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An Average Day

Ruby spun around in her chair for a bit. Middle of the day, with Lilac working the majority of the counter, which left her to focus on design work for the commissions that she'd gotten during the Vytal Festival Tournament. The cat faunus was leaning heavily against the glass countertop, one hand absently petting Zwei on his doggy bed there, the corgi absolutely loving the attention.

The shop was quiet, not that Ruby was expecting anything but. It was technically the end of the Vytal Festival, but because of the Incursion most of the other sales had kept going, and the Vale Community Board allowed it, which was apparently rare enough that Ruby felt that she, too, should keep her own sale going.

Half off all ammunition if she had it in stock, and five percent off dust prices. Mostly because the dust prices were still skyrocketed high thanks to Roman Torchwick and the White Fang. But because it was after the end of the Festival, that also meant Beacon was out, as were the three smaller combat schools. And most Hunters didn't like getting up early if they didn't have to.

Ruby knew that she was one of the rare ones.

"What do you think of this," Ruby asked looking at a particularly difficult looking commission. They were asking for an axe that connected to a chain, allowing it to be a small chain whip axe, featuring a larger rifle in the base. "Red dust for the ignition in the base, but with gravity dust for the axehead, so it could do the same as this one, and blow itself up and then reconfigure itself."

"Looks and sounds complicated," Lilac answered easily. "He wants it to connect to a chain. You don't need to make a dust chain if it has a physical chain, right?"

"No, but this way anything the chain hits it'll actually do something to, rather than just wrap them up. This way it'll wrap them up and do something!"

"He may not want a dust chain. He may not know how to care for it," Lilac pointed out.

Ruby grumbled. "That's fair. It's not that hard though. I'll give it an idea and toss it to him, but warn him of the price increase," she answered, writing it down on the paper before putting it into the 'think about later' pile.

She pulled out another one, sighing as she looked at it. "Oh boy, here's gonna be a fun one. A pole that disconnects itself with shotguns in the middle and can be acted a nunchucks."

Lilac stared at her for a moment. "Isn't that just a copy...?"

"Of Sun's weapon from the tournament, Ruyi Bang and Jingu Bang? Yeah," Ruby nodded. "That's just plain derivative. Easy to make work though. Plain dust for ignitions, using shot put for the ammunition so they get multiple shots per actual firing, hardened steel on the outside."

"How many of those were copies of weapons from the Tournament?" Lilac asked after a moment. "I didn't really look at them after I filed them."

"The earliest ones were the more original ones. The ones during the Tournament days, ooh boy. Lots of clones," Ruby said. "Easy to make, nowadays, considering I still have access to the blueprints, but not very thought provoking. Although there was Tri-Hard."

"...Tri-Hard?" Lilac was struggling not to giggle. "Somebody named their weapon that?"

Ruby nodded, grinning. "Yeah, Neptune Vasilias. I don't think he got the pun for a while, but by then it was already on the official paperwork. Hence, Tri-Hard!"

"Neptune...he was...?"

"The blue haired guy on Sun's team," Ruby clarified. "He was the guy with the electric dust on his weapon in three different voltages, accidentally nicked Penny Polendina on stage with the wrong wattage?"

"Right. You know, there's some conspiracy theories that she's a robot."

Ruby waved her hand a bit. "I wouldn't believe it. The girl's not normal, sure, but none of us actually are. She has aura, she fights Grimm. Walks like a person, talks like a person, sounds like one to me."

That said, her weapon, Floating Array, was conspicuously tied to an outside power source and an outside processing unit, so if she was a robot, then it was a good disguise. And really, Penny had been a lot more socially competent than a robot would be. At least, according to the science fiction moves she watched when Yang and Taiyang weren't telling her what she could and couldn't watch. Granted, most of the time it was because horror movies kept her up with nightmares, but it was really hard to beat the living nightmare she'd lived through.

"That makes sense," Lilac said, leaning back onto the counter. "Pass me that X-Ray and Vav would you? The latest one?" she asked.

Ruby glanced over at it, giving a heartfelt sigh as she grabbed it and tossed it down the counter. "You know, you are supposed to be working at work time," Ruby grinned, pulling one of the original issues for herself. It had been a long time since she'd read any comics.

