exsiliumlogs | [open] The terrible things that happened to you, didn't make you you

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[open] The terrible things that happened to you, didn't make you you

Date & Time: From the 25th - early July
Location: Everywhere~
Characters: Stephanie Brown and you
Summary: Steph does stuff. Mostly training and Batgirling around
Warnings: Injuries, violence, dumb feelings.
Notes: Prose or actionspam is fine, hit me up if you would like to sort out something specific

a → closed for Vanadi

Everything is terrible, and she's an idiot, and all she wants to do is throw herself into something just to stop thinking for a little while, as if that might stop her from feeling so damn guilty . With the way things are with the Exiles, Steph knows better than to take her frustrations out on them, justified or not, so she heads to the training centre, instead. It's not really fair to force her anger onto a sparring partner, either, so she decides to turn her energy towards the vault, beam and bars.

It goes well, for a while. She's throwing herself into it a little too hard, trying to pull of moves that are a little too complicated, dangerous, especially for someone her height, but the rush of adrenalin and building confidence at every successful trick is helping, bit by bit. For a little while, she just loses herself in the motion of it, her attention focused entirely on one movement to the next.

There are more than her fair share of falls, slipped grips on the bars, crashing into the mats after the vault, burns on her leg from the beam. It's nothing too serious, until she's trying to pull off a Geinger, proceeds to miss the catch, and goes crashing into the ground, landing with almost all her weight on her left shoulder. The sound of it dislocating is unmistakable, by this point. The feel of it dislocating is something she'll never forget, and she bites back a pained cry, pushing herself onto her back and just taking a moment to breathe through the pain.

It takes her a little while to find the energy to get up, but she manages to push herself to her feet and start towards the clinic, holding her arm awkwardly across her torso to try to keep it from moving and jarring too much.

b → closed to Ellie

They need to talk. They really need to talk, but Steph has been dreading it in equal parts, because she's scared she's going to do something stupid like blurt out the fact she kissed Saul. She tells herself that she won't, that it'll be fine, but still ends up nearly having a panic attack as she tries to make coffee for them both. Ellie is curled up with a book, she's not sick anymore, Jim and Leonard aren't home, which makes this the perfect time for it.

In the end, she makes tea instead of coffee, realizing that she doesn't need that much caffeine on top of the nerves, and that Ellie tends to prefer tea, anyway. For a moment, she just stares at the mugs, forcing herself to calm down, before picking them up and heading over to Ellie.

"Hey," She offers one of the mugs, waiting until Ellie accepts it before curling up beside her on the couch, "How're you feeling today?"

c → Training

Once her shoulder is sufficiently healed enough - by her standards, rather than those of an actual medical professional - she throws herself back into training. With another older Bat here (one she's always been equal parts admired and been terrified of), she feels like she has to up her game, make sure that she's doing everything she can to be as good as she can, and it helps that training is a good way to distract herself from all the thoughts twisted up in her head. Violence has always been cathartic, and it doesn't let her down, now, when she can hit things and get hit and ignore the guilt for a little while. If she pushes herself hard enough, it means she can just collapse at the end of the day, instead of lying awake for hours.

A lot of the time she trains in her Batgirl uniform, wanting to keep working on the sentience, on upgrading it and getting it to evolve so that she can be of more use on missions. And because it's kind of fascinating, discovering new things she can do with her suit, with her utility belt and all the tech in her cowl. She misses the Batcave with its extensive obstacle courses and training robots, and she wonders if she should check out the VR room at the Hold, one day. She's not sure she trusts it, though, so for now the physical training rooms will have to do, and she makes use of almost everything there at her disposal. Sometimes, she goes in civvies, not wanting to come to rely too heavily on her suit. Those days she tends to focus on gymnastics, easing herself back into things to make sure she does wreck her shoulder again so soon.

No matter how she's dressed, she spends a lot of time around the areas set up for sparring, and is more than happy to go a round or two with someone other than the Initiative trainers.

d → Patrol

With the degradation of Transport/Exiles relations, Steph increases her patrolling, spending more time out at night and trying to cover as much ground as she can over the city entirely, rather than focusing on the more criminal parts. There are still the usual sorts of things to keep an eye on, drug deals, muggings, drunken brawls, but for now her primary focus is on the areas that Transports frequent, bars and restaurants and cafes that tend to draw their patronage. It's not that she isn't aware most Transports can't take of themselves, God knows the Initiative mostly got things right when it comes to wanting soldiers, but that doesn't mean there aren't people that do need someone keeping an eye out for them.

She's a silent shadow, mostly, flitting from rooftop to rooftop as she watches for any disturbances below.

e → Wildcard

[OOC: For anything else your heart might desire.]

