Author's Note: Chapter - (noun)

Chapter 51

Carol sighed, breathing in the afternoon air. Classes were done for the day, his team had retired, and by all accounts he should have been in for a good evening of machine drilling and painting. Unfortunately, as things stood, he had an entire new project to complete, and given the timeframe, he was going to have a to pull a couple all-nighters. Usually not an issue, this time it was, given the fact he had a mission in two days. That complicated things severely. He took out a cigarette and his lighter in a practiced manner, setting the stick alight and puffing on it.

Of course, he never was one to shy from a challenge. And besides, it was only two days, he'd dealt with worse. Of course, those were just rough production quotas instead of facing toothy shadows who hungered for his blood and flesh, so it was a bit hard to compare it. He'd just have to play his cards right and make sure that his team were the ones doing the fighting.

...was that bad of him? He thought so, but then again, he was terrified of the Grimm. How he'd managed to skirt by on the subject for so long was at once reassuring and staggering. For a school of Grimm hunters, you'd think there would be more...you know, Grimm slaying. Instead, it was just teenage angst, drama, classes, and the odd major rib fracture. If he didn't have forging, things would be intensely boring.

Carol walked forward, towards the fountain. He really needed to get to work, yet he hadn't had any time in recent history where he just slowed down and relaxed. Okay, I'll take three minutes to smoke near the fountain, then I'll get to work. Sometimes, you just needed to slow down. He stopped in front of it, extending a hand to let the water flying through the air fleck against his palm. It felt cool, and not for the first time, Carol thought that he should learn how to swim. Beacon did have a swimming pool, so it wasn't out of the question. Woops, my bad. Schwimming pool. Turned out, the SDC had sponsored at least part of Beacon being built, so they wanted their name somewhere on the campus. Carol liked wordplay, but something about that spelling just made him cringe internally.

He pulled back his hand, beginning to circle the roundabout. As he did so, figures became apparent in the distance, though a bit distorted because of the falling water. When he cleared the fountain, he found a set of familiar figures. Two groups of four, but the second group was some people he wouldn't expect the first to interact with. Team RWBY and team CFVY, where it should have been the former and JNPR. Perhaps JNPR didn't have their mission today, or they were busy. As far as he knew, Jaune was out getting his ass whipped into shape by Pyrrha, but surely they'd want to see team RWBY off? Ah, well. Not like I have any room to judge.

Ruby, ever being the one to look for other things to be distracted with, swung her arms back and forth as she looked upwards, before becoming bored with the sky. Pulling her vision back from the clouds, she looked around and spotted him by the fountain. A strange warmth heated his chest and his face as she enthusiastically waved with both arms at him. As much as she was a pain in the ass, there was something endearing about how she just wouldn't up and leave him alone. And, just for thinking that thought alone, Carol considered picking up drinking to forget the fact he thought it. Despite his conflicted thoughts, he raised his hand and gave a lazy wave to the rest of the group who were alerted to his presence by Ruby. The rest of team RWBY acted in a way he expected (a glare, a conflicted smile, and a clasping of hands together with a slight smile), but CFVY was the outlier in this situation.

By all accounts, Carol considered them square. He got them to allow Cardin to plead his case, and he stopped an asshole grabbing Velvet's ears. He expected them to be, at the best, ambivalent towards him. And yet, Coco grinned, cocking her hip and giving him a wave which Velvet copied, though less energetically. Fox just shook his head while his giant of a teammate calmly watched with folded arms, offering a slight nod in Carol's direction. For some strange reason, Carol felt like he had the respect of the larger man. Which was weird, because he'd never interacted with him.

Still, he supposed they were heading to the landing pads to head out to their mission. Mountain Glenn, home of hundreds of thousands of bloodthirsty Grimm. He sure wouldn't want to head there for any reason, much less the 'research' their mission would be for. Once again, he had to question why JNPR wasn't there. Their (practically) sister team was heading out to a rather dangerous area, even if they were to be supervised. Shouldn't they be here wishing them safe passage, or some shit? He felt almost obligated to wish them well for Jaune's team, but then they'd get the wrong idea and think he cared more than just 'hey, I hope you don't die in a Grimm infested city'. And it wasn't like they expected him to do it, or anything. He could probably just walk away, and they wouldn't think any less of him for it.

"Hey!" He called out, cursing his own name as he did so. "You guys are headed to Mountain Glenn, right?"

There were a few confused glances between the team, before Ruby cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted back. "Yeah!" He regretted initiating it, but in for a penny, in for a pound. But how to say it so they wouldn't think he'd gone soft?

"Don't die!" He started, buying himself time to think of something more to say. "I wouldn't have anyone left to piss off if you did!" There! That was ambigous enough, right? Ruby grew a thousand megawatt grin, giving an exaggerated thumbs up.

"Don't worry! They won't know what hit 'em!" The enthusiastic reply left only room for him to believe her, which was surprisingly relieving. His face heated from the feeling, which wasn't helped by Weiss sporting her own bright smile. Though that changed quickly, as they all whipped around to face Blake. Carol had seen her speak from where he was, but could only guess what she said. Regardless, it was a good time to egress, as he'd already spent too much time dithering about. It was time to knuckle down and get to business.

