The sounds of the stirred dead swirled around Emiya on his way back into the suburban area. He kept to the high ground when he could to avoid any surprises and eventually reached far enough that the sounds settled.

Quickly, he laid the girl out onto the asphalt. Using his flashlight and the moon he scanned the bare extremities of the girl's body checking for anyone bites or wounds. Her body and clothes were both intact. However, said clothes were soiled to the point that continued use would put her at risk of a non-reanimating infection. Just as he feared.

Next, he opened each of her eyes checking for abnormal pupil dilation. Even if she wasn't infected, brain damage could end her anyway. The reacted normally. Emiya could feel relief building up at this point and made a point to check her for breathing and check her pulse for irregularities.

Once again, all clear.

He scooped the girl back up into his arms and immediately moved to check for a safe shelter. House after house, he scanned for the bare minimum of intact and mostly sealed entrances before he would place his ear to a window. Three brisket knocks to listen for even the slightest bit of movement or moaning vocalization. It took a few houses before he found one that hinted no movement from inside. It was one-story and only a few of the windows showed signs of damage, for a temporary shelter it would do just fine.

Grasping the door handle he slowly pushed his magical energy into the locking mechanism until he heard a small ting of cracking metal. The door slowly creaked open and he was greeted by the stale air of an abandoned house as he moved inside. His flashlight cut through the void like a sword through flesh and revealed a hallway devoid of any life.

He projected thick rebar and planted it into the ground behind the closed front door before turning to venture down the long front hall. He eventually came to the den.

Two chairs and a couch surrounded a coffee table, and in the center of the room, on the wall, a television that would no longer broadcast anything. Standard living-room defining features.

He felt a pang irony surge through him.

"This will do." He whispered and laid the small girl onto a love-seat styled couch before taking a seat on an armchair that was across the table from it.

He sank back deep into the leather cushions and let his magical enhancements fade. A familiar sensation of weakness came over his body and reminded him that he was only human. With a weary sigh, he ran his hand threw his hair.

"What am I going to do now?"

Rushing into Randall Corp with a small child was not an appealing idea, even if he was confident it could be done. Could he spare the time to find a safe house for the child or even feel right leaving someone so young to themselves? What would happen if he ran across more survivors during such a trip? How could he make sure they would stay safe as he set off on his mission? While they may have been fine until now, what if something happened and he wasn't there to stop it?

A sense of melancholy poured over Emiya as his thoughts spiraled deeper downward. The logic that was like breathing for him quickly turned him into a drowning man desperately flailing for land. He cursed the slow-paced nature of the undead threat. It gave him too much freedom to move, too much rest, and too much time to think. But despite all that, he couldn't help but feel everything was slipping through his fingers as fast as running water.

He scoffed at himself and sat up.

"The rest of the rooms still needed to be check."

Turning his flashlight on again, he proceeded with an unnecessarily thorough house tour. Thankfully the open areas of the house were what he was expecting, lots of dust, nobodies, and eerily preserved. Aside from that, he was met with the pleasant surprise that there was a working gas stove along with a decent amount of non-perishable food items in the kitchen. They weren't going to make any dishes worth speaking about, but he figured his new companion would be happy to eat a warm, half-decent meal after waking up.

A stray thought that the little girl may not wake up again crossed his mind causing him to bite back a grimace.

It was a silly notion, he had checked her and she was fine. But then, so had others in the past.

"Don't think."

He still needed to check the closed doors.

The first belonged to the couple who owned the home, the signs of struggle were all he needed to know what took place here.

He closed the door and continued. The next two doors led to a bathroom and an office respectively. The only thing of note was that there was still clean water left in the tank of the toilet. His companion was going to have to use that to wash, naturally, he'd boil it and add a few drops of bleach first just to be safe.

Last, a door with a name placard hanging on it.

"Kurumi."

The owners must have had a daughter. It was a tidy room with telltale signs that it belonged to a teenage girl. He would be able to solve the problem of fresh clothes for his companion now.

