The first thing Rin did when she awoke the following morning was to rush down stairs to check on Berserker. He was still laying there on the table, his eyes closed. The expression of agony that had haunted his features the day before had relaxed into a more peaceful mask of sleep. His brow was furrowed as if in concern but the clench toothed, white knuckled expression of the day before was gone. The various cuts and slashes that criss crossed his body had faded somewhat but could still be seen, rends of exposed flesh marring his already over scarred visage.
What must he have been through? Rin wondered. Who was he when he died?
When his wounds healed it would be difficult to tell that he had ever had them, not because the scars themselves would fade, but because Berserker already had so many scars that the hundreds of cuts he had gotten from Assassin would be nothing but drops in the ocean. How did he get them? His life must have been one of constant strife from infancy. He was worried that he hadn't been a good person. Rin wasn't worried about that at all.
Despite his feelings he rushed to save Shirou without hesitation. He sacrificed himself to save me from Assassin. No, Berserker, whoever you were then, you are a good man now.
She squeezed his good hand tightly for a moment before she left.
She went in search of Ilya but couldn't find her in her bedroom. However, wherever Shirou was Ilya was sure to be close by. And sure enough she found all three of them in the garage. Shirou was working, as usual, repairing the Bentley where had smashed into it the night before. Rin felt a twinge of guilt but she ignored it with a haughty toss of her head. Hmph! It served him right! Ilya was hovering about watching with a dreamy look in her eyes, listening to his stories and handing him tools out of the tool chest when he called for them. Caster was hunched over his work bench, his gnarled fingers tweaking some experiment or other, a large pair of spectacles making his eyes look owlish.
"Could ya hand me that eight millimeter socket wrench?" Shirou said, reaching behind him for the tool that Ilya held out.
There was a series of mechanical clanks from under the hood and then Shirou stood up, wiping his hands on a shop towel.
"Thanks, kiddo." He said and affectionately tousled Ilya's hair, who blushed.
When she glanced up and saw Rin standing in the doorway she froze. Her eyes darted back and forth between Caster and Rin, a look of frightened uncertainty wide in her eyes.
"Rin, I..."
Caster tensed but Shirou seemed as emotionally oblivious as ever, glancing around in bewilderment at the sudden sparks crackling through the air. Rin recalled Ilya's words from the night before.
You won't hate me, will you?
The dynamic between them had changed and Ilya, sweet, impulsive Ilya, feared that their friendship was changed as well. The situation defused as Rin stepped forwards smiling. She put her arms around her friend.
"It's okay." She said. "I understand how heavy the pressure from your family can be. I'm just glad to have an ally in this thing."
Ilya slumped in relief and then beamed happily.
"I'm so relieved! I wanted to tell you since the first day you arrived but I just...I wasn't brave enough. I didn't know what you would do, I didn't know what my father would say. They sent me specifically because of our friendship, they thought it would give me an edge over you. I guess the joke is on them now, huh?"
Rin stared down at the top of Ilya's head, counting the strands of her beautiful white hair as she considered her answer. Caster was far more powerful than Berserker, their alliance would benefit Rin far more than Ilya. And she knew, deep in her heart, that if she wanted to she could get her friend to do anything. Rin's whole life had been spent manipulating people around her to one end or another. Often benignly, and usually for their own good, but she knew she had the potential in her to use Ilya as a vanguard in the Grail War. She knew that she could force Ilya to chose between her family and Rin. Could she do that? How much did she want to win the War? Did she want it enough to use her friend, play on her friendship to get her to fight her battles?
And just as soon as the question came into her mind the answer followed it. Of course she couldn't. Not in a million years.
She took Ilya by the shoulders and looked gravely into her eyes.
"Very well. Let this cement our alliance. But Ilya, you have to realize that even if we win this thing will come down to one of the two of us. I don't want you to sacrifice your standing with your family just for me. And I want you to know that even if we...that no matter how this whole thing turns out, you and I will always be friends."
Ilya's lip quivered and her eyes misted. She hugged Rin back fiercely before straightening up, scrubbing her sleeve across her eyes. She nodded, a determined smile cemented on her features.
"So, what's the plan?"
"For now? We go to the post office." Rin said resolutely.
Ilya looked puzzled but it was Shirou who chimed up.
"The post office? Is one of the other Servants...I dunno, who's a famous post man? Ben Franklin?"
Rin rolled her eyes.
"We aren't hunting a Servant. I'm expecting a letter that may have information relating to the Omega weapon."
