Interlude 4.c: – Makeover
Sabah and Lisa – Secret Base (Under The Apartment Complex)
"I like the look you went with," the thinker formerly known as Tattletale admitted. "I've always had a fondness for noir. The hardboiled detectives and the femme fatales had been a guilty pleasure of hers long before she'd become Lisa. "Will it be enough to hide from Coil though?"
The detective angle was admittedly a bit on the nose as far as costume design went Sabah could admit. But the point wasn't really to hide, so much as symbolize a change.
"I think he'll likely be suspicious no matter what," Parian offered. "A new cape joining Jiraiya right after she helped you escape from him? It doesn't exactly take a genius. This is more for everybody else. You're starting a new chapter as a hero. Best to start with a clean slate."
"Is that why you decided on a wig?"
Sabah eyed the wan girl thoughtfully. She was still recovering from the forced drug use she'd suffered under Coil in order to augment her power usage and it showed. But despite the bags under her eyes and sickly pallor of her skin, she hadn't lost a step mentally. She suspected that Lisa's thinker power was augmenting an already sharp intelligence rather than the other girl being solely reliant on her power.
"Don't you already know?"
"I probably could," the now former villain admitted. "But I try not to overuse it. Not on friends anyway."
Sabah raised a brow, "friends?"
"Prospective friends," the thinker corrected with a wry grin.
The only sign of discomfort from the former villain was the absent rubbing at the crook of her elbow. Sabah bit back a disgusted frown. Coil was truly awful. And for him to have planned a similar fate towards Diana… well, it was amazing that he'd managed to keep under the radar for as long as he had if that was the kind of stuff he got up to.
"Allies at the least," the thinker continued. "Besides, why waste my power when I can get the information just as easily by asking?"
Sabah hummed thoughtfully. "Yes," she said in response to the earlier question. "You've been pretty low-key and the Protectorate obviously has much bigger fish to fry at the moment, but it wouldn't take much to link Tattletale with the new blonde thinker hanging around Jiraiya. Especially not after you two publically made contact with each other during the alliance meet up."
The rogue frowned thoughtfully as she slightly adjusted the fitted trench coat the other girl was wearing, had to account for the armored inserts. Thankfully Taylor's jacket had given her a bit of practice with this, though admittedly, Lisa's jacket as a bit less armored and a bit more form-fitting than the toad summoner's battle coat.
"They probably wouldn't give you too much trouble," she offered after she'd finished her adjustments. "The might be glad enough to just have one less villain in the Bay and call it a day, but no need to call any attention to it. Better to let you get yourself some goodwill untainted by your past. That way, if the connection is already made, you have a bit of good karma backing you up. It's your lucky day, because of Taylor, you got a golden ticket to start over without any of the shady crap you pulled dragging you down."
She mentally chastised herself for the terse tone at the end. She couldn't really fault the other girl for grabbing onto her salvation with both hands if she was actually genuine. She'd been just as glad when Taylor crashed into her life and saved the day. Still, the situations had been different she reminded herself. The girl before her was a villain and a thief, and by her own account, largely unrepentant about that fact.
"You don't really like me do you?" Lisa asked sounding amused and resigned all in one. She turned her gaze towards the mirror as she let the older girl place the wig on her, eager to get the full picture of her new costume.
"I like you just fine," Parian corrected, fiddling with the wig in order to make sure it sat well. The pins to make sure it sat still through the rigors of cape life could come later, for now, she satisfied herself with adjusting the wavy curtain of dark brown hair so that it nicely framed Lisa's admittedly attractive face.
And it was true. Although their interaction had been limited so far, she found she didn't really have much objection to Lisa or her personality. She even felt a fair bit of sympathy for her situation. The younger girl was even a little charming in her own way, marred sometimes by her own smugness and the invasive nature of her power.
"I just don't trust you."
"Fair enough," the now brunette said as she eyed her new appearance critically. "Huh," she said thoughtfully, "I never thought I'd make a good brunette."
"It looks good," Sabah agreed.
"The costume is great too," the former villain admitted eying the dark suit and the deep navy trench coat that wrapped around her figure in a flattering manner. It brought to mind some of her favorite movies. "Not exactly a direction I would have headed towards for a hero, but it looks good."
