AN: Unrelated to the story, but part of me is calling to write an Alpha Protocol fic. Partially due to the lack of them and partially because Sis was criminally underused in the game itself.

Meh. Maybe when I finish this.

Handwavium note: Yes, Danny freaked about the changes. Yes, Taylor played the throwing a temper tantrum teenage rebellion card. No, he's not aware of the suspension. (Winslow is a shithole with shit uptake on things like that).

I didn't enjoy writing any of that when I made an attempt at it, so I didn't.

...

After eating together and then spending the day hanging out, which consisted mostly of us trading our usual banter while she worked on things around her warehouse and I put more time into researching the local happenings, we found ourselves standing outside Tattletale's apartment in full costume. My little spies informed me that she was currently home and browsing on the internet though the details were lost due to lack of bugs with the required vision being naturally in her apartment.

We were both in full costume. I found myself mildly surprised at the fact that she had one but she'd informed me that the first thing she'd done upon realizing how this world worked was to acquire one. More over, apparently Parian was "quite enjoyable and fun company." I'd take her word for it though I did wonder what wonders she could come up with it I provided her with my materials. Something to think about another day.

For once I actually thought that I looked better than Shepard and my costume was certainly more functional than her black body suit. When I inquired I was informed "I'm used to wearing real armor. This is just the under suit for when I finish making the stuff. Though I expect you'll want to protect your BFF's life and draw me up a spider silk version..."

For better or worse, I couldn't bring myself to argue.

"So...are you sure this is going to work? I mean it seems a bit..."

She tossed a grin my direction. "Panacea, Armsmaster, Uber...I'd say my track record with dealing with these situations is pretty good."

I rolled my eyes. "You kidnapped Panacea, got tazed by Armsmaster, and slept with Uber."

"Exactly!" Her voice was ladened with enthusiasm. "Fantastic track record."

Sigh. "Ok, what exactly does this note say?"

She raised an eyebrow at me. "That would ruin half the fun. Just deliver it!"

"...fine."

I had my bugs fly the letter up to the window and a few of the sturdier ones "knock" on it a few times. To her credit she immediately caught on after the second knock. After glancing around with some suspicion she went to the window and took the note before reading it. She was still for a few moments in what I was sure was deep thought before she nodded to herself.

She then walked over to the door without bothering to change out of her pajamas and opened it. Not that I could see her proper I took in her image. She was a pretty blonde teen maybe a year older than me. She was (Of course) better proportioned than I was and had a striking smattering of freckles across her nose. More prominently was the very fox like grin that she was sporting.

She thrust her hands out towards us, held together at the wrists, and her grin just grew when I flinched slightly.

"If my lovely kidnappers would apply the handcuffs so we can be on our way?"

I blinked. "Uh." And then tossed a look to Shepard. "We're kidnapping another one?"

She shrugged. "It's called plausible deniability. She can truthfully tell anyone that she needs to that she was kidnapped." She gave her a critical eye. "I did specify in your note that you should change into your costume."

The grin just got bigger. "Which tells me that you play by the rules, even if in a very weird way. "Hey! We know who you are and where you live! We would like to kidnap Tattletale but respect the rules enough not to do so unless you give your consent." If I'm reading it right, and I know I am, you would have just left if I hadn't."

Shepard nodded. "Yeah, pretty much. Either you changed and then we kidnapped you or we just pretended this never happened. When you're out and in costume you're almost always with your team, so..."

"So the best way to kidnap me is when I'm at home but causes the problem of me being in my civ identity. To be honest I...can't think of a single other parahuman that treats it quite like -this- much of a game. This is like actually seeing them as rules rather than guidelines most people honor."

I shrugged. "Sure, with friends or potential ones anyways. We'll chat about that later. You, uh, sure you don't want to get into costume?"

That ever persistent grin hadn't faded. "Nah. Cuff me and take me to your secret lair and do your worst." Wink.

I felt my eye twitch slightly. Another one, really?

Shepard smirked at her. "Aren't you a little inexperienced for that?"

Tattletale matched her smirk for smirk. "Aren't you a little old to be wearing a teenagers body?"

Blink. "Touché."

"Besides." Her eyes flicked from Shepard to me. "I was talking to her."

