Shane dropped Rin and Berserker off in front of the Von Einsbern manor, walking around to open the door for her as he always did before driving around to park the car in the garage. As she mounted the steps up to the wide front doors the hair on Rin's neck began to prickle. Something was definitely amiss, and she though she could detect the faint but unmistakable tingle of a magical aura emanating from within the house. Her steps quickened and Berserker, sensing her mood, quickly put himself in a defensive position in front of her. He quirked an inquisitive eyebrow in her direction, the one over his sightless and scarred blind eye.
"Something's wrong." She said urgently.
He nodded and preceded her into the house, following her cues as they quickly made their way through the front rooms. The magical aura was definitely growing stronger as they approached but Rin couldn't identify its source or purpose. Could a rival mage have discovered the manor and attacked Ilya while Rin and Berserker were at the church? Rin's steps quickened until she and Berserker were practically running through the house to get to the source of the magical convergence. They reached a finely carved set of dining room door and Rin could detect the aura just beyond them. She quietly nodded to Berserker, who dropped into a practiced combat crouch.
They burst into the room with a crash and Ilya, who was sitting at the large table that filled the center of the room, leapt up with a strangled yelp. Other than Rin and Berserker's forced entry the room showed no sign of struggle and Ilya was in perfect health aside from being startled. The younger mage's face split with a grin of pride as she swept her hands over the project that she had laid out on the massive mahogany table that dominated the center of the room.
"Look what I did while you were out!" She said excitedly, moving around the table to grab Rin's hand and pull her forward, ignoring Berserker and the door hanging loosely from its hinges. Her excitement overrode her concern at having her dining room partially demolished.
There was a jumbo sized map of Valencia spread out over the table, the corners pinned down with thumbtacks and its surface smoothed out with some sort of laminate. It was obviously the source of the magical aura that Rin had sensed earlier. Across its surface a number of small crystal marbles about the size of a BB shot were rolling about, swirling in patterns apparently of their own volition. Rin's brow screwed up in concentration and she probed with her arcane senses, trying to unravel the mechanics of the map even as Ilya was excitedly babbling an explanation.
"I threw a low level detection field over the city and tied it off to this map. Not enough for any magus to detect over the naturally occurring motes of prana in the air, but juuust enough to cause a minor magical resonance whenever anyone tries to cast anything big. I also enchanted the marbles to gravitate towards magical disturbances. It probably won't pick up normal spell casting, but if someone uses something big or if a Servant unleashes their Noble Phantasm…"
"…the marbles will clump together in that spot and we'll know where they are!" Rin finished in unison, her voice catching Ilya's excitement.
"Ilya, this is fantastic! It won't show us spell casting but we'll know whenever Servants engage in battle. How did you manage a web wide enough to cover the whole city? Even as weak as the field is the strain must be enormous."
Ilya waved off her concerns, her infectious excitement leaving little room for such doubts.
"Oh, stop worrying. I'll be fine. The point is that this gives us a distinct advantage over everyone else. We'll be able to monitor Servant battles, and if anyone casts a spell powerful enough to register on the map we'll know right away."
Rin dropped the matter but she filed the new information about Ilya away. To maintain such a web without visible strain meant she had some trick up her sleeve that she obviously wasn't willing to share. Either that or she was simply far, far more powerful than Rin remembered. Possibly more powerful than Rin herself. If she were finding this out about anyone else Rin would be suspicious and wary. As it was she could only find herself feeling excited for her friends potential.
Putting such thoughts out of her mind Rin leaned in over the map, pointing at a minor eddy of activity in one of the seedier waterfront districts.
"What's this?" She asked, gesturing to a small flurry of activity in the constantly moving marbles.
There were four points on the map within relatively close proximity to each other around which the marbles seemed particularly agitated. They weren't clumps of magical energy, that much was clear, but each elicited a minor vortex of movement around its position.
Ilya craned her head to look at the four different points, a quizzical expression on her face.
"Well, it could be a minor magical disturbance, or maybe something just weak enough that the field is picking up eddies. They're all in the same neighborhood so maybe it's some mage's base of operations? Or it could be…oh, OH! I know what this is! It's been all over the news for weeks!" Ilya exclaimed, bounding energetically into the television room with Rin following at a more dignified pace.
