multiversallogs | I told her once I wasn’t good at anything.

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I told her once I wasn’t good at anything.

Who: Stephanie Brown and Ilde Decima
What: First meetings!
Where: Howl Barrow, the river nearby
When: Night! Sometime this week.
Notes: SORRY FOR SPAMMING THE LOG COMMUNITY I DO WHAT I WANT THOR ETC
Warnings: Violence

Bar fights are not Steph's specialty.

Which is, of course, why she ends up trying to break up one outside Anarchy 99. She has no idea what started it, or even who started it, but it's a messy, all out brawl and she leaps down into the fray in an attempt to stop it before anyone gets seriously hurt. She puts herself between two guys trying to gut each other and manages to disarm them both while also dislocating their wrists. One howls in pain, the other scowls and tries to kick Steph in the face, but she blocks it and jabs him in the solar plexus; it's plenty of pain for them both to decide they're better off slinking away. It's makes enough of a ruckus within the brawl that suddenly she's drawing too much attention and the focus of the fight shifts from 'all out' to 'who the fuck is that girl in a weird costume and why is she trying to break up our perfectly good fight?'

"Fuck." She should have thought this through.

There's a moment of almost complete stillness as they all size each other up, Steph barely daring to breathe as about twenty pairs of eyes - and some trios of eyes, which is extra worrying - stare at her. She's not quite in the middle of the mass of bodies, but she's too far in to cut and run without having to fight her way through at least a few people. She could use her grapple, but she's not sure she could pull it out and get up in time to avoid a fist to the face. She wishes she'd taken her bo staff out earlier; there's no time to do it now.

The stillness is broken by a shout of "get her!", followed by a fireball being hurled in Steph's direction. She dodges, bringing her cape up at the same time to block the flames -- thank god for fireproof material. It leaves her open to someone kicking her in the ribs, driving the breath out of her, but before they've even pulled their foot back, she's grabbed onto their ankle and thrown them over backwards. The commotion of that is enough for her to get back up and start fighting her way through the crowd. There's no temptation to stay, she'd been outnumbered even before she'd realized some of them had magic, or powers, or something that was gonna end with her turning into a charred crisp.

They move like a swarm; any time she thinks she's getting near the edge, more break around to block her way. They tug on her cape and her hair, trying to get a hit on her despite the fact she's lashing out, delivering punches that connect with the sound of noses and jaws breaking and smashing her feet into knees to send people down. It's messy and painful and makes her appreciative of the armor in the Batgirl suit. Her Spoiler costume would've been a mess by now.

They've gotten close to the river when she makes it out of the brawl, with a lot of bruises and a bloody mouth, but she's out and she can start running. They pursue, of course, and when another fireball flies past Steph's shoulder she decides 'fuck it' and angles towards the bridge she can see ahead. The next fireball hits her in the back, fortunately most of the force is absorbed by her cape, but she's pretty sure the ends of her hair got singed.

In the middle of the bridge, she stops and turns, the surprise of the move enough to bring her pursuers up short. Without a word, she flips the bird, on both hands, then turns to the side and dives straight into the river. The shouts from above are muffled by the water as Steph pulls a small Bat designed rebreather from a pocket on her thigh belt and lets the blood in her mouth get washed away by the probably polluted water. With the device in her mouth, giving her a half hour of oxygen, she starts swimming.

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Away. She wasn't so much trying to get somewhere as to just not be near the people trying to kill her. She looks back the way she came, trying to figure out how far she's gone.

Safe now. But she adds a shrug, because she's not 100% sure. They might've followed along the shore and kept looking for her.

Edited 2012-01-24 05:57 (UTC)

A few moments pass as they continue moving with the river - Ilde has a slight frown, like she's trying to figure something out in her head, and finally veers away from it entirely (asking whether or not it was the Militia is a little complicated with their respective vocabularies) and settles on: Face why?

It's a little simplistic, but she's trying to aim for things she's sure will make sense if Steph has trouble following; it's the costume she's trying to ask about.

