multiversallogs | I know it's hard but...

Who: Steph Brown, others [closed]
What: Monster fighting, rescues, healing
Where: All around Baedal
When: Over a two week period since Hasi broke reality
Notes: Everyone has their own thread starter, which are in no particular order, if there are any problems/questions please let me know!
Warnings: NPC death, gore, violence, monsters, PTSD, my inability to be succint, if I've missed any feel free to tell me

The monsters are new for her.

It's not that she isn't used to dealing with all the assorted bullshit that Gotham can throw at a vigilante, but there's nothing quite like this. There are people like Killer Croc and Zsasz and Black Mask, who might be horrific, but they're still people. These monsters are more like animals, but they're huge and violent and they hunt people. She's not trained for this, she's not equipped for this and she sure as hell isn't prepared for it. Getting the gun and new batarangs from Rex helps, and she adds a large hunting knife to her array of weaponry, but it still doesn't feel like enough.

It's terrifying, in a way that she doesn't have time to deal with, so she pushes that down and focuses on doing what she can. There's moments, as she faces down things that eclipse her worst nightmares, when she wonders if she should be hiding instead of out here fighting. But there are other moments, times when she wins, when she gets to reunite a parent with their lost child, and it doesn't matter that Steph is bleeding, bruised and exhausted, because she did good.

At the behest of Babs, and the reminders her own body sends, she forces herself to stop and rest once in a while. Usually she goes back to wherever Babs is, or Kate, if she happens to be resting at the same time. Her sleep happens in small bursts, a few hours here or there, curled up near Babs or Kate and letting the exhaustion take over. She tries not to eat too much, because she has no idea how long these monsters will stay in the city and she's scared that food will start running out. She's already started collect supplies, bringing them to the safe places and distributing them to people.

She doesn't think about the dead bodies she sees, or the injured people. A lot of Baedalites can look after themselves, but some of them can't and it's those who end up as smears on a wall. Except for when she has to stop to throw up, after seeing half eaten corpses; then she thinks about it, and she doesn't know how long she can keep going out and coming back alive.

She hopes no one will hold it against her if she gets killed.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Steph can't decide whether she approves or disapproves of Martel turning the horse around and beheading the uruk hai. She should probably approve, because now the damn thing is dead. But on the other hand, she is seriously not good with horses and only barely managed to stay on Kalten.

She does approve of her suit right now, it means that with her head turned away from the uruk, she avoids getting blood on her face.

"Uh, thanks," she speaks up after a moment of being unsure what to say. Partly due to the realization her boss just caught her in her Batgirl suit.

The costume - outlandish and bizarre as it struck him - hasn't yet really registered to Martel, if only because he's one of those irritating people who have more complex ways than the visual to recognize someone. In a city like Baedal, he tends to rely on those other senses more habitually than he otherwise might-- or maybe that's just long-standing paranoia on his part.

(Not an unfounded thing.)

“Not at all,” he says, not looking back as he wipes blood from his sword, sweat and blood (his, from earlier, and the uruk hai's, now) plastering his shirt to his torso and outlining some of his own scars. “Kalten becomes restive if not properly exercised.”

Really, she did them a favour! Clearly!

"Well, in that case, I guess you should be thanking me," it's said with the edge of teasing that Martel should be familiar with now. This is pretty much Steph's default mode, and it gets worse when she's been fighting. Adrenalin makes her snarky.

It's still weird to be having a conversation with Martel's back and hair, which has admittedly seen better days. She hopes he's not too badly hurt, "How much of that blood is yours?" Apparently she is determined to make sure he's looking after himself, even in the middle of a monster invasion.

“It's nothing,” he says, dismissively, which at least means 'some of it'; while it's fair to say Martel rarely knows quite how to feel about concern for him, it never matters much to how he responds to it. What's the worst that could happen, after all? He's already died.

(He's not in a hurry to do it again, at least. Not any more.)

“Where am I taking you, then?”

