The first thing she registered was the smell. It was a clean scent, sharp and sterile, the kind that clings to bleached linens and antiseptic solutions. It was not comforting. It was the smell of a place where things were put back together, a place one only visited when something was broken.
Gudako Fujimaru's eyes fluttered open to a ceiling of pristine white tiles. A slow, rhythmic beeping, too faint to be an alarm, pulsed somewhere to her left. She felt a slight, dull ache in the crook of her arm, and when her gaze drifted down, she saw the clear, thin tube taped there, snaking its way up to a plastic pouch of fluid hanging from a metal pole.
She was in a medical bay. That much was clear. Figures in pale blue garments, medical staff she presumed, moved with quiet efficiency in the periphery, their voices a low, professional murmur. Her eyes searched the room, passing over the unfamiliar faces until they landed on a familiar one.
Dr. Romani Archaman sat slumped in a chair before a bank of monitors, his back to her. His usually cheerful orange hair was a mess, and even from this distance, she could see the profound exhaustion in his posture. On the screen before him was a complex diagram of what looked like a nervous system, bathed in a sickly green light and overlaid with strings of indecipherable data.
He must have sensed her movement. The chair swiveled around, and the doctor's tired eyes met hers. A flicker of relief, genuine and immediate, softened the hard lines of exhaustion on his face.
"Fujimaru-kun," he said, his voice gentle. He noticed her looking at the IV drip. "Ah, don't worry about that. It's nothing serious, just some fluids to rehydrate you. Glucose and water. You'll be fine. All you need is some rest."
She opened her mouth, a question forming on her lips—What happened to the Director? To Mash?—but the words caught in her throat. She froze, her gaze locked on Romani's face.
She had seen that look before.
The memory surfaced, sharp and unwelcome, from a time when she was small enough to believe that the world was a safe and simple place. She would ask her mother, a woman whose smiles always seemed a little sad around the edges, where her father was. And her mother would get that same look. A careful, fragile brightness in her eyes that didn't quite mask the deep well of sorrow behind them. A look of pained love. "He's on a business trip," she would say, her voice just a little too bright. As a child, Gudako had hated those trips, had resented the unknown work that kept him away. It was only years later, as an older girl who understood that some pains were too large for a small heart to carry, that she had realized the truth. Her father had never been on a trip. He had simply been gone. And that look on her mother's face… it was the face of someone trying to build a shield out of words, of someone tasked with delivering an ending they couldn't bring themselves to speak.
Romani had that same look now.
Her heart began to hammer against her ribs, a frantic, trapped bird. "Doctor…" she whispered, her voice barely a breath. "What is it?"
He blinked, a flicker of confusion in his weary eyes. "Fujimaru-kun?"
"That look," she said, her voice growing stronger, harder. She knew she had to force this. To wait for him to find the right words would be an agony she could not bear. "I know that look. My mother used to… just tell me. You have bad news, but you don't know how to start." She took a shallow, shaking breath. "Just… get on with it."
Romani's shoulders slumped. The carefully constructed wall of paternal reassurance crumbled, revealing the raw, exhausted man beneath. He sighed, a sound that seemed to carry the weight of a dying world.
"You're right," he said softly. He didn't look at her, his gaze fixed on some point on the far wall. "The purpose of Chaldea… our entire mission… was to observe the future, and to prevent any catastrophe that threatened the Human Order." He finally met her eyes, and the sorrow in them was an ocean. "It seems we've already failed. Humanity… everyone outside of this facility… has ceased to be."
The rest of his words became a dull, meaningless drone, the beeping of the monitors fading into a distant hum. Her mind did not process them. It couldn't. All it could register were the words ceased to be.
The world went blank. White. Silent.
Then, the images came.
Friends from high school, laughing over cheap convenience store snacks. Her mother, humming in the kitchen, the scent of her cooking filling their small apartment. And her younger brother, his face bright with a gap-toothed grin as he showed her a beetle he had caught in a jar.
