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Date & Time: Jan 18-23
Location: Lots of bars. Lots of dark, unpleasant places.
Characters: Jason Todd the Grump and whoever decides to interrupt his willful ignoring everything.
Summary: Jason Todd is willfully ignoring everything and spending most of his time up on lonely rooftops and occasionally drinking.
Warnings: idk, gloomy bullshit, swearing, we'll see.

[ Okay. Jason wasn't an idiot. It was really kind of obvious he wasn't going to be able to avoid everyone forever. Exsilium wasn't Gotham and there just weren't enough places he could go until he just. Ran into somebody.

Maybe he'd even run into Dick or that tiny girl Robin. Or Joey... Though that didn't bear thinking about. Running into them eventually didn't mean running into them immediately. All Jason wanted was space. He needed to reorganize himself, needed to separate himself from the memories that of this place that still floated through his head. Exsilium wasn't Gotham, but Jason was still himself. The holster under his jacket was a reminder of that. So he spent most of his time in bars, in the darker, shadowy parts, nursing a drink and listening. The rest of the time, he wandered, relearning the alleyways and rooftops of this weird ass city. If nothing else, he'd be prepared for however long he'd be staying here. ]

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[ He almost smiles at her joke. Despite the confusing jumble of past memories and feelings, it's pretty obvious she's a good kid. The kind of kid who'd by all rights be a Teen Titan, if she lived in his world.

Maybe she'd even be one of the ones that kept living... That and the name does a pretty good job of killing any warm fuzzies he had. He crosses his arms and leans back into the shadows. ]

You got the wrong guy.

( She wonders who he thinks he's fooling with a direct lie to someone who, currently a bat who speaks into people's minds, would currently set most folks questioning sanity or stumbling back. Even drunks had a limit she'd been careful to find on nights where she was four footed and many of the exiles here were armed.

A world with mostly unfriendly, mutated animals was not strictly friendly to an Animorph roaming unannounced. )

< Nice try! >

( She says, unwrapping one wing to point his way with her shortest fingers. )

< But I've heard better. Though I guess it could be true! You might go by another name, since we never were properly introduced. >

( Collette sounds amused. She's partly serious, having pulled his name off the network months ago, but in no small part teasing at the same time. )

< Wouldn't matter what I called you, you'd still be you. You done with bar hopping for the night? >

[ He eases himself out of the shadows, moving to stand almost directly under the sign she was hanging from, looking up at her. ]

I'm not always me.

[ Christ, yeah, okay, he's still a little drunk. He shifts and rolls his shoulders a little. ]

Might be.

< Way to tell a girl you've got multiple personality disorder! >

( She's joking, unfolding her other wing again so she's hanging above his head, looking half ready to fly away. She's less teasing, more... serious would be the wrong word. Curious and testing with her next question, canting her head to the side so she looks down at him almost quizzically. )

< How do I get that to be a definitely? >

What can I say, I'm a complex guy.

[ He frowns up at her. ]

Why.

[ He could maybe sound less suspicious. Maybe. ]

( Bats lack eyebrows to raise. Collette trades that off in favor of squinting and opening her mouth in an almost smile. )

< Why do you think? >

[ His frown deepens. Then he snorts and looks away. ]

Relax. I don't pick fights and I sure as hell don't need a babysitter.

< Good, because I'm pretty sure I count as an abysmal failure as a babysitter. Maybe my brother had the right idea leaving me in the states when he shipped out overseas with his wife. >

( She lets herself laugh at that, saying it can't hurt when she knows she's never seeing him again. At least he and Anne have a future, right? She can be happy for them for that alone.

She hopes he doesn't feel guilty. She hopes he's proud. )

< If you're free, then I want to hang out! Not so literally as this, but you know. At least walk you back wherever you're staying. >

[ He thinks about it. Really honestly thinks about it and as far as he's concerned, that's reason enough to refuse. He's not desperate for company, damn it.

He also kinda gets the feeling she's not going to take no for an answer. He sighs, turns on his heel and heads down the street. ]

Don't expect me to be great company.

[ He'll be sober enough in a few blocks that he'll be able to lose her over the rooftops. ]

( She doesn't particularly care about the quality. She's happy he didn't outright say no. Yes, it wouldn't have been much of a deterrent -- it usually isn't, she knows she's persistently annoying for a reason -- but she's happier not to have to fight uphill the entire time. )

< Bat, golden, or coyote? >

( She has her wings half-cocked, face and ears oriented his direction again. )

[ What, there's options? He doesn't look back at her when he responds. ]

Not the bat.

