Bloody Bullets
"Is this legal" Weiss asked while looking at the work station Ruby had set up in her apartment. This was the first time Weiss had ever been in Ruby's apartment since her partner had moved out of the dorm, and she hadn't been sure what to expect of Ruby's place.
"Weiss, you said you were curious how we make our ammo, and now we are showing you" Yang chided her, keeping her tone light so that the heiress wouldn't take offense.
"That doesn't answer my question though" Weiss muttered. She then thought to herself 'of course this wasn't legal. How could it be?'
Ruby, in preparation for the new school year, which was only two weeks away, had decided to move out of the on campus dorms, and into an apartment of her own. She had been the last to do so in the group, as Weiss had been the first, followed by Blake, then Yang. Originally Yang had wanted to share a place with her adopted sister, which Ruby had found hard to refuse without offending Yang. Eventually, after a lot of dragging feet by Ruby, Weiss decided to do it for her partner and just told Yang point blank "Ruby wants her own place." Yang's response had been "that's cool". Weiss was still annoyed that the weeks of Ruby coming to her for help trying to think of ways to fix their issue was resolved so easily.
Blake and Yang were both junior hunters, and if the amount of time it took for the two of them to receive their admittance was to be used as a frame of reference, Ruby and Weiss would be receiving theirs within the month. Everyone had tried to persuade Ruby to wait until she had been admitted before upgrading her living conditions, but the redhead had decided that it would be best to do this as soon as possible, as she was tired of having to use the schools workshop.
The workshop supplied by the school wasn't bad, but it wasn't specialized in anyway, as Beacon had to accommodate the hundreds of different types of weapons that could walk through its doors during the year. Ruby's weapon was unique, and almost none of the tools in the shop, except for the most basic wrenches and files, could be used on Crescent Rose. While originally Ruby thought she would have to rent out a garage, she thought of a better way to service her scythe, in her own apartment/workshop.
Ruby's apartment wasn't that big, and couldn't have been more 700 square feet. However it felt pretty large on account of it only being two rooms, a large living room/kitchen/work area and a small bathroom in the back, plus a balcony. Ruby's apartment was on the top floor of an apartment building somewhat close to campus, which she had gotten for a steal, only $500 a month, plus electricity and water. The place had taken a lot to get running, and it was pretty much taped together from scraps, duct tape, and what she could borrow from her mechanic's job, but Ruby was proud of it.
The room was a perfect square, and was pretty much cut into four quarters. One fourth was dedicated to what an apartment needed to be considered livable. On one side of the quarter there was a small refrigerator, a microwave, a sink, and a scratched up old wooden table. Three old chairs, none of which matched each other, circled around three sides of the table, the fourth shoved against the wall. On the other was a small couch, which had a blanket draped across the back, and two pillows were placed against each arm. And against the wall perpendicular to the refrigerator was a standing wardrobe, which was slightly open, and jammed to the brim with clothing. There was no bed, or it was inside of the couch. Weiss guessed that the rest of the things that an apartment needed, a washer, dryer, etcetera, were all in the bathroom. This space was the only carpeted area in the entire apartment, the rest of the floors made of the cold, grey concrete found in mechanic shops and home improvement stores.
The rest of the room however, was exactly how Weiss had imagined it. In the opposite corner, closest to the entrance, was a huge work table, which was just a bunch of 3 inch thick slabs of wood sanded and stuck together, and then drilled into a bunch of metal drawers. At one point the table might have looked nice, but now it was a huge mess. With chunks missing from the finish, scorch marks, spray paint, drill holes, and a myriad of other abuses now present, the table looked like a mess, with metal shavings filling the divots and gaps in the wood. Another table, which was a little more presentable was placed 5 feet away, and seemed to be covered in sharpie markings with exact measurements drawn along the wood. Surrounding that table was at least 30 boxes of parts, each labeled meticulously with number and letter acronyms, although Weiss had no clue what they meant.
In the third quarter was racks upon racks of tools, many of which Weiss had no clue as to their purpose. Most looked dangerous, and many of them could pass for weapons themselves. She recognized a few, and realized that those must have been the tools Ruby had ordered for the purpose of servicing Weiss's sword. When Ruby was ordering the majority of her tools, she also ordered the extra few tools necessary to service the rest of the group's weapons, offering them up so that the rest of the group's weapons would be in good condition as well. While Weiss had appreciated the sentiment, and had tried to fraise what had needed to say in the nicest way possible, she informed Ruby that "nobody is laying a finger on my Rapier except me". Ruby always got fidgety when she said that, but Weiss had assumed the thought of being unable to mess with a state of the art weapon was killing her. She hadn't meant what she said in a mean sense, as she was sure that Ruby would be perfectly competent at repairing Myrtenaster, but there were a few things that Weiss wished to keep secret about her weapon, even from her teammates. While Weiss was terrible with tools, she had forced herself to at least be proficient enough to take care of her rapier.
