I slid into the seat across from Lisa a little more hurriedly than usual. I was running uncharacteristically late, and could see she'd been sitting for a while, already pretty deep into her coffee.

"Sorry for the wait," I said, hoping to leave it at that.

Lisa's gaze lanced through me with suspicion. She pushed her coffee away, her eyes narrowing as she focused on me.

"Can I help you?" I asked, a bit nonplussed. I felt like I'd just gotten home a few minutes after curfew and run into my mom waiting for me.

Lisa stuck out her tongue and faux-gagged. "You made me wait because you were having sex?" she said. "I joke about you being a teenager, but come on, are you going to make it that easy for me? Last night wasn't enough for you, you needed another tumble this morning?"

My face flushed a bit. I should have expected she'd find out, of course, but still, it was embarrassing, as if I'd been caught doing something I shouldn't have.

"So what?" I fired back, maybe more than a little bit defensively. "We're all adults here. I'm not apologizing."

She squinted at me, as if searching for something. "Anelace?" she said, snickering. "Oh, honey. You couldn't do any better?" Her smile vanished abruptly. "Oh, god, I so do not need those mental images. Stop, power, please. I'm going to lose my appetite, and right after I just ordered all that food."

I felt my cheeks heating up a little more. "You're the one who decided to jump into my head with your power, aren't you? And you're calling me immature? Get off my case."

She scoffed. "Aren't you supposed to be the powers geek? It started feeding me that garbage before I could do anything about it. Believe me, I have absolutely no desire to have those images flashing through my head."

"God, this is almost as uncomfortable as talking about this with my mom," I said. "Can we please move on?"

"You're the one who decided to keep me waiting for the sake of a roll in the hay," Lisa said. "I'm not enjoying this either."

"Yeah, I doubt that," I said. Her gleeful tone suggested quite the opposite.

"Okay, I'm enjoying it, obviously," she said. "But honestly, Vicky, if you're going to dangle a steak this juicy in front of me, what do you expect?"

"Adult behavior?"

"Sounds like I can leave the adult behavior to you, though, doesn't it?"

"Oh, come on," I said. "Who are you, Imp?"

"Spend long enough around somebody and they're bound to rub off on you a little. Anyways, you practically teed me up for that one. Nobody to blame but yourself."

"Well, you'd better not rub off on me too much," I said. "You've already been too much of a bad influence on me. I don't want to end up throwing verbal barbs at everyone I meet."

Lisa waggled her fingers at me. "Your itty, bitty brain is putty in my hands, hon." She stirred her coffee, took a sip, and leaned back. "So, what, are you guys dating now?"

"Are we dating?" I asked, a bit puzzled. What was her angle? "I don't know, not really? Maybe? I haven't bothered to figure out, I guess. The specific label to put on it doesn't really seem very important right now."

"Okay, so you're dating," she said, nodding with satisfaction, as though I'd confirmed something.

"Does it really matter?" I asked.

"Oh, you of all people should know that I like to know what's going on," she said. "So, you like him?"

Why did she care about that?

"Spending time with him is nice," I said after a moment. "I haven't had a lot of 'nice' in my life the past few years. I'm not really thinking about it past that." I felt my cheeks warm a little, and cursed my lack of self-control.

"Good for you. I mean, I don't know that Anelace would be my choice if I was interested in that kind of stuff, which I'm not, but whatever works for you, right?" she said, her tone smarmy. "That's a nice, juicy piece of gossip for me to spread around the local villain circles."

I'd had about enough of this, and seized my opening to hit back.

"Villain circles?" I said. "Come on, Lisa, why keep pretending?"

She quirked an eyebrow, some of the snarkiness leaving her voice. "Excuse me?"

"The whole 'ooooh, I'm a big nasty scary villain' thing," I said. "You know I know that it's all a total act, right? It's just me, so why even bother keeping up the pretense?"

Her eyes narrowed in annoyance. "Where are you going with this?"

Sensing the balance of power in the conversation shifting, I pressed my advantage.

"It just seems kind of silly to keep acting like you're this sinister, self-interested villainous mastermind in front of me," I said. "It took me a while to realize, but basically everything you do is for the greater good, even if the methods involved are dubious, at best."

"That's ridiculous," Lisa said, rolling her eyes. "Don't expect me to take the bait."

"Okay, what big villainous scheme are you working on right now?" I said, crossing my arms and smiling.

"What?" Lisa asked, confused.

"You heard me," I said. "You're a villain, so you must have some villainous plan to enrich yourself in the works that doesn't involve protecting the world in some way, right? Spill. I'm all ears."

Lisa's face flushed in turn.

"This is so stupid," she said. "After all that shit you yelled at me about, like Rain-"

"You said yourself that you thought he was a psychotic, murderous cult member, and that you were using him to get tools to help keep the city stable," I said. "So what you did might have been shitty, but self-interested villainy? Not so much."

"Yes, well…There was…I mean…"

She was almost sputtering.

I felt like I was winning our arguments a lot more often lately. That seemed like something to be proud of, unless it meant I was turning into her, which would be more worrisome.

"You're almost a rogue nowadays, if we want to apply some old definitions," I said. "I get that you need to keep the image up to some extent, but you're too smart to think you can still fool me about this."

Lisa threw her fork at me, and put some real oomph behind it. It ricocheted harmlessly off the Fragile One, of course.

"Very mature."

