Chương 104: 7.06 No Return without Receipt or Label

2104: 04: 05: 23: 49: 11 A definitely-not-out-of-place, snow-white owl flew across the starry sky in the near-dead of night as I alternately kept my eyes on the Portside harbor east of me; on the ship that would, whether they knew it or not, become a smuggling vessel coming west from across the Pacific; on the grid-within-grid roads and pathways between shipping containers; on the road entering Portside from The Hub; and on Crowsong huddling underneath the operator's cabin of a gantry crane as she herself watched the gate into the harbor itself while keeping in contact with the other Sentinels.

We – as in, the Sentinels as a whole – had expounded upon Naomi's idea of an intel-confirming 'little raid' to instead span multiple scouting missions alongside one genuine strike. On this one, Amber and I would be in Portside to keep an eye out for a specific cold storage truck that Doombell and Blade Eater would, if our intel was indeed correct, see leave a riverside warehouse in, well, Charm's Riverside district.

As this particular one was in the grand scheme of things a relatively small smuggling run, there was no big distraction-fight with Magistry going on at the same time – which was both good and bad. Good, because having villains duke it out in the streets, even if unserious, wasn't great. Bad, because it meant that potentially anyone from Motorgang's roster of masked could be here to oversee the operation. But again, this was a small operation.

Sure, the scene had changed a lot after the Jannacht – the heroes becoming more active, the gangs larger and more organized, we vigilantes expanding the Sentinels – but one truck full of goods being stored in a pre-labeled container for smuggling towards South East Asia? That's just routine. Grunt work. That didn't mean we weren't prepared for trouble, but it did mean we two were 'allowed' to do this without the need for 'adult supervision'. Not that they could forbid us.

Stakeouts like these were for a vigilante what smuggling was to villains – routine. A signal all but invisible to the human eye lanced up into the sky. A low-intensity laser, flickering three times with second-long intervals. I banked and dipped toward the crane, circling lower and lower until I came to the crook Crowsong had placed herself in.

She lowered the oversized high-tech, maybe even maker-tech, rifle-length, low-light camera she'd borrowed from Rhennish – though maybe not borrowed; it was 'team property' – at my approach.

"News from Blade Eater," she said while fiddling with her phone.

"The truck's on its way. ETA should be thirty-five to forty-five minutes." She held up her phone for me to see. To my owl vision it was like a flashbang straight to the retinas, and by the time it faded she'd already put her cellphone back in her pocket. I nodded nevertheless.

"Keep watching the docks for anything unusual; I'll keep an eye on the gate." she instructed.

"The next three-beam signal you'll see means they've arrived and from there, we'll do as we discussed before." I hooted once in agreement and flew off again. The wait was predictably uneventful. The freighter was slated to leave late in the afternoon tomorrow – 16: 25 to be exact – and despite the general busyness of Charm's always-active shipping port even this late into the night, there were very little people around, most of the port being automated and all. That wasn't to say it was uninteresting.

As with watching the city from above and looking at the chaotic flow of people going about their business, there was a beauty to the mechanical precision of the dock's inner workings. Everything from crane to train, container to freighter and sailor to shoremen; it all worked in tandem beautifully, a testament to human efficiency.

Sure, the automated, diminutive forklift-annex-trucks carrying their singular container, maneuvering flawlessly between regimented lines of stacks and stacks of them was the exact opposite of the chaotic, yet lively hustle-and-bustle of people in a city; but it was a complimentary one rather than a contrasting one, or perhaps contrasting in just the right way to complete the whole. At around midnight – 00: 30: 21 exactly – Crowsong lit the beacon again. I changed course and headed toward the gate into Portside.

Already I could see the headlights of our target blaze a trail ahead of it through the darkness as it slowly made its way up to the security gate. Remaining high up for a moment, I shifted from owl to base to crow and then descended, landing on one of the wires hanging between utility poles besides a murder of them – crows, that is. The closest one flapped its wings and hopped away from me, affronted.

As it bumped into its neighbor, it set of a wave that ended up with the entire flock cocking their heads and looking at me funny. Seeing as I was a fair bit larger than these juvenile crows, I merely puffed out my chest and raised my wings to make myself larger, then let out a single squawk in reprimand. They quickly looked away from me, deciding this weird adult crow wasn't worth the bother, and I turned my attention back to the car.

It drove up to the security gate and a hand appeared from the rolled-down window on the driver side, reaching to press a button on the intercom. Barely a moment passed and the boom barrier raised, allowing the driver through. The fact that the gate opened at all confirmed that this particular nighttime operator – a Marlon Chiyo according to our definitely-legally-obtained shift roster – was a part of Motorgang's network.

The truck drove on and I followed from above as it made its way to its destination: a LOT 553 at the back of Portside's northern half, a dock as close to the bridge crossing Gray Harbor's inlet as any of the docked ships could get. It passed by another truck heading the opposite direction and I could barely make out the driver raising a hand in greeting. I didn't know whether that was a sign of familiarity or simply something truck drivers did. Most likely the latter.

