Fanfic / Something Lost Something Found

As the work primarily features Morgan who is a Walking Spoiler for the Avalon le Fae section, this page will contain spoilers for Fate/Grand Order up to the sixth Lostbelt, some of which may be unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

Something Lost, Something Found is a Fate/Grand Order fanfiction written by Jack Simpson, which revolves around Morgan and her relationship with Ritsuka Fujimaru after he shows her affection by scratching her chin. It is something he does for his Servants as a sign of appreciation and affection, but when he does it to Morgan, it awakens in her a desire for more. But in wanting more from him, she inevitably begins to desire to stand out more than all of Ritsuka's Servants and be the one to be the most special of them all.

"Her kingdom was gone, her plans had failed. Everything she'd fought for, the suffering she'd been through and all her preparations had been for nothing.

Summoned by what remained of the Chaldea Security Organization, former Lostbelt King Morgan now has to fight for the very history she just tried to overwrite.

But perhaps, just perhaps, there's something there for her. Perhaps this can be a new beginning, a chance to find something that will become just as valuable to her as the her kingdom once was.

This is a story of that new beginning....and it all started with a chin scratch." -Summary from AO3.

Can also be found on Fanfiction.net under the same author, but under the name, Avenger013

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This series contains examples of:

• Abusive Parents: When Mordred tells Morgan that she isn't a mother, this causes some indignation until Mordred clarifies that it's because Morgan has been showing some concern for her, which real mothers don't do in her eyes because they don't care about their kids. When Morgan views the memories of how her Panhuman History self behaved towards Mordred, she's stunned at how awful a mother her PHH self was.
• Achilles' Heel:
  • Ivan The Terrible's ice colossus form is all but Nigh-Invulnerable...with the key exception of his crown, being far easier to destroy, as it's all that's left of his original self.
  • Just like in his legend, Siegfried has a leaf-shaped spot on his back that isn't covered by the Armour of Fafnir, and he suffers from a curse that makes it impossible for him to protect it with any other armour or even clothing.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade:
  • Morgan in Grand Order rarely dwells on her past in the Fae Kingdom, with it not coming up very much in her My Room Lines or in her appearances past Lostbelt 6, while Morgan in the fic is shown to be haunted by the memories of losing all her close friends and allies, to the point of being kept up at night regularly unless she blows off steam in the simulator beforehand.
  • Ritsuka himself is hinted quite heavily at being far more haunted by his past actions than he seems to be in the game, what with having Kiara as a regular therapist and Ivan The Terrible mentioning that finding him wandering the halls or breaking down in the cafeteria at night is a semi-regular occurrence.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Panhuman History Vortigern was already quite the powerhouse as described in Garden Of Avalon, being able to knock Gawain out of the fight almost instantly and battle Saber for a full day before he bit the dust. His appearance in Chapter 3, however, shows he's expanded his repertoire quite a bit, expanding his light eater abilities to let him drain ALL Holy Swords of their light rather than simply Excalibur-class swords, being vastly more capable at restraining enemy spellcasters and manipulating the environment with his Casting a Shadow powers, and being so durable and powerful that he tears through almost the entire Round Table before he's stopped. Even then, had he not succumbed to Bond Villain Stupidity and tried to force a Sadistic Choice on Saber at the end, he'd have likely killed her before backup arrived to turn the tables.
  • In the game proper, Siegfried became memetically infamous for being severely under tuned thanks to being a launch Servant, while the game's Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors element quite badly handicapped his ability to deal with dragon-type enemies despite him specialising in dragon slaying in the lore. Chapter 7 gives him a better opportunity to shine, showing him slaughtering his way through hordes of wyverns and dragons without taking much damage. In his original myth, he also admits to blacking out before fighting Fafnir and only coming to once the dragon was already dead. Here, he gets to stay conscious through the whole fight, taking on and defeating Fafnir in a Duel to the Death despite previously wearing himself down clearing the village of other dragons and wyverns.
• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • Lancelot's tendency to hit on women is absent here and he's portrayed in a better light as his knightly qualities are emphasized, with him refusing to yield even as he's losing a one-on-one fight against Cu Chulainn Alter.
  • Via Adaptational Relationship Overhaul, Saber has a much better relationship with Mordred and is shown making genuine efforts to praise her for good behaviour and treat her like family, whereas in the game she treats Mordred with indifference and apathy at best and outright disdain at worst.
• Adaptational Personality Change: In Grand Order proper, Morgan tends to be very emotionally muted and stoic, as befitting someone implied to be suffering from quite severe PTSD over her experiences in her backstory. In the fic, she tends to be a lot more emotionally expressive. Justified in Chapter 1 as her no longer needing to suppress her more emotional side to help laser-focus on ruling now that Fairy Britain no longer exists, and being rather unused to actually moderating her feelings properly after millennia of essentially being dead inside from all the accumulated trauma.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: Ritsuka has gotten into the habit of giving these out after a Rayshift, either petting the Servant on the head or scratching their chin, with the latter being preferred by animal-like Servants. The fic kicks off when he accidentally does it to Morgan.
• Affectionate Nickname: Apep refers to Morgan as "my dear" repeatedly throughout Chapter 9, bolstering her image as a friendly refugee just looking for a home. This shifts to Terms of Endangerment when she keeps on doing it even after revealing her true colours and goal, this time as a form of mockery.
• All for Nothing: Right there in the fic summary, and a constant source of angst for Morgan, is the fact that everything she did in Avalon Le Fae and all of her preparations amounted to nothing in the end thanks to her death and the Lostbelt's pruning, something that Oberon-Vortigern likes to bring up whenever they talk. This is also part of the reason why she latches so quickly onto ingratiating herself to Fujimaru after he praises performance on a Rayshift: it helps her feel as if her efforts mean something for once.
• All the Other Reindeer: Shows up once or twice.
  • There are repeated references to both Morgan and Artoria Caster/Artoria Avalon's horrific treatment at the hands of the Fae in Lostbelt 6, partially because they hate the idea that they need a saviour from Avalon to repent for their sins, partially because Morgan and Artoria Caster are 'pure' Fairies born of Avalon while the British Fae are all cursed to decay into Mors thanks to the sins of their founders.
  • Chapter 9 has Apep explaining that she suffered from this, to the point of being cast out, attacked and permanently mutilated by her Arch-Enemy and his followers out of jealousy at her beauty compared to them. Except it's almost all bullshit in her case.
• Always Accurate Attack:
  • Gae Bolg works like this. Even the thrown version used by Cu Alter in Chapter 3, which trades the causality reversing "strikes the heart first" property for increased power, can still home in on its target and cannot be dodged, only blocked.
  • Sir Tristan's Failnaught fires sonic waves that automatically chase their target, ensuring that he doesn't need to put any effort into aiming his shots.
• Always Someone Better: A couple of instances in Chapter 9.
  • Despite being an extremely skilled and powerful ex-Lostbelt King with magical talent and spells that her own Crypter called a cheating Story-Breaker Power, to the point of claiming her to be stronger than both Arjuna Over Gods and Lostbelt Zeus, Morgan is left near helpless when faced with Apep, an Outer God, who laughs off all of her attacks and blatantly toys with her for fun.
  • For all of Apep's power, however, she pales in comparison to the Evil God of the Abys, who effortlessly dispatches her mental avatar. While Morgan was prepared to keep fighting Apep despite suffering under the effects of her presence, the sheer overwhelming strength of the newcomer's mental presence has her begging for mercy immediately.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: The POV is primarily on Morgan, but a couple of times it switches to someone else.
  • Chapter 7 is told primarily from Siegfried's perspective, with a brief switch to a Kent peasant named Gertrude mid-way through.
  • Chapter 10 switches the POV to Baobhan Sith, following her efforts at making a new friend.
• And Then What?: Part of Apep's Armor-Piercing Question toward Morgan to convince her to support her plan is asking what Chaldea is going to do after they defeat the Foreign God and dismantle the remaining Lostbelt, asking if they have an actual plan to reverse the Human Order Revision and restore the Earth's World Texture. Morgan, on thinking it over, realizes that they most likely don't.
• An Arm and a Leg: Happens several times during the fight against Vortigern in Chapter 4.
  • Gareth loses her left leg below the knee from Vortigern cutting it off with his sword.
  • Percival has both his legs bitten off.
  • Lancelot loses both his arms below the elbows.
• An Ice Person: Sitonai and Scathach-Skadi fight primarily with ice magic, the former via a bow and her bear Shirou's ice breath, and the latter by summoning runic icicles to skewer or throw at her enemies.
• Arc Villain:
  • Connacht Singularity: Initially Meb and Cu Alter, who are being used by Proper Human History Vortigern. Vortigern makes his move after they're defeated by the Knights of the Round Table.
  • Kent Singularity: Fafnir, who has manifested using the thieving peasant Francis as a host.
  • 2015 Shinjuku Singularity: The Followers cult led by high priest Gilles the Rais who himself is being manipulated by the Outer God Apep into summoning her on Earth.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • Morgan and Oberon-Vortigern consider each other this, with the latter being summoned specifically to destroy the very land the former was trying so hard to save. So much so that Oberon will go out of his way to antagonize her every chance he gets and rub in her face how he was victorious in achieving his goal of destroying Britain.
  • Pan Human History Vortigern despises Saber and Merlin more than anything and anyone else alive. Through sheer force of will, he manifests himself in the Connacht Singularity just to have another go at killing his niece, and when he actually gets his hands on Merlin he gives him an EXTREMELY brutal 'death' by ripping him to pieces with his bare hands.
  • Apep and the Evil God of the Abyss are this to one another. The former targets Earth for conquest purely to spite the latter for his interest in it, while the latter poaches Morgan from Apep deliberately as a middle finger, planning to use her for his own plans.
• The Archmage: As per the source material, several Servants are this.
  • Carrying over from her portrayal in Avalon Le Fae, Morgan is naturally this. Chapter 7 has her creating a brand new Dragon Core using a piece of Vortigern's preserved heart and implants it into herself for an extra Mana source. Chapter 11 has her using said core to cast a slightly modified Water Mirror — a teleportation spell she couldn't use in Connacht Singularity because she didn't have enough mana.
