multiversallogs | movements come and movements go

Entry tags:

movements come and movements go

Who: Bruce, Logan, Jason, and some friendly NPCs (no).
What: The Militia enacts a brutal raid, and your friendly neighborhood wanted terrorists interrupt it. This goes about as well as it sounds like it would.
Where: Flag Hill (west side)... for now.
When: A few days after the Militia announcement.
Notes: This is another one of those incidents that's going to get snagged by the media blackout and never reported on, but we're well past the point of no return with word-of-mouth about civilian-Militia skirmishes.
Warnings: Violence, police brutality. Samm's icon choices.

It becomes apparently not long into his searching that whatever's going on is probably a trap.

There's a “college group” that meets in a cliffside pub biweekly in Flag Hill, and with minimal digging, the fact that it's a local anti-Militia activist group is easy to uncover. Mostly young people and a few mentors who've seen and heard it all, they're passionate, edgy, but mostly peaceful – more bark than bite. With far more than minimal digging, barely-there rumors can be sifted up through the dirt suggesting that the Militia is going to be in the area that night for unrelated reasons – though what reasons, no one knows. Making an arrest? Making a buy? Meeting with informants, meeting with their mysterious, anonymous suppliers?

It's kind of an obvious trap though, Bruce thinks. All it would take is someone figuring out that those dates and locations overlap to deduce that the Militia wants to smash-and-grab both the kids in the bar and whatever vigilantes or fearless journalists show up to cash in on the rumor mill. But, he doesn't discount the notion that it might intentionally seem obvious.

Which is why he's here now, hidden in an otherwise alarmingly unsafe alcove against the cliff wall, watching the bar in question be swiftly surrounded by hooded agents. There's too many of them to do much of anything about at the present time, and besides, there's always the chance they're just going to go in there and scare people instead of making mass arrests – bursting in trying to help might just do damage. So he waits.. and then spots a familiar silhouette and gait: the telekenetic woman responsible for his smashed ribs the week before. Hm. He thinks – well, he'd better be pretty damn sure, huh? - that they found him last time by tracking the radio signal, even though he'd been certain they didn't have that kind of tech (and demonstratably hadn't, before). He's changed it up for now (obviously), but he knows after this he'll have to keep changing it every time. Even with sabotage, they're keeping up. And quickly.

From inside the bar, someone screams. A heartbeat later, a hooded man is dragging out a boy who can't be more than eighteen by his hair.

Well. Shit.

Bruce adjusts the catch of the sword across his back, and starts to move closer along the cliff wall, high above the action.

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The agent regains (is that really the right word, a distant part of his mind wonders) mass just in time to flatten Jason. It's not the same as being tackled by a persistently solid individual, because then he'd already be in the right position to throw or turn the tables; the intangible-then-suddenly-there agent catches him in an awkward, far more vulnerable position. It feels like one arm is fractured, if not broken. The gun skitters off somewhere else, possibly joining Logan in the ravine, which is just great because Baedal has so many modified glocks and there'd been at least 1/4 of a clip left. He really only has one arm free and he's pissed off enough to trigger the taser built into his glove. It doesn't have the punch of the one Bruce used, but it isn't to normal levels either. The insulation of his body armor also isn't as good, mostly because what he's wearing now are components that have been put together rather than being built to go together.

The insulation suffices, however, and if Jason triggers the glove after he's jammed a thumb in the agent's eye, well, he's pretty mad. This is not a worse team up than Kyle and Donna, he reminds himself as he kicks the agent off of him and gets up — just in time for that cinematic spray of blood and the ensuing, brief disorientation. It's... interesting. He knows there's absolutely nothing in his expression to give him away, but that that's also its own tell; he knows he could be wrong, or he could be right, but that it doesn't matter, it really and truly and for the last goddamn time, does not matter, not to either of them.

"Up?" Is all he asks, since he's never tried to truck with the Flag Hill cliff area before. It'd sure been an option when he'd first heard about the incoming raid and was looking at the area to figure out where he wanted to be, but he'd dismissed it as 'probably insane', which is the exact reason why he's sure this guy was there.

