Disclaimer: See last chapter.

Ruby vs. Ember Celica

Ruby grumbled as she went back to her post. The next fight wasn't to start for another ten, twenty minutes. And no one on Team PABY was hurt, except for Ember Celica.

And anyone who says that Ember Celica wasn't a member of the team was going to get Ruby Rose's wrath! Or Rath. Just for the alliteration.

Oh no, the heat was starting to get to her now. She grabbed a bottle of water, glad that Beacon and Amity had nearly endless water for the blacksmith because ooh boy did she need it. She was soaked in sweat, and she had no doubt that her skin had that 'glow' to it that showed she was working her butt off.

Technically, she should finish Team Cardinal's stuff first, since they showed up first. And then Team Auburn's weapon, too, although really they didn't have much in the way of damage. Just some polishing, and call it a day.

But Ember Celica...was delicate. Much more delicate than her owner it felt like. The amount of time it would take to fix the gauntlets, combined with the fact that Team PABY was probably going to fight tomorrow too, made it a higher priority than those teams' who weren't going to fight.

She grabbed a dust filled rag and slowly went to polishing Team Auburn's gear. It didn't require much, and by the time that Port and Oobleck were done commenting on Team PABY's overwhelming 'curbstomp of a fight', quoting Peter Port there, she was already done.

The Executioner was in bad shape, but it also wasn't an immediate 'high priority' as Ember Celica. Not to mention that Jaune hadn't dropped off Mors either, despite that it should have, and probably did have, a few dents in it. Fortunately, shields were easy. Or rather, fixing them was much easier than fixing a sharp object. Warm it up, hammer it back into shape, throw the decals back on there and boom, instant shield.

Ember Celica was most definitely not. The plates were all misaligned again, and Ruby didn't want to try putting it into maintenance mode because that would just cause issues. Potentially losing her hand issues.

Explosions are nothing to be 'unconcerned' about. Instead Ruby grabbed at the bottom of them, making sure that there weren't any charges left in them. They had a bit of dust, which she emptied, and a few slugs appeared to be stuck within the barrels. That was going to suck having to get out...

She reached for some tongs, slowly reaching in and gently prying the slugs loose. It would be difficult, but if she could get them out she could force the mechashift to maintenance mode, opening them up much...more...she almost...had it...!

The slug went off instead, blasting a small hole in the wall. "Darn it Yang, I told you to discharge these before giving them to me!" Ruby shouted once she'd calmed down a bit. Having a shotgun shell go off about three inches from her eye was not her idea of 'having a fun time'.

Her scroll dinged. 'Everything alright? Amity has record of a gunshot in your area,' from Ozpin. She rolled her eyes, wiped the sweat off her brow as she quickly typed that she was fine, it was a lone slug that went off because her sister forgot an important step. Again.

Ozpin gave the all clear text a second later. Apparently sensing gunshots was a thing that Amity could do? Why!? It was an arena, made for fighting, from people who were professional fighters! Why would it have an alarm for a single gunshot in an area where dangerous equipment is known to be kept!?

She took a deep breath, and took another swig of water. She could lower the forge temperature, but that means it'd take more dust to heat it back up if she needed to make new parts instantly.

Which actually, she may have to do, she realized. Apparently that one punch had done more damage than she thought. Ember Celica was...Ruby's hands deftly took off some of the top plates, ignoring the way they scratched at her.

Yeah, these plates were unworkable. "That's...going to take some work..." Ruby muttered. It wasn't just the damage to the reloading mechanism and the barrels, so much as it was damage to the actual mechashift.

The next fight was about to come on, but Ruby ignored most of the commentary from Port and Oobleck. She'd get a highlights reel afterwards anyway, and the real funny parts she had no doubt she'd hear from Qrow and Dad multiple times tonight.

Although the part about Port sneaking into Goodwitch's class for the second time for the records to Team PABY was kinda funny...

