After dreaming of one of many friendly faces he would never be able to see again, Winston did not bother trying to go back to sleep. His ruined slumber was a fitting punishment for allowing himself to indulge in unnecessary luxuries such as rest, especially when there was still so much he needed to do to get himself back into fighting shape.

Besides, his life was enough of a nightmare already. He didn't need to invite another one on top of being currently unable to fulfill his one and only purpose of fighting in service of the Emperor.

The guardsman, still clutching onto the pendant that once belonged to Bluey, slowly shrugged off the blanket his leader had lazily draped over him and rose to his feet with his kitbag in tow. From there, he carefully made his way out of Team RWBY's dorm and silently excused himself from their company, making sure the door quietly locked behind him as he left them to their peaceful slumber. He doubted he needed to act with such caution when none of them were woken up by their leader's return, or her snoring for that matter. Even so, he had already been told off once for making too much noise the previous night and had no desire to be reprimanded two nights in a row for the same mistake.

He didn't bother looking for threats lurking immediately outside Team RWBY's dorm too, as anything waiting outside wishing to do them harm would have attacked long ago after hearing all that noise. Even so, it didn't stop Winston from breaking his routine habit of checking the darkness around him for any flickers of movement or looking up at the ceiling for anything waiting to pounce on him the moment he lowered his guard. A lone guardsman was as good as dead if they weren't careful. Without numbers at their side, a guardsman's continued survival was largely dependent on the grace of the Emperor rather than anything they could hope to achieve on their own. After having outlived millions of his brothers and sisters, all of whom were more worthy of His protection than himself, he refused to perish because he neglected to inspect his surroundings.

Lacking anyone other than himself to rely on once again, Winston fell into a familiar routine of stalking through the shadows around him and slowly checking every corner with the barrel of his laspistol before rounding it. The Emperor protected only those who were worthy, and although he knew he was not deserving of His protection, that wouldn't stop the Korpsman from doing everything he could to stay alive as he headed towards his destination.

The guardsman's journey took him over half an hour instead of the five minutes it would have taken him if he could have moved in the safety of the light or with the reassurance of numbers at his side. In the end it hardly mattered as he was still able to reach the weapons workshop with plenty of time to spare until morning, when he would need to prepare for classes and find something edible amongst the strange foods the people of Remnant indulged in. Hopefully the next thing he risked taking a bite out of wouldn't be as hard as a brick of rockcrete or just as dry.

Unfortunately for him, it appeared that someone or something was already inside the workshop given the clattering of metal coming from inside the dimly lit room. Winston quietly opened the door with the barrel of his laspistol and fixed his sights on the lone figure toiling away at one of the forges before recognizing the identity of the mustached individual inside.

"Hmm, is someone there?" Professor Port called out behind him as he continued hammering away at the oddly familiar looking sheet of metal in front of him.

"Yes, sir." Winston answered, flicking the safety of his laspistol on as he holstered it in one swift motion before abandoning what little cover the door he had been hiding behind offered him.

"Oh, Mr Votoyski, it's you. I heard about what happened to you and I must say it's good to see that a little scratch isn't enough to keep you down." Port greeted him, "But I have to ask, shouldn't you be getting some sleep now?"

"I already did." The guardsman curtly replied, "But there are things I need to attend to before classes start."

"Eager to start your day off right on the right foot then, eh?" The professor laughed to himself, "I wish I could say I was the same. I would very much rather be sound asleep than making a few repairs to the training equipment after some student managed to blast a whole through some practice targets in one of Goodwitch's class. A huntsman needs his beauty sleep, after all."

"My apologies, sir. I will try not to let it happen again." Winston told him.

Port immediately stopped what he was doing and fixed an incredulous look on the student behind him, his eyes barely emerging from the big bushy eyebrows they were usually hidden underneath.

"You did this?" The professor asked as he pointed to the hole in the target he was in the process of patching up, his voice oozing with doubt, "I don't recall you showing off any anti-material weaponry in my class, nor do I recall Ozpin or Glynda mentioning anything of the sort."

"I misjudged how sturdy the targets were. I was planning to recalibrate my laspistol this morning to avoid blowing more holes through them." Winston informed him.

Better to fix that issue now before Ozpin wanted to discuss it, with all the dangers that came with gaining an Inquisitor's full attention for such a disturbance. Having the old man take an interest in his health was harrowing enough.

