2012-10-23 - TYBM

@Spoiler_Alert: Suck it, pigs! 100% 3 star Ham'o'ween run!
Now and again, Spoiler lifts her head to peer into the dimly lit alley across the way, but for most of the night, she has only had eyes for her cell phone. A couple of nights ago, she saw a nine year old boy sprint by, toss a paper bag into an old tire, and then barrel away as police sirens droned in the distance; rather than leave a spraypainted marker behind and hope that the police find it first, she elected to keep an eye on the place herself--just to see who comes to collect the package. Every night since then, she's come by to stake the alley out, and every night, she's found the same thing: that package - stuffed with little glass vials of white powder - resting undisturbed in its new home.
She has a pair of binoculars in her other hand, and sometimes - when she thinks she sees movement in the darkness - she even brings them up to try and get a better look; for the most part, though, this whole affair has been a great excuse to catch up on what /really/ matters: hurling peevish birds at uppity swine.
@Spoiler_Alert: but no seriously stakeouts are THE WORST
She is seated atop a boxing gym, legs dangling over the edge of the roof and kicking at the air idly.
Many in the world would say journalistic integrity is a quaint and outmoded notion. Too often, they're right. When an independent filmmaker starts shooting criminals in Gotham, though-- well, it's both dangeorus and informative work, and likely to draw both the wrong and the right kinds of attention. Which is, of course, largely a matter of perspective. The first real clue (that most would notice at all, anyway) that the Spoiler is not alone on the roof is when her latest alert pings a note from a rather short distance behind her, a simple and relatively subdued chime.
It's not hard to conclude that she was entirely /meant/ to hear that (and that certain vigilantes tend to keep their communication devices /silent/ at other times), but it's unlikely to be the girl's first thought when looking over her shoulder would reveal the dark silhouette of the Batman in shadowed relief. The Dark Knight's form is difficult to fully distinguish from the Gotham night, standing where he is shoulder adjacent to one support beam holding up a billboard mounted near the corner of the building's roof, the chill autumn wind carrying steadily to set long cape aflutter, its interior somewhat lighter than the black exterior as it seeks to wrap-- or perhaps flee-- Gotham's ghost.
Well, she /had/ a pair of binoculars; when Spoiler hears that shrill little chime, she panics, nearly drops everything, and spends the next few moments doing her damndest to bat phone and binoculars both onto the roof, where they'll be safe from gravity's cruel grasp. In the end, she's left with both hands clutching the phone to her chest while she watches the specs bobble all the way to the ground. She has to turn her head away before they shatter down there; those things were /expensive/, the result of saving up what was left after paying for groceries and other household stuff out of her last few Stark Future checks.
The whole thing has the side effect of making her a little slower to take her feet than she otherwise might be: she actually keeps a hand against the roof to steady herself rather than hopping straight up, lest she join her binoculars. Once she's upright, though, she quickly looks to and fro, frantically running her fingers across utility containers all the while; as soon as she spots the fluttering cape, she spins towards its wearer, a scratched and scuffed batarang clutched in her free hand.
"Okay, dirtbag," she sputters as she spreads and sets her feet, Her eyes quickly flick from the cape to the cowl to the spiked gauntlets, back to the cowl, and so on, as she tries to balance putting her strongest foot forward with making out the big, black /thing/ in front of her and not breaking her neck below. "let's see if--" Her brow furrows a little when she skims over the symbol on his chest.
"Let's--" She turns her head to actually look at the batarang in hand, and then she gives the symbol another look.
"... oh," she exhales as she slowly lowers the weapon and brings her eyes up to the cowl. "Um." Beat. Beat.
"'sup?" she finally squeaks out, shifting the throwing bat so that it's casually dangling behind her back.
It's probable that the Dark Knight could have gotten to the edge of the roof to save those binoculars-- or Spoiler herself, should she decide to join them. The peril of the formed doesn't draw Batman from his position, however. Nor does the purple-clad vigilante's preparation to do battle seem to faze him in the lest, the Caped Crusader remaining where he stands, arms folded evenly across his chest. Just below that symbol etched in black that finally draws recognition from the girl. In this instance, the Bat would never let her see the internal smile; he'd also probably never admit that this part never really gets old.
"Not this time." There's a note of warning, perhaps undertoned (somewhere) with concern, in the deep and resonant stage voice utilized with pitch perfection by the Dark Knight. It's probably lucky for Spoiler that he -isn't- here for trouble; even if he weren't, well, Batman. "You're playing a dangerous game with dangerous people." Gotham City is risky for the finest operatives, with the best training. At a glance, the Detective is rather sure Spoiler is and has neither.
