As I stepped off the train platform in central Fuyuki City, the press of bodies momentarily distracted me from the depressing thoughts that had been circling around in my head for the last few hours. The slow train ride home gave me plenty of time to ponder what had happened the day before, and what I could do about it, but my available range of options had yet to get past 'ask Tohsaka' and I had no idea what kind of help I could get from her with only a description of my attackers and vague conjectures of their overall goal. This was looking more and more hopeless the more I thought about it, but I didn't have anything else to occupy my attention right now.

At least I was almost there. My foul mood kept me company for the half hour or so walk to Tohsaka's house, my attention clearly elsewhere as my feet took me through the familiar path. Before I even registered what I was doing I was standing in front of Tohsaka's mansion, and it took me a few seconds to compose myself before I knocked on the door. A few moments later the door opened, revealing Tohsaka in her school uniform, wearing the same polite expression she reserved for her school friends and people she didn't really know well.

"Emiya-kun, it's so nice to see you. Do come in, I've prepared everything."

The way she said 'prepared' clued me into the situation, though I wasn't sure what she was getting at. When I had informed the pragmatic mage about all the surveillance I'd be under she immediately set to work devising some counter-measures that would give us the ability to talk in times of an emergency, and the first things she made were a series of coded phrases that would allow us to pass along information without listeners understanding us. She just told me she had everything set up for a private conversation, though that didn't make sense because I hadn't told her anything about the attack at IS Academy yet.

She might have just set it up in case we needed it, though I got the distinct feeling that whatever Tohsaka wanted to talk about involved magic, and magic usually meant something bad was happening. I refrained from commenting as Tohsaka led me into one of the guest rooms, the long table inside already furnished with everything we'd need to confound the highly technical recording device strapped to my wrist; A blanket, a notebook, and two pens.

We both sat down at the table, Tohsaka's worried expression mirroring my own. Neither of us said anything for a minute, but finally Tohsaka collected herself and began. Without preamble she picked up the blanket and started wrapping it around my arm, winding the opaque cloth over my dormant IS again and again, shutting off any light that would reach the device. Even though Senken's recorders were all 3D holographic cameras, it needed light to function. With a blanket covering the entire thing it simply couldn't record any kind of video, effectively blinding anyone trying to see what was happening. The second part of our brilliant plan involved writing things down instead of saying them out loud, making the sound recorders useless as well.

When Tohsaka was satisfied with the now enormous blankety prison my arm was encased in she turned her attention to the notepad, biting her lip as she scribbled down one sentence and passed it to me.

'Ilya is going to die in three months.'

I stared at the paper for what must have been a solid minute, my brain failing to comprehend the simple message. My hand felt like it was made of lead as I wrote my response and pushed the notebook back.

'What?'

Tohsaka didn't look like she was enjoying this any more than I was, but she wrote what looked like a novel as I stared at her face. This wasn't a joke. The last time I had seen Tohsaka look like that we were discussing the Grail War, and I knew enough about her personality to realize she was completely serious about this. My sense of anxiety only grew as she kept writing, but eventually she passed the paper back to me and I could understand what was going on.

'You've been mostly gone for the past few months, so you probably haven't noticed, but Ilya's body and mind are deteriorating. As a homunculus her body and soul were tampered with to serve as a vessel for as the Grail and as a Master, but a long lifespan wasn't something her family cared about. They built her to withstand the immense burden of hosting the souls of the defeated Servants only as long as it was necessary for her to win the War- they expected her to win and then die, fulfilling her roles as both the Einzbern Master and as the vessel for the Holy Grail. Frankly, her body is disintegrating. No mortal body could hold that kind of power without breaking, and Ilya has about three months left before she completely dies.

