FYI: I don't guns. If you do guns, proceed at your own risk, as I'm invoking my artistic license for firearms ;)
Jaune hadn't seen much of Ruby, or his own weapon in the following weeks. If Weiss' constant, irritated rants were anything to go by, neither had her own team.
The girl still showed up to classes, sure; but her Semblance made it impossible to catch up to her when she'd inevitably bolt out at the end of them; Weiss trying to freeze the class door solid only resulted in said door being broken to freezy bits by the red blur and a detention for the heiress.
Still, the girl seemed to be in high spirits (even though she vehemently refused to share the details of what exactly she'd been doing with anyone), so the whole crafting process must have been going well, Jaune surmised.
Better than he was doing, at the very least. Being left without a weapon meant he was excluded from most excursions into the Emerald forest, unlike his team (which left him with a guilty conscience, but also plenty of opportunities to hunker down in the library and do all the research Ruby'd asked him to do) and from Goodwitch's class; the teacher, however, used that opportunity to put him in an unarmed spar against one of CRDL, instead.
Safe to say, nobody expected the guy who couldn't swing a sword properly to save his life to actually swing better, if only marginally, without a sword.
Was it beginner's luck, or idiot's luck, or somebody else's luck, or a combination of them all, but Jaune Arc had actually managed to beat Russel. Sure, the dropkick he tried out of sheer desperation had hurt him more than it did his opponent, but it was enough to kick the mohawk-donning punk out of the ring.
For the first time in…well, ever, Jaune Arc walked out as a victor, and not as infirmary's regular soon-to-be patient. It didn't stop him from ending up in the infirmary anyway when Nora'd hugged him so tight he cracked a rib and passed out from lack of oxygen.
After waking up in the infirmary to the concerned gazed of his friends, waving them off and putting Nora on a one-week "no pancakes" diet, Jaune was left to his own devices. His Aura had probably already healed the superficial damage, and the boy, hopefully, would be out within the hour. Jaune's thoughts wandered to Ruby. He didn't mean to be ungrateful, but he really wished he'd get the gun soon. Or at the very least, get his sword'n board back.
Totally coincidentally (and not just because it's super cliché), with perfect timing, thd very person he'd been thinking about barged into the room.
"Hey Jaune!" Ruby waved to him and got closer, "I heard about what happened. Are you okay?"
"Never better, Crater Face," Jaune shot back a grin.
"Yay! You got your first win!" the girl jumped up a bit. "I'm so happy for you!"
"Thanks, Rubes. I mean, I really just got lucky-"
"Don't say that!"
"-but at this point, a win is a win for me. Don't worry."
"Good," Ruby crossed her hands, "Because I have some great news for you!"
No way. "Did you-"
"-finish your gun! Yes I did!" the redhead beamed. "It's so cool! Not as cool as Crescent Rose, of course, butyouillabsolutelyloveitI'msure!"
Jaune chuckled. "Never change, Ruby."
"I won't!" she shok her head energetically. "Is, um, your injury serious? Can you leave already?"
"Just a cracked rib. I've had way worse," Jaune waved the girl off. "I'll probably be out within an hour or two."
"Great!" Ruby chirped. "When you're out, come to the shooting range. I'll introduce you and Joan Junior together!"
"Joan Junior?" the blond raised his brow.
"Yes, because she's going to be your baby! Now come on, get well and I'll see you there!" Ruby exclaimed, quickly moved in to hug Jaune (he barely had time to reciprocate), then just as quickly left the room.
Forced to wait for the nurse to discharge him, Jaune was left with his thoughts once again. His first thought was that "Joan Junior", as a name, would definitely have to go.
Suprisingly, it didn't take long for Jaune to find the gun range once he'd been discharged. It was actually almost right around the corner from the infirmary, straight across the Weapon Forge. If Jaune had to harbor a guess as to why all three were so close to eachother, it's that so you wouldn't have to wheel injured students halfway across the campus when their Brand New and absolutely Flawless(tm) weapon-related ideas didn't go so well.
