Disclaimer: See chapter one.

Buying Dust

Ruby looked down at her shopping list. It was late at night on the first day, and she kept getting more and more questions as to where her actual supply of dust was.

Granted, said questions were only asked by Taiyang when he came around for several hours and tried to teach her how to cook something more than pasta water, and by Velvet after Ruby had helped fix Aneisadora.

Still! Two questions about it were two questions too many, and so now that was a thing she had to resolve as soon as possible!

A moment went by as her stomach growled. As soon as she got some real food in her! Yeah, that would do it. Her dad wasn't the best cook either, surprisingly that was Yang who seemed to inherit Summer's ability to cook.

That said, Ruby inherited Summer's ability to bake, so in the end she thought it evened out. Cooking or baking, all that mattered was at the end she got some sugary goodness in her!

A small bark diverted her attention for the second time in a few minutes. Zwei was pushing his empty bowl along the floor, along with whining that she hadn't fed him. At first Ruby was horrified with herself that she'd forgotten to feed Zwei, then she remembered to look at the calendar on the wall, an insistence made by Uncle Qrow.

Sure enough, she'd already written down Zwei had been fed that night. He was just being a hungry puppy. Ruby couldn't fault him for that. Too bad chocolate was bad for dogs, otherwise she'd share. Maybe. She petted his head for a couple minutes before she focused back on her scroll.

She was logged in to her SDC corporate account, made by Qrow shouting at the scroll for twenty minutes and her dad taking it away from him and just calling the SDC for ten minutes. They were nice to her dad, according to him. Then again, he was a huntsman, and a well-known one.

Then again, so was Uncle Qrow, and he couldn't do it in double the time.

The website was...not the best, in Ruby's mind. She needed specific types of dust, not just the 'I need two tons of red dust'. Seriously, who needs a ton of dust? That's a lot! Even dust shops only bought in the small containers. And there was no way that a small container held a ton.

And there was no way to adjust for quality. Not that she saw at least, and she'd been at this for five minutes already! "Gahh, why is this so annoying!?" she yelled out to nothing.

The oven dinged off happily, and Ruby made sure to clean up the rose petals that fell from her Semblance as she took the cookies out of the oven. As a side note she remembered to take the baked chicken and put it on the upper shelf rather than the lower shelf that it was.

Cook, no. Bake, yes!

She stared at the gooey chocolatey goodness that was just sitting there, cooling off in the brisk autumn air. She wanted to grab one. She wanted to grab all of them. But no, she had to finish this!

She sat back down staring at her scroll. "Just...put in the order Ruby. You can do this! This is just another part of it! You know what you're doing!" She cheered herself up.

She stared at the screen, seeing the letters suddenly turn to gibberish. Maybe she couldn't. But she'd do it anyway!

She clicked around, before she finally hit the right tab. A direct order form! She could do it! But what kinds of dust did she need? She needed a bigger screen for her scroll, or just a computer in general.

Ruby knew what weapons she had in stock, but knowing what types of dust each one needed...she usually had to go see them. She walked down the steps still in her pajamas. The door was still locked, she made sure as soon as she came within view distance of it, the red lock sign lighting itself happily. She made sure to not turn on the lights, before she tripped over Zwei, who'd followed her without her knowing, and she resolved to turn on the lights when she came down here from now on.

She checked over her inventory with a discerning eye, keeping notes on her scroll as she went. "You need ice dust, purity eighty six, you just need anything, purity...fifty two. You don't need any, you need electric dust, purity seventy five," she muttered to herself as she went, talking to each weapon as if it was living and dust was their food.

Which to her it kind of was. Her own Crescent Rose was interchangeable in its dust usage, but general explosive dust was by far the most effective. And because it was interchangeable, she didn't need to worry about purity values with it, so that way if she was stuck out in the middle of nowhere with Grimm surrounding her, any amount of dust would let her continue to enjoy herself.

She should probably stop thinking about killing Grimm for now. It would probably freak some non hunters out.

Her 'dust inventory' as she was calling it now took a bit longer than she expected, although it didn't help that she called a break half an hour in to eat her dinner. And the cookies. Mostly the cookies.

But at the end she had a full order form, and she was about to click the submit button when she saw how much it would actually cost.

Nearly triple the amount that she'd earn from actually selling all those weapons. She stared at the number, her eyes widening. There was no way that it would cost that much.

Incidentally, she actually saw how much her dad and Uncle Qrow were paying for the place, at least for the first few months, and this was almost double that!

She clicked 'save quote' and hoped that wouldn't mean the SDC would charge her for something like that.

Ruby would call in the morning, before the shop opened. Yeah, she could do that. She'd made it this far, and what was it Uncle Qrow had told her once? Just fake it until she makes it? Yeah, she could fake it with the best of them! Although how that saying rings true, she didn't know.

