Rin flopped down onto her bed. It had been a long day and she was tired.
She'd assisted Shirou with his work until they ran out of raw materials, by which time he had created 135 swords, 600 arrows, 30 bows, 25 spears, 15 axes, 10 spiked gauntlets, 10 shields, 3 whips, and 60 pieces of armor.
Like with his enhancement skills, the creation of armor seemed more costly than the creation of weaponry, despite their creation being no more complex. Meanwhile, arrows could be created in bulk, shaving time and MP.
She supposed it being cheaper to work with weapons than armor had something to do with his 'Sword' Job being more about weapons than armor. Like the difference between a Bladesmith and an Armorer.
"What a day." Ayako said, plopping down on the bed beside Rin's.
There were four rooms and five people, so naturally, someone had to share. Shirou and Issei volunteered, but Ayako insisted that she and Rin share a room. It wasn't like Rin minded, but for Ayako to insist on it…
"How are you holding up?" Rin asked her only friend. The only person too stubborn to leave her alone when they were in school.
While Rin had had plenty of 'admirers' she hadn't had any friends, mostly because she didn't want to make time for them. She even used her magecraft to make people leave her alone. But Ayako had just enough natural resistances to muscle through and had always insisted on playdates and talking.
In the beginning, Rin had resisted, but eventually she just gave up and figured that a single distraction wouldn't hurt.
"...I'm alright." Ayako said, grabbing a pillow and holding it against her chest, curling up into a ball around it. "I'm just a little worried about how my family is taking it. My death couldn't have been easy on them."
"I'm sure they will bounce back. In the end, you can't let yourself be sad forever." Rin said, hoping this was the right thing to say.
"I can't tell if I want them to forget about me and be happy or not. The thought of them being happy without me hurts just as bad as the thought of them sad." Ayako said, tears forming in her eyes. "I want them to be happy. I really do. But to be forgotten…"
Rin went over and started to pat the girl on the back.
"I never thought I would envy you for not having anything to connect you to the world." Ayako said to Rin, before wiping her eyes. "Sorry. That was a horrible thing to say. I'm just…"
"It's fine." Rin said with a shrug. She'd gotten over her parents' deaths a long time ago.
"Do you think we will run into them here? Your parents?" Ayako asked.
"...I honestly hope not." Rin said, looking up at the ceiling. "Seeing my mother again would be uncomfortable. She basically abandoned me when she killed herself. As for my father… Before he died, he did something so unforgivable that if he appeared in front of me right now, I would kill him myself. That's what my mother should have done, instead of taking her own life."
Did Rin have abandonment issues? No. …Well, maybe a little. But her issues with her parents didn't revolve around them abandoning her. It was the other person they abandoned that ignited a spark of hate within her heart. A spark that had never gone out, even after an entire decade had passed.
"...Do you want to talk about it?" Ayako said, looking up at her.
"Honestly, no. I'd rather just forget about them and continue on with my life. After what they did, they don't deserve to be remembered." Rin said with a huff. "You are lucky to have memories of family that aren't tainted by betrayal and hurt."
"I suppose so." Ayako said, looking up at the ceiling. "I don't know if I should feel guilty that I feel better now."
Rin snorted, taking a pillow and slapping her with it. "Well, we are all in the same boat now. You, me, Madoka and the two idiots."
"Hey, don't call them idiots." Ayako laughed. "And if memory serves, you have a crush on one of those two idiots."
"That… that was years ago." Rin stammered, cursing herself for every telling Ayako about that.
It had been their first year in high school when Rin had seen Shirou's stubborn refusal to accept his own physical limits, trying to push himself harder and harder on the field. It was something that had gotten her attention, something which Ayako had interpreted as Rin having a crush on him.
"Did it feel good, having him call you by your first name for the first time?" Ayako teased, getting herself another smack from Rin's pillow.
"Shut up. Or do you want me to start teasing you about your crush on Kuzuki-sensei." Rin snapped back.
"What is wrong with liking older men!?" Ayako shouted in defiance.
Fine, so it was true, Rin had had a crush on Emiya Shirou, however she had never acted on it for two important reasons.
First, she was a magus. So nothing good would ever come of it. She couldn't share her life with him, she couldn't tell him about the existence of magecraft. For the sake of magical power, she could only ever marry and have children with another magus, a powerful one. Not to mention she spent all of her spare time researching. She didn't have time for dating.
