Interlude - Making of a Tyrant (II)
A bike roared on the streets upon the mountains overlooking Fuyuki City. Long hair whipped in its wake like a purple comet.
No matter how sharp, no twist in the road seemed to slow it down any. In fact, its rider seemed to enjoy accelerating even more right before a turn, bending the bike to the point it it almost looked parallel to the ground.
It was a performance that any onlooker would consider inhuman, and rightly so. The Gorgon Medusa was as far removed from being human as they could possibly get, despite originally being a Goddess of Perfect Beauty born from mankind's wishes.
The Servant of the Mount took full advantage of the Class she had been summoned into. Her A-Ranked Riding skill manifested itself regardless of her choices in vehicles and her supernatural boost allowed her to bring out of a modern bike a level of performance that human riders could only dream about.
Her current Master, Emiya Shirou, allowed her to borrow his bike on the condition that she didn't go all out in within the perimeter of the city.
Rider had no objections. The twisting mountain roads at night, free of traffic, proved to be a far more entertaining circuit than the straight city streets.
Rider didn't think she would have had the opportunity to enjoy herself to her heart content in this conflict, so this was another point in favor of having been forced to switch allegiances.
Her wish to help Sakura was still at the forefront of her mind, but the situation wasn't something that could be solved with brute force. Helping Sakura meant removing Zouken from the picture, but from what Rider had seen of the old Magus, he was nigh unkillable. His whole body was made from his worms familiars, but by the very nature of such a thing, his body might as well be a decoy and his soul reside somewhere else entirely.
Rider couldn't make a move without against being sure of killing him in one swoop, otherwise Sakura could end up paying the price.
She considered asking for Caster's help, but according to what she gleaned from their conversations, they couldn't track Zouken when they thought he was her Master.
Moreover, she couldn't just ask for Emiya Shirou's help. If Zouken noticed their movements, and felt cornered he would just burrow his worm head in the sand and wouldn't come out until the storm was over, once she could no longer protect Sakura.
Servants were temporary existences, and Sakura needed permanent solutions.
Such a conundrum made Rider's frustration, rise and she let it out by riding all night long. The sheer freedom of the rush was the best method to soothe herself at her disposal. There were also other methods, but she refused to even entertain that notion.
She rode through all the night and morning before she decided to call it a day, taking the black motorbike back towards the city.
Slowing down to merge with the regular traffic, her shapely form clad in skintight leather drew more than a few gazes.
Even though her visage wasn't visible under the full helmet she had been made to wear, nobody thought even for a second that anything other than a face to match her body could be concealed underneath it.
Rider paid the staring no mind whatsoever. In fact, she didn't even notice it, though she wondered why some people's driving skills seemed to drop considerably whenever she approached.
She had other things to worry about, such as how to check up on Sakura without alerting Zouken to her presence. Where, and when could she approach her summoner without making it obvious?
There was but a single answer to that question.
Shirou was just about done with classes. Most students were starting to leave and Shirou would soon join them. Ayako had made a full recovery and had been discharged from the hospital and returned to school and to the archery club. She had no recollection of what happened to her, which was fortunate as no one was looking forward to manipulating her memories.
That meant that Shirou had no reason to worry about the club any further and besides a few duties with the Student Council of which he was still a member, he was mostly free to return home right after classes. Fortunately Issei kept most things running smoothly and unless something needed to be fixed, Shirou had little to do.
It finally looked like things at school had returned to normal with the exception of the still missing Shinji. However, according to some schoolmates he had been seen wandering around the city.
Shirou was willing to give him a few more days to sort himself out, then he would approach him and ask him what his intentions were. If he wanted to get away from Fuyuki, either temporarily or permanently Shirou would set him up, no string attached.
He informed Sakura of this development and she was relieved to hear it, though obviously sad that Shinji didn't return home.
Honestly, that guy. Making his own sister worry like that.
All in all, the situation seemed to have balanced itself out and Shirou was looking forward to some quiet if busy days.
He really should have learned by that point that it wouldn't be nowhere near that simple.
Right after classes, the school was at its noisiest, with students clamoring without reservations, relieved of being held in their seats in silence for the better part of the day.
As such, Shirou noticed immediately when the clamor fell to hushed whispers. He looked up from what he was doing with a quirked eyebrow.
Issei did the same thing and the two exchanged a worried glance. When a bunch of teenagers fell into near silence, something big had to have happened.
