Small Steps 1.6

Lunacy

"I think we're boring the kids," Lisa said.

"Don't encourage them," Brian muttered. Lily didn't know why he bothered. Aisha and Alec were referred to as a unit frequently enough (usually due to misbehaving together) that them getting a collective label was inevitable, and "the kids" was the one that stuck. It didn't hurt that they were among the youngest of the Undersiders, or that they were the least mature. Needless to say, "the kids" took their label as inspiration and encouragement to annoy "Mom" and "Dad".

Aisha smirked. "Aunt Lisa is right, though." Lisa didn't approve of that nickname, but Brian didn't have much sympathy for her. "You're starting to talk about boring things. You three should probably talk about them without us."

Brian sighed. "Alright, but one last thing. Aisha, Alex? No more stealing."

"Brian—" Alec started.

"No argument. I know that's how you got most of what you got, and it's going to stop. We're trying to take a clean path—"

"But Lisa gets to work with Junior!" Aisha whined.

"She's not doing anything as blatant or clear-cut as robbery. If you get caught—"

"My power is not getting caught! How would I get caught?"

"—it's a stain on your record that we'd never be able to erase. I'm trying to keep us on the right side of the law, this time."

"We stole the warehouse," Rachel pointed out.

"We're trying. I won't claim we've always succeeded, or that we always will, but…I don't want to just throw it all away. We're not that desperate. The two of you are going to look for legal work, even if you need to weed some old lady's garden for a few lien. And keep an eye out for something stable you can do."

"What're you going to do if we don't?" asked Alec.

Brian sighed. He knew he couldn't do much to enforce his demands.

"You would both go to bed right after dinner? With no dessert?" Lisa suggested.

Alec smirked. "Alright, we'll be good."

With that finished, Lisa, Taylor, and Brian went to one corner of the main "room" in the warehouse to make plans. It was open enough that they didn't feel like they were hiding anything, but they wouldn't get in the way of anything the others were doing to kill time. Lily followed them, as she often did. It made her feel like she actually belonged here, even if only a little. Sabah usually followed Lily. They didn't always contribute, but Lily decided to speak up tonight.

"They wouldn't call you Dad if it didn't bother you," Lily said. "Ignore them and they'll stop."

"If only it was that easy," Brian muttered. "I'd appreciate if—"

"She didn't tell you how to deal with your kids?" Alec shouted.

"If you don't have anything helpful to say, shut up!" Brian yelled. "Some days…Tomorrow, I'm going to be meeting Junior after work."

"After work?" Lisa asked. "I'm not sure about that."

"What do you mean?"

"Exertion isn't good for you right now. You're still not really recovered from wrestling Rachel's dog. Your leg's probably not all good, either. I'm pretty sure you're worse now than when we left Meadow-Creek."

Now that Lily thought about it, she saw what Lisa was talking about. Brian had been walking with a bit of a limp, he tried to sit still a lot, his temper was shorter.

"I still need to work. We need—"

"We need you to not kill yourself, okay? Like you said, we're not that desperate. And if that's not reason enough, you should be rested when you meet Junior tomorrow."

"It's not that bad," Brian argued.

"Not quite," Lisa said, "but it will be if you don't take a rest some time, soon. Does your job have some kind of vacation or sick day policy?"

"We basically come in at the beginning of the day, then they pick a bunch of people to work that day. Nothing formal."

"Perfect. You can miss a few days to rest. End of discussion."

Brian looked to Taylor. She hesitated before saying, "I'm with Lisa on this one. You don't look great. You need to rest, maybe consider having an actual doctor check you over."

Brian sighed. "Fine, I'm outvoted. Next order of business. This Junior, what's he like?"

"First off, he's pretty imposing. Close to seven feet tall, I'd say."

"That's good to know, but not that important."

"Just letting you know. Junior's imposing and he talks big, but he's out of his element. Junior's nicknamed partly because people see him as a poor replacement for his predecessors—he's good with money, but not so good with underworld politics and such. Junior's a good liar for Remnant, as long as he doesn't start doubting himself or forget his story. A bit touchy, too—he's a better beta than alpha, but he needs to be an alpha and knows it."

"So don't challenge his authority."

