29th November 2003
The New York skyline glinted with the lights of a thousand companies, a thousand dreams and a thousand lives; lending true weight behind its moniker of The City that Never Sleeps. Many skyscrapers adorned with lights rose above the surrounding buildings appearing to reach upwards with a purpose only known to their owners. Out of the hundreds of buildings there many that housed interesting events, even this late at night. The words spoken by men and women this night would lead to hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars being exchanged and many lives being saved or ruined at the whim of these corporate overlords.
However even among these momentous occasions there was one event with unprecedented importance. A single skyscraper stood, identical to the rest, except for perhaps the quality of the person residing within it. A dozen or more lights dotted the side of the building, evidence of people working overtime or those who had bound themselves to some sort of nightshift. However one floor was brighter than any of the other, namely the top floor and if one were to somehow gain access to this floor they would find a well-decorated penthouse that stood in opposition to the various laboratories, admin centres and work stations throughout the rest of the building. Even then there were various diagrams on the walls and a couple of running monitors, indicating the presence of somebody who didn't know how to leave work at the office; even if their office was beneath their place of residence. Despite the lights being on throughout the entire floor there was only one singular room that had any signs of life.
In the dining room a shiny metallic table divided a boy and a girl who sat facing each other. The girl had fair skin, courtesy of her European heritage, with long blonde hair styled into ringlets, or drill hair as some people called them and brown eyes. She was dressed in an elegant blue dress that complimented the blue ribbon in her hair and she held herself in a stern aristocratic manner.
Sitting opposite her was the boy who was of her age or perhaps a bit younger. He had auburn hair and golden-brown eyes only partially obscured behind fashionable glasses, that stood out as unusual for somebody of pure Japanese heritage and he was decked out in an expensive black-business suit that was probably more crumpled than it should have been. Unlike the perfect posture of his conversation partner he sat slumped over and there were large black bags under his eyes that managed to undermine his otherwise handsome appearance.
"Have you gone insane!" the girl said slamming her hands together as she stood up. "Why on Earth would you willingly go into that meat grinder?"
"Maybe," the boy said. He raised a can of something that had far too much sugar and calories in it and gulped it down. "They do say that the line between genius and insanity is very thin. It is a possibility that I slipped over the line while chasing my goals."
"Please don't joke about that," the girl responded bluntly. "I cannot have an insane man for a business partner nor can I have a dead one."
"I think you will find that I am quite hard to kill Ms. Edefelt. If you remember you gave it a go yourself and we both know how that worked out." The boy smiled nostalgically at his companion. "It really has been a long and lucrative relationship."
"It has only been three years, Shirou," Luvia Edefelt replied to him crossing her arms across her chest as she did so.
"But an immensely profitable three years, for everybody involved," Shirou Emiya rebutted with a smile that probably looked more tired than it was meant to.
The event that he referred to was three years ago when the Edefelt family had been contacted for an assassination mission by a Clocktower magus that apparently had an axe to grind against the son of Kiritsugu Emiya. However when Luvia and a few of her branch family members attempted to kill Shirou they instead found him completely aware of the assassination and fell into his trap. Luckily for Luvia and her extended family Shirou decided against disposing of them and instead presented them with an offer of employment. As a declaration of his sincerity he presented them with the Magic Crest of their original employer, only slightly bloody, and after a few moments of weighing the odds Luvia had accepted.
From then onwards her family and Luvia in particular had been Shirou's primary contact in the Moonlight World and he had received not only basic magic training from her as well as giving him right of first refusal for the various magics that they pillaged from around the world; a couple of them used to advance his hobby.
"Don't change the subject Shirou," Luvia stated looking him dead in the eyes, her usual composure almost completely absent. "I thought you of all people would avoid that blood bath considering it killed your own father. Just what is so important that you feel the need to head back to Fuyuki?"
