(no subject)

[initiates]

Date: July 1st
Location: The Initiative Hold & Courtyard.
Characters: Everyone.
Summary: New Transports arrive and are shuffled into the Courtyard after their initial briefings. Now with 200% more People-Seeking lists!
Warnings: None.

You've just been hustled and bustled through mazes of information and literal, wide corridors of the Initiative Hold and you've been equipped with your weapon—be it a gun, a sword, or even your existing powers. They've handed you this light netbook and a small pouch of coins (or a debit card, if you're more inclined), and there are several Transports before and after you going through the very same motions. You can hear the Greeter's voice as she walks alongside large groups, telling them all about the history of this place and sharing with you your purpose here in a hurried and urgent tone. "You're in luck that we have enough rooms for all of you; the housing building is getting awfully full. Please, let me show you into the courtyard."

You pass what looks like huge gymnasiums, all with dummies and targets strewn and splayed around the room. Training areas. There are even classrooms, and a few small offices. You're rushed past a large library while the Greeter informs you that you can find almost all your information there, if you've got the time to look—and trust her, you'll have time. You don't spend a lot of time in the bank, and it's a bit of a blur of exchanges with more and more of these strangely-accented and oddly polite-seeming members of the Initiative.

Soon enough, you're in a massive courtyard bustling with all the other Transports. It's not exactly what you'd expect, and it looks more like barracks than anything—huge walls of concrete and stone, separating you from all of the hallways you'd just passed through. It's raining heavily, and dark clouds loom in the air, though it hasn't turned to snow. It's a chill cold, and there are shelters—long cloth hangings that extend from the walls of concrete to house you from the rain, but not enough. Most notably, the courtyard is filled with a marketplace. Even in the cold and the rain, there are several citizens seated at their covered booths and tables, bundled up against the weather. They're selling all manner of their own handmade goods and foods, and citizens and Transports alike are traveling from one small covered shop to another in search of all manner of necessities. Now and then around you you might spot paper fluttering in the faint wind from somewhere relatively dry. It looks like a list.

The Greeter's voice has become so faint now, but you swear you can make it out in the back of the crowds as she tells you, "Good luck. Be safe!"

Her voice is drowned out by the busy marketplace, though even the transactions taking place are somewhat subdued. Nobody is overly happy, really, though most citizens can be found with smiles on their faces. It doesn't seem like they're that shocked to see you, either; even if you're not bound in tattered rags and wrapped in heavy shawls as they are. You're welcome to walk up to a shop, and find yourself something to eat—hey, maybe you'll even find something akin to a raincoat. Or, you can join the others under the coverings against the walls. Where am I? What war? She was talking so fast, and it didn't all make very much sense… did anyone else catch it all?

Welcome to the courtyard. Welcome to the Initiative Hold—and most importantly, welcome to Exsilium.

Comments

oh god now i'm getting ballads from you too

[controlledvariable]

[She's gotten good at dealing with scrutiny, in the years she's known Bruce and Cass and Babs, because they all have a habit of watching so carefully. She just finishes preparing the tea, sending a quick message to Helena while she lets it seep. There's a mug for herself, as well, if only so she'll have something to do with her hands once it's ready.]

You could live here. I mean-- If you wanted. Don't know if you wanna put up with all the bickering, but... yeah. [She trails off, not knowing what else to say, offering Babs an awkward sort of shurg.

This is harder than it should be.]

[powdered]

Instead of being cowed by Saul's remark she simply became more irritated. She lifted her head even higher, glossed lips pressed into a firm line and nostrils flared.

Effie didn't want to be reminded of how far she was from home, or that if what the officials of this place said was true that Exsilium was to become her new one. She didn't need to go farther than the marketplace to know that she hated it here and that it was not a place she belonged. It was as bad as being reduced to live in a District, or worse since they were at war and one was expected to take part. The notion of rebellion scared her, wasn't it what they had worked so hard to overcome with the Games?

"Of course they're strained. They are abducting people."

Effie was not a woman who was easily silenced or told what to do. Especially when she felt slighted. In fact her prime directive became letting everyone else in the entire world know just how upset and annoyed she was.

"Which is very rude. I can't believe their audacity." Said as they directly passed a group of starved looking natives.

"I have a job to do in Panem. An important job. I don't have time for their silly revolution and I will not be silenced because they can't reap what they have fished." Close enough.

and i will always love you~

[bodilesswarrior]

[Oh. She wasn't expecting that, and she just looks at Steph for a few moments, unsure how to respond.]

