Somewhere in space. 6 days after the Battle of Geonosis.

"Enemy contact! Entering the system!" Redwing barked into the comms, and Jaune felt his heartrate quicken. The dropship was completely dark, save for the faint blue glow emitted from the commando's visor's. The ship began to move, and shudder as Redwing began to open fire.

"Hard contact!" The ship began to shake as the pirates returned fire. Redwing fired another salvo, and Jaune felt a tug in the bottom of his stomach as the ship accelerated.

"Enemy engines and weapons systems disabled! Moving in now!"

The Republic ship, disguised as a Labyrinth Bread company freighter, pulled alongside the pirate ship, and sealed itself to it.

"Get a charge on now!" Jaune barked, as Nora set a breaching charge on the door that now connected their ship to the enemy's. Unlike typical breaching charges that just blasted the door's lock, this one was designed to blow the door off entirely.

"Ready!" Nora relayed, as she backed up from the door. They had to be careful setting off explosives in such close proximity if they were to avoid any friendly casualties.

"Hit!" Jaune yelled as he detonated the charge, rushing through the door first. Jaune believed in leading from the front, and he showed that in situations like these.

On the other side of the doorway was a mercenary, stunned slightly, but with his gun still raised. It was a close quarters situation, and Jaune instinctively slammed his fist under the merc's jaw, his vibroblade ejecting into the merc's throat. His eyes widened as Jaune twisted, then yanked his arm free, a spray of crimson following his blade out of the gurgling merc's throat. Jaune moved forward wordlessly, confident that his team was behind him. He turned a corner and saw a merc rushing him with a knife, but Jaune wasn't a fool.

He raised his rifle and put a burst into the criminal's chest, the momentum of his charge carrying the limp body past Jaune, slamming into a wall. Jaune ran up to a door, which seemed to be locked.

"Looks like this is the bridge guys, remember, keep your fire on target and no explosives. We need to salvage all we can here." Jaune ordered, turning towards his squad.

"Hey Sarge, what's in the room?" Nora said, her rifle trained on an unmarked door that was still sealed.

"Don't know. I'll check it out." Jaune crept towards the door, his rifle level, in case anything jumped out at him. He walked towards the console, ready to slice open the door, but to his surprise, it opened for him anyway. Unlocked. Weird.

Jaune slowly walked inside, his squad directly behind him. The room seemed empty, and Jaune began to walk out with the rest of JNPR, when they heard a voice that was feminine, yet robotic. All of JNPR quickly turned around, their guns trained on the origin of the voice.

"Salutations!"

Onboard the Beacon. One standard week after the Battle of Geonosis.

Weiss felt like absolute shit. She had been in a bacta pod for the past day, her wounds healing. She hated the bacta pods. Floating in a glass cage, with nothing to do but breathe in, and count how many bubbles go past your face while you're in there. 5,494, by the way.

She was out now, walking towards the mess hall, where she suspected she would find her squad. She hurt all over, but her side hurt the worst. Even though her wounds had been patched up, she still felt an ache where the slug had entered her body. Even worse, she was incredibly hungry. Not just hungry, but hungry for real food. She wandered about the Beacon, trying to find her way to the cafeteria.

She eventually found it, and walked in, looking for her friends. She found them sitting at a table in the corner of the mess hall, secluded from the rest of the troopers. They had probably picked this place at Blake's insistence, trying to keep away from everyone else's judgement. A shame she has to hide like that.

They seemed to be deep in conversation, but that stopped when Ruby noticed Weiss approaching the table. She stood up, and rushed Weiss, who braced herself for the impact. A tight hug enveloped her, as Yang and Blake stood up and walked over.

"RC 1104 reporting for duty." Weiss said in her best impersonation of a monotone trooper's voice, as Ruby punched her on the shoulder lightly, laughing.

"How are you feeling?" Ruby asked, letting go of her friend.

"I'm alright, just a bit hungry." The sound of her stomach growling cut through the air, and Weiss grimaced slightly.

