Explorations and character studies on the concept of gun nut Ruby Rose

by AnonYmous776

Volume two-ish gun nut Ruby Rose (and friends) discuss firearms, historical European martial arts, and light fan service, while on a training range at Beacon. This fic was written with the express purpose of making a depiction of Ruby Rose that is at least as much of a gun nut as Revy from Black Lagoon or Rebecca from Cyberpunk Edgerunners.

1. Chapter one:

/Note from the author: Large parts of this are probably going to be a dry and clinical read. Furthermore, none of this is in anyway meant to be instructional or to otherwise be used as a reference. Part of the characterization that I am trying to portray is a willingness to do dangerous things, and an incomplete understanding of certain facts. Do not attempt any action depicted in this fiction./

Chapter one: What how and why is Crescent Rose.

Scene one: Range day story time and building the worlds fastest gun.

Scene setting: Beacon era, Weiss is watching Ruby practice on a training range. Ruby has her weapon in it's scythe-monopod form taking slow carefully aimed shots at paper targets on the far end of the range. The paper targets feature half sized silhouettes of beowolves with bulls-eyes on their chest and head.

Weiss asks between shots. "You called that a 'sniper's rifle' earlier, but you're training to be a Huntress not a sniper. Wouldn't it just be a 'hunting rifle'?"

Ruby responds between shots. "Well, yeah, but that's not very descriptive. She's definitely more of a precision-long-range style gun than a brush-gun."

"I don't think you shoot it that far most of the time"

"I don't. The longest sight lines through the trees and hills of the Everfall Forest are like... 50 yards. I could climb Beacon tower with her, but I'd still have to try and spot beowolves through the trees."

"If you can't actually use it to it's potential then what's even the point?"

"That's just the terrain we're in right now. If I was somewhere flat and open, or if I was somewhere up in the mountains above the tree line I'd be untouchable."

"So what's the farthest you've ever shot it?"

Ruby waves a hand and nods in the direction of the far end of the range. "About 800 yards."

Weiss follows her motion. "That? Just now?"

"Yeah"

"Aren't 'sniper's' supposed to shoot like... multiple kilometers?"

"The record shots are, but it's hard to find a range that long. This is actually the longest range I've ever been too. My dad's property has a range that's I think a little over 200 yards, and Signal had a 400 yard practice range. Actually, you could see Signal's range from the top of the hill behind my dad's house. Beautifully framed shot right down the river right at about two-and-a-quarter-thousand yards."

"What's that in real units of measurement?"

"Uhhh, like... Two kilometers and a bit? I don't know." Ruby shrugs and shook her head.

"Did you ever try to make that shot?"

Ruby sighed "No. Patch has this local ordinance where in order for it to be a legal practice range all shots must be contained within the property lines. Because the shot would have been from a range, over top of what is a hunting and fishing preserve, too another range it wasn't legal. Signal's headmaster and the sheriff said it would have been okay but the game warden said no and dad wouldn't let me. My uncle bought me a big eight-too-eighty-by-sixty (8-80x60) scope and it's still sitting in a box in my closet because I haven't really had the chance to use it. I tried to sneak out late one night when I thought everyone was asleep but dad must have seen me take the scope out of the box because when I got to the top of the hill the game warden and him were just sitting there having a drink."

"Do you think you could have done it?"

Ruby shrugged "I don't know... I mean, I've done the math but I don't know, you know?"

"Aren't you a good shot?"

"I'm an okay shot"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm about a... 2 minutes-of-arc(MoA) shot."

"A what?"

"So... Okay." Ruby has to pause practice and turn too Weiss to explain how MoA works. "One minute-of-arc is the angular size of one inch at one hundred yards, and it's an angular size so every time you double the distance you double the size. So two minutes-of-arc times eight for 800 yards is somewhere inside of sixteen inches." Ruby holds her thumbs and index fingers in a box at arms length, then moves the box to just in front of her own chest and looks down at it. "So at 800 I can't guarantee that'd I'd hit the heart and just drop whatever I'm shooting at, but I have half decent odds of ventilating the chest cavity and collapsing a lung."

"So 'minutes-of-arc' is just what you call the non-metric version of 'milliradian'? So how would you be at your, what was it, two kilometers?"

"About 45 inches." Ruby makes the box much wider. "Not accounting for wind or anything else."

"Is that a limitation of you or your weapon?"

"Probably me. Almost certainly me."

"Well what do you need to improve?"

"Time and practice." said Ruby moving to resume her shooting.

"You spend like, an hour or two a day hand loading your own ammo right?"

"Yeah."

"Well I am the heiress to an ammunition company, what if I just order you some ammo so you can spend that time practicing?"

"You don't sell all the hand loadings that I use. Besides, I like hand loading, I listen to music and audio books while I'm doing it."

"I'm the heiress to the company, I can custom order whatever your 'special' ammo is. I would just need to know whatever your cartridge, projectile weight, chamber pressure, and barrel length are."

"I bet mine are more accurate."

"I bet they're not."

"If mine are better will you do my homework for the next month?"

"Sure, and when you lose you'll be advertising the SDC and passing out brochures for the next month. What do you run?"

This discussion is going to warrant an extended break from practice, so Ruby sets down Crescent Rose and turns to Weiss. "Uh, a couple of different things actually. These-" Ruby slaps the magazine currently in her weapon and points to the silvered cases on her belt "-are what I run for my long range stuff. They're a three-thirty-eight, (.338) saboted down to take 90 grain flechettes, loaded too 85,000psi, from a 36 inch barrel."

Weiss blinked "That sounds massively over pressured. Like 50% over pressured."

"More like 39 to 40 percent."

"That's dangerously out of spec."

"She's not an 'in spec' gun, she's a gun I made myself. She's built out of an M95 action and a barrel I turned out of an M2 blank. The only reason I don't run her hotter is the action will seize and I'd have to hit the bolt with a mallet to get it open. When I do that sometimes it rips the rim off the case and it's just a whole mess to clear the chamber, but even if I accidentally double charge one she won't blow up."

"How do you know that?"

"I've blown up several intentionally."

"Okay... what velocity do you even get out of this... thing?"

/Authors note: Some rudimentary math and a bit of guessing was done here and I know it's wrong. 250grains in 338 at 61,000psi with 28in barrel makes ~3,000fps. +50fps per inch of barrel too 36in makes 3,400fps. 250gr at 3,400fps makes 6,415 joules. 85,000psi is 139.4% of 61,000psi. 139.4% of 6,415 joules is 8,942.5 joules. 90 grains at 6,690fps is 8,942.3 joules. I know this is an over estimate due to efficiency losses. This is anime damn it, go with it./

Ruby answers proudly "Around about six thousand six hundred and ninety feet per second."

"That's... isn't that like twice what a normal rifle makes?"

"More than double."

"How are you getting more than double velocity out of only 40% more pressure?"

"Well that's not the only thing different, she's got a 36 inch barrel instead of a .338's standard 24 to 28, and she's using sabots to fire tiny little 90 grain flechettes instead of 250grain bullets."

"How are you any kind of accurate with that? Don't you have to like... change your rate of twist and all of that when you change your barrel length and projectile weight that much?"

"She's actually a smooth bore."

Weiss is completely taken aback. "I'm sorry, what?"

"She's firing flechettes. You don't need to waste energy spinning the round up too half a million rpm to spin-stabilize it if its already fin, f-i-n, fin-stabilized. Plus being a smooth bore instead of rifled I don't need a full huntress license to travel with her. That and smooth bores are really simple to turn on a lathe."

"So it's technically a gun, not a rifle."

"Legally and mechanically yes, functionally and practically she does rifle things. The IWS2000 is the same way."

Weiss shakes her head "...I still can't believe you're making double a normal rifle's velocity."

"Well the IWS2000 makes 4,750fps, and it does it with a projectile big enough it's measured in grams instead of grains. There's another one called the twenty-two-eargasplitten-loudenboomer that makes 4,600fps-"

"The twenty-two-what?"

".22 eargasplitten loudenboomer"

"Your making that up."

Ruby pulls out her scroll and opens a wiki page and holds it up to Weiss.

"That's... a thing?"

"Yes. Also, the defense contract prototype version of the thirty-three-seventy-eight (.30-378) made more than 6,000fps. The civilian version is much slower, but lots of military rounds run much higher pressures than civilian spec."

"Such as?"

"Lots. Whatever they're going to officially designate the new two-seventy-seven(.277) is the new hotness, before that it was M-eight-fifty-five-A-one (M855A1) was kind of hot. Before that I don't know off the top of my head but if I had to guess I'd assume M-sixty-one (M61) and M-nineteen-twenty-two (M1922) were both pretty hot."

"Are those all rounds that the Vale military uses?"

"Yeah."

"If they're military rounds wouldn't they just be a steel core?"

"Well yeah, but they're also higher pressure."

"Right, okay, and this is better for the kind of shooting that you do than standard ammo?"

Ruby makes a weighing scale gesture with her hands "There's... trade offs."

"Like what?"

"Faster bullets you don't have to account for as much lead or drop, but lighter bullets lose velocity faster and get pushed around by the wind more. Plus super fast rounds burn through barrels really quick, the bore starts to waller out from the muzzle back and the chamber forward after only a couple thousand rounds. When I'm doing all day training sessions twice a week I have to replace the barrel like twice a month. Also, if you want to maximize penetration in hard targets like a bandit wearing armor or an old grim with a very hard head you want to maximize velocity, so a small fast bullet. But if you want to maximize penetration in soft targets like just a bunch of grim in a line or one really big grim then you want to maximize inertia, which means for the same energy you'd want a bigger bullet going slower." Ruby shrugs. "Honestly, tiny little bullet going super fast just amuses me."

"Okay, you said you load a couple of different ways? What are the other ones?"

"I've been starting to run more five-hundred-whisper (.500-whisper) to shoot different kinds of dust projectiles. 500 whisper is just 338 brass necked up to accept heavy-machine-gun projectiles. It uses the same bolt and fits in the same magazines as 338 I just have to swap barrels. I use it for gravity dust slugs to swing the scythe around more, that and just standard high-explosive-incendiary projectiles. What's cool about them is because its the explosive doing the work on target instead of the velocity I can have the same effect on target as the heavy machine gun round while subsonic and suppressed. That and also when high velocity rounds get far down range and transition from super sonic to sub sonic they lose accuracy because they'll deviate from their path, but if you're shooting sub sonics to begin with you never have to deal with that. So hypothetically, if I'm willing to account for all the lead and drop in the world, I could hit a beowolf with a slug from a thousand yards away with almost no sound at all."

"That sounds rather optimistic."

Ruby doesn't happen to have her other barrel and ammo with her to demonstrate on the 800 yard target, so she pulls out her scroll again and shows Weiss a video of a huntsman using a bolt action rifled 12 gauge to hit a steel target with slugs at 1,000 yards.

"Okay, but those are just low pressure sub sonic dust rounds right? You wouldn't mind it if I just gave you lots of that right?"

"Uhh, yeah. Sure."

"Cool, what other crazy nonsense do you run in this thing?"