Well, that would make the vigilante thing easier. [Not that she's quite as concerned about secrecy here.]

i feel so loved

[controlledvariable]

[Her smile tries to say it's okay if you don't want to because her and Babs never had an easy relationship, even before she became Batgirl. She's always known Babs cares, but she also knows how frustrating she can be, and they'd butted heads more than once.]

I gave up on the whole secret identity thing, here. It's given Helena a little trouble, so that's... something to consider.

[Whether Babs wants to be closely associated with Steph, if it might make people think she has something to do with the vigilante world.

They have time, though, to work that all out later, right now she's finishing up their teas, bringing them over to the kitchen table where she makes room for Babs and her chair before taking a seat herself.

God, where does she even start?]

as you should

[bodilesswarrior]

[Barbara nods; it seems like a sensible option, all considered. Unless certain people from home show up, but they'll just need to be extra vigilante.

Which they need to do anyway, so it all works out.

She accepts her tea with a slight smile, raising it to her lips to breathe in the steam. It's nice, having something familiar.

And then she waits. Stephanie can start on her own time; she figures this isn't an easy story to tell.]

this is why you're my favourite (don't tell bella)

[controlledvariable]

[She doesn't drink her tea, just curls her hands around the mug where it's resting on the table, staring at the liquid as though it might have the answers, whe really it just means she doesn't have to look at Babs.]

Leslie lied. [Two words, spoken quietly, but they're not nearly enough, and this is so important that she forces herself to look at Babs, no matter how hesitant she is.] When I flatlined, she told Bruce there was nothing that could be done, but she lied, and as soon as he was gone they restarted my heart. She tells me she wanted to keep me safe from Gotham, but... at the end of the day I think she might've just wanted to teach Bruce a lesson.

[Which hurts, it twists uncomfortably in her chest, because it feels like so much of her life has been about adults using her, controlling her, taking away her agency,

She has to pause, exhale slowly and scrub a hand over her face before she can continue, but she gets there.]

She took me to Africa, and I spent a few months there in a coma. When I woke up...

[She just looks at Babs, hoping maybe she can read it in Steph's expression, that she can understand what it was like when she woke up. And maybe Babs can, better than most, because they've both been hurt so badly.

I was scared.

But she can't say the actual words.]

my lips are sealed

[bodilesswarrior]

[Ah.

That...it's a shock, to think Leslie would betray them like that, would
use a teenage girl to prove something to Bruce. But she can tell Stephanie isn't lying, isn't obscuring the truth.

The gang war changed all of them.

She blows softly on her tea, considering how respond. She knows what Stephanie isn't saying; that after she woke up, she stayed.]

You were tortured. [The words are soft and sad and ashamed. Even if Stephanie lived through it, they still failed her.] It's more than just the pain. It makes you feel helpless. It makes you feel like nothing. Like you'll never be whole again.

[She takes a breathe, lets it out slowly.] You needed time. I get that. [If someone had taken her away from it all, away from Gotham, from her dad, from Jason, from the Bats...maybe she would have, too.]

ty ty

[controlledvariable]

[No matter how soft the words are, they still make her flinch, fingers curling tighter around the mug as she tries to fight down that instinctual reaction. They're just words, but the truth of them still stings, when she tries not to think about too much.

It makes you feel like nothing.

She's never really talked about this with Babs before, because Oracle had just known, the way she knows everything, and Steph has to wonder why they never did. Maybe it's just too hard for both of them, to confront those pieces of their pasts.]

About a year, give or take. [That time she needed.] The camp we wer in was attacked, and I had to step up, the way I would've at home. I realized I wasn't ever going to let go of that part of me, not like that.

[It couldn't be taken away by anyone else, not even Sionis.]

[interspace]

[ Misha gives a quick motion with her hand, curling it up around the air as if trying to mine what? ] 'Veraun' is like, 'Sir' or something, right? Besides, I've got my allowance. I don't need a sugar daddy.

Well, shit. Sleeper agents makes this a whole lot more complicated. Like, infinitely more.

[bodilesswarrior]

[She sees it, of course, and she almost regrets the word. Having it out there, bold and plain - it hurts. And it hasn't been nearly so long for Stephanie.

But she needed to make sure Steph knew she understood. That she didn't blame her. This was on Leslie.]

I think most of us are like that. [Even when she retired from Batgirl, she knew she wouldn't abandon that path entirely. Maybe she would have finally followed in her father's footsteps.] ...It helps, to know you can still make a difference. They they didn't take that away from you.

[She doesn't talk about this, not even with Dinah - who would understand just as well. But she gets the feeling Steph didn't have a lot of people to confide in; that she could use someone who knew what it was like.]

[5055034455]

Jesus, this lady. Saul's quick to shoot a sympathetic glance the natives' way again, actually flinching a little as Effie continues on. And people say he lacks tact?

