'cause when love is gone, there's always justice

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Who: Stephanie Brown, Barbara Gordon CLOSED
What: Dealing with the militia
Where: Coin's End, assorted places around Baedal
When: Over a nine day period, just after the transmissions were leaked
Notes: This took so long to write and is like 2500 words, I don't really expect anyone to read it.
Warnings: Discussions of police brutality (particularly towards children), violence, if there are any I'm missing lmk

It's a long process.

She has to draw on pretty much everything Tim, Babs and Bruce have ever taught her regarding investigation. It isn't her strong point; she's more used to deal with her fists than with her brain, but it's not impossible for her and this is important enough that she's going to pull out all stops to track the militia agent down. People hurting kids has always been something she won't stand.

Her first step is talking with Babs, she's so used to going to the other woman for advice about missions that it's second nature even though their situations are so different. Babs has seen the transmission, and tells Steph that there were more, but they decide to focus on the one for now because if they don't, Steph would probably flip out. They make their plans together and Steph heads out.

Day One

The second step is investigating the source of the transmission - not whoever compiled the transmission, Steph thinks they're one of the good guys - she needs to find out if the name and address attached to the transmission she saw is the person who featured in it. After talking with Babs, she goes home and gets changed, and is ready to go by 6:30am. She leaves the Batgirl costume at her apartment and dresses instead in all black with a bandana over her nose and mouth, and a black hoodie pulled up. It's for plausible denial; if she gets caught, she can pretend she's just a regular thief who had no idea about the transmission. There hasn't been much time since it was shown, so it's plausible at least. It might not do much, but she figures it's better than being seen as an organized vigilante.

It's still dark enough that she can climb up to a neighbouring rooftop unobserved, where she picks a spot to peer into the house using a small set of binoculars. She only sees one person, a middle aged woman, presumably Karen Nakai, walking around the house and getting ready to leave. Steph assumes she's going to work; she's dressed in plain business clothes rather than the militia uniform, but there's a chance they change into their uniform at a later point.

When the woman leaves, Steph weighs up the options of following her, or going into the house to check out the contents. She decides that following her right now wouldn't lead to much except Steph potentially getting caught by the militia, so she heads for the house instead, sticking to the few shadows left as the sun rises higher. She has no idea what sort of security would be inside, but she doesn't have time to check it out so when she's at the back door, she simply picks the lock and pushes the door open. There's an alarm system inside the house, beeping for a pin code and Steph mentally gives herself two minutes before anyone comes looking. She heads straight for the bedroom, doing a quick check for cameras as the alarm starts blaring, before rifling through pictures and personal effects. She checks for any official looking documents, but everything seems to be hidden away or kept elsewhere, and she finds nothing useful.

When her two minutes are up, she steals a handful of jewelry to keep up her cover of being a thief - and because she's feeling angry and bitter - then leaves out the back door. She takes a few seconds to lock the door, close it, then kick it open so it looks like the house was roughly broken into. With that done, she slips over the fence and into the neighbour's yard, spending the next ten minutes sneaking through assorted backyards, gardens and little side alleys until she feels she's far enough away. She pulls off the bandana and the hoodie, and she's just Steph again, some young woman who looks a little out of place in Coin's End, but doesn't raise too much attention in plain jeans and a green shirt. She takes an obscure route back to the closest train station, occasionally doubling back on her path to make sure no one's following her.

She spends the day out, heading to various pawn shops to sell the pieces of jewelry one at a time; it makes her a nice amount of cash that she'll probably end up donating somewhere. She might be angry, but she's already feeling guilty about the stealing. She's glad for the amulet she picked up from the address she got from the anonymous person on her network message. Hermione had assured it would work as a way to hide her from tracking spells, and it's reassuring considering she has no idea what sort of protections the house of a militia member might have.

It doesn't lessen the paranoia, though, which is why she waits until it's dark before taking a long, complicated route back to her apartment. She doesn't turn the lights on or open the blinds, and even though she's exhausted she knows she won't sleep. There's so much more she has to do.

Day Two & Three

She's working both days, two full day shifts, which means she can't make any headway on the situation.