He pulled the cover sheet off the bed and returned to cover the sleeping lump on the couch before sinking back into his chair and shutting his eyes.

"I want to save everyone. I don't want to let those in front of me suffer."

Emiya returned to consciousness and took in the room. No longer pitch black but the deep, dull blue of predawn, he affirmed that it was still just him and a sleeping child.

Not being attacked in the middle of the night allowed him to get the bare minimum of sleep, it was a welcome boon. Still, he needed to double-check her condition. To make sure she hadn't died in the middle of the night by some undiscovered injury.

He held his index finger just under her nose. Small, relaxed breaths of air tickled the length of his finger. After that, her carotid artery. The steady throb of her heart pushing blood through the veins at a measured pace painted the picture of perfect health, as far as he could tell.

With a sigh of relief, he left for the kitchen. All he could do now was cook some food, boil some water in a pot for cleaning, and wait for her to wake up.

With a yawn and a stretch, Ruu slowly peeled off her covers and sat up. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes she looked around her room. Only this wasn't her room and she was still in her school uniform. A wave of confusion washed over her as she wondered why she was sleeping on the couch. She couldn't remember anything after she left for school yesterday morning.

She strangely felt as though she just had a terrible nightmare and desperately needed to see her parents or sister. The small girl made to call out but the words wouldn't leave her mouth. Her throat was sore and her mouth felt like she was sucking on cotton.

Her tiny hands curled and gripped her blanket hard. Panic started to grow in her chest and she shrunk back into the arm of the couch. She had a sense that even if she could yell, a monster under the couch would jump out and grab her. So, in place of calling for help, she hid her head under the cover.

Surely her mother and father hadn't left for work yet, they'd always see her and her sister off to school in the morning. If she just waited long enough, one of them would come.

The clack of a bowl being set on a table touched her ears.

"It seems you're awake. How do you feel?"

The voice was warm and soft, she knew this voice. Slowly peeking out from the makeshift hiding place she could feel her eyes well up.

It was her papa.

In an instant she threw off the blanket and leapt towards him, stumbling in the process. He caught her before she could hit the ground.

She was so happy.

"Dad!" She voiced happily despite the hoarseness of her throat. She made to hug him only to be sat back down on the cushion of the couch.

"I..." Her father started to speak. But he paused while looking at her, knelt, and gently rubbed her head.

"Eat first okay, we have a lot to do today."

His smile was shining. The girl wondered if something good happened this morning.

The girl sitting in front of him happily ate the chicken noodle soup. It hurt his chef's pride to call heating something from a can, "cooking," but he swallowed the bitter pill of life for the smile.

"Still... she's delusional. It could be a possible head injury I didn't notice, but aside from tripping on her blanket her motor skills seem intact." Emiya thought to himself.

By the time the girl finished eating, Emiya had concluded that the massive amount of trauma she suffered lead her to a sort of mental break. It broke his heart to think about how terrifying the events suffered must have been.

"If only I could have-" He stopped his thoughts before trailing down the rabbit hole, he had bigger issues.

"Daddy? Dad?" A small voice broke him out of his daze. It was still a fair bit raspy, but it was getting better now that she had fluids entering her system.

"Sorry, what were you saying?"

The small pout he received over his lack of attentiveness was blinding. The girl's puffed out cheeks looked more than pinchable but he restrained himself from teasing his "daughter." The fact that he could even consider such a thing spoke to how powerful a child's innocence could be in the midst of a tragedy. It was a shame to think of her inevitable return to reality.

"I mean it, I'm really, really sorry." Emiya once again patted the girl's rat's nest of hair.

"Where's mommy and Rii?"

"Most likely dead." He thought.

"They left for work and school." He said with a smile. "I kept you home today because you looked a little sick. Do you feel okay now?"

"Sleepy." The girl yawned.