  • Merlin gets to display his skills during the Connacht Singularity when Saber seemingly gets Impaled with Extreme Prejudice by Cu Alter, only for him to reveal that it was a body double made of his flowers.
• Armor of Invincibility: Siegfried's Armor of Fafnir, naturally. It's able to shrug off all but the most powerful of blows (except any aimed for the Achilles' Heel on his back) as well as bites and flame blasts from Fafnir himself. While it does still protect Siegfried, he still takes quite a bit more damage from Fafnir than he did against any of the other dragons he fought in the Singularity.
• Badass Crew: Kind of inevitable considering the massive Army of The Ages assembled at Chaldea by now.
  • Chapter 3 gives us the Knights of the Round Table during a Rayshift to Connacht, with all the summonable members (sans Bedivere) fighting together in a Singularity and tearing their way through multiple Celt armies with nary a scratch on them.
  • Subverted with Clan Calatin, a cadre of Queen Medb's greatest warriors originally assembled to take on Cu Chulainn. Try as they might, they can't match the Round Table when Medb sends them to fight them and are rather soundly defeated without doing much damage to their opponents.
  • Chapter 8 gives us the major players from the Scandinavia Lostbelt (Skadi, Sigurd, Brynhild, Napoleon, etc.), joined by Morgan, Habetrot, Barghest and Melusine, on a Rayshift to a Singularity in Shinjuku.
• Badass Normal: Chapter 7 features an expedition of perfectly ordinary English knights and militia trying to protect a village in Kent from an onslaught of wyverns and dragons. Despite how outmatched they clearly are, the expedition keeps fighting.
• Beam-O-War: Happens between Dragon!Vortigern and Saber Alter, with his Breath Weapon going against Excalibur Morgan's Sword Beam. Excalibur Morgan wins and Vortigern winds up losing his head for it.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: With Morgan as the primary POV character, this was bound to come up sooner or later.
  • In both her hallucinatory flashbacks and thinking back on her reign, it's brought up several times just how much of her old self Morgan threw away to get to where she is, going from the warm-hearted, idealistic, beloved All-Loving Folk Hero Tonelico, who promised and fought for freedom for both humans and Faeries alike, to the cold, cruel, tyrannical Winter Queen Morgan who kept both humans and Faeries under her heel and was hated by almost everyone. Though she's very ashamed to think it, Morgan admits to herself that she's secretly glad that all of her old adventuring companions and friends either died before she took power or were unaware of the connection between Morgan and Tonelico, not wanting to face their horror and disappointment at what their friend became and what she did.
  • This almost happens to her again in Chapter 9. Having been convinced by Apep to take her deal, where Apep will help defeat the Foreign God and restore the world via her Reality Warper powers in exchange for Morgan enacting the ritual needed to bring her to Earth, Morgan realizes that Chaldea will most likely not approve given that the ritual involves Human Sacrifice and Apep is an Outer God, whom Chaldea are all extremely and justifiably wary of given their past interactions. Her plan to convince them involves essentially mind controlling Ritsuka into going along via several runes placed on him alongside some other Magical Enhancement runes, under the guise of Morgan being concerned for his wellbeing and wanting to make sure he's protected, then using him and his charisma to convince everyone else. She's halfway through congratulating herself for her idea when the realization of exactly how deceptive and manipulative her plan is sets in, since she's throwing away her honesty by taking advantage of Ritsuka's trust to backstab him despite him offering her nothing but praise and support in return (much like the Fae did to her time and again), snapping her right out of it and immediately souring her on the idea.
• Becoming the Mask: This has apparently happened to Kiara of all people in her time at Chaldea. Originally, she only showed up intending to try and take the power Meltryllis had used to defeat her in SERAPH for herself, which she believed had come from her Alter-Ego Class. After learning that she was motivated by The Power of Love, Kiara switched to attempting to ingratiate herself to Fujimaru to try and take that same 'love' for herself, which she did by offering an additional service as his therapist...only to wind up genuinely falling for him after a while, complete with seeming-genuine Undying Loyalty. However, with Kiara being who she is, this affection has been twisted and warped by her into viewing Ritsuka as the same kind of 'True Human' that she believes herself to be, complete with open worship of him and referring to him nearly-exclusively as "Lord" and "Saviour" in dialogue. Naturally, just about everybody she talks to about this is incredibly creeped out by her view of their Master.
• Berserk Button:
  • Morgan has a few.
    • Do not compare her to Saber, especially if it's to accuse her of being a copy or inferior in some way.
    • She tends to lose her patience and restraint very quickly whenever Oberon-Vortigern gets involved.
    • Even though they all perished in the Lostbelt's destruction, thinking about the Fae tends to set Morgan off and get her angry.
  • Medb doesn't like anyone encroaching on her Connacht, and cuts through Saber's attempt at diplomacy to order the Knights of the Round wiped out by her army immediately.
  • Saber herself gets angrier than she usually does at the sight of Vortigern, especially when he starts threatening Rituska and Mash.
  • Kiara can typically laugh off or dismiss anyone trying to call her insane by claiming that they're "ignorant fools" who haven't "seen the truth" yet. However, questioning her devotion to her new 'saviour' will get her mad.
• BFG:
  • One of Habetrot's Noble Phantasms is Spinster Habetrot, a massive railgun that can wipe out entire armies with one shot. When Morgan questions how she has it, Habetrot explains that it's a replication of the Black Barrel Replica, summoned along with her thanks to her Lostbelt counterpart carrying it around for so long and modified by Tesla and Edison to make it safe for her to use, as the Black Barrel Replica proper would regularly poison any Fae that held it thanks to being a hyper-advanced machine.
  • Napoleon shows up in Chapter 8, still wielding his huge cannon and able to use it to fire cannon balls, laser beams and a gatling gun.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Chapter 4 has Morgan, Habetrot and Saber Alter show up just in time to stop Dragon!Vortigern from killing off the Round Table, Mash and Ritsuka.
  • Kingprotea shows up after Passionlip yells for her to give Kiara a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown and stop an all-out fight between her and Chaldea's Grand Servants from erupting in the corridor.
  • Chapter 7 features Siegfried showing up just in time to rescue some Kentish villagers from being slaughtered by a flock of Wyverns and Dragons. Later on, Morgan shows up in disguise to save the English garrison from being overrun by a wave of reinforcements.
  • Chapter 8 has the Chaldea expedition team showing up just time to stop some Shinjuku civilians being used as a Human Sacrifice by crazed cultists.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
  • Francis acts all polite and insists that his stealing is all about trying to buy he and his wife Gertrude a better life...before screaming that the stolen loot is his and ONLY his, while also turning aggressive, the moment Siegfried tries prying him away from it.
  • Apep puts on the act of being a kindly refugee simply looking for a home after the other Outer Gods cast her out for being much prettier than them, but in reality she's a monstrous manipulator out to conquer and then rule the Earth as a middle finger to her brethren and their prior 'claims' to the planet.
• Blow You Away: Saber can project gale-force Razor Wind from Excalibur via Invisible Air, which she puts to good use to defeat Cu Alter and later blowing away the shadowy Deflector Shield that protects Vortigern from attacks, allowing the Round Table to finally damage him properly and start turning the tables.
• Body Horror: Several instances.
  • The aftermath of Merlin taking the full brunt of Curruid Coinchenn isn't pretty, with about half his entrails hanging out of his body afterwards.
  • Francis' transformation into Fafnir in Chapter 7 is pretty grisly, with descriptions about his gums being split open by his new fangs and draconic spines erupting out his back.
• Breather Episode: Chapter 11 contains a brief scene of Habetrot goofing around with and playfully teasing Morgan, coming right off of the heels of a rather emotional bonding moment with Skadi and preceding the serious scene of the Chaldea team planning for the invasion of the cult's main base.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Gilles de Rais and the majority of the Followers have become this, courtesy of Apep.
• Brown Note Being: Both Apep and the Evil God of the Abyss qualify as this, with their mental avatars' mere presence automatically saturating their surroundings in eldritch magic. Since Morgan is a Fae with Super-Senses, she starts coughing and choking almost immediately, forcing Apep to actively repress the magic bleed so they can talk safely. The Evil God of the Abyss immobilises Morgan in an endless coughing fit that has her struggling to even breathe the moment he projects his avatar into her mindscape.
• Call-Back: Part of Chapter 3's Big Badass Battle Sequence has Merlin stopping Cu Alter from killing Mash the exact same way he did in the America Singularity, only this time he actually takes some damage doing it. Of course, given his circumstances it doesn't stick for too long.
• Canon Foreigner: Panhuman History Vortigern qualifies for both this and Canon Immigrant. While he's been confirmed to exist in the Nasuverse and a couple of his abilities have been established by supplementary material like Garden Of Avalon (which details his final battle against his neice Artoria/Saber), his personality and the rest of his powers were invented by the author wholesale for the fic to the point that a Servant Profile was put together for him and released at the end of the chapters he appears in.
• Chekhov's Gun: After the defeat of Panhuman Vortigern, Morgan manages to remove and preserve his heart before his body fades away, citing that an intact dragon's heart is a very valuable resource to have. It comes in handy again a couple of chapters later when Morgan is looking for a way to improve herself, settling on using the preserved heart to create her own artificial Dragon Core, to help deal with the typical mana costs that comes with being a high-tier Berserker Servant.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Kentish peasant Francis is mentioned only a few times in passing before he shows up properly...and promptly transforms into Fafnir thanks to his greed.
• Chekhov's Skill: Well, more like Chekhov's vice, but Francis' habit of stealing from his neighbours, to the point of amassing a large stockpile of stolen items in the village church, turns out to be the reason Siegfried sensed danger in the Singularity: Fafnir is due to return, and Francis' greed makes him a very suitable host...
• Claimed by the Supernatural: Morgan is forced to brand herself with the Evil God of the Abyss's symbol on the back of her left hand, marking her as his newest Foreigner. She treats this brand as a source of great shame and constantly angles her hand so that no one can see it.
• Cliffhanger: Several.
