Fate: Hammer Time

by TedTheRabbit

Shirou Emiya wanted to become a hero. That was clear to all who truly know him. For a long time though, he lacked the power to actually achieve that goal. No longer. No longer will he lack the power, now that the Hammer of the Odinson has chosen him as new wielder. Prepare for Thunder. ShirouxMultiple, Thor-Shirou.

31. General Maintenance

General Maintenance

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Electronics and machinery.

Shirou had had an interest in them for as long as he could remember. It just fascinated him, how a collection of metals, plastics, wires, and a bit of energy could create things that moved by themselves, or could rise into the air, or allowed one to interact with the entire world from behind a desk.

The redhead could still recall taking apart his first motorcycle, to see what it was made of and how it worked. It had been an old, broken thing, a gift from one of Raiga's men for Shirou to mess around with to his heart's content, but the redhead had been over the moon with it.

Now, giving a motorcycle to a child to take apart was of course ridiculously irresponsible. It could easily have led to Shirou injuring himself, especially since the man hadn't even removed the fuel from the tank. Kiritsugu had been apoplectic when he'd learned of it. But that incident was what had gotten Shirou interested in electronics, so he was grateful to that guy nonetheless.

He had taken that motorcycle apart completely, meticulously studying every piece to discover what purpose it served and how it worked. Then he had tried to put it back together again, before repeating the process of breaking it down and building it up again several more times, until he knew every single aspect of the vehicle inside and out.

From there on, it was only a small step towards trying to repair motorcycles, and then repairing cars, and then household appliances, and so on. Over the years, Shirou had quickly made a name for himself as an expert craftsman, though only in certain circles, such as a certain Yakuza gang, several schools, and the local library.

Once Kiritsugu had gotten over his shock of having his child play around with dangerous equipment, he had praised Shirou's skill and encouraged him multiple times to make a career out of it. Being a repairman was much easier and much more fulfilling than being a Hero of Justice after all.

Shirou hadn't listened to him though. Having the skills of a repairman was certainly useful, to help people out or maybe bring in some extra money should it ever be needed, but it would never fill the gaping void in his heart, left there by the Fire. The path of the Hero of Justice was the only path open to him.

Kiritsugu had been disappointed, but this was one of the few cases in which Shirou hadn't cared about what his father thought.

Raiga on the other hand had never bothered talking about careers or paths to take in life. He had just been happy to have Shirou repair his family's broken motorcycles and cars, and sometimes had Shirou enhance them as well. A normal car should never be able to go faster than four hundred kilometres per hour, but once Shirou was done with it, it could, for a little while at least.

The Yakuza-head didn't use Shirou for those jobs to save money though, no, he royally compensated Shirou for every vehicle repaired. He only used Shirou because Shirou never talked to the police and never asked difficult questions.

A car with bullet holes in the motor cap might raise a few eyebrows in a normal garage, but Shirou just overlooked them, calmly repairing the engine and welding the holes shut without a word.

Once he began to attend school, he started taking care of the appliances there as well. The air conditioners tended to break down every summer due to excessive overuse, and while they would normally be replaced in such an event, since hiring a repairman to fix them was more expensive than just buying a new one, Shirou always managed to make them last a few months more.

His teachers had been so grateful for his work –and that he didn't ask for compensation—that they hadn't even asked where he had learned his skills.

They did find it odd that Shirou was so skilled at such a young age while decent repairing skills normally took years and years to learn, but that was only because they didn't know about his unfair advantage.

Structural Analysis.

An extremely useful spell for working with electronics and machinery. It made determining the function and place of every part of a machine a breeze, and greatly contributed to quickly finding faulty parts in malfunctioning equipment.

The latter especially was incredibly important in the modern world.

As time passed, electronic equipment became more and more complicated. Where before a determined father with some skill could put his car back together, or fix a sputtering tv, the ever-increasing complexity of the inner workings of modern machinery made that impossible. Nowadays, only professionals stood a chance at repairing equipment, and even they had to search for hours to find the points of failure.

As such, the ability to flawlessly discern the point of origin for any problems or issues was absolutely invaluable. Fixing a problem was not difficult after all if you knew perfectly well what was going wrong and what you could do about it.

Structural Analysis was immensely useful to a repairman, and Shirou wasn't afraid to take full advantage of it.

It was a nice example of combining Thaumaturgy with modernity. A heresy in the eyes of most Magi, but Shirou didn't care much about that, nor did he expect it to ever become a problem. It wasn't like he'd ever have to repair something in the Moonlit World after all.

Sure, most Magi had cars these days, very fancy cars, and they were slowly getting used to air conditioning and electric heating, but they were rich enough to employ professionals to repair their stuff if it ever broke, or to just replace it entirely without a care if they didn't want to hire a repairman.

There was no need to involve a nobody from Japan who had no official certificate of any kind that could prove his skill at mechanics and electronics.

A Magus hiring him? That would never happen.

Except it did. At that very moment, Shirou was applying his mechanical skills to repair a faulty elevator in the very heart of the Clocktower, inside the dreaded Department of Policies no less.

Normally, the Department of Policies had an extremely traditional stance on technology and its use. One could even say that they had a hatred of all things modern. However, once the department's second-in-command, Mirei Montmorency, had begun to have trouble climbing the stairs every day, that hatred had been suspended in the blink of an eye so an elevator could be installed for her.

It was an old thing from the nineties, very much a dinosaur in the twenty-first century, but it did its job of transporting people up and down the floors of the department perfectly well.

Or at least, it used to do its job perfectly well, until it had broken down several months ago because of an unidentified error. Unable to find a repairman because of some new law that had been introduced recently, the department had left the elevator unrepaired, until Shirou came along and offered his help, back when he'd been in the department for his meeting with the Vice-Director, now two days ago.

Lady Montmorency had gladly accepted, and before long, Shirou was brought to the Department of Policies again, given a quick rundown of the problem and what they wanted him to do about it, and was shown to the elevator to get to work.

It wasn't something he'd done before, fixing elevators, but the tried-and-true tactic of using Structural Analysis to determine how the machine was built, what all separate parts did, how they were supposed to interact with each other, and what part was faulty still proved its merits. It took him less than a minute to find the problem, and from there on, everything went as smoothly as could be expected.

The direct cause for the elevator breaking down had been a problem in the service board. It could no longer register what buttons were pressed by the people inside, meaning it didn't know what floor to go to. As a result, it stubbornly remained on the highest floor of the department, unable to accept further instructions.

The service board was far from the only problem however. Shirou's Structural Analysis revealed that ever since the elevator had been installed, it hadn't been maintained properly. Or rather, it hadn't been maintained at all.

There were weak points in the cables, problems in the wiring, several cogs were close to breaking, and the gears were grinding heavily at some points.

Considering all that, it had actually been pretty lucky that the service board had broken down when it did, because the elevator had been about to turn into a death-trap.

Despite the damage being quite extensive however, fixing it was a simple matter. Shirou replaced a few wires and a few cogs, oiled the gears, hammered the cables straight, and before long, the elevator was running smoothly once more. Another Structural Analysis proved that nothing else was in danger of breaking down any time soon, so Shirou cleared it for use again.

Despite his inexperience, fixing his first elevator turned out to be no problem at all. Nothing to worry about, all well within expectations.

He did however find several traces of Magical Energy scattered all over the elevator shaft. At first, he'd feared that they were hostile spells, aimed at Lady Montmorency perhaps, but once it turned out they were just bits of energy without a purpose, he'd quickly dismissed them as residues from actual spells.

In the end, he'd just dispelled them, as easily as snuffing a candle flame.

With Structural Analysis pointing out that the elevator was in excellent condition again, Shirou decided to take it for a test run.

The button to close the doors worked perfectly fine, and so did the button for the first floor. There was some tension in Shirou's body while the elevator was descending –no one liked it if their work had failed after all—but the machine did its job to perfection.

Someone must have informed Lady Montmorency of that as well, since he found her waiting for him when he returned to the upper floor of the Department.

"You have my deepest gratitude for your work." Lady Montmorency smiled brightly at him when he stepped out of the elevator, tapping her cane against her legs. "As well as the gratitude of these old legs."

"It was no trouble at all." Shirou shook his head with a smile of his own, lightly stretching his arms and legs. "It took me just an hour to find the problem and fix it. That's hardly worth mentioning."

"Hm, nevertheless, you do deserve adequate compensation." Lady Montmorency waved aside his attempt at humbleness. "As I said, I am most grateful for your work, but unfortunately, since the job wasn't for the sake of the entire Clocktower, or even Policies as a whole, I cannot grant you too much in return. Rewarding you too handsomely for a small task would set a wrong precedent."

Shirou completely understood that. If they started giving him incredible rewards for an hour of work, everyone would soon be demanding such compensation from the Department of Policies for small jobs. That was something even the richest person alive couldn't afford.

"I wouldn't know how much repairmen usually charge for such a job." Shirou admitted, rubbing the back of his head in thought. "How does eight hundred pounds sound as a salary for my work?"

It was still an outrageous sum of money for one hour of work, but asking for less might have suggested that Shirou thought the Department of Policies was destitute, so he majorly overcharged them and left room to negotiate it down to a more reasonable price.

Lady Montmorency fell silent for a few moments, blinking owlishly at him, before she started cackling again. Something she seemed to do quite often in his presence.

"Hahaha! Very well, eight thousand pounds. Come with me to my office now and I'll pay you."

"But I said eight hundred pounds!" Shirou protested, but the snickering old woman, who had suddenly increased his pay by an order of magnitude, paid him no mind, turning around to walk towards her office instead.

Left with no choice, Shirou quickly pursued her.

On the way to the woman's office, Shirou tried several times to bring his salary back down to eight hundred pounds –eight thousand was way too much for a small job, it would kill the market of elevator repairmen—but she completely ignored him, acting like he didn't exist.

Eventually, after five minutes of talking to the metaphorical wall, the redhead gave up, resigning himself to be paid ridiculously more than what he was owed.

Since Lady Montmorency didn't seem interested in talking at the moment, Shirou took a minute to look around, noticing they had entered a part of the Department of Policies he hadn't been to before.

That didn't say much though. Aside from his visit to Lorelei Barthomeloi's office two days ago, he'd never been inside the Department, so just about every part of it was new to him.

They passed through numerous hallways, one more richly decorated than the other, and crossed paths with hundreds of Magi, all of them in a hurry towards wherever they needed to go. S

Fortunately, they did not cross paths with Lady Barthomeloi herself. Shirou hadn't seen her since the meeting, and he would like to keep it that way for a good while longer.

She unnerved him. That combination of raw power, perceptiveness, arrogance, and pride would be deadly in anyone, let alone in the most politically powerful woman of the Magus Association, and Shirou did not think he'd made a very good impression on her during their meeting.

He wouldn't change anything about it, aside from the fact he'd accidentally revealed his sensory abilities to her, but the fact remained that he probably hadn't conducted himself as he should have during their talk, and with a woman as traditional and narrowminded as Barthomeloi was rumoured to be, that was dangerous.

Lord El-Melloi had just about pulled his hair out in despair when Shirou told him that he'd almost come to blows with the woman, but he admitted he couldn't really disagree with anything Shirou had said. The Lord hated torture as well after all.

Also, the fact that Shirou had still been alive and conscious to give his report meant that Lady Barthomeloi hadn't truly been insulted by his impudence. She would have made it known otherwise, in a pretty obvious way.

"Say, mister Fujimaru." Lady Montmorency suddenly interrupted his contemplations, turning her head around to look at him. "What was that spell you were using during your repairs, if you don't mind me asking? I noticed you used Magecraft at the beginning of your work."

She had noticed that?

Well, it was hardly something he wanted to keep secret anyway.

"Structural Analysis." Shirou answered, which got him an odd look from the woman. "I used it twice. Once at the beginning to determine how the elevator should work normally and what was wrong with it, and once at the end, to verify the elevator was completely repaired."

