Chương 80: 6.01 How many Samanthas does it take to change a lightbulb?

2104: 02: 03: 14: 15: 16"Mwuhahaha! You'll never take me alive, Jester!" Hexkey in her odd occultist car mechanic outfit and gauche gold-with-silver-filigree welder's mask rose in the air on two of her hexagon-faced tube-shaped drones, her imperial purple cape with padded shoulders flapping in the wind. She laughed as she pointed and yelled at me, "Now die!" Three of her free-floating drones positioned themselves between me and the villain, their oversized singular camera lens staring right at me.

I quick shifted into a hummingbird and, as the world slowed down in that heightened state, dodged between the red, the blue and the white-dotted purple laser beam with all the flightiness I could summon. Wherever the beams hit there lay either a rope trying to coil around empty air (the red beam), a patch of ice that wasn't actually ice (the blue beam), or, if one looked very carefully, small particles of dirt and sand floating into the air with a purplish tint to them.

It was obvious that, despite her claims of seeking my demise, none of the beams were actually deadly. Just annoying. Dashing through said beams – which weren't moving at lightspeed and thus probably not really light, but who knew; maybe they were slow light? – I approached one of the drones and quick-shifted into a spider monkey. With newly nimble feet and nimbler hands, I clung onto the drone and started messing with its numerous delicate rotors and strangely cold jet-like thrusters, twisting them every which way.

Then after disabling one and sending it careening to the ground, I jumped toward the second and disabled that one too. The third tried to fly out of reach and go towards its owner, but I was quick enough to make the jump and latch onto it. But just as I disabled it, it was clear the maker had not been idle. She perused her book of curses – an artifact much more fitting to her time as Hexeminar of Dead Hive – and tore out a page. She lifted and pointed the page filled with arcane sigils towards me.

As the page burned in white-edged black flames, I pushed off against the third drone and threw myself towards the ground. Though I had no doubt the spider monkey could take the ten-meter fall with ease, I still quick-shifted into peregrine falcon and twisted the dive into an upward swing. The rapid maneuver allowed the black fireball to shoot past me and into the grass underneath, staining it a black-and-white in an eerily similar effect as Irkalla's powers had months ago.

The speed of my descent also allowed me to quickly go underneath, then up and behind Hexkey. While Hexkey did her best to order her drones to swing around as quick as they could, if she did it too fast she'd risk catapulting herself off of the improvised platform. And by the time she did finally manage it, it was already too late; a bird was flapping right in front of her eyes.

In that brief window between her confronting me and me deciding my next move, the Heroic Impulse's not-so-subtle suggestions coursed through my head.

I should quick-shift into a gorilla and smack the villain down, or grab and break her arms at least; I should transform into an alpaca, or a goat or something similarly unwieldy to destabilize the platform; I should- By now adroit with its tactics, I ignored its dangerous suggestions and grasping tendrils begging to take control, opting instead to simply start pecking away at the villain.

"Argh!" Hexkey shouted, trying to swat me with her grimoire.

"Geroff me! Go away!" I dodged her swipes, avoiding the thick-spined book while continuously pecking, and flapping, and falcon-screeching, and bumping into the woman in an attempt to force her to back down. And for a second, it was working. The two-droned platform slowly started to make their way to the ground as I continued to put pressure on her. That is until she managed to score a lucky hit with her book. It struck my head from above, a clean swing, and I plummeted toward the earth in a daze.

With but a second to spare before I hit the dirt, I managed to spread my wings enough to course correct and land relatively softly, if stumbly. I shifted back to my human form and looked up, preparing myself for the villain's next attack. Yet instead of shooting blasts of exotic energy or firing a curse from her grimoire, Hexkey was fleeing.

"So long, Jester!" she said, rising higher and higher until she was nothing more than black dot against the grey clouds.

"But you haven't seen the last of me yet!" The distant, barely-audible shout was followed by even harder-to-discern laughter before fading completely. How dramatic. I turned around and made my way to my mentor's side, who was busy struggling with the Magistry side of this battlefield. When the MaskedWatch alert popped up we'd for once been close enough in our patrol to go ahead and swoop on over.

Normally when these engagements happened it was either further south in Aberdeen, on the border of little Europe, or took place outside of our routes or scheduled patrol times. Even now, as close by and quickly alerted as we were, we arrived at a battle already long in progress. Yet when I made to face them, the speedster Harehead and most of her crew of summoned demons – courtesy of their caller and Magistry head, Friend-of-Fiends – had already disappeared, leaving only five remaining imps to stall Crowsong.

These were nothing to her blades, and when I shifted into a gorilla to stomp the last one into dust – literally; they exploded into dust upon death – we were left with a calm, if somewhat ravaged park, piles of drone scrap and imp dust, and zero villains captured.

