Thompson Contender (トンプソン・コンテンダー, Tonpuson Kontendā^?), also known as Thompson/Center Arms Contender Custom (トンプソンセンターアームズ・コンテンダー, Tonpuson Sentā Āmuzu Kontendā^?), is a Mystic Code used by Kiritsugu Emiya in his career as the infamous Magus Killer.

Characteristics

The Thompson Contender is a special piece of equipment compared to his other weapons, which are armaments for the Magus Killer that can simply be bought and replaced at any time.^[1] It is something that cannot be bought with money that represents Kiritsugu as a magus, a Mystic Code with which he can use magecraft during battle against another magus. It is a one of a kind weapon only for his use that he has favored on many battlefields. It is used in conjunction with Origin Bullets, which are special Conceptual Weapons that utilize Kiritsugu's Origin to its fullest extent by actualizing it within a target. The bullets were created from his first and second ribs on both sides being cut off, extracted from his body, ground into dust, condensed with a craft to preserve his soul, and sealed within sixty-six bullets as their core. The gun and bullets are stored within a rosewood case, which was left with in the care of Maiya during his nine years of retirement. It is 444 mm long and in its base form weights 1700g, with his modifications bringing the total weight to 2060g.

The Contender was developed in 1967 by American company Thompson/Center Arms. It is a break-open single-shot pistol meant for sport shooting. Simple yet powerful, the weapon can, with little modification, be used to shoot various ammunition ranging from .22 LR to rifle bullets. While it is not suited for real combat, it was chosen as his Mystic Code due to it being able to deal the maximum physical damage possible. Its grip and forearm are carved in walnut, making it reminiscent of a dagger in its scabbard. The only visible mechanical parts are the trigger and the hammer, with neither a cylinder nor a slide on the simple exterior, making it similar to the percussion pistols used in the last hours of the Middle Ages. The lack of complex parts between the barrel and trigger allows for high accuracy. Kiritsugu's is customized with a fourteen-inch rifled barrel made for hunting specifications and fitted for .30-06 Springfield bullets. The cartridge of the bullet has a bottleneck structure, and its size and power level on an entirely different level from a handgun bullet. The .30-06 is 10% stronger than the .308 Winchester rifle bullet, and even surpasses the hand cannon class of a Magnum bullet.

While it is a powerful weapon with especially powerful bullets displaying destructive power capable of easily puncturing bulletproof vests and killing large animals in a single shot when discharged from a handgun, its true use lies in the specialized firing pin and additional magical modifications for firing the Origin Bullets.

Origin Bullets

Origin Bullets (起源弾, Kigen-dan^?), containing part of Kiritsugu's soul, actualize his Origin of Severing and Binding (「切断」と「結合」, "Setsudan" to "Ketsugō"^?) upon contact with the target, which can cripple living creatures that are fired upon. There are no wounds or bleeding upon the bullet making contact, but the targeted area or body part appears to be suffering from necrosis. While it seems to have healed properly on the surface, the nerves and capillaries will never regenerate properly and the original function will be forever lost. While it would be bad for a living being to be hit by it, as a Conceptual Weapon, this bullet poses an even graver threat to magi in particular. Out of the sixty-six Bullets, thirty-seven bullets have been used, and not a single one was wasted after completely destroying thirty-seven magi. During the Fuyuki Holy Grail War, he has access to twelve bullets, and Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald becomes the victim of the thirty-eighth bullet. The only person to render it ineffective is Kirei Kotomine due to the fact that he doesn't fight like an orthodox magus.

Origin Bullets will immediately affect magi upon coming in contact with their magecraft. The only practical way for magi to defend against one is to discard all magecraft and defend purely by physical means, but he uses a particularly malicious method forcing the use of magecraft by making it impossible to physically block it. The bullets excel in penetration, and there is little outside of magecraft capable of blocking the specialized hunting rifle unless they are protected by the military-grade armor of an armored vehicle. Being forced to defend with magecraft, the impact of the Origin within the bullet affects everything all the way down to the Magic Circuits of the practitioner. If a magus' Magic Circuits are a high-voltage power cable, then the impact of the bullet is comparatively a drop of water attaching itself to a thickly-placed electrical circuit. Once a conductive liquid becomes attached, the short-circuiting current will destroy the circuit itself, resulting in permanent damage.

The more intense the pressure used to gather densely-packed magical energy for defense, the more active Magic Circuits will be functioning upon the moment of contact, and the more severe the destructive power of the bullet becomes. With an RPG analogy, it can likened to an attack that converts the MP^WP of the user into damage, so someone with a high amount of MP compared to their HP would be overwhelmed and someone with a low amount of MP to their HP would only receive a small amount of damage.^[2] The "Severing" aspect will cause magical energy stored within the Magic Circuits to ignore the paths within the body, flowing chaotically and destroying it in the process. Afterward, the Magic Circuits will be bound together again with the "Binding" aspect, albeit in a chaotic and useless manner, thus rendering them permanently inoperable and destroying the target's magecraft abilities. If used against a magus not actively using their Magic Circuits, such as Kotomine supplementing his own abilities with Command Spells instead of his own undeveloped Magic Circuits, it will target the source of the abilities instead. Targeting the one-use Command Spell, it simply dissipates after being struck by the bullet without affecting Kotomine.

Kiritsugu initially uses normal .30-06 Springfield bullets in order provoke the enemy into believing that those are his strongest weapons. Utilizing the bullets that have an initial velocity 2.5 times higher than 9mm bullets used by his Calico and seven times the destructive power, they become focused upon making sure that they can consciously defend against such an attack and focus most of their magical energy towards that task. When someone is provoked into using their utmost amount of magical energy, the damage is completely fatal. It causes excruciating pain within the body as the nervous system spasms while being broken down. Their internal organs are almost destroyed, and numerous muscles and nerves are damaged. If they do not die instantly, the wounds will quickly prove fatal, and even if healed by a magus, it would be impossible to recover enough to even stand again. Once Kayneth is struck, it takes a great deal of money and an expert puppet master to simply get his hands working enough to move a wheelchair.^[3]

References