The only thing that could save her now is a miracle like the Third Magic; also called Heaven's Feel, it was the only known way of restoring the dead to life with no negative consequences. But that's not something we can do easily. The entire Holy Grail War was the original ritual for completing Heaven's Feel, so you can see how complex and difficult it would be to cast something like that, let alone trying to create and complete something new in the small time frame we have. Ilya herself knows how to complete the spell and could probably teach me how to do it before she dies, but we simply don't have the resources to enact a ritual of enough complexity and power to make it work.

Ilya didn't want me to tell you this, since you'd only worry and couldn't really help us, but I don't think we'll be able to save her. I'm trying everything I can, but it just isn't enough. I just... I just wanted you to know, so you could do the right thing. Don't worry about me or Sakura for the next few months. If I can't save Ilya, at least you can make her happy before she dies. She just wants to spend time with her onii-chan, you know?'

I read through the whole thing twice, trying to force my brain to understand. There were a dozen things I wanted to ask, demand, or simply yell, but I settled on the most constructive thing I could with my head buzzing around like this.

'What do you need in order to cast the Third Magic?'

Tohsaka, being unable to adopt her traditional pose when lecturing me about magic, looked far less elegant than usual as she wrote down the answer and passed it back to me.

'There are four things we need to make it work. The first is knowledge of how to perform the Magic itself, but Ilya has that covered. The second thing we need is a ritual- something to give our raw power form and function so we can shape it into the Magic we want. This can be skipped if we have enough magical power to begin with, which might be necessary in our case because we simply don't have the time to make an entirely new ritual.

Next we need a vessel for Ilya's soul, but thankfully Ilya already has a doll of excellent craftsmanship that should work perfectly. The last thing we need is power itself, the necessary magical energy to pour into the ritual to complete it. That's the biggest problem right there, even more so than the lack of a ritual. We don't have anywhere near enough power right now.'

I read through her answer carefully, making sure to understand every last part of it. I couldn't afford to misunderstand something crucial when Ilya's life was on the line. After my third read-through of the entire conversation, I decided I grasped the situation enough to make the offer I had in mind.

'Tohsaka. The IS core attached to my arm is basically a jewel, right? Can you use the energy from it to power magic?'

She stared in shock at the paper after I passed it back to her, and hastily scribbled a response.

'Isn't that thing recording you? And besides, no matter how much energy it has it doesn't even come close to what we need, so that's not going to solve our problems.'

'Just try it. Don't do anything that could be seen or heard, but see if you can use it.'

I had good reason to think Tohsaka, who specialized in jewels, could use the jewel-like IS core even more effectively than the mages I had recently fought. If she could, I had a plan.

Tohsaka scowled when she read my latest note, but dutifully packed away the notebook and started undoing the blanket around my IS. When my dormant IS was finally uncovered she placed her right hand directly on the jewel and closed her eyes, feeling the sense of power emanating from it. Only a second later she took her hand away and bundled me back up, bringing out the notebook again to continue our conversation.

'Yes. I'm amazed at how compatible that thing is with magic, but it's still way less than what we need. If you could get me thirty-five or forty of them, fifty to be on the safe side, we could use those to entirely power the ritual, but isn't getting even one of those a big deal?'

'I wouldn't be able to get that many real cores, but I could Project enough of them.'

'Am I supposed to answer that seriously? Your Projections only last a few hours and you'd die far before you could make fifty in the time frame we need.'

'Um... actually, I can save Projected items for later use now. I kind of made Senken into my familiar and it can store things in a sub-dimension not bound by Gaia's rules, an action that allows me to pull them out at a later date with no deterioration. It's a long story, but my IS is giving me the prana I need to Project everything I'd need and I can store them indefinitely, so I could make that many cores.'

I was painfully aware that the only reason Tohsaka wasn't giving me an earful of abuse was because of our need for silence, but her glare promised eventual punishment for my actions. Still, it's a good thing everything happened this way, right? Otherwise we'd be in way more trouble trying to save Ilya.

'Again; aren't you being monitored all the time? How do you plan on doing this without your owners noticing?'

Ah. I knew I was forgetting something.

