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Blackstone Foundry and Forge; Friday [04/26].

Amaya got the forge ready and roaring that morning, even if she didn't plan on getting much use out of it until the afternoon, when she'd start in on some of the work for the hilt of the sword she was currently working on. That would be quite a bit of challenging work, too, work that she was looking forward to, while she saved the detailing on the blade itself for next week's lesson with Fjord.

The morning, she decided, was going to be spent over a few mugs of coffee and some blue prints spread out over one of the worktables, a pencil stuck behind her ear that she'd almost immediately forgotten about as soon as it wound up there, since she was working with another pencil, and would only rediscover the first pencil once she tried to tuck the second one behind her ear at some point. It was time for a little bit of rearranging, now that it was already shop with two blacksmiths. Who'd've though she'd ever go from her tiny little corner shop in Daventry to a two-smith operation? Sure, Fjord still had a lot of work to do, a lot of things to learn, but it would go much quicker if he had a bit of his own space to work while she did the same.

And you so know she was already thinking of ways she could be using both anvils at once , too, which would be wholly unnecessary and a little ridiculous, but it would be fun to at least try.

But first, figuring it all out. Things like this worked much better with a plan, and Amaya liked a good puzzle, trying to figure out and rearrange things to see how to make the addition space fit in without having to compromise too much of what was already there. Luckily, the shop had plenty of space to begin with, so the planning wouldn't take much. Just a matter of figuring out just how much she wanted to rearrange.

The Forge is open!

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Zack hadn't been putting this off. Really.

Honest.

Okay, he'd kind of been putting this off. Maybe he could just never do this, and everyone would be fine with it? But the buster sword was taking up space at Amaya's place, and he couldn't run away from bad memories forever.

Especially since, as he was slowly starting to cling to with a strange sort of fierceness, even the bad memories were his memories.

"Hey," he called, peering through the door after giving Girl instructions to sit and stay outside. "Anybody home?"

Amaya looked up from her plans spread out in front of her, brushing away the dust of another erased attempted at rearranging and blinking a few times to get herself out of Future-Shop and into Present-Shop, then smiled warmly at the head poking through her door.

"Hey, there, Zack," she said, "come on in. I was wondering when you might pop in after hearing you were back. Everything go well? Still in one piece? That sword hold up for you?"

"Everything went about as well as it could," Zack replied, smiling crookedly as he pulled his sword from his back and held it up for her to inspect. "This might need a little basic maintenance along the edges - it cut down a lot of monsters," and worse, "while I was away. But it held up better than any ShinRa-issue SOLDIER sword might."

A beat.

"I mean, it's still in one piece."

So, ShinRa had a pretty low bar set, there. But Zack was still quite pleased with the results that this one had given, regardless. It was a damn good sword.

Still in one piece was really one of the big boxes to check with regards to any sword, especially one put through some rigerous work, and knowing her work was better than someone else's, no matter how low the bar they set, would always make Amaya preen a little. Even if she'd easily claim that her work being better was, in most cases, pretty much a given.

"Well, that's good to hear," she said. "If it can't serve you at least to that point, then I might as well just go and hang up my hammer and retire to the beaches of Tanalore already. But I' m going to guess you're not just here to flatter my ego, though I'll happily take some if that's what you're selling."

"Will you accept flattery, a sword sharpening and a general check for wear and tear, and some extra space freed up in here? I should probably take my other sword back too, now that I'm here again."

Sure, odds were it would just sit in a closet or something, but...

"All of the above," Amaya grinned. "Though I'll be a little sad to see a beauty like that on her way back home. It's been a pleasure keeping tabs on her in the meantime, though."

And it wasn't like there was any lack of ridiculously large weapons in the shop, what with the return of the axe and the advent of the legendary shuriken.

Zack knew a Turk back home who would have been thrilled to get her hands on a shuriken like that.

... He wasn't really talking to any of them. But he knew one!

"And I appreciate that you did," he replied, smiling a little. "It probably would have been safe enough at home, but... it didn't feel right just leaving it alone, you know?"

"All quiet, collecting dust, no other sharp shinies to keep it company," Amaya agreed. "Much better this way, and I assure you, it's just as good as when you left it with me. Lemme go fetch it."

