Bain's claws curled in spite of himself, and his eyes narrowed. "Amber. What do you want?"

She raised her hands defensively. "Wait, just let me explain! I'm not here for my dad, I promise!" Taking a closer look at her outfit, Bain noticed that she wasn't wearing her trademark uniform. Rather, she was wearing some rather tight jeans and a shoulderless blouse, along with a pair of monochromatic casual shoes. She didn't even have her mask on, but Bain didn't need a face to recognize someone. Scent was more than enough to go off of for him, and Amber had a distinctive smell of burnt grass hanging around her at any given time.

Mentally, he decided to stick to calling her Amber as opposed to her hero name. In some corner of his mind, he realized that Toxic and Counterstrike had stood up, the tech-covered teenager's hand nervously going to one of the canisters on his torso. Turning briefly, Bain told them, "Calm down, I know her."

Spinning back around, he folded all of his arms and growled, "So what are you doing here?"

She blinked. "You're a lot more aggressive than I remember you being."

He shrugged irritably. "Well, it's not like every person I meet tried to use my dreams as a footstool to my dad."

Amber winced, dropping her hands. "Okay, I deserved that one. But more to the point, what's Nahma doing?"

She saw Bain's expression and promptly backtracked. "That was - I'm sorry, that was a bad-"

"Please leave." He pointed at the door behind her, nearly shaking in wrath.

She started to move forward, but he grabbed her by the shoulder, pushing her out of the door. "Bain, what are you doing!? I swear, I'm here to try and help!"

Bain nodded mechanically. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what you said back when we were friends. You know, when you were lying to my face?"

Amber tried to say something else, but he bodily shoved her out the door and slammed it shut, shaking the room. Breathing heavily, he turned back around to the nervous would-be sidekicks. "Sorry about that. Is there anything else you guys want to talk about? I've never had a sidekick before."

They glanced at each other, and then Counterstrike asked mildly, "Uhh, what was that all about?"

Bain sighed, the tension leaving his shoulders. "That was Amber. She was a really good friend of mine at one point, or at least I thought she was. Haven't really spoken to her since the last time I saw her."

They both nodded understandingly, and Toxic added tentatively, "I've had friends like that. Most of them turned out to be villains or their henchmen."

Honestly, Bain could kind of relate to that. With a shrug, he told him, "Well, you're not going to meet anyone like that here. Have you talked to the sheddings yet?"

Counterstrike nodded, but Toxic shuddered. Noticing Bain's curious expression, he hastily explained, "Sorry! I know they're your family and everything, it's just... centipedes kind of freak me out."

Bain raised an eyebrow before remembering he didn't really have an eyebrow to raise. "Weren't you recommended to come here because of what Nahma did?"

Toxic shook his head rapidly. "No, although I did hear about that. Your dad's really powerful, yeah, but you seem like the way nicer one."

Before Bain could thank him for the modestly accurate compliment, somebody knocked on the door. Bain's nose told him who it was, and he opened it with a sigh, startling the person behind it. "Amber, I'm really not in the mood to be manipulated right now. Can we do this later? Or preferably never?"

Amber stuck her foot in the door as he tried to close and yelped in pain as she realized that he could close a door a lot harder than her foot could take, and Bain felt an instinctive stab of concern in spite of himself. "Are you okay?"

She waved it away, gripping her foot while hopping in the middle of the hallway. "Uh, sure. I'll be fine. But seriously, you need to talk to your dad!"

The concern vanished, and Bain promptly slammed the door in her face. From behind it, Amber shouted, "He's partly a villain!"

There was a long moment where Bain simply stood at the door, waiting. Tilting his head back, he sighed loudly and then opened the door. "All right. What is it?"

Amber was panting slightly, still holding onto her foot. When she realized Bain wasn't going to slam the door on her again, she started talking quickly. "Okay, so the sheddings have a lot of powers, I know that. I haven't been able to figure out all of them, but - you know, I'll just get to it. I think the sheddings are acting like a villain."

Bain shook his head immediately. "That's not possible. They're helping me and Stitches out with the territory, which I really need to get back to. I've got to pick some sidekicks."

Amber raised an eyebrow at him. "Are you sure? It's not like you know all of the sheddings by name or anything!"

Bain threw his arms wide. "And you can't possibly know that it's them! Besides, which villain would they possibly be? There aren't any centipede-themed ones!"

She nodded worriedly. "They're He of Many Eyes, I'm certain of it. He never shows his face, he teleports - or he makes clones, I don't know - and his first ever victims were those three heroes that attacked you! Bain, those were tough guys. Not just anyone could take them down, and it's a terrible idea to start out a villain career as a murderer!"

Bain's eyes narrowed to slits. "How did you know those heroes attacked me?"

Amber's words screeched to a stop, and she stammered wordlessly for a moment. Swallowing hard, she glanced at the floor and then back up to Bain. "Okay, I can't tell you that right now, but you've got to trust me! Tell Nahma to make his sheddings stop being a villain!"

Bain shook his head. "Amber, why on earth would I trust you? Why should I trust you? The last time I saw you, you told me that Firepower using me for his own retirement wasn't a bad thing."

She flinched visibly and stepped back. "Look, I'm..." She hesitated for a moment, and then her shoulders slumped with a sigh. "I'm sorry. Just - okay, ignore the warning, fine. I - can I start over?"

Bain shook his head again, and she shrank noticeably. He couldn't help but feel a little bad for her, but all he had to do was remind himself of how she'd treated him to make that feeling go away.

Amber hung her head. "Okay, I'll go. Tell Mike hi from me."

She closed the door as she turned around, and Bain stared at the door for a long moment.

He was a monster. Amber wasn't. But that didn't make her better than him. If he decided to never forgive her, he would be utterly justified in doing so. In fact, nobody would expect him to do otherwise, aside from Stitches. Despite that, did he really want to make an enemy? He didn't think that Amber would hold a grudge, he knew she wasn't that sort of person.

So was he the one holding a grudge?

Glancing back at Toxic and Countersrike's worried expressions, he sighed and opened the door, heading down the short hallway.

He was a monster, and Amber wasn't. But he could be better than her.