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Story: [Big Brothers are Love]
Summary: It wasn't the first time he'd discovered family that he'd never known of before. But it was the first time any of them had been related to him by blood.
Crossover: (Fate/Stay Night) / (Sekirei)
Genre: Humor, Crack
XXX
Shirou sighed. Illya had never been the most understanding of individuals, and it looked as if he was going to end up breaking his 'promised time of arrival'.
Of course he'd made sure to get access to a phone in order to tell his little sister that he was being delayed by airport security, and thankfully it'd been Taiga who'd answered, meaning that Illya hadn't ended up threatening to come down to the airport and kill everyone who were delaying the arrival of her big brother. There was a silver lining to every cloud.
But still, his little sister was going to be upset about it. Hopefully he'd still make it in time to suffer a flying tackle before her bedtime, but he wasn't exactly counting on it. He had a tendency to have some pretty interestingly karma-negative luck.
Which was probably why he was being detained for a machine-malfunction the moment he stepped foot in his home country for the first time in almost a year.
In hindsight, he really should try to visit more often. But time and work had just kept on piling up on each other, until it was all he could do to book time off for Illya's birthday. And thankfully for his own chance of survival, he'd made sure to account for possible delays. She really would kill him if he missed her birthday. Or Taiga would just beat him senseless. It was kind of up for grabs, but it would've been painful and unpleasant for everyone involved.
Saber had stayed with Rin, not wanting their lover to work herself into a coma or something, and Rin had stayed because she still had an awful lot more to do than Shirou did. Also, there'd been some heavy-handed 'big sister'-privileged hinting about Taiga promising to throw a fit if he included the 'wicked she-devil who'd kidnapped him' in a family celebration.
Rin and Taiga didn't exactly get along.
Oh, they played polite, and as long as Saber was around to run interference – neither of them really ever listened to Shirou when he tried to do the same – and Illya wasn't feeling mischievous enough to fan the flames, they could all have perfectly reasonable conversations. It was just that everyone would agree that perhaps that kind of tension wasn't really a good thing when there was a birthday celebration on the books.
It wasn't as if he was really planning on staying for longer than a month, anyway.
Suppressing the urge to sigh again at the future prospect of a lonely and cold bed for the next month, Shirou tried to focus his attention on something more useful.
XXX
He had a mother?
Shirou pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'm sorry, but I'm fairly certain that my parents are dead."
The woman whose face had paled enough that it almost matched her white hair, narrowed her eyes at him. "Because you were found in a fire?"
Shirou paused, feeling his own eyes narrow at that very specific knowledge of his past. It wasn't exactly something he kept hidden, but it would still require a bit of digging into his past in order to find out about it. "Yes."
Somewhere halfway through her explanation of the events – which basically sounded like he'd been staying at a relative's house, and then used a nickname to introduce himself in the hospital, leaving her to believe that her son had died, and him to believe that he didn't have any surviving family members – Shirou came to the conclusion that she was either a very good liar, or very convinced of what she was saying. Considering his life though, he was willing to bet on the 'liar' theory until he had very solid proof to the contrary.
Something beyond the fact that his hair was already starting to turn white, at just about the same age as the shell-shocked woman in front of him. The woman who was seemingly trying to come to terms with the idea that her eldest son was actually alive, and had in fact lived a long and fulfilling life completely out of her reach.
Shirou suddenly hung his head, sighing heavily. It really was just his luck to get detained in airport security because of a malfunctioning machine, and then have his biological mother popping out of the woodwork, just when he'd finally taken the time off to go on vacation and celebrate his little sister's birthday.
Speaking of little sisters, Shirou felt his own face begin to drain of color as he realized how Illya might react to hearing that he had blood relatives of his own.
The girl could be possessive sometimes, in a way that Shirou accepted with a general fondness, but her family situation had always been a... sore topic. With the Einzbern family being the way that they were, with Kiritsugu never returning, with her mother dying, with arriving in Japan with the full intention to kill Shirou and then dying herself in order to fulfill the Einzbern family's desperate struggle for the Holy Grail.
Shirou would rather jump into a pit filled with venomous snakes than he would breach the topic of 'family history' with his little sister. He was suicidal, not insane.
No wait. He wasn't supposed to be that either.
Sighing again at the sudden flash of memories including the many many many many times that Rin had attempted a new Distortion-curing remedy, Shirou was silently grateful that he had enough control of his body to not blush.
Sex wasn't the cure-all that some people seemed to think, but it certainly hadn't stopped Rin from trying it out. Repeatedly. In many positions. In many situations. And with the involvement of quite a few more elaborate schemes than was probably strictly necessary.
