Okay, I think I'm getting a little better at the formatting over here. Sorry to everybody who saw the first draft of the last chapter I posted, before I got even basic line breaks to stay in.

I got a little impatient so I broke down and decided to post another chapter today. I think the first three chapters combined kind of work as the intro to this story, the equivalent of days 1-3 in the visual novel, so I will also be posting chapter 3 tomorrow morning. After that I will try to limit myself to two chapters a week.

One reviewer asked me to share a link to the full version of this story, which is posted over on Questionable Questing (QQ). Unfortunately, I think I literally can't. You need an account over there to see the NSFW story section, so I don't think I'll be able to share it like that. Sorry. I may figure something out when I get more used to this website and how it handles links.

Chapter Two

Everything hurt. The pain was so bad that it felt like his mind was going to tear itself to shreds. The grip the woman had on his arm made it feel like it was trapped inside of a wood-thresher.

And yet...

For the rest of his life, Shirou Emiya would remember that moment as one the most wonderful things he had ever experienced.

"That man, is my Master!"

"Tohsaka?" He did not think that he had spoken loudly enough to be heard, but somehow both his captor and the woman who looked like Tohsaka turned their heads to look at him. He wanted to ask what the hell was going on, but he couldn't make himself speak again.

"You can't expect me to fall for such an obvious lie." His captor said. Her hand raised again, and Shirou saw his life begin to flash before his eyes.

Damn it, he couldn't die here! He hadn't even saved anyone yet! He hadn't even fulfilled his promise to that girl!

He tried to stand again, but a simple twist of his arm sent him sprawling to the floor.

"Wait!" The woman who looked very much like Tohsaka said.

She held out her arm and crushed a jewel within her hand. Intense magical energy spilled forth, more than Shirou could have summoned in a thousand years. On the floor of the school, a pair of mystical circles formed. One beneath her. And one beneath Shirou.

Her eyes were full of desperation, but when she spoke it was with all the dignity and confidence of a trained magus. "I ask of you, are you my Master?"

Even though he knew that his mind should have been consumed by panic and he should have been attempting to flee, there was only one thought running through Shirou's brain. If he could be the Master of a woman like that, then he would feel like he could die happy.

"Yes." His voice was soft and weak. He hated that. Just because his body was dying was no excuse. A Hero of Justice was supposed to be stronger. A Master was supposed to be stronger.

All around him, the air grew thicker with magical power. His captor released her grip on his shoulder, letting him fall to the floor. The words of his Servant rang out in his ears like perfectly clear bells, even as he felt like everything else was becoming nothing more than a series of blurred lines.

The woman with Tohsaka's face looked like a goddess of beauty. Her pale skin was luscious, and the sight of her body drove him mad with desire.

"Your will shall empower my body, and my sword shall create your destiny! I who heed the Grail's call shall abide by your will and reason. I answer you!"

A searing pain spread across his hand. There was no pain he would not have suffered for this, but he still gasped and cried.

His former captor, every bit as beautiful in her own way, looked on with some conflicting emotions, and then Shirou heard her begin to walk away. "Hmmph. I suppose I have no reason not to accept this outcome. It's not like anything changes. Either way, I, with these hands... will have to kill you both."

Shirou blacked out.

X X X

He awoke from that strange dream in his own bed, in his own room. His body hurt all over, but when he tried to flex his arm he found that it was in no way broken or damaged.

"...What?" He asked.

Everything had felt so real. Normally when he dreamed he only felt dread or despair. That pain had been so bad that he had wanted to pull off his own arm to escape. And yet no matter how much he had struggled, he hadn't been able to awaken. Was this what people called sleep paralysis?

...There was one way to check. In the dream the strange woman with Tohsaka's face and a very impractical outfit had called him her Master and a series of symbols had been burned onto his hand. Simply checking to see that they weren't there would be all the proof he needed.

Still, Shirou didn't do so right away. It had been a really nice dream. Despite the pain. When that woman had made herself into his Servant, he felt like he had finally unlocked the secret to a fulfilling life. It would be a shame to let go of that so soon.

Really though, it was something he could never tell anybody else about. If Tohsaka were ever to find out that he'd dreamed about her in such a skimpy outfit, he wouldn't blame her for bashing in his skull.

