Rin checked over the both blades carefully, the greatly serrated edges gleaming new as they glinted in the afternoon sunlight. They stayed cool to the touch. Running a finger over the reflective side of one, and stopping where they interlocked together, she tittered once before looking over to the nearby seated Saber, eyes locked on the sharp metal and looking nervous, almost scared. Illya roughly pushed the blonde girl back in the chair when the she tried to get up.

After wincing, Saber stared between the other two females, eyes wide open and eyebrows down in apprehension. A bead of sweat formed itself on her right temple and dropped onto her white blouse, the salty liquid spreading and staining the otherwise clean shirt. Her armour was halfway across the compound, and though the occasion shouldn't have called for it, she really regretted it not being nearby.

Rin turned to approach them, polished school shoes squeaking against the wooden floor. The smirk on her face wasn't downright malicious, but more... mischievous. She quickly swished both blades together, letting the serrations dip into each other, and laughed as Saber nearly flinched out of her seat, more droplets of sweat starting to sheen over her forehead. Rin eventually stopped and stood out of her view, but remained close enough to for Saber to start getting prickles on the back of her neck. Now massively uncomfortable, she shut her eyes and exhaled sharply.

"You know what, Rin, this wasn't such a good idea," she said as she got up for the umpteenth time. She was promptly shoved back down by Illya, who this time held one arm down to hold her in place.

"We think it's a great idea!" Illya was grinning, skipping from side to side a little as she did so. "It'll do wonders for your self-confidence, and either way, it was your idea in the first place."

"Yes, but on second thought, there are alternatives other than-"

"I'm sure Shirou would appreciate it." Rin chipped in, interrupting Saber's protest.

Saber stopped, and gave her a long look. After a few moments of thinking it through, she slumped and flopped herself back on the wooden chair, defeated. Illya clapped her hands in delight.

"Alright, then," Rin declared as she lifted up the blades. "Brace yourself!"

Saber cringed as she heard loud, obnoxious snipping of Rin's brand new layering scissors and clumps of light, feathery hair fluttered to the floor. And thus began her first haircut in several hundred years.

Illya watched on intently as Rin combed down the blonde locks. She parted the hair into three sections, pinning up the ones at the side and combing down the one in the middle. With a smirk, she sank the two scissoring blades down the blonde fall, straight above her shoulders. Long locks of beautiful blonde hair slithered down the back as a nervous Saber was literally drenched in sweat. As more blonde locks joined the floor, Saber's hair was starting to take place. She, one of the toughest warriors in the history of Earth, was shedding a few tears at the sight of the mass of blonde locks lying all over the floor.

Rin worked rather slowly, much to Saber's torture. The was sky turning orange as she was finally finished, unpinning each section carefully and putting in those last few snips as the setting sun took away their working light. Saber was still tense on the chair, grasping her skirt as if for dear life as Illya skipped out of the room.

"It's done with," Rin declared, suddenly tired from concentrating for so long. She meandered her way directly in front of Saber, and put a hand under the other girl's chin so she could lift her face to get a clearer look of the day's work. She inspected it over several times before nodding in satisfaction, and it was now her turn to leave the room.

Saber now sat alone, biting and nibbling at her lip. She didn't really want to follow suit. It was true that it had been her idea (she'd said that having a haircut might make her feel more human that morning, after Shirou had left the table) but not to this extent... Rin had cut off a good portion of her actually pretty long hair, and it now lay with the tips brushing her shoulders and the weight on her head much less. It'd been layered a bit, too, and no longer lay as flat as her old style.

Wiping away the minute specks of dried tears from before, she eventually got up and made her way to the exit, head down, only to stop when she noticed a shadow growing out from the door. She looked up as Shirou reached his hand up to flip the light switch beside him.

"What're you doing here alone? It's already dark." He turned to Saber before stepping back in alarm. "Whoa, what the hell happened to your hair??"

She sighed in resignation. "Rin cut it." Shirou would appreciate it, my foot.

After getting over the surprise, he paused to look it over, once, twice, thrice, hands rubbing a little at his chin. After what seemed an age of being scrupulously inspected, with her cringing slightly under it, he then smirked – Saber thought he was going to pass off some dry, meaningless comment on how messy it was, or something like that.

"It really suits you," was what she heard instead.

"What?"

"I'm not kidding. It really does." He lifted up an arm to rub at the back of his head as glanced to the side out of mild embarrassment. "It frames your face really nicely, and it looks more relaxed rather than being pulled back all the time." He looked up at her and smiled.

Just then, his name was shouted out from somewhere across the compound. Shirou panicked, remembering his reason for coming out in the first place and grabbed a couple of random items and small boxes around them, for they were in a large storage area. He called out in reply and turned to leave, but not before saying one last thing;

"You look good, by the way. I really like it."

And with that, he ran off, his yell of "Hold up, Fuji-nee, I'm coming already!" throwing itself across to the other building.

Saber blushed and gazed down into the floor.

Turns out that getting a haircut was a pretty good idea, after all.

- - - - -

AN: Just fyi, we're two writers working together xD though one wrote one hell of a lot more than the other for this particular chapter.. Can you notice the difference?