White Ink

20

Shirou and his ever-present butler, who was currently carrying the two bags he brought with him, stepped out of the busy Heathrow airport and into the gloomy England weather. Unfortunately he couldn't invite anybody else other than those present for this trip. Where he was currently headed for would be a terrible place for Arcueid and Sumire to show up unless they decided to actually declare war on the organisation. Satsuki was too weak for this particular trip and having Illya come along would set off to many alarm bells due to the current unfortunate scarcity of Einzbern homunculus.

Speaking of his beautiful and currently teenage looking sister she was getting quite uncomfortably close these days. While he would freely admit she was exotically gorgeous and his and his sexy vampire companion's relationship was still comfortably languishing in the friends with benefits stage he refused to take it any farther.
This mainly came down to two reasons. One he didn't believe Illya was emotionally mature enough to indulge in the type of relationship he and Arc had. Despite being a homunculus both she and Satsuki were by far the most human of the group and would have a typical humans view on that relationship.
Two he refused to do something as stereotypically Japanese as fucking his adopted sister. His race already had a reputation of giving the middle finger to the Westermarck effect and he refused to participate in anime's biggest excuse for a brother-sister incest plot.
Therefore he kept all his interactions with her warm but platonic despite how many times during their magecraft lessons she asked him to inspect her new body.
Hopping into a taxi he asked the taxi-driver a moustachioed Indian man to take him to the British Museum and with Nine by his side he sat back and enjoyed the ride through the streets. Finally arriving at the British Museum he left Nine to pay the man and headed inside the building.
The museum was open to members of the public and the lobby was full of family units that lined up to get in.
Shirou quickly looked from side-to-side and then he mumbled under his breath, "Full of muggles as usual."
Suddenly a hand appeared on his shoulder, "Really Master Inke. I think you've spent too much time hanging around Lady Arcueid if you're now quoting movie references.
"But it fits so well Nine," Shirou protested. "We're in a mundane area about to enter a world of magic or at least magecraft."
Shirou then looked him in the eye. "Remember also while we're here I'm not Shirou Inke but Kurio Shine. Now both you and I will infiltrate in an attempt to find the item and we'll meet up near the entrance to plot how we will obtain it. Do you understand the plan Nine."
"Perfectly Mr. Shine," his butler said. "I suppose with your new appearance nobody would ever think to connect you to the oriental Master Inke."
"Huh, I quite like that name," Shirou said to himself as he swept his hand through his unruly black hair and adjusted the glasses through which his sky blue eyes peered. "Let's go Nine."
xxx
After queuing up for a bit they entered the atrium and proceeded to head into the marine area where Shirou detected a bounded field. Coming closer Shirou realised the bounded field was a simple one that merely influenced any curious person to leave. It surrounded an innocuous door with a note on it that stated that non-staff members should not enter. Shirou just shook his head and boldly stepped through the door.
The door spread out from a single point to an astonishingly large stairway that was covered by a satin red carpet. Candelabras adorned the walls every few metres illuminating many pictures of distinguished looking men and women. It was all dreadfully fancy and Shirou found himself growing drowsy at the mere thought of all that aristocratic bullshit. Still Shirou persevered and he headed down the stairs until he was stopped by two men stepping in front of him.
The first one had brown hair and a goatee and the second was blond and had a nasty scar that barely missed his eye and took a chunk out of his nose. "State your identity," goatee called out, "and what reason you have to be here."
"Hi I'm Kurio Shine," Shirou said chipper. "I just came in because the museum was getting too crowded you know how it is." Looking at their hands drift towards whatever mystic codes they had to the sides, Shirou sighed. "No," he said, "Oh well."
In the next instant the guards were covered with water and were forcibly slammed down into the ground hard enough to knock them both out. "Nine," he said. "Would it be overkill to just eat them now?"
"They may have a wife and family Mr Shine," the butler started. "In addition as enforcers they may be successful in preventing dead apostle attacks in future. You're letting your personal distaste for magi interfere with your sense of good and evil."
