Disclaimer: See first chapter.
The First Customer!
Ruby stared at the door with baited breath. Today was her opening day, the first day she'd ever worked and actually made money!
That was a lie, she'd helped out her Dad every once in a while and he paid her. First time having a job then? First day having an actual shop, that was for sure!
And what a breeze that had turned out to be! Shopping for basics with Dad and Uncle Qrow was...interesting. Dad would always try to get her the most comfortable stuff, regardless of cost, while Uncle Qrow made sure she always got the most 'bang for her buck'.
But it meant she had new bed sheets, plenty of food that even she couldn't burn, and even the basics of a point of sale system downstairs! Which is where she was now, so it wasn't downstairs for her.
Maybe she should try to separate those in her mind. The downstairs would just be the shop, and the upstairs would be her room? That was probably the best way to do it. The shop and the room. Yeah!
They'd even brought over her bookcases, complete with the hidden section that she was sure not even Yang knew about and she wasn't about to tell her Dad or Uncle Qrow about, no matter how much they complained that the bookcases were far too heavy for what they were made of.
And then Uncle Qrow had taken her weapon shopping! And by weapon shopping, she meant stopping by at the park and looking at the dozens of hunters there and getting an idea of what weapons they were carrying.
He had gifted her a bunch of old weapons that he'd found lying around his house. Who knew that Uncle Qrow was such a messy housekeeper though, what with dozens of random weapons still lying around? Most of them weren't mechashift, but she had an idea for that.
But first she needed a customer! She stared at the door intently, asking it, begging it for some kind of customer. There had to be someone! Someone who was interested in weapons, and that's all they wanted to talk about!
She'd gotten up far too early that morning to make sure the downstairs...excuse her, the shop!...was in perfect condition. Each of the weapons on the walls were dusted down, cleaned, and oiled. They were almost sparkly, and Ruby had no doubt that if the sun could hit the inside of the shop they would shine with a power that would outweigh even the shine of lien!
Although lien was a card, so how it could shine Ruby didn't know, but it was a saying so it had to be true. Otherwise why would people say them?
Ruby stared at the doorway again. Come on, there had to be someone! Someone, anyone!
The lock clicked over to green. She looked at it; it had been locked this entire time!? But it was nearly eleven in the morning, she'd been open for three hours already! The door opened with a small bell, and she plastered a giant smile on her face.
"Welcome to Summer's-oh. Hi Dad," Ruby said, dropping the fake smile immediately. Taiyang walked in quietly, admiring the various weapons on the wall.
"You know the door was locked, right? Pretty sure you shouldn't keep a door locked during hours that you're supposed to be open."
"I couldn't tell it wasn't automatic!"
"Ruby, the light was orange. Orange means locked. Red means dead. Green means unlocked. You've been alive for fifteen years. How do you not know this yet?"
"I meant it should have been automatic! I put in the hours that I was open on the app and everything, and every time I tried it it worked just fine!"
Taiyang sighed. "I'm sure it did, Rubes. How's Zwei?"
"In the bathroom," Ruby said, pointing to the small door next to her. She heard a small flush. "I think he's done though," she said as the door opened, and the cuddly corgi sauntered through with wet paws and a small piece of toilet paper coming from his back paw. "Zwei! I told you, use the paper towels to dry your paws. That's why there's a dispenser there!"
Zwei let out a small whine before he went back to the bathroom, his back paw slamming the door shut.
"Still no customers yet?" Taiyang asked, leaning up against the glass of the counter. "No one hanging out outside the glass, wondering why the door was locked when it was supposedly open?"
Ruby rolled her eyes. "No, not yet. I mean, it's only the first day. What're you going to do if there is?"
"I'll browse the wares and pretend I don't need your help!" her Dad countered. "That way it looks like you have more customers than you actually do."
"That sounds like lying. I don't like that..."
"Did you finish your homework yet? Specifically the one for math and dust studies?" Taiyang asked, going back to his usual 'dad' routine.
"Yes! Of course I finished it!" Ruby said, lying her head off. She was going to finish it, she just...hadn't found time yet. Between dusting the downstairs, making sure the shop was ready for its first day, it was going to be great! But not now. Homework later, shop now.
"While you don't have anyone in here, you could be doing that."
Taiyang was interrupted as the sound of a small bell rang throughout the entire shop. Ruby froze, and dove behind the counter. The door to the bathroom opened just barely as two adorable corgi eyes peered out.
Ruby lifted her eyes just above the counter, to see a relatively well built man looking around the variety of weapons. He was wearing plain clothes, and Ruby had no idea if he was a huntsman or just some person that liked to study weapons.
Her dad gently nudged her elbow, and she froze again. She looked up to him, and he pointed to the new person, making the motion of 'alright, you told me you could do it. Now go and prove it!'
