The next few hours in the apartment at 22 Ironwood Avenue were... surreal, to say the least.
Chara sat in the center of the room, flanked by three increasingly comfortable servants. Tiamat had claimed his left side, her head resting against his shoulder as she hummed that eternal lullaby. Jack had draped herself across his lap like a contented cat, occasionally giggling when the bond XP ticked upward. And MHX, despite her earlier protests about "professional boundaries," had somehow ended up sitting close enough that their shoulders touched, her cap pulled low to hide her expression.
[Bond Leveling in Progress...]
[Jack the Ripper: Bond Level 1 (8,750 / 10,000)]
[Tiamat (Larva): Bond Level 1 (6,890 / 25,000)]
[Mysterious Heroine X: Bond Level 1 (1,340 / 10,000)]
"This is... strategically sound," MHX muttered, though she made no move to pull away. "Building rapport with one's Servant improves synchronization in combat. Purely tactical."
"Sure it is," Chara replied, patting her head again. The bonus XP notification popped up immediately.
[+50 XP - Headpat Bonus]
Her ears turned crimson, but she stayed put. Through the Eye of the Primordial, Chara could see her Mental Stability bar slowly filling. The cosmic loneliness that came with being a dimensional traveler was being soothed, bit by bit.
Jack's eyes opened, watching the exchange with the quiet calculation of someone who had spent centuries studying human behavior from the shadows of Victorian alleys.
"Mommy pats everyone's heads," Jack observed, her voice carrying that unsettling mix of childlike observation and ancient knowing. "Does that mean we are all equally important?"
The question landed heavier than Jack probably intended. Tiamat's humming paused for exactly one second, then resumed, though the melody shifted slightly — something more attentive underneath.
Chara considered his answer carefully. In a room containing a Primordial Goddess, history's most infamous serial killer, and a galaxy-brained Saber-slayer from another universe, diplomacy was a survival skill.
"It means none of you are replaceable," he said finally.
Jack processed this for a moment, then pressed her face against his knee with a small, satisfied sound. MHX made a noise that was definitely not a quiet exhale of relief. Tiamat resumed her original melody, apparently approving of the answer.
The gas lamps flickered. Outside, Backlund murmured with the sounds of late-evening traffic — iron wheels on cobblestone, the distant bellowing of a foghorn on the Tussock River, and somewhere three streets over, what was either a tomcat or someone having a very bad night
.
[Bond Leveling in Progress...]
[Jack the Ripper: Bond Level 1 (9,100 / 10,000)]
[Tiamat (Larva): Bond Level 1 (7,340 / 25,000)]
[Mysterious Heroine X: Bond Level 1 (1,680 / 10,000)]
MHX shifted slightly, her Secretcalibur propped against the armchair beside her. In the warm amber gaslight, its futuristic design looked even more out of place than usual — a blade that had seen the death of stars, resting against velvet upholstery older than some dynasties.
"Master," she said, with the measured tone of someone choosing their words strategically. "In the Servant Universe, I operated with a clear objective. Eliminate all Sabers. The mission provided... structure." A beat. "This world does not have Sabers."
"It doesn't," Chara confirmed.
"So my purpose, as originally defined, is effectively void."
Chara tilted his head to look at her. Through the Eye of the Primordial, her Mental Stability had stopped climbing and was hovering, fluctuating in small increments. The cosmic loneliness he'd noticed earlier wasn't fully soothed — it was just quieter.
"Your purpose isn't void," he said. "It just needs a new frame. Sabers, Warrior Pathway Beyonders, anyone with a sword and bad intentions in this city — there's no shortage of targets. The Zmanger Gang alone probably has ten men who think a blade makes them untouchable."
MHX was quiet for a moment.
"...Saber-adjacent?" she tried
.
"Close enough," Chara agreed.
She nodded once, with the solemn gravity of someone accepting a sacred quest. Her Mental Stability ticked upward two points.
[+50 XP — Headpat Bonus (residual)]
Tiamat made a low sound, somewhere between a hum and a question. She had been watching the exchange with those lilac eyes, and now she reached across Chara to gently tap MHX's shoulder with one finger. Not a gesture of aggression. More like an acknowledgment.
MHX looked at the finger, then at Tiamat. Something passed between them — two entities from outside this world's natural order, recognizing something in each other.
"...You're very old," MHX said quietly.
Tiamat blinked. Then, very slowly, she smiled. The gas lamps didn't explode, which Chara counted as a personal victory.
Honestly, he wondered if this was the correct way to increase the bond level quickly and even though he is surrounded by three girls who were all in close proximity with him.
He was getting a slight headache from the sheer amount of bond XP notifications piling up in the corner of his vision. The system had apparently decided that "quality time in a Victorian apartment" counted as a legitimate bonding activity, and it wasn't wrong, but the constant soft chiming was starting to feel like a very polite form of sensory overload.
[Jack the Ripper: Bond Level 1 (9,600 / 10,000)]
[Tiamat (Larva): Bond Level 1 (7,890 / 25,000)]
[Mysterious Heroine X: Bond Level 1 (2,100 / 10,000)]
Jack is close to Bond Level 2. Upon reaching Bond Level 2, new information regarding the Servant's history and inner state becomes available.
Chara filed that away. In the original game, Bond Level 2 for Jack unlocked fragments of her origin — the children of Whitechapel, the fog, the longing for something she'd never had. He wasn't sure he was ready to see that rendered in real time through the Eye of the Primordial, but it was coming regardless.
But he wasn't hating it and he wasn't really going to do anything to them, Chara was a Megalomaniac, his only romance was getting stronger....but maybe he didn't really need to fully focus on that, maybe he can make some time.
