Homeless Bunny 10

I mixed up a negroni cocktail and slid it over to Roman Torchwick. Pompous asshole made me want to feed him his own hat, but he did have a solid taste in drinks. And hats. Fortuna would approve. It was a pity the man wore more eyeliner than the hyper-competent precog ever did.

"Thanks, and you didn't even shed in i-Oof!" He was cut off from his bitching by Melanie's bladed heel jabbing down on the arch of his foot, making his aura flash brightly. At the same time, Neo elbowed him in the side, bending him over. He wheezed, "Why…"

Neopolitan and the twins had a somewhat unique relationship. Before I came along, the three barely tolerated each other. Neo was dismissive of them while the twins thought of her as a bitter rival. Miltia told me the story one night when she had a bit too much to drink.

Apparently, they'd all attended some shady school for assassins that doubled as a finishing school for girls. Back then, Neo, being a few years younger, got bullied for being mute by the twins. It was a bit hard to imagine the flirtatious, visually bombastic woman being shy, but she'd been quite the wallflower. Imagine their surprise when the same girl quickly overshadowed them under the partnership of Roman Torchwick. Now, Miltia admitted, with much gnashing of teeth, that the ice cream themed girl was much stronger than they were.

Ever since Neo found out I could make ice cream, she became a regular sight at the bar. Any time anyone gave me shit for being a faunus, she made her displeasure known with a swift kick to the dick, probably harsher than I'd ever be for a mortal with too much lip. It was by far the fastest way to end your night at this club and wake up in the dumpster tomorrow. I suspected her presence was a big part of what drove the twins to take my training sessions seriously.

Now, with me in the center, they'd struck up an uneasy alliance. Melanie glanced at her rival with a cautious glare. "Truce. In the name of ice cream."

Neo nodded seriously before slapping Roman upside the head for good measure. A dainty handshake sealed the deal.

"I get no respect around here," the "master thief" complained. One of these days, I'd have to introduce him to Alec. The two could compete to see who annoyed the other more.

To be honest, I considered the fact that this was the "kingpin of Vale" to be a good sign of the effectiveness of the local law enforcement. Were I in their place, I too would leave the relatively harmless man in power.

More than anything, there seemed to be a gentleman's agreement between the criminal and lawful elements of the city. With the grimm being attracted to negative emotions, the criminals tried to keep things relatively bloodless for the most part and, in many cases, policed their own who went too far. Or, at the very least, they kept things out of the public eye.

"Deeds, not words, Roman," I chided. "If you want respect, you earn it. With raspberry cheesecake ice cream and drizzled honey.."

"Damn straight," the twins chorused, grabbing their bowls with relish. Neo's only remained on the counter because she'd already taken it and replaced it with an illusion, all the better to bait out and punish would-be ice cream thieves.

Our peace was disturbed when, with the flow of petals, Ruby Rose settled into an empty bar stool. She dumped my ingot of lunar cold iron onto the table with a pouty huff. "Here."

I blinked in confusion. "What? You don't like it? Do you have any idea how much this costs?"

"Well…"

"Didn't you say you wanted something more durable so you could increase the caliber?"

"I did…"

"And?"

She looked down with a heated blush and mumbled, too quiet for most to hear, "I couldn't melt it…"

I snorted in laughter. It made sense in hindsight. Lunar cold iron was a highly, magically durable metal. It was so impressive that the Four Heavenly Beasts used it as the primary metal in the alloy that made up their weapons. Chang'e made her satellites out of it when she took to copying the Chinese space program for funsies. In other words, it was a metal that would not be found lacking when compared to some of the most magically powerful objects in the Netherworld. If this ingot appeared in a mortal auction in my old world, magical families would beggar themselves to have it.

But by the same token, such heavenly durability meant it was impossible to forge through mundane means. It wasn't just heat that was the issue. It was the lack of mana to synchronize and mold the metal into its liquid form, mana that no one on Remnant knew how to properly manipulate.

Forging it would have been a challenge for the greatest smiths in my world, those who worked directly under Luo Hao, Annie, and the like. Being able to present a weapon made of this metal would enshrine that mortal smith as among the best in his generation, a proof of mastery not dissimilar to the WGO's triple platinum stars for chefs. Here, where knowledge of magic had faded into myth? I may as well have asked Ruby to mold a black hole into a hat.

"Wow… I really need to spend more time with mortals…" I muttered under my breath. How could I have forgotten something so obvious? "Alright, are there any forges nearby we can borrow? I can forge it if you give me the appropriate design."

