Chapter 6-5

At the end of the afternoon, I walked out of Arcadia with a smile on my face. An entire day had gone by without anything horrible happening. No surprises, no pranks, no name calling. It felt wrong, walking out of school, feeling this good, and yet…

I needed this. I needed this so badly. It was like I'd died and gone to heaven.

Well, almost. I had homework now, and somehow I doubted they'd give me that in the afterlife.

Shaking my head, I pushed the irrelevant thought out of my mind and focused on my surroundings. I had a patrol scheduled for the evening and I needed to get to the Rig undetected. Boardwalk seemed like a good place to go: I'd get lost in the crowd of people doing their afternoon shopping. Not that there were that many people actively looking for me: Banshee had only been active for a little under a month, which probably wasn't enough time to make too many enemies. Well, except for whatever's left of the ABB.

I guess I do have enemies. Isn't that just wonderful.

Speaking of the ABB, I couldn't help but wonder why they hadn't made a move yet. As far as our intel could tell us, what little remained of the ABB was basically laying low. They were still trying to protect their most important territories, but they hadn't retaliated in any real way, even when the Empire started muscling in. Oni Lee had been sighted a lot, but Bakuda had all but fallen of the face of the Earth. Even Lisa wasn't sure why. You'd think that the ABB would fight, if only to go out with a bang. I'd half-expected Lung to have been sprung from prison and half the city to be on fire. The ABB just didn't strike me as the kind of organization to die quietly. Instead, most of their membership and even one of their capes had simply disappeared.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the penny hadn't dropped yet. Who knows.

I got to the Rig and almost immediately bumped into Missy. "Taylor! There you are. About time."

"Yeah, I took the long way around. Don't want to get outed on my first school day. Sorry I'm late for…what exactly?" I checked my watch. My patrol was in two hours.

"Oh, you'll see…" She replied with a smirk. We went to the common room. Everyone else had arrived before me, including the Wards who went to Arcadia too. Apparently they knew a quicker route than the one I took. I'll have to ask them about that later.

Then, Carlos walked into the room and exclaimed in his 'presentation voice': "Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor tonight to present to you our newest member and the latest victim of Hurricane Glenn. Let's give a warm welcome to Insight!"

A complete stranger walked through the door. It took a few moments for me to put two and two together. "Yes, it's really me, people. You can stop gawking now." The girl said, with Lisa's voice. I knew a good costume could make someone almost unrecognizable, but I never expected it to work this well. I had to admit, I was impressed.

Lisa was wearing a tight-fitting, though not skintight, suit along with a knee-length skirt of some kind, colored light blue and a soft white. Her head was covered with a mask that left the lower half of her face exposed. Her hair was tied up in a long, brown ponytail (wig or hair dye, I couldn't tell). Although the costume was unmistakably feminine, it didn't show off her features very prominently. In fact, it almost looked like it was designed to down-play her assets as much as possible without making her look like a tomboy.

Her costume was generic, safe, and paint-by-numbers. It was aesthetically pleasing without being really provocative. A product designed by a committee to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. It was as generic as superhero costumes got. If this were a movie, Lisa would be the one of the heroes on the side-lines, one that would get maybe two or three lines and a single action scene, only to be forgotten the moment they leave the screen.

I pitied her a little. Lisa seemed like the kind of person who really wanted to get out there. She'd probably hate being relegated to wallflower duty. I probably wouldn't have minded wearing a costume that let me disappear into the crowd, but her…

Dennis stood up and walked to her with a look of pity on his face that couldn't be less genuine if he tried. "Oh, Lisa…"

"Clockblocker, don't…"

"As someone who's also experienced the horrors of the PR department, you have my deepest sympathies." Dennis only grinned as Lisa shot him a look that would have frozen the toes off a polar bear.

"Dennis, I have a mouth and I'm willing to use it." She said, threateningly.

That quickly shut the boy up.

"So I guess this means that Tattletale is officially retired, huh?" I said. Lisa joined me and Missy while the guys ran off doing guy things. We headed to the cafeteria and got ourselves some dinner. The food there wasn't great, but it was more convenient than going home and coming back.

"Pretty much, I guess." She sounded sad. Not that I could really blame her, I suppose. Lisa didn't just turn away from her old life. She pretty much slammed the door on the way out. That couldn't have been easy, even if she had been a villain before.

"You okay?" Missy asked. "Missing Tattletale already?"

Lisa smiled wryly. "A little." At least she was honest enough to admit it. "I'm going to have to get used to being a different person now. Not going to be easy. Oh, and having to deal with those PR guys has to be 'cruel and unusual punishment'." Missy and I smirked. We could empathize. "I envy you, Taylor. You're lucky you got your own costume and don't have to deal with those clowns as much. Wanna trade?"

"See if you still feel that way when your armor melts out of your skin."

She bit her lip. "Yeah, I guess that kind of sucks too." Lisa took off her helmet and removed the elastic band holding her ponytail together.

