Pain.

As Winston struggled to pick himself back off of the arena floor after something pulled him down there, the only thing he could think about in that instant was the wave of sheer agony that racked his entire body. His arms, chest, and skull hurt worse than they ever had before, and if he hadn't long since familiarized himself with pains great enough to make an ordinary man beg for death, he was certain he would have happily passed out before hitting the ground. Despite wanting nothing more than to stay where he laid and wait for the anguish he was experiencing to fade away until it was bearable to consider resuming his sparring match with Pyrrha in earnest, the guardsman did not allow himself such a luxury. Even though it was only just a sparring match, neither his pride nor resolve to keep fighting until he was physically incapable of doing so allowed him to accept defeat so easily.

Although the stubborn and borderline suicidal resolve of the Death Korps were equal parts renowned and feared for likely played a part knowing that a child, even if she was a renowned champion on this planet, was responsible for his current state played no small part in preventing Winston from staying down and surrendering no matter how dismal his odds of succeeding against her were. Survival instincts that had been honed through years of training and countless narrow scrapes with the many horrible ways to die throughout the galaxy forced him to rise up as his own body rebelled against him and an inability to stay down guided his left hand to the laspistol holstered to his waist. The burning sensation in his chest worsened as his arm darted towards his last remaining weapon, the others he could just barely make out on the edge of his vision as distant gray splotches on the ground in front of him, far beyond his reach, yet he was able to remain collected enough to pull it free without wavering an inch as he drew a bead on his opponent and fired a lasbolt in the center of her chest.

…at least, that is what he intended to do.

Instead of letting off one last defiant shot at his sparring partner, his sidearm simply sailed out of his hand and onto the ground amongst the rest of his weapons, leaving the guardsman staring dumbfounded at it. How could he have possibly let one of his most precious possessions slip out of his grasp so easily and at such a crucial moment too?

It was only as his gawking extended to his hand while he wondered how he could have made such a stupid mistake that he discovered a simple slip of the fingers wasn't to blame. The only reason he couldn't put the blame on his numb fingers was because he didn't have any to speak of anymore. That certainly explained why he was having trouble feeling his fingers, unlike his arm that cried out for attention as he did his best to ignore it.

As far as he could remember, the searing pain that filled his entire body doing his memory no favors, he still had all five fingers attached even if they all weren't the 'real' ones he was born with. Now the only thing he could see on his left hand was his thumb, which he didn't recall possessing three joints or bending backwards onto the back of his palm last time he checked, and the four little metal nubs just past the first knuckle of each of his missing prosthetic fingers where they should have been securely screwed into. The fingers of his glove had been torn off, likely owing to their contents being ripped free from them, exposing one of the many deformities he was thankful the Death Korps uniform could hide so well.

With an almost absent minded sense of urgency, Winston attempted to use his other hand to cover up his exposed augmentics, only to find that something slightly more important was missing as well. His right hand, as well as the rest of his right arm and sleeve up until what remained of his bicep, was gone. If it hadn't been for the wave of pain that reached a final crescendo at the sight of his own missing limb and the old burn scar his torn uniform now exposed, he might have been surprised to find himself missing more than just a few fingers. Instead, the Korpsman found himself slightly amused at how he hadn't passed out yet after losing his right arm again.

The first time he lost his arm, he was barely able to stay conscious long enough to deliver retribution for his crippling injury. Now, he was able to simply stare at and feel no worse for wear aside from the burning ache that kept building in his upper torso and a slightly light headed feeling that came with it. It was strange how a person could get used to losing a limb.

Even with the neural implant that his regiment's highest ranking tech priest integrated into his stump in order to test its effects, the pain wasn't nearly as bad as he remembered it being the first time. Considering the circumstances he did lose his original arm under, that wasn't entirely surprising to the guardsman. What the Ecclsiarchs preached was true after all: There was no greater suffering than that born of betrayal. He only wished he didn't have to learn how truthful that particular sermon was first hand.

