Ch. 7

I cannot even begin to explain the annoying behavior Jalen had been when we started talking about names. I just wanted to use whatever sounded nice and discreet. SHE wanted to match names, chose ones with meanings, didn't want the meanings to repeat - I can't - I just wanted a name. Oh, dear Glow! 'Horus is a god of war, but also a god of light, so we shouldn't use that if you want to keep –'Dear Glow, it was so pointless.

In the end, we decided on our names. My name, in full, is Kuraz Horus Rai. Jalen's full name is Levia Candida. Once we were done with that particular madness, we noticed that we were hungry.

"Clair should be running her kitchen shop by now," Jalen said. "Want to go eat there?" (*A kitchen shop is like a restaurant, but people bring the raw materials – game, fruits, exc. – to the cook and ask them to make it a certain way. The adaptable the cook is, the more likely they'll get more business)

"Sure," I said. "I've always wanted to see a functional hunt and eat. Let's go."

We grabbed some of the leftover food from earlier and headed off. It was a ways off from the house, but we soon arrived at the two-story building that was Clairs Kitchen. The bottom was stone, but the top was a dining area with a folding cover that could let light in or block rain.

"She gets so much business, she needed to expand upwards to make room for her customers," Jalen explained. "But she always keeps a table ready for me and Zack. Now you, of course."

"Stop getting my hopes up," I said. "The food you made could never compare to anyone else's."

"We'll see about that when your taste buds are relaxing your mouth muscles."

We walked in, and the place was noisy. People's chatter was everywhere. Laughter, yelling, excited tales of hunts. It was weird for me to stand in that kind of atmosphere. I mean, it was a positive atmosphere. Not something I had much experience with at that point. Imagine the feeling of strangeness of suddenly walking into a fight, but take away the adrenaline caused by fear and instinct. As for the layout of the place, the round tables were placed in diagonal rows across much of the room, with a small bar/kitchen area on one side and a small stage on the opposite, where a man was currently doing something with a tool to make sounds.

"Priest!" called Clair as we walked in. She was wearing blue jeans, a blue shirt, light blue gloves, and a handmade coat that reminded me a little of the ones the doctors wore during chemical analysis of my blood. But all the pockets were filled with various bottles of herbs and spiced, and everything she wore was covered in food stains. She had her hair covered by a tied blue patterned bandana.

"So is he awake?" she asked.

"He's right behind me," Jalen yelled over the din of the room. I was the only one in heavy armor, so I was drawing many stares from everyone. (*Which didn't help me feel welcome in the least) I tried nodding my head at a few of the burlier groups in the room, which took care of the majority of the staring eyes. But the few that still looked at me felt oddly piercing, as if I could feel their harsh criticisms of me in their very gaze. I shook my head of the notion and waved at Clair.

"I figured you'd pull through," she said. "Your table is where it usually is, P. Go on and take a seat."

I followed Jalen to the table. Up close, I could see that the list of acceptable ingredients were etched into the wood, formed into a spiral pattern from center to edge. The center of the table itself had a stack of four plates, four bowls, and four full sets of silverware.

A man came over to take our food.

""We'll have two Magic Specials," Jalen said as hesitantly handed him the food.

"Of course, ma'am," he said, grunting a little at the weight of the baskets. I took a seat opposite of Jalen so we could talk better. Up close, I saw that a spiral list of all acceptable ingredients were carved into the table, with four full sets of eating tools set up at each seat.

"I hope you don't mind that I ordered for you," Jalen said. "The Magic Special is just really, really good. Clair will take a look at everything we've brought to her and decide on a recipe that's completely random, but always fantastic."

"I'm sure it's delicious," I said. "I'm more concerned about the stares I'm getting from everyone else. I'm not exactly blending in at the moment."

"Well, I think you look great and everyone here is just jealous."

"Maybe, but it's no less weird on my end. I kind of feel . . . out of sorts with everything."

"Look, Pal, I know how hard this must be. I may have been saved a lot earlier than you, but I still had a lot of trouble dealing with people. Not only because of 'The Program,' but we also mentally mature faster than normal. So I first thought that humans and Fauna were idiots that had made us by sheer luck."

"Were they really that slow to grow up?"

"Honestly, I think even some 40 year olds are still maturing."

"That must have been tough."

"It was, but then I meet someone. A Faunus boy named Jack. He really proved my assumption of humanity wrong. We actually dated for a while."

"Really?"

"Yeah! We would walk along the river and talk about how stupid people could be sometimes or whatever was bothering us. He would play in the river after a really heated rant. I asked him why he always did that and he said, 'I need to wash more than my hands of this mess they made of me.' He splashed me and soon, we were both playing in the water, splashing each other . . ."

As she talked, she got progressively sadder. It didn't take an expert body reader with super vision to know that he was now dead. I reached over and grabbed her hand, the little bit I knew in comforting a person. She stopped and composed herself.

