“Oi, shitty Master.”
It is a surprise to nobody, but the Master of Chaldea was pissing off a former demon god. His reply was a wordless moan, his face all but buried in the pillow.
Barbatos planted her hands on her hips.
“Seriously. You don’t intend to get off your bed today?”
“…so tired,” muttered the young man. “Scavenging the whole day yesterday. Moved around too much. No plans for today. So tired.”
“Stop talking like a telegram, shitty Master. And it was you who insisted on going on a, and I quote, ‘hardcore farming spree’ yesterday. I was with you the whole time.” Rolling her eyes, the Assassin walked closer to the bed and poked the side of his head with her musket. “Damn it, Mashu Kyrielight pampers you way too fucking much. Get up, you bum!”
The Master groaned.
“Really, muscle ache…”
Barbatos’ face showed no hint of pity. Nevertheless, she sighed.
“Fine. I already threw away my pride when I became your…ugh,
Servant. I can handle at least this much.”
******************************************
Deftly working with the tablet computer in her hands, Peshtur was hard at work dealing with the logistics of Chaldea. Even if her unofficial title of “Master’s left hand” was recently taken away by Barbatos’ unique talents at acquiring valuable materials, Gilgamesh’s little sister had already proven her competence at managing the small matters of housing dozens of Servants at Chaldea. She had been a temple administrator in her time, after all. Chaldea had welcomed her, and the Master had told her that she was necessary. Her gratitude towards him was limitless.
Christmas was nearing, so she walked down the grey halls of Chaldea while working out the numbers for the inevitable party. Chaldea was a large organization with significant resources, but there was only so much they could splurge. Matching Chaldea’s capabilities with the Servants’ expectations was perhaps her biggest challenge as da Vinci’s assistant.
“Perhaps Her Majesty Cleopatra would assist us on that regard…ah.”
It was inevitable to meet other people when walking down the halls. Their steps came to an abrupt halt, just like hers. It was that uncomfortable moment during which nobody knows what to do or say. It was almost silly—Peshtur had already accepted herself. Even if she was a walking beacon of calamity, there was at least one person who had wholeheartedly accepted her. Therefore, she faced them coolly and with proper manners: the fair dame who looked like she wanted to be anywhere but there, and the knight who had nothing against Peshtur, but would never do anything to anger the dame.
The wicked priestess of ancient Uruk bowed before the pair.
“Fair Euryale, sir Asterios.”
She was anathema to all gods. It was neither good nor bad, merely what she was.
She walked past them to spare them the discomfort of a response, completely intent on leaving them behind and return to her work—
“Ah, ah, here you are, here you are. Just as expected.”
The three Servants—even Euryale in all her lack of combat instinct—went rigid and took combat stances upon catching hearing of that voice, for it belonged to nobody in Chaldea.
“Eh…? Santa…?”
It was, indeed, a Santa. It was a girl, but that was the norm in Chaldea. The Santa costume was very skimpy, but Chaldea had much, much skimpier. The horns and tail were probably more unusual, but, again, Chaldea. If anything, the truly unusual thing was the broom she was seated on. Its appearance was nothing out of the ordinary, it was just the fact that it hovered a yard above the floor. Like the stereotypical witch, the Santa girl darted forward, catching the three unaware until she was standing right in front of Asterios.
“Right! For a good kid, a proper present in this Christmas! Here you go!”
“Ooh…oooooh!”
The large Berserker’s eyes sparkled as he unfolded the elegant and gentlemanly suit the Santa had brought out of thin air. The horned girl was all smiles.
“Now you can look sharp for your lady, just like you wanted.”
Euryale’s lip quivered, caught in the crossroads between affection and embarrassment.
“Fool…!” she said, but a smile finally took root on her face at the sight of the minotaur admiring his new—and admittedly very nice looking—suit.
“Good!” declared the Santa girl. “Very well, enjoy your holidays and be kind to each other. Off I go!”
She disappeared in a flash, her flying broom swift like a rocket. Released from the high of his new gift, Asterios looked in the direction she departed, along with Euryale and Peshtur. Then, they looked at each other.
“…inform the Master?” proposed the goddess.
“Inform the Master,” agreed the priestess.
And they hurried together, all thoughts of anathemas and rejection gone from their minds. They made it to His Room quickly enough, only to find the fidgeting figure of one Mashu Kyrielight by the door. They would have asked what held her, but they had better things to do.
“Master, we have a situa—”
Three Servants and a former (?) Demi-Servant came to halt in front of an unconventional scene inside.
“Gods, Barbatos, that feels incredible.”
“Yes, yes, of course you’d be the kind of idiot who enjoys something like this. I’m grinding harder.”
“Oh, oh, oooh, that hurts so good.”
“You’re fucking gross, didya know that?”
