Disclaimer: See last chapter. Unfortunate OC's are unfortunate.

Remake

Ruby's head was hurting as sweat dripped down from it. She was trying to remake this particular piece from memory alone, but it was dying out even in her head as she struggled to grasp onto it.

She remembered the shaft, she remembered the axehead. She remembered how her mother had gripped it, fighting against Grimm whenever she'd had to.

Her hands dropped down as a rogue piece of metal bit at her hand, a feral missile digging into her flesh. "Shoot..." Ruby muttered as she dropped it suddenly. This was the last piece of the day, and it was one that she wanted to make right more than anything else.

She was back in the forge, with Lilac and Jasper hopefully doing well at the shop. She had her scroll on silent, this was their third day. It had taken her months to get used to working as a shopkeeper, but that was also her. Those two...were at least much more socially inclined than she was.

More than a few pieces were behind her, bolts and screws and edges, in a startling array of variety. Axes, swords, polearms...who seriously used a polearm to fight Grimm actually she could think of a few dozen ways to do it maybe she should take it go out into the forest for two years with just that by the end she...

She shook out her mind. Her combat skirt was long dropped on the floor, and she had nothing but a tank top and some shorts, and a few extras of protective gear on. Of the three gallons of water she'd brought in for her, two and a half were gone and she was rapidly working on the final half.

After this was the grinding down, and then came the fun part; the assembly. She had plenty of dust infused wire now, the SDC had a surplus of it at one point and she had snagged as much of it as she could get at the time. It made that particular month rather harrowing finance wise but she'd made nearly quadruple what she'd paid for it because of it.

But then there was this. Her version of Sundered Rose had been stolen by Torchwick and Neo, and she wanted it back. But it wasn't as if she could find Torchwick just lying around somewhere, the man was as capable of hiding as a rat was. Or a snake. Or some other creature that Ruby didn't particularly want around.

And with no leads, it came to this; simply remaking the piece. Sundered Rose hadn't been a single sheet of metal, but rather an alloyed gold titanium, with a mix of dust infusion for keeping the edge, and a long shaft mostly made of petrified wood. How her mom had found so much of the rock, she didn't know.

She wasn't trying to remake a one to one. For that, alloyed gold titanium was way out of her price range. And usually gold itself was much too soft, but she could use a dust infused iron, nearly a fifth the cost of the actual material the weapon had been made of, to get the same color even if it wouldn't hold up as well.

The original one that she'd made was done to its original specs, courtesy of Dad telling her all about it. It hadn't been the best of ideas, but the shop was called "Summer's Weapon Shop". It hadn't been that much to try to bring a recreation of the weapon of the woman who Ruby had named it after.

She took a deep breath and brought it back up again. Iron for the shaft, painted like wood, and dust infused iron for the head. She could use pure steel for the insides, that should be enough. It didn't need to be a true mechashift, and it would give her an idea of how to remake the actual.

Not even her original remake had been nearly as good as the original. Dad had come around and swung it around a bit, before idly commenting, "That's pretty good Ruby. Not quite there, but you're close!"

Not quite there.

Those words still haunted her. She wanted to remake it the best as it could be, the best as it was. She didn't have a lot of memories of Summer, just the best of the best. The hugs, the cookies, the love. The kind words, the stern scolding whenever she deserved it.

Not quite there. That wasn't good enough. It needed to be as close as she could possibly get it. This was just a holdover, a tideover, until she could get the one that was stolen back. But even if it wasn't going to be 'enough', she'd still put her heart and soul into it, just as she did every other weapon she made.

The hammer came down again as the forge flared. The metal hissed and spat, as it always did when infused with dust. She'd brought her own dust this time, using the few expired crystals. She could guess generally what purity they were, even as random as it was when dust expired.

The fact that dust could expire was something she didn't understand. Supposedly it was something that dust studies were to cover once she actively joined Beacon, but she looked over Yang's notes, and doodles, and didn't understand a bit. Then again, that might have been because Yang was far more interested in punching another person than figuring out the differences between thirty five purity dust and thirty six purity dust.

The metal flickered and tried to lick at her, but she ignored the pain that flared up. She was Ruby Rose. The Weaponsmith. And fire was her blood, and steel her body. The dust infused iron was put into the cast, and just as appropriately dropped into the barrel of dirty water. Steam splashed up, and yet she ignored it. She could barely see...but she could still feel the weight.

Dust infused iron was a general pain to work with, if only because it was mostly unstable unless using a particular stabilizing agent. She could only do it by mixing in water as the main agent, allowing the molten iron to harden with the dust included. Then...