[ At least he's honest about his bullshit issues. ]

< As you wish! >

( Like she wouldn't quote on that one. It's about all she needs, and with his response she drops off and catches herself falling with a mad flapping of wings. She looks like she's flying drunk as she zigzags around the corner, diving down with a muted shout to herself of BONZAI before grumbling about why it's always, always in the trash.

(Safer there. Animals like trash; people expect to find them lurking around there, even the less harmful mutant creatures that wander into town now and again.)

She goes for coyote. Golden's new enough she wants people to get used to seeing her in daylight, keep her as something friendly they note around town before they wonder at the new thing slinking in the shadows. Shadows she slinks right out of, scenting the air and walking over with a predator's particular grace. She pulls her lips back from her teeth a little in an expression of distaste. )

< So gross! Someone's been wasting money all night down that way. >

( If you can't keep it down, why pay enough to drink so much that you lose it all? Dumb! )

[He'd only seen her morph the once and that was into a human form, so he doesn't really react to the weird flying, except to listen for any signs that something went amiss.

When he spots the coyote, though, he instantly wishes he'd told her to do something else. More of those weird not-memories swam to the surface. He knelt down, getting a closer look at the face that was not missing an eye. ]

That's what you get in allies, kid.

< Plus plenty of garbage. >

( A fact she seems in decent humor over. He remembers, and it's fairly obvious to her what.

She's not so apologetic, turning her head to the side with her ears still perked forward. One eye facing him makes it easy to affect a wink; and so she does. )

< Like what you see? You might wanna take a picture. It's going to last longer! >

( And she laughs, giving herself a full body shake to avoid the impulse to play nice -- and a little mean -- with physical contact, like she would with Miles, Mahdi, or Vanadi. For one, she's not sure how tipsy he is. For another, she was serious about wanting to know who he is now. From someone making dark jokes and trying to scare people off with shifts in tone and not-so-joking references to being dead. She'd listened in, politely or otherwise, and tucked it away with a myriad of other things she might never get around to asking about, or might blurt out at any second. )

< Seriously. Two hour time limits! Talk about a certain kind of pressure. >

[ He snorts and pushes himself back up without touching her. Physical contact isn't really something he gets a lot of these days, when it doesn't involve violence on some level. It feels weird to break that cycle, even with someone in animal form. It's not that hard to shove away the memories and start walking. ]

Guess we better get moving then. I'm not gonna haul your ass back if you wind up turning human.

[ But he does make a mental note of it. He doesn't ask if it's two hours per form, though, counting her talking to give her away. ]

( It's when he's walking that she moves closer, making to brush against his leg once before settling at an easy distance. She loves the smells at night, everything a little less cloying than when people are up and leaving scent trails over scent trails. Besides, she never minds the cold so much out in fur. )

< Pfft, turning human? You make it sound like it's involuntary! >

( She tilted her head to one side to glance up at him, letting her mouth stay open in a sort of canine grin. )

< I have to switch out or I'm stuck like this forever. >

( She hopes he enjoys her candid admissions in the matter-of-fact, slightly amused flavor they're delivered. )

[ It's nice to know she's still good at saying shit that shakes him up. Even if he's better at just rolling with the punches these days. ]

Good to know. You must have a hell of an internal clock.

< Nope! Though the Andalites do. I've just been training ever since I got here. >

( "Training" Barnaby, all the rest of it, even picking up a stopwatch when she'd been pulled off the platforms into the weapon's hall, it came back to getting herself used to guessing at the right amount of time. )

< Between that and endurance work, I'm in better shape than ever! I'm pretty sure none of us had seven months of basically uninterrupted practice time before. >

( Marco hadn't been there for more than two weeks? A month? Before she'd arrived. Then he'd been gone again, leaving her with that Carmen Elektra finger painting. No way he'd gotten much training in during the meantime! )

[ It's weird to think of her as a soldier. It had been a thought his younger self was still wrapping his mind around when he wound up. Well, like this.]

Seems like uninterrupted time is about all this place has going for it. Or used to...

