I don't own anything from RWBY, that honor belongs to the fine people at Rooster Teeth.
Chapter 2: Beyond The Surface
Setting out for Ruby's forge after taking some rest, Pyrrha quickly went over the modifications she wanted for Milo and Akouo, given how the redhead had mentioned that she had a few plans for the weapon. Pyrrha always looked forward to whenever Ruby had a weapon idea or wanted to tinker with something given as the young forger had a particular knack for finding out extremely creative applications for weaponry. It had become one of her hallmarks by the time Pyrrha had become one of Ruby's closest friends.
It was after all Ruby who made some necessary modifications to provide Milo it's javelin form and made Akouo's sight, allowing Pyrrha to aim more accurately while retaining her defense. How she managed to fit a thermal and night vision scope into the shield was completely unknown to Pyrrha, but it had certainly provided results and as her father always used to say, results never lie.
Knocking on the door, in the same way she always used to, Pyrrha found the redhead almost waiting for her at the door, ready to surprise her with a hug. How she managed to do that, was a feat only explainable by the Gods but it still made for an extremely warm greeting. Although, the hug did feel much weaker today.
"Hi Pyrrha! You're here for the modifications?" Ruby asked, seeing Milo and Akouo slung on Pyrrha's back.
"I would like to see what plans you had for Milo and Akouo, like you had intended before we were distracted by a… certain vampire attack." Pyrrha replied.
"Yeahhh, hopefully we won't be derailed this time!" Ruby said, before heading the forge with Pyrrha by her side.
Both girls walked down the hall, where Pyrrha glanced upon a picture of Ruby with her whole family back when she was a baby. The picture was… cute in many people's eyes but unless they wanted to meet Crescent Rose face to face, most people would stay away from commenting on Ruby's antics from her childhood.
"Where's your sister Ruby?" Pyrrha asked upon finding Yang and remembering she hadn't yet come back.
"Oh, she went on a hunting mission for some kind of monster hunt with her friend. My dad's still on his mission though so I've just been stuck at the house making some more and more improvements to Crescent Rose." Ruby replied, absentmindedly as she walked over to the doors leading to the forge
"Ruby, are you sure you're not feeling lonely?" Pyrrha asked, worried that Ruby might not be getting the adequate amount of time from friends and family as she deserved.
"Eh, it's fine Pyrrha." Ruby replied, her tone telling her she was most certainly not fine.
"Ruby, do you want to talk about it?" Pyrrha asked, slowing down Ruby before she entered the forge.
"What 'it' are we talking about, Pyrrha?" Ruby asked, as she slumped downward and sat by a workstation.
"Whatever's bothering you Ruby." Pyrrha said as she sat down next to her.
"Okay fine! I'm not feeling fine! I'm just really disappointed in myself! I forgot to activate the protections in the house and ended up letting that vampire in-" Ruby blurted out, surprising Pyrrha with the amount of pain in her voice.
"Ruby, you're not being fair to yourself-" Pyrrha tried to say, hoping she could at least reassure Ruby before being again cut off.
"But I still didn't remember to activate those protections and look what happened! A vampire snuck in and Wiss, or Snow or whatever nearly killed you and captured Jaune!" Ruby continued, her outburst nearly breaking into tears as Pyrrha realized just how badly Ruby had been beating herself up since the incident. "Maybe, if I had been a better huntress or just a little more attentive, then maybe you might not have been in any danger. I'm sorry!"
Hearing Ruby's outburst, Pyrrha immediately wrapped her hand's around the youngster's head and hugged her close, reassuring her "Ruby, you could never have accounted for the fact that you would be attacked by a vampire, let alone one of the older ones in existence. And you don't need to be sorry about anything, you're a great huntress, even in training. I saw that in the way you fought. Don't forget, you were the one who held off that vampire when I was frozen in Ice."
Ruby relaxed slightly upon hearing Pyrrha's words, immediately making the invincible girl feel happy in knowing she had at least healed some of her friend's pain.
"I also know that when you do become a huntress, you'll far outshine us all. Just keep moving forward Ruby and be yourself. Because that's all that matters. Being true to yourself." Pyrrha said, as she ruffled Ruby's hair similarly to how Yang would do it.
The act had the intended effect as Ruby was feeling a lot more like herself again, if not with a few more self-doubts to deal with but they would burn those bridges when Ruby was ready.
"So, you wanted to talk about the modifications?" Pyrrha asked after Ruby broke away from the hug and looked on the workstation where Crescent Rose was kept.