Even so, it's longer than he usually takes to accept the invitation and cover his business. The small PDA that chimed with her update is revealed in one extended palm, a touch of a button spawning a montage of video to fill the screen, one after the next. Clips of likely longer surveillance she took on cars and agents the Caped Crusader clearly recognizes. "I need everything you have on these operatives-- and everything similar but unposted back at least two weeks." Unless, of course, she'd rather huck the Bat's own toys at him.
Back straight, shoulders squared, head up; now that she knows who she's dealing with, Spoiler can't help but try to at least put on a show of discipline for the Dark Knight's benefit. Slipping the batarang back into its compartment while still standing at attention is kind of annoying, but she tries to make do; there's only a little bit of slapping at her waist before she's successful, at which point she folds her hands behind her back.
And then, just when she's beginning to get comfortable with the steady, professional face she's presenting the Bat-Man, he starts talking about /being responsible/.
"Oh my God, I /know/," she immediately hisses in reply. Her mask hides it, but the Bat can probably /hear/ the eyerolling her voice. The tenseness in her stance quickly melts away; in her best sixteen year old facsimile his gravelly 'stage voice', she mutters, "'This is my city and you don't have the skills--'"
Hey, a PDA! With footage she uploaded and posted on Twitter! Some of it is too dark, or too grainy, or too blurry--her camera is pretty good, but it's for photos more than footage, and the fact that she got a lot of it while following the agents from above doesn't help so much.
The wee vigilante stops herself mid-mockery, stares at the screen for a little while, then refocuses on Batman's white eyes.
"I--I dunno, they were, like, guys who /really/ wanted to look like homeless people," she murmurs, bringing her own phone so that she can tap at the buttons for a spell. "So I followed them around for a while, just to like--see. I posted all the best stuff, though--the rest is pretty hard to get anything out of. I dunno who they are, or anything; they were following this spanish lady around for a while, then--I dunno." She taps one final button, and... just keeps looking down, rather than meet his eye again.
"I don't really /have/ two weeks worth; a few days, that's about it."
"It's not a joke." The Dark Knight notes without missing a beat. He clearly /does/ hear the eyerolling in her voice, mask be damned. ".. and don't give me the speech about how it's /your/ life. It's not /just/ whether you live or die; it's everyone attached to you, or who they think is attached to you. Everyone you save, everyone you stand up against, what happens to -all- of them is a question of how good you are; how ready for the job. This may be my city--" he's not about to deny it. ".. but it only stays that way because I know her so well." The lecture is one he's given more than once before, and almost certainly will again, in part or in full. Everyone comes into this with a slightly different set of attitudes and expectations, after all.
Despite his own adamant perspective, the Dark Knight doesn't miss a beat in coordinating the transfer on his own end, barely looking at the device as LED and touch controls are intuitively manipulated with gloved digits-- pretty difficult on anything standard issue, as Spoiler is likely quite well aware. "All of it. I don't care how bad the shots are." The mainframe can fix that faster than one would think, and the landmarks pulled from a variety of shots could give him some insight into movements or motives. "Just give me what you do have."
More information is more information; even if the Caped Crusader does seem to feel the pressing weight of a timetable, he's anything but rushed and impatient in his urgency. It's even likely this part of the job could have been done remotely, particularly with Oracle in his corner.. "Did you notice anything else unusual, hear them say anything?" He steps towards the edge of the gym rooftop a few feet down from her, gazing out towards the point she has been staking out; wouldn't do to let them slip the noose because of him, after all.
Spoiler keeps herself from muttering a non-chalant 'Whatever' in reply to Batman's lecture, but the drawn out groan that follows it says plenty on its own.
"Just give me a second..." The violet vigilante again lowers her head. "I need, like--your email address isn't, like, 'batman thirty-nine at gmail dot com', or something, right? Because I need some way to--give you--all this crappy footage you wan--" Beat. Oracle. Right.
"Uh, just a second..."
With the push of a button, gigabytes of surveillance footage is sent off to the former Batgirl's systems, and then she lowers the phone. "It's, um, it's--Oracle's got it, now..."
There's /still/ no activity in the alley--unless a discarded plastic bag dancing across the pavement until it tumbles out onto the street counts as activity, in which case there's tons.
Batman's own device acts like a router to relay the wireless data back to Oracle-- and the Caped Crusader's formidable network as a whole. It's many times faster than Spoiler would be used to seeing in the field, the signal routed to a nearby vehicle and uploaded to the proverbial bat-cloud. He doesn't even comment during the process, she figures out what to do, what he's doing himself, fast enough to make it redundant at best to explain.
"Good." His gaze shifts from the nearby alleyway back to the smaller vigilante, "This group-- their operatives.." or scapegoats, ".. have already been responsible for at least two kidnappings and a murder, and are tied to a criminal syndicate still larger."
