Author's Note: Wow, ten reviews for the first chapter? Thanks, guys. Here's the second chapter; hope it's still to your liking.

Chapter 2: A Fateful Meeting

The next morning began just like any other. Shira got ready for school, ate breakfast with Taiga and Sakura, and washed the dishes once the meal was over. It was when Shira and Sakura were walking to school that the first strange thing that day occurred.

"You know, Sakura," Shira began as the girls approached the school building, "I appreciate you coming by to help me with chores, but you could take weekends off. Don't you have friends you want to hang out with?"

"Oh, it's really no problem," Sakura said. "I don't feel the need to go out just because it's the weekend. But if I did want to meet someone or had something personal to do, I'd do it."

"Okay; I just don't want you putting yourself out on my account."

"Senpai!" Sakura suddenly exclaimed. "Your hand's bleeding."

"Huh?" Shira abruptly stopped walking, confused. She looked down at her left hand; sure enough, there was a long, thin cut along the back of her hand. Tiny droplets of blood dripped down in between her index and middle fingers.

"That's weird," she said, more to herself than to Sakura. "I don't remember cutting myself last night." She shrugged. "Maybe I did and I just don't remember."

Shira looked up at Sakura, who looked concerned.

"Don't worry, it's just a scratch." She smiled reassuringly. "It doesn't hurt at all."

That seemed to be enough for Sakura. "All right, as long as you're not hurt."

"Morning, Emiya."

Shira and Sakura turned to see Ayako Mitsuzuri walking up to them with a small grin.

"Good morning, Mitsuzuri," Shira greeted.

"I was wondering where you were yesterday," Ayako told her. "Figured you'd want to sit in on the archery club meeting."

"I had to work," Shira explained.

"Sorry, Senpai," Sakura said, giving a slight bow to Ayako, "but I should be getting to class."

"See you later, then." After Sakura had left, Ayako turned to Shira, her initial smile fading. "Hey, Emiya, could you do me a huge favor?"

"Sure, what is it?" Shira asked.

"Keeping an eye on Shinji for me."

"You mean Matou?" The redhead frowned. Shinji Matou was Sakura's older brother, and although Shira had been going to school with him for years, he was no friend of hers. "What's he done now?"

"Well, he's just been kinda out of control lately," Ayako said as she and Shira began to walk into the school building. "I take my eye off of him for one second and he acts like he owns the place. Just the other day, he made the first years, who had never touched a bow before, do target practice in front of every girl in the club. He embarrassed them until they hit their mark."

By now, the two girls had made it to the locker room, Shira shaking her head in disgust while Ayako opened her locker. "What a jerk," she said as she began opening her own locker. "Where were you when this was happening? You're team captain; you could've gotten him to stop."

"Hey, it's not like I let it happen." Ayako grabbed her bag and shut her locker door with a little more force than was necessary. "I'm doing a dozen things at once and I can't be in the dojo and out at the archery range at the same time."

The brunette scowled. "And whether I try to talk to Shinji about anything, the little creep just up and leaves. I'm telling you, one day I'm gonna strangle him!"

Shira hummed in thought, closing her locker after getting her books. "Still, it sounds like something must've ticked Matou off pretty good. I mean, I'd like to think that even he would know the difference between tough instructing methods and public humiliation."

"Well, I heard he got shot down pretty hard by Rin Tohsaka yesterday," Ayako admitted as she and Shira left the locker room.

"Really?" Shira asked.

Ayako nodded. "If it's one thing that boy has plenty of, it's pride. From what I heard, Tohsaka took all that pride and smashed it into bits."

Shira spoke again after a momentary pause. "If you really want me to, Mitsuzuri, I'll try to talk to Matou."

What she didn't say was that trying to talk to Shinji was like trying to talk to a brick wall.

"If you're gonna harass me about something, Emiya, can you at least wait until a reasonable hour?" Shinji grumbled shortly after Shira had approached him in the hallway.

Shira was tempted to inform him that she wasn't here for the pleasure of his company, but she restrained herself. Starting an argument with Shinji was not something she wanted to deal with right now.

"I'm not trying to harass you about anything," she said patiently. "I just wanted to know what was going on with the archery club."

Shinji scoffed. "You quit the club ages ago; why the hell do you care now?" He didn't give Shira a chance to answer as his usual arrogant smirk crossed his face. "But now that I'm vice captain, we're bound to win."

"Sounds great," Shira replied a bit shortly. Then, feeling as though she might as well be more polite, she added, "Let me know if you need help with anything. If I remember correctly, you were never good at fixing your own equipment."

