Chapter 1: A simple, more honest soul

Ruby Rose gulped as she approached the Sith Checkpoint, Given what she was planning the fact she didn't even come close to having anything resembling the legal documentation that would let her actually pass through the gate. Still she wasn't worried, after all she had a thermal detonator clenched in one hand and her other was firmly gripping her blaster. So she felt relatively safe.

"Ruby you there?" A voice asked over the earpiece Ruby had resting in her left ear. The Speaker was Ruby's Half Sister Yang; who at this point in time was situated on top of a run down tower with a very high powered blaster focused on the guards at the gate.

"I hear you." Ruby said as she casually slipped between an arguing alien couple and continued down the packed market street keeping her silver eyes trained on the Sith checkpoint.

"Good, you ready?" Yang asked as she tracked her Sister down the bustling alien market, struggling to keep track of her Sister in her ratty red jacket amongst the various alien Species currently living on Patch, all of whom seemed to have picked this day to visit the market instead of any other freaking day. Probably because it was one of the few days where the rain wasn't falling.

"Yup." Ruby said, nodding at a Dug who was attempting to strangle a merchant well known for his… lacklustre deals. And continuing her path to the gate.

"You still want to go through with this?" Yang asked as she eyed a couple of Sith troops getting near to Ruby, her gun naturally moving onto them as she got ready to blast them the second they looked at her sister the wrong way.

Ruby didn't answer, partly because she didn't trust herself to give the right answer and partly because she heard something very interesting slip out of one of the Sith Troopers mouths.

"…Can't believe they want more people guarding those two, their just some Padawans…" The Trooper muttered darkly as he stomped off down the market path, shoving past a Gungan couple as they went, sending their fruit flying as she fell to the ground.

"Padawans?" Ruby asked, turning to look back at the troopers, really wanting to turn back around and hear more of the conversation.

"What?" Yang asked, irritation in her voice as she looked down at the silver eyed girl.

"That Trooper!" Ruby hissed as she ducked into a small side ally, crouching low and looking at the retreating backs of the silver armored troops (Though due to the generally wet atmosphere of patch was the armor was more brown and dull by now) "He mentioned Padawans!"

"What? As in the Jedi kind?" Yang asked, slightly taken aback now she knew what Ruby had heard.

"Yes! Yang do you have any idea how big a deal this is!" Ruby muttered as she crouched down, ignoring how much her boots were sinking into the muddy ground and the fact that she probably had tetanus from just touching the rusty metal building behind her.

"Ruby that can't be what they said." Yang said. "If the Jedi were going to come they would have arrived during the invasion, it can't have been them."

"But…" Ruby began before Yang interrupted her, a slight edge of irritation in her voice as she spoke.

"Ruby we've been planning this raid for the last month! We aren't throwing it away so you can obsess over something you heard two random troopers talking about so we can save people who aren't hear!" Yang snapped.

Ruby gritted her teeth, While Yang was probably right for perfectly logical reasons she suspected that wasn't the actual reason she held this attitude. Yang came from Two Mandalorians and she had picked up some of their legendary disdain for the Jedi order… them not showing up to help while the Sith took over her home hadn't helped matters. Ruby suspected she wouldn't have wanted to go in and help even if she did have more evidence.

A loud horn honking jolted Ruby, suddenly causing her to remember she had perfectly logical reasons for letting the Padawan thing slide for now. Specifically the Hover Truck coming through right now.