Small, vague replies littered the conversation from that point, he couldn't risk any specifics and cause an instance of cognitive dissonance. The last thing he needed was a small child breaking down and alerting everything in the vicinity.

Eventually, he breached the most important subject of the girl needing a bath. He used the excuse that the power was out to explain why the shower wasn't working and told her how to use the towel and water pot.

In the meantime, Emiya exited the house and made his way to the roof. The sky was gray with rain bloated clouds. They tinted the surrounding area in a calming aura that could easily lure a careless man into silly mistakes. Moving through the rain with a child would be difficult.

Emiya pulled an earpiece from a very small pouch at his waistline and plugged it into the radio device he wore at his neck and switched it on. Closing his eyes, he listened to static fill his ear as he clicked through different frequencies. FM then AM.

The buzzing cotton consumed his focus as he listened for anything, finally, a few drops of rain tapping the back of his neck broke him out of the trance.

"Nothing today as well."

It was a small hope that he would ever catch survivors broadcasting for help, but it put his mind at ease to have another avenue of information. Below him, he could hear a small voice calling for her father out the backdoor.

He dropped down from his perch, the small girl was considerably cleaner now and wearing a fresh set of loosely fitting clothes. The rat's nest of hair still sat on top of her head.

"Can you brush my hair?" She asked gingerly.

"Of course."

How long had it been since he last brushed another human's hair, he couldn't remember. Still, he slowly and gently worked through it while thinking of reasons for them to travel into the city once it was finished.

Rain pattered against Emiya's umbrella as he walked the vacant city streets. He could hear the faint humming of the girl at his side as they weaved at a leisurely pace around wreckage and any zombie that hadn't taken instinctive cover from the rain.

What did the wrecked vestiges of civilization look like to the girl, he wondered as his eyes fixed on a large crowd of completely motionless corpses standing in an intersection. He came to a stop, his hand flexing slightly around the small hand in his grip.

Whatever it was, he thought, it must be fields of daisies.

"Daddy?"

The mass ignored the rain and stood huddled together facing inwards. This was the first time he encountered such a sight and it made old scars itch with anticipation.

"Trace on," Emiya whispered. A rod of molten fire and cold iron plunged down his spine modifying his body to superhuman levels. The world bloomed with his expanded senses.

"I was wondering if you could close your eyes for daddy."

"But why?"

Narrowing his eyes he looked closer at the group they were slowly advancing toward. The stillness was unnatural, not even the lopsided balancing that some of the more deteriorated ones would often exhibit could be seen.

"Well, I was going to cast a magic spell that will get us closer to mommies work. But it only works if good little girls close their eyes." He stooped down to pick the girl up with his free arm.

He was met with a small pout but tightly closed eyes. Emiya smiled, this girl must have trusted her father.

"Hold on tight and count to ten." He folded the umbrella.

The cool rain ran down his face. He knew this would be risky, but he had to see what was happening.

"Start counting, now."

His legs pushed off the ground with an explosive force that cracked the cement he had been standing on as he ran at a full sprint toward the unsettling crowd. The raining bit at his face with stinging force forcing him to narrow his eyes to avoid injury. He felt her hands grip at the edges of his breastplate and a tiny face turn into his body.

A second before he was within an arms reach of the mass he launched himself into the air. The aim was to sail in a large arc over the dead, giving him a good view of the situation.

It felt like he jumped straight into a pool of mud as the sickly sweet scent of magic assaulted his nose.

It was too late to stop.

It was too late to avoid sailing straight into a bounded field.

Since there seem to be some confused people. Shirou isn't doing the whole nerve circuit shtick. I was simply adding some flair to the use of magic circuits as like a "his body is warming up and changing" type of thing. If he was using nerve circuits I would've typed that out to be the case in the narrative.

But please, kill me anyway.

I'm starting to think I maybe have this story listed under the wrong genre, might switch it to action just to be safe.

Not sure if it matters at all.

Ch3 of my less popular story. o3o