Kirunax
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Chapter 16
🕑 Added 2025-04-30 00:22:10 +0000 UTCEmiya
The elevator doors slid open with a soft mechanical hiss, revealing a sealed corridor lined with reinforced glass. Beyond it, Armsmaster’s workshop stretched out — not sprawling, but dense, compact, alive with purpose.
Emiya stepped inside without hesitation. Tanya lingered half a step behind him, surveying the space with cool calculation.
It was a workshop, but it wasn’t spacious. Every inch was calculated, compressed, miniaturized for maximum effect. Workbenches folded into walls, tool racks retracted on sliding rails, diagnostic stations sat layered above fabrication units, sharing power and space without a centimeter wasted.
Efficiency — that was the first impression. Brutal, unrelenting efficiency.
Not just in layout, but in spirit.
Devices rested on secured benches: force projectors, compressed sensor arrays, adaptive armor plates. Emiya's eyes swept over a line of compact weapons — palm-sized assemblies of coil housings, acceleration chambers, reinforced nozzles.
He recognized the basic design from shape alone. Kinetic launchers, almost certainly.
Designed to unleash high-velocity projectiles — lightweight enough for integrated use, heavy enough to matter in a fight.
The technology in the room wasn’t just advanced. It was distilled, refined to essentials — as if every extra gram, every unnecessary feature, had been systematically hunted down and stripped away.
Compact. Ruthlessly streamlined.
Armsmaster had engineered an entire arsenal not to be bigger, but smaller. Sharper. Faster.
Tanya moved deeper into the workshop, pausing near a row of armor components: sleek chestplates and gauntlets with adaptive reinforcement nodes visible along their seams. They were not modular in the swappable sense — no quick-change gimmicks. Instead, they were built to shift internally, adjusting defense or utility based on the operator’s needs without compromising structural integrity.
Emiya didn’t move beyond the entrance. The word workshop demanded ingrained respect from him. Caution.
His gaze cataloged everything:
The exits.
The choke points.
The concealed weapons built into the environment.
He felt the hum of shielded energy banks through the floor — compact capacitors, clustered against the walls, feeding everything without ever breaking the workshop’s closed-loop of function.
Inevitably, Emiya’s eyes were drawn to the centerpiece: the halberd, upright in a stabilization cradle, its surface gleaming under surgical lights. Compact yet heavy with potential, the weapon embodied its creator’s philosophy — a spear that could act as a blade, a scanner, a firearm, a transmitter.
Emiya had already traced it, recreated it within his Reality Marble.
But standing here, facing the original in the place of its creation, he understood something deeper.
Every line, every seam, every unseen layer of that weapon had been fought for — shaved down, compressed, made to carry more weight without collapse. It wasn’t a weapon born of extravagance, but of obsession.
A craftsman’s prayer: to do more with less, again and again — no matter the cost.
The workshop smelled faintly of heated metal and polymer — the scent of endless late nights spent forging, refining, pushing every design tighter. The lights were tuned to a perpetual mid-morning brightness, steady and timeless.
No windows broke the walls. No clocks marked the time.
Here, life was measured in iterations. In finished projects, not passing hours.
It wasn’t just a lab. It wasn’t even just a forge.
It was a life, compressed into steel and circuits and purpose.
Armsmaster himself stood at a console, entering command strings with the familiarity of a man breathing. He didn’t glance back at them. He didn’t need to.
This room — this fortress — was his true body — and every screen, tool, and machine responded to him like muscle and nerve.
This — this dense, relentless pursuit of improvement — was Armsmaster’s real existence.
Emiya studied it all, absorbing the shape of the life built here.
And for just a moment, he thought he understood the man better than any other cape.
"Stay close," Armsmaster said, voice clipped and impersonal.
Emiya nodded silently and followed Tanya — the hum of machines behind him like a heartbeat, steady and unceasing.
Armsmaster pivoted away from his console, half of his face hidden behind his visor. "Your copy vanished the moment I began taking it apart," he stated bluntly, facing Emiya. "Just as you warned."
"And you still went ahead with it," Emiya replied flatly. "At night. Without asking."
"I needed to see what would happen," Armsmaster replied unapologetically. "Your ability represents something unprecedented—instantaneous recreation of complex Tinker technology. Until now, only Dragon could replicate tinkertech, and even she requires significant time and effort. You don't."
