Chương 95: 6.16 How many Samanthas does it take to change a lightbulb?

2104: 03: 19: 15: 32: 59 As the dust and smoke from the blast became less and less thick, the six figures hidden within grew in clarity. Dressed in a mix of bright red and greyish-black professional ice skater wear, a leather jacket over it and the top half of a bicycle helmet with two little figurine engines plus exhausts on either side, Maxxellerate struck a pre-emptive victory pose complete with one hand in V-shape, the other carrying the baseball bat resting against her shoulder.

Covered in a black denim worker's overall with half a dozen pockets, an almost comically small red cape and a face shield like one would use in paintball with blacked-out glass was… somebody else. Undoubtedly another junior masked of Motorgang, but last I heard they only had one. A recent recruit? I sincerely hoped this wasn't her debut. Wouldn't want to ruin such a grand moment for the poor kid; she looked clearly nervous despite her best attempt at a cross-armed sneer-and-glare.

The third was similarly unfamiliar to me, but not completely. Looking like a stereotypical Viking warrior – nose- and eye-covering helmet, chainmail, fur-lined vest and rope-tied trousers, although no axe, sword or shield – Husk Carl wasn't a part of Motorgang last I'd heard.

He'd been a somewhat minor (in age, status and reputation) villain in Riverside, more known for getting into extremely bloody fights with the late and not-so-great Dead Hive than his own villainous acts which ranged from surprisingly tame muggings to the most casual of burglaries. Unlike the other two, he looked mostly bored.

The last two masked, standing behind and looming over their juniors, were much more familiar to Crowsong and I: Motor Spirit in his power armor, and Mangine of Destruction wearing little of anything at all. Really, if he swapped his monstrous machine-devil facemask with that of an old Indian deity and his swim trunks – thankfully one of the longer, square-cut boxer-style ones rather than briefs – replaced with a barbarian girdle, Mangine could've been Jagar Natha's… younger cousin or something.

Besides the muscle and getup, they really weren't all that similar.

"Well, well, well, well, well," Maxxellerate well-ed.

"Here we planned for a big welcome committee, but it's just you two huh?" She scanned the room theatrically.

"Wait, where's little miss crow? She and I have a, uh, missed appointment to catch up on." She laughed at her own 'joke'.

"Behind the elephant," Husk Carl said, voice dry as the desert. The speedster whirled on him.

"I know that, idiot! I was doing a hyperbole."

"Not what that means."

"Ugh, just shut up!" Maxxellerate turned to me.

"Now, let's address the elephant in the room." I trumpeted in complaint. She rolled her eyes.

"Everyone's a critic – but never mind that! What I do mind is you animals running roughshod over fine, upstanding business ventures, while uttering vile slander over some of our friends," she said. I had no idea what she was talking about. Oh, right; the business we'd exposed as fronts.

"Now, what do you have to say for yourself?" After a second, "How did you even find out about us?" Crowsong said from behind cover – the cover being me, of course.

"Hah! You think we'd just let your friend steal our work?" Maxxellerate sneered.

"Hell no! A simple-" A resounding clang! followed by an outraged, " Ow!" stopped her in her tracks for a moment. She rubbed her helmet where Motor Spirit hit her. Mangine of Destruction, who'd so far acted out the role of the tough one to a tee, broke character and turned away, restraining his laughter.

"What was that for?" Maxxellerate asked aggrieved.

"What did I say about thinking before you speak?" Motor Spirit chastised.

"You put a tracker in the drones?" Crowsong asked.

"In the bike?" Oh. This ambush was my fault. They must've seen the video of me mimicking and shooting the first Hexkey rope drone in the park, and then decided to place trackers in their maker ware. I'd never considered the possibility, and now they'd used it to track us here. A chill ran down my spine. Where else had they managed to track us? Another clang broke me from my thoughts. This time, Motor Spirit had hit his own helmeted head in exasperation.

Maxxellerate looked a bit shamefaced for a second, realizing her mistake before ploughing on ahead anyway.

"That's right!" She looked at me.

"Though really, your shitty power needs some work. Most of the trackers don't even track anyth- ow!" She turned to Motor Spirit again.

"What?! It's not like they're gonna keep using them!"

"Just…" Motor Spirit sighed.

"Just shut up, please." Mangine failed to restrain his laughter any longer, barking like a dog with a bone stuck in his throat.

"Oh Mot, just let her be. No matter how hard you hit, there's no way you'll get that lesson through her thick skull." Maxxellerate looked inordinately proud at the older villain's declaration.

