multiversallogs | men murdered themselves into this democracy

Entry tags:

men murdered themselves into this democracy

Who: ~~Bruce Wayne~~ Tom and Kalinda Sharma.
What: An interrupted mugging. And more.
Where: Syriac Well, near Stoneshell.
When: Tonightish.
Warnings: Violence.

The roads linking Stoneshell to civilization have become familiar to Bruce of late, in particular a twenty-four-hour coffee shop whose courtyard is constantly overgrown with grass and ivy, laced in fairy lights. It's quaint, hovering between rural and classic, though he doesn't often stay for very long; the people who frequent and operate it are polite, good, and if he stays still for any extended amount of time they start trying to engage him in conversation and, well. He's walking down the street into Syriac Well, now, gauging the temperature of whatever it is the barista made him. (Salted something? He always lets them pick.) It's innocently near-deserted at this hour, in an already sleepy corner of town. And then - something.

Most people would have missed it: a seemingly-average looking man hopping up on the sidewalk to pace a young woman, arm around her shoulder. They turn into a side-alley, her coat covers any body language cues that might be sent out. On the surface it looks fine, but Bruce couldn't not notice the way she flinched when she was first touched, the way the man's outside arm and shoulder twisted forward out of view, like he was holding something against her.

Maybe it's nothing.

Bruce sets his coffee cup down on top of a metal trash can near the entrance to the alley, almost an afterthought, as he walks over, following the would-be couple.

At first no one notices him; they're halfway down the alley (that lets out on the other side to another sedate, equally empty street) and he's got her up against a wall, wooden cross held to her throat. Her face is twisted in horror, red eyes half-shut, trying to struggle away. Bruce's expression doesn't change, but something like a wry, disgusted smile twists in him as he steps forward; what bold timing.

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Kalinda's working. She rarely isn't, and that's exactly how she likes it. She just happens to be on the opposite end of the alley from Bruce and the assault in progress. Her black duffel sits next to her on the ground and the trash bin she's digging through looking for any scrap of information that could help her case. And when she realised she wasn't alone, she dropped to a crouch to retrieve that bag instead.

She lifts her dark eyes, studying the scene for a moment before she rises to her feet. "She's a vampire, huh?" She tilts her head to one side. Rough business. Straps of her duffel in hand, she approaches slowly. "That's the thing about this place, there's always vermin to get rid of."

Saint Kelley's Memento paid off. It isn't that she was gifted from home couldn't have been acquired from a store in the city, but it just wouldn't have the same sentimental value. It wouldn't feel the same when she slid one hand past the bag's open zipper to wrap around it and test its weight. It wouldn't be as balanced.

The bag hits the floor of the alley, and there isn't much time to register that she's now gripping the shaft of a wooden baseball bat. Kalinda winds up her full swing, aiming to knock the air out of the lungs of the hunter, and hopefully drop him to a heap on the ground. Swift and vicious as the motion is, her face is impassive, save for the way her lips tighten just before the bat connects.

... Well.

Bruce stops - not up short, more like a pause to assess the rapidly changing situation - when the woman across the alley begins to engage, at first not sure where this was going, and then somewhat surprised. He remains where he is when the assailant staggers back, protesting loudly at the sudden greeting via baseball bat. Apparently he expected her to help.

The young woman against the wall slides away a bit, shooting Bruce a nervous look. He steps to one side, not blocking her, and inclines his head. You okay? She bolts to the end of the alleyway, turning back to watch them, one hand clutching her face, but she looks more shaken than hurt. Guess so.

The assailant (some kind of hunter, from the looks of it) is backing up now, as if Bruce is going to let him go, too. Instead, Bruce moves again, boxing him in. When the irritated demand of, "What the hell, man?" is snapped out, he merely shrugs.

"You heard her."

Kalinda is helping. And she's helping the hunter's ribs make friends with her bat again. She is a helper. And she's also angry -- something she didn't realise until she took that second swing. Her mind works quickly to classify where Bruce stands in this situation, and she's pleased that it seems to be in her corner.

"I'd tell you to apologise," she says to the hunter, but flitting a glance in Bruce's direction, "but I doubt you'd mean it." She raises the bat again. "How long do you think you'll be out of commission if I break your kneecaps?" Her voice stays level, probably dangerously so. Her gaze isn't even cold, just... Intense might be the right word.

