"Huh, that went better than I thought it would." Yang muttered as the rest of Team RWBY followed her out of their Grimm studies classroom.
Unlike their previous class with Port, all of Team RWBY managed to learn something today, even if it was how much more boring Grimm Studies class could be when their professor didn't decide to go off on a random tangent every two minutes. None of the girls could quite decide if they preferred this version of the loudmouthed instructor or not.
Winston on the other hand was glad Glynda gave him the punishment she did since he finally managed to add something he learned in class to his growing list of notes regarding the Grimm he already encountered. If this was what it took to learn something more useful than the drivel printed in the Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer, then he was going to need to damage more training equipment in the future.
No, wait, comparing Professor Port's rants to the laughably wrong information contained within the Primer was unfair. Nothing the boastful fool tried to teach them was likely to get them killed if anyone actually listened to what he had to say and tried it for themselves.
At least, he thought it wouldn't. By the Emperor, an Inquisitor was responsible for running this schola! No one except the Administratum should be that incompetent.
"What do you mean, Yang?" Blake asked her partner, sounding a little concerned as she continued to talk about the professor, "Port looked like he was half asleep for the entire class. I'm surprised he didn't pass out in the middle of it."
"Better that than wasting everyone's time by telling ridiculous stories about himself again." Weiss quickly answered for the brawler, taking no efforts to hide her annoyance with the boisterous professor.
"Or have us watch someone get her butt kicked by Grimm." Yang chuckled back.
The others at least made an effort to hide their grins, except for Winston whose mask did the job for him. Even with the perfect cover to hide any joy he might have found at the heiress' expense, he didn't feel there was anything funny about watching one of his teammates get tossed around in such a way that would have guaranteed her death if she didn't have any Aura. Sure, he thought she was an idiot for letting it happen, but that didn't mean he wanted her to die or get hurt because of her arrogance-fueled stupidity, even if she was an aristocrat by this planet's standards. If anything, it made him more worried for her safety and those unfortunate enough to be around her the next time she felt she had something to prove.
"Oh please, I had everything under control." Weiss quickly countered.
"Even when the boarbatusk threw you across the room?" Blake asked, her smirk on full display to the rest of her team.
Weiss did not bother dignifying that deliberate attack on her reputation with a response. Why would she? She had far better things to do than to talk with people who insisted on belittling her for a minor little mistake anyone would have made in her shoes. It wasn't her fault the boarbatusk got a lucky hit on her. Why, it could have happened to anyone! And yet there was her team, berating her over a tiny little mistake that wasn't really her fault at all. Knowing that she would be wasting her time trying to correct their misunderstanding of her actions, she started walking faster so she could put them and the first of a series of embarrassing events that happened on her first day of classes behind her.
"H-hey, Weiss! Wait for us!" Ruby called out as she attempted to catch up to her partner, only to be stopped when her sister grabbed onto her shoulder to hold her back.
"Don't worry about our little Snow Angel, Rubes. She's just heating up from all the attention we're giving her and needs some time to chill out." Yang said with a cheeky smile, tactfully ignoring the pair of extended fingers Weiss raised in response as she furiously stomped away from the others.
"Stop calling me that!" She shouted back at them as she disappeared out of sight.
"Classy." Blake said as she rolled her eyes at the heiress' childish display.
"I know, her puns are terrible." Ruby whined.
"That wasn't what I…" The quiet huntress was about to correct the little leader before noticing the beaming smile her partner gave her, "You know what, you are right, Ruby. That was terrible."
"Oh please, I'm hilarious and you know it." Yang confidently retorted, only to be met with deafening silence from her team.
"Anyways, what about you, Tough Guy?" The blonde then asked Winston, quickly changing topics to avoid any further criticism of her self-assured comedy genius, "I haven't heard you say much of anything since this morning."
"Sorry." He monotonously apologized.
He personally didn't feel it was necessary to apologize for saying nothing when he had nothing to say, but life hardly decided to work out in his favor. Better to play it safe than end up with a lasbolt through your gut for pissing off a superior. Yang technically fit the role because she had attended Beacon longer than him, but even ignoring that he wasn't going to risk angering someone who could deflect an Astartes-sized scythe with her fists by remaining silent.
