Dad Lore Chapter 24 - Fickle Lies

A sense of normalcy had returned to Taro’s house and the slightly overweight bespectacled man wasted no time in going back to his routine and arrested himself at the counter of his small shop. 

He could see that Raven was still having problems adjusting to what she’d once been familiar with, but he did not rush her. Her nightmares were a continuous thing and unfortunately there was little he could do about that. 

She looked as if the nightmares were easy for her to deal with, but Taro wasn’t that gullible. She wasn’t getting a full sleep because according to her, anytime she went to sleep, a portion of her consciousness remained outside while the other one went into the dreams. 

It was also why he hadn’t resumed her training. She was barely getting enough rest as is, pushing her any harder and she might just collapse. 

As for their open invitation to visit Dr. Fate, Raven had yet to set aside a date. Taro, on the other hand, had already decided that if she kept postponing it then he would just knock her out and take her there himself. 

On the bright side, it looks like Raven was having less trouble expressing herself — as much as blank stares and bland tone counted for expression —and was slowly opening up as the days went by. 

It wasn’t as drastic as he was making it out to be, but his worry for Raven still remained. She must’ve sensed it one time because he could tell that she started pushing herself out of her trauma zone just so that he would worry less. Basically, the two of them were running around the other in concentric circles. 

“I’m ready. Let’s go.” And that was how Raven approached him and told him that she was ready to visit Dr. Fate. 

He didn’t say anything and just closed his shop while Raven teleported the both of them outside the entrance door of the Halls of Justice. Taro, who didn’t have time to change—it probably skipped his mind— wore worn out jean trousers and a stained yellow t-shirt under the patchwork apron he usually wore in his store. 

Before he could make a comment on it, the door slid open and a smiling Nightwing welcomed them and led them in. 

“Nice to see you again, Raven. And good day to you too, Mr. Sakamoto.” 

The young man under the mask was a genuinely outgoing person and the smile he wore was almost second nature to him. It also made him a very good actor. 

It made telling the genuine cherry disposition apart from the act a lot harder. 

Taro gave Raven a mental shrug when he saw her looking between him and Nightwing. Well it was almost impossible to fool Raven with such an act. 

Nightwing led them to a very spacious room that looked like a mix between a lounge and a hospital ward, and turned to face them with an awkward smile on his face. 

“Um, Dr. Fate is not around at the moment.” He saw Taro looking towards Raven and quickly added, “but don’t worry he'll be back in less than thirty minutes, so you can just relax around the lounge before he arrives.”

Taro discreetly checked his apron pockets and slightly relaxed when he felt a stapler in one of them — a loaded stapler from its weight. It was better than being empty handed. 

“Hmm.” Taro grunted and walked past Nightwing to take one of the comfortable-looking chairs— only for him to stop after taking a single step past Nightwing. 

Raven just looked at both of them, as expressionless as ever, but it felt as if she was chiding Nightwing for the stupid stunt he just pulled. 

Taro took a single step back and stood in front of him with a disappointed deadpan. 

Nightwing laughed awkwardly and went for Taro’s collar to remove the micro-micro mic; as thin as a toothpick and 1/5th its size. 

“You found Batman’s tags, so me and the others had a bet to see who could tag you.” He grinned unrepentantly as if that was an acceptable explanation and his actions were excusable. 

Whether he was telling the truth or not— Taro couldn’t be bothered to find out— Taro was literally the bigger person in every way so he just took it in stride and went to take his seat, and flicked the second mic towards the retreating Nightwing. 

“He wasn’t lying.” Raven said from his side but he just gave her a grunt. So it was kids being kids after all. 

“Feeling?” He asked but she just shook her head softly. 

“Hmm.” She replied and he nodded. 

He really was getting on with the years as he could feel the chair doing wonders to his spine. He could buy a set of these in furniture make and put them in the living room, but thinking about how far back such an expenditure would set him made him gently squash the thought. 

