Somewhere In Nevada... ( Steel & Zell )

There was nothing.. all Daniel could see was blackness.  He remembers flying to Nevada, he remembers piloting that suit, and he remembers… a crash?  But right now, there is nothing.  Daniel thought over the fact that he might be dead, if he crashed during the suit’s flight test.  No, he can’t be dead, because his whole body was hurting from the inside out.  Alright, if he’s not dead he just needs to wake up… just.. wake up.

Daniel’s eyes slowly open to a large white room, he was lying on a large metallic stretcher with machines all around him.  It looked like some sort of hospital, or a lethal injection room.  He looked around this white room, no one was inside with him, he was all alone.  He couldn't remember how he got here exactly, how long he was unconscious, or if he was even still in Nevada.  All he knew was that he didn’t have the strength to get up, let alone move his head.

Well this was a total disaster. He was just supposed to fly and try the Gemini exosuit, not fly it into a freaking molecular fusion reactor! Zell sighed as he ran out the door into the dry and arid area. He jumped into the air, hurdling himself. As he did this a pale fire appeared and then soon it faded off, little techno squares and circles appeared in a various pattern of polygons. It appeared to be a holographic image that caught a pale techno-fire, and then suddenly it was a solid object...this object being a motorcycle. His hurdling was so that he landed straddling his motorcycle. Leaning forward the bike fired out with a loud boom. "Oi, What's wrong Zelly-boy?" Sadrith asked as the cycle sped off. Of course a sudden twist caused the tires to spin, spiraling, trying to keep balance and not allow the cycle to capsize.

  Rushing off Zell found himself now kneeling over the man's face. He had been changed...entirely and utterly changed. Oh this was not good. Well actually it was, but this was not the best news for him. The man was now made entirely of this metal. Gemini was normally a deep and dark turquoise serpentine color with an uncanny sheen of orange when the light hit it perfectly. Now he was a silvery sleek individual made of metal. This was going to be horrific...he could feel it.

  "Jesus fucking Christ marine! C'mon Devil Dog. Alright, relax. You're alive AND entirely intact. That's the good news!" Zell said as he was panting, obviously worried for this man as he began to try and help the man sit up. Damn He was heavy now, then again Zell wasn't overly strong. He quickly allowed the holographic device to draw the visor, a pale cornflower colored flam flashed, burned as the visor materialized as the flame died down. Immediately Zell looked to his motorcycle. "Sadrith, get us a transport, NOW!"
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   Zell was sitting there as he watched Daniel through the one-way mirror. He felt absolutely awful about this. This is yet another individual his research has sent into another terrible event. It was the risk of his using an exosuit. Zell wasn't legally responsible, this is true... but a heavy heart never did the teenager any favors. A villain he may be...but not like this. Not this way. The man seemed to stir, unable to lift his head once more...this time because of the restraints. After the events Zell brought the marine to his lab. The man was a statue locked up... Zell quite literally needed to do an exodermal operation just to let him move like a normal person...once he woke up and recovered. Zell quickly moved and entered the room to speak with the man.

   "Woah there Marine, calm down a second. You crashed and we had to bring ya back here. Moving your neck could definitely cause complications. Just relax a second until the MRI's an X-rays come back." Zell said calmly, trying to alert Daniel that everything was...well... relatively okay.

The Marine looked up at Zell, the man behind all of this, the rich genius whose machine he was testing.  Daniel felt a brief feeling of rage, but it quickly faded as soon as it came.  This kid wasn't at fault, he’s a Marine, he signed up for this.  He’s alive, so not all of this situation sucks.  He tried to move his head and Zell urged him not to do such a thing.  

Daniel let out a grunt, it wasn't as if he was paralyzed, and couldn't feel anything.  No.. he felt everything, his insides burning and trembling against the weight of itself.  That’s how he felt, very heavy, like he was still wearing the suit of armor.  He knew he wasn't though, because he could still feel the air on his skin.

His eyes turn to Zell, “Where am I..?  What happened to me..?”  He says very slowly, even moving his jaw was requiring him to use a lot of energy.  He felt very weak, like dead weight.  One thing he couldn't figure out was why exactly was Zell looking at him strangely, like a child who spilled his milk on his mother’s new carpet.  What exactly happened to him?

"You went to high in elevation than the test-thrusters could handle. We tried to tell you to come down but something made our signal go fuzzy. By time you asked us to repeat the thrusters went. Normally you would have just fallen, but the thrusters recovered and you continued on at a very fast pace...right into the power source for the entire test site." Zell said, a rough explanation while barring too many details that wouldn't help the Marine at all. Here was the hard part though, the kicker to it all. Yeah sorry dude but we took the opportunity to rename you "metalman" and now we're gonna give you a guitar and send you off to fight a teenager in a blue suit with a plasma cannon for an arm. Oh boy, this would be exciting...

"You collided into the M.F.C core, a single thing the size of a penny and you just so happened to hit it... it caused a reaction and it...it fused the molecules between your physiology and the suit." Zell said with a sigh as he rubbed his eyes. God this wasn't his problem... but even a villain can feel guilt.

Daniel looked at the boy, continuing to notice his grief stricken expression.  This wasn’t good, there was something he wasn’t telling him.  He gets an explanation for what happened during the flight, most of this he remembered.  The malfunction, the change in coarse, colliding with some building.  That was a power source?  Zell took a long pause, and his expression worsened.  He was about to tell him something bad.  At this moment, Daniel knew he didn’t escape the accident unscathed.

Zell finally spoke, telling him what happened and the Marine didn’t exactly understand.  What does that even mean?  He wasn’t fused to the suit?  He can feel his skin perfectly fine.  No, wait he said “molecules.”  It wasn’t like some fusion you get when touching something really got, it was on the molecular level.

