Fred continually drifted in and out of consciousness, seeing the inside of a transport ship, the open sky, then a hospital's white ceiling, then he felt the grogginess that came with anesthesia, then his eyes closed and he slipped into a dreamless sleep.
Fred's eyes slipped open a bit, and he returned to the land of the living, he heard a nurse and a doctor conversing, "I hate having to deal with the academy's trainees," the nurse muttered.
The doctor voiced her agreement, "I know, there were three kids that I had to spend over an hour on each digging shrapnel out of because they set off a grenade right in their own faces, and they were just wearing those stupid battle skirts that give little protection ever since the tournament."
Fred was still a bit out of it, and his drug addled mind decided it was a good idea to join the conversation despite the fact that a large portion of his chest cavity was open and they were actively pulling glass shards out of his ribcage. He mumbled, "Oh man, I hate when tha happens, Sam did tha a few months ago essept-I-I think he used a nuke or-or somethin," The nurse's face was absolutely priceless, and it was the last thing he saw as he felt more sedative being administered almost immediately.
Dr. Jade Honeydew was at the grocery a few floors down from her apartment in the lower city of Atlas when someone in a crisp white suit appeared behind her, a military issue suit, "Dr. Honeydew," he addressed her, "You are requested at upper city hospital A-2 and I am to escort you there immediately,"
Jade turned around as she grabbed a bushel of some leafy vegetable off a shelf and waved it in the man's face, "First I will be putting these," she used the vegetable to gesture at the rest of her groceries for the week that she had just paid for, "to my fridge, I'm not paying for two weeks of groceries when I only need one because the first got spoiled because you rushed me up there to some cadets who blew themselves up again,"
The man's impassive face broke for a second, clearly stressed, "Ma'am please, we need to get going now,"
Jade looked at her watch, stalling for time, a small little ting in her head, and she was set, "Ensign Castleton, I will be heading up to my apartment, and if you attempt to stop me I will report to your command that you are unfit for duty due to your crippling anxiety that is set off by Ursa and uncomfortable social situations,"
The man froze and color completely drained from his face and he spoke, his voice losing the calm composure it had just seconds before, "of—of course, I'll help you carry your stuff ma'am,"
Jade smiled, which she retrospectively realized probably set the man, boy really, more on edge despite what she attempted, and shook her head, "No thanks, you'd just get in the way, I'll be back in about five minutes." She pushed past him, and he seemed to shrink back into the wall.
Four minutes and fifty four seconds later Jade came back down the stairs while throwing on a coat and putting on a backpack.
The ensign had regained his composure, and his eyes flicked to her waist, "do you know how to use that?" He gestured to the holster filled with a large suppressed service pistol that she was covering with her long coat.
"Would you believe me if I said no?" Jade said, raising an eyebrow.
Half an hour later Jade walked into the hospital and was quickly directed to her new patient, she walked into the room and looked at her patient, the boy was tall, really tall, blonde, and highly muscular, but the face of the boy looked considerably younger than the rest of him.
Jade could feel her semblance working in her head as she did an inspection of any possible wounds. She saw long healed scars, some clearly from large surgeries, others from gunshots or stabs or various other things.
Jade peeled back the bandages around his chest and winced as she recognized the wounds, this kid had been shot in the gut, point blank too, he had apparently been able to seal it with some sort of medical sealant that whichever nurse had been attending to him hadn't removed, then after some time he had a sword stabbed through him, and further inspection revealed nothing but a few bruises, but that was to be expected with a huntsman.
Jade stepped out of the room, hoping to find someone to explain the situation and was surprised when general Ironwood stood just outside the door, "Sir!" Jade straightened into a salute.
"At ease Doctor," the general said, "I'm here to explain."
He paused, composing himself, she guessed he had just come out of some frustrating meeting, then he spoke, "your patient in there participated in the Vytal festival as a tournament combatant, and we know nothing other than that of his backstory. We saw him first in an elevator in Beacon Academy in Vale pinned to a wall by a glass sword through his gut, he proceeded to remove the sword himself and walk approximately 40 feet past our soldiers and approach me before he fell on his front unconscious. He was also wearing an extremely advanced suit of armor which our engineers are currently puzzling out, nothing by Atlesian make that we can tell so far."
