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I thought about my ability to fly. I really thought about it and I compared it to Ruby's ability to transform herself into a swirling hovering red mass.
They weren't so different. Not really. But hers was an active ability. It was something she had to focus on in order to accomplish. What I did just sort of happened. I glid over the ground when I fought almost unconsciously. It had been unconscious at first. I didn't know I did it until Ren pointed it out.
How long had I been doing that? Since I killed Eminence and her partner or before even that? It had to be before that had happened. And it was something I once could only do when my semblance was active. But that was the nature of Limit Breaker. It made me better than I was otherwise.
I could still Cross slash and blade-beam without Limit Break active. And there was nothing special about the eight cuts that made up Octa slash. Nothing special other than I was spending my semblance on them.
So what did that mean for my magic?
For one thing it meant my sword was like my magic wand. It was a bit like I'd seen Weiss use Myrtenaster for. A guide for her semblance and power. A focus. I needed my sword for blade-beam. It was in the name, blade-beam. My sword was where I drew my power for that little spell. My very first spell and the one I used the most.
All my attacks that spent Limit Break were like that. They all used my sword as the main point of origin. Where my power was gathered and used. I could probably use my fists in a pinch if I had to but the Titania edge suited me far better than punching or kicking would or did.
My sword was even at the focus when I flew. I held it behind me or in front of me and I was always ready to wield it when I soared. That was different from Ruby's semblance. Ruby's weapon blurred into the rest of her when she flew. Or when she became a drifting mass of petals it transformed with her. My weapon never did anything like that. Instead it remained the focus of my power.
It glowed and even hummed with energy when I swung it around. It sung with force. It was my magic wand. Crescent Rose didn't do anything like that for Ruby. Instead it was most like Weiss's use of Myrtenaster in that aspect.
When I ate dust that didn't really change. My weapon was still the focus of my power and my blade-beam was still my go to for letting that power out.
I imagined that Ozpin's cane was like that for him and Oscar. It didn't need to be a blade for that to work. The Titania pointed tip probably worked just fine for him. Or at least as well as my edge did.
There were subtle differences between what Limit Breaker did for me and what a typical semblance did. For one thing a semblance typically did one or two things. Super Strength. Lie Detection. And they were usually simple. Even Blake's shadow clones were simple in concept as was Yang's semblance. Mine had a whole bunch of moving parts. It made me stronger. It made me faster. And it gave me a charge to spend. The only other similarly complex semblance was Weiss's and hers was defined by all of it's moving parts and spells.
Her spells were about the only utility as numerous as Limit Breaker. Then there was Ruby's semblance. It also let her change states but it was active and not passive like mine was. They were all active things they had to focus on whereas mine was passive. It was something that just happened to me except for when I charged it. That was the only active part of my semblance except for when I spent the charge.
That was my second spell after blade-beam. Storing and gathering power by charging. I was storing and gathering magic or something. Maybe aura, maybe not.
It was this magic or aura that made me stronger and faster. Especially while my semblance was turned on. It was this magical charge that I was able to use for movement or an attack while it was active.
Was it really a semblance then? Or was it pure magic? It was impossible to tell. And that was the point. It was something I did with power. That could just as well be magic as it could be a semblance. I had no idea.
It wasn't quite like Ruby's ability to fly then. What I did was a passive combat oriented thing where what she did was an active change in states. Even my ability to change states was in many ways passive. Sure I could charge it but I also activated it by dealing or taking damage. What did that say about me? What did that mean for who I was as a person?
It meant there was a magic or aura based threshold for me. A place that once I reached physically I crossed over. And the Breaker state change… what did that mean for me?
My ability to elevate myself and become more, if only for a little while meant something. I could see traces of magic to it. In how it made me stronger and faster and maybe even a little smarter. But it was hard to measure something like that. Not like how it was easy to measure my speed boost. And it wasn't the kind of smarter that made me better at taking tests. It made my instincts more true. It made my decision making better.