"So it was hair dye." I remarked. "Thought you'd be wearing a wig."

Lisa sighed. "Wigs are a pain. They keep getting loose if you run around too much. Still, Glenn didn't want Insight to be a blonde so…yeah."

"And why can't Insight be a blonde?" Missy asked.

"Because, I quote, 'we need to distance you from your old, villainous persona. Can't have someone link you to Tattletale, now can we?' Yes, because it's bad for PR if Joe Dumbshit finds out I've been a petty thief once upon a time. Of course, since the Protectorate doesn't give out the identities of its members, I'd be safe anyway, but apparently that wasn't good enough for Mr. Chambers." I guess a change in hair color would be enough to throw off most of the tinfoil hats, especially because Tattletale was never that big a villain to begin with. Whether it was really necessary was a matter of opinion, I suppose.

"So now you're a brunette."

"So now I'm a brunette. I liked being a blonde." Lisa sighed again. "I'm sorry, I'm just venting for a bit. Having to deal with people like that burns me out."

In an attempt to improve the mood, I added: "On the bright side, maybe your old boss will have a harder time finding you now."

The former villain snorted in response. "That's what Glenn said too. Word of advice from the friendly neighborhood Thinker: don't listen to that man. Ever. He's just feeding people shit to get them to go along with whatever stupid ideas he's come up with. Besides, if my old boss wants to find me, he'll find me. No doubt about it."

"Just trying to find a silver lining here."

"Oh, and that's not even the worst of it." Lisa continued, completely ignoring my earlier statement. "It's not just my appearance they want to chance, they want to change my personality too. I have to learn to walk and talk and act like a little Miss Goody Dogood, or else I get canned. I'd tell them to go fuck themselves, but then they remind me that I've signed a contract and that the PRT basically owns my ass for the next two years. Sure, it's still better than prison, but not by much."

Considering how she basically got away with armed robbery, she probably shouldn't be complaining this much. I put my hand on Lisa's shoulder and said, in the most sarcastic tone possible: "Lisa, I'm very sorry I caught you robbing a bank and forced you to become a hero so you could dodge a prison sentence."

"No, you're not."

I shrugged. "Not really."

"Well, fuck you too." Lisa said with a smirk. "I'm not blaming you, though. If anything, it's Shadow Stalker's fault the PRT's being such a bitch."

"Really?" Missy asked, incredulously. "How does that work?"

Lisa started to grin. I bet she really enjoyed proving that she knew more than we did. "Well, the PRT always tries to give its heroes as much wiggle room as possible. Sure, they need to keep them…us on a leash, but they know that if they push too hard, we'll push right back, which won't end well for anyone involved. So they let us get away with some things. So long as we don't cross the line or cause a PR backlash, they'll bend the rules to accommodate us. Take me, for instance: I robbed a bank and instead of going to prison, I'm doing glorified community service. If I were an ordinary crook, they'd have tossed me in the slammer and thrown away the key."

"So what does Stalker have to do with that?"

"You guys tried being reasonable with her, right? Give her some space, be her friend, let her find her own way in the superhero world?"

"Pretty much…" Missy's downcast eyes were very telling. I wondered how much she blamed herself for what happened.

"And then Shadow Stalker threw it all in your face when she did something to Taylor over here." I must have tensed a little, because Lisa looked me in the eye and said: "Please, it's obvious. Shadow Stalker 'volunteering' for a tour of duty in a Simurgh quarantine zone the same week you join the Wards… Don't worry, I won't pry. If it got Stalker the can, it must have been really bad and it wouldn't be nice bringing it up. Anyway, the gist is that the PRT tried to be nice to Shadow Stalker and it blew up in their face. So, in typical government agency logic, they figure that the best way of keeping this sort of thing from happening ever again is to do the exact opposite from now on."

I nodded. "So instead of the carrot, you now get the stick." I could understand their reasoning. At least the PRT was acknowledging that there was a problem and something was being done to fix it. While I wasn't really sure that this was the best solution, it's still more than Winslow has ever done for me.

"Yep. Fun times."

I was still skeptical, though. It couldn't have been that simple. "And the fact that you used to be a villain had nothing to do with it?"

Lisa thought about that for a second before concluding: "That's part of it, I think. Power says that they're more afraid of another Shadow Stalker, though. They really dodged a bullet with her. If you'd gone public…"

"Then I'd probably be outed as a cape, lost any chance of being a superhero, and you'd still be working for that piece of shit boss you hate so much."

"Always a silver lining, huh?" Lisa replied. "Didn't peg you for an optimist."

I smiled. I guess the past few weeks had been working wonders for my mood. "Guess I am. Still, it's kind of worrying that you know more about the PRT than we do."

Lisa grinned even wider.

"Hey Taylor!" Dennis suddenly said. "Suit up, we have a patrol in 15."

I checked my watch. Time to go to work.