Blush. Twitch. Twitch. FUCK. Nope. Not playing this game. Derail! Derail! Must win! I wasn't going to lose every single bout to too insufferably smug older girls! Quick! How would Shepard derail?!

Without thinking it through, I quickly stepped forwards and after tossing her a sultry smile gave her a peck on the lips before stepping back and smirking at the dumbfounded expression on her face. A feat only made possible by the fact I hadn't quite finished the lower portion of my mask. "Well. If you're already making those kinds of promises I think we're going to get along just fine."

Tattletale sputtered in disbelief for a second before shaking her head and tossing a slight glare at Shepard. "You're a terrible influence on her you know. I can tell that much already."

Shepard just smirked and rubbed my head affectionately. "Oh. I think I'm a wonderful influence on her. Just happens those two terms are synonymies sometimes. now get in gear and let's get out of here."

That Vulpine smile was back in full swing as the three of us headed towards Shepard's apartment.

...

An hour later we were sitting around in Shepard's living room and had just finished more or less outlying the situation to Tattletale, Lisa. She was returning the favor by giving us a rather blank look.

"So let me get this straight." She finally spoke up. "You're intending on becoming essentially the Warlords of the city and controlling the underworld in order to twist it towards positive ends while also removing the more morally terrible aspects of organized crime by becoming the organization in control? And you want me to join?"

Shepard and I shared a look and a nod.

Lisa's blank look gave away to a large vulpine grin. "Of course you're already aware you're going to have to deal with the big power players Kaiser and Lung."

She glanced at Shepard and paused. "Kaiser yes but Lung no?" She thought about that for a moment still looking at Shepard. "You're aware that the E88 needs to be taken out but you think you can leave Lung to his region?"

Another pause. "No, not left alone. You plan on absorbing him..."

Shepard nodded. "More or less. I had Taylor pour over the statistics. Outside of petty crime and butting heads with the E88 the ABB mostly stays out of serious trouble. Really, outside of some drug policies and getting rid of forced prostitution the area under Lungs control can mostly be left alone. Handled carefully and phrased in the right way and I think I can get him on board. He's always been content to be the dragon you don't poke."

Lisa nodded slowly. "I can see that working...it would be a very dangerous line to walk but it's definitely possible. Well, that aside. You're of course going to remove the merchants..."

"With fire and brimstone." I cut in vehemently. "They're a blight on the city."

"Hm. Most people look down on them but not quite like that. Mentioned statistics so...the statistics paint a worse picture than the surface does?"

"Yes." I replied simply. "They need to be removed. Jail is preferable but if not..." A slight shudder on my part but I resigned myself. "I'll not complain if Shepard does what she does."

"Which really only has two modes." Shepard interjected. "Talking. And when that fails, bullets."

"Simple but decisive, at least. Thankfully I don't think many people will make too much of a stir if that happens to the merchants. You'll need to be a little more careful dealing with people that don't have such a universally bad rap, though. And of course avoid having it decisively tied to you... but you already knew that. Some kind of black project government work before you got powers?" A pause. "You don't have powers?... No. Not quite right. You're not a baseline human but you're not parahuman either."

"It's complicated." Shepard cut in. "And I doubt you'll be able to put it together with any of the pieces available to you, as impressive as your power seems. Some kind of super Sherlock Holmes?"

Smugness. "Pretty much. Good deduction yourself."

"You're not exactly being subtle. Though I'm guessing with your cape name..."

"Yeah. It's hard to know so much and not use it. So I've just embarrassed it."

Shepard smiled. "That's perfectly fine. We've all got our quirks. You should have seen the crew I used to run with."

"You'll have to tell me later. But, ok. You've kinda got powers but not. So what's your deal?"

Shepard drummed her fingers. "I'd say the easiest way for you to mentally classify me until I give you the full scope is that I'm a damned good soldier, an even better spy and assassin, and I've got enough knowledge of science and tech beyond baseline that I can salvage any tinker tech that falls within my knowledge pool and make stuff from it."

Tattletale's eyes widened slightly. "That's...pretty broken. If it falls within your realm of knowledge...advanced knowledge, but only specific parts. Indicates specific tech trees where technology progressed along certain lines or close enough to those lines for you to understand it. Suggests real knowledge and understanding rather than random tinker insight. Suggests future knowledge base." Pause. "Knowledge from the future?" Pause, looks at Shepard. "Doesn't fit exactly. Temporal displacement?"