Telling her about the recent biological attack and subsequent bombings probably won't help, he decides. Instead, he continues guiding her along — they seem to be headed back toward the Hold — and speaking in hushed tones. "It's not just that they want us to fight for them. I had an important job back home, too, but there won't be a home for me to go back to if the United Earth has anything to do with it. They're destroying whole worlds. I've seen it happen. And it doesn't matter whose it is — yours, mine, Elmer's. They'll do it. They don't care. That's why we're here."

He's a little taken aback by his own words. They sound foreign to his ears, almost. Saul-back-home would never have advocated fighting for a cause other than his own.

"Don't you want to help save your world?"

[controlledvariable]

[She nods, grateful for the reassurance, the understanding, but she isn't sure how to put that all into words, isn't sure if she even wants to, not when this is so hard to talk about.

Not when she nearly had a panic attack, just from someone touchiing her scars.]

I'm Batgirl now.

[It's the only thing she can think to say, and it's important too, that Babs knows. She probably could've have waited for a better time, instead of dropping so much on Babs in one go, but it's better than trying to talk about what Sionis did.]

Cass gave it to me.

[To reassure Babs that it's not because something happened to Cass, and maybe to assert that it was given, not taken.]

[sweetling]

Oh, jeez. Tell me you're not some sort of wannabe superhero with the cybernetic sidekick.

[sweetling]

[Halfpipe won't bother to argue with Miss Congeniality's 'everyone is magical' shtick, mostly because she's too busy being horrified about the weather.]

I am never going to have a good hair day ever again.

[sweetling]

So Seattle still exists where you're from?

[bodilesswarrior]

[For a moment, her heart drops into her stomach - what about cass what happened no one has heard - but then Steph clarifies, and she can breathe again.

She can consider.

Barbara cocks her head, slightly, brow furrowing.]

Well. Cass wouldn't have given you the symbol if she didn't think you could handle it. [She'll need to see Stephanie in the field to be entirely convinced, but she doesn't hate the idea. It makes sense, if Cass wanted to move on.] How long?

[taijiya]

Ah... thanks. [She flushes faintly and goes back to rearranging cookie plates.]

So you have demons in your world, too?

[showmeyourwreath]

[Flora changes tacks immediately because hair. She frowns sympathetically.]

Oh, I can come up with something to take care of that if you want, don't worry!

no don't ask questions about time in comics!!!! trying to make a guess at this

[controlledvariable]

[That's... a better reaction than she expected, considering the batarang shaped dent in her wall at home.]

About ten months, plus another six here.

[It's hard to wrap her head around the fact she's been trapped here so long, when it feels like hardly any time has passed at all, regardless of how much has happened.]

[taijiya]

Hm. So... a very small island, huh.

[As much as she has a fixation on 'home' now that it's gone, Sango's not sure how she would have been different if she had never traveled outside of the demon slayers' village.]

But... you came to this world, too... so technically you are in their position. With the traveling, I mean... right? So why would you envy the new Transports if you're here, too?

[taijiya]

[A faint chuckle that's not too happy.] Well, I said a little less depressing, not a lot.

[sweetling]

If you have a magic spell to make my hair look perfect in any and all weather, I officially want to grow up to be a fairy.

[Never mind that she is already grown up and... pretty much the farthest thing from a fairy ever.]

I'M SORRY sounds good to me

[bodilesswarrior]

[Barbara is in a better place emotionally, all told. Besides, it cheers her considerably to know Cass is back on the radar, as Batgirl or not. She understands wanting to move on, and if Cass chose Steph...]

So you've settled into the suit, then. [All the same, it is a bit perturbing. She wasn't there while Stephanie learned to navigate her new identity. She wasn't the one who continued her training. None of that has happened yet.

(Will it? She's trying not to wonder if this Steph is from a different world entirely.)]

I'd like to observe you in the field, but that'll be a bit trickier here.

[interspace]

Not wannabe, and not cybernetic. [ She shakes her head, then lifts her legs so that she's in a sitting position... on the air. Considering what else everyone is facing and with all of the so-called sentient weapons the Initiative is bandying about, the basic use of her powers are no secret to be kept. ] Disclaimer: I know exactly how lame that makes me sound.

sup piper let's explode stuff together :>

[solitaire]

_{( Remy waves off her apology with one hand as he laughs, a throaty chuckle that is entirely well-meaning. )}

No need ta apologize. It's a busy day, an' even us ones who've been here longer than a day can get a little excited.

_{( He usually doesn't as a rule, but hey. At this point he dips his head as a greeting. )}

I jus' thought I'd remember, if I'd seen you 'roud before.