"Okay check that, I'm starving." She admitted, as Ruby busted out into laughter.

"Come on, I'll go with you through the line." Yang said, motioning for Weiss to follow her.

They walked towards the line, and Weiss grabbed a tray, as Yang just stood behind her, her food already at the table.

"So how are you?" Weiss asked, as she pointed towards what food she wanted. Oooh, they have nerf burgers.

"Pretty good. Nothing much going on." Yang said, shrugging nonchalantly.

Weiss just turned, and stared at Yang, who began to feel uncomfortable, as she could guess what this was about.

"You know what I mean. I said we would talk about it later, and I meant it."

"I'm fine with us talking about it, just not here, okay? Not now." Yang said, breaking eye contact as she looked at her shoes awkwardly.

Weiss simply nodded, before getting the rest of her food, and walking back to the table.

"So Weiss." Ruby said, chewing on her food. "We were discussing the mission."

"I miss anything good?" Weiss said, beginning to tear into her burger.

"We were discussing the matter of kill count for the mission."

"I did kill our target, and his two lieutenants." Blake chimed in, chewing on some pasta.

"Yeah but you sniped them. No style points." Yang shot back, a fry in her hand.

"I sniped two of them, but I unloaded two clips into the bitch that shot Weiss."

"I'll give you points for overkill since you cooked her until she was well done, but still no style points." Blake just sighed, rolling her eyes.

"Besides," Yang continued, "I had the highest kill count with my bomb."

"I detonated the bomb." Ruby said, swallowing her food.

"I placed it." Weiss added, as Yang glared at her.

"So you guys split those kills three ways." Blake said, smiling.

"The bomb detonated late. That should cost Yang points." Ruby said, pointing her fork accusingly at Yang, who shrugged.

"Do we even know how many we took out with the blast?" Weiss said as she put her burger down.

"Nah, no fucking clue." Yang added, as Weiss threw her hands in the air in exasperation.

"Then why does it matter?"

Blake, Ruby, and Yang looked at each other, and shrugged before Blake spoke up.

"For fun?"

The table erupted in laughter, and Weiss couldn't help suppress the grin that enveloped her face.

It felt good to be back.

Ren considered himself to be a calm individual. It was essential, to balance out Nora's craziness. But at the moment, even he was having issues keeping his cool.

"Identify yourself." Jaune said, his blaster rifle pointed at the head of the strange sight in front of him.

"My designation is P3N-Y." It said, before perking up. "But you can call me Penny!"

'Penny' was, as best as Ren could guess, some form of protocol droid that had been modified for combat. She was painted black, with bright neon green accents, and had blades fixed to the undersides of her arms, and had blasters attached to the top of her arms, on her wrists. She looked oddly human-like, with fake orange hair on her head, bright green eyes scanning the four clones in front of her.

"Great, a fucking synth." Nora muttered, as Penny's head snapped to stare directly at Nora.

"That's offensive, clone."

"Who the fuck are you calling clone?" Nora shouted, her rifle pointed at Penny's face, as Penny's blasters began to glow green, charging up.

"Nora, stand down. Penny, if you could stop antagonizing my soldiers, this would go smoother." Jaune ordered, his rifle still trained at the droid.

"What is your prime directive?" Jaune demanded, and Ren could sense the unease in his voice.

"My prime directive is to AssIS-." Penny's voice began to cut out, and fluctuate, as Ren crept towards the console that was tucked away in the secret room that Penny had been hiding in, behind a false wall.

The console that Penny was still plugged into.

He began to cycle through the list of commands on the screen, before finding the one he was looking for.

Deactivate.

Penny's head slumped forward, and the neon green on her body dimmed.

"Boss, what was that?" Pyrrha said unsteadily, clearly disturbed by what she had seen.

"No idea. Let's take her back with us, see if command has any use for her."

"What's taking you so long Juniper? You guys stop for coffee or something?" Redwing came in over the comms, clearly growing impatient.