Ruby watched as the Hover ruck turned left, just as it had for the last month, moving down the boggy road as Ruby ran to intercept it, stopping on a small ledge just above the Trucks path at the bottom of a hill. Ruby tried to calm her nerves as she gripped hilt of her blaster. This plan was crazy, a sign that she'd come up with it. The main thing that would prove it belonged to the red headed fifteen year old would come if this actually worked. (Which admittedly had proved more effective than you'd think)

Just as the Hover Truck passed underneath her she jumped, freeing her blaster from its holster and blasting a hole into the roof of the convoy truck. Granted it wasn't a big hole, but then again, it didn't need to be seeing as Thermal detonators weren't that big either. As she dropped the detonator Ruby couldn't help but let off a small cheeky smile before she dived off the truck, running as fast as she could towards the relative safety of the old Mountain Glenn Subway system, diving down the stairs faster than a normal person should have been capable of as she covered her ears as the small bomb went off, with a force far stronger than anything that size should have been capable of. Sending the truck up and practically vaporising it.

"Ruby, confirmed destruction!" Yang said, Ruby knew full well she was fist pumping at the moment. "I get a feeling we pissed them off today!"

Ruby nodded as she scrambled down further into the station. Happy the plan seemed to have worked. Normally losing a single truck wouldn't really damage the Sith's presence on Patch in the slightest… Of course that assumed it wasn't carrying experimental Dust Crystals. Fairly unique to planets in the Remnant System no one was entirely sure over what exactly the crystals were, other than the fact they were and effective power source once you refined them properly… and if you happened to destroy them in transit to a lab which was meant to study them and you just set them back at least a month while they made more…

"That'll have them fuming!" Yang grinned as she hauled herself of the roof of the tower she was currently stationed on, sliding down and jumping off the edge as she headed to the West station to rendezvous with Ruby who was traveling from East station. "Plus that raid was so short I doubt they saw you!"

"I hope not." Ruby muttered as she sank a boot into something infinitely less pleasant than the mud outside, presumably left by that Patch Frog sprawled across the neighbouring tracks. This was not going to be a fun walk home.

…

The Sisters reunited at the station with Ruby giving a very firm warning not to say anything as she stomped up in her dung stained boots, which to her credit Yang didn't (Assuming you didn't count barely hidden giggling as saying anything) as the two began the walk home.

Patch wasn't the nicest planet to live on, hell technically it was a moon to its home planet of Vale which frequently dominated the skyline if you happened to look up… assuming the rain clouds weren't there and that was not exactly a common occurrence. As a result mud squelched around you with every foot step you took and also lead to a lot of buildings built on the moon from sinking into the ground by a few feet. On top of making the terrain a complete nightmare to navigate normally the rain also had another nasty side effect, most notably the fact it was slightly acidic. Said rain was the reason new buildings never looked it, one rainfall was enough to ruin any metal, hence why every building on the moon was rusted.

This also lead to some problems for the locals/anyone visiting. Because shockingly the rain which damaged the metal super structures was also rather troublesome for anything organic that wasn't made to live on the planet. The usual strategy to deal with this was to cover everything, hence why everyone wore full body outfits at all times (Usually with a helmet or hood to protect their head)

This rain was also what the two Sisters were currently dealing with.

"Well this kills the mood." Ruby muttered, looking up at the green tinted clouds as she pulled the hood on her jacket up to cover her face.

"Oh come on Sis!" Yang grinned as she took the bag containing the meat she'd just brought of the four armed seller. "It's not so bad!"

Ruby scowled under her hood. It was all well and good for her to say that in her Beskar forged Mandalorian armor which was roughly one hundred years old and one of the few things that could survive Patch's frequent acid rain storms unharmed. When you had that to wear the rain wasn't so bad, when you only had a hood that had already suffered quite a few storms and was only just holding together… well it was never going to end well.

Still Ruby didn't respond, they were close to their home anyway and within five minutes they were at their front door. The Half Sisters lived out of a disused swoop bike garage, brought off the owner for barley anything after new construction made it a complete nightmare to get from the building to the track. Well that was what he'd told them, as it turns out the other reason was that out of the three doors only one of them worked properly (the rest had had their mechanisms melt due to the rain) and the maintenance wasn't worth paying for.

