Wyvern 5.2
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Sadguychet
Just a Sad Guy
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- Jun 16, 2019
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Lisa's mind was numb as she made her way into the loft, completely and utterly out of it after what she had just witnessed. Her mind whirled a mile a minute, running through theories and possibly revelations faster than even she could keep up with.
Alec was sitting on the couch as she entered, playing some mind numbing video game as always. He looked up as she entered, " Where've you been? More importantly, did you bring back any food? Rachel ate the last slice of pizza."
"Just order more." Lisa said automatically, not even sparing him a glance as she passed him by on the way to her bedroom. He said something, probably whining about being too lazy to pick up a phone, but she wasn't listening as she entered her room, closing the door behind her and blocking out the sound of his voice.
Now in the relative safety and privacy of her bedroom, Lisa immediately beelined for her laptop, powering it on and navigating to the one site where people liked to think they knew as much as she did. Parahumans Online.
And just as she expected, the local forums were completely lit up with the most recent development in the city. Thread up on thread of people talking about Yosei and the attack earlier that day. Power speculation threads, sightings threads; even some of the shipping threads were more active than usual which was honestly not as surprising as it probably should have been after how everything ended.
"People love their damsel in distress trope. Even if said damsel runs the most dangerous gang in the city." Lisa muttered as she navigated the forums.
From the looks of things, everyone was understandably up in arms about what had happened, even though most of them barely knew the details. All they knew was that Yosei had been attacked in her civilian identity, apparently unprovoked, and that was good enough for the majority of them, though there were some who believed that Yosei deserved what happened.
And Lisa? Lisa was just left wondering where this left the rest of the city.
She leaned back in her chair, staring at the wall in front of her as she thought about the chain of events this incident was going to start in the city. Yosei wasn't going to let something like this go. Bring attacked in her civilian identity, by Empire capes no less, was basically a declaration of war. Being nearly killed on top of that…
Well, if Lisa had her powers, she sure as hell wouldn't be sending gift baskets.
Lisa's thoughts of impending doom were interrupted as her phone began ringing on her desk. She jumped, startled by the noise, and glared at the offending device.
"Who the hell-?" Her words cut off with a growl as she caught sight of the caller id. For just a moment, she debated just throwing the phone at the wall as hard as she could and claiming it was broken. It wasn't like she couldn't afford to just buy a new one.
Fuck, but then she'd have to move over all of her contacts and back up her pictures. Not to mention it wasn't like he wouldn't know. He somehow always knew.
With an angry sigh, Lisa accepted the call, "What do you want, Coil?"
"Good evening, Tattletale." His slimy voice wormed its way into her ear, "I'm simply following up on our earlier conversation. How did you fare with the task I gave you? Did you discover anything useful about Yosei?"
Oh right. That. Lisa held back the annoyed sigh that wanted to escape her lips.
"Yeah, I did. Wasn't easy with that storm but once it went down and I was actually able to see, I managed to get some stuff that might interest you."
"Well, don't keep me in suspense. Go ahead."
"Well for one, Yosei's power seems to work off of how many threats are present, not just how long she's fighting like Lung's. There might be something else to it, I'm not sure. I didn't see enough to get everything. It also has some sort of cool down, or maybe it needs to build up. She didn't transform immediately against Glory Girl and the rest of them, but I could tell she was super on edge. She wasn't just holding off to be nice."
Coil made a noise of interest, "That's good to know. We can certainly use that against her in the future. What else? How did she react when she was shot?"
His interest in the topic made Lisa pause slightly, "She… went down too fast to use her powers. They aren't automatic. She needs to be able to think in order to use them."
Coil didn't speak for a moment, before his voice returned, sounding extremely pleased about something, "Well done, Tattletale. It seems I made the right choice making sure you were there for the end of that little incident."
His words rang like a bell in Lisa's head, and she stiffened as her power helpfully connected the dots that a normal person's mind couldn't.
Coil was the one responsible for the shot that took down Yosei. He was the one who put the most powerful cape in the Bay out of commission and he had seemingly done so on a whim just to get information on her power.
But wait, that didn't make any sense. Coil was too careful to risk revealing himself like this. The moment that Yosei figured out who fired that shot, she'd be gunning for him and he wouldn't be able to hide in his little snake den any longer…
Except she wouldn't find out, Lisa realized with a start. Yosei had no reason to think that it was anybody but the Empire who was involved in her attack. All of her anger would be focused on them instead of the true culprit.
That was Coil's game. He wanted to pit the ABB and the Empire against each other. Why? She wasn't sure, but knowing him it couldn't be anything good.
Frustratingly, before she could ask any more questions and try to sus out what his plans were, Coil spoke again, "Anyway, I'm afraid I must cut out conversation a bit short. Other matters require my attention. You did well, Tattletale. I've sent you a nice little bonus for your efforts today. Please be sure not to spend it all in one place."
