movements come and movements go

[caballero]

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.

Comments

[goodsoldier]

"Oh, no wonder you like me so much," Jason says blandly, pushing some vegetation back from the path they're taking. It seems like he might have forgotten his promise about leaving, or rather, now there's less of a guarantee he'll stay away so ardently. Bruce brought this on himself. What if he has more stories like that? Anyway, they both hang out with Vanessza, apparently.

[caballero]

"Yeah, you're completely cool." Deadpan. Look at this, check out this bonding they're doing here, these are the sparks of the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

No, he isn't that disdainful, he's just... Bad at this? Maybe? It's not quite banter, and it's not even exactly friendly - it could be the strange faux-ease he has due to his age, his contemporary modern context, or it could be a mirage. Bruce has learned by now that the stoic and mysterious act draws more attention to himself, but one-on-one and in public. Which is why he fully embraces being an insufferable nerd when he's not Batmanning around. Whatever Bruce is, he's always a crap shoot to read.

Their trek begins to move more obviously uphill now, and alongside the beginnings of the cliffs that Flag Hill rests atop - crevices in the rock wall are visible even in the dark, framing a deep blackness that is somehow ominous. One of them appears to have a spiral-shaped top, and Bruce instinctively picks a path that gives it a wider berth. Not In The Mood.

[goodsoldier]

He does another one of those little exhales of amusement, and unlike Tim and Dick, nothing about Bruce's manner (at the moment) bothers him personally. It's been years since he's been so acutely attune, so reactive to whatever Bruce is doing or saying the way they are. Something of that still remains on the few occasions when they've fought, either against each other or together against other opponents, but it doesn't exist here with this one, as far as he knows. There's no sense of jarring disconnect in Bruce's differences or lack of personal relationship, there's only completely appropriate disconnect and lack of personal relationship. And if he can't read him, that's what Jason expects, and frankly a comfort.

As long as there's not lots of climbing, he won't have any cause to renege on his apathy toward a splint. Jason concentrates on making his way. The silence is just silence now, he's not steaming or brooding or trying not to laugh.

[caballero]

Bruce doesn't want to admit to himself that Jason reminds him a little of himself against Ducard, because that would put a spin on things that he's just not willing to consider. There's a hollow sort of gladness, however, that at least one of them has had the sense to be bitter about it. The reverence and concern is just. Too much, and too wrong. Fear is understandable, hatred is understandable. He's a monster. There's no room to pretend otherwise.

Their gently sloping hike leads them briefly alongside a small pool formed from a barely-there trickle of a stream, lined with tiny, blue-glowing frogs. Bruce thinks they're fantastic, but doesn't say so.

A little while after they leave the frogs, he stops - not short, but one moment he's moving and the next he's not, fully alert in a pointed way, dead silent, hand on the hilt of his sword and staring ahead into the darkness. There's no sound.