“Lyss, please, just hear me out.” Aces groaned, draping herself dramatically over the table. “We’d be helping people! Saving lives, fixing past mistakes, yknow? You wouldn’t deny a lady her last wishes, would you?”
Lyssa continued chewing her food, stubbornly refusing to look at the ghost that was lying on the cafeteria table. Danny was sitting across from her at the table, though it was difficult to see her through the criminal in front of her.
“Starlight and her team killed it first round against the Ravens. Really, it wasn’t even close! She used light to summon up some weird patterns in the air. The program censored the actual designs, but the fact that Crow’s Nest threw up and had to be subbed out kinda tells you all you need to know, yknow? Then Bolt ran the ball to Falcon and got a far score. Fastest point scored since the Speedster clause was brought in, do you know that? You missed a world record play!” Danny continued to ramble about yesterday’s Capeball game. Understandably, Lyssa had missed out, though she had been a bit dodgy about the details.
Danny didn’t seem to mind Lyssa bailing on her, and didn’t ask any questions on the situation, which she appreciated. It was one of the reasons Lyssa and Danny’s friendship worked as well as it did. Wasn’t the first time she told Danny that she wouldn’t be there.
“I mean, come on, the cops aren’t actually gonna do anything to keep that tech safe in time! They spend at least a week having to deal with the company that owns the vault, then the company spends as long as they physically can changing everything up. There is no chance that the vault’s gonna not be robbed by the time anything gets done! You’re wasting that tech, practically giving it to them yourself!” Aces continued to rant over Danny, still laying on the table.
Lyssa grit her teeth silently, continuing to chew as she failed to really listen to what either of the two was saying. Her comments from yesterday rang true: ghosts might not be able to do anything, but they could make noise, which meant they might be able to annoy her into doing something.
However, that point was moot, here. Lyssa wasn’t going to budge on this. Lying to a police officer about how she get certain information was a necessary evil, but taking down a criminal organization? Robbing a vault of Artie-tech? No. Lyssa…she could barely handle the sight of Aces’ body, let alone doing whatever gruesome things would need to be done to take over Razor’s gang. Her hands shook slightly at even the thought. Lyssa didn’t want to…sink that low.
“Pleaaaassseeee?” Aces pleaded, now on her knees on the table. Lyssa felt her eye twitch in annoyance. Pretty much all of today had been some variety of this: some small arguments, then switching to begging, then going back to arguments. Lyssa learned to try to tune her out, but Aces was apparently very good at being a general nuisence.
Lyssa felt a slow, steady sigh leaving her mouth in a puff of breath, sinking into her seat, food done. It had been a long day, and she had lost her patience with Aces at least a dozen times already. She was trying very hard not to acknowledge Aces throughout the school day (she was already not pretty popular, and yelling at invisible people would basically be jumping off a cliff socially. People aren’t friends with crazy people, after all.)
Danny seemed to noticed something, pausing in her ramble. Her lips parted slightly as she began to ask. “Do you-”
“Later.” Lyssa said, cutting her off. They both knew what the other meant, so they nodded at each other before finishing lunch.
Classes found a way to be even more tortuous than usual, with Aces’ constant talking making it basically impossible to focus on even the most mundane of tasks. In fact, it was so supremely annoying that Lyssa had, for a few seconds, considered just letting the infuriating woman pass on, just to be free of the endless bombardment of annoyances.
Obviously, she would never follow through with something like that, it would practically be murder. But the fact that she considered it for even a second it a testament to Aces sheer ability to be as infuriating as possible.
However, as the seconds crawled by at a snails pace, they eventually churned away to the end of school, a way to lessen Lyssa’s torment, if not eliminate it entirely. Aces trailed behind her, never ceasing her endless stream of words, as Lyssa wandered out of school. Immediately, she wandered around campus, moving past other students leaving as she continued to wander through the city. She walked for a decent amount of time, until she was out of earshot from the rest of the students.