XXX
"Sister?" Takami tilted her head, confused.
"My father's daughter." He explained, shaking his head. "And I haven't seen her in nearly a year, so she's probably going to monopolize most of my time for a while."
"... I see?" The woman fidgeted, as if she wanted to argue against it, but was physically restraining herself. "You've been out of the country for that long?"
Shirou made a face. "I've had work to do, and-... stuff." He wasn't entirely sure if he wanted to make any mention of Rin and Saber and their very-much-not-traditionally-acceptable relationship. "She's been living with our sort-of-unofficial big sister."
The woman's eyes had narrowed suspiciously at the 'stuff'-comment, but she let it slide. "You seem to have made quite a big family for yourself, Shirou-kun."
"Not really." Shirou shrugged. "After dad died, Fuji-nee came over to check up on me all the time. Then there's Sakura, and Rin and Saber. Sakura is an old friend of mine, and I think Rin might technically classify as my boss right now-..." He scratched his head, not entirely sure how to phrase it. "Mostly, Saber and I just try to keep her from working herself to the bone."
"So these two, Saber and Rin, they're why you've been out of the country?" Takami asked.
"Pretty much." Shirou admitted readily, not really thinking about it. "Rin can be a bit of a handful."
"I see." Takami nodded, understanding, even as her eyes managed to narrow even further in suspicion.
Thankfully for Shirou's nerves, he didn't pay it any mind. He would've been much more uncomfortable with the situation if he realized just how thoroughly his newly met biological mother was taking notes on him and his life.
XXX
Takami hadn't in any way expected finding her long-thought-dead son when she'd responded to the call of the malfunctioning machine. In fact, she'd been expecting a member of a rival company trying to stir up a fuss.
Shirou seemed to have lived a fairly happy life, even if he'd had the misfortune of inheriting her quick-to-gray hair. He was athletic, he worked part-time as a mechanic and part-time as a researcher's assistant under a good friend of his, he wasn't in any dire financial strait – though apparently Rin forced him to foot the grocery bill more often than not on behalf of all of her money going to her research – and he had some suspiciously vague relationships with the people in his life.
If it wasn't for the fact that Rin and Saber were apparently very close to each other, she would've almost suspected that her son was dating them both behind each other's back. As it was, she thought it might be that he'd had a few too many daydreams about getting into their pants to feel entirely comfortable with lingering on the subject.
His little sister Illya was another wild card in how he would awkwardly dodge any commitments in regards to meeting her, almost as if he wasn't entirely sure if that was a horrifically bad idea or not. Though, considering that the girl's parents were both dead, and Shirou had just found out that at least one of his wasn't, his discomfort on the matter was perhaps understandable.
Takami also had the strange feeling that he was dodging around mentioning this 'Fuji-nee's' full name, though she couldn't quite phantom the reason for such. And though Saber was apparently a foreigner and an old friend of his father, she was never described as being 'older than them', which was maybe a bit weird. Not to mention his old classmate Sakura who had somehow been placed in charge of 'making sure that the house remained standing', rather than leaving such a thing in the hands of the woman who was old enough to have been their homeroom teacher in high school.
It was all very peculiar.
Then again, Takami supposed that most lives tended to become peculiar in one way or another. And she might just be trying a bit too hard to drown herself in this information, trying to analyze the life of her eldest son, desperately trying to learn as many things about him as she could, and doing her best to ignore the small voice in the back of her mind that begged her to just scoop him up and sob into his shoulder. Because this was her son, and she'd missed so many things in his life.
Thankfully, she'd long since mastered the art of suppressing and eliminating such thoughts from her mind, so it wasn't exactly a very loud voice.
XXX
Illya cackled happily as she straightened from her tackle to sit on top of him, straddling his poor abused ribcage.
He really should've expected her to plan an ambush for the moment he opened the front door. Though he hadn't thought that Sakura would simply smirk at his obvious cry for help from his overly cheerful little sister.
He had however perfectly expected Taiga's heartless decision to declare him as 'deserving of it'. She'd always been a very ruthless big sister figure.
He still hadn't explained exactly what had happened in regards to the airport to delay his arrival so badly, but he hoped that they wouldn't press him for answers on the topic until he could at least make sure that Illya wasn't going to decide to hunt down said blood-relatives in order to eliminate the competition.
He loved her lots, but the girl could be absolutely terrifying when she put her mind to it.
In fact, she reminded him a lot of the tales of the fae, and not only in her semi-ethereal looks. It was just the way that she could be innocent and kind, and then suddenly absolutely horrifically violent at the drop of a hat, depending entirely on a set of rules that he still hadn't completely figured out after all these years of knowing her. It was all very fae-like of her.
