o. o. o.

"You know, I'm beginning to hate being an average one." Rin grumbled as she sat on Shirou's porch in the middle of the night and watched as her studying partner created and shot swords constantly around his body at a reasonable pace at a nearby pile of logs.

The steady sound of the weapons impacting the dull wood before shattering in mid air created a unique melody in the relatively cool summer night. "I mean, all you have to do is focus on the few spells that you can actually use and eventually you'll be able to do ridiculous things with them. With me, I have to study my butt off on each and every one of my elements PLUS all the possible spells that they could let me have access to in order to truly realize my potential."

"Yeah." Shirou rolled his eyes before he began to pick up his pace on projection and firing his swords, now shooting at least half a dozen swords at a time with relative ease. "It must be so tough having the ability to actually use standard magic with proficiency and knowing what you can actually do with your powers instead of figuring it out from scratch by trial and error the entire time."

He could feel his od actively flow into his magic now as well as his circuits heating up, however it was still well within his range of tolerance. From what he's learned about magic circuits, they were similar to organs in a way, but they could be trained a small amount. It was similar to if one left an organ alone for a long period of time. The organ would become more stagnant and not work nearly as efficiently. Some noble families actually utilized this process of enhancing their heir's circuit quality, but not many since it was an extraordinarily risky procedure that if failed would not only break the heir, but potentially risk the destruction of the portion or the entirety of the magic crest that had been infused to the child's body at the time.

Magic that was beyond the caster's abilities would kill them. It was a fairly simple rule that was taught on the first day of any magus' training, and by no means was it a stretch of the truth even if it was retrospectively common sense. It was because of this that few actually went out of their way to train their children and or heirs in this way. The high risk of permanently damaging a priceless heirloom countless times over just to boost it a bit each time simply wasn't worth it.

Of course, Shirou normally trained by himself with little to no supervision, had an artifact that healed him more thoroughly than any other spell available to modern magecraft, albeit mush slower, was an extremely stubborn child, and valued his well being less than the normal person.

Because he frequently pushed himself to the limits by projecting Avalon nearly every night, and of course because the real Avalon was inside his body repairing any minor damages that he may have incurred, the quality of his circuits improved and any potential damage he did to them was almost always gone by the next morning.

His circuits would never reach the level of quality of say the Barthomeloi clan with their Blue Blood fueled noble magic circuits (not that he needed another reason to get a Sealing Designation). However, he estimated that by the time his body stopped developing, his circuits would reach a quality that would make most magi think twice before trying to mess with him… if they were ever allowed close enough to look at his circuits to begin with.

Now if only he had a spell that could abuse all that power at once other than just projecting a boat load of swords and firing them off at once.

What he was doing right now was nowhere near as exhausting and straining as projecting Avalon was… not that Rin knew he had the Noble Phantasm inside of him. Having the girl know of his status as an Incarnation was bad enough. He didn't need her to know that he had a relic of immeasurable power and value inside of his body too.

He shivered at what Rin would do to him if she ever found out about that… no. It was better not to dwell on that possibility. He would get his hopes too high since she always seemed to reach a new level of low whenever he least expected it.

"Oh stop your moaning. I've been helping you iron out everything outside of your Projection and Reinforcement magic since you got here." The girl frowned. "You'd still be having trouble firing off your little swords if I wasn't here. I even threw in some bounded field lessons because I was so nice."

"Yeah, and in the mean time you gutted out the only unique line of spells I have to further your research on infusing your magic to your jewels to such a level that you discovered a way to nearly triple the capacity of your gems. Not to mention all the time I had to spend teaching you how to reinforce your body to a higher level. Real fair exchange there." The red headed boy muttered under his breath before stopping his constant projection and firing practice. Instead, he made two shorter versions of the swords he was firing through alteration in his hands, and began to swing them in a practiced and focused manner.

"Again with that dual sword style?" The Tohsaka sighed, clearly noting that this wasn't the first time the boy had trained in such a mundane way. "Why do you keep on doing that? I mean other than Taiga, no one spars with you when you use that style… if you can call it that. Then there's the fact that you're in the archery club instead of the kendo club. You make no sense."

