Chương 76: 5.15 Clashing Pearssonalities

2103: 12: 31: 18: 44: 08 Mom and I ate dinner in front of the TV, watching the 80s rendition of The Man From Baghdad mostly in silence. Dinner consisted of mussels and fries, with the possibility of an early start to the New Year's pastries if I played my cards right. I'd returned from my flight at 17: 02, and still felt strangely winded from today's events despite my alleged inexhaustibility. If it was just a mental fatigue I'd understand, but no.

I had muscle aches and a low-level soreness all over, as if I'd just come back from a masked fight not-quite unscathed. Most of what the flight did was help calm down my nerves – or my Heroic Impulse – somewhat, though I also used the opportunity to see our base again.

Amber was long gone by the time I did, of course, but she'd been hard at work; nearly all the training equipment had been set up, including the rack-of-many-weights and some of the more impressive, and expensive, exercise machines we'd not had before. After returning home, Michael had long since gone away and back to New York. Mom hadn't asked me any questions about it as of yet, but I was certain she'd interrogated Michael on how the conversation went.

No doubt I'd sooner rather than later be subjected to questions as well. As for how to answer those questions… We took our last bites of dinner and Mom paused the movie. We cleaned up together, keeping light conversation as she rinsed the dishes and loaded it into the dishwasher while I took everything from table to kitchen, fridged everything needing fridging, and made a big thermos teapot of tea.

When she wasn't looking, I sneaked a pair of pastries onto two little plates; better to ask forgiveness than permission. I lay down on the couch and grabbed my Paperfold as I waited for Mom to finish, as she put it, 'her part' of the chores. Serpents Amidst Smoke was coming to its end, and I was coming to like it more and more.

Not only did the detective work turn out to be much more thorough and interconnected than I'd previously thought, but to my surprise the characterisation of the protagonist himself improved too - in the story sense, not the character-as-person sense - as his missing-persons case devolved into a conspiracy he wasn't equipped to deal with. Still, it wasn't enough to keep my attention with today's events bouncing around in my head. Inevitably, my mind wandered back to Michael.

Whatever impact the conversation would have later – and it would surely have great impact – in the present it helped me get my bearings, stabilize my footing. I hadn't felt this certain of myself in a long time, maybe as long as forever – which was to me about four months. Combined with my journey on finding things I like, pursuing newfound hobbies, cultivating new and strengthening old relationships, and things like my chronically-lacking personality, character and identity were shaping up nicely.

Add to that me finding out that the part of my motivation for killing Nth-Sight that wasn't connected to his Treaty-break was, at least in part, not me but my Heroic Impulse edging me on, if not outright taking the wheel… well, it helped clear some of my doubts regarding my ethics to say the least. Guilt still lingered, but that was to be expected; like Mom said, even when necessary taking a life should never be without inner conflict. Though to be honest, I'd preferred never to have taken a life at all.

Was there ever a real necessity for me to do so, outside of maybe self-defense? Even then, it'd likely be safer for me to flee than kill my attacker. At the very least, I was certain that killing him to preserve a secret wasn't worth it. But even if it helped clear up a lot of the confusion, I'd also found plenty of new things to worry about. To use a scene from Paladin of the Seventh Tithe, it was like I'd cleared a labyrinth so as to find my destined nemesis, only to find mirrors staring back at me.

Or maybe not even that, but a replica instead. One holding all my mannerisms, but moving just wrong enough to creep the shit out of me. The Heroic Impulse was made by my creator to be my moral anchor and to shield me from so-called 'Mad Android Syndrome' – or whatever the proper term was for the trend that artificial life morally degraded over time. But unless I was the one in the wrong here – which I obviously wasn't – it seemed like the Heroic Impulse itself was degrading, itself becoming the mad android.

That, or it never functioned in the first place, which honestly seemed par for the course insofar as my maker's creations were concerned. Add to that whatever that malformed, simulated pseudo-Sam construct in my personality matrix was, and no matter how much surer I felt of myself on a personal level, I felt I was degrading mechanically. Again, my creator was to blame for all of it. How could I be expected to run properly on hastily constructed hard- and software?

It was a miracle I was such a highly functional hero at all. And now because of that failure, I might soon cease to be a hero at all – cease to be a person at all. Let alone what might happen to others if it was me going Mad Android. Ten minutes into my ruminations, Mom walked back into the living room and took her seat. She smiled, one I returned before closing my Paperfold and turning to the flatscreen. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

She didn't press play.

"You know," Mom began, "with all that's been happening, I hadn't had the chance to ask, but… why did you become a vigilante?" I slowly sat myself upright and said, "Because I wanted to do good?" She laughed.

"Why are you asking me?"

"I just… wanted to be a hero. Wanted it from the day-" I woke up in that bunker, "-I found out I had powers and knew what a hero was." I chuckled.

"I even wanted to head a team in the beginning, but that, eh, that didn't work out as planned."

"Figured as much. You had a similar reaction to when I told you and Michael about me being Peakstar." She chuckled in reminiscence.

"The team stuff's new though, but you could be ambitious when you wanted something. Either that, or stubborn." I shrugged. I didn't know what else to say to that, nor did I figure it required explanation. Besides, I was already preparing for the follow up.

"Still," Mom continued, "why a vigilante?" I couldn't tell her the truth, of course, so I shrugged and said, "As I said, I wanted to build a team of my own, and to do that I figured I needed to find both unaffiliated do-gooders and built a reputation." I scratched my cheek.

"I, ah… my first night out didn't go very well, as you already know."

"The nose?" she guessed.