The response to that is a bunch of hissed bigotry, and thus Bruce feels like - whatever, kneecap him. He crosses his arms, looking almost casual, but it's got a deceptive edge; some guy his size standing there menacingly at one end of an alley, bored-looking or not, makes a compelling referee.

The hunter lunges at Kalinda, apparently deciding to take his chances with her versus Bruce.

Bad idea?

If we're asking Kalinda? Terrible idea. She dodges artfully - she's had years of practise in scrapes like this, it just comes with the territory - and uses the man's momentum to carry him into the wall and pin him there with her knee and her bat. "Don't," she growls in warning. Whether she means don't talk shit, don't try that again, don't fight it, or all three is left up to interpretation.

"Do you want to limp home to lick your wounds yet? Or do you want me to hit you a few more times?"

Apparently he wants to get hit a few more times - he's not wholly incompetent, just clearly used to attacking people with weaknesses this woman doesn't have (holy sensitivity, so on). Bruce takes a few steps back, keeping his attention partially on the conflict still going on, to make sure the vampire girl is all right. She is, her face already healed, and by now there are other people creeping over to see what's going on. That is... less good, and so Bruce angles the assault victim to the lookers-on, one of which is a familiar barista, and overhears their plans to call the sheriff at once.

He nicks his coffee (cold by the feel of it) and heads back into the alley.

The hunter his bodily hauled back and shoved down the alley so Kalinda can put enough distance between him and her to take another swing. Because she is just that pissed now. "Is this being reported?" she asks Bruce without actually looking over her shoulder. Gotta keep your eye on the ball.

Or the patella. Whatever.

If he doesn't go down the first time, she'll just do it again. Mercy is for people who don't attack unarmed women. Even if they do happen to have fangs.

"Looks like it." He takes a sip of his coffee - it is cold. And too sweet. Eugh. "Better make sure he doesn't run off."

... He sounds so mild when he says that, too. Bruce half-glances over his shoulder, assessing the tiny crowd. Words like 'sheriff', that's good; even out here, no one is inclined to call the Militia, considering current political climate. Not that he thinks they'd normally handle hysterical calls about muggings, anyway, but now more than ever, they're fielding random calls that they'd normally kick back to local in hopes of bagging vigilantes.

Not that this woman seems like a vigilante. Whatever she is, it's very professional. (The bat or the outfit?)

Edited 2012-02-21 05:02 (UTC)

"I'm on it."

It takes a very special sort of someone to just pack up their gear and calmly walk away when they've left a man screaming on the pavement with two dislocated knees. Kalinda is doing just that, tucking a strand of hair behind her ears and adjusting the strap of her duffel bag on her shoulder, bat tucked away inside once more. "I don't think I broke him," she muses as she moves past Bruce. "But he should be immobile at least until someone comes to cart him off." She won't be sticking around for that, apparently. And for good reason, really.

Yikes. She sure is.

The screaming is apparently disturbing the gaggle of collected people. Bruce merely raises his eyebrows at her observation and takes another sip of his coffee (pointlessly) and moves away; he has no desire to end up on the local canton law's radar, even for this. There's also the reality that he penned in a guy so he could be violently crippled by a woman wielding a baseball bat, but hey, he had that coming.

Maybe Bruce has been doing this for too long.

He chucks his coffee as he passes another trash can.

It doesn't escape his notice that he's walking in the same direction as the woman and her ominous duffel bag, but there's only one short way into Syriac Well proper, and unless one of them would like to leap up and fly away, they're stuck on the same highway. Interesting.

"So I guess you weren't a short stop." Well, what the fuck does he know about baseball. (Also that's still not funny, Bruce, somebody go put his sense of humor out of its misery.)

"Homerun champ," she retorts without missing a beat. It isn't lost on her that he's following, and she doesn't seem to particularly care one way or the other. Now that she's putting distance between herself and her victim, it almost looks like nothing ruffles her. She carries herself with almost too much poise for it to be completely natural, however. She very much wants to give the impression of impassivity.

She reaches into her red leather jacket to retrieve her CiD, typing in a message as she walks. She's obviously got loads of practise at that, too. "If I hadn't intervened - if I'd just called it in - that woman would be dead. And would the law in this part of town even care?" The device is slid back into her pocket again. Kalinda's head turns slightly toward Bruce, but she doesn't actually look at him. Like the question may have been rhetorical, and she doesn't really care what the answer is, but she wants him to know she's addressing him all the same.