She wanted to! And she knew that she should, he was her first customer and everything that she had pleaded with her dad for was right there and why were her legs frozen she hadn't gone out to buy dust yet oh gods what if he wanted dust and she didn't have any then he'd go out and tell all of his friends that she didn't have dust and she'd be an utter and abject failure!
"Hi! Welcome to Summer's Weapon Shop!" Ruby shouted uncomfortably close into the man's ear. He winced and turned away. "Oh no, I'm so sorry, what're you looking for what can I help you with I don't have any bandages-"
"It's fine," the man laughed off. "I was just looking in here because I've never seen it before. Is this a new shop? I don't recognize the name, so I don't think it's a chain."
"No, not a chain! First shop ever! Grand opening today!" Ruby cheered. She looked back at her dad, hoping to see if he thought she was doing good. He wasn't looking, instead petting Zwei on his adorable head. Okay, that was fair. Obnoxious, but fair.
"Grand opening. How come you don't have a sign for it? Do you have any discounts or promotions for your 'grand opening?'" the man asked. "I've never heard of a shop that has a grand opening that doesn't have one."
"Eh...I'm still new. I hadn't thought of one yet. Is that what most others do...?"
"Most of them. You aren't from Vale, are you? Where are you from, Mistral? You're not from Menagerie, are you?"
"Menagerie? You mean that fish island off of Solitas? I've never been there. Why would it matter? I'm from Patch."
"Oh good, so you're a human. For a moment I thought I'd made a mistake."
Ruby blinked, looking back at her dad in confusion. Why would it matter if she was human? Her dad was pointedly not looking towards the man, instead focusing his glare on the small supply of handheld weapons like pistols and knives. Ruby should know, she put them in there this morning.
"Do you have a sign with your hours? One of my brothers is going up to Beacon in a day or two, and I might take him down here to see what you got. He went to Flare, and he chose some kind of mace, but in case he wanted a better weapon."
"Sure, here!" Ruby said, racing to grab one of her fliers that she was sure she'd put outside. She glanced towards the man, seeing him playing on his scroll. "What kind of metal is it made out of? Is he strong enough to use it? Mace's are generally heavier, so you need a lot of upper arm strength to use them. Otherwise they're just big and bulky."
"Oh yeah, he's plenty strong. Got a lot of big muscles, too. Course, I got bigger guns," the man grinned, showing off his arm muscles. Ruby wasn't impressed; Uncle Qrow had more muscle than that, and he was a twig.
"If you need bigger ones, I got plenty!" Ruby cheered. "All my really big guns are over here," she said, showing him to one large rack. It only had three things on it, a large tube closer to a rocket launcher, what looked to be an oversized elephant gun, and a small grenade disc. As in a disc that shot out grenades, not a disc that was a grenade.
"Huh. You don't have much in the way of stock. This is a pretty tiny shop too. How about I take this one off your hands, so that way you can say you sold a single thing?" the man asked, grabbing the rocket launcher.
"That's...eighteen hundred lien. Just for the casing. Actual rounds run into the three to four thousand lien range, depending on amounts," Ruby said. The man blinked at her.
"But...I can pay you in exposure! That way everyone will know about Summer's Shop of Weapons!"
"It's Summer's Weapons Shop," her dad finally chimed in. "And don't think you're getting anything for free."
"It wasn't going to be free! I was going to tell everyone about this place! Fine. I guess I do need some help then," the man snarled, bowing down only lightly when her dad stepped up to him. "Does this backwards place have a bathroom?"
"In the back," her dad said, watching as the man gently stomped off, slamming the door behind him. Ruby winced as she heard the loud click of the lock being engaged. "Sorry I had to step in Ruby, I figured he was going to try to grab it and run, or try to scam you out of money."
"How would he have scammed me? I wasn't going to take him up on any of that. It's only the first day! Something better will come along. Besides, something about him was giving me the creeps," Ruby shuddered.
The man was in there for a surprising amount of time, nearly twenty or thirty minutes before he finally unlocked the door. He stepped out from behind the back, and without even looking at either Ruby or Taiyang, walked outside. The small bell at the front bid him a farewell from the door.
"So much for a first customer..."Ruby muttered under her breath. She went back to the back and laid her head against the cool glass. "If those are the types of people that come in here, I'm not sure I want to..."
"It'll be okay. There's always bad ones in every bunch. Here, no matter what with the next one, I'll let you handle it. No matter what they do or say," Taiyang said.
Was there even going to be a next one? Ruby wasn't sure. She almost wanted to go to the front and lock it.
The small bell rang again. This time an obvious huntress walked in, a mostly brown skin suit, matching the same color as her hair. She had two long velvety rabbit ears out of her head. She gave a curious look around.
"Hi, what can I help you with!" Ruby called out.
