Shirou parked his rundown van inside his empty warehouse, shutting down the rattling engine. Only after taking several detours did he feel confident that MBI was not following him.

He was aware that by picking up this creature, he was putting himself in danger and compromising his mission, but he was also very much aware that he could not let go of this matter just like that. Simply letting this creature free and unsupervised could lead to a catastrophe, and since he could not muster the resolve to kill her, he became responsible for the consequences of letting her live.

It was a twisted way of thinking, but that was how Emiya Shirou was like.

He unbuckled himself and the creature before getting off the van. Rather than getting out from her side, she crawled on the seats to exit from the same side as Shirou.

'Doesn't she understand how car doors work?' he wondered. 'No, it's not that. She's taking the shortest route to follow me.'

For whatever reason, this woman seemed to be captivated by him. It wasn't the kind of attention that a predator gave its prey, as there was no malice or threat in her laser-like focus.

'She's like a baby bird, imprinting on the first living creature it has seen, regardless of species.' Shirou thought.

He held out his hand to help her out of the van and she took it willingly. Shirou noticed a slight blush spreading across her face when their hands touched.

'Embarrassment?' he wondered. It didn't make much sense that she would be embarrassed about touching his hand but not exposing so much of her body. Then again her choice in clothing was probably a byproduct of impending necessity rather than a choice. 'I'm overthinking it. She's not human, and there's no reason that her physical cues would be the same as ours. I don't have information to make any speculation.'

He led her up the stairs to his mostly empty apartment, closing the door behind them. He took his guest to the couch, where he sat with her, still holding her hand.

"Alright," he said, turning to face her. "Introductions, for starters. My name is Emiya Shirou. May I ask you what's yours?"

"... Akitsu," the woman replied in a barely audible voice.

"Akitsu," he repeated. "Only Akitsu?"

"Yes... I no longer have a number. I am a Scrap."

"AScrap? Number?" Shirou's mind spun frantically. The implications weren't pleasant. He had many things he wanted to ask, but he didn't know what this creature would take offense to.

How would she react if he revealed that he knew she wasn't human? What would she do if he told her he knew she had escaped from MBI's labs? An indirect approach was advisable.

"What were you doing in the park in this state?" he asked. "Did something happen?"

"I wanted to reach the sky, but I don't have my wings," she replied cryptically.

'That doesn't make any sense to me. Maybe I'm asking the wrong question.'

"What happened to your wings?"

"They were broken," she told sorrowfully.

"Who broke them?" he asked.

"... I did."

Shirou sighed. This conversation was going nowhere fast.

"Alright, what is that you want to do now? Do you have anywhere you want to go? Anywhere you can go?"

She shook her head slowly.

"Can I stay by your side?" she asked, then paused, looking away from him for the first time since they had met. After a few seconds she dared to look at him again, and this time she looked extremely scared "Could you be my Ashikabi?"

"Your... what?" Shirou asked, blinking at the unusual word.

"My Ashikabi. My destined one. Even though I can no longer spread my wings, and I'm useless I..." Her voice was cracked and Shirou could see barely restrained tears pool at the corner of her eyes. The hand which he was holding was shaking, trembling in fear.

Shirou didn't know the circumstances of this woman, but he understood that regardless of her power she was terrified of being rejected.

"I will not send you away." He told her in a way he thought reassuring. "I don't know what this Ashikabi thing is, but as long as you don't wish to harm another you can stay as much as you want."

His words seemed to have the intended effect, because she calmed down some and nodded. Before she could say anything else a loud roar was heard and both of them stared down at her stomach.

"Huh, how about you take a shower while I'll make something to eat?"

"...Yes."

"The bathroom is over there," he motioned with his free hand. "Give me a second I'll get you a clean towel and clothes."

He stood up and made for the windowless room he used as a bedroom, where he fetched one set of his jeans and shirt as well as a clean towel.

The entire process took him less than thirty seconds, but it seemed to be a sufficient amount of time for a catastrophe to strike.