"That's mostly it, just lots of different projectiles in a 500 whisper case. High explosive incendiaries, gravity dust slugs, cryogenics, XREP taser rounds, whatever I feel like trying. I'm also trying to design a sort of drop-in Pedersen device to fit her so that she can do self loading carbine things. That'll probably be chambered in something like 8.6-blackout, but that's no where near done with that yet."

"I could probably help with that."

"Naa, she's my design... Well, mine and my uncles. He taught me how to make CAD templates to make the folding mechanism."

Weiss looks skeptically "You can do CAD?"

"Cardboard-Assisted-Design? Yeah, it's not hard."

"Oh, okay." Weiss shakes her head "Back to your 338 flechette nonsense. You seem like you half way know what you are doing. You know, If I custom order some and it runs good I might be able to get a weapon manufacturer to adopt it and then I could start mass producing it."

"But she's mine."

"You would collect royalties on your patent of course. Plus it'll be easier and cheaper for you to get ammo if it's everywhere. I mean, you already use machine gun barrel blanks and projectiles because they're cheap and available right? Wouldn't you like to be able to walk into an SDC store in any town and buy a box of '338-Rose'?"

Ruby's expression is hesitant and conflicted.

"We would just need to find a weapon platform that already has a market share that could adopt it easily. Do you think it could run in an up-scaled MG3?"

Ruby opens her mouth to say something in protest, but then processing what Weiss just said she blinks and her eyes go WIDE as the gears in her head start turning.

End scene.

Scene two: Kraut space magic and manual of arms.

Scene setting: One week later on the same range. Jaune finds an unhappy Ruby wearing her red hood over an SDC uniform consisting of a branded baseball hat, polo shirt, and cargo shorts. Ruby is spinning a sign and passing out brochures near the target range next to a booth where an SDC vender is selling premium versions of common handgun rounds and shotgun shells.

Jaune "Oh, hey! how's it- ...what are you doing?"

Ruby "Advertising."

"Well, yeah but why?"

"I lost a bet."

"With Weiss?"

"Yeah."

"And she wanted you to just do advertising?"

"Yeah, for the next month."

"Why? I mean like, everyone here already knows what the SDC is, and almost everyone already uses SDC ammo."

"No idea."

"Well what was the bet?"

"Last week Weiss bet me she could custom order some ammo for Crescent Rose that was more accurate then what I could hand load."

"'Hand load'? Like putting rounds in the magazine?"

"No, 'hand load' like I make my own ammo."

"Oh, how did she manage that? You made that gun yourself right?"

Ruby sighs. "Yep." She sets the sign down and leans back. "So, three days after I made the bet. Three. Days. Right? Very next live practice session she shows up at the range pulling a pallet jack stacked 5 feet high with ammo cans, with just the smuggest power-strut she can possibly manage while pulling a pallet jack in heals. She slides like three yards passed me trying to get the pallet to stop. Gets it stopped and turns to me and smiles and waves at the ammo like a game show host presenting a contestant with a new car! Anyway, she argues to make testing fair we should run both her ammo and mine through a chronograph to see which one has the biggest variance, and I agree."

"What's a chronograph?"

"It measures the velocity of bullets after they've been fired."

"Oh, okay."

"If a type of ammo has less variance in velocity from one shot too the next then it's more consistent and it should be more accurate, so I agree. So anyway, I open up one of the ammo cans that shes brought and these things are big, so I'm expecting them to contain like a couple hundred rounds each, right? But when I open it it's mostly full of foam and there's exactly twenty evenly spaced just immaculate looking rounds each in their own little foam cutout and wrapped in wax paper, and like the projectiles on these rounds are eff-ing sharp. Like, hold on." She opens a Velcro-ed pocket on the thigh of her SDC branded cargo shorts and pulls out one of Crescent Rose's magazines. She takes the first round out of the magazine and passes it to Jaune. "Feel the point on that."

"Wow, yeah." It is indeed eff-ing sharp. He hands it back.

Ruby puts the ammo back in her pocket. "So we pack some magazines, set up the chronograph, and I shoot my ammo first. Most ammo you can buy in a store will have a variance of like plus or minus fifty feet per second right? I put three full magazines through the chronograph and the biggest difference from the fastest too the slowest round of mine was seven feet per second. So I'm feeling pretty good, I mean I've got this, right?"

"Sounds like it."

"Well, I take Weiss' ammo, and the first shot through the chronograph makes 6,689fps."

"That sounds really fast, is that good?"

"It's about what we were expecting, but remember it's the variance, the difference from one shot too the next that matters, right?"

"Right."

"So I shoot the second round and it makes 'Duo!' 6,689fps, and I'm thinking 'Wow! Two in a row fresh out of the box with the exact same velocity, what are the odds of that?' Right? So I fire again. 'Duo-Duo!' 6,689fps, 'Wow! Three in a row right out of the box! What are the odds of that?' And the whole time Weiss' has this grin that's just getting smugger and smugger, right? So I fire again, and it 'Duo!'s again, and at this point I'm starting to think somethings up, right?"

"Did she cheat?"

"Nope, well... Maybe? Anyway, I tell her I think the chronograph might be broken and that I'm going to get another one. She says 'Go right ahead, it'll be the same.'. I put three magazines each through three different chronographs. The biggest variance from the slowest shot too the fastest across three different chronographs was a whole four feet per second. We had one round, one, that made sixty-six-ninty-two and one of the chronographs said that she was only making sixty-six-eighty-eight with each shot. Like-" Ruby holds the magazine up for emphasis and shakes it "-what the heck is this Atlesian-space-magic!?"

"How did she manage that?"

"I don't know. I mean she told me, but I don't know if she told me the truth of if she was joking. If she wasn't joking I don't know if I should tell anyone."

"Well, what did she say?"

Ruby's hesitant.

"I'm not going to tell anyone else, just like... What do you think she's joking about?"

Ruby takes a deep breath. "She told me right after we made the bet she went straight too the CCTS and got a direct line too one of the SDC's senior engineers. I have no idea who this guy is but the SDC's one of the biggest defense contractors in Atlas, so this guy whoever he is is possibly one of the most prominent subject matter experts in this field in the world, right?"

"Oh."

"So she tells me that she told this guy: 'I need a shipment of the cost no object highest quality of ammo of this exact specification that we are capable of making, and I need it no questions asked.'-"

Jaune rocks back on his feet.

Ruby continues "The guy says: 'Of course.' and Weiss says: 'Stop. I think you just misheard me. I think what you just heard was: I need a shipment of very expensive very high quality ammo of this specification no questions asked, that's not what I said. What I said was: I need a shipment of the cost no object highest quality of ammo of this exact specification that we are capable of making, and I need it no questions asked. But this guy, whoever he is, probably has military history definitely has some sort of security clearances, he just sort of laughs it off right? And he asks: 'What, is your sister doing some sort of false flag black op and using you as a proxy for plausible deniability?' And Weiss says she just poker-faced him.-"

"-What?"

"They sit there like that for a minute and he just says: 'Understood' and hangs up."

"No, she's messing with you. That sounds like, super illegal. That's got to be some kind of illegal right?"

"I know! And I thought I was the sketchy quiet one! I asked her why she would do that, or why she would tell me, and she just leans in and says: 'Well, you did call it a sniper's rifle.'-"

"She's definitely messing with you, there's no way. She did something too the chronographs or something."

"Nope." She grabs one of the silvered rounds on her belt. "This is a round that I loaded, hold it up to your ear and shake it."

"Okay?" Jaune does.

"Sound like sand inside of it? That's the dust propellant. Now shake this one." Ruby hands Jaune one of Weiss' very pointy rounds again.

Jaune does. "...I don't hear anything."

"Exactly."

"Is there nothing in it?"

"No it's full. After I lost I got all my tools and pulled a few apart to see what they were, inside of them there's like a solid tube of propellant. Just a rigid cylinder with a hole through the center."

"So like... A big dust crystal turned on a lathe?"

"Nope, that would just turn Crescent Rose into a pipe bomb. Plus dust crystals don't turn on lathes well, they just shatter. This is some material science wizardry and I've got no idea what it is. It's also brittle, either it was formed inside the case like a gelatin in a mold or it was put inside before the case was necked down, because it couldn't fit through the hole."

"So she wasn't just messing with you?"

Ruby shrugs "I have no idea... So anyway, what are you into today?"

"Oh, uh. I was actually looking for you, I wanted to ask you something."

"What's up?"

"I've been thinking, I think I want to pick out some sort of ranged weapon. You know, so I could be a more useful asset to my team. I was thinking something along the lines of a bow or crossbow or maybe some throwing axes to fit my knight motif, but you seem like you know guns the best out of everyone in class so I thought I would ask for your input. Just getting a second opinion and seeing what all my options could be."

Ruby's whole mood visibly brightens. "Well, have you ever fired a gun?"

"No. I've had just one of those 'introduction to firearm safety' classes that used compressed air pellet guns, but not a real one."

"Well, lets start there. We're already on the range so..." Ruby pulls Crescent Rose off of her back and unfolds it into it's rifle form. She pulls the magazine in it out and puts it in one of her pockets, then slowly slides the bolt to the rear with a hand over the ejection point to catch the chambered round as it is ejected and pockets it too. She then shoves a pinky finger into the chamber to physically show that it's clear. "Demonstrating clear." She then passes Crescent Rose muzzle down to Jaune. "Keep her pointed in a safe direction at all times, keep your finger off-"

"-Finger off the trigger until ready to fire, assume all firearms are loaded at all times, yes, yes, I know." Keeping the muzzle pointed at the ground Jaune looks the rifle over rotating it in his hands. "Where's the safety on this thing?"

"She has no manual toggle safety, she only has a grip safety."

"A what? Why?"

"Alright, hand her here for a second." Ruby takes back the rifle, and points to a small paddle on the back of the rifle's pistol grip that would be covered by the webbing of your thumb if you were holding the grip tightly. "This is a grip safety, this has to be held down or the else the trigger can't move, this is the only safety she has."

"Why wouldn't you have like a push button or switch toggle safety?"

"I got tired of carefully lining up shots and forgetting I left the safety on and being unable to pull the trigger. With a grip safety only you don't have that problem because-" Ruby opens the bolt and puts one round in the chamber through the ejection port without inserting a magazine, then points the rifle down range and demonstrates trying to pull the trigger without squeezing the grip safety. The gun does not go off. "-If you're not holding her right, there will be no bang.-" She then with her hand completely off the grip points the muzzle straight up and slams the stock of the rifle into the ground to demonstrate that the rifle is drop safe. Again, the gun does not go off. She points the rifle safely down range and properly squeezes the grip. "-But as long as you are holding her right she's always ready to F-" Ruby fires the rifle.

"Is that safe?"

"I'm probably not as scared of carrying in 'condition zero' as I should be, but like: with just about any revolver and some auto-loading pistols the only safety you have is the holster and plenty of people carry handguns on a loaded chamber. If I had too I'd honestly rather carry her on an empty chamber then put a toggle safety on her. Crescent Rose at least has a grip safety so that she's drop safe... and also so that when I'm using her as a scythe she doesn't just go off if I get my finger in the wrong spot." Ruby ejects the spent round, physically demonstrates the chamber is clear again, and passes the rifle back to Jaune.

