I had a problem.

  I needed a weapon.

  True, I had made do with my standard issue sidearm and even customized it to suit myself, but that had only been to change the grip to make it more comfortable. And with the start of canon rapidly approaching in all of its glories and all of its horrors, it was high time I actually created a weapon for myself. Even if I just used it for half a decade before putting it on a wall in my office, it was now more than just a matter of curiosity, it was practically a necessity. Team SSTO might be shaping up to be our field team, but there was more than a high chance that I’d need to be deployed into the field at some point in the not too distant future. A tiny little handgun wouldn’t do much to an Alpha Grimm out in the wild.

  Plus I was a Professor for Brother's sake! Every other Professor at the Academy had their own unique weapon. I wanted one too. And I had the perfect idea for what I was going to create…or rather, recreate. That was one of the upsides of knowing about multiple different universes, I had entire worlds to plunder ideas from.

  Once upon a time I had been a fan of a certain game series, and whilst almost every weapon was of typical fantasy fare (swords, axes, shields and bows), there was one that stood out above all the others as utterly unique. A repeating-and-or-automatic crossbow with a carved wood stock, four limbs, silver and brass embellishments and a retractable bayonet. A masterpiece of craftsmanship called ‘Bianca’.

  Now, my plan had several issues. One of which was that it had now been nearly fifteen years since I’d even played a Dragon Age game (including the twelve years I’d been in Remnant), so I only had half remembered memories to go on as to what Bianca looked like. The second was that I was in no way shape or form a weaponsmith, so would undoubtedly require aid to make said weapon.

  Happily, I had just the aid in mind….

  ________

  As with the other Kingdoms, the Kingdom of Atlas had a total of four Huntsfolk Association Academies. Three combat schools which fed into one of the ‘Four Academies’.

  In Atlas, the combat schools were Calypso Academy, (which serviced the cities of Mantle and Crossed), Pleiades Academy (which serviced Essen and Dormir), and Helios Academy (which serviced the City of Atlas alone). Calypso and Pleiades were boarding schools much like Atlas Academy, and Helios was a day school. Cinder was grateful for that. It meant that she could still eat breakfast and drink coffee with her Dad in the morning before heading out for the day, and be home that evening to eat dinner and snuggle on the sofa with the cat.

  Perfect.

  But it was not Helios’ workshop that she was going to today. As great as it was, it paled in comparison to where she was going today.

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  It had been years since she had been to the Atlesian Military Headquarters, and even when she visited regularly she had never been allowed in the Workshop and Armoury. Admittedly, that was down to being both a child (with all of the desire to play with the cool looking weapons) and an Atlesian child (with all of the stereotypical desire to play with explosives) to boot, but all that was about to change.

  It was certainly a surprise when her Dad had asked for her help to build himself a weapon. Surprising in both the sense that, firstly he was actually building one, and secondly he had asked her for help. He’d shown her his plans, and she’d taken some time to try and figure out how to make it work.

  She had only finished creating her own weapon a few months ago, after all, and was still in the ‘weapon-making’ mindset. Mercury had quite quickly designed his weapon. His Talarian Striders were in essence combat prosthetics, ones tailored explicitly to his unusual kick-boxing style of fighting. But he was also outfitting them for day-to-day use. “It’s no good having legs that can break a Grimm’s skull if I can’t walk down the street without breaking the street” was his explanation. But Cinder was fairly certain it was just an excuse to have only one set of prosthetics.

  She herself had originally considered a greatsword, like those bedtime stories her Dad had told her as a kid. Of Arthur and his Knights sallying forth to slay the monsters and save the day, using Excaliburn to cleave the heads off of Grimm with a single swing before falling back to his castle to feast and celebrate their glories.

  But if she was being honest with herself, she didn’t really have the build to do that. And it wasn’t how she preferred to fight. She was light on her feet and liked to deal with foes from a distance, not some hulking bruiser one-handing a zweih?nder.

  But she had nonetheless taken inspiration from some of Dad’s other stories. Tales of the dashing Locksley the Robin and his ‘Men of the Hood’ stealing from the evil Sheriff to feed the poor, of bold Miss Croft raiding tombs and caves searching for lost treasure and history whilst killing long forgotten Grimm, and of tragic Sir Tristan of the Rounds who had inadvertently started off the dominoes that would lead to his King’s death by walking away.

  So she had begun to construct a bow. A bow that could shift into a staff (Heh. A Bow-Staff) with lightning dust cattle prods at each end, and she had given it the name: Failnaught.

  She had taken her weapon along with her. Not only to get herself used to taking it everywhere, but also to show off a little bit. Dad was busy with his work for Mister Ironwood and the Academy, so he hadn’t had the chance to see her precious Failnaught in action. That would change today! She’d help make his weapon, and then they’d make liberal use of the shooting range, really make a day of it!

  So it was with a smile that Cinder entered the Workshop of the Headquarters, taking a moment before she moved to claim an area for her and her Dad to indulge in the near heavenly smell of dust and metal and plastic and oils that filled the air, and to lose herself in the sounds of metal on metal and practice gunfire.

  This was going to be fun.

  In the end, it took several weeks and more late nights than I cared to count, but I finally had a working weapon.

  I had unashamedly opted to splurge a little on materials. Menagerian Snakewood for the stock, Pellan Brass and Valean Silver for the embellishments, Vacuan Steel for the bayonet and limbs, and a very high grade sight that Ironwood had provided me once he’d heard about what I was creating. I would need to custom make each and every bolt, but that was fine. Whilst it might sound overly smug, Blue Room resources were quite extensive and mass producing ammunition under the radar for one of their members was no issue at all.

  And the first time I heard a bolt ‘thnk’-ing into a target, I am almost certain I had a gleeful smile on my face, one matching the one on Cinder’s face. Seeing her cheering and applauding when it dawned on her that we had finally got my weapon working was truly a wonderful sight, and when she inevitably kicked my ass in a shooting competition, she was thankfully not too smug..

  Unfortunately, it was then that I reached the last problem I had, one that was thankfully far more minor than the others. I worked with someone called Bianca, so using the name was straight out unless I wanted to deal with several awkward questions, so I took a leaf out of Mister Zaeed Massani’s book.

  I called her ‘Jessie’.