"Depa Billaba!"

"Yep, she's currently with her apprentice Caleb Dume on an off-world mission."

"Okay, what about Agen Kolar? You know her?"

"Yes, Rainbow! What part of 'I'm a walking library' did you not understand?!" Spike exclaimed.

"Only, you know, the entire thing!" She threw her arms up in exasperation. It took a few minutes for Rainbow to comprehend that her new Master was so much of an egghead that she made her droid an encyclopedia of the most awesome Jedi she ever idolized! "I mean, you have every move, every biography, every, well, EVERYTHING! Why would you wanna stay on this ship when you can help me be 20% cooler shooting down the bad guys?!"

The little astromech sighed. "Look, I get you're here in Bay 2 to kick droid butt, but my safety protocols prevent me from endangering any of you." He held out a metallic claw. "Now, let's get back to the others and ride out this space battle."

Looking behind her at the ARC-170 longingly, she sighed. "Fine!" Rainbow huffed, shaking his claw. "But before we do that, do you mind doing me a huge favor?"

"Anything, if it means getting you back to safety! What do you need?" The droid desperately pleaded.

"Oh nothing," the young Padawan said, silently using the Force to bring over a laser wrench. "Lemme just take a look at your control panel. It looks a little loose."

SP-K3's lights brightened up. "Sure!" The droid said, swinging open the panel. "It has been squeaking lately! I didn't know you could fix astrom- ERROR, SAFETY PROTOCOLS DISENGAGED."

"I can't." Rainbow twirled the laser wrench in her hand. "Buuut, most repair droids have a motherboard just like fighters. All I did was a slight solder to it and now we can go out to the real fun without you freaking out!"

"...Huh, how about that." was all the droid could say in response, before hopping in the astromech pod on the fighter she was repairing, still furious yet impressed at the same time.

"I hope you know Master Twilight is gonna be furious at you for hotwiring me!" He berated, running diagnostics on the ship.

"Yeah, well that's future me's problem!" Rainbow grunted, sliding under the ARC and plasma welding a few pieces of loose armor. "What's the armor reading, droid?" She spat out of habit.

"Seeing as I don't have much of a choice, the output is enough to take a few blasts but that's it. Anything else, Human?" Spike hated acting childish despite his voice and demeanor, but he figured might as well fight fire with fire.

"Nope! Just one more quick solder to the S-Foil control and we should be in *grunts* business!" She smiled, wiping sweat off her brows. Suddenly, the cockpit lights flickered on and the pod flung open, waiting for its next pilot. "Ha! And the repair crew said I couldn't do it!" She smugly grinned, wiping off excess grease from her hands.

The ARC-170 was fully repaired and ready to go, yet it was missing something. Rubbing that same patch, Spike noticed, she snapped her fingers and brought over a stencil and some paint. Holding the stencil over the sigil of the Republic Army, she painted what looked like a bolt of rainbow colored lightning coming out of a single white cloud. Below it in baby blue words, she signed "for the Wonderbolts..."

"Who are they?" SP-K3 asked curiously, only to receive a killer glare from Rainbow.

"THEY have nothing to do with you, so quit asking dumb questions and start running your programs or whatever." Out of all the young learners, there was almost nothing about Rainbow Dash in Spike's databanks, save that she was a survivor much like everybody else. Again, she rubbed that faded patch on her robes absently. Snapping out of it, she started to clean up her tools and clear the area of debris.

After a long and awkward silence, Spike spoke up. "Diagnostics are done."

"Huh? Oh yeah, sure..." Still quietly rubbing the patch, she hopped into the cockpit and began booting up the fighter. The engines roared to life, bursting forth a brilliant blue flame before idling. Flicking switches and checking controls, Rainbow remained silent.

