Wedge was finally settling in on the Folor training base, unpacking some of the small personal effects he kept with him, when he receives an urgent message from Zraii, the Verpine crew chief for Rogue Squadron. Raking his hand back through his short black hair in mild aggravation, he opens the message.

Only to close it after fifteen seconds of trying and failing to interpret what can only be described as a massive quantity of heavily annotated mechanical diagrams for what he recognizes as X-Wing components.

Sighing, he keys up his comlink, calling Emtrey, the Rogue Squadron protocol droid, and resigning himself to having to deal with the annoyance for the duration. Standing up, he leaves the office, meeting Emtrey in the halls on the way to the hangars.

Entering the bay, he sees the Verpine tech up near the cockpit of a distinctively painted X-Wing, the creeping thorns on the wings and fuselage with the rose emblem on the nose marking it as Flight Officer Ruby Rose's personal X-Wing. "You sent me a message, Zraii?"

Wedge doesn't have to be able to perceive radio waves to understand that Zraii is incredibly annoyed, chattering at him and waving him to climb the ladder up to the cockpit. Emtrey translates, saying "He's complaining that almost nothing on Flight Officer Rose's X-Wing is a normal part, and nothing in his stocks will allow him to maintain it. He doesn't even have any documentation for any of these modifications, which he would expect from working on modified craft before. He also invites you to look at the cockpit for an example."

Nodding, Wedge grabs onto the ladder, climbing up to the cockpit and stopping as soon as he sees inside.

The familiar X-Wing cockpit he's used to is gone. The long central control stick, full length to the floor, is missing. The only thing left intact are the etheric rudder pedals, and even those have been blatantly custom shaped instead of the blocky things that are in stock X-Wings. The central console screen has been enlarged and moved to the right side of the console, a second screen has been added on the left side of the console, and many of the warning lights have been moved to the left side of the cockpit. Most switches have been moved to the right side of the cockpit, the few on the left side are now things that would never be used when in normal flight – the canopy open release and a few other switches are there, but most of the switches are unlabeled and unidentifiable.

One of the few things he does recognize is the throttle lever on the right side of the cockpit rather than the left, although it's had several additional switches added to it of unknown and unlabeled function, including a large white button with the rose emblem on the nose painted on it, positioned to be easy for the thumb to hit. Some switches next to the throttle are identifiable, the toggle to engage and disengage the landing gear and repulsorlifts being one, but again nothing is labeled.

Most confusing is the completely custom stick mounted on the left side of the cockpit, the obvious firing stud for the quad laser cannons and proton torpedoes and the four-position toggle for switching between laser firing modes and proton torpedoes. However, the stick is more joystick like than the traditional full length stick. Looking up again at Zraii, Wedge says "What the kriff?"

Zraii clicks again and Emtrey translates. "Nothing in the cockpit is standard. Even the seat is custom made. I recognize the inertial compensator, it's a prototype and only fifty were made. The wiring for the cockpit is well managed but unlabeled and nothing plugs where it should."

Wedge shakes his head. "This is unacceptable. I'll call-"

Zraii interrupts with more clicking, gesturing at Wedge to go back down the ladder. Wedge acquiesces as Emtrey translates, saying "He wishes to show you one more thing before you do, back at the engines."

Wedge nods, letting Zraii climb down from the cockpit and moving to the back of the craft. Zraii opens one of the maintenance panels, locking it up and open and gesturing at the open panel. Wedge might not be a trained mechanic, but he's been around X-Wings for most of his adult life and he instantly realizes several odd things. The fuel lines are much larger in diameter than standard, routed differently, and there seems to be a secondary pump at the halfway point between engine and fuel tank. In addition, a large donut-shaped piece of metal is mounted to the front and inside of the thruster. Zraii clicks, gesturing in obvious agitation at the fuel line and odd protuberance in the engine, and Emtrey translates. "I've never seen anything like this on an X-Wing. It seems to burn fuel, possibly for an increase in thrust, but there's no documentation on what it is, does, or how to maintain it."

Wedge nods. "Is every part like this?" Zraii nods in return. "I'll call the Flight Officer now," he says, shaking his head in disbelief. Keying his comlink, he says "Flight Officer Rose, report to the hangar ASAP." Clicking it off, he only has to wait a few seconds before he hears Ruby's affirmation, sounding like it was delivered while sprinting with loose tools.

Ruby bursts into the hangar not thirty seconds later, distinctive red-tinged black hair flying as she practically sprints towards Wedge, her stained mechanics coverall and toolbox betraying that she'd already been on her way to the hangar. Sprinting up to Wedge, she skids to a stop, carefully depositing her toolbox on the floor before saluting with her now free hand. "Flight Officer Rose reporting as ordered, sir!" she says.

"At ease," Wedge says, flashing a halfhearted salute. "Zraii is the Rogue Squadron crew chief. About fifteen minutes ago, he sent me a message with several annotated diagrams of X-Wing parts. Confused, I came to the hangar, and he showed me your X-wing."

Ruby's silver eyes light up. "Ooh, what did he show you? Crescent Rose is my baby, I've put a lot of sweat and most of the money I've had over the last four years into her."

Wedge blinks, having not expected the energetic response. "Zraii showed me the cockpit and one of the engines."

