Wake-up Call – Chapter 34

"You should've called me," Colin growls over the phone.

"Well, I know that [now], but nothing indicated I should've prepared for an unknown parahuman to make her debut right in the middle of my brawl against the Merchants," I very reasonably and not at all half-panicked point out.

"Thinker si—"

"I'll hurt you. I don't know when, where, or how, but I'll find a way."

"Maybe if you were a good Thinker, you'd at least know the answer to some of those questions."

"… Put Hannah on."

"…"

"Colin, put Hannah on," I patiently repeat.

"I don't wanna."

"You know I've got her number already, don't you?"

"I'll be there in ten minutes. Try not to burn down the Docks," he replies sternly and professionally.

"I can call her anytime I waaaaant," I singsong at him.

And he hangs up.

Heh.

"Did you just…?" Alec asks me from his side of the rooftop.

"She did," Taylor answers. "She's… I don't know. It's like she's gotten him wrapped around her finger. Like she's daddy's little girl, and not even in a creepy way, and every time I think about it, it makes my head hurt."

"Well, high-rated social Thinkers are considered dangerous for a—" I start to calmly and academically explain without even a hint of braggadocio.

[Use of words such as 'braggadocio'—]

Is perfectly warranted from time to time.

"Of course, there's also the part where he can make her twist into a pretzel with a stern look," Taylor interrupts both my line and inner dialogue.

"Oh? Do tell," Alec inquires with an almost nonchalant edge that's about as casual as a lion looking sideways at a hyena sounding like Whoopie Goldberg.

"We should focus on the fight," I remind them, because someone needs to be a professional around these parts.

"Yeah, it's like she has this desperate need not to disappoint him—"

"Oh, look! Brutus is chewing on a tank! Isn't that something you two want to pay attention to?"

"So, would you say your girlfriend has… [daddy issues?"] Alec is acting very unprofessionally.

"And Grue filled the whole tank with his smoke! So clever! Now any electronic countermeasures will be effectively negated! Look at Grue being all tactical and shit!"

"Don't even get me started on that! You should've seen how she acted when she met my dad; she was doing and saying everything to catch his attention and earn even an ounce of approval—"

"Look! At! [Grue!"]

"You don't say. How positively scandalous!" Alec, my vengeance shall be swift and will probably involve replacing all your gaming tags with something vaguely homophobic.

"Yeah, I couldn't quite believe it, but seeing the way she's latched onto Armsmaster since—"

"Will you two stop assassinating my character and focus on the fucking superhero brawl!"

"Well, if [someone] hadn't made me stay on this rooftop, maybe I wouldn't be mouthing off about my controlling girlfriend to her gay best friend!"

"You're better off here! You have [range]! You don't need to risk a fucking concussion or worse!"

"Do I really count as a gay best friend if I'm bisexual? I mean, I wouldn't want to be guilty of cultural appropriation or whatever. It sounds like a pain on Twitter."

"You [definitely] have the sassy part down—I mean! Fight! Our comrades, struggling to—oh, Brutus is shaking Squealer like an unwanted baby."

"Lisa!" Taylor exclaims because apparently she's not done being pissy at me.

"What?! It's gallows humor! Black comedy! [Dead baby comedy!"]

"You really haven't gone on Twitter in a while, have you?" Alec asks with the tone of a man who has seen too much.

…

I'm [pretty sure] at least a good percentage of it is affected.

[Alec's distant, unfocused stare—]

Don't contradict me, please.

"She's getting away," Taylor mutters.

"Squealer? Not without a stretcher—and I don't want to see how she can Mad Max a stretcher, really. Or anything else medical, for that matter," I answer, still trying not to figure out what can traumatize Alec on fucking [Twitter—

Likelihood of—]

There are things man was never meant to know, Power.

[Eowyn clause—]

Oh God, don't even start nerding out at me. And that's not even original! 'None of woman born' ring any bells to you?!

"Not Squealer. Our mysterious newcomer," Taylor interrupts my scholarly debate.

…

Fuck.

I rush to the corner of the rooftop, my binoculars pointed at the heap of Merchant goons lying either unconscious or in very obvious pain.

The woman in modified PRT armor is running, and—

"Tagged her?" I ask Tay.

"Yeah, but she's going to get out of my range soon." She's right beside me, and before I can even say anything, she grabs the railing of the fire escape, vaults over the edge of the roof, and starts running down the stairs.

I shoot a look back at Alec over my shoulder.

"Go. It's not like you can't watch Brutus play fetch with tank parts any other day," he reassures me with a wide grin.

… I can't. You bastard.

I grunt at his infuriating grin and follow after Taylor. Mostly out of habit, at this point.

