I've made plans to go grab some beers with Kuro and the guys.
That was going to be the excuse Shirou would give for why he always disappeared on his days off… only no one ever asked him. They never invited him to anything that they did on the days off the group decided to have at the end of each week.
Rin had argued that for every five days of work, they should have two days of rest in order to prepare for the next set of challenges. This was really just an excuse in order to give herself and Shirou time to do their real business without the inference of others.
The only one who wanted to be around Shirou during his days off was Megumin, and she thought it was really cool that he was sneaking off with Kuro to do some more high-end missions during his break. He usually took her with him to Sherry's Tavern when he went to meet up with Kuro and whoever of the Typhoon Rocks happened to be nearby, then he would leave her with 'Mimori-nee-chan' and her team.
The Tokkis, better known as the Laughing Stocks, was perhaps the most annoying group of people that Shirou had ever met in his entire life. He couldn't say for sure, due to memory issues, but it was hard to imaging how people could be more loud and in-your-face than the Tokkis. Their insistence on calling him Archy-tan really grated on his nerves. But Megumin liked them… a little too much.
She had started to adopt some of there habits, like striking strange poses out of nowhere, sewing odd patterns on her witch's hat and cloak, and wearing an eyepatch everywhere she went, insisting that there was a dark and terrible secret behind why she had it.
Still, while they were weird people, it was a fairly powerful group of veterans, and no one would consider hurting little Megumin while she was with them. Mimori in particular was the exact picture of what Rin and Shirou feared Megumin would grow up to be. The former Warrior had changed jobs to become a mage after she found out that she had a knack for the same kind of magic Megumin did, Arve type fire magic. Her magic reserves were so high that she could cast the [Blast] spell more than a dozen times in a single day, if she felt like it. She also found especially large explosion to be 'adorable'.
"Hey Kiddo, ready for a long hunt?" Kuro said with a grin, tossing Shirou a spare bow, quiver and a short sword that he had left with the older soldier so that he wouldn't be seen leaving the barrels fully armed, or have to explain why his equipment would become more and more worn down even though he was supposed to be on break. "We've been given a contract from the normal army to poison Orcs' food supplies. Not going to kill ourselves over it, but if the opportunity shows itself, we'll take it."
Unlike Rin, Shirou wasn't all too good with research. So, he spent his time preying on the local Orc encampment in order to gather more money and acting as a messenger boy between Rin and their black-market contact, Barbara, who was assisting in getting books on various magics for Rin, since the Frontier was severally lacking on the more rare volumes and asking around for them could gather attention that they didn't really want.
Barbara was a trust worthy, if perverted, individual who was the mentor of Sakanami, Typhoon Rocks' thief. She helped them get information with minimal questions asked and with only a relatively small fee.
Shirou had explained Rin's goal to Kuro soon after he convinced her that the guy was at least unlikely to squeal on them about the money. Kuro immediately jumped on board with the idea, even offering to help with financing some of it himself and got them in contact with Sakanami and Barbara.
Sakanami himself had also readily agreed to assist. Something that they were both grateful for, and… well… "Yes, while the lights of hope still grow within this day, let us continue upon our quest of penance. Lest with miss this chance to wash away the blood of our sins upon this world. With this still beating heart I believe…" Man the guy was weird. The way he talked was extremely off putting. For a thief, he sure did talk a lot about penance, sins and salvation. He was like one of those doomsayers who sometimes shout at people in the streets.
Shirou managed to deal with his crazy Priest like talk, but Rin couldn't stand the man and had actually used her magic to incase his entire head in water when he had refused to shut up. She said it was more than just the way he talked, just looking at him made her feel sick to her stomach.
Sakanami was a tall lanky individual in his mid-twenties with shallow cheeks and a million-mile stare in his black eyes. Like many of his teammates, he didn't look to have bathed in days, and his wiry black hair came down to his shoulders.
Regardless of his eccentric nature, he was a skilled fighter and could throw a knife with nearly the same level of speed and percussion that Shirou could shoot an arrow, making Shirou very glad that the man wasn't as insane as he acted.
Shirou ignored Sakanami's ramblings, preferring to check on his equipment. While a single glance told him that everything was in working order, it still felt natural to check it. Satified by the results, he gave Kuro a nodded and look to Inui, the Tikkis's Hunter. "I'll be back to pick up Megumin before sunset."
"Happy hunting to you, Archy-tan." The man replied, waving them off. Inui was a tall man with a long face. He looked to be in his early thirties, making him one of the oldest people in the Crimson Army. He wore an eyepatch over his left eye, even though Shirou knew for a fact that there was absolutely nothing wrong with his eye. The patch looked old and worn down, and Inui said that there was a history behind it that he'd rather not share.
The man was full of shit.
