Kirunax
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Chapter 17
🕑 Added 2025-05-06 19:39:55 +0000 UTCAs we soared through the city on a sidecar attached to the Armsmaster’s motorcycle, I kept running the events of the night through my head.
The meeting with Armsmaster went extremely well.
The Protectorate leader had been suitably impressed with my brother’s capabilities. As he should be.
I did some research on Tinkers and how they operated. For established Tinkers, the ones that had already secured material base sufficient for their specialty, maintenance was the bottleneck. Even if you give a Tinker unlimited amount of resources it wouldn’t really translate unlimited fighting prowess or unassailable fortress.
They were severely limited by their ability to maintain already existing equipment. And it wasn’t limited to weapons and armor. The most impressive and advanced examples of their technology required tools that were themselves tinker-tech—recursive maintenance nightmares.
Meaning you had to do maintenance on them as well.
Add the fact that even building those tools often required other tinker-tech tools...
Well, it’s no wonder Tinkers guarded their workshops like dragons – often times with its own tinker-tech defenses. A loss of a workshop signified not only the loss of a base and materials, but the very ability to keep the things you have already built operational.
What followed was usually a swift incarceration – for villains – or a significant blow to one’s own capacity to operate as a cape. Which for both heroes and villains could easily mean death.
Now, with Shirou’s power eliminating the need to maintain at least part of Armsmaster’s equipment and freeing those hours for innovation and refinement...
It was most likely invaluable. With his power and familial connections, my brother’s ascension within the ranks of the Protectorate was all but guaranteed.
Career opportunities, safe postings, high salary, lucrative contracts, well-paying commissions and networking. Sky is the limit.
That just left... me.
So far, my only contribution to the organization was straining relationship with the New Wave.
I was pleasantly surprised by Director Piggot’s decision to protect me instead of throwing me to the wolves to appease such potent resource as Panacea. Especially in a city where New Wave represented a good third of law enforcement capacity.
I wouldn’t even have begrudged the woman if she chose to appease Carol Dallon by leveling sanctions against me. That was only sensible in a place where the gangs were, frankly, winning against the local government.
Still, Piggot’s decision to stand by her own and Armsmaster’s quick defusal of the tense standoff with the lawyer saved me from having a black mark on my record.
Admittedly, attacking a fellow hero wasn’t a good look either way, but since it was being kept in-house and Glory Girl admitted her fault the damage to my career was minimal.
But it still meant I have to work hard and find an opportunity to demonstrate my value to the organization.
Shirou’s support was touching, but I didn’t want to keep relying on him. I had my own pride. I had risen through the rank on my own merit through two lives, and was fully equipped to do so again. Nothing less was acceptable.
I adjusted my safety helmet and glanced back at my brother in whose lap I was sitting. The sidecar wasn’t really designed to carry two passengers, and Armsmaster’s motorcycle itself wasn’t designed for two people, so I regrettably had to suffer the humiliation of being transported like a small child.
Still, it wasn’t enough to ruin my mood. Shirou had comported himself well during the meeting. Sure, his usual demeanor was less than stellar, and not at all the social grace required for impressing one’s superior, but overall, he got along surprisingly well with Armsmaster.
Well, the man was Shirou’s father, so it is only expected that they would find rapport, but I was worried Shirou would act as his usual stubborn self and refuse to play ball. The fact that I had to drag him this meeting did nothing soothe my apprehension either.
However, despite my worries, the two engaged in a fruitful discussion. I was actually surprised that Armsmaster managed to ignite some form of enthusiasm my brother usually reserved for cooking.
Maybe it was the tinkering. Given Shirou’s proclivity in earning money by working with electronics, it makes sense that he would hold at least some interest in wonderous technology kept in Armsmaster’s workshop. Tinkers were also supposedly suffering some form of compulsion that made them want to work with technology, but it was unclear if Shirou even was a Tinker, so perhaps it was just a lucky coincidence.
Personally, I thought that Armsmaster’s manner of speech simply left Shirou no ammunition to show his usual wit and aggravate his interlocutor. The man had a reputation of a hardass, but I had found him refreshingly direct. He simply told you what he expected of you and expressed it in clinical, precise terms. No bullshit.