"Brk!" Shirou sputtered as soon as he stepped back into the living room, nearly dropping his clothes.

Akitsu had discarded her lab coat and was in the process of removing her panties as well. The way she bent over gave Shirou and eyeful of everything there was to be seen.

'H-human anatomy confirmed.' He thought as clinically as the situation allowed for, before diverting his gaze.

Indeed, Akitsu seemed to be lacking a human sense of property. She did not seem to be embarrassed of baring every inch of her skin to him. In fact, the thing that seemed to stress her most was that Shirou was pointedly looking elsewhere.

"Did I do something wrong?" she asked, with a faint tinge of fear in her voice.

"Perhaps you have not been taught this, but it's not proper for a woman to expose her naked body," he explained.

"Ah... I did not know," she replied, looking around and hastily picking up the lab coat to cover herself with. She still didn't look embarrassed. Rather she looked displeased at herself for giving him cause to scold her.

"That's okay. You didn't know." He said, turning to look at her. "Please keep it in mind for the future."

"Yes, Master."

Shirou froze at the appellative, like a deer in the headlights.

"I ask of you, are you my Master?"

'Calm down. Don't overthink it.' He told himself. 'Figure things out before jumping to conclusions.'

"Here, take these." He told her, handing over the bundle of clothes instead of asking the questions he so badly wanted to be answered. "Do you know how to use a shower?"

"Yes." she nodded, receiving the clothes with one hand while keeping the lab coat over her body with the other.

"Good. Then go ahead, and get yourself cleaned up. We'll talk more later."

"Yes. Thank you, Master."

This time the appellative did not take him unprepared, but he still tightened his jaw unconsciously.

Akitsu turned around and made for the bathroom and in doing so she showed her entire naked backside to Shirou, forcibly distracting him from his grim thoughts before they could gain momentum.

"What did I get myself into?" he murmured, shaking his head. Magi and assorted monsters, he knew how to deal with. Beautiful women with no sense of propriety not so much. Whatever outcome this situation would have it would not be easy on his nerves. He could be sure of that much.

[br]

While Akitsu showered, Shirou set up dinner and by that he meant microwaving a couple of boxed meals straight from the fridge. They were nothing fancy, but they had most of the nutrients and calories a human needed on average. The only problem is that they tasted as bland as wet cardboard, and yes, he did know what wet cardboard tasted like.

Fortunately, he had at least some cheap spices that he could add for a variety of flavor, making it slightly better. He was done by the time Akitsu walked out of the shower, wearing his clothes.

His shirt put up a valiant effort at keeping Akitsu's chest contained, but the material had given up under the strain and it had ripped at the neck, resulting in a hint of cleavage being shown. Similarly, his jeans couldn't hope to contain Akitsu's curves, and she had forgone buttoning them up completely.

The overall result was enough to make any man's head turn.

'Then again, she could do that even with clothes that fit her.' Shirou thought realistically. 'At least she's decent now.'

"I apologize, Master. I ripped your shirt," she said upon noting his gaze.

"There's nothing to be sorry about. It's an old thing that would have ripped on its own anytime soon. Don't worry about it, and have a seat."

She did as he instructed, and Shirou put down a meal box and chopsticks in front of her, before taking a seat at the opposite end of the table with a box of his own. He already had dinner before meeting Akitsu, but he figured that sharing a meal would make for a more relaxed setting.

Akitsu picked up her chopsticks but she hesitated to start eating. Shirou noticed and wondered whether she didn't like the food. Or maybe her species couldn't eat the same type of food as human beings?

'No, it's not that. Until now she hasn't done anything I didn't outright instruct her to.'

"Please, eat to your heart content. There's more of it if you want."

"Yes, thank you." With those words Akitsu tore into her meal with gusto. So much for his suspicion that she could not eat the same as humans. Well, it was better that way.

If she had the same eating habits as Dead Apostles, things would have turned out, well, bloody. That was a weight off Shirou's chest. If humans weren't on the menu of her species, the level of threat she represented was much lower.