Which was a fair way of doing things, considering how ninety five percent of Beacon's student population were batshit insane. Or maybe that was just his former civilian self talking.
Ruby had already been waiting for him by the entrance to gun range, anxiously tapping her feet.
"Hey Ruby!" Jaune greeted her.
"Hey, Jaune!" Ruby greeted him back. "You're finally out!"
"Yep," Jaune popped the p, drawing a small smirk from his companion. "So, uh, we're going then?"
"Yeah! Come on in, I got us both a booth!" the girl dragged him along.
Jaune marvelled at the inside of the gun range. It was…huge, to say the very least. Dozens of lanes, separated by what looked like heavily reinforced walls and booths with heavy, Scroll-controlled doors. Some of them were locked, muffled sounds of gunfire or explosions coming from within. Each booth had a window stretching all the way to the ceiling high above, thought there were shutters covering it in some booths. A large metal walkway ran perpendicular to the entirety of the range.
"What's the walkway above us for?" Jaune asked.
"Oh, it's for spectators," Ruby explained, still dragging him along. "Per rules, only two people are allowed in a single booth, but you can observe the, um, everything going down range through that glass. Or there are controls inside the booth to close the shutters, so that nobody can see how you're doing. It helps if you come here on a bad day, heh-heh."
Well, now that the girl had explained it, it was kinda obvious. Oops.
His attention was turned back to the present by Ruby actively tugging on his sleeve. "This is our booth, cmon!"
Unlike the shooting itself, the inside of a booth wasn't remarkable in the slightest, save for a very intricate-looking console to his right and what he assumed to be an ammo locker to his left.
"How big is this range?" Jaune inquired, looking down said range, while Ruby connected her Scroll to the console and started doing something with it.
"Five hundred meters from here to the wall," Ruby replied nonchalantly.
Half a kilometer inside a building? "Holy crap."
Something painfully hit him just below the knee. Grunting in pain and surprise, Jaune turned around only to see the girl had kicked him from where she was standing.
"Bad words. Not good. Stop," she mumbled without looking away from the console.
"Okay, okay, sorry. I'm just impressed, that's all. What're you doing, anyway?"
"Setting up the targets for you," Ruby paused to click something on the console, and in the next moment a set of holographic targets appeared some distance away.
"This whole system is super cool!" she turned around and continued with excitement in her voice, "You can customize how big the targets are, how far away each one appears, how many there are, how they appear, do they appear at all, in what order they appear, dotheymove, dotheyfly, dotheyactivelytrytoavoidyourshots it's so awesome!"
Jaune blinked a few times. "Yes," he said on autopilot.
"Great!" Ruby moved past him and connected her scroll to the ammo locker. "Time to meet your baby gun!"
Ruby pressed something and the locker opened. Jaune's jaw went wide open.
The weapon was as weird as it was beautiful. It had two barrels – one of them painted golden yellow, the other stark white with yellow stripes spiraling all the way across - in an over/under configuration attached to a rather sizeable receiver wigh the help of a smaller, rectangular steel frame. Some kind of a tube - magazine, Jaune guessed - was housed at the very bottom of that frame, covered by polished and intricately engraved wood and going straight up into the receiver. Said receiver was also stark-white with spectacular-looking golden engravings. The trigger with the large-looped lever (all gold-colored) were situated right under a somewhat short, but sturdy-looking handle. Finally, there was a small-sized, intricately decorated razor-sharp axe head situated at the edge of the frame.
"Wow…." Jaune breathed out. This was way better than anything his imagination could have conjured up.
"So…do you like it?" he heard Ruby's shy voice from the side.
Turning to her, Jaune looked straight into the strangely apprehensive girl's eyes. "Ruby, if I wasn't so deathly scared of Yang, I could have kissed you right now."
The girl turned bright red.
"No no, not like that, Rubes. Just…I dunno how else I could thank you for this."
"Well…not like Yang has to know…" Ruby mouthed barely audible words. Not a second later, she felt strong arms wrap around her and something soft, warm and slightly wet press up against her cheek. Only for a second, but by the end of it the girl was so red you could genuinely mistake her for a Fire Dust crystal and try to stick her into a gun (not that she'd mind it too much, probably).
