Caster (Fate/Crossover - Ultimecia)

**Caster** (キャスター, *Kyasutā*) is the servant of ??? in the ??? Holy Grail War.

*"This is reality. No one can help you. Sit back and enjoy the show."* - Ultimecia

## Profile

### Identity

Caster's true identity is **Ultimecia**, an immensely powerful Sorceress who seeks to compress all of space and time into herself to become a "living god." For this purpose, she sent her consciousness back in time to possess every Sorceress who ever lived, shaping history through their natural control of magic and cast Time Compression in an attempt to avert her fate of being defeated by "the Legendary SeeD." Ironically enough, her attempt to avert destiny is what seals her fate in the end, as the portals opened by the spell allow Squall and co. to confront her directly in the future and defeat her once and for all.

### Appearance

Ultimecia wears a skin-tight red gown with a plunging neckline that exposes her neck, chest, stomach and abdomen, and only partially obscures her breasts. A black collar extends down the neckline to her waist; the collar rests over her shoulders and covers the junction of her black feathered wings. In Final Fantasy VIII the collar appears to be made of feathers, but in Dissidia Final Fantasy it is made of fur. The dress has a short train, which drags along the floor, trimmed either similarly to the collar, or torn and frayed and made dirty. Long red sleeves with prominent shoulder pads join with her purple taloned hands.

Ultimecia's skin is tattooed or body-painted with lined patterns. She wears a gold necklace, earrings and hair jewelry among a headdress designed to pull her hair up to resemble horns; silver bangs are left to frame her face. Ultimecia has yellow eyes surrounded by purple eyeshadow and she wears deep red lipstick. She has no eyebrows, instead having tattoos. She doesn't wear shoes, walking (or perhaps flying) barefoot, and although Ultimecia has a human appearance, her toenails resemble a beast's claws and are accentuated in her Dissidia Final Fantasy appearance.

While possessing Edea, she dresses in a skin-tight dress with a plunging neckline and a feathered collar, and wears an ornamental frame on her back with strips of gauze fluttering behind her, somewhat mimicking the appearance of Ultimecia's wings. During the possession, Edea's eyes change color from green to yellow.

Upon junctioning herself into Griever, Ultimecia takes on Griever's traits: lion-like head and front paws, a feathered lower half and a plated tail. Ultimecia herself stays below the leonine head with purple limbs. As she starts to become one with the universe Ultimecia's empty shell takes over while her bondaged human remains hang upside down from where her legs should be. Her "face" is but a glowing orb that blinks while she speaks. She has bat-like wings at the top of her head and elongated clawed arms. She wears flowing red robes with red-and-blue veins.

### Personality

Ultimecia is cruel, relentless, hateful, uncaring, self-centered, conceited, power-hungry, misanthropic and nihilistic. She appears aloof and regal, but this masks her seething anger. She displays scathing contempt and resentment towards humanity, evidenced by her hateful speech to the Galbadian people after killing President Vinzer Deling.

She holds the heroes in greater contempt (mixed with loathing respect, as she calls Squall "an impressive nuisance"), and bears virulent hatred for the SeeDs (witch hunters), a constant thorn in her side. She deems everyone as beneath her and kills thousands without a qualm.

She does show a softer side though, taking pity on Seifer Almasy and making him her Knight, when she could have left him executed. She sees him as a tool and harshly scolds failures, but heals him when needed and never discards him. More importantly, her last lines (expanded in the cut Japanese dialogue) hint that she longs for the lost happiness and innocence of her early years, with which she strives to renew no matter the cost. Later games hint that she has been broken by shunning, isolation and bitterness.

Reading through Ultimecia's words and actions, it becomes obvious that she is fully aware of her upcoming demise against "Legendary SeeDs", whom she awaits without fear. It is also clear that her hatred of humanity is due to the dire persecution she (and other sorceresses before her) suffered.

Her goal of Time Compression is driven by her yearning to overcome her destiny; by ruling a chaotic universe as immortal goddess, with her fated foes powerless and barely existing, gaining respite at last, at the price of everything and everyone to ever exist.

Ultimecia is highly intelligent, devious and manipulative: she easily intrigues to reach Galbadia's high government, and manipulates Vinzer Deling and Seifer by playing on their insecurities and desires. She leaks intel to lead the heroes in traps, or fakes illness when possessing Rinoa to lead the heroes where she wants, using her when least expected. She is an expert strategist, forcing the equally strategic Squall on the defensive for all their battle. In Mobius Final Fantasy, Squall describes her as a skilled liar. She removes him as a threat and anticipates his every move to set traps.

Finally, Ultimecia has rather extravagant tastes, and revels in luxury and style. She lives surrounded with riches, lords over her domain sitting on exquisitely carved thrones and dresses with luxurious and elaborate, if peculiar and even gaudy clothing. The parade held in her honour in Galbadia is grandiose, filled with light and coloured crystal, yet exceedingly glittering and luxurious.