Jaune tilts his head looking over the rifle again. "Is this pistol grip literally just a handgun's frame?"

"A modified one actually, yes."

"That's neat, who gave you that idea?"

"My uncle."

"Cool.. Now your a lefty and I'm right handed, is that going to change anything?"

"Not really. She's a right hand bolt, if anything it should be easier. I don't think wrong handedness matters as much as cross eye dominance, at least not for a bolt action. Wrong handing a self loader you would have to worry about where it ejects and if it has a reciprocating charge handle, but that's about it."

So, which target are we going for? The one way down there?" Jaune waves a hand at the far end of the range.

"Slow down. We're going to go for that paper target at 25 yards."

"This close one?"

"Yes, humor me. She's a serious gun, we're going to cover fundamentals before I let you shoot."

"Okay."

"Now, point her down range, shoulder her, and lean into her."

Jaune does so in an overly casual manner, with his feet together and not realizing that he's leaning away from the gun instead of forward into it.

"If you hold her like that she is going to take you for a ride. First of all that's you bicep not your shoulder.-" Ruby grabs the stock the rifle and moves it properly into the pocket of Jaune's shoulder. "-Secondly, put one foot way forward and bend your legs a little.-" Ruby nudges Jaune's foot with her toe and he takes a half step. "-Thirdly, really lean into her.-" Ruby pushes Jaune's shoulder forward with a hand until most of his weight is on his front foot. "-Okay, now try too look through the scope."

"I... can't really see anything. Does it like, adjust?-" Jaune takes his trigger hand off of the gun and starts to reach towards the scope.

"-DO NOT touch the dials on her scope without permission!-"

"-Sorry!-"

"When you look through a scope there's a 'shadow' around the picture of the crosshair, there's a spot a certain distance from the scope called the 'eye box' where everything comes into focus and the shadow goes away. More your head forward and backward a bit until you find it, forward I think."

"Okay... Oh, okay. Wow this zooms in a long way. What kind of scope is this?"

"That one is a five-too-twenty-five-by-fifty (5-25x50) That's actually the smaller of the two scopes I own, I need the minimum zoom on that one more often than I need the maximum zoom on the big one."

"This still seems like a lot, like how do you see anything when there's a grim right up in your face?"

"If you look below the scope and through the scope rings she also has a set of iron sights."

"It does? Oh, I see them now-" Jaune finds a hooded front post and an adjustable rear notch style sight on the gun. "-I have to really mash my face down into the gun to see that, and I can't even line it up."

"That's because she's tailored for me and you have a bigger head than mine, and probably a longer neck. We're going to adjust for that now, hand her back for a second." Ruby takes the rifle back. "So ideally with a rifle tailored to you, you want it so that in your normal shooting stance you can close your eyes and just rest you head on the stock of the gun and open your eyes again and your eye will already naturally be in the eye box.-" Ruby demonstrates this as she's talking. "-If that's not the case there's a couple of different ways you can adjust for that. The easiest way is if the rifle just has an adjustable 'length of pull' and an adjustable 'comb height'. Crescent Rose does have an adjustable length of pull, the stock just telescopes out, but she doesn't have an adjustable comb height. Couple of reasons for that, one: if her stock had an adjustable comb mechanism then when she's in her scythe form she would be too big around for me to hold with my hand, and two: I built her to exactly the measurements I needed for her to fit me specifically. So-" Ruby continues demonstrating as she talks. "If I find my natural 'cheek weld', close my eyes and rest my cheek on her and open them again, I've already got the iron sights lined up. If I find my natural 'chin weld', close my eyes and rest my chin on her and then open them again, I'm already in the scope's eye box."

"That make's sense, so how do we adjust it for me?"

"First we get your stance and your grip right and then figure out where you head naturally sits. Now-" Ruby hands Jaune the rifle again. "-point her down range again."

Jaunes does, and his stance is somewhat better. "Like this?"

"That's a little better, now we need to get your grip right. She kicks kinda hard, so you need to be ready for it. You want to be pulling her back into your shoulder. If she's not in the pocket of your shoulder then she's going to punch you in the shoulder, if she's in your shoulder then you're just going to roll with it. So what I want you to do is take your arm that's holding the front end of the rifle and lock your elbow straight, and then I want you to turn at your shoulders so that you are pulling her back into your shoulder and pressing your shoulder into her."

Jaune does.

"Alright now close your eyes and rest you cheekbone on the stock."

Jaune try's but he bumps his brow into the back of the scope. "Doh."

"Okay, we're going to give you more length of pull." Ruby grabs the stock of the rifle and telescopes it two inches longer. "Now try again."

Jaune does. "Okay, my height is like half way between the irons and the scope."

"Right, now try resting your chin on the stock."

Jaune does. "Now I'm too high for the scope."

"Okay we're going to try something that's probably dumb. Instead of having the stock in the pocket of your shoulder, we're going to try raising your grip by putting just the bottom corner of the stock right in front of your clavicle" Ruby grabs the stock and moves it to where she described.

"My collar bone? This seems not smart."

"This is going to change the angle that your head is at and maybe line the sights up better. Besides I think you're strong enough, just make sure you're pulling her into your shoulder tight."

"You 'think'? Do I need to get us adult supervision?"

"I built the gun, you are being supervised."

"I'm messing with you."

"Close your eyes and put your cheek on the stock again."

Jaune does. "Hey, I can see the irons now!"

"Alright, this is the stance and the grip that we're going to use then."

"So when you change it from it's rifle form too its scythe form does that move where your head is relative too the scope?"

"It does, I actually use two different stances and grips that both put me in the eye box. Now too line up the irons you-"

"-I know that one! You put the front post in the center of the rear notch with the tops level, and you put the target just at the top of the center post, and you focus your eye on the target not the sights. They covered that in the safety class."

"Okay, now we're going to do some dry fire practice. She is clear, point her at the target and put you finger on the trigger but don't fire yet."

Jaune does so. He put's his whole finger through the trigger guard so that the trigger is passed his second knuckle. "Just like this?"

"If you squeeze the trigger like that you're going to pull your shot too the side. You want to be pulling with just the tip of your finger if you can. Your hands are bigger than mine, so you're going to want to curl you finger into a hook so that just the tip of your finger is coming straight back into the trigger."

Jaune adjusts his grip. "There's a lot more minutia in this than I thought there would be."

"There is, but you're almost ready. Now, when you pull the trigger you don't just line the shot up and 'run at the trigger' all at once, because that will pull the shot too the side. You want to focus on keeping the shot lined up and then slowly add pressure too the trigger until it 'breaks'. You actually want the gun going off too surprise you, because if you flinch in anticipation of the shot then you will pull your aim one way or the other, but if the gun going off makes you flinch the round will already be down range long before you start moving. So squeeze the grip with your thumb and other fingers like you're giving it a firm handshake, and then slowly as you can press your index finger into the trigger."

"Right now?"

"Yep."

Crescent Rose almost immediately goes 'click'. "Oh wow, that's much lighter then I thought it would be. Can I try that again?"

"Yep, to reset the trigger we're going to cycle the bolt. Watch your face."

Jaune leans his head out of the way so as Ruby cycles the rifle's action he doesn't get hit in the nose with the bolt handle. "Do I need to do that video game thing where you hold your breath to take the shot?"

"You can if you want, it does help if you're trying to be as accurate as possible. If you're going to do that you want to fully exhale and hold the exhale as you're pulling the trigger."

Jaune practices taking aim, squeezing the trigger, and cycling the action a few times.

"Looks about right, do you want to try a live round now?"

"Sure!"

"Here." Ruby pulls the magazine out of her pocket and passes it to Jaune. "These don't 'rock and lock', they just slide straight up into the magazine well."

Jaune looks the magazine over. "How many does this hold?"

"That one's a double stack that holds ten, I've also got some single stacks that hold five, and she'll hold one in the chamber with a full magazine."

"Why do you have two different sizes of magazine?"

"In case I want to carry lots of different kinds of ammo at once. I went down to the surplus store and bought some magazine pouches and then I cut the little pockets out of my dress and sewed in the magazine pouches. The pouches were meant to fit one polymer double stack magazine but they also fit two really thin steel single stacks. If I want to carry lots of the same ammo like today I'll just use double stacks. But if I want to carry gravity dust slugs, high explosive incendiaries, cryogenics, and XREP taser rounds all at once I'll use single stacks. Then I keep extra rounds on my belt in case I need to do emergency single loads, and more in my backpack when I'm doing a whole day of fighting and I need to repack my magazines."

"How many rounds do you carry on you?"

"With one magazine in her and four to eight spares on me and including the backpack about 200 rounds total."

"That seems like a lot."

"It's a lot of weight or I would carry more, but 200 rounds of 338 is about 23 pounds. If we're just doing range practice and I'm taking slow carefully aimed shots at a rate of like once every ten seconds or so that would still be a rate of 360 rounds an hour. When I first started designing her I wanted an even bigger round, but the main reason I don't use fifty-cal, (.50) or fourteen-point-five-by-one-fourteen, (14.5x114mm) or twenty-by-one-oh-two (20x102mm) is because the ammo would be twice as heavy and carrying it all day would suck. Even with just this when we do our twice a week live combat training I need to keep getting ammo out of my locker."

"I feel that. Both my chest plate and my shield are level 4 rated ballistic steel."

"Why did you get steel and not ceramics?"

"Because I wanted armor that didn't have an expiration date, and was rated for more than one shot."

"Well yeah, but ceramics will catch the bullet, steel will shatter it and you'll get sprayed in the face with all the fragments. Plus most body armor has an engineered safety margin that's more than what the rating suggests."

"Did not know that, I guess I'll have to get a neck protector like a 'bevor' or something. Anyway-" Jaune looks down at the magazine again and fumbles briefly putting it in the rifle, then points the rifle down range and cycles the bolt chambering a round. With his hand very much away from the trigger and grip safety, he finds his stance, his grip, the target, and his sight picture. "-Like this right?"

"Yep, looks good! Now hold her tight and give it a try."

"Okay, here we go." Jaune takes several deep breathes, a half step forward, leans farther into the rifle and grips it tightly. He moves his finger to the trigger, several seconds go by, he takes his finger off the trigger and takes another deep breath, then back to the trigger. A few more seconds go by.

"Stop."

Jaune freezes and lifts his trigger hand off the gun.

"You're shaking. You're way too tense."

"Sorry, it's just a lot all at once." Jaune says with the rifle still pointed down range.

"You're fine. You've just got first shot nerves. We're going to make this simpler, for this first shot forget what I said earlier about not 'running at trigger all at once'. Just line up the shot and when you're comfortable rip the band-aid off and just send it."

"Okay, right. Think un-tense thoughts, got it."

"Just think about your sight picture and the target."