That wasn't to say his current predicament was a pleasant experience by any means necessary, but at least it was somewhat understandable. Since he had lost his fingers and an arm, both of which were prosthetics, and the parts of him that hurt the most were not entirely flesh and bone, it seemed reasonable to Winston to assume Pyrrha's Semblance likely had something to do with moving certain metals at will. It certainly couldn't be all metallic objects, as she hadn't deprived him of his laspistol or some of his other prosthetics despite being more than capable of disarming him in other ways.

Winston was glad she only removed an arm and a few fingers as she could have done a lot more than just removing most of his ability to fight back against her. The pulsing agony that rang throughout his skull and the sharp taste of blood in his mouth were a testament to exactly how much damage she could have done. How or why she hadn't ripped his teeth or other bits out was a question he wanted to ask her, but not one he had any presence of mind to answer since the streaks of pain that raced throughout his chest had not disappeared yet, and…

Oh, right. He almost forgot about those ones. It truly was amazing how natural an artificial pair of lungs could feel when you couldn't hear them working.

Or feel them working, for that matter.

…

Winston, after giving the pain in his chest a little more thought, couldn't recall sucking down any air since he had been disarmed, not even now as he tried and failed to take a much needed breath of fresh air into his burning lungs.

It suddenly made a lot more sense to him as to why everything hurt so much. That didn't help him hit the ground any softer when he collapsed moments later as his and Pyrrha's team rushed down into the arena.

The first thing that Winston discovered when he woke up, much to his disappointment, was that he was still alive. Everything still hurt, his arm and fingers were still missing even if his remaining thumb wasn't bent the wrong way anymore, the familiar taste of blood and oil filled his mouth, but he was alive. Either he had not yet suffered enough to earn his forgiveness before the Golden Throne, or the paradise the Ecclesiarchs preached about was a lot more exaggerated than he previously believed them to be. Considering how his surroundings looked vaguely familiar, he decided it would be best to assume the former until proven otherwise.

The Korpsman did not wake up on the arena floor like he would have expected to if he were still alive. Instead, he found himself in a far more frightening place that he never would have ventured to willingly. He was surrounded by white walls and ceiling, sterilized tools strewn with apparent haphazardness, bottles of assorted medicines, other unmentionables strewn scattered wherever they could fit behind the cloudy windows of locked cabinets, and the sickening smell of ethanol filled his nose with the first breath he reluctantly took and savored against his own budding terror. There was only one possible place he could be, and upon looking down to see that had woken up on a gurney as the last piece of undeniable proof of his current location, Winston immediately reached down to his laspistol holster only to find it was empty. An immediate check of the leather straps sewn to the inside of his partially tattered trench coat revealed the keepsake from his quartermaster wasn't the only beloved weapon he was missing.

To an outsider, it might have seemed odd that Winston's first instinct upon waking up in a medical room was to arm himself. To most guardsmen, the thought of spending a quiet night in a nice, warm, albeit stiff bed with around the clock care would have sounded like a gift from Him on Terra. Most Imperial Guard regiments also had dedicated medicaes and orderlies to tend to their patients with what limited medical supplies they had on hand. The Death Korps of Krieg were not like the rest of the Astramilitarum, especially when it came to the treatment of their casualties.

The Death Korps were not like most Imperial Guard regiments when it came to treating their dead, dying, and those who were merely injured. The limited supplies the Adeptus Munitorum issued them were no less strained and the trained medicaes no less competent, the latter actually more experienced that those found within the wider Imperium, but unlike their inferior counterparts the medicaes of the Death Korps went by a different name, one that struck fear in those they served alongside and inspired what remaining strength their prospective patients had to avoid medical attention by any means necessary.

Their medicaes were known as quartermasters, and unlike the medicaes the rest of the Imperial Guard employed, they possessed more than just the Munitorum provided medical supplies to treat their patients. Quartermasters were also given a specially calibrated laspistol to deal with hopeless cases at their own discretion with both the Ecclesiarchy and Commissariat's blessings, and it was one of the tools they ended up using the most often. From that point, it was simply a matter of giving their more critically injured patients a more dignified death and stripping the bodies for whatever resources the quartermaster or his contingent of medical servitors could carry. Whether it was clothing or weapons, rations or undamaged organs, everything of value that could be put to use would not be left behind. The same could not be said for the fresh corpse they had come from, although time was always taken to read the soon to be departed their last rites as a matter of courtesy for truly giving their all to the Imperium they served.

