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I cut down the Grimm in front of me. It was green where it should have been white. The discoloration a sign of the modifications Merlot had subjected it to. I spun the broadsword with one hand easily.

Neo was by my side and she tore through the Grimm with grace enough for two.

I wasn't quite sure what the point of the modifications were. Were the Grimm stronger or faster? Maybe. But not enough for it to matter. At least to me.

We'd left the horse back in town. Godo had given his word it would be safe in Wutai while we worked our magic. I sliced and cut into the creeper's flesh. I put out a boot and crushed a green one like it was a child's toy and not a ravaging killing machine.

Neo had her stiletto in one hand and the umbrella in the other. She worked methodically covering my flank as we marched further into the Grimm infested territory.

We'd yet to see the humanoid Grimm I'd been wary of. Just these modified Creepers and Beowulfs. I spun my sword around my body and brought it down, crushing a Beowulf as much as slicing it.

Lately I've been fine in my ruminating state but it felt good to blow off some steam against some enemies which definitely deserved it. Grimm weren't like people and for a moment I was able to remember the light.

I cut down monsters left and right, conserving my energy as we pushed deeper into the woods. I spent my Limit Break on blade-beams when I got it and held onto the strength and speed as long as I thought I could manage before I threw it away and started on the next one.

I once Finishing Touched an Ursa Major we'd come across. The whirlwind of attacks stormed the beast until there was nothing left of it and it dissolved away into grime and smoke.

I wouldn't even need to clean my blade after this. It had been so long since I'd fought these. The true enemy of humanity. I had forgotten. I was a slayer of monsters, truly.

I heard Mother's voice even through the fighting. It was beckoning me to the kingdomless lands. To take the relic and fly to her. I could pull it off too. If I just gave in to that alien goddess it would all be fine. The voices and the bugs would stop.

Instead I marshalled myself and pressed on. Neo flickered out to one side and stabbed through two Beowulfs with a refined ease. She was acrobatic as she accompanied me. Flickering out from the wedge I was driving and destroying and Grimm which dared to get close.

I reached out and crushed a Beowulf's neck with my left hand. I easily strangled it until it was naught but dust and ash.

I would have taken a smoke break a while ago but the Grimm had been unrelenting. It was like disturbing an ant hill as we pushed deeper into enemy grounds. The more we killed the more we seemed to aggravate the whole until I at last caught a glance of a lopsided creature.

I thought it was a Beowulf but it moved more raggedly. It was entirely bipedal with one arm disproportionately larger than the other and ripped with barbed white claws. It was fast but slower than I had been expecting, than I had been afraid of. It's face was the least human thing about it. It had a looming maw in place of a head and seemed to detect me without any eyes.

I blocked it's strike and riposted hard. It went down, bisected by my enormously wide blade. The six feet of range never allowed it to get close to me.

I stepped nearer and looked at it as it dissolved. Neo and I shared a look and I could only hope that she felt the same disgust I did over the monstrosity.

How had Merlot made these monstrosities? How had he made me? Was I like them? Godo had called these ones failures… was I a successful model? Who and what was I really? Time could be my only guide as I pursued the truth.

Neo and I held the line together as we moved apart and chopped away at the Grimm that was swarming us. It was possible I was in a bad mood thinking about my origins.

Oh well. Godo-Dono would be appreciative of us killing more Grimm and so far these weren't threatening. It was the sheer number of them that made them dangerous. They were trying to swamp us. I Cross Slashed two Beowulfs at once. The strikes, the same ones that had killed Ren, demolished the Grimm bodies. Tearing away chunks of red and black Grimm flesh the same way they'd torn into my friend's aura.

It had a sort of sickening familiarity to it.

It wasn't good, I'd spent the last week nearly constantly wasted on greens to hold back my psychosis and it was biting back at me now, as if to punish me.

I blinked rapidly trying to get the bugs out of my eyes and ignore the sweet whispering call of Mother's voice.

"Child, my child…"

"Obey me… come to me…"

I fought through it. Whatever it was I was born with it. I could beat this. I rubbed my eyes and stuck a finger in my ear. I changed the motion and rubbed my earlobe. As though I'd be giving her power if I acknowledged the hallucinations.

I heard Mother... Salem- laugh softly.

I couldn't go back. I'd gone too far for that. Besides, I wasn't the sort to listen. To Salem or Ozpin, Ozma she'd called him. I climb-hazard a Beowulf and slammed it back into the ground in a brutal action, releasing some pent up rage. I Limit Broke and became an absolute wall against them, spinning my blade around me and slicing any Grimm foolish enough to come into my long-long range.

