What was this thing?

It was infuriating. For more reasons that it just being a hindrance and it pricking him all the time.

He didn't know how long ago his last attempt to escape was because he had been stopped from continuing any form of escape. The metal soldier now attacked him whenever he slightly moved his vision from just one of them. The second he looked even the slightest bit at the clear rock dome, they would attack him like normal soldiers would.

All he knew was that his latest escape attempted had actually been pretty successful but had earned him this strange metal band that clamped on his neck. It wasn't tight enough to kill him or hurt him but it was tight enough for him to notice its constant presence. It was also small enough so that it was impossible for him to claw at it without injuring himself in the process. Although he would have normally done so to escapes it clutches, he was tired, hungry, very low on energy and felt that it wasn't his biggest concern.

What little food he managed to scrap by from his semi-successful escape was sadly used up as the metal soldiers increased their attacks patterns. He remembered where he got it too; two females, their fear, confusion and surprise. It was so incredibly savory after not having anything to feed on such a long time but it was all gone now. He needed more energy but it didn't seem as though any of the people outside the clear rock dome were giving off any sort of negativity. They gave off emotions sure but he couldn't feed off; contentment, interest, slight spikes of joy. Or maybe he wouldn't, he had never tried too although he figured the process would be the same as feeding of negativity.

No he still wouldn't try, it would take too much time to learn to adjust to doing that and by the time he had learned, he would probably be dead. Feeding off fear and negativity was just so much simpler since it was something that literally poured out of people in times of stress. He would just have to continue until one of them broke; the metal soldiers or him. He didn't fear his own death as Grimm were faced with it so often, both the death of others and their own death that they had become almost at peace with the concept. He did as well, but like all Grimm before and after him, he wouldn't go to death without at least putting up a fight.

No, he would have to find food some other how. He looked around for something to 'eat'. He vaguely remembered the action of 'eating'. The concept of putting somethings into ones mouth to swallow for energy but in truth, the memory was so vague, distant and intangible that he really didn't believe that memory was even his. It happened sometimes. Absorbing memories. Nothing very good because all the memories a Grimm would feed off of would be the negative emotional ones.

But what to… 'eat'? He was still terribly unsure on the concept but he had to try. Survival was always top priority. He decided that he would try it with one of the metal soldiers, as their newfound ferocity had made it a bit easier to dispatch them as they tended to over-reach in their assault now. Especially if he lured them in by taking his eyes of them for a bit.

He did so, try to at least look past the clear rock dome to find someone else to attempt to feed off of. None of the people outside seemed to give him anything to feed off of but they did seem to take in interest in his interest in them. He waited for another second before turning quickly and pouncing on the first metal soldier that came into view. The metal soldier was making an attempt to smash him to the ground but he had countered that by pouncing on him and ripping his arm out. Something not as easy as it once was now. The moment he had ripped of the arm, he swung it down against the metal soldier once or twice as to get the soldier to stop moving. For some strange reason, they would be a lot more active when that happened than other non-metal soldier.

After making sure that the metal soldier that he had just literally and figuratively disarmed had stopped moving, he bit into the disembodied arm and tore out what he found on the inside. He ripped out the insides of the metal arm and began to, if he was remembering this correctly, eat the arm.

Taste was something he had half forgotten about throughout time. He could 'taste' the emotions he would feed of off but the emotions he feed off of never differed much from just savory. That's all he really remembered of taste, everything else was just a mix of other smaller takes or minimal variations on savory.

This was not savory. This was not good. The thing he thought the most though was that what he was 'eating' wasn't right. He couldn't really be sure why but his attempt to eat this thing was not turning out great. It took him a while to remember how 'eating' worked, with chewing and swallowing. He could not remember the different tastes one could experience but he was certain that if it wasn't the only choice available, he would never try this again. After the first two mouthfuls of 'eating' a pain shot through his neck.

It was truly excruciating! It was terribly painful. So painful that he dropped the arm he was currently 'eating' and started smashing the floor as a means to release pain or anger. What was so painful? Why was it so painful? Was it the metal arm he had 'eaten'? No, it couldn't be! It hadn't started hurting when he bit into the arm so it couldn't be it! Right? He wanted this pain to stop now! He roared as he began to smash his head against the floor with such force that his vision began to be sprinkled with black spots!

He wanted this pain! To! END!

He could feel his own blood trickle from his head.

Good. He had always been ashamed of blood.

No other Grimm bleed, yet he did. He shouldn't but he did.

He continued to roar! He continued to bash his head against the ground!

He managed to smash his head against the ground enough for the pain to stop. Although it was more like the world around him stopped. Everything went black.

It was nice.

No pain.

No worries.

Nothing.

