Ch. 91 Careful, hot
The moment Jaune got dressed after his shower he all but ran to the dining table. Of course he found that Ruby beat him there by a short while, the rose petals still showing the trail from the ground floor bathroom to the table.
Jaune smiled at the sight of his sisters getting along with her and quickly sat down between Ruby and his dad.
Jaune's mom, Juniper, was busy pouring the steaming stew she only just took off the heat moments ago. Doré didn't wait any longer and despite his wife's warning immediately started eating the piping hot meal.
Mere moments after, when Juniper filled both Jaune's and Ruby's plates with the rich broth.
"Careful both of you, it's hot." she repeated once more, more out of habit than any danger to huntsmen with active Aura.
Jaune brought the spoon to his lips and savoured the moment as the taste of his mother's home cooking spread on his tongue. Unfortunately for him, that was the moment his father swallowed his mouthful and spoke up.
"So, when's the propper wedding?"
Jaune nearly spit the lovely stew out before swallowing with some difficulty. Ruby too looked like she was choking, the abrupt question interrupting her mid swallow.
"I told you it was hot, dear…" Juniper chided in jest.
"That's not the problem here and you know it mom. Dad! We just arrived!" Jaune exclaimed incredulously.
"And you likely won't stay long Jaune. I'm not blind to the state of the world. All I'm saying is I'd like to hold the celebration before you do… unless you had other plans?"
Jaune looked at his dad for a few moments before sighing. He wasn't entirely wrong but at least he wouldn't go further than Amity and he planned to come back frequently.
"No… not anything concrete anyway… But we're not going far for a few weeks at least. I'd rather the second ceremony was a little more planned than the first."
Jaune looked both incredibly tired and content, a small smile spreading on his face. At least until he heard Lily snort, pulling everyone's attention on her. "Right that "mistake" of yours…" she butted in, making air quotes with her fingers.
"Hey, it was the best mistake I've ever made. I'll have you know." Jaune rebutted his voice mirthful even though a blush was making its way onto his face.
"Whatever you say Jaune." Lily shrugged and refocused on her plate.
"Either way, I'd rather Taiyang was there to walk Ruby down the aisle… That was the original plan anyway." Jaune said, turning back to Doré
"Jaune, it's fine. Dad was there the first time…" Ruby quietly protested.
Jaune was about to speak but his mother spoke first. "Ruby, darling… I think we can at least wait a little. I'm sure your father can make his way here from Vale when he wakes up."
"Mom, he's not… actually maybe." Jaune looked pensive suddenly.
"Jaune?" Ruby asked, confused.
"Raven can take him to Qrow. We only arrived today so for all we know Taiyang is awake and Raven just hasn't contacted Qrow yet."
"That's… not impossible I guess." she piped up, her mood improved slightly.
"Alright then. How about we set the date to a month from today?" Spoke Doré impatiently.
Jaune and Ruby nodded and were about to say something when Topaz loudly exclaimed "Seconds please!"
The serious mood immediately dispelled Ruby turned back to her plate, once more enjoying Jaune's mom's cooking.
=O=O=O=
Qrow walked at the head of the group as they made their way through the ruined streets of Mt. Glenn. They had already finished their lunch and were making good time on their survey of the area. A few more days at most until they could safely return and report their culling of the Grimm population.
Behind him the three youngsters were bickering amongst themselves half heartedly. It was mostly idle conversation meant to fill the time.
"What is she saying? I didn't quite catch that, something about eating?" asked Sky.
Cardin sighed, he kinda didn't want to translate for Neo. Mostly because he didn't think her joke was funny.
"She said: Have you considered eating three packets of hot sauce? You won't regret eating three packets of hot sauce."
"I'm not eating straight hot sauce! That was one time and only because I thought it was a packet of jam. Which, mind you, it was before you stole mine and switched it with hot sauce."
Neo snickered when she heard Qrow chuckle.
"Man, you kids are a blast. I should hang out with you more." he added, still laughing.
"And I'm telling you, I'm tired of waiting for the other boot to drop. We've been too fortunate so far. I'm telling you it's only a matter of time before something bad happens."
The moment Sky finished those words a roar and a crash could be heard from a few blocks away.
"See, what did I tell you." Sky exclaimed, vindicated in his paranoia.
"Hey kid, we're here to hunt Grimm you know? How is finding our query a bad thing?" Qrow chuckled.
"When is finding more Grimm ever a good thing?" Cardin piped up.
"Alright, I see your point. Now kick your ass into gear. We're going over there."
=O=O=O=
Emerald fought her way against the hot wind whipping the sand into her face. Mercury was only a few steps behind and the only reason he wasn't complaining the whole time was that he didn't want sand in his mouth… any more than it already was. Mercury wasn't particularly fond of the crunchy feeling between his teeth.
Their search for the Summer maiden was proving to be even more difficult than they expected. Signs of people traversing the desert were scarce. In part due to the fact that any piece of gear left behind was likely to be lost forever so travellers seldom left behind anything that could be used to identify their campsites. At best they were looking at charred stones and firepits on the odd stone formation peeking above the sand.
The sand of course was the other reason it was so hard to find anything as the moment wind picked up any signs of camps or trails were likely to disappear.
