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Spontaneous Weapon Creation

"None of your skills will be of any use against a Servant. In that case, at least imagine it. If it is an opponent you cannot match in real life, defeat it with your imagination. If you cannot defeat it yourself, imagine something that you can defeat it with."
Archer, to Shirou Emiya, Fate/stay night

You're up against the Big Bad, and he enjoys Playing with Fire. However, just burning stuff is a bit dull. So what does he do? He uses his pyrokinesis and creates himself a sword out of fire.

But fear not! The Hero has a similar trick up his sleeve. From out of nowhere he's able to conjure a sword of his own and take the Big Bad on blade to flaming blade.

The idea behind this trope is a character with the power to create a weapon. This can either be the power being to create or otherwise summon a weapon, or creating the weapon is but one application of a power they already possess. As in the example above, one character could conjure a weapon out of thin air, while the other created his weapon by clever application of his fire control. Sometimes the character can turn this power Up to Eleven to create a Storm of Blades.

One common use of this trope, especially among the second type, is frequently seen in Tournament Arcs where weapons would otherwise be banned. The person who crafts the weapon will be use Loophole Abuse to claim that, since what they're doing is simply an extension of the power they came in with, it's allowed. It usually is.

People who do this will generally possess Elemental Powers. Compare Natural Weapon, which can also fall into the Tournament Arc Loophole Abuse noted above. Contrast Flaming Sword, which is usually an otherwise metal sword that's on fire, rather than a sword made out of fire. Can often come about by characters who possess Imagination Based Superpowers. Shapeshifter Weapon is the one formed from the wielder's body.

Compare Instant Armor and its subtropes for when this sort of thing gets used for defense instead of offense. See also Elemental Punch, when weapons are not in use. A form of Shaping Your Attacks and may or may not involve a Person of Holding. See Summon to Hand for calling existing objects as opposed to creating them — weapons are the most popular application.