"Well I haven't had any good Japanese food recently," Shirou started and then trailed off when he saw the unamused look of his companion. "Okay look Luvia," he said taking off his glasses and putting them to the side. "I want to save the world."
The room fell silent with the blonde girl staring incredulously at her companion. She slumped unceremoniously back into her chair and just sat there shaking her head as the boy watched on.
"No, no, Shirou," she said breaking from her stupor. "You don't just get to drop that on me and act like it explains everything. Just what is the world in danger from, because from where I'm standing here, everything looks fine?"
"We have a good life Luvia," Shirou rebutted. "That does not mean that everybody does. Even now in the world there are dozens of wars, hundreds of natural disasters, thousands of murders and an uncountable number of people dying of disease, exposure or just plain hunger. How can you call this a safe world?"
"So open up a charity or something," Luvia rebutted. "Or go and invent something that will make those people's lives better. You've done it before. You're still doing it every day."
"It's not enough Luvia," Shirou said as he stared directly into her eyes as if trying to form a connection. "I can do so much more."
"Or you could die and then all the good work you've done stops," Luvia stated harshly. "You can't be naïve enough to know what happens to your company if you die over there."
"So help me," Shirou said, his voice almost pleading. "I'm going over there alone with my Servant. It would really help if you were able to come along."
"No Shirou," Luvia said and there was heavy regret in her voice. "It's not about money," she continued as Shirou started to open his mouth his mouth. "I'm the head of my family and I can't risk going into that death zone. If you want I can send one or two of the other members of my family but even then I can't see what good they would do, and I'm not sure you would want them anyway."
"I see," Shirou said putting on his glasses.
"Please don't do this Shirou," Luvia said once again. "The Edelfelt family would hate to lose one of their best customers and I would hate to lose a friend to that war."
"I'm sorry Ms. Edefelt," Shirou said as he stood up. Reaching up to the shirt under his jacket, he pulled it open tearing off the buttons as he did so, revealing an elaborate tattoo over his heart. "I'm afraid by this point I'm committed. I plan to summon my Servant later tonight…" he checked the watch on his left arm, "this morning."
"Okay," Luvia said swallowing and turning her face. "It was a pleasure working with you Shirou." She said as she stood up from her spot at the table, without slowing down for a moment she headed towards the door only to pause at the exit. "Don't die," she said once again, emphasising her words as if she hoped that this would make them come true and then she was gone.
"I won't Ms. Edefelt," Shirou said, but he was talking to the empty room. He looked at the empty can in his hand weighing it up for a moment before he set it down and walked over to middle of the table where a vase full of purple flowers stood. With one fluid motion he picked it up and then hurled it against the closest wall he could see, causing it to shatter into small pieces.
"Was that really necessary Mister Emiya," a voice came from all around him as small wheeled robotic creatures scooted out from one of the walls of the room and sucked up all the glass shards, water and flowers before retreating into the walls again.
"It's supposed to relieve stress and anger if you break things," Shirou said as he turned around and left the room.
"Did it work like it was supposed to?" the voice inquired as he walked through the hallways.
"I'm afraid not," Shirou replied. "It just added a bit of guilt to the mix."
"Guilt is a normal human emotion often employed in response to something crime done wrong…"
"Reset standards and run another million lines of text through," Shirou said, his words activating programs stored inside the mainframe of his house. His attempts at recreating an Artificial Intelligence, while spirited, were slow going. Science fiction was littered with ideas of rogue AIs causing all sorts of problems and while there was some profit to be found in the industry, this really wasn't an industry he wanted to rush into recklessly.
A nearby screen lit up with a with a few lines of text and Shirou grit his teeth in annoyance as he saw the words 'Luvia Edefelt will turn down Shirou Emiya's proposition (6% variance). A few seconds later a giant cartoony green tick mark appeared over the words and an image of electronic confetti appeared with the words confirmed below and Shirou debated whether he should test out the stress relieving properties of breaking things again before sighing and moving on.
