While the Clock Tower was primarily a research organization, the magi that made up its ranks tended towards the more affluent members of society, if only because they came from old families with old money. As such, many of the faculties of the Clock Tower were not labs or libraries, but rather private lounges or recreation room for the more well off members of the Association. It was in one of these rooms, hiding behind a number of wards to insure that their conversation remained private, that three such individuals were discussing recent developments. "I can't believe that you somehow convinced me to join in this nonsense." A man in a fine, if somewhat old fashioned, suit remarked as he paced nervously. "You said there was no chance anyone would survive, yet here we are!"

A woman with olive skin and raven black hair sat primly in a chair opposite him, regarding the man calmly. "It was a sound idea at the time. It was not my fault that I had out of date information on those participating. Nor was it my agent who failed to do anything about it once things stopped going to plan." She paused a moment before her tone became a little sharper. "And will you stop pacing, Jonathan? It's starting to get on my nerves."

He did stop, if only to turn to the woman and say with a heated tone. "My 'agent', as you so put it Maria, happens to be my cousin, who had to fake his own death and go into hiding to prevent suspicion! Are you not even thinking of what will happen to us if someone finds out that we aided a Dead Apostle?! And to top it all off we don't have anything to show for it!"

"True, but fretting about it like a child afraid that he'll be caught misbehaving with do nothing." She replied coolly. "And besides which, regardless of how little risk you might have thought this venture to have at the time, you still agreed to it. You were as sick as I was of the great families looking down on us, and you certainly weren't complaining when I offered you a chance to further your own research."

The man snorted. 'Further your research' was a rather polite way to say 'harvesting the Magic Circuits from the bodies of dead magi', but he had little empathy to care about it. "Now I wonder if I would have gotten anything out of it at all. What mysteries could possibly be gleamed from bodies of a few brutes?"

"More than you'd think, if you knew how to look." The two turned their heads to look at the third person in the room, an older man with a wispy beard and greying hair. However, the man was not even bothering to look at the other two, keeping his head buried in that book of his, a work of old mythology if the cover was to be believed. "If nothing else, the raw material of their Circuits would be of excellent use furthering your Crest."

"That's all well and good, but as I pointed out, we have nothing." Jonathan spat back.

"As well, do you actually plan on joining this conversation at some point Marcellus?" Maria remarked, her voice laced with irritation. "Or are you going to just stand there with your book and let us handle everything?"

"I'll join as soon as you two start saying anything worthwhile." Marcellus casually replied, silently amused at how the other two bristled at this. He half thought Maria would launch into a tirade at him.

However, Maria was a cold and focused woman, and she managed to regain control before either of them started ranting. "Regardless, casting blame will do us no good. It was a freak chance that things went wrong and we should focus on what to do next." She gave a shrug. "Which in my opinion is very little. No one even suspects that there was foul play involved in Germany, much less that we had a hand in it."

"Perhaps, but that one Enforcer is still snooping around." Jonathan replied. "You can't keep intercepting his messages to the Church forever. At the very least he suspects something, and he is one of the few brutes that may be taken seriously if he starts throwing allegations around."

"Maybe, but we don't have any real way of dealing with that at the moment." Maria said. "I don't have any of the right kind of influence to mislead him more than I already am, and we don't exactly have the means to 'remove' him. Though they may not be as refined as a proper magus, there is no doubting an Enforcer's efficacy when it comes to physical confrontation. Trying to do so discretely is possible, but this particular one is experienced and has brought in a number of rouge magi. It would not be easy."

There was a sudden snap of a book closing. "So we do not go after him directly." Marcellus said, stepping forward as he did. "I believe that we already have the opportunity we need for solving this little problem. We need to have Shirou Emiya declared a Sealing Designate."

The other two blinked in confusion at the odd suggestion. "Shirou Emiya? You mean that oriental boy that was on the mission with him?" Jonathan asked. "What does that possibly have to do with anything?"

Maria was also not convinced, but she said "I will admit, I am curious as to the new magecraft he has reportedly shown, but I must agree with Jonathan in that I don't see what you're getting at."

The older man rolled his eyes. "Come now, you must have done enough investigating to know that Emiya is a favorite of the Enforcers, and Williams has been silent on the matter of the boy's incident. It's clear to everyone that he knows something, whether or not that is actually true."

The woman arched an eyebrow slightly, starting to see what he was going with this. "I see. So what exactly are you proposing?"

