Wake-up Call – Chapter 89 – Collateral

[Emily Piggot]

I catch the laughter.

Far enough away that none of the members of New Wave are likely to see me, sitting on my parked bike, by the side of a road high enough to overlook the two-story house, I hear the laughter and relief coming from Amy's house.

And so I drive away.

The engine rumbles between my legs as I drive slowly. Leisurely.

One of the splinter groups of the ABB, a Filipino gang, is trying to go back to their roots near the docks. They'll likely attempt to make a show of force in the next few days.

The Merchants are still looking for me. Their next public outing will be a trap.

Faultline's Crew is still adhering to the fiction of not taking jobs inside Brockton Bay. I'll keep an eye on them to make sure they don't change their mind.

And at least some remnant of the E88 now has a mysterious parahuman backer who… who led them to pull a string of operations without any victims that ended up with me distracted and exhausted just in time for today's events.

Fucking Thinkers.

I take another impossibly deep breath like I've been doing since I let Amy walk away from me and into her own home, the lingering traces of the calm she artificially infused me with finally evaporating despite my best efforts.

And I drive.

Still slowly, I head toward the boardwalk, once more replicating my nighttime ritual of calming down after a combat mission.

But, yet again, I won't be calling Amy.

Because…

She's with her family.

The toxic cesspool of terrible dynamics, emotional neglect, and borderline abuse. The bundle of traumas only parahumans can so easily navigate and entangle one another with, all of them knowing how broken the others are.

There should be more empathy between them. Between hero and villain who recognize what the other went through. What pushed them beyond humanity and into something other.

At some points, I thought there was.

Why else would so many of them survive repeated clashes against people with such awful abilities? Why would a Kaiser or a Hookwolf not murder half my roster out of sheer principle?

Why would Hannah not execute [any] of them?

That's not how combat works. It's chaos, unpredictable, and you can't always pull your punches. Aiming for a peripheral limb may incapacitate your foe, or it may pierce a vital artery and have them bleed out in seconds.

Worse: it may let them live to murder your partners.

So, why?

Why are so many of them alive after clashing again and again if not for some comradery that goes beyond factions and only amounts to them being, all of them, parahuman?

The thing is, after I have become the closest thing to a human-parahuman hybrid there could ever be… I have my answer:

Because they can.

They have options regular humans don't. They can afford these extra risks, these little luxuries.

They can kill only deliberately.

I can't.

I have almost killed quite a few gangbangers since I started. Maimed plenty of them.

Some, Amy has healed.

But only in the hospital.

Because I've never called her to cover up my messes. I've never involved her in my activities beyond healing me when I finally did get over my head.

I have never acted like her sister.

The sister she's in love with.

I clench my hands around the unyielding rubber of my bike's handlebars, forcing myself not to speed up as a hint of sea breeze reaches me, carried by a gust of wind tumbling up this broad, deserted, well-maintained street.

It's night.

Deep into the night.

I have spent… quite some time outside Amy's house, just listening in for any kind of disturbance. For her mother finally flying off the handle. For a last, unpleasant surprise left behind by Tattletale.

Glory Girl was far too ready to believe in the villain's good intentions. In some kind of plan made solely for the sake of Amy's sanity.

I am not.

I [have] been working on helping Amy. On letting her come out of her shell.

And it [was] working[.]

I lean to my left, leisurely taking a curve that will lead me to the road that runs along Brockton's beach. Though, this time, I'll start from the nicest part of town and up toward the docks. The opposite of my usual route when I want to unwind after a mission.

I am now near the point where I usually stop, holding my bike upward with my stretched legs as I lean over my handlebars, supported on my elbows.

Where I usually call Amy.

But she's in her house, surrounded by her family.

Laughing and crying.

And so I keep driving.

She's… Tattletale was right. This body is… new. Confusing.

Messing me up.

I am older. More mature and experienced. It would be incredibly wrong.

But she's the only one who knows me. This me. Who has seen me go from Emily Piggot to her younger 'niece.'

And I like her.

I enjoy her sense of humor. Her sarcastic wit.

The way she always has something creatively nasty to say about bothersome people.

It's… It's the opposite of charm. It's somebody being prickly just because she can afford to be and because it's the only way she knows how to be.