It's not all the information, all the details that might lead Spoiler to the League of Fellows or the Eight themselves is completely brushed past, quite purposefully. It's not quite 'good work', but hey; the Bat gets somewhere near that target. Sort of. "Why do you do it?" This potentially deadly job for which she's so inadequately prepared, if the Dark Knight's words are taken at face value.
Stephanie's eyebrows do shoot up beneath the mask when she sees those speeds; she figured she'd be babysitting the transfer all night and maybe even tomorrow. She files the news of murder and kidnappings away in her head; grisly as it is, it does serve as further vindication that she the nights she spent on surveilling them weren't wasted. As if Batman showing up to demand her footage wasn't enough already.
When he asks that question, she quickly looks up from the phone, stares at him for a moment, then lowers her gaze. It's a complicated question--and a new one; Oracle has talked her ear off about the many dangers of vigilante life. The Red Hood made fun of her inadequacies as a crime fighter; 'why' didn't really figure into any of those conversations.
"Because if I didn't," she murmurs after a few moments of hesitation, "there'd be few more drug dealers, and pimps, and--well, just--/criminals/ running around the city. Poisoning it." She chews on her lower lip for a moment, then lifts her eyes to his. "Isn't--isn't that why /you/ do it?"
Where /does/ he get those wonderful toys? Some nights it seems like all of Gotham is wired up to suit the Dark Knight's operations; with his mobility and foresight, some nights that's not far from the truth. It's a fair bet that affirming the value of the work is at least part of Batman's intention.. even as harsh as he may be about other elements of Spoiler's fairly freshly minted vocation. As for complicated queries, well-- the easy questions are seldom worth the time it takes to ask them, particularly when the Detective may already know or be able to guess the answer in the first place.
"Most of the city would tell you that one less dangerous criminal on the streets is a good thing." The Bat notes, not entirely sold, solid as the answer may be on the surface. "A fair sample of that group won't even dial 9-1-1 if they see violence happening outside their own window." It's a frustrating thing, but something the Caped Crusader made at least a semblance of peace with, long ago. "People are naturally afraid of stepping outside their comfort zone, much less risking their lives and limbs to protect those who rarely return the favor."
It's a thankless job. While sometimes, public sentiment moves enough to inspire civilians to collectively lob hard objects off a bridge at a supervillain, too often crime simply endures on the indulgences and apathy of a social structure that would prefer to ignore it. "Something always sparks that dissatisfaction with the status quo; something always tempers that will. Breeds that tolerance to see and taste the poison, and use it to temper strength." It's not really answering her question as much as it is questioning her answer-- but there are more than a few actual explanations within, nonetheless.
"As... as long as it's not some kinda weird power fantasy, or drawn out nervous breakdown, or something, I guess," Spoiler murmurs after a few seconds of trying to dredge an answer from the Bat's words. "I mean..." Rather than explain any further, she just sweeps a hand up and down a few times to indicate his form-fitting, bat-stylized black armour, then draws her hand back to tuck it under her other arm.
"... no offense, or anything," she tacks on, then, looking away from him. Trying to carry on a reasonable conversation with the mythical urban vigilante who she once dressed up as for Halloween is a little harder than she'd anticipating, but at least he isn't lecturing her anymore.
Well, okay, at least he isn't lecturing her about the dangers of crimefighting, anymore; philosophy is at least marginally more interesting, and less likely to induce eyerolling.
"Theatricality and deception are powerful tools." The Dark Knight notes without hesitation. "So are the natural superstitions, fears, and expectations of the human mind, and guilty heart." Some would call that lesson one. That, and his equipment is a lot more effective than hockey pads. The Detective doesn't press into Spoiler's personal motivations for crimefighting, any more than he lays his own bare. Enough to note that they're there-- on both fronts.
If it's possible to out and out offend the Bat, implying that he may very well have issues(tm) doesn't seem to be the way. "Though if you can do /this/ and never wonder if it's because you've lost your mind.. worry." As established a bit more elaborately already, trauma and disillusionment come with the package.
Lesson two, perhaps. It's easy to chalk up the warnings and dangers as earlier lessons, but those are never fully learned without firsthand experience. Among the tragedies that leads to just that spoken thought, no doubt.
With her polyester-blend armour and arsenal of the best gear a tight budget and an eBay account can buy, Stephanie would pretty much /have/ to be nutsto have kept at this gig for so long after getting her dad thrown in jail.
"Will do," she murmurs in reply to his suggestion. Her tone hovers somewhere between genuine acknowlegment and vague sarcasm; there's a moment where she could about swear that another lecture is coming, and when it doesn't, she just winces at herself.
Paranoia: a sure sign that Spoiler is becoming a real Gotham crime fighter.
