Following his exit from Beacon's medicae office, Winston quickly made his way to the academy's weapon workshop to continue working on his equipment after stopping midway through the previous night. Now that he was a little more experienced with his current crippled state, he was confident that he could at least pry open his lasrifle's casing and reassemble anything he took apart before his next class started in a few hours.

As much as he hated using the same clamp from last night to compensate for his missing arm, he was more than willing to acknowledge his weakness if it meant he could compensate for it with some fully automatic firepower afterwards. Sure, he didn't know how effectively he could wield his lasgun with solely his flesh and blood arm, but that was something he knew he could adapt to with enough practice. He already had plenty of experience using his lasrifle one-handed thanks to the enhanced strength and magnetic locks his prosthetic arm boasted, the latter most likely why he lost his arm to Pyrrha's semblance now that he gave the issue some thought, so he was positive he could work something out eventually.

Whether or not he figured it out before he reattached his arm was irrelevant. Learning a new skill to enhance his combat capabilities was always a priority. Losing an arm in a training match was bad enough, losing it in an engagement against the Grimm or another one of Remnant's local dangers would leave him to die a quick and ignoble death if he couldn't use his current weaponry to defend himself regardless of how badly he was injured. As the last surviving member of the Death Korps 483rd Siege Regiment, allowing the legacy of his fallen brethren to die with him in such a shameful manner was simply unacceptable. Whether or not he himself could ever be worthy of the Emperor's salvation was not something Winston cared about anymore, as he was confident his actions had made his fate all but inevitable. Even so, he could not, would not let his fallen regiment's legacy remain unredeemed.

No matter how unlikely it was that their reputation could ever be cleared in the eyes of the Imperium, he still had to try. If he didn't, then there wasn't much reason to accept Ozpin's offer to attend Beacon so he could be cleared to rejoin the Imperial Guard once again. He'd be better off wandering into Remnant's wilds to make his last stand against the Grimm if he couldn't redeem the 483rd.

Even now a small part of him still wanted to, but what he wanted didn't matter.

Instead, he had to play the part of a cadet who had yet to kill his first heretic while training alongside a bunch of civilians attempting to become what appeared to be this planet's equivalent of Arbites. From there, he needed to accomplish the task of earning Inquisitor Ozpin's approval to rejoin the Imperial Guard, and Winston knew his odds of achieving this were astronomical at best. As impossible as his task was, it was his duty to see it through until the bitter end and he had no intentions of letting a noble of all things force him to accept defeat when he was still capable of fighting.

But before he could think about his plans for the future, he first needed to make sure his arsenal was fully prepared to take down whatever meager threats a rural planet like Remnant had yet to eliminate on its own. Checking how much time he had to work and feeling as if the couple of hours before combat class started would at least allow him to diagnose whatever damage Pyrrha had done to his lovingly maintained weapon, he silently set about making whatever repairs he could.

Remembering exactly how painful of an experience it was to remove the protective cover of his laspistol while limited to a single arm, he did not waste time trying to pry open his lasgun without the help of the same clamp he used to compensate for his missing arm earlier. Wasting an hour opening up a device as small as a laspistol with one arm was more than enough to teach him about his new limitations. He had no intention of repeating the process with something bulkier, even if the extra weight was more likely to help keep his rifle steady while he worked.

Having rewired his lasgun two days prior, he knew how everything inside should have looked if the same force that removed his arm had left his weapon unscathed. Unfortunately for him, several burnt out wires tumbling out of his lasgun's opened casing informed him this was not the case. The copper wiring must have shorted itself out after Pyrrha's Semblance dislodged them. Probably nothing short of the Emperor's grace that his lasgun didn't detonate immediately afterwards. Despite the most apparent damage causing the faintly burnt interior looking damaged beyond repair, in reality the few adjustments and minor rewiring Winston needed to make wouldn't be all that difficult. The same could not be said if the more delicate parts of his lasgun had not escaped unscathed. Remnant didn't appear to be advanced enough to recreate the parts he needed according to what Ruby mentioned while he had been showing her how to work on his lasgun, and he left the few spare parts he had been provided to him back inside the savior pod that hadn't killed him when it crashed down on Remnant.

At the time, when he didn't see how he would have lived long enough to put the spare parts or the boltgun he also arrived with to much use, although the latter had proved quite useful in fending off the first few Grimm that greeted him as he took his first steps on Remnant's soil. He didn't know the planet was inhabited by humans when he arrived and the spare ration bars he took in their place seemed like the better option to bring at the time. Considering they alone were the only reason he hadn't starved to death before leaving Greenleaf, he did not regret his decision.

