章 1686: There goes sixty years of planning (Fate Apocrypha) by Shinji117
Summary:
The insertion of an SI with powers drawn from Swiftrosenthal's Waifu Catalogue throws the Great Holy Grail War into confusion.
This begun as a entirely self-indulgent way to pass the time during COVID lockdowns, but when I originally posted it on QQ it turns out people seemed to like it so up it goes.
Notes:
(See the end of the work for notes.)
Chapter 1: PrologueNotes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
"I guess that would be it?"
As I hit enter on the finished character sheet, I close my eyes while stretching and sigh. Honestly, this had been a waste of time, but with my final uni course over and COVID having smothered my already low-intensity social life, spending a couple hours filling out a power fantasy character sheet had been fun. It had kind of reminded me of those times, years ago, where I'd made up multiple D&D character sheets, or Warhammer army lists, despite having no board game groups in my area I played with, just because I enjoyed the possibilities (and also, maybe, making spreadsheets and lists and tables).
Which, I assume, is when it happened.
When I finished stretching my arms and opened my eyes, I'm no longer at my desk, but sitting (despite there being nothing to sit on) in a blank void. My computer's been replaced by text, somehow hovering in place before my eyes with no screen or obvious projector.
I close my eyes, counted to ten, and opened them.
Still the blank void, still with free-floating text.
The cliche here would be to pinch myself, but I'm fairly sure you can actually feel pain in dreams. Still, I give it a shot, and still I find myself stuck in the void. With nothing else I can really do, I give the text a glance over.
"Final Confirmation: Is this starting selection correct?"
The text is the CYOA character sheet I had just filled out.
'Ok, so there are a few possibilities. There's always the possibility of it being a dream, or I finally have snapped and lost it. I guess it could be a prank, though how it's being done and who would have done it is beyond me. And finally, this could somehow be real and I've managed to Isekai myself?'
Deciding to play along, in the case of options 2 or 3, I call out into the void; "Hello, is there someone I can talk to about this?"
After a few seconds spent taking a look at the completely blank...ceiling void? a very obviously robotic voice spoke back.
"This is customer service. As a potential recruit, please listen to this pre-recorded message:
You have been chosen to undergo a fantastic* and wonderful** adventure across the multiverses. To begin with, this is 100% real and not a dream or other form of self/artificially induced delusion or illusion. Regarding your current status, you are a fork of your original self, and rejecting this offer will not in any way harm your (original) self, so you do not need to worry about leaving any family or friends behind on whatever planet/ship/station you previously inhabited. They won't even notice you have left, because in a very real sense you haven't. You may finalize and edit your starting build at will for as long as you like, but once confirmed you will not be able to revise anything. Declining this offer will result in a painless cancellation of this simulated environment, as well as the guarantee that you will never hear from us again."
Well, that was only a little clarifying and very terrifying. I know enough about Red Text to know why I'm unable to disbelieve anything it laid out, while also noticing the (admittedly very obvious) gaps that the Red Text worked around. That's probably why whatever is running this program went with Red Text for me. So I've been instantly forked from myself who, I assume, will have just closed the document and started getting ready for dinner, and shanghai'd into this adventure with no real way to decline as long as I-as-I-am-now want to stay 'alive'.
Guess I can make the most of it. My own calmness at this whole scenario is intellectually shocking to me but trying to actually muster up an emotional reaction to it seems impossible. I guess whoever is running this disabled it or something, which should be terrifying but, again, it isn't. I turn towards the text, still floating and waiting for confirmation and, after a second working out how to interface with it (turns out just hand movements and thought), delete most of it. Time to build this a little more seriously if my life is on the line.
First up, Origin. I'd always felt that Reinhard Van Astrea was a completely absurdly ridiculous steal at 50 points. I hadn't gone with him in my original Character Sheet because of how broken he was and how boringly obvious the option seemed, but if my life is seriously on the line here then you can bet I'm going with the safe option. Unfortunately, whoever was running this thing in actuality seems to have agreed, as now he was a 100-point choice, with another 100 points to unlock his blessing that gave infinite new blessings. Still worth it, but it was going to throw my plan off.
