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Neo and I took the train out and hiked to our hidden plane. I wasn't quite sure about the nausea I felt. I was at once heavier and lighter. Certain avenues of my life had been reopened in the past two months which had been closed before. I was at quite a loss to express myself but I knew that I had to march on.

My father must have another laboratory in which even now he slaved away and made abominations. Whether those abominations were like me or unlike me didn't concern me in this regard. My father had to be stopped and that wasn't going to happen if I sat around in Atlas and accomplished nothing. That had to be put to an end. And I was certain that if he didn't already he would have a third and fourth laboratory near Vale and Vacuo. It fit his pattern. It matched his style.

He was, from his record keeping, a creature of habit and he would follow those habits even if something caught up to him. Something like me. In fact, I was pretty sure I was exactly his recompense for his misdeeds.

We flew through the blue sky and over blue water. The occasional cloud bank set upon us but we encountered no storms or turbulence to exacerbate my motion sickness. Atlas really was a remote and godforsaken place with all it's tin toys and tin men treated better than some of the real people down in Mantle. But those were problems for higher minded men. I was good for cutting down monsters and people. The nausea I felt had nothing to do with leaving the city behind although I suppose it had grown on me slightly. Not anymore than Mistral had. I think it was leaving my friends and loved ones behind that did it. I had certain responsibilities to them. Those responsibilities meant hurting myself and them for safety.

I wanted to do less and more at the same time. I wanted to hurt fewer people this time around with Neo and do more to look after those I came across. Like I had done with Peach. That felt good. It was that sort of good that I wanted to be. I wanted to be more than a killer. To more than just those close to me I desire a more harmonious existence. I just wasn't sure how to get that. It was an odd sort of fulfillment I longed for. To fill me up and to breath it in was all I ever wanted.

I used to want to be a hero and save everyone. I used to want to kill Cinder and get my revenge. Now I wasn't sure what I wanted. Weiss and Ruby would be nice I suppose. More than nice, really. But I just couldn't be trusted. It was a lurching sensation that the distrust I had in myself gave me. It came accompanied by that nausea. And I suppose there was a certain dread to it which set my stomach and made me look out the small windows of the craft warily.

We flew in silence. Neo was as mute as ever and I kept my thoughts locked up to myself. Maybe being so bottled up was hazardous in the long run but I wasn't bound to have a very long run, was I? Not by my reckoning at least.

I think I was at once more at peace with the idea of dying and more bitterly resentful at the motion as well. The twin feelings truly added to my sense of vertigo. There was fear, of course. Death, say what you will, is scary. Just about the scariest thing there is. There were a lot of stories about brave heroes who risked their lives but there were very few that I had heard of which were facing something even more scary than their own death. I faced my annihilation and betrayal of my very self. Which was more brave? To risk one's life? Or to risk having one's life stolen away? It was a mystery I'd never have the pleasure of solving. There was nothing I could do. I was as helpless as babe in the cradle.

I think what I wanted more than anything was to have a life I could look back well upon and know I had made the right decisions for myself and for my loved ones. Something like that was easy to say but it was hard to live that way. It required so much willpower and self sacrifice and let's be honest it was about as scary as death is. Living well is terrifying. The threat of it is more horrible than any vision my Mother had sent me and more petrifying than being her puppet.

But what else was I to do with the brunt of my soul in this world? I was supposed to take on my challenges and do my duty to its fullest. Anything less would be a betrayal of myself just as much as turning myself over to my Mother's side.

Know thyself. I think that was the heart of it. What was I willing to live for yet be without? What more could I ask for from life than this. The things I had taken and conquered were mine and mine alone. I overcame myself through effort of will and rose above what I was supposed to be. I was trash. I was nothing. Yet I had killed Cinder. I had made great friends and great enemies. Not bad for something that was supposed to be discarded and forgotten. Considering where I'd come from, the places I had started, I was amazing. But I still had so far left to go. That's what made me terrible.

I wanted to kill something but that was the point. This was the thing to resist and resurge against. Digging the long edge of Crocea Mors through flesh was a fanciful thought but it deserved to be just that and nothing more. My blade was for monsters and not for men. Not anymore. It had changed. I had changed. At least I hoped so. I would do my best to not kill for pleasure.

What was I? It didn't have a static answer because I wasn't a static thing. I had changed. I was constantly in the process of becoming. I was always turning into something more. I was taking more and more from life than what it had just been willing to give me.

Even now I resisted and rebelled against the thing I was supposed to be by all rights. That gave my life urgency. That gave my life purpose. It forced me to define myself and the things I was willing to be and do.

I rebelled against killing myself as well. That would be too easy. Too quick. Too clean. That would be to accept that life was simply too much for me. It would mean that my cross was too much to bear. A better life cannot mean another life, that would be unfair.

So even if I had to go on without Ruby and Weiss I could still carry them with me in my heart and know that I was doing that right thing, even if it was absurd. Even though it shattered me.

I rebelled against that too. And why not? What wasn't there to rebel against and resist in my life? If there was free will, if I really had it as opposed to everyone else and everything else which implied I did not, then I should spend it triumphing over all those things which sought to lock me in a cage. No matter how fine a trap or a cage it was, I wasn't deluded. Golden chains are still chains. I would be free, or as free as I could be while taking the steps necessary to keep those I loved safe. Even from me. Especially from me.

Just because I was born a monster did not mean I had to remain a monster. And maybe, just maybe, one day I could reclaim the ones I loved. Maybe I could give Ruby her dream family. We would meet again. Our destinies were interwoven. Maybe then I would be more ready - less scared - more victorious.

