That draws a moment's pause, challenge weighed and decided ... unlikely. That was a perfectly ordinary comment from someone who didn't know what he was capable of. "You may test your doubts as to my fitness at your leisure." He's fought longer with far worse injuries than thorn scratches in the past and doubtless would again, changes or no.

"Support teams are a luxury and one often absent. This is no different." His smile is brief, behind a curtain of silver bangs. "For all that I am not as unstoppable as the news claims I am, I am also not a porcelain doll in need of rescue and pampering. I won't break so easily against thorns and scratches."

This was all deeply disturbing, in a profoundly unignorable way he didn't like to think about, the doubts and fears since childhood as to what he really was ground against uncomfortably, but it .. wasn't just him.

It wasn't. They were all changing, failing. Becoming the things he was tasked to destroy.

The thought is shaken off before it can settle too firmly into place.