Re-Forged (Rewrite)
Reforged
The armoury of Beacon Academy was located on the far edge of the campus, where the noise of the machining and the machinery could not disturb the air, or more importantly, the students. It was past the farm, with its clucking chickens and the goat whom Sunset kept an eye on as they passed, and getting there involved following a path which was sometimes gravel and sometimes just plain dirt, before the team arrived at last at their destination.
The armoury was a tallish building, but shaped in a way that made it seem kind of squat all the same; the walls leaned inwards a little, so that the armoury narrowed towards the top like some kind of chimney stack. It was black, unlike the grey stone of most of the other buildings at Beacon, and the windows were only translucent, so that you couldn't see much on the other side of them except colours: hot colours, bright reds and oranges, as if an inferno were blazing away inside.
“Are you sure that you’re okay to do this, Pyrrha?” Jaune asked as they approached. “I mean, I know that you—”
“My honour is not so important as your sword,” Pyrrha assured him. “I’m sure that Cinder will not begrudge me this slight tardiness.”
The doors were metal and locked, but Ruby — who was in the lead — held up her scroll to swipe it over a scanner mounted into the black wall, and both the metal doors swung open inwards, like the entrance to a creepy old temple opening up to lure in unwary treasure hunters.
Walking inside, all four members of Team SAPR found themselves upon a metal walkway suspended over a sharp drop downwards to a basement level where hot furnaces belched fire, smoke rising as the flames licked upwards from their dark, charred pits.
The metal walkway upon which they stood, and upon which their feet rattled as they moved, ran all around the wall of the armoury, save along the eastern wall where there was instead a ramp sloping downwards into the pit. The four of them walked down it. Over his shoulder, Jaune wore a satchel bag containing the shards of Crocea Mors; the pieces of the blade clattered together every so often, moreso it seemed as they began to walk downwards; just so long as they didn't slice open the bag and come spilling out to drop to the floor below, that would be fine. He didn't have any other parts for his new sword that Ruby had designed for him — he had contributed ideas, but it was Ruby who had turned those ideas into something that could be physically manufactured — since Ruby said that they were going to make them themselves, here in the armoury.
Jaune couldn't help but think that that would translate to Ruby making the parts here in the armoury and hoped that they weren't — that he wasn't — putting too much work upon her shoulders.
As they descended, the heat of the fires began to strike at Jaune's face, slapping him repeatedly as the flames flickered. He could feel the heat of the air when he breathed and found that already he could hardly imagine what it would be like to stay here for hours, days, longer perhaps. Now he understood why Pyrrha had insisted on bringing some bottles of water with them.
He couldn't help but wonder how long this was going to take.
As they reached the bottom of the pit, Jaune saw that there was someone down there already: a young man, if a few years older than him — but certainly not much older than a new graduate or a fourth-year student — a pretty man, in a way that might have made him jealous if he hadn't had so much faith in Pyrrha; a man with long brown hair tied back in a queue and a pencil moustache dignifying his upper lip. He was tall — about Jaune's height — and slender, dressed in a shirt that had been white before it became stained with suit and ash and much else besides, a neckerchief equally stained tied around his neck, and dark trousers. He was holding a sword in one hand, a slender rapier with a gilded hilt and guard. The blade glimmered in the light of the furnaces.
"Wow! That looks really awesome, Mister Turner!" Ruby called as she leapt off the ramp and led the way rapidly across the spacious chamber towards the man and his sword. "Is that a new one?"
The man — Mister Turner — turned to face her, still gripping the blade firmly in one hand. "Ruby," he greeted her cheerfully. "Nice to see you again; and yes, this is new. Folded steel, gold leaf laid into the handle, the tang is nearly—"
"The full width of the blade," Ruby finished.
Mister Turner smiled. "You have a good eye."
Ruby smiled. "Thanks. Is it for you?"
Mister Turner laughed. "No. This is an order for General Blackthorn, placed by the First Councillor to celebrate the good general's promotion."
"Ah," Ruby murmured. "That's a pity."
Mister Turner blinked. "'A pity'?"
"A general isn't going to get much use out of it, is he?" Ruby asked. "It's just going to sit on his hip, looking pretty."
"Perhaps," Mister Turner conceded. "But if he should ever have need of a sword, he will have the best." He glanced past Ruby towards the other members of the team. "And these must be your teammates."
"Yep," Ruby agreed. "This is Sunset Shimmer, Jaune Arc, and Pyrrha Nikos. Everyone, this is Will Turner, the assistant armourer."
"You know him?" Sunset said.
"Yeah, I've come here sometimes to work on Crescent Rose," Ruby explained.
"And you make swords for people outside of the school?" Jaune asked. "You must be pretty good."
Mister Turner shrugged. "If people appreciate my work, then who am I to say that they are wrong? So, Jaune, I understand it's your sword that you're all here to reforge?"