A soldier who could not fight was not worth saving, and as the Death Korps were famous for their unwillingness to stop marching towards the enemy until they were physically unable to, no wounded Korpsman desired to find a quartermaster walking in their direction, but that wasn't the worse fate that could befall them. A lasbolt to the face was a far kinder fate than being taken away by a group of tech adepts and engineseers when the regiment was running low on servitors. Every Kriegsman had seen at least one familiar face amongst those unlucky legions long before being shipped off Krieg. None of them wished to become the next.

Winston didn't know where in Beacon he was or if Ozpin had neglected to inform him of the Mechanicus' presence on Remnant, but that did not stop him from trying to run for the doors that would take him away from the horrible place he had woken up in. Despite being close enough to his own quartermaster to receive his laspistol as both a final farewell and yet another memento mori to add to his collection, the idea of facing yet another quartermaster didn't scare him. Being operated on by another incompetent or inexperienced medicae or tech adept, however, was a different story. The people of Remnant, as far as he could recall from his limited research the previous night, were not technologically advanced enough to develop spacecraft yet. While this was by no means a direct indicator that their medical practices and knowledge was similarly stunted, the Korpsman had no intentions of finding out personally.

Still feeling woozy from having only woken up, the guardsman made a frantic attempt to run to the pair of double doors on the opposite side of the room he believed to be the path to his salvation. The guardsman felt something flopping around loosely in one of his boots before his legs collapsed out from underneath him after having taken only a single step, falling to the floor and sending an assortment of sterilized tools clattering down alongside him in his wake after failing to stop his descent with a nearby push cart.

He tried to push himself up despite missing a limb, but found the handicap and his own weary limbs lacking the strength to do so. That didn't matter though. He still had one mostly intact arm. He would happily crawl his way to salvation if it meant escaping before Beacon's medicae returned for him and tried to-

"MMrRRgggwha?" A startled snort came from behind one of the cabinets.

Whoever was in the room with him sounded groggy, as if they had been awakened unexpectedly. As Winston already had an impression of the kinds of people Ozpin liked to employ after spending too much time for his liking with Qrow and experiencing one of Professor Port's classes firsthand, he wouldn't have been surprised if one of the academy's medicaes had fallen asleep on the job when they were supposed to be monitoring his vitals while unconscious. If that was what had happened, then that was all the proof he needed not to trust the lazy medicae.

"Who's there?" The other occupant of the room called out, the legs of their pants finally coming into view as they investigated the disturbance that rustled them from their slumber.

Winston used his remaining arm to desperately pat himself down once again for bayonets, power packs, and anything else he could possibly raise in defense against the man whose weary eyes fell upon him after having his nap ruined, the medicae managing to keep a surprisingly straight face given the circumstances. The man was dressed in the exact attire he heard civilian medicaes typically wore; a thin white overcoat and plain pants with odd looking blue gloves covering his hands. That alone wouldn't have been terrifying, but the two curled horns that sprouted from either side of man's head from the edges of his thin crop of black hair gave the dark skinned man a rather sinister appearance. If Ozpin hadn't informed him that the abhumans of Remnant were a far more common sight than they were within the greater Imperium, the guardsman would have believed this man had been touched by the Ruinous Powers without a second thought and acted accordingly. Even so, murderous whispers still lingered in the back of his mind as he looked at what he could only presume to be the doctor who had been watching over him, the very same person who could condemn him to an ignoble death or worse with a single word if he was anything like the quartermasters of Krieg.

The two of them locked eyes and refrained from moving or uttering a single sound for what felt like an eternity before the medicae decided to break the silence between them.