"It's simple. There are already some whispers among the Lords that there's something forbidden going on with Emiya. If he is Sealed, we can find (or fabricate), evidence that Williams knew about the boy's magecraft and kept it hidden, thus resulting in imprisonment or death." A grin played over Marcellus's face. "And if we are the ones to expose Emiya, we can make a case for being the ones to extract his mysteries from him."

Maria's eyes narrowed. "Why does something tell me you are far more interested in this boy than covering our tracks?"

"Because he's something new!" Marcellus said, an almost childlike glee entering his eyes. "He created a pillar of light a kilometer tall! Even for how straightforward that is the sheer power of it is stunning! I was there when I saw him spar with that woman who follows his master around, and I'm telling you there is something different about what he does, and I have to know!"

Jonathan hummed. "What if his supposed new abilities are as mundane as he claims?"

"Not a chance. He never showed abilities remotely like this before he left for the mission. Something happened to him out there, and I promise you if we get our hands on him it will be worth all the bodies lost from this endeavor."

The other two were silent for a long moment, contemplating the idea. Eventually Maria said "This does seem possible… and I will admit, this also has the potential of taking Tohsaka down a peg. Never could stand the girl, thinking that her dying house was in any way important."

"And it would be nice to get something material out of all this as well." Jonathan agreed. "Alright, we're going to need proof that Emiya is doing something forbidden or rare, or at least a convincing enough lie. I shall see about getting a suitable trap ready for our target, and to create it such that we will have rights to the body."

"I shall handle the Enforcer." The woman said. "I have a few favors I can trade to help cast doubt on the man's supposed ignorance. Assuming he has the same distain for Tower politics that most Enforcers do, his own dismissal of such rumors should only help fuel them. I suppose I could also construct the necessary documentation we may need, though I would prefer to know the content, namely the Warden's actual abilities, beforehand."

"Leave that to me," Marcellus said, a hungry grin crossing his lips and his hand tightening his grip on the book he held. "I'll find out what he is."

"For the last time, no."

"Come on, I promise that I'll keep myself in check this time." Shirou said with exasperation as he paced around the apartment. "I just need to get out and do something. I think we've made some progress with my abilities."

"We've made a small amount of progress." Rin replied sharply, her arms folded across her chest. "And even if we have a small idea of what you can do, we still don't know why."

Shirou let out a groan as he pinched the bridge of his nose. The past several days had passed slowly for Shirou, his once daily routine upset by his new found condition. Now unable to physically train as he normally would, he spent most of his time confined in Rin's lab, either being examined by her or trying to see what he was capable of. Unfortunately they had to build a sort of side room to do such tests in, as it quickly became apparent that extensive use of his abilities inexorably bleached everything around him, and Rin was not happy the first time he turned all of her equipment white. He suspected that she was still mad about how he ruined one of her sweaters.

Still, he was getting better at that… marginally. He still couldn't rein his 'aura' back in once it got out, be he was starting to find that it was possible to keep it in so long as he didn't do anything too major. Normally the more Light he used the more it would 'bleed' out of him, but he found that could channel some of it… closer to himself? More contained within him? He still didn't have the right words for it but he was making progress.

Regardless of the secondary effects, what limited testing he could do showed the primary use of his Exaltation was, for lack of a better description, to do things. He found that if he applied his Light in the most basic way possible while he did an activity, he became inherently better at it. Fighting, moving, watching, and yes, cooking. It was like he was a wellspring of talent, and even though there were many tasks that he couldn't apply this newfound ability to, he got the sense that all he needed to do was train himself enough and it would come in time.

He did find that he also had a few more specific abilities that built on top the others, his little performance with cooking being one of them. He could create arrows of golden fire that never missed. He could summon his blades to his hands from across the room. He could shatter near any object with a strike, and restore it to wholeness just as easily. He summoned strength and speed beyond a normal human. Rin referred to these as his spells, but that didn't feel right to him for some reason. Unfortunately, he couldn't really explain why to her, which often resulted in her getting frustrated.

She also seemed frustrated at him in general these days, though that wasn't really her fault. She had basically doubled her workload by both studying his Exaltation as well as doing her other research. Still, it wasn't like everything was fine for him either. "Look, I need to do something. All this experimenting is all well and good, but I need to… stretch my limbs as it were."

"That seems unwise." Saber said from off to the side, finally joining the conversation. "The incident in Germany already showed how… visible you can be if you apply yourself."

