Three Perfectly Normal Time Travellers in Camelot

The bell above the doorway chimed as the trio of magi entered inside the shop and quickly began to peruse the wears. It was a bit of a joke for them of course, but what else could it be? An antique shop in London that claimed that every item in the entire shop was in fact magic and would have strange effects, from Monkey's Paw style curses, to beneficial enchantments that could turn your entire life around.

There wasn't a speck of magic actually in the shop. They were all magi, so it was second nature to them to be able to tell between something with magical energy stored within it, and something that was simply entirely mundane. And this store was most definitely the latter.

It was still fun though, to walk between the isles and observe the gimmick, to see what strange and fanciful nonsense the store owners had come up with to try and sell the objects on their shelves.

"Ohohohoho Tohsaka!!" Luviagelita Edelfelt called out as she lifted a oil burning lamp that was supposedly the home of a Djinn off of a little pedestal. "Perhaps you could wish for your second rate bosom to be larger. It is the only way you will ever be able to encroach on my superior breeding after all."

"Oh yeah, sure." Rin spat back as she lifted a small breast milking handpump off of a shelf. "Or I could just drain you down to size with this." The plaque helpfully provided next to the item described it as being a rather convoluted method of stealing another woman's tits. You would milk them with the machine, and their breasts would become flatter and flatter. Then whoever drank the extracted milk would gain all of the lost cup sizes.

The two girls looked at each other with equally smug smirks on their lips, before bursting into giggles and replacing their items on the shelves. Maybe some other time their fighting would have a bit more bite to it, their verbal shiving actually intended to anger and infuriate, until they finally broke out into a duel like so many times before. Not today though. Today they were on a date, and that meant they were too happy to do anything more than playfully prod at each other.

Shirou, for his part, wandered further and further back into the bowels of the little shop, passing countless objects that claimed to have extraordinary reality shattering power. There was the third Volume of the Necronomicon , which apparently wasn't just one book, but an entire series of huge atlases. Because there was simply too much untold forbidden knowledge than could fit into only a single book. He passed at least 6 different objects all claiming to be able to turn him into a god of various kinds, as well as a guide titled "Succubi. Summoning them Succulent and Submissive, to Save Your Soul."

"Oooh! A costume rack!" He heard Luvia call out behind him, and immediately began to scraping of coat hangers as she began to peruse through the entire collection in search of something gaudy enough to suit her tastes. That usually meant bright blue, and either as lacy and frilly as you could find, or it was something she was going to choose specifically because she wanted to seduce him in it. "There are some wonderful animal girl outfits here. Ear headbands and.... where are these tails supposed to go?"

"In here." Rin's voice answered, followed by a muted slapping sound, and a sudden sharp cry from Luvia. "Not that you need to bother. I've found a shelf of 'potions' over here that do the same thing permanently." Her tone was very playful, and the amusement in it when she said the word potion very clearly showed what exactly she thought of them. "Oh, and you have got to see these 'Power Rings' over here. There are like a hundred of them all doing different things."

Well it was nice for the two of them to actually be getting on for once. Shirou's eyes continued to wander over insane item after insane item, dancing between shelves and stands and magic mirrors and who knows what else. Then he came to a small gathering of little boxes. They were the kind you usually saw for engagement rings, opening at the middle to reveal the no doubt beautiful gift within. The plaque that sat with them simply said that details would be inside.

The first box contained a set of cufflinks, that apparently halted all your physical processes while worn. Aging, tiredness, hunger, and countless other things would simply pause for a while until the cufflinks were again removed. It didn't really sound like his thing though, so he set the box back down and chose another.

This time, the box contained a set of earrings. They were clip on so people without pierced ears could wear them, and they were shaped into two little Ns. The description merely stated that they were perfectly Normal earrings. Shirou had never worn earrings before, never felt any reason to try. It wasn't like they were ugly or anything, but he'd just never thought of himself as an earring kind of guy.

Which was why it was surprising, even to him, that he found himself picking one of the pair out of their box and hanging it from his fingers, inspecting it in close detail, before carefully clipping onto his right ear. It felt entirely Normal to be wearing it.

"Huh. That looks good on you." Rin said from behind him and he jumped in surprise, tossing the box with the other earring still in it up and into the sky, almost hitting the roof before it fell right back down again and bounced off of the top of his skull, to be caught in Rin's outstretched hand. "Seriously Shirou, you look great."