  • Chapter 3 ends with the Round Table, Ritsuka and Mash being faced by Panhuman History Vortigern, fully intent on settling his old grudge with his niece Saber.
  • Chapter 5 ends with Morgan reaching the cafeteria to check on Ritsuka, only to be confronted by Kiara.
  • Chapter 8 ends with Morgan falling unconscious after repelling a wave of cultists and demonic beasts with her Noble Phantasm.
  • Chapter 9 ends with Apep being banished from her mind and Morgan being forcibly awakened, having been press ganged into serving the Evil God of the Abyss and with instructions to wait for his "vessel" to contact her.
• Combat Pragmatist: As in the game, Cu Alter does not fight fair, and winning is all that matters to him. As soon as the fight between his and Medb's army and the Round Table starts, he tries killing Ritsuka with Gae Bolg to cut the Servants off from their mana supply. When Saber cripples him with a blast of Invisible Air, he takes advantage of being flung away from main melee to activate Battle Continuation and attempt a sneak attack on Ritsuka and Mash while they're distracted. If not for Merlin Taking the Bullet, he would have succeeded.
• Commonality Connection:
  • In Chapter 5, Ivan and Morgan form a fast friendship over them both being the rulers of their respective Lostbelts who faced rebellions from their people over their oppressive methods, despite the fact that their tyranny was very much necessary in order to ensure that their Lostbelts survived to the present day.
  • Invoked in an insidious way by Apep, who deliberately tailors her fake backstory to be similar to Morgan's (claiming she suffered the All the Other Reindeer and Fantastic Racism treatment for being born different to her fellow Outer Gods, etc.), hoping to elicit sympathy and make it easier to sway Morgan into accepting her offer to work together.
• Complete Immortality: Merlin's here and he's still got it, letting him bounce back from getting skewered head-on by a Noble Phantasm. Even when Panhuman Vortigern rips him apart and incinerates the remains, he's back in Chaldea none the worse for wear later on.
• The Confidant: Ivan the Terrible of all people fills this role during a training session with Morgan, empathizing with her and the horrible way their worlds ended.
  • Kiara is a Subversion, she may be The Shrink to Ritsuka,but he also knows just what she is capable of and has a contingency plan in place with his most powerful Servants, including former Grand Servants, to bring her to heel if she gets any funny ideas.
• Consummate Professional:
  • Saber Alter is presented this way in Chapters 2 and 3, quickly breaking up an argument between her uncorrupted self and Morgan while scolding them for squabbling while they're preparing for an expedition, being serious and no-nonsense throughout the whole ordeal.
  • Fellow Saber Sigurd demonstrates a similar attitude throughout the "Test Run" Arc, keeping the team focused when planning their next moves and keeping his mind on the job at all times.
• The Corrupter: Two of them so far, both Outer Gods but with differing methods.
  • Apep prefers a more subtle method, approaching Morgan in an engineered dream and attempting to sweet talk into help her Take Over the World under the pretence of being an outcast and refugee simply looking for a new home, playing on her desire to be special and lingering grief from the loss of Fae Britain, only turning aggressive once Morgan rejects her. She's already tricked Gilles De Rais into helping her by forming a cult based around Human Sacrifice, playing on his hatred of God and grief over Jeanne D'Arc's death to soften him up enough that he falls into her influence. By the time he's encountered, his firmly under her thrall and doesn't even truly realize it.
  • The God Of The Abyss, on the other hand, is both more and less direct. On the one hand, he simply forces Morgan to connect herself to him via a runic mark right from the get go. However, rather than brainwash her like Apep attempts to do he simply gives her A Taste of Power, knowing full well she'll inevitably be tempted to start using more of it in the desperate situation she's stuck in, giving him a gradual foothold into her mind and she opens the connection further and further.
• Crazy-Prepared: Chapter 6 establishes that Chaldea has various contingency plans in place for various possibilities, such as a Servant going renegade or the Wandering Sea being invaded, having several response teams organized based on the severity of the threat. The threat scale is categorized based on Noble Phantasm designations (IE: Anti-Personnel being the weakest threat, Anti-World being the worst threat) and for an Anti-World threat like Kiara, the response team contains all of Chaldea's current Grand Servants, among others.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Several.
  • Merlin gets torn in half and then utterly incinerated by PHH Vortigern in Chapter 4. Given his condition it doesn't take for long, but it's still a nasty way to go.
  • PHH Vortigern himself gets his wings blown off by Spinster Habetrot and Roadless Camelot, with several of Morgan's summoned spears lancing through his body, then gets his head blown off by Excalibur Morgan.
  • Apep's mental avatar gets boiled alive inside out by the Evil God of the Abyss until she explodes.
• Cue the Sun: This happens when Gawain taps into his Nightless Charisma Skill to strike one last blow against Dragon!Vortigern, with the dark clouds parting and a patch of sunlight shining down on him, activating his Numeral Of The Saint and tripling his strength.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Connacht Singularity has two.
    • The Celtic armies don't last long against the various Chaldean Servants in Chapter 3, being routed with near-total casualties time and again while failing to kill even one of the enemy Servants.
    • The Round Table struggled to fight against PHH Vortigern in his human form, thanks to being worn down from their prior battles against the Celt armies, Medb and Cu Alter, but still managed to fight him off and severely injure him. Once he assumes his draconic form, however, he crushes them very quickly without Saber having Rhongomyniad on her to stop him.
  • Chapter 9 also has two.
    • Apep ignores everything Morgan throws at her, even picking her up with one of her Combat Tentacles and taunting her playfully to show her just how little her attacks are fazing her.
    • Apep herself gets her avatar boiled alive and destroyed almost effortlessly by the Evil God of the Abyss, without even laying a finger on him in turn. In the process, Morgan gets completely debilitated without any chance to do anything, allowing the Evil God of the Abyss to force a contract to her with no way out.
• Cuteness Proximity: Gareth immediately starts squeeing when she sees Habetrot, wanting to hug her.
• A Day in the Limelight: Though the fic's focus is primarily on Morgan, different chapters feature various other Servants showing up or given focus for a bit.
  • The three Fairy Knights show up semi-regularly to give Morgan advice or ideas when she's stuck, being a bit more socially adept that she is.
  • Chapters 2 and 3 give the Knights of the Round Table, Merlin, Habetrot and Saber Alter some focus as they tag along on a Rayshift expedition. Saber Alter in particular develops a similar passive-aggressive dynamic with Morgan that she once had with Jeanne Alter.
  • Ivan The Terrible shows up in the simulator in Chapter 5 after Morgan accidentally interrupts his solitude, getting the opportunity to chat with Morgan and offer his perspective on her worries.
  • Chapter 7 focuses on Siegfried, complete with POV switch, on a solo Rayshift to Kent to track down the source of a dragon and wyvern infestation.
  • Chapter 8-11 features the cast of the Scandinavian Lostbelt, the Faerie Knights minus Baobhan Sith, and Oberon Vortigern.
  • Chapter 10 focuses on Baobhan Sith, also with POV switch, on her quest to find a friend that doesn't have a predilection towards torture and murder.
• Desperately Craves Affection: Several millennia of putting up with the Fae's constant backstabbing and complete lack of respect for her efforts to save them have left Morgan feeling rather starved of praise and affection, to the point that one compliment and Affectionate Gesture to the Head (well, chin) from Ritsuka is all that it takes for her to start trying to ingratiate herself to him further, quickly coming to crave his praise as acknowledgement that her efforts have been meaningful.
• Divide and Conquer:
  • Vortigern does this several times in Chapter 4:
    • He traps the Round Table, Mash and Ritsuka within a Bounded Field to stop any reinforcements interfering.
    • He imprisons Saber in shadowy bindings to stop her fighting, so that she'll be Forced to Watch as he kills her knights and Master.
    • He uses a second barrier to lock Gawain, Lancelot and Percival out of the fight, allowing him to deal with Tristan, Gareth, Mordred and Merlin separately.
  • In Chapter 9, Apep takes advantage of Morgan falling into slumber to imprison her in a dream and approach her with an offer, trying to turn her against the rest of the Chaldea expedition team.
• Do Not Go Gentle:
  • Even after Vortigern transforms into a colossal dark-magic fuelled dragon and starts tearing them apart, the Round Table still don't yield and are determined to keep fighting him as long as they can. Gawain and Saber Artoria even cross their respective Godzilla Thresholds (using Nightless Chraisma and unleashing the full might of her dragon blood, respectively) just to try and damage Vortigern.
  • After Apep shows her true colours and prepares to subjugate and brainwash her into a slave, Morgan continues fighting and struggling against her right to the end despite knowing how outmatched she is.
• Doppelgänger Gets Same Sentiment: Though Chaldea's Habetrot is different from her Lostbelt counterpart Morgan knew as Tonelico, Morgan still treats her well and has come to care for her nonetheless after striking up a fast friendship.
• Dramatic Irony: Morgan regrets not saving Ector from Tintagel when she had the chance and wished she'd sent Woodwose and the Fang Clan to go get him...unaware that Ector died rescuing Artoria Caster from the arriving Fang Clan Executioners, plus the rioting Tintagel Fae, as they destroyed the village.
• Dream Spying: Merlin, Edmond Dantes and Morgan can all peer into the dreams of others, though Dantes can only do so with Ritsuka himself, with all three of them using this ability in Chapter 6 to verify that Kiara did indeed soothe Ritsuka's worries by putting him to sleep and giving him a pleasant dream, as she claims to have done.
• Dream Weaver: Outer God Apep proves capable of this, constructing a very complex and highly convincing Lotus-Eater Machine environment to lull Morgan into a false sense of security and soften her up for Apep's offer of a partnership.
• Dwindling Party: The Shinjuku team steadily loses members as they mount their final assault on the Followers Cult's stronghold. First, all their flyers have to stay behind to hold off the dragons, demons and cultists outside the barrier around the cult's base, then Apep gains enough of a foothold on Earth to begin imprisoning them behind shields and Forced Sleep. Soon enough, it's just Morgan and Fujimaru left to breach Apep's inner sanctum and stop the summoning.
