Lethum's Libro Lounge

[lethum]

Interesting regarding how Misaya and Shirou first met. What exactly did Shirou do when he wandered too close to their lands? What did he do that made the Reiroukan clan try to kill him?

As for Misaya being offered to Shirou, how did she feel about that? How does she feel about Shirou?

This contains plot points that haven't been explicitly stated in the fic.

Shirou was wandering around, and activated the bounded fields they had over their clan house. The guards came out and gave him shit, but Shirou fought back and drove them back into the spacious garden of the house. The current head came out (followed by the combat able magi in the house) and went to teach the brat a lesson, forcing Shirou to do the only thing he could in that situation: swordspam. They couldn't deal with swordspam. Not even the no-NP spam that was all that Shirou was capable of right there and then.

Misaya was part of the magi that got swordspammed. While still injured, she went to Shirou and took out her frustration on him by yelling for a while. Afterwards, the clan offered Misaya's hand as a "we're sorry" gift, Shirou told her that he was Batman Kiritsugu and he invited her to become his Robin Maiya. She called him an idiot and rejected the idea. He said ok, and she remembered that he was still the idiot that won the Grail war and got curious. After their first job, Misaya went Tsundere for Shirou. Sometime after a few months, she became a pragmatic Kuudere. The Reiroukan made decrees and proclamations that neither Shirou nor Misaya really cared about.</somewhat distorted oversimplification>

Reading this, it seems Shirou is basically Kiritsugu 2.0 in Steel Nerves.

Badass.

Harem Ending?

Shirou's got Kiri's dream and job, but Kiri is a better planner while Shirou has better and/or more varied tools. Rin is still hung up on Shirou because he became the 'one that got away' and because she feels guilty that she by allowing him to turn into what he is, she is at fault of his actions.

People like Shirou. Shirou likes people. Most characters in Steel Nerves are not virgins. Some are. At the end of the fic, some virgins won't be.

[lethum]

Here's another bit. Copy pasting plenty, for the win.

Prologue
Previous

---

Anti-Monster
Time Alter Zero
Decisive battle

Entering the building that once upon a future housed Emiya Shirou as he grew up into an adult, Avenger simply bypassed the door in the wall that surrounded the property by jumping over it. The plants in the garden were left to grow wild, and the building itself appeared to be close to its final moments. From what he knew of the house in the future however, Avenger was sure that the premises would be straightforward to replace.

In any case, they'd been very successful, today. He'd followed Kiritsugu's instructions, which meant that meant that if the Magus Killer's plans worked out, Kayneth would die before the next down. After all, the concoction Irisviel made from Kiritsugu's blood had proven quite effective against Tohsaka Tokiomi, a mage of considerable talent himself. It was a potion that mimicked on a smaller scale the effect of the origin bullets Kiritsugu used, and very difficult to detect, using magecraft. With Archer's A-rank Independent Action skill, there was no doubt that the Tohsaka would survive to remain a threat, but they would be diminished for long enough to deal with some of the other servants.

By this time, it was likely that Maiya had finished dealing with Kayneth's fiance, Sola, so Lancer should vanish in short order after Kayneth drank the poison Avenger had slipped into his private rations.

Going into one of the many rooms of the house, Avenger opened the drawer of a broken desk, and took out a cellphone. Checking the messages stored for the line, he listened attentively the instructions that Kiritsugu gave him. Tokiomi seemed to think that the condition that afflicted him was the result of a Noble Phantasm, or at least the fault of one of the Servants. Since there was only one Servant who's powers weren't perfectly known, he had deduced that there was a chance to end his condition by defeating this Servant, Avenger, and Archer had been ordered to kill him tonight.

Immediately, Avenger had ran out of the house and into the city, headed for the temple where Servant Medea had holed up in the war he had fought in as a Master. Caster Gilles hadn't been a good enough magus to take advantage of its superior qualities, so it had been left alone for the duration of most of this war. Tonight, Avenger would use it to pin down Archer and force him into a battle of fired Noble Phantasms. With Irisviel as a Master and Archer unable to receive magical energy from his master, Avenger would only have to be careful about neutralizing Enkidu if it was used, and preventing Ea from being activated at all. Not that Archer would attempt to use it before it was too late.

Furthermore, if for some reason, Saber and Irisviel managed to defeat Lancer ahead of schedule, they would be drawn to the battle and flank Archer between two enemy Servants. With the beginning of a plan on his mind, Avenger tightened his grasp on the Dragon Dagger. It seemed like the world had recognized it as an unique existence, and supported its presence, instead of rejecting it. It would be his ace in the hole tonight. With the Dragonzord as a proof of concept, there were other actions he could attempt with the Dragon Dagger with a good hope for success.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Avenger was honestly curious of how was Archer, Gilgamesh, planning to arrive to the temple. He'd stopped hiding the last stretch of the way and began broadcasting his position, roughing up the streets a bit to fake a scuffle with another servant. Standing at the top of the stairs and in front of the gate, Avenger stood with his arms crossed as he surveyed the corridor of climbing stairs and the city that spread out from the feet of the mountains he stood in.

On one hand, Archer would hate to be the one looking up to his enemy, but he'd also hate being forced to employ whatever method he had to avoid looking up to the defending servant. In any case, he'd arrive full of anger and injured pride, looking for an easy battle to be won by firing weapons from his gate at the problem until it went away. A tactic so dumb that Avenger was sure that after a good spar or two, the boy could beat the arrogant king at his own game some time in the fifth war.

Hmm... now there was an idea.

Before long, however, he saw a Noble Phantasm flying his way from the bottom of the stairs, a blade that he still remembered seeing in the Gate of Babylon while he was still alive. Bakuya struck it in midair and Kanshou ensured that the former returned to his hand. Everything stood still for a while. The birds, the wind, the insects, the trees, everything paused as if enraptured by the coming battle between heroes of past eras.

Avenger kept his eyes on the form of Gilgamesh, as the golden clad Servant climbed the steps, an annoyed look on his face. It seemed like he was saving his displeasure for when he could talk down at Avenger without straining his voice, and less angry than Avenger expected. But even if Gilgamesh wasn't incensed in any way as he climbed, Avenger's ability to make him angry was high. And he also preferred to have Archer on the defensive, which would mean countering the Noble Phantasms fired from the Gate of Babylon with his own after the former had been launched. Deciding that while the open space of the temple would not favor him, the trees could be used to hinder Archer some, Avenger began to move down the stairs.

The natural corridor and the speed he was moving at meant that the shroud of Martin he wore billowed dramatically in the wind, but he had long ceased to pay attention to such things if they had no immediate benefit. Throwing Kanshou and Bakuya, he allowed them to fly in an undulating path as they converged on Archer.

They would cut Archer's head in half if left alone, so even if the armor that he wore could be hit by the blades without a scratch, Archer was forced to defend himself, somehow. But the swift movement of both servants had brought them close with celerity, and Gilgamesh's counter, a Noble Phantasm from the Gate of Babylon that buried itself on the ground, parried away the paired blades.

"A worm digging its way out of the ground," began speaking Gilgamesh without breaking stride. "For raising your blade against what is mine, worm, you answer to me!" Raising a hand, numerous blades appeared in thin air, powerful and ancient weapons that the arrogant king had claimed possession of, in his life.

Avenger had not stopped to listen either, so he was close enough to Gilgamesh to grab the blades he had thrown as they tried, once again, to reunite. The trajectory of the weapons had avoided all the trees in both sides of the stairs and returned to the place where Avenger and Archer would meet at, if Avenger hadn't jumped forward to grab the weapons in midair, jump towards Archer and swing them in a rising cross against the golden servant.

Four weapons were fired at Avenger, ancient and powerful Noble Phantasms carelessly treated as simple arrows. Four projected blades, all of them low ranking Noble Phantasms, deflected them. But one more sword appeared in midair between Avenger an Archer, held in place by two portals to the vaults containing Gilgamesh's treasury and ringing after being struck by Avenger's blades.

Making use of the fact that the upwards attack moved him closer to the ground, Avenger took a step forwards down the staircase and swung again. This time, Gilgamesh met the blade with a golden one of his own, swung in his right hand. Undeterred, Archer swung his other blade, and it was met with an identical twin of the first blade, held in Gilgamesh's other hand.

Putting a smirk on his face, Avenger began fighting Archer, clashing his two blades against the two golden blades of his enemy. Matched blow for blow, the facade of self control that Gilgamesh was displaying broke, and true anger showed in his eyes.

Raising sparks in the air with the clashes of their blows, using the steps to change the angle and distance of their combat, the two warriors seemed closely matched as far as wielding two swords was concerned. Of course, the blows Avenger slipped past Archer's guard deal no damage to the golden armor, so as he fought he began adding some magical power to his blades, making them stronger.

Back and forth they went, exchanging blows without moving much. But Gilgamesh had lost his patience. Again, weapons appeared in midair from a golden glow that marked their arrival from his gate out into Earth, these time much greater in numbers.

"Enough!" Began saying Gilgamesh imperiously, "Die!"

Again, swords came flying out of the Gate of Babylon, and again many lesser Noble Phantasms projected by Avenger parried them, diverting them from their path. Avenger himself jumped back up several steps of the stairs, and allowed the two blades on his hands to change. Like they were containers being overfilled and stretched, the black and white blades grew in length, width and even thickness, while their grips stayed the same. The ridge of the blades shattered, tightly packed shards that remained firmly struck together in a manner reminiscent of feathers.

"Bastard!" Yelled Gilgamesh as Avenger jumped towards him to strike him with the overedged forms of Kanshou and Bakuya.

"Die-kgh" Something with colossal power hit Gilgamesh's back. It deal no more damage than a scratch, but the angle lifted Gilgamesh of the ground and into Kanshou and Bakuya.

A loud roar identified the source of the attack, Berserker had been drawn by Avenger's show, and had immediately attacked Archer. It wasn't Saber, as Avenger had hoped, but if it wasn't an ally, Berserker was the easiest enemy of my enemy to use against Archer.

"GHRARHAGAHARHAAARG!"

Not allowing Berserker's surprising first strike, Avenger completed his attack and allowed the full power of the Noble Phantasms of his making to hit Archer with tremendous force. This time, Archer's guard broke, and he was sent flying back with the chest of his armor dented. Now angered beyond anything that Avenger had remembered seeing in this war, Archer turned and saw Berserker's wavering dark shape quickly jumping towards the two other servants.

Gilgamesh then called forth even more weapons from the Gate of Babylon aimed from the sky above them to fly at both the Servants who had dared enrage him.

"Trash! I'll kill you both!" He yelled. Without any further pause, the weapons began raining, but this time Avenger saw his chance. Bringing a copy of each and every single weapon that Gilgamesh displayed, he fired them at their originals hard enough to shatter some of them and to send others back into the gate. But he didn't fire them fast enough for Gilgamesh to fail at recognizing them.

Full of wrath and without the time or the inclination to come up with an appropriate insult, Gilgamesh yelled, "FAKER! DOG! DIE!" And proceeded to summon what seemed like every weapon in his treasury to point at the other servants.

At that moment, a jumping Berserker grabbed two copies of Hrunting in midair, and flew at Gilgamesh like he had learned ow to fly without wings. Much closer to the mad Servant than the wall of golden light that fell from above, several openings of the Gate of Babylon opened around Berserker, and a chain manifested to chain the insane servant in place.

Right before it tightened, however, Avenger threw a copy of the Crimson Rose of Exorcism at the golden miasma that marked an opening of the Gate of Babylon and watched with satisfaction as all the openings to the Gate of Babylon disappeared, taking with it all the weapons that hadn't been fired and the chain that was about to trap Berserker.

Gilgamesh was livid with fury, but at close range and with the Gate of Babylon forced to close for even one second, he stood no chance against Berserker, who wielded two copies of a blade that would not fail to strike what the owner aimed at with the skill preserved by Berserker's Eternal Arms Mastership and guaranteed by Knight of Honor. With the power of Berserker behind the strikes, Gilgamesh was overwhelmed. He had underestimated his enemies and was paying for it.

Understanding the danger he was in, he summoned Ea, not from the Gate of Babylon that took too long to open and browse, but as a the Noble Phantasm given to him by the Grail. Even if his enemies weren't worthy of being targeted by Ea, he wouldn't allow himself to be defeated.

But in his madness, Berserker knew better than to let him use a weapon and sacrificed one of the copies of Hrunting to send it and the drill sword flying off a few feet away. Taking the opening, Avenger stepped forward and stabbed Gae Buidhe into Gilgamesh's unprotected's head.

Berserker and Archer froze.

Gae Dearg fell from the sky and into Avenger's free hand, who proceeded to stab it into Gilgamesh's spiritual core through his armor, as though the golden metal didn't exist. Letting both lances go, Avenger hopped back away from Berserker who swung the copy of Hrunting in his hands and decapitated the King of Heroes.

"GHRURHAGAHRUHAGUARG!"

At Berserker's roar, Avenger hopped back even further and dismissed all the weapons he had projected and still remained.

Seemingly panting with a dull roar, Berserker sounded more like an engine or a monster than a human, bent over several meters away from Avenger who watched him warily. Taking a risk, he used his knowledge of the future and said, "leave. You will not find your king in this temple."

Berserker roared again, and prepared to pounce, but whoever his master was gave it the order to retreat, and it astralized and left in a hurry.

Standing still for at least half an hour, Avenger watched everything within his sight. After he was satisfied that neither Rider, Berserker nor Lancer or their masters were waiting in the shadows, he returned to his spiritual form and made his way to the current base of operations for the Einzbern faction. Hanging from his waist, the Dragon Dagger went with him.

To Be Continued...

---

Prologue
Previous

Not beta'ed.

Comment?

Critique?

[Fafnir]

Can you actually get multiples of the same weapon from GoB? I thought the originals where supposed to be, well, original.

And how did Gil survive getting stabbed in the head to get decapitated later?

[Incarnite Azurnum]

Look at the headshot in UBW. He lived long enough to say some words before he got sucked into AM.

[Kyte]

Can you actually get multiples of the same weapon from GoB? I thought the originals where supposed to be, well, original.

And how did Gil survive getting stabbed in the head to get decapitated later?

I got the impression the multiples were from Emiya.

[dragon20990]

Servants of Darkness unite in epicness. Quantity x Quality = Overkill

[lethum]

I got the impression the multiples were from Emiya.

They were. They were made simultaneously used quickly, because by being so close together Gaia could tell neither was real (AKA a part of Gaia) and it would have crushed them quite fast without becoming Lancelot's Noble Phantasms.

[Fafnir]

They were. They were made simultaneously used quickly, because by being so close together Gaia could tell neither was real (AKA a part of Gaia) and it would have crushed them quite fast without becoming Lancelot's Noble Phantasms.

And what about Gil drawing twin golden swords?

[lethum]

And what about Gil drawing twin golden swords?

Those are a call out to proto-Gil, who has the Twin Deluge swords of Deluge and uses them to fight. You notice that those two blades are twins, identical natural existences, as opposed to copies/clones, like Archer's traces are called.

[Fafnir]

D'oh. I missed that reference. Carry on then.

[G-Man]

Maginificent, Lethum! A great fight won with strategy and fighting dirty; perfect for EMIYA (though I have to wonder how they were using NPs within the temple's boundary)! I also like that you threw Kariya a bone by letting his Servant kill Gilgamesh. Though EMIYA's dialogue has me wondering. Does he just not care about killing Rin's father for a Grail that doesn't work or is the poison only going to disable Tokiomi? I won't even bother asking about Sakura's situation and Kariya (I always got the impression EMIYA doesn't give a rat's furry butt about Sakura for some reason, even in canon).

[VelspertheCat]

Emiya left Rin to Shinji's tender mercies in UBW.

I don't think he cares much about hurting Rin's daddy.

Edit; Well, canon Emiya. This one can be different for all we know.

[lethum]

Maginificent, Lethum! A great fight won with strategy and fighting dirty; perfect for EMIYA (though I have to wonder how they were using NPs within the temple's boundary)!

The boundary affects spirits only. In the case of a Servant, they'd directly attack the Servant's "core" that they hold inside their bodies.

Noble Phantasms aren't spirits, so they are safe from the bounded field.

Archer, Avenger and Berserker fought on the stairs, which is outside the bounded field of the temple. The bounded field on the temple is everywhere on the mountain that is not the stairs or inside the temple walls.

I also like that you threw Kariya a bone by letting his Servant kill Gilgamesh.

Kariya won't survive, I think. He has some angst flying his way that I'm not sure about portraying, since EMIYAvenger is the main character, so to speak.

Though EMIYA's dialogue has me wondering. Does he just not care about killing Rin's father for a Grail that doesn't work or is the poison only going to disable Tokiomi?

From what I believe, Grail War!Tokiomi had already taken off his Magical Crest and put it into some sort of stasis. When the Grail War ended in canon with Tokiomi dead, Kotomine took the Crest from its stasis pod spell thingamagig and implanted it in Rin. The poison could have killed Tokiomi in a higher dose, but as it was, it did permanent damage to most of Tokiomi's Magic Circuits without killing him. Besides the loss of quality in those affected circuits, their element was also modified (from fire to burn, fuel, heat and similar; remember people, its sever and bind). From the point of view of a magus, it is very interesting, with the loss of quality in the Magical Circuits being worth the magecraft research possibilities brought by them.

I won't even bother asking about Sakura's situation and Kariya (I always got the impression EMIYA doesn't give a rat's furry butt about Sakura for some reason, even in canon).