"Hey, there's nothing bad about that." Yang quickly backpedaled, "Not saying a word to anyone really helps you with that whole 'mysterious bad-'"
"Ack, bad word!" Ruby quickly shouted, interrupting Yang who could only sheepishly laugh at her sibling's antics.
"...butt image you have going on." The brawler finished, earning a nod of approval from the little leader.
"What are you talking about?" Winston asked in confusion.
"Sorry, I don't know what you're talking about either." Blake said as she looked at her partner for a further explanation.
"Oh come on, you of all people should know what I'm talking about with all those books you brought to Beacon!" Yang chastised the bookish huntress, "There's no way you don't know the kind of people I'm talking about. You have to have at least a couple of stories about a mysterious stranger from outside the kingdom who carries around a crazy amount of guns and other weapons, is really good at beating Grimm and jerks to a pulp, and never so much as laughs or smiles in public like Tough Guy here. "
"No, I don't own any books like that." The quiet huntress informed her partner, fixing the guardsman with an appraising stare, "But now that you mention it, I kind of see what you're talking about."
"Like I told you, he totally nails the look." Yang said as Winston struggled to figure out what they were talking about.
The guardsman had no clue what the blonde was speaking of, but decided to nod along regardless until she started making sense. If he was lucky, he might be able to figure it out before they all realized he had no idea what they were discussing.
"Yeah, he's like that rogue huntsman from that one movie you got me for my birthday last year! The Exterminator! The only thing he is missing is a motorcycle, sunglasses, and a shotgun to complete the outfit!" Ruby excitedly said as she added her own thoughts to the conversation, "Well, except for that whole reveal where he was secretly a robot sent to kill everyone on Remnant."
The young leader suddenly fixed her temporary teammate with a pointed look. "Hey, Winston, are you-"
"No, I'm not here to kill everyone." He interrupted before she could finish with her question, "All I am here to do is slaughter Grimm and anything else that threatens humanity."
Blake visibly stiffened at his answer, but the others didn't notice her or how he didn't mention anything about the faunus in his response. Or did they simply not care, she wondered?
"Uhm, that wasn't what I was going to ask..." Ruby sheepishly tried to correct the guardsman, only for her sister to interrupt her before she could even start.
"And yet you're not saying you're not a robot." Yang teased, chuckling at his serious response, "Maybe Nora's guess wasn't so crazy after all and he really is some sort of robot soldier from outer space."
Winston was thankful his gas mask hid his visage in that moment and quickly steered the conversation into more comfortable territory before anyone started thinking too much about what did lie underneath his mask. "What's a robot?" He asked, unfamiliar with the term the two sisters were throwing around so freely.
"You don't know what a robot is?" Blake asked incredulously.
"No." The Korpsman bluntly answered.
"But you have guns that shoot lasers. How do you not know what a robot is?" Yang jumped in, "From what I've heard on the news and what my sister tells me every now and then, they're a pretty common sight around Atlas and places the Schnee Dust Company owns. Maybe we should ask Weiss if she could show us a few sometime… to help you know what they look like, of course. She could probably share a few exclusive pictures with us since her family is kinda responsible for making them all."
The Korpsman couldn't help but to notice how Blake glowered at that last little bit of information. Apparently he wasn't the only one who hated nobles, if he wasn't just reading into her reaction too much. It was hard to tell since the bloody girl always looked like she was hiding something.
Probably because she was.
"Hey, what are you looking at?" She asked, quickly noticing that the smoky grey lenses of the Korpsman's mask were staring straight at her which only served to prove his point.
"Your bow's loose." He lied as Blake hurriedly adjusted the ribbon sitting on her head.
"Oh, I definitely need to ask Weiss if she knows anything about the rumors of a new model of Atlesian Knights releasing soon. I'd love to see a few close ups of them!" Ruby gushed, instantly latching onto the only other thing on Remnant that came close to catching her interest as much as guns did.
"Knights?" Winston muttered aloud, clutching onto the one and only term the two sisters mentioned that he knew anything about, "If robots are anything like Knights or Titans, then I do know of a few robots used in… where I'm from."
Sodding Warp, he nearly slipped up again. That was close.