Entertainingly, Jaune had yet to see them. And apparently, according to Yang, he had a massive comics collection that was only rivaled by Blake's book collection. They had, or at least Yang had, decided to call it the "Smutty Comic Collection" to see how red both Jaune and Blake could become.

"I know, but I already did the dusting for today, lunch isn't for another hour, no one else in here, the dust has already been counted, and we're still waiting on deliveries for ammunition."

"I was teasing," Ruby giggled. "I know there's not much going on," she said, right before the electronic bell that she had installed went off, signaling that the door was opening.

Or rather, that someone had peeked in, and decided to turn around. "Huh. That was weird," Ruby muttered.

Strong arms were suddenly flung around her chest. "Ruby!" Yang called out, pulling her tightly off the chair and hugging her close. "Aww, what's my favorite sister doing now!" she said. Ruby had the strangest thought that she was holding her this tight on purpose, because now she couldn't quite reach the floor and why was Yang's grip tightening up!?

"Yang! Yang put me down!" Ruby cried out as she realized that her very strong sister wasn't going to be letting go anytime soon. Her legs wiggled in the air. "Yang!" she shouted again.

She heard Lilac giggling from down below. "Lilac! Do something! Yang!" Ruby cried out again before Yang finally put her down. Her sister had a giant grin on her face, not even looking winded.

"Aww Rubes! You know I'd never let anything hurt you!" Yang said. "Besides, you were barely a couple of inches off the ground. Even if I did, you wouldn't get hurt!"

"Doesn't mean it didn't surprise me. What are you doing here?"

"Why wouldn't I be here?" Yang asked in retort, looking around. "This is where my favorite sister is, and I had the day off from Beacon!"

"It's also only eleven in the morning," Ruby pointed out.

Yang blinked. "Wait, seriously? Darn it Blake...she woke me up early when she got out of bed to go reading in the living room."

"And you thought it was a half decent time, so you took a shower and now you wandered down here?"

"Yeah, just about!" Yang smirked. "So, anything fun going on? Ooh, what're those," she asked, pointing to the commissions on the counter. "And when did you get comics?"

"You've known about those for a few weeks! Remember, you came in a while ago and asked the same thing word for word?" Ruby retorted, getting a sheepish smile from the blonde. "As for those, the commissions I got for unique new weapons for the Vytal Festival Tournament."

"Any fun ones? Maybe you can give Ember Celica a glow-up!"

"You'd have to pay me," Ruby grinned. "I'm not doing that for free anytime soon," she said, specifically not saying that she'd come up with about three different upgrades to the bracelet shotguns when she was working on them up on Amity.

The one time that Yang had gotten hit, and it was right in the shotgun bracelet gauntlets. It wasn't quite as bad as the time that Jaune had somehow hit them directly into Pyrrha's weapon, Miló and Akoúo̱, in which she'd had to basically rebuild the entire things from scratch, but it was pretty close.

"Aww, come on, you know you're my favorite!"

"I'm your only," Ruby answered. "And there's nothing too fun. Also, did you know Neptune's weapon was called the Tri-Hard?"

It took a moment before Yang started to giggle lightly, before it upgraded to a chuckle, before she bent over her knee. "Ha! That sounds hilarious. Let me guess, Sun named it? That sounds like something he or I would do."

Ruby shrugged, smiling broadly. "I have no idea who named it, but that's what's on the official paperwork. You can look through them if you'd like, nothing confidential in them."

"I thought you usually took confidentiality to the extreme," Lilac said from the side. "I know you never let me look at those."

"You never wanted to!" Ruby answered. "If you'd told me, of course I'd let you. Here's a fun one," she said, pulling one from the 'probable ideas' pile, sliding it over to Yang.

It took her only a moment to glance through it. "This is a copy of that sword from that one game, isn't it?" Yang asked after a second. "Is there a sketch?"

"Third page, back side."

She turned to it. "Yeah, there it is," she said, tracing her fingers around the pommel and hilt design. "That's almost copy for copy. How many of these are that unoriginal?" Yang asked.

Ruby threw her head back. "Most of them! Most of them are like that! What happened to originality!? Where's the Ember Celica's, the Gambol Shrouds, the Crescent Roses!?"

"You can't tell me Crescent Rose was original, Ruby."

"It was totally original!"

"It was based off Harbinger and Sundered Rose!" Yang retorted. "I remember when you went through the initial designs, trying to mix both Mom and Qrow's stuff."