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"Never really had baklava before …" Alisha doesn't quite know how to properly address the whole gym thing. Normal talk? So not in her skill set anymore. She's always conversing about where to hide the probation worker's body or how powers are shit or how timelines have changed now that certain events have happened. Normal things are difficult to come by, and are extremely hard to talk about when the situation arises.

Alisha's still side-eying Stephanie a little. While she wishes to ignore it, as her and her mates had dressed in similar gear for a costume party, she can't quite do it. She shifts the weight on her feet, her brows pinching, and she honestly doesn't mean anything horrible by it, but, honestly, it's just weird. So, she asks, "Is there a reason why you're dressed so weird? Didn't really think people went to the gym dressed like that."

"You won't regret trying it," Wait, she makes a bit of a face, "Unless you have a nut allergy, in which case I'd recommend avoiding it."

Health advice with Batgirl, though she's very aware of how Alisha's looking at her, since she's gotten similar things from other people. At the question, she can't help laughing.

"Batgirl, at your service," Just casually curtseying, using her cape like it's a skirt, "I'm a vigilante back home."

Or a superhero, but she's less inclined to apply that word to herself, since it feels a bit too over the top. Wonder Woman is a superhero, Steph's just someone trying to help where she can.

"A vigilante," she repeats, dipping her head slightly as she tries to apply the term to the woman before her. She's dressed as one, sort of similar to those in the comic books Simon loves so dearly; her outfit reminds her of Superhoodie, though, but something possibly better designed, since his looked so lunky and thick and more made up of random pieces of dark clothing he could get his hands on or afford.

It's just weird, finding herself standing in front of someone so similar to him. Of its own accord, her expression softens slightly, that sharp crease of her brows smoothing out as she remembers him. "Like a superhero?" She takes in a breath, that softness in her expression is still there, but seems to be buried as Alisha connects what she knows from home to the woman before her. She hadn't really expected to see anyone in this line of work; Simon had been the only person to ever really properly act on his powers with a get-up similar to Stephanie's. The other guys? They saved the day when they were in danger, not because they did it for the greater good. "You're one of those people who go around jumping off of buildings and saving people, yeah?"

Steph can be patient when she needs to be, giving Alisha time to process, though she's keeping an ear out for the rowdy crowd that have to be getting closer. At least she'll hear them coming before they get too close, and she's good enough at splitting her attention between two things.

"Kinda like that," Even if her expression twists a little, still unsure at claiming that title, "Jumping off buildings, saving people, punching supervillains in the face, that sorta thing."

It's not an entirely accurate summary of what Batgirl does, but it's a start.

Splitting her attention is not something Alisha has come to learn. She's so involved in this recent discovery to really notice anything around her, let alone be on guard for a threat potentially coming their way.

"And Batgirl is your superhero name," she says, rather than asks. She honestly wishes Simon was here rather than her. She doesn't know what to do with information like this. How is one meant to react when someone says they're a superhero? How id someone meant to react when someone is dressed like one? This isn't her area of expertise or interest, and Alisha's finding that she's not doing a good job at swimming against it.

A long time ago, Alisha would've laughed in Stephanie's face. But after a little growing up, with the help of Simon and his tangents of Sarah Connor and the like, she's found herself more taken by surprise than greatly amused.

But what she's come to learn, over the few months since she's been struck by that storm, is that some people mistakenly call themselves superheroes. She may not remember it, the exposure incident with Milk Boy, but she remembers that some people had taken a few alter-ego names on board. And wasn't Nathan always going on about being called captain of something? Everyone with some other identity, whether it be Jesus or Superhoodie, has always had some shitty power to come with it. "Does this mean you have some sort of superpower?"

A nod, since it's easier to just go along with the superhero thing than to keep making a point of it; she just has to hope that Babs won't somehow hear this and make fun of her about it.

She probably will, even if Babs hasn't set up a network and started monitoring Steph's every move. Somehow she'll know about this.

The superpower thing just draws a huff of a laugh, though, as Steph shakes her head, "I'm just a baseline human, it's a thing with us Bats, none of us have any fancy powers."

Which kind of makes them stupid, at the end of the day, when they're throwing down against aliens and mutated creatures and gods, but she can't imagine any of them just stopping what they do because they're outmatched.

And Alisha's entire understanding of what makes a superhero is blown. It's not a concrete universal rule, apparently, that superheroes - or vigilantes, even - need to have some sort of power that is the catalyst for them to don some ridiculous costume and try and save the world. Isn't that what Simon does? Tries to use his powers for good, rather than selfish need or to simply ignore it like she does?

Alisha frowns. "So, how is it you're a superhero, then? I thought you needed to have some sort of crazy power to be one."