With that said, it did pain him to leave behind such precious Munitorum issued equipment like that, but given the circumstances, he was sure he would be punished with only a minor flogging if anyone found out. There was only so much use a guardsman could get from a bolter with one and a half magazines worth of rounds, after all, and leaving behind the lasgun his regiment's tech priest modified for him was unthinkable. The humble lasgun was the standard issue firearm for most Imperial Guard regiments not because it was powerful, but because a single power pack was capable of firing hundreds of rounds before needing to be swapped out and recharged gradually over the course hours in sunny weather or in a matter of seconds if connected to a generatorium. It was hard to kill the Emperor's enemies when you ran out of ammo after only a minute of firing at a horde of xenos or heretics numbering in the millions, after all. Even if an individual lasbolt itself was barely capable of punching through a standard issue flak vest, it was far more effective to pepper an enemy with thousands upon thousands of lasbolts rather than bludgeoning it to death with an army wielding only entrenching tools.

Then again, a lasgun that couldn't fire wasn't much better than an empty boltgun when its ammo finally did run out. Sure, the magazine was less likely to blow up in your face when using your lasgun as a bludgeon compared to a bolter or plasma gun, but that's why the Imperial Guard issued bayonets. Stabbing your enemies was a lot more effective than bashing their skulls in with a gun like Orks tended to do when they forgot they had perfectly functional choppas with them, Catachans being a notable and extremely effective exception he was fortunate enough to witness in action.

Lacking enough arms to do either in his current state, Winston refocused on his current endeavor and started scrounging up enough spare wires lying around the weapon workshop as he wondered whether or not he should practice pistol whipping techniques with his quartermaster's laspistol sometime. Attaching a bayonet to the sidearm wouldn't be possible in the field so long as he only had the one arm and holstering it like that wouldn't work either. Besides, he'd also run the risk of stabbing himself in the leg if he fell on it. He made a mental note to find a good enough target that could withstand having a pistol bashed into it a few hundred times until he found a technique that was effective and felt comfortable to perform.

Maybe that blonde idiot, Jaune, could prove himself useful for once in his life that way? Winston seriously doubted the incompetent fool could manage it any other way given his obvious lack of training or practical experience. It was something he would have to seriously consider for later if he couldn't find any better alternatives.

The guardsman quickly set aside such viscous thoughts as he opened up his lasgun and started working on it in earnest. Without anyone to distract him or any heavy machinery running in his immediate vicinity that his great coat could potentially get caught on, he was able to work without worry as he attempted to repair what little damage he could to his weapon. After his first few attempts to affix the first section of wiring without it immediately falling out before he could solder it into place, he soon realized he had quite the difficult job ahead of him. Not one to let any adversity deter him from what needed to be done, the Korpsman quietly pondered how he could repair his weapon with only one arm as he tuned out the world around him.

As Winston became more and more absorbed into his work, the faint lighting of the weapon's workshop illuminated to almost daylight conditions by his gas mask's lenses and sound of students recently released from their classes and running in what little freetime they possessed were ignored similarly to how alone he found himself once again. Despite his hesitation to be by himself, rearming himself by making the necessary repairs to his primary weapon would provide him far more security than a couple of juves. Just because he wanted to have someone by his side didn't mean he would bother his team to satisfy his selfish desires, nor did he waste any time getting to work so he could rejoin his team… once he managed to track them down.

Time and the world around the guardsman became an unintelligible blur as he slowly but surely made some progress in mending his lasgun and the machine spirit housed within, when it felt like cooperating with him. The mischievous little piece of technology nearly brought him to his wit's end on more than one occasion as he thought he had finally reattached some of the wiring he had spent far too long fixing into place, only to watch it fall to the ground the moment he let go of it. Many litanies of repair, appeasement, and only a few necessary attempts to beat the bloody thing into submission while uttering litanies of percussive maintenance were uttered during his necessary work.

The guardsman was so enthralled in his repairs that he never noticed the young girl who had been searching for him ever since the previous set of classes ended enter the weapon workshop until she was close enough to touch him. She was about to greet him when she witnessed him beat his head against his table once again after yet another section of wiring fell out and took another with it.

"Having trouble?" Ruby asked Winston before rushing to hold him steady when he nearly fell out of his chair at her sudden interjection.

"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry! Are you okay?" She apologized as she watched him steady himself with what remained of his right arm from a close distance.

"I'm fine, Commander Rose. You have nothing to apologize for." Winston told her, grateful to see a pleasant face even though the pain that started from his phantom limb and shot up through the connector built into his body left him feeling faint. He was all too glad his gas mask hid the grimace he wore as well as the hiss of pain that escaped from his pursed lips.

While he appreciated his leader's presence, if not her sudden arrival, Winston didn't waste time with pleasantries beyond giving her the minimum she was owed. Instead he tried reaching for one of the tools he needed to continue working on his lasgun with one arm while propping his weapon up with the other, only to realize his mistake moments later when Ruby grabbed what he was looking for instead.