The second reason was because of something she found out later, after a few years went by and her once little sister joined their school. Sakura was in love with Shirou. Not just a crush, but really in love. It was so obvious that Rin couldn't see how Shirou didn't notice himself. So Rin gave up on him. She gave up because she didn't want to steal anything from Sakura. She didn't want to give her little sister any more reason to hate her.
…But were either of those reasons valid anymore?
Who cares if she is a magus in a world so full of magical things. And they were in a different world now. Sakura wasn't here.
Everything was perfect. She was now in a party with Shirou and he was dependent on her for magical energy, which was forming a bond between them. The two of them could become really close. She could still feel the heat of his body on her fingers from when she was supplying him with MP.
Ayako watched as Rin's face started to turn red.
Death certainly had its benefits.
Shirou's eyes snapped open as his biological clock told him that it was time for him to train.
Despite having gone through the effort of creating about 300 different pieces of weaponry and armor the night before, he didn't feel particularly tired. Perhaps a result of his 'Ironwill I'.
But as he made to raise himself from his bed, he noticed something grabbing onto him.
He looked down to see Madoka huddled up against him underneath his blankets, her hands grabbing onto his shirt. Her face was calm, but she didn't seem to want to let go.
Shirou sighed softly as he looked down at the girl, patting her head.
She was only 12 years old, but had gone through a very horrible experience, not only dying, but finding herself alone in an unfamiliar place and having to struggle to survive while basically homeless for an entire year.
Shirou was the first familiar face that she had seen in a long time, and so she had snuck into his room at night seeking comfort, not caring about the fact that he was almost an adult man and she a little girl.
He couldn't blame her.
So he gently untangled himself from her grip and left her to sleep in his bed as he went to start his day.
The clock on his ID told him it was 4:00 am on the dot. He had about two and a half hours before he would need to be heading out to grab Theresa for the day's work, but in the meantime, he could do some training.
Stretches, pushups, situps, squats, the normal things for a warm up came first, before he picked up a large metal sword and started to practice swinging it.
He swung it and swung it until his arms screamed in protest. Then he kept swinging it anyway. He ignored his muscles protests. He ignored the sweat pouring down his body. At one point, the weapon fell from his grasp to the floor, but he just bent down to pick it up and continued again.
He had a Manufacturing Job. This meant he wouldn't get stronger just from leveling up. If he wanted to be able to help anyone, he would need to work for it. And he would do more than help. He would save everyone.
Shirou was too wrapped up in his workout to notice that his dropping his sword had caused a bit of noise, waking up Tohsaka Rin.
Having not quite expended all of her magic energy the night before, she wasn't as tired as she was normally in the morning, just a bit groggy. But when she cracked open the door to her room and peaked out at Shirou doing his training, she woke herself up in order to watch him.
She had been informed by the others that Shirou's Manufacturing Job would mean he was at a disadvantage when it came to combat, with the gap growing larger as they leveled, but she had understood even then that this wouldn't stop him.
This was what she had admired in him. His stubborn refusal to just accept that he couldn't do something.
She watched as he continued to push himself even as his body sweated buckets and his breathing became heavier and heavier. His white undershirt that he had been sleeping in had become clingy and slightly transparent from all of the moisture, and Rin could see his six pack through the cloth.
She watched until Shirou's body gave out, and he collapsed, breathing heavily. She had been watching him for 10 minutes by that point, and he had been going at it since long before then.
His determination was incredible.
Rin wondered if she should go out and offer to help him recover with her Skills, but before she did Shirou started to do something else.
He sat down, with his legs crossed and the sword in his lap and mumbled something just loud enough for Rin to hear. "Trace. On."
Having pushed his body as far as it would go, Shirou had moved on to practicing his magecraft.
His already aching body screamed as it felt like his spine was being lit on fire from the mana being filtered through it, but Shirou pushed through the pain and directed the energy into the sword on his lap, analyzing it. He determined its make up, its structure, its history. Every single scratch and imperfection it had, he knew them inside and out. Then, he held out his hand in front of him, and did his best to project a copy of the weapon.
It surprised him how much easier that was compared to normal, holding it all in his mind and shaping the magic energy into the blade.
It barely took more than a moment, and Shirou had a perfect copy of the weapon in front of him. "That went well." He mumbled to himself, checking the weapon for anything out of the ordinary. Until he heard a voice behind him.
"That wasn't one of your Skills, was it?" Shirou jumped and turned his head in order to see Rin standing there, looking down at him with her arms crossed, an expected look on her face.