"At least someone else gets it…" Rin muttered irritably.

Shirou let out a huff. "But I need more space than this! I've been feeling cooped up ever since we started this!"

"You've been feeling coop up-!?" Rin started to say before she cut herself off. "You know what? Fine. Me and Saber are going out. You can have the whole apartment to youself!" She turned on her heel and started walking to the door, grabbing a surprised Saber's hand and dragging her along with her.

"Well, what am I supposed to do here?" Shirou asked her back in frustration.

"I don't know, use your hands, make something!" Rin yelled back. "Just don't cook everything we have again, because I'm making enough shopping runs as it is!" And with that she promptly walked out of the apartment, Saber in tow. Shirou stood awkwardly in the middle of the apartment for a few moments before he let out a hum. Make something… he thought to himself. That actually wasn't too bad of an idea. One of the hobbies he had during his high school years which had fallen off since he came to England was maintenance and mechanics. Part of the reason he had become known as the unofficial janitor was that he would always be there to fix something if it broke. He had been given less of a chance to do such things since he moved, both because he became more focused on training and because his building was well maintained.

Whatever the case, perhaps now was a good time to start that hobby up again, though that did leave the question of exactly what he should work on. He already knew how to take apart and put together everything in the apartment, and it seemed silly to go out and buy some appliance he didn't have for the sole purpose of taking it apart and putting it back together. After a moment's consideration, he gave a shrug and wandered to Rin's home lab. Might as well start with what I know, he thought to himself, rifling through her merger amount of raw materials till he grabbed a bar of good steel and a small amount of wood and leather. He then started to… make a knife.

Someone who was watching him at that moment would say that his hands started to glow with a golden light and the materials in his hands began to mold like clay, that he was using some kind of magic to craft it. To be sure, Shirou could not deny that what he was doing was beyond normal ability… but part of him resisted the idea of calling it magic. It felt to too natural, too intuitive to be called that. Magic was the conscious defiance of the rules of the World, imposing your own rules in its place to achieve a desired effect. This was, well, this was making a knife very, very well. Shirou didn't try to manipulate the strength of metal, didn't try to change the properties of the wood as he worked in order to fashion it into a blade. He just set out to do a task, and the wellspring of Light flowed forth to let him do it better than anyone else could hope for.

It wasn't long before the light in his hands faded, and he found himself holding the fruits of his labors. It was a simple, 14cm double edged blade with a wooden handle and leather grip. It was perfectly balanced, razor sharp, and had a mirror polish. The knife was a perfect example of its kind, and in that moment Shirou felt a small amount of satisfaction for his work when he realized that this was the first weapon he had ever truly created. It wasn't a copy or a Traced weapon, it was something entirely of his own.

And yet… it wasn't enough. This had been simple, trivial even. He needed to stretch his limits He needed to do something better, more impressive. He frowned as he thought of what he could do next, leaning on a nearby wall. He idly held out his hand and started to Trace weapons as he thought, each one a different style and make to help give him an idea. However, his frown only deepened as each blade formed and dissolved into golden mist in his hand. None of them seemed interesting, all of them too mundane. Then again he was only Tracing normal weapons at the moment, nothing magical. Even with his newfound ability he couldn't craft a magical sword, or heaven forbid, an actual Noble Phantasm…

…could he?

His Tracing suddenly stopped, his mind suddenly switching focus to a detail he had not truly thought about till now. In his hand he held a gladius, the same one he had Traced after he first Exalted, and it still had the golden sheen that all his weapons now bore. What was that? He had initially dismissed it as a cosmetic effect of the Exaltation, but now that he truly focused on it he could tell there was something more to it. It was almost there was something alloyed in the blade, yet not. Properties of a metal that didn't exist. He focused harder and the sunburst started to glow on his forehead. There was a name to it, something on the tip of his mind, something he could know if he just

Orichalcum Simulacra Method

focus a little harder-

He blinked at the sudden thought that went through his head. Orichalcum? Is that what it is? He started to pace as he tried to figure it out. Orichalcum was a mythical metal that was said to be rare even in the Age of the Gods, to the point where modern mages could only speculate on it's real properties. Given that he had been given his Exaltation by a god, and one that embodied the sun at that, it was possible that he had somehow gained the ability to emulate the material. That could be a huge boon in a number of ways. He felt something start to come together inside him, an idea half formed. If he knew what it was, how it worked, maybe he could recreate it-

He stopped when he noticed something out of the corner of his eye, and he turned his head to see his ruined Kevlar armor piled into a corner, forgotten amid all the recent events in his life. He froze where he was before he slowly raised the sword in his hand so that both weapon and armor were in view. He looked at the golden metal, then at the armor, and suddenly his idea clicked into place. In that moment of clarity he found what he was looking for, something that was not just a distraction but needed. Something new, something he had never tried before, something that would test his skill. All he needed was the right materials.

