Shirou struggled with several awkward bundles as he made his way back to his home from a late morning trip to the marketing district.
He had picked up the standard array of mixes, fruits, veggies, spices and meats he used in his cooking, as well as some less day to day things. Grounding cloths and metallic threads were hard to come by, as most people didn't have any use for them, but they were key in several forms of complex magic arrays. Ninja's seemed to prefer to use what they called sealing paper and chakra infused ink to do their Fuinjutsu, but the paper was more delicate than the cloth, and would burn if too much prana was absorbed into it. Rin had been making him keep an eye out for anything that would work for a while and a few out of town traders had brought in some.
Ever since he had reconnected with Rin, he had been helping supply her with the things she needed for her magecraft. The first thing she had done was make new clothes for herself, sewing in several runes and Fuinjutsu formulas that would allow her to be able to mask her chakra presence by funneling it until the seals. Through this she had started to sneak out of her families compound nearly everyday to meet up with Shirou. Things really did feel like old times as they worked to turn the small Ena compound into a virtual fortress through a variety of seals and bounded fields.
Not all the things that Shirou had bought were for Rin though. He himself had to buy some chakra infused sand for his smithing.
It had been a slight surprise to him when he started getting requests to make swords. He didn't really know why it was such a surprise, something along the lines of Hakkō Chakura Tō was bound to get attention. But now he found that rather than making kunai and throwing stars, he was exclusively making swords.
It was a whole lot more work. Where someone could pop out a couple dozen kunai in an afternoon, a chakra blade took weeks to make. Though the price and number requested were also different. Ever ninja seemed to have somewhere between ten and a hundred kunai and throwing stars, however, more high quality weapons were more limited. So most ninja only had one or two if any. This was probably because of the price difference.
A lot of ninja were just simple mercenaries who didn't have the most money, most lived on a sort of village subsidized plan. A kunai cost around five hundred ryō a piece, you could buy five of them for the same cost as a fancy meal. On the other hand, good katana could be compared to the price of a one bedroom apartment. A chakra blade was closer to a house, and the village wouldn't help pay for those kind of expenses.
At first Shirou considered just sticking to making the kunai. He wasn't all that comfortable giving people such blades. Yes kunai were still weapons that would be used to hurt people, but it was like the difference between selling a knife and selling someone an assault rifle. Unfortunately, Rin was a little too insistent on him taking the higher paying jobs, and long experience had taught him to simply not fight her on such things.
Luckly, because there were a large number of requests, he was able to be more picky about who he chose to make weapons for. He categorized the people who he saw into three main groups, two of which he wouldn't make blades for. It was easy enough to tell the people apart. Just one look at their current weapons told Shirou novels about the people that came to him.
The first and largest group were the people who believed that having a powerful blade would make them strong. These people were idiots. They reminded Shirou of an old proverb about putting pearls on a pig. It doesn't matter how beautiful the pearls, the pig is still a pig and won't look any prettier, you'll just be wasting good jewelry. Powerful swords that ended up in the hands of people like this usually didn't stay in their hands for very long, as they would be killed and the weapons simply taken off their corpse.
The second were the people who were too good at what they did. People who killed more than was probably necessary and took innocent lives. Giving a powerful blade to them would be like giving an already dangerous dog rabies. Shirou had no desire to help these people be more efficient killers.
But if the people asking were actually of a decent sort, only taking jobs that helped people, then Shirou would usually consent to making something. Sadly this group seemed to be in the minority. So far, in the five months since he made Hakkō Chakura Tō, he had made four other blades for three different people.
Shirou was wondering just what he would be making for lunch when a now familiar scent come into the range of his sixth sense. He looked towards a park bench and saw the source, Uzumaki Naruto.
Shirou had long since realized what the boy was. There was no mistaking that scent. The disturbance that lingered in the air around him, something that distorted nature, but also seemed to be a part of it. Any magus would be able to sense it, and nearly any magus could tell you exactly what it was.
A spirit of nature that has been contorted by hate, a true demon. Not just any demon, but the Nine Tailed Demon that ravaged the village.