Edited 2012-09-27 20:19 (UTC)

Up and over, anyway.

This'll be fun.

Bruce is still reeling a little bit, but they've got seconds before the Militia bursts through the back of the bar after them. He jerks his head in a that way motion that's either an agreement or an ominous declaration, then takes off. Fortunately he's physically trained enough to be able to function at damn-near perfect levels even if his cognitive perceptions aren't cooperating. There is only one small problem with that, but he's not there yet. He's got a minute.

There are rickety fences blocking off the sharp edged drop of the canton border - they don't bottom out into nothingness on the other side, but cordon off an expanse of craggy rock, dirt, limestone; it's a pain in the ass to get even there, but as he drops down over the first fence he hears the sound of approaching, pissed off agents from behind him. Not bad timing, even if they'll know there's only two ways out (down the ravine, over the side).

That one small problem is, of course, if in the dark and with his head swimming, he can remember where the only safe space down below - free of rocks peeking up out of the water - happens to be.

It's probably for the best that Jason can't tell what's going on with him — that even at his most aggressively disinterested and resentful when it comes to someone who is maybe Bruce, he still trusts that person's instincts. Not that there are a whole lot of other options, here. He follows easily, right up until his feet actually hit what's left of the ground on the other side.

"Son of a—" For what it's worth, that's only a hiss. The look on his face could be sequentially represented with a series of one word exclamations. Seriously! This! You! Fuck! How does it always come to this? How? Are they really about to do this? It's not like he has a fucking plane stowed around, right?

Edited 2012-09-27 21:27 (UTC)

"You'll be fine," because of course he heard it anyway, and of course he's just going to make that assertion despite the complete lunacy of the situation, "Just brace your neck."

So it doesn't, you know, snap and kill or paralyze him immediately on impact. On impact on the dark, foreboding, fog-creature filled sea water so far down below them that it can't even be seen, the starlight is so sparse. He picks his way rapidly over the uneven ground, mapping the way in his head - he's pretty sure he's got it. Sure enough.

If he's not, well. Hopefully Logan makes it out.

"Don't go too far in either direction." A warning. Bruce reaches behind him to make sure his sword is secure, just as a shout from their backs is sounded.

And then he leaps off the edge.

Of course, he's gone before Jason can come up with anything to say, which is entirely his own fault. He only hesitates long enough to estimate the distance Bruce jumped — there's no decision to make. On the most obvious level, it's this or the militia. On a deeper level, that aforementioned trust of instinct still forms a cornerstone of his reality. Jason makes the same leap, and if Bruce didn't remember right, this will be really horrible. But he has fallen from great heights before, and though the dark that rushes up at him is new and the waters alien, he is not afraid.

Water free of bone-shattering rock greets him, plunging deep into its freezing, dark depths - immediately pushed forward by the tide, but not smashed into pieces. It's a win, even if he feels more knocked breathless than he has in weeks, and the salt water seeping into his clothes reminds him that he does, in fact, have a laser projectile burn on his shoulder.

He's under for too long to tell if Jason followed or not, and when he breaks the surface he's hindered for a split-second pushing his face covering away so he can breathe. Something bumps up against him - not a rock, but something alive, solid-massed, and he almost gets a complete thought in worrying if that kid lived or died, and then. Realizes it's not a person.

Whatever it is vanishes, then something else winds near his legs. Eel-like.

A wave tosses him, pulls him down underwater once more. He draws his sword.

Another downside to assembled as opposed to configured body armor is that there are lot more places for water to get in. People go into shock from water this cold all the time, and all he can do is bear it out, try to refocus on up and find air again. The impact dislodged some of his inventory; his arm hurts a lot too, so he just lets that one be, drifting out at his side, where it touches something that sends another surge of adrenaline through his body. That was something, an unpleasant and moving and very large something. At least that adrenaline gets him mobile, even before he's completely got his bearings. Jason breaks the surface some long seconds after Bruce, wild-eyed from the sudden shift from feeling almost stunned to fight or flight mode. He doesn't see any sign of the now underwater again Bruce, distracted by checking what possible weapons he has left.