Still it wasn't like their search proved entirely fruitless. They stumbled upon a few caravans of nomadic tribes. This was fortuitous in several ways. It allowed them to trade for supplies for one, which in turn meant they didn't have to return back to the city of Vacuo quite as soon as expected. Another boon was that they likely stumbled upon the reason the Summer maiden could survive out here. Either she traded with these people or perhaps more likely she was a part of one of these groups.
Emerald even considered if perhaps the storm was something the Maiden manifested to drive them away, but that was unlikely since nobody had recognised them so far.
There was one more thing of note, though this was more so something Mercury noticed and Emerald wanted to hear nothing about. The sand was shimmering in places. Some places more than others of course and when they stumbled upon a particularly glittery dune Mercury went to investigate the source of the shimmer.
To his surprise he came to the conclusion it was dust. A good amount of it too.
It wasn't enough to warrant trying to sift it out of the sand but Mercury thought that since dust is a finite natural resource, perhaps there'll come such a time when humanity won't have much of a choice.
Mercury swore as another hot gust assaulted him, only to immediately regret opening his mouth.
=O=O=O=
Jaune carefully hammered another piece of the rather soft metal into shape. He barely needed to heat it up since the alloy was rather malleable at room temperature. This was exactly what he needed and one of the reasons he chose this piece of scrap over the hundreds of similar ones.
As he worked on the shape of the gauntlets he ran through all the things he'd need to do to make it work as intended. While he could have opted to just make the whole thing of some combination of burn dust alloys he decided against that brute approach.
Instead he spent a few hours the day before stitching leather gloves and then using a stainless steel mesh as a spacer between the glove and the burn dust alloy gauntlet itself. It wasn't a perfect solution but it didn't need to be perfect, just functional for long enough that he could heat metal to forging temperatures in his hands.
Jaune wasn't exactly sure what the burn dust alloy was made out of but his guess was a lot of copper. From where he found it the guess was that it was a remnant of one of the thickest cables meant to carry vast amounts of electricity through the innards of Amity. The percentage of unburned burn dust mixed within was also quite high. Cobalt seemed to reach the same conclusion after examining it with his semblance.
The hope was that the gauntlet would be able to transfer enough heat to the metal in its grip before either burning itself out or melting the metal. Of course Jaune could just resummon it and continue heating the workpiece nearly immediately, but for convenience sake he hoped it would hold long enough.
Suddenly Jaune hissed in pain, interrupted from his flow of thoughts the moment he forgot himself and gripped the tongs with his off hand a little too tightly. He let the tongs clatter to the floor and surveyed his bandaged hand.
He had just come back from the local clinic. Luckily he was a huntsman and wasn't exactly picky about the quality of the service. The bandage was clean and skillfully wrapped around his hand, the wound itself lathered in a salve made from the pink sap from Forever Fall. In a few hours nobody would be able to tell there was once a cut there.
It wasn't an injury of course that caused the wound, it was the doctor that made the incision. Jaune saw the latest of his medical scans and had an idea. One which he immediately put into practice by letting the doctor remove several of the dust crystals that took to growing from the bones of his hand.
Removing them had merit of its own as well, but that wasn't the main purpose behind the procedure. It felt right to use tem for that purpose.
He shook his head as he finished reshaping the piece of scrap into the last segment. He immediately brought it over to the nearly constructed gauntlets and slotted the pieces in like a puzzle. Much to his relief, it fit near perfectly so he went about riveting it in place.
The rivets were ordinary steel, but Jaune doubted they would let go before the burn copper alloy would so it wasn't worth it to bother with a better material.
The next several hours were spent sitting at the workbench, carving many blocky letters of ancient Valean script onto the metal. It wasn't until sunrise that Jaune realised he didn't sleep or indeed let anyone know he wouldn't be coming back to Arc manor to sleep.
There was nothing he could do about that now, so he opted to at least finish the thing that distracted him like this. For the first time since the test fit the evening prior he put on the gauntlets.
They covered three quarters of his forearms and shone with that coppery red brown colour of work hardened copper. Jaune lost no time and flexed his aura, lighting up the script that wound from around his forearms down to the end of each individual finger.
Despite the rushed job, this creation turned out well enough.
"Te nomino Forguum Digitos in lingua avita in qua omnia arma ab Arco gestata nominatur."
Jaune felt as the dust in the alloy finally ignited only a few words before the newly named Blacksmith's Fingers became a part of his aura. The red brown metal immediately went red and then white, the rolling heat singing Jaune's rolled up sleeves.
Then just as suddenly as the flash came the Fingers disappeared, retreating into Jaune's aura.
Jaune grinned like an idiot as he slowly stepped outside, intending on returning to Arc manor and finding Ruby as soon as possible.
=O=O=O=
Author's note:
Burn baby burn! Sorry this note will be shorter than normal, I'm really tired right now.
I accidentally stumbled into getting another job, meaning free time is in higher demand than perhaps ever before.
But hey if you want to support me you can do so on P a treon . com (slash) OlympianScribe
Anyway I hope you enjoyed and are looking forward to the next chapter: Ch. 92 Tea at the Bonsai