…or was it? Talking about the god engines shouldn't violate his agreement with Ozpin to not mention any information about the Imperium, right? It's not like he was telling the girls anything about the Astartes or just how small their place in the galaxy really was. Sharing what little he knew about the world outside of the Death Korps probably wasn't too dangerous, so long as he was careful about it. Not unlike letting people know that, compared to the horrors that lurked on countless planets and star systems that could be seen from Remnant, the Grimm were barely more threatening than domesticated livestock.
Emperor on Terra, even that might be giving the Grimm too much credit. If anything of what he heard about 'domesticated' Anbulls was true, then there was at least one species of feral xenos more dangerous than the possibly warp-tainted wildlife that some people thought of as 'pets'. Two, if the Catachans he met weren't lying about making that Catachan Devil that almost killed him their regiment's pet at one point. Knowing them, they could probably pull it off if they tried hard enough.
"Oooh!" The little leader gasped in delight, as she assaulted the guardsman with an onslaught of questions, "Have you seen any of them in person before? What do they look like? Do you think you can show me some pictures of them?" What about…"
Winston slowly shrunk in on himself as Ruby drew closer and closer with every question she asked, growing increasingly uncomfortable with her excitement and the way she was getting closer to him with every passing second.
He tried to take a few steps back away from her to gain some space, but in her pursuit for answers about all things to do with automata, the young girl absentmindedly pursued him until his back was against the wall and he had nowhere else to flee to. Luckily for everyone involved, Yang quickly came to his rescue before he could pull his laspistol from its holster, not that any of the present members of Team RWBY noticed him reaching for it in the first place.
"Why don't you give Tough Guy some space and ask him later, Rubes?" She interrupted her sister as she delicately pulled Ruby away to give the guardsman some space, gesturing at Winston as he pressed himself against the wall away from them.
It was only as Yang's words hit her that Ruby realized what she had done and her face turned red as her namesake with embarrassment. "Oh my gosh, I am so sorry about that, Winston!" The young girl sheepishly apologized, "I got a little too excited there for a moment and I didn't mean-"
"I'm fine, Commander Rose. You have nothing to be sorry for." He told her before she could finish apologizing, confident his trembling didn't show through the thick layers of his uniform, "I would show you the picts and recordings I have of them, but the device I need to play them on is damaged and I can't repair it."
"Ouch, you broke your scroll during your first week of classes. That must suck." Yang winced.
"No, not my scroll. My data slate." Winston said as he pulled the bulky device in question out of his kitbag, "My regiment's tech priest upgraded it to have more applications than standard because he didn't want me to sort through multiple data slates while assisting him with his work. The only feature that works anymore is the gene-scanner."
"Huh… data slate. Is that something like a scroll?" Blake inquired.
"A little." He told her. "Most data slates can only record, play, or transfer the data stored on them. Mine is more advanced, but still inferior to a scroll in every conceivable way."
He silently offered a prayer begging forgiveness towards both the machine spirit housed within his malfunctioning data slate and his regiment's late tech priest for admitting a primitive world that had yet to discover space travel could make one of his many pet projects look inadequate by comparison. If only Bluey could see the scroll Ozpin had given him. The eccentric priest would have cried oily tears of joy at the very sight of the device, if he didn't immediately start trying to reverse engineer its mysteries the moment he laid his mechadendrites on it.
"If it's broken, maybe I can take a look at it?" The quiet huntress offered, "I've worked on a lot of them before, so I can probably fix it by the end of the day if there isn't anything major wrong."
"Really?" Yang said, impressed at hearing another one of her partner's many skills yet unable to resist trying to tease her for it, "I didn't think you were a nerd like my sister."
"Hey! It's not our fault you waste all of your time partying instead of studying!" Ruby playfully shouted at her sister, as Blake cocked an eyebrow at the younger of the two siblings.
"Don't waste your time, Cadet Belladonna." The guardsman said dismissively, "Mechanicus technology is too complicated to be repaired by anyone who hasn't worked with it before."
"Mechanicus? Is that the operating system it uses?" Blake asked, still hoping she might be able to offer her teammate a helping hand, "I've never heard of it before, but I'll try to help you with as much as I can."