She pulled out the cast, and flared her aura towards it. This was the dangerous part. The iron was still hot, but no longer molten and liquid. It needed to keep its shape as the dust solidified within it, otherwise the dust would conform to whatever shape it was.

It was why mechashift used so many dust infused parts. They were small, and thus used a small amount of dust, and a small amount of aura was needed.

Ruby had been using her Semblance so much frequently that her aura had expanded nearly three times as much as it was when she'd first started the shop. And it wasn't just her Semblance either; the constant usage from spars, the constant infusing of dust into the weapons.

It all added up. She took a step back as the dust coagulated within the iron. How the process worked exactly she wasn't sure, but dust was...weird, in the physical sense. A combination energy and physical matter. The dust matter was the harnessing of the energy, but it was the energy she needed to capture.

She wiped the sweat off her brow. "Alright. That's done," she said, watching it carefully as the dust glowed bright. It had fed off of her aura, keeping it still and harnessing the energies. Once it was done, the iron would be a dull gold, similar to the color of alloyed gold titanium.

It wouldn't be exact. It wouldn't be a true replica. But she also wasn't trying to make one. This would be enough.

Time for the grinding, and that was going to be a pain. She turned off the forge, letting the cool air sneak in for the first time since she'd come in there that morning. The windows were fogged up, as they should be, even as open as wide as they were.

There was a knock on the door. "Done with the forge?" Mr. Cyanton's voice called out. "Are you finished finished or still have grinding?"

"Still have grinding. There was a lot for today," Ruby answered. "Brought my own dust and dust wire, at least. Forty bars of steel, twenty of iron, and a few blocks of grinding stone," Ruby said after a moment. "That may go up, depending on how small these parts are."

"Aye. You mechashfit Hunters prefer are always varied. I'll add what you've called out to your tally, and you can pay once you're done," Mr. Cyanton said. Ruby nodded, even though the door was shut.

The blacksmith, Mr. Cyanton, had actually gotten a new grinding stone within the last few months. Now it was an electric powered grinding wheel, rather than the manual one that she had been using.

She flipped on some goggles, picking up each piece individually in the gloves and glancing over them, looking for imperfections. Some of them she put back in the bins, already mostly in decent shape. A few would have to be reforged at some point, although most she could just hammer into the shape she needed. They were still warm, so it was the perfect time to do it.

She set her scroll up on the wall, allowing the various blueprints to dominate her screen. She ignored the various messages from Lilac and Yang. And the one from Blake saying that a new book of their favorite series was coming out next week and if Tukson wasn't back yet if Ruby could go down to the bookstore and reserve two of them that would be great. She definitely ignored that one, just pushing it aside, and not opening to read it because Blake had mentioned which series it was.

She grabbed the flathammer, making sure that she knew which piece individually it was that she was working on. It was the hardest part of mechashift; each piece had to be near exact.

Not including the remake of Sundered Rose, which wasn't technically mechashift in that it never truly 'transformed', much in the same way that Crescent Rose could go from sniper to scythe without any actual change. Sure, it had a handheld mode that she could use to snipe, and that was a true shift, but to switch between the two modes when it was fully extended? Didn't need anything to change.

Where was she going with that? Right, besides Sundered Rose she was doing four mechashift pieces. A halberd whip, which was exciting but it had so many pieces to it it was exhausting, a rifle and sword setup which seemed to be getting more and more common these days, a dust lined greatsword that vented explosions on the sides, and finally a multiple use variable piece. Part wakizashi that could fuse into itself to turn into some kind of demonic spiked yo-yo.

She had questioned that last one significantly before sending off the final plans, but it was what they wanted and said they could use. Honestly if she was proficient in that kind of thing it looked kinda cool in the plans, but she could just imagine missing the rebound and impaling herself once. Not as bad as the sword boomerang, which would cut off someone's hand, but...still.

Nearly four hundred pieces needed to be made today alone. And it was already one or two in the afternoon.

Today was going to be a long day...

Sale Day

Ruby wished that she was still the wide eyed idealist that she was nearly a year ago when she first opened the storefront, but while was prideful of how far she'd come and how much she learned, it was still harsh sometimes to come downstairs in her pajama's and realize that she still had work to do. At six in the morning.

Zwei barked up next to her. "Alright Zwei, you know what day it is! We have four days until the start of the Vytal Festival. And that means, guess what! Sale time!" Ruby cheered. Zwei cheered with her, immediately snuggling up onto the computer. Ruby blurred back upstairs to change into her usual outfit, before she came back downstairs to work on the changes that needed to be made.

