Fate/Recursive Wisdom (Fate/Stay Night)

[James D. Fawkes]

Look. Up there. See that? Up there, at the top. Yes, there. That thing we call a summary, or a description. If you're still here after that, or if you clicked on the story and only now see it but still decided to stay, welcome.

First off, The Characters: Emiya Shirou has a supporting role in this story. He's still the protagonist of his own tale, but I'm not going to try and one-up Nasu by writing his conflicts as the main focus when FSN managed to do the job quite well already, so although he features prominently, he's not the protagonist of this story. Rin will also feature prominently as an important member of the supporting cast, but she's not quite the protagonist, either. The main focus of this story will actually be Medea as the Servant and an OC Master, Tohsaka Yukio, Rin's elder twin brother. (By seven lousy minutes!) They're deuteragonist and protagonist respectively.

Speaking of...

The OCs: Strictly speaking, there are three. One of them is mentioned only by name and never appears because there aren't enough female characters in the Clocktower who are both around the main characters' age and not so important that using them for the purpose I needed would get me in trouble, the other is a Servant who is mentioned in the lore but never expanded upon (come on, she's one of my favorites; you guys should already know who she is), and the third is the protagonist of this story, Tohsaka Yukio. The rest of the characters will be straight from canon, either FSN itself or the expanded Fate universe.

If you want to be pedantic about it, there's a fourth OC, but that's just a canon Heroic Spirit in a class they never showed up in during canon, so that doesn't really count.

Tohsaka Yukio: Is an OC and technically a Self-Insert. I say technically, and I mean that in every sense of the word: he isn't just a drop-in who was tossed into the story by Zelretch (really?), he's not a SI disguised as a random OC (yes, those of you who do it, no one is fooled), and he's not a SI who woke up as a baby and perfectly remembers all of the details across 18 years as he grew up to match his mental maturity (come on, seriously?). Yukio is very much built and designed from Nasuverse mechanics, made with rules that govern the setting, and like any good SI, he became his own character long before the main conflict started. The things he inherited from me aren't all good for him, either.

Expect a character more like Lang Noi's Gekko Keisuke from Catch Your Breath rather than... I dunno, I don't really read stories with really bad SIs, so I don't have a counter example.

What to expect: Fate/Stay Night. Yukio is not a Mary Sue or Gary Stu or what have you. He isn't perfect. His plans don't work out flawlessly. He's not some super mage that makes all the rest look like chumps. He's not an edgy, misunderstood genius who no one acknowledges but is actually better than all the rest. Yukio has some advantages, but he is, by and large, a first generation magus, and he doesn't have a Reality Marble to push him past where he should be.

He's better than Fate/Zero era Waver Velvet, but that's not exactly a high bar.

Like with FSN, things will start fairly slow. After all, as you'll see in the first chapter, the story starts a whole month before canon Day 3, when Shirou summons Saber. I get to fill that time with Yukio trying to get everything in order before things kick off, so the first 8 or 9 chapters will be a lot of that and a lot of establishing his place in the setting.

Romance: There will be some, because this is FSN. I'm not going to tell you who ahead of time, but it should be very clear fairly early on.

Update schedule: There isn't one. I'll post on Sundays as and when my buffer fills up, but this is a side project I'm working on simultaneously with Hereafter. Chapters are undoubtedly going to come slower than that story's.

Special Thanks: to all my supporters in the usual place, for helping to make this possible. Their support helps make writing these stories possible, and I'm profoundly thankful to all of them.

 

[James D. Fawkes]

Prologue: Witch of Betrayal

All around her, there was quiet.

In the distance echoed the sounds of fighting, the thunderous booms of powerful Noble Phantasms clashing, the crack of smacking flesh, the rumble of the earth breaking and shattering beneath kicking feet and punching fists that surpassed the strength of mere humans.

And yet around her, there was nothing. She was alone with her own breathing, alone with the swirling of more magical energy than she had ever before witnessed with her own eyes. Nothing and no one stood between her and her goal.

Saber still fought far off. The remaining Masters were still busy with one another, trying to stop the Grail or bring it to fruition, each for their own reasons. In truth, the Grail War was still not yet finished, and the vessel prepared to accept the souls of the defeated had not yet been filled. A wish could not yet be made upon it.

And yet Medea stood before the Great Grail, and she was the victor.

"What was it you said to me?" she asked the silent air. The vast torrent of magical energy that roared around her like a hurricane seemed to drown her words out. "If I made it to the end against all odds and stood before the Grail to make my wish, you would kill me yourself?"

She should be laughing. She should be crowing her victory, because he had told her he would crush those who stood before the Grail with a wish in their heart, even if it was her, but he was nowhere to be seen. He could not enforce the promise he had made to her at the beginning of this all. He could not stop her.

Was that not something to celebrate? Was she not the winner of this Grail War? She had schemed and plotted and waited for this moment, biding her time so that she could sweep in at the last moment and claim the Grail for herself, and it had all paid off, now.

With this much magical energy, she could achieve anything she wanted. With this much power at her fingertips, why, she could build her own Grail and use it to fuel whatever sorcery she imagined. There was nothing beyond her, now. She could have her wish granted at a whim.

And yet… In spite of that…

Medea looked up at the womb of the Grail, at the grotesque visage of a skeletal, half-formed fetus with four enormous eyes and too-long limbs. The miasma of corrupted magical power that seethed off of it and hovered over the ground like mist was corrosive and vile, even to a Heroic Spirit like her who was formed more from grudges than adulation.

Even this was not truly an obstacle. It was exactly as had been foretold: a creature of incredible power that specialized in the killing of humans, a thing of darkness and curses closer to one of the Beasts, an Evil of Humanity, than a proper Servant. But it was still weak and defenseless, and therefore at her mercy. Like this, nascent and not yet fully manifested, she could smother it in its womb and plunder the Grail for whatever she desired.

This was it. This was what she'd struggled for, what she'd almost died for, this was the end of the crooked path she'd been walking. Right here, right now, it didn't matter if the Grail War hadn't technically ended, because with this much power at her fingertips, she was the winner, no matter what.

And yet…

And yet, she was hesitating. Victory was within her grasp, and all she had to do was reach out and take it with her two hands. There was nothing stopping her, nothing standing in her way, neither Servant nor Master to prevent her from subverting this whole system for her own ends.

And yet she hesitated.

Why?

Why? Why was she hesitating? What was stopping her from claiming her prize?

Nothing. She couldn't think of a single reason. There was nothing in her way and nothing at all to stop her. She had no reason.

No, that was wrong. It wasn't that she didn't have a reason.

Rather, the one reason she could think of was a reason she absolutely couldn't accept. She'd spent too much time and effort denying it, turning away from the possibility, and scorning him for his willingness to believe it. She'd spent too much time tricking him, too much time lying to him, too much time and effort twisting him around her finger.

It had all been a lie, it had to be. Yes, from the beginning, she'd always known she could do it, she would do it, and that she'd have to in order to make it this far. Lying to him and leading him on, tricking him into believing in her, trusting her, that had been part of the plan ever since he had saved her.

She'd even given him her body, made herself vulnerable just so that she could take advantage of his. Seduction was the witch's oldest trick, the original sin that men blamed her for. She had seduced Jason, surely, and killed her brother to sell it. What difference did it make if this time such an accusation was true?

And with her tongue, she'd promised him loyalty. With her lips, she'd sealed that promise. In the bedchamber, she'd given that promise weight. No man could surrender so much to a woman and not believe her his.

All so that she could do as her legend said she would and betray him at this very last moment.

But what if the only person she'd wound up lying to was herself?

Damn it. Damn it.

She drew Rule Breaker, held it out, gripped it with shaking hands. The easiest thing in the world would be to stab herself with it and be free of the contract, free to betray him and take the Grail, free of the threat of his Command Spells when he realized her treachery.

And yet, she couldn't do it.

No, she couldn't be that much of a fool, could she? That day, when he'd so calmly and with such conviction told her she could transcend her legend, she had scorned his naiveté. She had long come to terms with who and what she was and his pretty words wouldn't change any of it.

And yet they returned to her now.

"Self-actualization, you called it," she murmured. "To cast off the shackles of my legend and become a hero. A chance to be true to who I am, rather than who I was forced to be."

She'd derided them then, and she absolutely should, now.

But…

The phantom sensation of his lips on hers tingled. His breath on her ear, his fingertips dancing along her naked skin, his body flush against hers. The memory of his scars under her touch. The sense of calm contentment to feel the warmth of his body next to hers.

Why? Why couldn't she get them out of her head?

His trust, his belief in her innate goodness should be meaningless to her. How could it compare to the deepest, most heartfelt yearnings that had been carved so completely into her being that she felt them now, millennia after her death? It simply couldn't. It was the same as weighing a feather against a pile of gold.

But… In spite of that…

"You're a fool."

She spat the words out like venom. Even she wasn't quite sure who she was addressing them to, herself or him. Maybe she was saying it to both.

Who was the greater fool, then? The fool who believed in her, despite knowing exactly who and what she was, or the fool who fell in love with him, in spite of her intentions to stab him in the back?

Or maybe she was the only fool, for not knowing that she'd become so good a liar she could deceive herself so completely.

A month. That was how long it had taken him to win her over so thoroughly that she'd never realized it. A month. That was all the longer it took him to steal her heart.

It felt far too short. Maybe if her younger self had been summoned, she would have been so susceptible as to find him that charming. The Princess of Colchis may indeed have been so easily seduced.

But the Witch of Betrayal should never have fallen at all.

Damn it. Damn it all. And damn him, most of all, for making her love him.

Because there was no other choice she could make. Now that she'd come this far, now that she'd made it before the Grail, there was no other outcome that could possibly have resulted. This was a foregone conclusion.

Knowing what she was sacrificing now didn't make it hurt any less.

She lifted Rule Breaker, her Noble Phantasm that canceled all contracts and reduced all magecrafts back to their origin state. Her hands no longer shook, because she'd made her decision.

For a moment, she closed her eyes and didn't bother to hide the lone pair of tears that leaked out. She thought of her family and friends, the ones she'd left behind when she'd sailed off with Jason. She thought of her father, her brother who she'd mutilated, the various staff and ladies in waiting who had been kind to her. She thought, at last, of the young man who had been the first to offer her a real and true smile since that fateful day, the first since she'd left Colchis to honestly love her, whether or not she deserved it.

"I'm sorry."

And she thrust her crooked dagger down.

 

[James D. Fawkes]

This is the story of the bloody ritual known as the Holy Grail War and all of the lives that it touched.​

Chapter I: Unexpected Everyday

"Isn't it obvious? He was supposed to leave."

It was a nostalgic image from ten years ago.

A man in an elegant red suit stood before her, smiling.

To her, his daughter, he had given the strength of his blood and his striking blue eyes.

This was the last time she had ever seen him.

He treated her somewhat roughly, in an awkward attempt at fatherhood. He offered her no true goodbyes, as a normal father might, nor words of kindness and love. Instead, he delivered a few parting pieces of advice, a handful of final lessons to his student and heir.

Everything that he felt needed to be said was said. The path of a magus was harsh and cruel and had no place for a soft heart, and so he showed her no softness.

Then, he turned away and disappeared from her life. If she had known that it would be the last time she would ever see him alive, she would have never let him leave without expressing the love of a daughter for her father.

But that was not to be.

Jiri-jiri! Jiri-jiri! Jiri-jiri!

"Ugh."

She groaned and rolled over onto her stomach, burying her head underneath her pillow. She pressed the fluff against her ears to drown out the noise.

It didn't help.

Jiri-jiri! Jiri-jiri! Jiri-jiri!

"Shut up, already," she groaned miserably.

But the alarm didn't stop, it kept merrily chiming on, ringing shrilly as though to alert her to an intruder.

That would be preferable, if she was honest. A reason to actually get out of bed. However, the boundary surrounding her house possessed no such feature, so it was only an ordinary alarm clock doing exactly the thing it had been designed for.

That did not mean she had to like it.

Ah, but, even if she didn't like it, she needed to go to school, didn't she?

Jiri-jiri! Jiri-jiri! Jiri-jiri!

"Alright, already."

Lifting one arm, she slapped her clock to shut off the alarm. When she peeked out blearily from beneath her pillow, the time read seven o'clock.

"Damn it," she grumbled, rubbing tiredly at her eyes as she forced herself up. "I don't like it at all, but I need to get up or else I'll be late for…for…"

For what, exactly?

It was currently the winter vacation, and a Sunday, at that, so there was no school for her to be late to.

"Guh." She dragged her hand down the front of her face. "I set that alarm last night without even thinking about it?"

It was a Sunday during winter vacation, so she had no school to go to and no reason to wake up at seven o'clock in the morning. There was no pressing concern that needed to be handled, and therefore no reason why she ought to get up so early.

"In other words, I could have just stayed in bed."

Of course, there was no reason why she couldn't still. Since there was nothing that needed to be taken care of and still a few more days left of vacation, it was a perfectly valid option for her to lie back down and get as much sleep as she liked.

"Maybe that's too greedy, though…"

On the other hand, if she stole as much sleep as she liked now, then it would likely be even harder on her when vacation ended and it was time to go back to school. She was not a morning person on even the best of days, and so if she got too far off her schedule of waking up at six thirty, she would surely suffer when it was a matter of necessity rather than discipline.

"Ugh!"

She threw herself back down on her bed and buried her face into her pillow.

"I just want to go back to sleep, though!" she moaned.

That wasn't really all that much to ask, was it?

BANG

The sound of the front door slamming open echoed. She scrambled off of her bed, slipping and falling off of her mattress, and landed on the floor, butt first.

Could it be, there was really…?

"RIN-CHAN!" a familiar voice called brightly. "I'M HOME!"

An equally familiar feeling of frustration and indignation rose up in Tohsaka Rin, and she snatched up the nearest thing she could grab — a slipper from under her bed — and raced out of her room and down the stairs.

A familiar young man, a boy her age with dark brown hair and bright blue eyes, stood in the entranceway, grinning broadly. The moment she saw him, she tightened her grip on her slipper, wound back her arm, and —

"STOP CALLING ME THAT, DAMN IT! YOU'RE SEVEN MINUTES OLDER, NOT SEVEN YEARS!"

— threw it at his head with all her might.

Tohsaka Yukio, her older twin brother — fraternal, of course, although they looked similar enough that people might be tempted to think otherwise, no matter how little sense it made — only laughed and ducked his head. He needn't have bothered, since the slipper missed him by a mile.

"Come now, Rin-chan," he said, still grinning. "Is that any way to greet your elder brother, who has been gone for over six months?"

"Kuh!" Rin's eyebrow twitched and her fists clenched — and then, suddenly, she relaxed, released the tension in her shoulders, and offered him a big, bright smile. "You're right," she said calmly. "How silly of me. It should have been a knife, not my slipper! Right, Big Brother?"

Rather than flinch, Yukio just laughed again.

"There you are," he said warmly. "It's good to see you, Rin. It's been way too long."

He dropped his luggage unceremoniously and stepped forward, throwing his arms wide.

"If you try to hug me, I'm disowning you," she told him flatly.

And as though she hadn't spoken at all, he wrapped those arms of his around her shoulders and pulled her against his chest.

Into her ear, he whispered like a sigh, "I'm home."

Rin let out a long, impatient breath through her nose, rolled her eyes, and then slowly hugged him back. "Welcome home."

After a long moment, he let her go and stepped backwards to hold her at arm's length, looking her up and down. Inspecting her. Marking her growth.

"You're more beautiful every time I see you," he told her.

Rin rolled her eyes again. "Stop treating me like I'm your daughter. I'm your sister, remember? Saying stuff like that to me is creepy, not sweet."

Yukio chuckled. "Fair enough."

Rin stepped back a little more and cocked one hip to the side, regarding him expectantly.

"So? What news from the Association, then?"

Yukio shook his head and gestured behind him to the luggage still sitting outside the open front door. It was not much, only a few meagre supplies that one might take on a short vacation, and how Yukio made that much last six months, she had no idea.

"First, let me get all of this stuff inside, before what little heat this old place has escapes outside. Make some tea while I get it all sorted?"

Rin nodded. "Alright."

Yukio turned back towards his luggage, and Rin made her way to the kitchen to put the kettle on for tea. While the water heated, she reached into the back of the cabinet for the special tin that she never touched — it was reserved for Yukio, his private stash of Earl Grey, and Rin let him have it; she preferred Eastern teas, anyway.

It said something about him that the tin, enchanted to preserve the freshness of its contents, was one of Yukio's first successful projects into magecraft.

When the tea was ready and had been steeped for the exact amount of time recommended, she poured it into a teapot — the one from the cheaper china set, rather than the more expensive, almost unused one meant for honored guests — set it on a tray, and grabbed Yukio's favorite mug. Then, she went back to the drawing room.

"You know," she began as she entered, "I know we're not exactly the most traditionally Japanese family to ever live, but if you're going to flout most of the things we do observe, you could at least have an oriental taste in tea."

He shot her an amused glance. A smile curved his lips.

"All of the other things I do that probably have our ancestors rolling over in their graves, and that's the part you find most offensive?"

"I've given up on most of the other ones," she told him as she set the tray down on the coffee table. "I figured I could at least correct your abysmal taste in tea, though."

"Sorry, but green tea has always been bitter and undrinkable to me," he said. "Besides, if it wasn't for me, we wouldn't even be able to afford loose leaf tea as regularly as we can. I figure our honored ancestors would forgive me much, since I saved us tons of financial trouble. By the way, here."

He tossed her a package, which she caught. It was a small, brown, nondescript box without any particular markings.

"What's this?"

"Your birthday present," he told her. He made a gesture with his hand. "Go on. Open it."

Rin hesitated for a moment, then began to work at the tape that held the box closed.

"It's about a month early, but I figured it's better to give it to you now than to wait."

What came out of the box was another box, this one black and with a hinge on one end. When she opened this box, it was to find inside a piece of jewelry.

"A necklace?" she asked.

It was made of gold, a chain with a small pendant in the shape of a dolphin. Sparkling from the place where the dolphin's eye should be was a small, blue sapphire.

"Formal wear," Yukio corrected.

Surprised, Rin blinked and looked over at him. "A mystic code?"

"Bought the necklace from a jeweler, but I customized it myself," he clarified. "It's got nothing on King Arthur's sheath, and it's not on the level of a Dead Apostle's healing, but that's got some powerful restoration magic. As long as you've got the mana to spare, your head's intact, and your heart isn't completely gone, that thing should keep you alive long enough to heal from just about anything."

"Huh," she said. "That's…seriously impressive."

"Healing's the one magic I'm good at," he said dryly. "I should hope my skill with it is impressive."

Not for lack of trying or effort. Yukio had inherited the same level of talent and, arguably, genius that Rin had, it was just that Rin was the heir to the Tohsaka magical lineage with an incredibly rare attribute, and Yukio, with his utterly ordinary attribute, therefore, had missed out on a lot of the training that came with that burden. Too, the lack of a magic crest was a disadvantage that had left him playing catch-up for longer than he probably liked.

Somedays, Rin wished he had been the one to inherit the Tohsaka Crest. But what always stopped her was the bitter realization that she, too, likely would have been given up, as Sakura had been, so that her innate talent and powerful magical attribute could flourish. Their fractured family was already shattered and broken beyond repair; if the alternative was not to be with any of them at all, then she would count her blessings that she at least still had her twin brother.

She'd tried to help him, of course. Shore up the holes. At least teach him the basics. But her own instruction had been interrupted by the Grail War, so there'd only been so much she could do.

"You really don't give yourself enough credit," she told him, trying to be supportive. "Your jewel magecraft is perfectly acceptable —"

"You mean mediocre."

"— and your grasp on the basics is solid."

"In other words, good enough to match a second or third rate magus," he translated.

Rin grimaced. It wasn't exactly untrue, but… Damn it, couldn't he just accept her compliments?

"A-Anyway," she said, changing the subject, "you went to the Clock Tower, right? Some sort of business you were handling?"

"Ah, that." He grimaced. "Well, uh, I was actually there to take care of a bit of inheritance. Dear old Dad set up a couple of betrothals for me."

"Betrothal? Like an arranged marriage?" She blanched. "Wait, hold on — a couple? As in, more than one?"

Sheepishly, he held up three fingers. "I managed to whittle it down to three."