Frak. He was not supposed to mention that. Thankfully, he had the perfect excuse to avoid breaking one of the rules Inquisitor Ozpin wanted him to follow as they passed by the locker rooms, "I already have my weapons. I'll wait for you in combat class." He said as he left the trio to retrieve their equipment on their own, quickly leaving them behind before they could inquire any further about his minor slip up.
It was as he was trying to escape one mistake that he managed to run straight into another in his rush to avoid another difficult conversation. Just his luck.
"Hey, watch it!" Weiss shouted as Winston bumped into her.
"Oh, it's you." She spat out after seeing who nearly ran her over.
"My apologies, Cadet Schnee." He apologized reflexively, the emotionless way he spoke making his apology seem patronizing to her.
"Just… just watch where you're going." She shot back at him, trying and failing to come up with a better retort as his expressionless mask stared back at her, "And don't call me a cadet. It's creepy."
"I will try to remember that in the future." He flatly responded, earning an annoyed glare from the heiress.
"Are you trying to make fun of me?" She asked as the two of them walked to their class together, one lacking better company to be with and the other not caring who was at their side so long as they weren't alone again.
Was this a trick question? It certainly sounded like one. Leave it to a civilian, and a noble no less, to be unable to speak clearly like someone with common sense. Someone like a guardsman or even a tech priest, perhaps, could always make what they wanted clear whenever they made a request. He never had to second guess what they really wanted from him, unlike an Inquisitor.
"No." The huntsman hesitantly answered, "Would you like me to start trying?"
"You're unbelievable!" The huntress-in-training muttered to herself in exasperation.
"I am?" The guardsman asked, unsure of what exactly his teammate was talking about.
The heiress glared at him furiously, mistaking his genuine confusion for deliberate malice while Winston continued to remain oblivious to her anger towards him.
"Oh don't give me that! I know what you're doing so you can stop with the act already!" She shouted at him, drawing a few stares from nearby students in the academy's halls as she continued her rant.
"I don't know what you're talking about." He honestly answered her.
His obliviousness only enraged the heiress further. "Really? You mean you just happened to make me look like an idiot in on the first day of classes by showing me up against a couple of Grimm, 'accidentally' terrorizing me in combat class during our practice match together, sending me to the doctor after you nearly burned my shoulder off, and constantly pretending to be a soldier to earn sympathy from the others?"
"Yes." He guardsman calmly tried to explain, only worsening Weiss' opinion of him in the process, "And I am a-"
"Don't think for a second I don't know you're lying to us." She interrupted. "You might have fooled the rest of my team, but not me. I know exactly what you are doing."
"And what is it you presume I am doing, exactly, Cadet Schnee?" Winston asked her dispassionately.
He had no idea what the heiress was ranting about, more than likely something to do with wounded pride or some other trivial matter that was a waste of everyone's time including her own, but he wanted to at least entertain her long enough to understand what complaints she had were about so he could try to correct them if they had any substance.
No matter what she was outside of Beacon, she was his teammate first and foremost. He trusted she would not let petty grievances bother her when it was her own incompetence that caused most of them in the first place. Giving her the benefit of what little good will he held towards her was the least he could do.
Yet instead of hearing a calm, detailed explanation of what her problem with him was, the huntress-in-training turned bright red, believing her teammate was purposefully screwing with her yet again. Rather than dignify his question with an answer, she chose to storm off a second time and left the Korpsman wondering what exactly just happened.
"Yikes, are you okay?" Jaune asked as Team JNPR walked over to check in on him after watching the heiress' tirade against him.
"What… happened?" He asked them, still struggling to figure out why Weiss was so angry at him.
"I dunno, but whatever it was, she is really mad at you." Nora said, providing what little insight she could into the situation.
"Why?" He asked none of them in particular.
"It totally wasn't because you were brushing Weiss off the entire time you were arguing with her." Jaune sardonically stated.
"No, I wasn't." Winston insisted, "I don't know why she was angry with me."
"Hey, Winston." Ren stepped forward as he spoke, having been in one too many similar situations thanks to his partner to stand by and continue letting the guardsman wallow in his well-meaning ignorance, "Do you really not know why she was yelling at you?"
"No, I don't." He flatly replied.
