A/N: Brief Omake after the author notes at the end of the chapter.
~O~
"It feels oddly disappointing for magical night vision to be in green." - mutters Shirou while running as quicky and as close to the floor as he can while making his way towards the land ship, his friends following as they run along the shores of the river at the canyon's bottom.
"Why's that?" - Mei asks while looking around, quite happy with the ability to see in utter darkness.
"It is a modern military cliché. I just assumed magical night vision would be more like that of a cat and amplify what little light the stars give to let us catch more light, or maybe just let us see as clearly as in the daytime. I mean, it is a Mystic Code, I was just expecting something more magical than the effect of cold war-era night goggles." - he sighs
"..." - Mei turns to her sides in order, looking at Luvia and then Rin, both of whom shrug.
"Don't look at us, we have no idea what he's talking about, either." - explains Luvia.
"He speaks in tongues." - jokes Rin.- "But seriously, I'm sure he is talking about some technology thing."
"Luvia, you told me you do mercenary work. Surely you must have at least seen a pair of night vision goggles in your life?"
"Sure, but I never tried them. My family has its own Mystic Codes for this sort of thing." - the Finnish girl replies calmly.
"Oh? Do they also make things look green?" - asks Shirou
"No, they just let you see normally in the dark."
"Thank you. That's what I expected, see?"
Luvia shrugs, not that Shirou can see her do so since he's going at the head of their little group.
"Actually," - he starts after thinking about it for a moment.- "While I am glad you are letting me take the point, why are you all following me side by side? Shouldn't you form a single line?"
"W-we are just ready to help if needed." - explains Rin
"That's right, Sherou. That and for no other reason." - adds Luvia
"Really?" - Mei looks at her friends in mild confusion.- "I just didn't want to miss this sight." - She gestures to Shirou's ass with both hands.
Shirou stops and straightens up, turning around to look at the girls that so quietly had been ogling his ass in a loincloth since they left the base.- "Really? Please, grow up."
"I feel like I understand you better now, though?" - comments Rin softly.
"Shh, we are getting close now, so just keep walking." - admonishes Luvia, and since she's the one with experience in mercenary work, Shirou decides to heed her warning and quiets down before turning around and continuing his approach.
"Luviagelita, how did you know we are close to the land ship? You weren't with us when we spotted it, and even I couldn't tell." - whispers Mei as softly as she can.
"I don't, I just wanted Sherou to quiet down and let me enjoy the sight."
Mei blinks, smiles, and nods.
It takes another twenty minutes or so for the group to finally reach the area around the base of the land ship. It sits directly in the middle of two shallow arms of the river, the water just barely ankle-deep even at this hour of the night. There's a rabbit gnawing on what little vegetation grows on the river shore, and perhaps a lone bat, but no other signs of life.
Looking up, they can see the silhouette of the land ship above them, as well as the thin and long bridges connecting it to the plateaus on either side of the canyon. More importantly, though, they can just barely spot a faint glow coming from a side of the rock halfway up to the land ship, and repositioning lets them see that it is coming from a cavern on the rock's side.
Shirou signals his friends to wait and reinforces his arms and legs as he starts to climb. The rock is humid and somewhat slippery, but it's still climbable and he slowly makes his way up while his companions' eyes follow his ascent from below with rather improper smiles on their faces. (1)
He finally reaches a small cavern on the wall, and notices it is mildly illuminated by a light coming from an opening on the ceiling. He enters the small cavern and goes through the ceiling opening, needing to climb further through a shaft about five feet across towards the source of light, when he notices a shadow moving above and begins to move in place while paying great care to any sounds coming from above.
He didn't stop because if he heard the sound of falling sand and pebbles and then the sound just stopped the moment he went to check it out, he'd be suspicious as hell. Instead, he kept moving to cause tiny little bits of noise without it giving the impression something was moving upwards along the shaft. God knows there are all manner of critters living in the area, so this was a lot less suspicious than the sound stopping all of a sudden or it moving upwards towards whoever was checking it out.
A splash of water came from above, and he did his best to bear it as stoically as possible while freezing in place.- 'C'mon, you just shooed away whatever it was, nevermind it and went back to whatever you were doing already.' - Shirou thinks as loud as he can.
Once whoever it was finally went away, Shirou resumed his climb, this time much slower and more careful of making any noise. Soon, he's at the top of the shaft, so he removes his Darfari helmet before peeking over the edge to spot a lantern of iron and glass-like those he saw in the pirate's galleon off the Lemurian shore, its warm light flooding an small cave, while a drunk pirate was sitting with his back reclined against a large chest, an empty bottle held in his right hand.