Jaune nodded. "That's right."
"Well, I'm sure you'll be in good hands with Ruby," Mister Turner said. "But if you need anything, I'll be around. For the most part; I do need to deliver this to Councillor Emerald."
"What about your boss?" Sunset asked. "The actual armourer."
"He's on vacation at the moment," Mister Turner explained. "Ruby, will you be all right here on your own for a little bit?"
"Oh, yeah, sure," Ruby assured him. "We'll be fine."
Mister Turner smiled, nodded, and placed the sword in a blue case, closing the lid and tucking the box beneath his arm before he began to walk towards the slope that led out towards the rest of Beacon and the world beyond.
"You know," Ruby said, "I've never actually seen the armourer, just Mister Turner."
"Perhaps he's very busy," Pyrrha suggested.
"Probably," Ruby agreed. "Anyway, since we're here, we should probably get started."
"Great," Jaune agreed. He paused for a moment. "Where do we start?"
They started, it turned out, in the machining room, which lay beyond a couple of doors leading out of the great chamber containing the furnaces. Here, there were all kinds of machining tools for the manufacture and adjustment of parts, although exactly what parts each machine made, Jaune really couldn't tell. All he knew was that the room was full of tools, and they made parts here.
I'm really going to need Ruby's help with this, aren't I?
"We start," Ruby informed them all, "by remaking the hilt; once we've done that, once the dust mechanism and everything else works, then we can reforge the sword and be sure that it's going to fit into the adjusted hilt — and your scabbard, of course."
"Right," said Jaune. "And … where do we start with that, exactly?"
It turned out that, although Jaune was completely new at this, and although he had no idea what these machining tools did, he was able to avoid relying too much on Ruby by insisting that she could only tell him, or show him, what it was that he needed to do. For the final piece, for the piece that would actually form part of the rebuilt and reforged Crocea Mors, he insisted upon doing it himself: he would make the part, he would bore the diameter, he would dismantle this or assemble that. It didn't make the process quick by any means; in fact, it made it a lot more drawn out than it would have been if he'd just let Ruby do it, but as much as he flailed about at times, as much as he broke things — only the would-be parts of his new sword, thankfully, and not the machining tools — and as much as he probably would have taken his arm off at least once if it weren't for his aura, Jaune was glad that he insisted otherwise, insisted upon having a hand — both hands, most often — in the production.
After all, this was his sword, his weapon. Dad had told him to make Crocea Mors his own, and what better way to do that than by actually making it? Ruby had made Crescent Rose with her own two hands, and while Sunset hadn't made the parts, she had put them all together herself. Pyrrha … he hadn't actually asked Pyrrha about it, but he'd be astonished if she hadn't been involved somehow.
After all, they said that all the best weapons had a piece of the wielder's soul inside of it. That hadn't been true of him and Crocea Mors, and while it certainly wasn't the only reason why he wasn't up to their level … maybe it was a part of it.
In any case, it was an issue that he had a chance to correct, and he wasn't going to miss it.
Which isn't to say that he didn't accept any help from the others. While he wouldn't let Ruby do the work for him, he would have been lost without instructions. When something was especially fiddly, where he needed a particularly steady hand, Pyrrha was willing to help steady anything metal with her semblance to ensure that he could slot things together properly without breaking anything or messing it up in any way. And as work on the hilt progressed, Sunset helped turn some of the dull metal into something a little cooler-looking.
Nevertheless, Jaune was doing most of the work himself, and while he wouldn't have had it any other way, it was still hard work, and it wasn't made any easier by the heat coming in from the furnaces next door. And so, taking a quick break, he left the armoury, climbing up the ramp and onto the high walkway, exiting onto the grounds of Beacon where the air was crisp and cool and fresh.
He sat down just beyond the armoury doors, resting his elbows upon his knees, his hands drooping towards the ground.
"Thirsty?" Pyrrha asked, holding out a bottle of water as she sat down beside him.
"Thanks," Jaune said, taking the bottle from her hands and unscrewing the white plastic cap. He squeezed the bottle a little between his fingers as he drank from it, pouring the liquid down his parched throat. The water wasn't cool by any means — it had been down in the armoury for too long — but he wasn't in very much position to care.
Jaune lowered the bottle and wiped the sweat from his brow with his other hand. "How's it going?"
"How do you think it's going?" Pyrrha asked. "It's your weapon."
"Yeah, but I don't exactly know what I'm doing," Jaune pointed out.
"You say that as though I do," Pyrrha said. "I'm sure that Ruby would let you know if things weren't going well."
"Yeah, I'm sure she would," Jaune agreed. He paused for a moment, and drank some more water from the bottle. "You didn't make Miló yourself, then?"
Pyrrha shook her head. "All my weapons," she explained, "were forged by Hephaestus, one of the greatest smiths in Mistral, although as I grew older, I was able to get more involved in the creation myself."