Still it had some upsides, a stable home that was undeniably theirs was a nice thing to have and it had enough room to hold all their stuff… Which admittedly wasn't much. If you were to count all the sisters worldly possessions you would find it amounted to two rails of clothing (most of which was Yangs) two mattresses for sleeping on and a pillow they alternated using every night, a restored swoop bike that came with the 'house', a slightly dodgy hologram projector for communications, a series of crates for sitting on, one small detox booth (Basically a shower but with the advantages of dealing with the acid rain if it got on the users skills) and Ruby's pride and joy.

Crescent Rose was a land speeder, well had been anyway, the machine Ruby had turned the vehicle into was anything but standard. Painted a stunning Crimson every single component in the speeder had been stripped out and replaced. The three small engines that were meant to be located at the back of the speeder had been replaced by two bigger engines, each one tweaked so it produced four times the power the units were meant to be capable of. The seats and controls had all been stripped out for more responsive units that actually fit her fifteen year old proportions. Then there was the reactor, No one but Ruby understood what went on under the hood of Crescent Rose, all anyone knew was that the engine practically sung a maelstrom of power and noise whenever she used it and that all her weapons never ran out of power and that was usually a problem for anyone that raced her.

"Okay I'm going to call Nora and get payment for that job." Yang said as pulled her helmet off with one hand (letting her insanely well kept blond hair flow free dramatically) and gesturing to the detox booth with the other. "You get cleaned up."

Ruby nodded as she dived in, feeling the relief as the burning feeling of the rain was washed off her as she stood naked in the shower, letting the liquid soak her before she stepped out, grinning as she walked over to her railing and pulling a baggy grey shirt on and one of her black skirts up as she walked over to Crescent Rose and began trying to unclog the main blasters on the front.

Ruby worked for a few minutes while Yang finished her talk with Nora, walking over to her and grinning as she poked one of Ruby's leg which stuck out of the side of her speeder.

"Yeah?" Ruby asked as she slid herself out from under her speeder to look up at her Sister, who was grinning and held out a package.

"We got paid." She said with a grin.

Ruby burst into a massive grin, no going hungry for a while now.

"That's great!" Ruby said as she stood up, walking over to retrieve her spare boots and pulled them on while saying: "That means less pressure on me tonight."

Yang rolled her eyes at her Sister as she jumped into her speeder while she opened the door. It was only her history of being stupid and reckless she would be furious at her Sister and her racing habits. However she wasn't exactly a stranger to the circuit and her Sister did have a knack for it, her winnings had gotten them through some tough months before.

"Just try not to wreck okay." She said as the door opened and Ruby edged her speeder out, made the slightly tight turn and headed off towards Juniors circuit.

…

Junior as he was known was man with his fingers in many pies, be that the perfectly legal bar/gambling den that bore his name, or the illegal black market smuggling he was involved in or possibly his most well known enterprise, the Patch Underground racing circuit.

Well known for it's 'anything goes' attitude towards basically everything Junior was a haven for anyone wanting information/rare goods/or just the most intensive race of their life. Anyone could show up in anything (provided it adhered to very loose size restrictions) and compete for a variety of prizes. Mostly credits but sometimes you found something else, like a set of Mandalorian armor a certain blond had won or even a broken speeder (Ironically given to its user so the silver eyed girl would stay out of trouble)

Ruby parked Crescent Rose on the start line (placement depended on how early you got their) before jumping out and looking around at what the competition had brought with them.

Maybe it was the fact Ruby spent hours buried in all sorts of machinery herself but she couldn't help but examine every other racer on the line. Every vehicle that showed up here was either extensively modified or a rich kid playing around in some ludicrously expensive fresh of the line swoop bike that nearly always ended up wrecked.

Ruby walked up the rows, smiling as she looked at everything that had showed up, earning a lot of dirty looks off the various racers. Which was fairly understandable given that most of the time a racer getting this close to his opponent was to sabotage their vehicle, which was the one rule Junior actually bothered to enforce.

"Hey Rose!" A voice called, Ruby jolted as she turned to look around at the speaker.

