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All the Sunny Days to Come	By : finch2000 Category: +. to F > Fate/stay Night Views: 16970 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Fate series and make no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Restless Nights
- 2-Restless Days
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- 2
Saber walked past the bistro where Rin and Shirou were having their date. She briefly considered looking through the front window and waving to them, but she decided that it was better to let them have their privacy. Instead she continued along her planned route through Shinto. Over the past few months she had been going door to door along all the businesses she could find, asking for work, and promptly being denied. Some business were forthright and honest, some were subtler and simply said "we'll call you back" but in the end the result was always the same. No one in their right mind wanted to hire a mysterious foreigner with no documentation.
Of course there was the odd exception. There was a mahjong parlor run by a group of intimidating men in identical black suits who seemed suspiciously eager to hire her right away, no questions asked. However, when Saber, excitedly talked about this development over that night's dinner, Rin suddenly looked very serious and told her that she was better off looking for another job.
This particular afternoon, Saber was, as usual, dressed in her Sunday best (even though it was Thursday). When she first started her job hunt Rin told her, quite confidently: "You need to look your best when looking for a job." And that afternoon they went out and bought Saber all sorts of nice clothes, a process that Rin seemed to find endlessly amusing for some reason. Today she chose a simple sundress the color of the clear sky above. It was a bit more revealing than she was comfortable with, but Rin assured her it was perfectly normal for girls these days. Her inner pragmatist couldn't deny that it was much cooler and more comfortable, even in the oppressive summer heat, but she couldn't help but blush every time she noticed someone looking at her exposed legs or arms.
"Next is… Yamate Street." She said quietly to herself, looking through her small notebook of locations to search. The place in question looked more like an alleyway than a proper street, however. It didn't seem like the kind of place you'd want to be after dark, but her notebook said there were a few small restaurants along the way.
Someone was waiting for her. "Hey missy! You know the Takeda family doesn't take kindly to being turned down." She was confronted by a group of tall men wearing sunglasses, some of whom she recognized from the Mahjong parlor. Slowly, a pair of the men circled around her like wolves and stood in the way of the exit back onto the main road.
Saber had seen this sort of behavior before. "You're brigands then?" She stood defiant, staring the man who seemed to be the leader in the eyes. Obviously, she wasn't afraid of this particular variety of scumbag, but she knew all too well that without the presence of the grail keeping her stable she had to rely on Rin entirely for mana. In effect, her physical capability was severely limited, and too much exertion could cause her to simply vanish.
"Brigands?" He grinned wolfishly. "That's an old fashioned word coming from a kid like you. We prefer ‘freelance wealth liberators’." The man was around six feet tall with a shaved head. His most prominent feature however was a gaudy tattoo of a dragon coiling around his bald cranium, breathing fire over his heavily scarred face. "We keep this city running you know! Old man Fujimura has gone soft in his old age, so the Takeda family stepped in to pick up some of his slack." He exclaimed proudly, thumping his chest with his fist.
"We already told our customers we'd be hiring a new girl, so you don't really get to say no." One of the men behind her quipped. "What are you? A first year? I'm sure some of our more refined customers will pay big for someone like you, especially for a foreigner."
These men made Saber's skin crawl. "I suggest you stand aside, lest you get hurt." A command that only made the men laugh at her. There were four of them, all of them armed with some form of knife of blunt instrument, and before them stood a small, unarmed girl, armored only in a feminine dress. It's only natural they wouldn't take her seriously.
"You've got guts missy, I'll give you that." The leader said as one of the men behind Saber stepped forward, grabbing her by the shoulder. "But you're coming with us whether you want to or not."
Saber took a deep breath, closing her eyes for a moment. She had no choice, and knew that if she didn't conserve energy she was as good as dead. Every movement would have to be absolutely perfect and efficient. With a bolt she turned her shoulder, stepping forward. She grabbed his wrist and pulled him along with the turning motion, throwing him off balance. Thankfully he was unprepared for a fight and he easily lost his footing. He fell shoulder-first onto the pavement with a sickening crack and an agonized scream that told her that he would not be getting back up.