But he was a fully trained Warrior, Thief, and Hunter, and had taken a liking to Megumin, just like the rest of his party.
Holding in a sigh of irritation, Shirou turned back to Kuro. "Let's go."
"Ah lua de muo su vi a tu rua fa yek nie she la stoa ryu kweh wana gwa pa le tu kia fless, [Kairi]."
As Rin finished her incantation, the water in the bucket in front of her began to shift and rise up into the air as an orb. The water than preceded to shape itself into a more humanoid shape, looking like a tiny girl, no more than a foot tall.
'Joyous. Curious. Master Need Assistance?' The vague thoughts and emotions of the Elemental, which Rin had named Kairi, reached the Mage's though the bond she had created with it.
Rin answered the Elemental in kind, returned her own emotions to it, letting the Elemental know that she was glad that it had answered her calling and that it was time to continue their lessions.
'Joyous. Friendship. Growth. Kairi Happy.' The Elemental replied, its watery form throwing up arms into the air.
The lesser Elementals were not the most aware of beings. They usually simply existed, not really caring about or understanding anything around them. Mages could guide them with their magic to act as instructions, but they normally lacked the will and knowledge to do anything themselves. A normal lesser Elemental would have all the emotional range and brain power of a rock.
The spell that Rin had just used had taken the power that was the lesser Elemental and crafted it an identity. Giving it the capacity to think and feel to a certain extent. Rin herself would have to teach it how to act and preform magic using her own magical energy and understanding as a medium. It would be a draining process that would take time and energy, but it would hopefully bear fruit soon.
This elemental was one of three elementals that Rin had managed to give a conscious existence. The other two were an Earth Elemental Rin had named Terra and a Lightning Elemental she called Raiju. Though Kairi was by far her favorite, as Terra was lazy and required much more magical energy to motivate and Raiju was finicky, disappearing from sight the moment Rin's concentration lapsed for even a second. Kairi on the other hand was both easy to work with and not difficult to control.
Her choices of which elements to focus on stemming from her hope that one of them might be able to detect the changes in the World around the Tower during the night of the full moon. Which just so happened to be that night.
It had been two weeks since Rin and Shirou had returned from the raid and she had been spending all of the time that hadn't been out in the field furthering her skills in magic in preparation for trying to divine some kind of meaning for what would be happening tonight at the tower.
She had been glad when Shirou had both accepted her decision to focus on learning as much about the movement between worlds as possible and about how much it was likely going to cost. Of the one thousand eight hundred gold coins they had obtained from the raid, they only reported twenty of them to the rest of the party.
It was still enough for them to buy armor sets for each of their frontline fighters, replace Sara's glasses and have enough on the side to purchase all of their Crimson Moon Badges and have enough for food for the next six months, but it wasn't so much that they could just spend it however they wished or forget about ever going out hunting again.
Shortly after the raid, the team regained some confidence and started to willingly venture into the ruins of Damuro. However, even though they had started to go and preform real hunting, there was obvious frictions within the group.
Touma was terrified of fire magic ever since Megumin had nearby blown him to bits on accident. The fact that the little girl turned out to be overly specialized and incapable of learning any form of magic other than the Arve type fire magic, and that even the basic fireball spell was enough to make the man wince in fear, was enough to cause problems. While the others pyrophobia wasn't as great as Touma's, they still insisted that she not case any fire magic at all, leaving her with only the [Magic Missile] spell. Megumin herself was extremely unhappy at being told never to use her favorite types of spells. Sometimes she would simply get too excited and cast [Blast] anyways, requiring the group to tactically retreat again… at least until the goblins learned to just stop coming. While a poorly equip Shirou had been overwhelmed by sheer numbers of crossbowmen before, with his new Dragon Horse hide armor and four quivers full of arrows… it was something to behold. In two weeks he had killed thousands of the creatures.
Rin had the Dragon Horse hides made into armor for herself and Shirou, going through with her joke about making a red top and black bottoms for herself, using what was left of the material afterwards to equip Shirou with his own red leather armor which covered both his arms and the upper part of his back and neck. She had joked that it had been so that it would be harder to tell when he inevitably got soaked in blood, but it really did look good on him.
Things also took a downward turn when all of the boys, save for Shirou who had been cooking at the time, got caught peeking on the girls as they bathed. Aoi had stabbed Richard in the shoulder because of it and Yui refused to heal it, even at Rin's request. It wasn't until Niko left the kitchen, having managed to get an early snack out of Shirou that the man's injury was tended too, and only because Shirou said that dinner couldn't start while someone was bleeding out.
The boys were just lucky that neither Rin nor Megumin had been in the bathes at the time. Or maybe that was the only reason they were willing to risk the peek, figuring that the most dangerous characters wouldn't be involved.