"I miss him," she whispered as a tear ran down her cheek. I just held on tight to her hand, not knowing what else to do.

After a moment, she pulled herself together and was smiling again.

"Sorry," she said. "I shouldn't be like this. I'm bringing you down."

"It's fine," I said.

I didn't know what to say after that. Unfortunately, someone else joined in.

"Hey," said the intruder. It was a thin man with short, black hair, a thin beard, red eyes and cape, and a button-up shirt with black jeans. "What's with your armor, Shiny?"

"You like it, too?" I said.

"What's it made out of?" he slurred, his eyes not even focused.

"Well . . . um," I was on the spot and I had no idea what to say. (*You see, it's actually made of rolled homogeneous steel with a small mix of gold and depleted uranium around two to three centimeters thick on average, not including the edges of joints. They thin out considerably, and even fold into each other at some joints. It's mostly gold in color, with small Dust shards at areas to help me weaponize the Dust in my body. But saying that would have raised drawn attention to me, and if I gain too much of a reputation, 'The Program' might come looking for me. But I couldn't think of something that would explain both its look and strength without garnering attention) Thank the Glow Jalen did.

"Hey, are you new around here?" she asked, leaning forward a little in his direction.

After taking a moment to align his eyes, he focused completely on her.

"Why, yes," he said, trying to lean in his chair in a way I think was meant to look cool, but otherwise showed just how drunk he was. "I new."

"Well, where are you from?"

"I came to here from Mistral."

"Why did you came all this way from a big city just to stop in this town?"

"Well, sweetheart, if you must know, I'm a Hunter on a job."

My blood instantly went to a boil. Hunters have been the most dangerous thing I have ever fought in my life. They would be the exact thing 'The Program' would send to try and take me back.

"Ooh! What are you Hunting?"

"An alpha Beowolf. It's earned the name 'Night Stalker' with how it hunts, and it's been reported to be around this area."

"Sounds like you could use some help."

"Well, I would certainly love the company, beautiful."

"I meant the both of us," she said, pointing between me and her.

He took another look at me, and I could tell that he wasn't happy about me being there. But I was just happy that he wasn't after me, so I didn't react to it. I DID react to what he said after the look.

"I doubt your friend would be much help in a fight."

"Says the man as he struggles to stay upright," I retorted.

"Hey, it speaks!"

"'It' is also trying to enjoy an old friends company without being interrupted by a drunk."

"Oh, really? And what am I in all of this?"

"Annoying. Now would you go back to whatever it was you were doing before you thought to bother us already?"

"I don't think I like your tone."

"Well, I KNOW I don't like your breath."

"HEY!" Clair called from across the restaurant. Everyone got really quiet, some edging away from us. "What's going over there?"

We looked at each other for a moment. I held eye contact with him, not knowing what else to do at that point but ready for a fight if he tried something.

"Nothing," he said after a heavy moment of silence. "I was just leaving."

He turned and walked away, and slowly conversation went back to normal.

"What was that?" asked Jalen venomously. "Were you trying to pick a fight or something?"

"Wait, what?" I responded. "Is that not what you're supposed to do?"

"What?!"

"I've seen it happen like that all the time when on exercises in towns like this. A man tries to steal a woman's attention while another man is talking with her. The original on talking to the woman tells the guy off after a minute, and doesn't back down until he leaves."

"That's a stupid romantic movie trope!"

"Romantic movie trope? I'm not familiar with those words. What do they mean?"

"Uh, never mind that! The point is, you were about to start a fight with a Hunter. You only just woke up, Paly. I don't want to see you sleep again."

"I understand your concern, but I would have been fine against him."

"I didn't mean the Hunter, I meant Clair! She would have tossed you through the wall and then fix it in five seconds. Literally, I've seen her do it."

"Oh. I guess I should apologies to her."

"Yeah, you should," Clair said as she brought us our food. It looked like a basic stew, but the mix of sweet, hardy scents and the colorful way the fruits and vegetables floated in the brown broth told anyone it was anything but basic. My mouth started watering like mad at the first whiff of the stuff. (*I was originally feed flavorless rations that were made only with the essential my body needed, as made by the scientists. There was never any 'flavor consideration' in 'The Program') "So what was that about, anyway?"

"A Hunter was flirting with me after interrupting a conversation me and Pa - Kuraz were having."

"You decided to keep that ridiculous name?"

"Yeah," I said, "I like it. It's unique."

"That's one way of putting it. Anyway, here're your Magic Specials, which I took the liberty of Dusting up for you. This one's . . . Kuraz, and this one's Priests."

"Thank you, Clair. Here's the Lien."

"Hey, don't bother. It's on the house to celebrate the new guy joining our small town."