The tears came a moment later, hot and silent. The dam of her shock broke, and a raw, ragged sob tore itself from her throat. She couldn't be here. She couldn't be in this sterile white room, listening to the impossible.
She ran.
Ignoring the shouts of the medical staff, she threw herself from the bed. The IV line in her arm went taut and then snapped free with a sharp, stinging pain she barely registered. She was out the door and into the hallway, a single, animalistic wail of pure grief echoing behind her as she fled, running from a truth too heavy to carry.
From the medical bay's doorway, a junior nurse took a half-step into the corridor, his expression a mask of alarm. "Doctor, shouldn't we—"
"No," Romani's voice was low, heavy with a weariness that went beyond mere lack of sleep. He raised a hand, stopping the nurse from going any further. "Let her go." He watched the empty space where she had vanished, his shoulders slumping under an invisible weight. The physician in him screamed to pursue, to sedate, to treat the raw, hemorrhaging wound of her grief. But the man who had been a friend, a father figure of sorts, knew that some injuries could not be mended with medicine. He turned back to the quiet of the med bay, his gaze finding a security monitor. "Give her a moment," he whispered to the empty air. "It's all I can give her right now."
-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-
The feed on the screen showed a grainy, flickering image of a distant maintenance corridor. There, Gudako Fujimaru had found her sanctuary.
It was a place of ghosts and echoes. The lights were out, shattered during the initial explosion, leaving the long passage steeped in a heavy gloom. The only illumination came from a single, sputtering emergency lamp on the far wall, casting long, dancing shadows that made the scratches on the steel walls look like grasping claws. She was huddled in a corner where the shadows were deepest, a small, forgotten thing in the belly of the dying world. Her knees were drawn tight to her chest, her face buried in her arms as her body was wracked with deep, ragged sobs that were utterly silent, all the sound stolen by the oppressive stillness of the dead facility.
From the main control room, the scene was viewed through the cold, impartial lens of a different security feed. Da Vinci stood before the monitor, her arms crossed, her usual effervescent energy extinguished, replaced by a somber, contemplative silence. She looked at the small, grieving figure on the screen, then at the doctor's face on her comms panel. A silent, shared glance of helplessness passed between them. It was Da Vinci who finally broke the stillness. She toggled the comms to a private channel, her voice a low, gentle murmur.
"Mash," she said. "Your senpai needs you. I'm sending you her location."
Gudako was so lost in the suffocating ocean of her grief, she didn't hear the soft, hesitant footsteps until they stopped. She didn't sense the presence until a figure sat down quietly beside her in the darkness. She flinched, her head snapping up.
Through a blur of tears, she saw Mash Kyrielight. Not the armored Servant, but the girl from the orientation. She wore her simple lavender top and lab coat, her glasses perched on her nose. She wasn't looking at Gudako with pity, or with the professional concern of a subordinate. She was just… there, her gaze filled with a profound and quiet empathy.
Mortification warred with the grief. Gudako tried to scrub at her tear-and-snot-streaked face with the back of her sleeve, a pathetic attempt to piece together a facade that was already dust. "Mash…" she croaked, the name a broken thing. "I'm sorry, I just—"
A steadying hand came to rest on her shoulder. The touch was simple, grounding. "I know," Mash said softly.
The words, so simple, so plain, made Gudako freeze. Her breath caught in another sob. Mash's gaze did not waver, her hand did not leave her shoulder. Her voice was an anchor in the storm. "I know, Senpai."
That was all it took.
The last, fragile dam holding back the full weight of her new reality crumbled into nothing. The words spilled out, a chaotic, desperate torrent.
"I don't understand any of this!" she wailed, the words muffled as she buried her face in Mash's shoulder. "Magic, and monsters, and… and Servants! A week ago, I thought that was all just in stories! I should be excited, right? I should want to know more, but… but it's just… this!" Her fist beat weakly against the cold concrete floor. "My friends… my mother… my baby brother… They're all just… gone! And I'm alive! Why am I alive?!"
