"Name?"
"Daniel Grigio."
"Age?"
"Seventeen."
"Gender?"
"Swear to God, please don't start."
The officer looked up at Daniel with a hint of annoyance in his eyes. "You and your two compatriots entered a fuel station and left it in ruins. You cost the owner tens of thousands of Lien in damages, and closed his business for what will most likely be months. I will start whatever I want to young man."
Daniel groaned and rubbed his eyes. "I'm a guy, I'm human, and please don't-"
"Sexual Identification?"
"Goddammit."
When the police had arrived, Daniel, Dakota, and Lunare had been separated from each other. Since then, Daniel had endured a ride in the back of a police car (not a welcome experience), sat in a cell for hours, and was now forced to answer a disturbingly familiar list of questions. Today was shaping up to be just perfect and the sun had only just come up.
The officer finished up asking the questions and left Daniel alone. He sat on the cold metal folding chair and looked around at his surroundings. He was in a small concrete room with a dim bulb hanging over an old rickety wooden table bolted to the floor. There was a metal loop installed into the table where a set of handcuffs were attached to by a zip cord. Evidently the local police department lacked funds to have a state of the art interrogation room. They didn't even have proper prison uniforms. Daniel was currently dressed in a pair of orange-ish sweat pants, and an orange t-shirt, both of which itched like crazy. The only part of the room that looked even vaguely new were the electronic shackles attached to his hands. Even Dakota and Lunare would have troubles picking these.
As Daniel made these observations, the door opened, letting in another officer holding a manila folder in one hand and another folding chair in the other. He set up the chair and sat down in it, opening the folder as he did so. "Daniel Grigio," he said. "Age seventeen, currently living with your father, no arrests, although it says here that you have been caught several times attempting to steal out of donation boxes."
Daniel fumed at this. It wasn't fair. His father bought exactly two types of things. Beer, and other varieties of alcohol, leaving Daniel to scramble with whatever was left of that month's money to buy food and keep the house in one piece. If he hadn't raided the donation boxes, he undoubtedly would still be in his clothes from kindergarten.
"That's not correct sir," Daniel said.
The officer looked up. "Are you accusing Vale of having false records son?" he asked icily.
"I'm saying they have out of date records sir," Daniel replied. "I've been enrolled and living at Beacon for just under three weeks."
The officer laughed humorlessly. "Oh, I see what you're trying to do here," he said. "You're trying to get the government to pay for the damages you and your friends caused under the impression that this was all done by Huntsmen."
"Well, yeah. That's because it was," Daniel said.
The officer leaned over the desk at Daniel. "You think you can pull the wool over my eyes boy? Well it's not going to work. You would not believe how many times I've been told that exact same lie. It hardly ever changes. You want to add impeding an investigation to your charges, or do you want to start telling me the truth?"
Daniel looked at him hard. This officer was treating him exactly like everyone else used to back in his town. Like he was dirt. Like they all were above him. He had endured it then because considering he was the son of the town drunk, they had a bit of a reason to. Not this officer though. He was supposed to be above this.
Something in his eyes caused the officer to shudder and look away nervously. "I feel like I would like to call Beacon and sort this out," Daniel said in a low voice, almost a growl. He had no idea what caused the officer to become so nervous all of the sudden, but he didn't want to lose momentum.
At that moment, the door opened. The officer whirled around, grateful that something had stolen his attention. "What are you doing? He demanded. I specifically said I was to be left alone during this interrogation.
"I'm terribly sorry officer, but considering the fact that you are conducting this interrogation with false information, I felt it necessary to intervene," Professor Glas said as he stepped through the door opened by the officer that had questioned Daniel.
Daniel slumped in relief. He had no idea how Professor Glas had found out what had happened or how he had gotten here so fast, but he was glad he was here.
The officer stood up and faced Professor Glas. "And who just might you be?"