"It's good exercise." Shirou responded vaguely, not at all reminding the girl that he was already in better natural shape than most boys his age… or even most boys several years older than him. "I'm trying to become ambidextrous since it can throw people off in a fight. And, it strengthens both arms really well. I want to have a good strong flexible style that only I can use." He smiled lightly. "Besides, what kind of sword incarnation would I be if I didn't have some sort of unique style?"

"I would say a weird one, but that would just be redundant." Rin looked at him bored, clearly not interested in his explanation. Getting up the girl brushed her hair back haughtily. It was around two in the morning and they had school the next day.

Normally this would be a problem for most twelve year old students who wanted to have perfect grades, but one of the benefits of being a magi was the fact that so long as you had access to your magic circuits, they could make it so that they needed less sleep to be fully charged and rested for a full day… so long as they didn't use their circuits to their full capacity in the process of course.

It still sucked to stay up late for multiple nights on end, but the repercussions were significantly reduced and no matter what, one would still wake up rather groggy regardless of how large their internal reserves of od was or how many circuits they had once they did finally go to bed.

Exhibit A: Rin Tohsaka. "I guess I've had enough for the day. You keep on doing that ridiculous training of yours. I'm going home."

"Yeah yeah." Shirou muttered as he swung his swords down once more while keeping form, focused on the task at hand. "Just make sure you get back home safely. You know that freaks would peg you for an easy target this late at night."

"Oh?" Tohsaka smiled slyly. "Could it be that you've fallen for my charm and beauty?"

"More like I don't want the Association to come here to claim all of your stuff and find out about me here." The boy grumbled before ducking to avoid a tea cup that the girl had chucked at his head. "Hey watch it!"

"What are you talking about Shirou?" The girl tilted her head to the side innocently. "I didn't do anything. You know it is very rude to yell at guests as they're leaving your home."

"… Just go already." The boy relented, knowing the girl was the culprit and that she was simply just mocking him as she always did.

"Are you sure?" She asked. "Don't you want to know who threw the cup at you? It could be a spirit or another Magus that managed to sneak onto your property."

"Very funny." Shirou looked at her unamused. Rin was always doing things like this. Either twisting his words around to suit her desires or playing innocent any time she was pretty much caught red handed doing anything. She'd make a wonderful politician if she decided to pursue that career. "You almost had me believing you that time."

"Fine then. I can see that my presence is no longer welcome here." She sighed aridly. "Have fun with the rest of your training Shirou. You might even improve if you keep it up."

The boy shook his head as the girl left his home and continued his repeated swings. This was pretty much how two nights every week had turned out for the past few months since Shirou met Rin.

Many would quickly determine how abusive the relationship was seeing as the girl often forced Shirou to do some of the most menial tasks for her experiments and rarely giving the boy anything in return. That did not mean that Shirou didn't learn anything from the experiences or improve somewhat. The average one did occasionally help him out with his so called "mundane" studies and clarify some complicated concepts that he had trouble understanding when he studied, however it was more to placate her ego more than anything else as far as Shirou was concerned, given how much she gloated on how dependant on her he was after every time he made a breakthrough in his research.

Well… the research he allowed himself to do in front of her at least.

Finishing his hundred repetitions and feeling the burn in his arms, Shirou exhaled slowly and forced the short weapons in his hands to dispel themselves. Allowing himself a small breather, the boy turned to the pile of sliced up logs still standing in front of him. From what he could tell, he could fire his projected weapons at a pretty high speed, but all in all he doubted that it was impressive compared to what other Magi could do. Granted a flying sword heading at someone's head was nothing to scoff at, but neither were fireballs, blades of wind, and other phenomenon that magi could perform.

Shirou knew he already had a decent basic magic based attack under his belt, but he needed to increase the scope of what he could do should he continue to delve into the world of magi. He needed something faster and or stronger, and right now he was attempting something that he assumed would give him both.

"Trace. On." The boy breathed out, holding a hand in front of him to grasp the bow that he had just projected.

It had taken him a few weeks of practice to memorize the entire scope of a bow to project it from memory, but being a part of his middle school's archery team didn't leave him without any source of reference.