• Embodiment of Vice: Fafnir the Evil Dragon, representing Greed, shows up in Chapter 7, manifesting through the body of a Kentish peasant who's been amassing a stockpile of goods he stole from his neighbours.
• Enemies Equals Greatness: Apep fully believes this, considering it proof that an exile like her is once again being taken seriously by the other Outer Gods. This makes her only more interested in claiming Morgan as her own Foreigner as the others would see it and relay to their patrons that Apep is back in business. And if they send their own Foreigners to Shinjuku for Apep to slaughter once she's crossed over to Earth? An even better announcement that she's back in the game.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Ivan the Terrible might be a brutal authoritarian with a nasty temper, but even he balks in horror when Morgan describes what The Fair Folk from her Lostbelt are usually like.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!:
  • Happens to Morgan in her own internal monologue several times in Chapter 9 as she twigs to the true nature of the Chaldea she's woken up to and she realises why so many Servants have been acting oddly.
  • Happens to Bobhan Sith in Chapter 10 when she realises just how closely Semiramis' description of Mordred, whom she's already written off as a poorly-behaved, poorly-dressed 'commoner', matches up with Morgan's description of the other heir that she wanted Sith to try and meet and befriend.
• Exploited Immunity: Chapter 3 features Merlin exploiting his Immortality in a fight against Cu Alter, Taking the Bullet for Mash and allowing the Berserker to rip him to pieces with Curruid Coinchenn, knowing full well he can take it much better than she can. Sure enough, despite being left with half his entrails hanging out, he's up and walking around again in about a minute or two.
• Evil All Along: Apep isn't the kindly, fleeing refugee she presents herself as. She's MUCH worse.
• Evil Virtues: PHH Vortigern has plenty of courage in him, disdaining the tricks and subterfuge employed by his Arch-Enemy Merlin and his niece Morgan Le Fay as "beneath him". If he wants to kill you, he'll at least do you the decency of facing you head on while he does.
• Face–Monster Turn: Francis' growing greed causes the peasant to undergo a Painful Transformation into the dragon Fafnir's latest incarnation.
• Faux Affably Evil:
  • Apep's general demeanour, always going on long-winded speeches filled with sugary sweetness even as she tries to Mind Rape and brainwash Morgan. It's only when she's confronted by the Evil God of the Abyss that her true hateful self shows up.
  • This even extends to her defeat. She's seemingly calm and blasé about her plans falling through...but only because she's got the satisfaction of knowing the one who foiled her plans is going to go insane and die thanks to unsealing her Mark of the Beast, while she can always try again thanks to be an ageless Eldritch Abomination.
• Fallen Angel: This is how Apep managed to win over Gilles de Rais to her cause, posing as a renegade angel kicked out of Heaven and horrifically mutated by God for the crime of speaking out against his cruel treatment of Jeanne d'Arc. Unlike Morgan, he fell for it hook line and sinker.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing:
  • When breaching the Bounded Field set up around the cafeteria, Morgan notes that it's powered by an incredibly strong source and that the magic is demonic in origin. A few seconds later, she's greeted by the architect of the barrier, ex-Beast Kiara Sesshouin.
  • Passionlip gets berated for taking so long in her detour to the cafeteria to confront Kiara by Meltryllis and BB, with her protesting that she needed to fetch some help. Moments later, she defuses the brewing fight between Kiara and the Grand Servants by yelling for and summoning Kingprotea.
• Forbidden Fruit: All the extra strength the Abyss God's brand offers will make the bearer MONSTROUSLY powerful should they choose to accept it, especially if they fully unseal the brand, with Morgan getting to use Rhongomyniad Magecraft again thanks to all the extra magic it supplies. Of course, the fact that it lets him turn the bearer into a Foreigner and twist their mind to serve him means it's really not worth it.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: Averted with Totorot/Lostbelt Habetrot, Lostbelt Uther and Ector, all of whom are deeply missed and mourned by Morgan, wishing she could have said proper goodbyes to all of them and regretting not saving Ector from the Tintagel Fae while she had the chance. She nearly hits her Rage Breaking Point once Artoria Avalon tells her what they tried to make her do to Ector, wishing she'd sent Woodwose and the Fang Clan to go burn the place down and get Ector out of there.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When she first confronts the Round Table, Ritsuka and Mash along with her army, Medb mentions a "creepy old man" who pointed her in their direction. Said old man shows up at the end of the chapter...revealing himself to be Vortigern from Panhuman History.
  • Plenty of it in Chapter 9 that all hint towards the setting's true nature and that Apep's not as nice as she claims.
    • Asclepius treats Morgan remarkably tenderly when she wakes up and is perfectly pleasant, despite her earlier complaints about him being a Dr. Jerk with a terrible bedside manner.
    • Morgan gets plenty of recognition and praise for her deeds, in spite of the fact that none of the other Lostbelt Kings have gotten that sort of support before.
    • Ritsuka mentions de-summoning Oberon-Vortigern for putting Morgan to sleep on the Rayshift, despite the fact that some Chaldea Servants have historically done FAR worse than that (such as BB's antics in Hawaii) and escaped without much formal punishment.
    • Saber Alter is polite and cordial towards Morgan, despite her being at best indifferent and at worse snarkily antagonistic in their prior conversations.
    • Kiyohime doesn't call Ritsuka "Anchin" and is remarkably accepting of him lavishing attention and praise on Morgan, despite being one of the setting's biggest and most possessive Yanderes and a Clingy Jealous Girl.
    • Apep seems just a little bit too bloodthirsty when it comes to taking on the Foreign God and securing Earth for a mere kind-hearted refugee.
    • Whenever Morgan uses her Fairy Eyes to determine whether or not Apep is lying, she notices a slight "shimmer" around her body. Sure enough, it's eventually revealed that Apep has been using illusions to project the friendly façade Morgan has been seeing.
  • Chapter 12 has old man Hokusai freaking out during Chaldea's assembly of reinforcements, trying to warn away other Servants from the Rayshift platform. Turns out that his link with the God of the Abyss means he already knows that his patron doesn't want Chaldea interfering in 'his' hunt for Apep.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Francis goes from just some random Kent peasant with a thieving problem to the new Fafnir, whom Siegfried needs to kill.
• The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: Despite them technically not being related to each other since they come from alternate histories, Saber and Morgan cannot help but argue and bicker with one another, with Saber being distrusting and suspicious while Morgan curses her internally, is quick to jump on any perceived failures of hers and repeatedly attempts to one-up her.
• Graceful Loser:
  • Cu Alter takes his defeat well when he's finally slain, acknowledging that it's only natural for the conquered to bow to their conquerors.
  • Apep takes her defeat relatively well, stating that she can always try again and win next time...of course, the knowledge that, in her mind, Morgan's just damned herself to madness and death by giving in to the God of the Abyss' lure of power gives her a high note to go out on.
• Godzilla Threshold:
  • Twice in Chapter 4.
    • Gawain taps into his Nightless Charisma to gain the power boost needed to make one last Noble Phantasm strike against Dragon!Vortigern, despite the Skill itself being a permanent reminder of the atrocities his Camelot Singularity self committed under the Lion King.
    • Saber unleashes her dragon blood to power up just enough for a last-ditch Excalibur strike against her Scaled Up Evil Uncle, despite normally suppressing that side of her and needing Grail Alteration to bring it out.
  • Chapter 6 revealed that for a level two threat (an attack aimed at Ritsuka), an Anti-World response team consisting of both incarnations of Gilgamesh, former Grand Servants and Lostbelt Kings, and other powerful servants especially those from Servantverse will act. Kiara is one such threat.
  • In Chapter 11, Ritsuka orders Oberon to use Lie Like Vortigern — an Anti-World Noble Phantasm with unlimited range and number of targets — if the assault on the cultists to stop the summoning of Apep fails.
• Chapter 13 has Morgan steadily breaking more and more of the seals on her Mark of the Beast in an effort to stop Apep's summoning, eventually fully unsealing the mark to get the power to win, despite the mountingly severe drawbacks.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Morgan gets very jealous at the praise Saber gets from Rituska at managing to pacify Fou and Artoria Avalon after their latest outburst and round of violent threats against Merlin, driving her to try and one-up her 'sibling' throughout Chapter 3 and 4.
• Happily Married: Sigurd and Brynhild are as lovey-dovey as ever when they show up, greatly cherishing the fact that they're reunited and are now able to fight together again.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: Averted with Vortigern, who explicitly states that he managed to bolster his Casting a Shadow powers and expand his light-draining ability to include all Holy Swords, rather than simply Excalibur and Galatine, because he trained on the Throne of Heroes get a better grip on his powers, helped immensely by the Year Inside, Hour Outside nature of the Throne.
• Harsher in Hindsight: One scene has Morgan thinking about what became of Fairy Knight Habetrot (or Totorot, as she was known as at the time), being outright sickened and severely ashamed when she thinks about her alterations to the Lostbelt and what they might have wound up doing to her old friend. This hits a lot harder for those who've gotten far enough into Avalon Le Fae to learn and remember that this is exactly what winds up happening, with Lostbelt Habetrot eventually crumbling into dust right in front of Mash once she remembers who Habetrot really is.
• Heel Realization: Morgan goes through a hard one in Chapter 9 when she realizes just how Fairy-like her plan for getting Ritsuka's support on her deal with Apep is, realizing that going through with it means lying to, abusing the trust of and betraying someone who's offered her nothing but support, kindness and praise up to that point. Not only would this be her doing to someone else as the Fae did to her, but she's also throwing away her honesty (the only virtue of hers she's retained from her Tonelico identity) and becoming even worse than the traitorous Fae Clan leaders she hates so much. As bad as they were, even they never stooped to outright mentally enslaving others as Morgan was planning to do. She's so horrified at nearly betraying her principals that she backs out of the deal immediately.
• Hope Spot:
  • After a very hard-fought battle against Panhuman Vortigern, which takes out Tristan, Gareth and Mordred, the Round Table finally manage to bypass his shadow-based Deflector Shield and have Lancelot strike him down with Arondight Overload. Everyone relaxes and sighs with relief...until Saber asks Lancelot if he made sure Vortigern was actually dead. He isn't. By the time the Round Table realize their mistake, he's managed to invoke his dragon transformation Noble Phantasm and completely flip the battle in his favour all over again.
