Chapter 8: Experience
I do not own Fate/Stay Night and stuffs:
o. o. o.
Shirou collapsed onto his bed in the Emiya estate, glad to be home after his exhausting month spent in England. He was slowly getting used to the country and the language seeing as it was his second extended amount of time being there in less than a year, but personally there was nothing better than being in the home that he grew up under Kiritsugu's care.
He had a new teacher now… well, less of a teacher and more of a fairly more mature version of Fuji-nee that happened to use rune magic and used her fists instead of a shinai, enabling her to run far faster and hit a lot harder than he would ever expect any girl to be able to do. He had experienced firsthand how truly outclassed he was when in their first fight the girl literally shattered his projections with her bare hands as if they were nothing. He then was afraid of her for another reason after she absolutely destroyed him in said spar. Shirou had attempted to utilize absolutely everything minus Avalon to at least push the girl back but the best he could do was slow her down a bit. Projected swords, spiral arrows, reinforcement, nothing could get that girl to stop as she plowed through everything he had like some unstoppable berserker, actually punching his normal swords and breaking them, and began to pummel him into the ground once she finally reached him.
He had a feeling that the first few times she did so she was getting back at him for taking her away from her job and venting stress. He swore that some of his ribs were still bruised from that one punch…
Bazett Fraga McRemitz was her name, and since Shirou vaguely remembered the name Fraga in his history and noble lessons, he was fairly certain she had access to magic that would murder him more times than he would bother to count or learn the names of. She was of fairly average height for a girl her age with short purple hair and was… for lack of a better term more developed than most females he has seen or talked to. Oddly enough despite the fact that she was his sparring teacher, she preferred to dress in a business suit of all things during their fights. Of course it did nothing to hamper her ability to destroy him in said spars, but Shirou assumed that in addition to the seals inscribed on them to enhance her speed and strength to ensure that they didn't tear easily and were properly vented to make them more comfortable. Despite her occasional impatient outbursts, she had an air of maturity whenever the boy talked to her, but Shirou always felt as if there was something off about that. It was almost if she was trying to be someone that deep down she really wasn't.
Initially the girl clearly didn't like the thought of sparring the boy or teaching him anything since she was already an ENFORCER of all things and had better things to do than waste her time training some no named kid. That alone made Shirou terrified of the bright purple haired 18 year old teen, after all, even if he didn't know of his future capability of manifesting a reality marble, his status as an incarnation would eventually put him on her hit list if he was ever discovered…
Shirou was fairly certain that between Rin Tohsaka, Taiga Fujimura, and now Bazett Fraga McRemitz, his perspective of women would be forever twisted in a sadistic and unhealthy way. If it weren't for Sakura Matou and her gentle and timid personality to balance them out, the poor boy was fairly certain that he would never feel truly comfortable or safe around the female gender for the rest of his life.
The first few weeks of sparring against Bazett and living with her in a spare workshop of Sirius' in the northern part of England had been roughly a routine. They got up, did their warm-ups, ate the breakfast which Shirou made all in silence, did some more warm-ups, then went at one another for as long as they could or until Shirou was pretty much unconscious. Bazett would then take him back to the cottage and she would leave to contact the clock tower to check up on what's been going on and all that. Then she'd return, they'd have a brief but filling dinner so long as Shirou could move his arms, a brief and microwaveable one if not, before Bazett would begin to help him out with basic fighting techniques and counter tactics to mesh with his bizarre and in her opinion downright suicidal style that he was trying to create. After they got back to the house Shirou either practiced his magic, studied, or most frequently simply passed out of exhaustion.
It should be noted that after a few days of having the microwaveable dinners and Shirou's cooking for dinner, Bazett's frequency of aiming at Shirou's arms and crippling attacks in the afternoon training drastically decreased… though when asked about this fact the girl would play ignorant and avoid the topic.
