Owen moved from class to class, feeling the eyes of his classmates drift to him as he moved. His eye glowed red as he moved through the crowded halls, drawing more and more attention. Eventually, Owen ran into a bathroom, the stares overwhelming him. "Um. Hi." Celeste said, peeping up from one of the sinks.

"Celeste, what are you doing, this is the guys restroom."

Celeste peaked her head around the bathroom, then back to Owen. "Check again, roboy."

Owen looked around. He was in the girls. "Aw man..." he said, leaning against the wall and sighing.

"It's cool, I won't tell anyone." Celeste said. Owen nodded in appreciation, then moved back to the halls. "Hey!" Celeste called back out to Owen. "Are you ok? You've been making a lot of mistakes recently." Owen nodded his head yes, less confident than he tried to be. Owen quickly left the bathroom, trying his best to blend into the crowd.


"...and I'm just worried about him." Celeste said, walking with D'art.

D'art turned to face celeste head on. "I mean, I can try talking to him about it, but I'm not so sure."

Celeste tilted her head. "Aren't you guys 'bros' or whatever?"

D'art scoffed a little. "I mean I want to be good friends but, it's hard to start a conversation or joke when he can find my point or punch line in my head."

Celeste, about to argue, stopped in her tracks. She heard something in the dorm. She turned to D'art, putting a finger to her lips. The two creeped through their dorm, trying not to wake Eve as she got much needed sleep. The noise got louder, a sort of whirring and banging. Celeste tripped slightly, warning D'art of the bag at her feet. D'art nodded, then tripped over it and fell to his face. The two looked up, mortified at waking either of their partners. "I told you to watch out!" Celeste whispered.

"It's a big bag!" D'art shouted back in a hushed tone. Suddenly, the banging stopped, and the whirring started back up. It was Owen's arm extending over his bed, fidgeting and glitching on his nightstand. "Poor guy." D'art said, sighing. "I wonder what's going on in his head."

Owen was thrown back through his memories, falling between birthdays and friendships. Then the falling stops, focusing in on his earliest memory he knew: his family.


"C'mon Owen! You'll be late for work with dad!" Owen's mother called out, quickly making waffles.

Owen ran down the stairs, quickly grabbing the waffles. "What are these?" Owen asked.

"Waffles." His mom said, returning to the kitchen.

"Why?" Owen retorted with a mouthful of breakfast.

"Um..." his mom struggled to answer, "Just. Because! Now hurry, run on down to the mine and catch up with your father." Owen smiled, running out the door putting on his boots and tying the laces. Large deposits of coal were sprinkled around the mining community, black dots on an industrial face of a community. Owen ran past bakers delivering bread to workers, wives seeing off their husbands to the mine, and children learning on site. Everyone worked in some way for the dust mine.

Owen ran up to his dad, giving him a slight hug. "Hey Owen! How's it going? Ready for a day of work?" Owen nodded, putting on his hat like everyone else. As he approached the elevator, a man in a white lab coat stuck out among the dirty clothes of the workers. He was talking to the foreman, waving a clipboard in anger. Soon he moved into the elevator, the light from the sun slipping away into the florescent lights dotting the shaft downwards.

...

"...and this, this is Dust." Owens dad explained underground. Workers toiled, pickaxes flooding the cave system. "This stuff makes people like you and me into heroes." Owen stared in amazement, moving it around his hands.

"Did you ever use it?"

Owens father chuckled, tussling his hair. "Of course son. But I met your mother, and we moved here in vacuo. Then we had you, and that was the best decision I've ever made." Owen smiled back at his dad. "Now," his dad said, pointing to a wall, "Get mining, that deposit should be easy." Owen saluted, getting to work. Suddenly, a rumble came from the ground, shaking each and every person to their core. Then it stopped, the dust settling once again.

"It's just a tremor, people!" A supervisor called out to the workers. "Nothing to worry about." Owen kept talking to the workers, asking their names and what they liked to do while handing their axes. Another tremor happened, knocking the workers to their feet. "Chris, what's happening?" The supervisor called over his radio, sweat falling from his head. "ITS A GOD DAMN zzzzzzVE COLLAPS...OH SH-" rocks crumbled over the radio. "EVERYONE TO THE ELEVATOR NOW!" Everyone packed in, tight as a can of sardines.