"Oh right. I forgot you were here. Ozpin said you would be an interesting patient, and daaaa-ng he wasn't kidding." He joked in an attempt to lighten up the mood, barely stopping himself from cursing in a token attempt to remain professional, not that his patient particularly cared for such formalities.

Winston didn't say anything and simply continued to stare at the medicae who was growing increasingly unnerved by the soulless gray lenses of the gas mask of his silent patient looking up at him.

"So, do you uhh… need a hand?" The Faunus asked before immediately realizing what he said and burying his face in his palms.

"Fu-rrrrick. Sorry about that. Would you like me to help you back up?" He corrected himself.

Winston didn't know what the man was apologizing for, but seeing as how the medicae didn't have any readily apparent tools on hand that could lead to an untimely end to his career before he had a chance to rejoin the Imperial Guard, he risked declining the offer with a shake of his head and staggered back on to his unsteady feet. The doctor refrained from commenting on the extreme effort it took the Korpsman to pick himself off the floor by propping himself up against the nearby wall for support, hovering nearby as his patient wobbled before finally accomplishing such an arduous task. If it hadn't been for Ozpin making several of the guardsman's many quirks all to clear, the Faunus would have rushed to aide him against his wishes. Instead, he silently waited until the guardsman didn't look like he would fall over at any moment before attempting to talk to him again. He had worked with difficult patients like the guardsman before, although he doubted any of them were quite as messed up as the one currently in his care.

"Well, now that you're awake and not crawling around on the ground like a blind Centinel, I think some introductions might be in order." The man said.

The Faunus seemed friendly enough to Winston, the odd drawl to the doctor's accent helping to lower his guard against his benefactor, if only a little bit. It wasn't enough to make him speak up yet, but it did keep him from bolting for the door as he shifted his weight on his legs as he felt himself recover his strength unusually quickly. Although he wasn't certain, Winston assumed his aura must have had something to do with it. He could still feel something floating around in his left boot, although he had a fairly good idea as to what it might be and wasn't particularly concerned.

"Okay, I'll go first since you're probably still a little shaken after what happened to you." The doctor sighed once it became clear the student in his care wasn't going to say anything before he did. "I'm Tod Schwarzer, Beacon's entire medical staff if you can believe it."

If one medicae servicing an academy with only a few hundred students, maybe a thousand at the most, was supposed to be impressive then Winston didn't see it that way. It wasn't unusual for a typical guard regiment numbering in the millions to have less than a hundred medicaes, not including servitors, but Korpsman didn't dare tell this to the person who could potentially put him down for his missing arm.

"Private Winston Voytoski…" The guardsman answered, barely stopping himself from telling the medicae anymore about himself.

While Ozpin had given him a few rules to follow in regards to maintaining the secrecy of their respective identities and knowledge of the galaxy beyond Remnant, they were incredibly vague as to what specific information beyond that could be shared and with whom. While Ozpin had been specific enough to mention anyone he was subordinate to could be safely confided with such information, there was some discrepancy as to who that entailed exactly. The obvious answers were Ozpin and those he had explicitly mentioned, but what about Ruby and the instructors of Remnant? They were technically his superiors, even if they had never been part of the Astra Militarum like he had, but would the Inquisitor approve of him sharing such vital information with them?

Maybe, but it was impossible to tell for sure. Was giving his rank, let alone the regiment he was a part off too much? Warp, were his own teammates technically his superiors since they had a day's seniority over him? That was a question for another time, if he felt like bothering Ozpin over such trivial matters. The Inquisitor hadn't mentioned the exact relationship between him and Team RWBY after all, so perhaps that was his way of saying it was okay to tell them such things?

Then again, maybe it was a trap and divulging such critical secrets would get them all killed. It was impossible to know until it was too late, and Winston would happily damn himself before he would let his new squad get killed on his account by testing just how far he could bend the rules Ozpin wanted him to follow. If only he was still a part of the Imperial Guard. Things were so much simpler when all your problems could be solved by killing them.