In my head, canon EMIYA knows that Sakura is Rin's sister that was given away, and that she has the heavy burden of resurrecting the Matou Magic lineage, especially after Shinji died in the war. He knows that Zouken is a dick who'd be cruel just because, and that Sakura's only ray light of happiness may have been himself, but he doesn't quite know about the worms. Or the wormrape.

Emiya left Rin to Shinji's tender mercies in UBW.

I don't think he cares much about hurting Rin's daddy.

Edit; Well, canon Emiya. This one can be different for all we know.

In my mind, UBW Archer was counting on Lancer to be a bro and take care of Rin, if Rin didn't save herself in the first place. After all, Archer knows that Rin stores magical energy in her hair, so the moment Shinji got into range, he'd get a hair-Gandr to the face. And balls.

At that moment, Rin was feeling betrayed by the person who could've would've and might've been an alternate future Shirou, so she was delayed long enough for Lancer to show up. Or was it Kotomine? I can't remember right now...

[Theocrass]

... Lethum, I believe you owe me a new pair of pants, sir.

[lethum]

01-Love's Lovely Ranger Land: Please join the Self-Defense Force
02-Legendary Heroes War: Pay one catalyst and 10 mana to place the Servant Card in the field
03-Tactical Magical Espionage Action: Of Sit-Rep, Op-Sec, Fall-Back and Infiltration
04-Place of Learning: Actually the Place where Battles Happen

Swordcraft Knight Rhapsody Shirou
Love's Lovely Ranger Land: Please join the Self-Defense Force

It was a beautiful day in Ramaqem, a city of tourism and vacation resorts in the tropical regions of Mid Childa. Or at least, it promised to be. The light blue sky chased away the black, dark blue and purple of the night, and the sun began raising from the east behind the sea. The few wisps of clouds present in the sky had been painted pink by the atmosphere, and the daytime wildlife had begun to stir.


Emiya Shirou, Sophomore in Homurabara and all around nice guy was already bathed and dressed. But it was more accurate to say that he was still awake. Today was the last day of the vacation he was on, but the time difference between Ramaqem and Fuyuki meant that that particular Saturday [equivalent] morning in Ramaqem happened simultaneously with Fuyuku City's Saturday night.


To avoid Jet-Lag (a term from Earth that subsisted within the social circle of people born or raised on Earth), he and Vivio would leave in the morning from Mid Childa, arriving late at night at Earth and staying awake straight through the night until some time in the mid-afternoon on Sunday. That way they'd wake up on Monday refreshed and ready for school. The long sleep and their own magical natures would help take care of their tiredness.


For that reason, they were up and about before the sun came up, leaving the adults to sleep in after the late night they'd had partying and drinking. This included Einhart, who had apparently not been able to deny Hayate given that she was snoozing on a pair of kitchen chairs under a blanket. Vita was on the couch and holding on to Zafira's wolf form like it was a giant teddy bear, while Shamal rested against a corner covered by a veritable hill of towels. Dry ones, thankfully. The other people who'd come to Ramaqen weren't visible, but the summer house they had been staying at had many rooms, with a lot of them closed when Shirou had passed them in the morning. He dared not open them, wary of what he'd find behind unlocked doors locks.


It had been a party with Lady Hayate involved, after all.


They'd made their goodbyes the day before, so Shirou was only waiting for Vivio to meet up with him in the reception of the resort so they could leave for the Dimensional Travel Station and from there to Earth. The employees that puttered around looked wide awake, probably used to working odd hours but nevertheless enjoying the reprieve from what their many guests and clients put them through while they were awake. Shirou was personally looking forward to cooking his own meals, following recipes both tested and experimental and eating them with friends and family.


"Shirou!"


Turning towards the source of the voice, the redhead saw his blonde friend run up to him, waving one of her arms in the air. His luggage had been stored by Lotus Blade, so the only thing on him other than his clothes was the skintight metallic-looking bracelet on his wrist. Smiling at his friend, Shirou asked her.


"Are you ready, Vivio?"


The cloned Sankt Kaiser pouted.


"I can't find my camera. It's not where I thought it was and I tried looking for it, but I couldn't find it. I'll just get Nanoha-mama to send it over later."


With that, Vivio intertwined her arm with Shirou's and began pulling him away. As a vacationing spot, Ramaqen was littered with details small and big that aimed at catering for the whims of the visitors without harming their reputation or prestige. One of them was the Skyway, a relatively simple illusion and detection field combo that created a network of translucent tunnels in the sky, invisible from the outside and usable by mages who could fly in order to avoid the traffic in the ground. However, teleportation and transport magic was still prohibited in all but a few exceptional cases, and there was a speed limit inside the Skyway.


Vivio and Shirou walked over to the closest ground entrance to the Skyway, a platform clearly identified by a big sign and a distinctive glowing circle on the ground. After registering their names and destination at the attendant, they flew over the city until they arrived at the Dimensional Travel Terminal, their destination. The two had been involved deeply in a conversation about their opponents in the (Pairs) Tournament where they had won a vacation to Ramaqen as part of the reward for getting first place. The high point of the tournament had been the fact that two rival criminal organizations had been using it as a proxy battlefield to settle their disputes with a fair third-party referee, with everyone else getting caught in the crossfire. While doing their best to cheat their way to victory.


At the end, the team that Shirou and Vivio formed had ended up disqualifying the star representatives from both sides, who had joined forces with the reigning winners in order to defeat them. Magical Enhancement Drugs and a few illegal artifacts were the tools used by the champions from the last year to cheat, but the combination of Shirou and Vivio was simply too good for the other competitors and the two newcomers had ended up winning the tournament. Einhart had had to beg off, given that her position in her job had not allowed her to be present for the fights, so she had only been around to watch some of the matches.


Sadly, at the Travel Terminal they got delayed. Somebody back at the resort had managed to wake early, and had called and stopped Vivio before they left for Earth in order to at least send her the photo data from her camera wirelessly, but it was taking too long. The meteorite rain that had fallen the night before had apparently contained a special material that was interfering with the communications, making the normally fast process last for what seemed like ages.


"You go ahead, Shirou. I'll finish this in a moment and get there before you know it," Vivio said.


"I don't know, Vivio, just leaving you like this is..." Shirou protested, his people helping complex reared it's extremely hard head.


"It's okay, Shirou," Vivio offered, "I'm actually safer here in Ramaqen than in Fuyuki, with all the vampires and sliders and crazy mages and giant crystal spider aliens," she finished saying with a small smile on her face.


The joke served to calm Shirou down. As did the funny idea of giant crystal spider aliens. Vivio just stood in place, tapping her foot while the data transferred.


"Still...Vivio, if it doesn't take too long I can just wait with you."


Shirou was calmer than before, but still not convinced. But even so he had a feeling that he would end up going ahead. Vivio was the person who knew him best and who knew perfectly well which of his buttons to push, so he was wary about pushing her too far and finding their kitchen devoid of anything but instant meals and cutlery. Or worse, fast food leftovers. He had cried the last time it happened. And then he'd convinced Sacred Heart to auto-translate evrything that Vivio saw, heard or spoke into the ancient Zulu language for a week.


"Shirou..."


Shirou gave in.


"Alright, you win. But," Shirou said, raising his hand to stop Vivio from talking, "I'll wait for you on the other side, alright?" he asked with a warm smile on his face.


Vivio smiled back at him, looking relieved. As he moved over to the completely empty outgoing line, he wondered what Vivio was relieved about. Something like his saving-people-thing resulting in overprotective episodes never crossed his mind, even if his friends and acquaintances had seen them become a familiar sight over the years. Not a common one, by any means, but for example everyone remembered the time when Shirou tricked Vita into missing a mission by feeding her a steady supply of food until it was too late for her to go.


Vita had been reprimanded, and the actual mission had still been successful, so Shirou had only gotten a stern talking to from the adults in his life. He had been frustrated for weeks following the death of his father, Kiritsugu, and it had been far from the only repetitive task he had done in order to work off his heightened temper. Wasting a whole afternoon at school after gym class to try jumping a bar without magic, training flight magic with Vivio, cooking all sorts of dishes for Vita...Shirou's actions during this time had gained him fame as the 'Helping Terminator' in Mid Childa.


Shirou had heard of the term, but like Nanoha with the <<White Devil>> title, he hadn't quite made the connection that they were talking to him and not about Arnold Schwarzenegger's role in the Terminator movies. Or about Amuro Ray, in Nanoha's case. They never paid much attention to those kind of discussion in the first place, and even then, those tended to happen outside their earshot.


The process of leaving, however, wasn't without problems. It seemed like the data on the targets for the Dimensional Transfer spell had been corrupted by the meteor shower, so instead of appearing inside the empty building in Shinto that the TSAB bought and maintained, he had to choose between appearing in Homurabara Gauken (which was the backup location in their database for some reason) or giving the coordinates of his house to the company in charge of the Dimensional Travel Terminal.


As his house was technically a classified location he couldn't give them the coordinates, and he didn't have the knowledge of the dimensional topography in Fuyuki or the skill in magical theory to calculate the coordinates of another safe arrival point. Doing the math in his head, he supposed that he would arrive too late to the school for anyone to be there, even guards or janitors, so he gave a short message to the attendant to let Vivio know he'd stick around the school building to wait for her.


Moving to the Translocation Cylinder at last, Shirou looked around the terminal one last time. Spying Vivio taking a spot in the line right behind an aged and wrinkled couple that was now talking with the attendant, Shirou waved at her, trying to catch her attention.


A voice came from the walls of the Cylinder, pleasant yet gender neutral. "Please, remember that active spell casting, luggage outside limits regulated in the polities of Dim'Sea Travels or the detection of illegal substances are grounds for immediate transfer abortion and-"


Finally catching Vivio's eyes with his own, he smiled at her and waved, feeling the magical power in the artifact that surrounded him rise and refine itself, undergoing rapid and guided mana linking by the hardware performing the Dimensional Transfer spell. The excess mana associated into junk data, and quickly underwent a decaying process during which they steadily released a soft white light. All in all, it was the official end to his and Vivio's short vacation and return to the normalcy of life on Earth as normal High Schoolers.


Despite what a somewhat widespread belief in Administrated Worlds said, Dimensional Travel was not instant. This mistake was repeated in all manner of places, like movies, jokes, novels, poems or even in official statements. In reality, a high sensitivity of a special type, one typically found in high ranking mages and people with Rare Skills, was enough to knowingly compress or dilate the internal trip-time of the spell, within a region rigidly defined by the spell itself.


Shirou was one of those who could do this, but he usually spent as little time waiting in transit as he could. He spent the transfer period deciding what he'd cook next, and where he would buy the ingredients. He wasn't sure of where he would appear in the school, besides knowing that he wouldn't be trapped inside a locked building.


But instead of the quiet and empty school grounds he was expecting, Shirou was treated to an explosion of sounds as soon as he appeared. Instincts and training took over and made him jump several meters back in an instant, simultaneously allowing Lotus Blade to leave its bracelet form in exchange for a full sized gleaming katana. It was a single silvery metal piece, even if the texture of the hilt was functionally identical to that of a normal sword.


"

「瞬閧」

Instant Coax

, 「Load」"


It was just in time. Shirou held Lotus Blade's katana form in a fully defensive stance, when something hit him with enough power to send him flying back towards the trees, almost to the entrance of the school. Only the automatic flight spell cast by Lotus Blade allowed Shirou to land safely, instead of simply rolling in midair until he crash-landed into a tree. All that Shirou managed to see before he was sent flying was that whoever deal the blow wasn't even staring at him.


"Who are you? Why are you doing this?" Shirou cried once he regained his bearings.


He had been thrown away as an afterthought, but the force in the blow had been incredibly strong. With his body automatically settling into a combat stance, he vaguely spied a girl in red on the edges of his vision, and distinctly saw a pair of men standing a couple meters apart. One of them was dressed in close fitting black armor and what looked like a long red open coat, while the other wore a blue armored skin-suit and metallic pauldrons.


The one in red and black had the black and white Bakuya and Kanshou in his hands, while the other had the red Gae Bolg. His inner being automatically processed the information on the weapons, as the one who dressed in blue and wielded the red Irish spear of legend began walking in his general direction. Simply by watching him move, Shirou understood the difference in skill. It was clear that Shirou stood little to no chance to win.


"You're not half bad, for a kid," the man in blue called out with a drawl. With more time to process things, Shirou noted that the other man had red eyes and blue hair styled into a simple ponytail. "The problem is... since you aren't a part of the war, you are an outsider. And the rules say that outsiders must be killed, so I'm afraid you'll have to die, then. My Master is a stickler for the rules sometimes, it seems."


"Die? In a war in Fuyuki? What do you mean?" Shirou asked, his mind racing even as the top of Lotus Blade sought the ground.


"Goodbye, kid," the man said. And with that, he disappeared-


"

「斷空」

Split Sky

," at that instant, Shirou's blade touched the ground.


-only to reappear alarmingly close to the redheaded mage. The man swung Gae Bolg 「刺し穿つ死棘の槍」 in a wide arc that would gore Shirou's torso, only for the ground surrounding the tip of Lotus Blade to shoot up as fast as a bullet. The combined mass and speed of the rising ground was enough to save Shirou from injury, but the blow was simply too much to be stopped without problems and a cloud of dust, filled with magic that dropped visibility to almost naught.


Shirou's spell, Split Sky, enchanted the ground around him to act as a magically reinforced fortress wall, raising so fast that it could cut incoming attacks in two and so strong and durable that for all but the most skilled mages in the Bureau it took a finishing move to pierce it. Combined with the way it automatically rose and sunk back to the ground at high speeds, independently reacting to danger and its own comparatively low mana cost, it was a very good defensive spell. It could buy the user time to prepare a finishing move, earning a place among the list of spells and skills called a 'Perfect Defense' in tournament circles despite forcing the caster to stay in one spot without moving. And Shirou had no hope of casting it without Lotus Blade.


Yet it had been swept aside in a single blow by the man before him.


That alone told him that the man was at the very least on the same level as the Wolkenritter, the Ace of Aces or his teacher. A glowing array materialized behind him, an animated two-dimensional Schlegel diagram of a tesseract, one filled with Mid Childan symbols running along its edges. It was a product of the cusp of Mid Childan magical knowledge, and it contained the framework for the equations involved in the magic spells Shirou used, as it ws developed directly for him. The boy's voice rang in the air, his own body hidden by the cloud of magically reinforced dust that was created with the destruction of the Split Sky protection.


"

「Series Gladius」

Sagita Magica

, Fire!"


It was the spell that counted as Shirou's trademark long ranged area denial and suppression fire spell. And it made it rain swords. They were fairly simple swords of various makes and shapes without any particular magical reinforcement, but they filled the air, flew at high speeds and were aimed at the man in blue. Undaunted, the man and his spear weaved and danced around, deflecting them all without getting scratched even once. As far as straightforward skill with weapons went, it was now clear that he was the best that Shirou had ever seen, beyond that of the members of the Wolkenritter.


Still, the blue-haired man was pinned for long enough, and Shirou took the opportunity to move up and back in the air. This time, a square appeared below his feet, parallel to the ground, while the tesseract's projection behind his back more than tripled in size and sped up its cycle. Shirou began casting 「斬監剣」 Execution Blade, a spell that would give him a giant weapon he would then swing with Transport Magic to great effect.


But the Irish spear, Gae Bolg, pierced his heart.


Magical energy crackled on his skin as the remains of a broken protection spell shattered, and Shirou's expression froze in place with his eyes focused on what was right in front of them. The face of the red eyed man was full of a savage complacency, like a wolf dealing the final blow to its current prey. Shirou's corpse fell from the air gracelessly, sliding off Gae Bolg without much fanfare. Lotus Blade was nowhere to be seen, having vanished from sight when the barrier jacket had seemingly broken.


"A pity. He'd have been more fun if he'd allowed to live," the man in blue commented without looking very sorry.


The girl in red glared at the spearman, her eyes full of a cold rage that the rest of her face did not show. "You-"


Without needing a word, the tanned man stepped forth, moving to stand between the girl in red and the man in blue. Unlike the girl's cold rage, it could be said that his eyes were at worst, disappointed, yet mostly uncaring and cold. Kanshou and Bakuya fell into their respective places in the stance he favored as his muscles tensed for battle.


"Archer, kill Lancer," the girl in red ordered. Somewhere between 'you' and 'Archer' she had regained control of herself, at least outwardly. Archer's stance subtly changed from defense to offensive.


"So you were finally going to take me seriously?" The blue spearman complained with a snort, "Just my luck. My master's not very courageous, so I'm afraid that we'll have to fight some other day." Turning around, Lancer dismissed Gae Bolg and ran out of the school building. After jumping over the outer wall, he disappeared from their sight.


"Rin, should I chase after him?" Archer asked without leaving his spot.


Shaking her head, Rin answered, "no, you stay here Archer. Stand guard while I heal this idiot." She walked over to the fallen body.


"You can raise the dead now? It seems like my Master is just full of interesting surprises," Archer commented.


"He's not dead. Someone who could use all those mysteries... if I can heal him, then S-" Rin stopped herself before saying more.


Archer was not about to leave it at that, "is it wise to heal a magus who didn't register with the Second Owner, though? I noticed that you were surprised by him showing up through that spell."


"He didn't have to register. A magus only has to register with me if he wants permission for setting up a workshop within my territory, but someone who can traverse long distances fast enough can simply set up his workshop outside my territory and commute. And since he can use use that...that- whatever he did to show up right there, then his workshop is probably on a mountain cave somewhere. I'm just being nice, since I think Mitsuzuri likes him." Rin spoke without looking up at Archer's face, choosing to shift at the corpse that lay awkwardly in the ground.