She took a deep, steadying breath. “Could you. Please. Shut up.”
Aces paused in her usual torment, looking at Lyssa. “Fine. Are you actually willing to hear me out on this?”
“No. I’m leading you to meet someone.”
“Ohh, is that your girlfriend from earlier today? What was her name? Darla? Debra?”
Lyssa grit her teeth, heat growing in her face in time with her anger as she turned to the ghost. “Her name is Danny, and she isn’t my girlfriend. So, please. Just. Shut. Up.”
Contrary to her usual expectations, Aces’ expression turned unusually serious, leaning close with her face blank. “Are you sure we can trust her with this?”
Lyssa blinked. “What?”
“I said, are you sure we can trust her with what we know. The more people know about this whole operation, the more chances are there’s a leak. More importantly, the information is entirely possible to put your friend in danger, if anybody realizes that she might know.” Aces leaned back, gaze cool as she stared at Lyssa. “I get that you might be able to tell her schoolyard secrets, but this is serious stuff. So. Can we trust her with this?”
Lyssa, to her own surprise, found herself actually hesitating on this, thinking it through thoroughly. Obviously, she trusted Danny, but the thought of putting her in danger? Maybe it was the seriousness of Aces question, but she did find herself unsure, for a moment.
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But only a moment.
“I trust her on this.” Danny had never led her astray before, and she desperately needed an outside perspective on this. Plus, Danny would kill her if she figured out that Lyssa had hid her on something this ‘exciting’.
And just like that, all the seriousness from Aces was gone. “Alright, then. Guess little ol’ me will have to sit all by her lonesome while you tell her my life story.”
“I don’t know your life story, Aces.”
“Still! My death story, then.” She replied, shrugging.
Lyssa just sighed and elected to ignore her, continuing her walk. The suburban buildings passed by slowly, the edges of the city turning more and more roughly made as Lyssa carried on. Eventually, she found herself standing in front of a large brick building. The area was filled with shattered windows, vines draping across the structure, and questionably stable doors.
Lyssa walked inside like it was a second home. Glass cracked beneath her sneakers, the scent of dust and rotting wood filled the air, but she still took a breath like it was fresh air. Sitting on a random stool was Danny, fiddling with something on her phone. Noticing Lyssa step inside, Danny put her phone away, brushing herself off as she raised an eyebrow, hands on her hips. “So. What is this oh-so-secret thing that you refused to talk about, hmm? You seemed…more out there than usual, today.”
Lyssa gasped dramatically. “Owch. I thought I was doing pretty good, thank you very much.”
“Uhuh, sure. Now spill the beans, girl, or I’ll have to start using my super-secret techniques on you.” Danny threatened, wiggling her fingers for emphasis.
Lyssa took a deep breath. “Okay. Alright. So, have you checked police records recently?”
“Oh, yeah, of course. I love to check on police records all the time. Favorite activity to pass the time away.” Danny retorted with a derisive snort. She looked to Lyssa, however, and her expression shifted to something more gentle. “Did something happen, Lyss? Something with your-”
“No, not that. Nothing like that.” She cut Danny off, coming off as a smidge harsher than she intended to. “No, its something else. Um, you remember how my power works, yeah?”
Danny snorted, eyebrow rising once again. “You think I’d forget it, ghostie? You detect anything that dies nearby in a certain range, which is also the range that your ghosts can leave you without reaching a wall or something like that. You never got the range on that tested, which continues to anger me, but eh. You can then get within a few feet of that dead thing and make a ghost using their soul-stuff. They can think and move and sense basic stuff, but they can’t touch things, and things cant touch them.”
Lyssa took a deep, shaky breath, preparing herself for the tale she was about to tell. “So, um…I felt someone die in my range, and-”
Immediately, Lyssa felt two arms wrap tightly around her, making the rest of her statement fall out in an incomprehensible puff of air. Lyssa realized that her hands were shaking again, so she held Danny tightly until the tremors fell away. They sat there for a little while. By the time either spoke, Lyssa’s vision was blurry, and moistness that had nothing to do with the damp building had fallen down her cheeks.
