Rin paced back and forth in her room, muttering angrily to herself. That insufferable girl who had burst into the inn and latched onto Shirou had been shepherded off to another room by the landlady, after the purple haired woman interfered before her and Saber could make the younger girl pay for her insolence. Rin wasn't entirely sure how Miya did it, but she had enough sense to know that she shouldn't mess with an alien creature that could make such a horrifying aura of malice at will. Sure, Saber could take her (and she pretty much had earlier that day), but unfortunately Saber respected the landlady's domain over her inn, and had dragged Rin back to their room to cool down at her request. Consider that in the half hour since she had been confined to the room she had gone down from loudly ranting to just muttering, it was something of a work in progress.

"Are you feeling less confrontational, Rin?" Saber asked from her position on the futon where she had been keeping a watchful eye on the wrathful magus.

"Of course not!" Rin replied. "Some weird girl shows up out of nowhere and starts calling us horrible people because she doesn't have a Root be damned idea what she's talking about? Of course I still feel like putting that idiotic whelp in her place! And who was she anyway?"

"I believe it was mentioned that she is Shirou's biological sister at some point."

Rin gave a grunt as she looked at her Servant. "You seem entirely too calm about this. Do you really think that just because she's related to Shirou we should just let her say whatever she wants about us?"

"Considering her behavior around Shirou, it's safe to say that she cares for him and likely decided to lash out at a perceived slight on his behalf, if incorrectly. As such, a little lenience is in order." Saber said. Her eyes then narrowed. "However, I do not think we should be entirely forgiving on this matter. When the appropriate time comes I will… correct the young girl's misconceptions and teach her not to jump to conclusion so quickly."

Rin felt a small amount of satisfaction at that. Saber was always one to favor politeness and decorum in most social situation, and it sometime made Rin forget that it didn't mean the former king was willing to let insults slide. "Well, if that's the case, I suppose I can hold off on disciplining the girl for a while longer. So, let's go. I still want to ask Miya a few things about the Sekirei."

"Wait." Saber said, stopping Rin as she was about to leave. "First I would like to know what you were planning on saying to Shirou."

Rin stiffened slightly and looked off to the side. "I… didn't have anything planned really. I was just going to start punching him and see how thing things went from there" She said. In truth, the two of them hadn't talked about the red head since he had told them what he had done last night. They had spent the rest of the night crying in each other's arms, and didn't speak at all the next day until Miya had roused them out of their depression with a challenge for the blonde swordswoman. It still hurt Rin to even think about the whole situation.

Saber gave a small chuckle at Rin's remark before her face fell again. "Rin," she said in a small, weak voice that seemed unnatural for the normally charismatic woman, "What are we going to do?"

Rin stared helplessly at Saber, wishing she had the answer to that question. Relationships weren't exactly something she was familiar with, outside the one she had with Shirou and Saber. Hell, before the Grail War, she never even really had friends, let alone lovers. For all of her genius, she had no idea what to do the pain, the utter sense of betrayal she felt. For what little she had thought about it, Rin supposed could understand why Shirou did what he did, but she still felt it was a terrible reason. She moved to the other woman, sitting down next to her and wrapping her arm around her. "I don't know. I just… don't know. I don't suppose your code as a knight has anything to say on the matter, does it?"

Saber's look fell even more. "The last time I followed my code when it came to relationships, I tried to have Guinevere burned at the stake." She said bitterly. "That mistake cost me my life and my kingdom."

"Uh…" Rin said uncomfortably, having forgotten how Saber's last marriage ended. "So, I guess we can rule out lighting him on fire then."

"There are a number of reasons I would not like to try that again, yes."

Rin was silent for a few moments, until she finally managed to voice that thought that had been eating at her since last night. "Saber…" She began slowly, "I don't know if I can forgive him."

Saber didn't respond, instead looking at the ground and clenching her fists. Rin knew the woman well enough that while Saber didn't want to admit it, the thought had crossed her mind too.

Before either of them could say anything else, there was a knock on the doorframe. "Excuse me, I'd like to talk to you if that's alright." It was Shirou's voice.

The two women looked at each other hesitantly before Saber said "Shirou… I'm not sure if now is the best time."

There was a pause before the voice on the other side of the door continued. "Oh, well in that case, would you like to talk to my incredibly handsome extra-dimensional counterpart? I heard that guy is pretty awesome."

