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  “Left, left, right upper,” Crowsong said, then caught Jester’s jabs on the reinforced and padded parts of her armor.

  “Left, right, sweep,” Crowsong said, catching the jabs again and jumping over Jester’s right leg sweeping for her ankles.

  This rhythm continued for a while. “Alright, let’s switch. Footwork and dodging.”

  Crowsong started with slowed down jabs, hooks and even some very careful stabs with blunted knives. Jester kept up easily, so Crowsong began increasing the pace. She never got too fast – didn’t want to hit her new apprentice by accident, especially since she’d yet to get Jester the same padding and armoring Crowsong had added to her own costume.

  Even so, despite the handicap, the speed and skill Crowsong used was above what even an experienced, non-super henchie could keep up with. And still, Jester was keeping through up despite her clear inexperience.

  Thinking this was enough dodging for now, Crowsong said, “Stop! Let’s switch –attack me however you want, I’ll dodge. And don’t hold back.”

  Jester went on the offensive and to her credit, she really didn’t hold back. Her attacks were sharp and had clear power behind them, enough to make the air whistle when fists flew past Crowsong’s ear. The attacks lacked skill, were overly telegraphed, had no good follow-ups, and were done without a strategy for victory behind it, but it was already much, much better than when they started out. Jester had barely been able to hit the broadside of a barn back then.

  It was abundantly clear that Jester was a quick learner and an attentive student. It also helped that she had some minor super abilities, though not a minor master power as Crowsong had first assumed. Her leaps in skill were large, but not supernaturally so like Crowsong’s own had been. Jester rarely pulled moves Crowsong hadn’t instructed her in, and when she did, Crowsong could trace its origin with a bit of effort.

  “All right, that’s enough for now,” Crowsong said. “Let’s wind down, take a breather and after, you start focusing on your shifting, alright?” Jester nodded in response.

  They did their post-workout stretches before going to the lounge. Crowsong grabbed two bottles of her favorite sports drink and passed one to Jester. Not long after, Jester began mastering her shifter forms. Crowsong followed her lead and started her usual routine of punching, stabbing and slashing her training mannequins.

  If Crowsong had to name one weak point of Jester, it was that she often lacked imagination. Crowsong had been surprised only a handful of times during training, and those times were solely thanks to Jester using her powers in creative ways. But in simple hand-to-hand combat, in her ‘base form’ as Jester herself called it? She stuck to what she was taught. For now, that was better than the opposite as Jester still required instruction, but it could become a problem later on if not addressed.

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  Regardless, her sidekick’s progress made Crowsong proud. Proud enough to smile underneath her mask during training. Proud enough to smile even when she got back home and locked herself in her room for the rest of the day. Proud enough to smile even as her mother and her father made a racket yelling at each other downstairs.

  She’d already been over the moon to find someone willing to be her apprentice or sidekick. For Jester to not only want that too, but be good at it as well was just the cherry on top. To be able to pass down Blackhawk’s knowledge, fighting style and style of heroism was a goal she’d started chasing from the moment Dieselpriest murdered her mentor, but she’d had little luck before. The few times she spotted a potential candidate, they proved to have a… less than stellar character, like that Drake kid, a masked that could turn into a dragon. That little shit had a mean streak a mile wide, and after their shouting match in the first meeting, the second time they’d met he’d been robbing a store – and burning it down in the process.

  Well, whatever. She had one now, and that’s the only thing that mattered. Hell, Jester had been practically thrown in her lap, and she’d still almost blown it! That first night at that drug lab had almost gone sideways and Jester had even ended up with a broken nose! It was a miracle the girl still wished to meet up a second time.

  Crowsong had been so nervous, so unsure as to whether Jester would accept, only to be blindsided when Jester asked her. She still couldn’t believe it – Jester asked her to be her mentor! Her! And what did she do in response? She began lecturing at her and almost went off the deep end. Instead of slowly guiding her protégé into the lifestyle of a vigilante, she’d nearly overwhelmed the girl by almost ranting at her. What should’ve been a simple introduction to the masquerade and the Treaty had turned into a lecture, a dark history lesson, a philosophy of heroism lesson and even a, at least in her own mind, pathetic plea toward the end.

  She’d feared she’d overwhelmed and even scared off her new protégé with all that information and, well, she had, but Jester took it all in and didn’t even hesitate to start training immediately after. Not just that, these past three weeks or so they’d gone crimefighting numerous times and her protégé had clearly taken those long-winded, nearly incoherent lessons to heart.

  It was like the masked was tailor-made to be her apprentice, and Crowsong couldn’t be happier.

  Now, if only her new sidekick wasn’t also Samantha Pearsson, she’d have been even more perfect.

  The voice alone had been a dead giveaway, unaltered as it was. Even if Crowsong didn’t have a particular knack for recognizing them, to the point she would’ve considered it a part of her power if it hadn’t been present long before then, she’d probably have recognized Samantha’s voice. She just had a specific way of speaking, an inflection and vocabulary few others carried.

  So from the moment Jester had opened her mouth, she recognized it as Samantha’s, the annoying, pushy and unrelentingly frank girl sitting next to her at school.

  Combine that with the fact that being achronally displaced was a type of ordeal people could easily get powers from, the timing of a new masked arriving on the scene right after Samantha’s return, and the fact that no sane masked – relatively speaking; it would be generous to call any masked sane – would pick a jester’s outfit of all things…

  Well, that just sealed it.

  Where had she even gotten-

  No, Amber could not lie to herself. She knew exactly where Samantha had gotten the outfit. Old Man Evergreen, a friend of her late mentor, at the costume store might be a professional, but only in the sense of a non-masked powered person; the man liked his jokes too much to ever be considered an actual professional. Must’ve given Sam the costume for free, if her sidekick’s reaction to getting money disconnected from her civilian identity was any indication.

  Ah, the struggles of being a new hero. Missed it like toothache, Crowsong did.

  But anyway, the issue with taking on Jester as a protégé was that the proximity of both their masked and regular identities made Crowsong nervous. That it was her weird – albeit for good reason – achronally displaced deskmate only made her more nervous.

  She liked keeping her identities as Crowsong and Amber as far apart as possible, but alas. Beggars can’t be choosers and all that, and Jester was too ideal an apprentice to pass up. Few were willing or understanding enough to tread the path of a vigilante, and those that were often had some screws loose, were suicidal, or used vigilantism as a way to ‘heroically’ fulfill their wanton need for violence.

  Thankfully, Jester simply had a few obvious screws loose rather than any of the latter options. Her heart was in the right place, and that was what mattered above all.

  And maybe, just maybe, a good heart was all Amber needed in a good neighbor as well.