Shirou sighed and bent down to cast some high-level hypnosis on them. Unless very rigorous tests were done the guards would remember nothing of Shirou and their confrontation. Straightening up he arrived at the bottom of the stairs and paused.
There was a simply massive atrium which led to a staggering number of passageways. All of them unlabled and for the first time in a bit Shirou was stunned. While the atrium was beautiful with a domed roof and more of those damned paintings he had no desire to linger.
"Let's meet up here alright," he said to Nine and proceeded down one of the passageways. Shirou spent the next few minutes walking cheerfully down the many hallways and whistling
annoying the many magi who passed him by.
"Finally seeing an open door Shirou walked inside and into a lecture hall. However while there were students there didn't appear to be any teacher. Strolling up to the nearest student he clicked his fingers in front of him and asked, "What is happening in this class?"
The student, a guy with an immensely forgettable face, turned to him from the conversation he was having with the lady next to him and looked at him as if he was an idiot. "We're meant to be having a lecture on formalcraft," he said. "The teacher just happens to be quite late."
"Oh," said Shirou intrigued. He quite enjoyed formalcraft. It was a zero od profession and wasn't interfered with by the person's origin. What one person did in a formalcraft equation could always be replicated by another person. It also held up to Gaia exceptionally well. The problem was unless you were good it took buckets load of time to do.
Shirou, Satsuki and Sumire often played a game between them whereby an effect had to be enacted by formalcraft and a person would have to do it the "best" way. Whether the best meant quickest, cheapest or least messy varied from game-to-game. Sometimes Arcueid and Illya joined in also but those two would always lose due to Arcueid's ineptitude with magecraft and Illya's overspecialisations of the same. In fact out of the many games that they played the person who always won was Sumire with either him or Satsuki coming second. While both he and Satsuki were exceptional by average magus standards Sumire was over a thousand years old and a strong competitor for the most knowledgeable magus in the world and she always had a new trick to show them.
Shirou smiled. He just had a brilliant idea to rub his knowledge in the face of the magus organisation that would infuriate them.
He turned around and strode up to the front of the room. "All right," he said. "My name is Kurio Shine and I will be teaching you how to get the best out of your mana with formalcraft."
"You're not our lecturer," some person with a penchant for the stating the obvious shouted out from the back of the room." Within a second a hand of water coalesced from behind him and plunged his head into his desk knocking him out.
"Anymore objections," Shirou scanned the room. "Alright now you're going to hear from a lot of people that formalcraft is useless, takes too long and is for untalented magi." He glanced around the room looking at the mix of rebellious and resigned looks.
"We call those people idiots," he said looking at the taken aback faces. "Formalcraft is the best magecraft ever created and here is why."
For the next two hours he waxed lyrically on about the many benefits of the art, pointed out different exploits and tricks that would negate many of the inherent disadvantages and planted seeds that would lead to further discoveries amongst the students. The lecturer had even entered about half-an-hour into the session and he simply sat back and begun to take notes.
After the session he dismissed the class, now glowing with determination and ambition, wished them well for their future discoveries and quickly left the room.
xxx
"Hmm, I'm actually pretty lost," mused Shirou to himself as he once again wandered the corridors. "Who ever heard of an infiltration failing because the person got lost?"
Suddenly in a stroke of good fortune the wall to Shirou's right exploded and relieved the tedium of his trip. In less than an instant a wall of water formed blocking the debris and then faded away once the effects of the detonation. Whistling at the sight of the destruction Shirou stepped through the door and froze.
The room was filled almost wall to wall with mystic codes. While most were inferior to the one's he made the sheer variety and imagination that went into them almost took his breath away.
He admired the sheer variety of items around the room when he heard a voice. Sending an infinitesimal amount of prana through the room he located the source of the voice and came across a mop of white hair that was weakly struggling from under its location of mystic codes. He reached into the pile and pulled out an old man in a brown coat and clothes.
"Thank you, young man," the old man said. "If I had buried under there for much longer I would have been finished."
"Yeah, that's nice," Shirou said looking at a mystic code that absorbed water and turned it into coral, trying to figure out how he could recreate it.
