There was no wind up; no voices whispering for him to give up control. One moment Daniel was looking at the man who had tried to experiment on him alive, the next he was gone; replaced by the beasts inside. General Ironwood had him wrapped in a full nelson as he tried to keep Daniel from lunging at Glas. Glas himself stood calmly in front of the struggling pair, watching them fight for dominance.
"You'll want to keep him restrained until he calms down," Glas suggested. "When we fought, he did so with a fractured arm and enough wounds to incapacitate most humans, and still won."
"We, know!" General Ironwood grunted as Daniel growled and snapped at his former captor. "You need to sedate him! Second cabinet on the right."
Glas' eyes widened in mock surprise. "Really General? Does this mean that my position of advisor has been increased to operator, thereby allowing me to touch surgical equipment without you, and I quote, 'breaking every fudging bone in mine hands'?"
"Just, get, nurse!" General Ironwood shouted as Daniel shot his head back and slammed it into Ironwood's jaw. Momentarily distracted, Ironwood's grip slipped and Daniel broke free. He leapt up on the table and launched himself at Glas, only to be stopped mere inches from his face, clawing and snapping at his former professor. If Glas was unsettled by this, he didn't show it. Instead, he stared into the blood red eyes.
"This is somewhat rude of you Daniel," Glas said as General Ironwood dragged a snarling Daniel backwards. "I know we had our differences in the past, but growling and biting at me? I expected at the very least a proper battle between huntsmen."
"Glas, shut up and sedate him already!" General Ironwood had pulled Daniel off of the table and was pinning him to the ground. Daniel snarled and thrashed, but couldn't free himself from Ironwood's vise-like grip.
"Yes, yes of course General," Glas said as he moved over to the cabinet. "Although this might be a bit difficult, considering my situation."
"Just, do it!"
"Patience General, I need to find the correct formula. This shouldn't take but a, there we go." He pulled down a transparent brown bottle and a box full of syringes. He selected a syringe and stuck it into the bottle, filling it up as he strode over to Daniel. The closer he got, the more Daniel thrashed. It was truly a sight to behold as Daniel squirmed and writhed under Ironwood's powerful hold.
"Now Daniel, before we say goodbye, is there anything you would like to say? Last time we met you were attempting to scatter my brains across the floor, so it would be understandable if you forgot anything you wished to relay at that point," Glas said as he bent down in front of Daniel.
"K-kill, you!" Daniel rasped. "Kill you! Kill youuuuuuu!"
"I expected as much," Glas said. He grabbed Daniel by the hair and jerked his head aside, exposing his neck. He jammed the needle into a large pulsing artery and pressed the plunger down. Daniel writhed and hissed at Glas, but it was too late. Within moments his muscles slackened and he collapsed to the ground.
"Next time save the talk until after he's sedated," Ironwood said as he carefully lifted his weight off of Daniel's prone form. "I can still have that agreement revoked."
"Really General, is that truly necessary? After all, you already have me bound and forbidden from taking any medical supplies with me," Glas pouted as he lifted up his arms to show him the hand and feet cuffs linked together. "Shall I also put a gag in my mouth and complete the look?"
"If you weren't the leading expert on Daniel's condition, we wouldn't even be having this conversation," Ironwood said as the doctors finally rushed in to assist. "From here on, you don't talk unless you are asked a question or see an immediate danger to Daniel's health. If and only if you follow this simple directive, I will allow your request to be processed."
Glas opened his mouth, but closed it when Ironwood raised an eyebrow. Instead, he backed off and watched as doctors cautiously shuffled into the room and carefully lifted Daniel up and onto the gurney facedown; strapping his appendages down securely. Daniel was then stripped down to his waist as several points were marked on his skin. As this was going on, the head doctor turned to General Ironwood, his face covered with a surgical mask.
"We will be ready to begin in a few moments sir," he said in a voice muffled by his mask.
"And you are certain the procedure has been properly modified for human use?" General Ironwood asked.
"Within the acceptable room for error you allowed," the doctor replied. His brow furrowed and he asked, "If I may be so bold sir, I believe we should have warned him of the risks, however slight, before sedation."
General Ironwood sighed. "I had planned to warn Daniel before he, lost control. As it stands, I doubt he could make the correct decision with a clear head. You may proceed when ready."
"-And therefor, due to the lack of rooms large enough for your team's increased size, you will remain in the rooms you were assigned," Professor Ozpin said. "As I understand, your teams have been close for some time now, so the changes should be slight. Although should you chose to participate in the Vytal tournament next year, there might be some complications that we can cover at that time. Are there any question?"
Professor Ozpin had waited several hours after Daniel had left Beacon before he called teams DLN and LSTR to his office to discuss what would be happening now that Daniel had left. He had waited so as to give time for cooler heads to hopefully prevail should some of team DLN have taken his leaving personally. From the scowl on Dakota's face though, little had evidently changed.
"Will we, hear from Daniel?" Nicholas Ochre of the newly shortened team DNL asked Professor Ozpin. "Want to hear if he's, okay."