Jade furrowed her brow, "I'm assuming you want me to fix him for more reason than just being a Good Samaritan,"
"Let's just say we need to question him for...purposes of discovery and the betterment of Atlas"
Jade just shrugged, "a patient is a patient," she said over her shoulder as she entered the hospital room again.
Jade was operating on the patient when he suddenly awoke in the middle of having glass removed from his interior and made his strange drug addled statement, after that she was even more curious about him, more than the fact that her semblance still hadn't finished.
Approximately 27 hours passed before Jade's semblance finished its work, it usually didn't take nearly this long, usually at most 10 hours for a full activation. Jade was asleep on the couch by the window of her patient's room (her semblance would reset if she left the target of its power), and as soon as the telltale ting of the completion of the medical scan finished she bolted upright, instantly awake at the possibility of questions answered.
Jade scanned the report in her mind's eye, and it was long, and a lot of it was just various injuries with nothing more than a note of "sustained in training, now healed," Next to it.
Then she started to get to the weird stuff, his bones had been laced with metal, his eyes changed to have perfect vision in almost any light, muscles greatly augmented, changing the speed of the brain and muscles increasing intelligence and decreasing reaction time. She looked at him, even the best doctors of Atlas would never think of trying to improve someone in a way like this, they just didn't have the tech or the knowledge.
She kept looking and finally found what she was looking for, the more recent injuries that hadn't healed yet. The first thing that popped up was records that seemed to agree with the fact that he had fought in the tournament, then shortly after, the bullet wound, her semblance gave her the info she needed, regular dust round, fire dust, but it never detonated, just blew through him. After that came the sword, which was apparently incredibly hot at the time of the injury, barely solid in fact, that didn't make sense, the wound wasn't cauterized.
Jade just went into the small bathroom in the hospital room and showered quickly before changing into her scrubs and stepping back out ready to operate. She had operated solo plenty of times, especially with her time as a combat medic, and she preferred it, so she didn't even bother calling the on duty nurse in.
She quickly opened the patient up after administering more anesthetics, stemming internal bleeding, correcting a bit of the hip bone, and sewing him back up, she also noticed his shoulder was a little off and she popped it back to the correct position. Suddenly the past day caught up to her and Jade trudged back into the bathroom after cleaning up and changed back into her sweats and crawled back onto the couch to sleep.
Jade wiped the sleep from her eyes and sat up on the couch, looking around the room, then promptly had a miniature panic attack when her patient, which her semblance had told her his name was Fred, was not in his bed.
Jade frantically looked around the room, checking the bathroom, the bed, anywhere and everywhere looking for any clue as to where he could have gone. The mystery was solved as she heard a soft click as the door closed and she whirled around, and there he stood, a sheepish grin on his face and a tray full of food in his hands.
Jade was shocked he was up this soon, and honestly a little impressed, but Fred broke the tension between them by saying, "I was hungry, no corndogs, but they have waffles, and I grabbed extra in case you wanted some,"
Jade did want some, but she needed to put her patient first, "I'm guessing you already know where you are supposed to be, judging purely by the fact that you tried to sneak back in here without me noticing. Just lie back down, please don't force me to make you,"
Fred just shrugged nonchalantly, "What are you, my mom? I'm going to finish my food, then I need to figure out where my stuff is,"
Jade sighed, then pulled her trump card, something she had inherited from both her parents, puppy eyes from her mom, and the disappointed dad face from her father, the combination had made General Ironwood cave in an argument, and that was something that never happened.
Fred looked at her, and his face seemed to melt as he took in the face, the disgruntled hair, the sweatpants and tank top she had slept in. Fred's chin dropped to his chest in defeat, then he trudged over to the bed and sat down, setting his tray of food down next to him.
Jade walked over to him and did a quick check of his injuries, and was surprised to find that he was mostly normal, even the holes in his chest seemed to be mostly healed, even aura doesn't heal that quickly she thought, and she stepped back to look over the updated record from her semblance.
Fred silently held out a waffle on a paper plate to her, and when she took it, he started working on his own food. Jade continued looking through the records, and sure enough, most of his injuries were healed, and the stitches would be able to come off in just under 2 hours.
She mentally closed the report, confused and said through a mouthful of waffle, "How in the world do you heal so fast?"