Pulling away from the redhead, Jaune realized what he'd just done and decided to turn into a tomato himself. The awkward, crimson-filled silence continued until the blond found courage to speak up.
"So, uhhh…what is this gun exactly?"
Grabbing onto the opportunity to switch to a topic she was way, way more familiar with, Ruby took hold of the gun and held it in front of Jaune.
"This," she cleared her throat, some notes of earlier embarrassment still present in her voice, "is a lever action shotgun. Based on the Winchester Arms Model 451."
Winchester…it was quite a surprise for him to find out that his bully had been the grandson of a renowned weaponsmith.
"Yes, Cardin is related to that Winchester. No, we both know we don't want to talk about him now," Ruby interrupted Jaune before he could even say anything worth interrupting, "This, for all intents and purposes, is a modified copy of a standard Model 451."
"Okay," Jaune nodded along. "What's with the double barrels?"
"Well," Ruby beamed, "I know I told you that you could fire slugs out of this gun, but then I started thinking and maybe you wanted to fire buckshot too, and the barrels would be a bit incompatible, so I went ahead andinstalledabarrelforbuckshottoo!"
"Ruby," Jaune said calmly.
"Sorry, sorry sorry!" the girl shook her head, "Okay, so in simpler terms: you have two barrels for two different types of shells. This," she pointed to the golden barrel, "is smoothbore with an improved cylinder choke. Perfect for using with pellet shots, And this," she then pointed to the white barrel with engravings, "is a rifled barrel. For slugs. And the best thing is you can switch between two barrels!"
"How? Aren't they fixed?"
"Not really. Look, here," she pointed to a small, latch-like thing at the edge of the receiver, "you flip it, and the barrels become unlocked." Doing just that, a distinct clicking sound was heard. Ruby then proceeded to grab the upper barrel and, with a bit of effort, successfully pulled it out of the receiver, leaving the twin barrels hanging on the frame.
"Just like that! You can switch them up on the fly, depending on what kind of ammo you've got loaded!" Ruby grinned, spinning the barrels and moving the engraved barrel to the top. "The firing mechanism will be locked until both the barrel," the girl moved said barrel into the receiver, and, with a click, it was secured, "and the barrel lock," she flipped the latch, "are in place. So you don't have to worry about nasty things like accidental discharges while the barrel's loose too much."
"Wow," Jaune was speechless, "holy s…weet cream!" he hastily corrected himself, noticing how Ruby zeroed in on him in a heartbeat. A question appeared in his mind. "What will, um, happen if I shoot the wrong kind of shot with the wrong kind of barrel?"
Ruby nodded in understanding. "I planned for that. Obviously, it's better if you use the appropriate barrels, but if you, say, shoot buckshot out of a rifled barrel, the buckshot will simply have really bad spread; and if you shoot a slug outta the smoothbore, then it'll have bad aerodynamics and stumble a lot and go nowhere as far as normal! Still pretty dangerous, but not really disastrous."
"Good to know," Jaune breathed in relief, "I guarantee you I'll be messing the ammo types and barrels constantly."
"Yeah, I figured," the redhead shrugged, "that's why the rifled barrel has these stripes going on it. Kind of the same pattern as rifling, so you can tell the two apart better."
"Awesome. What about the, um, axe thing?"
"Oh, the axe? Well, I figured if you get caught with Joan Junior in close quarters, you can use it pretty nicely as a hatchet," Ruby flipped the gun in her hand and held it by the handle in a vertical position, giving a few test swings, "It's not the greatest thing ever, but it can probably help you if you can't reach your sword."
"That's really thoughtful." A second passed before Jaune's eyes widened. "Wait! Crocea Mors! What about my sword?!"
Ruby's eyes widened too. "Oh, right! Here," she quickly put the shotgun in Jaune's hands, turned around and reached deeper into the locker, pulling out a familiar scabbard with a sword inside.
"Ta-da!" she grinned triumphantly. "Your awesome sword, safe and sound!"