"Don't make it sound like I'm abusing your junior," Motor Spirit sighed.

"We have a reputation to maintain."

"So, when are we going to fight?" Husk Carl asked.

"I thought that was why we were here."

"Five to two?" Crowsong said.

"A bit unfair, isn't it?

"Oh, no not to worry about us," Mangine said, teeth gleaming from the gap in his demonic mask.

"Our juniors will take care of you. We're just here to stop you from escaping."

"Uh-huh. Unless we start winning, of course." Crowsong scoffed.

"And that when you owe us for saving Chroming Hand and your henchies during the bridge incident."

"An incident you helped create, if I recall correctly," Motor Spirit responded.

"Or were you not the ones following Hessian's orders?"

"And you goons attacked our base completely out of your own volition, no?" Crowsong accused. Husk Carl yawned.

"Soooo, no fighting?"

"Kinetic!" Maxxellerate interjected.

"Do your thing!" The previously-unnamed Kinetic looked nervously between Maxxellerate and Motor Spirit.

"I-I- Do I…?" As Motor Spirit vaguely gestured the go ahead, I trumpeted my trunk as loud as I could. The villains startled – Kinetic going so far as to jump a little – but Crowsong got the message. Her claws lightly digging into my skin – more of an itch than a pain, really – Crowsong clambered her way on top of me and immediately loosed a volley of a half-dozen knives towards the junior villains.

Maxxellerate ducked and activated her power, sliding off and away to the side at a continuously accelerating pace, leaving the knives to pierce the floor where her legs had been milliseconds before. When the villain hit the wall, she continued to slide upwards, laughing as she brandished her metal baseball bat and made to flank Crowsong and I. Kinetic's pockets opened themselves and from it shot up dozens upon dozens of shiny ball bearings.

Without wasted time or a single gesture given, they coalesced into a low-to-the-ground wall protecting her legs. The knives were unable to pierce the dense mesh and clattered to the floor. Husk Carl merely stood there and took the knives without complaint, one burying itself in his heart and one piercing the helmet to enter his forehead.

This wasn't Crowsong being uncharacteristically brutal- Well, okay, this was her being brutal, but she wasn't exactly known as the gentlest masked and Husk Carl's death threshold was among the highest on the West Coast, maybe even the Americas. Hence his reputation for bloody fights; the blood was all his, as were the limbs – and guts, and heads – he was often known to leave behind. So yes, Crowsong was justified in this, especially since he was her real target to begin with.

She'd leaped off my back the moment she threw them, now descending on the bored villain with her maker-blades out and ready to cut. The moment I felt her leave my back, I-"Kinetic!" Not a second later, an explosive bang! echoed through the office space, an overwhelming force crashing into my head, sides and rear. Even through thick elephant hide and skull, I felt six ball bearings dig its way through and crack my skull, ribs and hip. Not enough to kill, but certainly enough to hurt, and hurt badly.

I attempted to quick-shift, but the lingering shock of pain, the suddenness of the unexpected attack and the disorientation from getting my then-elephant brain partly pierced screwed with my usual quickness, forcing me to get my bearings and linger in base form for a second. It was the second Maxxellerate needed. She descended on me like a vulture, cackling madly as her metal bat arched down and hit me in the side with all the momentum she'd gathered.

I felt the ribs – my real, actual ribs – on my left side crack and a second shock of hurt go through my system, amplifying the lingering phantom one. Well-trained reflexes finally kicked in and I shifted back into elephant form, now completely healed if still smarting from the now-dual phantom pain. Pushing through the distractions of ghostly aches without a moment's hesitation, I sounded the charge, trumpeting and barreling my way to the one villain I could reasonably hit: Kinetic.

Though I saw neither her nor the so-far uninvolved adult villains' eyes widen, they quickly dispersed before my oncoming one-woman stampede. Motor Spirit's boots screeched like tires, leaving smoke in his wake as his motorized skates dragged him backwards and out of the building. Mangine simply kicked off the ground and launched himself backwards through the hole.

When Kinetic made a similar backpaddle – ball bearings flowing underneath her, forming a platform to carry her off – she again launched a dozen of her metal marbles towards me like a buckshot. They cracked in the air as they shot forwards, striking me with the kind of force shotgun slugs wished they could have. But this time I was prepared. I skidded and threw myself upwards, taking the hit mostly in the legs and blubber of my chest, quick-shifting right after to nullify the wave of pain before it could fully hit.