He would wake up later. He had to get used to that too. Waking up.

Grimms, it was such an obscure concept. Was this something humans did every day? It felt so wasteful. Why sleep when you can just continue? Of course maybe that's what led him here. Grimms, he hated this feeling.

…..

Weiss was agitated.

Only after a week or so, the secret had somehow managed to gnaw at her mind to point of insanity. She was wondering how Ruby was keeping herself from bursting at the seams. Maybe it was having more of a reaction on her because she knew her family's business had an active hand in whatever they were doing to the boy.

She wasn't really sorry for the boy, not terribly; he had attempted to strike them down twice now, but it was more the idea that the SDC was breaking its own principals. It was one of the clauses in any contract that the SDC Company made to never interfere with the tampering of human life. Technically the clause was in place so that they wouldn't be held responsible for any misgivings on human testing, augmentation or experimentation that they happened to be apart but it was still disheartening.

She went over the conversation her team leader and she had had with the Headmaster.

Prof. Goodwitch led the two girls to the elevator and motioned for them to go inside. They both silently listen to the commands given and entered the elevator, both of them silently quivering in their shoes. They had encroached on something they shouldn't have seen. To their defense, they didn't go out looking for it so hopefully they wouldn't truly be punished for their late escapade into the school.

The ride up to the Headmaster's office was just as silent as their walk to the elevator yet somehow more excruciating. Maybe it was because they in such tight proximity with one another but the silence and the anticipation that it brought along was so much more palpable than before.

The elevator door opened and Ozpin, who seemed to be writing some things, looked up as the elevator *DINGED* its presence. He seemed somewhat surprised at the arrival of the students and the professor.

"Glynda? What's going on?" He asked as he closed some screens and picked up his mug.

"We have a problem."

"Well it must be. If it involves any member of team RWBY then it's almost synonymous with the word." He replied with a small smile. The humor of the situation was definitely not lost on him. It was hard to see it but he did.

"These two have seen the science project that has been proceeding in Arena #4." Prof. Goodwitch clarified. Ozpin's reaction to this must have so muted as even Glynda was surprised that there wasn't any bigger reaction. He just seemed to nod, as if expecting this. He placed the mug down and motioned to the chairs in front of his desk as he said to Ruby and Weiss, "Please sit down."

Both girls did so, unsure if they should be pleading for a lightened punishment or not. Ozpin sighed a bit as he looked at both girls. He was decided something, they were sure of that but what he was decided was a mystery. His face showed no extreme emotion; no anger, no disappointment, no sense of annoyance. He leaned back in his chair and sipped some coffee from his mug, relaxing a bit as he did so.

"So, Miss Rose, Miss Schnee. What is it that you believed you saw tonight?" He asked.

Both of them didn't respond for a while until Ruby, who Weiss was surprised to see her muster up the courage to do so, said, "We don't entirely know what we saw, sir."

"Come now. From the way Glynda is pacing I can tell that you have seen quite a bit." He said with a hint of a smile. Weiss turned to Prof. Goodwitch just in time to see her roll her eyes towards Ozpin.

"Well, we saw a boy." Ruby said, more as if she was unsure if that was the correct terminology. Weiss would have agreed as well. Using 'boy' seemed wrong. Animal was maybe more appropriate but that would be terribly insulting to animals.

"Go on." Ozpin said patiently.

"We saw something that seemed to be the product of an experiment using SDC technology and its attempt to escape." Weiss said, finally mustering courage and a little anger to declare what she believe she had seen. Ozpin nodded and seemed to bring up some things on his SCROLL before eventually turning it over to them as he said, "Look through these photos. See someone familiar?"

Both members looked at the SCROLL and their eyes widened slightly. The picture that was first shown to them was of a Grimm attack on a large settlement. It didn't look as though they had been prepared for this. Grimm were everywhere and so were the people in more way than just one. Some were running, some were hiding, and some were being attacked. It was chaos. Yet through the chaos, Ruby managed to point out what it seemed Ozpin had wanted them to see.

There was the… boy. Seemingly disemboweling some poor woman as someone beside her shouted in fear. The next picture show another Grimm attack, though in a different settlement and day. It was snowing in this photo which made the red of blood and the black of Grimm stand out all the more. There he was again, this time using what looked like a staff-like weapon to beat a soldier down into the ground. It was hard to tell if that's what was going on as the scene only took up the small top left corner of the photo. As they kept scrolling though photos of tragedies, he was in most of them. What bothered Weiss the most however, was the fact that the boy was regressing in each photo. She looked at the date and time of capture in each photo which showed that they were moving back in history. He seemed to be this way for so long as the last photo seemed to show him as a 4 or 5 year old, with less fur and bones than he had now.

