Disclaimer: See first chapter.

More Repairs

Ruby stuck her tongue out as she manipulated the screw to go into the right spot. It was an axe sword modular, or a sword that could curve around itself to become an axe. Why the girl wanted two melee weapons on one, Ruby didn't know, but that was what she wanted. In Ruby's mind, one should always have a melee and a ranged option, rather than two ranged or two melee.

It didn't help that was how she had been trained, and she'd seen Qrow at work more times than she cared to admit. Although half of those times were because she sneaked out to watch him hunt on the tiny little island of Patch...and he was starting to do flashy moves that he would only do if he was being watched...okay, so maybe he knew and she didn't really sneak out.

The exact specifications of the axe sword were tricky to work with, and the exact mechanism to allow the modularity had to embedded within the sword parts rather than the axe, but both sides had to have them protected, otherwise the weapon could stall if a lucky shot gets made. And some Grimm did have the ability to shoot stuff...

The bell clinked overhead. "Hi, I'll be with you in just a second!" Ruby said, her eyes focusing on the final screw. It was a tiny part, about as small as most glasses screws, but if it wasn't tightened it could do bad things. She'd have to remember to make a note of it in the final weapon file, because otherwise most others would just skim over it. And if there was one thing she couldn't have, it was others missing out on details because she'd left them out!

"Oh, no worries," Jaune's voice said. She glanced up, seeing the tall scraggly boy, almost a man, standing there holding his head in one hand like he was just caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Although where that phrase came from, Ruby didn't know. Because she was never caught with the cookies, she just ate them.

She twisted the screwdriver another quarter turn, and she reached down to jiggle it a bit, making sure it was tightened down. Satisfied, she put everything down, and carefully grabbed the axe sword. It was in its default state right now, that of a one handed sword that could with a push of a button or a push of aura make it into a two handed axe.

It was no Crescent Rose, but it also wasn't an over-designed piece of crap like most of the other designs she'd seen these last two weeks. Flare's design class was starting to spin up again, so naturally everyone and their brother and sister thought they had a good design. She pushed her aura into it as a test, ready for the recoil as the blade shot up and out of the sword side, mechanics functioning properly as every screw and piece overlapped each other, snapping into place just as the rest of it finished. A two handed axe. "That was cool!" Jaune said as he watched it.

Ruby grinned. "You think? Good to know it'll be appreciated," she said, pushing her aura into it again and watching the blade snap back to its sword shape. The timing was critical, as it only had the time that the blade was turning around for all the proper mechanics to function. It wasn't like Crescent Rose, which could do even partial transformations and still work. This was an all or nothing.

She turned to him. "So what brings you here? You need ammunition?" she asked. Jaune's face flushed a bit as he pulled out Mors. She blinked at it, before she sighed. The shield portion had been bashed in, and the core sword part looked like it'd been bashed with a tree. "What did you do."

"I uh...tried to flatten an ursa with it," Jaune admitted. "I did get the Grimm, at least!" he said, putting Mors onto the counter. Ruby's eyes immediately took the piece into her mind, filtering it against the plans she had memorized on account of forging the thing.

It had been...well, shattered, for lack of a better term. The part that folded out was in three pieces, the metal literally folding in on itself, the part that split down was split in the middle of itself, which shouldn't be the case, and the worst part was? All of it was the original metal. "You're going to have to explain that one to me," Ruby said, staring down at the shattered and broken weapon.

"Well, we were in Forever Fall, gathering sap for the cafeteria, and they want the first years to do it because it's a simple task but there's still the chance of combat. Overwatch, I guess. Then...well, we got hit by a bunch of the needle Grimm."

Ruby nodded. Okay. That all made sense. But what didn't make sense is how that translated to this!?

Jaune kept going, "And then team CRDN was...well, screaming about something. Apparently their leader got his ass kicked recently and his mace was broken. Or so he claimed. But a pair of ursa was following them to the rest of us."

"Yang could take out two ursa easily. Without Ember Celica. So...this?" Ruby asked, motioning to the dead Mors in front of her.

