Vines of a Rose.

He sat on the bridge of the ship he was given command of, contemplating the strategy he would be using to fend off the Republic, and their clone army. It was time, Naboo was going to finally fall. He had been given a new ship, a new weapon, and command of the greatest squadron in the confederate armada, nothing was going to stop him now.

"Umm, commander Durge? Sir?" One of the droids asked, vying for his attention.

"Rrrr, what!?" Durge demanded, easily annoyed by the damn droids that the Count had assigned him.

"It seems we're having trouble with some of the equipment, specifically the new displacement canon."

"Well, what's the problem?"

"It seems to be broken, Sir."

"… Broken how?" The ancient Gen'Dai asked, teeth clenched, trying to stave off the temptation of crushing the battle droid where it stood.

"It's emitting some weird energy signatures; we're not sure what adverse effects this could have when we fire it up."

"Do you think it could still tear apart the Republic's ships?"

"It should be able to, bu-"

"Then I don't care, as long as the damn thing works when it's fired, I don't give a rat's ass! Dismissed!" Durge yelled, his lack of patience finally getting the better of him and sent the machine off before he could send it to Robot Hell. "You," he said pointing to a random droid, "prepare my ship. I'm going to be taking part of this one."

"Roger, roger." Was its dull reply. Within the hour Durge's ship was prepped and ready for the upcoming dogfight over the atmosphere of Naboo. Dropships were already being sent down to the planet's surface. It wouldn't be long before the enemy became alerted to their attack, exactly as planned.

"Sir, we've got enemy ships inbound to our position." The commander heard over his com link.

"Perfect." He hissed out in reply, excited at the prospect for another chance to kill. He was out of the docking bay force fields a mere moment before he had a confirmed visual of six Republic Cruisers. "Engage! Engage! Engage!" He shouted over his microphone.

It was at this moment where all hell broke loose, lasers, explosions, and ship parts started flying everywhere, and at the center of the carnage was Durge, ducking and weaving through the dogfight avoiding blaster fire and annihilating the smaller ships. He was having a good time. However, the Separatist forces were easily outnumbered two to one, their entire operation was just a test fire of their newest W.M.D., the Rapture Warp Wave, a displacement canon capable of taking small sections of a ship, or the whole thing, and sending it a short distance away. It was a prototype, and an incredibly shoddy one at that, teleportation technology had rarely ever been thought about before for any purposes, and now it was being used to literally tear ships in half. Durge wasn't confident that the testing would be successful, but if it was, it would turn the tide of the war immensely, capable of taking small settlements and transporting them out of the planet's atmosphere, effectively killing everyone in it, or just ripping through an enemy's defenses instantaneously either by teleporting ships into a flanking position, or by manipulating the enemy's own vessels.

"Child of War, do you read me?" Durge asked over the radio.

"We read you general, what are your orders?" was the robotic reply from the ship carrying Durge's newest plaything.

"I think it's time we give them a test of our newest… toy."

"What will our target be?"

"Hmmm, aim for the one on the far right."

"Um, your right or ours?"

"Does it matter!?"

"Right, right sorry! What are we going to do with it?"

"Put it inside the one closest to you."

"Roger, roger." The call was hung up. Durge could see a hatch open in the side of the Child of War, the barrel of the Rapture Warp Wave, sliding out as the dreadnaught maneuvered itself to take aim. When it fired, all combat stopped, no one made a move except for the Child of War as it got a bead on its next target, when it fired a second time, it wound up sending the two cruisers on a collision course that neither had time to escape. The crash happened in the span of three seconds, when the impact occurred the remaining ships all focused their fire on the new weapon. Durge heard a call come in from the ship under fire.

"Commander, Commander, we're taking heavy fire and the canon might be damaged!" The droid captain screamed into his ear.

"Protect the Rapture Warp Wave at all costs, do not let it be destroyed! When you get the opportunity, fire upon one of the least damaged ships!" The Gen'dai commander ordered, jumping back into the action, protecting the Providence-class dreadnoughts from the smaller ships.

"We'll try." Was his only reply.

"Great," Durge thought, "this whole mission could turn into a huge clusterfuck and I'm going to be the one taking the rap for it, Goddamnit." He sighed before adding another ARC-170 to his kill count.

It was roughly 30 minutes later, twice as long as the normal wait time, when the Child of War reported back saying that they were almost ready to fire again.

"What took so damn long!?" Durge demanded.

"We said we're under heavy fire!" Was the captain's reply.