"We're about to assault the bridge now." Jaune stated, as he began to walk towards the door.

"Good, the meter's running."

Yang had been doing fine. While Weiss had been recovering, the rest of RWBY had time to kill. Yang had taken the opportunity to do everything she could to keep her mind off of Qiilura, and she had spent most of her time working out. She found it easy to ignore her thoughts if she was doing something physical, so she had spent almost no time sitting still. Unfortunately, she still had to sleep, and lying motionless in a bed was the perfect time the thoughts to creep into her head. Murderer. You killed them.

She had been having a good time in the mess with Blake and Ruby, talking about literally anything but the massacre, but then Weiss had to go and bring it up. The rest of their time in the cafeteria had gone well enough, but after they had finished, Yang told her team that she was going to work out, and walked towards the gym onboard the Beacon. She was unsurprised when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned to see none other than Weiss.

"Yang, I think we should have that talk now."

"Weiss, I'd really rather not right now."

"Yang, you're never going to want to. The sooner we do this, the sooner you can go back to sleeping normally."

Yang cocked her head. Weiss shouldn't know about that, she was in the medbay.

"Blake told me. And I'm sure Ruby noticed too." Weiss explained, a soft expression on her face.

Weiss walked towards the gym, and walked into one of the rooms reserved for private workout sessions when you didn't want to deal with people. There were three troopers in the room already, but they cleared out when Weiss and Yang walked in. They could feel the tension in the air, and decided that pissing off two commandos, even if they weren't in armor, was a bad idea.

"So how are you really?" Weiss asked, leaning against the wall.

"I'm fine if I don't think about it. I do stuff to keep my mind off of it." Yang said, arms crossed, making it very clear that she didn't want to be here.

"That's no way to operate Yang."

"What do you want me to do Weiss?"

"I want you to talk to me about how you feel."

"How I feel? I feel like a fucking murderer, because there were five more corpses when we left that godforsaken planet then there should have been! I feel like a fucking failure, because if I hadn't slipped and fell, those people would still be alive! If I had made sure that charge had been set up right, you wouldn't have almost died! And most of all, I sure as shit don't feel like the soldier I'm supposed to be!" Her voice cracked at her last admittance, her head down, and shoulder slumped.

"I didn't want this Weiss. Even back on Kamino, I had always hoped that there would never be a war for us to fight, so we could just go out into the galaxy and live."

"There's always after the war." Weiss said quietly.

"After the war?! The only way we're leaving is in a body bag, actually no fuck that, we don't get body bags do we? We get left in the field, no burial, no memorial, no fucking nothing! Left to rot like the fucking tools we are. Do you know how many commandos died in Geonosis?!"

"I-." Weiss began to respond, but was cut off.

"4,982!" Yang yelled, letting the floodgates open.

"What are the odds that we make it through one month of this war, let alone the entire war?" Yang said, not expecting an answer.

She opened her mouth, about to go off on another tangent, but she was stopped short when Weiss hugged her.

"Uh, Weiss?"

"You need to stop worrying about things you can't control. They're only going to tear you apart. Worry about what you can affect, like getting through this awful war." Weiss said, before pulling back, her hands on Yang's arms.

"We'll get through this Yang. Together."

"Charge set!" Pyrrha barked as she dashed to her right and leaned against the door frame, standing right behind Jaune. She felt the charge go off, and Nora tossed a flashbang grenade into the room, as Jaune rushed in. Pyrrha was right behind him, her rifle instinctively snapping to a merc who was standing up straight, stunned by the grenade. She put two a burst into his chest, before moving forward. A merc stood up behind a terminal, the group's leader, if his large blaster was any indication. He never got the chance to fire, as a blue bolt pierced his skull, and he fell backwards, smoke trailing from a hole in his forehead.

"Clear." Pyrrha said, as the rest of her squad repeated the word, and they all eased up slightly.