As they argued about payment, I focused entirely on the dish in front of me. Looking closely at it, I could see that the broth had small specks of Gold Dust floating inside of it, making it shine rather bright. The smells were intoxicating, fruit and meat and herb given a perfume-like quality as the steam rose from the bowl. I placed my helmet (*Which had been resting under my arm up to this point) on the table and grabbed a spoon. I swirled the solution around, and the colors danced in the shade of the apple slices, pineapple chunks, orange cuts, carrot pieces, potatoes, and so many other things. I brought the spoon up to my mouth, and the scents increased to overpowering levels.

And then I sipped it.

It.

Was.

Bliss.

It was like the Glow itself had blessed me with the purest of sensations. I had to grab my jaw to stop it from spilling the holy elixir that was the soup. So many flavors, so many textures, so many chemical reactions – My sense of taste was being overloaded. (That use to happen to me a lot when I was little. Since the Dust in me enhances my nerves to an extreme, I would be overwhelmed by sounds, lights, and even changes in temperature. It took a lot of patience on 'The Programs' part not to kill me as a babe, but don't confuse this as kindness on their part. I was the only living specimen at the time, as all other attempts had failed to live past five minutes outside of a tank)

My situation must have shown on my face, as the others stopped their conversation and focused completely on me.

"Hey, you alright there?" asked Clair, moving to put a hand on my back. I reflexively pushed her hand away as I tried to process all the sensory information my tongue was relaying to me.

"I completely forgot!" Jalen said as she understood what was going on. She grabbed Clair by the collar and pulled her ear to her mouth to whisper. "Clair, his senses are a lot stronger than ours. You've just overloaded his taste buds!"

"Shit, what do we do?!"

"Get some bland bread, now." Jalen turned back to me as a migraine began to form in a new area inside my brain. "Paly, listen to me. You need to spit the soup out."

I starred at her, aghast. How could I possibly release such a potion as this? Was she mad? Why am I getting a migraine?

"Come on," she said, "we can't make a scene here. It would make Clair look bad."

I slowly understood that my reaction could be considered the result of bad food, so I focus all of my willpower into a singular effort.

I swallowed.

Most of the strength of the soup's flavor was taken away, but I could still feel the blessed sustenance roll down my throat and into my stomach, where it slowly spread throughout my body. I began to glow faintly, my own soul responding to the ecstasy of the biblical broth. Jalen was quick and absorbed the excess light I was emitting. But she had a problem finding a way to release it. After looking around for a moment, she decided to blend the excess with the natural light bulbs. No one was the wiser.

Clair came back with a loaf of soft bread, which I took a large bite out of without thinking. The last of the experience was absorbed into it, and I was back to normal.

"I should have thought of this," Clair said. "I knew you were made of Gold Dust and I should have put two and two together."

"No," I wheezed softly, "It's not your fault. 'The Program' should have thought of something so simple and prepared me for it."

"I still should have thought of it."

"No, honestly, don't worry about it. The food is still great, I was just overwhelmed by it."

"Kind of shows that we're not infallible, huh?" Jalen said.

"What?"

"Well, think about it. 'The Program' Wanted to make super-soldiers, capable of facing any threat that could be faced. Yet you were nearly taken down by a bowl of tasty stew. It's kind of funny."

I was about to retort when the lights dimmed down in the room except for the stage. The men began to cheer about what would soon happen.

"Quiet," whispered Clair, "She's about to go onstage."

I looked to the stage and a woman walked into the middle of it. She had longs, dark hair, long eyelashes, blue eyes, red lips, and wore a simple red dress of some glossy material. A small band formed in the background with their instruments all black so as to blend better into the shadows. The woman herself accepted a microphone a man passed her. As the band began to play the opening of a song, she began to sing. It was a nice song, filled with long notes that she held nicely, the band behind her changing their rhythm to match hers. I forget exactly how it went, but the overall idea of the song she sang was about her being happy that she left someone and now gets to live free. It almost fit the situation I was in, except that she sang about the fun she had with the other one, so I couldn't relate to the song.

Everyone else was in love with it, though. All the guys were dog-eyed about the woman on stage, and all the women off it were looking at her with obvious jealousy. I watched for a bit to see if anyone was going to try anything, but when it was obvious that they weren't, I went back to eating my amazing food. I first tried dunking the bread into the stew, which really cut the overloading aspect of the thing. But after I had soaked up half of the liquid, I realized that I would leave the fruits and meat to dry. So I tried eating some of the solid stuff, but it was almost too much. Luckily, Clair got a waiter to bring me some water to try and cut the stew as a whole, so I instead used it to cut the solids exclusively.

I managed to finish my food as the song ended, with the crowd cheering the woman on stage for her performance.

"So," Jalen said, "did you like it?"

"Great," I said, "once you get around the migraine-causing first bite."