As for drama among the girls themselves, a boy from another team that Yui had been having her eye on asked Yukari out, sparking problems between the two when Yukari started to date the boy. A fight between them was broken up by Shirou, who Yue was still far too afraid of. As time went on and they got more comfortable with their new lives, it looked more and more likely that Yue's fear of Shirou would someday outweigh her fear of being on her own.
And of course, above it all was the continued sense that Rin and Shirou were separate from the rest of them, and that it was their decisions and actions that ultimately ruled the others' lives. The way Shirou just watched like a hawk during their hunts and was quick to interfere the moment anything happened, left the other boys on the frontline feeling like a joke. Male psychology was starting to take its toll on them.
They were starting to act rebellious about having a female boss, though Rin still managed to get them to do when she needed them to by using logical arguments that they couldn't counter as to why doing it was in their own personal best interest. But who knows how long boys are going to continue to listen to logic.
Honestly, the only thing that stopped Rin from saying 'fuck it' and just kicking all of the trouble makers out, since the boys could probably find a way to make a functioning time by themselves, was the sneaking suspicion that it was the Counter Force that made the idea seem so appealing. The confirmation, that the Goddess Eldritch was ever so kind as to just give Shirou, that there really was an omnipresent force that was messing with her perception of reality had made the girl even more paranoid than before, and she had already been pretty paranoid. She had, after all, been paranoid enough to suspect that there was an omnipresent force that was messing with her perception of reality.
That brought Rin to her current task, teaching an Elemental a concept like Perception. Elementals didn't have eyes, ears, noses, or any other sensory organ. They could only sense the world around them through their connection to the World's magic and to their own element, and with Kairi being essentially a newborn baby, she didn't have a good understanding of concepts like spatial relations, shapes, or time. Time would have to be something that it would just have to get a feel for over time, but spatial relationships and identifying different types of objects by shape would be important stepping stone for processing information. Until Kairi could tell the difference between a human and a goblin, Rin didn't want to risk letting Kairi act for herself on the battlefield. Rin would always have to monitor and instruct her in order to make sure that Kairi didn't decide to throw icicles at one of her teammates.
Rin was sharing her own sight with her Elemental Familiar and trying to explain to it what she was seeing using her words and emotions. The Elemental didn't understand most words yet, but it did recognize its own name and simple things like 'correct' and 'wrong'.
'Shape. Shape. Different. Shapes. Touches.' Kairi expressed as Rin explained to the Water Elemental that there was a difference between a shoe and a rock beyond that they both didn't have water in them. Rin couldn't help but smile, realizing that Kairi was kind of like her own baby. Kairi was an intelligence that Rin had made just a few days ago. Her development was actually unbelievably quick if compared to the average human baby. 'Kairi Like Sight. Like Share. Kairi Share.'
Rin blinked in surprise as the Elemental shared its own senses with her as well. Seeing the world as the Elemental Saw it, a sort of void filled with magic and water, was a little jarring at first, though Rin's mind quickly adjusted to it, finding the experience as fascinating as Kairi had her own human eyes. Kairi's senses were not inhibited by walls and Rin could see all throughout the barracks, and she quickly realized that every living thing had water and at least a little magic in it. She grimaced a little deep inside when she realized that the barrack's rat problem was more extreme than she had suspected. She would have to get Shirou to sort that out.
However, it wasn't until she recognized her own existence in the Elemental's vision of the world that her eyes widened. "What in the world is that?"
Just because she was right that the World was out to get her, doesn't mean she wasn't paranoid.
The last chapter marks the end of what I would call Act 1 of this story. Act 2 is going to be Shirou and Rin discovering more about magic, and the introduction of the canon main characters, concluding with Rin deciding that serious actions are appropriate. Act 3 will be Rin pushing to remove the more immediate threats to the city on the Frontier so that they could be more free to explore. Act 4 will be them expanding out, going to search for and explore the other worlds in order to continue their research. Act 5 would most likely be when all the big stuff starts to move about and Act 6 would be the conclusion.
Hope you are in it for the long run. =] Hopefully now you will understand if I never complete the story. It's because it would be ******* long! You know the base material I am working from have been in writing for four years and still hasn't finished, right? And it is their writers actual job.
I considered writing out Shirou going to Kuro and being introduced to Barbara instead of doing a time skip for it, but in the end I just skipped it in order to move along the story a little bit faster and save us another three chapters.
Next chapter will have a better interaction between Shirou and one of his party members, in order to get a better view of the world from their perspective, before switching back to the actual plot. (Sorry, they are all side characters meant more to establish scope and tone rather than having any real significance and being deserving of character development. How many side characters who are name dropped in Harry Potter ever get character development?)
I'm not planning on having Sakura or Illya show up, but if anyone wants to take my story and write their own using it as a starting point and add those characters themselves, feel free. Just ask if you want me to send you the source material.