Taking out a red pendant from a pocket, she sat in seiza besides the corpse with the pendant hanging a couple centimeters above the hole in the torso, and began to gather the magical energy stored in the pendant's gem to use it in what would essentially be a <<Revive>> spell. At that moment, a hand grabbed her in place, disrupting the spell as Rin was startled. The same female voice with metallic, or digital, undertones rang out from somewhere near the corpse.


"

「空蝉」

Man of this World

, 「Unload」."


"What?" Rin may have been still young and inexperienced, but she still had the presence of mind to spring away from the corpse. Archer immediately took a position where he could protect most of Rin's body with his own, while allowing her space to see what was going on. They both moved further back from the "corpse".


"Be careful," Archer said. "We don't know what we are dealing with, here."


But what they were dealing with was right in front of their eyes. As they watched, the whole corpse glowed a silvery white with the glow leaving the body in the shape of sparks not unlike those that left bonfires and other medium sized fires. Every time that a spark left the body, the glow in that part stopped, returning to its original not-glowing condition everywhere. With a single exception.


The wounds in the corpse, like the bruises, scrapes and the one broken bone -a humerus- from the fall, plus the hole in the torso where the heart should be, all of them disappeared. In addition, the replaced body was not frozen in death, so his chest rose and fell in time with his breath, and his eyes soon blinked open like they were blinking the glare away.


Shirou soon stood up from the ground, finding himself a few paces away from the other two people in the school, who were looking at him with a stony face and an angry expression respectively. He opened his mouth to speak, but the girl, another student in his year in Homurabara, interrupted him before he could start.


"Emiya-kun! It's so nice to see that you're okay. I'll see you on Monday at the school's roof during lunch hour, okay?" She said, her voice sweet like honey, almost making Shirou forget what he'd earlier. But Tohsaka wasn't happy despite how she sounded. She was as angry as Shirou had initially thought she was. "Or I'll kill you."


"Wha- I mean, yes?" Shirou, who had discovered the TSAB at same age that Harry Potter received his Hogwarts letter, was frankly unnerved by the girl.


"Excellent! Then I'll be see you the day after tomorrow, Emiya-kun. Good night!" Tohsaka said, still with the same exceedingly sweet tone. Shirou's gaze strayed for a moment to the other man, who was glaring coldly at him. Shirou's expression hardened at the sight of the other man.


"Uhm..." Shirou was confused. He could understand Tohsaka not being as happy as he would be in the opposite situation, not everyone enjoyed helping other people like he did. But, Tohsaka being angry at him for not being dead? After she was going to try to save him? He simply couldn't wrap his mind around the idea.


"Boy," the man, Archer, if Shirou's somewhat flawed perception of the world around him while using Man of this World was right.


"Yes?" Shirou couldn't get a grasp on the man. Usually, if someone use a weapon, Shirou could sympathize with it enough to get a rough idea of the person's history with it. Spontaneous Sympathetic-Concept Resonance Mediated Psychometry that ended up functioning like a Focus-Enabled Magical Empathy. Technical terms that had been pushed into his head to the point that he could almost recite their definition from memory despite his incomplete understanding of them.


The problem with the Kanshou and Bakuya that Archer wielded was that they were...empty weapons. They had been forged married blades, and one would always return to the other, and the man had called them into his hands to fight Lancer just a few minutes ago, as the owner of those paired blades, but...nothing more. To be more accurate, nothing in between. It was like they had literally come to exist when Archer had needed them, with the weight of the accumulated years, but none of the history that there should have been there. And added to the unfounded mutual animosity they had going form the moment they'd crossed eyes...


Shirou couldn't get a grasp on Archer, and yet, despised him.


"What is best in life?" Tohsaka, who had been walking away, paused at the unexpected question from the man.


Shirou'd never heard the quote, or anything about it, since his access to Earth's entertainment culture was limited to what his circle of friends and family maneuvered into watching, especially Hayate-san. As a consequence, it was mostly Western blockbuster movies, anime, super heroes and anime and manga form Japan, mixed with video games from all over the world. But no Conan the Barbarian. Yet, without even a short pause to think, he answered.


"To save the innocent." There was no doubt in his mind. It was who he was. And perhaps he had been steered in a certain direction by his friends and family.


Archer snorted. Shirou's fingers tightened fractionally.


"So you're still a fool," he commented dryly, as if to himself. But loud enough for Shirou to hear, which made the teen's temper rise even more.


It was also loud enough for Tohsaka to hear, since the girl immediately spoke without looking back. "Enough, Archer! We're leaving."


Shirou just watched them walk away, and when they vanished from his sight, he simply kept staring at the last place he'd managed to see them. Intellectually, he'd known that there were other magi in Fuyuki, and that more than half of those of them that were of his age went to Homurabara. But to find out that the school idol, Tohsaka Rin, was one of the cold-hearted researchers that made up most of the Earth's magus population was kinda overwhelming.


It didn't help that Shirou had something of a crush on her, so he was currently ready to believe that Ayako was actually a Magical Girl. Or that Taiga was secretly a Sith. Or that mankind was trapped inside the Matrix and instead of magi, there were just hackers. Well, not exactly ready to believe. He'd still be surprised, while knowing from beforehand that he'd be surprised. Thankfully for his peace of mind, Lotus Blade chimed in.


"

「Incoming Dimensional Transport Detected」

_

."


"ETA?" Shirou asked.


But even as he spoke, the flash of light that heralded commercial Dimensional Transfers filled the schoolyard. When it vanished, Vivio was standing there, wearing the leather jacket that Fate had given her as a gift for her last birthday. And the skirt from Shamal, the sweater from Yuuno and the boots from Vita. Shirou wondered for a moment if she was also wearing the lingerie set that she'd got from Hayate, before vanishing those thoughts from his mind. Shirou felt lucky that the cold air of the winter and the tan he'd gotten in Ramaqen hid his blush.


"Vivio!"


With a smile, Shirou walked with his arms open towards the girl, who'd shown up a couple meters away from him. The hetero-chromatic blonde smiled black widely, and jumped forwards to hug him.


"Shirou!"


They hugged, and remained holding each other for some time, before finally letting go.


"Let's go, Vivio." Never one to push his problems on other people, he was going to hold telling Vivio what had just happened until later, when they'd already arrived to his house.


"We're going to walk, Shirou?" Vivio asked.


"Oh, right. Sorry," Shirou answered rubbing the back of his head. He'd forgotten that they'd discussed the option of using Shirou's, or rather Lotus Blade's, Transport Magic to get home quickly to get their Japanese money and eat some food or order out. "

「柔散歩」

Gentle Stroll

, 「Load」."


The square of Summoning Magic appeared below their feet, and suddenly they were gone from the school without even a flash of light to attest for their departure.

"Shirou...how exactly did you damage your clothes so much in just one minute?"

TO BE CONTINUED...IN CHAPTER 2




There. Rin's characterization may be a little weak, but I think I pulled through, somehow. Explanations on how do Magecraft and Mana-linking, Magic Circuits and Linker Cores and Mystic Codes and Devices work and/or interact will come in the next chapter. Questions? Comments?

[lhklan]

... How the fuck did I miss this wonderful thread? Subscribing now.

[lethum]

01-Love's Lovely Ranger Land: Please join the Self-Defense Force
02-Legendary Heroes War: Pay one catalyst and 10 mana to place the Servant Card in the field
03-Tactical Magical Espionage Action: Of Sit-Rep, Op-Sec, Fall-Back and Infiltration
04-Place of Learning: Actually the Place where Battles Happen

Swordcraft Knight Rhapsody Shirou

Legendary Heroes War: Pay one catalyst and 10 mana to place the Servant Card in the field

It was a dark and stormy night around Narita, Tokyo's international airport. Therefore, it was closed. Rain fell in droves to the ground, and many of the travelers whose flights had been delayed or cancelled awaited in the airport for news on the airline's response to the eventuality. Kiritsugu's mind was elsewhere. People like him could read a crowd like a surfer reads sea waves. Thus, he was making his way through the airport's floor 2F, towards a the end of the North Wing, close to one of the elevator stops.

Once he closed in however, he felt a bounded field go up, and people disappear. In fact, with his body ravaged by the curse of the Grail, he was surprised at how accurately he felt what happened. Yet, he was at a lost as to how to articulate what it was that he'd sensed. Like somebody who's only just conceived the idea of tools watching a Rube Goldberg machine in action.

After shaking off the effects of that situation much slower than he should have, he noted that, in addition to everyone inside Narita disappearing, there was an isotropic purple shade everywhere but on him and he was alone. But the disturbance he was expecting when he began to follow the intricacies of the crowds...wasn't. Instead, there was a large hole in the wall, spying within its confines the purple tinted exterior of the airport.

Something roared, and Kiritsugu felt the impact of the noise hit his eardrums like a bullet. Drawing a gun from his coat and switching off the safety, he took a pained approximation of a shooting stance and walked closer to the hole in the wall. From half remembered plans for the airport he'd used once, and the actual shape of the hole, he could rule it as an outward impact structural damage to the wall caused by something with the proportions of a one year old kid but the size, mass and speed of a family car.

The lack of stress marks on the ground meant that either the impact was the result of magecraft, or it was caused by something with supernatural locomotion means. After gripping his gun for a moment, he reset the safety and stored it back into his coat and took out another weapon. It felt too heavy for his arms, but it was necessary at the moment, so the fact went ignored. Again, the Thompson Contender rode to battle on a Magus Killer steed.

Walking mostly sideways until the hole was right in front of him, he then began approaching it, quickly noticing a soft green glow coming from a point above him, hidden by the wall above the hole. He walked closer, and saw a pair of clawed feet, a mix between a horses' hooves and a biped dinosaur's feet, tied together by a glowing green chain.

Relaxing fractionally, Kiritsugu finally closed in to a couple meters from the wall. He could see a long haired blond man in a green suit and glasses, floating -standing- in the air as he imperiously stared down a 5 meter tall fur covered creature immobilized by green glowing chains on all of its limbs, joints and torso, without leaving even the snout free to move. Reluctantly, Kiritsugu lowered his gun until it was pointed at the ground.

The blond man turned his stare to Kiritusgu, and lowered in the air. His expression had immediately changed from the serious demeanor from before into something like Irsviel's own at his classes about the real world, openly trusting.

"Oh, forgive me, I didn't know there was another magic user around here. This person attempted to turn herself into a gnoll lycantrope and tried to kill me, but something went wrong and she died before I could do anything," he said, looking actually contrite about the fact, perhaps she was a valuable test subject? "I tried to apply basic resuscitation procedures, but the she only lasted long enough to roar a single time and, well, die again."

Kiritsugu nodded at the other man, lowering his gun completely as a sign of trust. Despite the unusual mysteries in action, it was not an altogether uncommon occurrence in the world of magi, probably beginning in the actual airport before the man had activated a bounded field to maintain the secrecy of magecraft. Flight mysteries were uncommon, but spells were already uncommon things, and the presence of foreign magi in Japan was usually related to private or secret research, so something like a reasonably fast levitation to control the flow of battle against an over-sized monster was certainly not common even for magi, but not inconceivable.

The situation was under control, then.

"Oh, forgive me," the other man continued. "It was a bit rude of me not to introduce myself. I am Yuuno Scrya, from the Infinite Library."





Shirou and Vivio were, at the moment, standing outside the shed in the grounds of the Emiya household. Shirou's teacher had converted it into a backup kitchen and dining room. Another floor had been added, and the floor of the original one had been lowered over half a meter to prevent it from ending up too cramped. A magic circle that had been initially inscribed on the stone ground became a solid novelty dining table, and wards had been added to turn the second floor into a place where Shirou could practice his magic without fear of being discovered, or needing Lotus Blade to cast a barrier, which could easily be detected and infiltrated by a mage from the Bureau.

Shirou had been in a daze, after meeting Vivio again, but he was able to remember that he'd inform Vivio of what happened. When the girl moved to enter the place, Shirou stopped.

"Vivio, wait."

She turned in place, coking her hip to the side and resting one arm on it. She was still smiling, and her eyes lifted slightly to stare into his. "Shirou?" She asked, with her voice and face tinged with curiosity.

"I've got something to tell you. Something important." Shirou said, making sure that his expression reflected the gravity of the issue. Oddly enough, this made Vivio's expression freeze and her hands to press against the middle of her chest, above her bust.

"Shirou I-" Vivio began saying, before stopping again.

"Let me go first. Vivio, I..." Shirou hesitated for a moment, staring at the intensity in Vivio's expression. No matter how he worded it, he was sure that Vivio would understand, but he wasn't sure which words to use. Nothing felt quite right, and it had been the first time that Shirou had been taken out with such ease in years. "-I was attacked."

Vivio's expression unfroze, filling with surprise before worry sunk in. "Shirou! What happened, are you okay?"

She suddenly stopped talking, and gave Shirou a look from head to toe.

"Shirou...how exactly did you damage your clothes so much in just one minute?" She asked the other boy.

"It wasn't my fault! I..." Shirou answered. "I was attacked as soon as I arrived up. Almost. I think."

"Shirou, either you got attacked, or you weren't. Are you trying to hide something from me?" Vivio accused. "Again?"

Shirou backpedaled a bit. "No, no! I'm not. I believe that I showed up in the middle of their fight, and they have a rule against outsiders knowing about them," Shirou explained. "After I managed to block the first blow, it was pretty obvious that I didn't stand a chance, so I used 「Man of this World」 to get them off my back."

Vivio nodded at Shirou's explanation while looking increasingly pensive. "And they all attacked you at the same time? Did you recognize anyone?"

"Well, there were three of them," Shirou said. "Only one of them attacked me, the other two didn't do anything until that one left, and they were going to heal me before I dismissed my Fake Corpse Spell. And..." Shirou trailed off.

Vivio looked at him expectantly.

"One of them...she was Tohsaka Rin," Shirou revealed.

"What!" Vivio exclaimed. Tohsaka Rin was a school idol who made perfect grades and was perfectly nice, polite and distant to everyone. She was in another class, but she was popular among the students, and even more among the girls. Mostly because it was girls who she mainly interacted with, but with her beauty she'd have to actively work to be unpopular with the boys.

"She was the one who was going to heal me with a pendant," Shirou continued.

"A support device?" Vivio asked. "Like Klarwind?"

"Or a healing type mystic code, or even some sort of magecraft cartridge," Shirou countered.

Vivio frowned, "not to be dismissive, but magic users from Earth stronger than the Wolkenritter? Didn't Yuuno-sensei say that they died out?"

Shirou shook his head. "Lotus Blade didn't get a good reading on them, but it managed to discard Algorithmic Linking pretty soon. And the magi from Earth can do crazy things with their magecraft, what if this time someone , or some group managed to make someone crazy strong?"

"But they wouldn't, unless it took them closer to the swirl," Vivio answered, refuting what Shirou had said.

"Well, the people from Earth don't have much need of a magical super soldier program while the Belkans and their enemies did," Shirou conceded. "I just don't think that we'll find yet another Lost Logia on Earth, making trouble of this size, after this much time. Earth is just too far away from Bureau, Belkan and Alhazard space proper to have too many Lost Logia."

Shirou heard bells in his head. He knew what that meant, the first bounded field that his father had installed, the one that simply detected hostile intent, had been triggered.

"-Vivio! Intruders!-" he exclaimed over a telepathic link.

"-The alarm? Are you thinking what I'm thinking?-" the blonde girl asked. Sacred Heart, who'd been inside a tiny backpack hanging from Vivio's shoulders immediately bypassed the material of the container to join its Master.

"-That it's the same person who attacked me here to finish the job? Maybe-" Shirou answered.

Without further words, Shirou jumped through a second floor window in the shed, with Lotus Blade already in its sword form and shattering the glass before he went through. Vivio herself ran into the house as fast as she could without leaving tracks in the ground, following one of the hallways to one of the rooms with a view to the shed.

From then on, there would be minimal telepathic communication, as had become general doctrine after the latest improvements in interception technology. The unspoken plan was simply to split up and take flanking positions, knowing that the magical energy given off by their Algorithmic Linking was almost undetectable to common magecraft.

Turning around one of the corners of Shirou's house, Lancer entered the courtyard and saw the last piece of broken glass hit the ground.

"There you are!"

In a single leap, Lancer crossed the yard and ended just below the broken window. Grabbing his spear almost like a sword, he swung it down in a horizontal arc that destroyed the wall, made a cloud of dust and caused an explosion of magical power that pushed him back to fall down in the middle of the small courtyard. Shifting his grip again for a more versatile one, Lancer stared at the damage he had caused with a smirk.

Inside, Shirou had been trying to reach a cabinet in the corner of the room, when Lancer's strike had broken not only the wall near the window, but fractured most of the the ground of the second floor, even the place where Shirou was running. Coordinating with Lotus Blade to compensate for the debris and land safely, Shirou twisted in midair and fell on something hard. Having been standing above it, Shirou had reached the floor after the debris had fallen, so he didn't bother looking up.

Even with all the damage there wasn't much dust, so Shirou was soon able to see that most of the wall of the shed had been destroyed, and the fallen wall had allowed damaged sections of the second floor to fall. By the feel of his stance, and his relative distances to everything around him, he knew that he had fallen on top of the table.

Outside the shed, the blue clad warrior was staring straight at him, a savage smirk on his face. The red lance was there, already in guard position. "I see that you're still alive, kid." His expression grew fiercer, until it his smirk was more of a display of teeth than any indication of his mood. "How about another round?"