Shirou had seen the boy running around dozens of times, and each time he had done his best to simply ignore it, but today something was different. Shirou couldn't sense any of the ANBU who usually tailed the boy, acting as secret guards. He was all alone, sitting on the park bench, nobody watching.
Shirou put down his shopping and started to walk towards the park.
Naruto was not the demon itself. Shirou knew that. Demons, just like with most spirits, were non-corporeal beings, masses of mystical energy. Only the most powerful among them ever gained a physical form, and that was usually through a contract with Gaia. However, there was little doubt in Shirou's mind that the boy's body was paying host to the demon. The whisker marks on his cheeks were signs of the demon influencing its host's body.
It was really sad. The child was innocent. However, Shirou was all to aware of how possessed human were. They could exist completely normal lives without anyone having a clue, until something causes them to feel blood lust. After that they would go berserk.
Shirou had a few dozen swords in his Unlimited Blade Works that had been used against these half breeds in the past. He could scan their history and remember those horrible battles. A human body possessed by a demon could be compared to a Servant in terms of raw power, and the added healing factor from the demons nature made them hard to kill. That was with a normal demon. With one as strong as the Nine Tails, it would be an entire Holy Grail War level of dangerous.
"Kill one to save a hundred." Shirou mumbled to himself, steeling his heart for what he was going to do.
Killing demons was no easy task. Even if the vessel was destroyed, it wouldn't truly kill the demon. Through its connection to nature, the demon would eventually regenerate, which was probably why the boy had been allowed to live. However, there were ways of severing that connection.
Usually a normal Black Key would do the trick, but Shirou wasn't taking any chances. He loaded up Gae Buidhe, a fairy made weapon, into his Unlimited blade works, preparing to Trace it. The short spear would be fairly maneuverable, even with Shirou's shortened height, and would easily sever the demon's bond with nature, destroying it forever.
However, right before Shirou made to plunge the spear through the back of the boy's chest, a low growling sound filled the air, giving him pause. It was... the child's stomach. Looking closer, Shirou saw that the child was holding his stomach and sobbing softly.
He didn't show most of the usual signs of neglect or abuse. He wasn't all that thin, and he didn't have any bruises covering his body. Though even if he was being starved and beaten, the demon inside of him would keep him alive and unscarred. It would provide him with all the energy he needed without having to canalize his own body, and it would heal any obvious injures. However, there were things that the demon wouldn't effect.
The boy was small, even for a three year old. Even with the demon providing him with energy, it couldn't replace two of the most important things for the growth of a young body, substance and human contact.
His cloths were a mess, the black shirt with the leaf symbol on the front made it hard to notice until you got closer, but it was covered with holes and looked like it had been a long while since it had a good washing. A few small blood stains spoke of injures that his body had received. There was also a good deal of dirt in his hair, and he was shivering slightly, the late fall air being rather cold for a worn out t-shirt and shorts.
There was also the mere fact that the boy was out there all alone. Shirou and Rin weren't exactly your normal children but even they were hardly left all alone for more than a few hours. It was actually quite annoying to the thirty plus year old children.
Sympathy started to erode away the steel Shirou was trying to erect around his heart. He tried to maintain his focus, and hold fast to his ideals... but rather than Tracing his weapon and finishing the demon off, he called out to the boy.
"Hey." Shirou said, causing the kid to snap up and look at him with deep blue eyes filled with fear. It hardly registered with Shirou that even though his cheeks were stained with tears, the boy's eyes weren't at all blood shot. Demon regeneration must have guarded against even that. "You hungry?"
'Well, its not like he's going to lose control right away. I can at least give him a last meal.' Shirou tried to tell himself. He hadn't given up on the idea of killing the boy. It was still the option that insured safety for the greatest number of lives. He was just... delaying it a little.
Shirou knew damn well that neither Saber or Archer would have hesitated for a second in ending the boy's life. They wouldn't have even felt the slightest bit conflicted about it. Lancer might have said it put a bad taste in his mouth to kill such a young child, but he would have done it. They would have all realized it was a necessary evil and done their duties as heroes.
"Are you sure its okay?" Naruto said, standing back a bit as Shirou moved up towards his home, giving the barrier around the house his command to let Naruto through. "Won't your parents be mad at you for this?"