How do you keep track of something like that? You don't. Not really. I wasn't even sure it really happened, myself. It might have just been bias. It made me so much stronger and faster then didn't that just make it look like I was behaving more intelligently? Or did my speed and strength just give me more options, options I might not have otherwise had?
Of everybody else's semblance Ruby's and Weiss's were most like mine. Ruby's for the state change and the speed buffs and Weiss's for the spells. Though it was also a bit like Yang's but barely. We both took damage and that made us stronger but that was the only similarity. She couldn't charge her semblance and spend it on stuff and mine didn't actually set me on fire. The blue wisps of light that covered me was just what my aura looked like when it was over charged with aura or magic while her semblance actually heated things up and made her catch fire.
Mine only did that when I ate fire dust so it didn't really count. It felt superficially similar. The parts that mattered were different. For example her semblance didn't activate by her dealing damage just by taking it.
So Ruby's ability to change her states though and Weiss's ability to cast spells were like me. Weiss's spells were a bit different from mine if you wanted to count things like Cross slash as a spell. She had the ability to manipulate time, I sure as shit didn't have that. Unless my speed boosts were accelerating me through time. That might explain how it made me smarter. It just gave me more time to think. That didn't feel quite right though. She also had little blade-beams. She could cast little points of light out from the tip of Myrtenaster. That was like me.
That just left Ruby's state changed but like I said, that was active for her and passive for me. Maybe my powers just weren't like anybody else's.
That would make sense for a semblance but it also might make sense for magic too. That just left my sisters. My powers were an awful lot like theirs. But that could just because we were related. Weiss's semblance was exactly like her sister's.
But why? The big kicker. Ruby had described Saphron's semblance to me. It made all of her attacks stronger once it was activated. That was an awful lot like mine. Then Violet's made her faster, again like mine. Then Lavender's ability to charge and release attacks was a dead ringer for my powers. But was that magic or was that just aura. Aura was funny enough and hard to define without magic being involved. But it was in play for me. Or else I wouldn't have been able to transfigure the needle into something like a feather.
So where did I draw the line if anywhere? I had no idea, and according to Ozpin that was the point. The line couldn't be drawn. Magic was just aura but even more. So what was the 'even more' for me? Was it all of what I called Limit Breaker? Or was it just parts of it? If so then which parts? The elevated state? Not necessarily, Ruby had that kinda. The spells? Weiss had those too. The speed or strength? Ruby and Yang both had that. So what was really happening?
It was literally impossible to tell from my perspective. And that might well be the point.
My powers weren't anything like what the maidens had so they weren't a good point of comparison. They came from Ozpin, after all. And I came from Salem. Further still, the process which had made me was unique, but that was true for everybody, made in a lab or no.
Nothing jumped out at me and screamed 'I am magic!' but then nothing also said 'I am your semblance and I am not magic' either.
It was confusing but it was probably not going to be any other way. Especially considering how I was made. Maybe if I was grown normally and had a normal childhood something would be more glaring, but probably not.
With the maidens it was all fire and wind and lightning whereas any magic I had was subtle. It was carefully hidden under my aura. Not that anything I'd seen Cinder do also couldn't be aura. I mean, Pyrrha had been a kind of materiokinetic. There was no reason somebody couldn't be pyrokinetic in a way that imitated what I'd seen Cinder do.
It's just that it was unlikely somebody would be pyrokinetic and electrokinetic and aerokinetic all at once. That was the realm of magic. So was I that same way? What were the odds that somebody's semblance made them stronger and faster and gave them a charge to spend? Unlikely but not impossible.
It seemed that it never reduced the odds of my powers being the result of just aura to zero. No matter what I stacked on top of it. It was just never impossible that my semblance did this and that and more. I mean, Ruby's semblance gave her speed and the power to fly apart and I was sure it made her stronger. But she was a child prodigy. She'd won the superpower lottery. While I was just a slouch. I think that was the difference. Beyond being extremely lucky my abilities were unlikely.
It was just unlikely that all my powers were the result of my semblance rather than magic laying under the surface. Carefully hidden but there all the same and augmenting me along the way. Giving me super strength and the power of flight. That was why flight used to be something I could only do while my power was active. Then it grew and expanded into being something more. That was the magic in me.
