Whelp this was awkward.
Griswald's mouth hung open. Mash's shield arm twitched. Ritsuka's eyebrows climbed toward her hairline. Even Fou stopped grooming himself to stare at the silver-armored woman who had just flatly refused their offer.
"Um," Griswald managed.
Jeanne's cheeks flushed crimson. She looked away, her gauntleted fingers fidgeting with the hem of her violet skirt. "I apologies. That was... I did not mean to sound so harsh."
"No, no, it's fine," Griswald said quickly, waving his hands. "I completely understand. You don't have to explain yourself."
"It is not that I find you repulsive," Jeanne added, which somehow made everything worse. "You seem like a perfectly acceptable young man. It is simply that I cannot—"
"Really, it's fine."
"—engage in such activities with someone I have just met, regardless of the circumstances—"
"Totally understandable."
"—and my faith does not permit me to—"
Ritsuka sighed loudly, cutting through their overlapping protests. "Makes sense. A saint like you saying no to sex. Can't exactly picture the Maid of Orléans getting down and dirty in a barn."
Jeanne's blush deepened to an alarming shade of scarlet. "I am not… I do not consider myself… Please do not call me that."
"What, a saint?" Ritsuka tilted her head. "But you are one. Literally. Canonized and everything."
"That is— The Church's recognition came centuries after my death, and I never sought— It is simply embarrassing to hear it spoken aloud so casually." Jeanne pressed her palms to her burning cheeks. "Please. Just call me Jeanne. Or Joan, if you prefer the English. There is no need for titles or... that word."
"Jeanne it is," Griswald said, grateful for any topic that steered away from the mana transfer issue.
An awkward silence descended over the farmhouse. Dust motes drifted through the afternoon light streaming between gaps in the wooden walls. Somewhere outside, a bird sang three notes and stopped. Mash shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Ritsuka examined her fingernails. Jeanne stared at a particularly interesting knot in the floorboards.
Griswald cleared his throat.
No one spoke.
Fou yawned.
"So," Ritsuka said finally, breaking the tension with all the subtlety of a hammer through glass, "is kissing off the table too?"
Griswald choked on nothing. Mash's face went pink. Jeanne made a small strangled noise that might have been a word in some language.
"Ritsuka." Griswald hissed.
"What? It's a legitimate question. Maybe we don't need to go all the way. A little mouth-to-mouth mana transfer might be enough to keep her going."
Jeanne's hands had migrated from her cheeks to cover her entire face. Her voice emerged muffled through her gauntlets. "I am sorry. I cannot do that either."
"Nothing at all?" Ritsuka pressed.
"Nothing." Jeanne lowered her hands, her composure partially restored though pink still stained her cheekbones. "Please understand. It is not personal rejection. I simply cannot engage in any intimate contact with your Master. It would be... inappropriate."
Griswald nodded slowly. "That's perfectly fine. I won't force anything on you. But I have to be honest about our situation." He gestured vaguely at his own chest. "My magical circuits are barely functional. In Fuyuki, I couldn't even sustain Mash properly through our contract bond alone. Without direct mana transfer, I won't be able to support you at all. You'd be running on whatever reserves you have now, and once those run out..."
"I would fade," Jeanne finished. "Yes. I understand."
"So we're at an impasse," Ritsuka said. "You need mana to fight. Griswald can only give mana through physical contact. You won't accept physical contact. How exactly is this alliance supposed to work?"
Jeanne's expression shifted. Something complicated moved behind her blue eyes. She looked at Griswald, then at Mash, then back to her hands folded in her lap.
"There is... another reason." she said quietly. "Beyond my personal boundaries."
Griswald leaned forward. "What do you mean?"
Jeanne's fingers twisted together in her lap, her gauntlets clicking softly. Her face remained flushed, and she couldn't seem to meet anyone's eyes.
"I am the Maid of Orléans," she said, each word carefully measured. "My legend is built upon... purity. Virginity. It was part of what allowed me to carry the banner, to hear the voices of God, to lead armies when no woman should have been permitted to do so." She paused, swallowing. "My maidenhood was examined twice by the church to verify my claims. It became inseparable from my legend."