"It's like she said, you kind of made her look like she had no idea what she was doing every time you both tried to show off." Pyrrha said, quickly averting her eyes away from Winston as he looked at her.
"Yeah, you kinda make her look as bad as Jaune." Nora helpfully contributed, or at least tried to, much to her team leader's shame.
"Ouch." He cringed at Nora's honest, yet fair opinion of him.
"Uhh… heh heh, oops?" She nervously laughed, "I'm sorry. I'm sure you'll be as good as the rest of us someday."
Jaune's shoulders slumped further at the bubbly huntress's attempts to comfort him. "Nora, I think you should stop trying to help Jaune and start trying to help Winston instead." Ren carefully reproached his partner.
"Yeah, sorry about that." She apologized to him.
"Don't worry about it. You're… not exactly wrong about me." The blonde boy glumly admitted.
"That's not true." Pyrrha quickly jumped to his defense, blushing a little as everyone's eyes fell on her, "You just need a little time to get used to life here at Beacon. Same as Weiss."
"Sure. That's what's wrong with me." Jaune gloomily muttered as he continued heading to combat class.
Winston watched the rest of Team JNPR follow behind their leader's sullen footsteps, still wondering what exactly just happened before ultimately deciding he was probably better off not knowing.
"But I wasn't showing off." He mumbled to himself.
Being able to do what he did on the first day of classes should have come naturally to any guardsman who had survived their first campaign, let alone three like he had. Rather than try and rush to Team JNPR's side to clear up the apparent misunderstanding, he simply decided he was likely to cause more trouble if he tried thanks to how little he knew about the kind of people he was dealing with now.
He had never come to fully understand civilians, even after living amongst some for a few months on a planet besieged by Chaos. He didn't learn much about the people he conscripted to fight alongside him to help defend their homeworld during those busy days, aside from how they made even less sense than he thought they did before he met one of them in person.
He always knew they were different from him and the rest of the Death Korps, but he never would have guessed they were so incapable of defending themselves or were so damn emotional about, well, everything. While he might not have learned much about the people he was sworn to protect during the time they spent together, he did learn enough about civilians to know how to deal with them better than most other korpsmen did. If only one of them lived long enough for him to repay the favor.
Of course, as useful as the lessons of the past may be, they weren't always useful in the present. Winston figured this was one of those moments that his previous experiences couldn't be relied upon and did his best to put the previous conversations he had behind him as he continued making his way to combat class
Similarly to the second year students he watched this morning, the first year students' combat class consisted of matches between different teams to test their abilities to work with one another.
In theory, this shouldn't have been necessary. Being the supposed 'best of the best' huntsmen-in-training Remnant had to offer, their supposedly superior skills being the sole reason they were attending Vale's prestigious Beacon Academy instead of one of the other huntsmen academies across the world, such an exercise shouldn't have been necessary. Winston knew better than to look for anything approaching a competence in fighting force outside of the Astra Militarum, not to say it too didn't have its fair share of idiots, but even he was appalled by the series of absolute travesties he witnessed.
To only note the most major offenses he watched unfold; there were several friendly fire incidents when teams tried to fire into a melee their members were taking part in, different teams announcing the tactics they were going to use out loud before performing them as well as failing to react when the opposing team did the same, and most glaringly of all, a general lack of coordination as most of the huntsmen-in-training tended to treat each match like a series of duels until someone was eventually eliminated, causing each fight to quickly devolve into an all-out brawl between each team. The whole display was nothing short of shameful and would have convinced some Commissars to execute the lot of them to spare them the embarrassment of being seen in public afterwards.
Had the huntsmen cadets been a part of the Imperial Guard, then after clearing their basic training they should have been more than capable of functioning as a group no matter who they were paired with. At the very least, they would have been able to avoid accidentally shooting one another, unlike some of the more hopeless juves he watched.
Every guardsman knew what role they were meant to fill long before they first set foot onto whatever warzone they were deployed to. Whether it was specialist positions such as siege engineers, dreary tasks such as organizing munitions and other logistics work with the regiment's quartermaster, or something simple as maintaining the defensive line with all of the other common infantry troops, every soldier present on the battlefield knew their role and how best to accomplish it. Even when no one with the necessary expertise was present, they all had a basic understanding of most conventional duties they could feasibly perform should a specialist not be present or otherwise incapacitated and unable to carry out their assigned duties.