"Got it." Jaune takes another deep breath, moves his finger back to the trigger, a few seconds go by and Jaune fires the rifle. The recoil of the gun makes the muzzle climb significantly and Jaunes stance visibly rolls backwards a few inches, Jaunes eyes are wide and he's quiet for a second.

"You did good!"

"Wow, this thing really... It moves all the air around you."

"Yeah, she's a really concussive gun."

"Did I hit the target?"

"Uhh.. It's on the paper, you missed the picture of the beowolf though. You flinched pretty hard and pulled it too the right."

"Oh, can I go again?"

"Yep, just chamber another round."

"I hit too the right, so I need to aim more too the left?"

"No, trust me the irons are on at 25. Just keep aiming for the bullseye and practice."

Jaune reaches up too grab the bolt handle with his trigger hand, and then stops and asks. "When you cycle the bolt you reach over the top of the gun to cycle with your opposite hand, why do you do that?"

"That's a precision-long-range habit. You get a more consistent pull of the trigger if you don't take your hand off the grip, so I run the action with my other hand. You also get a more consistent sight picture if you don't move your head when you run the bolt, and I've got just barely enough room where the bolt handle just barely touches my cheek when it's open, but when I'm trying to run her as fast as I can I move my head out of the way so I can wrench the bolt open as hard as I can."

With the gun still shouldered Jaune puts his trigger hand back on the grip and then tries to reach for the bolt with his other hand, first over the top and then from below. He manages to cycle the action but has to move his head out of the way to clear the bolt. "That's really hard, it's very front heavy, how do you manage that?"

"It is, I only do that when I'm using the scythe as a monopod."

"Right, I gotcha." Jaune spends a minute taking some more practice shots. He gets progressively less tense and his shots start to become more centered on the target.

"While you're practicing, can I play with your sword?"

"Sure!" Jaune unhooks his sword's sheath from his belt and passes it too Ruby before continuing to practice. "You know how to handle one of those right? It's a little more complicated than just 'swish-swish-stab'."

"Sort of." Ruby gives herself some space and then draws Jaune's sword holding it in two hands and starts to do some slow shadow sword fighting routines. "At Signal we had to take both boxing or karate and also saber fencing or longsword as our 'introduction to melee combat fundamentals' classes, and then before I could take a polearm elective I had to take quarterstaff as a requirement. I took karate, longsword, quarterstaff, and halberd, but honestly I was like half way awake during the two introductory classes. I was up all night playing video games or revising my plans for Crescent Rose and just coasting through class on sugar and caffeine. Whenever I messed up in sparring sessions I'd just use my semblance to get me out of trouble."

"What games do you play?"

"A lot of Modern Warfare and Sniper Elite, some fighting games."

"Ah, I'm more of a tactics games and open world rpgs kind of guy."

"How did you learn to fight?"

"Mostly home schooled.. Well, self taught actually. My dad has a small library of old fighting manuals and treatise's. I'd read them and practice the poses in front of a mirror and shadow fight. I read a lot of arming sword, both Vale and Atlesian longsword, a bit of greatsword, and I've had one formal class on foil fencing before getting into Beacon. That and Pyrrha's been tutoring me, she's been real insistent that she should teach me Mistral legion shortsword and tower shield technique, and Olympic wrestling, and that I should at least read the gouging treatise to get the more use out of my shield and armor."

/Author's note: I'm using English and German longsword respectively as the Vale and Atlas schools of longsword for the purposes of this fiction. I'm using both Roman and Greek shortsword and shield technique as Mistral's school of sword and shield. And yes, in real life there is a formal fighting manual written about the subject of gouging./

"You should probably listen to her. She's the only one in class that's managed to catch my weapon while I was using my semblance, and her ground game is just murder."

"Yeah." Jaune sends the last round in the magazine down range, leaving the bolt open after ejecting the round he turns to watch Ruby practice. "Do you know how to find the 'center of percussion' on a sword?"

"Like this?" Ruby Ruby holds it in one hand loosely by the pommel with the point straight down, then smacks the flat side of the blade with her wrist. The blade vibrates like a tuning fork, she then points at a spot in the last third of the blade where the resonance of the vibration is making it remain motionless. "Right there?"

"Yeah, that's where they will usually cut the best, but I guess you already knew that."

Ruby notices Jaune has stopped shooting, and reaches for one of her pockets. "Oh, did you need more ammo?"

"Naa I think I'm done for a bit. My collarbone's already a bit sore."

"Yeah, I kind of figured holding her like that would be kind of dumb. That's really more of pistol-caliber-carbine technique then a magnum-caliber-rifle technique."

"You.. Taught me a technique that you knew was wrong?"

"It worked didn't it? You didn't even hit yourself in the eye with the scope, you did pretty good for a first time."

"Uhh.. Thanks? How about my aim?"

"Its.. Certainly a first shot."

"That bad huh? How accurate should the gun be?"

"You see those targets all the way down at the end of the range? The one's by the 800 yard sign? I can put a whole magazine inside of a sixteen inch diameter circle-"

"-Wow-"

"-and she should be able to do better than that. There's a certain unavoidable amount of mechanical play in things like the folding mechanism and the sight base, but she's should still be able to make an eight inch group.. Or, honestly more like six inch, but I'd be more than happy if I ever got to where she could make eight inch groups."

"That's still really impressive either way, I don't think I could ever do that."

"Just takes practice, and if you're really far away a bit of basic math."

Still watching Ruby shadow fight, Jaune comments. "You know that's really meant to be a one handed arming sword not a two handed longsword, your second hands on part of the pommel not the grip."

"I'm much shorter than you, this is like.. almost a greatsword to me."

"Naa, you're not that short. Put that sheath on your belt and you'd totally had the reach to cross draw it from the hip, it's not proportionally a greatsword unless it's too long to draw and you have to carry it into battle on your shoulder. Heck, its just about short enough if I wore it down on my thigh instead of up on my waist I could almost same side draw it instead of cross drawing it, that would make my shield a pain to get too though."

"You're not going to take the opportunity to make some lame joke about how big your sword looks in my hands?"

"Actually, I think it looks like a good fit."

"Ha."

"You said you know what, quarterstaff and halberd? What's the name of the halberd treatise you work out of with your scythe?"

"Actually most of halberd doesn't quite work with her, at least not without modification. A lot of halberd is an end-of-your-reach thing and it's very thrust-centric, and she has no point.-"

"-I mean, the end is also a gun.-"

"-Yeah, but the curve on her blade is so tight and only the inside edge is sharp so I really need my opponents inside of my reach not at the end of it. So what I use most of the time is all of the 'in-fighting' stuff from quarterstaff."

"Gotcha."

"There's one thing from the halberd treatise's that seems to work pretty well, it's the technique for fighting shield users. So the way it's written you're suppose to do a big overhead swing from the high-guard too the mid-guard position while advancing one step and aim to put the head of the halberd passed the shield, and then you follow that up by using the head of the halberd to pull their shield and open them up, and then you follow that up with just a straight thrust.-"

"-I'm aware of that one.-"

"-With Crescent Rose it's even simpler, I just load gravity dust and swing the head of the scythe passed the shield and then pull the trigger all in one motion.-"

"-I, am, aware. Please stop shooting me in the chest with the gravity dust slugs.-"

"-Sorry.-"

"-I go from completely fresh and ready to go for the day too a third of my aura spent and the wind knocked out of me in one move and it sucks!"

"It's definitely safer for me to hit your armor with gravity dust or taser rounds then anything else I've got. The gravity dust just makes you fall sideways really fast."

"It sure doesn't feel safe."

"I was actually thinking about adding another hinge and lock to the folding mechanism so I could turn her into a 'war scythe' which is basically just a glaive and then I could use almost the entire school of halberd techniques with her. I have the templates already drawn up I just need a holiday weekend to cut them all out, or to order them from a machine shop but I'd rather do it myself."

"That would be neat."

"I also kind of want to learn Wushu (Chinese spear Kung Fu) for all the big flashy spear spins. I try to like, approximate bits and pieces of it that I've seen in cartoons and video games and stuff, but I haven't actually found a manual for it yet."

"Pyrrha knows Wushu, I could ask her if she knows where to find a book if you want."

/ Author's note: I'm using both Wushu and Greek spear technique as 'Mistalian-spear-technique' for the purposes of this fiction./

"Yes, please."

"There's a kind of cool spin in saber fencing, uhh.. what was the name of it? You do hanging guard sweep of the low line parry and then you drop the elbow to spin the sword at your wrist for a riposte cut. Uhh.. the 'Moulinet'!" (Just Youtube search it, the visual is more useful than me explaining it.)

"Like.. this?" Ruby one hands the sword and tries to preform a Moulinet as described. She moves the sword in a slow, exaggerated, wide arc, but after she drops her elbow the way the swords center of mass flips around her wrist is much faster than she anticipated and she almost drops it.

"Yes! Those are cool! They're fun but you don't really do them with a shield because you'd just parry with the leading edge of the shield instead of doing a hanging guard. You're really supposed really kind of swing the shield with the sword to protect your sword hand, but I've got to unlearn a bad habit I picked up from foil fencing where I throw my off hand behind my back on a lunge." (Just Google image search 'foil fencing lunge'.)

"Are there any other cool spins in fencing?"

"There's a lot of variants on the Moulinet in saber, but that's about it unless you count, like, some of the follow-throughs on the Fleche. I asked Yatsuhashi if there's any cool ones in greatsword. He does Odachi (Japanese greatsword), but he has also read and toyed around with Montante (Spanish greatsword) and Zweihander (German greatsword). He said Montante's got a lot of spins but that's like a whole school of greatsword written on the premise of a knight fighting skirmishes against groups of less equipped opponents and he thinks it kind of relies a lot on creating 'fear compliance'. He said Zweihander pulls a lot of stuff from Atlesian longsword, and it's more thrust-centric and written for fighting peer-opponents in duels or formations and it just wrecks."

/Author's note: I'm using Odachi, Montante, and Zweihander as the respective Mistral, Vale, and Atlas schools of greatsword fighting for the purposes of this fiction./

"What's 'fear compliance' mean in this context?"

"It's like Montante focus's on keeping the sword moving and doing a lot of big sweeps to intimidate your opponents and make them want too step back outside of your reach instead of committing to fighting you close in so that it gives you more space to work with. It's like the whole manual was written for the circumstance of one knight bodyguarding a VIP whose gotten ambushed in a crowd by a group of rogues and brigands. Zweihander on the other hand assumes your opponent also has good armor and a big sword and wont be intimidated by a fancy spin so it just focus's on fast thrusts and searching for gaps in your opponents armor instead of big slow sweeps."

"Montante kind of sounds like how my uncle fights. Do you think anything in Montante could work with a scythe?"

"I'd imagine if you tried it would make you very tired very fast. I don't know, maybe you could make it work with dust?"

"Maybe. Hey, do you want to go weapon shopping sometime, maybe try you out a few different ranged weapons? I could show you some cool gun things I know."

"That would be great."

Enter stage right Pyrrha Nikos.

Pyrrha "Are you trying to steal my team lead?"

Jaune "Oh hey, Pyrrha! Ruby was just teaching me how to shoot a rifle."