Kate calls her for help with another militia situation - she knows there was more than one transmission leaked, but it still makes her sick to her stomach as she sits down and watches a militia agent drag a woman out of a building. They make a plan to go check out the address attached to the transmission and the whole time they talk, Steph doesn't say a word about what she saw on her own CiD.

She doesn't really know why. There's the partial excuse of the fact she just doesn't want to get Kate caught up in too much of this, it's stupid and hypocritical of her to do it, but she just wants to protect her friend. But there's something more than that and she knows it. This feels personal, almost, like she has to prove to herself that she can do this on her own. And while she'll let Babs in, somehow she can't bring herself to let Kate help. She'll apologize for it later, when everything's wrapped up.

Day Four

The information Babs has gathered so far doesn't hold any clues to the identity of the man in the transmission - who Steph has started mentally referring to as The Asshole while Babs is going for the Culprit - but that doesn't mean she's at a loose end. There are still the kids who were being arrested, and Steph thinks she might be able to get something out of them.

Babs helps her put together the disguise. Steph's practiced using them, done a few tests runs while she was Robin with Bruce's help, but she's never done anything that had a mission resting on it and that makes her nervous. They stick with one main disguise and persona, that of a teenage boy looking for his little brother. Steph wrinkles her nose when Babs first suggests cross dressing, but if she stuck with looking female, she'd seem too old to be talking to a bunch of younger teens. With the short, choppy, dark wig and a flat chest, she looks about sixteen or seventeen and that's good enough to not raise suspicions straight away. Getting the voice right takes a little more work, but once she's got that down and added the final touches - darkened eyebrows with make up, changes in posture and clothing - Babs gives her the all clear to start investigating.

She's got an afternoon shift at the library starting in two hours, but that's enough time to leave little threads of her identity throughout Baedal. She sticks to the lower class neighbourhoods, knowing it's unlikely the militia would bother upper class kids like that and doesn't do much beyond creating a presence. She gets into a fight with some sleazy looking bloke wandering around a back alley, and she doesn't stop shouting at him until he leaves; a nearby group of kids give her a grateful look and Steph counts that as enough work done for today.

Day Five

She has the whole day off today, and spends it wisely. The disguise goes back on and she wanders absently through the streets of Baedal, talking to other street kids, and the ones skipping school. These are the important ones, Steph knows, these are the ones more likely to be harassed and the ones more likely to want to give up information about the people who hurt them.

People know about the transmissions, it wasn't just sent to her cohort and there's whispers in the city that aren't too hard to hear for people who know how to listen. It makes her story even more believable now, but it's still not time to start actually using it, because no one likes a person who asks too many questions straight away. Instead, she works on making friends, hanging out at a park with kids the same age as her persona. They wonder why they haven't seen her much before, and she tells them she just ran away from home after having a huge fight with her parents. When pressed for what it was about, she clams up and most of them respect that, although she gets curious looks for the rest of the conversation.

She doesn't stay too long with one group, because there's a lot of ground to cover and while Baedal might be only one city, it's still a big city and the sooner she tracks down one of the kids from the video the sooner she can get the militia agents responsible. It's a fairly successful day, despite not finding anyone. The teens of Baedal recognize 'Toby' now and seems to trust him enough that Steph thinks she'll be able to get them talking.

Day Six

When her shift finishes at the end of the day, Steph heads to Echomire. There are plenty of abandoned buildings there, and she's staked out one for herself; she's on the top floor, and all the stairs in the building are crumbled, so they only access point is grappling up or jumping from the neighbouring buildings. It's not foolproof, but it means no squatters are going to wander in and stumble across her small stash.

Today that stash is another disguise, this one an outfit and wig that'll get Steph into a club and make her fairly unrecognizable. She carefully applies her make up using a small mirror she bought along and tucks her work clothes into the bag, then hides it up in the rafters. Her target is Karen Nakai again, and Steph knows it's a faint hope, but she's going to attempt to get hold of Karen's CiD.

Karen's moved from her apartment in Coin's End, obviously she didn't feel safe after the transmission and following break in, but no one's come after Steph so she hopes they're not looking too closely at it. They'd managed to track her down, though; Babs had hacked what few video feeds she could while Steph had done surveillance around the Spire. Between them, they got a track on Karen and found her new address, which is where Steph heads now.