"Oh, the cockpit is my favorite part! It took months of designing and testing before my sister and I could put it into Crescent Rose! You see, when designing the X-wing, the only cockpits that this Incom team had worked on before was the T-16 Skyhopper and the Z-95 Headhunter, both of which had manually operated controls for their in-atmosphere flight, which necessitated a full length stick for additional leverage when performing maneuvers at high speed while in atmosphere. The X-wing is fully fly-by-wire, no manual controls, but development time was rushed so rather than experimenting with a new cockpit layout they went back to one they knew worked," Ruby says, gesturing excitedly and not seeing Wedge trying to politely interrupt her. "The sidestick layout with all controls you could potentially need while in a dogfight being on the throttle or the stick itself is substantially more ergonomic. It also keeps the stick out of the way of some of the lower instruments during some maneuvers, which doesn't come up much but is annoying when it does. I tried to get it to be a pressure-function stick rather than the standard stick, but had trouble getting it to transmit consistent results so I shelved that project for a while."

Ruby jumps past Wedge, gesturing into the open maintenance panel. "Oh, and the engine improvement project – I couldn't mess too much with the 4L4s, but I was able to figure out how to add an afterburner. It requires a lot more fuel flow to function properly, but it has no effect on power or efficiency when disengaged and when I engage it I'm 10% faster than a TIE Interceptor in a straight line in space. It's not perfect, I've got it disabled by default when in atmosphere because sim testing revealed flameout problems if you were using it in a dive and turned it off at speed, but in space nobody expects the X-wing to suddenly jet off like it's going to hyperspace." Ruby stops to take a deep breath, about to explain more, but Wedge finally manages to get a word in edgewise.

"Flight Officer, this is all very impressive and is certainly a deep display of your engineering and mechanical knowledge," Wedge says, Ruby practically preening under the praise. "But your X-wing must be brought back within regs so that our mechanics can maintain it."

Ruby steps back, halfway moving in between the open panel and Zraii as if to protect it from the other mechanic, a look of horror blooming on her face. "What? No, I can't do that to her! She's my baby! I can keep her maintained on my own, I've done it for years!"

Wedge sighs. "Flight Officer, how many man-hours of maintenance per hour of flight time are necessary to keep an X-wing spaceworthy?"

Ruby shakes her head, refusing to hear this. "It depends on a few things, but it's typically somewhere around 3 to 1 when loaded for combat, about 20 to 1 when engaged in combat."

Wedge nods his head. "In an active duty squadron, you may have multiple days of missions back to back. You will need to keep up your sleep. If you fly a 6 hour mission with a dogfight at the end of it, and then the next day sortie in an interception, you will not have time to perform the maintenance necessary to keep your starfighter in condition while also maintaining yourself in a ready state."

Zraii's clicking stops Ruby from starting her next desperate defense, Emtrey's translation coming a few seconds later. "Zraii would like to correct a misinterpretation, Commander."

Wedge nods. "Go ahead," he says.

"He says that he has no problems with the modifications to Flight Officer Rose's starfighter, which seem to be professionally made and installed. He simply needs documentation on what the modifications are, what they're supposed to do, and how they're maintained."

Wedge pinches the bridge of his nose. "Do you have this, Flight Officer?"

Ruby shakes her head. "Not written down, sir. My sister might, though. Before I joined the New Republic, she helped with a lot of the modification and maintenance."

Zraii clicks again. "Would you be willing to have your modifications professionally documented for potential wide scale adoption?" Emtrey translates.

"Yes?" Ruby says.

Wedge sighs. "Call your sister. If she agrees in principle, I'll need to run it past Admiral Ackbar in order to hire her and potentially set up the trials. For now, please don't modify your X-wing further past standard."

Ruby chuckles, rubbing the back of her neck guiltily. "Not sure I could without actually starting to alter the frame. Even the missile lock systems aren't stock."

Wedge starts to feel a headache coming on, a common occurrence when dealing with Ruby. "Thank you, Flight Officer. Dismissed."

Ruby grabs her toolbox and runs out of the hangar as Wedge slowly walks out, swinging by DownTime and getting a bottle of water. Popping the top and taking a swig, he rests the cool bottle against his forehead for a few seconds, the chill doing wonders to counteract his headache. Setting the bottle on the table, he mutters "Not even a day into training."

AUTHOR'S NOTE

If you follow me for The Grimm War, I'm sorry. I am incredibly burnt out on writing it right now; I spent nearly six months getting the Operator/Cinder fight just right, and frankly I think it's probably the best thing I've ever written, but now I'm just sick of looking at the chapter. I need to take a break from even thinking about it for a few months.

Instead, here's something that I was originally planning on making into another longfic, but eventually decided I didn't have the skill to actually write. A RWBY/Star Wars X-Wing crossover. Mostly just "Let's slap Ruby into the slot of Rogue 11 during the events of the X-Wing series." Eventually spiraled into what's going to be a nice little collection of one shots, published without regard for chronological order and just whenever I finish them.

There will be other RWBY characters involved - as the story mentions, Yang is joining the support crew to help maintain Ruby's X-wing, but the only other one I've committed to adding at this point is Pyrrha, who will be Rogue 12 and Ruby's wingman. And eventual love interest if I ever get around to writing that because I am Milk and Cereal trash.