Blink. I spoke up. "Damn. You're really good."

Smug, vulpine grin. "I know. So that's it? You're some kind of soldier / spy from the future?"

A mild sigh on Shepard's part. "Infiltrator. Battlefield tactics, infiltration, wet work, and assassinations. Genetically and cybernetically enhanced. And yeah, from a future but not from your future. We never had any of this parahuman stuff."

Lisa nodded. "Yeah, makes sense. Probably diverged around the same time Earth Aleph did. Just a much further removed timeline if you never had any Paras at all."

Shepard face palmed. "Every. Single. Time. Not one shocked person!"

"You've told others? Of course you've told others. Taylor knows. How many more?" Glance. "One? Ok, yeah, one other person." Pause. "I noticed that Taylor's complexion is a little too clear and her footsteps are a little too heavy for someone of her size. Shared genetic alterations? I don't think you have the tech for that..." Glance. "No, you don't. At least not right now. Only person that could do that...Panacea knows." Blink. "Damn. You're good at making allies! Any others?"

Shepard smirked. "I have a rather extensive history with making odd allies..."

I shot a smile of my own at Shepard. "Well, so far, she's kidnapped Panacea and somehow turned that into being somewhat on her good side. She broke into the Rig to use Armsmaster's lab..."

"That was you?! No, of course that was you. Man, he was pissed when he figured out you used his lab and he just let you go. There's a bunch of buzzing excitement over there about that and the fact there's a new tinker in town. Boss has me looking for you, actually."

"And she slept with Uber." I finished, tossing an annoyed glance at Lisa.

Lisa just blinked and shrugged. "Makes sense. She's basically exuding sexuality and liberalness and he can master any skill."

I face palmed. Yes. Dealing with both of them was going to be a nightmare.

"And I don't lock up when someone kisses me." Shepard gave Lisa a teasing smile who in turn looked a little sheepish.

"One of the main drawbacks of my power. So many things you don't want to know or think about when you're, uh, involved with someone. Like, she brushed her teeth 3 hours before that and there were still tens of thousands of bacteria in her mouth."

Shepard slowly nodded her head. "And? On noes. All those non-harmful bacteria." She chuckled. "No, I get it. At your age and lack of experience all of those things would be overwhelming. It's like how teenagers don't want to think about their partner being human and needing to expel biological waste. You grow out of it with age. With you it's things like that and a lot more than you don't have the experience to just shrug your shoulders and do thing anyways."

Lisa blinked. "Experience can get past stuff like that?"

It was my turn to cut in with a grin. "Sure. Humans are super adaptable. Like, all that closeness stuff with other people is like an 8-10 on your 1-10 scale. But then all that data you don't want to think about is like an 9-12 on your grossness scale so it cancels out. But as you live with your power you'll eventually get desensitized to that stuff so it will fall to something more reasonable."

"Assuming your libido doesn't fall at the same rate due to teenage hormones dying out and having mentally wired your brain to reject it. I'd say make sure your sexuality remains strong and don't mentally write it off until the parts that bother you eventually become more normal. Expose yourself to them in ways not directly tied to sexuality so you don't directly associate it while also speeding up the process of desensitization. Speaking of which."

She paused with a thoughtful look. "I'm assuming your power requires data input to actually do anything? Otherwise if it's running rampant it's just playing with the stuff already in your head?"

Lisa nodded. "Yeah. It's intuition. I need data to actually intuit from..."

Shepard shrugged. "Look into sensory deprivation then. Less senses feeding you input, less data to wig you out."

Lisa actually looked thoughtful in her silence rather than disturbed. But despite my lack of experience if someone told me that I would be deeply disturbed by any form of intimacy I'd be pretty horrified.

"Huh. Thanks. One of those differences between being able to put all the pieces together and actually having a fleshed out knowledge base to work from."

Shepard smiled at her. "Yeah. Trust me, I'd imagine if you make it to my age and actually make an effort to build up your knowledge base while getting there you'll make me look like a child by comparison with that power of yours. For now I suggest you study cognitive science while you have time so you have a solid grasp of how the brain works, interacts, etc."