"Again," Clair said, "I'm really sorry for that."

"I was talking about the song," Jalen said.

"Oh," I said. "It was nice."

". . . That's it?"

"Um, yeah."

"I would've thought you'd like her song," Clair said, "Seeing as how you nearly choked on your food because it was too strong."

"I couldn't relate to it, so I didn't go through the emotions a song is supposed to carry you to."

"I think you're overanalyzing it. Can't music be something just to listen to?"

"It can, but it still wouldn't be as satisfying as a song that you can emotionally invest in."

"Wait," Jalen said, a sudden look of confusion on her face. "How the hell do you know about music?"

"They sent me in a lot of villages like this to start trouble and fight a Hunter. So I would come across some music every now and then, maybe even an instrument, and so I know the basics of what music is. Once I did, I used some reasoning to figure out what it was for."

"Alright," said Clair, "Let's hear what you think it is and why."

"Well, at first, I thought it was something to help boost one's spirit in a fight. But when I saw a civilian listening to some as he danced, I scrapped that and thought it a form of entertainment. But then I heard a sad song, so I came up with the new idea that it was something in the lines of art. You know, a way to express yourself. After that, though, I soon heard some dubstep, so my current theory is that it's a way to make you feel emotions whenever you want."

There was a moment of silence as they looked at me blankly.

". . . Wow," said Clair, "You're really bad at telling stories."

"I'm use to giving reports," I said.

"Hey," Jalen said, "Stop talking like that. You're free now. No need to talk about the past."

"What do you mean?"

"Um. . . Well, how to say it. . . What I'm trying to say is that you don't have to dwell on what happened in 'The Program.' You can move one and start a new life without fear of them."

"Okay, I wasn't trying to say it to bring back bad memories. . . Although, now that you mention it, could we give the thing a vague name for conversations between us so as nobody gets any flash-backs or anything? We'll also need it to talk about it in secret."

"Hm," Clair thought out loud. "How about just 'The Program?"

"Alright, I'm down with that." (*And that's how that was done. Don't be confused with how emotional I was when talking about 'The Program' just then when I originally wrote that it brought up bad memories in the beginning. I was conditioned in 'The Program' to not respond emotionally, and it stuck for a while. The anger I felt in the fight with Schnee was the first I've felt in a long time)

"Hey, guys!" Called Zack as he entered the room. He wore black leather pants and a red t-shirt that read 'I have 2 hammers' under a leather jacket. "What I miss?"

"We've decided to call 'The Program' 'The Program' so we can talk about it secretly and without triggering any emotional reactions," I responded.

He stummbled a little at that, what I said catching him off guard.

"Um, okay," he said. "That wasn't something I expected to hear when I walked in here."

"Well," I said, "We're not exactly normal ourselves."

"Hm, fair enough. So have you decided on your names yet?"

"Shush!" Clair said, "I don't wanna hear them yet! I want to hear them shout it out to the crowd during the Ceremony."

"Alright, alright! Keep your apron on. But what about what they plan to do after the Ceremony?"

"After the Ceremony?" I asked.

"Yeah, what do you want to do with your life?"

"Oh, that's easy. I want to free the rest of the Dusters and build us a kingdom to live in."

Everyone stopped and starred at me for a good minute.

"What!?" they all asked.

"I want to free-" I began.

"No, after that," Clair said.

"Make a kingdom for us?"

"What?" Jalen asked.

"Make a kingdom for us," I said, deepening my voice so it could be heard clearer.

"Dude," Zack said, "you have some ambitious dreams if you want to make your own kingdom."

"What do you mean, my own kingdom? I said our own kingdom."

"We don't have dreams to rule anything," Jalen said.

"Okay."

"What?"

"Okay, let me spell this out, as you're all confused about something I've been saying. I want to make a kingdom that will be the main home for the Duster race. I don't care if I rule it, or if you do, or anything like that. But when you look at the facts, the Duster race won't be able to stand on its own in this world without such a place. Humans and Faunas are fighting between themselves right now, so there's pretty much no way that they'll accept a race made by them to be weapons as equals. So we need a place where we have supremacy until it's over between them or we've established ourselves as equals."

"Oh," Clair said. "That makes sense, I guess."

"But couldn't doing something like that be made to show our unwillingness to fraternize with the other races?" Jalen asked. "You know, like a sign of war?"

"It would, but the alternative is that we walk around the other four kingdoms un-unified and subject to new hate and fear."

"Un-unified?" Zack asked.

"Not unified."

"But how would we even go about making a kingdom?" Clair asked. "We need the minimum of a completely tactically advantageous position of grand scale with massive deposits of resources."

"We find a big plain and dig underground, I imagine."

"That's it? Just find a wide plain and dig?"

"For now. First we need to destroy the other bases where they keep the other Dusters."