Or at least, that is how the Death Korps of Krieg operated. While Winston was unable to speak for the greater Imperial war machine at large, the Death Korps held no illusions about the purpose of their lives. They were guardsmen, meant to fight and die for the God-Emperor in order to wipe away the shame of their ancestors and themselves. While nothing less than victory was acceptable for them, that did not mean that every triumph they made would come without a cost. Thousands upon thousands of casualties were expected every day, and with it, the loss of several individuals who held vital knowledge that the rest of their regiment or squad sorely lacked.
Despite the loss of someone as important as a demolitions expert or vox operator in the heat of battle, every Korpsman was trained to perform such tasks to a minimal standard of acceptability should the need ever arise. A standard infantryman might not be able to drive a Leman Russ tank as well as those specifically trained for the task or lacking the years of experience as the dead soldier they were replacing, but they could at least drive it from point A to point B with minimal problems, barring a few accidental deaths caused by being run over by said tank that would be easily excused given the circumstances. The same could not be said for most civilians, as Winston found out the hard way.
As much as Winston wanted to believe the students attending Beacon were more like guardsmen in this aspect as opposed to the ignorant masses they bore a closer resemblance to, he knew better than to raise his expectations of them. Watching each team of four spar against each other, fighting against their own teammates more than their opponents sometimes, only served to prove his initial impressions of them correct. These cadets truly were every bit as incompetent as they looked.
Well, most of them anyways. He certainly couldn't say Pyrrha didn't know how to fight. She could probably manage to best an Eldar in melee combat. If not, it would certainly be close.
The entire purpose of this exercise, according to Headmistress Goodwitch, was for the teams to display their teamwork to one another while also learning to fight against a group with skills similar to their own. Her reasoning seemed less like an excuse to encourage teamwork and more of a way to not only show the consequences of how far they would get by relying solely on their own abilities in a real fight, but to also start giving them some experience fighting against other huntsmen. Winston didn't know how prevalent traitorous elements were on Remnant, but if even Astartes could fall from grace, then he had no doubt a bunch of civilians wielding strength comparable to that of Space Marines could too. Better to give the cadets some experience now instead of later when the price of failure would be fatal.
The guardsman watched the different teams fight amongst one another with flickering interest. Aside from seeing how similar the huntsmen and huntresses of Remnant fought like the lithe and inhumanly agile Eldar, Winston took the time he waited for it to be his own team's turn to make fools of themselves to charge his power packs in the sunlight pouring in from the skylight above him.
It was the first time he had a chance to top them off since he first arrived on Beacon, and even though he had only depleted the charge from two of his ten power packs, he still wanted them all at max capacity should the need arise. After slogging through the ruinous aftermath of a plague zombie outbreak that had yet to be purged, he had developed something of a habit of hoarding spare ammunition and other valuable supplies such as food and water he could be sure were uncontaminated.
Soon enough, the class had almost come to an end and his power packs were almost fully charged. It had taken a few hours for each team to finish their matches, and for Glynda to give her own commentary that bordered on coddling to Winston's ears, but there were only two teams that had yet to spar. They were of course the two best teams of first year cadets Beacon had to offer, JNPR and RWBY, and Winston was all too eager to finish his match against Pyrrha properly.
"As soon as both of your teams are ready I will start the countdown for you to begin." Goodwitch announced one last time as members of both teams picked up their weapons and prepared themselves for a fight.
Each squad of four and Winston rose from their seats as they climbed down the arena's elevated seating area and jumped down into the fighting pit below them. Winston, preferring not to trust in a power he barely understood to keep his ankles from shattering on impact, decided to take the stairs instead. He would have joined the others if Glynda hadn't stopped him before he descended.
"I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you to refrain from joining your team this time." She informed him.
Well, that definitely made sense by a certain, faulty sort of logic. The people of this planet were soft, and he doubted they would have believed five against four would be fair, as if fighting was meant to be anything but fair. In a real fight, there was no such thing as 'fair' or 'rules' as the headmistress seemed to insist there were. All that mattered was defeating the enemy, plain and simple.