"I am Professor Arthur Glas," Professor Glas replied. "I am a professor at Beacon. I teach battlefield tactics and combat first aide to the students. When we were informed of the incident that took place earlier this morning, I came immediately. There have been some unexpected delays in entering Mr. Grigio's information into the system, and it was decided that it was for the best for a Beacon official to come and make certain no misunderstandings were made."
"So you're telling me that this boy is a Huntsman?" the officer asked incredulously.
"Huntsman in training to be precise," Professor Glas rectified. "But he still has the same rights and privileges of a fully-fledged Huntsman. The only difference being we will be having an inquiry to make certain Mr. Grigio was within his bounds to act in the way he has. That however will be taken care of by Beacon staff." He then turned to Daniel. "If you would stand Daniel, we can leave."
Daniel held up his shackled hands, still attached to the table by a zip tie. Professor Glas saw this and reached into his suit and brought out a scalpel. In one fluid throw he tossed through the air and through the zip tie. It sliced through it like butter and sunk into the table. Daniel stood up and yanked the scalpel out of the table. The officer flinched at this and his hand strayed towards his handgun on his belt, but was stopped by a motion from Professor Glas' hand. Daniel walked over to Professor Glas and offered the scalpel to him handle first. The professor took it, but accidentally sliced Daniel's palm with the blade as he did so.
Professor Glas' eyes widened as he saw what he had done. Quickly he put the scalpel away and pulled out a small flat first aide kit. Within seconds, Daniel's hand was sufficiently bandaged and Professor Glas was apologizing profusely. "I assure you Daniel, this never happens."
"Hey, it's okay sir," Daniel said. "I hardly felt it."
Inside though, he was cursing his head off. He had gotten very lucky. Right now the cut could be written off as a depleted Aura. Any other time would attract attention and possibly even let his secret out.
Satisfied with his handiwork, Professor Glas turned back to the officer. "I don't believe that there is any reason for Mr. Grigio to remain shackled, now is there?"
The officer frowned, but did as Professor Glas suggested. He pulled a fob from his belt and held it close to the shackles. He pressed a button and the shackles chirped once before coming undone and falling to the floor.
Rubbing his wrists, Daniel followed Professor Glas down the hallway. The walls of the hallway were lined with jail cells some of them empty, others containing occupants, all of them filthy. Daniel shuddered. Professor Glas had just saved him from a particularly nasty fate.
As they reached the end of the hallway, a commotion could be heard on the other side of the door at the end. Professor Glas opened it to reveal Lunare being roughly handled by two officers.
"All that I am saying is that if you didn't want me to open the door to my cell, you shouldn't leave two hair pins in the sink," Lunare protested as he was forced to his knees. "And furthermore, the locks themselves are in horrible shape, and not even close to being as complex as a jail cell lock should be!"
"What on Remnant is going on here?" the officer from the interrogation room demanded. "I thought I told you two to check on the prisoners, not let them out!"
One of them stood up straight and saluted to the officer, indicating that he was his superior officer. "Sir, we entered the room and caught this one exiting his cell on his own. Apparently we missed a set of lockpicks on him."
"As I informed you, they were merely hair pins," Lunare corrected indignantly. "I have never carried a set of lockpicks, nor will I ever. I see no reason when a universal key can be created with household parts and a simple microchip!"
The officer sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Please tell me that someone was watching the cameras and saw this."
"That brings me to my second issue. You have a single camera watching an entire wing of cells on a fifteen second cycle. That gave me ample time to open the door and exit."
"Mr. Nacht," Professor Glas said calmly, "Would you please explain why you were attempting to escape in the first place?"
Lunare's face turned red with embarrassment and raised his hand to rub the back of his neck, showing that in the time they had been talking, he had also managed to free himself from his handcuffs. The guards reacted instantly by stepping away from Lunare and raising their pistols to point them at him. Pretending not to notice them, Lunare addressed Professor Glas. "Sorry sir," he said. "I noticed these design flaws in their prison and felt the best way to address them was for me to show they could be used to escape from their poorly designed prison. I would also like to mention that having a NFC fob that unlocks handcuffs within reach of someone who might wish to use said fob is a very poor idea."
