Chapter: 63
I woke up to the sound of my cell phone blaring next to my head where I'd left it the night before as I'd fallen asleep while looking at memes.
"Annoying, who is calling me at…" I looked at the time, "…6 in the morning. Hello," I groggily said as I pressed the phone to my ear.
"Um… hi, Layla. It's Foggy Nelson here. You know… your lawyer." The guy sounded nervous.
"Why are you calling me so early?" I asked.
"W-well, um. T-the thing is – you're being sued. By Norman Osborn. For 400 Billion Dollars… He's claiming your acquisition of Oscorp was fraudulent, and he's hired the best and most cutthroat legal firm in the city."
I was being sued? Was that even possible? Could humans even sue non-humans?
[They can sue mutants.]
'Now that's just discriminatory, system…'
[Sorry.]
I'm surprised Norman was also taking the legal route. I was expecting something along the lines of a retaliatory assassination attempt to be honest. "Oof. That is a lot of money. I figured Norman wouldn't be happy that he lost his company, but I was expecting something different than a legal battle." I said over the phone.
"Something different? This is exactly what Matt and I were expecting at some point. What were you thinking would happen?" Foggy replied.
Well he asked… "I expected he would inject himself with Oscorp's failed super soldier serum and develop an evil split personality. Then he would put on an experimental Iron Man knock-off armor suit and fly around on a very unsafe glider trying to kill me with Halloween-shaped weapons," I explained. Yes, I was expecting the Green Goblin to kill me, and now I'm disappointed that he's not…
[That makes two of us. Legal battles are boring. There are no lawyer video games for a reason!]
I could have pointed out Phoenix Wright, but the system had a point.
"Halloween – WHAT!? Nevermind… How soon can you come back to New York?" Foggy asked as I heard him sigh in the background.
Ideally, I could leave as soon as I made sure the Destroyer and Loki were taken care of. That should not be long judging by how freaked out the latter looked when I saw him. "I might be a few more days at the most." I told Foggy.
"Yeah, okay. Legal battles are drawn out and slow anyway. We'll need to sit down in a few days with Matt though to get a plan going." He said before we both hung up and I went back to sleep.
…
It was a few hours later after my conversation with Foggy that I woke up again. This time on purpose. After spending some time getting prepared for the day I stepped out of my room. It seemed I had good timing as Penemue and Azazel were getting up as well.
"Good morning, Layla," Penemue greeted me as she exited her and Azazel's motel room. I was doing my best to forever purge this moment from my memory.
"Where's our blond-haired prince this fair morning?" Azazel asked as he followed after her.
"I'm not exactly sure," I replied. I knocked on his motel room door, but he didn't answer. My best guess was that he had run off early in the morning to go and find Jane. Did he even know where she lived? I didn't think he did, considering the plot had basically been tossed out, and Jane never took him to her RV. "I'm sure we'll see him soon. This town's tiny after all."
Azazel and Penemue were hungry, so the three of us decided to hit up the town's diner once again. They were getting a lot of good business from us. As we meandered our way down the street, something was glaringly obvious to me. There were noticeably a lot more people walking around the town than there should be, and these weren't poorly disguised shield agents either– but regular people. As our group passed through the crowds, I could hear them gossiping.
"This is the right town, yeah?"
"Yes, this is Puente Antigo. Layla of the fallen is supposed to be here! And so is the handsome alien prince! We can't let that slut who latched onto him claim him all to herself!"
"I drove 200 miles all through the night just so I could see Layla and an alien for real!"
Oh, the town was now swarming with crowds of tourists who were all here looking for me and Thor… Word sure traveled fast on this one.
Azazel laughed as we made our way through the crowds. "Wow, it seems like little sis is quite the celebrity. There must be over 500 people here, and I can sense more on the way still." he said cheerfully.
"Indeed," Penemue commented before turning to me with a raised eyebrow. "I know you told us about your stay in this world so far, but we didn't think you would be so… blatant with exposing yourself to the regular humans. You were always the shy one too..." She lamented. I didn't really have a response to that because my backstory really did make me seem like a shy shut in. I stayed in heaven for hundreds of years and then the one time I left, I ended up falling. After that I pretty much never left the Grigory main base in the underworld.
"Eh, I wouldn't worry too much. It was only a matter of time before the supernatural got exposed anyway." Azazel said nonchalantly as we entered the diner. The waitress was standing behind the counter nervously watching the gathering crowds of people on Main Street. They had obviously never had that many people in this tiny town ever.
The reason people weren't swarming us three in the streets was that Azazel had cast an illusion over us so mortal eyes would slide over us three. That illusion had to fade away, however, otherwise the waitress wouldn't notice us. When Azazel dropped it, she jumped up in startled fright as from her perspective we just appeared out of nowhere.
"Oh–Wow!" She exclaimed as she landed back down. "You all surprised me there. Welcome back, same booth as yesterday?" She asked nervously, and I nodded. It didn't exactly take long before the people inside and outside took notice of our arrival.
"It's Layla!" One person on the street finally spotted me as he pointed at me through the window.
"For real!? Where is she!?" A woman who appeared to be filming everything on her phone spun around.
"She's inside the diner! Just in here–oof!" A man tried to run inside after us but bounced off the glass door.
Before the crowd could rush inside, Azazel had snapped his fingers, and a magical force washed over the front of the building. "That should allow us to eat in moderate peace. The door is now magically locked, and the windows won't break unless someone tries to drive a car through them."
The waitress looked a bit nervous about so many people being denied entrance to the diner. That was until I waved my hand, and a stack of bills materialized on the table in front of us. It was around a few thousand dollars. I didn't really specify an exact amount when I reached into my inventory. "For you and all the other employees here." I said as I smiled at her. Damn, being able to do that felt pretty awesome, I'm not going to lie. Her nervous look immediately shifted to excitement as she quickly grabbed the money and proceeded to take our order. The spectators outside seemed put off at not being able to swarm us as we ate, but that didn't stop their staring and filming.
"My friends! I'm glad you're all finally here!"A familiar voice called out to us. I looked over and saw that Thor and Jane were in the next booth over. Thor was comically wearing a pair of large sunglasses and a hooded sweatshirt.
"Nice disguise, Thor. Where'd you get it?" I giggled. The sweatshirt, in particular, was many sizes too small… and pink.
"The lady Jane here insisted on it as the town is apparently now crammed with my admirers. The woes of being a crown prince…"
Jane looked like she would rather be anywhere other than here as she looked out into the crowds outside nervously. "I didn't expect this many people would be out looking for us. A bunch of women out there have been calling me a hussy too! That damn body jacker threw herself all over Thor for the entire internet to see! Now the whole world thinks I'm some tramp thirsting after the world's first-ever alien." Jane explained with some tears brimming in her eyes.
Yeah, that was rough. I checked my phone this morning, and the posts and memes were not painting Jane in a good light… particularly when her identity came out and people found out she was an astrophysicist with a doctorate. She was going to have a rough go of it for a while…
XXX
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