'I'll think of a way. When do I need to have them by? Will fifty be enough, or would more be better?'

Tohsaka bit her lip, mulling over the question in her head. 'Fifty should be fine, but honestly, I'm just guessing at this point. The amount of magic we need is something far outside of my area of expertise, and the Tohsaka family has never been in possession of a True Magic, so I'm basing all of my assumptions on how much energy the Heroic Spirits that originally powered the ritual possessed when we fought them. Fifty of these jewels should be enough, far more than necessary actually, but the more you can get the better chances we will have if my assumptions are wrong.

I'd like to get started as soon as possible, but I still need to learn how to perform the Magic itself from Ilya. We're both genius mages, though, so it shouldn't take too long. We'll set the ritual date at two months from today, which should give us enough time to prepare without endangering Ilya's life by stalling too much.'

So in other words Ilya can be saved if I Project at least fifty copies of Senken's core in two months without the Academy staff noticing, without Tabane interfering, without anyone else noticing me break the most important part of the Alaska Treaty, and all while trying to keep up appearances at school.

'Two months. I'm counting on you, Tohsaka.'

Tohsaka gave me a rather chilly look.

'So about this turned your IS into a familiar thing.'

Oh boy. Well, this was the reason I came here in the first place, right? I spent the next few minutes detailing all of the things that had happened at the Academy, from Senken's connection to my magic circuits all the way up to the sudden attack of the unknown mages, trying to include every detail that Tohsaka might find important. When I was done, she studied what I wrote with her usual intensity.

'It's not really as bad as you think, Emiya-kun. Transferring magic to receptacles like jewels isn't nearly as easy or simple as I make it look, and very few established families outside of the Tohsaka can do it on the level I can. Many can't do it at all. The cost of making mystic codes capable of holding large amounts of prana keeps most families from experimenting with it in the first place, so not many people have the knowledge to create them either. It's always possible the particular mages you fought have that knowledge, but then why didn't they use it in the fight with you? They're most likely just using the immense natural capacity of the IS cores directly, like when that mage teleported the unmanned IS in.'

Tohsaka's explanation, while reasonable, didn't quite make sense. Those mages were willing to make enemies of the whole world in order to steal those IS cores, so they had to be planning something with them. Of course, even if those mages didn't have the ability to store the excess magic, each and every core came packed full of more magic than any mage possessed naturally and refilled themselves in only a few hours, so it was possible what they intended to do didn't require any storage at all if they stole enough cores in the first place.

'Tohsaka. Do you know of any ritual that would require a few dozen of these cores that would be worth that kind of risk?'

'I don't know. It depends on what their goal is and what kind of knowledge they have, something I have no way of knowing. But there are a few hundred of these cores, right? With enough of them they could do some really scary stuff. We won't know what they want until they make a move.'

That was what worried me. Just like when I was in the Grail War, I couldn't find the enemy Masters that were targeting innocent people on my own. I'd have to wait for them to make a move noticeable enough for me to react in time and confront them in the act. I was slightly consoled by the fact that most IS cores were held individually and with large amounts of security, so the chances of them trying anything so soon after their failure at the Academy were pretty slim.

'So you can't find them?'

'They're not a part of the Association, if what you said was true, and you didn't bother getting me any of the blood they left behind either. I can't find them any more than you can.'

It looked like I'd just have to wait until they revealed themselves before acting.

"It's getting late, Emiya-kun. Should we head back to your place? I'm sure Ilya, Fujimura-sensei and Sakura are all waiting for you," Tohsaka said, breaking the silence we were under.

"You're right."

It looked like our strategy meeting was over, and even though I still didn't have a plan to stop those rogue mages it wouldn't do me any more good talking about them. I'd just have to wait until I had more information about them. In the meantime I had to find a way to Project and store fifty very illegal copies of an IS core without the people watching me knowing about it, something I had no idea how to accomplish. I guess it was about time to take Tabane up on her offer.