"I spared no expense," was Sabah's truthful reply, a tinge of something in her voice. "And once Chemist makes some more of his impact gel to go with the armor inserts it should protect you nearly as good as it looks."
"That must not have been cheap," Lisa replied slowly, eyeing the other girl carefully.
"It wasn't," Sabah affirmed. "But Taylor wanted to be sure this was done right. I think she trusts you, or at least, she really wants to."
"But not you."
It wasn't a question and Sabah kept her expression as blank as possible under the thinker's scrutiny. She could practically feel the pressure of the other girl's focus as it scoured her, seeking the smallest of cracks to creep inside tear out her innermost secrets piece by piece.
"I want to," she said with a shrug, surprising herself a bit when she realized that she meant it, "at least a little bit. But I won't be blind either," she said firmly. "From a certain light, your situation was pretty shitty. The poor thinker who couldn't catch a break under the thumb of one of the most secretive and powerful villains in the city. Her team in shambles after a tragic miscalculation."
"And in a different light?" Lisa asked, a mocking smirk twisting her lips and a dangerous light in her eyes.
Sabah didn't react to the change.
"Maybe the thinker who's power makes it so easy to make sure things are framed in just the right way had just lost her shield in the Undersiders and was looking to trade up with the new cape on the block. Jiraiya has shown that she has some serious power when push comes to shove, and with your particular thinker ability, it can't have been too hard to make an appealing case. Especially not to someone like Taylor being the way she is," she said, eyeing the other girl carefully.
"The way she is?"
"A good person," Sabah replied.
"If that were the case, then things seemed to have worked out pretty well for me," Lisa noted, not quite able to hide the flinch at the casual mention of what had befallen her former teammates.
Sabah let herself relax a bit at the other girl's reaction towards the mention of the Undersiders.
Friends then, or at least close acquaintances. The cloth using cape staved off the rising guilt from her callous remarks. She had needed to be sure. If Taylor wasn't going to look after herself then someone needed to.
"If it were the case," Sabah agreed. "But like I said, there are many ways to view a situation. I hope that everything you said was true and that you were honest with your intentions when you reached out to Taylor. I like you well enough, and one day I hope that our prospective friendship becomes an actual one. And I hope that you're serious about your second chance here. Not many people get them.
She took a deep breath. She hated this, the way capes sometimes had to act and dance around each other. A lack desire for fighting wasn't the only reason she chose to be a rogue. But as she'd come to discover more and more recently, when it came to Taylor, Sabah was willing to do things she otherwise wouldn't be.
But if you aren't," Sabah said as she flexed her power causing the other girl to choke as the tie cinched uncomfortably tight and the pins holding the alterations to the costume vibrated warningly, "if you're going to end up screwing Taylor and the rest of us over somehow in the future, I'll make sure you regret it."
Holding the former villain's gaze for a long moment she released her power and let herself relax.
"Message received," Lisa said when she finally got her breathing under control, looking at the older rogue in a new light.
The two capes stared at each other awkwardly, unsure of what to say after all that.
"So," Lisa said with forced levity, "what were you thinking in terms of the mask?"
"Chemist helped a lot with it actually," Parian said, more than willing to change the subject. "He went in a bit of an interesting direction. He found some weird cloth I got from my contact in Milwaukee that I didn't know what to do with and must have been inspired."
"Ah, you mean Clothier, the cloth tinker independent."
"Yes," Sabah said in surprise, "how did you know?"
A smug grin flitted over the other girl's face, managing to seem impish despite her still pale and drawn features, "Research," was all she offered.
Sabah rolled her eyes, "Maybe chemist was right after all for your mask."
"What do yo –"
"Hold still," the cloth manipulator interrupted, taking the strange skin toned piece of cloth that had been sitting at the table and slapping it against the other girl's face.
"What the fu –"
"Language," Sabah admonished, spraying the cloth with the bottle that Greg had left for her. She watched, fascinated as the cloth seemed to cling to the skin, shifting and stretching to accommodate Lisa's face leaving a blank expanse of what looked like a normal face only with none of the features. No eyes or lips for visible at all, leaving an unnerving blankness staring up at her. It was strangely intimidating in its own strange way.