"You can?"

"Of course I can."

Miltia sighed, her spoon paused halfway to her dainty lips. "Let me get this straight, bun-bun. You have a metal that a professional forge at a huntsman prep school can't melt."

"Yes."

"And you can just melt it whenever you want."

"Yup."

She sent her sister a longsuffering look. "One more for Tianyu's Tianyu-ness?"

"Sounds like it," Melanie said, shrugging ambivalently. "Just deal, sis. Tianyu doesn't make sense."

"I don't know what I was expecting. Where did you get something like this anyway?"

"The moon," I spoke honestly. "Baihu likes to dig them up once in a while."

"Fine, it's a secret. I get it."

'I wasn't lying though?"

"Sure, bun-bun."

I rolled my eyes. One of these days, I'd have to take them to the Lunar Palace proper. They'd love Laura. They can commiserate over having the privilege (misfortune) of being my students. Or my first student would take out her repressed trauma on them and make them peel potatoes for a week straight. Either way, it promised to be amusing.

Roman stared curiously at the ingot. "So… A metal even huntsman-grade smiths can't touch? How much would this be worth, do you think?"

"Neo's lifetime ice cream privileges," I deadpanned. "Neo, he touches that, shove your umbrella up his ass, won't you?"

The dessert-themed girl nodded so fast her head looked like a blur. Or she used her Semblance. Either way, Roman decided to find other marks. "Che, it's worthless if I can't make anything out of it anyway."

Ruby tapped the ingot. "So… You'll help me make my baby?"

"Sure, Ruby," I said, ruffling her hair. She batted at my hand in indignation. "Take me to a forge tomorrow evening. I can leave the kitchen to Jeremy."

"Okay. You promised, baby-killer."

"You know, the way you talk, this'll mean we're making a baby together," I teased.

Her face burned an atomic red as the bar devolved into giggles. "That's a lie!"

"What? That you want to be my babymama?"

"No!"

"Yes."

"No!"

"Yes."

"Aaahhhh!" she ran out of the club in a burst of rose petals.

"Well, that's one way to get rid of the goody two shoes," Melanie said. She leaned back, her bowl empty and tummy satisfied. "That was great, bun-bun."

"You're very welcome, Mel," I nodded, always happy to hear from a full customer.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Roman tossed a plastic card on the table. Black, with a magnetic strip along one side. I nodded and slid it into the register. Whatever else could be said about the asshat, he was also the type to grossly overpay for the sake of appearances.

"I don't know how you can stomach that stuff. Way too sweet, not like a dignified negroni," he huffed. "Come on, Neo, we've got work to do, heists to plan."

"Come again, you two," I called. Maybe it was my century of having to be related to Alec, but the "master thief" didn't get on my nerves nearly as much as I'd expected. I could appreciate a man who appreciated a great cocktail.

X

That was how I found myself awaiting one Ruby Rose outside an address she sent me. Malcolm's Smithy was a shop catered towards huntsmen, one of the best in the city according to Junior. He was also a contact of one Taiyang Xiao Long, father of the idiot siblings. Ruby apparently got him to loan us his forge for the evening after standard business hours.

"Let's make a baby!" Ruby cried as she arrived in a torrent of rose petals.

I reached out and snatched her out of the air, gripping her cheeks with one hand until she hung in the air by her face. "No. We are not making a baby. We are making a weapon. Stop trying to get me registered as a pedophile, you insolent brat."

"Cweshen Woze ish mah babee," she moaned through squished cheeks. I let her flail around for a while longer before dropping her.

"Come on, ya little menace."

We strolled inside to find Malcolm waiting for us. If I didn't know any better, I'd have thought he was one of Dvalin's brood. The man was a dead ringer for a dwarf in every way. He was a good four inches shorter than me, with arms as thick as my head and a long, shaggy beard laden with soot.

He also had the least impressed look on his face I'd seen in a long time. "So you're Tai's brat, eh?" he muttered gruffly. "How the hell did you break your weapon in four months?"

"I didn't!" Ruby cried. She pointed to me like I was the source of all the world's evils. "He's the one who murdered Crescent Rose!"

I rolled my eyes. "And I'm making you a new scythe. Now come on, brat. Malcolm, right? Thank you for lending us your forge for the evening."

"You know, it takes longer than an evening to forge a mechashift weapon. You'll be here tomorrow too, I reckon. You two are just lucky I owe Tai a few favors."

"Ehh, it won't take long. I just need the plans from Ruby."