Yes, that goes for both following her and the grunt. Really, they're all awful people.

Of course, she gets to the street below us before me, mostly because jogging is just one more way to flagellate the frailty of the flesh like she inherited some Catholic guilt, and then, while I try not to die of hypoxia, she rushes to my baby with—

"You don't know how to drive!" I yell at her with what seems to be a hitherto unknown reserve of air my lungs were secreting away.

"And you—" she starts quipping.

"Not the time!"

She looks at me with a clearly implied arched eyebrow beneath her mask.

I look back with both a lack of air that, for once, has little to do with how good she looks in a silken body glove, and with all the clarity of purpose of a woman who won't allow her baby to be taken—

[Motorized vehicles consuming fossil fuels likely to be phased out in—]

You shut your dirty mouth.

"Fine…" Tay grumbles as she takes a step back and sits in her proper place. That is: behind where I'm currently straddling my baby as her slender arms surround my waist and her body molds to my back and…

"Liz?" she asks.

"Uh?" I answer, as cogent and self-possessed as ever.

"The newbie. Getting out of my range."

…

"Oh. That."

"… Turn on the damn bike, Liz."

"Yes, sweetie."

The motor purrs between my legs, and I shoot out of the alley in the direction we last saw the blonde—

[Hair tone and luster natural if uncommon shade—]

Right. Not a wig. Good to know.

"To your right," Taylor says loud enough to be heard over the rushing wind.

I lean gently as I take the next turn—

"She's speeding away. Wind—oh, for fuck's sake, does [everybody] like bikes?!"

"I mean… yeah?"

"Don't even think about trying to race the unknown parahuman with physical enhancements!"

I very carefully don't grin.

And then rev my bike as loudly as I can.

"Lisa! Don't!"

We speed away, about as fast as that night Lung chased us down, and Taylor's arms tighten around me in a way that makes me grateful for the extra padding I added to my costume since I bought my baby.

"Call Colin!" I ask her.

"What?!"

"Call! Colin!"

One arm starts to let go before suddenly whipping around me when I quickly swerve around a pothole that shouldn't have been there—oh, wait. Poor part of town. Never mind. I'm lucky it wasn't an actual mine.

And I guess this means Taylor isn't letting go, which would, a priori, be a good thing, but I [kinda] wanted to coordinate with Colin so we could trap the runaway cape between us.

I mean, if she was chasing me, it would be child's play to predict Colin's route and… Oh, I already did that with Lung. Uh. Déjà vu, I guess.

[Use of 'Déjà vu' theme song in Initial D meme—]

Remind me never to watch an Uber and Leet stream. Again. To never watch them [ever again].

[Sailor Moon cosplay referencing Banpresto arcade beat 'em up—]

Remind me to lobotomize myself…

"Liz!"

Oh. Also remind me to keep my eyes on the road.

I shift the body of my bike with my knees in a left-right-left quick motion that manages to thread the needle between two puddles of what looks like motor oil—

[Countermeasures—]

Yeah, no shit. She has a Bond-bike.

[Lisa Wilbourn's relationship with Bond franchise—]

You're getting far too mouthy in your old age. Also, caltrops.

Great.

I lean to the right as I abruptly twist the handlebar, and I turn the forward motion into a classic Akira slide—

"For fuck's sake, not [again!"] Taylor screams almost right against my ear.

Everyone's a critic.

Anyway! The important thing is that my practiced and perfectly safe maneuver has fulfilled its purpose in that my wheels are still in pristine condition after avoiding running over a line of caltrops by inches.

Now I just need to get down, brush them aside to clear a safe passage, and—

"I just lost her," Taylor says, already dismounting.

"What? So quickly?"

"Yes. She kept pulling ahead even when you went full throttle. I don't think we can catch up, Liz."

She runs her fingers through her hair in a completely unnecessary movement that only serves to highlight how utterly perfect the hair in question is. Really, it's enough to make a girl jealous.

Or drool. One of those two.

I look at the narrow street ahead, the possible routes she could've taken, and then infer her likely level of paranoia and experience from the precautions I've seen her take against being followed.

…

Yeah. Colin's gonna be pissed.

***

"At least I captured Squealer!" I calmly point out.

Brian clears his throat, and I discreetly flip him the bird.

"And you only needed five parahumans to do it. Once again, I'm in awe at your efficient use of the resources you have at hand," Colin comments, and Alec's eyes widen in what seems to be the preface of manic glee and my own headache.

"To be fair, she came in with a small army and an invisible tank," Taylor remarks, possibly even trying to be fair.

"An 'army' that was taken care of by this mysterious newcomer and a tank that just became the world's most expensive chew toy," he says, ignoring all fairness just to take a cheap shot at me.