And it did not at all seem strange to him that he began to mutter in words that his world had never heard.

Though they had arrived at the coffee shop 10 minutes ago, Saber had remained silent since the two of them left the apartment. Part of the reason was that Rin was still grumbling with irritation (even as she sipped her tea). The woman hoped that she would calm down enough at some point to maybe to let it go, or at least talk about it without ranting. Unfortunately, having lived with Rin for several years, she knew the odd of this happening were low at best. "So-" She started to say.

"He's just so damn inconsiderate sometimes!" Rin said angrily before Saber could get a word in edgewise. "Doesn't he know how easily he could get himself killed!? It's not like I'm working tirelessly to keep everyone else at the Tower away from him or anything!"

Saber looked around nervously. "Rin, perhaps you should keep your voice down." She said. They were sitting at a lone table near the edge of one of the windows, but Rin's volume had drawn a few looks in their direction. It would be awkward if they let slip information about the Clock Tower slip to mundanes because they were speaking too loudly, to say the least.

Rin flushed a little in embarrassment, and when she spoke next it was in a much softer tone. "Sorry. It's been a long week. I'm still stumped on what to put into that report we're no doubt going to need."

"Still, are you closer to finding out just what that Divine Spirit did to Shirou?" Saber asked. "What his… Exaltation is?"

"It's… new." Rin settled on after a few moments. "For all I've looked at it the closest thing I can equate it to is a Magic Circuit that resides only in the soul, but that is so limited a comparison it's barley accurate. I suppose it's closer to your own Magic Core, but even then that is just equating magnitude and not what it really is." She said, before letting out something that was halfway between a huff and a laugh. "It's just so absurd. This could very well be the magical discovery of the millennia, and I could spend my entire life trying to understand it. And yet I can't talk about it because my 'discovery' is inside of my boyfriend, which is difficult for him to be if he's vivisected in some Lord's dungeon laboratory!"

Saber was silent for a moment before she said "Mayhaps you should lay claim to him, as it were. He is you're apprentice after all. Would it not be only natural that you would be the one to study him?"

Rin let out a sigh and leaned back in her seat, looking out the window as she did so. "It may come down to that, but I don't feel great about the odds of the Lords actually agreeing. For one thing if they get a hint of how big this could be, along with where it came from, there will be any number of families chomping at the bit to take him for themselves. Families with more influence than I can hope to fight." She said with a worried frown. Although she had been a studious worker within the Clock Tower for the past few years, her efforts had only gained her a modicum of respect among her peers, even though she came from an old and prestigious house. There were a few reasons for this (her Asian heritage in a mostly European organization, the decline of her house before she assumed control), but one of the largest reasons was the animosity of Lord Bernhardt Einzbern, one of the most powerful families in Europe. They were not happy with her when she proved the corruption of their Heaven's Feel ritual to the rest of the Clock Tower and had it dismantled.

She gave a small, bitter laugh. "And if that wasn't enough, my relationship with my apprentice isn't exactly a secret, even if most assume I'm just using him for sex. They might claim my attachment to him will cloud my judgment as a magus."

Saber pursed her lips at this. "If the judgment of a magus would be to treat him as a specimen rather than a person, then-"

"I know, I know." Rin said quickly. "I'm not defending it or anything. It's just how it works." She bit her lip and looked back out the window, a troubled expression crossing her face.

Saber sighed, uncomfortable with how heavy the atmosphere had become. "I am sorry for all the stress this is causing you. If there is anything I can do to assist in this matter, I shall do so."

Rin did not immediately turn her head, but she glanced back at Saber. Her lips formed into a soft smile. "Thank you." She said quietly before she let out a breath. "Ah, enough about Shirou and all that nonsense for now," Rin remarked with a wave of her hand before turning her attention to Saber. "Let's talk about me and you."

Saber sat upright in surprise. "What? What is there to talk about?" Rin didn't say anything, but a mischievous smirk played over her lips, and her eyebrows waggled suggestively. Saber started to blush at this, not exactly sure what she was getting at, but knowing that she should probably be embarrassed by it. "I-I'm not sure what you're getting at."

