This Chapter Teaches you how to Build a Gun

Fuuma vomited on the floor. His hands were shaking. His knees were weak.

“Oh god, I killed him! I failed the first rule of gun safety! Oh fuck! Calm down, calm down. He came in here without permission. He was going to kill me. That’s self-defense, right? Gah, I’m sounding like an American! He’s…gone?”

Dige’s body and blood had disappeared entirely from the personal realm, leaving Fuuma all on his lonesome. His memory refreshed him with something Akira told him. Heroes can come back from the dead after thirty seconds have passed, but not in the exact same spot. That warranted a sigh of relief. That meant he was probably back out in the wilderness, away from his precious work. He was back to his normal plan.

“That’s amazing!” Dige picked the revolver right out of the teen’s hand. “This is exactly what I need! You have to show me how to make this!”

“You’re still here!?”

He was. This puzzled Fuuma, infuriated him, but left him in a particular bind. If he couldn’t remove him via force or death, what was he to do? If he showed him how he made the weapons, would he leave? Would he have time to make his own projects, restock his ammo? The options burrowed into his head, and it led to his body squirming in a way that Dige disapproved of, but it produced positive results, because for all the love for weapons Fuuma had, he hadn’t found someone as interested in them as he was, anything past the wow factor. It gave him some much-needed self-esteem. Finally, his brilliance could be appreciated! He couldn’t help but stand up straighter. So, mentor role? He thought. It couldn’t hurt, could it?

Within the hour, the two had a table ready for practice. Dige watched with his complete attention.

“So here’s how you make a revolver,” Fuuma briefly summarized. “You’ll need to make a frame with a mold. You’ll need high-quality steel for this. The cylinder will be made in a similar fashion, and it’ll need to be carved precisely to make holes for the bullets. After that, you’ll attach the handle like this. You can incorporate wood into this section, and then you’ll use a file to fit everything together. Same idea for the barrel. Make sure everything is aligned at this point, or the gun won’t work. Add the hammer, the trigger, and load it with six cartridges, which are made of copper and lead, and there! A gun.”

The boy slid the fresh hunk of metal across the table and into Dige’s grabable vicinity. There were many questions and many more criticisms the dwarf could weigh against the young smith, namely that the materials he just used were pulled out of a hole in the table with seemingly no bottom, and second, he didn’t actually smith anything. The manifestations in his workshop were doing all of the work. It wasn’t smithing, and it wasn’t artisan. Dige observed the weapon presented with the keenest eyes. His eyes squinted.

“Ayy, it’s so pretty!” Dige’s grin was wide and toothy. “The weight and direction is amazing! I’m going to give it a try.”

"Use the table over there, please."

The dwarf got his own workstation and began the process. He reached into the hole for some metal. He reached into the hole for some metal. There was no metal. It was a hole.

“Boy, how did you make this work!?”

“I don't know. I just think about it!” Fuuma shrugged. “That’s how my power works. This whole place was my gift from Lady Elbeth. I guess you can’t use it.”

“Can’t use it!? Then how am I going to make gun!?” Dige found another table with fewer distractions on it. “Fine, I’ll figure this out myself. Where’s me hammer?”

Dige reached out to delve into the orerrealm for his usual tools. Still, the portal was far larger than his initial intentions. It, in fact, took up the entire wall, and the space around, above, and below, revealing the space’s true form. 

Deep within a mountain, all forms of ore were at the ready. A forge stood red hot and ready alongside flowing cool water, a workbench with every tool Dige was familiar with, and a bed of rocks that only a dwarf would find comfortable. Dige had died several times now, but this time he was sure he was in heaven.

“I could’ve been living here!?” Dige shouted. “I lived in a sewer for grog’s sake!”

“It’s huge,” Fuuma noted, testing the air. The air conditioning was still in effect. “If our spaces combined like this, does that mean we have-.”

“The same power?” Both were in sync, and both were more than happy to laugh about it.

“You, a smith?” Dige laughed.

“You, a gun maker?” Fuuma retorted. What was this world coming to?

It was time to experiment. Dige had the finished product in front of him. He had the formula to make formidable gunpowder. He just had to reverse engineer it. He wouldn’t recreate it with the techniques Fuuma used. He would form it with the methods he was familiar with, the real way with dwarven craftsmanship.