"…Structural Analysis." Lady Montmorency repeated after a few beats of silence, placing a finger on her chin in contemplation. "How unexpected."

Her surprise wasn't unwarranted. Structural Analysis was seen by most Magi as a useless spell, and learning it as a waste of time and effort. It only revealed the most rudimentary information about an object, was unacceptably expensive in terms of Magical Energy, and was such a widespread spell that most Magi avoided it purely because of its reputation as a beginner's trick.

It was mostly seen as a kind of introduction for inexperienced Magi, a spell that was easy to learn and easier to cast, but no one ever used it for anything serious.

Had he only possessed Structural Analysis itself, Shirou might have agreed with that. Fortunately for him though, he didn't have such limitations.

When Shirou had first learned the spell from his father, he had immediately and almost accidentally developed his own variant of it. He had named his new spell 'Tracing'; a higher form of Structural Analysis that revealed more information about objects, cost less in Magical Energy, and was undeteriorated, having been mastered by one person only.

Despite the immense convenience of Tracing however, or perhaps because of it, Shirou kept referring to the spell as Structural Analysis. He did not want it to become known that he had basically revolutionised one of the most basic spells of the entire field of Thaumaturgy. That would attract far too much attention.

Yet another secret on a list that already contained far too many of them, including but not limited to him changing into a god, him possessing an outerversal power source that had nothing to do with Magical Energy, his Magic Circuits that were continuously increasing in quality, his divine weapon, his increasing immunity to the influence of Gaia, his ability to use spells similar to the Second and Third True Magics, his family name, and his fundamental rewriting of one of the most basic spells in existence.

If even one of those secrets would come out, well… A Sealing Designation with his name on it had already been haunting his dreams at times, but it would become reality then.

"I must admit I am not entirely sure what to think about you using Magecraft to repair an elevator." Lady Montmorency's voice pulled Shirou back to the present, and he focused again to find her rubbing her chin in thought. "On one hand, it's quite against tradition and the unwritten rules to use Thaumaturgy for such… mundane purposes. On the other hand, it was only a basic spell, you made clever use of it, and you did it in service of the Department of Policies. Hm, best if you don't tell anyone else, just to be on the safe side."

"I only told you because you asked." Shirou nodded, moving his use of Structural Analysis for repair-work onto the list of secrets. "I usually don't volunteer the information."

"Keep that up then." Lady Montmorency agreed, and then she spoke no more of the subject.

It was three minutes later that they arrived at her office. Upon entering, Shirou was surprised to find it was barely any larger than Lord El-Melloi's.

It was certainly much smaller than the offices of Reines and Lady Barthomeloi, and while Shirou understood that Lady Montmorency was lower in rank than the Queen of the Clocktower, certainly she was higher than the heir of a fallen family?

"Is there something off-putting about my office?" Lady Montmorency asked curiously after she'd sat down behind her desk and found Shirou still standing in the door opening. "If you're gaping at it like that?"

"Ah, no." Shirou quickly shook his head, but when Lady Montmorency kept looking imploringly at him, he decided to bring the matter up anyway. "I was just surprised that it is so small."

"Hehehe." The lady guffawed, looking almost proud, though of what, Shirou didn't know. "It is more than sufficient for me. The Barthomeloi offered me a bigger office some time ago, but I refused it."

"May I ask why?"

"You may ask, and I think I might even answer, as you look trustworthy enough." Lady Montmorency's eyes twinkled for a moment, but then she frowned in displeasure. "Quite simply, I considered it an insult that they even offered."

"An insult?"

"I have been working for the Barthomeloi for over eighty years, for five generations of them. In all that time, I have worked myself to the bone. I do not think I am being arrogant when I say I have been vital for their continued hegemony." Lady Montmorency began, her voice a mixture of pride and annoyance. "But even despite all that, despite everything I have done for them, I don't think they have ever expressed some form of sincere gratitude to me. Even a simple 'thank you, Mirei' was too much for any of them."

Lady Montmorency didn't shout, but her voice was noticeably louder than usual.

"And let me tell you, everyone has such a high opinion of the Barthomeloi, but they are lazy! For all of my eighty years here, they never bothered to do more than the absolute bare minimum of work they could get away with, leaving the rest to me. And then they think they can make it all okay by throwing some money and a bigger office at me? That some material rewards that they won't even miss can make up for decades of loyal service? You know, boy, when Stuart Barthomeloi offered me that bigger office as 'a reward for all my services', he didn't even look at me! I was too inferior to look at, like a stain on his shoe!"

"I see." Shirou muttered, easily able to understand how working endlessly without ever being rewarded was very grating, especially if you'd been working for eighty years. "That sounds terrible."

"It is, but I didn't call you here to gripe and complain about my life." The white-haired woman let out a long breath, before smiling at him again, having totally recomposed herself. "I called you here so I could pay you. Let's see, where did I leave my money-box?"

Lady Montmorency reached for something in her desk, outside of Shirou's sight. There was the sound of shuffling and bonking as she moved something up and down, and then she sat back up, holding a big pile of money in her hands.

"Eighteen thousand pounds." She said, holding the obscene amount of cash out towards Shirou. "Please accept it quickly, this heap of paper is rather heavy to my old arms."

Not even bothering to comment on the fact that the sum had again increased by a ridiculous amount –she would just ignore him anyway– Shirou accepted the money, before pretending to put it into his backpack while actually putting it straight into his Vault.

"Thank you for your service." Lady Montmorency inclined her head ever so slightly towards him.

"It was my pleasure." Shirou on the other hand bowed deeply, as he should towards a superior and an elder.

At this point, Shirou probably should have left the office again. He had no more business here, and since he was trying to avoid Lady Barthomeloi, hanging around her right hand's office was probably a very bad idea.

He couldn't though. He couldn't the leave the office.

His hero-instincts were playing up again.

Lady Montmorency might have plastered a perfect smile on her face now, but it was clear from her earlier rant that she had plenty of anger and spite cropped up in her. Anger and spite she was probably desperate to vent to someone.

She needed someone to talk to, and Shirou would be a poor Hero of Justice if he left her on her own now.

As his father had said, a Hero of Justice helped everyone, not just beautiful young women.

"Why don't you just quit if you don't like your job?" He asked, partially to keep the conversation going and partially because he actually wondered why Lady Montmorency didn't simply give someone else the job, someone who didn't care about being appreciated and would in fact be satisfied with material wealth only.

The woman seemed surprised by his question, and after a second, she scoffed, clearly finding the idea to be preposterous.

"I want to, boy. Believe me, I want to, but I cannot quit my job; I haven't found my replacements yet." She replied, angrily tapping her ring against the surface of her desk as she spat out her next words. "If I don't find someone to take over my responsibilities before I leave, the task of finding my successor falls to the current head of the Barthomeloi-family, but with the Barthomeloi being the way they are, they will shirk that responsibility and let the families of the Clocktower decide. I don't believe I need to tell you such a thing would be disastrous."

"…"

Shirou didn't reply. He didn't have to. He could imagine well enough what would happen if some of the most important positions in the Clocktower were up for grabs for the most powerful families to fill with whomever they wanted.

"I am trying to find people to succeed me, but with the way things are going, I will be dead before I can find more than two people, which means three of my functions will be taken over by sycophants and sociopaths." Lady Montmorency now slammed her hand on the table, her expression one of fury. "There are already people after my positions, and each one of them only acts out of self-interest! Let me tell you, boy, I would rather change myself into an undead and keep working for all eternity than to let an Edelfelt, Burgon, or Brishisan gain any more power than they already have!"

She was really starting to gather steam, and Shirou stayed silent for the moment, quietly listening to the Lady's complaints.

"I cannot even try to appeal to the Barthomeloi for help on this, because they will just wave me away and then run off for a month to escape any further 'nagging' from me, as they always do." Lady Montmorency's lips pulled into an outright sneer when the rulers of the Clocktower came up. "They always try to find excuses just so they can spend a little more time on hunting inhuman creatures, which is just about the only thing they actually care about, aside from 'upholding the family's honour'. It's hopeless!"

By now, she was breathing heavily, her face spotted red from agitation and anger.

"Lady Barthomeloi didn't strike me as someone who would treat a request for help from you with such frivolity." Shirou offered hesitantly.

From what he had seen so far, Lorelei Barthomeloi was definitely the kind of person who wouldn't bother with the small details of ruling, but he couldn't imagine her treating a trusted underling with such blatant disrespect as to refuse a small request for help.

Then again, he'd only met her once, so…

"Oh, I never even bothered asking her." Lady Montmorency shook her head, her lips still pursed, even as her anger abated a bit. "After the fourth Barthomeloi once more promised all kinds of things only to run away again without having kept a single one of those promises, I stopped trying to get anything out of them. It was all just false hope they were peddling, and a woman grows tired of that after eighty years."

"Maybe you should try asking her." Shirou ventured, still not quite able to believe Lorelei Barthomeloi would wave her own second-in-command away with a few false promises she had no intention of keeping. "She might positively surprise you."

"If she'd been willing to do something about my situation, she would have done so by now." Lady Montmorency dismissed his idea out of hand, her loathing of the Barthomeloi-family clear in her every word.

"Perhaps she simply doesn't know things are as dire as they are. You never talked with her about it, right? So it could be that she is ignorant of the situation." Shirou tried. That she didn't know about the situation still didn't speak very well of Lady Barthomeloi's work-ethic or involvement with her own department, but at least she wouldn't be actively disinterested like the previous Barthomeloi had apparently been.

Lady Montmorency appeared very dubious of his words, before she heaved a deep sigh of exasperation.

"Very well, boy. I suppose I can try to appeal to a Barthomeloi one more time. If she bails too, however, making promises she won't keep, I don't want to have anything to do with that family anymore. I'll serve them, if only to keep things running smoothly and prevent a sociopath from getting my position, but a servant doing the bare minimum is all I'll be."

Lady Montmorency clearly felt very strongly about this, to the point where she was behaving almost childishly, though Shirou couldn't blame her for it.

If he had worked hard for decades with far too many responsibilities piled onto him, toiling day after day for people who wouldn't lift a finger if he was on fire and refused to do their own part, he probably would have felt spiteful too.

If anything, he was impressed that the elderly lady had lasted so long. He couldn't say what he would have done in her position, but he did know most other people would have given up and walked away a long time ago.

"But here I go again, unloading on a child." Lady Montmorency shook her head once more. "How improper."

"I do not mind." Shirou declared immediately, pressing a hand to his heart. "You've been working hard for decades to keep the Magus Association running as it should. Listening to your problems is the least I can do."

"Are you certain about that? You are talking about eight decades of cropped up salt and spite, you know? That's not nothing." Lady Montmorency wryly cautioned him.

"I'm certain." Shirou confirmed, grabbing a chair and taking a seat on it to face the elderly woman. He had listened to her so far, and he could listen for a while longer. "Unload away."

Lady Montmorency seemed taken aback by his words, and she studied him for a moment, peering at his face with narrowed eyes.

"How old are you, boy?" She suddenly asked.

"I do not know. I guess I'm around fourteen." Shirou replied, not able to remember his true age because of the Great Fire.

"Fourteen." She paid no attention to his admittance of ignorance about his own age but focused on the number only. "Then you are three years younger than I was when I began my job as second-in-command of the Department of Policies."

"Eh?"

Three years older than him? She'd been seventeen when she had started on such a prestigious and challenging job?! She hadn't even been an adult yet when one of the most important positions of the entire Clocktower had been forced upon her?!

Shirou was equal parts impressed and horrified by that information, and had no idea what to say in response. Fortunately, she continued without him having to say anything.