“Less talking, more moving~”
“Yeah, yeah. How about this?”
“Oooh, shit! That strong twisting—how do you do that!?”
“It’s all in the hips, shitty Master.”
Peshtur and Euryale exchanged identical looks, eyebrows symmetrically raised. The former made a note to check on the Master’s bed—it was creaking quite a bit, and she could have sworn that bed should have been solid enough to have no creaking, ever.
“Wha—wha—just what’s going on in here!?” Mashu was clearly scandalized, if her loud, high-pitched voice meant anything.
“I would say the scene speaks for itself, Mashu,” replied the ancient Greek beauty.
“It is obviously our Master, enjoying a foot massage to perhaps a worrisome degree, and Miss Barbatos, who clearly finds some sort of sadistic delight in stepping on the vanquisher of Goetia.”
“Could not have explained it any better, wicked priestess.”
Just like that, the goddess and the Anathema of the Gods created a bond of friendship.
“Hmm?” His voice was as lazy as his overall visage. Finally realizing they were no longer alone, the young man and the one he appointed as his little sister turned towards the opened door. Barbatos’ left heel still dug into the skin of the Master’s bare back.
“Huh. Hey ther—oh, oh, ohh, so good…”
Any attempt at further communication was stopped by a soulful moan. That elicited a blush from the ladies in the audience.
“Good gods, how do you
do that?” murmured the young man, completely turned into putty under the former demon pillar’s ministrations.
“…I might have to get one of those,” murmured Euryale.
“To you I’m charging QP,” promptly remarked the masseur.
Euryale clicked her tongue.
“Aww, so you
do love me—ow, ow, ow, OW! I give! I give! Sorry!”
“Good. Now, massage’s over. Get up, shitty Master. Time to work.”
The shirtless Master squirmed uselessly on his unmade bed.
“But it’s my free day,” whined the exhausted young man.
“If you don’t get up right now I’ll massage your innards with my bullets.”
“Yeah, yeah…” mumbled the last hope of humankind as his arm futilely reached here and there, probably looking for his clothes.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Despite complaining, Barbatos grabbed the Master’s dark undershirt between her toes and dropped it on his head.
“You are mind-blowingly stupid at times, shitty Master,” said the Wild Hunter before jumping off the bed. “So, what’s the situation, Peshtur?”
Peshtur knew her Master well enough to tell that he was paying attention despite being spread on the bed like a hairless sloth. Therefore, she accepted Barbatos’ cue and succinctly described the events that led the trio to his room. By the time she was done, the young Master had already put on his clothes and raised himself to a seated position on the bed.
“…so you’re saying there is an unknown Santa girl flying on a broom and delivering presents?”
Peshtur and Asterios nodded at the Master’s summary.
“We hunt her down.”
“You used a rather dangerous verb just now, little sister,” replied the Master. “And what’s with the musket already in hand?”
“The idea of some random person sneaking into houses to ‘selflessly’ give presents to complete strangers goes against my entire system of belief.”
As a Wild Hunter, she never goes into people’s houses. As a Demon God, she only gifts those who summon her. In short, Barbatos is very lawful.
“Ahaha, Barbatos is really cute.”
“What the—don’t pet me, shitty Master!”
After ruffling his assistant’s crimson hair for a moment, the young Master sighed, slapped his own cheeks to get some blood running to his head, and rose to his feet.
“Anyway, an intruder is an intruder. Let’s find this Santa.”
******************************************
Finding this Santa was very easy.
“There-Are-Too-Many-Santas-Already-Calibur!”
The search party came to a chilling stop when they saw the eerie glow of
Excalibur Morgan around the corner. Its blood-freezing rumble made them wonder how Chaldea stayed in one piece all this time. They hurried closer to hopefully stop the impending disaster.
“Awawawawah—Ste—
Stella di Betlemme!“
The profane radiance was engulfed and apparently dissolved by pristine white that stopped the Master and the others in their tracks. Just from looking at that white light, the young Master felt his chest inflame with joy, hope, and the certainty that everything would be alright. It made him want to hug whoever was close enough, to share in this uplifting, inspiring feeling. Indeed, he soon enough found himself caught in Mashu’s warm embrace. A step behind him, he noticed Euryale leaning into Asterios’ side, and his strong arm wrapped her protectively. Then he turned to his left with an expectant smile.
“Fuck. You,” said Barbatos.
“It’s fine. It’s your loving thoughts that count.”
“Then learn some telepathy so you can hear the ‘fuck you’ in my mind too.”
The young man gave no reply to that, choosing the accept the lonely-looking Peshtur into a three-way hug with Mashu.