Shirou notices with some disgust that he doesn't see a glass or bucket anywhere, so he sniffs himself in hopes that the water that fell on him was some kind of booze, though he already dreads the truth.- 'Oh for fuck's sake.' - he signs and pushes himself up into the little cavern, from where he can see a second shaft leading upwards to a chamber further up and with a lot more light coming down from it.
'Alright... believe it or not, I am sorry about this.' - he kills the pirate as quickly and as painlessly as he can, though he's pretty sure the drunkard didn't even notice anything was happening.
Shirou looks around. Indeed, there's nothing more in the little cave. Just the shaft going down, the shaft going up, the lantern, the body, and the chest. He checks the man's body and finds a key and two gold coins, which he moves back into the corpse's pocket while keeping the key. After moving the body, he tries the key on the chest and sure enough, it opens to reveal... multiple bottles of booze and a small journal, which Shirou opens at random and takes a peek at.
... More crates washed ashore today. Silk, cracked pottery, jewels - the usual booty the sea provides us with. But this time there were boxes with rare spices to the likes of which I have never seen. Its zesty texture burns the throat but warms the body and brings out the sweat. I'd better start cooking, Shamalla will have me hanged for making her wait ...
There are a few recipes written down after that, as well as a description of how to process local herbs to emulate the spices after these run out.
'Well, now I just feel bad. A fellow cooking enthusiast, uh?' - he looks down at the dead pirate.- 'At least I'm pretty sure he didn't even notice when he died.'
...fiery-hot soup.
...fiery-hot bread.
...fiery-hot sea-fish feast.
...fiery-hot grub.
...fiery-hot imperial tea.
'Really, those are the best names you could come up with?' - Shirou sighs and stores the little book in his bracelet, then starts climbing up the second shaft until he's peeking at a large room that looks like a cabin belonging to somebody important. There are multiple chests, a workbench, a desk, a large bed with two children chained to it (currently sleeping), and more than a few weapons lined in weapon racks along the walls.
There's some dirty dishes and flipped-over bottles, as well as an exit leading towards the rest of the ship.
'Alright, the children alone justify this little incursion.' - he decides, and goes back down the shaft into the little cave, then down again to call the girls. Soon they made their way up into the cave.
"If possible, let's try and cut the bridges so they can't reinforce the ship. Agreed?" - he asks the girls, and when they agree, they begin climbing into what they assume is the captain's cabin one by one, with Shirou first, followed by Luvia, then Rin, and finally Mei.
"I doubt we'll have the benefit of surprise for long, so be as brutal as you can and watch out for archers." - warns Mei as she slides along the room's wall towards the door, then peeks out, and gestures for them to approach.- "Luviagelita, there's an entrance ahead, you go in with Shirou, then call for us."
"Alright." - Luvia nods, and she and Shirou peek outside into a rather spacious hallway carved in the stone. They see wooden ramps leading upwards at either end of the hallway and the entrance a little to the right, then after making sure nobody is looking in their direction, both of them dash toward the entrance. This area is well-lit so speed is more important than stealth right now.
There's no door to kick down, but there is a small set of stairs that Shirou fails to spot as he goes from the illuminated hallway into the dark space across the threshold, and he stumbles, falls on his hands, rolls to cushion the impact, and ends up kneeling in the middle of a bunch of sleeping, half-asleep, and now wide awake pirates and slaves looking at him with honest to God befuddlement as they try to figure out what to think of him.
It is at this point that he'd normally call out to them and give them a chance to surrender, but no, not these guys. Not after seeing they had children with them and easily guessing what they used them for. It is right as one of the pirates wakes up enough to process what he's looking at and sees a Darfari right in the middle of them, with another at the entrance, that the screaming starts as Shirou begins producing and chucking spears at them, nailing them to the ground and walls while they scream and howl in fear and pain. Someone has the bright spark needed to take cover behind a large barrel and use it to rush at him, but Shirou is quite happy to see that nobody is trying to use the children as shields.
'Makes it all worth it.' - he thinks while getting out of the way and tracing Darfari swords into existence, turning in place and beheading the man, though even as he does so, three more try to charge him, forcing Shirou to give ground and causing them to give chase, their steel and iron swords making chips and dents in the Darfari wooden-and-stone swords. But it doesn't matter, he simply traces a new pair after throwing the breaking ones at one of his attackers.