This allowed Fuuma to return to his original duty. With the kunoichi’s weapons, he set up a procedure on his computer to print out a new stack of paper blocks for use as ammo. The process was simple but slow to perform and required hands on board if the machine fell off-model. At the same time, he put on some thick gloves and threaded Tama’s wire from the spool to the rifle, slowly transferring it in a tight and even coil.

The inner mechanics of how this ammo was made weren’t to his knowledge. As far as he knew, there was no knowledge. The room was made for his wish fulfillment, and the weapons work because he specified it. The process was in itself a ritual to allow the material to come into being because, despite his powers, he wasn’t invincible. His magic as a hero only went so far, and this had to be the limitation. Limited weapons, ammo, time, any way to restrict what he could do. That said, the design was not limited. Physics could only be bent so much, but the boy’s ingenuity was limitless. There was a method to what he had created. Could Dige do the same?

“Alright, here ye go.” Dige slid his work across the table. “One blunder caster.”

Fuuma’s eyes tilted up, glazed and half closed, the long night taking its toll. "What the hell is this?"

He inspected the weapon. Even though his methods were more instantaneous than Dige’s hammering, it should’ve taken a week for him to forge something usable. The result was wide and blocky, with a barrel so large he could see the shell hiding inside. Fuuma grumbled. Perhaps this was a good time to stop weaving.

“Let’s test it out here.” Fuuma presented a door that led into a second room. It was as white as the previous room, and featured a firing range with targets on the other side of the long hall. “You can fire at the targets from here. Do you need ear protection?”

“Ear protection?” Dige asked while firing. The hallway cracked with the sound of the ricocheting bullet until the shot found itself lodged into the wall to their direct left. Dige stroked his beard in deep contemplation.

Fuuma threw up his hands. “Screw this! I’m going to bed!” 

The boy began to walk toward the bedroom when Dige grabbed his hand. The dwarf’s visage was shaken but determined, with eyes that sought approval despite the visible age difference. 

“How can I improve the weapon?” Dige asked. “What are your secrets?”

Fuuma accepted the magnum, firmly inspecting it again, attempting to disassemble it further, but found it difficult.

“Based on what I can see,” Fuuma mumbled. “You focused too much on making the steel high quality. It’s missing key components that make a gun accurate. The main thing you’ll need is rifling, which are the spiral grooves in the barrel. Then you’ll want to lighten it up with cheaper materials outside of the main components. The sights are up here to aim and not decoration, and the cylinder should swing out for easier reload, with a little extra space to allow shells to fall when you fire. Do you understand?”

Fuuma expected to turn back to a disgruntled and bitter dwarf, but his eyes were gleaming at him like words from god himself. His reevaluation of his weapon unlocked a cascade of new ideas in his head. The boy never imagined the dwarf could think so much. It made him eye the door again.

“May I see your pistol, boy?” Dige asked politely. “I want to make comparisons.”

“Uh, sure.” Fuuma provided. “But it’s night and day what we’re talking about.”

Looking inside, he wasn't lying. The pistol was a light piece of plastic and carbon fiber with steel and some unfamiliar alloy making up the frame. The devices to conduct the light beam were concentrated in the handle and were a series of computers, mirrors, and ammo storage.

“This doesn’t make sense to me.”

“Well, I wouldn’t expect you to get real technology.”

“No, the mirrors are facing the wrong way, and this block of whatever doesn’t connect to anything. Also, why does this doohicky have this battery sticking out like this?”

Dige continued to pick it apart, slowly shattering the boy's psyche in the process. His resolve was waning. He unholstered his rifle and returned to the firing range, unloading on the target dummies but to no avail. His eyes went wide with terror. The dwarf was right. His weapons were now faulty.

“Anyhoo, I think it’s time for bed.” Dige returned Fuuma’s pistol. “Sleep forges the ideas.”

But Fuuma could barely sleep. He was lost in a never-ending spiral of adjustments and repairs in his mind. He couldn’t fathom how his weapons functioned anymore. He was completely powerless once again, all from the power of suggestion. His magic was against him. Why? He thought. Didn't he follow the mecha artbooks to the letter?

Still, even as he sat awake in his plain bed, his smile never fell away. Despite the shock, he was excited for the next morning.