[center][img]http://i.imgur.com/a6RYmyh.png[/img]
[@Silvan Haven][@Crimmy][@Write][/center]

[color=9D36FF]"Have a good day, Luke."[/color]

Dejected.

Defeated.

Broken.

[i]Hopeless.[/i]

I felt my brow knit together, not out of anger, not out of disgust, but of pain. The pain of sympathy. The pain of empathy. The pain she was feeling was one I was viscerally familiar with. Was one I had struggled with before. Was one I had almost resigned myself to.

But I didn't resign. Somehow, some way, I found my way to keep fighting every day. I regained the fire in my belly, and forced myself all the way into Beacon and through an S-Rank mission.

And I wanted, selfishly in that moment, for her not to resign either.

It should be clear that I'm not talking about her wings. Those I had no experience with, those I never had, those I could never lose like she had. I hadn't even broken an arm before my semblance trivialized that sort of thing.

But that fire...

Try though she might, Bianca's words rang hollow in the ears of us all. Even to a bonafide idiot such as myself, it was obvious that her heart wasn't in them. She had lost that fire.

Her spirit was in tatters, just as much as, if not moreso than her wings. I'm no motivational speaker, nor an expert surgeon, so what I could do was limited. No matter how much I wanted to move heaven and earth for the sad, broken girl in front of me, there wasn't much I could do to help. 

I clenched my fist and grit my teeth— and stopped.

My fist.

[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i7Sznuu-Ww]My [i]hand.[/i][/url]

I stared down at my hand again. Gazed intently at my thumb, eyes tracing the outline of a long-disappeared laceration.

[b]"Not at all, Bianca."[/b]

Maybe there [i]was[/i] something.

I looked back up to her, searching her eyes for a flicker of hope. My eyes then flicked to her wings, observing the damages once more, under a different light.

Extensive damage throughout, barely able to move. Torn musculature, torn feathers, torn skin. Yeah, a seven to nine year recovery and rehabilitation process looked about right to me. I tried to imagine my leg being similarly mangled, without the added delicacies that were part of a wing's existence, and could easily see a brutally long process.

She couldn't become a Hunter at that rate. She would be well into her late twenties by the time she could continue her freshman year.

That would make anyone not insanely dogged want to give up.

...But what if you could expedite that process?

What if those wings were back in proper shape?

What if they were ready to be used again?

What if they simply healed quicker than a timeframe of [i]years?[/i]

I smiled.

[b]"In fact, I think I might be exactly where I need to."[/b]