The call clicked dead before she could say another word, leaving Lisa stewing in her own thoughts and a bad taste in her mouth.
"Slimy bastard…" She muttered, tossing her phone on her bed out of frustration.
Taking a deep breath, Lisa turned her chair around with a squeak that grated on her nerves and stared at her cork-board of conspiracies sitting just off to the side in silent thought. Nothing on there had anything to do with Yosei, or at least not in this particular instance, but the familiar sight helped her get her thoughts in some semblance of order.
Putting Coil and his machinations aside for a moment, Lisa mentally laid out all the facts as she knew them.
Yosei had been shot badly enough to warrant an immediate hospital visit. The Empire had attacked her in her civilian identity, seemingly throwing all of the Rules out of the window just to get at a woman who hadn't overtly done anything to them since she had taken power, and now the entire city was stewing in their seats, wondering if this was going to be the start of a gang war the size of the Boston Games.
The question of the day, and the one that Lisa couldn't even begin to fathom, was why. It didn't make any sense that the Empire would attack Yosei in her civilian identity, and especially not in a place as public as a mall. Kaiser, despite leading a legitimate neo-nazi gang in the year 2012, wasn't stupid. He wouldn't sign off on something like this.
"A rogue cell? The cape that fought Yosei wasn't one I've ever seen before. Definitely not a usual player at least." She said aloud, trying to make sense of it all.
But if it was a rogue cell, what did they gain from this? No matter what their end goal was, there was no possible way that this would end well for the Empire in any sense of the word. Even if their objective was to screw Kaiser over and pin the blame on him, all that would do is paint a massive target on the entire gang. It would be Fleur all over again, except Kaiser wouldn't be able to crucify some random skinheads and call it a day. So why even try?
Unless… They weren't trying to.
Lisa's eyes widened as her mind supplied a new theory. That skinhead in the mall had no idea the mark he had pointed out was Yosei, but that could easily be explained away by him just not being told who he was looking for. Lisa had a feeling that wasn't the case though, and it all came from one specific detail of her conversation with the woman herself. A tiny little detail that was so utterly inconsequential, it shouldn't have even mattered in the first place.
Yosei had a girlfriend.
Lisa turned back towards her laptop, moving to one of the dozens of webpages in her bookmarks bar as she searched for something specific. Finding it quickly, she clicked on it, watching the video that played with new eyes.
It was barely anything. A blurry, ten-second video of someone flying around on a dumpster lid. Not an uncommon occurrence in Brocton Bay, but given that Rune hadn't been seen in action in weeks and this person didn't seem to have any overt affiliation to the Empire, it had been enough for Lisa to keep it in the back of her mind in case it ever popped up again.
And it had. She clicked on another bookmark moving to a new url with a video of much higher quality than the last. It depicted the same person as in the other video, zooming down the street on the deck of a longboard and heading straight towards the whirling wall of ice and snow downtown.
Lisa watched as a cloud of white surged upwards from a nearby alley, scaring everyone nearby including the person recording. The girl was blindsided by the cloud, falling off of her board and out of sight, and a few seconds later, the video ended.
Lisa rewound the video, taking in every bit of it that she could while letting her power run as wild as it wanted. It fed her tons of extremely interesting information, from the desperation in the girl's posture, to the familiar way she shifted her feet compared to a certain blonde telekinetic.
As the video came to its end and she was forced off of her board, a shock of holding blonde hair whipped out of her hood, and that was the final thing Lisa needed to confirm her little theory.
Somehow, Yosei had gotten her hands on Rune. Not only that, but she had convinced her to join the ABB and, if Lisa's intuition was correct, had likely managed to convert her to the 'dark side' via lesbianism.
"Kaiser wouldn't willingly take something like this lying down. He'd lose too much face with his people if he didn't retaliate in some way."
Suddenly everything started to make sense. Yosei wasn't the target, it was just some freak coincidence. They were after Rune and she just happened to get caught in the crossfire.
Lisa almost laughed. What were the chances? Unfortunately, her humor only lasted for mere moments as she realized the possible ramifications of this revelation. If the Empire's true target had indeed been Rune, and if she was right that Rune and Yosei were in some sort of forbidden relationship, then this was much, much worse than she thought.
Yosei had stormed the Rig completely alone just to get her dad back. She had gone against the preeminent hero association by herself and came out, if not on top, then certainly not with a loss. Even her dear old dad hadn't done that. So what would she do to the Empire once she figured out what they'd done, and more importantly, what would she do to Coil once she learned about his hand in her hospitalization? What would she do to the Undersiders, who were probably already on her radar after what Skitter had done.
Lisa didn't want to find out. She needed to get into Yosei's good graces as soon as physically possible.