The forge was quiet and barren, as per the usual. It seemed more lonely this time, however, that wasn't a bad thing. He didn't have any loops of logic to leap through, no one to get in his way, and no one to keep an eye on. It was just him, the forge, and Ren's weapon. Speaking of... Carol opened his scroll and thumbed to the blueprint viewer, tabbing over to Stormflower and giving it a cursory look. Discarding his scroll on the counter, he moved to the locker in the corner where he knew the machine pistol was and retrieved the chunks of it. Surprisingly enough, there was the second pistol in the locker as well. He took that as well, the logic being that he would have a final end goal to compare it to.

"Now, let's see the damage..." He set StormFlower down on the table next to his scroll, propping it up and zooming in on the blade. The chunks he began to arrange in a fashion to line up the blade once more, even if it was a bit jagged. Hmm. Obvious stress fractures besides the separated fissures, blade itself is dulled and rolled to one side on point of impact...yep, blade's FUBAR. That didn't take a master smith to tell that, but it did to know that the blade was basically slag material. It tied in with his dislike of Dust quenching.

The reason he disliked Dust quenching so much was because it tainted the blade. After it had been treated in the solution, it did take on the qualities of the Dust itself, but that wasn't the issue. It was after the weapon had outlived its lifetime that the problems arose. Dust, it turned out, didn't like to come out of things. It was why weapons grade paint was made with a certain partition of the stuff. A weapon that was quenched in Dust stayed quenched with Dust, which was why new material was needed.

Sure, theoretically you could reuse the damaged blade if you were just going to quench it in the same manner. However, that wasn't what Carol was going to do. Ice Dust made the blade sharp but the core weak and brittle. Combining an ice Dust quench with a water one, however, counterbalanced the brittle nature of the ice with the more relaxed one of Dust, without too much of either desired quality being lost. The downside was is that it was expensive, as Dust didn't just grow out of the...ground. Okay, bad analogy. Carol admonished himself.

It wasn't all bad news. You had to soak the bits of whatever ruined weapon or chunk of armor in a chemical solution to draw out the Dust, but it could be done. That took time, however, time that neither Carol nor Ren had. At any rate, Carol intended a fresh forge for those reasons, as well as the personal one of having a weapon be his own creation sourced from his own materials. It was a point of pride as well as practicality; You didn't want a broken blade to be reforged from something that had failed, or at least, that's what he thought.

There wasn't much left to discern. The only point of interest was the fact that the blade was anchored to the handguard by a set of locking pins in the recess where it fit, which meant Carol had to use the machine drill to open a few holes up for it to sit flush. Not a hard thing to do, but then again, it required careful precision. He deigned to check the status of the firearm component of the weapon, both as a courtesy and his own pride in maintaining and crafting weapons. All it took was pulling some locking tabs down and pulling the slide forward. That's right, it was supposed to be blowback operated. Makes sense, considering the caliber- good gods, what is that gunk?!

Carol looked at the solidified chunks of Dust particles in the sides of the barrel of the machine pistol. It wasn't enough to be a real danger to the user, but it would impact weapon performance. Lower velocity, potential for jams, as well as a probable lower cyclic rate. Just to be sure, he checked the other weapon. It too, had a deposit of gunk on it, though not as much as the other. I swore I heard that one was cycling slower than the other. Guess I was right. He pulled the spring off of the fixed barrel on the front, then pressed it between his two hands to check if its coils were still operating at a good capacity. As he did so, he found himself frowning, frustrated with Ren. This is no good, the tension in these is weak as water. Don't they know how to properly upkeep their weapons?

Then again, he already knew the answer to that. They did, it was just that it was too expensive for them to maintain. Dust required certain chemicals to clean it off, proper weapons grade springs were rather expensive if you wanted to get something that lasted, and ammunition didn't just grow on trees. Carol sighed. He agreed to reforge the blade part of the weapon, but did he really need to work on the firearms part? It was fully functional as it was, even if it was a bit out of spec.

Carol sat there for a few moments, before huffing. He couldn't just leave a problem that he knew existed well enough alone for the life of him. Besides, the better prepared Ren and the others were for the inevitable conflicts with Grimm, the better for his survival chances. At least he had gotten the materials he needed before he knew he needed them...

Standing, he set a course for his hardcase, retrieving the Menagerian steel from it. He tossed it up and down in the air, catching it and relishing in the weight as it fell into his hand. It was almost a shame that he had to use it, as it really was a beautiful metal, and not just because he understood the nuances of it. The luster of it captivated the eye, a strange gleam that was gloss and matte at the same time. The duality of it was interesting to say the least, but unfortunately, it had to be broken down before it could be built up...which was to say, he had to use a crucible once more. The furnace was set up to heat the metal, and Carol turned to the Automold and set it to the parameters of the blade, once again leaving it in a rough fashion so he could at least get some enjoyment out of it. That left only thing to do; Maintain StormFlower's firearm portion.

There was plenty for Carol to do tonight. First, clean Ren's guns. Second, forge the blade. Then came the quenching, then the drilling, and finally...a fresh new coat of paint. That was one of the most enjoyable parts of making a weapon, though perhaps that was because it was the penultimate step. Carol surveyed the room one last time, sighing to himself. "Welp. Nothin' for it, but to get started." Who needed sleep, anyway?

End Note: Fifty first verse, same as the first.