Emiya shifted uncomfortably, a faint annoyance flickering across his features. Tanya, noting his reaction, smoothly interjected, "A considerable advantage for both of you, wouldn't you agree? Efficiency in weapon maintenance alone makes this worth pursuing."
Armsmaster nodded. "More than that. If he can internalize new iterations as I design them, I could disassemble older builds, reclaim the materials, and rely on him to deploy the archived versions as needed."
Emiya didn’t bother hiding his skepticism. "You’re making assumptions. I don’t fabricate things. I reproduce them. Replicas, drawn from what I’ve internalized, and only when the structure and function make sense."
Armsmaster tilted his head slightly, clearly processing that information. "Explain your parameters."
Emiya paused. He glanced at Tanya. Her gaze was level, silent and demanding.
"I don’t copy things by reverse-engineering them like a Tinker might," Emiya said at last. "I work off impression. Structure, material, purpose. If it holds together as a single concept, I can recreate it."
"So you store designs mentally."
"Something like that. But it has to be coherent. The more complex or contradictory the object is, the harder it becomes."
"My halberd qualified."
"Barely," Emiya admitted. "It has a clear purpose. A weapon, with focused and elegant design. I could follow its intent. Your halberd was surprisingly... honest."
That gave Armsmaster pause. Tanya smiled slightly.
Armsmaster paused thoughtfully, crossing his arms. "Can you retain multiple versions of the same device? Different iterations?"
Shirou hesitated. Tanya shot him a pointed look, silently urging him forward. "Yes," Emiya finally admitted. "But only if they're meaningfully distinct. Small tweaks aren't enough—major structural or functional differences are required."
"Could you project individual components rather than the whole?" Armsmaster continued, clearly cataloging possibilities.
Emiya considered this, more engaged despite himself. "Yes. Components, individual modules—as long as they have clear identities as objects."
"Interesting." Armsmaster seemed genuinely intrigued now, tapping his gauntlet thoughtfully. "How about complexity? Any upper limits?"
Tanya’s gaze flicked between them, a faint glimmer of something like approval flashing across her expression.
"Complexity doesn't matter if I can understand it," Emiya explained carefully. "But that’s only where it concerns objects conceptually defined as ‘swords’ or close enough. Basically, if it has a blade then I easily replicate it.”
“Wouldn’t that mean that you can easily recreate a rifle with a bayonet?” Tanya asked.
“No,” Emiya instantly denied, “Because conceptually it is still a gun. Bayonet is only an attachment. And before you ask, an inbuild bayonet doesn’t change anything. The object itself would have to be a bayonet first, and a gun second from the moment of conception to qualify for Unli... to count as sword. You would need something like a spear that was then shaped into a gun. And it has to be a fully functional spear for me to record as well as fully functional gun – otherwise what’s the point?”
He had seen various examples of gunblades throughout his life. None of the really united the concepts. It did help that gunsmiths were almost never bladesmiths, and thus parts of the those gunblades were forged by different people, further muddying the concept of creation. A singular maker would be a boon.
“Those kinds of combined arms are usually one or the other. If it’s mainly a sword, then all I record is a sword, and the gun part is flawed and hollow. If it’s mainly a gun, then I simply can’t record it,” he finished.
Suddenly, it struck Emiya that he could perhaps create something fitting using Alteration. Weapons stored within his Reality Marble were already conceptually defined, so using Alteration to carefully tease out a new form – without disrupting the core concept – would theoretically allow him to add new function. It would be a careful balancing act, but Emiya thought it was feasible.
Problem was, the vague idea of a design he had in mind would be useless for Tanya, despite what she obviously hoped for. The ammo would still be a problem. The whole point of creating a gun that way was to add options to his arsenal. Meaning that the gun would have to shoot blades in some form, without the use of a chemical propellant.
A blade that fired swords — absurd on paper, but not impossible.
And interestingly enough, it was something that Emiya himself could achieve. The trick would be to apply reinforcement to the spring corking the hammer – and the hammer itself – to increase the strength of a blow the ‘bullet’ receives. It was the same trick he used with his bow – reinforcing his arms for a quick draw and then reinforcing the drawn bow to amplify its potential energy.
