"You… want our daughter as your retainer?" Angelica's father said, nearly speechless after Rin explained about Angelica's 'punishment' to them.
"That is right. In order to avoid mishaps like what happened before in the future, it would be best if Angelica stuck close to the side of someone who can keep an eye on her. If she is assigned as my guard, she will not be able to stray far and I will be able to intervene if she ever causes problems again." Rin said with a gracious smile. "And since this means she will need to join me at the Temple outside of Winter Socializing, when she will be expected to be at the Academy, the other nobles will accept it as being her punishment."
The parents looked at each other with worry as Angelica beamed with obvious happiness. Well, their worry was natural. No noble parents wanted their child to be sent to the Temple… or so Rin thought.
"I'm sorry, Lady Tohsaka, but would it not be better if Angelica joined the Temple as a Priestess rather than as your guard." The girl's mother said in an apologetic manner.
Rin was taken aback by this suggestion. "Why would you want your daughter to become a Blue Priestess? You do realize that she is scheduled to enter the Academy this year."
"That is… well…" Angelica's father said awkwardly shifting about in his seat. "The truth is… Angelica isn't very bright. Given her poor memory and empty headed nature, it is unlikely that she will be able to graduate from the Royal Academy."
"If one fails to graduate from the Academy, then they lose their noble status and have their schtappe sealed.. So if she is going to lose it anyways, would it not be better for her to join the Temple?" The girl's mother said.
"...Even if you say that there is little chance of her succeeding, there isn't any harm in letting her try, is there?" Rin asked, still confused by their behavior.
What they were saying about their own child was deeply offensive, but Angelica just kept smiling without seeming to care about it at all. As if she just accepts that her being an idiot and not standing a chance of succeeding was a given.
The parents didn't answer Rin's question, despite her waiting, so Rihyarda stepped in for them. "It is as Milady says, there is no harm in Lady Angelica trying to become a noble, so long as she is unattached. However, if she is the retainer of a high ranking noble, especially the Archduke's family, that failure becomes a stain on the family. An attendant's family like theirs cannot survive such dishonor, as no family would ever hire them afterwards."
The parents looked ashamed at hearing their own motives spoken out loud.
Rin looked from them and then to Angelica. "And you are okay with this?"
"Hm? What was that?" Angelica asked, showing that she hadn't actually been keeping up with the conversation.
"...You are okay with being disinherited by your family and sent to the Temple, instead of being given the chance to become a noble?"
"Oh. I suppose I am. I was disinherited a long time ago. My little sister is the family's heir." Angelica said her smile not showing any sort of resentment. "I was told that I could still become a noble if I studied really hard, but I'm just no good at it. Luckily, I can still become the mistress of another Mednoble family. I've been told I would make a good mistress."
…She certainly would.
Angelica had the same kind of noble beauty that Saber had, and Saber had been the kind of woman who could turn a gay man straight. One night had been all it took to convince Rin that she was very much a bisexual, despite the terrifying circumstances.
Still, the way her family had basically just given up on her ever having a future, it struck a chord with Myne.
It reminded her of how her family used to treat her whenever she had been too sick to even get out of bed. How they wanted to keep her around and be happy with her, but they had all given up on her living long. They only permitted her spoiled behavior because they knew she would be dying soon. It was the same with Angelica, wasn't it? Her family only allowed her to play at becoming a knight because they knew she was going to fail anyways and was doomed to eventually fall from nobility and become nothing but someone's mistress. Effectively a slave whose only purpose was to make babies, and they would never see her again.
Myne wondered if behind her smiling expression, if Angelica was hurting on the inside as well, knowing that her family had given up on her. That they viewed her as hopeless and as a burden that they were obligated by family ties to carry.
Myne's heart bled for the girl.
"Milady?" Rihyarda said, snapping Rin out of it. She noticed the stares she was getting and realized there were tears in her eyes.
How embarrassing.
"Angelica. I'd like to test you, if that would be alright." Rin said.
"A test." Immediately Angelica adopted the most terrified, kicked puppy expression that you had ever seen. One that looked exactly like the one Saber would give whenever she was embarrassed.
"Yes. I would like to test your swordsmanship."
"Of course!" Angelica said, immediately bouncing back, her blue eyes sparkling with delight.
"Milady, didn't you scold Wilfried's attendants for exactly this sort of thing yesterday?" Rihyarda said as Rin did a few stretches in her outdoor clothes and performed a few experimental swings with her wooden sword.
Her normal hairstyle had been replaced by a single ponytail tied up on one side, and the dark leather training clothes had several ruins stitched into them to protect against attacks. She also carried a helmet underneath her arm.
"That was different. I have taken the necessary precautions. Besides, I am much more familiar with a sword than my brother is." Rin said dismissively. "Or are you going to deny that there is a difference between me and Wilfried."
"...Milady, you are indeed strong for your age, but I wish you would not needlessly endanger yourself." Rihyarda said with a sigh.