In contrast, the way Bruce - Tom - moves is easy, innate; if he's trying to fake anything it's that he's reeling in how almost-unreal he is, hovering on some other frequency. Confident and comfortable and not quite able to seem harmless, but he can appear uninclined to be threatening, even amiable.

He sticks his hands in his jacket pocket. "Here? Yeah."

Quiet for a bit, a clattering, noisy horsedrawn taxi passes them by, riders oblivious to any tension in the canton. Syriac Well is a 'nice' area, the sheriff and her deputies are capable, generally good-minded people who don't want trouble and don't want to rile up any of the charged politics of the city.

"You were looking for something."

She's still feeling out the politics of the city, figuring out which districts value which sorts of citizens and which get swept under the rug. It's the Militia and the way it tries to hold the city in its grip that keeps her from truly trusting any part of the system.

"I was," she confirms, but doesn't elaborate. This time, she does make eye contact. Though her lips don't curve upward, she still looks like she's smiling. Like it's some secret between the two of them and conveyed only by a look.

Women who look like that - look at him like that - are a bad idea. Just about always.

Bruce meets her gaze, and his eyebrows go up, just a little, both intrigued and - challenging? Daring? He turns, walking backwards for a few paces as he veers in the direction he needs to go in, hands still in his pockets.

"Coffee?"

He tossed his, you see; the chill in the air wrecked it, as he was watching her beat the hell out of that guy.

And she'd be the first to tell him she's likely to be no exception to this rule.

Then she'd posit that he doesn't care whether or not she does turn out to be trouble. She stops and tips her head to the left, then right, back and forth one more time as she seems to consider his query.

"Why not?"

She could use some caffeine to substitute for the ebbing adrenaline rush anyway.

If she wasn't trouble he wouldn't ask; it's a vicious cycle.

He pauses (like he did in the alley, he doesn't ever seem to stop, he just waits here and there) so that she can meander over this way if she so desires - mysterious, potentially dangerous stranger that he is, he's not about to rudely attempt to lead her away ten paces apart. The look he gives her is appraising, but not critical. There's probably something wrong with a guy who decides what she did back there is eye-catching*.

"Tom."

* Intellectually stimulating.

Heels sound on pavement as she does move to catch up with him. This time, she does smile with her mouth as well as her eyes. He did watch her beat the hell out of that guy and didn't go running in the other direction, or try to stop her. He condoned it. It should be a red flag, and it is, but it's also like a merit badge.

"Kalinda."

His smile is faint, but present in his eyes. It looks like there's a little rust on it still, someone either not used to showing that kind of emotion at all - or merely showing it genuinely. When she paces him he nods, which passes for a 'nice to meet you' in stoicese. He leads him northeast, towards the bridge to Echomire, and the little shops that little the area before it becomes deserted on the other side of the river.

"Nice handiwork."

That she doesn't grin about. She's not a total psychopath. But she does incline her head graciously. "Thanks. I don't make a habit of it." In case he was curious. "Sometimes... you just do what you have to do." Many women would have tried pepper spray, if they attempted to do anything at all. Kalinda also carries a gun, which maybe argues that she's capable of showing restraint. She didn't kill the bastard, after all.

"I don't like to see people picked on." Not unless she's doing the picking. That's different. And usually deserved. There's a saying about flies and honey.

"Timing plays into it," he says, and it might be an agreement or an observation. Maybe it's nice handiwork because she did what she did when she did it; maybe Bruce is just insane. (Well, that's subjective, no matter what.)

"The city's been restless."

Why was in in that alley, anyway? Rubbernecking? Or was he about to step in, if Kalinda wasn't there? A mystery.

She vocalises that she agrees with both statements with a quiet mm. The question of why he was there has crossed her mind. Mostly she worries he might be an investigator for someone else, out to see how much she knows about her current case, but not terribly much. It's just in the top five list for Worst Case Scenario.

"Militia only makes things worse. More tense." Her tone turns wry. "The cost of keeping the peace, I suppose." She doesn't suppose. She doesn't condone. But she also can't be sure of who she's really talking to. Also on the top five list.

Not too many people creep around in the middle of the night searching through quiet streets; Bruce wonders about her, because she doesn't seem like she was up to anything malicious, but she doesn't seem like one of the self-styled vigilantes, either. There's an awareness to him, but it's hard to assign a particular emotion to it.