Coming to a locked purple door at the end of the room he pulled out a key card from thin air and briefly swiped it against a scanner to the side of the door before the card faded away as swiftly as it came. The room it opened up to was cramped by the standards of the other spacious rooms in the penthouse and filled with a few shelves of books, gemstones, mystic diagrams and other weird contraptions and one magic circle that sat quite conspicuously in the middle of the room. Even in this small tribute to magic in a bastion of technology there were still incursions from the future in the forms of unknown and complex structures of metal and plastic.
From what he heard it was still two months before the grail materialised. If he were to summon a Servant now would have to be done without the use of the grail and consequently would require a truly enormous amount of prana, far beyond his ability to generate. In fact from what he knew about magi there probably wasn't a single one with the reserves to do it. Fortunately Shirou had a work around for that courtesy of some books he acquired from the Edefelt family regarding the ritual; they were in fact relatively cheap due to the utter resolution of their family not to participate in that war in future.
The interesting fact he picked up on from the various texts he purchased; was that a Servant and their master are connected by Magical Paths, things of dubious nature that funnel magical energy from master to Servant regardless of distance. That regardless of distance thing was the lynchpin behind the magic trick that he was about to perform. The second lynchpin of this plan was a contraption, the Mana Engine, beneath the floors of this building that tapped into the grid and converted vast amounts of electrical energy into mana where it was stored and compressed for this moment. He was really not going to have a fun time explaining that to the auditors.
Beneath the circle countless wires thrummed with prana, pumping it into the mystic diagram that would, if his calculations were correct, provide him with a Servant and if he was incorrect would just provide him with a higher electrical bill. Words spilled from his lips, a bunch of mystical mumbo-jumbo cribbed from the Edefelts, with no discernible meaning behind them. The lights flickered for a moment and Shirou briefly worried that he had overdrawn from the grid, but in the next moment the lights came back fiercer than ever and the room was engulfed in bright light, almost blinding the unprepared scientist.
Rubbing the black spots out of his eyes Shirou was confronted by what could only be described as a suit of power armour. The suit was red and gold, appearing sleek and efficient and apparently moulded around the user's body. A surface scan could only achieve so much and Shirou found himself hungrily inspecting every inch of the armour.
"Hey, only my wife can look at me like that," the person inside the suit said as the helmet seemed to break apart into minute particles around his head.
"Nanites?" Shirou asked immediately. "How did you program them?" A beeping cut off his questions and he pulled out his phone to see that a message indicating that just over half of the stored mana had been drained. This represented a loss of about four million dollars which, while high, was still well within his expectations.
"Sorry," Shirou said putting down his phone. "I was distracted by that intriguing piece of new technology and forgot myself. My name is Shirou Emiya." He smiled at his new acquaintance. "How would you like to help me save the world?" He raised his hand outstretched towards his future business partner.
"Tony Stark and I'll hear you out," he said taking his outstretched hand. "But if your plan is to kill off half of all life, I'm going to have to shoot you."
xxx
21st January 2004
Shirou read once more through a file of potential master candidates that was created for him by the Edefelt family while he waited to leave for his plane to Fuyuki. It was pretty standard stuff but there was a noticeable anti-Tohsaka bias that had crept in there. Aside from that the fact that there was also always a Matou and an Einzbern was well documented apparently which really thinned out the number of unknowns.
"Going through that file again?" the Archer class Servant who had introduced himself as Tony Stark asked as he walked into the room dressed in that sleeveless vest that signalled he had just been tinkering with the inventions in his lab.
The very first thing that the Archer had done was to demand a lab and once Shirou had given him that the two of them had proceeded to have what could only be described as a boast-off. This was unfortunately for Shirou a competition that he had lost, his vast skills in engineering and programming failing to measure up to a hero that had inscribed their name upon the records of humanity, even if that record had either yet to be written or been written in a different timeline, judging by the out of this world nature of Mr. Stark's armour.
