Hello again. I hope you all enjoy this chapter, it was a pretty fun one to write so hopefully it's fun to read. And thank you again to all those who comment, favourite, and follow it's always nice to see that people enjoy your work.
Weiss
Weiss leaned back in her chair and breathed out heavily, she had just finished Ruby's arm, and although it wasn't anywhere near Ruby's level of craftsmanship it would suffice until Ruby upgraded it. She stopped to criticize her work and look for flaws. It was at the moment only a skeleton, the wires and mechanisms were clearly visible inside the metal housing, and the dust crystal slot for the Aura Connection Dust was somewhat crooked, but it would work for now, and that was what mattered.
"Are you done?" Ruby called from across the room.
"I can't really tell with my aura other than that there is an arm shaped object in front of you, which has been the case for a while now so… Yeah, are you done?" She continued, with more than just a hint of excitement creeping into her voice.
Weiss sighed, wiping her hand across her brow "Yes, after hours of gruelling work, under your loving care of course, and many broken nails, I have finally completed something akin to what you probably built when you were five."
Only noticing after she had finished talking that she had wiped greasy oil on her forehead. She elicited a groan of frustration.
"Are you okay?" Ruby asked concernedly, "Don't tell me that I pushed you too hard with the work. Oh I should have given you more breaks!" Ruby continued on, her brows knitting themselves together with concern.
"No, no Ruby I'm fine, I just made a mess of myself with some oil. And enough with the breaks! You were trying to force me on one every two minutes the entire time I was building your arm!" Weiss replied exasperatedly.
"Good, I was worried there for a second. And would you mind if I tried it on?" Ruby asked.
Weiss cocked her head at Ruby giving her a look that screamed "Really?", but realizing that Ruby couldn't see it, she spoke out loud.
"Really, Ruby? Isn't your… stump still healing?" Weiss said with some difficulty at the word stump.
"Yeah, I think it should be fine, I have been focusing all of the aura I could spare from sensing things in this room away to healing that stump." Ruby said while wiggling the stump in question.
"Okay, if you think its fine then…" Weiss said, still somewhat uncertain.
Although as Weiss approached, the arm came to life, the wrist snapping up and waving at Weiss as she walked. Rolling her eyes she just continued walking and after a few seconds of fumbling, connected the arm to Ruby. Ruby sucked in a deep breath, held it, then slowly let it out as she flexed and stretched the new arm, testing out her range of movement. The redhead lit up with a wide smile.
"Thanks Weiss, you did a great job with Frosted Stem, I love it." Ruby said happily.
"Frosted Stem? Is that what your naming this one?" Weiss asked.
"Yup! I'm naming it after our symbol, the White Rose. And I'm naming it that because you are the most important person in the world to me, and I need and want a constant reminder of you with me." Ruby explained.
"Well that's very sweet of you Ruby, and may I ask if that is the reason why there were so many white pieces of metal and odd dust crystals on that shopping list of yours?" Weiss asked, curious how Ruby would implement them.
"That is exactly why, but I won't tell you what they all do until we get out of here." Ruby replied.
Weiss smiled and thought, You dolt, you never change do you? Mischievous, upbeat, optimistic, cute, sweet, and completely endearing.
Turning away so as to walk back and get started on the first leg, Weiss felt Frosted Stem softly take hold of her arm.
"Although I love Frosted Stem Weiss, that took you a slight bit longer than it would have taken me, and now that I technically have two arms I can finish Frosted Stem with your help and build the legs when Blake and Yang get here." Ruby suggested.
Rolling her eyes, Weiss asked, "How long would it have taken you to build Frosted Stem the way it is now?"
Ruby pursed her lips and after a few seconds came up with an answer, "It would have taken me about two hours I would say."
Weiss glanced at the clock and chuckled, "Ruby that took me six hours to finish and I bet half of it is somehow off or wrong. It's probably for the best that I help you in whatever way you suggest."
"Okay, well if you want to wheel the table and boxes over here and hand me Ruby's Stem then we can get to work!" Ruby said, trying her best to suppress a grin.
Weiss groaned, "You are Yang's sister alright, and okay, just tell me what to do." the heiress responded as she wheeled the table, boxes, and Ruby's Stem over.
She continued on to say, "You know, you could just say something instead of grabbing my arm all of the time."
Ruby smiled and nodded as she used Frosted Stem to increase the incline on the hospital bed. Once the table was put over top of the bed to make a sort of tray over Ruby's lap, they started. Weiss was about to put Ruby's Stem onto Ruby when it went limp, and at the same time as it did, Ruby got a very serious and determined expression on her face.
"Don't worry, to get a more precise picture of Frosted Stem I have to focus my aura onto it and away from everything else. Right now I can pretty much only sense Frosted Stem, but I can sense every hinge, wire and bolt in it." Ruby grimaced but quickly covered it up.
"It's that bad huh?" Weiss asked knowingly.
"N-no, it's not that bad…" Ruby said, trying to be as positive about the arm as possible.
"Well don't worry about offending me, I know it's terrible so let's just get to work and make this arm usable for you." Weiss said.
"Okay, well we will need to realign this Dust container, rework the metal structure, relocate and reconnect these bundles of wires, reconnect the joint, add the special adaptations I had planned, and finally cover it all with the metal skin." Ruby listed off, pointing to various parts of the arm as she did so.