Griswald shifted uncomfortably. "I see."
"It is mortifying to speak of." Jeanne continued, her voice barely above a whisper. "But you must understand why I cannot—"
"Hold on." Da Vinci's voice crackled through the communicator. "Before you torture yourself further with explanations, let me provide some context. This is actually a fascinating example of how Servant mechanics function."
Jeanne's shoulders sagged with what looked like relief at having the conversation taken from her hands.
"Heroic Spirits," Da Vinci continued, her tone shifting into lecture mode, "are not precisely the people who lived those lives. They are crystallizations of legend, myth, and belief. The person Jeanne d'Arc who walked the earth in the fifteenth century is gone. What remains is humanity's collective understanding of who she was, compressed into a Servant container."
Griswald frowned. "So she's not... real?"
"Oh, she's real. Just not the Jeanne d'Arc who actually performed the deeds. Think of it this way: when enough people believe something strongly enough about a historical figure, that belief becomes power. It becomes truth, in a sense. The legends themselves are what give Servants their abilities and define their limitations."
Ritsuka leaned against the wall. "Like how some Servants are stronger in certain places?"
"Precisely! A Servant manifesting in their homeland or somewhere their legend is widely known receives a significant boost to their parameters. That's because the collective unconscious in that region recognizes them, resonates with them. The land itself remembers." Da Vinci paused, and Griswald could almost picture her adjusting her glasses in that particular way she did when explaining something she found especially interesting. "But it works in reverse as well. Legends bind Servants just as much as they empower them."
Mash's eyes widened slightly. "Does that mean if senpai..."
"Exactly, Mash. You're catching on." Da Vinci's voice carried a note of approval. "If a legend states that a Servant is weak to something—fire, water, iron, whatever—then that Servant will be weak to it, regardless of whether the historical person actually was. The legend overwrites reality. It becomes their reality."
The implications settled over the group like a heavy blanket. Griswald looked at Jeanne, whose face had gone from pink to nearly white.
"So if the legend of the Maid of Orléans specifically emphasizes her virginity," Mash said slowly, working through the logic, "and that purity is part of what made her powerful enough to lead armies and hear divine guidance, then if she were to... if senpai were to have sex with her..."
"Then it would directly contradict her legend," Da Vinci finished. "And Servants cannot contradict their legends without consequence. It's not just a matter of personal choice or religious belief. It's a fundamental aspect of how her Spirit Origin functions."
Jeanne nodded, her voice barely audible. "That is correct."
Griswald ran a hand through his hair. "What kind of consequence are we talking about?"
"In the best case scenario? Her parameters would drop. Strength, endurance, agility—all of it would decrease as the legend weakened its hold on her. She might lose access to certain skills or abilities tied to her sainthood." Da Vinci paused.
The farmhouse fell silent again, but this time the quiet carried weight. Not embarrassment or awkwardness, but genuine understanding of the stakes.
"That's..." Griswald trailed off. "I didn't realize. I thought it was just about personal boundaries."
"It is that as well," Jeanne said quickly. "Please do not think my faith is merely some mechanical limitation. I would refuse regardless, legend or no legend. But the legend makes it..." She gestured helplessly. "Impossible. Even if I wanted to compromise."
Ritsuka pushed off from the wall. "So we're back to square one. Jeanne needs mana to fight. Griswald can't provide it without physical intimacy. Physical intimacy would weaken her. Great. Just great."
Mash stepped forward, her shield shifting on her arm. "Then I will simply have to fight harder. If Jeanne cannot draw from senpai's mana, I will protect them both. My reserves should be sufficient for—"
"No." Griswald's voice came out sharper than he intended. "You can't shoulder everything, Mash. That's not sustainable."
"But what choice do we have?"
The silence stretched taut between them, broken only by the creak of old wood settling and Fou's soft chittering from his perch on Mash's shoulder.
