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 regards him carefully for a few more seconds before deciding that he's telling the truth about being alright. The comment about her being a superhero gets a smile, wide and kind of dorky, she doesn't think of herself as one, but it's still nice to hear someone else say it.

"Showing up out of nowhere is kind of in my job description," It's also not as impressive ad whatever the hell Sunny did, but you can't win them all. "The tricky part is disappearing into the shadows." Not that Steph does that a whole lot.

"It is?" Sunny puzzles, the-- first part, smile going wry but universally Sunny isn't inclined to poke too hard into the business of other people in the abstract hope people return the favour. But as for the second half; "I could shut my eyes, if you want, but--" He makes vague hands.

That's probably not what she'd be going for.

"Yup, appearing out of nowhere, ridiculous costumes, punching bad guys in the face," Steph is mostly just amused, once the cat is out of the bag, she doesn't mind people wanting to know more.

She snickers, just a little, "No, no, I'm just messing around. I try not to disappear too much, I've been on the other end of it a lot and I know how annoying it is." Thanks Tim, for constantly vanishing into the shadows when Steph was trying to have a conversation with you.

So that would be the anarchist part. And maybe a mask wouldn't be such a bad idea.

"Well I'm glad you didn't do that," Sunny decides, casting a look towards the hulking corpses they took down, and then around the street at large. At the rumbling stampede of villainry, most people were wise enough to duck down and hide - but soon they might come out of the woodwork, poke at the dead meat, ask questions. "Although we should consider doing a similar thing."

"I like to stick around to give the damsel in distress a chance to thank me," Standing around looking at dead monsters is totally the appropriate time for teasing Sunny -- who happens to be the damsel in this situation.

She nods in agreement, but she quickly pulls out her CiD and snaps a few shots of the deathclaws to send to Babs, both for info purposes and so Babs can send someone to dispose of the corpses. "You any good with rooftops?" She feels safest up there, despite the creatures that can fly.

"Thank you."

This is said in all sincerity - cheery over reverent, but not disingenuous all the same. Never mind if he needed it or didn't need it, she still jumped down to defend him against three fucking monsters, and that's worth some gratitude.

Turning to look at the buildings approximately where he imagines Stephanie jumped down from, he gives a short nod and sets about climbing. There's an animalistic certainty to scaling upwards for the roof ledge, sure footed against window sills and drainpipes that creak and rattle in protest beneath his weight. If he's worried about heights, he doesn't seem it, pushing himself up onto the rooftop without glancing back to see if Stephanie needs help; he is relatively sure she doesn't. The cowl is convincing.

Still, once he's there, he does look to check. It's only polite.

"All in a day's work, citizen," It's a joke, obviously, and she sounds sort of like she's mimicking someone, although it's more a joke at the expense of every superhero ever. Except Batman, he never says anything to people that isn't a threat.

She's impressed at how easily he climbs, and it just puts more questions in her head that she's too polite to ask. She climbs with a little more care than Sunny, checking that nothing is gonna break under her weight - maybe Damian's Fatgirl jokes have made her a little nervous about that - but she makes it up in relatively the same amount of time it takes Sunny.

Speaking of cowls, Steph fixes hers up, making sure her hair isn't caught up inside it because that always ends up feeling awful, and it's been a long day. She looks fairly rumpled - there are a few rips in her costume and only some of them have been sewn up - but it's mostly on the surface. She's not injured badly at the moment, which is always a bonus.

"Where've you been staying?" She hasn't seen him around much, and it's always good to know where there are safe houses - if that's where he's been.

It's nicer, up here, closer to the sky by a fractional amount... even if the sky is acting the way it is. His hands seek his pockets, shoulders at a relaxed slope, and he sort of twists to indicate the general direction of Chimer, which is to say, always vaguely north. "There's a community centre that some of the people in Chimer are using to sort of wait things out," he says. "A lot of families. I've been staying there a lot."

He sweeps a proper look up and down her, as a sneakered toe goes out to nudge at an ancient cigarette butt that's been cast into a puddle up here, from some stranger seeking a moment's quiet. "What about you? When you're not rescuing damsels."

She runs through all the assorted places she's been the past week, trying to remember if she'd gone to Chimer and the community centre there. It does sound vaguely familiar, "I think I've sent a few people there when I found them trying to get somewhere safe." It'd been a slow process, the people coming out of their homes to seek safer places, but now its happening almost constantly and it's kept Steph busy.

Steph notices the look and gives Sunny a wry smile, well aware how ridiculous she looks to people not used to superheroes. "My friend Barbara offered her place up, so I mostly crash there when she makes me take a break." Because obviously she has to be made to, there's no such thing as a Bat who takes care of themselves.

I know it's hard but...

hi hello I love you and late tags are more than okay

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