Byakuya Matou had died.

It wasn't much of a surprise to Shirou, he had felt the man's lifeforce grow to an ember of what it used to be. Not that it was really all that much to begin with…

Still, a man of the Matou had died. And that meant a funeral-

Shirou scoffed, as if anyone in the Matou clan ever got a funeral.

They had just dumped the body into the worm pit for the worms to eat. Shinji had been on his case about environmental health anyways, or something to that extent.

Shirou had learned how to tune his cousin out a long time ago. So long ago he forgot when it started. Though it might've started the summer before he became Student Council Vice-President.

Though, Shinji had gone stark when he heard Shirou commenting on how he helped the environment. So that was funny.

What wasn't funny were all the pitying stares he received at school. It almost made him want to kill the entirety of the student population.

Well, more than usual anyway.

Though, at least one person hadn't changed.

"Hey Makiri! Heard your uncle died!" Tohsaka shouted at him with no particular effort to conceal her smirk. Though that was mostly on the count of them being alone on the street, she wouldn't break down her walls like that if not.

Unlike Shirou, Rin had a tendency to actually try and be a model student the old fashioned way. Perhaps she thought it was unfair to use Magecraft or any of their inherent advantages against normal humans, or perhaps she just wanted to waste her time.

Shirou didn't know, and didn't particularly care either.

"Ah yes, Tohsaka, I heard all of your family died. How sad," The Bug magus said in a deadpan tone.

She huffed, narrowing her blue eyes. "At least my family wasn't a leech sucking on the leftovers of his father," She threw back, crossing her arms. "And I do have family left, thank you very much."

Shirou scoffed, he could let her win and have her small victory, or, on the other hand, he could not.

A difficult choice of which Shirou would ponder for a time-

"Oh? I wasn't aware a priest could be considered family." The autumn haired boy snarked back, a grin crossing his features as his rivals' face turned red. Whether from anger or embarrassment Shirou didn't know.

Oh wait, he did.

"Then again, Shinji did tell me that priests loved kids. No wait, those were boys," Shirou put a hand on his chin, making a faux thinking pose before smirking. "Well, you were never very girly to begin with, were you?"

Tohsaka grit her teeth in anger, steam coming from her form as Od seemed to overflow from her body. Prana wafting from her frame in waves, Shirou could even see the faint markings of her family crest.

Before it all went down with a deep breath. Taking a side-long glance at the street, she seemed to be satisfied.

And of course she would be, did she truly think he wouldn't set up a bounded field as soon as they started trading barbs?

"Tell me Makiri," She spat his name out with venom, her cold blue eyes piercing into him with fire. "How am I not 'girly'?" The Tohsaka heiress said with a thin smile, annoyance clear on her face.

The Makiri shrugged, though he had a dark smile all the same. "Oh, I don't know, maybe when you broke Issei's leg in the race all that time ago? Or how about when you cursed Shinji with sickness?"

Tohsaka huffed, "Those were a long time ago! I've changed! And I know you or anyone else in your family could release that curse,"

"Maybe, or maybe not." They could, the curse was rudimentary at best. Anyone who had even an inkling of knowledge would be able to unravel it.

That is, of course, other than Sakura. His grandfather had forbidden her from dealing in curses, why that was, Shirou didn't know and couldn't be bothered to figure out.

"Also," He felt the need to mention with lidded eyes. "You cursed Shinji a week ago." The little shit had the gall to barf on his school uniform while blacking in and out. Sakura fretting over the sick boy with wild panic.

The auburn haired boy threw them both in the pit for that transgression. He threw Shinji because he was the reason for his dirty shirt, and Sakura for good measure.

Sure, he could've cleaned them with magecraft easily enough, but Shirou was petty like that.

"Who cares about that, no one cares about Shinji!" She claimed with a frown, not that Shirou could really argue. "I know you sure as hell don't!"

Shirou hummed at that. "Sakura does," He said and Rin immediately recoiled as if having been physically struck.

It was a low blow, but Shirou had never been one for chivalry. And he enjoyed the brief panic set on her face, however short it was before it melted into a cold mask.

Shirou could almost feel the heat from her circuits as she looked upon him like one would a bug. "Tell me, Makiri, do you really think it's a good idea to push my buttons so much in one day?" She asked, a dangerous glint to her eyes.

The Makiri Heir hummed, "Maybe, maybe not," He said noncommittally. "Then again, you were the one who started this conversation."

"And don't I regret it," She muttered before turning away, walking off towards the direction of her home.

Shirou smirked, he had won this battle.

Shirou hummed as he dripped his personal curses onto a small batch of his Centipede-blade eggs. They were created through his own blood in conjunction with their mutated parents, and held curses throughout their very being.

Neither alive nor dead, a state of nothingness only capable through the way they were created by his own flesh.

His curses seemed a bit stronger than regular ones, well, if the regular ones were like that Gandr Tohsaka liked to throw around.

Anyways, due to that any regular familiar not created from his own blood and flesh would always die far too fast for any mutations to set in. As such, even a small batch like this was precious to him.

The magic circle beneath the eggs glowed with a sinister edge, his own faint muttering compounding their power.