…no, he was still part of the Imperial Guard. He was still one of the countless trillions serving the will of the Emperor and the faceless billions of active Krieg fighting for redemption, no matter what the Administratum's records might say about him or his regiment. If not, then that was all the more reason he had to earn Ozpin's clearance to return to the front lines as soon as possible.

"Uh huh, a private you say." Schwarzer hummed, recalling that particular detail of his patient. "Did you happen to do a lot of fighting before arriving in the kingdoms?"

"Yes, sir." Winston dutifully answered.

"How much of it was against Grimm?" The doctor followed up, already fearing the answer.

"Only a couple of days, sir. Most of the time I've been in… Vale." The guardsman answered, struggling to recall the name of the kingdom he landed in less than a week ago.

Tod cringed, already fearing what the answer to his next question would be. "And how long have you been a private?"

Winston was about to answer, but stopped before he could say anything. Rather than give him multiple answers, all and none of which were true, he simply gave him a noncommittal shrug. Warp time displacements were near impossible to sort out and his regiment never did figure out how far into the future they had been flung after his first campaign serving with them. In fact, he still wasn't sure if they had gone forwards in time instead of backwards. Translating directly into an ongoing siege instead of the fortress world they expected to resupply at certainly didn't make it any easier to get a straight answer.

"Is there a reason you're asking me about my service record?" The guardsmen eventually asked, having grown tired of wondering how long he had served for.

"Yes… err, no… well…" The doctor stammered a bit as he tried to think of what to say.

"Ah, forget it." The doctor finally gave up. "Anyways, how're you feeling? You looked more dead than alive when that girl with the cape dragged you in here."

Oh, so that's how he ended up in the medicae's office. He was going to have to apologize to Ruby later for being a burden, after he retrieved his missing equipment and reattached his arm of course. Speaking of which…

"I'm fine." Winston told the doctor who looked unamused by the immediate answer.

"Fine?! You passed out in the middle of your combat class and you're missing a damn-" The doctor hissed a curse underneath his breath for forgetting to remain professional, "-dang arm!"

"It's just an arm." The guardsman replied, failing to see why it would be so important, "It's nothing I haven't lost before."

"Oh." Schwarzer sighed, partially understanding his patient's logic even if he didn't agree with it in the slightest. "Well, I suppose that is one way to look at it."

Winston sensed the medicae wasn't satisfied with his answer and added, "It's easy enough to repair, so long as I can find the right parts for it."

"Okay, and what about the whole 'passing out in front of your entire team' thing? Is that something you aren't worried about too?" The faunus testily asked him.

Seeing as he was still alive, Winston felt there was only one way to answer. "Yes." He droned, earning a groan from the doctor.

Winston heard what sounded like the Litany of Holy Perseverance Against Adversity being muttered by Tod before being presented with another question. "Alright, then would you mind telling me why you passed out then since you apparently think it isn't worth worrying about?"

"I think Pyrrha's semblance must have stopped my lungs from working." Winston flatly answered.

"What?" The doctor said in confusion, his mind refusing to believe the student before him could ever possibly treat lung failure and a missing arm no differently than a paper cut.

"My lungs are artificial." Winston explained, thinking that is what the medicae wanted from him. "The damage must have been minor enough for their auto repair function to treat sometime before I suffocated to death."

"What!?" The doctor uttered again, more shocked now than he had been after the previous answer.

"As I said, it was nothing worth worrying about." The guardsman asserted once again, "I doubt anyone on Remnant could fix my lungs if they tried. It's not worrying over something I can't do anything about."

"I can see what you are trying to say." The doctor conceded in the masked face of insane acceptance he was looking down at, "But still, I think you should be a little more concerned about your own well being than this."

"I will take your concerns into consideration." Winston matter-of-factly replied.

"Hooo boy, you are going to be an absolute treat to work with." Schwarzer groaned as he rubbed his weary eyes, "First you send more kids into my infirmary than I saw throughout the entire last semester, and now I have Ozpin wanting me to make sure you fit enough to be a huntsman after losing consciousness without running any physical exams or psych evaluations."