"Hexkey escaped?" Crowsong asked, sheathing her blades. I shifted back to base and nodded.

"Managed to take out most of her drones though." We turned to look and saw the remains of near-twenty drones scattered about, two of them still feebly, futilely trying to rise into the air despite their broken-down state and letting out strangely-adorable little robotic coos. I'd not been responsible for all of them – we hadn't arrived instantly, after all – but I had broken eight, including the two still 'alive'.

"Hmm. Good work. That should hurt their wallets some."

"Rather have had the villains." Crowsong shrugged.

"Ah well, what can you do. It's not like others heroes have had better luck so far." There'd been conflict between the two gangs after since the unofficial 'Christmas Truce' was over. Magistry, having preserved their strength and resources both by not fighting the Jannacht and not falling into Nth-Sight's schemes, had managed to incorporate both the Numbers Room and Dusk Bandits into themselves in that time.

By all accounts the merger had been a peaceful one due to the Dusk Bandits deciding that their numbers were too low to be a 'proper' gang, and the mostly-augur villains of Numbers Room deciding they needed protection after one of their own died against the Jannacht. Though the latter did have two defectors, 80-71 and Thirteen, striking out as solo villains in protest.

This had created a situation where Charm only really had two gangs: Motorgang, consisting of Blazin, Motor Spirit, Chroming Hand, Dieselpriest, Mangine of Destruction, Smokestack and their sole junior Maxxellerate, along with the three former Dead Hive villains Hexkey, Helltearer and Deathride – for a total of ten; and Magistry with Friend-of-Fiends, Foxhead, Wolfhead and Harehead, the ex-Numbers Roomers Null, One, Six and their junior Nine-Nine, and the remaining Dusk Bandits Perihellion, Ilmagon and Dryadynamo – for a total of eleven.

And now the two big gangs were fighting. A recipe for disaster. Or so I'd imagined when I first heard it, but really it had been downright peaceful these past few months. Even after the Christmas Truce ended and fights between them grew somewhat frequent, it was… I scanned the park we were in. No flipped cars, road and street left intact, zero casualties or injuries on both the civilian and villain front, and only a few areas of lingering exotic effects from Hexkey's drones and Friend-of-Fiends' called imps.

Not counting the grass that had been burned and gouged at places, the largest casualty was a single tree in which a falling drone had been caught, his continued struggle breaking its branches and slowly setting the tree a-smolder with its burners. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. Their encounters were all like this. These battles felt performative.

Maybe it was a show of force, or a probing attack against the other side, or an attempt to measure the heroes' response times or a distraction for hidden operations elsewhere. Either way, fighting them felt like participating in whatever plans they cooked up; plans neither Amber and I were particularly keen on helping. It all felt like a waste of time, and the amount of time I had left was dwindling. Worse, if these encounters were meant to be theatre, it was working.

For the news these incidents were certainly more attention grabbing than the regular crimes being committed, and after three or four of these battles civilians had already all but stopped cowering from villains like they'd done in the latter half of the Jannacht Wars. Children – those without supervision of their parents at least – were already curiously investigating the lingering effects of the battle.

A couple of teens my age or older were throwing rocks and stuff into the slight, near-invisible patches of anti-gravity, while a couple of younger kids were busy tug-of-warring or otherwise playing with cords of previously-animated rope. A trio of small kids were fearlessly running, then sliding on a particularly long stretch of frictionless not-ice, their parents hurrying to catch and stop them. All this no doubt to the dismay of many an employee of Charm's Department of Public Works and Restoration.

Their slogan of 'Safety Before Curiosity' had been thrown well out the window. There were also the more opportunistic ones. Teens and adults were collecting the dust of dead imps or grabbing scattered pieces of broken drones, though they still thankfully avoided the 'living' ones. These pieces weren't exactly worth much – not for the adults at least – but plenty of people, businesses and even some institutions collected and paid for things like that, so there was a market.

That, or the people here simply wanted their own memento of the battle they witnessed. A nice conversation piece.

"Should we try and stop them?" I asked my mentor, gesturing to the looters. Even if it was all fun, games and profit, it was still technically illegal. It just wasn't enforced for mostly-harmless stuff like this.

"Nah," Crowsong said.

"It's no use. Not even the government really bothers until PWR arrives to start cleaning and repairing, and only then if they interfere with operations. Just let them be while we wait for-" Crowsong cut herself off and turned slightly. I followed and saw that, coming out of a group of onlookers taking pictures of the two of us, an apologetically-smiling mother and her shy child were making their way over to us. It was a rare, but not completely unfamiliar sight.