Jeanne straightened in her seat, her gauntleted hands unclenching. Some of the tension bled from her shoulders as her blue eyes swept across their faces. "I can still fight," she said, her voice gaining strength. "And I will happily fight alongside you. My skills with the banner and blade remain intact. I am not helpless simply because I cannot draw upon your Master's mana."
Ritsuka crossed her arms. "But you need mana to exist, right? Servants aren't exactly running on air and good intentions."
"That is true under normal circumstances." Jeanne's expression softened, and for the first time since they'd met, something like hope flickered across her features. "But we are in France. My legend is strongest here the land itself remembers me, recognizes me. The collective belief of generations saturates this soil." She gestured toward the window, toward the rolling hills and forests beyond. "While I remain within this Singularity, I am in no danger of disappearing. The ambient mana and the power of my legend will sustain my Spirit Origin without a Master's support."
Griswald felt a flutter of relief. "So you won't fade?"
"No. Not here." Jeanne paused, her fingers tracing idle patterns on the wooden table between them. "However, that does not cover the mana expenditure during combat. Sustaining my existence is one matter. But deploying my skills, manifesting my Noble Phantasm, engaging in prolonged battles... those actions require significant reserves." Her jaw tightened. "Which means I cannot fight for extended periods. My combat effectiveness will diminish rapidly without a proper supply."
Mash watched Jeanne's face with quiet, analytical attention. "Then where does that leave us?"
Griswald was already turning the problem over in his head, rotating it the way he might examine a fracture in someone's bone. Not a catastrophe. Just a limitation. Limitations had workarounds.
"It leaves us with a new ally who knows the land," he said. "Which is, by itself, enormous."
Everyone looked at him.
"Think about it." He straightened up from where he'd been leaning against the wall, pushing his glasses up his nose. "We arrived here twenty minutes ago and we already have no idea where the false Jeanne is operating from, what her army's movements look like, or which towns are still standing. Romani can give us coordinates but he can't tell us which roads are watched or where refugees are sheltering or what the local people actually believe is happening." He glanced at Jeanne. "You've been walking this Singularity for three weeks. You know things we don't."
Ritsuka tilted her head. "Huh."
"You know the geography. You know the settlements. You know which soldiers might still be willing to fight and which lords have already surrendered. That intelligence is worth more than raw combat power right now." Griswald crossed the farmhouse floor toward Jeanne, his footsteps quiet against the packed earth. "We can work around your mana limitations in combat. We can be careful about how long engagements last. We can develop strategies that don't require you to fight at full power for extended periods."
Jeanne had gone very still.
Up close, she was smaller than her bearing suggested. The silver armour caught the afternoon light coming through the cracked shutter behind her, scattering pale reflections across the low ceiling. Her blue eyes tracked him as he approached, cautious but not retreating. The faint flush had not entirely left her cheeks.
Griswald stopped in front of her and extended his hand.
"If you'll have us." he said, "we'd genuinely love to team up with you."
Jeanne looked at his hand. Then at his face. Something in her expression shifted, the careful distance she'd maintained since introducing herself cracking slightly at the edges. Her eyes moved briefly to Mash, then to Ritsuka, then back to him.
"You are not bothered?" Her voice was quiet. "By my refusal?"
"No."
"Truly?"
"Jeanne." He kept his hand steady, his grey eyes direct behind his glasses. "You explained your reasons clearly and honestly. That's more than most people manage. I'd be an idiot to hold that against you."
Her lips pressed together. Not displeasure. Something else, something she was visibly working to contain.
Jeanne took his hand.
Her grip was firm, gauntlet cool against his palm, and she shook it once with the practiced formality of someone who had sealed more than a few wartime agreements. Up close her blue eyes held steady, no longer avoiding his face.
"Then we are agreed," she said.
"We are." Griswald released her hand and turned back to the group.
Ritsuka exhaled through her nose, long and slow, and dropped onto an overturned crate near the farmhouse wall. "Well. That's one." She stretched her arms above her head, orange ponytail swinging. "We're still going to need more bodies if we want to go up against whatever that false Jeanne is commanding. She had wyverns and she had them in numbers. That's not a one Servant problem."