"Hm?" Shirou mumbled, being dragged out of his thoughts. "No, its fine. I don't have any parents."
"You don's!?" Naruto half shouted in surprise, his blue eyes widening as he stared at Shirou, as if seeing the slightly older child in a new light.
Shirou ignored the boy's surprise as he opened up the door to his house and carried in his shopping. "I'm home!" He shouted out of a half ingrained habit. That's not to say he didn't get a response.
"It's about time, Shirou-chan!" The grinning face of a purple haired female ninja said as the owner of these features idly played with a few kunai. "I came all the way here to see you, and there wasn't even a hint of a free lunch."
"Shouldn't you be at work, Anko-nee?" Shirou said in a disapproving voice.
Mitarashi Anko was somewhere between fifteen and sixteen, though she wouldn't actually tell them her exact age. Her purple hair was usually worn in a sort of spiked up ponytail and her brown eyes were as featureless as Rin's white.
She had first shown up two month previous, under the pretense of her house being messed up in a large scale plumbing accident, and needing a place to crash for a while. Unlike the other ninja who were usually field ops, Anko worked in Konoha's Intelligence Division.
The older girl had been sent to spy on him and Rin. When Rin confronted her about it, she didn't even both denying it. The Hokage had ordered for the two of them to be watched, and Anko had been assigned to both act as a sort of guard and to report on their activities. Young as she was, Shirou would admit that she was highly skilled.
She considered it to be the best job she had ever been assigned. She was getting paid to live in a nice house with someone else doing all of the household work, being given three home cooked meals a day, and got to tease Shirou all she wanted.
After the whole 'you're spying on us' was out of the way, Anko and Rin ended up being fairly friendly with one and other. It was probably due to their mutual pass time of teasing Shirou, though the fact that Anko was knowledgeable about various summoning techniques and willing to share didn't hurt.
Shirou also didn't mind Anko's presence. It was actually a lot like having Fuji-nee around. Maybe even disturbingly like it.
"Oh don't be like that, Shirou-chan. I'm supposed to be watching you and the princess. How am I supposed to do that if I don't swing by during the day to make sure you two precious little monsters are alright." Anko said with a wide grin.
She had taken up Rin's calling of Shirou 'Shirou-chan', believing that Shirou was a humiliating nickname, and not realizing it was actually his name. Rin she called 'the Princess', though she seemed to believe that 'Rin' was Shirou's attempt at a counter nickname, as Rin meant dignified and cold.
Looking past Shirou and at Naruto, Anko raised an eyebrow slightly. "Hey, looks like a stray followed you home."
Naruto bristled a bit at that. "I'm not a stway!" He said angrily. "I'm Uzumaki Naruto and I'm gonna be the greadest ninja ever!"
"My my, listen to it hiss." Anko chuckled as the young blond fumed.
"Naruto will be joining us for lunch, so try to play nice." Shirou said as he put down his bundles on the table.
"You know if you feed it, it won't ever leave. That's just how strays are." Anko said with a sly smile.
"You mean like you?" Shirou said drily.
"Ah, that wasn't very nice. I thought you loved me, Shirou-chan." Anko fake pouted.
"I'm going to start making lunch now. Any requests? If so, there's a good chance I know how to make it." Shirou asked Naruto, doing his best to ignore Anko's antics at the moment.
"Uhm... can you make ramen?" Naruto asked, seeming to forget about Anko rather quickly.
"Ramen?" Shirou repeated, thinking over the list of ingredients needed to make it.
The little boy's face light up like a bonfire. "Yeah! Ramen is the most amazing food ever! There's this nice man, Teuchi, he sometimes gives me some whenever..!" Naruto's enthusiasm faltered before he merely continued on a different train. "Teuchi saids that ramen is the food of the gods! It is the best food ever and it could be used to solve all the worlds problems if you got enough of it!"
"Is that so? Well, I might not be as good as Teuchi is, but I can see what I can do." Shirou said, leaving Naruto with Anko as he went into the kitchen to start preparations.