Luckily, she might know just how to do that. Or at least how to start.
Get chapters to this fic and all others early at Sadguychet | Patreon
Alec was sitting on the couch as she entered, playing some mind numbing video game as always. He looked up as she entered, " Where've you been? More importantly, did you bring back any food? Rachel ate the last slice of pizza."
"Just order more." Lisa said automatically, not even sparing him a glance as she passed him by on the way to her bedroom. He said something, probably whining about being too lazy to pick up a phone, but she wasn't listening as she entered her room, closing the door behind her and blocking out the sound of his voice.
Now in the relative safety and privacy of her bedroom, Lisa immediately beelined for her laptop, powering it on and navigating to the one site where people liked to think they knew as much as she did. Parahumans Online.
And just as she expected, the local forums were completely lit up with the most recent development in the city. Thread up on thread of people talking about Yosei and the attack earlier that day. Power speculation threads, sightings threads; even some of the shipping threads were more active than usual which was honestly not as surprising as it probably should have been after how everything ended.
"People love their damsel in distress trope. Even if said damsel runs the most dangerous gang in the city." Lisa muttered as she navigated the forums.
From the looks of things, everyone was understandably up in arms about what had happened, even though most of them barely knew the details. All they knew was that Yosei had been attacked in her civilian identity, apparently unprovoked, and that was good enough for the majority of them, though there were some who believed that Yosei deserved what happened.
And Lisa? Lisa was just left wondering where this left the rest of the city.
She leaned back in her chair, staring at the wall in front of her as she thought about the chain of events this incident was going to start in the city. Yosei wasn't going to let something like this go. Bring attacked in her civilian identity, by Empire capes no less, was basically a declaration of war. Being nearly killed on top of that…
Well, if Lisa had her powers, she sure as hell wouldn't be sending gift baskets.
Lisa's thoughts of impending doom were interrupted as her phone began ringing on her desk. She jumped, startled by the noise, and glared at the offending device.
"Who the hell-?" Her words cut off with a growl as she caught sight of the caller id. For just a moment, she debated just throwing the phone at the wall as hard as she could and claiming it was broken. It wasn't like she couldn't afford to just buy a new one.
Fuck, but then she'd have to move over all of her contacts and back up her pictures. Not to mention it wasn't like he wouldn't know. He somehow always knew.
With an angry sigh, Lisa accepted the call, "What do you want, Coil?"
"Good evening, Tattletale." His slimy voice wormed its way into her ear, "I'm simply following up on our earlier conversation. How did you fare with the task I gave you? Did you discover anything useful about Yosei?"
Oh right. That. Lisa held back the annoyed sigh that wanted to escape her lips.
"Yeah, I did. Wasn't easy with that storm but once it went down and I was actually able to see, I managed to get some stuff that might interest you."
"Well, don't keep me in suspense. Go ahead."
"Well for one, Yosei's power seems to work off of how many threats are present, not just how long she's fighting like Lung's. There might be something else to it, I'm not sure. I didn't see enough to get everything. It also has some sort of cool down, or maybe it needs to build up. She didn't transform immediately against Glory Girl and the rest of them, but I could tell she was super on edge. She wasn't just holding off to be nice."
Coil made a noise of interest, "That's good to know. We can certainly use that against her in the future. What else? How did she react when she was shot?"
His interest in the topic made Lisa pause slightly, "She… went down too fast to use her powers. They aren't automatic. She needs to be able to think in order to use them."
Coil didn't speak for a moment, before his voice returned, sounding extremely pleased about something, "Well done, Tattletale. It seems I made the right choice making sure you were there for the end of that little incident."
His words rang like a bell in Lisa's head, and she stiffened as her power helpfully connected the dots that a normal person's mind couldn't.
Coil was the one responsible for the shot that took down Yosei. He was the one who put the most powerful cape in the Bay out of commission and he had seemingly done so on a whim just to get information on her power.
But wait, that didn't make any sense. Coil was too careful to risk revealing himself like this. The moment that Yosei figured out who fired that shot, she'd be gunning for him and he wouldn't be able to hide in his little snake den any longer…
Except she wouldn't find out, Lisa realized with a start. Yosei had no reason to think that it was anybody but the Empire who was involved in her attack. All of her anger would be focused on them instead of the true culprit.
That was Coil's game. He wanted to pit the ABB and the Empire against each other. Why? She wasn't sure, but knowing him it couldn't be anything good.
Frustratingly, before she could ask any more questions and try to sus out what his plans were, Coil spoke again, "Anyway, I'm afraid I must cut out conversation a bit short. Other matters require my attention. You did well, Tattletale. I've sent you a nice little bonus for your efforts today. Please be sure not to spend it all in one place."