Her weapon maintenance kit was laid out behind her. It was probably for the best that she hadn't tried to shift Ember Celica back into maintenance mode; with the actual components as broken as these were, it quite likely would have shattered in her hands.

Her scroll dinged. 'Hey Rubes, Pyrrha wants to know if we can expect EC back sometime before tonight. She wants to do an emergency training session tonight'

Well, that's what Ruby translated it into anyways. The actual text was much more number-based. 'You'll get it back when I'm done with it! Just punch with your bare fists.'

Yeah, she'd tell her sister! Yeah! Ruby congratulated herself before she remembered that technically, right now, Yang worked for Ozpin and Ruby worked for Ozpin and there was really only one way that was going to work and why did she agree to this she should have just stayed out in the forest for two years constantly killing Grimm but instead she was here where it was hot and stuffy and ooh molten metal that was always nice.

"Plate mold, plate mold..." Ruby muttered as she looked over the pre-made molds that she already had. Every weapon she designed she kept the plans for, and had spent a good amount of time at her original blacksmith's forge to make the molds for them, just in case of exactly this scenario.

She had most of the minor bits and bobs of mechashift, the constant small gears that were only a fraction of an inch across.

Ruby stopped for a moment, glancing at Ember Celica. The funny thing was, the material was made out of an iron tungsten alloy, which made it lightweight and strong. However, it was brittle, and shattered easier than it did tear. If she could allow it to tear easier, and make it less brittle...

Steel platinum alloy? Slightly heavier, but much shinier. Not quite what she needed. What if...this would be expensive if this wasn't on Beacon's dime...she used a carbon-tungsten ionized alloy? It would have similar properties, but a bit more lightweight and much less prone to breaking when blunt impact forces. Slashing weapons would still get hit, but how often did Yang get hit by slashing weapons?

As if to agree with her, the fight was going on, and immediately the first person to land a hit was some guy with a sword against another guy with a sword. Personally, Ruby thought swords were kind of outdated but whatever, if it worked for them it worked for them.

She didn't have any of the special material. But she did have plenty of iron and titanium and other metals. She turned up the heat on the forge, quickly melting a few bars of iron and other metals, trying to swirl them together so they'd be conjoined rather than two separate pieces.

Alloying a metal was more work than just 'mixing two metals together'. There was temperature control, made easy by fire dust, and it needed to be strong enough to hold but weak enough to be molded, along with the alloying materials that were used to help fuse the resulting metals.

Ten plates. That's all she needed, about a quarter of an inch thick. She could do that...but no, she couldn't. She could improve on Ember Celica later, back when she was at her actual workshop and not this heatwaved hole called the blacksmith's shop on Amity. Or whatever its actual name was. She'd bring up the plans with Yang later, for now it was just 'get it back up to fighting ability'.

Port announced the winner. Team Sun. Really? Ruby glanced up. Oh hey, it was Sun. Still looking almost identical to how he had when he'd wandered into her shop so many months ago. Seriously, how did he make those abs so defined? And while it wasn't the coldest out in Vale, Ruby would have thought he'd have put on a jacket by now.

She made a single plate, using small bits of indented sand for where she would break it off. The parts for it were of a particular nature, and had to be a very specific size, but that was all solved via grinding the plates down. Right now, she was just in the middle of forging the things.

Once the forge was hot enough that she could no longer feel sweat on her brow, because it evaporated too quick, she knew that it was ready. The steel titanium platinum alloy was mostly done, and was almost in a stewlike sludge.

She poured it into the mold, hoping someone didn't come in right now. For one, it was hot. They probably thought there was a fire going on in there, which to be fair, there was. For another, if they came in and scared her she was quite liable to accidentally toss molten metal at them.

That would be bad. Aura could only defend against so much, and honestly Ruby almost felt her aura depleting right now. It wasn't, but she had to check her scroll to make sure. The mold sat, and she turned down the forge, letting a little cool breathe into the air.

The door opened, and Sun peaked his head in. "Hey, Ruby! You uh...you got a sec?" he asked.