Professor Ozpin nodded. "Of course mister Ochre. General Ironwood will be contacting me as soon as Daniel is out of surgery. If I receive any further communications, I will be certain to pass them on as well."
"We should also like to hear anything from him," Lunare said. "My team and I considered Daniel a close friend and would like to be certain of his safety as well."
"I don't see why not," Professor Ozpin said. "Now if there are no further questions, I wish you all a good day, and best of luck on your midterm exams."
As the two teams exited through the elevator, Glynda Goodwitch turned to face Professor Ozpin, having held her tongue during Ozpin's talk. "Do you really think that this was a wise idea?" she asked. "Transferring a student like this, I worry about the precedent it will set."
"And by precedent, you mean letting Daniel transfer to another school that might be better at treating his condition?" Professor Ozpin asked.
"Ozpin, I mean the precedent of sending a student away instead of stepping in and dealing with the situation ourselves. And that's completely ignoring how we let a student in who will never generate an Aura on his own." She sighed. "It's times like this when I wonder if you made a mistake letting him attend Beacon. None of this would have happened if he hadn't come."
"And yet it is also times like this that I remind myself of what we did for Daniel," Professor Ozpin replied. "At the end of the day, we did what we believed to be right. By letting him in, Daniel was able to leave the life he endured at his home; as well as gain some skills he could use to defend himself when the time comes. I can't think of any other decision that we could have made that would have been for his benefit."
Glynda sighed. "If you say so Ozpin. I just hope that his team will take this well."
No one in team DLN's room spoke, not even Lewis or Ryler who both couldn't stand a moment of quiet. Everyone seemed to be engrossed in some menial task, not wanting to be the ones that broached the subject with the rest. Most of team LSTR weren't even certain why they'd entered into the room in the first place. After the meeting in Ozpin's office, they had followed Lunare, who had in turn followed team DLN back to their room. They half expected Lunare to attempt to cheer up the group with some sort of clockwork contraption he made between Ozpin's office and here. None of them expected it to work, but they all figured it would be good to try.
Out of all of them, Dakota was taking it the worst. No one had seen him this angry before; not even during initiation when Daniel had refused to look into his eyes. All he was doing was sullenly staring at his homework for Professor Oobleck, as if daring it to do something he didn't like.
After an eternity, Lunare was finally the one to break the silence. As he stood up, the rest of his team tensed, waiting for him to be pounced upon the moment he pulled something from his jacket. Instead, he surveyed the room and announced, "If no one else has anything left to say, I will take my leave. I'm expecting a shipment of parts for Scrapmetal's leg upgrade to the garage, and I don't want to keep the delivery driver waiting."
"I should probably go as well," Tiberius voiced. "I'm several days behind on my, ah, report on Schnee dust, and really should get it finished."
"Same here."
"I've got to replace the candles in the bedroom!"
"You know you aren't supposed to leave those lit. You're not even supposed to have them in the dorm to begin with!" Schatten said.
"Well it's like my mom always says; they can't get you in trouble if they don't realize it's-"
However Ryler was going to finish that sentence was drowned out by the closing of the door, leaving team DLN to themselves.
Nick was the first of them to move, getting out of his hammock and striding across the room to Daniel's bed. For one reason or another, Daniel's jean jacket was still hanging off of his bed. Nick picked it up and turned it over. The gashes left by Yarrow's axes were long and ugly, still tainted at the rough edges by Daniel's blood. He looked over and saw the rest of his team watching him; Lewis with mild curiosity, and Dakota with weary carelessness. He folded the jacket over his arm and pulled his notepad out of his coat. I don't know if either of you noticed, but Daniel left his jacket here. It's still ripped from fighting the Atlas team, but he might still want it.
"Nah man, I wouldn't worry about it," Lewis said.
Nick frowned and cocked an eyebrow at Lewis. When Daniel had announced he was leaving, Lewis had been almost as upset as Dakota had been. Since then however, he'd quickly changed his disposition, improving back to his normal self in a matter of hours.
"Daniel isn't gone forever guys, we'll see him soon enough," Lewis continued. "The spirits told me everything man. I'm telling you guys; we'll see him again and it's going to be-"
Lewis was interrupted by Dakota abruptly standing up and walking over to Nick. He yanked the jacket out of his arms, strode over to the open window, and tossed it out.
"To hell with your spirits, and to hell with him," Dakota said. He then strode back to his bed and grabbed his leather jacket off of it to throw over his shoulders. He then strode towards the door and ripped it open, disappearing into the corridor beyond.
Had he watched Daniel's jacket fall, he might've seen the it tumble through the air and land at Lunare's feet as he strode through the courtyard toward his garage. Lunare bent down and picked the jacket up, inspecting it for himself. He fingered the gashes in the front with a curious expression on his face before tucking it within his jacket and continuing on his way. There was a deliveryman to meet after all.
Daniel's mind was in turmoil.
Normally once his pulse rate slowed and his body calmed down, the voices would become quiet and eventually disappear.