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    Anime & Manga 
  • A few times in One Piece, with Logia users Aokiji and Kizaru Shaping Their Attacks.
    • Aokiji is An Ice Person, and by taking a few blades of grass and breathing onto them, he freezes himself up an Ice Saber.
    • Kizaru manipulates light, essentially enabling him to wield a Laser Blade.
    • Baby 5 has the Arms-Arms Fruit, a Devil Fruit that allows her to turn herself into various weapons.
  • Hiei in YuYu Hakusho Plays with Fire, and at one point uses this ability to create a sword made out of Dark Fire. He's reluctant to use this more than he can help though, since it reminds him too much of Kuwabara's Spirit Sword, which is, or more accurately became, an example of this trope as well (it started as him drawing the true power out of a piece of a blessed wooden sword, which became his Spirit Sword's handle; as he got stronger he eventually could just pull the sword out of midair, without the chunk of wood). Kuwabara shows the most flexibility with this power, his Spirit Sword can stretch lengthwise to increase its reach or expand sideways to flatten people (called the Spirit Flyswatter). Bui could make axes and Karasu could make bombs. Touya can makes swords out of ice.
  • Enryu from Tower of God can create thousands of spears out of Shinsoo and let them fall down onto his enemies.
  • When dueling Touma in A Certain Scientific Railgun, Mikoto Misaka uses electromagnetism on the sand and dirt around her to create a Whip Sword out of iron sand.
    • Harumi Kiyama briefly draws an energy blade while fighting Mikoto.
  • Alchemists from Fullmetal Alchemist can transmute weapons using the mass of floors or walls, although not many alchemists ever actually do so.
  • The "sword of one's heart" from Revolutionary Girl Utena might qualify. It's a regular old steel sword, but you draw it out of your own chest (or your Love Interest and/or creepy stalker figure does it for you).
  • Many characters in Beet the Vandel Buster can conjure weapons called Saiga. Beet is unique in that he can create five, which were given to him by the heroes he admired.
  • Bleach
    • Quincies are capable of producing weapons out of reishi, the spiritual equivalent of "atomic particles". They usually need a physical object as a focus for creating the weapon and the weapon itself tends to be an Energy Weapon, traditionally an Energy Bow. However, they can generate these weapons whenever they feel like doing so. Advanced Quincies can make their weapons a form of Hard Light that makes the weapon look solid and physical.
    • When in his resurreccion and segunda etapa forms, Ulquiorra is capable of producing a lance made of energy whenever he likes.
    • Fullbringers are similar to Quincies in that they use a physical object as a focus to producing weapons. However, Fullbringers tend to be more limited in the range of weapons they can produce, usually producing the same weapon every time. Their weapons become physical rather than energy.
  • Dragon Ball Z
    • Krillin's signature attack (though many of the other Z-Warriors can do it too) is the Destructo Disk—a concentrated disk of Ki energy thinned to a razor sharp tip. Frieza and Cell also have a remote-controlled variation.
  • While she may appear to be an example of conjuration, Erza from Fairy Tail is , in fact, weapon summoning. She has everything stored in a separate location and brings it up to her in battle. The straighter example is Gray and his Ice Make magic.
  • The Pandora from Freezing does this with their Volt Weapon.
  • In Puella Magi Madoka Magica most Puella Magi possess the ability - each summons a specific kind of weapon, though they can apparently be created in any size or quantity. Homura is an exception, having a Bag of Holding she must stock manually, but she switches to summoning a bow in the epilogue.
  • Cures Rouge, Lemonade, Mint and Aqua of Yes Pretty Cure 5 Go Go create weapons out of their elements - a ball of fire, energy whips, energy disks/barrier and water bow and arrows.
  • In Smile Pretty Cure!, Cure Beauty can make an ice sword, which she used to fight Joker.
  • Galvatron does this, supposedly through pure Energon power, in Transformers Cybertron.
  • The Sacred Black Smith: Luke can create metal swords on the spot but the process is a little more involved then snapping his fingers. That's why he needs Cecil to protect him in the meantime.
  • The titular character from Toriko can do this, creating knives and forks of varying sizes composed of Appetite Energy which he uses as projectiles, the latter is also used as a shield.
    • Chin Chinchin also creates a spoon, also of varying sizes and composed of Appetite Energy, to scoop things up, use as wings and shields and even make a dome to seal himself and his enemies inside.
    • Coco can use his his poison to create weapons, such as a sword, a bow and arrow, a spear and even a suit of armor, by combining said poison with the clotting agents from his blood.
  • This is a fairly common trait for super robots, ranging from growing a drill on your forearm to fully functional melee weapons such as axes or swords. Then again, this is just another way they like to screw over the laws of physics.
  • In Naruto the Sound Ninja Kimimaro and Kidomaru can do this by creating weapons out of bone and hardened spider's silk respectively.
  • InuYasha: Sesshoumaru spends a lot of the manga searching for a sword that is suitable for channelling his vast power. He causes a lot of trouble by thinking the only weapon strong enough is his brother's sword Tessaiga. Eventually, it's revealed that Sesshoumaru has possessed all along the power to spontaneously create a sword out of his very soul as the physical manifestation of his true power. However, very specific conditions have to be met before Sesshoumaru can unlock this power and it's only a one-off ability that creates a permanent, physical sword.

