Rin strode purposefully through the corridors of the Clock Tower with her back straight and her head held high. The confidence in her steps and in her eyes was a reflection of her renewed pride.
Such pride was evident to any onlooker. Now confident in her beauty, she no longer cared for the spite she received for being a 'monkey from the east'.'
While before, she had fought to prove that she was just as good if not better than them, now their judgement slid off her skin like water.
Inevitably, the heads that turned at her passing could only increase in number. Even amongst those who looked down on her did she appear to shine with a light they could not easily disregard.
What had changed? How could a nearly disgraced foreigner rise from the ruins of her social standing and not only crawl back to her previous position, but also accrue more accomplishments? And moreover, why did it look like she had breezed through them?
Anyone nearly half-important was aware of Rin's economic circumstances and many were quite certain it would have spelled her ultimate ruin. Instead, word was that she had been able to acquire resources through unknown means and that she was steadily making her way toward repaying her debts. Some still doubted that she could truly meet the deadlines, but upon seeing her confident smile they could no longer deny it.
Of course, they hated it with a passion. 'I'll teach her her place,' a great deal of them thought, but of course there was nothing they could do without incurring the wrath of the Directors.
Magi killing each other wasn't an unusual occurrence, but murder of one's peers was forbidden within the Association, lest things devolve into complete anarchy. Thus, Rin's detractors could only seethe, nurturing malicious thoughts.
Naturally, many of those thoughts weren't only of the murderous sort. Even if they considered her their lesser in Magecraft, she was still a beautiful young woman who had only grown more beautiful under duress. The murderous desire that could not find satisfaction easily turned into carnal desire.
Tohsaka Rin saw and understood it all, relishing in equal measure their rage and their lust.
She would be eternally grateful to Gerard for showing her just how much better she could do. Of course, things were far from perfect or simple.
Just like she had to hide being a Magus from the general public, she also had to conceal being a whore. Although they were both part of her, people who knew of one could not know about the other. It was just the way it was. She was no stranger to living a double life and if she had to be honest, it was far more exciting hiding her sluttiness than it was hiding her Magecraft.
She wondered how the old geezers would react if they knew that she didn't wear anything under her skirt anymore? She had felt their lecherous gaze on her skin more than once before, but only now she knew how to enjoy it. Even if they were repugnant old farts that probably couldn't get it up anymore, they still lusted after her while talking behind her back.
How preposterous. She could see now people really worked. For all their talks of superiority they were only just pigs in heat. Oink. Oink.
If she put herself to it, she could make them crawl at her feet with a ridiculous expression on their faces. These were the thoughts that Rin entertained from time to time.
Of course, reality wasn't that simple. Society was founded on decorum, and as such, she had to maintain a facade even if she considered those Magi less than dirt.
Right then, the people who held her respect could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Saber and Shirou, of course, but recently even Gerard had joined the ranks of the people she trusted unconditionally.
No, because Gerard knew a side of her that the other two didn't, he belonged to a completely different category. Whereas the attraction she had for the other two came from the love they shared, the love she had for Gerard came from the lust he ignited in her. If she ever had to choose between the two sides, she didn't know what would be the outcome.
But she wouldn't have to do anything of the sort. Since she was a cheating whore she could have the best of both worlds. She could love and be loved back as the perfect Magus Tohsaka Rin while enjoying the thrill of sneaking behind Saber's and Shirou's back to fuck around with whomever paid her for it.
The only thing she had to do now was having Shirou returned and everything would be absolutely perfect. She would get her halcyon days back whilst hiding her whorish activities under the pretense of extensive thaumaturgic research.
She stepped into her laboratory, where her apprentices were working frantically. That was good. The peons could take care of the day-to-day operations while she supervised the progress every now and then. She had sufficient resources invested to pay back her debt in time, plus there was what she planned to make with her body. With the results she was producing, she would soon have enough influence inside the Clock Tower to start putting pressure on having the hunt for Shirou recalled.
Satisfied with herself, she took from her pocket the contact card the man from the strip club had given her some time ago. Back then it had sounded such an outrageous idea even if it had made her insanely wet. Now, it looked like the right platform to make connections into her new line of business.
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It had taken Rin more than a little courage to actually present herself at the Velvet Room. Usually women got into the stripping business before they got into prostitution, but Rin's case had been quite uncommon.
Extenuating circumstances aside, it meant that the number of people who had seen her naked body could be counted on the fingers of one hand. She had come to appreciate showing off her beauty as of late, but even a musician who had been practicing for years could develop stage fright.
Excitement and anxiety swelled in her chest. True, she was confident in her appearance and the byproducts of Gerard's Magecraft had only enhanced it, but it was also true that she hadn't had any direct competition until then. This was a place where attractive women exposed her bodies every night and Rin was afraid that her curves would not compare to that of the English girls that worked here.