There's a restaurant nearby with a street view, and Steph takes a seat and buys herself something to eat as she watches. When Karen leaves the apartment complex, Steph doesn't move straight away -- she notes the direction Karen is heading, then she finishes her drink, leaving the meal half finished, and pays the bill. Karen isn't too far away, and Steph follows at a distance, keeping her eyes on her target but not getting close enough to draw attention to herself. She considers catching up to her and pick pocketing her as she goes past, but Steph has no idea where the CiD will be stored and anyway, her sleight of hand isn't that good and she'll need the perfect opportunity.

About six blocks from where they started, Karen seems to start getting suspicious and Steph has to duck into a building when the older woman turns around to check behind her. "Shit." Steph curses under her breath and makes a note to be more careful, getting caught would be a very bad result from this little endeavour. It would be easier if she could just take to the rooftops, but it's not dark enough for that yet, and the heels that go with this outfit wouldn't allow for easy movement.

Fortunately, Karen's destination is coming up and when she disappears into a club, Steph follows after her. She'd expected this, Babs had said Karen spent last night getting pass out drink in another bar, which doesn't surprise Steph considering what the repercussions of having her CiD transmit incriminating evidence might be. She doubts the militia are very nice to their own people when they fuck up. Unfortunately, Steph's plan goes to hell when Karen freezes where, and Steph knows, instantly, that she's been caught. Instead of just giving in, she quickly turns to a random woman next to her and says, "Please pretend to know me."

It works, the woman smiles and addresses Steph as if she's known her forever and when Karen turns to look, she only stares at Steph for a moment before shrugging it off as paranoia and heading further into the bar. Steph watches it all out of the corner of her eye, inwardly cursing the whole situation.

Tonight has been a complete blowout and Steph knows it's her fault for not being more careful.

Day Seven, Eight & Nine

She has the three full days off work, mostly because she'd promised Martel she'd do unpaid overtime whenever he needed her. She's not looking forward to that, but it's important now that she follows this line of investigation since the one concerning Karen has been mostly a bust. She puts back on the 'Toby' disguise and heads out to areas she didn't go last time.

It's time to start asking the right questions, and by the end of day six she's tracked down two of the kids who featured in the video; neither of them are the one that was kicked, but they can still help. She spends as much time as she can with them, usually in larger groups of kids but sometimes she manages to get one of them alone. When anyone question her motives, she goes quiet and mumbles something about "looking for someone" and she drops careful hints of a little brother in the conversation. She lets them work the story out of her slowly over the course of the three days.

Toby Carrel has a younger brother; Jack, who's 14 to Toby's 17 and had a bit of a rebellious streak. Eventually, according to the gradual story that Steph tells, and despite Toby's and their parent's attempts to curb the attitude, it led to Jack trying to pick pocket someone who he thought was an ordinary citizen, but had turned out to be a plain clothes militia agent. Toby was with him that day, and was supposed to be looking after him; he'd gotten distracted and had only barely heard Jake's shout of protest before it was muffled by a large hand. Toby had tried to catch up to them, but the militia agent had hauled Jake into a nearby ally and they'd both disappeared; Toby managed to catch a brief glimpse of the man's face. Two days later a pair of militia agents turned up at their house, and his parents had told Toby that he should forget Jake. He'd had no choice but to listen, because he'd had no leads; that was, until the transmission had leaked and Toby had recognized the man.

The kids buy her story, especially when Steph starts crying midway through talking about seeing Jake being taken away and pretends to roughly brush the tears away before anyone sees. It gets them to open up, and eventually they tell her about the man. None of them know his name, but he tends to stick to patrolling in areas where no one comments on kids coming home with bruises or broken arms. It makes Steph almost blind with rage, but she has to fight it down because it's not the right reaction for Toby to have. The kids tell her which places to avoid -- certain bars and shops that the man frequents and she makes a note to go right to them.

Toby disappears at the end of day eight. If things go to plan, Steph won't have need of the disguise again.