Disclaimer: I do not own the Fate franchise it belongs to Kinoko Nasu and Type-Moon.

Peaceful Days

Chapter 6

"Where's Kirsikka?"

Eyes turned at Rin's exclamation, because indeed Kirsikka had vanished, seemingly into thin air, when and where she'd been standing just behind Rin a moment ago. Likewise, Little Rin had vanished as well, which wasn't all that surprising in hindsight. Concerning, though…disturbing even…but they had little time to ponder that, because the new arrival was here.

Luviagelita 'Luvia' Edelfelt stepped onto the shore like a conquering princess, wearing her usual blue and white dress, which looked really incongruous given the beach setting. "OH-HO-HO-HO-HO-HO!" she greeted Rin with a laugh, causing a vein to visibly throb on the latter's forehead. "It's so good to see you again, Rin! You've been away from the Clock Tower for so long, I've actually missed you. Then I heard you were back, only to go on vacation with your family soon after."

Luvia paused to click her tongue, tapping a fan elegantly against her chin before opening it to mask the lower half of her face. "We're family too, aren't we?" she asked accusingly. "So why didn't I get an invitation?"

Rin's eyes were wide and bloodshot. "ARE YOU SERIOUS?" she shouted incredulously.

Luvia scoffed before closing her fan with a snap. Then ignoring – shoving – Rin aside, she approached Sakura, who briefly looked apprehensive only to turn shocked as Luvia took hold of her skirt, and then spreading it in a curtsy, sank to one knee with head bowed.

"I humbly apologize, Cousin Sakura." Luvia said in a remorseful tone. "Both for taking so long to come and see you again, and to once again offer our entire family's apology. Had we taken action sooner, had we brought Tokiomi Tohsaka to heel in his youth, then you would not have fallen into the hands of those pestilent curs, the Matou."

"I…please…I've already accepted your apology before!" Sakura replied in a fluster. "You don't really need to do this every time we meet…so please, stand back up. You're confusing the children."

Luvia smiled and nodded. "Of course." She said, getting to her feet. "Then I wouldn't be imposing with my presence here?"

Sakura smiled back. "No, of course not." She said with a glance at her husband, who sighed and nodded.

Luvia beamed. "Great!" she said. "Now then…I had also heard there was another relative here, a bastard by-blow of the family with a right and proper Finnish name. 'Kirsikka', I believe her name was."

"How did you…are you spying on me?" Rin demanded.

Luvia scoffed. "Hardly," she blatantly lied, not that Rin knew it. Besides, she lied to everybody at some point or another, so why should Rin be any different? In this case, at least, she – Rin – didn't need to know. "I simply had a friend who liked to share what she'd heard."

"You mean this universe's version of Sister Ortensia." Kirsikka said, walking out of a portal from Imaginary Numbers Space, and adjusting her necktie as she went. "And more to the point, Kirsikka's just a placeholder. The name is actually Sakura Tohsaka, but since it'd be confusing when there's more than one Sakura here now, I decided to use the Finnish version of my name. You could say it fits me like a glove."

"Hmm…you could use more elegance in your language and bearing," Luvia smoothly remarked. "But I suppose this…lone wolf, air you seem to possess is suitable for one of our bloodline."

Kirsikka smirked. "Still," she said. "I wouldn't mind being a bastard by-blow. Sure, it drags Tokiomi and Aoi's names through the mud, but it's not as if they don't deserve to have it done to them."

Luvia hummed again, eye narrowed at her cousin. "…I should not be surprised you're from another timeline," she said. "As it's no secret your sister works closely with Wizard Marshal Kaleidoscope, but that does make me curious how it is you came to be. Did my father bring your father to heel in their youth? No, your words imply against that…as it would against Tokiomi Tohsaka actually not dealing with filthy lowlives…or perhaps Rin was the one betrayed in your timeline…"

Kirsikka's smirk turned vicious, and she handed a file over to Luvia who quickly took it and began to read. Meanwhile, Rin hurried over to Kirsikka's side. "How'd you know she heard about you from Caren?" she asked.