She kept it tucked away a little, lest anyone mistake it for her own work, though this was reminding her that she did need to get working on one like that of her own, maybe when she actually extended the forge a little, make a little more space for something like that...and maybe once she'd managed to clear through the fifty other projects she had going on right now.

But, hey, what was one more?

Add it to the queue!

Zack smiled faintly as she went to get the sword. He felt better about leaving it here when she put it that way, which was silly on a few levels, including but not limited to the fact that it was an inanimate object and the fact that he'd tried to leave it in the woods and forget about it, some time back.

"I'm sure you took great care of it," he called after her, smiling a little as he looked around the shop. "It would have been in pretty great company around here."

Best thing about fetching the sword in question was getting one last chance to heft it a little and admire it, because, zounds, that blade...Amaya'd nearly let it just become part of the scenery after a while, admiring it just as she had anything else around the shop, but now thinking that it'd be gone definitely put to mind she'd have to work on her own.

Maybe with a few more spikes, though.

"And there it is," she said, handing it over as...well as one could hand over a sword like that, which was bound to be a little awkward no matter which way you handled it. "It's been an honor, Zack. You need any future weapon-sitting, you know where to turn."

"You're definitely my first choice," Zack replied, grinning a little and reaching to take the buster sword back, one-handed, before holding his other sword back out to her. "And here, I'll let you give this any of the TLC you think it might need. The materia slots worked great, by the way. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you'd been installing them into weapons for years."

Amaya took to inspecting the other sword as soon as she had it, her expression clearly impressed with the damage she was already seeing to it from just a cursory glance. Whatever it is Zack had gotten himself into, he got quite some work out of it, that was for sure. This was going to be one heck of a clean-up job, and she was already looking forward to it.

"Oh," she shrugged a little, taking a moment to inspect those materia slots a little with her finger to confirm, "it's not as though there's a whole lot to it. Same as when you want to make things a bit fancier by including gems and what have you, only a lot more useful. It's been interesting trying to build up the materia you left me with, too. Not as much time to really build them as I'd like, but they're making some progress ~~despite not getting around to really mentioning it shhhhh~~."

"Well," Zack mused, settling the buster sword onto his back like it was nothing at all, "knowing this place, it's really only a matter of time before you get your chance, right? How've you been using them? You got Fire, Blizzard, and Thunder, right?"

One of each, he remembered!

"Fire, Blizzard, and Thunder," Amaya confirmed with a nod, "and I've really only just been using them to build them up, to replicate them, just like you said. I'm not much of a fighter myself, so they haven't been used on much more than a few practice dummies here and there, maybe the odd device I whipped up out of curiousity, but I wanted to make sure I've really got a handle on how they work before I start unleashing them on weapons that'll be used by people who actually use 'em for what they're meant to be used for....

"Only thing that's really happened 'round here while you were gone that might have needed something like that would have been the snowmonsters, and that was right around when you took off, wasn't it? Those fire ones could have been real useful for that, now that I think about it. Maybe I should update the Crumbler's flamethrowers..."

"I re-lit your forge for you using Fire during that," Zack supplied, smiling a little. "Considering your line of work, I'm kind of surprised you're not getting a whole lot more use out of that one in particular, honestly."

But he wasn't so surprised it hadn't seen much use. Using too much magic with no experience at all could be tiring.

"Ah, that's right! I remember now; seems ages ago, really, but that just comes to show how time flies," Amaya mused. "And I guess you're right, only...it's just still a bit strange in a way, you know? Seems almost a little like cheating, if I'm perfectly honest."

Zack hummed in thought at that.

"Well, if you ever want to take an afternoon to just work them out with someone," he offered, "I'm really only busy on Tuesdays, but I've been working with materia for years."

He was a bit of a pro.

"Hey, now," said Amaya, grinning faintly. "There's an idea. You can come in, test out some of the weapons I've put together with the slots, build some of it up, and I can get a chance to see how they work in action from someone who actually know what they're doing. I'll have to wait and see where my summer class is likely to fall on, but other than that, I'm almost always here. Just probably not Wednesdays, that's when I'm mostly working with my apprentice."

"No Tuesdays, no Wednesdays," Zack replied easily. "You just let me know what day works best for you, and we can... I don't know, meet in the park or on the beach or something."

Probably the beach. It was hard to burn down sand, right?

"Beach sounds like a good idea," Amaya admitted, for pretty much the same reason. "Seems there'd be a bit less...collateral damage down that way."