He had thrown every invention that he had at the Servant including his sun harvesters, which Mr. Stark countered with his own clean energy system; his synthetic plasteel mix, which Mr. Stark countered with a process to form an actual new element; his prospective calculative system, which Mr. Stark countered with an actual Artificial Intelligence; both of them had their own way of generating energy shields but Mr. Stark's was more energy efficient. Dozens more inventions came from both of them but eventually Shirou was finished when he mentioned his work into adaptive prostheses and Tony Stark countered with freaking nanites, a branch of technology that he hadn't even had the opportunity to dip a finger into. This was not even including the suits of armour and weaponry that he possessed that Shirou had no answer to, never having entered the weapons industry himself.
If meeting a great inventor like Tony Stark was like Christmas coming early then having him being open to collaboration was like a decade of Christmas and Easter all rolled into one. Tony Stark quickly became the second person to have Priority zero on all secret projects and the Servant often spent time when Shirou was asleep, having collapsed into exhaustion, perusing the younger inventors projects and even tacking on notes or adding ideas to the files. On the other side the Servant Archer reciprocated the trust that Shirou had shown him and subsequently had provided him with a lot of data on his personal discoveries, an unimaginable gift coming from a scientist whose life and name often hinged on their work.
In fact Shirou had long lamented the fact that he hadn't summoned him earlier. The upkeep from the Mana Engine only amounted to about eighty thousand dollars a day, an unimaginably low amount for the knowledge he gained each day. In fact if it wasn't for his Tony Stark's personal dream then Shirou may have given up on the Grail and stayed out of the whole thing just absorbing his senior's technological insights.
"I am just a bit nervous Mr. Stark," Shirou replied to the Archer Servant. "My primary love has always been technology, building new things, making new discoveries, incrementally improving the tools that we use each day to make the world a better place. Magic is something that exists and, while I can use it, it's not something that I feel comfortable falling back on. By most proper magi I would be considered a third rate magus at best."
"Then what about all your plans of combining magic with technology," Tony Stark said. "There seemed to be an awful lot of knowledge about it for a man who doesn't care about magic."
"You hacked my own personal files I see," Shirou said raising an eyebrow before shrugging his shoulders. "Good job I suppose. I should update my encryption procedures." He put down the file of master candidates he had received. "Let me honest here. Magic and technology do really not mix well. Seriously, they make oil and water look like wine and cheese. Magic and technology both have their own laws and reconciling them is beyond me right now. I'm afraid that those plans that you've found amount to nothing more than idle speculation. Out of the hundreds of ideas that I've explored only one had any success and that was the mana forge I told you about."
"Anything that can summon me can only be called a complete success," Tony Stark said. "And call me Tony. If we're going to go fight a bunch of wizards together than we might as well be on first name terms while we do so."
"Sorry I'm Japanese," Shirou said smiling. "Cultural heritage and all that."
"No seriously stop it. You remind me of somebody else when you say that and I have to do a mental double-take single time," Tony rebutted immediately. "If you don't stop calling me then I am going to start calling you Master. Wasn't that the technical term for the relationship between us?
"Okay Tony," Shirou said, immediately letting the matter go. "By the way I might have mentioned this before but I am not an expert on magic. While the common consensus places the grail as a wishing device of almost omnipotent power and the explanation given seems believable. There has never been an example of a winner and…"
"Hold it right there kid," Tony said holding up his hand. "Contrary to what you seem to think I'm not an idiot and you've dropped enough hints over the past month that there was no way I could not pick up the fact that it is not a sure shot that I'll get my wish even if we do win this thing." He turned around and sat on one of the other couches of the room. "Remember I died. The fact that your aspiring necromancy at didn't make me end up looking like a rotting zombie and even managed to preserve my good looks was already beyond my expectations. I'll try for a chance to meet them again because I genuinely miss them but even if we don't quite manage to do this; it is not on your shoulders."
