Rin awoke to a gentle but insistent shaking on her shoulder. She opened her eyes blearily and shut them again immediately against the grey pre dawn light. The hours of sleep that she'd managed to snatch hadn't done more than blunt the edge of the exhaustion that was blanketing her brain like cotton, making it impossible to concentrate.
"'ive m'minutes." She mumbled sleepily, turning away from the big figure bent over her bed and burrowing her face back down into her pillow.
The shaking stopped but instead she heard the impatient swishing of socks on carpet as her unwanted wakeup call began pacing beside her bed. Rin tried to ignore the sound but found her self nudged back into wakefulness every time she was just about to doze off again. Her brow furrowed deeper and deeper until she sat up with a jerk and threw the covers off.
"Alright! I'm awake!" She growled.
Shirou paused mid step, his eyes wide and darting back and forth between Rin and her nightgown. She let out a startled eep and blushed at the same time he did, her red face mortified and his splitting into a goofy grin. With a fury born of embarrassment Rin jumped up and hustled Shirou out the door, slamming it behind him hard enough to shake the frame.
Rin emerged some minutes later, cleaned, dressed, and fuming. Shirou was still grinning.
"What can I say? I guess you're just…" He began but Rin cut him off, pointing a finger in his face like she was going to impale him with it.
"Don't. Say. A word." She warned. "Let's go."
She turned on her heel and marched down the stairs. Shirou's levity disappeared as the seriousness of their errand settled over them. Neither of them said anything as they drove through the quiet post dawn streets. It was still earlier than the morning work rush but the sun had already crested the horizon, sending long beams of twinkling sunlight slashing through the deep shadows that still clutched the ground. The effect made the city look like it was cut in half, the tops of the buildings and street signs haloed in golden dawn and the bottoms still steeped in creeping dusk.
As they drove the silence between them deepened into a quiet tension like a rubber band vibrating on the edge of snapping. Shirou looked buried in his thoughts with Rin fighting a torrent of her own. Everything that she had learned about the Grail war, the nature of Project Omega, and her family's shadowy involvement with it pointed towards Kotomine. What secrets would he reveal? And were they secrets that Rin really wanted to know? What about Shirou? What would he do when he confronted Kotomine?
Were she sitting next to anyone else Rin would be worried that he would kill him. But Rin knew Shirou. Shirou risked his life every time he went out, spent it minutes and hours at a time to fuel his abilities, all to save people. Even his enemies. If anything she was worried that Kotomine would get off too easy.
What would Shirou do once he had his answers? Would he leave? Was Rin more curious about Omega because of the connection to her family? Or because of the connection with Shirou?
All of her thoughts and trepidations were pushed the background as Shriou pulled to a stop. Rin looked out the window and realized with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that they had arrived. Shirou opened his door but Rin reached out and snatched his sleeve, reflexively, without even realizing what she had done.
Shirou looked at her quizically.
"Shirou, there's something that I…I just…Just promise me that we're a team. Right? No matter what happens?" Rin said, searching desperately for words but utterly failing.
Shirou settled back into his seat, his eagerness to confront Kotomine cooling in the face of Rin's hesitant need. He looked at her, eyes serious, and reached forward tentatively. He brushed his fingers against Rin's cheek and she leaned into him subconsciously. But after too brief a heartbeat he pulled his hand back. His eyes fell.
"I…I can't promise that everything will be the same. I care about you. I mean I…I…yeah. I care about you. A lot. But I haven't been completely honest with you. I'm, I'm not…I'll tell you everything. That's all that I can promise you. Then you can decide if you…well…I'll tell you everything. After. That's all I can promise." He said.
Rin's heart leapt as the tender moment developed and sank as she felt Shirou's secrets poisoning the air between them. He reached out for her again but she turned her face away, opening the door and pushing herself up. She heard him doing the same on the other side of the car but couldn't look at him. She was torn between hope and apprehension. As intense as her feelings for Shirou were they were, and always had been, tainted by the web of secrets and lies that surrounded him. She hadn't even known him by his true name until the secret was forced out of him. Could he truly be honest with her? And if he did, what would change? Was it a change that she wanted?
"Very well then." She said, her words sounding icy even to her.
"Let's go and get our answers."
She marched resolutely across the small cemetery and Shirou ran to catch her. The chipped tombstones which had lent the yard an eclectic and quaint feel now loomed like deformed grotesqueries watching them as they forged forwards. Shirou pushed past her and reached the door of the chapel first, taking the lead as he pushed the door open. Rin took a deep breath as if she were jumping into a pool of icy water and crossed the threshold, following Shirou inside.