"Sorry. Did I wake you up?" Shirou asked her, hoping to avoid the subject of what he had just been doing.
"You're a magus." Rin said, turning Shirou's nervous avoidance into complete shock.
"How do you…"
"You shouldn't practice so close to other people. You could get into a lot of trouble if you got caught… or that would be how things worked in our old world. I guess in this one you can just claim it is part of your 'Job'." Rin said, walking closer and looking down at his work. "You are still practicing projections then? Pretty low level stuff."
"Tohs… Rin. You're a magus too?" Shirou asked her.
"Does the term 'second owner' mean anything to you?" Rin asked him with a tilt of her head. Seeing Shirou's blank face, she figured not. "That explains why you were in my city without giving me so much as an introduction. You aren't familiar with magus society. Not that it matters now. How far are you in your training?"
"...Not very. My father died shortly after I started, so I've just been practicing on my own." Shirou admitted.
"I see. If we are going to be working together, having you as a proper magus will be handy. We'll have to make time for me to train you later." Rin said with a smile. "For now though, let's keep this between us. The others will probably be waking up soon, and I won't be starting my day without a cup of coffee."
"Alright, they are done." Rin said proudly, revealing the 'rune stones' she had been working on.
She had purchased the 'Magic Stone Refinement I' skill, giving her the know-how and skills required to refine magic stones into rune stones.
Unlike magic stones, rune stones required a 'slot' on the item they were being applied to in order to be fitted, but they were a lot more potent, and could be cycled out. Whereas magic stones would be attached to the item and couldn't be replaced.
Shirou had made his and Ayako's bows with the application of runes in mind, so after Madoka woke up and 'Delivered' the magic stones that had been extracted from the monsters overnight, Rin had processed 20 of the Wind Stones they got from the weaker monsters they hunted into two Wind Runes. This would massively increase the flight speed and range of their projectiles. Something key for that day's plan.
…Honestly, she could create much more complex runes within the stones if she really felt like it, but for the purposes of increasing the range of their bows, this was all that was needed. A more powerful one would require more magic power than just the ambient energy in the air, and therefore drain the user. Not optimal for this situation.
"We are massively better equipped when compared to yesterday." Ayako said, checking out her new armor to make sure everything fit properly. The bright green carapace had been made using this exoskeleton of the Emerald Queen, and made Ayako look like a true samurai. It was also imbued with one of the five Lightning Stones that they had gotten from the monster, which would both offer lightning resistance, and deliver a weak shock to anything that physically attacked her at close range.
"You don't know the half of it." Madoka mumbled as she 'appraised' the items that Shirou had made with her new skill that she unlocked at level 3.
Every piece that was made for personal use out of the materials harvested from the Named Monsters had at least a +2 quality. The kind of equipment that you usually would see 3-star Seekers using. Not people who were just about to go out for their second day on the job. Even the equipment made from common drops was still a +1.
And she was expected to sell this stuff? In District 8? Not a chance. The best equipment a team based in District 8 could afford was a full set of basic gear. Even +1 equipment was outside of their price range. She'd need to talk to the Merchants Union and get word out about the product to other areas.
"It will help out a lot while defending the two of you, but how fast do you think you can bring down the boss?" Issei asked.
His armor looked like his normal training with a half kashaya robe tied over his right shoulder. The training clothes were black and were tempered cloth from the Furballs using Red Face's blood, no magic stone had been used on this layer yet.
The outer robe was made with some of the hair from Red Face, and treated with oils obtained from the Emerald Queen's body. A Wind Stone had turned the outer layer a mixture of blue and white, and gave him an increased resistance to wind attributed magic, and removed the effects of air resistance on him, letting him move at higher speeds. The fact that it was Red Face's fur already gave it a fire resistant quality.
He also had a pair of spiked gauntlets made using purchased 'glowing gold' ore and the stinger of the Emerald Queen. One was infused with one of the three Flame Stones that were retrieved from within Red Face's body while the other hand a Lightning Stone. It would drain Issei's MP a bit in order to make use of their elemental properties, but it made it so that he packed a serious punch. They also would inject venom into his targets, which could stun or poison.
Madoka had identified them as being called "+3 Gauntlets of Flames and Thunder". They were weapons that could have easily gone for 1000 gold coins in a higher district, and would normally be impossible for a rookie team to get their hands on. Not that Shirou seemed to have any understanding of their value. All he knew was the price tag on the ore needed to make them, which hadn't been a cheap buy.
