TW: mentions of attempted rape, prostitution, alcohol, blood and other various triggers throughout this chapter
It had been about two weeks since her first visit to 19th century London and Y/n was already making a huge change. She had managed to get a much better grip on traveling between her home dimension and this Black Butler one. It took an insane amount of will and energy but she had figured out how to do it while awake, and it baffled her that she had been able to do it in her sleep. She figured it was an accident the first few times but she could now go back and forth a few times before feeling like she was getting torn in half, and time changed slowly when she traveled from her home to her Black Butler world. She hadn't quite figured out the exact equation for the time change but she was technically on summer break and didn't need to do any math. While she still mostly traveled between universes at night so she could get some proper sleep, only the night seemed to pass. However, when she traveled during the day, time seemed to freeze in place. It was quite strange. She had also been doing her nightly patrols that lasted from about 1 a.m. to 6 a.m and sometimes earlier or later depending on the dinner crowd. She had saved many women and young kids from creeps and crazy people hiding in the alleys, hardly ever seeing the same assailant twice. First they got off on a warning: she would cut them right on the cheek like she had done to her first criminal, giving them an 'L' shaped wound. If they continued after that she had begun to flash her gun at them and would shoot them in the foot. However, she didn't like to fire her weapon though because it was louder than she would've liked. Whenever her gun went off, lights would appear in the surrounding buildings and people would come to look out their windows at what caused the noise. Y/N always had to leave the scene with haste so as to not get caught red handed with a gun in hand and a creep wailing for help after being shot.
Almost every time she shot someone the Undertaker would stroll into the Pud, no matter the time of day to and ask if they had heard the racket last night and seen his 'mystery' vigilante. Every day they would tell him if they had heard the shot and sometimes they would say they caught a glimpse of someone but never saw their face. It was a game of chase and Y/N was only a few steps ahead of the Undertaker. Enough steps to be comfortable but not proud enough to stop checking behind her back. And every time he came to the pub he never ordered anything. He just asked them questions and if they were willing to get fitted for a coffin. Occasionally Y/N would ask him about how business was going and if he was any closer to finding out if the person was a man or woman, or their hair color, or their name. Time and time again he told her he was no closer but he would keep her updated if he got anything new. Y/N couldn't tell if he was lying or being honest but she hoped she had played innocent waitress from c/n (country name, if you're from London come up with another city/town) well enough to fool him.
The second week of Y/N's Black Butler adventure was almost at a close and nothing exciting had happened that day until an agitated and surly man came barging into the Dozy Dog at about 11 o'clock for a drink. Y/N hadn't recognized him until she saw his face, the letter 'L' carved into his cheek. She felt her heart skip a beat as she went to seat him at the bar. She had never seen one of her punished criminals at the pub before, and if she had they must've stopped coming after she ripped them a new one. She felt a little dumb for not recognizing a man she had basically assaulted in an alleyway but it was always dark and she was usually tired when she went on patrols. Plus she had punished over 10 men so far, so she definitely wasn't going to remember them all. When the man reached the bar, he loudly shouted at Alice to get him a beer and drank most of it in one go. Many other customers noticed his scar and started whispering among themselves before one brave man finally went up to him and asked, "Richard, how'd you get that nasty scar?" The man named Richard growled before finishing off his pint and almost slamming the glass down on the bar.
"Some crazy bastard running around with a knife cut me," he grumbled, Y/N remembered him now. He had beat up a homeless man who asked for some spare change. "The fucker just ran out of an alley and attacked me." Muttering filled up the whole pub as people whispered about what Richard just told them. Some women gasped and others looked a little unsure about the integrity behind Richard's story. Y/N hated what this was going to do to her reputation. As someone who was cleaning up the streets, this made her sound like a crazy lunatic with a knife, not someone who was protecting the bottom-of-the-barrel lower class people of London. After a little more muttering and whispering, a woman who was a well known prostitute spoke up.
"Is that all? Or is there a little more to your story?" Some people gasped at what she was suggesting and others looked scared while Richard looked enraged.
"No! That son of a bitch jumped me and I'm gonna send him to hell for it!" While some other customers looked like ghosts, the prostitute calmly but firmly stood her ground.
"I find that hard to believe." This lady really didn't fear death. "Go off, queen," Y/N thought.
"You tryin' to say somethin' you little whore?"
