"Wake up Master Inke," the voice comes from somewhere in the room. The voice has a distinctly inhuman quality and it both sounds inhumanly beautiful and a quite dangerous. "You are going to be late for school," the voice continues. "Kiritsugu has instructed me quite clearly that I mustn't let that happen."

"Damnit Nine," Shirou said rolling out of his bed. He blinked trying to get his eyes used to the sunlight streaming through his window. Focusing he took in the smiling visage of his butler. His butler had been "acquired" months ago and one of the first things that had changed was that he subsequently took it upon himself to wake Shirou up every day finally retiring Shirou's very battered and abused alarm clock. The problem was that even though Shirou was his master he obeyed Kiritsugu so that Shirou would not get into trouble. It both made Shirou happy and pissed him off that his butler was so considerate of him.

Nine stood six feet tall and looked to be in his twenties. He had black hair and eyes. He wore a stunning butler suit. You could say he was dressed to the nines, Shirou silently chuckled to himself. While he looked very ordinary, for a butler in Japan that is. Any magus would feel distinctly off guard with him due to the higher sensitivity to shifts in the ambient mana. Looking at him now even Shirou felt like nothing looked extraordinary about him. Until he flickered.

It was a thing he did whenever Shirou started seeing him as a too human. For a brief second his mask would drop and his human visage would disappear to be replaced by the image of Chaos that was his true origin. He only ever did it around Shirou and not even Kiritsugu ever saw his true visage.

"You're supposed to listen to me Nine," Shirou said grumbling.

"I'm only doing this for your own good, Master," Nine replied. "You need to go to school and keep Kiritsugu happy. A happy Kiritsugu means more magic time."

Shirou reluctantly conceded the point and quickly changed into the clothes provided for him by Nine. He quickly headed to the bathroom to do his morning ablutions knowing that Nine would be cooking for him today. While Shirou liked cooking he didn't do it during the morning anymore as he was often waking up late due to too much magic practice. Heading downstairs he passed Kiritsugu and greeted him inquiring about any further updates in the Einzbern plan.

Kiritsugu replied in the negative and stated that there was a visitor downstairs for him. Walking into the kitchen he came across a bikini clad Satsuki who was savouring the food. In the corner of the kitchen was Len who had likewise shown up for breakfast and was munching into the deluxe cat food with modest glee.

"Hey," Shirou initiated the conversation. "Haven't seen you for a while Satsuki." He stared into her hazel eyes and watched as she finished up her current dish.

"Yeah," she said wiping her mouth. "Things were a bit rough at home. It's nothing terminal but I had to get away. So I told my parent's I'm staying over here."

Shirou winced at that. When he had convinced Satsuki's parents that she was going to the hospital it had apparently torn into a lot of old family drama. Satsuki didn't blame him saying that he merely set off the powder keg that was their family and he more than made up for it by helping her afterwards.

"I bet they weren't expecting the friend to be over in another city were they," Shirou said to Satsuki with a wry smile.

"Yup," Satsuki replied with a toothy smile. "Benefits of being the favoured sibling."

Satsuki was referencing the fact that barely a month after their initial meeting Sumire had taught Satsuki her teleportation technique. Despite mostly being human by that point Satsuki had both acquired enough goodwill from the vampires and had enough magical ability and aptitude to learn it and it pissed Shirou the hell off. In fact it annoyed him to such an extent that not even a month later Shirou had learned how to use his magic to alter the coordinates of his existence and teleport anywhere for which he knew the coordinates.

In fact it was both a point of irritation and admiration from his entire circle that he had manged to partially unvampire Satsuki. Vampirism was an infection of the soul something that he as a person who was not knowledgeable about the third could only affect tangentially. Therefore instead of reversing the vampire treatment he was only able to help Satsuki symptomatically. Therefore technically Satsuki was a vampire albeit one that has no craving for blood or desire to kill and whose body does not periodically break down. As a trade-off she lost a huge chunk of her speed and strength but her time reversal stayed. Shirou had currently neither the knowledge nor the desire to unbind the curse of restoration. As a side effect Satsuki had also started gaining mystery at an even greater rate than a normal vampire, probably due to Shirou's bodily manipulations.

