"Okay," Shirou said as he materialized on the outside of Fuyuki's newest sinkhole. "Let's check: I'm alive, Sakura... let's call that a maybe, Zouken is mostly dead, and Rin is upset at me."
He nodded to himself. "All in a good day's work for a Hero of Justice."
"Hey, Faker!" a voice came from the bottom of the mansion.
"What?" Shirou yelled back.
"I can't hear you! I'm speaking through the original megaphone!" Gilgamesh yelled.
"Then how did you know how to answer me?" Shirou commented to himself.
"Ex Clairvoyance and Shu Naqba Imuru!" Gilgamesh said. "Now stop interrupting me, it's rude!"
If you know what I am saying, then shouldn't you be able to converse with me? Shirou Lily wondered.
"There are just a few Crest Worms left now. I have them all lined up and dying, so go ahead and lift the barrier," Gilgamesh ordered. "After this, the only ones that will remain are the one in the Matou Master and a few pockets of worms. Take care of the ones in her and I'll finish off the rest."
Shirou nodded and turned to leave.
"Oh, and your Master's payment for basically doing nothing is another Command Seal to replace the one she has already used. She doesn't want to start at a disadvantage, right? We're basically in a new war now, anyway."
Shirou nodded. Rin would ask for payment. More out of the principle of the thing than feeling like she had to be bought off, but she would ask for payment nonetheless.
"And if she asks for more, tell her that I've already given her a free bit of information. That should be the extra she wants."
Shirou nodded and shifted his weight to take a step—
"And when she gets too greedy after that, I can always pay with a Noble Phantasm. The experience in setting up new Bounded Fields around her home would be good for her education."
Shirou acknowledged the threat to demolish the Tohsaka family Bounded Fields that protected their home if Rin pushed her luck.
Shirou lifted one foot up—
"Oh, and I would like a tub of ice-cream when this is done, thanks for offering."
"Anything else you want, your Majesty?" Shirou said as he waited for the next interruption.
"I already told you what I want, weren't you listening? Although, maybe a sugar cone would be nice…" Gilgamesh mused through his megaphone. "And it better be the good kind of ice-cream, the second from the left in the store. Yes, the Jeni's one."
"You're seriously using your clairvoyance for that?" Shirou muttered under his breath.
"Of course," child Gilgamesh answered the rhetorical question. "Ice-cream is important."
Shirou sighed but nodded, stepping aside for the rush of firefighters and police officers flowing onto the scene through the now open gate.
* * *
Rin waited next to her petrified sister, trying to look like it was natural for her to be here. Which meant buttoning up her jacket, pulling it down to cover most of her pajamas, retrieving her slipper, and keeping an unobtrusive eye on the Servant who had killed her sister.
Why, Rin was not too upset about it.
Why would she be upset about her Servant's sister killing her?
"Hey Rin," Archer greeted her, strolling out of the mansion with a bit of sweat dampening his hair. He wasn't covered in dust or rocks, though. The bastard came out of this looking way better than he should have.
Rin hastily shunted her feelings aside. She was upset, and no amount of good-looking hunk would distract her from that!
"'Hey, Rin,'" Rin placed her hands on her hips, her whole posture screaming irritation, apart from the pleasant smile on her face. "Is that all you have to say after going off on your own, breaking a treaty between the Matou and the Tohsaka that neither would ever attack the home of the other during a Grail War, and waking your Master up?"
And what were you thinking when you got Sakura involved!
"Um," Shirou Lily rubbed the back of his head. "Gilgamesh came by to see you this morning, and wanted to tell you, but we felt that you might not like being woken up."
"Oh, thank you for your consideration," Rin thanked her Servant with a smile. "Why, I do enjoy being rudely woken up instead only to discover that my Servant has declared open season on my home."
Shirou winced at her acerbic words.
"Gilgamesh is responsible," Shirou threw his fellow Servant under the bus of Rin's wrath. "He also said that he would give you payment for doing—I mean, for having loaned your Servant."
"Equivalent exchange, huh?" Rin crossed her arms across her chest. "What could be worth all of this mess?"
"A new Command Seal," Shirou said.
Rin paused.
