There are not a lot of things that Shirou Emiya hates. Arrogance. Threatening innocent individuals. Murder in general, and of course, bad cooking.

CLANG!

The bloody tendril sliced through the air, parried at the last second by throwing one his trusted blades, Bakuya, at the menacing vine, only losing the ends of his hair. As the red strands glided downwards, and he repositioned himself, he mused that this bloodthirsty apostle hit nearly every item on that short list, save for the bad cooking.

"Oh ho! A fine show young man, perhaps instead of experimenting on your body, I will feast on your remains." The apostle began readying his organ-like tendrils, uncurling them from his back side, so as not to leave his sides open to the daylight that crept in through the shattered hole in the ceiling, he raised his head to needlessly taunt once more, an apostle custom, "Truly a target worth absorbing, if only my chocolate dwarves—URK!" Blood spew from the apostle's mouth and his bisected body.

Shirou was not quite sure how the apostle was going to finish that sentence, and he would never know. Having maneuvered the apostle into the general area where he would not be able to summon his tendrils without leaving his back open, Bakuya returned to his hand, drawn back to Kanshou. Shirou swung Bakuya through the air, flinging the blood off the blade that had just cut clean through the back of the relatively young apostle, leaving him completely severed from the middle of the rib cage down. And dead, likely again.

Like kitchen utensils, all silverware should be clean enough to eat off, err, figuratively in this case. As Shirou examined the blade for any spots of blood, he noticed something move on the ground.

Buh-bump. Buh-bump.

The apostle's heart was bouncing lightly on the ground, removed from the body and free of any connection to a blood source. How curious, not only does the apostle have a functioning heart, something he wasn't sure apostles had, literally and figuratively, but it seemed to still be beating. As a now accepted magus in the Clock Tower, he knew it would be wise to study this. This was a rare opportunity to potentially delve into an apostle's method of preserving his life, without having to experiment on himself to do so.

SHANK!

Shirou's blade stabbed smoothly through the heart, piercing the ground it laid on. Fuck apostles. And now he had to clean the blade again.

Buh-bump. Buh-bump.

Strange. The heart still beat, even though the apostle appeared as dead as Saber's tolerance for skipped meals. Deciding that it would likely be pointless to continue stabbing the heart, though he did so a couple more times anyway, with a couple different swords, he took out a plastic zip-lock bag and sealed the heart in it, noticing there were a couple seal marks on the underside of the heart. Lorelei would be pretty surprised he was returning with a "living" portion of an apostle, but he figured even she would want to see this, even if he didn't always enjoy seeing her.

Making sure the apostle was dead one last time, and a couple more times after that, he left the apostle's dwelling. A castle, like usual.

"Lorelei will see you now."

As custom, the familiar vanished before he could even reply in time, leaving him awkwardly saying thank you to the air once again. One of these days he'll remember. Shirou entered the office, and Lorelei's piercing chocolate brown eyes locked onto Shirou's immediately. "The Queen" of the Clock Tower always looked good enough to make you feel underdressed, even if you had invited her. Somewhere in her 20's, he would guess, she was strikingly beautiful. Her light brown ponytail flowed lightly as she stood up, maintaining her stare.

"Boy, I smell death upon you. And not the good kind. What are you holding behind your back and why do I feel a headache approaching?" Lorelei called him by the usual "boy" moniker she had bestowed, despite his protests.

Hmm, this was probably not a good time, but unfortunately he knew how Lorelei thought, somewhat, err—not really, but he did know he should report this as soon as possible. She would not have taken kindly to a potential apostle possession in the Clock Tower, especially on him. Moving his hand to the front of his body, he saw her eyes light up, staring at the item in his hands in what seemed to be confusion.

"I know you have a bleeding heart, literally here, but we kill apostles not save them."

Not confusion, then. Probably anger. Rin was right, he couldn't read women at all. Maybe this was part of why he was always in such precarious situations that happened to involve a lot of powerful and dangerous women.

Lorelei continued glaring at him, and not for the first time did she think that Shirou had an abnormal lack of awareness, no doubt lost in his thoughts once again. Realizing he had been just staring off into space for a little bit, and thinking he must look like an idiot, he cleared his throat and began his brief explanation, "After I killed the apostle, I found this heart on the ground by the body. I tried stabbing it with a couple different swords, and I couldn't stop it from beating. It might be immortal."

Lorelei looked at the heart, then back up at Shirou, walking towards him. Shirou never ceased to feel some apprehension whenever Lorelei approached him. Despite having been working with her, or rather for her, for almost a year now, she was never without the feeling of a killing intent for very long. Or some other feeling that got him anxious whenever she was around, he couldn't read it well. Shirou just couldn't help but feel nervous. There was no chance he was bringing that up though, there was a better chance of him finishing a bowl of Taishan's mapo tofu.