"Hmph, I'll be watching to make sure you two don't blow up my forge."

"Hey, I made Crescent Rose on my own," Ruby protested.

"I learned from Dvalin and Odin. I'll be fine," I added.

"I'll be the judge of that. Come on," Malcolm said gruffly.

He took us into a side room, past a storage area with various ingots of steel, coal, and quenching oil. I nodded with approval. The man kept a clean smithy, a challenge in itself considering the profession. He seemed like a man dedicated to his craft, someone I could respect.

He began putting fuel into the fire and handed me a hammer. "Well, lad? Show me what you can do."

I nodded and removed the lunar cold iron from my pocket. I took the plans from Ruby and looked them over.

All told, Crescent Rose Mk. II looked remarkably like the original. It had a three-sectioned foldout blade, two claws on the opposite side of the head that I assumed doubled as sights when using her rifle, and a shaft that doubled as a sniper rifle, scope and all.

She'd outlined on one page all the differences this model would have compared to the first. To start, the shaft was a little bit thicker to accommodate a higher caliber. The magazine was also a little bit longer as a consequence. There was also a secondary magazine that was smaller than the first and housed only four rounds. A toggle mechanism had been added next to the trigger so she could switch between her regular fare and specialized bullets, which she described as "boom babies."

I stared at the design and took a deep breath. The more I saw of her weapon, the more ridiculous it seemed. I had to try.

"Ruby… I know you love your weapon, but have you considered… making more adjustments?" I asked gently.

She stared at me suspiciously. "Like what? My baby needs to be a rifle, my entire fighting style is based on it."

"Right, you use its recoil to augment your Semblance. Okay, show me how you fire your weapon."

"There are two ways actually," she chirped happily. She pointed to a diagram of Crescent Rose in which the shaft was partially extended while the blade remained folded inward. "I can fire her like this and use the scope like a normal rifle. Or, I can unfold my baby all the way and plant her into the ground."

"So… If the shaft is as long as you are, and the butt is bladed so you can't brace it against your shoulder, how do you use the rifle scope when your weapon's unfolded all the way? Do you just kneel awkwardly, sling the shaft under your arm, and lean into the shaft to peek through the scope?"

"Well… I don't…?"

"Okay, let's try this again. How far is the longest distance you've successfully shot at?"

"Umm… I don't really know…"

"From your fighting style, less than a hundred yards, right? You're pretty fast, but you still need to be relatively close if you want to back up your squad as a huntress, yes?"

"Yeah? But the scope looks so cool!" she pouted. Had to admit, it was kinda cute, in a "child who didn't want to give up her stuffed animal" sorta way.

"You get my point, right? The scope is only useful sometimes, and most huntsman combat isn't going to require it. I think you should make it a detachable module instead of something folded into your rifle. You can carry it in a pouch next to your spare magazines and clip it on when you need it."

"What if I need it really quickly?"

"It shouldn't take you more than three seconds to clip on a scope if we make the attachments right. And if you, someone with a speed Semblance, can't spare three seconds, that's not the time for a scope."

"Fiinnneeee…"

I nodded happily. I was a little surprised I'd gotten through to her on even something like this. "Don't worry, it's not like Crescent Rose is losing any functionality. If anything, it's better this way since you can block with the shaft and swing it around like a melee weapon without potentially damaging the scope's glass."

"Okay, what else…?"

"Is there any way to not have the magazine get in the way when you fight? Like, don't you sometimes slide your hand along the shaft and catch your finger against it on accident?"

"I used to when Uncle Qrow first started training me," she admitted, "but I like it! I want everyone to be able to tell that my baby is also a gun!"

Seeing that I wouldn't get anywhere on that front, I decided to let her have the impractical weapon. Truly, a design like this could only have come from someone like Ruby. Scythes, like axes, tended to have handles that sloped gently to be more ergonomic, so as to minimize the jarring recoil from striking something with a lot of force. Unfortunately, a rifle barrel obviously couldn't be sloped. It wasn't the worst thing in the world, but it suggested to me that Ruby was more interested in the rule of cool than having a perfectly optimal weapon. If I presented something like this to Dvalin, he'd skin me alive.

"Fine, magazine, grip, and all the other basics of a rifle need to stay. But why is the sight a claw? And why is it facing towards you? If you ever need to hit something with a backswing, wouldn't having something that sticks straighter up like the claw of a hammer be better?"

"True… It does get a bit hard to aim through… Okay, how about this?" She scribbled something into the blueprint until the blades of the claw were angled the same as the main scythe. "This way, if I swing backwards, my baby can follow the same arc."

