"GRAAAAAAH!" The tiger roars on Jaune's scroll as he runs around in the Merlot Island map.

Already having 10 kills under his belt, he skates on the sloped roof, looking for the secret entry pipe. One wrong move sends him in the toxic ooze, which will drain his health quickly and make completion of this mission all the harder.

He sees an oddly placed crate, and guides the tiger onto it. The tiger roars as it breaks the giant crate, revealing a pipe on a nearby wall, but there is one teensy little problem…

He's in the ooze.

Jaune rushes with the tiger in tow, struggling to crawl out. A health meter appears in the top center, quickly turning green when a piece is removed. The tiger gains enough traction to move forward, but it is slow. The character coughs wildly as the meter dips into the yellow. Finally, with three health pieces left, Jaune escapes into the pipe. A health refill is nearby, but after that is nothing but large, strong Grimm. He jumps into the clearing, ready to fight them all off at once!

. . . This is during the third hour of him playing this game. He's already beaten the map once, but now it is on hard mode. He's pressing on despite all the game can throw at him. The thumbs move with perfect accuracy as Jaune's character clears through the map.

"NOOOOOOOOO! DAMMIT!"

A Grimm hops out from a higher floor and surprises him, leading to his quick death. He was so close!

Jaune's mind begs him to start another game, but he resists. He has to buy a weapon today.

He grabs the remnants of his old weapon and attaches it to his back. With armor on, money in hand, and a fresh new mind, he sets out on his journey. Which, of course, features one of the few things he will never be able to defeat; motion sickness.

"Jaune? Been a while since you came around. Here's your bag."

"Thanks…"

It's a long way to the weapons shop. Most weapons around here are made by the huntsmen themselves, but Jaune has neither the time nor experience to do that kind of thing. Luckily for him, this shop offers weapon-making services. It's gonna cost a lot, but that's what 6000 lien is there for.

But first, the ride there. It is very sparse for this time of day, with very few people on it to speak of. The bag however would disagree with that assumption, as it is chock full of content from all manner of bodily processes. It even has color!

That eye-popping imagery aside, he finally arrives at his stop and gets off the bullhead. The bag quickly gets sealed up and thrown into an endless dark void (otherwise known as a trash can), and off he goes, searching for the weapon store.

It's the fifth one on the left;

Cascade AeroDust Inc.!

It's got all sorts of neon colors, and the store itself is painted in various colors. There are even weapon displays in the window!

He enters this store and instantly gets hit with a nice air-conditioned gust of wind. They sure do take things seriously around here.


Ah yes, apparently air conditioning is all that is needed for a place to be considered 'serious'. How the hell did I even come up with that?


His eyes stare straight ahead, and take it all in.

Numerous pieces of armor, potential weapon parts, Dust ammunition, various hunks of metal, and just about everything else you can think of cover the store wall to wall.

The audial spectrum is filled with various machinery running, like 3-D printers, robotic welding machines, and even some slicers to cut metal down. And, in the far edge, there are three people talking. They offer advice, general weapon knowledge, and also act as salesmen and women to seal the deal for a potential buyer. Jaune takes a mental note of that area. But first, he's gotta get some inspiration…

Well, time to look through the horde. The first thing that pops out at him immediately is a huntsman demonstrating a shield. He can lift it like it is nothing! His old shield is pretty heavy, but this shield looks even bigger!

He's gotta ask the salesman about that…

He goes to the left wall and looks at all the weapon designs. Guns everywhere. There's barely even any swords in the whole display case! It's just gun after gun after gun. He does see one that shoots projectiles out the sides though… that could be interesting. He continues looking and finds pretty much nothing else of interest.

Next to the guns, of course, is the ammo. They range from tiny little pellets to ones that are as big around as his arm. Obvious that this is their moneymaker… even after the cut the Schnees' get there's still almost certainly a healthy profit to be made. At 100 lien for merely a package of 10, this would burn through his money faster than a binge of Pumpkin Pete cereal.

On the other side is all kinds of metal. Magnetic, brittle, even some real expensive diamond is shown off here. How do they keep this from getting robbed?

He hears what sounds like the cocking of a weapon nearby. Looking up, he sees two drones with guns pointed straight at his head. Guess that explains it. But they sure do know their stuff. It's got ratings, weaknesses, rarity… let's pull one up right now!

Diamond

Rarity - 9 out of 10
Price - 8.5 of 10

Diamond is a special type of gem that is mined in deep underground areas, below even the Dust mines. This material is very hardened due to this depth, being able to stand even a direct swipe from Boarbatusk claws without losing any strength. However, the high heat and frequent wear of weapon usage cause it to crack somewhat easily, making it a poor choice for anything other than as shielding.

450 Lien per cubic inch

This is really useful. He spends about 35 minutes around there looking through all the information cards. In the end, he goes with a steel alloy type, that is almost as good as diamond, but can be used in high-heat situations. And isn't insanely expensive…

After searching through all of that, he has some ideas, but not enough to get a design yet. Back to the start…

He combs through the weapon designs again. Anything interesting at all? Well there is a flamethrower kind of thing with fire dust.. He also notices a little slot on the top for something. For what, he can't quite place. But he will ask about it, that's for sure.

*bump*

"Sorry about that, I didn't watch wh-"

His eyes process the scene in front of him. Red. Bright, cheery, ketchup red. Only one can don that color.

"J-J-J-J-J-J…"

She stutters like a broken record. Her hands are holding her scythe as if to shoot something, but it is not raised.

Against his better judgment, he taps her on the shoulder.