In place of decorations, Ruby had dozens upon dozens of blueprints for weapons hanging upon the walls. The largest of all was against the wall next to the entrance, a hand drawn life sized schematic for Ruby's Crescent Rose. The drawing, which must have taken hours to do, as it was drawn by hand on blue gridded paper, showed Ruby's weapon broken up into its most basic parts, and was covered in dotted lines showing how the parts interlocked. Similar smaller schematics were on the walls detailing the weapon in the several forms it took. Weiss was surprised when she saw a few schematics for the other weapons on campus, including Yang's, Blake's, Pyrrha's, and Nora's in other random places on the wall. While hunters weren't extremely secretive, it was rare for a weapon to be handed over to another for scrutiny, and the hidden mechanics of the weapons were often kept close to their wielder's chest. When Weiss noticed a very familiar looking rapier drawing hanging on the wall, she ripped it down, scrutinizing it to make sure that it wasn't just a coincidental similar sword. When she read the inscription on the handle she had made by herself with an exacto-knife, which she had always covered by the leather wrap she curled around the metal and never visible, Weiss was sure the weapon was hers. Turning the drawing towards Ruby, she exclaimed "where did you get this?!"
Looking like a deer caught in headlights, Ruby's mind tried to think of a way to explain herself without it sounding that bad. A few ideas popped into her mind, all useless. She finally decided to just be honest, in hopes of escaping the majority of Weiss's wrath. "Well, uh, remember that time you left your rapier in my bag because you didn't bring one to gym? You then left without it, and I gave it back to you the next day. I figured that I should make sure it was okay before I returned it". Shrugging her shoulders, she hoped that Weiss wouldn't dive across the room to rip her head off. Yang had become really interested in the placement of scraps in the 3 junk boxes across the room, as if she was pretending to not hear anything.
"Really…" Weiss couldn't really be mad about that, as that day had happened before she had made clear the hands off rule on her weapon. Not to say that she wasn't annoyed, but she was less than if Ruby had directly gone against one of Weiss's requests.
Ruby could sense that Weiss wasn't that mad, which really surprised her. She then, deciding that she couldn't do much more harm at this point, asked her partner a question that had always been itching at the back of her mind. ""Well, I expected that to go worse. Since you're not strangling me, I've been wanting to ask you something about that schematic. I think it is messed up. The sword is pretty standard, and is surprisingly durable for how light and thin the blade is, but I wasn't able to understand how the dust selection mechanism works without taking it too far apart. It looked to me like it operates similar to a revolver, but I couldn't tell how the catch worked."
Weiss had always wanted to keep this part of her weapon a secret, as it was probably its only weakness as a weapon, simply stated "there isn't one." Ruby was even more confused, and wanted to ask a few more questions, but at that point the door swung open and Blake came in, shaking of an umbrella behind her. Weiss was really grateful for the moment break, as she would now have a second to think, unsure if she would come clean or not. While it may not be tonight, she knew that eventually Ruby would ask again, and she would be force to answer.
Myrtenaster was a good weapon, one that Weiss had mastered using and wouldn't ever dream of replacing. That being said, there were several flaws in its design, which she often wished weren't present. All of these flaws were related to the way the dust chambers worked, and these problems had often led to mishaps during battles. The six chambers for storing dust inside of the hilt operated similarly to an old fashioned revolver, and at the flick of a wrist she could change to a different chamber during battle. Unfortunately, the weapon had no way of controlling which chamber it landed on, and the dust reserve Weiss was forced to use was left purely to chance. While she could then flick her wrist again, the time her weapon took spinning was valuable during a fight. Weiss had always found slight annoyance in the family weapon, which had received the nickname 'Gambler' from several of its previous users.
