A Week Where Months Happened - Monthly Omake

An omake that depicts Rin’s point of view in the events of the Holy Grail War up to the 4th chapter of Throne Thief. This omake was made possible by all of my wonderful patreons, who voted for this on Patreon. I am very thankful for their support.

Rin’s Holy Grail War had started off… not exactly as she would have liked.

No one could ever know that her Servant Summoning had been affected by something as simple as a clock malfunction. Because how could she have known that all of the damnable things in her house would be hit with it, all at the same time!

But that was fine, it really was! As much as her Servant was an infuriating idiot, she could feel his desire to win the War matched her own, and the Command Seal would ensure that he didn’t get any ideas about betraying her…

…As much as using it hadn’t really been Rin's real intention either.

Rin could live with it however, because Archer’s attitude had been like night and day when comparing before and after. When she’d calmed down from it and began thinking up strategies, she would surely come up with a variety of ways to make up for both her botched summoning and the early loss of a Command Seal.

The moment she’d decided to skip school and show Archer around town to familiarize him with their battlefield to be, however, she had caught sight of something that would, unbeknownst to her, utterly Ruin whatever conceptions she had of how this Holy Grail War would come to pass.

"I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt, Tohsaka Rin!" The Idiot said in an all too loud of a voice, his grin a wild and free thing that set her entire body on edge… Until his next words utterly destroyed what composure she had. "I'm gonna treat you like you're a good person, despite you being a Mage!"

Rob Loxley.

Someone that Rin couldn’t have imagined, even if she had been given a hundred years to account for every single possibility of the Holy Grail War.

Oh, she’d heard of him of course, through the moniker of the ‘Magpie’. He was a topic of discussion that came up regularly in Clocktower circles as far back as ten years ago, after the end of the Fourth Holy Grail War.

Through keeping up with the grapevine (as much as she could from the other side of the world anyway), Rin had come to know the ‘pest’ that was infesting London, striking at Magi Families and destroying invaluable Magecraft knowledge whenever he did.

Beyond lamenting the loss of so much Magecraft, Rin had not spent much time on the Magpie phenomena, beyond a cursory thought about how to protect herself from it when she did go to the Clocktower. But beyond that, she simply didn’t feel the urgency to, considering that the destroyer was indeed, half a world away from her.

And then he’d appeared in front of her, in the form of a boy who’d named himself after Robin Hood… who seemed surprised and abashed at the fact that he was known for destroying centuries of research.

Who’d told Rin that he liked her.

And when she’d demanded he’d explain himself, he’d merely told her some words that she had dismissed as nonsense in her enraged state.

Rin had thought him a fool then, one that she would never meet again, for he would no doubt get his and his Servant killed by the first Servant that he came across because they would certainly not be as merciful as Rin had been to him.

She could still hear Archer’s laughter echoing in her skull after that whole thing.

She didn’t know just how wrong those words would prove to be.

--- --- --- --- --- ---

It had only taken a couple of days for Rin to be given a firsthand view of the truth about the Magpie.

Her first warning had been the abrupt death of the Familiar she had placed on her school, something she had done to observe the place after discovering the existence of the Boundary Field that she had been withheld from breaking by Lancer, which had fallen by the wayside when she’d had to deal with Emiya right afterwards.

Now that she and Emiya had paid off all debts they had toward each other, and returned to the status quo of a Grail War, nothing was stopping her from coming to deal with the fool who would mess with her school.

Only to find the entire matter already resolved by Rob Loxley.

She had been shocked to find that it had been Shinji who was behind it all at first, but the simple fact that he had been such a creep, coupled by the fact that he likely had no Magical Energy to provide his Servant with made it all make sense.

No, once she reconciled all of those thoughts together, all of her thoughts (beyond that nagging spot that was always reserved for Sakura) had been centered around Rob.

So Rin found herself having to go to the Church for the second time in two days, two days too many by her account.

And on the way there, she found out what kind of person Rob Loxley was… an overexcitable fool in all senses of the world, who latched onto praise and affection, who had a warped idea about what Magi were as people, and thus dealt with them with a strangely warped moral compass.

As much as she hated to make assumptions about his background, she couldn’t help wondering just what could have happened to make him into such a person in the first place. Only being met with thoughts that made her shudder in revulsion.

To have the crux of it be confirmed by Kirei of all people, who’d used it to hurt him, only for the fool to shrug it off as if it was a revelation, had done her troubled mind no favors. And so she’d leaned into their alliance meeting.

She hadn’t expected to be accosted at the middle of her school, and have her carefully built reputation shattered in the face of his assault. She hadn’t expected to come face to face with two Servants, and a mystic code for a hand that she was getting inappropriate ideas about.

She hadn’t expected their date- meeting to go on as it had, she hadn’t expected their strike against Caster to be distracted so, she hadn’t expected him to rob the Servant dry with just a hand…

…And she certainly didn’t expect the gifts he had given her afterwards.

To be perfectly clear, Rin hadn’t thought much of Rob Loxley

But in such a short time, she had found her thoughts on him radically shifting from frustrated scorn, to serious consideration that naturally resulted from her ambitions.

And this Holy Grail War still had so much time to go…

Who knows what could happen during that time? Who knows how Rin’s thoughts could change…

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Tomorrow will be a privately commissioned omake by a supporter on discord.

Next week will see us catching up on lost time for Kiri la Kill with 6 chapters.