"Oh! Right, well I had a bunch of plans for Milo and Akouo. Let me just bring up my chart and… that should be fine." said the young forger as she quickly projected her scroll onto a holoscreen, making Pyrrha's jaw drop from the list of attachments she was working on.
"Uh, Ruby? "Pyrrha asked, wondering how on earth did she have so many attachment plans.
"We could give you a variable zoom on your sight on akuo, ako, I'm just gonna call it Aku now." Ruby said, again failing to pronounce Akouo making Pyrrha giggle slightly. "Or I could give you a Slammed Receiver to reduce the recoil, maybe we can put in a mod to make Milo shoot two shots in one trigger pull or we could put boosters in Milo's javelin or-"
"Ruby, I just need something that can help with finding and taking down the Schnee Vampire." Pyrrha quickly said, hoping Ruby would calm down.
"Okay, then how about a gold plating over Milo, since it's well… incendiary towards Vampires and some more silver bullets?"
"That would be perfect."
"All right! Come over by evening today and the weapon will be ready!"
"Thanks Ruby! And in case you ever need someone to talk to, just let me know okay?" Pyrrha said to the young forger, her hand on her shoulder in a reassuring manner.
"You got it! Stay safe!" Ruby replied excitedly, as she quickly got to work on Pyrrha's weapons in the forge.
Pyrrha smiled gently as she bid goodbye to her weapons and left them in Ruby's capable care, fully confident in her abilities to make a good weapon. Upon leaving the house however, she couldn't help but feel that something was off about Ruby's behavior.
In the evening
It was done! Ruby had finally finished gold plating Milo and was now planning on melting down more and more of the silver which was thankfully in abundance on Remnant. She only wished she could say the same for Gold since having fire rounds could come in extremely handy against vampires, especially when they used Ice Magic like the one from before had.
Setting down Milo on the table next to it's shield which Ruby had absolutely no idea how to pronounce, she gathered some more of the steel and placed it into the forge for melting and upon getting the molten metal, promptly placing it in the bullet fabricator where it would be converted into bullets.
Now all she had to do was wait for Pyrrha and then she would be off on her quest to hunt down 'Snow White' and then… it was back to forging and cutting trees. Which was starting to get rather boring.
Ruby always had so many ideas for weapons, but no one would let her go crazy with any of her weapons, apart from her own which didn't really have a lot of things that could be tinkered with. Sighing in disappointment, Ruby sat down on the bench outside her forge and just looked out towards the horizon watching the beautiful sun's colors meld into the horizon.
It made her wish she wasn't stuck in school, learning how to be a huntress and that she could go out for crazy adventures with Pyrrha, or Yang or Ren and Nora. It sounded so much fun to just go out and about in the woods to hunt monsters and save people. Just like her mother had.
But Ruby was never going to be the hunter her mother was, right? After all, she nearly cost Pyrrha and Jaune their lives because of her failure to activate a simple switch and it showed given Ozpin's words after the conflict. It was clear that Ruby still wasn't good enough. And at this rate, she might never be.
So many bad thoughts ran through the girl's mind that eventually she decided that she needed to spend some time away from her home. After all, it's not like she was going to have any company given how Yang's mission still hadn't come to an end and neither did her dad's leaving her at their house.
So, she left her house after leaving Pyrrha a message that her weapon was ready using her scroll and leaving said weapons out on the workbench, which she had given Pyrrha access to, she left towards a very familiar location with Crescent Rose by her side.
Quickly running across the forest, Ruby used her semblance in short bursts to find the path. Along the way however she heard plenty of roars and well, those couldn't be left unattended.
Arming Crescent Rose, Ruby headed out to the source of the roars and found a lone Beowolf. Quickly taking aim with her sniper, Ruby shot out at the Beowolf, landing a shot to the head, which alerted the location of 3 more to her location, as was evident by their growling.
Immediately using her semblance and placing her scythe blade towards the neck of one of the Beowolves she pulled at let it's head fall to the ground with a violent seize before quickly shooting down the other Beowolf which was to her right.
The last one however, pulled out the trunk she was behind and using it like a weapon, bashed her into the trunk of another tree, making her aura flicker once.
Recovering from the impact, Ruby quickly found herself in the eyes of a charging Beowolf and saw it jump and lunge towards her, looking to make mincemeat of the young huntress.