The guardsman graciously accepted her help, cursing himself for forgetting something so obvious once again. He really needed to fix himself up before a moment of forgetfulness got someone killed, but losing feeling in his severed limb would suffice until then. That was a challenge in and of itself. The only way he knew to lose feeling in his prosthetic limb was by using the concealed control panel in his arm to turn it off. Lacking a way to reconnect his arm and turn off the neural connection to his stump, the only way he could possibly fix that problem was if he were to somehow jam something in between his augmetic and what was left of his arm to keep them connected long enough to send a signal between the two and end his suffering a little early.

That of course ran the risk of irreversibly damaging his prosthetic limb, and even if he wasn't running the risk of ruining an irreparable wonder of the Omnissiah, the act of doing so would earn him the ire of any tech priest who caught him such a barbaric act. If it hadn't been for the near crippling wave of agony that raced through his body every time something other than his great coat brushed up against his stump he would have simply dealt with the pain like that caused by his wounds, old and new alike. Nearly collapsing to the group in a writhing, sniveling mess at the slightest jolt was something he simply could allow if he didn't want to risk getting his team killed due to predicament.

As for the former issue, the next time he saw Ozpin he was going to have to ask for something to fix…

"Okay, I was just worried since you almost-"

Ruby let out a small yelp as Winston beat the table in front of him with his left hand, letting out a wet, raspy cough that didn't sound healthy at all as he did so, and then frantically scrambled to catch his lasgun before it fell onto the floor after his outburst knocked it loose.

"You must really be having a hard time." The little leader nervously chuckled as she watched her teammate delicately put his weapon back onto the table and tightened the clamp that had been holding it a little tighter so it wouldn't pop out again.

Winston didn't give her any indication that he heard her, instead staring at her with that unnerving mask of his, its lifeless gaze feeling as if it was piercing through her very soul. "You know, because of your missing… you know…" Ruby slowly explained, her attempts at explaining herself making everything she said sound even worse as she tried to avoid addressing the Goliath in the room.

"Bloody Warp." The guardsman cursed underneath his breath. "I forgot."

"Forgot what?" She questioned, fighting the urge to ask him the obvious as she stared at his missing limb.

"There's a tool I need to be able to reattach my arm, Commander Rose. I couldn't find it anywhere in the workshop last night and I didn't ask Headmaster Opzin if there was one available for me to use." Winston informed her. It sounded like he was sulking over his moment of forgetfulness, but Ruby couldn't say for certain since he still maintained his usual flat tone as he explained what had happened.

"I'm sure you can probably ask Ozpin to see if the garage or maybe if someone in Beacon has what you are looking for." Ruby suggested, trying her best to be helpful.

"That's what I forgot to do when I saw him this morning." The Korpsman sighed.

"Oh…" Ruby muttered. "Well, I'm sure we could always ask him later when we see him next. What do you need to help you put your arm back on anyways?"

Winston chose to ignore the small shudder from his leader as she felt the wrongness of what she had just said hit her. "I need an adjustable circular wrench with a thickness of no less than two centimeters to hold my arm in place long enough for the auto-repair process to begin and hold it in place until it is completed." He said.

"Huh, I don't think I've ever heard of… whatever tool you are looking for is called." Ruby said, before remembering the ridiculously long name he gave a phillips screwdriver. "Maybe it's called something different where you're from?"

"Possibly. All the more reason to ask someone who would know what I'm looking for." Winston mused.

"Yeah, I'm sorry but I don't think there is anything else I can do to help out." Ruby apologized once again.

"You have nothing to apologize for, Commander Rose." The guardsman sighed.

"If you say so." The young girl shrugged, not letting her teammate's brusque way of speaking get to her since she knew he didn't mean anything by it.

"Anyways, would you like me to give you a ha-help!" Ruby shouted as she stopped herself from making an accidental pun her sister would have been proud of. "Do you want me to HELP you work on your weapons?"

"I'm fine." Winston politely declined.

Not one to be shaken off so easily when it was obvious her teammate was having difficulties performing basic maintenance with his weapon, the young leader did not relent in offering his assistance. "I know you're fine, but you still haven't answered my question." She replied teasingly.

Winston paused for a moment, choosing his next words a little more carefully this time to avoid any further discussion. "I do not want your assistance, Commander Rose." He droned on. "I must be able to service my equipment in the event I lose my arm in the field. This will provide me an opportunity to learn how."

"O-okay, I guess that makes sense." The little leader responded, only partially understanding his reasoning. "But why do you think you would lose your arm and break your weapon in the first place?"

"It happened once. It can happen again." The guardsman answered.

As much as Ruby wanted to step in and help, she could see that Winston had a point, as unreasonable as it did sound. Being able to repair his equipment by himself no matter what condition he or his weapons were in was important. Even her own father made sure she could fully dismantle and reassemble her own beloved Crescent Rose before he enrolled her at Signal Academy to start training to become a Huntress.

