exsiliumlogs | [open] this time I'll be a little smarter

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[open] this time I'll be a little smarter

Date & Time: First two weeks of Feb
Location: Training area, rooftops, other places!
Characters: Stephanie Brown AND YOU
Summary: Steph's finally settling into a routine in the city; see threadstarters for options or make up your own c: Or PM me if you want to work out something specific!
Warnings: Violence, will update if necessary

It's been over a month since Steph first stepped off that damn platform and into the Initiative Hold, and she's still struggling with it more than she' d like to admit. Time travel and the multiverse and strange creatures aren't exactly new to her, but they're all things she had minimal contact with, they're the things that the Justice League deals with. Batgirl might be a bigger player in the vigilante game than Spoiler was, and she's certainly noticed a shift in the sort of situations she finds herself in, but it's nothing compared to being pulled into another city to fight a war. That stuff happens to Superman, or Wonder Woman. Steph doesn't have the training for it.

But even if she's struggling, she refuses to let it show, and puts on a brave face to deal with life until things start making sense. Exsilium is depressing, with the constant rain and cold temperatures, with the citizen living in poor conditions, and all the Transports and their nonsense. It takes her a while to warm up to using the network, and to warm up to the idea of even getting to know the other people here, but she's getting there, and starting to maybe, possibly, sort of make friends.

That doesn't mean she likes it in the city, but at least she doesn't actively hate it anymore.

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Research isn't really her area of expertise. She's a good detective, and while she's nowhere near the same intellectual level of Tim, Bruce and Babs, she's good at figuring things out when she puts her mind to it, but, well. She's not at the same level as Tim, Bruce and Babs, so usually when serious research is needed, Batgirl isn't the one that people go to.

Unfortunately, she's the only one here (there's Dick and Jason, but she's... not sure where she stands with them) which leaves the research to her. At least college served as good practice, and her job at Gotham U's library means she can make her way around the Initiative one with relative ease. And research serves as a good counterpoint to the physical exertion of training; curling up at one of the desks with books stacked up in front of her. For someone who doesn't have a lot of patience, when she gets lost in a task she can spend a few hours reading through books and making notes in one of the various notebooks she's collected. If anyone gets a close look, they'll notice that she isn't writing in any intelligible language, but rather a combination of shorthand and code, something to make writing things down both quicker, and safer.

Occasionally she remembers that staying seated for hours at a stretch isn't good for her, and promptly takes a walk around the library as she sips a cheap coffee from one of the vending machines. She really needs to buy herself a thermos.

It was always to move back into reading after training on the long shift. Coby was panting when he got back to the library after a day full of physical training, wearing the bare minimum of sweat pants, a white t-shirt and his glasses. Pulling his glasses down, he wearily walked the halls upon halls of bookshelves, holding his tablet under one arm. He was looking for history--but, more importantly, military history.

Coby sighed with a relaxed expression on his face just across from Stephanie, holding a stack of books taller than himself in each hand after roaming the shelves. He set down both stacks and removed a handful of notebooks from one of the two stacks, unclipping one of the pens he set together with them.

"Finally," He spoke to himself, snatching one of the leather-bound tomes, going through and looking for anything remotely pertinent to the situation he was in. With one hand, he drew his hand into his sweat pants and removed a can of soda with a Skull and Crossbones on it, the other hand drawing up his next pen and clicking it so he could begin writing at the table.

Steph watches the whole procession with slight concern; that's way too many books for a normal person to person to carry, and she rises from her seat slightly as Coby starts to put the books down, just in case he loses them. It's possible she's been working in a library too long, if she's so worried about a bunch of books.

Once she realizes there's not going to be a huge disaster, she settles back into her seat, though she can't help making a remark on all the books, "You're gonna have a long day ahead of you."

Wincing at the taste of the drink, Coby finished it and then set it down on the table before him, his eyes falling to Stephanie the moment she spoke up to him. His hand, thumbing his pen, seemed to become a bit more busy because he was being spoken to. The distraction itself was welcome--in the wake of so much information, he was feeling pensive.

"I hope it's a good workload, actually," Smiling faintly in response, Coby fixed his glasses with the end of his pen. "This is a new world entirely for me. Since this history is so well documented, I should make use of it."

"A lot of it's bullshit," It's not even a comment on how the Initiative operates, but Steph is from Earth and she doesn't put a lot of stock in history books, "History is written by the winners."

Not that it hasn't been interesting to look through the history books of this alternate Earth - things seem fairly similar up until the late 20th Century - but she takes it all with a grain of salt.

"I guessed as much," Coby replied with a bit of a deeper smile. Though he was earnest to learn as much as possible, he knew about the 'Void Century' and the gigantic gap there was in his own world's history. The phrase 'The winner writes the annals of history' was something he knew to be confirmed truth.

"Though, I can't let it stop me," He continued on, opening the first book and lining up a page mark for it. "If I don't search, I'll find nothing. I can make comparisons and see for myself what might be true and not true. Then, I'll be able to help everyone out much more effectively."

Well, at least he's going into this knowing that, and considering her own research, she can't exactly fault anyone for wanting to learn as much as they can.

Glass houses, and all that.

"You're doing this all to help people?" There's something a little disbelieving in her tone. It's not that she isn't used to people doing that sort of thing - she's in a business where they'll leap in front of a bullet for a total stranger - but she's generally a little suspicious of everyone else in the city, even if they're another Transport.

Coby nodded briefly, flipping the pages in his notebook so he could continue on. One hand turned pages and the other skimmed the lines of text with the tip of his pencil. He still remained attentive of Stephanie though, but he was capable of splitting his attention easily enough. Helmeppo would talk to him constantly even when he studied, so it was something he was easily used to.