“What…. what are you talking about..?” The man said in a tone you’d hear from a man whose doctor just told him he had cancer.  With a grunt, Daniel began to slowly force his head to lift up right, straining under the weight of it.  After this show of great effort, he takes in the sight of something horrible.  His body, it wasn’t his own anymore.  Instead of flesh, he saw shiny metallic material. “No.. nooo...nooo...NOOO!” He calls out, his voice loud and shaking.  “This isn’t real!  This can’t be!  How is this even possible!?”  The machine that somehow was able to read his heartrate was going nuts, the man was in a state of panic.

"Daniel I need you to stay calm! I might be able to help you undo this but I can't help you if you whip your heavy ass head around and break your own neck!" Zell snapped, the stress and concern for the marine was weighing on him rather apparently. The last thing he wanted was for this guy to end up hurting himself. Of course he didn't really need to worry about it killing him, as Gemini was virtually indestructible. Human means of hurting him would be horribly ineffective, and while it got into quantum and microbiology that were beyond human levels he was certain that his body was pure Gemini now. Not that this marine could see through that. He lacked the intelligence, let alone the calm mind and perception to see through Zell's words.

"If you really want to move start with your fingers and toes, start small, work up." Zell instructed, certain that it would help him by starting small. Of course he didn't expect the Marine to actually calm down, though he was worried that he was going to freak himself into a heart-attack. Soon he'd be used to his own body weight, and things would become much easier with practice. Zell's only real problem wasn't even a concern to him, if the Marine became Irate he did have a plethora of Gemini weaponry. Indestructible against indestructible always ends the same, sadly... well "virtually indestructible" anyway. But this wasn't a good situation. Not at all.

Daniel lies his head back down on the slab, trying to breathe easy.  He’s a marine, he’s been in shittier situations, right?  No; that was a lie, out of all his experiences in the military, this the worst situation he has ever been in.  But he can’t allow himself to panic, even for this, he was trained to face shitty situations.  His heart rate slowed as he gradually calms down, letting out a slow sigh.  He looks up at Zell, slowly nodding his head at the suggestion.

The marine’s eyes looked down at his limbs, though he couldn’t see them due to not lifting up his head. “Alright… move..” He grits his teeth and lets out a strained grunt as his fingers and does start to twitch.  He lets out a relieved sigh. “Atleast I’m not paralyzed..” He makes another grunt as he forces his appendages to move once more.  His toes slowly begins to curl, as well as his fingers slowly clenching into a fist.  It was obvious this Marine had a powerful will.

The dude was tough, so that was good. Unfortunately now he was REALLY tough. Tough to kill, tough to move, tough to rehabilitate, tough to scan. Dude took a whole new level to a pain in the ass. "Yeah, that's what we were worried about." Zell said honestly as he cleared his throat and took out a folder, walking over to be in sight of his little victim here. He could kill hundreds and millions of people a second without a single shred of guilt, but he just watches a bad event happen to this guy and he feels terrible? Strange enough as it may seem, there was a rational reason behind it. One he didn't wish to delve too far into.

 "Okay. Good news is that this CAN be reversed. Bad news is that it's going to take me a while to mesh the technology together to do it. I have to go to another rea-uhm. Another region to get some of it and that takes government time. I'll rush it as fast as I can but uhm...well... This is gonna take five years minimum for me to get all this stuff together." Zell cleared his throat and inched away, hoping the man wouldn't hulk out or manage to somehow suddenly be able to move himself.

  "More good news is you won't age, you'll never get sick, you'll never have to worry about getting hurt really...unless you decide to become STEEL MAN or something like that, then there's about a handful of metahumans that could hurt you...but you're natural healing will reconstruct you better than a regular human.... the only thing I want to do is a little muscle shock to actually help you gain the strength to move yourself. Given your history it shouldn't take more than a week of therapy at most to move like a normal person again." Zell added in with hopeful thoughts that tension wouldn't elevate too much.

A Few Days Later....

Five years... five... years... The Marine kept running those words through his head as he sat up in his hospital bed.  Its been almost a week since he finally woke up, and learned that he was no longer a fleshy human but a metal man.  The last couple days have been difficult, struggling to sit up, struggling to move his arms, struggling to get out of bed.  Zell kept telling him he was adapting faster than a normal man would in physical therapy, which was true Daniel could now walk with relative ease.  He still felt incredibly heavy, and it took a great amount of energy to move his body but over time it got easier and easier.  He could lift himself out of bed, walk around his room, and even lift five pound dumbbell.  It may not seem incredible, but in this short amount of time he’s done what it takes injured soldiers months to accomplish in therapy.

With a grunt, Daniel rises from his bed and slowly walks over to the sink on the opposite wall to his bed.  He looked himself in the mirror and let out a deep sigh, “How am I going to get used to this..” He lifts his fingers up to his cheek and feels it.  To him, it felt like skin, it moved around to his finger like skin would, but no needle could pierce it, which proved unfortunate for the scientists trying to gather blood samples from him.  Apparently, due to the tests, his body is not one solid piece of metal.  He still has a diverse society of eukaryotic cells to make up his body.  The only difference being those cells are made of solid gemini metal.  The only reason why this actually works, is the almost organic nature to the metal his DNA fused with, it works perfectly fine as body cells.  He still has a beating heart, and that means blood.  Further testing revealed that those aswell, are made of metal.  He has lungs, and he breathes normal oxygen, but due to his new molecular makeup, further tests are trying to determine if his body actually requires oxygen to survive.

The Marine lets out another sigh as he lets the water from the sink run, letting it pool in his hands before bringing it up to his face, a second time to allow him to get a drink of it.  He looks at himself one more time in the mirror, “Five years…”