"Everything will be fine." Rin said before walking out into the small garden behind the children's house of the castle, facing an Angelica with a noticeably disappointed look on her face. "Is something the matter?"
"Mother and father say that I must not fight with other children." Angelica admits.
Rin glanced over at the parents who were progressing from merely worried this morning to being terrified, believing that their simple minded daughter was about to bring about the end of their family.
Having injured one child of the Archduke was bad enough, doing it a second time would be a death sentence for sure.
"But they have also told you that you must always obey the hierarchy, did they not?" Rin asked the girl, who nodded. "Well, I am ordering you to spar with me and to take it seriously. If you don't, you will be a very bad girl."
"Oh, I see." Angelica said, brightening up.
"And to make this interesting, if you can manage to get a hit on me, then I will grant you one request, so long as it is within my power. How about it?" Rin asked.
"Really?" Angelica asked, her eyes now sparkling.
"Of course. I give you my word with everyone here as a witness." Rin said with a smile. "The rules are simply, the match will pause any time one of us lands a hit. First to get five hits wins. Rihyarda will be the one to give the signal of when to begin."
"Right." Angelica nodded in agreement.
The both of them put on their helmets.
Angelica was smiling that graceful smile from behind hers while dressed in armor that imitated the armor worn by the Knight's Order, save for the lack of cape, making her look all the more like Saber.
"Are both of you ready?" Rihyarda asked, magic power flared from Angelica as she nodded her head, with Rin merely smiling in return, no obvious use of magecraft as she strengthened her body without a single drop of wasted magic power. "Begin!"
Angelica rushed forward and swung towards Rin, attempting to get a quick early strike, bit if Angelica was fast, Rin was faster. She immediately batted aside Angelica's swing and countered.
Angelica dodged with no evidence of surprise on her smiling face as she readjusted herself to attack a new opening that Rin had made for her.
Angelica was an excellent swordswoman, perhaps an equal to Rin. And while Rin hadn't focused on the use of weapons, having trained in hand-to-hand in her previous life in order to keep her body in shape for the sake of her magic circuits, no one who had spent as much time as she had with Shirou could be entirely unfamiliar with swords.
Rin was faster, but Angelica's balance was better and she had a longer reach, allowing the girl to stay just out of strike range of Rin as she attacked. But this in turn made her attacks easy to handle as well. Something that Rin too quickly took for granted.
One of Angelica's swings came and Rin moved to parry it, only for Angelica to lean back slightly, causing their swords to just barely not connect with one another.
It was something played up in blade dances, a form of art that some nobles took part in instead of music, which Angelica seemed to be an expert in, despite her young age, and her attendant family background.
Rin's weight was set to intercept the attack, causing her to lose a bit of balance, while Angelica had shifted her stance to get ready for a lung.
A burst of mana came from the back of Rin's hand, swinging her sword back fast enough to deflect Angelica's attack, leaving the girl open for a counter.
"The first hit goes to Lady Tohsaka!" Rihyarda declared, as the match paused.
"I thought I had you there." Angelica said with a pout and she breathed heavily and attempted to conserve her mana.
"It was a wonderful maneuver. You indeed almost had me." Rin admitted, still not strained.
Angelica had been using reinforcements, but she was doing it with the same level of grace as a gorilla has when painting. The waste and imperfections in it made it no match for Rin's own reinforcements.
"Tell me, who is your swordsmanship instructor?" Rin asked the girl.
"I don't have one." Angelica said. "I only learned by watching the knights training while my parents were working in the castle."
"...And yet you are this good." Rin said, her eyes moving towards the girl's parents. "You have such an abundance of natural talent. Letting you spend your life at the Temple or hidden away as someone's mistress would be a waste."
"Thank you for the praise, Lady Tohsaka. Though you are so much more amazing." Angelica said, brimming with happiness.
"I only have a better understanding of magic than you do. Your talent with a sword exceeds my own." Rin replied. "Before, I merely wanted you as my knight. But now, I won't take no for an answer. I won't let your talents go to waste."
"...But I'm no good as a noble." Angelica said, words that she had probably been told, not out of maliciousness, but out of a misplaced sense of pity.
"Even if you are a third-rate noble, that only makes me trust you more." Rin admitted with a smile, thinking of Shirou. Of how his idiocy was his best quality. "We still have four more rounds to go."
"Right." Angelica said as she got ready for the next bout, before pausing. "Wait, I thought it was first to five hits, not best of five."
"What's the difference?" Rin chuckled.
Veronica watched Sylvester's adopted daughter from her window.
Tohsaka's sudden appearance had been jarring to Veronica and she had immediately sent an inquiry to the Temple to find out who the girl was.
Her brother, Bezewanst, the Archbishop of the Temple, sent a reply saying she was 'probably' just a commoner girl that some merchants were trying to pass off as an orphaned child of high nobility, hoping to use Bezewanst to get her adopted into a high ranking noble family in order to secure favors.