"I... guess that this kind of crazy is constructive, at least." Beat. "/Our/ kinda crazy, I mean," she corrects with a fleeting, hidden smirk. "I--mostly try not to, like, think about it." Beat. "Oracle showed me some pictures, once," the girl quietly adds. Of criminals discovering her hiding places mere moments after she'd left them, ready to extract vengeance for cyber-snitching; her arm wraps a little tighter around her body.
Some do it for the thrill, others for the duty of it, the potential for fame or glory, out of a deathwish or deep-seeded guilt. Sometimes, more often perhaps than not, there's no simple single motivation or catalyst-- rather, a long equation of motivations, rationalizations, and justifications built on top of the subconscious arithmetic. Once again, Spoiler's respect or lack thereof seems to be little but water off the Dark Knight's back; it's hardly the first time he's dealt with /that/, either. In time, they all learn; or at least, he tries to keep that faith.
"It can be." Constructive. There's a considering pause of his own, a sweep of one thick arm bringing his cape back over both shoulders as he turns to pace back from the edge of the roof, scanning their surroundings carefully for a moment. "If you can keep a clear head, and an eye on your real goals at all times." That's a real trick, some nights; even for the Detective. "Otherwise, it can all go to hell quicker than you'd ever believe." It's something of a lecture, but quiet. It's an almost somber matter-of-factness that may well have been there earlier as well, lost in teenage snark and expectations of her own. It's the voice not of condescension, but frank experience.
"They'll come for you again." He may have seen those same pictures. "Again, and again, as long as you continue." A small pouch which looks to have detached from his utility belt is offered out, palmed unseen during one of the other movements the Dark Knight makes as he paces evenly, too gracefully for his size, back to the precipice. "Flash bombs. A charge of magnesium and around a full minute of smoke cover. Throw one and run."
There's another pause, and mid-extension the pouch is flipped over by dexterous hand, revealing a business card pressed to the back. An old design, simple, for Grant's Gym. "Sign up for a boxing class." A deceptively simple instruction, but then the Caped Crusader? /Full/ of those.
The offered pouch snaps Spoiler out of dwelling on those images any further, at least for now. Caution is all well and good, but too much thinking about what /could/ go wrong were she ever a second too slow, an inch too far from avoiding danger, and she'd be hard pressed to get into costume and patrol the city. In fact, with all she's seen since beginning her nocturnal career, she'd probably be hard pressed to even get out of bed in the morning; fears of mad gods and science-terrorists do not mix well with trigonometry lessons.
"Probably," she quietly says of 'they' and 'their' pursuit as she takes the pouch and card. They're turned over a few times so that she can quickly scan over them both before slipping the latter into another compartment and clipping the former to her belt, where it sticks out like a sore yellow thumb amongst the smooth, egg-like containers lining the rest of the belt. After a deep breath, she looks (way) up at him, hand lingering over the mismatched pouch. "Thanks," she gingerly murmurs. For the bombs. And the recommendation.
And bothering to at ask why she did what she did instead of just trying to dissuade her from it.
And for making sure that she doesn't wake up to a city-wide murder-carnival or something.
It's a lot for a masked girl to try and communicate with a single word.
Thanks, the Batman doesn't need-- or even want. That she takes the devices, and the advice, without any further snark or argument is more what he's looking for. The Dark Knight simply nods, once, considering the blank facemask worn by the violet vigilante as he turns to face her fully, cape drifting around him to half-conceal his statuesque, honed frame as he looks allll the way back down. Literally, rather than figuratively, though it's certainly easy to get the other impression as well. "The Spoiler, hmm?" he's heard the name, scanned her posts; now and then taken down someone she pointed out, at that.
There's the scarcest smirk out of one side of the Bat's mouth, before his hand comes free with grapnel gun. He barely seems to look up before firing the line upwards, lost into the night for long moments before snapping taut on a distant stone of a much taller nearby tenement, Grecian-columned and towering over the block. "I like it." Almost in that same moment, the Dark Knight is lost into those overhanging shadows, launched at a breakneck pace skyward without sign of hesitance or fear.
Spoiler's eyes are as big as dinner plates when he says her name... until she remembers the chime that preceded their conversation.
And, okay, Oracle, who easily could have mentioned her to him at some point. Still, though, Batman saying her name? A little unsettling--even if she can't really put her finger on /why/, now that she's finally met the myth.
"Yeah," she dryly murmurs as he draws the grapnel gun. "one stormy night, I found out the truth about Bruce Wil--"
Before she can get the rest out, he's complimenting her. And disappearing; she has /got/ to get one of those grapnel guns.
"--lis--" She looks around the building he fired at, then past it; no sign of him. After swallowing, she slowly looks down at her phone, backs out of her big pile'o' mediocre-quality video, and taps a button. Somewhere in the distance, a simple, subdued chime may ring in the night.
@Spoiler_Alert: omg omg omg
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