Ruby "He did pretty good for his first time."

Pyrrha crosses her arms and turns to Jaune. "I should have been your first time."

Ruby "Hey Pyrrha, I meant to ask you but I never got a chance: is that rifle of yours an old enbloc loader thirty-aught-six?" (.30-06)

Pyrrha "Well it is an en-block loader, but it's been re-barreled in four-fifty-eight." (.458)

Ruby does a double take. "I'm sorry, what?"

Pyrrha reaches into her pocket and pulls out an enbloc loader clip and passes it to Ruby. Instead of the eight, slim, pointy, thirty-caliber, typical hunting rounds she's expecting there are eight, stout, flat-nosed, forty-six-caliber, dangerous-game rounds.

End scene.

Scene three: Sportsmanship and philosophy of use.

Scene setting: Three days later on the same training range. In addition to the paper targets that Ruby has been using the range has several sets of steel targets consisting of the A-frames of old swing sets from the chains of which are suspended old armor chest-plates with a simple bullseye spray painted on them. Ruby finds Pyrrha practicing from a kneeling position shooting a set of steel targets quickly from left to right and back with her weapon. 1-2-3-4-4-3-2-1-ping!

Ruby "Hey, Pyrrha!"

Pyrrha answers while continuing to practice. "Hello again."

"You're weapon's really cool, can we practice together?"

"Were you making a pass at Jaune the other day?"

"What? No, he just asked me for help picking out a ranged weapon."

"It sounded like you asked him out."

"I was just teaching him how too shoot and discussing different fighting styles."

"How was it that you explained to him how grip safeties work? 'If you don't hold her right there will be no bang, but as long as you're holding her ri-'"

"-How long were you there!? How do you even move that quietly in that leg armor!?"

"Mistralian secrets."

"I just like to make strong jokes while talking about guns. I probably get it from my uncle, he's the one who taught me. I'm not really looking for a relationship right now, I'm just trying to get through Beacon. Why are you even so fixated on Jaune like that anyway? Like don't get me wrong, he's a fairly chill guy. At least when he's not trying to get Weiss to step on him, but he's also the densest person I have ever met. Nora said she thinks you could probably lounge around your dorm room in just a towel and he wouldn't even notice."

"Are you seriously asking the woman dressed as a Hoplite, who's also an undefeated tournament champion fighter, why she's battle buddies with the only other shield user in our entire class?"

Ruby tilts her head at Pyrrha, not getting it. "..Yes? What is he like, secretly some kind of faunus that's passably human while wearing loose fitting jeans and not too excited?"

Pyrrha stops practicing, stands up, and turns to Ruby. "I want. To build. A phalanx! Weapons are a part of our souls and physical extensions of our selves, Ruby."

"That simple? Just a shield?"

"Yes! Doesn't exactly hurt that he has like a 98th percentile aura either."

"I can get behind that I guess. Uhh.. Can we practice together? Or, can I ask you some stuff about your weapon?"

"Yeah, sure. Why the uniform? Did Weiss give you a job at the SDC?"

"Ugh no.. Well, kind of. I lost a bet and now I have to work for her for the rest of the month. Even made me wear steel toes, and I hate it."

"Don't you wear boots normally?"

"Yeah, comfy motorcycle boots with buckles, not lace up steel toes. But Weiss said it's 'company policy' for all SDC advertisers to wear safety toes while operating a spinning sign."

"A spinning sign? They're made of cardboard. What are you going to do, get a paper cut through your leather boots?"

"That's what I said! She wouldn't even let me wear a skirt. I'd have thought a skirt would have been great for advertising, but apparently the SDC uniform doesn't have a skirt option. I'm so done with having this snowflake branded on my butt. Anyway, what kind of drills are you doing?"

"I was just doing speed drills on the plates at 300 yards."

"I'm going to have use the paper ones. Glynda yelled at me because I kept putting holes in the steel targets, it was really scary."

"How'd you get armor piercing rounds as a student anyway? Don't you need a full huntress license for that, or is there like a tax stamp?"

"Vale defines 'armor piercing' as projectiles with hardened steel cores. I'm not shooting steel, I'm shooting tungsten. A metal is not a steel if it contains no iron."

"What? That's a lie. That's not how that works, that can't be how that works."

"You're right, I'm just messing with you. I did ask my dad about that though, he couldn't find the part of the law that said that I couldn't with a quick search so he asked the sheriff. He didn't know off the top of his head either, so he asked the judge. He wrote me personally a very politely worded letter with big scary D-O-J seal on it that said 'Please do not.'. These are just solid spun brass. Well, actually the one's I loaded are. I don't know what the ones Weiss gave me are, or heck even what their 'ballistic coefficient' is."

"So how were you putting holes in the targets? Just a really big, fast round?"

"A small fast round, yeah. Hey, what kind of optic is that? I don't think I've seen one like that before."

"It's an Olympic target style diopter."

"What kind of magnification is that?"

"It's not, it's just irons. It's a front globe and rear aperture, it just looks like a really small scope because the aperture has a sun shade tube."

"You don't run magnification?"

"No, it would make it bulkier then I want. Besides at practical shooting distances, 50 too 200 yards or so, magnification is more for positively identifying targets then marksmanship anyway. I can carry a small pair of binoculars if I need. What do you run on that monstrosity?"

"A 5-25x50."

"That short little thing is a 25 power magnifier?"

"You would be surprised, it was not cheap. Do you run a single stage or two stage trigger?"

"Just a basic single. Well, a match grade single. I'm not really a fan of two stages on self loaders. Don't get me wrong, on a single shot they're great. I actually learned to shoot on a single shot falling block rifle with a diopter and a two stage, but in a self loader I found myself thinking a lot more about where in the trigger pull I was then what my sight picture was and I didn't like it. What about you, what do you run?"

"It's an accutrigger, it's like a-"

"-It work's like a two stage but it's an articulated trigger instead of completely internal, yeah, I like those. Why the grip safety?"

"Got tired of lining up shots and realizing I had left the safety on, but I still wanted her to be drop safe."

"Mine still has the original, old school style toggle switch safety the enbloc loader came with that's inside the trigger guard. If I realize I left the safety on I don't have to move either hand off the gun, I just press forward with my trigger finger. Plus it's right there, it's hard to forget that I left it on."

"I thought about one of those, I didn't like the idea of having to put my finger inside the trigger guard to operate the safety."

"I don't really either, but I only need to put my finger in the guard to take it off safety. To put it on safe you press it from the outside of the guard and... Oh look, a deer!" Pyrrha points a hand down range.

Enter stage right one deer. The deer is not very skittish and has just wandered out onto the end of the range to graze some grass.

"Deery NO!" Ruby jumps and waves and shouts. "Run away little deer! This is not a good place for you!"

The deer is unfazed. The professor who is serving as the range safety officer calls for a cease fire.

Pyrrha laughs. "You know the job title of the career you are going to school for is called 'Huntress', right?"

"I don't want to hunt deer, I want to hunt big old grim! I want to be a hero, like in the story books."

"You're going to need to know some hunting and bushcraft if you're going to be out in the field fighting monsters for a long time. Besides, sometimes being a hero is as simple as providing food. How's that any different than a cheeseburger anyway?"

"I know that, I just.. I don't know, I don't want to do that."

Pyrrha watches the deer graze for a bit and comments. "Look at how fat the deer in the Foreverfall Forest are, and they're not even skittish! Jaune said a really big buck kicked him and stole part of a sandwich from him once. I want to just, catch one."

"I know right! They're so cute and I want to pet them! Sometimes when I'm walking through the Foreverfall I'll come around a tree and there will be one like two or three yards from me and we will both just freeze and stare at each other. I try to pet them, but they always walk away."

"I don't want to pet them, I want to run one down and eat it."

"Glynda said students aren't allow to shoot the deer. They're a protected species, I think they were called a 'Nilgai' or something? They aren't afraid of people because no one here hunts them. Besides, Beacon doesn't own the Foreverfall, they just lease part of the land from Vale for training purposes."

"I know that, have you ever heard of 'persistence hunting'? If you chase a deer until it collapses of heat exhaustion then you didn't shoot it. It died of 'natural causes' and you just happened to be there, and you wouldn't want a perfectly good deer to go to waste now would you?"

"Somehow I don't think a game warden would agree with you. What would do you do after they get tired and lay down anyway, just put them in a choke hold?"

"Well you could, but you would also bring a knife to clean the deer in the field. Plus as high on adrenaline as they'd be more often then you'd think their heart just gives out and they're done before they hit the ground."

"That sounds like way too much work. I mean, I suppose if I really had to I could catch a deer by just using my semblance to grab it quickly, or my sister could run one down on her bike maybe."

"Where's the sport in that?"

"Blake or Ren could probably sneak up on one, or jump down out of a tree on one."

"That would be cool, I might have to try that sometime."

"How even would you ever chase a deer until it collapses? You'd have to be at a full run for like hours wouldn't you?"

"I've done it before. Well, not one of these here, smaller deer back in Mistral. It does take a while. If it decides to cross a stream you can refill your water bottle but it'll also cool off and you have to chase it even longer. When I did it I had an ice dust infused shirt and gym shorts so I wouldn't overheat and start sweating, a couple pounds of ice dust saves a couple gallons of drinking water so I got away with just pocketing a water bottle. Plus being cold is good motivation to keep running to stay warm. They did cross a river a few times though, I had to focus my aura to jump clear across it so I wouldn't get wet and freeze. When they finally gave out I just used a rope to hang it in a tree and my knife to clean it and then I packed it in an ice dust backpack to hike it home."

Ruby takes a second to process that. "What even is your cardio routine?"

"Other than our usual training you mean? Nothing special, I just wake up an extra hour or so early everyday, grab my ice dust shirt, and run laps around our athletics track."

Thoroughly intrigued at this point Ruby starts to barrage Pyrrha with questions. "An hour everyday? Even days that we do combat training? How many laps do you do?"

Pyrrha nods at each question like it's the most normal thing in the world. "Most days.. Yep.. Usually like fifty-something or so."

A runner herself, Ruby is a bit skeptical of Pyrrha's casual W.R.-pace claim. "You run half a marathon in an hour every morning before we do our normal combat training and PT? Whenever we've had a sparring match it was after you did half a marathon in an hour? You hunt deer by chasing them until their heart gives out?"

Pyrrha just keeps nodding until Ruby gives her a chance to respond."Yes? Days that we're only doing lectures and written tests I'll wear my full kit for the run and try to get another run in at the end of the day, but days that we do combat training, sparring, and PT I'll train hard enough during the day that I'm usually too spent for a second run. Saturday's I usually take off and just spend time with the team."

"Whenever you do finally decide to just.. claim Jaune be careful that you don't accidentally kill him."

Pyrrha just grins for a bit before responding. "I would only kill him a little."

Ruby blinks. "What?"

"I can fix his cardio."

Ruby shakes her head. "Uh, speaking of Jaune, before I forget: I told him that I wanted to learn Wushu but I couldn't find a manual or a treatise and he said that I should ask you."