Every few days or so Sirius or Waver would come to visit and train Shirou on his magic studies, mainly on the ones that wouldn't be used in immediate combat... and heal the wounds that Bazett and Shirou couldn't manage in the mean time. Theory, bounded fields, history of other nobles and families. The three covered everything together. It was on these days that Bazett left the cottage to get parcels from her job and make some excuse for being gone for so long. Whatever Sirius had done for the girl, it must have been pretty big considering how much she grumbled about how annoying her bosses were whenever she came back.
For the most part the teen didn't speak much to Shirou for those initial weeks, preferring to maintain an air of indifference, irritation, and maturity about her. She instructed him, she sparred with him, she occasionally ran him through battle scenarios to see how he thought and fought, but other than that she didn't bother small talking with what she considered "just some kid with a few interesting spells".
That however changed after those few weeks when she walked into the cabin when the boy and Sirius were studying and demanded Sirius in English seeing as she didn't know that Shirou had just finished learning how to perform the standard translation spell. Its technical term was "manifesting the comprehension and production of alternate human based verbal communication", but it was otherwise commonly known as "the spell of ears and tongues". Apparently Bazett wasn't told beforehand who Shirou was related to, and Shirou wasn't fully aware of how infamous his father truly was in the magus world.
It was only after Bazett had heard rumors that Kiritsugu had died and learned of the man's full name in passing conversation with one of her enforcer friends that she realized that she was teaching one of the most infamous magus assassins in the world's son how to fight… something she wasn't too keen on being forced to do blindly, let alone just finding out after already doing so. Part of her displeasure came from being involved with such a high profile individual without even knowing it… and the other part came from the fact that if word got out that she had actually taught the boy how to fight, she would get into a fair amount of trouble with not only some of the other enforcers who have a grudge against Kiritsugu, but a fair number of noble families as well not limited to the Archibalds and the Einzberns.
She went on to rant about how Kiritsugu was an infamous killer who held several records for his exploits including most high ranked and lethality missions completed and most high class magus targets killed within the timeframe that he was active. In short she pretty much argued that the man was a murdering battle crazy, suicidal, and terrifying psycho that knew pretty much every way to kill a person, magus and not.
Shirou pretty much had enough at that point. While it was true that Kiritsugu had done all that Bazett had claimed… actually the girl had pretty much demonstrated that she knew of only about a 4th of what Shirou knew his father had done in terms of crimes against humanity which was understandable since Kiritsugu stated that most of his killing methods were covert on a level that neither the Magus Association nor the Church would assume that he was involved since his actions utilized bombs, appeared as convenient accidents, and used non magi related means. The ones that they did suspect he had some hand in the events they could not actually prove anything. Still there was more than enough said to get on Shirou's nerves, and when the red headed boy did lose his patience on listening to his father's name repeatedly get dragged through the mud, without saying a word he stomped out of the room, slamming the door behind him, and left Sirius to fill in the enforcer on how badly she had just screwed things up.
The faker didn't know how long he had been using magic in the brisk British hills, firing off sword after sword in such quick succession that it wasn't long till his magic circuits became rather hot and the tree he was shooting his blades at was now resembling nothing but splinters and firewood.
All he knew was that after a certain point Bazett had appeared a short ways behind him. She didn't say anything as he turned around and glared at her. Instead she just stared at him as if she was looking for something for what seemed like hours… before taking a sparring stance against him.
The following fight was one that Shirou could honestly say was one of the hardest ones he's ever had one that he had pushed himself the farthest in. Despite his mentally and physically exhausted state, the boy lasted longer against the 18 year old than he had ever done so before. He still didn't stand a chance in hell against the Fraga, but he did last longer as his body progressively learned how to fight and his mind adapted to what real fighting was like. Granted looking back on things now he doubted that any future opponents he would come across would not fight bare handed other than demons, magical creatures, or other extremely talented magically enhanced martial artists, but still fighting someone of remotely average size with actual skill in combat was something that couldn't be taught, it could only be experienced.
