Wake-up Call – Chapter 47

Colin barely has dinner at his apartment. The freezer is better stocked than his fridge, and his microwave is the thing most used in the whole kitchen.

"Can you pass the salt, please?" he says, dabbing his mouth with a red paper napkin.

Narrowing my eyes, I reach to my right and hand him the plastic disposable saltshaker. That he takes without further comment before sprinkling some of it on what is actually a very expensive frozen lasagna that would've tasted much better if he'd bothered to use the oven.

The pristine oven I think only gets used for frozen pizzas.

"Please don't tell me you plan on supplementing this with some gross, nutritional pills," I beg him as Taylor rolls her eyes.

Bitch.

All right, fine, it's not about the frozen food, or the clearly one-use nature of everything around us. It's not even about eating at a round kitchen table covered by a red and white, checkered piece of vinyl.

It's not even about the kitchen being [olive green!]

…

It [may] be slightly about that.

[Lisa Wilbourn's sense of aesthetics—]

It's important! You can't call it life if you always prioritize function over form!

[Lisa Wilbourn's projection of own values—]

Can you tell me you disagree rather than take digs at me?

[…]

Didn't think so.

"My nutritional supplements aren't gross. They're designed so they don't have any flavor—"

"That! That [is] gross! Nobody would think regularly swallowing something tasteless is even remotely appealing!" I say, pointing at him with a thankfully empty [plastic fork.]

"It's not about it being appealing, but about the lack of a discernible taste making it easier to include on a regular—"

"If that's how you're going to tell me that you don't want to give them a flavor and then get tired of it, then make them into gummy drops! A different flavor whenever you feel like it!" I cut through his excuse with both my words and a sweeping, dramatic gesture with the fork.

And Taylor kicks my shin beneath the table.

"Hey!" I protest the unwarranted bout of domestic violence.

And she rolls her eyes. Dramatically.

Of course.

"Ah, that reminds me," Colin says, fishing around in his shirt's breast pocket in a way that makes it perfectly clear that, at some point, he was quite used to having a pocket protector in there.

… I am pretty sure both Dragon and Hannah would do terrible things to get their hands on a few pictures of high school, nerdy Colin, even if for entirely different reasons.

"Here," he says, offering a square, yellow plastic case to Taylor. "Let one of these slowly dissolve in your mouth; it should help temporarily."

Taylor takes the case with a raised eyebrow before fidgeting with it and sliding open a small tag.

"What is that?" I ask while she contemplates the small round pill in her hand.

"Potassium chlorate. It's an old singer's trick for when they need a quick way to get on the stage," he calmly explains, cutting off another mouthful of lasagna with his metal knife—at least he's [efficient] enough to not bother trying with the plastic substitutes.

Taylor's eyebrows rise, and she quickly puts the thing in her mouth, proving yet again that, for all her paranoia and issues with authority figures, she didn't quite internalize vital lessons such as 'don't take candy from strangers.'

"And you know that because…?" I can't help but wonder.

"Because it wouldn't be the first time I've been asked to give a reassuring public statement after being in a fight where I lost my voice due to screaming in sheer agony at the top of my lungs," he calmly replies before eating the piece of pasta, meat, and cheese and letting out an appreciative sound.

Taylor's cheeks move in a way that indicates she's trying to dissolve the pill as quickly as possible, and Colin calmly eats the next mouthful, none of them perturbed by that line.

"All right, I'll bite," I calmly state, "[what the fuck?!"]

[Lisa Wilbourn's management of emotional state—]

I swear, Power, if you tell me to calm down, I am going to have a hysterical crisis just to spite you.

"It's part of the job," he says with a small nod.

"No! No, it isn't! Your job is to put them away, not to let them hurt you!"

"Mistakes happen."

"Not like this! Not enough to put your life on the—damn it. You just set me up, didn't you?" I grumble as I bury my face in my hands just so I don't have to watch the smug smile parting his beard.

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Thinker six."

I kick his shin.

He's wearing a shin guard.

And smirking.

"You are about to give me a lecture, and you just 'remembered' to give Taylor a temporary fix for her throat just so she can join in," I tell him, with none of the maniacal glee of a supervillain explaining her master plan.

I should know.

"A Lecture? Not at all, Lisa. I am not angry, just… disappointed."

"I'll bite you."

"And concerned about your nascent violent streak."

"If you tell me adults solve things using their words, I'll have to remind you that mine are far worse than anything I could do with my limp wrists."

"Yes, that's a thing that we're going to change starting from today," he says, and, this time, I can't avoid seeing the sadistically-leaning grin.

"… If you're going to make me take up self-defense classes, I should remind you I [do] have a gun."

Colin arches an eyebrow and leans down to pick up something from beneath the table I don't need Power to tell me—

[Lisa Wilbourn's gun—]

Oh, fuck you. You're doing this on purpose.

