Rather than an assassin shirou was more of an entangling type of fighter, he felt comfortable with defending by deflecting and going for a straight counterattack. They didn't come up with particularly groundbreaking ideas to solve these problems. Tohsaka family being a family of strong magus did not realy have any need for methods to increase prana quantity or quality. Still, she came up with an idea and said
"You know, you can just store mana into gems like I do and then use the stored mana 1st before using your own."
This solved the problem to some extent but shirou not being a practitioner of jewel craft can't store mana on his own and needed Rin`s help, plus with his talent, he will likely take years to do that on his own. She asked shirou to forge some pieces of metal in a particular design from the leftover material from his sword, when he asked why she just told him to shut up and wait.
She took whatever had come to her head as a challenge, and she was fired up to attempt it. For the next week, she did different kinds of tests with the sword and Shirou. She concluded that the sword activates only when fed with the boy`s mana and is being used by him. She took the pieces made by shirou and then disappeared while instructing him to not disturb her and all their spars and meetings were cancelled till she said otherwise.
Being a craftsman himself he recognised the fire of inspiration and passion in her, he smiled brightly as he watched the view of her back and her swaying twin tails. The school year ended and a new year began smoothly, the emiya family went on a trip under the guidance of Raiga and Issei was also pulled to the festival by his father.
This time the boys took part in the shooting competition after kiritsugu refused to take part. Issei ended up with a bruised cheek as the rifle flew out of his gasp and slapped him on his cheek due to recoil, shirou did fine but he had more experience with handguns and disliked using rifles so his accuracy was just ok not the 90 per cent it is with his desert eagle.
During this time Rin had shirou undergo several more tests and from them, shirou concluded she was making a mystic code for him and it involved gems. He guessed that it was for the issue they talked about a month ago, still, the charred surface of the workshop and the smell from the basement had him concerned about her and he should be too as Rin being a happy-go-lucky girl is unsuited for being a creation focused magus.
She went back to normal after some time and he assumed whatever it was had failed and didn't ask about it to avoid triggering her. So time passed by and it was October 20 and Shirou's birthday came. They had a small feast at emiya residence with all the friends, rin still stubbornly didn't come with the avoiding people excuse. Rather she came by after midnight and shirou fed her till her cheeks looked like a squirrel. Kiritsugu lightly smiled looking at this and muttered
"At least he has people who will be with him."
After everything was over Rin dropped a wrapped package on the boy's hand and ran away red-faced while shouting
"Happy birthday shirou! I hope it fits you"
Looking at the girl running away to avoid embarrassment as well as to make up for the delay she caused by getting lost in the atmosphere. Rin had to rush home to take care of her mother who was paralysed very badly and had a brain injury making her extremely dependent on others. He remembered coming across the mother and daughter pair in the park as Rin pushed the wheelchair carrying the green-haired woman who gave off a feel like withering grass.
Smiling, he opened the box after unwrapping it and found a pair of black fingerless gloves. The gloves were made from some type of leather that looked like rubber and had a lace-like design on the flat of the hand. A blue gemstone was embedded in the gloves right on the knuckle of the middle finger. The whole gloves looked like motorcycle gloves but the designs and small silver inscriptions made it look like some high-class decoration rather than a usable piece.
He opened his circuits, scanned the gloves, and felt the metal pieces he forged placed inside them and a lot of delicate silver and mercury work on the inside. Understanding that it was a mystic code he didn't mess with it and kept it inside the box. It is common knowledge not to randomly force mana into mystic codes as they are very delicate and precise structures on the inside. (Image of the gloves)
Over the next week, the mystic code needed a lot of calibration performed by Rin and shirou needed some time to familiarise himself with it. The gloves were basically an inferior copy of one of the basic abilities of the tohsaka family jewel craft, the ability to retrieve mana stored inside the processed jewels that were half mystic codes.
Shirou could fit gems filled with his mana on the knuckle of his 3 remaining fingers and thumb, and then the blue gem of the centre would slowly draw mana from them and release them from the palm side. This was the function of the gloves simple but very effective, shirou required training with them to achieve seamless manipulation of the mana released by the gloves as it came from his own circuits. This mystic code would now allow him to use phosphoric fang at full capacity for a long period of time and let him keep his prana reserve intact to perform other magecrafts to give him an edge in combat.