Rin and Saber blinked in confusion for a few moments at Shirou's rather strange statement before Rin narrowed her eyes. "Wait, you're not Shirou are you?"

The door slid open to reveal the man who looked identical Shirou save a few white strands peppered throughout his hair, an eyebrow raised at Rin's question. "Of course I'm Shirou, just not the one you know." He looked at the two women huddled close on the futon with a wary look. "I'm sorry, if this is a bad time…"

"No, no, it's fine." Rin quickly said as she got to her feet. She really didn't want to continue the line of thought that she and Saber were discussing, and was glad to have any kind of distraction from it. "What do want, Shir-" She cut herself off before she confused him with Shirou again, but then awkwardly realized that it was also the name of the man standing in front of her, so there was no need to do so.

Seeing Rin's plight, the man gave a smile and said "Just call me Troper, it keeps things from getting confusing. As for why I'm here, I was made to understand that you wanted to talk to me, so I figured now would be a good time while we wait for Shirou to wake up."

"Wait, why is it that you have recovered so much faster than Shirou?" Saber asked with a frown.

"I've used that trope plenty of times. I'm much more used to its effects than he is, so I can shake it off faster." He said.

"Trope? You mean spell, right?" Rin asked. "For that matter, why do you call yourself Troper?"

Troper hesitated for a moment. "Getting into all the details about it would make for a very long explanation, but the short version is this: Rather than having the Origin and Element of Sword like your Shirou, I have the Origin and Element of Trope. It is the basis of all of my magecaft, so for me spells and tropes are the same thing. The name Troper is something of an inside joke based on a website I created back in my dimension. It actually exists in this one too, but I won't show it to you now as we don't have half a day to kill."

Rin didn't really understand what he was talking about, and it wasn't just because she didn't know what a website was. "I don't understand. A trope is basically just a phrase that means something else. How can it be your Origin?"

Troper lifted up his right hand, which the two women now saw held a thin, rectangular piece of plastic. "I thought you might be confused, so I brought this. Matsu recorded the fight between me and Shirou as well, so watching it should give you a better understanding of what I can do."

Rin looked at the object in his hand dubiously. "What kind of remote control is that? For one thing it's too large, for another it doesn't have any buttons, and we don't have a TV in here. How is that supposed to let us watch anything?"

Troper blinked a few times in surprise before pinching the bridge of his nose, muttering something along the line of "Well, at least your better than most magi…" before tapping one side of the device several times and handing it to Rin. "Here. Just touch the screen to start the video."

To the small magus's surprise, the side that was once black was now a picture of a clearing, with both Shirou and his double standing in the middle of it. When she hesitantly poked at the image, she almost dropped it in surprise when it began to move and sound started to emit for the device. "What? They've made a TV you can hold in your hand?" She said incredulously, turning it over in her hands to examine how thin it was.

"Actually, that's a computer, but that's not important right now." Troper remarked, gesturing for her to return her gaze to the video.

Rin obliged, with Saber looking over her shoulder. They turned their attention to it just in time to see Shirou Trace his traditional swords and flourish them slightly. Troper's response was to pull out a gun and shoot him!

"Hey!" Both Rin and Saber said angrily to the man standing next to them.

Troper rolled his eyes at this. "Has no one in this dimension seen Raiders of the Lost Ark? Besides, I've never really understood why other magi find using guns to be beneath them."

They glared at him for a moment longer before their eyes returned to the screen, the battle between the two Shirous underway. True enough, Troper favored the use of ballistic weaponry, shooting and dancing away from Shirou. The odd thing was that he would occasionally say some cryptic phrases and then something strange would happen to accompany it. Rin figured that it must be how he casts spells, although she was having a hard time pinning down the exact effects, or making sense of his arias for that matter. Considering his speed and the fact that he seemed to be creating objects, his powers were at least somewhat like Shirou's, though Rin felt a nagging sensation that he was missing something important.

Her confusion grew when later in the video, after saying a slightly longer if disjointed aria, the Troper in the video suddenly started to glow and shoot small blasts of light at Shirou. The duel ended when Shirou somehow reflected one of the larger blasts, which in turn was intercepted by an identical attack, causing a rather impressive explosion.

The two women blinked a few times before Rin turned to Troper and said "How does that-"

"Wait." He interrupted. "It's not quiet done."

The two turned back to the screen just in time to see Troper shoot Shirou again. "Hey!"

