Chapter Text
Ruby Rose fiddled with Scuttlerose 2.0 at her desk, sitting cross-legged on her chair in her childhood room—well, hers and Yang’s, as they did share the space. The walls had posters of her favorite bands and movies, the occasional blueprint she’d left up as a way of visualizing all the things she’d made—or planned to make but never did—and plenty of holdovers from many short-lived hobbies laid strewn in random places in the area, all vying for space with Yang’s things. “So Torchwick ran away, blew up the whole place, and then I passed out from blood loss,” Ruby said, finishing her story.
“Wow,” Penny Polendina said from the computer terminal on Ruby’s desk, which she had installed herself. The video feed of the redhead from Atlas was still laggy and inconsistent—the connection on the island of Patch was weaker, as it wasn’t close to the Cross-Continental Transmit tower in Vale, and the relay towers elsewhere were unreliable at best. She was lucky that she had a signal at all, really. “That is amazing. What happened after?”
Ruby shrugged, setting a small screwdriver aside and holding Scuttlerose 2.0 up to the light before picking the tool back up and grabbing a tiny screw. “Well, after I got out of the hospital, Ozpin scolded us for breaking a whole lot of school rules, Torchwick’s gang went quiet, and we didn’t hear about any new dust robberies. We tried to focus on schoolwork the rest of the semester—oh, and I’m sixteen now! Yang threw a little party for my birthday and invited all our friends—I really wish you could’ve come; it was fun.”
“Maybe next year!” Penny said, hopeful. “It’s just too risky traveling right now—I hear that the Grimm have been riled up lately.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that too,” Ruby said. “But even Weiss was nice… well, nice by Weiss standards anyway.”
“How were your grades?”
Ruby dropped the screw, bending down under her desk and looking for it with a grunt that was partially from effort and partially from frustration. “Well… I wish I did better. A lot of my academic scores weren’t great—I’m lucky I did so well in practical applications.” Ruby found the screw, clutching it between her fingers and sitting back up, returning to screwing it into Scuttlerose 2.0. “How about you?”
“Great!” Penny said, her video feed briefly hitching on the smile. “And I’ve even been getting along with my team more—I think that being your friend made it easier.”
“That’s awesome, Penny!” Ruby said, setting Scuttlerose 2.0 aside for the moment. She laughed to herself. “I never thought I’d hear someone say they had an easier time making friends because of me.”
“I really hope you can come and meet them someday,” Penny said. “I suppose you may see us at the Vytal Festival.”
“I’m so excited for that—and to see you in person again,” Ruby said. It was strange how fast it had come up—the festival felt like it was years away last semester.
Penny looked away from her computer for a moment. She turned back. “Sorry, I think my father needs me for something.”
“No worries,” Ruby said. “Call you again soon, okay?”
Penny nodded, and the video call closed. Ruby sat in her chair for a moment, feeling warm—talking to a good friend had that effect, and she was glad to have one like Penny. She just wished they lived closer together so they could visit each other.
Ruby heard laughter coming from outside—her father and Yang were both out there, and when she heard barking, she knew the family dog, Zwei, was as well. Ruby quickly grabbed her boots and Crescent Rose, charging outside.
“What are you guys doing?” Ruby asked, sitting down on the front doorstep after opening the door as she pulled on her boots.
Ruby’s father, Taiyang Xiao Long, had his hands up with a pair of punching mitts on, which looked like they’d seen their fair share of use over the years. Yang was facing him with sports tape over her hands and fingers, fists raised. Zwei was lying in the grass nearby, the white and black corgi cocking his head to the side, ears perking up at Ruby’s voice. Yang shot a glance behind her toward Ruby. “Training.”
Ruby stood, pulling her last boot on and hopping on one foot as she did so. Once it was on, she ran into the grassy clearing surrounding the small cottage home. “I have some stuff I want to show you.”
Ruby’s father perked up. “Show us what you made, kiddo!” Taiyang always encouraged his daughters’ interests… sometimes, a little too much, as various chips in the walls and scorched wood in the house indicated some of Ruby’s past inventions—or mishaps, as some might call them—weren’t the most stable. Taiyang always just accepted them as the quirks of her creations.
Yang’s posture relaxed, and she shook out one of her hands.
“Check this out,” Ruby said, pulling out and extending Crescent Rose into a scythe—then, she tapped a few buttons in sequence, causing the blades to shift, lining up parallel to the shaft as that condensed. The blades shifted back so as to make them roughly bend in the other direction, an outward curve instead of inward. In a short time, Ruby was standing with what was, in essence, a sword. “How’s that?”
Taiyang smiled and clapped. “And what inspired this?”
Ruby made a few test swings, feeling out the weight. “It’s hard to use a scythe in small spaces—I added this mode so that there’s less for me to swing around. And it’s like Uncle Qrow’s weapon too. It’s still a little big, so I might have to work on something else later, but I thought this would be a good start.”
“Smart,” Yang said. Then she smirked. “But, just throwing this out there—maybe the reason Crescent Rose can have… issues… is because you keep putting new features into it before you fix the ones that it already has.”
Ruby pouted. She tapped the button sequence out again, transforming the weapon back to a scythe—though, as if it intended to illustrate Yang’s point, the blade got stuck in its parallel position. She sighed, fiddling with the jam until the edge sprung into the proper place—nearly taking her hand with it and making her yelp in surprise.
“You okay?” Taiyang said, already taking steps toward Ruby.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Ruby said, though she didn’t sound happy about it. She collapsed Crescent Rose and set it down in the grass. “That’s not all, though.”
“Oh boy,” Yang said.
Zwei groomed himself, apparently disinterested in the realm of human invention.
Ruby grinned, clicking her boots together—two wheels sprung from the heel. She started to roll around with them on the grass, of all things, gliding across it like it was a smooth floor. “I made these to help me get around a little faster in fights without having to use my semblance,” she explained, skating a circle around her sister and father. “And I learned how to use my aura with it so I can skate on rough surfaces too.”
She tapped her boots together again, making the wheels retract as she stood before her family.
“You’ve been busy,” Taiyang said with an impressed chuckle. “Nice work.”
“Thanks,” Ruby said. The truth was the reason she’d been so busy was that she couldn’t stop replaying the night at the funhouse in her head over and over and over, turning it and looking at it from every conceivable angle to find the things she should’ve done differently. It had turned into a bit of an obsession.
Yang’s stomach growled. She patted it with her hand. “Hey, Dad, we having dinner soon?”
Taiyang looked at the sky, the sun lowering on the horizon. “Yeah, let’s eat—it’s getting dark.”
Zwei ran ahead of them into the house, barking for the humans to hurry up as Taiyang draped his arms over his two daughter’s shoulders, all of them walking inside together. It was nice to be with her family again, Ruby thought. Even though she still wished her mom could be there with them.