I don't own anything.
Finding Ruby Rose in the halls of Beacon was not too difficult a task for someone who knew her. The younger girl spent most of her time outside of class either in her dorm, in the cafeteria or in one of the training rooms. It was when I'd checked all of those locations but still hadn't seen hide nor hair of her that I started getting a little worried.
After her usual haunts, I went to the kitchens, the gardens and even the Emerald Forest before in a final gambit, I went to the library. I wasn't saying that Ruby wasn't intelligent, because she was, but the girl was not the biggest fan of studying, and don't even get her started on homework. So, she spent as little time as humanly possible in the library. As far as I'd seen, she only really went in there to get the necessary books for our coursework or to get boardgames for her team before vacating the premises as fast as possible.
So, I felt that my confusion at finding her sat at one of the many tables in Beacon's library was more than justified. In front of her, the girl had a pen in hand and was writing on a sheet of paper with books spread out around it. Looking at the girl herself, I couldn't help the smile that came over my face. She just looked so focused on her work, hell, she even had her tongue sticking out of her mouth a little in concentration as she took notes.
Quietly, so as to not disturb her, I drew out a chair and sat myself down in front of her. To be honest, I was a little curious to see how long it would take her to notice that I was there, if she noticed at all. As it so happens, it only took her a couple of minutes before she looked up at the book right above her papers and caught sight of me.
Her silver eyes grew wide, and she almost jumped out of her chair in shock as she noticed me sitting there, one hand flying to her chest. Evidently, she hadn't been expecting me.
"Jaune! How long have you been sitting there?" The girl whisper-shouted at me. All in all, it was just as loud as it would have been if she'd just talked to me normally. I paid it no mind, though, that was just how Ruby was. I made a show of taking out my scroll and checking the time before I replied.
"About four minutes now."
"Why didn't you say anything then?"
"I wanted to see if you'd notice." I told her, smiling widely, and that smile only grew when I felt her foot hit my leg, taking a sliver of my aura off. When I didn't react to the hit, she stuck her lower lip out a little.
"Meanie."
"You know it." I told her proudly, "What are you doing here anyway? This was literally the last place I thought to look for you." Her eyes narrowed at that.
"Are you trying to say I'm not smart"
"No, but if I remember correctly, you told me that 'We already spend so much time with our books in class, why would I want to do more of that outside of it?' so I figured you wouldn't be sitting here on a Sunday afternoon."
The pout returned in full force. "Yeah well, if Dr. Oobleck hadn't assigned us that extra homework on the Faunus revolution, I wouldn't be here."
Wasn't that essay due last week? I asked her as much.
"Uhuh, I'm redoing it." She told me, frowning at the papers in front of her as she did so.
"Huh, why?"
"I, uh, I got a bad grade on it." She admitted, speaking normally for the first time in the conversation. "He said he'd bump my grade if I could get him a better version by tomorrow, so… you know." She said, pointing at the books arrayed around her.
I didn't even have to ask why she hadn't asked her team for help with it. They probably didn't even know she was here. Ruby probably didn't want to bother them with, or she didn't want to admit that she had failed on the homework, or a combination of the two. That didn't mean that I couldn't lend her a hand with it, though. So, I stood, grabbed my chair and brought it around the table to go and sit next to her.
"You want some help?" I asked, and the sigh of relief that left her immediately told me that I'd done the right thing.
"Please." She added, pointing to the sheet in front of her.
I looked it over for her, and she was almost done anyways. Honestly, she hadn't even done a bad job, she was just missing a little bit of the analysis that Oobleck liked to see. She had all the facts and described the battle of Fort Castle pretty well, but the problem was that she wasn't writing out the 'lessons' that could be learnt from the events.
"It's honestly pretty good, you just need to add something about what you learned from it. Like, I wrote this paragraph about the importance of information gathering and the opportune time for troop deployment." I told her, and she quickly grabbed her pen. "Don't just copy that, though, he'll notice. Just think of something you learned from it." The girl paused for a moment, bringing her pen up to her lips as she thought it over.
"Like… not fighting when your opponent is at their strongest?" She muttered and began writing it down. As she wrote, the idea became more fleshed out, and soon after, she had a paragraph about how it was important to not only maximize your own advantages, but to minimize those of your opponent whenever possible. It was always jarring to see how Ruby's mind worked, because behind that fun-loving and often goofy smile was a sharp mind with a scary amount of talent for combat. It was in moments like these that it was clear to see why she'd been admitted to Beacon two years early.
She quickly put the finishing touches on the essay and then slumped down onto the table when she was finally done. Amused, I patted her on the back of the head, and I had to stifle a laugh when she stuck her tongue out at me. Talking was okay, but a belly laugh was liable to get me kicked out by the crotchety old librarian.
"Thanks for the help Jaune." She whispered, and I ruffled her hair again.
"Any time Ruby."
After a couple of moments, Ruby suddenly sat up, dislodging my hand from its resting spot on her head. "You said you were looking for me!" She said suddenly, jogging my memory. Damn, I had been looking for her, but I'd forgotten when we got to work.
"Oh, yeah. I was going to ask you for some help." I told her, but before I could continue, she piped up.
"Sure!" I raised a brow at that.
"You don't even know what I'm going to ask yet." I pointed out.
"Doesn't matter! Any time, right?" She said, throwing my own words back at me. Well, that made this a whole lot easier.