Rin sputtered and felt her face turn red. "What?! That doesn't make it any better, you know! 'Whittle it down' means there were more beforehand!"

"Dad was prepared," said Yukio. "He had a whole bunch of contingencies in case his preferred matches were rejected or renegotiated later on, so…um, well, it was basically every eligible female heir or family head within ten years of me. Plus or minus."

Rin twitched. Plus or minus… That meant that he'd said no to at least a couple seven-year-olds.

Wait.

"You did say no to the seven-year-olds, didn't you?"

Yukio had the grace to look affronted. "What do I look like, a lolicon?"

"That's not a no."

"Geez, you think you'd have more faith in your favorite brother," he griped. "Yes, Rin, I said no to the seven-year-olds. And the ten-year-olds. Everyone under fifteen, actually, which was basically everyone who was younger than me by more than maybe a few months."

Rin let out a breath. "All right. So, you said three. Who does that leave, then?"

"Well, there's Dad's preferred match," said Yukio, "a girl a few years older than me by the name of Lilieve Synestella. She's probably the entire reason why there are contingencies, actually, because there's apparently some clause in the betrothal contract about how it can be negated if the Synestella's family head — which is Lilieve, now — decides I'm unworthy of her when it's time for the contract to be fulfilled. Which is probably what's going to happen, if I'm honest."

"She sounds like a stuck-up bitch," Rin commented.

"You know," Yukio began slyly, "there are some who would say you —"

"If you finish that sentence, I'm disowning you."

Yukio let out a laugh. "Wow, twice in one day? You must really have missed me!"

She flushed. "I-idiot! That's not it at all! As the head of the Tohsaka family, it falls to me to ensure the prosperity of my family, and a marriage like that can't be prosperous if both sides aren't satisfied with the arrangement!"

"If you say so."

"A-anyway!" she said, trying to regain her dignity. "You said there were three. Who were the other two?"

"Ah, right." He snorted. "Well, the second one was the Edelfelt family. By a strange twist, the head also retired young and left the headship to his daughter, a girl by the name of Luviagelita. She's about our age, actually. Might be a year or so older, at the most."

"And the third family?"

Yukio grinned sheepishly. "I, uh, don't remember?"

Rin stared at him flatly. "…What?"

He shrugged. "I don't remember. I stopped paying attention during that meeting, so that's probably why they didn't call it off altogether, because I didn't express any interest in doing so."

"How can you not remember?" she sputtered. "Yukio! This is your future wife we're talking about! How are you supposed to have a prosperous marriage if you don't even remember her name?!"

"Because it doesn't matter!" he protested.

"Doesn't matter?!"

"It doesn't!" he said. "Even if the Synestella say no, the Edelfelt definitely won't!"

"You don't know that!"

He grimaced and wiped a hand down his face. "Actually, yes, I do. She told me so herself."

Rin's brain ground to a halt. "What?"

"Luviagelita told me herself that she'll accept if the Synestella reject me," he explained. "She told me flat out, in no uncertain terms, that if Lilieve says no, she'll take me, no matter what. Something like, since the Tohsaka family of thieves stole one of the Edelfelt sisters during the Third Holy Grail War, it was only right that the Edelfelt family take one of the Tohsaka siblings, now. It was just a shame I didn't have the Crest that we apparently stole, too, because her family's been wanting that back for decades — or so she said."

"That's what she wants you for?!" Rin demanded. "To repay a grudge her family's been holding for seventy years?!"

He shrugged.

"And of course, you said no!"

Yukio grimaced. "I didn't get the impression I was allowed to."

"Of course you're allowed to!" Rin groaned and pinched at the bridge of her nose. "Please tell me she was at least ugly."

"Smoking hot, actually," Yukio said casually. "Everything the right size and the right shape in the right place. Takes good care of herself, too, she's in really good shape. Only thing awkward or odd is the way she styles her hair — old-fashioned, Victorian era curls. A little strange, but it doesn't make her less attractive."

"Yukio."

He smirked. "Of course, the personality was less endearing. Really got the 'I'm better than you, plebeian,' thing going on, like she talked down to me the entire time. Plus, she's got this most god-awful laugh that she must have practiced, because there's no way it's natural."

Rin blinked. "Her laugh is what throws you off?"

Yukio straightened, lifted one hand up to his mouth daintily, adopted the most superior, condescending expression she'd ever seen on his face, and then demonstrated. "Oh-ho-ho-ho-hoh!"

Rin felt her eyebrow twitch.

"Like a hyena," Yukio agreed as though she'd spoken. "I think she's actually trying to go for that 'refined noblewoman' kind of thing, but it just doesn't sound like that at all."

"…She really sounds like —?"

"Yes."

"And if the Synestella say no, she'll —?"

"Unfortunately."

Rin grimaced. "What about the Synestella, then?"

"Cold," said Yukio. "Formal. Well-spoken and precise, with a dignified bearing. She's certainly pretty, and there's probably more of a personality under all of that ice, but she's the sort of woman who seems way out of my league."

"No chance she'd accept you, then?"

He chuckled a little. "A chance, sure. Maybe even a fairly decent one, relatively speaking. But I have major doubts that it'll actually happen. She's basically royalty, and we're…well. Backwards orientals."

In other words, realistically speaking, his only actual option was to be the trophy the Edelfelt family used to gloat over the Tohsaka. A feather in Luviagelita's cap, an object over which to be bragged, a tally mark in one family's ledger for the sake of revenge.

No dignity. No elegance. Just a life attached to a woman who wanted to degrade him and his family.

"I could cancel them," Rin offered. "I'm the head of the Tohsaka family. I could cancel the other contracts, if you asked me to."

It wasn't the magus sort of thing to do, but then, Rin had found that she wasn't cold enough to be a pure magus, anyway. At least for her twin brother, Yukio, she was willing to put his happiness before the family's success.

Her father was probably rolling in his grave.

"Mmm," Yukio hummed noncommittally. "Well, there's still a year before any of the contracts are due for ratification, so I suppose I have time to think about it, don't I?"

Rin blinked. "You're going to go through with it?"

He shrugged.

"I haven't decided, yet. I admit, I find it an interesting idea. There's a certain appeal to melting the ice queen's heart. And just imagining how much it would stick in everyone's craw up there to have to mention the Tohsaka name in the same breath as the Synestella is incredibly gratifying. To force them to have to kowtow to one of the 'orientals' that they look down on so much…"

He trailed off, closing his eyes and tilting his head back.

"…Yukio?"

"Shush, I'm fantasizing."

Rin snorted, smiling. "You dweeb."

He chuckled a little, but then his smile dropped and he sighed.

"In all seriousness, I haven't made up my mind, yet," he said. "Admittedly, the idea of being trapped in a loveless marriage, even if the woman herself is breathtakingly beautiful, doesn't much appeal. The possibility of building a romance after the fact exists, but there's no guarantee on that end, so it's not something I would bank on. On the other hand…"

He trailed off.

"What?" she asked. "'On the other hand,' what?"

"If I'm consort to someone as high ranking as the Synestella, or even the Edelfelt, then I should have far more than enough influence to ensure you a sponsorship to the Clock Tower, after you graduate."

Rin blinked, momentarily stunned by his admission, then leaned back, pressed the fingers of one hand against her brow, and let out an explosive sigh.

What an idiot. A selfless, self-sacrificing idiot who really loved her more than she probably deserved, but hell if she didn't love him just as much.

"Ah, geez," she said, exasperated. "You don't need to keep taking care of me, you know! I'm a grown woman, now, not a little girl! I don't need you to hold my hand every second of the day!"

Yukio laughed at her and smiled a small, nostalgic smile. "Well, I can't help it. I am your older brother, after all."

"By seven minutes!" she pointed out sternly, jabbing at him with her index finger. "Seven! Minutes! That's such an insignificant amount of time that it's basically irrelevant! We're the same age!"

He shot her a sly grin. "Do you still have that stuffed dolphin I bought you for your eighth birthday?"

Her face lit up a brilliant, cherry red. "Th-that doesn't have anything to do with this!"

She did. It had a place of honor on the top of her chest of drawers, sandwiched between the handful of family photos from when they were all whole and unbroken.

"What about the stuffed tiger I got you for your ninth?"

On her bedside table, next to her alarm. There were days when she accidentally knocked him down while trying to shut it off.

"I —"

"Does it still roar when you squeeze it, or did you wear the battery out ages ago?"

Of course it still roared. She'd had the battery replaced five times since she got it.

"Th-that doesn't mean anything at all! Yukio! It doesn't! It…!"

But her words and the red that covered her whole face, creeping down her neck, only made him laugh more. Against someone else, there would have been no surrender, because Tohsaka Rin didn't back down, no matter what. With Yukio, however, she knew better than anyone else when she'd been beaten, and so, rather than dig an even deeper hole, she gave up and stopped fighting.

"Damn it," she muttered, embarrassed. "I can't beat you when you know all of my weaknesses."

When the laughter died and all that remained was a smile, he told her, "Never change, Rin. Keep being my precious little sister forever, okay?"

She didn't reply, except to scowl and look away. Even if she'd surrendered, her pride would not allow her to agree to something so humiliating.

"Alright." He let out a sigh and set his empty mug down atop a saucer on the coffee table as he stood. "I'd better go and get everything unpacked. If I don't do it now, I'll wind up putting it off for the rest of the week."

Rin blinked. "You're staying?"

He smiled wryly. "That is why I brought my luggage back."

"Don't play stupid! That's not it at all, and you know it!" She huffed. "I was asking whether you'd be staying home for a while or heading back out, again!"

"For the foreseeable future, yeah," he said. "Well. I'll have to go back, eventually, to figure out the whole marriage contracts thing, but unless something comes up, I'll be here, yeah."

Which meant she'd get to see and spend time with her twin brother again, rather than being by herself in this big, empty mansion, alone, constantly faced with what she'd lost.

"Good!" She nodded. "That means there'll be someone else around to share cooking duty with. Since you've been gone, I've had to take care of everything myself, you know!"

Rather than argue as he might have when they were younger (Yukio hated cooking, although he wasn't half bad at it), he just laughed and gave her shoulder a pat as he left to take care of his luggage.

"It's good to be home, Rin."

And then, he was gone. A moment later, she could hear him trudging up the stairs, suitcases in tow, and making his way back to his own room.

When she was alone, Rin huffed out a sigh and smiled fondly at the place where he'd been sitting.

"Welcome home, you big goof."

 

[James D. Fawkes]

Chapter 2: Gentle Everyday

"Are you ready, Yukio?"

I awoke slowly, rising to consciousness one moment at a time, as the last vestiges of my dream echoed in the back of my head as though down a long tunnel.

…No, that wasn't right, was it?

A dream was fake, a thing without substance or reality, the lurid imaginations of the subconscious mind as it dealt with extant stressors through symbolism and metaphor. To wit, it was the mind's way of dealing with the problems that plagued it even unto the sleeping world.

What I had just seen now could not, therefore, be called a dream, because it was not something that had been conjured by my imagination, but was, rather, something that had already occurred in reality. An unavoidable truth that could not simply be dismissed as the conjurations of my subconscious.

A memory.

The memory of the moment when everything had changed, and the person known as Tohsaka Yukio could truly have said to have been born, and yet to have died, as well. The memory of my enlightenment, and also of my damnation.

I groaned and leveraged myself up into a sitting position, pressing the heels of my palms against my eyes.

"Maybe it's coming back here, after spending so long away," I muttered to myself.

I had been gone six months, after all. It wasn't entirely out of the question that returning to my childhood home after being gone for that length of time might have stirred up old memories. It could even have been the familiar smell of the old place, dredging up stuff I'd thought I'd dealt with ages ago. Scent was one of the most powerful psychological triggers, after all.

I sighed and rubbed at my messy hair.

"Well, it's a hell of a way to start the morning, that's for sure. Digging up old existential crises and questions of self-identity. I could even be forgiven for rolling back over and getting some more sleep. Totally reasonable."

I stopped, blinked, and then laughed.

"Wow, I really am her twin brother, aren't I? That sounds like the kind of excuse Rin would make to stay in bed in the morning."

Good grief. If she and I weren't fraternal twins, we'd be perfect for each other, wouldn't we?

"…I just had a very dangerous thought, right now, didn't I?"

Damn it. Of all the things to inherit from him, those sorts of sentiments for my sister were exactly the most troublesome, and I could most certainly have done without them.

That was part of the tradeoff, though, I suppose. It couldn't be as easy as advantages all the way down, that wasn't the way things worked. The things I inherited came with both their good points and their bad points.

Personally, I blamed some of it on the doujinshi scene, here in Japan. That sort of thing was almost shockingly popular, among the less…mainstream media, and even in daytime anime and primetime slots, it was way more common than it was in places like America or Europe. But oh, it was okay, they weren't really brother and sister, they were cousins, or he was adopted, or she was adopted, or whatever contrivance the writers thought up to make it 'acceptable,' and that completely ignored that part of the problem wasn't the bloodline, it was the fact that they were raised as siblings, their entire relationship was built upon that basis, and having incestuous thoughts for your brother or sister wasn't —

And I was going off again.

Damn it. It was way too early for this.

I sighed.

"I'm really off, today, aren't I?"

I smacked my palm against my forehead a couple of times, then ground the heel of it between my brow, as though to push out any weirdness from my thoughts. It didn't really work as intended, but at least it did manage to banish any remnants of sleep. Silver linings, right?

I slid out of my bed and into a pair of slippers, and then, shivering, grabbed the thick bathrobe I'd slung over my desk chair at some point. Was it yesterday, or six months ago? I didn't remember, exactly, because I'd never used it while I was in London.

"Well, however miserable London can get, at least I was warm," I groused as I pulled it on. "Seriously. It rarely even snows, here. How come it's so much colder in this house than an apartment in England?"

Should've had this old place renovated for a modern furnace system, back when I'd had the chance. Secrets of magecraft be damned, it would've been worth it just to be able to walk around in shorts during the winter months, or at least not have to wear layers in my own damn house.

Tempting, but a toothless thought from the beginning. Rin and I would probably get into the most serious fight we'd ever had if I tried something like that without running it by her, first, and even if I pulled out my best arguments, she'd probably put her foot down and refuse. In the end, she was the heir, now head of the family with everyone else gone, even if I was technically her guardian. As far as the Mage's Association was concerned, her word was law and my place was to obey.

Ah, geez! But it's so cold!

"Tea, tea, tea," I muttered to myself as I shuffled out of my room. "That's what I need. Some tea to warm me up."

I went down the hall, then descended the steps and made a sharp right turn towards the kitchen, where I found a teapot, my favorite red mug, a bottle of honey, and the tin of Earl Grey that Rin never touched. I set the kettle on to boil, then measured out the tea leaves while I waited.

Rin tended not to use honey in her tea. Well, it was more like she tended not to eat sweets or sugary foods, because she was absolutely certain she "knew exactly where it would all go." I found it utterly ridiculous, of course. We — that is, the Tohsaka family — owned one of the relative handful of Japanese honey producing businesses left, the largest and most premium one, in fact. Why not enjoy our own product?

No, I didn't arrange for us to purchase the land, hire the workers, acquire the bees and the beehives, and work out distribution, all so that I could have a consistent source of locally made, quality assured honey to put in my tea. That would just be ridiculous, and if anyone ever accused me of it, I would deny such a thing in the strongest possible terms.

(I totally did. I'm utterly shameless, and even if it was a completely unnecessary extravagance, it wasn't like we were losing money on the business. It was easier to compete simply because honey was by and large imported from China and Korea, and therefore more expensive than my company's locally made and sourced honey.)

"Well," I told the air wryly, "dear old Dad probably would've had something to say about it, but I consider it a worthwhile investment. This stuff is delicious. And besides, it's like that old adage goes: if you want something done right, you've gotta do it yourself."

Just don't ask me to put on a beekeeping suit.

A few minutes later, the kettle began to whistle, and I set about pouring it over my tea leaves, then let it sit to steep. That was always the hardest part about making tea, the waiting. I was certain old Nagato or one of my more Zen ancestors probably would've had something to say about patience and the virtue thereof, likely quoting some Buddhist koan or something, but frankly speaking, I was too cold to care.

It was around that time, just as I finished making my tea and went to the living room to sit, that Rin came marching in, already fully dressed in her usual sweater-and-skirt combo and with her hair styled.

"You're up early," I remarked casually over the rim of my mug.

She grimaced, and for all her apparent readiness, she still looked like she was about half asleep. Yeah, Rin really wasn't a morning person, although being entirely fair, I wasn't much of one, either. And I was still getting over the jetlag.

"I'm trying to get all of my preparations done," she admitted.

"Ah." I took a sip to cover my thoughts and any reaction that might have slipped onto my face. "It's that time again already?"

Like I hadn't been counting down the days on my calendar.

"Yeah." She sighed. "It's early this time, so it's unexpected, but things should start off for real in about a month. I'm holding off on my entry for another couple of weeks, though."

I knew exactly what she was talking about, of course.

The Fifth Holy Grail War. The fifth in a series of failed rituals, conducted as a battle royale between seven magi functioning as Masters and seven Heroic Spirits summoned as Servants. The last one had torn our family apart, leaving Rin and me orphans. Father had died during the fighting, and Mom shortly afterwards.

And my sister intended to enter. Of course. Dad hadn't lived long enough to explain the whole thing to her, so for her, it was really a matter of pride. My sister had a bit of a competitive spirit, after all.

Well, to be fair, so did I.

"I'm guessing you'll want me out of the house and somewhere safe, for the duration."

"Yeah." She sighed again. "Sorry to do this to you, Yukio, especially since you only just got back, but you remember how it was, right? Dad sent us away last time to keep us uninvolved, so I'd feel better if you did the same thing, this time."

Not that it had helped much, but I suppose that one's opinion on that varied, depending on how you defined 'helping.' After all, even if it hadn't gone the way my parents had planned, at the end of the day, I wouldn't be where I was now — in any sense — if things hadn't gone the way they had. In some ways, that was a comfort. In others, it was a curse.

I shrugged.

"Sure. I've already got a place I could stay, actually. There's a house I've been sitting on for a couple of years. Used to belong to an ancestor of ours, wound up in foreclosure hell, then I bought it and renovated it. I can stay there for a month."

It suited my plans just perfectly, actually. Dear Rin-chan just gave me the excuse.

"Thanks," she said gratefully. "That really does make me feel better about everything."

I shouldn't… But, well, I couldn't resist…

"Just don't throw any wild parties with gigantic orgies while I'm gone, okay? Not unless I'm invited."

For a moment, she didn't react but for her mouth dropping open a little and her eyebrows rising. Then, when the words finally registered and her brain had fully caught up with her ears, her cheeks flushed red, so bright a red that I almost expected steam to come pouring out of her ears. Ah, now that was the reaction I'd been looking for.

She shouted, "I-Idiot! J-just what kind of girl do you even think I am, anyway? And what's that supposed to mean, not unless you're invited? What kind of depraved fantasies are you cooking up in that demented brain of yours, Yukio!"

I just laughed, even as her face kept getting redder and redder. She looked so cute, all flustered like that. I just couldn't help myself.

There were a lot of pitfalls that came with it, plenty of problems, but this was, without a doubt, the absolute best thing about being Tohsaka Rin's twin brother: I could tease her whenever I wanted.

"Geez!" she muttered, looking away as she crossed her arms over her chest. "You really are the worst!"

"I'm seventeen years old, about three and a half weeks away from turning eighteen," I reminded her, grinning. "The longest, most serious relationship I had was three years ago and lasted about a week. These days, most of my contact with the opposite sex involves people I can't afford to piss off or people who would use it as an excuse either to dissect me or start a feud, if I did. In this house, with my dearest little sister, is the only place and time I can be so relaxed as to make jokes of that nature."

"O-oh. W-well, I guess that makes…"

She shook her head violently.

"W-what am I saying?! That doesn't make it any better at all, Yukio! I'm your sister, not some giggling schoolgirl you can charm with a smile and a few nice words! You absolutely shouldn't be saying that sort of thing to me! H-hey, Yukio, are you even listening? Yukio!"

But I just laughed more, because I was tired and maybe a little punchy, and god had I missed this. Six months without Rin to tease, spending every day in the company of stuffy bluebloods who either didn't have a sense of humor or thought me so barbaric and backwards that I was little more than a Neanderthal — laughter had been in short supply.