Shinji dismissed her with a wave of his hand. "Unlike you, I'm not into that blue-collared labor stuff. I'll give you a holler next time something comes up."

Translation: I wouldn't ask you for help if my life depended on it. How nice of you, Matou, Shira thought sarcastically as she watched him leave.

The rest of the school day passed in a normal fashion. After classes were over, Shira spent a couple of hours with Issei in the student council room, trying to fix an ancient TV set. It was nearly sunset by the time she left the school building.

"Hey, Emiya! What are you still doing here?"

Shira forced a tight-lipped smile on her face as she walked across the schoolyard to the archery dojo, where Shinji was standing with a group of girls.

The smile Shinji was wearing was downright condescending. "Must be nice to have so much free time that you think you can just goof off all afternoon."

"Well, if you must know, Matou, I was helping Issei with a TV for the student council," Shira replied, managing to keep her voice civil.

"Well, aren't you a little lapdog?" Shinji gestured towards the girls behind him. "That said, we have a favor to ask of you. See, the archery dojo is in serious need of a cleanup. I'd do it myself, but," he let out an exaggerated sigh, "I'm just swamped. You mind taking care of it for me?"

The girls gasped in surprise.

"Shinji!"

"But Ms. Fujimura told you to clean it up."

"But if I did that," Shinji told the second girl who had spoken, "we wouldn't make it to the restaurant before it closes. Who cares if she does it for me? It still gets cleaned."

"Yeah," the girl reluctantly admitted, "but doesn't she think that's rude?"

"Oh, you don't care, do ya?" Shinji asked Shira.

Honestly, she had half a mind to tell him to go do his own damn work and go straight home. How Sakura got stuck with this guy as her brother, I'll never understand, she thought.

Even so, she figured the best thing to do was to go along with it. She did tell Shinji to ask for her help if she was needed, after all.

"It's no problem," Shira said. "I had nothing planned, anyway."

As Shinji left with his giggling groupies, Shira went inside the dojo.

If I'm gonna do this, I might as well do it right.

It was well over an hour later when Shira finished washing the dojo's floor, cleaning the bows, and fixing the bowstrings. All in all, she felt it hadn't been a waste of time, despite Shinji throwing his work onto her; it was actually kind of fun to be cleaning a place she used to spend her time in.

Shira was in the middle of wringing a rag out when she heard loud clanging sounds coming from outside.

What could that be? she wondered as she stood up, focusing on the sounds.

Was that metal she was hearing...?

Deciding to investigate, Shira headed outside the dojo. What she saw out in the schoolyard caused her heart to skip several beats.

A man in blue and a woman in red were fighting, their weapons—a lance for the man, twin swords for the woman—clashing and clanging as they met blow for blow.

What the hell is going on? Shira thought as she watched. Somehow, she didn't think these people were from a circus.

The two combatants struck at each other, but with each opening that was exploited by one, the other was sure to block and counterattack. Whether it was an attack, a block, or even a dodge, the man and the woman moved with a speed that Shira could barely follow.

It was a speed that could only be called inhuman.

Shira's shock at what she was seeing turned into horror when she suddenly remembered the conversation she had with Issei yesterday.

"There was a murder. ... What's odd about it is the weapon that was used to kill them. They believe it was some kind of long blade."

She needed to run; she needed to get out of here. The man and woman seemed intent on killing each other, but what if they spotted her?

They'd kill me, Shira thought faintly. They'd kill me; oh, God, they'd kill me! Run, you idiot, RUN!

Her thoughts were becoming more frantic by the second. However, even with her every instinct screaming at her to run, that this was something she shouldn't see, her body remained rooted to the spot. Her eyes continued to focus on the battle in almost morbid fascination.

The man's lance clashed again with one of the woman's swords, the sound of metal on metal piercing the night air.

A fearful gasp escaped from Shira's throat.

"Who's there?" The man took his eyes off of his opponent...

...And looked directly at her.

At last, Shira turned around and put all of her energy into running as fast as she could, the spearman chasing after her.

She ran into the school building, down a flight of stairs, and through several hallways. It felt as though at least a quarter of an hour had passed before she slowed down, unable to run much further.

Panting heavily, Shira leaned against a wall. She couldn't hear anything except for the thudding of her heart. She was safe from her pursuer...for the moment, anyway.

"What the hell?" she muttered. "What the hell?"

Those three words summed the whole thing up nicely. Just who were those people (if they could even be called that)? Why were they trying to hack each other to pieces?

Shira's breath rate was starting to get back to normal. But before she could straighten up and resume running, the blue-clad spearman appeared in front of her as if from nowhere.