Fred shrugged, "honestly I don't really know, and its probably classified anyway, but I did eat Linda's gummy vitamins one morning as well as my own when we were like 8, she blamed Kelly though,"
Jade noted that he was definitely military, but apparently not Atlesian, then the second part of the sentence caught her off guard and she lost her train of thought in a fit of laughter.
Fred smiled, then said, "I think you pull off the just rolled out of bed look really well, but the nurse is making her rounds and should be here in about 5 minutes and you should probably try to look a little more, uh, professional."
Jade nodded, getting her expression back under control, "I'm guessing you saw her down the hall when you were coming back from your breakfast expedition,"
Fred gave her a thumbs up as she turned around to go change, then went back to his food.
Fred had no idea why he appeared to be this doctor's only patient, or why she seemed to be his roommate, but he liked her, enough to business to get things done, but also laid back enough to laugh.
An hour later the nurse came by again, "you have a visitor, Mr.—" she paused, clearly looking at her sheet for a last name, then continued, "—Kurt, the visitor has requested that Dr. Honeydew leave the room,"
Jade nodded, "As long as the visitor is ok with me standing just outside the door so my semblance doesn't disconnect, that is fine with me."
The nurse ducked away for 30 seconds, then came back, "he's ok with that," she said. Fred's hopes fell, it clearly wasn't Kelly or Linda, but could still be John, and he finished off his waffles as Jade walked out the door.
Jade stood outside the door and waited, looking for who this visitor was, and her jaw almost hit the floor when Jacques Schnee walked past her and into the room. She watched the silhouettes of the two talking for about 5 minutes, then saw as Jacques walked back out with a completely neutral expression.
Jade rushed back into the room, sitting down where Jacques had been just moments before and asked Fred excitedly, "what'd he say, and why in the world did you have one of the most powerful men in the world as your visitor,"
Fred looked like he had an epiphany, "oh, that's why he got frustrated when I told him I had no idea who he is, and all he really said was asking me in different ways if I would sell him my equipment,"
Jade sat back bewildered, "that was Jacques Schnee, the owner of the biggest and most influential company in the world, what'd you tell him?"
Fred looked her dead in the eye, "No,"
Two hours later Jade removed the stitches and was finally able to disconnect her semblance and go take a break, so she had gone and grabbed a coffee, then went to the corner of the cafeteria she usually went to and sat down to drink it.
She couldn't help but overhear the gossip going on at the booth next to her among a group of nurses, "I heard Jacques Schnee was here today!"
"I know! He was supposedly taking some special interest in one patient, and plans to take him to his own estate to take care of him,"
"No way! That lucky bastard gets to see the Schnee mansion in person!"
"Do you know why though?"
"Not really, but apparently Ironwood found out and was furious,"
Jade stood back up and quickly swallowed the rest of her coffee, then made her way back up to Fred's room as quickly as she could.
When she arrived he was sitting on his bed with a laptop, which she recognized as one of the hospital's that was issued to staff, and some jeans and a shirt that were definitely not provided by the hospital, she decided to waive the theft and get straight to business, "We need to move, now."
Fred closed the laptop and looked confused, "Why?"
Jade grabbed her bag from the couch and threw it over her shoulder, "That man you said no to is very powerful, and plans to take you to his personal clinic where he will have no consequences to anything he does, even though I already cleared you, and more than likely plans to do something not so nice because you pissed him off,"
Fred stood up immediately and snapped into some sort of different mode, "I need to find my gear before he gets his hands on it, and I think I know where to find it,"
Jade nodded, "I'll lead until we get out of the hospital, then you can take the front,"
Fred nodded and followed her out the door.
Once they arrived on the street Fred took a second to look around, then immediately struck off towards the airport. They arrived on foot, and instead of heading towards the normal airport, he headed towards the private airfield.
They ended up crawling through the waist high grass close to the hangars and approaching the multiple that belonged to the Schnee family.
Jade spoke up, "Do you actually have a plan, or are you just browsing?"
Fred shot back, "You said he was planning to have me shipped to his clinic right? I figured we might as well just show up and say we were invited,"
Jade opened her mouth to protest, but just couldn't argue the statement.
"That should not have worked," Jade said as they strolled onto a small cargo hopper bound for a Schnee laboratory in the lower city, they had just acted like they belonged, and they had only been questioned by one person, who Jade had explained that she was Fred's medical escort, and they were to head to the lab with his gear to demonstrate how to properly use it, and it was all Mr. Schnee's orders of course, and he had waved them through.
