Interlude 3.B: Brian
April 13th, 2011
I followed Lisa upstairs and into the loft after kenneling Brutus; Rachel would be back soon, and she preferred to take care of Brutus herself. We passed by Alec, whose focus was consumed by the television as usual. We both had not spoken a word during the entire trip back from the Boat Graveyard.
Lisa entered her bedroom, and I stuck my foot in the door before she could close it behind her.
I pushed the door open with one hand, causing Lisa to release the door's handle from her grip. I grabbed her shirt by its collar and shoved her against the wall, hard. She made a small noise in protest as I glowered at her, our faces close.
I didn't want to do this, but she needed to be taught a lesson. This was the second time now that she had intentionally provoked the very same Cape that she had explicitly warned Rachel, Alec, and I not to interact with unless absolutely necessary.
I didn't really care about the excuse she had given Placenta – who I now knew was a girl named Taylor Hebert, although I really wished Lisa hadn't told me that – about fearing being Mastered by her. Lisa had gone back on her word, and that couldn't be simply swept aside.
Lisa tried to speak, but she stuttered when she saw the look on my face, "I-I was-"
"I don't care. You're acting like a fucking retard lately. What's wrong with you? And no, it doesn't matter if you planned that whole scene out ahead of time. You used me, and your little gambit could've gotten both of us killed."
I didn't mean to get so heated, but she had struck a nerve. She might not have cared about her own family, but she should have understood that I had people who needed looking after. If she wanted to go kill herself by poking the new Nilbog, then she could feel free to. I didn't want any part of that, and I was pissed off that she hadn't told me anything ahead of time.
"It's hard to explain. Can you at least give me a chance to try?" Lisa pleaded.
"I've given you too many chances already," I grumbled.
Despite my reluctance, I released my grip on Lisa's shirt and stepped back a bit, sighing as my anger was dulled by mental exhaustion. The past week had been full of false alarms and mixed messages from the boss, and Lisa seemed to be busy playing her own game, further complicating everything. Too much shit was going on over too short of a span of time, and it was stressing the entire team out – well, maybe except for Alec.
Lisa took the opening to slide past me and plop down on her bed. She met my eyes, and I could tell that she felt at least a little bit guilty. I didn't like the hints she had dropped about quitting the team to Taylor. It was unacceptable on every level for her to give an enemy access to a weak-point like that, especially considering that she hadn't directly mentioned it to me at any point. Her frantic behavior this past week was recontextualized by her half-baked plan to leave the city, although it seemed that she hadn't fully made up her mind yet.
"Okay. So… first off, T-Placenta has a weird thing about powers. I don't know if it's a Trump aspect to her power where getting access to powers makes her more powerful, or if she's just curious about how powers affect the brain – and not curious in a good way, more of a Bonesaw way – but it's a big problem for us, because I'm the nearest villainous Thinker that she can get her hands on. We're easy pickings for her."
So she was trying to rationalize her fear. I'm sure that it wasn't wholly unfounded, but I failed to see how pissing her off and outing her did anything at all to stop that from happening.
"Go on," I eventually said.
"She's kept a pretty low profile so far, especially as far as the public is concerned, but we're at the end of that. Do you want to know what the boss found out the other day?" Lisa asked me.
I shook my head; Lisa was my only connection with him, and we had argued plenty of times about that in the past. I wanted to know more about the man bankrolling me, but she had told me that her hands were tied.
"She's got Alexandria coming to the Bay, and soon. Top secret PRT stuff; I don't know how the boss even got his hands on that information. It doesn't matter – that's not normal. I looked through every single major Cape fight in the Bay for the past ten years, and Alexandria hasn't shown up to the Bay one time since two-thousand-and-one."
That was… disconcerting, to say the least. Alexandria could wipe the floor with the whole team without breaking a sweat, and the fact that Placenta had drawn Alexandria's direct attention so soon after her debut made me even more concerned about Lisa's interaction with her this afternoon.
"For whatever reason, the PRT has been almost completely hands off in the Bay, these past few years especially. It's part of the reason I came here to begin with. Placenta has managed to change that, and I think she's preparing to replicate what the heroes did in Boston a few years back: wiping the slate clean. That includes us."
Oh.
"You think, or you know?" I questioned, because that piece of information was a big deal.
"Ninety-nine percent sure," Lisa responded, "Anyways, whether we can stay in the city pretty much depends on whether or not Placenta and Alexandria decide to go after our team. This whole Bakuda situation is potentially a good thing for us – not for the people with the bombs in their heads, but I think I have a way to deal with that, depending on what Placenta decides to do next – because it gives us an opportunity to show Placenta that we can work with her, help her plan without her needing to mind-rape us or go full AM on us."
"And if she decides to anyway? You realize how risky that was, right? You should have talked to me about this," I confronted her.
Lisa winced, and I gave her a moment to reply, "She won't, at least not for now. I wanted to tell you, but you wouldn't have gone along with me if I did. We have a window of opportunity right now to earn her trust outright, and even if I'd rather not have anything to do with her, this might be our best bet if we stay in town."
