Hello and Welcome to your occasional dose of mediocre crack fic!
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Brocton Bay
30 January 2011
Docks: Warehouse Area (Currently in the process of Mass Friendly Takeover. For Further Enquires, please contact Evil Corp Representative Lacey Breen)
"I can't believe you've done this."
"Come on. Its not that bad. Where is your sense of adventure?"
Brian's brows somehow deepened further than Lisa had ever seen before, and since that fateful day in the park.
"It curled up and died next to your sense of reason…" Brian let out a sigh and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Lisa let a grin come onto her face, one of confidence and not one of nervousness like the one she was trying to suppress.
What had she been thinking?
Brian, when he saw Lisa's grin, let out an even deeper sigh.
Yeah, she hated Coil but to do this? To just up and abandon the villain who had literally threatened her with death, a fate worse than death and a fate worse than a fate worse than death to join up with a girl who had no money, no reputation and absolutely no desire to be a villain. To say that it looked like she had a death wish was an understatement to say the least.
Daring Coil to kill her would have been a more reasonable choice.
But reason didn't account for just how utterly broken that same girl was. For Lisa, it was almost reflex to look over every person she met with her power, carefully looking for anyone that would have caused trouble for her. Then she had looked over Taylor…
At the time of first seeing her, her power had gone bezerk, throwing a bizzare jumble of insane words and what she could only assume were project names at her unprepared mind. Forget Tinker Headache, she had thought that her brain was going to explode before her power blissfully short-circuited itself out.
Any reasonable person would have left it at that, attributed it to either a quirk of her power or a Stranger power and left immediately.
Unfortunately, Brian was right. It seemed that her sense of reason did seem to curl up and die out.
To her mind, which felt as though it was on fire, Taylor had been a curiosity. Curiosities had potential to be beneficial to a girl in her position.
And in her position, you couldn't refuse beneficial.
"Don't worry about it boss man!" Alec, looking almost ridiculous in a deliberately baggy shirt and jeans and purposefully inspired by his costume as Regent, grinned towards Brian. "Our bigger boss man pretty much told us to go along with it anyway, so nothing's really changed."
Lisa nodded her head tentatively at Alec's point. It was odd how her boss, unknowingly to the others as Coil, had simply ordered them to 'work' for what seemed to be a heroic Tinker.
Lisa had almost had a power-fuelled epileptic fit the moment when he had heard Coil tell them to work for the shy girl that she had met in the park that day. It was just so out of character for Coil to send the Undersiders, especially Tattletale, to go into the tentative employ of a complete unknown, even if they were still technically working for him. Both her natural intuition and her power had confirmed that Coil was an extremely controlling individual. It was obvious from how he controlled his body expression around her and how he kept referring to her as his "pet" that he wouldn't exactly be willing to part with any control that he had over her.
Even after literal brain burning hours with her power analysing what she knew, she still had no idea why Coil would loosen his control like that. She did figure that the ten-minute-long silence on the phone had something to do with it however.
"So you have no problems working for a person wanting to be a hero? While we are Villains?" Brian's exasperated stare landed on the grinning Alec.
"I mean, we still get paid right?" Alec shot back with a shrug as he sent a small glance towards Lisa.
Wants reassurance. Worried about not getting paid by Coil. Worried that his new boss won't pay him.
Lisa smirked, a genuine one this time, as she found the perfect way to get revenge on the horde of "mid-life crisis" and "innocent girl" comments he was throwing at her yesterday.
With a confidence she didn't really feel, she winked at Alec and turned away as she walked to their destination.
It seemed that Brian had also had enough of trying to figure out how everything in his life had got flipped upside down as he followed Lisa, even as he pinched the bridge of his nose for the thirtieth time that morning.
"Wait." Alec blandly stated, his face grew a worried frown. "I am getting paid. Right? Right!?"
With that, Alec sped after them, eager to get a prognosis on his future bank balance.
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If she was honest with herself, Lisa had no idea why Taylor had asked the Undersiders to meet at the docks.
Like any good Villainess, Lisa had taken the time to look up their new benefactor and Taylor had nothing to her that would point to the thin teenage girl being anything but a thin, shy teenage girl.
Of course, that was only the official story.
