Fuyuki.
Arriving at the porch of his own home, the man finally sighed a breath he'd been holding in.
He hadn't been able to shake the tenseness off his shoulders. Not since leaving for Europe. Who knows what might've happened in the weeks—months he'd been gone? Then again, that fact the barrier around their small estate remained intact, and that not a single stone was out of place in the garden meant he was worried for nothing.
Not that a former mercenary assassin had the leeway to relax until he'd verified as much with his own eyes.
It's not like he was worried sick at leaving his son to his devices for months on end without supervision. The Fujimura family had promised to look out for the boy, especially the earnest and young Taiga who was also a teacher in his school.
But a threat comes in many forms. And, as a man who made far too many enemies, he couldn't do much but worry. However,
"I'm home."
"Welcome back!"
Hearing his son's voice coming from within the well-lit home, Emiya Kiritsugu managed to loosen up a bit as he slid the main door shut behind him. Making his way towards the kitchen, there he found a young redhead busy with prep work for dinner. Shirou turned and shot him a reassuring nod and smile. One that had the old man softly his own return.
"I see you haven't burned the place down."
"I see you haven't starved yourself before getting back."
"Touché." Kiritsugu walked in and ruffled the top of his adopted son's head. Shirou didn't brush him off embarrassed like most kids his age would at affection. Instead, the boy moved forward to give him a quick embrace. Kiritsugu subconsciously returned it tighter than he'd meant to, but his son didn't comment on it. Breaking away, he patted his son on the back and offered him the bag he'd been carrying. "Here. This is yours."
"What's this?" Shirou asked, taking the gift.
"Souvenirs." Kiritsugu took a seat at the dining table and watched as his son calmly opened up the box. "Silverware and cutlery. I figured you would prefer these over snacks or another set of socks. What do you think?"
Pulling out one of the knives hidden inside, the boy inspected it with the attentiveness no child would ever be seen giving a bladed object. Not unless they planned to use it for… less savoury reasons.
"Pure silver?" Shirou deduced.
"Right on the money. The place selling had marked it up and was pretty pricey, but the make was worth every penny." Kiritsugu watched as Shirou's gaze ran over the sheen of the metal with the practised motions of a blacksmith. After a long minute, the boy asked.
"Since it's silver… can it be used for werewolves?"
"No, kiddo. You'd rather use mercury for that." Chuckling at the strange direction the conversation took, Kiritsugu shook his head. "Despite popular myth, all silver will do is maybe give a couple of them an allergic reaction. Mercurial poisoning on the other hand can cripple them instantly and, if they survive the first shot, weakens them greatly if enough gets into the bloodstream."
"Hm…" Shirou nodded in understanding. Then, instead of gently putting the knife away, twirled the blade in one hand before switching and testing his grip with it in the other. He even tried the backhand position before checking the feel of its balance in either palm. "It's light. Flexible, but also sturdy. I could use this for practice. Thanks, dad."
He smiled in thanks as Kiritsugu welcomed it. Only then did Shirou nod in satisfaction before storing it away… inside a cabinet lined with rows and rows of various blades. All of them were cooking utensils, yes. But at the same time, not one of them were there because the usual cook was a master chef with a penchant for having a specific knife for every single task.
"So, how have things been since I left? Anything I missed out on?"
"Only this," picking up the one he'd been using to slice vegetables, Shirou smiled proudly as he offered the old knife to his old man. It was part of the set he'd given Shirou as a birthday gift last year. "Try snapping it."
Hearing this had Kiritsugu raising an eyebrow. But knowing his son meant for him to understand without words, he did just that.
Putting magical reinforcement through his hands, Kiritsugu put as much force as he could into bending the knife's blade. When the thin metal alloy didn't give away on the first attempt, he then exerted double the force, surprising himself when it finally snapped upon tripling his initial efforts. The shattered knife fragments fell to his palm, not hurting him due to the enforcement on his skin, but he could feel the sharpness regardless. The fragments and handle disappeared into motes of bluish light not a second later.
"Impressive." Kiritsugu smiled at the progress. "How long has that one been put to use?"
"Made it about a couple of days after you left for Germany." The boy casually shrugged but was no doubt proud of his achievement. "Not once did I have to reinforce it as much as I used to."
That, Kiritsugu had to admit, was impressive. It had been four long months since he'd left. For a subject of projection magecraft to last as long as this had?
"And what else have you done for training?"
The boy stepped aside and motioned for his dad to follow. Pulling open one of the nearby cabinets they used to store pots and pans, Shirou tugged on the secret compartment hidden just out of sight on the roof of the cupboard. A whole box of knives, tens—no. Maybe more than twenty of them, each and every one identical to the one he just shattered, were lined in organized rows with various labels taped onto each of them.
Randomly picking up three, Kiritsugu noted the labels on them had dates stamped three months and a week, two months, and a month and a half back. All of them apart from the labels and dates were the exact same knife he'd snapped. All of them were projected copies.
His son rarely smiled wide, but seeing his father's dumbstruck reaction had him beaming ear to ear. "So? Good enough?"