They finally turned around the corner. Santa Alter held her unholy sword to the side, revealing that she was more than ready to go. Jeanne d’Arc Alter Santa Lily quivered behind a kneeling figure—the unknown Santa in question, breathing and sweating heavily after apparently neutralizing the blast of the corrupted holy sword. Some steps behind Jeanne Alter Lily, Jack the Ripper and Nursery Rhyme were all but merged into the wall, firmly held there by Atalante’s strong hands. The huntress glared at the original (?) Santa Servant; apparently, they too almost got caught into the dark blast.
“You will not be able to do that a second time,” declared the sword-wielding Santa. Indeed, the uplifting white light had already disappeared. However, the exhaustion in the unknown Santa’s eyes faded somewhat when she caught sight of the Master and his companions.
“Mother!” she called out warmly. “Please, help me convince Miss Pendragon we can all get along!”
Those words were not directed to the Master, nor to Mashu; they were not for Euryale nor Peshtur, and definitely not for Asterios. All of them turned as one to the target of those words and of the stranger’s hopes.
“…what,” said Barbatos.
******************************************
Explanations were given. The whole time, the newcomer, who had introduced herself as “Jiang” in the Alter Ego Class, stood calmly next to the one she had called “mother”. Her face was a perfect depiction of warmth; if anything, she projected a far stronger motherly aura than the former demon pillar. Then again, anything is significantly greater than zero.
“I can see the resemblance,” said Euryale, in that tone of voice carefully crafted to piss someone off.
“Oh gee, I’m being made fun of by a glorified doll of the Greek gods. What am I to do?”
“Mother, that’s poor manners.”
“I’m not your mother!”
“But I was born from you,” countered the (for a change) red Santa, bringing her hands together in an overwhelmingly big-sister-ish gesture. “Half of my Skills and Noble Phantasms are your inheritance. I do not have a family in my foundational legend, so this is a pleasant change to me. Being a Servant is lovely.”
“Well at least someone is having fun.”
“Alright, let me get this clear,” intervened the Master. “Assassin Chiyou’s first Grail was made of the discarded husk of Demon Pillar Barbatos.”
He fixated on the former pillar.
“Barbatos, when you took that Grail into yourself, you couldn’t wholly take it, because you had chosen to discard that identity. Am I right?”
The Wild Hunter shrugged.
“Well, there was a possibility I would’ve turned back into Demon Pillar Barbatos, and that was kind of not the plan, so yeah, I played it safe.”
The young man nodded. “Alright, so that part matches. So, Miss, um, ‘Jiang’.”
The skimpy Santa stood at attention.
“What you’re saying is that, when Assassin Chiyou became Beast, she discarded some part of herself, which would then fuse with the dregs of the Barbatos Grail to become you?”
“Well, there’s a mythological foundation holding the two pieces together, but that’s the gist of it.”
The Master glanced to the side. “Da Vinci-
chan, does that make sense to you?”
“Hmm, somehow, but there are gaps in that explanation. Barbatos, care to enlighten us?”
“Urgh.” The Wild Hunter scratched her cheek, not comfortable being the center of attention in these circumstances.
“Well…yes, it’s not like Assassin Chiyou wholly overwrote herself to become Beast. Beast wasn’t even her aim in the first place. Her only wish was to
evolve, to become something better than she was. And evolution implies both improving on the good things and discarding things deemed unnecessary.”
More talking to herself than explaining to the audience by this point, Barbatos brought a hand to her chin, resting that elbow on the other hand. The Master and his Servants smiled to themselves and each other when the former pillar began pacing around the hallway like a Great Detective at work.
“I was there when she became Beast. It might be plausible that those discarded elements latched on to my Saint Graph to avoid destruction. I mean, the Cornucopia is based on the concept of providing, feeding and sustaining. For all I know, destroying things is against its nature, so it had to put the discarded elements somewhere. And then when I absorbed the Grail…yeah, I could see…”
A vague gesture towards the smiling Santa girl.
“…
you happening.”
The Master of Chaldea turned to the man calmly smoking to his left, who had arrived at some point during Barbatos’ musings. The smoke out of his pipe was not particularly irritating to the nose. If anything, it made the Master hungry for some reason—most likely the fact he had skipped breakfast.
“Care to add anything, Mister Holmes?”
“Oh no, no, the Lady Barbatos is doing quite well on her own. Let us listen.”
Seemingly satisfied with her deduction thus far, Barbatos began to walk circles around the intruder in red and white. The Santa girl followed Barbatos with her own gaze, as if eager to present herself to her “mother”.
“Of course, you are not a Servant Barbatos; I cannot be summoned in any other form but this. And you are definitely not an aspect of Chiyou. There is indeed a third element, one with a connection to the Santa Claus custom. Peshtur reported that you were flying around on a broom of all things. Then there is that Noble Phantasm, summoning the light of the Bethlehem Star, and the very fact this whole farce happened in Rome and its surroundings.”