The question ripped itself from her throat, a raw cry of survivor's guilt and cosmic injustice. "Was I that awful? Was my life so terrible that the gods decided this was my punishment? To be the only one left in a world where everyone I ever cared about is dead?!" Her rage dissolved into a pure, desolate wail, the pain too vast, the loss too absolute to be contained in words anymore. She didn't know what to do. There was nothing to do.
Her energy, fueled and then consumed by her grief, finally gave out. Her cries softened into ragged, shuddering breaths. She went limp, a dead weight against Mash, having passed out from the sheer, crushing burden of it all.
For a long moment, Mash just sat there in the flickering darkness, holding her Master. Then, with a strength that belied her slender frame, she shifted, carefully lifting Gudako into her arms.
The final scene followed her down the silent, echoing corridors of Chaldea. She carried her senpai back to the small, sterile room she had been assigned. She gently placed her on the bed and pulled the clean white covers up to her chin. She turned off the lights, plunging the room into a soft darkness, and then stepped back out into the hall, the door hissing shut behind her.
In the dim, sterile light of the corridor, Mash stood alone. A single, silent tear escaped and traced a path down her cheek. It was not a tear for the billions of lives lost, or for a world she had never known. It was for the overwhelming, absolute pain of the first and only true friend she had ever had.
-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-
Mash held her bow, her posture a deep and formal plea in the echoing silence of the hangar. The two beings before her were concepts made flesh, forces of nature she could not truly comprehend. One watched her with a predator's playful curiosity; the other, with the profound indifference of a distant, blood-red star.
Sukuna observed her for a long, silent moment, his four crimson eyes unreadable. A low, dismissive "Tch" escaped his lips, a sound of pure, untroubled annoyance. He turned his gaze, not to Mash, but to Cú Chulainn.
"This is your project, Hound," Sukuna stated, his voice flat. "Do not waste my time with it."
With a final, parting glance at Mash that clearly and utterly categorized her as an uninteresting problem—a dull rock in a world of fascinating, breakable things—Sukuna turned. He strode out of the vast training room without another word, his silent footsteps leaving a heavier silence in their wake.
The rejection, so absolute and casual, stung more than Mash cared to admit. She felt a familiar shame begin to creep up her neck, her gaze falling to the concrete floor.
"Well, there goes the grumpy one."
She looked up. Cú Chulainn was leaning on his staff, his wide, confident grin completely intact, as if Sukuna's suffocating presence had never been there at all. "Guess that leaves you with me," he said cheerfully. "Stand up, Shielder. Training's no good if you're staring at the floor."
Mash scrambled to her feet, a flush of embarrassment warming her cheeks. "S-Sorry, I…"
Cú waved a dismissive hand, though his red eyes had turned sharp, analytical. His playful demeanor receded just enough to reveal the seasoned warrior beneath. "Alright, before we start trading blows, I need a baseline. Let's see your stances. Show me your guard. Show me how you move when you're not getting your shield bashed in by a monster."
Nodding stiffly, Mash shifted her weight, bringing her shield up into the defensive posture that felt most natural. It was an instinct, a piece of knowledge that existed in her muscles, not her mind.
From Cú Chulainn's perspective, the moment she moved was a revelation. It was there, clear as day to a warrior's eye—a flicker of a truly masterful style. Her shield arm was perfectly angled to deflect, her footing solid, her center of gravity low and stable. For a single, fleeting second, she looked like a veteran of a hundred battles. Then, just as quickly, the illusion shattered. She took a step, and the inherent grace dissolved into a clumsy shuffle. Her own conscious thought was fighting a battle with the instincts she'd been given. He saw it with perfect clarity: this wasn't inexperience, it was a conflict. Two drivers fighting for control of a single body, and the one with the license was a terrified amateur.
Fascinating, he thought, his grin returning. This was a far more interesting puzzle than he had anticipated.