I excused myself from Tohsaka and headed into another room, on the off chance that Tohsaka wasn't already implicated in my sordid reputation at school.

"Call Tabane."

"Hi hi Shi~chan, what took you so long? I wanted to talk to you!"

Tabane's energetic and slightly childish voice erupted from Senken's speakers as soon as I called her, her tone reminding me more of Ilya than a woman who was supposedly my senior. Still, despite all her strange mannerisms this woman was quite possibly the only person who could help me out right now, so I tried to treat her with as much professional respect as I could manage.

"Good evening, Shinonono-san. I'm sorry for not calling earlier, but-"

"Never mind that boring stuff! You called because you want something, right? Ri~ght? What could you possibly want from the great genius Tabane-sama?"

Her interruption caught me off guard, but I quickly recovered myself. "I was actually hoping you could do me a favor. A couple of favors, actually."

"Of course! What do you want, Shi-chan?"

"First, we need to talk in a way that the sound and video recorders on Senken can't record. Can you do that?"

"Absolutely! Just give me a minute here~."

A few seconds later a message popped up from Senken. Recording devices offline. Not one to waste an opportunity I immediately used Structural Analysis on Senken, finding out exactly what had changed from when the devices were on to when they were off. Like I had thought, the recording equipment was separate from the actual workings of the IS, so while I couldn't have affected them before I now had working knowledge of how to turn the damn things off. Assuming the equipment wasn't changed or modified at all after this conversation.

"Done! So what did you want to talk about, Shi-chan?"

There wasn't any way around this- I absolutely had to tell Tabane what I was about to do or she could ruin everything. She had already taken control of my machine once, after all, and there was nothing stopping her from doing it again. She could easily take out all the stored cores I was going to put into Senken, or alert the Academy and get me thrown into jail, or pursue any number of equally terrible actions. I had to make sure she wouldn't be fighting me on this.

"In order to save someone close to me I am going to create and store a lot of IS cores in Senken's subspace. Please, let me do this. I won't-"

"Hahahaha, silly Shi-chan! No one can create cores except for me!" Tabane's giggling interrupted my request, her obvious disbelief of my declaration evident in her amused tone. Well, that was fine too.

"Then, in the improbable event that some core-like objects were stored in Senken's database, will you promise me not to interfere with them? You are the only person I can't lock out of Senken's systems, so I need your word that you will not tell anyone about this or take the cores out of my subspace. This is more important to me than my own life. Please."

"Mmm~ Shi-chan is so serious. Fine, fine, I promise. But this is a favor, right? So now you owe me one! I'll be sure to collect it~" and with that final ominous promise, the great genius Tabane ended our conversation. Unsurprisingly all of Senken's recording devices came back online a moment later, letting me know that Tabane was done talking with me. What was up with that? She said she waited for me to call but abruptly ended our talk by herself without even asking any questions.

I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. I didn't know if I could trust Tabane or not, but at this stage I had little choice in the matter. The only thing I could do was forge ahead with the plan to save Ilya and hope everything worked out. I knew how to turn the recording devices in Senken off now, and no one except me and Tabane could access the cores after they were stored in my sub-space, so I could effectively disguise the cores as other objects and store them in secret.

That was the theory, anyway. Time to test it out.

Trace, on.

I focused my attention on Senken, feeling the flow of prana from my circuits to the machine. It was part of me now- with a thought I switched the recording devices off, and a thorough Structural Analysis revealed that everything worked the way I hoped it would. Next I focused on my Projection, bringing each and every tiny detail of Senken's core to the front of my mind, perfectly recalling and replicating the shape, history, forging, and all other aspects of the powerful little jewel. I could feel myself draining energy from my machine's original core to power my magic, giving shape to the image in my mind. A second later I was holding a perfect copy of Senken's core in my hand.