"When you say all of your weapons—”
"I didn't always use Miló and Akoúo̱," Pyrrha said. "My training began when I was very young, and so did my tournament career. My weapons have … I would say they have grown up with me, but the truth is that, as I grew up, I left them behind."
"But they were always the same kind of weapons, I guess," Jaune said. "Otherwise, you would have had to start your training all over again."
"Indeed," Pyrrha replied. "My first weapon was a spear called Steropes and a shield called Brontes; both very simple, no mode shifting, no unnecessary complications. When I had gained some affinity with the spear, I was given a sword, Arges, and thereafter my first gun.”
“What was that called?” asked Jaune.
Pyrrha paused for a moment. “My mother made the mistake of letting me name the gun, young though I was.”
Jaune grinned. “Come on, you’ve got to tell me now.”
Pyrrha glanced downwards. “'Pyrrha’s Gun,'” she said.
Jaune snorted. “There could have been worse choices.”
“Perhaps,” Pyrrha agreed. “But Mother didn’t let me choose the names again until I was old enough to appreciate the gravity of it and the solemnity with which it should be approached.” She looked at him. “Will you keep the name Crocea Mors?”
“I… yeah,” Jaune said. “I mean, why wouldn’t I?”
“Sometimes, when a weapon is shattered and then reforged, it is also renamed,” Pyrrha said. “Especially if it is coming into the possession of a new owner who wishes to put their own stamp on it.”
Jaune thought about that for a moment … but while it was possible to think about changing the name, actually thinking about a name which he might change it to was a little more difficult. Besides, while he hadn’t considered the idea before, now that it had been brought to his attention, it wasn’t really grabbing him.
“I think I’ll keep it,” he said. “After all, it’s enough that I’m completely changing the sword from what it was when my ancestors used it; I don’t want to lose all connection to what it was and to who came before me.”
Pyrrha smiled. “Very well then,” she said. “Crocea Mors it shall remain. And you shall do it further honour, I have no doubt, until the time comes…”
Until the time comes to pass it to one of our kids? Jaune wondered, guessing that was what she meant but had not quite said. It was a lovely thought, but at the same time … Jaune wondered if it wasn’t too much. He already had the family ring, to give to Pyrrha when he felt like he was ready to ask — and when he felt like she’d say yes, too — to also keep the family sword, permanently … was it a bit much?
“I … don’t know,” Jaune admitted. “I’m wondering if maybe, when the time comes for me to retire, I should send the sword back home, for River’s kid or one of my other nephews to use.”
“Or perhaps it is time to retire the idea of an ancestral family weapon?” Pyrrha suggested. “I do not bear the weapon of my huntsman father or my esteemed tournament champion mother. Rather, I use my own weapons, made for me, as this new Crocea Mors will be made for you. While a simple sword and shield can be learned by anyone, these modifications—”
“Might not suit anyone else’s style or technique,” Jaune finished. “That … that’s a good point. I don’t know, not like we need to make a decision on it right now, anyway, right?”
Pyrrha smiled. “No, indeed.”
Jaune drank some more of his water; the bottle was about halfway drained by this point. “Thanks for this,” he said again as he climbed to his feet. “I think I’m ready to get back to work now.”
And so he descended back into the armoury, back into the heat of the forges, back into the machining room, and there, with the help of his friends, he laboured until the hilt was complete.
It was heavier now than it had been before — it could hardly have been otherwise, given what was being built into it — which was unfortunately going to mess with the balance a little bit but which was, at the same time, unavoidable if any changes were going to be made to the sword whatsoever. Ruby said that there were ways of reforging the blade that would counteract that, but judging by the look on Pyrrha’s face, Jaune thought that she might have doubts about the idea of making the blade part of the sword heavier than it already was.
It was wider now, heavier, yes, but also more ornate, the crossguard rising at the tips, pointing in the same direction as the blade would, and in the centre forming a golden arrow pointing down the blade — or at least, it would once there was a blade again. The gold — or gilded metal; Sunset had cast a spell on it to make it look gold, but Jaune wasn’t sure that it actually was gold; probably not — was ornately decorated with swirling patterns, and set on each side with a pair of sapphires set together so that they almost looked like eyes, and each pair paired with two emeralds sitting on the extreme wings of the guard.
Again, Jaune didn’t think that they were real gems, but Sunset had certainly made them seem that way.
The grip remained much as it had, long enough to grip the sword easily in one hand, wrapped around with strips of blue leather criss-crossing up towards the pommel, but the pommel itself was set with what appeared to be a very large sapphire, the size of a duck’s egg, gleaming brightly on the end of the sword.