"He can't give that," she pointed out. "He would need to be the Overseer to offer a Command Seal as recompense for intruding on the Grail War, and he could only give it for something that would threaten the integrity of the war or the secrecy of magecraft."
"Zouken was threatening the war," Shirou informed his Master, "and Gilgamesh took the position of Overseer before handing Kotomine over. He just didn't have the opportunity to tell you last night."
"I see," Rin distractedly said as her mind started making connections. Yet Archer was somewhat unnerved as, for some reason, he could just see money signs appearing in her eyes. He might have just figured out why Gilgamesh was so annoyed when they had parted ways. "But that's only for the loan of my Servant. The cost of breaking our long-standing agreement with the Matou and risking my family home and workshop is far greater than that."
"Well, there is also the fact that this is essentially a new Grail War so that indicates that similar changes has happened to the other Servants." Shirou theorized. "The only way it could be a new Grail War would be if all of us were made younger besides only me, Lancer, and Gilgamesh. So maybe all of the other Servants got changed too."
Rin was shaking her head. "The value of the information is insignificant to the safety that our treaty provided. That won't be nearly enough. But he is Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, right? Owner of a massive treasury known as the Gate of Babylon? Surely he has something of value that he can offer in reparation."
Archer winced. "Well, he did say that—you know, I'm going to quote him on this. These aren't my words so don't take it out on me."
"Oh?" Rin asked, the question slithering dangerously in the air like she, and not the Servant hovering protectively over Sakura, was the deity associated with snakes.
"Um," Shirou Lily swallowed before spitting out. "'I can always pay with a Noble Phantasm. The experience in setting up new Bounded Fields around her home would be good for her education.'"
Rin froze.
Considered it.
Started sweating.
"On second thought," Rin hid her nervousness well but her eyes were looking a little wild at the thought of rebuilding all of her family's Bounded Fields in the middle of a Grail War. "I think that the value of my real estate might just be enough to cover the price. And I can always renegotiate a new treaty between the Tohsaka and the Matou."
Shirou Lily's relief was palpable as the greed of his Master receded to an unhappy rest.
Until Rin hissed. "But that will mean dealing with Shinji."
She shuddered in disgust.
"Petrified," Lancer said with a faint undercurrent of satisfaction in her voice before she shifted and looked away, looking like nothing more than a child trying not to be caught lying and just being cute about it. "Accident."
Rin did not look impressed.
"Well, all's well that ends well." Shirou declared as he tried to move everything along before tensions sprung up again. "Zouken is mostly dead and soon will have gone onto his long-awaited afterlife. Sakura is—"
"Petrified!" Rin hissed as she pointed at the statue she was standing next to. "Which was something that she hadn't been last night!"
"Yes, well," Shirou acknowledged, shifting from side to side nervously. It was like a cute puppy trying to explain away the mess it had made. "She'll get better, right?"
The last was said to Medusa who nodded under her black cloak.
"Not permanent," the goddess informed.
"See, Sakura will be back to normal in no time at all," Shirou promised to his angry Master.
Rin ground her teeth without making any sign on the outside. It was a skill she had learned from having Kotomine as her guardian for the past decade. She wanted to be angry!
"And what about the Crest Worms?" Rin reminded them, her voice saccharine sweet in a way that made his teeth rot. "You know the ones that you said were inside of her and would kill her?"
"Oh, right," Shirou took on a trapped expression. "Give me a moment…"
"A moment!" Rin almost shrieked, only to bring her volume back down as she realized that she was in public and that they were still surrounded by emergency services. "And how will Sakura be 'in a moment'?"
"I'm looking, I'm looking," Shirou assured her as his eyes were far off. "I'm trying to see what I have that would help. Rule Breaker would remove the worms from Zouken but they would still be inside Sakura. Um, that sword wouldn't work, Avalon? Might work… but she would need a connection to that Saber and I don't know if she was summoned. I think she was but this is an alternative timeline…"
"You are hopeless!" Rin threw up her hands in exasperation. "This is why I told you to back off! We could always have done this later, after preparing—"
"Oooh," Shirou interrupted her, his face brightening up. "That might work."
"What?" Rin snapped as both her and Medusa's eyes pinned Shirou.