Kirsikka gestured at the yacht without a word, and Rin looked in its direction…only to palm her face at the sight of Caren Ortensia and Bazett Fraga McRemitz sunning themselves on its deck while wearing only bikinis. "Great…just great…" Rin grumbled. "…Kirei Kotomine 2.0 Electric Boogaloo is here, along with her sidekick the Irish Christmas Cake…wonderful…really nice…"

Kirsikka snickered, and then started laughing at that, while Little Rin similarly materialized and laughed next to her. Sakura and Shirou held hands to their heads in concern at the sight of the two otherworldly siblings doubled over with laughter like a pair of loons, while on the deck of Luvia's yacht, Caren and Bazett started sneezing like crazy.

Then Little Rin's laughter abruptly cut off, as Luvia picked her up. "Okay…I see…so that's how it is, Murderer Blue." She said while looking Little Rin over. "I should be angry…but it's clear responsibility for this fiasco once again lies at the feet of your frankly insultingly-incompetent parents. More importantly…"

Luvia trailed off…

…and then started gushing over Little Rin while hugging her tight. "Rin was so cute when she was a child!" she practically purred. "I wish I had a little sister like you!"

"Hey!" Sakura protested, grabbing Little Rin and pulling her away. "She's my little big sister! Get your own!"

"You make it sound so easy. Now, come on. Share!"

"No!"

"Yes!"

"NO!"

"YES!"

"…I'm being fought over?" Little Rin thought in bemusement, while Rin, Sakura, and Shirou stared with slack jaws. "By Luvia and big little sister? This is…nice."

"Look," Kirsikka snapped while cringing away and holding Little Rin away from Luvia's grasping hands. "You want a child to cuddle and baby over, just go ask your husband to pop a baby or two into you. You can can't just take other people's…er, little big sisters, away from them! It's just not done!"

Luvia, though, was staring at Kirsikka like she'd grown a second head. "I'm not married." She said.

Kirsikka blinked. "You aren't?" she echoed.

"No." Luvia said before brightening up. "But that means my counterpart is, right? Who was it? Who did she marry? Was it dashing Hercule from Provence? Or maybe gallant Guillaume from the Cote d'Azur? Maurice from Normandy, with his baritone voice? Pierres from Paris? Philippe from the Loire?"

Luvia blinked before seeming to slump. "Or maybe," she continued glumly. "I married a stuffy older gentleman, didn't I? Was it Inglebert from Berlin? Eckhard from Cologne? Please tell me it wasn't Wenzel with his damnable tubas from Bavaria. Or that…insufferable twit, Narciso from Sardinia."

"…I don't know those people." Kirsikka said after a moment, looking and sounding lost, before cringing back as Luvia leaned in, practically glowing with her eyes glittering and hands held together in front of her.

"Or maybe…I…I married Shero from your timeline?" she asked, the Angelic Choir all but audibly tuning their instruments while vocalizing Handel's Hallelujah.

"No…" Kirsikka said, taking a big step back, Little Rin crawling up to drape herself over Kirsikka's shoulders, looking weirded out at Luvia acting like a lovestruck teen despite her age. "…you married Lord Beckenstein."

"Who?" Luvia asked, the air all but audibly echoing with what sounded like a record player screeching to an abrupt halt.

"Oh…um, I guess he hasn't gained that title yet…um, Lord Waver El-Melloi II."

The blood visibly drained from Luvia's face, the ether echoing with the anguished screams of the angels as they died horrible and agonizing deaths to the sound of the Devil's deep laughter. "You're telling me…" she ground out. "…that I married that…insufferable…inconsiderate…stuffy…selfish…self-absorbed…self-righteous…preachy…nerd, Waver Velvet?"

"Um, yes?"

Miles away, police and civilians alike tripped and looked up at the sky at the sound of a woman's outraged scream, and the sight of countless birds flying away in fright.

"What was the other me thinking?" Luvia raged, pouring brandy into a snifter, only for her shaking to cause the glass to slip and fall, leaving shards and alcohol spilled on the floor. She stared down for a long moment, and then looking flat, decided to just drink brandy straight from the bottle. "Was she so desperate to have a man permanently in her life that she decided to just go for the…closest available, option?"

"Eh…from what I've heard it was arranged by their families." Kirsikka said, looking on with an amused look from further down the yacht's bar's counter. "Uncle Kaleva for the other you, and Lord El-Melloi for Lord Beckenstein. There was a political dimension to it, I'm sure you understand."