"Oh, you're looking at that old thing. I obtained that from a Persian magus. What do you think about it?"
"It's quite nifty," Shirou replied. "It's some weird cross between alchemy and Taiji. I truly haven't seen something like this before."
The old man blinked looking quite surprised. "That's quite impressive youngster," he said. "What can you tell me about this one?" he said pointing to a whirling dream catcher.
Shirou's eye's raised as he looked towards the relatively innocuously looking ornament. "No way," he said. "How is that even possible? That somehow harnesses the sixth imaginary factor. Oh, I see." He crossed his arms. "It uses residual prana as a medium to convey desires. That means it would only work in a place like this. It's revolutionary but incomplete."
"What about this one," the man said looking very excited.
"A baby Hydra," Shirou exclaimed. "Wow that would be quite deadly even to me."
"How about a job," the man said enquiringly.
"Nah," Shirou replied. "But I'll gladly discuss mystic codes with you. I'll even show you some of my own work."
xxx
Another three hours later Shirou emerged from the old magus' workshop with two mystic codes that he had been convinced to part with. They both had a riveting discussion and Shirou had sold a few minor mystic codes that he had never quite got right to the man. Still even with the exchange Shirou had ended up with a twenty-thousand pound deficit. Still it was nothing compared to jewelcraft. And his two mystic codes, a scale that somehow collected and stored mystery more efficiently than usual and a flashlight that shone red in the presence of "evil."
What exactly the thing defined as evil escaped Shirou's current knowledge but the old man stated that since he acquired and brought it to the association it hadn't stopped shining vermillion so Shirou knew it was at least doing great at its job.
The problem was that Shirou was now growing hungry after three hours of discussing mystic codes and two hours of lecturing. He sniffed the air making out the faint sense of food. The problem was that his sense of smell was, well not awful but compared to his other senses and to people like Arcueid, Sumire and Nine it was pretty terrible.
He walked forward smelling the sound of the food until he came across he came across a "cafeteria". He thought cafeteria between two massive quotation marks because there were still red carpets and those damnable gold framed paintings. Many people in fancy suits, that probably cost many times his own, lingered around various tables occasionally eating and speaking in low susurrations about topics that Shirou didn't particularly care for.
He scanned the room looking for somebody who at least looked remotely interesting to talk to. As his eyes scoured the area for someone separate from the boring politicians he came across a brown haired woman who wore a pony-tail and a white waistcoat and she was staring straight at him.
Intrigued he strode through the room passed the various uninteresting conversations about secret alliances and inferior magecraft and held her gaze as he drew towards her table. As he arrived a man who had stood next by the side of the table, but he had written off as uninteresting, moved forward to stop him. However with a moderate application of prana channelled into his glove the man's own blood betrayed him and he stepped back while simultaneously withdrawing his hand.
Sitting down he placed his hands on his knees and leaned forward eye's still locked with the woman.
"Kurio Shine," he announced himself smiling all the while.
The woman still showed no emotion beyond a slight raise of the eyebrow as he bypassed her guard and sat down. The man once again moved to apprehend him but a small gesture from the woman and he backed down and retreated to her side once again.
The woman regarded him for a few seconds and then, "Lorelei Barthomeloi," she said.
Shirou whistled, "The queen of Clocktower herself," he said intrigued. He eyed her up and down and then smiled. "I wonder if you measure up."
A gasp came from the side and out of the corner of his eye Shirou saw one of the servants drop a bottle of wine. With barely any prana channelled into his glove he manipulated the wine in the bottle and levitated up the bottle onto the table. Turning back to look at Lorelei he noticed that her face was blank as usual but their glowed genuine hatred in her eyes.
Shirou smirked. He was tickled pink that somebody hated him so soon after meeting him and after so few words also. He poured some wine into a glass stood up and turned to leave. However he suddenly became aware of a rapier lightly pressing up against his back.
"Mr. Shine," the flat voice came from behind him. "Are you really going to leave after such a challenge?"
"You know for a moment there I was," Shirou said as he gulped down the wine. "Is this the bit where we have a massive battle destroying life, limb and property," he said his voice not quite containing his eagerness.