Ruby looked to the side. "I thought it was cool," she said quietly.

"It was! But that doesn't mean that it was original," Yang said. "And hey, maybe they want copies of these things because they liked how we fought. Besides, did Blake ever tell you how Gambol Shroud was made?"

"It looked like the original was just random parts of whatever she could find," Ruby answered.

Yang nodded. "That's exactly it. They couldn't find good steel out in the wilds," Yang said, sending a quick look over to Lilac. Ruby nodded. Lilac probably had no idea that Blake had been in the White Fang, and that wasn't Ruby's secret to tell.

Wilds, in this case, meant while in the White Fang.

"And then there's Jaune," Ruby said, thinking it over. "With the classic Crocea Mors. Not so classic anymore. I'm just asking where's the originality?"

"A few of these are fairly tame," Yang said, looking over a few more. "When are you next planning on forging?"

"Her next day's in about a week," Lilac answered, glancing at the calendar. "I can only remember that because those are the only days that both Jasper and I were scheduled."

"That's handy," Yang smirked. Ruby started to leap up, getting only a sly grin from her sister.

Lilac shrugged. "Eh, not really, I can barely stand working with him."

"Heh, don't tell Blake that. She'll put you two in as the stars of a story," Yang grinned.

Ruby raised an eyebrow. "I didn't know she wrote. I know she read a lot. She was really upset that Tukson left abruptly."

"Tukson was the only one who stocked her favorite series," Yang shrugged. "She's been trying to find the next in the series. So as a way to get that same escapism, she took up writing."

"You mean Roaring of the Sun?" Ruby asked, tilting her head. "You're talking that Ninjas of Love series, right? I have it, she can borrow it for a bit."

"Oh don't tell me you read that series too," Lilac said, her tail lowered as she covered her eyes.

"Ha! She doesn't like anyone to know but she loves that series," Yang answered for her. "And she'd love that, by the way," she turned to Ruby.

Ruby rolled her eyes. She was sixteen. At least Yang wasn't trying to tease her about reading smut anymore. She burst into her Semblance, heading up the stairs to grab the book.

Ruby vs. Grades

Ruby glanced back at the clock. Lilac had gone home nearly an hour ago, but the shop would be open for another hour. Why she decided to make her employees schedule so weird, she didn't know, but she was going to curse out her younger self for doing just that!

Maybe it was because the hardest part of the shop wasn't closing but opening...so she could have someone on dusting duty and the other on the dust duty.

Yeah, that was probably it. It would make sense, because her day started long before she opened the shop and ended after she closed it.

Her scroll buzzed, with a message from Blake. It was mostly just an image of a hug, and a picture of the book. Ruby rolled her eyes, but gave a soft smile as she sent back a quick text that she could return it at anytime, that Ruby had already read it and they could hang out one day to talk about it.

Zwei was in the arena, battling against small targets that looked like tiny little beowulves. He was surprisingly quick, which Ruby guessed she shouldn't have been surprised about because really, his aura was unlocked and he knew how to use it.

The doorbell rang, making Ruby glance up. "Welcome to Summer's Weapon...oh hi Dad."

Taiyang grinned as he walked in, his eyes on Zwei. "That's all I get? Just a 'oh hi Dad'," he said. "Off by yourself today?"

"Nah, Lilac left a while ago."

"Ah. How much longer do you have them on?" he asked, walking around the counter. He glanced over at Zwei as the corgi let out an adorable little howl and stepped on one of the small beowulves. "And should he really be doing that? It's gonna give him a complex."

"He already has one," Ruby answered, rolling her eyes. "But he's such a cute widdle corgi, yes who's the best? Yes he is..." she said, devolving back into the baby talk she liked to use on him.

Her dad looked at the calendar, right next to the bathroom door. "Only a couple of more weeks though huh?" he asked, seeing the small red note that said, 'Lilac and Jasper's last day!'

"Yeah. With the Vytal Festival over, things have started to slow down, and they want to have time to hang out with their friends," Ruby explained. "And they're getting bored a lot more frequently now."

"So then what're you going to do?" Taiyang asked. "Unless you think you can keep the shop running permanently?"

Ruby shook her head, "No, this'll probably be its last year. A good run, but I'll need to focus on Beacon. And the whole magic thing."

