Lewis barged into their dormitory, his face rather pale. He opened his clothing drawers and pulled out several bulging socks and a Tupperware container before excusing himself to the bathroom with a warning to not follow him in. Loud splashes came from behind the closed door, followed by furious flushing. Anyone who didn’t know Lewis or the contents of the socks would have been left wondering what on Remnant was going on.
Daniel, who had entered right behind Lewis, sat down at his desk and immediately began looking through the documents on the tablet. After a few moments, he grabbed a stylus from the table and began filling it out.
Dakota eyed him curiously. “You do know your parents are supposed to fill that out, right?” he asked.
“Please,” Daniel scoffed. “I’ve been writing mortgage checks and withdrawing cash in my father’s name for years now. I doubt anyone’ll tell the difference. It is after all, my handwriting.”
“Yeah, but what if they find out you faked the signatures?” Dakota asked. “That’s grounds for expulsion right there. Even I went and got the orphanage owner to sign mine. Hell, she gladly signed them to get rid of me.”
Daniel set the stylus down and turned to Dakota. “Well unfortunately Dakota, I don’t have that possibility,” he said with more than just a hint of irritation. “I’ve got a drunk ‘father’ that I ran out on in the middle of the night because I’d had enough of his crap. I try and go get this stuff signed by him, there’s no way I’m getting away again. And even if I did, he’d just have the school void the forms and send me back anyways. Forging the signatures is my only hope.”
Dakota raised an eyebrow in surprise at Daniel’s intensity. “You mean he wouldn’t want a chance to spend more money on alcohol?”
“And lose the only person who does the dishes, folds laundry, buys food, and makes certain bills are paid so we don’t end up on the streets?” Daniel said sarcastically. “Besides, I’m worth more to him in government support checks than if he was on his own.”
Nick, who had been listening to the conversation from his hammock whistled quietly. “That there is a piece of shisno if I ever heard of one”
“Tell me about it, I’ve lived under him for way too long,” Daniel answered shortly. “Look, I appreciate the suggestions and sympathy, but right now, I need full concentration to fill out this form. It’s asking for a lot of information that I haven’t needed for a form in a long time. If I screw up, they’ll send it to my father for corrections.”
“Got it,” Dakota said. “I’ll stay out of-” he stopped when Daniel, who had just turned back to the form, whipped his head around again and glared menacingly at the former gang member. The glare didn’t faze Dakota- he had both seen and delivered far worse glares than that. But Daniel was his friend, and if he had to leave Beacon, Dakota doubted that they’d see each other again. So if Daniel needed concentration to fill out the form, the least he could do was to give him that.
As if on cue, a gurgling noise could be heard from the bathroom, followed by Lewis’ frantic cry “They won’t go down! The brownies won’t go down!”
Sighing, Dakota walked into the bathroom and prevented an incident that would give the cleaning staff something worse to complain about than smoke in one of the dormitories.
Daniel dropped the stylus and rubbed his eyes wearily. He had been at it for hours now; they sky through the curtains was pitch black at this point. He picked up the dimmed tablet and blearily reread the documents several times to make certain he had filled out everything correctly. Satisfied with his handiwork, he had turned off the tablet Professor Ozpin had handed him, turned out the desk light, and was pushing his chair back when someone lightly knocked on the door. Confused, Daniel stumbled to the door and opened it, revealing Lunare holding a long thin object that glinted menacingly in the low lit hallway.
Daniel stifled a scream and stumbled backwards as Lunare stepped into the room, brandishing the menacing screw driver in one hand. “I apologize for waking you at this hour, but it couldn’t wait,” he said.
He strode over to the mattress that Nick had left lying on the ground in-between his and Lewis’ beds. The cleaning crew probably would’ve picked it up long ago, had Lewis not appropriated it for storing his ‘stuff’ on it. Clothes, dust vials, and several of Ryler’s mother’s ‘scented’ candles were strewn over the top. Team DDLN had quickly learned that the cleaning crew avoided Lewis’ items like the plague, leaving the team to clean around his bed and spare mattress on their own.
Lunare felt around the top seam of the mattress before stopping at a place near one of the corners. Taking the screw driver, he stabbed it into the seam and pried upwards, revealing a long metal container directly underneath the fabric of the mattress. Careful not to disturb Lewis’ stuff laying on the top, Lunare cracked the lid, releasing a chill through the room. The rest of Team DDLN, who by now had fallen asleep, tossed and turned in annoyance to the drop in temperature.
Ignoring the chill, Lunare fished a penlight from his coat and shinned it into the crate. Curious, Daniel peeked inside the metal container. What he saw astonished him. Rows upon rows of Rage cans were stacked two high within the mattress. There was easily over two hundred of them. A thin layer of ice coated each can, but Daniel knew that the contents of the cans would still be liquid- Rage was almost impossible to freeze by most refrigerators. Satisfied that they were all in place, Lunare closed the refrigerator and unscrewed a side access port. He set it aside to reveal four ice dust crystals sitting in containment cells. Three of them glowed dimly, the fourth was dark. Lunare pulled the dead cell out and replaced it with one he produced from his jacket. His mission complete, Lunare re-screwed the access port shut and covered the refrigerator with the mattress once more. “I apologize once more for waking you up,” he said, “but the crystals drain exponentially faster if there are only three powering the unit for an extended period of time.”
“What, what was that?” Daniel asked, still in shock.
“That would be the third bank of LSTR,” Lunare replied. “Consider it a storage facility for the school’s supply of Rage that both preserves the taste of the beverage, and stores them in a safer place than most. I have several others in secure locations, but this one is easily the largest. Lewis allows me to operate out of your room in exchange for waiving the usual monthly fee for his account.”