The cries of the pirates don't go unheard, and soon reinforcements begin running down the ramps. Fully awake pirates with various degrees and types of armor and weapons start to crowd the platform, giving Luvia and Rin excellent targets to spam Gandr shots at.
Bodies begin to fall from the ramps, and some of the pírates try to run back up when they realize its 'Darfari cannibals' attacking them, knowing enough to be horrified by the concept, and doubly scared as the invaders seem to be some type of witches, which does nothing but compound into the horror of it.
Seeing as the girls seem to have the situation with the reinforcements well at hand, Mei rushes down into the fight of Shirou and seven pirates, running through the closest pirate with her new spear, then simply grabbing the shaft from the other side of the man and pulling the rest of it through rather than try and pull the head back through the man. The pirate was still alive when she did that, his gurgles and whimpers as he dropped to the floor freezing his crewmates for two seconds, more than enough for Shirou to kill another man, and more than enough to finish waking up the rest of the sleeping pirates.
Soon, Mei and Shirou are fighting back to back against almost two dozen pirates, parrying and blocking before lunging, thrusting or slicing, wearing the pirates down while taking wounds of their own. Mei has a crossbow bolt impaling her right thigh, and a nasty slash on her left arm, though she's too busy to worry about it, while Shirou is constantly firing off spears at the surrounding pirates despite the deep gash on the side of his face.
""Ugh!"" - both of them curse as a javelin flies at them from behind the surrounding pirates, with enough force to fly THROUGH one of the crewmen and still impale both of them, binding them together like some horrid shish kebab as it goes in through Mei's stomach and goes out through the left side of Shirou's hip. Mei grits her teeth and does her best to remain standing so as not to drag Shirou down with her, but now that they're literally pinned to one another, neither of them can dodge anymore.
They parry and block in desperation, but soon enough they're covered in cuts and each has two or more arrows through different parts of their bodies.
As the last of the crewmen falls down, a tall man with sun-kissed skin, a dirty yellow beard and hair walks out from behind a stone pillar, grinning like mad as he studies the 'cannibals' in the middle of the room.
"Uh. Good job standing still, fuckers." - he says as he reaches behind him and takes out another javelin. The pirate smirks as he lifts the javelin, and his head blows up.
"Good job standing still, fucker." - Luvia repeats the pirate's words, then rushes in to help her friends.
"Ghk..." - Mei looks at the blonde and smiles, blood running from the corners of her mouth as she struggles to remain standing.
"Luvia? I can't turn around." - says Shirou, an arrow through his shoulder pinning him to Mei again, though this one didn't come out of the girl's body.
"God, Rin is right, you are an idiot." - Luvia calls out in worry as she beholds her friends and tries to figure out what to do.
"Hold on..." - Shirou traces a copy of the spear he already traced for Mei.- "Alright, can you pull the javelin out, please? And please hurry."
"S-sherou, I know enough battlefield medicine to know that's a terrible idea, that thing is probably keeping you both from bleeding to death."
"I have healing potions. As soon as you do it, give one to Mei." - he pulls two flasks from inside his bracelet and hands one to Luvia.- "Please hurry."
"Alright..."
"Hey, are they alright!? Luvia, they wizened up and brought archers, I can't peek out of the room anymore!" - calls out Rin from across the hallway.
"Well shit." - curses the blonde as she hurries to pull the javelin out of her friends.
"Aaa~h!" - Mei whimpers her pain through gritted teeth, and falls to the floor despite herself, dragging the arrow with her and pulling it out of Shirou through his shoulder.
Shirou hurries to drink a potion while Luvia moves to force another down Mei's throat, putting it in her mind and kiss-feeding it into the redhead.
Pirates start flooding into the room, and a pain-wrecked Shirou starts shooting swords at the entrance, killing the ones at the head of the pack and stopping the flood right away, then focusing on shooting another sword through the head of whoever tries to peek into the room. Sadly, the walls are solid rock, so he can't just spam swords at the walls and hope to get whoever is behind them.
"I... I'm feeling better." - says Mei before falling unconscious. Now that she feels less pain and her friends are with her, she makes the mistake or relaxes for a moment, and faints right away.
"Alright, that's pretty bad." - says Luvia as she starts slapping Mei, trying to wake her up.- "You shouldn't go to sleep, Mei!"