They both walked up to greet Blake, Weiss folding the paper schematic and placing it in her coat pocket in order to keep it from Ruby's collection. They both noticed the small inconspicuous splint upon Blake's wrist that Yang had mentioned earlier in the afternoon. Her last mission, a recon assignment to mark out the migration patterns of some beowolves, had been both extremely dangerous and a great success. Blake's only injury was a sprained wrist, which would be healed in a few days. Shaking her head to get out the few drops of water she felt fall on her head while closing the umbrella, she looked up smiling and said "sorry I'm late, I got caught up at the cross walk by one of our professors. Did you know we are getting a new history professor?" While Weiss found this information interesting, and asked Blake a few questions, Ruby and Yang dropped back to the second table, getting out several of the tools that they would need in the next few hours.
"Do you think the humidity will be a problem?" Ruby was worried, as it was the rainy season, and they had been forced to put off crafting bullets twice this week. Excess moisture in the air could be a very bad thing for the bullets, and Ruby wasn't keen on getting any new scars from dust explosions.
"It shouldn't as long as it doesn't start raining any worse. We've put this off for the last week, and I'm really starting to run low". Thinking about that for a second, Yang looked over her shoulder at Blake and asked "so did you want us to make you a batch as well?"
Blake shrugged her shoulders, and in the most noncommittal gesture she could make, she waved a hand and said "I said I would appreciate it if you did, but to not do so if you would rather not. I am not going to be any help in this, so I just wanted to make sure that you are okay with making my bullets with only Ruby's help Yang." While Blake wasn't in anyway poor now, and she had quickly rebuilt the savings she had lost, she was still being somewhat frugal, and wind dust bullets had gone up in price recently as they gained popularity with the hunting crowd. Dust bullet sales went in phases of popularity. Yang was happy about the shifts, as while wind had been rising in cost to Blake's chagrin, fire dust was at an all-time low. Buying the raw supplies was by far cheaper than just purchasing the bullets, if a person was willing to overlook the slight legality issues behind creating them by hand.
"Just makin sure. So we need a few batches for all three of us… Hey princess! You sure you don't want to help?" Yang was only joking, as she knew the heiress had no interest in messing around with the materials, and getting her hands dirty – and possible singed- in the process. "Hey, do me a favor Weiss, just look around the place and make sure Ruby didn't leave a window open or something". Ignoring the denials from Ruby she explained "last thing we need is water in the gunpowder".
There wasn't much to check, as all Weiss had to do was scan the two sets of floor to ceiling windows that were on two sides of the room, showing off the lights of the city's downtown to the north and the east. From here the amphitheater where they had gone to that concert earlier in the summer was visible. After that she opened the bathroom door and called back to Ruby, poking her head around the door "you left the bathroom window open. Also, what kind of flower is in the shelter on the wall? I don't recognize them." Weiss had always had the hobby of gardening, way back to before she knew she was going to be a huntress for the company's sake. At one point in her childhood she had wanted to own a store that doubled as a nursery for plants and a reptile enclosure for endangered species, although she had given up on those childish ideas a long time ago. She still kept up with plants though, and she was always surprised when she ran into a species of flower she hadn't heard of.
After receiving a glare from Yang, Ruby yelled back "not sure; I found them growing in that forest we visited to clear out the beowolf pack last semester".
Once they had made sure that the place was sealed tight, as now Yang didn't trust Ruby's judgment in saying the apartment was fine, Yang and Ruby began. After a moment of discussion, they started with the ammunition that Blake required, as those were the easiest and fastest to produce. Weiss had expected them to start with the metal casings and the pieces of lead, but instead they began with the gunpowder mixture. Blake would ask a question every once and a while, usually questions that Weiss would have asked if they hadn't been voiced already.
"Why aren't you measuring anything?" While there were several scales and weighing trays behind Yang and Ruby, they hadn't been touched through the entire process. Ruby answered back in a very factual tone "we are, but we just measure by volume instead of mass. These mixtures are all ratios of dust to gunpowder, and we already know the weights of the individual parts. We just need to make sure we keep them in balance."
"What kind of balance is it" Weiss asked, curious how precise the two were being.
She found out they were very precise when Ruby commented back "for a standard pistol round with pure wind dust as the catalyst… we would use a ratio of gunpowder to dust at two parts dust for every forty one parts standard gunpowder, give or take a part of gunpowder depending on the preference of the manufacturer. We go with a one in twenty to give the bullets a tiny bit more kick".