Usually that meant trouble.
Before Shirou could act, there was a knock on the door of the Student Council's room.
"Uh... Emiya-san?" a first years student called out. "There... there is someone here to see you."
A feeling of dread clutched his heart. His instincts told him to throw himself out of the window, disregarding that it was closed and that they were on the second floor.
He told himself that he was overreacting. Surely no enemy would brazenly attack in broad daylight and in a crowded place like this.
Shirou steeled himself and stood up from his chair. He swallowed his nervousness and proceeded out of the room, only to find himself blocked by a gaggle of students.
Even though there was a veritable wall of people standing in front of him he was taller than all of them by a good head and at the same time, the objected of their attention towered above them all.
Rider stood in the middle of the corridor, wearing the glasses Medea had made to contain the curse of Cybele in lieu of her blindfold, as well as her biker suit, unzipped to show a decent amount of cleavage.
"Ah, there you are," she hesitated, "...goshujin-sama."
'THAT IS NOT HOW YOU SHOULD TRANSLATE THE WORD MASTER, DAMN IIIIIIIIT!'
Inside his head Shirou screamed his soul out, although on outside he looked perfectly calm and collected.
Several dozens eyes turned to look at him with a whole spectrum of emotions reflected in them, envy and scorn chief among them. The former was present in greater measure then the latter and it just went to show how foolish people could be.
There was nothing to envy him about. Not a thing!
He really should have jumped out of the window when he still had the chance.
He knew that Rider was avoiding to call him with the English term to prevent his identity to be accidentally leaked to other Masters and Servants, but quite frankly Shirou would have preferred it.
Enemies after his life he could fight, the judgement of his peers wasn't nearly that easy to deal with. Still, running away now would only compound his guilt. It didn't matter that he had done nothing wrong.
Therefore he pushed through the crowd, completely disregarding his peers.
"What are you doing here?" he asked as soon as he stood in front of her. His tone was completely neutral as a result of trying not to show embarrassment, but to those who only ever heard him use soft-spoken tones and gentle words he sounded almost domineering.
Without even realizing it, he had confirmed the sort of relationship that Rider had accidentally implied they had.
"Forgive me, should I not have come?" she asked. Rider's own emotionlessness came through as demure and subservient.
"You are here now, so there is nothing that can be done about it." he replied shortly. "Next time don't just turn up without asking first."
He meant ask if there would be problems, but of course the crowd interpreted it as asking for permission.
Such a display was not something they would usually get to witness outside of some specific type of fiction, especially not from a guy who was regarded as 90% doormat.
Being stunned into silence was the least that could happen. Shirou noticed that even the whisper had died completely and turned to regard them.
"Don't you all have somewhere else to be?" he asked with a stony look on his face. That had most of the students jump out of their own skin.
They had been staring and whispering, which was a rude thing to do regardless of the circumstances and being called out like that cowed them into retreating as fast as humanly possible without making it look they were running away.
Although it was completely accidental, Shirou managed to to flip his reputation on its feet, from that of an amiable but harmless chap to that of womanizing bad boy.
"So that's the rumored foreigner I heard about." one student said to another as they left the area.
"No that's another one. I saw her, and they look nothing alike."
"Holy shit! Two of them?"
"There's also the transfer student in his class, Yumizuka," a third student piped in. "I heard they live together."
"Didn't they say he and Tohsaka were dating a few months back?"
"What the hell? How does he do it?"
"Hell if I know, but I'd sure like him to teach me."
The girls were not much different in that regard.
"Despicable," one of them muttered, but if Shirou had bothered to look at her he would have noticed she was quite flustered and stealing glances at him. If fact, few girls weren't expressing similar behavior.
Two of them to be precise. Saber and Tohsaka.
The former looked puzzled, not having understood the flow of the conversation. The latter looked annoyed for a lack of better words.
To be completely honest, she looked like she didn't care one iota about the entire exchange, which either meant that she did not care or that she was pissed about it.
"Well, Emiya-kun, it seems like you're having a lot of fun." she said as she passed him by, but without deigning him of a single glance in his direction.
Definitely pissed, then.
Saber merely nodded in greeting and followed after Tohsaka. She did not say anything, but it looked like she would be asking her Master for explanations once they were out of earshot.
Ultimately only three people were left in the otherwise empty hallway. Shirou himself, Rider and a gaping Issei.