Meanwhile, Shirou's own wounds have gone from death blows to 'merely serious and horrifying' as he pulls the rest of the arrows out of his body and gulps another potion.
"Rin, how are you doing!?" - he calls out, and to his horror, noone answers.
Another pirate tries to peek in, so he shoots a sword through its face.
"Shit, I need to go to Rin."
"Rin's a big girl and can take care of herself. Do you have another potion?" - asks Luvia
"No, but this spear is knitting my wounds closed. Make sure Mei's hand is closed around hers."
"Alright."
A brief stand-off follows as the pirates try going in with shields and they still get impaled by swords. After a few more minutes, Shirou is well enough to stand up, so he asks Luvia to fire something large out into the hallway before he rushes out and tries to reach for Rin. On cue, Luvia pulls out a quartz the height of a chair's leg, charges it with prana, and flings it out into the hallway. The 'ship' quakes from the explosion as crystal shards wet with blood and other juices bounce into the room, and Shirou forces mana through his circuits before reinforcing himself as far as he can and rushing out into the slaughter in the hallway, through it and into the other cabin, where he finds about a dozen pirates looking extremely shaken and confused while standing around the shaft, holding bows, spears, and javelins while looking at him with horror in their eyes.
He takes advantage of the fact they're all bundled up close to each other and showers them with rapid-fire of projected swords. The children whimper and cry as they hug each other on the bed, terrified of the 'cannibal' that just turned the pirates into mincemeat.
'Fair enough.' - thinks Shirou as he looks at them for a moment, then rushes to the shaft and calls down into it.- "Rin, are you there?"
"Shirou, I'm sorry, they forced me down! Is everyone alright?"
"Mei is unconscious but she'll live. Neither of us lost any limbs, so we'll do a full recovery... I think."
"What do you mean 'I think'?" - she hurries up and climbs back up, then stops after pulling herself out of the shaft and looking at him.- "Oh for the love of God, Shirou!"
"At least it worked, they never tried to use human shields."
"Did you get them all?" - she asks, then looks at the children and sighs
"I doubt it, but we did get a lot of them, let's try and go back to the others."
"How did you cross from the other room if you haven't gotten everyone?"
"Luvia... basically threw a grenade into the hallway."
"Good idea." - Rin nods as she pulls out a crystal the size of a table leg and starts charging it with mana.
"Rin wait that's wait too b-!"
" .Go~!" - she throws it out into the hallway, and Shirou hurries to cover the entrance with swords. He would have cried out for Luvia and Mei to take cover, but there's honestly no time as the land ship quakes due to the force of the blast, the light visible for miles in the clear desert night, literally waking up the dead and turning every head for miles to their general direction.
"For fuck's sake, Rin...!"
"Um. Alright, but you gotta keep the loincloth." - she jokes as she peeks out into the hallway and finds it empty. There's blood dripping in from overhead, so she probably got more than one pirate that might have been looking down into it.
"Rin Tohsaka, are you insane!?" - comes Luvia's cry from the other room.- "What am I saying, of course she is." - she mumbles to herself, then looks down to see that Mei is wide awake now.- "Welcome back, how are you feeling?"
"...surprisingly alright. What happened?" - she means how come her wounds are closed, but Luvia thinks she's asking about the fuck-off blast that woke her up.
"Rin happened."
"...I should thank her later."
"You probably should. It's really dangerous to sleep with that many wounds. Not that you have any left as far as I can tell."
"...alright?"
Both groups finally meet and go above 'deck' to find the ship deserted. Upon looking out into the campsites, they find that whoever isn't dead or locked in a cage, fled.
"Uh. I somehow doubt we got them all." - says Mei as she wobbles a little on her feet.
"Your wounds may have closed, but you still lost a lot of blood, Mei." - Shirou tries to pick her up, and falls down with her in her arms, much too weak to carry his friend.
"Look who's talking." - comments Luvia.- "Rin, pick up our gentleman, please."
With that, Luvia picks Mei and carries her bridal style, while Rin tries to do the same for Shirou, but he gets up and just holds from her shoulder instead.
"I doubt they'll stay gone. I didn't spot any cages on the northern campsite, so you and Luvia should hurry and free the people in the southern campsite, then bring them here so we can evacuate the same way we came in." - Shirou smiles at Rin and gestures to Luvia to let Mei down.- "I'll sit by the other bridge and shoot anyone trying to come into the ship that way. Once you have everyone back here, we can just leave."