Shirou let himself be lost in the mundane task of cooking. Rin never really understood why Shirou liked to do such things. The half mechanical tasks that took up just enough concentration to stop you from thinking about the great world. The kitchen became his universe, and nothing outside of it could matter.
Shirou didn't want to think about it. He didn't want to consider what life must be like for Naruto. The kind of hardships that the small child had to endure with the world at large being willingly ignorant of his suffering. That or causing it.
It reminded him too much of Sakura. One of the things in his past life that he felt worst about. He had been so close to the girl for so many years, but hadn't noticed the hell she had been put through. The guilt of it ate away at him. He knew it did the same to Rin.
Shirou spent the next twenty minutes decompressing as he prepared lunch. But the moment he exited the kitchen, the fact that the world he was in was a strange one was brought right back to his attention.
"Anko-nee, what are you doing?" Shirou asked dumbly.
"Babysitting." The ninja replied in a matter of fact manner as she sat on Naruto and filled her nails.
"Kuroshi... help me..." Naruto gasped as he was crushed underneath the young woman's butt.
Shirou sighed. "Lunch is ready, so just get off of him."
"You're no fun, Shirou-chan." Anko said in a disappointed manner, though she did get off of Naruto so that she could grab her meal.
"Hey, why do you keep calling Kuroshi Shirou-chan?" Naruto asked, giving the teen ninja a wide berth as he too took up a chair.
"That's the Princess's nickname for her little pet." Anko said with a wide grin as she saw Shirou twitch at being called a pet.
"Princess?" Naruto said with a slight gasp.
As if on cue, the door to the room Rin had claimed as her personal study opened up and the girl herself came walking out holding a cup of coffee and a sheet of papers. "Hey Shirou. I smelled lunch. Did you grab my things for me from the markets?" She said in the manner of a lady addressing a servant.
She was dressed in the clothes she had prepared to help her sneak out of her house. The long sleeved red top and short black skirt with stockings were very much alike the clothes she had worn in high school, though without her older figure, they didn't produce the same drop jaw response out of anyone but true perverts.
She half stopped on her way to the table when she noticed Naruto. "Shirou, why is there a possessed boy at the table?" Rin asked, switching to speaking in English.
The native language around the elemental nations was more of a dialect of Japanese, so whenever Shirou and Rin needed to speak to each other while others were watching, they decided the best course of action was to switch to English. It always shocked the people who were trying to listen in on them, who believed that the two four year olds had somehow managed to set up an entire code language without them noticing.
"He... was hungry." Shirou responded, a little bit embarrassed.
Rin sighed as she took her seat at the table. "Only you, Shirou."
"Are you really a princess?" Naruto asked, looking Rin up and down suspiciously.
"Of course I am." Rin said with a smile as she sat in a very dignified manner. "Haven't you ever seen a princess before."
Shirou sighed, knowing full well that she was trying to brainwash the little boy. So he did the only thing he could do to stop it. Shirou brought out the ramen and passed everyone their portions.
All talking ended abruptly as Naruto practically attacked his bowl. Anko was only slightly better, though Rin controlled herself, eating in a civilized manner.
Shirou held off, watching everyone as they ate his food, taking a little satisfaction at how people seemed to like it.
"Uhm... As usual, your cooking is at an acceptable level, as to standard." Rin said in her high and mighty fashion.
Anko snorted. "Your words of praise are too overwhelming, Princess. You should be careful, it might go to his head."
Naruto didn't say a word. He couldn't, not with the rate he was eating. It wasn't until he dipped his bowl back, drinking the broth so fast that some of it spilt out onto his shirt that he finally said anything. "That was amazing! Maybe even better than Teuchi!" He said with a satisfied sigh and he seemed to dissolve down into his seat.
"Maybe its just hunger making you say that." Shirou said before asking the question that had been bugging him. "Naruto, why were you out there in the park alone?" The intelligence officer in the room pricked up her ears, though tried to pretend she was still interested in her food. No doubt Anko was going to go sell out or blackmail whoever it was that was supposed to be keeping an eye on the demon host.
Naruto's face momentarily twitched into a sad expression before he sat up and puffed out his chest in a fake pride. "Oh, one of those cranky old farts at the orphanage was PMSing or something. I didn't want to put up with him any more, so I left."
