Remaining Days: 2
As I step into my private room after my morning classes, I find Saber awake, poking around her previous wound. "Good morning," I greet her. She turns to look at me, her expression indifferent. "Morning, Master." Usually she is either in a good mood or really grumpy, so this neutrality feels off.
"Is something wrong?" Saber looks down, then back to me, as she gets up from the bed while materialising her usual barely-armour.
"Not really… I don't know. Yesterday feels sorta hazy." It must be the side effect from being poisoned so badly. "What day is it?"
She won't be too happy about the answer. "It's… the second last day of the Preparation Period of Round 2," I answered truthfully.
Saber's eyes widened in shock. "The… Triggers? We didn't get any yet after all."
I shake my head, before a mild anxiety overcomes me. Saber is probably not too happy that I trusted Rin and her Servant Lancer so much when she herself was unconscious. "I got the first, Trigger Code Gamma, yesterday. Lancer, Rin's Servant, helped me."
Immediately, she pouts, although she's visibly relieved as well. "So you cheated on me?"
My cheeks heat up, then I notice her sly grin, signing it's a joke. Of course, what else would cheating on her mean? "And you've been with Rin all day."
"I don't remember a thing!" Saber gets visibly flustered about my remark, which is really cute. Adorable, even. "Geez, all she did was healing me." Saber grumbles in frustration, but then we go back to being a bit more serious. As much as I enjoy and need such friendly banter, because it makes this whole situation feel comfortable for at least a moment at the time, we wouldn't get far in this deathmatch tournament if we were just kidding around and teasing all the time.
"What's our plan for today?"
I ponder a bit. Of course, she would just love to slash through some Enemy Programs now that she's healed. But I don't think it would go well if we went from zero to 100 this fast.
"Well, I… we," I correct myself, "need to go to the Chapel. I have a question, regarding my lost memory. Rin said something like… your parameters and my access rights seem as if I am receiving a punishment from the SERAPH."
"But… we didn't do anything. Or did you?" Saber shoots me an accusing glare.
"Of course not… Not that I remember, at least. That's why I'll have to ask." I'm almost offended Saber would think I could have done something that deserves such a harsh punishment. "It might unlock your Noble Phantasm, too, if we solve it," I add.
Saber averts her gaze. "Yeah."
"Oh, you're early this week," a sarcastic greeting reaches Saber and me as we push open the chapel's doors and step in.
Before my Servant could possibly bite back, I answered. "Yes, we've been hold up. Anyways, this time I have a specific question."
"Oh? Take a seat," Aoko gestures me to the couch Saber and I lied on last week for the Alteration of the Soul. I sit down, while Saber prefers to just stand behind it, resting her arms on the backrest. Even Touko seems slightly curious as to what my question might be.
"Well, I'm sure you noticed something about me the last time… So, what's wrong with me?" Aoko chuckles at my question, which earns her a glare from Touko.
"It's surprising you made it through the first Elimination Battle in your condition. So, you finally noticed?" It's not really that I was the one to notice, though. But it doesn't exactly matter right now, so I nod.
Aoko starts an explanation. "You have a punishment debuff, though there's no cooldown on it. That's unusual. You can't fully access all of your Servant's data and you can't even access your memory."
Touko continues. "Usually, such punishments last for a Round at most. But you started in this condition, so you can't have done something as bad. It limits your Servant's parameters, too."
It's about as Rin has already said, it seems. "Then, what can I do?" Both of the NPCs seem to be pondering, hinting that this may be the first time in all history of the Moon Cell that this happened.
"Alterations of Soul may help long-term, I suppose," Aoko says. Touko nods approvingly.
"But who knows if hearing about her memories actually triggers the access rights to be activated?"
"Couldn't we give her those rights, when we hack into their souls? It should be possible."
Touko groans in frustration. "Do you really want the Moon Cell to punish you for 'quasi-legal' Alterations again?"
Aoko pouts in response. "But they did nothing wrong and we already helped another Master with this exact thing. Nothing happened! The Moon Cell probably knows it messed up with this and is thankful if we fix its bug."
Aoko states her illegal hacking as if it was something to be proud of which brings Touko to merely facepalm.
"Fine," Touko gives in, "But not this week. And even starting next week, we'll do it step by step."
Saber is starting to get irritated, she was never too fond of long-winded discussions and I'm sure she'd want access to her full power as soon as possible. "Why delaying it so much? Do it now," she practically barks at them.
If glares could kill, Touko's surely would have killed Saber at least twice. "Your Master is an amateur. If we make such rapid changes to her cyber self, it would break and that would kill her."
Saber swallows.
"S-Step by step sounds pretty good," I mumble more to myself than to the others in the room.
"It's not like that's free of risks, but they should be minimal," Aoko says, patting my shoulder.
"At least when it's not that monkey doing it," Touko adds, "Also, to help this process, remember to always tell each other what sort of memory you saw."
Saber averts her gaze, I don't really understand.
"Why? Didn't we share the memory through a link?" A minute of silence separates my apparently dumb question from the seemingly obvious answer.
"Share, yes. But it's more like switching. You see your Servant's memory, while she sees a similar memory of yours. If you saw her first lover, she'd see yours, for example."
Oh. Oh. I saw Saber's last minutes, her death, the last time. What could she possibly have seen from my memories?
"I saw nothing. Just black," she says, not facing me.
"That would mean your Master has no similar memory… yet," Touko adds, sternly observing Saber.
"Do you want another Alteration of the Soul now?" That's what we probably need this week, don't we?
"No need, we're fine," Saber says as she makes her way out of the chapel. Dumbfounded, I followed her, excusing us from Touko and Aoko.
"Saber, what's wrong?" I try to catch up with her stomping.
"Nothing," she says, though it's obviously a lie.
"But…" I see her eyes slightly wet from dwelling up tears. "Okay, we'll talk about this… sometime later," I compromise. Saber nods and wipes her eyes.
"Damn this dust," she excuses her tears, hoping I would be too oblivious to notice. For now, I will be playing along.
Whatever it is that she's keeping from me, I'm sure sooner or later I'll find out.