章 1852: 83
"We did it! We did it we did it we did it!" Ruby squealed, holding up a sword as she pranced about her newly expanded workshop- the old shed out behind the Xiao Long household having been made larger and ever more comprehensive over the years as Ruby found more and more things she needed (and appropriated a lot of old machinery from some of the people around town) to become the best weaponsmith she could be. Even Mr. Bronze out in Patch's main settlement said she was the best he'd ever seen, and he'd seen a lot considering he'd moved out of Atlas a long time ago. Currently, though, she was all but dancing as she held up a newly created sword of Floating Array- something that Penny had previously thought nigh impossible… but Ruby had done it!
The carrying case, the cable port, the cable itself, and the sword- it had definitely taken longer than what the machines in Atlas could do, but in Penny's case she thought that the slightly slower construction more than made up for an increase in quality- Floating Array was good, but everything about it was too precise. Too well machined. Her Aura only started to properly surge through Floating Array instead of simply flowing in when she had helped Ruby customize the swords properly- she hated the idea of changing her father's hard work but… until then, it had been her father's hard work. Shaping metal and cutting channels and reconfiguring her own systems to accept the modified swords had been her hard work, along with Ruby's help to configure the plans and make them a reality.
Ruby truly was the greatest thing to ever happen to Penny, even if they'd gotten off to a bit of a rocky start.
"We did it! You did it! It's- it's amazing! It's beautiful! It… is almost completely visually identical to the upgraded originals!" Penny stated somewhat belatedly, grinning widely as her girlfriend presented the sword to her as though a knight swearing fealty, kneeling down with the sword braced across her hands, handle oriented in such a way that Penny could lift it with her right hand. "It may be your finest work of engineering yet, wishing star!"
"I really think it might be," Ruby nodded, standing as Penny mimed the action of knighting her with the newest member of her Floating Array, having spent multiple days and nights working tirelessly- either with her main body or a Rosebud while her true self slept indoors with Penny- to break the protections that Atlas had put on Penny's swords in order to keep someone from simply decompiling the object code back into assembly code and then remaking it as a new source code.
It had taken weeks- ever since Ruby had started doing purely mechanical improvements to Floating Array, having managed to figure out that, despite the lack of communications otherwise, Penny could still send her Aura through the cables connecting her to Floating Array's swords, and that in and of itself would allow her to trigger Aura switches enabling her to use the elemental enhancements that Ruby had installed. It wasn't a perfect system and Penny had to manually check to see how much Dust was left in each sword and then refill each type of Dust one by one, but with the new enhancements and Ruby's crash course on Atlas' public domain Pi-THON code, she was able to decompile and reassemble the code for Floating Array into something that she could read, modify, and comment on without having to bug the Atlesian Military for access. Or Penny's dad, for all that he was a sweet, amazing old man whose work with prosthetics was literally legendary in the field of mechanics.
Ruby wanted to meet him in person so bad! But also, since his code was protected under the P.E.N.N.Y. project… she couldn't exactly get a copy of his source code. She did get a copy of his libraries, and that helped immensely with figuring everything out. The digital texts he'd sent over sneakily about the Atlesian Military's own private branch of Pi-THON helped even more. But the rest of the work? All her and Penny!
