"You can't defeat me as long as you're still human!"
Setsuna instantly ducked her head back into the water in a desperate attempt to drown out the sick, saccharine laughter clawing in her head.
The water was freezing, and sent goosebumps all over her body and chills down her spine. She had already washed off the dirt and grime, and now all she was doing was just wallowing in her sorrows and thinking about the things she didn't want to think about.
Yes, yes, she had lost her fair share of fights - that was a given. Through failure comes enlightenment, they told her. But never had failure been so humiliating. Never mind the perversity of the skirmish; the worst part of it all was that she had brought it on herself. All because of a stupid, silly mistake that she had always been able to avoid before.
(Damned hormones.)
If this had been a serious battle, if she had been protecting Konoka, or Negi, or Asuna, or anyone, and she had faltered like she had done before, then-
Setsuna closed her eyes, clenching her teeth. No matter how much she trained, it would never be enough if she couldn't control those aspects of herself. If she couldn't do that, then she would never be able to maximize her poten...
Wait a minute.
Maximize her potential.
Her sword in one hand, happiness in the other.
Ki in one hand, magic in the other.
Maybe...
Maybe the human side in one hand, and the demon in the other...?
...Was it a risk she was willing to take?
She opened her eyes to her reflection on the tiles; she stared long and hard until it became a blurry and unrecognizable figure.
...
...
...
...Perhaps.
She lowered her gaze and turned off the water.
-
A/N: Eh, I dunno about this one. I just needed to write something to vanquish my writer's block.
Just a brief character vignette. It became stream-of-consciousness, but that's what happens when I write drabbles. So here, have an angsty Setsuna. Quotes were pulled from memory, please excuse me for my laziness to look up the exact quote.
Fun fact of the moment - I write most of my stories backwards. This is one of them.
In other news, hohoho, I sense some well-needed character development in this arc (mainly from Asuna, obviously, but hey, it'd be nice to see some other characters get attention). Finally. Even then, that's pretty much one massive "maybe" there. Sigh…