"Hold on, Sherou." - Luvia stops him mid-speech and looks him up and down.- "Alright, I guess you can at least sit down on your own... Rin," -she turns to her friend.- "Can you open the cages on your own? I'd like to break open any and every container around for whatever valuables these people may have."
"Good idea, it should give their hostages some funds for when they settle in Sepermeru." - Shirou nods and smiles.
"Right... for the hostages." - Luvia replies softly, then looks at Rin and mouths 'nope' so only she can see it. To be fair, Mei noticed, but she feels they should get something for their troubles so she says nothing anyway.
Honestly, she wants to suggest Shirou should just cut down the northern rope bridge, but then he may try and help so she's already keeping quiet to begin with. Besides, sitting down next to him sounds really nice at the moment.
A thought occurs, though.- "Rin, you should probably take the Darfari war mask off so the people you are rescuing don't try to attack you as soon as they can."
"...that's a fair point, thanks."
With that, everyone goes to do their own thing, with Luvia starting by smashing every container in the 'captain's cabin' before moving to the hold and upper deck. All in all, the pirates had a surprising amount of little notebooks and documents, and a somewhat surprising amount of silver and coin. The many, many bottles of booze are less of a surprise, though.
"Hey." - comments Mei as she's sitting next to Shirou.
"Yes?"
"I'm glad you are alright."
"...I'm glad you are alright too. This spear is quickly growing into one of my favorite weapons to trace." - he says while holding [Blood Drinker] aloft.
"I'm pretty tired."
"Don't you dare fall asleep, Mei."
"I know. When we go back, I wanna eat your cooking."
"We have a lot of meat just waiting for me to take it off the fire, so sure. I'm planning on getting Rin's help and chopping it into thin lines so she can make something chinese with it."
"Does 'Chinese' stand for incredibly perverted? Because I would be okay with that too, you know?"
"...you are incorrigible."
"Hey, I've never pretended anything else. I have been this way from the start, remember?" - she smiles at him brightly, and accommodates herself to lay her head on his lap
"I guess." - he starts brushing through her hair while keeping his eyes on the bridge and the darkness beyond.
"Hey, Shirou?"
"Yes?"
"I know you didn't come to us by your own free will, but I am grateful to that Zelretch person for sending you our way. You, Luvia and Rin. You are doing so much for us, I can't wait to see what my people will look like in a year from now. Or five years from now. Or ten. We were dying off by inches, but now I actually think we may have a future ag-" - she stops herself as she notices someone moving in the darkness to Shirou's left. She re-accommodates and leans further back to see Luvia turning crates into rubble on the other end of the ship.
The figure throws a spear at them. She pushes Shirou down with whatever strength she has left and throws herself on top of him...
~O~
Rin made it to the end of the southern bridge with no problems, and took off her Darfari war mask as she headed over to the nearest cage.
"Don't be afraid, the Darfari thing is just a disgui-" - she starts to explain when she's interrupted by panicked crying and begging.- "Oh for the love of God..."
With no obvious options, she just stands there with her arms crossed and waits for the prisoners to calm down, which takes a surprising amount of time, so she busies herself looking around, occasionally donning the helmet again to peek out into the darkness surrounding the now abandoned campsite.
"Alright, just keep screaming I guess. I'll be right back." - she decides there's no reason to just stand still, and starts inspecting the pots, chests, and bags she can see spread all over the place. To be fair, she ends up collecting quite a bit of valuable trinkets, though she has no idea where the pirates found the two gold ingots she's now carrying around inside her bracelet.
Still, she's not complaining.
"Are you guys done?" - she asks when she notices the screaming has died down considerably, and seeing as most of the prisoners are just looking at her, she walks over to the nearest cage.- "As I said, I'm not a Darfari, it's just a disguise to scare the pirates away. Worked fine too, did it not?"
The people in the cages nod, carefully.
"Alright look, does anyone here know what I'm talking about if I explain that to find the hypotenuse, you add the squares of the other sides, then take the square root? Or that to find a shorter side, subtract the squares of the other sides, then take the square root... does this sound like something an actual Darfari would know?"
"How do you calculate the radius of a circle!?" - calls out someone from inside a cage to her right.
"Do you know the circumference or the area of the circle?" - she asks in turn.
"Alright yeah I believe her." - the same voice says, much more calmly now.