"So, how did you come to be by that park?" he asked casually. He already had an idea of the answer, but he would rather she told him herself so that he could gauge her honesty.

"Ah...!" she said mid-swallow. "I got lost after I run away from the labs."

A blunt and straightforward answer. Shirou wasn't expecting it.

"From the labs? MBI's labs? Does that have anything to do with the incident from last night?"

"Yes. There was an explosion and suddenly everyone was thrown on the ground. I could see the sky outside and before I knew it I had jumped out."

'So she didn't cause the explosion herself?'

"You jumped out... from the eleventh floor?"

"Yes," she nodded without hesitation.

"A human can't do something like that," he told her. Even in his Reinforced state he would think twice before jumping from that height. "But you aren't human, are you?"

"I am a Sekirei," she told him easily.

"Sekirei," he replied, rolling the world in his mouth. It was a species of birds, the wagtail. Was it just a codename given to her species by MBI, or was she actually related to her namesake?

In ancient times, it wasn't unusual that some animal species could evolve spiritually until they gained the ability to assume a human appearance. In the past, the collective human consciousness had even given birth to some of the gods, before the same consciousness banished them away. Perhaps she was born from a similar process?

"Did MBI make you?"

It wasn't unlikely. MBI was ahead of the curve in bio-engineering technologies. It wasn't impossible that they had managed to create a being with a strong spiritual imprint out of mundane processes.

Magecraft itself, after all, could only do things that were possible through mundane means, and creating a familiar with spiritual capabilities from scratch was very much feasible.

However, Akitsu shook her head and pointed her finger towards the ceiling.

"We came from the stars."

The weight that been just lifted from Shirou's shoulders returned in full force and it brought friends. A single phrase sent Shirou's mind reeling. Causing him to reconsider many things.

An alien species. An honest to god alien species.

It wasn't an outrageous concept, really. After all, Shirou could name at least two other alien species that were present on Earth at that very moment. Type-Moon, aka Brunestud, with its vampiric progeny, and the dormant Type Mercury, codename ORT.

But it wasn't Akitsu's origins that shocked him, not really. He had assumed that MBI was behind the creation of species, but perhaps it was the opposite. The meteoric rise of MBI was because of the appearance of the Sekirei on Earth.

And more importantly "You said 'we'. How many other Sekirei are there?"

"There's one hundred eight feathers like me in this city."

There was just one thing that a reasonable man could say in front of that statement.

"Shit!"

What kind of outrageous clusterfuck did he just stumble upon? What was MBI up to with these aliens?

At that moment, Shirou very much wanted to grab his head between his hands and just pull his hair out. It seemed that he had truly uncovered something that he couldn't just ignore.

One hundred seven other creatures like Akitsu. With a number like that they could very well represent a threat greater than all the Dead Apostles combined. Shirou could not look away from something like this. He could not let another catastrophe play out before his eyes and do nothing.

"I need you to tell me everything you know," he told her.

He would have to get to the bottom of this, one way or another.

[br]

Later than night, Shirou sat on his couch in almost complete darkness with a cigarette between his lips and a can of beer in his hands.

Sekirei.

An alien species that crash-landed on Earth an unknown amount of time ago. Akitsu didn't know the details because in her earliest memory, around twenty years before, she was already in MBI's care.

She and the rest of the other members of her species had been the subject of intense experimentations for a long time. According to Akitsu they had not been tortured. The researchers were quite humane in their treatment, and over time the Sekirei had been released after they had undergone an adjustment process.

The nature of this process served to regulate and restrain the Sekirei's power, making them capable of interacting with human beings without turning them into meat paste.

Akitsu's adjustment process had gone poorly and she lost the ability to be winged. That is to say, the capacity to create a bond unique to their species with a "destined one", commonly called Ashikabi. If this Winging was something akin to a mating ritual then Akitsu's condition could be compared to being sterile.

Actually, it was worse than that.