"Really? You'll have to show me that rifle of yours if it is capable of doing this much damage. Ozpin informed me that all of your equipment was made outside of the kingdoms and I would love to have the opportunity to witness what your gear is capable of, Mr Votoyski." The professor told him.

"I said my laspistol caused that damage, not my lasrifle. I haven't been able to use my lasrifle since my right arm was removed." The guardsman corrected, waving the end of his stump to emphasize his last point.

"My, my, my. That must be quite the unique handcannon you own." Port mused aloud.

"It's just a quartermaster's laspistol." Winston replied, "There is nothing unique about it."

The boisterous professor stopped his work once again to fix another surprised glance towards the guardsman after hearing his answer.

"I'm sorry, but are you seriously saying you did this with an ordinary pistol?" He asked in disbelief, still unable to believe such a small firearm possessed so much destructive potential.

Winston pulled the weapon in question out of its holster when he gave the older huntsman his answer.

"Yes, sir. It is just a standard laspistol, one of the many patterns you can find anywhere within the Imper-" The guardsman froze still for a moment, barely catching himself mid mistake as he corrected himself, "-where I come from."

"I think I'll have to pay a visit to your home sometime if that's the case. I can only imagine the kind of Grimm your people must face regularly to need a weapon capable of punching a hole through a solid sheet of dusted steel." Port responded, blissfully unaware of how little he knew about the horrors of the greater galaxy, "My hunts there would be legendary!"

"I don't think you would want to do that, sir." Winston warned, although his quiet plea fell on deaf and all too adventurous ears.

"Nonsense! A true huntsman would never back down from a challenge!" The professor declared with a shout.

Which is why mindless zealots like you are always the first ones to die on the battlefield, Winston thought to himself. He had seen far too many over eager servants of the Emperor forgo vital necessities such as cover, armor, and, most idiotically of all, firearms in their quest to prove their piety. Those fools made for a brief distraction at the best of times and a waste of the manpower and resources used to ship them into battle at the worst. Thankfully they rarely lived long enough to be promoted to a position where they can get other, smarter, more capable soldiers killed on their behalf.

Unless they were a noble, of course. Bloody nobles were able to somehow worm their way into positions of power they didn't deserve. They did it almost as often as they got loyal guardsmen like him killed by the millions all for the sake of their own pride, pointless commendations for fighting they never took part in and, worst of all, profit.

"I hope you don't mind me asking, but what are you doing here?" Professor Port asked his student, snapping him out of his thoughts, "I can't imagine you are able to do much work on your weapons given your current… condition."

Winston didn't need to see the adventurous huntsman's eyes to feel them boring into his exposed stump. He loathed how weak people thought he was, even if such thoughts were completely justified. The guardsman made a point to pull as much of his remaining sleeve over what remained of his right arm, the pain of the rough fabric of his trench coat brushing over his synthetic nerves barely registering against his desire to prove he was not nearly as worthless as people thought he currently was. He only managed to cover up the pale, sickly looking flesh surrounding the metal nub that was the source of shame, but at least it wasn't as exposed as it had previously been.

"I already told you, I am here to recalibrate my laspistol. I also need time to practice servicing my equipment in a timely manner in my condition…" Winston almost growled the word, quite the stark contrast from his usual dispassionate tone, earning a wince from the professor who started to regret pointing it out, "...should it happen again. I also think it would be better if I didn't anger Headmistress Goodwitch and reduce the intensity of my laspistol so I don't destroy any more targets."

"Ah, *ahem*, I see." Port nodded in agreement, feeling all too understanding of his student's latter reason, "I'll try not to be too much of a distraction then. Oh, and don't be afraid to ask for any help if you need it either. I'm always willing to give a helping hand to those… that need… one…"

Winston could feel the huntsman's burning gaze upon the exposed amalgamation of flesh and metal at the end of his crippled arm as Port regretted his unfortunate choice of words.

"I… uhh… sorry. I didn't mean to point out the obvious." The professor said with a nervous laugh as he started to ramble on a long winded apology.

Winston made no attempt to listen to Port and decided it would be better to start working on his weapons instead of wasting any more time talking to the blowhard huntsman. The guardsman didn't particularly care about Port's particular choice of words, similarly to how he couldn't care less about the professor's attempts to amend for the imagined slight. He could have corrected the huntsman's misunderstanding, but felt leaving it be was a fitting punishment for treating one of the Emperor's own soldiers like a damned juve after he had butchered horrors the professor couldn't even begin to comprehend.

