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

Resolution

Chapter 9

"So, how did it go?"

Sakura (Matou) met with her brother at a teahouse a short walk away from the train station two stops from the closest station to the Fuyuki Grand Hyatt. Despite being blood siblings, they greeted each other with a quick kiss on the lips, before sitting opposite from each other across a table.

"Well enough…" Sakura (Matou) said, trailing off as a waitress arrived. "…I'll have French vanilla, please…where was I? Oh, right, big sister…she was a bit cranky at the start, though she apologized for that, apparently she's been overworked lately, the gods know we both know how that feels when things get really busy at our own work."

Rin (Matou) chuckled. "Fair enough," he said. "And we – well, you – did catch her by surprise."

"Yes, I did." Sakura (Matou) said with a nod. "Once we started talking, though, she quickly relaxed."

"What did you talk about?" Rin (Matou) asked.

"Quite a bit of things." Sakura (Matou) replied. "What you and I did for work, reminiscences on our respective experiences in school…oh, and I showed off a bit of my baton twirling skills for her. Big sister was very impressed, and surprised, said she never expected me to be a…well, I don't honestly remember. She called me some kind of word in German or French, a special kind of cheerleader, I guess?"

The young woman shrugged. "I told her I didn't know what that was, and that I was just a cheerleader." She continued. "That, and she asked me if I was happy."

"And?" Rin (Matou) prompted.

"I told her I was content." Sakura (Matou) replied with another shrug. "Then I asked her if she was happy, and she gave more or less the same reply."

Rin (Matou) chuckled again. "Well, we are siblings." He said, causing his sister to smile. "More or less, though?"

"Big sister got a bit philosophical." Sakura (Matou) said. "She admitted being a magus was a hard life, that it caused her more than a bit of regret, and even agreed with me describing it as something of an addiction."

"But…?" Rin (Matou) asked.

"She quoted Da Vinci at me." Sakura (Matou) said. "Something about how a bird can't stop flying even if you ask them to. Makes sense in a way but…it also feels kind of sad."

"Da Vinci…the Italian painter, right?" Rin (Matou) mused.

"Among other things." Sakura (Matou) said with another shrug. "Scientist, architect, engineer…actually, big sister said he was part of her crowd, and that one of our ancestors might even have met the man, and impressed him of all things. That…only makes it even sadder, in light of everything that's happened since then."

Rin (Matou) sighed. "Yeah, I get what you mean." He said, even as the waitress returned with his sister's tea. "Anyway, back to our sister…did she enjoy the lunch you brought her?"

"Oh, she definitely did." Sakura (Matou) said with a beaming smile. "Said she'd never forget it, and that she'd find a way to pay us back for it."

"Well…good." Rin (Matou) said with a nod. "So…now what? What do you plan to do?"

"Take things slow," Sakura (Matou) said after a sip of her tea. "Build bridges with her, stuff like that. Maybe we ought to alternate meetings with her between the two of us, get her comfortable, before trying to move on to the big stuff. You know…like a dinner or something including our parents."

"…yeah…that's probably the best way to go about it…" Rin (Matou) slowly and thoughtfully said. "…getting the three of them back together is going to be touchy as it is, we mess it up…boom…maybe even literally…"

"Pretty much." Sakura (Matou) said with a sigh. "You know…I can't help but wonder…how differently things would be if our mother hadn't abandoned our sister at such a young age. As in she stayed here in Fuyuki, and instead of going to our father, our father came to her, and still had us. Only we grew up with our big sister…"

"…on one hand," Rin (Matou) began after a moment. "We might have a better relationship with our big sister. So would mother, and maybe father…but on the other hand, grandfather's right there, and he might push his claim on either of us to become his heir. Most likely me…and I'm not sure even our big sister was strong enough to push back against him at the time…"

"…so we'd lose you…" Sakura (Matou) softly said. "…in more ways than one…and big sister would end up having to fight you in that…contest, they used to hold here in Fuyuki…"

"As bad as things are," Rin (Matou) mused, even as he let his sister reach other and lace her fingers around his own over the table. "Maybe it's for the best that things grew as they did."

"Maybe…" Sakura (Matou) echoed, the siblings sharing a much too intimate smile between them over the table. "…so, what do you want to do after we finish here?"