"Damn right I wouldn't have gone," I struggled as I tried not to raise my voice at her, "You can't keep pulling shit like this. No more secrets."
"Brian, if I told you everything I knew…" Lisa began, then trailed off, "It'd do more harm than good. I only keep secrets when I have to. You're right, though – it was wrong of me not to keep you in the loop, so I'm sorry about that."
Well, at least she had apologized, even if she didn't seem to have learned her lesson. I could understand her actions a bit more now, but I still got the feeling that she wasn't telling me everything.
"That's not good enough. We're both going to do our best to forget Placenta's name, and we're going to talk as a team about what to do next. You need to work out the holes in your plan: where's our money going to come from, if the boss gets wiped out, for example?"
"I doubt that's going to be a problem; the boss is considering leaving town too. When my powers started giving me hints about that, I knew shit was getting serious. If she does take him out… well, I have plans in place. We'll make do."
"So all that cops and robbers shit is out the window, then," I sighed, "I need you to figure out more-"
"No, Brian. I'm going to use my power sparingly until tomorrow afternoon. I need to do some research on Bakuda, so I can start preparing to deal with that cluster-fuck of a situation."
I wished that I could argue with her, but I couldn't exactly force her to use her powers. Besides, it was probably for the best that she rest her powers for the moment. She had gotten us into the middle of a difficult situation, and tomorrow would apparently make or break how things went for the team.
"You have until whenever Bitch gets back. We will have a discussion about this, whether you want to or not," I promised her.
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Rachel had arrived a little while later in the evening, and I gave her some time to sort things out with her dogs. Once that was done, I brought her and Lisa into the living room before stepping in front of the flatscreen TV.
"What the fuck, Brian?" Alec asked indignantly, leaning to try and see the screen around me.
Another player moved into view on the screen and killed Alec's character, prompting him to throw his controller at me. I casually deflected it and turned off the TV.
"What'd I do to deserve that? Huh? You're being a dick," Alec complained.
"You wouldn't have paid attention to me if I tried to get your attention any other way," I chided, "Listen – we're having a group meeting. Get your head out of your ass, because we've got some serious shit to talk about."
Alec raised his eyebrows, "Is this about that Nilbog chick?"
I nodded, and Lisa spoke, "Nilbog would've been preferable, to be honest. To get everyone up to speed, the city's probably about to take a turn for the worse. I've been making preparations in case we need to leave the city."
We settled into a rough circle within the living room – Lisa sat next to Alec on the sofa, while Rachel sat on the armchair. I remained standing.
Rachel spoke up, "Why should we leave?"
"Lisa's worried about a gang war, or a purge of the villains," I replied, "And thanks for letting us borrow Brutus, by the way."
Rachel merely grunted in response, and when I waited for her to elaborate further, she remained silent. It was a bit hard to read her.
"So if they're going after the villains, why don't we just go to ground?" Alec asked, "Not take any jobs for a few weeks. Once everything blows over, we'll be the biggest fish left in an empty pond. Doesn't sound like a bad deal to me."
Lisa countered, "Yeah, so all of the heroes in the Bay can focus on us, once they're done with the gangs? Great plan. Face it: our boss is out of our league, and Placenta is apparently out of our boss' league. We're getting squeezed out of the Bay by bigger players."
"I agree with Alec," I found myself saying, "I think we should wait and see, at least for now. If things start to get bad, we can still leave at any time. I- not all of us can just up and abandon the city out of the blue. Maybe we can turn this situation around and wind up in a better position afterwards."
I didn't fully believe that things would turn out that well, but I couldn't just leave Aisha. She was the only reason I was on the team in the first place; everything that I had done would be meaningless if Aisha's situation remained the same. The Undersiders currently served as a means to work towards my goal, and while I was loyal to them, Aisha came first.
Some part of me hoped that Placenta would be willing to help with Aisha's situation, if Lisa actually managed to earn her trust. I would need to be there, of course – an unrestrained Lisa was liable to talk herself into a fight with just about anybody, including me.
"What about you, Bitch?" Lisa asked, voice tinged with a bit of hope.
"Couldn't care either way," Rachel shrugged, "As long as my dogs are taken care of. If you've got the money to do that, I'll stay with you."
Lisa's face fell a fraction, and it became clear that the others were not in favor of her plan to leave Brockton Bay behind so suddenly.
"It's two to one, then. Lisa… I'm glad we could talk about this as a team. We still need to figure out the specifics of our plans for the next few weeks, and what to do if the boss ends up leaving town or getting caught. I think we can still make things work, but it'll be tricky."
The next hour or two was spent in discussion about the team's finances, potential jobs that we could pull off without the backing of a sponsor, and more details on the Bakuda and Placenta situation. Lisa eventually retired to her bedroom in order to do more research, and the conversation petered out after that.
I was left with a deep feeling of uncertainty and dread about the next week. This entire day had been a disaster, and I doubted that things would get better any time soon.
None of that would matter, just as long as I could ensure things turned out well for Aisha.
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