It had been nearly a decade ago, but Kazuna still remembered the long walk to the old auto shop on Distrito Nacional. The smell of motor oil and gasoline, the muffled pounding of air compression tools, buzzing saw blades, and the howl of blow torches. Her two and a quarter kilometer hike from her family's studio apartment to Kenji San Auto Manufacturing was full of life, innovation, and possibilities. It held its fair share of danger too. For a fifteen year old Mulito girl to walk those streets alone, you either got beaten down into brake-dust or became an unbreakable diamond.

Hurricane season came on the heels of the day that changed Kazuna's life. She always felt guilty about loving the smell that preceded that season of destruction. The air pressure would drop and the atmosphere became charged and crackled with an electric intensity. Those thick dark storm clouds were beautiful against the dancing lights of the setting sun upon the Atlantic Ocean. It wasn't until they reached the mainland Dominican Republic that they morphed into floating nightmares. The floods, the mudslides, the crumbling buildings and stolen lives; why anyone stayed in the aftermath of the storm they knew would come year after year remained a mystery to Kazuna.

It was the only home Kazuna had known and longed to leave.

Outside the studio apartment with her brothers, sisters, and mother, everything was a matter of routine and survival. Work under the car pits was long. From dawn to sundown she would become caked in oil, sweat, and every so often, blood. Still, Kazuna endured. It offered her the opportunity to create. For a chance to complete her university training? She'd endure worse. No matter how often Kazuna's mother attempted to beat the young girl's creativity and ambition out of her, those core qualities would remain. Deep down both Kazuna and her mother knew the former's imagination far exceeded her grasp. It would take a catastrophe to halt the pursuit of a life outside Kazuna's tiny island.

In addition to every spare dollar saved, Kazuna often salvaged parts to complete her master work. Every discarded servo, actuator, and slice of scrap metal were all taken (borrowed) to the empty shipping container she had squatted in just outside her house. Every minute of time Kazuna stole was spent in that makeshift workshop. Second hand tools. Rusted, reclaimed, and repurposed gadgets. Countless sleepless nights were spent on creating what Kazuna believed was her ticket off her doomed island.

At last, after nearly a year of perfecting the hardware, struggling against the limitations of outdated software, Kazuna was ready to bring her creation to life. She'd christened the creation, Canneta: the first of her kind in medical robotics. Many months were spent uploading libraries worth of information into the machine's hard drive and many more months were spent perfecting Canneta's ability to utilize that data. Now in the few minutes before dawn arrived each morning, Kazuna would spend time simply developing her relationship with the new friendship she'd built.

Canneta may not have been perfect, but in Kazuna's eyes, she was gorgeous. Over the month spent fine tuning her capabilities, the robot was more than a machine, more than a ticket off the island. Kazuna and Canneta had developed a genuine friendship unlike any that existed before.

Then, as fate would have it, Kazuna's mother found her daughter's refuge. She caught her red handed. Violating the laws of robotic intelligence passed by Congress, Canneta's personality and indepence was apparent as any human. That machine was so much like her daughter, Kazuna's mother nearly screamed in frustration, in horror, and rage.

"Sacrilegious," the woman breathed out in Spanish. The words hung in the air like a noxious gas. "Only God creates a being in his own likeness. It is not something man is meant to do." What her daughter had created was far outside of what was natural.

Kazuna had pleaded for her mother to reconsider. Her tears fell on deaf ears. Kazuna's mother wouldn't understand. She refused to understand. No amount of begging could save Kazuna's only friend from the sledge hammer falling repeatedly into the metal chassis.

Canneta herself even begged for mercy. Those cries for help only served to enrage Kazuna's mother further, pounding away into the machine. At the peak of desperation, Kazuna draped her own body over the machine, her only friend. It was unfortunately to no avail. Her mother continued to strike without regard for whether she hit metal or flesh. After what felt like hours, Kazuna watched in sorrow as life faded from Cannata's retinal display. She watched as the future grew ever darker. Much like the foreboding storm clouds that hung off the coast of their island, Kazuna's future would continue to perpetuate its cycle of violence, destruction, and sorrow.

Seconds stretched to hours as Kazuna was forced to listen to Canneta's final pleas for her life until her vocal processor was smashed to dust. Even as the young girl draped herself over the remains of the robot, her mother continued to sing the hammer down. Flesh was bruised. Metal bent. Ribs were cracked. Kazuna watched as her blood and tears mixed together with Canneta's actuator fluid and coolant on the rusted steel floor of the shipping crate. Both of the girl's liquid remains swirled together down the small ground drain.

