2103:10:26:00:33:01

  Our destination wasn’t close but we made great time. I was once again impressed by how quick Crowsong moved through the city. Part of that came from her surfing on top of nighttime busses, trams, trucks and other forms of transportation, but it was still extremely impressive how quick and athletic she was. She’d told me it wasn’t a super sub-power, but I had my doubts.

  I refused to believe her moves all came from the knife mastery power – that just didn’t make sense – but maybe it guided her training in some way? Or had her old mentor devised a method, or outright given her some superpowered technique? I’d heard those were a thing…

  Well, it doesn’t matter. Flying was still superior.

  We left Bayside and returned to Northside, but not towards Crowsong’s base at the old Intra-Cascadian warehouse. No, we stayed further south and went towards a mix of sorts between a business and industrial park. From there, we went to a large, bland looking metal box of a building.

  Crowsong entered their carpark without hesitation and marched toward the entrance, uncaring of the cameras I saw dotted around the place.

  I joined her on the ground, shifting back to base form. “Where are we?”

  Instead of answering me directly, Crowsong pointed up. Following her finger, I saw the peeling, fading letters spell out in barely legible font: ‘MySafe Charm Storage XL’. A storage facility, if that wasn’t already clear.

  My mentor walked up to the locked front door and held her phone against a pad next to it on the wall. A second later, a tiny dot of red flipped green and the pad bleeped. Crowsong pulled the door open to reveal a concrete interior as uninteresting as the exterior, filled with rows upon rows of red metal roller doors spaced meters apart.

  We walked through the halls and went upstairs, then entered a corridor to our left. My mentor examined the numbered storage boxes until we reached number 225.

  She retrieved a metal something from her pocket that kind of looked like a key, but wasn’t. It was sharper, with a pointier end and rough sides. Not quite a knife, something closer to a nailfile. She forced it into the padlock, then started dragging in and out as if chiseling away at its interior. After a few seconds doing this, the lock clicked open.

  “You didn’t have a key?” I asked my mentor.

  She threw away the padlock and returned her knife-like tool back in her pocket. “From who? There aren’t any employees here during nighttime, and I’m not walking up here during the day. Besides, unlike those cameras, people remember when a masked walks in here,” Crowsong explained. She grabbed the bottom of the roller door and threw it open. “And I’d rather they didn’t.”

  She flicked the light switch to her right and the interior of the box was lit up. From the outside, the box had already looked wider than I’d expected from these self-storage facilities, but now they were revealed to be surprisingly deep as well. At least five meters deep, and eight to ten meters wide.

  Then again, that might just be the impression it gave because of how empty it was. Aside from my mentor and I, the only thing present in the storage box were four packages, each wrapped in brown paper held together by black cords.

  Crowsong crouched down and cut the cords with one of her many knives while I stood and watched from over her shoulder. I might not be jumping up and down in excitement, but it’d be a lie to say I wasn’t looking forward to seeing what was in them. When my mentor had said we’d been ‘gearing up’, my first instinct was she’d gotten the stab- and bulletproof under-costume armor she’d promised, but there were too many packages for it to be just that. Three too many, to be exact.

  My mentor peeled back the paper of the first package to reveal… something wrapped in plastic and duct tape. Why did they always double wrap things? Was the first-

  Before I could finish my thoughts, she threw the package over her shoulder right into my face. “That one’s yours,” she added. Forgiving as I was, I focused my attention on the package rather than complain about her method of delivery.

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  Inside the plastic wrap was, as expected, a jumpsuit. It shimmered in the light with a metallic sheen, and when I held it against it, it turned partially see-through. Also like metal, it was cold to the touch, but the way it flowed over my hand was more like I’d imagined silk to act. Disturbingly, the way the fabric actually felt was more like skin than any kind of cloth. It was kind of disgusting; the way the cold and texture combined made it feel slimy in a way.

  “Don’t make that face,” Crowsong said, unwrapping another package. How did she know- “I don’t have to see your face to know you’re making one.” Was she secretly an augur as well? If so, what did that mean for that speech she made about them before?

  “What you have in your hand,” Crowsong began, “is the finest maker-made flowplate available in this city – at our level of budget, anyway. It stops knives, small caliber bullets and even larger calibers as long as it's from far away enough. It also helps against extreme temperatures – both heat and cold – and you can get dragged behind a speeding car for miles without road rash.”

  As she explained this, Crowsong unfurled her own new piece of armor. She flapped as if shaking off the dust, and when she did it made an oddly light tinkling sound, like that of a chime swaying in the wind. She detached her old cloak by pressing something on her chest, then draped the new one over her shoulders. Contrary to expectation, the light didn’t bounce off of what was clearly metal. Whatever the cloak was made off, it remained as pitch black as her feathery one.