"Yeah. I'll do that." She shook her head. "Moving off the topic of my sexuality, that answers what you do. Obviously she" she tilted her head towards me. "Controls bugs. Which is really versatile. What can you do with it?"

"I have access to perfect individual control and sensory input from every simple life form above a certain size in a radius of 3 city blocks."

Lisa blinked. "Holy fuck. You're basically omniscient in a 6 block diameter even without the other things you can do with them. That's how you found me! I would have noticed if any were acting weird but you just left them doing what they were doing and gathered their senses passively."

I grinned. "Yeah. It's pretty strong. That's not even the best part. See, she designed this tool for me that she calls "The Rig." It's a computer with specialized inputs..."

"So that you can control it with your bugs. The amount of data you can pull off the internet or even screens of any kind is only limited by the number of bugs and the hardware..."

I waved my hand in a so-so gesture. "Kind of. I've still only got one human brain to actually process the information all of my bugs sort out for me. So I can use low level functions with all my bugs to, say, grab all information and trends related to the Undersiders. But then I have to use my human brain to actually study it and figure out what it means..."

"Which is where I come in. You can distill the entire internet down to the relevant information on a subject and then I can eat it and use the organized information to spit out an incredibly detailed analysis. How long does it take you to do this?"

I shrugged. "Uh. Right now? If I wanted all the data that's on the internet about, say, Armsmaster it would probably take a few days. He's been around a long time and I've only got one rig. Once I'm fully up and running maybe an hour? Less with more? And then there would be a massive base of information on Armsmaster sorted based on low level processes I can multitask with. But at that point I'd have to go through it all."

Blink.

And then she was across the distance hugging me. Why did people keep doing that?

"You're...like, the best thing ever. I'm going to use you in so many ways!"

Two of them! Why are there two of them?! Gaaak.

"Sorry. Already called dibs... but I'll share." I watched Shepard wink at me.

Two of them.

I just shook my head. "Fine. Fine. There's enough of me for both of you." I pushed her off, despite how nice this felt.

She sat back on the couch and gave me a vulpine smirk. "You're giving me the internet. There's pretty much nothing I won't do for...or too you." She winked at me.

Anthropologist damnit I blushed again. Damned teenage hormones.

I held up my hands defensively. "Nuh uh. I'm going to fragrantly abuse my current status of being in the hard taboo zone and declare myself off limits."

Shepard smirked. "Only applies when dealing with age gaps. She's what, a year older than you?" She glanced at Lisa.

"16." She said, not losing her grin.

"Yup. Most of society is fine with that. You don't have a taboo shield against her."

"Not. Helping." I hissed at her.

"Ok. Ok. Let's focus on the more important topics before we have to declare Taylor a case 53 with red skin."

"Case 53?" Shepard asked.

"Uh. Yeah. Monstrous capes. Shared history of not remembering anything before their trigger. All of them have a certain tattoo somewhere on their bodies. Faultline's crew here in town has two of them. Newter and Gregor."

Shepard nodded. "Ah. There's the Shadow Conspiracy group. Why the hell would they brand them, though? That's just giving the game away."

"You mentioned you thought there was a shadow conspiracy group here before. Why?"

Shepard shook her head. "So innocent. There's -always- a shadow conspiracy group. No memories? Monstrous appearance? Branding? That's weapon testing if I've ever seen it. Back home, Cerberus did it with a bunch of different creatures. Trying to breed weapons or control the Reapers or any number of other things. You mentioned triggers? All of them are parahumans with non-human appearances or biology?"

Lisa nodded. "Yeah. You think that...hm. Yeah, it would fit. Bit crazy but...someone's playing around with powers?"

"I'd put money on that, yeah. Either inducing them or fucking with them one of the two. Could be something like genetic engineering on the...whatever the brain regions you guys have that causes powers. Find some subjects with one that hasn't woken up, or even one that has, and then try to tweak it to get different results. It's what I would do if I had resources and was amoral in this world. We're getting off topic, though."

"Oh! Right. Ok, so Kaiser, Merchants, Lung. Last one you have to worry about is Coil, who..." She paused. "You're already aware and worried about Coil...you think he's going to be the most problematic? That's true, but how did you? Oh. Just finished talking about shadow conspiracies. Innately suspicious of anyone that isn't following the general trends at large or a more specific trend that you can see. Paranoia says he's the most dangerous."