"Whoa," Lisa muttered, distracted from her earlier ire as she examined the mask in the mirror. "It covers my whole face but I can see through it as though there's nothing there."
"It should also filter out harmful substances like smoke or gas," Sabah added, resisting an unconscious shiver as the blank face turned to regard her once more. "You just take the cloth and spray it with the chemical like I did and it will adhere to your face easily enough. Just peel it off when you're done and reapply it in the same way for your next outing. Like I said, Chemist had a serious burst of inspiration."
"I like it," Lisa admitted, turning to take in the full look of her new costume. A fine looking dress shirt and tie tucked into an equally fine pair of slacks. The dark navy trench coat wrapped around her, coming in at the waist in a way she could definitely appreciate while at the same time giving her an almost intimidating presence, especially when combined with her new and admittedly a bit creepy mask.
It was a much different look than her old costume which had tended more towards playing up her looks. She couldn't say she hated the new direction though. Just one thing was nagging at her.
"Why did he decide to make the mask blank like this though?"
"Ah," the dark-skinned girl said amused, "he felt people would be less likely to want to punch you in the face if they couldn't see that annoying smirk thing that you do."
The amused comment from the other girl seemed to temporarily deflate the preening thinker who had been looking at herself from different angles in the mirror.
"Seems there's two of you that I have to win over," Lisa said a little ruefully.
"I already like you," Sabah corrected, "mostly. I'm just looking out for Taylor."
"Where is she by the way?"
"Out training her powers or something. I don't really understand how she's doing it though," Sabah admitted, "her summoning seems pretty straightforward to me."
"She can do more than just summon toads," Lisa replied distractedly as she adjusted her wig. "Or rather, the ability itself has more depth than you might think. The toad eye thing she does for example, that eye color change isn't cosmetic, she's summoning the eyes of a toad to use as her own to allow herself to see through her summons."
Sabah blinked at the offhand information on Taylor's power offered by the thinker. She tried to think of the implications of what Lisa was implying. She let go of the thought as her mind went down strange turns of summoned toad tongues coming out of the ground to bind enemy villains and gang members. Not for the last time, Sabah wondered at the bizarreness of her friend's powers.
"And the nerd? What's his deal with me? I don't think I've said more than 10 words to him."
"Well not calling him that would probably be a good start," the rogue cape said drily, just barely able to stop from rolling her eyes. "He's newer at the whole cape thing. I think he might be struggling to see the shades of gray that can sometimes come up in this life. And, he takes the hero thing very seriously, more so than anyone I've met save for perhaps Taylor. He probably just needs time to adjust more than anything. Taylor okayed this whole thing and he won't go against her."
Lisa just hummed thoughtfully as she went back to examining her new costume, absorbing the information but not offering any input of her own.
Sabah was content to let the topic drop. Moving to the side, she grabbed the last item of Lisa's new costume. Walking over to the taller girl, she reached up and settled a dark navy blue fedora with a black ribbon wrapped around the base, a perfect match to the trench coat, onto the former blonde's head, careful not to disturb the brown wig.
"And there we go," she announced satisfied. "Tattletale is dead, long live…" she paused as she realized she didn't know what to call the other girl. "What's your new cape name again?"
"Jury's still out," the former villain said, adjusting the fedora to sit on her head at a jaunty angle. "I've been playing with a few ideas though. How does 'Insight' strike you?"
"A bit on the nose," Sabah replied honestly. "We might not be able to fool Coil about your identity but no need to make it easier for anyone else. Besides, with the way you tend to talk when you're using your power, it might sound a bit more aggressive than you'd like."
"Hmmm."
Sabah had to imagine the frown the other girl was wearing due to the mask but it was obvious in her tone that she hadn't thought her idea would get shot down so easily.
"Well, do you have any ideas?"
"'Question' maybe?" Sabah offered after a moment. "It's what you do," she said in an effort to explain, "You answer questions. And it fits with the whole 50s detective thing we've got going on in your costume."
The now detective themed here cocked her head thoughtfully.