"Redwing, this is Ninety. Bridge is cleared, we are beginning to pull data off of the terminal in here. Jaune said, pointing at said terminal. Ren nodded, and walked towards it.

"You have much of a waiting party?"

Jaune kicked the limp body at his feet, rifle still pointed at it just in case.

"Nah, nothing too big."

"Ren, see if you can find anything on there about that droid." Jaune ordered, while Pyrrha absent mindedly walked over to the merc leader.

She crouched down next to his body, examining him.

"Kind of ugly, isn't he?" Nora said, standing behind Pyrrha.

"Plasma damage sure didn't help."

"Pyr, Nora, with me." Jaune said, and the two commandos jogged over to him while Ren continued to pull data off the terminal.

"We need to move her." Jaune said, motioning at the droid, making Nora and Pyrrha groan.

They lifted Penny up, and carried her to the ship, making sure to carefully disconnect the cables attached to her.

"You get a droid to replace two-three? It'll probably talk more." Redwing remarked as the trio carried Penny into the ship, setting her down and leaning her against a wall.

"And here I was going to tip well." Ren said over the comms, causing Redwing to laugh.

"In all seriousness, gratuities are accepted." Redwing said, tapping a jar that was labeled 'Tips.' To Jaune's amusement, it actually had lien in it.

"I've got the data we want Jaune, on my way back to the ship." Ren reported, beginning to jog back to his squad.

"So are we blowing the ship up? Or just leaving it to float around in space?" Nora asked, clearly wanting to blow it up.

"Nah, we'll leave it here. That's what pirates do, and it's what people will think this is." Redwing replied, as their ship detached from the pirate's.

The four commandos sat down, taking their helmets off, happy to have completed the mission.

"Fucking hell Ninety you look like death himself, you know that?" Redwing quipped, causing Pyrrha to study Jaune's armor. Besides the dirt and scorch marks that he had accumulated on Geonosis, there was blood on his left gauntlet and his chest plate, from the merc he had stabbed in the throat.

Jaune just sighed, before looking at Penny, who was still leaning against a bulkhead.

"Man, Intel is gonna have a field day with this one."

'Your problem Sergeant, not mine." Redwing replied, as the squad started laughing, Nora turning her music back on over the comms.

"Another successful mission JNPR." Jaune said, grinning, as the ship took off, taking the squad back home.

Hey guys, Heil96 back once again! I really enjoyed writing this chapter, and I think it's one of my best so far! I think it had a really good balance of combat, emotion, and story! Also we got to meet P3N-Y, who will have a minor part in the story. HUUUUUGE shoutout to /u/Breads_Labyrinth for all their help with fleshing out Penny and how I would fit her into the Star Wars universe. I know you wanted her to be an astromech droid, but I'm shelving that idea for someone else farther down the line. Also I've been kind of hinting at it for a few chapters now, but I'm considering putting some romantic pairings into this story. Now I still haven't made up my mind, and I want to make one thing incredibly clear. Any romance, if I even put it in here, will be a minor plot detail. This will not become a fluff fic, it will stay a darker combat oriented story. That being said, feel free to leave a review letting me know how you feel about romance entering the story. Hell, feel free to leave a review anyway! I do respond to them! A couple things to point out is that the number that Yang cites for Republic Commando casualties during the Battle of Geonosis is pulled from canon. I did not think to myself, Heil, think up a massive number and slap it on in there. Personally I think that number seems excessive, but I am trying to keep this close to the story. Also you may have noticed that I started to put dates and locations at the start of the chapter, which is something I plan on continuing so you, the reader, can keep track with just what the hell is going on. That's all I've got for today, thank you so much for reading! Next chapter will be on Monday at noon CST!

Guest Review response:

Guys and Gals, you cheeky bugger.

Team RWBY

RC-1183 Ruby

RC-1104 Weiss

RC-1170 Blake

RC-1126 Yang

Team JNPR

RC-1390 Jaune

RC-1163 Nora

RC-8051 Pyrrha

RC-2223 Ren

Vode An

Heil96, out.