She gets what Ilde means, but defintely has to think about how to put that answer into something she can sign, and she's not even sure if a mermaid would be able to understand anyway -- she has no idea if Ilde can go on land as well.

To hide. Protect family from... She has to pause and actually spell out e-n-e-m-i-e-s. Is the concept of secret identities universal? She's kind of hoping so.

Edited 2012-01-24 07:55 (UTC)

After giving that some consideration, Ilde points toward the surface - they're sufficiently far away that she's more or less confident that Steph's pursuers will have given up a while ago, and if they haven't, she can make them regret trying to come too close to the water's edge - and begins to swim upward. Their respective command of sign language is not nearly sufficient for what she wants to say.

Edited 2012-01-24 08:23 (UTC)

Steph nods and follows Ilde up. Once she breaks the surface, the first thing she does is look around to make sure they're alone, and when she's confident no one's followed her, she pulls the rebreather from her mouth and takes a deep breath. Fresh air is nice.

Then she looks to Ilde, "Hi."

"You do realize that's a completely ineffective method of concealing your identity in Baedal." Ilde's accent frequently comes as a slight surprise to those who first meet her in the river - precisely trained received pronunciation with subtler hints of Florentine Italian underneath that, she looks like river nymph and sounds like a British socialite. Nevertheless: her tone carries genuine concern.

(At least she's had the cliff notes on superheroes from Remy, which forestalls any commentary on the aesthetics involved.)

"It's worked so far, aside from me making silly mistakes," Like talking to Angela over the comm and then showing up in her Batgirl costume, but on the other hand, Jay hadn't recognized her. Neither had Kate until Steph revealed herself.

Ilde's accent is a little surprising, but it's not really a concern of Steph's and well, she went from hearing the Batman voice to the Brucie voice and that's even weirder.

"As far as you know. With humans, probably." Ilde's skepticism is evident, but it's not unkind so much as well aware of the risks of relying on it. "You shouldn't rely on it. Scent, trace signatures, the way your voice sounds--"

A shrug, and she gives Steph a little poke in the chest.

"I know what these costumes are for." Bewildering her, mainly, even if the mask part does make sense. "The Militia doesn't like people poking their nose into things. You look..." A gesture. "Poke-y. Fabric won't stop them tracing you." And anyone she knows.

It's not so much that Ilde doesn't think it's conceivably important to hide (she doesn't share details of all her activities, generally, she grasps secrecy well) but that she feels someone should point out Steph could be doing more to protect her identity. She should be, if she has any real investment in concealing it; she won't get lucky with oblivious humans forever.

The fact that this is none of Ilde's business is irrelevant, naturally.

Okay, she can't argue that point. Laura somehow figured out exactly who she was without having met before. The poke in the chest makes her blink, but she just shakes her head.

"I stay away from the militia," So far she has been; she mostly patrols in places the militia don't go, and if she does seen them nearby, she makes herself scarce.

"I don't know what more I can do." Disguising her voice would be a start, but she's always been terrible at that because her identity doesn't rest on being growly like Bruce or commanding like Tim's Robin was. She had briefly considered re-working her costume to look like her Spoiler one, just because that entirely covered her face, but she doubts that's what Ilde means.

Ilde shrugs, more a roll of shoulders as she moves restlessly in the water - her tail is still turning her circles, keeping her treading water with ease. "Research?" she suggests, dubiously; she doesn't know any better, but it seems right to bring it up and to stress the importance. "Whatever you do or don't do, don't rely on it."

Assuming it's working because nobody's actively come at her yet is a dangerous mistake, but one that strikes Ilde as easy to make by someone not accustomed to the kind of capabilities that are common in Baedal. Even in just their cohort (and Steph must be in her cohort - she seems new, to not have dealt with this already).

"A lot of people in Baedal aren't relying on what you look like, when they see you. Not just the Militia. Most of the population of Mafaton could probably smell you."