"Thank you." - Rin chirps happily as she heads over to open that cage.- "Please go to the stupid land ship so we can evacuate you through a secret passage that leads to the river. From there, we'll run off to our base and after you have all rested for a couple of days, we'll take you to Sepermeru, which is a... well I wouldn't call it exactly a friendly city, but at least you'll only get robbed instead of eaten, and not even that if you're smart about it."
"Ah, actual civilization, then." - chuckles at someone else, and this causes everyone to noticeably relax as Rin starts opening the other cages.
~O~
The man that came out from the crow's nest was a monster. Not in the sense that he was tall, muscular or broad, but in the sense that he was actually good enough to dodge or shield Shirou's fired projections and close into melee with him to start pushing him back despite all the skill the red headed young man had at his disposal, while also making sure to keep him between himself and his witch friend.
The head of the man's short spear zoomed through the air less than an inch from Shirou's eyes, and was immediately followed by a shove with the man's shield that further broke Shirou's posture and left him open for a quick and shallow swing. The man seemed more than happy to kill through a thousand cuts if it meant killing in the end, which was bad because it meant he wasn't biting into Shirou's false openings, seemingly experienced enough to see them for what they were, or too cowardly to compromise to a killing blow when plenty of little ones would do.
Furthermore, Shirou had also lost a lot of blood, and wasn't exactly recovered yet despite his wounds having knitted closed thanks to [Blood Drinker], the traced spear still in his hand as he was taking full advantage of its ability to knit wounds in order to mend the shallow cuts the pirate kept giving him.
He still wasn't recovering the blood flowing off each cut the pirate continued to make on his arms and legs, though. Furthermore, he couldn't move away and leave Mei alone.
"..." - the Lemurian girl knew she was in the way. She had successfully saved Shirou's life by pushing him down but was too tired to move away, and that meant Shirou had to stand and fight while rooted to the spot.
Trapped because of her.
The pirate captain was a beast. Lean, strong, fast, and more importantly, smart enough to take only calculated risks, measuring every situation in the middle of a fight. His shortspear was more of a harpoon, really, meant to pierce and hold, but he had it enchanted and personalized until it let him stab, slash and swing. His shield was a rudder wheel, and while it would doubtlessly be near useless against projectiles, it was amazing at catching swords in its spokes and breaking wrists with an easy twist of the captain's forearm, usable as a blunt weapon that could easily shatter bones or smash soft tissue thanks to its bronze-tipped handles. Honestly, Shirou wasn't surprised when his Structural Grasp told him that it was a purpose-made custom job.
She looked at the edge of the 'deck'. It was just a foot away. She wanted to see the future Shirou would gift her people, she really wanted to, but she'd settle for knowing it would come. That's why she gritted her teeth, moved her right leg under herself, and pushed as fast and hard as she could.
Shirou kicked her towards Luvia. It hurt. Obviously, it hurt. He had kicked her a full dozen feet after all, and she landed like a bag of bricks on a smooth surface made of stone. The pirate saw a huge chance and took it. Shirou saw the spear coming in his direction, and then the pirate took a Gandr to the side and flew off the deck and into the open canyon with an almost comical scream.
"Uh. Thanks, Luvia."
"Rin is right, you can be such an idiot sometimes." - she sighs and looks down at the pain-wrecked Lemurian by her feet.- "And you are just as bad, you know!? What were you tr- no don't answer that I could tell what you were trying to do, for fuck's sake!" - the blonde facepalms.- "Now you got me to use coarse language too!"
""Sorry."" - Mei and Shirou apologize together.
~O~
"...and then she tries to be a hero and toss herself over the edge so Sherou wouldn't have to defend her. If he hadn't kicked her at me hard enough to break her ribs, I would have slapped her face raw, I swear!" - Luvia complains to Rin on the way back, even while carrying Shirou on her back.
Rin sighs and says nothing, though she does shake her head a little as she rolls her eyes and looks to the stars above, hoping to find some extra patience on the sight.
"Sorry." - says Mei again.
"Yes, well, you can probably blame it on Shirou's influence. Is what I do when it's me doing stupid things." - Rin deadpans.
"Sorry." - this time it is Shirou who apologizes.
"Lucky for you both, I'm in a forgiving mood after Luvia found that treasure map. We'll go looking for it tomorrow morning after everyone's had some breakfast. Which reminds me, how much meat do you have on the fire? We have to feed a lot of people, now."
"It would have been more than enough for you to prepare a Chinese barbecue for eight with nothing but meat on it. We add greens and vegetables, it should be enough stew for everyone."