The cargo hopper took off, then quickly dived towards the city, making way for military traffic at the higher altitudes, settling in to a height just 20 feet above the buildings.
Fred casually asked Jade, "Where's your apartment?"
Jade gave him a puzzled look, "28th street, second building from the intersection with 3rd, odd side of the street. Why?"
"Hold on," was Fred's only response as he looked out the window, then smacked the ramp lowering button.
The roar of wind filled the cabin as Fred shoved the box full of his gear out the back ramp while simultaneously scooping up Jade and jumping out of the moving hopper, managing to smack the close button on the way out.
Jade was absolutely shocked at what had just occurred, and she let out a bit of a scream, but then her military training kicked in and she remembered the instructions for tandem jumps, so she pulled close to Fred and did her best to line up her center of mass to make it easy for him to balance, but she was shocked as the roof of a building came up to meet them and Fred landed in a perfect roll, managing to come out of it with minimal damage to both parties.
Jade looked around, this was her building alright, there were Mr. Daveed's Petunias, and that was Mrs. Tamarind's pigeon, and she laughed at the sheer insanity of what they had just done.
Fred shoved his large box of gear over to the elevator and waved her over, gesturing to her to hit the button for the correct floor. Jade hit the button for her floor and they descended.
In Jade's apartment Fred started unboxing his gear, his whole set of armor was there, his BR55, and most of his knives. A cursory examination of his armor revealed that some of the stuff had already been messed with, but he would have to have it on to run a full diagnostic.
Schnee will pay for those two knives he lost Fred thought, but that would have to wait, he needed to get to his team, find out if Kelly—if the whole team was safe.
He heard Jade mumbling to herself in the bathroom mirror, "Alright Honeydew, you just helped someone you barely know steal, escape from, and piss off possibly the most powerful man in Atlas, maybe even the world, you then jumped out of a moving plane, landed on your roof, woke up all the neighbors, and who knows what's going to happen next, but everything is fine, at least this time your groceries aren't spoiled…"
She continued for a bit longer, but Fred just shook his head and started putting on his armor.
Jade walked back into the room just as Fred was about to put on his helmet, so he waited to put it on. She sat down on the couch across from where he was standing and assembling his weapons and equipment and she said, "So what now? You aren't at immediate risk from anything and you have your…" she trailed off at the sheer amount of weapons contained in the crate, "That can't possibly all be yours, Ironwood said he recovered you without any stuff that wasn't on your person."
Fred looked at her, then back at the crate, "Not all of it is mine, just most,"
Jade shook her head in disbelief, as if that answers the question.
Fred put on his helmet and set some diagnostics running before looking back at Jade, "To answer your original question I have four main goals, first is to find the rest of my team, second is to get home, third, find something to eat, preferably a corndog, and fourth to find out if Schnee has data or schematics on my gear and if so to get rid of the data.
Jade nodded, "At least you have a plan, and I can help with objective number three, and I might have an idea to help you with number four."
Fred pulled off his helmet and his eyes lit up, "you have a tactical upgrade and a corndog? This is almost the best day ever,"
"Not exactly, I know where you can get food and I'll even buy some for you, and my idea is to paint you like a knight so you can walk into almost anywhere with little to no opposition, though only if you can act like a robot."
Fred replied, "I can do that, but do you have enough paint?"
Jade nodded, "Probably, but I'm going to go buy some more just in case, and you can some with me and we'll stop by a street vendor to get you a corndog."
"I feel bad having you pay for all this, are you sure you are ok with it?" Fred asked Jade as they walked away from the old street vendor who looked strangely familiar.
Jade raised the hand she wasn't carrying paint with in a flippant motion, "I already told you, It's fine, I'm a doctor, and am paid accordingly. I could probably buy that whole stand and not have to compromise on my budget."
Back at the apartment Fred started taking off his armor pieces and painting them white while Jade was assembling a meal "significantly more substantial than a corndog"
A few hours later the last piece of newly painted armor clicked into place and Jade stepped back as Fred admired his new paint job in the bathroom mirror, "A bit to flashy for my taste,"
Jade just shook her head, "It'll be perfect camouflage for snow, and you look like a prototype knight, which is the important part. Now where do we go to find and wipe this data?"
"That lab my stuff was supposed to go to earlier."