Comparing now to back then was such a strange thing to be doing. Back when he was younger, he didn't look like a Grimm. In fact he look more like someone has just thrown some black fur on him without any commitment and said to go play outside. However as the years had gone by, it look as though what was once just a spattering of black fur here and there had become an almost fully fledge coat of actual fur. Then there was the bone-like protrusion from different places in his body; his shoulders, his elbows, the back of his lower legs, hands, feet and chest. His claws and his mask made it clear that this lifestyle had fully indoctrinated him.

"This is the boy you probably saw tonight." Ozpin clarified, as he took back the SCROLL, "We have him here in… captivity."

"Is he human?" Ruby asked. Weiss agreed that that was the more important question. If this was a human being, what they were doing was wrong, but then so was the things he did.

"We are not entirely sure." Ozpin said in a blaze manner.

"Ozpin! You can't be serious about telling them this!?" Prof. Goodwitch asked in incredulity.

"If one is spoiled the mystery in a murder movie or book before they finished it, it become harder to finish, don't you think?" Ozpin said with a relaxed smile. Weiss was confused and it look like as though Ruby was as well but it seemed the Glynda understood what he was trying to get at and backed down. She didn't look ready to accept what he was doing but she backed down all the same.

"The reason we are keeping him here is because of his ability to basically be a Grimm." Ozpin continued, "Of course he doesn't know or, I believe, understand what his situation is but we have been attempting to slowly teach him words for him to eventually describe or tell us his experiences of being a Grimm."

"You want to learn from him?" Weiss asked, slightly perplexed. She believed that from what they saw of him, intelligence wasn't something a card dealt in his hand.

"Why not? He has been on the inside of the other side of the fight against Grimm so for him to explain things from their point of view is definitely an asset one would not give up." Ozpin said, "Even if his explanation would be lacking do to his schooling, it is still possible."

"So you're trying to teach him so you can learn from him?" Ruby asked, attempt to dilute everything into an easy to process clarification.

"In a sense, yes." Ozpin said.

"So then why do you have SDC equipment and researchers in the same arena?" Weiss asked, a bit more force then intended.

"Because Ironwood believes that we should obtain a more thorough understanding of their anatomy and capabilities." Ozpin replied with a bit of a sigh.

"You're going to dissect him!?" Ruby asked, obviously horrified. She remembered her earliest dissections in science class. She didn't really mind or felt squeamish as she poked around inside the frog but her memories came more form the other kids in her class. The ones who made it a competition to see how fast they could disembowel the poor carcass.

"No, no, no. Miss Rose." Ozpin quickly said as he raised a hand in defense, "I assure you it won't come to that. In fact, it really shouldn't come to that unless the boy dies." This didn't seem to please the young huntsmen in training, so he elaborated, "Our boy here is the only one of his kind so dissecting him would actually cause a lot more issues than it would solve. It would be like handing in an assignment for one class without allowing others to benefit or copy off your assignment." This managed to hit home in the understanding department and both girls to nod.

He took back his SCROLL as he took another sip from his mug, "I trust you to understand this is to be kept a secret." Both girls looked confused and he continued, "While we would like for his contact with actual students like you to increase, he is still unstable and quite violent. Letting this information out to the study might incur some… rambunctious fellows to try and dare each other to get too close to the 'cage' we have placed it in. And from tonight, you know from experience that the cage we have him in isn't the best."

The conversation had basically died out after that as the Headmaster had said explained that that was all he could tell them as, they're didn't know too much about the situation at hand as this was more of military research project than anything they had control over.

While at first, she seemed slightly ok with the prospect that her company's assets were being used to benefit the world, something inside her wasn't. That part of her seemed to slowly and steadily chip away at her for the entire week till the boy and what they were doing to him with her company's machines was on her mind 24/7. She was even losing sleep over it, discovering that she had started accompanying Yang and her escapades into the dream world during Port's class.

She was getting annoyed at herself for letting this small, mostly insignificant, event and person invade her mind so often. She had to find a way to get rid of the thought from her mind soon or it would continue to encroach on her school life.

She looked over at her team leader, Ruby, who was somehow managing to be a lot more level headed than she was being. Ruby seemed to notice Weiss' stare on her as she turned and rewarded her attention with a goofy looking face which, against herself, got some snickers out of her.

"Something wrong Weiss?" Ruby asked as they left class.

"Nothing important," She lied, as she hefted her bag over her shoulder. Ruby seemed to understand what was going on as she threw her shoulder over Weiss' shoulder and gestured to the other two members of her team to come closer as she said, "We are going to the room! C'mon. Let's go! Team Meeting!"

