Rin stood within a dense crowd. Spectators, gawkers, self-satisfied government officials, there was certainly no shortage of scum present today. After all, today was the day the 'terrorist', Emiya Shirou, would die. Rin continued to watch in silence with hands clenched as the crowd burst into screams and jeers when Shirou was shuffled out by his four guards, bound hand and foot, toward that eerily familiar gallows. If anything was said by either prisoner or executioner as Shirou hobbled his way up the steps, Rin didn't hear it. She was too busy listening to the dull roaring tone that had taken up residence in the back of her head, and the ringing in her ears certainly didn't help.

Rin honestly didn't need to look to know that Shirou's eyes were scanning the crowd as the noose was prepared around his neck. She still couldn't look away. A light breeze gently tousled the condemned man's white hair as Rin counted down the seconds until that moment she dreaded. A moment she knew all too well. One would think that with the end of the contract the dreams would have stopped, but one would be wrong. There was one dream that her mind showed her over and over again and she could never figure out why.

"You are a good person Rin."

An annoying voice, half remembered, half imagined, provided helpfully. However Rin knew that it wasn't the truth. If she were a good person it never would have gotten to this point. So Rin the magus stood staring at that smile, that horrible, beautiful smile. The moment she dreaded arrived and it was like she was seeing it from both positions. Shirou made eye contact with Rin as the executioner reached for the lever and a buzzing chill went down her spine. His gaze locked on hers and she could see through his eyes in her mind his last living sight. Shirou Emiya died and Rin Tohsaka did nothing.

"Like hell!"

Rin growled out through clenched teeth. Her arm quickly rose as arcane power surged from her fingertip, at the same time the bottom went out of the gallows. A Gandr struck the point of tension as the rope tried to pull taut, snapping instead. Confusion overtook Shirou's expression as, instead of dying, he fell.

With a noise somewhere between a sneeze and a drawn out thunderclap, a multicolored stream of light instantly flowed past Rin's right at a leisurely pace. It poured down from above before continuing its straight path along the ground at about chest height. The light snaked its way straight through the crowd before flowing between the legs of the gallows underneath Rin's erstwhile love interest. It continued on its way only a couple yards, just long enough for Shirou to fall into the light with a confused noise. Zipping up from both ends, its exit made a sound somewhere between a blender and a saxophone while leaving its only trace in the form of a vaguely minty but not unsatisfying green apple scent.

Rin, still posing dramatically with her hand pointed straight ahead, blinked a couple times before a voice spoke up from behind on her left.

"Well, that was unexpected."

Turning about to face the voice Rin confirmed that it was in fact the Wizard Marshall speaking to her. Rin's composure snapped back into place as she glared at the eccentric vampire standing before her.

"Zelretch, you insufferable old man, tell me what you did with my Shirou!"

Rin managed to get out through clenched teeth, completely ignoring that she had never garnered such affections from the missing 'idiot' as her words implied. Breaking out into a grin the wielder of the second true magic began to respond:

"Why Rin, my dear prospective pupil, that is going to be impossible-"

Rin's mind raced, briefly entertaining the thought that this all might be some elaborate scheme to pressure her into accepting his offer of apprenticeship, before Zelretch continued where he left off.

"-because this was not done by me. Why, it's just not my style! I came here to entertain myself with the heartwarming reunion of two interesting persons. To interrupt before the good part, this was indeed an act most heinous."

Zelretch finished his rambling with a fist clenched before his breast as Rin stared at his whimsy with dead eyes. Seizing the moment before the Wizard Marshal could soliloquize further Rin interjected:

"If it wasn't you then who? And more importantly, where is he?!"

"If I knew I might tell you, but I don't. All I can say is that the dimensional anomaly that he fell into was not that of a parallel world. I happen to be a bit of an expert in the field, and I can say that, wherever he went, it is far away from our timeline."

As he spoke, a bit of an edge seeped into Zelretch's tone. Perhaps the interference being made within the bounds of his field of dimensional operation wasn't as easy to shake off as he made it seem. Regaining a bit of his teasing attitude, and that insufferable smirk, Zelretch continued to speak:

"I am afraid, Rin, that, as you are now, you will be unable to get your precious Shirou back. If you knew the operation of parallel worlds though then you might have a starting point."

He extended his hand towards Rin while he spoke, holding a familiar blueprint that she had avoided studying. Refusing to respond, Rin grabbed the blueprint out of his hands before stalking angrily away toward her workshop. Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg though had disappeared the moment she grasped the paper. The crowd remained silent for a couple moments more before they all started, as if waking from a dream. They remembered nothing beyond the lever being pulled, and they could do nothing but stare at the gallows dumbfounded. Somehow Emiya Shirou had escaped, all that remained on the scaffold was half of a rope, gently swaying in the breeze.