It's not even genuine. Not really. She hides the softer parts of herself as carefully as most people hide the sharp edges. And maybe that's it. Maybe Amy is the precise opposite of most people I've ever met. Maybe she is special, even if only by contrast.

Or maybe Tattletale is right, and Amy has been my only positive influence, my only constant, as my whole life has been violently changed.

My job taken away from me. My illness no longer an enduring agony. My strength something beyond what I had at my prime.

My beauty.

It's… bizarre. To be beautiful once again. To look at the mirror without revulsion, shame, or regret. To see a face that no longer has piggish eyes hidden in deep recesses of fat and citrine skin, a body that is no longer morbidly wobbling, not something for me to laboriously drag along. An anchor to my past and my defeat.

My failures.

And there have been so many of them…

A grey car goes comes in from the other direction, and marvelously tuned eyes don't get blinded by the moronic driver using high beams in the middle of a city.

I hear the displaced wind before he passes me.

I feel it on the stretch of bare skin over the back of my hands and past my wrists.

I know the rumble of the engine passing me by in my bones. My teeth. My ears.

And then the car is gone.

I keep driving, just… just letting my hearing pick up on the water lapping along the shoreline, wishing Amy could've sharpened it enough for me to hear the hissing seafoam vanishing into wet sand.

And then a bike comes from behind me.

Fast. Faster than it should, the bike grows bigger in my rearview mirror.

A purple and black thing.

It already chased me once before.

And now the driver's sending SOS signals with the headlight.

So I close my eyes, swear up a storm, and drive to my right, my bike climbing up the sidewalk with two solid bumps before my tires slide into the gravelly promenade that looks over the sea.

And I wonder what suicidal urge would drive an enemy Thinker to try and meet me in person after what she just pulled.

To her credit, Tattletale doesn't stop right next to me, neither does she turn off the engine of her bike. There is enough space between us that if I were to leap at her, she could just get out of the way with a sharp turn of the throttle.

Or that's what I think. And what I think she thinks.

Even what I think she thinks I think.

Fucking Thinkers.

The blonde takes off her helmet, shaking her head and tugging her ponytail in position before shooting me a rueful smile until I do pretty much the same, except without any ponytail to take care of.

"What do you want?" I ask, not bothering to raise my voice and letting her power work to make up for any difficulties she may have hearing what I have to say.

Out of spite more than anything else.

"Mostly? To make sure you don't get killed," she says, her tone matching mine, trusting my modified ears to…

Whatever.

"I didn't think you cared, Sarah," I say without looking at her.

Something I regret when it takes her some time to answer.

"I don't. Not really, you know? You are… a pain in the ass. Reckless. As much good as you think you do, you're also making all the criminals in this city paranoid and trigger-happy. Nobody wants to get maimed by the ghost, and somebody is going to get shot because they thought it was you."

"Right. And [you] have done everything in your power to set the criminal mind at ease, what with devastating the two major stabilizing powers of the underworld."

"[Stabilizing?] Murder, sexual slavery, [Nazism?] Is that what stability looks like to you, Piggot?"

I turn to her.

And I shoot her a very unimpressed look.

"It's easy to criticize when you have the power to see things others don't, Sarah. Just how many of your risky operations would have ended up in utter disaster if I had tried anything close to them? Your stunt with the Empire? How would that have worked out if I had sent my best and brightest to storm a gathering with Kaiser, Hookwolf, Krieg—"

"That's an easy excuse. There were [other] things you could have done. You were… damnit, Emily, you were [Lady]. I have looked up your record. You could have—"

"[I] could have done nothing. I was an administrator, and I was [shit] at it. I've been stuck for years behind a desk because someone didn't want me to tattle about Ellisburg's utter shitstorm, but I never was officer material. I was a [soldier], Tattletale."

She… rolls her eyes.

I want to slap her.

"That's an excuse, and you know it. You didn't have my powers? You were a shitty administrator? You were never prepared to take up leadership? So what? How many of us are [ever] ready when the call comes? Would you have accepted this excuse from Alexandria—"

"I already want to snap your neck, Tattletale. Don't make it even more tempting."

Her eyebrows rise in something that isn't alarm, and she looks at my bike.

"My engine is still running—" she says.

I turn on the ignition with a brief roar that forces me to clench the brakes so I won't jump against the wooden rail in front of me.

"—my engine is still running, and I learned what your bike can do the last time I chased you. I also now know precisely what your new capabilities are and how far you can push both yourself and your ride. A race [won't] end up the same way as it did before."

