10

Chapter Text

Crescent Rose.

It was a simple, evocative name. Blood red construction, the arc of a gleaming blade. The bloody moon made manifest as it whirled through the air and tore through the creatures of grimm like so much chaff. With a name so simple and evocative of the moon and her mother, one might have expected the weapon to be just as elegant- a sword with silver blade, perhaps a bow or a spear or something that was refined and deadly and elegant and understated. 

Crescent Rose was refined. It was deadly. It was elegant… but it was not at all understated. There was no understating a high caliber sniper scythe painted in red and black, with a blade of gleaming silver as sharp as any razor. It was a masterwork of weaponscraft- the perfect weapon for a woman who knew what she wanted and how to do it. A massive sniper rifle so large that no one without an active aura could even wield it, and only Uncle Qrow so far had been able to use it effectively- outside of its creator, of course- combined with a scythe whose head was just about the size of Ruby herself, if not a bit larger in terms of overall weight. 

The massive, 38mm diameter cartridges it used for its absolute fullest potential were custom tooled and cost Ruby more than a pretty penny to buy those dies and molds directly from the weapons shop, and cost even more (even with a trainee Huntress discount) to keep stocked on the dust infusions that the rounds needed for the cartridges to work at maximum power. Even so, Ruby had built in redundancies so that her weapon wouldn't be prohibitively impractical to use- just… a bit more impractical than most for anything other than the mass, wholesale slaughter of grimm. If needed (or, indeed, for any and all standard use), Crescent Rose could chamber anything from 50 caliber and up, even working with 4 gauge shotgun shells if she wanted to borrow some of Yang's spare explosive shots. Or swap ammo between Crescent Rose and Augury.

The scythe form was no less impressive, for all that it was technically the simpler weapon- the entirety of Crescent Rose was made with as much Dust reinforced material as possible, alloys that she'd had to hand mix and test out properly in the home forge that she'd made partially out of grimm stuff. In between the plates and screws and precisely machined components were threads of that same stuff- shadowy tendrils that wound through the mechanisms and made Crescent Rose partially alive - the same way Augury was, though Augury… was a different story. Even so, the scythe was much like her uncle's. It had a scythe form, a war scythe mode, a butt spike capable of being planted in the ground for stability or being used as an impaling implement, and the back of the blade itself had its own extendable edge so that she could collapse most of Crescent Rose's mechanisms down and wield it like a sword with a long handle. 

Explosive cartridges. Dust bullets. High velocity shots. The amount of ammunition that Crescent Rose could reliably use was astounding, and its sheer mechanical complexity meant that it was, quite possibly, the only one of its kind out there- even in the general scythe or rifle range, most Huntsmen and Huntresses would stick to fairly popular standardized calibers and wouldn't try to go out of their way to custom order anything bigger, even with Dust technology making it easier. As for scythe wielders… well. There weren't many. Certainly not a lot that were semi-famous like Uncle Qrow was.

The final bit that completed the puzzle of Crescent Rose was a dual linked Gravity Dust module that allowed it to adhere to the mounting point on the back of her belt or to its twin, Augury. Ruby hadn't had many stories of the Huntress that inspired her Uncle Qrow to work on, but she knew that Maria Calavera, the Grimm Reaper, was known for using dual kamas that could combine into a staff as well as be manipulated by Gravity Dust. Crescent Rose and Augury… didn't quite mesh perfectly together seeing as Crescent Rose's build profile was entirely different from Augury's, but she could still freely manipulate the two together by modulating her Aura in conjunction with the Gravity Dust modules embedded in both weapons.

Augury, meanwhile…

Where Crescent Rose had been made as a companion piece to Augury, and was made in remembrance of her late mother and her weapon, Sundered Rose, Augury itself was a gift from Uncle Qrow. 

The final test of her engineering prowess before she was allowed to move onto weapons creation on her own, he'd said. The objective was simple- since she'd broken Harbinger on a hunt, she got to reforge it, make it anew. Qrow had a pretty nest egg saved up from the amount of high profile missions he took solo, so he didn't mind blowing a significant chunk of it on spare materials for Ruby's workshop.