This was definitely not a sapphire; rather, it was the container for a canister of dust, although it did help disguise what kind of dust he was using on any given day. Rather than add in a revolver function, such as Weiss or Russel used, Ruby had suggested a simpler system whereby there was only one dust canister in the sword at any one time, but with the capacity to easily switch it out if needed. And so, once a dust canister — he didn’t actually have any dust yet; buying some was next on his to-do list once the sword was finished — was inserted into the gem, the dust would travel down the two pipes that ran through the hilt to be expelled through the holes which sat on either side of the crossguard. Once activated, by a trigger built into the hilt at the point where his thumb generally rested when he was using the sword — Ruby had had him draw the broken sword from its scabbard at least twenty times to be sure of getting the position right — fire or ice or whatever else he liked would erupt down the blade.
Once the blade was reforged.
For now, Jaune was the proud owner of a new hilt, a hilt which he brandished aloft. “What do you guys think?”
“It needs a sword,” Sunset said.
“Sunset!” Ruby scolded her.
“How does it feel, Jaune?” Pyrrha asked. “You are the one who has to wield it, not us.”
“It feels…” Jaune paused, swiping the bladeless hilt through the air experimentally. “It’s … different, to how it was before, but so am I. It’s better.” And so am I.
Pyrrha nodded, and a smile graced the corners of her lips.
“So,” Jaune went on. “Now for the sword.”
So Jaune passed out of the machining room and into the forge, where the air was even hotter as the flames of the furnaces rose up, and amongst the flames, chest bare, he laboured to reforge his broken blade, melting the broken shards down in the hot fires and casting them anew into the mould.
The renewed blade was joined to the newly fashioned hilt, and just like that, Crocea Mors was born anew.
And Jaune Arc was armed once more.
“So,” Jaune said, “where shall we go to get dust? Where do you go to get dust?”
The four of them now stood in Vale; none of them were armed, save only for Jaune, who wore his new sword proudly at his hip — and why shouldn’t he? It was, after all, brand new. Brand new, remade, reforged; he had a right to show it off a little bit.
Sunset would have done the same in his position.
“I shouldn’t say this, but I always buy from the SDC,” Sunset said. “Well, I buy from DustWorld, the SDC retail subsidiary.”
“Why don’t we try From Dust Till Dawn?” Ruby suggested. “You know it reopened after the robbery around the start of last semester.”
“No, let’s not go there,” Sunset said.
“'Robbery'?” Pyrrha repeated. “Is this where the two of you—?”
“Yes, it’s where we met, but we’re not going back,” Sunset said. “The owner is a racist.”
“Really?” Ruby asked.
“Yes!” Sunset insisted. “He kept me waiting forever, refusing to serve me because I’m a faunus. If he had done his job and not been such a bigot about things, I wouldn’t have even been in that store when Torchwick arrived.”
“Then it’s a good thing for him that he didn’t, huh?” Ruby replied.
Sunset pouted. “Perhaps,” she conceded. “But that doesn’t make him any more of a pleasant person or any more of a person that I want to spend a lot of time around.”
“I’d like to see how he’s doing,” Ruby said. “Just to make sure that he’s okay and that he got back on his feet. Wouldn’t you like to know that it all worked out okay?”
Not really; it wouldn’t bother Sunset if the man had gone out of business permanently; it would have served him right. However, with as much grace as she could muster, she relented. “Very well, let’s go to From Dust Till Dawn, but if he doesn’t have what Jaune’s looking for, then we go to DustWorld.”
So they headed through the streets of Vale in search of the dust shop that had brought Sunset and Ruby together and brought Ruby into Beacon two years early. It was getting a little close to dusk as they moved through the city, the sun beginning to sink in the horizon, yielding the sky to darkness, to the stars, and to the lights of General Ironwood’s warships.
“Now that Jaune has a new weapon,” Ruby said as they walked along, “we should ask Professor Ozpin to give us a mission so that he can try it out.”
“Trying out his weapon is what training is for,” Pyrrha pointed out, “but a nice, relatively quiet mission so that you can see how your new functionalities work in the field wouldn’t be the worst idea.”
“Once your fight with Cinder is done,” Jaune said softly.
The air seemed to grow a little colder at his reminder of what lay in store for Pyrrha, the reminder of the fact that a possible future lay ahead in which Team SAPR was without the P, and Jaune carried his new sword in memory of his lost love, laid low in defence of her honour.
It won’t be like that; have some faith; she’s your best friend.
And Cinder’s wrath is terrifying.
“Yes,” Pyrrha murmured. “Once that has been dealt with.”
Pyrrha wouldn’t be doing this if she didn’t think she could win.
Would she?
Wouldn’t she? You heard her, you’ve heard her more than once; she’s looking for something to hold onto.
Well, then maybe you should be supportive and help her find it, since clearly, it wasn’t going to get any better on its own.
I’m not going to tell her that it’s a bad idea, but I won’t cheerlead this; I can’t.
My heart is too heavy to muster light-hearted enthusiasm.