She was told that she was a smart, if impulsive girl, who thought in much the same way as a merchant, and despite working with him daily, she and Ferdinand appeared to hate each other, with Ferdinand having found her trying to dig through his files in the middle of the night for blackmail material. She'd also turned the Temple orphanage into a workshop so that she could make money off of them.
Based on his description, the girl was nothing to worry about. Just a tool who caught the eye of some extremely important people who desired to make use of her. Not a real noble.
If that had been the case, Veronica would have just let her be. A child with abundant mana who could be used as a tool for the Duchy was fine by her, so long as they never had a hope of becoming the next Aub.
But Veronica had underestimated just how talented the girl was. Her ability to control magic was unreal for someone without a schtoppe, and she had a way with words.
But even if she had a good deal of charisma, there was a not so subtle push whenever she spoke, like she didn't want anyone to get close to her. Where she was fine with having their sympathies, but didn't want confidants. She seemed to have some idea what it meant to be adopted into an Archduke's family and that she was way in over her head and wanted to avoid getting involved in politics. But at the same time, she made such public displays of power that she was impossible to be ignored.
Sylvester had declared openly that he didn't want to replace Wilfried with the girl, but wanted Tohsaka to grow into a support role for him. But it made Veronica uneasy.
She would have much preferred it if she had been adopted into another family and made to act as Wilfried's attendant, rather than being adopted into their family herself. The child was unsure of herself and didn't want the role of Archduke now, but there was no guarantee that it would stay that way.
It looked like Ferdinand all over again, or maybe worse.
Well, she had gained experience when dealing with her step-son.
She'd start by spreading stories of her greed and then rumors that she was behind the attack on Wilfried, arranged to make herself look good at his expense. She'd call into question her background and get her subordinates to have their children become her retainers and harass her in the shadows, the same way she had with Ferdinand.
If she becomes suspicious of everyone and dismisses all of her retainers, then she will be unable to become Aub no matter how talented she is.
…Or perhaps there was an easier way.
After all, the girl's adoption did not come with the consent of her 'family'.
Veronica didn't have many strings to pull in Frenbeltag, but she was sure she could still get them to move if information of the child leaked.
Sylvester and Florencia had never found it easy to say no to their older siblings.
It had been only three minutes, but Angelica looked to be on the verge of fainting.
Being physically a child and not yet having started practicing mana compression, she had less mana than a full grown Laynoble, and it showed. She had spent everything she had trying to push herself to reach Rin, but only ended up falling short.
"Would you like to take a break before our final round?" Rin asked.
Angelica nodded her head before collapsing to her knees, panting for breath. "Lady Tohsaka is amazing. I wish I had as much mana as you do."
"...Angelica, while I do have a lot more mana than you do, I haven't used even a tenth as much as you have so far." Rin said, surprising the girl. "Despite the fact that my smaller body requires me to strengthen myself more than you do, I have a much better understanding of how body strengthening magic works, lowering my consumption to the point where any Laynoble could do the same."
"Wow." Angelica said, thoroughly impressed.
"Would you like me to teach you?" Rin asked, getting a rapid nod from the girl. Rin chuckled before looking around her for a prop, spotting a sandstone rock in the rock garden, picking it up and bringing it to Angelica. "Do you see this rock, how it has hundreds of little holes in it? Well, that is how your body is. There are hundreds of thousands of little imperfections, and when you use your body strengthening magic, what you are doing is filling in those imperfections with magic in order to strengthen them. The problem is, that you don't understand where the imperfections are. Your method of strengthening your body is like taking a handful of sand and just throwing it at the holes, hoping that you will fill some of them in."
Rin did so and showed how while some of the sand got caught in the holes, most of it just fell to the ground.
"Not only is this wasteful, in that you use far more mana than you need to, the mana you do get into the holes isn't tightly packed and just falls out." Rin said as she shook the stone so that the sand fell out. "What you need to do is compress your mana into the holes, and let it expand to fill them up. This will produce a more powerful result, for less energy and with less upkeep. It also has the added benefit of not flaring your mana for all to see."
"I see." Angelica said before pursing her lips. "But how do I find the holes?"
"It isn't that hard. Here, just hold this and…" Rin stopped, looking over at the adults and frowned a little. "Maybe we should continue this in my secret room."
"But what about the final point?" Angelica asked.
"We can have our last round later, after you've trained properly." Rin assured her. "Or do you want to have that last round now? I don't think you'd have much of a chance of scoring a hit as tired as you are now."
"...Later." Angelica agreed.
Then, taking Rin's hand, the pair of them went to her room so that they could continue their lesson in privacy, leaving the stunned guard knights behind with Angelica's parents.
The pair didn't know what to do or say.
Their daughter, their simple minded daughter, had somehow won the attention of the Archduke's adopted daughter.
They couldn't decide if this was a good or a bad thing.