"This is what I get for asking for something to do while I'm on shift." The doctor finished ranting, only just remembering the person he was complaining about was still in front of him. He was about to apologize, before deciding that Winston probably wouldn't care either way.

He was right, of course, but he had no way of knowing it.

"Am I free to leave, sir?" Winston asked after the uncomfortable silence between them returned.

"Yeah, Ozpin wanted me to send you up to his office as soon as you were able to walk there." The medicae told him, the guardsman noticeably tensing up at the mere mention of the headmaster's name.

"I'd offer to escort you over there, bu-"

"I'm fine. I can make it on my own." Winston interrupted.

He didn't know exactly how to make it to the top of the tower where Ozpin's office was located relative Beacon's infirmary, wherever the bloody thing was, but he would rather roam around the hallways of Beacon lost than stay near the medicae any longer than he absolutely needed to.

"Yep, I kinda figured." The doctor sighed. "Well, I probably shouldn't keep you any longer. It's almost midnight and I'm sure Ozpin isn't going to be up much longer. Hell, I'd have called it a night hours ago if I had the choice."

Not that it had stopped him from falling asleep on the job, the guardsman thought to himself. Winston dreaded the idea of meeting with Ozpin again so soon after having become crippled once again, but wanted to keep the Inquisitor waiting for him even less. He quickly shuffled his feet towards the door, only pausing to deliver a solid kick into the wooden doors leading out of the medicae's office in an attempt to reconnect the half of his foot that must have come loose when Pyrrha beat him. A satisfying click and the feeling of a familiar weight attached to his foot that he hadn't noticed was missing until it had returned left him feeling reinvigorated, and he wasted no time trying to search for Ozpin's office.

The Korpsman hadn't even been gone for five seconds before he heard the doors to the medicae swing open and the doctor call out to him, "Before I forget, I'll need you to come back into my office sometime tomorrow so I can give you a general check up and make sure there isn't anything else we need to look out for. The last thing either of us want is for you to pass out in the middle of another combat class again." He said.

The logic was sound, but that didn't make Winston look forward to going back to the waiting medicae. Winston turned around and offered Schwarzer a salute before returning back to the task at hand.

"Oh, and you're going the wrong way." The doctor then informed him. Winston turned around to face the faunus as he offered the guardsman a few additional directions, "You'll need to go down to the other end of the hallway, take the stairs all the way down, and head out of the building through the first door your come across. From there, head straight until you hit the water fountain and make then take the second path on the left until you reach it. That'll take you exactly where you need to go."

It took every ounce of self restraint the doctor had to stop himself from adding 'Or you could just use your eyes and head to the big-ass tower that's impossible to miss' given just how 'smart' his patient felt like acting, but that would have been unprofessional.

"Thank you, sir." Winston said before turning around and taking the route he had been given, silently dreading whatever it was Ozpin wanted to discuss.

Tod Schwarzer pulled out his scroll and checked the restrictions Ozpin placed upon him when tending to Winston as he watched the guardsman depart to ensure he was leaving in the correct direction this time. It was a short list of things he wasn't allowed to do upon threat of immediate firing. A small part of him wondered if he would have had that same threat placed upon him if he were a human that he tried his best to ignore, but regardless of the reason behind them, the restrictions placed upon him only added to the frightening picture his short talk with Beacon's newest arrival had left him with.

He couldn't send Winston to a therapist or recommend he visit any without Ozpin's previous approval, conduct blood tests or any other physical analyses of him beyond a general wellness check, remove any of his armor or clothes, or check him for any hidden injuries through the use of his aura or an MRI scan. The later one made obvious sense now that he knew just how it would practically be a death sentence for Winston, and after seeing the gruesome burn scar that ended at the stump of his patient's arm he had no desire to see any of the guardsman's other scars in more detail than he already had, but the others left him wondering what exactly it was the headmaster was trying to hide from him. It also made it damn near impossible to treat the kid while he was unconscious, forcing the doctor to wait until he woke up.

