[X] She asks Ruby how she and Penny have been getting along. They have been spending some time together...
Picking up the part, Yang looked at it for a moment.
"Just a grip?" Yang asked, holding the black pistol grip and rotating her hand to get a better look of it.
"For now, yes." Ruby replied. "I'm working on attaching the other one we have to a generic gun so I can test if it will work functionally while shooting and hitting. For now, just wave it around and hit some things while using it, see how functional it is."
"Is there any specific way it works?" Yang asked. "I don't force Dust into my Semblance so if there's anything specific..."
"Don't be concerned." Penny spoke up. "It's all automated. Just make sure your Semblance is active when holding the pistol grip and allow it to work through you. The actual usage of it through a Semblance isn't worked through the weapon, and is more of an internal source. As long as the Dust flows into you, then we will know that the mechanisms here are working."
"Just that simple?" Yang asked.
"Yep!" Ruby replied. "And it shouldn't hurt you."
"One problem, though." Yang pointed out. "My Semblance needs me to take a hit before I can use it. And needs to take my Aura down completely to do the best possible. You might not get accurate results if I was fine."
"Hm." Penny mused for a moment. "Do you really think it could be a problem? It shouldn't make a difference how much your Semblance is in use, but if you are concerned that you might need to take significant combat damage to test it accurately, I believe I could take down your Aura to the precise level needed quickly enough?"
"...It's fine." Yang replied. "I'm not the expert here, so I'll just go with what you say."
With that in mind, Yang smashed her fists together, but didn't do much beyond that. Just hard enough to effect her Aura to a noticeable degree, but only if you were watching closely.
"That should do." Yang declared, as she walking towards one of the walls, next to a trio of test dummies. Said dummies were burnt, cut, damaged, and full of bullet holes. The one in the middle less than any of the others.
Looking towards them, Yang smirked. Holding the pistol grip in her hand, Yang felt a sort of buzzing near her hand.
Relaxing her Aura around her hand, the buzzing faded slightly in intensity, but grew and spread around her body. Before long, Yang stopped actively noticing it. Bringing the grip in front of her face between her curled fist, Yang smirked.
Just punch the dummies a bit, then talk to Ruby, right?
Charging forward, Yang extended her arm behind her pulling back to punch as she charged forward. Then her hand exploded, and she dropped the grip in sudden shock.
"Ow." Yang complained. "Ruby, you said it didn't explode."
"Water Dust isn't supposed to explode." Ruby replied, with a frown. "It must've been a Dust reaction."
Turning to the table, Ruby reached for the gun rested on it, and quickly pulled out a screwdriver. "How did that go wrong? Did I forget to adjust the flux capacitor so that it's astral injecture was self-stabilising?"
Penny put down the part she was working on, then stepped to the side, to behind Ruby. "Did you remember to set the stability matrix in line when you were adjusting the grip to allow it to store bullets?"
Ruby paused, and pulled open the part she was holding.
"...Oops." Ruby admitted. "Hey Yang, I found the reason you exploded this time."
"I can't believe you blew me up." Yang replied.
"Don't you blow yourself up all the time?" Ruby asked.
"That's completely different." Yang answered. "I can't tease myself over blowing me up."
Penny looked over towards Yang, then at Ruby, then scribbled down something on a piece of paper next to her.
"Teasing..." She muttered under her breath, barely audible. "Knowing boundaries? Or just used to what she will say? More observation needed..."
"Did you say something?" Ruby asked, turning to Penny.
The orange haired girl quickly hid the paper she was writing on under some more mechanical parts.
"Just thinking out loud." Penny replied. "I was thinking about the blade, and how to alter the shifting function on that. I didn't want to distract you from your work."
Ruby nodded, as Yang picked up the exploded part, and shook it so it stopped smoking. Walking towards the table that the other two girls were standing over, Yang put the pistol grip next to Ruby.
Man, it'd been ages since Yang had to do in-depth thought regarding her weapons. She'd made Ember Celica years ago, and had tweaked it up over the years, but didn't really pay too much attention to what the different parts were beyond what her blueprints said they did, and getting improved versions of the parts as they were sold.
Putting that thought aside for the moment, Yang looked over at the two little engineers at work.
"So, you two have spent a while hanging out." Yang pointed out. "Have the two of you been having fun, then?"
"I have." Penny replied. "I do not often interact with people, and Ruby's hobbies overlap with mine. It would have taken me several days to work on this project this much without her help."
"It's been fun, yeah." Ruby agreed. "I mean, it might be an idea to do something else soon, go for a walk to get some ice cream or just talk a bit so we don't get overfocused, you know? Make sure we don't miss an obvious solution to a problem because we were overthinking it. But it's been fun, and Penny's nice."
"It's nice to see you've made a friend." Yang noted, with a smile.
Penny froze, dropping a screwdriver that she was holding to turn towards Yang.
"Friend?" She asked. "Do you... Do you think me and Ruby would be considered friends, at this point?"
Yang couldn't even reply, before Ruby spoke up.
"Of course I do." Ruby replied, turning to her. "You're a nice person, you share my interest in making weapons, and you're fun to be around. Isn't that enough that you'd call someone a friend?"
"I don't really have too many friends." Penny replied. "I'm not entirely sure how the entire befriending process works. Is that all it really is? We do not need to know each other better or anything?"
"I don't see why we'd need to." Ruby replied. "I'm having fun, you're having fun, everyone's having fun, friends. We can talk a bit more about ourselves if you think we need to, though."
As she finished talking, Ruby turned back to the second pistol grip she was holding, and quickly put the finishing touches on it.
"Here." Ruby finished, passing it to Yang in the process. "Let me fix the other one while you test that, let me know if there's any problems."