"Oh, right. So Pyrrha and I ran to take them out, while Blake and Yang were out getting help. And by help, I mean laughing hysterically at Cardin's broken mace. But she took one, and I took the other. I missed the first few slashes but then a claw hit this part...here," he said, showing Ruby the very edge of the split part.

That shouldn't have done anything. "Then it fired randomly, and I couldn't grab it in time, so it shot towards Yang who punched it towards the ursa and then it went to this."

Oh.

Ruby sighed.

"That makes sense," Ruby said softly. "This does look like a Yang punch," she kept going as she looked at the shield portion. She could almost see the faint outline of the fist. She grabbed one side of the sword, slowly flipping it over to look at just how bad the damage was.

Had there been a misfire? No, there was always some kind of residue left from a type of misfire. It fired properly, but Jaune hadn't been holding the trigger. It wasn't even capable of firing in the mode he'd had it in. Which...actually explained some of the damage. "Okay. What day do you need it back by?" she asked.

"Um...preferably by three days from now? Pyrrha wants us to run through some drills, and we're supposed to go against Ren's team," Jaune explained.

Who was Ren? Probably some other Beacon first year that Ruby didn't know. She nodded. "I can probably do three days. It looks like this is just a bunch of metal folding over itself."

"Thanks, Ruby!" Jaune grinned. "Hopefully it won't eat too much out of my account..."

She waved her hand, "Nah, shouldn't be much. Let's see, if I estimate around six hours worth, plus materials, that's right around...hm, probably around four thousand?"

"That's expensive! More than the original weapon!"

"No it's not," Ruby clarified, "it just seems like it because Pyrrha paid half of it. Crocea Mors was an heirloom Jaune, and it wasn't easy to try to translate that to this. I honestly don't think many other weaponsmiths would've been able to," she said. "Most others would probably say to scrap it and reforge it if they saw it in this condition."

"Yeah, that's what Goodwitch was saying."

Ruby shrugged, "Not surprised. Yang was in here a few weeks ago with a broken Ember Celica after fighting with Pyrrha, so I'm kind of used to the attitude. I'll take care of him though," she said, pointing to the broken Mors on the table, "after you tell me what you actually named him."

"Oh...uh...heh, funny story about that-"

"You haven't named him yet, have you? It's still just 'Mors' or 'Crocea Mors' to you?"

"I have, I have!" Jaune lied. It wasn't hard for her to pick up on his embarrassment at all. "It's just...I...don't like saying it aloud, that's all!"

Ruby stared at him, before she sighed. "Fine. Fine. Tell your team I said hi, and I'll have Mors back to you before whatever event you needed him for."

"Right, will do Ruby!" Jaune said, giving a small wave as he left the shop, the bell doing a happy little ding.

Zwei came down from upstairs, jumping onto the counter with ease. He gave a little bark, and nudged his empty food bowl. "I fed you earlier. I know I did, I keep a calendar for that exact reason," Ruby said.

Zwei glared and troddled back upstairs.

Ruby looked down at the broken Mors. She had...only one other weapon that she needed to design out, and no other pending repairs. Which meant that she had plenty of time right now to work on Mors.

It was in a sad state, as most things would be after Yang punched them. Ruby grabbed her toolkit, starting to take every piece off like she knew she'd have to. Yang did a lot more internal damage than she ever did external, not that most people realized that.

Except Yang. Yang knew it. But she never tried to control herself when making those punches. And she was strong enough to...wait a second, Jaune had said the weapon fired. It was missing a single shell out of its barrel.

He had given it to her without even getting rid of its ammunition!? Hurriedly she made sure the safety was on, and quickly emptied every bit of the gun part. Of all the lazy antics, that one could've gotten someone seriously hurt!

Not her, she had aura. Someone else.

The bell rang again just as soon as Ruby had taken Mors entirely apart. She made sure to keep separate piles for every bit of metal that needed replacing, and which parts were from the original Crocea Mors. "Hi, I'll be right with you," Ruby said.