Arcueid, Sumire and Kiritsugu had promptly forbidden him from making another one or revealing he could do it, although he was currently working on a project with Arcueid to reduce her bloodlust. That project was kind of an annoyance as fixing something of Arcueid's status was a bit harder than a newly born vampire.

Speaking of the vampire Shirou had yet to see her. "Satsuki have you seen Arcueid recently."

Satsuki didn't reply but another voice did. "I do believe she had left to go hunting down a particularly nasty Dead Apostle in Russia," Nine said as he walked into the room carrying Shirou's breakfast. "Now I believe you have about twenty minutes to finish breakfast and get to school.

Hearing that Shirou wolfed down the remains of his breakfast, and using the fourth he quickly grabbed his bags and teleported to an alleyway near the school that was always unoccupied at that time. "Almost always unoccupied," he corrected in his head, "but that's what hypnosis is for."

Strolling into the school gates he walked past through the crowds of those students who didn't have before school activities. Ahead was a slight commotion and with some slight amount of interest he realised it was Tohsaka and Matou two people who he really didn't feel like meeting now in this morning. Most likely Matou had said something flirtatious and Tohsaka was putting him in his place. He didn't have time for this though as school was starting… "Wait a minute," he thought to himself staring up at the sun gauging its location. "If school was starting soon then they wouldn't be outside arguing." His eyes widened as he came to the realisation that Nine had set him up. "Meh," he thought, "He probably thought I was leaving too late. I don't really care enough at the moment to reprimand him."

"Wait," Shirou thought to himself. "I have time." Without further ado he walked up to the arguing couple and decided to mess with them a bit.

"Woah," Shirou started, interrupting the feuding duo, "A lover's quarrel right in front of the school, how bold airing your dirty laundry in public."

"Inke," Tohsaka spat out the word, looking as if he had just ruined her whole day. She as usual wore her red coat over a girls version of the Homuhara high uniform and had her black hair in pigtails.

"Wow Tohsaka, if you keep looking at me with eyes like that I'll think you've fallen for me," Shirou said in a false coy tone of voice.

"I'm afraid to burst your bubble Inke but I wouldn't fall for you if you were the last person on earth," she took a side look at Matou and amended, "Second to last person on earth."

"Always wound up so tight I can nearly hear the springs snap, and as I've said before you can call me Shirou," Shirou said his smile genuinely widening as he took part in one of his favourite activities in high school."

"Can't you tell you're not wanted?" Shinji said to him. He and Shinji definitely did not get on. It was entirely the fault of the blue-haired youth. He foisted some work given to him by the teachers onto Shirou and Shirou did definitely not forgive. From then on Shirou had gone out of his way to foil multiple dates of his and irritate him whenever he got the opportunity. Speaking of that it was probably time for another attempt.

"Don't be like that Matou," Shirou smiled at him. "Hey do you want to see a magic trick." At this Shirou pulled out a deck of cards. Shirou was in fact an average magician. No to rephrase that he was an epic user of the forth magic but his street magic was only average. Luckily the forth magic used no prana and his street magic was available on the internet and he could combine them to pull off some David Blaine level street magic. He mainly used his newfound teleportation to pull out cards from anywhere and everywhere.

"Also without fail the emergence of his magic cards never failed to piss off both Tohsaka and Matou."

"No for the last time I don't want to see a magic trick," Shinji yelled at him while Tohsaka frowned clearly conflicted between enjoying seeing Shinji taken down a peg and Shirou's trivialisation of magic.

"Are you sure you don't want to. I'm a really good magician after all," he said speaking one hundred percent truth.

"Man Shinji you're such a killjoy," Shirou said. He decided to take his mockery to the next level. "And your grandfather was so nice," he said. This was one hundred percent a lie. If Shirou ever met the man he would probably kill him out of principle.

"What," Shinji said his eyes bulging comically and even Tohsaka was taken aback.

"Yeah, we met down by the park one day. Your grandfather is an expert on bugs you know." At this Shirou adopted a fake nostalgic smile. "We spent an afternoon just discussing entomology."

"Ahh good times," Shirou fake reminisced ignoring Shinji's wide eyes. "Oh well I've got to go. Catch you two later." Shirou waved and left.