That was left to Jaune, who smiled and slipped one hand into hers and said, “Yeah, once you’ve finished Cinder once and for all, we should ask about a nice, quiet, ordinary mission.”
Pyrrha glanced his way. “I’d like that.”
They continued to walk down the streets, streets which were not perhaps covered in graffiti but which were nevertheless daubed with paint decrying Atlas.
“I see what you mean, Ruby,” Sunset said softly.
“Is it like this everywhere?” Jaune asked. “I mean … how? How has the whole of Vale just turned against Atlas like this?”
“It doesn’t have to be the whole city,” Sunset pointed out. “Just a few people who care enough to spread the word across the whole city.”
“Okay, but even so, why?” asked Jaune. “I mean, at the Breach, without General Ironwood’s forces…”
“The city would have been lost,” Pyrrha whispered. “Perhaps that is the problem. Valish pride cannot bear to have stood in need of rescue.”
“That still doesn’t make much sense,” Ruby pointed out.
“People don’t always make sense, so maybe Pyrrha’s right,” Sunset replied. “It doesn’t make it any less stupid, but she might be right.”
“Faunus! Why don’t you go home, eh? Go back where you came from?”
Sunset jumped a little at the sudden shout from across the road, her tail twitching and her ears pressing down against her head, disappearing into her mass of fiery hair.
She turned on her toes, one hand clenching into a fist as her mouth opened to give whoever had yelled at her like that a piece of her mind, before she realised that the shout was not actually directed at her.
No, the shout that had come from across the street was actually directed at two faunus across the street, two bird faunus with wings of apple-green white emerging from out of their backs.
Two faunus whom Sunset had seen before, although it took her a moment to place their names: Silverstream and Terramar, Skystar’s cousins.
They were walking down the street, going the opposite direction to that in which Team SAPR was headed; Silverstream was wearing a Weiss Schnee top with spaghetti straps, which had the advantage of accommodating her wings; Terramar was wearing a t-shirt with a sports brand on it, which also had been cut out at the back to let his wings fly free.
Sunset couldn’t help but feel they might have done better to cover them up in this instance.
They were being followed down the street by a man, a bald man in a faded blue denim jacket and jeans, with steel-toed boots upon his feet. He moved with an awkward, almost shambling gait, but he was taller than Silverstream — and much taller than Terramar — and so, despite the fact that they were trying to walk quickly, they were not able to open up the distance between them.
Worse still, their route down the street was going to take them past a bar, a cheap-looking place where cheap-looking people were gathering outside with pints of ale in their hands. Some of them, their attention drawn by the shouting, were already looking up the road towards Silverstream, Terramar, and their pursuer.
Silverstream kept glancing behind her, as if she was hoping that he had given up; she kept one hand on Terramar’s shoulder and another on his back, though whether she was trying to push him along or shield him, Sunset could not have said.
“How many kids did your mother have, eh?” the man demanded. “How much money has she stolen from us?”
Sunset gritted her teeth, but Pyrrha beat her to stepping forward, her armour glinting in the dying sunlight as she strode across the road — looking both ways as she did so — towards Silverstream and Terramar. Sunset followed, both hands clenching into fists, although when she walked across the street, she did not aim for the two faunus, but rather, for the man who followed them.
Pyrrha reached the two first, smiling reassuringly as she stepped in front of them.
“Hello,” she said. “You might not remember me but we’ve met before. My name is—”
“Pyrrha Nikos,” Silverstream murmured, her voice trembling. “You’re … kind of hard to forget.”
“So are you, Silverstream Aris,” Pyrrha replied, the smile not leaving her face. “Please, don’t worry; everything’s going to be alright now.”
Sunset stalked onto the pavement on their side of the road, placing herself foursquare in the path of the man in the denim jacket and jeans.
“That’s enough,” she growled. “Leave them alone.”
The man came to a rollocking stop, leaning backwards a little and staggering back a couple of steps, looking as though he might topple over and crack his head on the pavement. He did not, unfortunately; rather, he sneered at Sunset, his lips curling back to reveal a mouthful of rotten, yellow teeth.
“Oh, another one,” he said. “How many brothers or sisters have you got, by how many dads? How often was your mother—?”
Sunset hit him, her fist snapping out to sock him on the jaw, making him stagger backwards, clutching his face with one hand.
“My mother was a lady,” Sunset growled, taking a step forward, her tail absolutely rigid with anger; it was true that her dam may well have been exactly what this oaf had been about to accuse her of, but she wasn’t Sunset’s mother. “So keep her name out of your mouth, or you’ll be eating soup for the rest of your life.”
The man stared at her in disbelief. “You … you can’t talk to me like that! This is my kingdom! Mine!”
“And this is my fist,” Sunset said.
The man’s face twisted with anger. “Why … why do you get to talk to me like that? Why do you get to look like that? I … I’m human! I should be ruling this kingdom, you uppity—”
Sunset hit him again, this time on the nose; there was an audible crunch as his head snapped backwards.