"True," Zack agreed, smiling crookedly. "It's hard to go wrong in the wide open with that much water nearby." A beat. "Well, except with the Thunder. Electricty and water, and all."

He shrugged.

"But hey, if we really get going, maybe we'll end up with glass."

Or just crispy dead sea things.

Beau had been meaning to come in and check up on her throwing stars, really she had, but there had been so much stuff going on the last few weeks and it had all put her in a much more introspective place than she was generally comfortable being. Wasn't all bad, though.

"'sup, Amaya?" she said from the doorway.

"Oh, hey, Beau," Amaya greeted back with a grin. "Come on in. You're someone I've been hoping to run into, actually I've been meaning to give you a call," but sometimes she was just bad about remembering or just far too good at getting distracted, "'bout those knives ad stars."

"I mean, I've been meaning to drop in and ask about them, so we're kinda even?" Beau said, shrugging, and she wasn't trying to be dismissive about it, it just sounded kind of like that. "Been a lot going on lately, you know how it is. How're those going though?"

"Yeahhhh," Amaya's sigh in response to that was far too understanding, really, "I know how that is. I'm glad to say, though, that even with all the set-backs and delays, I've actually got them finished. Lemme grab 'em for you." She started to make her way around the counter where she'd kept the box. "You've got good timing, just finished 'em up last week."

"Yeah, I have no clue how long something like that would take," Beau said, shrugging. (Which could have been a lie. She liked to know things, a lot more than she let on.) "But I would've been, like, being super annoying about it if all this wild shit didn't keep happening, so that's a win for you."

"If all this wild shit didn't keep happening," Amaya pointed out, "then I'd have gotten 'em done long before you had a chance to be annoying about it. Whichever way you cut it, though, I'm glad it didn't come down to that."

And then there was the nice wooden box Amaya had put them in on the counter, and she turned it toward Beau and opened it up to show her the nice set of black throwing stars tinged with blue on the edges of the blades and throwing knives to match. "But there you have 'em. And, I assure you, especially with what I saw when you were testing out the prototypes, they're going to be just as effective as they are pretty, likely even more so."

"Holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit." Beau's voice slid upward by about half an octave before she finished the exclamation. "I mean, I saw the design before, when I tested them? But this is fucking amazing. It's, like, serious art, you know? Obviously you do. Still."

She took out one of the stars and spun it between her fingers just to see the pattern the blue formed as the star rotated.

"I kinda can't wait to try these out. For real, I mean."

Yup. People in this town really did wonders for Amaya's ego. It was nice, working somewhere that people actually appreciated a fine weapon. But she kept her grin fairly contained for how much her chest was filling with pride.

"I assume by 'for real,' you mean with more than just a practice dummy or a couple of trees," she noted. "Though I know firsthand the trees in the parks can take quite a beating."

"Yeah, I saw the scar you and Fjord left on one of them," Beau said with a faint smirk. "But stationary targets aren't really the same."

How convenient that she was picking them up this week!

"I kind of want to keep one of each and just, like, frame them or something, make a nice display case in my living room , you know?"

"Oh, no," said Amaya, with a wave of her hand. "That was all Fjord. Credit where credit's due, especially with regards to a throw like that. Only scar I managed to get was one in the ground, which should hardly count. And I'm a big supporter of weapons for both damage and interior design," she hitched a thumb over at the wall covered in various weapons, "in case you couldn't tell. Function and form, art and action."

"Yeah, but you made the thing, so you should get some credit for it in the end," Beau countered.

She gave the star another spin.

"You do fucking sweet work, just gonna put that out there. Like, you even got the whole color theme going and everything. That's amazing."

Amaya shrugged, but the modesty of the gesture was a bit spoiled by the grin on her face. "That'd be the Tanalorian steel," she said. "Treat it a certain way, and you can pull all sorts of colors out of it. Same stuff I used for Kanan's sword, only with him I went green. Makes 'em a bit more...interesting. Unique."

And kind of fun to make, really, but that could be said for anything she made.

"It's like . . . super dope," Beau said, looking like a kid in a candy shop. "Shit, if I ever get home for a visit I might send some referrals your way. That kind of personal touch is a really smart business move, you know?"

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Blackstone Foundry and Forge; Friday [04/26].

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