Winston spent the next few hours working on his equipment, ignoring Professor Port's eventual departure and the rest of the world around him until the first rays of sunlight from the emerging dawn crept into the workshop from the hallway outside. Most of his work had been largely redundant, polishing bayonets that had been thoroughly cleaned days before, recalibrating the focusing crystal inside his late quartermaster's laspistol so its lasbolts would be both less intense and likely to blow a hole through the next thing he used it again, be it another training target or fellow student, and uttering one of the shorter prayers Bluey taught him to keep the machine spirits inside his electronics appeased.

For a brief moment he considered returning to Team RWBY's dorms but quickly thought better of it, believing the hour or two he had until he could join his team at the cafeteria would be better spent in the training area to ensure his sidearm was properly tuned. He wasn't too confident about his work on the laspistol, never having to do anything more than rewire or build one from freshy fabricated parts back on Krieg. It would be better to make sure it was functioning properly and that he hadn't accidentally modified the sidearm into behaving like a laslock, capable of punching a hole through a solid plate of adamantium with a single shot, to say nothing of what it might do to someone's aura and the tender flesh underneath it.

This time the guardsman didn't waste time skulking through the halls of the academy. As the school grounds were thoroughly illuminated by the creeping sunlight once it crested above the cliff Beacon was on, he could place a little more faith in the latent security that an academy poorly trying to emulate a Schola Progenium inherently possessed. With that said, he did not neglect to keep a hand on his laspistol while on his way to the training area.

Winston had been expecting to find a lot of his things when he entered the training room in which combat classes were held upon opening the door. He had already seen the room change between one of the most disastrously constructed sparring areas he had the displeasure of seeing to a much more well-thought out firing range, but as a soldier of the Imperium, even one with as much knowledge of the Mechanicus' ways as he possessed, he had not been expecting what he found in that room upon entering it. Rather than any of the previous layouts he had witnessed over the past two days, he was instead greeted by the sight of Goodwitch standing over an enormous hole in the floor that she was peering over and the whirring of heavy machinery coming from its depths.

While his instincts screamed at him to stay as far away as possible or at least go retrieve his lasrifle first before proceeding to investigate, his curiosity got the better of him as he walked up to the headmistress and peered over the edge of the precipice she stood over. She only gave him a mildly inquisitive look upon noticing she had company, but the guardsman was too focused on the mechanical marvel moving beneath his feet to notice her. Winston was completely absorbed by the sight of several floors layered partially on top of one another in the hole in front of them, two of them striking him as vaguely familiar until he realized those were the different rooms he had already seen inside the training grounds. The various floors were not sitting idly by waiting to be observed, much to Winston's chagrin, but were instead moving around each other as one rose above the others. It looked similar to a colosseum one would expect to find on a feudal world, complete with a ring of elevated seating and a distinctive lack of shielding surrounding it to protect any potential spectators, which came to a rest after it was level with the small sliver of floor he was standing on with the other floors hidden underneath it.

Winston never noticed his remaining hand slink inside his trench coat to grasp the cogwheel necklace around his neck or the hushed prayer to the Omnissiah he uttered after witnessing such an incredible work of the Machine God in motion until it had already escaped his lips. What he did become immediately aware of was the inquisitive look the second most powerful person in Beacon fixed him with as she finally addressed him.

"Might I ask what you think you are doing here so early, Mr Votoyski? I hope you know that I have a class of second year students who will be performing a few exhibition matches for both themselves and their classmates to learn from." She told him, waiting for his response before deciding what to do with him.

So she didn't hear him give thanks to the Omnissiah for witnessing such a mechanical marvel. Good. He didn't know if it was okay to relax his guard around her, but he didn't want to find out if he was wrong.

"I wanted to test out my laspistol after recalibrating it." He informed her, silently lamenting how he likely no longer had the opportunity after taking so long making sure his bayonets were properly maintained and the serial number crudely etched into each one were still perfectly legible.

"I would strongly recommend against doing that." Goodwitch sternly advised him, "Otherwise I will have you repair the next batch of training targets you damage."

"That is why I came here, ma'am. I needed to make sure I properly altered the potency of my laspistol to avoid any further damages to the academy's facilities." The guardsman replied, "If I am able to do so."