Another two 'human' Grimm approached me and I blocked their long claws and stepped back. I swiped low and took off one's leg at the knees. I thrust forward into the other's chest and it died. I brought the blade down on the still crawling one's head.

The person-like Grimm came at us enforce then and we had to give ground to take ground. I jabbed, thrust, and bit my way through them. I was a terror with my weapon and though I backed up, the enemy kept dying around me.

Neo stood with me. Lashing out from behind me when she saw the opportunity and alerting me when we were going to be overwhelmed at our position.

I front flipped and brought the blade down in a massive Limit Breaker attack and it shattered the ground along with a half dozen of them.

I normal Cross Slashed when I saw the opportunity and danced with my blade all through the enemy.

I removed limbs with a casual ease and beheaded the fast Grimm with a casual calm. They were driving us back but they couldn't keep this up forever.

The only advantage they had was numbers and they started to thin out as I bust the cuts out on them. I opened deep gashes in the enemy, ones which would never heal and I smashed them under my foot.

I lacerated them with the massive blade, crushing Grimm white bone at the same time I opened up that red inside. I clipped heads off and rolled my wrists making my weapon a blur as I worked my way through them.

I panted as the last of them died and leaned against Crocea Mors for a moment to catch my breath.

We'd arrived at a steep cliff and there at the bottom sat a white metal roof. It was stained and bullied by the Grimm who constantly attempted to undo the work of humanity. Godo-Dono was right. This place had been built to withstand assault.

Assault by the Grimm perhaps, but not by trained huntsmen like yours truly.

The whole place was giving me a sick sense of Deja Vu. I'd been here before. I knew it like I knew the feel of my own heartbeat, like I knew the long red padded handle of Crocea Mors.

I charged Limit to absolutely full. Then I just jumped and before I hit the ground I climb-hazard the wall, rising back up after falling without even hitting the ground. I stood on top of Crocea Mors, embedded in the rock. I pulled it free of the cliff face and then I landed and simply took my weight on my legs.

I looked up to witness Neapolitan drifting down with her parasol. She looked peaceful, relaxed.

The structure looked mostly clear and I stood still, charging Limit Breaker while I waited for her to land. I left it a hair away from being charged and resumed my patient waiting.

I searched my way around the sides of the building, looking for a way in until I found a set of blast doors on the Eastern side away from the cliff. They weren't made of Titania, forged of some kind of cold steel instead. That meant I'd be able to cut my way through.

I activated Limit Breaker and Cross Slashed the doors. The steel fell away to reveal another set of blast doors into which I'd partially cut. I just charged my semblance again and came down with a massive overhead strike and two horizontal swings to pry it open.

Neapolitan landed on the roof above me as I finished breaking my way inside. There was a fury in my heart I couldn't quite place. I was pissed off at being born somewhere wretched like this.

I hovered my way inside. The light I cast from Limit Breaker shed a fine shifting glow over the walls.

I closed my eyes and focused on holding onto the Limit as long as I possibly could. I didn't want to be in the dark in here. I needed the light.

Wisps of my semblance washed over the ceiling as I paced my way inwards. Neo teleported beside me and gave me something like a reassuring smile. I just frowned. The genius loci of this place hated me and I hated it. The feeling was totally mutual. We came across rows and rows of… pods I guess you'd call them. Inside each came a soft greenish glowing light which was familiar to me. Like some distant fever dream.

I could hear Salem's voice whispering louder now.

"Bring it to me… come to me child… my beloved son…"

I didn't buy it. It was getting annoyingly distracting, though. Shadows loomed from every corner of the place along the thick tanks. I walked up to one and peeked inside. There was one of the humanoid Grimm in there. For all the world lifeless and floating, naked and shameless.

"Is this what I am? Just one of these… these clones too?" I asked.

Neo didn't answer. She looked distinctly concerned though. I breathed and tried to relax. I cast light with a wave of my arm upwards. At the top of the rows and rows of tanks there was a larger one. With an inward blue light emanating from the glass window. I walked up to it and traced my fingers across the glass. Nothing floated inside.

"This… this is where I was born. Where I was made. This tank right here. I remember being on the opposite side. The blue light… all of it. It seems surreal to see it from this side now."

True enough I felt almost a sense of vertigo to be looking in from the outside.

I walked down the steps and Neo followed, skipping to keep up, umbrella at the ready.

"If I'm supposed to be comforted by the feeling of having a special tank amongst these cloned monsters I'm not. Let's see what else we can find."

I paced downwards away from the rows and rows of tanks. There was an office there. It had a wide chalkboard… and rows and rows of books.