Sure, Winston was probably being stubborn and was only making excuses, but that was his decision to make. She didn't want to overstep her position as leader, especially since her teammate seemed more protective of his weapons than she was. Besides, who knew if he would ever encounter a Grimm or something else capable of pulling his prosthetic off. Ruby certainly didn't, and she was certain Pyrrha didn't either until yesterday.

Seeing that her teammate wouldn't budge without her forcing him to accept her help, Ruby let him be and started working on her own beloved weapon on one of the tables next to Winston. Before long, both of them were fully engrossed in their work with only one of them making any noticeable progress in maintaining their equipment. It hurt her to see someone struggle when she knew she should do something to help out on the few occasions she spared him a glance, but the guardsman made his opinion on the matter clear.

By the time combat classes were ready to start, only Ruby had managed to finish servicing her weapon. Winston was barely able to screw the bolts holding the protective casing of his lasgun back into place when his leader dragged him out of the workshop by the scruff of his neck so neither of them would be late to combat class. The Korpsman had a perfect view of the rose petals the two of them left in their wake as Ruby used her semblance to make sure they arrived on time, apologizing with every hard turn she made or bump they came across.


As all eyes fell on Winston as he was half dragged, half marched behind Ruby with his missing arm in full view of his peers as the two of them walked into the grounds their combat class would be taking place in, whispers of what happened the previous day started swirling throughout the other teams who had not witnessed what happened for themselves. Some said that Pyrrha ripped off his arm because she thought she was going to lose and was too vain to accept defeat. Most believed it was an accident, even if they struggled to see how one could accidentally dismember someone. Others still claimed the Korpsman removed it himself in order to beat the Mistralian Champion with it after losing his weapon.

Winston ignored the rumors for the most part, although he did appreciate the latter individuals who recognized how effective of a bludgeon a severed prosthetic could be. A sturdy augmetic was more than enough to crush a human skull underneath its weight when swung like a mace. Doing so hadn't been his first choice of weaponry when he made that discovery, but it did manage to keep him alive long enough to complete his mission and for his unwanted extraction team to rescue him. Necessity was the mother of invention, after all. His regiment's tech priest didn't even see it fit to punish him for abusing one of the Omnissiah's gifts since turning his prosthetic into a weapon was the only thing that prevented it from becoming irrecoverable.

A pang of guilt hit Winston as he thought back to that odd one he helped serve in-between combat deployments. The guardsman didn't even realize he had pulled out the memento mori he had scavenged from the priest's ravaged corpse until he felt the bones shift from how hard he was gripping the cogwheel pendant as it started to tear through his glove. He missed Bluey. Hopefully his death had been swift and the priest didn't have to suffer for long. Of course, knowing how good they were at their craft, Winston doubted the priest passed quickly or quietly.

"Hey, Tough Guy, are you doing okay?" Yang asked as she gave him a playful nudge.

"Don't touch me." He hastily spoke as he took a step away from the taller girl.

"Sorry about that. I was just trying to get your attention because you kinda zoned out while Mrs. Goodwitch was telling us what we were going to be doing today.

"She did?" The guardsman questioned, unable to believe he allowed himself to be so distracted that he not only missed the arrival of one of his superiors but ignored everything she had said.

"You did." Blake answered. "You were staring off at nothing while holding onto your necklace. Are you sure you're doing okay?"

"I'm fine." Winston answered as he carefully slipped his memento mori in between his greatcoat and flak armor where it could rest safe and out of sight.

"Really? Then what were you doing while the rest of us were paying attention like we were supposed to do?" Weiss asked him, sending a pointed glance to both him and Ruby beside him as she nervously chuckled. Blake and Yang were about to admonish the heiress before Winston interrupted whatever reprimand they could come up with.

The guardsman remained unresponsive despite the heiress' prodding.

"Hey, Remnant to Winston." Yang slowly drawled out as she waved a hand directly in front of his face. "What's on your mind?"

The Korpsman begrudging gave his team an answer seeing how avoiding the subject didn't appear to be a possibility. "I was remembering… someone." He told her, his voice trailing off gradually as he spoke.

The white haired huntress-in-training's expression faltered at his explanation, but quickly returned as she turned her attention to Ruby. "And what's your excuse?" She inquired.

"I-I was paying attention!." The little leader stammered.

"Do you really expect me to believe that?" The heiress glowered.

"Not really." Ruby sighed.

"Okay, that's enough whining for now." Yang interrupted before Weiss could say anything else.

"Whining!?" The heiress indignantly huffed.

"That's what it sounded like to me." Blake said with a smirk.

"I am not whining!" Weiss whined back.

"Look, I don't care what you call it, Princess." Yang said, attempting to play peacemaker which she might have been able to pull off if she wasn't also trying to enjoy the outraged look on the heiress' face for all it was worth at the same time. "Goodwitch wants us to do some target practice for today's classes so instead of arguing with each other, how about we grab ourselves a spot before all of the good ones are taken and we end up stuck next to Cardin's team."