"Your plan keeps getting more unrealistic by the minute."

"So what do you want to do, play human while our brothers and sisters die at the hands of 'The Program?' Is that what you want to do?"

"No, but we need to be realistic. We could never go against 'The Program' regularly. Priest has nearly died hundreds of times just trying to find you. What makes you think you could do any better than she did?"

She brought up a fair point. While we were stronger, faster, and smarter than the average person, we were still four people. We stood no real chance against our creators, who had an infinite budget, resources, and people to pull from to stop us, not to mention the fact that they were incredibly secretive.

But I couldn't leave others like me to face what I know they face. To fight impossible odds every day for the lab-hacks, to kill innocent people to keep them emotionally distant to the world, to repeatedly undergo surgeries for new organs that may improve their performance. How could anyone leave them like that?

How could she fight me on this?

"Listen," I said, adding an edge to my voice so show my anger at what she suggests. "I will not leave them to suffer like I did. What you experienced in 'The Program' was nothing to what I endured. I WILL save them all, and you WILL help me, as they are OUR kin."

"Watch it," Zack said, getting angry at my own tone. "You don't get to order us around because you've been through shit back at 'The Program.' We're allowed to do as we please out here, so you need to do a better job of persuading us on what you want to do."

"There should be no need to persuade you to begin with. We are the only ones that know of this, of people being grown into weapons, and can actually make some kind of difference. Yet not only do you not want to help them, you don't want to because you feel free to disregard them for your own personal benefit."

"That's not what I said!"

"Then please, explain why you're fighting me on this."

"I'm not fighting you or saying I only want to do what I want. I'm saying that what you propose is so ridiculously huge that I can't in good conscious do this with you. You need to show me something that proves you can do this."

Before I thought of how to respond to that statement, I heard a scream from outside. I perked my head up to hear if it would happen again. My friends paused at first from my seeming reaction, but the second scream was heard much better. I ran outside with the others behind me, putting on my helmet as I passed through the door. A third scream told me where to go, but before I could move towards it, Jalen grabbed my arm to stop me.

"Paly, you idiot!" she said. "This is obviously a trap! 'The Program' knows how you work and will be doing stuff like this at every town that we could've gone to."

I shrugged her off and began running towards the noise. She hadn't been there for years. She didn't know what I'd become in 'The Program.' I may have given them a completely new persona to confuse them. Or I acted crazy while with them. She had no reason to think I was still the same.

But in any case, I ran deeper into the forest on the edge of town. The screams acted as my compass to the trouble. Before I got to close, I made green stairway to the top of one tree and grabbed hold of some branches. From where I was, I could see an alpha Beowolf running after a woman and a small boy. It would have caught up to them had they not been dodging through the woods left and right. But they were about to head into a sparse patch of the woods, so I needed to act fast. Surveying my options, I made an axe of green and slid from the top branch on a ramp of blue.

I kept forming it as I went, matching myself up to the path of the two people and the beast. I got their attention and directed them to a small clearing where I could fight the monster properly. I did my best to tomahawk the thing as it sprinted through the forest, but what it didn't dodge was blocked by the trees. (*I was never that good at throwing things while sliding on a ramp like a skater with flat skates. I could never properly add my velocity into the throw)

As the familial pair entered the clearing, I dropped behind them to block the beast's path. It set its sights on me and made a rather daring leap at me. I brought my shield up and made a few golden support rods to hold it against the force that slammed into me. Just as the thing bounced back from its sudden road block, I took a few steps back and made a giant hammer of brown, cartoon-style. I brought it up, and as I began to slam it down onto the behemoth's head, I filled the head of the hammer with a crimson red light. As it made contact, the brown shattered to release the force of the red straight onto the Grimm.

Shadowy flesh seared from the force of the blinding brilliance, the creature howled in pain, and I never stopped in my charge as I made a sword of gold to plunge into its skull. But as I was about to make contact, a blast from a shotgun like weapon deflected my weapons course, and I had to make do with shoulder-charging the beast farther away from the couple of victims.

The thing squirmed against me until it managed to get its feet on me and pounce off as if in water.

"Any reason you want this thing alive?" I asked the shooter as I kept my eyes on the beast, we now circling each other with gazes locked.

"Can't have you taking my kill," said a voice I didn't expect to hear.

"So this must be 'Night Haunter' or whatever you're after?" I asked as the drunk came out of the clearing to the right of the Grimm.

"Night Stalker," he managed to say with a minor drawl in his voice. "And yes. I'll need to collect the bounty on that thing if I'm going to pay my bar tab."

"Alright, I'll take out its legs and you can take its head."

"Please, amateur, let a pro handle this."

"Said the drunk to the trained killer. If you want to play Hunter, that's fine, but the 'lone ranger' role you're trying to play won't help against something like this."

