Chapter 5-9

Our first 'normal' conversation with Lisa was…somewhat strained. Being nice to her wasn't easy for some of us. Avoiding the elephant in the room even less so.

Eventually, Dennis could resist anymore. "Okay, I've got to ask…"

"Dennis…" Carlos warned, probably realizing where this was going.

"You want to know why I became a supervillain." Lisa said. A statement, not a question. Well, you diddn't need bullshit Thinker powers to see that one coming. Though I'm sure none of us would admit it publicly, we all wanted to know.

"You've got this great, really versatile power. I mean, even if you didn't want to be a hero, every company on Earth would be showering you in money to get you to join them. You could've been a detective, or a negotiator, or…anything." Dennis sounded almost jealous. "You've got like, one of the most useful powers ever. You could have all the money in the world and get it legally. Why become a villain? What's the point?"

Lisa's expression tensed. Probably a touchy subject. "Well, I suppose you guys deserve to know that much. Thing is, Dennis, you're right. I do have a useful power that could have made me rich legally. I know that. The problem is: so did my parents. Let's just say that it's hard to love someone when you know the only reason they're being nice to you is because you're valuable." She sighed. "Anyway, I spent a little while as a petty thief until I ran into a man in a mask with a gun in one hand and a big bag of money in the other. He made me an offer I couldn't refuse. I think you know the rest."

We thought Lisa's story over for a little while. She sounded honest, but I couldn't discount the fact that she might be feeding us a story designed to make us empathize with her. It's the downside of dealing with a person who's always a few steps ahead of you: there's no way of telling whether or not they're being honest.

"So, if your parents were shit, why not go to us?" Chris asked. "You could join the Wards until you're eighteen then spend the rest of your life as a rogue. I mean, I get that you can't say no to a guy waving a gun in your face, but there must have been something you could do long before that."

Lisa smiled, but there wasn't any mirth in her expression. "I thought about that, until I realized that you needed parental permission to join the Wards. If I tried signing up, my parents would simply stroll into the nearest office, thank the good men and women of the PRT for finding their 'beloved' daughter and politely tell you that joining the Wards is not in 'my best interest'. So no, not an option."

"Well, isn't there something else you can try? Your parents were abusive, couldn't they put you under state custody, or whatever it's called? You know, like they do when parents are crackheads and can't take care of their children?"

Carlos shook his head. "Only if there's clear evidence of abuse. It's possible, but it's really hard to pull off. Being a shit parent just isn't enough."

I understood what he was getting at. "That, and emotional abuse isn't visible on the outside. The authorities won't act unless it's blatantly obvious and they have no other choice."

"I'm sorry." Lisa said, knowingly. She probably noticed that I spoke from personal experience. That was nice of her. I wondered if she actually felt that way, or if it's just an act to get on my good side.

"Thanks."

She shook her head and continued. "But, yes, Carlos, you're right. The thing is, my parents are rich and it shows. A well-fed girl with nice clothing doesn't look like an abuse victim. A judge is going to take one look at me and think I'm just another spoiled, ungrateful brat who doesn't know her place in the world. Besides, there are plenty of legitimate reasons for a parent not signing up their children for the Wards. Wanting to keep your kids from get mauled by supervillains isn't a valid reason to have your daughter taken away."

Chris shook his head. "Look, the PRT has Thinkers, Tinkers, and god knows what else on the payroll. It would take them about five seconds to figure out your parents are bastards and…"

"And what kind of message would that send to the world?" Lisa asked us. "Sure, the PRT's just trying to help and make sure that I don't get disillusioned with the world and turn supervillain, but to an outsider, it looks like I'm pretty much being conscripted. You have to understand that the PRT lives and dies by its PR. Parents let their parahuman children be Wards because they trust the PRT, because they trust that their children aren't going to be turned into child soldiers. Without that trust, there wouldn't be any Wards and without the Wards, there'd be a lot more supervillains. After all, supervillain gangs don't have to obey the law when it comes to recruiting people."

"That sounds a little…extreme." Dennis said.

Carlos disagreed. "It's not. The sad truth is that if we had gone after her, all her parents have to do is threaten to make a big fuss about it. It's also why Director Piggot keeps hammering on PR and acting like superheroes in the field. Any kind of scandal scares prospective Wards away and we can't afford that. Trying to recruit someone against the parents' wishes…Lisa's good, but I doubt the PRT would risk its good name for her. Uh, no offence."

Lisa just shrugged. "None taken. You aren't wrong, by the way. Unless I can do something really amazing, like accurately predict Endbringer attacks or something, the PRT wouldn't want to lose face for little old me. Too much at stake, I guess."

That actually made a disturbing amount of sense, actually. It also explained why you rarely hear about Wards getting hurt in cape fights. Oh, you hear that there's been a fight and that the Wards have been involved, but you never hear about injuries and the like. The PRT's PR machine made cape life sound almost safe. The fact that I've been in three major battles (not fights, battles) in just one week, two of them as a Ward, was evidence enough that this wasn't the case. Sure, it were extraordinary circumstances and I didn't think next week would be quite as 'interesting', but that didn't change the fact that the PRT seriously downplayed the amount of fighting I'd have to do.

Not that I minded beating the crap out of supervillains, really, but they were still being dishonest.

