70

Black Rose Blooms SilverCyberQueen_Jolynen

Chapter 70

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Ruby grinned as she stood before the combined groups of Teams RWBY+P, JNPR, and CMNE, a rolling cart covered in a velvet covering sat behind her as she waved at each of the people before her. Nora, sitting with the rest of JNPR, was visibly vibrating with excitement as she stared at the covered box hidden behind the beautifully ornate fabric.

"Sisters! Friends! … Weiss!" 

"Hey!"

"And Penny~" Ruby finished, waving very specifically at her girlfriend with a dopey smile whilst ignoring Weiss' instinctive interjection to voice her displeasure.

"Sal-u-tations!"

"Just get on with it," Emerald sighed, groaning as she leaned against the table and flopped to the side, bumping her head against Cinder's shoulder while the older girl just elbowed her lightly in the side.

"Don't be rude, she's doing a weapon presentation," came the warning murmur, a gentle tug at the ring on the back of Emerald's choker making the thief blush and duck her head.

"Ooh, I bet you got something big to show us if you're doing a presentation in the cafeteria," Yang started, visibly growing more excited with every passing moment as she tried to guess what it was. "Someone's getting an upgrade- and I'm guessing it's Nora isn't it? She's literally bouncing in her seat right now!"

"Show me! Show me show me show me show me show me!" Nora confirmed, slamming her fists on the table and rattling all of their (thankfully empty) dishes as she almost sprung out of her seat with pure, unrestrained glee. "I want my baby to make the biggest booms!"

"Oh it will, and thanks for being there every step of the way before assembly," Ruby confirmed, grinning wide as she grabbed the fabric off of the top of the box and swept it aside- the purple and gold thing sailing through the air to Velvet, who caught it and folded it neatly away because, really, it was actually one of Velvet's fancy throw blankets that Ruby borrowed. 

The rabbit girl may or may not have a hoarding problem when it came to fancy throw blankets.

Regardless!

"Behold, my friends, family, and beloved girlfriend!" Ruby exclaimed, presenting the ornate wooden box holding the newly forged, upgraded, and thoroughly improved Magnhild II within its confines. Delicate golden scrollwork stretched across the black painted wood, every single line clean and smooth with a matte finish that drew attention to the metalwork that went into the clasps, the corner pieces, and even the carrying handle. It was, altogether, a very impressive bit of carpentry and metalwork for a single box, but what was really more important was what was inside .

And that…

Ruby slowly undid the catch and began to raise the lid, golden light pouring from within thanks to the special grimm she'd made to light up the interior, and revealed Magnhild II to the world (the original safely stowed within her collection alongside the rest of her weapons) with enough flash and circumstance to awe everyone who beheld the sheer glory of the weapon before them.

Inside of the case sat the new hammer/grenade launcher combo, nestled within beautifully sewn crushed velvet covered foam inserts that molded to the shape of the weapon, with an entire rack of twelve grenades set neatly in two rows of six nestled under the barrel of its folded up grenade launcher configuration. Visually, it was quite similar to before, bearing many of the same hallmarks and boasting a hammer head nearly one and a half times the original size, the entire structure beefed up and reinforced to handle the forces that would be running through the massive hunk of metal. The scrollwork had changed visually as well, though it was still fairly similar- and although Magnhild II bore some same hallmarks of Ruby's color scheme, the vast majority of it was still a well polished, brushed metallic gray with the occasional satin finish on some plates and with beautifully bright pink accents and details that made the individual components stand out quite well.

"Introducing Magnhild II! Based on the original Magnhild, this baby boasts twice the magazine size, fifteen times the destructive power, and exactly one point eight two three times the original mass! New features include but are not limited to: an increased effective range! An increase in fire rate! An all new propulsion system to add extra force to back and forward swings! A proprietary formulation of Lightning Dust to charge up Nora's Semblance on the go! An increase in grenade size plus the extra magazine size means that you have so much more bang per shot, and with the increase in mass comes an increase in generation capacity, so there's piezo-electric cells that store up energy with every hammer strike and work as a back up for Nora's Semblance if the Lightning Dust is depleted!" Ruby immediately started, phrasing the entire thing like a sales pitch as though she hadn't been working on and off on improving Magnhild for the past several weeks now, lifting the entire thing out of the box with a single hand and motioning over its various features with a brilliant, eager smile on her face. "Now as for the grenades, these are actually a pretty nonstandard size cuz Nora was already using 40mm and anything bigger has to be custom made, but Magnhild II also has a built in chip slot that can let any autoforge built in the last ten years or so make new grenades quick n' easy!"

