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Summoner - Chapter 12 - SomeoneYouWontRemember - Parahumans Series

Chapter 12

Notes:

"Not to call you a liar, but… uh… it's a bit hard to take that at face value?" Lisa said, then frowned. "Your confidence is nice and all but I'm going to be honest, from my point of view it feels like I just joined up with a madwoman because I ran out of options. A skilled, very nice madwoman, thank you so much for saving me, seriously, but- come on, that's a tall claim, you have to admit." Lisa said, exuding gratefulness and doubt in equal measure, and shrugged.

Taylor hummed.

This building was purposefully in the most abandoned section of the abandoned section that was the docks. She could do a tiny bit of showing off.

"I get you. A demonstration would make it more believable. Alright. Cover your ears, Lisa."

In an instant, she swapped to Ryze then turned, and aimed at a pile of abandoned cinder blocks with a half-opened hand.

A rush of blue energy rushed out of her hand and slammed into it like a tear-shaped bullet, dust and debris flying everywhere, most of which she flicked away with Ryze's minor telekinesis, all but one particularly large chunk that she manipulated to fly into her hand. Her other hand gestured to the pistol on the floor, and yanked it into her right hand, her free one.

She glanced over her left shoulder at a very stiff, wide eyed Lisa, then tossed the cinderblock piece up in the air, a bit away from her to not get dust into the blonde's eyes.

She threw the pistol in the air on the opposite side, swapped to Evelynn, spun on her heel like a ballerina and with a hundred times the grace of one, her tentacles wrapping around her, and with a small jerk of her shoulder for show, one of them lashed out.

With a whistle-crack not unlike a whip, she smashed into the cinderblock piece with enough force to make it explode into dust with one of her feelers, visible for the first time in a while. She grabbed the pistol out of the air with her left hand, careful to keep her finger away from the trigger, and turned into Twisted Fate. With a flick of her right wrist, in the tail end of her spin, six cards were held between her fingers, taken out of that little fold inside her sleeve.

She whipped her right arm at Lisa while the other one used the barrel of the pistol to hold her hat down, and all six cards whistled through the air and embedded into the concrete two feet away from Lisa's legs.

Six joker cards stared back at Lisa as she gaped at them, genuine astonishment and relief slowly bubbling to the surface, rising higher and higher.

"Holy fuck." Lisa croaked out, half-laughing.

Finally, she swapped back to herself, just a tall girl in a hoodie with shoulder-length curly black hair, a plain face mask, and a pistol in her hand, which she lowered, and shoved into her hoodie pocket.

"That was just a small demonstration. I was not joking. So long as people don't know what I can do, I can probably take down a Triumvirate member in a one on one fight. Maybe, don't want to oversell myself. Regardless, since I am alone and very new, I'll admit I'm not exactly sure of where to put you. I'm not comfortable bringing you to my house, but I'm also broke for about another week, and my minions are in the process of rehabilitation, so I'm not sure I want those fuckers anywhere near you."

Lisa raised a brow with a snicker.

"You call the people that work for you minions? I can't tell if you're serious or being satirical with that and It's hilarious."

She clicked her tongue.

"No more sass from you, Cape minion!" She said with an overly snooty voice, turning her nose up at Lisa as she put her hands on her hips and spread her legs.

Lisa covered her mouth with a hand as a small piel of laughter escaped her, averting her gaze from second-hand embarrassment.

Taylor couldn't suppress her smile as she dropped the pose and put her hands back in her hoodie pockets.

"Oh, we are going to get along just fine, you and me. But ah, yeah, rough spot for me. You don't have a hideout or anything?" Lisa asked as she side-eyed her, and Taylor blinked.

"I do, kind of, but it's underground with no exit or entry, and only I'm capable of getting in or out of there. Not that I'd ever do that, but I feel like it's a tall order to trust me unconditionally to not just let you sit there or whatnot. Or maybe I'm just paranoid and projecting."

Lisa sighed.

"I don't need my power to know that you're projecting, don't worry. But yeah, even if I trust you not to let me starve to death down there, the notion of being underground without any possible way of escape barring you is… eugh." Lisa expressed with a shudder.

Or a shiver, it was late and cold as shit.

"Yeah, that…" She trailed off, biting her cheek.

Fuck, she had sixty dollars to her name, and money would only start rolling in next week when the first bag of purple-ish superweed she made was finished and she could give it to her dealers.

If the numbers they told her when she asked were accurate, drugs were a ridiculously lucrative business. High-quality weed, sold for about four hundred and fifty dollars per ounce. An ounce was thirty grams. If hers was better and higher quality than this 'high quality' cannabis, nobody would complain if she sold it for about five hundred or so an ounce. Or for sixteen dollars a gram.

By rough estimation alone, each of her bags had seven hundred to one thousand grams.

If she sold out every week, that's sixteen thousand a week, and sixty four grand a month .

From a single room she had made in about two-ish hours and just two dealers. Sure, she'd have to pay about two to four grand to each of her dealers for them to sustain themselves, and a fifteen percent cut to Faultline, but that was it for costs. Basically nothing.

"So, Summoner? Any bright ideas?" Lisa asked with a faint shiver, and she pursed her lips, pulled out of those thoughts.

She turned back to Evelynn, then shapeshifted to look like herself, causing a raised brow by Lisa.

"Do you plan to betray me at any point? Or do you think you might have to?"

Lisa blinked at the sudden question, then gave her the best ' are you serious' look she'd ever seen.

"You can't be serious. This is like the fourth time you're asking me, directly or indirectly." Lisa said, a faint taste of flabbergasted disbelief on Taylor's tongue as she spoke.

Second time, actually.

…

Maybe third?

She'd already resolved to be more trusting of her, why was she doubling back now, actually? Because she considered her personal information more sensitive than her "power"s information? That was ridiculous.