I glare at her.

She smirks.

"What is the point of this?" I finally say.

"I told you I don't—"

"Don't want me to get myself killed. And you have talked long enough with me to know that isn't the plan, so come up with a new excuse and make it more convincing."

Sarah Livsey glares at me.

And then she sighs.

"It's… I don't like you. I want to make it absolutely clear that I oppose both your ideals and your methods. You are just shy of being an outright villain in my eyes," she says.

"How ironic—"

"And so am I."

We both shut up, glaring at one another, and she, finally, decides to keep talking.

"I am… not a good person, Ems. I focus on mine, on the people I [can] care about, and I try to do my best for them, but still… I am still the selfish kid who ran away from home, her only plan being to start off as a pretty good pickpocket until I could con some actually deserving targets. That's… That was shortsighted. Hurtful. And not evil with a capital 'E,' but… Close enough."

"In a city with [Hookwolf?"] I ask despite myself.

"Other people being worse doesn't make me any better. Otherwise, most of those of us suffering this stupid world would be saints."

I consider her words.

And shrug.

"So what? Do you want my absolution, Sarah? Is this what this late meeting is all about?"

"In a way? Maybe. But it's more that I need your help."

I look at her.

She looks back, utterly serious.

And I turn off my engine before leaning over the body of my bike as I explode into belly-busting laughter.

Admittedly, part of it is just for show. Just a way to throw things in her face, to make her feel even an ounce of the ridicule she's subjected me to since she captured me last night.

Part of it is that… it's actually funny.

Ridiculous. Farcical. Nonsensical.

Amy would have a field day.

"Are you done yet?" she asks in a tone that finally lets me see her as the surly teenager she should be.

Most likely a calculated move on her part.

"For now. But I deserve the right to laugh in your face the next time you say something so mind-numbingly stupid."

"We're both very lucky that 'snark' is just a small part of what I've come to think of as my type," she says with an overly exaggerated eye-roll.

"You're very lucky that it would take me too long to reach for my gun," I say with my own juvenile expression of dismissal.

"Oh, threatening gun violence at the first sign of being outmaneuvered in a conversation. How mature of you."

I contemplate reaching for the snub revolver tucked into my right boot just to see how fast she can drive away when properly motivated.

Then I sigh.

"Spit it out," I finally say, once again looking away from her and up toward the black sky rather than the dark sea I would stare at while chatting with Amy on the phone.

"I want her to heal brains," she says.

"Don't patronize me," I tell her.

"Colin's, for instance," she adds.

Ah.

Armsmaster is…

A hero.

'[I used to admire you,'] he told me the last time I saw him.

And then he could say no more.

Because he's one of Behemoth's victims, his body as healthy as the best parahumans in the world could manage to make it while his brain just…

Wasn't there.

I think his abuse of tinkertech stimulants may be the foremost reason he hasn't been turned into an organ donor.

Well, that and Dragon.

So…

I could be petty.

I could be difficult.

I could be Emily Piggot at her worst, thinking about all the angles, all the ways in which I could profit from this, or what risks I could avoid with one stance or another.

I could cling to the person I've been since Ellisburg claimed Lady.

Or I could be the person Amy has let me become.

"Sure," I say, shrugging in that way that makes me miss the crackling of imperfectly aligned vertebrae.

Out of all the things that were wrong with my body, that's the one I sometimes feel nostalgic about.

"Sure? That's it? No strings attached?" Tattletale asks.

I, once again, in a very juvenile, immature, and quintessentially rude display, roll my eyes.

"Spare me the fake surprise, all right?" I tell the Thinker who has come up with at least ten main permutations of this conversation.

"I mean, I [was] willing to negotiate. I had a few extra things to ask and a few concessions to make for you," she tells me with her own shrug that she may be too young to properly enjoy.

"And what, precisely, do you think you could offer me that would make me agree to manipulate Amy on your behalf?" I tell her, once again thinking about the revolver hidden in my boot.

"I will sell your plan to Tagg," she says.

And doesn't add anything.

So I turn to face her as slowly as I can manage, dragging the moment out as I narrow my eyes at the girl trying to smile guilelessly at me.

I've seen snakes look less predatory.

