I woke up.

I was angry. I knew why. I hurt. Everything hurt.

And then I was sad. I didn't know why. Everything still hurt. I ran past the girls. I think I was still bleeding.

Suddenly, I was happy. And then melancholy. Everything reminded me so much of Earth.

I had made it to the apartment. I was numb. My face in the mirror was streaked with tears and blood dripped down my chin.

I was angry again. I broke the mirror. I smashed everything in the bathroom. The door gave way under my fist. I curled up on the floor. I felt someone's arms around me and I wanted to punch them. But then I was sad again and I cried.

"I don't know what happened." I didn't want to talk, but I forced myself to. "I was sparring and I got hit, then I blacked out. That's all I know."

It wasn't a tearduct-emptying sadness anymore. It felt more like a pressure that existed within my skull and weighed me down as I proceeded through life. It was a feeling I was familiar with. Eventually, I would snap and run away from life once more. I felt my aura flicker and warp. Winter let go of me and I curled up on the bed. She looked angry. Very angry.

"I'll be right back, okay?" She squeezed me a bit, then stood up and slammed the door as she walked out.

It was silent for a few minutes, then I could hear her yelling through the door. I couldn't make the words out. I forced myself to sleep.

I felt motion. I was being moved somewhere. I slept

I woke up to a steady beeping. I was in a hospital bed. My torso was bandaged, and so was my head. I'd found out when I tried to rub my forehead. Doctor Braun was standing off to the side. He had a kind, fatherly face. We talked a lot whenever he came to check up on my head. He said it was healing. He had a wife and a young son who wanted to become a Hunter when he grew up and always talked about how daddy was going to help save the world with his inventions. I was numb again. I felt like I should feel something, that I should be happy a friend was here, but it was as if my emotions were locked behind a dam that was ready to overflow.

"He is awake now, Sir, Ma'am." He nodded to the doorway. "You have ten minutes."

Eisen and Winter were there. Both of them looked concerned, Winter even more so. Dr. Braun left to give us privacy.

"I apolo-" Eisen's mouth snapped shut as Winter rushed over, babbling apologies.

"What for?" I asked them.

"We should have told you earlier…" Winter was shamefaced. She explained how they saw me when I got here, and that I was in a bad condition. Eisen had decided to field test some cybernetics developed from their joint Synthetic development program with the Atlesian military. The logic was that since I had no records, they could just dump the body if it went wrong. Cold and efficient.

I didn't go wrong until today and things and the relationship between us was different. I saw the guilt in Winter's face plain as day, and Eisen was silhouetted in the window as he gazed at Atlas.

My fists clenched and I wanted to push Winter away, but that drained right out of me. The past was in the past, and it answered a few questions I had about myself. I would have done the same thing if the world rested on my shoulders. Still, it annoyed me a bit that they didn't let me know about this earlier.

"Your cybernetics malfunctioned due to the electrical feedback." Eisen broke it to me. "Dr. Braun and his team have shut them down in the interim. It is up to you if you want them replaced with improved models, or removed entirely."

I was glad that I'd been given the choice.

"I'll think about it."

He nodded, and they left. Dr. Braun came in holding a clipboard and he ran me through a few tests as he jotted down notes in a document marked EXCISE.

It all boiled down to pragmatism in the end. I went under the knife once again and woke up with a few more bandages. I'd be out of bed in a couple of days, and discharged by the end of the week. I took comfort and amusement in the fact that such a life-changing surgery would take at least a months of recuperation on Earth.

I read through legal documents, and then signed them when I was fully aware of the implications. And then came the list of parts they were going to take out of me and replace. I'd get my aura back and that was it.

I flipped through TV channels, my way of killing time after the surgery. The news was sad and frustrating. The White Fang had raided a village on the outskirts of Mistral. People were up in arms about it, some defended them, others wanted to retaliate. A Grimm-worshipping cult had drunk the Kool-Aid. Some actress had gotten pregnant. At least the soap operas were better by virtue of having entertaining fight scenes.

I was not in tears when Selene Belle declared her love for John Seaward and not Sam Beech. I honestly hadn't expected myself to react that way, but I did and it was fun to rage.

Eventually, I had enough of the melodrama (for now) and flipped through their channels once more. I think I had stumbled upon their equivalent of The Discovery Channel. This documentary about the different 'flavors' of weapons I was now watching was really entertaining and somewhat informative. I wondered if there was an equivalent to the Mythbusters somewhere.

That documentary sparked a lot of questions and ideas however, and I swiveled over the table my laptop was sitting on so I could type. I wasn't very good at melee combat. The circumstances of my arrival on his hospital bed was a testament to that. And quite frankly, I didn't want to get messed up again. On the other hand, I'd gotten remarks that I was a good shot even at long ranges. I figured I could work with that and an idea began to form as I worked out an experiment in my thoughts as I massaged my forehead.