The blonde huntress hummed thoughtfully as she considered her student's words and apparent eagerness to correct a past mistake, something not enough first year students attempted in her opinion.

"Should I assume that you were not informed about the firing range connected to the weapon workshop for that explicit purpose?" She asked, knowing his induction into Beacon had been rushed and coming to the obvious conclusion for his odd request.

"No, ma'am. I was not informed of that." Wiston answered her after a small pause that almost made the expressionless visage of his mask look embarrassed.

"Then I should also presume you were not told how every team was given a key to access that room?" Glynda sighed as she wondered what other important information Ozpin might have neglected to inform their new arrival of.

"That is correct, ma'am." The guardsman informed her.

"Were you at least given a Scroll and key to your own room?" She half asked, half groaned.

"No, ma'am. I have only received a Scroll with a set of regulations I need to follow from Headmaster Ozpin himself." He told her.

Winston felt the overwhelming instinct to reach for his laspistol the moment he caught sight of Glynda's furious look upon hearing his answer before she could get her emotions back under control. It was only the knowledge that she was both far more observant than Ozpin's other subordinates and much, much more intimidating than all but the Inquisitor himself that convinced him to stay his hand to avoid having her wrath directed at himself.

"Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Mr Votoyski. I'll be sure to get you everything you were meant to receive upon being accepted into Beacon." Goodwitch said, quickly adding, "Including a proper uniform."

The guardsman wanted to mention how the last part was unnecessary as he was already in uniform, albeit not a 'proper' one for students attending Beacon, but once again felt it would be better for his continued survival if he remained silent on the matter. With some luck, the Inquisitor would push back against such a needless procedure if he knew what was best for the both of them. If not…

Winston still had a fairly good idea of where his saviour pod was. It would only take three, maybe four days at the most to scour the Emerald Forest for where it landed before he finally found it. Perhaps it was worth spending that time to retrieve the bolter and some of the more potent explosives he left scattered around the pod in case anyone tried snooping about. There was no telling when a couple dozen assorted landmines and grenades could be useful, especially when positioned at the base of the eyesore of a clocktower Ozpin typically resided in, if he proved to be incompetent as the other nobles Winston had encountered so far.

It wouldn't be the first time he did the Imperium a favor and purged a useless waste of flesh from the galaxy, nor was he unfamiliar with the consequences of doing what was necessary for the betterment of mankind for that matter.

"Now, unless you intend to watch the second year's combat class, I would recommend you get some well needed rest. I expect you to do your best in my class later today, even if you're missing an arm at the moment." The headmistress said in an attempt to scare him off, her words having the quite opposite effect given how she was perhaps the first person to not expect anything less of him while he lacked an arm.

"Would it be possible to do more than just watch?" Winston inquired, feeling his time could be better spent training against students with more experience than those he had the displeasure of watching and sparring with until now.

Except for Pyrrha, of course. She was damned good, unlike the other first year juves he had observed and traded blows with so far.

"If you weren't currently injured, I would consider it." Glynda reluctantly answered him, "After seeing your performance in the firing range yesterday and hearing about how your matches against your fellow first years the day before went, I have already put in a recommendation with Ozpin to place you with students who might be more in line with your abilities and far less likely to harm you due to your weak aura."

"I understand, ma'am." Winston replied, immediately looking forward to fighting someone with a little more combat experience than the juves he had already beaten, "How long until their class starts? I would like to observe the second years to see if I might be able to learn anything from them if I have the time to do so."

That… was not the response the headmistress was expecting. What Glyda had been expecting was to hear some disappointment or anger at being denied the opportunity to do whatever he pleased given her initial impression of Winston. His eagerness to improve himself was unexpected, nor was it unwelcome in the slightest. Perhaps she was too quick to judge him during their first meeting.

"The second year combat class starts at 6:30 in the morning every weekday. Feel free to watch them whenever you feel like it. If there is also some free space or a team that is willing to let you accompany them, then be sure to inform me of what you're doing first before you join them." She said as she wondered how often the Korpsman would take up her offer.

"Yes, ma'am." Winston replied, offering her a quick salute that Glynda found to be slightly off putting, but strangely well intentioned as he took a seat up in the top rows of the spectating area and waited for the second years' combat class to start.