“Boohoo, your life is awful, and you’re unhappy,” Sunset said. Guess what, I’m pretty unhappy myself a lot of the time. “It doesn’t give you the right to be a jackass to kids. Now beat it.”
The man looked as though he might say something else — until Sunset raised her fist at him again, at which point, he got the message and scurried off, though not without some angry backward glances in her direction.
Sunset turned her back on him, walking towards Silverstream, Terramar, and Pyrrha, who had been joined by Jaune and Ruby.
Pyrrha had her gloved hands upon the shoulders of both Silverstream and Terramar, smiling benignly down at both of them.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
Terramar glanced down at the ground. “Not great,” he said quietly. “My stomach feels kind of … almost like I might throw up; not exactly, but kind of, you know.”
Silverstream shivered. “Me too. I feel a little better now that he’s gone.” She half turned to look at Sunset. “Thank you, for getting rid of him.”
“It’s the least I could do,” Sunset said.
“What happened?” Ruby asked.
“We were on our way home from the video store when he just started following us,” Silverstream said. “I thought that maybe he’d stop after a little bit, go away, leave us alone, but he didn’t. He just kept on following us. I didn’t know what he was going to do if he caught up with us.”
“That’s not something you have to worry about anymore,” Sunset said.
“But we’re sorry that you had to go through that,” Ruby added. “Vale … I don’t know what’s going on; Vale’s better than this.”
“I’ve never had that happen to me before,” Silverstream agreed. “This, the graffiti … it’s like nothing that I’ve ever known; it’s like Grampa’s stories about what it was like after the war, when he got chased out of his house and people wrote ‘Silver Bullet won here’ on the door. I thought that was all in the past, not that I’d ever…” Silverstream trailed off. “Anyway, thank you for helping; we should get going.”
“We’ll walk you home,” Pyrrha said, with only a glance towards Sunset in the way of asking for permission.
“Are you sure?” Silverstream asked. “We don’t want to put you to any trouble.”
“It would be our honour,” Pyrrha assured them.
“And our duty as huntsmen,” Ruby said.
Silverstream glanced at Terramar and managed to muster up the slightest smile. “Thanks,” she said. “Thank you all.”
The four of them fell in around the two, Pyrrha leading, Sunset bringing up the rear, with Jaune and Ruby on either side of them. They steered away from the bar, veering towards the other side of the street again, but though a few people stared at them, nobody else dared to challenge them.
“Vale shouldn’t be like this,” Ruby lamented. “Especially not now. We’re supposed to be all coming together for the Vytal Festival.”
“Apparently not,” muttered Terramar.
Jaune’s brow furrowed. “So,” he said, “did you two pick up anything cool at the video store?”
Silverstream glanced at him as one hand went to the bag that she wore on one harm, banging lightly against her hip. “I hope so,” she said. “We’re going to try out those cartoons about the zoo animals that get washed up on Menagerie.”
“I’ve not heard of them,” Sunset said. “What are they called?”
“…Menagerie.”
“Right, that sounds obvious, now that you say it,” Sunset replied. “Well, I hope you enjoy them.”
“You guys having a movie night?” asked Ruby.
“Something like that, yeah,” Silverstream said. “We’re kind of—”
“Babysitting,” Terramar said.
“That makes it sound like a chore,” Silverstream chided him. “Which it isn’t. Bramble’s really sweet.”
“'Bramble'?” Sunset repeated. “The First Councillor’s son?”
Silverstream nodded. “We’ve known Councillor Emerald for years — he and Aunt Novo were always really close — so we sometimes take care of Bramble when the First Councillor needs a sitter. He’s going to … I think it’s a Vytal Festival thing, cause Skystar’s going to be there too.”
“It’s the parade planning,” Terramar supplied.
“Right, right, the parade,” Silverstream. “Are you guys looking forward to that? Are you looking forward to the festival?”
“'To the festival'? Yeah, sure, why not,” Jaune said. “To the parade … we don’t actually know if we’ll be a part of it yet; none of the schools have announced their Vytal choices.”
“That sounds as though it’s cutting it pretty fine,” Silverstream declared. “When are you going to find out?”
“We are not entirely sure,” Pyrrha admitted.
“But we’ll be selected, for certain,” Sunset said.
“You shouldn’t get overconfident, Sunset,” Pyrrha murmured, glancing back at her over her shoulder.
Sunset snorted. “You just say that because you want to seem humble in front of Silverstream and Terramar.”
“I’m surprised they don’t announce it earlier so you can start training for the tournament,” Terramar opined.
“We ought to be training anyway, tournament or not, to keep our skills sharp,” Ruby said.
“Okay,” Terramar allowed, “but don’t you need to practice for the parade too?”
“It sounds like they haven’t sorted all the details out yet, so it would be kind of hard to practice,” Ruby pointed out.