"Just that I've seen who you're talking about, and they're no crazy son of a bitch, they're a hero," she said calmly as she sipped her wine, like the queen she was. Richard looked like he was going to explode with rage.
"What did you just say you filthy whore?" Richard had stood up, knocked over his stool, and was getting ready to hit the woman before Alice stepped in.
"Let the lady speak or you'll be outta my bar faster than you can fish money out of your pockets to pay for your tab," Alice threatened. Richard growled again before violently picking up his stool, set it back down, and wisely stayed seated.
"Like I was saying," said the working girl, "That person's a hero. In fact, they saved my ass just the other night from some crazy man trying to rob me with a knife. The bastard was ready to cut me open for some spare change before that person stepped in." People were now all listening to her side of this story with great interest. Was this person some crazy with a knife or were they a hero in the making? "When they showed up they pulled a knife on the man, but they did it after they told him to back the fuck up. When he didn't listen they went at him and he was too drunk to dodge but sober enough to feel the pain when they sliced an 'L' on his face, just like yours." Y/N remembered that one as well, a drunk man with a knife had tried to make the prostitute hand over her night's wages before Y/N had stepped in. "Plus Mary, my sister who works down the street, had something similar happen to her when another bastard tried to rape her. It was about two weeks ago on the 24th. She was cornered in an alley by some nasty noble when someone in a blue scarf saved her. She said she originally thought her hero killed the son of a bitch but turns out she did the same thing she did to you and to my attacker. So I'll say it again: that person is no crazy son of a bitch. They're a hero." The woman took another dainty sip of wine and all heads turned over to Richard who had chugged another pint of beer. Now they were all wondering what he had done to get the 'L' on his cheek. Whispering spread through the pub like wildfire and Richard ground his teeth because someone had called him out on his bullshit.
Y/N smiled a bit as people continued to talk about her while she took more orders and passed out more food to patrons. Tipping was still good but it had gone down a little bit since Y/N's face wasn't as new as it was a week ago. All you could hear were people talking about Y/N's alter ego from that point on, all night until closing time. As they cleaned off the tables after the doors were locked, Alice questioned Y/N about her little warning marks. "So you really cut that sucker like that, as a warning?"
"Well, I told him to back up first but, yeah." Both Y/N and Alice looked at each other before they started laughing.
"You are insane, honey! Oh what I wouldn't give to have seen the look on his face!"
"They've started taking me a little more seriously but some need more proof that I mean business," Y/N sighed when she finished laughing.
"Oh no, what do you do then?"
"I uh, I shoot them in the foot," Y/N admitted. There was complete silence for a few seconds and Y/n was afraid she scarred Alice for life. Then Alice suddenly burst into crazy laughter. Y/n followed her lead and also burst into laughter. Alice was almost in tears before she was able to speak again.
"Do you really?" she managed in between laughs.
"If they don't back off, then yes, I give them a bigger problem than an over sized paper cut!" The two women laughed and laughed for almost twenty minutes before they were able to calm down. Alice gave Y/N her usual warning about staying out too late and to get home to the pub safe and sound.
Y/N had done one rotation already, she was getting much more comfortable in the streets near the Dozy Dog Pub. So far she had dealt with only a loud drunk who was pushing around one of the local homeless and all she had to do was flash her blade and they went running in the opposite direction. The homeless woman thanked her and retreated back to wherever she lived in the shadows and cracks of the streets. Y/N had been walking for a little while, just thinking about nothing in particular when she heard glass break and a high pitched scream. Y/N ran to the source of the noise as fast as her legs could take her. When she arrived at the source she wasn't surprised to see a prostitute being harassed by a group of three men, two holding bottles, one gripping the broken remains of one. "Hey!" Y/N shouted, everyone turned to look at her, "Leave her alone! You've got three seconds to back the fuck up before I cut the three of you into pieces!" The three men, not taking her seriously in the slightest began chuckling and turned to her and began to laugh. Even when Y/n showed both her blades the men laughed and began to approach her. Three on one weren't good odds, even if they were drunk there were three men and Y/N only had two knives. Y/N sighed, "Men can have really thick skulls sometimes," Y/N said to the woman who was just watching at this point, using her fake accent and horrible deep voice. Y/N sighed, put one knife in a belt she had saved up for with tip money and drew out her gun. When she did the three men stopped in their tracks, but only for a moment.
"You won't use that," one proclaimed. The other two laughed in agreement before they started walking towards her again. Sure enough, Y/N fired a warning shot at the ground, only an inch from the leader's foot.
