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-Emergency! Emergency! A fire has broken out in the central power plant and the central control room. The central sector bulkhead is...
With a thunderous blast, the entire of Chaldea was suddenly plunged into darkness as the facility’s power began cutting out one section at a time. The coffee and strawberry cake on the table were knocked over by the shockwave and spilled straight onto the floor. We, too, braced ourselves on the ground and waited for the shaking to pass. When the tremors finally died down about thirty seconds later, Romani cautiously got to his feet and began panicking over the situation.
"W-What... What was that explosion just now---!!"
"Doctor Roman, what on earth is going on?!"
"Ha... so it’s finally starting..."
He looked flustered for a moment, then immediately activated the watch-like device on his wrist to check the situation in the control room.
"That explosion just now... was it in the control room?! Monitor! Show us the control room right now!!"
The device at Romani’s command immediately projected a hologram of the current situation in the control room into the air before us. No matter how you looked at it, the control room was a hellish scene. Some of Chaldea’s outer walls had collapsed, crushing people beneath them until blood pooled everywhere. Others had been engulfed in flames and reduced to corpses on the spot. Still more staff had suffocated from the smoke caused by the explosion and collapsed dead where they stood. There were so many of them it was absurd. It felt like this sight would be burned into my brain as trauma... As Romani and I stared at the scene, Ritsuka suddenly went pale, then turned and sprinted toward the control room without looking back.
"Mash!!"
"Ritsuka!!"
Because of Ritsuka’s sudden move, I ended up following after her without thinking, and Romani, worried about both of us, ran after us toward the control room as well. We ran almost without stopping from the control room to Ritsuka’s room, caught our breath for a moment in front of the elevator, then took it down to the control room. Romani had apparently pushed himself too hard with that burst of speed, because he was sitting on the floor for a moment, breathing heavily.
"Huff... huff... You all... really do exercise a lot, huh..."
"We’ve been trying to keep up with exercise little by little. We need the strength for part-time work, after all..."
"Have you considered that Romani has no stamina?"
When I hit him with that blunt fact, he looked up at us with a wronged expression and said,
"No, of course not! How am I supposed to build stamina when all I do is research here all day...!"
"That’s fair..."
She nodded up and down as if she understood. Seeing her reaction, Romani blushed a little, embarrassed by his lack of stamina, and said to us,
"R-Right...! Sorry about that!!"
Anyway, before long, we arrived at the control room floor. We didn’t wait for the door to open and forced it open ourselves. The moment we rushed into the control room, Chaldea’s facility-wide announcement system began speaking.
-Power unit shutdown confirmed. Power generation is insufficient. Anomaly detected in switching to backup power... Please... return to the command... center...
Because the announcement echoed through the silence, the sound rang even more clearly in my ears. Romani immediately turned back to us before sprinting off again and spoke.
"For now... I’m going to the power plant to restore power! You two go back and wait together with Ritsuka!!"
Seeing the worried look on his face, we tried to calm him down, and I answered that we understood.
"Yes. Be careful, Romani."
"Yeah. You be careful too, Juhwan!"
With that, Romani hurried off toward the power plant. Just before he disappeared from sight, his face seemed to relax for a moment, as if relieved. After Romani vanished, she went straight into the control room without even looking back, and I followed after her to find her. When I entered the control room, the Master candidates didn’t seem to have died instantly inside the Coffins, but many of the staff had been injured or killed. I quickly asked the people who could still move to help the injured, then went straight into the area with the Coffins to find the missing Ritsuka.
"Ritsuka!! Where are you!!"
I shouted her name at the top of my lungs to find her. Right after that, her urgent voice stabbed into my ears.
"I’m here!"
Her voice sounded frantic, but at the same time, she seemed to be suppressing her emotions as much as possible, as if trying to reassure someone else. I hurried toward the source of the voice. There, I found...
"...Juh... wan... sen... pai..."
"Oh no..."
When I reached the source of the sound, I found Mash pinned beneath the wreckage of the exploded building, with Ritsuka standing beside her and trying to comfort her. I rushed over to them and desperately tried to move the rubble crushing Mash. Ritsuka was the same. Her hands had already been burned by the heat of the debris, and yet she kept trying to lift those heavy stones.
"Ritsuka... your hand..."
"Senpai... I’m fine... so... please run..."
Ritsuka seemed not to hear our voices at all. She kept straining to lift the stone, but the rock, as if it knew nothing of her feelings, didn’t budge an inch.
"Mash... just hold on a little longer...!!"
Still, she kept trying to lift that cruel lump of stone, and as if it had finally understood her feelings, it shifted ever so slightly. Moved by her iron will, I rushed to her side to help, putting my shoulder under the stone and saying,
"I’ll help, Ritsuka. We lift it on three."
"Okay...!"
So the two of us began to lift the stone with everything we had. I put all my strength into my lower body and waist.
"One... two... three...!!!"
Grrr...!!!
But the merciless stone, as if it knew nothing of our feelings, still didn’t move. What Ritsuka had lifted a moment ago must have been close to a miracle. Mash, watching our efforts with dazed eyes, tried to stop us in concern.
"Juhwan... Senpai... I’m fine, so..."
She said that, but her breathing had already begun to slow little by little.
"What do we do..."
Just then, the control room door slammed shut, trapping us inside to protect against the fire, and immediately after that, the announcement for the start of the [Ray Shift] began to sound.
-Searching for suitable Masters for [Ray Shift]... Found them. Master aptitude candidates 47 and 48, Juhwan Yang. Fujimaru Ritsuka has been reset as Master.
As if it knew nothing of our situation, the announcement began activating the [Ray Shift] in a cold, mechanical voice. Just when I thought we might actually survive, Mash, frightened by her own situation, quietly spoke to Ritsuka, who had given up on lifting the stone.
"Um... Senpai..."
"Hm...?"
"Could you hold my hand...?"
Hearing that, Ritsuka silently took Mash’s hand without saying a word, and I looked at them and murmured,
"Oh... so this is the famous scene in person...!"
They didn’t know it, but just now they had delivered one of the iconic lines that marked the beginning of Fate/Grand Order. Anyway, while I was thinking that, the [Ray Shift] preparations must have finished, because the announcement sounded again.
-Un-summon program start. Spiritron conversion commencing.
"At last... it’s starting... my fight to survive..."
-Three seconds until [Ray Shift]...
-2
-1
-All procedures complete. Commencing First Order.
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