Days Union Oneshot Book [DISCONTINUED]

WE ARE STILL HERE TO BREAK THE SLAY!!!

A/N: This is loosely tied to the "EVERY DAY I WAKE UP IN FUCKING OHIO" chapters but I've edited some details to make it more accurate to DU lore since the server search bar is my new best friend (/j)

ALTHOUGH WE NO LONGER REACH FOR THE STARS, WE ARE STILL HERE TO BREAK THE SLAY (someone sign me up for therapy please)

* * *

Flashing lights spiraled the room and coated the walls in red. A cold, thick gel of bright cyan leaked from a shattered capsule, spilling the liquid all over the hard floor. The piercing of glass shards burned his nerves until they shrieked out the shocking currents coursing through his body. A siren blared above it all, disintegrating the seed of any attempt at a thought sparking in his mind.

A mind new, a mind foggy, a mind dazed by something he did not know.

His consciousness faded in and out, every blink bringing new sensations and environments. The first few continued with those harsh red lights circling him like a vulture and that loud sound aching his ears. Eventually, however, silhouettes shielded his vision from the red light and began to attempt to hoist him up. At one point, he felt the hands supporting the back of his head slip, his skull making harsh contact with the floor wiping his vision to black again.

And the darkness wrapping around him stayed for much longer.

The chaos of the senses ceased, leaving him alone to nurture the seeds of his thoughts.

He first asked, "What am I..?"

Of course, nothing answered back. He asked again, "Why am I here?"

Still nothing.

He should have expected this; he just... was. He just began to exist without a say in it. But he had no idea where he was, who he was, why he was even existing in the first place. Other people would have to tell him. Other people would decide it for him.

The awful burning sensation returned, flaring in his skin like a wildfire devastating anything it could consume. He wanted to find a way to relieve the pain in any way. Why was he feeling this? Who let him feel this? What even was it?

Then it clicked.

Pain.

The sensation seared him mercilessly, its only purpose to make him suffer. It hurt, that's what it did. Was all pain like this? Was this all life was?

If so, he did not know if he wanted to return to consciousness.

But like everything else going against his will, his eyes fluttered open to the sight of a blinding fluorescent light. The smell of rubbing alcohol stung his nose until he scrunched it in a displeased sneer. The shadowy blanket over the silhouettes now slipped off in the presence of the light, revealing their forms as much shorter people in lab coats and armor.

"Subject Baron is awake, Admiral," one of them murmured into an odd device attached by a wire to his belt.

As he rubbed his head, he processed the name just uttered: "Baron."

"Is that me..?" he mumbled, his dry throat aching. What did the name even mean? Why would he be named that?

The man in the white coat looked up, his eyes wide as if he did not expect the subject to speak. "Affirmative. You are Subject Baron, one of many experiments of Project Regal. Your duty is to assist on the battlefield."

Baron held his hand up to his face and traced over the lines of his palm with his thumb. He could not choose the number of lines on his skin. He could not choose to have softer skin instead of the sickeningly hard calluses built on his hand. He could not choose to avoid the terrible pain still burning his skin. He could not choose his name to be anything but "Subject Baron." He could not even choose what his duty was.

He could never choose who he was.

These people who he did not know chose his entire life for him. They chose to leave him in confusion. They chose to leave him in pain. And now they would choose to lead him into more confusion, more pain.

Something else seared inside him: a pain that burned in the very core of his existence, that compelled him to unleash it somehow. To unleash it on something... or someone.

Anger. He felt anger.

His fingers balled as tightly as they could before he swung his arm with as much strength as he could muster until his fist slammed into the wall. Bits of the drywall crumbled from the impact as cracks split across the wall, sawdust leaking from the crevices. The man in the coat jumped back and clutched his clipboard to his chest, his eyes growing even wider with a different emotion deep within the irises—like surprise, but much more intense, much more capable of dropping your heart to your stomach.

"Subject Baron, calm yourself," a cadet ordered, adjusting the gun loud enough to convey it as a threat.

As he whipped his head around, the sharpness of his ice-blue eyes punctured a fatal glower into the soldier. The cadet winced and froze as still as a statue, his eyes already beginning to dull at the realization that his time had come.

"You dare threaten me..?" Baron snarled before he lunged for the cadet's neck. Just as a single choke for air escaped the cadet's throat, the tightening of Baron's fist released a sickening crack that bounced off of the walls of the tiny infirmary. He tossed the limp corpse to the floor, the strength of his throw sending the body crashing into the wall with the audible crunches of a few more broken bones.

He turned back to the man in the labcoat, who shrank against the wall, away from the wrath of his terrible creation. A terrible thing he had created and unleashed on Zirianata, as merciless as pain itself. One capable of destruction, even more than the Coalition itself could bear. An unblessed royal, forever scorned under the justice of Ziraina. A monster.

But Baron's skin was already designed to be as tough as leather, impenetrable to the mortified stares and vengeful glares attempting to strike his heart. Impenetrable to the fearful realization stabbing into his back.

He could not fight, beat, or destroy his way out of this miserable hell he had been punished into. They would find a way to use him somehow... or kill him if he refused to comply. As much as his first moments of existence felt to be torture, the thought of it ending so soon brought back that flare of anger within his ribs. Only now it was different, like he would loathe himself for fading out of like as quickly as he had faded into it, without only the death of a useless cadet to the name Baron.

He would forever despise the Daybreak Coalition for making him feel pain when he first arrived in this cruel world. He would forever hate himself and whatever they chose to make him, whatever he chose to become under their orders. He would forever curse the searing fires of anger each time he snapped another neck or shed another drop of blood. He would forever mourn the loss of freedom that the Coalition took away before he had a chance to know it was there.

But he would have to do as they said if he wanted to stay alive.

He approached the man in the labcoat still cowering against the wall. His hawklike stare on his creator did not break for a single blink, even when the creator turned his face away and gasped for his final breaths. Yet as easily as Baron could have killed him as well, he fell to one knee and bowed his head.

"My name is Subject Baron Daybreak, at the service of the Coalition."

* * *

Climbing the ranks should have felt rewarding. He should have felt satisfied in having been declared Chief Admiral of the Coalition. He should have been proud of being a shining example of Daybreak's glory and power.

He felt anything but.

His resentment for the Daybreak Coalition did not fade after