Thanks to Mom now knowing I was Jester, Amber and I went masking during the day much more often than before. And with our actions against the Jannacht, Soliloquy and Nth-Sight we'd garnered a fair bit of fame and reputation.

Me for participating in the big strike against the Jannacht, in the fight against Soliloquy and, unfortunately, for being the one to strike down Nth-Sight; and Amber for discovering Nth-Sight's plot, for outsmarting Nth-Sight's augur abilities where no one else could, for sabotaging his escape plans, and for setting up the ambush in which I killed him.

That these were embellishments on deeds we accomplished more through luck than anything else wasn't something others considered, but either way we were now recognized and 'liked' by the public – especially in Northside, our home turf as it were. I feared it would get even worse when Amber and I receive the medal for Meritorious Heroics on the tenth next week. The only thing unfamiliar about this sight was the age of our fan.

He seemed to me anywhere from four to six years old, especially with the way he half-hid from us behind his mother's leg. Easily the youngest fan we'd interacted with yet.

"Hello Jester, Crowsong!" the mother began cheerily, no doubt hoping to encourage her son.

"Sammy here-" how fun, "-wanted to say thank you and ask something. Didn't you, Sammy?" Becoming the focus of attention, the kid further hid behind his mother's leg, his little hands tightening his hold on her jeans. With eyes downcast and face hidden, it was clear he wasn't ready to make the first move. Luckily I had prepared for this. I crouched down to the kid's eyelevel. Curious at the movement, he raised his head marginally, and as his eyes met mine, I began.

"A duck goes to the doctor and says," I put on a silly voice and gestured along with the play, "'I have this ache in my wing – have had it for a month now! How do I get rid of this pain?' The doctor nodded and said 'I see, I see; I have just the thing' and went to his cabinet and gave the duck his medicine.

'This, I swear, will cure anything! Just rub the salve in for three days – before bed and after waking up – and you'll forget all about the pain!'

"Thanking the doctor, the duck left and went back home and, eager to leave his pain behind, began massaging his wing with the salve. Yet to his dismay, on the second day his feathers started falling out, and his wing began to itch a lot, so the duck went back to the doctor, shoved the featherless drumstick of a wing in his face and yelled, 'Look what you did!'

"The doctor rubbed his chin, examined the wing and replied, 'Well, does the pain still bother you?' The duck blinked, taken aback.

'What? Who cares about the pain! Can't you see all my feathers have fallen out! And this itch – it's the worst!' To which the doctor said, 'Well, good! Seems you've all but forgotten about the pain! Just keep rubbing it for a few more days to be sure it worked.'"'But-but what about the itch?' the duck asked.

'What about my feathers?' To which the doctor shrugged and said, 'I'm not a skin doctor', and handed the duck the bill for his services. Seeing the enormous medical bill, steam blew out of the duck's ears in anger and he opened his mouth. Do you know what the duck said?" I asked the kid. The boy, still clinging to his mother's leg, thought deeply for a second before emphatically shaking his head.

"He yelled, 'You-" I shifted into a duck, and "Quack!" -ed as loud as I could. The kid stared with eyes wide before happily yelling, "Ducky!" Quicker than I expected, the boy dashed and grabbed a hold of me, lifting into the kind of fierce, no-holds-barred embrace only kids were capable of – all the while not caring one whit about my brilliant punchline. All this preparation and I could've just turned into a duck right away to get the same effect? I felt cheated.

Of course, I allowed him to pick me up without much of a fuss. His petting was a bit rough and his little fingers burrowing its way through my feathery coat uncomfortable – especially when he tried petting them against the grain – but I kept my complaints to a couple of admonishing quacks. Naturally that only encouraged him further, and worse, with him so tightly hugging me I couldn't even shift back. The boy's mother put a hand on the kid's head.

"Put the hero down, honey," she said, but it was clear she was amused by his antics. Worse, she'd been taking pictures before even trying to get Sammy to release me – though she did so only after asking Crowsong. Who of course gave permission. Really, with friends like these… The boy eventually let go as his mother's prodding grew more insistent. After taking another picture with me posing as a crow on Sammy's shoulder while Crowsong crouched down and side-hugged the kid, they went their way.

Others came and went too for the next few minutes, and even though Crowsong was uncomfortable – she didn't make it obvious, but I could tell – she was pretty good at it. Was it something Blackhawk trained her for? Eventually, PWR arrived on the scene and began to chase everyone off. They were accompanied by the Guardian Sandelabra and his junior, the Acolyte Erinye. They must've heard the battle was already over and the situation under control; they'd have arrived here sooner otherwise.

"Hello again, Crowsong," Sandelabra, dressed in a wizard's robe of flowing glass and sparkling like gems, greeted.

