He extended his hand to me, “Hey, I’m Brian.”
I shook his hand, he wasn’t shy about shaking my hand firmly. I said, “You can call me Bug, I guess. At least, until I come up with something better, or until I decide this isn’t an elaborate trick.”
The Mozarts are really dropping all guards. Meanwhile, Taylor is being surprisingly upfront about hers being up.
He shrugged, “Cool.” There wasn’t the slightest trace of offense at my suspicion. I almost felt bad.
Yeah, I think they get it. Hell, Grue himself just said he would’ve showed up in costume too, probably for similar reasons.
“Lisa,” Tattletale introduced herself. She didn’t offer me her hand to shake, but I think it would have felt out of place if she had. It wasn’t that she seemed unfriendly, but she didn’t have the same aura of geniality about her that Grue did.
Yeah, Tattletale seems social, but not in quite the same way.
“I’m Alec,” Regent informed me, with a quiet voice, then he added, “And Bitch is Rachel.”
Thanks for the reminder on Bitch’s name, because I had actually forgotten. I doubt Taylor has, but in my defense, the chapter where it was introduced was several days ago for me but only hours for Taylor.
Brian, Lisa, Alec and Rachel. All nice names. Very normal, very human.
So is Taylor going to mention that she already knows Rachel’s name, and give away that she’s been doing research? Probably not.
“Rachel is sitting this one out,” Grue said, “She didn’t agree with the aim of our meeting, here.”
“Which raises the question,” I cut in, “What is the aim of this meeting? I’m a little weirded out with you guys revealing your secret identities like this, or at least, pretending to.”
Yeah, that’s really the elephant in the room here.
I personally think the Mozarts may be wanting to invite “Bug” into their ranks.
“Sorry,” Grue… Brian apologized, “That was my idea. I thought we would make a token show of trust.”
Yeah, that part has been relatively obvious, but the real question is why. Trust which would let them form a friendship with Taylor and lead to gaining a new member?
Also, Taylor is readjusting to thinking about them using their legal names (I’m not going to say “real names”. Grue, Bitch, Tattletale and Regent can be just as much real names as Brian, Rachel, Lisa and Alec.) already, which might help her to think of them more as humans than villains.
Behind the yellow tinted lenses of my mask, my eyes narrowed, flicking from Lisa to Alec to Brian. I couldn’t draw any conclusions from their expressions.
“Why, exactly, do you need my trust?” I asked.
Taylor is asking pretty much the same questions as me, and I don’t think that’s an accident on Wildbow’s part. It’s time to get some answers to questions he’s been making the readers ask for a while.
Brian opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked to Lisa, who bent down and picked up a plastic lunchbox. She held it out to me.
“I said we owed you. All yours, no strings attached.”
If there’s a burger in that lunchbox...
Without taking the box, I tilted my head to get a better look at the front, “Alexandria. She was my favorite member of the Protectorate when I was a kid. Is the lunchbox collectable?”
“Open it,” Lisa prompted me, with a roll of her eyes.
I took it. From the weight and the motion of the contents inside it, I immediately had a pretty good idea of what it was. I undid the clasps and opened the box.
Now what in the world have they put in there.
“Money,” I breathed, caught off guard by suddenly having so much in my hands. Eight stacks of bills, tied with paper bands. Each of the paper bands had a number written on it in permanent marker. Two fifty each…
Fuck. Money, probably illegally obtained money. The bane of many a moral compass.
Lisa answered before I had the number totaled up in my head, “Two grand.”
I closed the box and did the clasps. With no idea what to say, I stayed silent.
“You have two choices,” Lisa explained, “You can take that as a gift. A thank you for, intentionally or not, saving our ass from Lung last night. And maybe a bit of incentive to count us among your friends when you’re out in costume and doing dastardly deeds.”
The Mozarts have enough enemies in the form of the Absolute Beetle Buffoons, so with a new villain around (or so they think) they’re trying to make friends.
Her grin widened, as if she’d said something she found amusing. Maybe it was the irony of a villain talking about ‘dastardly deeds’, or how corny the phrase was.
Using corny phrases can be pretty fun!
(...an excellent track called “Sound Judgement”, about a character who fancies herself an enforcer of the law, just started playing on lumiRadio. I love the irony of that timing.)
She elaborated, “Between territory disputes, differences in ideology, general power struggles and egos, there’s a rare few people in the local villain community who won’t attack us on sight.”
Yeah, exactly. Enough enemies.
“And the second option?” I asked.
“You can take this as your first installment in the monthly allowance you’re entitled to as a member of the Undersiders,” Brian spoke up, “As one of us.”
One, we finally have a name! Finally, I can stop calling them “the Mozarts”, which was never a good name for them to begin with.
In fact, my cat’s name is Mozart, so it sometimes sounded like they were a bunch of copies of him. Which would be cute, I suppose, but not make for a particularly good group of villains.
Anyway, two: We have an invitation for Taylor to join!
I think Taylor is going to take them up on this offer. Perhaps not immediately, but she does have motivations to decide to do it - if she’s a member, she can learn more about them that she can decide to not volunteer to Armsmaster and then become a permanent member.
...yes, I know that would mean breaking bad, but I honestly feel like that might happen. Or maybe Taylor reforms the Undersiders to use their powers for good. Either way could work.
‘Course, there are other routes the story could take. This is just how I personally kind of hope it’ll go.