"I think I have something that might work," Shirou said with excitement. "It is from the experience of an exceptional hero, a true hero of justice. I can copy her skill and—No, the Crest Worms are part conceptual aren't they? Not purely physical."
Rin and Lancer both slumped slightly.
"Wait, I'm a Servant," Shirou as the spark of excitement leapt back to life.
"No kidding, Archer," Rin snarked. "Any other obvious points you wish to make? Like how Sakura is going to die because of you?"
"No, she won't die," Shirou said before wavering. "Well, she may still die. It is a risky procedure after all."
"But if we are going to remove Crest Worms from Sakura, then we need a Spiritual Surgeon, and the only one I know of happens to be puking his guts out." Rin countered. Medusa's face soured, and she took a few steps away from the twin-tailed tsundere.
"Not literally," the magus grumbled, looking away. "I haven't figured out to make him literally puke his guts out. That's the next set of experiments. I'm hoping that disgorging internal organs will actually get through his masochism so that he actually suffers instead of becoming happy...
"But enough about the mess that Archer will be cleaning up when we get back," Rin dismissed before laying her hands on her hips again and staring angrily at Shirou. "Now tell me about your 'risky' plan to save Sakura."
"Well, it is simple," Shirou said as he held a hand up. "I'll just remove the Crest Worms from her myself."
A beat.
"That's it?" Rin asked skeptically. "Sakura has Crest Worms inside of her and you are just going to remove them yourself?"
Shirou nodded, a light of hope still shining in his eyes. "I am a Servant. A being not wholly confined to the material plane. In a contest between me and any Crest Worm, I will win. And with these—" Shirou manifested a sharp British surgical knife in his hand. "and her teachings on medical techniques, I can even remove the physical traces of the Crest Worms without killing Sakura. And as I remove the physical traces, I can drag out the non-physical parts as well."
Rin wavered. Shirou was rather confident about it.
"Trust me," Shirou said with an ever-growing spark of enthusiasm in his eyes. "This will work."
* * *
It was another beautiful winter morning, Taiga reflected as she skipped down the street to her favorite udon store. It was Sunday so Shirou would be sleeping in from staying up late all night working on some project or another, which meant that having breakfast there would mean waiting a long, long, long time.
And she wanted breakfast!
And then she had heard the sirens and curiosity got the best of her and she was now walking down the street, rudely eating a few rice balls out in public as she wondered what disaster had happened in the rich foreigner's part of the town.
As she turned the corner to head down the hill to where the sirens were coming from, she saw an unexpected sight.
Shirou was out running with a stone statue of Sakura on his shoulder while a small child in a ratty black cloak held up her feet behind him as Rin Tohsaka ran beside them.
"Good morning, Taiga," Shirou Lily greeted her.
"Good morning," Taiga greeted back automatically as she rubbed her eyes.
She must be asleep.
She opened her eyes and looked back up the street.
Yup, Shirou was still carrying a life-like stone statue of Sakura, but now he was carrying it into Rin Tohsaka's mansion as she opened the gate.
Taiga pinched herself on the wrist and finding it to only hurt a bit, nodded.
And immediately turned around to march to Shirou's place, ignoring that her crushed rice ball was falling off of her wrist where she had pinched it instead of her skin.
She must be dreaming as she could have sworn that she had seen Shirou running with a stone statue of Sakura while a little girl with hair that must have come from the Matou family, carried the back half while Rin Tohsaka, the school's honor student, ran alongside them.
This is obviously just a dream which means that it will soon be time to wake up and go eat breakfast at Shirou's.
Oh wait, it is Sunday. Shirou won't be making breakfast anytime soon.
Oh, wait. This is a dream! Her dream. Which means that Shirou will not only be awake but also putting the finishing touches on a five-star buffet breakfast! With all of her favorites!
Taiga wiped some drool from her mouth and doubled her speed towards Shirou's dining room.
Home. She meant Shirou's home. She wasn't thinking only about the food.
Yeah, she was worried about him! That maybe the murderer with the bladed weapon who had been on the news had stabbed him!
Or worse, hurt his arm again and couldn't cook!
* * *