i suffered fools so gladly and now i find, i've changed my mind.

[caballero]

Who: Bruce Wayne, Jim Kirk.
What: Observations and delegating. (Sort of.)
Where: Various places.
When: 29th-31st. Ish.
Warnings: References to violence, more TBA.

It isn't difficult to track Jim Kirk's CiD. The first to respond on his peer cohort, the first in the city as a whole to respond in an unselfish way. Bruce keeps tabs on him and digs up everything else he can, and learns he's the first to be proactive about it, too. He makes a note of it, of him, and then when his schedule knots, he knows just what to do: borrow a Starfleet captain to untie it.

(Starfleet is a word that itches in the back of his mind and annoys him in a way he doesn't actually want to think harder about - a multidimensional repetitive, like his own name. Does it make Kirk someone of more or less interest? He puts it out of his mind.)

The timing has to work; he's got a day to work with for sure and a day in limbo, half a day to get where he needs to go after that. So he follows Kirk and makes it sloppy (for him) so that the other man will notice - but just barely. It can't look like he's trying to get noticed, in fact it can't look like anything at all. It has to feel like someone's watching him, and he has to hope Kirk is an observant enough man to pick up on it. But if there's anyone who's a cold professional at manipulating how he's seen or not seen to others - be it specific people, crowds, entire cities - it's Bruce Wayne.

Comments

[captaincocksure]

It's getting downright annoying.

Jim Kirk is indeed the kind of man to pick up on the fact that he's being followed. He's usually the kind of man to further pick up who's following him, but this pursuer is proving elusive. He's tried everything. Doubling back in the middle of a CiD call with McCoy, pretending he's wandering aimlessly as he chats. Leaning against the corner of a shop's exterior wall, checking his text messages while surreptitiously watching people pass him. Sly checks over his shoulder as he navigates the streets.

Right now he's standing before a window display, and while he does have an interest in the suits on display, what he really wanted was a glimpse of someone, anyone, with eyes on him. Denied again.

His gut tells him there is someone. He gives the people on the sidewalk a quick once-over as he turns to walk away.

[caballero]

Bruce gives it a bit, but decides to let up before the guy starts to look like he's going crazy about it. Sufficiently satisfied that Kirk ought to be expecting something, Bruce and his eerie surveillance vanish not long before nightfall, when the other man is in the middle of a task. It gives him a reasonable buffer of time (not that he needs more than a moment) to slip away and head back to Kirk's residence. To stick a note on his door.

Left in an unobtrusive place, no sign or trace of anyone or anything around, is a small off-white card; something nicked from a pile of discarded office supplies, from anywhere, nowhere. In plain handwriting:

Thanks for noticing.

Two miles west of Ketch Heath.
6pm. Tomorrow.

[captaincocksure]

Jim is not really surprised by the card. He knew, after being watched for most of the day, he should expect something. If there's any surprise at all, it's of the pleasant sort--hooray, he gets a note and not a knife to the back or an arrest warrant out for him.

He takes the card inside with him, and tucks it into the inside pocket of his leather jacket; that way it goes with him tomorrow, too. Not for the location or time, those were memorized with his first glance at the card. But if this turns out to be something bad, a potential source of real trouble, he doesn't want it in the apartment where someone could find it. If things come down on him because of his investigations, he'll accept that, and deal, but he would never forgive himself if McCoy was dragged into things because of him.

He's promised Integra--well, no, it's more that he's promised himself he'll do this--that he'll keep her abreast of things that happen on his own time, things that could lead to things. Those things might be information, those things might be resources... those things might also be his ass in a sling, but he respects her and he respects the Princess, and above all he respects what they've built. He's not going to let things catch them unawares.

He sends Integra a quick but informative text, briefly running down what's happened, and where he'll be tomorrow night. There's a part of him, too, that morbidly thinks this also serves the purpose of being the starting point of any investigation if he goes missing, that this also tells them where to find the body if someone's got ill intent.

Either way, he'll be ready.

[caballero]

Bruce doesn't have time to do more than make sure he sees Jim leaving - beyond that, it's up to a higher power of fate and timing.

Ketch Heath, on the official city map, ends at a point. In reality, there are no clear divisions, no lines on the ground or any neat borders where grass ends and dreary fog-covered dirt begins; the buildings continue, tacked onto streets that haven't been kept up in hundreds of years, cracked and overgrown - shanty towns and wooden structures intersperse the framework of things both old and hauled in through the fog. To miles past what passes for the border in between the edge of the canton and the Spatters, down a crumbling alley, a meeting is taking place.

The area is otherwise deserted - there's not much viable, picked clean and dirty, and the occasional lookout that can be seen peering through cracks in old boarded up windows assume anyone not dressed like a Militia agent has been invited. (Because who else would know where to go, and when?)

Inside a ramshackle building lined with plastic sheeting and lit up with glowing orb lamps, something between an auction and a political negotiation is taking place: children, tiny-bodied and blank-eyed, being bartered for. One couple is discussing a lengthening of their contract. The slavery is hauntingly creative, from sexual sadism to plans harvest nightmares to sacrifices, destroyed and healed, destroyed and healed again. But there are no children on the premises; they're kept somewhere else, set up to be delivered to clients in secret, one at a time.

The ringleaders take great care to hide their tracks when the meeting is over - northward, to the cliffs before the coast, and the catacombs deep in the rock, where the fog border pulls only at the edges.