The rest of the men froze in place, looking first at their fallen friend and then the small girl who knocked him down so effortlessly. The leader narrowed his eyes, suspiciously, but nodded at his remaining lackeys, which they took as a cue to ready their weapons. The thug in front of her pulled what seemed to be an extending baton from his waistband, while the familiar sound of steel being drawn told her that the man behind her had pulled out some sort of blade.
Both men rushed forward, each quickly closing the short distance between themselves and Saber in a moment. The man with the knife arrived first and swung his weapon, slashing at Saber's back in a heavy, downward motion. It was easy to hear his footsteps and the rush of air as he swung, so avoiding it was just a matter of stepping to the side. She didn't even need to look, which allowed her to focus on the man in front of her, currently swiping at her head with a bludgeon. Reacting quickly, she ducked and allowed the blow to sail over her head. She noticed quickly that this man was as inexperienced as his fallen comrade, and the thumping noise accompanied by a grunt of pain told her that the man with the baton had accidentally struck the man with the knife.
At this moment, Saber saw an opportunity. In the process of striking out, the baton man locked out his elbow, if only for a brief moment. That moment was all she needed. As the man with the knife was reeling, she caught the other man's wrist with her bent arm, and pushed against the back of his elbow with her open hand. There was a loud cracking pop as his arm bent the wrong way. He stepped back and stared at his dangling arm in horror before running away, screaming.
Now Saber was finally free to focus her attention on the man with the knife. She stepped back into a position where she could keep an eye on both him and his leader. The leader's face was now twisted with rage, and his crony didn't seem much happier. He apparently had broken his nose when the club wielder smacked him, and blood was running down his face from the appendage in question. By Saber's estimation, neither of them were interested in capturing her alive any longer. The knife man stepped closer, stabbing directly at her abdomen, confirming her suspicions. In response, she grabbed him by the wrist, locking it, while simultaneously striking him in the windpipe. She turned along with his movement, spinning him on his axis and slamming him back-first on the ground. The improvised body-slam, combined with the throat blow left the man coughing and gasping as he released the hold on his knife.
Saber picked up the discarded weapon and pointed it at the remaining thug. His tattooed face started to pale as he realized that Saber could easily close the distance between them in a moment. Suddenly he began fiddling with his belt. At first she was confused by this, but confusion turned to dread when she saw him pull out a compact pistol from his waistband. She had seen the damage a firearm could perform firsthand, and with no proper weapon, no armor, and no mana even she may have been wounded by a direct hit from it. She wasn't sure whether or not her protection as a Servant would extend to her when she had no magical energy remaining, and she wasn't willing to try.
The next moment passed in a blur. With a rush of adrenaline and mana Saber rushed forward and slashed at the leader. She heard a loud bang and a whizzing noise as the bullet zoomed past her ear. There was a moment of silence as both combatants stood still. The silence was broken by the sound of dripping blood. Saber looked up to see the leader staring, mouth agape at his bloodied arm. Just as Saber had intended, her cut had disarmed the man, letting the weapon drop to the ground harmlessly, along with his severed hand.
The man's face grew even more pallid as the blood drained from him. After a moment he let out a scream of horror and fainted, falling on the ground with a thud. The whole engagement lasted less than a minute, but Saber felt the exhaustion wash over her. However she made sure to leave the scene before letting the feeling show on her face and in her posture. "Is this really all I can manage now?" She asked herself.
When she was safely out of sight and hearing range of the disabled men she finally let go of her composure. Her breathing became ragged and she had to lean against a wall to stop herself from falling over. She touched her forehead and noticed that her body temperature had risen drastically. It was as if her body was fighting against itself, and was tearing itself apart in the process. It was then that she saw she had taken a defensive wound in the fight. A long red gash had appeared down the length of her inner forearm, at some point. She figured it must have come from when she grabbed the knife wielder's wrist.