For a brief moment it looked more like a matter of if he would wake up than when, but thankfully that moment had passed by quickly enough. Long enough to clean up most of the blood that leaked out from underneath his helmet and remove most of the stains from his armor, but it wasn't nearly enough time to convince the doctor he could be left alone for even a moment should he take a turn for the worse until he regained consciousness.

That was why Schwarzer had decided to ignore at least one of the commands Ozpin gave him and tried to use his semblance to diagnose any possible internal injuries the Korpsman was suffering from and he almost immediately regretted it. His semblance allowed him to 'see' inside the bodies of his patients, which was the main reason he had become a doctor in the first place. Having immediate access to an internal view of his patients made treating their injuries laughably easy once he figured out what was wrong with them by 'seeing' what didn't look right. There was a reason he was Beacon's one and only acting doctor, after all.

So long as he had the right tools and supplies on hand, he could practically cure anything on his own if time wasn't an issue. If he couldn't, then it was always nice to know any call he made to Beacon's various hospitals would be answered almost immediately regardless of the hour it was made. Huntsmen weren't nearly as common as most people thought they were, and the loss of one of them even if they were still in training would have dire consequences for the continued safety of thousands. Some more ignorant people complained that the defenders of humanity shouldn't be given special treatment for doing a job they willingly accepted. Those were also the people who had likely never seen a Grimm in person before and were blissfully ignorant of just how quickly a Beowolf could kill an unarmed person, regardless of whether or not they had any aura.

What little information the doctor had been able to gleam by using his semblance when Winston was first carried into his infirmary shook him to his core, not enough to request an immediate medical evacuation but coming far too close to it for his liking. His semblance had revealed a multitude of broken bones that had barely finished healed, large swathes of bruising both internal and external that were healing just as well, and a myriad of scars both new and old layered on top of each other.

Oh Brothers, THE SCARS. There were so many of them. How did he get so many of them? Where did he get them all? What the hell was Ozpin thinking when accepting him into Beacon if the old man knew it was nothing short of a miracle that he was still alive?!

Maybe some questions were better off being left unanswered, which seemed to be what Ozpin thought was safer for everyone too. And maybe there was more than meets the eye with Beacon's newest student, and there was already A LOT to see. Schwarzer knew that, probably more than anyone else aside from Ozpin, but as useful as his semblance was for his profession he couldn't rely on it to do all of his work for him. It couldn't heal the wounds it found, just like it couldn't find those that were not physical in nature.

The kid hid it well from him, but not well enough. Anyone who wasn't medically trained, or perhaps simply didn't care to spot the few oddities in his rigid presentation of himself, would have easily missed the obvious signs that something was very wrong with him.

To name the most immediate concerns: he had some definite anxiety problems if not outright paranoia, remarkably violent tendencies if sending several students to the infirmary before arriving himself was any indicator, claimed he had been fighting 'things' other than Grimm for longer than he could remember with the scars to back up said claims, and seemingly no regard for his own well-being or perhaps outright resignation towards death given how he treated a near death experience and the loss of a limb so casually. Schwarzer didn't think Winston was suicidal, but it wouldn't have been a shocking discovery if he turned out to be. There were only a few things the huntsman-in-training could be suffering from with symptoms like those, one of which seemed to fit him all too well, but the doctor wanted to be absolutely certain before jumping to conclusions. The last thing he wanted to do was give the guardsman any more problems when it was a miracle he could even walk.

But that could wait until tomorrow. Right now, he had a nice bed waiting for him in his room that was calling his name. Just because one of his patients was neglecting their own well being didn't mean he should neglect his own.

Author's Corner:

Yeah, for those of you that know what the Imperium of Man's medical services look like… it ain't pretty. And I'm not talking about the 'servitor treatment' battle weary soldiers receive. It's little wonder Winston wanted nothing to do with Beacon's resident doctor.

Also, this is something I've only really noticed after really thinking about it and is a completely random thought, but does anyone else find it odd that there are no faunus employed at Beacon that we see? It's a little less glaring than with Atlas given the kingdom's rough history and the way the subject is presented in canon with all the subtlety of a flaming chainsword, but seeing as how Cardin is committing what are most likely hate crimes inside of Beacon with crowds of witnesses and suffering no repercussions from the staff, it does raise a few questions since the guy supposedly doing what's best for humanity has no idea what's happening under his nose or simply does not care. Maybe the White Fang operating in Vale were on to something before they became a stereotypical genocidal terrorist organization.