Walking through the doors of the school he caught the eye of Shinji's significantly better looking sister. He smiled genuinely at her and waved. Sakura saw him and waved back tentatively. Sakura was a person of interest for him. When he passed her initially he could feel the very faint ripples that denoted a magus. However a few days later when he had bumped into her he had felt a lot more. Wow that sounded dirty in his head. No brimming beneath the skin of Sakura was a dark power just waiting to be unleashed on the world. After that Shirou was immediately intrigued at the scale of the abomination. Whatever Eldritch God had spawned Sakura Shirou wanted to watch and see the results. There were mainly two reasons why he hadn't examined her further. One he had invested time into trying to figure out what it was without his magic and to just scan her and instantly know it would feel like a letdown. Two he had only discovered this about a month ago and he was waiting any day now to go rescue Kiritsugu's daughter. He had no current time for sidequests so to speak.

He continued on to his class where he sat on his chair and began to sleep. When his teachers came he paid the minimum amount of attention and dutifully answered important questions. "Man," Shirou thought, "my school life needs more wacky hijinks."

Kuzuki Souchirou's class he paid attention in because he would never fall asleep in Kuzuki's class. The first time he walked into the class Shirou nearly shot out of his seat right there. Only his well-trained self-control kept him from going into fight or flight mode. The man had a better assassin walk then his father. He observed him stealthily the whole time in class.

After the lesson he paid Kuzuki a visit and showed him a magic trick. That time the card appeared from right next to his jugular vein. He then gave him the warning that if anybody in the class turns up dead he knows who his first guess would be. Kuzuki took the threats seriously and he stated to Shirou that his only goal was to be a teacher. After judging his certainty by a slight use of the forth magic Shirou had thanked the man and bid him good-day. Still neither of them would ever let their guard down while near the other.

At lunch time after devouring his bento he wandered around the school seeking interesting things. He contemplated starting an argument with Rin again but then he noticed Yukika sitting with the rest of the track group at the table next to her. If he starts an argument she would look up at him and earnestly and politely ask him to stop. It was an attack to which he had no defence.

So he did the next best thing. "Hey Yukika, Himuro, Black Panther. How are you doing today?"

"You are doing this to annoy Rin aren't you," Himuro replied automatically. The serious looking gray haired girl staring at him from behind her spectacles. "You're sitting by her and deliberately not picking a fight."

"Yeah I know," Shirou replied knowing the game is up. "It's fun to watch. You can actually see the evolution of her thought process whenever I do this. First she carries on the whole I'm an honour student I'm above your petty reasons. Then she slowly starts glancing at me after the first minute mark. Then she gets really impatient and starts drumming her fingers on the desk and then after that she will initiate."

"Why do you even want to do that," the Black Panther of Homuhara or Kaede Makidera replied. "You don't seem to hate her." She then looked Shirou in the eyes and asked him directly. "Are you teasing her to get her to notice you?"

"No," Shirou responded immediately, "If I wanted to get into her pants," he started. "Which I still believe I'm too young for, get your mind out of the gutter," he said upon seeing all three girls turn red. "I would go about it in a different way. Nope in this case Ms Tohsaka is the fortress and the prize is seeing the fortress crumble into impotent rage. I merely act as a purveyor of chaos and mayhem. Now please be quiet she's coming over."

"Inke have you finally got enough of troubling the people in your own classroom," Tohsaka said her hands on her hips she looked a bit off guard as was the effect of this strategy.

"Nah," Shirou replied relaxed. "I was just going to show these people a magic trick when you came around Tohsaka. You don't have to worry you weren't barging in on some really important conversation. I would never dream of calling your manners into question." Shirou laughed. "You can come talk to me anytime you want Tohsaka. Maybe we can even have the conversation in English."

"It was one mark!" Tohsaka said in a sort of low shout. "You beat me by one mark. Stop implying I'm bad at speaking English."

Shirou shook his head, "Always seeing the worst in everybody Tohsaka at that rate you'll never get a girlfri… I mean boyfriend."

In under normal cases that would be below the belt but Tohsaka had started it a couple months earlier when she implied that he and Issei were romantically involved. Shirou had just rolled with it and for the next week spoke to every guy with the prefix of darling before he got bored. But in doing that Tohsaka had left herself open to this specific counterattack.