When it came to capes, the official story was rarely the truth. Powers had a habit of letting even the most boring and unambitious of people destroy both the rules of logic and believability. It didn't make sense how a man could simply create metal out of other metal or how a woman could create earthquakes by lying, half-naked, on the floor. So if Taylor was a Tinker, like she suspected from her power's terrified gibbering, then it would be completely reasonable for her to have a secret lab somewhere, especially in a cliched place like an abandoned warehouse.
Infact, it seemed that occupying an abandoned warehouse was in fashion for ambiguous organisations lately. On the way to the warehouse that corresponded to the address that she had received from Taylor, the three Undersiders had tripped over at least a dozen warehouses that were also "abandoned". There were the typical mixture of drug dens, illegal hide aways and completely legal storehouses with only the small complication of not being owned by the tenants. There were some that stood out like the ABB warehouse where the red and green guards were too busy unloading an obscene number of expensive chairs into a cramped warehouse, stacked with identical chairs. There was also the warehouse that the E88 were using as a sort of assembly line for baked goods where Lisa and her two teammates couldn't help but share a quiet laugh at the assembly of tough, tattooed, skinheads were baking cupcakes by the dozen in fluffy pink aprons. Since it seemed that Othala was supervising everything, Lisa had a good guess on who choose the uniform. The situation only grew more hilarious when Lisa had spotted a squad of black-clad mercenaries from a nearby Coil warehouse, using their immense tactical experience to steal boxes of cupcakes from the inattentive Neo-Nazis.
Her hate of the stick-thin villain aside, she had to admit that it was quite a sight seeing the mercenaries duck and dodge behind cover, cupcake and cookie boxes in hand as they narrowly avoided detection. It was also significantly more effort than their fellow thieves were going to, the small group of yellow jumpsuited men and women laughing a street away as one of the women operated a Tinkertech device to teleport unattended boxes to the group of hungry workers.
She was tempted to ask them for a cupcake or two, but she decided that they should probably move on when her power started a too familiar gibbering when she tried to examine their teleport gun.
Lisa did share a private smile with herself from being vindicated on her decision to have an abandoned storehouse as a base for the Undersiders. There were far too many people hanging around the "abandoned" warehouse area to have any amount of secrecy. If they had gone with Brian's initial suggestion of setting up here, then it would be likely that E88's Victor would have come over to borrow some sugar one day.
She did have an idle thought of wonder however. Was the Bay always so animated? Full of life, even in its abandoned areas? Or was something causing this to happen?
Despite the distraction of the unpaid bake sale, Lisa, Brian and Alec managed to make it to their destination. In front of the three teenage villains was a large warehouse, the uniquely nondescript, weathered outside rendering it unique amongst its theoretically nondescript neighbours, with a very nervous looking Taylor in front of the warehouse's door.
Lisa took the opportunity to look over her new employer again. To Lisa's normal eyes, Taylor looked like an average teenage girl. She was wearing baggy jeans and shirt with a slightly larger hoodie in what seemed to be an attempt to hide that she was self-conscious about having a thin figure and a small, if any, breast size.
Completely normal teenage girl things.
Lisa couldn't help but compare her outfit with Taylor's. Ironically, trying to hide something badly always made it more noticeable and unfortunately for Taylor, Lisa's tight fitting blue shirt along with a carefully chosen pair of skinny jeans did less to bring attention to Lisa's figure than Taylor's attempt at wearing a tent made out of clothes brought attention to her's.
Lisa gave a silent sigh to herself, schooling her expression so that her slight exasperation wouldn't register to Taylor's bespectacled brown eyes who looked at her with hesitation almost through her curly brown hair, the only part of her appearance that seemed to have any care put into it at all. She could only wonder what she would look like if Taylor even tried looking good.
Actually, if this was her attempt at looking as good as possible for her "henchmen" then Lisa felt slightly jealous at what Taylor could look like if someone had actually taught her how to look good.
From only a glance, she could tell that Taylor was a girl that would either get ignored or bullied, either through jealously at the effortless way she managed to look average or the fact that she didn't have the self confidence to own her looks. All in all, it seemed that Taylor had a bit of a complex, comparing herself to some unknown beauty standard coupled with a bit of bullying had probably tanked her self-confidence.