"If you don't have to. Call out his BS early, too, it helps."

"Speaking of which, do you have any idea what this stuff's worth?

"Research has been…tricky. I walked around downtown to get an idea of what stuff is worth in general, so I have some guesses. We'll be getting a bit less, partly because we're paying a premium for silence, partly to get some goodwill, but he'll ask way less if he can make up an excuse for it. He tried to pay about half market value for the crystals, when a fair price was maybe three-quarters or four-fifths."

"Any chance of foul play?"

"I doubt it so. I get the vibe that Junior's trying to treat his syndicate as he would a legal, if cutthroat, business. It's where his strengths lie. Still, probably not a bad idea to bring some muscle. Lily and Taylor?"

"I'd feel better with Rachel's dogs," Brian said, "but I get why that's a bad idea. They're too visible, too memorable, and they look too much like Grimm, especially at night."

"Bingo. Having Aisha in the wings wouldn't be a bad idea." Lisa turned towards where Aisha and Alec were talking for a moment. "Hey, Alec! If he's willing to behave, having a visible 'minion' along would help the image."

"I could be persuaded," Alec shouted back.

Lisa shrugged. "Anything else we need to talk about now?"

"I'm thinking that long-term planning should wait until after the deal with Junior, and ideally after you get some information from him about the city's situation, who's in power."

"Fair."

"So…maybe we could go over what the stuff we have is worth?"

Lily decided that she probably didn't need to know how much they were going to try and sell a crate of Dust rounds for, so she and Sabah drifted away.

~0~

"Five minutes early," Lisa said.

Lily could see a truck pull up to the corner. They, Sabah, and Taylor were watching from a room half a block south of the corner where Brian and Alec would be meeting Junior. Rachel was in a nearby warehouse, and Aisha hiding somewhere, just in case; Lily hoped she was paying attention. Lily and Taylor were watching, waiting for any sign that the deal was going sour. As for Lisa, she had a pair of binoculars, with which she watched the proceedings intently.

"And you won the bet?" Taylor asked.

"Yup."

Lily sighed. "Why does he keep betting with you?"

"Alec's not the sharpest nail in the box. And probably either addicted to gambling or willing to take the losses, hoping for the one day where he'll win a bet with me and be able to gloat about it forever."

Junior came out of the cab of the truck, with a few of his goons exiting the back. He and Brian exchanged greetings before getting down to business.

"…So…" Sabah had decided she'd rather be on the roof, with some company and news of what was going on, than alone and worrying in the warehouse. Unfortunately, they hadn't been talking much.

"I know something else we can talk about," Lisa said, eyes still on the meeting. "How're those silk clothes you're making, Sabah?"

Sabah said, "Well, I've basically finished the spider silk undershirts. Just need to put it all together, really. I've started work on Brian's stuff, too…Um, Taylor, about your clothes…you didn't seem like a dress person."

"I'm used to the dress, but that doesn't mean I really like it."

"Should I make pants for you, then?"

"Thanks. So…how do you like the view? Up here, on the roof?"

"It's…nice. I see why so many capes travel on the rooftops. The view's good. You can see everything, feel…big, important. And Remnant's sky is pretty at night. The air's so clear, you can see a lot more stars than back home. And the moon is…beautifully eerie."

"Definitely eerie," Lisa muttered. "You know what I realized the other night? The moon is always on the opposite side of the planet from the star."

"Huh?"

"I mean, the moon always rises when Remnant's 'sun' sets. On Earth, the moon gets closer to and farther from where the sun appears to be as its phases shift. Remnant's moon shatters and reforms, or shows and hides its shattered side or whatever, and it always rises at sunset and sets at sunrise. You never see it in the day, no matter what its phase."

"Ah."

"Maybe it's at a Lagrange point?" Taylor suggested.

"Those are only stable without outside gravitational attraction," Lisa pointed out. "Other planets would probably disrupt it, and I'm not sure if the equations account for the third body's gravitational attraction, either—the moon is a lot bigger than an artificial satellite. It isn't impossible, but…"

"…it's likelier than any other explanation?" Taylor guessed.

