Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-63.86.215.2-20130611071759/@comment-63.86.215.2-20130611181350

1) I believe if you check the boards, and some of Monty Oum's comments, you'll find that Wiess does indeed have a gun in her sword.  There's plenty of frame outtakes showing the trigger on her sword hilt at several points in the fight.  She simply never uses it.

2a) The differences in weapon weight actually goes toward my contention, the two weapons should result in radically different fighting styles.  However, instead, we see very similar moves between the two.  It's more as if someone had adapted the other persons fighting style to match their weapon.  I think it would be easier to adapt the scythe techniques to Yang's hand-to-hand fighting style, than it would be to do the opposite.  In other words, it almost seems like Yang has been trained by Ruby's teacher.  Which argues more for Yang to have been adopted, now that I think about it.

2b)  I agree about Ruby depending on the scythe, whereas Yang could still fight without her cuffs.  At least, given what has been shown so far.  It's entirely possible that Ruby has some other abilities we haven't seen (the whole teleport thing seems to argue for that).  But, given the current available knowledge, I agree that Ruby is more dependent on her weapon for combat than Yang.  That does not, however, mean anything.  You can have the same situation with people who study Aikido.  Aikido can be used with bare hands, with staffs, and swords (just to name three).  All three are the same martial art training, and if you watch 3 practictioners, each using the Aikido style, that style comes through.  But by the same token, someone who has specialized in Staff will be at a severe disadvantage when disarmed compared to someone who specializes in empty hand techniques.  It doesn't mean one is better than the other, it simply means one specialized in a specific weapon while the other specialized in lack of weapons. The staff or sword master can still fight without their weapons, but they are not as good as the unarmed specialist. By the same token, the unarmed specialist doesn't perform with staffs or swords nearly as well as the weapon specialists.