However the Beowolf would only find empty air as Ruby split into 3 petal blooms and promptly got out of the way of the Beowolf, letting it's claws slice through the tree trunk and landing 2 shots to its back before it turned around, revealing it's bony head where Ruby shot, hoping to land a killing blow, only to find that armor plating was much stronger than what she had estimated earlier, finding herself punched into the air by the Beowolf.
Landing in the branches of a tree, Ruby promptly fell to the ground, her aura now flickering rapidly from the impact given as she had been using semblance as well, leaving her near exhausted. And given from the low growl she heard from the edge of the forest; she knew her time was probably up if she didn't get out of these branches.
'Come on! Come on! Stupid tree, work with me here!' Ruby thought, as she rapidly cut the branches holding her in place, hacking away at them blindly with Crescent Rose and falling to the ground with a quiet "oof!"
Unfortunately, by the time she had managed to get down, the Beowolf had already caught up with her. Just as it was about to raise it's claws and rip Ruby to shred's however, one of the cut branches fell atop the Beowolf's head, stunning it long enough for Ruby to shoot her gun in it's chest and send it back before rising to her feet and landing a slash that took away both the legs off the Beowolf.
Latching her scythe blade against the Beowolf's neck she fired with Crescent Rose and decapitated the beast as it fell to the ground, signaling the end of the conflict.
"Thanks for the help and I'm sorry I called you stupid!" Ruby said to the tree above her, feeling extremely guilty for the words she said and took a deep breath.
After letting her aura restore itself for a few minutes, Ruby carried onto her location and found the cliff side. The cliff side where her mother's gravestone lied.
Had she come here an exceedingly crazy amount of times? Probably. In fact at this point she wondered if Ruby had always been like this in every reality, given how one of her forging mentors did talk about their being alternate realities, she wondered how other versions of her were like with their mothers, assuming the theory was even true.
Perhaps it was a little concerning as to why she loved coming to this place and this place only, but she couldn't help it! Whenever she felt too burdened by everything, she always came back to this place. Despite knowing her mother was long gone, having at least something to remember her by did help her out whenever she felt especially down on her luck.
But today, the gravestone wasn't shining as brightly as it used to in the moonlight. Perhaps even her mother was disappointed in Ruby.
"Hey mom. I don't know if you're there or not right now, it's pretty late after all but I came here to say hi and uh, talk for a little bit about everything that's been happening." Ruby began as she awkwardly sat down beside the gravestone, hoping her spirit was still inside it.
"It's been a little while since I last talked but I uh, had another one of my tests happen to become a huntress and I think I did pretty well on it. At least given by the look, Professor Oobleck gave me I think I did pretty good on it. But after that I had a lot of forging assignments to turn in which thankfully didn't take me too long but I still had a lot to go through. It did give me new ideas for weapons, and it did give me the inspiration to make my own weapon! It's called Crescent Rose and it's a scythe that can turn into a sniper."
Simply letting out those words had felt so good to Ruby to just let everything that had happened since the last few weeks. The gravestone seemed to glow a little brighter as she said those words, so Ruby felt a little more validated about her feelings.
"I did get attacked by a vampire yesterday though. Pyrrha had come with one of her friends she met, although I think there's something going on between them. But anyways I got attacked by some vampire that used ice magic and then tried to kill me and Pyrrha. But we fought her off and then I got told off by Ozpin for… wanting to hunt down the Vampire. Although, Pyrrha did come back and helped me feel a little better about it." Ruby continued as the gravestone began shining even brighter, now feeling a little uncomfortable.
"But still, I can't help but think about what Ozpin said and think, what if I'm not cut out for this? I made a really stupid mistake and… it almost killed Pyrrha and her friend and me. Plus, both dad and Yang have been well rather busy, and I guess there's no point mincing words now, I feel lonely. I wish I had someone other than my friends or a partner even just who I can well hang out with and just relax. Safe in the knowledge, that they'll never go and that I can always count on them to be around. I know I have some very good friends, Pyrrha's one of them, but I still feel like something is missing." Ruby finished as she noticed the light on Summer's gravestone was flickering wildly which was certainly very unnerving.
As were the Crimson and Sapphire eyes watching her from the trees.
A/N: Week 2 of the new schedule and already it feels odd, but I guess that's something I'll get used to with time. However, I have been working behind the scenes on a new story which may be revealed sometime soon. I'm not sure I can guarantee a chapter for Strange Fates but I could do one for this story.
Anyways I hope you enjoy and as always review kindly and Keep Moving Forward!