Weiss was actually surprised how serious the two were taking this, as usually they would be cracking jokes and laughing while working on assignments together. They worked in dead silence now, only focusing on what was right in front of them. Ruby's constant cheery face actually had a scowl on it, as if the concentration was giving her a headache. Both Blake and Weiss were fascinated in the deadly precision the two of their partners used, and the unspoken harmony that they worked together with. Ruby would measure extremely small amounts of dust into a small chrome scoop, which she said had been treated to not have a static charge and keep particles of the dust stuck to the spoon's surface. In passing she mentioned how yellow dust, which had the elemental properties of lightning, had to be handled with a different set of tools. She would then gently place the dust into the bottom a chrome bowl, which couldn't be set down as it was a perfect semi-sphere. For every one scoop of dust Ruby added, Yang then placed in ten scoops of gunpowder from a spoon twice as large into the bowl, but not mixing the two substances, placing each other side by side in the bowl. Ruby added 20 scoops worth of dust to the bowl, stopping between each scoop to let Yang add the required amount of gunpowder to keep the proportion balanced. Once they finished Yang began to slowly stir the mixture by hand.
When they first started to mix the materials, Blake cried out in protest, saying that what they were doing must be extremely dangerous. In a level voice, Yang replied back "yes it is, but we can't purchase the machinery to mix these as civilians, and getting a license is impossible unless you are creating a distribution company". Thinking for a moment, she also said "don't worry, we have been doing things for the past 2 years this way, and we haven't had an issue yet".
Even though Yang had attempted to give their partners a sense of peace, it was obvious that she was extremely nervous, and was being extra careful not to scrap the bottom to ignite the mixture and create an explosion. As a small bead of sweat dripped down Yang's face, Blake and Weiss would have found the sight of their two partners holding their breath over the sparkling grey mixture amusing if they didn't have a feeling that they had reached the point at which the act was illegal. It was obvious to the two of them why now. If Yang had messed up at this crucial stage, she would have definitely lost a hand, and she would have probably been scarred badly on the rest of her body. Luckily, everything went smoothly, and once they were both satisfied that the mixture's quality they poured the contents of the bowl into a new container, now a chrome cup. Ruby quickly placed a 2 inch thick slab of chrome over the cup, and then they both released a sigh of relief.
Taking a moment to breathe, and to look around, Ruby joked with the two bystanders "you look more nervous than we are".
Weiss was a little surprised by what she had seen, and hadn't expected the process to be so dangerous. "Why don't you just swallow the extra price and buy the bullets you need? This is maddening, for you to go this far for just some chump change."
Yang and Ruby exchanged a look. They had expected questions like this at some point through the night, and they were actually prepared with an answer. Ruby answered back with "first, the quality of our own bullets is much better, and far more consistent. Second, the mixture Yang uses in her slugs isn't sold anywhere, and she couldn't fight the way she does if we didn't make these ourselves".
Both Blake and Weiss were still slightly troubled, but they had decided to not push the issue, eager to be done with the danger and able to move on with their evening. Yang turned to Ruby and asked whether she wanted "to create all of the separate mixtures first, then make all the bullets at once, or make each set of bullets one at a time?"
Ruby looked back at the table, uneager to have to postpone the stress of making the powder again, and said she would rather do all of the gunpowder at once.
While Weiss didn't ask for the exact measurement's this time, she noted that the mixture for Ruby's rifle bullets seemed to use almost double the amount of dust than the pistol bullets made for Blake. Also, two different dust's were used in Ruby's bullets, both wind and fire in equal proportions.
The powder for Yang's bullets was by far the most complicated however. Using three different types of dust, it looked to Weiss and Blake like it was an even split between fire and lightning dust at first. When Ruby mixed the dusts with around eight times the gunpowder, which was by far the most amount of dust they had seen ever go into one bullet, Weiss sighed from relief, thinking that what had been one of the most stressful evenings she had ever had was over. Before they put away the mixture however, Ruby sprinkled an extremely small amount of blue dust over the entire bowl, giving the mixture one more stir, and then finally put away the bowl.
"Okay… we are done with the hard part" Yang finally huffed, glad to have a moment to relax before she went back to her extremely stressful and dangerous job. Ruby, shaking her arms after she had been holding them in such a tight manner for the last hour, walked over to the fridge on the opposite side of the room, and asked to the entire group "does anyone want anything?" She received a chorus of no's, and only pulled out one bottle of water. After holding her breathe for the majority of the time, she washed out her mouth, bringing back some of the wetness that she had lost.
Eager to finish, Yang and Ruby worked as a conveyor belt, and quickly assembled all of the bullets, going through them in the same order they had in assembling the gunpowder. This part seemed far less dangerous, and Weiss and Blake both drifted off to the other parts of the apartment, looking for entertainment on the walls, racks, or in the scrap buckets.