"No," Griswald agreed. "It's not."
"So what's the plan? We wander France hoping to trip over helpful Heroic Spirits?"
"We found her," Griswald said, nodding toward Jeanne. "We'll find others."
Ritsuka stared at him for a moment. Then the corner of her mouth curved upward. "That we did."
Griswald turned toward the window. Outside, the afternoon light had begun its slow tilt toward evening, the sun dropping behind the tree line and pulling long shadows across the ruined courtyard. The farmhouse had a good stone foundation and most of the roof remained intact, which put it well ahead of anything they'd sheltered in during Fuyuki. There was a well in the courtyard that Mash had confirmed produced clean water.
It was as good a position as they were likely to find before dark.
"We should stay here tonight," Griswald said. "Give Romani and Da Vinci time to run proper scans."
He lifted his communicator. "Romani. You heard most of that?"
A brief crackle, then Romani's voice came through warm and slightly tired. "Every word. I'm glad you have Jeanne on side. Her knowledge of the terrain is going to be invaluable."
"Can you scan the Singularity? Look for Servant signatures within a reasonable radius?"
"Already started." The sound of keyboard inputs filtered through the static. "The ring structure in the sky is interfering with long-range detection but Da Vinci has been working on a filter algorithm since you landed. We should have preliminary results within a few hours."
Da Vinci's voice joined the channel without invitation. "If there are dormant Servants drawing on the Singularity's ambient mana rather than a Master's supply, they'll show up as distinct resonance patterns once we correct for the any interference."
"How long?" Griswald asked.
"Depends if there are any servants near by."
"Alright keep us updated."
The channel clicked quiet.
Griswald lowered the communicator and found the others already beginning to settle in.
Mash couldn't sleep.
She lay on her back in the small upstairs room for twenty minutes, staring at the ceiling's dark timber beams whilst the sounds of the French countryside filtered through the cracked shutter. Crickets. Wind moving through grass. The distant call of something nocturnal she couldn't identify.
The sounds were beautiful. It made the night so calming. Nothing like the hum of machinery that she fell asleep to in Chaldea.
But her body wouldn't settle. Her circuits were still humming from the day's combat. She sat up, pulled her bodysuit back on, called her gauntlets and boots into place from wherever unsummoned equipment went, and decided that staring at the ceiling in armor was at least more honest than pretending she might eventually drift off.
The farmhouse was quiet. Masters door was closed, a thin line of darkness beneath it, no candlelight. Good. He needed the rest more than either of them.
Mash descended the stairs carefully, avoiding the third step from the bottom after she had felt its creak beneath her boot on the way up. The ground floor was all shadow and pale moonlight coming through the gaps in the walls. Fou was nowhere visible, which meant he was sleeping somewhere improbable.
She pushed the farmhouse door open and stepped into the courtyard.
The air was cool. Not the recycled, temperature-managed air of Chaldea's corridors, with its faint mechanical undertone and complete absence of weather. This was real cold, carrying the smell of earth and damp grass with the trace of something flowering she had no name for. Mash stood in it for a moment and let it settle on her skin.
Movement above caught her eye.
Jeanne sat on the farmhouse roof with her knees drawn up and her banner resting across her lap, her silver armor muted in the moonlight and her long braid trailing over one shoulder. She was watching the tree line with calm, unhurried attention, the kind of watchfulness that suggested she had been at it for some time and expected to be at it for considerably longer.
Mash studied the roofline. Stone wall to the left, a low section of roof where the thatch had collapsed inward, a narrow ledge above that. She gathered herself and jumped, catching the ledge with both hands, and pulled herself up in a single clean motion. Her boots found purchase on the roof tiles and she straightened, crossing the remaining distance to sit beside Jeanne.
Jeanne turned at the sound of her approach, no alarm in her expression. Just recognition.
"Mash." Her voice was quiet, calibrated for the night.
"I am sorry to intrude," Mash said, settling beside her. "I could not sleep."