"Not where I come from," Maybe things work differently in other universes; she can't speak for them. More importantly though, she's pretty sure they're running out of time.

There's still no reason to worry Alisha, so Steph takes a moment to look up at the sky, wrinkling her nose at the rain as if it's more of a deal than it really is, as if she's only just noticed it.

"I'm more than happy to answer anything you ask, but do you maybe wanna head to that cafe to save us from getting soaked?" Alisha doesn't need to know that Steph's suit is waterproof.

And it's a good thing Stephanie's taken the moment to completely burst the comfortable bubble Alisha's found herself in, even if it hasn't been quite comfortable, what with her feeling a little unbalanced with this information revelation. It would've continued on a stream of questions, ones that, perhaps, Alisha didn't quite deserve to hear, considering she's very much a stranger to her questionee.

When Stephanie glances up, Alisha does, seconds later. Her gaze doesn't shift back to Stephanie until a few beats after her question. "Yeah," she says, now looking back at her. "Didn't quite pick up an umbrella from that arrival place."

Then, Alisha remembers, with another pinch of her brows, that Stephanie had been doing something while Alisha, herself, had been on a completely different path. Is her coming to the cafe going to disturb something that Alisha isn't aware of, considering she's not a subscriber to the superhero newsletter? "You don't have any superhero things to do?"

Okay, agreement, that's good.

"I got distracted by the cookies," A joke, untrue, since Steph had seen drug addict written all over Jesse Pinkman and hadn't wanted anything to do with him, regardless how nice the cookies seemed.

She briefly considers offering her arm to Alisha as another joke, but that might be a little too much, and she knows she wouldn't get soo close to a person she doesn't know.

"There are a fair few of us running around the city, I think I can take a snack break," She won't stay too long, but it'll help get Alisha out of the rain and somewhere safe. It won't be too hard to track the group of men down again once she's had a cup of coffee, just to make sure they don't run into anyone else.

To hear there are more people like Stephanie … Why is Alisha even shocked? "I'm Alisha," she says. Since they're going on a coffee date as if they're two normal women, and Alisha at least knows a name Stephanie much prefers to go by, it's only normal that she says who she is. Alisha, honestly,just wants to be normal, but going to a cafe with someone dressed in a costume meant to represent another individual?

She tries.

"Those welcome cookies any good?" She slips her hands into the pockets of her jacket, shifting in her stance in a gesture of her being ready to move whenever Batgirl is. She's not exactly the best at giving verbal cues of 'Lets move' that don't contain a tone of bitchy.

"Steph, on my off days," With a smile, as she starts towards the cafe, her posture perfectly casual despite the fact she's still listening out for anything that might give them trouble. It's still a little strange to say her real name while in uniform, but she stopped worrying about her identity so long ago that it doesn't matter, now. And people tend to be a little less wary of her when she gives a real name.

She starts towards the cafe, making sure Alisha is keeping up, not even worrying about the tone of bitchy in Alisha's gesture, "They're not bad, actually. Jesse's pretty good in a kitchen."

Despite not taking any the first time, she has tried them since then.

"Should probably take one, next time," she says with a shrug, trying to keep in step with Stephanie. She's a little behind, nothing noticeable, as being shoulder to shoulder with someone where she has no idea of where they're going always leaves her feeling a little awkward. More awkward than usual, either way. "I'm kind of learning the hard way to trust the things that come out of this place, like umbrellas and foods. Everyone seems pretty good around here. If you ignore all the other shit that happens."

The other transports seem to be good people, even if Alisha's not exactly the most pleasant person with them. Steph is the most recent example of that. And while Alisha would find it much more easier to simply distrust her, she knows she'll end up taking a left when she's meant to take a right and end up lost on her way to eat herself into a state of denial.

Steph isn't quite sure what to say to that at first. For all that the people here have generally been fairly decent, trust isn't something that comes easy to her. And it's different for her, when she knows that she could take most people in a fight, while it seems like Alisha is a fairly regular person.

"It never hurts to be cautious," Her tone is light, as much as it is a more genuine warning, "But I think most of us are generally pretty okay people."

Most, but not all, and she doesn't want to encourage anyone to be less cautious, even if she can imagine Babs laughing at the idea of Steph encouraging caution.

(But it's different, she can throw herself at all sorts of things; it's not okay for other people to get hurt.)

"Most of the people I've met," Alisha says, almost accompanied by a shrug. Her shoulders start to lift, but never quite take liftoff. "You are. Most people I meet in alleyways aren't exactly the good kind." After a beat, she breathes out, "Or completely honest."