"Do you do weapon maintenance?" the rabbit girl asked, hiding inwards to herself as if afraid of the answer.
The First Customer! Side B
Velvet was not having the best of days. First she had a bad accident several months ago, making sure that she couldn't take the physical finals for Year 1 of Beacon. As those were worth nearly sixty percent of the pass or fail marker, she obviously failed. The only one in Year 2 to have failed, not that the teachers blamed her.
Instead, she would move to combat class Year 2, but then have to take Year 1 mostly over again. Which meant another year in Peter Port's classes, with his droning voice that could lull Grimm to sleep. Or worse, history with Oobleck, who was determined that 'cups of coffee' meant 'pots of coffee'.
She'd have to work hard this next year to essentially advance to Year 3 with the rest of her team. The teachers were all for it, but it meant that she had to pull more of her weight than most.
What that also meant is that she would barely have time for the basics. That included basic weapon maintenance. It didn't help that her weapon, a camera named Aneisadora, was very, very exact. If even one thing was wrong, it just flat out wouldn't work.
Which sucked for her, as she needed it to use her Semblance. The hard light projectors were particularly new, and it wasn't as if Vale had a lot of experts in hard light dust projectors. Coco, her teammate and team leader, had a point when she said that it'd be almost easier to make a variable weapon and make it copy other weapons from that, rather than a dust projector.
Atlas was the best with dust. That wasn't an opinion, in Velvet's opinion. That was simply a fact. It was where the SDC was based out of, it's where most of the dust for Remnant came out of...and honestly, some of the dust crystals that she needed were so expensive that she'd have to spend an entire mission's pay on one crystal! And the White Fang didn't help with that, what with their thefts of various dust shops.
But she barely had time to even think on all that. Which is why she found herself at Vale on a Saturday morning. If she could find someone, anyone, skilled enough with dust to help maintain Aneisadora, she could spend literal hours more on her homework, and thus be more likely to finish Year 2 with the rest of her team.
She was just as strong as them, she knew. But the hard part was proving that she knew all of that to the teachers. It was honestly a surprise she passed to combat class Year 2, but she supposed she had the rest of the Team CFVY to thank for that.
All of her usual places that she ventured for dust were just dust shops. There was one place, which was just where she had commissioned Aneisadora to begin with, but the man had been older and had probably retired. His place wasn't even a shop anymore.
Even the smith at Flare, where she'd gone to pre-Beacon, wasn't capable of maintaining Aneisadora. It was literally just her and the original maker, and the only reason she knew was because she had designed every aspect of it. And slightly copied the maker's ability every time she had to maintain or change anything.
Velvet was starting to lose hope though. It was nearly eleven in the morning, and she'd gone past every single store that she thought could help. Almost all of them had taken one look at Aneisadora and told her she was out of luck.
She was about to give up hope and go back to Beacon, maybe hoping that the weekends would give enough time to study for both Year 1 and Year 2 material when she saw it.
A quaint little shop, buried in the corner. Actually it wasn't even buried in the corner, it was buried in the middle with the only door a slight indent from the sidewalk. Most people wouldn't see it or even look up from it.
The glass windows had a variety of weapons, most of them looking fairly clean, as if they hadn't seen an ounce of use. Velvet though, once she came closer, could very well see the use on some of them. The small scratches, dents and nicks. These weapons were used at one point. Above the glass, in simple flowing italic lettering; "Summer's Weapon Shop".
Was Summer the name of the hunter? It wasn't unheard of that those that grew too old to hunt Grimm settled down, had families, and then started to help the younger generation. Only a few of them ever opened a weapons shop though.
She saw a younger man, probably around eighteen or nineteen, come out angrily. He pushed her aside with barely a glance, as if she wasn't worth the dirt on his boots. She rolled her eyes. People like that weren't worth her attention. But what had happened to him that made him so angry?
Cautiously, and making sure to not get her hopes up, she opened the glass door. A small bell that hung to the side let out a cheerful ring. She heard it last much longer than others would, another blessing, or curse, of the ears upon her head.
The shop was dark, surprisingly. It had lights on, but they weren't the full size lights that she was used to. It made everything inside a veil of washed out gray, letting the glimmer of the weapons shine out even brighter.
At the back of the store was a young girl, probably Flare age. Fourteen, maybe thirteen if she had to be accurate. Small, in a red outfit with a mostly black dress, matching the colors of her hair. A red cape flowed from her neck. Next to her was a larger man, with small tattoos on his bare arms. Blonde, tall. Hunter.
"Excuse me...do you do weapon maintenance here?" Velvet asked. The small red one looked at the larger blonde one before she suddenly appeared in Velvet's vision, taking over everything. Small red flower petals emanated from her.
"Sure, I can try! Welcome to Summer's Weapon Shop!" the girl said.