"You know. I really do appreciate having you around. I don't even have to answer your questions, you do it for me! Really appeals to the laziness in me. For the sake of appearing to have a discussion, though. You mentioned a boss. Not one of the others, probably weren't referring the Undersiders leader..."

"Grue." I supplied.

"Probably not Grue. Guessing your boss is Coil. So either a mole inside the Undersiders or..."

"The Undersiders work for him. They don't know it, though. They know they have a boss, but not who. He keeps us on retainer and lets us do what we want but will offer us paid jobs now and then. Dunno why. They're random things like "Rob this" or "break in here." I haven't been able to see a pattern."

Shepard smirked at her. "Well, get my glorious Shadow Broker here a list before you go and she'll gather all the data about them and things that happened around the same time. Possible waves, that sort of thing. We can forward the results to you so you can use that power of yours to figure it out from a complete dataset."

"That...that would be fantastic, thanks. But yeah. He's got a carrot or stick for each of us but the other's only see the carrot. Regent just doesn't care about much of anything but has...family issues that Coil is keeping him out of sight of. Bitch, Hellhound to you PG folks, just wants to take care of her dogs. Grue has a little sister and custody issues Coil is "helping" him with... and I got recruited at gunpoint."

"Hm. Seems a bit heavy handed compared to the others. Pretty much guaranteed to cause resentment."

Lisa shrugged. "He's got some sort of power. He says it controls destiny and I haven't been able to figure it out. When he displayed it to me, he had me flip a coin and called the result correctly each time. When we go on some dangerous jobs he'll give us a go ahead or a not go ahead. Or a go loud or go quite. That sort of thing. It always worked."

I glanced between the two of them and when neither of them spoke up I ventured. "Is it always two things?" They turned to look at me. "I mean, "Go, don't go." "Heads. Tails." They're binary. Two possibilities, pick one. I mean, knowing that, I'd try to get him into a situation where both binary options he has are bad ones."

Lisa's mouth open and closed like a fish. "I...wow. I never thought about that pattern before. So many possibilities. I might actually be able to figure it out now with a little more work."

I gave her a grin. "So he can call coins back to back. Has he ever given you further direction in the middle of a mission?"

She paused for a second and shook her head. "No. Some kind of Thinker limit dependant on the complexity of an event maybe..." She paused. "No. Not enough data on hand here and I've already used my powers a lot today. Going to run into a headache if I push to deep. I'll invest a day when I have a chance and see what I can figure out. Thank you."

I smirked. "Shepard's been teaching me a lot about noticing things. "Reject what you think you know. Reject what society tells you it knows. What do you actually know?" And then work from there. He says he controls destiny? I call bullshit. What do we actually know? He can accurately predict binary choices."

Shepard reached over and rubbed my hair as she was prone to do and smiled broadly at me. "Growing up so fast."

"Ok girls." Lisa ventured. "This has been a blast, and I'm totally on board. I'll stick to my role with the Undersiders for now and play double agent."

"Sounds like a plan." Shepard acknowledged and I agreed. "Need to test Coil's power a bit, if you can. See if you can get future information back to yourself with it. Come up with some kind of code system that no one but you understands. Make it nonsensical so the codes only have meaning to their particular selves and maybe even only to your intuition. If he's a precog of some kind you may be able to pass information to yourself and figure things out if you can trick him into doing so."

She gave me a look. "Something I've been working on myself since there are precogs in this world. Being able to send yourself a message from the future or a timeline that doesn't exist because of changes you make now is a very useful ability. Something for us to put on our list of things to work on, but of more immediate use for Lisa. Guessing she can do that herself."

Lisa nodded. "Yeah. That's a really good idea."

"So. We know who you are. Should we, like, unmask?"

Lisa held up a hand. "No. Just in case Coil catches on or something I don't want to be able to give him information on you two. You are my best chance for getting out from under his thumb, after all."

She paused. "So. Hm. What are we going to call this little conspiracy of ours?"

Shepard smirked. "Oh. I thought that was obvious. Cerberus. The three headed bitch."