"After the previous second-in-command died, the then head of the Barthomeloi-family, Alphonse Barthomeloi, decided to let the families of the Aristocratic faction choose the successor, since, again, no one in that family seems capable of accepting responsibility of something they deem boring." Lady Montmorency's expression turned sorrowful for a moment. "At the time, I had just lost my father to smallpox, and my mother had died in childbirth years before, meaning I had no family anymore. As such, I accepted the job when it was offered to me."

"They offered it to you even though you were seventeen?" Shirou gawked at her. He knew he often called Magi insane, but now he was genuinely starting to wonder if most of them weren't actually brain addled.

"I was unaffiliated and, if I do say so myself, quite skilled at administration." There was a note of pride in Lady Montmorency's voice, which then immediately disappeared again. "I accepted, grateful to belong somewhere again. I… I suppose I thought I could build myself a new family."

The many decades had given Mirei Montmorency plenty of time to think on her life-choices, and by now, she had a pretty good idea just why she'd followed the path she had.

"Of course, that didn't work out. Alphonse Barthomeloi was as cold, heartless, and uncaring as any Barthomeloi, and while I made plenty of contacts across the Magus Association and I gained respect from my underlings, I never really connected with anyone. Not on a deep level."

"…I'm sorry to hear that."

"Don't be sorry, it's not your fault. You weren't even born yet." She waved away his words, giving him a comforting smile.

The fact she was so comfortable speaking about the matter only made it worse however, and the fact that her story of never finding anyone to love was nothing unique or even unusual in the world, not just the Moonlit World but the mundane one as well, was no consolation.

The world was cruel by nature, and nothing could change that. Not even a fully charged Holy Grail, corrupted or not.

"Oi! Don't look so down." Lady Montmorency scolded him in a playful voice, rapping the surface of her desk with her knuckles to gain his attention. "It's not your problem what happened to me. I have made peace with my lot in life long ago, and I will not have some youngster bawl for me."

"…"

"Oh, good gracious." Lady Montmorency rolled her eyes after he remained morose. "You know what, boy? To cheer you up, I'll share some of the stupid antics the past Barthomeloi got up to. If their dumb mishaps don't make you laugh, nothing will."

"W-Wha?" That certainly snapped Shirou out of his funk, his depressed thoughts immediately disappearing in the face of impending gossip about the Clocktower's Ruling Family. "I-Is that safe?!"

"Hehe, perfectly safe. No one will hear us here." Lady Montmorency grinned at him, looking entirely at ease. "Though it doesn't really matter even if little Lorelei does hear what I have been saying about her family. If I'm fired, I can at least stop working without feeling too guilty, and if I'm executed, I can stop working without feeling guilty at all. That's a win-win as far as I am concerned."

"Are you certain you are willing to risk your life just for some gossiping?!" If Shirou's voice had gotten a little shrill at this point, Lady Montmorency was kind enough not to point it out.

"Yup, no problem at all." The elderly, and apparently suicidal, woman grinned, before stroking her chin in thought. "Let's see, what embarrassing stories do I have for you? Ah yes, to begin with, Alphonse Barthomeloi, the one who was in power when I was appointed to my position. He was quite peculiar about creatures belonging only in their natural habitat."

"You mean he was a racist." Shirou deadpanned. He'd heard excuses like that before: 'I'm not a racist, I just think certain people belong in certain places'.

"Oh, it went further than that, boy. He truly believed living creatures could only survive in their natural habitat." The elderly woman shook her head, holding up a finger to quiet him. "That is for instance why he refused to believe in the existence of zoos. At least, until I took him to one. I don't think I have ever seen a Barthomeloi look so floored as when Alphonse saw a tiger in its enclosure in the London Zoo." She guffawed, but then her smile disappeared again. "It was significantly less funny though when he almost decided to mercy-kill all the animals there, and the visitors along with them."

"…Excuse me?" That was a massive leap in thought, even for a Magus.

"He thought the animals were being tortured, being kept alive while they should have died, separated as they were from the place where they belonged." Lady Montmorency explained, her expression turning a bit grim. "He wasn't really wrong. Back in those days, they put the animals in glass cages barely large enough for them to turn around in. It was nothing but cruelty."

"I see." Shirou mumbled. "Why did he want to kill the visitors though?"

"Oh, he was disgusted by them. He believed they were enjoying the sight of animals being tortured, and he wanted to punish them." The words were spoken through pursed lips, and the old eyes stared off into a distant past far beyond Shirou's reach. "He did always care much more about animals than about people."

Once more, Shirou had no idea what to say.

"Edward Barthomeloi, Alphonse's son, did not inherited his father's love for animals. In fact, I do not think he really cared about anything but his position and his family's power. He did however spend three years living in fear because he thought Gandalf the White was going to usurp his position."

"Gandalf the White?" That was so surprising, Shirou forgot he was supposed to be scared for a moment. "You mean, from that book?"

"The Lord of the Rings." Lady Montmorency nodded, pointing a finger towards the bookcase in the corner, which indeed held the full trilogy of the famous series. "A total hit among a select group of Magi. They couldn't stop talking about that wizard, and I suppose Edward overheard one such conversation."

"But why would that scare him?" Shirou asked, still not understanding why a Barthomeloi would fear a fictional character.

"Because he thought Gandalf the White was real and was about to usurp him." Lady Montmorency tittered in amusement as she revealed that shocking fact. "Magi are granted a colour-designation if they are particularly impressive or feared, you see, like the Red or the Blue. I suppose 'the White' was enough for poor Edward to believe he would have to fight a Sorcerer to keep his position."

That was… odd.

To say the least.

"Moving on. After Edward, there was Jeal Barthomeloi, and Jeal was perhaps the coldest person I have ever had the displeasure of meeting. Nothing could move him; nothing could surprise him. In life, he was pretty much the perfect Barthomeloi." Her tone indicated quite clearly that he had also been the Barthomeloi she had hated the most, and Shirou gripped the handholds of his chair tightly in anticipation when a vicious light entered her eyes. "All of that perfection was worthless however when he and his team were killed trying to abduct a poor mundane girl for his research. They were all shot and killed by a passing hunter, who'd just returned from a pheasant-hunt."

"Wait, what?!" Shirou's eyes boggled at that last reveal. "Killed by a hunter?"

"Quite humiliating, isn't it?" Lady Montmorency's eyes shone in delight as she recounted the tale. "I guess Jeal simply had no answer for the hunter's gun. It was hilarious, and though the Barthomeloi immediately covered it all up, I still remember everything that happened that day. Got a bullet right between his stupid eyes, that boy."

Shirou didn't reply, still stuck at the fact that a Barthomeloi had been killed by a passing hunter. What a stupid way to die. Though the man had probably deserved it, considering he'd tried to abduct someone and all.

"Stuart Barthomeloi was supposed to redeem his father, who had ruled for a mere five years before being killed. I suppose Stuart was okay, though his go-to solution for every problem he encountered seemed to be to throw money at it. I don't know how deep the pockets of the Barthomeloi-family are, but since they have become much more prudent with their money in recent years, I guess Stuart did more damage to their treasury than they want others to know."

By now, Shirou did not even try coming up with an answer anymore. Lady Montmorency had promised his opinion of the Barthomeloi-family would go down after he heard her stories, and she'd been completely correct.

"Lastly, there is little Lorelei." Lady Montmorency finished, arriving at the current Vice-Director of the Clocktower. "She's been pretty good so far. Actually does some work every now and then. In terms of embarrassing stories, I don't have a lot to offer on her. There's the fact that she is always trying to escape marriage talks by pulling the most ridiculous stunts, by Barthomeloi-standards of course, and that she is very naïve on the subject of procreation and everything involved, but that's more cute than really embarrassing."

"Right, right." Shirou was barely registering what the woman said anymore, he was too overwhelmed at this point. He had started the day thinking all he had to do was repair an elevator, but now he was gossiping about the Barthomeloi with the most important woman in the entire Clocktower.

Funny, how things could go.

"Ah, how nice to share all these things with someone for once." Lady Montmorency reclined in her chair, folding her hands behind her head, a satisfied smile on her face. "I've been sitting on those stories for who knows how long, and I must say, it is some rather nice pay-back to spread them around a bit. Perhaps I should share them with more people."

"You should probably be careful with that!" Shirou stressed, wringing his hands in nervousness.

"It'll be fine." Lady Montmorency waved his concerns away, before looking at him with a lopsided smile. "But perhaps you'll feel better if I praised little Lorelei for a bit? To balance things out?"

"I don't think 'balancing things out' is a term that can be applied to this situation-"

"I suppose she is the most powerful of all Barthomeloi so far." Lady Montmorency didn't seem to have heard him at all, or at least pretended not to. "And I mean by a long shot. It's ridiculous how powerful she is. She is also driven, actually tries to help me out here and there, leads the Aristocratic Faction from time to time, and I have heard through certain sources that she has a great rear."

"W-What are you talking about?"

"You didn't notice? Hm, I thought most men would look at such things immediately." The elderly lady mused, giving him a surprised look. "I mean her bottom. I have heard that she has a great ass."

Shirou had no idea how to reply to that.

Yes, his first thought upon seeing Lorelei Barthomeloi was that she was gorgeous, and yes, thinking back on when she had turned away from him for a moment, he had to admit she did have a great rear, but how was that relevant? Why were they even talking about that?

Was she just messing with him right now?

"I suppose you'll just have to check for yourself when you meet her again." Lady Montmorency added whimsically, her expression still completely serious, save for the twitching corners of her mouth and the laugh-wrinkles that were starting to appear in the corners of her eyes. "For now, you are dismissed. Thank you for making my day great again."

It was an abrupt dismissal, very similar to Lorelei Barthomeloi's dismissal, but Shirou didn't complain. He was already close to having a nervous breakdown, and he had a pretty good idea of why she wanted him to leave.

Indeed, when he left the office, the first thing he heard from inside was a peal of laughter in Lady Montmorency's voice.

She had really been messing with him.

Shirou shook his head with a sigh, but, even though his anxiousness almost made him sick to the stomach, he still couldn't keep a smile off his face.

At least she was in a better mood again.

That was worth a lot.

---

"So let me get this straight." Waver said, rubbing his forehead with the palm of his hand to desperately try and stave off the headache that wouldn't be stopped anymore merely by pinching the bridge of his nose. "Those 'unusual' Dead Apostles you have been fighting over the past months, the ones that behave erratically and dangerously, were not only created from mundane people, something that is supposed to be impossible, but they were created deliberately for some purpose, and you suspect the Alva-family, one of the most favoured underlings of the Meluastea-family, were the ones responsible?"

"Yes, sir." Bazett nodded, standing at attention with her back straight. "That is what the evidence points towards, sir."

"Certainly, it is not that hard to believe?" Caren Ortensia smiled sweetly from behind Bazett, looking innocent and pure in her nun-robes, though Waver wasn't fooled. She had the same aura around her as Melvin and Reines, and thus likely the same personality, if perhaps slightly less malicious. "As a Magus yourself, you must admit that it does sound like something Magi would do."

"It does." Waver agreed with her assessment, before holding up a finger when Bazett made to speak again. "But the same goes for just about every amoral act or conspiracy you can think of. Gathering eight hundred eighty-eight thousand eight hundred eighty-eight people and sacrificing them all to summon some kind of devil also sounds like something a Magus would do. That doesn't mean they are actually doing something of the sort now."

"But we have evidence." Bazett protested in a small voice, realising that what they had was flimsy at best.

"You do." Waver agreed again, giving up on trying to rub the headache away, as it had come through in force now. "Which is why I'll believe you. I'll do my best to investigate this matter and try to find conclusive proof to present to the right people."

"You will?" Bazett perked up at his words, smiling brightly at him when he nodded. "I knew I could count on you, Lord El-Melloi!"

"I figured. You keep coming to me with the most difficult jobs you can find after all." Waver huffed, crossing his arms in displeasure.