As they sat there in silence like patients waiting for their doctor’s appointment, Taro thought back to his past, something he rarely did, and wondered what some of them might think if they knew he was—

He threw away the childish thoughts and just emptied his mind since there was nothing productive to think about. 

“Taro, I’m really fine, y’know.”

He melded into his chair and closed his eyes to immerse in the satisfaction. “You’re doing fine. Difference.”

“And when will you stop worrying?” She asked again. 

“I’m practically an old man. Worrying is what we spend most of our time doing.” Neither of their voices went above a certain volume as they conversed. “Focus on getting better and I’ll find something better to do with my time other than worrying.”

She looked at him with what others would have called an unnerving stare and after having her fill of it, she looked away. Whatever was going on through her head would stay exactly there, right inside her head. 

She was still getting used to the dynamic that she was now his daughter, however that worked, and the fact that he cared about her more than she’d expected. 

So it should come as no surprise that she felt extra guilt and shame when she’d found out, considering what she did, Trigon’s influence or not. 

She was slowly working through her guilt and was making slow but steady progress, and every now and then she’d look at Taro and confirm that, no, she did not in fact rip out his heart or flay him alive, and yes, she had someone who cared enough to want to be her dad. She still didn’t know how that worked yet so she just left it as it was. 

It spoke a lot about her mental state that she immediately latched onto Taro, and somewhere down the line she stopped worrying about herself but instead worried about the worry Taro felt for her. 

Heavens. She was such a mess. It was honestly surprising that she could somewhat function as a human being with how much tatters her mental state was in. 

Their attention was called when the door opened and Dr. Fate walked in, reflecting both magic and resplendent gold. 

“Raven, how are you doing? How is your health?” The clearly legally licensed magician asked Raven and got his replies in murmurs but that didn’t deter him as he turned to Taro. “Good day to you too, Mr. Sakamoto.”

“Likewise.” Taro replied. The magic doctor was both polite and pragmatic, traits Taro could respect in someone like him. 

“This will take some time so you’re free to wait outside if you want.” The doctor offered so he looked at Raven who returned it with a nod. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”

He wasn’t really interested in walking around the Justice League HQ so he took the path that Nightwing led them through and made his way back to their front door. 

He sat on the steps and simply enjoyed the breeze as he counted down the minutes to Raven’s treatment, or whatever magic ritual they were about to do. 

He had just crossed his ten minute timer when he felt the wind pick up unnaturally and looked up to see one of the heroes, Wonder Woman, descending. 

He gave her a silent nod which she returned, disregarding the silent part. 

“Mr. Sakamoto, if you’re here then does that mean that Raven took up Dr. Fate’s offer?”

“Hmm.” He grunted. 

“Rather than sit at the entrance by yourself, you could go to the cafeteria and get something to eat while you wait. I can take you there if you want.” She offered. 

This was the moment where paranoid Taro would refuse and try to limit his interactions with them as small as possible, but it was too tiresome so Taro just decided to go as a normal guy in his mid-40s. It worked perfectly in Gotham, here was hoping it worked as well. For his mental health. 

“Thank you.” He said, and for some reason she looked taken aback for a second before she shrugged it off and led him through the curving hallways to the court-sized cafeteria. 

He checked their fridge, saw his watermelon flavored soda, he took two, he sat back with Wonder Woman. 

“Mr. Sakamoto, do you have something against heroes?” She asked bluntly without giving heed to any type of small talk. 

He stared at her behind the round frames of his glasses, and she did the same to him. 

“Is there a reason why you so easily distrust us?” She asked in the same casual manner as someone asking why someone’s favorite soda was watermelon flavored. 

He was disliking this place the more he stayed in it. But that was mostly his paranoia speaking. 

“I don’t.” He eventually replied. 

