Impostor Syndrome

From a Different Perspective

She rushed down the busy street, occasionally tucking her hair behind her ears. I thought it was sort of cute, in a little kid sort of way. Serena was going to hate it. Her dog used to look like a wolf. Now she looked like some kind of chihuahua.

Although, I thought as I meandered through the throng of people, She might really get behind that school girl look Andi has going on right now.

Eyes slid over and passed me. I was just so incredibly average looking without my Dragon next to me. A bit on the chubby side, perhaps. I grinned. Saint Kassie certainly loved to spoil me. Of course, I most definitely earned it.

Andi finally slowed down near Hue street: a dead end. I watched her stop in front of a small blue house that needed some real attention, take a deep breath, and put the key in the lock. I slipped up to the nearest house and neatly picked the lock. I re-locked the door behind me and set about checking out my new home.

The entryway was small but functional, with a shoe rack and coat closet. It opened into a nice living and dining area with a proko snail and big white wall. It seemed to get plenty of use: there were empty snack containers and used drink cups on the table and the chairs were worn and stained. There were stairs to the left of me and a kitchen just passed the Proko room. I checked out the kitchen first. Dirty, grungy; dishes in the sink, something growing on the counters. I wrinkled my nose.

Upstairs was slightly better, except for the smell. I covered my nose with my sleeve and squinted through the nearly visible scent. My eyes watered as I reached the top step. How had I not noticed this when I walked in? It was almost like the time Kasey locked the butler in the Hot Box, and he'd baked alive. When she finally remembered to pull him out...

Sure enough, I found the corpse of a single, old man bloated and decaying in the bedroom. It would take me days to clean out the house...

The door opened. I could have slapped myself, If I wasn't busy pulling down the shower curtain one handedly.

"And that kid still has no ide-e-ea that we-e-e're here?" The deep male voice sounded incredulous. He had what sounded like a slight stutter on his hard E's. "what a fre-e-kin' moron!"

"I'm ha-a-aving a hard time picturing Giovanni lettin' that shit bag da-ate his Da-a-ughter!" Laughed a second voice.

I froze. It wasn't a stutter: it was a bleat. They were Black Elks. But what were they doing here? I pressed myself into a cupboard to wait. I lost their conversation as they continued speaking downstairs. I was almost used to the smell by the time they came to the second floor.

"Man, if I had Scorpe-e-on Grass at my fingertips..."

"Dude, I don't wa-a-a-nna hear a-about it."

Scorpion Grass? I frowned. I heard rumors of a drug hat could alter a person's memories, but there was no hard evidence that it actually existed. Of course, it would explain Andi's new demeanor. I listened to them rummaging around in the old man's room and weighed my options. I could just find a new house to take over and leave these two thugs alone. But there was the very real risk that we were after the same target. Though I knew her as Karovitch Andi, the fact that she was living with an abusive, ex-Elk member who, seemingly, had access to a drug that altered memories...

There was too much circumstantial evidence connecting the dots. Karovitch Andi must have been Gordonova Andromeda: Giovanni's missing daughter.

I shook my head. With all of our contacts, how had we not figured that out? Of course... That explained so much about her demeanor. Stoic, tight lipped, aggressive. Just like her father. It also explained why Joker had offered Serena over a billion berri to buy her. It would have given him control of the Drug trade on top of everything else.