As Winston finished watching the last of the second years' matches for the day he couldn't help but to feel as if the Inquisitor made a mistake putting him on Team RWBY. That isn't to say that Inquisitor Ozpin did make a mistake because Inquisitors never made mistakes. Everyone knew that. Anyone who didn't quickly disappeared not long after making their ignorance public knowledge, similarly to how the Adeptus Mechanicus would produce a new servitor with a body type that closely resembled their critics shortly after the blasphemer vanished from the populace.

That didn't stop Winston from feeling as if Ozpin might not have been as familiar with the Death Korps as he should have been before making his decision. While a lack of knowledge was no excuse for an incorrect course of action, it did lead to a lot of mistakes that could have otherwise been avoided, except for Inquisitors for obvious reasons. The squad tactics he watched the second years display were elementary at best, something even a prepubescent cadet could surpass while still failing to meet the Death Korps enlistment standards, though still better than anything he had seen his own team replicate so far. Sure, he hadn't seen them do much with one another after only having spent a few hours amongst them, but seeing as how most of that time had been spent arguing amongst one another or wandering off on their own, Winston felt as if his judgment of them so far was accurate.

He didn't want it to be, but he didn't dare to hope it wasn't true because he knew better than to risk dealing with hope. Hope could kill an entire army in one fell swoop, break a once prosperous world with a single declaration, and shatter one's faith with a few careless words. Hope was a poison, yet it was one all of humanity relied on to survive regardless.

And if some of the more deranged cultists he fought against were to be believed, then it could also be-

"Hey, Winston! Over here!"

The guardsman jolted slightly after hearing someone called his name, but quickly calmed himself after realizing it was only his team's leader trying to get his attention. He hadn't been paying attention where he was walking to after excusing himself from Goodwitch's class and was surprised to find he had wandered close to the dorms. Apparently his teammates didn't want to be late to Port's class this time since neither he nor Team JNPR had to make an attempt to wake them up.

Winston turned to the side to see Ruby quickly approaching him while the rest of Team RWBY followed behind her with far less enthusiasm. Only the little leader looked eager to be up so early in the morning while the others resembled guardsmen who had been on watch duty for over forty-eight hours straight and deprived of recaff the entire time, a feeling he knew all too well.

Emperor on Terra, he missed recaff. Not the watery, almost sweet stuff civilians served each other, but the good kind the Administratum supplied the Imperial Guard with that could almost be chewed because of how thick and strong it was. It had been over a year since he had any of the good stuff.

"Commander Rose." Winston greeted his leader as she ran up to him, tensing as she came a little too close for comfort and only relaxing once she took a step back from him shortly afterwards.

"Hey, where did you run off to? We were worried when we woke up and didn't see you anywhere." Ruby told him.

"Speak for yourself." Weiss interrupted before quickly being silenced by a venomous look from Yang.

"I was working on my weapons and tried to get in some training before classes started." The guardsman answered.

"Oh, that's… uh, cool, I guess? Anyways, if you haven't already eaten yet, would you like to join us in the cafeteria?" Ruby offered.

Winston considered her offer for a brief moment before responding, "No, that won't be necessary. There is still something else I need to finish first." He told her.

"Oh, okay." Ruby replied, looking a little crestfallen but not letting her disappointment affect her cheery mood too much, "Maybe next time then?"

"Maybe." Winston said noncommittally, wondering if he would be able to burn through his supply of granola bars before then.

He had enough of them to last one full day in his kitbag already, maybe two if he rationed them tightly. They might not have been as filling as he would have liked them to be, but there was no way he was going to let the supplies he took for himself go to waste simply because he would prefer to dine on something else.

The Korpsman was about to walk away and let Team RWBY be, but quickly stopped as he remembered what Goodwitch told him, "Commander Rose, would I be able to borrow our team's key to the firing range beside the weapon workshop?" He politely asked.

"Uhm, sure?" The little leader hesitantly responded, unsure of why she was being asked permission for something so trivial until the realization hit her.

They never told him where to find it. Actually, would he be able to get back into their room to get it if he did know where the key was? Winston never said he had a key to their room yet.

Wait, was that why he never returned to their dorm the day he lost his arm? Oh Brothers, that was totally why he never came back that night! She had to fix this right away!

"The key is on the dresser underneath the window, right in front of the picture frame on my side of the room." Ruby told him as she pulled out her room key and held it out to her new teammate, "And here, since you don't have a key to our room, you can use mine."