Her mind was still on the number when she went to bed that night, and in the morning was drinking her cereal and eating her milk before she remembered what she'd promised herself.

"Right, just...call. That can't be hard, right? Dust shop owners do this all the time, and I'm just...a weapon shop owner. Yeah, I can do this!" Ruby told herself aloud. The shop had nearly half an hour before it was due to open. Sure she could get something done before then! Zwei hopped up onto the table, bringing his full dog bowl with him, and casually sat down next to her.

There was a number on the sales quote that she'd downloaded the previous night, and with great hesitancy, not helped by Zwei who was dragging her hand to each number individually, she dialed it in.

"SDC Sales office, you've reached Lapis," a calm voice said over the scroll. She sounded bored, Ruby noted instantly.

"Hi, I'm Ruby Rose, I'm hoping...to make an order? For a weapon shop in Vale that just opened and I don't know what I'm doing and your sales data was way too off there's no way dust should be that expensive-"

"Ms. Rose, please calm yourself," Lapis said easily. "The reason for the high prices is due to the surge in crime in Vale right now. Roman Torchwick, you may know of him, has been making our job unnecessarily difficult."

"Oh yeah, Torchwick! I fought him a couple of nights ago, he was trying to...steal...dust...oh I see what you mean."

"I'm glad at least one shop was saved. You might have to search in Vale for a dust shop however, they might have more reasonable prices considering they're already in Vale. Getting dust into the city is proving to be far harder than it seems," Lapis answered. She continued, "Can you give the sales quote number so I can pull it up on my screen? I'm not sure how much the price you were quoted was."

Ruby looked at her scroll. "Oh, sure," she said, rattling off the quote number from the top of the sheet.

"Yes, I see it now. It's...that is quite a shocker. But you also were quoted for shipping a few more times than necessary, because you made multiple quotes and stacked them on top of each other."

"I needed different kinds of dust! All of the weapons here do."

"There's a little button, under each line, where you can add another type of dust. Another reason for the high price is the amount of high purity dust you've ordered, and the specificity. Do you know the difference between seventy two and seventy five purity dust?"

"Yeah! Seventy five has a point two five increase in overall ability over seventy two, and there are some cartridges that simply can't handle that increase so they explode."

"...I'm surprised, not many people do. I usually have a cheat sheet for that," Lapis acknowledged. "Alright, I've turned all seven of your quotes into one, which should reduce the price a little. If you'd like, I can change it to generic dust, which comes in a variety of different purities. I can include a helpful guide to dust purity to help picking out which is which."

"Doesn't the generic stuff only go to twenty five purity?" Ruby asked. "For weapons, that is...kind of useless."

"How long have you been a huntress, Ms. Rose?" Lapis asked.

"I'm not? I'm a weapons shop owner," Ruby answered. She blinked in surprise as Lapis immediately hung up the call. "Oh come on! We were being nice and everything!"

Zwei put a paw on her hand, shaking his head gently. "What am I doing wrong, Zwei? I don't get it. Am I cut out for this?" Ruby asked quietly. Her scroll started ringing a moment later, from the same number she'd just called. Ruby immediately hit the green 'connect' button.

"I apologize for that, Ms. Rose. The CCT was under maintenance and they forgot to let us know about it," Lapis' voice said. "Have you ever bought from us before?" she asked.

"No, this is my first time. I only opened yesterday," Ruby said. "So you...weren't mad that I wasn't a huntress?"

"Ms. Rose, I couldn't be mad about that. Not everyone is built for being a huntress, and they always need people like you or myself on the backside, being the supply chains. Without the supplies, a hunter is simply a skilled fighter. With the supplies, a hunter is a force of nature," Lapis said. "I've sent you a note with the new quote information. Do you want me to place the order? You can always wait, the quote is good for several months."

Ruby's scroll pinged. "I...need to look over it first," Ruby admitted as she opened the attachment. "Thanks Lapis!" she cheered.

"Very well, Ms. Rose. If you need any more help, please continue to call the SDC. We're here to help, after all."

The scroll started beeping as the call disconnected. Ruby fell back onto the chair, unsure of when exactly she'd gotten up. The new total was...much kinder than she'd gotten last night. Now it was only half a month's rent, as compared to triple or double it.

Still there was no way she could afford it, but at least this way she had some amount of information when people asked. "Alright Zwei, time to go open up!" Ruby cheered. Zwei barked in agreement, and she raced down the stairs, rose petals forming in her wake.

Team PABY

Ruby was staring impatiently at the door for someone to come in. It was a weekend now, darn it! Someone would think that she'd be busier on the weekends, but it seems that no one in Beacon had yet heard of her despite the fact she knew that at least one of her customers came from there!

Hadn't Velvet said that she'd help out? Although the faunus had helped out more than Ruby would like to admit. The fiddling and basic maintenance on Aneisadora was calming in the worst of times, or like now when Ruby was bored out of her mind and waiting for something to happen.