[Lisa Wilbourn's sense of fair play—]

Is perfectly functional in that it's calibrated to let me win without any undue remorse.

"Look, we knew it would be a trap for the Dockworkers, so we expected a level of opposition similar to what showed up. Everything went according to expectations until the action film reject showed up."

"Things [never] go according to expectations, Lisa! You're far too enamored of your streak of successes to consider what happens if you fail!"

"I'm not failing! And it's not a streak, it's… It's what I do. My power. I've worked at it—"

"At being a Thinker?" he asks, the tone one that makes it clear he knows how much work any Tinker puts in but not what other capes have to deal with.

"I… Give me a moment, please," I tell him before I say something else I'll regret.

"Well, that's new," Alec comments.

And Taylor elbows his side.

Heh. I knew there was a reason I was still head over heels for her.

[Lisa Wilbourn's infatuation—]

Right. Right. Just a joke. I know I love her.

Now… Just a deep breath, but not too long, because he's getting impatient, and I know how much he hates wasting time…

Close my eyes, allow tension to melt away, to be carried with my exhalation. It slides out of me as I slacken my body, as I stop holding onto it…

All right. Not perfect, but all right.

I open my eyes to find his blue visor almost in front of me, while the rest of what were the Undersiders but maybe should think about rebranding after switching sides is to my left in the same alley where we agreed to meet at the start of all this. Squealer is sitting on the floor, cuffed and sedated until she can be moved somewhere without easy access to technology, something that sends chills down my spine when I think about it, and so I very carefully avoid [thinking about it].

Great. My calm is ruined.

"Look, I know how hard you've worked to get where you are, how much effort you've poured into your power to get every single one of your inventions working, how every single step forward has been an uphill battle, and how sometimes you had to kept fighting without even knowing if there would be a goal to reach after all of that sweat and blood. I [know], and I respect you a Hell of a lot more than I would if I didn't, but… Can you respect me as well, please?"

He pauses for a moment, and I know enough about how his armor and predictive algorithms work to realize he almost stumbled.

"Lisa," he begins with a very careful tone, "I [do] respect you, but you need to realize your power, as good as it can be, cannot be your only safety net. You're still new to this, and there's so much you need to learn before—"

"I have read the dictionary," I interrupt him, almost, but not quite, waspish.

"What?"

"I have read the dictionary. Because Power, at the start, just knew what I knew, but one day I realized, after watching a quiz show, that he blurted random facts at me, things that were in the show but that I hadn't retained… And that's the trick to my power: he experiences what I experience, but he never forgets. So I read the dictionary to him, and he learned everything he needed about the English language. And then I kept reading things. Books, articles, webpages… Everything I could get my hands on. So, if Power goes on a tangent about the precise number of women who ever had PRT combat training? That's something I've read. If he tells me how unlikely it is for a woman to beat up grown-up men, taking into consideration training, weaponry, and numerical superiority? That's something I, at one point, decided it would be worthwhile for him to learn. If I can tell you that she used some of the flashiest Tae Kwon Do kicks there are, the ones that are usually considered all but useless in a real combat scenario due to the high risk involved in pulling them off? That's because of all the videos I've watched of people demonstrating their specific styles. I respect you, Colin. [A lot]. Can you… respect me?"

He stares at me silently until he steps forward and wraps me in a half hug against his still stupidly unhuggable armor.

"Holy shit, you weren't kidding," Alec mutters.

"Wrapped around her finger," Taylor remarks.

They are all awful.

I wouldn't change them for the world.

[Earth Bet likely considered subpar among—]

All right: I wouldn't change them for a non-crappy world.

[Lisa Wilbourn's sentimentality—]

I wouldn't change you either, Power.

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This work is a repost of my most popular fic on QQ (https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/wake-up-call-worm.15638/), where it can be found up to date except for the latest two chapters that are currently only available on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true)—as an added perk, both those sites have italicized and bolded text. I'll be posting the chapters here twice weekly, on Wednesday and Friday, until we're caught up. Unless something drastic happens, it will be updated at a daily rate until it catches up to the currently written 85 chapters (or my brain is consumed by the overwhelming amounts of snark, whichever happens first).

Speaking of Italics, this story's original format relied on conveying Power's intrusions into Lisa's inner monologue through the use of italics. I'm using square brackets ([]) to portray that same effect, but the work is more than 300k words at the moment, so I have to resort to the use of macros to make that light edit and the process may not be perfect. My apologies in advance

Also, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon: Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, Xalgeon, and aj0413. If you feel like maybe giving me a hand and helping me keep writing snarky, useless lesbians, consider joining them or buying one of my books on https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Lavere/author/B0BL7LSX2S. Thank you for reading!