Oh no what did he do now?

"Sure, come on in. Mind the heat," Ruby said, glancing towards the molten metal. It was cooling rapidly, and that meant she had only a few minutes to try and make sure the impurities got out. That was the key part to any good metal, the more pure it was, the better. Except steel, that one was by its nature impure.

"Cool, cool. So Neptune's going on but his trident got hit by...what was it again Neptune?" Sun asked, peeking back out the door. "Right, 'some kind of alien like device'."

There was no weapon like that in the last battle. "Was it a nine-tipped whip?" Ruby deadpanned, the closest thing she could come up with for the 'alien like device'.

"Yeah, that was it! Any case, it's busted. Could you fix? He's going into the second round with me so you know we kind of need it."

Great. They had won and they still needed repairs. And that's not counting what they're opponents would need.

"Yeah, just leave it in here and I'll have it back by the fight tomorrow," Ruby answered, taking a small metal knife and curling off the top part of Ember Celica's new plates. The impurities had risen up, creating a small black covering which is what she wanted off. It was mostly pure carbon, which although useful, it wasn't as if she could make diamond out of it.

"Sweet! Thanks Ruby, you're a miracle worker!" Sun said cheerfully as he threw in a broken what used to be called a trident. Ruby stared at it for a bit; that was less of a repair and more of a reforge.

Seriously, half of those parts shouldn't have been able to break. And yet here they were, breaking in half, or thirds, or quarters...

There had once been an electrical system added in, using yellow forty five dust. It was a neat thing, flowing to each point in a different way so each 'tip' of the trident gave a different voltage.

"Sun, that's going to take me hours!" Ruby yelled back as soon as the monkey faunus had closed the door.

There was another knock and Yang peeked in. "Oh hey Ruby, how's Ember Celica coming?" she asked.

Ruby withheld the urge to scream.

First Night

Ruby was exhausted, and it was only the first day of many. She'd almost lost track of how much metal she'd used. First there was having to reforge Ember Celica's parts, and then Neptune's weapon, that electric trident thing which she came up with at least three or different improvements for. And that wasn't even including the people who wanted their weapons fixed right this second and didn't care about propriety. For those, she only had to glare at them as her hammer fell on molten metal for them to realize that bothering a weaponsmith in her shop was a bad idea.

Then there was the third and fourth year fights and it turns out some of them had very specific alterations to their metal demographic. There was one that was, wait for it, a silver-platinum-iron alloy. Why!? Just...Ruby had to ask, why!? And the platinum was in such a small amount it could only be used for the color, which was almost better to use the silver for! Yes, it would tarnish, but that's what the iron was for.

Honestly, it was better to just use stainless steel if someone wanted something covered in chromium and looking like a mirrored silver, just use stainless steel!

Eurgh, it was painful to watch these people claim that they knew how metals worked. She wasn't the world's best metallurgist, of course, and she knew that, but she knew the basics of different variations. Once someone threw dust into the equation though, things went...well, out of bounds would be a good first thought.

Dust inverted a lot of the properties of metals. A dust infused gold was hard and durable, closer to steel or titanium rather than the soft and bendy metal that it actually was. Dust infused iron was actually the best metal to used for mechashift, as it was malleable, and yet durable.

Once the elemental dusts got into the equation, even all of that got thrown out of the window. Supposedly there was a class at Beacon that covered it, called Dust Studies, that would help with explaining why.

Of course, whenever Ruby asked Yang or Blake or anyone, they could only shrug and give the bare minimum, which is stuff she already knew. Even if she asked Pyrrha, supposedly one of the best in class, the most she got was a quiet 'hn' as she winced. Apparently even though Pyrrha was top of the class, she still wasn't doing what she claimed as 'well'.

And Weiss' weapon! What a glorious use of dust that was, totally normal for a Schnee. Dust infused steel for the main rapier, which was fair. It helped with the canisters of dust that could be used like a revolver.