Under most circumstances healing the wound would be nothing, but obviously, these conditions were far from normal. She tried to step forward, but only managed to slip and fall flat on her rear, sitting with her back to the wall. This was bad. Every drop of blood she shed was valuable mana draining away, and healing the wound supernaturally would take even more mana. She was assaulted by a strange, unfamiliar feeling. A feeling she hadn't known in a decade. She thought of her friends Rin and Shirou, and everyone she had come to know in Fuyuki. Finally she realized what the sensation was. She was afraid of dying.
"I'm here, Miss, don't worry!" Saber heard the voice of an old woman. She looked up and saw the source of the voice. It was an older woman she had never seen before carrying a small white box. She looked like an average, everyday person around sixty or seventy years old. "I had to run inside and grab my first-aid kit." She raised the box, showing the Red Cross on the cover. "You got into a nasty bit of trouble didn't you…" She sounded like a grandma chastising a naughty child, as she immediately crouched down next to the blonde girl and resting the case on the ground.
"Who are you?" Saber asked wearily, as the old woman pulled out a bottle of disinfectant, and applied it to a sterile cloth.
"This will sting." She warned before applying the cloth to the wound. "I'm Mitsuko, I run a little flower shop down the road." A response that made Saber raise an eyebrow, silently questioning why the woman knew so much about first-aid. "I went to school to be a nurse, though." She responded, as though reading Saber's mind.
The antiseptic did indeed sting, as Mistuko had cautioned, but it wasn't as bad as some of the wounds Saber had suffered. "Why are you helping me?"
"You're the foreigner who keeps asking around Shinto for work, aren't you?" Mitsuko put away the cloth and took out a needle and some thread. "I guess I just admire your hard-working spirit… You're awfully tough, you know? You didn't even flinch when I put the hydrogen peroxide on you."
"I've suffered far worse." Saber stated matter-of-factly.
"Yes I can see that." Mitsuko threaded the needle and started stitching the wound closed. Her tone sounded vaguely patronizing. "You fought off those thugs without much trouble… current injury aside."
"Who were those people anyway?" Saber asked as she patiently waited for the wound to be closed.
"They call themselves 'The Takeda Family' but it's really just the four of them pretending to be tough yakuzas. Dumb kids go around all over Shinto asking the businesses for protection money. They're lucky the Fujimura family hasn't cracked down on them yet. Well, not that they're going to be much of a threat for a while." Mitsuko ranted for a while about the men as she wrapped Saber's forearm in bandages.
"I see. Thank you so much for your assistance, I think I just need to rest for a while and I should be alright." She tried to stand, but her legs were still wobbly.
"You can rest in the shop for a while." Mitsuko offered Saber her shoulder to lean on. "You know…" She said, after thinking for a moment. "The shop is doing well, however, sometimes in my line of business a pretty face is more useful than experience, and I'm not as pretty as I used to be."
"Why are you bringing this up?" Saber asked politely as the two of them slowly made their way to the shop in question.
"I'm saying the shop could use someone like you. Not only are you hardworking and honest, but truth be told, when people shop for flowers they look for beauty; not just in the product they're buying but also in the person selling them." She laughed. "At the very least it'll stop the Takedas from coming around asking for money."
Together, they entered the shop. Being suddenly encircled by so many gorgeously arranged flowers was oddly calming, and Saber took in the smell delightedly. Mitsuko led her into the back room where there was a small couch awaiting her. "You can rest here for now." The old woman said. "There's water in the mini-fridge, drink all you like, but please don't push yourself."
Saber was rendered nearly speechless by the woman's kindness. "I cannot thank you enough, please, allow me to repay you somehow. You have my word that I will do anything in my power to help."
In response, Mitsuko only smiled. "Just come back here in one week at noon. I'll give you a job interview, but really that's just a formality. For now, I'll get back to work. Call me if you need anything at all." The old woman waved goodbye as she stepped back into the flower shop's main room, leaving Saber to ponder her options. It wasn't long before she drifted off into a peaceful, dreamless sleep as the sweet smell of flowers filled her senses.
Author's Note: My apologies for the long wait, I've been busy with school, and lacking motivation lately. That said, I appreciate you reading this, and encourage everyone to leave a review if you wish.
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All the Sunny Days to Come