"And hello again to you too, Jester. Glad to see you again under better circumstances." He was referring to the Soliloquy battle. He gestured to his winged junior – dressed closer to a helmeted Valkyrie than the Greek furies from which she got her name – and said, "Here, let me introduce you to Erinye real quick before we get to the report." The greeting came in the form of a short and terse saying-of-names and shaking-of-hands, Erinye clearly unhappy at having arrived too late and missing all the fun.

That, or she was standoffish by nature. After giving our view on today's events, Sandelabra left to help PWR with the restoration efforts. Erinye lingered and we began speculating about what was going on between Motorgang and Magistry. She quickly became more open with us.

"Yeah, doesn't seem like they're really trying," she said, crossing her arms while rubbing her unmasked chin.

"Not that I expect them to; not so soon after the Jannacht, anyway. But it does seem like they're trying to look harmless – actively trying, I mean. Or at least to appear more harmless than they actually are."

"You fought any of them?" I asked. She scowled.

"No. Not any of their masked, at least. They've been careful in where they've been deploying their juniors so far, so I've only managed to help clean up a few of the imps and drones in their battles. As far as I know only Bizz-Buzz was lucky enough to get into a fight with Maxxellerate – the bastard!" she grumbled. She then brightened, smiling toothily.

"Though I did briefly fight Meteor Hammer."

"Meteor Hammer?" Crowsong asked. Erinye nodded.

"New villain on the scene. A solo junior, so go soft and try to persuade him to turn his life around, yada yada." She gestured dismissively before smiling again.

"He was fun to fight though. Definitely wouldn't mind running into him again."

"If you managed to bring him in you could spar as much as you want," I suggested. Her head swayed side to side, considering.

"Meh, I don't know. Takes some of the fun out of it, I think. Feels less real, you know?" I shrugged without comment, letting Crowsong take up the conversation again.

"Maybe we could spar sometimes? Me and Jester could both use some practice against supers. Especially fliers." That was true. Though I could reach them pretty easily, taking them down without outright flinging the villain to the ground and potentially killing them was pretty difficult, especially for squishy targets and/or non-regenerators. Like Hexkey. Erinye briefly got excited before looking crestfallen.

"I wish, but you know how it is with the Guardians and vigilantes." Crowsong was no doubt scowling underneath her mask since I did much the same, and I was definitely less prone to them than her.

"That sucks," I said. Both Crowsong and Erinye nodded in agreement. Crowsong was about to speak when something behind Erinye caught her eye. Erinye and I followed her gaze and saw that the drone caught in the tree, finally having burned its way through the surrounding leaves and branches, was about to break free. Half the tree collapsed with a snap, the PWR employees near it diving away. Erinye saw much the same, and the three of us rushed to the drone.

"Don't destroy it!" Crowsong yelled after Erinye, who got ahead much faster thanks to her wings.

"Jester needs to copy it!" Without offering a response, Erinye flew ahead in a burst of speed and reached the drone. Without Hexkey offering its guidance the drone was seemingly incapable of firing its laser or performing complex maneuvers, so Erinye caught it with ease. Thankfully she must've heard us as she wrangled the thing without destroying its tiny, rudder-like little wings or any of its trusters or the big central eye. As we reached her, Erinye said, "Here you go, freshly caught!

Do you need to hold it or something?"

"Just keep it there," I replied and scanned its form. I grabbed a hold of it pretty quickly since it wasn't that large – only half a meter long, and half that in diameter. I shifted into it. The world changed but unlike with most inanimate objects, it didn't fall away entirely.

I could see clearly through its singular eye and there were a number of senses all over my hexagonal cylinder of a body informing me of airflow, pressure, direction and balance; all combining to give me a sense of the world around me and my position in it. Unfortunately, while the senses were pretty intact for an inanimate form, the rest was as lackluster as every other form. I could twitch the rotors, the thrusters and the little wings, but couldn't really power them enough to fly.

Much like the maker generator I'd copied, I could move some parts but not really use the whole. Maybe I lacked a power source? Or the connection to the maker power itself? But there was one thing that I could do. One that, as I had shifted facing nose down into the ground, I felt comfortable activating. A red beam shot out of my mechanical eye. A lively rope sprang into existence and briefly did its best to coil around absolutely nothing before tangling in on itself, dropping into an inert pile a second later.

I shifted back. Erinye, Crowsong and I all stared at the rope. To be honest, I was surprised it was still there, considering how other things – feathers, blood – would normally disappear in the switch.

"Man," Erinye said.

"The anti-gravity one would've been so much cooler." Crowsong and I hummed in agreement. Still, it was better than nothing.