World Tree MUSH

  Here in the Darkened Branches, worlds less safe or stable tend to jostle together. Life in many of these worlds can be harsh, even though plenty of people call these places home. The further away from the fringes one gets, the safer the territories generally are.

  It's way back in a safe area that Tohsaka Rin -- but not his Tohsaka Rin -- has abruptly contacted a bewildered Emiya Shirou to talk. Not at his world, since it seems to be inaccessible, and certainly not in her world, which itself has been the centrepiece of too many crises to count lately.

  Nope. She's called for a meeting in some world that's been integrated for so long that nobody even knows its name any more. All that's really known about it is it has a tendency to attract good restaurants, lots of tourist traffic, boasts some extremely reputable hotels, and has convenient Vine access to a variety of different places.

  The red motorcycle is leaning against its kickstand at a sidewalk cafe. Bustling and patio-friendly, the establishment wouldn't look entirely out of place in the streets of metropolitan France. Rin herself sits at a corner table, flicking through something on the display of her phone, expression bored. One hand holds the device up so the blue light illuminates her face; the other leans against the table, chin propped in her hand.

  There's a half-empty cup of tea near her, a few sticks of biscotti are missing from the jar in the middle of the table, and a few crumbs suggest Rin's been waiting here for a little while. So does the ash tray, which has a cigarette burnt down to the filter smoldering in it. The tiny plume of smoke goes mostly ignored by Rin. Her attention is fixated on whatever she's reading.

  At least, until her guest shows up.

    To call Emiya Shirou bewildered might be... putting it lightly, all truth be told here. He's barely had the time to be settled in at his lodgings provided by Tonbokiri's people before he gets the message delivered to him.

    The exact method of message delivery probably bewildered the young man too, honestly. There's way too much to take in right now.

    So you can perhaps imagine how long it took the poor adopted son of the Emiya family to figure out how to even follow the directions provided. It may or may not have taken him several minutes before he even realized that he did, in fact, have to find some method of travelling between worlds in the first place.

    Eventually, he did run into someone who was both able *and* willing to help him out, if only by way of leading him to where he can go through this... somewhat unsettling trasportation for someone still very much unused to it.

    ...And even though he went about that whole effort purposefully early, he's still... somewhat late. There is a nonzero chance that he got lost on the way to the cafe even with proper instructions given through the city.

    She'll probably spot him first by the sight of auburn-red hair among the crowds. His clothes have changed since the last time she saw him. They were torn up here and there, so that might be understandable, though it would also be understandable enough for a magus to use magic to repair damaged clothing, too. Maybe he just decided to change things up and go for the loosely-fitting dark-blue hoodie jacket and red shirt out of personal choice?

    Whatever the case, the redhead locates Rin quickly enough now that he's actually found the cafe itself, padding his way over to the corner table and drawing out the chair there for himself.

    "Sorry I'm late, Tohsaka," he offers with an apologetic smile that, despite earlier revelations, still holds a bit more familiarity to it than it should while he sets himself down to sitting. "I was, uh... well. Let's just say I'm... still trying to get a handle on things?"

  Although most of her attention is fixated on her phone, the waiting magus does pause occasionally to sweep the area with a glance. It wouldn't do to be taken by surprise. Not just by this acquaintance she barely knows, either, but by anybody. Tohsaka Rin does not generally like surprises all that much.

  All that to say, she sees him coming. When he's close enough to recognise her, she raises a hand to beckon him towards the table. There's a chair opposite her that's been pulled slightly out from the table.  "You're late." Rin's unhappy observation comes half a second before he can open his mouth to defend himself. The explanation doesn't seem to mollify her very much. "And stop... looking at me that way." One hand waves curtly as though to indicate his face. Her own hand lowers to place both palms flat against the table; to stare at him with those cold blue eyes. "Before we get into anything else, I want to make sure you can get something straight. I'm not her. Whoever Tohsaka Rin is in your world, and whatever she is to you, she isn't me."

  Rin leans back, picking up her teacup as she goes and taking a dainty sip.

  "It's a lot to get used to. All right. Enough pleasantries. Let's get down to business." She watches him over the rim of her teacup, and there's something about that veiled observation that almost seems like a cat studying its prey. "Emiya Shirou." Rin says the name slowly, as though she were paying attention to how foreign and strange it feels. "My father's notes don't suggest any family of magi under that name in Fuyuki City, but if you have command seals, you are some kind of magus."

  "What I want to know is why you had a command seal. I'm going to assume it's gone, now, because if you're from a world that's been cut off from the World Tree, well, you've probably been metaphysically cut off from your Servant. You can count them out of the War, I guess." Rin pauses for another dainty sip of tea, both eyes closing. "It's all just speculation, anyway." Both eyes open. Rin leans forward just a little, narrowing her eyes and staring Shirou down. "So."

  "Spill."

    Rin's admonishment for the familiar look does... probably not come in any way as a surprise to Shirou, but it doesnt exactly succeed in helping him push away that particular reflexive sense.

    "It's not that I don't understand that, you know?" He says, a bit of akwardness etching on his expression while one finger scratches idle at the side of his cheek. "It's just kind of hard to let go of just how... similiar you are. You look more... 'mature' than 'my' Tohsaka, I suppose, but same enough that it's hard to tell the difference without really looking..."

    Enough pleasantries she says, then. The teenager's shoulders slump slightly, and even the akward smile he was maintaining up until now fades some, the glint in his eyes taking on a more of a wry edge with the fading of the smile. "...You certainly act like her too..." he mutters quietly, possibly just *barely* audible enough for her to hear it.

    Auburn brows jump up slightly at her observations, however. "That's... odd. Kiritsugu did say we were more or less living in Fuyuki without the Association's knowledge, but you-- uh, the you from where I came from seemed like she had at least a suspicion even before..."