"Fine, let's just get this over with already." The white haired huntress conceded before she wandered off to retrieve her weapon.

Blake and Yang followed closely behind her, leaving Winston and Ruby to find their team a spot amongst all of the others as they were the only two who brought their weapons to class before it started.

"Well, I guess this will have to do." Ruby said, picking a small section between two other teams she couldn't quite remember the names of, giving both of their members a hesitant wave they returned with equal uncertainty.

Winston remained silent, instead choosing to observe the firing range they would be using for today. He took a moment to try and figure out how the same room they had used for practicing battles had been converted into a firing range in only a day, completely removing the fighting pits that had been dug into the ground. The only explanation that made any sense was that there were multiple 'floors' contained in the room used for combat classes, with some form of technology he couldn't even begin to comprehend capable of swapping them out on command. While it was certainly a waste of resources, it did put little space available within the academy to good use.

Once he finished wondering at yet another example of Remnant's baffling mixture of cutting edge technology and primitive constructions even a feudal world would find archaic, he sighed in relief seeing how the firing range was not an accident waiting to happen unlike the arenas from the day before. While he was sure that some improvements could be made to the largely random array of targets sprawled out where anyone on the range could hit them, he did see someone had made a token attempt to separate them by painting a few lines on the ground to distinguish one lane from another. As for the targets themselves, they were a variety of different shapes that mostly resembled the Grimm he had already encountered on Remnant and a few he hadn't. They even moved down when they were hit, a neat little way of signaling the target had been successfully hit.

Winston couldn't help but to notice the distinct lack of human shaped outlines of any of the assorted targets. Apparently the cadet's were either unwilling to consider shooting at other people or the instructors assumed they were that horribly incapable. He was going to bring the matter up to Ozpin at some time, but not before he asked for the tool he needed first.

Overall, it was much more impressive than what he had been expecting. After seeing how easy it was for a bystander to get shot in the open fighting pits and flat arenas above them, Winston had been expecting the firing range to be ordered in a circle with every student firing inwards without considering their fellow students would be doing the same from the opposite end or what would happen if they missed their intended target. Perhaps the people of Remnant were not nearly as incompetent as he first believed them to be.

…and as Winston watched some idiot throw their sword to hit a target and fail to hit their mark, he instantly retracted his praise.

"Frakking idiot." The guardsman muttered as he shook his head in disappointment, waiting to see the owner of said weapon to go out and retrieve it only to receive a bullet to the back of the head for their troubles.

Then again, since everyone here apparently had aura, perhaps they intended to make themselves a target to practice evading incoming fire. When he thought of it like that, it didn't sound like a half bad way to practice evasive maneuvers. It certainly was safer than organizing mock battles while using low output training power packs and blunted bayonets back on Krieg.

"A what idiot?" Ruby asked him as she looked over where he was staring.

"Some fool threw their sword." Winston said as he pointed at the weapon laying far from any potential target.

"Oh, I think that looks like Jaune's." She said, and sure enough, the blonde boy immediately ran out to retrieve it as a small chorus of laughter followed him.

"Of course it is." The guardsman sighed, disappointed but not at all surprised it would be him of all people to do something so stupid. Did the boy have a death wish or did-

"Come on, Jauney Boy! Dance a little faster for us if you don't want to lose your weapon again." Someone jeered as Jaune quickly scooped up his weapon and returned to safety.

Rather than investigate who the culprit was, Winston merely waited for Glynda Goodwitch to march over to them wearing a furious expression that would have made even a Bloodthrister falter beneath her wrathful gaze. A pained yelp soon followed as she reappeared from the throng of students she inserted herself between and pulled the guilty party out, dragging the orange haired brute by his ear like the petulant child he was with one hand while Jaune followed behind her in the spitting image of a guardsman following his commissar to his own execution.

Apparently Cardinal, or whatever the brutish lout's name was, had a hand in that near disaster. Winston made a mental note to beat both of those idiots into submission the next time he had a chance to fight them, only stopping when he finished beating the stupid out of them if Professor Goodwitch didn't do it for him. Judging by the enraged look on her face, he doubted they would need any reminders in the future unless they were truly lost causes.

"Geeze, he's lucky nobody got hurt." Ruby commented as they watched the two meddlesome students leave the training grounds behind the irate professor.

"Getting shot teaches a lot of valuable lessons, Commander Rose." Winston informed her.

Unable to think of how to reply to such an unexpected response, and fearing why the guardsman could say such a horrible thing with what she assumed to be a straight face lurking underneath his mask, the little leader decided to ignore his comment in fear of hearing an example from him.