Lilac and Jasper weren't supposed to come in until eight, and by then she wanted to make the transition easy on them. And that meant changing the entire point of sale system to update for the new sale prices.

She'd spent most of last night on it, after she'd come back from the blacksmith's. She never quite saw the expression on Jasper's face when he saw just how many pieces she'd made in...ten hours? How long had she been there? A long time, that was for sure.

The hardest part about the update was that it also changed the various taxes, and also needed to be able to switch back to the old pricing just as quick for custom orders. No sales on that, no matter what! She'd make sure of that!

Or rather, the contracts that she'd downloaded off the CCT made sure of that. The contracts that outlined exactly what it was that they were buying and how much it would cost.

She was just fortunate that no one had actually reneged on those contracts yet. She didn't really want to take a Hunter to court to get paid, that wasn't really her...but she did need the money so she'd do it if she needed to but she'd much rather be out there fighting alongside them but she couldn't because now she was doing this and why was Zwei updating the POS system!?

Ruby glanced at the corgi, who had mysteriously found some glasses and was inputting random numbers on the computer system. "Zwei. I'm going to put the banners up. I know you're smart, but please wait for me to do that," Ruby muttered.

Zwei gave a 'ruff' and had his tongue lolling out before he pressed the enter key, a simple 'no sale' raising up on the monitor. "Zwei..." Ruby growled out. The corgi gave another huff and rolled over to his bed, where he promptly sat down and awaited the day.

Her Semblance blurred her forward as she started to put up the banners. It was her first official 'sale' so to speak, and she'd never done something of this scope asides from actually starting the shop. And back then it had been a simple hole in the wall that slowly gained recognition over time.

The other weapon shop had closed down within two months. The fact she was here was another reason to be prideful of this place. She put one banner on the outside, and she saw a few other shopkeepers that she'd known throughout the year to be putting up their own.

Vale had an old law on the books that said anything advertising a sale had to be put up the day that it started and taken down the day after it ended. There were no 'permanent' sales. So everyone had mentioned that banners were the way to go.

"Ruby!" Robin yelled out from down the street. She was the deer faunus that Ruby had almost bought some combat boots from months ago. They had started at similar times, and Ruby was glad to see that she was still in business. "Putting up your sign too huh?" she asked.

Ruby nodded and jumped off the ladder. "Yep! I'm excited yet terrified."

"Isn't that just the standard state of being by this point?" Robin asked. "Mine's been up for a while, but this year's festival ought to be good. Pyrrha Nikos is competing."

"Yeah, she's on my sister's team," Ruby said, trying hard not to brag. "She's an incredible fighter."

"I'd say she is! I have an entire clothing line dedicated to something like her armor. It's one of my best sellers."

"That I'm not surprised about. Doesn't hurt that it's actually wearable, unlike some armors," Ruby said. "You want to come in?"

"No, just making sure you knew that you have a bit of holes in that combat skirt of yours," Robin explained.

Ruby looked down at her usual day wear. "That hole's been there," she said, flattening it out gently. "I'll change once I get inside again."

Robin nodded, before she gave a quick wave goodbye and headed back off. Ruby waved back before she put the ladder away and ran back inside. Her Semblance was being pushed to the brim today.

By the time eight rolled around, both Lilac and Jasper were coming in and situating themselves in with the new looks of the shop. Ruby had rearranged entire shelves, not including the banners, to help take care of the new customers that would be coming in. She'd been told that her prices weren't cheap, so hopefully this would help drive some sales up.

It also didn't hurt that dust was only five percent off. It was the most Ruby could do before she started to go negative on it, and this way it would at least cover her own costs on it.

"Alright, just like we practiced!" Ruby cheered. "Lilac, you're on cashier duty. I left the old prices there and put on a pad the new ones just in case something gets rung up wrong." The cat faunus gave a mock salute. "Jasper, I want you on the floor to make sure that people don't hurt themselves. That means you have access to the arena hardlight software too, in case someone wants a spar. I still have a mechashift yo-yo to make."

"Really? I thought you finished that one," Lilac asked. "According to the tag you did," she said, looking at the screen with all finished and unfinished custom orders.

"I thought so too but then it decided to break on me when I took it out to test it."

"Went for a whirl, huh?" Jasper said. He ignored the glare that came from Ruby. He hadn't been wrong, per se, but it was the pun that was annoying. At least Dad had learned not to tell them so easily around her!

He grinned, before heading to some of the racks. He'd gotten a small duster out and was making sure that they were cleaned off well. She'd already done that this morning, but it never hurt to have another person be doing it too.

