Chapter Text
"-he PRT has given statements that Lung was taken into custody last night through the efforts of Armsmaster and other heroes, after a battle which took place through the southern Docks area, ending in the Bay. However, as the last elements of last night's gang warfare are still ongoing, the release of full details will have to wait until the press conference tomorrow. Now, onto Kate with the weather-"
Lisa shut off the TV and tossed the remote over onto her hotel bed. One last check of her room assured her she hadn't left anything behind. Laptop, phone, burner phone, notes she couldn't risk being found, money, the change of clothes - all were back in her bug-out bag. Now she just needed to get across town, grab the less-essential-but-still-important stuff, and move over to the apartment she had on back-up, in case of a situation just like this.
Doing favours for people had its benefits. That some of those people didn't want certain aspects of those favours getting out only made them more grateful. And if taking payment in favours and access sometimes meant less spending money in the moment, Lisa would take that every time.
She locked the hotel room behind her and headed downstairs, tossing the key onto the receptionist's desk as she went by. The pimply teenager didn't even look up - all the better - as Lisa headed out into the street. The walk to the bus station wasn't long, but the bus itself was fifteen minutes late; it was an effort of will to stay casual, to not look over her shoulders, to keep her power tightly leashed. The worst of her headache was gone, but it still waited around her temples, ready to drive iron spikes into her head if she overdid it again.
Still, the instinct to listen, to take in data, was always there, and as she leaned against the dirty plastic of the back of the stop, Lisa took in the conversations around her. There were about a dozen standing about, joined by the familiarity of complaining about the bus, and the need to talk to someone, anyone, about what had happened last night.
"I heard that Lung grew wings," said one middle-aged woman to her neighbour, and someone else broke in to say they'd seen footage online; and it hadn't been wings, only like spikes poking out of his back. A small argument started over whether the woman had meant early in the fight or later, and Lisa turned her attention elsewhere. A man in his late twenties - Lisa had to push back the urge to tell exactly how late - in a black leather jacket said to another guy that if the Empire hadn't been fighting the ABB, there was no way the heroes could have caught Lung, and that Victor had shot Kazenbo during the night. The man was at the far end of the stop, and Lisa was glad of it.
The conversations continued as the bus drew up, trailing out along the middle aisle as people boarded and passed cards or money to the driver. Sai hadn't been seen since the early part of the night; she had been involved in the first part of the fight against Lung. Had it been the PRT who had been fighting Lung then? No, it had been some new capes - the ones who beat Hookwolf? Yes, the ones who beat Hookwolf.
An angry noise came from the man in the leather jacket, and conversation died for a moment before resuming again, quieter, and with no mention of Hookwolf.
Who were the new heroes? No-one knew their names - but that wasn't right; their names were Tiger Cub and Panther. No, Tigereye and Onyx; the teenager who spoke up had heard about them already on PHO; they'd fought the Merchants, then the Empire, then Lung.
The general consensus was that they wouldn't last long, if they'd pissed off all the city's gangs like that. Would they join the Protectorate? What even were their powers; they had those giant fighting-forms, right? The bus arrived at Lisa's stop, and she climbed out as the teenager began to hold court based on the illimitable expertise of an undergrad in Parahuman Studies.
She was on the street behind her apartment building - her old apartment building, she supposed she should start thinking of it as. The news that morning had had plenty of shots of the melted road out front, and men in hi-vis jackets and PRT markings working out the spikes to be taken into custody. So it was a good thing Lisa had long since known about the alley you could take through from the street behind, to get to that back door which wasn't meant to open from the outside, but where you could jigger it into the right position and slip in anyway.
It was an odd feeling, to be climbing the stairs for the last time. It was a shame, too; the apartments weren't exactly the height of luxury, but they'd been nice enough, the neighbours reasonably quiet, and the internet had actually been good. It would be a shame to leave - but better deal with some trouble getting into her next place, and going on a shopping trip or two to fill in what she was missing, than have Yi Man or Oni Lee turning up to press-gang her, if they didn't take the first attempt as a lesson.
Her thoughts turned to her savours; Onyx and Tigereye. "Fucking dorks," she muttered under her breath. She was still surprised they weren't fucking on the reg - her power had been certain on that when she'd met them almost two weeks ago; it'd been a basic assumption, not a wild extrapolation. It was always unpleasant to get those reminders that her power wasn't infallible; that she wasn't omniscient.
She had to be; if she didn't know, if she didn't see, then-
Lisa shook the thoughts away as she marched up the last flight of stairs to her apartment. She didn't regret calling in the two, but things weren't going to be pretty from here on. The people on the bus hadn't been wrong that the Tinker and her sidekick had put themselves in the crosshairs of practically every gang in the city - and she owed the two idiots, big time, which meant that just fading into the background as a Rogue again wouldn't be so easy. If it had just been Sai, that would have been one thing, but taking down Lung, on a mission to capture Lisa herself… She was a matter of reputation, now, almost as much as the other two.
