Chapter Text
In the dark dormitory, all the furniture piled on the opposite side of the room, Ritsuka Fujimaru sits cross-legged, eyes closed, and focuses. One hand is held out in front of her, palm up, a sticky note resting in it. The other sits in her lap. Her breathing is steady, even, uniform. There is not a sound to be heard in the room. The door is locked, the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from its handle to hopefully ward away interruption. There was only her, the energy within her, and her singular spell.
She holds the image of the lighter, its metal battered and dented. She feels the coolness of it under her fingertips, imagines the feeling of the lid's corner against her thumb. She had felt it enough times before; she knew this lighter better than her own body. This was the first part of performing magecraft, da Vinci had taught her. Opening your magic circuit. It was different for everyone- a simple ritual performed entirely within someone's mind which acted as a trigger to allow the od to flow.
With a soft breath out, she imagines flipping the lighter's top, the click of the mechanism, the warmth washing over her hand as she holds it. She feels the strange kind of stress that came with the circuit's opening, a kind of heaviness in her blood. This is where she has to stop most times. Where she fails. The sensation could be too much for her to bear, and it's so easy to let her circuits close immediately in response. But not this time. She feels her energy, her od gather around her center, visualizes her heart flush with magical energy. Focuses on her heartbeat. Counting the beats, considering carefully their pace. Next, she imagines that energy flowing through her veins, pumped with each slow thump of the organ. The od runs its way through her veins, her arteries. She follows its flow closely until it reaches her fingers. She knows of only one spell. The only spell she had ever seen her father cast. She understands the basic concept, knows the desired end result.
Da Vinci had likened od to a battery. Electrical charge. Each magus could only hold a certain amount of it, and magecraft consumed it at static predictable rates, but it could be refilled. For Ritsuka, that wasn't quite right. It's not wrong, per se, but the analogy neglects one very important aspect of od as an energy source; it burns.
"Enciende." The first word of a simple two-part spell. She commands herself to light, and she lights. The spark starts in her core, lights the gasoline in her blood. It is agonizing, a kind of pain unlike any she had ever imagined before the first time she attempted it. The fire consumes her veins, radiates outwards, threatens to incinerate her body, to destroy her mind. It is hell. It is power. It is ecstasy. It is, at least in part, a lie. The shock of physically rejecting the magecraft, too advanced for her untrained body. A scream threatens to tear its way out of her throat, but she strangles it as it forms, reduces it to a grunt. She focuses on the pastel yellow paper in her hand, on the heat within her. On the image of the lighter.
This is where, in her best attempts, the burn had grown too severe for her. But not this time. Progress has been made. She has tempered her body, her mind, to at least this degree. Her pain is an invention. The ache that signifies the development of new muscle.
"Quémate."
The second component of the spell. She commands the world to burn, and it burns. The flow of her od is minute, stunted. There would be no roiling wave of flame, no consuming blaze. For now, she would settle for something weaker. A party trick, at best. A flame, small and stable but white-hot, rips through the sticky note and crumbles it almost instantly to ash. She watches the flame for just a moment, half-blinded by pain, and then flips closed the image of the lighter. In an instant, the fire is gone and she is ice-cold. She breathes, hard, fast, frantic as she clutches at her chest where the pain was greatest. She can't restrain her elation, her joy, even as she curls into a shivering ball, desperate to reclaim her heat. This is a victory. Her first flame, hotter than any she had ever produced through tools. Only the first victory of a thousand before she could attain the proper use of even this one spell, but a victory nonetheless. She laughs, warm and hearty despite its hoarseness, as she collapses onto the floor. She has earned her rest. Twenty minutes on the floor, another liter or two of water, and then she would get back to her work.
She didn't set an alarm like she normally would, spent as she was- Ritsuka doesn't know how long she lays like that, face down on the floor. She certainly doesn't get up to fill her water bottle like she knows she needs to. She just lays there, not a thought in her head, waits to recover so that she can destroy herself all over again.
Until the knock at the door. It's not until the third knock- each coming in bursts of four quick raps against the door- that the sound drags her back to reality. Hoarse, raspy, Ritsuka cries "Coming," just loudly enough to be heard. She takes a deep breath in, focuses. Remembers the her legs connect to her hips, and her hips connect to her torso, and her torso connects to her neck, and her neck to her head. She is human. She is alive. There is blood in her veins, not gasoline. With a pained groan, she drags herself slowly from the ground. Part of the agony lingers in the pulsing ache that sets in over her entire body, in the bitter cold that bites at her fingers. It's not a problem. In time, she'll be used to it.
She shambles to her door, turns the lock, slides it aside. The bright fluorescent light of the hallway rips into her eyes, forces her to shield them with a hand- the flesh of her palm burned, the tips of her fingers stained by ash and soot. The two Chaldea staff standing in front of her door are unfamiliar to her, a tall-ish blond with close-cropped hair and a wide frame, and a smaller operator with long black twintails- both wearing thick-rimmed glasses. She's seen them before, probably- Chaldea didn’t have many remaining staff, so she knows somewhere in the back of her mind that these two were at least somewhat responsible for her continued existence throughout Fuyuki and Orleans.