‘Really?’ her raised brow seemed to say. She obviously didn’t believe that. Knowing Wonder Woman’s character was easy as she was very vocal about them to anyone who cared to listen— and reporters listened very well. That was why they loved her more after Superman. 

So Taro looked at her, just as she did him as she waited for his answer, and gave her the simple answer. 

“Self-preservation.”

She opened her mouth to speak but stopped her words as she thought over the meaning behind his words. 

His instincts told him just how harrowingly impossible it would be for him to supplant these heroes. He could pick off the more human members, that was no issue, but there was nothing he could do against most of them. 

A prime example of an insurmountable target was the warrior woman before him, and she was right behind the symbol himself. 

His instincts have dictated his survival for decades and when it told him to preserve his life when in the midst of these people, Taro listened. 

Maybe he could employ some tricks, maybe he could exploit their weakness and spring up a masterful trap that could kill them— he stopped the long streams of maybes. He wasn’t in that circle anymore — it was something he had to constantly remind himself these days. 

“So you don’t distrust us?” She asked tentatively. 

“No.”

“But your self-preservation tells you to keep away.” She completed, but he said nothing. “Then you must be quite the warrior.”

“Not really.”

She looked at him seriously. “I know of fellow heroes, courageous men and women, whose instincts are nowhere close to self-preservation. They might be able to sense danger, but anyone can do that with sufficient training. To be able to turn that into a constant state of self-preservation, I can only wonder how skilled you are.”

“You’re reading too much into it.” Taro said offhandedly as he finished his second drink. 

“Warrior to warrior, I would appreciate it if you could stop lying directly to my face. A simple refusal would suffice.”

She frowned at him with her hands crossed in front of her. Her lasso was holstered to her waist while her sword sat on the opposite side, and with her armor and wristbands that were mired with tiny scratches — she indeed looked like a warrior. Alas, a warrior he was not. He saw himself as several other things before being a warrior. 

“Will you accept my request for a spar of skills?”

He made a show of looking at his body before shaking his head. “Unfortunately, I doubt I’m in any condition for a spar. Why not ask him for one? Or the Bat, I think he’s quite good.”

She laughed. It was a short amused thing that filled the ears. “I admire many things about Kal-El, he’s a great fighter, but he’s not what you’d call a traditional martial artist.”

The smile on her face stretched even more as she spoke. “As for Batman, his mastery in the arts is something even his foes would appreciate. If you say he’s ‘quite good’, then forgive me for being curious about your skills in comparison to his. I won’t stand for a slight against a treasured comrade.”

He paused at the last bit, wondering how the conversation flowed smoothly to that point. 

“Aren’t you taking me too literal? I can no longer move like I used to in my youth. Cut me some slack.” 

She cocked her head to the side and gave him an appraising look before snorting. “Stop the masquerade. You’re not that old— in fact, it’s more than that. You’re still in your hay years. As for taking you too literal, why shouldn’t I? You’ve been doing the same, haven’t you?”

Taro looked at the woman in front of him and he couldn’t say he would blame himself for underestimating her—a plain impossibility— but he didn’t have dossiers of information on her, so while he was getting a read on her, she too was getting a read on him. Her profile on him would only cause him problems if she was that good of a reader, which he doubted. 

Till date, no one has ever gotten a good enough read on him that was better than Wu-San’s. Honestly, that woman was as scary as she was crazy. 

“Like I said, you take things too literal.”

She shrugged. “Maybe, because it doesn’t really matter.”

He looked at her with a silent ‘why?’. 

“Tell me, Mr. Sakamoto, you know where I’m from, right?” She leaned back into her chair and kept looking at him with that smile on her face. 

“Hidden island. Amazons.” 

She nodded. “I’m from an island of warriors. We are trained in combat as soon as we can walk and can swing a stick. I’ve been surrounded by warriors my whole life, both legendary and unseen geniuses, and in all the centuries I’ve been alive, most of my memories are of me crossing blades with these warriors, for centuries.”