Lorelei took the bag off his hands and took the heart out of the zip-lock. It stopped beating, seemingly frozen in time. After a quick moment of examination Lorelei shifted her gaze back to Shirou. "This is not the apostle's heart." Wait what? He was confused and knew he probably should give a more detailed explanation of how he found it, to elegantly clarify if she was mistaken on something.

"Wait what?" Lorelei narrowed her eyes at Shirou, and after a tense moment of staring, she broke the silence. "This heart did not belong to the apostle you killed, or at least it did not belong to the apostle's body. I know not of its origin, but I do know it's not the apostle's blood. You likely found a portion of the experiment he was working on, perhaps cut free from his clothes when you killed him. It seems to have some kind of charm effect on it, though the potency is low, likely a side-effect of whatever the apostle was working on."

Well that makes some sense, it was sort of confusing how the apostle was definitely dead, and the heart was definitely not. "So what should we do with it?" Lorelei never broke her gaze off Shirou, seemingly intent on boring holes through his eyes with willpower alone.

"It does not beat when I hold it, boy, the heart was active in your possession. See here?" She pressed her hands together with Shirou's holding the heart in between, stepping closer to do so. "It beats once more. The heart is reacting to you, because you took possession of it after disposing of its previous owner. I know the manner in which this type of bonding can take place, and it is likely it is bound to you in that fashion, through the use of those markings on the heart." Uncomfortable with the way she was still staring at him while being so close to his face, he tried edging away from her, only to have her edge closer keeping their hands together on the heart. He continued backing up, and her moving forward until he hit the door behind him.

"Is there something we can do?" He asked again, trying hard not to stutter. Another moment of silence and staring. Sighing, Lorelei released his hands and turned to her side, walking towards her bookshelf, he nearly dropped the heart out of surprise when she let go, his side now facing the door. When she reached the shelves she trifled through them until she found a large and cumbersome looking book. She blew off the dust which left a visible cloud in the air, wiped it once over with her hand, before she threw it at him. He barely caught it in time after adjusting the heart into the other hand.

"Open that to page 54, paragraph 7, sentence 8. I recognized the seals on the heart, this should allow you to transfer possession of the heart over to me. Be careful after uttering that expression, the heart should be weak without an owner and will need to be transferred over immediately. This abomination should be disposed of properly, and I know of just the way" Lorelei explained, once again resuming her deadly stare. "Because of your ineptitude at magecraft, boy, you did not notice the drain it's exhibiting on your OD to preserve its life. You will need to read page 56, paragraph 2, first line, in order to transfer ownership to me, at which point I should be able to keep it beating, and remove the charm from the heart before destroying it."

Shirou struggled to flip the pages of the book with one hand while holding the heart with the other. Lorelei continued staring, with what seemed to be a hint of a smile. Of course, Shirou wouldn't confirm this, even if he could, commenting on it might be as close to suicide as he could get. And he was definitely not unfamiliar with suicidal actions.

Finally finding the page, Shirou said, "Err, okay, I found it. Al'iifraj ean sihr muaqqat!" Immediately the heart began dripping blood, the rhythmic pumping and beating of the organ stopped, the heart lay limp in his hands. "Good, now flip to page—"

SPLAT!

The heart exploded. Smashed against the door and the blood and pieces splattered on Shirou. The book dropped on the ground. "Your highness, we have… Oh my." The young woman who stood next to the door only had half her body through the doorway, her mouth wide open and her eyes even more. "I'm so sorry, I just, um… goodbye." The woman stared openly at Shirou, her gaze lingering for longer than he felt comfortable before she shut the door and Shirou heard her footsteps, as she scampered down the hallway. Lorelei sighed and planted her face in her palm. Of course this would happen to Shirou.

Glancing back up at him, Lorelei noted he looked utterly clueless. Shirou tried wiping the blood off his shirt with the hands that were filled with blood, only managing to smear the blood around. Eventually Lorelei cleared her throat and said, "Boy, as entertaining as this is, you should go clean yourself off properly. I sense little magical aura or foul-play anymore, save for the slight charm effect and the blood everywhere. As unsafe as that was, the heart is dead. The charm however, will stay on you for an indeterminable time. I would not suggest trying to remove it, now that it is not attached to the heart, it may have complicated nuances that I'm not sure of. Apostles tend to dabble recklessly in their madness. Normally I would suggest you try to avoid other women, but in your circumstances, there's not much that can be done." Lorelei began made a shooing motion, and looked over to the corner of her office, before animating a couple of broomsticks around there, which began cleaning the blood. "I have work to do, and your troubles, though amusing as they might be, are not part of my plans." As Shirou was about to turn around and walk out the door, Lorelei turned back to him, this time with a softer gaze and a softer voice, she said "Good luck, Shirou."

Before he could even make an expression, Lorelei turned back around to her bookshelf, picking up the book left on the ground. Even though the apostle hunt was finished, Shirou had a feeling the real struggle was just beginning.

Author's Note: First time writing! This fic is just a series of drabbles, mostly unrelated stories, but I want to try to have some continuity.