Using the firing range for its intended purpose now that the momentary distraction had passed seemed far better than continuing that trainwreck of a conversation. Ruby walked up to the barrier separating two sides of the range and pressed a small button on the top of it which immediately caused two walls of physical light to erupt from the ground, forming a corridor that separated a fair portion of the range away from the rest of the area. The guardsman's hand shot to his laspistol the instant he saw the barriers appear, quickly flipping the safety off of his sidearm as he stepped towards Ruby to offer her whatever protection and covering fire he could. It was only when the more rational part of his brain caught up to the rest of his body that he realized that the barriers of light were only just of no threat to anyone that he lowered his guard. That didn't stop him from keeping a tight grip on his weapon.

"Oh, I guess you're not used to the firing ranges the huntsmen academies use." Ruby said as she noticed how surprised her newest teammate looked, failing to see how alarmed he truly was. "Anyways, would you like to go through the course first or should I?"

"Course?" The Korpsman asked, unsure of what his commander was talking about.

"Here, watch this." The young girl said as she removed her weapon off of her back and transformed it into its sniper rifle configuration.

Winston kept his thoughts about the impracticality of using such an overly complicated weapon like his leader's which was practically begging to be jammed mid conversion to himself, and watched as the girl lined up a firearm as large as she was at the targets before her. A harsh bark coming from her rifle heralded the first shot she fired, knocking down the vaguely Beowolf shaped target she had been aiming at with ease from a well placed headshot.

Not letting herself be distracted by a single success as the guardsman expected her to be given the overall quality of the cadets he had seen so far, Ruby started to methodically take down the other targets arrayed in the private little slice of the firing range she had created for herself. After a little time had passed and the girl continued firing away, several targets she had previously knocked down rose back up only for her to take them down a second time. None of them were dented or sporting any puncture holes, much to his surprise. Whatever the targets were made out of, it took more than a man sized rifle to damage them.

It took Ruby longer to deplete her magazine than Winston thought it would have given how compact her weapon appeared to be when he first saw her carrying it, but he supposed whatever this technology was that allowed so many moving parts to fold in on themselves without destroying any loaded ammunition also ensured she could fire off as many rounds as possible before needing to reload. The Mechanicus would have loved to get their hands on her rifle to reveal any other secrets it might have contained within.

Perhaps he could ask her how she managed to cram so many rounds in such a small space if he could ever manage to convince Ozpin to retrieve the gear he left behind at the savior pod. It was something to think about if the opportunity presented itself, as unlikely as relocating the abandoned vessel was.

Winston counted twenty-four shots fired and just as many targets hit by the time his leader moved to swap out her magazine, the young girl taking her time to make the necessary arrangements to remove and replace it with another without causing any damage to either the fresh magazine or her beloved weapon. It was just as she finished pulling the charging handle that a hologram showing the number of successful hits she landed and time it had taken to land them appeared in front of her face, the walls of light isolating her area of the shooting range disappearing not long afterwards.

"Heh, not bad, huh?" Ruby giggled as she swung her gun onto her shoulders in an attempt to show off.

"I don't know." Winston answered her honestly. "I've never used a weapon like yours."

"Oh, I know. Don't worry. Scythe-Sniper users are like, one-in-a-million amongst huntsmen and huntresses because of how hard they are to use." The little leader gushed as she walked over to her only spectator, her shyness fading as she discussed her area of expertise.

"You know, I might be willing to let you try using my Sweetheart if you let me use one of your laser guns." Ruby then offered, more than willing to let Winston lay his hands on her baby for the chance to use a gun no one from the four kingdoms had ever used before.

The weight of Ruby's proposition flew over the guardsman's head entirely, not that he would have accepted it if he had understood how much it would have meant to the girl. "Commander Rose, the only way you will get your hands on my lasguns is if you pry them from my corpse." He calmly told her, barely stopping himself from snapping at his direct superior.

"Ah… I thought so." The little leader glumly chucked. "So, how about you give the practice course a turn now and see how you do?"

"But only if you want to make it a competition!" The young girl quickly added, finally remembering herself and her teammate's current predicament as the happy haze of playing with her prized weapon wore off.. "I'm not saying you can't beat me the way you are now-"

"What do you mean by that?" Winston asked, insulted at the implication his leader was hinting at despite the legitimacy of the potential complaint.

"U-uhmm, you s-see…" Ruby stammered as she found herself underneath the cold glare of her teammate's mask as he waited for his answer.

"What my little sis means is that she wants to show off to the guy who was almost a match for the world's strongest huntress-in-training." Yang called out as she and the rest of Team RWBY trailed behind her with their weapons in tow, an explanation he accepted upon seeing his childish leader's response.

"Yaaa~aaang!" The dark haired girl whined at having been exposed.

"My sister loves to show off her toys whenever she gets a chance, isn't that right Rubes?" The blonde continued.

"I don't know what you're talking about." Ruby sheepishly denied, fooling no one with her suddenly embarrassed demeanor.

"Your sister likes to practice her marksmanship?" Blake asked her partner.