"I was actually about to ask you the same thing." Rin (Matou) said, and taking a drink of his tea.

Sakura (Matou) shrugged and briefly closed her eyes while also taking a drink of her tea. "I suppose we could go window shopping for a bit," she said afterward. "Then have dinner out…and then maybe…visit someplace…you know…"

Her smile and bearing turned just a bit seductive at that, Rin (Matou) giving a low growl in his throat. "Minx." He accused, and his sister laughed.

"So you say," she said, regarding him with half-lidded eyes. "But you like me that way."

"Guess I do." Rin (Matou) admitted, causing his sister to laugh. "Alright…let's finish our tea first, then we'll go out on a date this evening. Though, we should call our parents, tell them we'll be coming home late tonight."

"Sounds good to me." Sakura (Matou) said, before taking another drink of her tea.

"Oh…oh…they're actually go to…they really went in…and the way they're carrying on…" Rin remarked in a tone that Sakura wasn't sure was surprised, shocked, horrified, amused, or indeed, all of those at the same time. "…oh yeah, our younger siblings are definitely sleeping with each other."

"Technically it's not illegal." Sakura idly remarked, looking up from the worktable to where her sister was reviewing a live feed from one of Sakura's familiars. "I mean, sure, they'll be socially-stigmatized for it, and they can't legally get married, but Japanese family and civil law doesn't actually penalize incest between blood relatives, even as close as siblings. Well, as long as it's completely consensual, of course. I'll be sure to ask about that if or when it comes up."

"You do that…" Rin said before her face twisted in disgust and she shut the feed off. "…yuck…just yuck…I'm not watching that…"

"Good to know you're not a voyeuristic creep, then." Sakura joked, and laughing when her sister stuck her tongue out in response. "Let me guess, you saw them making out?"

"In the elevator, yes, and they were more than making out." Rin said in disgust, stomping over to plop herself down on a stool further along the worktable. "They were groping each other…okay, can we talk about something else than this? It's disgusting."

"Fair enough…" Sakura said, walking away from the worktable to the shelves along the walls, and rooting through a collection of clipboards, picked one up and briefly went through it before heading to Rin and giving it to her. "…time to collect sacrifices."

"Huh…so these are the types of people you need to sacrifice to summon the demons." Rin said.

"Yes." Sakura simply replied.

"You want me to gather them now?" Rin asked.

"Not necessarily now," Sakura said. "Or even all of them if you did, but it'd be a start."

"Huh…" Rin mused while looking it over. Then she nodded, her expression turning grim. "…not a problem. It's not like I've got anything better to do, anyway."

"Just be subtle about it." Sakura said, taking a mystic code and handing it to Rin. "These disappearances will cause quite a stir, so let's not draw attention our way. Also, this mystic code will allow you to toss them into a specially-prepared pocket space in Imaginary Numbers Space. The sacrifices can be kept there for a relatively-extended period of time with only limited support requirements."

"Got it." Rin said, running a finger over her chin. "Be subtle, eh? Well, that shouldn't be a problem for the type of sacrifices in the third category…the other ones, though…well, I can manage."

"Good…" Sakura said while opening a portal back out of Imaginary Numbers Space. "…watch yourself."

"Naturally." Rin quipped as she shifted into feline form and padded out through the portal. "Now then…time to work."

"Good morning, this is JNN News." A bespectacled woman with dark hair and wearing office attire said with a polite bow on the TV. "Our top story today, the National Police Agency has publicly confirmed an escape by several prisoners from a high-security prison in Kyushu this evening. We go now to a press conference given by Police Superintendent…"

Sakura ran a hand over her face before looking at a sheepish-looking Rin. "Didn't I ask you to be subtle?" she asked.

"I was subtle!" Rin protested. "I didn't leave any evidence that I was there…aside from the missing prisoners, anyway. Or the hole in the wall. Well, holes in several walls. I didn't kill any of the police, though…come to think of it, do the police guard the prison? I think someone else does that…"

"T-t-that's not the point…" Sakura spluttered out before pulling herself together and running a hand over her face. "…how did you know who and where to get your targets, anyway?"