The call clicked dead before she could say another word, leaving Lisa stewing in her own thoughts and a bad taste in her mouth.
"Slimy bastard…" She muttered, tossing her phone on her bed out of frustration.
Taking a deep breath, Lisa turned her chair around with a squeak that grated on her nerves and stared at her cork-board of conspiracies sitting just off to the side in silent thought. Nothing on there had anything to do with Yosei, or at least not in this particular instance, but the familiar sight helped her get her thoughts in some semblance of order.
Putting Coil and his machinations aside for a moment, Lisa mentally laid out all the facts as she knew them.
Yosei had been shot badly enough to warrant an immediate hospital visit. The Empire had attacked her in her civilian identity, seemingly throwing all of the Rules out of the window just to get at a woman who hadn't overtly done anything to them since she had taken power, and now the entire city was stewing in their seats, wondering if this was going to be the start of a gang war the size of the Boston Games.
The question of the day, and the one that Lisa couldn't even begin to fathom, was why. It didn't make any sense that the Empire would attack Yosei in her civilian identity, and especially not in a place as public as a mall. Kaiser, despite leading a legitimate neo-nazi gang in the year 2012, wasn't stupid. He wouldn't sign off on something like this.
"A rogue cell? The cape that fought Yosei wasn't one I've ever seen before. Definitely not a usual player at least." She said aloud, trying to make sense of it all.
But if it was a rogue cell, what did they gain from this? No matter what their end goal was, there was no possible way that this would end well for the Empire in any sense of the word. Even if their objective was to screw Kaiser over and pin the blame on him, all that would do is paint a massive target on the entire gang. It would be Fleur all over again, except Kaiser wouldn't be able to crucify some random skinheads and call it a day. So why even try?
Unless… They weren't trying to.
Lisa's eyes widened as her mind supplied a new theory. That skinhead in the mall had no idea the mark he had pointed out was Yosei, but that could easily be explained away by him just not being told who he was looking for. Lisa had a feeling that wasn't the case though, and it all came from one specific detail of her conversation with the woman herself. A tiny little detail that was so utterly inconsequential, it shouldn't have even mattered in the first place.
Yosei had a girlfriend.
Lisa turned back towards her laptop, moving to one of the dozens of webpages in her bookmarks bar as she searched for something specific. Finding it quickly, she clicked on it, watching the video that played with new eyes.
It was barely anything. A blurry, ten-second video of someone flying around on a dumpster lid. Not an uncommon occurrence in Brocton Bay, but given that Rune hadn't been seen in action in weeks and this person didn't seem to have any overt affiliation to the Empire, it had been enough for Lisa to keep it in the back of her mind in case it ever popped up again.
And it had. She clicked on another bookmark moving to a new url with a video of much higher quality than the last. It depicted the same person as in the other video, zooming down the street on the deck of a longboard and heading straight towards the whirling wall of ice and snow downtown.
Lisa watched as a cloud of white surged upwards from a nearby alley, scaring everyone nearby including the person recording. The girl was blindsided by the cloud, falling off of her board and out of sight, and a few seconds later, the video ended.
Lisa rewound the video, taking in every bit of it that she could while letting her power run as wild as it wanted. It fed her tons of extremely interesting information, from the desperation in the girl's posture, to the familiar way she shifted her feet compared to a certain blonde telekinetic.
As the video came to its end and she was forced off of her board, a shock of holding blonde hair whipped out of her hood, and that was the final thing Lisa needed to confirm her little theory.
Somehow, Yosei had gotten her hands on Rune. Not only that, but she had convinced her to join the ABB and, if Lisa's intuition was correct, had likely managed to convert her to the 'dark side' via lesbianism.
"Kaiser wouldn't willingly take something like this lying down. He'd lose too much face with his people if he didn't retaliate in some way."
Suddenly everything started to make sense. Yosei wasn't the target, it was just some freak coincidence. They were after Rune and she just happened to get caught in the crossfire.
Lisa almost laughed. What were the chances? Unfortunately, her humor only lasted for mere moments as she realized the possible ramifications of this revelation. If the Empire's true target had indeed been Rune, and if she was right that Rune and Yosei were in some sort of forbidden relationship, then this was much, much worse than she thought.
Yosei had stormed the Rig completely alone just to get her dad back. She had gone against the preeminent hero association by herself and came out, if not on top, then certainly not with a loss. Even her dear old dad hadn't done that. So what would she do to the Empire once she figured out what they'd done, and more importantly, what would she do to Coil once she learned about his hand in her hospitalization? What would she do to the Undersiders, who were probably already on her radar after what Skitter had done.
Lisa didn't want to find out. She needed to get into Yosei's good graces as soon as physically possible.
Luckily, she might know just how to do that. Or at least how to start.
Get chapters to this fic and all others early at Sadguychet | Patreon