Predictably, Rin surrendered and gave up trying to lecture me. Years of experience had told her how useless it was, but even now, her upbringing told her the proper response was a scolding.

She huffed, folding her arms over her chest. "You're my legal guardian, so I wish you'd at least act like an adult."

I let out a satisfied sigh and leaned back, draining the rest of my tea from my mug.

"That's the great illusion about being an adult. When you're a kid and you see your parents, your aunts and uncles, and your teachers, they all seem to know what they're doing, like they've got it all figured out. When you grow up, though, you realize that no one ever really does have it all figured out, they're just trying to get through the day without the world falling apart around them."

I hummed. "We're like kites, really. Some of us have strings or tails, but only a precious few have both."

"…You stole that from an anime, didn't you?"

I smiled at her. "Shamelessly," I admitted.

Bebop would forever remain my favorite. A song from one of the soundtracks was even in my will, to be played at my funeral.

She let out an exasperated sigh and shook her head. "And the fact that I even recognize that means that you've been a bad influence on me."

I raised an eyebrow, still smiling.

"Would you rather have no idea what a cellphone is and be incapable of using a DVD player?"

Like most magi? went unsaid.

"Sometimes, I wonder," she retorted dryly. "Anyway. I'm not asking you to leave immediately. You just got back, after all. I'm not so cruel to ask you to pack up the minute you've got everything unpacked. But… Maybe in two weeks? The nineteenth or so?"

"That's fine," I said.

"Okay," she said. "I'll be down in the workshop if you need me."

"Shared or private?"

"Shared," she answered. "I'm making the major preparations now, and I'll need the room when I do the summoning. If you don't have any objections…"

"None."

"Good, because I would have overruled them anyway," she said bluntly. I snorted, smirking. "What about you? Are you going to stick around and unpack or did you have some kind of other plans for today?"

"I think I'm going to head out, today, touch base with the people I haven't seen in a while." I stood languidly, rolling my shoulders and grunting when my spine crackled. "It has been six months, after all."

"You're not going to see one of those floozies, are you?" she asked dryly.

A startled laugh tore itself from my throat. "Floozies?"

"What else am I going to call them? All they ever want to talk with me about is you," she groused, then affected an exaggerated, girlish voice. "Tohsaka-san, when is Yukio-kun coming back to Fuyuki? Tohsaka-san, has Yukio-kun mentioned me? Tohsaka-san, does Yukio-kun prefer long hair or short? Tohsaka-san, what's Yukio-kun's favorite type of girl?"

I snorted. "Do they really ask stuff like that?"

"Incessantly!" Rin threw her hands up and made a disgusted sound in the back of her throat. "It's like they've got nothing better to do! You graduated two years ago, you'd think they'd have gotten over whatever schoolgirl crush they had by now!"

"Well, I did graduate two years ago. They probably view that as a sign of success or something, and that's supposed to be very appealing. Other than that, I can't think of anything particularly special I did to earn attention like that."

"You'd think the fact that you're a ronin would cool some of them off. What's the 'official' story now? That you've failed your entrance exams…I think it's up to four times at this point, isn't it?"

"I'm also spending months at a time outside the country, during which, for all they know, I'm off having dalliances with sexy American women or blonde German bombshells. I'm an international man of mystery, off having adventures while they spend their days sitting in a boring classroom, seeing the same sights and the same people every day."

The truth would bore them, I thought. Tense political negotiations with cutthroat European bluebloods could be interesting to some people, but a Japanese schoolgirl would find them terribly dull.

She shook her head. "You're probably right. I swear, they multiplied after you graduated. Before that, I only got those questions once or twice a month. Now, I'm getting them almost daily." She sighed. "At least Ayako is getting a kick out of it."

My lips pursed. "Mitsuzuri?"

"Yeah."

She arched a questioning eyebrow at me, then a catlike smile curled her mouth.

"Ah, that's right, she used to have a crush on you, too."

I shifted uncomfortably, grimacing. Rin laughed.

"You know she got over that almost three years ago, right?"

"You sure about that?" I mumbled.

"Definitely. These days, she does that stuff just to see you thrown off balance. Watching you get awkward and shy is hilarious."

A melodramatic sigh left my mouth. "Ah, but my beloved sister is so cruel."

"It could be worse," she advised me.

"Oh?"

"You could be so dense as to completely miss the fact that a girl has a crush on you, even though she joined the Archery Club just to be close to you."

Or that a completely different girl visits the Archery Club every morning with her best friend, just so she can watch you. Well. To be fair, Rin was also there for Sakura, but people's motivations didn't have to be simple or singular.

"I feel like I should stand up for Emiya, but I can't deny that you're right." I shrugged. "Not everyone can be as clever as me, I suppose. Or as socially adept."

Rin snorted, smirking.

"I hear the doubt in your voice," I said flatly.

"I didn't say anything!" She held up her hands in surrender.

"No, but you were thinking it. Loudly."

"My brother can read minds! Scary, scary!"

She snickered into her hand.

"Right, I can see when I'm not wanted."

I drained the last of my tea from my mug, rolling my shoulders again.

"You're right, I should be getting on with it, too," Rin said, once she'd contained her laughter. "Can you handle dinner for tonight?"

"I guess. How spicy do you want it, on a scale from 'not at all' to 'Kirei's mapo tofu'?"

She gagged.

"Ugh. I'm not looking to clean out my bowels tonight, so something mild is fine."

Neither was I. Being entirely honest, Rin had a better tolerance for spicy foods than I did, even. Then again, I was addicted to sweets, so I had to guess it balanced out.

"Right. I'll pick something up on the way home. I'll see you at dinner."

"Yeah, dinner."

We separated, me heading back towards my room to get dressed and her making her way down to our workshops.

The shared and private workshops were exactly as the names implied: one workshop that Rin and I shared and separate ones we kept to ourselves. The shared one was for projects we worked on together, experiments we were both working on, and just things we were both studying. This was where Rin had taught me the basics of magecraft and where we polished up our jewel magecraft together.

Get it? Polished up?

The private ones were, as the name suggested, private, for personal projects or studies into a field of magecraft that the other didn't know or had no aptitude for. Generally, Rin had more private projects than I did, given she was the heir and had far more training than I did, too, but I had a few things in mine that I was keeping from her.

Such as a certain journal that I hoped she never got the chance to read.

Well. Never let it be said I didn't have contingencies, though.

Naturally, as we were magi, we respected the boundaries of those private workshops. At least in my case, I wasn't so keen on figuring out what my sister did in hers that I was going to risk triggering one of her traps or anything, and while Rin could probably tear mine apart with impunity, the fact she didn't said something about how much she respected me, I liked to think.

Either that, or she didn't think there was anything worth looking at. Decent odds either way, right? I just preferred the version of things where my twin sister actually liked me.

"Well," I said to myself with a sigh, "might as well get going, right? Places to go, people to see, projects to check up on."

A smirk pulled at the corner of my lips as I marched up the stairs.

"I hope you've been keeping up with your studies, Emiya."

— o.0.O.O.0.o —​

Spoiler: Notes

There's two more chapters still in my buffer, and two more in the works. The next chapter will come out as and when those two are finished and I have a minimum buffer of 3 chapters. Technically, the first interlude is done, but it's so out of place that I can't count it as part of the buffer, right now.

I also have an outline I've been piecing together for where this story is going to go, so I'm not flying blind or anything.

Special thanks to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best, and your continued support is invaluable.
If you like what you're reading and want to support me as a writer so I can pay the bills, I have a Patreon. If Patreon is too long term, I have a Ko-fi page, too. If you want to commission something from me, check out either my Deviantart post or my artist registry page for my rates. Links in my sig. Every little bit helps keep me afloat, even if you can only afford a couple dollars.

 

[James D. Fawkes]

Chapter 3: Touching Base

There was nothing quite like a hardened wooden pole rushing towards your face.

Thwack

It wasn't the same as facing down a real sword, with naked steel and a sharpened blade.

Thwack-thwack

There wasn't quite the same sense of danger, of your life and your body being at risk. One wrong move wouldn't see you maimed or dead.

Thwack

But it wasn't so safe that you could afford to take hits without concern. Especially when you weren't wearing official kendo safety gear, the kind worn on the regional, national, and professional circuit.

Thwack-thwack-thwack

How had I heard it put before… "Death can come even from a wooden sword." One wrong hit to the head, one indelicate blow to the ribs, and you could die just as easily as if you'd been stabbed with a real katana.

Thwack

Even so…

And… parry!

THWACK

There was something much less tense and much more carefree about sparring with a bokken or shinai than a life or death battle with live steel.

The shinai clattered as it hit the ground, rolling over the wooden planks of the dojo until it came to a halt. The owner blinked down at his empty hands, surprised, and I relaxed, resting my own shinai against my shoulder.

"That'll be my win, Emiya," I said matter-of-factly.

Emiya Shirou's face screwed up into something like frustration, and then it smoothed out and he ran a hand through his sweaty hair.

"Yeah," he agreed with a sigh. "You beat me again, Tohsaka."

"No!" Fujimura Taiga wailed from the sidelines. "Shirou! How could you lose, again? You make your beloved Fuji-nee look bad! How can I defend my title if my star pupil loses so easily?"

"I just can't get a read on you," Shirou admitted, ignoring her. "Every time we spar, you're further and further ahead of me."

"It's because you don't practice," I told him. "You would probably surpass me easily, if you actually dedicated yourself to the art of it."

That, and I rotated out my shinai so that I never used the same one twice in a row. Those completely unfair eyes of his that recorded the experience of any weapon he saw were useless against a weapon that had no experience attached to it.

It probably helped that I was using a self-made style developed from Irish Bataireacht. The nimbler, almost breezy kind of motions were quite different from the grounded rigidity of traditional kendo forms.

"Yeah, I guess so. It feels like I've heard that before."

I hummed.

That was because I'd told him so, before. He'd probably heard some version of it from Fujimura-sensei, as well, although I was fairly sure she was still on his case about quitting the Archery Club.

Knowing her, Mitsuzuri at least never let him go a day without pestering him to return. There was something to be said about persistent girls, I supposed.

"You'd have more time to focus on it if you just learned to say no, you know. Helping people isn't wrong, but not every problem is one you yourself need to fix personally."

He laughed.

"Yeah, it feels like I've heard that before, too."

Because I'd told him that before, as well. If I hadn't known him better, I might have thought my admonishments and advice were simply being ignored, but understanding Emiya Shirou came down to realizing that helping people was basically a compulsion for him. No matter what I said, he would never be able to stop.

Trying to curtail some of that into more reasonable habits had been an exercise in futility from the very start, hadn't it?

"Shirou!" Fujimura-sensei howled like she was some kind of wounded beast.

I grimaced and turned to her, plastering a fake smile on my face.

"If you want to defend your honor as a kendo champion, Fujimura-sensei," I said with Rin's exaggerated politeness, "then you're certainly free to take his place for the next round."

She stopped her exaggerated crying instantly.

"Oh…?"

Shirou froze, eyes wide and mouth dropped open.

"Oh no," he whispered.

"Oh-hohoho!" Fujimura-sensei stood, pointing a finger at me dramatically, like something out of a manga. "Naturally, I accept!"

What even is my life?

How was this woman even a real person? She made me exhausted just watching her, and I was easily ten years her junior. That sort of stamina and outgoingness was just ridiculous.

Still. Emiya Shirou was a rank amateur, no matter how hard I'd been trying to drill swordsmanship lessons into his head. As a matter of comparison, defeating him in a spar with nothing on the line wasn't something I could take pride in. If there was someone here in Fuyuki to safely use as my measuring stick, Fujimura Taiga, a master of kendo who only lost in the nationals as a result of a cosmetic violation in her shinai, was the best choice.

"Here we go…" Shirou sighed.

Fujimura-sensei switched places with him, and as though she'd been waiting for it the entire time, she pulled out her special shinai, complete with the tiger-striped charm dangling from the hilt. Smiling, full of confidence, she took her stance opposite of me, a thing of perfection without flaw. It wouldn't be inaccurate to say her form was the epitome of Japanese kendo. It was simply that good.

The epitome of Japanese kendo… But my goal was something far beyond that. I couldn't win unless I surpassed the peak of human martial arts and reached a level to compete with the legends of old.

I let out a breath and stilled my racing heart. My mind honed itself into an edge. My line of sight narrowed to encompass only my opponent and the space that separated us. The rest of the world became unimportant. There was only me and my foe.

My grip on my shinai tightened. The stance I took was low with a center of gravity closer to my ankles than my hips. It resembled a Japanese kendo stance not at all.

Then…

First step, surpass the speed of sound.

Second step, erase the distance that stood between me and my foe.

Third step, unleash an attack that could shatter the enemy's sword in a single blow.

This, the power of the martial arts of the ancient Celts, unseen for nearly two millennia. The Vantage of Swiftness that carried me forward, the Swordbreaker that destroyed the opponent's weapon. With this, I claim victory!

Swifter than lightning, I struck —

THWACK

— and blinked up at the ceiling.

THUMP

"Ah?"

I was on my back?

"Tohsaka?"

When had I fallen down? I had just been racing towards Fujimura-sensei, hadn't I?

Slowly, gingerly, I sat up, prodding gently at my throbbing ribs. There was no stopping my wince, but thankfully, I wasn't seriously injured. A bruise, one easily healed when I got home and there was no one watching, but no outright breaks or apparent fractures, so nothing I needed to worry about right now.

More importantly…

I sighed. The bruise on my chest throbbed. "Again, huh?"

"Oh yeah!" Fujimura-sensei crowed, more to herself than anything. She made exaggerated flexing motions, like some kind of bodybuilder showing off her hard work and bulging biceps. "Fuji-nee's still got it! The reigning queen keeps her crown!"

Shirou gave me a sympathetic smile. "Again."

Damn it. Fujimura Taiga was a prodigy of kendo, but even she had nothing on the likes of a Servant. If I couldn't even beat her, what chance would I have against my true enemy? Taking on such a monster with skills and performance that couldn't even best an ordinary human kendo master…

Double damn it. Ten years of preparation, and this was all the farther I managed to make it? Did all of that work amount to nothing? Was the bridge between me and my goal so insurmountable that it had never been anything but a dream from the beginning?

To have lost to Fujimura Taiga again certainly seemed to say so. Her speed, strength, and skill still put her ahead of me, and the gap hadn't closed, yet. Ten years of training hadn't been enough to overcome the benchmark for my progress.

There was, at least, one area where I held the advantage, though.

"Fujimura-sensei," I said sweetly, taking my revenge, "it's unbecoming of a teacher to lord her victory over one of her students."

"Guh!"

Fujimura-sensei stumbled, clutching her belly as though I'd punched her in the gut. A look of agonized shock marred her face.

"Furthermore, it's absolutely unbecoming of a woman your age to act so childishly. As an adult, there's a certain example you need to set to those younger than you."

"Urk!"

She collapsed to her knees, shoulders hunched and head hung as Torashinai clattered to the floor. That easily, I did with just a few words what I'd been unable to do physically and disarmed her of her weapon. In a breathless, strained voice, she wheezed, "An adult… my age…younger…than me…"

Then, the Tiger arose, roaring. "So what if I'm almost thirty?! What counts is that I'm young at heart, you know!"

That's exactly the sort of thing someone ashamed of their age would say, Fujimura-sensei.

Shirou chuckled awkwardly. "That's Fuji-nee, alright…"

Good grief. The woman who had so easily defeated me after ten years of hard work refining my style couldn't even be a cold, calculating badass, she had to be a ditz who behaved closer to three than to thirty. There was something just monumentally unfair about that.

"Anyway," I breathed out. "Say, Fujimura-sensei, do you think I could borrow Emiya for a few hours? There's a few things I need to discuss with him."

"Oh?" Her face twisted into a cruel expression only older sisters knew how to make. "Is it time for some boys' talk, Tohsaka-kun? Or maybe there's a confession that's about to happen before my eyes? Ah, Shirou, if that was the way things were, you only had to say so, you know!" She nodded sagely. "Fuji-nee is nothing if not supportive!"

The way this woman's mind worked…

But her simplicity and earnest nature was also what made her so easy to manipulate.

"Fuji-nee," Shirou began tiredly.

"Actually," I said cheerily, "you're not that far off! Well, if you're up for hearing all of the gritty details, then feel free to stay and listen." I turned back to Shirou. "So, Emiya, let's pick up from our previous lesson. I said last time that there are particular areas of sensitivity that will respond to the proper stimulation, but there's one in particular that should drive your partner absolutely wild."

One hand held up, palm towards the ceiling, I made a curling motion with my ring and middle fingers. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Fujimura-sensei's mouth fall open and her face slowly turn a bright shade of red as she realized exactly what I was teaching.

The real key was to have no shame. After all, for all her exuberance, Fujimura-sensei was a proper Japanese woman when it came to her morals and norms, with all of the trappings that entailed.

"Remember, the key is consistency and repetition. You'll want to start slow and gradually pick up speed."

"WH-WH-WHAT ARE YOU TEACHING MY POOR, IMPRESSIONABLE SHIROU?!" she wailed.

Gotcha.

"The…what's the expression…pillow techniques necessary for a man," I replied guilelessly. "Neither of us has a father to pass on these skills, so I'm only fulfilling my responsibility as his more experienced senior to ensure that Emiya is well prepared."

"M-m-m-more experienced?" she stuttered. "No! Tohsaka-kun has already known a woman's touch! Where did I go wrong? I thought I raised you better than that!"

Implying you had much of anything to do with my growth at all.

But for all that she frustrated me sometimes, Fujimura-sensei was a decent person and, I liked to think, a friend. There was no point in tearing her down by saying something so hurtful.

An exaggerated, put upon sigh hissed out of my mouth. "Regardless of your opinions, Fujimura-sensei, these are necessary life skills that Emiya will need in the future, and I'm the only one both available and knowledgeable enough to pass them on. Unless you'd like to take over his instruction? Perhaps a woman's experience in this area is more valuable."

Her mouth snapped shut, and she went, if possible, even redder. Then, she threw herself onto the floor, clutching at her head, and started rolling around.

"I-I-I couldn't possibly! Oh, what kind of woman do you take me for! W-with me, Shirou would never…! And besides that, it's not proper! I'm his guardian, after all! It's just not my place to…!"

On and on she went, rambling wildly about why it was a bad idea and wouldn't work and Shirou wouldn't accept it, besides. He and I watched her go, and some of the things that came out of her mouth made me wonder… But those were the sorts of thoughts I absolutely shouldn't entertain, so I tried not to think about it.

Finally, after a minute or two of this, she stopped rolling and stopped talking and went still. Then, she stood abruptly.

"Sh-Shirou!" she announced, voice a little squeaky. "In this particular area, your beloved Fuji-nee will entrust your instruction to Tohsaka-kun!" A little quieter, she added, "His experience will serve you well." Then, at full volume and with max cheer, "See you tomorrow!"

And just like that, she raced out of the dojo and left. When she was gone, I let out a sigh.

"Well," I remarked. "That was a thing."

But when I turned back to him, Shirou was bright red, too, with a miserable expression on his face. He refused to meet my eyes.

"What?"

He sighed and rubbed at the back of his neck. "Did you have to use something like…that to get her to leave?"

One of my eyebrows rose.

"Would you have preferred she thought we were doing the horizontal tango together?"

"The horizontal… N-no, of course not!"

I rolled my eyes. "Then the how of it isn't all that important, is it? The alternative was letting her in on the secret of magecraft, and we both know that she'd stick her nose in far too deep if we did that. Besides, next time, she'll leave us alone without the trouble, because she'll think I'm teaching you…'pillow techniques.'"

He didn't look entirely convinced, so I waved it off. There really wasn't a point in arguing about it.

"Anyway," I said, "let's check up on your progress, now. To your workshop, as it were?"

"To the shed," he agreed. He honestly looked relieved to have moved on from the subject and to something more in his comfort zone.

It wasn't like what I'd said was a lie, I thought as he led me out of the dojo and through the halls of his Japanese mansion. A certain blonde-haired girl king would definitely appreciate the pillow techniques I'd just mentioned, when the opportunity arose for him to employ them on her. More than Shirou would appreciate her own knowledge of how to please a man, I'd wager.

Needless to say, the Rin route wasn't happening, if I had anything to say about it. It was my prerogative as an older brother to jealously safeguard my beloved sister's heart, and I fully intended to continue doing so.

The Sakura route would mean something had gone horribly wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong.