"Did you forget that I managed to block your god-like sword strike from twenty yards away?"

"Haven't you noticed that it's been paying attention to me even after you got as close as you are right now to it? It knows I'm the bigger threat and it's a dumb daemon animal. Or are your senses waning in your old age?"

"Stop trying to make me hate you as we fight this. I'm too seasoned for you to trick me into being bait."

"You mean too senile."

"Okay, that one was uncalled for."

The Grimm finally turned to look at the man, which is when I used my Dust ability to dash at super speed to get the beasts legs. Surprisingly, the old guy nearly matched my speed, minus a dozen miles an hour. I didn't focus on finesse and simply cut through the kneecaps of the Grimm, dodging under its bulk as it fell. The man stabbed through the head with an oversized sword of his own, about as wide and as long as his torso. The handle had a clockwork face at the pommel, covered in a strong sheet of Plexiglas. (*My eyes can see the way light passes through glass with enough detail to differentiate between different makes and varieties)

The thing nearly fell on top of him, but he managed to push it away and stumble back as the Grimm fell.

"Well," he said, "that was something."

"Not really," I said. "That was easy, plain and simple."

"You kids never seem to understand the value of every fight."

"I've been in plenty, believe me."

"You're not the first to say that, and you won't be the last."

"Whatever. Go collect your bounty, old man. I'll check on the victims."

I jogged off before he had time to retort, going back to the clearing where the woman and child were still laying. The mother was holding her child and weeping, so I ran over. I slowly moved her aside to see the damage to the boy. He had many minor injuries from branches and stones, but the biggest wound was a large gash on his back, now a deep red with dried blood.

I took my gauntlets off and felt for a pulse. It took a moment, but I felt a small beat in his neck.

"Run in town and get help," I told the woman as I started tearing the boy's shirt off to examine the wound fully.

"My baby . . ." she sobbed.

"Listen!" I grabbed her chin and gave a solid shake. "Go to town and get help. I can do a lot, but I need a friend in town. She's a priest. Go now."

"Uuuhh, uuuhh, okay," she gasped, and went to get Jalen.

I got to work doing what I could for the kid. Straining myself to the limit, I used my Semblance to see if he had anything festering in his gash, like a piece of bark or Grimm talon. Seeing none, I began to deal with the bleeding. With a soft, red light to lightly cauterize the wound. After wiping the rest of the blood off, I started shining the healing light I learned when I was around three. It was entirely by accident, honestly. I was surrounded by five Ursai that had taken the use of my shield arm. I was on the verge of fainting, but I managed to pull from another part of my Aura I had never knew existed. If I had to describe the sensation of healing anything, it would be as if you were to expose your most sensitive skin to the wind of a hurricane. Nothing is in the wind, mind. It's just the sensation and pressure of the wind itself you feel. Not bad, but there.

Anyway, I went to work healing the worst of the boys' wound. I'm use to healing my own flesh to the fullest, but I wasn't as comfortable doing the same for others at the time. Remember, special Dust nerves here. They are three times as connected to each other as normal ones and can adapt easily, so I never had to worry about anything but the main veins being patched properly.

I tell you this so that when I tell you that Jalen took over and started really healing the boy, you know why I was impressed with her skill in the healing arts.

She truly let the Light shine through her that day, even if she's modest about it. I spent a good minute looking the boy over after she had healed him, using my Semblance to microscopically enhance my vision to see the inner muscles and blood vessels she had put back together. Every vessel was connected. Some obviously not at the right places, but blood flow was 100% normal because of her work.

"How did you patch him up so well?" I said after I was done looking him over.

"I've a lot of practice," she sighed, then turned to the child. "How do you feel, Jeffery?"

He curled into his mother's stomach, where she held him tight.

"Thank you so much," she said. "I thought I'd lost him."

"Don't worry," Jalen said. "He'll have some pain for a few days, but he'll be fine. Tell me though if anything else happens in that area, okay?"

"Okay. Thank you so much for all your help, Priest."

"It's alright, Bethany. Go home and rest."

She walked off, and that left me, Jalen, and the Hunter alone.

"That," said the Hunter, "was some mystical crap you pulled right there. How'd you do it?"

"We've photo kinesis," Jalen said. "So when you control a part of the universe, you learn how to use it."

"Can you do that, Shiny?" He said, turning to me.

"It's Kuraz, and to an extent," I said. "I do hard light creating."

"What?"

I made the sword of light again.

"This kind of thing."

"Oh. Nice trick. How do you do it?"

"Like her, photo kinesis."

"Wait, so you two have the same Semblance? Wow."

"We know, it's rare for two people to have the same Semblance like us."

"Yeah, even for siblings."

We talked over each other while trying to say 'no, we're not related.'

"Oh," he said. "That's even stranger."

"Yeah," I said. "We know."