Not this time though.
He'd had nightmares about the voices many times before. They'd increased in regularity after the day his secret was released, but he'd always woken up in a cold sweat right before they overwhelmed him. This time was different; this time he was stuck in slumber by whatever Glas had injected into him. This time, he was trapped in his mind.
The voices swirled and howled around Daniel; begging for control, demanding that they be let loose to wreak havoc against Glas. Grimm faces swirled into his vision, their teeth and beaks snapping mere inches from his face. Daniel wanted to let them loose so badly, at least then they'd be focused on something else besides him. But every time he tried to let them take control, nothing happened. He couldn't even escape into brief insanity that followed their takeover. It was as if he was on the verge of losing control, but was incapable of taking the final step.
Then suddenly, he woke up.
"Glas!" he shouted as he burst from slumber like a sea dragon bursting from beneath the waves. His eyes bolted wide as his hands shot up to his head, expecting for the voices to continue harassing him for a bit longer. Incredibly however, the only response he got was a painful tugging at his arm from an IV.
Confused, Daniel tried to take in what was going on. After the operation, he had evidently been transferred from the table to a soft hospital bed where he was lying face down with a hole in the mattress for his face to rest. Cautiously, he tried to roll over, but was stopped once again by the IV.
As he inspected the room from his limited point of view, there was a pounding of feet approaching his door. It burst open and half a dozen doctors and nurses rushed into the small room, instantly making it feel cramped. To complicate matters, someone had brought along a defibrillator and had seen fit to shove everyone out of the way to get it into the forefront. Daniel was immediately subjected to rounds of pokes and prods as every medical personnel in the room began rapid fire asking him and each other questions.
"Check his vitals! Are they still fluctuating?"
"Warm up the defibrillator, we might have to use it!"
"Mister Grigio, how do you feel?!"
"Is the implant causing you any trouble?"
Before they could get into a repeat of what had happened before the operation, a voice called out behind the doctors.
"Everyone calm down and make certain he is stable. I'm certain this is the last thing Mister Grigio wanted before he woke up."
The doctors paused, clearly ready to poke and prod every inch of Daniel's body once more. They conceded however, and limited themselves to simple pulse checks and blood sampling before filing out of the tightly packed room. Soon, the only people remaining were General Ironwood and a tan balding man in a white lab coat.
"I apologize for them Daniel," the General said. "Sometimes the members of the Aura research facility can get a bit excited."
"General, what, what's going on?" Daniel asked. "Is everything alright?"
General Ironwood looked over at the balding man, who tapped his glasses and cleared his throat. "After your operation Mister Grigio, which was a success I might add, it was decided to keep you under sedation for the day so that we could monitor how your body was accepting the implants. We were going to bring you out later this evening; however, your vitals suddenly spiked and your essentially forced yourself awake. We rushed in because, frankly, that is quite dangerous for the body."
"Fortunately, it appears that you are currently stable, and now have access to an Aura," General Ironwood added.
Wait, I do?" Daniel asked, checking himself. He didn't look any differently. He didn't feel any differently. Where was the protective field that everyone talked about?
"The implant itself is removable, save for the housing around it," the man said. We tested it while you were still unconscious, however we removed it soon thereafter to allow your body to safely adjust."
"The implant, what are you, ow ow ow, ow," Daniel exclaimed as he tried to roll over again. His upper back was lit up with sharp pains; it felt almost as if something was stuck into it. The implant, apparently.
"Yes, that would be the implant, Mister Grigio," the man said. "It's a marvelous feat of engineering if I do say so myself. You see, it reroutes the signals normally traveling along your spine past the section we had to remove to make room for the implant, I would be more than happy to show you some-"
"Wait, you did WHAT to my spine?"
"Removed part of it. Between your third and fourth ribs actually."
Daniel craned his neck, trying to see what was on his back. Unfortunately, due to it being on his back, all he could see was a mass of gauze extending half an inch above his back.
"Would you like to see it Daniel?" General Ironwood asked.
"Yes, Yes!" Daniel said, nearly shouting.
"Then please hold still while I remove the bandages," the Doctor said. He moved over to Daniel and stuck something cold, large, and hard between the bandages and his skin. Daniel tensed up as the scissors cut through the gauze with some difficulty. He brushed the torn strips aside and pulled something free before pulling his scroll out and snapping a picture. He then held it in front of Daniel's face, allowing him to see it.
A circle of flesh had been cut out of his body, right over his spine. It went down deeper than what made Daniel comfortable before terminating in a sort of socket. The interior of the circle was lined with coils of wires that ran between the bottom and a lip right before the top.
"Now then young man, if that is all I do have some research I must attend to. We will be holding you here for a few more days, however you should be free to move about for the most part."
"Well Daniel, do you have any questions?" General Ironwood asked as the Doctor stood up and left. "How do you feel?"
"Feel?" Daniel said, struggling to control his breathing. He lifted his head up and gingerly turned himself around to face the General putting on a brave smile as he turned. "I feel, great!"
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