But, if everything went as planned, then the Grail War would go off without a hitch, all of the big threats would be handled, the world would be saved, and neither Shirou nor my sister would have any idea that I'd had anything to do with it. Neat, clean, tie it all off with a little bow, call it a day, everyone could move on with their lives.

That said, I wasn't above stacking the deck, just in case things went wrong. That whole thing with Fujimura-sensei itself proved that I couldn't count on all of my plans going exactly the way I wanted them to — and hadn't I learned that lesson so many times over the past ten years?

Shirou and I stepped into a pair of shoes and walked through the courtyard to the shed; he drew the door open, and I followed him inside to the sight of half a dozen incomplete projects and experiments, refinements on his skills rather than testing new ideas or exploring different avenues of his craft. The best off were the ones that at least somewhat resembled a sword.

"Okay," I said, "let's see how you've progressed. Projection first?"

He nodded, then took a deep breath and closed his eyes. The snap between his circuits being off and turning them on was a visible moment, a tightening of his brow as his mental trigger was activated.

"Trace on."

He held out his hands, and over several long seconds, the frame of a katana slowly took form, sleek, sharp, and with the wrap on the handle fraying from age. The blade slowly filled in, shimmering and shiny, with the burnished bronze habaki and the wavy hamon, tapering into the curved boshi and the pointed kissaki. At the base was the tsuba, rounded and thin, barely large enough to cover the shape of a fist. When it was finished, he let out a breath, opened his eyes, and offered it to me for inspection.

I took it and gave it a look over with just my eyes — at first glance, there weren't any flaws. No holes in the structure, so to speak, where the image used broke down and the inherent weakness compromised the resultant construct.

Then again, this was Emiya Shirou. His projection magecraft had always been top notch, compared to standard practices.

"So far, so good," I said, and Shirou's lips twitched a little.

I took a deep breath and in my head, I imagined my own mental trigger, the crack of a mirror shattering into countless irrecoverable pieces. It thundered through me as my circuits whirred and spun up and turned on.

"Tosaigid eclaimm." Begin analysis.

The structure of the sword in my hands bloomed in my mind's eye, and immediately, I set about examining it for flaws, for areas where the image was incomplete or the material was lacking. Any sign at all that this wasn't the exact sword it looked like, so expertly recreated that it was virtually indistinguishable from the original.

I found none.

Of course, I was also somewhat more limited in my examination than Shirou was. I could only look for obvious malformations; my form of Structural Analysis was not advanced enough to find any mistakes in accumulated history or the manufacturing process, not the way his could. I was only able to determine that the object was "complete" insofar as it was as physically perfect as possible.

Sometimes, I was envious of Shirou's magecraft. The degree to which he was able to reproduce such fine detail in an object, even if it was limited to "bladed weapons," was… Well, there was undoubtedly a combination of magecraft that would allow me to do exactly what he did, down to recording the skill and strength with which the weapon had been wielded, and then projecting that "image" into reality.

The difference was, it would take me years of study and probably generations of accumulated skill. Shirou did it as a matter of course.

I smiled, refusing to let any of my thoughts show on my face. "Remarkable as always, Shirou. I can't find anything at all wrong with this katana."

I'd done my best to help Shirou. To nurture his talent. Five years of — admittedly sporadic — training was nothing to sneeze at, especially when it let me undo some of Emiya Kiritsugu's sabotage. He'd made leaps and bounds in the quality of his projection magecraft in that time, to the point that he was faithfully reproducing even these antique pieces with the mystery they'd gathered over the ages intact.

But there was only so much I could do. My own teachings weren't stellar to begin with, and the one field where I truly excelled was one he was completely incompatible with. Too, Shirou was safe only so long as Kotomine, Zouken, and Rin never realized exactly who he was, who had adopted him, and the fact that he was a magus. Spellcaster, if you wanted to be pedantic about it. The instant he was found out… Well, one of them would give me an earful for keeping it secret, one of them would start planning how to drag him into the Grail War in a way I couldn't plan for, and the last would kick off my worst case scenario.

And there was the biggest problem: because of who he was, I couldn't even begin to imagine exactly how spectacularly bad an idea it would be to take him to London and the Mage's Association, where he would be able to start recording the truly powerful artifacts squirreled away in their vaults — and where everyone who heard his name would probably start making plans to assassinate him while he was still young and inexperienced and hadn't survived a Grail War.

Thus, the inevitable result before me: a perfect replica of a priceless antique that took him far too long to make and was therefore practically worthless in an actual fight.

At the end of the day, there was just too hard a limit to what I could teach him and how much help I could give him. Without the pressure of a Grail War to accelerate his growth and fill out his arsenal with truly incredible armaments, it seemed this was as far as my own skill could take him.

"Okay, then." I flipped the sword up, caught it by the back of the blade with my index finger, and let it balance itself there, wobbling a little as it found equilibrium. An excellent blade, simply not my preferred style.

I spun it around until it was pointed, hilt first, at my "student." He rolled his eyes and dismissed it; it dissolved into motes of golden light that flickered out like fireflies.

"Let's take a look at your Reinforcement next, shall we?"

— o.0.O.O.0.o —​

Spoiler: Notes

Chapter 6 is finished but for the editing pass, so I'm gonna post this one now.

Those are some suspiciously specific denials, Fuji-nee.

There's just too much setup to do for this story. Especially because he's both an OC and a SI, Yukio's plans and preparations have to be laid out, and I'm covering the better part of a month before the Grail War gets started for real. But, by the same token, that gives me 7-8 chapters to endear the readers to Yukio before the main plot really kicks off, so I suppose I can't complain too much.

Special thanks to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best, and your continued support is invaluable.
If you like what you're reading and want to support me as a writer so I can pay the bills, I have a Patreon. If Patreon is too long term, I have a Ko-fi page, too. If you want to commission something from me, check out either my Deviantart post or my artist registry page for my rates. Links in my sig. Every little bit helps keep me afloat, even if you can only afford a couple dollars.

 

[James D. Fawkes]

Chapter 4: Surrounded by Smiles

January 8th dawned bright and cold and clear.

There'd been a light dusting of snow over the weekend, but it hadn't stayed on the ground long enough to settle, so classes were set to resume right on schedule. Naturally, since I raced through high school as quickly as I'd possibly been able, I had no real reason to be up so early in the morning, because I'd finally gotten over my jetlag and started sleeping normal hours. I could have stayed in bed, snuggled up and warm, and awoken at my leisure.

Instead, I was up at the godawful hour of six-thirty, pulling myself sleepily from the cocoon of my blankets. My bathrobe was pulled on over my pajamas more out of habit than intent, and my cold feet were stuffed into a pair of slippers, before I made my way to start the day.

A glance down the hall as I opened my door showed Rin's still closed shut. I had probably half an hour before she actually managed to pull herself from her bed, because this was the first day back to school and she'd let herself fall out of the habit of getting up at six-thirty on the dot.

Why was I forcing myself to wake up this early, again? Oh right. Plans. Plans that I had to stick to, since they were literally a matter of life and death.

If only the Holy Grail War could have done us all the courtesy of happening during summer vacation. At least if we were all risking our lives in a dangerous battle royale, couldn't we have been doing it comfortably warm?

"Of course not," I groused to the open air. "That would make too much sense, wouldn't it?"

And common sense and magi weren't on speaking terms, let alone a first name basis.

Down the stairs I went, and with a little bit of effort, I fumbled my way through putting on a pot of tea for myself. While the water was heating up, I set about making a quick breakfast, a simple meal that I wasn't sure I didn't put together sleepwalking. I did make sure, though, to make some toast for Rin and put a pot on for some sencha. That girl would probably go the rest of the day until lunch without having touched anything else in terms of food.

The torture she put herself through because she was scared of putting on just one extra pound.

By the time I was finished eating, my tea was ready, so I sweetened it to my liking and took it to the living room, where I sat down with a sigh and relaxed a little. Since I was going to be getting precious little of that in the coming days, I fully intended to grab what I could as and when I could. Stress was the enemy, and I was soon to be beset from all sides.

For those precious few minutes, I sipped tranquilly at my tea. The room around me was silent, but for the ticking of the clock. There was something to be said for the quiet of suburban living, even if this was still technically a part of Fuyuki city. The calm, peaceful atmosphere, devoid of the hustle and bustle of a living city thriving just outside your window, was much easier to enjoy than trying to ignore the eleventh car backfiring or thousandth gasp of one streaking down the street.

Just shy of seven o'clock, a thump sounded from upstairs, and it was followed a moment later by a series of slower, softer thumps as someone dragged herself out of bed begrudgingly.

I hummed and took another sip of tea. Looked like Rin was finally awake.

Sure enough, a minute or two later, she stalked down the steps, disheveled and bleary-eyed and dressed only in her nightgown and a pair of slippers. She held onto the bannister, swaying slightly and tilting dangerously, as though it was the only thing keeping her from falling. It just might have been.

"Morning, Rin," I greeted mildly.

"Mo — orning, Yukio," she mumbled back, interrupted by a yawn halfway through.

"I made you some toast and put some water on for sencha," I called out to her as she stumbled her way over to the kitchen. She offered me a muttered, incoherent thanks, and shuffled towards the smell of her toast.

That girl… Really not a morning person, huh?

She came in about five or ten minutes later, one piece of toast hanging limply from her mouth and the other set on a plate she was carrying with her. In her other hand, she held a steaming mug of sweet-smelling sencha, and she set it on a saucer on the coffee table, then plopped down next to me unceremoniously.

"Hey!" I said, holding up my mug as the tea inside sloshed. "Watch it! If this had been full, you'd be cleaning up a mess!"

She grunted something unintelligible around her toast, and then proceeded to ignore me and munch on it over her plate. When she'd finished off the first piece, she set down the plate with the second, picked up her mug of sencha, and took a deep, long sip.

"Mmmm," she hummed slowly. "I feel like a human being, again."

My lips quirked to one side. "As opposed to what? A vegetable?"

"A vampire." She slid me a glance. "I was thinking of sucking some of your blood, but then I realized I'd probably get diabetes, so I decided it was better to just have some regular food."

"Good thing, too," I said, playing into the joke. "I like my blood just where it is, thank you."

She snorted and picked up her second piece of toast. "What's the word for that? Tyranophobia?"

"A good thing there aren't any more T-rexes walking around, or else I might be in trouble," I said dryly. "The word you're looking for is trypanophobia. And it's not. I have a perfectly rational aversion to having sharp, thin objects jabbed into my body."

"Really? It doesn't sound very rational to me."

"This from the woman who just recently bemoaned my lack of Japanese preference in tea, and yet herself prefers milk teas instead of matcha or sencha."

"H-hey!" she said indignantly. "Milk tea is a perfectly Japanese tea preference, I'll have you know! For that matter, do they even sell them in England? Seems strange to me, considering they add milk to their tea anyway!"

"It's not a very traditionally Japanese preference, though, is it?" I remarked mildly.

Rin huffed. "Better than guzzling down sweetened black tea all the time. How have you not put on fifty pounds from all the sweets you eat?"

"By working out. Vigorously." I slid her a suggestive glance, and a moment later, her cheeks exploded with bright red. "But mostly understanding this thing called moderation. It's fine to enjoy desserts and sweet snacks, as long as you know how much you should and shouldn't have. Plus, well, there are a few perks to being an expert in medicinal magecraft."

She rolled her eyes.

"By cheating, you mean," she said flatly.

"If you're not cheating, you're not playing to win," I said, dry as bone. "Besides. Cheating is only cheating when the other guy is doing it."

Rin snorted a little.

"As long as you're the one telling the story, you get to say it was just an application of creative thinking, is that right?"

"Now you're catching on!" I said brightly. "Welcome to History 101, Rin-chan! If you're the winner, you get to spin the story however you want!"

She shook her head, drained the last of her sencha with something of a grimace, and promptly stood.

"I'd better get going," she said wryly. "If I sit here with you too long, all of that hypocrisy is liable to rub off on me, and then where would I be?"

"The same place you are now: pretending you're nothing more than an ordinary school idol, bright but completely and utterly normal."

She chuckled and disappeared back up the stairs. I sighed and looked mournfully down at my empty mug of tea.

"Guess I'd better get going, too," I said to myself. "If I dawdle too much, she'll leave before me, and then things will just be awkward, won't they?"

My mug went into the sink, to be washed later, and I climbed the stairs back up to my room to quickly go through my morning ablutions. Then, I dressed in my usual attire, a white button-up, a black vest, a blue silk tie, and a pair of nice jeans, a masculine mirror to one of my sister's outfits that I couldn't actually remember her ever wearing.

I slipped on a black jacket and my favorite red scarf and made my way downstairs, but Rin was faster than me, because I'd fallen out of practice since I hadn't had to rush to get ready for school in years, and she was already sliding her shoes on at the front door. It was already shutting behind her by the time I made it to the shallow well at the entrance where my own shoes were set aside. I had to race through putting them on, and then I lost several seconds more activating the defenses of the house's bounded field.

Rin was already well on her way to school, so I had to make long, quick strides as I tried to catch up with her, but I knew I'd get an earful if I broke our family's "image" of elegance and grace, so I made sure not to break into a run. When I'd finally managed to get within arm's length of her, I put on an extra little spurt of speed, slid up next to her —

"Leaving without me?"

— and hooked my arm around hers.

She stumbled and turned to look at me, eyes wide and expression completely unguarded. "Yukio?" she blurted out. "What are you doing?"

"Walking you to school. What does it look like I'm doing?" I told her with an utterly innocent smile.

She blanched and quickly looked around, then leaned in and hissed, "You can't! Do you have any idea what that would look like to my classmates, having my older brother escorting me to high school?"

"Oh, so you admit that I'm older, now," I said, mercilessly attacking her weak points.

"That's not what I — !"

She clamped her mouth shut before anyone could notice her raised voice. Quieter, she said, "That's not what I meant, and you know it! It's a matter of their perceptions, and since you've already graduated, they think of you as being more mature."

"You worry too much." I waved her off. "People will be more focused on the fact I'm there than the fact I came with you. It won't be that unusual, anyway. We used to walk to school together every day, after all."

"That's not how that works, don't pretend otherwise!"

"Plus," I deployed my trump card, "I wanted to check up on Sakura."

She paused, the words she'd been about to say frozen on the tip of her tongue, and then she sighed. "Fine," she said, and then she pulled her arm free of mine, "but we're not going there arm in arm. I don't know what sort of crazy nonsense you've been exposed to in London, but here in Japan, public displays of affection like that are considered culturally inappropriate."

"You can only hide behind that excuse for so long, Rin-chan."

Her cheeks flushed. "Idiot. Why did I have to be stuck with someone like you for a twin brother, anyway? And stop calling me Rin-chan!"

We made the trek to Homurahara in mostly silence. Rin didn't try to strike up much conversation — in fact, as we walked and more and more of her classmates saw us, staring at me and muttering, she tried to shrink in on herself and her face became increasingly red. I could almost hear the litany of embarrassed moaning that must have been going on in her head as she mentally lamented my presence.

I took it all in stride. Really, in the Clock Tower, learning how to ignore insults and just keep moving on with your life was an essential skill if you wanted to last with your sanity intact past the first month.

A bunch of teenagers gossiping while they thought I couldn't hear was nothing when compared to snide comments from rich and powerful magi who knew I could.

We arrived at the school gates with something of a crowd around us, all giving us wide berth as they passed us by, and standing there as though she had been specifically waiting for us —

"Yo, good morning, Tohsak — aaaaaaaaaah?"

— was a familiar tomboyish archer.

"Good morning, Mitsuzuri-san," Rin said politely. "Is there something off about my appearance, today? I'm not sure what I've done to warrant a response like that."

Mitsuzuri Ayako's face twisted. "I… You… Just… You brought your brother here?"

"I didn't bring him so much as he brought himself," Rin replied sardonically. "No matter what I might have said on the matter."

"Good morning, Mitsuzuri-san," I told her. "Ah, don't mind me. I'm just indulging some nostalgia, right now."

"Nostalgia?" Mitsuzuri asked incredulously. The way Rin eyed me said that she didn't believe a single word of it, either.

"It's been a few years, so I wanted to come back and relive a little of the experience of attending high school."

Neither of them believed that, either. Well. That wasn't as important as keeping the real reason secret. You didn't have to lie well to throw someone off. You just had to lie so badly that they never realized what you were trying to avoid admitting to.

"Perhaps he misses the days when he had legions of schoolgirls pining after him day and night," Rin suggested cruelly.

"Oh, that's only natural," Mitsuzuri agreed, picking up the thread and running with it. "After all, he's only a teenage boy. Imagine what it must be like to be considered so desirable by so many girls?"

"It was never legions." But I couldn't stop the thread of doubt that wormed its way into my gut, and despite knowing I was walking into a trap, I couldn't stop my mouth, either. "Was it?"

Mitsuzuri and Rin shared a conspiring look and a devious smile.

"Oh, there were so very many, Yukio, and they've only grown more numerous in your absence."

"There's even an unofficial fan club dedicated to you in the school," Mitsuzuri added. "In fact, I've heard that they've made attempts to be officially recognized by the administration."

I didn't need a mirror to know exactly how ugly the horrified grimace was on my face.

"Please tell me you're joking and none of that is actually true."

"I didn't tell you before?" Rin asked mildly, tossing her hair back over her shoulder. She acted like she'd just realized she hadn't told me she bought a new pair of shoes. "I suppose I'd simply forgotten to mention it. It's true, Yukio. All of the girls pining after you are trying to make an official Tohsaka Yukio fanclub. I hear they've even got a shrine dedicated to you in one of the clubrooms they frequent. Somehow, they even managed to acquire a lock of your hair."

"Oh, that reminds me," said Mitsuzuri. "Yukio-kun, I know I'm not your type of girl. After all, I don't have long, dark hair or startling blue eyes —"

Rin sputtered. "Just what are you trying to imply there, Ayako!"

I felt my cheeks grow hot.

"— but would you consider being my boyfriend?"

"Wait!" Rin interjected. "Don't tell me this is how you intend on winning our bet!"

"Why not?" said Mitsuzuri, unfazed. "He's handsome, respectable, talented, and I had a crush on him for quite a while. There was never any rule in our bet that I couldn't hook up with your brother, Tohsaka."

"That's cheating!" Rin protested.

"Ah, Mitsuzuri…" I tried. "That is, it's not that I dislike you, per se, but… U-um, how should I say this…"

"That's a no, huh?" She didn't seem surprised; she just shrugged. "Yeah, it was a longshot. Worth a try, though, right?"

"Don't you have club practice to go to?" Rin pointed out irritably.

Mitsuzuri didn't stop grinning. "I guess I do. I should probably get to that, then. See you around, Tohsaka, Yukio!"

A miserable groan slipped out of my lips as she walked away, and I had to rub at my eyes just so that I could cover up my flaming cheeks and disguise my embarrassment. "You're sure she's over her crush?" I asked my sister.

"Sometimes, I wonder," Rin answered sardonically. She huffed. "I don't know what she was thinking, asking you of all people to go out with her. She knows —"

Her mouth suddenly clamped shut, and I looked over at her curiously.

"She knows what?"

"She knows how important you are to me," Rin managed, sounding with every word as though she were dragging the admission out of some box with rusted hinges where she'd locked it away a long time ago. "She knows that I would never forgive her if she toyed with you and broke your heart."

I blinked, and something warm kindled in my chest.

"Rin…"

"Wipe that stupid look off your face," she grumbled, a faint dusting of pink spreading over her cheeks. "I didn't say anything unusual, so stop acting like it's strange that I actually care about you."

I smiled and let it go with a laugh. "Sorry. I guess I just don't hear it very often from you, so I cherish it when I do."

She mumbled something under her breath that might have been "idiot," and then shook her head. "I'm going to go to class, before I'm late," she announced, like she didn't have almost half an hour before school officially started. "Don't do something unnecessary, like coming to pick me up after school, got it?"

My smile gained teeth and she groaned.

"You totally will, won't you? Ugh. I can't deal with this, right now. It's way too early in the morning."

And without another word, she strode off, heading towards the campus's main building. A fond sigh whistled out past my lips as I watched her go.

"That girl…"

I shook my head and turned towards the archery range — and nearly bowled over a short, dark-haired girl dressed in a Homurahara uniform who seemed to have been waiting behind us for Rin to walk away. She gave out a high-pitched squeak as I steadied her and myself so we didn't topple, because the very last thing I wanted right now was to be the protagonist in some romantic comedy and fall on top of her.