The bow in his hands now was different from the ones owned by the facility though. It was thicker and stronger in build. The string required a much greater demonstration of strength in order to draw, and the wood itself seemed to be more indented in the center as if to hold something larger than an arrow.

In his other hand, Shirou projected a slightly thinner sword than the ones he had been firing off earlier in front of Rin. He looked at it carefully… before dispelling it again.

"Trace. Start." He slowly chanted, hypnotizing himself into slowly going through his projection step by step until he got to the part he knew where he would be making changes.

"Pause. Alter imitation of skill in making. Inscribe contortion. Apply. Resume." His eyes narrowed as he attempted to include a new magic into his usual process. Despite the fact that he was exceptionally good at both projection and reinforcement, alteration was considerably more difficult for the boy to get used to.

Technically he could have made the changes he wanted to the sword after making it, but he determined that his enemies wouldn't allow him the time to complete the two step process in a fight, meaning he needed to make it a fluid one step process. Much like when manufacturers try to streamline procedures for making the same product to save time and money.

Unfortunately, he could not reproduce weapons he altered naturally as if they were their own design for some reason. He was guessing that it had to do with the fact that since it was something he himself was adding to the original design it would change the original blueprint stored in his head. If he wanted to make a blueprint of the altered version, he would pretty much be overwriting the original blueprint, something he was very reluctant to do.

So, he had to manually alter these arrow sword hybrids from their original sword state each time he wanted to make a new one. The good news was that he was getting better and faster at it. The bad news was it took a bit of extra prana to shape it adequately.

Setting off the metaphorical gun inside his skull, the boy projected his creation into his free hand again, producing the same sword as before, only this time the weapon was twisted all the way down the blade, making it look more like a sadistic nail than a sword.

"Let's see if I can get this to work this time." Shirou muttered to himself as he knocked the twisted weapon into his modified bow, having allowed a small slit to form in the pommel of the weapon to make things easier. The alteration of the sword had been relatively easy compared to making a bow that would enable him to actually fire it off without breaking in his hands.

A normal bow of course wouldn't work even when reinforced to its limits, so he had to make a few changes from a little of what he knew about material compositions and a lot of studying of what materials he actually wanted and needed to use into the bow.

The result of his trials and errors was what he had in his hand right now, as were the bows that he had tested out for the past few weeks. He had gotten the shape down as far as he could tell. Now if he could just get the right material…

Breathing calmly, Shirou began to pour prana into his body, strengthening his arms, body, and skin in order to not only draw the heavy string with the sword notched on it, but to protect himself in case the bow literally blew up in his face… again.

Thankfully he had managed a fairly good grasp on basic medical magic before he started, mostly due to the fact that Rin realized that Shirou had a tendency of getting rather injured in her and his experiments and she was getting tired of healing him all the time. He was fairly confident that should something go wrong he could heal himself so that no one would notice the next day.

Fairly confident.

The bow and string pulled back rather smoothly, and so far there were no initial signs of either snapping. That was already a good sign as he decided to draw a bit more. The string was now right around the front of his jaw now and was digging into his skin. This wasn't a problem, even if he wasn't reinforcing himself. Shirou had already familiarized his body with the feeling of a bow and the rubbing the string put on his fingers.

The somewhat painful pressure on his digits was rather cathartic and therapeutic to him as he pulled back some more so that the string was now just behind his ear line, which is where most Japanese archers pulled back their strings unlike Western bowman who stop just in front of the face. This was a good sign. The pull on the bow was strong, but there was no showing of it snapping under the pressure.

Instead of letting the modified arrow loose, the boy rather quickly allowed the bow to pull his hands back together to get a feel for its retraction. Sometimes a good looking bow with a strong pullback just didn't have the powerful "snap" that made a bow launch an arrow, or would wobble a bit on the retraction that would cause it to shoot poorly. Shirou had created a few of these annoying almost bows in his experiments and each time they had irritated him to no end.

Thankfully, this bow seemed to have neither one of those defects as far as he could tell. Nodding to himself the boy breathed out slowly to himself and began to draw back the string…

o. o. o.