  “What do you think?” Crowsong asked excitedly – a rarity for the normally serious masked. “An armor of thousands of tiny knives, all but invisible and all working with my power – look!” She swiped her cloak through the air and I heard it sing as it cut through it. Then, she threw it out in front of her and it extended much further than expected, like a many-fingered monstrous claw ready to grab its next prey.

  “I’ve been saving up for this for over a year.” She swiped two more times, making tiny adjustments by prodding the cloak with her fingers, playing it like a pianist. She made it curve, bend, curl, extend and retract with beyond supernatural skill. “It’s perfect…” she sighed contentedly.

  “Won’t it make too much noise?” I questioned. Although the sound it made was light, it still made noise whenever she moved it. Since Crowsong and I relied on our stealth more often than not, that was sure to alert their target.

  Crowsong shrugged and grabbed her old cloak. “Not as long as I do this,” she said and put the old one over the new. They overlapped perfectly, seamlessly blending together like they weren’t two separate articles of clothing. When she moved a wing around in demonstration, the chiming sound was nearly absent – if it weren’t for the quiet inside the storage box, I doubt anyone would’ve heard it. “Besides, the war cloak itself is only for when stealth stops being an option.”

  “What about the other two packages?” I asked.

  She moved her feet to one of the two still on the ground, then whipped it up and towards me. I caught the box and opened it.

  “Boots?” I asked. One pair of large, thick-soled boots, red and shiny with white laces. A perfect fit for my costume compared to the regular ones I ran around in, but… “Why?” I asked.

  “Put them on,” Crowsong responded.

  Raising an unseen eyebrow, I did as asked and changed into them. They were sturdier than my old ones, I suppose, but was that it? I stood up and bounced on them a little when Crowsong’s feet suddenly shot forward – knife extended. Before I could respond, she struck me on the side of my foot.

  My mouth opened reflexively to yell ow!, but I felt… nothing? I lifted my boot up and inspected where she hit me. There was nothing, not even a scuff mark from where the knife had struck.

  “It’s the same stuff as my own boots,” she explained. “Tougher than that under armor, and helps absorb falls from great heights. Useful for when you transform high up and fail to transform back – as long as you land on your feet, that is. Plus, it’s got a steel nose so you can kick people in the shins that much more effectively.”

  She then bend down and picked up the last package. “As for these…” She removed the paper and gleefully opened the last box, rubbing her hands together as she dove in. “These ones are for me.”

  Two gleaming blades with strange cross markings on it emerged. Double edged and without a handguard, they looked dangerous to not just the target, but their user as well. And from the examples Crowsong had shown me, they looked too long to fall under her mastery.

  “Can you even use those?” I questioned.

  She hemmed and hawed for a second, before saying, “Sort of. There’s a trick to it,” she said. She moved both swords in lazy arcs before doing something with her hands that caused them to fall apart. Instead of the pieces falling to the ground or shooting off, they continued along the arc she’d made. She moved them about, and much like her new cloak, they sang as its sharp blades carved through the air. She then whipped one in a way that threw the tip of it straight forward, piercing the concrete wall at the other end. Another twist of her wrists and the pieces drew back together, reforming them into proper blades once more.

  I frowned from behind my mask. “Did you really have to damage the walls just to show me this?” Sometimes, I questioned my mentor’s propensity for unnecessary damage.

  “I’m hoping I can expand my power by using this,” she said, ignoring my question. “Either lengthen what it considers a ‘short blade’ or add more maneuvers to what I already have.”

  “Does that work?” I asked.

  “It hasn’t so far,” she admitted. “But powers have been known to change over time – through use if nothing else. Master powers are especially flexible. Maybe to make up for what it lacks in survivability?” she wondered, then shook her head. “Well, who knows. Either way, even if it doesn’t, my power still guides me through these weapons, so they’ll be useful regardless.”

  Fair enough, except for one thing. “Why don’t I get any weapons?” I said, definitely not pouting.

  Crowsong snorted and teased, “Your marotte not good enough for you? Seriously though, my power relies on weapons, so I can get away with lethal stuff like this. But if a shifter starts walking around with a gun, people will think you’ll intend to use it.”

  How convoluted.

  “That doesn’t mean I’ll leave you hanging. Instead of weapons, however…” Crowsong put her weapons away, picked up the trash and moved out of the storage box. Naturally, I followed, and she closed it up behind us. “We’ll go to a couple of places later to get you some new forms. I’ve been scouting around a bit and found a few in the zoo and across pet stores that seem like good additions. We’ll break into them, take their forms and leave before the alarm sounds. Sounds good?”

  The morally dubious manner of acquisition aside, “Sounds great,” I said eagerly.

  “Great. Because you’ll need to master every single one of them before the Jannacht arrives in force,” she said airily, throwing an arm over my shoulder. “Which means you’ll be training every single moment of every single day from now on. And I will be keeping track of your progress. Understood?” Her arm tightened around my neck ominously.

  I nodded, even though I was confused too. Weren’t we already doing that?