"Stew, uh?"
"That a cream, something their stomachs can handle given how malnourished they are."
"Alright."
"Thank you."
"I wonder if it is a redhead thing." - murmurs Luvia.
"I doubt it." - replies Rin.
"It's going to take a while for these two to be up and around." - Rin sighs as she readjusts Mei's weight on her back, causing the lemurian redhead to wince as her broken ribs poke at her insides.- "And this one doesn't has a relic inside to heal her up. I guess we are going to find out just how quick Age of the Gods people heal."
"Well, with the [Blood Drinker] spear, she should... actually I am not sure if it would be a good idea to depend on that thing," - Shirou changes idea half way through his own words.- "It's not a miraculous thing like Avalon, so I am kind of worried about a lot of things going wrong with it when it comes to bones."
"You are probably right." - says Rin as she lets out a sigh. Thankfully Mei is quite light in the first place, and it isn't that big of a deal to carry her thanks to her reinforcement, but when you add the weight of her armor and weapons, that's a different story. She doesn't complain since Luvia is carrying Shirou, though.
"It is a pity that the armor still weights the same." - Luvia thinks aloud.- "To think a full plate turned into a leather necklace still weights the same, what a half-baked transformation."
"Its probably a necessity in order to keep the same defensive power... can we please stop with this long conversation while carrying these two idiots?"
""Sorry."" - Both Mei and Shirou chirp in softly as the girls carry them away.
It is then that they notice the pirate captain's shield float by on the shallow and slow stream of the desert river.~
~O~
A/N: I am weak! Weaaaak! I planned on releasing this chapter on Thursday and get started on a Monday & Thursday release schedule! Anyway as you can easily tell, I came really, really close to killing Mei by having the Black Hand captain throw its legendary spear through her head while she was talking with Shirou. I settled for just giving her all sorts of death flags to make you guys nervous instead. Also, the captain is a 'unique NPC' who can do a LOT of work if a player knocks him unconscious and throws him into a Wheel of Pain. Heck, I actually farmed the guy.
1- You know, girls are worse than guys when they get together. Trust me, I'm talking from experience.
~O~
Omake - The Goddess Descends!
The Lemurian high priestess fell backward in orgasmic bliss, her body aglow with the energies of her goddess as the ritual reached a crescendo, the sky darkening as thick, rolling clouds of power in red, black, and gold came out of every horizon and ran towards the spot above the temple on legs of golden lightning.
The earth trembled and the birds shrunk against the bottom of their nests as a flood of power bathed the ancient city of Xel-ha, the sound of a dark and terrible moan filling the world as the goddess of fertility, death, and pleasure descended to aid her followers!
"Yes~ the goddess has cum!" -cried out the high priestess of Derketo, and Shirou had to do a double take. Nope, he was going to pretend he heard that wrong.- "Cum to us, oh goddess, great holy whore, you whom all other gods petition and desire!" - he was definitely going to pretend he heard that wrong, too.- "Behold, as the great calamity that is her lust manifests upon the world, her sacred form birthed from the world, a towering giant that shall deliver us from the heretics that wish to change our ways!"
"You could have just said 'no', Yakira. This is beyond overreacting, you know?" - sighs Shirou as he watches the spot the priestess is looking at while browsing through his mental catalog of Noble Phantasms, looking for those with anti-divine properties.
"I have to agree with the kid, Yakira. Sheesh, way to call me over nothing, child." - Rin's voice comes from behind, oddly annoyed.
For some reason, Shirou knows something really stupid just happened, and can already feel a headache forming.
"You are not looking at me, are you Yakira?" - he knows the answer, but as they say, hope dies last. The great priestess denies with her head.- "You are looking right behind me, aren't you Yakira?" - the high priestess nods in agreement.- "You are looking at Rin, aren't you Yakira?"
The great priestess nods, and Shirou can feel his headache transcend into a migraine.
"Well now, what interesting memories this host has!" -calls out Rin(?) from behind him.- "Oh my, shibari? I approve! Yakira, I have new ideas for our sacred rites, go fetch parchment and ink!"
"...y-yes, my goddess!"
"Good girl." - the sheer smugness radiating from behind him...- "Shirou, is it? Alright, this girl's memories are amazing, let's see... you're an ass man, aren't you? Fun!"
Who knew it was possible to have two migraines at the same time. Thank you for Rule Breaker, Medea. Truly the gift that keeps on giving.