"Thanks Tony," Shirou said and then he stood up abruptly. "That's enough self-reflection. I didn't enter a dangerous winner take all tournament to stand around talking."
"What purpose did you have for entering it anyway?" Tony remarked.
"To save the world of course Anthony," Shirou replied instantly. "I'll explain the mechanism when the war starts."
"Firstly never call me Anthony again," Tony started shooting Shirou a stern look. "Secondly that explanation was as sketchy as hell and I reserve the right to shoot you if your solution ends up as mass genocide." Shirou simply nodded his head as if to say fair enough. "Thirdly just what is your plan for dealing with the masters and Servants? Go straight in and kill them, try to negotiate, settle it with a dance-off. If I'm going to help you then I need to be informed."
"Straight in and murder them," Shirou said. "The Servants were already dead so that doesn't really count as murder. Although I will make an exception for you; it is a genuine crime that you died and every day you stay alive I can feel the wheels of progress continue to turn."
"You can go ahead and say it already," Tony said cutting Shirou off. "The dead are not worth as much as the alive. I am not the sort of person who would be able to sleep easily if my unlife was saved at the expense of another."
"Even if we fail to get the grail I will do my best to make sure that you stay alive, Tony," Shirou said. "And I will try my best to send you home."
"I can agree to that. If this glorified coffee mug can do better than the both of us then I think I will have to hand in my world's greatest genius badge."
"I would have to hand in my world's greatest inventor coffee mug," Shirou said with clear reluctance. "Anyway the thing you have to realise about most magi is that they are terrible horrible people."
"You seemed to get on quite well with that blonde girl I saw before," Tony said with a smile that could have just bordered on smug. "Maybe you were trying to use your body to redeem her from her evil ways?"
"Magi families are generally involved in massive eugenics projects where the young of the family are married off in such a manner to produce the best quality children and continue their experiments on both innocent bystanders and each other in attempts of reaching the nebulous centre of the universe. And yes I am implying that for the most part they are basically a mix between the Nazi's and Unit 731; a magical Axis if you will."
"That's slightly sickening actually," Tony said and his words were slightly less light-hearted now. "Do you have any problems dealing with her?"
"They keep it professional," Shirou said. "The Edefelts are just magical mercenaries and assassins which surprisingly makes them one of the least objectionable groups. I'm getting off topic," he said. "The whole point is that the Masters of this grail war will likely be the sort of scum with which the world is better off and they will not hold back against us."
No more words about that subject were said and after a brief debate about the differences between the technology of each of their worlds the two of them left to board their plane.
xxx
"Nice place," Tony said as he stared at one of the dusty rooms that were meant to be there fortress for the duration of the grail war.
"It's a bit of a fixer upper," Shirou said yawning. He had slept the whole way through the fourteen hour flight and he was looking much better. "I'm not going to rely on the old Emiya Residence as the Einzberns will at least know its location. I'm not going to stay at a hotel because trust me when I say that any idiot could walk into a hotel and kill you. The security at those things is terrible."
"So instead you bought this dump," Tony said looking at the rather ratty furniture.
"This dump has a magus workshop, a regular science workshop, a replica of my lab from home, all created under the cover of night in under a month since I bought this place," Shirou pointed out. "I can go buy a new TV right now and I haven't seen you eat anything but cheeseburgers since I summoned you."
"For you information I have a very refined palate that I indulge when your pitiful human constraints force you to go to sleep," Tony said. "But fine when you sleep I'll go do some shopping and try to get decently coloured furniture. All the purple in your last house of was giving me PTSD."
"Fine," Shirou grumbled. "I'll take care of the dust." He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Replicare Profectus," he spoke and Tony watched as a dozen of those little robots that he had seen over the past month appeared on the ground and immediately set to cleaning."
"Useful aren't they," Shirou said gesturing at his creations. "We're also in talks with major toy companies for a specific range of robots for kids."
"So those are maid bots," Tony said. "Actually I'm not going to lie I could have used a few of those."