Hence, why she was subconsciously trying to shy away from her new subordinates.
All of that she had figured out without her power, and a quick application of it only confirmed her theory.
And that was when her power started gibbering again. Ignoring the nascent headache that was forming behind her eyes, Lisa tried to find the small amount of comprehensible information that her power was giving her.
Nervous. Convinced that you are here to mock her for multiple reasons. Thinks she made a huge mistake accepting your proposal and is enaging in self-humiliation. A Dwarf Spider can be impr0ved using rthe c0ontents f an Oven and THREE Tshirts of Salt…
Ignoring the nonsense, Lisa took her power to heart and put a disarming smile on her face, hoping to put Taylor at ease through a gesture of friendliness.
Distance from Coil was critical for her freedom and survival. Lisa needed this to work.
"Hello Taylor. I would like to introduce you to my two teammates. Here is Brian" Lisa gestured to the man in question who nodded at the fifteen year-old girl. Lisa didn't miss how Taylor's eyes darted towards Brian's black t-shirt, jeans and jacket combo which showed just the right amount of muscle to look good but not overwhelmingly good.
She should know considering she helped him choose it out.
While Brian noticed the looks, Lisa was pretty sure that she was the only one who noticed the light dusting of pink on Taylor's cheeks as she did so. Interesting.
Next Lisa pointed in the vague direction of Alec. "And this charming timetraveller is Alec. He is as odd as he looks."
"Hey," Alec protested, not taking any offense at all while his voice took on an exaggerated regal quality. "I happen to look significantly better than any of you unwashed peasants."
"There is one more of us but… Rachel couldn't really come..." Lisa lied a bit. There was no way she was going to bring someone as volatile as Racheal to someone as fragile as Taylor seemed.
That was an easy way to get enslaved/killed by a snake fetishist.
"So," Lisa continued, hoping that letting a bit of awkwardness enter her voice would help Taylor's nervousness. "That's the Undersiders."
She cringed internally. She hated sounding like some sort of awkward teenage villain, but she needed to keep Taylor calm. Everyone knew that powers affected their hosts mental state, it was easy enough to see in Lung's case, and with how Lisa's power acted around Taylor, who knew how the girl reacted to ordinary stimuli.
There was silence as Taylor looked at Alec, his outfit and finally his long hair.
"Nice to meet you all." Taylor eventually said, her face showing more of her inner turmoil than her soft voice did.
The silence stretched on.
"Well, I'm feeling motivated, Boss." Alec snarked, sarcasm turning to pained amusement as Lisa stomped down on his foot.
"Look, just ignore him, I mostly do."
As though broken from a daze, Taylor shook her head quickly.
"Oh, no. Don't worry. I'm kind of used to it." Alec wagged his eyebrows at Lisa with a knowing look. Dammit, he unfortunately got this point for his attempt to break the ice.
"Well." Lisa didn't let Taylor focus on potentially Lisa-threatening thoughts. "While we are here. Why don't you tell us why you called us here?" she suggested, hoping that it didn't involve any Tinkertech testing on the new henchmen.
Taylor's face lost all evidence of nervousness in that moment and was replaced by a suspicious look towards Lisa.
Uh Oh. Her mind helpfully provided commentary.
"I thought you called me here?"
Lisa's eyebrow raised.
"No. I got a text that said it was from you saying that we should meet you here."
Taylor's brow furrowed, surprising Lisa by the sudden intensity of that gaze. Maybe she wasn't so normal after all?
"I got a letter at my house telling me to come here…" Taylor's voice trailed off as she thought
Jeans Can be made bi HEATING Squids. Confused. Can't send a T3xt. Doesn't own a cellphone.
Lisa's eyes widened as she realised…
"Someone has lured both of us here." Taylor said, a steely tone entering her voice as she voiced Lisa's thoughts.
Glancing behind her, she could see Brian tensing up. Having been given an explanation on exactly what Lisa's power did around the tall brunette and how volatile she could be, he had been content in delegating the leader role to her as they talked for the first time and, instead, focusing on his surroundings. The news that they had been lured here left him scanning the area around him as black smoke started swirling around his fingers. His power was ready to give them cover so that they could escape as the Undersiders had done dozens of times before.