It really highlights how Ozpin has a tendency to drop the ball regarding immediate issues when thinking about his long term goals, as do his other mistakes that lead to so many of the problems that take place within RWBY.

Comments:

"Guest": Personally, I was hoping for a bit more team interaction to occur before a bedridden arc (And the all too common 'injury earned through heroism' trope)

Bold of you to assume Winston will let a missing arm slow him down, because as D'nomme so eloquently put it, "Tis only a scratch"! As for what his teammates will think about his casual reaction to losing an arm, that's a different story.

Also, while I could have had our Kriegsman temporarily lose his arm doing something heroic, I didn't feel that was fitting for his character or the direction I wanted to take him. Winston is a guardsman. Nothing more, nothing less. That heroic sacrifice stuff is for the Astartes, Commissars, and Inquisitors. A memorable death is not meant for people like him. Guardsmen die by the millions every day, each and every one of their deaths unsung and quickly forgotten. Why would he want special treatment that his fallen brothers and sisters were denied?

Kodaking: Good chapter. Sorry for nitpicking but how tf did he 'forget' to check the charge on his lasgun. Like for real? Seems like some bs to me

As Winston previously mentioned when teaching Ruby how to repair his lasgun, the fire select not only changes how many lasbolts he fires for every pull of the trigger but also the amount of power each lasbolt consumes. Personally, I imagine it would be quite difficult to remember how much charge his power cell has left when his attention isn't focused on managing his plentiful ammo supply, but rather on a girl whose semblance could potentially, hypothetically speaking of course, rip him in half for all he knows…

kalki Dharma'esa: Winston getting a cybernetic hand prove him that he was a veteran guardsman. But i found interesting when Pyrrha tore apart Winston bionics. not many depicted how fragile bionic are since guardsman bionic differ than the mechanicus or space marine bionics (quality and quantity wise).

That's the thing. Cybernetics in the Imperium and W40K in general vary greatly, from limbs 'borrowed' straight from Necrons to shoddy pieces of crap that stop working after being submerged in salt water for a couple of seconds. It all depends on the skill and 'eccentricity' of the tech priest who supplied him with his replacement arm.

An unhealthy and very heretical adaptation of captured xenos tech also helps.

Gas Mask Jack: Yeah...this just gave Pyrrha PTSD and I actually wonder if this will play into the fight with Penny if that ever happens. Meh who knows. All I know is Winston is gonna be PISSED.

Shrimpknight67:Can't wait to see how Winston or anybody else treats Phyrra… She will have trauma about this, afraid of using her semblance on any other person fearing she might rip someone else's arm off or anything similar to the effect.

Considering how utterly casual he is about his missing arm, I doubt Winston will be too particularly angry at Pyrrha for what happened to him. That's not to say there won't be to say this incident won't have lasting consequences for either of these two characters or their teammates who saw everything happen.

Teo Char: Many Fanfics, even the good ones, make one major mistake in combat. Most duels do not last longer than 15-30 seconds with intense blows exchange. Fighting gets tired very quickly. Unless fighters take a break to think about the fight or catch their breath, the fight should not last longer than one minute, maybe two or three.

I am in agreement with you there, if these were two normal schmucks fighting against each other. As aura seems to have a supernatural ability to boost a person's ability to keep on fighting, and Death Korps troopers seem to have a "I can rest when I'm dead" mentality to say nothing of what a W40K pair of prosthetic lungs can do for a person, both Pyrrha and Winston have their own respective reasons for lasting as long as they did. When you throw in the fact that they are both expert fighters, one a world-renowned champion and the other is a veteran guardsman from a universe where the average battle between two armies has millions of combatants on both sides, they probably both have some built up endurance that normal people lack.

As always, thanks for reading and I hope to see you all again in the future!