Eventually, Shirou began to feel guilty about laying in bed for too long. It wasn't like him to go to sleep this early, and he still had no idea how he had even ended up in his bed. He raised his hand to examine it's back and –

It was there. The mark that had been engraved on his flesh, the symbol of his bond with that woman, was real.

"What the hell!?"

X X X

Rin was able to hear Emiya wake up from the other room of the house. "He sure healed quickly." She said, taking another sip of tea.

Of course, she wasn't upset to hear that. It would be troubling for her if her Master was to be killed, and if he had spent the entire rest of the Holy Grail War recovering that would have been just as bad. She had healed his physical wounds as best as she could, with one of her carefully horded gems, but even so she had expected him to spend at least the rest of the night sleeping of the trauma of nearly being killed and then being dragged into such a strange situation.

She had planned to go to him, but from the sounds of it he had just sprinted out of his bedroom and was now searching his way through the entire house. So, she let herself spend a few more seconds enjoying the sights of the veranda that she was currently sitting on. Rin sighed, getting herself ready for the conversation to come. There was something she needed to confirm.

Sure enough, her new Master arrived within less than a minute of her hearing his waking scream.

As soon as he saw her, he tripped.

Rin stiffed a giggle as a look of sheer awe crossed his face, and all strength seemed to leave his body. He crashed to the floor, but caught himself at the last second with the arm that had been broken only a couple of hours ago. Not letting up, he finished the last few steps on all fours, crawling to a spot beside her so that they were both at eye level.

His eyes were studying her face. He was so close. She'd seen boys look at her with worship before, but there was something so adorably appealing about the look of awe and adoration on his face.

Geez. It wasn't relevant. It really wasn't what she was supposed to be focusing on. She did think he looked cute, but that wasn't important at all!

Of course, none of those reactions showed on Rin's face. She kept on her carefully neutral mask. "Emiya-kun, don't you think you're a little close? And it's fine to be energetic, but I don't think someone with your injuries should be flailing around so much."

He jumped back and to his feet with a rather comical expression. Then he stared at her for another few seconds. "Don't tell me... you really are Tohsaka?"

"That's right." She said. She took another sip of tea. It felt rude not to offer him any, but she had been expecting to spend the night watching over his sleep so at the time it hadn't occurred to her to make extra. "Emiya-kun, just to confirm. You are a magus, correct?"

"Hmm? Yeah." He said. As she'd suspected. That Master-Servant contract had formed a little too easily, normally when trying to make one with someone without any sort of magical circuits it would have been much more difficult. But he'd connected with her like they'd been meant to be. He certainly wasn't a very strong magus however, she would have felt more power flowing in from his body otherwise. "Wait – Don't tell me. Tohsaka, are you –?"

"That's right." Rin said, deliberately repeating herself. "I am a magus, and a couple of days ago I completed a ritual to turn into a Demi-Servant to fight in the Holy Grail War."

There was no sign of recognition from him for either of those terms. Really, it was damn right irresponsible for whoever had trained him to leave him in a city like this without telling him about it's most important piece of magical history.

"Let's start with this." Rin said. "How much of what happened before I brought you back here do you remember?"

He told the story briefly. His memory seemed spotty because he got a few events mixed around, but she understood the gist of it. As a favour to Shinji he had agreed to stay late at the school in order to clean the archery dojo. That was why he had been there to witness her fight with the mysterious Demi-Servant. From there he seemed not to remember how he had gotten into the school, only that the next thing he recalled after starting to flee was being caught in a different location. No surprise there, such traumatic memories were always hard to properly pierce together.

He did remember their bonding perfectly. He was even able to recite the chant she had performed word for word. Sadly, knowing that they had become Master and Servant did not mean that he understood what that meant at all.

"So... That woman. Who was she? Why did she spare me?" Emiya asked, once he had finished the story.

"As for her identity, I have no idea." Rin said. That was something she was worried about as well. That woman had been a real monster. "As for why she spared you, that's because I made you into my Master. You know the rule about how magic must be kept hidden, right?"

He nodded. She would have been terrified if he hadn't known that much.