"No," came the reply, "If we were to fight somebody like you here I would end up losing a sizeable number of magi which is not ideal." Shirou turned his head to look her in the eyes and he noticed that beneath her burning distaste there was a minuscule amount of excitement buried deep down.
"No," she continued. "I will not attack you here. However later I will track you down and call you to account for your statement."
Shirou couldn't help it. At that statement his smile widened until his cheeks almost physically ached. Watching Lorelei's face pass hatred into a look of utter loathing he couldn't help himself.
"Inke," he said and at the brief look of confusion on her face he clarified. "Don't look for "Shine" look for "Inke". Then he turned around and strolled away but not before snatching a bowl of soup from the table of some self-important looking twat and downing it in one gulp.
"I'll be waiting," he said and exited the room.
xxx
The man yawned as his eyes scanned the room. He had already been on guard duty for over six hours and he was starting to flag. It didn't help that nobody ever attempted to steal anything from this room. The place he guarded was full of various sealing designates that had been marked as non-urgent and sealed off for later study. Suddenly a scratching noise came from the side of the room and he perked up scanning the area.
A bit of movement caught his eye and he saw a black rat moving its arms and legs causing the scratching noise he heard earlier. Watching it for a second he sighed and then sent out a small burst of flame that incinerated the rodent. His eyes widened as he saw the creature turn into goo and then he felt a sharp pain in the neck and then everything faded to black.
Nine felt the small piece of black goo, that moments ago had been a rat, re-join him. Slinking forward he came across the locked door that was sealed by some form of bounded field preventing anybody from accessing it. Nine sighed and reached for the key that he had taken from the guard causing the door to unceremoniously open. The room that he entered was huge and looked more like a warehouse than a simple archival room. Trying to find the specific item was akin to looking for a needle in a haystack and it would take a single person days and days to locate it without having the specific knowledge of where it was located.
Fortunately Nine had an advantage. With a brief moment of concentration the figure of Nine was gone to be replaced by a multitude of hummingbirds that dispersed into the room hovering amongst the various items. After about thirty minutes the numerous hummingbirds merged into the form of Nine in front of an innocuous yet clearly labelled box. After a few seconds of examination Nine picked up the box and left the room.
xxx
Strolling through the halls of this venerable research association Shirou found himself wondering what to do. Earlier he had repeated his success at teaching with a very popular rune class that would likely stick in the minds of those amateurs for a long, long time. But despite the fun he had while teaching he had very little desire to repeat his stunt a third time.
As he walked trying to find something to do he overheard a name that he wasn't expecting. Some young girl magus was talking to her tutor and she called him Lord EL-Melloi. As far as he knew his father had destroyed the last lord of that family as well as obliterated their magic crest. For them to even be a person publically acknowledged as Lord El-Melloi that means that they must have somehow recovered in the eight years since the end of the war. That was truly incredible for the normally dull and slow moving magus of the association. It must mean they had a genius working for them.
Turning around and walking to the dour looking black-haired man he inserted himself into the conversation with all the grace and elegance of a double-decker bus inserting itself into a brick wall.
"Yo," he said. "How's that magic crest," he continued. "Has it significantly recovered from being shot by a Kiritsugu Emiya's conceptual weapon?" he elaborated.
"How did you…" the man started his eyes widened.
"Yeah, I've heard the stories of the grail war," Shirou said steamrolling over the man's questions. "The crest was all but destroyed by Kiritsugu Emiya's Thompson Contender. In addition his death should have led to the El-Melloit going destitute. So imagine my surprise when I run into one whose actually still a Lord."
Shirou chuckled to himself ignoring the blatantly shocked look on the man's face. "So spill," he said as his chuckling subsided. "How on earth are the El-Melloi still a thing?"
The man was looking at Shirou with a slightly disturbed look now. "I have no obligation to tell you," he said turning to walk away.
"Hey," Shirou said and his voice was absolutely devoid of any remaining humour. "Are you sure you want to do that? I'm not fond of aristocratic magi in general and the El-Melloi in specific. If you continue to walk away we will see if the El-Melloi can survive the loss of another head."
