Kapitel 74: Chapter 71: The Aftermath

She might be slow at times, but her gut feeling helped her most of the time. She felt that if she didn't move forward now, she might lose something important because of her stupid indecisiveness. This sent tingles down her spine, as losing things was not her strong suit. The loss of her sister was enough to last her a lifetime. As she approached the crazed-looking boy with an inviting gesture with her arms spread out he abruptly launched himself on her and pulled her towards him as he held her by the shoulders.

As he pulled her in with a small smile just on his lips she jerked her shoulders. He felt the warm liquid staining his fingertips and saw the few visible red droplets visible on his wrist due to her shoulder`s moment his arms stiffened and he slowly withdrew them and rapidly returned to the former state. When he tried to grasp Rin he didn't notice the 2-inch long blade growing on his wrist as he had nearly stopped perceiving pain in his one-minded pursuit. So when he had griped her the blade had sliced through her pyjamas and had drawn blood from her scapular region.

As shirou was pulling back from her rin`s body suddenly flashed with green lines as the mana-filled soul intersected with her body and released the energy as she pushed forward. She warped her hands around the boy`s neck and pulled him towards her into a hug even when she felt multiple scarps and small cuts from the blades protruding out of him. As she rested her head on his shoulders and forced his head onto hers shirou slowly closed his arms around her while avoiding making any large blade touch her by subconsciously using a structural grasp on his body with his already open circuits.

They remained silent throughout the incident, which made it weird for any witness. People might guess they have some form of minor mind synchronisation due to the ease with which they understand each other through wordless communication. Under the moonlit night under the blue light, the gentle hug transformed into a possessive one and tears slid down his eyes.

Rin didn't rebuke him even when she felt his crushing hold on her body but rather she moved into a comfortable position in his hold and gently brushed his back and comforted him with words and phrases like "Don't worry I am here!", " we will be fine" etc.

With time it finally sank into his mind that Rin was safe and sound in the present, the future was just a possibility, not an inevitability so she would be safe in future too as he would make sure of it.

It had still not sunk into him how casual he was becoming to bloodshed once someone came at hit the will for it. When getting mutilated and tortured to death became the staple to him he was slowly losing sight of what was common sense for the masses. perceiving his now stable breathing rate Rin threw away his overcoat and was looking at his condition she was already pissed off and was about to blow over her top.

Along with her tantrum and passive-aggressive questions, shirou stayed silent and when she calmed down and looked at him he just said

"Dad is dead."

With a calm and measured voice, tonight he had shed enough tears for a lifetime and felt that he was out of them for a long time. Rin was stumped by the stable edge and acceptance present in his voice, it was not the type of projected stoicism that was used to mask sadness but rather Shirou Emiya had completely accepted the death of his father and strangely moved on within a night.

Ignoring this due to her nature as a magus, she locked her house and changed her clothes from the bloodstained ones she was wearing. The boy asked her about her wounds, and she replied that healing magecraft alone would be enough, and if she used one of her average gems, then they would be gone in an instant.

Then she explained to him how healing magecraft works better on the body. Healing by magecraft is proportional to the magic potential in the body of a magus so if a talented magus like Rin needs 1 unit to be healed, shirou would need 20 units due to his lack of quality and quantity of circuits.

Then she explained how their wounds are different, for her they are normal cuts but for him, the lingering origin concept in his wounds would make magical recovery significantly harder.

Plus he needed the metal his body produced like this for his mystic code forging. Rin dragged him towards the emiya residence as the breaking of dawn`s light and shadows contrast made the glow of magic circuits of their legs unrecognisable.

Shirou was mussing about last night`s talks the whole way home and as soon as they reached the compound the girl pulled him into the new shed beside the forge and removed his clothes by shredding them into torn rags. Using reinforcement on a pair of tweezers that she brought she removed the swords from his body. Along with a scalpel made of crystal, she did some amateur stitches on his wounds and supplemented with healing magecraft shirou became presentable as long as he wore full-sleeved clothes.

"So what should we do next Tohsaka?" asked shirou whose mind was in a weirdly single-tracked state. Contemplating for a while she answered

"Do you have your crest completely transplanted or else contact your tunner to do it as soon as possible"

She was aware of crest damage that happened when it was left on a corpse for long and she was worried for shirou as he had to take the risks she took when she took all her family crest at once. What she was forgetting was that her crest stored generations of excellent research as well as magecraft passed on by a magician but the emiya crest was not even worth being called a 1`st generation crest in its current state rather it was like a newly made crest. It was like a sub-crest made using the framework of the emiya family crest rather than a small part of it.

So they used the contact Melvin had given the emiya family, after setting up and using the satellite phone to call the given number no one answered. After 20 minutes of waiting the call was answered by Melvin himself who asked

"Mr kiritsugu are you there?" in a playful tone

"No this is shirou speaking." replied the boy and as soon as he heard the kid`s voice Melvin`s entire demeanour changed and he asked

"When did he pass?"

And like a lightning bolt, it hit shirou that his father knew about his imminent demise and had likely told Melvin about that and not him. The next part of the conversation was filled with snarky remarks from shirou that he himself didn't know he could make as he always kept those in his mind and never spoke them. Still, Melvin explained that he and kiritsugu had signed a geas and according to that he had kept the remaining emiya crest preserved and would only give them to the now family head of the emiya family when his body was ready to accept them. He also revealed that he was pulling some strings under the same request to have shirou join Clock Tower next year.

He stubbly bragged about how he was pestering his best friend a lord at Clocktower to get a recommendation for him. He mentioned how they are using the part-time enforcer work of Natalia and kiritsugu as a reason to bring back the emiya family into the official magus lineage list instead of the unverified sealing designation list.

What he didn't tell the boy was that he was also removing traces of kiritsugu being the one who killed the former lord El Melloi and consequently what he didn't know was that the same Kiritsugu Emiya was the master of the servant that traumatised lord El Melloi the 2nd. Finally, he gave the green light to plan to bury kiritsugu or whatever postmortem ritual was to be performed. And then he cut the line along with a see you soon and coughing and choking noises.

Finally collecting himself the little redhead went to the landline installed in the house and dialed a number slowly. And placed the receiver on his ears as the line connected and rang.

(A/N: this is some info-dumping chapter and we will move on to the clock tower arc after some chapters. What do you guys think about me making up some incidents and cases for shirou to solve as an enforcer, exploring the stereotypical job they do and some fun things? then we can move up to serious things. I am also thinking of stretching the storyline of case files to a few years rather than the 1 year time, we would meet Gray earlier here as shirou would talk to Waver about the early coming war and then we can have some motivation given by her.

Now about me, the days are busy af like college is so fucking jampacked here. Thank god no shity problem like bullying and etc is happening here now. I just hope it stays like this and I don't get pulled into shit.

Anyways thank you, guys