's an undocumented Tokyoite.
Still, why would you go swimming on such a storm? That's not quite sane."
She stopped. What could she actually say? She had no idea if anything she carried meant anything here. For all she knew, this was the afterlife, and it had already been colonized by policemen. And the younger one, who looked ready to draw a sword at any moment, was interrogating her like she'd personally offended his ancestors.
"Do I look the type to do something so stupid like jump into the sea? In the middle of a storm?"
"I would not recommend lying," he added, as if reading her hesitation. "I have little patience for deceit. The facts remain as this: you were found in the shore and picked up. Perhaps you were partying this late into the night. How can you explain yourself?"
"Ye'll scare the poor thing before she's even got her mind straight. She's not been given time to even introduce herself."
"Mister Hogen. I am not trying to scare her. I want to be thorough. Which you should also be.
State your name, if you remember that much."
"... Ritsuka Fujimaru. I'm affiliated with a research institution called Chaldea." She offered the ID card, as if it might explain any of the abnormalities going on with her. "... And I have no idea where I am! Please help me, kind officers!"
The younger lad took the ID card, scrutinizing it with a frown. "Chaldea? Is that a Technical College, an Academy... Neither of those exist." He handed it back, his expression unreadable, though something in his posture had shifted: something about Touji was slightly less hostile.
"I was somewhere else entirely, my friend took my hand, everything went dark and..." And then she noticed. Where was the culprit for this? Had he drowned? That was likely to have happened, but the more she thought about finding herself at sea... He wasn't there to begin with. He abandoned her!
"... Cat person. Somewhat taller than me."
"No one like that has been found by you. You are not a remarkably convincing actress." He exhaled a sigh. This didn't look particularly productive. "... Very well. What are we supposed to do? If she's not in any public records and we can't locate just who she's looking for, we should keep her in custody until she's briefed on how Tokyo works."
"... Do I look like a criminal to you, really?! I'm literally just a girl!" Not like something like that was going to work, but she had always wanted to yell that. Trivial as it was...
"You look like someone who fell out of the sky, who has no paperwork, explanation or proper identity. You must understand why that makes you troublesome."
And as if on cue, the older officer in the room would place a hand on his junior's shoulder. "Ease off, kid, she's still under shock."
"Hogen. Are you suggesting we let her wander about with nothing but wet clothes while asking about a Feline Therian Transient? Do you know how little that's going to narrow it down? We should look for that person, too."
"But for now, we should help her get up. She's no fugitive, as we would had been able to cross reference her appearance if that were the case. Now." His expression softened a bit with a smile: while she had never crossed paths with this man's iteration in her world, what was obvious already was that he was a mentor, not just for this Sakimori guy, but in general: something deeper.
"Now, missy. You said you work for an institution named Chaldea. We've not heard of it, but Tokyo has many an organisation that keeps to itself: even from of the law. But it does not mean that you are necessarily going against the law, so you're not a criminal yet.
But lacking any identification is a no go, so we're going to ask you some questions, how's about that?"
Her defense had NOT worked, which she expected, but it had been enough to trigger a pivot in this conversation from the senior office: it should give her enough room to explain herself and get explanations as well.
"Fine! Questions! I can do questions. Sure."
"State your full name, date and place of birth."
"Ritsuka Fujimaru. June twenty-sixth. Shinjuku."
"Shinjuku..." Hogen would write it down, but Toji seemed bothered by it. "Shinjuku Ward? As in Tokyo?"
"... Yes."
"This should help: your current address?"
"I don't have one here." She met his gaze. "This may be a Tokyo, but it's not the one I was born in."
"You mentioned 'Chaldea,'" Toji continued. "What do you do there?"
Lying outright had never been her strength. Bluffing and misdirecting, those she could manage. But pure fabrication? She sucked at it. It would be best to give something true, but not the whole truth.
"We're... Anthropologists. Of a sort. Preservation work. We go to locations, assess problems, help with..."
"You're field staff." Toji's eyes cut to her uniform. "That explains why that is not a school uniform we're familiar with."
"Because I'm twenty-two. I'm way past school." She nearly added smartass but swallowed it. He could already tell she was thinking it.
"You mentioned a cat person. A Feline Therian, that is." Toji set down the pen. "He grabbed your hand, and the next thing you knew, you were in the ocean. What is your relationship to him? His name?"
"Matt. Matthew... He's... a coworker. A friend. We were in a bad spot. He tried to get me out. It went poorly. There was another woman too. Mash. She was right behind us. She was reaching for my hand when our... Equipment malfunctioned. I don't know if she made it."
"Two companions. The Feline Therian and this Mash. Describe them both."
"Mash is shorter than me. Purple hair, violet eyes. She should be carrying a large cross-shaped shield."
"These two. So they were with you when your equipment malfunctioned."
"Matthew grabbed my hand. Mash was int he area, too."
With that first round of questions out of the way, Hogen chuckled as he closed the notebook and looked back at her. "Just so you know: not lying but not telling us everything isn't much help. But it is an improvement! We're getting somewhere." He glanced at Toji with exaggerated warmth. "See, kid? Tender loving care. You get more answers that way.~"
"Please ignore this old man," Toji said flatly.
Not a father and son, but mentor and protégé, seasoned enough to bicker without heat. Toji's annoyance was a comfortable one, much like the one she'd feel towards some of her friends.
"I'm going to assume good faith, but you need school placement and lodging."
"... I said I am twenty-two." A nervous chuckle. She looked between them. Toji's expression hadn't shifted. He was deadly serious. "As you can see, I'm a grown woman."
"Transients and arrivals are granted student status as a legal framework. You'll attend classes, yes, but primarily it's to give you a guarantor. Without a school, you have no legal standing. No housing. No work. No protection."
"You'll be placed somewhere that fits your background, but we have options. You can choose." A flick of his wrist as he pointed to a cabinet. "Touji, can you be a good boy and hand those over here?"
Shinjuku Academy. Nakano Performing Arts Academy. Yoyogi Academy. Akihabara Academy.
Ritsuka's eyes caught on the first. Shinjuku. Her home, or a version of it. The wrongness of stepping into that familiar name in this unfamiliar Tokyo made her stomach uneasy. Moving on.
Nakano and Akihabara held their own appeals, but Yoyogi... Physical and practical. Somewhere she could move, could run, could lose herself in a sport.1
"This one." She tapped the pamphlet. "Yoyogi sounds interesting."
"I'll try to arrange—"
"By 'I,' this old man means me." And the part-oni youngster plucked the pamphlet from her hand with surprising gentleness. "We'll sort you out for tonight. Tomorrow, you're doing paperwork."
"Aren't you forgetting something, Toji?"
"If you would let me finish." Toji's jaw tightened. Then, quieter: "If your friends are in Tokyo, we will look for them."
"... Thank you. He's the one I saw last, but there was also another girl with us. A lot of people, if I'm honest, but... She has purple hair, is a bit shorter than I am and is pretty polite, too."
As the night went on, her lodging would become a small room in an apartment block from which she wouldn't take her eyes off the window: it was home, yet it wasn't her home. And she was alone.
Her comms device was on, but it had no service whatsoever. Her command seals felt dead or disabled.
She wouldn't try to use them without confirmation that doing so would help, given she didn't even know if it was possible to reload them here like back home. With the rain tapping on the glass, all she had was to try and wonder where everyone was. What was life supposed to be like this? Would she stay like this for too long? For the rest of her life, with everything prior having been only a dream?