"Well, while I am certain that these fine officers would enjoy learning of ways to improve their holding cells, we should get going," Professor Glas said. "I understand that Professor Ozpin is very interested as to why you three were out so early this morning."
Lunare stood up quickly. "It was my idea sir," he said quickly. "I overheard Daniel's issue with getting a fingerprint from his father and I-"
Professor Glas held up a hand to stop Lunare. "Calm down Mr. Nacht," he said, "I'm certain this can all be solved without any serious repercussions."
The officer was about to protest, when the sounds of a scuffle broke out off in the distance. The officer paled and raced past Daniel, Professor Glas, and Lunare towards where it was coming from. The three followed quickly behind along with the two guards that had held down Lunare. They took a turn out into the open to see a large room with several of Vlad's gang lying on the ground moaning. Right in the middle of them was Dakota, panting and clutching his still shackled right hand which was bleeding from what Daniel assumed was a prison shiv since one was lying at his feet.
"They jumped me," Dakota said simply, his eyes showing no sign of regret. "I dealt with them accordingly."
At this point the officer had had enough. "Go!" he demanded. "Go and get the hell out of my station. You people are crazy!"
"One denim jacket, one pair of jeans, one pair of sneakers, one 41 inch saber, one .45 pistol with three magazines-"
"Four," Daniel corrected.
The officer looked up from the contents of the bin with Daniel's items. "Excuse me?" he asked.
"There should be four magazines," Daniel said. "Five if the pistol is empty."
The officer grumbled but searched through the bin until he found the missing clips. "Five magazines," he said. "Is there anything else that should be in here?"
"Yeah, my dignity," Daniel said. "But I doubt that made it out of here."
The officer sighed and pushed a paper towards Daniel. "Sign here that everything is accounted for, and move aside please so that I can help whoever's next.
Daniel signed and picked up his bin, moving towards a bathroom to change as Dakota walked up to the counter. He changed quickly, glad to be out of the prison clothes and into his worn but familiar jeans. He exited the bathroom as a very flustered officer was going through the three bins of items that they had pulled out of Lunare's coat and pants pockets.
"Forty-two nuts, thirty-six screws, one pocket electric screwdriver, six dust energy cells, one, whatever this is," the officer said, holding up the contraption that Lunare had used to stun several of Vlad's goons.
"It is an Aural disruptor," Lunare corrected. "I would suggest remembering the name since you will most likely be seeing more of them after I increase the battery capacity and decrease the power consumption. Currently the wires are-"
"One Aural disruptor," the officer said over Lunare, "one set of watchmaker's tools, six feet of copper wire, another thing,"
"Universal key," Lunare corrected once more.
"I really don't understand why you would keep so much scrap on you," the officer said.
"While I will admit I forgot about the lug nuts, I wouldn't call any of this scrap," Lunare said coldly. "I was capable of building a working Aural disruptor merely from those items. A device that currently is still being tested in labs funded by some of the top companies on Remnant. Including Schnee Dust Company."
The officer sighed and looked up at Lunare. Is there anything else that is missing from here? I would appreciate it if you did not require me to name off the different sizes of wrenches again."
Lunare gave the bins a brief once over. "I can't help but notice that Nieh Mehr and Scrapmetal were not included. While I can understand Scrapmetal due to its size, I would like to know where my gunstaff is."
The officer grumbled and pushed his chair back into the depths of his office. After a moment he returned with the severed halves of Lunare's gunstaff and lay them on top of the three bins. "You can pick up your vehicle in the impound," the officer said. "Sign here and please move aside."
Lunare signed and took the bins, balancing the middle one in-between the two on the side. He carefully walked over to where Daniel was standing and set them by his feet. "Would you kindly watch over these while I change?" he asked.
Daniel nodded and Lunare grabbed his clothes from the bins and made his way into the bathroom that Daniel had just vacated. Dakota, who had been sitting and watching the whole escapade walked over to Daniel. He was still in his prison clothes.