"Yeah, not only is she a total gun nut, but she has the skills to use anything she gets her hands on perfectly too." Yang bragged.

"YAAAANG! Stop it, this is so embarrassing." The young leader pleaded as she started to shrink in on herself underneath her sister's shower of praise.

"I don't see what's so impressive about hitting a bunch of still targets when they don't even fight back." Weiss grumbled.

"How did you do this time, sis?" The blonde brawler asked loudly after hearing the heiress' snide comment.

"Twenty-four for twenty four in forty-two seconds!" Ruby proudly announced.

"Just a little bit off of your best time." Yang said, letting out a low whistle as her sister basked in recognition of her accomplishment.

"How did you hit them so fast when your weapon has so much recoil?" Blake asked, her curiosity piqued as she studied her leader with a renewed image.

"Practice." Ruby answered with a nervous laugh as she thought back to all of the many, many misses it had taken to master her weapon. "Lots and lots and lots of practice."

"Pretty impressive, right?" Yang boasted on her sister's behalf as the little leader turned as red as her namesake.

"It's passable." Winston honestly answered, setting aside his previous grievances from earlier. "For a juve."

"Oh-ho! Really?" The blonde brawler laughed back. "Are you saying you can do better?"

"Of course I can. That much is child's play." He scoffed.

"Then prove it." The heiress challenged, remembering how he had struggled to land a single hit on her with his laspistol until he had her pinned to the ground. "Or are you just trying to brag since you can't do anything useful with only one arm?"

"Weiss!" Ruby gasped in shock. "Take that back."

The guardsman couldn't help to admit that the noble had a point, as wrong as it felt to admit it. Thanks to his crippled state, he was a liability to his team and they were right to treat him as such until he proved otherwise. If anything, he had all the more reason to prove the brat wrong. He would have too, if Yang didn't step in to defend his honor first.

"Woah, you are WAY out of line!" She practically growled at her smaller teammate. "Just because he's missing an arm doesn't mean you can treat him like he's useless!"

"Oh, and you mean to tell me you think he can fight a Grimm with the way he is now?" Weiss fired back, unwilling to back down.

"N–n-no… but that isn't the problem here!" The blonde stammered in her attempt to support her teammate. "You can't just pick on the new guy when he can't fight back!"

Unfortunately for her, Winston found her attempts to protect him to be far more wounding than anything the heiress could have called him. "Commander Rose?" Winston asked, clutching his fists so tightly that they shook. "May you show me how to start the training regimen you used earlier?"

"S-sure…" The little leader quietly mumbled, lacking the confidence to step in between her sister and partner to stop their fighting or tell Winston he didn't need to accept the heiress' challenge.

"You don't have to prove anything to us." Blake told him, taking a break from spectating the argument her own partner was involved in.

"You're wrong." The guardsman said as he pulled his laspistol from his holster. "And Cadet Schnee is right. None of you have any reason to believe I can competently defend you or myself thanks to my injuries."

"Okay Winston, all you need to do is press the button on the counter and then you can see how many targets you can hit in a row before the timer decides you have taken too long in between shots." Ruby carefully informed Winston, trying not to start any more fights amongst her team.

"Wait, he's actually going to do it?!" Yang shouted as she noticed what her sister was trying to do, sending a venomous look to the heiress as she squirmed underneath the bigger girl's fury.

"Look, I didn't mean anything by what I said, okay?" Weiss shouted half-heartedly in apology, not that anyone was fooled, Winston least of all.

As for the guardsman himself, he didn't care what his team said or thought about him at that moment. The Korpsman flicked the safety off of his laspistol and brought the bottom of his sidearm's magazine down onto the button in one swift motion as he ignored whatever protests his team wanted to raise. He didn't have anything to prove to them. Instead, he needed to see if he was still worthy to call himself a guardsman despite his current disabilities and deserving the laspistol in his possession.

"There's one more thing you should know! The more targets you hit, the less time you have to hit the next one!" Ruby called out as she took a step back from Winston alongside the rest of her team.

He took note of her warning as he watched the same walls of physical light appear and tensed his body like a spring, ready to snap onto the first target to pop up in front of. The guardsman held onto his breath, keeping his mind clear of all potential distractions as he tuned out whatever it was his team was bickering about behind him as he waited to see just how effective the calibrations and repairs he made to his quartermaster's laspistol were.

As soon as the first target rose into position, it was knocked back down almost instantly as a bolt of crimson light struck it in where the heart of the Grimm it portrayed would have been. Rather than take pride in his small victory, Winston instead turned his aim to the next target that appeared and swiftly planted another shot near its core with ease before moving onto the one after that. The Korpsman quickly fell into a rhythm of striking down targets almost as quickly as they popped up that left his team behind him awestruck as they watched him effortlessly mow them down, even if his precision faltered greatly after the first few shots. If they knew how long he had been fighting against the enemies of mankind and how necessary such quick reflexes and accurate aim was to survive on the front lines, then they would have found his display to be far less impressive.

