The Travelers made their exit, Shatterbird came inside to stand guard by the door, and the rest of us settled down.

This casual mention of Shatterbird coming inside caught me off-guard. :p

Lisa dialed and put her cell on speaker phone.  It rang twice before Cherish answered.

Let’s do this thing.

“Finally,” her voice came through the line.

“Your two minutes start now,” Lisa spoke.

Tick, tock!

“I should get four, since I’m dealing with only one group.”

Ehh. I see the logic, that because she’s allowed them to haggle it down, she should be allowed to haggle it up. Four might be a bit much, maybe?

“One minute, fifty-five seconds,” Lisa replied.

Heh, nice.

Cherish, you should probably have haggled that before the time started.

“Where should I start?  Hey, little brother.  Want me to tell them the sort of things you really did when you were back home?”

“Eh, why not.”

“It’s sort of tedious,” Alec replied.

Hehe.

Oops, I forgot Aisha in that last sentence.

I think she would be down with it, too.

Nobody spoke.

“We could do another blind vote,” she suggested, “In case anyone wants to say they’re not cool with these new terms.”

Makes sense.

“Speaking as the person who took two-twenty-two, I really don’t care all that much,” Alec said.

I suppose he didn’t let his nonchalance weigh in all that much.

“I picked a higher number because I thought it would bother those guys.  I figure my team knows enough.”

Ah, that’s fair.

“Exactly as I said before,” Lisa said.  “Anyone else have any major objections?”

I shook my head.  I could deal with the team knowing about my plan.  If things went south, they’d find out anyways.

Half of them already do, I doubt Alec would care much, and Rachel… is Rachel.

There was a pause.

“Good.”  Lisa put her hand over the mouthpiece.

Alright, I suppose we’re doing this without the Travelers present.

“Does that really work?”  Trickster asked.  “What if we wanted to keep stuff from you?  She could tell you while we’re out of the room.”

Yes, thank you for pointing this out.

I think Lisa already knows a lot of the secrets, so she’s better equipped than most to make judgment calls on this, but still.

“Do you want to keep anything particular from us?”

He shook his head.  “But how do you know your teammates didn’t pick the high numbers?”

…hasn’t anyone filled Trickster in on Lisa’s power yet? 😛

“I don’t,” Lisa flipped through the pages.  “But just going by what I know about our groups, I think our team is going to be more concerned about what outsiders think.

…wait, really?

You guys are going to be more concerned about what your teammates think.  Am I wrong?”

Alright, fair enough. I did kind of suggest that myself, just with less emphasis on how much they care about what outsiders think.

It took another minute for the rest to decide.

“So, in order… twenty-six, one-twenty-two, one-forty, one-forty-one, one-fifty-five, one-sixty, one-seventy-five, two hundred twenty-two, and three-twenty-five.”

This is one of those lines where I feel like writing out the numbers in letters just makes it look like a (crumpled?) mess, so lets make this digital: 26, 122, 140, 141, 155, 160, 175, 222, 325.

Total: 1466. Average: ~163.

The average ain’t too bad, but that 325 sounds nasty. I’m guessing that’s either Trickster or Tattletale. Regent might be somewhere in the middle (having nasty backstory but being fairly nonchalant about it), and Imp is probably the 26 (having not really been a cape long enough to build up much baggage and not seeming to be much for secrets).

Three-twenty-five?

“That’s a no, then?” Brian asked.

The 325 really points towards no, yeah.

“Something like that,” Lisa replied.  She picked up the phone and dialed.

“What are you doing?”  Trickster asked.  “You said we wouldn’t go ahead if we didn’t all agree.”

Ah, yeah, jumping the gun a bit, Lisa.

“You’re right.  But I’m going to try to haggle with her,” Lisa replied.

Oh. Alright.

“Hello?  Yeah, you already know the answer.  No-go.  Uh-huh.  Sure.  What if I asked for the Travelers to leave?  You could address the rest of us.

I’m not at all surprised to see the Travelers being implied to be the source of the highest numbers, but… Lisa. Surely you see the flaw with your idea here? Cherish can still reveal details about the Travelers without them being present, which would only delay the murderous rage or whatever reaction people might have to the higher secrets.

…well, it’d be only the reaction the Undersiders might have. Maybe Lisa has figured out that the big secrets are specifically internal secrets, that it wouldn’t matter if the Undersiders heard them but the other Travelers shouldn’t?

You and I both know you’re doing this to sate your boredom than for any grander purpose.”

I’m than a little sure Wildbow or Lisa accidentally a word there.

Also, boredom is a powerful thing.

“Can’t say, can we?” Lisa said.  She tossed the phone in the air and then caught it.  “Say one of us has something to hide that Cherish could reveal to the others.  Nobody’s about to admit it.”