"Fire at will!" Durge shouted as he hung up. "Damn, mouthy ass droid, it survives this I'm going to cave its fucking head in." He growled before looking up, out the window of his ship, "Huh?" evidently the republic had seen the cannon charging up, and sent out a small squad of Y-wings armed with torpedoes to bomb the cannon's barrel. "Oh no you don't." Durge thought as he sped after them. Their motion trackers must have seen him because four of them started breaking off to hold him back while three others went on. Durge flipped his ship so the belly of his and another barely grazed each other, causing sparks to fly from the grinding metal. He curved his ship up and righted himself behind the Y-wing, before a single laser blast took out the back middle of the fighter at near point-blank range causing severe damage to the two thrusters on either side, and making it explode. Durge laughed as he noticed two more flanking him from both sides, he dived just as they began firing, causing them to shatter their cockpit windows. Durge tried to ditch the last one, and head for the other three, but he proved to be both more annoying, and harder to kill than his brothers, dodging laser fire and nearly scoring several hits on Durge. "You're pissing me off!" he said as he finally got a bead on the wily clone, "Fuck off and die!" he shouted as he pressed the triggers to fire, destroying yet another clone ship.

_

The three Y-wings were closing in on the Dreadnaught when a blip showed up on their motion tracker, their new tail sening them a message.

"Did you really think that would hold me for long?" The clones heard over their ships' coms centers.

"Not really, Commander. But we did figure they'd keep you busy for just long enough, and we were right." The head clone said, the smirk evident in his voice.

"Yeah, you kind of messed up by taking too long, we have this whole plan that has us blowing up your entire space ship." Was the reply of the one on the right.

"Well then I'd better put an end to that little plan, now shouldn't I?" Durge responded.

"Or you could just surrender, come with us and go to prison, nice and easy. Who knows, maybe you'll be let out early 'cause of good behavior! BWAHAHAHA!" The left rear mocked, before he and his craft were reduced to space scrap.

"HOLY FUCK, TUCKER! Caboose, take evasive action!" The leader shouted.

"Copy that Church!" Was the newly named Caboose's reply. As they began ducking, zig-zagging, and barrel-rolling like idiots.

"Hold still, Goddamnit."

"No thanks, I'd rather not end up like Tucker."

"Caboose! Too soon!"

"You're fucking idiots you know that?!"

"Yes!"

"Caboose, shut up! Just shut the fuck up, and keep him off me while I prep the bomb!"

"Okay!"

"GRRAHHHH" Durge was effectively pissed and attempted to fire on Church's Y-wing, only for Caboose to swoop in and take the hits to the underside of his own ship after having his astromech boost the shields on it.

"Bomb's prepped, firing now!" Church said as he flew to the still charging cannon.

"NOOO!" Durge shouted, a feeling of defeat and rage bubbling throughout his body as the torpedo was launched into the glowing barrel. He fired on Church's engines nicking them just enough to send him on a collision course with the ship.

"Ain't that a bitch?" Was all Durge and Caboose heard, before Church impacted and exploded, against the hull of the ship. Caboose took advantage of his new positioning and fired on Durge's vessel, causing it to stall, right in front of the barrel, before flipping around and speeding off to the Republic's rendezvous point. The torpedo did do some damage to the Rapture Warp Wave, but it didn't prevent it from firing.

"Aw fuck..." Durge said as the beam hit him, and he disappeared. The moment he was gone the entire ship ruptured, the explosion taking out the other Dreadnaughts with it. The Republic had won the battle.

_

"…Me." All Durge saw was a flash of light and then he was in the gravitational pull of some planet he'd never seen before, all systems failing and red flashing lights and alarms blaring in his ears. He attempted to wrestle with the unresponsive controls, but they weren't doing anything. He tapped away at some holographic panels trying to at least get the shields up before he could crash into an ever growing expanse of lush, green forest. As the forest drew ever closer Durge began to make out nearby settlements, "Perhaps I can find some help from the locals when I crawl out of this." he thought. It was then, a fourth of the way to the planet's surface, that severe turbulence hit, the jostling of the ship throwing Durge's heavy form around the cockpit like a paper airplane in a hurricane. Durge's restraints had ripped off and he was tossed backwards. As the wall behind his head drew closer and closer, as if in slow motion, Durge thought, "Son of a bitch." And everything went black.

Ozpin was standing on the top of the cliff he had thrown this year's Beacon student hopefuls off of nearly an hour ago, watching as the recently decapitated carcass of a massive pitch black bird, a Nevermore, fell into a ravine. He smirked at the leadership shown by two of the new students Jaune Arc and Ruby Rose. But as soon as the smirk appeared it turned into a frown of confusion as the sound of a huge explosion ripped through the air around the Emerald Forest causing mass panic among the animals and even the creatures of Grimm. A massive fireball was hurtling towards the ground letting the professor know exactly what had caused the noise. He could see on the tablet in his hand that it had landed a relatively short distance behind the Nevermore's killer. Fortunately, he had already made up the teams in his mind, so he could send one to investigate as their first unofficial mission. He held out his hand signaling to his assistant, Glynda Goodwitch, to hand him a large megaphone they had invested in a few years prior, for a similar occasion. He and Glynda pulled out earplugs.

