Jump 360: Fate

Jump #360: Fate
>Five of Wands (Strife), reversed: A stressful situation that brings out the worst in the participants.
Christ, that one fits TOO well.
>Age: 24
>Location: 1933, Third Grail War
>Identity: Scholar (-100)
>Drawbacks: (+500) Helping Heart, Center Stage
I'm just a man whose intentions are good! Oh lord, please don't let me be misunderstood.
>Magic Circuits (x5) (1000)
Again, first one's free. Which gives me 140 here, or rather, 270 in total.
>High Speed Incantations (600)
With this, combined with my ability to partition my mind, my frankly absurd number of circuits, and ability to pay attention to literally everything, I don't think anyone is going to be catching me by surprise any time soon.
>Academia (Free, Scholar)
Doesn't hurt to be more skilled at teaching, certainly.
>Resource Acquisition (500, Scholar)
What's that? I can use this to find curious artifacts and lost wonders? Why, there's a particular snakeskin I'm looking for and I have SO MANY PERKS THAT WORK LIKE THIS.
>Thaumaturgical Focus: Jewelcraft (300, Scholar)
You can blame Zelretch for this one. He said this would pay dividends in the future, but laughed when I asked for detail.
>Companion Import (0)
Might as well bring my companions along! They can enjoy the fun as well.

Do you remember the haunted printing press from Xianxia? That I can print books on, that when read will impart the same effects as me personally teaching someone for two years, complete with all the perks that compound that effect? Do you remember how I had eight clones mastering every last basic technique that magecraft has to offer for the entire last jump?

So, yeah, it turns out that the magical aristocracy doesn't take well when mages who are basically nobodies get these seeming-grimores shipped to them, and abruptly their abilities leap to staggering levels, using them in ways that nobody had really thought of previously. I had to flee the UK when they came down on me like the wrath of god, and ended up in Japan.

I may have liberated a fossilized snakeskin from someone on the way and stolen the Einzberns' shot at summoning a Berserker. (Because the only way I'd let them summon Angra Mainyu is finding a way to force the Sader drawback onto it and calling it Angry Man, with 'tattoos' drawn in crayon.) Except... even using the right catalyst, I still summoned a Berserker. Not an Archer, as I was expecting to get.

Gilgamesh as a berserker didn't have an ego, just an insane bloodlust. So yeeeah, you really really REALLY don't want to know what a berserk Gilgamesh gets up to, because holy SHIT that was a mistake. He was capable of some higher reasoning due to having C-class divinity (lower than usual due to his madness?), and no Gate of Babylon, but he still had Ea. I had to burn two command seals to stop him from killing other servants' masters, since that would... well, that would be unsporting, to put it mildly.

I am almost certain that should NOT have worked, but it did. On the plus side, he had utter disregard for a large variety of Nazis that he came across (despicable would-be tyrants, as he put it), but it was rather difficult to keep covering his tracks and I actively had to use out-of-jump abilities to keep the masquerade. Gilgamesh had slaughtered all of the other servants, including the two Sabers, before turning his attention to the grail itself. And destroying it. Because, as he said, it was his to do with as he pleased, and his goal was not so much a wish as a desire to simply cease feeling as though he were a mad dog, controlled by any outside force - a king should be ruled by nothing but his own will, after all.

Technically a win, yes, but when one plays chess... does it still count as winning when one achieves checkmate, and then knocks over their king, the board, and the entire table before punching their opponent?

This entire course of events, with the physical vessel for the grail being shredded by Ea, had... interesting repercussions that would make themselves known further down the line. The grail wouldn't be contaminated by mud, but... of all the things to have done... well. Consider Ea. Consider, if you will, its full potential. The Third Magic remained intact, but... marred. No one knew, not back then. But they would find out later.

In the meantime, I was an outsider. I came from nowhere, usurped one of the Three Families' roles in the conflict, seemingly threw away the prize in spite, and already there were people hunting me. So I left Japan for a little while and worked on my research while more and more new mages came to feel as though they were in my debt due to gaining so strong a grasp on the basics of magecraft and how best to master it early on.

By the time I ended up jump, I was selling on the gray market... well, I can't call them magic crests, but they were not entirely dissimilar. Far weaker, but far more compatible. A single spell in each one, a regeneration spell. Their purpose, of course, was to make a mage slightly more durable, and otherwise much harder to kill.

Zelretch appeared as my time was coming to a close, chuckling. Pleased that things were not as some had expected or foreseen. And he was looking forward to seeing me again in sixty years. (Or perhaps a day or two... but it's a timey wimey wibbly wobbly ball of stuff, after all, as he said. How did he know..?)