"Hey Miltia…" Ruby said, turning to look at one of the twins Junior hired to enforce his 'no sabotage rule' One of the Malachite Sisters, two young girls who's habbit of wearing dresses and impractical heals didn't stop their ability to lay out opponents over twice their size and armed with more than a couple of Vibroblades. Simply put, you did not mess with these two girls if you felt like walking away from the circuit with all your limbs.

"Shouldn't you be keeping an eye on your speeder?" The girl asked, fixing her green eyes on Crescent Rose as Ruby responded.

"It's okay, I got the starter." She said, showing her the control chip, which was usually the easiest bit to take of before one of the Malachite Sisters caught you. "Actually was interested in the prize haul today."

Miltia rolled her eyes.

"Ruby you know how this works, the prizes are revealed after the race." Miltia scowled as Ruby flinched but continued.

"Actually, I was interested in a possible exchange…"

That changed Miltia's attitude.

"Come with me." She said simply as her sister Melanie walked out, standing near Crescent Rose while Milta took Ruby over to Junior.

"Junior." Milta called as Junior provided his regular payment to the Sith who were meant to be stopping the races if they caught the organiser to make sure they failed to find anything out today.

The two Sith troopers walked away and sat down at the stands near the view screens (the races were a great way to kill spare time on their shift which were never going to work) as Junior turned to Ruby… Surprised to see her hear tonight.

"Rose… This is new." He said as he sat down in his private seat to look at the screens, pouring himself a green drink and sipping at it as Ruby stood awkwardly at the door. "You want an exchange?"

What was meant by 'Exchange' in this situation was that a racer wanted something specific instead of the prize if they won, given he sometimes needed time to move assets around sometimes to get what the racer asked for it was sensible to do it before the race given these things tended to dispersed very quickly (Loses tended not to stop at the finish line and just headed home afterwards) He mostly did this on the grounds that it guarantied an interest in something and if they couldn't win the race then they'd have to go through more conventional methods if they wanted to get it, mainly more credits than they'd normally like to pay. So long as he kept racers happy by holding up his end of the deal when they actually won racers would keep trying it and he made money on things he never would have guessed.

"Yes." Ruby said, forcing the word out as she took a few steps towards Junior. "I heard something from a couple of Sith troopers today and I want to see if you know anything more about it."

Junior took another sip of his drink before raising an eyebrow and saying: "I might know something, depends what it's about."

Ruby steeled herself for a second before taking a deep breath and saying:

"I want to know anything about the Padawans they said they were holding."

Junior looked at the Silver eyed girl for a second before responding.

"If I have anything it will be waiting for you at the finish line." He said simply.

Ruby nodded, a part of her had been expecting that; Junior couldn't know everything all the time but he could find information very quickly if people wanted it. Ruby was always good for it due to her young age making her very good for betting on. So she might get lucky.

A part of her thought she should make a jokey comment before leaving, something about how she'd be seeing him there, but the words didn't come so she exited silently, walking over to her speeder, reattaching the starter and getting ready for the lights to flash green.

Most of her opponents were trying to psych themselves up, convincing themselves that their machines would hold together, they would win this race, they were going to come out of this with all their limbs. Ruby didn't. She didn't need to. Crescent Rose was easily the best built vehicle on this start line and Ruby was far better than her age gave her any right to be.

Ruby smiled as the light went green, she slammed the throttle forwards, this was an old track and she'd ran it before, she could gun it here. Crescent Rose shot of the line, darting forwards as Ruby kept one firm hand on the throttle and one of the wheel.

As per usual some of the racers hadn't even made it off the starting line properly. The one fool brave enough to bring a Pod Racer had suffered a failure when the beam connecting his engines had failed, both of which had gone flying, not that the pilot noticed because his racer was to busy being sent flying as a racer rammed him up the back, clearly not expecting the man in front of him to stop instantly.

Ruby grinned despite herself, never bring anything fancy to these races, it never worked she thought as she shot past the crash and entered the main portion of the race through the old Dust processing plant.