"So… redo nearly everything and then some?" Weiss abbreviated.
"Um, kind of, but you did really well, Weiss!" Ruby said, attempting to salvage the last shreds of her girlfriend's mechanical engineering credibility.
"Whatever, let's just get started, okay?" Weiss said as she pulled a chair over to the side of Ruby's bed and sat down.
"Okay…" Ruby reluctantly agreed, as she took her focus off of Frosted Stem and reconnected to Ruby's Stem, allowing Weiss to physically connect it for her.
Ruby got to work, her nimble hand quickly and perfectly completing tasks that Weiss had haphazardly completed, Ruby completing them in a fraction of the time it took Weiss. With Weiss merely watching, and reading a description of a piece for Ruby here and there, Frosted Stem started to retake shape. After roughly an hour and a half of work, Ruby turned Frosted Stem over and took stock of her work. The arm looked nearly identical to Ruby's Stem, the only discernible differences were that there were extra hinges in the finger tips, a slightly wider gap between the forearm and the pivoting joint, the metal skin had extra white perimeters around the red metal, and the palm also bulged slightly from a dust crystal that had been implanted inside.
"Ruby, it's kind of scary the things that you put in there, I can't even imagine how they are going to work." Weiss said, staring amazedly at Frosted Stem the entire time.
"Well, you're going to have to wait until I get out of here to see it in action. Anyways, since Yang and Blake aren't here yet I have time to modify Ruby's Stem to fit the theme." Ruby said, already starting to take apart Ruby's Stem.
"You're going to add all of those things into Ruby's Stem as well?" Weiss asked amazedly.
"Nah, that wouldn't really work out if I did, I just have a few things I need to change." Ruby explained.
Ruby got to work yet again, and shortly before she finished Yang and Blake quietly walked in, careful not to disturb Ruby's concentration.
It only took her an hour this time, well, she didn't have to fix nearly the entire thing this time I suppose. Weiss thought to herself when Ruby leaned back from her work on Ruby's Stem.
"That is seriously scary, sis, where did you come up with that?" Yang asked, seemingly just as amazed as Weiss had been with Frosted Stem.
"Oh I just got the ideas from some movie or another, they just kind of made sense to do." Ruby tried to explain.
"Well, I can't wait to see you carving up Grimm with those mods, I might even feel sorry for them." Yang continued.
"Anyways, sorry for being late Ruby, we had a little trouble getting a few pieces Weiss sent us to get. But now we are ready to help with anything you need." Blake offered helpfully.
"Thanks guys, if it's not too much trouble I kind of want to start on the legs as soon as possible." Ruby said.
"No problem, Rubes, we will get started right now." Yang said, pulling her chair up to the other side of Ruby's bed, quickly followed by Blake.
Ruby went over the blueprints for each of the legs with Blake, Yang and Weiss, giving them each tasks to complete so as to speed up the whole process, while Ruby completed the main construction work. Yang was given the unfolding and firearm mechanisms to assemble and pass on to Ruby. Blake was given the Dust containment chamber to assemble and the wiring to contend with, she was also passing these on to Ruby. Finally, Weiss was given the task of organizing the parts into the three separate categories, one for each member of team RWBY excluding herself, and then organizing the parts of each category into subcategories that would make it easy to tell which parts were for which project.
Since the jobs were split up amongst the four friends the job of making the two legs for Ruby went a lot quicker than expected. They finished the two limbs merely three hours after they had started. The left leg (which Ruby had named Cold Thorn) and the right leg (which Ruby had named White Petal) bore a close resemblance to each other. They both were mainly black with red knees, ankles, and soles of the feet, with a red angular line connecting all three on both sides. It also had the white outline between the red and black that Frosted Stem had. They both sported shotgun barrels on the inside of Ruby's legs that ran from the knees to the heels of the foot, a pump action system similar to Ember Celica had been implemented by Yang to simplify its construction and use.
The only difference between the two was that the left leg had connecting lines running parallel to each other all the way up the foot and leg until they reached the knee. While the right leg had four rectangles in the mid shin, completely ringing the leg.
Weiss and Yang each took a leg and carefully connected them to Ruby. The feeling of Ruby's aura that constantly enveloped the room withdrew for a moment, and in that moment White Petal and Cold Thorn twitched. Ruby's aura enveloped the room again, replacing the cold feeling there had been when it had left with warmth.
"How does it feel Ruby?" Weiss asked, walking up to Ruby's side and placing a comforting hand on the redhead's shoulder.
"It feels… Good…" Ruby responded, pushing the table away from her lap so she could attempt to stand.
Ruby swung herself over the edge of the bed and immediately stumbled, only being saved from falling by Weiss quickly grabbing hold of her. She regained her footing and stood up straight.
"It's fine, Weiss, I can stand, I just haven't practiced in a little while, I should be fine from here on out." Ruby said, lightly pushing Weiss' hands off of her.
Ruby took a careful step and smiled, she took another and the smile grew wider. Suddenly Ruby disappeared in a cloud of rose petals.
Thank you for reading and sticking through all of this with me. Hope you all enjoyed, till next week!