"Hehe, I suppose I do always come to you." Bazett rubbed the back of her head in embarrassment as she admitted it, laughing sheepishly, before she slumped in depression. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I would have done the same in your position." Waver didn't know anyone else Bazett and Ortensia could have gone to with this either. Everyone else he knew was either too evil or too uncaring to want to deal with this, or not powerful enough to deal with it even if they wanted to. "I just have to think about what we're going to do now."

To put it shortly, this situation was an absolute disaster.

Dead Apostles being created from mundane people was a nightmare scenario. The sort of event every Magus knew could potentially happen one day but didn't want to think about because it was too terrible to contemplate.

It was already bad enough that the newly formed 'mundane Apostles' knew nothing about the Moonlit World and were completely unaware of what was happening to them, making them lash out in unpredictable ways and making them entirely fearless of Enforcers or Executors as they rampaged across the globe, but the fact that they could in turn create even more new Dead Apostles was far worse.

Normally, mundane people who were bitten by a Dead Apostle did not become Apostles themselves. It was only from Magi, or other people with a heightened connection to the Moonlit World, such as people with an inhuman bloodline, unusually active Magic Circuits, or Mystic Eyes, that new Apostles were born. Only they had the required Magical Energy to first become a Ghoul and then a fully-fledged Apostle. Mundane people didn't.

This was extremely fortunate. While the armies of zombies created from mundane people were certainly a nuisance, as well as a tragedy every time they came into existence, they at least couldn't generate new Apostles, keeping the population of true Dead Apostles relatively small.

That would all change however if mundane people could become true Apostles as well. If every single bite generated a new Apostle, then the world would soon become flooded with the descendants of the Crimson Moon. The Enforcers and Executors would be completely unable to stop the tide.

It would be a catastrophe of unprecedented levels, and the end of the world as they knew it. The Crimson Moon would have succeeded at its task to destroy humanity despite its defeat at the Kaleidoscope's hands.

And all that because some Magi couldn't resist tampering with one of the most dangerous creatures in existence.

What were they even hoping to achieve with all this?!

No, never mind. Waver didn't even want to know what they were thinking. They might infect him with their insanity. He was just going to do his utmost to ensure that they died, and that their research was annihilated beyond any hope of recovery.

He was normally not a violent man, and he preferred to capture his opponents whenever he could rather than killing them, but this time was different.

These Magi had to be destroyed, together with everything they had ever achieved or created. He would catch these amoral monsters, and put a stop to their horrendous practices.

"First of all, I must ask you a question." Waver spoke up again, directing Bazett and Ortensia towards a pair of chairs. "To ascertain the gravity of the situation before I start taking steps."

"We will answer to the best of our ability, my lord." Bazett nodded immediately, plopping down on the chair that she'd pretty much claimed for herself over the past years, while Caren gracefully lowered herself into a seat next to the Enforcer.

"Of all the Apostles who have been reported to behave oddly, are there any still alive?" Waver asked, considering that to be the most important matter.

"No." Bazett's answer was resolute. "Every single one of them has been annihilated."

"Often at the cost of many lives." Caren's smile turned sad at this bit of news, before it turned bright again. "But Lord Crown confirmed that they are all dead now, so it wasn't for nothing."

"Good. Then there is no risk of this… let's call it a 'mutated Curse', spreading any further." Waver sighed in relief. "At least until the Magi responsible for its creation unleash another batch of their abominations."

"You consider that likely?" Bazett asked cautiously.

"The fact that they did it once means they can very well do it twice." Waver didn't like it any more than the women, but he couldn't deny such a basic fact. "As such, we have to act fast, and for that, I need help."

"We are at your disposal." Bazett proclaimed immediately. "And Kayla, an Enforcer I worked together with, is recruiting people in the Church."

"Is she? Excellent." That was good news. Every extra person on their side was a massive boon, whether they were from the Magus Association, the Church, or anywhere else. "But we'll need more support in the Clocktower too if we're to take on the Alva-family and whoever else is involved with this. Preferably people with some serious influence in the Magus Association."

Waver was merely the figurehead of a fallen family. There was no way he'd be able to bring about the fall of the Alva-family and their allies on his own.

"We cannot let this information get out." Ortensia reminded him gently, coyly brushing a lock of hair behind her ear. "There is no telling what the Magi and the Church will do in response to hearing about mundane people becoming Apostles. We might end up with many more Magi pursuing this horrible line of research, or even with a rekindling of the war between the Church and the Magus Association."

"You don't have to tell me that." Waver huffed, knowing perfectly well that dropping such a bomb could have absolutely catastrophic consequences. "I'll ensure only those who I trust completely will hear of this matter."

People like Fujimaru, Grey, Svin, and Flat for starters, though he might be able to add some other names to that list as well.

Perhaps he could even make an appeal to Mirei Montmorency and Lorelei Barthomeloi? They too had a vested interest in peace and calm both inside and outside of the Clocktower, and they brought a whole lot of power with them, both political and magical.

Waver liked to think he got along well enough with Lady Montmorency that she would at least hear him out on the matter, and while he wasn't sure Barthomeloi would listen to him, Montmorency would probably be able to get through to her if he couldn't.

It wasn't something he would normally consider, going directly to the top brass, but this situation was sufficiently dire that he had to pull out the big guns immediately, lest thousands would perish over the coming months and perhaps millions over the coming years.

It would make the Black Plague look mild in comparison.

"McRemitz, do you have anyone among the Enforcers whom you would trust with this matter?" He addressed Bazett again.

"I do know a few people who know when to keep their mouths shut, and who are morally good enough to care about stopping this plague." Bazett nodded, her face tense as she dug into her memory.

"Don't tell them immediately." Waver advised her, painfully aware of how seemingly trustworthy people might not be so trustworthy anymore once great amounts of pressure were applied to them. "Scout them out first, and gently introduce them to the topic. Make sure to only inform them once you are certain of their trustworthiness."

"Yes, sir." Bazett nodded sharply, saluting again.

"I am not your commanding officer, Bazett, there is no need to salute me." Waver told her for what felt like the thousandth time, shaking his head at the woman's strange actions.

"Yes, sir."

"Is there anything I can do?" Ortensia spoke up after Waver had glared at the redhead for a few moments, looking thoroughly amused at the byplay. "I am not a great talent at fighting, but I am observant, and I do have a talent for interrogating people."

"No, I don't believe there is anything yet." Waver shook his head, before he asked a question that had been bothering him for a while. "By the way, miss Ortensia, what exactly is the basis for you to be here at the Clocktower?"

"I don't understand your question." The white-haired girl peered curiously at him. "I am here because of the mundane Dead Apostles."

"Yes, that is the actual reason." Waver nodded. "But I rather doubt it is the reason you gave to the Church. What did you tell them?"

"I told Caren's superior that she would join me because she wanted to see the Clocktower." Bazett was the one who responded instead of Ortensia. "It was the best I could come up with on such short notice."

"Then we'll have to come up with something better now." Waver would rather not end up on some kind of list of people who'd poached the Church's employees after all. "Maybe I can do something with an exchange of personnel-"

"You don't need to go to such lengths to explain away my sudden decision to stay here." Ortensia interrupted. "Nor do you need to put in much effort to convince the Church to let me work in the Clocktower for a while. I dare say they'll be glad to be rid of me, and will happily agree with any reason you put forth."

"They will?" Bazett looked flummoxed by her words. "How so?"

"Let's just say that I am not exactly popular in the Church." Ortensia looked way too serene for the uncomfortable subject, but that appeared to be her default state of being. "If you decided to keep me here at the Clocktower forever, they would send you a thousand letters of gratitude."

The silence that followed that statement was deafening in its intensity, as the other two people present had no idea of how to react to the blasé remark.

"…Be that as it may," Waver began slowly after the tense silence had dragged on for long enough. "I will still have to fabricate something. While the Church might not mind you being away, it will still make many people suspicious if an agent of the Church hangs out here in the Clocktower seemingly without a reason."

"You should do what you consider to be best." Ortensia didn't agree or disagree, and Waver took that as permission to continue.

"Who was your contact in the Church again?"

"Kayla. I don't know her last name." Bazett answered promptly, apparently eager to move on from the unpleasant topic of Ortensia's lacking popularity at home. "If you want to find her, she said she would speak to bishop Dilo."

"Ah, bishop Dilo. I know him." Waver smiled, sitting up in his chair when the man was mentioned.

Bishop Dilo was an old friend of Waver's, back from before the Grail War. They'd had a strange first meeting, involving three goats, two bicycles, a large bucket full of red paint, six very well-behaved pet rats, and a particularly excellent meal at a local restaurant, and they had been friends ever since.

"I'll send him a letter with a request to call me at his earliest convenience." He continued. "I'll also start recruiting allies as soon as possible, and I'll have my agents start looking into the Alva-family."

"Is there anything we can do?" Bazett gestured to herself and Ortensia. "Other than trying to recruit Enforcers?"

"Not at the moment." Waver denied their offer. "Right now, caution and secrecy are vital. Until we are able to strike, we must not let our opponents know that we even suspect something is amiss. That means we need to have as few people as possible moving at a time. For now, just behave normally and try to get some feelers out for possible allies. I'll call you if I have need of you."

"Yes, Lord El-Melloi!" Bazett saluted yet again, and Waver's despondent sigh elicited a giggle from Ortensia.

The white-haired woman really was just like Melvin and Flat.

The fact that she looked adorable made the teasing a little more bearable, but Waver was rather sure she'd be getting on his nerves sooner or later as well.

---

The galaxy really was a big place.

That was the only conclusion Shirou could draw as he read the small booklet that Nasu had provided him with.

The booklet contained a succinct summary of the history of the race that was known as 'The Watchers'. They were one of the oldest races of the universe, and also one of the most powerful. They were immortal, beyond the concepts of Life and Death. They could watch entire universes at once and remember everything that had ever taken place inside one. To them, Reality was nothing but clay to mould and mend as they desired. It wouldn't be inaccurate to refer to them as 'alien gods'.

Shirou had always believed that the Crimson Moon had been a scary and incredibly powerful being. The Watchers however could erase that thing from existence with a mere thought.

And not so long ago, one of them had visited him, and presented him with the very booklet he was reading now.

The Watcher, Nasu, had told Shirou to read and memorise the booklet before the end of the holiday, because the creature would then visit Shirou again to really start discussing things in earnest, and he wanted the redhead to at least have some idea of what a Watcher was.

So far, Shirou had done his best to think about that Alien as little as possible –it wouldn't do his sanity any good if he lingered too long on the idea that there were countless beings out there that could destroy his world without even noticing they did so—but he had nevertheless taken the booklet with him to London in order to read it.

It was best to do what the polite alien god told you to do, no matter what other things you might have in your agenda or what reservations you had about learning too much about the universe.

Since the booklet was very small however, it took him barely an hour to finish it. He'd probably read it several more times, just to be sure it was all in his memory, but for now, he closed it and threw it back into the Vault.

After all, there was something far more important that Shirou needed to focus on. A project that was far more pressing than some nebulous stuff that might happen in the future. A project far more important than an alien god even.

A project that he hadn't made any progress in whatsoever, even after close to two weeks at the Clocktower. He had managed to achieve countless other things, up to and including a meeting with the Vice-Director herself, yet so far, he had failed to achieve his most important objective.

He had still not saved his little sister, Illyasviel von Einzbern, from the claws of her 'family'.

It was for her that everything else, even alien gods and Vice-Directors and who knows what else, was regulated to a backseat for. She took precedence over all other things, save for the direst of happenings.

Yet saving her was without a doubt the most difficult thing he'd ever tried to do.

For years, Shirou had studied the Einzbern-family, hired mercenaries to observe their stronghold, researched their defences, and made profiles of every single person in that family. He had gathered a wealth of information and his father had gathered even more before him.

With all that intel and the power that Shirou had received from Mjolnir, it should have been easy for him to invade the Einzbern-castle and get Illya out of there.

A breeze. A walk in the park. Easy as pie.

But nothing was less true.