“You make a good point there,” Terramar conceded.
“In my experience, there isn’t usually a lot of rehearsal for these things,” Pyrrha said, turning her head to look back at the rest of them over her shoulder. “Once you try and rehearse, then a crowd turns out, and before you know it, the rehearsal has become the parade itself.” She paused for a moment. “For my part, I am glad of it; I think that if these things are overmanaged, if they are repeated until they become rote … the sacred nature of the thing is lost.”
“'Sacred'?” Terramar asked. “It’s just a parade. It’s all for show, right?”
“Not so,” Pyrrha insisted, although not too strongly — she was only talking to a child after all. “Those students chosen to participate in the Vytal Tournament will not simply be marching through the streets of Vale but, by marching behind the Vytal flame, they will be dedicating themselves to the peace and harmony embodied by that flame and by the festival and the tournament.”
“The tournament where you fight each other?” Silverstream asked, a tad sceptically.
Pyrrha smiled. “Better that we fight for the entertainment of the crowds within the arena than that we fight to the death outside of it, no? It is said that when the first annual tournament was instituted in Mistral, the Emperor of the day did so in order that his greatest warriors might have a place — an arena, if you will — to demonstrate their skills and their superiority without killing one another in duels. In a sense, the Vytal Festival descends from that same tradition.”
“I’m guessing your views on the parade descend from the same place, too,” Jaune suggested.
“Perhaps,” Pyrrha conceded. “I have driven my chariot four times through the streets of Mistral to celebrate my victories, and on no occasion was it ever rehearsed at all; such a thing … it would have been blasphemous to Victory, almost.”
By the time they arrived at the home of Silverstream and Terramar — a nice brownstone in a suburban district of Vale, the kind of place where every house came with an expansive garden out the back and a balcony over the front porch — the sun had sunk lower still in the sky, casting the city of Vale in an angry red glow.
It matched the mood of the city at the moment.
Silverstream fished her keys out of her purse and opened the door.
“We’re home!” she called out, as Terramar stepped inside. In the doorway, Silverstream turned to the four students. “Do you guys want to come in for a second?”
“We wouldn’t want to impose—” Pyrrha began.
“Come on, it’s the least we can do to thank you guys,” Silverstream insisted. “You can grab a coffee or a slice of pizza or something.”
“It’s a generous offer, but we’ll be fine,” Sunset said. “Tell Bramble I said hello.”
“Okay, I’ll tell him,” Silverstream said. “Thanks again, all of you.”
“You’re welcome!” Ruby called, before Silverstream closed the door on them.
The four of them stood outside the now closed door, a momentary silence settling upon them.
“I’m glad we were able to help,” Jaune said.
“Indeed,” agreed Pyrrha.
Sunset folded her arms. “You know what? You know what really sticks in my craw about this? I bet Blake isn’t having to put up with this crap in Atlas.”
“You think so?” Jaune asked.
“I think if she was, she’d have come back here already,” Sunset declared. “I came here … I came here because Vale was supposed to be better about this sort of thing.”
“It is!” Ruby insisted. “It was. I don’t know. It’s like … it’s like something just happened, something just changed. I don’t get it. I don’t get what’s going on here.”
The barracks of Vale’s Grenadier Guards regiment had three mess halls: one for officers, one for sergeants, and one for other ranks. The Other Ranks’ Mess was a spacious room, a chamber that could comfortably fit more than the current seven hundred-strong strength of the unit. It looked like one part canteen — there were the serving stations at the back, where food could sit under heat lamps while a long queue of common soldiers waited with their wooden trays to get served — and one part club, complete with a bar at the north side of the room and wood-panelled walls covered in paintings and photographs commemorating the regiment’s ‘illustrious history.’ The colours, emblazoned with battle honours — none of which, as far as Tempest could see, were more recent than the Great War — sat in the southwest corner.
Ordinarily, the mess hall would have been filled with tables, but tonight, some of the collapsible tables had been folded away while others had been joined together in the centre of the room, loosely covered by an array of tablecloths to form an ad-hoc stage.
And upon the stage, before the men and women of the Grenadier Guards — officers and NCOs included — seated all around, pranced Sonata Dusk.
Tempest couldn’t hear the song that she had sung — although she wanted to, oh how she wanted to; the temptation to tear off her headphones was becoming ever stronger — but she could see the soldiers, sat all around the hastily prepared stage, clapping their hands together furiously; she could see them rising from their seats; she could hear their mouths moving and guessed that it wasn’t insults that they were hurling her way.
At least, if the great beaming smile on Sonata’s face was anything to go by.
Tempest judged the session was over now. It seemed to be; Sonata wasn’t singing any more. At least it didn’t look as though she was.
She risked taking off her headphones. Part of her wouldn’t have minded being wrong about the song being over.