"Oh, no need. Just browsing," a low voice almost growled. Ruby glanced up to see a tall man in a white hoodie, the hood pulled up as much as he could, around the corner. He had what looked like an eyepatch around one of his eyes, but Ruby only saw it for an instant.

"Alright. If you need any help, I'm right here," Ruby answered, going back to Mors. Two of the major sword parts would need to be reheated and treated. She could take the moment to even upgrade the thing so such damage would be unlikely in the future. Mix it with a titanium base, complete with iron core...it would be an expensive weapon, but if he was on a team with both Pyrrha and Yang, it would almost be necessary.

Especially if that was a trick they'd do in the future. Jaune throwing his weapon to Yang, only to punch it at some other enemy? She was inaccurate most of the time, but sometimes she got lucky and most people wouldn't expect a flying gun sword to be punched towards them.

She wrote down the idea, quietly observing the man in the room as he looked down at the arena, and at Crescent Rose next to her. He was walking slowly, his hands going over most of the weapons.

A few minutes later he walked out without saying a word. Ruby barely noticed, except for the ringing of the bell. Whoever that was, he was strange.

Ruby was interrupted by her thinking as Zwei came back from upstairs, this time holding her calendar in his mouth. He had red ink over his usually black nose, and the mark she had made for his food day had been smudged off. "Really?" Ruby asked as Zwei hopped onto the counter, pointing to the empty calendar square.

"I can see the mark, I know you're just trying to con more food out of me!"

"Woof!"

"...Fine, but only a cup. And you're getting extra walkies tonight."

"Ruff!"

Ruby (and Tai!) vs Qrow (Round 1)

Ruby laid back into a chair, her feet up on the table. The shop was closed, and she'd balanced the books for the day already. She was already in the green for the next two months, even if she didn't make another sale. Dust and ammunition were her biggest sellers, and she should probably stock up again soon. Especially with the ammunition, more and more people had heard of her 'experimental prototype' and wanted to see it in action. She denied them, seeing as how she wasn't quite sure that it was safe.

There was no firearm that was safe, but by mixing a few non-hazardous chemicals together, they became...extremely hazardous. And exploded. Quite frequently, in fact. It had happened by complete accident in her workshop one time, and since then she'd been trying to make it happen in actuality.

The time she tried it on the ursa at Beacon? Her first actual field test. Rather than using dust to explode, this used the chemical she'd found, storing it in a separate chamber before it mixed with the solid, creating the explosive chain reaction.

Just like dust, just cheaper. And less power, if she had to be honest. A purity thirty fire dust crystal had an explosive force of nearly thirty five thousand newtons per gram. Her composite mixture? Only around ten thousand newtons per gram. It wasn't quite the best, but it'd do.

On the other hand, as long as it wasn't mixed, it wasn't going to explode because every element in it was perfectly stable on their own. Better yet, it was easy to freeze so they couldn't mix at all, which is what she'd done down in her workshop. In separate freezers. On the other side of the room. Both of them locked down with dozens of warnings and locks.

She took safety quite seriously.

There was no chance of her workshop randomly blowing up one day because she happened to mix a few random stable elements together and created a very unstable one.

Zwei was next to her, lying down on another of his dozen doggy beds that she had laying around. She had her scroll on, playing some movie that Yang had recommended to her, but honestly, Ruby wasn't paying much attention to it.

She was...content. And it was weird how that seemed, considering how much was going on. She had to worry so much about people breaking into the shop, breaking into her apartment, hurting her, hurting Zwei...and yet she was making a difference. It may not have been much of one, but there was.

Her ear perked as she heard the bell ring. That was weird, the shop was closed. She was in her pajamas already, but she pushed herself up, Zwei's head popping up a moment later. She waited for the growl of a stranger approaching.

There was no growl from Zwei, which meant it was someone that he knew. And there were only two people that she had ever given the shop's key code to. One was her Uncle Qrow, who preferred to fly in through the window through methods that they'd never actually found. She and Yang had tried for years to figure out how he did it but they never had.