The interior was as dimly lit as Rin remembered it, deep shadows thrown static by the morning sunlight. None of the candles that had burned on her last visit were lit, the morning sun casting the shadows in sharp black and white angles instead of the guttering, cave like illumination from before. Knowing full well Kotomine's penchant for lurking in the shadows Rin narrowed her eyes, trying to pierce the gloom. She scanned the dark galleries and alcoves hunting for the dark priest. Tragically it did not occur to her to look upwards into the dark rafters for the threat that lurked there.
"Kotomine!" Shirou bellowed, standing defiantly before Rin.
"I've come for you!"
There was a rustling in the dark recesses of the chapel and Rin stiffened. Beside her Shirou dropped slightly, his feet spreading into a combat ready stance. Rin's tension eased somewhat when the figure that shuffled into the light wasn't Kotomine, but the elderly priest that had inducted her into the Grail War. Shirou remained coiled like a spring.
The priest's kindly face was still tinged with the sadness that Rin had seen on her first visit. His features tightened when he saw Shirou, a look of panic fluttering over them before he mastered himself once again into a look of serene contemplation.
"So. He's sent you for me at last. I knew it was only a matter of time." He said to Shirou, ignoring Rin entirely and bowing his head.
Rin's gaze darted sharply between the priest and Shirou. They obviously knew each other, or at least the priest knew Shirou. Shirou's pose relaxed and he took a small step forwards. The priest took a fearful step back.
"You've got the wrong idea. I'm free. He doesn't have any control over me any longer." Shirou said, his hands spread in a non threatening gesture.
The priest stepped forwards cautiously, his face a picture of curiosity and even wonderment.
"Why should I believe you? Well, I supplies I'm not dead. That's very nearly proof enough that you aren't his creature any longer. How?" He asked, his crinkled eyes darting over Shirou's features.
Shirou was about to speak but Rin, fed up with being cut out of the conversation, barged forwards.
"Hold it right there! Will someone please tell me what's going on?!" She demanded, glaring at Shirou and the aged priest.
"I'm sorry, I was just surprised…I suppose I should start at the beginning." The priest said.
Shirou nodded and Rin felt hope fighting its way over her anger. At last she would get some answers.
"After the fourth Heaven's Feel it became clear to all parties involved that some deeper form of control was needed. It also became clear that if the Church and the Mages Association continued their rivalry it was only a matter of time before our secrets became exposed or some rogue agent did something that would be harmful to all sides.
"Still, the Church and the Mage's Association have been enemies for countless generations. And so it was decided that the joint project, Project Omega, would be conducted in secret, hidden from both the Association and the Church at large. Kotomine Kirei was the head of the project, appointed as the Church's representative because of his pivotal role in the fourth Grail War.
"We were so foolish. We thought everything was going well. Kotomine's reports were so promising, so reassuring. And then we uncovered a number of oddities. One of the scientists working on the project was killed in an un-related circumstance, a car accident. But we kept getting his reports. We sent agents to investigate Kotomine and Project Omega but they all disappeared or were involved in lethal accidents. For years we had trusted him and in reality Kotomine had betrayed us from the moment he was put in charge of the Project. Sending us fake reports. Kidnapping researchers, mages, and biologists as well as countless innocent test subjects. He went well and truly rogue once we discovered his deception. Cleaned out the Project accounts. Moved his operation. We were able to track him here to the city."
Shirou's eyes lit and he took another step forward.
"He's here? Where?" He asked excitedly.
"And why would you work with him if you knew what he was? What connection is there between the Project and the Grail War? For the War to be initiated here, now, it's too much of a coincidence to be random." Rin added.
She was awash with relief at knowing that her family had nothing to do with the atrocities committed by the Project. The aged priest folded his hands into his sleeves and gestured with his chin towards one of the pews.
"I'll tell you everything I know. Have a seat, this could take a while." He said.
Rin made as if to turn but jerked backwards as she suddenly detected a burst of magical energy from high above her. She whirled but Shirou caught her and leaped backwards, shielding her with his body as he interposed himself between this new interloper. Rin caught a flash of black fabric as a dark figure dropped from its hiding place in the rafters.
The attacker ignored her and leaped on the priest, seizing him by the throat and slamming him up against a nearby pillar. The harsh slanting light cast his shoulders and face in shadow but Rin instantly recognized his magical aura. He was the mysterious mage who had watched her battle with Saber from the shadows! She had seen him several times and each time he had simply observed the proceedings, watching, waiting, and biding his time.
"Now, now." He hissed into the struggling priest's ear.
"We can't have you telling tales, can we?" He said.
Rin's ears perked. His voice was harsh and tinged with cruelty but oh so familiar. Rin knew she had heard him speak before.