Winston tried to silently decline Ruby's offer, but the persistent young girl wasn't backing down and letting her crippled teammate get away that easily. When the Korpsman tried to walk away she used her semblance to put herself in between him and his intended escape, before he could make life any harder on himself for their team's sake. He was already willing to sleep on the floor instead of forcing any of them to share a bed when he had more than enough reason to ask for one of his own, and he didn't seem like the kind of person that would mention anything small like a lack of a room key or a blanket to sleep under if it was bothering him.

Sure, he also didn't mention something pretty important like a missing limb bothering him either, but that only proved why she had to force him to accept what little help she could offer him while the opportunity was there.

The guardsman, realizing that he would not be able to refuse his leader's kindness without a fight, cautiously took the key from her, careful not to let his gloved hand touch her own as he did so. "I'll be sure to return it to you as soon as I can."

"Keep it, don't worry about giving it back until we get another one." The young girl adamantly insisted, "I'll just borrow my sister's if I need to get back in if no one else is already inside."

"Yeah, don't worry about her. I'll make sure my little sis doesn't run into any trouble until then." Yang said as she walked up to Ruby and tousled the smaller girl's hair.

"Ahh, Yang! Stop it!" The little leader pleaded as she tried to fight off her sister's teasing hand and the embarrassment coming from being treated like a little kid in front of her new friends.

Winston lingered long enough to watch Yang finally relent before departing to Team RWBY's dorm, leaving the girls to enjoy their breakfast in peace. He wasn't quite sure what they were talking about after he left, but he was reasonably confident it wasn't anything he needed to concern himself with. Even if it was, he felt confident that they could handle it on their own. They were civilians, after all. Civilian matters were best handled by civvies and military matters were best handled by guardsmen like him.

Once the Korpsman reached his team's room, he opened the door and quickly retrieved the key he had been looking for from precisely where Ruby said it would be. He didn't pay the pict it laid beside much thought and quickly departed the dorms to test out the adjustments he made to his laspistol.

The halls were much more lively and filled with students preparing themselves for their morning classes or tending to their equipment in their downtime. Winston found himself surprised to find a large number of second year students he had spotted earlier in Goodwitch's class performing maintenance on their weapons inside the workshop once he finally arrived despite himself. His expectations for the students attending Beacon had been lowered tremendously since seeing what his team and a few of the first years were capable of and found the sight of several, but not nearly as many people as he wanted to see, taking good care of their weapons and the machine spirits they contained pleasantly surprising. Perhaps the people of this planet were not nearly as incompetent as he thought they were.

…well, some of them at any rate.

Winston didn't pay anyone inside the workshop much mind after his initial shock at seeing so many civilians acting like responsible guardsmen and quickly made his way to a door in the back that he hadn't paid much attention to beforehand. The odd stares and occasional whispers directed towards him went unnoticed as he marched towards his destination. The Korpsman had thought this door led to a parts room only accessible to Remnant's equivalent to whatever passed for the tech priesthood, but upon trying the key he retrieved from his team's dorm room, found it did indeed open to reveal a very rudimentary firing range that wouldn't have looked out of place on a very primitive planet.

Calling the area he stepped into a firing range was incredibly generous, as there was nothing more than a few targets assembled out of straw and cloth in shapes vaguely resembling either Grimm or grotesquely deformed mutants scattered across the ground. It was hard to tell which they were meant to represent as he had yet to fully understand what kind of mutations the faunus could possess and found it hard to believe a bunch of weak stomached juves like those he had already met could stand to shoot a target shaped like their fellow man. The one thing Winston could tell from the general disrepair of the area was that it obviously didn't see much use as Beacon's other facilities. The cloud of dust that escaped the target he propped up against a wall to test out the modifications he made to his laspistol only made it that much more obvious.

As simple as the equipment he would be testing out his laspistol on was, they were still sufficient to serve their intended purpose. Showing the target he selected as much respect as the academy's caretakers did, Winston drew his laspistol and quickly fired off a burst of lasbolts towards the target's center of mass without bothering to aim at them. The crimson light that the sidearm's shots had previously emanated was almost nonexistent. Instead, his sidearm fired a trio of translucent red bolts of energy into a tightly packed cluster centered around the target's right shoulder all within a fist's width of one another.