"More than…" Slapping his son's shoulder in approval, Kiritsugu could hardly contain his own sense of pride. "You put me to shame. And here I thought I'd have a hard time showing you the ropes…"
In the modern era of magecraft, the branch of learning was pretty dull and labor intensive. A projection was merely a recreation of an object imagined within the caster's mind. But upon creation, reality would work to undo the new creation. Even Kiritsugu himself, not a fully trained mage, barely able to cast a large spell on his own, struggled in it.
It was unnatural to make something out of nothing. Even if one's od, the magical resource running through one's body was used to pay for the cost, the fact that it was a solid object and not a metaphysical phenomenon that would fade away soon after casting rendered it unable to stay in reality. And, as the slightest external pressure forced it to change to its being, the formula keeping it in shape would weaken and the item lost as soon as it was made.
Most magi preferred using saving their od and mana to use in malleating high-quality resources and materials to enact great feats that would bend reality as a normal person would know it, cheap creation of irrelevant materials that would soon fade away was seen as impractical and wasn't further expanded upon.
In short, зrojection was a waste of time for many.
But in Shirou's case, projection took a different turn. The object he successfully projected lasted long. Far longer than normal, one would think him a professional at the task. The boy was able to recreate any small object almost perfectly. Well, specific items are more so than others.
Kiritsugu took an educated guess that it was influenced by his affinity. That being said, he couldn't be entirely certain what Shirou's affinity was. He was just as much of an amateur in the craft as the boy. Yet, he had had a sneaking suspicion Avalon had something to do with it.
The relic was no doubt influencing Shirou for better or worse. The boy himself admitted that projecting tools of a long, cylindrical nature was far easier compared to round or box-shaped objects. When it came to metal shapes, he seemed to gravitate to forms akin to blades. Or perhaps a sword.
"Have you been practising your other skills while I've been gone?" when the boy nodded in silence, Kiritsugu decided to test him. Drawing out his own hidden pocket knife, he said. "Alright, show me."
The boy took the knife in hand and Kiritsugu watched as the boy's eyes bore metaphorical holes staring into them.
"You've used it to cut a cable and… hotwire a German truck? Held tight to it when you thought you saw an enemy magus pass you by… in a train station. Sliced open a letter in your hotel room… Threatened a thug who was… trying to mug a Romanian teenager. And… stabbed a man through during a shootout. You were in Bulgaria… Ngh…"
"Careful, easy." He managed to grab onto his shoulders and hold him steady. "Breathe and concentrate, hear me?"
The boy took a gulp of air to settle himself down and nodded. Being fed so much info yet so vaguely, must've been draining. But he pulled through and managed to right himself.
Structural analysis. Simply put, it was a skill that allowed one to study and understand the make and inner workings of an object with just a glance. The one thing that made it unique in Shirou's hands was that, when he tried hard enough, he could see not only how it worked but what the object had gone through.
Seeing it, feeling it, emulating it, living it. Recollecting an object's memories or past, in a sense. Such a skill, partnered with Projection magecraft, allowed the boy the ability to create and reinforce a projected object to last longer than it would normally be able to. As though he could impart the object's history into his mental image, and thereby project that as well into reality, giving it a tangible form grounded not just in physicality but also spiritually.
Kiritsugu was impressed. It took the boy collectively a couple of years to get the hang of running mana through his body, and less than a year to get projecting. Now, with him practising the basics of structural analysis, it took him less than six months to master a limited form of mass production.
Shirou's talent… it was too good to be considered normal. He wasn't a descendant of a magus and barely had the Magic Circuits to produce competent magecraft. At most, the boy would reach the level of a first-generation magus, not even close to being acceptable enough for education within the Clock Tower. He was weak, yes. But he had potential. Not that Kiritsugu would allow him, but Shirou didn't have intentions to go down that road anyways.
His growth… it was an anomaly. But Kiritsugu didn't think it was a bad one.
"You've made so much progress that I'm tempted to actually step up the training." The boy's eyes seemed to suddenly shine with recognition. "Then again, our promise was for when you reached your eighteenth birthday. Before we move on to the practical application."
"R… right." Shirou deflated at that but understood. Just a little under a year left, but all the same, he looked impatient.
Kiritsugu couldn't fault him. The boy had a goal in mind, far more ambitious than his peers. Yet, there was a certain danger involved in practising magecraft. More so when the training Kiritsugu had in mind would require attaining a legitimate relic of a weapon. One Shirou could practice his projection on for real.
"Don't worry so much over it, kid. You've made progress." Ruffling the boy's red hair, he comforted him in as fatherly of a way he could. "Projecting this much… that's not something most magi can do at your age. Especially in just a few months. Did you hit a breakthrough or something while I was out?"
"Well…" The boy sheepishly scratched his cheek. "I… sorta… tried looking through your old stuff in the shed. And… found something… Something that just… clicked."
The adult raised an eyebrow at that. Especially since he'd forbidden his son from… accessing a couple of things he'd stored away in that shed.
"It was… kind of an accident. I was looking for the spare pipes we hid up on the higher shelves. I… kind of slipped and fell and brought a few boxes down with me. I wasn't hurt so it's fine!"
"I can tell that." He chuckled. Seeing the boy act like a child was rare. But he was being patient still. "And? What did you find?"
"An old gun. A pistol. The one that only had room for one large bullet."