Yes, storming the castle and hoping for the best would indeed be easy enough for him. The redhead had no doubt he could get in at any time he wanted and that he would have little trouble holding off even the best that the Einzbern could throw at him.

The problem was that doing so wouldn't serve his purpose.

Yes, he could invade the castle and break through all Bounded Fields and slap the Magi and Homunculi aside, but then what?

He didn't know where Illya's room was. He didn't know where to even begin searching for her inside that gigantic castle, a place where even his improved senses would need time to track someone down.

The Einzbern wouldn't give him that time though. The moment Shirou broke into their castle, they would move to move to secure Illya, one of their most valuable assets. They would take her away and hide her, and Shirou would never be able to find her again.

And that was only the beginning of his troubles. Even if everything went perfectly and he did succeed at finding her in time, he would first have to convince her to come with him, and that might be extremely difficult as well.

Shirou didn't harbour any illusions about Illya being glad to see him. He had some of Kiritsugu's old possessions stored away in his Vault to prove he really was Emiya Shirou, but convincing her of his identity would be the easy part. It would be far more difficult to convince her of his good intentions. He was the one who'd grown up with their father after all, while she had been left to her fate, with a family that was only too happy to do unspeakable things to her in the name of making her better suited to finally claim that thrice-be-damned cup that Kiritsugu had abandoned her for and that had killed her mother.

In her view, Shirou was nothing but a thief, a usurper of her rightful place, and he wouldn't be surprised if she didn't want anything to do with him, no matter how much of Kiritsugu's stuff he'd brought with him.

He had spent many days thinking on that matter over the years, but he still didn't know how he would deal with her anger and hate. His options basically boiled down to respecting her wishes and leaving again without taking her with him if she so demanded, trying to persuade her to come with him despite her dislike of him, or to just grab her, throw her into the Vault, and deal with the consequences later.

The first option was of course not an option at all. There was no way he was going to leave her behind in the claws of the Einzbern, even if he hadn't promised his father to get her out of there.

It was much harder to choose between options two and three however. While Shirou would prefer calmly talking with her to convince her to come with him peacefully and without a fuss, he was realistic enough to understand he wouldn't have the time to do that in the middle of the Einzbern castle after smashing through their defences.

On the other hand, the third option wasn't great either. Disregarding her wishes and basically kidnapping her without permission was a terrible thing to do, and would likely make her distrust him for a very long time, if not forever.

Ultimately, even after much thought, Shirou hadn't managed to think of much more than a 'I'll cross that bridge when I come to it'-approach, which was of course completely underwhelming as far as plans went.

And then, even in the event that everything went perfectly, that he invaded the castle without trouble, convinced Illya to come with him in less than a minute, and then made it back out safely, the matter would still be far from over.

Getting Illya out of her prison in such a flashy way would ensure that the Einzbern would hunt them down for the rest of their lives. It would force her to hide behind Bounded Fields and Wards forever, essentially trading one prison for another.

No, a direct assault on the Einzbern-castle was not a viable option.

Fortunately, it wasn't the only one he had.

Shirou himself far preferred the concept of a more subtle invasion, sneaking inside unseen and remaining hidden all the way until he'd found Illya.

Then, when he had found her and convinced her to come with him –which he then would have more time for, considering the Einzbern wouldn't know he was present— he would put her into the Vault, which was the safest place available for her, and he would leave immediately, taking care to be as stealthy as when he entered.

Ideally, the Einzbern wouldn't notice her missing until several hours had passed. By then, he would be halfway back to London, with no one any the wiser about what he'd been up to. All that was left at that point was keeping Illya with him for the rest of the time he'd spend in the Clocktower, and then performing Nasu's ritual on her to make her into a real girl.

No Pinocchio-reference intended.

If he had to, he could even cause a massive distraction to one side of the castle, and then, while everyone was distracted, sneak in from another direction.

He would have to carefully choose the kind of distraction he was going to use though, to ensure the Einzbern didn't think they were under attack, because then they would take Illya away again.

Maybe he could create something like the Northern Lights? A massive display of colour in the sky? It would certainly be attention grabbing, yet wouldn't give the impression of an attack.

Whatever plan he would end up executing though, he needed more information on the Einzbern-castle first. That was why he'd been so happy to go to London with a perfectly legitimate reason. From inside the Clocktower, where he now had full right to be, he'd be able to sneak over to Germany once in a while to thoroughly scout out the place.

Also, the Clocktower was the perfect place to lie low after he'd freed Illya. The Einzbern would never think to search for him there, and even if they did, it would be easy enough to avoid them.

Yes, he was in a perfect position to begin scouting. Now he just needed to find the time to actually go to Germany.

As flying from London to Germany alone would take him the better part of a night, a full scouting-mission would likely take him at least a full day, maybe two. That was an awfully long time to be absent from his classes, which meant he'd have to inform Lord El-Melloi in advance, to avoid difficult questions.

Furthermore, after all of the recent happenings, many people were watching him closely. If he disappeared for two days, they too might get suspicious, and if there was anything Shirou didn't need at the moment, it was Magi being suspicious about him.

Most likely, he'd have to ask Lord El-Melloi for assistance with getting those people off his back.

Shirou only just suppressed the urge to sigh deeply as he realised just how much he still had to do before he could even begin the rescue-operation. Kiritsugu had always said he hated rescue-missions the most, even above escort missions, and Shirou was starting to understand why.

He wasn't going to be discouraged though. No matter what might come his way, he was definitely going to save Illya before the end of the summer.

That was an oath.

---

The Catholic Church was a massive organisation of faith, one that had more than a billion members around the globe and had existed in some form for over two millennia.

For most of that time, it had been an insanely powerful organisation, practically ruling Europe by word, fire, and sword. It had been the keeper of knowledge, and a source of comfort and stability for countless people throughout the ages.

It was from the Faith that great heroes had risen, such as Joan of Arc, Richard Lionheart, Vlad Dracul, Saint George, and Saint Martha. It was the Faith that inspired great works of wonder, it was the Faith that had shaped European history, and it was the Faith that protected humanity against the monsters in the dark.

In recent times, most of these functions had disappeared. There hadn't been a great hero in the church's ranks for generations, very few great works had been built, and the power to shape history had been taken from it long ago. The only great task still left to it was the protection of mankind against the beasts in the shadows.

Witches, warlocks, monsters, demons, and other creatures still roamed the Earth and formed a threat to God's flock, preying on humanity with wild abandon.

There was no way a dutiful Pope could allow that to happen, not now and not ever. That was why, over a thousand years ago, the leaders of the Catholic Church had come together and decided to implement an Eighth Sacrament, a Grace that did not Exist.

This Sacrament, this power separated from the public face of the Church, was in essence a duty bestowed upon a chosen few. A duty to protect humanity by culling those that would prey upon it.

These chosen few became known as the Burial Agency, the secret task force charged with destroying the heresies that should not exist in God's world. The blades of the church. The secret army that no one knew about. One of the last vestiges of the Church's worldly power in the twenty-first century.

The Burial Agency had continued to exist through the centuries and entered the second millennium since Christ's birth as one of the most powerful organisations in the world, rivalled only by the Magus Association.

The highest leader of the Agency was the Pope himself, but as it was considered improper for God's representative on Earth to busy himself with foul heresies, the task of actually leading the Burial Agency fell to several cardinals, who each had several bishops under them.

One of these bishops was bishop Dilo, a former Exorcist who had distinguished himself with his impeccable record and extraordinary leadership abilities.

A kind, if stern man, bishop Dilo always worked hard to find the least bloody solution for any problem that presented itself to him. He was a man of great character, with little appreciation for political games, and trustworthy to a fault, which was exactly why Kayla came to him for aid with the issue of the mundane Apostles.

"Bishop Dilo." Kayla spoke respectfully when she entered the old man's personal shrine, having been allowed passage by the guards. "I have returned from my mission. The Apostle has been terminated successfully and his thralls have been put to rest."

"I am glad to hear it." The grey-haired bishop responded in a soft, peaceful voice, not turning around from where he sat on his knees, his head bowed towards a statue of Christ on the Cross that had been hewn from the whitest of marble. "But please, wait a moment longer while I finish my prayer."

"Of course." Kayla immediately lowered her voice to barely a whisper, her cheeks burning in shame for so crudely disturbing the atmosphere and interrupting the bishop's connection with the Lord. How could she have missed that he was still praying?!

On the outside, she shut her mouth and bowed her head deferentially. On the inside however, she swore she was going to make the man who told her she could safely enter the shrine pay for lying to her.

How dare he make her embarrass herself in front of the bishop?!

"Please control those malicious and violent intentions that are rolling off you." The bishop remarked in an amused voice. "Such feelings are hardly appropriate inside a house of God."

…Kayla buried her face in her hands, wishing someone would strike her down immediately.

With the peace and quiet restored, bishop Dilo finished his prayer a few seconds later, and he rose from his position, striking a cross as he did so.

Then he turned around.

Gustavus Dilo was one of the oldest bishops of the entire Church, but if one were to look at him, they would never be able to determine that from his appearance alone.

His pepper-and-salt coloured hair and his many wrinkles did convey the fact that he wasn't the youngest anymore, but the bright spark of vitality in his eyes, the ease of movement that allowed him to smoothly rise from a kneeling position without using his hands, and the outline of a fairly muscled figure under the robes suggested a man who was only just entering his golden years.

Not that anyone actually knew how old he really was. In fact, his true age had long been a subject of debate inside the Burial Agency. Everyone knew that he was well above retirement age, but opinions varied greatly on how many years he was above it.

The bishop himself only laughed when people tried to ask him about his age, refusing to answer the question, and the other bishops, the cardinals, and even the Pope had been sworn to secrecy by him. Action-reports and other documentation from the bishop's past, secured after countless hours of searching, had allowed his followers to determine he had to be at least eighty, but that was the limit of everyone's knowledge.

"Forgive me for disturbing your prayer, bishop." Kayla, who had participated in the search for the man's true age on several occasions, bowed deeply in apology. "I believed you were finished already. I do not know why your guards let me enter your sanctuary while you were still engaged with the Lord."

"They too believed I had finished already. The fault is mine. I prayed a bit longer than normal today, for all those souls that were lost over the past months." Bishop Dilo's voice was solemn, and when Kayla rose from her bow after an appropriate amount of time, she could see the sadness in his eyes. "So many have been lost recently. So many have fallen prey to the Crimson Moon's abominations. Believer and unbeliever alike have suffered from this abominable curse that has been put on us by that foulest of creatures. Kayla, you did well in ending the threat for now."

"Yes." Kayla tried not to show how giddy she was about being complimented by her superior, though she was rather sure she was failing at it. Remembering what she wanted to discuss with the man sobered her up quickly however. "But I bring grievous news nonetheless."

"Oh?" The bishop, undoubtedly having noticed her sudden mood swing, motioned for her to continue.

"We are almost certain that these irregular Dead Apostles had been created from mundane people."

From one moment to the next, a massive pressure seemed to descend upon the shrine, as all traces of amusement and warmth disappeared from the bishop's expression, making place for a cold neutrality.

Kayla weathered it well enough, but any normal person would be gasping for breath under the intensity of bishop Dilo's focus, as his eyes blazed and his hands clenched so tightly his knuckles cracked audibly.

"Continue." He ordered, and Kayla obeyed promptly.

She told him about the strange, erratic behaviour of the Apostles that had cropped up over the past months. She recounted their completely illogical actions that had resulted in thousands of casualties and had attracted teams of Enforcers and teams of Executors to slay them, something normal Apostles would have tried to prevent at any cost.

Kayla also recounted the destruction of the most recent Apostle by the small taskforce she had been a part of, as well as the comics that Caren Ortensia had found in the monster's hideout.

Lastly, she told him about unearthing the connection with the Alva, a Magus-family that had dabbled in Dead Apostle research before and probably had very little scruples about doing it again.