Reappearing as an elephant, I continued my charge ahead. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. But before I could reach her, she launched herself into the air, lifted by ball bearings crawling into her denim overalls. And, I noticed, with fewer ball bearings surrounding her than before. Which was odd. My forms didn't eat matter or took items with between shifts, merely dumping them on the ground around where I reappeared in a new form.

And indeed, the metal balls Kinetic had hit me with were still there, on the floor. Where they remained. As she didn't use the metal on the walls or the broken bricks from their breach, focusing solely on what she brought with, it meant she wasn't a tele- or ferrokinetic. And as she seemingly couldn't use the ball bearings that had pierced me, there was a good chance she needed to either empower or make them beforehand.

A power that, much like other powers when used on my shifter form, they lost if they pierced my body and got caught between shifts. In other words, this was a war of attrition. A war I would definitely win… If this had been a one-on-one. A short series of quick-shifts – base, cat, base, elephant again – and I'd completed a one eighty, facing the warehouse. I charged forwards again, heading towards the hole in the wall while getting peppered in the rear by Kinetic's armaments.

Likely having noticed the effect I had on them, Kinetic made sure that this time they pierced only shallowly or not at all, getting dragged back immediately before I could catch-and-shift to depower them. I ignored it and kept my eyes on the more important goal: getting back inside. Crowsong was still fighting Husk Carl, but she looked to be in bad shape – not physically, but tactically speaking. Her blades were carving away at the male villain with seeming ease.

But while she managed to cut him aplenty, all attacks meant to lob off limbs or his head were ducked under or dodged by Husk Carl. Whether through mundane training or powered mastery, Husk Carl knew close-quarters hand-to-hand well enough to know how to position himself. But that wasn't the worst of it. No, that belonged to Maxxellerate skating in and out of combat, striking with her metal bat at whatever opening she could, and just as often feigning an attack to distract rather than hurt.

And when she did neither, the villain kept building up speed by going round and round the office space, across the walls, floor and roof, acting like gravity was but a suggestion. Already Crowsong had had to discard her war-cloak to use as an impromptu spike trap against the speedster, and as I approached, she unlinked one of her swords to form her barbed whip to strike out at Maxxellerate. Yet that seemed to be the exact moment Husk Carl was waiting for.

As the whip-blade snaked its way through the air toward where Maxxellerate was about to be, Husk Carl moved in for a clinch. Crowsong sidestepped the attempt and instinctually lashed out with her regularly-shaped sword to scare off the villain, but Husk Carl powered through the scare tactic and simply let it pierce, focusing his efforts on grabbing the unfurled whip blade before it could strike Maxxellerate. And catch it he did.

Lodged within the flesh and bone of his right arm, Husk Carl had managed to deprive Crowsong of one of her weapons. Or so he thought. Crowsong moved and whirled the bladelets of the whip-sword, allowing it to entangle further around and into the villain's form, catching not just his arm but his chest, throat and both shoulders. Then, she let go of the sword altogether, ducking and kicking him away from her-"What the-?" he uttered, surprised at how casually she had let go of the weapon.

-and throwing him right in front of my charge. I raised my front legs, head scraping against the roof of the warehouse office as I prepared to crush him beneath my feet. That was when Kinetic struck again, this time going all out rather than continue the light peppering she'd been giving me. With the harshest snap-and-crack I'd heard of her yet, a concentrated load of the ball bearings crashed straight into my spine and, for a split second, the back of my head, instantly plunging me to darkness.

I came back right in time to watch my mentor parry Maxxellerate's metal bat – which should've been cut through. Did they really give her a maker-made bat? Seriously? – before catching Husk Carl's whip-blade-wrapped fist in her suddenly knife-filled claw of a hand. It was a move of desperation on Crowsong's part, as instead of pulling back his hand the villain simply leaned into it, forcing his hand deeper into the blades and closing it around hers.

Fearing what came next, I rapidly shifted into gorilla form and charged to her position, yet the moment I did one leg was pierced all the way through by a rapid-fire series of ball bearings. I roared in pain and stumbled, crashing to the floor. Before I could quick-shift, it was already too late. Locked in place as she was, Husk Carl had made to grab Crowsong with his yet-free hand, but failed; my mentor had managed to cut it off at the wrist with her remaining blade before he could.