A single misstep would have the pile die before they were even born. Perhaps in the future he could create a strain of his Centipede-blades without the need for this ritual like his own Grandfathers crestworms, but for now, his sole success had been sacrificed for the greater good.

Shirou scowled at that thought, but did not let that stop his chant. That irritatingly familiar priest had gotten on his bad side, not because of the injuries, no, while they may have stung they had already healed before the next day.

He was mostly grieving the death of so many familiars. Close to a hundred had died in his escape and his Tome of False Skin had nearly lost all of its pages.

That meant not only would he need more skin and familiars to use the Absorption aspect of the Matou magecraft, but he would also need to combine them all over again.

Shirou would definitely curse that priest if he ever saw him again…

But for now, he shook the thought out of his head. Familiars were to be born, new experiments held, and most importantly, for now he needed to mutate this batch of eggs. Afterall, the last one had been killed before she could lay any.

A single misstep, and he would need to redo hours of work-

A large slam from behind made Shirou flinch, which in turn caused the ritual to misfire and all the eggs to burst into a foul smelling liquid.

For a moment, Shirou simply stood there, blank eyed and the next set of incantations already on the tip of his tongue.

"Yo, Shirou! Could you-" Before Shinji could say another word, Shirou's reinforced fist hit him square in the jaw. Shinji barely had enough time to realize what was happening before his 'cousin' had bounded over a dozen meters in a few seconds.

The seaweed haired boy flew through the air, spinning as he crashed onto the other side of the hallway, cracking the wall.

Shirou had definitely cracked more than a couple of bones, smashed in his nose and probably given the boy some amount of brain damage and a concussion.

Sakura would have him healed by tomorrow.

With a scoff, a fully formed Crest worm emerged from his neck, falling onto the carpeted ground with little to now damage.

"Go get Sakura," The Magus commanded as the doors behind him closed of their own volition.

Why was that idiot part of their family? His grandfather could have gotten a new grandson, couldn't he? The drunkard had been alive for the seven years Shirou had lived there, could he not have made a new Shinji?

Preferably a less annoying 'Cousin' with decent circuits to experiment on.

'Oh right,' Shirou thought, the fast steps of Sakura resounding through 'his' ears. 'That's why.' Shirou withheld a scoff as he looked through the familiar as Sakura started using magecraft to heal Shinji.

Opening his eyes, he felt the crest worm crawl towards the place most familiar to it, normally it would be Shirou himself, but considering he was away and the pit was closer, it took the plunge to see its cousins.

He sighed, If only his family were just Sakura and his grandfather, but unfortunately, that was not the case.

Shirou sighed, gathering another batch of eggs, today was going to be a long day, and he didn't even have a chance to abduct anyone else yet.

Rin sighed, healing herself of yet another series of injuries born from her spar with Kirei. It was a tiring process, but it was one that the fake priest insisted on.

And Rin really couldn't object, Kirei was teaching her the traditional martial arts of the Tohsaka after all. She could still vaguely recall having some lessons with her father, but only to such an extent that she only knew how to recognize it.

How that fake Priest knew, however, was beyond even her.

The Magus grit her teeth at that, for all the man's faults he was at least a decent enough teacher. Even if he did have secrets miles wide…

She shook her head of those thoughts, before fuming as she recalled the series of jabs Makiri had dealt her.

Her? Unwomanly? That bastard! Rin would shoot him full of holes had he not been the only source of good conversation in this town. Infuriating or not, at least they had similar circumstances and were actual Magus'.

Unlike Shinji or Kirei, who were either failures to their families or actually Executioners in disguise, at the very least She and Shirou could talk work without any interruptions.

And she certainly couldn't talk to Sakura outside of those few times they met by coincidence…

Then again Shirou had always been a part of those 'Coincidences' and she didn't doubt that he would manufacture those meetings for his own entertainment.

Just like that damnable fake Priest…

Rin hummed as she went about the process of storing prana in her gems. Shirou and Kirei were remarkably similar when she thought about it.

Sure, one was a crusty old man and the other was a prematurely whitening teen, but they both had a sort of malefic glee that couldn't be faked. It was actually kind of eerie how similar they were.

'But enough of that,' Rin shrugged her shoulders and flexed her circuits for whatever prana they had left in them, dropping it into her magic circle which in turn sent it directly to her gem.

Today was a weekday and tomorrow she had a long day of school, almost too much in fact. Actually, maybe she should just not go to school for a change.

"Nah," Rin said out loud, shaking her head with a snort. She had spent way too much time on her perfect girl mask for that, just like Makiri did for his 'Indifferent Executive' face.

Actually, was that even a mask at all? Theories for later, right now she had a duty as a Magus of the Tohsaka.

In a room closed off from the outside world, a shaky breath can be heard as a portly blond man smiles viciously while staring at his hand with a sort of excitement unusual to even the worst of man.

Though, this was to be expected.

After all, what lay on his hands was something that might grant him what he had wished for nearly all his life.

Yes, Gordes Musik had gained command seals. Three stigmata, red as blood in the form of a leaf shone brightly on his hand.

WIth this, the revival of the Musik family was assured!

Yo, sorry for the wait. Midterms are shit as always, so yeah. Sorry for the wait. Hopefully the next one isn't so bad.

But yeah, Gordes may or may not die.

Still summons Siegfried though.