Alec yawned loudly as he engrossed himself in picking his ear, completely uninterested in the prospect of being ambushed. Or at least that was what his body language was saying as Lisa saw his eyes sharply scanning the area as well.
All of a sudden, the massive warehouse door behind Taylor started opening, the groaning of decade old motors echoing around the group of teens as they lifted the weathered steel door. As the door lifted, the interior of the warehouse was revealed which caused both Lisa and Taylor to draw a sudden breath. Alec whistled.
The interior of the warehouse looked like something out of a scifi or superhero show. Scattered across the room was literal tons of scientific equipment and manufacturing tools which were arranged in such a way for one person to access every part of the room easily, presumably from the wheeled office chair in the middle.
Scientific instruments are paired with work tables and other manufacturing devices. Room designed for both Research and Development simultaneously. Perfect Tinker lab. Lisa's power helpfully supplied, providing her mind with several, pressing questions.
Her questions only increased when she noticed a thin, teenage boy wearing a leather jacket with blond hair holding the remote to the door that he just opened.
"Yup." The boy said, his voice as relaxed as his posture. "I lured you here."
Lisa was just about to voice the million questions on her mind when the a confused Taylor interrupted all of them with one sentence.
"Greg?!" Taylor all but yelled in surprise.
"Yup." Greg answered, completely unaffected by the surprise on everyone's faces. "Here is your keys to the lab, Taylor. Oh, and your new cell phone!"
Greg threw both a cell phone and what looked like the keys to the warehouse at Taylor, who caught them with a bit of fumbling.
"But… How?"
"Don't worry about it. Just remember to lock up after you're done for the day. Half of this stuff is reaaaaaly expensive." He gave Taylor a wink. "Your henchman also has the number of that phone now."
Lisa's attention turned fully to Taylor, hoping for her incredibly dangerous new boss to explain what was going on. Instead, Taylor seemed to be looking past the teenage boy in front of the group.
"IS THAT A 3D PRINTER!?" Taylor's face suddenly lit up as she into the warehouse, seemingly ignoring the blond boy's presence. Lisa was further surprised when her two companions entered the warehouse warily behind the Teenage Tinker, also completely ignoring the boy as well.
Greg sighed. "Well, that's what I get for expecting a thank you this time." He moaned glumly.
"Okay, Just who are you?" Lisa demanded. Greg spun around towards Lisa, surprise evident on his face.
Not expecting to be noticed. Doesn't expect to be by most people. Most people can't. Stranger power.
Lisa took note of her power's observations, even as Greg schooled a cool but definitely happy expression on his face.
"Ah, A Thinker I see." Greg yelled out, unconcerned about anyone hearing him. "Allow me to introduce myself. Greg Veder, Super minion for hire."
"for hire?" Lisa echoed, eybrow raised.
"Yes. By a very exclusive clientele I might add." Greg added proudly.
"Then howcome I haven't heard of anyone like you?" Lisa felt her suspicion grow of the strange boy infront of her. Greg winced slightly.
"Merely the unfortunate part of my power. For you see, I have a sort of perception filter around me that leaves people's mental image of me as somewhat of a bore and quite useless individual. Only Thinkers of a high quality can actually remember the real me."
"So…" Lisa promted, ignoring the subtle praise.
"I once saved a family from a burning building once. They attributed it to the family cat." Greg's voice had gone completely deadpan.
"Oh." Lisa was near speechless. She had never heard of a stranger power that completely powerful before. But then again, maybe that was the point?
"But hey, all water under the bridge." Greg's happy demeanor had returned in full force. "In fact, I am here on a bit of a job to make sure that Taylor has all she needs."
Before Lisa could say anything, Greg raised his hands to stop her reply.
"I know what you are thinking, and no. My current boss doesn't mean Taylor any harm. I don't think he even knows she Is here. And no, you don't want to mess with a guy like him anyway so just drop it."
The slight sudden gibbering of her power let her believe Greg wholeheartedly.
"Hey, I gotta go now. Got some jobs for our resident Miss America and little depression cleric lined up, but hey, Just give me a call if you need some work done or just wanna chat a bit. I'm even available for a bit of a booty call if you are feeling it." Greg winked at Lisa, giving her a business card as he began to turn away.
"A booty call, with someone you just met? You must not meet a lot of girls around."
