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Summary:
Rin breaks into the room and starts hammering the desk that Shirou is behind with her magic. The force eventually breaks it, and Shirou is thrown against the wall. However, Rin doesn’t finish him off and instead lets him stumble into the hallway. She wants Shirou to give up his command spells (the tattoo on his hand), but he refuses because it would be betraying Saber. Hearing that, she starts a countdown so that he can decide between that or his life. Fortunately for him, a girl’s scream echoes down the hallway, and Shirou rushes off to see what’s wrong. He and Rin find a collapsed girl who seems uninjured. However, Rin recognizes that the girl has had her life force drawn out and would die if she were left as is. As Rin gets down to help the girl and Shirou goes to close the door, a projectile suddenly comes flying towards Rin’s head, but Shirou sees it and blocks it with his arm. The weapon then seems to disappear after having pierced into Shirou’s arm.
An injured Shirou goes outside and into the woods looking for the perpetrator, but instead briefly sees the silhouette of his friend Shinji. Shirou feels a tugging on his arm and a blade comes out of nowhere and slits his throat. While recovering from the fairly shallow wound, Shirou sees another figure in front of him – a Servant. His reflexes are good enough to block this Servant’s next hit, but then the Servant vanishes again. Shirou considers using one of his command spells to summon Saber, but then he remembers her previous injuries and decides against it. His opponent eventually gets him on the ground using the invisible kusari stake that’s actually still attached to his arm. She uses it to hang him by his arm off of a tree branch, and throws the other stake at him. Rin comes and saves him by firing her magic and forcing the Servant to retreat.
While she’s bandaging his arm, Rin tells Shirou that there must be another master from their school. Shirou wants to continue their earlier battle, but Rin says she’s not interested anymore and instead invites Shirou to her house to treat his wound. When they get there however, Shirou’s wound has surprisingly healed. Rin attributes this healing ability to Saber’s power flowing into Shirou. The two discuss how they don’t know who the new master is, and then Rin proposes a truce because of the new Master. Shirou agrees, but Rin has to clarify that a truce and being a friend are different things. Rin learns that Shirou never really learned magic from his father since his father opposed him becoming a mage. When Shirou starts talking about how he used his only ability on the table, Rin stops him and reminds him that they’re still enemies. Although Rin thinks that he should hide what kind of magic he can use, Shirou’s reminded of how his father told him that magic wasn’t something to be hidden and that if he wanted to give up training, then he should just quit. Rin goes off on a tirade about Shirou’s father abandoning his duty, but soon the clock reminds Shirou that he should get going. On the way, Archer, who was ordered by Rin to escort Shirou, questions Shirou’s ideals. As the two part ways, Archer says that a meaningless ideal will be eventually defeated by reality, and asks if Shirou can keep chasing those ideals. At home, Shirou finds Saber sleeping, but she wakes up to say that she’s relieved he’s safe.
*sigh* I’m having a hard time getting into this series. I think part of it is because the pacing feels a bit off (the action parts are good, but the dialogue parts feel extremely slow to me). At this point, it still feels like they’re slowly developing the story, but the plot hasn’t really pulled me in yet. So to reiterate, the action parts are the main reason I’m still watching the show, and I’m holding onto it because I think the story has a lot of potential, even though it hasn’t gotten that good yet.
Next episode seems to be about Shirou and Rin working together in their new truce. I can’t say that I look forward to watching it, at least not nearly as much as I look forward to Shana or Otome.