"The fastest we can maintain for an extended period of time should be around an arrow every 2 seconds. So between the two of us, we could probably fire enough to bring Juggernaut down in 5 minutes. If we don't have to change our positions." Shirou reported as he finished attaching the Rune Stones to the bows and looked towards two massive quivers full of arrows. "I'm going to start enhancing these. Rin could you… support me in a bit?"
While 300 arrows should be enough to bring down Juggernaut, Shirou made twice that number to account for any possible misses, deflections, or the case that Juggernaut had more health than they were expecting.
3000 HP on a Named level 5. So a normal level 5 should have around 300. Suddenly his +10 damage didn't seem like much. While infinitely useful on low level targets, it was going to fall off a cliff once higher level enemies became commonplace.
"Sure. Tell me when you need it." Rin said with confidence.
Rin was a bit confused as to why Shirou didn't have a larger pool of magic power if he was a Magus, but she wasn't going to complain. Perhaps he was a generation that had few magic circuits, like her own mother had been.
Part of her, the Magus part of her, was upset to find out that an unknown Magus had been living in her town, but the part of her that was a young girl was overjoyed to find out that the only secret that stood between her and him had just disappeared, and that she could pursue him without any sense of guilt.
He was obviously untrained, or poorly trained, otherwise he wouldn't be practicing something as useless as projections, a type of magecraft only the most rookie of Magi used in their practice routines. If it was the only thing he was ever taught, he was sunk. Books on how to be a Magus couldn't be easy to come by even in a world like this. She could teach him a little about other forms of magecraft in order for them to bond together.
It would also improve his ability to help the party.
Rin also had clothes made from the hair of Red Face and enhanced with a Wind Stone. Her clothes looked much like her school uniform and her red jacket, but were much more durable. Her whip had been upgraded to a metallic cable, with a Lightning Stone being used to give it a powerful shock.
Shirou's equipment was more basic, as the Named Monster materials had started to run low after making armor for the others. It was basically just jeans and a hoodie, made from the Furball hair and enhanced with a Flame Stone to be fireproof.
His sword saw a bit more attention, as the katana was made using the fangs from Red Face and some Glowing Gold, as well as a Blue Flame Stone, which Rin had created by merging a Flame Stone and Wind Stone. It also had several slots open for runes, but those were currently empty.
"Are you sure you don't want to come along? With your 'hide' skill, you should be able to avoid danger." Rin asked Madoka. "We are most likely going to be growing another level if we succeed."
"That's… Even if I go with you, I don't have any combat capabilities, and I might get in your way." Madoka said guiltily. "Buying and selling things is something that I can do to help. But once you start going on longer expeditions, I'm sure my skills will be more useful to you in other ways."
"We'll be counting on you." Shirou said to the girl.
He didn't like Madoka's insistence of 'being useful', as a child her age shouldn't have to think about such things. She should just accept them taking care of her. …But that wasn't how this cruel world worked.
"How about you, Theresa? Is there anything else you need?" Shirou asked the Demihuman girl as she sat at the table, looking down at the short sword and shield that Shirou had made for her. Both were made with the exoskeleton of the Emerald Queen in the mix and were enhanced by the two remaining Lightning Stones, giving her attacks a shock and her blocks a stunning effect as well. She didn't reply, of course, but she did look over towards Shirou in confirmation that she heard him. "Alright, but try to let me know if anything is wrong."
Ayako shifted uncomfortably, still not used to Theresa's silent presence and feeling guilty about what she had said the night before to step on one of Shirou's buttons. Buttons that she had been convinced didn't even exist, as people would have spat in Shirou's face without him so much as reacting.
It had literally happened before, and Shirou hadn't gotten mad, just confused and offered to help the guy out if there was a problem.
Shirou had always been too pure for the world, or something like that. Pure had never felt like the right word for it.
"Alright everyone, get ready. Once Shirou is done enhancing all of our equipment, we'll be heading out." Rin said with confidence.
They had a plan, and it was a good one. They had picked the method of attack and a location that should make defense easily possible. Nothing could go wrong.
Nothing.
Whelp, this is all I wrote.
One thing that was never really said (to my knowledge) was how did Rin view her father? Her father basically sold her little sister into slavery when she was 7, wording it in such a way to make Rin feel like it was her own fault, and she believed that her mother had committed suicide over it. Then he gets himself killed in a war and leaves her alone with the fake priest.
Honestly, I think she would hate him. It's surprising she doesn't have a distrust in all men over the things he did in his final days of life.