"I'm nowhere near finishing anything as advanced as an actual maid bot," Shirou said jokingly. "Although as a Japanese male I think I'm obligated to at least try for that once in my life time."
"You really lean into the jokes about your cultural identity don't you," Tony remarked, causing Shirou to shrug.
"It's pretty much ninety percent of my repertoire," Shirou admitted. "Have you come up with any plans for the war or should I tell you my ideas."
"You can start," Tony said deferring to Shirou's greater knowledge of magic.
"Okay the thing you have to realise is that a servant's invisibility in spirit form is not absolute, it is just will not show up in visible light," Shirou said drawing a pair of glasses from his luggage. "These glasses pick up emissions from outside the visible spectrum and I have calibrated them the relevant position on the electromagnetic spectrum. Basically using these you will be able to see the energy that composes servants even when in spiritual form."
"Really unnecessary dumbing down there but okay," Tony said. "I presume these will only work when I myself are in physical form though."
"Well you won't be able to hold them in spiritual form so yeah," Shirou said rubbing his neck. "That is kind of the flaw in the plan. "Don't worry though I've got a few of my yakuza buddy's to set up cameras equipped with this technology throughout the town."
"So you want me to take in the sights and keep an eye out for any servant-master combos," Tony said. "Well I suppose it's more pleasant than hanging around here. What's your contribution to our inevitable victory?"
"Well right now I'm going to a teaching interview," Shirou said once again leaving half the story out. "There will likely be at least two Masters attending the school that I can scope out. It also provides me with an excuse to be here if I am helping out a friend cover for a missing teacher's position at school. If I were to just head off anywhere without a good reason, then the more responsible members of my company will start haranguing me. This way I can at least say I'm doing it for publicity and to return to my roots."
"There also may be attractive schoolgirls at Fuyuki who are round about your age who I'm sure would love private lessons from the CEO of a massive international company," he said giving him a wink.
"That would be extremely unprofessional and a violation of the trust placed on all members of the teacher's profession," Shirou said. "Then again…"
"I know," Tony said cutting him off. "You're going to use your standard joke about Japanese heritage."
"We're getting pretty good at this whole Mater-Servant coordination aren't we," Shirou said.
xxx
"That might be the last one," Shirou said to himself as he watched the Tohsaka magus stroll through the streets, a blob of whitish energy at her side. It was break time for him and he was at his phone scrolling through the various hidden cameras littered throughout the city. Today would have been the day that he would have met her face to face if she hadn't decided to take her servant on a tour throughout the city.
"No father and no mother," Shirou said realising that the Tohsaka was placed in much the same position as he was at the end of the last Holy Grail war. "I wonder how she grew up." It wasn't an irrelevant question. The Tohsaka family was likely the weakest of the three families in this war and the girl would be forced to rely on her own abilities if she did not want to die.
The active bounded fields around the old Einzbern castle had prevented his ability to spy on the Einzbern representative and even some of his craftier tricks had failed. It would likely take a full on assault for him to get info out of the Einzbern and that would likely leave the value of the information null and void.
The Matou representative on the other hand… Shirou had met her first hand on one of his first few days of teaching and there was a palpable feeling of danger and wrongness around her. Maybe if he was a more gifted magus than he could turn his insubstantial feelings into concrete but as he was now he could only resolve to stay out of her way until he got more information. Although how useful that intention would be was debatable as he was also quite certain that she knew he was a master; the look of interest that she had given him left no doubt.
There was also a representative from Clocktower that he had traced to the airport but had holed up in the church ever since she had arrived there. It was actually incredibly against the rules for the mediator of the war to show such favouritism to a single participant, although he honestly expected nothing more from both organisations. Oh well he was sure that God would forgive him if he destroyed a church in the process of saving the world.
