Ch.47 Picking up the pieces
Jaune knocked on the door three times with his fist. When Cobalt finally opened the door.
"Lad, what the hell are you doing here! Shouldn't you be in Vale? Helping with containing the Beacon exclusion zone? Or home with your family?"
"I need to borrow your forge."
"And why would you come here, surely there are better equipped workshops than mine."
"I have a rather personal project. Plus I can't exactly afford to pay for the rent, especially now that Vale needs every workshop to maintain equipment to protect the city."
"Well come inside then, and tell me what is so important you would return here."
Jaune picked up the pack off of the ground. He didn't really have many possessions now that he returned from the ruins of Beacon. But in the pack was the reason he came here.
Walking inside the workshop it was much like Jaune remembered it. He came towards the worktable and took out his sketchbook, one of the few things he managed to recover from his belongings.
"You remember Ruby Rose right?"
"Your little genius? Of course I remember her."
"And you know about the wyvern?"
"Yeah, of course I do. That's all anyone can talk about these days."
"Well, it's petrified on top of Beacon. And we were both there when it happened. Well me, her, her sister and her sister's partner."
"Where are you going with this? Is she alright?"
"In a coma. Stable, but we have no idea when she's going to wake up."
Or if she is going to wake up at all. They both knew, but neither said anything.
"Well why are you here then, shouldn't you be by her side? Weren't you two basically dating?"
"That is precisely why I'm here and not with her."
Jaune took out a bundle of cloth and set it on a table. He untied it and presented the contents.
"It's all warped and melted… Wait, is that?"
"Crescent Rose… or what's left of her. The pieces were scattered all around the Beacon exclusion zone."
"You didn't… Jaune! You went back there?"
"I had to… I know how much Crescent Rose meant to Ruby. And one of the last things she saw was Cinder destroying it."
"Is that what happened? Burn dust?"
"That or a semblance. I don't actually know how she did it, but I know one thing, she did not come out of this unscathed. When Ruby petrified the wyvern, Cinder was hit too. I can still hear her scream. But she escaped on a Nevermore of all things."
"So what are you going to do…"
"I have the original blueprints, I have the notes Ruby made about the later modifications, and I have the remnants of Crescent Rose. I may not be able to recreate the original one but I have scavenged enough dust and rare metals from Beacon to reforge her with high dust alloys. As long as I breathe I will make sure this doesn't happen again."
"Jaune, you can't just…"
"Then what should I do? Leave the pieces scattered? Or bring them to Ruby? Either way it would break her heart. And I can't fucking watch that happen."
Jaune was screaming now, tears in his eyes.
"It may be selfish, but… I have to do something."
He almost whispered the last sentence.
"I see… I won't stop you… I'll be here for you if you need my advice."
"...thank you."
=O=O=O=
It has been a few days since Jaune arrived. Cobalt let Jaune stay in the room he occupied when he apprenticed here.
Now there were loose papers all around the floor of the room he used to stay in, the only other thing still in the room was a bed pushed to the corner. The original design of Crescent Rose was blocky and rather heavy looking mostly due to the original mechanical constraints of the internal mechashift. Ruby has made many adjustments and improvements over the years but the core mechanism stayed much the same.
What Jaune was doing was reworking the internals with the help of Ruby's notes about the other modifications and her speculations about eventually rebuilding the core mechanism.
Jaune wasn't a mechashift expert like Ruby was but if there was one mechashift system he knew a lot about it was this one. Ever since Ruby first told him that no one wanted to listen to her explanation of how she first built her weapon, Jaune made a conscious effort to listen to her whenever she talked about her beloved scythe.
In a way figuring things out from her notes nearly made Jaune forget she wasn't there. Occasionally Jaune questioned her notes out loud. But no matter how long he waited, she wasn't there to answer his questions.
Cobalt tried to help where he could, but he wasn't an expert on mechashift either. Sure he could do maintenance on one, but that was the limit of his abilities. He was after all an expert on traditional smithing and smithing using exotic materials. But he did help Jaune with testing the various alloys Jaune incorporated into the new design.
Jaune reworked much of the mechashift mechanism to be smaller, more lightweight. Instead of the original robust design, the new one, while functionally identical, relied on the strength of the aura infused dust alloys. Jaune also decided to completely forgo the paintjob. He instead experimented with trace additions to the alloy mixtures.
Cobalt helped a lot during this process as he was already familiar with some common colour altering metals. Nonetheless they made several small sample ingots with different elements added in. The one that turned out to be a deep ruby crimson was surprisingly the ingot with trace amounts of chromium, which is the same element that gives rubies their red colour.
