Mosaic sucks in air through her teeth. She can feel herself cringing, body folding in on itself and compressing to a denser form as though it could shield her from the feeling of immediate failure stabbing through her nervous system. Her arms burn, her legs freeze. Her eyes wince shut and her lips open to show her fangs to... nothing at all. Herself, with no reflection.

Immediate failure. The very first thought that had come to her, as an instinct level reaction, when she'd tried to preemptively tackle the problem of being doomed by anger. Master it, hide it, push it beneath her feet and walk away on it until she could wrestle with it enough that she wouldn't hurt anybody on it. The least clever clever idea in the entire arsenal, and it's the blade she'd drawn first. 

The [i]Plosious[/i] is pointed away from the battle. The hangar's view is only space. But to Mosaic, it looks like a vast and dreary hallway, filled with impressive and important furnishings that served no purpose other than to remind her that she was beneath the ones who put it there. Her hands attempt to smooth an apron she isn't wearing as her fur lifts off the back of her neck in a rush of pure fear.

There was... a garden. If she walked this hall, she would enter it. If she walked this hall, she would die. A simple glance would turn her to stone and she would be nothing but another warning decoration because she was a failure failure failure failure [i]failure![/i] Her lungs squeeze her like a vice as air stops traveling through her system. She is choking on a memory that doesn't belong to her, she is dying from a terror that isn't hers to feel.

She slams a fist into her own leg, and feels a dull ache wash over the rest of the cocktail of sensations swirling through her body. It draws a snort from her nose, and the spell breaks. She observes the polychromatic-black sea of space once again. She wipes the sweat from her brow before she dares a glance toward Hera. 

How could she fight this? There's no weapon mighty enough to slay this sort of beast that can slip through the cracks of even her best intentions. If attempts to hide her mood were the poison that would eat away at the bonds of her heart then... what? Should she give herself over to rage when she feels it? Impossible. But then, if she spends her days binding herself to keep a lid on it in the first place... ha! What, if anger by thy doom then simply feel none to begin with?

Ridiculous. The tighter a leash she kept herself on the less she would be able to act at all. If she kept at it she'd be no different than the statues in that garden, or that hallway. Every special thing about her, the things that Ember and Dyssia and Vasilia and all of Beri were counting on and following her for would die. And her family might very well die along with them. The riddle of strength and weakness looms over her again. It casts a much darker shadow this time, than when it spoke with Zeus' voice.

"I..."

Mosaic's voice falters as she turns to stand side by side with the goddess. She fights a war to regain her posture; her neck pops loudly in protest as she straightens her spine, and her tail twinges with irritation when she forces it to unwrap from her leg. She remains proud, but now, in spite of herself.

"I see," she begins again with a yawn, "Then I really [i]was[/i] raised by monsters. Which parent gave me this, I wonder? Was it the fur and the claws, or the bare skin and the teeth? Was it neither? Is it one of my eyes, instead? I am a -- hmph, haha. I am what I was named for. And I guess that must mean I have another kind of anger that I was given to hold. Fuck you both, mom and dad. I won't let this beat me. I refuse."

She flashes a grin and tightens her muscles as if she were preparing to hunt a crab large enough to crush a plover into a can. The rush of battle soothes her even as the tension wracks her injured body with pain. But this too is armor, and she wears it as well as her dress.