My Master always told me that I was a perfect fighter. But I wasn't the absolute 'best' fighter. I was ten years old at the time. And it bothered me to try and contemplate the meaning of such a mystical expression.
Years passed and I grew up, and I began to understand exactly what he meant. Everybody is perfect in that everyone is themselves. But you cannot expect one's perfection to be better than another's. Life just isn't that generous all the time.
Which—I think nowadays—was the Master's way of breaking it to me that I was not the most gifted of all his students. I lost most of the spars. I panicked under pressure. I couldn't run as far, teleport as far, or swing my sword as far as everyone else who learned the tools of the Spectrum. I was young, inexperienced, and naïve.
But according to him, I was perfect. And it shocked me then as much as it makes sense to me now that I was chosen to be his Balance Adept—the 'heir' to the power of Blackness. I was astounded. I still am astounded, howbeit inescapably lonely.
I'm a little older now. Nearing sixteen. I can't say I'm anywhere close to being the godly Joe Schmoe, John Doe, or Gary Stu to wield the sword in the name of the Titans' ambition. But there's one thing I've never lost sight of in regards to myself.
I am perfect.
And I shall always be 'perfect'.
The same as all of us are and will be perfect.
Even if life itself—as ever—assaults us with the wages of imperfection.
-T-T-T-T-T-T-
It is the morning time.
A bright Sun—still cool in the early morning—drips off the Ocean waves lapping up against the rock bluffs of Titan's Island. I am standing on the Western Side, with the Suspension stretching far aside to me like a second horizon. I am surrounded by sawgrass, swaying and drifting in the wind.
Myrkblade is in my grasp. My exercise movements are slow, methodical, dancer-like at slow mo. I am looking at everything and nothing at the same time. My senses are honed in on the fabric of the universe—and the very epicenter of that fabric. It is an element so very familiar to me, like a second bloodstream.
Balance.
Ever since I joined the Titans, I've been asked multiple times about my powers. The nature of them. How I am able to do the agile things I seemingly can do. I hesitate to answer any of my partners—Bard included. Why?
Because the answer is even more awkward than the question. I have no powers. The Spectrum is something that is applicable to all human beings. And that makes it an essence, not a gift.
All in all, I just want to avoid explaining it to Beast Boy because I just KNOW he'll pull some wisecrack about Jedi proverbs—unless Static beats him to it first.
I take deep breaths. My black eyes are fountaining fumes of obsidian—partly to shield my sensitive optics from the blossoming sunlight, but mostly because it is a necessary side effect of my fluctuating concentration of murk.
'Murk'.. ….the physical (and sometimes incorporeal) manifestation of my being a vessel of Balance into this waking world. It is something that swings, swims, and sloshes with nature. And it also has the neutrality to spin orbits around anything and everything that exists. To 'fit between the cracks' of matter with intense serration. To evade and to envelope and to engage. But never to invade. It's not so much a passive shade of the spectrum as it is necessary one. For Balance is the essence that keeps the poles of life in check—Construction and Destruction. White and Red. Progress and Inevitability.
It fountains out from the slicing contours of my blade as I stealthily guide the wooden blade through the air and over the sawgrass fingers in a Tai Chi of ferocious frothiness. I take deep breaths. I focus.. …and let the essence of darkness manipulate the movements of my limbs. And I am in peace—not so much enraptured as I am complete.
And it is at such a moment that my mind teeters on the brink of oblivion. And like a devout Buddhist monk or an ascetic priest, I feel the euphoria of existence.
And I am speechless.
This session can go on for well over an hour. And each morning, it usually does. But it so happens that a circumstance branching over from last night has fountained its way into the present with an ear-shattering, fateful: "Snnnkkt! Yo! YO Titans! This is Static, I-I think you should all head on down into the laboratory. Looks like our over-muscled 'guest' is coming to."
"Static, this is Robin. We read you. All Titans. Report to Cyborg's lab. On the double."
I take a deep breath and exhale. It's not a sigh. It feels too good to be a sigh.
Other things are worth sighing for.
CHIIIING! I sheathe Myrkblade. I walk and hop over the sun-lit rock bluffs. I pause above a puddle of trapped Ocean water and glance down. I see my reflection. My squirrel-black eyes. My frazzled hair sprayed darkly around my cranium. And a thin, deep scar stretched in a solid line across my throat. It is a scar that I subconsciously finger.
So many things worth sighing for… …
"… … …"
I shrug it off and bound, blur, surge my way up to the Toward entrance.
I could really use one of Bard's songs right about now.. … …
