***Robot Genealogy***
"You look down, downer than usual. Did something happen?" Lisa asked the girl that was totes her new bestie. Or something like that, whatever teenagers that didn't have superior minds said these days. She knew, of course, that things had happened. Glory Girl had used the shared app-group that included all teenage capes, except for the villains, in Brockton Bay to inform everyone that new girl, aka LightHuntress, was not hunting down Grue anymore. Because, for some reason, Miss Militia.
Now, if only she could figure out when, and why, Miss Militia had talked to Taylor about that… Colin was supposed to have informed her that the situation was under control. Then again, it was Colin that was supposed to have informed her that the situation was under control, so it was perfectly logical for her to assume that the situation was very much not under control.
"Oh, you know… stuff with my dad," Taylor replied.
It was a lie, blatantly so. At least in part. Yes, it involved her father, but no, it was not stuff with her father that caused all the problems. She would've given less of a shit about it if it was her dad that did something. Unless her father somehow unmasked her, but Lisa was like 80% sure that that would've ended with a quick call to the PRT and enrolment into the wards.
"Oh, anyway, you see the news yesterday? All that cape stuff?" she asked. Maybe it had something to do with that little gang fight.
"What? You mean the birdcage stuff? Didn't really pay attention, not like it'd be relevant, right?" Taylor said.
Yeah, sure, not relevant. Which, Lisa's power easily supplied, meant that it was very, very relevant. In other words, she knew someone who had something to do with someone that had escaped the birdcage. Had her father been a henchman to someone? Did he piss of Marquis back when the supervillain was still around?
"Anyway, gotta go leak real quick, see you in class?" Lisa asked. After some shuffling around, she'd managed to make sure she'd accidently shared every single one of Taylor's classes with her.
"Sure, I'll come with, I needed to go too." Taylor said.
Of course, the age old custom of girls going to the bathroom together. Fuck, that was annoying.
"Nah, I'm kind of a, you know, private pooper. Can't do it while anyone's nearby," she replied.
Taylor looked disappointed. After having finally found friendship, they still couldn't pee together, and peeing together was akin to magic in the eyes of a lonely fifteen year old.
But, life was hard, and Lisa had a robot to call. She ran for the bathroom, checked it was empty, and swiped through the screens on her phone until she reached her fellow mother.
"Hello, D speaking?" the shitty Canadian voice-modulation program said.
It wasn't actually shitty, it was quite a good disguise actually. Even Colin hadn't figured it out yet. That, however, meant nothing when confronted with Lisa's power. It had taken her about three days of casual interaction before she figured it out, mostly from her seemingly contradictory actions. Dragon wasn't like Militia. Sure, both were heroic, and both obeyed the law. But Militia obeyed the law and followed her orders out of loyalty, while Dragon did so because she didn't have any options.
It was a short route from there to figuring out she couldn't disobey, and about a five minute online search to figure out that Saint and the Dragonslayers also knew. Plus, Saint probably also had some sort of anti-AI weapon. If only she had some sort of way to take him down before he could react… Maybe she could convince Saint to hand over his weapon? Tell him she was a much better anti=Dragon weapon? Anyway, that was an entirely useless tangent, and it was time for Lisa to reply to Dragon's greeting.
"Morning D, Lisa here. Can you do me a favour? I need a quick look-up of one Taylor Hebert, student at Winslow High, fifteen years old."
"Lisa, I'm kind of busy, what with my inescapable prison cracking open. There are seventeen highly dangerous capes out there, and I have no idea what they're doing."
"Well, it's kind of about that. I'm pretty sure you'll find something related to the birdcage when checking the girl. I tried, but I don't get access to everything you do."
"Fine, I'll check," Dragon replied.
"Let's see. Some stuff about her father and the dock riots, a note that she's in classes with Sophia, must not have been updated yet, and… Oh, yes, I see how that might be relevant."
"What? What is it?" Lisa asked immediately, she wanted to know. She had to know, she couldn't be on the phone with someone who knew something she didn't!
"It's a sealed court document, regarding the civilian identity of Lustrum."
"Oh… yeah, that'll explain it, guessing they didn't tell her, news came out… My job just gets harder and harder doesn't it?" Lisa replied.
"What, exactly, is your job here Lisa? Colin send you to Winslow to identify the potential parahuman, haven't you already done so?"
"Well, yeah, but now I'm doing all kinds of important stuff like making her like me, it's totally necessary and important you know," Lisa replied, shutting down her phone.
Sure, she had all the information that she wanted, but fucking with that Emma girl was just so much fucking fun!
Lisa hurried back into the hallways, looking for Lustrum's daughter. When she found her, the girl was being cornered by her primary tormenter.
Now, let's see, what was she most insecure about today? Her hair? She had it done up in some ridiculous Game of Thronesy manner, which was, honestly, kind of cool. Her dress maybe? It looked like the kind of thing she probably got from one of her modelling jobs. Jobs she wouldn't have for long, after all, who wanted a nervous trainwreck to represent their brand, but that would take some time.
Maybe her nails, they were painted red today, probably to hide the blood of little kittens or something like that.
No, just trying to impress a boy, her power neatly supplied. Ooh, that was interesting, there was a boy that Emma was after, but which one?
Then again, did it really matter which boy she really liked? After all, once everything would be said and done, everyone was convinced that the real target of her lustful feelings was none other than, well, that was going to be one hell of a surprise.
Thinking about boyfriends though, maybe it was time to set up Taylor with someone? One of the wards, maybe Shielder? She was largely het, even though her mother was, supposedly at least, a radical lesbian. One of the wards? Kid Win maybe? He was nice and non-threatening. Maybe a little too non-threatening, boyfriends weren't any fun if they weren't exciting. Carlos, or maybe Dean? Sure, there was a 64.213% chance Dean was currently dating Glory Girl, but that wouldn't be very difficult to break up, and then Taylor could be his rebound.
Or maybe she needed a bad boy? A nice vaguely dangerous yet still upstanding supervillain for her? Then again, teenage male supervillains meant she was limited to Grue, who was already dating his sister, Regent, who had something semi-masturbatory going on with tentacle girl, and Newter, who came with an entirely different set of problems. Stuff would just be so much easier if TayTay could be a lesbian. A world of possibilities, just waiting for her to explore them.
Maybe some out of towner then? Trade wards with another city to find Taylor the perfect boyfriend? Maybe Tecton? He was the right combination of ripped and nerdy to be the perfect match.
Now, how to take down Emma today? Play around her fears, subtly warning her off? Or just go straight for the throat?
Lisa approached the group of girls, and saw that some of them had noticed her.
"Hey Tay, I heard Lung's ABB beat the crap out of the Empire yesterday, took a shit-tonne of territory."
Taylor suddenly looked at her, not quite sure what to make of the remark. "Yeah? I heard…" she said, almost crying from Emma's actions.
"Just saying, we should watch out. Probably going to be a lot of gang members around after school, I heard part of his claim is centred around Winslow." Lisa said.
"Hey, we were talking," Emma said, trying her best to be condescending.
"Well you girls should know too. Scary gangsters with knifes, who knows what they would do to a pretty girl like you? Horrible to think about," she punctuated her earlier statement. It wasn't subtle, but it didn't need to be. Emma wasn't the type to tell her hanger-ons stuff like that, so they'd just be confused about why she was suddenly stressing out.
Emma looked at her, lightning in her eyes. Lisa looked back, signalling her that yes, she knew, and yes, she would go there. Within seconds, bitchy mac-bitchface was telling her friends they should get to class.
Now, she'd just have to hire some Asian guys to stand menacingly around Emma's route home.