Shirou instinctually raised his blade to block the blow he was coming, but instead of the blow he was expecting, what he saw was at least a dozen magical projectiles bombarded both Lancer and the ground he was standing on. Recognizing Vivio's handiwork, Shirou gave Lotus Blade the order to change modes.

"

「弓矢様」

Bow Mode

"

At once, the Device in Shirou's hand changed shape. The blade seemed to sink into the hilt, while the hilt itself grew and curved backwards. In the middle of the bow, a horizontal slit opened and widened until the grip was in two distinct halves that against all common sense, remained in place as though they hadn't ceased being a single solid piece. Taut metallic strings grew from the ends of the bow and joined into a single one in the nocking point, while the insides of the handle of the blow began glowing a soft, deep purple. The bow was still looked like it was all made out of metal.

While the shape of Lotus Blade's Bow Mode was something of a formality, since the major propellant of the projectiles it fired was not the taut string, but a collection of enchantments that affected the space between both halves of the bow's grip. In fact, the bow shape was something of a physical and mental mnemonic to help Shirou use his own aim more comfortably, since his own aiming method was actually more accurate than the Bureau's own accuracy software.

Shirou knew all this, of course, so his attention was on Lancer, whose eyes tightened slightly every time that he destroyed one of Vivio's magical attacks with his Lance. From watching the reflected light on the walls and the ground, he could tell that the spell Vivio was using, a variation of her old Sonic Shooter Assault Shift, had an added flash-bang effect that both Lotus Blade and Sacred Heart automatically filtered for their own Masters.

And yet, Lancer was inconvenienced, at most. His guard never broke. Shirou's own aiming style was able to tell that anything that flew at Lancer would be blocked, dodged, parried or deflected. What was worse, Lancer's footwork was shifting almost imperceptibly, rotating. And if Shirou guessed right, that meant that Vivio was only a couple of seconds away from being directly attacked by the blue spear man.

Shirou wouldn't let that happen.

All sound fell from his ears, along with all irrelevant sensory data. -Ashibumi, the footing- even as his free hand -Dozukuri, the torso- went up to -Yugamae, the bow- the nocking point of -Uchiokoshi, bow rise- the string where -Uchiokoshi, bow rise- he began pulling it back and -Hikiwake, drawing apart- filling the bow with his magical power -Kai, the full draw- to the brim, compensating his technique for a non-Japanese bow and finally using his own magic to call forth a sword to serve his as his arrow a and finally -Hanare, the release- letting it be sped up to high velocities by Lotus Blade.

"

「剣道投射砲」

Blade Motion Gun

, fire!"

Empowered by Shirou's spell, and propelled by Lotus Blade and Shirou both, the sword -130 years old, super dense metallic alloy- flew true to its target, but something was wrong. Shirou's magic continued to leave him, and the magic circles of his personal Magic System were still active, with red glowing runes filling voids within. Too disciplined to let it distract him, the next instants passed agonizingly slow for Shirou, until the sword he fired -straight, double edged long sword- finally impacted Gae Bolg.

-Zanshin, the remaining body:spirit-

Like previous attacks, this one was ineffective, but a short radius around Lancer sunk in, the grass flattened and the ground sunk in like an enormous round boulder had fallen to the ground. Shirou wasn't actually forced immobile by his firing technique. It actually was the sudden drain on his power, which had even activated his magic circuits, what had rooted Shirou to his spot.

Thankfully, the draining event didn't last long and Shirou was able to jump back from where he had been standing, and away form Lancer, and stare at what was happening on top of the stone table.

It was a mistake.

Without prior warning, or the proper filtering protocols pre-installed, Lotus blade was unable to prevent Shirou from being momentarily blinded by the hurricane of magical energy that surrounded the stone structure. Powerful winds filled the shed, strong enough to turn dust and small pebbles into a localized sandstorm, even as a great pressure fell on everyone capable of feeling magical energy. Shirou was thus unable to see Lancer jumping through the hole in the wall towards him, only for something inside the tornado of magical power to send him flying right back.

The clanging weapons heralded the return of all sensation to Shirou, and the storm of magical power and swirling wind in the shed died out in an flash of light and wind. Through his Barrier Jacket, a minor healing spell was applied on his eyes by Lotus Blade, so his eyesight was restored to perfect condition in the blink of an eye.

He saw her.

Her eyes were green, her hair light blond and straight, gathered in a bun behind her and her skin was healthy. A blue battledress with golden linings covered a white under-dress, and was covered in turn by pieces on plate armor on her chest, forearms, legs and on the outside of her legs, besides armored metal gauntles and boots. The lights inside the workshop weren't on, so the only source of light that bathed her form was the moonlight that entered through the huge hole in the wall, taking her image and turning it into an unearthly beauty that hardly seemed real, never mind possible.

When she spoke, her voice was as devoid of emotion as her eyes. "I ask of you. Are you my Master?"

Shirou, who'd still been holding Lotus Blade in ready position, let go of his bow's string and brought it closer to himself, so that it was aimed to the side. He felt something wet roll down from the back of his hand. Simultaneously, both Shirou and the mysterious knight looked at Shirou's left hand, finding a red mark confined within a diamond shape, stylized and split into three different marks that made up the greater one. Starting from there was a red trail, left by a single drop of blood when it rolled down from the mark.

Saber nodded, then, and with the same stoic grace she had spoken earlier, she said, "I, Servant Saber, have come forth to answer your summons. Henceforth, my sword shall be with you and your fate shall be with me. With this oath, our contract is complete."

Shirou believed her. He'd been struck in awe at her appearance, but whatever magical event had happened when he brought forth a sword with his magic, had still happened and had then evolved into something more stable. Instead of the powerful vortex that ate up his power at the beginning, there was a much smaller and steadier stream now, like a water clock compared to the initial broken dam.

Of course, her magic was so implacable that even though it was his power that was going towards her, there was a small feedback of a power that made Shirou feel rested and healed. Suddenly, Saber turned in place and jumped out of the shed in a single leap, while Shirou dropped to the ground, walked around the table and exited the shed over the doors, which had fallen when the wall was broken.

"-Shirou! Are you okay? Where did she come from?-" Came Vivio's telepathic question.

"-It's okay, I'm okay. I think I summoned her.-" Shirou answered.

"-You think?-" Vivio asked, incredulous. She was probably still in one of the rooms of the house that overlooked the shed, hidden.

The only thing Shirou said was a "-Wow-"

He was watching Saber and Lancer fight. The lance user attacks saber without a word, but she simply countered his weapon with something invisible that she held in her hands. In less than a five blows, Lancer's blows grow stronger than anything he had used on Shirou, yet Saber deflects his every blow and forces him to give ground.

For normal people, ten straight blows in a single exchange between skilled combatants didn't happen, with the loser having died by then or by one of the combatants breaking away for a short breather. Even in battles between mages where the blows were enhanced with magic, around eight blows was the limit before the combatants attempted something else, and that was in battles where neither mage could take to the air. In the air, exchanges tended to include even less blows. Even if there were several exchanges in a row, they were separated by short interludes where the mages would split before charging back in...or allowing the other mage to do so.

For the two combatants in Shirou's lawn, they had quickly surpassed half a hundred high speed blows, with the ground around them being scarred by their weapons every time they passed close. They were both pouring magical power in their blows, as far as Shirou could tell. Or perhaps their blows were so powerful that the magical weapons began glowing with their inner power. A magical force so great that it becomes visible to the eye.

Some time while they were fighting, the clouds covered the moon again, but the two warriors had continued without pause. "You coward, hiding your weapon like that!" Lancer calls out, but Saber simply keeps attacking. Shirou can tell that with Saber using an invisible weapon, Lancer can't attack without potentially giving the other girl an huge opening. For somebody with the kind of skill that let him fight an invisible weapon by watching the enemy's body language, doing that was simply too careless.

Then finally, the exchange reached its end. Saber attempted to deal a final, decisive blow to Lancer while he was on the defensive, but he avoided her attack by practically teleporting back, before returning just as fast to deal a blow that Saber only barely defended. Still, the last collision was so strong that the clashing magical energy tried to blow them apart. Saber, whose feet where firmly planted on the ground, remained in place, while Lancer was thrown several meters away one more time.

Lancer's smile was gone. Though Saber's stoic expression has barely shifted in the time Shirou'd known her, all 30 seconds of it, she was clearly dissatisfied. And it was only natural. If Saber's blow had left an opening after it had struck, it was because she expected it to be the last. And if Lancer was thrown through the air once more, it was because only his own blow had also been supposed to be the final one.

"Before we go on, let me ask you first. Your Noble Phantasm, is it a sword?" Lancer asks. Shirou can feel the spike in hostile intent that accompanies the question, stabbing into Saber like it was a knife.

But Saber was unmoved by it. Instead, she taunted the lance user, "who knows? It might be a battle axe or it might be a spear. It might even be a bow, Lancer."

Saber's taunt was not ineffective and Lancer felt even more murderous than before, but against all expectations he lowers his lance, as if he has decided to stop fighting. Saber watched the man warily. Like a suspected deja-vu, Lancer's stance was painfully familiar to Shirou. Despite having never seen it before, he almost recognized it as easily as he did his own arm. Suddenly, the tip of Lancer's spear began gathering magical power, and the air was filled with a murderous intent much higher than before.

Suddenly, Shirou recognized it.

Lancer spoke, "You, I'll cut that heart of yours!" Gae Bolg was not only a sturdy spear. It was a supernatural existence of legend tied to the Hound of Ireland. It was only thanks to his remote psychometry on swords that it happened, but he knew that the next blow would simply ignore Saber's attempts at defense, because the result she was aiming to prevent would be the first thing to happen.

It would take too long to explain. He had a straight blade in his right hand and Lotus Blade in his left one, he drew the string back and the sword was the arrow was the target was Emiya Shirou was shoddily reinforced and sent flying at Lancer, aimed right below his solar plexus.

It was deflected harmlessly, broken to pieces and redirected away from Lancer. But the attack had been successful. For an opponent like Lancer, there was no chance of killing him that easily. But Lancer had needed to use Gae Bolg to deflect his attack, and the Noble Phantasm had not been used, letting the gathered magical power disperse in the air. Not that Shirou knew what a Noble Phantasm was exactly, or at all, but the term was as natural to describe Gae Bolg as it was for the sea to be full of water.

Oddly enough, Lancer's smirk returned, though it had an odd quality that reminded Shirou of bittersweet smiles, filled with numerous apparently contradicting signs. The lance user was disappointed, excited, angry and relaxed. There was no killing intent of note remaining anymore, and even the invisible pressure of the gathered magical power had vanished.

"Looks like you really lucked out with your Master, Saber," Lancer said conversationally, like he hadn't just been trying to kill her. "Yours looks like a fun one, but mine is a coward. He's telling me to go back to keep my lance in reserve."

"You are running away, Lancer?" Saber challenges the blue haired man.

Lancer snorted before answering. "Yeah, yeah. Just be prepared to die if you do come after me, Saber." With that, Lancer casually hops over the wall and vanishes from the Emiya state. Saber looked like she was going to chase him over the wall, but suddenly she stopped and twisted her head to look at Shirou's house. Shirou only saw this over the corner of his eye though, since he was already looking at what called her attention.

In fact, Shirou had been about to call out for her to stop, but since she did it without his prompting, he returned his focus to his blonde ally. Who was also his blonde friend. "Vivio! Are you okay?"

"I'm okay Shirou. But tell me first, why did you stop answering?" Vivio asked Shirou, walking over to meet the redhead in the middle of the lawn turned battlefield.

Shirou answered. "Sorry, I got distracted by the battle."

"Master," came Saber's voice, making both of them stare at the knight. "She is an ally?" Her question was punctuated by her raised invisible weapon. A Saber, if her title was anything to go by. Or at least some kind of sword.

Vivio gave Shirou a look, one that told him that he should deal with this situation before something went wrong.

"Yes, she is...Saber. How did you show up?" Shirou asked the other girl. Hayate's had given Shirou and Vivio a 'what to do if someone suddenly shows up saying you're their master' lesson, at Yuuno's behest. Shirou had never thought that they'd amount to more than an amusing childhood anecdote.

"But you summoned me, did you not? Were you expecting to summon another Heroic Spirit? Was the contract not enough of an assurance, Master?" Saber asked.

"I'm a summoner," Shirou answered. "I was summoning... something else, but you showed up instead. You gave us quite the surprise, even if you were on our side from the moment you appeared. I mean, the only reason I know that the man in blue was Lancer is because I heard someone else called him that."

Saber expression did not change. "I see...so you're not a formal Master, correct?" The girl nodded to herself after Shirou assented with his head. "You do not need to concern yourself, Master, I won't betray our pact."

"You keep mentioning that, a pact, a contract. What do you mean by that? My magic can only call swords, and my teacher said that the circle in the shed was like a clean room, but for magic instead of surgery."

The knight's head swivels again to a seemingly random direction, right when it seemed like she was going to answer. "Master, enemies approach."

Shirou turned to Vivio, who said "alright, I'll check" and called up a floating screen. The angle didn't make it easy, but Shirou recognized the control panel for the defenses of the house, most of which read as inactive or dormant. A few touch, thought and text commands by Vivio later and a barrier was deployed inside the walls of Shirou's house, tinting the world in purple.

Another screen appeared besides the first one, and Shirou was able to see an aerial view of the house with a HUD overlay that highlighted several shapes in the screen. Shirou glanced at Saber, who was staring at Vivio with an unreadable expression, but thankfully no hostility. She had recognized that the other blonde was on their side, and knew better than to distract her.

"It's Tohsaka-san and another man, Shirou." Vivio said, lifting her face to look at Shirou again. "I think the man knows that something happened. He reacted when the barrier went up."

"Not a man," Saber said, making both Shirou and Vivio turn to look at her. "A Servant."

"But what is a Servant?" Vivio asked the knight, as she dismissed both screens.

However, she was ignored by Saber, who turned to ask Shirou. "Master, dealing with these two enemies shouldn't take more than a few seconds. We should strike first, before they have the chance to mount their own attack."

"No!" Shirou exclaimed. "They were the ones that were going to heal me when they thought that Lancer had injured me. At least they deserve to be hear what they've got to say, instead of fighting from the start."

Saber seemed to struggle with that order for an instant, before giving her assent and moving to stand guard near Shirou, "as you say, Master."

"Also," Shirou began, "if the man is tanned, with white hair and dressed in black with a red coat, the he was called Archer, though I think he used two Chinese blades."

After Saber nodded in response, a terse moment passes as the three of them wait for the newcomers to arrive. Saber addresses Vivio, "My Lady, if you'd stand behind me I can protect the two of you at the same time." Vivio looked like she wanted to protest, but finally walked over to stand near Shirou without a word. Another moment passed, but this time nobody interrupted the silence as they waited.

However, instead of jumping over the wall like Lancer had done, they heard the doorbell ring. Shirou and Vivio exchanged glances, before Shirou gave the girl a determined glance and walked around the house to the door with a careful but deliberate gait. Saber kept her position by him somewhat awkwardly, and Vivio walked behind them both. As they got closer to the door, Shirou felt the mark on his left hand react, making him wonder how Saber and Archer were related, and what a Servant was, exactly.

When they arrived at the door, they were in time to hear bell being rung again, as though the people outside were in no hurry to force their way inside. When Shirou opened the gate, Saber was by his side, perfectly visible from the outside even before Shirou was, while Vivio was somewhere on his other side where the door kept her somewhat hidden even after Shirou opened the gate.

As they expected, it was Tohsaka behind the door, with Archer standing behind her with crossed arms and a somewhat belligerent expression. She was smiling politely, as though they had met by chance on the corridors of the school.

"Good evening, Emiya-kun!" She chirped.

Going with the flow, Shirou decided to treat her normally, too. "Good evening, Tohsaka. I wasn't expecting to meet you before this Monday."

"Oh, it's alright Emiya-kun. I just noticed that Lancer came this way and left before we arrived," Tohsaka answered, as if unconcerned with Saber's presence. "Do you mind if I come in?"

"Oh, of course not. We just arrived ourselves, so it's no problem," Shirou answered and stood a bit to the side. Saber did the same, creating a passage between the two for Tohsaka and Archer to pass through. Before they went through though, Shirou jogged over to the door, opened it and began turning lights on. Tohsaka made no mention of the purple tint that filled everything inside the barrier, and neither did Archer.

Shirou wasn't surprised. For people with magic, barriers were visible from outside as long as you had a line of sight to it, and the one on the house was about four stories tall. And bounded fields that were unnoticeable to normal people were standard for magi. In a traditional neighborhood like Shirou's, something that tall could be easily seen from quite a distance. Not to mention that Archer had apparently noticed when it went up, without looking.

After opening the door to his house and turning the lights on, he turned over to the others, and saw Tohsaka give Vivio a double take after she surreptitiously glanced around the house. When Vivio simply smiled at her, her own smile brightened, so Shirou simply called them over to come inside.

Without much fanfare, they settled into Shirou's house. Of course, he could tell that Vivio's presence had unsettled Tohsaka for some reason, although she still started the conversation. "This house is quite big, Emiya-kun. Has it been in your family for long?"

"Actually, I think my father bought it a couple of years ago. And he didn't move in until he adopted me." Shirou answered, slightly unnerved.

"And I moved here for High School," Vivio added. "Since my mother was originally from Japan, and I wanted to finish my basic schooling here in Fuyuki with Shirou."