Yang nodded as she took the pistol grip, and Ruby picked up the one that had exploded. She paused for a moment, as she noticed the scent of smoke, which had oddly enough mixed with the smell of what smelt like the ocean side.
"I'll test this out, then." Yang decided. She noticed the buzzing in her hand again, as she flexed her hand and wrist, and it only took a moment for Yang to head back over to the training dummies.
...There was something weird about that Penny girl, Yang mused, as she again drew her clenched fist back to prepare to punch the middle dummy. She seemed to latch onto the idea of having a friend way too fast, and didn't seem too sure on what exactly she would consider a friend.
That latter point wasn't too much of an issue, in fairness. Different people considered the different levels of companionship to be the point where people were properly friends. Yang didn't really think about it that often herself, but she certainly had some people she was more confident calling friends then others. Miltia and Two were a bit above Piran and Peri, for instance.
But still, Penny hadn't seemed to doubt Ruby's words about them counting as friends at this point, and in general had just accepted what Ruby said. She even said herself that she wasn't too sure on how making friends worked.
Seemed like a sad person, Yang mused, as she uppercutted a training dummy, ripping it from the stand it was on and sending it hurtling towards the ceiling. Well, not sad as in personality, but sad when you thought about implications. She'd reacted like that to the idea of having a friend, asked about how having friends was supposed to work, didn't seem well socialised, and Yang had seen her writing down notes on people interacting not that long ago.
Clearly someone who hadn't gotten much companionship, despite how nice of a person she was, and how easily Ruby was getting along with her now. It made Yang worry a bit, about why. Maybe Penny was shy, in fairness. Maybe she had something in her past that made it difficult. Maybe she came from outside the Kingdoms or something.
Still, it was odd.
...Not that Yang should be judging, she mused, as she looked over towards Ruby and Penny, who were giving their thumbs up. Yang hardly went around talking about things that explained every little bit of her personality. Ruby was happy, her friend was happy, and that was enough.
Finishing off the training by kicking an airborne training dummy into the floor, Yang landed a moment after it, her left hand extended so it hit the ground alongside her knees while her right hand, with the pistol grip, was held up in the air.
"I didn't explode." Yang called out, after a moment. "I think it's working now."
"Good." Ruby decided, as she continued working on something on the table. "But we still need to test it once it's attached to a gun. Theoretically, there shouldn't be any problems while shooting and having that Dust thing happening, but theory's aren't always right..."
"I'll try it anyway." Yang dismissed the concern. "Pass it here. If it explodes or I end up shooting myself, I'll probably be able to take it."
"Probably?" Penny asked.
"On the off chance that I get hurt worse then expected from something going wrong, you'll know because I won't make a joke about Ruby trying to assassinate me."
"Okay." Penny decided, nodding even as she frowned in confusion.
Approaching the work table again, Yang dropped the pistol grip next to Ruby, who was rapidly adjusting a generic pistol so that the grip she had worked on would feed ammo into the gun. Rose petals fell on the table as she worked, and before long, Ruby passed the complete work to Yang.
"Here you go." She finished. "Just run around a bit and shoot with this. Maybe hit someone with it too, make sure it doesn't jolt around too much while in melee before the blade gets worked in properly."
"Sure." Yang replied. It'd been a while since she used a weapon that wasn't Ember Celica, but it was hard to unlearn something like shooting a gun, especially one as simple as this. Not even any transforming parts to worry about. No complexities, no hidden tricks beyond the Dust thing which Yang couldn't do right now. Just pulling the trigger and running around.
...Come to think of it, what would this Dust infusion trick do with Yang's Semblance? She wasn't entirely sure on how it worked exactly, and it was hard to think about how different kinds of Dust would work with the idea of Yang getting stronger as she gets hurt. Maybe Fire Dust could be used to amplify the quality of her Aura's flames when she was hurting, but how was Ice Dust supposed to help? Or anything else, for that matter?
...Well, maybe she could experiment with that another time. Dust based combat was expensive, from what Yang had heard, so there was no point spending her time on looking into what her Semblance could do if she made use of some Ice Dust. If she wanted to improve, she should just stick with what she was good at. More Aura, more punching, and some focus on not running into traps so she got stabbed as she ran around corners.
And there it was, her brain going back to her defeat when she was trying to have a fun day out with Ren and Nora. Okay, enough of that.
Pulling up the gun and aiming down the sights on it for a moment, Yang fired, just to get a feel of the weapon. She took note of where the bullet struck, a half hand or so away from where she had intended to hit. Tilting her arm upwards slightly as she changed targets to a spot over where the heart would be on the dummy, Yang fired again, and fired just over the point she was aiming for.
The third, fourth and fifth shots were all accurate enough, and with a feel of the gun established, Yang grinned. She looked back at Ruby and Penny, who were standing, ready to take notes, and gave them a thumbs up.
And then she turned back and ran, strafing the dummies while firing at them. The walls burst up from the floor again, and Yang bounced off one to alter the movement and momentum of her jumps.
Time to have fun with this.
Later that day, Qrow arrives in Atlas to check in on his nieces and brother-in-law. Yang's last attempt to talk to him is still bothering her, even if she is ignoring it for now.
[X] He still has answers, and Yang wants them. Get him alone, then yell at him until he spills.
[X] Ruby deserves to know too, come to think about it. Grab Ruby and interrogate Qrow with her.
[X] Her father might be able to get some answers out of Qrow, come to think about it. Ask him to help talk with him?
[X] Forget it, Qrow wants his secrets, fine. Yang doesn't even bother seeing Qrow, instead sneaking out to go see the town.