I was exhausted. A quick check revealed that I had used only a tiny fraction of Senken's actual power reserve, but that was way more prana than I should be channeling through my magic circuits anyway. There was no need to rush creating the rest of the cores, since I needed to make far more than I could in one sitting anyway, so I counted this experiment as a success and prepared to join back up with Tohsaka. After storing the newly created jewel as a generic sword in Senken's database and turning the surveillance back on, I headed back towards the living room where the genius mage was waiting for me.

*break

Monday morning rolled around without anything else exciting happening, something for which I was grateful. I had enough on my plate already, trying to save Ilya and stop a group of crazy mages from stealing IS cores to do who knows what with them. Still, some things need to be done, so I spent the first half hour after I woke up training my body like I did every day to prepare myself for whatever life decided to throw at me.

"Do you work out every morning?" Charles asked, breaking my concentration.

I was just about done anyway, so I stopped my current set and looked up at the young man. It was obvious that he had just woken up, since he was still in his bed with the covers on, but he had a slight flush for some reason.

"Yeah, you never know when you'll need to be at your best. I'm not waking you, am I?"

The young blonde shook his head, a slight smile creeping along his lips.

"No, I'm an early riser too. I'm not nearly as diligent as you are, though."

Something seemed... a little off about Charles today. Come to think of it, I hadn't seen him since the incident in the workshop. He should be completely recovered at this point, but then again I wasn't exactly a genius with magecraft, so I could be wrong about how powerful that Bounded Field had been.

"How are you feeling? Are you still faint from..." I almost said "the attack," but realized that I actually didn't know what official explanation was yet. I left the Academy right after my interrogation was over, so I had no idea what lie they'd decided on, assuming they weren't telling people the truth.

Charles gave me another half-smile. "No, I'm fine, Emiya-senpai. Would you like to use the shower first? We still have some time before everyone comes over."

That was it! There was something wrong with his smile. Normally I could feel a sense of calmness and purity of spirit coming from his smile, but right now I couldn't feel anything it all. It was like he stretched his lips into the form of the thing without any of the feeling. He must have been more affected by the life-stealing spell he was under than I had thought, if it could sap his liveliness to this degree.

"Ah, yeah. Thanks. Try to cheer up, okay? I'm here if you need anything."

A strange expression flashed across his face, and if anything the young man looked even more tired than before.

"Thank you, Emiya-senpai."

I was more than a little worried for the gentle boy, but there wasn't much else I could offer him. I'd just have to make sure my breakfast was stuffed full of nutrition and energy so he'd get some of his strength back.

After I showered Charles took his turn, keeping his eyes averted from my bare chest like he usually did. It was only a few minutes of work to put on a clean uniform and lay out all of this morning's ingredients, but after I started cooking I lost all sense of time. Laura, Houki, Huang and Cecilia all let themselves in, the door remaining unlocked after our showers, and I absent-mindedly called out greetings to everyone as they made themselves comfortable at our table. Surprisingly, I noticed that the atmosphere was kind of tense even in my cooking-induced haze, but again I put that down to the incident in the workshop that left a few dozen of their classmates in the nurse's office for a couple days.

I brought the food out to everyone, and after we sat down all the girls, minus Laura, looked at me expectantly.

"Um... how were your weekends?"

"Who cares? Who are you going to partner with for the tournament this weekend?" Huang yelled, being the first to answer. I looked blankly at her, not comprehending her meaning.

"Shirou-san, weren't you going to have your answer today? It's bad manners to break a promise with a lady."

Tournament? Oh yeah, there was supposed to be a big inter-class partner tournament this Saturday, and the three girls all currently glaring at me wanted to be on my team. They had even gone as far as preparing elaborate bribes for me, and while I was certainly the strongest first year pilot I really had to question their desire to win. Though as Representative Cadets they may well have to win, or at least out up a good showing, to keep their titles after this internationally broadcasted event so I could understand where they were coming from, even if I didn't really approve of their methods.

Still, they were all my friends. I probably should have thought about this beforehand.