"That sounds fine. Are we good to start forging now?"

"Y-Yeah. Can you really make all this in one evening?"

I nodded. I flared the wu xing seal, mostly for show, and let the character for "fire" glow hot. I then stuck my hand into the forge that Malcolm prepared, ignoring their gasp of surprise. "Relax. I've done this before."

Inside the furnace, so the room wouldn't get too unbearably hot for my spectators, I channeled more qi into the flame until the fire started to glow a worrying white. Taking the lunar cold iron, I began to stretch it like taffy. The ingot was already pure so there was no need to fold it to remove impurities, but I did it a few times anyway so I could feed mana into it and make it more malleable.

I removed the glowing ingot but did not place it onto the anvil. I couldn't, or the cast iron would deform from the heat. Instead, I held it in my hands and began to knead it like pastry dough. Dvalin used to make fun of me, saying a chef would always be a chef, even in the forge.

He wasn't wrong.

Piece by piece, I molded it all into shape. It was as much my mana as my memory and artisanship. The magic remembered what I wanted. I was the moon, and so was this lunar cold iron. As the Jade Rabbit, my will was its reality. Occasionally, I'd take a finished piece and drop the heat rapidly, effectively doing the same thing as if I'd quenched it in oil manually.

The most challenging part of it all was fitting the glass lenses into the new scope.

I was cheating. Dvalin would probably smack me with his hammer and tell me to try this bullshit on something that wasn't of the moon. Everything I just did was an insult to smiths everywhere who'd spent their entire lifetime mastering their craft, but that was fine. I never claimed to be a master smith, merely a hobbyist.

A single hour later, I presented Ruby with her new weapon. "Here you are, Crescent Rose Mk. II. Don't worry, it's cooled already."

Malcolm stared at me as if he'd seen a ghost. Or Dvalin himself. "What… How in Brothers' name did you…"

"Don't stress, Malcolm. Seriously, just think of me as a freak of nature and move on."

"THAT WAS SO COOL!" Ruby squealed. She grabbed her new weapon, still an unpainted silvery-gray, and tested out its mechashift functions. "Where did you learn to do that?"

"I told you, I cook for people and they sometimes offer me something other than money to pay their tabs. One of them happens to be a very good smith."

"That wasn't smithing, boy," Malcolm grumbled. "I don't know what that was, but that wasn't smithing."

"I know. It drives Dvalin insane too, says I'm a disgrace to smiths everywhere. It's fine; I'm a chef. Fucker likes to cook steak on a toasty anvil just to piss me off too so we're even."

In the end, the two of us left a still flabbergasted Malcolm after I "forged" a few magazines for Ruby. The little reaper skipped happily along as she hummed to herself, Crescent Rose swinging through the air.

I reached out and caught the blade between two fingers. "Put it away, Ruby. Don't swing it while walking down the sidewalk; you look like a serial killer."

She pouted but folded it up and slotted it in a holster at the small of her back. "Fine… So… Are you going to go home now?"

"Hmm… I suppose I could. It's only nine now but I did give Jeremy the kitchen tonight… Why? Did you have somewhere else you wanted to be?"

"We need to paint my baby! And I could use more dust rounds! Oh, and how does engraving work?"

"Didn't you say you didn't want your 'baby' to get tattoos?" I teased.

"That was before you proved you knew what you were talking about."

"This brat…"

"So?"

"Fine, but we need some dust. Let's go get that first since you can paint without me."

"Okay, come on! I know a place that opens late!"

She regaled me with different combinations of dust enchantments she'd want. In the end, we settled for gravity to make her weapon heavier or lighter, and wind to give her a decent array of options at all ranges.

Author's Note

Fantasy smiths are bullshit. But if you have absurd heat resistance and elemental mastery, why bother with any of the regular bells and whistles?

I considered completely revamping Crescent Rose, but I realized it'd be very much against Ruby's personality to make sweeping changes to her "baby." At this stage in canon, I see her as a bit of a showoff, someone who's been raised on tales of heroics and wants the flashy weapon, the cool combos, and the heroic entrances. She's not really thinking about the "optimal" weapon, more just the thing that'd make her look cool while being (sorta) viable. Even the enchantments are going to be fairly basic as far as magic weapons go.

Thank you for reading. To reach a wider audience, and because I enjoy a more forum-like setup to facilitate discussion, I like to crosspost to a wide variety of websites. You can find them all on my Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/fabled.webs.