The finished product had been dubbed Augury, because she'd taken Harbinger and not only reforged a new, improved version from scratch (that was still visually identical to the old one), but made the original truly her own. Augury was… simple, in a way that Crescent Rose wasn't. It was a massive sword, a scythe, and had a secondary rotary dual shotgun function. In Ruby's case, she'd upgraded the shotguns until they could chamber 4 gauge shells- which, upon seeing Augury, Yang had decided to make Ember Celica chambered in double barreled 4 gauge as well… it had taken her three months to be able to handle the recoil, and another five months of extra conditioning and muscle building to be able to reliably use them in combat… and then she'd added on her Combustion Dust boot attachments, still under the umbrella name of Ember Celica. That wasn't important, but Ruby had fond memories of seeing her big sister struggle to manage the weight of a twenty four round rotary magazine of 4 gauge variable aura-activated explosive Fire Dust shells. While also punching. And kicking. And doing aerial acrobatics. And handling the sheer recoil the shells had so that the blasts augmented her punches instead of weakening them.

Mercury had complained often (and loudly) about Yang copying his Talaria and opted to get a set of throwing knives so as to not be completely overshadowed by a girl two years his junior.

Regardless of what her sister and her… not really a cousin but came over enough that he could be called a cousin… were doing in their fruitless competition of dick measuring and one-upmanship, Augury's upgrades were… fairly minimal. The same dual linked Gravity Dust system that connected it to Crescent Rose and the unit on her back (she kept Augury stored inside of her most of the time, but there'd come a day where she stored Crescent Rose away in favor of using Augury instead), upgraded shotguns, plus some tweaked mechanisms to make sure it was whisper quiet and as fast as anything, the same subtle grimm weave for reinforcement and ease of maintenance, and a straightened handle.

Ruby loved Harbinger because it was her uncle's weapon of choice. She did not like having to manage a curved scythe haft. Keeping it in a straight line made it easier to work like a regular staff, and it made it easier to line up shots and keep a bead on a target if she didn't have to deal with a weird shape making it harder to maneuver properly or aim down sights.

Augury's rotary shotguns, in this case, had been modified to only fall into three positions- in line with the handle with the blade pointed down or in scythe mode so she could fire it like Uncle Qrow fired Harbinger's shotgun mode and rocket herself around like on Crescent Rose, in line with the blade for extra power on backswing strikes for nonlethal applications in case she had to fight crime instead of grimm (not a common thing but… she'd beat up a few criminals along the way), and finally, pointing in the opposite direction of the blade so as to add even greater impact on her swings and strikes.

In that regard, Augury was much superior for close quarters combat than Crescent Rose was- but that was the thing. Harbinger had always been a suitable mix of weapons for killing low to mid-level grimm and fighting human opponents. Its accuracy suffered at any range longer than a hundred yards or so, and the way the shotguns were integrated made it hard to quickly reload in the midst of a grimm horde. The sword was good for killing grimm, but also suffered slightly against more agile opponents that Qrow couldn't just bulldoze through with Harbinger's sheer mass. Crescent Rose, meanwhile, was the weapon of a monster hunter. It could be used against human opponents- she'd trained with Emerald, Mercury, Yang, Cinder, and Uncle Qrow enough to know that- but the wide, sweeping attacks and massive size made it unwieldy at best, a liability at worst. That was- as long as she wasn't using her speed and enormous grimm strength to her advantage. 

No one could match Crescent Rose's ability to be accurate at range, nothing less than an airship cannon or other military weapon came close to the sheer stopping power of one of Crescent Rose's full power, maximum impact cartridges. Even at 3 miles out, the sheer power of a single cartridge was enough to blow clean through the armored skull of a Goliath. A juvenile, perhaps, but even juvenile Goliaths were hard to deal with by even a full four man squad of Huntsmen- let alone a singular trainee. Ruby had hit the beast in the eye and turned the back of its skull into an erupting flower of flame and ichor.

Crescent Rose was her baby. Her perfect grimm killing machine. Sure, she'd fight other people with it if she had to… but that was what Augury was for. Augury had seen the destruction of bandit camps, gang hideouts, drug dens- if not by her hand, then by Qrow's when it was still the original Harbinger. Ruby wasn't about to corrupt her precious Crescent Rose with the taste of human blood. 

"Ah… and there. We. Go," Ruby murmured to herself, finally finishing off the last bit of her weapon's maintenance with a loving wipedown with a rag, every last bit of her perfected, ninety seven pound ultra high caliber sniper scythe gleaming in the lights of the workshop- glossy red, brushed silver, matte black… the hidden rose emblems etched ever so lovingly on the inside of every finished part… yes, her baby was perfect. In every single way. As she finished, she picked up her weapon and triggered the mechashift mechanisms within with a whisper of Aura and the tiniest flex of connection to the grimm tendrils within. As it folded, the just-shy-of-fourteen year old slid it onto her belt (alongside her spare ammo pouches and basic survival and first aid kits) and walked out of her workshop, whistling cheerily as she opened the door and stepped out into the sun. 

Time to go be a Huntress… in training.