Well, Shirou’s... underdeveloped sense of hierarchy would still allow him to refuse Armsmaster’s request, but a few nudges from me secured my bull-headed brother a nice apprenticeship with one of the Protectorate’s premier Tinkers.
All in a day’s work.
As I was congratulating myself, the world jerked sideways as something slammed into the sidecar.
Metal screamed. My spine slammed into Shirou’s chest like a thrown ragdoll, and I barely had time to register the sky overhead before gravity reasserted itself and the sidecar tore free from the bike like a kicked tin can. We were spinning—wildly, violently—caught in a death spiral.
I reached for a shield formula, but Shirou had already wrapped his glowing arms around me. His grip was vice-tight, crushing the breath from my lungs, and a heartbeat later we were airborne.
We hit the ground hard.
The impact punched the wind out of me. Gravel tore at my jacket, hot sparks singed my sleeves. Shirou twisted mid-fall, using his own body to shield me. I felt something snap beneath us—ribs?—but he didn’t make a sound. Just slammed a dagger into the road, the edge shrieking against the asphalt as we skidded to a halt.
Concrete split beneath the force. Shards and dust sprayed into the air like shrapnel.
When I looked up, Shirou’s face was pale under his domino mask, lips tight with pain. His black armor had already bloomed across his torso—matte black and shiny silver, polished steel outlining his imaginary abs. His skirt—red again—fluttered down over me like a protective curtain.
Shirou really has impressive reflexes. He’d even had time to conjure his gear.
A thunderous crash stole my attention.
Armsmaster hit the street like a sack of scrap metal. His armor sparked as it bounced once, twice—the second impact leaving a smear of crushed pavement and embedded shoulder plating.
I would usually call dead, but the man was wearing power armor.
Which might have saved his life twice today, because the next moment he was pounced by a swirling mass of serrated metal.
The air howled with friction as it slammed down a limb like a butcher’s guillotine. Asphalt detonated. Armsmaster rolled, barely missing decapitation.
Blades gouged out fist-deep furrows in the road, flinging up chunks of blacktop like cannon fire
Hookwolf.
I had heard the name before—not just the parahuman, but the artifact.
Late-stage Nazi desperation: a theorized anti-infantry weapon cobbled together from scrap and hate. Rotating blades. Spiked treads. A mobile abattoir meant to carve through the Red Army like a threshing machine.
Crude. Inefficient. Designed less for tactical effect than trauma.
Of course a half-literate white supremacist would name himself after a Nazi fever dream.
And of course the man had the powers to match—a living embodiment of pointless brutality wrapped in ideological delusion.
I had fought better machines, but in this moment I had to admit: the fear he generated was well-earned. The name worked. And propaganda, however grotesque, was still a weapon.
Armsmaster rolled, hard and ugly, and came up with his halberd already shifting. His halberd split at the haft, spinning into a heavy gyro-flail.
The Nazi had no intention to give even a moment of reprieve and continued his assault, striking with his serrated limbs.
Armsmaster didn’t strike. He used the heavy ends of the flail to deflect and redirect, desperately trying to force distance.
Smart. Doesn’t commit. Buys time.
We were inside the PRT-controlled territory, between the Rig and the HQ. It wouldn’t take much time for the reinforcement to arrive.
The sound of running made me whirl to the side and see other people hurrying to join the fight.
They weren’t our reinforcement.
A bare-chested man in white tiger mask froze mid-sprint.
“What the fu —!”
Two silver streaks screamed past me. Shirou’s blades. The air cracked as Stormtiger batted them aside with a localized pressure burst, but I was already in motion.
I launched myself at him, boot finding his jaw.
Something halted the impact but he still flew backward, skidding across the street in a trail of blood and shredded rubber.
Did he use air cushion to...?
A shriek of steel warned me—too late.
Clang!
Kamas struck from both sides, blocked by my brother. Sparks flew. Cricket was on us, twin blades spinning, body low and precise.
Shirou met her with a snarl, intercepting her next strike with weird swords held between his knuckles that hummed with murderous intent. He pushed Cricket back and threw his blades at her.
I turned—just in time to see muzzle flashes.
Alabaster was firing.
I slammed a shield formula into my calculator. The bullets hit like hailstones, sparking and flattening against the kinetic veil.