Even so, Winston was making short work of the faux army which lacked any capability of fighting back against him. Although he had yet to miss, he was careful not to take pride in his work as the majority of his shots would have been crippling at best as while his accuracy was inarguably high, the same could not be said for his precision. Ten, twenty, forty, and more fell in a matter of seconds without the guardsman pausing in between shots to adjust his grip on his laspistol or line up a shot. To him, shooting whatever targets presented before him came as naturally as breathing and was performed with as little thought behind each movement that led to the next target falling before him. By the time he had racked up fifty consecutive hits, the students next to his team's area had taken note of his progress and stopped what they were doing to watch him make short work of the challenge the range was supposed to pose to him with those nearby being drawn into the budding crowd.

But to the guardsman, only two things mattered: the continuous wave of targets that were appearing before him and the remaining charge in his current power pack. He hadn't even struck down a hundred targets and yet he knew he still had over half the charge in his loaded power pack remaining. He didn't intend to stop either, not as long as he was still able to fight as if his life depended on it. As far as he knew, one day it very well could, and he would not allow this chance to practice his final stand to pass by so easily.


Special thanks to Doc43Souls for beta reading this chapter!


Author's Corner:

If there's one thing the Imperial Guard is good at, it's never backing down against impossible odds. Whether its Eldar, Chaos Space Marines, Necrons, or worse, the Emperor's hammer will use everything at their disposal to either fight back against extinction or make sure their foes pay dearly for whatever ground they gain. As Winston in this chapter clearly displays, not even a missing arm is enough to slow down a determined guardsman from serving the Golden Throne.

That isn't to say such a guardsman won't eventually run into difficulties, however.


Comments:

Shitty Bill & Rangda: (On our Krieger's identity and DKoK enlistment age)

While Winston's identity has been set in stone since before the first chapter was uploaded, it will be quite some time until it is revealed within the story. With that said, there are already plenty of hints as to what lies underneath the uniform. As for my take on when a Krieger can become a Korpsman, well, they obviously have to be old enough to serve to join up, of course. Anything else would be against regulations and obviously heretical.

Naturally, that raises another question that only the Death Korps know the answer to.

Spatialyeti8:I have never thought of how skinny death korps members must be until now and wow it makes sense

Considering how the Death Korps consider their soldiers as expendable as bullets and how hard it would likely be to get a steady supply of rations to the hardest battlefields which they volunteer to be deployed in, I am fully assuming malnourishment runs rampant within the Death Korps. Smaller, less muscular and even emaciated physiques in truly hellish conditions are likely common knowing how good the Administratum and Munitorum are at keeping Guardsmen supplied in optimal conditions.

Gas Mask Jack:Speaking of, has Winston ever encountered the traitor legions or loyalist legions?

Yes, he has seen both. If you pay attention to some of the past encounters and comments he has made you'll know of at least two specific legions/chapters he has seen. The same goes for other factions.

A random "Guest": I would say that Winston has prosthetics regular veteran guardsmen would dream off.

This is why it's never a bad idea to make friends with your regiment's tech priests. You oil their cogs and they'll make sure any prosthetics you receive actually work when you need them to.

The same "Guest": Come to think of it given how loyal kreigers are there seems to be a lack of kreiger inquisitorial stormtroopers or is just they are far more useful for direct confrontation than guile in the case of the inquisition.

Three reasons immediately come to my mind.

1. Puritan Inquisitors would never be comfortable working with guardsmen whose origins are almost certainly heretical.
2. Radicals would likely end up dead the second any Korpsmen in their entourage detected or suspected them of any heretical activity.
3. All time, supplies, and other resources invested in them would need to be thought of as 'extremely short term investments' given their zealous desire to die for the Emperor.

ThousandSonSorcere: How the fuck did Winston make it this far? Lose a limb and survive? Ok, Kriegers are most definitely fine with that. But missing about half a skull? How balls to the walls is Winston?

I actually have an answer as to why your bog standard guardsman would have some metal replacing their skull. Do you recall which eye Winston has a replacement for? The same one with SOME metal replacing the surrounding bone. As quite a bit of artwork of 40K characters shows, not all eye augments are compact enough to be installed without some minor 'adjustments' to allow a person's head to accommodate them.

Dovahsinn270 & E: (On potential Heretek origins of Winston's arm)

It takes either a very heretical or very stupid tech priest to openly use xenos tech and other forbidden technology in their efforts to aid the Imperial war machine.

Or they could be a 'kindred spirit' with Cawl. We can't forget the only person since the Emperor himself to innovate anything within the Imperium or think out of the box without being branded a heretek despite the ongoing attempts to do so…

Hopefully the Imperium and Mars aren't that brain dead, otherwise Vashtorr might have a future champion waiting for his patronage.


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