She rockets off at insane speed, clearly using her semblance, out of the shop, and completely off the street into a nearby bakery.

He and many other onlookers stand in shock at what has just gone on. To take Ruby out of a weapon shop, her biggest sanctuary? It must have been something fierce. No one can believe it.

Eventually everyone returns to their normal routine. Jaune goes back to looking through the multitude of weapons.

After careful observation and scrutiny, he isolates 6 possible weapons to get ideas from, mentally named W1-W6. These weapons span the entirety of the display, and cover the entire range of what he could want in a weapon, without leaving any gaps in between.


Two SM64 references in the chapter up to now. Figure them out? I wouldn't blame you if it took over 12 hours… ≻:)


With everything set up in his mind, he walks over to the salesman to get his design finalized.

"Finally decided on what you want?"

"M-Mostly there."

"What were you thinking of?"

"I was thinking of a shield that had something in it that could make it nearly weightless, like that one huntsman I saw earlier lifting his. And I wanted something that could be both a sword and gun essentially, that way I could use dust to do all kinds of attacks."

"How complicated are you thinking? Do you just want a gun welded to a sword? Cause that is pretty easy to do."

"Nah, I want to have it be toggle-able between the two whenever I need it. And I don't want to deal with ammo. Not a fan of all the recoil and waste it has."

"Understandable. I guess you would use something with powdered Dust I assume?"

"I guess."

The salesman thinks a while, putting down various drawings and options on his giant scroll. Jaune uses this time to think as well, coming up with more ideas of his own.

"How about a gun that uses some different types of dust, and has an outside shell with all the sword technology? You could switch with the press of a button on the back of the gun."

He shows the drawing to Jaune. This design has three rings outside the barrel to hold the dust, and a sheath outside of them that can transform into a small sword.

Jaune's face lights up as he realizes the potential of this prototype design.

"How about a pocket for gravity dust in the barrel? That way my attacks can have range."

"Can you add a sword attachment to the top of it? Would help me out with rotation and such."

Two taps on the scroll adds them in. It looks nearly perfect, but he has one more request…

He takes the sword and shield that has been sitting on his back this entire time and sets it in front of the salesman.

"Can you use this stuff to help make it? It was my great-great-grandfather's weapon."

A smile cracks onto the salesman's face. He's had this request many, many times before. If you get this far, you have the deal sealed.

"Of course we can. Any more customizations you would like?"

"Keep the shield the same. And of course make it extra shiny."

"Extra shiny huh… alright. 5200 Lien."

Not all the money used? That's a surprise. He takes out the lien and sets it on the desk.

"How long?"

"Oh… about 45 minutes."

"You said.. 45 minutes?"

"Yep. These robots work fast. You can even watch it if you like."

He takes that offer with enthusiasm as he hands his old weapon off. The salesman weighs it in his hands for a moment, trying to figure out how to balance the weight in the new weapon, before throwing them in a microwave.

"This used to take 20 minutes just to heat the metal up, but thanks to Dust, it's now only-"

*DING!*

"-10 seconds."

The weapon is left in there as he gets the right metal down for manufacture.

"Your great-great-grandfather sure had a good weapon. Pretty nice steel. How did a nice specimen like this one get bent like that?"

"Don't wanna talk about it."

"Grimm Battle, huh? I get you…"

Jaune will just let him believe that…

He puts the old weapon in the metal, and puts the mixture in a shaking machine to stir it up. After about three minutes of that, he turns it off, checks the mix, and then feeds it into a large machine.

The salesman taps the machine as it loads up the molten metal.

"This thing prints it allllll out. It's pretty calming to watch, I hear."

After that, it starts running, as multiple tiny jets of molten metal spit out of the machine onto a large, flat surface.

Jaune watches the machine work it's magic, but quickly gets bored and pulls up some generic scroll game. He's had enough Grimm Wars 2 for one day.

He can totally see why Ruby would come here… speaking of her…

Why was she so scared of me?

Questions he will probably never know the answer to. But Jaune wants to stop thinking about them for the time being. So back to the scroll games he goes…

The machines continue to whirr, as the parts get made, and some workers put them all together.

"It's done." Jaune looks up from his scroll and sees the final finished products. "Try it out on the targets over there." He walks up to the shooting area and tries to fire some ice dust at it, but nothing comes out.

"Flip the switch down one."

Another try and an ice Dust pellet flies out of the barrel, straight into the target, blowing clean through. Wanting to test out the sword functionality, Jaune puts the switch back up, then presses a button on the top edge to bring out the three-pronged sword. He runs up and slashes the target, bringing it down with a few quick swipes.

"Very good control. Clearly you had a bit of practice with that old sword."

"This thing is great. Thanks for the help!"

"You're welcome. Come back here when you need Dust refills!"

He's gonna need a lot of those. He buys the first one now, buying one bag each of Fire, Ice, and Earth dust, totaling 450 more Lien. With the bags attached to his weapon, and the weapon itself strapped on his back, Jaune finally leaves the shop, excited for the future.

He even stops by the bakery to check on Ruby, who is unsurprisingly still in there, now with cookies and strawberry desserts everywhere around her. She notices him almost immediately, and after stealing a glance at the new weapon he has, quickly turns away, digging her face into an ice cream sundae.

Jaune turns back around and goes toward the bullheads with a happy look on his face. Those droids are gonna get a real smacking tomorrow!

(A/N: Yes, this is Part 1. I didn't want a 4,000 word chapter. I think you can guess who the star of Repainted - Part 2 will be...)