The amount of dust she must use in a week was about the same amount that Ruby sold in a month.

Ruby only had to fix up a single chipped barrel, which was easy enough. The testing phase went off too, although Ruby was hesitant to use any amount of dust for a mere test. But she had to do it, so she did it.

Dad and Qrow had gone off somewhere to find dinner for the night. Normally people would leave towards Vale, but Ruby had special permissions considering she was the weaponsmith of the Vystal Festival. She got a room of her own in Beacon!

Granted, that was probably because they expected her to have to stay up for hours to fix the weapons and armor broken throughout the day. That's one of the main reasons the old blacksmith decided to call it quits; he simply couldn't handle the stress and pressure.

Not that Ruby blamed him. She had seen it first hand. A constant influx of gear that needed fixing, repairing, reforging, remixing...she had gone through nearly a hundred pounds of metal throughout the day. Considering that Mors was one of the heaviest pieces she'd ever worked on, and that had weighed in at a hefty four pounds, that should say a lot.

It always felt like metal should weigh more than it did. The heaviest thing she'd ever worked on was fixing Yatsuhashi's massive cleaver, which was a whopping eight pounds. That doesn't sound like much, but considering how strong he was? Eight pounds generated a lot of force.

Her scroll dinged, and Ruby's face hit the pillow. Right, she still had one or two things before she could turn in for the night. She hurriedly dialed Lilac's number.

The screen turned on before the cat faunus came into view. It looked like she was still on Beacon grounds, but Ruby had told her and Jasper that she was just going to check in via scroll. "Hi Ruby! Successful day?"

"Sure, let's go with that," she murmured as she pressed Jasper's number, connecting with both people at once. His face popped up in the corner, next to Lilac's. His was at home, which was good. He was running the ground shop.

And closing hours had been two hours ago. "Ruby! Tired yet?" he asked, that same sarcastic smirk he always wore.

"More than. Alright, so before I ask, how did everything go?" Ruby hesitated to ask how they had made out selling wise. She wouldn't be able to make new weapons if they needed it, but she had been working like crazy the last few months to make sure they at least had enough ammunition and dust.

"Well, the shop here was quiet," Jasper said, "Not that I was expecting much else. Zwei got into some trouble, somehow managed to dig underneath the arena floor, but by the time I got down there to see where he was he'd already managed to get out. I made sure he had food and water before I left, and I'm pretty sure he used the bathroom?"

"Wait, how does a dog use the bathroom? I know you said he was smart Ruby, but there's a difference between smart and a genius," Lilac pointed out.

"He's an aura-awakened dog," Ruby admitted. "And yes, he does that. So long as you leave it unlocked he can get in to do his business. Did you leave the treadmill going too?"

"I...did not. I saw that instruction but thought it was inefficient."

"Oh yeah, it was there for a reason, so he could walk himself if needed. Shouldn't be a problem for one night, just make sure you turn it on first thing tomorrow morning for him. Or take him on a walk, but then I also suggest either get your aura awakened or some heavy duty protective gear," Ruby said.

"...Right, gear it is," Jasper answered quietly.

"Got no problems here. People were here all day, always wanting something. Do we have any more of the extra scroll batteries? Amity apparently doesn't have any battery charging stations," Lilac commented.

"Oh yeah, we have dozens. Come by to pick them up tomorrow morning. And yes Ruby, we'll remember to mark the ones that go up," Jasper said.

Ruby smiled. She was glad that the two employees she had were used to working in the same kind of business that she was. She almost felt bad for using them like this. But they had signed up for this technically...

"Ammunition is a big seller too. You want numbers Ruby?"

No, she didn't, but it was part of the charges of being a weaponsmith. She wanted to smile and nod and pretend that everything was good. "Sure, hit me," Ruby answered.

"Right," Lilac said, before she got out a small list. "Of the one twenty eight cartons of .45 ammunition, we sold sixty three. Of the one twenty eight of .38's, we sold twenty two. I think those ones would be higher in the later days, when it's more about conserving smaller caliber. Right now, people want bang."