The result would be something akin to a nail gun. All that would be left is to design an appropriate ‘sword-bullet’ he could project directly into the chamber.
Emiya stopped himself. Not now.
Shaking off the sudden bout of creativity, he continued, “It's the conceptual clarity that's essential. And the further it strays from the concept of ‘sword’, the greater the strain on me. Something that isn’t a ‘sword’? I can’t record it."
"So it’s not engineering," Armsmaster said. "You interpret the object by function."
"More or less," Emiya agreed. It was close enough, and surprisingly insightful. "If it doesn’t have a unified idea behind it, it slips apart.”
“I routinely see you creating things that aren’t swords. You aren’t going to tell me a plate is just a round sword without a hilt or edge, are you?” Tanya raised an eyebrow.
Emiya chuckled, “I don’t need to record an object in my... I don’t need to record it to be able to recreate it. Structural Analysis and my own memory provide a close enough of an approximation for a concept of an object to emerge. To a functional degree at least. I am still limited by own understanding, so something like a plate or a... cotton-candy machine is doable but something like that,” he pointed at futuristic drone hovering in the corner of the workshop, “is not. I just understand swords easily, so that’s why am able to record the halberd.”
Armsmaster inclined his head, “The fact that my weapon has a blade allowed you to bypass its complexity. Am I correct?”
“The fact that your weapon is a halberd allowed me to do so. Sticking blades on your gadgets won’t work if they aren’t fully functional in that capacity as a whole,” Emiya stressed, trying to impress the importance of a ‘concept’ on the man with no education in magecraft.
Armsmaster tilted his head, recording the information without visible reaction.
It did not escape Emiya that he was basically explaining magic to an engineer without admitting to the fact.
That’s what I get for pretending to be a parahuman.
It was somewhat amusing, if annoying, and Armsmaster was oddly receptive to it.
The man moved to one of the wall racks with mechanical precision. Without hesitation, he retrieved a small device — a compact, angular tool no larger than Emiya’s palm — and extended it toward him.
"Replicate this," Armsmaster said.
Curiosity trumping annoyance, Emiya took the device in hand.
Weight. Density. Energy signature.
His fingers flexed around the casing, instinctively adjusting as his mind opened the pathways he had carved long ago.
He fed a trickle of magical energy through his palm, a thin line of perception bleeding into the object’s structure.
As his it flowed into the device, faint green circuitry-lines bloomed across its internal structure — not light, not energy, but a mapping only he could see. They traced seams, lattices, pressure points. Connections lit up in sequence like a guided tour of function and failure.
Layers peeled away: external casing, reinforced subframe, power transmission lines, microcapacitors embedded deep within. The device unfolded before him, not physically, but conceptually — a three-dimensional map of mass and function laid bare to his senses.
Structural Analysis complete.
Localized energy amplifier. Kinetic discharge, focused. Practical. Understandable.
It was not a blade. No killing edge. No martial soul. Just a machine. That made it fragile, harder to grasp. Without direct contact, the image would degrade.
For swords, the Unlimited Blade Works kept the record. For something simpler, memory was enough. For this? Only active analysis made the projection viable.
Emiya exhaled once, low and controlled, and let the projection flow. His magic circuits warmed and sculpted the impression into form. A second device solidified in his free hand — identical in weight, texture, and purpose.
Armsmaster collected both devices without comment, placing them into scanning cradles. Ceiling drones whirred to life, flooding the bench with scanning fields and diagnostic overlays.
Tanya watched silently from behind, hands clasped lightly behind her back. Her gaze lingered a fraction longer than necessary — not puzzled, exactly. Measuring. As if she were weighing some invisible scale of oddities.
"Material fidelity: identical," Armsmaster announced. "Internal structure: identical."
“They are not,” Emiya refuted but then paused. This device wasn't bound to legend nor was it mystical in nature — it was just built. The complexity was throwing him off. It was less than the halberd, but still beyond anything else he had ever traced. If it was a mystic code the intricacy alone would all but guarantee that his copy would be a diminished replica. But there was no spellwork woven into the device. He understood enough of the device to be able to replicate it, but it also gave him a good look at how much he didn’t understand about it. With Mystical it would mean that his copy would degrade. With mundane... The projections were usually perfect.