[Anthropomorphizing of parahuman abilities interfaces—]

That's a yes. I know that's a yes. You know that I know that's a yes. I know you know that I know that's a yes.

[Recursive reasoning—]

Hate you. So much.

"You are going to get certified for this," Colin says, depositing the gun on the table before Power can say—

[Lisa Wilbourn's fickleness—]

Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!

"Certified? Where do you even want me to get certified training for—oh. No. No way, absolutely no way! I refuse! Taylor refuses! You can't make us!"

Taylor snaps her fingers, and I turn to see her inquisitive eyebrow.

Damn it.

"He wants us to get in the Wards," I say.

And her eyes go wide.

"Yeah, I entirely agree. No way I am going to put up with [bureaucracy] for dealing with supervillains when we've shown we're far more effective than anything the Protectorate has—"

"How many times has a Ward been shot in their home?" Colin cuts me off.

And I go still.

Not… It's not even planned, or like I'm trying to get a reaction, or… Nothing. I just see Taylor in front of me, bleeding out, her face pale, and—

And there's a heavy hand on my shoulder and stern, caring eyes looking down at me.

"I am sorry," he says. "I don't mean to… to poke at the wound, but… But there are protections inside the system, Lisa. Things you won't have as long as you're running around outside the law, being still technically a villain—"

"That's bullshit," I mutter. And he pauses, giving me the time to gather… myself, I guess. "Nobody should be more protected just because they are part of the government; everyone should be… free. Free to live without the fear of villains, without the fear of…"

I trail off.

He already knows.

"We are not talking about how things should be," he says, not unkindly.

I stop. Close my eyes. Breathe.

Then I look straight up at him.

"Aren't we?" I say.

And he clenches his jaw.

"Lisa…"

"No. No, I get it; I [understand], really, but listen to me. We [are] working toward how things should be. We've cleaned as many moles as we could out of the PRT, ousted Piggot, ended the ABB and Coil, and we're about to do the same to the Empire. We [are] changing things, making them how they should be, how they should have always been. And… and we aren't doing it inside the system because we're not [done]. Because there's still too much for us to do before we can accept working inside of it."

"You'd get training, protection, comrades—"

"And rules, lack of freedom, supervision—"

"[I] would do that," he says. And now he's begging.

It's not fair of him to do it.

"The Empire," Taylor says, standing between us after moving around the table unnoticed, her voice surprisingly clear.

Power, make a note to get some of that potassium chlorate.

[Use in explosives—]

Even better.

"What do you mean… Oh. No," Colin answers himself. "That's what started this whole thing. I can't let you two in good conscience—"

"They have no more Thinkers. Victor was their only one, and now we've got access to all his information," Taylor continues.

"You don't know what reinforcements they may get. And you don't need any superpowers to hire a PI and do some basic mental calculus. Do you really think you'd be the first independents to be disappeared? The death rate is—"

"I won't go to any Endbringer battles," I burst out.

"What?" Colin asks, blinking.

"[What?"] Taylor does the same, but somehow worse.

"I… I can't do anything in them that I can't do through Dragon's comms, can I? And… and is that a good compromise? I won't go there, and I'll clean things up here. For you. So that you don't have to worry when you're…"

I can see him.

Dancing around Leviathan's water blades, always a hair's breadth away from being bisected by pressurized, impossibly thin edges.

Clenching his jaw, working to stem the tides of whatever inhuman horde the Simurgh unleashes while the cruel angel sings and sings as he can feel his mind slipping away, counting down the seconds until he [has] to flee.

Rushing to Behemoth, trusting his latest armor to be the one that can stand in the middle of the kill aura, only to then face something much, [much] worse than the cloud of radiation trying to cook him from the inside out.

I can. I don't even have to imagine it. I know.

So I angrily close my eyes and wipe them with my sleeve, refusing to let this get to me as much as it should before I look at the two people currently closest to me for bizarre reasons no Thinker could've ever foreseen.

"I won't face them. But I'll keep you safe in here. And if you don't let me… I'll follow you. I'll follow you around the Earth to face the monsters, and you won't be able to stop me, Colin. So, one way or another… I'll fight for you."

His jaw is almost beating, the muscle so taut it stands out against the skin, delineated even through his beard.

And, for the second time without armor, he hugs me.

I angrily let him, my face rubbing against his firm chest, not crying, refusing to.

Much as I refuse to ask him to stay, to let others fight those losing battles, to let someone less important risk their life in his stead.

I don't know what I fear most: that he would reject the idea out of hand… or that he would listen.

So I'll let him be the hero he is. I'll let him face impossible odds and stand tall. I'll let him risk death and limb.

So long as he lets me do the same.

… Damn it, Tay is a [terrible] influence.

==================

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 86 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!