"That sounds okay."

"No weapons sold yet, although I handed out three flyers with the commission forms, so we might be getting a few things from that. And then we have the scroll batteries. Of the thirty extra that we brought up, all thirty have been sold. And that was in the first six hours."

Considering that she hadn't sold thirty scroll batteries in six months that was rather impressive. And she made a bit of markup on those too honestly, but still less than what it was on some of the other CCT sites she'd found.

She was lucky to be able to buy them wholesale from the manufacturer directly. "Alright. Bring up fifty tomorrow and see if all of those sell," Ruby commented.

"Fifty, got it. Let's see...no problem people, so that's something at least. Overall, we made out pretty good."

"Sounds like you had fun up there. I'll take down here to up there," Jasper said. "Although how Zwei gets into such trouble..."

"A," Lilac started, "he's a dog. B, he's an aura-awakened dog. My friends in primary had an aura-awakened cat, and that thing was terrifyingly smart. It figured out how to almost talk at points, how to open every door...how to use its cuteness..."

"So it's a cat," Jasper commented. "Regular cats do the same thing."

"Yes, but moreso."

Ruby refrained from rolling her eyes. The cat versus dog arguments had been going on her entire life. She was a dog person at heart, especially based on Zwei. Of course, the less said about Ein, the better. He was an older puppy even when Ruby could remember him. By the time she could start to unlock his aura he'd already passed.

And then her dad had commented idly he was thinking about getting another one and named this one 'Drei'. Where he was getting these strange names from she didn't know, but he'd somehow figured it all the way out.

All the way to ten, although what the other names were Ruby wasn't told. Honestly, he had Zwei, he didn't need any other puppies. Although it was true that Zwei was with her most of the time...

"Alright. Lilac, how much longer are you staying at Beacon?" Ruby asked, cutting their continuing argument short. Both of them stared at the screen before she shrugged. "Alright. Both of you are doing a good job, so just keep it up and we'll be back to normal soon enough!"

"Oh, wait, I have one thing," Jasper commented quickly. Ruby paused the hang up button, before she nodded. "Mind if I bring a screen in for the fights over the next few days? Most everyone's up at Beacon or Amity anyways."

"Go for it. Use the one upstairs if you want to. But otherwise, sure," Ruby nodded. Jasper smirked before he hit the hang up button. She rolled her eyes fully now. "And yes Lilac, if you want to you can bring one up too."

"Oh I kind of already did. There's a ramen shop nearby that also has the fights playing, so it's kind of cool to be able to listen to people talk about them while watching them myself. Also, the two commenters are weird."

"Port and Oobleck? They're teachers here, they're really nice," Ruby said. She admitted, "I snuck up here once almost a year ago, like a month into the first semester, and Port noticed but didn't say anything. He was cool like that. And then he allowed me to fight an ursa!"

"As someone who isn't trained to be a huntress, that sounds worrisome and not something that could be called 'cool'."

"Eh, you'll learn to love it at some point," Ruby shrugged. "Also, can you make sure that the experimental ammunition is kept separated? I know I left instructions for that-"

"Already did. I don't want it blowing up the shop while we aren't here," Lilac said. "Alright, I'm about done. See you tomorrow Ruby!" she said. Ruby could hear the dangling of the keys as things were locked up.

She nodded, and hung up.

She rolled over onto the hard bed, her scroll dropping from her hand. The room she'd been given was tiny, barely a bathroom and a bed. But it was where she was. "I miss Zwei," she said quietly to no one. "He was always here to help, even if I didn't want it. His distractions were great."

As if on cue, her scroll started ringing from the floor. A picture of her dad was on the screen, and Ruby hurriedly picked up, eager to quell the storm that was her stomach. Hopefully they found something decent!

Not all drama. But I'm hoping I'm keeping things entertaining and light hearted!

Until Next Time!