"A bridge between the Barthomeloi and Trambelio factions, or something along that line." Luvia inferred. "Humph…I will not be some prize mare to be sold off at the market like a mere breeder, I won't! I absolutely won't!"

Kirsikka blinked, and then turned her head at the sheer speed Luvia had moved, the blonde now practically pinning a confused-looking Rin against the wall. "You'll help me, won't you, Rin?" Luvia practically pleaded. "It's no different from what happened to your sister, even if I'm already as old as I am. You won't let me be sold off like that, would you? Please? You're an apprentice of the Wizard Marshal Kaleidoscope, the Jeweled Sword Blue, surely you can do something!"

"I'm…not sure…what I can do…" Rin said, literally cringing away. "…not to mention your other mainline relatives could just, you know, force me to tell them even if I did help you. Our crests are connected, remember? We are – the Tohsakas – technically an Edelfelt branch, after all."

"Oh, it's hopeless!" Luvia moaned, before once again putting the bottle to her lips and chugging the brandy down. "I'm never going to find some sweet, heroic, and noble young man to have a good family with! I'm going to end up sold off like some cheap whore…"

"OOOOOOKAAAY!" Kirsikka said, walking over to pull the bottle out of Luvia's hands, and then spinning her about, slapped her once on the face. "Done feeling sorry for yourself?"

"…I needed that. Thanks."

"No problem."

Luvia blinked, and then smirked. "Brass ones." She said, while crossing her arms. "Never been slapped by anyone before, not even by my parents."

"Consider yourself lucky, then." Kirsikka said. "Tokiomi used to beat me whenever I fell behind in my studies."

"…really?"

"Here comes daddy's fist! Oh, and right behind is the stompity-stompity boot!"

Luvia's jaw fell open, while Rin raised an eyebrow. "That's not really something to be sanguine about," the latter said. "Much less something to sing about."

Kirsikka shrugged. "I've long since gone beyond feeling sorry for myself about it." She said, before taking a drink of brandy herself. "Nowadays, it's just bitter melodrama, leaning towards the comedic end of the genre scale. Speaking of which, seeing as you were just drinking from this bottle yourself, did we just kiss? Indirectly?"

Rin palmed her face while Luvia laughed. "Oh my." The latter said with a grin. "Was that a proposition? I don't mind, but it still comes as a surprise."

"Who knows?" Kirsikka asked with a laugh, before tossing the bottle at Rin. She caught it, shrugged once, and then sighing, took a drink herself.

"We're all crazy here." She simply said.

"What kind of crazy?" Luvia asked.

"The fabulous kind." Rin replied, and Luvia laughed again.

"So," Rin began as she looked out over the yacht's deck. "Why exactly is Kirei 2.0 here, along with the Irish Terminator?"

"…I don't know what a Terminator is, aside from its root word," Luvia began with a confused air. "Though I assume you are referring to…ahem, Sister Ortensia's mentally-disturbed father…"

"Caren is disturbed." Rin deadpanned as she watched Caren busying herself at the grill next to Sakura and Rider, while Bazett was helping Shirou replace the broken windows at the guesthouse. "Or at least has a few screws loose."

"…anyway," Luvia continued with a cough. "Like I said earlier, I heard about this vacation from her, so I invited her as a gesture of thanks. She then took the liberty of inviting her friend, Enforcer McRemitz."

"A Terminator is basically a…artificial, assassin." Rin explained with a sigh. "A robot…or an automaton, meant to kill – terminate – a specific target, no matter the cost. You remember Trimmau, Lord El-Melloi's personal mystic code? How it sometimes goes haywire and rampages out of control? That's because Lord El-Melloi II accidentally added Terminator code into its programming while rebuilding it after the previous Lord El-Melloi's death."

"…yes, I see how that would be accurate when referring to Enforcer McRemitz." Luvia conceded.

"Yup."

"You're not disturbed by Murderer Blue?"

"I'd cheerfully cut off my right arm if it means a version of my sister doesn't have to go through the worms."

"Not your left arm."

