CHAPTER IV
A/N: Hello again, readers! :D I'm back with another chapter of the thing woohoo! Reviews are greatly appreciated, but above that, I hope you enjoy the story so far! At least, I hope it goes somewhere... I have the thing planned out in my head, I just don't know how to put it into words and make it sound more interesting than it is at the moment. That, and I'm losing motivation. Damn.
Anyway, please enjoy!
Thankfully, the room the duo stepped into was free of the baddies. It was a dim-lit storage room full of decrepit and dusty things. Weiss never remembered stepping in here in her life, but seeing the other side of another door, she recalled being told not to enter that door at the back of the kitchen. She understood now why she wasn't permitted to enter.
This was an armory, full of weapons that looked like they've been in there for a lifetime.
The weapons ranged from guns, crossbows, and bows and arrows to rapiers, machetes, and the medieval swords.
Weiss could only gasp and say, "Whoa" at the sight of all the weapons hanging on the walls and lying around in cases long forgotten. Why did her father have an arsenal below the library?
"What?" Blake asked. "You mean you didn't know this existed, too?"
The heiress shook her head. "Why would he need this much weapons? He's never gone to war or anything. They look like family heirlooms... They're so old."
"They're the weapons that your people around the house use," the ninja told her. "They're supposed to be around to defend you from the bad guys outside, though. I don't know where they've gone."
Weiss picked up a sword in its sheathe and nearly dropped it because of its weight.
"This is sssoooo heavvvvyyyy!" she said as she attempted to get it out of its sheathe. "How do people even lift these weapons? My back's gonna break!"
"Well, Weiss, have you ever held a sword before?"
The snowy-haired girl blushed and looked away in embarrassment. "N-n-not this one! I took up fencing before."
Blake smiled at the reaction Weiss was giving and pat her shoulder. "How long ago?"
"It was last year when my teacher stopped coming here. Daddy kicked him out because he was suspicious, but I learned lots from him."
The ninja nodded her head in understanding and stepped away from Weiss. She started scouring the room for a weapon that was close to a fencing foil.
"If you don't have your rapier with you," Blake said. "You should look for something just like that here. I'm pretty sure there are several sabres, rapiers, whatevers here that are like yours, maybe even better."
Weiss let out a "hmmm" and set to work as well. She was sneezing a lot due to the dust that was forming on the boxes and the weapons. She was looking into several cases she presumed contained a fencing sabre, or at least something that closely resembled it.
"Found anything?" Blake asked.
"Nope," she replied as she continued searching.
Minutes later, she found herself falling over some misplaced guns and bows and stumbling over some empty cardboard boxes.
"Oomph!" was the sound that came out of her upon impact to the ground. Blake turned her head to see the white-haired girl struggling to get out of the mess she made.
"Oh, no," she muttered to herself as she quickly made her way to the heiress. "Weiss, are you alright?"
Weiss opened her eyes to see Blake hopping her way past the fallen weapons to be at her side. She was very agile to be able to do that without stepping on a single gun or bow. The Faunus reached out to Weiss to help her up.
"Yeah, I'm okay, Blake," she replied as she accepted the hand and got pulled up. As she was getting up, a clanging sound was heard from behind her. Both kids turned to look at the source of the sound, and were surprised when they found the kind of weapon Weiss needed.
A silver rapier lay on the ground before them, shining in the dim light. It wasn't an ordinary rapier, either – above the hilt, there were six empty chambers that spun and clicked each time 1/6th or 1/8th of a revolution was made. Intricate designs were shown on the metal that housed the Dust chambers, its maker's signature for each weapon they crafted. Its blade was dull from lack of use, but it was nonetheless enough to cause bruises if anyone was hit.
Weiss and Blake knew in an instant that this kind of rapier was rare and one of the most difficult to make for its immense power – it's a good thing the chambers are empty right now.
It was a Dust rapier crafted by the great blacksmith Myrtenaster. What was it doing in a pitiful place like this?
"These are the kinds of weapons you put on displays," Weiss whispered in awe. "Not things you put in a dump!"
Blake shook her head. "Everything here's made by some other great blacksmith. They're all guns, too. Certainly, you wouldn't be putting these up for the world to see that you have an ancient-old arsenal. It's more reason for the bad guys to steal them when no one's around!"
Considering their current situation, the dark-haired kid was right. By now, the henchmen would have already had them.
"Well, why don't you try carrying it?" Blake suggested. "It's the only rapier around here. You might be used to wielding weapons with a normal rapier's weight."
"Doesn't it look heavy?" Weiss asked as she stepped towards the weapon and examined it further. "It has that container thing..."
Blake shrugged and watched as the heiress picked up the weapon. It seemed Weiss was comfortable with its weight, now that she was swinging it around, poking through air, practicing old moves.
Weiss' smile was contagious.
"Wow!" she said. "It's a good weapon!"
Blake nodded, the smile still evident in her features. "Use it for later, when we beat up those guys."
"But they're out to kill me!" Weiss exclaimed. "And they want to bring down Daddy's company, which I'll take over when I'm old enough to work!"
"That's not the way to do it," the Faunus told her, the smile now gone from her face. "You just want them to be captured by the police and get them arrested. They won't know their lessons when they're dead, Weiss."
Weiss was about to say something else when Blake's eyes widened and she stiffened. Her Faunus ears were twitching this way and that, and before Weiss could ask anything, the Faunus put a finger to her lips and pointed to a crate.
"Someone's coming," Blake whispered with a tinge of urgency. "Get the weapon and hide behind that crate!"
"What about you?"
"I'll stay here and take them by surprise. You appear later at my signal!"
The now-rapier user nodded and ran to the crate her companion had pointed to, her not-so-new rapier in her left hand. She took a glance at Blake and nodded to her in thanks.
"Remember, Weiss," she heard the other girl whisper. "You only want to immobilize them, you don't want to kill them."
Weiss nodded again before she heard the heavy footsteps of henchmen coming down the stairs.
Two men were out to get her now, and she was ready to make them suffer by the blunt edge of her rapier.
A/N: This probably doesn't happen in canon, but Mister Myrtenaster sounded good to me. What weird ideas come to mind.
Hope you enjoyed that chapter! I'll put another one up next week so stay tuned! :-)