"This is a cold reading trick. You're going to fish for whatever plan you think I may have just to—"

"Enhanced PRT troopers. A standardized package just for elite forces that would make most low-tier capes easy pickings for the agents selected for the program. A way to blur the lines between PRT and Protectorate. A way to make the next Nilbog [suffer]."

I don't say anything.

Just glare.

And she lets her innocent smile turn into something dripping with arrogance and victory.

"That obvious?" I finally ask.

"Oh, no, not at all. In fact, I very much doubt anyone would've ever guessed [without knowing you]."

"You don't—"

"I told you, Emily: I have studied you, Amy, and Vicky for longer than it took me to orchestrate Behemoth's defeat. I know you better than you know yourself."

"And yet you still had to pull your stupid, risky, nearly suicidal stunt," I can't help but prod.

She preens.

Of course she does.

"Nearly suicidal is, believe it or not, quite a step up from some of my earlier plans," she says with what may be a complicit grin if not for the fact that we hate one another.

"That doesn't assuage my fears," I say, briefly focusing on my heartbeat just to have something to think about other than my desperate need to clench my fingers over the rubber handlebars until I leave a permanent imprint of my frustration on them.

"That's a lie: you don't have any fears. You trust my abilities enough to know that Tagg is now all but sold on your idea."

"[Trust?] After today—"

"What do you want me to say, Ems? That I didn't need to push that far? That I could've accomplished the same results just via indirect manipulation, feeding you the lines Amy needed to hear to get over her blocks and traumas? That I could've recruited Vicky to play her own part?"

"[Yes!] You're so convinced of your infallibility that you just went for the first plan that sprung up into your mind without considering the long-term ramifications—"

"The long-term ramifications would have been Colin [dying!] Do you think I could keep the best parahuman healers in the world rotating around his braindead body for months or years, waiting for Amy to go through her healing process? Do you think I have that luxury—"

"Do you think you were right to risk the mental integrity of one of the most dangerous capes in the world?! Is a new Mannequin or Bonesaw something you consider worth the price of Colin Wallis—"

"[Yes!] Fuck, [yes]! I would pay [any] price to get him back, to have him look cluelessly at the women who love him without him ever knowing why! To have him banter in sarcasm and frustration at me without ever thinking about pushing me away! To have him [alive!] Mannequin? Bonesaw? The [Simurgh?] Let them come. Let them try to tear him away from me and see just how many graves are dug up at the end of the day! Let them… Let them… I…"

And Tattletale, a Thinker seven pending a revision of her threat assessment, chokes up, her face darkening as she furiously closes her eyes.

As she tries not to cry.

…

I was terrible at my job.

A bad administrator. A cowardly leader only thinking about minimizing losses and maintaining the status quo.

And, more than anything else, I was awful with children.

With children who can warp time and space, who can survive a full assault rifle clip, who can read emotions or force them on others.

With children who, each and every one of them, went through something terrible, something that all parahumans understand and see in one another.

With children who felt alien and distant.

But children nonetheless.

I take out a single ball bearing from my pocket as Tattletale rubs her eyes furiously, and I throw it with all my strength and inhuman precision.

And Sarah's eyes fly open at the metallic sound of her front mudguard being pierced through.

"Did you just…?" she asks with incredulity I think isn't feigned.

"He'll live," I say.

And then, before she can come up with another line to make me despise her, I drive away.

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This work is a repost of my most popular fic on QQ (https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/wake-up-call-worm.15638/), where it can be found up to date except for the latest two chapters that are currently only available on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true)—as an added perk, both those sites have italicized and bolded text. I'll be posting the chapters here twice weekly, on Wednesday and Friday, until we're caught up. Unless something drastic happens, it will be updated at a daily rate until it catches up to the currently written 95 chapters (or my brain is consumed by the overwhelming amounts of snark, whichever happens first).

Speaking of Italics, this story's original format relied on conveying Power's intrusions into Lisa's inner monologue through the use of italics. I'm using square brackets ([]) to portray that same effect, but the work is more than 300k words at the moment, so I have to resort to the use of macros to make that light edit and the process may not be perfect. My apologies in advance

Also, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon: LearningDiscord, Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, Xalgeon, and aj0413. If you feel like maybe giving me a hand and helping me keep writing snarky, useless lesbians, consider joining them or buying one of my books on https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Lavere/author/B0BL7LSX2S. Thank you for reading!