“So if the refrigerator is, there,” Daniel said, stifling a yawn. “Then where are the springs for the mattress?”
“Oh I took those for a project ages ago,’ Lunare said dismissively. “Lewis sold them to me for three boxes of brownie mix and a two percent increase to his stock in the bank.”
Daniel groaned, massaging his temples. It was way too late for these kind of revelations.
Lunare noticed Daniel massaging his temples. “You should get some rest,” he suggested. “The pain might have time to dissipate.
“It’s okay,” Daniel yawned. “I wasn’t even asleep when you knocked. I was working on the parental release form.”
Lunare raised his eyebrows and pushed his glasses up his nose. “I assume that you do realize that those forms are to be filled by the parent and not the student, correct?”
Daniel cursed under his breath for letting that slip. He briefly considered brushing it off like it was nothing, but discarded the notion quickly. Once Lunare caught onto a discrepancy like that, he wouldn’t let go until either he found an answer to the discrepancy, or he was proven wrong. Daniel quickly and quietly gave a brief synopsis of what his current situation was like, and what would happen if he didn’t forge the documents.
To his credit, Lunare, listened to every word, only interjecting once or twice to ask a question. When Daniel was done, Lunare pushed his glasses up again, even though it was unnecessary, and asked “I assume that you have a solution for getting your father’s finger print, am I correct?”
“Do what now?” Daniel asked, desperately fighting to stay awake at this point.
Taking Daniel’s answer as no, Lunare grabbed the tablet from Daniel’s desk and switched to the final document. He turned the tablet and handed it to Daniel, pointing at a rectangle that Daniel had missed due to exhaustion. Daniel read around it and groaned. Right there, plain as day, it said that the form needed to be not only signed, but also stamped with at least one of the legal guardians’ fingerprints.
“Due to the nature of our work and training, there is a higher risk of injury and death than other professions,” Lunare mentioned. “The school most likely wishes to make certain that parents understand what their children are getting into. Failing that, they at least have means to avoid a nasty lawsuit should something happen to a student.”
At this, Daniel let out a long stream of curse words that started off quiet but soon reached a dangerously loud decibel.
“Judging from what you have told me, and the colorful way you have managed to incorporate every swear word I know and their derivatives multiple times into a single sentence, I assume that asking your father for a fingerprint is out of the question,” Lunare commented.
“Damn right,” Daniel said. “I mean what am I supposed to do? Walk up to him and say ‘Hey Dad, sorry for skipping out on you like that but you were a bit of a jerk to me and I’d had enough of your crap. Oh, and by the way, I need your thumbprint so I can become a Huntsman and come back to this hellhole of a house when I’m done with training and tell you to suck it.’”
“That would be difficult to do,” Lunare mused.
“Yeah, just like sleeping with you two jabbering on!” Dakota hissed in the darkness. “Also Daniel, that had to be the most unique use of the four man derivatives of the F-bomb I’ve ever heard; and I used to share a room with a guy who literally had a notebook full of ways to use them.”
“Sorry Dakota,” Daniel apologized. “I just, I don’t know what to do now. Without that fingerprint, there’s no way I can stay at Beacon.”
“Write in the notes section that your dad has no thumbs,” Dakota offered. “That’s what the orphanage owner had to do for me.”
“It is highly likely that Beacon would simply resend the papers asking for a fingerprint of another finger.” Lunare contradicted. “And having the paper returned to Daniel’s father is out of the question.”
Daniel sighed and checked his watch. “Alright then, I've got a bit of money left over from what Tiberius gave me. I'll get a round ticket to my father's place in the morning, and get his fingerprint when he's passed out drunk.”
“Not happening Daniel,” Dakota said. “National Holiday, remember? Trains and buses are closed down for the rest of the week.”
Daniel hit his head, furious that he hadn't thought of that. “Perfect. I've got no way of getting to my father's house in time.”
Lunare pondered this for a moment, then pushed his glasses up his nose once more. “Could it work?” he murmured to himself. “Yes, it could. But it would have to be tonight. It’s the new moon, which means little light for us to be discovered.”
“Discovered for what?” Dakota asked, still irritated that he wasn’t being allowed to go to sleep, but at the same time curious as to what Lunare was planning.
Lunare didn’t answer Dakota immediately. Instead, he walked over to the spare mattress and opened up the secret refrigerator once more- pulling out three cans of Rage. He made a note on his Scroll and tossed a can to Dakota and Daniel each. “Drink up,” he said. “We’re getting into Mr. Grigio’s house and getting his thumbprint tonight.”
Daniel sighed and handed the can back to Lunare. “Lun, I appreciate the idea, but it’s past midnight and it takes six hours by car to get to my house. It’s just not possible to get there, get the thumbprint, and get back to Beacon all in one night.”
Lunare passed the can back to Daniel. “I didn’t say we were taking a car.”
Well then, That's a bit mysterious. If they're not going by airship or train, and a car is too slow, what could they use to get to Daniel's father in one night?
In other news, show of hands, whose excited for Volume 3?
You in the back, put your hand up. You know you're lying to all of us!
It's been too long since we last saw the world of Remnant. Far too long. Even though I completely agree that they needed that time to get back on their feet, it doesn't mean that I liked it. I need to do some calculations, but if I'm not mistaken, I'm actually going to be releasing the next chapter right after episode 1 premiers. And let me tell you, that chapter is intense. At least, that's what my beta team has told me.
I'll see you all then!
ns 15.158.61.20da2