"You are not intruding." Jeanne's gaze returned to the tree line. "I have taken the watch. It seemed reasonable."
"That is a good idea." Mash drew her knees up, mirroring Jeanne's posture without entirely meaning to. "May I join you?"
Jeanne's answer was to shift slightly, making room on the tiles between herself and the roof's peak. Not a large gesture. Enough.
They sat together and looked out at the dark edge of the forest. The sky above was extraordinary. Mash had stood under the Fuyuki sky and felt something like awe, but that sky had been blood-red and wrong, a symptom of a dying Singularity. This one was clean, vast and full of more stars than she had known existed outside of astronomical charts. The great ring of pale light curved across it from horizon to horizon, strange and bright, and beneath it the landscape lay silver and still.
"The stars are different from what I expected," Mash said.
"Yes?" Jeanne glanced at her. "You have not seen them before?"
"Not like this." Mash considered how to explain Chaldea without making it sound like she was asking for sympathy. "I grew up in a facility. Underground, largely. We had simulations. Images on screens. But this is..."
She did not finish. She did not need to. Jeanne seemed to understand that some things were better held than spoken.
They were quiet for a while. The forest moved in the wind, a slow breathing dark mass at the edge of Mash's vision. Nothing emerged from it.
The cricket song swelled and faded in slow waves.
Jeanne turned the banner shaft between her fingers, a slow rotation, more habit than intention. "You and your Master seem close," she said finally.
Mash felt warmth move up the back of her neck. "We are." She paused. "He means a lot to me…'
Jeanne's did not rush her.
Mash looked at her hands in her lap. "He was the first person at Chaldea who spoke to me like I was simply a person. Not a subject." She turned one gauntlet over, examining the dark plating without really seeing it. "I did not realize how much that mattered until I had it."
Jeanne made a small sound of understanding.
"The mana transfer," Mash continued, and then stopped, surprised at herself for saying it.
Jeanne glanced at her sideways.
The words were already out. There was no graceful retreat. Mash kept her eyes on the tree line and pressed forward with the blunt honesty that seemed, lately, easier than careful omission. "I have performed mana transfer with him. Directly. Several times."
A beat of silence.
"I see," Jeanne said. She shifted a bit and some color warmed Jeanne cheeks.
"I did not know," Jeanne said. "When I refused this afternoon, I did not know your situation. I hope I did not make it seem as though I thought less of you for it."
"You did not," Mash said quickly. "Truly. I was not offended." She folded her hands together. "Our situation in Fuyuki was... there were no alternatives that were practical in time. Senpai made certain I understood I was not obligated. He was very clear about that." She paused. "He is always very clear about that."
Jeanne breathed out slowly, and the tension Mash had not quite noticed in the set of her jaw released itself. "I am glad." She leaned her head back, looking up at the pale ring crossing the sky. "When your Master described the mana transfer requirements I felt I had somehow stepped into a situation I was entirely unprepared for." The corner of her mouth moved, not quite a smile but adjacent to one. "I have faced English armies, heresy charges and the stake. I did not expect that to be what gave me pause on my first evening with allies."
Mash found, to her own mild surprise, that she was smiling. "It is an unusual circumstance."
"Extraordinarily." Jeanne's shoulders dropped further, and something younger showed through the composed warrior bearing, something that reminded Mash that Jeanne had died at nineteen. "When I was summoned I expected to fight. I expected it to be difficult." She glanced at Mash. "I did not add intimate negotiation to my list of anticipated complications."
"Nor did I," Mash admitted. "The first time was..." She searched for a word that was accurate without being exposing. "Abrupt. There was very little time to think about it."
"Was it frightening?"
The question was asked with simple directness, no salacious edge to it.
Mash thought about the ruined store in Fuyuki. Griswald's careful awkward uncertainty pressed against her own. The mana moving through her circuits like a tide coming in, filling spaces she had not known were empty. "A little," she said. "Mostly it was... unexpectedly warm. I did not expect the warmth."