Aside from his poor accuracy, Winston was satisfied with the results of the recalibrations he made to his quartermaster's laspistol. There were still many, many adjustments that went far beyond technical changes which needed to be made to the internal components of the sidearm, but he could worry about those when he was working with two arms and was actually able to implement them. Until then, he'd need to improve his aim when only using one hand but that would easily come with practice. He already had some experience using stub pistols in the past, albeit using his prosthetic arm to help steady and manage the recoil from firing them.

Considering how laspistols lacked the recoil kinetic weapons possessed, he was sure it wouldn't take long for him to make some noticeable improvements to his aim. He had already made a lot of progress in handling the laspistol with only one arm the previous day and believed it wouldn't take much longer to fully master it if given enough time to practice.

Of course, that would have to come later. Not only did he have a class with Professor Port coming up soon, he also needed to chow down on something before Ozpin was informed of his malnutrition from the doctor. As much as he wanted to run down to the cafeteria to scour for another one of those bricks of ramen, he still had a couple days worth of granola bars stuffed in his pack after mistakenly believing them to be ration bars. As a loyal servant of the Emperor, he could not allow himself to waste the resources given to him or those he had requisitioned for himself. After taking a moment to make sure the coast was clear and none of the students in the nearby workshop were peering inside the secondary firing range or wanting to use it themselves, he quickly tore into several of them in private before finally heading out to Port's class.

The guardsman was so absorbed in his desire to make it to his class with time to spare that he never noticed a certain rabbit eared girl attempt to take a picture of his laspistol dangling from his belt as he passed by her, or the sullen look on her face when she failed to get a clear shot of it.

Special thanks to Doc43Souls & Tireless Traveler for beta reading this chapter!

Author's Corner:

That previous chapter was an odd change of pace, much like the author's note at the end, wasn't it? In case you haven't already been able to tell, Winston has had quite the interesting past before arriving on Beacon and I intend to reveal it in due time. One of the ways I will be doing so will be in chapters with "Memento Mori" in the title. These will also be the chapters where my main goal, aside from shining some light on Winston's history, is to make you cry. Here's to hoping I can actually pull it off at some point.

Comments:

longlongmaaaan: So Winston DID know a heretek, I'm surprised he remembers the magos so fondly given what he and other kriegers think of anything heretical.

Heretek? What heretek? There is no heretek here, just ask the magos. He has guaranteed us that there is no tech heresy going on here, so please stop making such baseless claims without proof. Before you leave, let me remind you that this is a serious accusation you are throwing at a very powerful and knowledgeable member of the Mechanicus. It'd be a shame if your weapons, vehicles, or anything else keeping you alive in the middle of a warzone were to suddenly malfunction. Why, it might be so shameful that nobody will remember you or the complaints you levied when the lasgun he serviced for you blows up in your hands.

Now carry on, guardsman. After hearing about your accusations, the magos said he wanted to give your lasgun a tune-up as an apology and I wouldn't want to keep him waiting if I were you.

DonPelayo: (On responding to comments and the balance between brevity and descriptiveness)

Striking a fair balance between the two is never easy but, when a story does find it, that is when it becomes something special. As for replying to comments, I enjoy engaging with readers and prefer to address questions and comments directly when I can as opposed to rambling on in my little corner whenever I feel like it.

Maglad: I think Yang's worry is understandable, and while it would be fixed if she just asked, we humans are very silly creatures and it probably won't be as simple as that. Anyway, fine chapter, thank you.

Yeah, there is no real good way to deal with someone who is constantly armed and armored, especially when they seem to have taken an interest in your sibling or vice versa. I still say that attempts would be made before, oh I don't know, things reach a point where one member of Team RWBY commits the equivalent of suicide because no one was looking out for them after being on a team together for at least two years.

In case it wasn't obvious, I was not a particular fan of how one of the more recent volumes of RWBY played out or how everything was considered solved by the ending when nothing ultimately changed.

A DifferentGuest who wanted to make it obvious how different they were: (On how Low Gothic and English are not the same language)

While I would ordinarily be in agreement with you here… I have both a BS reason and genuine reason for this. The BS reason is because it's my fic and I can do whatever I damn well please. The genuine reason… will be alluded to and made fun of later. Also, as readers of one of my other stories can attest to, and no this is not an intentional shill but I won't be upset if anyone here checks my other stories out afterwards, reading a faux English language is painful for everyone involved. Months later and I still deeply regret writing half a chapter in Orkish, narration and all.

That's it for me. Thanks for reading and I hope to see you all again in the future.