The Next Day:

"Honestly Emiya, what did you do to yourself this time?" Issei Ryuudou sighed as he ate lunch with Shirou, looking warily at the bandages on the boy's cheek and arms. "Every other week you're coming into school covered in bandages with some new excuse on how you got them."

Shirou laughed lightly before digging into his meal. "It's nothing Issei. I just got hurt testing some new archery equipment back home."

"Oh?" The son of the head monk's at the nearby temple raised an eyebrow. "You mean it wasn't because you were trying to chase off feral and deranged animals going through in your home this time?"

The red headed boy managed to hold back his laughter fairly well at his frequent excuse for his injuries caused by Tohsaka. The girl didn't seem to take that thinly veiled insult quite well when she heard how he was explaining his frequent injuries that she was responsible for… but despite the second degree burns he got that night he believed that the small payback was still worth it in the end. "No. Well, yes, I did have them again, but they didn't give me much trouble this time."

"You really must get better protection for your home Emiya." Issei sighed. "Even though the temple is rather large, spacious, and close to the woods, we still seem to have nowhere near as much trouble with wild animals as you do for some reason. I don't see why they keep coming for your home though. I've visited you before and you keep the property immaculate."

"Eh. I'm just that unlucky I guess." Shirou shrugged casually as he finished up his meal.

"No kidding." The other boy shook his head. "So were your injuries bad enough to prevent you from archery club this morning?"

The faker shook his head. "Nah. It's really only a few scratches. I got to the club on time, helped everyone set up, and did my rounds. The usual."

"You know you really surprised everyone with your archery skills." Issei pointed out. "Even if you've tried it a bit before, I've never heard of someone our age that can constantly get bulls eyes so easily. People are calling you a prodigy and there's word that some of the highschool kids are going to be checking you practice soon."

"They can watch all they want, it's not that big of a deal." Shirou shrugged, not really seeing why everyone was making such a display of it.

Many people were surprised when Shirou signed up for the archery club instead of the kendo club after his very brief fight against Taiga on his first day of school half a year ago. Even more were surprised when those who didn't know about his hobbies and habits watched him help out the school's maintenance and custodians with the work around the school to such degrees that he occasionally found answers to problems that even they couldn't figure out. It had gotten to the point where Shirou had begun to earn several nicknames including but not limited to "the janitor", since he was fairly good at everything when it came to using his hands. Many people thought that he was trying to be like those old wise strong guys they see in manga and movies who throw people off by working in the most demeaning places. Shirou merely laughed them off when asked and merely replied that he enjoyed getting his hands dirty and messing around with stuff.

Unfortunately, he still managed to get himself into trouble occasionally when he came across bullies picking on others, thus isolating him somewhat from his classmates. Issei thankfully was not one of them and the two boys frequently ate lunch together away from the crowds.

"I've heard that the Tohsaka girl in class 1-A is getting pretty popular." Said apprentice monk sighed irritably.

"And from the way you said it, it's a bad thing." Shirou commented.

"I don't like her." Issei stated bluntly. It was a trait that the two boys shared. They both were rather bad at hiding what they were thinking if they bothered to do it. "I can tell, she's one of those people who are nice on the outside, but pure evil deep down."

"You may be right about that…" Shirou replied almost casually before eating again, making sure his bentou was in front of his face to hide any tells he might be giving off.

Issei smiled. "Finally. Someone who doesn't brush off my comments the moment I voice my opinion about her. Everyone else I talk to about her just look at me like I'm crazy or think that I'm secretly in love with her…" He stuck out his tongue in disgust. "Ugh. No thank you."

Shirou couldn't help but laugh about Issei's response to the evil one. "Haha. I wouldn't keep on trying to convert people against her if I were you Issei. If she really is as horrible as you say, then if you get her attention she might use her despicable abilities against you."

The glasses wearing boy flinched. "Damn. You might be right. I have to be more careful from now on."

o. o. o.

It was after school and Shirou had just finished practicing at the archery club. Despite his injuries which any experienced person with a bow could tell were the result of a bow shattering in the owner's hands, the boy maintained his virtually perfect shooting record, hitting each and every target dead on much to many of his senior's displeasure, and many other's joy seeing as they were thinking of exploiting his skills to win tournaments. He knew the reasoning for the latter because some of the upperclassmen females normally got very giddy around him whenever he shot and were rather vocal about what they wanted of him.