From there, I go about editing the build. I mostly keep things standard, dropping a few quality of life purchases I had gone with before for more outright power and to make up the extra Reinhard cost. The biggest new purchase was dropping the whole world-skipping package I had originally planned for a dip into Roswaal's magic powers to complement Reinhard's martial skill. A dip of Communication Talent covers my lack of Romanian, given the setting.
Retinue-wise, I pause for a moment before going with Saber-Artoria; loyal, competent, powerful with the potential go Avalon her up, and also incredibly attractive, especially her older Lancer-style appearance. With only a few seconds hesitation, I pay the extra Yoink point cost, guaranteeing that she is the same Artoria as was present in the world I'm off too. I'm not sure whether or not this'll help with the upcoming family drama worse but might as well get it just in case.
Finally, it's time to load up on drawbacks to cancel out Rein's and Artoria's costs. Picking two copies of Enemy Level Normal felt...appropriate given the setting, and I had a feeling I knew which two factions would be getting the warnings about my arrival. After that, Limited Selection 4 was enough to have me break even and then some, while still giving me a point of leeway for future Retinue members.
I click confirm, and my vision goes black.
-Night 0-
Darnic Prestone Yggdmillennia stood by the window of a tower in the Fortress of Millennia, looking down at Trifas. Decades of preparations and planning, years upon years of effort to assemble his forces and ready the lands for what was to come, and a wrench had been thrown into all these plans the instant the war had begun.
Every single Master of Black and, Darnic assumed, Red had simultaneously received a...vision, or more accurately a notification, that a renegade Master was intruding on the War. Somehow, this Master had managed to summon a Servant and had formed what amounted to a third faction, allied to neither Red nor Black. Darnic might have assumed that somehow Sagara had fallen victim to this magus, but the vision made clear that this third-party magus was not replacing any of the Masters of Black and Red. Darnic did not know how this Master had managed this feat, which all his study of the Greater Grail told him was impossible, but the notification had been impossible to disbelieve. This should have itself been of concern, but somehow neither he nor any of the Masters could actually manage to work up either disbelief or concern regarding the warning.
A single, unsupported Master and Servant pair should not be a real threat. The vision had laid out that the renegade Master- a red-haired and blue-eyed man dressed in white, had summoned a Saber, but even the greatest Servant of the 'best' class would not be able to win against seven unified Servants, let alone when the Master was likely some third-rate Magus who Darnic could not identify from his time in London. However, with Sagara out of contact and this third-party magus intruding, the fact that things were already not going as planned boded ill.
Darnic heard the creaking of wheels behind him and turned to greet Fiore. It was time for the rest of the Black Faction to summon their Servants.
-
Far away, another Master is thinking similar thoughts. Shirou had also received the message regarding this third party, but the Spirit Board's lack of updating for this new Saber concerned him in ways that even the message hadn't been able to influence. If this new Master was this War's Ruler, or somehow allied to the Ruler then the War that he had been preparing for six decades had one more complication.
He always had known that the salvation of mankind was never going to be easily achieved, though.
Notes:
AN: This was inspired by, as mentioned, me just throwing together a CYOA sheet on the fly to pass COVID lockdown time and university completion. It was always going to be a Fate fic, but I went with Apocrypha for a few reasons- not many other fics seem to touch it, while FSN and FGO are extensively covered, and over on another site I got into a discussion on Mordred and how I wished later Fate materials touched on the post-Camalan Artoria-Mordred relation in non-comedic ways.
In any case, some adjustments have been done to SwiftRosenthal's Catalogue - it isn't going to be a 1-1 carryover, because while the mechanics are interesting and I like the point values and so on, the lore is...eeeeeh. I don't want to go full-moralistic CYOA where I never use any of the powers, so again it's inspired by, and is not the complete R34 Catalog. As for the build itself, Reinhard it the key feature- when I first saw the Husbando Catalogue list him as a T6 I laughed and laughed. His nerfed form is T7 for this fic, and unnerfed he'd be T8+.
My...employer went with Red Umineko Truth Language purely because they worked out that that would be the fastest way to force me to believe what was being said and not spend ages trying to work out the trick. They aren't actually secretly Bern or Lamb playing a funny prank or anything. Hopefully.
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