Or maybe she thought there wasn't anything for him to do to contribute to the lesson she intended to teach to his team and Team JNPR? He already knew how to adapt to most combat situations and a variety of experienced, inexperienced, and just plain incapable allies during his service in the Imperial Guard. So maybe-
"You're in no condition to be fighting anyone as you are." She then added, instantly earning the guardsman's ire.
…maybe she thought he was an invalid just because he was missing an arm at the moment. That was also an option, apparently.
"I'm fine." He tersely told her, fighting the urge to reach for his laspistol at how she was looking down at him for his injuries.
"Even so, I cannot let you do this in good conscience, Mr Voytoski." She said placatingly, her words having the exact opposite effect on him.
"Is that an order from Ozpin?" He asked her, wondering if the Inquisitor himself demanded such a humiliating restriction be placed on him.
"No, that's an order from me." She sharply replied, finally picking up on the guardsman's frustration with her, "And unless you want to bring up your current eligibility to participate in combat classes with Ozpin right now, I recommend you return to your seat until my class is over."
Winston, obeying instincts that had been beaten over the course of years through both physical means and from indoctrination to the Imperial Truth, did as he was told with a noticeable stiffness to his movements. He didn't want to go through with Glynda's decision to prevent him from fighting, but orders were absolute.
The only way he could get around the course of action she had taken was if a higher authority were to override it, and the only authority he knew that could do so was the Inquisitor, a person whose word was second only to that of the Emperor's himself according to Imperial law. As much as Winston wanted to take the matter up with Ozpin at the earliest opportunity, he figured such a powerful individual would not take kindly to such a frivolous request. He knew Inquisitors would kill for less than that when properly provoked. Saw it happen too.
Then again, they could also execute someone just because they wanted to for that matter. Winston didn't know what kind of inquisitor Ozpin was, but he was determined not to find out if it would end up with him at the old man's mercy.
And so the Korpsman returned to his seat and prepared to watch the only two teams he was familiar with spar against one another, wanting them to prove him wrong about their ability to work together but not raising his expectation in the slightest.
Special thanks to Doc43Souls & Tireless Traveler for beta reading this chapter!
Author's Corner:
As you can see, in pursuit of becoming masters of siege warfare, the Death Korps of Krieg lose a few other skills that you and I would consider much more valuable. Social skills are perhaps the most obvious one, so much so that Commissars are considered to be better to get along with than your average Korpsman. Yes, most guardsmen prefer to be around the people who can execute them for even the slightest infraction rather than someone from Krieg. Let that sink in for a moment.
The fact Winston still has people willing to talk to him in Beacon should really go to show how much he has learned from his time in the Imperial Guard, even if he can still annoy certain individuals with ease.
Comments:
longlongmaaaan: I wonder what will Winston think of Blake once he has confirmation of what she truly is and what the organization she used to be a part of does. I also hope there is someone else nearby before Winston tries to fill her with lasbolts.
Honestly, I doubt anyone here will expect what happens when that little tidbit is revealed.
Sabethetan: When Glynda spoke about school uniforms I got a feeling that Winston's face would be revealed to RWBY. Can we expect this soon?
Not if Winston has anything to say about it.
Sgtforge1: Ok so this savior pod has:
1. bolter and extra ammunition
2. presumably more ration bars
3. spare weapon parts
4. assorted grenades and LAND MINES
5. Probably so form of vox system
Anything obvious or mentioned that im missing?
Yes, yes there is. And no, I will not say what. However, I will tell you it is something required for all independently operating and SANCTIONED Imperial technology to function.
Ggkcc: (On minor details that were funny and seemingly out of character)
A lot of the things that you pointed out as being OOC or just plain strange were done for a reason. As I've said time and time again, a lot of the more unusual details and moments between characters, no matter how minor, may be more than what they initially appear when looked at as a whole.
Also, how sure are you about Winston's character that you believe he was acting OOC? The mask covering his head might not be the only one he is wearing...
linuxnoodle: damn. I guess I have a new favorite Warhammer fic
That is just about the highest praise you could give an author and I cannot thank you enough for it, especially since I haven't even gotten anywhere close to posting the good parts of this story yet.
Once again, thanks for reading and I hope to see you all again in the future!