She had gotten a lot done over the last week. Six of the weapons on her shelf had gotten sold, and her dad had visited every single day this week. She'd even gotten to submit that SDC dust order she'd gotten quoted from a few days ago. All in all, it was looking up!

But there was another thing she was looking forward to. Tomorrow was the first day she'd get to actually sit at the forge. She'd gotten a good deal from a nearby blacksmith who did mostly custom weapons, but he was getting older and simply couldn't sit there for hours at a time. His kids wanted nothing to do with the family business.

Ruby had offered, although in reality it was Uncle Qrow who'd offered in her stead, to pay a small rental fee for a few days of use each week. That way she could do more than basic maintenance. She'd buy the materials from the blacksmith, who was thinking about dropping most of his contacts, at a discount and then turn those into weapons for her shop.

All in all, it was a good deal. It was a great deal, if she had to be honest. The fee wasn't all that much either, only around three thousand lien for two days per week. Even with materials added in, she'd made enough this last week to be able to get it all and still be in the black.

Granted, that was because she wasn't paying her own rent yet.

Once that happened everything got thrown out the window, but fortunately she didn't have to think about that. She even got a neat little thing on her scroll to help keep track of everything!

And finally the reason that they forced everyone to take all those math classes was starting to make sense. Not that math didn't make sense; Ruby was good at math. She had to be, because how else was she going to get twelve thousand newtons of force from a gun?

But it was times like this that made her all wish for something different. Because there was no one here. Not a single person. She could see dozens of people walking around outside, some of them were pointing at the shop.

There were even some kids, probably from Flare, that wanted to come and peruse. But not a single person did.

And before anyone asks, Ruby did in fact check to make sure it wasn't locked. It wasn't.

She thought about getting her scroll out and starting up some more designs for stuff, or just playing Ninja Death Combat 2. Yeah, she could do that one. Although dad had given her homework, hadn't he?

Or was it done? She couldn't remember.

Her idle worrying left her immediately as soon as the bell rang gently on the door, and Ruby perked up instantly. "Hi! Welcome to Summer's Weapon- Yang?" she asked.

Her sister had indeed come in through the door. It was nearly impossible to miss the bright shade of long blonde hair, a near perfect mix of Taiyang and the-woman-who-shall-remain-unnamed-in-Dad's-presence. Behind her was another girl, probably the same age, with dark hair and a small bow on the top, dressed mostly in black.

Yang rushed over to the counter. "Ruby! How ya doin' lil' sis? I heard the deets from Dad, you went and got this up and running!? I thought it was a joke when I heard about it!" she said cheerfully.

Ruby could see Ember Celica had a few new scratches on it, but in general looked to be in good shape. The other girl, by contrast, had a Menagerie-style ribbon-based kusarigama with a sheath blade.

Ooh that was a cool one. "Sure! Who's...your friend?" Ruby asked quietly. The girl was looking over some of the nearby light weapons, pistols and such.

"Oh, that's Blake! My partner from Beacon. I was trying to get the whole team down here, but both of them said they had other things to do. But I wanted to come down here and see my little sister!" Yang said, reaching over and grabbing Ruby's hood, dragging one knuckle over Ruby's head.

"Ack, Yang, no, stop!"

"So tell me all about it! How's the shop life treating you?"

Ruby managed to extricate herself from her sister's wrathful grasp. "It's...different. More talking than I was expecting. How Ember Celica and...Blake's. Yeah. How are they handling."

"Ember's just fine!" Yang grinned. "Nothing a few minutes with some oil and basic maintenance couldn't handle. But those Grimm...they're different than the ones back home," she said, losing the smile gently.

"Beacon!" Ruby said, launching over the counter. She wanted to restore the smile on Yang's face, and if she got happy talking about Beacon all the better for it. "Tell me about it! I want to know! How is it, who's on your team!?"

"Whoa, where did this come from?" Yang smirked. "Beacon's brilliant. You're gonna like it once you get there. Small rooms though, especially for four of us."

"Who is your team? And how did you get them? Were you assigned them or did you have to draw straws or did you have to kill Grimm how many did you kill how did you get them did you use all of your explosives do you need any rounds-"

"I see what you mean now," Blake said quietly, effectively shutting Ruby up instantly now that she'd spoken. "About how she can talk."

"Well yeah, she's my little sister! You can't tell me you wouldn't treat your little sister like this!"

"I wouldn't know. I don't have siblings," Blake answered.

"Tell me! I want to know!" Ruby shouted at her sister. Yang flinched, and Ruby must have been louder than she thought as Blake flinched a bit too.

"Well, we got launched into a forest and told the first person we made eye contact with was our new partner!" Yang grinned. Ruby was surprised; that was a particularly...bad...way of determining partners. Especially if they were partners for four years. "And then we had to make our way to some ruins, fighting Grimm the whole way, where we had to find an ancient relic!"