The absolute worst thing would be if I accidentally copped a feel in the process. Like this was some kind of shoujo anime.

"Are you okay?" I asked her politely.

"Y-yes!" she said nervously.

"Sorry, I wasn't paying enough attention and I almost knocked you over."

"I-it's fine!" she exclaimed.

Movement from behind her caught my eye, and I looked over her shoulder — over her head, really, because I might have been average in London, but here I was tall — and spied a group of girls off to the side, watching us. Like vultures waiting for their prey to finally die, refusing to look away for even a second.

The dots connected, and I drew the only conclusion that made sense.

Oh. Oh dear. Please don't let this be what I think it is.

I looked back at the girl, took her in again, examining the details more closely this time. Dark hair, pale skin, slender and waifish, and while that was so generic a description that it could fit just about any Japanese schoolgirl, there was a niggling sense of familiarity. Old, worn, like I hadn't touched it in years.

She was one of my classmates, wasn't she? From back before I tested out and graduated early.

The only trouble was…I'd paid about as much attention to my yearmates back then as a fox might a flea — engaging with them only when it was unavoidable, and only so long as it took to convince them to leave me alone while still fulfilling my social obligations.

"Was there something you needed?" I specifically used a diminutive, whatever that said about me, to try and convey that I saw her as young and immature, hoping she got the hint.

"U-um… That is, I… I've…"

Oh, Christ above, this is painful.

"Yes?"

At last, she seemed to draw herself up and muster her courage, rallying behind some well of determination.

"Yukio-kun," the girl said, and for the life of me, I couldn't remember her name. "I-I've been waiting for you to come back to Fuyuki. These past few m-months, I've been preparing my h-heart, and that's why… That's why I…"

She thrust out her hands, and held tight between her fingers was a plain, white envelope. Her cheeks were bright red, and just keeping eye contact seemed like it was a Herculean task for her.

"This!"

The gaggle of girls behind her gasped and broke out into whispers — the vultures circling. I did my best to pretend they weren't there as I looked down at the simple, unadorned envelope with resignation. My gut twisted up into knots.

I hated what I was about to do to this girl. I hated that I had to do it. It made me feel like a jerk, like I was kicking a puppy that just wanted to be petted.

But it wasn't fair to me to have to pretend, and it wasn't fair to her for me to lead her on.

"Listen," I said quietly, pointedly ignoring the envelope, "this isn't what you're going to want to hear, and I know it's going to feel like your heart is getting ripped out of your chest —"

Her hands began to tremble and her eyes started to water, like she could sense the blow coming and couldn't get out of the way.

"— but I'm not interested. It's nothing to do with you or your age or —"

But she'd already turned away, sobbing, and raced off past her group of friends. They all gave a gasp and a horrified shout as one and spared me only the time and effort of a fiery glare before they gave chase. No doubt, by the end of the day, the same girls who had told her to take the chance would be telling her that I was a no good, evil scoundrel, and she was better off without me.

"Or how attractive you are," I told the air. "In fact, I'm sure you're a very lovely girl. It's just that I have no room in my life for romance, right now. You should definitely find love with someone who actually remembers your name."

I carded a hand through my hair, sighing, and frowned at the empty space they'd all occupied. Nothing to be done about it, really. At least she hadn't broken down and collapsed into tears on the ground in front of me.

Trying to put the incident out of my mind, I continued my journey to the archery range and stepped inside.

By this point, everyone who was going to arrive for the Archery Club's morning practice was already there, suited up and practicing. The thwip of bowstrings cutting through the air was thick, and most of them were so focused on the task that they didn't notice me come in at all.

Most of them. Mitsuzuri noticed me immediately and came over.

"Did you rethink my offer, Yukio?" she asked with a sly, foxlike grin.

My lips twitched, but I managed to keep my grimace mostly contained.

"Not at all," I said casually, affecting polite disinterest. "I simply came to check up on an old friend."

I let my gaze wander the line until it found a particular head of dark hair perched atop a particular pair of shoulders. The ornamentation was still in place, and it made my heart ache every time I saw it.

But I couldn't afford to linger and I couldn't afford for my attention to be noted by a particular person especially, so I took only as long as I thought would go unnoticed — only long enough to drink in the sight of my target, to make sure they were as okay as could be expected, only long enough to sate my conscience — before I turned my eyes back to Mitsuzuri.

"It looks like you still haven't managed to get Emiya-kun back into the club, though."

Mitsuzuri sighed and put her hands on her hips. "Yeah, that guy just can't be persuaded. No matter how much I or Fujimura-sensei tries, he still refuses to return to the Archery Club. With a guy like him on the team, we could take any championship we wanted."

"Some people just can't be convinced, I suppose." I shook my head for effect. "Well, that's all I was here for, so there's no reason for me to stay. Have a good day, Mitsuzuri-san."

"Later, Yukio."

I stole one last glance back at the line of archery students, one last glance at the person who still suffered only because I wasn't good enough.

It looks like you're doing okay, Sakura, at least for now.

And then I turned and did the hardest thing.

I walked away.

— o.0.O.O.0.o —​

Spoiler: Notes

So many hints and clues sprinkled throughout this chapter. So many of them.

Special thanks to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best, and your continued support is invaluable.
If you like what you're reading and want to support me as a writer so I can pay the bills, I have a Patreon. If Patreon is too long term, I have a Ko-fi page, too. If you want to commission something from me, check out either my Deviantart post or my artist registry page for my rates. Links in my sig. Every little bit helps keep me afloat, even if you can only afford a couple dollars.

Next — Chapter 5: Ulterior Motives

 

[James D. Fawkes]

Chapter 5: Ulterior Motives

After checking up on Sakura, I didn't linger, because I knew that my resolve to stay out of the way until all of my plans came together would disappear just that quickly if I stayed.

Ten years had already been ten years too long. It was only knowing exactly how fearsome my enemy was that kept me from turning back around, running to her, and promising I would rescue her from the hell that she was currently living.

So I left Homurahara and kept on walking, making sure I didn't fall prey to the trap of looking back behind me. So close to the finish line, I didn't intend on stumbling before the race was over.

The first place I went was back home, to grab an umbrella. We weren't forecast to have any rain today, but reliability and weathermen weren't always on the best of terms, and I was going to be prepared, just in case.

I didn't actually expect it to rain.

With an umbrella tucked beneath one arm, I left the house again and began my trek back in the direction of the school, but when I got there, I didn't stop, I kept going until I'd passed it and found myself on the outskirts of town, where the plots of land were larger and the houses sparser. Fuyuki's sprawling metropolis was a distant blob, and even the residential district that the Tohsaka called home was a vague blur behind me.

I had a moment of trepidation as I came upon the stairs that led up the mountain and to the temple that sat at its summit, and an entirely unrelated thrill shot through my stomach at the idea that she could be here, already, lying in the grass off to the side of the path, desperate and fading and trying to reach the top for herself. I could start working on my bigger plans, put the things I'd been brainstorming for the better part of ten years into action. My Holy Grail War could finally begin.

But no. I already knew she wasn't here, yet. The image in my head was vague and fragmented, like a watercolor painting that had run together, but I could distinctly remember rain and the evening sky.

"It's not going to be anything truly dangerous that kills me," I told the air. "No Servants, no magi, no curses, spells, or Noble Phantasms. Instead, if these stairs don't do me in, I'll die of the waiting."

That didn't mean there wasn't any point to what I was about to do, though, and so, with a miserable, exhausted sigh, I put one foot in front of the other and began my journey up the steps to Ryūdō Temple.

It was torture.

Although that might be a bit of an extreme way of putting it. I wasn't out of shape or anything, no, not when everything hinged on me being able to outperform the most ridiculous kung fu master since Li Shuwen, but even I felt the burn walking up all of those steps. Forget my excuses and my other plans — making this trip every day just for the workout might have been a worthwhile idea.

I could only imagine how many elderly folk died of heart attacks or strokes trying to make it all the way to the top for pilgrimage.

Nonetheless, I struggled through it and forced myself to go on. There might have been breaks involved. Okay, yes, there were breaks involved. But I didn't back down and retreat, I faced my enemy head on and pushed past my limits to achieve my goal.

That was how Tohsaka Yukio conquered the stairs of Fuyuki City's Ryūdō Temple.

If I had to take one more break at the top in front of the gate, just outside of view of any of the monks living there, well, no one actually had to know about that, did they?

And so I was perfectly poised and casual as I strode into the main compound like it was any other day and I belonged there.

So it was only natural that a man a few years older than me in monk's robes with a head of hair so closely cropped it might as well have been shaved came out of the temple to greet me.

"Yukio-kun," he said to me with a friendly smile.

"Ryūdō-san," I returned with an equally polite one.

"It's been quite a long time," Ryūdō Reikan commented. "What brings you back to our temple, today?"

"Would you believe me if I said I came to pay respects to my father?"

Reikan's smile grew into a grin. "I might, if I was not already aware that you and your family are devout Christians, and your father is buried in the Christian cemetery."

One side of my smile slanted a little further. "And if I were instead to claim that I sought out the tranquility of the temple, so that I might meditate on my life and the meaning of my existence, to purify myself of impure thoughts?"

Reikan laughed. "A little more believable, but I'm afraid I still know you better than to think that's the truth!"

I sighed and ran a hand across the back of my neck. The smile I offered him this time was a little sheepish.

"It seems your brother isn't the only one with an eerie talent for seeing through to people's true selves," I told him.

It always amused me that Issei so easily saw through Rin's "innocent school idol" facade and to the girl beneath it, and I was decently sure she got a kick out of messing with him whenever he accused her of duplicitousness. No, who was I kidding? Rin absolutely enjoyed winding him up over it, just as I had during the short time I'd spent on the student council, back in the day.

"I have nothing of the sort, unlike Issei," Reikan denied. "My surety comes entirely from knowing what kind of person you are, Yukio-kun."

"Fair enough." I shrugged. "Well. To condense a long story into something a bit more bite-sized, an acquaintance of mine is scheduled to meet me here sometime in the next week or two. Originally, I hadn't expected to be back in town early enough to greet her, and Rin would have been rather, ah, cross with me, to put it mildly, for inviting a stranger into our home without consulting her first, so I asked her to come here where she might receive your hospitality."

"Rather than putting this mystery woman of yours up in a hotel?" Reikan asked a little skeptically.

"She wouldn't accept my charity, because she thinks such gender roles are old-fashioned, but she also doesn't have the money to afford a good hotel in Shinto, so there weren't many options."

Lie, lie, lie, lie, but at least this was one I had practiced and prepared and schooled myself in a long time ago, so it rolled off my tongue as easily and effortlessly as the truth would have. It wasn't like I could tell him that a Servant, the spirit of a distant figure from mythology temporarily revived in a corporeal form, from a secretive magical event called the Holy Grail War would be making her way to the Ryūdō Temple because it sat atop the most powerful ley line in the city and I intended to intercept her.

The worst part of that wouldn't be him refusing to believe me. The worst part would be what might happen and what might have to happen if he did.

One of Reikan's eyebrows rose. "You can't contact her and tell her you've arrived home earlier than expected? I would think it much easier to meet her at the station than forcing her to walk all the way across the city to here."

An exaggerated, put-upon sigh left my mouth. "Unfortunately, I don't have any method of getting in touch with her. She has my home phone number, and she's supposed to call once she's made it up here, but in between now and then, I don't have any way of contacting her. She doesn't have a cell phone, you see."

"That is rather inconvenient," Reikan allowed. "Ah, it's fine, Yukio-kun. As long as her stay isn't particularly long, we here at the Ryūdō Temple would be happy to accommodate this acquaintance of yours. We'll gladly show her our hospitality."

A knot in my stomach that I hadn't realized was there eased, and I checked another point off of my list.

"Thank you, Ryūdō-san," I said politely. "Ah, just to be clear, though. I intend to visit the temple every day until she gets here. My business with her is somewhat time-sensitive."

"Oh?" Reikan grinned. "Perhaps Yukio-kun has fallen for an attractive foreign beauty? An acquaintance, indeed. I should remind you, Yukio-kun, that the temple grounds are not to be used for any illicit meetings. We are not a love hotel."

Heat flooded my cheeks and I let out a low, quiet groan. "Really? It's nothing of the sort, Ryūdō-san. My business with her is strictly that — business. I am not sneaking a foreign lover into the country under my sister's nose or whatever other ludicrous scenario has entered your head."

"You must admit, it's suspicious." And he was definitely teasing me, now. "After all, you've never kept company with other women before, aside from your sister and your attorney."

"In Fuyuki, perhaps," I said, a little sharper than I intended. "I've spent the last six months in the presence of quite a few women, many of them quite attractive, and all of them only for the purposes of contractual obligations. Quite frankly, Ryūdō-san, I have no room for a love life, right now."

"Message received." Reikan held up his hands in the universal sign of surrender. "Can you at least tell me what to expect of this acquaintance of yours? How would I recognize her, aside from the fact she's coming here in the first place?"

A sardonic smirk curled one side of my mouth. "You can't miss her. If you put aside her bright blue eyes, she's also probably going to be dressed like something out of a Greek play. For all that she chides me for being old-fashioned, she's quite the traditionalist herself."

"She sounds like a complicated person."

A secret smile curled the edges of my lips. A joke that only I was in on.

"In ways and to degrees that you wouldn't believe, Ryūdō-san."

With his agreement and permission to continue my daily pilgrimage to the temple, I bade my goodbyes, turned back around, and began my trek down the mountain. It wasn't exactly enjoyable, but it was far and away easier on me and my legs than the journey up had been. I was probably going to have sore legs for the foreseeable future, even still.

The things I did for my family and their future.

Halfway down, I paused a moment, closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and as the mirror in my head cracked and shattered, I reached out with that nebulous sixth sense with which I could feel the flow of magical energy. It stretched as far as I was able, up and down the mountain, until I felt like I was spreading myself through the trees and the blades of grass and the very air — and I found nothing.

There were no major sources of magical power nearby. No elfin waif struggling to hold on just a little bit longer so that she could make it to the top. No harried sorceress racing towards the peak. All I could feel was the distant barrier that surrounded the temple and the pulse of the ley line buried deep beneath me. Even when I chanced a glance into the underbrush, there was not the slightest sign.

I sighed and kept going.

It wasn't like I'd been expecting her so soon. For all that these early stages would be some of the most critical to get right, my timeline on the sequence of events was admittedly fuzzy. Because my previous self had never known for sure, neither could I.

When I reached the bottom, I stopped long enough to look up at the sky, and I was greeted by clear blue, with thin, lazy clouds drifting across the expanse like puffs of cotton candy.

It made me feel like a stranger. Out of place. A pervasive sense that I didn't belong settled in my gut, just under my diaphragm, and for a single moment, I was seized by a sudden certainty that I was going to fail and there was nothing I could do to change it.

But that was nothing new. I'd had nightmares as a kid, vivid dreams where I could only watch as a highlight reel of my family's suffering played behind my eyelids, because nothing I'd done had stopped any of it. Learning to live with the doubt had been one of the hardest challenges I'd faced in those early days.

I just had to remind myself that nothing would change if I didn't try. Failure was the same as doing nothing at all.

Sucking a deep breath in through my nose braced me against my fears, like an impenetrable bulwark between me and despair, a castle wall that pushed out that sense of unbelonging. Bolstered, I stepped out onto the sidewalk and started to make my way back home.

There was nothing to be done about it, now. Medea would make her way to the temple eventually, I just had to be diligent and make sure I found her before Kuzuki could snatch her heart. I wasn't fool enough to try and assault Atrum Galliasta in the little workshop he'd set up for himself, even if I was fairly sure I could have beat him in a fight. Not when he could simply order Medea to do me in with one of his Command Spells.

I just wished I had a better idea of when she would show up than "a rainy afternoon in mid-January."

"Well, it can't be too easy, can it?" I asked the open air. "It would just be boring if there weren't a few stumbling blocks here and there. It's no fun if I don't have to work for it."

Now if only I could actually bring myself to believe that.

It couldn't be helped, so I made my way back home, the winter chill on my cheeks and the bleak sun on the back of my neck. I stopped back by the house only long enough to put away my umbrella, now that I was absolutely certain I had no use for it, and to make sure I had both my wallet and the shoulder bag with my laptop on hand before I left and began the trek to Shinto, the modern, more industrial half of the city where all of the businesses and big department stores had set up shop.

Call me old-fashioned, but I preferred the sleepy, less busy little town of Miyama, Fuyuki's residential district where most of the city's people actually lived, particularly its oldest and longest settled families. There was some wonderful history to London, and the old, Victorian era buildings that still stood even now had a charm of their own, but as incredible as it had been to feel like I was stepping back in time in some places, there was just something homey and magnificently archaic about Fuyuki's Miyama district.

Shinto felt cold and indifferent by comparison. An unfeeling monument to capitalism in all its terrible glory, crowding out everything that wasn't of use to the machine of corporate profits.

Well, maybe I was being a little too harsh. Modern cityscapes had their own beauty, it just wasn't to my particular preferences.

There were a handful of tourists milling about in the city proper as I walked, some housewives out shopping with their friends because they had nothing better to do with their free time, but I paid them no mind as I made a beeline for the electronics shop that was my destination to pick up the order I'd placed earlier in the month.

Waiting had been an exercise in patience. Rakuden, the store in question, had had my order days ago, but Rin would have asked way too many questions if she'd seen me come home with a bunch of tiny surveillance cameras specifically designed to be hidden and unnoticeable. "Spy cameras," as it were. She would have asked way too many questions that I really didn't want to answer. Couldn't answer, not truthfully, not without ruining a whole load of my plans, and while I was a decent liar, Rin was way too perceptive to take the chances that she might catch me out.

With my wallet a little lighter and my arms a little heavier, I left Rakuden carrying a couple of plastic bags and made my way on a meandering path out of the city proper and towards the edges. Deliberately, I avoided any road that swung too close to the old Catholic church on the hill, because the very last person whose suspicions I needed to arouse was Kotomine Kirei, and the very last person whose interest I needed to catch was the golden-haired king currently living with him.

Finally, as the sun peaked and noon fast approached, I found myself coming upon the old ghost house, a mansion that had last been occupied almost seventy years ago, during the Third Holy Grail War. One of two, in fact, originally owned by the Edelfelt sisters from that War. Luviagelita had only been too happy to sell the deed for the other one to me — for an exorbitant sum, of course, and even if I had talked her down, I'd still paid well over market value — but this one technically belonged to the Association, now.

Which meant, of course, that it was the Association's foothold in the city, and if anyone decided to come take part in the Holy Grail War on the Association's behalf, well, this was as good a place as any to set up base, wasn't it? Old, Western, upscale, for what and where it was, and already mostly prepared for just that.

Fortunately, no one had yet claimed it, so there was still plenty of time to put one of my side plans into action. A contingency, if you would, to make sure my endgame went off properly, even if other parts went awry.

The front door was locked when I came upon it, but the spell needed to undo that lock was the same as it had been for the other house, so it didn't take much effort to get inside and find myself in a well-maintained mansion. Carpet, flooring, furniture, furnishings — everything had been perfectly preserved by the bounded field, kept neat and clean over the decades while the house waited for its owner to return.

Was Luvia's grandmother still around? I wondered. It had been sixty years, after all. Was that spiteful, old hag still spitting mad over my grandfather seducing her twin sister?

Well, it wasn't like I had any plans of finding out, so I guess it didn't matter.

I dropped my bags on the seat of one plush armchair and set about exploring as I pulled one of the cameras out of its packaging. There were only so many for me to plant, and the very last thing I needed to do was hide one of my limited number of spycams in a useless place — or worse, in such plain sight that it was easily noticed.

"If it's anything like the other mansion…" I muttered to myself. "A top floor, a middle floor, a ground floor, a basement…"

And naturally, the best place to perform a Servant Summoning would be…

"Probably the basement."

Isolated, closed off, private, it would be ideal for keeping the magical energy from spreading out, and it would be the easiest place to avoid the attention of snooping neighbors. Or in this case, neighborhood kids who wanted to get a look at the mysterious ghost house and mistook strange lights and sounds for an actual haunting.