"It's one of the spear techniques that I know, I can show you some stuff in the computer lab after practice."

"Awesome! It's gonna be so cool to learn the secrets of the best fighter at Beacon. I bet you could even beat the professors."

"The professors? No I couldn't. I might be the fittest person on campus and of prime competitive age but I'm not the best fighter. I'm still very much a student and here to learn and train."

"Naaa, you'd totally mop the floor with them."

"I could probably take a bout or two off of a few of them in a match, but I would run out of tricks long before they did. I mean I don't think I've even seen Ozpin fight, and I've been trying to catch that or find old footage of him in a fight for a while now. The best read I can get on him is that one of the many things in his bag of tricks is foil fencing."

"I think he doesn't fight because hes just a pencil pusher."

"No, hes one of the ones who was skilled enough to become old and gray in a profession where most die young. Hes probably forgotten more about fighting than most of us know."

"Yeah, hes forgotten. Don't get me wrong, they're all legends, but they're also all old and heavy set and slow. Oobleck's still pretty spry, but I don't think he can function without coffee every five minutes. Glynda's still a great fighter, but the rest of them seem out of touch. Heck, I'm pretty sure I could beat Port in a match."

"No, you couldn't. He's much stronger than he looks and he's a very, very quick shot with that blunderbuss. If I could catch you with a grapple while you were using your semblance then he could definitely catch you with his gun."

"I know he's not fast enough to run me down and I really doubt he could hit me at 800 yards with a blunderbuss."

"If you get in a rifle duel with Port he will find you long before you can find him, especially with that red hood."

"I could cover more ground in a search then he could, and I've got a really good scope."

"Running around like that is just going to make him find you faster, and make you tired... I have to ask: What made you decide on a scythe anyway?"

"I read a lot of comics and watch a lot of cartoons and play a lot of video games and I just thought they were cool. I know scythes are not really a battlefield weapon and there's not a good fighting manual for them, but I've kind of pieced together some things from quarterstaff and halberd and she's worked for me so far. Kind of silly of me, I know."

"Nothing's wrong with wanting to learn something for the theater and spectacle of it. Is that why you went with a big 50 cal, to be a crowd pleaser at the tournaments?"

"She's actually a 338 not a 50. She is built out of an M95 action and M2 barrel blanks though."

"You... Down-calibered and un-bullpuped an M95?"

"Well when you say it like that it takes the fun out of it. No, I up-gunned and plus-pressured 338, and I built an absolute railgun."

"So why 338?"

"Lots of reasons."

"Alright, list them."

Ruby takes a second pondering where to start. "From the top of the hill behind my dad's house you can actually see the end of training range at Signal. Perfectly framed view, right down the river, about 2,250 yards away. When I first started designing her the record for the longest sniper shot was being traded back and forth between a bolt action 338 with a 5-25x50 and a self loading 50 cal with the same sight. I haven't checked in a while, now the record might be held by 14.5x114 or something else, but at the time it was between 338 and 50 cal. There was one other guy that set the record a few times with literally just a standard heavy machine gun with a commercial 4 inch telescope bolted to it, which is really cool by the way, but that didn't have that same sort of... 'appeal' in the minds eye of younger me as a more... I guess 'idealized', picturesque, bolt action sniper rifle, you know?"

"I could see that."

"50 cal's an impressive round, and I do like really big guns, but it's bulky, and heavy, and it's so prolific that it's become literally the standard by which some armors are measured. Body armors tend to be rated up too about 30 caliber, vehicle armors tend to start at about 50 caliber and go up. So there's this kind of spot in the middle where if you aren't worried about armored cars then nothings technically rated to stop 338. Bandits generally don't have armored cars so much as they'd just have a big machine gun stuck on the back of a pickup truck. If they do have something like an armored car it's usually just an 80 year old Atlesian tank. In that case 50 cal's not nearly enough and if you need something bigger than a 50 cal it would make more sense for your team to have two separate weapons, one being a designated marksman's rifle the other being a rocket launcher."

"So you plan on fighting a lot of bandits after you graduate?"

"I don't want too, humans fighting other humans just brings more grim. I would say that 'I would rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it' but it's all trade offs really. 338 is big enough that there isn't technically body armor rated for it, it can take any normal land animal, and it can take most common grim. It can do most things."

"Earlier you said you wanted to be a hero 'like in the story books', did your heroes hide in a bush a mile away from their quarry with a magnum caliber rifle?"

"Some of them, who doesn't like a good spy thriller or action flick?"

"You said any land animal, can 338 stop an elephant?"

"Don't tell me you would actually hunt an elephant."

"Probably not, they tend to kill anyone who tries to take them with a spear by just landing on them after they die."

"It should be able too, standard pressure 338 has about the same muzzle energy as most elephant guns"

"Well yeah, but elephant guns tend to fire a much larger projectile. I've seen pictures and videos of elephants still up and walking around with a gunshot wound in their forehead. They had to have been looking directly at whatever poacher tried to take them, and those poachers probably got gored to death."

"I.. think the smallest round ever used to take an elephant was a very hotly hand loaded 44 caliber pistol round fired from a full length rifle. Don't quote me on that though, it's been forever sense I heard it, I have no idea what the source was."

"That almost sounds like it could have been a rider putting one in that back of its skull to stop it from running amok, you could do that with a hammer and a chisel. There's a bit of a difference between putting one down, or even taking one that's calm and unaware, and stopping an angry one that's charging at you. Besides you said you wanted to hunt 'big old grim' and grim are much tougher than animals. That projectile looks kind of small for dragon or tarrasque hunting."

"My other barrel's a 500 whisper."

"Oh.. Yeah, that might do it."

"Plus if I really needed too she is an M95, I still have the original bolt, barrel, and magazine well back at home if I ever wanted to run 50 cal."

"Why the M95 action?"

"I wanted a really strong magnum rifle action to start with as a base for hand loading really hot 338, and the M95 is what they had in stock at the sporting goods store when my uncle took me... Well, they had the M95 in 50 cal and the Model 110 in 338, but I wanted to load really, really hot."

"You hand load?"

"You don't?"

"It seems like a nice skill to have and I bet you could do some cool things with it, but as much ammo as we go through it would just take so much time that I think would be better spent training."

"But don't you want to know what your weapon could really do?"

"I'd rather not blow it up. I've heard if you load these old enbloc loaders too hot it'll bend the operating rod. That's not a problem I want to have out in the field. This is a 458 re-barrel, but I'm just running factory brass."

"You just buy from the SDC?"

"Actually no. I buy Cardin's family's brand. Atlesian tech is nice, but Vale really does know it's guns. Plus it amuses me to beat Cardin with his own ammo, just maybe don't tell Jaune."

"So why 458?"

"My turn now huh? When I was planning my weapon I wanted a round that could take anything. Three-seventy-five (.375) and four-sixteen (.416) had a lot of history, but 458 had become sort of the new standard by which dangerous game guns were being measured and there was a company that was making self loaders in 458 by re-barreling old surplus rifles. I remember reading the Wiki page for 458 back then, it's probably been changed or edited by now but there was a section that used to read '458 is not recommended for big cats due to significant risk of over penetration.' Now I understand why it said that and why it was worded in that way, but at the time the most literal interpretation of that amused me, because it implied that it was so excessive that it could shoot clean through a lion from end to end and still have enough energy left over to potentially cause significant collateral damage to the empty savanna grassland behind it."

"Yeah, having a soft target penetration measured in yards instead of inches is kind of neat."

"But other than that, basically the same reasons as you. There's not technically body armor rated to stop it, it can take any normal land animal and most common grim."

"Well there's not technically body armor rated to stop it, but 458 is a big slow round not a small fast one. It looks like you were just denting the heck out of the steel targets, not actually getting yelled at for putting holes in them."

"That's fair I guess, but that's probably for the best. Wouldn't want anyone to get hurt at the tournament just because they were pushing their aura as hard as they could. I suppose after I'm done with my tournament days and get out into the real world I could find better ammunition for it."

"Do you run a lot of different kinds of ammo? There's like 5 or 6 that I use right now, and I have to keep a small notebook in my pocket with all my different ranges and zeroing for them."

"I mostly just use solid spun brass and leave it zeroed for that. I also single load a gravity dust slug if I want to javelin it, but the zero's close enough at 25 yards that I don't change it for that."

"You only use irons and they're only zeroed for 25?"

"Its a 25-200 zero. It's on at 200 and close enough at 25. Its about 6 inches high at 100 or so, and about 15 inches low at 300. Running the plate rack at 300 like I was earlier, I was holding the sights about the height of the plate over the plate, and hitting a bit high of center on the plate."

"That sounds like a real step arc."

"It is a big round, it only makes about 2,500 feet per second at the muzzle."

"Crescent Rose makes almost 6,700, she shoots super flat."

"What? How'd you manage that?"

"She's saboted down to take 90 grain flechettes and loaded almost 40% over spec."

"That.. Doesn't sound safe at all."

"It's fine, I blew up a few to know when they would explode."

"I don't know if I would trust that. You get material variances in steel and you have metal fatigue to deal with. Plus ammo tends to get hotter as it ages, the oils keeping it stable starts to evaporate out of the propellant."

Ruby just brushes that off. "It's fine."

"What kind of groups do you even get out of that?"

"I'm an okay shot. I make about a 16 inch group at 800 yards, but she should be much better than that. I thought about getting one of those really expensive scopes that is its own ballistics computer and self zeros too see if that helps, but they're a lot of money and I haven't gotten around to it yet."

"That's still a pretty good group, but how's your fundamentals if you don't mind me asking? Your trigger pull and cheek weld and breathing and all that."

"Should be fine, think I just need practice."

"We already practice a lot. How's your vision?"

"Fine, and also even if it was bad that's what the scope's for."

"You're not getting any weirdness with like parallax or something are you?"

"I shouldn't be."

"What about your heart? You eat a lot of sweets, don't you?"

"I do my cardio, thank you. My resting heart rate is like 55."

"Mine's about 38."

"Well you're like, not human."

Annoyed Pyrrha responds "Ow."

"In a good way!"

"Do you time your shots with your heart beat?"

"..I'm sorry, what?"

"Do you time your shots with your pulse so that it doesn't throw off you aim?"

"Is that a thing?!"

"At the highest levels, yes."

"How would you even?! What, do you have like a heart monitor on your wrist wirelessly linked to a HUD in your sight?"

"I guess you could do that, but I just listen and feel."

"How do you do that while you're shooting?"

"I just do? Have you ever considered smoking?"

"What?"

"Well, target shooting is the only sport where sedatives are considered a performance enhancing substance because you are trying to have the lowest heart rate possible, so have you ever considered smoking?"

"No! That's bad for you."

"Good, don't. But have you ever considered-" Pyrrha reaches into her pocket and pulls out a small bottle. "-Night time cough syrup?"

"That's cheating! You're a cheater!"

"I prefer the term 'champion', or 'record setter'."

"You're a fraud!"