"So you're a relative of Emiya-kun?" Tohsaka asked Vivio. Somehow, the atmosphere felt stifling to Shirou, despite the amicability of the small talk.

"Oh, no. We just became really good friends since we have the same teacher," Vivio corrected the other girl. "My mother just trusts Shirou enough to let us live together, even if she can't return to Japan because of her work."

"I see," Tohsaka answered. "My house has been in my family for generations, but since it is a Western-style manor a Japanese-style house like this is pretty unusual for me."

"It is the only house I've ever really lived in, really, so I don't know about how that feels. When I'm not here I mostly stay at hotels and they are completely different," Shirou said.

Tohsaka nodded at that. "You must like your house a lot, then. It is pretty big, and it looks well looked after."

"Thank you. We actually just came back from a vacation, so everything is is a little unkempt." Shirou said.

"I hope that Lancer didn't damage your house too much," Tohsaka mentioned so casually that Shirou almost missed it. The atmosphere, which had been getting lighter with every second spent on small talk, suddenly turned tense. Shirou saw Vivio straighten up in her seat, and how Archer and Saber, who'd stayed silent and standing until then, tensed up.

"The shed on my yard lost a wall and most of the ground of the second floor, and there are some craters and slashes in ground nearby, but nothing to the house proper, thankfully." Shirou answered. On his father's behalf, Shirou's teacher had coached him on the half truths and misdirections of keeping magic a secret. Since both the Bureau and the Magic Association had their own reasons for keeping knowledge of magic away from the general populace of Earth, it was a must have if he was to live there and learn from him.

"Is that so?" Tohsaka asked, raising an eyebrow. "I wouldn't have believed that a Caster could drive a Lancer away, even if they'd set their territory here."

Shirou heard more than saw Saber shift minutely while Vivio kept sitting straight and Archer's eyes narrowed.

"I don't know any Casters," Shirou answered honestly.

"Oh? And how do you explain what happened at the school, then?" Tohsaka asked somewhat heatedly. Given her beauty and usual grace at school, her anger made her look quite scary to Shirou.

"That was something that my teacher set up. I just used it because I saw that Lancer was too good for me to beat. Or escape," Shirou said.

"Your teacher who is also hers?" Tohsaka demanded, gesturing at Vivio with a hand.

"Yes?" Shirou answered again, unsure why Tohsaka was making such a big deal out of it.

At that moment, Tohsaka also seemed to decide that she was getting pointlessly angry, and relaxed visibly.

"I was going to ask you on Monday to make sure, but now that you're here...you don't have a workshop here, do you?" Tohsaka asked. She had her own suspicions, but it would be unwise to simply leave the situation up in the air without confirming anything first.

"No, I don't." Shirou answered. "But Tohsaka, you didn't come here just to ask that, did you?"

"Of course not!" Tohsaka said, her voice somewhat raised. "Servants are dangerous! Since Lancer left so fast, then you either had managed to drive him away, somehow, or you'd been killed. I know that-" she stopped herself from talking and began saying somethin that was most likely unrelated. "Magecraft has to be kept a secret, so if you'd been killed by a Servant, I had to make sure that there were no clues about magic for the police to find laying around."

That made sense to Shirou. An action like that was well within the rights and duties of the Second Owner of Fuyuki, and she may have had been tracking Lancer after he left the school. Archer had been fighting against the spearman at school, so they may have wanted to finish the fight before the sun rose and followed the Servant to his house.

"I understand," Shirou said. "But I have a question. About Masters and Servants, you know what's going on, right? Can you explain it to me?"

"You already summoned a Servant of your own but you still want me to explain everything to you?" Tohsaka asked. From her tone it was clear that Shirou had annoyed her with that question.

"Actually," Vivio interjected, "we just got to Fuyuki a couple minutes ago. And we've never heard about any Masters or Servants before tonight," she finished saying. And blushed for some reason, Shirou noted. He wondered what she had thought of that had been so embarrassing.

Shirou nodded. "I didn't even know about Servants until tonight. And all I know about Masters is that I am one, and that Lancer had one that ordered him to retreat."

"And you still summoned Saber," Tohsaka noted in a flat tone. She harrumphed before continuing, "I don't know if you're really good or just lucky."

"Mind your manners," Saber warned her. "You are a guest in this house only because my Master asked me to spare your lives while you approached," she said, making Tohsaka's expression flinch, and causing Archer to tense up again.

Giving Saber a probing look, Tohsaka turned back to Shirou. "If that's how things are, then I guess it's just fair that I explain in exchange for you saving my life from your Servant." Tohsaka said, like Sabre hadn't just threatened her life. "To start, you have been chosen as a Master, and your proof are the three Command Seals engraved in your hand. It is the sign of a Master." Shirou looked at the symbols in the back of his hand.

"Each Command Seal is an absolute command that your Servant must obey, even things that break the laws of nature like bypassing the intermediate space to call her to your side in an instant. While you have them, they can be used to control an unruly Servant, or to give them a boost at a critical point in battle, so they are very useful. However, if you use more than two, you'll be killed." Tohsaka explained.

"Killed?" Shirou asked. It was a supremely odd thing to put on something like the Command Seals that Tohsaka had been describing.

"That's right," Tohsaka said. "In the Holy Grail War, Masters killing Masters is almost as common as Servants killing other Servants. Since the prize needs a Master to use, if there is only one Master left, then he or she is the winner. It is a death duel between seven Masters, called the Holy Grail War. Each Master summons a Servant, and the prize doesn't exist until six Servants have fallen."

She continued, "I don't know all the specifics, of course, but every few decades seven Masters are chosen and given Servants as familiars by the Holy Grail to combat other Masters."

"Wait a moment," Shirou said, glancing at Saber and Archer. "Aren't familiars things like mice or cats with easily suppressed wills? I've even heard of spirits being used, but Servants are just too different from any of them." Of course, Shirou knew that familiars in worlds Administered by the Bureau could have human shape, but if they did, then they continuously drained a big portion of their master's power even if they weren't particularly powerful in battle, but Saber wasn't from any the territories of the Bureau that he knew of.

In any case, to have a familiar with human shape and still being strong enough to fight was a mark of prestige, of belonging to the elite of most powerful mages, and was strictly regulated by the law in dimensional space. It was still a law freely broken by many criminals, who occasionally used them as various types of slaves or even as intermediaries to keep themselves hidden.

"Well, Servants still belong in that category, though they are on a completely different level. To be more accurate they are Ghost Liners, the strongest kind of familiar," Tohsaka answered. "The Grail summons a Hero from the past and gives it a body, a container to exist in the world. The summons of a Master is more like a signal to have the Grail summon a hero, and create the familiar bond between them. Without such a powerful artifact, summoning a hero would be impossible."

"I don't understand," Shirou admitted. Vivio also looked like she had questions, but she was staying silent. "I can get that a powerful artifact like what you're saying the Grail is can summon things from across time, but how can it distinguish between a hero and someone who is powerful but never became famous?"

"Haven't you been taught that any humans, animals, or machines that leave any great achievements behind get removed from the ring of reincarnation and sublimate into beings of higher rank?" Rin asked Shirou. "Heroes are that sort of beings. To put it simply, they have been worshiped and made as unto gods. Of course, the container the Grail gives them isn't a real body, so they can switch between staying in astral form and having a body. Plus, to succeed at the great achievements that made them famous in the first place, they had to have had unmatched strength in the ages where monsters and beasts still walked freely, so Servants are uniformly superior to normal people, or to any magus."

"But what is this prize that everyone fights for?" Vivio asked. Of course, Shirou almost hadn't asked, but Vivio had noticed that they hadn't been told what the prize was.

"Isn't the name a pretty big hint? Although it isn't the one mentioned in the legends, the Magic Association gives the title of Holy Grail to anything that has the same kind of power as that one. For an artifact to get called the Holy Grail, it must be able to grant any wish."

Suddenly everything made sense to Shirou. There was no shortage of people with impossible dreams, ambitions or wishes that they wanted to have so much that they'd kill six other people to do it. Even without wish granting artifacts, people could kill thousands of other people to get what they wanted, and magi from Earth were a breed without the morals to care about who'd get in the way of what they wanted.

Even the Jewel Seeds and the Book of Darkness, two very powerful wish granting Lost Logia that ended up on Earth, were explained. If there had been enough wish granting artifacts to make giving them the 'Holy Grail' title a standard protocol instead of using their individual names, then Earth was a veritable farm of wish granting artifacts. And power called to power. Well, that was Shirou's theory.

"Okay, if you don't have any more question, that means we are done here. Let's get going." Tohsaka said, standing from her seat.

"Going? But, where?" Shirou asked.

"To the Mediator. Since the war is a battle to the death between magi, the Church appoints a mediator to serve as a neutral judge that everyone can trust. He can provide sanctuary to the masters who have lost their Servants but are still alive, to clean up after the battles between Servants that happen in public places, to preserve the secrecy of magic or even to offer Command Seals to the Masters as the prize of doing a particular task."

Shirou looked over to Saber. She had stayed silent through the conversation, until Rin she felt that Rin had overstepped the bounds of politeness. He guessed that she had been a knight, which was kinda supported by her armor and general attitude. At his look, she simply returned it. Wanting to avoid a pointless staring contest, Shirou spoke.

"What do you think?"

Saber thought for a moment before answering. "It is as she says, Master, she didn't lie to you in her explanation. But having the mediator as an enemy would be troublesome, and showing up means that an enemy Master could see us and perhaps attack from the shadows in the journey. Going in the day would be safer, if your night has been as dangerous as you said, Master."

Shirou nodded, and turned back towards Tohsaka. "I think we'll won't be going for a few hours, at the very least until dawn. Maybe we can meet there?"

Rin pierced Shirou with her eyes. "Of course, you realize that the next time we meet, it will be as enemies," Rin warned Shirou. "We are both Masters in the Holy Grail War, so we'll meet again sooner or later, and only one of us will walk away."

"I don't care about that," Shirou said with a smile. "Masters don't need to fight, do they? They only do it because defeating someone like Herakles or Achilles would be really hard, even if you have someone that strong by your side. But you aren't the type of person to do that. You're a good person."

"You think that I won't kill you the next chance I have?" Rin demanded, now. Archer had walked until he stood behind Rin, punctuating her words with his presence. "We are enemies in the Grail War, you can't expect mercy from anyone, even me."

Maybe it was because he'd been told about how the Jewel Seed and Book of Darkness incidents had gone, or maybe he was just like that, but Shirou insisted. "Even so, I don't think you're my enemy, Tohsaka."

"Don't you understand?" Rin said heatedly. "There is no place for mercy in the Grail War. There have gas leaks around town for the last few weeks, and all signs point to the works of a Servant. Mercy will get you killed if you give it to someone that will use anything to win!"

"But you are not the kind of person who would hurt bystanders, Tohsaka," Shirou responded calmly. "I think you're not giving yourself enough credit. If you were as bad as you said, you'd have just left me without an explanation."

"I just don't like being in debt! It was in exchange for you stopping your Saber form attacking my Archer while our guard was down!" Rin yelled, her cheeks flush with exertion.

"That was in thanks for trying to heal me back at the school. And you wouldn't have tried to do that if you weren't a good person form the beginning, Tohsaka." Shirou countered again, still smiling at the girl.

Shirou saw Rin's cheeks redden in anger, before she grabbed the bridge of her nose.

"Enough!" She exclaimed. "I've decided, you're an idiot who lucked out summoning Saber. Next time, I won't show you any mercy, you hear?" And with that she walked out of Shirou's property with Archer in tow. Saber, Shirou and Vivio followed them and closed the doors, until the blonde Servant mentioned that Archer had left her own detection range.

"Vivio, can you set up the connection while I clean up?" Shirou asked.

"Sure thing, Shirou," the other teen answered, leaving for another room. Saber remained his silent shadow, though Shirou guessed that while she felt that she had nothing to contribute at the moment, they still could be attacked in their own house and took it upon herself to guard him as he went to his room to change his clothes.

Shirou was almost by his room when he heard Vivio's mental message, "-Shirou, did you leave the servers off? Never mind, they were just in standby-"

Unlike most of their teachers, mentors and friends, neither Shirou nor Vivio belonged to the Saint Church or to the TSAB. However, they were still citizens under their purview, which afforded them several rights and duties. One of the duties was reporting dangerous Lost Logia Incidents, as possible. The other was reporting incidents that could create Dimensional Rifts or Dislocations. And while the Grail may not necessarily classify as a Lost Logia, it certainly was a very powerful magical artifact and from Tohsaka's explanation, it handled enough power that if something went wrong a destructive dimensional event could happen.

Shirou only planned on warning his teacher, and trust him to contact the relevant authorities, but he expected that everyone would end up involved with this Grail War. The TSAB also considered dealing with magical catastrophes in some Non Administered Worlds as part of their calling, within the stipulations written in their laws.

It was a couple minutes later that Saber, Vivio and Shirou stood in one of the rooms of the house, staring at a screen in the wall. They stared at some generic loading screen, awkwardly ignoring each other. Shirou didn't know what to say, not knowing how to break the odd tension that filled the room. Saber didn't feel like saying anything, though she was silently annoyed by the atmosphere. And Vivio wanted to talk to Shirou without Saber getting in the way, but she didn't want to make it obvious to the Servant.

In the end, it was Shirou who broke the silence, "Saber, can you really turn into a spirit?"

The Servant shook her head. "I don't know what happened when I was summoned but I can't, Master."

"Again with that title, I didn't say anything before because, but please call me Shirou, that's my name." Shirou told her.

"I see," Saber said, trailing off as she considered his words. "I think...I'd like that, Shirou."

"And call me Vivio, please." Vivio requested. "I don't really like being called a lady."

"Very well, Vivio." Saber answered.

At that moment, the animated loading screen froze, while a group of other, smaller red screens floated in front of the first one. Vivio immediately frowned.

"Errors?" Vivio said, mostly to herself.

"Vivio?" Shirou asked.

"I can't connect to anyone in Mid Childa. I'm not even getting Ramquen's or Mid Childa's error screens, just your standard Comm Buoy ones," Vivio explained. "I tried everyone, but nothing went through to anyone."

This made Shirou frown. "Not even the Saint Church?"

"Not in Mid Childa," Vivio answered.

"The Saint Church?" Saber asked. "You have allies within the Church?"

"You mean the Church in Rome?" Shirou asked. At Saber's nod, he continued. "No, we..." he looked at Vivio, who just shrugged. As far as she was concerned, Saber was going to find out about the Bureau when they talked with the adults, so she'd figured that Shirou had already decided to explain things to the Servant. "...we have allies in a Church, just not one on Earth."

"Explain," Saber said. It lacked an imperative tone, yet it still sounded like an order. Shirou sent Vivio a pleading look.

Vivio, who had the best grades in history back at Mid Childa, began explaining. "Well, nobody is sure about where Humanity appeared first, but sooner or later they found a way to use magic to travel to other places. They traveled farther and faster until they something called the Sea of Dimensions was discovered. In that place, it was possible to find other worlds to live in relatively easily, so people began starting new cities and kingdoms everywhere. Many countries and kingdoms rose and fell, and now the Time-Space Administration Bureau is the dominant ruling body."

Shirou continued the explanation, seamlessly taking over. "The Bureau is something between a federal government and a neutral party between member worlds. Other than the member worlds called Administered Worlds, there are two kinds of worlds, uninhabited and non-administered. The final category is for lost or destroyed worlds, like Al-Hazard or Belka. Non Administered Worlds either can't reliably reach the Sea of Dimensions or even outer space near their planets, or declined from joining the Bureau for their own reasons."

"Then, why hasn't Earth ever heard of any of this?" Saber asked.

"Well," Vivio began. "There are several reasons, but nobody knows for certain. Teacher said that the leading theory is that most worlds hid or lost the technology and knowledge from most people until it was publicly rediscovered or they got visited by someone who did. He said that, like with the Tower of Babel, many planets have histories or myths that told of a great diaspora in the past. I guess that Earth was one of the worlds that lost it, or maybe someone knows and its keeping it hidden."

Saber frowned, and looked down. "This is odd, your words mention things that sound familiar, yet I'm sure that the grail didn't grant this knowledge during the last war."

"The Grail grants knowledge to the Servants?" Vivio asked.

Saber nodded. "The grail gives the Servants general knowledge of how the modern world works and an understanding of modern languages. Even if a powerful hero is summoned, it is useless if the Master and the Servant can't understand a word of what the other is saying."

"Then, maybe the Grail takes the knowledge from the Masters?" Shirou suggested.

An insistent beeping blared from the screen, interrupting their conversation. Shirou turned to ask Vivio, who had begun fiddling with a new screen and tapping incessantly for a few seconds. "Who is it?"

"It has Admiral Lowran's ID. It was trying to break into the channel we're calling from, but the security programs did their job well. I'm patching it up through the screen."

The Admiral's face appeared on screen. Admiral Leti Lowran was an attractive woman who still looked youthfull, with white skin, violet hair, glasses on her stormy eyes and four dots in a rhombus on her forehead. She was looking surprisingly frazzled, given that on the background they could see the bridge of a TSAB ship. "Vivio Takamachi? Is Shirou Emiya there with you?" She asked. Her voice was surprisingly even, though it was obvious she was doing it on purpose.

"I'm right here, Admiral." Shirou said, scooting closer to Vivio.

"I see. My apologies, the connection on my end isn't very clear, and the edges of the screen are just static," the official apologized. "I'll cut to the point. Earlier today, the two of you were present in Ramaqen making use of a prize you earned in a tournament?"