Jeanne said nothing. But she was listening in the way that suggested the silence was intentional space, offered rather than absent.
"What about you?" Mash asked. "You said earlier that you have not felt right since you were summoned. What did you mean?"
The stillness that moved through Jeanne was different from composure. Composed was a surface. This went deeper, the stillness of something pressed inward.
"My Ruler class grants me particular abilities," Jeanne said. She turned the banner shaft in her hands again, one slow rotation. "All of it is there. I can feel the shape of each ability when I reach for it. But reaching for it and having it respond fully are different things."
Mash waited.
"It is like trying to speak in a room where the air is too thin," Jeanne continued. "The words form correctly. The intention is precise. But something between the intention and the action is missing, or compressed, or just simply not answering." Her jaw tightened briefly. "I held off the wyvern today. But I felt every expenditure of energy in a way I should not have noticed. Abilities that should be effortless required deliberate effort."
"The absence of a Master," Mash said.
"Maybe." Jeanne's blue eyes moved across the dark countryside.
Mash understood that. Not abstractly. She understood it the way she understood the weight of the shield on her arm, the way she understood the gap where Galahad's voice should be and was not.
"I know that feeling," she said quietly.
Jeanne looked at her.
"Not totally the same." Mash said. "Something that should be present and whole being present and incomplete instead. Something you reach for that answers only partially." She looked at her gauntlets. "The Heroic Spirit within me. He gave me his power when I needed it most. But he does not speak to me. I do not know why he chose silence." She paused. "I have spent most of my life being told I was an incomplete version of what I was supposed to be. And now the thing inside me that was supposed to complete me is also incomplete."
The words landed in the quiet between them without drama.
Jeanne was still for a long moment.
Then she reached out, not quickly, and rested one gauntleted hand briefly on top of Mash's.
"Then we are well matched," she said. "Two incomplete things, standing in a country that does not quite know what to do with either of us.
Mash felt the warmth of that gauntlet against her own before Jeanne withdrew it, and the gesture settled something in her chest that she hadn't realised was unsettled.
"Two incomplete things," she repeated softly.
Jeanne had already returned her gaze to the tree line, but the set of her shoulders had changed. Less watchfulness in it. More presence.
They sat together for a while without speaking, and the silence was the comfortable kind, the kind that didn't need filling. The cricket song rose and fell in long slow pulses. The wind moved through the grass below them in visible ripples, silver in the moonlight.
"I want to be someone he can rely on," Mash said eventually. She was not entirely certain she had meant to say it aloud until it was already spoken. "Senpai. I want to be a Servant he never has to worry about. Someone who is simply there, solid and certain, every time he needs a shield raised." She looked at her gauntleted hands. "In Fuyuki I was almost not enough. Several times. I felt it each time, the gap between what I could do and what the situation required."
"But you were enough," Jeanne said. "You are here."
"Barely." Mash turned one gauntlet over.
Jeanne was quiet for a moment. Her thumb traced a small arc along the banner shaft.
"I understand that," she said. "Though from a different angle." A pause. A careful exhale. "I never sought sainthood. I never stood on a battlefield and thought, I am doing this so that generations will call me holy. I simply tried to do what the voices asked of me and trusted that God's purpose was larger than my understanding of it."
Mash listened.
"And now that title is my legend. My foundation. Every ability I possess is built upon it." Jeanne's jaw tightened. "I must live up to something I never imagined having. That is a strange pressure. To be handed an identity so large and told that collapsing it means collapsing yourself."
"Yes," Mash said. Quiet and immediate. "Yes, exactly that."
Jeanne glanced at her, something like recognition passing between them.
The pale ring arced overhead, vast and silent, cutting the sky in two. Mash tracked its curve from one horizon to the other and thought about identity built on foundations you didn't choose.
A question had been sitting at the back of her mind since the farmhouse. She had let it wait, giving it space, not wanting to interrupt the quiet they had found. But it was still there now, patient.
"Jeanne," she said. "Earlier, when you explained why you couldn't accept senpai's mana. You said physical intimacy would weaken you. That it would contradict your legend."