Weiss found a knee high box, which was as wide as she was tall, filled to the brim with old and chipped blades from Crescent Rose. Looking through the box, she felt as though it was a huge waste to use so many blades for one weapon. Picking one of the newer ones toward the top up, she laid the metal along the top of her left arm, or as far as her reach would go up the blade. The piece of metal extended at least a good foot beyond her fingertips, and was balanced precociously on the crook of her elbow. Weiss had always been impressed how Ruby could swing around her weapon with ease, even though it was at two feet longer than Ruby's entire body, and was also heavier as well. She stood there, beginning to imagine the blade whirling around her on the rest of Crescent Rose.
A cheerful voice suddenly chirped behind her "Yeah, I should be a little more conservative with my blades shouldn't I?"
Ruby hadn't meant to startle Weiss, and had walked over quite loudly. Her attempt at being obvious had been in vain, as Weiss was so deep in thought that the sudden sound jerked her out of her waking dreams. Jumping, the blade slid off of Weiss's arm, making a long, shallow stroke across Weiss's skin from the outside of her elbow to the pale girl's armpit.
"Shit!" Ruby grabbed Weiss by the other arm, and brought her over to the table where Yang wasn't continuing to make the bullets. She also gingerly picked up the fallen blade of the ground and brought it with her for inspection, to see if the steel could give Weiss any kind of infection. Ruby had finished her part of the job, putting the dust mixtures into their shells, and now Yang was just pressing the rounds into the casing and sealing the entire bullet. She had already finished the bullets for Blake, and was half way through Ruby's. She stopped when she looked up and saw Ruby leading Weiss to the cleaner table, and got out of the chair she had been standing in to see if she was needed.
Turning over Weiss's arm, to make sure that didn't touch the table and stayed open to the air, Ruby examined the cut. While the cut wasn't deep, it was bleeding profusely, and Weiss would probably pass out from blood loss if something wasn't done quickly. Taking off her belt, Ruby used it as a tourniquet around Weiss's shoulder, to stop the bleeding. Ruby looked up at Yang, and said to her "you know where I keep the first aid kit right?"
Yang responded back "Under the sink in the bathroom."
Ruby nodded and said "get it for me, I need to stitch this."
Looking back down while Yang walked off to the bathroom to get the box, she heard Weiss mumble "not one of my greater moments huh?"
"Don't worry about it; I've hurt myself worse with those blades before, although I think I'm not going to leave them out in the open anymore". Ruby then looked at the piece of metal she had place opposite Weiss, laid with its sharpened edge pointing away from the two of them across the table, and breathed a sigh of relief. "I'm just glad you didn't cut yourself with one of the blade's farther down in the box, those one's are all rusted and I would have to take you to the hospital immediately. We can wait until tomorrow since you cut yourself with this one. I replaced it only two weeks ago after it got chipped by a brick wall".
"I don't want to go to the hospital" Weiss responded meekly. "I'll be fine once you stitch me up. You've done it before."
While it warmed Ruby's heart how much faith Weiss had in her, that wasn't the main issue. "Actually, I want to get you to a hospital for a tetanus shot. The last thing I need is a partner with lock jaw".
At this point, Yang walked up with the first aid kit in hand. "Uh… here" she mumbled, not looking down at the table. While in the heat of battle she could easily overlook it, Yang was normally extremely queasy around the sight of blood, and she had passed out in the past from the sight of it. "Well, I am going to go… Blake, you want to come with?" she called over her shoulder as she began to walk for the door, eager to put what she had seen out of her head.
Blake, who Ruby hadn't realized was standing right behind them, watching the entire process, said "sure". While she sounded as though she didn't really want to leave, Blake also knew that she wasn't needed, and would be in the way. As the raven haired girl began to walk out the door, she said "I'll see you guys tomorrow".
"Don't forget the bullets" Ruby yelled absentmindedly, already searching through the box for a disinfectant. Out of the corner of her vision, she saw a black blur run past her, swoop up two boxes of rounds, and then walk out the door. With the click behind them, it was now just the two of them, one hunched over the other, curving her neck to try and see the wound under a good light.
"This isn't going to leave a pretty scar" Ruby mentioned absentmindedly. While she hadn't gotten a good look at it before hand, now she saw that while the cut was clean, it had sliced a foot and a half long gouge along one of the muscles on Weiss's the slender arm, and the skin was spreading apart as Weiss clenched. "I need you to loosen up" Ruby spoke in a soothing voice.