Shirou turned to look at his long time friend with a resigned look on his face.
"I don't have an explanation that you'd be inclined to believe Issei," he told him, "but this is not what it looks like."
Issei picked up his jaw and fixed his glasses on his nose.
"Emiya, I know you are a upstanding individual but this isn't the first episode of this kind. You should consider an exorcism at the temple."
"You know what?" he sighed. "I might just take you up on that offer someday."
"Did I do something wrong?" Rider asked, tilting her head in curiosity.
"No, it's nothing," he told her.
Why, oh why did such dark beauty have to be so unaware of her own self?
That was an existential question to which Emiya Shirou would never find an answer.
Eventually, he convinced Issei to borrow him the Council room so that he could have a private talk with Rider.
Issei agreed, if only because Shirou had an entire mansion to himself if he wanted to be up to no good with a woman, something that was rumored he was already doing, by the way.
"So, what brought you here?" he asked once the door was closed behind them.
"Surveillance," Rider replied. "You spend a lot of time in this place. Knowing the lay of the land is paramount if we are to fight here someday."
"That makes sense, but why did you chose to do it in broad daylight and in physical form?"
"I was already in the area and I would have had to find a concealed place to dematerialize without being seen and then double back here."
That was a flimsy excuse, Shirou thought, but he then considered that Rider probably didn't see anything wrong with casually walking into his school looking like every man's wet dream and call him her master in front of everyone, and thus she found no reason to bother with the detour.
"It seems that I have wronged you somehow, Master," Rider observed.
"Like I said, it's nothing." just his reputation, but there was nothing that could be done to salvage it now short of brainwashing the entire school population.
Rider did not push her line of questioning. She might be socially unaware of her actions but she did not miss the discomfort on Shirou's face.
"Didn't Shinji show you around the school already?" he asked.
"He never took me here previous to our fight, least my presence gave him away as a Master to you or Saber's Master."
"Hmm," Shirou agreed. That made some sense, but Rider had already been on the school grounds when she attacked Ayako. Didn't she think of scouting the area back then?
Apparently not, and Shirou believed in people too much to think that Rider would lie to him over something so trivial.
He chalked it up to an embarrassing accident and nothing more. Even if he did suspect her of lying, he would think that this was some sort of revenge on her part.
Definitely, he wouldn't have thought there were ulterior motives.
"Well then. Look around as much as you want, but please do so in spirit form."
"...I will have to discard my clothing to do so," she explained. She could change from her ordinary clothes to her combat attire but if she tried to astralize her clothes would be left behind. The only exception were her glasses, but they were a Mystic Code made by the Witch of Betrayal herself for that express purpose. They would appear on her face as soon as Gorgon Breaker was removed and she couldn't remove them from her face unless she was authorized to either by Caster or their mutual Master.
The end result of this setup would leave Shirou carrying her biker suit around on his person and it would not fit inside of his school bag. When not worn it was rather bulky. Being seen walking around with Rider's clothes after the exchange they just had would completely destroy the already small fragments left of his reputation.
"Ghk! Fine! I'll show you around myself," he surrendered. "Come along."
He showed her around the building, occasionally coming across some students. News of the beautiful foreign model had already spread like wildfire and no one was surprised to see her, though everyone would stare as they passed by, whether they had already seen Rider already or not.
A few tried to sneak a photo of Rider in her biker suit, but when they tried to do so they found Shirou glaring at them with enough intensity to make them fear for their lives.
To the dismay of the male half of the student body, not a single clear picture of Rider was taken on that day and the already heavily implied relationship between her and the former captain of the archery club was further confirmed by his possessiveness of her image.
Not a single male soul blamed him for it, for they would have done the same in his place.
They still resented him enough to curse his name in a few private voodoo rituals though.
Some thirty grueling and humiliating minutes later, Shirou was done showing Rider around the school.
"You are awfully exposed in this building, Master," Rider commented. "Although you can protect yourself you are still in danger."
"I'm here only during school hours," he objected. "And no one would attack me here in broad daylight."
"My former Master did," she observed.
"... point, but that was a special situation."
"Your assumption is flawed. There would not be any need for an enemy to expose themselves. Assassin could slit your throat in the bathroom without anyone noticing and an Archer could easily claim your head from the other side of the city. Potential witnesses would simply die alongside you. The only way to deter such bold courses of action is making them moot by placing a Servant in close proximity to you. Saber cannot protect you and her Master at the same time."