"…a day might come when I meet with a doppelganger of my father." Rin said after a moment. "I'll need at least one arm to crack his chest open, to reach inside and tear out his heart, before showing it to him as he dies. Assuming he has a heart of course, in which case I'll still need at least one arm to rip out his brain and spinal cord. Speaking of which…here, I have something for you. A souvenir from my most recent incident resolved under the Wizard Marshal's orders."

Luvia raised an eyebrow as Rin dropped a skull into her hands. And again, as she looked over the polished bone with a practiced eye. "A mutant's skull?" she asked.

"The details are classified," Rin cheerfully said. "But I can tell you it belongs to a 'broodmother' which birthed mutants en masse as disposable foot soldiers and cannon fodder. An acquaintance killed a couple, then gave their skulls to us – me and Sakura, that is, Kirsikka – to remember the incident by. Thing is, it's not really my style to keep something like that sitting around or mounted on a wall, whether in my home or in my workshop."

"And you think I do?" Luvia asked mockingly.

"You don't have a hall full of trophies?" Rin asked back just as mockingly. "By all means, label it in honor of 'Rin Tohsaka-Edelfelt'. I don't mind."

Luvia laughed while balancing the broodmother's skull on a finger. "A few years ago," she began. "And you'd have thrown a fit at the notion."

"A few years ago I still had quite a bit of childish stupidity – of the daddy's little girl kind – clouding my eyes." Rin said while stretching her limbs. "Now, though? I still think it'd have my father screaming in outrage in the afterlife, likewise for my mother. Maybe even my grandparents too…but I don't care anymore."

"Even your grandparents?" Luvia mused.

"They raised someone like Tokiomi." Rin simply. "And Aoi. I do have two sets of grandparents, after all."

Luvia laughed. "This is true." She said.

"Caren, where's my sister?" Rin asked while walking up to Caren and company at the grill.

"Right here." Caren replied while gesturing at Sakura next to her.

"The other one, Kirsikka." Rin added.

"She disappeared into Imaginary Numbers Space." Caren replied. "I do not know the reason, though. Perhaps she had something pressing to attend to?"

"Well," Sakura began. "She said she needed to change back into beach clothes, and to get ready for the water."

Rin clicked her tongue. "We go all the way to the beach, and she doesn't want to go swimming." She disapprovingly said. "Now that's just…"

"To each other own, Rin." Caren said. "If she chooses not to swim, then that is her right and privilege. It is not any of our places to force her to do so. Besides, the whole point of this exercise is to spend time with friends and family. And she already does that, does she not? Has she not already contributed to this affair meaningfully?"

"She has, but still." Rin complained.

Caren tilted her head. "If that is your position, and you will not budge from it, then I will respect it, as is your due." She said.

Rin pursed her lips but said nothing. Caren poked at the steaks and sausages on the grill before again tilting her head. "By the way," she began. "Have you ever met my counterpart in Miss Kirsikka's timeline?"

"…just a bit." Rin admitted. "I never had much time to really interact with her, and we were getting chased down by a madman in an attack helicopter at the time. She seemed a lot like you though. If nothing else, she looked just like you."

"I see." Caren said with a nod. "That is fair enough, and thank you for indulging my curiousity."

Rin nodded before crossing her arms and looking out over the beach. Shirou and Bazett had disappeared into the house, while the Emiya children were playing some kind of trading card game over snow cones. Little Rin and Mikasa were nowhere to be seen, most likely having joined Kirsikka in Imaginary Numbers Space.

"Worried about Kirsikka?" Sakura asked.

"Yeah." Rin said, not even bothering to wonder how Sakura knew what she – Rin – was worried about. They were sisters, after all.

"She'll be fine." Sakura reassured her sister. "Whatever it is she's planning, preparing for, maybe even building, I'm sure it won't do anything to ruin our vacation. If anything, it'll just make it better, less…conventional. Just like Luvia being here. Or Miss Caren. And Miss Bazett, of course."

Rin pursed her lips again, and glanced at Sakura with half-lidded eyes. Sakura just beamed at her, and after a few moments, Rin sighed and gave in. "Yeah, you're probably right." She said. "I need to have more faith in my sisters."

"Yes," Sakura agreed with just the faintest hint of smugness. "You do."

Rin just laughed.

A/N

By this point I'm just going full Carnival Phantasm. No need to be completely serious anymore, and if it is, just use the seriousness to build up the comedy.