In the same motion that cut the limb, she'd then whirled her blade behind her to catch what she couldn't see, but knew would come. Yet even though she'd managed to position her blade behind her, the angle was not ideal. Even with all her mastery, the only thing she could do was dampen the force of the impact. Maxxellerate's bat struck with titanic force, hitting the flat of the blade right into Crowsong's hip. I heard my mentor cry out sharply in agony, the sound sending a shiver down my spine.

Pushing aside the anger, the pain of my severed leg – and during the brief period in base form, my broken ribs – I quick-shifted into the Hexkey anti-gravity drone. Taking advantage of Maxxellerate's halted momentum from crashing into my mentor; of Husk Carl's hold on her; of my mentor's pain; I blasted them at max power, catching all three of them in a bubble of purple anti-gravity. It hit, and not a second too late.

Kinetic's ball bearings cracked the air again, tearing through the metal and erasing the drone from my collection. Returning to base, I put my everything into a jump, the pain in my ribs rising like hellfire agony before disappearing as I transformed into a hummingbird. Again, it was right in time. Right at where I just stood, a single ball bearing cracked the stone floor and bounced off into the distance. I whirred around and quickly flew up, dodging a hail of ball bearings by a less than a feather's breadth.

I focused my attention on Kinetic and the whirlwind of ball bearings surrounding her, quick-shifting into the Hexkey rope drone and firing at her as quickly and as many times as I could. I got only two shots off before Kinetic caught me right in the lens. Though it wasn't a killing blow for my drone form, it disabled my beam. After I felt my metal body crash into the floor through my sensor suite, I quick-shifted as quickly as I could back into hummingbird again.

Two ball bearings smashed into the ground where my drone form and, for however briefly, my base form had previously stood. Sure, the animate ropes had wrapped the villain up all nice and tidy, but it didn't prevent her from using her power. I jumped and beat my wings to get away as fast as I could, placing the wall – she was still outside the building, if only barely – between us before the villain could improvise another buckshot to try and catch me through sheer numbers.

I stayed close to the roof as I made my way to the other end of the ready-to-pop bubble of antigravity. Hopefully Kinetic would be hesitant to fire her pseudo-railgun through her teammates. Hovering above them, I counted down the seconds until, right as the thirtieth passed, I quick-shifted into a gorilla. The bubble popped and the trio fell to the floor, reengaging the struggle.

Maxxellerate was off and away before I could grab her, so instead I lunged for Husk Carl – specifically, the arm still holding onto Crowsong. Catching him by the elbow, I squeezed down with my gorilla strength and shattered it with ease. The villain made a huff in annoyance as his grip on Crowsong broke. My mentor dropped like a sack of potatoes, doing her best to crawl away and create some distance, grunting in pain all the while. Things were going from bad to worse.

The break in her hip must be really bad; Amber had a higher-than-normal pain tolerance, and pride and stubbornness in spades. But we hadn't lost yet. Unless she manages to catch me between shifts, I highly doubted Maxxellerate could do any lasting damage to me with her bat, and Husk Carl- Shit. The second I realized I'd miscalculated horribly, the familiar crack in the air echoed in from outside.

A squad of ball bearings pierced Husk Carl and struck me hard enough to find real estate in my left lung and deep in my right shoulder. A third shattered my clavicle before punching clean through, with a fourth hitting my right knee hard enough to shatter it completely. As I fell and roared in pain and anger, I dragged Husk Carl down with me. I pounced with all my fury and pounded his head into the stone floor with all my strength. After the third, something broke. And yet he was still moving!

I'd hoped crushing his head would disable him temporarily, but even headless he struggled against my grip. Frustrated beyond belief, I rolled on my back and used the momentum to throw him away and straight into the wall. The second I let go, another series of well-aimed ball bearings found my elbow, each adding to the break, then to the wound as broken bone pierced skin, until finally managing to amputate my lower right arm completely.

I howled in pain while another, desperate part of myself thought over my options. Maxxellerate was still running around all over the place, waiting for an opening. If I could quick-shift into another Hexkey drone – the friction-denial one – a single beam could take Maxxellerate out, or at least hinder her enough to be all but ineffective. But as pain continued to build, so would its phantom counterpart. A quick-shift would be risky, and if I failed… I might die. Amber might die.

Yet if I did nothing, we might die all the same. I was bleeding out and would be forced to shift back to base either way, permanently losing the gorilla form in the process. I had to risk it. I shifted back to base, the simultaneous vanishing of one pain and the reintroduction of another set my nerves alight and senses adrift. Then the phantom pain hit, one almost too strong for me to keep my focus. Almost. I managed to push through, quick-shifting into a hummingbird.