His body was heavy like lead, his muscles were on fire and screamed for rest, and he was covered in injuries that he was fairly certain would take him more than a single day to recover from… but in his mind all he saw was Bazett and all he thought was "beat her"…
Shirou didn't exactly know how long it went for or if he actually managed to hit Bazett, but he did know that at some point he did pass out either from exhaustion or from the multiple wounds he had sustained during the time. The next thing he knew he was barely conscious in the cabin and feeling aches in pretty much every part of his body. What he remembered most though was the conversation from the next room…
"What made ya change yer mind lass? Ya aren't ta type ta go back on yer decisions like tat…"
"He has potential. I couldn't just leave a poor kid like that alone in your hands for training, regardless of who his old man was. Lord knows your track record with apprentices is just as bad as Kaleidoscope's…"
"Ah don't say tat lass. Ah may get a bit carried away wit me methods, but ahm not nearly as bad as Zel… ah trained you afta all…"
"In rune based combat magic and conducting Fragarach's ritual old man, not in actual hand to hand combat."
"… So what did ya see when ya looked at ta lad?"
"…"
"Come on lass, ahm old, not stupid."
"… I saw a kid ok? I saw a kid who was hurt because he cared about his father… not the son of a guy who was notorious for killing magi or a possible future unstable serial killer…"
"Ah told ya lass… Kiritsugu's story wasn't what ya tought it ta be. Ta only person who ah tink really knows who ta man truly was deep down is ta lad."
"Must be one hell of a story…"
"One tat's not mine ta tell lass. If ya want ta know about ta true Kiritsugu Emiya… ya gotta ask ta lad. I can add a few tales here an tere… but ta lad knows ta most about his sire… even if he was only adopted…"
"… I'll think about it…"
"… So yer gonna keep on helping ta lad right? Not gonna tell all ta pricks an teir moters in ta clock tower about ta lad?"
"… Heh. Of course not. After all, the kid technically isn't the Magus Killer's son. There's no reason for me to tell anyone…"
"Hahahah. Ah yer a bleedin heart just like yer moter…"
"Please, if anything its hereditary from your stupid genes… Sirius Fraga McGinty…"
"Ah… lass ya know ah don't bear ta Fraga name anymore. Ah got banished afta all… can't even make a Fragarach ta save me skin now tat me sorcery trait is sealed away… all ah know is ta ritual an how ta make it, but me ability ta make it is long gone. Everytin else ah know how ta do is from me research an not relyin on ta trait ta learn everytin an ten goin out o me way ta learn different branches o magic, which is why ah was banished in ta first place…"
"That doesn't stop you from being my great great grandfather old man… and you're the only family that will still talk to me after I joined the Association. You know how the clan reacts to anyone that wants to see the world and goes through with it…"
"Right… now ahm ta only family ya've got lass… an ya should have more faith in what ah do! Honestly, where did yer trust in me go tat ya wouldn't tink tat ah would actually do sometin tat would be notin but bad news for us?"
"Around my 14th birthday when you got completely drunk and sent me half a dozen male strippers to arrive during the party. That was the 1st year I was living away from home and I had several people from noble families from the association over to congratulate me before my testing and interview with the lords the next week.. It's part of the reason why I was quickly dismissed by the nobles later on when I was demonstrating my abilities despite the fact that I'm a Fraga…"
"… Ahhh fergot about tat…"
"I figured. You were pretty drunk at the time…"
"Musta been… ah usually don't do tat ta lass' as a goof till tey hit 17…"
Excluding the disturbing pieces of information that he had learned that night about his new teacher's 14th birthday, Shirou learned a lot about Sirius and Bazett that night before passing out once again due to his injuries. In fact it had taken a good 3 days for Shirou to recover completely from the exhaustion and the injuries from the fight, during which Sirius had once again left for his home in London.
After he got better, things once again fell into a routine between Shirou and Bazett. There wasn't much talking between the two when they weren't training or eating, but the tension between them had definitely disappeared, almost as if they had come to a mutual understanding of one another without really saying anything. The two joked among one another more often and Bazett seemed to actually smile around him now.