"You built Crescent Rose, right?" I asked, and at her nod, I continued. "I kind of wanted to upgrade my sword, but I don't really know where to start, so I thought you could maybe take a look at it?" I asked, feeling a little awkward at having to ask. It was a little hypocritical of me, but as much as I offered help and encouraged people to ask for it, I'd always found it hard to do so myself.
"You want me to help you upgrade your weapon?" Ruby asked, almost like she couldn't believe it. Well, so much for anytime, then. I was about to excuse myself, but I suddenly found the little reaper crashing into me in a flying tackle-hug.
"YESYESYESYES! OhmygodsI'msoexcitedIneedtogogetmysketchingsetand-" The girl rambled so fast that it left me wondering if Ruby could use her semblance on her mouth as well, but I didn't get the chance to properly decipher whatever it was that she was saying as she suddenly stood.
"I'll be back in like two seconds, stay right here!" She told me before vanishing in a puff of rose petals. With a sigh, I began to gather them up, knowing that we'd get kicked out if the librarian found them lying around.
It turned out that there was a lot more to creating and upgrading weapons than I'd thought. A lot more.
"Okay, if we're not making a new weapon, and you don't want to reforge Crocea Mors, then we need to use dust." She said after almost half an hour of running me through ideas for new weapons that I wouldn't know what to do with. "If we want to use dust in your weapon, though, we're going to have to find some kind of way to deliver the payload."
"What do you mean?" Honestly, most of what she'd been saying had gone straight over my head, but if I was going to use it, I would need to understand the mechanics behind it, so I was at least going to put in some effort to learn. Luckily, Ruby was eager to teach her passion of weapon smithing, and didn't leave me hanging.
"Well, we need to figure out what kind of dust you want, what medium we should use, how to make it reach whatever you're hitting." She rattled off the list, and as I tried to write it down, she muttered to herself. "So many cool ideas, so many cool impossible ideas." She bemoaned, and I couldn't help my eyeroll. Knowing Ruby, she had probably tried to add a railgun to Crescent Rose or something like that.
"Maybe we can start by listing all the dust types and their pros and cons?"
"Sure!" Ruby quickly pulled out another sheet of paper and began scribbling. Looking over her list, I dismissed a lot of them instantly. Steam dust, for example, would screw me over just as hard as any enemies I was fighting, no matter the medium I used. While they couldn't see through the steam clouds, I couldn't either.
In the end, we were left with Fire, Wind, and Lightning. All of them were offensive elements, though each of them leaned in a different direction. Fire would be wide area attacks for the most part. It could be used in more direct physical attacks as well, but if I was close enough to hit someone, hitting them with a sword that was on fire wouldn't really change much.
Wind would let me do much of the same, but it also gave me a little more area denial. As apparently, the green dust could not only let you create blasts and gales of wind, but if you were skilled enough, you could even create small twisters and tornadoes with it.
And lastly, Lightning dust would give me the most offensive power. It had the fastest ranged attack out of any of them, and it gave me an easy non-lethal method to subdue people without aura.
Now, how to decide.
"You know, you don't really have to choose if these are your picks." Ruby said suddenly, interrupting my train of thought.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, Lightning, Wind and Fire dust are all good to use as full crystals if you want to cast with it." She began, "So if we make the crystal slot interchangeable, you can just switch between them."
That… that was amazing! I looked over to the girl with a huge smile and grabbed my pen. "That's great! Now how can we get the dust into Crocea Mors?" I asked.
We quickly found that the best place for me to put the dust crystals would be in the tang. We'd have to adjust the tang a little to make sure I didn't unbalance the sword, but we could hollow out a portion of it and put the dust in there. Ruby quickly sketched out a rough diagram, and we figured that putting the dust crystal in the pommel would be easier. We could just hollow out a part of the tang, make the pommel a cartridge I could screw into it and then put a dust crystal in there.
It would mean that I couldn't put more than one type of dust in my sword at once, but I could change it out whenever the situation called for it. Then, we began working on the 'delivery system' as Ruby called it. While my aura would activate and guide the dust, a good design would make it a lot more efficient, since I wouldn't be fighting physics to get the effects out.
So, we settled on a copped lining for the fuller of my sword. It wouldn't impact the durability of my sword, and it wouldn't require me to reforge it either, but it would give the electricity somewhere to naturally flow through when I used my Lightning dust. That way, I could point and cast lightning bolts at people, since they would be the closest conductive thing in the direction of my weapon.
As for Wind and Fire, well, there wasn't much I needed to change to use those properly. I'd just need to learn how to properly cast, but luckily, I knew an expert on that.
"Alright, I'll make sure to get you a proper diagram tomorrow, and then we can go into Vale next week to rent out a smith's shop and make the changes." Ruby said excitedly.
"Hey, take your time, there's no need to rush this." I told her, and I meant it too. Sure, it would be nice to have as soon as possible, but having Ruby work all night to finish that diagram when she'd basically spent all afternoon working on this with me kind of felt like I was taking advantage of her.
Evidently, she followed my thought process. "Don't worry! I just won't be able to sleep until I finish this, and designing weapons is my hobby anyways. Alright, I'm going to go get started on this, see you tomorrow Jaune. This was fun!" The girl engulfed me in another hug before she zipped away, leaving another pile of rose petals on the library floor.
"Damnit Ruby." I may have grumbled, but I couldn't keep the smile off my face.
Finally, a weapon upgrade. And some Ruby scenes of course. Let me know what you think and as always, have a good one!
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