Every girl that she had seen access the building by the rear entrance was tall and more stacked than she was; however, there was something off about them that Rin couldn't quite pinpoint.
She had decided for a low key approach for her first visit, opting for a more conservative look than what she had come to prefer lately, namely a red knee-long skirt and white blouse. She went for the front entrance and the muscled man running security barely looked at her twice before allowing her inside. Rin guessed that either female customers weren't such a rarity or that perspective strippers usually surveyed their would-be place of work much like she was doing.
Either way, it didn't matter what he thought. If she started working here, he would probably see much more of her.
She made her way inside, meeting a few surprised glances from the exclusively male patrons. Most of them looked away when she caught them staring, and she was puzzled by their behaviour. Shyness in a place like this didn't make much sense to her.
Only a tall, black skinned man dressed in what looked like expensive brand clothes held her gaze, giving her a loppy smile and tipping his glass at her.
Rin found herself smiling back, feeling herself relax slightly. Okay, a woman among the clientele was apparently an odd thing, but not too much so.
She ordered a glass of whiskey and sat in a corner where the light didn't quite reach. Soon enough, the music amped up a notch and a woman made her way on the stage. She was dressed in what Rin thought a mockery of a police officer's suit, which she stripped off, piece after piece, as she danced on stage.
She moved with grace, twisting around the metal pole as if her body didn't have any weight, while the patrons threw money at her, whistling and cat-calling all the time. Because of her martial art traning, Rin was fairly confident she could replicate those moves with little practice but she wasn't sure if she should. There was something off about the stripper, but for the life of her Rin couldn't figure out what.
Perhaps it was just her mind playing tricks on her, so she decided to keep watching. Over the course of the evening, more and more women performed and Rin couldn't shake off the impression that something was amiss, and then, suddenly, it clicked.
Their eyes were hollow. Although they went through the motions with great skill, although dozens of men were throwing money at them, they weren't enjoying it in the least.
'That's right,' she thought, 'ordinary women hate exposing themselves.'
She had gotten so used to enjoying the act debasing herself that she had forgotten how ordinary people felt on the subject. She was profoundly stunned by this simple revelation, and felt a sense of pity for them.
These women, beautiful as they were, could not enjoy what it brought them.
Well, on the other hand, Rin was now confident that she wouldn't have much competition on stage. What did it matter if they had bigger boobs and asses if they looked like a bunch of dead fish? The first thing necessary to excel at any task is passion, and she had more than enough of that.
"Enjoying the show, miss?" a man asked as he took a seat at her table. She immediately recognized him as the man who had given her the business card on the train. Rin felt a wave of heat rising to her face at the memory of her earliest explorations and the encounter that came with them.
"Not really," she managed to reply with a steady voice.
"Oh? Would you rather be the one on stage?" he asked with a grin.
"Do you make a point of asking these questions to all your customers?"
"Only the beautiful women I met on the train while they were in the process of teasing the passengers with their naked legs."
Rin was thankful for the scarce light, because her face had to be crimson red by then. Shame crept up her face, but in spite of that, or rather because of that, she felt herself starting to get wet.
"I see," she replied. "Are there many of those?"
"Currently only one. A shame, that. But you didn't answer my earlier question, miss. Would you like to be on that stage with them?"
Rin swallowed the knot in her throat. Her heart was beating frantically in her chest and it echoed across her body. Gerard's piercing rubbed against her thighs, sending shivers of pure bliss across her nerves.
Another step toward decadence, depravity and untold pleasures.
"I would love to."
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The man, who introduced himself as Michel Corner, escorted her to her office, where they sat at his desk and held a quick interview. Rin was reluctant to give her true name out of fear that it would make its way back to the Clock Tower and tarnish her reputation, but it was nearly impossible that it would.
What would people think if they knew she was such an indecent woman?
But the pleasant shiver that crept up her spine at the risk of being found out pretty much broke down any reservation she had in that regard.
"Excellent. Before hiring you however, I must to ask you to undress. I must examine the merchandise before offering it to my client, you understand."
Rin came so very close to having an orgasm right there when he referred to her with that word that she had to steady herself against the desk.
"Is something the matter?" he asked. "Are you feeling unwell?"
"N-no," she stuttered in a daze. She couldn't wrap her mind around the fact that mere words were able to send ripples of ecstasy across her body. Here she was about to expose her body to a man she had known for just a few minutes and she was getting off on him calling her merchandise.
What would he think when he saw that she didn't have any underwear? That her clitoris was pierced? That her cunt was a dripping mess? Would he call her out for being such a slut?
God, she hoped he would.