"Yes," Shirou and Vivio answered at the same time.

"Why did you leave? I understand that the prize lasted for a whole other week, at least?" The violet haired woman asked, with her eyes straying slightly. It was some sort of report she was reading, Shirou knew. Screens with classified or private information could be filtered out of a transmission, even erasing reflections on reflective surfaces like eyes or pens, but the actions of the person making the call, like glancing at a report, were not hidden normally on video calls.

"We only got permission to skip this much time from school. We just got home a couple minutes ago." Shirou answered. Narrowing his eyes, he realized something, and asked. "You can't contact Mid Childa either, can you?"

"Correct." Was the Admiral's answer. "Do you have anything to add? Anything you may have noticed will help us figure out what's wrong."

"There was a meteor shower falling above Ramaquen. It wasn't detected until it was very close, so it became quite popular in a short time and a lot of people came out to see it," Shirou mentioned. "But when we were leaving there was some interference in the air that was slowing down communications and affecting information systems."

"Is that what was happening? Are you sure?" The woman asked.

"Yes. I arrived a bit later than Shirou did because I was receiving some data, because the transfer rate was very slow, and Shirou had to give them the target coordinates because they lost their own." Vivio said. "I can send you Sacred Heart's records of that time, if you want," she offered.

"Please send them," Admiral Lowran asked. "They'll be a lot of help." A small screen with a progress bar appeared near the biggest screen, finally dispersing the error screens that had remained there until then.

While Sacred Heart sent the data, Shirou made a question, "is there anything you can tell us? If something happened, then a lot of people we know must have been caught up in it..."

"I'm sorry," Admiral Lowran apologized. "But until we know more, all detail are classified to the highest levels. Perhaps later, when things settle down some, we will be able to tell you something." Mentioning that they couldn't contact Mid was pushing it, already.

"I see..." Shirou said. The progress bar filled, and a soft alert noise let everyone know that the transfer was complete.

"Don't worry," Admiral Lowran said. "Everyone is working hard, so we'll fix this together, okay? I have to go now."

"Goodbye, Admiral," Vivio said.

"Thank you for letting us know," Shirou added.

The video screen vanished, replaced by a menu written in Mid Childan runes. Shirou and Vivio, who were sitting close enough to

"It looks like we left at the last moment," Vivio noted, turning to hug Shirou, burying her head in his neck. The boy immediately hugged her back as Saber stood silently to the side, watching them. Vivio wasn't crying, and neither was Shirou, but their hearts were feeling heavy. A jamming effect that affected even magical communications and computing systems, followed by total planetary silence and disruption in communications inside the Sea of Dimensions, all in five minutes...they could have been cause by many things. But running though the minds of the two mages was one option they were too wise to dismiss out of hand and too scared to really contemplate.

Dimensional Dislocation.















Glossary:
弓矢様: Literally Bow and Arrow Manner/style. 弓矢 is bow and arrow in Japanese, while 様 can be used as the kanji for the sama suffix, or as the kanji meaning 'style/manner/situation' when used as a part of actual words. It was the translation of "Mode" I felt most comfortable with, plus it came with a single-syllable reading, which makes people and devices intoning it in (most likely fast paced) combat a little easier to swallow. You still need to suspend your disbelief, though.

剣道投射砲: A construction from 電磁投射砲: Railgun. Breaking it up lke this: 電磁: electromagnetic 投射: Throwing/launching, 砲: cannon and substituting the Electromagnetism part for Swordmanship (kendo<->剣道), the result should technically mean something like "Sword (Launching) Canon" or "Canon that fires swords". I hope! Also, the translation is a call out to the Wave Motion Gun.


On this chapter...you will find a lot of explanations that you could've had by being familiar with either side of the crossover, but... as someone who's been introduced to several fandoms via crossovers with fandoms I am already familiar with, I like making things clear in-fic. Combined with the world building I end up making almost out of habit, then there are sections of the fic that people who are already familiar with the explanations will skip.

Let them skip them, if they did that, they probably didn't need them in the first place.

It may be a bit late to put it, but if you want to quickly shift between a spell in the fic and the glossary's entry for that translation, use ctrl+F (Windows, Linux) or Command+F (Mac) and put the kanji in the search box. Most browsers should be able to do this.

Also, dun Dun DUN.

Though if you paid attention to what I've talked about in SB, then it may not be so dun Dun DUN.

Let me know what you think.

[lethum]

01-Love's Lovely Ranger Land: Please join the Self-Defense Force
02-Legendary Heroes War: Pay one catalyst and 10 mana to place the Servant Card in the field
03-Tactical Magical Espionage Action: Of Sit-Rep, Op-Sec, Fall-Back and Infiltration
04-Place of Learning: Actually the Place where Battles Happen
05-The Witch of Betrayal: A Love Letter to All Her Followers

Swordcraft Knight Rhapsody Shirou
Tactical Magical Espionage Action: Of Sit-Rep, Op-Sec, Fall-Back and Infiltration

The teenagers finished unloading the baggage in the room that had become Vivio's. The chatter from the adults came from another room, punctuated by the occasional exclamation made by the most excitable adults, like Taiga or Hayate. A stereo was playing jaunty music that nobody paid any real attention to but still complemented the atmosphere nicely. A round of laughter interrupted the unintelligible conversation on the other room, followed by even more comments that made everyone laugh again.

"You really are doing this, aren't you?" Lutecia asked from her seat on Vivio's bed. She was the full time employee of her own private training resort in Carnaaji, working under her mother alongside the other people they had employed. Einhart, sitting on her left, had applied for an internship with them but it wouldn't actually start for a year, until Einhart graduated from St. Hilde Magic Studies Institute. It was only natural since, comparatively short transit or not, it would be on a completely different planet from her school and residence.

Vivio nodded. "I studied really hard to get good marks on the Equivalency Exams, and Yuuno said that I passed the Mage Rank Examination, so everything worked out for me." The blonde mage kept talking. "Everyone else from St. Hilde were going to different places, and since I always wanted to live on Japan as a normal student even for a little while, Shirou returning here instead of choosing a career path right away was actually lucky for me."

"Because you still don't know what you're going to be when you graduate?" Erio asked her teasingly. Vivio had had an episode when she worked herself up for not knowing what she wanted to do when she graduated, until her friends and Nanoha had calmed her down. Sometimes she got teased about it.

"Because she's a girl who will focus on her work a lot, and she won't have time to spend more than a few days vacation for years." Shirou defended her, receiving a beaming smile in return. "Besides, I'm also one of those who isn't sure about what I'll do when I graduate."

"You aren't going to become an enforcer, Shirou?" Caro asked from her seat on Vivio's desk.

"That's right," Erio nodded. "I thought that you'd be dead set on that job."

"Of course, Erio agrees with his girlfriend," Lutecia stated matter-of-factly, making the other teenagers laugh and the two people in question to blush. Their relationship was rather recent, and it seemed that everyone was more at ease about it than them.

"So you're really not sure about what to do, Shirou?" Vivio asked him.

"I really like helping people, but form what I've seen all the jobs have downsides like bureaucracy or politics or regulations." Shirou answered with a shrug. "I don't like the idea of having to stick around for weeks after solving a case before moving on to the next one like a Enforcer, or get stuck chasing pickpockets in Cranagan."

"Maybe you can get some place to hire you as a superhero? Training by day and patrolling by night, foiling the crimes of super villians!" Lutecia said while swinging an invisible sword around, making everyone laugh again.

"And you'll be right there, won't you miss Sailor Carnaaji?" Erio asked, making Lutecia flush and stick out her tongue at him while everyone else laughed again. Her mother had changed the design on her Barrier Jacket once without telling her, as a joke, and Hayate had made sure that everyone knew that she'd been in the uniform of the Sailor Scouts. It was Erio's favorite piece of ammunition against the purple haired girl, because it never seemed to stop working on her.

"I'll have you know that the crime rate on my planet is zero, so I'm a better super hero that you'll ever be, Squire-man," Lutecia shot back.

"You're having a good time, Einhart?" Shirou asked her over the needling between the older teenagers. He was resting his back on the wall next to Vivio, who was sitting at one end of her bed next to Lutecia. Erio had brought a stool from somewhere and sat next to Caro.

"Vivio's friends are always like this, so I've gotten used to it." The soft spoken girl answered. "Besides, I enjoy being with them when we're having fun like this. I want to enjoy this chance, because we won't be able to meet so easily after today."

"So let's drink!" Lutecia yelled cheerfully as she opened one of the boxes to show it was filled with Cranagian wine.

"Where did you get that? And so much?" Vivio asked, surprised.

Lotus Blade hung off Shirou's wrist as he crossed his arms. Yuuno had updated his device again, and had left him tasked with learning the new spell he'd installed before a month passed. Despite the help from various Meisters, Yuuno was the only one who came close to understanding the Magical System he'd painstakingly assembled for Shirou's unique situation, so the Chief Librarian of the Infinite Library had become a fully accredited Meister in record time.

As Lutecia bragged about her own success at procuring drink, Shirou considered his situation. Surrounded by friends who supported his dream, being trained by the best the Bureau had to offer, being supplied high quality equipment tailored to him, with people dedicated to finding people to save and a breath of jobs where people pointed field agents at the problem to choose from...

Somehow, for the first time since his father died and he made that promise, Shirou felt like being a superhero wasn't just a far off dream.








Saber, Shirou and Vivio sat on Shirou's table, enjoying the food served. After the two teens gathered themselves, they had finally ordered groceries to be delivered to their house. Shirou went about preparing a meal for them, while Vivio unloaded their baggage from Lotus Blade and Sacred Heart with Saber's assistance.

Despite her initial assurances that Servants didn't need to eat, Saber was impressed with Shirou's culinary skill, and freely complimented him on it after trying his food, which prompted a discussion on food and cooking that was followed by a round of small talk that died out when Vivio took out some cookies and served them. Unlike Shirou, who was able to cook anything he set his mind to and produce delicious food, Vivio could only make various pastries, confectionery and desserts on that level of quality with any real reliability, so she stuck to what she was best at for the most part.

Of course, despite the hearty portion that Shirou ate and Vivio's decently sized serving, Saber consumed an even bigger portion of both food and dessert with a ferocity that they had never seen. Except for, perhaps, in Fujimura Taiga.

"Vivio, Shirou," Saber spoke. "There is a matter that I'd like to discuss with the two of you."

"Yes? What do you need, Saber?" Shirou asked.

"The two of you are of school age, and I believe that the permissions you requested have already expired? Is there no way to extend them for the duration of the war?" The knight asked.

At this, Shirou leaned back and became thoughtful. "There's no way we can do that, not without a good excuse. How long do these Grail Wars last?"

"Anywhere between four days and three weeks at the most, I believe." Saber answered.

"Four days sound reasonable for an illness to keep you at home, but Fuji-nee won't believe it. Or let us leave. Not to mention that if anyone sees us in the city and the rumor spreads we'll get into a problem. If the illness lasts too long Fuji-nee will try to take me to the hospital, so it wouldn't be all that wise in the long run," Shirou said.

"Then, I shall come with you to school," Saber said. "If Archer can take spirit form, then Rin will always have you at a disadvantage if you attend. Not to mention that if any Master knows that Rin is a magus or finds out that she's an enemy Master, then they may follow her with their own Servant and find you." She elaborated. "To leave you alone in that case would be to put you in danger."

"Can't Shirou call you with a Command Seal?" Vivio asked.

"Of course. But that would be a Command Seal that he could need further in the war, and a Servant like Assassin may strike before you are able to react and use a Command Seal" Saber replied.

"Say," Vivio began. "If you can turn your sword to spirit form, can you do the same for just your armor?"

Blinking, Saber answered. "Yes. In the last war I wore clothes to mingle with the crowds without drawing attention to myself, and restoring my armor only needs magical energy."

"Wait here!" Vivio said before running out of the room. Shirou and Saber didn't move from their spot, even as the sounds of drawers, doors and closets being opened or closed reached them. A minute later, the strikes of Vivio's feet against the ground heralded her return. But she didn't come alone. She brought a dark blue school uniform that looked like it would fit Saber perfectly.

The pleated skirt looked absolutely normal, and the upper half of the uniform mimicked a sailor uniform pretty well, down to the red fabric tied into a bow that hung below the collar. Said collar, of a darker hue than the skirt or the long sleeved shirt, fell like a short cape to her shoulder blades and hid the seam where the long sleeves met the torso of the uniform, decorated by twin white lines that ran along the border.

"I think I know what you're thinking," Shirou said, "but that's not Homurabara's uniform."

"I know that," Vivio responded without a pause. "I just have an idea: we tell everyone that Saber is a transfer student who's staying in Fuyuki for business, and that this is her old school uniform. Since she's only staying for a while, she doesn't want to buy a new uniform that she may only wear for less than a month."

"I don't know, Vivio. I don't think there'll be any problem with getting her in, but what if they don't put her in our classroom? We got lucky like that when we ended up together, maybe she'll just go to the class with the least students." Shirou pointed out. Saber fell silent, staring at the discussion.

"And there comes the second part of my plan!" She announced with an affected kansai accent. It reminded Shirou of Hayate. And gave him goosebumps. Probably because he got reminded of Hayate.

"What do you mean?" He finally asked.

Vivio's answer was a single word, "omiai." Shirou looked doubtful. And he felt like that, too. Saber's expression was mostly blank, but it looked like she was considering it. Focusing on Shirou, Vivio continued. "If Saber says that she came because your parents arranged something, then she'll get permission to join our class. If it's like that we can also excuse the two of you always being together, since you're supposed to be feeling each other out for marriage."

"But what if they don't?" Saber asked. "Sometimes the people in charge are not agreeable to what we want, and they may not want to put us in the same place."

"Well, Shirou isn't really good at mind magic but he can do this much at least." Vivio said. "After it's been done, they won't have the grounds to complain even if they can't remember how they did it. Not to mention that your father was born in Japan but spent a lot of time overseas, so the story checks out."

"You really are okay with this, Saber?" Shirou asked. Even if he knew that she was supposed to be a heroine form ancient times and she didn't really act like she looked, she still had the face and body of a pretty girl. Outside of the battlefield, he couldn't help but attempt to protect her.

"There's no problem, Shirou. It solves all our problems so I see nothing wrong with it," the blonde knight answered. "On my times, political marriages were the rule, so I was prepared to meet such a fate since I was young."

It still felt wrong to Shirou to essentially force the other girl into marriage, but if she had no complaints he couldn't really argue against it. "I still don't like it, but I guess it's the only plan we have."

"Don't concern yourself, Shirou," Saber said. "Such matters always depended on compatibility of the partners, and if you summoned me without a catalyst then it is because we were compatible already."

Vivio and Shirou were struck silent by that comment. The atmosphere turned awkward, with nobody being quite sure of what to say. Remembering their original plans, Shirou remembered the stack of movies they hadn't watched that sat besides the TV.

"Why don't go watch some movies? There's still a good while until morning when we can go visit the Mediator of the war," he offered the other two. Saber and Vivio eventually acquiesced, so the three of them moved to the sofa in front of the TV. The movie passed without much fanfare, since neither Shirou nor Vivio were the kind of people who liked to comment on films at they played and it was Saber's first time watching a film.

When the movie ended and credits began rolling, Vivio and Saber began discussing the finer points of her cover story while Shirou dug around for the next movie. He didn't pay them attention, still somewhat uncomfortable at the thought of a fake engagement. But Lancer's unstoppable strength and the ease with which Saber dealt with him gave him pause.

He also had to wonder at what could've prompted Vivio to come up with such an outlandish idea, but other than an insistent if intermittent exposure to Hayate he had no clue. It was still too early to leave for the church, but he realized something.

"Vivio, won't Saber need casual clothes for weekends?" Even on a Sunday it would be odd for someone to go walking out in armor. If it sounded metallic, and it did, then it would attract undue attention, so they'd need more clothes for Saber unless they were planning on having her walk around the city in the school uniform Vivio had produced.

"She can borrow some of my old ones, since she's a bit smaller than me. I still have a lot of them here, since it frees up space back in my house in Mid," Vivio answered. With that, both of them turned to continue what they were doing. Time passed, they finished watching the second movie and moved on to the third immediately, but it was still too early to leave despite the fact that the sun was already on the horizon.

When the third and final movie ended, Shirou stood up and fixed everyone a quick breakfast, which was quickly consumed by the three of them. Shirou stood somewhat impatiently by the door, waiting for the two girls to show up. Like Vivio had said, some of her old clothes had fit Saber, so the Servant had ended up wearing a pair of form fitting jeans and a blue hoodie with parallel ocher yellow lines that joined over the shoulders and went down the middle of her chest to split her torso in two vertically.

Vivio was still dressed in the clothes she had put on back in Mid, while Shirou was in his customary pair of jeans and an open black button up shirt over a red T-shirt reading 'AMBULANCE' in mirror script.

"You two are ready?" Shirou asked. They nodded, so they all left the house and locked it behind them. Sacred Heart had returned to its standby mode as a plushie inside Vivio's bag, while a number of active and passive defenses were left engaged. In particular, anyone who looked at the house was recorded, looked up in all available databases and produced a report.

The outer appearance of the shed had been fixed thanks to one of the active wards on the property, though it be a few days before the complex circuitry that was damaged got fixed. The grass on the yard was still dead, but the ground had been fixed to normality.

"Vivio, where do we have to go?" Shirou asked turning to his left. On his right, Saber walked somberly. She'd assured them that she could call on her armor and weapon in an instant, but she didn't seem to believe that they'd be attacked in public in the middle of the day and looked introspective.