The two stood outside the lab on the opposite side of the street, it was pretty easy to spot, it even was marked on the Schnee company website as a research facility.
"Jade you're going to have to lead, I'm just a prototype robot remember?" Fred said as they crossed the street and he fell into step behind her. Jade nodded and opened the door, revealing a fairly standard lobby with a bored looking receptionist behind the counter.
The woman behind the counter perked up as she realized that she had visitors, "State your business Ma'am tours are over for the day."
Jade spoke up, sounding considerably more confident than she had outside just minutes before, "Actually I'm an intern at another research center and I was told to bring this prototype knight for its routine data dump and download, and our servers are currently under maintinence, and we can't really interrupt the rhythm of a prototype because that would create another independent variable."
The poor woman looked overwhelmed and unsure of what to do, Jade decided to put a little more pressure on and glanced down at her watch, "I've got ten minutes before it needs to happen,"
The woman seemed to panic a bit, then just said, "Down the hall, third door on the right, end of that hall is an elevator to the data vault and comm center."
Jade smiled, "Thank you thank you thankyou," as she rushed down the hall with Fred in tow.
Fred took the lead just as they got to the elevator, and pulled Jade past it, "what are you doing?" She hissed in his ear.
"I found some building blueprints online," Fred said, pulling her into a janitorial closet just behind the elevator, then started feeling around on the floor.
His finger found a little groove in the floor and he tugged on it, revealing a trapdoor on the floor and a ladder that folded down into a large server room with large so outer screens and terminals about twenty feet below them.
"Old builder's access hatch from before the elevator was put in, they are almost instantly forgotten about once people move in." Fred explained, then descended the ladder, telling Jade to wait.
Fred spent ten minutes looking for any sort of equipment that looked like his, and found it fairly quickly, he started to try to tell if it had been sent anywhere else, or if this was the only location when the door slid open at the front of the chamber and a scientist walked in. Fred jumped up and grabbed onto the ladder ten feet above the ground, hauling himself up and out of sight.
The man walked over to the terminal Fred had been using and sat down, looking at the screen puzzled as it wasn't supposed to be active.
Fred dropped down behind him silently and wrapped an armored arm around his neck. The man brought his arms up to his neck in shock as his air supply was suddenly cut off, and Fred held his tight grip until the man fell limp and unconscious, then continued his search, finding that most of the data was only stored here, but the data for a BR55 battle rifle had been mass distributed. He sighed resignedly, there was no way to erase that, but he could still wipe the rest of the data. Fred quickly cleared the databanks of any reference to his armor, power coming from anything but dust, and what he considered "regular" bullets before climbing back up to meet Jade.
When he folded up the ladder and closed the trapdoor she whispered at him angrily, "you could have crushed his esophagus!"
Fred looked at her, "at least then he wouldn't have to worry about what happens if he's found sleeping on the job."
"But he's just some random scientist, I'm only helping you with this to get back at Jacques after he tried to stunt my career after I told him his bad parenting could negatively affect his kids' health."Fred replied sarcastically, "Oh? I thought you just liked causing chaos,"
Jade sighed and started to walk out the door towards the lobby and the street with Fred snickering silently behind her.
AN: Alright, Fred's chapter is done, hope I didn't disappoint. Next I'm hoping to finish each of the three arcs I've started, but we shall see.
With Corona going around I've had a lot more time to write which has been nice, Try not to get infected and I will see you next chapter.
Also please let me know what you think of Dr. Honeydew, she's my first real attempt at writing an OC
Review Responses:
PanzerJ: Yeah, the reason he got injured is lack of experience, that and the plot demanded it, but you are right, luck = plot armor, so he isn't going to die.
Kat's death, it was just...frustrating, especially after seeing her getting hit in the face with a wraith shell in Sword Base… multiple times. But oh well, at least we can replay the campaign and have Kat drive us off another cliff.
Thanks for your feedback, it means a lot.
Just a Reader: Yeah, he really did deserve to die, and with extreme prejudice.
Don't sell yourself short, any idea is a large contribution.
Thanks for the support, and don't worry, I will keep writing.
Red October 700: Without plot demanding it, Tyrian would probably have to get lucky in order to puncture the suit, but this is Gen I, maybe Gen II armor, details on early MJOLNIR are scarce in the lore.
Thanks again for the support, and I hope to hear from you again soon.