Chương 85: 6.06 How many Samanthas does it take to change a lightbulb?

2104: 02: 14: 19: 29: 36 It was time for our Thursday evening meet-up and I was feeling incredibly anxious for it in both senses of the word. Not meeting Amber in and of itself – we'd seen each other in class just hours before now – but as a masked. The new forms I'd gotten from my solo outing two days prior were promising. I now had three types of non-lethal drones – rope, frictionless and anti-gravity – and a lethal scorch ray one; lots of possibilities once I'd gotten some practice with them.

Unfortunately, and somewhat strangely, I could only have one functional copy of each of the three kinds. All the other copies were simply inert hunks of metal. Odd, that, but whatever. Wasn't the first time my powers screwed me over on the details. What it didn't screw me over with was the motorcycle, because, well… it worked! Well, sort of. The only minor issue was that I couldn't steer myself, but that was easily fixable if Amber agreed to be behind the wheel – after maybe getting some driving lessons.

Though it didn't come with the standard 'road sense' other cars had, it did have one other amazing addition: the blaze trail. What exactly the use of setting the road on fire behind you was, I didn't know, but I sure as hell could do it! So yes, I was anxiously excited to show them off and use them during our excursions. The two of us racing through the streets, Miss Dark and Edgy's feather-and-knife cloak trailing behind, dancing in the jet-stream speed like dark fire…

Problem was – and here was the source of the negative anxiety– I would have to tell her how I got them. Mom had found out I'd gone out alone that night, and had been very angry that I hadn't told her I would. And this was without telling her I also hadn't told my mentor! Now, obviously Amber wasn't my mother, but she was my mentor, so she might have some right to be angry with me. Yet we were also friends and, if not literally the same age, then in similar stages of our life – peers, in other words.

From that perspective she shouldn't have the right to forbid me from doing anything really, let alone be angry with me. That she would be so regardless was, while annoying, frustrating and irritating – which were three words for the same thing, but that's just how much I felt it – something I had to accept in the same way one would a hurricane: reluctantly. The moment of my doom arrived.

With a subtle soft click of the opening door and the less-subtle bang of it closing – then a repeat of it to enter the lounge space – Amber entered the room. I turned around on the couch, staring at her from over the back. I greeted the masked crow-girl, "Hey Amber." Amber, still midstride, froze immediately.

"What did you do?" she asked, already suspicious for some reason.

"Also: I'm in costume. Call me Crowsong." She put down the bag she'd been carrying on the table, pulling her mask off right after. Would I still need to call her Crowsong now?

"What's in the bag?" I asked instead.

"It's a rifle… sort of." Seeing the doubtful look on my unmasked face, she snorted.

"I said 'sort of' – it's not the real thing." She pulled the device out of the bag. It indeed looked like a rifle, except smaller, with a narrower barrel, a rectangular muzzle and a gas cannister for a magazine attached underneath. I'd seen something similar before online, a kind of dart gun for tranquilizers, though this one looked sturdier than those – metal rather than plastic. Though I suppose this one could shoot knife-shaped projectiles in order to, hopefully, benefit from her master power.

"It's a multi-purpose rifle," Amber explained.

"It can shoot tranq darts, tasers, trackers, and most importantly-" she took another item out of the bag: an anchor-looking thing that, of course, seemed a bit too knife-like to be a proper anchor.

"-this grapnel, making it a grappling gun as well!"

"That's pretty cool," I said admiringly. Did she know how to shoot it though?

"Yes, it is," she said, looking at the device lovingly for a moment. She then put it on the table and looked back at me, her eyes narrowing sharply.

"Now stop deflecting: what's up with you today?" I ignored her question.

"You know what else is cool?" Amber sighed.

"I don't know. What?"

"I've got some new forms," I said with a sing-song voice.

"And they're pretty useful too!"

"Why're you being annoying?" she asked, then tsked at my lack of response.

"Alright, I'll bite: what are they?"

"I've got another motorcycle," I said.

"But guess what? This one works!"

"Okay, that's pretty cool." Though her frown told otherwise.

"But how is it that this bike-""Unfortunately, while the engine works I can't really steer it," I said, cutting her off.

"But I can accelerate, and it's got power. So if you get behind the wheel and steer, we can definitely ride it!" A second of silence.

"Probably." Another second of silence.

"Uh-huh. And-""And then I've also got three other forms!" I said cheerfully, cutting her off again. I was really pushing it today, and I didn't even know why. Maybe forcing cheer would somehow help lessen Amber's anger? By the look of Amber's crossed arms that didn't seem to be the case. How frustrating.

"Here, let me show you!" I shifted into the Hexkey not-ice drone, the one whose beam applied a temporary frictionless surface. Amber walked up to the back of the couch, peering over at my prone drone body.

"I've already- wait?" She leaned in closer, staring at its blue lens intently.