Jeanne inclined her head slightly. "That is correct."
"Because your legend is built on chastity. On purity." Mash kept her voice even. "The Maid of Orléans. If that element of the legend is violated, your Spirit Origin weakens. Your parameters drop."
"Yes." Jeanne's voice was careful but not defensive. "It is not merely religious conviction, though that is genuine. The two things are inseparable. My power and my vows are the same thing."
Mash nodded slowly. She looked at her hands again.
"The Heroic Spirit inside me," she said. "His true name is Galahad."
The name landed in the quiet like a stone dropped into still water.
Jeanne turned fully toward her for the first time since they had sat down. Her blue eyes were wide.
"Galahad," she said.
"Yes."
A beat of silence. Jeanne's expression moved through several things before settling on something stunned and intent. "The Knight of the Lake's son. The purest knight of the Round Table. The one who achieved the Holy Grail quest because no sin could touch him." She paused.
"Ya… that Galahad," Mash confirmed.
Jeanne was quiet for a long moment. The wind moved the grass below them.
"He is known as the Pure," she said at last, her voice careful. "His legend is built on the same foundation as mine in that regard." She looked at Mash with something approaching bewilderment. "If your abilities are drawn from his legend, then the same principle should apply to you. Intimacy with your Master should have weakened you."
"It should have," Mash agreed.
Jeanne stared at her.
"It didn't." Mash said it plainly, without drama. "When senpai transferred mana to me through direct contact, I was stronger from his mana. Not weaker. My circuits expanded to carry the volume. Lord Chaldeas activated for the first time." She pressed her palms flat against her knees. "Galahad had never given me access to that Noble Phantasm before that moment. After the transfer he did. And I have had no problems since. No degradation. No weakening of parameters."
The silence stretched.
Jeanne had no answer. Mash could see her working through it, the same logical architecture Mash herself had been quietly building and demolishing since Fuyuki. The silver armor caught the moonlight as Jeanne shifted, turning the problem over.
"A Demi-Servant," Jeanne said slowly. "You are not a full manifestation of his legend. You are human. His Spirit Origin is layered over yours, not replacing it."
"That is what I have told myself," Mash said. "That perhaps the Demi-Servant structure changes how the legend's rules apply. That because I am also simply Mash Kyrielight, a human girl, the same constraints do not bind me the way they would bind him if he were summoned whole."
"It is a reasonable theory," Jeanne said.
"It is an unsatisfying one." Mash's voice was quiet.
Jeanne looked at her with something that might have been respect. "Then think on it."
"I will." Mash lifted her eyes back to the sky. "I intend to."
Jeanne turned forward again. Neither of them spoke for a while. The farmhouse beneath them creaked once in the wind. The forest held its dark, breathing stillness at the edge of the field.
Mash turned the question over slowly, like examining a lock without a key.
Pure. The word sat in the center of her thoughts and refused to move.
She thought about what purity actually meant, whether it was the absence of a thing or the presence of one. Whether a locked door was pure because nothing had passed through it or whether purity was something else entirely. Something about intention. About the quality of what was carried rather than the fact of carrying it.
She did not reach a conclusion.
But the question felt better shaped than it had an hour ago. More defined at its edges. Something she could return to.
Jeanne's shoulder brushed hers as the taller woman shifted, settling into a slightly different watch position. The contact was small and entirely unself-conscious.
Mash did not move away from it.
Above them, the pale ring crossed the sky in its slow arc and the stars burned cold and permanent in the spaces between, and the two of them sat together in the quiet while France breathed around them in the dark.
Mash breathed out happy that they had found a full servant that could be look out without needed to sleep. Now Senpai can get a full nights rest and not have to worry about something jumping him in the dark.
Griswald was woken by something jumping him in the dark.
It landed on his chest and took the air out of him. He scrambled for his glasses in shock and looked up to see Ritsuka looking down at him with a sly smile on her face as she sat on his chest.
"We are going to have sex now and I am not taking no for an answer."
Well it seems that he was not sleeping tonight.