So Shirou spent the rest of his month and a half break training with Bazett both in magic based combat and close ranged combat. At first the girl was very skeptical about helping the boy create the beginning first few moves of his clearly suicidal sword style, but after much arguing and realizing that the faker wasn't going to budge on his idea, she relented to the point that she would help him practice a few sequences that would fit his criteria while still meshing well with a standard 2 sword style. It wasn't much, but then again it wasn't like she was a sword user or had much time to create a new style in the first place. It was more just practicing what they found had worked for the kid and then sparring to get him used to actually doing the moves in actual combat.
Waver's occasional lessons helped the boy become more adept at bounded fields and understand the basics of his father's magic crest. At first the red head was ecstatic about hearing that his father was capable of manipulating TIME of all things and imagined what it would be like to move at 5 times his natural speed while reinforcing himself… when Waver warned him of the repercussions of not only simply changing time over a wide area, but trying to alter time to his own body, especially since he only had 3 circuits remaining from the original crest.
Shirou had long since come to terms with standing on the verge of death when it came to utilizing standard magic… but risking blowing up his heart, major arteries, bones and other vital parts of his body at once just to move a bit faster for a few seconds wasn't something he was exactly comfortable with. All it took was for Shirou to manage to put an accelerating bounded field on a rock and then throw it a small distance before canceling out his magic to see what could have become of his body if he had done it to himself… he preferred to not to be shattered into tiny pieces thank you very much.
In the end Waver simply told Shirou that he had to find his own way to utilize the miniscule magic crest his father had given him. The time magic was indeed there, however it was far too unstable to be applied to his own person or anything he valued…
Of course it only took a day for the boy to come to the conclusion that he could somehow apply it to his fired projections, which would break anyways after they hit their target… the only question now was how to apply the magic in such a way that the swords would remain stable enough to not only last long enough to be considered an attack, but to also remain structurally stable enough to not shatter to pieces upon contact with the target… he had already determined that applying a normal time based bounded field on the projections was not a viable method as of yet due to the fact that he was not only still inexperienced with the new magic, but it took too much time and prana to utilize in an actual fight. He'd have to go into his 8 steps and find how to apply the magic into the right section in order to get this down…
Sirius' lessons on the other hand were more focused towards main stream basic magic and enhancing the boy's core spells: reinforcement, projection, structural grasping and a bit of alteration on the side. For the most part things went at a fairly average pace with Shirou. He wasn't a genius by any means. He just worked hard at what he was doing, be it sensing magical energies in others, learning the theory behind making familiars, and studying the science and theory behind the basic 5 elements.
When it came to his best branch of magic, most of their time was spent analyzing the boy's projections and picking out errors he had accidentally made or aspects he could improve on. Sirius took things to a new level when it came to structural grasping as well, forcing Shirou to not only fully analyze the object he was looking at, but to go a step deeper and grasp all the components on the same level as the main body. The Irish man claimed that the key to his own extreme form of reinforcement was by finding the gaps in the object he was empowering up to at least 3 levels of the object he was working on. Meaning he didn't just pump prana into the basic gaps into his body that normally existed between and in major muscles and organs, but then he pumped prana into the gaps inside of the materials of his bones, organs, and muscles, and then he pumped prana into the gaps in the very fibers that hold his body together. If what the old man said was true, then there were points where he was able to go even further and find the gaps inside the materials that made the fibers that made his organs as well, but that was difficult for even Shirou to believe was possible. This extreme version of structural grasping and reinforcement was something that to Sirius' knowledge unobtainable by someone who was not extremely talented and naturally gifted in structural grasping.
Of course Shirou was nowhere near that level of structural grasping yet. Not only did he see what the components of the object he analyzed, but his previous training forced him to see the very purpose, concept, and history of the object as well. This meant that while theoretically there was a possibility of the boy eventually reaching an even higher level of reinforcement than Sirius was capable of in due time, it would also take the faker longer to reach the level that the elder was currently at as well due to the fact that he was naturally dealing with more information in the first place.