She picked up the remote control and began flipping through news channels. After a maddening number of daytime infomercials they finally found a good news station. Unfortunately they were running an hour long special on a disaster in Tunisia which, while appropriately heart wrenching, did nothing to help them. Ilya finally threw the remote down in frustration.
"I guess we'll have to use that." She said ominously. "Go get Shane, we'll need his help. He'll probably be in the garage."
Rin was a bit bewildered but she complied. The garage was a large structure near the rear of the manor. Part motor pool and part machine shop, there were several luxury automobiles and a number of mechanical projects in various stages of completion scattered around seemingly at random. She picked her way past a partially disassembled motorcycle and found Shane doing something under the hood of the Bentley. Rin cleared her throat and he straightened up, wiping grease off his hands with a rag. He had swapped his black drivers uniform for a simple white shirt with blue sleeves currently rolled up around his elbows. There was a streak of grease on his face and he began scrubbing his hands on a shop towel. He was very…masculine. Rin struck an imperious pose and looked down her nose at him.
"Driver," She said. "We require your assistance."
Rather than standoffishness Shane replied to her rather curt request with one of his wide grins.
"Ya know, you can call me by my name. Shane. Shane Rowe."
"Very well then." Rin snapped back, turning on her heel. "Come along Shirou."
She cringed inwards and fought a blush. Perhaps it was the days excitement, or perhaps she was flustered for some other reason that she didn't really want to contemplate, but her Japanese accent emerged like a smirking monster and she absolutely butchered the pronunciation of his name. To her great surprise Shane caught her arm as she was about to leave the garage and spun her around. Her eyes widened and he leaned in, his customary jovial manner gone, a sudden frightening intensity animating his features.
"What did you call me?" He demanded. "Where did you hear that name?"
Rin was taken aback and she choked out a surprised retort.
"S-Shane Row? Th-that's your name, isn't it?" She sputtered, carefully pronouncing each syllable correctly. How dare he make her stammer! A sudden rush of pride and anger filled Rin and she jerked her arm away.
"B-Besides! Maybe your name just isn't worth pronouncing correctly!" She finished somewhat lamely.
Shane stood there for a moment, his look of intensity changed to a look of surprise, and then he burst out laughing. It was the worst thing he could have done. Rin stamped her foot in fury and resisted the urge to smack him right upside his laughing face. Instead she hunched her shoulders, balled her fists, and marched off to find Ilya, the laughing Shane following in her footsteps.
Ilya was in a small, out of the way room huddled over a desk. The item on the desk filled Rin with as much apprehension as the though of facing a servant in battle. Perhaps it was their reliance on magic, or perhaps it was their ancient family lineage, but most of the mages Rin knew felt the same way about computers as she did. Dreaded, confusing boxes animated by unknowable foreign magic and containing secrets that had to be painstakingly ferreted out to be understood.
Ilya sat in front of the keyboard with a look of miserable resignation on her features as she hunted and pecked with two fingers. She brightened when Shane walked in, her face lighting up with clear infatuation. Rin, still angry at him for flustering her as much as he did, harrumphed and stomped over to stand next to her friend.
"Shane! I need you to find a news report for me."
Shane obligingly sauntered over, leaning in over Ilya's shoulder and sending a luminescent blush creeping up on her porcelain cheeks.
"Okay, click on the icon for the internet…the one that looks like a giant E…no, left click…you gotta double click…that's twice in rapid succession…you really should use a better browser…here, scoot over, lemme try."
He gently shooed Ilya out of the computer seat and the started clicking away at the keyboard. He launched into confusing dissertation about setting foxes of fire, or perhaps covering them with chrome, Rin couldn't tell. She looked at Ilya over Shane's head and they both shrugged in unison.
Eventually he pulled up the news report that Ilya had tried to show Rin earlier on the television. The somewhat jovial mood in the computer room faded away as a young anchorwoman began her report on the series of grizzly murders that had taken place near the docks. Four murders had been reported. The details were being withheld by the police but the addresses of the killings placed all four directly under the four magical disturbances visible on Ilya's enchanted map. Shane's expression was somber but Ilya's was calculating. Four murders, obviously magical in nature, each within a week, and all of that compounded by the start of the Grail War. There was no way it could be coincidence.
"I guess I've got some investigating to do." Rin said.