"What are you second-raters talking about? I have already received orders from the Instructor to partner with Emiya during the tournament," Laura interrupted, apparently oblivious to the delicate social situation I was currently trapped in.

"What? No way! Emiya-san already agreed it would be one of the three of us!" Huang countered.

Actually, I never agreed to that at all. I had the feeling no one would pay attention if I voiced that thought out loud, so I didn't.

"Hmph. Your objections are meaningless. The outcome has already been decided," the German girl stated, turning to me. "You will be my partner in the tournament. At least you won't drag me down like the rest of the civilians here."

With her declaration over she returned to the food, eating with the vigor of someone used to wolfing down meals in a hurry. Why did Chifuyu-nee order her to partner with me? It's not like she could observe me better than the cameras in the arena, and there wasn't any other... hold on. What if Chifuyu-nee was just doing this to help Laura? Certainly the foreign girl didn't have any intentions of partnering with anyone herself, and if I'm the only person whose piloting skills she respected in the whole first year class then I was the only person she'd actually work with. Sometimes I forgot that Chifuyu-nee was actually a very responsible woman who cared for the welfare of her students.

"I understand. Let's do our best, Laura."

The three other girls immediately let out a cry of protest, but Charles cut in before they could really start lecturing me.

"Well, it can't be helped, right? It's an order from Orimura-sensei. And even if we can't be Emiya-san's partner we can at least show him how much we've improved as pilots, right?" the boy said, coming to my rescue. I didn't even need to hear him finish; whenever the charming young man spoke up I was instantly saved from whatever situation I found myself in. He was like a social life-jacket. What did I ever do without him?

"That's true... and it's not like Bodewig-san has any interest in Shirou-san herself, so none of us actually lost," Cecilia commented. That was true- Laura only partnered with me due to orders, not because she wanted to personally, which meant that future situations like this wouldn't end up with her monopolizing my skill. The last bits of tension drained from the table as everyone seemed to be satisfied by the current situation. I made a mental note to repay Charles for this in the future.

"So, who is everyone going to team up with now? There are four of us here, and none of us have partners..." Charles began, looking around the table.

"Rin and I decided we'd pair up if things didn't work out," Houki stated, nodding at the diminutive girl across from her. Those two had gotten pretty close lately, mostly bonding over good food. Both of them liked to cook, though not as much as I did.

"I'd be honored if you would be my partner, Alcott-san," Charles said, taking the social clue.

"I'd be delighted, Dunois-san," she replied. The two high-class pilots got along pretty well themselves, though I wasn't sure if that was just their impeccable manners or if they actually liked each other. In any case it seemed everything had been decided, so we all turned our collective attention back to the food I had cooked and began eating.

Even with the normal chatter during our meal, a little thought kept niggling in the back of my brain. 58 days, 48 more cores before the ritual to save Ilya.

*chapter end

The whole "Ilya is dying" thing is actually canon, by the way. Her stated lifetime is about a year after the events of Fate/Stay Night, so six months after F/SN ends is the start of this story, plus two and a half months passing in the story means she's got roughly three months left before her homunculus body fails. I'm sorry for introducing the solution for this before the problem, but I made that particular plot before remembering about Ilya and decided that Shirou would obviously save her if he had the ability, so it became like this.

Also, I'm aware that the original power of the Grail comes from a loophole where a path to Akasha opens up when the souls of defeated heroes return the the Throne, but that only matters for the wish-granting part of the Grail. Ilya is shown to be able to cast the Third Magic without the Grail- in a bad end where she sticks Shirou's soul into a doll and again in the Heaven's Feel route when she sacrifices herself to save him from dying, without actually completing the Holy Grail ritual. So it's obvious that she knows how to cast the magic, she just must not have enough power to do so normally. Hence the traditional Einzebern solution to the problem- throw enough magical power at it until it stops being a problem.

Edit- for some reason the symbols I used to show writing didn't show up, so I changed them to single quotes. Sorry about the confusion, hopefully it's much more readable now.