The black haired man turned slowly towards Shirou his face grave. "By the way my name is Kurio Shine, and you are," Shirou inquired continuing as if he hadn't just threatened to end him if he didn't stop.
"You must be quite confident to make that threat openly in the heart of the Clocktower," the man said his voice containing only calm analysis and not a trace of fear.
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure I could kill you and leave with no repercussions," Shirou said honestly.
"I see," the man said. "My name is Waver Velvet although I'm known as Lord El-Melloi II. I participated in the Holy Grail War by stealing a relic from the previous Lord El-Melloi. When he died in the war and his magic crest was destroyed I became his replacement as a penance and rebuilt up the family."
Shirou clapped upon hearing such a concise explanation. "Brilliant, an explanation that quickly and efficiently exhausts my curiosity. You must be a great magus to be able to rebuild a magic crest as well as recover the reputation of the family after the previous head was so unceremoniously wiped." He crossed his arm and tapped his foot. "Wait a minute Waver Velvet. From what I heard described of you in the previous grail war you sounded like a bit of a pussy but now you're actually pretty calm and cool. Good job," Shirou said and gave him thumbs up. "Well I've lost all interest in killing you, have a nice life."
Shirou turned away from him and made to walk off when he was confronted by the sight of Nine walking towards him followed by some sort of demure maidlike homunculus. He read the creature history overcome by curiosity and broke out into peals of laughter.
"Mister Shine I have retrieved the item and made the acquaintance of this delightful creature," Nine said.
Shirou's laughing stopped and he wiped the tears from his eyes. He nodded to Waver excused himself as he brushed past the young female magus who stood petrified having listened to the conversation between Lord El-Melloi II. He walked up to Nine, grabbed hold of his faithful servant and teleported them both back to Fuyuki.
Author Note: My twentieth chapter. I wanted to have another breather chapter and I also wanted to do something at the Clocktower hence the most nonchalant invasion ever. Next chapter is the next arc.
Guest Yup the puberty truck, that's all it is. I currently have no plans for Shiki Ryougi.
Archleone I really love your reviews. Okay, I use breather chapters/filler to flesh out the character. Most parts of the date I used to indicate a characters views or personality. That discussion about love was meant to be used to contrast Arcueid and Shirou's views in life with Arcueid displaying her idealistic views and Shirou displaying his own idealistic views. However that paragraph was used to strongly divorce such aspects as romance and sex from love in Shirou's mind. He implies that you can love somebody without having sex with them and have sex without loving them. As for harems who knows. Me I do.
The Touko thing was something that was blown way out of proportion. In the words of comedic songwriter Bo Burnham everybody needs to lower their expectations. The problem was that with both characters personality there was no way I could have created drama without making them act out of character.
Lastly, yes keep believing in the Rin pairing. That way when I blindside you with the actual pairing you'll be suprised. Shirou/Ort-chan OTP.
KRKing Caren Ortensia I already said he would get along well with. Narbareck, the hatesex would be incredible.
Other Guest That sentence implies a different thing entirely though. Nine is actually closer to Leysritt in that he doesn't have much sense of self and bases his actions on what would make master happy. He antagonizes him because Shirou enjoys it. Kiritsugu's death was something that was inevitable when he stepped into the trap. He knew it and his opponent knew it. I didn't feel like describing a hopeless battle from Kiritsugu's side where he knows he was going to die but just wanted to get as many good hits in. I feel like it would be depressing to write and to read so I skipped to him dying with a smile on his face.
Piddle Hmm. Do you know Arturia can walk on water. #Actually pretty canon.
Isoroku Let's see. Arcueid may or may not have loved him. She's not experienced enough to know. She is however content with their current relationship. Shirou goes by the name Inke which is currently the name of no Magi family. Moreover he does not practice magecraft in front of Rin. Magic, yes but she can't perceive magic. Lastly more in a few chapters but the thought of two experienced executors just disappearing on her land did not sit well with Rin.
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