As Archer Watched the boy named Shirou exit the roof after dispatching the sigil on the roof his mind went into overdrive as to what he should do next. While it was true that he was a heroic spirit that came from the Future like he told Rin there were a couple of things that he couldn't tell his master under any circumstances, first was that he never lost his memory from the summoning since it went off without a hitch meaning that he knew exactly whohe was.

      The second thing was that he was not a proper heroic spirit at all but was instead a Counter Guardian, a person who made a deal with the collective spirit of humanity ALAYA to safeguard humanities survival for eternity after their death in exchange for power. While it seems not bad on paper the reality was much worse, as the contracted sucker was summoned across time and space to conflicts that would threaten humanity and is forced to deal with the threat by any means necessary. Archer had originally sold his soul in order to gain enough speed to reach a nuclear reactor in time before a meltdown happened and threaten the lives of everyone living nearby. From there he used his new powers to do what ever he could to stop a conflict from spiraling out of control, only to be branded as the cause of the war by the real mastermind who used him a scapegoat and was executed.

      From there things went from bad to worse as after he died he was summoned by ALAYA as part of their agreement to conflict after conflict and was forced to watch himself slaughter people whether they were innocent or guilty, this had continued for centuries until the counter guardian decided he had enough and made a desperate plan to kill his past self and hopefully cause a big enough paradox that would erase himself for good.

This plan was set in motion when he felt himself being summoned by one of the many versions of Tohsaka Rin across the multiverse, as a counter guardian he remembered events that happened every time that he was summoned which was a lot due to the existence of parallel dimensions. In these different versions of the grail war one Tohsaka Rin would try to summon a servant of the Saber class but always failed because of two things, first was that she didn't have a proper catalyst instead used her fathers necklace, the second mistake was that all the clocks in her house were an hour fast so she summoned an hour early when her magic was at its peak though this was somewhat understandable since most the clocks in her home wereof western design and Japan doesn't use Daylight savings time like they do inthe west. The point was that these mistakes meant that when Archer was summoned in those alternative universes he was summoned above Rin's house instead of in front of her and his stats were slightly weaker than normal. So it came as a surprise to him when not only was he summoned in front of Rin like normal, but he also was at full power now as his strength stat was a rank higher then his previous summons, of course since Rin managed to do the summoning right he decided not to criticize her abilities as a master so that she wouldn't waste a command seal this early in the war.

Of course there were other shocks in store for the counter guardian as he noticed a couple of strange gems on a workbench in his masters workshop, when he asked Rin about it she explained that they were the result of her attempt to combine regular Jewel craft with Runecraft which surprised Archer as he never remembered his version of Rin ever learning Runes let alone combine them with her families jewels. Of course this left him an a pickle because since Rin managed to do the summoning ritual properly this time he couldn't use the same amnesia excuse as before so he came up with an explanation the next morning with him being a future heroic spirit that wasn't recorded in legend yet and had affected his memory as a result, it was a half assessed explanation he admitted which was surprising for him as Rin seemed to believe it.

When she left for school half an hour later Rin felt the bounded field that was set up around the school and after getting confirmation from Archer that it was the work of a servant she decided to meet her associate on the roof during lunch which seemed to leave Archer curious as to the identity of Rin's mysterious ally as this didn't happen at all in his timeline of the Grail War. So of course Counter Guardian Emiya was understandably stunned speechless when his past self walked through that door leading to the roof and apologized to Rin since he was busy taking out the bounded field sigils around the school, of course this wouldn't have set Archers alarms off as there were plenty of worlds out in the multverse in which Rin Tohsaka and his past self found out about each over before the 5th war started oh no it was Shirou's circuits that were the problem. From what the servant could tell from his senses not only were they open but there were so many of them that they ranged in the thousands, far above the 27 normal-quality circuits that he was supposed to have had based on what the guardian could tell they were similar to when he used to turn his nerves into makeshift circuits back before the Grail War started which could only mean one thing. His idiotic past self had not only found away to turn his nerves into permanent circuits without killing himself over and over, but there were so many of them now that they equaled hundreds of highquality circuits which gave him a level of prana that rivaled most Dead Apostle Ancestors, all without turning himself into a cripple in the process.

     And if that wasn't bad enough it seemed that his past self had learned how to use Tracing earlier then normal since heu sed a magical fire and ice sword to destroy the sigil that Rin didn't detect, based on these facts it was clear that this version of Shirou Emiya was not the one he was looking for meaning that killing him will not cause the paradox he wanted as the teen was not his true past self. Which means that for now he would play the role of Rin's servant and keep an eye on this version of Shirou Emiya, however if he still had that stupid dream of becoming a hero of Justice then in order to spare him the pain of watching his ideal betray him Archer will do what ever he can to fix it. Even if it meant turning the red head into a human pincushion after taking a page out of Gilgamesh's book and shooting dozens of blades at his past self. Of course that last part was probably his jealousy of this version of Emiya Shirou acting up since the idiot managed to acquire a level of power that he never even dreamed in his life but seriously can you blame the guy.

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End of chapter...