It took a little searching, but eventually, I found my way downstairs and walked the perimeter of the basement, looking for a good place to set up the camera where it wouldn't be noticed. There weren't many options, because the place was pretty sparse, but fortunately, the basement was dark and didn't have much in the way of lighting, so when I nestled it in the crevice of the brickwork, it all but disappeared. It had the benefit of a good view of most of the basement, too, although there were a few places where it didn't have line of sight.

It didn't matter. As long as I could see people coming and going and had a decent look at what happened inside the room, I didn't need to see everything.

Back upstairs in the living room — parlor? Whatever, I wasn't that old-fashioned — I stuck my next camera in the centerpiece above the fireplace, in plain view but disguised by the structure around it. As long as Kirei didn't have a chance to inspect it too closely, it wouldn't get noticed at all.

I stuck one more camera in the shadow of a painting hanging on the wall.

Upstairs, most of the second floor was residential space. Bedrooms and bathrooms and a decently expansive study. I hid one camera in the corner of a bookshelf there, peering out towards the door. I doubted the summoning would take place here, but just in case, I needed eyes on the largest portion of it I could manage.

The bedrooms and bathrooms, I left alone. It felt a little too invasive to plant cameras in places where I knew people were going to be naked, particularly people of the opposite sex. Less like I was spying on the competition and more like I was either collecting blackmail material or just plain peeping.

No matter how sexy I thought Bazett's abs probably were, they were just going to have to stay in my imagination.

On the top floor, I found attic space. It wasn't like standard attics, of course, because it looked much more like a top floor that was simply a little more squashed and a little more open, like the builders had simply forgotten to finish adding the walls and left only the bare skeletons of the support beams. This wasn't the least likely place in the whole house for someone to attempt a Servant summoning, but of the list of places where casting a spell like that would happen, it was the least likely. I stuck a camera on the far wall and called it a day.

With almost all of my cameras planted, I went outside and put my last one in place, hidden just under the doorbell.

Once that was done, I went back inside, pulled out my laptop, and once it had booted up, I did a systems check to make sure everything was connected properly. Through a clever bit of adaptation, I'd merged technology and magecraft using the same principle as the gramophone in the basement: I connected the information recorded by the cameras with my laptop. I just hadn't been sure it would work until I actually sat down and tried it.

So it was with bated breath that I opened up the program that recorded the cameras' feeds and waited…for the video streams to come in clear and complete. For a few handfuls of seconds, each camera sent back video to my laptop, and then, one by one, they winked off to conserve power. Motion activated. There was a reason I'd had to get them special order.

A laugh bubbled out of my lips, and I pumped my fist with a hissed, "Yes!"

Dear old Dad probably would have had something to say about it. Scratch that, he was probably turning over in his grave right that moment, and if he'd been alive to see the very magecraft he once used on an old timey, antique gramophone adapted to a modern laptop and camera setup, he just might have popped a blood vessel or fainted from sheer, apoplectic rage.

Just to make sure everything was working properly and none of it was a fluke, I stood up with my laptop, went down to the basement, and waved my hand in front of the camera I'd hidden — it was so inconspicuous down there that I actually had a bit of trouble finding it again. Sure enough, the instant it detected movement, it turned on and streamed directly to the feed on my laptop. To be absolutely certain, I went around to each of my other hidden cameras and checked them, too.

Each and every single one of them turned on when I walked in front of them, stayed on as long as I was there, and turned back off after thirty seconds of no movement.

"I could kiss you right now," I told my laptop with a grin. Of course, it didn't reply, because voice activated personal assistants wouldn't be a thing for something like another decade. A shame, because this whole thing would be much more interesting and less lonely with a snarky, AI companion.

With my cameras installed and working, I packed up the bags and the packaging, bundled my laptop back into its bag, and left, making absolutely certain I didn't leave anything conspicuous behind for the next occupant to stumble over. A glance at my watch told me I had about an hour and a half to make it to Miyama in time to walk Rin home from school, and I definitely wasn't making that trip by foot, so I dug out my cellphone and called up a taxi service so I could get back in time.

My dominos were set up and organized. Now, I just had to wait for the right people to come and tip them over, so that my plans could truly be set in motion.

I'd already been waiting ten years. What was another week or two?

— o.0.O.O.0.o —​

Spoiler: Notes

The ball gets rolling.

Rakuden, incidentally, is a play on words. It combines the first kanji of "paradise," that is "Rakuen," with the kanji used for electronic devices and electricity, "den." Therefore, "Rakuden" is the "paradise for electronics," roughly. I wasn't the first person to come up with this pun, because as I discovered, there was actually a store in Japan that came up with the idea, first.

I'm also fudging things a little bit. Broadband wifi was only just getting its legs under it in 2004, but strictly speaking, Yukio isn't relying on wifi to connect his laptop to those cameras, so it's fine.

Special thanks to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best, and your continued support is invaluable.
If you like what you're reading and want to support me as a writer so I can pay the bills, I have a Patreon. If Patreon is too long term, I have a Ko-fi page, too. If you want to commission something from me, check out either my Deviantart post or my artist registry page for my rates. Links in my sig. Every little bit helps keep me afloat, even if you can only afford a couple dollars.

Next — Chapter 6: Interloper

 

[James D. Fawkes]

Chapter 6: Interloper

Ten days passed quickly.

Frustratingly, they were all the same, a blur of mundanity where nothing of import happened. The cameras in the Edelfelt mansion remained off, because no one was there to activate them. My daily pilgrimage to the Ryūdō Temple featured no elfin women, feebly struggling to make it up the stairs. No pale-haired, red-eyed fairies appeared to threaten me or anyone else in a sweet voice with a pleasant smile.

It was a boring everyday.

How had it turned out that the wait of ten short days felt longer than ten years?

On January the eighteenth, I woke up just as I had the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that, and just as I had those days, I rolled out of bed, bleary-eyed, trekked down the stairs, put a pot of water on for myself to share with my sister, and made a quick breakfast, with two pieces of sparsely buttered toast set aside for Rin. Like every day for the past week and a half, I ate quickly and quietly and sat down to enjoy my mug of tea while I waited for Rin to wake up herself and drag herself out of bed.

As with every day, at exactly six-thirty on the dot, there was a thump from upstairs, like something heavy had been dropped on the floor — or someone had dropped unenthusiastically out of bed. A few minutes later, a girl in pajamas with her long hair askew stumbled down the steps and into the living room, just as bleary-eyed as I had been and half asleep.

As I had every day prior, I gestured with one hand towards the kitchen, and over the rim of my cup, I told her, "Toast and tea on the counter, ready and waiting."

She mumbled something that might charitably have been called a thanks and then staggered off in that direction. There was the clatter of her clumsily fixing up her tea to her preference, and then she came back a minute or two later, half hunched over and swaying a little with every step.

If I didn't know her better, I might have been scared she was going to drop her food or her tea and make a mess, but Rin had always been like this, and she hadn't spilled anything yet. She plopped down next to me with an explosive, exhausted sigh and started nibbling at her food and sipping at her tea as she slowly began to wake up.

"Rough night?" I asked her mildly.

"Yes," she said, and then she lanced me with a sideways glare. "And no, there wasn't a boy involved, so get your head out of the gutter."

"Oh no, I'm getting predictable," I lamented with a smile. "Are you sure you didn't sneak someone in for a little funny business? I won't judge, I promise. You're a healthy teenage girl, after all. It's only natural."

"No, I absolutely didn't! I was trying to make a few last minute preparations, you ass!" she said. "What part of my life right now makes you think I have the time or the interest to invest in a romantic relationship? Enough to…to fool around, at that!"

I chuckled into my tea. "Methinks the lady doth protest too much."

She made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat.

"Could you at least use a Japanese idiom for that? You're not in London anymore, you know!"

My lips quirked to one side. "Are you sure you're awake? We've been talking in English."

She blinked at me, and then her brow furrowed, and at last, a flush spread across her cheeks. She looked away, refusing to meet my eyes, and busied herself with her two meager pieces of toast.

I sighed, set my tea down on the coffee table, and leaned over. "I'm going to start moving out today."

She blinked again and turned to look at me, toast hanging from between her teeth. "Already?" she asked around her food.

"It's the eighteenth," I pointed out. "Might as well get settled in, right? Besides, I thought you'd be glad. Didn't you want me gone before the War got started?"

"Well, yes, but…" She let out an explosive sigh of her own. "I guess I just…got used to having you around again."

I smiled. "Oh, so you do care."

Her cheeks flushed a little again, just the slightest.

"Jerk. How many times are you going to make me say it? You're my twin brother, of course I care."

As many times as I had to, Rin. I was going to cherish every utterance of your affection for as long as I possibly could, because the possibility was very real that it might not be that much longer at all.

"That doesn't mean I don't like hearing it."

She huffed.

"Yeah? Well, don't get used to it! You're not going to be seeing me for most of the next month, after all!"

"Why ever not?" I asked, feigning incredulity. "I'm not moving that far away, Rin. It's just up the street. There's no reason I can't walk you to school every day until things kick off for real."

She looked at me in horror. "You wouldn't."

I just smiled at her. She sighed again and dragged a hand over her face.

"You absolutely would. Are you trying to ruin the elegant image I've spent the last four years crafting?"

"Nope," I said brightly. "I'm trying to ruin mine."

She stared at me for a moment, uncomprehending, and then she snorted and doubled over, clutching her stomach and laughing. Somehow, she kept her mug of tea from spilling, probably because it was mostly gone.

"Oh my god," she managed between gasps. "You're really that desperate to get those girls to leave you alone?"

"If I never have to receive another 'confession' letter," I told her, "then I'll consider it effort well spent."

One was more than enough, but as that girl at Homurahara last week had proven, I didn't have to still be in school to get "confessed" to by one of my old yearmates. It was why I'd also avoided checking up on Sakura more than once or twice since then and left Rin at the front gate, now.

Rin shook her head. "Only you, Yukio. Why, if Shinji were as popular as you were with so little intent on your part, he'd have built a harem by now."

"Not for lack of trying," I said dryly, "at least as far as I understand it."

She cocked one eyebrow and rolled her shoulders in a careless shrug.

"Well, I guess some girls do find him charming, when he's not being sleazy about it."

Even if I hated his guts for what he was party to, I had to admit that she at least had that much right. Still, I couldn't leave it alone and let her walk away without slinging a final, parting insult at him.

"He's the sort of boy who peaks in high school."

She let out another unladylike snort, then sighed and stood, draining the last of her cup. "Sorry to cut this short, but I should get going."

I waved her off.

"Go on without me, today. I need to get a head start on packing all of my stuff up and moving out. But I'm going to be waiting on the curb tomorrow, because you're not getting rid of me that easily. Got it?"

"Yeah, yeah. Big, strong Onii-chan there to protect me from the slavering hordes of horny teenage boys."

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said coyly. "I need you to protect me. All of those girls just want me for my body, and you're the only one who can fight them off."

"Not going to claim they're after your virginity?"

"Alas," I said melodramatically, one hand pressed to my heart, "I'm afraid that was stolen from me quite some time ago. It's quite the tragic story, really, and I'm far too traumatized to tell it."

She snorted, shook her head again, and left, bouncing up the stairs much faster and lighter than she had coming down them. About ten minutes later, she came back down, dressed, her school bag in one hand, and her hair styled. She stepped into the living room long enough to say goodbye.

"I'm heading out," she announced to me. "I expect you to at least stay for dinner one last time tonight, got it?"

I blinked at her.

"Huh. You did your hair differently, today."

The parts that she normally styled into her signature twin tails were pulled back and styled into a pair of small braids that were tied together at the back of her head. It actually looked really pretty, gave her more of an office worker look instead of high school girl. Feminine and dignified, rather than girlie.

She blinked back at me, and then her face flushed a bright, brilliant red to match her jacket.

"I-idiot!" she spat. "You're the one who told me I'd look more mature if I wore my hair like this! W-well, not like this, exactly, but it's a compromise! And what's with that delayed reaction, anyway! I've been wearing my hair like this for almost a year!"

Really? And I hadn't noticed?

"You have?"

"Ugh!" She spun around and stomped away. "You're so clueless sometimes, Yukio!"

A minute later, the front door swung open, and still sounding very much angry, Rin called back, "I'm leaving!"

"Go and come safely!" I shouted, more out of reflex than anything else.

The front door shut, a little more firmly than it really needed to, and an exasperated breath hissed out of my nostrils. Good grief. Had I been so distracted by my own preparations for the Grail War that I'd missed something that should have been so incredibly obvious?

"I'll have to make her something extra special for dinner tonight," I told the empty air. "Make it up to her."

Rin had always been pretty, but that more mature look really suited her so incredibly well. The twin tails had been fine for a seven-year-old, cute, even, but as an adult, the hints of sophistication were a much better look.

I didn't know how I hadn't noticed it before. Even as busy as I was trying to get ready, Rin was literally the most important person in my life, so even something as simple as changing her hairstyle should have been like a giant, neon sign glaring at me.

Maybe I should slow down a little, try to relax? Missing something like that might be a sign that I was focusing too much, getting tunnel vision, and that could be just as dangerous in any number of different ways as slacking off and letting the chips fall where they did.

For a few minutes more, I sat alone in the living room, accompanied only by the tick of the mantle clock, and nursed my mug of tea.

When it was all gone, I got up, went to the kitchen, and gave the dishes from both my breakfast and Rin's a quick wash. Ten minutes later, I was upstairs and pulling out my suitcases so I could start packing up everything I would need for the next month.

It was going to be a long one.

— o.0.O.O.0.o —​

Right around noon, I had started settling into the old Edelfelt mansion down the street. Fortunately, whatever magecraft had kept the other one in good shape had kept this one just as pristine, so there hadn't been any need to go about dusting or otherwise cleaning the place up and it was just a matter of getting used to living someplace new. Since I'd been spending the better part of the last three years making trips back and forth across the British Isles, staying somewhere I hadn't been before was something I happened to be well accustomed to.

The only thing the house really lacked was food, which meant a shopping trip later in the day was going to be essential. It did mean that I had to go back home to make myself lunch, which turned out to be just as well, since I'd forgotten my laptop when I left.

And while I was there, well, there wasn't any reason not to check on the camera feeds from the ghost house in Shinto, was there?

Unfortunately, just like the last week, there was no sign of anyone having moved in. The Association's representative in the Grail War was still missing in action, and the time for her to show up and prepare her entry was fast dwindling away. Not for the first time and definitely not for the last, I cursed the vagueness of the timeline as I knew it, because all I had to go on was "about a week before Saber's summoning."

Reikan hadn't called me, either, which meant Medea hadn't shown up, yet.

It was all hit and miss. The easy things were going according to plan, exactly how I'd imagined they would for the last ten years, but the important bits kept spiraling off. Fujimura-sensei had beaten me so effortlessly, Medea was missing in action, and the Mage's Association's representative in the Holy Grail War was nowhere to be seen.

Was it just a matter of timing, and I was getting too impatient? Everything before January 31st was murky and unclear, after all, full of estimates and maybes. Or was there something else to it? Something I hadn't thought of, a possibility that I hadn't given enough consideration?

For ten years, I'd been moving forward under the assumption that all of the things filling my head were right. Could it be, was it possible…

My laptop was shut down and stowed back away with a frustrated sigh, and I took it back with me to the Edelfelt mansion before I went out for groceries. By the time I was done with all of that, it was starting to get pretty late in the afternoon, so I grabbed my umbrella and made my daily trip up the mountain to the temple.

It still didn't rain. The skies had been threatening for the better part of a week, but the forecast still only listed a "chance" of showers, although the number kept rising every day. Equally so, there was no sign of an elfin waif along the mountain steps, and Reikan only told me that she hadn't shown up, so my trip was equally fruitless as it had been every other day.

It was as I was stepping back into the Edelfelt mansion that something finally happened.

My cellphone rang, and I fished it out of my pocket to find a number I recognized. It took all of my will power not to flip it open as quickly as I could and instead to take my time so that I didn't give the impression of being in a hurry.

"Appearances are everything" wasn't just a line that applied to the Clocktower, after all.

"This is Tohsaka Yukio," I said politely into the receiver.

"Yukio-san," the voice on the other line greeted me. My heart skipped a beat. I had to wet my lips.

"Raiga-san," I said calmly, like my pulse wasn't thundering in my ears. "To what do I owe the pleasure of this call?"

"I'm repaying the favor I owe you from back then."

Yes, yes, yes, yes! Finally, things are starting to go my way!

I made sure to keep my voice even, my tone distant and disinterested. Politics was such a messy business, but it was even messier when you were playing with people as dangerous as the Yakuza. They were not as nerve-wracking as magi could be, but I didn't intend on underestimating them or their resources anytime soon.

Their resources were the exact reason I'd cultivated that favor, way back when.

"Oh? Should I take it to mean you've found her?"

Please say yes, I begged him silently. Please say yes. Please.

"She was exactly as you described her to me — medium height, slender build, auburn hair, business suit. One Bazett Fraga McRemitz, according to her passport."

A jolt of adrenaline shot through my stomach.

"You've confirmed it, then? She's in Japan?"

"She arrived at the airport in Tokyo just last night," Raiga said. "Given the lines from there to here, she should be in Fuyuki in no later than two days."

Two days. Just two days. That was all the longer I had to wait until things finally got started for real.

"I see. Thank you for your diligence. Consider your favor to me repaid, Raiga-san."

"Not at all. In fact, as a matter of courtesy, I will contact you again when she arrives in Fuyuki."

I swallowed.

"That isn't necessary."

"I insist, Yukio-san. The Fujimura Group doesn't do things by halves. I will not consider our debt fulfilled until then."

"Then, I can only accept your dedication and thoroughness, Raiga-san. Please convey my appreciation to your men for their work."

"I will do so. Good day, Yukio-san."

"Good day, Raiga-san."

I waited until I heard the click of his phone turning off and then ended the call on my end, too, and pumped my fist victoriously.

"Yes!" I shouted to the empty mansion. "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! She's on her way! Raiga, you old, cantankerous codger, if you were here right now, I could kiss you!"

Bazett had finally shown up. It was still going to be another few days before she made it to Fuyuki, but finally, finally, things were moving forward and I wasn't just twiddling my thumbs while I waited for something to happen. Ten years of planning and preparing, ten years of worry and nightmares, and there was finally something I could act on, something I could do about it all.

Something tickled my gut from the inside, and I couldn't stop the enormous grin from spreading across my face as I giggled quietly to myself. It was hard to contain my excitement, but too many years of pushing everything down beneath a mask of politeness and elegance just so I would be taken seriously was just as hard to shake.

This was proof, now. Proof that all of those things I'd had in my head for the last decade weren't just the imaginations of a brat who had had a bad fever dream or a reaction I'd had to activating my magic circuits for the first time. It was all real. Medea and Bazett and the Fifth Holy Grail War. Shirou's Reality Marble. Archer, Herakles, Illyasviel, King Arthur, Cúchulainn.

I took a deep breath, and some of my excitement died.

Medusa, Zouken, Shinji, Sakura, the pit of worms, too. The Shadow. Angra Mainyu and the corrupted Holy Grail. Gilgamesh. Those were all real, too.

Maybe it would have been worth it to be wrong if it meant none of that had ever been true.

— o.0.O.O.0.o —​

Spoiler: Notes

I legitimately almost forgot I was going to post this today.

Rin and Yukio playing off each other continues to be one of the best parts of writing this story.

This chapter suffered in size a little for being a transitional chapter mostly meant to fill the space between last chapter and next chapter. I felt I should at least put this much between them, though, so I didn't just cut it entirely.

Special thanks to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best, and your continued support is invaluable.
If you like what you're reading and want to support me as a writer so I can pay the bills, I have a Patreon. If Patreon is too long term, I have a Ko-fi page, too. If you want to commission something from me, check out either my Deviantart post or my artist registry page for my rates. Links in my sig. Every little bit helps keep me afloat, even if you can only afford a couple dollars.

 

[James D. Fawkes]

Chapter 7: Trust Misplaced

If the ten days I'd spent waiting for anything at all to happen had passed in a swift blur of mundanity, then the next two days were somehow an eternity.

My routine continued mostly unabated. I showed up at the door every morning to walk Rin to school, using the opportunity to check up on Sakura in the Archery Club whenever the urge got too pressing to ignore, spent my day making other, less important preparations (and waiting impatiently for the hours to pass), and stopped back by the school to escort Rin back home.