"Is that-" Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. I shifted back to base.

"Yep!" Amber flinched back, startled by the sudden transformation.

"I've also got the anti-gravity drone and another, heat-ray shooting one – though that one seems a bit too lethal."

"Oh Sam…" she groaned. I jumped off the couch.

"And this is the motorcycle by the way." I shifted to show her, then quickly shifted back.

"I've also tested some of the things we came up with. Like-""Sam…"

"-the one where I jump and shift into a bird-""Sam."

"-then quick-shift into a drone so I can basically use the drone like it's an actual drone instead of-""Sam!" Amber yelled, finally having enough. I flinched at the noise. Amber had yelled before, but never had I felt the need to flinch. So why now? And why was my head swimming?

"I thought you'd be happy," I said instead. Amber calmed down at my scared-cat non-act, releasing her frustration through a deep exhale.

"Why did you go masking on your own without telling me?"

"What, I can't go out on my own?" I said, an angry stubbornness creeping in.

"Since when has that been a rule."

"It's not about can or can't," Amber said.

"It's about knowing where the other is. Just-""'In case'. Yes, I know."

"Then why didn't you tell me?" What could I even say to that? That I didn't want her to ask questions about why I suddenly wanted to strike out on my own? That I had a shitty day due to a shitty realization about a shitty situation caused by my shitty creator? That there was something inside my head that whispered things to me, looking to take control the moment I grew lax?

That it felt like I was on a time limit, and that I can't even tell if that time limit was on me, or on the very thing that was both meant to protect me from that doom and trying to take control of me? Let alone the issue that I didn't even know how long I had left. Research on Mad Android Syndrome I found hadn't been clear on the exact time frame, but it was always sooner rather than later – and much sooner than the time I had already lived. Sometimes, it would happen the moment the maker was killed.

Other times, it would take weeks for the artificially sapient being to degrade. I'd not found a single example where it lasted months. But I couldn't share that with Amber. Not any of it. She was smart; she'd figure things out before I knew it. So, I said nothing. Amber sighed.

"Look. Far be it from me to judge you for going through whatever it is you're going through – family stuff, achronal displacement issues, power stuff; whatever." I knew it. She was already this close without information; one more hint and she'd crack the case.

"But we need to trust each other for this-" her finger pointed alternatively between us, "-to work properly. I cannot have you breaking that trust. I cannot." Her pleading tone; it stung. I knew Amber had trust issues, and I still…

"I'm sorry."

"I don't care about your 'sorry'," Amber said.

"What I want to hear is why. Why didn't you tell me? Why did you think this- this stupid act of yours was a good idea." I opened my mouth to apologize again, but something caught in my brain. Something that set alarm bells – non-Heroic Impulse ones – ringing.

"Act?" I asked.

"Yes, your act! You know, the whole-" she gestured vaguely at all of me, "-overly-emotional, fake-sweet cheer? The fake-shyness, passive-aggressive, confrontation-avoiding schtick that seemed specifically designed to annoy me? That act? Or what, you gonna tell me that was genuine?" She scoffed.

"I know you better than that, and that wasn't you." I quickly searched my memory, replaying my memcordings as fast as I could, and came to a singular worrying conclusion: she might be right. An overemotional responses after a period of mental instability. A difference in personality, like a reluctance to confront and overgrown stubbornness – a different-from-normal kind of stubbornness, anyway – and an overall increase in unpredictability.

It was subtle, much subtler than what I knew to expect from the Heroic Impulse. Pseudo-Sam was leaking through. The thought set off a whole new round of alarm bells. Unlike the Heroic Impulse, which I could by-now easily recognize and deny, the simulation of other-Sam was something buried deep within my personality matrix – and thus outside my direct control. It was a phantom hidden deep within constructed from my earliest memories, built from the stories, objects and pictures Mom had shown or told me about.

Something I incorporated to at first better blend in, and later kept because a lot of it fit. Something that was ultimately me in a way the Heroic Impulse simply wasn't. In other words, the thing that was degrading wasn't the Heroic Impulse – or at least not just the Heroic Impulse. It was me.

"Sam?" Amber asked worriedly, startling me from my thoughts.

"Are you alright?" I felt a clammy kind of sweat form on my forehead, underneath my armpits, emerging from my palms, legs, back and everywhere else.

"I… I may need to lie down," I said. Amber's frown deepened.

"You already are." And indeed I was; I just hadn't noticed.

"What's going on Sam?" she asked, her voice gentler than I'd ever heard before. I swallowed, the movement thick and difficult.

"I- I just had a stressful couple of days. Some personal issues I'm dealing with," I admitted.

"I just- It feels like I'm on a timer or something, and I don't know how to…" I trailed off; I'd already said too much.

"Are you sick?" Amber asked, fear etched clear.