Of course, I was assuming that Lisa was being completely honest herself. It took so little persuasion to get her to share what sounded like really personal secrets. Something I probably wouldn't have told a bunch of people I only just met, if I were in her situation. It could just be the paranoia talking, but in the end, I couldn't forget that she was a villainess and that she had a power that would have made lying to us criminally easy. She could just be telling us what we wanted to hear. She could be setting us up, or worse, trying to turn us.

Or she's telling us all this because she knew that we'd be able never work with her if she doesn't. Maybe Lisa's power is advising her to be as honest as possible. Maybe she really doesn't have an agenda and is genuinely trying to turn over a new leaf.

It's moments like these that I wished I had better social skills.

"So, if being a hero isn't your thing, why not become a rogue?" Chris asked. "The PRT does support them nowadays, with protection and loans to start up a business."

"Well, first, there's the age thing again." Lisa replied. "I'm not entirely sure what the law has to say about rogues, but I don't think supporting a teenage runaway is in the PRT's best interest. Secondly: do you know why there're so few rogues around?"

"Because being a hero is so much cooler?" Dennis joked. "Okay, serious answer: because most of us don't have power that work well outside of combat. Take me, for instance. What kind of business can I run with the ability to cut an object out of the space-time continuum for a couple of minutes? It's great in a fight, but other than that, it just traps me in my own room when I accidentally freeze the door again." I snickered at the mental image.

"That's part of it, but the biggest reason from my point of view is that capes not picked up by the Protectorate generally end up in the hands of a villain gang. It's not even difficult: point a gun in someone's face, threaten their family, offer them a ton of money, hook them up on drugs… Everyone has a weak point, and unlike the heroes, villains can break laws trying to find them." Lisa sighed. "It's even worse for people like me. My power gives me a ton of useful information, but nothing to back it up. Sometimes, all my power can do is tell me how screwed I am."

Chris nodded. "Kind of like a Tinker, then?"

"Pretty much. Honestly, this is probably the best-case scenario for me: I got a solid, well-paying job, I'm free from fucking Coil, and my parents will never be able to touch me here without acknowledging that their daughter is a supervillain. I call that a 100% win."

"And you didn't plan this all along?" I couldn't help but notice. "I mean, where there's smoke, there's fire, and the way things are going for you…"

Lisa looked thoughtfully before grinning. "You know what, I totally planned this. All of it. Right down to getting tasered by you. Now bask in my genius." We shared a laugh at that. "I have to admit, it wasn't. Didn't even think it was possible until Armsmaster gave me a piece of paper to sign. That said, I'm not complaining. As much as I hate being in a gilded cage, it's better than an actual prison or waiting for the day your boss thinks you're too dangerous to live."

"Downside being that you can't take over the city anymore." Dennis chimed in. Carlos groaned in the background. "What, isn't that the goal of every villain ever?"

Lisa just chuckled. She didn't seem offended by the notion at all. "No, it's not. Believe me, it's not."

"Really?"

"Yes, really. There are basically three kinds of villains. First, you've got the monsters: Slaughterhouse 9, Nilbog, Sleeper…"

"The Endbringers." Carlos added.

"The Endbringers. The kind of people that just want to murder everyone for shits and giggles, basically. Then, you've got the crazies: Kaiser, Lung, Coil; the sort of people that totally would turn Brockton Bay into their own personal fiefdom and build a skull-fortress on Captain's Hill if they thought they could get away with it. Then, there's the remaining 90% of the villain population. People that are in it for the money, the thrill, or because they have nowhere else to go."

"People like you."

"Yes. Look, I'm not going to pretend that I was one of the good guys. Hell no. I robbed people for a living and some of them probably didn't deserve it. I'm not taking the moral high ground here. I can't. I got paid way too well for that." It surprised me that Lisa was willing to admit as much. If she wanted to earn our trust, admitting that you enjoyed being a villain didn't seem like a good idea. Then again, I'd be more suspicious of her if she tried to convince us she'd been one of the good guys all along.

Dean seemed to smile. "Well, that's very honest of you." I wasn't entirely sure if he meant it.

"We're a team now, for better or for worse. You need to be able to trust me and that's not going to happen if I'm lying to you, now is it?"

"Fair enough."

Trust. It always came down to trust, didn't it? Most people probably wouldn't have had much of a problem with that, but I wasn't 'most people'. I still wasn't sure what to think about her. She didn't seem like an evil person to me. In fact, if things were slightly different, I probably would have ended up in a similar situation.

"I should probably get going." I decided. It was five o'clock already. "My dad's probably worrying himself sick again." Not that I could really blame him. After what happened last night… "Fuck, how am I going to explain yesterday to him?"

"My advice?" Our team leader helpfully replied. "Sanitize it a little. This hasn't been classified, so don't give him the mushroom treatment, just leave out the more…extreme bits."

"Like that you got shot…" Dennis added. "Or that people died…probably don't wanna mention the 'covered in blood' bit either…you know what, mushroom treatment isn't looking so bad right now." Carlos slapped him on the back of the head. Unfortunately, Knowing Dennis, it would only encourage him.

"But yeah, he's your father, you know him best. Just go with your gut and remember that you saved someone's life. Good luck."

Great. I said goodbye and left for the day. When I got home, I still didn't have a good answer for my father. This was going to suck, wasn't it?