Every impact made the shield visible and echoed in my bones.
“Non-lethal?” I spat. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
For the moment I was pinned into position.
And Stormtiger was already getting up.
***
Emiya
Something was wrong.
His balance was off, there was a delay his reaction time, and it was becoming increasingly harder to stay on his feet. His ears rang, but not with sound—with pressure, like a tuning fork buried in his skull.
Did I hit my head without noticing?
His opponent was taller and stronger than him. He could match her with reinforcement, but the reach...
Emiya stumbled and the girl capitalized, leaving a bloody gash on his shoulder.
A scratch, but she cleaved right through the shroud.
Granted it wasn’t that durable even with Reinforcement, but her kama penetrated too easily.
Enhanced blades then.
He couldn’t read the specifics, much like with Arclance and Jouseter’s weapon, but the girl in front of him moved much too aggressively against an armored opponent. She was sure her short blades would slice through.
In fact... her weapons were chosen specifically so she could go wild without immediately killing opponent with a longer blade.
Her movements were clean. Deliberate. Her blades—short, fast—were optimized not for penetration, but for carving. Lacerations. Distraction. Pain.
The girl wasn’t trying to kill him. That much he understood. She just wanted to slice him up.
Lovely.
He projected three Black Keys between his fingers and flicked them—a fan of silver streaks screaming through the air. But his depth perception was off. His arm twitched too early. The blades veered wide, clattering into a dumpster ten feet to her left.
He saw her smirk—just a twitch of the mouth behind the steel bars of her helmet.
Her eyes never left the Keys.
Perfect.
Shirou surged forward.
She slashed, fast as lightning—a horizontal sweep for his throat—but he ducked low, caught one kama on a crossing pair of Keys, the other caught on his Reinforced armor. The blade penetrated, but didn’t reach his flesh.
They crashed to the ground.
He drove her backward, tackled her against the pavement. Gravel scraped his knees through his pants.
One hand slammed a Key through her left sleeve into the street, pinning her wrist. She howled—soundless—but twisted like a lunatic—thrashing, kicking, trying to headbutt him.
Her other blade gouged along his already cracked ribs. He grunted. The armor held, barely.
He punched her. Once. Twice.
The cage on her face caved. Blood sprayed from her mouth—black and red in the halflight. A tooth bounced off plate on his hand.
And then the air howled.
Boom.
A concussive wave slammed into his side like a cannonball. His breath vanished. The world went white with motion. He was airborne—flung off her by a lateral blast of compressed air.
His back hit a car. The rear windshield cracked on impact. He slid down the hood, coughing blood, ears still ringing.
***
Watching Shirou flying away from Cricket, I gnashed my teeth.
Dammit, I only had four calculators on me! My clothes had only so many pockets!
One of the most frustrating problems with using calculators instead of a Computation Orb was the lack of synchronization. I had to brute force every formula into hardware that was never intended for this use. Which was one of the reasons my calculators didn’t simply burnout but melted.
More pressingly, it made switching between spells more difficult. Add the lack of in-build spell matrixes and that delay became deadly for the purpose of high-speed combat.
Meaning that while I could drop the shield long enough to fire an optical formula at Alabaster, I wasn’t confident I could raise it again before getting perforated.
The cape in question, grinning like a freak, was emptying a handgun in my direction. He stood there languidly like he had all the time in the world. Which, for him, was technically true.
So for now, I was forced into defense, weathering bullets and air blasts. The shield pulsed with every hit, webbing lines of flickering light where the spell matrix thinned.
Luckily, Stormtiger seemed to be eager for payback, instead of continuing his assault on Shirou. Blood stained his chin—good hit earlier—and the mask was ripped against pavement but the strength of his aerokinesis was unaffected. Air rippled around him in shimmering waves, each breath dragging atmospheric pressure into his lungs like he was sipping from a jet engine.
In theory, this was a stalemate. Shirou could hold against Cricket’s small blades with his Brute rating, and I could stall the pair of nazis.
However, that was only until my shield spell reached saturation, or Stormtiger realized it was forward facing and didn’t cover my flanks.
Alternatively, he could switch targets to Shirou, but then I could close the distance to Alabaster and carve him up. The man was conveniently immortal, but taking him out of the fight for several seconds, was all I needed to snipe his partner.