"Are you…?"

"No!" I quickly denied, though it felt like a lie.

"No no! I'm not dying or anything like that." Some of the tension leaked from Amber, but not all.

"It's- it's just mental issues." I winced at the choice of words.

"It's just a feeling I have, that's all. I'm already talking about it with my therapist." Except I was stuck on that front too.

"Ah," Amber ah-ed, not knowing what to say.

"I've just been feeling off lately – since winter break, really. And with the city so- well, not exactly calm, but… well, you know what I mean." Amber nodded.

"I'm still getting used to… having less of an impact, I suppose."

"Is that why you're so anxious to get out there more often, wanting to fight more villains and stuff?" Amber asked.

"To the point of going solo?"

"Yeah," I said.

"I just… wanted to do more, you know? All these patrols, the theatrical fights between Motorgang and Magistry, the whole memorial stuff? I- It feels like we haven't done anything in, like, two months! Our biggest bust was just some minor Motorgang warehouse, or fence or whatever it was out in the middle of nowhere! And after all we did in the Jannacht Wars- I mean, it was horrible, but it felt like we had real impact back then… even if it still wasn't enough."

"I understand," Amber said, "but that's what the majority of heroing is like. We go and put a stop to the fighting, save civilians where we can, arrest criminals wherever we find them and all the while try to undermine the gang's criminal network as much as possible. Which unfortunately isn't something that normally takes a month or two's worth of work like with the Jannacht."

"I know," I said.

"But is there really, truly nothing we can do?" Amber sighed, her eyes taking on a bitter, melancholic look.

"I had similar feelings when I first started apprenticing under Blackhawk. Nothing we did seemed to have an impact. Villains we captured were easily replaced, and organized crime networks seemingly continued to exist no matter what we do." It was rare for her to talk about her past with her old mentor. And, I imagined, difficult.

"How do you deal with it?"

"At first? Not well." She chuckled.

"But Blackhawk told me the bitter truth then: that it takes years to bust a gang, and that Motorgang's been around for decades. That no matter how hard the two of us work or how much we want to, there was little we could do by ourselves.

"At the same time, he also said we had a crucial role to play in all this. That we – the vigilantes – were the ones going out there and collect evidence of their crimes, uncovering their network and helping the heroes put together the bigger picture for a definitive strike. That we – Blackhawk and I back then; you and me now – are the vanguard of justice, forging a path for the heroes to follow. A difficult, unenviable position – yet all the nobler for it." She grimaced.

"Though knowing what I know now, it seems like he might've been attempting to salvage some sort of pride from his new… lot in life." A weary sigh escaped her lips.

"Still, he did have a point: there's no way that just us two could take down Motorgang – let alone them, Magistry and all the independent villains running around. So, we do what we can, and hope our actions are enough to finally motivate the bureaucracy of heroism to get off its ass and take matters into their own hands." I mulled over her words. They made sense, but it didn't address the issue as I saw it: the issue of my limited time. As such, it provided me little comfort.

Though it did spark something within me. Namely, an idea.

"And without Nth-Sight, we have to do everything ourselves, right?" She raised an eyebrow.

"Unless we can find a new augur? Yes." I smiled.

"Ooooor… we ask the Sentinels." Amber blinked.

"The Sentinels? They don't have an augur."

"They don't. But they do have a Mantellan," I said.

"And even without him, surely they have some other way of gathering intel. They've been in this business for years now. Decades, even. They must've built some kind of a support network by now."

"They work mostly in Greenside and Little Europe," she argued back, but from her thoughtful look she wasn't fully disagreeing.

"Maybe they'd help in Aberdeen, but there's no way they'll go to Northside."

"Even so, isn't it better to get in contact with them at least? Share information and work together when necessary, for the bigger operations?" I asked.

"I mean, we did so during the Jannacht Wars."

"And you saw how that worked out," she pointed out. I winced at the retort, but held my ground.

"It's better than nothing." Another idea popped in my head.

"And who knows? Maybe we can even spread it out to other vigilantes?"

"Set up a network?" Amber asked, sounding all but onboard now.

"I don't know. You know what other vigilantes are like." I didn't; all I knew was what she'd told me. But I also knew I liked the idea forming in my mind.

"If the Sentinels back it, I'm sure the other vigilantes would see the value regardless of whatever… inclinations they have." Be it ego-driven edginess, outright bloodlust or some form of desire for solitude; all of them could use information on the gangs.

"Hell, maybe we can even include solo heroes in that!" Amber snorted.

"I don't know about that," she said.

"But… the Sentinels could work." She rubbed her chin before nodding.

"All right. I'll contact them and see if we can set something up." I smiled. At least something good came out of this today.

"But in return," Amber continued in a deadly serious tone, "never go solo without telling me again, you hear? Never." I nodded, feeling properly chastised.

"Good."