She really needed to get on that meditation business and not neglect fixing herself, there was no way it was normal for Taylor Hebert getting this intensely paranoid from the mere mention of Thinker powers.

"No, of course not. You saved my ass from Lung. He threatened to burn a hole in my stomach if I sassed him again, do I look stupid or ungrateful?" Lisa asked, spreading her arms in exasperation.

No, she didn't. There was literally not a hint of deception in her emotions, nor falsehood, not even the sly satisfaction of a well-crafted lie. She was completely honest with her. She grimaced a little.

"Yeah, maybe I'm just being stupid. Look, I'm sorry, it's just… get stabbed in the back once or twice, you get really suspicious. Get stabbed in the back a hundred times, it's hard to not assume or worry about everyone doing the same." She explained, and though it felt a little cheap to act like what her Legends had experienced was the exact same as she herself experiencing it, it was the truth.

"Yeah, okay, I get it, but still, you're acting like we're mortal enemies trying to reconnect or something over here, and we've practically just met." Lisa sighed, then shivered again, and finally wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing herself for warmth as she curled up into a ball, her bare feet likely not enjoying the freezing concrete.

She could just go to Ethan, kick him out of his flat, and tell him to go live in the streets for a bit or something, and he'd do it in a heartbeat, but it just wouldn't work. He had to have some resources to fulfil her orders. She was also broke, so no motel or hotel. In short, there was no place to put Lisa in for a week.

No place but hers.

"Damn it. Fuck, okay." She groaned, and marched over to Lisa, and crouched down next to her.

Then she pulled her mask down.

"I'm going to speak in your head now, don't freak out too much." She said as her only warning, then reached for Lisa's mind.

Hi. My real name is Taylor Hebert. I'm fifteen years old.

Lisa startled for a moment, then nodded.

And I have a lie detector of sorts, so I know you were kind of half-lying about your name being Lisa. Since the only real solution I can come up with that isn't cruel is to bring you to my house and have you pretend to be a recently homeless friend or something, at least for a week or so, you're going to know my full name, where I live, and my father. Needless to say, that's a bit much to suddenly trust you with because I was the screaming monster cape from a few months ago and every gangster bastard knows my real name and is waiting for me to pop back up so they can snatch me up. So do not say my name to anyone outside my house.

And because that's a lot to trust you with without knowing all that much about you, you should probably tell me both your full names, or however many you have, and be honest with me so I don't have to use my lie detector all the time, okay? Make this easier for us both.

She asked, a reasonable request in her opinion.

Lisa's expression soured, but she nodded.

"My birth name is Sarah Livsey. Didn't like it, and it would tie me back to my parents whom I ran away from because, well, you know, what teenager doesn't?" Lisa joked, then shrugged. "So I got here and picked one I liked. Lisa Wilbourn. Please use the second one." Lisa said, a bit testily.

She nodded, then took the pistol out of her pocket, making Lisa tense up a lot because she accidentally had the barrel pointed at her when she took it out, then she extended her hand to Lisa, wiggling the pistol as she held it by the slide.

"I didn't grab any magazines, so it's only got however many shots it has in it. And I'll be honest, I have no fucking clue how modern firearms work beyond knowing not to put my finger on the trigger. You'll put this to better use and need it much more than me. It's yours."

Lisa gave her an odd look at the ' modern firearms' bit, likely due to how oddly specific that was, then grabbed it with almost shocking familiarity, quickly taking out the magazine, checking it, putting it back with a small click, then pulling the slide thing back to check a hole on the barrel and releasing it to snap back into place. Then she flicked her thumb at something above and behind the trigger.

"Seems good, though there's uh… a bit of blood on this thing." Lisa said with a scrunched nose. "Not gonna ask. I'll clean it up when we go to your house, I guess. I know basic gun maintenance. Shit, I'll teach you how to do it too. And how to shoot, if you want. You said you're new right? To all of this. Even if you don't plan on getting in on the action anytime soon, I have a lot to teach you in general, so I don't plan to mooch off of you."

Taylor grinned.

"Good. And I will need to learn how to shoot, so we'll get on that too. Welcome to the team, Lisa." She said, and directed a genuine smile at her, which Lisa returned, though it was a bit more of a smirk that felt like it was asking her a sarcastic question she couldn't quite catch.

"We don't have a name yet, and we have a shitload to talk about, so let's just go to my house and do that until you fall asleep. We'll figure out what to tell my dad when we get there. You're taking my bed, I'll sleep on the couch."

Lisa opened her mouth, probably to deny the bed offer, then paused, and nodded as her lips curled into a smile.

"Alright, thank you. So… how are we getting to your house exactly?"

She turned into Ryze, and Lisa jumped slightly at how sudden that was.

"Hey, yeah, still me, T. Ignore the voice." She waved it away, and rose to her full height.

Lisa snorted. "Bit hard, but sure. You have some weirdass power, you know? Are you like, summoning capes you've killed or something? Dead capes?" She asked, and Taylor's brows rose.

Power or no power, Lisa was perceptive.

"Something like that. Right, I'm going to teleport us into my attic, then we're going to lock ourselves in my room and hash things out."

"And here I thought I'd left being a normal teenage girl behind." Lisa joked, and Taylor couldn't help but chuckle as she began casting the teleport.

The moment the glowing runes appeared on the floor, Lisa scrambled upright by her side to watch the light show, shoving the pistol in her oversized hoodie pocket.

Then the runes turned into that swirling, wormhole nothingness underneath them, and Lisa jumped a little, probably feeling the concrete below turn marble-smooth as the blue energies took over.

"This is pretty trippy." Lisa mumbled.

Then they got sucked into the floor as blue motes of light.

Notes:

ye its a shortie