Finally, her namesake Castle, while creepy befitting a Dark Queen of her level, is lavishly decorated, filled with opulent furniture and contains an impressive art collection.

Dissidia Final Fantasy and Mobius Final Fantasy flesh out Ultimecia's character and motivations. In Dissidia, she is more cynical than hateful, being suave, with a flair for theatrics and no respect for boundaries. She finds life and struggles meaningless and despises her foes' resolve, trying to break their spirit. She is very deceptive, shape-shifting to misguide Squall and playing on his doubts. She is also sharp-witted and mockingly seductive, berating allies and foes alike, calling them the puppets of their fates. But on the other hand, she hints a melancholic side and even some regrets.

In Mobius, she is very harsh, controlling and nihilistic. She reviles the world and the suffering it brings. She deems everything fleeting thus pointless, bitterly musing about people rejecting reality to cling to expectations. So, she wants to select who and what she would allow to exist, if they obey her. She is scornful and taunting, albeit cordial, conversing with the heroes and offering to recruit them in earnest. She remarks that they both fight for a better outcome but they reject it, for they try to make things better while she would sacrifice all for her selfish vision.

Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia shows her in a surprisingly positive light. While still manipulative, she laments her life of loneliness and seeks to find her true self. Furthermore, she sincerely assists Noel Kreiss, finding affinity in their plight as time-travellers from bad futures. But she hides herself out of self-loathing, and accepts the heroes' scorn, apparently regretting her evil ways. Also, she is intrigued by the heroes' bonds, siding with them in earnest to learn more.

## Abilities

As with every Final Fantasy Final Boss, Ultimecia is incredibly powerful. The scan explains that she syphons power from all Sorceresses. As such, she added all the Sorceress Power in existence to her already tremendous magic, gaining god-like abilities. Later games describe her magic as boundless.

Ultimecia can see, hear and speak from far away; perceive virtually anywhere; greatly enhance her strength, speed and stamina; fly, teleport and phase through solid matter; perform high-level telepathy, mind-probe and telekinesis; or fully control the weather and the elements. She can enslave people, compel up to vast crowds without them noticing as if acting freely, or reduce victims to mindless puppets.

While possessing a much less powerful sorceress, she could create monstrous clones of people and transform statues into flesh-and-blood beings. When not limited by a host, she can control and summon monsters. She can paralyze many people, still able to see and talk; heal wounds; shape-shift, alter her features or clothing in seconds; raise magic barriers; and infuse objects with her magic to animate them or alter them as she wishes.

In battle, she masters a wide array of powerful spells. In Dissidia Final Fantasy, she fires all sorts of energy weapons. In Mobius Final Fantasy, she coats her hands with dark-red orbs to parry strikes and surrounds herself in a spherical barrier, hurls orange energy bolts, red orbs firing exploding bolts, violet explosions, and raining, explosive yellow bolts even far away.

### Control of Time and Space

Ultimecia's Sorceress Power grants her absolute control over Time and Space. As seen when she absorbs fallen enemies into the void of time, or when she separates the party in different planes during the final battle. (She chooses three foes at random and isolates the others, making them appear out of nowhere when she brings them forth.) Also, she maintains her Guardian Force Griever (an immensely powerful summon) in battle as long as she wants to, instead of letting him disappear after a single attack.

In Dissidia she can freeze time, with only her being able to move or remain conscious, seemingly for as long as she pleases. In Mobius, she spreads her influence through other eras. She can stop, slow and accelerate time, as far as rewinding it to cancel attacks; distort space to relocate things and people, make people vanish and return at her leisure, and drag them where she wants; or warp both to send people into perfectly real echoes of past battles.

### Reality Warping

Ultimecia can transcend the limits of magic and warp reality to a huge extent. She can corrupt, enslave, transform and empower even divine beings; create mighty slave monsters from small objects or nothing; and turn machines into sentient living creatures. She either bewitched her castle to make it fly, or more likely built it flying from scratch. She can seal people's powers, like when the heroes enter her castle, and destroy a foe’s stock of magic.

When Junctioning people, she fuses them instead of simply linking their minds, (merging Rinoa Heartilly into Sorceress Adel and merging herself to Griever). She also uses it to possess any sorceress, and gain access to any living being's mind, enabling her to draw as much power and knowledge as she wants from it, stealing spells from the heroes during the final battle.

To a further extent, she can make real what she finds in people's minds. She creates Griever that way, giving life to Squall's conception of the most powerful Guardian Force that can exist, resulting in a demon as powerful as she is.

In Mobius, her leaking magic is enough to spawn monsters that draw power from their surroundings; change from scorching heat to freezing cold, instantly covering mountains in snow; create landscapes as if they always existed; or even spawn a weaker but self-sufficient double of herself. She can alter and extract memories, grant powers to servants, bring her Castle to other worlds, invade imaginary realms, rewrite her surroundings, or drag people into perfect replicas of places from their memories, as real as the normal deal; doing all this even from miles away.