"The only reason she had tried to kill you in the first place was because she thought you were an uninvolved bystander. Honestly, if I had know you were a mage it might have been enough to tell her that to spare your life, but there's nothing I can do about that now. Once I had formed a contract with you and become your Servant, she was no longer required to kill you."

Emiya frowned, noticing the hole in that story very quickly. "Wait. But once I became your Master, doesn't that mean I became her enemy? Wouldn't that make her just as likely to want to kill me?"

"...It should have. However, I think that woman was only there in the first place because her Master required it." Rin grimaced. It did not make her happy to admit this, but she needed to make sure that Emiya understood what was going on in case he met her again. "Thinking back to our fight, there were many times when she could have killed me as well. I wasn't even good enough to make her break out her Noble Phantasm. So, since she had already declined to eliminate me, I reasoned that there was no reason she would decide that she had to eliminate you."

Rin sat there in silence for a minute, letting him digest that news. Hopefully if he understood that he had lived only because his enemy had not been bothered enough to consider him a threat, he would show the appropriate level of restraint going forward.

"At any rate, once you passed out I carried you back here and brought you inside."

"You brought me here?" He seemed confused and worried. "Wait, what about Fuji-Nee? Did you?"

Rin smirked. "I told her that I had found you passed out from overwork. She bought it so quickly that I almost felt bad about lying. That should also give you an excuse to miss school tomorrow. Of course, I didn't tell her that I would be remaining to watch over you, to avoid a fight."

"That's a relief." Emiya said. Rin did not know Fujimura-Sensei personally, but she knew of her reputation, so she couldn't blame Emiya for being scared of the thought of her discovering them. "But... Tohsaka, I still need to know. What does it mean that I've become your Master?"

Rin crossed her arms over her chest. To be honest, she felt like she didn't have the gravitas necessary to explain this situation to him properly. It would be easy to tell him the words, but to make him really feel like they were true... she needed something else.

X X X

The Fuyuki church was large and imposing, and Shirou felt a sort of instinctive need to retreat as soon as he heard the door slowly creak open. It was odd, and he didn't think he would have this sort of reaction normally, but he decided to trust his feelings and walk forward only with caution.

"...I know you said he was, but it's still odd to me that a priest could be a magus." Shirou said.

Tohsaka ran a hand through her hair. She didn't look any happier to be here than he did. "As I said – he's a big hypocrite so a little lie like that is no big deal for him."

"Oh – what's this?" Shirou froze at the sound of the deep male voice that had appeared behind them. He turned his head, surprised to see a giant of a man directly behind them. How had he gotten there without either of them noticing? He laughed softly but malevolently. "Just who is the liar here? Didn't you tell me only a day ago that you would never take a Master, and never seek out the comfort of my church?"

Rin winced, and Shirou rubbed at the back of his head. "Kotomine. So you knew what he was just from looking at him, huh?"

Kotomine put a hand on the cross that hung around his neck. Something about the man bugged Shirou for a reason he couldn't describe. "Of course. As the facilitator of this Holy Grail War, I am able to identify Masters and Servants by sight."

"I should have known." Rin said, after sighing. "It's like this. He's unfamiliar with the situation, so I brought him here so that you could explain."

"Unfamiliar? I see. Well, it is my duty to guide poor lost children." Kotomine said. "What is your name?"

Shirou wanted to protest the term, but he felt like doing so would only be petty. "Emiya Shirou."

Everything distorted.

For a brief second, Shirou felt like he saw the shadows in the church lunge for him. Then it was gone, and everything was back to normal, and Tohsaka was looking at him like he had spaced out for a few seconds.

Had he imagined that? No one else commented on it, so he decided to file it away as just another thing that he didn't understand.

He had so many questions already, so to be honest it just didn't fit on the pile. "So, in the first place what is a Master? What does it mean that Tohsaka has become my Servant?"

"I see, so it's best to start from the beginning..." Kotomine walked away from them for a moment, beckoning them to follow him towards the alter at the head of the church. "The Holy Grail War is a competition between mages. As the name implies, this competition is over the right to hold the Holy Grail itself."

"The Holy Grail? The real Holy Grail?" Shirou asked. He looked to Tohsaka, but she remained silent.