Lastly Caster had holed up inside the Ryuudou temple. Her Master was apparently Galliasta a newly established Clocktower magus, most probably backed by the Church and the Mage association. Luvia had informed of his family's magecraft and he had actually laughed in despair upon hearing it. Generating mana by sacrificing people; Shirou could do the same damn thing with a wall socket, a few machines and a bit of chalk. Stupidly cruel and useless seems to be the name of the game for magi of the Association and he was fully prepared to dispose of them as soon as they popped their heads out of the shells they were hiding in.
By his count that meant that there was at least one more pair unaccounted for that Shirou had no leads on whatsoever. Suddenly the door to the break room opened and one of the other teachers who Shirou worked with entered the room. Souichirou Kuzuki was a very dangerous feeling man. His efficiency and movement reminded him somewhat of his father Kiritsugu and when he met him he was almost certain that the old man was a soldier of some kind. A bit of research had uncovered his connections to an assassination organisation that Shirou had heard about once or twice. Shirou would have suspected him of being a Master but the man had already been teaching for a while and overwhelming circumstantial evidence indicated he had no ties to the Twilight world and was for all intents and purposes retired.
"Mr. Emiya," he said before handing him some paperwork that he needed to fill in. He carefully went over the purpose of the paperwork and Shirou nodded and promised to fill it in later.
xxx
'Why do humans like standing on the top of buildings,' Shirou thought to himself as he filled in the paperwork and watched the Tohsaka whose first name he didn't know… whose first name he didn't want to know. A laptop lay in front of him highlighting an image of the Tohsaka and the white blob that represented her servant. A single stroke of the key and a scope appeared over the Tohsaka, streams of code taking into account wind pressure, the Coriolis Effect and predicting any sudden movements of the target. Like the glint of a guillotine a line of code pops up on the screen: 'Target will perish: 1.5% variance".
"I don't really feel comfortable about this," Tony said and Shirou didn't say anything.
"She is just a girl, surely she can't be as bad as some of the grown up magi," he continued.
"She went into a war fully intending to kill other people," Shirou started. "Do you know how many magi would cut me open out of sheer curiosity?" His tone lacked his usual eloquence and he was fumbling with his words. "Anyway won't the good I do by winning the war make up for this."
"That is not a road you want to go down kid," Tony said placing his hand upon Shirou's shoulder. "Trust me," he continued smiling reassuringly. "And have a little faith in yourself. We can win the war without becoming like them. Besides you would be an extremely poor teacher if you killed your student. It would completely ruin your future job prospects."
"I guess it would," Shirou said but before he even took his hand off the button the Tohsaka's servant appeared blocking her line of sight. This servant looked like a short girl with long grey hair wielding two swords and in a purple bodysuit with some pretty decent curves on her.
"Saber," Tony said taking in the swords. "So she's the one who summoned the supposedly strongest servant. That's the one who we have to eliminate. Right kid?" Tony repeated himself because Shirou was obviously not paying attention. Instead the younger inventor was looking at the screen in disbelief.
"That…" he began. "That's impossible," he continued after a short while. "I have to go see to something Tony." For now I'm not killing Tohsaka or her servant." He all but slammed the laptop shut as he spoke.
"You're keeping more secrets from your allies now," Tony said and Shirou could hear the annoyance in his voice. "I let it go the first time but trust me when I say that nothing ruins a team like secrets."
"Give me two days," Shirou said and there was pleading in his voice. "I'll even write you an IOU but I have to check something out first. I have to get my thoughts together."
"Okay but if this ends up with us fighting each other in an airport you only have yourself to blame," Tony said shaking his head.
xxx
'I'm going to have strong words with that child after I'm done here,' Tony Stark thought to himself as he watched the blue one shrug off a repulsor blast with minimal injuries.
"Please save them Tony," Shirou had said just a few seconds earlier and Tony had given into his sort-of a protégé's pleading.
'If this is all to get into their pants then I'm going to be very angry," Tony thought to himself as he watched the blue guy ready his lance. 'Then again this wouldn't be the worst time I had to wingman for somebody.'