Without any issue whatsoever, the driver arrived at their destination. Both of the truck's doors opened and two people stepped out – a man and a woman. They walked to the back of the truck and opened it. To better see inside, I dove down and behind a line of shipping containers and quick-shifted midflight. My prior speed carried my newly-ratified body into a tumble, but even as a rat the sambo lessons proved useful; I rolled along with the momentum without any harm whatsoever.

I dashed through the gaps between individual containers – a tight fit, but nothing a rat couldn't handle – and arrived all but beside the smuggler's truck.

"-had her first performance. Not the biggest role – she played one of three singing bushes – but by God if she wasn't the best singing bush I ever damn heard!" the man said, laughter echoing out from the truck right after. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"Adorable," the woman said, standing outside of the truck with her arms raised.

"I can show you-" a grunt of exertion "-some pictures later," he said, voice squeaky from the effort. Loud footsteps thudded against the metal bottom of the truck, a drum barrel appearing in the opening right after. The woman accepted the barrel, putting it on the ground soon after.

"After we deal with this stuff," the man finished at last, gesturing towards what were no doubt other barrels behind him. Similar idle talk followed as the two henchies proceeded, the last barrel being followed by two foldable, motorized carts. Placing six of them on each, they went away. I followed. If our intel was correct, the first shipping container they should be going for was the PMLU 157800 2, registered to Palau Myzomela Logistics.

Yet the container they stopped at was a different one, albeit of the same company: PMLU 744025 1. They opened it up with a key, put two barrels in, then left. Interesting. Of course I kept following them, and ultimately they visited a total of seven containers. Three of them belonged to the same company as before, but the others were different, one belonging to an unknown company with the initials STJ and the other two belonging to ESS. We'd only known about the PML one.

It seemed a bit overkill using so many containers, but what did I know about smuggling. Once they were done, they went back to their truck and drove away. I took a good final look at the license plate – memcording it just in case – and returned to my mentor, shifting back to base form next to her in the nook.

"What happened?" she asked. Her position in the crane had been chosen precisely for taking pictures of the truck, their smuggled cargo, and them loading said cargo inside the container we knew about. Something which obviously didn't go according to expectations.

"They distributed the drums over half a dozen shipping containers," I said, then listed the numbers I'd memcorded.

"Hmm." She took out her phone and looked for the initials.

"Sterling Transference and Jauntry, and Eastsun Shipping Services." She frowned.

"That last name; it rings a bell." It had to me as well. I rapidly rewound my memcordings to the only other time we'd been in Portside.

"ESSU 377845 4." Crowsong looked up, staring.

"It was the container Nth-Sight made us look for. The one containing Jannacht's teleportation device." It didn't necessarily mean the owners of these shipping containers were aware of the smuggling. Motorgang might simply use them to get to where they needed to go and once there let Rajaparang – or if not them whoever was on the other side – retrieve them, the shipping companies themselves none the wiser. But for Eastsun to be involved with both the Jannacht and Motorgang?

That seemed too much of a coincidence, especially with what Michael had said about the Jannacht and Rajaparang brokering an agreement.

"Ah," Crowsong ah-ed in realization, nodding in approval.

"I'd forgotten about them. Good work. Ah, how wonderful it is to have an android as a junior," she said in a joking tone – mocking I would've called it, if it weren't for what Marianne said last Tuesday. So, I decided to just ask.

"You know," I began carefully.

"When you say things like that… what're you trying to do?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I don't know," I dithered.

"Just comes across as a bit… a bit like you're making fun of me, I guess." She leaned back, literally taken aback by the comment. I hastily continued.

"I mean, I don't really think you're mocking me, but it can… kinda feel that way? My therapist said you're just trying to make me feel accepted, or lighten the mood, or the burden or something." She visibly thought it over for a moment.

"I… don't know, honestly. Hadn't really thought about the why." She scratched the back of her head.

"It's the latter, I think – definitely not trying to mock you, though. Obviously." Then, her voice taking on a softer tone, "Want me to stop? Just not mention it at all?" I thought it over for a second.

"No, it's fine. Just needed to know what you mean with it. Just feel a bit insecure about it, you know?

"Sorry," Amber said. I shrugged.

"It's fine. I'll deal with it." A moment of silence. Then, Crowsong continued, "Let's wrap this up and get out of here, alright?" I nodded. We moved quickly, checking the containers – using Crowsong's knife-based lockpicking skills, of course – and the contents of what they were smuggling. As expected, the oil drums contained the Dieselpriest derived, Motor Spirit-processed pseudo-fossil fuel mixed in with a bunch of similar looking oil drums containing some form of gel-like liquid for cover.

As this wasn't a raid, we didn't take any of it. Nor did we call the authorities. We didn't want Motorgang to know we knew, after all, and while it was unlikely they'd figure it by just one 'lucky' raid, it was better not to risk it. Finally, we compared the new container numbers and their companies with our prior intel, added what needed adding, wrote a quick message through SentiNet about what we found, and then finished up our day.