What side of the coin did tinkertech fall on?
“At the very least, you should test it more thoroughly. The readings you see do not necessarily paint a full picture. The ‘form’ may look perfect, but it may also be a hollow shell.” Emiya said eventually, “And I don’t mean ‘hollow’ literally,” he clarified.
“You are saying that my scanners are insufficient, and the functioning of the amplifier may be compromised,” Armsmaster frowned.
“Essentially,” Emiya nodded, “Besides a drop in functionality—or complete failure—the fastest way to check is destructive testing. If my projection is more fragile, chances are it is overall flawed or diminished.”
“I see. Give me more for later testing,” Armsmaster extended his hand.
Emiya shook his head, “Too complex. I can’t project it from memory – I need to literally hold it to replicate. The form and function are clear enough, but not the underlying principles of the device.”
Armsmaster silently passed him the original.
“It is also straining. I’ll give you only one more if you still want that halberd,” Emiya said dryly, giving Armsmaster a new projection.
The man nodded, and Emiya projected focused on projecting the halberd.
Tanya’s curious voice came from behind him, “Would a better understanding of the science behind Armsmaster’s tech improve the quality or reach of your replication ability?”
“Likely so,” Emiya shrugged and only then caught on the implications. His eyes widened as he looked at his little sister.
There was a wide, satisfied smile on her face.
"Then it would benefit both of you to collaborate more closely. You, Armsmaster, gain easier maintenance and rapid prototyping capabilities. Shirou, you deepen your understanding of technology. Win-win," she said, her voice full of serene and deceptive innocence.
Armsmaster nodded firmly. "That aligns with my interests. Armiger, regular analytical sessions on new tech prototypes could streamline my production capacity greatly."
"I didn't say I'd do that," Shirou replied, mildly defensive.
"Oh, come now," Tanya chided gently, putting a reassuring vice grip on his shoulder. "Surely you, of all people, can appreciate the value of collaboration between craftsmen. A tutoring from an engineer such as Armsmaster is invaluable for an aspiring repairman. After all, you like building things, don’t you, big brother?"
Shirou gave her a weary look but slowly nodded, grudgingly relenting. "I suppose, occasionally, it wouldn't hurt to try."
I really should learn how to say ‘no’ to her. But with how rarely she asks for something and with how I’ve been ignoring her requests to play nice with the Wards...
Emiya wasn’t sure exactly why she was so insistent on this, but he could play along. For some time at least.
"Good," Armsmaster concluded decisively. "I'll set up scheduled sessions. This is it for tonight."
A monitor on the wall came to life and an image of a woman appeared. For a moment, Emiya thought it was real, but then his eyes noticed the touch of artificiality. Computer generated.
There was a fraction of a moment where the woman seemed surprised, but then the image flickered, correcting itself.
“Colin, I see you are spending time with the kids,” the woman smiled warmly, her voice familiar to him.
“Dragon,” Armsmaster nodded.
Ah, yes. His name is Colin.
With how rarely it was used, Emiya had already forgotten.
“Good evening, Dragon,” Tanya politely greeted the woman.
“Hello, Tanya. How have you been?”
“I am well, thank you for asking.”
“I am sorry to interrupt, I just wanted to chat with Colin. I’ll get out of your hair now.”
“There is no need. We were just about to go home. You are free to discuss your business with Armsmaster.”
Dragon frowned, “Are you two going back alone?”
“We will find someone to drive us back. If not, we will be just taking a stroll.”
“It’s quite late, Tanya. I am sure Colin will be able to take you home.”
“I have a patrol scheduled...”
“Colin, it’s almost midnight. You can go on patrol after you have safely driven you kids back,” Dragon stressed with no small amount of force.
Emiya recognized the notes.
“Understood.”
At the very least, Emiya wasn’t the only man tonight who was forced to do something he clearly didn’t want to by a willful woman.
Comments
Hooli4ss
Tanya has them wrapped around her finger lol . But honestly if Shirou makes her some type of gun…sheeesh !
Ержан Жусанбаев
Yes.
A tired road
Can’t wait for more, do you think we’re going to get any more interactions with the Dallon sisters in the near future?
Christian E. Y.
Just wait until they realize his reinforcement can help with the nanothorn project by making the whole thing more durable