"Time for work?" Her voice is grim, determined. She's been waiting for this for a full month now- the second singularity. She wasn't ready, but she'd have to train for years to feel really ready for another rayshift.
"Well, actually-" the tall one intones, clearly nervous
"We're here to-" the short one follows up, unsure of exactly how to say what she wants to say. The two operators share an uncomfortable glance between each other as Ritsuka crosses her arms, feels her eyes start to properly adjust to the light. She searches her memory for them and when she doesn't find an introduction between any of them, she scans their uniforms for a nametag. None can be found. The smaller one moves on first while the larger still stumbles over his own anxiety. Ritsuka wonders if they're just awkward or if she's really that unapproachable.
"I'm Mao. Or, maybe Maomao? If you want? It’s just- you've been at Chaldea for two months now." That's true, isn't it? Two months since she climbed into a plane bound for Antarctica without so much as a goodbye to any of her friends from college on the vague promise of a research internship. Two months since everything had changed forever. How many more months would she have left here? Receiving no response, Mao continues at their friend's urging- "and…. You started in October, so…."
"Yeah?" that was true. Late October- the 20th or thereabouts. Mao fidgets with their collar, lets their eyes settle anywhere at all except on Ritsuka's face.
"So… we're holding an office Christmas party, to give everyone a break- or, it's more of a holiday party since Chaldea's a multifaith organization- but most of us are British or French- I'm Jewish, actually, but I don't really do anything anymore but-"
The taller one stares down at Mao, realizes that they're botching their invitation, and mercifully decides to step in. "I'm Jingle. We've been wanting to meet you for a while, since you're really cool. Forgive Mao, she gets rambly." Jingle is clearly also nervous, but seeing their friend flounder has given them the strength to step up. Wait, there was something weird in there, wasn't there?
"Huh?" Since when was she cool? Ritsuka looks down at herself, unwashed ratty hair dropping onto her face as she squints at the age-yellowed sweat-stained t-shirt two sizes too large (merchandise for some poppy, unmemorable singer-songwriter she had stolen from a short-term girlfriend by accident), the hideous baggy green sweatpants below. She spent roughly 95% of her time looking about as Like Shit as a person could possibly look, and if you were to go beneath the looks all that would be left is a useless magus with a bad personality. "The fuck's cool about me?"
"You punched Saint Martha in the face!" Mao's response is instant, enthusiastic. That's true. She had done that- stupidly. Ritsuka had been lucky, then, that the corrupted Rider was essentially only fighting to commit suicide. She should have been turned immediately into paste, but she had instead been completely ignored. That, in no small part, was the reason she had spent the last four weeks setting her blood on fire.
"That wasn't cool, it was stupid."
"Stupid," Jingle offers wisely, "is often much cooler than smart."
"He's right!" supports Mao with surprising quickness.
Ritsuka blinks twice, her confusion distracting momentarily from the thudding pain in her body. It was refreshing, at least, that she wasn't the only idiot employed by Chaldea.
"O…kay. So, do you need something for this party? I can't really do all that much, but-"
"Well, yes, actually." Jingle makes an attempt at a friendly smile, but it's just a little too awkward. He doesn't do that a lot, Ritsuka guesses. She sympathizes. "We need you. Party's not the same without our one and only Master."
"Oh."
Mao takes a deep breath in- to psych herself up, maybe?- and holds out a hand towards Ritsuka. "Come on! Archer baked a huge cake, but it's going fast."
She looks at the hand- really looks at it, small and soft and with well-painted fingernails, vivid red on each finger but the middle, which bore a surprisingly well detailed Christmas tree on top of a white base. She considers taking it.
"I'm working. Sorry."
Jingle expected this, and he doesn't let his disappointment show. A single solemn nod.
"Sorry to bug you, then. If you take a day off some time, though, you can usually find us in Command or the cafeteria."
Mao, to contrast, looks like she's going to cry. It was difficult for her to work up the nerve to knock on the door, and she had been hopeful. She doesn't let her emotion get the best of her- but it's close. There is a softening in Ritsuka's eyes for a moment, an urge to reach out after all and take that hand- if nothing else, only to put a smile back on Mao's face. But she's not here for that. She bites the inside of her cheek, tastes the metal of her blood.
"Happy holidays." Ritsuka's heart isn't in it. It's a bad thing to say after shooting down an invitation. "I'm-" She's already said she's sorry. And she is. But this was the Grand Order. Humanity itself was at stake, and here she was. So useless that producing a single tiny flame threatened to rip her apart. She didn't have time for a break yet. She had to do more.
"It's okay," lies Mao. "We get it. You're training for us, after all."
"Thanks for understanding," Ritsuka tries to keep the weariness out of her voice. She fails. A moment of hesitation. A fake smile from Mao, her lips curling just slightly up, and a little wave from Jingle. Her two coworkers- potential friends, a moment before- make their way down the hall back towards command.
Ritsuka Fujimaru slides her door closed and stands there, alone, as her eyes adjust to the dark.