"Where's Owen...OWEN?!" Owen ran to his father's voice, dodging rock after rock. Suddenly Owen stopped. He was pinned. He struggled to move, hearing his father's voice muffled by the sounds of the mine collapsing Owen looked up towards his dad and the light, before a boulder rolled over it like a night sky.

...

Owen woke up soon in a whited out room, surrounded by technicians and doctors. "I want to see him. Right. Now." A voice called out to Owen's left. Owen tried to rotate his head, but it wouldn't budge. He tried to roll his eyes over, to see what was going on. But he couldn't see out of his right eye. He tried to clench his fists in anger, but only one formed on his left.

"I...I can't feel..." he gasped, "My..arm...dad?!" He cried out struggling to get up setting off several alarms from the nearby machines. Quickly two nurses held him down and inserted a syringe into his remaining arm putting him back under.

...

Owen drifted in and out of consciousness, nurses and doctors clamoring over his body. He could hear the muffled cries of his mom, his dad screaming at the doctors, the sense of his body being rushed into an operating room. Owen looked deep into his dad's eyes and only seeing fear. Fear of losing his son. Two guards grabbed him, dragging Owen's dad kicking and screaming back to the viewing area. He saw something in the corner of his left eye, a metal plate close over his right eye. With that he returned to darkness, drifting in and out of the surgery.

...

Owen woke again, feeling numb. He was once again in the white room, but nothing was tying him to the table. He looked around the room, his vision was blurry yet somewhat sharper than normal. As if in response to his revival a man in a lab coat entered the room smiling brightly. "Ah, Owen. You're awake! Fantastic, how do you feel?." Owen reached out to grab the side of the bed to sit up and then he saw it. His right arm was completely metal. Freezing in place for a second he slowly moved his arm closer to his face staring at it in shock "It's ok Owen" the man said, pulling out a clipboard and. "Do you remember what happened?" Owen ignored him, still studying his arm.

"Oh!" He finally answered, realizing he was ignoring him. "Uh, I think… the mine collapsed. And my arm was..." Owen said, going back to staring at his prosthetic.

"Yes, caught under a boulder. More rubble from the collapse crushed the majority of the right side of your body, including your eye. But worry not! We've added in a cybernetic eye. It's got thermal, night, and enhanced vision." Owen proceeded to touch his face, the metal chilling his human hand to its core.

"...but why?" Owen finally asked, staring back to the man.

"I want to help you Owen. Give you another shot at living. Maybe even turn you into the best huntsman the world's ever seen.

Owen's eyes lit up. "Huntsman?"

He adjusted his glasses. "Yes, someone who helps everyone. Don't you want to do that?" Owen tilted his head. He always did want to leave home sometime.

"But, my parents. They'll be worried."

The man in the coat stood up from his chair, pacing around the white room. "Don't worry. They know you're safe here at atlas. They've signed whatever paperwork that needed to be signed." He said staring back at Owen. "So" he said, offering Owen a hand "do you want to become the best?" Owen took his hand, smiling.


3 years passed. Owen worked harder than ever, trying to master his new cybernetics. His family came to visit, the parents bringing food and gifts from his old home. He learned everything he could about his new body, how to fix it, how to move with it, how to use it. It was another training day, when a new technician came in. Owen dropped everything, moving to meet him. "Hello..?" The scientist left a letter in the room, walking out and locking the room behind him. Owen picked up the letter, reading it carefully. Suddenly his calm turned to blind rage, smashing furniture and walls with his cybernetics. He destroyed anything not bolted to the floor. He rushed over to a panel on the wall containing everything his parents gifted him. He raised a fist, then let is hang. He fell to the floor crying. 'Why didn't they accept me...?' He kept muttering in his head, fighting back more and more tears. Another technician came in, stepping over the rubble Owen caused. Owen recognized this one as the one from the mining field all those years ago. "You..." he said, picking him up in another fit of anger. "WHY DIDN'T YOU ACCEPT ME!? YOU TOOK ME AWAY FROM MY FAMILY AND FRIENDS FOR NOTHING!" The technician, gasping for air, motioned to his pocket. Owen grabbed another letter from the pocket, dropping him to the floor. "What?" He said opening it. The white paper had a simple message inscribed: "Dear Owen Williams, I have a simple proposal for a bright student like you, to come to an academy for the best and brightest, Beacon." -Professor Ozpin