She protested every time, of course. The words "idiot" and "jerk" must have left her lips more times in the two weeks since I'd come home than it had in the last year and a half, but in spite of what she said, she never seriously tried to stop me from following her to school or picking her up on the way from it. The trouble was, she just couldn't be honest with herself and say she enjoyed having me there.

It was one of the things I loved about her. She wasn't loud and proud about her affections, but if you knew her well enough, then they were incredibly obvious and easy to see. I was one of the rare few people who never had to look at that polite, saccharine falsity of a mask she wore for the rest of the world.

After school, I made my daily pilgrimage to the temple on the mountain, and I always carried an umbrella, even though it had yet to rain. There still wasn't any sign of Medea, and I was starting to get tempted to scour the hotel registries for that fop, Atrum. I had to constantly remind myself that he could easily order Medea to kill me if I actually tried to cut out the middleman, as it were.

January the twentieth began the same as all of those other days, except I was waking up in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar mansion in a room that lacked all but the barest of my own furnishings. For a scant few seconds, in the haze of that fuzzy line between dream and reality, I thought I was back in London, negotiating the inheritance Dad left for me.

But everything settled shortly, and I pulled myself out of bed with a groan, shutting off my alarm with an impatient smack.

Like I had every morning since my return to Fuyuki, I trudged down the stairs, still feeling half asleep, and made my way to the kitchen to make myself a quick, easy breakfast. Raspberry jam on toast wasn't exactly the healthiest of meals, and it wasn't particularly Japanese a meal either, but sue me, I liked my sweets.

Somehow, I managed to pull myself together enough to make myself presentable and walk down the street in time to meet up with a Rin who was just barely leaving our ancestral home herself. She let out a long-suffering sigh when she saw me, but other than that token protest, she didn't try to stop me accompanying her.

Mitsuzuri wasn't always there to greet us, but when she was, it wasn't uncommon for me to get dragged into their playfighting, or worse, for the two of them to double team me with teasing, often over my supposed "harem" of supple maidens (ugh) who would reportedly drop their panties and bend over if I just said the word (really? Wasn't that going a bit too far?). Somehow, I thought that was probably Rin's revenge for my insistence on escorting her to and from school, but if I let a little discomfort derail my plans, well, I wouldn't have gotten very far at all.

This morning, she wasn't waiting for us at the front gate, so Rin said her goodbyes and went on to do her own thing while I popped in for a quick moment to check on Sakura. It wasn't like I had expected anything to change in the last week or even the last two days, but I checked on her anyway. To make sure she was still…okay wasn't the right word, not with what she had to put up with, but surviving. Pushing through.

As long as she suffered no more so than usual, I could convince myself to wait and prepare. Matou Zouken's days were numbered. I just wasn't good enough to put him in his well-deserved grave yet.

Somedays, that was the only thing that stopped me from trying.

I couldn't spend all day worrying about my sisters, though. It was all fine to keep an eye on them where and when I could, but there were other things that needed my attention, even if all I could do was impatiently wait for them to become relevant and present instead of concerns for the future.

Like Bazett, who was kind of important to some of my contingency plans for if or when things went off the rails. Keeping track of her was something of a big deal.

When I got back to my temporary home and checked on the cameras in the other mansion, I didn't bother to stop myself from grinning like an absolute loon when I realized the cameras were on because Bazett Fraga McRemitz was in residence and going about her own morning ablutions. And then I actually looked at the feed and made a discovery that I hadn't expected.

"WHOA!"

I slammed my laptop shut and squeezed my eyes closed, my face burning up and my ears on fire. Some part of me waited for the stinging blow of an open hand on my cheek, like the one time I'd walked in on Rin as she was coming out of the shower.

Bazett Fraga McRemitz did not, thankfully for my sanity, sleep in the nude. But "pajamas" for her consisted of "a pair of panties and a t-shirt," something I probably should have considered, since she was Irish as they came. Maybe I'd just gotten too used to Rin and her cotton shirt and pants and her full length nightgown.

On the plus side, at least I had confirmation that Bazett was settling in, perhaps a little too comfortably. Raiga had phoned me to say she was in town yesterday evening, so she must have arrived at the mansion fairly late last night, after I'd gone to sleep.

A sigh gusted out of my mouth and I pinched the bridge of my nose as the heat slowly faded from my cheeks. I sent my laptop a wary, considering glance, but I didn't need to know Bazett's every move, so I left it alone. I'd check in again later on, I decided, after dinner. The next thing I needed to know was when she did her summoning, so I could be there in the aftermath to set up one of my contingencies.

If I was a betting man, I'd have said she was going to spend the rest of the day prepping for the ritual and save doing it for tonight. I knew Rin intended to wait for her 2 AM "peak" before she started, just so that she could be at her absolute best when she tried for her Servant. I didn't know Bazett's, nor even if she was meticulous enough to be that thorough.

Accidental voyeurism aside… This was it. Today was the day. I'd spent ten years preparing myself for what I knew was coming, and now, now, it was finally happening for real. This wasn't a nightmare, this wasn't one of my dreams, this was real life, and the Fifth Holy Grail War had finally arrived at my metaphorical doorstep.

It wouldn't be accurate to say I spent the rest of the day on cloud nine, floating through the remaining hours. That would imply I was feeling something more like happiness when a better word might have been eagerness. Impatience. Even excitement had maybe too much of a positive connotation for it, although anxiety probably went too far in the opposite direction.

I didn't have better words for it, whatever it was. I just knew that something I had been waiting for a very long time for had come at last, and I couldn't wait to meet it.

My strange mood didn't go unnoticed. In hindsight, I was sure it must have earned me a few unusual looks both on my way through town and at the school when I went to pick up Rin, but no one commented on it and I didn't notice any strange looks shot my way at the time. Naturally, instead, it was Rin herself who actually spoke her mind and said something about it during dinner.

"You're in an unusually good mood," she said between bites.

I blinked at her from across the table, fork stuck between my lips and the burst of citrus still on my tongue from where I'd bitten into my food. It was my turn to cook tonight, and I'd chosen one of my favorite dishes, a lemon-basted chicken recipe, a kind of Chicken Romano derivative that I'd adapted from an old favorite I had absolutely loved a lifetime ago.

Quite literally, in this case. My, but reincarnation gave that sort of thing a whole new meaning, didn't it?

Chewing gave me a few seconds to think up a response. I could have been honest and told her a half-truth, and by the end of it, I probably would have. My relationship with Rin, however, just wasn't that simple, was it?

"Am I not usually in a good mood?" I asked with a mild smile.

She leaned her head on one hand and jabbed the tines of her fork in my direction.

"You were humming while you cooked," she told me flatly. "The last time you did that was when the school let you graduate early."

I hummed.

"Was I? I hadn't noticed."

Rin stared at me, unblinking, and without looking, she speared another piece of her chicken, wound some noodles around it, and shoved the whole bunch into her mouth, chewing slowly and deliberately. After she had swallowed, she closed her eyes briefly, let out a long sigh, and asked, "Alright, who was she?"

Unbidden, my mind supplied an image of the scantily clad Bazett I'd glimpsed earlier. I schooled my face to keep any hint of my thoughts locked away.

"She?"

"The floozy you were with," Rin said, unamused. "Who was it this time?"

I recoiled incredulously. "Floozy?"

"Don't think I don't know," said Rin, pointing at me with her fork again. "Every so often, you'll go off for the day and come back looking like that. I've seen that sort of look enough times on the guys in my class when they get lucky to know what you spend those days doing. So who was she? Please tell me it's just some side dish you're having a fling with and not a professional."

…Oh man, she was walking right into this one, wasn't she?

A long, exaggerated sigh came out of my mouth. "Okay, you've found me out," I said. "I confess, there is a special girl I'm seeing."

Rin snorted, pinning me with narrowed eyes and a venomous scowl. "I knew it."

"I can't help myself," I went on, shaking my head. "She's just so beautiful. And feisty, yes, that's the best part. I can't help falling in love with a woman who can kick my ass."

Rin's face twisted into a complicated expression and she pinched the bridge of her nose. "Oh god, please don't tell me you and Ayako have actually been going behind my back and keeping it a secret. She'll never let me live it down."

"Of course not," I said, and Rin let out a sigh of relief. "No, no, this girl is incredibly special. I can't help having to see her as often as I can, and having to be away for six months was absolute torture."

Rin's brow furrowed. "She's a local?"

"Born and raised in Fuyuki," I confirmed, desperately smothering my grin. "The fairest in the city, in fact. She has the most wonderful long, dark hair with just a bit of curl at the ends, not a blemish anywhere on her body, and my absolute favorite feature is her bright, brilliant blue eyes."

The understanding that slowly dawned on her face was almost as delicious as the vibrant red blush that crept across her cheeks, and at last, I broke down and laughed. Rin hid behind her hands, pressing her face into her palms.

"Yukio, you jerk!"

Once I'd managed to get my laughter under control, I asked her, "Is it really that strange for me to be in a good mood?"

She peeked out at me from between her fingers. "Maybe not, but you're definitely in a better mood than usual."

"I got some really good news today," I admitted, shrugging.

"And all the other times?" she probed, slowly coming out from behind her hands.

"Do you think our investments magically flourish?" I retorted wryly. "Maybe that getting myself emancipated at nine years old was as easy as telling a judge to make it so? Those other times, I was talking to either my financial advisor or my lawyer. You don't think I was making the beast with two backs with them as a twelve-year-old, do you?"

The tips of her ears were so bright a red they almost glowed.

"W-well, I guess maybe that's a little unreasonable," she muttered. "B-but there are some very strange women out there…"

My mouth twitched. "My, but that's a lovely glass house you have. Are you sure you should be throwing stones inside it?"

This time, Rin's brow twitched. "Just what exactly are you insinuating there, Yukio?" she asked with a plastic smile.

"Are you trying to tell me magi are in any way normal?"

She let out a sharp breath through her nostrils.

"No, I guess not," she admitted. "You don't have to be so vulgar about it, though."

I rolled my eyes. "This from the girl who thought I was sleeping around with prostitutes."

Her cheeks burned red again, and rather than spit back whatever retort might have been on her tongue, she retreated and turned back to her dinner, pointedly refusing to look at me. So did I a moment later.

When we were done eating, I stayed only long enough to help clean up (and pack up some leftovers for myself, because even if she enjoyed it for what it was, this was my favorite meal, not hers, and she refused to hold onto more than a single extra serving), and once that was handled, I made my way back up the street to the mansion I was housesitting at for the duration of the War. There still wasn't any sign of rain in the sky, and I'd made my daily pilgrimage up to the Temple earlier than usual.

Once I had my leftovers safely tucked away, I sat down in the parlor and pulled out my laptop to check on Bazett. I fully expected to find her in the dining room by herself, finishing off her own meal alone.

I most certainly didn't expect to find her chatting amiably with Kotomine Kirei.

I almost jolted right out of my seat, I panicked so hard, but on a second look, they hadn't made their way down to the basement yet, so I still had time to get there before things went down. Instead, they were…catching up?

It felt incongruous with everything I knew about Kirei. The man was a monster. No matter what, there was no way I could forget the look on my father's face as Kirei murdered him in cold blood, and I'd had my own fair share of nightmares about the orphans wasting away in the basement of his church. He was oily and slimy and even Rin, who had no idea of what he'd done to our family, let alone a bunch of innocent kids, knew better than to turn her back to him. Ever.

And yet, before my eyes, a smiling Bazett was sharing a cup of…either tea or coffee, I couldn't tell which, with the man who was, for me, the Devil in the flesh. She was talking with him like he was an old friend, and Kirei was actually smiling, as well. Smiling and talking with her so casually.

How could she not see the insidiousness behind that smile? How could she not tell that he had something nefarious planned, that he was eyeing her so callously as he plotted his moment of betrayal?

If only she knew better… But even if I'd tried to warn her, what reason did she have to believe a random kid — one connected quite dearly to the Second Owner, who was guaranteed a slot in the Grail War — over the comrade who had fought beside her against some of the worst the Moonlit World had to offer?

None. Worse, it would only make her more suspicious of me, and it might even clue Kirei in, because there was no way she wouldn't bring an accusation like that right to him the instant I made it. There was no point in even making the effort.

I stood up suddenly and shut my laptop, then set about getting ready to leave. My laptop was stuffed into its shoulder bag, and a minute or two later, I was out the door and headed for Shinto. There was no telling how much time I had before they moved to do the summoning for Lancer, and it was going to take me something like two hours to get all the way there.

There was a 24-7 internet cafe two blocks from the edge of the city. In lieu of a better place closer to the ghost house, it would have to do.

I was in such a rush that I almost forgot that I could even call a taxi service, which would have been unfortunate because it wound up shaving at least an hour off of my travel time. He got me far enough to put the internet cafe in walking distance, and I only barely remembered to offer the clerk a quick, polite greeting as I nearly ran to find a seat.

The only reason this place even existed was probably because Shinto was trying to modernize itself as much as possible.

By the time I got settled in and had my laptop opened back up, it was approaching nine o'clock, and the sun had long since set. Kirei and Bazett had apparently spent the entire time still talking, because I'd gotten everything booted back up just in time to watch them set their mugs down and stand up to leave the living room. Bazett went upstairs to grab something, but Kirei made his way directly down to the basement to wait for her.

For just an instant, as he walked in, he looked around and his eyes seemed to find the camera. My heart stopped, waiting for a smirk, a raised eyebrow, any sign at all that he knew I was watching — but his gaze passed over it and he continued his casual inspection, completely oblivious to my surveillance.

Bazett joined him a few minutes later and offered a carefree grin to her friend and comrade. He stepped back out of the way, and she stepped forward, making a few last second adjustments, and showing her back to him without the slightest worry. When everything was to her liking, she took off the pair of earrings she was wearing and set them in pride of place in the formulcraft array.

Her catalyst. They must have had some sort of connection to Cúchulainn if she was that confident they would do the job.

With everything else ready, she threw out her hands and started chanting the incantation. I wished the cameras had audio just then so that I could have an even better idea of what was going on — although having to listen to her be all chummy with Kirei earlier might have turned my stomach — but they didn't, so I was stuck watching impotently.

The circle started to glow as she kept chanting. She must have been, at least, because the angle of the camera only showed me her back, so I had to assume. Light flooded the room, casting everything in an eerie glow. An unseen wind picked up, tugging at her clothes and hair.

And through it all, Kirei stood behind her, watching stoically, with his hands clasped together at the small of his back.

The light grew brighter and brighter. The wind grew faster. Bazett's stance remained the same as she held out one arm towards the circle, and the light spilled out over her splayed fingers.

I almost missed the moment a stark, red pattern etched itself over the back of her hand.

The light flared, so bright it nearly blinded the camera, and the wind burst, sending everything aflutter. At the center of the storm, a figure in blue with a long, red spear took shape like a shadow cast against the wall.

And at that moment, while everything was in flux and nothing had settled, Kirei struck. With a blow like lightning, one of Black Keys cut through the air — and then through the flesh of Bazett's arm, just above the elbow joint.

I was glad, just then, that I didn't have audio, because her startled scream would have jolted me into action, and I would have rushed to her aid too soon, with Kirei and Lancer still there. I would have died.

Instead, having to sit and watch it silently as she fell to the floor and slowly lost consciousness gave me enough of a grip to weather it and wait. I'd known from the beginning that this was going to happen, and I'd known from the beginning that nothing I did would be able to change it. Of all the things my scattered memories of the events to come had covered, this was one of the ones that was set in stone. Predetermined.

Fated.

It only gave me an even deeper appreciation for just how much of a monster Kirei was as he callously picked up Bazett's severed arm and ripped the Command Spells out of her hand without even blinking. I saw Lancer's mouth move as he started to get an inkling of what had happened, saw his face twist with fury, but before he could do anything, Kirei tossed aside Bazett's arm and lifted his own, glowing red with his own Command Spells and hers.

The leftovers from the previous Wars. One of the cheats he had access to that would make him a challenge, no matter what. Teaching myself and honing my body to compete with that had always been a part of the goal, and apparently it had always been a fool's dream, because I couldn't even beat Fujimura-sensei.

Kirei's first Command Spell hit Lancer like a physical blow, and grudgingly, he submitted, furious the whole time. Another order must have been given, because a moment later, Lancer vanished into spirit form and disappeared from view. I had to assume he'd been ordered back to the church, because where else would Kirei send him?

And once Lancer was gone, Kirei spared Bazett a single, contemptuous glance, and then left her to bleed out on the basement floor.

Waiting was torture. But no matter how much I hated it, Kirei was an opponent I absolutely had to take seriously, because I absolutely couldn't face him, right now. Instead, I had to sit and wait for him to stroll up the stairs, through the living room, and out the front door. I had to wait for the camera hidden by the doorbell to turn on, watch him walk away, and then turn back off.

But the instant I was sure he was gone, I slammed my laptop shut, shoved it unceremoniously into my bag, and tore out of the internet cafe like the Devil himself was on my heels. I ran for all I was worth, sprinting through the streets and out into the outskirts at the edge of the city, and I didn't stop, not even to catch my breath, until the ghost house came into view.

There was no way of knowing how much time I had. Bazett would die without my intervention, that much was obvious, but magi had ways of surviving some incredibly deadly stuff. A magus with an old and powerful enough Magic Crest could hover on death's door for hours before finally succumbing.

The front door almost flew open as my hand landed on the knob. Kirei cared so little that he hadn't even bothered to lock it on his way out. I paid it no mind except for how convenient it was as I raced through the house and towards the basement as quickly as my legs would carry me.

I found her exactly where she'd been left.

Knowing it was going to happen hadn't prepared me for seeing it happen. Seeing it happen through the lens of a camera hadn't prepared me for seeing it with my own eyes. My stomach churned at the sight.

God, there was so much blood.

My bag was all but thrown to the side as I rushed over to her and dropped to my knees next to her. I turned her over as gently as I could, pressing my fingers against her carotid to check for a pulse — it was there, but thready and weak. When I held my palm over her mouth, her breath was hot against my skin. I wasn't too late, then. I could still save her.

I pulled off her tie and looped it just above the stump of her arm, then yanked it tight enough to stem the flow of blood. Then, carefully, I hooked one arm under her knees and one arm under her shoulders, lifted her up, and carried her over to the clearest, cleanest spot I could find. Almost against my will, my eyes found her face, pale and white and splattered with red blood, and I had the stray thought that she really was very pretty, mole beneath her eye and all.

I tried not to think about the legs those fitted pants of hers were hiding and how sexy they were, especially since my fingers were currently curled around one steely thigh. I had much more important things to focus on, like reattaching her goddamn arm.

Her skin was cold and clammy as I set her down. She was going into shock.

There wasn't any time to feel gross about it as I went over to grab her severed arm and rolled the sleeve down to show the wound. A sense of surreality permeated the entire situation as I rolled up the sleeve on the part of her arm still attached to her body and went about lining up the wounds so that the muscles, bone, and tendons all matched.

It was almost like I was hovering over my own body, watching myself reconnect the severed tissues with magecraft I had only ever practiced on cadavers, because real, live people — even magi — weren't exactly keen on having their limbs severed "for learning purposes." The closest I'd ever gotten with living tissue was closing a few deep cuts by stitching the edges back together.

I wasn't sure how long I spent patching her back up. Even with her arm back in its proper place, and that was already a not insignificant challenge to get right, there were still other issues I needed to deal with. For one, she lost a lot of blood, and stimulating the production of more blood cells and blood plasma was always a tricky business, because it introduced the risk of clotting. Without knowing her blood type, transfusions would be tricky.

The safer thing would be keeping her in a medical coma for the time being, so that was what I did.

Once she was at least stabilized enough that she wasn't going to give up the ghost at any moment, I got her out of the basement and up the stairs, and only as I was reaching for my phone with one blood-stained hand did I realize another problem I had to deal with. Namely, both she and I were absolutely soaked, and anyone who saw us would have a very good reason to think I was carting around the body of my murder victim.

That was just what I needed: the police slapping me in cuffs and taking me off for interrogation while they rushed her to the hospital. There was no way Kirei wouldn't find out about the whole thing in a matter of hours.

Fortunately, I was well used to the manipulation of blood and other fluids, because of my dual wind and water alignments. Unfortunately, even if I used magecraft to pull the blood out of our clothes, that didn't do anything about the conspicuously missing sleeve on her left arm. Equally as unfortunate, it didn't leave me with much in the way of options.

