[center][h2]Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus[/h2][/center]

To say that the former Roman Emperor was happy about being summoned was to severely understate the situation. Though she forgave her subjects for not returning the love that she had for them and allowing her demise, to be alive once more and to see how the artistic landscape had changed... it was a glorious day, made all the better by the others summoned. From the cute Legatus who so mirrored herself, albeit lacking her most wonderful assets, all the way to the handsome man that marked their only male Servant. Yet all this paled in comparison to one of the heroes she had always wished to meat. Atalanta! So beautiful and with such unusual features...

Yet the opportunity had not presented itself to make her acquaintance, merely the introductions had been done. With so much overlap between the classes, perhaps it was not a surprise that their real identities had been used--and her hand had been forced, as she had been recognised from the busts that still survived to this day. Inconvenient, but her Master had yet to show any signs of the loathing that she feared her enemies would have left of her reputation.

Since summoning, the blonde had worked on catching up with 'famous' literary works. Thus far, she had yet to finish reading and studying the works of Shakespeare--a progress slowed by finding fault in the stories and making aborted attempts to improve them. Sadly, the time and effort needed to redo so great a corpus was difficult to come by so soon after summoning. Made worse was how difficult it was to get anything done without her head becoming an anvil for Vulcan's hammer--as her earlier attempt to redo the play with all the fairies had proven. Quite how a story such as that had become popular was beyond her. Too many plotlines, names that clearly did not come from Greece...

And the fairies! How would a story with such creatures of the wild be so restrained? It should have been more libertine! With all the love potions, there was no excuse to avoid more exciting acts and partying! And no room in the plot for song? How could she ever act a part in such a play if her talents were not going to be used? But sooner rather than later, concentration had become impossible, and the blonde had claimed her Master's bed to rest. Of course, she was quite recovered now, when the message to assemble came off, and the diminutive Servant swung her legs down and rose to her feet. It seemed fortuitous that she hadn't removed a single item of clothing, as easily as it could be summoned aside, this time around.

"Praetor, lead the way!"

Studying a map had not been one of her tasks in the past few days.

[hr]

[center][h2]Abe Ai[/h2][/center]

The past few days had been an eye-opener for Ai. Who knew that such a famous part of her country's history was actually a girl? Of course, that had hardly been the only surprise... her Servant was spectacularly lazy for someone that had nearly united Japan. Looking around at the limited number of things, then demanding food whilst not even presentably dressed. It certainly wasn't what she had been expecting when summoning a near mythical figure but, on the whole, the girl hadn't taken too badly to it--though she drew the line at using the Servant's preferred form of address. Names were invented for a reason.

Ai, herself, had been only slightly more productive, spending time looking through fashion magazines and wondering if she could persuade the short girl to try on some of the cuter outfits. But the most important thing she had been doing was filling her quarters with origami paper cranes, folded as small as she could possibly manage and made from a single ofuda each. All in all, there were exactly 1,000 of the things carefully arranged throughout the room and with the mana in this place...

Well, anyone unprepared who came through that door without her was in for a shock. Hopefully, they would back out rather than try to disrupt the pattern, going from painful static to something more damaging might not leave identifiable remains.

With the alarm of course, she couldn't have finished a moment too soon, stretching and turning to look at the smaller Servant as she placed the last component of the unusual Bounded Field in place, "Ah, Nobu-chan, I hope you plan to attend this event properly dressed."

[hr]

[center][h2]Meran Briefort Marzikek[/h2][/center]

The white-haired alchemist had yet to properly introduce herself to the Masters; so far as they knew, she was just some random nobody working on the project. Well, that had a grain of truth to it--yet "random nobody" would be a stretch. Kaleidoscope was certainly an impressive component in this particular undertaking but it wasn't the [i]entirety[/i]. The underlying systems to keep this running smoothly, to have it operate from something more reliable than the old man's abilities... that was where Atlas stepped in.

Now, down in the teleportation chamber itself--the Kaleidoscope World Altar, she thought it had been called--Meran was seated at a desk to the side, in front of what seemed to be a computer. Certainly, its monitor was sleeker than any modern box, and the keyboard seemed to rely on something other than mechanical switches... but what was interesting were the nine devices connected to a hub and then the computer. Eight appeared to be relatively ordinary smartphones, and the last a tablet of some description.

They were hardly going to go into strange scenarios with no means of keeping in contact, were they?