"Ruby, I don't think you can promise that. Have you even thought of rates?" the larger man said. Was that her father?
"Sure I have! But that's talk for later," the girl answered quickly, as if in a hurry. She grabbed Velvet's hand and pulled her over to another corner. "I haven't actually but this is my first day and I'm trying to do it right. Help me out?"
Help HER out? What had Velvet gotten herself into. "What do you mean, first day?" she managed to ask. First day of working?
"First day of the shop!" the black haired...red haired...black haired red highlighted girl said. Wait, she owned the shop!? What was the world coming to? "Let me...ohh is this a custom model Action Replay Tee Forty Five!? I've never seen one!" the girl said.
Velvet paused, taking Aneisadora from its place at her hip and back. "Yeah, it is. It's been my pride and joy for a while, but things happened-"
"I've heard the dust projection crystals have to use eighty five purity crystals, otherwise it starts to fail when it replays."
...How did she know all of this, and why was she not stopping?
"If you put it here I can take a look and give you a quick price quote, I'm pretty sure I should be able to handle it. Eighty five purity crystals aren't cheap but they can last a while, and as long as the diode transmitter is functionally aligned, the crystals should last nearly a year before the energy in them goes to dust."
"Uh..."
"Ruby, let her breathe. Come on over here, Miss. Ruby, don't overload the poor girl. Just because her weapon is cool doesn't mean you need to regurgitate every fact you know about it."
Admittedly, if the girl owned the shop, as Velvet was thinking she did, then it did so very much mean she had to 'regurgitate every fact she knew about it', because otherwise Velvet would not trust Aneisadora to a rank amateur!
Ruby, the girl, did end up dragging Velvet and Aneisadora over to the glass counter. The rabbit faunus could see places where dust crystals should be, but were obviously empty. Cautiously, she put Aneisadora on the glass counter.
Within moments Ruby had out a small weapon tool making kit. "Hard light dust projectors aren't too hard, they just take a while," she murmured as she very quickly took the backing off of Aneisadora. The father leaned in, obviously curious as to what his daughter was doing.
"Is this...your shop?" Velvet hesitated to ask.
"Grand Opening!" Ruby said. "Oh, here I think I see the issue with maintenance," she said. She grabbed a quick clean cloth, or at least Velvet hoped it was clean, as she started to wipe down the diodes. "The main issue with the Action Replay T series is that the diodes like to rust in normal weather. They gather sand like no one wants over in Vacuo, but in Atlas it's not too bad. It came from Atlas, you know?"
"I...did know that, yeah. There was a maker here, a few years ago, that I had it commissioned from. I did the design on it, so I know most of the little details, but he was the one that chose to put a focus on the photography."
"That's a good idea. Imprints the light nodes to the hard light dust. Quicker way of analyzing things than if you were trying to do it via normal light. This isn't mechashift, is it?" Ruby asked. "I don't see any of the normal pieces, but I feel I should ask."
"Uh...Ruby? You sure you're not just speaking technospeak?"
"I know what I'm doing dad."
Velvet had to admit that the girl definitely did. She was able to keep up with Velvet on why every decision was made just by looking at it. "So the maintenance isn't hard, it's just time consuming. I can do it, definitely, but this seems like something that you should be," Ruby said.
The rabbit faunus winced at the unasked question. "So I was in a bad accident, late last year at Beacon. I couldn't take the physical finals-"
"And so your team passed to the next year while you didn't," the father said. "Unfortunately that's how it goes. I assume you're working with the teachers to right it?"
"Yes. I can study hard and skip to Year 3 with the rest of my team at the end of the year, but I need to pass both Year 1 and Year 2. To do that I need to study, not maintain Aneisadora."
"Aneisadora. Good name," Ruby muttered under her breath. "I can see that this would take hours. You've obviously taken good care of her."
"It, Ruby. Others may not gender their weapons the way you do," the father nodded.
"No, I like it. It's a her, definitely," Velvet agreed with Ruby. "For weekly maintenance, how much and how long do you think it would be? I don't have much in the way of lien right now, until more missions start up."
"Eh, two thousand a week. Should be a couple of hours, maximum."
Velvet nodded. That was a fantastic deal. If that's the usual kind of help she'd get here, then maybe this place would work. She just had to make sure that this place stayed afloat. She'd get Coco to help, that would definitely boost this place's popularity.
And that was how Ruby Rose got her first loyal customer.
So I wasn't expecting the amount of activity the first chapter got. I just want to say, holy crap and thank you all. Hopefully you all like this chapter too!
To the guest reviewers: I do try to respond to every review I get, but I can't do it if you're a guest. But make no mistakes, I am reading them and taking them into account! It may take a bit, seeing as I do try to keep a few buffer chapters of what I'm posting versus writing.
Until Next Time!