Ultimately, it all came down Hookwolf and Armsmaster. If the Protectorate leader could turn the tides, it would mean our victory.
If Hookwolf got him... I’d have to grab Shirou and fly away. As regrettable it would be to lose our sponsor, the Wards regulations specifically allowed for a retreat if faced with overwhelming odds unless doing so would be in a violation of a direct order.
I glanced at Armsmaster, and saw him fending off Hookwolf by shocking him with his halberd. His armor looked trashed and one hand was hanging uselessly.
My reprieve came in the form of twin blades spinning in the air and flying at Alabaster.
They were deflected by an air blast, but half a dozen more came at a wider arc, turning the cape into a pincushion.
Taking advantage of a lull in the constant barrage on my shield, I dropped it and fired optical formula.
Stormtiger screamed.
The beam lanced his shoulder—skin cooked off in an instant. He stumbled sideways, shrieking, slamming into a car door hard enough to set off the alarm. I hit him again, searing through his thigh.
The stench of scorched flesh hit like a hammer.
The smell of burned plastic told me that I was down one calculator.
Taking a moment, I took stock of the battlefield. Cricket was unconscious. Alabaster was charging.
I pivoted, raised a second spell—no time to aim—and caught him low. He didn’t scream as the beam cut across his gut but his knees buckled.
I dashed forward, boot met nose.
His head snapped back, skull rebounding off the pavement. He didn’t even have time to finish swearing before I slammed Mage Blade into his eye socket. Blood fountained—viscous, fast. He twitched, died, and fell limp.
I snatched his handgun and turned—just in time to see Armsmaster’s halberd go flying.
It missed me by inches.
I took aim at Hookwolf, but before I could fire, two absolutely massive blades crushed into the rotating storm of serrated blades and interlocking saws that was the Nazi-cape, launching him away from Armsmaster.
My handgun was already saturated with mana, penetration formula at the ready, when Shirou ran in front of me from behind with Armsmaster’s halberd in hand. It was glowing green and crackling with electricity.
He threw it like a javelin and it pierced Hookwolf’s metal hide, sticking and making his form dance like a drunken private on Sedantag until he collapsed.
Frustrated, I dropped my hand and shot twitching Alabaster instead.
“Stay down,” I muttered, stepping back and scanning for targets.
The street looked like a war zone.
Pavement cracked and cratered. A fire hydrant hissed a high-pitched scream into the night air, geysering water like a severed artery. One streetlight flickered overhead, painting everything in nauseous strobe flashes.
Armsmaster was down but conscious—his helmet cracked, left gauntlet and pauldron mangled into scrap of uselessly whirling servo-motors. There was no blood, but it didn’t tell much with his armor still on. His halberd was still embedded in Hookwolf.
Stormtiger had crawled into an alley, dragging one burned leg behind him. He wasn’t coming back into the fight.
Cricket was still down. Her cage-mask bent inwards, bloodied and lopsided from Shirou’s blows. Fingers on her one healthy hand twitched occasionally, but not with intent.
And Shirou... my brother stood amid the carnage, breathing like a furnace. His armor flickered at the edges, low on energy. One eye was swelling shut. Blood painted half his face like a war mask.
I wanted to approach him, but...
I shot Alabaster again.
He didn’t look at me. Just watched the battlefield like he expected a second wave.
Then, at last, sirens.
Dozens of them.
Floodlights. The unmistakable whine of PRT tactical vans. PA speakers blaring protocols. Boots on pavement. Shouted callsigns and IFFs.
Just in time.
Comments
Ержан Жусанбаев
Partially. They both have no trouble killing, but the situation never pushed them that far. As for Shirou's trouble: it's her disorientation ability combined with damage from the crush. He also has absolutely no desire to go all out because he doesn't like showing his hand, and the 'no killing' part of the game would force him to surrender more and more intel to the enemies.
Gwwynblaid
Kinda surprised Shirou had as much trouble with Cricket. Sure she was messing with him with her powers but with reinforcement I feel like he should've been more than capable of tearing her in half with his swords. Or was this both Shirou and Tanya adhering to the no killing unwritten rule?
bakapervert
Is this Coil plot? The strike really comes out of nowhere