As she spoke, bishop Dilo's features became tighter and tighter, and by the end of it, he looked utterly furious.

"Magi." He rumbled in an extremely displeased tone. "Bane of the Earth. Always making things more difficult than they need to be. Would that they had all been taken already by their accursed and treacherous crafts."

"They truly are only interested in their research." Kayla nodded, no fonder of the users of Thaumaturgy than her superior was. "So incredibly selfish."

"No, Kayla, selfishness is not the problem here. Selfishness is a malady all humans are afflicted with." Bishop Dilo shook his head in agitation, his teeth gritted in righteous fury. "But Magi… What they partake in is not just mere selfishness. They deal almost exclusively in evil and foulness. If it isn't tearing people apart for some inane reason, it's creating horrible curses, or making some ritual that requires a thousand people as sacrifice, or creating Dead Apostles from mundane people, as you have now told me."

"It boggles the mind." Kayla didn't have much experience with Magi –her job was hunting and killing Dead Apostles, rogue Magi were left to other teams—but even she knew how foul they could be.

"It does. It truly boggles the mind." The bishop proclaimed, throwing his arms wide in agitation. "At times, I wonder why the Devil doesn't take them all-"

He suddenly stopped.

Bishop Dilo fell silent, his angry words cut off, as he looked at the image of Christ, hung on the back wall of his sanctuary.

Kayla wasn't sure what happened, but the bishop's mood seemed to make an incredible shift. His features relaxed, his jaw unclenched, and his hands fell open again. The pressure in the room lifted accordingly.

"But… at times, if you look well enough, you can find a Magus who is noble of heart, and capable of much good." He amended his earlier words in a soft voice. "It makes me wonder what could have been achieved if Magi were noble more often, and if the cardinals of old hadn't been forced to declare them heretics. Might we be staunch allies in such an event?"

Kayla wisely kept her mouth shut. She was just a lowly Executor; it wasn't her place to comment on decisions made by cardinals from long ago.

"But we have strayed from the matter at hand." The bishop shook his head to stop himself from wool gathering, before looking back at Kayla. "If mundane people can be changed into Dead Apostles, we must act at once to strangle this problem in the cradle, or we will soon face a calamity-level threat that far surpasses anything else in the modern world, save perhaps for Primate Murder, ORT, and the Crimson Moon."

Unbeknownst to the bishop or the Executor, the elderly man had arrived at the same conclusion as Waver. He too immediately saw the repercussions of leaving things as they were, and he too saw the importance of destroying the problem before it could get out of hand.

"We cannot allow that to happen. All Apostles created from mundane people must be destroyed and the Alva-family, and whoever else is behind all this, must be crushed swiftly and decisively." A fire had ignited in the old eyes, a fire that promised doom for all those that opposed the Will of the Church, a fire that hadn't been lit in years yet burned as brightly as in the days that he'd been an Exorcist fighting demonic possessions. "I shall assemble a task force, with only the most skilled individuals."

"Honoured bishop, I urge you to be cautious about who you will inform of this matter. We felt it would be prudent not to spread this knowledge too far." Kayla cautioned him.

"Of course." He agreed without pause, giving a sharp nod to her warning. "There are many of my respected colleagues who would see this as nothing but an opportunity to increase their rank and standing, and wouldn't qualm to ruthlessly exploit the chaos this is going to cause. We cannot tell them about this extremely sensitive matter, or even give them a hint of what is happening."

"Yes, that is what we thought as well." Kayla concurred. "Honoured bishop. Forgive my impertinence, but I request to be a part of the team that will act in your name to combat this new threat."

"I already assumed you would. You were the first name on my list." Bishop Dilo smiled at her, before straightening up and bringing his expression back to a stern frown. "Executor Kayla, I entrust you with the task of ending the threat of the mundane Apostles. To this end, I charge you with tracking and destroying all these unusual monsters, as well as wiping out those responsible for this threat's existence. Can I count on your best performance?"

"You can." Kayla didn't hesitate for a moment in her reply, a fire of her own igniting in her breast. "I will destroy this threat or perish in the attempt."

"And I shall of course assist you in any way I can. I shall tell Ahmed to cancel all my appointments for the coming weeks, except for the most important. I shall also await a message from these Magus-friends of yours."

"I wouldn't call them friends exactly." Kayla muttered, too soft for the bishop to hear, before she spoke up again. "According to McRemitz, a certain Lord El-Melloi the Second would be leading the operation on their end, if they could convince him of it."

"Waver?" There was clear surprise in the bishop's tone, and his tone became noticeably warmer as he continued. "Then there is little to worry about. Waver is not someone who will stand aside and do nothing while people are in danger. He is one of the few Magi in the world who have an actual sense of responsibility."

"I'll… take your word for it." Kayla herself had never heard of this Lord El-Melloi the Second before, but the bishop clearly had, and that was enough for her. "Shall I contact him?"

"There is no need. I am certain that Waver will be making contact with me sooner rather than later." The bishop sounded utterly certain of that. "That boy is nothing if not efficient-"

"Honourable bishop!" The elderly man was interrupted when one of his aides stormed into the shrine. It was one of the aides that had let Kayla in earlier while the bishop was still in prayer, and he was now thus on the receiving end of a withering glare. "You have an urgent message from Lord El-Melloi, who requests you call him back immediately."

There was a beat of silence in the shrine, before the blonde Executor turned towards her superior.

"You truly do know him well." She remarked.

"After what we've been through together, it would be strange if I didn't." The bishop mused idly. "Those pet-rats really were clever little buggers."

---

Sitting in class and listening to Lord El-Melloi's teaching had been interesting at first.

It was still interesting, Shirou didn't want to cast any doubt over that. The man was and remained an excellent teacher, who effortlessly captured the attention of the entire hall as he quickly and concisely relayed whatever parts of his vast knowledge he wanted to bestow upon them.

Through no fault of Lord El-Melloi however, Shirou had come to see his lessons as a waste of time and effort. Time and effort that could have been better spent on preparing to rescue Illya.

There still was so much he had to do, so much he had to prepare; the thought of it all made him sick to the stomach and took away any chance of him being able to focus on the lecture.

It had been okay in the beginning, sitting in the banks and being taught, but after close to two weeks in which he'd gotten not a centimetre closer to Illya's freedom, it was mainly getting annoying and nerve-wracking.

In the timespan of this lecture, he could have been halfway to Germany already, and if he'd gotten the day off, he could have done even more than that.

Halfway through the lecture, Shirou made a decision. At the end of class, he would go to Lord El-Melloi and request a day off for personal purposes. Also, he'd see if he could negotiate some kind of agreement for the lord's help in getting those annoying pursuers off his back for a while.

When the lecture ended however, Shirou's path to Lord El-Melloi was blocked by two people standing in his way. The redhead vaguely recognised them as fellow students in the Department of Modern Magecraft Theory, but he had no idea what their names were or what they wanted from him.

The one on the left, from Shirou's perspective, was a tall, black-haired adolescent, with handsome features and piercing blue eyes. He didn't come close to Svin in handsomeness, but he was a fair bit handsomer than Shirou himself. He had the kind of devil-may-care look about him that teachers hated and fellow young adults loved.

The one on the right was a shorter and younger girl with light-brown hair, dull green eyes, and clothing that meticulously covered every inch of her skin except for her face and upper neck. Even her hands were covered by gloves, though it was a warm summer day.

She wasn't nearly as relaxed as the other Magus, looking both nervous and apologetic, as she wrung her gloved hands incessantly, looking like she was expecting a beating at any moment.

She wasn't wringing randomly though, Shirou noticed, but instead kept rubbing a specific spot on the back of her right-hand, a spot that emitted the smell of a foul kind of magic.

She seemed rather familiar for some reason, and after a moment of thought, Shirou realised that she reminded him of Sakura, back when he'd first met her, to an uncomfortable degree.

His confusion only lasted a second though, and then he'd regained his composure again.

"Can I help you two?" Shirou asked politely.

"Yes. Lord El-Melloi said that you were going to help us with our research." The man said bluntly, as if that was obvious and Shirou was stupid for even asking the question.

"T-That wasn't w-what S-Sir s-s-said." The brunette protested softly, giving the man an aggrieved look, before looking back at Shirou with a pleading expression. "H-He said we could t-try asking y-you for help w-with our p-projects if we r-really didn't g-get any further with them. H-He didn't promise y-you would accept t-though."

Lord El-Melloi had sent more students his way for tutoring? Had he been so successful at tutoring Reines that the man wanted him to do a repeat performance?

Shirou's first inclination was to refuse. He had agreed to tutor Reines only out of gratitude to Lord El-Melloi, who had accepted him as his student, not because he liked teaching. In fact, he could think of few things that would be more vexing and tiring than teaching Magi.

Not to mention that he couldn't spare the time. Illya came first now.

The refusal was at the tip of his tongue, before a sudden realisation made him pause.

Lord El-Melloi had apparently sent these two, his students to Shirou for tutoring. In other words, accepting their request would practically mean that he was doing the lord a favour.

A favour he could surely ask something in return for.

Something like covering up the fact that Shirou was going to disappear for a few days soon. Something like helping to make sure he wouldn't be attracting undue attention from factions the redhead really would prefer to keep out of his business.

Yes, Shirou could see it now. He would help these two a bit, and in return, Lord El-Melloi would cover for him while he was off to Germany.

That sounded like something that was worth spending a few hours on.

"I cannot guarantee that I will be able to help you. Your fields of research are likely completely different from mine." He warned them, eliciting a huff from the man and a cautious look of happy surprise from the girl. "But I am willing to try nonetheless. As I am sure you know from Lord El-Melloi, my name is Shirou Fujimaru. A pleasure to make your acquaintances."

"Oh, m-my name is-"

"I am Eduardo di Stanza. Make sure you remember that." The man, Di Stanza, brusquely interrupted the girl, talking over her timid voice with ease. "I will have some time for you tomorrow at two in the afternoon. You can find me in the department's library. Don't be late."

His piece apparently said, the man marched away again. He seemed completely convinced Shirou would help him, no ifs or buts about it.

Now there was the typical Magus-arrogance Shirou had heard so much about. Not racist, not sexist, not based on any other discriminatory fact, just pure, undistilled arrogance that made a Magus believe they were above everyone else.

The man didn't have any malicious intentions, which was why Shirou didn't refuse to associate with him outright, but he sure was conceited.

Hell, the guy hadn't even told Shirou what field of Magecraft he studied, preventing the redhead from being able to make any preparations. That would make tutoring Di Stanza far more difficult than it had to be, if not outright impossible.

If he did research into something like Gemcraft for instance, then Shirou would be utterly useless.

He just hoped Lord El-Melloi wouldn't have sent Di Stanza to him for help if the problem was something Shirou couldn't help him with.

But that was enough about that 'Di Stanza'-fellow. There was someone else who came to him for help.

Shirou turned towards the girl, who took that as a sign to introduce herself again, looking much calmer now that Di Stanza had left.

"My name is Mary Lil Fargo." The girl, Lil Fargo, curtsied lightly. "Please call me Mary, and please don't mind mister Di Stanza. He's like that with everybody."

"It is a pleasure to meet you, miss Mary." Shirou greeted her politely. "And I do not mind. I have dealt with people like that before."

"Still, to behave so beastly after we made such an impudent request." Mary mumbled, looking down at the ground in embarrassment. "It's not proper."

"…" Shirou didn't comment, as he was rather sure that being dismissive of those whom you perceived as lesser than you was in fact very 'proper' for a Magus.

"We were supposed to flatter you so you would agree to our request." Mary continued, suddenly revealing something Shirou was quite sure she'd rather have kept hidden. "I don't know what mister Di Stanza was thinking, being so rude to you when he was asking for your help."

"Oh, well, it doesn't matter." Shirou waved Di Stanza's behaviour away. "As I said just now, I do not mind. I mean, I agreed to help him, didn't I?"