"Exactly. I have to say, considering that you legend is so romanticized, you don't seem to know much about romance itself." Rin remarked. "Come on, you've spent the past five years just sitting to the side while me an Shirou had all the fun. Now it's your turn! I can take you out to dinner, buy you nice dresses, treat you like a lady-"

"Th-that's really not necessary," Saber insisted, a blush covering her face.

"Actually, it is. We're kinda dating now, so…" She paused for a moment before she let out a breath and continued. "Look, I know you talked to Shirou about this a bit, but I don't want this to just be the two of us bedding you whenever we feel like it. You deserve something better than that." A small smile played across her face. "And it will be nice to have another woman to have some 'girl time' with."

Saber was silent for a long moment, trying to keep herself from being too flustered by all of this. Even though over a week had passed since they entered into this little… arrangement she still felt awkward taking about it. Eventually she settled on "I… don't even know what 'girl time' is."

"It's not that hard, from what I understand of it." Rin said with a wave of her hand. "Mostly it involves us bonding over things like clothes and ice cream, and a mutual solidarity in the knowledge of our own superiority over men, namely in the intelligence department."

"But I don't believe myself to be smarter than men."

"What about Shirou?" Rin replied with a smirk.

"…he's intelligent in his own way."

Rin let out a laugh at that. "See, this is exactly what I'm talking about. We should spend some time like this more often. It's not like you do much else than hang around anyway."

Saber became a little indignant at that. "Just because I take my position as your Servant seriously don't mean I don't have a life outside of you. I do get out and do things." She looked off to this side. "And I do have some friends that aren't you and Shirou as well."

Rin's eyebrows rose. "Really? And who would that be?"

"The Queen's Guard."

Rin had to pause for a moment to process that. "You… made friends with the guards at Buckingham place?"

"Though I have already decided that the Royalty of England is a pale and ineffectual shadow of what it should be, I wished to see if the knights that guarded them were still worthy of my respect."

Rin sat in silence for a moment before she started to laugh. "Ok, I have to hear the story behind this."

Saber frowned at the laughter, but she nevertheless sat up straighter and said "Well, as I am sure you know, the Guard does not interact with the public whist on duty, but every solider has a tavern they like to retire to afterwards, so I struck upon the idea…"

Saber and Rin talked for a surprisingly long time after that, and by the time they finally decided to head back to the apartment, Rin found that she was in a good enough mood to try talking to Shirou again.

When they got back however, Shirou wasn't in the apartment. There was a brief moment of worry on the two women's parts before Saber noticed that the window leading out to the fire escape was open. Sure enough, after a short climb they found the man standing on the roof of their building, his back to them as he stared up and out over the city. Her concern not entirely gone, Rin said "What exactly are you doing up here?" She sincerely hoped that he wasn't stupid enough to start 'practicing' out here.

"Do you know where the nearest active volcano is?"

Rin stopped in her tracks, completely caught off guard by the question. "What? I… Mount Vesuvius I think but, what the hell does that have to do with anything?"

He grunted. "Probably nothing. It doesn't matter because the Sun is wrong."

Rin paused for a long moment, trying to understand that sentence or at least the context for it. Of course, she failed. "What do you mean that the sun is wrong?"

"I mean that Sun is not emitting the right kind of light!" Shirou said with annoyance, gesturing forward. It was then that Rin noticed that he was staring at the sun in particular. "Damned if I know why or how, but it completely lacks the proper Essence of Sol Invictus! Did someone break the Daystar while I wasn't looking? I swear, Nysela spent all that time looking for errors in our behavior, yet she completely fails to notice a flaw in her own chariot?!"

This… wasn't right. Shirou's words, his tone, even the way he stood where all off to her. She had dismissed Saber's worry about his mind being affected as minor, but seeing Shirou act like this was incredibly unsettling. "I… don't know what you're talking about."

Though he wasn't facing her, she could tell from the motion of his head that he rolled his eyes at that and turned to face her. "I'm taking about how it is impossible for Orichalcum to catalyze in such conditions. Has whatever broken the Sun also suddenly made you pathetically stupid as well?"

Rin's anger flared. "What the hell is wrong with you Shirou?!"

Shirou blinked, and for a moment he just looked at her dumbly before he flinched back from her, his hand coming up to cover his mouth. "I… oh god I'm so sorry! I don't why I said that! I…" He trailed off and shifted away from her, his postured shifting to one of distress.