XXX
Minato wasn't sure what he was expecting.
He'd had an older brother, he'd known that for a long time, but it'd always been a kind of distant childhood memory that was more than vague enough for him to be unsure of how much of it had been fabricated by his imagination and how much was an actual memory. The death of family members from before he could even properly remember was hardly something that often showed up in conversations.
So, when his mother had gathered him and Yukari to explain some things to them, he'd been just as shocked as his little sister to hear about who the woman had somehow managed to stumble upon.
She'd even brought pictures.
Red hair that was already going white, an easy-going expression, casual clothes, and physically fit enough for a spark of jealousy to appear in Minato's heart. His brother certainly wasn't ugly.
Yukari was ecstatic, ranting on about something or the other about suddenly revealed siblings being a super interesting plot-point. Minato had long since learned to at least partially tune out his sister whenever she started referencing manga.
No, Minato hadn't been entirely sure what he'd been expecting when Takami had revealed that she'd managed to get a promised meeting between them a week down the line.
But he definitely hadn't expected the beautifully innocent-looking little girl that arrived with him. He wasn't sure how old she was, but it was clear that she was going to grow up into quite the beauty one day.
And then she'd opened her mouth and started making weird declarations about rivalry, siblings, long-lost relatives, and bad writing completely screwing up interesting plot-twists.
Minato felt a headache beginning to form. Of course his biological brother's adopted little sister would be exactly the same as his biological little sister. He wasn't even sure why he'd been surprised at all, his entire life was a joke, and this right here had been the punchline it was leading up to. It all made sense now.
Shirou looked as if he really wanted to laugh, and when he sat down next to Minato so they could both watch Yukari and Illya's confrontation from the sidelines, he said something that chilled Minato to the bone.
"I'm glad Fuji-nee was more interested in kendo than manga. Or else there would've been three of them."
The idea of having three Yukari's, ranting randomly about weird things at the top of her lungs, somehow bouncing ideas off of each other until some kind of multiplying resonance dragged them into a synergy-effect of absolute madness-... The mere thought of it was enough for Minato to feel shivers of terror traveling down his spine.
XXX
Takami had been curious about her oldest child's 'Fuji-nee' and his strange reluctance to give her a full name to go with, so of course she was looking up all of the information she could on the lot of them. It wasn't as if she could let something like this go unexplored.
In hindsight, she could almost see why he'd dodged the subject so insistently.
Daughter of a yakuza boss, kendo practitioner extraordinaire, English teacher, infamously explosive personality, more traffic-violations than Takami had the time to do more than stare at in awe – it covered pages – and some hints to the effect that the woman was fiercely protective of her students.
A good – if slightly eccentric – woman, with a number of connections that she probably shouldn't have, legally.
After that, Takami heightened the priority of her search for 'Rin', 'Saber', and 'Sakura'.
Sakura was a young woman, quite pretty actually, living in an old manor all by herself – her brother having died tragically several years ago. Rin was another woman, this one at the top of her class, beautiful, and polite if distant – the perfect student – though she had a few recorded altercations with the president of the student council, who apparently believed her to be a devil in disguise.
As for 'Saber', she couldn't find a single trace of her.
More interesting though was the tangle of incidents wherein Sakura's brother had apparently been a victim.
There'd been deaths – quite a number of deaths actually – from gas-leaks and the like. It was something Takami could only faintly recall having seen on the news – having been rather preoccupied with the Sekirei. And then it'd suddenly stopped.
The investigation into the whole thing looked perfectly legitimate until she actually started digging through them, and the more she looked, the more unsettling things became.
A castle registered under the name of 'Einzbern' having been reduced to rubble, Sakura's brother having been killed by something akin to a giant ax rather than gas-leakage, and several recorded explosions in the middle of the night.
It didn't sound like a series of accidental gas-leaks so much as it sounded like a cover-up.
She was halfway through digging deeper into it all with the full intention of uncovering exactly what had happened in Fuyuki City all those years ago, when her phone went off.
"Sahashi-san," A familiarly sweet voice greeted as she answered. "I'm not going to tell you to stop. But the incidents have been dealt with, and there are people who would be... 'upset' if someone dug too deeply into them."
Takami frowned heavily, because why in the world would Shirou's little sister help keep these things hidden, and how had the girl even known? "Is that a threat, Einzbern-san?"
There was a thoughtful hum from the other side of the line. "Not really, no. It's a bit more like a warning. Shirou and I don't care, but Rin's employers might, and then lots and lots and lots of people would probably die."
