King: Welcome to the August Prompt Project! All 15 prompts will be gathered here as they are completed. My goal is to complete the 15 by the end of the month with one coming out every other day. If it doesn't or gets stalled, then assuming something happened beyond my control (like a blackout or other ailment). Either way, I'm not beholden to get them out on time, but I'm gonna try damn it. That's the point, to get me working. Any who, here's what to expect.

15 Prompts starting with this chapter.

Each prompt was collected in accordance with my rules for collection.

Each prompt can be 1,000 to 5,000 words, depending on when I feel it's done.

Prompt #1 - Ruby making Cresent Rose Suggested by Zannaria

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Ruby sat at her desk, staring at a blank piece of design paper. At the age of 13, she was tasked with designing her prototype for a weapon that would be built and perfected during her years at Signal Combat Academy. But Ruby Rose had one great problem for designing her own weapon. She was a total weapons nerd. She geeks out about nearly every part of the process and any cool weapon she's ever seen. But that was also the problem. What should she make?

Her head hit her desk as she groaned. "Come on, Ruby. You know everything about weapons, just pick one!" She'd been beating herself up about this for the better part of three hours. She'd scribbled and discarded dozens of weapon designs by this point! A sword with a hand cannon for a hilt, a spear that can shoot its blade on a chain, a grenade launcher with a giant blade on the bottom for quick slashing ability! That last one in particular was something to hold onto for another time. But nothing screamed, The Weapon of Ruby Rose, Awesome Huntress-in-Training. She's been staring at these papers for so long she was starting to see things on them that weren't there. Like an inkblot forming what looked like a bird, kind of like a… crow…

Ruby's eyes went wide and she slowly moved upward again. Suddenly she burst out with, "THAT'S IT!" She grabbed paper and started to draw a first idea for her weapon. A scythe! What was cooler than a scythe?! But it wasn't enough either. She needed to make sure this was the perfect weapon. It had to include a ranged form! Now that she thought about it, a scythe, in order to be useful for a Huntress, needs to have a larger blade. Which means it'll have to be heavier. She made a note for using light but durable material, but that could only do so much.

"Even lighter metals would still be heavy. Considering…" Ruby looked at her hands and what little muscle she had. She wasn't very strong. Swinging around a weapon that would need to be taller than her would be difficult on a good day and near impossible otherwise. She had to make this work. "What if I use a heavy weapon type? Heavy recoil would probably be a good idea. Yeah. It can help swing the weapon." She started writing down possible options. "Maybe a shotgun like Uncle Qrow's? But that's pretty low range for both sides of the weapon. Launchers don't work with the same type of recoil…"

She glanced to the side and to the newest issue of Weapon World Magazine. On the cover was a blonde woman dressed in a white parka with a rifle hanging from her shoulder. She remembered reading the article, which was an interview with a woman who had come to be called 'The White Death.' She was, apparently, the world's most accomplished sniper. Ruby would admit to just skimming the article itself, but there were a few highlights. The first point she took note of was the outdated rifle she used. It was an old Atlas-style Tundra rifle; good range and accuracy with lower stopping power. The fact that she was able to win a marksman's competition with it while her opponents used modern rifles was telling of her skill. Then there was her record, which got brought up in the article. She was known for her lightning fast reflexes and accuracy, which helped her take out over two hundred Grimm over the course of two months. There was more, but Ruby checked out and had to work on her weapon.

But that also made her think. A sniper rifle might actually be a good idea. She started drawing up blueprints about how it could work. One version had the gun inside the blade itself while another had it at the end of the shaft. Eventually, she settled on a proper design. Make the shaft of the weapon the rifle itself, the center top of the weapon holds the barrel, and the blade can fold into itself. She had to be able to carry it and a scythe taller than she was required she had a way to shrink it down. She did her best to make sure it was compact and functional, but the weight would ultimately be the same. Her father explained the principle with a metaphor about weight.

It's easier to carry a brick that weighs a pound than it is to carry a pound's worth of feathers.

Once she perfected the style, she thought it might be a good idea to shift into a halfway form between the two to just be a rifle. A few tweaks here and there and she had that part down. All she had to do now was build it.

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This was harder than she thought. Her last two attempts at building the actual scythe's blade parts were… difficult. She pulled what metals she could get together and shaped them in the school's forge area (thank goodness for Signal's campus). But there was one problem thus far, she was having difficulty getting the blades to slide next to one another without grinding against themselves. She was groaning as she tried to figure out how to make them work without creating a grinder that'll ruin the weapon's integrity. She, eventually, found a series of extra tools she could slip in between the plates and keep them apart just enough to allow them to move without grinding against each other. That just required her to figure out how to put the gun into the form and let it fold.

"Fold… Hmm… Maybe if I change that to a collapsing form…" She started to reformat the barrel and mechanisms of the rifle to fold in over itself rather to either side. After a moment, she felt she'd perfected the form. She got to work fusing and screwing the pieces together. It took her hours just to get the blade together properly, let alone the barrel and firing mechanisms; one for in rifle mode and another for scythe mode. Set up a proper place for a clip and test.

She took the weapon to a firing range and tested the gun. The accuracy was good, but she could do better. Right now, though, she had to make sure this thing worked properly. Pressing the mecha-shift button, her as-of-yet unnamed weapon unfolded into its proper scythe form. Holding it felt like she was holding her own newborn child (she assumed). With a smile on her face, she tested the shift over and over to make sure it all worked without grinding up against itself. Testing the gun in scythe form found its stopping power and accuracy increased. Apparently the extended barrel was better for power and accuracy than she expected. Taking a mental note to look this stuff up more, she looked toward her weapon and grinned. She only has one more job now. Stain the metals into proper red, black, and greys. After that, she'd be done.

She'd completed her weapon. Her Crescent Rose.