X I spend the night doing what I always did: training, mastering, studying, schoolwork, etcetera. Though mostly it was schoolwork. I had a presentation on Monday for Geography class for the essay I wrote about plate tectonics, and I had put off working on it until basically the last moment. Things had been hectic, alright? Funnily enough, it turned out for the better that I hadn't prepared it.

With the doubts creeping in about where exactly I came from, where I was made and the sequence of events leading up to me getting to Charm, it led to some… interesting discoveries. Ones I hadn't expected to uncover by doing homework of all things. For one, the earthquake that came three days before I was found was clearly not a natural one.

For the essay on Cascadian plate tectonics I found out that the trifecta of the Himalayan Slip, the Sinking of Europe and New Seattle's destruction by Tyrannicus had altered tectonics around the globe so much that the Ring of Fire and the creation of the New Cascadian Plate – itself a result of Tyrannicus' Meteor, and a part of the Ring of Fire – had shifted around so much that earthquakes had become very rare here, especially for magnitudes such as mine had been.

It explained why my rescuers had said they 'found the cause of the earthquake' when they picked me up out of the forest. So a notch on the side of my achronal displacement being real, right? Wrong. In fact, it strengthened the truth of me being an android. It proved the main earthquake and its aftershocks were caused by my creator's reappearance into the world.

As Marianne had shown, Trajan Baker had been the one achronally displaced and stranded in the woods – perhaps even outright underground in some naturally formed cave of some sort. How exactly my creator had build that bunker in three days was easy to explain: powers. Likely, he woke up somewhere deeply underground. Desperate and without any means of survival, he built his lab as quickly as possible in order to then build me.

It would explain the low quality of his work; my lack of powers, pre-programmed personality and the sub-par Heroic Impulse. Although I was created too late to save him, unfortunately. He might've been a more formidable maker than I'd given him credit for. I felt bad for thinking about him the way I did back when I first woke up.

He wasn't a failed- well, he might still have been a failure of a law student, and a pampered son of inherited wealth, and overly ambitious with his plans even as he was on the verge of dying; but he wasn't a stupid, deranged 'mad maker' after all. Still weird that all that information had been implanted in me, but I chalked it up to an accidental transfer caused by his powers or something. What else could it be? Either way, all very useful to know – and reassuring too.

Who knew that doing your homework could lead to new insights? Something something 'stay in school' something something 'knowing is half the fight' – or any of the other dozen references my friends made about childhood shows and PSA's I'd never seen.

"Morning, Sam," Mom greeted me as she came downstairs and entered the kitchen. I quickly swallowed the bite of cereal I dutifully ate every day.

"Morning." She went to the fridge and prepared her side of breakfast.

"Anything interesting happen last night?"

"Meh. Depends on what you find interesting." I paused for a second, hesitating on what to say. Rhennish was the one responsible for what and what not to share with the heroes, so I had to be careful.

"Oh?" She sat down next to me.

"That already sounds interesting enough." Or I could just say, "Promise you won't tell the Wardens or Guardians?" She blinked, spoon halfway to her mouth halting as she froze.

"Depends on how serious it is."

"It's not that serious, I think. Besides, you already know the more interesting stuff of what we found out about the gangs." By which I meant Magistry's teleportation and summoning network, of course.

"Hmm," she hmm-ed.

"Alright, I promise." I smiled.

"We went to Portside to confirm some things. Guess what we found out Motorgang's side does during these stage fights?" She shrugged.

"Smuggling, probably."

"Yeah, basically," I affirmed.

"But it's potentially more than that. It's the Rajaparang."

"Rajaparang?"

"Remember what Michael said- Wait, did Michael say that to you? About his 'company' potentially coming to an agreement with an overseas partner?" She looked stunned.

"Jannacht was making a deal with the Rajaparang?"

"Hm-mm." I nodded twice.

"And now Motorgang's stepping in to take their place." She rubbed her chin, but said nothing. It sent alarm bells ringing in my head regardless.

"You promised you wouldn't tell."

"Sam, this is serious."

"Yes. Which is why we Sentinels are doing something about it before it grows into a problem. Which it will if we have to wait for the heroes." Mom frowned, expression a mix between insulted and amused.

"Sam-" I cut her off.

"You promised." A quiet battle of wills took place, neither Mom nor I blinking as we stared in each other's eyes. I'd confided her with this information, and even said too much. I would not back down. Eventually, her shoulders sagged and she sighed.

"Fine, fine. I promise. But promise me this: if it ever looks like things are spiraling out of control, you call me. Okay?" I smiled, this time wide and toothily.

"I promise." It was… a good sign for the future, let's say, that she agreed in the end. I might be extrapolating a bit too much, but that extra show of trust in me, and with something masquerade related too? It gave me that extra bit of reassurance for when I would inevitably tell her the truth. Now all I needed was the courage. She went to rub my head affectionally, which I of course dodged, leading to our usual morning routine resuming.