    As for the Command Seals... He did realize it for himself, that Saber would have been cut off from his mana after he got here, even if whatever calamity sent him here didn't outright destroy her. Either one seems just as likely judging just from the disappearance of the Seals.

    "...She could have made a new contract," he suggests, while his golden eyes drift down towards his left hand -- the blemishes left behind by the seals have faded further by now, but there's still subtle hints of their presence still there, noticable by a trained eye. "Maybe she could have even made a contract with that you. They always seemed to get along." Wait. Get along? Wouldn't they have been enemies?

    The demanding question illicits a brief wince from the boy, and he finds himself instinctively leaning back towards the backrest of his seat under the weight of Rin's narrow-eyed stare.

    "I... I don't know how much there is to explain, Tohsaka," he insists. "It seems like you are still the one in a much better position to understand it than me. I happened to witness two Servants fighting at school one night, and, uh... The other one almost killed me. Silencing eyewitnesses and all, as I understood it. He gave chase to me all the way to my home, and I... *somehow* summoned Saber in the middle of it all."

    That... is probably not the most reassuring explanation he could possibly give.

    Shirou's eyes turn off to the side, both out of inability to quite meet Rin's stare head-on for such an extended period, and out of the side-effect of his own wandering thoughts. "And then the Holy Grail War was explained to me. By you. Well. 'My' you, I guess."

  "Understanding it and acknowledging it are two completely different things," Rin states briskly, snatching up her phone and dropping it into a pocket. Today she's wearing clothing that probably doesn't seem very familiar. Jeans, and a white tee-shirt tucked into them, hair drawn back into a loose, long ponytail. Hiking shoes. She looks like she's ready to go walking out in the woods, not dabble in the mysteries of the cosmos.

  It's just kind of hard to let go of just how... similar you are.

  Rin's eyes narrow as she listens.

  You look more... 'mature' than 'my' Tohsaka, I suppose, but same enough that it's hard to tell the difference without really looking...

  Her expression is like stone, but before she can dwell too much on how annoying it is that he keeps comparing her to a relative stranger, he says something that completely derails her attention. Something around her eyes tightens when he comments on his own Tohsaka's suspicions, and of the Emiya household living under the Association's radar.

  "While it's possible that the Emiya family was living in Fuyuki City without permission from its Second Owner, I find that a little hard to believe." Those blue eyes flick to regard Shirou, once. "I don't know what the situation is in your Fuyuki City, though, and speculation is pointless. There's no guarantee over what does or doesn't carry over between what seems to be two instances of... maybe not the same world, but at the very least, one quite similar."

  "It's possible," Rin concedes, with a tip of her head. "If you were right in the opening salvos of a Grail War, things like that can certainly happen. Command seals aren't absolute, and alliances are fluid, even between Masters and Servants. Maybe especially between Masters and Servants." She sets her teacup down. "Again: Speculation," Rin sighs, as though reaching for reserves of patience. "It doesn't matter, anyway. For all intents and purposes, you're out of that Grail War."

  Rin leans back in her chair and folds her arms as Shirou stutters towards a beginning. It really isn't very much of one. Not that she'd been expecting a whole lot. Usually, when she demands the universe supply her with answers to a particularly vexing conundrum, it does the opposite.

  "Well, you know what a Servant is, and you're still alive to talk about it, so that suggests to me you aren't as much of an outsider as you keep fessing up to being." She eyes him, gaze narrowing thoughtfully. "The only missing piece, to me, is how and why you're a magus. Either your family was very good at keeping secrets, or they had the tacit permission of the Second Owner, and were operating under the pretense of good behaviour. And yes. That's a thing Servants do that."

  The rest is taken in silently. That hood-eyed gaze probably isn't reassuring, though, or the way the fingers of one hand drum restlessly against the opposite forearm. For once she's not actually mad. Not directly, anyway. She's thinking. To go by her reactions this is all most curious.

  "Right. Well. That still doesn't answer the question of why your Servant... uh... summoned itself? I mean, seriously, how do you not know about summoning a Servant?" More importantly, how does some chump manage to summon Saber without knowing it?

    A *chill* runs through Shirou's spine. Tohsaka might not *say* anything, and she might keep her expression... neutral, by some definition of it, there's still a significant *weight* of it. And Shirou learned all too well from his interactions with the Tohsaka from his world what there is a very good reason for that particular kind of sensation given out from her.

    For once, he makes the smart choice of *not* questioning a Tohsaka Rin on it.

    "I never dealt with the Association in any way," he still has to point out. "And as far as I know, my father never did, either. For that matter, he kept expressly telling me to keep away from them if I can, all the way up until he passed away."

    Without him even realizing it himself, a bead of sweat dribbles down the side of the boy's forehead, while he watches Tohsaka, in the wake of the explanation he gave her. At least she hasn't exploded at him, so that's... good, right? But there's still a very *dangerous* air around her, from his point of view.

    ...But she's expressing her confusion about his particular situation much more outwardly... and he can't help but smile faintly, out of a renewed sense of familiarity agian. She really does act exactly like the Tohsaka he knew!

    ...And then that smile takes on a *much* more embarrassed edge to it the instant he internally realizes he got caught into that little pit trap all over again.

    "Aheh... She was surprised about that too, you know?" Come on, Shirou, you're making comparisons again. "But... I really don't know what to tell you?" He continues, that akward smile still persisting, complete with his hand rubbing at the back of his head and eyes closing for a moment. "I can't know about something I haven't been told about, right? Even now I don't know enough about it all to really make even a guess on how that happened. I didn't really even know what a Servant was, much less the War, until after the fact. My father didn't tell me anything about it... or about much of magic to begin with, and I didnt have any other teachers."