"Speaking of Beacon, how's your homework for Signal going?" Dad asked slyly. Ruby blinked for a long moment, before she realized that it was true, she still did have homework for Signal.

Oh crap she had homework for Signal. "Wait I got it just wait a moment I'll be right back with it I swear I didn't forget I just didn't get around to it I'll be right back!" Ruby said, hoping that he caught what she was saying as she burst into her Semblance upstairs.

She felt the maiden's powers start to awaken too, and she was almost hesitant to find out what emotion 'panic' would bring out. No, she'd be fine, it was just homework! She'd passed last year, and that was despite the fact she hadn't shown up.

Apparently the teachers at Signal for very forgiving for obvious truancy. Then again, so was Vale as a whole, based on the way that she owned and operated her own weapons shop. She grabbed the giant folder on the counter, covered with the remains of a pot pie she'd made earlier, and ran, practically flying downstairs.

Dad was still there, watching as Zwei continued to stomp over the fake Grimm. His clothes ruffled from the wind. "You forgot, huh?" he smirked.

"No, I didn't forget!" Ruby called back. "I just...uh..."

"You forgot."

Ruby growled lowly, and Taiyang rolled his eyes before watching Zwei again. "I'll stay here until you finish it. If you have questions, ask. I already know you're up to date on math and engineering."

Those two weren't even Taiyang's classes. How did he know what her grades were? He probably looked at the big grade book ages ago. He taught combat class, and she knew she could pass that without a problem.

"What about combat class?" she asked.

Dad shrugged. "Eh, I haven't seen you fight in a while. No pass," he grinned.

"Come on!" Ruby called out. "I fought Uncle Qrow! And I got him down to forty percent aura from ninety five! I almost did damage to Pyrrha! I fought Cinder!"

"And I wasn't there for any of that except Qrow," Dad said. "So you'll have to prove yourself to me then," he finished.

Really, she'd done more than 'almost did damage' to Pyrrha. With half of the Maiden's powers, she'd actually got Pyrrha down to...what was it, seventy percent aura? Maybe sixty, if she was lucky. But more importantly, she'd got it down to where Pyrrha was enjoying herself.

What's worse is that she knew her dad was teasing her but darn it it certainly didn't feel it at times. It felt like he was frustrated and just taking it out on her. That frustration lashed out at her, and she felt the wind start to bubble up. "Not now," she murmured as she grabbed the first sheet. Math homework. Easy enough. Most of it was just busywork at this point. She knew what she was doing, the teachers knew what she was doing, she was already accepted into Beacon, she just had to wait.

"You gonna calm down there?" Dad asked after a moment. His voice was deeper, as if he was shouting. Ruby glanced up, seeing that the wind was starting to get a bit crazy.

As in it was starting to threaten to pick him up and deposit him on the other side of the store. Actually...could she do that? Could she do that to herself?

Could she learn to fly!?

She was going to have to run the numbers. And do some experiments. She was going to have fun with this. But wait, first, math homework.

Fortunately it was, asides from some of the harder difficulty problems, fairly easy. Not stuff she'd really have to use in real life scenarios unless she went into more dust heavy studies. Like quadratics and such. She still didn't quite see a use for those when she had basic math in engineering. And make no mistake, she was an ace at engineering.

"Ruby? Turn off the wind?" Taiyang asked from the side.

The paper in her hands crumpled a bit as the wind blew around harder. Ruby looked up as she finished the last problem. "But I thought you said you've never seen me fight, so how do you know I can turn off the wind?" she asked, grinning.

"Oh ha ha," Dad rolled his eyes as he jumped a foot in the air, taking longer to come back down that he did to go up. In that time he'd moved almost five feet back. "Seriously, I think it's starting to affect the dust back here," he said, looking towards the glass counter in the front.

Instantly the wind vanished as Ruby popped over there, checking over the crystals. "No, no, I didn't mean it my pretties, you're fine right?" she asked to the dust crystals.

The dust crystals, being inanimate objects, did not respond.

"Whew. That's a harsh wind right there. What else can you really do? I knew intellectually that you had the powers, but...I've never seen them."

"Most just elemental stuff, I think," Ruby answered. "At least, that's all Ozpin wants to instruct me to do. And even then his instructions were akin to 'you'll learn in time'."

"Sounds like Oz. Never straightforward when you want him to be. He still bugging you?"