There's the knife, that stayed with him. A sonic device might work, sound carries well in water, but where the hell is Bruce? Jason twists in the rough waves, looking for either of them. Was that a ripple near the surface, or just another wave?

It is, in fact, an eel-like creature having an experimental snap at Bruce, which Jason can sort of see once he's been pushed underwater as well. With how dark it is, it's the movement he can see and not details. The eel thing is large enough that he can take a swipe at the tail end with his knife.

Bruce is really, just beyond not in the mood for this, especially when he realizes that the massive, horrifying-looking eel creature is aiming for his left side, where the monster in the fog bit him. He hazards a well-informed guess that he is now a beacon for like kinds - drags his left hand up by his chest, and then as soon as the thing opens its great, spine-filled mouth to strike, he jams his blade into it, and out the other side, slicing its head and brain open.

There's an unearthly ear-splitting shriek as it dies, thrashing, and Bruce is thrown again. At least it's not further under this time - his sword skids a few feet away from him on the surface and sinks, but returns to his hand when he reaches for it. (Compliments to Meg's hammer.)

Face uncovered, hovering head and shoulders out of the bloody water in the push-and-pull of the tide, he looks around for Jason. There's a low, screeching sound getting closer; probably more of those things. They're going to have to get to the cliff face without getting crushed, and crawl along the side to the shore. Swimming is no longer an option.

The shrieking and thrashing and sudden prevalence of disgusting organs convinces Jason that this particular eel is not a problem anymore, but he is desperate to get away from the cloud of chum before other things come to start eating. Also because it's disgusting. He manages to pop up out of the flow of it to catch a breath, heading toward the cliff face already at the dogged speed of someone who just had their night. He didn't actually see Bruce, but he assumes that if Bruce killed it, then he's sufficiently fine and can make it by himself.

He catches Jason's escape. Good. Bruce waits for another few heartbeats, letting him get a sufficient lead on him. If he is bait thanks to his injury, at least this way they'll aim for just him instead of the other guy, or both. The surface of the water breaks, rippling, and Bruce makes a slicing motion - the tip of his sword catches something that immediately darts away, deciding that the corpse of their kin is an easier meal than the guy with the pointy object.

For now.

Bruce lets a wave carry him to the cliff wall, his attachment to it decidedly ungentle, but effective. Sword sheathed, he gets a grip and pulls up, six feet or so behind wherever Jason is. One of the eels bursts up out of the water and slams itself against the rock in between them - it's startling, but all it does is bounce back down into the waves. Bruce mutters something that's lost in the sound of the waves crashing but could be an irritable "Christ", and begins scaling along towards the shore.

The wind isn't particularly strong tonight, but in freezing wet clothes, tired, a little beat up, and with one arm fractured, Jason is moving along entirely on the strength of his aggravation. However, it must be carefully mustered for the effort of climbing and inching along, so he only flinches and curses internally at the optimistic eel. Bruce also gets a cursory glance. At this point, however, he's focused on survival. He is not going to die of hypothermia clinging to a cliff or from falling back into the water because that's stupid.

It is the angriest, most silent climb he's ever done. If his eyes could shoot lasers, the cliff would be gone. None of it has anything to do with Bruce (anymore), though, all of it is simply the Jason engine at work. And when they reach shore, he staggers a little but keeps going.

In an entirely perverse way, the sound of the ocean and the precise work of climbing actually becomes relaxing to him. No more eels attempt to leap from the water, though he sees the backs of them sometimes, awfully close, looming. Soon enough there's too many rocks for them to fit between, and then the shallows.

He walks backwards up onto the shore, staring up at the sky and the cliff - but nothing comes down after them, and nothing follows them out of the water. At best, they're presumed dead, but Bruce feels like that's probably the lucky option, and thus not likely. They'll be looking for them in Raven's Gate, because it'd be practically suicidal to stay out here in harsh, rocky, gnarled sandy-floored beach forest after that fall, and after the freezing water. So of course they need to stay out here.