Takami found her brain stalling a little at just how cheerful the girl sounded about the prospect of mass-death.
"Why?" Takami asked, trying to wrap her head around this entire situation.
There was an amused huff. "Because they have something to hide, obviously."
Then the phone shut off.
Takami stared at the phone in her hand, and found herself wondering if – just this once – she should simply let bygones be bygones, and not get herself involved.
She had children, and if Rin's employers were somehow in charge of things, and if Rin was in turn Shirou's employer, then it stood to reason that digging too deeply might end up badly for both sides of her family. And really, she had enough on her mind with dealing with the Sekirei Plan and Minaka's general madness.
She really didn't need to go looking for more secret conspiracies when she was already halfway into drowning in one.
XXX
Minato took a deep breath.
As if discovering that his assumed-to-be-dead older brother was alive and well wasn't enough, he'd now managed to get himself landed on by what was apparently some kind of alien. A really cute alien, but still, very much a strain on his mental reserves.
There had to be some kind of limit to how many shocks people were allowed to experience within a short amount of time.
And now he was being kicked out of his dorm, because Musubi was living with him, and mixed genders were forbidden. So yeah.
Though Musubi was really very useful to have when moving, considering how she was somehow managing to actually carry all of his things without any problem. It definitely looked bizarre, but he wasn't going to argue about something that was actually making his life easier for once.
XXX
Takami came very close to doing something violent when she heard of exactly who'd Winged number 88.
It just had to be Minato, didn't it? It couldn't have been someone else? Someone who wasn't her flesh and blood? Someone she didn't have to worry about, since she knew for a fact that Musubi was enthusiastically awaiting the moment where she could face off against Karasuba in an all-out battle?
Out of all the Sekirei that could've been his Fated One, why did it have to be the minefield that was Musubi? And wouldn't it have been great if he'd somehow actually managed to dodge out of the entire 'being an Ashikabi' thing entirely?
Oh, but those were dreams to sigh over with longing hopelessness.
She'd always had rotten luck.
XXX
Shirou stared at his phone with a slightly pained expression.
He wasn't even late, so why-...? No, he knew exactly why. Even if Rin wasn't secretly a worrywart, Saber would've insisted.
Of course she'd decide to properly converse with the parent of her lover about their relationship, should they be found to still be alive and well. The former King of Britain could be a bit old fashioned that way.
Shirou briefly wondered if he should feel awkward over comparing himself to a maiden of times long-passed being courted by a gentleman, before he discarded that idea.
No, what he should feel awkward about was the very real possibility that should the thought ever occur to Rin, she would without hesitation force the two of them to role-play it out. With the appropriate clothing, and lack of clothing.
Shirou felt his eyebrows slide into a small frown. It wasn't that Saber didn't look amazing in a suit, or that having Rin watch would spoil the mood, but rather the uncomfortable prospect of Shirou being forced to wear a wig.
Long hair really didn't suit him. At all.
XXX
Miya had agreed to hold the family get-together, since Musubi couldn't leave Shin Tokyo, and Takami honestly didn't have anywhere else to properly meet up.
She could also admit that she might be just a little bit curious about Takami's eldest son, having heard of the fire he was thought to have died in a great many years ago.
She didn't expect Yukari to arrive with a Sekirei of her own in tow, or for the number of acquaintances from Shirou's side who'd apparently decided to attend. Two of them had even managed to interrupt their busy schedules in order to travel halfway across the world for the sake of being introduced to Takami.
But nothing could've prepared her for 'Saber'.
Golden hair, sharp blue eyes, and projecting a sense of serenity that seemed more compatible with the samurai of old than with a young woman. The fact that it was obvious that she'd been trained with the sword at one point only made the image all that more bizarre.
Takami's attention however seemed entirely focused around trying to figure out exactly what their relationship was with her son – when she didn't actively try to ignore Yukari being overly affectionate with her new Sekirei.
The strangeness didn't stop there, since apparently Taiga spent most of her time glaring balefully at Rin and complaining about how the 'devil' had 'stolen Shirou'. Illyasviel seemed far more enthusiastic about seeing the red-clad girl, but also looked suspiciously smug about something.
From what Miya could gather, it was probably that nobody outside of Illyasviel – and the trio in question – knew that Shirou and his extra two guests were lovers.
Apparently, such relationships were frowned upon in this day and age.
XXX
Of course they'd figured out that something weird was going on.
Rin was a magus of the highest degree, Shirou could smell magic, and Saber was a legend made flesh. It'd taken the three of them virtually no time at all to figure out that there was something that was definitely 'off' about the three new people being introduced to them.