"Wait, I thought you hand-tooled all of these?" Nora interjected, reaching over and pulling one of the currently unarmed grenades from the box, the glassy midsection colored a dull, flat pink instead of the brilliant, glowing vibrancy that it would be once properly armed and stored inside of Magnhild II properly. "I was there when ya made 'em, Ruby!"

"Yeah I like hand tooling my ammo, it's fun! Plus it lets me add non-standard mixes, but since you use grenades and need more consistent sizes otherwise stuff gets kinda cloggy, I made sure you could get standardized grenades with standardized fills," Ruby shrugged, flipping Magnhild II into its hammer form and pulling a little data chip out of a cleverly disguised access slot and showing it off before returning it to its rightful place. "Oh! Right! So, Magnhild II uses 50mm grenades either hand or custom tooled, with a custom Dust and accelerant mix for both immediate and lasting damage. I've got a fusion of Burn and Wind for the immediate high temperature explosion, a colorant mix to make it pink, plus some secondary bits that you can toggle on or off as you need for either napalm or extreme concussive force. Oh! And there's remote Aura triggers in every grenade plus an Aura switch in the mechanism so you can either have things explode on impact, explode after a time delay, or explode in midair! Aaaaand yeah pretty much everything else you need to know is in the documentation, including care guides, replacement part specifications, and some vinyl stickers to throw on there cuz I had a little extra time and someone added a sticker cutter to the forge and… yeah. So… yeah!"

Ruby shrugged, handing Magnhild II off to Nora with all of the reverence of a knight bestowing their sword to their ruler, the grimm firefly things inside of the case pulling out the really quite massive booklet that had been pinned beneath the weight of the weapon. 

Everyone else simply stared in silence, including the various other students who quietly edged away slowly from the prodigious mad genius who had brought live napalm grenades into the cafeteria . 

Because… reasons.

"Oh… she's perfect… and it was totally worth handing off Magnhild to you! I mean okay yeah you kept a lot of the internal components the same but wowza! This is great! And we're already so close! I can feel it!" Nora gushed, hugging her newfound much stronger hammer to herself with an expression of pure glee, giggling and spinning around childishly as she showed off the gleaming metal and twirled it with as much ease as one would spin a baton… much to the chagrin of the occupants of the directly adjacent tables, who flinched away and/or ducked beneath their tables and scooted away frantically.

There was a reason why nobody fucked with Teams RWBY, CMNE, and JNPR, and it was that they were all batshit insane and the strongest teams on campus.

And now one of the strongest members was even stronger . Because of course the adorably terrifying weapon nut would make sure the thunder thigh'd valkyrie was equipped with a fucking mountain breaker of a weapon.

"Nora, please sit down. We'll book a time slot at one of the outdoor practice ranges later, please don't hit any of our classmates with Magnhild II," Ren sighed, standing calmly and tugging on Nora's sleeve, guiding her back into her seat with a slightly exasperated expression.

Jaune whistled lowly, flinching slightly as the giant hammer passed by him before straightening up and clearing his throat. "Whew, dang Ruby! That's one heck of a weapon you and Nora built!"

"I know right! I think she's my… ninth… best work to date!" Ruby grinned, hands on her hips as she closed the box and slid it over to Ren, returning the cart to where it was supposed to be by stretching out her cape and pushing it away. "I'd say it was higher, but I have been doing a lot of touchup work on Crescent Rose lately. And Ember Celica. And Midnight. And Thief's Respite. And Talaria. And Hush. And Gambol Shroud. And Myrtenaster. So… y'know. It's up there! But uh…"

She shrugged a bit sheepishly, while everyone else just motioned at their freshly maintained and updated weapons, each one with that signature Ruby Rose stamp of approval… which, really, was just her symbol stamped into the metal and filled with black Huntsman grade enamel. "Again. I've been doing a lot lately. Penny's been helping."

"Indeed I have!" Penny cheered, waving from where she was sitting and giving off a megawatt smile full of pure positivity. "It was very informative, and also quite touching that Ruby would let me work alongside her!"

"You're the best, Penny," Ruby chuckled, sitting back down in her place next to her girlfriend and nuzzling against her with a happy sigh. "Soooo…. Team JNPR…. Who wants an upgrade next? I already know how Miló and Akoúo̱ work cuz Pyrrha let me do some reconfiguring work… Ren? Jaune? Anything you guys want? I know Jaune still needs a ranged option~"

"Ah… hehe… um…" Jaune winced a bit, rubbing the back of his neck slightly. "Maybe wait until after I'm better with a sword to gimme some kind of overpowered gun thing?"

Ruby huffed, shaking her head. "Fiiiiine. But if you don't say no I'm turning Crocea Mors into a railgun!"

"... We'll uh… come back to that one, I think."

Notes:

You'll get a Nora picture later, I refuse to draw Magnhild's scrollwork more than once.