"Alright, that's enough of that," Cú declared, spinning his staff in a lazy arc that belied the speed of the motion. "Now for the fun part. Show me what you've got." He settled into an open, almost goading stance, his staff held loosely in one hand. "You there, stand in the middle." Mash's posture changed into one of determination. She nodded at him. He grinned. He changed his posture, staff held in a two-handed grip. "Don't hold back. I want to see what that knight you're borrowing from really taught you."
"Yes, sir!" Mash said, her voice tight with resolve. She took a breath, centered herself, and charged.
The spar was an exercise in absolute control for the Caster. He never attacked, only reacted. Mash's first blow was a powerful, straightforward bash. Cú met it not with force, but with a fluid parry, the head of his staff deflecting the shield's rim just enough to send the force of the blow harmlessly wide. He used her momentum against her, stepping inside her guard as she overcommitted, forcing her to stumble to regain her balance.
She came at him again, a sweeping horizontal strike meant to knock his legs out from under him. Cú simply leaped, a feat of effortless agility, his feet clearing the arc of the shield by a scant inch before he landed silently behind her. He could have ended it there with a simple tap to the back of her head. Instead, he waited.
From his diagnostic point of view, her flaws were a litany of rookie mistakes. Her footwork was a disaster; she planted her feet like she was trying to grow roots, making her predictable and slow to pivot. She swung the shield with the unrefined power of a cudgel, all force and no finesse, telegraphing every move. But beneath it all, he could still see the ghost of that other fighter—the subtle, instinctual shifts in her wrist to angle a block, the momentary, perfect form she'd hold for a split second before her conscious mind interfered. It was like watching a master artist's work being colored in by a child with a crayon.
The test ended a moment later. Seeing an opening, Mash lunged forward with a desperate shield thrust. Cú met it with the butt of his staff, spun the weapon in his grip, and used its length as a lever. A sharp, controlled twist, and the massive shield was wrenched from her grasp, clattering loudly onto the concrete floor. Before she could even process the disarmament, he had flowed forward. The tip of his wooden staff came to rest with an almost delicate pressure against her throat.
For a long moment, Mash just stood there, breathing heavily, the cool, smooth wood against her skin a definitive statement of her defeat.
Cú's grin returned as he pulled the staff away. "Not bad," he said, and the praise sounded genuine. He walked over and nudged her shield with his foot, pushing it back towards her. He then helped her to her feet. "Raw as a fresh wound, but the potential is there. I know where to start now. We'll build you up from the ground, proper-like. Iron out that mess between what you know and what your body thinks it knows."
Mash, exhausted but resolute, looked up at him. "Do you think… could I ever beat you?"
Cú let out a booming, infectious laugh. "Woah there, kid. Let's learn to walk before you try to outrun the wind, eh?" He turned and started for the door, slinging his staff over his shoulder. He paused at the threshold, looking back at her over his shoulder.
His expression softened, a flicker of the genuine hero beneath the roguish exterior. "But listen," he says, his voice losing its mocking edge. "You put in the work, you listen to me, and I promise you… there's no mountain you won't be able to climb. You've got the heart for it. That's the one thing a teacher can't give you."
He turned back to the door. "Now, that's enough work for one day. First rule of being my student: you debrief with your teacher. I'm going to see if I can charm a drink out of that genius lady and find our King to see what he's scrounging up for dinner. You coming?"
Mash's face, bright with a mixture of exhaustion and renewed hope, broke into a small, determined smile. She hurried to catch up with him, her steps lighter than they had been all day.
"Yes, Shishou!"
Cú's back was to her, but she could have sworn she saw the tips of his ears turn a faint shade of red as he let out a surprised bark of laughter. They walked out of the hangar together, a new, unlikely partnership forged.
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Author's Note:
Thanks for reading, everyone! Sorry this chapter was so short.
For my Patrons, you'll start getting early access to chapters from the next arc, "Orleans," starting tomorrow or the day after.
I've had to pause my other story, "Of Aliens, Magic and Superheroes," because I have writer's block. To avoid getting tired of writing this story, I might start a new one or work on an old one.
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Thanks for all your support!
Ciao