"Who are you!" She demanded, pushing her way forward to stand side by side with Shirou.
The dark figure only barked a harsh laugh and to her surprise it was Shirou that answered.
"He's one of Kotomine's enforcers. Be careful. He's dangerous." He said.
The seriousness in Shirou's voice set Rin's teeth on edge and she nodded grimly. She sidestepped slowly, circling around so that a single burst spell wouldn't be able to disable them both. The enforcer slunk deeper into the shadows, whirling the priest around and holding him in front like a human shield.
"Drop him!" Rin said.
She tensed, ready to cast at the first sign of betrayal.
"Give me control of the Omega Weapon." The shadowy figure countered. Oddly he seemed to be addressing her, not Shirou.
"Omega belongs to Shirou now. He has it and nothing you can say will make us give it back to you." She said.
Once again her words were met with a dark laugh. Where had she heard that voice before?
"It's calling itself Shirou now? How…ironic. You foolish, foolish girl. It doesn't have the Omega weapon. It is the Omega weapon!" He said in a voice tinge with cruel humor.
The dark enforcer stepped out of the shadows.
Rin gasped. Her eyes widened. Her heart skipped a beat.
It was Shirou.
Rin's jaw hung slack. Her eyes darted between the two men. They weren't similar enough to be brothers. They were perfectly, wholly identical. Only the cruel cast of his eyes and his black tactical combat gear distinguished the figure holding the priest by the throat from the erstwhile companion that Rin had come to rely on.
Magical energy permeated the air as Shirou activated his powers. A dark resonance formed in the currents of prana as his twin activated his as well. The dark figure's face split into a wicked grin, an insidious mockery of Shirou's good natured smile. His eyes flashed danger.
"Sigma, don't…!" Shirou cried.
But it was too late. The doppelganger, Sigma, wrenched his hands sideways and violently snapped the priest's neck. The body slumped bonelessly to the ground, head twisted nearly completely backwards, and Rin clapped a horrified hand over her mouth.
Sigma's grin didn't waver as he slowly stepped backwards back into the shadows. Shirou advanced on him, fists up, his face a mask of fury.
"You think I'm just going to let you walk out of here after what you've done!?" He said, his voice trembling with rage. "You know you're no match for me."
"Of course not, Omega." Sigma replied, placing a mocking emphasis on the name. "But then, I don't have to be. You see, I called in several of your friends the moment you arrived. All I had to do is tell them where you were. You're quite a valuable commodity, you know. The should be arriving riiiight, aboooout…"
Rin's eyes widened as she felt a sudden surge of magical energy from behind her.
"Get down!" She cried, tackling Shirou off his feet and pulling him down behind a row of pews.
At least she tried to. With his powers coursing through him Shirou was as hard as a piece of stone and about as dense. Fortunately he got the idea and folded with her momentum, wrapping her in his arms and taking cover beneath one of the wooden pews. At that same instant the surge of magic blossomed into a spell of fiery destruction. The explosion rocked the church, sending the front doors careening through the interior. The pews and Shirou's magically enhanced form shielded Rin from the worst of the blast but her ears were still ringing as she hastily pushed herself to her feet.
The doors had been blasted open, one hanging at an angle and the other flung across the chapel to crash through one of the simple stained glass windows. Dust and rubble drifted through the opening. Sigma was nowhere to be seen.
Instead a pair of figures stood in the now jagged doorway. Both radiated magic like a pair of twin suns, the taller figure shedding the warm golden light of Grail energy and the other a darker, purple radiance like an oil slick over water. Rin cursed and hauled herself upright. It was Archer and the Matou heir, Sakura.
"We may be in trouble." She said to Shirou grimly as he pulled himself up beside her.
Shirou nodded but all further conversation was cut short as Sakura spoke.
"Take the weapon. This one is mine." She said imperiously. Here eyes blazed with something that Rin couldn't define, a hatred that she found shocking considering that she had never met the woman before in her life.
She had not time to consider the turn of events as Sakura lashed out. She sent a tongue of dark fire darting towards Rin and something else, a minor spell that Rin only caught in the nick of time. Sakura had simultaneously cast a lance of fire and a counterspell against shield class spells. Instead of falling into her trap Rin lashed out with a spell of her own, neutralizing the fire with an icy blast and at the same time rerouting Sakura's counter into a mana trap spell that she quickly wove to keep Sakura's mana supplies tapped.
Rin had once heard that fencing was like chess at 100 miles per hour. A mages duel was like three dimensional chess at 100 miles an hour with both players trying their best to cheat. And often the best cheater won.