Alleyways haunt Alisha. Or should it be verandahs? Places where there's only two ways to move, back and forth, are the places where Alisha finds herself confronted the most, with either questions of her future, or concerns for her own chance at survival.

Oh.

She's not sure why that catches her off guard, when she just said most of us and was including herself in that statement, but it's still nice to hear someone say she's Good People, and her grin is pleased.

Though it doesn't last long, not when Alisha mentions meeting bad people in alleyways.

"Maybe you should make alleyways a no-go zone for the future," She knows it isn't as simple as that, but it's not exactly unhelpful advice, either.

"Yeah," she says, because, hell, even Alisha agrees. "Dunno why I keep finding myself in them," she shrugs. The pathways she had taken back home weren't exactly alleyways, but they might as well have been. Abandoned. Empty. Quiet. Someone always seemed to follow her in those spaces.

"Seems like I can't find a place without taking some stupid shortcut," she says it half-amused. She turns to Steph, "Shortcuts here - I should avoid them, yeah?"

"Might be an idea to try to avoid them, yeah," Especially the way things are with the Transports and Exiles at the moment, although at least Alisha doesn't stick out too much, since she looks human.

Though Steph's just - fishing something out of her utility belt as they walk, holding out a small, simple device for Alisha to take.

"This is kinda like a panic button, just flip that switch on the side and it'll send out a signal to let me know where you are. Just in case," She'd started working on them when Saul had asked for a way to contact her, though she hadn't finished them before she'd just told him who she was, but-- This works in situations where it'd be too hard to make a call on the tablet, and the bonus GPS device in it doesn't hurt.

Alisha's brows pull together as she looks at the little device, then takes it. "You're seriously a superhero," she says, her gaze on the little panic button in her hands.

"Thanks," she says as she glances towards Steph. Though she's smiling, her brows pinch together. She's not quite sure how to feel, of someone actually caring about her safety to such an extent. It reminds her of Simon, but he's more smothering, way more intense. This … It seems like some sort of token of friendship. In the oddest of ways, of course.

"You hand these out a lot?"

"Well this isn't a fancy dress costume," Not that it really looks like one, with how obviously well made and solid it is. From a distance, it gives the illusion of being skin tight and clinging, but up close the suit is clearly armoured.

The question earns a shrug, "A couple, I only just finished making them, so you get one of the first," Between her regular work for Tony and all the other little projects she'd gotten involved in, she hadn't had much time to work on them.

"You made them?" Alisha glances back down at her little gadget, inspecting it, turning it over in her hands as she does so. "I've never met someone who can make stuff like this. Not exactly something you'd find someone doing community service can do."

"It's a pretty basic transmitter, the receiver's the complicated bit, but I already had that," She shrugs, because it's a little weird to think of it as being anything impressive.

And she doesn't miss the comment about community service, but it doesn't feel like her place to ask, especially not when she's in this get-up. She doesn't want to make Alisha feel like she's being interrogated or anything.

"You should see some of the stuff my friends can do, I used to have a device that'd turn me invisible."

Steph you stole that.

"Invisible," Alisha repeats. Doesn't that strike a chord in her. Invisibility reminds her of Simon, and thinking of Simon makes her ache for his presence, his reassuring nature, of the way that he takes charge but a different sort of charge — one that isn't completely overpowering and obnoxious, but quiet and commanding.

Her brows crease together. Steph's device is the storm for Alisha, something that has granted her a power that she personally does not want. "What kind of stuff can they do? They've all got devices that can make them invisible or something?"

There are a lot of things her friends can do, both in terms of technology and straight up ability. She's quiet for a moment, considering what she can say that isn't revealing too much about anyone.

"Batman has a suit that mimics the powers of the other superheroes," Like laser vision, that jerk, "It's a hell of a thing to see in a fight."

Or... to fight against.

That jerk.

Edited (wurds) 2013-09-18 11:24 (UTC)

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[open] The terrible things that happened to you, didn't make you you

YOU ARE SO GOOD TO ME!

I AM A TRUE FRIEND

THE TRUEST! /DRAMATICALLY SWOONS

/CATCHES YOU OFC

/INFATUATED

/sends you flowers

/sends you champagne

are you trying to get me drunk?

i am a very innocent and sweet person with no ulterior motives, how dare you!

I don't believe you!!! I'm onto your sneaky plan!!

/serenades????

I see the tables have turned

you mean this table that is decorated with fine lavish foods and wiiiiine?

you're too good for me

but you are most excellent!!

am i tho. what if i'm secretly a serial killer

are you good at it?

not really, no

oh, then i think i have to take back my comment of excellency ...

it's okay i understand

i changed my mind, you are excellent.

my plan is working

it's a good plan but do i get an invisibilty device in it?

of course