"Oh!" Jalen exclaimed. "We never got your name."

"Qrow. And you are, gorgeous?"

"Jalen, though it's not official yet?"

"Oh? Why's that?"

"Well, in this village, you go through a ceremony to gain the name of your choice."

"Wait, so what were you called when growing up?"

"Priest."

An alarm went off in her Scroll before he could respond to that piece of information. She pulled it out and checked it.

"Hey, Kuraz," Jalen said. "We should get going. The Ceremony will be starting soon, and we need to get you some better clothes than that."

"Alright," I said. "Let's go."

"Alright. Later, Qrow."

And we walked off after that.

I won't bore you with the details, but we managed to get me a nice gold collared shirt, some beige cargo pants, and a set of white sneakers that I managed to make slip-ons by tying the knots just right. We left my armor at Jalen's home, though I was insistent on hiding it so as to avoid possible theft. We made it just as they were rolling the stand that held all the cups of herbs and powdered Dust. A small crowd was already forming on one side of the stage, and another on the side with the steps with all the ones about to go get their names. We joined into the group, though it was kind of awkward doing so, the tallest of the rest reaching our chests.

"How old are most of them, do you think?" I asked Jalen.

"Fourteen, most likely," She said. "We're definitely the oldest."

"Is that weird, or no?"

"A little. Most kids usually pick their names at the age of fourteen, so we're the minority."

"Like in every other regard."

"Hey, we can still be friends with them."

That threw me off guard.

"Uh, I didn't say anything about being friends," I said.

"Well," Jalen said, "what you said sounded like you were alienated and hated being such, so I thought I should say something to that capacity."

"Um, okay. I don't mean to say that you're wrong in that regard, but we are aliens to this planet as it is. A new race unlike anything this world has seen before. While we can fraternize with them, we will always be fundamentally different from them."

"Doesn't mean we can't be friends."

"Not saying we can't, just that we have to keep our difference in mind when dealing with them."

"Don't see how being partially made of Dust would make us so different to a human or Faunus."

"Don't you remember what the doctors said about our life-spans?"

"Life-spans? I don't know. How long was whatever it is you're talking about?"

"Like, when we were done learning english. It was something they made a big deal out of."

"Mmmmm, no, drawing a blank. What about it?"

"Well, so long as we aren't killed, we should, theoretically, live forever."

She looked incredibly shocked by the news.

"Really?" she asked.

"Yeah," I answered. "They analyzed the way our bodies regenerate both naturally and with our Semblances and concluded that so long as nothing aims to kill us specifically, we could live forever."

"So we're immortal?"

"No, we can still be killed or fall ill."

"But we have a chance at living forever?"

"Yeah."

"Wow. That really limits my options in a boyfriend."

"Once I make our kingdom, maybe not. We could maybe make you one, if you got desperate."

The last line was meant as a joke, but she focused on the other thing I said.

"You really plan on making a kingdom of Dusters?" she asked.

"We NEED a kingdom of Dusters," I replied. "With one, we can build our race and make sure we aren't kept as slaves again."

"'Sigh' you really are ambitious."

"Not even a little. It's just logical to make a place for ourselves where we can grow separate from human control. If we can't, we would start a war with them."

"No, we wouldn't."

"They're still fighting about Faunus Civil Rights and combating the White Fang. They're not going to accept bio-weapons as an equal without fear or power. My method involves power, but it's not directly pointed at killing the other races, just with founding our own culture and safe haven for our kind."

"But what makes you think you can do this? I mean, you're not just talking about making a kingdom, which is unlikely enough as it is, but of fathering a whole race into a world you yourself said wasn't ready for something like us. Why do you feel the need to do something so . . . so drastic and grand?"

"Because one way or another, we, and others like us, are here now and intend to stay. We can't stop the creation of our race without genocide, which I will NOT do. As such, somebody needs to create a place for them – for us – so that we won't be abused or treated unfairly in this unfair world. I have the ability to at least try doing this, and I owe it to me, you, Zack, Clair – I owe it to our kind to do what I can to help them."

"And what of the other races? Do you think to just ignore them completely, or maybe you want to destroy Atlas and take over the world."

"I don't want world domination, and I don't plan on attacking Atlas either. They made us out of fear of the Grimm. They went overboard in what they did to us and are doing to others, which I will never forgive them for, but they had the best of intention. At least at the start. So while I wouldn't mind leading an army to raze their capital and kill everyone associated with 'The Program,' I won't do it. As for what I plan to do in regards to interaction between us Dusters and the humans and Faunus as a whole, I don't know yet. What do you think I should do?"

She opened her mouth to say something, stopped, then took a minute to think over her own question.

"Not everyone is bound to be like you are, Paly," she began. "Refusing to act on their emotions, I mean."