"Of course," He replied with ease, raising his head up again to look at Stephanie. "As a soldier, it's my duty to protect those who need me, stop criminals and to uphold Justice.

"That sounds more like a cop than a soldier," It's not a criticism, just a general comment on the way he's phrased that answer. She doens't have a high opinion of soldiers or police, but in her experience soldiers fight in the wars they're told to fight in, they don't really concern themselves with justice. Nor do they really worry about criminals. An enemy soldier isn't a criminal, he's just another man fighting the same war for a different side.

"That's what I've been hearing," Coby touched the brim of his glasses, hardly disconcerted. He had heard that same evaluation of his station several times even at home, but ten times more in Exsilium. Police had been a rare commodity in the world. At times, villages would normally only have one or two officers and that was hardly enough to protect people from criminals.

"However, that's the stance we've had to emulate. It's difficult to work with such a low number of soldiers, so it borders into acting as constables whenever we're stationed in certain areas. Before I was brought here, I had actually been stationed on an island to investigate wrong-doings in a local village."

Idly, she wishes Babs or Tim were around, because she's wondering if this is an alternate universe thing, or a time travel thing, since the way he talks - villages, constables - puts her in mind of someone from a fair few decades in the past. History isn't her strong point, so she isn't sure if the system Coby's describing would be similar to how things might've been run in the past.

"Must be a lot of hardwork," Her opinions on law enforcement aren't particularly generous, but she can respect that it takes a lot of work, "I guess things are probaby a lot quieter for you, here."

"From time to time, yes," Mulling it over, he began to run his fingers along the spines of the books he'd drawn. He was looking for something more aligned to police history from Earth--something he really was curious about from the get-go, just by previous mention of it all.

"Though, quiet isn't good. It just means that criminals have better hidden themselves."

Her first impulse is to laugh, but she fights down the urge, simply shrugging instead, "Or the people here are just less inclined towards being criminals, when they're too busy trying to survive in exile."

It's funny because as Batgirl, she's crawled into all the dark little spaces where criminals usually hide, and what she's found have been petty crimes at best, nothing like what she's used to dealing with.

Coby had, since he arrived, always been confused by the mention that 'survival was difficult' there. He was raised in a military environment in which rationing was a common thing and a 'week long starvation' was a commonly accepted punishment. In terms of food, he thought he'd hit the jackpot in all honesty.

So, he blinked rapidly in response, "Do you believe so? I'm more used to a violent underground."

"You still have your regular thefts, assault, that sort of thing," She lifts a shoulder in a lazy shrug, as if this isn't much of a big deal, "But there's less inclination to do things like holding the entire city hostage for millions of dollars when there aren't millions of dollars."

It is, of course, possible that her persepective is somewhat skewed. Things like that happen once every couple of months, back home, and that's not even touching on people like Cobblepot, or the gangs.

Dollars, again. Coby had never really gotten the chance to run over the shift in currency between eras, but he did know the name of that currency. It was something from years before in those history books--something in the information age. Though, he heard it way too often. He should have been studying on that. With a furrow of his brows, Coby shifted away one of his books to get at the bottom of his pile.

"Admittedly, all those things have potential to get bigger and bigger," Biting off the cap to one of his pens, Coby found a notebook. "And even then, I don't think I can relax easily at all."

"They might, if the Initiative gets what they want," Meaning that if conditions improve in the world due to the effects of their missions, things will likely change a lot in how the city of Exsilium functions.

And there's more she could say, about some suspicions she has that there are a few worse things lurking where even she can't find them (yet), but it's not something to share with a stranger. So she doesn't.

"The Transports have set up their own police force, maybe they'd appreciate your help."

Coby stopped himself from diving into the pile any deeper, blinking rapidly in response to Stephanie. What she said sounded fine enough, but he had always gotten nervous about pursuing secondary employment, none the less something he wasn't entirely knowledgeable of. 'Police forces' really were a rarity in his experiences and for good reason. Most men couldn't maintain a budget to keep one active and often-times just relied on the Marines to acquire protection.

"I'm not entirely sure. Though, I suppose I can take a look at it," He mulled it over in his head. "Would there be uniforms involved, ma'am?"

"Not as far as I know, I think they're a litte more in formal than that," She's not inclined to trust them at all, but that's just thanks to the simple fact that they're police, and she's never had a good relationship with them.

"And I'm Stephanie, by the way, the 'ma'am' really isn't necessary," It makes her feel old, or posh, both of which are strange.

"I apologize," Coby reacted quickly, bowing his head apologetically. "It's a force of habit."

Though, he still had to be told ten times a day. One would question if he was even trying to remove himself from his habit.

"At the very least, do you believe they would let me wear my military uniform?"

"No apologies necessary," She waves a hand to dismiss it, "Just letting you know my name is fine."

It's not like she'd given it to him until just now, and at least ma'am is polite, so she's hardly going to hold it against him.

"I doubt they'd mind, I mean - I can't see why it'd hurt, and if it makes you look more official that's probaly a good thing," Since that's generally the sort of thing that police forces go in for. Officialness.

"Ah, then--my name is Coby!" Coby settled himself and adjusted his posture in his seat, bowing his head briefly. It was an awkward gesture, but one he was used to repeating over and over. With that, he began to draw up his books, reaching into his shirt for a felt-tip pen to make marks in his notes.

"So," He smiled weakly, wondering what he could even do for the people around him. Being a soldier was much easier. He could be pointed in a direction. He didn't have to consider his options too much. "...No. I don't think I could do it. As much as I've heard--I don't think I qualify for it."

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[open] this time I'll be a little smarter

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