Troper gave a chuckle. "No one ever expects the chekhov's gun. Now, what were you saying?"

In a somewhat exasperated tone, Rin said "How does that explain anything about your magic? What exactly is it that you can do?"

A small frown crossed his face as he thought for a moment. "Do you remember what I said early in the fight, just before the slides of my gun clicked back into place?"

"Bottomless magazines?" Saber asked "I don't understand. What did that mean?"

"Have you ever watched a movie where the hero can fire his gun endlessly and never seems to run out of bullets even though he should?" The two women nodded at this, having become more familiar with the form of entertainment ever since they met Shirou. "It's basically that."

It suddenly came together in Rin's head. "Bottomless magazines is a trope for the concept of never running out of ammo. You used it as a spell to keep your guns loaded…" she thought back to everything else he had said during the fight, realizing that she could make some sense of what happen if see looked at it through that particular lens of thought.

"In truth, Trope is simply how I define my Origin." Troper said. "My abilities are based on elements in and of fiction, and tropes are an easy way of paraphrasing things. It would be more accurate to say that my Origin is 'concepts that have been used in fiction'. Of course, since basically everything that humanity has ever thought of has been put in fiction at some point, we could probably drop most of that description and simple say 'concepts'."

Rin frowned at this. "That's… incredibly broad an vague actually. It still doesn't tell me what you can do, because it implies that you can do anything you can think of!"

Troper rubbed the back of his head in a motion that the two women found very familiar. "In practice, my abilities are limited by a number of things: how much power I have, how much experience I have with a particular trope, the limits of what I can learn in a human lifetime, the aspects of my own personality, not to mention a few things I'm just learning about how my Reality Marble fundamentally works. But theoretically, yes. I have the potential to do pretty much anything."

Rin's mind boggled at possibilities of this, at just what it would mean to be able to turn any thought you had into reality. However, Saber was wondering something else. "So, what are you trying to do?" the Servant asked.

Troper gave a start, clearing not expecting the question. His wide eyes looked at Saber for a moment before he closed them and gave a sigh. "It's a… personal matter. To put it simply, Rin and I apprenticed ourselves to Zelretch so that we could find something we had lost."

Rin's remembered the conversation they had with Shirou last night at the dinner table, something he had said suddenly bringing itself to the forefront of her mind. "You mean your Saber?" She blurted out without thinking.

His head snapped to her, his eyes narrowing this time. "Now, why would you say that?" he said in a tone that indicated that she should be careful of what she said next.

Taken aback by the sudden and somewhat threatening demeanor of the man, Rin stuttered "I-I'm sorry! I don't know why I said that! Shirou had just told us that you lost your Saber, and I just connected what the two of you said, even though that's probably not the case…" She trailed off, not sure what else to say on the topic that she didn't have the knowledge (or right) to talk about.

After a few more moments of silence, the tension left Troper's body and he gave another sigh. "Actually, it is the case." He said quietly as he looked off to the side.

The two women looked at him in surprise, but he said nothing else. After a minute of silence, Saber finally asked "What happened?"

Troper's gaze turned to her, his expression unreadable as he looked at the face of the woman he was trying to find. "It long story. And not one I one I particularly care to tell."

"Is what happened to her really that complicated?" Rin asked.

"No, what happen was quite simple. It's what I doing about it that's complicated." Troper shifted uncomfortably. "Look, it's rather painful for me to remember, so I don't want to talk about it."

The three of them stood there awkwardly for a few moments, unsure of how to proceed from there. "Perhaps we should continue this talk later?" Rin offered hesitantly. She still had a multitude of questions of the man, but given how things were at the moment, she would probably have a better chance of getting them answered when he wasn't so melancholy.

Troper gave a nod. "That's… probably for the best." He said. "I'll see you at dinner. I can answer any other questions you have for me then." He walked towards the door, but Saber's voice stopped him as he reached the doorway.

"You will find her." She said. His body turned ever so slightly back towards her, and she continued. "If you believe and keep searching, I know you will find her. And if she's anything like me, she will wait for you."

There was a long moment of silence. Rin thought he was going to leave, but before she could say anything, she heard Troper say "They made her choose." His voice was barely above a whisper. "They made her give up the life she deserved so she could save us." He turned fully to the Saber, a sad smile on his face. "I hope that you never have let go of the ones you love like she did."

With that, the man left.