The day went by far too quickly, in Ruby's mind. From nearly the instant she opened the door at nine, people were constantly in and out of her shop. Her two employees were pulling their weight far more than they had the last two days, and she'd only been able to give them one day of training on guns.

Flare, Signal, even it seemed half of Beacon was going through her shop that day. The hours went by quick, and by the time it had slowed down for the first time it was nearly four in the afternoon. Two hours from closing time. There was only one person in the shop now, a small faunus boy with a puffy tail behind him. Probably no older than eight or nine, probably a first year Flare student at best. He was looking around with wide eyes at the variety of weapons on stock and display. There was a orange haired girl who was looking around with adamant curiosity.

Ruby sat down, the chair spinning slightly. She was almost panting, and yet while her body had no energy left or brain knew she had a few hours left. "That was exhausting," Ruby muttered. Lilac giggled from the counter.

"You think that was bad, you should work in a coffee shop. The morning rush is always something," she answered. "It's like a never ending line of everything."

"Everything going wrong all at once?" Jasper asked from the front. The boy was ignoring all three of them, so entranced by the weapons that he was. "Sounds about right for a job like this one. I don't think Dad ever had anything like this."

"Nor would he," Lilac countered. "Although, hey look, more people," she grinned. Ruby had to stop the inevitable groan from coming out. She was tired, and there were too many! The hated bell rang a few times as the door opened, closed, and then opened again. Another rush, Ruby knew.

It was times like this she was grateful to have the Semblance that she did. She could use it to almost teleport anywhere in the shop whenever she was needed, which wasn't nearly as often as she had thought but far more often than she'd hoped.

The bell rang again, and there was the same unsightly growl that she knew all too well. "Adam!" she yelled out, as the angry bull faunus walked through. He had a white hood up to hide most of them, and his eye patch was in it's usual spot. The orange haired girl stared in obvious shock. Ruby recognized her from somewhere, but by the time that she could try to recall it, Adam had stepped up to her.

"Ruby. I need another contract," he started to ask. Ruby nodded.

"For more of the same?" she asked. He nodded. "Alright, it might take me a while to get to them due to the Vytal Festival going on," she said, moving her hands throughout the shop. Adam glanced, and took a deep breath.

"We need it before. An emergency order. I've been told to give you a blank check, just make it fair," Adam said. He looked around for a long few moments. Ruby followed his eyes. There were a lot of kids in the store now. From the same boy earlier to a couple of other girls, human or faunus, they were dotting the shop in their consistency.

Lilac was openly staring at Adam. "A...a blank check? Seriously?" Ruby asked. That thought made her mind crash. She could effectively charge whatever she wanted. If she wanted to overcharge him by nearly four or five times, she could! But then...that same niggling thought went to her mind. That wouldn't be fair. Just because she could doesn't mean she would. No, she'd be better than that. If she wasn't, she'd have been better off in the forest for two years.

"We need more. The ones we got were high quality last time, and although we don't need that good of quality, we need more."

Ruby froze as she felt the ground to start to quake a bit. It was a small shake, and the only reason she was sure she wasn't imagining it was because Adam did the same thing. None of the other customers, nor Lilac and Jasper seemed to have noticed. The orange haired girl, Penny, Ruby finally remembered her name, seemed to have noticed it as well, staring off into the distance, as if waiting for something.

"It almost sounds like you're planning for a war or something," Ruby commented, choosing to ignore it completely. She met Adam's eyes, and he seemed to have chosen the same. "Then again, with Atlas the way they are, I wouldn't blame them. Everyone's on edge right now thanks to the battleships," she muttered. Penny froze and stilled. "I can scrap a few together, maybe not the same amount as last time, but as many as I can. What's the absolute latest you need them by?" Ruby asked.

Adam froze at the mention of a war, his eyes on the faunus kids. "Three days. Just before the start of the tournament. That should give plenty of time-"

His words were cut off as a loud klaxon alarm started blaring. Ruby had heard it only once in her lifetime, but it was the first year Pharos student who really brought it into memory, looking around wildly. The sound was drilled into their heads the instant they were students to become Hunters.

Grimm were coming.

"Jasper, Lilac, get the customers together into the arena and lock it down, it doubles as a barrier!" Ruby called instantly. She blurred over to Crescent Rose, grabbing it and unfurling it. "Make them stick together, and whatever you do-"

The klaxon blared again, drowning out Ruby's words even from her own mouth. "Don't let any of them get hurt," Ruby repeated. She glanced at Adam, who seemed more in shock at the blaring alarm. "Get in the barrier, you'll be safe there," she said to him, heading out into the street.

In the immortal words of Wheatley; "We're doing this now!"

Until Next Time!