"Fair fights are for suckers. Everyone who's actually competitive plays underhanded and bends the rules as far as they can and breaks the ones they think they can get away with. Besides, after Beacon the real world isn't going to be as kind too us as the tournament setting." She puts the bottle back in her pocket.

"What kind of groups do you even make doing that?"

"Well if I was using a proper target rifle I would do really good. With this big old hunting gun and cheap factory brass though, if I try really hard at 200 yards I can make about an inch-and-a-half or two-inch group."

"You're sub-minute-of-arc with that?!"

"Yes."

"With iron sights?"

"Yes, these."

"Standing shots, or supported?"

"Kneeling, usually."

"Do you just do groups of threes?"

"No, groups of threes aren't statistically significant and they're really just an exercise in 'cherry-picking'. Seven's about when its near-as-makes-no-difference statistically certain, but the gun holds eight so I shoots groups of eights."

"Are you measuring from center to center of the farthest shots or from outside edge to outside edge?"

"Outside edge to outsi-"

Ruby grabs Crescent Rose, unfolds it into it's scythe monopod form, all but shoves it into Pyrrha's hands, and blurts out. "-Please shoot a group at 800 with my gun!"

"Uhh.. Okay?" Pyrrha takes the rifle hesitantly. "You're sure it's not going to explode on me, right?"

"Absolutely! Oh, actually-" Ruby reaches into her pocket and pulls out an extra magazine. "Can you shoot two groups for me, one with my ammo and one with Weiss's?"

"Well, we're going to have to wait for the deer to move."

"Oh-" Ruby looks down range. The range safety officer has a loaf of bread and is trying to lead the deer away from the range. The deer is uninterested. "-right."

"You're also going to have to show me how to shoot this thing, it's way different than what I normally do."

"It's actually really simple, it's just a monopod."

"This thing must weigh like.. three of my rifle."

"She's not that heavy, besides that's what the monopod is for."

"Well maybe, but I'm also used to a gun with gravity dust infused in the stock to make it close to neutral buoyant in gravity."

"What?"

Pyrrha passes Ruby her own weapon. "Feel."

Ruby tosses the rifle a few inches in the air a few times. It floats back down like a feather but takes significant effort to toss. "But why? It weighs less, but doesn't the gravity dust itself add even more mass and inertia?"

"Yes, that means there's both less strain from holding it up in the air and more mass to mitigate the effects of hand tremors. Both just make it more accurate."

"But it's also a sword, how do you swing it around with all the extra inertia?"

"Mistralian short sword doctrine involves training with a weighted sword to build muscle anyway, and it having high mass but low weight means I don't get fatigued from just carrying it around all day. Plus it being near weightless means if I javelin throw it it goes really far. It's a trade off, but I think it's a net positive. Especially sense I carry a shield to make up for the sword being a bit short and slow."

Ruby is starting to get a bit overwhelmed from learning so much at once. "Teach me your Mistralian secrets oh wise master."

"I've already told you a lot, I still need to keep a few things in my bag of tricks to win the tournament. Tell you what, tomorrow is Saturday and we don't have class. How about we both get up really early while nobodies on the range and you show me how to operate this thing and I shoot a group or two for you."

"Yes! Please! Thank you!"

End scene.

Scene four: Mechanical accuracy and qualified marksman versus medal-ed Olympian.

Scene setting: Early the next mourning on the same training range Ruby, back in her normal dress, is giving Pyrrha a brief rundown of Crescent Rose's quirks and features in preparation for Pyrrha taking the shots. Weiss arrives at the range looking for Ruby.

Weiss "There you are."

Ruby "Oh, hey Weiss!"

Pyrrha yawns loudly and stretches before responding. "Hello again." Pyrrha goes back to fiddling with Crescent Rose's scythe-monopod form.

Weiss "I was wondering why you got up so early."

Ruby "Did I wake you up?"

Weiss "You did-"

Ruby "-Sorry-"

Weiss "-it's fine. What are you doing anyway?"

Ruby "Pyrrha's a really good shot and I asked her to shoot a group with Crescent Rose to see how she would group differently then when I try."

Weiss "Why so early, and why not on a training day?"

Pyrrha "I wanted some time to feel out the weapon," Pyrrha yawns again "and I didn't want the fatigue from training or distractions from the range to interfere with the shot."

Weiss "You look really tired, did you not get any sleep?"

Pyrrha "Actually I slept pretty good, I just haven't done my morning run and I'm not awake yet."

Weiss "Do you want some coffee? I was just about to go get some."

Pyrrha "Naa, I've got some water. Thank you though." Pyrrha continues fiddling with Crescent Rose.

Weiss "..Why are you wrapping it in paper mache?"

Pyrrha, still half awake. "Wha-? Oh, Ruby's scope is so high up she rests her chin on the gun instead of her cheek. I didn't like that, so I'm just tapping on some rolled up newspaper so my cheek will sit at the right height-" Kneeling Pyrrha points the scythe down range, rests the shaft on top of her shoulder, closes her eyes and rests her head on the shaft and then opens them again. "-and it looks like I've just about got it... Do you mind if I dry fire it a few times?"

Ruby "Go right ahead."

Having cleared the gun earlier Pyrrha takes a few deep breathes and squeezes the trigger, a few more seconds go by before there is a 'click'. "..What?" She reaches under the gun with her non trigger hand to cycle the bolt action. She grumbles in annoyance as the bolt handle runs into her cheek and crumples her carefully made newspaper cheek riser before sending the bolt forward and dry firing the gun again. "It's such a weird gun."

Ruby and Weiss respond with two different tones of "It is."

Pyrrha cycles and dry fires the gun again. "Okay, why is the grip safety sooo heavy?"

Ruby "She's got an 8 or 9 pound grip safety because I wanted her to be drop safe with a quarter pound trigger."

Pyrrha "Yeah. There's no take up at all which is cool but this trigger's like.. dangerously light."

Ruby "I wanted a super light trigger so my pull wouldn't mess up my shots."

Pyrrha "You're probably losing as much with the heavy grip safety and you are gaining with the light trigger. You might be better off with a 2 or 3 pound grip safety and a 2 or 3 pound trigger."

Ruby shrugs. "Maybe, I don't know that I'd trust a grip safety only being that light given how I fight with her, and I did want a really, really light trigger anyway."

Weiss interjects. "I was going to go get us some breakfast, do you think you'll be ready to take the shots by the time I get back?"

Pyrrha still tired pauses to stretch her arms and back. "I think we'll be done before you get your order."

Weiss "Oh, I'll stay and watch then. By the way-" Weiss turns to Ruby. "-That engineer I had make you that batch of ammo called and said he had a list of changes that would make it better, but he wanted to see complete CAD files for the weapon system first."

Ruby "No! I told you she's mine, besides didn't you tell that guy 'no questions asked'?"

Weiss "I did, and he didn't ask questions. He said he had a list of suggested changes that could make the weapon better but he would need to see CAD files for it to know if they were viable."

Ruby "Absolutely not. Most of my old cardboard templates are in my closet back at home anyway."

Weiss half smiles. "Cardboard, that's cute. That reminds me: I've paid for you to take an online course in Computer Assisted Design, you start next Saturday."

Ruby "What? Why?"

Weiss "You may be team lead, but while I'm on the team we're on my budget and we're going to have nice things."

Ruby "I'm not going to spend all day every Saturday on my one day a week off taking a course on computers for your ammo. I built Crescent Rose with just a lathe and a drill press and hand tools."

Weiss "Ugh, we can have nicer things then hand tools. Besides the machining is probably where some of your accuracy problems are."

Ruby "Hey! All of her tolerances are done with a micrometer. My machining is fine, thank you."

Weiss "Why would you use a mic and hand tools when you can use a laser and a C-N-C?"

Pyrrha "I still don't really understand why she doesn't just use a standard 50 cal and ammo."

Ruby "But I could do sooo much more interesting things than just standard 50. That and 50's ammo is so heavy."

Pyrrha "You said this action and barrel is from a 50 and they're where most of your weight is, and I'm pretty sure 50 can do everything you actually do with this anyway."

Ruby "Standard 50 ammo doesn't make almost 6,700 feet per second."

Pyrrha sets the scythe down and takes a drink from a water bottle. "Aren't SLAP rounds really fast?"

Ruby "M-nine-oh-three (M903) makes about 4,000. Mistral's D-G-J-dash-oh-two (DGJ-02) for 14.5x114 might be a bit faster, I don't know."

Weiss interjects "I've seen those before." and doesn't elaborate.

Ruby "While we're talking about it one of my earliest design drafts for Crescent Rose would have been an over pressured 50 cal with a 6ft barrel built an action for a 20x102mm, but my uncle pointed out she would have been 9 feet long and weighed two of me."

Pyrrha "Now you're just being ridiculous." as she gives the scythe a final look over.

Ruby "Would you believe it if I told you there's a company called 'Anzio' that already makes that exact gun-"

Weiss "-Really now-" as she pulls out her scroll and searches something.

Ruby "-And if you wanted a higher caliber lower velocity option for high explosive incendiaries that shares the same bolt and magazines as 50 cal they actually make their own cartridge called twenty-fifty (20-50) that's literally just 50 cal brass necked up to accept 20mm projectiles."

Pyrrha "That sounds more like an exercise in engineering-pornography then a credible weapon system."

Ruby "I know, right?! They're so fricken cool!"

Pyrrha yawns again. "..So, are you going to give me the ammo to take the shots, or-"

Ruby "-Oh! right." as she pulls a magazine out of her dress pocket.

Weiss looks up from her scroll and tilts her head at the magazine. "..Isn't that your old ammo?"

Ruby passes the magazine to Pyrrha. "Yes, we're grouping both."

Pyrrha takes the magazine, loads the scythe, and aims down range. "Going for the target on the left."

Weiss "Oh, I see what you're doing. My ammo is more accurate, the chronograph proved it. If it doesn't look that way on the target that must be either the weapon or the operator."

Ruby "That's just one metric, you never even told me what the projectile's ballistic coefficient is let alone the rest of it's properties."

Weiss "It was made to your exact specs, just finer tolerances.-"

-Ruby opens her mouth to retort.-

-Pyrrha projects a very loud yawn. "Just let me shoot."

Ruby and Weiss are silent for a second and then move to get a good view of the target with a pair of the range's spotting scopes. Weiss holds her scroll up to the eyepiece of the scope to video capture her assumed triumph.

The range is silent and almost a minute goes by before Pyrrha sends the first round. Crescent Rose punches a pencil hole through the bullseye at 800 yards.

Weiss blinks "Oh."

Pyrrha says "Well, the zero is good." before slowly cycling the bolt without moving either her cheek or her trigger hand.

Ruby apprehensively remains quiet.

The second round comes slightly faster. It can only be described of as on top of the first shot. Ruby and Weiss are silent, Ruby clenches her fists. The third and fourth shots ring out, the pencil hole widens out into a cloverleaf. Ruby, silent and weak in the knees, can not help but fist pump the air after each shot. The pattern continues to widen a bit with each shot but remains within the first ring of the target straddling the bullseye on each side.

Pyrrha, genuinely tired, has to pause with the bolt half open to yawn before the last three shots.