"There weren't that many Grimm. And the relics were chess pieces."

"Hush, I'm telling the story," Yang smirked towards her little sister, staring up at the blonde with stars in her eyes. "And that's how we determined teams! And now you're looking at the partner set of Team Peabody! According to Ozpin. PABY," Yang said, her smile falling as she gave the team name.

Ruby tried to withhold her laugh. "Pea...peabody? Team peabody?" she tried. She honestly did. She just didn't have much luck.

Even when Yang started to give her a noogie again Ruby didn't stop laughing. "You have to admit, it's not the best name," Blake said from the back.

"I know but she can at least stop laughing," Yang answered. She looked down at her sister in her arms. "Are you going to stop laughing at our unfortunate team name yet?"

Ruby snickered. "Yeah, I'm good," she lied. Yang waited a moment before Ruby let out another snicker, prompting the blonde to push her down closer to the counter. "Okay, okay, I'm good now," Ruby corrected.

Yang did let her up that time. "These are all Uncle Qrow's right? I thought you were gonna do what you did with Crescent Rose and Ember Celica, you know, make your own. Really get your own stamp out there," Yang asked, pointing to all the weapons on the walls and such.

"Yeah, it tore him up to have to reduce the size of his collection, in his words. But Dad eventually convinced him to downsize."

"You make your own weapons?" Blake asked from the back. Her gold eyes were piercing into Ruby's, as if she was silently judging the young shopkeep now.

"Yeah! It took a while to find a good forge around here, but I have all kinds of parts and such in the back. And Yang should know, mechashift weapons are better personally designed. Not...this stuff," Ruby said. "A weapon really tells you a lot about all kinds of people. Like Yang's!"

"Oh no," Yang said quietly. "Please don't Rubes-"

"She's upfront, bullheaded, liable to punch your gut in the same as blast you with a shotgun blast, and you never know which because she's surprisingly tricky!"

"Oh, that's not bad."

"She's also upfront, bullheaded, sucks at long range, can't hit a barn with a pistol from ten feet away, and as long as you can keep her away she can't really hit you at all!"

"Thanks Ruby," Yang deadpanned. "It's not as if I'm right here or anything."

"You're welcome sis!"

"This is punishment for the noogies, isn't it."

"This is totally punishment for the noogies, yeah," Ruby agreed. Yang sighed. "But I did have a plan for the mechashift! I made a kind of questionnaire to gauge a person's personality, to see if they can't help find the right weapon, but I haven't found the right person to really test it on yet."

"Hm. We may know someone, right Yang?" Blake said.

"Oh yeah, Jaune!" Yang agreed. The blonde turned to Ruby, "He's this other guy on our team, along with our team leader Pyrrha. You remember her right, Pyrrha Nikos? She's on our team too. Jaune lost in combat class pretty bad so she's helping him up a bit. The kid doesn't have a mechashift weapon, he just has a sword and shield!"

"Sometimes the classics are classic for a reason," Ruby said. "Yeah! If he can come in soon that'd be great! I'm out tomorrow working the forge to replace most of these, and so hopefully Uncle Qrow will stop giving the weeping glare when he's in here."

"He's still doing that? You'd think as an adult he'd stop that. Doesn't Dad have a few stories about that?"

"Every time he comes in," Ruby said. "Which isn't much, seeing as how Signal is still going. Dad should be back here soon if you want to see him," she said. "He went out to make sure I have enough groceries to last the next week."

"He is aware you're old enough for your own shopping, right?" Blake asked.

"Yeah he knows but Dad's always treated me like a kid. This is the first time he'd really let me out on my own for any amount of time," Ruby answered.

"Nah. It's not that I don't want to see him, but...well, I don't think he'd be happy to see me. Considering the last time we saw each other we shouted so loud that the police told us to keep it down."

Blake was staring at her partner as if Yang had developed another head. "Oh yeah, that was when I first told Dad about the shop idea. You should call him. You know he doesn't hold that kind of thing against anyone."

"That's true, I suppose. It's just...things. Things are bad. And I don't know if I have the words to fix it."

"You don't need words," Ruby said. "Sometimes the feelings are just already there. You don't need words to say things you both already know. What time is the final bullhead for Beacon?"

"Six thirty tonight. Why?"

"Stay for dinner! Come on, please Yang!?"

"I...sure if you want me to, Rubes," Yang said. Blake had steadily started to head back towards the door. "Blake's welcome too, right?" Yang said, freezing Blake in her place.

"Yeah of course! I know just the thing!" Ruby grinned. "I lock up around five on Saturdays. Come in around then!"

Before anybody says anything, peabody actually is a color name. It's kind of dark blue/green color with a hint of gray. It's also an unfortunate name.

Until Next Time!