"Not as much. I think he realizes that he's screwed up by trying to get me to Beacon so quick. I know he just wants me safe, but-"

"I think he wants control," Taiyang shrugged. "It's like that thing that he gave to us to guard. You know, before your mom..."

"Where is that thing anyways? Last I checked Yang and I kept using it as a coaster before it disappeared," Ruby smirked. Dad grinned at her.

"Oh, I threw it into the attic. I figured if anyone comes snooping around, they aren't going to look there anytime soon. And how did you manage to use as a coaster? It has a hole in the bottom."

"There's a hole in the top, and a cup fits perfect right through there. But you have to turn it on its side," Ruby admitted. "Control sounds about right. Also, does this sound good?" she asked, reaching for the engineering paper. "'To determine the density of the steel, when forging the metal one has to smelt it down upon the impurities burning, carefully lifting them out of the resultant soup,'" Ruby quoted.

"It's a paper on forging."

"Yep."

"To a weaponsmith."

"Yep," Ruby said, popping the 'p'.

"I think you can pretty much say whatever you want, Ms. Howler isn't going to care. She'll take it as gospel anyways. How wrong is that?" Dad asked.

"Eh, not wrong just...not entirely right," Ruby smirked. "There's a lot more to making steel than that."

"Isn't it just iron and charcoal?"

Ruby glared at him, and he must have realized that what he said was wrong. It was so wrong it was hard to put it into words. It wasn't just 'iron and charcoal'. It was iron and carbon. But it had to be carbon in a very specific amount to add to the strength of the metal. Iron was weak. Steel was strong.

Okay, that was a lie. Iron was strong in its own way. No one should ever make pure iron though, because iron tended to oxidize. Unless she added some other element, generally chromium, into the steel to create a layer of protection on it.

Which had the added benefit of preventing rust.

"Now for regular language," Dad said, hovering over her shoulder. "Think you'll train in the magic thing, or just keep the weaponsmithing?"

"Probably both," Ruby admitted as she growled, staring at the page. "I've come up with a few ideas that I want to try, but I don't know how to go about it yet."

"Like what?"

"Imbuing magic into a weapon," Ruby said. "Imagine a weapon that doesn't need dust to do what it does, but it's just an inherent ability of the weapon itself! No more gravity dust to do weird magnetic shenanigans, but it's literal magic! Teleporting hammers, swords that can't be drawn except by certain people without a physical lock!"

"Teleporting hammers?"

"One of the commissions wants a teleporting hammer," Ruby said, patting the file to her side. "I'm going to have to tell her why it's impossible, along with other impossibilities like it giving someone the power to shoot lightning bolts."

"Why not use electric dust?"

"Oh no, the lightning bolt thing is easy. But she wanted it to be able to give her the power of lightning bolts. That's not possible. Going from the weapon though, yeah that parts easy. Unless Semblance."

"Or Maiden."

Ruby froze for a moment. That was a good point. That description was almost word for word what someone had wanted from the Maiden's power. She put aside her homework, glad to have any reason to not be doing it, as she looked through the commission pile.

The commission form was something that she'd come up with after her experience with Jaune. She had noted the bare basics, but it was really up to the person to describe what it was they wanted. It's why there were four pages to each form.

The first page was the basics, the second was a budget breakdown showing what kind of estimate they can generally get, and the third was more information on dust and ammunition types. The fourth page was a small sketch of the thing.

Ruby grabbed it, before she sighed. "Okay, good, it wasn't Cinder," she muttered as she put it down. "Just someone worse."

"Who's worse than Cinder?"

"Nora Valkyrie," Ruby grinned as she showed hm the form. The name was clearly written, along with plenty of little additives that was mostly just things like 'boom!' and 'Pow!' and other things the hyperactive one was known for. "She'll know."

"You'd think she'd be happy with Magnhild," Dad said as he looked over it. "And the design is exactly the same as Magnhild."

Ruby glanced over it. "Oh...so it is," she muttered. Well, unless she wasn't happy with Magnhild...but she was an explosives expert...maybe Ruby would have to call her out anyways someday.

In case it wasn't obvious, Weaponsmith was a comedy series. Magicsmith is continuing this tradition.

Also, I just realized I've been misspelling Aneisadora this entire time. Apparently it's Anesidora. Not sure if I should go back and change it all or just make it another thing that Ruby didn't realize...

Until Next Time!