"How can you stand those itchy clothes?" Daniel asked him.
Dakota shrugged. "This isn't the first time I've been in here. You get used to it after a while. Besides, I was having too much fun watching the show over there," he said, jerking his head over to where Lunare had been regaining his personal effects. "You missed the part when the guy put a bag of potassium next to a bottle of water. Lunare went on a whole rant about how if condensation from the bottle touched even a slight amount of the potassium, all of his stuff would go up in flames."
"Why does Lunare have potassium in his coat?" Daniel asked with confusion.
"Why does Lunare have enough parts in his pocket to build another Scrapmetal?" Dakota answered. "I don't know man; it's just what he does."
"And I have no intention of changing," Lunare said, fresh out of the bathroom and back in his normal outfit. He bent down over the bins and began shoving their contents back into their respective pockets. Within no time, his hands were covered in their usual grease. Dakota took this time to change as well. Soon, the three teenagers were back to normal.
Seeing that they were finished, the officer that had interrogated Daniel stepped up to them. "You may think that you've gotten away," he said, "But next time you come around, watch your back. I will not hesitate to throw all three of your asses into solitary, and throw the key down the drain."
"I'd give us thirty minutes to get out, thanks to Lunare," Dakota said. "Seriously Ronald, you give that exact same speech every time I come here. It may've worked the first time, but not anymore."
"That's Officer Ronald to you Mr. Harding!" Ronald said, his ears becoming as red as Daniel's hair. He made a move to grab Dakota's arm, but he shook it off. "I think I know the way out," Dakota said. He pushed past Officer Ronald and headed to the door. Without any hesitation, Daniel and Lunare followed suit, eager to leave this place.
Professor Glas was waiting for them outside next to an old beat up car. He looked up and smiled at them. "Good. Now that you've all gotten sorted, we can get back to Beacon."
Lunare raised a hand, as if in class. Professor Glas noticed this and nodded. "Yes Mr. Nacht?"
"If it is all the same to you sir, I would prefer to stay behind," Lunare said. "Scrapmetal is in the impound, and I need to stop by a hardware store to fix Nieh Mehr."
A brief frown crossed Professor Glas' face "Scrapmetal and Nieh-"
"My vehicle and my gunstaff respectively," Lunare answered.
Professor Glas nodded. "Well then, I'll drive you to the impound to get Scrapmetal, and we can get going. You can use the hardware store near Beacon."
"Unfortunately the hardware store near Beacon surprisingly does not contain the tubing I require for Nieh Mehr," Lunare replied. "Last night's battle has made me realize that making the handle thin enough to hold stacks of bullets decreases the overall structural integrity leading to the incident that befell my gunstaff. I need to not only get thicker tubing, but also parts to completely redesign the loading system. I'm thinking of putting the bullets within box magazines that lie flat on the surface of the weapons. It should actually allow for an increase in the amount of bullets per magazine, as well as-"
Professor Glas held up a hand. "I don't need an essay Lunare," he said with a laugh. "You can go get your supplies. We'll see you back at Beacon."
"Normally I would say I will see you back at Beacon," Lunare corrected, "but knowing myself in a hardware store, even Scrapmetal cannot make up the time I will lose there." He waved at them and trotted off into the darkness, in search of an impound, and a hardware store.
Professor Glas reached into his pocket and brought out a car key that he used to unlock the doors to the car and usher Daniel and Dakota into the back seat. "Normally I would offer the front seat," he said as he started the car, "But the seat-belt snapped a while back. Putting either of you up here would be a serious safety violation."
"Wow, key unlocking and broken seatbelts; Beacon really needs to work on its cars," Daniel joked.
"Oh, this isn't Beacon's," Professor Glas corrected as he shifted into gear with a loud grinding and pulled out of the parking lot, "This is my personal vehicle. When I went to get you three, I was in the middle of lesson plans. There was no time for the paperwork that normally accompanies getting a school vehicle. I barely have time for my own work, let alone any request forms," he laughed at this, but there was little humor behind it. Daniel gulped in embarrassment as he realized the inconvenience they had caused Professor Glas. He looked over at Dakota who was also visibly embarrassed by the realization that he'd just insulted his professor's car.