The Master caught da Vinci’s appreciative murmur from the communication line. Holmes nodded, seemingly acknowledging the demon girl’s conclusion.
Barbatos just chuckled.
“It’s gotta be La Befana, right?”
“You are absolutely correct, mother,” admitted Jiang, clapping quietly.
“Yes, I can see how one would connect La Befana to both mine and Chiyou’s legends, even if through inversion.”
The rest of the audience joined in much louder applause, the younger among them voicing appreciative sounds.
“Oh, shut up,” retorted the Wild Hunter, nevertheless scratching her reddened cheeks a bit. She would have normally used filthier words, but even she made sure to measure her speech around the children.
“Wait, so you’re saying Jiang-
san has two mothers?”
The applause stopped when everybody turned to stare at Jack the Ripper.
“Yes!” agreed Jiang. “How novel, is it not?”
“Stop that trail of thought at once,” Barbatos demanded. “Chiyou must never find out about this—”
“Hey guys, I felt
Excalibur Morgan going off around here.”
The overly enthusiastic brown girl made her appearance. The six-armed, invincible God of War, Chiyou, popped out from behind the nearby corner.
“Why are we meeting here?”
“My, if it’s Mother, but not quite,” greeted Jiang. Her bright smile gave way to a frown as she turned to the other horned girl now bashing her head on the nearest wall. “Mother, what does that make this person? Auntie?”
“Say again?” Chiyou uttered, tilted her head in inquiry.
******************************************
“My daughter!”
“Ahaha, Mother is so effusive. This is so exciting.”
“Yes, yes, you are to call me Mother!” Chiyou laughed boisterously and joyfully, a lot like that King of Conquerors. “Truly, this is a day to celebrate!”
“Oh, fuck me.” Barbatos was still bashing her head against the wall. All thoughts of minding the children long gone.
“Come on, darling! Join our family embrace! There are plenty arms for both! Wahahahaha!”
“Yeah, no. Fuck you.”
Chiyou mock gasp, covering her mouth with the back of one of her hands.
“You…you would turn your back on your own daughter!? You monster!”
“Sob-sob-sob.” Jiang eagerly played along.
“Seriously, fuck you. Both of you.”
Chiyou and Jiang inched away from the musketeer, bringing their hands to their reddened cheeks.
“Darling…” murmured Chiyou in mock embarrassment. “Not in front of everyone! Kyan~”
“Mother, that does not sound like something the Lord would approve.”
“Oh, fuck everything.”
“So bold, darling!”
“Mother, so sinful!”
“Alright, the two of you? Shut the fuck up.”
Barbatos promptly glared at the smirking, chuckling (and in the case of da Vinci from her remote view, outright laughing) audience. A finger twirled as it pointed in the newly formed family’s direction.
“Shitty Master. This,” she said, referring to the mother-daughter couple against embracing each other. “I’m blaming you for this.”
“Why!? That doesn’t make sense! I had nothing to do with it!”
“I don’t give a shit! I’m blaming you for this! It’s not like I can hurt Chiyou, and I won’t use my musket on my daughter!”
“You’re not supposed to use it on your big brother, either!”
“Um,
senpai, I think you meant ‘Master’ just now…?”
“Then what use are you if I can’t pick on you,
onii-chan—uwah!”
It was a hopeless effort to resist Chiyou’s vastly superior Strength, so Barbatos did not even bother and allowed her face to be buried in the war god’s rather lacking bosom.
“So I was right!” Jack the Ripper declared as she pranced her way to give her Master a hearty hug. “Christmas is when Mothers are made!”
“Jack, I love you lots, but please don’t say things that can be easily misunderstood.”
“Huh…?”
“Well, she does have a point. In your home country, at least—”
“Be quiet, Da Vinci-
chan.”
“Now, now, darling. You have too much stress!” Chiyou offered soothing words in a voice that was way too loud. “Let your darling wife take care of you~”
“Seriously, I can’t tell if you’re joking anymore, it’s scary! And why the fuck are we married now!?”
“Now, now, you wouldn’t deny our daughter a proper family, would you?”
Barbatos turned her face to meet Jiang’s sparkling clear eyes.
“Really,” said the former demon pillar in a flat tone. Then she grunted when the hug became almost painfully strong. “If anything, she was born from your Assassin aspect.”
“But she’s not here, is she? And there’s no way that dark girl would be a proper mother to this child!”
“Gebuh!” groaned Barbatos as her head was squeezed against Chiyou’s chest. “Nipple, nipple!”
“Don’t worry, I’ll take responsibility in her stead! I swear I’ll make you both happy!”
“Oh, I’m so happy, Mother!”
“I fucking hate Christmas.”
Originally Posted by the god of world-0
Posting Permissions