"I'm not the bad guy, Rainbow." Spike rotated his head unit, feeding script written in Galactic Basic onto the cockpit screen. "*sighs* I know you don't wanna talk about it, but knowing Twilight, it's better if you get it off your chest before she comes back. Otherwise, the lack of data will force her to bug the living Sith out of you, and trust me, she gets pretty insane!" More silence. "We really are here to help-"

"Mind your own business, okay?!" She spat. "I... Don't wanna talk about it." Rainbow grasped at the patch as if it were a lifeline and letting go would maroon her in empty waters. "Just... Do some droid stuff or something!"

Dang it, Spike. Now's not the time to press for answers! the droid thought. Right now we gotta stay alive!

"Hey Rainbow, do you want me to switch on the auto-pilot?" He asked cautiously through the monitor. "It'll give us a head start into space before the fight begins."

"What's that supposed to mean?!" She glared daggers at the astromech. "Giving me the silent treatment too with that monitor speech? I can still hear you fine, ya know!"

"Yeah but not in space, Rainbow!" He yelled back.

"...Fair point." Rainbow snapped out of her funk and got back into the flow of things, checking various instruments in the on-board computer. "Nah, I dont need auto-pilot. In fact," she smugly grinned. "I was the fastest outta all the fighters back under my old Master! In fact, I was so fast that I did a Sonic Rainboom! When I first flew a fighter, no less!"

"Uh, what's a Sonic Rainboom?" SP-K3 looked through his records of space flight phenomena, but nothing came up.

"Oh you never heard of it? I wouldn't be surprised, only the coolest people even know it exists!" She beamed. "When there's a very strong Force User or Jedi with awesome flying skills, they can concentrate with all their energy and use the Force to mess around with the space around the fighter! I didn't even know what I did until my Mas- I mean my Ex-Master told me."

"Wow, it sounds pretty awesome, Rainbow!"

"Hey, that's what you get for tagging along with the coolest Padawan!" She beamed.

Suddenly, the controls locked up and her commandeered ship started to power down. "What's going on?! I thought the bypass worked!" Quickly, the young Jedi started pulling plugs left and right, desparate to keep it running.

"Can you hear me in there, soldier?" A clone engineer's voice echoed through the comm. "Regardless, we saw what you were doing! That's a Court Marshall, youngling! Which means this bird is grounded!" True to his word, several pilots and mechanics began approaching with Magna-Clamps to ground the fighter until the damage Rainbow did to the system was reversed. Reaching back up from under the cockpit, she turned off the comms link and switched on the communicator to Spike instead, pulling a few wires here and there to do so.

"Spike! Help me out here!" She whispered.

"As far as I'm concerned, this is Karma. It's outta my claws anyways, I'm locked out too." The clamps were attached, an engineer crawling up towards the cockpit to hotwire it back open.

"Poodoo!" She slumped near the control board underneath the ship's computer. Sighing, Rainbow switched the comms back on. "I know I broke some major rules, and I'm sorry." She pulled herself out from underneath the computer and unlocked the cockpit doors. "But I know how to fly and I know how to do it good." Raising her hands, the Padawan accepted her fate.

"Even so young one," the engineer opening the cockpit spoke. "We must respect the chain of command. Your Master specifically ordered the entire ship to look after you lot, and that's exactly what we plan on doing." He gestured to one of the other clones, handing him a pair of prisoner's cuffs. "Even if it means putting you in the brig."

The young jedi sighed solemnly, holding out her wrists. "I just wanted to help..."

"There are many ways to help young one, and a lot of em don't involve being another ship for the tinnies to shoot at." The engineer slapped the cuffs on and locked them tight. Sighing, she nodded in understanding. "Take her away boys! She's no use to us in a hangar." He gestured to two troopers standing by, giving them the signal to escort Rainbow to the brig alongside the astrodroid.

Author's Note

So, the announcement that the clone wars tv series is coming back inspired me to write again! Good news for that I guess.

Bad news is this planned 2-part story is gonna actually be a 3-part one instead because ~~I suck at writing~~ I planned it from the very beginning and sound very confident because I'm a tired bean that knows how to write ~~trash fanfiction~~ compelling stories!

Part 3 in the works, it'll take some time. Like probably a week...