"Yo," he drawled, his red eyes glinting maliciously.

Shira flinched away with a yelp.

"You're pretty fast, little girl," the man remarked. He spoke as casually as though he was talking about the weather, and that was probably what scared Shira the most.

"But you can't run forever. And now that you've seen us," he lifted up his red lance, "you have to die," he finished as he stabbed the frozen, terrified girl in the chest.

Shira heard a small, pained squeak, belatedly realizing that it came from her. She slumped forward as the man roughly pulled his lance from her body, falling face first onto the floor after it was out.

She dimly heard the man's footsteps as he left. She coughed up some blood, feeling her body going numb as her heart began to slow.

The world around her was getting darker. She couldn't focus on anything.

I'm dying... The thought came to Shira sluggishly.

She'd been close to death once before, after that fire ten years ago. Back then, though, Kiritsugu had saved her, and there wasn't anyone to save her this time.

I'm dying...without ever having saved anyone... She didn't even have the strength to shed a tear at the fact that she'd failed in her promise to her father.

Everything went black a second later.

Shira did not know long she remained in that darkness. For a time, all she heard was her faint heartbeat, struggling against the odds to stay alive. Then she heard footsteps, followed by a voice or two, but it was as though those sounds were from a long distance.

"Reproduce and replace all damaged organs, including the heart."

Warm heat seemed to cover her like a blanket.

What's going on...? Is someone there...?

The heat faded, and Shira was left with the darkness.

When she came to, the first thing she noticed was the high ceiling of the school's hallway. The second thing she noticed was the sharp pain in her chest.

Grunting, Shira slowly sat up and gingerly touched the place where she'd been stabbed, earning a blood-stained hand in the process.

I'm...alive? she thought, slightly stunned. But she had been dying; how on Earth—?!

Shira let her eyes wander to the floor, where she saw a small ruby glittering from a chain.

Someone was here, she realized. Someone was here and they brought me back to life.

After a few seconds of thought, Shira picked up the ruby, deciding to give it back to whoever saved her if she ever met them. Of course, it would help to know who that person was, but still.

Finally, she stood up and left the school for home, her head full of thoughts of the bizarre events that had transpired.

The estate was dark when Shira arrived. There was a note from Sakura in the dining room, saying she had gone home herself, but the redhead only gave it the briefest of glances. She sat down on the floor and took a few deep breaths, feeling exhausted even as the pain in her chest seemed to subside at last.

Whoever the lancer and swordswoman were, Shira had decided that they couldn't have been human. Were they ghosts, then? But that didn't seem right; even from the distance where Shira had watched them, they looked solid enough.

A ringing from the bell hung from the ceiling broke her from her thoughts. Immediately, Shira tried to stand up, her senses on alert; in the next second, she sank to her knees as pain from her wound spiked again.

He's here! she thought, gritting her teeth. There was an invisible barrier around the estate; it wasn't much, but it at least let her know when a stranger entered the property.

No doubt her killer followed her home so he could finish the job.

Get a weapon, get a weapon! Shira ordered to herself, searching the room for something she could use.

She quickly spied a rolled-up poster that Taiga had brought the other night (it was a military poster made from sheet metal; Taiga had meant for it to be a joke, although Shira had been unamused) and grabbed it. It wasn't the greatest weapon in the world, but she would have to make do.

There was no way she'd let that bastard kill her again so easily.

"Trace, on."

Her natural magic circuits, as few as they were, hummed with mana. Shira rushed through the spell to reinforce the metal poster, skipping a few steps in the process. It didn't have to be perfect; it just needed to be enough to hold her ground until she either escaped (that was a likely scenario) or could force her opponent to retreat (that...wasn't so likely). In any case, she didn't have a second to spare.

And it was just as well, because as soon as she completed the spell, the lancer appeared, seemingly coming straight through the ceiling. He had his weapon in both hands, preparing to strike.

Shira just barely avoided the blow by rolling forward. Glaring, she quickly stood up to face the man, her own reinforced weapon at the ready.

"You know," the lancer began conversationally, "I was being nice by giving you a painless way to die. But," his face darkened, "now that you're making me kill the same person in one day, you've pissed me off!"

Shira remained silent; the glare she still sported was more than enough to convey that the feeling was mutual.

"This time," the man readied his lance, "be a good girl and stay dead!"

The lance was thrust, but Shira managed to block it with the poster. Unfortunately, while the lance did not pierce her chest again, it did graze her arm.

The man's red eyes seemed to light up in interest as Shira painfully hissed and clutched at her injured arm.