With shaking legs, she stood, and with equally trembling hands she started undressing herself. Her coat fell to the floor, followed shortly by her shirt. He only grinned at the sight of erect nipples, but his mouth hung open when her skirt slid down her legs and pooled at her feet.
A slick trail of fluids made its way down her legs and the piercing was clearly visible hanging from her clitoris, which had grown larger than normal from the arousal and the almost constant stimulation from the Mystic Code.
Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes half lidded. She was breathing raggedly and it took all of her willpower just to keep her hands at her sides. His gaze washed over her naked form hungrily, making every inch of her skin tingle delightfully.
'Look at me,' she thought. 'Stare at my naked body all you want. You can have it, you know? Just put down the money and I'll be your plaything.'
"Wow," he exhaled. "I always knew you were different, but I would have never thought you were so... perfect."
"P-perfect?" she asked. That was not what she had expected and she didn't know what to make of it.
"Yes. I see many women in this line of business, Rin, and this is the first time I met someone both so beautiful and so willingly decadent." He stood up from his chair, walking around the desk without removing his eyes from her. "None of my female employees actually enjoy their job. They can appreciate its benefits, but none of them truly enjoy exposing their bodies the way you do."
Rin nodded. After all, ordinary women didn't get turned on at the possibility of selling their bodies and cheating on their partners. Their dreams weren't filled with depravity. They didn't crave the attention mixed with equal amounts of scorn and lust that came with wearing skimpy clothes on a busy train.
She shivered, recollecting the many instances when she had dressed inappropriately for the specific purpose of arousing strangers. She was a deviant-a filthy pervert-and she loved every minute of it.
"You want people to recognize you as a sexual object," he continued. "A piece of meat free for the taking."
"No," she whispered, turning her head slightly to look at him with an expression caught between mischievous and delirious. "Never for free."
Michael grinned. "Ah, an entrepreneur at heart, then. Very well. I think we can come to an agreement then. Care to hear about it?"
Rin nodded, quivering in anticipation. How many undiscovered emotions were waiting for her on that stage? How deep did the rabbit hole go?
She would be finding out very soon.
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Once upon a time, Arturia Pendragon had ceased to be human in order to become the perfect king.
She had detached herself from all the things a human could have needed short of nutrients for her body. Things such as restful sleep had been discarded long before she had taken Caliburn, in favor of being instructed by Merlin in her dreamscape.
Once she sat upon the throne of a still fragile kingdom, she had reduced herself to a machine called "King Arthur".
Things such as feelings, wishes and desires had all been cast away, making her capable of making difficult decisions without being beset by trivial things like personal preferences.
Inevitably, she became unable to understand her own subjects, and consequently, the people had become unable to understand their king. In the long run, it had spelled the end of the kingdom she had valiantly sought to protect and pushed her to make a wish for the Grail that brought her into a distant future, where the relentless caring of two unusual Magi had forced her to learn that she was still very much human underneath.
It had been, and still was, a learning process, especially when done in an era so very different from her own.
Simply speaking, modern-day human beings were all but alien creatures to her, with the notable exception of Shirou and Rin, and even then there were many points of misunderstanding. Worse yet, Rin and particularly Shirou were fundametally different from ordinary people, in that they were Magi. Therefore, whatever insight into human nature she had garnered from interacting with her two lovers didn't exactly convert in experience with the rest of mankind. Oh, she could command obedience well enough, but that didn't mean she understood anyone.
In addition, much like Rin, she was quite a prideful person who didn't find it easy to ask for help. That meant that after Shirou had been forced into running to keep them safe and Rin's subsequent focusing on her work 24/7 to gain the influence she needed to help him, Saber had no one to turn to for advice.
There had been a point in time when things seemed to have taken a turn for the better. Rin had finally started to look as if the worst was behind them, and with it had come a rekindling of the passion that had been lacking since Shirou had left. Their mutual understanding had started to build up again, only for it to crumble abruptly once again for no apparent reason.
Had she done something wrong, she wondered? Had she somehow failed again at understanding some fundamentally important? She didn't know and she knew better than to ask.
Much to her displeasure, Rin was cut from the same cloth as hers, more or less. Prideful, stubborn and far too disinclined to share her problems with anyone, whereas Shirou had no issue asking for help when needed. He had been the glue that kept the three of them together and the reason why they had been in a three-way relationship in the first place. With him gone, things had started to fall apart.
Saber felt as alone as that fateful day, when she had bargained her soul in exchange for the Grail.
Was this her fate, perhaps? Cursed to watch the things she cherished fall to pieces and slip through her fingers?
She could not accept that. She hadn't accepted it the first time and she wouldn't the second. She would get to the bottom of this, no matter what it took.
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AN: I know, not much of a development this time. Worry not, Saber's fall starts next chapter.
Beta: Akemi Homura-san