He stroked MHX'S hair again.
[+50 XP — Headpat Bonus]
MHX went very still.
Not the stillness of someone caught off guard — the stillness of someone making a deliberate decision not to react in a way that would undermine their dignity as a legendary Saber-slaying Assassin from the depths of space.
"That," she said, with great precision, "was unnecessary."
"Was it?" Chara asked, already knowing the answer.
[Mysterious Heroine X: Bond Level 1 (2,210 / 10,000)]
"...Strategically ambiguous," MHX amended.
Jack giggled from her spot across his lap, the sound bright and slightly unnerving, the way wind chimes in an empty house are bright and slightly unnerving. "Mommy likes X's hair."
Chara smiled. "Well her hair is soft, just like yours."
Jack went very still in the same way MHX had — except where MHX had weaponized composure, Jack's stillness was the particular stillness of a child who has received something unexpected and doesn't know what to do with it. Her surgical knives, which had been idly spinning between her fingers, stopped mid-rotation.
"...Mommy thinks my hair is soft?" she said, very quietly.
"It is," Chara confirmed, and reached down to run a hand through the pale, mist-damp strands without making a production of it. Like it was obvious. Like it had always been true.
"If you want, i can even make it into different styles someday, if you want." He said with a smile.
Jack didn't answer for a long moment. Her fingers had curled around the hem of Chara's coat, a small,1 unconscious grip that she probably wasn't aware of.
"...Different styles," she repeated, as though tasting the words. "Like the ladies in the shop windows? With the ribbons?"
"If you want ribbons, sure."
Another long pause. The fog outside pressed against the windowpanes. Somewhere down the street, a clock tower began its slow count toward nine.
"Jack would like that," she said finally, very quietly, like a confession she wasn't sure she was allowed to make. "Someday."
After a while, Chara felt like rhis was ebough bonding for today and now ir was time for hunting, a besst has to protect what it has and it's territory and his territory is now the slums of Backlund, specifically the East Borough.
Chara gently extracted himself from the pile of Servants with the careful precision of a man defusing something far more dangerous than any explosive — three interdimensional beings who had, over the past few hours, apparently decided that his personal space was communal property.
Tiamat released him with the reluctant grace of a tide pulling back from shore. Jack relinquished his coat hem one finger at a time. MHX straightened immediately, adjusting her cap with the practiced dignity of someone who had absolutely not been leaning on his shoulder for the past forty minutes.
"We're moving," Chara said, standing and rolling his shoulders. The Real Knife settled at his side, its familiar weight grounding. "East Borough. Zmanger Gang territory. We observe first — no engagement until I say so."
[Quest Update: Digest the Beast Potion]
[Phase 1: Locate Zmanger Gang operations in East Borough]
[Current Progress: 0% → Scouting initiated]
MHX was on her feet before he finished the sentence, Secretcalibur strapped across her back and already looking deeply inappropriate for Victorian street wear. She caught his look and sighed.
"I will... conceal it."
The blade shimmered, its cosmic hum dampening as she wrapped it in what appeared to be a cloth sheath that definitely hadn't existed thirty seconds ago. It still looked like someone had tried to disguise a piece of the future as an umbrella, but in Backlund's smog-heavy streets, stranger things walked freely.
Jack had dissolved into a low-hanging patch of mist that clung to Chara's shadow. He could feel her presence — a cool, watchful weight at the edge of his perception, the Eye of the Primordial registering her as a jagged shimmer just below visual threshold. Her Presence Concealment at A+ was not a skill, it was a fact of nature. She wasn't hiding. She simply chose not to be seen, and the world agreed.
Tiamat presented a different problem.
She stood by the door in her dark blue traveling cloak, lilac eyes patient and waiting. The cloak masked the worst of her divinity, but Chara's Eye of the Primordial still registered the [ERROR: INFINITE] hovering over her head like a crown that reality couldn't quite parse. In the cramped, spiritually saturated streets of East Borough, a Primordial Goddess on a casual stroll was the equivalent of dragging a second sun through a paper city.
"Tiamat," Chara said carefully. "I need you to stay here tonight."
The apartment went very quiet.
Tiamat turned her head toward him with the slow, oceanic patience of something that had existed before the concept of patience was invented. Her lilac eyes didn't narrow. They simply waited.
"It's not that I don't trust you," Chara continued, holding her gaze. "It's that the Church of the Evernight has Nighthawks who specialize in detecting divine presence. One whiff of what you actually are and this entire district becomes a theological incident." He paused. "I need you here. Holding the safe house. Making sure no one with bad intentions gets anywhere near this address."
A beat.
Tiamat looked at the door. Then at Chara. Then, very slowly, she reached out and pressed one finger gently against the center of his chest, directly over his Soul.
The Determination there flared warm in response, like embers recognizing their origin point. She held the contact for exactly three seconds, then withdrew her hand.
It wasn't agreement, exactly. It was something older than agreement — the acknowledgment of a truth she'd decided to permit.
She moved back toward the armchair, settling into it with the fluid grace of a tide reclaiming a shore, and resumed her humming. The lullaby changed, barely perceptibly — something with a sharper, watchful undertone now. A mother not sleeping, but listening
.
"Thank you," Chara said.
She didn't respond, but the lamp nearest the window burned a fraction steadier.
AN:For the person sending those power stones, dude I haven't finished LOTM yet so I can't accurately right the fanfic and I sometimes dont write chapters for my first for days so there's that, you don't really need to send power stones but I respect the dedication. I will try releasing three chapters in a few days just because of it.