"The Kotomine church." Vivio answered, making Saber give a start that neither teen noticed. "Since Rin didn't tell us about where the moderator lived, we're going to visit that place since it's the biggest residence of any priest from the church in Fuyuki. Actually, I think it's the only one in Fuyuki. It looked pretty big in the photos I found, like a small cathedral."

"Didn't Issei say that his temple and the church were on opposite ends of the city?" Shirou asked.

"Yes," Vivio replied. "The Ryuudo temple is on the far end of the north of Miyama, while the Kotomine Church is almost at the south end of Shinto. We're going to take the bus, since it would take over an hour to get there if we just walked."

Nobody said much until they arrived at the bus stop, when Vivio mentioned something she hadn't found believable about the battle scenes in the film and Saber corrected her. Shirou gave his own opinion, and from then until they got off the bus stop near the church, they indulged in small talk like old friends. Saber was the one to shift the mood, suddenly becoming serious as soon as the bus they rode in drove off, in turn making Vivio and Shirou become serious right away.

At the top of the hill, a white church is clearly visible. It wasn't actually big as christian temples go, but the distinctive architectural design combined with the way the climb ended on a flat stretch of land that followed a wide road straight towards the building that loomed over any visitors made it the central fixture of the place. The graveyard that surrounded the place went almost unnoticed in comparison.

"This is as far as I'll go, Shirou." Saber said, suddenly.

"You can't enter, Saber? Does the church have protections against Servants?" Shirou asked.

"Not quite," Saber said while moving to stand stiffly by the side of the road. "But since the moderator is in charge of granting asylum to Masters without a Servant, it could be taken as an insult towards the moderator for me to barge in with you. I can trust that you'll be protected by the Moderator's Sanctuary, at least until you come back outside."

"I'll come with you, Shirou," Vivio said, stepping up closer to the teen, who nodded at her. When Saber nodded at them both, they turned around and walked over to the open church. It was surprisingly lonely, given that Vivio had planned to arrive right before the service, when the priest was sure to be around, but there were still several people sitting or kneeling in the benches, praying.

When they entered, the priest was unexpectedly easy to find, since he was talking with a young couple to the side of the altar. It actually wasn't the first time that Shirou had set foot in a church, but he didn't know if all the priests in the church were in on the secret of magecraft. He wasn't sure if he wanted to breach the topic to a priest who was unaware of that side of the world.

They didn't need to have worried, since the priest, a tall man with wild brown hair, dressed in black clothes under a purple coat and a solid golden-looking cross hanging from his neck, simply approached them when he was done speaking with the couple.

"So you're the one that Rin mentioned last night? The priest asked with a surprisingly deep voice. Combined with his height and body language, he radiated a dangerous aura that put people around him at ill ease.

"Yes, I am." Shirou said. "We were going to come last night, but since its a Sunday we would be free to come in the middle of the day."

"You are just as she said, though she never mentioned your name. What is your name, seventh Master?" The priest asked.

"Emiya Shirou."

The priest smiles. Though it was the smile one would give when meeting a person you liked, it added a chilling quality to the dangerous presence he was already exuding. Not sparing a glance at Vivio, he began speaking, "then we'll begin right away. Emiya Shirou, you are the Master of Saber?"

"Why do you think his Servant is Saber, anyway?" Vivio asked. "And should we doing this right here with other people in the room?"

This time the priest did stare at Vivio, like he was reminded of someone he'd met. "The people who've are here right now are focused only on their own prayer to god, and those that wish to speak with me will not approach close enough to eavesdrop until you have left. As to you first question, as the Mediator of the war I have the means to find out when exactly has a Servant been summoned, and their class."

"Class?" Shirou asked. "They aren't just brought from the Throne of Heroes into Ghost Liner bodies?"

The priest answered. "Rin was right, you really have no knowledge of the war. Very well, I shall explain. Heroic Spirits are very difficult to contain, and making a container that could carry them all and at the same time survived the summoning of the hero was too difficult, so the two containers were split apart. One specialized container for every hero, one capable of surviving the summoning and of keeping the Heroic Spirit anchored to the world with the help of the Master, with the other container being able to catch the spirit of the hero after the first container has been destroyed by another Servant. The fist kind of container is the Servant you saw after your summons and it comes in seven different classes that contain the Heroic Spirits and gives them access to a portion of their power."

The man spoke clearly, but all his sentences were filled with information that Shirou and Vivio did their best to absorb.

Knowing he had their complete attention, the priest continued. "These seven classes only allow the portions of the Heroic Spirit compatible with them to be used in battle, so a hero who was skilled with a spear would not be able to use one if they are summoned in a Caster class container. Some heroes can fit into more than one class, or even be summoned into the wrong class, but the resulting Servant would be weaker than if it had been summoned into another class."

"So what are these classes?" The priest got asked. Shirou wasn't sure if it'd been him or Vivio who'd asked the question.

"The Class for Heroes of the Bow, Archer. They favor long ranged combat and can move far more independently from their Master than other Servants. The Servant of the Sword, Saber, those superb heroes whose legend and that of the blades they wielded in life are one and the same." As he spoke, a group of people near the front of the church began loudly intoning a rosary, and got quickly joined by the other people inside. "The Servants of the Lance, who are more agile than all other classes and wielded spears with unequaled skill during their life. The Servant of the mount, Rider. If the legend of a mount is inseparable from the legend of a hero, then the mount and the hero both will ride with you for the war. The Servant of the Spell, Caster, for those users of magic whose legends tell of their incomparable skill at magic that no magus can replicate. The class of the mad servant, Berserker, is reserved for heroes who lost their sanity in battle at least once."

The priest paused. Shirou almost pointed out that it'd been only six classes, but the priest continued speaking. "And finally, the servant of the dagger, Assassin. The weakest in combat of all classes, they are the strongest in stealth and will target Masters instead of combating other Servants."

Shirou and Vivio, whoever, were not satisfied with just that much information and kept asking questions, but the priest was skilled at giving answers similar to what was asked, but different from what the question wanted to know. The greatest surprise came from when it was revealed that the priest had been been a Master in the last war, and that the Fuyuki fire, the disaster from which Kiritsugu had saved him, had been an incident caused at the end of the last war.

Besides the information in the war, it was clear that the man wanted Shirou to fight, and barraged the teens with reasons and arguments based both on the nature of the contest as well as that of the contestants to justify their participation. Well, it was actually Shirou's participation, but there was zero chance of Vivio leaving Shirou to fight alone, especially with the Incident that happened on Mid Childa.

"With this, our conversation is over. The only ones qualified to obtain the Holy Grail are those who have Servants. When there is only one of you left, the Holy Grail should naturally appear in front of you. State now your intention to join this battle, the Holy Grail War." the priest said.

There is no choice, anyway. Even if I'd never found a teacher to instruct him in magic, if the choice was between staying in the sidelines while innocents were put in danger and fighting to keep everyone alive, then the choice for Emiya Shirou was obvious. "I will fight in this Grail War as a Master."

"Then I, Kotomine Kirei, shall approve you as Saber's Master. In this instant, the Holy Grail War officially begins. As the Moderator sent by the Church, I approve of the battle in this town, from now until only one Master remains. Everyone shall follow their pride and compete fully against each other." The priest declared, his voice powerful, yet nobody else in the building did as much as turn their heads around to face them.

Shirou wondered if the priest was doing something. If he remembered correctly, the Church and the Mage's Association were on a state of open, if secret war until not long ago, so it was logical for them to be able to counter magecraft used both in the battlefield and outside it. Vivio, who'd been standing close to Shirou already, moved even closer, grabbed his hand and squeezing it once before dragging it back a few centimeters.

"Farewell, Emiya Shirou," the priest said as both Shirou and Vivio spun around their heels like wheels on an engine and the hands that were touching ended up on opposite sides of their body. "From now until the Grail descends you will only kill or be killed."

With that, Kotomine Kirei turned around and moved towards someone else. Outside, Saber stood in the same place they had left her until they came close and she joined them in a mirror of the formation they had when they arrived to the church. The pressure Shirou felt while he was in the same room as the priest fell and he was about to mention as much, but Vivio had other things to say first.

"Shirou, I've got a message from the Bureau."

The one in question turned immediately to look at her. "Is that why you stopped talking in there?" Vivio had been asking most of their questions, until she had suddenly stopped and allowed Shirou to continue alone.

"Yes, I got a call from one of Admiral Lowran's people." Vivio explained, "I answered with telepathy, but that person didn't want to put the admiral on the call and instead passed along a video message from her to us."

"Could the situation from last night have been resolved?" Saber asked. They were making their way back to Shirou's house, though this time they were going to use a different bus station, one that was a longer walk away from the church.

"I don't think so," Shirou said. "Things probably settled down some, so things must have not been so bad." It had been well over ten hours since they got that call, so it was unlikely for the situation to be the result of a dimensional event. That left Shirou without any real ideas of what had happened, but he felt that the chances of everyone being alive and well were very good now.

"I still haven't watched the message. I'll put it on a big screen when we get home," Vivio said.

Again, they lapsed into silence. This time, the silence was not oppressive in any way, it was the comfortable feeling of being with people you trust and whose ideals were aligned with yours. Saber had her own suspicions on to how her current Master was compared to her previous one, but it seemed like the even if one did not focus on the completely opposing attitudes they had, there were clear similarities between the two of them.

They had both chosen companions similar in mindset to them, had access to methods utterly alien to their enemies and even when caught flat footed they were still quick witted enough and well prepared enough to deal with the problem, if their survival of Lancer was any indication. If the Priest who was the Moderator for this war was the same person as the Master that Kiritsugu worried about in the last one, then their most dangerous enemy was the same. Of course, from that perspective Vivio was probably a mix of Irisviel and Maiya, but Saber tried not to pry any closer into their relationship, and chose to treat them as they treated each other, friends.

Privately, the Servant made the vow to never allow what happened in the last war to repeat itself.

The ride back was without consequence, on a bus that had even less people than the one that had brought them to the church. They got off at the shopping district of Miyama, since Shirou and Vivio wanted to stock up on groceries for the house and Saber had no complaints on their plans. The two teens showed that they were old hands at the task, knowing when and how much to haggle while greeting the various vendors with friendliness.

Since they went out of their way to get the best deals on everything they bought, they moved around from store to store, sometimes not even purchasing anything but still managing to leave the store attendants in a good mood, mostly by being friendly and polite. Saber watched them with interest, studying how they played off each other to help put the vendors at ease and contrasting them with what she remembered from her own childhood and later on her experiences as King.

Noon was coming closer, though, and both Vivio and Shirou were now showing the first signs of wanting sleep. Saber, as an existence who did not need to eat or sleep, was still as fresh as she was the moment she was summoned. For appearances sake, Shirou was carrying most of the bags, but they were so many and so full that people would get suspicious if he simply carried them all, so Vivio and Saber took some to carry.

So it was three people laden with a copious amount of groceries that walked the relatively short distance between the shopping district and the Emiya house under the bright February sun. Saber walked stoically behind the two teens who were engrossed in a discussion on the prices of groceries and what they would cook. She would have given her own input, but there was something in the air that called her attention. It felt like a Servant was close.

Because the two teens were in her way when they suddenly stopped, she had to step around them to see why they had. She wasn't expecting what she saw. The same red eyes, the same white hair and unblemished pale skin of Irisviel stood in their path looking far too young to be daughter she remembered Kiritsugu had played with. But there was little doubt that the girl belonged to that family.

And with the presence of the Servant she had felt, there was little doubt that she was a Master in this war. A Giant spirit stood besides the girl, silent like a mountain but threatening like a smoking volcano. The little girl, dressed in thick purple clothes with a tall hat sitting on her head gave a short curtsy. "It's nice to meet you at last, onii-chan."

Shirou, who'd never met the girl before, was too polite not to respond in kind without losing the smile on his face. "Good morning. How do you do?"

The little girl answered, "I'm fine, onii-chan. Thank you." Nobody spoke for an instant, before the girl continued, "I'm Illyasviel von Einzbern."

"That's a nice name," Shirou said. "I am Emiya Shirou, nice to meet you," he continued with a polite bow.

On his side, Vivio followed suit. "And I am Takamachi Vivio, his best friend," she said with a nod as she nudged Shirou's side with her elbow.

The little girl returned both the bow and the nod with nods of her own, before speaking again. "I see that you've already summoned your Servant, onii-chan. Let's meet tonight to play!"

Vivio and Shirou managed to contain their reactions well enough to hide them from anyone who hadn't been looking for them, which only meant that everyone else involved in the conversation, namely Saber and Illyasviel, noticed them right away. "You summoned a Servant, Illyasviel?" Shirou asked, probing for more information. The insistence of the priest and Rin on how Masters would enter the war convinced that targeting each other was simply convenient ran through his mind. A Magus Family that wanted the grail would not hesitate to brainwash a child prodigy to do it if they believed it would help.

In response to Shirou's question, Illyasviel just nodded. "Good bye, onii-chan, let's meet up tonight! Good bye, onii-chan's friend!" She yelled, jogging away in the energetic way that children occasionally do, occasionally turning around to wave.

Shirou began moving to stop her, but Saber grabbed his arm before he could do more than twitch in place. Keeping his stare on the young girl, Shirou waved and called out "Good bye Illyasviel!"

The girl quickly disappeared in the crowd, while Vivio asked. "Why did you stop Shirou, Saber?"

The blonde Servant explained. "That girl's Servant was following her in astral form very closely. If you'd followed her to any place even relatively isolated, she could have made her Servant materialize and kill both of you in an instant, even if she didn't lure us into a trap."

"Let's go," Shirou said, interrupting the conversation before it really got started. "I want to see that message."

Getting the hint, the trio hurried to the Emiya house, leaving the grocery bags in the kitchen while Saber stayed to put the groceries in their proper place. There were numerous labels scattered through the place that got put there the last time Arf and Zafira tried to cook, an amusing story that had ended up with Shirou ordering cheese pizza and then adding a few more ingredients before serving them. Earth and Cranagan flour are not interchangeable in recipes.

In truth Shirou thought that Saber looked enthusiastic about helping prepare the food, and she wanted to give them at least some privacy while they deal with the news of their parents. If that was what the video was about. Vivio finished putting her grocery bags and left to the living room with Shirou after getting assured by Saber that it was alright for her to finish alone.

Shirou and Vivio sat again in the same sofa they had been in when they'd gotten the news last night, watching the enlarged screen opposite of them. It was, as they'd been told, a message by Admiral Lowran, with the woman looking essentially the same as she did during the first call. The violet haired woman looked at the camera and began speaking.

"Shirou Emiya, Vivio Takamachi. Our call ended a couple of hours ago, but I am preparing this right now when I have a spot of time instead of later. We have some very strong circumstantial evidence of the survival of the mages Nanoha Takamachi, Fate Testarossa Harlaown, Hayate Yagami and Yuuno Scrya. I can't go into much detail in a prerecorded message, but the communications black out was a deliberate effort on the side of the responsible parties. I have ordered that this message won't be delivered to you if any of the facts within are proved wrong, so you can rest assured that this message will remain accurate when you receive it. If you want to know more then please contact me directly, using the password at the end of the message. Thank you." The video cut to a series of rotating third dimensional glyphs before ending abruptly.

Shirou sank into the couch and let his head fall on its back with a sigh. Vivio similarly relaxed by his side, shifting in her seat. The two of them turned to stare at other simultaneously, showing each other beaming but relieved smiles.

"I think we should try calling, Shirou." Vivio said.

He nodded. He was also curious about why the evidence they had was only circumstantial, or why they knew that the blackout was attributed to the deliberate actions of a single group.

A TSAB officer that they'd never seen appeared on the screen, apparently the one that refused to let Vivio talk to the admiral earlier in the church. After they gave him the password, he connected them to the Admiral's line, when Vivio was done apologizing for her earlier insistence despite the man's assurances that it was fine. The Admiral that showed up on the screen was different from the one in the message. Her expression looked more tired, although her hair was still just as frazzled as it was in the video, looking like she'd tried to make it look more neat but had only managed to make it look frazzled in a different way.

"Admiral." Shirou said, greeting the woman.

"Leti is fine, Shirou. This counts as a personal call so there's no need for formalities." The Admiral told them.

"Good Morning," Vivio said with a smile. When he first met them, Shirou'd thought it odd that everyone in Mid Childa smiled at each other all the time, but with time he had realized that while Mid Childan society was just as polite as the Japanese one, displaying good emotions towards each other was subtly encouraged. In a way, they were just being polite, though smiling at someone when you didn't mean it was actually ruder than not smiling in the first place. Not that he ever really had that problem.

"How are you, L-Leti?" Shirou asked, stumbling a little at the informal manner the admiral wanted to be addressed as. As friendly as the other woman was when they met in person, she had a very high rank and was many years older than him. The western style way of just addressing people by their first name used in Mid was still difficult for Shirou to completely adapt to.

"I'm fine, Shirou, thank you." The woman said. "But I don't think that you called just to see how this old woman was, did you?" She asked. "Sebring told me that you only just got my message?"

"Yes," Vivio said with a nod. "We watched it and called you right away. Can you tell us more about what's going on?"

The woman in the screen sighed. "It's a bit of a long story if you try to explain any details, but the actual situation is quite simple. Mid Childa is fighting the last battle of a war that ended before the current calendar."

"What do you mean? The Foundation War?" Vivio asked, mentioning one of the names given to the almost continuous series of conflicts and wars in dimensional space between the end of the Saint King Unification War and the official birth of the TSAB.