"So I should be working out how to throw vampires off my scent?" The words could be flippant, but her tone is genuinely just a little lost. Steph is used to dealing with gangs and criminals, occasionally throwing down against the upper echelon of Batman's villains - Clayface and Scarecrow - but she rarely has contact with the supernatural. The closest she's gotten is probably Klarion, and he was a little shit, but generally a good guy these days.

There's a small part of her that just wants to say I can handle it but that's stupid pride, and pride has only ever gotten her hurt. Talking like this with Ilde makes her feel like a kid again and she'd hoped she was past the days of feeling like she should go home and leave things to the adults.

"Some can sense your..." Ilde makes a vague gesture. "Everything has a-- signature. I can sense magical ones; other people don't need the magic part."

After a moment, "I don't know what you should do. I don't hide. But there must be ways." It's just a question of finding them, she presumes.

"Seems like I'm fucked no matter what I try," The anger isn't directed at Ilde, she's just frustated. How the hell is she supposed to hide herself from people who can just sense her? It's a depressing day when she actually wishes Klarion was around, maybe he'd have a way to help.

The anger doesn't last long, and she sort of sinks a little, although she's still treading water, "This magic stuff is so out of my league."

"I was supposed to go to finishing school." ...and yet ultimately committed suicide to avoid being made a soul sacrifice to something far worse than satanic; sometimes she thinks it's funny, that she was on the fast-track to 'bored socialite' and didn't even believe in fairies. It is funny, just-- in a very particularly bleak sort of way.

A moment later she nudges Steph with her tail, under the water. "Be adaptable. No assumptions. That helps."

She's not sure the analogy quite works, because Steph is still just a regular human while Ilde is apparently a mermaid who seems to hve at least some control over water, but she doesn't say that, "I guess you never made it?"

She smiles for the nudge of Ilde's tail, even thought it's a little weird, "Well, I'm good at adapting. So I've got that on my side."

"Ill-timed apocalypse." It's almost blithe, and not quite a lie but an omission of certain other details that she's ordinarily more forthcoming about. She just doesn't quite have the energy this week, not for her usual more aggressively straightforwardness about Prometheus. It's never something easy to talk about, but right now--

--now just isn't the time.

"Baedal seems to mostly choose people who can handle it."

This doesn't mean anything good about why they're here, she thinks, but it is at least a potentially reassuring thought in terms of adaptation.

"I didn't realize there were well-timed ones," She's realizes there's a lot more there than what Ilde is saying, and she hopes making a bit of a joke isn't appropriate. There's been closely averted apolcalypses in her world, but she can't imagine what actually living through one is like.

"So I get a vote of confidence from the creepy city that kidnaps people?" What? She's not bitter.

"Better than playing sacrificial lamb," Ilde drawls, and-- there's more to that, too, recent and brutal experience, but Steph's flip remark didn't seem to bother her and her own doesn't, either. Sometimes gallows humour is the only way to go, and it's the nature of her to be just a little bit more callous than is entirely appropriate. "It can always be worse."

Which is why it's best to try keeping a step ahead, she figures; even if it doesn't work, at least you're doing something, at least it's forward motion.

"I've done that, too," Mostly for her dad, because he's a complete asshole who wasn't above using her as insurance for weapons deals, "I guess you're right about this being better, at least I get to do something instead of standing around playing the damsel in distress."

"Most people in our cohort aren't the sort," she observes; more of them than not are proactive, the kind of people who get into things and investigate and do something. If one assumes that new Baedal residents are chosen to a purpose - and Ilde does assume that - then it's an interesting indication of what that purpose might ultimately be. Something worth thinking about.

"I'd almost think we were being recruited for a war, but I don't know what against." The militia seems the mostly likely, but she's not sure if they're over-matched there, even with the powered, 'xenian' members of their cohort; the militia are just so entrenched in Baedal in a way their cohort can never be.

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I told her once I wasn’t good at anything.

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