Author's Note: Hey guys! Thank you so much for sticking with this. Thank you to all who reviewed, favorited, and followed this story despite my long leaves of absence. Clearly I won't be finishing this in the timely manner that I thought I was going to, but I do plan to finish this story as soon as I can.

I would like to mention before this begins that I am in no way a medical professional and I'm not sure how much of this is accurate based on some googling, or if any of that really matters because who really knows with nanites involved.

On with the story!

Holiday was reaching into a drawer to get a cold pack for Rex's head now that his stomach had calmed down and she had kicked Bobo out of the lab when she heard Six say "Rex. Rex!" with sheer panic.

She turned around to Rex twisting and turning on the table, teeth gritted, and shaking uncontrollably. "He's having a seizure! Don't touch him just let it run it's course!" But as soon as she finished speaking Rex suddenly just stopped moving and went slack on the table, passed out cold.

Six turned to look at Holiday hoping for an explanation of what the hell just happened but she was frozen in place staring at Rex with wide eyes clearly at a loss. It only lasted for a second though before she quickly snapped herself out of it and grabbed a scanner.

Six stepped out of the way knowing that she would give him instructions if he were able to be of some use. He stood awkwardly off to the side and waited as she performed the scan.

"What…?" Holiday mumbled to herself as she read what was on the scanner.

"What's wrong?" Six asked. He tried to read the scanner over her shoulder but he couldn't make sense of all the symbols.

"His brain activity is back to normal," she said in disbelief. "I'm not getting any signs that he's in any pain, all the readings are what you would get if someone had just fainted. There's also no indication that he had a seizure in this report. He shouldn't have even had a seizure in the first place! I need to do a proper scan in the MRI machine. Help me get him over there?"

Six carried Rex over and laid him down gently. The kid didn't even twitch. "What happened before that? Why did he have such a violent reaction to the lights?"

"That was actually pretty standard for how much head pain he was experiencing. Migraines, when bad enough, can cause light sensitivity and nausea and even some disorientation. He was basically having a migraine on steroids so with Bobo suddenly coming in like that I'm not surprised he threw up. He should have been fine in a few minutes though! He was already having an easier time focusing on us even if he couldn't understand what we were saying to him. There was no indication he was going to have further complications."

She pressed some buttons and the machine started up. "Okay, Rex, let's see what's going on here," she muttered under her breath as she looked at different parts of his body on the view screen. "All of his organs are functioning properly and there's no indication of pain anywhere, not even his head. Let me look on a microscopic scale now."

"The nanites are still slowing near the brain, but there isn't a pileup anymore. His nanite count is a bit smaller too, like some of his nanites have been purged out of his system. That normally requires an offload of his nanites though, his body has never done it on its own before. Something important happened here."

"Something good or bad?" Six asked.

"I don't know." She worried her bottom lip for a moment as the readings printed out of the machine. She scanned over them quickly. "His nanite codes have varied again. The majority of his nanites have been reprogrammed into the code Van Kleiss has implemented but he has some nanites that managed to stay the original somehow. I think that seizure was caused by the nanites, I'm just not sure which side caused it, or it could have been both."

"So, bad."

"Not necessarily. They may have prevented a complete reprogramming of the nanites in Rex or something worse from happening. We do know the target is erasing Rex's memory but from what I can tell that hasn't happened here." Holiday pushed a button so the machine pushed the table holding Rex back out and then she powered it down. "Well, at the moment he appears to have just passed out, so I might be able to bring him back to consciousness with smelling salts."

She rummaged in a different drawer across the lab before coming back holding a salt stick. She held it under his nose and started shaking his shoulder. "Rex... Rex... Come on wake up for me, Rex." Rex's eyes flickered briefly. "That's it, wake up Rex."

"Augh, what is that smell?" Rex grumbled as he blinked back into the conscious world and brought a hand up to swipe the offending object away from his face.

"It's a smelling salt, the odor has to be powerful so a person who fainted will be brought back to consciousness." Holiday smirked at the face he was making. "Besides I thought you'd be used to smells with a monkey for a roommate."

"That smelled way worse than Bobo. That was like Bobo after taking a swim in a sewage tank," he joked. "Why did you use it though? I didn't faint, I was sedated."

"Holiday didn't sedate you, you had a seizure and passed out," Six said, looking concerned for some reason.

"No... I remember being sedated. I had an overload and Doc sedated me." He looked from adult to adult who both looked outright alarmed. "Right?" he asked, panicking slightly when no one answered.

Holiday took a deep breath. "Okay, Rex what is the last thing you remember?"

"I was laying here so you could get a reading on my brain activity, or whatever, and then it got really bright... Oh man, I didn't puke on you did I?" Rex asked looking at Holiday semi-embarrassed.

"No, I got out of the way in time. Though it was the closest call." She smirked at how red he got before getting back to the topic at hand. "And after that?"

"And then it felt like that time I had an overload and I remember being injected with a sedative..." He trailed off as he brought up his arm to inspect it and saw no injection site like there usually was. Come to think of it, he never woke up on the Keep after an offload.

He looked up at the adults who were looking very concerned. "I really didn't overload?"

"It's possible you are exhibiting signs of PTSD. The overload was a very painful experience for you and the head pain you were experiencing according to my equipment would've been around the same level even if your nanites were preventing you from feeling it at that capacity. Maybe you were more affected by that overload than we thought you were at the time."

"But... I felt it. It was so real! I could feel the straps around me and I felt you inject the sedative! And Six! You were pushing me back down on the table telling me to 'try to stay still,' or whatever."

"I did actually do that after you threw up," Six said. He turned to address the doctor. "So, my words triggered a flashback?"