    Comic Books 
  • As noted in the description, the rings of the Green Lantern can create anything the wearer can imagine. Weapons are just but one of many things they can do.
  • Psylocke's "focused totality of her psychic power" in X-Men is a psychic blade that's able to fry the brain of any foe. At maximum intensity she can kill but it's seldom used this way. After a Re Power that made her powers telekinetic instead of telepathic, it could function as an Absurdly Sharp Blade that could slice through anything (yet still have its stunning effect if it hit flesh and blood.)
  • This is one of the many possible uses of Invisible Woman's force fields. In one X-Men/Fantastic Four miniseries, she had a Mama Bear moment and used a force sword to slay a Brood queen in close combat, leaving the males of both teams rather shocked.
  • This was the super-power of the minor DC hero Gunfire, who could turn any object into a blaster or bomb weapon with his touch by channeling energy into or through it.
    • Hitman #1,000,000, the Hitman issue tying into and sending up the DC One Million crossover, mercilessly spoofed Gunfire and, by extension, this power, with a particularly inept future counterpart of the original version.
      Gunfire One Million: Pain — so bad! If I can just reach — Medipak — *BLAM* Aaaaahh!! Aaaah, no, I turned the Medipak into a gun!
      Gwant: That really is kinda lame....
      Hitman: Imagine his personal life.
      Gunfire One Million: Oh God, I turned my ass into a hand-grenade — *FOOOMM*
  • The Punisher had this power briefly, pulling any kind of angelic weapon from his overcoat.
  • Jules from Bazooka Jules has this ability due to a micro-robtic weapon fusing with her body. The weapon placed small dimensional gateways around her body that lead to a dimension filled with nanomachines. When she needs a weapon like a gun, one of the gateways open up, the nanomachines flood out and they manipulated to form that weapon.
  • Quentin Quire takes a page out of Psylocke's book in Wolverine and the X-Men, using his powers to form a psychic shotgun.

    Fan Fiction 

  • In Spaceballs, it's possible that this is how schwartz weapons like schwartz swords work. Yogurt claims that the rings from which the schwartz weapons appear to come are really a Magic Feather.
  • In Thor the Frost Giants can form weapons out of the ice covering their body.

  • In The Wheel of Time, Rand occasionally creates a sword made of fire, though this is a rather inefficient use of the One Power.
  • In Highschool Dx D Kiba's Sacred Gear "Sword Birth" lets him create magic swords with different elemental attributes in order to counter his opponents' powers.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Dungeons & Dragons in general has had a number of spells that created weapons (usually swords). They include Mordenkainen's Sword, Dimensional Blade, Enchanted Blade...
    • Greyhawk has a few more, such as Nystul's Crystal Dagger and Jaran's Prismatic Blade.
    • Forgotten Realms adds Acid Lash, Bone Blade, Chromatic Blade, Decastave, Fellblade, Flamespin, Forcelash, Vampiric Lash, Ghost Blade, Whisper Blade, and Black Blade of Disaster. Thunderlance looks and is wielded like a spear, but doesn't act the part (it explosively discharges on touch).
      • Al-Qadim has Sand Jambiya, Sand Sword and Wind Blade.
    • Dark Sun sourcebook The Will and the Way added Psychic Blade — semi-tangible effect shaped and wielded like a sword and doubling as a mental attack.
    • In 3.5 version Psionics, the Soulknife can create a sword using psychic power. (Psychic warriors can also call weapons, but it's not clear if that's creating something or psychoporting it from some abandoned armory or what.)
  • Both Cyber Knights and Mind Melters from Rifts can create Psi Blades.
  • Shadowrun. In older editions, a number of fans developed spells that created a sword (or other weapon) made of energy. One type was called a "Power Sword". There have also been varieties that are made of a specific element (e.g. fire, cold, etc.) and have the appropriate elemental effect (e.g. fire setting flammable objects on fire).
  • Ars Magica. The spell "Tooth of the Staff" can create a spear with a polished flint head.
  • Mage: The Awakening: The Phantasmal Weapon spell creates a weapon, piece of armor, or other bit of functional equipment out of Mana. The Marionette spell, available at the same level of skill, can be used to create a person-or-animal-shaped construct out of Mana as well.
    • There is also the "Shadow-forge" spell, which uses different Arcana than the above (Death & Matter vs Prime) to create things out of solid shadow. It's somewhat easier to cast, but is penalized by being cast in brightly lit conditions and the objects can be damaged by light.
  • Exalts of most types are capable of creating magical weapons out of Essence, though Solars and Abyssals are generally the best at it. The other Exalts are either too specialized in the weapons they create, or prefer other methods of fighting without a weapon at the ready.
  • In Feng Shui, one of the effects for the Blast sorcery schtick is "conjured weapons".
  • The shugenja of Legend of the Five Rings can use their Elemental Magic to conjure weapons such as a katana of fire, a bo of water, a yari of air, or a tetsubo of earth.