### Power-Boost by Transformation

In the final battle, Ultimecia increases her ludicrous abilities twice. First she fused with Griever adding his might to her own, then she assumes her unfathomably powerful final form.

Not only does she gain formidable spells, but her mere existence is now enough to wreck the time and space continuum and to gradually absorb the entire universe.

Even worse, her already tremendous reality-warping power skyrockets, to the point that she becomes able to make her own thoughts come true. As such, she comes up with the most devastating spell she can think off and draws it from her mind, becoming able to cast it for real as many times as she wishes.

### Skills

#### Class Skills

* Item Construction (A++ Rank): Capable of giving life to inanimate items and enhancing them with magical powers.

* Territory Creation (A+ Rank): Ultimecia was highly adept at designing fortresses, even capable of constructing a mighty castle through magic amidst a ruined world.

#### Personal Skills

* Mind Invasion (A+ Rank): Ultimecia can invade the minds of those around her to extract vital information. She can also take this a step further by possessing the victim. If she does so, she can exist indefinitely, supported by the host’s Prana. In addition, this power can be used to counter mind control attempts on her.

* Charisma (A+ Rank): Ultimecia is a shrewd manipulator, and enhances her powers of persuasion with magic.

* Divinity (B Rabk): Ultimecia almost became a god through Time Compression, but ultimately failed.

* Eye for Art (E Rank): Ultimecia has great interest in the fine arts, but is limited in her knowledge due to coming from a different world.

* Headache Sufferer (D): Ultimecia is haunted from her persecution as a Sorceress.

* Magecraft (A+ Rank): Ultimecia is a potent sorceress from the distant future, and therefore has extensive knowledge of magic.

* Subversive Activities (D Rank): While certainly versed in preemptive sabotage, given her interference in the past, it should be noted that her plans came for naught in the end.

* Contradictory Mind (E Rank): This skill allows the servant to switch their alignments. Ultimecia can only change from Lawful to Chaotic due to her mentalality.

### Noble Phantasm

#### **Junction Machine Ellone; "Conscious Mind to the Past"**

This Noble Phantasm allows Ultimecia to send her mind into the past. However, Ultimecia must know what time period she is aiming for- although it is possible to miss shoot. Once in the past, she exists in a manner similar to a ghost, unable to manifest herself or her powers without expending her limited supply of Prana. She can solve this dilemma by possessing a host. This gives her many more options, as she can now take direct action and utilize a degree of her powers, depending on the Prana reserves of the host. If the possession of one host is compromised, Ultimecia can transfer her mind to another victim. To possess a person though, she must first directly confront the subject. She can possess a person instantly after traveling through time, but only if she has chosen a specific host ahead of time. Should she not have a specific host in mind, one that she knows very well, she will simply appear in the time period and be forced to search for a host. Also, the type of host is restricted to female magi, limiting her options.

#### **Griever; "Recreation from Illusion and Memory"**

Ultimecia pores into the mind of her opponent and uses the victim’s memories to generate a Guardian Force spirit based on the individual’s imagination of the most powerful thing in the universe. The form of the spirit and its powers depend on the memories used, and therefore varies between opponents. Depending on the victim’s view and understanding of the world, the idealized power may be strong or weak according to others’ standards.

#### **Time Compression; "Distortion and Tearing of Reality"**

Time Compression uses a reality marble to distort time and space into one moment. Ultimecia then resides in the center of the time storm, safe from the destruction it brings. However, the process takes time, and until it is complete it is possible for one to traverse the compressed world and confront the culprit. Should Ultimecia be defeated, the Time Compression will cease and its effects will reverse. However, Ultimecia is capable of maintaining the ritual as a minor action, and can still defend herself quite easily. There are several stages to Time Compression. The first effect of the spell is near-instantaneous, as time and space begin to bend. The first stage of the compression can last for several minutes as places in space and time begin to merge into one. After that, the effects mellow out slightly, leaving a transformed world behind. Because the full Time Compression merges all time and space, this preliminary stage changes the entire world, effectively wrecking it in the process. While most areas of the world are sealed away due to the chaotic instability, magical nexuses can endure the storm for a time. This gradual stage of Time Compression can take days to weeks to finish, allowing those still alive in the world to function until the end. Ultimecia usually keeps to this slow pace, as it requires minimal effort on her part to maintain it. However, she can step up the rate of Time Compression if she feels the need. In this final stage of Time Compression, entire worlds and stars are drawn in within seconds, and are devoured by Ultimecia. Because she is directly absorbing time and space at this stage, Ultimecia is on the verge of becoming a goddess of infinite power. At this point, only scant minutes remain to defeat her and end Time Compression. However, she uses this advanced rate of Time Compression as a last resort, as while it greatly increases her power, it also makes the Time Compression more unstable and difficult to control; if she loses control of the complex spell, Time Compression will fade away.

## References

https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Ultimecia

https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Ultimecia

https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Ultimecia

https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/summon-a-servant-fate-stay-night-crossover-ideas.196067/page-33?post=6441511#post-6441511