But she wasn’t wrong. She was absolutely right. The song was over. Sonata was silent, smiling, waving her hands in the air as she was deluged with applause from all sides, cheering raining down upon her from the Valish soldiers gathered all around.
They were not fighting each other, as the civilians to whom Sonata sang were. They hadn’t turned on each other; they were not consumed by quarrels. That was not part of the plan. The Valish soldiers, in their uniforms of forest green, the Valish soldiers who were thought so little of, who were so often discounted, who had been forced to stand idly by while the Atlesians saved their city, they were not divided against one another.
Rather, Sonata’s song had united them against an external enemy.
“Thank you!” Sonata cried. “Thank you so much; you’ve been a wonderful audience! Thank you, Foot Guards, woo!” The cheering was redoubled, as if they were overjoyed that she had remembered their name. Sonata giggled bashfully. “How about three cheers for Atlas, huh?”
“Boo!” Not a single soul cheered, but everyone in the mess — nearly a thousand men and women, all told, including officers and the like — booed and jeered as loudly as they could, or worse still, cursed the name of Atlas.
“Well, that works too,” Sonata said lightly. “Stay sharp out there, 'cause your time is gonna come! Are you going to be ready?”
“YEAH!” the soldiers chorused.
Sonata raised her fist in the air. “Are you gonna take your city back?”
“YEAH!”
“Are you gonna kick some Atlas ass?”
“YEAH!”
“Yeah!” Sonata cheered. “Show ‘em what you’ve got, Vale!” she leaped down lightly off the stage, landed delicately upon the toe of one boot. “This is going to be sooooo awesome!”
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I really like a bastard sword Crocea Mors. It will give him so much versatility now.
Jaune's got a magic sword! I can't wait to see the look on Cinder's face!
Hmm. So take the canon reforging, add in a little bit of Myrtenaster, and a little bit of spell swords and you get....basically Ludwig's Holy Blade from Bloodborne with Arcane applied to it, plus a shield. I like it.
It was a one horse town for a little while... and then Sunset left.
Lightsaber!
9693617
I'll only acknowledge it as a lightsaber if it does the sound.
9693668
9693672
Sorry, I missed that part. It is a light Saber.
"Use the force Jaune."
9693676
Lightsaber FTW!
Another topic you managed to cover much better than the actual show. A weapon, or so it was explained, is supposed to be an extension of the hunter, his will, most of the time forged to fit the user as much as possible from the hunter himself. In season 4 they simply combined Pyrrha’s and his grandfather’s weapons, but it was like at the beginning when Crocea Mors was a family heirloom. After the restoration it was a family heirloom, still, mixed with Miló and Akoúo, not “his” weapon per se. Your Jaune put his soul into creating a weapon which is truly his own.
I don’t know, it felt like when Ron from Harry Potter used the wand of his relative, a “stranger’s” wand just doesn’t work for the wizard or the witch like the “own” wand you get from Olivander. So many plotholes and missed worldbuilding from Rooster Teeth, it’s just depressing to see how fiction writers pull off a much better story with the core material than the actual show creators themselves.
Please tell me that Sunset thought to add a little security to the enchantment as well so that no one but Jaune is able to use the sword, without permission of course.
Vorpal?!? Sunny that is not a "touch" of magic!
9693889
They made a big deal about putting your soul into the weapon so I'm assuming that only the proper wielder of the blade or people who know how to use magic could possibly be able to activate the enchantment.
Snicker-snack!
I had to look up what a bastard sword actually was. And now I know.
9710088
Bastard swords are wonderful blades, in my honest opinion. Versatile in that you can use it two-handed for extra power or one-handed for faster attacks (not to mention the free hand for a shield), and the double edge makes it even more deadly as you don’t necessarily have to adjust your hand or the sword itself all that much to keep up constant attacks. In the hands of a true master, a bastard sword can beat any other kind of sword. Thankfully, true masters are few and far between, the things of myths and legends.
9718056
I’ve seen some pretty nice recreations of northern single-edge words in the bastard sword size- those things are absolute units. They trade that slight bit of ease of use in a duel for the unrelenting workhorse power that comes with being able to have a big boi spine. No offense to the more contemporary European designs, but I can’t get over how brutal those things can be.
If you need a visual for what I’m referencing, Albion’s Berserker model is pretty close, just that with a 1 1/2 grip and a bit of a longer blade. Up there with their Maximillian in terms of badass, if you ask me.
10626993
No no. I’m familiar with the single edge design. Both edge designs have their pros and cons.
9718056
Im a little late but.
A master with what they train with at least with a weapon as long as the design is useable and the quality at least munitons grade there is now best one design just skill
That's a thing that changed in the rewrite, right?
Amazing chapter btw love the tension that sonata and tempest are building, can't wait to see how it ends.
Uh... given the anti-faunus stuff going around, maybe it would be best Sunset wait outside of that shop...