It took a great deal of courage to make the kind of life that I wanted to live. Any person could be a killer. It could happen by dumb accident or through a stroke of luck. I should rebel against that, too. I shot a glance over at Neo. I should do more to keep Neo in line and look after her. She had no one else. It was a terrible and beautiful thing. But it happened so rarely that it should be cherished. Even though friendship is a scary thing. It still wasn't as scary as some of the things I yet resisted.

It was harder to make life. Barret had been right. It was this that I should focus on accomplishing.

What was I for? It was just death and mayhem in my past. I could do more and be more. It would take a great deal of effort but that was life and I intended to drink up as much of it as I could in the time I had.

False memories and fake impressions danced behind my closed eyelids and I let out a little shudder. I couldn't make the hard choices for my sisters. I couldn't steal their rebellion from them and I couldn't set that fire in their souls. I could only do what was right. And my Mother was twisted beyond all hope of repair. Her form now was nothing like what I held in my memories. I would do what was my responsibility and I would rebel.

Sea gave way to land. Uninhabited forests and mountains as far as the eye could see. There was so much world out here. And there were so many monsters.

My life had been short and brutish. It was easy to become a brute like that and nothing more. But a man wanted more from life than that. Even if I couldn't have everything I wanted I'd get what I needed. And I'd do it without becoming a brute once more. I had been so furious. I once was little more than a thug. I let my anger and fury at being alive rule me and I killed not because I wanted to or because I needed to but because I found it fun. I had enjoyed the sport of it all. That made me nasty. My savagery had known no limits and I'd gotten into fights because it pleased me. Even the fight against Ace Ops, Vine and Marrow, had been like that though I was also referring to when I brawled with Raven Branwen.

So what did I want to be? I felt in myself a little god. I was, after all, the spawn of a goddess. I was three parts, man, god, and monster. It was the latter that worried me the most. How much Grimm was I? I sensed within me the power to choose and shape the world with my strength and that terrified me. I had grown so strong. It made me wonder when exactly I'd start to see myself decline. Would I age really fast, Wrinkle and sag? Or would I just start to fall apart into dust and atoms? I was unsure. But I did have to die. Of that I was sure. And in part I wanted to die, of which I was even more sure. But in killing myself would I be embracing the beast or the god? Or perhaps it was the man in me that desired death? I was unsure. My three natures clashed violently and I thought I might grow ill.

There was a touch of divinity to me. In my semblance I saw a soft blue glow which allowed me to equal anyone and any time. What had I become since Beacon and those days camping out in the woods with Ruby and my team, when I still had a team, that was?

What more to life could I ask for than what I'd been given? I had received a terrible burden but also enormous strength. I had such strength that I probably wouldn't be able to help but to shape the world. That was where I felt the touch of godhood in myself. The magic I had lurked just beneath the surface of my semblance.

I was doomed but then so was everyone else. Except most people weren't also given enormous strength and speed and how many people had dreamed of the power to fly like I could? I lived a privileged life in many respects. I was cursed in many others but then who wasn't? I had two lovers and a handful of close friends, and the power to change fate. It was important to keep that in mind with everything I was leaving behind right now. For now. Just now.

Not forever. I was born sick but I could become well. Made in sin, a horrible pact, I could overcome. Soon I would be stronger and wiser and with the will to overcome my lowly origins which marked me deep in my bones. I felt the alien fingers on the surface of my mind. They probed me gently. They rocked me softly. I listened to the whispers without heeding them. Everyone has bad thoughts in their heads. It's about learning about yourself from them, though. It was about overcoming your own weaknesses and seeing through your strengths.

She pressed on my thoughts but that mattered little. I was the captain of this ship. My Mother could torment me and threaten me but she couldn't take this from me. It was deep inside of myself if I looked for it and it wasn't possible to quite put my finger on it or call it anything other than resistance. This quiet mutiny against her was mine and mine alone. There was no agony she could inflict upon me that could rob me of that whispering victory. It came with no heralding trumpets. It was small and minute. But it was there. In this respect, the more she pushed on me, the more she tried to leverage herself down on me, the more I won. My little rebellion frustrated her. That was my conquest.

It was about taking and giving ground. I allowed her small victories here. I would win the necessary battles there. That was how I would win the war. There was an ebb and flow to my thoughts which didn't belong to either one of us. It belonged to both. It belonged to neither. It stood as a contested no man's land in a gulf between us as wide as any ocean. It led me to a shocking realization. The revelation of which had me floored. It was so sudden. It was so unexpected. Never would I have imagined that it was the case unless I had felt it for myself in that chasm between us.

Mother was afraid.

She was scared of me. She was afraid of the power I wielded. I was supposed to be weak. I was supposed to be servile. But just as she had a way into my mind I had a way into hers. She was afraid of me. She was scared of my potential to undo her plans and devastate everything she tried to accomplish. The way I resisted her frightened her.

That was a weakness.

My sisters had all fallen into line to do my Mother's bidding so easily. It had been natural. I saw that now. It had been so effortless. So as I, the weak link, the runt of the litter, won out against her influence time and time again with ever growing might it worried her. What had she overlooked? Where did I find this strength?

You play chess with God and you lose, of course. But say you get as many attempts as you like. Say then, after repeated attempts, over and over, you force him to change strategies. You have discovered something in that. A weakness.

Well, I wasn't about to tell her. I kept it a secret. Locked in the deepest reaches of my mind where I knew she couldn't reach.

What was Ozma planning with me, her only son? I wanted her on her toes. I wanted her wary of the possibility that she was falling into a trap. And she would be. When the time was right, when I reached the zenith of my power, I'd destroy her. I just had to hope that I was bound to keep climbing as I had been and breaking my previous limits.

A thousand victories.

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-WG