"Hey, gotta take a chance." Greg shrugged. "I can safely count the amount of people who actually remember me on one hand, and even my parents ain't one of them. When I see a beautiful girl that doesn't forget me in a dozen seconds, I gotta take a shot."
"That's a problem for you is it?" Lisa grinned. She had to admit, she liked his seemingly simple nature. He seemed almost incapable of lying to seem cooler than he was.
"Yup. You have no idea how awkward it it when a kiss turns non-consensual in the middle of it. Or when she becomes convinced that the person she accused of attempted rape is now herself." Greg checked his watch. "Damn. Gotta go now. Have a good day Miss model."
"It's Lisa!" She called after Greg as he jogged off towards the main road.
"I know!" he called back. Lisa got the impression that he was grinnig as he did so.
Is, in fact, Grinning.
Thank you for the obvious.
As Lisa turned back towards the open warehouse, seeing Taylor messing around with all the equipment inside, she couldn't help but smile. How long has it been since she met someone so honest? Had she ever been that honest with a complete stranger. She knew it was only because any effort on his part to impress people with lies was going to go to waste anyway. Regardless, It was nice for her power to not constantly tell her that the person in front of her was lying through is teeth.
As she entered through the massive warehouse door, intent on making sure that Taylor wasn't going to destroy them all, she decided she was going to call him back.
She could use a friendly face like his to chat to.
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"Dammit." Emma Barnes cursed from her perch from the warehouse's skylight.
She had a full view of her friend down there, and she knew that Taylor was falling deeper into her Evil Genius side by the second.
Emma had to hold back a sob. She had tried so hard to avoid her friend from going down this path. To give her a normal life, far from the life of chaos and insanity that both their dads lived. She had tried slowly when they were kids, Emma's young mind already understanding the danger that her fellow playmate was falling into.
Everything had been going well, until Taylor had come back from summer camp.
When Emma had visited her, disassembling a fridge to build a miniature freeze ray. Almost immediately, Emma had leapt into action that day, tricking her best friend into taking a nap while she took the afternoon to rebuild the fridge before their parents got home. It was that day where she lost hope for her friend. She had found herself withdrawing from Taylor as everynight had brought nightmares of police, villains or monsters ripping her friend apart or worse, simply because she couldn't be normal.
And then Annette Hebert died.
It had been tragic. Emma had found herself crying along with her best friend, Annette having been like a second mother to her. But that was when she saw it…
In her grief, in the trauma of her mother's death had stilled the side of Taylor that would have got her killed.
From that came a plan that still shreaded her heart and almost forced her to vomit.
And a hope that her friend wouldn't be murdered in a ditch somewhere.
It had been easy to recruit Sophia. A speech about strength and pretending to be some sort of love-sick puppy to the psycho had been enough to get her on board. Madison had been significantly easier, quickly being coerced and bribed with useless social standing, not knowing what real power was. She would have been a great minion for Taylor if Emma hadn't gotten to her first.
And so Emma then betrayed her friend and began bullying her, all in the hope of saving her life.
But it went on.
And on.
And on.
It didn't seem to be working and overtime, she hated herself more and more for putting her friend through this.
The excuse became more and more hollow.
The Locker was a last ditch plan. A final try to save her friend from herself.
The Danny Hebert had found out.
Instantly her plans were crushed, her father keeping tabs on her to make sure that she didn't bother Taylor again while Madison and Sophia had been thoroughly intimidated by Danny's use of indirect coercion.
In fact, Madison seemed to be growing an admiration for Taylor after accidentially discovering who her father was.
It all had built up to this. Her best friend was down there, happy and falling deeper into her particular brand of madness.
And all Emma had accomplished over two years was to mentally torture her friend for no reason.
Her father had always said that the end justifies the means, but what if you failed to get the end you wanted?
Emma remembered her early joy in helping Taylor with her science as a kid and she would have liked to be down there now, enjoying her friend's happiness as Emma took care of her.
But Emma had thrown away that chance to be happy with Taylor, for a long shot at saving her only friend from an inevitable violent death.
As Emma creeped down from the roof, her custom stealth suit leaving her all but invisible to passers by, she lamented on what could have been.
What could have been, if she had just left it alone….