Shirou frowned. Ignoring the obvious fact that Naruto didn't have a clue what PMSing meant, Shirou could read between the lines well enough. Since Naruto didn't have anything but the clothes on his back, the people running the orphanage must have thrown the boy out onto the streets the night before. Whether that was a permanent thing, or if it was the first time it had happened, Shirou didn't know. Naruto must have been forced to sleep out in the cold and had missed breakfast, perhaps dinner to.
"Did you manage to eat dinner last night or..." Shirou tested.
"Um... well no... but that doesn't matter! A guy like me can go days without eating anything!" Naruto tried to boast. Sadly, his stomach growled in disagreement, causing his face to fall.
"Stupid kid. Don't pretend you are more okay then you are. Doesn't do you any good to lie to anyone here." Anko said, her face more serious than normal. There was probably a story there, but Shirou wouldn't pry. Not when the person involved was someone who was a master of daggers and poisons.
"Here." Shirou pushed his bowl in front of Naruto, who blinked in surprise.
"But this is your food." Naruto said.
"I can make myself something else in a bit. You need it more." Shirou said, waving the boy off.
Naruto grinned wide. "Thank you!" He said before digging into the second bowl.
Rin watched the boy eating before a smile grin passed over her face. "Alright, I've decided." She said, getting the others attention. "Naruto-kun is going to be living here from now on."
"Huh!?" Naruto shouted, accidently spilling more of his ramen on himself.
Shirou himself tensed up. "You do realize this is my house?" He said, locking eye contact with the girl, trying to send the message that this was not a good idea.
"Hm? Did you say something, Shirou?" Rin replayed, her warm smile not masking the fact that she was going to ignore all his complaints from this point on.
"Just what I needed, another brat to look after." Anko said, though she didn't seem that opposed to the idea. "I'll go tell the old man. I need to be heading off to deliver my reports anyways. They better increase my pay." She got up and left before Shirou could stop her.
"Hey! What if I don't want to live here!?" Naruto shouted, still in shock.
"Makes no difference. I am a princess and I have decided. You are just going to have to deal with it. That's the way the world works after all." Rin said with a soft chuckle, confusing the actual child. "Now, if you are going to stay here, the first thing you will need is a bath. You're filthy. Some of Shirou's old clothes will probably fit you and he can get you new things later."
Rin hurriedly forced Naruto to go and take a bath, leaving her and Shirou alone together. After doing a quick sweep for people listening it, they got to talking.
"Rin, he's possessed by a demon. He needs to be put down before he goes berserk." Shirou said trying to maintain a level of professional calm about it. Something he was finding difficult to do.
"I doubt he will go lose himself to the demon immediately. I'd give it another ten years or so. Who knows, it might never happen." Rin said, waving him off.
"It might never happen if he spent his entire life livings in peace. With how things are, I doubt he will make it till he is ten. Especially if he actually tries to become a ninja and is exposed to killing." Shirou counted. "Every day he lives comes the risk that something might happen. Another incident, just like three years ago. I'm not going to take those kinds of chances."
Rin rolled her eyes and smiled. "Alright then. How about a bet. If you can bring yourself to do it, then kill him. I won't stop you. But if you can't, I get to observe him as research material." Rin said tapping her chin. "I doubt that a demon as powerful as the Nine Tails actually willingly took on a human host. It is probably bound to the child with a seal of some kind. It would be interesting to take a closer look at. Not to mention the demon itself. I wonder how the changes in Gaia would effect those spirits that are connected to nature. So many questions."
Shirou's jaw dropped. "You can't be serious."
Rin turned to him, giving him a sly smile. "Oh I am serious, and I know I'm going to win. You won't kill him, because you aren't Archer, and you never will be." Then she walked out, returning back to her chan and leaving Shirou to take care of the three year old time bomb.
Closing his eyes, Shirou tried again to steel his heart, only to find the steel crumbling at the memory of Naruto's hopeful blue eyes. "I'll... kill him next week." Shirou mumbled to himself, before running off to fetch some clothes that would fit the small boy.