The Conductor {Black Lightning}{Wattys2018}

Ch. 6: He Had It Coming

Alternative title: Eugene kicks Lala's ass.

***

As soon as she woke up, Eugene tried to psych herself out of panic mode. Nightmares were nothing new. She had better things to do than freak out over subconscious-induced delusions.

Unfortunately, her efforts ended up being useless. All it took was one look at her open drawer to see that Tobias had sent her a message and make her freak out all over again.

What if he knew about Mr. Pierce being Black Lightning? If Eugene had figured it out so quick, Tobias definitely could have. And if he knew about Mr. Pierce's powers, did he know about Anissa's powers too? Anissa already had enough issues with Tobias knowing about her powers before she even did.

Part of Eugene wanted to bury her head in her pillow, ignore the text, and forget about Tobias and the dream. But she knew she couldn't do that. The consequences for ignoring Tobias would be much worse than dealing with whatever he wanted to talk to her about. If she ignored Tobias, she'd get choked out (or worse, shot by the harpoon gun) either way. But if she replied, there was a chance that it wasn't about Anissa or Mr. Pierce and that she wouldn't get choked.

Praying for the best, Eugene pushed herself into a sitting position with her elbows and swiped open her phone to see Tobias' messages.

Lala's being too loud. He sent someone to the Pierces' house while the cops were there. Make him shut up, will you?

Eugene's first instinct was to ask if the Pierces were okay, but she knew she couldn't. Tobias would question her attachment to them and he probably didn't know or care about whether or not they were okay. Plus, if anything bad had happened, Anissa or someone else would've texted her.

And she had to be grateful that the text from Tobias wasn't about anything serious. All he wanted her to do was kick Lala's ass. That she could do. Hell, it might even be fun. Eugene had put up with Lala at first because he had kept a small amount of fragile peace.

But now he was causing a ruckus that was hurting the people she cared about and she was happy to be the one to silence him.

***

When Anissa came home, Eugene interrogated Anissa about what happened at the Pierces' house. If she was going to talk to Lala, she needed to have her facts straight and she wanted to confirm that everyone was okay.

"I heard that the One Hundred came to your house," said Eugene. "Is anyone hurt?"

"Everyone's okay," said Anissa. "They just sent a kid to shoot Jennifer with fake blood from a water gun, but otherwise, everyone's okay."

Eugene grimaced. Actually getting shot was bad enough, but thinking you were getting shot and then realizing you weren't was like dying in a nightmare and then waking up. The mental scars were real even if the physical ones weren't.

"They also put a cop car outside of our apartment too since they think the One Hundred will come after me as well," Anissa added. "Just be careful. I don't want you to get caught up in this mess."

Eugene's lip twitched. If only Anissa knew the kind of mess she already got caught up in. "I'll be fine."

"You better be," Anissa said fiercely. "'Cause if anything happens to you, I'll break their asses like I did with that sink."

***

The next evening, Eugene went to Club One Hundred to look for Lala. This was her least favorite part of the job. It was Friday, which meant the club was packed. It also meant there were more people were smoking weed. Getting smoke from her lightning-related endeavors out of her clothes was something she could deal with. She could even imagine regular smoke being a perfume smell, but weed just stank and she sure as hell didn't want it in her clothes.

And then there was the fact that she couldn't see a damn thing because the lighting in the club was so shitty. She also couldn't use her walker to get through the crowds because she was technically the Conductor right now and if she used her walker, someone might recognize her as Eugene.

After thirty painstaking minutes of pushing through sweaty, confining crowds while trying (and failing) to not fall over, Eugene finally found Lala in a private room.

"Lala, I need to pull you aside for a minute," she said, feeling as though she was in her classroom at Garfield pulling a disruptive student aside to give them a talking to.

"Didn't you torture me enough last time?!" he said demandingly.

"I never actually said I was gonna torture you," Eugene pointed out. "But I fell over three times coming to get your dumbass and now I smell like weed and booze. So if you don't come with me now, I'll make sure last time felt like a bee sting."

Now that she thought about it, there was a slight difference between the teaching analogy and her situation with Lala. If she threatened and cursed at her students like she did with him, she'd get fired in a split second.

"Ooooh," the rest of Lala's chorused like a bunch of third graders when their classmate got sent to the principal's office. Eugene whipped her head around to face them.

"You want some too?" she asked.

They didn't answer.

"I thought so."

***

"What did I do?"

That moment was one of the rare times Eugene wished her helmet was see through so Lala could see how fed up she was. "Uh...let me think," she said dryly. "Does sending someone to shoot Jefferson Pierce's daughter with fake blood at their actual house ring a bell?"

"They told the police about me!"

Eugene stayed silent for a few moments, trying to figure out how to regain the brain cells Lala had just made her lose. She was so shocked by his stupidity that she went into teacher mode instead of torturing mode.

"I'm sorry," she said slowly as though she were explaining something to a confused student, "but do you know how ridiculous you sound? All of Freeland PD knows you're dirty and by sending that kid, you just gave them another lead!"

"Those stupid girls shouldn't have run their mouths about me to the police - ow! I thought you never said you were gonna torture me!"

"First of all, I lied. Second of all, I don't think anything is gonna get the message across to your dumbass!" said Eugene, her voice gradually getting louder and louder "Stay away from the Pierces and stop causing so much fucking ruckus!"

Lala fell to his knees again as she shocked him again. "Argh! Fine, I'll stop! I'll stay away from them!"