I needed something that would allow me to precisely attack an opponent from far away, but since opponents moved very quickly, I also needed something that could function at medium-to-close ranges and as a melee weapon to buy the time and distance I needed to get back to sniping.

A sniper rifle immediately came to mind. It could provided a decent framework for transformation into other types of weapons. Say, a longsword. But what about in between? A carbine perhaps? I would have to deal with the lack of ammunition, but I figure I could carry a bunch of 20 round .50 BMG equivalent magazines. Nevermind the fact that I actually needed to make a working weapon first.

I took my fingers off my keyboard and erased the string of letters I had made while thinking, then typed down my list of requirements and roadmap to making my own weapon. It would probably be a blend of store-bought and specifically-designed parts that I would need help making. I looked forward to using it on the range. Being forced to use it against people however? Not so. I would shoot attackers if I really had to, but I promised myself that I would exercise restraint.

I spent some time sketching out its appearance in Inkscape as I ate dinner and I think it looked pretty good. I used the Barrett rifles for reference, though its main body was larger and flowed into the stock to accommodate the transformation mechanisms and the barrel was shrouded by what would be the longsword's blades. That way if push came to shove, I could thrust and stab with the gun. Meanwhile, the sniper rifle's bipod would merge into a handgrip for when it became a carbine, and would also form the longsword's crossguard. I was at a loss for everything else. I was only a concept artist, not an engineer.

Pretty good effort, I suppose.

I spent the next few days writing and tossing ideas at Winter when she came to visit with a box of pizza, and she helped me refine the design of the a bit. We slimmed the main body down a bit and she gave me some ideas for recoil management and loading. She liked the free-floating barrel idea, and I made a new document with a bullpup version of the gun but she was on the fence on that matter. She also pointed out that I should get it working first before I went ahead with other special features.

"True." I said over a slice of pepperoni, mushroom, and onions pizza. "So how's your day been?"

"Tiring." She sighed. "I've got a lot of work, but I thought I could drop by for lunch."

"Well, I'll be joining you soon." I patted her shoulder. "I've got to reply to those angry letters and do research too, you know."

Research in my case, often ended up delving into some of the seedier areas of Atlas to see what things were like for people there. I'd been on school-mandated outreach programs before, but actually immersing myself in the situation for a whole day was a whole lot different. Even a Lien could mean the difference between dinner and starvation for them. Those trips led to nights digging in the paperwork while trying not to leave a trail, and then organizing charity events as Eisen worked from the top-down.

The angry letters were prompted by the fact that I was now writing opinion pieces on local newspapers and submitting essays to various literary journals. It was safe to say that I wasn't very popular among some types of people. I decided to ramp up my training and fast track my weapon the moment I got out of the hospital.

She stared at the ceiling. "I wish I could be like my sister and her friends. They just fight people to fix things."

"We're fighting, aren't we?"

"I mean, with blades and bullets." She gestured with her hands. "One, two, punch! Bam! Bad guy's in jail and the day is saved! But…"

"It's only a stopgap." We both knew it.

We'd gone through a couple more slices in silence, then Winter noticed the cartoon that had just come on TV.

"Oh!" She grinned. "I love this show!"

I watched it with her. I'd be out tomorrow, and then we would begin the training again.

I knocked aside Winter's rapier with my longsword and punched her across the cheek. Her head recoiled and she grinned at me as we parted and reset our stances.

"Getting better!" She cheered as she cracked her neck. "That actually hurt a bit."

I smiled. "Thanks."

"Now, that was just the appetizer. Sure you're ready for the main course?"

"I'd like to try."

"Alright then."

We fell silent as we circled each other for a bit, and then everything dissolved into a flurry of sword strikes as metal clashed against metal. She slashed at eye-level while I parried it away in a shower of sparks, and then thrust my own sword forward. She flowed around it and countered with a slash that I just barely had the time to deflect.

She kicked off the ground and then launched herself off a glyph in an attempt to land behind my back. I opened another glyph in front of her and set the exit point in a random direction. I watched her fly out of the portal and land in a crouch off to my left, unfazed by the sudden change.

"That was great!" She laughed.

I rushed forward and swung from my left side. She ducked under the blade and slipped between my legs and the hairs on the back of my neck rose. A a pair of glyphs manifested themselves behind and in front of me, and I saw Winter's arm sticking out of the one out front. I moved aside as I allowed her to withdraw her arm before collapsing the portals.

She leapt into my field of view. "So that's what you were talking about?"

"Yup." Our swords locked together as I parried a sideways slash with a downstroke and forced her rapier down and away.

"You're still too slow, though."

She moved, And then I was on my back, dizzy, and staring down the blade of a rapier.

"Woah."