"The nose. Crowsong was there to help me – she'd been the one guiding me the entire night – and later, I asked her to be my mentor, and she said yes." I shrugged.

"And that was that, basically."

"Hm," Mom hm-ed.

"And neither of you want to join the Acolytes or Prospectus? Or at least get properly registered as solo- well, a duo of independent heroes?" We were entering dangerous territory, but it was one I'd been preparing for ever since Mom told me she was Peakstar. An argument I'd hoped I never had to use, but alas.

"I understand why you and them did what you did, but that doesn't make it right." Mom's expression twisted at that, guilt writ large. A guilt I echoed, for various reasons. Android business aside, it was unkind of me to press on the sore subject, and not a little bit hypocritical with me having done a similar thing for sort-of similar reasons to Nth-Sight. But it had to be said.

"And besides," I continued, "Crowsong is my mentor, and I owe her a lot – more than the Wardens or Guardians, that's for sure." She smiled self-deprecatingly at that.

"And as for registering? Getting steered, a stipend, and being expected to obey and on-call? That's just not in the cards for Crowsong." And she had her own reasons for this, like Blackhawk and her general distrust of the authorities. Mom nodded and turned to silence at that. So, I asked her the question instead.

"Why did you become a hero?"

"Had powers since I was eighteen," she said, smiling in reminiscence.

"Got them one night while staring at the moon. A clear night, a full moon." Her smile turned mournful.

"I'd just finished high school and didn't know what to do with my life, but that was fine. My parents were supportive, and even if I ended up taking a gap year and chose to travel the world, they would help me do so. So there was no need to worry.

"Then, a month after graduating, my parents died after getting hit by a truck. Rather than risk his job and jailtime, the driver tried to hide the bodies in a dumpster. Clumsily. Put them in garbage bags and all, mangled their bodies." She clenched her fists, all but hissing the words before just as suddenly relaxing.

"An augur of the West Coast Wardens found them that same day, but the condition they were in… they could've been resurrectable if the driver hadn't tried to hide them the way he did, but with what he did, that window had closed." She sighed and leaned back in her chair.

"I tried to move on quickly, you know? Arranged the funeral within the week, then made up my mind to find a college, a field of study that, even if I wasn't passionate about it, could keep me afloat and occupied. I hung out with friends, went clubbing, to movies and on dates; tried to keep myself as busy as I could. But nothing really worked. It never works.

"So one day, I ran away from my temp state housing. Ran into the forest, up a hill and toward my favorite spot in all of San Diego. And it was there, as I was looking at the full moon, that I really broke down for the first time since it happened. I cursed, screamed, shouted, blamed, cried; I let it all out. And then, as I lay down and stared up, I… felt its light reach out. And for a moment, it was like my mom had come back somehow, and was trying to comfort me, caressing my hair and whispering in my ear…

and so, I fell asleep." After a short pause, she shrugged, idly running a hand through her hair.

"Well, she didn't come back, obviously. But I did get some powers out of that. And from there, the rest was easy: I went to the Wardens and signed up that same day, and that was that." For however emotional that tale was, she didn't look too broken up about it.

"It was a long time ago," Mom said, smiling. She must've read my thoughts.

"I've moved on, for the most part. Found a new place, made a new family; the past's over and done with."

"And… the moon?"

"Oh, it's still there." I huffed, causing her to laugh.

"Sorry, sorry. Never really found out anything about it. Just one of those semi-random power gains or something. Or I was blessed by the human superconscious, like Knight of Artemis and that sword of his- of all of them, I mean." She stopped and hesitated for a moment, deliberating on whether to continue. Eventually, she did.

"And sometimes, when I'm flying high and deep into the night, with the full moon bright in the sky and me in shifter form-" she smiled "-it feels like my mother's there again." Her smile slowly fell.

"Don't tell anyone about that part though; powers can be weird, and the weirder they are, the more certain people would like to study them." I mimed zipping my mouth, to which she smiled. X We continued the movie, played a card game or two, drank tea and soda and ate pastries and chips, and generally filled the night by having fun until tuning in on the Charm Announcement Service's countdown.

Mom filled two glasses of carbonated grape juice for the two of us – didn't want to drink a whole bottle of champagne by herself, she said – and when the countdown hit zero, we cheers-ed and wished each other a happy New Year. On the screen, fireworks launched into the sky despite the tough winds and cold. Something similar was going on outside with our neighbors, which I'd no doubt Mom wanted to greet in a moment.

But first, she had a call to make to friends and colleagues and the like, while I busied myself doing the same over text. Along with a dozen others at the same time, it seemed. I sent a simple message in the Class Y2C school chat group at the same time half the class did, then sent more personalized ones to Millie, Saga and Jolie in our private group chat.

Amber I messaged personally, of course, both because I hadn't yet been invited to her friend group's group chat and because even if I had, we had a much tighter connection than I had with the rest of the group. Jolie and Millie were still on their respective vacations and shared stuff about them. Each of us sent selfies of our families, me and Mom included. Amber had found her way out of family obligations by joining with Alisha's, whom I wished a happy New Year through proxy.

Saga was the only 'miserable' one due to mandatory curfew times for wards of the state, though she did send a selfie with one of the girls there she was friendly with. Both looked absolutely stiff-faced and done with it all, but I was certain they were putting on a performance and having an alright time. I knew Saga more than well enough for that.

"You ready to go outside?" Mom asked, already in a coat, mittens and a wooly knit cap. I nodded, sent a final message to everyone, armored myself against a cold that didn't bother me and a wind that might, then joined her in exodus.