The other was her Dad. She reached out with one hand to grab a short sword, just in case she needed to, but fighting in her pajamas was not something she was good at.

"And she's actually here?" she heard Qrow's low baritone voice say. "I don't see hide nor hair of her, Tai."

She put the short sword down and rushed downstairs, flower petals filling the air. Zwei was bolting down right there with her as she sunk into an armful of a hug courtesy of her Dad.

"Wow, hey there Rubes. Wasn't sure if you were asleep or not," her dad said. "Wanted to check up on you, see how you were doing, but it looks like we don't need to."

"Last time I checked up on her I broke nearly every appliance she had up there. And a few more. Enjoying the new fridge?" Qrow teased.

"Much. And this one has a warranty!" Ruby answered back instantly. Qrow laughed as he does whenever his Semblance was brought up.

"Shop looks good. You dust the dust, right?" Qrow asked as he looked around. "I don't see any of the vintage stuff I lent you. You sell it all already?" he asked.

Ruby shook her head. "Half of it's in storage, because no one wanted to buy it. You can have it back if you like, all of the stuff out here is new."

"Sweet! Yeah I'll take that junk back!"

That got rid of another thorn in her side, what to do about Qrow's old weapons. That was good, she hesitated on melting it down for new metal. It was better to just get new metal from a reliable source rather than recycle metal from old weapons. It had to be melted at a much higher temperature than normal to get out all of the impurities that came up during normal wear and tear.

"Hey, since we have you down here, you want to do a two on one?" her dad asked, pointing to the hard light arena. "It can be one of us with you versus the other, and then we switch like that!"

"Is this going to be one of those things where you both gang up on me to teach me about being humble and finding my surroundings or something?" Ruby asked as she reached for Crescent Rose. "And I need to get dressed," she said, motioning to her pajamas.

"Ah, right. Yeah, we can let you do that at least," her dad said. Qrow was about to scoff and say something before her Dad elbowed him in the rubs roughly, "Can't we, Qrow?"

"Yeah, guess we can," Qrow said breathlessly, holding his ribs in. Ruby grinned, darting back upstairs with flower petals following her. It took her only a minute to find the day's outfit, recently cleaned as she always did at the end of the day.

"Huh. That was faster than I thought," Qrow murmured as she reappeared next to him fully dressed, with Crescent Rose ready to go. "I almost thought about saying if you took more than a minute we'd have to fight you as you were."

"I thought that was what watches were for at night?"

"That is what watches are for. That doesn't mean that everyone listens to them," Qrow nodded. Ruby glanced over at her Dad, who was whistling nonchalantly. This was obvious some story that they had that they were unwilling to share, probably because it had her mom and Raven in it.

"Alright, first round," her Dad said, stepping into the arena. "Stretches first!" he warned, starting to loosen up his arms and legs. Ruby rolled her eyes. She'd been stretching multiple times a day just because she was on her feet most of the day. She didn't need to limber up.

She noticed that Qrow didn't either. "Going out on another mission soon?" she asked him because of it. He growled, before he nodded.

"Yeah, something like that. Can't tell you much, just that it's a standard protect the escort mission. They wanted the best, so naturally I'm charging them over the ears for it."

Good, that was good. Most escort missions were, as Qrow put it, a 'bog down tired affair of people who didn't know they weren't important'. And then he'd usually drink from his whiskey flask.

Not that he'd ever told them it was whiskey. They'd found out on their own, when they stole it from his sleeping form one day and Yang had tried it, before declaring that she hated alcohol and would never touch it again.

That was, of course, before she turned fourteen. Her attitude had changed, greatly, in the time since.

Her dad had finally done all of his stretching, before he popped his knuckles. "So since Qrow's going on that solo, I figure we should try to make sure he's good enough to handle it. What do you say Rubes?" he asked, grinning.

"Oh no, oh no no," Qrow said, backing up slowly as the hard light walls lit up. "I do not like this, Sam I am...I do not like green eggs and ham-" he managed to get out before Dad went to punch him in the gut.