The many-layered phantom ache doubled, tripled, quadrupled as every injury my mind remembered but my body didn't wreaked havoc on my senses, yet still I managed to jump, slowly rising into the air-"Gotcha!" -only to be caught by a passing blur, Maxxellerate's hands wrapping around me. I was stuck, unable to transform back to base. It was Soliloquy all over again.

"Thought you could pull the same trick twice, eh?" Maxxellerate mocked, shaking me around in her grip.

"Ha! Think again bitch!"

"Language," Motor Spirit chided, him and Mangine reentering the warehouse office. Followed right behind the pair was a sheepish-looking Kinetic, still bound by the rope while being held up by a number of her ball bearings.

"Ignore the sourpuss," Mangine said.

"It's a villain's right to gloat after a good victory!" He laughed, and Maxxellerate laughed with him.

"Gloat?" A wet-sounding gurgle sounded behind me – Husk Carl. Seemed like his head had at least partially regenerated.

"We nearly got our ass kicked." Mangine shrugged.

"A win's a win."

"Yeah man, stop complaining," Maxxellerate complained, turning to face her colleague. His face had yet to heal; I could see bits of brain and skull peeking through. Yuck.

"Oh, and hold her for a second- careful! Don't want her to slip loose." I was carefully, if unceremoniously passed over to Husk Carl's slick-with-blood hands. Maxxellerate twirled her baseball bat, passing it back and forth between her hands while menacingly eying my mentor. She started walking. I noticed Motor Spirit making to intersperse himself between them and for a brief moment felt surge of hope, but it was immediately crushed by a hand grabbing the villain's shoulder, followed by a shake of Mangine's head.

"What're you gonna do?" Crowsong ground out painfully between breaths.

"Kill us?"

"Kill you?" Maxxellerate chortled as she stood above Crowsong.

"Of course not – we're not barbarians!" The villain poked her with her bat. Crowsong winced.

"I'm going to hurt you." Maxxellerate raised her bat.

"Hurt you so bad you'll never mess with Motorgang again." And brought it down. Crowsong cried out in pain. I desperately made to wriggle out of Husk Carl's hand, pecking at his hand as hard as I could. All he did was tighten his grip.

"Don't worry-" Another hit.

"-I'll make sure-" Another.

"-to leave you-" And another.

"-resurrectable!" A final blow right in the center of Crowsong's chest, ending the spectacle with an ominous crack. Amber didn't speak, or whimper, or let out even a single noise. I could only barely tell she was still breathing. I furiously struggled against Husk Carl's grip, but it didn't work. I tried contorting myself downward, nearly cracking my ribs in the process, but it didn't work. I then deliberately tried cracking my ribs, but couldn't find the leverage. As far and hard as I could, I twisted my neck.

Nothing worked. Then, right as I'd given up hope, a whisper. An alternative. A path forward. It came reluctantly, I could tell – as reluctant as an unliving, emotionless program could be. The option was as tantalizing as it was horrifying. Self-termination. A push of the button up and I would cease to exist and, hopefully, exchange my hummingbird form for freedom. And all the Heroic Impulse asked of me was the deaths of the villains standing before me. Amber's wheezes sounded wet, struggling.

Her sobbing – if I wasn't imagining the sound altogether – was heartbreakingly soft. The villains were speaking among themselves, discussing, but I didn't spare an ear to them. My attention was solely on my mentor, and the devil in my head. I gave in. The Heroic Impulse flicked a switch. Without feeling anything of it whatsoever, the hummingbird ceased to exist. I reappeared a step away from Husk Carl. He looked at me, at his now-empty hand, then back to me in surprise.

By the time he looked back up, I had already shifted in a gorilla. A second later, I grabbed his head with two hands and popped it like a watermelon. I stomped on his heart thrice for good measure. Villains yelled and the air cracked, another load of ball bearings piercing gorilla hide. I let it, then quick-shifted despite the debilitating pain in both my forms. Phantom pain and debilitated senses hit, but it didn't stop me. The Heroic Impulse had all but completely taken control by now.

It would be better to say I was it, my consent to its pact and our goals aligning us perfectly; its will strengthening mine and vice versa. I transformed into a sparrow, Maxxellerate's baseball bat whizzing past me between the shifts, and jumped into the air. I angled myself downward and quick-shifted into a Hexkey drone – the lethal, heat ray-bearing one. With barely a thought, I fired into Maxxellerate, the villain screaming in pain as she was being gradually cooked from the inside out.