As for alteration… in short it was really just Shirou trying to help Sirius go through the theory of removing a concept from an object while still maintaining its "completeness" and stability. The boy was just learning as they went along, but since it was just the halfway mark between reinforcement and projection it wasn't that difficult to catch up. They had made some interesting steps though, such as finding out that it was easier to perform the process of erasing an aspect so long as said aspect did not have an effect on the internal physical structure, such as turning a wooden toy back into a block of wood by removing the concept of what its shape was, such as "horse", "doll", "alphabet letter", "storage box", etc, from it. The longer the object has been in that state, or the more intricate the object is, the more prana and focus it would take to remove that aspect from it. The amount of prana used was slightly more than what it would take to change the base elements into that shape in the first place, but that had to do with the concept of the shape already being an intricate part of the object in the first place and had strong bonds with that which would be left over from the object. If the magus screwed up the process and didn't pay enough attention to what he was doing, the object he was altering would not only loose the concept that he originally was taking out, but would disrupt the object itself such that it would break down to its base elements and loose any other physical and some metaphysical aspects that would have remained had the spell worked normally. Sirius compared it to removing a card from a house of cards. The lower the card you want to remove, the more cards would fall down if you screwed up and the more difficult if became.
More complicated internal aspects such as material removal and enchantment removal were discovered to be significantly easier, or otherwise actually possible, if the caster had some sort of strong connection or medium to focus through to the removed aspect in the first place. For example, Sirius could actually remove the concept of "fire" from a burning fireplace thanks to his status as an average one such that the only thing left when he was done with the spell was extremely hot coals. It was easier to simply stop the fire through a far more basic extinguishing spell, however the results were more absolute this way as any possibility of the fire starting up again would disappear with the removal of the concept of "fire" from the coals instead of smothering the flames and being fairly certain that the fuel wouldn't reignite. The same could be done with removing the electrical charge from batteries and dehydrating plants until they were dust… albeit the last test was fairly more draining than Sirius had initially assumed due to the fact that water was an essential part to life and a living being's molecular makeup.
It was good theoretical training for Shirou since he normally focused more on practical applications of magic, but other than reducing normal everyday objects into base elements or basic structure reducing magic Shirou was unable to truly unable to utilize this magic completely as he had nothing inside of him or out that served as a significant enough medium to remove additional concepts from other objects. His element an origin were both "sword"… and technically he wanted the things in his hands to become more dangerous in a fight… not less.
Still, before he knew it, his summer break was over and with several goodbyes where Waver and Sirius were teasing Bazett who they were claiming was trying to put on a tough girl attitude the entire time, Shirou took the plane by himself back to Japan where one of Taiga's family's "associates" picked him up in a rather nice car, complete with one very hungry and weepy Taiga, and drove him back home where he immediately went to work cooking dinner lest the female screaming like a child in his living room use him for kendo practice again. Shirou would admit that he had gotten better at fighting… but not that much better without using magic…
And so this left Shirou resting in his bedroom alone after dinner with a full stomach and Fuji-nee already back home, simply enjoying being back home reminiscing on his training and how much had happened in that short amount of time…
… When the doorbell rang. Several times.
Shirou looked at the time. It was already past 10 and he didn't tell anyone he was back yet other than Fuji-nee. There was only one person he could think of that would visit him at this hour… and he really didn't want to deal with her right now.
Unfortunately for him said person didn't share his feelings and instead became more insistent with her pressing of his doorbell.
Grunting to himself and tiredly walking to his front door where the ringing had yet to cease. Closer and closer he walked, and as he did so he developed a rather appropriate headache to match the situation. By the time he reached the door his mind was near splitting as if he had been studying mundane history for several days straight.
The door opened to reveal a deceivingly calm and cheerful Rin Tohsaka. "Good evening Shirou-kun." She said pleasantly. "How has your vacation been?"