"Huh; this is a surprise," he commented. "It would explain why you're still breathing even after I skewered your heart. There's a faint sense of magical power coming from you." He smirked devilishly. "I suppose I might as well have some fun."

Again, the lance was thrust. Again, Shira blocked it, but only just. Her opponent kept coming at her, and it was all she could do to defend herself; even if she had any time, she doubted she could land even the weakest of hits.

After a couple of minutes of this pattern of striking and blocking, the lancer knocked Shira into the sliding doors, and she landed in a heap in the hall. As she struggled to get to her feet, she looked up in time to see the man throwing his lance at her. In her mad rush to get out of the way, she jumped backward through the window, glass shattering as she got outside.

Shira did not stop to see if the lancer would follow her, but ran in the direction of the storage shed, hoping beyond hope that she could reach it and find a better weapon before he could—

She hadn't even completed that thought when the lancer suddenly caught up to her, roundhouse kicking her and sending her flying into the wall of the shed. She landed bodily on the ground.

She fought to contain any screams that wanted to escape from her mouth as she struggled to stand despite the injuries she sustained.

"Face it, girl," the man said, "it's over."

As he thrust his lance again, Shira took a step back. The next strike he sent resulted in her being thrown inside the storage shed. When she tried to get back up, the lancer approached her and kneeled down to her level.

"Just give up." He smiled mockingly.

A mixture of stubbornness and fury filled Shira's veins.

"NO!"

She shot to her feet and recklessly attempted to beat the man over the head with her battered poster. He calmly used his lance to smash her weapon into pieces as if it was only origami paper.

"Checkmate," he declared. "I gotta hand it to you; you've got spunk for a little girl. From what you've showed me, it's possible that you were the seventh."

"You mind stringing together words that actually make sense?" Shira snapped.

The lancer chuckled. "At this point, you don't need to know."

Right behind Shira, the carved circle that had glowed faintly the night before began to glow more brightly. But Shira wasn't paying attention to that. All she cared about was getting out of this alive.

I was given a second chance to live, she thought fiercely. I'm not going to die here. I don't want to die here!

As if in answer to her thoughts, an image of that shining sword appeared in Shira's head, and her left hand suddenly burned as though a hot iron had been placed on it.

In the next instant, both Shira and the lancer were distracted by the column of white light that shot upward from the circle.

What...? Shira squinted her eyes against the brightness. The light slowly faded to reveal an armored figure. The figure shot forward in between Shira and the lancer, causing the former to be pushed to the ground and the latter to be driven out of the shed.

Shira blinked rapidly, wondering what was going on this time. But as she lifted her gaze to this new figure, her breath found itself lost in her throat.

It was a boy, looking only to be about her age or younger, dressed in a long-sleeved blue shirt and black leggings underneath silver armor. His skin was pale, his hair was light blond, and his blue-green eyes looked as though they could see right through her. The moonlight coming in from the shed's open door illuminated him, making him look as though he was not of this world.

At that moment, Shira forgot about the lancer, forgot about her wounds, forgot about all the craziness that had happened tonight. All she could comprehend was this boy standing in front of her.

He was the most beautiful person she had ever seen.

When he opened his mouth to speak, his voice—majestic and powerful, yet also stoic—was just as beautiful to Shira as his appearance. "I am Saber, your Servant. I have come forth in response to your summons. I ask of you: Are you my Master?"

It took a few seconds for what he actually said to register in Shira's brain.

"What?" she asked, finally coming to her senses. "Your...Master?" She yelped slightly as she felt her left hand burn.

"Yes, you summoned me," the boy answered calmly, "and as a Saber, I heeded your call. Your orders, Master?"

Instead of replying, Shira looked down at her still burning hand. Three red marks—was it blood?—were etched into her skin. She rubbed her right hand over her left to try to stop the burning.

"My sword will be at your side from here on in," the boy continued. "From this moment henceforth, whatever fate awaits you awaits me. Now, our contract is complete."

"Just what are you—" Shira began.

But the boy suddenly stiffened, turned around, and rushed out of the shed.

"Hey! Get back here!" Shira yelled, getting up and running after him.

Author's Note: And Guy!Saber makes his grand intro, y'all!

As you can see, Shira is not at all friends with Shinji. I seriously doubt that a female Shirou would ever be Shinji's friend under any circumstance. Even so, Shira does try to remain polite and civil when dealing with Shinji, even when he's obviously treating her like dirt. She won't be willing to play nice later on in the fic, though.

In summary, we got a glimpse of Girl!Archer, Shira doesn't die when she is killed, and Saber makes his shiny debut, which makes Shira instantly smitten with him.