Long before I could finish her off – before I could even hit the floor, only just coming down from the apex – a ball struck and the beam went wide. A moment later a large hand, Mangine's, pulled me out of the air, threw me on the ground and stomped down on the drone. I shifted back to base and rolled away between two stomps, turning into a gorilla right after and attacking Mangine. I tried hitting his head but he ducked under my fist, going in for the grab immediately after.

Two arms wrapped around the back of my neck and began pushing my head downwards. He brought up his knees and shoved them hard into my sides. I moved with the blow, but still the strength of the super was enough to break ribs. Thankfully, the hold he held me in was a familiar one. I brought up one hand to wrap around his neck and the other to his wrist, twisting both. Taking advantage of his surprise, I kept his hand close to my chest and pushed the one I had around his neck further up and around into his armpit.

Stepping inward, I brought my whole body around, raised him up and threw him over my hip and onto the floor. Just as I was about to go in for the grapple – or the strangle, or simple pounding his head in – a wave of fire washed over my back. With the Heroic Impulse suppressing my reactions, I managed to throw myself over and to the other side of Mangine despite the agonizing pain. Mid tumble, I grabbed him and turned him over, rolling on top of me and into the fire.

The flames washed over Mangine's back and he began screaming in my face. Fists rained down on me faster and faster, getting more powerful with each blow as the Mangine began building up steam. I managed to deflect some while purposefully taking others on the thick bone of my forehead, growing progressively more concussed in the effort. All the while, I tried my best to return the favor blow by blow, my knees kicking him in the ribs, stomach and wherever else I could get him.

Yet as he continued to ramp up, Mangine's punches grew faster and faster, knocking all the sense out of me. Soon all I could do was sit there and take it until I was forced to base. My only hope was to quick-shift fast enough to avoid the next blow and take it from there. But then-"Mangine! Grab Carl and Max, we gotta go!" -the air cracked again, but the sound was off. Less like a speeding bullet, and more like something bursting apart.

Not a second after the sound, a vapor began filling the room, one that quickly transformed into something not quite liquid, yet not quite fire either. It was a thick, green, erratically-dancing mist that washed over us, one that seemed intent to drain me of all my energy and emotions. Before it could drain Mangine completely, and after giving me a final baleful glare from behind his metallic demon mask, the villain let go and leaped back, vanishing from my sight in an instant.

Slower, and being drained all the while, I scrambled up only for my concussion and ruined back to make me fall forwards, face first. Lying on my stomach, I watched Mangine pick up the headless Husk Carl and wounded Maxxellerate, then immediately turn to leave. I quick-shifted into a sparrow, the transformation resetting the effect of the exotic mist, and rose up into the air and left the building. Seeing the retreating backs of the villains, I honed in on Maxxellerate's form draped over Mangine's shoulder.

Without hesitation, I quick-shifted into the scorching ray Hexkey drone in midair and- I terminated the shift, permanently ridding myself of its form in the same way the Heroic Impulse had erased my hummingbird. It didn't rage at my interference. Instead, it forced me to shift into a crow and give chase, flying out the warehouse, past Darion and following in the wake of Darius' jet pack smoke trail. I terminated myself again, crashing to the ground after sacrificing another form.

A cat followed and ran for a split second before it, too, got terminated. The same for another cat and, unfortunately, the ostrich as well. After that, my body stood still for a second, watching Darius disappear in the distance. We both knew the villains had already gone too far away for any of my other forms to reliably catch up. So, it ceased trying. The program didn't rage, or argue about the unfairness of me breaking the deal.

All it did was relinquish control and recede back into the shadows from whence it came. All the emotion and pain I'd felt but distantly moments before came crashing down in an instant, leaving me no choice but to collapse and lie, broken-ribbed and bleeding, on the cold asphalt. I lay there for a minute, perhaps two, basking in… something.

Despite everything that had happened today, despite how all of it was my fault, despite how close I'd come to killing someone today; despite everything, there was a vague sense of accomplishment. Something sweet extracted from a bitter root. After the two-and-a-half minute mark passed, I saw Darion appear above me.

"Are you alright?" he asked, posture screaming a confused tension.

"I saw you running and thought- but then- it all looked a bit…" He trailed off.

"Crow… song?" I managed to croak. He tensed; a near-flinch.

"She's… not great, but she will be. Nothing that can't be fixed." I nodded.

"I'll be fine."