"What are you suggesting then?"
"I shall escort you to school every day from now on. In spirit form to prevent further misunderstandings."
"Well, I can't say there isn't merit to what you are saying, and if you are willing to do it then I will accept your help. I would like you to remember though that my life is expendable whereas we must avoid losing Servants as much as we can."
"But if you were to die-"
"Then Caster would be able to act as your Master, probably even better than I can," he interrupted. "I will accept your protection, only if you agree to save yourself first. I will not compromise on this. I am willing to use a Command Seal for it."
Rider shifted her weight as if pondering his words.
"If that is your will, I shall abide by it."
"Thank you. Both for agreeing with me and for having decided to help us."
"It is nothing. I am your Servant, after all."
"We should probably return home now, before Caster starts wondering where we both are."
"As you wish, Master."
They left the school building and in doing so they were confronted with a problem.
Rider had just decided to protect him while at school, which meant both coming and going from it. However Shirou's bike was already there. Shirou would have liked Rider to go ahead on the bike while he walked home, but that would go against their earlier agreement.
Changing into spirit form still had Shirou carry her clothes somehow and the bike was not equipped with a container of any sort. He never got around to adding one.
The only reasonable options was for both of them to ride the bike together and Shirou firmly refused to put his hands anywhere on Rider's body, therefore he would be the one driving.
That however, created two additional problems that Shirou had to deal with.
The first, was that the few students still on premises saw him leave with Rider holding herself closely against his back.
The second problem which made him completely forget about the first, was the persistent contact of those two heavenly lumps of flesh pressing against his back all the way home.
If he hadn't been speeding his bright red face might have been mistaken for a street light by the other drivers.
All in all it had been an unforgettable day for Emiya Shirou for better and for worse.
While they rode towards their home base, Rider considered how the day had gone.
She approached Emiya Shirou at school and while she was not entirely sure what had happened with his fellow students she still managed to get what she wanted: his permission to be on campus with him.
Protecting him was a secondary concern. While admittedly she found herself not disliking him in spite of how they met, she couldn't care less about him.
That was not entirely true. If he were to die in the course of the War, she might feel a bit sorry. Additionally he and Sakura seemed to be friends and she would also be sad if he passed away.
In that regard, protecting him was not too different from protecting Shinji and with the latter's status as Master removed he was as safer than Emiya Shirou.
What mattered was that she could be at the school with Sakura and therefore she could keep an eye on her in that timeframe.
It was killing two birds with one stone and in due time she would work out how to protect Sakura elsewhere as well.
It wasn't much but it was a start.
They arrived home and Shirou jumped off the bike like it was burning hot, muttering something about taking a shower. A very cold shower.
Rider looked at him quizzically, but thought nothing much of it. He was a weird fellow most of the time anyway. She gave the equivalent of a mental shrug and went to change.
Caster had provided her with an entire wardrobe of clothes, but Rider preferred a loose sweater and form fitting trousers when she wasn't riding Emiya Shirou's (her) bike.
She didn't think much of the day, until dinner time when Fujimura Taiga returned joined them.
He knew that this moment would come. He had known since Rider showed up at school but he tried not to think about it.
"Shirooooou!" Taiga growled menacingly as a dark aura clung around her. "Why is that I've heard about you being in a S&M relationship with a foreign model? I might as well forget about having a raise for the next decade, damn it."
"Hmm? This is the first I heard about it," Caster commented, glancing between him and Rider.
For his part Shirou was holding his face in his hands trying his hardest not to weep. What did he do to deserve this?
"I... believe that it could be my fault." Rider admitted.
"Oh? Do tell."
Thus, she explained how and why she approached him at school. A bit of prodding revealed exactly which words had been exchanged and the result was that Caster laughed to the point of crying, slamming her hand on the dinner table repeatedly.
Satsuki being more reserved was doing a fairly good job at hiding her amusement, while Taiga was still upset even though she understood it was a genuine misunderstanding.
"Mwahahaha!" Caster roared in an undignified manner. "Oh, dear. I wish I could have seen it."
"Yeah, laugh it up, you," Shirou groaned.
"I confess I do not understand." Rider admitted.
"Oh, ahahaha, it's fairly simple," Caster explained. "With your choice of words you have strongly implied that you are in a sexual relationship with Shirou, in which he is extremely dominant and you are willingly submissive. The use of restraining devices is considered common in these type of relationships."