  • Though they're left badly battered from doing so, Chapter 12 has the Shinjuku team break through the cult's defenders around the theatre and prepare to storm the stronghold, assured that they'll be reinforced by Chaldea's reinforcements...only for the God of the Abyss to remotely overload Novum Chaldea's Rayshift systems with excess mana, leaving the expedition team entirely on their own.
• Hot-Blooded: Napoleon proves just as passionate and fired up on the Rayshift to Shinjuku as he was in Scandinavia, with his infectious enthusiasm even lifting the rest of the team's spirits as well.
• I Am the Noun:
  • When Saber asserts that Britain needed to move into the Age of Man, Vortigern snarls back that she has no right to tell him what Britain needs, because "I AM Britain!"
  • When venting his anger over Lostbelt Anastasia and the Yaga rebels working at overthrowing him, without any respect for his prior efforts at keeping his people alive, Ivan yells "I AM Russia!" at one point.
• I Just Want to Be Special: This becomes one of Morgan's motives throughout the fic, wanting to stand out more so that she'll be praised and rewarded for being an outstanding Servant. This first develops after Kiara needles her and gets under her skin with assertions that she's nowhere near as unique as she thinks she is: she's not the only ace magic user in Chaldea thanks to Merlin, Circe, Medea, Sheba and Skadi's presence; Arjuna Alter and Xiang Yu precede her as Lostbelt Berserkers; Ivan The Terrible, Skadi, Qin Shi Huang and Arjuna Alter precede her as recruited Lostbelt Kings and her three Fairy Knight enforcers are simply the Evil Counterpart of the Knights of the Round Table, right down to having some of their Saint Graphs spliced into them.
• Irrational Hatred:
  • Carried over from the game proper, Morgan's hatred of Artoria/Saber is this. She acknowledges that realistically, she shouldn't actually hate Artoria because they never did anything to one another (being from separate timelines and all) and that most of her hatred stems from taking on the memories of Panhuman History Morgan Le Fay, who did have reason to hate Artoria, but she cannot help hate her regardless...which isn't helped by her jealousy at the attention and praise she gets from Ritsuka.
  • Artoria Avalon seems to have this for Merlin, never missing an opportunity to rag on him when he starts slacking and threating him with beheading several times, even when he's behaving himself, in spite of the fact that she shouldn't have any real reason to hate Merlin so much since her living self only interacted with Merlin once in Lostbelt 6 in a fairly positive manner and the 'Merlin' she knew as her mentor was in fact Oberon-Vortigern posing as him.
  • Skadi bears a grudge against Napoleon because him being summoned to answer Ophelia's cry for help is a tacit admission that Skadi wasn't doing enough to help someone she considered a daughter, and it eventually led to Ophelia's death. Skadi admits that she really should be blaming Surtr, but she couldn't do it for the sake of her pride as a mother. Morgan is somewhat envious that this grudge is irrational as it is comparatively easier to get over compared to her justified hatred for the fae.
• Instantly Proven Wrong:
  • After assuming his Draconic Abomination form and crushing any remaining resistance from the Round Table knights, Vortigern gloats about having essentially won already, remarking that there's no Rhongomyniad or other help to bail out Saber this time...a few moments before his Bounded Field is breached and Morgan, Habetrot and Saber Alter show up as The Cavalry.
  • Apep laughs off Morgan's attempt at threatening her with the other Outer Gods intervening in her plan by assuring her that all of them are far too busy with their own squabbles to keep an eye on her. One of those Outer Gods (her very own Arch-Enemy, if her reaction is anything to go by) promptly interrupts her attempt to convert Morgan into a thrall and banishes her from the latter's mind with ease.
• It's Personal:
  • Vortigern manifests himself in Connacht to kill Saber in revenge for her killing him originally, rejecting any attempts to try and talk him out of his rampage.
  • The God of the Abyss sabotages Chaldea's attempt to Rayshift backup to Shinjuku, insisting that the "prey" (implicitly referring to Apep) is HIS to deal with.
• I Was Quite a Looker: Apep bemoans the loss of her former beauty in her conversation with Morgan, explaining that she used to be incredibly attractive until her Arch-Enemy, jealous of her looks, rallied his followers and mutilated her in battle before cursing her into her current, hideous form. Unfortunately, it's a pile of crap and she's always looked like that...matching how monstrous she is on the inside.
• Jerkass:
  • Oberon-Vortigern seems to go out of his way to be the biggest dick he can be to whomever it is he's talking to, especially if it's Morgan. Artoria Avalon even mentions that he regularly tries picking fights with or provoking other Servants for his own amusement.
  • Baobhan Sith seems to hold the majority of Chaldea in contempt, insulting the food, having a low opinion of anyone she deems a "peasant", being appalled at "commoners" and nobles mixing together and regularly insulting Panhuman History as inferior to her home Lostbelt, purely because she doesn't enjoy the same privileges she used to.
• Large Ham:
  • Ivan The Terrible and Morgan both start hamming it up during their spar in Chapter 5, with both of them throwing cheesy threats and action movie-esque lines around to have some fun and blow off stress.
  • Napoleon hams it up from time to time, showing how Hot-Blooded he is. He even admits it's just a part of who he is to be as loud and larger-than-life as he can, befitting someone who answers the hopes and dreams of humanity.
  • Conversely, Gilgamesh (both the Archer and Caster version) not being his typical hammy and boastful self during the confrontation with Kiara is a sign of just how serious the situation is.
• Like a God to Me: Played for for all the creepiness it's worth when it's revealed that this is how Fujimaru himself is viewed by Kiara Sesshouin of all people, with her having come to view him as a "True Human" and Messiah like herself, who takes in, strengthens and 'saves' his Servants with his endless love and affection. It's to the point where she's even willing to follow him just about anywhere and do whatever he asks of her, even being willing to give up her previous pursuit of reaching enlightenment because, as far as she's concerned, he can give her the enlightenment she's been seeking with The Power of Love. Whenever anyone tries to tell her how her new beliefs sound, she simply laughs it off with a condescending pat on the head and telling them how blind and unenlightened they are. Word of God states that this mindset is a result of genuine affection being warped through the lens of Kiara's Beastly Blue-and-Orange Morality and her attitude towards other humans: she's twisted enough that the only way she can rationalize and accept genuinely growing to care for someone else is by viewing them as a fellow "True Human" and messiah-figure like herself, because she views every other human being as a mindless animal or stepping stone to her own salvation.
• Living Lie Detector: Morgan's Fairy Eyes/Eyes of the Faerie allow her to see through lies and discern the true intentions of others. Unfortunately, they're not strong enough to see through Apep's illusions, allowing her to project a friendly façade to string Morgan along into believing whatever she wants her to believe.
• Logic Bomb: Baobhan Sith, unaware of Mordred's parentage and family issues, assumes that the female Artoria is her mother only to be corrected that she is her father. Frustrated, she points out by that logic that Arthur is Mordred's mother, only to be corrected again that he's male father. Baobhan Sith's brain promply breaks.
• Logical Weakness:
  • Morgan is an unrivalled magic user with magecraft that enters and surpasses the realm of the Gods themselves. However, she's also a Squishy Wizard Glass Cannon par excellence and almost entirely reliant on her magic for protection and offense, meaning that a single sealing rune or other method of cutting off her access to magic will render her a non-threat almost instantly.
  • PHH Vortigern's light eating ability might work on all Holy Swords and other such weapons this time around, but it's still limited to HOLY weapons. He finds it much more difficult to drain Clarent (a Holy Sword corrupted by rage) and he's flat-out incapable of draining Excalibur Morgan, a blade powered by dark magic.
• The Lost Lenore: Lostbelt Uther is revealed to have been this for Morgan in her Tonelico days, with the two caring about one another quite a bit, Morgan blushing whenever Totorot or Mash brought up the prospect of marriage in the same sentence as Uther and Totorot blatantly trying to pair them together. Sadly, he was butchered along with the rest of her Round Table by the Fae before they could make anything of those feelings.
• Loved by All:
  • Ritsuka's about as universally popular among the Chaldean Servants here as he is in the game proper, with Morgan and Baobhan Sith repeatedly expression confusion at this, if not even more so considering that he's managed to attract the seemingly-genuine affections of Kiara this time around.
  • This gets used by Morgan to try and dissuade Baobhan Sith from acting and doing as she typically would towards Ritsuka (as she was planning on "making him her toy"), pointing out that he's protected by about a half dozen Servants at bare minimum, with many more willing to follow him just about anywhere and do whatever he says, none of whom would take kindly to Baobhan's attempt to 'play' with him.
  • This gets quite darkly Deconstructed in Chapter 6 with Kiara's take on the matter. She points out that Ritsuka's ability to gather the loyalty and (in some cases) affections of so many Heroic Spirits makes him rather terrifying to outsiders given the level of power he wields by proxy. The fact that some of the Servants' Undying Loyalty borders on fanatacism makes him seem (to Kiara at least) like a sort of cult leader...and it doesn't quite help that Kiara herself has started thinking like this about him, which creeps out everyone around her.
• Love Freak: Habetrot, the self-described "Friend to all Brides" who's always on the lookout for a new girl to help get her happy ending and dream marriage.
• Magic Knight: Several show up throughout the fic.
  • Artoria Avalon has no problems fighting in melee with Marmyadose, on top of being an extremely strong spellcaster in her current form thanks to having Age Of Gods Mystics at her disposal.
  • On top of being one of the strongest mages to ever live and the current Grand Caster thanks to his top-class Clairvoyance, Merlin is also a highly skilled swordsman, especially given that he was King Arthur's mentor in swordplay, and in fact prefers to fight up close, as he finds chanting incantations exhausting compared to just hitting things with his Caliburn Replica.
  • Panhuman History Vortigern is a very effective swordsman, able to take on and outfight several of the Round Table's skilled knights, while also wielding the Primordial Black Magic of Britain to bolster himself and weaken his foes.
  • Sigurd is inhumanly skilled with his Demonic Sword Gram and can use Primordial Runes thanks to being taught them by Brynhild, knowing enough that he qualifies for the Caster Class.
