multiversallogs | I went out into the night

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I went out into the night

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.

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"Isn't that what ears are for? Or do you have to rely on your eyes only?" Kate won't be able to see her smirk, but it's in her voice.

The last two are starting to look a little nervous, but they come at Kate and Steph anyway. Steph dodges a punch, then uses her bo staff to trip up one guy, following his momentum with an axe kick to his shoulder, sending him down hard. He's not unconscious, but he's smart enough to stay down.

She turns to make sure Kate's handling the last one fine.

"You can't hear a fist coming, but you can definitely hear it when it hits your face and by then, it's too late," Kate laughs as she pulls her battle staves out of the loops of her pants and connects them into a staff not too different from Steph's. One end gets jammed into the gut of the man and the other end is easily flipped over to crack the back of his head. Not hard enough to give him brain damage, but just hard enough to send him into naptime on the concrete.

Oh, she handled him just fine.

"It's never too late."

She has zip-strips on her, but she's not sure if they're worth using. She hasn't seen any cops around, and there's no way she's gonna trust the militia, even with assholes who probably deserve it. So she just collapses her staff and watches Kate work, "You're pretty good. Been at this for long?"

It's an easy question to answer, but Kate shakes her head at first. "Not here." She means she isn't about to start telling her teen superhero backstory right around some perps. For now, she whips out her CiD and makes a quick call for whatever goes for non-Militia cops in Baedal, then nods at Steph to follow her as she leaves the area for a nearby rooftop to both leave the scene and keep watch until the authorities come.

"Right," Steph follows after Kate, easily climbing up to the roof and taking position to watch over the perps. She also takes two energy bars out of a pouch on her belt, offering one to the other girl, "Want one?"

She's curious about the other girl, wondering what sort of world she comes from and how she ended up as a vigilante. But she'll wait a bit before asking questions, not wanting to ask too much at once.

Now perched on the roof, Kate slips the quiver of arrows off her back (those should look familiar to Steph, even if Kate's costume hides her true identity) and finds a stray cinder block to make a seat out of.

"Thanks," she says, accepting the bar and chewing a few moments before continuing. "A couple years now. Seems just like yesterday, though." There's an unsaid exchange of storytelling from Kate to Steph; it's her turn now.

She definitely notices the quiver, her eyes widening slightly, but she doesn't say anything yet. Letting Kate know she's figured out her idenity might give her own away, and Steph isn't ready for that just yet.

"About five years, minus six months when I was sixteen and a year when I was eighteen." She won't go into detail about the reason for taking breaks, even if asked, "What name do you go by?"

Kate has an inkling she might have run into this person somewhere. The voice is familiar enough to ring some bells, just not the bells that'll give her a name. It's bugging her, really. Where does she know this woman from?

"Hawkeye." There's a story behind that, one Kate will tell later, but right now, she's eying Steph with curious eyes. "What about you?"

Edited 2012-01-13 05:58 (UTC)

"Batgirl, the third one." It's a harmless bit of information to give out, and Steph kind of feels the need to let people know she didn't come up with the name, because Batgirl is a boring name.

"You're used to fighting alongside people, aren't you?" She fell so easily into step with Steph, most people have trouble working like that.

"Well, I guess this is where I admit I'm the second Hawkeye," Kate laughs sheepishly. Later obviously came sooner than she expected. "Usually, but we sometimes split up to cover more surface area during patrols."

Or, you know, sometimes two of the three of them are grounded.

A quick glance back down into the street and Kate notices the authorities on the scene coming to pick up the trash. "So what happened there?" Fight first, ask questions later, obviously.

"There's nothing wrong with being a legacy. Is Hawkeye your first ID?" She's never heard of Hawkeye, but she can't say she's surprised. Kate and her didn't seem to be form similar worlds, and this just confirms it.

"You're on a team?" A team that patrols together, even, It's a bit of a foreign idea to Steph, most superhero teams in her world are really only there for crises.

"They'd be prowling around looking for prey, I stepped in just after the found some, but before they could do any damage." She wants Kate to know she didn't just jump the guys without making sure they were actually criminals. Steph gets paranoid about people thinking she's reckless.

"No, but let's not talk about the long list of ones I rejected." She's technically the third Hawkeye, but the second dude to have that name is a little out of Kate's realm of superhero information. Besides, Clint had it first. Captain America felt she earned it and gave it to her (or more like she took it and he let her keep it, but details schmetails) so Steve's and Clint's approvals are the only one who count.

Kate shrugs at Steph's questions, noticing that the exchange of information isn't quite even here and chooses to stick to another part of the conversation for the moment. "Good job. I doubt they learned their lesson, but it's enough of a warning that'll stick with them for a while."

Turning back to Steph, Kate cocks her head to the side and decides to just come right out with it. "You sound really familiar to me. Are you from New York?"