If he understood correctly, the Winging was a fundamental process of their biology as well as their psyche. To be unable to perform it was the same as being a cripple, both physically and emotionally. For this reason Akitsu was never meant to leave MBI. A cruel but perhaps sensible choice.

Letting over a hundred beings of superhuman powers to roam free was already a huge risk, even in the confines of a single city. Shirou assumed and dearly hoped that MBI had the means to control and contain them.

Akitsu confirmed that some of the strongest Sekirei worked directly for MBI as members of the Disciplinary Squad, tasked with intervening if their fellow Sekirei started misbehaving and causing trouble for the general population.

Although Shirou didn't like the idea of keeping anyone prisoner, he wasn't sure he agreed with MBI's choice of releasing the Sekirei. Then again, they might have realized they couldn't really contain them and this was the best compromise they could get away with.

Powerful or not, the Sekirei would not want to attract the attention of humanity as a whole. There was nothing to be gained from doing so and a whole lot to lose. With this arrangement, they were able to survive in moderate freedom, without harming humans or being harmed by them.

It was a seemingly decent arrangement, if not for the sour note that was the Sekirei Plan.

Akitsu didn't know what it entailed beyond having all the Sekirei find an Ashikabi, but it suggested there was an overarching goal. Perhaps it was just staving off the extinction of the Sekirei species; a breeding program of sorts.

Unfortunately, Shirou had such optimistic hopes beaten out of him over the years, and therefore he couldn't find the peace of mind necessary for him to sleep. So he sat there with just a smoke and a beer for company.

'What am I supposed to do about this? The most sensible choice would be warning the Clock Tower,' he thought to himself. However he knew that the result would have the Sekirei captured and experimented upon in a much more invasive way than they already had been at MBI's hands.

Shirou couldn't really condone something like that, not without the absolute certainty of a threat of greater magnitude. Yet he couldn't just pretend he didn't know about it either.

'It looks like I'm stuck watching this mess develop.'

Frankly, he could have done without the additional hassle. He already had far too many things to worry about. Unfortunately, he was not the kind of person that could overlook a matter like this. In any case, he would be operating in Shin Teito for the foreseeable future. Keeping his ears open and his eyes peeled wasn't too much of a burden.

He would decide what to do depending on how things turned out. Right then, he knew for certain that he had to accelerate his schedule. If things went ass over teakettle, like he very much feared they would, he had to be as ready as he possibly could.

Other than that, he could only hope that this matter wouldn't turn into yet another tragedy. He had enough of those to last him a lifetime. He took one last drag from his smoke and threw the butt into the empty beer can. Then he stretched his legs on the couch and laid down with his hands behind his head. He should at least make a token attempt at sleeping.

He needed to be at the top of his game, now more than ever.

He closed his eyes and slowed down his breathing, hoping that the steady rhythm would slow down his consciousness as well. After about thirty minutes, he was finally about to doze off when a faint rustling noise brought him back to full awareness. The presence of Akitsu shifted in the other room and Shirou heard her slowly stand up from his futon and towards him.

Shirou faked being asleep, while he inwardly he was already prepared to act. He had taken her story at face value because there was no reason not to and everything she said more or less fit with what he had already surmised on his own.

However that didn't mean she hadn't lied or omitted something. In short, he didn't really trust her yet, and the fact that she was approaching him in the middle of the night when she thought he was asleep didn't really help her cause either.

The sound of her bare footsteps grew slowly closer until he could feel her presence loom above him. He kept his breathing steady but cracked an eye open just a little bit to look at her.

The room was not completely dark due to a streetlamp somewhere down the road casting a bit of light through the blinds of the living room, and it was enough for him to distinguish her form.

She simply stood there, looking at him. Time stretched without either one of them moving, until Akitsu slowly sat on the floor next to him, hugging her knees to her chest, eyes ever fixed on him.

It was hard to say how long they stayed that way, but eventually Shirou realized that she wasn't about to do anything to him or return to bed.