"Do you find it peaceful?" He sounds wry. Either he doesn't expect her to say she does, or he doesn't care that she might find fault in his mild objection to the suggestion that the Militia is doing its job.

There's no moment of touché or similar. Kalinda only lifts her brows and tucks her chin in toward her chest. "Not especially." There's no objection, because she agrees, when the meagre lip service is taken off the table. She doesn't ask if that's why he wanders around after dark. He hasn't pried into her movements, so she returns that favour. "A lack of peace is usual a symptom of a police state." As opposed to a police state being the treatment of said symptom. It can be somewhat cyclical, supposedly.

The reality of Bruce's nocturnal wanderings is less mysterious and more lamely scandalous; he's walking back from his - well, he's walking about from Seoraj's, because work and obligations and a hundred other things exist, and he personally disdains the el train and doesn't mind the cold night air.

(That's the story tonight, anyway.)

"Well, they never start to control crime. They start to control everything."

Which, given there's no need to control everything in Baedal - the fog does it for them - makes the Militia a particular case.

"You're interested in local politics?"

Lame scandal is still scandal. Someone will find it interesting. Maybe even Kalinda. But maybe not. She lifts her head again, adjusting the hang of her duffel absently, though not self-consciously or anxiously. "I think when you settle somewhere new, it's a good idea to be aware of local politics. It's like figuring out what the native customs are."

"You've got your work cut out for you, here." Native customs in a world made up of other worlds.

The coffee shop is rustic, eclectic, and extremely mom-and-pop even for Baedal standards. (Chains are rare, and nearly everything is a small business, but some are mo off the beaten path than others.) He holds the door open for Kalinda (it jingles) and the barista greets them cheerfully, her pink skin flushing in a neon glow when she speaks.

"So I've noticed." Kalinda nods her head graciously, stepping through the held-open door past Bruce and into the shop. She's been here long enough that she doesn't even blink at the barista's interesting colouration. She's nothing if not quick to adapt.

"Nice place." And she means it. It's got character, which she definitely appreciates. "You come here often?" She procures her CiD again, so she can check in on Tableau. She's helping Angela test. Don't judge, Bruce.

Hey, he's just happy Angela's got her feet under her after the mugging. If someone's beta testing her app, that's fantastic. He glances at what she's doing, but doesn't comment. Maybe if Kalinda squints, she might notice Bruce almost smiles.

"I've been in before, but I'm an annoyingly unloyal customer everywhere." Sometimes despite that, people remember him - it's either the cheekbones or the occasionally unnerving demeanor. Who knows.

He orders 'coffee' and the barista giggles. Sigh, this dance again.

Venue checked into and review pending. She doesn't squint, but she catches that almost-smile all the same. She also attributes the notion of being an unloyal customer to a desire to avoid having a predictable routine. Call it a hunch. "They say variety is the spice of life."

She orders chai.

Bruce ends up with black coffee and cream, and he pays for both of their drinks (because he asked) and then gestures at Kalinda, positing an inquiry as to where she'd like to sit without words. Outside, someone zooms by in quite a hurry on horseback. Maybe the deputy finally picked up his phone.

Wooden chairs and benches are littered with multicolored pillows, the windows strung with beads. It would be annoyingly colorful if the intent seemed to be perkiness versus care. He doesn't mind it.

A table is chosen in a corner that's not so much quiet as it is more or less out of view of the windows. She'd normally like to watch out of them, but considering what she's been up to tonight, it's not surprising she'd want to avoid being seen. She slides her bag under her chair before taking her seat.

She crosses one knee-high boot-clad leg over the other and stirs the cloud of milk in her tea. "This was a good idea," she commends.

He raises his cup (which totally has some real kind of concoction in it, honest) in a friendly almost-salute. "There's something to be said for unique moments." Slightly wry, because every heartbeat in Baedal is unique for the abductees. But there's something to be said for the details of this moment, too.

"You adapt well." What a weird fucking compliment, Tom.

Fucking weird, but appreciated for what it is all the same. A compliment. "Thanks. So do you." That's partially an assumption on her part, but he also hasn't batted an eye at anything. She feels it's an assumption that's reasonably safe. Kalinda mimics the salute before she takes a testing sip and nods approvingly.

"What are your plans for the rest of your evening?"

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men murdered themselves into this democracy

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