Lisa sighed. "I suppose. I think they've decided on the price of the Dust rounds. Junior's looking a bit angry or concerned, but…mostly satisfied with the deal, I think. I'd say things are going well."

"How much longer do we have to stay up here?" Lily asked Lisa.

"Until they're done. I don't quite trust Junior enough to not stab Brian in the back at the last minute, and it's possible someone's noticed us and they're waiting for us to leave. It's not likely, but unlike Alec, I don't like to gamble."

Lily looked over at the Valish skyline. Lily had been to more than a few big cities, and no two had quite the same architecture or layout…but Vale seemed different from anything on Earth. She decided it looked like the whole city was designed by an artist, or at least one of those architects who wanted to create artsy buildings. Or maybe it's the local architectural norm. Or maybe I just don't know anything about architecture and there's a perfectly good reason for why the city looks weird to me.

"I've been thinking about relating to the moon and Dust. The moon, even if it's at a Lagrange point, doesn't really work. It should have fallen back together at least some, even if it exploded just this morning. Breaking a moon doesn't turn off its gravity, and even if it did somehow, the bits wouldn't stay together like they are."

"What if the chunks reached escape velocity?" Lily asked.

"Then they would be escaping, not just sitting there. And then there's Dust. It's not tinker-tech, but it's apparently a simple substance with an energy density way above anything we have on Earth, and way more flexible."

Taylor said, "Are those related?"

"Not directly, but I think we need to admit that this world might be…based in part on forces not found on Earth, which we would consider…let's say beyond natural."

"Magic?" Lily stated.

Lisa shrugged. "Maybe. 'Any sufficiently advanced technology' and all that, but the Remnans don't seem sufficiently advanced, and they're definitely not responsible for Dust. They don't have electricity, they power everything with Dust. They don't seem to have personal computers or microchips or transistors, I think they just have big central…Dustputers and these terminals that everyone connects with. They have Dust, which NASA would kill to get a sample of, but they haven't even considered using it to go into space."

"Why are you bringing this up with just us?" Sabah asked. "Shouldn't this be a whole-group kind of thing?"

"Alec would never let me forget if I said this world ran on magic and I was wrong."

Taylor nodded. "You'd never hear the end of it. But…I see where you're coming from. And I can see the magic argument elsewhere, too. The plants are a lot more…vibrant and richer, from the same or less sunlight and soil that's probably not that much better."

"The people are faster, stronger, and tougher," Lily added, "the cities and wilderness cleaner. There's—there were a lot of stray dogs in Brockton Bay, even with Hellh—Rachel adopting all she could, and they were half-feral at best. Stray dogs here are rare and already almost trained."

"It's almost like the whole world's a…fairy tale, or something," Sabah muttered.

"So what you're telling me is, Alec won't laugh at me?"

"He'd laugh at you for saying the sky was blue if he thought he had an excuse," Taylor pointed out. "But…I don't think he would have much reason to for saying there might be magic."

Lisa sighed, handed the binoculars to Lily, and put her head in her other hand. "It's just…magic? Really? That doesn't seem right, you know? I feel like it's just giving up—'This weird stuff if happening because we woke up in…in a rejected Maggie Holt plot or something. It makes sense, but…it doesn't."

"'Once you eliminate the impossible—'" Taylor started.

"'—whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.' I know. But magic is, almost by definition, impossible. And what other things have we eliminated?"

"You just don't want to tell the others 'magic,'" Lily said, handing the binoculars back to Lisa.

"Or you, or myself. But…"

"There's another side to that sufficiently-advanced technology principle," Taylor pointed out. "Any sufficiently…analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science."

"Who said that?" Lily asked.

"Just me, I think. Anyways, people used to think superpowers were just magic, like you think Dust and stuff is. But then we studied them, started to understand it, and parabiology was added to our body of scientific knowledge. Maybe this is the same."

"Dust doesn't getting its power from the same place we do," Lisa said. "Probably."

"You know what I mean. If we got a sample to Earth, they could figure out how it works, and then Dust and stuff would just be science."

Lisa sighed. "Well, what matters for us is that it's all magic as far as we're concerned…and as far as I'm ever likely to figure. Looks like they're wrapping things up down there, too, so if anyone wants to argue, make it quick."