"Oh, that was easy." Rin said with a wave of a hand. "I just used my mystic eyes to 'ask' a police officer in the main office here in Fuyuki. Then I hitched a ride on a train – while in astral form, of course – to get as close as I can to the prison, then used my mystic eyes to get more info from the guards, and that was that."

"…how did you pick?" Sakura asked after a moment.

"Hmm…based on their crimes, of course." Rin said while spreading her hands. "The first…Yamaoka something. Sentenced to at least forty-five years in prison for beating his wife to death simply because he thought she was cheating on him. Then Serizawa something, also sentenced to at least forty-five years for killing his girlfriend and another guy after catching them in the act. Cheating on him, of course."

"Seriously…?" Sakura asked.

"Yup." Rin brightly said. "Not really people anyone would miss…oh, and there's that guy I filched from that mental hospital in Kagoshima, who beat girls to death because they were too pretty or something. And another girl, who pushed her classmate off a roof because he wouldn't go out with her."

Rin paused, and actually looked disturbed. "Okay, that last is pretty creepy." She said. "Talk about yandere…shit, I only thought that stuff like that happened in video games."

"Rin…" Sakura began, looking and sounding unimpressed. "…Cecilia."

"…okay, fair enough." Rin admitted after a few moments, a few moments spent humming and hawing over Sakura's late rival in love. Technically the winner of their little love triangle, but whose inability to move on from their past rivalry had started a vendetta that ended in the deaths of just about every adult in her family.

Well, mostly. Celenike Icecolle Yggdmillennia was still alive, and was even one of Sakura's friends.

It certainly helped that she not only avoided participating in the vendetta, but had tacitly – in her own small way – helped push it along in Sakura's favor.

Not that she didn't benefit from it, of course.

The deaths of virtually the entire Forvedge family removed the only real competition for the title of Lord Yggdmillennia.

Similarly, the deaths of the Icecolle's elders also rid Celenike of those she considered as pests and botherers at best, or liabilities at worst.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, as the old saying went.

"…why couldn't you have just more like this fifth guy," Sakura grumbled while reading the clipboard, specifically Rin's fifth and final entry for the first category. "Matsuyo Tsukudo…a convicted wife-beater, albeit one who's since been released from prison. Guy's disappearance probably won't even be noticed until he fails to pay his rent…"

"…that's…that's true…" Rin reluctantly admitted. "…damn…why didn't I think of that?"

"You were thinking too big and flashy, that's why." Sakura dryly remarked.

Rin huffed. "Fine, fine," she said. "I'll be more…thoughtful, going forward. Unless you want to release the sacrifices I've already gathered?"

"No, they will suffice." Sakura said with a sigh while placing the clipboard on the table, and then changed the TV's channel to a light music program. "My problem is less with the kind of people you picked as sacrifices, just with how and where you got them from. You're otherwise right, you see. These…lowlives, aren't really anyone will miss. At least my way, their otherwise worthless lives gain some meaning, being spent to achieve a greater and nobler purpose than they could ever have imagined."

Rin gave an evil snicker. "Sakura," she said. "You're sounding like a supervillain again."

Sakura smirked. "I know." She said, and Rin laughed.

Regardless of their disagreements or at least quibbles on the 'materials' acquired – and the means of acquisition thereof – a few hours later and both Sakura and Rin were visiting the former Tohsaka mansion.

The work therein, whether physical or metaphysical was almost done. The Circle of Shadow and its Black Vaults were all complete, needing only the demons to be summoned and bound within the latter to cloak the entire site from the Counter Force. The Circle of Power was similarly almost complete, a colossal trench buried under its walls and running along its entire length, with great spines of iron stabbing down into the trench from the ceiling along regular intervals.

Inscriptions had been carved into the trench's walls and floor, while ribs and spines of iron curved along the ceiling above, festooned with vine-like cables of silver winding along the superstructure. More silver carpeted the ground outside, past the Circle of Power, and leading towards the low walls of the third and innermost circle, the Circle of Ascension.

Laborers worked carefully as finishing work on the Circle of Power proceeded, wearing heavy protective gear up to and including gas masks. But of course: the final touch involved filling up the trench with mercury, enough to submerge the lower portions of the iron spikes, as a form of metaphysical electrolyte.