An awkward silence ensued, interrupted only by the grinding of gears whenever Professor Glas shifted, and the occasional honk and irritated yell from Professor Glas when someone would cut him off. This continued on for some time before Daniel decided it was best to break the ice.
"So, you fight with scalpels then?" Daniel asked.
"Hmm? Oh yes," Professor Glas said. "I have found that they are a very unique weapon, being able to both heal and destroy at the same time. Much like my job I suppose. I teach teenagers how to fight, yet I also teach them how to save a life. Somewhat bipolar, really."
"Did you do anything special to yours Professor?" Dakota asked, catching on to what Daniel was trying to do.
"Not much I'm afraid," Professor Glas replied. There is only so much you can do to a scalpel before it becomes nothing more than an extremely sharp knife. But I did make mine more balanced for throwing, as you saw earlier Daniel. Also keeping with the bipolar theme, they can accept multiple different dust blades. Dust crystals can be shaped to be extremely sharp, you know."
"Yeah," Dakota said faintly. Daniel saw him rub the palm of his right hand. "So you say they're bipolar sir? Does that mean they can heal as well?"
Professor Glas laughed, slightly shrilly actually, which set Daniel on edge for a moment. "No, they can't heal. But they can diagnose. Say, if I were to collect a sample from either of you, be it skin, fluid, blood, anything; I could absorb them via diagnostic blades. They can then run any imaginable test in the world, and some that are quite unimaginable, let me tell you."
Daniel frowned. Something about Professor Glas wasn't quite right. Something had changed during the car ride, and not for the better. He winced as they took a turn harder than what Daniel would've done and asked, "What kind of tests can it do?"
"I just told you! Anything! I can check to see what your blood pressure is, heart rate, brain activity, it can even check your Aura!"
Daniel felt he had been punched in the gut. Nervously, he looked down at his bandaged hand. The cut from the scalpel had seemed so innocent at the time. Now with the way Professor Glas was acting, he wasn't so certain.
"Interesting thing, Aura," Professor Glas said. Every single creature on this planet has one, save for a handful that seem bent on destroying all of humanity. Aural study is rather difficult, since the one group of creatures that lacks them die in captivity and their bodies begin decomposing almost immediately. Without the independent group, I fear we shall never have a successful experiment that tells us about both Aura and the Grimm. Unless,"
Dakota's right hand slowly slipped towards the pouch he kept on his belt at all times. "Unless what sir?" he said in the same controlled but dangerous voice he had used with Vlad.
"Well, unless we had a test subject that was not Grimm, but completely lacked an Aura; at which point Aural research could progress leaps and bounds thanks to the study of that subject's anatomy," Professor Glas said as he adjusted the air conditioning. "Awfully sorry boys, but this is where things get rather,, unpleasant."
Everything happened in an instant. Dakota went for his pipe, and Professor Glas pressed the button that normally turned on the rear winshield wiper. Instead two tasers launched out of the back of the front seats and latched themselves onto Daniel and Dakota, delivering shocking jolts that left both of them violently jerking in their seats. But that wasn't what knocked them out. That would be the nerve gas that flowed from the air conditioning and into their lungs. The lights went out in their eyes and they collapsed into their seat-belts.
Professor Glas, saved by the antidote he had taken while waiting outside checked to make certain that they were both incapacitated and turned back to the front. "After all," he said as he honked at a driver that was more interested in her Scroll than the green light, "I couldn't have both of you not cooperating in my experiments."
Before you ask, yes. that did just happen. If you all could, please send me a PM or drop a comment so I can tell how well I pulled that surprise off. Was it too obvious? Or did you see it coming ever since chapter 4? I'm really curious and would really appreciate it if you did this for me.
I hope you all have a Happy Holidays, and I will see you all on the 23rd!
-Wrench
ns 15.158.61.20da2