"Y-Yes, you agreed rather easily?" Mary's voice rose at the end of her sentence, indicating she was confused. "Why did you do that? We haven't even agreed on a reward yet."

"There isn't really anything I need from you." Shirou said kindly, not wanting her to think he was up to something nefarious. "I will discuss the matter of compensation with Lord El-Melloi later."

"With sir?" Mary suddenly appeared even more distressed than before, her eyes widening as she clasped her hands together in an almost-begging motion. "Oh, please don't ask too much of him. I don't want to cause him more trouble."

"I won't." Shirou hastily assured her, very conscious of the several people who had turned towards him once Mary made her tearful appeal. "I'll just ask for a small reward that won't cost him anything, I promise."

It was a hasty promise, one he normally wouldn't have made, but the girl reminded him so much of Sakura that he felt rather off-balance by it all.

Was this all just an act by the girl to appeal to his softer side? He couldn't sense any malicious intentions from her though, and there was no way she'd know how to behave to make him think of Sakura.

But wasn't it odd for a Magus to act so vulnerable around someone she didn't even know? He might not abuse her trust or use her words against her, but many in the Clocktower gladly would.

"Really?" The girl asked after a moment, peering up at him with wide, pleading eyes. "You won't demand too much from sir?"

"Yes, really." Shirou again made an impulsive promise, but since he'd already decided on what he was going to be asking from Lord El-Melloi, something that could in fact be considered as 'small', he felt comfortable making it. "So, don't worry."

The girl breathed a soft sigh of relief, and Shirou decided to get the discussion back on track.

"Would you like to be tutored tomorrow, like mister Di Stanza?"

"W-Well, yes, I suppose I could attend your session with mister Di Stanza at the library tomorrow." Mary said hesitatingly, before falling silent, clearly not considering that to be the best option.

"But it wouldn't be ideal?" Shirou prompted her to continue.

"N-No, not really." She admitted, beginning to wring her hands again. "Y-You see, I study Astromancy-"

"Wait, before you continue." Shirou interrupted her, holding up a hand to silence her for a moment. "I don't know anything about Astromancy. If you want help in that field, I think you should ask someone else-"

"W-Wait, please!" She interrupted him in turn, holding out both her hands to stop him from finishing his sentence, her voice a lot louder than before. "I do think you'll be able to help me! Y-You see, it's more of a basic issue than something to do with Astromancy, a-and Lord El-Melloi agreed that you could help me!"

Shirou was taken aback by Mary's sudden vehemence, not having expected her to feel that strongly about a simple tutoring session, but then again, research was often a Magus' whole life, so perhaps it was normal for them to behave so strongly about matters concerning it.

And if Lord El-Melloi thought he could help…

"Alright, if you're sure I can help you, then I will." Shirou nodded slowly.

"You will?! Oh, thank you so, so much!" The brunette gushed, grabbing his hand in gratitude as she beamed at him, lending more credence to his theory about her research being incredibly important to her.

"Miss Mary, you were saying something about the location of our lesson." Shirou reminded her after a few moments, when it became clear she had no intentions of continuing where she'd left off before.

"A-Ah, yes." She nodded, breaking out of the happy trance, and taking a step back. "Well, a-as I said, I study Astromancy, a-and for that, you need all kinds of equipment. A telescope for instance, and a star map, and s-some other things. T-They don't have that at the library here, so I hoped you could maybe…"

She didn't finish her sentence, her voice tapering off at the end, but it was easy enough to guess what it was that she hoped for. She wanted to have the lesson at her house.

Now, on itself, the lack of proper equipment was a pretty good reason not to hold the tutoring session at the library, and the fact that she did have the equipment at home was a strong argument in turn to hold it at said home. Nevertheless, Shirou got the impression she had another motive than just the availability of equipment.

It wasn't anything concrete, just his instinct telling him she was hiding something.

Those same instincts were also telling him however that whatever she was planning, it wasn't something malicious. She had no intentions of harming him.

Well, then he could humour her. As long as she wasn't out to harm him or his loved ones, Shirou didn't care what her motives were or whatever she was planning with his presence.

"If you are willing to allow me into your house, I would only be glad to go there." Shirou offered, having made his decision.

"Oh, please!" Mary smiled brightly at the suggestion, confirming that was indeed what she had been going for. "If you could accompany me to my family's estate tomorrow evening, I would be very grateful."

"I don't have anything planned for tomorrow, so that's fine." Shirou agreed, already making a schedule in his mind. It all worked out rather well. He would be tutoring Di Stanza in the afternoon and Mary in the evening and the night.

"W-What about the day after tomorrow though?" Mary inquired, her hands clenching harder again as her nerves played up once more. "A-Astromancy is a craft usually performed at night, s-so we'll likely be working until very late. Y-You might not be able to be very productive that day after."

Well, he could function just fine with a few hours of sleep a week if he had to, so that was no problem. Furthermore, he didn't have any plans for Saturday anyway.

"That's fine. I don't have any plans for Saturday." Shirou assured the nervous girl, which visibly set her at ease again. "So I'll come with you tomorrow evening, help you during the evening and night, and when we're done, I'll go back to the dorms?"

"O-Oh, no. That wouldn't be right at all. Please, allow me to offer you a place for the night after we're done." Mary shook her head quickly, straightening her back as a note of pride entered her voice for the first time since the conversation began. "I cannot make you leave my family's estate in the middle of the night after I asked so much of you. I would be an extremely poor hostess if I did."

"Perhaps, but letting a stranger stay at your house is probably not a great idea either." Shirou cautioned her, really not seeing a problem in returning to the Clocktower after helping her. "I would rather not cause any trouble for you."

"It won't be. It won't be any trouble at all." She promptly assured him, seeming almost desperate to convince him. "I have a spare room you could use. It's empty, so you can Enchant it against intruders as much as you would deem appropriate."

"…Very well then."

"Then please join me on Friday after class." The timid brunette beamed. "If you could come to the garage at eight PM, I'll come pick you up with the car."

Her piece apparently said, she turned around and walked away quickly, as if fearing he might change his mind if she stuck around for too long.

It left Shirou with a lot to think about.

Miss Mary seemed very adamant on getting him into her house, and on keeping him there too, that had been clear enough, but there still hadn't been any maliciousness in her actions or words.

It puzzled Shirou, as he couldn't see a reason why she, a Magus whom he barely knew, would invite him to her estate if it wasn't to trap or ambush him. It might not have been her Workshop, but letting strangers into your house wasn't exactly normal anywhere in the world, Magical or mundane.

Shirou took another look at her retreating form, really putting his all into observing her motions and mood, on as deep a level as he could, looking far beyond the surface.

It only proved once more that she had no evil thoughts, no hatred, no anger, or indeed any aggressive intent whatsoever towards him.

The only thing he could detect in her was…

Fear?

Shirou blinked in surprise, before he looked again.

No, he'd been correct. That was indeed fear.

Mary Lil Fargo was deathly afraid of something, to the point all other emotions were taking a backseat.

It wasn't Shirou whom she was afraid of though, and Shirou was almost certain the cause of her fear was not present in the lecturing hall either. If it was present, she would surely have reacted to it, but she hadn't reacted to anything in a notable way.

But that left the actual cause of her fear a mystery.

It really was quite mysterious, this scared Magus-girl asking him for tutoring at night at her own house. It almost seemed like a horror story.

He had given his word though, that he would help her, and Shirou wasn't someone to back down just because things promised to become difficult.

For now however, he needed to put the tutoring sessions out of his mind and go talk to Lord El-Melloi to discuss their deal.

But of course, when Shirou turned towards the front of the class to look for his quarry, he found Lord El-Melloi was already gone.

---

Mirei Montmorency was, as has been said many times before, one of the most important people of the Clocktower. That was in large part due to her outstanding work-ethic, which was unquestionably the best of all people in the Magus association, but also because she had by far the most experience in running the massive machine that was the Department of Policies.

As such, it wouldn't be wrong to say that she was the person who was most vital to the Department at large. The most crucial cog in the entire machine. She was simply irreplaceable.

Despite her immense importance however, Mirei was not the highest in ranking. Not in the Clocktower, and not in the Department of Policies either. It was incredibly unfair, considering Mirei basically did all the work, but in the end, she was nothing but a flunky, a henchwoman.

The honour of being the highest in ranking in both the Clocktower and the Department of Policies went to the head of the Barthomeloi-family instead, as had been tradition since the very founding of the Magus Association. That family was simply too powerful and influential to ignore, which meant the leading positions had always been theirs, for better and for worse.

As such, one of Mirei's tasks was to bring progress reports to the Barthomeloi in charge. At regular intervals, she would head to their office for a meeting, and during that meeting, she would report on everything that had happened since the last time they spoke.

Since the work-ethic of the Barthomeloi wasn't stellar by any sense of the word, those meetings were rather rare. In a standard, run-of-the-mill month, their number would average around two or three.

This had been the norm for almost eighty years now, and it hadn't changed in recent years either. Lorelei Barthomeloi, for all that she was a slight improvement over her predecessors, had no love for stuffy meetings or the process of bureaucracy. She, like all others before her, was more than content to allow Mirei an immense amount of independence, barely bothering to check her work, as long as she didn't have to do much herself.

Which made it immensely unusual, nay, unprecedented even, for Mirei to step into the girl's office for the eighth time in as many days, for yet another debriefing on the current state of affairs in the Clocktower.

Ever since returning from her last hunt, Lorelei Barthomeloi had become increasingly more motivated to involve herself in Clocktower politics. Suddenly, she kept asking Mirei about the details of the relations between certain families, the precise associations between different departments, and, most ominously, what the consequences would be if she suddenly 'removed' several specific families from the board entirely.

It wasn't hard to imagine what had gotten the girl so motivated when she'd been very hands off before. It was the prospect of committing violence, of destroying the families that had been thumbing their noses at her for far too long.

To be more specific, Lorelei was hunting the Meluastea, the Leading Family of the Neutral Faction, and the family that headed the Departments of Archaeology and Mineralogy. To bring that family down, she was willing to suffer through as many stuffy meetings as was necessary.

"What have you found?" Lorelei asked when Mirei sat down on the most comfortable chair in the office. The girl's voice would have seemed utterly neutral for anyone who didn't know her, but to Mirei, the eagerness in it was clear as day.

"What we already suspected. The Archibald-family as a whole is not involved in any criminal acts, though it is undeniable that several of its individual members are." Mirei replied calmly, immediately cutting to the heart of the matter. "Lord El-Melloi himself is definitely not an accomplice to anything illegal. As such, asking for the aid of him and his students should be safe enough."

"Excellent, we shall involve them, and most importantly, Fujimaru, as swiftly as possible. We have closed our eyes to the Meluastea's excesses and atrocities for far too long, but with his help, we may be able to put an end to them once and for all."

There was not a single doubt in the girl's mind that Fujimaru would agree to her demands. She didn't intend to ask him or politely request his help. She just assumed he would eagerly serve her whenever she wanted him to.

Mirei sighed deeply at the typical show of Barthomeloi-arrogance, but since she also knew Fujimaru was likely to indeed accept a proposal to combat evil, she kept her silence for now.

Not to mention the fact that they really couldn't afford to have Fujimaru refuse their request for help. They needed Fujimaru's aid if they were to track down the sources of the continuous illegal activities going on inside the Clocktower, and though Mirei wouldn't like it much, she was willing to force the boy if she had to.

Fujimaru would track the criminals down, using the sensory abilities he'd displayed, and then Lorelei and her forces would destroy them root and stem.

Mirei usually didn't believe in large shows of force, preferring to negotiate and cooperate, but in this case, she completely agreed with Lorelei that the rot that was simmering under the surface had to be destroyed wholesale.

In all her eighty years, she had never seen it get so bad before. The Meluastea's crimes were unprecedented. Never before had a ruling family so blatantly flaunted so many rules while basically thumbing their noses at the Department of Policies.