"Can you stop please," Yukika said drawing the match to close like a prime time referee. "You two should be a bit nicer to each other. You're both amazing you don't have to fight."

At this Shirou sighed. Yukika was both adorable, with her plain hair and big brown eyes coupled with her short stature she kind of reminded Shirou of a puppy and always spoke sincerely. In addition she along with Issei were the only people that he knew of that he would consider a purely good person. After that display he wouldn't be able to enjoy a battle with Rin for a week.

"Well if that's it I should be heading out to the classroom. "Yukika, Himuro, Black Panther and Rin," At this he smiled sincerely, "It was nice talking to you." At this he turned and walked out of the room ignoring Rin's sputtering.

xxx

Shirou was and always will be a very dedicated member of his club. While in club obsessed Japan the going-home club was never very popular Shirou attended it religiously. When walking home he passed a restaurant and saw a familiar man sitting in one of the open air booths. He immediately went inside and sat opposite Gilgamesh. The man would only ever show up if he wanted to address Shirou about something. "You may as well order, I'll pay for your meal." At this Shirou quickly scanned the menu and picked the most expensive thing before stating his order to the waiter.

"So what do you have to tell me this time? If you have some new advice on vacation spots I'm afraid I may be too busy in the near future."

"Rescuing your sister right," Gilgamesh replied. "A worthy cause and something that I have no doubt will give you a good amount of growth."

"Growth," Shirou mused over that word. "Yes I suppose I did grow on the last one also. But it also lead to the deaths of two people."

"Yeah," Gilgamesh said and for a moment Shirou though he looked very melancholy. "Death is always scary. It is the ultimate unknown. Not even I can see what lies beyond."

"So if you're just going to tell me to go what was the point of meeting with me. I was going to go anyway."

"Actually I met you here to give you two pieces of advice and a warning," Gilgamesh paused, "Your food is here," he said as the waiter arrived with Shirou's dish. "You can eat I'll continue talking. First piece of advice is to finish that spell you've been working on."

Shirou refrained from asking how he knew about that spell instead allowing Gilgamesh to continue.

"Second piece of advice take every scrap of research you from them." At seeing Shirou's incredulous look he elaborated. "You will need it in future. I'm not a magus. I care little for their so-called heresies. If you don't get the research then it is likely your sister will die anyway."

"My warning on the other hand is this. Don't lose sight of what's important. Very seldom is everything lost and you are a person who will always be caught when necessary."

At those last cryptic words Gilgamesh stood up and left the restaurant. "By the way," he said turning back to Shirou, "feel free to order anything else you want, it's already been paid for."

Shirou smiled and started rummaging through the dessert menu.

Author Note So here's the chapter. I just wanted it to be a bit more slice of life before the heaviness of the next arc. Yes Nine is the result of the black goo and he is absolutely loyal to Shirou. Yup Rin and Shirou do not initially get along. Their personalities clash as they are both strong willed people who don't back down. Right now Sakura has intrigued Shirou but not much more as they haven't had a proper long conversation. Yukika, well cute things are Shiro's kryptonite. He finds it incredibly hard to deny Len anything.

aliesterus Thanks for the reccomendation but I already know and have watched Madoka Magica. Difference between the character speaking and the author in this case. This chapter takes place in the year two thousand Madoka comes out in twenty eleven. I actually have some trouble with that now and again keeping track of what each character knows.

sandmanwake This is going to make me sound a bit harsh. I really appreciate your review but I'm going to have to be blunt about this. Saving a person does not mean they automatically fall in love with you. It brings temporary feelings of gratitude. What determines whether a character can get together is if they have good synergy and can see themselves spending their lives together. Caren would get on well with this Shirou, he would be drawn to her interesting personality.

Pepebomb I'll try not to force you to like anybody. Everybody has flaws and I understand the annoyance when authors try to pretend that those flaws don't exist in the love interest.

KRKing If I was going to use an OC I would be probably write down one or two things about them and they would be either be a minor role or killed off. While I realize how hypocritical that sounds considering this Shirou is basically an OC I will admit that I much rather prefer to redefine and extrapolate existing characters than to invent new ones.

Please Read and Review. Actually at the time of writing this I just hit one hundred favorites and on my first story. Thank you to everybody who Favorited the story.