"Yes. If you remember, there was a militant faction that wanted to reinstate Belka as the supreme power despite the disappearance of the Saint's Cradle and the death of Vivio's big sister," Leti said, sparing a smile in Vivio's direction. "On the lasts months of the conflict, Mid Childa's higher officials received intelligence pointing out to a huge gathering of the military forces of that group in an uninhabited star system without any apparent tactical advantages, centered on a research post that had been thought abandoned. Most of Mid's forces were tied up in another battle, so they gathered a crew of powerful mages who had been disgraced for several reasons and sent them in what was essentially a suicide mission to cripple and sabotage whatever operation was going on there."

"And they never heard from again," Vivio finished. It was part of the knowledge she'd picked out from reading books from the infinite Library. "Surveys on the coordinates showed that there was a moon sized spherical hole in the interplanetary rocky nebula that surrounded the proto stellar gas cloud at the center of the system. The authors of the books I read thought that they'd managed to fire some kind of overloaded Arc en Ciel at the gathered army."

Admiral Leti smiled at Vivio's knowledge, and said. "Our working theory is that this Belkan Loyalist group had discovered a method to move faster than light without entering the Dimensional Sea in the research post, and planned to launch a major military force into the heart of Mid Childa bypassing most of its defenses. We think that the sabotage crew disabled or destroyed the device at the last moment and the fleet and army stationed there got still got sent at Mid, but moving slower than light under relativistic temporal distortion."

"And now that army arrived, a hundred and fifty years late." Shirou said. He decided to take the explanation at face value. "But how did they set up that huge jamming field on Mid?"

"Do you want to answer this one, Vivio?" The admiral asked the girl. "You've read a lot about Belkan history, so you should know the answer."

"There is a mineral we call magicite that was very abundant in Belka," Vivio explained, she talked with the air of a teacher and she seemed very sure of her words. "The original kingdom used it together with Lost Logia from Al Hazard and their own knights to conquer first their own planet, and later on all the other planets that ended up as part of Ancient Belka. It was known to disrupt first magical and later on electronic and hybrid telecommunications and sensors, plus it had some AMF properties on top of that."

"It was believed that over a third of Belka's crust was made out of magicite," she continued. "And the ones on Belka were the only magicite mines big enough to fuel an industry."

"That's right," Leti said. "That's what our reports say. We think that the research outpost was mobile and it stumbled on a cloud of magicite and they essentially dragged it all the way to Mid."

"Wouldn't all that magicite burn up in the atmosphere, though?" Vivio asked. "I don't think it can survive re-entry. Not unless it was the size of a house and it didn't crash too hard."

"Most of the magicite has settled in orbit around Mid, probably by design." Leti answered. "There are some fragments that fell to the atmosphere, but nothing big enough to survive re-entry."

"Should you really be telling us all this?" Shirou asked. "I don't think that information like this would get told to the general public, especially so soon."

"You are right, this kind of information isn't public normally," the woman in the screen explained. "But this isn't really an incident. It's a war, as far as the Bureau classifies things, and in that case the laws say that a lot more information than normal can, and must be released to the public. News services all over the rest of Bureau space are already running the story, plus I think that the Public Relations Department has already made several official statements and press releases in many worlds."

Vivio and Shirou digested this for a few moments, before the girl asked. "What did you mean, in the message, that you had strong circumstantial evidence of..." She trailed off as the admiral nodded and smirking, outwardly showing that she was feeling quite amused by something.

"Well," she said, "I'll say this straight out. We saw them from space." At Shirou's and Vivio's faces at that, Leti's smirk widened and she elaborated. "As you may know Vivio, magicite interference with visible light is comparatively low and predictable, so most of our sensors have been temporarily reconfigured as giant telescopes or turned dormant to free up computing resources. We simply saw, in the area where your family was last seen, spells that only they can cast and with caster spectra that coincide with the ones on file for the people I mentioned in the message."

"That's...unreal" Shirou said.

While every magic user of Algorithmic Linking had a distinctive color to their magic, even Shirou, the spectrum of the radiated light was very diffuse, giving little to no information. However, if the mage used high ranking spells the spectrum sharpened and a distinct pattern appeared, one so unique to the individual that even identical twins had different ones. For the ships in orbit around the planet to see the spells, the light had to go through the air in the atmosphere and the debris field of magicite, which meant that an statistically significant amount of data had to be collected before giving a verdict on the identity of the caster.

However, it was very simple to distort the resulting spectrum of light emitted by a spell, which coupled with the necessity of measurements on spells that needed skilled casters made it was rare for spectral analysis to be used outside of laboratories and hospitals with specialized equipment. Like with blood type or allergies, it was another section of the information that the Bureau handled.

"I'm afraid that anything more specific than that is still classified," Leti apologized. "I can tell you that your teacher used at least a single S ranked barrier and an unknown dragon themed binding spell because you're his official apprentices, but our own theories and their effectiveness are currently classified under the Official War Secrets Laws."

"It's okay," Vivio said. "If mom and the other Three Aces and Yuuno are alright and fighting, then I think everyone else must be, too."

If they were all working together they may have bought the time and space needed for the three Aces to essentially spam their higher ranked attacks against the enemies they faced, and for Yuuno to have used that kind of high ranked support spells that made them visible from space. Not to mention that Vivio had an inkling as to what exactly did the S ranked barrier do and how it helped whoever was on Yuuno's side.

"It must have been pretty busy over there," Shirou said. "Is that the same everywhere in the Bureau? We don't keep up with the news much, when we are here in Japan."

"Most Administered Worlds are feeling a bit paranoid, recalling their troops and stepping up patrols while only sending token forces to the TSAB. The ships that the Navy did not send back to Mid got sent to patrol dimensional space for any criminal opportunists that try to pop up. Earth is pretty far out of the way, so I think it'll be a couple of days before anything goes anywhere close. I really should disconnect now, I have a meeting in a few minutes," the admiral said. "The two of you take care of yourselves."

"It's alright. Good bye, Admiral." Shirou said, prompting the admiral to chime in with a "I told you to call me Leti, remember Shirou?"

"Sorry," the red headed mage said sheepishly.

"Is it okay if we call you again tomorrow, around at this time?" Vivio asked.

"Yes, of course. Since I may be busy, don't worry if I don't answer right away, I'll call you back later. I have to go now." Leti said, cutting the connection.

Shirou stood up from his seat and stretched. Turning to Vivio, he asked, "a war? Really?"

"Why didn't you say anything about the war?" Vivio asked Shirou, disregarding his comment.

He answered, "you heard how it is. Even if we warned her, with even less ships trying to patrol the same space all that Admiral Leti can do is pass it along and worry. I'll write a report before I go to bed and send it to the Headquarters and let them prioritize who should know what, who should do what and when they should know and do."

"Stupid," Vivio said chastising Shirou. "You know that she'll find out anyway, right? I thought you had a better reason."

"I just didn't want to trouble her right then when she had a good mood," Shirou apologized. "I figured that if she found out about it through official channels then she'd deal with it like another part of her job instead of an extra personal problem on top of the Belkan attack."

"Your parents sound like skilled combatants," came Saber's voice from the doorway, startling Shirou and Vivio.

"They are," Vivio said. "How much did you hear?"

"As a Servant, my senses are superior to those of a normal human," Saber answered. "I could hear you from where I was restocking provisions."

"I see," the blonde teen said. Shirou stood from the couch, and turned to the blondes.

"I have to get started on that report, Vivio," he said. When the blonde mage stretched her arms towards him, he helped pull her up to her feet.

"I'm going to bed, then." She said. "Do you need to sleep, Saber?" She'd been told that Servants needed no drink or sleep as long as they had a source of magical power, but it still saved up the amount of power she was using. And Saber had enjoyed the food, even if she didn't need it.

"I'll stand guard in Shirou's room," the Servant said. "The Einzbern Master could have discovered where we live, so there should be someone standing guard."

Vivio tapped her chin with her finger as she thought, before saying, "come on. I'm going to show you how to use the wards and the alarm system."

"My Magic Resistance will not dispel anything?" Saber asked. She was aware that they had access to technology beyond what Earth had, but her instinctual understanding of the Bureau told her that most of their devices functioned by mixing effects and properties from magical and mundane methods. She believed that the floating screens would vanish the first time she touched one.

"It's okay. All devices can make screen from just magic, but specialized ones, or systems like the ones we have underground can make non-magical screens with haptic feedback anywhere in range." Vivio's voice vanished as the two young women left the room, and Shirou left to keep his word. Once he finished the report, he went to his room and changed into his sleeping clothes. When he got inside his covers, he heard Saber come over to stand outside guard the room.

His last thoughts before his long hours dragged him down to sleeps were of admiration for the woman, since learning to use, display and understand at least superficially all of the information that the defenses on the property had was hard even for people familiar with surveillance experience in Mid. To have learned it all before he had finished writing his own recollection of events was quite impressive. Whoever she had the skills to she have earned the title as a legendary hero from the past.

The night passed without much incident, but when the morning came Shirou got a big surprise. In one of the corners of his room was Saber, standing so still that people could have mistaken her for a wax statue. After yelping and almost falling out of his bed, he asked almost yelled, "Saber! What are you doing in here?"

"The defenses on this place are formidable, indeed." Saber admitted like she could care less about how Shirou was dressed, or how short a time it had been since he'd woken up. "But it occurred to me that if any Servant was capable of bypassing them, it would be Assassin using a personal Skill or even a Noble Phantasm. And Assassin would have to materialize before dealing a blow, so I moved here as a precaution."

Shirou deflated. It all made perfect sense, so even if he was unnerved by having a pretty girl stare at his sleeping form for what could have been hours on end. His own brushes with conflict had taught him to ignore some of the reservations he'd had begun to develop, but others he clung to much more tightly. Then he noticed that Saber was already dressed in the uniform that Vivio had dug out.

"You already are ready for school?" He asked.

Saber nodded. "Indeed. Last night Vivio showed me what I should bring in the bag," she said gesturing to the blue bag hanging off her shoulder, "and I appropriated a spare bokken in your room to use as a weapon available should something happen in public. Nothing else should be out of place."

"Fine. Is Vivio awake?" Shirou asked. When Saber nodded her head, Shirou said, "Okay, I'll set up some breakfast, take a bath and change. Please wait for us to get ready, Saber." After having said that, Shirou almost walked out of his room before he remembered something. "Oh, and Saber," he said, turning around, "Please think about what name you're going to use. I was going to suggest that you use Saber as your last name, but it's really up to you."

"Very well, Shirou." Saber said. "I'll wait for you at the dinning room, and inform you of my choice before we leave."

It didn't take long for Shirou to prepare breakfast and to set things up so that nothing would be burned or ruined until someone came and served the food, thought by the time he got to the bath, Vivio had already left it. The long sleep had completely revitalized him, and the bath had focused that energy in a way that he was somehow left exactly as what he needed to be to start the day on the right foot.

After he dressed, he arrived at the dinning room only to see Saber eating and Vivio nowhere to be seen. He could hear the sounds of someone cooking, so it could only be her. It seemed like the day before hadn't been an oddity, Saber really seemed hungry enough for enough food to sate a lion the size of an elephant. Though, with her being an essentially immaterial being with a fake body, eating food probably worked differently for her. Shirou decided to take it as a compliment to his food.

"Saber," Shirou said, making the knight stop eating. "Have you decided on a name?"

The woman nodded. "Please call me Veronica Adams."

"I see, then I suppose I should call you Veronica while we are in school, Saber." Shirou noted.

The Servant shook her head, but it was Vivio who answered. "If anyone asks, Saber's a childhood nickname she got when she was little and was first learning how to wield a sword. But I think that everyone else will call her Adams-san, maybe Veronica-san at most."

The extraterrestrial blonde mage set Shirou's breakfast on the table before sitting besides the other two. The Japanese mage happily greeted her, "hello, Vivio. Good morning."

"Good morning, Shirou." The other mage automatically responded, just as jovial. "Are you going to stop by the Archery range?" She asked as she sat.

"I'll go with you and Saber first. Since the house is technically on my name I may be needed." Shirou said as he prepared t start eating. "But after that I'll head over and meet with Mitsuzuri."

"You belong to your school's Archery club, Shirou?" Saber asked. Shirou thought it was a bit odd that the Grail had taught her something so mundane, even if the acclimatization package was through but he supposed that Saber had the whole night with access to the house's computer systems, or maybe Vivio had told her about clubs last night.

"Yes, I do. Yuuno, my teacher, encouraged me to take a position where I was in charge of people while still in school. And since I am one of the best members of the club, I got voted as the Captain when the last one quit sometime last year." Shirou said.

"Then what do they do when you are not attending?" Saber asked again.

"Mitsuzuri Ayako, mi vice-captain, takes charge while I'm not there." Shirou answered. "To be honest she's fit to be the official captain, but she didn't want the title until she could beat me in archery. And she can't."

Saber nodded. Turning to the other blonde in the table, she asked her, "Vivio, are you also part of this club?"

"No, actually. Clubs aren't mandatory, in any case." The girl in question answered. "I'm taking a long distance course in data analysis at a University in Mid, so I need the time."

"And the school accept just accepts that?" Saber asked, seeking clarification.

"My apprenticeship with Yuuno-san is actually recognized by the school because it technically counts as credits for the Archaeology programs of an university he made a deal with." Vivio explained. "That means that we get a lot more leeway on absences from school than normal students, though our grades are a bit lower than they could be since some teachers like to make long assignments and sometimes we don't have enough time to make them perfect."

Breakfast was a relatively short affair afterwards. Saber had begun eating before the other two had even sat, and when they finished eating, Shirou and Vivio worked together to wash the dishes in a prompt fashion. When they were done the whole group moved over to the entrance where they picked up their school bags and left the house.

They left for the school quite early, with their breath making tiny white clouds every time they exhaled. They walked mostly in silence, until halfway through, when they began discussing and expanding both Saber's back story and what Shirou and Vivio had been told about it. This time Shirou heard that Vivio had coached Saber some on the details, thought she'd left the Servant to come up with most of it herself.

The walk from Shirou's house to the school took only twenty minutes, but when they arrived the school was already open. They went to the administrative offices of the school, but after Saber explained her fabricated situation and the temporary nature of her stay, the bureaucracy went through quickly and the whole thing was over in less than ten minutes total.

The woman who'd helped them, a plump office lady whose hair was long begun graying, seemed enthused by the 'romantic' tale of Kiritsugu's father organizing a betrothal with Saber's grandfather and the 'accidental' meeting between the teens that led to Saber's family remembering about the contract. Widowed of a husband she'd met in an omiai by a heart attack, she seemed to want to give Saber the same chance of getting a happy ending she did.

Vivio, despite the ease with which everything happened was in a bad mood when they left, but she regained her composure very soon afterwards. The two girls split from Shirou, to tour the school before class, and the redhead quickly made his way towards the Archery range. His own key still worked, so he opened the lock and began inspecting the state of everything within.

He was soon joined by Mitsuzuri, who talked him through what'd happened in the club while he'd been absent and helped him inspect the equipment and the range. A few people arrived, but instead of practicing, everyone ended up welcoming their captain back and talking, before it got late and everyone had to leave to their own classrooms.










TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 4


Glossary:

Veronica Adams: Veronica, a version of Berenice, which is itself a version of Φερενικη-Pherenike which means 'bringing victory' in ancient Greek (Macedonian?) for 'to bring' (φερω-phero) and 'victory' (νικη-nike). A homage to her own noble phantasm, but still common enough a name that the meaning behind it is usually ignored, unlike something like "rex" or even "Drake". Moving on, Adams. Saber (as written by me) is thinking of the Proto-norse aþala and the Old Norse aðal, both of which mean noble and are somewhat distant from her legend. The modern Adams, according to my research, comes from the biblical Adam, with the 's' at the end generally being an indicative of the patronymic suffix (like if Johnson was actually Johns).



Another chapter done! For those who skipped the description, for those who simply couldn't picture it in their minds or simply for everyone who wanted to see how Saber looks, here is what I was going for with my description:

This image is quite old, and it was my personal inspiration for Saber joining Homurabara as a student, something that neoalfa recently did in his fic Path of the King. As soon as I read that chapter, I was bummed because mine wouldn't be the first fic where it happened, but that's hardly problematic fic-wise. I do believe that my chapters are ending up quite long however, which is way too long for a real novel but good enough for a fic. I hope.

No food porn for you, because I didn't want to choose between Japanese style, western style or world building-born Mid Childan style food. And I didn't want to do the research necessary for good quality food porn. I made up Mid Childan wine and flour, though so it's all fine? People like booze and explosions so since flour can be used for dust explosions people like them, right?

The first chapter can be technically considered a prologue, with no flashback and the second is a beginning, with a flashback to another beginning. This chapter is about a transition, and its flashback is about a transition too. I expect this will repeat itself for all chapters, and that their lengths will remain roughly the same. Around ten thousand words, if someone's curious. The next chapter should have action again, and the fic's route will begin to take its own life.

If you have any questions, suggestions or criticism, feel free to tell me.

[rajvir]

Great chapter and I am really starting to like this I encourage you to also post this in fanfiction you will gain additional fans there and I can download it with flagfic easily then.

[Fafnir]

Nice chapter. A few comments:

Shirou stood up from his seat and stretched. Turning to Vivio, he asked, "a war? Really?"

"Why didn't you say anything about the war?" Vivio asked Shirou, disregarding his comment.

I know what you mean, but this is really ambiguous since there are two ongoing wars.

Victoria-san

BZZZT.