"You sure about that?" The men stopped to consider the fact that maybe, just maybe she was serious. One of the ones in the back decided he would rather not find out and took off in the other direction yelling that the other two were on their own. The second in the back seemed to now be taking Y/N a little more seriously and doubting his and his partner's skills against her gun. The leader however, was either to drunk or too stupid (or both) to take her seriously and kept sauntering forward towards Y/N, and her gun. Y/N sighed again and shot the man right in the knee without hesitation. Both men and the woman screamed. The leader fell to the ground and continued to scream in pain while his partner shouted things along the lines of "Are you crazy?" and "You shot him oh my God!" The screaming went on for a little while longer before Y/N made her way over to the men. She used the knife to put her signature right on the two men's faces, just like the others. While she signed her work the two men continued to scream while their victim just watched, soon both donned a huge 'L' on their cheek. "You can shut up and go now, unless you want a hole in your knee like your buddy here." The second man looked at her with so much fear, Y/N couldn't begin to describe it. "And make sure to take your buddy with you. His corpse would take away from the aesthetic of this bustling metropolis." Nothing else needed to be said because that man hauled up his leader with surprising strength and ran away from Y/N and the woman who they had been harassing.
Y/N put up her gun and knife before approaching the woman, holding her hands up to show she wasn't armed any longer. "Are you alright, ma'am?" Y/n dropped her fake deep voice but not her fake accent. The woman looked a little shocked, Y/N was yet to talk to someone she had actually saved while still in her 'disguise'. The woman took some deep breaths, steadied herself against the wall, and nodded.
"Yes, yes I'm okay, thank you, uh..." she trailed off.
"I don't really have a name," Y/N chuckled, looking down at the ground, embarrassed (which was quite ironic, considering she'd shot several people and carved 'L' into all of them).
"Well, uh, the 'L' stands for something, doesn't it?" asked the woman, now fixing her dress where it had been messed up by the men. "So what's it stand for? Laura, Lilian, Louise, Lucy?"
"No, actually, my name doesn't start with L," or if your name does start with L then , "No, actually, my name does start with 'L' but that's not why I chose it."
"Then why?" Y/N went silent, "Because the greatest detective ever went by 'L' in an anime and manga series called Death Note and I'm an idiot so I just copied him," didn't sound like the best reason, despite being the truth. Then something came to her.
"Lion," she said, "Because I'm like a lion, I hunt and I defend, I am brave, and most importantly," Y/n paused, "I am a woman, and I am defending my pride." The woman was looking her in the eyes, no longer scared and shaking. Now, she looked safe and relieved. There was silence again.
"Can I quote you on that?" Piped up the woman. "My husband is a reporter and he's been hearing all these strange reports from hospitals about men showing up with the letter 'L' carved in their cheek by some crazy man," explained the woman, "I'd been hearing from the local working girls about some scarfed person saving them from men and prowlers, usually shooting them in the foot and carving an 'L' on them to get his, or her, message out. I help him get scoops by spending time around the prostitutes. They know more than they get credit for."
"Well if you do quote me, can you omit the part about me being a woman? You can use the rest. Just leave out that detail, if you don't mind. I'd like to keep it a secret."
"Of course, Miss Lion. Anything you want me to add while I've got you here?" She had now pulled out a notepad and was scribbling down the quote Y/N had given her (minus the 'I am a woman,' part).
"Yes, actually. If you don't mind, add this: I don't hurt people for fun, I'm not doing this to cause needless bloodshed, I'm doing this because people need to know that they're safe, that the homeless, the working women, the lost drunken party goers don't need to worry about being hurt because someone is finally here to protect them." Y/N thought it sounded simple enough but she decided to add one last part. "I am not here because the police can't do their job, I'm here because they're stretched thin, and not every rape, not every mugging gets reported and not every criminal gets caught and charged for their crime. If you see someone with a 'L' know that they've done something to deserve that scar." The woman wrote as fast as she could and when she was done she pocketed her notepad and pen. "You want someone to walk you home?"
"Oh, no I live right up here actually," she pointed to some windows above her. Y/N knew there were apartment buildings above them.
"Alright, well then have a good night, Miss." Y/N waved to her as she watched as she made her way into the building.
"Goodnight, Lion," she called back.
Y/N knew, when that story got printed, everyone would hopefully know the meaning behind the 'L' shaped scars, and what you had to do to get one.