"People suffering from PTSD can have incredibly realistic flashbacks to past trauma, but I think this is more than that. It's rare for a flashback to be physically acted out by the body while in progress and, Rex, you do exhibit signs of having some nanites being offloaded, though it wasn't at the quantity that your offloads normally take out. Your nanite count is smaller than it was before you passed out and the way in which you passed out was very much like what happens when you are sedated."

Rex flopped back down onto the table while simultaneously throwing out his arms in a wild gesturing manner. "I'm so confused. What does that even mean? Am I seeing things or did something actually happen?"

"I'm not sure, Rex. At the moment, I'm going to say both happened here. I wish I could give you a better answer, but I just don't have any tests that I could run that I haven't already that would tell me anything about what happened here."

"So what? Are we going to just sit around and see if it happens again?"

Holiday gave him an apologetic smile. "In the meantime I think we should treat this as you having some PTSD symptoms and I know of some things we can try to help you."

"If you want me to meditate or drink tea again..." Rex grumbled while glaring at her.

"Oh no those clearly didn't work last time. I was thinking we could just try talking about it."

"What like therapy? With who? You?"

"Why not? One of my PhDs is in Psychology."

"No, no, no, no, no. No way." He crossed his arms for emphasis on how serious he was. "I'm not sitting here and talking to you about how I feel about stuff any more than you already make me do."

"Okay, calm down," She held up her arms in a placating manner. "I won't force you to speak to me. But I do think you need a healthy outlet in some form. Your nanites have halted the toxin again but they aren't going to be able to hold on forever and I'm sorry to say it but this one has me stumped. I'm going to do everything I can to stop this but this isn't going to be the last of what you experience before I can fix this. It would be best to have some way for you to work out your own frustrations in place besides destroying Providence property or taking a lap around the zoo."

It was Rex's turn to take a deep breath. "Okay, yeah I know."

"I might have some ideas on what you can do to relieve stress," Six spoke up from his position against the side of the medical table.

"More training? No thank you," Rex said, back to arms-crossed.

"That's not what I had in mind."

"Really?"

"Or I can just leave you to talk it out with the doctor."

"Alright, alright I'll bite. Lead the way."

"In the meantime, I'm going to go inform Bobo of the situation," Holiday said as she stood up. "Let me know immediately if anything happens."

Six nodded and pushed Rex out the door of the lab, directing him towards their destination.

"A punching bag," Rex said in disbelief as Six led them inside the small room off of one of the many training rooms Providence had to offer. "A little, uh, cliche, isn't it Six?"

"Cliche or not, it works for blowing off steam," Six said as he walked to where the gloves were stored and tossed Rex a pair to put on. "With the amount of training equipment you've destroyed over the years here and the damage you've done to the zoo, it's clear to me that you just need to be able to hit something sometimes. I'm going to teach you how to use the bag safely and then you can punch it for as long as you want."

Rex had the decency to at least sport a sheepish smile on his face at the explanation for the punching bag. "Okay, that's fair. I guess I'll give it a shot. Can't be any worse than meditation."

Six came over to stand directly next to Rex. "First, plant your feet firmly on the ground. Further apart. When you punch you want to keep it level with your shoulder, like this." He demonstrated it to Rex and had him try it a few times, correcting him until it was right. "Now you want to make sure you're not pushing your arm out past the punch. It'll slow you down and you can pull a muscle or worse. Just extend your arm for the punch and immediately draw it back in before punching with the other arm."

"Go ahead and hit the bag, see how it feels, figure out how far away you should be standing from the bag in order to be able to punch it, but not so close that you can't full extend your arm to reach it. Back up further. Now punch it."

Rex hit the bag as hard as he could in the way Six had shown him. "Huh, it's heavier than I thought it would be." He tested out a few more swings as Six watched to make sure he was doing it right.

"Make sure to keep your feet planted while you jab, but move your feet in between series of swings to keep your momentum going. Yes, like that." He watched Rex closely for a few more minutes before being satisfied with how he was hitting the bag. "Alright, have at it kid."

Rex hit the bag repeatedly, testing out how much force was comfortable to put behind his punches and how many he should throw in a row. He had to admit, cliche or not, this was working. He could feel the tension leaving his body, tension he wasn't even aware he had so much of until now. A small laugh escaped him as he began to feel better than he had at any point in the past week. He chanced a glance at Six, who was leaning up against the wall, and saw that he had a small smile on his face as he watched, not that he would ever admit it.

It was easy to fall into a mindless rhythm, not focusing on anything but the bag in front of him. This was definitely way better than meditation.

He wasn't sure exactly how long he was at it for but he stopped when he became aware that his arms were aching and sweat was pouring down his face. He put his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath.

"Done?" Six asked as he came up to stand in front of Rex.

"Yeah... heh... heh... You were right that did feel good."

Six just nodded as a response. "Let's do the normal training cool down stretches. You're going to be sore tomorrow."

"Can't be any worse than after your normal training," Rex grumbled as he bent to get in a handstand position.

"Speaking of, I looked at the report from that training program I set up this morning. We need to work on your reflexes when getting shot at by a rocket launcher. You lost precious seconds when deciding which machine to use to block it with."

Rex just groaned in response as he finished walking the length of the room on his hands and ended in a neat summersault. "My machines blast apart when I try to block one of those."

"Then find one that doesn't or get out of the way."

"I thought you didn't want me destroying training equipment?" Rex smirked up from his backbend position.

"Rex," came Six's warning voice.

"Fine."

They finished up the stretches in a comfortable silence before wiping down the equipment and putting the gloves away.

Six stopped Rex before they got to the door with a hand on his shoulder. "You ever feel like you can't deal with what's going on at the moment, you ask me and we'll come here, got it?"

"Thank you, Six."

I would also like to say I am not an expert on how to properly punch a heavy bag. Just did some quick googling. Thanks for reading!