[ He was more or less a walking, talking embodiment of interrupted time. ]

You've got that horse form too, don't ya? [ He knows the conversation is inevitable, but he can at least keep it turned on her. it gave him something outside of himself and his fucked up memories and kept her from asking her own questions. ]

< Two horses. >

( She corrects. She's a bit pleased with the both of them, if she wouldn't have called herself much of a horsewoman before Exsilium. She finds herself laughing at the idea of uninterrupted time, even before now. )

< Sure, that's totally what I thought during the bombings! Oh, and Russia. We might not be traveling our own timelines all that often, but uninterrupted time? We're here to interrupt time until it all breaks down on us. >

( She gives a wag of her tail, purely affectation. There's much in Exsilium and what they do that she finds exciting. Collette doesn't trouble herself in being too bogged down in the what ifs and the might bes. There were always too many of those for her to juggle when she was so much better at doing than deliberating. )

Oh, pardon me, two horses.

[ There's a flare of amusement, but it fades quickly. ]

Wonder if this is part of time breaking down. [ And it's probably for the better that he doesn't focus on the idea of going back in his own timeline. He blows out a sigh and runs a hand through his hair. ]

The things that happened didn't feel like they lasted very long. Or. They don't now. [Which isn't entierly true. Russia had flown by compared to his memories of the caverns and the stink of poison gas. ]

< Nope, I'm pretty sure this is all part of the UE's response to -- um. Unexpected boulder attacks. >

( Caesar had told her he wouldn't advise owning up to her part in Sollux's rubble toss at the UE's capitol. She understood at the time why he said what he said, and part of her agreed -- she'd still confessed.

They'd brushed her off, saying they knew she didn't have those sorts of powers, and she was left feeling uneasy in the aftermath. Accountability... wasn't that supposed to be important? When the only person who'd come close to being really angry with her was Caesar, and he'd walked away without yelling, wasn't that messed up?

She shifts closer, head lowering as they go on. One ear stays fixed on her companion. The other moves around, flicking toward the origins of sounds she's picking up and categorizing with a different part of her mind. )

< If that's the case, I wonder if you'll be saying the same thing if you lose time again and end up like when I first met you. >

( In a conversational enough tone, as she lifts her head again. Chin up, focus on what there is to find out there, Collette! Her internal peptalks are a salve for her confusions. )

< If any of us dwelled on just how bad things have been, there'd be no place for us to go. So we make our own lives up here, and we live, and we fight, and we put the memories behind us as best we can. The nightmares are a different thing, but you wake up from those. >

( Mostly. Confession and observation and partial lie, Collette still sounds little more than factual. )

< Sunshine or no sunshine, there's still a new day dawning out there somewhere! >

[ He snorts. ]

Very inspirational.

[ Yeah, bright kids like her really didn't fit with the fucked up life he'd picked out for himself. At least he was past the worst of it, he'd been feeling almost stable. Or had, anyway.

He sighs. ]

Hard to put memories behind you when you find you've got a whole lot that you didn't have before.

[ He glances down at her. ]

Like you, for instance.

( She gives another wag of her tail when he mentions her, laughter more of a mental impression than something precisely 'heard.' )

< Way to flatter a girl! On again off again memories has to be a whole new time-traveling bother. Though it's nice you do remember me! It's got to be something with how so many people are changing points in time right now, and it's kinder than what Vanadi has to live with. >

( She's teasing, but she may as well not have been. It's true in this case.

She finds it curious that it is the way this work, that whole sets of memories can be repressed and recalled based on... what. The trigger of a location? The mind is a tricky place as it is, and the inconsistent results across people she's met while everyone's gone wonky might make sense if it's tied in to this place. )

< Then you do forget everything when you go back. >

( She doesn't let her disappointment color her mental voice. It's one of the benefits to being in morph, though more of it shows in how her head dips and her ears twitch back before she literally shakes it off. )

< At least for now! >

( Probably forever, but she has to wonder, deep down, if there's any way to just... not go back at all. )

[ He's not sure "nice" is the word he'd use. It's weird being around a girl he remembers having a crush on when he was a kid, even though Jason was positive he'd never seen her face to face before just now.

Part of him wants to ask her to morph human, just so he can connect the real face with the vague memories. He watches her head drop out of the corner of his eye. ]

We don't know how the machine works. Technically, I don't know if I ever even went back.

[ He realizes he's trying to make her feel better, maybe apologize? For what? ]

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html behave >C

no it refuses

RUDE >C

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