"You're not allowed to get yourself killed, I'd have to find a new job," covering her worry with a joke is more for his sake than hers; she knows he's not the type to let people fret over him. Though she easily slips into her nurse voice for the next thing she says, "If you're hurt, you should let someone look at it." She knows Hermione's magic is suited to healing, but she has no idea what Martel is capable of.

His question makes her pause for a moment, considering her options. She should probably go back to Babs' and rest, but she's not badly hurt and could go another hour or two before collapsing, "Do you know what parts of the city have been hit the worst?" That's partly an answer, in that she'll go wherever she's needed most.

“The city is in chaos and the beasts come through and roam at will; I could set you down here now, let you wait, and sooner or later this would be the worst part of Baedal a while.” His tone is frank, more than anything else; the better question, increasingly, is where in the city isn't hit hard? (The answer to that is 'no where', though sanctuaries are springing up and Martel has made himself useful as an escort to one or the other already.)

...he says, blithely ignoring her good advice about healers.

One day she's going to befriend someone who isn't endlessly frustating and stubborn, and she won't know how to deal with them.

"That's not helpful," is what she grumbles instead of commenting on his lack of response to her advice. She probably shouldn't antagonize someone who just saved her ass, but there's no real annoyance behind her words, so she thinks she can get away with it.

She gives it another moment's thought, still doing her best to ignore the fact she's sitting on a horse - and fighting down the urge to joke about how Martel doesn't exactly smell like the man her man could smell like - before deciding on a course of action, "I'll head to the Spatters. They usually get overlooked down there."

It's where her patrol route in calmer times usually takes her, because it's true that a lot of the officials, and other vigilante types stay away from the Spatters. Aside from Laura, really, and god knows what Laura is up to right now.

It's not an area in which Martel himself has spent a lot of time - any time at all - but he knows where it is, has made a point of learning his way around this city (even Chnum, tolerated by dint of his origins, though he's disinclined to press his luck too hard) and particularly his way around this city in a crisis. The route they take won't be the most direct, but it will be the quickest available--

“The Spatters,” he agrees, urging Kalten down a different path.

"Thanks," she wasn't entirely expecting him to actually take her there. Because it's Martel and she can never really get a good read on him, despite the fact that she tries.

She tries to stay quiet, mostly for his sake, and also because she doesn't want to get kicked off the horse for being chatty but it's hard to be quiet, "I hope it goes without saying that the whole... costume thing shouldnt be mentioned in public." Just in case once things are back to normal - and she's praying that will happen - she wants to be sure Martel won't randomly bring this up. She really, really doubts it, but it never hurts to check.

A pause follows this, almost reflective. 'Superheroes' are not a concept with which Martel is familiar in the slightest - vigilantism does not exist in his world in this form, and he hasn't moved in the right Baedal circles to have become acquainted with the practise. There is no reason for him to make any kind of connection between her activities and what looks to him like 'some daft get up'.

“What you do in your private life, Stephanie, is absolutely no business of mine.”

...in other words he's not asking in case it's a sex thing, look at you, you're practically a child.

"Thanks. I really don't need the militia finding out that it's me in this," That was a poorly constructed sentence, Steph. To be fair, she's still feeling a little rattled and is just generally questioning her life choices in general.

It's not a sex thing, at least.

He's not asking.

--though he'd have heard worse, if it were. Much worse.

“Heaven forfend.” It shouldn't be possible to be so dry in the midst of this, occupied with navigating an unfriendly city - their route alters repeatedly, and it'll take longer to get there but it'll also mean not running every gauntlet, which would've taken yet longer - but if he were going to pick any day to stop having an attitude with the world, it was never going to be one like this.

"One day I'm gonna teach you how to converse like a normal personal," This is clearly a serious threat and something Steph could actually achieve.

She is probably a terrible person for Martel to have rescued, because she never shuts up especially not when she's in situations that are unsettling, and ridiing a horse through a partly decimated city is definitely one of those situations.

"You do know where we're going, right?" They seem to be taking the long way 'round.

I know it's hard but...

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