    Video Games 
  • In The Elder Scrolls series you can use the "Bind [weapon]" spells to summon the most powerful generic equipment in the game for a while.
  • Archer in Fate/stay night is able to summon his weapons out of thin air through some unknown means, unlike the other Servants who are always wielding theirs. Shirou eventually becomes able to instantly create swords from mana through his own freakish magic specialization. The exact nature of this power is complicated and takes up a great amount of expo-speak over the three routes, but it basically boils down to Shirou's, and by extension his Future Badass self Archer's, elemental affinity and Origin being Sword, as well as his total lack of self-worth, combining to allow them to store a Hyperspace Arsenal of images of objects and the histories behind them. "Tracing" is bringing the image of the object to reality.
  • Kassadin's Laser Blade in League of Legends is this for his Void powers.
  • Mortal Kombat:
    • The Kori Blade that Sub-Zero uses as his weapon style from Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance onwards is created by Sub-Zero himself using his ice-based powers. When he becomes Cyber Sub-Zero in Mortal Kombat 9, he starts creating bigger swords.
    • Frost, being Sub-Zero's protege, uses the same technique to produce her own ice weapons, though her relative inexperience means that she can only create a pair of small daggers as opposed to Sub-Zero's entire sword.
    • Nightwolf can create green energy-based daggers, tomahawks, and a bow with his powers.
    • Shao Kahn can (at least in 9) create javelins and warhammers. His ability to throw the latter is part of what makes him so dangerous: they're unblockable, can't be ducked under (so you need precise timing to jump over them or hope that your character can teleport), and stun you for several seconds — more than enough time for him to throw another one.
  • In inFAMOUS you can buy the ability to generate electric "swords" from your hands in order to do more melee damage at the cost of draining energy.
  • In BlazBlue it's implied that the Kaka Clan's claws are of this nature (as in they have the ability to produce them, rather than them being retractable). Taokaka (the only playable example of the species so far) seems to be able to produce them in a number of shapes.
  • The Unbreakable Darkness in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Gears of Destiny has her Ancient Matrix Limit Break, where she thrusts her hand into her opponents chest then pulls the Blood Flame Sword out from it through a dimension portal.
  • This is how all of Ultimecia's spells function in Dissidia: Final Fantasy, generating swords, arrows, axes and spears to fire at the enemy.
  • In Final Fantasy Type-0, one of Machina's unique spells is Sword Field which summons swords of Hard Light to orbit him in a Reverse Shrapnel fashion.
  • Pops up now and again in Kingdom Hearts
  • Shanoa of Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia can create weapons instantly by equipping the right glyphs.

    Web Comics 
  • The Stus of Dubious Company. Gary creates katars out of fire, while Marty can summon any weapon out of thin air.
  • For a long time in El Goonish Shive, women who were offended by sexist men could conjure hammers from out of nowhere and use them to pummel the offender. This lasted until the person who originally created this ability passed away.
    • Susan can instantly summon a replica of anything from a specially marked container, and keeps a few old weapons there. And when she finally got her own spellbook, it started with the old good stun-hammer — without any limitations. So she remains "The Hammer Queen".
    • Abraham possesses spells that summon or create swords, shields, and axes.
  • Void in L's Empire can make spears pop out of his body. His future self can make them on any surface.

    Western Animation 
  • In Avatar: The Last Airbender , Aang briefly discusses the idea of making a 'Wind Sword' this way.
  • In Wak Fu, Big Bad Qilby in season 2 can create a Sinister Scythe made of pure wakfu. After more of his true power is unlocked, Yugo is able to generate a wakfu sword and shield in the same fashion.

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alternative title(s): Instant Weapon
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