Chapter 4: A Puff of Air
Saturday morning rolls by as I attempt to proactively finish my homework early; but, as usual, everything becomes distracting when I'm bored. While memorizing the anatomy of Grimm, I fold an origami rose: the main flower white, with red leaves. I doodle a dragon in the margins through writing a journal entry for "Botanical and Aural Medical Force". When I start to read the same paragraph for the fourth time in the "History of Remnant" textbook, Hong-Long pipes up wryly.
"Don't you have something more important to do, rather than bury your nose in that dusty old tome?"
"It's homework," I sigh heavily. "It's supposed to be a waste of time."
"I understand that learning how to stab through a Taiju to hit its brain and how to make a field poultice are important. Those have actual uses during and post-combat. But history is only useful to a person who locks themselves in a tower to read old stories and consider when their lives will begin."
"Well, she also plays guitar, and knits, and cooks, and paints…" I can feel the heat of Hong-Long's glare on the back of my neck and try not to grin.
"You are insufferable."
I can't help but laugh then, knowing just how miffed he is.
"What I was trying to say was that you need to re-create the seals on my 'prison.'"
I jump to my feet. "Shoot! I forgot about that!" Thankful for a productive distraction, I grab my seal repair kit and Hong-Long and make my way briskly to Beacon's Forge.
The Forge is an absolutely massive room designed for creating, fixing, or upgrading weapons. On the wall opposite the entrance sit three enormous smelteries, each paired with an anvil. Though old, they are always primed for the shaping of replacement parts. The vast majority of the room contains rows of workbenches that hold clamps that keep a weapon in place and various built-in drawers for students to place their tools and oils. Students of Beacon are welcome to use the Forge as long as there is a professor in the Forge to supervise, and many of the students that are more interested in weaponry tend to spend more of their time there.
Upon arrival, I search for the least populated corner to set up, and settle on the back right. Carefully placing the glaive on the workbench, I open the kit and take out the ink powder and brush. I confirm that I have enough oil, which keeps the wood of the glaive from drying, as well as my whetstone, for sharpening the blade. I place the whetstone by the blade and start to sharpen, concentrating on smoothing all the nicks and dents out of the edge.
"Hey, Yuen-Yee! Whatcha doooin'?"
"Oh!" I nearly drop Hong-Long – to which he hisses at me – and whirl around to face Ruby Rose. "Hi Ruby." Flustered, I gesture to the ink powder and whetstone. "Just doing some, uh, maintenance on my glaive."
"What kind of maintenance needs a paint brush?"
"It… It's a calligraphy brush," I respond carefully, trying not to show irritation at her ignorance. "See the seals on the staff? I need to re-write them."
"Oh. How come?" She looks at me expectantly.
"If I don't, they'll fade. This glaive is thousands of years old, and every one of my ancestors who wielded it spent at least an hour on Saturdays to keep it looking like it did when it was first forged."
"Ooh! Heritage. I was wondering why someone had a weapon that looked as different as yours."
"How is my glaive different?" I grab the oil and start applying it.
"It doesn't have the flair that most other weapons do nowadays." Before I realize, a flash of indignance crosses my face, and Ruby realizes what she'd said. "N-not to say it isn't cool. I really like seeing people using the antiques."
Take it as a compliment, Yuen-Yee. Take it as a compliment. I smile as Ruby continues to blabber on about how amazing antiques are.
"I can split mountains in twain, by the way. How is that for 'flair?'" Hong-Long interjects.
Mark Twain? Huh?
"You should pick up a dictionary at some point."
I'm sorry: not everyone can speak old fart. With a start, I realize that Ruby has stopped speaking and is looking at me, once again, expectantly.
"Sorry, what?" Done with oiling, I deftly mix the ink and dip my calligraphy brush.
"Why does your family keep it so well maintained?"
Were my previous answers not good enough!? "It's tradition," I respond lamely, meticulously reapplying the strokes of ink. "To be considered a real member of the Baak branch, we need to maintain our weapons."
"Wow," she says in awe, her eyes lighting up. "Your family sounds pretty cool to me."
Surprised, I feel myself warming up to her. "D-does it? It's tough because I wasn't supposed to have this glaive. I was raised to be the 'damsel in distress' type. I was given so much training in our family history and how to cook and whatnot, so it was harder for me to prove that I was a real Baak fighter."
"Huh. What do you mean that you weren't supposed to have your weapon?" she asks. "Also, if you wanted to fight, why didn't they just train you?"
I set down the calligraphy brush and start cleaning up the workbench. "My elder brother was supposed to inherit it, but, um, a twist of fate happened and the ceremony went in a completely different way from what my parents were planning." I laugh nervously. "My brother still sort of hates me for that since I kind of accidentally stole his purpose in life…"
"Why couldn't he do something else? Like write a book or something."
"Well, from the day he turned five, my father gave him grueling training every day on how to wield a glaive, maintain it, et cetera. So he was told, every day, that he needs to become an amazing person in order to be worthy of wielding such a weapon, so he didn't spend much of his free time doing anything else but practicing. It's kind of hard for him to adjust to the idea that he can't be someone he's been working his entire life to be, you know?" I sigh. "I think, in all honesty, he could be a great blacksmith, though. Before the ceremony, we were the best of friends, and he would always draw me these awesome modern weapons that he'd dream up."