“All the more reason not to fight you then.” Taro said dryly. Yet the smile remained faithful on her face. 

“The only thing I’ve known throughout my centuries of life is the blade of warriors pressing down on mine—”

“You’re not really making a supporting case.”

“— I’ve lost more battles than I’ve won. Near a millennia of constant fighting. My self-preservation came to me in my first century.”

Taro had a foreboding. It started as a soft hum, but now his self-preservation was revving up like an engine. 

That smile. Her smile alone was what was setting off his self-preservation. 

Oh shit. 

“Unfortunately, it did me no good as I kept on jumping into fights and disregarding its warnings. In my third century, I lost my self-preservation but I gained something else in its stead. I gained Insight. And that was when I finally started winning my fights. Not satisfied with just that, I honed my insight to the finest I could and with its success I finally gained a ‘Path to Victory’. From my fifth century, I remained undefeated among my sisters and my enemies.”

“And yet I still don’t know where you’re going with this.” Taro lied. He hoped his senses were wrong. For once he hoped his self-preservation was wrong. 

She tilted her head to the other side. “Well, then allow me to clarify: It is nigh-impossible for a warrior to pretend to be something else in front of me. My insight allows me to see just how sharp they’ve honed themselves.”

Now she leaned forward and propped her head up with her left hand, the smile still on her face. 

“You cannot hope to hide such a fascinating and threateningly sharp fighting spirit from me.” The smile that was on her face told Taro just how serious she was. Very. “Others might be able to avoid my gaze because of how lacking they are, but that is something you can never hope to do. In my long life, I’ve only met two people with intensity comparable to yours.”

Taro let out an audible sigh. He couldn’t understand how his self-preservation failed to warn him of the greatest danger to his life in the Justice League. 

He had thought it would be Superman or the Flash that would be the greatest threats to his self-preservation, but oh how wrong he was. Because the combined threats from both Superman and the Flash hardly equaled what his self-preservation was getting from Wonder Woman. 

In an instant, she had easily dethroned Wu-San as someone who scared Taro. For Wu-San, it wasn’t her strength that scared Taro, but instead it was everything else about her. From her words, her beauty, her mind, her cunning — everything was designed to specifically harm him, and it was done intentionally. 

But even that felt tame compared to what the smile on this woman’s face promised. 

“How did you do it?” He seriously asked. Seeing her incomprehension, he reiterated. “How did you hide from my self-preservation?”

Since he mastered that particular skill, no one has ever hidden their threat level to him. Trigon didn’t count because the scale was above what his self-preservation could process. 

“My insight prevents your self-preservation from getting any true read on me.”

Taro exhaled. It was as he expected. This was manageable, and extremely preferable. She was a hero and—

“Regardless of what happens, I will get my fight from you and you will not refuse me.” She got up after that bit and stretched her hands towards his and grabbed it in a warrior’s clasp. 

“We’ll be having our fight soon, Taro Sakamoto, of that you can be certain. From this moment on, I am Diana of Themyscira to you. Well met.”

With that, she excused herself from his presence and disappeared behind one of the doors but Taro was too stunned to care. 

He knew it. Deep in his bones he had known that nothing good would come out of interacting with the heroes. The two times he’d done it had resulted in a calamity. 

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I'm just going to drop this here just in case anyone was wondering about that little tidbit about Wonder Woman. Her ‘path to victory’ is a wholly combat-focused glorified sixth sense that does what its name says. It helps her read into her opponents attacks and defense patterns, and gives her insight to the best(numerous) attack paths to defeat her opponents. Why did I give it to her? Believe me, I don't know why. That ability only came to me the moment I got to that particular dialogue.

Basically, it helps her continuously stack critical attacks and helps her hit constant black flashes…. It also gives her Sharingan-esque hyper-perception that helps her see her opponents' attack paths.

Conclusion: She is the last person you want to have a prolonged battle with, or worse, fight for the second time