Slightly behind Jason when he turns back around he asks, "You all right?" His tone isn't concerned, exactly, and is instead efficient; an offer to patch or splint something in an emergency if he needs it right away. Without the distortion masking his voice it's familiar - as if it wasn't enough for his face to give him away after all that - and, well. In the dark, soaked, such trifling details as brown hair and brown eyes, a few inches shaved off here and there, don't seem to exist.

Edited (what happened to that sentence) 2012-09-27 23:41 (UTC)

Jason glances at him as if he'd forgotten Bruce was there, which he had only in the most superficial sense, and nods shortly, just as efficient. He'd felt his arm already and bones aren't sticking out, so that's fine. Now that anger isn't necessary to keep him going, it's all gone, used up. That is a version of Bruce, and that's fine like his arm is fine. He trudges towards the trees with not much on his mind other than getting out of the wind. While he's not in the worst shape ever, he's reached a similar conclusion about Raven's Gate. For the first time in a very long time, he misses Gotham: he misses how well he knows it, how easily he can disappear. You could almost get the feeling Baedal wanted something out of you, though that's probably incipient hypothermia talking.

All right, as long as they're both in one piece, that's fine. Bruce looks insufferably not tired despite everything, but strangely reflective. He's thinking about his moment up in that alley, what he saw, and the fact that he nearly decapitated someone. Not for the first time, he thinks about how he's practically a stranger to himself here in this city.

When they're deep enough in the tree cover to be obscured from anything watching on the beach, he runs one gloved hand over his hair, shakes it out, and then pulls his left glove off. His hand's still a little screwed up, and the bandages are unwound and half jammed elsewhere by now; he holds the glove in his mouth as he walks, wrings the cloth strips out, and start re-wrapping it.

Some kind of night bird hops along the branches near them, and makes a curious sound. Bruce shoots it an irritable look - you know, like he can just control the world around him by sheer force of his disdain - and, miraculously, it shuts up.

Jason has a lot more to wring out, so he concentrates on that. The idea that he has to invest more in his outfit is one he approaches grudgingly, because not two years ago he swore off costumes. But it wouldn't be a costume, it just all has to fit together better. In fact, there was a lot that happened tonight that he wants to fix. The glove was good. He liked the glove. Thanks, Dick. The gun was bad. He could consider getting weird, because the militia has defenses against most sensible things, but he really hates feeling like he's turning into a Flash rogue. Plus that shit is complicated. Why didn't they ever just patent it all and make a fortune, Jason wonders like five million other people before him.

Time passes. He becomes slightly less damp, and considers splinting his arm despite his previous declaration. He is doing a very good job of casually pretending Bruce isn't there. It's almost comfortable, apart from the fact everything sucks.

"How's your arm?"

You know, since you're fine, and everything. (Yes, Virginia, he can tell.) It's dark and horrible and filled with fuck-knows-what, but Bruce either knows where they're going or is faking it really well, because he's moving ahead with the determination of someone who has point b in mind.

His own laser-burned shoulder is about as fixed as it's going to get for now; salt water and now being effectively left to dry is fine. It's not so much a priority as his perception, but that seems to have melted back into normalcy, for now.

"It'll hold. Where're we going." His voice suggests his curiosity is mild, borderline conversational, a genuine question if one of little importance. As opposed to a totally smooth topic change. A part of him hopes the answer isn't to his liking so he can stop following Bruce around and wander off, but he can't really imagine an answer in this context that would inspire that reaction. A butchery. The circus. Texas.

Because Jason is very pointedly not looking at him, he misses the incredulous look that passes over Bruce's face - but he can probably feel the weight of his gaze at the back of his head. It's a weight that specifically telegraphs Okay, Princess, but if you trip and land on it in a minute, you'd better not whine.

"Back to Flag Hill." ... Sir.

Without looking, he lifts his good hand and the middle finger attached to it.

"Where. In Flag Hill." A discotheque. A tractor pull. The crusades. Come to think of it, he's not actually sure what a tractor pull entails, other than, obviously, a tractor and pulling of some sort. But surely, Bruce knows. Bruce knows everything. He could ask right now. In fact, he's probably been to one. He could do it if he had to. Because he's Bruce.

His silence is a bit more peaceable now, which could, under the circumstances, be worrying.

