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The day after meeting Kaito, Tokiomi Tohsaka set out with his younger daughter, Sakura, while his wife, Aoi, handled the driving. Their destination: the Matou residence.
In the Tohsaka family, Aoi always took the driver's seat. It had practically become a tradition, since Tokiomi—like his elder daughter Rin—was a hopeless idiot when it came to machines. He could technically drive, yes, but his "skill" was on the level of a textbook road hazard.
So whenever the family went out together, Aoi drove. If Tokiomi had to travel alone, he called a chauffeur or found someone else to take the wheel.
"Father, Mother… c-can I not go?"
The small, trembling voice came from the back seat. Sitting there was four-year-old Sakura, dressed in a purple dress, her black-brown hair neatly framing her doll-like face. She looked nervous, almost pleading, as she stared at her parents in the front.
Both Tokiomi and Aoi froze.
Through the rearview mirror, Aoi glanced at her daughter, then at her husband, torn between pity and hesitation.
Tokiomi turned, meeting Sakura's gaze. For a moment, a flicker of regret stirred in his calm eyes, but he quickly buried it.
"Sakura, this is for your own good. With your talent, you were never meant to live an ordinary life. If you stay in the Tohsaka family, it will only end badly."
"The Matou family is different. Their magical bloodline is nearly extinct—they have no heirs left. Once you're adopted, you'll be their sole successor."
"So don't resist. Just accept this arrangement."
His words were gentle but absolute, the mixture of a father's concern and a magus's cold pragmatism.
Aoi opened her mouth but couldn't bring herself to speak. She drove on in silence, her eyes shadowed with grief. Sakura lowered her head, the hope in her eyes extinguished, and whispered a soft, obedient reply.
It was obvious she was devastated. The pain of a child abandoned by her parents was written all over her face. She was too young to understand the politics of magi, or the brutal consequences of being too talented in the wrong family. All she knew was that she was being cast away, left to live as "Sakura Matou" in a future clouded by fear.
Tokiomi hadn't made this choice lightly. For all his flaws, he did care about family. If there had been another way, he would have kept both daughters. But the world of magi allowed no such luxury.
Both Rin and Sakura had extraordinary talent. The Tohsaka family could only pass its crest to one successor. The other—deemed "precious"—would be marked for Sealing Designation by the Mage's Association.
And a Sealing Designation was worse than death. It meant being turned into a living specimen, preserved forever, body and soul, inside the Association's vaults.
That was a fate Tokiomi could never allow. Since the Tohsaka family had no power to defy the Association, the only way to protect Sakura was to hand her to another house that could shield her.
And among the families of the Holy Grail War, the Matou clan seemed the best choice. In his eyes, there was no better place.
Tokiomi was blind to the rot inside the Matou household. Unaware, he was sending his daughter into a living hell.
...
The car neared the remote outskirts where the Matou estate stood. With no one else on the road, Aoi unconsciously picked up speed.
Then it happened.
A circle of sparks suddenly ignited in the air ahead, opening into a "hole."
Aoi blinked, startled. Before she could even process it, someone stepped out of the fiery ring.
The circle vanished instantly. The man now stood in the middle of the road, perfectly dressed in a suit, his back to the car, curiously glancing around—completely oblivious to the vehicle barreling toward him.
Aoi slammed the brakes. The tires screamed, gouging black marks across the asphalt. But it was too late.
The car clipped the man, sending him flying.
Inside, the Tohsakas were unhurt, strapped securely in their seats. But Aoi's heart dropped into her stomach. 'It's over…' she thought in panic.
Tokiomi frowned, but not out of guilt. His thoughts were elsewhere. Who exactly was this man who had just walked out of a gate made of sparks? That kind of ability could only belong to a magus of unusual skill.
But before he could dwell on it—
In midair, the man's body suddenly blossomed with a suit of armor. Plates of red and gold metal crawled across his body like a living thing, locking into place in less than a second.
A power suit. Sleek, radiant, impossibly advanced.
Tokiomi's mind froze. This was no magecraft—it looked straight out of a sci-fi blockbuster. Except even those films had nothing this sophisticated. It was like something from the finest handmade sci-fi anime… except real.
The machine-illiterate Tokiomi was completely overwhelmed. His earlier assumptions collapsed. 'Could America's technology have already reached this level?' In this era, when people spoke of "the future," they thought of only one nation: America—the victor over the Soviet Union, the new global giant.
Even that spark-gate could be brushed aside as "sci-fi weirdness." After all, American films were full of such things.
The armored figure twisted midair, landing in the classic superhero pose, knees and fist to the ground, skidding several meters before coming to a stop.
As he rose, the armor melted away, vanishing like a retreating tide. On a microscopic level, it was nanomachines retracting back into his body—but Tokiomi couldn't see that. All he saw was something inexplicable, leaving him wondering if perhaps this wasn't technology after all, but some strange form of magecraft.
Magic? Science? He couldn't tell anymore.
And then the man lifted his head.
Tokiomi and Aoi both froze.
Because the armored stranger's face was— Tokiomi's.
But older, with a neatly trimmed hairstyle, streaks of silver in his black hair, and a sharper maturity etched into his features. But it was unmistakable.
The man looked like Tokiomi himself… ten or fifteen years in the future.
.
.
.