Forgotten But Not Lost

23

Shirou's morning started like just about all the others. He woke up long before anyone else, preformed his morning exercise routine and practiced opening and closing the few magic channels he had managed to gain some control over. After that he started preparing breakfast. He didn't realize that anything was different until he brought out the first few plates of food to the dining table only to find most of the seats empty.

Rin was there drinking one of the cups of tea that Shirou had left out for her. Along with her was Sara, Megumin and Niko. "Where are the others?" Shirou asked as he put down a plate full of sausages and pancakes.
"It would seem that they left last night without telling us." Rin said waving around a piece of paper. "Hard to tell. Itsuki's hand writing is almost completely illegible, and his sentence structure and grammar are pretty bad too. From what I could decipher, they seemed to have left because they are tired of me babying them."
"Oh, I see. So I guess they wouldn't be joining us for breakfast anymore." Shirou said, thinking about how much food was going to go to waste.
"There is also a bit where Itsuki swears that he will return one day to kill you and cut off your head to present to his god." Rin adds casually.
"Really?" Shirou said, a little surprised. He never realized that Itsuki hated him that much. Rin held out a few sheets of paper to Shirou and the boy took them, quickly giving them a read over.
He could hardly make out half of it, and the parts that he could read put a frown on his face. Itsuki seemed perfectly capable of writing out his swears properly. Apparently, Rin was a 'shit fucking cunt'. There was also a detailed telling of how he would take great pleasure in someday ending Shirou's life and feeding his body to the black wolves, but not before shoving every single sword Shirou owned up his ass. A truly impossible feat.
If it had been someone more skilled or perhaps someone more willing to use stealth or attack in a group saying these things, Shirou doubted he would have allowed them to live to see the sunset after making such threats. However, Itsuki wanted to beat him in single combat, and that just wasn't going to happen. Itsuki was skilled for a rookie, but Shirou was working with the combined knowledge of tens of thousands of swords.
It was only a line towards the end, where the boy's bravado was starting to dry up that caught Shirou's attention. 'I know you'll be saying that I make a stupid choose but it still my choose to make. I am the master of my own lives. So don't worry about me and the others anymore, we ain't your fucking kids.'
The choice of words almost made Shirou laugh it was so sad. He wondered if it was the Counter Force itself mocking there attempts to change the system it had set in place.
Of course, that was the thing, you never knew what was or wasn't happenstance. Every idle choice you made became subject to scrutiny once you knew that the Counter Force existed and that you are one of its targets. Was it a lapse in focus or did the Counter Force make you ignore it? Was it a poor choose of words or an idea planted by the Counter Force? Did you feel like going for a walk or was it something that the Counter Force made you want to do? Is the Counter Force trying to break you or does it not even realize you are trying to resist?
Eldritch was right to say that people were better off just not knowing about it. The mere act of thinking about it was maddening. Shirou glanced up at Rin, trying to judge her reaction to everything, hoping that this wouldn't eat at her too, but everything about her was the picture of in control. If she was affected by Itsuki's curious choice of words, she didn't show it, and he had no way of knowing what she was thinking. She would never let herself fall to piece in front of the others. They needed her to be strong, but for someone like her who liked to be in control and who thought things through, the Counter Force's existence was hard on her. Harder than it was for Shirou.
"Guy really has a way with words." Shirou said, tearing the pages up. He would burn them before Megumin had a chance to look at it.
"I'll say. I didn't even recognize a few of them." Rin agreed.
"You seem awfully calm about this." Sara said, shifting a bit in her seat. She had suddenly gone from being one of four tanks in the group to being the only pure frontline fighter.
"We've known this was coming for months. I'm actually surprised it took this long." Rin admitted with a small shrug. "Riku has hated me since the vary beginning, Itsuki can't stand being teased, Richard was only concerned with getting a girlfriend, which is hard to do when you are a laughing stock, and Yui has been weighing her options about leaving since the first week. The only reason she hadn't is because she didn't have a team to go to and was too nervous to search for one. She would have joined Ayako's team, if a healer had been in the list of things they had needed."
"Good riddance." Megumin said with a huff.
"We can only hope that they will at least follow the same logic we've been using so far for our group, no necessary risks and keeping a balanced team composition. With their skills it shouldn't be hard to find a Mage or Hunter willing to join them, and Itsuki actually can use his Demon for scouting. If they are careful, they will be fine." Rin said, sounding unconcerned. Shirou and her had judged the four's odds of survival together before and had set it at about 80% if they managed to pick up a good ranged supporter, 25% otherwise. "We can't change their minds, so for now we need to focus on how we are going to continue. Shirou will have to change from being mid-rank support to being a frontline fighter in our formation. I'll take over his position as the main barrier between the enemy and backline."
Shirou nodded his understanding. The mid-rank was normally the position of Hunters since they could both support the frontline with their bows, as well as defending the backline with blades, but since Rin was as good with her sword as most Hunters were, she was more than fit for taking up the position. With their number of frontliners reduced, Sara would need Shirou's assistance more than the backline.
"Other than that, I think that it would be for the best to have another healer in our group." Rin said.
Niko tilted her head in confusion. "But I can provide healing."
"Yes, you can, but if you get injured, we need someone capable of healing you. It is only an extra precaution against the worst-case scenario." Rin explained, after thinking about it for a second, Niko nodded in agreement. "So, I am going to leave the Mage's Guild and join the Priest's guild."