Ruby, a mix of emotions, can not contain jumping and fist pumping in excitement during the pause. Ruby the somewhat average marksman has been completely humbled by someone else using her own gun. Ruby the world class weapon designer is happy to the point of tears.

Weiss, cold as ever, remains silent and just observes.

Shots 8, 9, and 10 ring out, and the group that was a beautiful cloverleaf with a few 'fliers' turns into an ugly roughly triangular scar that just about fills the first ring outside the bullseye. The two inch diameter ring at 800 yards, Crescent Rose with Ruby's own ammo is a quarter-minute-of-arc gun. Crescent Rose could take the head off of a rabbit from half a mile away, and because of the muzzle velocity the projectile would be in transit for only about half a second.

An over joyed Ruby cheers and hugs Pyrrha thanking her.

Pyrrha, with the bolt of Crescent Rose open and her trigger hand's arm now half returning Ruby's hug, with her eye still looking through the scope states. "That's actually pretty good."

Weiss still recording looks up from the spotter scope and turns toward the others. "So, two inches at-" -sighs- "-What's that in milliradian?"

Pyrrha in jest "Who uses 'Mil-Rad'?"

Weiss "I'm sorry, I'm an Atlesian business woman. I need everything in giant-sky-battleship units of measurement, not your silly little caveman fractions."

Ruby lets Pyrrha go to heel turn on Weiss "Oh you're so going to get wrecked! And you're going to owe me an extra two weeks of homework to make up for all that advertising!-" Ruby reaches into a pocket and pulls out another magazine and passes it too Pyrrha. "-And I still want to get to shoot that M-G-3!"

Weiss "..The, what?"

Ruby "What do you mean 'The, what?', the MG3."

Weiss "What MG3?"

Ruby starting to get a bit mad. "Don't tell me you forgot. The whole reason I actually went along with the stupid uniform was because you said you would get an MG3 chambered in my round built."

Weiss "Oh, I remember now. No, I asked you if your round could be chambered in an upscaled MG3. I didn't say I would make one."

Pyrrha having loaded the weapon tries to interject "So should I-"

Ruby "-What do you mean you didn't say you would make one?! That was the whole reason I actually went along with the advertising!"

Weiss unwavering "You are doing the advertising because you did lose the bet."

Ruby "The advertising's ridiculous! You said you wanted to give me the ammo so that I would have more time to practice, but how am I supposed to practice if I spend every range day twirling a cardboard sign next to the ammo booth?-"

Pyrrha half asleep just leans against Crescent Rose and waits for the argument to end.

Weiss "-You're the one that made it a bet, and that was the terms you agreed too."

Ruby "What's even the point of me doing 'advertising' for you? How does me standing over there with a sign sell more ammo to the students who were already going to buy it?"

Weiss "Because it's the terms I wanted, and having the most prolific hand loader at Beacon start wearing my uniform has actually been great for sales. I played you like a fiddle. You need to lose that hood though, it covers the logo and hurts my brand recognition."

Ruby "Absolutely not! And you still promised there would be an MG3!"

Weiss, starting to get angry at the accusation. "I did no such thing! I'm not a weapon manufacturer, I'm a fuel and ammo supplier! I just asked if you thought your ammo could run in a machine gun so there would be a reason to mass produce it."

Ruby "You implied there would be a furious, Atlesian, roller delayed, eighteen-hundred rounds a minute of Valeian, plus-pressured, three-thirty-eight caliber precision, and I demand I get too ride. That. Lightning!"

Weiss, amused at Ruby's description, replies smugly "Then you build it, you're the weapon maker after all."

Ruby frustrated and a bit deflated struggles finding the words for a second "But, ih.. I.. I don't know how to do roller delay math, I work with bolt actions."

Weiss "That computer assisted design course starts next week, tuition's non refundable by the way. You wouldn't want that to go to waste now, would you?"

Ruby "I didn't ask for that. You didn't ask me before hand, how did you even sign up on my behalf?"

Weiss "I'm your employer."

Ruby blinks "No you're not. That was just a bet. You're not paying me. Are you paying me? When did that happen?"

Weiss "You are wearing my uniform and I've elected to pay you a bonus in tuition."

Ruby "I didn't sign anything."

Weiss "It was a verbally implied contract."

Ruby "You can do that? What, do I have like.. Dental now?"

Weiss "No, you're just a contractor not hourly. Oh, and congratulations on getting the job by the way."

Ruby's still on the back foot and shakes her head having to think for a second. "..I can't just build an MG3, I don't have a full huntress license yet. There's like.. paperwork and tax stamps and stuff for me too do that."

Weiss "You could ask Coco how she got her gun."

Pyrrha snores loudly enough to wake herself up in a start. "-What? Sorry!"

Ruby "Right, the group! We'll be quiet. Sorry."

Pyrrha "Actually those first four rounds were really tight and then the group started to loosen up, should we wait for the gun too cool down?"

Ruby "Naa, I made her an ice dust infused fiber composite barrel jacket. She does get warm, but she cools down pretty quick. Should be good to go, feel."

Pyrrha puts the back of her hand and then her palm on Crescent Rose's barrel "Huh, neat. Okay then, going for the target on the right."

Weiss looks at her scroll "Am I still recording? I'm still recording.-"

Ruby "-You're, recording this?"

Weiss "You are going to lose."

Ruby "No I'm not."

Pyrrha yawns again as she prepares to shoot. Ruby and Weiss make their way back to the spotter scopes. With Pyrrha marginally familiar with how the weapon behaves about ten too fifteen seconds go by before the first shot. The first round is centered left to right but hits about 7 inches high. Weiss bites her lip and remains silent, Ruby grins.

It takes Pyrrha about 2 minutes to complete the group. The results of which leave Weiss tilting her head at it, Ruby resting her chin on her hand in thought, and Pyrrha scratching her head. The group is a vertical string that hit between 6 and 8 inches high and is just over two inches tall but less than an inch wide.

Pyrrha "Well, the point of impact shifted but its not a bad group."

Ruby "If anything Weiss's hitting high means it dropped less, which means they could have a better ballistic coefficient. If they lost less velocity due to drag they would have gotten down range faster and had less time to drop."

Weiss trying to save face "Yeah. The gun's made in Vale, the ammo's made in Atlas. The gun is wrong, the ammo is right."

Pyrrha "No."

Ruby sighs "That's not how that works, but I guess you're technically correct, just for the wrong reason. If we're comparing ammo we should measure the group size not the distance from zero."

Weiss "Right. I don't suppose anyone brought a tape measure, or calipers?"

Ruby "I did, but we can see from here. If you look how it straddles the rings on the target it's just over two inches, mine was just under."

Weiss "But my ammo chronographed better, and you just said it had a better 'ballistic coefficient'."

Ruby "It did, but mine still grouped better. The bet was who could make more accurate ammo for Crescent Rose."

Weiss "You're just going to keep moving the goal post so you can get out of holding up your end of the deal."

Ruby "No I'm not."

Pyrrha "It sounds like you are."

Ruby "No I'm not!"

Pyrrha "Her group is less than an inch wide and it's a vertical string. It's possible that the horizontal spread is closer to what it can actually do, and the vertical was just... Me, or how I was holding the gun, or something weird with it's ergonomics."

Ruby "That's.. Possible I guess, but we should already be pretty close to what Crescent Rose is even capable of."

Weiss "The ammo was right, the gun is wrong."

Pyrrha "The gun isn't wrong, it's just weird."

Weiss "Should we shoot another pair of groups?"

Pyrrha yawns "If I'm the limiting factor, or the gun is, we could shoot groups all day and not see a difference in the ammo... I think I want breakfast."

Ruby "I agree."

Weiss "..You're leaving now?"

Ruby "To get breakfast."

Weiss "Magazine after magazine through the chronographs to try and best me, but you're going to quit after one pair of groups on paper just because your first group looks slightly better?"

Ruby shrugs "...Want to call it a draw?"

Weiss still recording on her scroll "If it's a draw I won."

Ruby "What?"

Weiss "The bet was weather or not I could order ammo as accurate as yours, not that I could actually beat you. If it's a draw then I won."

Ruby flustered "..Bu- N-no.. No, that's not-"

Weiss with a smile having caught Ruby "-Yes it was, and I still won." Weiss stops recording and pockets her scroll.

End scene.

Scene five: Foils and making an anime villain entrance.

Scene setting: This scene is a time skip a long way forward to just before the time of the Vital Festival. Various students are practicing on the range again, Glynda Goodwitch is serving as the range safety officer on this day. Visiting student May Zedong (The sniper from team BRNZ of Shade Academy) is disappointed with the training range.

May drops a cigarette that she was smoking and puts it out with her shoe before approaching Glynda "Hey, this range is too short. Can I take shots from the top of the dorm, or park a Bullhead in a hover a mile away and take shots from that?"

Glynda, sitting in a lawn chair, between watching the range and doing some paperwork on a clipboard didn't notice the cigarette. "Absolutely not."

"Come on, I've got 3,000 yards worth of gun, how am I supposed to get any real practice on an 800 yard range?"

"Our range is perfectly adequate for practicing marksmanship fundamentals. Besides, the terrain in Vale isn't flat and open like Vacuo's desert. You're going to have to adapt to different environments."

"'Adequate for practicing marksmanship fundamentals'? Are you training a militia garrison, or are you training huntresses? My weapon's built for 3,000 yards and I'm here to learn my weapon, I need to shoot 3,000 yards."

"Marksmanship fundamentals apply at all ranges and skill levels. You can practice perfectly well here."

"No, I can't. I'm not going to learn anything new hitting targets at 800. Hell, half the time I leave my gun zeroed at a thousand and anything closer I have to aim below my target to hit it."

"Then you can practice doing so on our perfectly adequate range."

May looks down range and then back to Glynda "-'Aight, bet." May snap turns to face down range, draws her weapon and begins firing in one smooth motion. May sings the chorus too 'One shot, two shot' while firing her weapon in time with the song's steady cadence, engaging the steel targets at 800 yards. High explosive incendiaries strike near the top edge of the plates breaking the chains and sending them tumbling away as she runs the targets from left too right with the first verse, and then starts again on the 700 yard targets from right too left with the second verse. May reloads mid chorus fast enough to only skip one beat and then begins again on the 600 yard targets with the third verse, and then she finishes with the 500 yard targets and the fourth verse.

With half of the ranges targets destroyed the whole range falls silent as May, with her rifle's chamber clear and bolt locked back, turns back to Glynda and proclaims "Oh look, I've ran out of long range targets. It appears I need a more adequate range."

Glynda gives May the glare of a headmistress contemplating if it's worth the paperwork and legal trouble to beat the visiting student from the other school.

May stands her ground unfazed.

Glynda stands up and opens her mouth to say something.-

Enter stage right Professor Ozpin.

Ozpin "Miss Zedong, I'm going to need you to follow me."

May shrugs "Alright." Slinging her rifle over her shoulder she turns to follow Ozpin.

Wide eyed Ruby Rose watches silently as the two walk passed her.

End scene. End chapter.