"Something bothering you?" he asked, opening his eyes for good. Akitsu looked genuinely surprised that he was awake, but she just shook her head. Maybe Sekirei were nocturnal creatures? "Don't you need to sleep?"

"Yes," she replied shortly without providing further explanation.

Shirou wondered if she was being difficult on purpose, or if that was just the way she was. Until now she answered every question he asked of her, but he couldn't say that she was forthcoming either. If he had to make a comparison, she was a bit like an automaton, following instruction to the letter but with no will of its own.

"Can I do something?" She looked away, then back at him, then away again. Shirou was starting to get nervous. She clearly wanted something, but she was reluctant to ask. "If it's in my power to help, I will."

She fixed her eyes on his as if pondering the sincerity of his words. Eventually she stood up slowly, and Shirou followed her motions with his eyes. Eyes that widened considerably when she put a knee on the couch and both hands next to his head.

Her gaze showed an intensity that made him uncomfortable. It got worse she lowered her head and pushed her lips against his.

Calling it a kiss would have been extremely generous. There was no passion to it, which reassured him somewhat. He would have been freaked out even more than he already was otherwise.

He felt something wet and warm splatter against his face and he realized that it was her tears.

She pulled away without looking at him, moving her head to his chest. The only clue that she was still crying was the trembling of her body and the dampness soaking the shirt he was wearing.

'Sekirei bond with their Ashikabi with a kiss.' she had explained to him. He supposed that this reaction meant that the winging didn't work. She already knew it wouldn't, but it hadn't stopped her from trying anyway, nor from being disappointed by the failure.

There was nothing that Shirou could do for her. He didn't know enough about Sekirei to even speculate a method to help her. The only thing he could do for her was to move his hand from behind his head and onto her trembling shoulders.

Surprisingly enough, that seemed to work a little bit, because the shaking of her body calmed down and she slowly relaxed under his touch.

He didn't know what that meant. He wouldn't dare to assume how the thought process of an extraterrestrial alien worked, but he dearly hoped that it was similar to that of a human being. At least in the department of emotional comfort.

Not that he was an expert on that subject either. He was never good at providing emotional support. Or receiving it for that matter.

In other circumstances, he would have trouble accepting such intimate contact with a woman he had only just met, however her clear discomfort and the gravity of the circumstances completely banished any thought about propriety from his mind.

Unable to move a muscle or do anything other than hold her, Shirou resigned himself to the situation and relaxed under the weight and warmth of her body.

The next thing he knew there was a bright light out of the window and he jerked up fearing the worst, startling Akitsu in the process.

It took him a full second to understand that the light wasn't from one of MBI's choppers, but rather from plain old sunlight.

"... Master?" Akitsu asked, looking up at him from his lap. "What is wrong?"

"Nothing, I... I fell asleep without noticing. Are you better now?"

"Yes," she replied, but her eyes were still red.

"Well, that's good. Look, I should be heading out for work, so I need to get up. I'll be back late in the evening."

"Can I come with you?"

"MBI is probably still on the lookout for you. Unless you fancy going back with them I suggest you stay put for a while. There's enough food in the fridge for the day. I'll buy some more on the way back tonight," he looked at her from head to toe. "Clothes as well."

"Then... I'll wait for your return, Master."

"Shirou. My name is Emiya Shirou, Akitsu-san. I would prefer it if you called me that."

"Yes, Shirou-sama," Akitsu agreed quickly. Shirou did not reprimand her use of suffix. For someone who called him Master just moment before, it was to be expected.

Shirou didn't know whether her willing subservience was a personal or a racial trait. According to what he understood from Akitsu's explanation, Sekirei held their bonded mates in the highest of regards. That didn't necessarily mean subordination, but it did make it more likely.

In any event, time would tell.

For the time being, he had to get to work. Even if he left right away, he'll probably be late. He hoped his good name wouldn't suffer from it.

He seriously didn't need additional setbacks. No, sir.

[XXX]

AN: I'm not dead and neither is this story. In the next few days you are going to see a lot of updates both for this one and the others.