There was nothing else for it, so I carried her up another set of stairs — let me tell you, a hundred-thirty pounds of dead weight in the shape of a woman wasn't the easiest thing to lift — and into the closest bathroom I could find. I set her down in the tub, and then went about the painstaking process of pulling the blood out of our clothing.

It was actually easier than it sounded, but that didn't make it less of a pain in the ass.

I left her there only long enough to go to her room and find her another set of clothes, and apparently, she came prepared, because there were another three suits identical to her current one packed away in her luggage. Maybe she just really liked fitted suits. Who was I to judge?

Getting her undressed was a bit of a struggle, and in just about any other circumstance, having an attractive, half-naked woman in my arms would have been a thrill. It was undercut by her cool skin, her white pallor, and the inflamed ring that circled the bicep of her left arm. No matter what I did, that would inevitably scar.

"Sorry about this," I muttered to her as I stripped off her old suit.

It was a bit of a shame it was ruined, because it was actually a really nice suit. Not so nice that I would've been afraid to wear it anywhere for fear of the slightest tear or stain, but nice enough that she could have easily been mistaken for the CEO of a major corporation.

Her underwear felt like a step too far, so I left it on and just got her into her new suit, which was twice as hard as getting her out of the old one had been.

Once she was dressed again, I wrapped her up in a blanket from the bedroom and packed away whatever of her necessities I found. Fortunately, she hadn't really settled in yet, so most of her stuff was still in her suitcases and the few things that weren't were either easily put back in or left be (because I wasn't touching her unwashed underwear unless and until it became an unavoidable hazard).

A quick call summoned another taxi, and that was when I discovered it was just past midnight.

As I waited, I took a seat in the armchair opposite the couch I'd laid Bazett on and just let myself unwind a little.

"What a long day," I told the air.

I was ready for it to be over.

Twenty minutes later, the taxi arrived, and my moment of relaxation ended, so I leveraged myself out of my chair.

The taxi driver gave me a strange look when I walked out the front door carrying a woman in a suit, so when I got her situated in the back seat, I offered him a smile and quietly told him, "Jetlagged pretty badly, the poor dear."

A finger held up to my lips in the universal bid for silence sold the whole thing, and he accepted it without comment.

It might not even have been necessary. The Japanese people were very much of the "mind your own business" mindset, so he probably wouldn't have commented on it anyway.

Once I packed her luggage into the back seat with her, I climbed in and gave my new address to the driver. In the dark, so late at night, the traffic was thin, so an extra fifteen minutes or so were cut off our transit time, and he pulled up outside my mansion shortly after one in the morning. I wasn't sure I hadn't dozed off during the trip.

Somehow, Bazett wound up bundled up in a bed in one of the spare bedrooms. She was still pale when I left her, but she wasn't as cold and her lips weren't blue, and most importantly of all, her heart rate had settled into something much less alarming and much healthier. Her luggage wound up dropped on the floor unceremoniously, because I was just done.

Half-asleep, I stumbled into my new room and collapsed face first onto my bed, too tired to even bother undressing. It felt like seconds before I was drifting off to a well-deserved rest.

The next morning, dark clouds hung overhead, rumbling with distant thunder, and a biblical torrent of rain poured down the entire day.

— o.0.O.O.0.o —​

Spoiler: Notes

So much happened in the latter half of this thing that I actively had to slim it down and reduce a lot of it to basically summary, or else we would have been here for another chapter just talking about those few things.

Also, the logical consequences of installing spy cameras in someone's house ensue. Yukio is kinda bad at thinking about that sort of thing, isn't he? He just gets too caught up in doing what he thinks he has to and rushes on ahead.

Special thanks to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best, and your continued support is invaluable.
If you like what you're reading and want to support me as a writer so I can pay the bills, I have a Patreon. If Patreon is too long term, I have a Ko-fi page, too. If you want to commission something from me, check out either my Deviantart post or my artist registry page for my rates. Links in my sig. Every little bit helps keep me afloat, even if you can only afford a couple dollars.

 

[James D. Fawkes]

Surprise!
Interlude I: Spiraling Repetition

It was a cruel irony, that she would make it so far, only to fail at the very end.

Her goal was in sight. The temple stood above her, looming, so close and yet impossibly far. If she reached her arm out, if she just extended her fingers far enough, she should be able to… But no. A stairway stood in her way, stretching up and into the distance, an insurmountable obstacle — one she could have easily conquered, had she but the energy.

She did not. It was taking everything she had, every scrap of will and every ounce of focus, just to keep herself from fading away. Already, non-vital functions in her body were beginning to shut down, so that the spiritual core that formed her shell upon this earth, that gave her the foothold to stand in this reality, could preserve its existence for just a few seconds longer.

Her body was already halfway numb, although that may in part have been because of the cold rain. Her heart beat a weak, rapid pulse. Each breath was shallow and sluggish, like trying to suck in air through a straw. Even the muscles in her arms and legs, normally orders of magnitude stronger than a human's, had trouble supporting her weight.

She was going to fade away, before accomplishing anything, before she even had a chance to try and win the prize promised at the end of this war. She was going to be defeated, not by an enemy Servant or by the strategic ploys of an enemy Master, but by a simple lack of the magical energy necessary to maintain her body. All without having even had the chance to fight.

It seemed, in spite of everything, her wretched Master had had the last revenge, after all.

It wasn't funny, but she wanted to laugh, and she almost startled herself as she realized that she already was.

A cruel, cruel irony, indeed.

"In the end, this is how I die again, is it?" she wheezed.

She wasn't sure if the streaks of water running from her eyes and down the sides of her face were tears or just the rain.

"Bandied about for others' use, exploited, then cast aside and reviled as a traitor…"

She lifted her hands towards the bleak sky, as though to ask the uncaring gods to come to her aid.

But they would not have, even if they still existed in this era. Of course not. It was their fault she had been besotted with that wretch in the first place, after all. She had never had their favor.

"Was it too much to ask… just once, for me to…"

To have her own wish granted, instead of being a tool for others' wishes?

"Ara…"

She blinked, turned weakly to try and focus her bleary gaze upon the figure who stood on the path next to her. He — and it was a man, she realized belatedly — stepped towards her and crouched down beside her.

"Well, there you are. I was beginning to wonder if that fool had managed not to screw himself over."

Through the haze of exhaustion, she caught the impression of a smile, and then, she was being lifted up and into his arms. She caught sight of the temple, again, as he turned away from it — away from the very place she'd been trying so hard to reach.

"No…" she mumbled, but he seemed not to hear.

"Let's get you out of this rain, shall we? And hope that Lancer's not still chasing you…"

Then, he carried her off and back into town. The temple faded away into the distance, and at last, disappeared behind the trees as he turned and started down a different path.

She slipped in and out of awareness during the journey. She didn't know the city well enough to say where he was taking her, and she was barely cognizant enough to see and recognize shapes amongst the rainy gloom as it was, but at some point, he stopped, mumbled something, and then something hot and wet was trickling past her lips and down her throat. She wasn't sure she didn't imagine it to begin with.

She came to again some time later — she wasn't sure exactly how long — to find herself sat in a plush armchair, positioned a little awkwardly. She rearranged herself almost reflexively, surprised a moment later to realize that she'd regained some strength, and belatedly noticed the aftertaste of something salty and metallic upon her tongue.

Licking her lips, she tasted it again at the corner of her mouth.

Blood…?

"Feeling better?"

Her head jerked up, and there, sitting across from her in another armchair was a boy, maybe seventeen, with brown hair and bright blue eyes. Not entirely unattractive, with a slight, careless smile at the corners of his lips. Almost immediately, she noted the traces of red on one finger as he sipped at a cup of what smelled like tea.

"Yes," she muttered, and was not quite shocked that it was actually true.

She did feel better. More solid, more real. Less like she was going to run out of energy in moments and fade away.

It was still a pittance, compared to her normally vast reserves, but she had enough, now, to keep herself stable.

He'd given her magical energy, it was easy to realize. Through his blood. A terribly inefficient method, compared to some of the other ways, but undoubtedly the quickest and easiest, and also the least invasive.

"You saved me."

It came out almost like an accusation. No, it was. Because even though she'd been out of it, barely hanging on, she remembered what he'd said when he'd found her. That he'd been expecting to find her. That he'd hoped Lancer wasn't still chasing her down.

This was not some random bystander who had found her and rescued her, this was someone who had been looking for her and saved her for a purpose.

"I suppose I did."

"Why?"

Why her? What did he want her for, that he'd come to find her?

He smiled wryly. "Well, for a lot of reasons, I suppose. Part of it was that I found your story just too sad."

The answer threw her for a loop.

"What?"

"Who wouldn't?" he asked. "The fair and beautiful Princess of Colchis, forced by the uncaring gods to love a man she'd never met, then spirited about amongst the company of strangers, forced to commit horrible deeds, used, exploited, and finally, cast away like a used up tissue. It's a tragic story, really."

"You must be reading the wrong legends," she said bitterly. "I'm the villain of that story. The woman who killed her own brother, chopped up his body, deceived King Pelias, and jealously slaughtered the king of Corinth and his entire family. A witch."

The smile left his face, twisting into a frown, and he set aside his tea to lean forward and look straight at her.

"Take off your hood."

Medea blinked.

"What?"

"I'm going to prove a point," he said bluntly. "Take off your hood."

She hesitated, but after a moment, lifted her hands and pushed back the cowl of her cloak until it rested about her shoulders. She felt strangely exposed without it on.

The boy stood from his chair and crossed the distance, stepping close to her, and unconsciously, as he brought his hand towards her, she tried to lean back and away, but she was weak and the only place for her to go was deeper into her chair. He took hold of her chin, and she flinched.

But his touch, though firm, was surprisingly gentle. He guided her head from side to side, turning her as though to inspect every part of her face, until he turned her back to the front. His gaze was intense and unblinking, and as his lips pursed and his brow furrowed, she realized suddenly what he was going to do and began to gather the meagre magical energy at her disposal.

If he tried to force himself on her, then even if it meant disappearing, she would —

"This is not the face of a witch."

— flush and stare, uncomprehending.

"What?"

"This is the face of a woman," he went on, "beautiful, but tired. Quietly defiant, but defeated and downtrodden. This is the face of a woman who has been told what and who she is so many times and so vehemently that she believes it herself, now. The world has called her so many vile names and blamed her for so many evil deeds that she grew too tired of trying to fight it and decided that there was no point in being anything but what they said she was. Even if, underneath it all, she hates it with everything she is."

Medea tried to look away, a complicated mess of feelings swirling in her gut. Anger, at the boy in front of her for stepping so carelessly into her heart. Indignation, that he would claim to know her thoughts and her feelings. A strange melancholy, because she was absolutely certain that she wasn't the person he was talking about. And threading through it all was a kind of longing, that she wished she could believe she was anything like that.

She wasn't. She hated the term, but she was a witch, and she'd long since decided that that was all she'd ever be.

This naïve boy wasn't going to change that.

But he wouldn't let her turn away, and his grip shifted as he set his fingers under her chin and lifted her face.

"Look at me." Almost against her will, her eyes turned towards his. "The world doesn't get to decide who you are. Only you can do that. You don't have to be anyone or do anything you don't want to. All you have to do is choose to be true to yourself."

"Your naïveté will get you killed," she said coldly. She hoped he didn't notice the faint tremor in her voice.

He smiled and stepped away to sit back in his chair.

"Well, something will probably get me killed before this Holy Grail War is over, but I don't think it'll be showing you kindness."

She laughed, suddenly, high and cruel. He'd almost had her fooled.

But in the end, he was just like everyone else. Another person trying to use her.

"Is that what you call this?" She gestured with one hand down at her own body. "You take me away from the place where I would be strongest, profess to believe in my own goodness, despite my legend, but only supply me a pittance of magical energy? Just enough so that I almost have to accept you as my Master? This is your kindness?"

He frowned, leaning back in his chair.

"That has nothing to do with your identity. The reason I gave you so little magical energy is because you are a Servant with a wish for the Holy Grail. I can list on one hand the number of Heroic Spirits I would trust enough to supply them with more substantial amounts of mana, were they in the same situation, and even King Arthur doesn't make it."

His statement was as shocking as it was ludicrous. It was true that there were Servants a Master absolutely should not trust — many would likely agree that Medea herself belonged on that list — and one might argue that any Caster who was a better magus than its Master was among them. Any Servant whose legend included betrayal or treachery, doubly so.

But King Arthur? The beacon of justice, righteousness, and steadfastness during the Dark Ages of Britain's bleakest hours? Untrustworthy?

"What?"

He didn't answer. Instead, he let out a sigh and folded his hands in front of his face.

"Alright," he said. "We were going to run into this eventually, so I suppose now's as good a time as any to talk about it. Medea of Colchis, Servant of the Caster class for the Fifth Holy Grail War: from here, there are two options available to you, each with their own benefits and disadvantages."

He held out one hand.

"Firstly, you and I forge a contract here and become partners in this War. As part of such a pact, you must forsake the Holy Grail, and in exchange, I will present to you the opportunity to do as I said you can: to make yourself more than your legend. To cast off the shackles that bind you to the role of villain and become a hero. To put it simply, self-actualization."

He was a fool if he believed she'd actually take that offer. Such a paltry reward it was, she thought. Good feelings and happy thoughts. The kind of things a naïve, unabashed idealist might want. It was nothing tangible, nothing that she could really enjoy for more than a few minutes. It was nothing she could touch or hold onto, nothing solid or corporeal or truly valuable. A fool's reward.

When she'd been younger, maybe… But that ship had sailed long ago, with Jason at its helm. The woman she'd become had no want or need for something so useless.

"And if I refuse?" she asked.

"Then option two: I will provide you with enough magical energy to sustain yourself for another few hours and personally escort you to the temple, as you'd planned."

She laughed. A fool, indeed. "There's no comparison! Only one of those will afford me the path to achieving my wish; surely you must understand —"

"But if you take option two," he cut in, "you will certainly fail and die before the War ends."

Her voice caught in her throat.

"What?"

She must have heard him wrong. There was no way that he'd actually said…

"If you go to the temple, you'll be killed," he repeated. "One way or another."

"…How?"

How could he possibly know that, that he would say it with such certainty? How could he be so sure of it, that there didn't seem to be any trace of deception in his words, in his tone, in his body language?

He smiled a mischievous little smile.

Of course, she thought, suddenly angry. There was the trap. He wouldn't tell her. The only way to find out would be to take the first option, to ally with him, or else take her chances that he was wrong.

Could she afford to? He looked unassuming and ordinary, but if he had some sort of clairvoyance ability, then she was already trapped. And he'd done it in such a way… Only enough energy to sustain herself. If she tried to hypnotize him, get his secrets out of him that way, she'd drain herself dry in the efforts, and then it would be a moot point.

Damn him…!

He frowned, tilting his head to the side, and then sighed again.

"Okay, I guess I can give you this much. A freebie, no strings attached."

He crossed his legs, reached for his cup, then took another sip of his tea.

"Herakles, Gilgamesh, and one of the original founders of the Fuyuki Grail will take part in this War," he said. "Any scenario where you go to the temple will inevitably pit you against one of those three. In that case, Herakles is the only encounter you would have any real chance of surviving."

Her mouth flapped open.

"Wh-what?" she asked weakly.

To hear that the greatest hero of Greece would be the only of those three opponents she might survive…

What kind of enemy made Herakles the least likely to kill her?

"And if by some miracle you make it to the end, braving the overwhelming, impossible odds to stand before the Grail and make your wish…" He closed his eyes a moment, let out a long breath, and when he opened them again, he pinned her with a cold, dead stare, blue eyes like chips of ice. "Then no matter how much it hurts me, in order to save the world, I'd kill you myself."

She blanched.

"Y-you… After you came and saved me, you'd still —"

"Yes. No matter how much I like you, Medea, no matter how much I sympathize with you… Any Servant who would covet the Grail at the expense of all else is my enemy. Even if that Servant is King Arthur. Even if that Servant is you."

He set his cup down. By now, all traces of steam had gone.

"I'm sure you've realized it by now, but there are secrets I have about this War and its circumstances. Competitors. The Servants and Masters at play. The stakes. Indeed, the nature of the Grail itself, even. But I'm sure you've also realized that I won't tell you these things if you're going to be my enemy. So, you must choose."

He held out one hand. "Forsake the Grail, become my ally, and help me save the world. All the relevant information will become yours, as well. To the best I am able, I can promise you will see the end of this War, or at least not die as miserably as you otherwise would."

He held out the other hand. "Or, go to the temple, become my enemy, and face all of these challenges alone. Hope that you will overcome all that is thrown at you, and I will be your last opponent."

"That's no choice at all!" she said. "Either way, you're telling me that I won't get my wish!"

He smiled sadly. "I suppose it does boil down to that, doesn't it? With one, at least, you will understand why."

As if that was any comfort. Forsake her wish, and understand why it was she had to give it up, or try and chase it, only to face an almost certainty that she would never reach it. Both options had the same, inevitable outcome, no matter what.

…No. No, that wasn't quite true, was it? She'd been thinking of this too much in his terms, that she would absolutely follow the paths he provided. There was nothing to say so, no binding oath that would demand she keep to her word, either way. There was nothing to ensure her sincerity, were she to agree.

"Forsake the Grail," he said. Except she didn't really have to, did she? There was nothing stopping her — nothing at all — from following him to the end and snatching the prize at the last second. There was no reason at all she couldn't just pretend to go along with him, say she'd given up on it, and then take the Grail when everyone else was defeated and she and him were the last ones standing.

Even if he used a Command Spell, she had Rule Breaker, so as a very last resort —

"You don't have to make up your mind right this moment," he said suddenly, cutting off her train of thought.

She blinked. "What?"

"You don't have to make a choice about what you're going to do right this very moment," he went on. "After all, you're not the only Servant I planned on recruiting."

What?

"What?" she echoed.

That was absurd. Even a competent Master could only handle sustaining a single Servant at a time, and yet he was talking about supporting more? No, it was utterly ridiculous. The amount of magical energy required would be at least five times that of a magus of this era, and even then, it would still be a debilitating strain.

But he didn't seem worried. Instead, he reached down beside his chair and produced a vacuum sealed bag, inside of which was a long, sharp shard of wood that looked like it had come from the spoke of a chariot wheel.

"To the best of my knowledge, so far, Caster, Lancer, and Berserker have already been summoned. There's almost two weeks, yet, before Archer and Saber are called, and maybe a week at the very best before Rider. Assassin… I'm not actually sure if or when that particular Servant will show up."

He wagged the piece of wood a little. "That means, until I contract with you, I still have a free slot I can use to co-opt one of the others. Considering who I hope to get with this, probably Rider."

"You intend…to summon another Servant and contract two at once?" she asked slowly.

He was mad, she decided. No, it couldn't be clairvoyance, or if it was, it had obviously driven him insane, like the oracles of old. Not only did he plan on trying to support two Servants at a time, he was also going to give her the perfect means to acquire another Servant to command at the end, when she would abandon him for the Grail.

Knowing her legend, he was going to trust her that far? A fool. A mad, naive fool.

"I said I wanted you to help me save the world," he replied, grinning. "I never said I wanted you to be the one doing all the fighting. Come now, Medea, most of the other Servants will have either high level Magic Resistance or some other method of resisting your spells. Why would I send you against enemies you can't even hurt?"

— o.0.O.O.0.o —​

Spoiler: Notes

This story fell by the wayside so much in favor of Hereafter. Part of that is, I think, the fact that the next three chapters wound up so dialogue heavy that I needed to interrupt chapter 10 to get Yukio and Medea and [spoilers] to stop talking about plans for the HGW just so that we could move on.

Finally, though, we get to Medea's debut. I hope I captured her well enough at least this chapter, because I'm less certain about the next few. But that's owing to the fact that the next few were just so much exposition for Medea's sake that it was a hassle to get through, so I'm not sure she reacted quite as realistically as she should have.

Meant to post this yesterday, but things conspired and I forgot.

Special thanks to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best, and your continued support is invaluable.
If you like what you're reading and want to support me as a writer so I can pay the bills, I have a Patreon. If Patreon is too long term, I have a Ko-fi page, too. If you want to commission something from me, check out either my Deviantart post or my artist registry page for my rates. Links in my sig. Every little bit helps keep me afloat, even if you can only afford a couple dollars.