Plus many of them thought that his red hair was "adorable".

Still, it did nothing to stop the oldest members of the club from forcing him and the other freshman to clean up the club building and supplies. Longer still for him in particular after Shirou offering to finish up the tasks while everyone else went home.

It was the last day before summer break and no one really wanted to spend any more time at school than they had to in order to start their vacation, and since he of course felt that he was in no real rush to get things started he offered to do everyone else's share. The boy was rather charitable when it came to tasks that were similar to household chores. It sometimes bothered his friends that he offered to do this so frequently, but he honestly enjoyed doing this. The cleaning was rather calming, and if he helped out others in the process then all the better.

This in the end left Shirou leaving the school at around seven at night.

"Man. I guess I took longer than I thought this time." Shirou sighed to himself as he felt the cooling summer air pass him while walking back to his side of town. "I guess I overdid it again."

The boy walked casually home taking some shortcuts through the local park, thinking about what he had left in his fridge and what he could make himself for dinner when he saw something out of the corner of his eye.

"… You're going back home late again Senpai." Sakura stated as she sat on the swing. "You let yourself do all the work again while everyone left early."

"Yeah." Shirou winced guilty. He wasn't surprised by Sakura's presence. She had a habit of occasionally being here during Friday afternoons. If he didn't know any better he would have sworn she did it just to wait for him since sometimes she was the only one in the park when he got there… but that would have just been silly. "I guess I did it again… but I don't really mind it. It helps clear my head a bit."

"I thought most kids our age try to avoid chores as long as they could." The girl tilted her head to the side curiously. It had been slow going, but ever since the two first met, Sakura's personality had been gradually coming to the surface. She expressed what she felt more frequently now, though she still was rather reclusive compared to the normal sixth grader. Still, most of her positive expressions rarely ever made themselves known.

"Yeah well you know me." The red head laughed. "I'm a bit different than most kids." He shook his head. "So how was school for you? Are you doing well?"

"I'm doing fine…" She said in a way that the boy could tell hid some deeper meaning, but Shirou didn't try to dig it out. It was her own business after all. "My grades are good and so far there haven't been any problems. I'm more worried about you Sempai." She looked at the patches on his arms and face. "You hurt yourself again."

"It's nothing. It was just a bad bow that I was testing out that broke in my hands." The boy waved casually.

"A bad bow?" She asked curiously. "I thought that the school checks out the equipment that it gives to its club members."

"Nah. This one is something I got for myself." Shirou explained to the girl. "I was trying to get a stronger bow and it ended up being of poor quality."

"I didn't know that archery was so dangerous…" She mumbled to the side.

"What? Did you want to join the club too?" Shirou asked, causing the girl to look at him surprised before looking away embarrassed, causing him to smile. "It's not THAT dangerous. I only got these because I was testing out new bad equipment. It happens sometimes. The clubs test the equipment they get before students use them in earnest. What I'm doing is no more dangerous than normal archery in that sense…" He paused. "Well… you have to make sure that everyone is pointing down the field when they are shooting, especially after that one time when one of my classmates accidentally… but yeah, perfectly safe."

"I see…" The girl looked at him with a very complex expression that seemed to be part hope, part joy, part skepticism, and several other emotions. "So the new bow was for your practicing at home?"

Shirou nodded. "Yeah. I was testing out a new arrow, but I haven't found the right bow for it yet. I've been looking around, but no such luck yet…" He was interrupted when he heard the growling of both their stomachs. "Ah. I guess I lost track of the time. Fuji-nee is probably going to have a cow when I get back home since dinner's going to be late." He shook his head in frustration before looking at the girl. "I know you'd have to ask your family first, but do you want to come eat at my place? You seem to be pretty hungry too."

The girl froze in her spot. The two had talked in the park multiple times before, but this was the first time that he had actually invited her over. If Shirou didn't know any better, he could have sworn he saw a bit of fear in her body language. "Dinner?" She asked in a slightly quieter tone as she thought about the subject extremely carefully.