He flipped over to find Crescent Rose right where he was about to be, and had to use an aura slash to get a second flip out of it. He hated to use aura like that, Ruby knew, so she considered that a victory. She compacted Crescent Rose, taking a few potshots as he went.

Her dad had no ranged option that she knew of, so she was operating under the assumption that he had none. She would be the ranged, and control the field from afar, and he would be the melee, controlling the field from close in. And this he did well, with aimed punches and kicks that were designed to disable and hurt but not kill. Dad was strong, she knew, and that's why he'd made a style that didn't need to kill, but just disable.

Qrow was a slippery one though, "We're going to what, out of aura or what?" he asked as he jumped to the side to avoid her Dad's fists and a few of her shots. He brought up his sword to deflect a shot, and then turned as if the sword weighed nothing to block her Dad, crouching down a second to avoid another shot.

"Nah, just until aura hits fifty. That way we have plenty for the next one," her Dad said. Qrow nodded, although it was hard to tell based on the way he was dodging so effortlessly. "You want to switch Rubes?" he asked, continuing to fight Qrow hand to hand.

Not particularly, but it was a spar. That's what they were supposed to do. "Yeah, switch!" she yelled. Her dad immediately jumped back and she bolted in, swinging Crescent Rose wide and large. He didn't even need to block as Qrow jumped back, only to be surprised as she fired a shot close range.

"Tricksy!" Qrow gave her before he flipped, kicking Crescent Rose back. "But you forget, I'm a scythe user too!"

No, she'd remembered. He's the one that taught her all of the tricks that he knew. "If I can force you to use Harbinger like that, I think that's a victory," Ruby admitted.

"Yeah it is," Taiyang said, grabbing what looked like a small hand cannon, firing small shots at Qrow whenever he had the chance. "He doesn't even need to break it out when it's just us anymore."

"That's because you've slowed down Tai!"

"Alternatively it's because you sped yourself up because you know one hit from me and it's over for you," her dad grinned, spending a few more shots. Ruby was darting to and fro, trying to use Crescent Rose whenever she had the opportunity. Qrow was deflecting almost instantly, most of his attention on her dad.

She was going to be paid attention to, darn it. She wasn't some weakling. She'd hunted Grimm, she made a freaking weapon shop out of her own hands. She pushed aura into her body, into her Semblance, feeling the push and pull of the rose petals as they started to fall.

Run, run. Run, run run. "This is new, I think," Qrow said, his voice deep and slow as she ran around him. She wasn't concentrating on hitting him yet, just wanting to run. There was no wind anymore, not for her, but she could see her wind starting to blow dust trails around both Dad and Qrow.

"I think she's been using it a lot," Her Dad said, taking a few more potshots at Qrow. "Rubes, need to switch?" he asked.

"Yes Ruby, please switch. I need a challenge," Qrow teased, before he grunted as an invisible scythe hit his knee. He turned and blocked the second and third strike, then another one caught his elbow. She was moving so much faster now, but her aura was tanking it.

He dodged every strike that would be a massive aura hit, so even the hits that she aimed for a much more impactful place didn't do much. Left, left, right, up, up, down, down, left, right. As fast as she could go, over and over. Instead she was going for the 'death by a thousand cuts', at least until the alarm blared on the hard light arena.

"Yep, yep, that's called it," her dad said. Qrow nodded, and Ruby hesitantly slowed down. She wasn't breathless, she didn't even need to breathe during her Semblance. And when she used it like that? Never.

"That was a neat trick Ruby," Qrow praised. "Next time though, think before pulling it out. You're at a third aura, and both Tai and I are at full."

"Keep working on it though. That was good," her Dad said. Ruby grinned, bouncing up and down on her feet. "Next time, we're going to test how long you can keep that up," her Dad said.

Suddenly she got the feeling she wasn't going to like the next time they showed up...

Yeah, sparring with Qrow and Taiyang probably forces anyone to make up new stuff on the fly...

Until Next Time!