"Wha's goin' on Sis?" Yang said as they were all dragged by Ruby towards their room.

"Ruby! We have class in 10 minutes! This is not the time for this!" Weiss complained but Ruby seemed to ignore her.

After being dragged into the room, Ruby locked the door after checking to see if there were anyone outside who might overhear their conversation. She turned to the group and finally started, "Weiss is troubled over something and I think I know what it is."

"Ruby! I said it was nothing!" Weiss protested.

"Yeah, so was Blake's fixation on the White Fang and look were that got us." Yang countered immediately, giving a small apologetic smile towards their fannus partner who only rolled her eyes, a sign that she accepted the blame. All be it with some annoyance.

"So what's bothering ol' Ice Queen?" Yang asked as she plopped herself down on the bed.

"Ruby! We were asked to keep it a secret." Weiss warned.

"Yeah, from other people. If we let this out in our team only, it'll be fine." She explained, then turned to the other two members of the team, "So long as you two promise not to tell anyone else!" She had mustered up all of the command in her to say that.

Both of the girls nodded. Weiss on the other gave Ruby a glare so powerful she thought it could freeze air but it seemed as though Ruby was unaffected as she looked at her and said, "Weiss, we want to help you. But to do that we all have to know what's going on." Weiss wanted argue but her logic was making sense is she refused this, it might end up being an even bigger debacle than the whole Blake and the White Fang event. Especially if the consequence of this whole thing going south would be the escape of the boy.

Even she was having a hard time calling him that. The boy wasn't so much a boy as much as he was a monster.

"Fine." She said with a puff of frustration. Ruby smiled as she began to explain that day a week ago. The reactions they got from each member was definitely varied. Yang's normally cheerful face went from one of confusion to horror, back to confusion with some gloom and then down to horror again. Blake had the most yet least reaction to the events that happen last night and the information they received. Her eyes said it all, starting from what was her usual disinterested look to slowly growing eyes of shock as the ears she kept hidden under her bow seemed too slowly tilt back until they were almost flat against her head.

"Wow… That's some stuff you saw there Rubs." Yang said solemnly, "So is Weiss worried about the lab rat? I never thought her to be the animal activist type."

"No! Of course not!" She cried in exasperation as she glared at Yang. Although as she looked towards her, it was clear that she had said this on purpose. Lightening the mood was something she was very good at accomplishing and it was not lost on the team. Weiss gave a small smile and nodded towards Yang, as a means to say that she had succeeded in at least cheering her up just a little as she said, "No. What is bothering me is that my company's assets is being used in in this experiment and I really don't know what they are being used for."

"You're tools are being used for the wrong reasons, welcome to the real world." Blake replied. Her tone wasn't harsh but what she said did hurt. Unlike the rest of them in the room, Blake was the only one who actual experience on how the real world and most of its underhanded methods and ideals. Her being blunt towards Weiss wasn't out of spite but more of just telling her that that is the world.

"I understand that but I won't stand for it. I won't just stand by and let them use my company's equipment for things that are against the company's ideals and rules." Weiss exclaimed with authority, "I understand that this is quite a selfish request but this is important to me. I don't want to be like my predecessors, letting things slide because of the profits gained. I will have tight control over my company so that others can't be hurt by my company."

While she spoke this, it was evident that she wanted this to be true. Yet another feeling one could catch from this small speech was its direction. It seemed to be directed towards Blake which one could understand why as it was Blake's people who her company seemed to hurt the most. It was an attempt to grab her attention, respect and help to change her and her company.

Blake gave a small smile that was almost imperceptible and she nodded as she said, "Well, I'm in."

"That was faster than I thought it would be." Yang said with a bigger smile, "Alright, you got me too."

"Good. See Weiss, if you just ask for help we will help you." Ruby said as she put a hand on her shoulder tenderly. Weiss did return her smile only for Ruby to ask, "So what is it that you want to do?" which managed to actually stump her.

She opened her mouth to respond but found that even though she wanted to monitor her company's equipment, she really didn't think about what she wanted to do upon finding out how they were using her equipment. Or if she could do anything for that matter.

She responded by saying, in a way that was very much unlike her, "We'll worry about that when we get there!"

This chapter wasn't entirely short but it had to do a little catch up ball with the previous since it happens a little after whole attempted break out.

Sorry about the length this chapter took to get out but I don't know what was holding me back considering I now how the whole Meet'Cute for the boy and the team. I would also like to say that he isn't getting a name for another few chapters.

I know this is a bad way to do things considering that the one way you can identify with a character is through a name but with the way the story is moving, he might not get them for a while.

Anyway, hope you enjoy this chapter. Next one will come up soon. Please read and enjoy, don't forget to review.