Still, they didn't seem like they were about to eat anyone's faces off, and it'd be kind of rude to go and accuse people – inhuman or not – of being somehow 'deceitful' in masquerading as normal humans. Especially considering how they had Saber on their side of things, and she was quite literally King Arthur manifested into the modern world through magic.
Rocks in glass houses, and all that.
Besides that, Musubi seemed innocently happy to meet new people, even if she was apparently rather unused to any variation of the concept of 'common sense'. Shiina seemed much more like a rational individual, but the slightly embarrassed but mostly smitten way he was eyeing Yukari meant that – unless whatever species of non-human that they were ate or killed their lover after or during the act of lovemaking – Shirou's recently-discovered relatives were perfectly safe.
Or at least, that neither of those two would be trying to kill them. Who knew how the other members of their race might react to their relationships.
Shirou also kind of got the feeling that Takami was sincerely entertaining the thought of grounding both of them for the rest of their natural lives, but that was neither here nor there.
As for the landlady, Miya. Well, she at the very least didn't seem hostile, even if there was a clear wariness in how her eyes would sometimes linger on Saber as she moved.
All in all, the meeting had been going perfectly fine, until Taiga had somehow gotten her hands on alcohol.
Needless to say, things quickly deteriorated from there.
XXX
Uzume returned to the inn from a long day with her Ashikabi, both happy to have been able to spend time with the girl, as she was disappointed in having to separate.
The hospital-thing was a definite thorn in their relationship's side, what with all of those silly rules such as the whole 'visiting hours' and such. Not to mention the security that could actually enforce said rules.
Keeping the late hour in mind, she'd expected a mostly quiet house, though from the lights shining through the windows, she would've guessed at the presence of Homura. That guy had some really weird schedules, sometimes. Though, perhaps it did make an awful lot of sense when one worked in a bar. Even if it was technically designated as a host club.
So, she'd opened the door, expecting maybe a silent nod from Homura as he stumbled around the kitchen, or a disapproving frown from Miya about being out late.
Instead, there was singing. And yelling. And a whole lot more people than usual.
She recognized Takami, nursing a cup of what was almost-certainly sake, and glaring silently at anyone and everyone. There was Minaka who seemed to be trying to fend off an overly-amorous – and oddly dazed-looking – Musubi, whilst at the same time avoiding touching anywhere inappropriate. And there was Miya, who seemed quite content in drinking her tea and pretending as if nothing at all was happening.
Considering that there was a strange woman with short hair whipping around a bottle of sake along with a wooden sword, and ranting loudly about 'devils' who were 'stealing things' and what might be random gibberish – or possibly references too blurred by her speech to actually register as words – Uzume had no choice but to feel slightly impressed with the landlady's ability to deny reality.
Then there was the dignified blonde who was also carefully sipping her tea, adjacent to the landlady, but also most definitely fighting down the blush of having another girl – this one with long black hair – quite literally draped over her. Interestingly enough, though the overly-affectionate woman was clearly drunk, Uzume didn't get the feeling that either of them were uncomfortable or even unused to the violation of personal space.
The long-suffering expression, mixed with the slight warmth in her eyes whenever her attention fell to the girl almost entirely in her lap, looked an awful lot like something Uzume could pick up in Chiho's expression.
Reasonably sure that neither of them were Sekirei – she couldn't remember all of the 108 of them, but they didn't look even remotely familiar – Uzume was left to wonder why an ordinary human couple would end up at Izumo Inn.
After those two, there was a girl with short black hair and a younger girl with long white hair, who were both seemingly shouting about being rivals at the top of their lungs, and commiserating about various things that didn't make a lot of sense at all to Uzume. Considering the white-haired boy – who actually did look a bit familiar, now that she thought about it – sitting next to them, and the chagrined expression on his face, she wasn't the only one who was feeling lost on their peculiar interaction.
Then there was a redhead whose hair had strands of white in it already, who was trying to calm down – or disarm, it was difficult to tell – the loudly ranting woman who was swinging around her wooden sword.
Basically, Uzume opened the door into chaos.
And she would've given a lot for a video-camera.
XXX
A/n: Written entirely around the idea of "Illya and Yukari meeting would be hilarious". It veered off into some kind of bizarre mix between Fate and UBW Good End. Not entirely sure how they managed that, but it's a happy Ending for everyone (except Shinji, but nobody really misses him so whatever).
Not sure how this fic would develop, might've gone for a Sekirei reacting to Saber or something, and have Rin get pissed off at them for encroaching on her harem. Mostly it would've been done entirely for shits and giggles.