Rin sputtered a little at thing completely at a loss for how to respond. Normally she would lay into him for saying something like that to her, except now the man's demeanor had completely shifted. She eventually let out a sigh and cast a worried glance at Saber before reaching out to touch Shirou. He was confused by this response, but he remained silent as she cast Structural Analysis on his body. She may not have been as good at it as Shirou, but it was a simple spell and a fast way to check if there was something obviously wrong with him. Unfortunately, it was the same as when she last checked; his body was in perfect physical condition, and the only unusual thing about it was that strange source of energy running through his Circuits instead of od.

"Rin… What is it?" Shirou asked uncertainly.

"I… don't know." She replied, look back up at him with a furrowed brow. She had no idea what could have caused Shirou to act like that, or if he was even aware of how different he was behaving. Part of her wanted to confront him about it… but a colder and more logical part of her, the magus part of her, wanted to observe. If Shirou started showing mental self-awareness (that would be a first, she though glibly), it could make it harder to see what exactly was happening to his mental state. She struggled with this for a moment before she took the coward's way out: changing the subject. "What was that you were saying earlier? Something about Orichalcum?"

Shirou stood up a little straighter at that. "That? Oh, err… I know how to make Orichalcum."

Rin took a moment to process the fact that her apprentice was telling her that he knew how to make a mythical metal that magi had been trying to recreate for centuries. Normally she would be in shock or throwing a fit about this, but considering all that had happened in the past few days, she decided to just roll with it and said "Ok… how?"

"It's an alloy of gold and obsidian, catalyzed by intense heat and sunlight. That's why it's always found in active volcanoes and open lava flows." He said. He gestured with one of his hands to show that he held two tiny pieces of gold and obsidian in it, as if to somehow prove his point.

Rin pursed her lips at this. She was going to have to have a word with him about taking things from her workshop. "Two thing. One, how is it that no one has discovered this by now? I mean, yes, most magi don't make a habit of wandering around active volcanos, but I know there are at least a few in the Department of Mineralogy that do. Which is to say nothing of mundane geologists stumbling over them. And two, that wasn't what I was asking. I was asking how you knew this is the first place."

"Well, to answer the latter… I don't know, it just seemed right." He said, in a completely guileless tone that Rin had become familiar with over the years. His expression made it clear that he thought that this was perfectly reasonable answer, and that he should in no way get smacked upside the head for such a stupid response.

Rin held in a sigh and said "Ok… how about the former?"

"Well…" he said, awkwardly scratching the back of his head. "That's because there can't be any Orichalcum lying around. The sun just… isn't right for some reason. I honestly don't know how else to explain it."

Rin tossed her hands up in frustration. "Oh come on! It's the sun! There's no way it could have changed that much over a millennia or two! Besides which, what could possibly be wrong with it?"

"It's… missing something." Shirou settled on. "A certain quality, something more than just electromagnetic radiation. Something more like… like…" His eyes unfocused for a moment, and then suddenly a light bulb went off on his head. This was less of a metaphor than one might think as the golden sunburst appeared on his forehead, shining a golden light. "Like this." He said. After a moment his brow furrowed and he looked at the hand holding the small pieces of gold and obsidian. He brought them close to his face and narrowed his eyes, and as a soft gold light enveloped his hand he started to press the two pieces together.

A minute passed as he did this. Rin started to tap her foot. "Well?" She said expectantly.

"… This may take a while." He muttered after a few moments.

This time she did sigh and put her hand over his. "You can do that later. Right now I want to run a few more tests on you."

Shirou frowned at this. "But I just got a great idea on what to do-"

"And I got a great idea on some new tests to run." She cut him off, using the tone she used when she didn't want to be argued with.

The man remained where he was for a long moment before his shoulders slumped and he started making his way back to the fire escape. Rin and Saber followed after him, both trying to not let the cold pit of worry in their stomachs get the better of them.

A/N: The nearest active volcano to London is actually Katla in Iceland, but we can probably forgive Rin for only knowing the second closest (and more famous) Vesuvius.

Finally getting back to this after a long time, if only to set up the upcoming conflict in the Clock Tower. Also hinting at a few things for Shirou personally, both with his first project and what's happening to him. Next time I will hopefully get into more of it all. Intrigue! Politics! Murder! Punchsplosions! All this and more!

Till next time.