"I... I did not know that." Rider said showing the closest thing to embarrassment since they first met her. She did not quite blush but she was clearly replaying the exchange in her head as well as the reaction of the people present at the time.
Although Rider did not care what happened to her, she wasn't trying to advertise herself or her Master as sexually active. Especially not with each other.
"Yes, I'm afraid that you have completely obliterated Shirou's reputation as a decent human being with his peers, and undermined Taiga's career as an educator for the foreseeable future in one fell swoop. I must congratulate you for your sheer efficiency."
"That was not my intention." she stated firmly.
"What is done is done," Shirou remarked. "No point in getting worked up over it."
"Easy for you to say," Taiga complained. "You don't have to work there. Two more years and you'll be out of there but I'm going to stay there for who knows how many years. Besides, do you really think your reputation suffered at all?"
"Well of course it did," Shirou replied with a frown. "Everyone thinks I'm some sleazebag now."
"Look Shirou. No guy is ever going to have his reputation tarnished by people thinking he's doing it with the equivalent of a foreign supermodel. Your street cred is off the roof. Even gramps heard of it."
"I don't have any street cred and you've got it all wrong. Even Tohsaka was angry with me, and she knew that things aren't like that."
"Hm. I wonder what investment Rin could have in you that she would be upset over the implication of you and Rider being intimate," Caster said amusedly. "Such a mystery."
Shirou looked at her without understanding, then he recalled the conversation they had about all the girls that liked him.
Tohsaka was being jealous? Of him? It made a twisted sort of sense but Shirou couldn't really wrap his mind around that concept. There had to be another explanation.
... except there wasn't.
He took his face in his hands and sighed deeply.
"I didn't ask for this." he lamented in a horse voice.
"There, there." Caster comforted him, patting his shoulder though she was clearly not feeling sorry for him at all.
"For what is worth, I apologize," Rider said inclining her head. "I swear it was not my intention."
"Ahhh. It's alright. We've got more important things to worry about than the gossiping of my schoolmates. By this time next week they will have forgotten about it and everything will be back to normal."
"If you say so." she conceded.
"Easy for you to say, Shirou. My career is still shot anyway."
"Don't worry Taiga. Once the War is over I'll make sure to slowly cause people to forget about incidents like this," Caster promised.
"Oooh? You can do that?"
"Of course!" Caster exclaimed proudly, turning her nose up in pride.
"Hold up!" Shirou interrupted. "I'm against altering people's memories unless it's absolutely necessary."
"I won't be altering them. I'll just make them not think too hard about them, that's all."
"Uhh, I'm not sure that's much better."
"No, that is definitely for the best." Taiga agreed. "Wait, if you can do that why don't you do it right now?"
"Well, I'm not entirely sure this is the last of such events that we are going to be seeing taking place around Shirou. I would hate to do the same job twice or more."
"Please, don't say that even as a joke," Shirou moaned.
"... Shirou does have a knack to get himself in such situations," Satsuki interjected. "Just like when you walked on me naked, remember?"
A heavy silence fell upon the room and all eyes turned to Shirou.
For his part, Shirou just leveled a look at Satsuki that said everything about what he thought of her contribution to the conversation.
"Ah, oops," the vampire added, slapping both hands over her mouth. "I shouldn't have said that."
"No, you really shouldn't have." Shirou agreed wholeheartedly.
"Shirooooou!" Taiga roared, slapping the table with the palm of her hand several times. "You are a womanizer after all!"
Shirou abandoned all hopes and just dropped his head on the table with a thud. He did nothing to deserve this. Nothing at all.
Alas, life was far from fair and bad things happened to good people all the Emiya Shirou's definition of bad things happening to him would have most good people want to strangle him on principle.
It was hard to blame them, really.
Emiya Shirou's luck was heaven defying, for better and for worse.
XXX
AN: Poor Shirou. This guy just can't get a break, although I suppose just about anyone would want to be in his shoes at times like these. Alas, that is not our fate.
In any event, one more chapter and we'll be all caught up with what's currently written of this story. The voters on Pa treon have been pushing for On Wings of Steel, which will be the next one receiving updates here on FF for the next... four months. Get ready for some Broken!Shirou action.
On a different note... I'm getting married tomorrow, so I'll be out of touch for a while. Have fun in my absence and don't forget about me.