"Would Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna, and Yang Xiao Long, please go and investigate whatever it was that just crashed near your location?" He asked his voice echoing all around the expansive forest, reaching the eight teenagers near the other cliff.

_

The latter three of the four girls called out by Ozpin looked at each other and shrugged.

"Why do you think, He told us to go do it?" Weiss asked using a glyph to help her teammates and herself up the cliff face.

"Dunno, but I hope that we don't find much, I'm tired and just want to go to bed." Yang complained, already dreading what could be awaiting them.

"Well, we might as well quit complaining and go check it out, the sooner we do that, the sooner we can get back." Blake stated.

"Amen to that." Yang agreed, as they reached the top of the cliff, Weiss' glyphs making it significantly easier to scale the rocky terrain.

"What do you think that was?" Ruby asked as her friends met her.

"It could have been a weapon test by the Vale military, though I think Ozpin's going to have a few words with them for it because it landed so close to Beacon." Blake said, walking past her slightly, stopping, and spinning on her heel.

"Could have been another failed space flight test. I think Vacuo still has a program running for it."

"Oh! It could be an alien, come to steal all of Remnant's cookies from you, Ruby! Haha!" Yang, Ruby's half-sister teased, talking in a mock-spooky tone.

"Yang," Ruby whined, "Stop trying to tease me." The group of four started off, taking only 15 minutes to reach the crash site.

"Jesus." Yang said as they stepped into the recently made clearing, "Look at what that thing did!"

"Spread out and search the area, see if you can find anything that might be worth reporting." Weiss told the group.

"Gotcha." The other three replied in sync.

Not long after they broke, Ruby called everyone over to have a look at something she found.

"Your theory might have a little more merit than you gave it, Yang." She said, "Look at this."

All three girls gasped at what they saw, there in the largest part of the wreckage was the body of a massive, oddly shaped man. His neck extended at least a foot off of his shoulders, and his, or maybe it was a her, chest was inhumanly large.

"Jesus Christ is it alive?" Yang asked, dumbfounded at what she was seeing.

"I don't know," Her sister replied, "I can't tell 'cause of the armor."

"Did you try taking it off?" Weiss questioned, clearly doubting that Ruby did.

"Yes, I tried taking the armor off. No, I didn't succeed. You wanna give it a go?" She questioned.

"No thanks." Was Weiss' sarcastic reply. Blake approached the downed figure.

"Alright, let me see if I can cut it off." She said as she drew her gun/katana from its sheath. She knelt down next to the figures neck and slowly and carefully placed the blade against the area, she applied some pressure and slowly slid the blade across the neck. When that didn't work she applied more pressure. "Ugh, it's no use it's either a robot, or his armor is just too thick, I was only able to make a decent sized scratch, not enough to remove the helmet."

"Let me try, maybe the recoil from Crescent Rose would be enough to break it open." Ruby said.

"That could possibly work, but you'd have to be really, exceptionally, careful. If you're not, you could accidentally slit his throat." Blake responded.

Before Ruby could say anything they all heard a deep, male groan. "Uuuuugh."

_

"Well that answers two questions." A yellow blur said half-jokingly. He sat up, holding his head in his hands.

"Where am I?" He asked, "Who're you people?"

"Well, I'm Ruby Rose, this is my sister..." A small black and red thing said gesturing to the yellow one at the end of her sentence.

"Yang Xiao Long, nice to meet you." The yellow one finished.

"I'm Blake Belladonna." A black and white blur said, drawing his attention.

"I suppose I'll introduce myself, then. I'm Weiss Schnee, heiress to the Schnee Dust Company, I'm surprised you haven't already heard of me."

"Who're you?" The red one asked again, everything was slowly coming into focus for him, sounds were no longer muffled, images were becoming clearer.

"What?" He asked, having missed her question.

"I asked who you were." She small girl said. He stood up, his full nine-foot armored form towering over them. The Yellow one, Yang, whistled.

"Damn you're big."

"Am I big, or are you just small?"

"Excuse me!?" She asked having clearly taken offence, sure she wasn't the tallest girl around, but it wasn't often that someone had the balls to call her short.

"I'm sorry, I don't remember. Am I above average height, or are you below average?

"I'm a little below average, but you're still huge."

"Sorry didn't mean to offend."

"Hey, are you all right? What is your name?" Ruby asked again.

"Right, right, sorry my name is, umm… m-my name is." He was holding his head again, the girls all looked at each other. "My name… is… I-I can't remember." He said a terrified tone taking refuge in his voice.