  • Despite his physical stats skewing closer to a Squishy Wizard, Oberon-Vortigern's overall fighting style is very physical. He is also proficient in a variety of Mystics, both Magecraft and Faerie Mystic, enough that he's still a very proficient fighter even when denied use of his insect summons.
• Magical Eye: Morgan's Eyes of the Faerie, which allow her to see through lies and discern others' intentions at a glance.
• Malicious Misnaming: Neither Morgan nor Oberon-Vortigern ever refer to one another by name, with Morgan always defaulting to "insect", "bug" or "shitty X" while Oberon-Vortigern takes cracks at her age by calling her a hag.
• Mama Bear: Though she isn't his actual mother and instead a Parental Substitute, Raikou is quick to draw her blade on and even threaten Kiara when she suspects the Alter-Ego of harming Ritsuka in some way.
• Manchild: Merlin does not act his age in the slightest, flitting between being an Attention Whore and making light of whatever situation he's in, no matter how dire it actually is, to the eternal exasperation of both Morgan and Artoria Avalon.
• Man of Kryptonite: Oberon-Vortigern is this to Morgan. While she's more than capable of beating him in a straight fight, his control over insects coupled with her own Why Did It Have to Be Snakes? weakness allows him to practically cripple her with terror just by bringing his bugs out in combat, giving him a vast edge in a no-holds barred battle.
• Mark of the Beast: Morgan is forced to carve a runic tattoo onto her left hand at the behest of the God of the Abyss, linking herself to him and essentially turning her into his second Foreigner Servant. Morgan herself sees it as a Mark of Shame, going out of her way to try and hide it.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!":
  • Chapter 3 has the Round Table react this way, and quite understandably so, when all their various Holy Swords start flickering and losing power suddenly in the aftermath of their victory over Medb and Cu Alter. Then a rather hostile stranger turns up...
  • Chapter 6 has all of the accompanying Servants start panicking when it looks as though Kiara and the Grand Servant team are going to come to blows, since Kiara is a borderline Physical God and the ex-Grand Servants are all incredibly skilled and/or powerful even without their Grand Saint Graphs.
  • The Shinjuku team react this way twice, first when it's confirmed that the Followers intend to summon an Outer God to Shinjuku and again when Ritsuka decides that Oberon-Vortigern's Noble Phantasm is their fallback plan should the rest of the team fail to stop the summoning ritual in time.
• Master of Illusion:
  • Merlin proves quite adept at creating illusions from his petals, which fits quite nicely with his role as a Support Party Member and The Trickster in lore.
  • Morgan proves able to disguise herself via runes, using this power to assume a more wholesome and period-suitable appearance when interacting with some medieval peasants in a Singularity in Kent.
  • Apep proves capable of manipulating the perception of others very skilfully, which she pairs well with her Dream Weaver powers to help entice Morgan to her service, to the point that she can successfully fool Morgan's Fairy Eyes into believing she really is the kindly refugee she presents herself as. The only telltale sign is a slight "shimmer" at the edges of her form where the illusion covers her real self, and she brags about her ability to fool Morgan once the jig is up.
• Meet the New Boss: Morgan is saved from becoming Apep's thrall by the Evil God of the Abyss swooping in and violently expelling her mental avatar...only for him to then turn around and conscript Morgan for his own needs.
• Mighty Glacier:
  • Vortigern's stat sheet in chapter 4 shows his Strength and Endurance ranked at A++ while his Mana is ranked A, allowing him to shrug off barrages of attacks from multiple Round Table knights and their accompanying Casters while ripping through their defenses with powerful strikes. Meanwhile, his Agility clocks in at D-Rank.
  • Ivan The Terrible is extremely durable thanks to his ice colossus form, but his sheer bulk means it's incredibly difficult for him to walk anywhere. Since he can teleport, this isn't as much of a problem as it would otherwise be.
• Moe:
  • Habetrot is a kind-hearted Genki Girl with an adorable enthusiasm for nurturing prospective brides, and almost no one seems to actively dislike her. She even mentions that Da Vinci, Sion,Tesla and Edison all agreed to help her because they were compelled to make her life easier and that they kept muttering "cute" and "kawaii" when talking about her.
  • Gareth is a big ball of sunshine and enthusiasm, fitting for someone who served as The Heart of the living Round Table.
  • Mordred has her moments, especially when she gets embarrassed about being called cute or when she gets praised by Saber for good work.
• Misplaced Retribution: Briefly touched on by Morgan as possibly applying to her, since she wonders if her utterly terrible time of life is at least partially caused by her taking on the karma and being punished for the sins of Panhuman Morgan Le Fay, thanks to having her memories and experiences transplanted into her by the latter.
• Mr. Exposition:
  • Ivan the Terrible, of all people, becomes this is chapter 5, explaining the events of Observer on Timeless Temple plus some of the events of his own Lostbelt to Morgan.
  • Siegfried briefly takes the role in chapter 7, telling Morgan a bit about his Arch-Enemy Fafnir.
• My God, What Have I Done?: "What did I think about doing?" in this case, but this hits Morgan hard in Chapter 9. She's disgusted and ashamed that she was thinking about mind controlling Ritsuka to have him convince Chaldea to support her collaberation with Apep, especially since the plan involved deceiving him and taking advantage of his trust first to place the Mind Manipulation runes onto him. She realized that the deception, betrayal and lack of respect for everything he's done for her up to that point involved in her plan would make her no better than the Faeries and their Clan Leaders whom Morgan hated so much and tried so hard to be better than via her Will Not Tell a Lie pledge, and ultimately couldn't stomach going through with the plan.
• Near-Villain Victory: Happens in Chapter 4. Panhuman History Vortigern, thanks to his invoking his Draconic Abomination transformation Noble Phantasm, completely dominated the tired, already weakened remnants of the Round Table, crippling all of the other knights and their supporters (and outright killing Merlin) while snatching up Saber. He's in the process of forcing a Sadistic Choice on her (after which he'll kill her) when The Cavalry finally shows up to turn the fight around.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • More like "Nice Job, Jerkass", in this case, but Oberon-Vortigern's dickish move of putting Morgan to sleep with his "End Of A Dream" Skill in Chapter 8, just because he thought it'd be funny, inadvertantly allows her to discover the true scale of the threat Chaldea is up against in Shinjuku, as Apep takes the opportunity to invade the sleeping Morgan's mind to try and recruit her, allowing Morgan to learn what she has planned from her Evil Gloating.
  • Had Apep simply kept up the kindly refugee act and left after her partnership offer had been declined by Morgan, especially since Morgan was offering to scry for another, less populated and more accessible home for her with her magic, she likely would have stood a much better chance at getting what she wanted. Instead, her extended stay in Morgan's mind to screw around with and gloat at her before brainwashing her into a thrall set Morgan against her and drew the attention of her Arch-Enemy, who arrived in time to foil her brainwashing attempt and throw her out.
• Nigh-Invulnerable:
  • Ivan The Terrible's ice colossus form is all but indestructible. He even assures Morgan before their spar that she can go all-out as she pleases, because as long as she refrains from damaging his crown then he can shrug off just about anything she throws at him.
  • Vortigern in his draconic form manages to withstand just about anything the already-depleted Knights of the Round can throw at him. When Gawain and Saber both cross the Godzilla Threshold to supercharge their Noble Phantasms for one last Desperation Attack, the damage they do is superficial at best. Even when he's immobilised by Morgan's gravity runes and left a sitting duck, it takes three Noble Phantasms to finally put him down, with the last one being Excalibur Morgan empowered by two Command Spells.
  • Apep looks at the other two examples and laughs at them, being able to flat-out ignore anything Morgan throws at her without even trying. She's only beaten by a FAR stronger Outer God butting in to bail Morgan out for his own ends.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis:
  • Cu Alter opens the fight with the Round Table by using Gae Bolg's thrown variant to try and snipe Ritsuka right from the get go, and it's only thanks to Round Of Avalon that he fails.
  • Vortigern is very thorough in dispatching Merlin when he gets his hands on him, ripping him apart and then incinerating his remains with magical flames, forcing Merlin to reappear in Avalon instead of allowing him to regenerate on the battlefield and blindside Vortigern by re-joining the fight later. However, once he finally has Saber in his grasp, he goes the other way instead.
• No Range Like Point-Blank Range: Saber delivers the Coup de Grâce to Cu Alter by unleashing Invisible Air right in his face, which results in him getting blown right across the clearing they're fighting in while shredding his skin and breaking half his bones. He only hangs on for a while thanks to his Battle Continuation Skill.
• No-Sell: Oberon-Vortigern doesn't fall for Apep's sales pitch when she tries approaching him, calmly rebuffing her and telling her that there's nothing she could offer that would interest him.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Gawain starts internally freaking out when a disguised Vortigern shows up in front of him. Even though he doesn't know who it is, he's still terrified.
  • Morgan has a moment of worry and fear when Kiara comes out of the cafeteria at the end of Chapter 5.
  • Kiara herself gets nervous when Gilgamesh draws out Ea to threaten her with and shows that he's already come up with a plan to fire it and minimise collateral damage should he need to.
  • Kiara freaks out even more visibly when she realizes she's being held by an angry Kingprotea, to the point of intending to reason with her instead of trying to lash out.
  • Siegfried is shocked and surprised when Francis suddenly shoves him away, despite him being a normal man against a Servant...and it only gets worse when Francis begins transforming into Fafnir right in front of him.
• Older and Wiser: Artoria Avalon is this compared to her original Artoria Caster self, being older mentally and more mature, with Morgan herself noting that her previous hesitation and nervousness has been replaced with an unshakeable confidence in her new abilities.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Chapter 2 features the normally calm and level-headed King of Knights acting on-edge and accusatory after learning that the new arrival joining the Round Table for a Rayshift expedition is a witch she might be familiar with, getting even more worked up after confirming that she's a part-fairy.
  • Chapter 3 has the normally unflappable and stalwart Gawain getting flat-out terrified when a mysterious stranger turns up to confront the Round Table, to the point that Mordred and Gareth both start losing their own nerve at the sight of their elder brother's terror. For good reason, considering that the stranger in question is Vortigern, back for round two.
