Keeping my cool is something people look to me to do. Be the lighthearted voice of mediation to stop people from fighting but everyone has a line. Walking out of the meeting like that isn't my proudest moment but there are just things I will refuse to do. Akari of all people knows how I feel about my mother but clearly, there is another side to her that not even Maxwell knew about. The nerve of her though, to just tell me to find her after all this time, that I should be going after her. My mother can rot wherever she is for all I care, I'm doing great without her and I don't need her in my life to ruin everything that I have.

A slap across the back of my head knocked me back into reality. Somehow, I was in the lab with Lydia sitting next to her. She had the stone tablets in front of her with papers sprawled around them, notes already scribbled onto them. She was staring at me with annoyance in her eyes. In all honesty, I had no idea how I got here, how long I had been here or what she had been saying. "You didn't hear anything I said, did you?"

"I heard you put words together to form a sentence," I said confidently before getting hit across the back of my head again.

"It doesn't matter anyways, I was just using you as a wall to bounce off my ideas." She said calmly as she bunched up her notes.

"Then why did you hit me?"

"Because you're going to melt your brain from thinking so hard." She said backhandedly. "I mean, obviously you can't melt your brain from thinking because the brain was made to process thoughts and actions on top of other-"

"You were so close to a good insult."

Once all the papers were stacked together, she slid the pile to the edge of the table, lining it up with the edge of the table. "I'm not going to ask what your relationship with your mother is to get you to react like that but if you want to have a conversation with someone, I can be a wall to ramble to. I know that I do not have the emotional dexterity of most but I can be a logical voice."

"Most people don't want a logical voice when they are talking about their problems," I mentioned.

"How do you expect to deal with it without a logical stand."

"By not dealing with it at all. If Akari really needs her, she can send someone else."

"Okay, if that's what you want but wouldn't you feel some regret for not trying."

"I thought you weren't going to ask about this," I said a little more coldly than I intended.

"Yes, I did. Just trying to help you think from a place of logic rather than emotion."

"What is with you and logic today?"

"Without logic, we allow illogical ideas and notions to take root." She spoke a little firmer.

"This is about what Oliver said."

"You can't seriously believe what he said, that there is a Heaven and Hell? That the devil exists?" She became more animated.

"Of course I do."

"What? Why?"

"I've grown up religious, Heaven and Hell have always been a sure thing for me. What would I be to my beliefs if I faltered when someone told me that it was all true?"

"Doesn't it take away from everything the whole faith of it all?"

"A little, but it doesn't change I how I feel about any of it."

She placed her arms on the table before resting her head on them. "No surprise that I don't believe any of it. Science and facts clearly define everything I know. If he is telling the truth about everything and there is a God and a Devil, what am I supposed to do with everything I knew?"

"Is that a rhetorical question or are you genuinely asking me?" I clarified, trying to lighten her up a little but she turned her head and there was existential terror in them. I sighed and placed my hand on her arm. "Do what you always do when you learn something and keep going. Take it as another fact, it doesn't have to mean that everything that you believe in is false. Science still explains everything."

"And the afterlife, what about different religions, are they just false."

"Who's to say that there aren't other versions of the afterlife? At the end of the day, we don't know and that is the whole point of faith. Not knowing but still believing. I can still believe a soul can enter the Bazrakh and wait for the day of judgement, or maybe the Greek Gods exist, who knows? Just because we don't have proof that they exist doesn't mean that it's not real. Nor does having proof that Heaven and Hell are real make it the only thing. What I'm trying to say is that not knowing is okay."

"Where's the logic in that?" She looked up at me. Her crystalline eyes marvelled at my words.

"There isn't and there doesn't have to be," I said giving her arm a little squeeze.

There was this look of recognition as she sat up again. Then she put on her thinking face, the face of deep thought as she mulled over something in her mind. "I want to start testing the Roboro on you properly and safely."

I blinked heavily. "That was abrupt."

"Unless you've lost your nerve for it."

"You know that I haven't."

"Then if we are going to do this, you will have to listen to what I tell you and I mean that. The moment you stray from what I tell you then I cut this all off, I tell the others what we have been doing and you never see this through. Is that understood?"

"I understand completely," I replied quickly. "But, I have to ask why the change heart?"

"I'm throwing logic aside just this once. The Roboro worked once, we can make it better."

"Shame that Aristotle and Hypatia are getting replaced," I said with a grin I couldn't quite contain.

"I'll find them a good home." She replied with a heavy smile that faded away as the door behind us opened up and at the door was Akari. She held a cardboard box under one of her arms as she slowly walked in.

"May I speak to Juan for a moment?" She asked, her tone having returned to the calm and kind one that I had always known.

"Yes, need to go check on the people in the med bay anyways." Lydia looked to me as she walked out of the room, hesitant to walk out until I gave a small nod to indicate that I was okay.

Akari took a seat opposite me, placing the box on the table. She looked exhausted, her hair was slightly dishevelled and her hands we slightly shaky. Her usual confident posture was frailer. "I hope you aren't expecting an apology."

"It's me who has come apologies, I have a few to do today." She said softly, tapping the sides of the box rhythmically. "It was wrong of me to bring your mother up as rudely and abruptly as I did. I understand how you feel towards her..."

"But."

"But it does not change my request."

"What part of, 'I'm not going to go look for her' did you not understand." My temper began to bubble over again.

"Juan, this is about more than you and her now. What she did was awful and I would much rather not have to bring her back but even you must admit that your mother is an expert fighter and force of nature that we need in the coming fight."

"So, why not get Adam and someone else to get her, why does it have to be me?"

"You know what she is like. She will kill anyone she knew was looking into her."

"You think that just because I'm her son, I'll be an exception. You clearly do not remember her as well as I do."

"It's because I remember exactly who she is that I know that you will be the only person she will let close to her." She said with desperation in her tone. It was almost hard to watch her essentially beg me to do this. Once she finished speaking, she slide the box over to me. "I have something to give you."

"A bribe?" I asked as I looked down at this box, it was tattered and weathered. A thick layer of dust lay on the surface, untouched for what looked like years.

"No, it's something that belongs to you now that you have finally got your powers." She said as I slowed and opened it up. "Once great grandfather's, then your grandmother's, then your mother's and now yours."

Inside the box was a neatly folded outfit that I had only ever heard about and seen in holograms of my bisabuelo. It was an obsidian black body suit with an extremely malleable yet resistant material, its texture reminded me of reptile scales as my hands glided down the length of the outfit. Across the chest piece were straps and buckles, almost like harnesses and on the left side of the chest piece was a stitched decal of a daisy, not too big as to stand out but enough to feel meaningful. "Is this the chameleon armour?"

"It shouldn't be sitting in a box. It will change with your transformations and will always fit you as well as provide you with protection. It's seen many fights and protected those who wore it through harrowing challenges, now it's your turn."

"I don't know what to say. I don't know if I can wear it." I said as this overbearing feeling of shame came over me, like I don't deserve it yet and cheated my way to it.

"It's yours. You don't have to wear it, you can do whatever you'd like with it. I gave it to you because it's your right to have it and we'll need it in the times that are coming." She stood from her chair and walked away from where I sat in contemplation.

I stared at the armour in my hands, thinking about the legacy that it carries within its fibres. The battles it had seen and the stories it could tell and wondered whether I was worthy to continue them. It was only by remembering how alive I felt when I used my powers for the first time, the feeling of my cells vibrating and changing as the adrenaline pulsed through me that I knew what I need to do.