Some of the other ingots also proved to be a success, producing a few other colours, most notably a goldish yellow from an addition of sulphur and a deep blue reminiscent of Jaunes eyes from the addition of cobalt metal.
Jaune used these to make several prototypes of the separate mechanisms. They could be combined together to form a sniper scythe though the end result was slightly blockier than the original Crescent Rose and many of the mechanisms were out in the open.
Separately these seven prototypes each were a functional weapon on their own, so Jaune named them Shards and added them to his arsenal.
A few more days and the plans were almost finalised. The main structure was decided on, but some of the details and decorations had several iterations of sketches and blueprints made, but none of them seemed right.
"Jaune? Are you up?"
"Huh? Oh uh yeah. What time is it?"
"It's almost nine in the morning. Jaune… Did you sleep yet?"
"No, I'm trying to finalise this before I do. But I'm having trouble deciding on whether I should put Ruby's emblem on it. Or maybe I should put both our emblems on it? Or none? Damn it none of it feels right. Every design of it just feels off somehow."
"Jaune…"
"Look, this is the last thing I need to decide upon before I begin the forging process."
"Jaune! Stop for a moment. Come with me… I'll show you something."
"...fine."
Jaune's joints creaked as he got off the floor. Cobalt led him to his own room. Jaune could count on one hand how many times he went in there during his time spent at the smithy, but this time seemed to be different. The atmosphere was heavy as Cobalt opened a drawer and took out a wooden letterbox.
"You know something the smithing and hunter cultures have in common?"
"Uh, weapons?"
"Well, you're not wrong, but I'm talking about a certain custom involving weaponry, specifically their naming. Here, look at this."
He handed Jaune an old photo of a young woman, a huntress from the look of things. Long platinum blond hair and blue eyes much lighter than Jaune's own. She was standing in front of a log cabin covered in snow.
"This is?"
"Ianthe Anderson, the love of my life… Will you listen to the story of an old fool?"
Jaune remained silent but nodded. Cobalt took the box and carried it to the kitchen table motioning for Jaune to follow. When they both sat down Cobalt started talking again.
"Ianthe Andersen, she was… we grew up together in an Atlasian settlement. She always wanted to be a huntress. And we both grew up pretending to be hunters together. I've always thought she was amazing. But I didn't have what it takes to be a hunter, we both knew that, but I had the knack for smithing. So when she went to Atlas Academy, then still called Alsius by our old folk, I stayed in the settlement to become a blacksmith."
For perhaps the first time Jaune thought about how his master must have once apprenticed under someone else. It was a strange feeling, but ultimately not the point of the story.
"Then four years later, she came back. And after four years apart I fell in love with her immediately. But I couldn't do it, I just couldn't gather the courage to tell her. I told my master, old Seppänen, and he told me of this tradition. From what I know, it's an old one, and is rarely practised in the kingdom of Vale, but in Atlas and Mantle it used to be fairly common up until a century or so ago."
Cobalt took a deep breath, but didn't elaborate on the tradition itself, instead he handed Jaune another photo. In it was an elaborate spear stuck in the ground in front of a heavy looking stone with text on it. It was difficult, but the text was legible.
"Here lies Ianthe Andersen, daughter of Lebesby settlement. A huntress fallen in line of duty. May her soul find peace."
Jaune read the text in a quiet voice.
"I made that spear. Spyd af Ianthe. I meant to propose to her with it. Never got the chance, so it serves to decorate her grave now. When a hunter names their weapon after someone, it is akin to a marriage proposal, similarly when a smith makes a blade for someone and names it after them, then it serves much the same purpose. The way I see it you are doing both and whether you realise it or not I believe it serves that exact purpose."
"I didn't mean it like…"
"No Jaune, you didn't, but I've heard you talking to her like she was here over the past few days. A hunter's life can end suddenly, and you both came fucking close to that from what I gather. Just… don't repeat my mistakes Jaune."
Jaune was silent.
"Take a day to rest, sort out your feelings. I will not let you mess up your work now."
=O=O=O=
Author's note:
So this was a very Jaune centric chapter... Ok, hear me out. So Jaune knows Ruby well enough to know that Crescent Rose meant a lot to her. He may not realise just how much of herself Ruby put into that weapon but he'll know soon enough. And for everyone that thinks I'm being hasty with... relationships lets say, I want y'all to remember Remnant is a deathworld filled with Grimm and who knows what else and they've just had an event that could have wiped out a whole kingdom on top of that. Shit is out of whack right now.
I'll be real with you, I've been busy with exams and on top of that I've been sick for the past three days, so you know... I'll keep this short.
Anyway I hope you enjoyed, and are looking forward to the next chapter: Ch.48 Meeting the parent