"Or if you don't like that how about 'Acuity'? It's kind of the same as your first choice only it sounds a bit less aggressive and you'll no doubt get the chance to be irritatingly smug whenever the dumber morons you take out have no idea what your name means."
Lisa snickered at the idea even as she played the idea around in her head. "Let's table that for now," she said finally. "Those both could be good, but I don't want to rush into it."
Sabah was about to agree with her when she was interrupted by a large explosion.
A loud whump followed by a rush of neon orange smoke escaping from one the empty bedrooms that Chemist had claimed for his experiments made the source of the noise obvious.
The aforementioned chemical tinker came stumbling out of the rooms, wearing what looked like a repurposed bug sprayer uniform, coughing violently and covered head to toe in a strange orange goo.
"Sorry about," a very disheveled Greg Veder said through choking coughs. "I was working on improvements to my binding glue. It turned out to be a little more volatile than I'd expected it to be," he offered sheepishly to the staring girls.
Sabah stared at the mess a moment before she deciphered what the tinker was telling her.
"You have enough materials to waste on that?"
Greg tried for what she suspected he thought to be a roguish smirk.
It didn't quite work for him, especially not when he was covered nearly head to toe in a strange orange slime, but Sabah wasn't going to be the one to say it.
"The Alliance was very determined to have my rusting agent on their side before they made the big push against the ABB and the Empire. Coil had no choice but to be very generous when I gave him my slightly edited shopping list."
Judging by the satisfied look on the tinker's face Sabah suspected that his 'slight edits' contained quite a bit more materials than he'd needed.
A snickering Lisa only confirmed her thoughts.
"Oh hey," he said, noticing the other girl, "the new costume looks great Parian."
Sabah gave a pleased smile, "I do my best," she said with false modesty and a wink.
"So," Lisa interrupted once she'd gotten control of her laughter at Coil's misfortunes, "how'd that glue thing you were doing turn out?"
Sabah turned to the other girl with a frown. She didn't think that she'd ever heard innocence sound so suspicious before.
Greg gave the former villain a poorly concealed suspicious look. "Good," he said slowly as he shucked off the protective suit he'd been wearing for his experiments. "A few more adjustments are needed though. The binding seems stronger now but for some reason, it's not solidifying instantly like it did in its earlier iteration."
He gestured down to his abandoned suit in explanation, the slime just now hardening into a constricting glue-like substance.
"Yeah that's interesting," Lisa said, "but how does it react with hair?"
Sabah felt a sinking feeling as she began to understand the source of the other girl's earlier amusement.
"The same as anything else really," the chemical tinker replied a little confused. "Why?"
"Hey," Sabah asked, sinking feeling turning to dread, "today wasn't the day you were invited to meet and talk shop with Armsmaster and Kid Win was it?"
Greg visibly brightened at the reminder. "Yeah I can't wait," he said enthusiastically. "Apparently Kid Win even agreed to let me see his workshop. Why do you ask?"
Sabah couldn't contain a sigh as Lisa began snickering hysterically when her feeling was proven correct.
In answer to his question, Sabah pointed to the top of the tinker's head. His suit and goggles had done a wonderful job protecting himself from the stray slime, but unfortunately, his hair hadn't been so fortunate.
Curious, Greg felt at the top of his head to try and find what she was talking about only for his face to rapidly pail when rather than encountering soft curls he instead found himself grabbing at a sticky tangled mess courtesy of his improved super strength binding mixture.
"What the hell am I going to do!?" He wailed frantically, "I'm supposed to leave in less than an hour!"
Sabah was mentally rethinking her life as Lisa's snickers turned to full-blown raucous laughter at the chemical hero's plight. She watched the pair, Lisa leaning over a chair wheezing and Greg's arms flailing around wildly in his panic.
Counting down mentally from 10, she took a fortifying breath and offered the only solution she could.
"I think I have a pair of clippers around here somewhere. Let me go check."
Turning around to leave the room and do just that, Sabah questioned, for what she was sure was not the last time, just what her life had become since a strange toad summoning hero had unceremoniously leaped into her life.
One more interlude to catch up with Taylor's training time and Greg's little tinker pow-wow and we'll delve into the new arc :)