That seems likely. Hell, maybe this is how we learn about the Travelers’ backstory?

There were glances all around.

“But I think I have an idea.”  Lisa smiled.  It was her old smile.  The scar was there, but it no longer pulled her mouth into a perpetual half-frown.

Hell yes.

I can’t even see that smile and I’ve still missed seeing it.

I suppose the unfrowning has to do with Brian healing her, like with Taylor’s small scars and such.

“Brian, got any books here?  Or magazines?”

“Upstairs.  Aisha, go grab something.  Any book on the floor of my room.”

Alright… I’m not seeing the plan yet, but I trust she knows what she’s doing.

“Why-”  She hesitated when she met his eyes.  “Whatever.”

It was a minute before Aisha ventured back downstairs with a novel.  It looked like a suspense thriller.

You know it’s thriller, thriller night!

“Here’s the deal.  Everyone closes their eyes.  We close our eyes while the others take their turns tearing a page out of the book.  The higher the page number, the worse our inner thoughts and secrets.

…what.

Oh, are they going to collect the pages, then look at the numbers without knowing who picked which ones, in order to evaluate how bad the inner thoughts and secrets are overall?

That makes sense.

The last page, Uh, three hundred and fifty-five, we’ll say, is the worst of the worst.  Unforgiveable to the point that someone here would kill you and the rest would be okay with it.”

Sheesh.

“Nothing saying she’ll tell the truth,” Alec said. 

Of course. Lisa might be able to help with detecting lies, though.

“And she’s in a position to say stuff that could create doubt or tension in our ranks,” Trickster pointed out.

“True,” Lisa conceded.  “But here’s the thing.  I’m getting the vibe she wants us to turn her down, so we’ll figure out the real scoop later and regret it.”

Hah! “I could’ve told you so!”

“What, you mean something like Siberian being here?  ‘Don’t you wish you’d asked me to tell you where she was, because she’s standing fifteen feet away from you’?” Alec asked.  “Yeah, that sounds like my sister.”

Pffft.

“How sure are you?” Brian asked Lisa.

“That there’s more to it?  Seventy five percent, to ballpark it.”

Worth a shot, I think.

“Bad idea,” Brian said.  I found myself nodding in agreement.

And now these two are on the same page in much the same way they used to be before Extermination. Nice. 🙂

Lisa raised the phone to her ear.  “Nope.  Don’t suppose we can change your mind?”

Oh, is she talking directly to Cherish?

There was a pause before Lisa hung up.  “Eighty-five percent sure there’s more to this story than she’s letting on.  She was all too okay with saying goodbye for someone chained up in a hot metal prison cell.  That, or she thinks we’re going to call back.”

Cherish might be right about that last thing, the way this seems to be going.

Sundancer spoke up, “Can’t we?  What are we really risking, here?  I mean, what’s at stake?  The worst case scenario, if we let her talk?”

The worst case scenario is that she tattletales you, and you’ve got the actual Tattletale with you…

“Words,” Bitch dismissed me.

Yeah, but you asked.

“Words, sure.  I’ll make it simple, then.  I consider you a friend, I’ll help you when stuff goes down.  And you… do whatever you think is right.  Do what you want to do.  I won’t stress about it, and unless you fuck with me like you did when we fought Dragon, I’m not going to hold it against you.”

This is probably a better way to put it to her, yeah.

I still don’t really get why Taylor considers Rachel a friend, but she does and she’s damn well going to act like it regardless of Rachel’s opinions.

She set her jaw, clearly irritated at the reminder.  Whatever.  I’d needed to make my point.

If she had been intending to give me a response, I didn’t hear it.  Lisa ventured back into the room, and all eyes turned to her.  She held her hand over the lower half of the phone.

Yo. So what does Coil have to say?

“For those of you who haven’t been in contact with Coil, we ended up locking Cherish in an overturned boat’s hold in the Boat Graveyard.

That’s up near the Trainyard, isn’t it?

She’s there now, with food and water, totally isolated, several layers of confinement, including but not limited to chains.  She wants to strike a deal, in exchange for details on Siberian and the Nine.”

Not surprising. I figured she would latch onto them asking as a bargaining chip, which is why I said the hard part was getting the info they wanted out of her. What does she want in return for that bargaining chip?

“Letting her go?  No,” Brian said.

Yeah, that needs to be out of the question.

“Not what she wants.  She just wants a chance to talk to us,” Lisa looked at each of us in turn.  “Two minutes to address us, and then she dishes out the dirt, gives us the location on the Nine, the details on Siberian and answers any other questions.”

Hm. Alright, seems fair enough. We might get some interesting tidbits out of it.

I’d like to suggest a video call, if they have devices capable of that. That way she can address them without being in range to manipulate their emotions.