After an eternity of pain, her mother, exhausted, dropped the hammer. A hollow clang shook Kazuna. Her mother smiled and said it's for, 'The greater good.' That's how destruction was always justified isn't it? A life had to end for another to begin. Kazuna looked down, devoid of feeling, through bloodshot eyes. The young mulatto girl stared at the life she had created and the future that now lay in ruins. Releasing her grip on any possibility of hope, Kazuna concluded there is no future without Canneta.

Her creation.

Her friend.

Kazuna spent those early morning hours crying her last tears, heaving, convulsing atop the broken limbs and chassis of Canneta's once beautiful body. As the dawn breaks, one of her brothers hollered from the apartment widow, "Kazuna, ma says you better not be late for work!"

Kazuna is not late for work.

She never slept.

She will never step foot inside her broken home ever again. Bruised, broken and bleeding, she dragged herself down Districto Nacional. Everything was quiet. Autoworkers were still waking up and the vibrant smell of industrial exhaust had faded into the night. Outside of the Kenji San Warehouse, Mister Wu smokes a rolled cigarette in his pristine, sky-blue Toyota Hatchback. He waits for another long day to begin at his factory. To everyone else on this tiny island, on the soon to be crowded street, it's business as usual. No regard for Kazuna's murdered friend.

There's a brief recognition as Mister Wu's hazel eyes flick over towards a battered Kazuna limping to the green metal gate of the warehouse. Through the ringing in her left ear, Mister Wu shouts something toward the girl. Maybe he yelled her name. Angry? Worried? She watched the short Chinese Man sprint from his car toward her. He put his cigarette out in his callus palm without flinching, and tossed the butt aside. Kazuna's thoughts drifted as she collapsed against the wall. She remembered being surprised by how strong Mister Wu was despite his age; effortlessly cradling her in his arms.

Darkness tugged at the edges of Kazuna's vision. She was vaguely aware that Mister had laid her down on the reception desk. An ambulance was called. One ear was still ringing. The other echoes the desperate pleas of Canetta begging for her life. Moments later, first responders carry Kazuna into an ambulance to Districto General Medical Center. Mister Wu rode along.

Hours, perhaps days passed while Kazuna faded in and out of consciousness. The halogen lamp above her hospital bed flickered. She recognized the ballast was most likely at fault. She could replace it if she had any feeling left in her arms or hands. At that moment, she did not. The sound of footsteps pacing at the head of the room drew Kazuna's attention to the short man with the clean cut goatee. Mister Wu continued to count the remaining cigarettes in the pack. As Kazuna stirred, he quickly dashed to her bedside.

In more eloquent Spanish than Kazuna could enunciate as a native speaker, Mister Wu asked, "How are you feeling, Miss Kazuna?"

With tears in her eyes, Kazuna attempted to cast off the burden that weighed most heavily on her heart, "I couldn't save her,"

Mister who asked about Canneta. Kazuna attempted to apologize for stealing parts from the shop. He doesn't interrupt to condemn her. For nearly an hour, he remained still and listened. One hand tapped an unlit cigarette on the arm of the chair beside her bed in a steady rhythm. Kazuna continued to explain her plan to develop robotics that could save lives, built at a fraction of the cost as androids produced in major cities. She even cracked a smile, admitting to the old man about her dream of a bright future and how hours earlier it had been smashed to pieces.

After she'd finished, Mister Wu leaned back in the old chair and stuck the cigarette in between his lips. He removed a lighter from his pocket. The bamboo jacket for the lighter had a carving of a Monkey's face with Cantonese writing Kazuna was not familiar with.

"You have the discipline and vision of the Shao Lin," Mister Wu said, flicking the lighter to life. "You are selfless, focussed on the needs of others despite all opposition against you." The old man searched Kazuna's face. Her expression didn't seem to disagree with his assessment. "I have... Family, back home. At my recommendation, they could show, train you to continue the path you've chosen. Would you be willing to commit yourself to something greater than what you've imagined for yourself?"

Without hesitation, Kazuna accepted the proposition.

Three years of grueling training pass by in the blink of an eye. Kazuna awoke each day with her fellow monks oceans away from the tiny island she once considered home, cage, prison. She learned to compartmentalize her longing to create life, to save life, and accept that all life is precious. Part of the universe she is now responsible for maintaining. Her body learns to heal itself faster than an average human. Reflexes are fine tuned to react swifter than the wind that blows through the dense forest surrounding the temple. After the ritual of Sun-Wukong, Kazuna emerged from the sacred pool stronger than ten men. It was a strength not her own, on loan, and came at a steep price. It was a price she would gladly pay many times over.

Intrinsically Kazuna was still that same girl from the island; selfless, curious, and tenacious. The power, the speed, and increased vitality she'd gained would one day return to the Universe. Until then, she was thankful that for the moment, she's allowed to step outside that cycle of destruction she'd been trapped in to create peace and bring harmony to a broken world.