He almost says A fine establishment, just to see if Jason will actually play twenty questions instead of whirling around and attempting to take his head off, but decides against it. The way he's not looking at him is just as obvious as the way Tim would stare unnervingly - he prefers this, honestly. People who hate him are much easier to understand.

Serenely: "A camping motel."

Flag Hill is known for its camping and outdoor pursuit resources - two guys coming out the woods into a place like that is nothing. And besides, he knows which ones will let him make some calls on a hacked CiD, if he decides he needs to.

A lumberjack camp. Broadway — okay, enough. He's not going to snap and do something as stupid as leave. Sure, he might be able to make it, but it'll just be uncomfortable and annoying.

"Then I'll deal with it there." His arm, presumably. Jason sounds calmer now. A fine establishment probably would've derailed the process, or maybe he would have managed to laugh after a moment of strangled outrage; in this state, it's a toss up.

Edited 2012-09-28 01:43 (UTC)

Suit yourself, his lack of reply seems to say, and he declines to point out that it's going to be a walk of an hour or more through this terrain. (See again: Princess Jason.) If he decides he wants help with it, he can elect to amend his decision and say so.

The forest, growing brambly and bizarre against the side of the cliff they'd just plummeted from, is host to all manner of strange sights, though (mostly) not the horrific, flesh-devouring strange sights like the forests above them. They have to inch their way through thick trees, and at one point, carefully maneuver around a massive, rope-like spiderweb while a great golden spider the size of an SUV tire clicks and shimmers from above, watching but not getting near them. Bruce uses his oddly-shaped sword to slice an opening through the far side of the web so they can get through. On the other side, it shakes clean with barely a movement from him (weird), and he replaces it at his back as the spider scurries down to repair the gap.

"Always nice to find something that's not trying to eat you, here." Mild, a little dry. He watches it for another half-moment before moving on.

It seems to suit him fine, as he doesn't slow or stumble any throughout their journey; he's just not thinking about it anymore and the long term repercussions, in his mind, will be minimal, partly because he still operates like the 'long term' has a maximum length of ten years. This is an improvement on the previous definition of 'long term', which was something like two years. If he ever gets beyond those measures, he will undoubtedly find time to regret a lot of things.

The spider and the comment don't get any response from him since he figures it wasn't an actual invitation to converse. Jason can't disagree with the sentiment and he's generally unappreciative of nature. Some ten minutes further on there's something rustling around behind ferns, but it hurries away as they approach, and by the sound, it is something low to the ground with at least four legs.

In contrast, Bruce thinks nature is actually pretty cool, which is probably runoff of his time in Tibetan Bhutan, and thus a difference that goes beyond height and hair - though it's not like he's stopping to take pictures. There's just a care to the way he moves. Then again, that could just be because he's an actual ninja.

Silence is passable for many long minutes, even after the thing in the bushes darts away. A marsupial-like tree dweller with saucer eyes peers down at Jason first, then Bruce, blinking curiously but too sluggish to move. Also there are mosquitoes. Which totally blows.

Curiosity nags at him just a little. It's not quite like it was with Ivy, even though he appreciated her disdain equally. She was curious about him in return, whereas Jason seems to hope Bruce will just burst into flames and leave anything useful behind.

It is a byproduct of his face, though in actuality what Jason currently hopes for is to not have to talk to Bruce about anything of personal importance and then to go their separate ways and continue not talking about anything of personal importance. He assumes that after tonight's hilarity, they won't be working together, which is fair enough considering the sheer chaos of it. Coordination might have made it better, and coordination is still possible, but it's just weird. In situations like these which involve a lot of people's lives, including his own, it would be most ideal not to have awkwardness and tension.

He has met a lot of versions of Bruce, so many that he can't quite tally it up (and doesn't want to). Some, like this one, didn't know him. He didn't exist or he wasn't around, it was one of those weird eras with fancy hats, all sorts of things. So it's not exactly personal. This one kills, at least. These are seriously boring but persistent thoughts, not unlike the goddamn mosquitoes. Jason slaps the side of his neck and thinks resignedly about malaria and blood flukes.

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