“Did you…save them?” Danny murmured, still holding her tight. “Like, with your ghost powers and…stuff.”
Lyssa wiped her face, taking a shaky breath or two before responding. When she was confident that her voice wouldn’t break, Lyssa spoke. “Yeah. Yeah, I did. But um…turns out that her death was…it had a few strings attached.”
Danny broke away, looking at Lyssa seriously. “What do you need?”
Lyssa couldn’t help to smile. “Well first, lemme introduce you to…Aces!” Lyssa made jazz hands in the general direction of the grown woman, who bowed obligingly.
Danny stared flatly. “First of all, her name is Aces? Really? Also, I still can’t see her.”
Lyssa blushed while Aces chuckled. “Yeah, uh, its a nickname, I think? But yeah, she’s been stuck with me for the past day or so.”
“Cool! Hey Aces, hows it feel being dead?” Danny said, speaking in the general direction of the criminal in question.
“Honestly? Not as bad as I thought it’d be. I mean, I just recently discovered that I don’t need to sleep, which would be nice if I had anything to do with the spare time.”
Lyssa snorted. “You could help me with my homework, if you want.” She spoke as Danny looked on in curiosity.
“Kid, I’m easily twice your age. Hell no.”
Lyssa chuckled and relayed the message over to Danny.
“Neat. Anyways, you said something about ‘strings attached’?”
Lyssa then proceeded to spend the next few minutes explaining the intricacies of the current situation to her friend. During some of the…more difficult parts, Danny would squeeze a shoulder or just mention that she didn’t have to explain it all, if she didn’t want to. Lyssa still did, though. Every last bit. It was important, so Danny could help her fix this mess.
By the end of it, Danny was looking…strangely at Lyssa.
“What?”
“Well, to start off, you somehow managed to immediately spot and do some casual necromancy at a murder scene, then you realized that the murder was, in fact, a massive hidden operation to steal secret tech from a local gang, and then you lied to a police officer, and ran off with the ghost of a leader of a large criminal organization and some secrets that someone has literally killed over. And you still went to school? And you didn’t blab that absolutely bonkers afternoon to anybody the whole day!?” Danny raised her hands in exasperation. “If I was in your place, I’d probably be busy absolutely screaming over how cool everything in my life just got!”
Lyssa stared, for a moment. When she put it like that… “It was…it was different in the moment. Is different. I don’t wanna do anything illegal, but Aces wants to rob the place before the rest of the gang does, and probably do a bunch of other things to take down the whole gang. It’s just…its a lot to take in a day, yknow?”
Danny nodded. “I guess so. This does seem a bit high profile for cops…”
Lyssa blinked as a realization snapped into her head. “Danny, you’re a genius.”
“Course I am…why am I a genius, here?”
“Of course it’s too high profile for the cops, its because it isn’t a job for the cops!”
Aces jumped in the air. “YYYES! Break-in plan time! I knew you’d come around-”
“It’s a job for the City Defenders! They take on all the supervillains in the city, fighting supers with supers! They’re specialists in this type of thing, right?”
Aces groaned, enthusiasm immediately gone. “Ugh, you’re getting the Capes involved? Really? You can call em ‘superheroes’ all you want, but they’re still basically cops. Err, pseudo-millitary, but still.”
Lyssa frowned. “They’re the best option here, though!”
“They still don’t know the whole story, though! Our cover doesn’t cover all the possible information I can give someone for this type of operation!”
Lyssa opened her mouth to continue the argument, before she realized that Danny was staring at her, a grin slowly spreading across her face. That type of smile always said she was up to something. Something Lyssa probably wouldn’t like. She decided to bite the bullet.
“What’s your idea, Danny?” Lyssa asks, already dreading the answer.
Danny pointed a finger at Lyssa’s chest, grin growing wider. “You.”
“Should join the City Defenders.”