Originally it was only the Schnee mining corporation on Patch and their old facility had been cutting edge at the time of its construction. Now it was old, worn out and only used for races like these. Keeping up speed while also avoiding a crash was something most racers failed spectacularly in.

The first stretch was simply enough, a straight line along the main bridge which lead to the facility's main gate. Long ago this had been a smooth bridge that would have been a fantastic opportunity to see how fast your racer could go. However, in the present the bridge was a half falling apart mess and gunning it relied on getting the one specific line of still intact plating and everyone went for that so Ruby went for the more viable strategy. So long as you kept your speed sensible you could take a more indirect path and avoid most of the fighting for the line and not lose any real ground.

Ruby grinned as she shot through the main gate, out of sixteen racers only eight were still in it, the bridge was good at filtering out the weaker racers, now it was serious time.

As Ruby threaded her speeder down the tight right hand corner that lead to the next stage one of the banes of her existence came around the corner. Pigs as she called them, racers who thought that nothing being able to ram them would give them a victory, just make a big thing with about fifty times more engines than necessary that nothing could move and you'd win.

Ruby scowled, she knew who that driver was. Cardin.

That unbelievable…

Somehow he'd managed to make his racer even worse since the last time she saw it, a slate grey hunk of flying scrap. Ruby growled as she looked up at Cardin from his high vantage point. She doubted he'd even seen her pull up next to him… well, no reason to correct him of that assumption.

Ruby grinned, knowing what she was going to do as soon as they hit the fourth stage of the race, still; she better get there first, preferably without being noticed.

Edge time.

Ruby broke of from Cardin, the normal path to continuing this race would be to head straight down the main factory production line before making a large left turn into the shipping yard and dodging between the rusting cargo cranes. However, Ruby knew a way of avoiding all of these and cutting a sizeable chunk out of the race if you were smart and small enough.

Ruby approached her break off point she got ready, not thinking about the timing for it. She'd never had to, something always just let her know what to do. So, she didn't think about ramping the throttle, she just did as soon as she knew when to. Forcing the speeder to jump up down a very narrow corridor, skimming along on some of the damaged piping as sparks flew from the speeder as its underside ran along the pipe as the shear force of her engines drove the speeder forwards. She knew full well the scraping was going to ruin the paint and possibly rip part of the underside off if she wasn't careful.

Soon she was off the pipes and all she had to do was let Crescent Rose do her thing as it shot forwards, bursting out into the main facility with the cranes behind her as she drove forwards, seeing Cardin's shocked expression in the parking camera. She then saw his look of fury as he rammed his throttle forwards as his pig of a racer pulled next to Ruby's speeder.

This was another moment where Ruby just knew what to do, as Cardin pulled up next to her she grabbed the throttle, pulling it back before sliding sideways and darting forwards, grinning as Cardin crashed into a wall… and another racer Ruby hadn't seen.

Six left.

Ruby grinned, these guys were good but the rest of the track was straight forwards, the most you were required to do was dodge a collapsed processing tower and that was nothing for Ruby to do. She easily threaded herself between her opponents, slipping between them as she climbed places, not even flinching when the leader went for a nasty ram over the open sea of the port, simply shooting forwards as his attempt backfired and he sent himself crashing into the ocean.

Ruby had a massive smile on her face as she crossed the line, looking over at Junior who was clapping as she drove over to him.

"Congratulations, Impressive flying." He said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a data pad. "This and your share of the winnings are yours."

"So there was something?" Ruby said as she took the pad of Junior before the credits, a sign to Junior he really should have learnt about the situation sooner, she would have paid well for that pad if it meant more to her than the credits.

"That's what the Trooper claimed." Miltia said with a huge smirk as she approached hr. "And he was very eager to impress me when I stole it."

"Okay." Ruby said as she angled Crescent Rose back home. Time to see if she'd won anything of value.

...