It was incomprehensible, and even Mirei had been overwhelmed by the speed and suddenness at which it had all happened.

It had all started roughly ten years ago, just after that boneheaded fool Kayneth El Melloi had left for Japan to get himself put six feet under while fighting the Magus Killer.

Mirei didn't know exactly what had happened. She knew only that Kayneth had made some kind of deal with the Meluastea to obtain an Artefact to replace the one stolen by young Waver Velvet. The precise contents of that deal were unknown, but as soon as Kayneth had bitten it, the Meluastea had used the deal to take the Department of Mineralogy from the Archibald. Ever since then, they'd strayed progressively further from the moral path.

Not that Mirei wanted to suggest they had been angels before. That family had never been very law-abiding, even among the families of the Magus Association. They were ruthless, ambitious, proud, cruel, haughty, incredibly condescending, and had egos far bigger than their power warranted.

They were just about the most stereotypical Magus-family one could imagine.

In the past, they tended to either skirt the line of what was legal or just plain crossed it whenever they thought they could get away with it. They tended to do it by proxy, by using some other family to handle all the actual illegal matters, but it was always clear they were the ones behind it all.

Dead Apostle Research, forbidden Blood Magic, Necromancy, Voodoo, Hoodoo, Ancient Curses best left buried deep, demonology, and many other horrible crafts. The Meluastea and their followers had dabbled in it all over the centuries of the Clocktower's existence.

In the past however, those criminal acts tended to stay limited to one or two people at a time. People who were driven by desperation or ambition to act out in exceedingly foolish ways.

Those people were easily tracked down and easily culled. They were made into examples, and after their families would then also issue a public apology, life would continue as usual, with the Magi walking on their toes a bit more again.

This was no longer the case.

Emboldened by something unknown, and perhaps insulted by Lorelei's decrees that abducting mundane people for research was no longer allowed, the Meluastea-family had started conducting illegal research and practises on an immense scale.

Instead of being mostly passive, they were now actively searching for smaller families who chafed against the Clocktower's laws to assimilate into their monolithic Department. They weren't even subtle about it anymore, openly sending invitations to every clan that struck their fancy.

Mirei didn't know it for sure, but she suspected at least half of the families in the Department of Archaeology were now involved in illegal practices. Several families who had petitioned for years to be allowed to perform illegal experiments had suddenly gone quiet, and Mirei was willing to bet it wasn't because they'd finally decided to engage in other, more legal research.

The amount of forbidden magic available on the black markets had gone through the roof in the last five years. Dead Apostle numbers had exploded. The Church was calling every other week to complain about their sensors going off, warning them about foul Magecraft being cast. Hundreds, if not thousands of mundane people had gone missing from all over London and the surrounding areas, and even several Magi had disappeared without a trace.

It infuriated Mirei, yet it also baffled her.

How did the Meluastea think they were ever going to get away with this? Did they think no one was going to notice? Did they think the eyes of the Department of Policies were blind?

The only reason Mirei hadn't yet allowed Lorelei to sally forth and destroy all those dens of evil was because she had no idea where they were.

For all that she hated giving the Meluastea any kind of credit, they did know how to hide themselves well.

That might soon no longer be a problem however, now that they had Fujimaru on their side.

The boy had already distinguished himself by not only noticing the Bounded Fields in Lorelei's office, but also correctly numbering them and discerning what their purpose was, without having to cast any tracking spells of his own.

That was an incredible talent, and Mirei had been quick to test him again.

Fujimaru had made no mention of it, but Mirei knew very well that he had found all the traces of Magecraft in the elevator shaft. She'd placed them there to test him, and when she'd checked after Fujimaru was done, they had all been dispelled.

Even Lorelei would have had trouble finding all the magic spots, and that was with tracking spells at her disposal. That Fujimaru could locate them with his senses alone made him a once-in-a-century genius, or an anomaly, depending on one's perspective.

Regardless of the perspective however, he was exactly what they needed to find the Meluastea's dens.

Now she and Lorelei would just have to decided on proper compensation.

"Do you have any suggestions on possible rewards we might promise Fujimaru in return for his services?" Mirei thus asked. "A right incentive could do wonders."

"I will grant him the opportunity of joining me on one of my hunts." Lorelei's answer was quite unexpected, drawing a surprised look from Mirei. "He appears to be quite eager to hunt Sealing Designees. I have little doubt he will be just as eager to learn from me how to properly hunt Dead Apostles."

"He'll be thrilled." Mirei deadpanned.

"As he should be." Lorelei nodded proudly, completely missing Mirei's sarcasm.

The old woman sighed deeply once again, resigning herself to having to arrange a suitable reward for Fujimaru herself.

Being allowed on one of Lorelei's hunts might be an amazing reward in the girl's own mind, but Mirei had a feeling Fujimaru would not agree with her on that.

Although, to be honest, it wasn't as if the elderly woman had a better idea of what to reward the boy with. He was a mysterious person to say the least, and Mirei hadn't been able to get a proper read on him yet.

More investigation was required here, but that was something for after this meeting.

"When do you want to start the operation of bringing down the Meluastea and their followers?" Mirei asked her superior, the corners of her mouth pulling down when she had to bring the bad news. "Before you answer, keep in mind that we haven't got a proper cause of investigation yet."

Lorelei scowled ever so slightly at the elderly woman's words, but she didn't deny them. They didn't have a 'proper cause of investigation' indeed, and with the way the Clocktower was structured, that was a massive problem.

When the Clocktower had been officially founded, back in the days of King Arthur, the families involved had all agreed to accept the authority of the Barthomeloi-family, but they had demanded that they be allowed to set up several structures and laws that were meant to protect their power and privacy.

One of those laws was that the Clocktower as an institution wasn't allowed to launch an investigation into one of the ruling families without a proper cause, sort of like a warrant in the mundane world. This was to avoid the Barthomeloi or one of the other ruling families using false accusations to wipe out their rivals.

It was a good law, and Mirei understood completely why it had been created. The Barthomeloi weren't angels, and the other families were as bad or worse. It had been very much necessary to create some form of check on their power.

Now however, the Meluastea were hiding behind that law, holing up in their department and taking care never to give the other families any kind of evidence they could use to launch a proper investigation, which was a serious problem.

Even with Fujimaru on their side, they couldn't end the illegal practises if they would not be allowed to enter the Department of Archaeology in the first place.

"I am aware we cannot set foot in the Meluastea's domain just yet." Lorelei's scowl didn't subside. If anything, it got worse. "We must find a credible reason to suspend the law of proper cause, and we need to find it swiftly."

"They have become much more cautious than in the past, and they have been clever in how they arrange things. Cleverer than I." Mirei hated to admit it, but it was true. The Meluastea-family had run circles around her. "All our intel has proven to be critically outdated."

"Outdated in what way?"

"The Meluastea-family tended to keep the more illegal parts of their research far away from their power base. This made it easy to track those parts down and root them out, as bases outside of the Clocktower are not protected by the law of proper cause. The Meluastea have recently wizened up however, and have now begun keeping those parts close to them, where they are out of our reach. We didn't realise they were moving things until it was too late."

"Then this was a critical oversight."

"I take full responsibility." Mirei nodded. She was the boss of the department's intelligence agency, and thus the one responsible for its failures. "I allowed myself to become complacent, believing the Meluastea would never evolve or learn."

"I am not interested in assigning responsibility." Lorelei waved her failures away. "I don't want apologies. I want solutions. How are we going to find a proper cause?"

"Ideally, we'd find a branch of the Meluastea or one of their flunky-families with a base that isn't located in the Clocktower." Mirei replied without missing a beat. "Then we don't need any proper cause to sack that base. In there, we may be able to find evidence linking those flunkie-families back to the main branch of the Meluastea, giving us the cause that we need to investigate them."

"The chance of that happening is small." Lorelei sounded sceptical, which was understandable. When a family was staking everything that they had on the law of proper cause, they'd have to be utter morons to start doing anything illegal outside of the Clocktower's boundaries, where that law was worthless.

Fortunately, the Meluastea turned out to be utter morons.

"Small, but not zero." Mirei's grin was positively shark-like as she spoke, and Lorelei leaned forward in interest, a cautious hope entering her expression. "They have overplayed their hand. In their greed, the Meluastea have forgotten that subtlety and caution were their best weapons. They have created nests outside of the Clocktower, ones that we can easily reach and root out. With a bit of luck, we'll find the evidence we need there."

"Send the Department's agents to burn those nests to the ground." Lorelei ordered immediately.

"I am sorry, my lady, but we don't have enough available manpower to attack them all at once and still have a complete certainty of victory." Mirei shook her head, not even needing to check her files to know that was true. "We can attack two at most, while I have found three."

"Then hire a team of Enforcers to attack the last hide-out." Lorelei huffed, before shaking her head. "No. Belay that order. Summon Lord El-Melloi instead."

"Lord El-Melloi?" Mirei raised an eyebrow at the strange order. "Surely you don't intend to send him to attack these nests? He is not… the correct person for the job, and it would be an insult to the Archibald too if you have their lord act as your dog."

"I do not care what the Archibald think. Lord El-Melloi had already shown himself capable of capturing Sealing Designees, and furthermore, Fujimaru is his apprentice. I want them both on the task. Lord El-Melloi can hire his own Enforcers to guard and accompany them."

"Why would you…? Oh! Oh, I see. You wish to get them involved." Mirei surmised, receiving a sharp nod from her superior.

Now Mirei understood what Lorelei was meaning to do. She was going to use emotional blackmail.

Both Lord El-Melloi and Fujimaru were good people with big hearts. If they were made to see what atrocities the Meluastea and their followers committed regularly –say, by being ordered to destroy one of their nests— convincing them to join the effort to combat them should be that much easier.

"I do not think such tactics are necessary. They would surely join you of their own accord." Mirei decided to comment, but she went ignored, so she changed gears. "You are certain you wish to send Lord El-Melloi and Fujimaru to take care of one of the nests?"

"I am certain. Make sure you send them to the nest that seems the most amoral."

That confirmed it. Lorelei was intending to recruit the men by playing on their morals.

"That should be easy. One of them in particular seemed evil to a ridiculous extend." Mirei mused, fishing some papers from her handbag and skimming through them. "It was located at… Ah! Here it is. It was located near Lykershausen, a small town in the vicinity of the Rhine Gorge."

---

And where is the Einzbern castle? Exactly!

So, this chapter took a long, long, long time to write. Partially because I am very busy again, partially because I was just a difficult chapter.

Now, I believe most things should be pretty clear. In the first scene, we have Shirou repairing an elevator and Mirei taking that opportunity to test his observation skills, which, as we all now, are incredibly, insanely high. This leads Lorelei and Mirei to the decision to involve him in the operation to start rolling up the Meluastea.

Now, let me be clear, this recent acting up of the Meluastea (a canon family, the ones who sold Kayneth both artifacts he used (or not used) for the Fourth Grail War) is not in any way due to Shirou. They are just chafing against the rules and think they can get away with breaking them. There are also some external influences, but I'm not going to talk about them yet, as that would be spoiling it.

Safe to say, one canon-family is going to disappear from this story before long.

Furthermore, we have both Waver and Bishop Dilo preparing to work together to combat the rising threat of mundane Apostles (for which the Alva-family is completely responsible, and with them, the Meluastea, in case you hadn't guessed that yet).

Shirou goes around in circles when it comes to rescuing Illya, knowing on one hand that he could theoretically get her out of there without implicating himself (too much), but also knowing that it would take only one tiny slip-up for the entire plan to fall apart. As such, he wants to scout out the castle for himself before making any big moves.

Fortunately, an opportunity has presented itself. Wow, Shirou, people might start thinking you are a lucky person.

My thanks to my betas Cali and LukeSky.

Ted dips his hat to you all, and struts off into the sunset.