"Took a while to find one you like?" It's pretty much a rhetorical question, Steph is glad that it was fairly easy for her to pick her first identity.

"I'll be patrolling here a fair bit, hopefully I'll catch them if they try something again."

She smiles at that. She could try to keep her identity a secret from Kate, but she thinks it'll be safe to tell her. Kate seems to be a genuine hero, rather than a villain parading as one, and she figures other heroes are usually good at keeping secrets. And, at the end of the day, she's in another universe where there's not much Kate can really do. "Not quite."

Steph reaches up and pushes her cowl back, smiling at Kate.

"More like it took a while to find one that didn't sound stupid."

Her eyebrows reach the top of her sunglasses when the cowl comes off and Kate can't help but snicker. "Well, that explains why you thought you could beat me when we first met." Steph still can't, by the way, even if she wished hard enough. Kate just won't let her.

Kate pulls off her glasses, not to give out her own identity which she safely assumes Steph has already figured out, but for a comfort thing. She rubs at her eyes and continues to laugh. "Librarians by day, crimefighters by night. You think Martel knows about this?"

"I thought you might've been in the vigilante game. Most normal people aren't as confident in their fighting abilties." Steph would too win. Maybe. She's definitely still up for that sparring match.

"I doubt it, I've tried to be careful and I'm assuming you have too." She grins, Babs might grumble at her later for telling Kate, but Steph doesn't regret unmasking, now she has a friend both as Steph and as Batgirl.

"When you know you're good, why downplay it?"

Kate nods and stretches out her legs in front of her. "Only the people from my world know. Even there I have to keep it on the down low even more." With her famous last name and her father's connections, the lips would be flapping if it came out that Derek Bishop's youngest child is skipping class and trolling the streets at night fighting people twice her age with the skill and agility of somebody who's done a lot more than just take after school fencing lessons. "This job has its pros and cons."

"Modesty is overrated."

"Yeah, I have people from my world here too. It wasn't much of a secret when I started out, but it sort of ended up having to be, mostly to keep my mom safe." Stephanie Brown isn't anyone important, and Tim used to call her by name when they were in costume. She nods solemnly at Kate's comment, "It really does. I love the adrenalin rush, and I'm glad I can protect people, but it's not always easy."

"Which is why I don't bother with it." The boys call Kate by name while in costume sometimes, but the benefit of her first name being so common is that she can be any of the millions of Kates in New York.

Before answering to Steph's statement, Kate goes quiet for a long while, reminiscing about the moment she decided to take up the bow and arrow and this non-monetary paying job. "Somebody has to help those who can't help themselves. Why not us?" She used to be one of them; not anymore. She swore to herself to never be that scared and helpless again.

Steph waits for Kate to speak, letting her think over whatever she needs to. She smiles faintly at the reply and nods, "That's pretty much how I feel about it. I'm not like a lot of the other vigilantes in my world, I only handle the little stuff, but I think there are people that need to do that."

Although she has actually been handling more big stuff lately, but none of the saving-the-world business that Tim, Bruce, etc get up to.

"We started with the little stuff too. Muggers, purse snatchers, bank robbers. Then we got sucked into the bigger things." Civil Wars, alien invasions, and the list goes on and on.

Kate crumples the now empty wrapper in her hand and sticks it into her pants pocket, making a mental note to find a trashcan later. "Why'd you start?"

"I think that tends to happen when you join a team," the Teen Titans always have to deal with a lot bigger things that Steph is used to. It's part of why she hasn't tried to join one.

"My dad was a supervillain," It's a simple explanation, and she figures Kate will be able to guess the rest, "What about you?"

Kate smirks and looks down at her hands before looking back at Steph. "Remember when I mentioned that story about my sister's wedding? Then."

After that night, the rest is downhill history.

"That's some story," Steph is both amused and impressed, "But you knew how to fight before that."

It's not really a question; most people can't just pick up a throwing star and use it effectively unless they've had some sort of training.

"I did." She isn't about to tell Steph about that day in the park. Nobody here knows about it. Kate had told Billy about it long ago in that other place, but here, she's sure he either forgot or just doesn't know. It'll stay that way for a while longer, until she is good and ready to bring it up.

Kate falls quiet again, fiddling with the wrapper in her pocket so it's the only noise piercing the now quiet night. "We should get going." If they're going to patrol together.

Edited 2012-01-21 18:44 (UTC)

Steph is smart enough to know there's me going on there, and that it's the sort of thing she shouldn't push.

"Alright," She stands up, stretching to limber up, "Do you have a regular patrol route?"

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joiedeviolet - 2012-01-22 01:54 (UTC) - Expand

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controlledvariable - 2012-01-22 02:00 (UTC) - Expand

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