[hr][center][img]https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/1400/f5680f53522101.59377852a7113.png[/img][/center][hr][sub][color=FDAD07][b]Gateway City, California[/b]
July 11th, 2018[/color][/sub]

[indent][color=91C88D]“Superman declared incompetent. Wonder Woman beating up the homeless. It's almost like people forgot that our job as reporters was to actually report things, not push propaganda and misinformation to suit the narrative.”[/color] Lisa Abernathy grumbled as she splashed water on her face in her uptown apartment, the long bags created from a lack of sleep and an abundance of stress all too evident as she looked blankly into the mirror.

At the very least, she could rest easy knowing that those who actually read The National Voyeur and didn't listen to people like G. Gordon Godfrey knew the truth of the matter. The Nepenthe Crisis had been a long issue that had targeted the homeless and other marginalized populations of Gateway City. And what happened in less than a month? Wonder Woman handled it. It may have been in her own way of doing things, but she couldn't argue with the results. 

Wonder Woman had unearthed a conspiracy that connected Leona Masters, a Gateway-born metahuman with psionic abilities that had fashioned herself as a subversive crime lord. The connections to criminals with convenient amnesia and the narcotic epidemic in the harbor district was something that the police had overlooked. She couldn't really blame the police given that the connection between the bank robberies, a crime lord named the Mermaid Queen that they didn't even believe was real, and the narcotic epidemic among the homeless was something that she still had trouble grasping. It read like a tv show or hokey film from the 1940s. 

But this was the reality of things now. Caped superheroes and whimsical evil geniuses. Mutants, masterminds, and the fundamentally strange was quickly becoming their new reality.

[color=91C88D]“Brave New World and we're all playing catch up.”[/color] She thought aloud as she grabbed a dry washcloth to dry her face.

Lisa moved her raven black bangs from her face, pulling her hair back as she returned to her seat at her kitchen table where her laptop and a few hours old coffee from Big Belly Burger sat waiting for her to return. Her next “Wonder Woman article” was nearing completion, though it was more about Leona Masters than it was about the goddess of truth herself. After all, Lisa was about the [i]facts[/i] and as much as she needed Wonder Woman and supported Wonder Woman, she was a reporter not a sensationalist. She just hoped that Garibaldi wouldn't go nuclear on her focusing less on the heroine she was assigned to and more on the villain that said heroine exposed.

Besides, how weirder could you get than a crime lord named the [i]Mermaid Queen[/i]? It wasn't like in a few days some naked dude made out of silver was going to drop out of the sky and make headlines.
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