Her room was just as she had left it; disarrayed from her quick exit the night before. Drawing out a trace of her power was enough to confirm that no-one had been in there since her. Lisa dropped down into her shitty office chair and turned on her PC. While it was booting up, she rummaged in her bag for her data drive - a good one; the kind distantly derived from Tinkertech - and plugged it in. She couldn't really take the computer with her, it was too bulky, so she'd have to get a new one and just keep her data.
The PC chimed, and she opened it up, setting her files to transfer over, then delete from the hard drive. She'd brick it for real afterwards.
While the bar slowly filled up, Lisa called up a browser, and paged through a few news sites. The details there were all basically the same; Lung was in custody thanks to Armsmaster, there would be a press conference tomorrow, the PRT was working to contain damage and unrest in the aftermath of major skirmishes between the ABB and the Empire. Then, she cracked open PHO.
The Empire's threads, of course, crowed about a triumph over their enemies - at least a dozen posters had gotten overexcited and been banned for slurs - and credited the capture of Lung to the fact. Nevermind that no Empire cape had actually engaged with Lung, though Cricket and Oni Lee had fought across several rooftops, which hadn't come up in the official news channels.
Protectorate is emphasizing major victories; likely covering for inability to meaningfully control the fighting.
Lisa shoved her power back again as a spike of pain drove into her forehead. She could've worked that out herself.
The more general Brockton threads still had a fair few triumphant Nazis doing a victory lap, but they were mostly shouted down by the rest. Some worried that the Empire might actually muscle out the ABB with Lung gone, and what that would mean for the rest of the city - while others countered that each gang had inflicted a mauling on the other, and if anyone it was most likely the Merchants would be the ones expanding.
That in turn lead to more arguments between people who held that position, and others who thought the idea of the Merchants actually gaining ground was laughable.
Merchant recruitment-
Lisa gritted her teeth and pushed the power back once more. She couldn't afford to let it run wild - not yet; not until she had some time to actually recover. How much she could use her power safely each day varied, and it wasn't consistent enough to put numbers to, but she couldn't help thinking of it like a credit card, sometimes. She had so-much she could use freely, and then she went into the red - and that 'debt' meant pain and lowered thresholds until she paid it off.
She was pulled from her browsing of PHO by a soft sound from the computer, signalling that her data transfer was done.
"Guess this is where we part ways, then," she muttered under her breath as she retrieved the data drive, then crawled under the desk to start unplugging the towerblock. Five minutes later, she had it on its side, and had managed to pull out the hard drive. "Well, hope you go to shitty computer heaven," she said as she stood up again - the moment somewhat undercut by the drive surviving her boot, until she improvised by bringing down one of the chair legs on top of it, then tossed the remains into the trash.
One last check around the room, and she was ready to go. It was almost depressing how easy it'd been to get everything packed and ready to go - to empty out this little shell of a life she'd built for herself, like a hermit crab moving onto the next.
Speaking of…
Lisa punched in the number of the landlord whose ass she'd gotten out of a class-action lawsuit. The phone rang five times before he picked up.
"Who's this?"
"Hey, Max, it's Laplace." said Lisa, locking her apartment door and starting to trundle her suitcase down the hall. "Remember that room I asked you to keep open for me? Well, I'm gonna need it. How soon you think you can have it ready for me?"
The staticky hiss of indrawn breath on the other end had her heart sinking before it even ended.
"Yeah, yeah, got it - well… About that-"
"You let it, didn't you," Lisa answered for him.
"It's been months! You said you'd call, but I thought - well, there was this one guy I was gonna throw out, but he ended up coming up with the money for the higher rent, and-"
"And you decided some extra cash was more important than keeping up your deal with me."
"I needed it! There was - look, I've got expenses, you know? The-the upkeep and the-"
"You mean the drinks and the girls, and making up with your wife after she finds out, again," Lisa spat back. But then, maybe it was for the best. Max Parker had never been trustworthy - just easy to get a handle on, and if that was the case for her, it was the case for others as well.
"I think that it's for the best if our little business partnership come to an end," she said after a moment. "I deferred a percentage of my payment from before, in exchange for that little favour. As you've seen fit not to hold up your end of the bargain, you'll be getting an invoice soon with the remainder, plus interested. I suggest you pay it - unless you want some additional evidence coming to light, hmm?"
Lisa hung up before he could answer, then sagged back against the wall, letting out a growl of frustration. That'd been satisfying, but… Maybe not the best option. She could crash at hotels for a while - but hotels were pricy, not private, and gave her no chance to set up new equipment to use her powers to their best effect. Renting on short notice in the Bay wasn't exactly easy, and while she had contacts across the city, but none she'd trust well enough to ask her for help finding somewhere to live.
Which really just left one group, at least for the short term.
Well, they've already saved my life. Not like I can be much more indebted to them.
She dialled in a new number, and let it ring.