"If I may?" Penny asked, reaching out to connect the singular sword to its guidance cable and linking wirelessly to the carrier pack so that she could control it properly. She settled the pack on her hip- one of four, each one designed to carry six swords, along with the two that Ruby insisted she held in reserve up her sleeves- and blinked as the startup sequence began automatically. "Oh! Oh, this is quite different… the interface is no longer green, but… ruby red…"
"Ah hehe… yeah, I um… had to rewrite literally all of Floating Array's code from scratch," Ruby mentioned, clearing her throat and slowly standing up as Penny's eyes flashed a brilliant gemstone red for a moment, the sword at her hip lifting as the robotic girl began to do diagnostic checks. Ruby blushed, knowing the change in Penny's eye color that moment had been because of her code integrating into Penny's systems. "I used a lot of the same names and paths for the actual interface proper, though! Because, um, otherwise it might not work super well? Your dad actually helped a lot- I know I said I didn't wanna talk to Atlas too much but he was in Mantle at the time and all he did was give me a list of variable and path names that he used and then I had to go through the documents he sent me and I'm so, so, so glad that Dad n' Uncle Qrow let me have a bunch of Signal's old networked scrolls because that made it so much easier if I could read them all at once and- um… yeah. So. I'm gonna need your help to remake all of Floating Array's swords. And make all of the new ones by the time we go back to Beacon. And also maybe some spares? Um… I know your backpack can actually hold up to twenty four swords and I built the hip carriers to have a capacity of up to twelve if you really need the firepower but I'd prefer to just have the regular full set before we get back and work on getting up to actual full capacity once we're back at Beacon? It's just… faster there. N-not that there's anything wrong with my workshop here, but… well… half the tech is repurposed, not meant for the work I do, or just so old it might as well be defunct."
"I understand, wishing star! Oh! There is an extraneous part of the HUD that the other swords do not have!" Penny blinked, tilting her head as she looked at the options available in her configuration settings, looking at the floating sword as it hovered and the lights upon its surface flickered brightly from green to crimson red. "You added in an appearance toggle! Marvelous! This is amazing- I can actually sense the amount of Dust left in each blade, both to power the cannons, and to power the Dust effects! There's even a battery charge indicator built into the hip carrier's software that my backpack lacks!"
"I… yeah, I wanted to see if I could. Just… as an experiment," Ruby nodded, rubbing the back of her head somewhat sheepishly. "I um- there was also some weird backdoor in the original code? I don't remember, but it was that part that handled communications between you and the swords' onboard sensors. Which… were a whole pain to replicate lemme tell you- let's be glad there's a really good computer parts store in Vale- um and uh… yeah! Your dad said that he didn't work on the communications part, and that he co-opted someone else's code since they were better at machine to machine communication and… long story short someone forgot to put in a patch to keep Floating Array from running arbitrary code executions or injections into your system… and also preventing it from forcing kernel access to your systems. Which probably wasn't a good thing because Floating Array doesn't really… need kernel level access?"
"I see… that is quite concerning- I know my father is not specialized in machine to machine communication, being that he specializes in robotic prostheses but none of the other engineers working on Floating Array seem to have caught that bit of code either. Thank you for letting me know, wishing star," Penny stated, feeling quite concerned as she disconnected from her backpack of original swords and let it fall to the workbench- completely shutting it down remotely to prevent any further communication with her systems, just in case. "We will need to re-flash the software onto the other swords, I believe. And we have much work to do on making and refurbishing Floating Array's full complement of swords. Shall we begin now?"
"Mm! Yeah! We can start now! I want you to be combat ready again as soon as possible, firefly!" Ruby grinned, sparkles in her eyes as she hugged Penny close and buried her face into her girlfriend's shoulder like always, Penny smiling in return and bumping her head against Ruby's with a gentle chuckle.
"I will always be combat ready for you, wishing star." Penny murmured softly, then pulled back just enough to place a gentle, soft kiss on Ruby's forehead. "But what I meant was, it is almost time for dinner, and while I only need to eat enough food to ensure that my self repair systems have adequate amounts of carbon and iron and some assorted other chemical additives, you become quite cranky when you do not eat. Shall we head inside?"
"Oh- yeah! Right. Right, lost track of time again… hehe. Let's go inside! Dad's makin' beef stew tonight!" Ruby cheered, lifting Penny up and planting a loud, wet, joy filled kiss on her cheek. "Mwah! Kissies!"
"Kissies!"
[I finally get to post Floating Array V2! I actually drew this way before I drew Myrtenaster, fun fact]
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