Weiss just shrugged, which wasn't the best motion, as it caused more blood to leak out of the wound. Shaking her arm slightly, the muscle in her arm relaxed, closing the wound and causing a little more blood to dribble out at the elbow.
Ruby firmly held Weiss's arm at the elbow, holding it with her left hand while holding up a cotton ball soaked with antiseptic in her right. "This is going to sting, but I need you to stay still. On three."
Weiss shook her head in confirmation. "Oneee…twoooo… ARGHHH!"
Ruby hadn't given Weiss the chance to get to three, and on two she began rubbing the cotton into the wound, working her way from Weiss's shoulder down. Weiss gave an initial, involuntary jerk, but after that was as still as possible, scrunching up her eyes as if to imagine the pain is not there. Ruby worked about a third of the wound, starting from the top and working her way down, and then grabbed a second cotton ball. She used a third to finish up, and then cleaned around the wounds surface. Putting aside the cotton balls, she now got out a needle and the string for surgical sutures.
Ruby had proven to be the best in the group when it came to first aid, and she had on multiple occasions been the one to stitch the others up when on missions. Every student on campus was required to take a remedial class of basic first aid during their first semester, and Ruby had used her elective slots to continue on this knowledge. She had even developed her own stitching style, which she felt left a smaller, less noticeable scar.
The wound closed nicely, although Ruby was seriously concerned over the amount of blood Weiss had lost. Her once nice table was dyed red, and she knew before she was even going to attempt it that the bloody markings wouldn't come out of the porous wood.
After Ruby closed the wound, she then removed her belt from Weiss's shoulder and watched, making sure that no large leaks appeared from under her stitches. A few drops beaded up around the edge of the slice towards the middle, which were quickly cleaned away. Ruby then took out some white gauze from the box and wrapped it around the entire upper arm of her partner.
Slightly dazed from blood loss, Weiss attempted a thank you, which came out mumbled and slurred, sounding more like a "khank shoo". Lifting the girl up by her good arm, Ruby picked up Weiss, folding her knee's over one of Ruby's arms and Weiss's back pressed against the other. Carrying her over to Ruby's couch/bed, the red head set her partner down gently on the sofa. "You aren't going to be able to go anywhere tonight, try to get some rest. We'll go by the hospital in the morning".
Humming in affirmation, Weiss attempted to grasp at Ruby's iconic red cloak as it swished in front of her face. This passed unnoticed as her partner returned to the table to clean up the mess left from the first aid. While there wasn't much blood, there was not much of Weiss either, and Ruby was unsure how much blood would be too much to lose. She was sure that Weiss would be fine for tonight though, as they had all lost more blood than what was on the table at one time or another on mission, and began to clean the mess up. Her earlier assumption had been correct; no matter how much she tried to soak up the blood, the giant stain on the table wouldn't come out.
After throwing a bunch of now bloodied rags into the trash, Ruby picked up the most comfortable of the three chairs, the only one with a padded seat, and placed it down next to the arm of the sofa where Weiss's head rested. A content smile briefly passed across the heiress's face, and Weiss began to drift off into a light sleep. It was times like this, when everything seemed happy and peaceful, that had Ruby think to herself 'why not just say it. It couldn't go that bad'. Weiss was no better right now than if she had drank her weight in booze, but Ruby sometimes thought she saw something behind her partners perfect reserved mask at moments like this, when Weiss loosened up. While Ruby was an extremely outgoing person, she was a coward when it came to things like that, so she just decided to enjoy the moment, content in the silence, listening to the slow breathing of the one who she could only have at the moment as a best friend.
Now that I am moving to a chapter by chapter basis, I thought it would be important to say how my first three stories affect these chapters. Basically, they are the first three chapters inside of these stories. I'm considering rewriting them, to fix all the things that I don't like about them (and there are a lot of things I don't like about them) so that I can put them in this set of stories, since I consider just reposting them unacceptable. I'm still mulling over that idea, and I guess I will come back with an answer when I have the time. These chapters are for one off ideas, which I may build upon or not. They may contain all of the team RWBY characters, only one of them, or some combination.
Also, as I have said in the description of "Black coffee, White cream" (which I still wish I could come up with a better name for) that the stories in that series are still a part of these stories, just a little too focused on one particular idea for me to include here. While they don't directly connect, they are important for the… uh… extended universe I guess. Same thing goes for anything else I write outside of this set of stories, unless I explicitly say that they aren't a part of these stories. Other than that, I guess I've said what I need to.
Rate and Review, let me know what you think, and I hope people will continue to enjoy what I write.