And thus the door closed as Shirou decided that if he had to deal with the harpy, the least she could do is not pretend to be everything that she was not to save him an even bigger headache. That way he could at least know what she wanted of him without bothering to translate every damned thing she said. He wasn't going to leave her alone after she bothered to come all the way to his place… but he would at least make it so that she would lose her cool enough that she wouldn't be in absolute control of the situation… not she knew what he was doing judging from the angry pounding she was giving his front door…
"Ah Rin, what are you doing here so late?" Shirou asked with the same smile Rin had on her face just moments before as he opened the door again to reveal a clearly more agitated and angry Tohsaka.
"Don't "Ah Rin" me you moron! Where the hell were you?" The girl growled angrily, all forms of modesty and self control in her small body now lost. "You left without any word for the entire vacation without telling me anything!"
The boy raised an eyebrow. "I was under the impression that as a human being I could go anywhere I wanted for extended periods of time."
"Not when you're my slave you aren't." The girl countered, getting a snort from the boy. "I was even thinking of helping you out with some of your magic out of the goodness of my heart during the break during my free time, but you obviously didn't care what I had planned to do for your benefit or even bothered to let me know that you were going somewhere…"
Shirou rolled his eyes. "Please, you probably just wanted to gloat about how much my magic sucked and have an excuse to stay away from that instructor of yours."
Rin flinched, knowing that the boy pretty much hit the nail on the head. Technically she wanted to spend more time with the only magus in the area that she didn't have strained relations with and talk to casually without having to watch what she says around… but she would be lying if she said what Shirou said wasn't true as well… which… she of course did.
"O-of course not!" The girl crossed her arms and looked away haughty. "What kind of person do you think I am?"
"The kind of person who would blackmail another who is already weaker than they are with their life at risk of being eternally experimented on to be their servant." Shirou stated bluntly. Rin didn't physically react from her stance, but the redhead could see the girl beginning to sweat nervously, indicating that he had her pegged.
Shirou enjoyed moments like these. It was a rare occurrence, but every once in a while Rin would let down her guard enough for Shirou to gain the upper hand in terms of dignity on the Tohsaka. The key was to keep on bringing up her faults and dishonest traits constantly and quickly so that she wouldn't have time to recover until she was a stuttering mess. Normally Shirou didn't like to pick on anyone, tending to avoid causing any trouble, but Rin and Taiga were special cases since they themselves caused him much trouble in the first place without any regards to his wishes. Technically, if Rin actually gave him more slack and treated him more like a human being instead of a slave or peon he wouldn't mind spending more time with her, but as it stood she was just another bully… only she could use magic better than he could… and in theory owned the entire city…
"Y-you…" She muttered and clenched a fist. "I'll let that pass this time Emiya, but don't you dare hope to get that lucky again…"
"Wouldn't dream of it." Shirou smiled gently, knowing that he had earned himself a small but very satisfying victory.
"So do you mind telling me where you were?" The girl crossed her arms expectantly. "You aren't the kind of person to just up and vanish for a while without telling people."
"I was out visiting the home of some extended family members." Shirou replied casually, knowing that this was exactly what Taiga told Tohsaka when the younger girl no doubted asked the elder when she discovered Shirou was gone. "They've dropped by every now and then and they wanted to help me out with my magic education whenever they had the chance…"
"That lie is so bad it hurts." Rin frowned at the redhead as if he was a fool. "How gullible do you think I am? Magi family members that happen to want to train you? You have your father's crest when you are adopted! If what you said is true, then they would have killed you and taken back the crest, even if it's only that pathetic little thing."