I look up after packing up my kit and see Blake coming from the left side of the hallway outside the Forge.
"I think that you two should find some time to talk things out. It isn't right for siblings to get separated over something, even if it is that big."
"Yeah, well. He's less angry at me now, and I think he understands that I didn't mean to, but still." A moment of solemn silence passes.
"Can I hold it?"
"Huh? Uh…" Panicking, I glance at the glaive, desperately trying to think of an excuse. "The ink might not be dry yet."
Ruby peers at the glaive. "I think it is!"
"O-oh. W...well, I guess you can, but be careful." I'm sorry Shifu! I don't know what to say! I think, my heart pounding as Ruby reaches for the glaive.
"It's fine. Just brace yourself: what I'm about to do might be a bit uncomfortable." Hong-Long hisses in a rush.
As Ruby's hand closes around the glaive's staff, a dense burst of air ripples through the Forge as Hong-Long pushes his aura as far away from the glaive as possible.
Blake, who had been reading a book, whips her head up as Hong-Long's aura whooshes by her. Her eyes search the Forge and our eyes meet.
"Why do I feel angry?" Ruby glares at me suspiciously.
Before Hong-Long can affect her mood more, I snatch the glaive back. "S-sorry. It, uh… It's a weird glaive and I forgot that it has an effect on people."
Ruby shakes her head. "Sorry, I didn't mean to glare at you."
"No, no. Like I said, I forgot I'm immune to this kind of thing. I should have been more careful."
"Well… That was weird," she says pensively.
I laugh awkwardly and look back to the open doors. Seeing that Blake had left, I turn back to Ruby. "Well, I've got to go and finish my homework. Again, sorry about my glaive…"
"It's okay. Thank you for letting me see you work on your weapon."
"Yeah. I'll see you in class on Monday!" I quickly stride back to my room and collapse on the bed, exhausted. After a couple of minutes of just laying there, I finally mumble, "You there, Shifu?"
"That was very close to an extremely bad situation."
"Yeah… I'm so glad that she didn't get burned and only got the angry symptom…" I sigh heavily. "Should I not have let her?"
"It would have been more strange to not let her. It might have raised more questions as to why you wouldn't allow another person to touch your weapon."
"You're right, but… I don't know. Maybe it'd just look like I was overprotective of my weapon or something… UGH. Whatever." I roll over, face down, and scoot under the blanket. "I'm taking a nap before dinner."
"Have a pleasant dream, little necromancer."
I roll my eyes and plop my face onto my pillow, falling asleep almost instantly.
TL;DR: We've got a tumblr, AND a Guild Wars 2 guild!
Tumblr: apeonyssnapdragon
GW2 guild: Sassy Snapdragons
Phy: There were a couple of references this chapter: Tangled, Phineas and Ferb, and a famous American author… I was in a weird mood when we were writing this chapter, so that happened. According to Umbra, it was hilarious.
Umbra: The references in this chapter are very indicative of the direction that all references are going to take. They will take all directions.
Phy: There wasn't much for this chapter (Umbra and I have been a bit busy still) but we decided to split up the chapter so that we wouldn't rush our writing process just to get it out on time. I feel like quality is more important, rather than publishing a chapter that is half-hearted.
Follow-up on last chapter's picture issue: Umbra has created a tumblr for A Peony's Snapdragon! This means we can upload better quality pictures for you guys to see, as well as little doodles I will probably draw during class. It also means if you want to draw our characters, we have a medium to see them!
Also, we were trying to think of names for the botany class that Yee is taking. Originally, it was called "Botanical Field Medicine", but then one of our betas suggested a funny acronym (basically, come up with a name that, when read as an acronym, would make a silly word) and we came up with BAMF. Our other beta suggested "Botanical Observations of Overstrung Barren Species" (BOOBS). Other ideas were "Force for Aural and Responsive Treatment" (meaning FART) and the one I liked best but was way too much of a stretch: "Cures for Rabies And Pelvic inflammatory disease" (CRAP). Like I said… too much of a stretch. But we had fun comin' up with them and using our middle-school humor.
Last thing that I am super excited to tell you! Umbra and I are playing Guild Wars 2, and we just randomly decided (April 2nd) to create a guild! SO! If you play GW2 or are interested in playing (it's free and an mmorpg! Not to mention great graphics, a personalized story, British voice acting(?)… /shameless_plug), we would love to play with you! And don't worry about being new to the game: I am horrendous at jumping puzzles (if you join us, you'll see; Umbra will attest) and we both are around level 15 (so we're nubs too). OR, if you're a seasoned GW2 expert and want to join us and teach us scrubs the way to play, we'd love that too!
For those interested in joining, please send me a private message with your account name (not the character name!). The GW2 system is a little funky, so I need to add you to my friends list before we can even exchange mail. BUT that means you'll get to see when I'm online (which, if I am, Umbra likely is too) regardless of what character I'm playing, and we can chat or do guild stuff or just hang out! :)
[[sorry for using so many exclamation points. I'm *very* excited about the GW2 guild.]]