Shirou perked up when Rin mentioned the name and she was reminded why he was in Valencia in the first place. He wasn't there for the war like Ilya and Rin, he was there for Omega. He claimed to want to destroy it but there had to be something that he wasn't telling them.
"Oh, well let's go then." He said.
"I'm afraid it's not that simple." Rin said.
"They'll only release the letter to me and I can't go anywhere while Berserker is recuperating."
Caster looked up from his work curiously.
"Why not?" He asked.
"Isn't it obvious? Berserker doesn't have independent action. While he's stuck here I'm stuck here, especially while he's healing. If I go his body could deteriorate even further without my prana to maintain it."
Caster pulled down his glasses and regarded Rin over the frames for a long moment. He gave her a searching look but Rin couldn't fathom what he hoped to find. At length he spoke again.
"Rin, you aren't feeding him any prana. He doesn't need it. He's like me."
Rin's eyebrows lowered in confusion.
"What are you talking about, 'like you'. Like you in what way?"
"Why, in that we both have physical bodies, of course. Didn't you think it odd that he can't appear and disappear at will like a Servant should be able to? Since he's actually here physically he doesn't require a constant stream of prana to continue existing. Of course, he'll still need to pull Grail energy through you to fuel his abilities and such, but his basic existence isn't dependent on it."
Rin felt the shock seep through her. Of course! He wasn't drawing nearly as much magical energy as a Berserker class servant should. Rin had assumed it had something to do with his crippled stats and lack of any abilities besides his glitched mad enhancement power. But a physical existence also explained it, along with a number of Berserker's other idiosyncrasies like his need to eat or sleep, perhaps even why the Grail hadn't corrected his amnesia.
"But...how?" She asked.
Caster only shrugged.
"I can tell you all the properties of the seed, but not who planted it. His temporal signature is too disturbed to get a glance into his past. All Servants are the same, otherwise it would be a simple matter of clairvoyance magic to find out their identities."
"You said that you are the same. How do you have a physical body?" Rin probed further.
Caster sighed and pulled his glasses off, tossing them onto the work bench and glancing at Ilya who nodded approval. He continued with a wry grin.
"Stupidity, mainly. Lack of common sense. Never assume because you're a brilliant magus that you aren't a complete idiot at the same time. I was experimenting with temporal displacement magic. Speeding and slowing time is child's play. But to stop it entirely? That was my, what's the expression from this period? My Mt. Everest. I spent years experimenting and when I cracked the problem I tried it. On my self."
Rin's face was rife with wonder, not only at Caster's tale but at the raw magical power that he must posess.
"So you were..." She began.
"Frozen in time." Caster finished with a chuckle.
"I set the spell to freeze myself for five minutes. Of course, when time is stopped for you personally five minutes becomes an eternity. I was like a piece of drift wood caught in an eddy on the river of time, and the world left me behind until a large enough temporal disturbance shook me loose."
"Ilya's summoning!" Rin exclaimed, looking at her friend. Ilya gave her a pleased nod.
"Precisely." Caster continued.
"In its most basic form the Servant summoning spell pulls a soul from outside the stream of time and empowers it. I wasn't a Heroic Spirit, altho I probably could have been if I had ever died, but I was outside the stream of time. And now here I am." He finished with a shrug.
"That's...incredible." Rin said, falling into a nearby chair in wonderment.
"But this physical form, is it an advantage or a hindrance?"
Caster tapped a finger against his chin.
"A bit of both, I suppose. I don't require any prana to continue existing, nor do I technically require a contract now that I've been made manifest, although I do need it to use the abilities granted to me by the Grail as a Caster type Servant. On the other hand if I die I won't enter the cycle of reincarnation. I'll be just as dead as any other mortal."
The thought was sobering.
"And Berserker? Could something similar have happened to him to explain why exists physically?"
Caster shook his head.
"What happened to me is a one in a million chance. One in a billion. No, one in every human that's ever lived. The chance of it happening twice? Unlikely. There must be some other explanation."
"But if the temporal..."
"Uuuuuuugh!" Shirou moaned, interrupting.
"Life is too short for such a boring conversation. Can we please go get that letter?"
Rin heaved an exasperated sigh. To the mages in the room the discussion was fascinating. To an idiot like Shirou it was like sitting through a boring lecture. Or maybe he was just disguising his eagerness to get at Rin's intelligence on Omega. Either way, as much as Rin hated to admit it, he was right. They were wasting time.
"You know, you might learn something for once if you bothered to...ugh. Never mind. Go start the car." Rin said.
"Yess'm!" Shirou said, jumping up and throwing her a comically exaggerated salute.
Rin rolled her eyes again. Why did everything he did have to irritate her so?