Tiger


(Shirou)

"Shirou, who is she?" Sasaku asked quickly while standing up.

"Fujimura Taiga, my legal guardian. Friend of my father's. She teaches at our school, good at kendo," he replied automatically in the time it took for her to clear her chair and turn towards Taiga. Huh, now that he was getting the hang of this, wasn't telepathic communication really useful?

"Fujimura-sensei, it's good to finally meet you," Sasaku said enthusiastically while making her way towards Taiga and bowing in what she thought was a formal manner. "Emiya Sasaku. Can I offer you some tea?"

"Oh sure," Taiga replied, caught up in Sasaku's flow and seating herself at a chair that Shirou dragged to the table for her. "I thought Shirou was the only Emiya - I did properly look for his relatives, you know!" she quickly added, doubtless in order to preserve her reputation as a responsible guardian. Sorry Taiga, but it's pretty much shot with anyone who actually knows you. Thankfully Shirou had been quite capable of handling his effective-independence.

Sasaku simply nodded and pushed some of the snacks towards Taiga while drinking her tea. "You know that Shirou-nii was adopted, I assume?"

"Yeah..." Taiga subsided a bit upon remembering Kiritsugu's passing. Her Grandfather had also liked the reserved man, though as far as she knew he was all business around the Yakuza boss. Or any adult, for that matter. "This was ten years ago though."

"I'm Father's, uh, Kuritsugu's daughter," Sasaku continued, faking the slip rather convincingly. "Mother never remarried after their separation. She didn't change my name either though."

"I see," Taiga said sympathetically, "It must have been hard growing up without a father." Shirou and Rin both had differing expressions of how tactless.

"Mother just passed away," was the sad reply. "And I then find out after searching that my father has already passed away ten years ago." She sighed before adding, "Shirou-nii is the only one who can actually carry on the Emiya name, so you weren't wrong earlier."

"I would never have thought of you that way!" Shirou suddenly interjected. "I didn't know- Father never had a chance to tell me. Taiga-nee and I would have looked if we knew!"

"Sorry I got distracted. Is Tohsaka-chan here because of this?"

"Yeah," Rin yawned slightly. The clocks indicated it was nearing 6am which meant for her meant a harrowing night was followed by a day with no sleep. "Emiya-san asked me to help out."

"You know her?" Taiga asked in confusion. "Er," Rin paused for the briefest of moments, before pointing at Shirou. "Emiya-kun, that is. Since we're classmates." She glanced over at Sasaku who was simply idly sipping tea as though the story they were weaving it didn't concern her. "I guess I'll have to call her Emiya-chan when they're both around."

Taiga took a moment to process everything. "Wait, if you don't have any parents and came here, then?!"

Sasaku caught on quickly, probably because she had been setting things up to that conclusion. "I don't want to be mean about it, but yes, I did think Father wouldn't have turned me away. Though apparently Shirou-nii just has everything?" She hesitated for a moment before continuing with, "We need to discuss this at some point, Fujimura."


(Taiga)

Taiga sweated a little, trying to remember the documents she had seen a decade ago. Shirou would not appreciate suddenly being kicked out of his childhood home if another heir arrived. "Ah, Emiya-san, no Sasaku. I don't keep all the papers with me, so it will take a while before we can look over them. Also a lawyer..."

"Don't worry," Shirou interrupted, smiling gently. "You don't have to fight to stay in Father's place. You've just been away from home for a while, is all."

Good thinking Shirou! Taiga quickly followed up on the opening. "That's right, haste makes waste and all that. Rely on me to arrange everything for you kids, alright?"

Sasaku nodded and looked at Rin. "Sorry my brother called you over so early. Cheap flights are always at the worst times."

"I understand somewhat, but seriously. We have school and you should be resting after the journey. We can do this later." Rin glared at Shirou who shrugged when she added, "You owe me two now."

"Tohsaka-chan, thanks a lot for helping receive Sasaku. You're always on top of things." Rin puffed up a bit at the praise, though she still looked tired. "I'm going back. You better not be late for school," she said to the earliest student in the school while on her way out.

Taiga turned to Shirou once the front door had closed behind the other student. Sasaku was in the middle of washing up after the unexpected teatime. "Shirou, we need to talk." Hopefully the girl didn't notice her nervousness.


(Shirou)

"You can leave that to me," Shirou told Sasaku while Taiga was pulling him off to the side. She nodded, but didn't stop what she was doing.

"Shirou, we have a problem~" Taiga practically whined once they were out of Sasaku's hearing, or at least what she thought would be. "I'm not good at dealing with these foreign types, but if she's already thinking about papers we really can't do anything about it."

Shirou tried to think about what he might do in such a situation. "Do you remember what the will said?"

"That's the problem," she replied with a frown. "It isn't like he edited it after adopting you, so I'm not sure. If it's as generic as 'my child' you might be fine, but if she's actually named we're in trouble since we couldn't find her earlier. It's a big deal!"

"I don't think really think she'd do something like that," he said as reassuringly as he could. Which, given he knew exactly what the true situation was, was a lot.

"Eh, Shirou is so naive when it comes to girls..." Taiga pouted as if she was as old as the girl they were discussing. "Just because she's younger than you, and addresses you as an older brother doesn't mean she won't take it all if she can. I hear they're quite ruthless out in the west."

Shirou only shrugged. "Look, just leave it to me to sweet-talk her. Find the papers and let me know what's on them so we can think about how to deal with it, ok?"

"I guess I underestimated you," she muttered conspiratorially. "It's a good idea to set it up so you're inviting her in, while you can. Makes it harder for her to not reciprocate, if your positions are switched. But try to get at least a promise out of her."

He simply nodded.


A little after that...

(Sakura)

The adopted Matou looked out of her window as the sensation of a Servant approaching caught her attention. It was the same one that had appeared earlier that night, which meant that Tohsaka had been busy putting her Servant to work already. Rider too had been busy the last few nights with the War, not that it mattered to her... A sound from behind the girl made her turn around before Rin and Kuro came into view.

"What is it, Sakura? It's too early, leave me alone," complained Shinji, looking at her with bleary eyes. He had seen a few late nights too, and hadn't improved any for it. She bit back a pointless retort then you should have returned to your own bed and kept quiet until he returned to his sleep.


.


Notes:
Roughly speaking, this is the end of day 1 (for convenience, take each day as starting at sunrise, as events at night will frequently go past midnight). Thus the next bit where there's some stuff occurring in school is day 2, and the night following is also day 2, and so on.