There was a security terminal too. I booted it up but it asked for a password. I hadn't the slightest clue what the password could be. I turned to the books.

"Let's see… Jaune Arc, perhaps. No… it seems he only gave model numbers to successes. If I'm a true failure I won't be in here. Perhaps it's this one."

I pulled a book from the shelf and breezed through it. Notes on the DNA of the creatures in the tanks. And graphic illustrations of those monsters.

"One of these will be about me. Or my line of models at least…"

I tossed the book behind me and grabbed another. It was full of details on a vivisected Beowulf. I leafed through it and tossed it aside. I was beginning to make a bit of a mess.

"You want to help?" I asked Neo.

She gave a slow cautious affirming nod.

"At that terminal, try variations on Jaune Arc. What with caps and spaces and all. Maybe it'll work. I don't know."

She nodded and began typing away at the computer with resounding mechanical clacks.

I tossed another book over my shoulder. Adding to the growing pile. I ransacked the shelves but whatever labeling system Merlot had used didn't agree with me.

Eventually Neo stopped typing.

"No luck?"

She shook her head.

"I thought not… Did you try 'password?'"

She gave me a flat look and did. No dice. Just that same login screen.

"Hey wouldn't you? If you were me?"

She sighed heavily but she did nod.

I tossed a book on Creepers over my shoulder. It landed haphazardly and I found I didn't much care. If Merlot ever returned he'd find his collection in a state of miserable disarray.

"Wait this is it." It was a vitruvian man which kinda looked like me. It was in the cheekbones and jawline and around the eyes. It had my tank's label to it.

"I was… I was made from Salem's cells. And some donor's. It doesn't say who. How in the world did he get his hands on Salem's cells? Doesn't she like… live on a kingdomless continent? I feel a pull in her direction but I cannot tell how far."

"I was grown here from a fetus. In that tank until I was nearly an adult. The tank educated me, I think. There are vague impressions..."

"Salem's cells… it must explain her control over me. How she's able to get in my head. Why I still hear the whispers. I can still hear her now."

Neo pantomimed smoking.

I nodded, relieved at even the thought and pulled my pipe out. I packed it from the grinder with some Lemon Drop Haze and took a long pull using my lighter. My semblance died out around then. I sighed and started to recharge. I took a long pull as I did and the only thing I could see was the glowing red embers in the pipe, slowly growing, then slowly dying out as I roached the entire thing in a single pull.

I exhaled and like a light switch my semblance turned on. I breathed out in Neo's direction by accident and she waved a hand through the smoke, looking annoyed.

"Sorry," I breathed. "Sorry."

"It says here… it says I was a partial failure." I wasn't sure what to make of that. At least I had a face unlike the humanoid Grimm and he counted those as...something I guess. I felt something bitter rise up in me. Something howling.

A failure without so much as a birth.

I couldn't even be a failure from birth.

I had no model number. My father… Merlot...

Instead on through the notes. "This explains my fake memories. They were given to me by the tank. And my… and my sisters. There's no mention of them. I wonder if they were successes." I put the little book in my pocket and perused the rest of the shelf. "They'd have a different model number if they were successes…"

I searched through every last book but found no mention of them, my sisters and no more references to me, myself, either.

"She said I was Merlot's. Could my sisters have come from somebody else? The more questions I have answered the more questions I have!"

I swung out with Crocea Mors and shattered the glass on the tank nearest the office. Neapolitan shot up, looking alarmed. The Grimm thing stirred but I reached through the broken glass and strangled it with my bare hands. Liquids from the tank dripped over me and the green light dimmed. It fell apart into a disgusting black fluid.

I growled and wanted to scream.

"Nothing about this makes sense. Nothing about this is fair. I'm going to get my hands on Merlot for real. I'll make him pay for ever creating me. Every ounce of agony I have ever suffered I shall inflict upon him ten-fold."

I laughed madly and shattered another tank. I stabbed straight through it and the Grimm thing inside. Malformed. A reject. A bad batch and nothing more. That's all my existence was. My entire life and every emotion I'd ever felt.

The only people who could answer my questions were Salem and Merlot and lords only knew where Merlot was. I had no intention of going near Salem. Just so she could control my mind again? I wanted nothing to do with that.

I skewered another tank and this time I did scream. I pierced the thing inside and it died a bubbly, gurgling death.

Neo watched from the sidelines, transfixed. Her face was ashen white.

With shaking hands I pulled my pipe out again and set up another hit. I pulled hard and long and coaxing.

I fell to my knees with it and for a minute or two I just let myself be fully and truly mad. My semblance evaporated and I was in total darkness.

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-WG