"Anything?" Sakura asked, her voice muffled by her gas mask.

"Nothing so far." Rin replied. Alone in the interior of the Circle of Power, she alone wore no protective gear, only casual clothes. Then again, mercury alone wouldn't be enough to hurt much less kill her. "Be patient, Sakura. The mercury hasn't even touched the tips of the conductors."

Sakura grumbled wordlessly, causing Rin to roll her eyes, looking away from the mystic code she was holding. It measured the amount of prana in the trench, which doubled as both a conduit to the ley lines running and intersecting under the Tohsaka property, as well as a reservoir of mana drawn therefrom. At present, though, the mystic code was silent, its gauges cold and dead.

"Come on, Sakura, get real." She said. "We're talking about over twelve thousand cubic meters of mercury here. It'll take time to fill the trench to volume, especially since we want to do it safely and properly."

"…fair enough." Sakura grudgingly conceded.

"Don't worry." Rin said. "Everything will work out, you'll see."

Sakura grunted but said no more, though she wandered off a few minutes later to check on the filling process further up and down the trench. Rin stayed where she was, easily able to contact Sakura via telepathy at a moment's notice. In the end, it wasn't until half an hour later that Sakura came back, and it still took them two more hours to finish filling the trench to volume.

"We've got a heartbeat!" Rin figuratively said, as the pylons on her mystic code crackled and its gauges lit up and twitched. Silence fell all around, foremen and workers alike filled with as much anticipation as Sakura was, even if their understanding of what they were doing here was…altered, to preserve the Masquerade. "Energy levels rising…rising…approaching threshold…threshold reached but continuing to rise…leveling up…we're stable within predicted values."

In the enclosed space beneath the Circle of Power, the celebratory cheers were all but deafening, even with the gas masks all the Humans were wearing. "Lunch and drinks are on me!" Sakura shouted, and more cheers erupted.

"It'll take time to charge up the reservoir," Rin said. "At least a month, maybe two to be safe."

"Then we'll delay completion of the gate until then." Sakura said, patting Rin on a shoulder. "Don't forget, once the doors are installed, the gate will automatically sync with the Circle of Power to and prime itself for opening and ascension both. Once that happens…"

"…the clock will start ticking." Rin said with a nod and narrowed eyes. "Up to now, we can be reasonably certain the Counter Force is still only passively on the lookout for someone trying to reach the Root, but once your gate is primed…"

"…it will know, and will start looking for the gate." Sakura said with a nod. "Therefore, we only prime the gate when all preparations for ascension have been completed. And there's still so much to do."

"Well, only two, really…" Rin said. "…the crest, and the successor…"

"I must prepare myself, as you well know." Sakura said.

"Then that makes three." Rin said, and Sakura nodded. "Well…even if the completion of the gate must be delayed, we can continue with work on the Circle of Ascension."

"Looking forward to outfitting the Hall of Penitence, huh?" Sakura asked.

"And you aren't?" Rin asked back, causing Sakura to smile.

"I suppose I am." She said, and Rin smiled as well.

A/N

So…Human sacrifices! Wife beater, wife killer, girlfriend killer, serial killer, and yandere bitch…ironically, those cultures infamous for the practice would reject all five of these subjects as unsuitable. Funny thing is, for the Mesoamericans, Human sacrifice was not a punishment or just a means to an end, but a glorious reward. The souls of sacrificial victims would be raised up in honor among the gods, as thanks for giving up their lives as fuel to keep the Sun burning, among other things.

And that's only one category (re: one set of sacrifices for one demon summoning) out of several. Rin's going to busy in the near future, kidnapping people/busting them out of jail just so Sakura can bleed them for her magic.

And now Sakura's scheme is revealed in full, as predicted by Gilgamesh three stories ago. She's building a World Gate, with which to reach the Root and usurp the power of God. No wonder she went all out to kill Zouken at the start of this story, she wasn't taking any chances that it would try and ruin her shot at glory, or worse, usurp the throne she plans to steal for herself.

Then again, does it count as stealing if God doesn't want it? Because from his…her…ITS appearances in Kara no Kyoukai, [] finds being all-powerful and all-knowing to be boring.