"Believe whatever you want, but it's the truth." Shirou shook his head. "They have their own crests since they are very distantly related but they happen to have liked dad. Not all magi are horrendously antisocial nobles that try their hardest to only barely know the people around them to keep up appearances you know." A metaphorical arrow shot through Rin's chest. "I did a bit of sparring training and my reinforcement, alteration, and projection skills have gotten a bit better… and they covered some of my basics in terms of magic that everyone else knows… but it's all pretty much stuff that I would have done with you other than the sparring, so in short they saved you the trouble of teaching me, so you didn't have to trouble with me at all." Another arrow pierced the girl's chest. Shirou on the other hand didn't pay attention to the girl's reaction and put on a thoughtful and distant expression. "Really… why do you bother to spend so much time on me when whenever we talk all you do is complain about how slow and pathetic I am in thaumaturgy and how I'm holding you back? I mean you've said it before but I'm really agreeing with you that it's a waste of time for you…" Yet another arrow pierced the girl who was now at a loss of words, unable to determine what to say or if she should feel embarrassed or enraged at what the boy was stating rather cluelessly. "… Especially since you have 5 elements and a boatload of spells that you can and have to master to satisfy that apparently sadistic teacher that you claim you have. It's like the only reason why you come here is to vent your frustrations onto me when you could be improving yourself…"
Several arrows pierced the girl, who was now slowly reaching into her pocket where she kept one of her emergency jewels fueled with prana. She really didn't care at this point. She would kill him and it would make her happy. It was a simple procedure that was absolute right now. Nothing would change her decision now. In a few moments Shirou Emiya would meet a violent and exploding end by her hands…
"Still, you at least bothered to help me out even if you didn't do it for my sake." The boy shook his head and turned around. "Come on in. It's late, but I'll make you something to eat since you probably rushed here after finding out I was back… probably by setting up a bounded field on the streets after I left or something… I thought I felt something funny as I was turning the corner…" He looked back holding the door open to look at Rin who looked like she was in the middle of taking something out of her pocket and in a halfway readied stance. "Well? Are you hungry?" He asked curiously.
The girl stared at the boy incredulously, not exactly sure how the hell to not only deal with the situation but with her own very confused emotions as well. "Wh-wh-what… the hell is wrong with you?" She stammered in unfocused rage at the boy, losing all composure in the process. "Honestly, how can you not understand that… I mean the fact that I… absolutely oblivious to…" She fumbled on her words and scratched at her head frustrated, not knowing what glaring topic to try and explain to the boy first, or if she should just bypass the entire process and stick to her original plan of just blowing the boy up.
"If you're not hungry just say so." Shirou sighed, once more showing that he was completely oblivious to what was causing Rin's frustration. "What's the matter now? I already told you where I went and I'm even offering to make you a late dinner."
"You are… just… unbelievable!" The girl shouted and pointed at him accusingly in pure frustration. "You know what? You're right! I have better things to do than waste my time with some 3rd rate magus like you trying to play babysitter! It won't even be worth my time to report an idiot like you to the association! I don't even know why I bothered with you in the first place!"
Before Shirou could even ask what was bugging her, Rin had stomped off down the street in a blind fury completely ignoring the boy and disappearing around the corner.
"What's her problem? I only offered her dinner…" Shirou asked to himself confused, clearly once again oblivious to the fact that he was the problem. Shaking his head, the boy sighed. "Oh well, maybe she'll make more sense when she comes to bug me next time…" He closed his eyes and sniffed the air for a moment before turning his head to look at a portion of the road halfway down to the nearest intersection. "There's the boundary she set up…" He muttered as he detected the line that crossed the entirety of the road and the sidewalks. "… Probably detects any magus that comes across it. It's pretty well hidden which is most likely why I missed it earlier… still to put one right in the middle of a road? That's just asking for a random magus to find my place…" Walking to the street and tapping into his circuits, the boy got to work getting rid of the field. Thanks to his father's teachings, he had a fairly efficient method of dispelling most bounded fields. The first step was… "Trace on…"
o. o. o.
"Well this is certainly interesting…" Kirei Kotomine mused as he watched Rin delve into her studies furiously with a drive that he rarely saw outside of the few spells that had gained the girl's attention. "You are exceptionally focused on what I teach you these days. May I ask why?"
"So long as you don't mind me giving you a false answer, go right ahead fake priest." Rin grunted as she read a book on advanced wind based thaumaturgy, something said fake priest had no doubt the girl could actually fully comprehend. She was as far as he could tell a genius after all, both in body and in mind.
"Hmph. Such well articulated scorn. As expected, that at least has not changed from the elegant Tohsaka heir." The man commented in amusement.