"You are!?" Sara said, not hiding her surprise. "But Rin, you are such a talented Mage. Couldn't Megumin fill the rule of our backup healer?"
"Hey!" Megumin shouted, scowling at the Paladin.
"I am, and she could, but I was thinking of leaving the Mage's Guild either way. I've already learned most of the more useful spells that the Mage's Guild has to offer and have already learned as much magical theory as I am likely to from them, so there really isn't any reason for me to stay. It was going to be either the Priest's Guild, the Paladin's Guild or the Thief's, and even if I had joined the thief's Guild, it would have just been a stepping stone before I joined the Priest or Paladin's." Rin admitted with a shrug.
"I knew it!" Megumin shouted with a bit of triumph at Rin's confession at knowing most of the Mage's Guild's spells.
It was true, Rin had been planning on moving on so that she could learn more about Divine Magic, since there was little more she could learn when it came to Elemental Magic and she had confirmed that it wouldn't be the Elementals that could get them home. The Thief's Guild's appeal stemmed from learning if she could master the [Gleaming Line], even though she was never meant for the Thief's Guild. However, that was a line of research would have been for pure curiosity, and as such was less important than learning Divine Magic.
Rin could have used the magic she had learned from the Magic Tattoo in order to preform a healing mystery, but she said that it was an extremely costly spell when compared to the basic [Cure] spell. The most powerful of these healing spells she needed to store away an entire week's worth of energy inside of one of her modified crystal coins just to perform it once. Though she kept it prepared anyways as it could help in the case of lost organs or severed limbs.
"Since I will be out retraining for the next week, feel free to take the week off. It would be safer not to proceed until we are fully prepared." Rin told them, and for once, no one complained. All of the people who were upset about the pace had already left. Sara saw it as a chance to further her own training with the Paladin's Guild, Megumin would be able to play with the Tokkis some more and perhaps join their party for a day or two of easy hunting, and Niko would never complain about having time off so long as there was no issues with the food money, and considering the amount of it that they had squirreled away, that wouldn't have been a problem if they decided to take the year off.
In fact, there was only one person with a problem. "Uh…" Shirou said awkwardly.
"Is something the matter?" Rin asked him, raising an eyebrow.
"No, nothing at all." Shirou said tried to hide a nervous twitch.
"Alright then, I'll see you all next week." Rin said before getting up from her seat and heading out the door.
"…Great." Shirou said with a sigh. Kuro had left the city the night before in order to head towards the Shadow Forests to get in touch with a group of like-minded individuals, one of several that they had reached out to in the last two months, who were trying to act as liaisons between the Tower and the Elves, and he wouldn't be back for another two weeks at least. It was good that the Tower was getting off the ground, able to add more people into the mix without becoming exposed to the general public. Rin's little organization had grown bit by bit as they identified parties who were unconvinced of moral simplicity of the Volunteer Army's existence. The group was growing influential enough to get the resources they needed through information and favor exchanges rather than having to put forth so much money like they did before, but this meant that Shirou now didn't have his normal days-off hunting partner evaluable.
The Tokkis were in town and he could join up with them and go around the local areas with them and Megumin, except that he really didn't want to be around them for an entire week. One day was enough to make him feel spiritually drained.
He could go hunting alone, but if Rin found out, she would chew his ass off. Skilled as he was, she always insisted that it was needlessly reckless to go out alone, and she was right. Nothing was certain on the battlefield. At the same time, Shirou didn't feel like blinding joining a party of complete strangers for a week of hunting.
He was running out of things to do fixing up the barracks and reshaping more of the armor he had taken would be pointless unless he already knew the measurements of the people who would be wearing them. He had been fitting second hand equipment for the new Rookie teams ever since that first time with Ayako's group, and a new batch of Trainees exited the tower just three days ago marking the fourth group since they started observing the events. Just one more full moon before Rin would have all the data she needed to map out the relative location of their home world, however that is done. After that the two of them wouldn't be bound to this city anymore and would be more free to travel around. But that would be something for the future, what was he going to do right now.
It was starting to look like he would actually have to take a real day off. He had never done that before. He wasn't even sure how to do it.
Looking at the table full of the food that he had prepared for the party members who had up and left, and he wondered what he would do with it all. It seemed like a waste.
That was when he decided he would bring it to Itsukushima, his mentor back at the Hunter's Guild, and see if the man wanted any of it. If not, he could always feed it to the Hunter's Guild's wolf pups. They would certainly be grateful for it. Who knows, maybe the Hunter's Guild even got a new recruit. It wasn't terribly likely. The Hunter's Guild wasn't that popular among brand new Trainees. It was more of a Guild that people joined after they had exhausted what could be learned at the Warriors or Thief's Guilds. Only the Dread Knights got fewer new members.
Still, he rarely visited and Itsukushima was an agreeable sort. Those few days in the forest had been the only ones were Shirou had really relaxed since coming out of that Tower. Maybe the older man knew the secret of how to take a real day off. Itsukushima always insisted that he would someday manage to teach Shirou something worth wild.
As Shirou packed away the leftover breakfast, he idly wondered if this was his own choice or some plot set in motion by the Counter Force. It wasn't as though he would be able to tell the difference.
And that was when the writer realized... that he was the Counter Force... O the humanity.
Yes I know Itsuki's letter had a lot of grammar errors in it. That was the joke.