  • Chapter 5 features the typically controlled and calm Morgan working herself into a frenzied and very emotionally charged rant to Ivan about everything she went through in her Lostbelt, the culmination of her efforts and everything of herself she gave up or lost along the way, complete with plenty of unrestrained crying and Power Incontinence.
  • In Chapter 6, when Morgan demands to know how someone like him became the Grand Caster, Merlin drops his typical Attention Whore and Insufferable Genius tendencies and simply replies that he's "a permanent seat warmer", as a gesture of respect for his predecessor.
  • In the same chapter, both the Archer and Caster iterations of Gilgamesh are incredibly serious and no-nonsense for the entire duration of the standoff with Kiara. Neither hesitate to threaten her into compliance, to the point of drawing out Ea to use against her and being willing to trap her in their Gate Of Babylon to minimise collateral damage from their fight.
  • When Achilles shows up to recruit him as part of the response team towards a threat, Andersen initially refuses to have anything to do with it, though not without reason as he's mainly a Support Party Member with little combat ability of his own. However, as soon as Achilles gives him the Trust Password he was asked to relay, Andersen immediately drops (most of) his complaints and follows him with no questions asked.
• Plagued by Nightmares: Even after thousands of years, Morgan is still haunted by the loss of her comrades in the Coronation Massacre, to the point of having nightmares about it unless she exhausts herself enough during the day. Fujimaru himself is also implied to have them, since him being up in the dead of night is not a rare occurrence.
• Poor Communication Kills: Da Vinci detected Vortigern's Spirit Origin in the Connacht Singularity as an unregistered Avenger Class Stray Servant, but neglected to warn Ritsuka and the expedition team about it, allowing Vortigern to ambush them while Saber Alter, Habetrot and Morgan were away from the main group and almost kill Ritsuka, Mash and the Round Table before the trio show up to help. Goredolf restricts her access to QP for her experiments as a punishment for the neglect.
• Positive Friend Influence: Invoked by Morgan when she asks Baobhan Sith to try and make some new friends at Chaldea, as part of an effort to get her to soften up and start returning to being the friendly, adorable kid she was before Morgan had to toughen her up to help her survive in Fae Britain.
• Power at a Price: The Abyss God's brand offers some truly monstrous boosts to Morgan's magical reserves and an increasing flow of fresh magic the more seals she removes from it...at the cost of allowing the Eldritch Abomination behind the link to start warping her mind more to his liking.
• Power High: The God of the Abyss' power works like this, feeling increasingly pleasant to use and draw on the more Morgan opens her connection to him. By the time all of the seals are removed, she goes on an extended monologue bragging about how she's utterly unmatched and back to her old self with all of this new power. The fact that it allows her to use her Rhongomyniad Divine Magecraft again only makes her enjoy it more.
• The Power of Hate: Vortigern manifested himself in the Connacht Singularity solely out of his hatred for Saber and a desire for revenge against her for killing him last time. Sure enough, after the group defeats him and returns to Chaldea, it's revealed that he was classed as an Avenger.
• The Promise: Chapter 7 has Siegfried promise Kent peasant Gertrude that he'll find her husband Francis and bring him back safely. Tragically, he is unable to do so, as Francis becomes the new Fafnir and must be put down by him.
• Properly Paranoid: Siegfried is very on edge and suspicious of Francis the moment he meets the man, with his instincts repeatedly telling him that Francis is dangerous and a threat to him no matter how much Siegfried tries to ignore them, reasoning that Francis has no reason to hate or threaten him. As it turns out, this is because Francis is soon to become the new Fafnir, Siegfried's draconic Arch-Enemy, who hates him very much indeed.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Kiara dishes one out to Morgan in Chapter 6, pointing out just how little she stands out from the rest of Chaldea's roster and how little goodwill she's accumulated with Fujimaru despite her efforts, mocking her for thinking that all it would take is one Rayshift expedition to get into his good books and baosting that she herself is far more unique and special, since she provides a service that no other Servant can through acting as The Shrink.
  • Andersen turns it right back on her at the end of the chapter once he shows up, pointing out that for all her proclamations of being close to Ritsuka and having more of his trust than anyone else as The Shrink, he's still wary enough of her to personally recommend that she be designated a maximum-level security threat, with even her own counterpart Kama ranking lower than her. He also points out that for all the change she's undergone, she's still the same "rotten demon" inside, and only when she changes the fundamentals of who she is will she have Ritsuka's full trust.
• Reformed, but Not Tamed: Kiara of all people is presented this way, insisting that she's genuinely fallen for Ritsuka after initially coming to Chaldea to one-up Meltryllis and avenge her defeat at the latter's hands in SERAPH, to the point that she's perfectly willing to act as his therapist and follow him just about anyhere. That said, her affections are still as twisted as she is and absolutely nobody buys her claims. Even Ritsuka himself is wary enough of her to have countermeasures prepared should she go rogue, and Chaldea's rules flat-out prohibit any alone time with him outside of their therapy sessions.
• Revenge Before Reason: In his desire for vengeance against Saber, Panhuman Vortigern is willing to kill his way through almost anyone around her just because she cares for them and it'll hurt her to watch them die. This also includes Fujimaru himself, which would doom the world by proxy but even after getting that fact thrown in his face, Vortigern simply brushes it off and attacks the Round Table anyway.
• Sadistic Choice: Attempted by Panhuman Vortigern after he manages to defeat Saber and the Round Table in Chapter 4, trying to force her to choose which knights he'll kill in which order, knowing full well it'll hurt her to do so despite the fact that Death Is Cheap for Servants.
• Sanity Slippage: Morgan steadily undergoes this through Chapter 13 as she opens the connection to the God of the Abyss further and further, her thoughts being increasingly warped, selfish and aggressive as her new patron gains a further foothold in her mind.
• Saved to Enslave: The God of the Abyss saves Morgan from being brainwashed by Apep, only to force her to connect herself to him and essentially become his second Foreigner, declaring her useful enough to serve his whims.
• Scaled Up: Much like he did in the Nasuverse's variant of Arthurian Myth, PHH Vortigern invokes his White Dragon lineage, here a Noble Phantasm of his named Dark Heart Albion, to transform into his Draconic Abomination form to fight and crush the still-active members of the Round Table in Chapter 4.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Several show up.
  • Morgan is still haunted by the events of the British Lostbelt, especially her past, to the point of having nightmares about it unless she manages to wear herself out properly.
  • Ritsuka in the game generally suppressed his trauma, to the point that Lostbelt 5B Olympus mentions him weaselling out of any counselling sessions he attended by lying that he was fine. Here, his trauma is far more open and noticeable (mention is made of him wandering the halls at night and breaking down in the cafeteria), and he makes no effort to avoid or weasel out of his regular therapy sessions.
  • Scathach-Skadi is still affected by Surtr's devastation of her home and slaughter of the Norse Pantheon during the Ragnarok that went Off the Rails in her Lostbelt's Point of Divergence, and begins to have flashbacks to his rampage whenever she's around sufficiently strong heat or flames.
• Shock and Awe: Ivan the Terrible's primary method of attack is throwing copious amounts of lightning around, whether by projecting it from his staff, his hands or his tusks.
• Shut Up, Kirk!: Saber tries reasoning with Vortigern by pointing out that if he kills her, the Round Table, Mash and Ritsuka, then all hope of reversing the Human Order Revision dies with them and the Britain Vortigern loves so much will remain a lifeless husk until being overwritten by a Lostbelt. Vortigern simply replies that Britain's needs and future stopped being his concern when he died and became a Servant, and attacks the Round Table anyway.
• Sitcom Archnemesis: Morgan hates Artoria Alter as much as she hates Oberon Vortigern with none of the justification, to the point that she lives in Morgan's head rent free. Artoria Alter doesn't really return the sentiment and frequently tells Morgan to get over herself, leaving the latter to stew in her one sided grudge frequently.
• So Proud of You:
  • Morgan actually feels this way about Artoria Caster/Artoria Avalon when she meets her, giving her successor a nod of respect for completing the duty that she never could, noting that she's far more confident and powerful than the last time they encountered one another.
  • She also gives this assurance to Baobhan Sith after the latter nervously explains her troubles with carrying out Morgan's request to make some friends, gently telling her that the fact that Sith is willing to try is enough to make her happy.
• Sticky Fingers: Kentish peasant Francis can't seem to keep his hands out of his neighbours' pockets, even while their town is under siege from dragons and wyverns. Unfortunately, this predilection towards greed makes Francis an excellent host for Fafnir...
• Strong Family Resemblance: Much like his niece, Vortigern has bright green eyes. It's how Saber finally recognises who he is after his prior hints haven't clicked.
• Summon Bigger Fish: Passionlip does this in Chapter 6 by yelling for Kingprotea's help, resulting in her teleporting in to pick up Kiara, pancake her into the ground and subject her to a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown until she's pacified.
• Take Over the World: Revealed to be Apep's goal, with her aiming to be summoned to Earth via a ritual fuelled by Human Sacrifice, then using her Mind Rape powers to convert the populace into her loyal worshippers. Her use of brainwashing also serves the goal of locking any other Outer Gods out of Earth, since humanity will be too mindlessly loyal to Apep for them to influence and make into new vessels to act or manifest through.
• Terse Talker: The Evil God of the Abyss is this in contrast to Apep, never saying more than what is needed.