"Shut up," she said. "Hearing this from you, of all people, is beyond asinine. I am a villain. The Undersiders are villains. We get reminded of that all the time by all of the dickhead 'heroes'. "

"Imp is running a therapy program for emotionally abused children, Foil and Parian were never really villains at heart to begin with, Rachel leads a whole settlement, and you and I both know that Chicken Little is arguably too heroic for his own good. And you've been burning the candle at both ends for years to try to keep the whole city stable. You said it yourself to me the other day, with Crystal. You guys have been at like every single life-or-death fight there's been in the past few years. If I described you guys to someone who'd never heard of you, I have to tell you, they might be wondering why you still choose to consider yourselves nefarious criminals ."

"I'm about to commit a crime right now," Lisa said. "Don't tempt me any further."

I leaned backwards, smiling with satisfaction. "I think I've made my point."

Lisa's fingers drummed irritably on the table. "Why are you giving me this speech, anyways?" she said. "Can't you say all this shit to the Wardens instead and get them off my fucking back for one minute?"

"Retired hero, remember?" I said. "And I didn't have a ton of clout even before I retired. But I did ask Crystal to put in a good word for you."

"Oh," she said, momentarily nonplussed. "And she went for that?"

"She doesn't like you, but she trusts me," I said.

"Well, the feeling's mutual," Lisa said. "I mean, about not liking her, obviously."

"I'd never share the details, but if you want, I can get word to some of the people who matter that you helped with the final plan for the Titans, too, and that you had actual reasons for not going under. I think a lot of people just assume the worst right now because they haven't been told otherwise."

"Absolutely not," Lisa said. "If they want to be a bunch of uninformed, judgmental dickheads about that, that's on them."

"Do you always have to be this difficult with the heroes? I know a lot of them can be assholes for no reason, but sometimes it feels like you want them to act like that. They're not all unreasonable. If you were a little more diplomatic, you could probably get a good amount of them to cooperate."

Lisa arched an eyebrow.

"Victoria Dallon, of all people, is telling me to be more diplomatic? Really, now?"

"What? I can be very diplomatic."

"You fly through walls."

"When it's necessary."

"You threw a girl into a hillside so hard that she saw God."

"She thanked me for that, actually," I said. "So we could call that diplomacy by other means."

Lisa snorted. "You might have reined in the bulldozer mentality, but I know it's still in there," she said. "I've seen you in action too often. You can't fool me. Your idea of diplomacy is about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face."

I had the Fragile One lift her chair an inch or two in the air. It landed with a clatter, and a rash of colorful language from Lisa.

"Case in point," she said after recovering her balance. "Keep that up and you may tempt me into using my power on you the old way after all."

"That wouldn't be any way to treat a not-friend. Plus, I think you've gotten too used to mooching off of me for breakfast."

"And I think you've gotten used to mooching off of my expertise," she shot back. "I should be charging you my consulting fee, you know. Imp gave me a ton of shit about that the other day."

"She seems…difficult," I said, remembering her bizarre appearance a few weeks ago at one of our meetings. "Good kid, but difficult."

"Massive pain in my ass, more like," Lisa groused. "Leading a team is a total nightmare sometimes. I feel like I need a degree in psychotherapy, or something. And I say that as someone whose power is better than a degree in psychotherapy."

"I know what you mean," I said. "Sometimes I'm amazed that capes manage to stay together in teams at all, considering how we're all basically walking bundles of neuroses."

"This kind of stuff came so naturally to Skitter," she said. "Maybe it sounds crazy to say, considering everything we went through, but it was just easier when I was the one backing her up. You met her, your dorky ass probably even studied her, you remember. She had this almost maniacal drive for pushing people forward. I'm not built that way."

"She could be pretty scary," I said. "To be honest, since the Titans and the dreaming death, I've wondered about what happened with her on Gold Morning, what she was thinking, why she did what she did. If you ever wanted to talk about it…"

Lisa shook her head, eyes re-focusing, and made a sharp shushing motion.

"That's a hard no," she said.

I raised my hands. "That's totally fine. No pressure." I'd have elaborated on what I meant a bit more, but she'd probably already had the full explanation fed to her by her power. Honestly, it could be kind of nice to know that you could generally rely on her to understand what you intended, even if she wouldn't always admit it.

"Anyways, changing subjects," I said. "We were talking about your consulting fee."

"Yes, we were," she said, seeming relieved to leave the topic of Skitter as quickly as she'd brought it up.

"Well, obviously, breakfast is your fee, like I said. You're not getting any more than that."

Lisa sighed.

"Hon, I didn't say I was asking for any more than that, did I?" she said. "Just let me bitch about my teammates. Usually I only get to bitch to myself, which just drives me even more insane. Imp will not stop giving me shit about these meetings in the most infantile ways. I swear to god, everyone I talk to is obsessed with this idea that we're like best fucking friends now or something. It's beyond stupid."

"Oh my god, thank you," I said. "People keep doing the same thing to me. Anelace gave me this ridiculous all-knowing look when I said I was going to meet you. Crystal was bugging me about it too. Like, can we not just have a cordial, professional relationship without people overreacting?"

"I wouldn't say cordial," Lisa said. "I definitely wouldn't say professional."

I rolled my eyes. "Very funny. You know what I mean."

I'd truly never met anyone who loved being difficult more than Lisa.

"By the way, I've been meaning to ask," I said.

"I'm already concerned."

"Hah hah. Would you be interested in coming to a lecture sometime, as a guest? I've been thinking about using the Undersiders as a case study of a more complex team, and it might be fun, and valuable, for the Patrol members to talk to you directly. They don't usually get to engage with capes as important in the scene as you are."

"And you think an obvious appeal to my ego will work?"

"Absolutely," I said with a smile.

"Well, yes, of course it will," she said. "I'll go to your stupid thing. Don't get the wrong idea, though. I'm going because I need to set the record straight on whatever misinformation you come up with."

"Mhm," I said. "Well, thanks anyways."

This promised to be interesting.