Five Stripes, Three Colors
“Forgive my ignorance, Master, but what country does this flag represent?”
The Master of Chaldea turns around to follow Artoria’s gaze, focused on the large flag spread against the wall of her room. While she has been keeping her frustration under wraps, this thing has been driving her wild for weeks now; anytime she sees it, she dives deep inside herself to find any relevant knowledge whatsoever, and every single time, she comes out with absolutely nothing. The grail will provide you with the necessary knowledge upon summoning. What a scam. False advertisements all around.
“Oh!” The Master turns back to her, grinning. “That’s the trans flag. You’ve never seen it before?”
“The flag of Transylvania?” Huh. Fascinating. Now she’ll know what colors to associate with Vlad’s country-
The Master chuckles. “No, no, the trans gender flag. You know? Since I’m genderfluid?” She makes a vague gesture of the hand, prana crackles in the air- and instead of a red-haired girl, Artoria is left facing a black-haired boy. It’s a trick she’s seen the Master perform a few times before, so it doesn’t sway her one way or another.
“I’m… afraid I don’t know what these words mean.” She admits, a bit shamefully. Much as it pains her to admit her own ignorance, she knows as a warrior and as a king that it’s better to fill any gap in knowledge as she can before heading to the battlefield.
The Master stares at her for a few seconds. “You… have seen me shapeshift before, right?”
“I have.” As established before, seeing the Master as a man is an equally common occurrence as seeing him as a woman.
“Why do you think I do that?”
Good question. Artoria never really pondered over it. “I figure each form might give you different magecraft advantages?” She hazards a guess.
The Master snorts. “God, I wish, but that’d imply me actually knowing how to do magecraft. Sorry to say, the genderbending trick is the only one I know.” He shakes his head. “No. Some days I feel more like a boy, and some days I feel more like a girl, so I shapeshift accordingly.”
Artoria quirks up an eyebrow. “Feel… ‘more like a boy’?”
“I… Don’t really have any better way to explain it.” The Master taps his chin. “It’s like being happy or sad. It’s a very personal emotion. I can’t put it into words any better than that.”
Well. That means nothing to Artoria. She has a title (king) and a sex (female) but she can’t say she’s ever had any particularly strong emotion tied to either of these things.
Though… There are days where her draconic heart seems to act up. Days where she feels less human and more like a lizard- not in a derogatory way, or an affectionate way, but just… in a way. Days where she finds herself more at home with the likes of Siegfried or Elizabeth, days where fire rather than blood seems to flow in her veins.
It’s not quite the same, but that’s the closest comparison Artoria can think of. “I think I understand.”
The Master nods, pleased. “Though I’m a special case. Most people can’t magically shapeshift into whatever body is more comfortable to them at the moment. Well, there’s still surgery and HRT-”
“Hold on.” She raises her hand palms up to cut them off. “You are telling me gender feelings have nothing to do with magecraft?”
“Well, yes.” He tilts his head towards the wall. “Hence the whole flag thing. I didn’t make it up. There are legitimately a lot of us out there.”
Of us, he says. What was the word he used again? Transgender?
For some reason, she finds herself thinking of Sir Mordred. A king can only be male, but a knight can be of any gender- Sir Gareth had certainly proved her worth as a female knight. Yet Sir Mordred had only ever presented as male. He had Artoria’s face. Presumably he had her sex as well. Yet on that fateful day he explicitly called himself her son.
Did Sir Mordred have these? Gender feelings? Certainly they must have been stronger than Artoria’s own- now that she is no longer duty-bound to present as a man, Artoria isn’t going out of her way to look like one gender over another. Being greeted as a man or a woman wouldn’t bother her either way. She thinks Sir Mordred would have minded, though.
“Apologies, Master.” Artoria gets up. “I need to do some research.”
She doubts her knights would ever want to see her again- while she no longer regrets the path she took in life, she can hardly fault them for holding a grudge, considering how she failed them- but on the off-chance that they might be summoned in Chaldea… it can’t hurt to be informed, can it?