I went out into the night

[controlledvariable]

Who: Stephanie Brown. Anyone who wants to meet Batgirl (Open).
What: Patrol.
Where: Starting in Mog Hill and heading towards the Spatters, passing through Bonetown and other neighborhoods.
When: Misdi/Coardi. Any time between sunset and sunrise.
Notes: Characters can run into her if they're on the rooftops as well, or if they're down on street level getting into, or up to, trouble. Rather than setting up a thread for each neighborhood, just LMK which area you're in.
Warnings: Violence/death/gore in the thread with Snape.

She had planned to wait longer until breaking out the Batgirl suit, not wanting it to be completely obvious that 'Batgirl' and 'Steph' were one and the same, but recent events have made her realize patrolling is more important than secret identities right now. And it's not like it matters if people know, they can't exactly go after her family or anything.

Even so, she was sticking to the rooftops, her aim for the night mainly reconnaissance. She's heading to the Spatters purely because the pamphlet warned against it, but she'll be making stops along the way to check things out. The city is big, and considering the distance she needs to travel, she expects to spend most of the night out. Having her grapple gun makes things easier; swinging across rooftops is quicker than running across them and she might get a lift from the El train by riding on top. She briefly wishes she had her car here, before reminding herself that she wouldn't get to see as much driving through streets as she does watching from above.

Comments

[controlledvariable]

"I started doing this when I was fifteen, 'cause my dad was a criminal and I wanted to stop him. I went out with nothing more than a homemade costume and some gymnastics training, my first few months were spent like that. I guess you could call it training on the job." She hasn't talked about it much, because most of her friends have been there for the whole journey, so to speak.

"I took a break for a while, when I came back I got some training from different people in the same business, mostly martial artists. But that was on and off for a couple of years." The bitterness in her voice is fairly obvious; Steph had loved working with Black Canary, but it'd been stopped for reasons she still doesn't understand. And then Cass had stopped training her too, just because Bruce said so. She'd been mostly on her own then, until she became Robin. "I went through a four month period of pretty extensive training with one of the best in the business."

"After I had a falling out with that trainer, I spent a year not doing anything vigilante related, though I kept fit by doing kata, weight training, gymnastics, and other stuff like it. I've been back at it for a little over a year, and I've had consistent training for about six months of that, with assorted teachers."

There's a fair bit she's left out, mostly her reasons for spending time away from being a vigilante and Steph's not sure why exactly she felt compelled to give Laura a somewhat detailed history. Part of it is wanting to prove that she can handle it, that she's been at this long enough to kno what she's doing. But she also just appreciates the chance to talk about this stuff.

[23rd]

She listens without commenting and without any kind of judgment. She would never assume that Steph is incapable because of her age -- Laura's peers are all around the same age -- or any other superficial reason, but one thing in particular stands out to her.

"You do not have powers." That's interesting. It is very unusual where she's from for adolescents to pursue this line of work without having already developed superhuman abilities in some way; most are mutants, who find themselves thrust into an increasingly violently hostile world at puberty and mostly need to learn to fight or die early. (The Young Avengers are exceptions, and even then, most of them have powers.)

The X-men round up teenagers and do their best to train them, and managed to not fail miserably at it in spite of Cyclops; the Avengers do, too, lately, she went to their academy for a while. Iron Man's Initiative had that same goal in mind, although he went about it in the most fucked way possible, of course, because... Iron Man. Fuck that guy. Someone that young seeking it out on their own isn't unheard of, but it's not common by any means.

[controlledvariable]

"Nah, most of my friends don't. We're just idiots in costumes," Steph doesn't have any illusions about how dangerous what they do is. They go up against metahumans and creatures that have them drastically out matched. But they train as much as they can and prepare themselves against their villains in the hopes they don't end up dead. And honestly, Steph is surprised more of them haven't died.

"There are people with powers in my world, and some of them do the superhero thing, but not all of us are."

[23rd]

"If you are still alive, then you are not idiots." Yes, thank you for that, Laura, so helpful and observant.

... because she knows a couple idiots and they're only alive due to luck, superhuman powers, or stubbornness. (She's thinking more Rockslide than Hellion, but...)

[controlledvariable]

That makes Steph smile, a little wryly, "Well, it's been close once or twice, but we've managed to avoid any fatal injuries."

Except for Bruce. Sort of. She's not sure if getting sent back in time counts as dying.

[23rd]

"That is common." The coming close thing, she means. God only knows how many times her team's been on the brink of death. (How many times she's actually died, speaking of what counts -- Belasco is kind of an asshole, news at 11.)

[controlledvariable]

"Yeah, it's amazing how that happens when you frequently throw yourself at people who are twice as skilled and like three times bigger than you are." Steph's smile is wry, her tone a little self-deprecating. Maybe one day she'll learn to only pick battles she can win, but that's unlikely.