• Threat Backfire: Morgan makes a last-ditch effort to save herself from being assimilated and brainwashed into Apep's thrall by explaining that Chaldea will inevitably notice that she's been taken over by an eldritch force and act accordingly. Even assuming she manages to defeat the expedition team, Chaldea will simply send in more reinforcements who will make short work of Apep's cultists. In addition, once the Foreigner Servants learn about what's going on, their various Outer God 'benefactors' will know too and won't hesitate to dispatch and empower their vessels to put a stop to Apep's ritual, since various other Outer Gods have already taken an interest in Earth and will not take kindly to Apep's attempt to take the planet for herself. Unfortunately, Apep not only literally laughs off the threat, dismissing the other Outer Gods as being too busy with their own squabbles to notice or care what a straggler like her is doing, but sees the Foreigners' potential intervention as a positive, intending to announce her grand return as a legitimate challenger to the other Outer Gods by both claiming the planet they're interested in and massacring all of their chosen 'vessels' as a show of her strength, contemptuously dismissing the Foreigners' strength as utterly insignificant next to the power of even a weakened Outer God. Ultimately, all Morgan's threat did was make brainwashing her and setting her against Chaldea an even more attractive idea, and if not for outside intervention, Apep would have done so easily.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: During the brief POV switch to Gilles de Rais, leader of the Followers cult, at the end of Chapter 11, it becomes apparent that he's suffering from Apep's Illusion Master powers, since he sees all of the Human Sacrifice targets as criminals, while Apep and her 'blessings' all appear divine to him.
• Too Good to Be True: The realisation that Morgan eventually comes to during Chapter 9, where she's getting basically everything she's been working toward and then some in rapid succession. She's right, it's all an Outer God's doing.
• Took a Level in Badass: From Morgan's perspective, her successor Artoria Caster has taken a huge one since their last meeting. On first meeting her "Artoria Avalon" Alternate Self, Morgan is quite taken aback to see just how much more confident and skilled she's gotten, with her wielding a blade even stronger than Excalibur and being on par with a Grand Servant in terms of raw power.
• Touched by Vorlons: Morgan technically becomes a Foreigner after being forced to link herself to the Evil God of the Abyss. She's sealed the connecting mark as best she can, but it's implied that it won't do any good should the Outer God press the issue.
• Toxic Friend Influence: When asking for an update on how she's been doing making some new friends, Morgan is worried about this happening to Baobhan Sith when she learns that the 'friends' in question are Carmilla and Wu Zetian, as their fascination with torture and mutilation means that they'll likely only encourage Sith's own sadistic habits further, which is counter to Morgan's goal of her lightening up a bit and moving towards her old self again.
• Trauma Button:
  • Mentioning Uther around Morgan, even if it's Uther Pendragon from Panhuman History (as Barghest does in Chapter 5), is this for her. In the chapter in question, it's enough to trigger her into hallucinating Uther being struck down at the hands of the King Of Mors, which quickly shifts to the Coronation Massacre of her Round Table, and she's so enthralled by it that she nearly fires off some spells in her room before Baobhan Sith shouts her out of it.
  • Flames and heat are this for Scathach-Skadi, as they remind her of Surtr and everything he did in her Lostbelt, especially causing Ophelia's death. It takes a pep talk from Ritsuka to stop her from wallowing in her trauma.
• Undying Loyalty:
  • Artoria Avalon is quick to establish that she's pledged hers to Fujimaru, assuring Morgan that she's staying with him both to follow "that girl's" (her living self's) wish to always be by his side as his sword and because she, having inherited all of the memories of her original self, genuinely cares for and loves Fujimaru herself.
  • The Knights of the Round Table will follow Saber anywhere and are die-hard loyal to her, being quick to defend her character when Morgan has a go at her in Chapter 2, which Saber herself reciprocates when Morgan critiques them in turn.
  • Baobhan Sith and Woodwose were this for Morgan, the former because Morgan took her in and taught her to protect herself and the latter being the only Clan Leader who wasn't plotting against Morgan, to the point of needing to be manipulated and gaslighted into going against her.
  • Lostbelt Uther was this during Morgan's time has Tonelico the Saviour, following her no matter what and never regretting supporting her, assuring her that he was proud to have fought for her cause even as he was dying during the Coronation Massacre.
• Unstoppable Force Meets Immovable Object:
  • Noble Phantasm variant in Chapter 3, with Cu Alter's Gae Bolg (reality-warping spear of sure hit) vs Artoria Avalon's Round of Avalon (spell that blocks almost everything). Round of Avalon wins.
• Unwitting Pawn: Medb, Cu Alter and the Celtic armies are this to Vortigern, who pointed them to the Round Table so they'd fight the Servants first, either tiring them out with constant combat or managing to kill one or more of them, softening the group up for him to take on later.
• Verbal Backspace: Barghest does this during a chat with Morgan and the other Fae Knights when she realizes that, in complaining about her problem with talking about wedding dresses with Habetrot, it sounds like she's insulting her in front of Morgan, forcing her to clarify that she simply wants to know why Habetrot keeps running from her before Morgan gets too angry at her.
• Villain Takes an Interest: The Outer God Apep takes an unsettling interest in Morgan, frequently calling her "my dear" and offering multiple times to team up together. When Morgan rebuffs her offer, this interest turns into possessiveness and Apep resorts to brainwashing her into becoming her personal Foreigner. Unfortunately for Apep, the Evil God of the Abyss expels her before she can succeed and then forcibly connects Morgan to himself to ensure that Apep will never get her tentacles on her dear.
• We Have Reserves: Medb sees no problem with throwing hordes of her soldiers at whatever enemy displeases her, and acts like they're completely expendable. In her case it's justified, since she can always create more of them with drops of her own blood as the Mother Of Soldiers.
• Wham Episode: The "Test Run" Arc, spanning throughout chapter 8 to 11 (except 10), has Morgan encountering two Outer Gods - Apep and the other initially unnamed - after being knocked out by Oberon-Vortigern's End of a Dream. Chapter 11 then reveals that the cultists are preparing for not just a possession like Abigail Williams' case, but a full-blown manifestation of Apep, while the true identity of the other Outer God is none other than Hokusai's patron, the Evil God of the Abyss, who makes good on his promise and forces Morgan to officially link herself to it, making her his second Foreigner. In Chapter 12, The Evil God of the Abyss takes his quest against Apep to the level where he is willing to risk destroying Chaldea for trying to interfere.
• Wham Line:
  • Chapter 3 caps off with this line, after the mysterious stranger unmasks himself in front of the Round Table:
    Saber: "Hello again...Vortigern."
  • This line in Chapter 9 indicates that Apep's not playing nice any more and won't take no for an answer.
    Apep: "“Oh that’s not what I meant, my dear…I meant that you aren’t leaving just yet. In fact, you aren’t leaving at all."
  • Chapter 12 has this line, revealing to the audience who it is that just sabotaged Chaldea's attempt at sending reinforcements to Shinjuku:
    God Of The Abyss: "THIS PREY IS MINE. DO NOT INTERFERE."
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?:
  • Morgan's phobia is even worse than in canon, with her now having a phobia of just about all insects, to the point of wanting to disinfect her hand after being forced to shake Oberon-Vortigern's insect hand. During the Rayshift to Shinjuku in Chapter 8, Ritsuka even takes note of this and asks Oberon-Vortigern to refrain from using any of his summonable insects to not trigger her phobia.
  • Skadi is afraid of fire and heat because it reminds her of Surtr. This also becomes a problem in Shinjuku when she finds out much of the city is on fire.
• Will Not Tell a Lie: Morgan outright refuses to lie, insisting that the practice is beneath her. This practice takes on a darker and more tragic edge in Chapter 9, with it becoming clear that Morgan values her honesty so much because it's one of the only virtues she's been able to hold onto from her days as Tonelico, after compromising and discarding almost all her other beliefs. In fact, this is such a core part of who she is that it's what causes her to reconsider her initial decision to work with Apep, because the plan involves Human Sacrifice as fuel and Morgan realized that she'd need to resort to deception and Mind Control in order to get Ritsuka and Chaldea on board, which she ultimately couldn't stomach.
• Yandere: Kiyohime's just as possessive and clingy here as she is in the game, being quick to suspect that Morgan is trying to steal away Ritsuka from her despite her protests that she was just checking up on him in Ivan's stead.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Chapter 9 is this for poor Morgan. She awakens to discover that, in the time she was in her Convenient Coma, word has spread around Chaldea of her various deeds and accomplishments, courtesy of Ivan The Terrible, finally earning her some recognition and respect, with Chaldea even planning a welcome back party for her to celebrate her waking up. Even better, Oberon-Vortigern's latest stunt in the Shunjuku Singularity got him dismissed by Fujimaru, ensuring her days will be much more peaceful from that point on. Unfortunately, she eventually discovers that the whole thing is in fact a Lotus-Eater Machine operated by an Outer God who's taken an interest in her.
• You Have Failed Me: Vortigern is quick to dispose of an injured Medb when he arrives in Chapter 3, disappointed in her failure to eliminate any of the Round Table despite the massive armies at her disposal.
• You Remind Me of X: Morgan comes to start comparing Ritsuka to Lostbelt Uther by Chapter 11 when he starts encouraging her, as Uther himself did for her in her younger days.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Vortigern throws this at Saber after she demands to know how he, an enemy of humanity by nature (being the Anthropomorphic Personification of Britain's desire to remain in the Age of Gods), managed to get accepted as a Heroic Spirit, pointing out that he might have been a tyrant and a monster to them, but to the mystical creatures and Phantasmals of Britain he was a hero and brave Rebel Leader fighting back against the encroaching Age of Man.
• You're Insane!: This is just about everyone's reaction to hearing Kiara talk about her view of Ritsuka, with Morgan calling her that multiple times throughout their talk.
• Zerg Rush: Several times.
  • The Celt armies in Chapter 3 repeatedly resort to this against both the Round Table and Saber Alter, Habetrot and Morgan, bum-rushing them en masse. Given who they're dealing with, it doesn't actually help them much.
  • The dragons and Wyverns in the Kent Singularity gang up on Siegfried time and again, hoping to overwhelm his armour and swordsmanship with sheer numbers. Again, it doesn't help them all that much.
  • The cultists in Shinjuku manage to one-up their predecessors, having enthralled Demonic Beasts, wyverns and even summoned demons to supplement their own forces as they charge by the dozens at the Chaldea expedition team.
• Zombie Infectee: Morgan becomes a Foreigner Infectee in the 2015 Shinjuku Singularity and tries to hide it from everyone. Ritsuka pries the truth from her since he saw it happen and Habetrot finds out quickly after from seeing Morgan hiding her hand all the time. To her credit, Morgan does offer to leave if Ritsuka feels she's too much of a danger but he refuses, making her fall for him even harder..