Kirei Kotomine gazed at the door in front of him. It had an impressive and grandiose air to it, as did the entire structure of the place. The Victorian-esque mansion that stood before him was the Tohsaka residence, home to one of the three main magi family in this area of Fuyuki City. Currently however, there remained only a single heir to and inhabitant of the place: a certain high school girl who was expending considerable time before opening the door for her early morning visitor.
Kirei allowed himself a brief sigh of vexation before proceeding to sound the doorbell for a fourth time.
Rin Tohsaka had been in the act of brushing her teeth when she first heard the doorbell ring. Alarm bells immediately began flashing through her head in sync with the doorbell chime as she shot a distressed look at her current state in the mirror. In a panic, she fumbled with her toothbrush as she attempted to tame the disorderly bed-hair that presently adorned her.
After a minute or two of this, she gave up on the prospect of getting her hair sorted into any suitable form and rushed to change out of the pajamas she was still wearing into one of her more simple trademark red-themed outfits.
As it turned out, "simple" wasn't really the most apt description to lend to the process of donning the clothes in question. Five minutes later, Rin glanced at the mirror one last time in a vain attempt to convince herself that she was at least partially presentable.
As the girl ran to the front door of the mansion, loud and annoying chime still ringing, a flurry of thoughts continued to assail her in a disorganized fashion. Tohsaka herself was an early riser, so for someone to get her this worked up early in the morning was quite the spectacular feat. Couple that with the fact that she hardly had any close friends, and she was at a loss in her present state to guess at the visitor's identity.
It was not as if Rin was a social isolate. If anything, at school she gave the appearance to the contrary; there she was known as the refined and model student admired and respected by all. Nonetheless, that was all simply part of the veil she had constructed around herself in order to keep her peers at arm's length. She had a wide range of acquaintances, but none to meet the specification of a friend close enough to pay her home visits.
Upon finally reaching the front door, Tohsaka caught her breath for a second before assuming a dignified posture and opening it. Within half a second of seeing who the guest was, she released a sudden exhale of indignation.
"Guh, it's just you!" All attempts at maintaining a façade vanished as Rin waved the robed man in, a scowl adorning her face. As much as she held the fake priest before her in considerably low esteem, she still berated herself for forgetting about such a routine appointment.
"Pleasant morning, Rin," voiced Kotomine in a rather hollow yet slightly amused tone. "Too early?"
Rin uttered a "tsk" as substitute for a proper response, leading the way to the room that doubled as both a storage and sparring room.
The two's training sessions commonly consisted of a variety of activities. The first routine of the morning would be an intense 30-minute sparring match, after which they would relocate to the study room of Rin's late father. There, the priest would begin by assisting Rin in practicing various methods of prana conversion. As it got closer to lunchtime, he would continue look over the rest of her magus training and studies until the noon bell tolled, at which point he would take his leave.
At present, Kirei's gait was dignified and deliberate as he followed Tohsaka's rather proud figure. His mind, in contrast, idly wandered as he took in the antique Western décor of the mansion's interior for what seemed the hundredth time. He faintly admired the ghostly beauty of it all.
"How has the practice been?" Kotomine asked of the girl.
"Fine," she grumbled, "but no thanks to you. Most days I've barely had the energy to convert prana after spending an hour on your karate. Also, forty push-ups are thirty-nine too many." She finished off her story of woe with an indignant "che!"
"You expressed interest in learning self-defense. If you were expecting book-perusing as practice, well… better not to have asked."
Kirei curled his lips upward in a half-smirk when Rin chose not to fire back a retort, preferring instead to shoot a dirty look in his general direction.
Rin marched into the large and mostly empty storage room, with Kotomine halting his steps behind her upon entering. He waited until the red-clad girl had made it to the far side of the room before he assumed one of his many stances of mixed martial arts origins.
As Rin took up her own stance and readied herself, she let the disgruntled expression fade from her face and replaced it with a determined and challenging stare. She set aside her moderate dislike of the priest for the moment and regarded the man instead as her opponent and mentor both. She stared straight at his idly poised figure, deliberating over which angle at which to strike.
From his distance, Kotomine searched the girl's emerald eyes himself. Soon enough, a rare and genuinely warm smile spread across his features. The heiress to the Tohsaka manor may be an utter handful at times, but these days she was one of the few sparks of light in his relatively dull and dreary life. As he contemplated what weakness of hers to target this particular day, his smile grew fractionally wider. It was finally time, the priest felt, to explore one especially poignant subject.
"I know it sounds trite to say, but you really do take after your father in certain ways," he called out. A flash of incomprehension and shock flitted across the twintailed girl's face for a full half-second before she recovered herself. "I always did… respect him."
Kirei then lunged towards his opponent in a sudden surge of momentum, signaling the start of the match. Steeling herself with gritted teeth, Rin leapt forward as well, a mere half-second after the priest. As dust kicked up into the air around them, their sparring ensued.