"That's correct. The holiest of all artifacts, capable of granting one wish." Kotomine said. "As proof that it exists, simply observe the power that your Servant Rin is capable of wielding. Surely you can tell that no human could ever hope to equal her."

Shirou nodded. "Yeah. No matter how you look at it, she's really amazing."

Tohsaka, for some reason, looked away.

"Rin has become like this, because she has merged with a heroic spirit. A heroic spirit is a hero from humanity's past, whose existence has been recorded by the Throne of Heroes. As a heroic spirit is too strong to summon into the world, even for the Holy Grail, they are placed into one of seven class containers. Saber, Archer, Lancer, Rider, Caster, Assassin, and Berserker. The result is what we call a Servant. Then this Servant merges with a human mage who wishes to participate in the Holy Grail War to make a Demi-Servant. The Servant themselves are not conscious, but should the mage they are bonded to win a Holy Grail War they will get their wish granted as well."

A wish... Shirou had no interest in such a thing. But learning that such incredibly magic was possible was truly mind-boggling to him. "Then, why is a Master relevant? If there's already something as strong as a Heroic Spirit involved, what could anyone else do to impact things?"

"Servants are meant to have Masters." Kirei said, as if that was the most obvious truth in the world. "In order to remain in this world, a bond of that sort is necessary. Originally it was hoped that the mage bonding with them could serve that purpose, but because the changes made through bonding with a Servant are so great the mage can only provide some of the support necessary. Without bonding to a Master, a Demi-Servant will have a far weaker grasp of their own abilities."

"So that's why..." Shirou said. He didn't really get it, but he wondered if that was why Rin had been so much weaker than the enemy Servant.

"Now then young man, you have a choice to make." Kotomine said. "Are you going to participate in this war?"

Tohsaka stiffened, and turned to march outside of the church.

"Tohsaka?" He called out, but she did not stop until she was gone. She did not even look back.

"Hmmph. So she did not want to pressure you by being here." Kotomine said.

"Pressure her?"

"That's right. Emiya Shirou, you have been drawn in to this war by accident. If you were to give up, Rin would not feel right blaming you."

"Give up?" Shirou asked. He frowned. "I'm already... Wait, how is giving up possible in the first place?"

Kotomine pointed towards the back of his hand, which had been marked when Rin had bonded with him. "Those are known as command seals. They give you, the Master, the right to make three unalterable commands. For a Master who wishes to leave the Holy Grail Way, there is only one option. Use a command seal to force the Servant inside of Rin back to the Holy Grail."

Shirou tried to stop himself from gasping, but failed. "But, if I did that, then...?"

"Yes, Rin would be forced to leave the war. Her power would be gone, and the servant along with it." Kotomine smiled as she said it. "You would be erasing her dream, to protect yourself. Well, Emiya Shirou? What is your decision?"

...That.

He didn't even really need to think about that.

"I see." Kotomine did not seem at all surprised. He seemed to have known what Shirou was going to do before even he had. "Will you be a strong enough Master to support her? We shall see. Rejoice boy, your dream will soon come true."

...

Shirou left the church behind.

Tohsaka was waiting outside for him. She had transformed. The normal clothing that she had worn here was gone, and she was now dressed in the same outfit that she had worn while battling the woman. To be honest, it was so distracting that he almost forgot what he had came out here to say.

"Tohsaka." He steeled himself. "Because you put your trust in me, I want to answer it. I will fight with you. I will be your Master."

"Oh?" Her expression shifted, and he could tell that she was trying to hide how relieved that she was. "How unexpectedly straightforward of you, Emiya-kun."

He frowned. It had felt like the right decision, that was all. And something else was bothering him too. "Tohsaka, if I'm going to be doing this I want to do it properly. If I didn't I couldn't look myself in the eye. I want you to address me as Master."

She smirked. "Oh? As your Servant, I suppose I should be happy that you're putting your all into this. Very well, Master."

As she said the word, his heart skipped a beat.

"But, I don't think it's fair that only I should be the one using such a familiar term. In return, I want you to call me Rin. Got it, Master?"

"Yeah. Rin. Let's win together."

He reached out a hand, and another contract was formed.