"Sakura?" Shirou asked concerned. Something about what he said obviously unnerved the girl. "Is something wrong?"

"Ah…" She stumbled over her words. "N-no. It's nothing Sempai, I was just thinking about some of the rules grandfather set up." She looked away ashamed before back to his eyes. "I don't think it would be a bother if I went to your place if it's just for dinner…"

The boy nodded, brushing away any concern for the way the girl acted. She frequently attempted to say things only to let her voice die off in the middle of a sentence if she spoke for too long. It had gotten better, but it was far from completely gone. "Right. So long as it's ok with your family. Anyways, come on. I'm hungry too and no doubt Fuji-nee is starving as well. I think I've told you enough about how she acts when she's hungry, so as long as you remember what I've told you what to say and not to say around her… and keep away from her mouth… you'll be fine."

"I still think that you were stretching the truth when you said she almost ate you once Sempai." The girl muttered as she followed Shirou to his home.

"You'll find out soon enough." The faker grumbled, displeased that yet another person did not believe that story. "Just don't say I didn't warn you."

The two children walked up to his home. Shirou noticed that the girl fidgeted as they got close to his door. He guessed that she was just nervous about being in another person's home like that. He pegged her as the extremely shy type. Unfortunately for him, as soon as he opened the door, he saw something that made his blood run cold for several reasons.

In front of his steps in the home, there was not one set of shoes lying there, but three.

"Oh no." The boy whimpered before the familiar pounding of very large legs could be felt by both the children.

"Oi! Lad! Ta hell have ya been!" Sirius roared as he appeared from the opposite end of the hallway. "Ah've been tryin ta stave off ma gut fer thee hours now an tryin ta keep tat lass Taiga away from Waver afta we all began ta drink ta kill time! She wants him lad. She wants him bad." He paused as he noticed Sakura hiding as best as she could behind Shirou who was merely pointing and gaping at the large old man in silent shock and rage. In response, the old man began to chuckle mischievously. "Ohohoh! No wonder ya were late lad. Ya've been entertainin ta wee lass here.

A commotion could be heard from deeper inside the house. "Sirius! For all that is holy help me out here!" Waver's frantic voice shouted as what seemed like something human sized was heard slamming into the ground.

"Waver-kuun! Stop running! I just want to have some fuuuun!" Taiga's intoxicated voice slurred, causing Waver's to yelp in more fear.

"How the hell is a woman your size so damn strong?" The male voice shouted both bewildered and scared.

"Heheheh." Sirius laughed nervously. "Ah guess ah shouldn't have given ta lass some o me special brew. Didn't catch onta how much she downed till she was already tryin ta jump him."

"Your SPECIAL beer?" Shirou shouted in shock and fear. "You gave her THAT? Why would you do such a thing?"

"Seemed like a good idea at ta time… ah thought ta lass was a sleepy drunk." Sirius muttered guilty before shaking his head. "Now's not ta time ta point fingers lad! We have ta reign in ta lass so ya can make us dinner!" He paused as he looked at Sakura. "Ah… right. Manners. My name is Sirius McGinty wee one. Ah'm a friend of ta family." He then turned to where the chaos in the home was occurring and put on a hard face. "Hang on lad! Ah'm comin!"

"Today?" Shirou almost cried to himself. "They had to give me a surprise visit today of all days?"

"S-sempai?" Sakura stammered, not sure how to deal with this new situation.

The boy took in several deep breaths and began to calm himself down. "Ok calm down. This is still manageable. At least SHE isn't here to truly make things hell." He turned around to Sakura. "Just stay here. No matter what you hear coming from the room, don't come in until I tell you it's safe. A drunk Fuji-nee is a very dangerous thing to deal with, especially when she's clinging onto someone."

"SON OF A LORD'S LOINS!" Sirius' voice roared from inside. "THE 'ELL DID SHE PULL TAT PEPPA SPRAY FROM?"

"A very dangerous thing…" Shirou shivered before walking down his hallway as if at the end was his execution. "Wish me luck." He smiled at her as if he was going to die.

o. o. o.