"Believe me," I said, "If I hadn't had years to think about it, I would probably be trying to destroy Atlas by myself right now."

"Regardless, some, if not most, will try to do that. But that would only cause pain and trouble for a lot of people, including us. So we can't have them doing that, but I don't know how we should react as a race to them, either."

"Guess we'll save that for another day," I said as the Ceremony began to start.

It wasn't much, all things considered. The platform only had a small stand near the center with lots of different cups, each filled with a herb or Dust, seemingly at random. Hedmund was there also, is a flowing robe of colors that would have been garish had they not been so dull. He stood right next to the center in front of the stand, and us on the other side as we walked towards him, one by one. He opened with this long-winded piece:

"Friends, family, and other compatriots, we are here to witness the formal coming of age of our wonderful young ones. See here that these once innocent children are no longer such, but are now truly grown beings to be treated with the respect they have striven for. But let us take a moment to remember those that are not with us on this journey through life, misfortune taking them from us . . .

"Remembrance done, please join in this celebration of these new being, now ready to claim their names from the world."

The first few went up, stating their names as Kevin Syre or Samos Tour, and Hedmund would anoint their face with an herb or Dust and say 'Recognize him/her,' which the crowd responded with 'We recognize him/her.'

Jalen went before me, eager to gain her name. When she did, Hedmund used white Dust to paint her face like that of a steer. (*It's meant as a symbol of healing and nature, but it looked so Light-shined funny at the time) She glowed a little as the last bit of Dust was applied, and I swear it formed white antlers before Jalen used her Semblance to hide the effect.

Then it was my turn. I walked on stage, feeling rather conscious about how I must seem to these people. Everyone so far has been a familiar face to the people watching me now. They know them, but don't know me. Coupled with the fact that I feel naked without my armor and in a disadvantageous position, and you got yourself one uneasy Duster. Hell, my nerves were too nervous to make me nervous, that was how weird it felt.

He makes a small motion for me to lower myself, the hand out of sight from everyone. It takes me a moment, but I realize that I'm tall enough to make this a little awkward for him. So I get on one knee, in case I need to suddenly roll or jump up in a moment. Jalen said that it made me look like a man about to be knighted. I think the word she used was 'magnanimous.'

Hedmund takes a moment to 'hear the Light,' then, of course, takes the gold Lightning Dust for my marking. He painted me as an animal as well, which I should have mentioned was rare, as most of the time you get a symbol on your forehead. I, Jalen, Zack, and Clara are of the few to have ever been made into an animal (*Zack was made a bear and Clara I think was an octopus. Glad I wasn't there, though, as everyone tells me that she was brutal with one kid that teases her about it and made tree roots grab him and carry him all over town, crying and screaming in fear. He wasn't hurt, but she traumatized him and showed everyone not to make fun of her animal. She's actually proud to be thought of as one, for some reason) Maybe he sensed our nature and chose to do this as a sign of control? Like how some ancient cultures would have doctors worship gods of disease so as to help with healing.

In any case, I was made into a wolf, though I swear he was going for bear again with me. Or maybe my round face just didn't highlight the snout he tried to make. Regardless, I was made a wolf, I hid my glow as he finished, I rose, 'We recognize,' and I'm off the stage.

I go to wipe my face, but Zack comes up behind me and grabs my hand, stopping me.

"Don't do that yet," he said. "There's a small after-party at Clar's spot, and they'll serve you free if you're still wearing that."

"Okay," I said, letting my hand fall to my side as he lets go of it. "Look, about what I was saying at the -"

"its fine, man. I know you were speaking from the heart. I can get heated at times as well."

"Was that a pun?"

"What?"

"'Heated?'"

"Oh, ho ho ho, yeah. It wasn't intentional."

"Alright. In any case, I still snapped at you out of the blue, and for someone who freed me from 'The Program,' I should have been more respectful."

"I won't argue that point, but that's because I don't know how to. Anyway, let's get something to eat."

"I'm fine. I actually want to go to bed. I haven't had a normal sleep in . . . Light, it must be years now."

"Seriously?! Where you awake all of the time."

"Nope, I was regularly drugged."

"Light Shine it, man! Look, at least let me make sure you're full before you go to bed. I'm telling you, nothing knocks you out nicer than a food coma."

"I DON'T WANT TO BE A VEGGIE, YOU FREAK!"

"What? . . . Oh! No, no, no, it's a figure of speech! I'm not going to actually put you in a coma with food."

"Relax, I was kidding. Let's just go already."

And so we went. The party was nice, the 'new men' flirting with the 'new women,' lots of popular music, and some dancing. Jalen made me dance at one point, but even though I could 'make those sick moves,' (*As one guy put it when I was about done) I could only really copy someone else's dancing style. If I was on my own, I didn't know what to do and everyone saw it. But it was nice.

For once, everything was nice.