"Thanks Rubes," Jaune smiled back, "You…didn't mess with the sword, right?"
"Nope!" she popped the p, then continued much less confidently, "but I. Umm…I kindamodifiedyourshieldabit!"
A pang of fear shot through Jaune's heart. "Ruby…what did you do?"
"Nothing bad!" the girl shot up suddenly, "It's-it's just a few things for you gun! Let me show you!"
With that, she unsheathed the sword, carefully putting it on a nearby table, then expanded the shield.
"Okay, look, first: here," she began explaining, pointing to a small notch at the top of the shield Jaune had almost missed, "you can put the gun in here and it'll kind of fix itself a bit," taking the gun from Jaune's hands, she positioned a certain part of the gun frame's bottom inside the notch, "and you can easily aim and shoot from behind your shield," the girl struggled quite a bit with the combined weight of both the shield and the shotgun, but eventually gave a mock demonstration. "Cool, huh?"
His old nervousness forgotten, Jaune could only shake his head approvingly with an impressed "Yeah."
"That's not everything though," Ruby put the gun on the table and pointed to a couple of strange hooks on the inside, "you can put Joan Junior in here, get her fixed in these hooks so that you can reload with one hand!"
Oh crap. In his excitement, he'd completely forgotten about having to reload the damn thing.
"Here," Ruby continued, "you equip the shield. It's a bit too heavy for me…owch," she shook her hand a little.
With ease, Jaune grabbed the shield and affixed it to his arm while Ruby grabbed the gun. It took a bit of fiddling on her part, but eventually, the shotgun rested pretty securely on the hooks, barrels pointing towards the ground. Jaune gave the shield a tentative shake, the weapon moving only slightly.
"When it's secured like that, you just move the lever back, and then slide the shells in suuuuuper easily!" the girl demonstrated those actions, "and then you simply take it off the hooks and you're good to go! And you can still hide behind your shield too, if you need!"
She'd thought of everything. This girl was truly a wonder. Pulling the shotgun out from the restraints with a bit of effort, Jaune, shield still in hand, pulled Ruby into a tight hug.
"Eep!" she squeaked.
"Thank you," Jaune mouthed quietly. "I can't ever properly thank you for this, so all I can do is thank you over and over again."
"It's n- you're welcome, Jaune," the girl stammered after he stopped hugging her. "I had a super fun time making this gun too, y'know? Better than trying to socialize with others and failing miserably…"
"Yeah, I get it. Socially awkward buddies for the win!" Jaune held his fist up and Ruby bumped it, dopey grins growing on both their faces. "So, can I try to shoot it?"
"Obviously!" in a heartbeat, Ruby scrounged through the locker for ammo, pulling out a box of slugs and a few earplugs. She made a move to start loading Joan Junior, but Jaune interrupted her, taking a shell from the box first.
"Relax, Crater Face," Jaune smirked, "I've been doing my homework too."
Ruby's expression of surprise would be funny if it wasn't so adorable already.
Countless CCTNet videos fresh in his mind, Jaune pulled the lever back and started trying to load. More than a few troublesome fiddling attempts later, he managed to load 5 slugs in. Putting the ear protection on along with Ruby, he chambered the first shell and fell into his approximation of a shooter's stance. His approximation wasn't even close to being accurate, given how many corrections Ruby had to do to his stance, along with a very short crash course on how to actually pull the trigger.
Eventually, though, she gave him a thumbs up. This was the moment.
He nodded back, put one of the holographic targets in his sights the best he could, put his finger on the trigger and steadily squeezed-
Next thing he knew, he was staring at the booth's ceiling, his head hurt like he'd just come out of a spar with Cardin and there was probably a Jaune-sized and shaped imprint on the back wall.
"Figured why they'd have infirmary next to th's place…" Jaune slurred, slowly sliding into unconsciousness as a frightened Ruby rushed towards him.
Vale wasn't built in a day. It would take more than just a day to build the legend of Jaune Arc, too.
Very old idea of mine, finally given life. The cockroaches are celebrating.