Sakura coupled her brute force attacks with feints and counter spells, trying to trap Rin in a position where she could neither nullify her spells nor launch an effective counter attack. Her raw magical power was astounding, stronger in terms of raw prana than even Ilya. But she used her magic like a club, smashing and burning everything in sight in an attempt to land a killing blow. Rin's spider thin webs of spell power used finesse and strategy to redirect or counter Sakura's more powerful spells into harmless effects.
Rin began setting a trap, lashing out three times in quick succession with prana spikes and then charged a fourth, changing the spell at the last instant to a mana trap that would absorb and redirect any spell caught in it. Sakura almost fell for the ploy, attacking from the side that Rin had deliberately left exposed. She saw her mistake just in time to stop herself and Rin cursed under her breath as Sakura instead blocked her own bolt of energy, sending it spattering harmlessly against the walls. One of the benches it struck exploded like a grenade. The other turned into a confused looking tortise.
With their magical duel warping the reality around them Rin had no concentration to spare to see how Shirou was doing against Archer, altho she knew that he didn't have a chance against a fully fledged Servant. She also knew that every second they spent fighting was one more second sapped from Shirou's life.
"Stop!" She said through gritted teeth, directing a blast of freezing air into a beam of searing fire that Sakura had tried to summon where she was standing.
"You're being manipulated! I know you don't have to do this!" She said.
Sakura's eyes narrowed. Her features had darkened, tendrils of black corruption creeping along her skin like a cancer consuming her. At Rin's words the corruption surged and Sakura's eyes flashed with red fire.
"You know? You know!? You don't know anything about me! YOU LEFT ME IN HELL!" She shrieked, a wave of power so intense it blurred Rin's vision sweeping over her.
Dropping all pretense of strategy she channeled all of her energy into a blast of fiery wrath, cocooning it in so much prana that Rin could sooner have redirected a freight train. Quickly Rin sought about for something, anything that would save her. There was nothing.
The split second after the blast would have hit her Rin wasn't dead, much to her astonishment. She opened her eyes to see what could have saved her and instantly regretted it. Standing between her and Sakura was a golden cloaked figure that she recognized as Rider. Only his impervious Golden Fleece could have saved her. But why?
Her question was answered by an idle tisking sound that came from behind Sakura. Rider's portly master stood there leaning against the rubble, inspecting his fingernails.
"What!" Sakura raged, gathering herself for another magical assault.
"Who are you? How dare you stay my vengeance!" She shouted in his face.
She accompanied her words with a blast of eldritch energies but Rider was faster, dashing forward to almost casually shield his master from the attack. Rin's eyes darted away from the conflict in front of her, searching desperately for Shirou. Fortunately he wasn't far away, locked in battle with Archer. The small skirmish broke up immediately as Archer quickly moved to Sakura's side, standing between her and Rider. Shirou was bleeding from a half dozen wounds but still on his feet.
The three parties stood facing each other down in the ruins of the church. Rider and his master, Sakura and Archer, and Rin moving quickly to support Shirou.
"Goodness, where are my manners?" The interloper said, bowing deeply.
"My name is Emil Lemieux. Don't worry. You won't have heard of me. I keep a low profile. A little birdie told me that Omega item that's all the rage was here. And lo and behold! I find a slinking rival to kill as well!" He said cheerfully.
Sakura bristled.
"Over my corpse!" She spat. "The Weapon is the Matou family's by right. And her...she is mine!" She said, pointing an accusatory finger towards Rin.
As if on command Archer dashed towards her but Rider blocked his charge.
"Ah, you great mage families. So arrogant. You don't know just how out matched you are, do you? Rider can..." Emil began boastfully.
Rin was distracted as Shirou whispered in her ear.
"Pssst! Not that this isn't fascinating, but they both seem pretty distracted and I'd rather not stick around to watch." He whispered.
"Let's make a break for it. On three. Uuuuh, THREE!" He shouted, seizing Rin's hand and dashing towards the car.
"Oh no you don't!" Emil bellowed.
Rider gave chase but Archer was on his heels just as fast, his flashing tomahawks racing towards his weak points. Rider was forced to turn and defend himself and the split second pause gave Rin and Shirou enough time to make it to the vehicle.
"You arrogant little bitch! Now they're escaping!" Emil raged.
Sakura responded with a bolt of magical fire.
The argument behind them devolved into a full fledged mage and servant's battle but, thankfully, Rin wasn't in a position to see it. Shirou gunned the engine and peeled out as he roared around the corner and out of sight. Rin's hands were shaking but she forced them to steady, instead focusing her attention on Shirou. They drove for long minutes until they were both confident that they weren't being followed.
"I think you have some explaining to do." She said.
Shirou gave her a long look, glancing at the road to maintain their break neck pace.
"Yes." He said. "I suppose I do."