From what he figured out he would need to spend a lot of magical energy to use the emiya family magecraft after getting the crest. Shirou`s time passed by in a blur and the month of December arrived. Rin was absent for the past weeks and came back today so they hadn't met for about 10 days, she said her mother`s health was getting worse and she needed a life support system for some time.
The night was moonlit with a bright and full moon high in the sky, which was covered by sparse noctilucent clouds which gave the sky a blueish glow. Kiritsugu called his son and gestured for the boy to sit beside him. Shirou obliged as it was part of a familiar routine, he knew that his father loved to sit quietly at night and gaze at the moon. He had accompanied him numerous times but most of the time he got lost in his thoughts and fell asleep beside the older emiya.
Expecting it to be like the numerous previous iterations of this event he sat down beside kiritsugu until kiritsugu spoke
"You know, children are supposed to be filled with hopes and dreams. The dreams of children are pure, as in their innocence, they neither know the harshness of reality nor the price they have to pay to achieve their dreams."
Taking in the statement shirou was filled with curiosity and asked
"What was your dream dad?"
Kiristugu didn't look at his son but rather gazed into the moon as the silence stretched on, he had expected shirou to know about his past completely but his vision had only stretched to the last holy grail war, he was shown the various participants action in details he didn't need, like the multiple murders master of caster committed and the mad stalking of berserker and his master. So with a small nostalgic smile on his face kiritsugu said
"I also had a dream, my dream was to rescue every human from suffering. I wanted to be a hero who brought justice to every man."
Shirou looked at his father in childish admiration but here the strings of fate came unwound as the boy was dazzled by the brightness of the ideals but lingering cracks in his psyche from witnessing the dark side of humanity pulled him back and the imminent pressure of survival brought him to the ground so he asked
"Is that dream of yours why you participated in the holy grail war? Was it the what you asked to be fulfilled at the war's end by the grail?"
"Yes, it was" replied kiritsugu and then continued
"You know how that turned out, when I grew up I realised the futility of the dream and an adult can't carry the naive dreams of a child. I adapted it to the real world to save people, save the majority at the cost of the minority."
"See how it lost its essence, hence I staked my hope on the holy grail, the artifact capable of causing miracles in this day and age. I tried to turn the impossible into possible."
After this, there was a strained silence between the father and son as kiritsugu was filled with melancholy and shirou was in deep thoughts. Shirou remembered the info and conjectures about the grail that they had discussed, they suspected the Enizbern family might have deceived kiritsugu about the true purpose of the grail and the grail was fake from the beginning or the grail was somehow corrupted and had become a tool of devastation rather than a machine of miracles. remembering all this shirou let the thoughts that somehow appeared from the depths of his self out, these thoughts felt right as if his own. He got these spontaneous emotions and feelings but never any reason for them so he blamed Clairvoyance for it.
He stated
"I think the happiness of each human comes from inside, only a man himself can create his own happiness. This is the inherent trait in all of us and this is what makes us human, seek your own happiness."
(A/N: and cliffhanger. Well, you guys would immediately get the next chapter so it shouldn't matter. Anyway, this is the signal that this arc is about to end and the fate has already changed.
Kiritsugu doesn't know about the grail because the retarded homunculi didn't say shit to him plus they don't understand human emotions and interactions hence they thought Iri would ask kiritsugu to get the 3rd magic as that's her purpose. They didn't fucking pick up that she was already madly in love with the guy and was like "Whatever he wants I will do it" for years.
So Kiri can only guess about the grail`s corruption and not know the shitfuckery these low iq idiots did. Like imagine some shit like one of the better Infantile beasts or worse candidate were summoned instead on Angra, the timeline would have been fucked. Stupid hiding things habits of magus.
Anyway guys my last 2 weeks were shity so I couldn't post, as I told you somewhere in the comments I went on a trip and that place declared flood alert and then I came back and faced similar rainfall. Then the week before that I was worked around like a mule due to circumstances and this week a cyclone hit my state. Like come on can I not catch a break!!!
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THANKS FOR READING:)