And I was older than my sisters. I'd probably faced more combat than them. It was possible they just hadn't realized and unlocked more powers yet. And hell, it was possible that they never would. I doubted that, though. Anything I could do they should be able to do. Or close enough.
So where did that leave me?
Well it left me with my ability to fly which stood out a little. Maybe if it remained something I was only able to do while my semblance was active but it hadn't. It had grown and the power had spread out into something more.
There was my strength and speed. I was super strong and fast even without my semblance turned on. That too had grown and spread from being something I only had with my semblance into something I had all the time.
Those things were probably magic, then. Probably. Not one hundred percent but probably.
My ability to charge and spend that on an attack or movement might be all there really is to my semblance. And everything else is magic. That didn't feel quite right either, though. That felt a little like magic too when I was examining things from this perspective. But then did I even have a semblance at all or was it all just magic? For all I knew all my semblance did was make me glow with pretty blue lights. That also didn't seem right, though.
I didn't have the energy manipulation that a maiden like Cinder had but I did have her flight. That was a similarity. Again flight stood out amongst my powers. But it was still something that could be construed as purely combat oriented. It certainly helped me with fighting even if it was just to help me get around. So it didn't really help me differentiate between magic and aura.
Except anybody could do the kind of energy manipulation I'd seen Cinder do. They just needed dust. So if that was really where I wanted to draw the line on, then I better be prepared for Weiss to cross it on the daily with her dust spells. She had power of fire and lightning and ice. She just needed a pinch of dust. Hell, I did too, when I had dust.
So that wasn't a really good line either. It seemed the closer I examined the difference between magic, aura, and dust the harder and harder it became to distinguish any of it. The more everything seemed possible with any single one of them without any of the others.
My super strength was like that. My speed was like that. My charge was like that. But then so was everything Ruby seemed able to do. Would she be able to transfigure the needle too? Would Weiss? It seemed impossible but it really wasn't. Even if they didn't have magic. It could just be another hitherto unknown faucet of their semblances. By that logic was everything I did a result of my semblance, including the needle transformation? It could be. It really could be.
"Cloud? You've been quiet…" Weiss murmured. She stroked my hair while I sat back in her lap. I was exhausted after my bout of training by myself and Weiss had a fantastic lap.
"Just thinking. About magic, you know? And dust."
"Well just so long as nothing is bothering you."
"It is bothering me a little, though. Do you think you would be able to transform the needle?"
"Of course not. My semblance isn't anything like that."
"What if it is and you just don't know. Your semblance let's you do so much. So many spells. What if one of them let's you transfigure the needle and you just don't know. You know? Because why would you have tried?"
"I see… you're still not sure you have magic, then," she interpreted. She was on the ball a little bit.
"I might have magic," I returned. "I just know that it's buried under what we call my semblance if I do have it. But everyone could be like that."
"Not everyone could transform the needle though, Cloud," Weiss murmured. "That's magic."
"Is it? Ozpin said we all have our own talents. Even with magic. I want you to try and transform a needle, Weiss."
"If it'll make you feel better I can give it a shot."
"It would," I affirmed. "How many people do you think Ozpin tried to teach magic to? How many different people truly failed the needle test before he started to give up? How many of them really believed in themselves when they tried? All of that matters. You think it doesn't matter to magic but it does."
"I'll give the needle a try," Weiss promised.
"But you have to really believe that you can do it. Or else you for sure won't succeed. How many people really believed that they could do it before Ozma started to give up teaching it?"
"Ozma?" Weiss asked.
"It's what Mothe-Salem called him." I caught myself on my words. "Ozpin that is. Ozpin wasn't his first name. He had reincarnations before."
"I guess that makes sense. And what? You're still trying to figure out what is magic and what isn't? That makes sense too. Your semblance can blend well with magic so it can be confusing, I'm sure."
"Thanks Weiss."
"No problem, Cloud."
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-WG