Well that was embarrassing. he hadn't thought he was concentrating that hard, but apparently Rin had been able to sneak up on him, and she wasn't usually that subtle around him at the best of times. How much had been focusing on that one earring? It was made even worse for him as he turned around to see that Luvia was stood right beside Rin, also now giving him a feminine inspection to see if he met her standards. "For once I agree with Tohsaka. It looks quite wonderful on you Shero."

"Thanks." He replied with a light blush. There wasn't much else that he could say in the circumstances, and he lightly scratched one cheek. He didn't really have an eye for fashion, nor did he care to acquire one, but both of the women in his life who claimed to possess one seemed to agree that he looked quite fetching, so who was he to argue? Their approval set his mind at ease.

"In fact, I shall be buying them for you!" Luvia declared before making a large sweeping turn to look at Rin instead, clasping not just the other earring but something else as well that she was concealing in her other hand. "And I suppose I shall treat you as well if I must. Oh poor Tohsaka, so relentlessly poor that she must turn to charity from her sworn enemy just to afford a simple gift. The scandal!" She added a hand to her forehead and a melodramatic swoon to really oversell her performance. He smirked as Rin drove an elbow into Luvia's stomach and the blonde completely ignored it.

"Still. Normal. For a place with the Gimmick that everything they sell is magical, a perfectly Normal set of earrings seem rather out of place." Rin was looking at the little card on the inside of the box that was supposed to explain what the item 'did', and was apparently just as perplexed as he was. "You would think they would come up with something a bit more magical."

"Yes. Magical." He snorted a little as he walked closer to the two girls, reaching out to pluck the box from Rin's hand and slide between the two of them towards the storefront. He might as well get them now if both of them were approving of them. "Maybe they make it Normal for a magic portal back in time to Camelot to suddenly appear and sweep us away."

It was intended just to be a joke. A snarky sarcastic remark that would do nothing but provide the three of them with a lick of humour. But no sooner had he finished speaking that there down below his feet a small blue glow emerged. It throbbed three times with its azure light, and then suddenly expanded, removing the ground beneath their feet and leaving no place for any of them to stand. And so with nothing else to do, they fell right in.

"Ahh!!!" Rin was screaming immediately as they fell through a pulsating tunnel of Blue and White light, the shop they had fallen from disappearing into the distance above them almost instantly, if the opening was even still there. Her arms hugged to her sides as she fell, and she had obviously dropped the earring box because it was falling alongside them just out of reach. "Shirou what did you do!?!"

"He said Normal you dolt!" Luvia cried. She was a little above them, the flaring of her skirt having provided just the smallest bit of drag to slow her descent, and so she hadn't reached terminal velocity until a few moments after them both. "He said it would be normal and then it happened!"

"But they aren't real, they have no magical energy!"

"Then how would you explain it!?!" Neither he nor Rin had any other replies to give. It seemed the only explanation. The earrings truly did have power, and he had triggered it with his reckless words. But if the earrings were real, then what else was real? Was it all of it? His eyes immediately zoomed back to Rin, with the unknown item clenched in her left hand.

And then suddenly a gust ripped past him, a heavy swipe of **** and turbulence that rocketed past at great speed and sent him spinning around. The others were much the same, and from the looks of things, they were all being blown apart. "Rin!!!" He called out, reaching out his hand towards her, and she flipped in mid air so that she could reach out with her empty hand towards him, desperately hoping to reach his grasp. "Luvia!!!" He called to her as well, flinging out his other hand above him, desperately hoping they could stay together.

But Fate was not to be kind. The turbulance they were hitting intensified, and his hands passed within inches of the two girl's before they were violently ripped apart, each of them spinning wildly towards the edges of the Blue and White tunnel.

"Rin!!! Luvia!!!"
"Shirou!!!"
"Shero!!!!"

Their shouts and screams were the last thing they each saw of each other. As they each hit the wall of the vortex, the world turned blue around them, before there was a brief sensation of weightlessness and then...

"Oof." Shirou cried out as he slammed down onto solid green earth. At the speed he had been travelling, that should have splattered him apart like a Picasso painting, but he was marvellously intact, just a little winded, and he had plenty of experience with that. Wincing a little, he was able to roll over onto his back, and get a look at his surroundings.

He was in a forest. There were trees, mostly Oak, but with a few sycamore, chestnut, hazel and willow. There was a warm golden glow shining from far above, that filtered down through the trees to bathe the entire area in brilliant hues of green, gold and brown, creating the perfect picturesque landscape, like something painted or drawn rather than a real thing.

And there was no sign of Rin or Luvia to be seen.