"Praise and scorn me all you want, I have more important things to do right now." The girl stated irritably. "The sooner I complete my studies under you, the sooner I can be done with you and get a real teacher…" And the sooner I can shut Emiya up. Have better things to do than waste my time babysitting him do I? Fine then. I'll stop bothering him for now, but only until I'm finished with the priest. Then I'll force the fool to be my lap dog and drag him with me to the Clocktower when I get my acceptance. He'll have no choice but to do everything I tell him to or else… I think the first thing I'll do is make him my personal butler and bodyguard since all he really seems to be good for is fighting and housework…
Kirei merely watched the girl in silence as she studied furiously from the corner of the room, curious as to what was so amusing about the subject to the girl that she would begin to chuckle so maliciously. He would admit that this new development had piqued his interest, however he decided against investigating the cause. No doubt it was another childish reason that Rin somehow blown out of proportion to fuel into her current self justified actions. He was merely her guardian after all. So long as she was properly taken care of and educated, she was free to go through the process in any way she pleased sans routes of heresy and forbidden magic. That was the task he was given by her deceased father in his will…
… and he was a man of god after all. Who was he to deny a dead man's last wishes?
o. o. o.
It is said that the world works in mysterious ways. Seemingly unrelated events could be very much entwined with one another if rather simple connections or changes are made between even just one or two seemingly miniscule elements. While a literal sense of the butterfly effect seems rather fictional, where if at the right place and the right time a butterfly's flapping wings could in fact manage to somehow cause a chain reaction that would eventually lead to something as great as a hurricane, a proportionally similar cause and effect could just as easily be made if significantly less specific conditions are met, especially in a world as secretive and influential as the one of magi… and vampires…
And thus Fuyuki City would experience such an event born from a man's dreams… 2 years before the next heaven's feel…
o. o. o.
A/N:
Ok. I have mixed feelings about this chapter and what I'm about to do. First of all, I am not confident in my writing of Bazett yet to do her character, which is why I skimmed over her for now. Plus I just wanted the time in England to be over with. Second, the holy grail war in itself, to me, seems as if it would end too quickly for my tastes to make a decently lengthed story with my particular writing style, so I'm twisting some events in the natsuverse in order to make a fairly innovative, creative, and character accurate side story before the war actually starts. And for all of you who are thinking I am throwing in characters from Tsukihime… no, you are wrong. No Shiki. No Arucreid. No Ciel. No Roa. I am using… other characters that do exist in the natsuverse as the antagonists for this bit and trying to keep things in character as I can without screwing myself over in the process. I will leave you guys a very vague hint though. Make no mistake, the events of Tsukihime did happen though as this next arc would be impossible to do if it didn't. It will be fairly lengthed, but the HGW will be bulk of the story. That bit will not change.
Next up is Shirou's and Rin's behavior. First, let me remind you that both of them are 13 years old. Neither one of them has as much control over their emotions as they did in the visual novels, and neither one of them is as mature as well. I tried to portray this when Shirou first unleashed his string of insults on Rin when she first arrived…
On the other hand, Shirou, (and this is myself analyzing his defections), is still virtually unable to determine, see, or even assume that other people value his presence as a person, truly enjoy spending time with him, and overall just think that people would help him for the sake of doing so... of course unless said people who wish to help him literally shout it to him in his face. This is portrayed in the part where he's insulting Rin's thinly veiled attempted good deeds without even knowing it. Rin obviously has some feelings for him, however as she is right now, she not only does not know of Shirou's distortion, but is so short tempered and fairly egotistical that she does not recognize her own feelings for him at this point in time.
Regardless… No. I'm not having Shirou get Fragarach for a long time if ever. It would be far too much and unbelievable if I did let him get another noble phantasm so soon.
So anyways… this chapter was a bitch for me to write for some reason. Hopefully the next one will be easier for me to pull off.
So review! Worship the log! Eat popcorn as Bazett beats the living shit out of Shirou! And Review Again!
